"Eternal Rhythms As a Dynamic for Murder!"

"Design in Red."
By Barry Perowne (Philip Atkey, 1908-85).
First appearance: Britannia and Eve, July 1947.
Reprinted in Mystery Book Magazine, Summer 1949.

Short short story (9 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "If he were right, then working here in the club was an escaped homicidal maniac."

Consider the case of an arrogant, bitter, and vindictive man, an amateur criminologist, who thinks he knows everything about a ten-year-old murder, more than enough in his mind to nab the escaped killer; now consider the case of this same man and how he goes about proving it, even if it means employing, shall we say, extreme methods . . .

Characters:
~ Walter Fagg:
  "The man walked cat-footed."
~ Hamel, Colton, and Weems:
  "It was the affectation of the three cronies that they were sophisticates in criminology."
~ Alonzo Bede:
  ". . . at fifty, since his hobby was criminology, he was reduced to haunting the court rooms."

Comment: With its focus on an obsessive character going too far and the nice wrinkle at the end, this one would have been a perfect fit for Hitchcock's 1950s TV series.

Resources:
- Barry Perowne is known to mystery aficionados for his continuation of the exploits of E. W. Hornung's gentleman thief, A. J. Raffles, for fifty years (1933-83; see Mystery*File HERE and HERE), most of them appearing in The Thriller (1933-35), Thrilling Detective (1935-37), The Saint Magazine (1956-59), and, preponderantly, in EQMM, beginning in 1952 and ending in 1983. See Wikipedia's stub of an entry (HERE) and Nico van Embden's bibliography (HERE). According to FictionMags, in addition to Raffles, Perowne had several series characters: J. R. (Rick) Leroy (1930, 1932, 1937, 1938, 1939); Prosper Fair, the Duke of Devizes (1959, 1963, 1965); and even a couple of shared universe Sexton Blake adventures (1937-39). One of his original stories, "Blind Spot", was written especially for a 1947 film of the same name (IMDb HERE, Wikipedia HERE, and the SPOILERific TCM synopsis HERE).

The bottom line:
   "One does not kill to avoid social inconvenience."
   ― P. D. James
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"Stalled Part Way Through a Murder Plan Which Was Too Complex to Begin With"

"Dry Run."
By Larry Niven (born 1938).
First appearance: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1968.

Reprints page (HERE).

Short short story (8 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     ". . . how, now, could he keep Harvey's death a secret? . . ."

It's true, Harvey is dead, but he wasn't the intended victim. "The worst possible time to die is when you're involved in murder"—good advice, but it comes much too late . . .

Resource:
- A red tide plays an important role in the murder plot; see Wikipedia (HERE and HERE) for more.
- You can find our featured posting of Larry Niven's "How the Heroes Die" (HERE).

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Two Shorties from MYSTERY BOOK

"The Liquid Bullet."
By Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-96).
First appearance: Mystery Book Magazine, Summer 1949.

Short short short story (2 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "Then she lets out a yell to me and fires at the lamp and hits it."

The lesson is clear: Never laugh at a blonde with a pistol—any kind of pistol . . .

Comment: A rare instance of a story being told as a one-side-only telephone conversation.

~ ~ ~

"Lady Killer."
By John W. Clifford (?-?).
First appearance: Mystery Book Magazine, Summer 1949.

Short short short story (3 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "The victim going out of her way to make it easier for him. The target fitting herself to the muzzle of the gun."

He's always had it his way—until tonight . . .

Comment: A twisty variation on a Hemingway story.

Resources:
- We've featured Samuel Kimball Merwin, Jr.'s detective fiction (HERE) and (HERE) and 
his crime-tinged science fiction (HERE) and (HERE); see (HERE) for biographical data. 
As for our other author, John W. Clifford, who knows?

The bottom line:

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"Nothing Was Certain About Mars"

"How the Heroes Die."
By Larry Niven (born 1938).
Illustrations by Virgil Finlay (1914-71; see HERE, HERE, and HERE).
First appearance: Galaxy, October 1966.

Reprints page (HERE).
Novelette (25 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).
(Parental caution: Language.)

     "At twenty-five miles per hour he fled, and at twenty-five miles per hour they followed."

Simply surviving on Mars is a hard enough proposition without a murderer formulating plans to kill everybody and claim it was an accident . . .

Characters:
~ John "Jack" Carter:
  ". . . left the radio band open, knowing that ultimately Alf must talk to the man he needed to kill."
~ Rufus Doolittle:
  "What'll we do, flip a coin?"
~ Lieutenant-Major Michael Shute:
  "Privately he wondered if twelve men could repair even a small rip before they used up the bottle air. It would be one tank every twenty minutes . . ."
~ Gondot:
  "He's planning something."
~ Lee Cousins:
  "This'll cause merry hell."
~ Lew Harness:
  ". . . was dead, murdered."
~ Alf Harness:
  "And now he was being chased by one man. But that man was Lew's brother."
~ Timmy:
  "They just kept going out into the desert."
~ The Martian:
  ". . . seemed to remember something."

Typos: "as if [missing he]"; "his eyes rivited on."

Resources:
- Laurence Van Cott Niven has been producing Major Award-winning hard science fiction and soft fantasy for more than fifty years; the usual sources have ample information about him (HERE; Wikipedia), (HERE; the SFE), (HERE; his homepage), and (HERE; the IMDb). TV Tropes has much more about Niven (HERE) and his Known Space story arc (HERE). Niven's most popular novel, Ringworld (1970), was optioned by Hollywood almost as soon as it was published, but so far nada.

- Steve Lewis at Mystery*File recently highlighted one of Niven's stories (HERE).

- We've already featured Niven's connection with the Star Trek franchise (HERE) and (HERE).

- Some stories that either take place on Mars or are somehow involved with The Red Planet include Raymond F. Jones's "The Memory of Mars" (HERE), John Jakes's "Coffins to Mars" (HERE), Theodore L. Thomas's "Mars Trial" (HERE), Alfred Coppel's "Tydore's Gift" (HERE), Richard Wilson's "Murder from Mars" (HERE), and Rog Phillips's "The Man from Mars" (HERE).

The bottom line:

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"He'd Never Been Scared the Way He Was Now"

WE'RE SO ACCUSTOMED to having our sleuthhounds sniff out crime that we tend to forget they can also hear it:

"Cop with an Ear."
By Lawrence Treat (Lawrence Arthur Goldstone, 1903-98).
First appearance: Detective Story Magazine, May 1942.

Short story (11 pages, 2 illos).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "A strangely familiar blond woman, with her eyes wide and half twisted out of their sockets and her mouth open with a shriek that still echoed in the room."

The clue that puts our sleuth on the trail to the real killer is simple enough—if you're a musician, that is: "The French horn was off pitch."

Characters:
~ Panachewski:
  ". . . was known for that kind of thing. When it came to women, he had no conscience and 
no morals. More than one man was glad the conductor was dead."
~ Inspector Kraft:
  "They got him five or ten minutes before the performance."
~ Patrolman Ernest Mathews:
  "He'd joined the cops for one reason, and only one. Olga."
~ Olga Bagby:
  ". . . Mat knew that, if Olga came to him, he'd hand in his shield . . ."
~ Lewis Bagby:
  ". . . growled and insulted him and took his money, but Mat knew he was making things easier for Olga."
~ Andy Markhof:
  "They resented him, and their resentment was all too apparent."

Resources:
- FictionMags tells us about Lawrence Treat: "Mystery writer, born Lawrence Arthur Goldstone; name change in 1940. Born in New York City; lived in Massachusetts." 
Our only other encounter with him is (HERE), with more informational links.
- The WPA serves as an element in the story; from Wikipedia (HERE and HERE) we learn:

   "The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. In a much smaller project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.
   ". . . Directed by Nikolai Sokoloff, former principal conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, the Federal Music Project employed over 16,000 musicians at its peak. Its purpose was to establish different ensembles such as chamber groups, orchestras, choral units, opera units, concert bands, military bands, dance bands, and theater orchestras that gave an estimated 131,000 perfor-mances and programs to 92 million people each week. The Federal Music Project performed plays and dances, as well as radio dramas."

- At one point we read: "They sabotaged him the way the Norwegians tricked the Nazis"; see Wikipedia (HERE) for what is meant.

The bottom line:
  "People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands—literally thousands—of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss."
     ― Nick Hornby
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"Brothers, Fathers, Husbands . . . Too Many Motives"

UP NEXT, we have in one story an example of the breadth of Anthony Boucher's interests, ranging from opera to the occult, with sidestops at mystery fiction and science fiction/fantasy (SFF). If after reading it you feel that the editor's introduction shades a little far into being too apologetic, then we're in agreement; the story, compactly told and always engaging the read-er's interest, is fine just as it is. It's unfortunate for Verner and Lamb fans, however, that for whatever reason(s), Boucher didn't or couldn't keep his promise . . .

"The Anomaly of the Empty Man."
(a.k.a. "The Empty Man").
By Anthony Boucher (William Anthony Parker White, 1911-68).
First appearance: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1952.

Reprinted in The Science Fictional Sherlock Holmes (1960), The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1989), and elsewhere (HERE).

Short story (14 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "It’s like a strip-tease version of the Mary Celeste. Only the strip wasn’t a gradual tease; just abruptly, whoosh!, a man’s gone. One minute he’s comfort-ably dressed in his apartment, smoking, drinking, playing records. The next he’s stark naked — and where and doing what?"

You may have heard of people being characterized as "empty suits," but this takes it to a whole new level . . .

Characters:
~ James Stambaugh:
  "It was as though James Stambaugh had been attacked by some solvent which eats away only flesh and leaves all the inanimate articles. Or as though some hyperspatial suction had drawn the living man out of his wardrobe, leaving his sartorial shell behind him."
~ Lamb:
  "No, Mr. Lamb. You have a wife and two sons. I have no right to trifle with their lives merely to gratify an old man’s resentment of scepticism."
~ Dr. Horace Verner:
  "'But Dr. Verner,' I led with my chin. 'The Stambaugh case . . .'
  "'Dear boy,' he sighed as he readied the old one-two, 'you mean you don’t realize that you have just heard the solution?'"
~ The cousin:
  "As you know, my cousin enjoyed a certain fame as a private detective. He had been consulted in more than one previous instance of the horror; but I had read little of him 
in the press save a reiteration of his hope that the solution lay in his familiar dictum: 
'Discard the impossible; and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be 
true.' I had already formulated my now celebrated counter-dictum: 'Discard the impos-
sible; then if nothing remains, some part of the "impossible" must be possible.'"
~ Inspector Abrahams:
  "Take a good look at the empty man on the floor. You see, I remembered the vacuum cleaner. And the Downtown Merchants’ parade."
~ Carina:
  ". . .  for almost unique among sopranos, Carina possessed a diction of diabolical clarity."

Renata Tebaldi. She's in the story.

Resources:
- You'll find plenty of info about Anthony Boucher (HERE; Wikipedia), (HERE; the SFE), (HERE; the ISFDb), (HERE; Mike Grost), and (HERE; the GAD Wiki).
- We've featured Boucher several times already (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE).
- An overview of opera can be found on Wikipedia (HERE).

The bottom line:

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"They Were on the Look Out for an Individual More Conspicuously Melodramatic"

"The Evasion of No. 527."
By C. W. Edwards (?-?).
Illustrations by W. F. Southcott.
First appearance: To-Day, July 23, 1898.

Short short short story (3 pages, 3 illos).
Online at Hathi Trust (HERE).

     "No. 527 made up his mind to do it if he had to swing for it."

Every prison escapee can't be a Jean Valjean or Richard Kimble, now can he?

Characters:
~ No. 527:

  ". . . at any moment he expected to see the hated forms of the square-capped men, with 

guns at cock, ready to shoot him with as little remorse as if he were a rabbit."

~ Mrs. Battledown:
  "Happily, the candle had been of a sudden blown out, and a few minutes after old Mrs. Battledown, the sole inmate of the house, was seen to leave it with a bucket."
~ The constable:

  "No objection to a pipe o' bacca, ma'm, I hope?"

Comment: We've read that the Victorian authorities had trouble overcoming a generalized tolerance, if not a romanticized sympathy, on the part of society for bad guys, and our story is a good example of it.

Resources:
- We can find nothing anywhere about C. W. Edwards or his/her illustrator, W. F. Southcott.

- For a better class of escaped prisoner see (HERE) and (HERE).

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