Publisher's Synopsis
Sequel to "The Mysterious Card," in which the mystery of the card is resolved. According to Uncertain Endings: The World's Greatest Unsolved Mystery Stories by Otto Penzler (Penguin Books, 2006), this 2-part story is one of the two most famous riddle stories of all time, the other being "The Lady, or the Tiger?" by Frank Stockton. The Mysterious Card stories were published in a magazine called The Black Cat, the first part in 1895 and the conclusion in 1896. The scene of this little book is on a high mountain. There are, indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline. It is no place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter; but to one who lives upon its sides, Mount Saint Helena soon becomes a center of interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one section of the Californian Coast Range, none of its near neighbors rising to one-half its altitude. It looks down on much green, intricate country. It feeds in the spring-time many splashing brooks. From its summit you must have an excellent lesson of geography: seeing, to the south, San Francisco Bay, with Tamalpais on the one hand and Monte Diablo on the other; to the west and thirty miles away, the open ocean; eastward, across the corn-lands and thick tule swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where the Central Pacific railroad begins to climb the sides of the Sierras; and northward, for what I know, the white head of Shasta looking down on Oregon. . . .
