Before You Begin

Before you begin.

Pugh and Joseph Tress are collectors, old friends and natural rivals. Put an unusual object between them and neither pride nor prudence can prevent an experiment.

In The Pipe, a handsome gift carries a warning that arrives just late enough to be useful. In The Puzzle, an inexpensive inlaid box refuses to yield its secret by any ordinary method. Both stories turn the habits of connoisseurs—their appetite for rarity, their sharp eyes and their sharper competition—into engines of comic suspense.

These anonymous tales appeared together in Julian Hawthorne's 1909 anthology The Lock and Key Library. Their authorship remains unattributed, and this edition preserves that honest uncertainty rather than inventing a biography or portrait.

Begin with the illustrated gallery, then follow the semantic trail through the text. Each new plate opens only after the events it gathers have already been read.