Two by Will Jenkins

"It would be silly to go around pushing people off cliffs!"

"High Justice."
(a.k.a. "Shelter Hut").
By Will F. Jenkins (1896-1975).
First appearance: Collier's, June 3, 1939.
Short short short story (3 pages).
Online at UNZ (HERE).
(Note: Accompanying illo quite unclear; use "Ctrl+" for legibility.)

"Down below, there was still a tiny patch of storm-frayed cloth, with perhaps a white bone or two showing through."

The biggest problem with the perfect murder lies with—really within—the perfect murderer; no matter how much he tries to push it aside, guilt can bubble up unbidden from nowhere, even on a freezing night atop a mountain precipice with a sheer drop of a thousand feet just inches away. "It is bad," says Kettermann, "when a chentleman uses the mountains to kill another chentleman. It is murder . . ."

~ ~ ~

"If the cops know you like I do, they won't bother trying to catch you. All they'll have to do is wait for you to clamor for their attention."

"Teletype."
By Will F. Jenkins (1896-1975)
First appearance: Collier's, March 16, 1956.
Reprinted in Bestseller Mystery Magazine, September 1958
and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, April 1965.
Short short short story (4 pages).
Online at UNZ (HERE).

"Timmy thought he was staging the perfect getaway. He didn't know he had to outsmart a machine that could anticipate any move he'd make."

A reticent state trooper acknowledges the universal constant about blood being thicker than water: "We got to allow for things like that. People hate to turn in brothers and sisters and such. It's human." For Callahan and his wife Jeanne, though, the man they both fear, her brother, acts like he isn't human at all—bragging, blustering, posturing, lying, stealing, threatening, and completely unconcerned when it comes to murder. This dark night could end disastrously for Callahan, Jeanne, and their two kids unless he can come up with some kind of plan, a plan that can exploit the killer's mentality and use it against him . . .

Resources:
- If you've read much science fiction then you'd already know that Will F. Jenkins often went by the alias Murray Leinster (HERE); according to FictionMags, Jenkins/Leinster consistently produced stories from 1916 to 1967.

"Nothing Could Keep a Real Crook Out of That Box — Except Maybe He'd Laugh Himself to Death at Sight of It"

"The Man Who Ran the Town."
By Frederick Davis (1902-77).
First appearance: Top-Notch Magazine, June 1, 1926.
Short short story (5 pages).
Online at The Pulp Magazine Project (HERE, slow-load PDF; scroll down to page 67).

"She was a good safe while she lasted."

Overcoming sales resistance is a perennial problem for commercial travellers, but Steve Simpson, "star salesman for the Impregnable Safe Corporation of New York," has found a way to sidestep reluctant buyers and turn a double profit; it's a system that, up until now,  has been working beautifully. The time has come, however, for a reckoning, and it arrives
in the person of a man named Pott . . .

Comment: The first three paragraphs are fine examples of descriptive writing meant to
set the scene.

Resources:

- Frederick Davis was astonishingly prolific; to see how prolific go to the GAD Wiki (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and a previous ONTOS posting (HERE).

The bottom line:

"Something of the Sleuthhound Had Been Awakened Within Me"

"An Essay in Detection."
By Harold Aker (?-?).
First appearance: The Royal Magazine, January 1902.
Short short story (5 pages, 3 illos).
Online at Hathi Trust (HERE).

"I believe to this day that I owe my life to the insecurity with which that trouser leg was sewn together."

People always seem to be saying that good help is hard to find; Mr. Chalcott and his house-hold are about to discover how true that is when an amateur detective sets out trying to locate a missing bracelet. Even Sherlock Holmes wouldn't in all candor make a claim like this: "My powers of observation, which are I may say of rather more than ordinary development, could not be deceived" (Poirot, certainly, but not Holmes). In the end, after the weeping of the housemaid, after the indignation of the gardener, after the smashing of the glass, and after the attack of the dog, Mr. Chalcott will have reason to regret suggesting, "Now then, Arliss, here's your chance. . ."

Resources:
- We've had absolutely no success gathering info about Harold Aker; he's not listed on FictionMags, and for all we know "An Essay in Detection" might have been the only
story he ever had published.

The bottom line:

"If I Don't Get Shot in the Back Before I'm Half Way Across the Cave, How Do I Know When to Stop?"

"One-Way Ticket to Nowhere."
By Leroy Yerxa (1915-46).
First appearance: Amazing Stories, December 1942.
Reprinted in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1943.
Novelette (23 pages as a PDF).
Online at Project Gutenberg (HERE).

"Listen Blake, when I sent for you, I figured you'd fit in here. I didn't know you'd fall for all this kid brother heroic stuff."

   Hijacking a train is never an easy proposition, so stealing one capable of five hundred miles an hour might stymie your average train thief. Nevertheless, a gang of hijackers colloquially known as the Silver Masks has been successfully doing that for the past six months, and it's about to bankrupt Walter Ferrell's "Hope to Horn" high-tech railroad. A helpful footnote tells us that "Hope to Horn" is . . .

   ". . . the nickname lovingly applied by its loyal employees to the mono railroad developed and owned by Walter Ferrell. These mono, or single-tracked trains were brought into service in 2100. The Hope to Horn line itself consisted of a north- and south-bound rail of heavy plastic extending from Hope, Alaska to Cape Horn, South America. They were powered by standard sixteen engine diesels, capable of five hundred miles per hour. Built almost in the shape of long graceful fish, the trains were of highly colored plastic. They ran on a single rail of plastic-steel. In a few short hours men and women tired of business could follow the entire Pacific coast line from one end to the other, the entire trip consuming twenty-two running hours between Hope and Cape Horn."

. . . most of it a big blur, no doubt, but the public seems to like it—or did, until the Silver Mask raids started.
   Just back from ten years in space and heading to see his twin brother, Jeff Blake walks right into one when Mono 6 gets hijacked on its way to Tierra del Fuego with his old pal Holly O'Toole, Walter Ferrell himself, and Ferrell's stunning (of course) daughter Dauna. Blake will have to get heroically proactive if he hopes to save the situation—as well as the stunning (of course) Dauna—but a couple of things could deep-six the rescue if they become known: Two supposedly trustworthy people on Mono 6 aren't who everyone thinks they are—and one of them calls himself Jeff Blake . . .

Comment: In view of what happens in the story, the editorial headnote makes no sense at all.

Resources:
- Leroy Yerxa wavered between crime fiction and SFF in his pulp output, sometimes combining the two, as in this story. Several Interblab sources have the essential data on our author (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE); our last meeting with Yerxa (HERE) showed him with his mystery fiction hat on.
- Because our story involves trains, we're adding it to our gradually growing list of
railway-related mysteries.
- If you have the time, "Next World: Future Trains," a video from 2008 (43 minutes
25 seconds), is presently online (HERE), but it could use a few subtitles.

The bottom line: "How did I get to Hollywood? By train."
  — John Ford

"It Would Have Been Very Awkward If He Had Been Killed by the Fall"

BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY defines a commercial traveler this way:

   "Where an agent simply exhibits samples of goods kept for sale by his principal, and takes orders from purchasers for such goods, which goods are afterwards to be delivered by the principal to the purchasers, and payment for the goods is to be made by the purchasers to the principal on such delivery, such agent is generally called a 'drummer' or  'commercial traveler'."
   — Black's Law Dictionary (HERE)

The most famous commercial traveler in mystery fictiondom is probably Dorothy L. Sayers's Montague Egg, whose unlikely entanglements with crime she featured in not quite a dozen Eggs (see "Resources," below). Because the general conditions were more or less the same for Mr. Egg as they were when this nonfiction article with its amusing anecdotes about traveling salespersons first ran, you could consider it as background reading (and, no, there will not be a test).

======================================================================== "The Commercial Traveller."
By Albert Harris (?-?).
First appearance: The Strand Magazine, June 1907.
Reprinted in The Strand Magazine (U.S.), July 1907.
Short short story (7 pages, with 5 illos).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

For the purposes of this weblog, the last anecdote about John Simpson's adventure on a train might be of greatest interest:

   ". . . I had hardly got my grip when his feet slipped from off the footboard and he fell back into the darkness. His hat had dropped upon the floor of the carriage. I picked it up, threw it out, and closed the door again."

Resources:
- Commercial traveler Montague Egg's exploits (HERE) rate highly among detective fiction devotees:

   "Sayers wrote eleven Montague Egg stories; they are the first six tales listed under Hangman's Holiday, and the first five under In the Teeth of the Evidence. These tales are among the best pure detective stories that Sayers wrote. Most of the tales reflect realist school paradigms of detective fiction. Several of the best of these tales center around clocks and alibis.  . . .  In general, many of Sayers' best plots are found among her shorter fiction. They tend to have real puzzle plots, in the sense of a initial, well defined mysterious situation that ultimately reaches a clever solution."
   — Mike Grost, A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection (HERE)

- Fadedpage has A Treasury of Sayers Stories (1958) (HERE), which collects a half dozen Eggs alongside sixteen Lord Peter Wimsey shorts and two nonseries stories:

    (1) "The Poisoned Dow '08"
   (2) "Sleuths on the Scent"
   (3) "Murder in the Morning"
   (4) "One Too Many"
   (5) "Murder at Pentecost"
   (6) "Maher-shalal-hashbaz".

The bottom line: "To serve the public is the aim of every salesman worth the name."
  — Montague Egg

"Then—Suddenly—The Viselike Clutch Weakened and Relaxed"

"The Vanishing Ambulance."
By J. Lenivers Carew (?-?).
First appearance: Top-Notch Magazine, February 1, 1912.
Short short story (8 pages).
Online at The Pulp Magazine Project (HERE, slow-load PDF; scroll down to page 168).

When he rushes to respond to an emergency call at the city hospital, young physician Stephen Denzil doesn't have an inkling that he's about to spring a trap—with himself
as the prey . . .

Main characters:
~ The chairman:
   "This board never waits for applicants who are not prompt."
~ Doctor Denzil:
   "You made a mistake. You ignored the fact that a man who has been bought still has a price!"
~ Doctor Gilbert Gresham:
   "Hear the bell, Stephen? The bus is going out."
~ Doctor Fraser:
   "They lied to you, Denzil."
~ Pat Kelly:
   "I'm an awful bad feller when I get on the track of a man."
~ Roach:
   "Only you mustn't talk to these fellers—it wouldn't do no good, an' the doctor's a sharp one. You leave him for me to deal with."
~ Greene:
   "What do yer think I am, a doctor?"

Typo: "hosiptal".

Resources:
- Whoever J. Lenivers Carew was and whenever this individual lived are still a mystery; FictionMags credits Carew with fifteen items, ninety percent of them for Top-Notch,
and all from 1910 to 1915.

The bottom line: "I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof."
   — Rodney Dangerfield

The Top 5 in June

THE MOST VIEWED posts last month were something of a mixed bag: a thriller about a bill collector, one about an incriminating hat, our first Salmagundi, a B-Western in space, and, rounding out our Top 5 in June, our Top 5 in May. Go figure.

~ June 2017 ~

(1) "Sometimes There Ain't No Justice" - (HERE)

(2) Hat Tricked - (HERE)
(3) Salmagundi—Number One - (HERE)
(4) The Top 5 in May - (HERE)
(5) "Everyone Slips Sometimes, and He Was No Exception" - (HERE)

~ June 2014 ~

(1) "A Well-paced Story That's Loaded with Action, Suspense, a Great Puzzle, and a Lot of Humor" - (HERE)

(2) "Both Literal Masterpieces of Sensational Fiction" - (HERE)
(3) The Top Ten - (HERE)
(4) Ten by Gladys (and We Don't Mean Mitchell) - (HERE)
(5) Four-in-One - (HERE)

~ June 2015 ~

(1) "Reprogrammed to Be a Killing Machine" - (HERE)
(2) Eight Tales of Terror You Might Enjoy - (HERE)
(3) European Pulp Science Fiction - (HERE)
(4) "You Must Conform!" - From "The Beautiful People" to "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" - (HERE)
(5) Criminous Nonsense from O. Henry - (HERE)

~ June 2016 ~

(1) "Deliberately, Cleverly, and Diabolically Murdered" - (HERE)
(2) "In a Flash of Realization, the Whole Puzzle Clicked into Place!" - (HERE)
(3) "It Was Only a Matter of Time Until a Criminal, a Really Clever One, Saw Through the System—and Reverted" - (HERE)
(4) "I Shot Her First and Then, As He Woke and Sprang Up, I Got Him Too" - (HERE)
(5) "What're You Trying to Do—Prove I'm a Murderer or Something?" - (HERE)