"Science Proves That a Man Can Kill Himself Without Committing Suicide!"

"Perfect Murder."

By H. L. Gold (1914-96; ISFDb HERE; Wikipedia HERE).

Illustrated by [Frank R.] Paul (1884-1963; ISFDb HERE).

First appearance: Thrilling Wonder Stories, March 1940.

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Short short short story (4 pages).

Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE: It will be necessary to download the entire issue; go to text page 74).

   "Perhaps the only object worthy of attention was the corpse lying near the bile-green armchair."

"It was a perfectly ordinary perfect crime," we're told. "Random had been murdered in a locked room, with a gun that lay twenty feet away, and, as subsequent investigation proved, he hadn't an enemy in the world." Who, indeed, would have it in for Harold, a nonentity to the world at large, universally regarded as "meek and inoffensive"?

Main characters:

~ Harold Random, Sewage Disposal Department employee:

  "'I've stood for enough,' he stated. 'You're trying to get me out of the way so you can step in. You know I'll win her anyhow!'"

~ Mr. Feeney, the janitor:

  "Why couldn't it be suicide?"

~ "a man, faultlessly dressed":

  "Sarcasm always was wasted on you."

~ Marguerite:

  "She's such a lovely thing, even without her fortune, that I know you'd hate to lose her."

~ Will Hanson:

  "H-m-m-m. Then Marguerite hasn't married that ugly ape yet. You know—Will Hanson."

Typo: "she [?] going to take the leap" (missing "is").

Resource:

- Several years ago, we updated Gold's story "Grifters' Asteroid" (HERE). Since then, we've also updated the short story bibliography; see "Resources".

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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UPDATE: Basil Thomson Novels List

Added Roy Glashan's Library links for seven Basil Thomson novels (HERE).

Nathan Doesn't Get Serious

Solar Eclipse Edition

IN 1909 George Jean Nathan (1882-1958), theater critic at large, commented on "Business Men's Novels" in The Bookman, noting that "one of the most prominent lawyers in the business district said recently that the statement that lawyers as a class liked detective stories best, might be made in all truth." (See ONTOS HERE.)

As a professional drama critic, Nathan would attend and comment on staged mystery plays, which were fairly popular in the early 1900s. Nathan couldn't help but notice how clichéd such plays had already become: "The curtain is pulled aloft and, after two hours of mystery monkeyshines, the profoundest idiot among the characters is revealed to be a detective master-mind in disguise. Thus, year in and year out, it goes." (See ONTOS HERE.)

Armed with a sophisticated wit, Nathan could produce his own lampoons, such as the following:

     VILLAINY

The villainy of a character in the American drama is appraised by an American audience in accordance with the following schedule of black marks:

1. Black moustache - 20 points

2. Riding boots - 36 points

3. Riding boots and crop - 47 points

4. Foreign accent (save Irish) - 29 points

5. Top hat - 8 points

6. Patent-leather shoes - 8 points

7. Long cigarette holder - 4 points

8. Well-fitting clothes - 52 points

9. Sexual virility - 84 points

10. Good manners - 76 points

11. Inclination to believe that a woman over twenty is perfectly able to take care of herself - 91 points

12. Inclination to believe that a woman over twenty-five is perfectly able to take care of herself - 92 points

13. Inclination to believe that a woman over thirty is perfectly able to take care of herself - 93 points

14. Inclination to believe that women between the ages of thirty-five and ninety are perfectly able to take care of themselves - 94 points

15. Inclination to believe that women between the ages of twenty and ninety are perfectly able to take care of themselves if they want to, but that they usually don’t want to - 95 points

16. One who believes that when a woman is married she does not necessarily because of this fact lose all interest in the world - 82 points

16a. Or in a good time - 83 points

17. Boutonniere - 9 points

18. Suspicion on the part of the villain that the hero is a blockhead - 98 points

19. Verbal statement of the above fact by the villain - 99 points

20. Common sense - 100 points

(From Bottoms Up: An Application of the Slapstick to Satire, 1917, HERE).

We think that with his "Opera Synopses" (HERE) Robert Benchley was inspired by (paid homage to? borrowed heavily from? ripped off?) Nathan not too many years after the next one appeared. (Note: All of the real people that Nathan mentions were very wealthy—and well-known for it—at the time.)

STORIES OF THE OPERAS

   I PAGLIACCI

  (ē pal-yät-chē)

Two-act drama; text and music by Leoncavallo

        CHARACTERS

CANIO Tenor

TONIO Baritone

BEPPO Tenor

NEDDA (Canio’s wife) Soprano

SILVIO (a villager) Baritone

       THE STORY

    Act I

At Tonio’s signal, the curtains open disclosing a cross-roads with a rude portable theatre and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt with a party of débutantes. The distant sounds of a cracked trumpet and belabored drum call the peasants together, and they greet with joy the familiar characters in whose costumes Canio, Nedda, and Beppo enter simultaneously with Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont’s party, Mrs. Otto Kahn’s party, Mrs. Goelet, in mauve faille d’amour silk, and a party of young people chaperoned by Mrs. Douglas Robinson. Silencing the crowd (on the stage), Canio announces the play for the evening—and is heard. Canio descends and boxes the ears of Tonio, who loves Nedda. Tonio, and two old gentlemen of decided snoring proclivities who have been sitting in the eighth row, wander off. A villager invites the players to drink. Twenty-seven gentlemen in the audience accept the invitation. The villager hints that Tonio lingers to flirt with Nedda, and the ladies in the boxes also get busy with recent scandal. Canio takes it as a joke, twenty-one of the twenty-seven gentlemen taking it with water. Canio says he loves his wife. And, after kissing her, he departs coincident with the arrival of the occupants of the Gould and Sloane boxes. The other peasants, and forty-two other gentlemen, leave the scene.

Nedda, left alone, broods over the fierce look which Canio and Gatti Casazza gave her. She wonders if Canio suspects her. The sunlight and the new gown and necklace on Mrs. Payne Whitney thrill her and she revels in the song and the sport of the birds (“Ballatella”). At the end of the rhapsody she finds that the hideous Tonio, if not the audience, has been listening. He makes ardent love, but she laughs him to scorn. He pursues her, however, and she, picking up Beppo’s whip, slashes him across the face. He swears revenge and stumbles away. Now her secret lover, Silvio, steals in with the twenty-seven gentlemen who have been over to Browne’s. Silvio pleads with her to go away with him. She promises in an undertone to meet him that night at Del Pezzo’s Italian Restaurant at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. Tonio, having seen them, hurries away. He gets the ear of Canio and returns coincidently with thirty-four of some forty-odd gentlemen who have been across the street. Silvio, however, escapes unnoticed and so do the two old gentlemen who have been sleeping in the eighth row.

Canio threatens to kill Nedda and Leoncavallo’s music. Beppo and one of the old gentlemen who has forgotten his overcoat rush back. Beppo disarms Canio. Tonio hints that Nedda’s lover may appear that night in the play and some bizarre looking ladies in the third row hint a lot of other things. Left alone, Canio bewails his bitter fate, and the gentlemen whose wives won’t let them get out do the same. In wild grief, Canio finally gropes his way off. And such gentlemen as are left in the audience follow suit.

(To be continued)

(Also from Bottoms Up HERE).

The entire book is on Project Gutenberg (HERE).

The bottom line:

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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UPDATE: Kenneth Macgowan's SLEUTHS - 23 GREAT DETECTIVES OF FICTION & THEIR BEST STORIES

Added and altered links to online stories (HERE).

"Are We Such Apostles of Mercy As To Complain If the Martians Warred in the Same Spirit?"

   "NO one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."

IF, like us, you're a fan of H. G. Wells (the fictioneer, not the self-appointed savior), then you'll be interested in what Roy Glashan has done to Wells's The War of the Worlds; he has greatly enhanced the text by embellishing it with more than 190 contemporary illos:

   "Production Note: This e-book edition of The War of the Worlds includes most of the illustrations that Warwick Goble drew for the version of the book published in Pearson's Magazine, and all of the illustrations drawn by Henrique Alvim Corrêa for the 1906 French edition."

It's well worth a look; go (HERE) for the HTML version and (HERE) for access to the EPUB version. The portal to RGL's complete Wells collection is (HERE).

Resources:

- It has been nearly a decade since we first highlighted three of Wells's best-known works: The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898) (HERE).

- You can also find links to three contemporaneous articles about Wells (HERE), one (HERE), one reacting to The Time Machine (HERE), one about Wells's trial run of The Time Machine called The Chronic Argonauts (HERE), and two of his rare crime stories (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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"The System Has Fallen Down, Somewhere"

HERE we have an Arthur B. Reeve story that might never have been collected anywhere (we're not sure); regardless, let's watch Craig Kennedy tackle . . .

"The Mystery of the Vault."

By Arthur B. Reeve (1880-1936).

Illustration by W. M. Allison (1880-1964; Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists HERE).

First appearance: Clues Detective Stories, December 25, 1929.

Short story (11 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE; go to text page 387).

(Note: Text very faded but readable.)

   "Kennedy, the impossible has happened; only Houdini come back to life or Einstein turned crook could have done it!"

Bank robbery has a long, disreputable, and largely unsuccessful history, but that hasn't stopped people from giving it a go. No one was more surprised by and no less a victim of it than that befuddled red-headed pawnbroker who sought enlightenment from the Sage of Baker Street. In today's story, the victims of just such a theft also seek enlightenment, this time from Craig Kennedy, scientific detective par excellence, only to have him confess at 

one point: "I suppose I myself was picked out for the role of the boob detective because I happened to be available." For Kennedy, being a cat's-paw like that isn't customary and undoubtedly rankles, so no doubt there's some real job satisfaction when he nails down the perps . . .

Principal characters:

~ Walter Jameson:

  ". . . Kennedy was as usual as great an enigma to me as if I were not his most intimate friend."

~ James Gage:

  "The new vault of the Broad-Wall Trust Company has been entered and robbed—and there is apparently not a clue!"

~ Craig Kennedy:

  "It's surprising how much you learn by studying girls."

~ Ethel Wynne Gage:

  "I knew that beautiful face. It was Ethel Wynne, late of the Follies, now Mrs. Gage."

~ Miss Madeline Croney:

  "Oh, I have quite a philosophy of finger tips."

~ Mr. Ingraham:

  "So, you see why it is that we say that the impossible has happened!"

~ Burton:

  "I hear the four, though, have sometimes made up a week-end party on a fast cruiser . . ."

~ Dave Wharton:

  "Wharton's racket is night clubs."

~ Walker:

  "Rather a clever fellow—always on the job."

~ Schwartz:

  "Let me out, I say! This is an outrage! Let me out!"

The Kennedy Method:

  "It had always been his rule that the fewer people he took into his confidence the fewer weak links there would be in forging his chain of evidence."

References and resources:

- "only Houdini come back to life or Einstein":

  The amazing magician had passed away of peritonitis just three years before our story was published, the brainy scientist of an abdominal aortic aneurysm twenty-six years after. (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "some relativity thief in the fourth dimension!":

  "Four-dimensional space (4D) is the mathematical extension of the concept of three-dimensional space (3D)." . . . "Science fiction texts often mention the concept of 'dimension' when referring to parallel or alternate universes or other imagined planes of existence. This usage is derived from the idea that to travel to parallel/alternate universes/planes of existence one must travel in a direction/dimension besides the standard ones. In effect, the other universes/planes are just a small distance away from our own, but the distance is in a fourth (or higher) spatial (or non-spatial) dimension, not the standard ones." (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "The door of a modern vault is a very complex affair":

  "Vault technology developed in a type of arms race with bank robbers. As burglars came up with new ways to break into vaults, vault makers found new ways to foil them. Modern vaults may be armed with a wide array of alarms and anti-theft devices. Some 19th and early 20th century vaults were built so well that today they are difficult to destroy, even with specialized demolition equipment." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "a treasure house to make Croesus look like a cheap skate":

  "In Greek and Persian cultures the name of Croesus became a synonym for a wealthy man . . . Croesus' wealth remained proverbial beyond classical antiquity: in English, expressions such as 'rich as Croesus' or 'richer than Croesus' are used to indicate great wealth to this day." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "a modern Midas had by his magic touch":

  "Midas was the name of a king in Phrygia with whom several myths became associated, as well as two later members of the Phrygian royal house. His father was Zeus, and his mother was Cybele. The most famous King Midas is popularly remem-bered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into pure gold. Midas is the biological son of Zeus and this came to be called the golden touch, or the Midas touch." . . . "Claudian states in his In Rufinum: 'So Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold; but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold, cursed his prayer'." (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "The most expert yeggman who ever lived":

  "Movies often depict a safe-cracker determining the combination of a safe lock using his fingers or a sensitive listening device to determine the combination of a rotary combination lock. Other films also depict an elaborate scheme of explosives and other devices to open safes." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "a little rum-running":

  The repeal of Prohibition wouldn't go into effect until four years after our story. (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "it might be just another instance where a motor was one of the efficient criminal instruments":

  Parker and Barrow made extensive use of "motors" during their spectacular but 

mercifully brief career. (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "a selenium cell and a relay . . . a poor conductor of electricity in the darkness, a good conductor in the light":

  "Selenium was used as the photoabsoring layer in the first solid-state solar cell, which was demonstrated by the English physicist William Grylls Adams and his student Richard Evans Day in 1876. Only a few years later, Charles Fritts fabricated the first thin-film solar cell, also using selenium as the photoabsorber. However, with the emergence of silicon solar cells in the 1950's, research on selenium thin-film solar cells declined." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "oxyhydrogen blowpipe":

  "It produced a flame hot enough to melt such refractory materials as platinum, porcelain, fire brick, and corundum, and was a valuable tool in several fields of science." . . . "Oxyhydrogen was once used in working platinum, because at the time, only it could burn hot enough to melt the metal 1,768.3 °C (3,214.9 °F)." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "harveyized":

  Subjected to the Harvey process: "A process for hardening the face of steel, involving the additional carburizing of the face of a piece of low-carbon steel by heaping a solid carbon-rich fuel (such as charcoal) on the face of the steel and then subjecting this to very high heat at high pressure for a prolonged period of time, followed by a violent chilling, as by a spray of cold water. This results in a thick surface of extreme hardness supported by material gradually decreasing in hardness to the unaltered soft steel at the back." (Wiktionary HERE.)

- "out of Dannemore [sic]":

  "Clinton Correctional Facility is a New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision maximum security state prison for men located in the Village of Dannemora, New York. The prison is sometimes colloquially referred to as Dannemora (having once served as a massive insane asylum named Dannemora State Hospital for the Criminally Insane), although its name is derived from its location in Clinton County, New York." . . . "In 1929, Clinton Correctional was the site of a riot. Coupled with riots in other prisons in that year, it led to prison reform in New York. Included was the construction of schools in the prison and the renovation or rebuilding of most of the structures within the prison walls to update the facilities to modern standards." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the greatest robbery since the Manhattan Bank affair":

  "On Sunday, October 27, 1878, the Manhattan Savings Institution bank and depository in Manhattan, New York City was robbed of $2,747,700 ($65 million 

in 2017 dollars) in cash and securities by the former gang of serial bank robber 

George Leonidas Leslie. At the time, it was the largest-paying criminal heist 

in history." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- Robbing banks seems to be a popular pastime with criminals (see Wikipedia HERE). Even fiction can inspire it, as happened in 1971 in, of all places, Baker Street (see Wikipedia HERE).

- The easiest thing about robbing a bank is that the vault doesn't move, but how about a theft where the vault doesn't move at less than fifty miles per hour? See Fred M. White's "The Night Express" (HERE), no doubt inspired by real events.

- Michael Grost's megasite contains extensive information about our author (HERE).

- The latest Craig Kennedy adventure that we happened to come across is "Deep Sea Treasure" (HERE).

The bottom line:

  "Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place."

   - Johnny Carson

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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"Yes, It Had To Be Done. I Had To Do It . . ."

YOU don't need to be an inveterate EQ fan to see where this one's going, but it could come in handy when you read about . . .

"Elroy Quinn's Last Case."

By Dennis M. Dubin (born 1950; OfficialUSA HERE).

First appearance: EQMM, July 1967.

Short story (10 pages).

Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 84).

   "What is it, a dying message or a fantastic clue?"

Saving the world is usually left up to gadget-laden superspies and hyperpowered people wearing silly outfits but . . . a frail old man?

Main characters:

~ The bodyguard:

  "From what you've said, I assume the dead man is not the King. Then who is it?"

~ Elroy Quinn:

  "One of these cats has more than one tail."

~ Inspector Thomas Velie, Jr.:

  "I knew this was going to be a weird case, Elroy."

~ The King of Ubinorabia:

  ". . . formed a violent hatred for this country . . ."

References and resources:

- According to FictionMags, this is the first and only short story written by Dennis M. Dubin, who was at the time a high school student.

- "Elroy Quinn's Last Case" is an example of a pastiche: "In literary usage, the term denotes a literary technique employing a generally light-hearted tongue-in-cheek imitation of another's style; although jocular, it is usually respectful." 

. . . "Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe are other popular subjects of mystery parodies and pastiches." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- There's a reference to Edmund Spenser's epic poem about heroic knights. (Wikipedia HERE.)

- It was just the other day we watched Ellery Queen (the detective) unravel the problem of the "Murder in the Park" (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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