"We Knew We Were Facing the Worst Threat in the History of Man"

"Mission: Murder!"
By O. H. Leslie (Henry Slesar, 1927-2002).
Illustration by Keith (HERE).
First appearance: Amazing Stories, November 1958.

Short story (13 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "His mouth was open when he dropped to the ground, kicking his legs in protest at the brevity of life, while the gray automobile roared away from the scene of sudden, surprising murder."

Ergman, Molton, Curtis, Fletcher, and Skade might sound like a high-powered Wall Street investment firm—each one is an influential businessmen, after all—but these individuals have also become prime targets for "a new type of commando, with only one mission. Murder. . . ."

Major characters:
~ Steve Stryker:
  "I've been on a mission, and I'm afraid it's only beginning."
~ Kathy:

  "It's not just the gun that bothers me; Steve says that his work is sometimes dangerous, 

that he has to be armed."

~ Doug:
  "I saw him kill!"

Resources:
- So far we haven't encountered the prolific Henry Slesar very often, but that's certain to change; see Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE).

- Slesar was at home in crime fiction, as shown by his "The Only Thing to Do" (HERE), but sometimes he crossed it with science fiction, as in today's story and "The Invisible Man Murder Case" (discussed HERE).

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"Why Should a Girl Deliberately Marry a Bluebeard?"

"The Girl Who Married a Monster."
By Anthony Boucher (William Anthony Parker White, 1911-68).
First appearance: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, February 1954.

Reprinted in EQMM (U.K.), February 1954 and EQMM (Australia), April 1954.
Collected in Exeunt Murderers: The Best Mystery Stories of Anthony Boucher (1983; HERE and HERE).
Short story (15 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).
(Parental caution: Mild profanity.)

     "I thought it'd be fun to see what a real, live, unconvicted professional Bluebeard was like."

The old saying, "Marry in haste, repent at leisure," never seemed more appropriate than when a ruthless killer, shooting for the perfect crime, says "I do" to a guaranteed hundred thousand dollars, a sure thing if ever there was one—but, wouldn't you know it, somebody else just as ruthless also has plans for that hundred grand . . .

Major characters:
~ Doreen Arlen:
  "I'm sorry. I don't need your wholesome Utah sympathy, thank you kindly. Doreen can look out for herself."
~ Marie Arlen:
  "Did I . . . did I fix the slats right, Mac?"
~ Luther Peabody:
  "It's true that many years ago Lieutenant Noble, presumably in order to advance his own police career, chose to hound me as a murderer because of the accidental death of my first wife."
~ Lieutenant Donald MacDonald:
  "Files? I think I have another source that's even better."
~ Nick Noble:
  "His eyes sort of glaze over and something goes tick inside . . . and then the facts make a pattern."

Resources:
- At his The Invisible Event website JJ has a related article, "The Nick Noble Stories of Anthony Boucher (1942-54)" (HERE), in which we find our protagonist characterized as . . .

   ". . . a genius detective in the Nero Wolfe mold, an ex-cop with a mind like a trap who is able to puzzle out the links in the most confounding of cases brought to him. And the cases must be brought to him as, since being kicked out of the Force following some political maneuvering by a savvy higher-up, he is to be found in a cheap Mexican bar slowly drinking himself to death with water glasses full of cheap sherry.
   "Noble is possibly the most heartbreaking central character I’ve yet encoun-tered . . . and Boucher gives you someone who is cracked beyond repair and yet still has enough about him for some light to shine through while skipping nimbly over the tropes into which a lesser author would be unavoidably wrenched."

- It would seem that today's story was the 9th and final Nick Noble adventure, all but one of which ("Death of a Patriarch") initially appeared in EQMM; see FictionMags's series listing 
for this character (HERE).
- In case you're wondering, the author tells us that MacDonald "had self-confidence, a 
marked lack of desire to warn the murderer by ringing a bell, and a lock-gun," meaning 
one of these . . .

. . . and we also get allusions to two real-life crimes: the "English 'blazing car' murderer back around the time of Peabody's debut," said killer being Alfred Arthur Rouse, although in an unusual twist his victim's identity is still unknown (see Wikipedia HERE); and to "Raymond Fernandez, New York's 1949 Lonely Hearts killer" (HERE).
- The legendary Bluebeard (HERE) lent his name to a category of murderer that doesn't seem to be as common as he used to be.
- Another of Boucher's stories, this one with a fantasy slant, is examined (HERE); he made the cover of Arthur Vidro's Old-Time Detection (HERE); one of his all-out science fictional tales is featured (HERE); and Boucher's involvement in radio is touched upon (HERE).

The bottom line:

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"I Moved Cautiously Through the Old House Fanning Every Inch of Air Ahead of Me with a Phone Book"

"Bleedback."
By Winston Marks (1915-79).
Illustration by Ed Emshwiller (1925-90; HERE).
First appearance: Worlds of IF, August 1955.

Short story (18 pages).
Online at Project Gutenberg (HERE) and Archive.org (HERE).

     "It was just a harmless, though amazing, kid's toy that sold for less 
than a dollar. Yet it plunged the entire nation into a nightmare of mys-
tery and chaos . . . ."

Weapons come in many varieties, from H-bombs to handguns to bare fists to tiny pills, 
but at least you can understand and deal with them; Calvin's lethal laboratory surprise, 
on the other hand, is, for all practical purposes, incomprehensible—and just might be unstoppable . . .

Characters:
~ Calvin Baxter:
  "As I looked down at the sprawled length of the big man on the tiled floor, the Mutt and Jeff angle didn't fit at all. David and Goliath was a better bet. This Goliath seemed also to have met his fate from a hole in the forehead."
~ Leo Baxter:
  "I was telling the truth when I said I didn't know what he was doing. I still don't understand 
it, and I've been losing sleep over these formulae. . . .[but] whether I understand it or not, Calvin's gadget, happens to work."
~ Dr. Thorsen:
  "All right, then what else but a flying particle could drill a hole in a man's forehead the diameter of a piece of 16-gauge wire?"
~ Gene, our narrator and a police detective:
  "When Doc's x-rays revealed nothing but a blood clot deep in the brain at the end of the tiny tunnel piercing the skull, I was left without even a 'modus operandi,' let alone a substantial suspect."
~ Paul Riley:
  "We've got to figure a way of getting those things out of the way."
~ Collins:
  "Why not just shoot them back into wherever it is they go . . .?"
~ Chief Durstine:
  "By the time we got him to the hospital this morning he was running a hundred and five. Docs were too busy with bleeders. Wouldn't listen to me until it was too late."

Resources:
- You can find more about Winston Kinney Marks in the online SFE (HERE) and the ISFDb (HERE).
- Wikipedia has articles dealing with other dimensions in literature (HERE) and science (HERE), and one by Sten Odenwald at Astronomy Cafe (HERE) discusses other science fictional encounters with hyperspace.
- A lot of electrons have flowed through the 'Net since we last considered Marks's "Slay-Ride" (HERE).

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"A Man Stuck His Head Out of the Back Window of the Sedan, and Let Loose with a Typewriter"

"The People Rest."
By Emile C. Tepperman (1899-1951).
First appearance: Popular Detective, March 1936.

Collected at Roy Glashan's Library (RGL) (HERE and HERE).
Short story.
Online at Roy Glashan's Library (RGL) (HERE: HTML, 17 pages).

     "That moron won't know how to act."

In court proceedings the idea is to get at the truth, but too often there are people who have a vested interest in keeping the truth well-hidden . . .

Characters:
~ Louie Link:
  . . . had the misfortune of being on the wrong end of a typewriter.
~ Nick Marco:
  . . . has the misfortune of being fingered by an eyewitness.
~ Jerome Benson:
  . . . is sure he'll earn the fifty grand.
~ Anders:
  . . . has his doubts.
~ Tyler:
  . . . has an objection.
~ The jury foreman:
  . . . has no objection.
~ The judge:
  . . . is losing his patience.
~ Hedges:
  . . . knows the truth—or says he does.

Resources:
- For more about "nolle prosse", one of the legal procedures proposed in our story, see "Nolle prosequi" in Wikipedia (HERE).
- The Thompson submachine gun was the weapon of choice for gangsters throughout the '20s and '30s; see Wikipedia (HERE):

  "The Thompson submachine gun was also known informally as the 'Tommy Gun', 'Annihilator', 'Chicago Typewriter', 'Chicago Submachine', 'Chicago Piano', 'Chicago Style', 'Chicago Organ Grinder', 'Trench Broom', 'Trench Sweeper', 'Drum Gun', 'The Chopper', and simply 'The Thompson'."
  ". . . The Thompson achieved most of its early notoriety in the hands of Prohibition and Great Depression-era gangsters, the lawmen who pursued them, and in Hollywood films about their exploits, most notably in the St Valentine's Day Massacre. The two Thompson guns used in the massacre are still held by the Berrien County Sheriff's Department. The Thompson has been referred to by one researcher as the 'gun that made the twenties roar'."

- Sometimes Emile Clemens Tepperman's pulp fiction tended to wobble into SFF-nal territory, which has earned him listings in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia (SFE; HERE) and on the Internet Science Fiction Database (ISFDb; HERE); see also The Vintage Library Page (HERE) and FictionMags (HERE).
- We last touched base with Tepperman nearly three-and-a-half years ago about his pulp crime story, "Sleuth of the Air Waves" (HERE).

The bottom line:

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"This Man Was Not Only a Crackpot, He Was a Lunatic"

"The Cyber and Justice Holmes."
By Frank Riley (1915-96).
Illustration by Paul Orban (1896-1974; HERE).
First appearance: Worlds of IF, March 1955.

Reprints page (HERE).

Short story (12 pages).
Online at Project Gutenberg (HERE) and Archive.org (HERE).

     "Old Judge Anderson feared the inevitable—he was to be replaced by a Cyber! A machine that dealt out decisions free of human errors and emotions. What would Justice Holmes think?"

If you've ever believed that there's a computer inside your head called a brain, forget it; what's actually there isn't a computer at all. It's something . . . else . . .

Characters:
~ Judge Walhfred Anderson:

  "At eighty-six you couldn't go on fighting and resisting much longer. Maybe he should resign, and listen to the speeches at a farewell luncheon, and let a Cyber take over. The Cybers were fast. They ruled swiftly and surely on points of law. They separated fact from fallacy. They were not led down side avenues of justice by human frailty. Their vision was 

not blurred by emotion."

~ The D.A.:
  "The defendant is charged on three counts of fraud under Section 31...."
~ Professor Neustadt:
  ". . . was an astonishingly thin little man; the bones of his shoulders seemed about to thrust through the padding of his cheap brown suit. His thinness, combined with a tuft of white hair at the peak of his forehead, gave him the look of a scrawny bird."

~ Cyber V, CAD:
  "Cyber V blinked and hummed steadily, assimilating and filing the facts."
~ Cyber IX:
  "Problem unsolved."

Typos: "Judged Anderson"; "his right check".

Resources:
- A few years after this story, Harry Harrison used a robot judge in one of his stories ("The judge was impressive in his black robes and omniscient in the chromium perfection of his skull. His voice rolled like the crack of doom; rich and penetrating"); see Technovelgy's citation (HERE).
- There's more about Frank Wilbert Rhylick on Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE).

- The "Justice Holmes" of the story's title would have to be Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) and not his celebrated father, who studied but never prac-ticed law (HERE); concerning Jr., see Biography's page (HERE) and the Wikipedia entry (HERE).

- "Man vs. computer" is a relatively new argument; see Wikipedia (HERE) for a computer 
that successfully bested human opponents. Computers in one form or another have been appearing in literature since 1726; see Wikipedia's "List of fictional computers" (HERE).

The bottom line:

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Miscellaneous Monday—Number Thirty-three

SHERLOCK HOLMES describes him this way:

   "But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law—and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every devilry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations—that's the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year's pension as a solatium for his wounded character." — The Valley of Fear (1914; HERE)

Not only that, Holmes claims this "controlling brain" isn't too shabby at arithmetic . . .

"On the Title of Moriarty’s Dynamics of an Asteroid."
By Alejandro Jenkins (born 1979; HERE).
First appearance: Arxiv.org, 5 August 2014.

Article (2 pages).
Online at Arxiv.org (HERE; PDF).

Abstract: "We propose an explanation of the title of Prof. James Moriarty’s treatise Dynamics of an Asteroid, a scientific work mentioned by Sherlock Holmes in The Valley 
of Fear and prominently featured in Guy Ritchie’s 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Our views on the subject differ from those expressed in Isaac Asimov’s 'The 
Ultimate Crime.'"

Conan Doyle has been accused of scientific errors in his Holmes stories; is this one of them?

VIPs mentioned in the article:
  ~ "Gauss" (HERE).

  ~ "Newton" (HERE).

  ~ "Lewis Carroll" (HERE).

  ~ "William Gladstone" (HERE).

  ~ "Sir Roger Penrose" (HERE).

  ~ "Cauchy" (HERE).

  ~ "Kepler" (HERE).

  ~ "Poincaré" (HERE).

  ~ "Kirkwood" (HERE).

Resources:
- Our author takes exception to the conclusions about Professor Moriarty that Isaac Asimov comes to in "The Ultimate Crime" (Caution: SPOILERS! HERE, HERE, and HERE), which was collected in More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976; HERE); it's one of his numerous stories about a dinner club that solves crimes (HERE, HERE, and HERE)—or tries to, at least; also see Jennifer Ouellette's article (HERE).

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Twelve Mini-mysteries with a Supernatural Twist

YOU MIGHT NEVER have heard of A. C. Spahn's brainchild, Professor Cara Watt, P.I., unless you're a regular reader of the Daily Science Fiction website; Cara Watt's job is to 
sort out problems that only a paranormal investigator would dare tackle. In an even dozen entertaining flash fiction adventures (so far), she and her new assistant Detective Derek Faraday fearlessly take on some pretty weird cases . . .

***

   "It's not polite to ask a lady if she's human."

(1) "The Bitten Body."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, November 1, 2017.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "Sometimes a deception can be a little too detailed for its own good."

(2) "The Identical Infants."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, November 8, 2017.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "He was almost past my shop when he turned toward me, and then blew a big jet of fire right at my roof!"

(3) "The Gutted Gallery."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, November 15, 2017.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   ". . . we don't have any hard evidence linking him to the crime."

(4) "The Mysterious Mauling."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, November 22, 2017.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "Answer, or I will eat you."

(5) "The Unsubtle Sphinx."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, November 29, 2017.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "I worked in this theater over one hundred years ago."

(6) "The Spirited Stagehand."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, April 4, 2018.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "Leave your phone in the office, so's the magnet don't scramble it."

(7) "The Lazy Lookalike."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, April 11, 2018.
Short short short story (3 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "Your second body can't be too far away."

(8) "The Swindled Selkie."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, April 18, 2018.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "Those who poke their human heads into paranormal affairs might find them ... snapped off."

(9) "The Stylish Sphinx."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, April 25, 2018.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "I didn't mean to kill him. My magic got away from me."

(10) "The Deceased Doppelganger."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, May 2, 2018.
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "Landing on its edge, it began to roll, tracing an invisible path into the ravine. Left turn, right turn, right, right, left, left, right, right, left."

(11) "The Riddled Rainbow."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, May 9, 2018.
Short short short story (3 pages).
Online (HERE).

***

   "We're going to die here, aren't we?"

(12) "The Beguiling Baron."
By A. C. Spahn.
First appearance: Daily Science Fiction, May 16, 2018.
Short short short story (3 pages).
Online (HERE).

*****

Resources:
- The Daily Science Fiction story listing is (HERE) and the ISFDb list (HERE); A. C. Spahn's homepage is (HERE) and the author's ISFDb bibliographical page is (HERE).
- If you want more info about the mythological creatures featured in Spahn's story cycle, see the following:

  ~ cockatrice (HERE).

  ~ doppelgänger (HERE).

  ~ dragon (HERE).

  ~ faerie (HERE).

  ~ fairy (HERE).

  ~ ghost (HERE).

  ~ leprechaun (HERE).

  ~ selkie (HERE).

  ~ sphinx (HERE).

  ~ vampire (HERE).

  ~ werewolf (HERE).

  ~ wizard (HERE).

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