The Egyptian Cross Mystery

Foreword

There is one minor mystery connected with the various major mysteries of The Egyptian Cross Mystery and that is a puzzle which has little, if anything, to do with the story itself. It might properly be called “the mystery of a title.” It was brought to my attention by the author himself — my friend, Ellery Queen — in a note appended to the manuscript, which he had sent on from his little place in Italy after urgent solicitations by cable from his very devoted servant.

The note said, among other things: “Give ’em hell, J. J. This isn’t the usual claptrap on le crime égyptologique. No pyramids, no Coptic daggers in the midnight dark of a creepy museum, no fellahin, no Oriental pooh-bah of any sort... in fact, no Egyptology. Why, then, The Egyptian Cross Mystery, you ask? With, I admit, justification. Well, the title is provocative, for one thing; it positively magnetizes me. But if there’s no Egyptian significance! Ah, there’s the beauty of it. Wait and see.”

Typical Elleryana, observe; which, as Ellery’s readers are apt to know, are always interesting and often cryptic.

The investigation of these appalling murders was one of my friend’s last jobs. It is the fifth Ellery Queen case to be presented to the public in fiction form. It is composed of extraordinary elements: a peculiar and unbelievable concoction of ancient religious fanaticisms, a nudist colony, a seafarer, a vendettist from the hotbed of Central European superstition and violence, an oddly mad “reincarnated god” of Pharaonic Egypt... on the surface a potpourri of impossible and fantastic ingredients; in actuality the background of one of the most cunning and horrible series of crimes in modern police annals.

If you are disappointed at the absence of that rare old codger of a manhunter, Inspector Richard Queen — I always insist that Ellery doesn’t half do his father justice — let me reassure you. He will be back. In The Egyptian Cross Mystery, however, Ellery played a peculiarly lone hand, due to certain geographical ramifications of the case. I was tempted to request the publisher to recommend an atlas as supplementary reading to this novel, or to issue as the frontispiece a map of the United States. It began in West Virginia...

But there I go. After all, this is Ellery’s story. Let him tell it.

J. J. McC.

RYE, N.Y.

August, 1932