Project Gutenberg's The Mystery of 31 New Inn, by R. Austin Freeman

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Title: The Mystery of 31 New Inn

Author: R. Austin Freeman

Release Date: April 28, 2004 [EBook #12187]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MYSTERY OF 31 NEW INN

BY R. AUSTIN FREEMAN

Author of "The Red Thumb Mark,"
"The Eye of Osiris," etc.

TO MY FRIEND

BERNARD E. BISHOP

Preface

Commenting upon one of my earlier novels, in respect of which I had
claimed to have been careful to adhere to common probabilities and to
have made use only of really practicable methods of investigation, a
critic remarked that this was of no consequence whatever, so long as the
story was amusing.

Few people, I imagine, will agree with him. To most readers, and
certainly to the kind of reader for whom an author is willing to take
trouble, complete realism in respect of incidents and methods is an
essential factor in maintaining the interest of a detective story. Hence
it may be worth while to mention that Thorndyke's method of producing
the track chart, described in Chapters II and III, has been actually
used in practice. It is a modification of one devised by me many years
ago when I was crossing Ashanti to the city of Bontuku, the whereabouts
of which in the far interior was then only vaguely known. My
instructions were to fix the positions of all towns, villages, rivers
and mountains as accurately as possible; but finding ordinary methods of
surveying impracticable in the dense forest which covers the whole
region, I adopted this simple and apparently rude method, checking the
distances whenever possible by astronomical observation.

The resulting route-map was surprisingly accurate, as shown by the
agreement of the outward and homeward tracks, It was published by the
Royal Geographical Society, and incorporated in the map of this region
compiled by the Intelligence Branch of the War Office, and it formed the
basis of the map which accompanied my volume of <i>Travels in Ashanti and
Jaman</i>. So that Thorndyke's plan mus