BLACK’ERCHIEF DICK BLACK’ERCHIEF DICK BY MARGERY ALLINGHAM WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM McFEE [Illustration] GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1923 COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY MARGERY ALLINGHAM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. _First Edition_ DEDICATED TO HAL GRAME IN THE HOPE THAT HE WILL BE SATISFIED THAT I HAVE DONE MY BEST TO FULFIL THE PROMISE I MADE TO HIM TO TELL THE STORY OF ANNY AND TO “TELL TRUE” INTRODUCTION In the sense of requiring elucidation or apology, this novel needs no introduction. The young lady who wrote it about two years ago, when she was eighteen, has already abandoned this work to publishers and other grown-ups, and with admirable professional good sense, is working upon fresh enterprises. In this, indeed, she is a genuine artist. Nothing is more clear from her correspondence with the writer of this introduction, than that she is, without ever becoming conscious of the fact, a genuine artist. Speaking of the intellectuals who occasionally impinge upon the family circle she says: “They have a horrid habit of---- oh, I can’t spell it, but it means pulling their minds to pieces and finding out how they are made, and they do that with their emotions, too.” Nothing of the sort is to be found in this tale of eastern England during the Restoration. And yet, while we may accept the unusual spectacle of a modern schoolgirl writing a red-blooded adventure story and privately poking fun at psychoanalysts and their dupes, we are justified in a certain curiosity as to the genesis of such a book. That curiosity the introduction is designed to assuage.