ARTHUR PORGES worked in pulp fiction, mainly concentrating in SFF and crime fiction, sometimes mixing the two. Today's stories are just that, as Porges combines specfic with crimefic, using as "glue" that estimable (and occasional) armchair deducer Professor Ulysses Price Middlebie, a man who is wise enough to heed what . . .
(1) "These Daisies Told."
First appearance: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (AHMM), December 1962.
Reprinted in:
Behind the Locked Door and Other Strange Tales, 1967
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: I Am Curious (Bloody), 1971.
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Collected in These Daisies Told: The Casebook of Professor Ulysses Price Middlebie, 2018.
Short short story (8 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 61).
"Is this guy going to get away with it clean, just because he found some cute way of hiding a hundred pounds of flesh-and-blood right under our noses?"
SERGEANT BLACK is convinced there's a body hidden somewhere on the Corsi ranch, but he's reached the point of exasperation in his unsuccessful hunt for it. It's a long shot, but maybe his old professor can be of help. That, it will become clear, is an understatement . . .
Main characters:
~ Ulysses Price Middlebie, Professor (Emeritus) of the History and Philosophy of Science ("Nobody is ever in a position to know right at the start which data are relevant"), Detective Sergeant Black ("It's the matter of a missing body"), Dale Corsi ("A very competent artist"), and Mrs. Corsi, in absentia ("she owned the ranch and brought scads of money to the marriage").
References and resources:
- "a harmless sluggish Jerusalem Cricket":
"Despite their common names, these insects are neither true crickets (which belong to the family Gryllidae), nor are they native to Jerusalem. These nocturnal insects use their strong mandibles to feed primarily on dead organic matter but can also eat other insects. Their highly adapted feet are used for burrowing beneath moist soil to feed on decaying root plants and tubers." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "mostly ice-plant":
"Although the ice plant may have arrived by ship as early as the 16th century, C. edulis was actively introduced in the early 1900s to stabilize dunes and soil along railroad tracks; it was later put to use by Caltrans for ground cover along freeway embankments. Thousands of acres were planted in California until the 1970s."
"Despite its use as a soil stabilizer, it actually exacerbates and speeds up coastal erosion. It holds great masses of water in its leaves, and its roots are very shallow. In the rainy season, the added weight on unstable sandstone slopes and dunes increases the chances of slope collapse and landslides." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "John Henry himself":
"John Henry is an American folk hero. An African American freedman, he is said to have worked as a 'steel-driving man'—a man tasked with hammering a steel drill into a rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "Purloined letter style, perhaps":
- The title is a variation on the universal folklore about daisies keeping secrets—"but these," says the professor, "finally did tell."
- For other commentary about "These Daisies Told" and other Professor Middlebie stories, see The Moonlight Detective (Beneath the Stains of Time) (HERE), Mysteries, Short and Sweet (HERE), and The Invisible Event (HERE).
(2) "The Missing Bow."
By Arthur Porges (1915-2006).
First appearance: AHMM, November 1963.
Reprint page (ISFDb HERE).
Short short story (8 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 17).
(Caution: Extremely poor copy. Eyestrain may result. Using CTRL+ could help.)
"In theory the puzzle was solved, but getting a conviction was not so simple."
THE PRIME SUSPECT in a murder case, a one-armed man, is as prime as they come. Sergeant Black is certain he did it and goes to his old professor to help him prove it. All of the circumstantial evidence, however, indicates that the man couldn't have done it, leaving it up to Professor Middlebie to show how, one-armed or not, it was indeed doable . . .
Main characters:
~ Victor Borden, deceased ("They knew Borden had been drinking and speeding"), Howard Cole ("A vanishing breed"), Sergeant Black ("Good hunting, sir"), and Professor Middlebie ("How odd that a book sixty years old should hold the secret to a recent murder").
References:
- "an expert archer":
"When a projectile is thrown by hand, the speed of the projectile is determined by the kinetic energy imparted by the thrower's muscles performing work. However, the energy must be imparted over a limited distance (determined by arm length) and therefore (because the projectile is accelerating) over a limited time, so the limiting factor is not work but rather power, which determines how much energy can be added in the limited time available. Power generated by muscles, however, is limited by force–velocity relationship, and even at the optimal contraction speed for power production, total work by the muscle is less than half of what it would be if the muscle contracted over the same distance at slow speeds, resulting in less than 1/4 the projectile launch velocity possible without the limitations of the force–velocity relationship.
"When a bow is used, the muscles are able to perform work much more slowly, resulting in greater force and greater work done. This work is stored in the bow as elastic potential energy, and when the bowstring is released, this stored energy is imparted to the arrow much more quickly than can be delivered by the muscles, resulting in much higher velocity and, hence, greater distance." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "Errol Flynn's 'Robin Hood'":
"The Adventures of Robin Hood is a 1938 American epic swashbuckler film from Warner Brothers Pictures. . . . It stars Errol Flynn as the legendary Saxon knight Robin Hood, who in Richard I's absence in the Holy Land during the Crusades, fights back as the outlaw leader of a rebel guerrilla band against Prince John and the Norman lords oppressing the Saxon commoners." (Wikipedia HERE.)
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- "Not even Faraday and Pasteur":
"Michael Faraday (1791–1867) was an English physicist and chemist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. Although Faraday received little formal education, as a self-made man, he was one of the most influential scientists in history." (Wikipedia HERE.)
"Louis Pasteur (1822–95) was a French chemist, pharmacist, and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the last of which was named after him. His research in chemistry led to remarkable breakthroughs in the understanding of the causes and preventions of diseases, which laid down the foundations of hygiene, public health and much of modern medicine. Pasteur's works are credited with saving millions of lives through the developments of vaccines for rabies and anthrax." (Wikipedia HERE.)
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- "a slide-rule":
"English mathematician and clergyman Reverend William Oughtred and others developed the slide rule in the 17th century based on the emerging work on logarithms by John Napier. It made calculations faster and less error-prone than evaluating on paper. Before the advent of the scientific pocket calculator, it was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering. The slide rule's ease of use, ready availability, and low cost caused its use to continue to grow through the 1950s and 1960s, even as desktop electronic computers were gradually introduced. But after the handheld scientific calculator was introduced in 1972 and became inexpensive in the mid-1970s, slide rules became largely obsolete, so most suppliers departed the business." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "as certain as Newton's Laws":
"Newton's laws of motion are three physical laws that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws, which provide the basis for Newtonian mechanics, can be paraphrased as follows:
"A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force.
"At any instant of time, the net force on a body is equal to the rate at which the body's momentum is changing with time.
"If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions." (Wikipedia HERE.)
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- About this story, JJ says:
"The first inevitable duff comes with ‘The Missing Bow’ (1963), in which a man is arrested for shooting a (most deserving) victim with an arrow . . . and yet, despite no time or place to hide anything he has no bow on him and there’s no evidence of how the arrow was otherwise projected with the necessary force. The ending here is notable for how [it] diverges from Porges’ usual tone, but the solution, while no doubt smart, feels a little cheap. Still, I’m a fan of my genius amateur detective having to do some research rather than falling back on his infallible hypermnesia to pluck the answer out of nowhere, so that helps soften the blow somewhat." - JJ at The Invisible Event (HERE).
(3) "A Model Crime."
By Arthur Porges (1915-2006).
First appearance: AHMM, August 1964.
Short short story (8 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 33.)
"Even Mycroft needed Sherlock's data to accomplish anything."
IN A CASE very similar to one investigated by Ellery Queen (the detective), Sergeant Black and Professor Middlebie brainstorm their way through a knotty problem of how expensive electronic transistors have been stolen right out from under plant security's nose, without a single suspect in sight . . .
Main characters:
~ Sergeant Black ("I'm beginning to worry about you, Professor"), Professor Middlebie ("I'm on the side of imagination and ingenuity"), and R. T. Brenner ("in these recent biographical notes you and your men made, he never said a word about such a hobby").
References and resources:
- "even for transistors, small as they are":
"A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics.
"Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more in miniature form are found embedded in integrated circuits. Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics, many people consider them one of the 20th century's greatest inventions." (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)
- "like Mendel's or Einstein's":
"Gregor Johann Mendel (1822–1884) was an Austrian biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno (Brünn), Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance." (Wikipedia HERE.)
"Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called 'the world's most famous equation'. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "the Socratic method":
"The Socratic method (also known as the method of Elenchus or Socratic debate) is a form of argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions. Socratic dialogues feature in many of the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, where his teacher Socrates debates various philosophical issues with an 'interlocutor' or 'partner'." (Wikipedia HERE.)
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- "Mycroft's blood pressure":
"Mycroft Holmes is a fictional character appearing in stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from 1893 to 1908. The elder brother (by seven years) of detective Sherlock Holmes, he is a government official and a founding member of the Diogenes Club. Mycroft is described as having abilities of deduction and knowledge exceeding even those of his brother, though their practical use is limited by his dislike of fieldwork." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "hooking a man off the ground in a harness":
"The Skyhook has been featured in a number of films and video games. It was seen in the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball, where James Bond and his companion Domino Derval are rescued at sea by a modified Boeing B-17 equipped with the Fulton system at the end of the movie. In 1968, it was used in the John Wayne movie The Green Berets to spirit a VC officer to South Vietnam." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "a dust-free routine":
"A cleanroom or clean room is an engineered space that maintains a very low concentration of airborne particulates. It is well isolated, well controlled from contamination, and actively cleansed. Such rooms are commonly needed for scientific research and in industrial production for all nanoscale processes, such as semiconductor device manufacturing. A cleanroom is designed to keep everything from dust to airborne organisms or vaporised particles away from it, and so from whatever material is being handled inside it." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "new cadmium batteries":
"Model-aircraft or -boat builders often take much larger currents of up to a hundred amps or so from specially constructed Ni–Cd batteries, which are used to drive main motors; 5–6 minutes of model operation is easily achievable from quite small batteries, so a reasonably high power-to-weight figure is achieved, comparable to internal combustion motors, though of lesser duration." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "watching the avocets":
"Avocets have long legs and long, thin, upcurved bills which they sweep from side to side when feeding in the brackish or saline wetlands they prefer. Their plumage is pied, sometimes also with some red." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- The readily-available Prof. Ulysses Price Middlebie stories (FictionMags data; ss = short story):
(1) "These Daisies Told," (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, December 1962 (above)
(2) "The Missing Bow," (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1963 (above)
(3) "A Model Crime," (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, August 1964 (above).
- Other ONTOS encounters with Arthur Porges:
~ "A Small Favor" with "No Killer Has Wings" (HERE)
~ "Revenge" with "One Bad Habit" (HERE)
~ "Chain Smoker" (HERE)
~ "The Scientist and the Bagful of Water" (HERE)
~ "The Cunning Cashier" (HERE)
~ and "Birds of One Feather" (HERE).
Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.
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