Claim-Jumpers of the Riphaean Mountains

"The Moon Mines."
By Eando Binder (Earl Binder, 1904-65, and Otto Binder, 1911-74).
First appearance: Wonder Stories, April 1933.
Short story (15 pages).
Online at SFFAudio HERE (PDF) and Comic Book Plus (HERE; set page selector to 60 and 87).

"On the moon's treacherous surface, the drama of greed, treachery and deception was played out . . . ."

Chapter titles: "Suspicions" — "Kranto" — "A Second Visit" — "The Snare" — "Trickery"

Three centuries from now, Richard Harrington works as an agent for the United Socialist Republic of Earth (U.S.R.), and his latest assignment puts him in a situation that, if worse comes to worst, could exacerbate tensions between the Ginzies (slang for Martians) and humanity enough to lead to war; his boss gives him his orders:

"Harrington you're going to the moon to investigate the death or disappearance of Harvey Wood, their [the U.S.R. Station No. 7's] best mineralogist . . . mind you, their best . . . and it may be possible that the Ginzies are mixed up in this."

When Harrington gets to the Moon, Station 7's overseer is willing to consider the missing mineralogist as already dead:

"The man died an unknown death out there in the vacuum. There's a dozen different hazards that make it a gamble to even walk around. About all you can do is go and look for the body yourself, instead of asking a lot of questions of me."

As for the short-tempered Martian mining overseer at nearby Kranto, he says he's never heard of the man:

"I have told you once, he did not come."

Somebody must be lying . . .

The Riphaean Mountains

Principal characters:
~ Richard Harrington:
   "There is hardly any doubt that if he had lived many centuries before, when there was no Bureau of Employment, he would have become a pirate; or, living in a later age, a gentleman outlaw."
~ Chief Wilson:
   "Tall and spare, he had the demeanor of a hawk. Beady, black eyes peered from a shrewd face. Quick in all his actions and words, he kept an alert mind on the responsible activity of his agents."
~ Overseer Soderstrom:
   "He was a large, jovial-faced man with a quiet voice. His almost obese body was clothed in a leathern outfit of fine quality and texture. His curly black hair fell over his forehead."
~ Sul Minto Pruma:
   ". . . was a typical north country Martian; eight feet tall, bony, spindle-legged, fur-faced. His deep set eyes stared out at the visitor with the usual Martian haughtiness. In a glance the earthman knew that he was of the lower class of that world of cold, austere people."

Typo: "the lie-detector weighs you words."

Resources:
- "Eando Binder" was a corporate name ("E and O") used by brothers Earl and Otto Binder, and usually by each of them when they wrote solo; see FictionMags HERE. "The Moon Mines" was evidently Binder's second published story.
- Wikipedia (HERE) and the SFE (HERE) have plenty of background information about Binder, and he/they also have some credits at the IMDb (HERE); the ISFDb has carefully researched bibliographical information HERE (Earl) and HERE (Otto).
- Eando Binder created Adam Link (see HERE), while Otto by himself is credited with formulating a lot of the material for the Superman series at DC Comics, including these characters: Beppo the Super Monkey, Bizarro, Brainiac, Krypto, Jimmy Olsen (as Elastic Lad), the Legion of Superheroes, Lucy Lane, Supergirl (HERE), and Titano.
- The story takes place largely in a lunar area known at the time as the Riphaean Mountains but which are now designated Montes Riphaeus; see Wikipedia HERE.

The bottom line: "I'm quite disappointed that I'm still the last man on the moon."
— Eugene Cernan

"She Was in Three Places Miles Apart at One and the Same Time"

"Invisible Death."
By Anthony Pelcher (1897-1981).
First appearance: Astounding Stories, January 1930.
Included in Anthology of Sci-Fi, V16, The Pulp Writers (2013).
Novelette (22 pages).
Online at Project Gutenberg HERE.

"On Lees' quick and clever action depended the life of 'Old Perk' Ferguson, the millionaire manufacturer threatened by the uncanny, invisible killer."

Darius Darrow, an eminent mechanical engineer, has died—but definitely not of natural causes; someone, it seems, wants to make an example of his death and use it as leverage in an extortion plot that could net them millions, as this charming billet doux from the killer indicates:

Old Perk: Get wise to yourself. We are in a position to destroy you and all the pot-bellies in the Wall Street crowd. If you want to die of old age, remember what happened to Darrow and begin declaring us in on Wall Street dividends. If you do not you will follow Darrow in the same way.

Our first demand is for $100,000. Leave this amount in hundreds and fifties in the rubbish can at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway at 10 A. M. next Thursday. If you fail we will break your damned neck. Bring the police with you if you like. — Invisible Death.

Principal characters:
~ Mrs. Susan Darrow, "one of the world's foremost chemists", widow of Darius Darrow: "He was working on an invention that he said would do away with war and would make the owner of the device a practical world dictator, should he choose to exercise such power. The device was completed. The murderer killed him to secure his device. That all seems plain enough."
~ Peck, the gardener: "The auto started itself, and what is more, that auto only went about a hundred yards when it disappeared altogether—like that—like a flash."
~ Perkins Ferguson ("Old Perk"), head of the Schefert Engineering Corporation, who pays royalties on some of the Darrow patents: "I have my own theory, however, but I am going to know a whole lot more about this case before I venture it."
~ Damon Farnsworth, first V. P. of Schefert Engineering: "The Darrow case has taken a sudden and sinister turn."
~ Walter Lees, a young engineer who doubles as our sleuth: "For the first time in my life I am going to be a Peeping Tom."
~ Adolph Jouret ("Elias, the Great"), retired magician: "When you find your man, you will find a madman."
~ Doris Jouret, Adolph's daughter: "The girl had adopted rather a theatrical pose, which disclosed considerable of her nether charms, and said nothing at all."

Typo: "a coal chute. This shoot . . ."

Comments: Engineers tend to be methodical and not given to flashes of inspiration, which our "detective" Walter Lees amply demonstrates.

Resources:
- There's practically nothing about Anthony Pelcher lying about on the Internet; both the ISFDb HERE and FictionMags HERE indicate a small output, with only five SF/Fantasy titles from this author.

The bottom line:

   "To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man—the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You have only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become—this.” 
   ― Griffin

"End of the Road"

"No Longer Perfect."
By Fred MacIsaac (1886-1940).
First appearance: Collier's Weekly, April 25, 1936.
Short short story (5 pages).
Online at UNZ HERE (start), HERE (scroll down to page 82), and HERE (scroll down to pages 84-85).

"The Hollywood adventure of Emily Forest, Mr. Lowenstein's confidential secretary, who wasn't so perfect as she seemed, and Ted Owens, her unwitting partner in crime, who was the luckiest author ever to make the grade in Hollywood."

Sometimes a "crime" can be as harmless, as well-intentioned, as doing someone a favor:

She had betrayed her trust; committed a heinous act of disloyalty for no reason whatever. She sank into her chair, almost obeyed an urge to rush back and admit her crime. And then she stuck out her chin. "It's about time I did some-thing I want to do around here," she muttered.

Comment: Nothing gruesome here, just a cute boy-meets-girl story with a fantasized Holly-wood background that Wodehouse would undoubtedly have done better—come to think of it, he did:

Episode Number 5: "The Nodder." Original Air Date: 30 April 1976.

Wilmot Mulliner (John Alderton) is a lowly ‘nodder’ in a Hollywood studio whose sole job is to agree to the pronouncements of producer I.Q. Fishbein (Sydney Tafler). Wilmot falls for Fishbein’s secretary Mabel Ridgeway (Pauline Collins), but she won’t marry him unless he proves himself worthy. After apparently bravely tackling a violent gorilla (actually an actor in disguise), he does prove worthy of Muriel’s attention. Mabel, a former vaudeville birdcall-imitator, has a dispute with Fishbein over the proper manner of imitating a cuckoo for a film (cuckoo-cuckoo v wuckoo-wuckoo). Wilmot finds the courage to defy his boss and defend Mabel. — "List of Wodehouse Playhouse Episodes," Wikipedia

Resources:
- According to FictionMags, Fred MacIsaac's writing career flourished during the '20s and '30s; he even had a continuing character, Addison Francis "Rambler" Murphy, prowling the pages of Dime Detective (HERE).
- MacIsaac's excursions into science fiction/fantasy earned him listings in the SFE (HERE) and the ISFDb (HERE).

- "The Nodder" is, for the moment at least, online HERE (30 minutes 16 seconds).

The bottom line: "Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good."
   — P.  G. Wodehouse

"It Was a New Strategy in Criminal Warfare, Killing People with Laughter"

"Moon Patrol."
By Victor Rousseau (Victor Rousseau Emanuel, 1879-1960).
First appearance: Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1941.
Short short story (8 pages).
Online at UNZ HERE (and author's comments HERE).

"Officer Connolly's Toothache Becomes a Pain in the Neck to Space Crooks When They Try to Laugh a Lunar Factory Out of Its Payroll!"

If armed robbery and murder aren't laughing matters, then why is just about everyone writhing in mirthful paroxysms while those crimes are happening right before their eyes? Moon cop Dan Connolly, finding himself in the middle of all this mayhem, doesn't think it funny either, but what really has him ticked off is that thief who punches him out and makes off with his ammunition belt . . .

Prominent characters:
~ Dan Connolly: "Ain't we Moon patrol cops the laughing-stock of every souse with a two-cylinder atomic engine who's breaking the rules of the spacelane? Is there anything we can catch with these rocket-busters of ours, except a one-cylinder atomic bike—maybe?"
~ Malva Connolly (offstage): "[She's] as right as a Moon patrol cop's wife has a right to be."
~ Sergeant Rourke: "There's a safe full of money in the plant's offices to pay the men, and it's two months since Pogen broke jail."
~ Pogen: "Pogen cursed. Dan heard the muffled tones through the criminal's oxygen mask."
~ Doc Smag: "I'm having too good a time to think of money."
~ Paxton: "Mechanism dishranged. Too hard for me to handle. Going back for chemisht—exshpert advice."

Typos: "the crooks ware oxygen masks"; "he opened on eye."

Resources:
- Victor Rousseau, who is not to be confused with the famous sculptor, enjoyed quite a long and varied writing career, from 1907 to 1948; go to these sources for more: Wikipedia HERE, the SFE HERE, Universe of Science Fiction (in Spanish) HERE, the ISFDb HERE, and FictionMags HERE.
- The "Heavyside" [sic], mentioned (and consistently misspelled) several times in the story as interfering with communications, is for real:

The Kennelly–Heaviside layer, named after Arthur E. Kennelly and Oliver Heaviside, also known as the E region or simply the Heaviside layer, is a layer of ionised gas occurring between roughly 90–150 km (56–93 mi) above the ground — one of several layers in the Earth's ionosphere. It reflects medium-frequency radio waves, and because of this reflection, radio waves can be propagated beyond the horizon.

Propagation is affected by time of day. During the daytime the solar wind presses this layer closer to the Earth, thereby limiting how far it can reflect radio waves. Conversely, on the night (lee) side of the Earth, the solar wind drags the ionosphere further away, thereby greatly increasing the range which radio waves can travel by reflection, called skywave. The extent of the effect is further influenced by the season, and the amount of sunspot activity. — "Kennelly-Heaviside Layer," Wikipedia

- As for all that "inert nitrogen lying around on the Moon"—well, unfortunately for him scientific discovery has outmoded our author's plot device:

Elements known to be present on the lunar surface include, among others, oxygen (O), silicon (Si), iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca), aluminium (Al), manganese (Mn) and titanium (Ti). Among the more abundant are oxygen, iron and silicon. The oxygen content is estimated at 45% (by weight). Carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) appear to be present only in trace quantities from deposition by solar wind. — "Geology of the Moon," Wikipedia

The bottom line: "From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it."
   — Groucho

WHODUNIT Comics

IT seems as if no serious attempt was made to expose younger readers to the smarter tropes of detective fiction in the comic books of the '40s and '50s. Most crime comics of the era skewed to the blood-and-thunder, hardboiled school, with dollops of violence and cynicism that eventually attracted the attention of Congress.

Apparently the only one that came even remotely close was D. S. Publishing's Whodunit, which ran for only three issues in 1948-49. Do any of these stories really fit the series title? Perhaps it depends on how you define "whodunit."

WHODUNIT, Number 1.
August-September 1948.
52 pages.
Online at Comic Book Plus HERE.

Contents:

(1) "The Case of the Commonplace Clue" (7 pages):
    "Murder is a game where no one wins. It was only a little thing — a mere trifle that anyone would overlook — anyone except Detective Sergeant Barney O'Toole — but it trapped the killer of Hilary Masterson."
    Detective fiction tropes: The broken watch; the allergy giveaway; the phony phone call; a fairly large suspect pool; the least likely suspect.
    Typo: "tampering with with witnesses."

(2) "The Weeping Widow: The Corpse Who Trapped His Killer" (7 pages):
    "When a weak man sees a fortune just beyond his reach, his path can lead down — TO CRIME — TO BLACKMAIL — TO MURDER! Who hated the greedy little man? Who fired the fatal shot? It was a strange tangle that faced Detective Murdock, but just as in the fabled labyrinth, one thread led straight to another."
    Detective fiction tropes: The contested will; the tontine; the femme fatale; a conversational slipup; the Laura gambit; the mistake redressing the body; an adequate suspect pool.
    Typos: "The dames screwy"; "nonesense"; "getaaway"; "the whole estate's is hers"; "the dead man was sunburn"; "just begining."

(3) "Who Done It?" (cartoons: 1 page)

(4) "Inspector Hawk: Death on the Range" (7 pages):
    "A previously overlooked detail gives Inspector Hawk the necessary clue, enabling him to capture the fiendish killer of multi-millionaire Gabriel Thorn in one of his most difficult cases — DEATH ON THE RANGE!"
    Detective fiction tropes: Stock manipulation and embezzlement; the obvious suspect is framed; how knots have been tied; suspects with credible motives.

(5) "The Guilty Greenbacks: What Bizarre Counterfeit Scheme Almost Worked?" (7 pages):
    "Counterfeit money . . . a deceitful menace to honest businessmen . . . bursts out in a new wave of crime! The alert police spring into action to stamp out the swindlers . . . but the bogus bills continue to appear . . . Special Investigator Bradley steps in to find the amazing solution to the GUILTY GREENBACKS!!"

(6) "A Question of Revenge" (text only: 2 pages):
    Detective Dave Carter and his secretary Sally are called to the estate of a multi-millionaire who's been keeping his daughter's disappearance a secret for the past two weeks. Dave's solution pivots on how old certain persons staying at the estate are.
    "You've been reading again, Sally. You just have to cut out those detective stories."
    Typo: "seemed loathe to answer."

(7) "Formula for Foul Play: Who Stopped Carlton's Winning Streak?" (8 pages):
    "When mysterious incidents start a permanent losing streak for the crack teams of Carlton Tech . . . Detective Dan Clark, a Carlton alumnus, goes to work tracking down the unsus-pected treachery to its shrewd mastermind . . . a shadowy figure who has devised a FOR-MULA FOR FOUL PLAY!"
    Typo: "made two base easily"

(8) "Mysteries from the Case Book of Edgar Peck: The Mystery of the Suicide Game" (1 page):
    Detective fiction trope: A murder is made to look like a suicide, but forensics fingers the killer.

(9) "Found $26000: All Applicants Form a Line at the Morgue!!" (7 pages):
    "There he comes . . . out of that butcher shop . . . a small man in his early thirties . . . He's carrying a small bundle and smiling . . . but it will be his last smile because three tons of speeding metal has got him marked for the morgue!"
    Typo: "and no one [?] a finger on him."

~ ~ ~

WHODUNIT, Number 2.
October-November 1948.
52 pages.
Online at Comic Book Plus HERE.

Contents:

(1) "The Mock Mandarin of Music" (8 pages):
    "Someone once said 'Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast' . . . but when a visiting Oriental festival group gave a Symphony Hall recital, mysterious occurences threatened to end the harmony of the 'Gaku' troupe from the Far East! Detective Hodges had to learn about Oriental music and apply that knowledge in tracking down the potential DEATH DEALER IN DISGUISE!"
    Detective fiction tropes: A weapon that can be used in plain sight without others realizing it; heavy makeup used by assailant.

(2) "The Pearl Pirate" (8 pages):
    "Pearls! The quest for these precious gems lures adventurous travelers to seek them in the enchanting topics. Lady Titwell became the victim of a scheming fortune-hunter . . . until Inspector Hollander stepped into the case and revealed the PEARL PIRATE!!"
    Detective fiction trope: Continual shifting of suspicion from one person to another.

(3) "Diploma for Death! or Skeleton in the Closet!" (7 pages):
    "The lesson for the day was MURDER . . . . One of the cleverest crimes ever concocted in a cunning mind! But, when Lieut. Steve Henston entered the class, the killer failed the final, grim test . . . and received his DIPLOMA FOR DEATH!"
    Detective fiction tropes: The dead victim is in plain view without anyone realizing it; the old reliable gimmick of not being able to make oneself shorter.

(4) "The Bloodstone" (text only: 2 pages):
    "This is a good picture," he pointed to the glossy print. "It even shows your ring! That nice big stone set in a snake's head."
    Detective fiction trope: On a whim the criminal unwittingly participates in an act that will ultimately nail them.

(5) "Death Takes the Witch: The Five Would-Be Killers" (7 pages):
    "This is the story of an evil old woman who abused and degraded everyone she knew . . . a story of fear, hate and violent death! Old Letitia Hodges never dreamed she might go too far . . . and she learned that—too late!"
    Detective fiction tropes: An apparent change in normal habits; the killer is color-blind.

(6) "Death Scores a Knockout" (7 pages):
    "Nobody could say that Kid McCann wasn't sure of himself. If ever a man tempted death, he was the one. But his luck ran out when the stakes were highest and he took the final count!"
    Detective fiction tropes: The gathering of all the suspects; the misdirection of outside and inside.
    Typo: "a lof of 'friends'."

(7) "Polly Wants Murder" (7 pages):
    "Old Man Crandall hated life — that's why he didn't last long when a severe cold caught up with him! But there was one thing he hated more than living . . . and that was his relatives who had been waiting around for him to die! He hated them and decided to do something about it!"
    Detective fiction tropes: The crazy codicil in a will that practically paints a target on the legatee; offbeat murder weapon.
    Typo: "imediately."

~ ~ ~

WHODUNIT, Number 3.
December 1948-January 1949.
52 pages.
Online at Comic Book Plus HERE.

Contents:

(1) "Secret of the Seance" (12 pages):
    "Secretly located within the quiet walls of Ivy College is a mysterious room called the 'crime lab.' This scientifically-equipped laboratory is headquarters in the bitter battle against crime waged by modest young Professor of Chemistry, Kip Dawn. Kip is aided in his one-man crime crusade by pretty Poppy Fields, post-grad student, and Clarence 'Biff' Bangs, ex-pug, now a crime lab guard."
    Detective fiction tropes: The murder happens at a seance when the lights go out; setting a trap with the near certainty that it will draw the killer out.

(2) "Case of the Fake Photo" (8 pages):
    "Here is your chance to match wits with Detective Reis of the Homicide Squad, who realizes that though there may be many motives for a murder, only one is strong enough to bring a killer to action . . . the CASE OF THE FAKE PHOTO!"
    Detective fiction tropes: Sometimes during a murder a camera happens to snap a picture; feeding false information to the killer in order to set a trap.

(3) "Who Done It?" (cartoons: 1 page)

(4) "Blueprint for Death" (8 pages):
    "It wasn't gravity that threatened the new building ... the pressure was coming from a crafty schemer who engineered trouble — until he ran into the sleuthing of JIM BREWSTER ... and found a new rival who tracked down guilty blueprints and cancelled THE BLUEPRINT FOR DEATH!"
    Detective fiction trope: The sleuth adopts a disguise to overhear unguarded conversations.

(5) "Murder to Music" (text only: 2 pages):
    "Cover a murder with a murder—quite an idea . . ."
    Typo: "out of he way"

(6) "Death Joins the Party" (8 pages):
    "When a small-time hoodlum starts to spread out with an unsavory mixture of double-crossing and blackmail, he becomes a bad insurance risk, as Willie Brophy, alias Willie The Croaker, found out."
    Detective fiction trope: Paraphernalia associated with a given profession leads to the culprit.

(7) "The Red-Headed Vixen" (7 pages):
    "What looked like a routine suicide case turned out to be a three-way mystery for Detective Lt. Jim Kirnan and his assistant Chuck Ballantine."
    Detective fiction trope: An apparently irrelevant detail becomes the clue that solves the case.

Comments: The criminals in these stories usually come from only two social strata: the well-to-do and the working class, and they speak accordingly; still, the street thugs' patois is over-the-top stereotypical; for example: "Now where's he goin'? Duh rat! I'll get him if I hafta foller him all night."

Resources:
- We previously dealt with another short-lived detective comic book series HERE.

The bottom line: "Like every criminal who thinks he's committed the perfect murder, you slipped up."
   — Detective Sergeant Barney O'Toole

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"His Skull Had Been Crushed by a Fifth Dynasty Martian Statuette"

"Public Eye."
By Anthony Boucher (William Anthony Parker White, 1911-68).
First appearance: Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1952.
Anthologized in Space, Time & Crime (1964).
Collected in The Compleat Boucher (1999).
Short story (10 pages).
Online at UNZ HERE.
Parental caution: Strong language.

"A wily counsellor proves he was in two places at the same time."

A couple of hundred years in the future seventy billion people are scattered across the planets and moons of the Solar System. Despite mankind's technical advancements, however, some old evils remain, including jealousy and murder:

It was an old-fashioned, even an archaic murder, and Fers Brin found his mind haunted by a half-remembered archaic line. Something about being surprised that the old man had so much blood. . . . Another level of his mind registered and filed the details of the scene. Another level took him to the phone for the routine call to the criminalistics squad. But the topmost conscious level held neither observation nor reason, but only emotion . . .

As it turns out, that seventy billion number will prove to be crucial to Brin's solution to the case.

Principal characters:
~ Dolf Mase, a defense attorney who claims a ninety percent win rate:
   "Spare me the moral lecture which I can already read, my dear captain, in those honest steely eyes of yours. I have no desire to devote myself to the good of the system, nor to the good of anyone save Dolf Mase."
~ Fers Brin, a "public eye":
   "Tell your watchers they've had a rare privilege. They've just seen a public eye get a hunch and he's acting on it right now!"
~ Captain Wark, head of the Identification Bureau:
   "It's the perfect alibi in history, Brin. Alibi means elsewhere, or used to—"
~ Lu Mase, Dolf's brother:
   "There was that time when Dolf was young. . . He'd convinced me that he'd changed. . ."
~ The Port Luna police sergeant:
   "That son-of-a-spacesuit! We been trying to pin something on him for years!"
~ Bets: She likes steaks:
   "I get kind of hungry around five."

Brinisms:
   "I've got me a problem—one they can't solve by criminalistics. One that maybe disproves criminalistics."
    "You probably know that the whole science of crime detection goes back only a few centuries—roughly to about the middle of the Nineteenth. By around another century, say in Nineteen Fifty, they knew scientifically just about all the basic principles we work on; but the social and political setup was too chaotic for good results. Even within what was then the United States, a lot of localities were what you might call criminalistically illiterate . . ."
   ". . . you know that it [period literature] was full of something called private eyes—which maybe stood for private investigator and maybe came from an agency that called itself The Eye. These characters were even wilder than the Mad Scientists and Martians that other writers then used to dream up; they could outdrink six rocketmen on Terra-leave and outlove an asteroid hermit hitting Venusberg. They were nothing like the real private detective of the period—oh yes, there were such people, but they made their living finding men who'd run out on their debts, or proving marital infidelity."
    ". . . I had a great-great-grandfather who was a private eye. I've read a lot and they keep saying they couldn't write a detective story about the 'future'—meaning, say, now—because everything would be different and how could you be fair? And the answer I've got is one you could have figured out even in the Twentieth Century. It's a problem that couldn't happen till now, but the answer was in their knowledge. They had a writer named Quinn or Queel or something who used to issue a challenge to the reader, and this would be the place to do it."
   ". . . we missed the whole point. There never was any such certainty. There were only infinitely long odds."

Resources:
- Anthony Boucher was quite active (perhaps hyperactive is more accurate) in crime fiction writing, criticism, and science fiction, as the following sources indicate: Wikipedia HERE, the GAD Wiki HERE, MysteryNet HERE, FictionMags HERE, the SFE HERE, the ISFDb HERE, the IMDb HERE, and ONTOS HERE.

- Other weblog postings about Boucher and his books: The Rap Sheet HERE; At the Scene of the Crime HERE; and Noah Stewart HERE, HERE, and HERE.

The bottom line: "Galton's calculation of 1 chance in 64 billion was quoted ceremonially in the decades following his book, but it seems fair to say that by the late 1920s the basis for their acceptance was neither scientific argument nor well-documented empirical study."
  — Stephen M. Stigler

"What in the Name of Goodness Is the Game?"

"The Greuze Girl."
(Original title: "The Greuze").
By Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957).
First appearance: Pearson's Magazine, December 1921.
Collected in The Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express and Other Stories (1956; described HERE).
Anthologized in Volume 3 of The World's Best One Hundred Detective Stories (1929; for sale HERE).
Reprinted in EQMM, October 1949; EQMM (Australia), November 1950; and AHMM, September 1987.
Short story (19 pages).
Online at SFFAudio HERE (PDF).

"You—thief! If you don't shell out within ten seconds I'll send you straight to hell!"

It seems like an utterly straightforward transaction for Mr. Lumley, the go-between, to purchase a rare picture from an impoverished aristo on behalf of a harried American limited by a tight schedule—and so it would have been except for those nettlesome inconsistencies about the deal that keep obtruding into Mr. Lumley's thoughts, and, most noteworthy, that "small, evil-looking automatic pistol" pointed at his head . . .

Principal characters:
~ Nicholas Lumley: A commission agent (see Appendix below).
~ Silas S. Snaith: "An American of the nouveau riche type."
~ Lord Arthur Wentworth: A financially straitened aristocrat who'd be right at home at Downton Abbey.
~ Dobbs: Lumley's old acquaintance.
~ Frank L. Mitchell: Not in the directory.
~ Inspector Niblock: Of, you know, the Yard. (Note: In this version Inspector French does not appear.)

Notable turns of phrase:
   He was well dressed in dark clothes of American cut, but an ornate watchchain, ruby tiepin, and diamond sleevelinks seemed to point to a larger endowment of money than taste.
    "For all he's a member of the effete British aristocracy, and about as ro-bust as a wisp of hay at that, he's all awake is Lord Arthur. A hard nut, as maybe you'll find."
   "You're so plaguey set on your dignity."

Comments: This is one of those very readable mysteries in which all the events are filtered through one individual's limited consciousness, leaving both that person and the reader pretty much in the dark about what's really going on. Our only complaint: the introduction of facts at the tail end of the story which could have been unobtrusively introduced much earlier, giving the reader a fighting chance to sort it all out. If they ever film this one, they should start with the last two pages. Definitely not fair play.

Resources:
- Lots more about Freeman Wills Crofts and some of his other works can be found HERE (Mike Grost), HERE (Vintage Pop Fictions), HERE (Noah Stewart), HERE (At the Scene of the Crime), and HERE and HERE (ONTOS).

Appendix—Commission Agents: The Basics:

In general, commission agents purchase and sell items on behalf of a principal, usually a company. The nature of the job depends on the field of employment. Agriculture produce commission agents who work for small businesses, for instance, travel to farms and orchards, purchasing fruits, vegetables and dairy products for principals such as grocers and restaurants, or sell such items to grocers and restaurants on behalf of farmers. These individuals work inde-pendently as contracted, third-party workers, not employees of their principals. Commission agents conduct business under their own names, which affords a measure of anonymity to their principals while allowing the agents a certain degree of autonomy. As experts in their field, commission agents can assist small businesses in making the most of their limited budgets. — Will Gish, Houston Chronicle

The bottom line: "Lead us not into temptation."
   — The Bible