"Two Guys Just Shot This Man!"

IF YOU ARE familiar with the term "biter bit" (if not, see "Resources" below), then you 
might be able to guess how the next story will turn out . . .

   "In his business fingers and nerves were everything—like with a piano player."

"The Last Haul."
By Fenton W. Earnshaw (1912-ca.1970).
First appearance: Thrilling Detective, September 1941.

Short short short story (4 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "Benny Warner Proves to Be Dumber Than His Victim!"

Have you ever been admonished not to jump to conclusions? Evidently whoever gave Benny that advice was wasting his breath . . .

Characters:
~ Benny Warner:
  "You got nothing on me, copper."
~ Captain Hendricks:
  "You're leaving by tomorrow night, Benny."
~ Detective Olsen:
  "He told you who shot him? He was talking when you got here?"
~ Mr. Carson:
  "It happened quickly. Carson's fists clenched, his mouth opened as if to yell."

Resources:
- The term "biter bit" and its variations are defined on The Free Dictionary (HERE).
- The FictionMags Index shows that short story credits for Fenton William Earnshaw spanned a ten-year period, 1939-49, with 21 stories overall; Earnshaw had three short-lived series characters: Dan McGuire (Thrilling Detective, 3 adventures, 1939-41), whom he inherited from Robert Leslie Bellem; Johnny Wells (Thrilling Detective, 1 adventure, 1939), a character later used by uberpulpster Norman A. Daniels; and MacAnderson (Thrilling Detective, 2 adven-tures, 1941-42), a character all his own.
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"I've Got a Bill of Sale, Made Out to Me, for One Space Worm"

"Murvyn the Magnificent."
By William E. Fark (1918-2010).
Illustrations by Scott Mavor (HERE).
First appearance: Fantastic, January 1980.

Short story (10 pages; 2 illos).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).
(Parental caution: Some strong profanity.)

     "Who would care about the feelings of a 'space worm,' a creature with no real form or place to call home? His strange abilities made money for people, but he wanted something more . . ."

A meditation on show business, slavery, and love . . .

Characters:
~ The narrator (unnamed):
  "In this racket, you're only as good as your current billing, and mine was never higher."
~ Murvyn the Magnificent:
  "The green material stirred and I met Murvyn."
~ Hank Milby:
  "As a third-rate comic, Hank was bearable; as a success, he was a first-rate bastard."
~ Hlassa:
  ". . . a dark, quiet girl from the Middle East, pretty in an unobtrusive way."

Resources:
- Murvyn's wild talent is covered by an article at TV Tropes (HERE).

- The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) credits William E. Fark with only two stories: "Hessie and the Spaced-Out Demon" (Fantastic, July 1979) and "Murvyn the Magnificent." See the extensive obituary for him in the San Diego Union-Tribune (HERE).
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"I Daresay There's More to This Sherlock Holmes Business Than Just That?"

IF YOU'VE BEEN browsing through old copies of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, MacKill's Mystery Magazine, The Saint, Creasey, or Edgar Wallace Mystery magazines dating from the 1950s and '60s, you will have doubtless come across a variety of crime fiction by one Nigel Morland (not his real name); Morland had only two series characters (see "More resources" below), one of whom was Constable Gill, the star of these two stories . . .

-------------------------------------------------------

   "He was taking a very long chance indeed, and if he made a mistake, dismissal and damnation would be his inevitable reward . . ."

(1) "All in the Night's Work."
By Nigel Morland (Carl Van Biene, 1905-86).
First appearance: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM), 
June 1961.

Short short story (9 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; scroll down to page 21).
(Note: Faded, but legible, text.)

     "Nothing unusual ever happened on Constable Gill's beat—until that mid-summer night on aristocratic Hertford Street . . . Now observe a London bobby at work."

If a murderer, like the one in our story, ever finds it necessary to hoodwink the police, he could certainly benefit from knowing the difference between a male and a female . . .

Characters:
~ Constable Gill:
  ". . . an old-fashioned man who clung faithfully to a drooping, curtain mustache which went well with a large and corpulent body."
~ Mrs. Gill:
  ". . . as stout and kindly as her husband . . ."
~ Tom Cowley:
  ". . . still a probationer with another year to serve."
~ Dane of the C.I.D.:
  ". . . a big man, as big as Gill, with a bleak face and rumpled clothes."
~ Farrar:
  "There's a secret drawer where I put a diamond I bought for—well, a lady friend. Paid nine thousand pounds for it."
~ Marshall:
  "The occiput's crushed like an eggshell—must've been a heavy blow."
~ The divisional surgeon:
  ". . . sighed but made no remark, knowing perfectly well the police cannot regard a corpse, even if it were cut into sections, as officially dead until the physician says so."
~ The Desk Sergeant:
 "Probably burn you at the stake, they will, chum!"

References:
- "the powerful Wootton lamp": Bobbies loved it (flickr: HERE; The Radio Museum: HERE).

~ ~ ~

   "I found the thief easily, sir."

(2) "Glimpse of the Obvious."
By Nigel Morland (Carl Van Biene, 1905-86).
First appearance: Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine, January 1967.

Short short story (7 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

A priceless diamond (aren't they all?) goes missing at a Christmas party, but the game's the thing wherein a clever copper will catch an incautious thief . . .

Characters:
~ Constable Gill:

  ". . . glared mournfully across the waste of slush and snow which covered Curzon Street, 

his large body shivering a little under his heavy winter uniform."

~ Bellamy:
  "Been a robbery."
~ Sir Osgood (or is it Gerald?) Quarles:
  ". . . it was my diamond, hang it!"
~ Mrs. Quarles, John and Michael, Lady Thameshire and Miss Templeton, Fritz Kaune, and Reverend Mr. Thomas Wellbeloved:
  "The gathering gave a sort of shocked attention to the big, solemn policeman in the door-way, his helmet under his arm and his round, balding head possessing a sort of common-place courtesy as if a god had come to the aid of mortals but was not prepared to play any favourites."

Typo: "Quarles expression" ["Quarles's"].

References:
- "He pointed to the epergne of walnuts.": For many of us, a new vocabulary term (Wikipedia; HERE) coupled with a familiar edible seed (Wikipedia; HERE).

--------------------------------------------

More resources:
- According to FictionMags, Nigel Morland's only other series character was Mrs. Palmyra Pym, ancestor of today's ruff-n-tuff female PIs, making her first shorter-length appearance in the '30s ("The Hatchet Man," The Thriller Library, April 17, 1937) and then disappearing from short stories until reemerging in the '50s ("Flowers for an Angel," EQMM, September 1951) and showing up 11 more times (1952-53, 1955-56, 1964, 1965, and 1969) in MacKill's, The Evening Standard, Creasey Mystery, and finally Edgar Wallace Mystery. [All data from FictionMags.] Some of these stories were collected in Mrs. Pym and Other Stories (1976; WorldCat; HERE).
- As for Morland's book-length efforts, see William F. Deeck's Mystery*File 2013 review (HERE) of The Clue in the Mirror (1937), one of many Palmyra Pym adventure thrillers—
not surprising, since Morland was a protégé of Edgar Wallace (the GAD Wiki; HERE). A 
film featuring her ("extremely entertaining rubbish") was made in 1940 (IMDb; HERE).
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"The Body Wasn't There"

"The Ghost Breakers."
By Fredric Brown (1906-72).
First appearance: Thrilling Detective, July 1944.

Reprinted in 5 Detective Novels Magazine, Summer 1952.

Novelette (17 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "With a killer and a sexy medium around, George has plenty to excite him in that haunted house—without any walking corpses!"

"A private detective doesn't do any dreaming," George confidently tells his client—but that man lying dead at the bottom of the stairs right at George's feet in a house that's prone to "manifestations"—the corpse that nobody, not even the police, can find—was he just a dream? As far as everybody else is concerned, it's simply a matter of the little PI who cried wolf, but like George insists, a good gumshoe worthy of his trenchcoat doesn't hamstring himself with dreaming . . .

. . . making bad guesses, on the other hand, that's a different matter entirely: "You solved the thing, only you picked the wrong guy. . . ."

Characters:
~ George Rice (the narrator):
  "This was an easy way to earn twenty bucks, but if I ever took another assignment like this, I thought, I would bring a thermos bottle of java, extra flashlight batteries, and a good book. Or a blonde."
~ Sergeant Carey:
  "If you know this joint is haunted, didn't you know that the ghost is supposed to be that of a tramp who fell downstairs here fifteen years ago?"
~ Captain Nelson:
  "That was my luck. I'd tangled with Nelson before, and he was going to make the most of this. He was grinning before Carey got halfway through his story. Then he wiped off the grin and glowered at me, pretending he wasn't enjoying it."
~ Norman Pollock:
  "Even unimaginative people sometimes tend to see and hear things they expect to see and hear . . ."
~ Zenas Wegs:
  "Mr. Wegs' opinion of me would make the difference between twenty bucks for one night's work or a lot of twenties from now on."
~ Shorty:
  "Criminetty, no bo would go any nearer that place than the tracks."
~ Jan Sharpe:
  ". . . is a screwball. Jan's a mystic and writes books about it."
~ Stanton Waldo:
  "Would you care to earn five hundred dollars, Rice?"
~ Scollini:
  "I'd have taken him for the devil, myself."
~ Irene Steiner:
  ". . . a medium—one Irene Steiner, a curvaceous number with an inviting eye, as I had found out . . ."

Typos: "I ddin't have to hunt"; "Strankled" [How often do people get strankled?]; "Green Street".

References and resources:
- "You've probably heard of Scollini, who rated next to Thurston in his heyday.": That would be Howard Thurston (1869-1936; Wikipedia HERE), who "eventually became the most famous magician of his time."

~ "I walked on into the jungles.": The "Hobo" article on Wikipedia (HERE) includes a glossary of terms commonly used in the 1940s; "jungle" is defined as "an area off a railroad where hobos camp and congregate."

~ "I walked around the end of a string of reefers": "a refrigerated boxcar (U.S.), a piece 
of railroad rolling stock designed to carry perishable freight at specific temperatures" (Wikipedia HERE).
~ "It's worth a sawbuck": "a slang term for a U.S. $10 bill, derived from the similarity between the shape of a sawbuck device and the Roman numeral X (10), which formerly appeared on $10 bills" (Wikipedia HERE).
~ "he hadn't been vagged.": Meaning arrested on a charge of vagrancy (The Free Dictionary HERE).
~ "What do you say to a séance at my place tomorrow night?": Wikipedia (HERE) says, "In English the word came to be used specifically for a meeting of people who are gathered to receive messages from ghosts or to listen to a spirit medium discourse with or relay messages from spirits."
~ "I saw now that they were a speaking trumpet and tambourine.": No séance would be complete without these gimmicks.

Houdini destroying the credibility of a speaking trumpet.

~ "The phonograph started grinding out Lead Kindly Light": A hymn dating from 1833 (Wikipedia HERE).

~ "The tambourine in the corner rattled, and the table fell, thudding against the carpet.": 

A levitating table? See "Seance Table Trick" at Magic Secrets Explained (HERE).

~ "snatched out of his hand and used to garrote him.": A depressingly popular way to 

murder someone (Wikipedia HERE).

~ "if she starts throwing ectoplasm around": "a term used in spiritualism to denote a substance or spiritual energy 'exteriorized' by physical mediums" (Wikipedia HERE).
- The Ghost Breakers was also the title of a 1940 comic "horror" movie starring Bob 
Hope and Paulette Goddard (Wikipedia HERE and the IMDb HERE). At one point in 
our story, in a "frozen second," George admits he was "scared stiff," which happens 
to be the title of the 1953 Lewis & Martin remake of The Ghost Breakers (Wikipedia 
HERE and the IMDb HERE).

- Fredric William Brown (see The FictionMags Index HERE) must have gone through dozens of typewriters in his long career generating above average short fiction (1937-65); see also Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and the IMDb (HERE).
- We've crossed paths with prolific and versatile Fredric Brown several times in the past: 

"Beware of the Dog" (HERE), "Daymare" (HERE), "Cry Silence" (HERE), and "The Night the World Ended" (HERE)—and will again in the future.
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"At Precisely 8:10, He Would Have His Revenge"

"How to Murder Your Boss."
By Roger Elwood (1943-2007).
First appearance: Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine (U.S.), 
March 1966.

Short short story (9 pages; 6 illos).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     ". . . it served no purpose to have a dying man gag horribly, tongue protruding from between puckered-up lips, eyes bloodshot with mortal anguish, lungs gasping for air and then the body going limp, stiff as 
a board."

Occasionally Charon gets lonely, and only one soul in the boat isn't nearly 
enough . . .

Characters:
~ George Hendricks:
  ". . . an underpaid and much abused bookkeeper."
~ Albert Tompkins:

  ". . . spoke softly and deliberately, his left hand touching his chest as though in a 

brief moment of inner pain."

~ Gladys:
  "Without Gladys to clean for him twice a week, he would also have had the added disadvantage of several inches of dust and dirt."
~ The landlord:
  ". . . turned to one of the two detectives who were getting into a nearby squad car."

Typo: "Lair!" ["Liar!"].

Resources:
- Roger Paul Elwood's small fiction listing on FictionMags doesn't really reflect his untiring ability to issue numerous anthologies of science fiction and fantasy (ISFDb HERE), which, paradoxically, earned him severe criticism in the SFF community (Wikipedia HERE and the SFE HERE); "I See Death in a Shadow" (Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, June 1964) and 
"How to Murder Your Boss" seem to be his only crime fiction stories.

The bottom line:
  "This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well."
  — 1st Viscount St. Alban
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"One Day - He Never Knew When - the Jailer Would Turn Executioner"

ACCORDING TO ANTHONY BOUCHER, the editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction at the time, what we have here is . . .

   ". . . a novelet of future crime and justice — at once an exciting melodrama, a terrifying nightmare . . . and a sort of poetic-theological statement concerning man and his soul."

That's quite a load for a short work of fiction to carry, but we think the husband and wife team sometimes known as Lewis Padgett manage to pull it off . . .

   "The trigger pressed his finger and the revolver kicked back against his palm, and the spurt of the explosion made the air hiss . . ."

"Two-Handed Engine."
By Henry Kuttner (1915-58) and C. L. Moore (1911-87).
First appearance: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1955.

Reprints page (HERE).

Novelette (21 pages).

Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; PDF; go down to 

PDF page 4).

(Parental caution: Mild profanity.)

     "I have a job for you. I want a man killed."

. . . something that any sensible person would reject out of hand, but there's a jackpot at the end of that illusive rainbow: "A life of luxury. I know you're not a fool. I know damned well 
you wouldn't do what I ask unless you got money and protection. That's what I can offer. Protection." Didn't a serpent making the rounds of a certain garden once make a similar proposal? And that was a lie, too . . .

Characters (in order of appearance):
~ Danner:
  ". . . was a man born at the wrong time."
~ Hartz:
  ". . . plump and blond, with the sad eyebrows."
~ The man in the alley:

  "They saw him take a sudden, deep breath, and break into a run."

~ The Furies:

  "They were very efficient. They were never wrong. Or at least, in theory they were 

never wrong . . ."

~ The beggar:

  "He was quite drunk that night, and he followed the beggar until the man threw the
money back at him and thrust himself away rapidly on his wheeled platform . . ."

~ O'Reilly:
  "Your hand pulled the trigger, not mine."

Typos: "it was to the wonder"; "turn into and alley".

Resources:
- Find Henry Kuttner (HERE) and Catherine Lucille Moore (HERE) on the ISFDb and follow the links from there.

References:

- The "two-handed engine," the obscure and abstract term used in the title, comes from John Milton's 1637 poem Lycidas (Wikipedia HERE and The John Milton Reading Room HERE); what exactly Milton meant by it has been booted about for centuries, but Kuttner and Moore give it a more concrete meaning here.

- "Ever since the days of Orestes there have been men with Furies following them. It wasn't until the Twenty-Second Century that mankind made itself a set of real Furies, out of steel.": An allusion to a cycle of plays by Aeschylus:

   "Featured in ancient Greek literature, from poems to plays, the Erinyes form the Chorus and play a major role in the conclusion of Aeschylus's dramatic trilogy the Oresteia. In the first play, Agamemnon, King Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan War, where he is slain by his wife, Clytemnestra, who wants vengeance for her daughter Iphigenia, who was sacrificed by Agamem-non in order to obtain favorable winds to sail to Troy. In the second play, The Libation Bearers, their son Orestes [HERE] has reached manhood and has been commanded by Apollo's oracle to avenge his father's murder at his mother’s hand. Returning home and revealing himself to his sister Electra, Orestes pretends to be a messenger bringing the news of his own death to Clytem-nestra. He then slays his mother and her lover Aegisthus. Although Orestes’ actions were what Apollo had commanded him to do, Orestes has still commit-ted matricide, a grave sacrilege. Because of this, he is pursued and tormented by the terrible Erinyes, who demand yet further blood vengeance."

. . . the Erinyes (Wikipedia HERE), also known as the Furies, being multi-purpose deities in Greek mythology:

   "The Erinyes live in Erebus and are more ancient than any of the Olympian deities. Their task is to hear complaints brought by mortals against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants—and to punish such crimes by hounding culprits relentlessly. The Erinyes are crones and, depending upon authors, described as having snakes for hair, dog's heads, coal black bodies, bat's wings, and blood-shot eyes. In their hands they carry brass-studded scourges, and their victims die in torment."

"Orestes Seized by the Furies After the Murder of Clytemnestra" by David Scott (1838).

- ". . . it operated on a basis of incorruptible machines. They made and enforced the laws 
that were necessary now to keep mankind alive.": This sounds like a sly take on Gort, the 
police robot from the first version of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951; Wikipedia HERE; SPOILERS); it would be surprising if Kuttner and Moore didn't have Gort in mind. It's probably no coincidence, either, that the Justice Machines in the Doctor Who serial 
The Stones of Blood call themselves the Megara (The Doctor Who Wiki HERE).

- "Upon that moving island two occupants dwelt, like a Crusoe and a Friday, alone.": A reference to the two main characters in Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel (Wikipedia HERE).
- ". . . to rebuild in man a realistic superego to save him from extinction.": Freudian psychology (Wikipedia HERE), enormously popular in the 1950s.
- "Quis custodiet, Hartz thought. The old problem.": The full phrase is "Quis custodiet 
ipsos custodes?" ("Who will watch the watchers?") (Wikipedia HERE).
- "The incorruptible metal was putting on corruption . . .": An inverted Biblical allusion (HERE). "It was as if sin had come anew into the world, and the first man felt again the 
first inward guilt.": Another Scriptural reference (HERE).
- It's understandable that Milton would inspire Edmund Crispin, at least with his story 
titles—"Humbleby Agonistes", "Within the Gates", "Abhorred Shears", etc.; see our 
review of Beware of the Trains (HERE).

- "Use your head. I've got an obvious motive. But you've got no motive . . .", which reminds us of a Hitchcock thriller (HERE; Wikipedia; SPOILERS).
- Cybernetic law enforcement officers, robot private eyes, and killers with motherboards . . . now where have we heard that before? (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), and so on.
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"Would You Be Interested in a Dead Gambler in a Hotel Room?"

THE OTHER DAY we covered a story by Raymond Chandler (HERE), generally regarded as occupying the pinnacle of hardboiled crime fiction; Bill Pronzini notes:

   "Chandler’s lean, tough, wisecracking style set the tone for all subsequent private-eye fiction, good and bad. He is certainly the most imitated writer in the genre, and next to Hemingway, perhaps the most imitated writer in the English language."

Certainly Michael Shayne, the Miami-based private eye, owed a lot to Chandler; another writer, not too shy about proffering his own imitation of Chandler as filtered through 
Shayne, would be the pseudonymous author of . . .

"The Big Squawk."
By Thomas Thursday (pseudonym; born 1894?).
First appearance: Smashing Detective, July 1956.

Short short story (8 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 65).
(Parental caution: Mild profanity.)

     "Like most practical jokers, Jack Kane didn’t appreciate a joke played on him—especially when it connected him with a killing."

Mark Twain, always one for a good joke, soberly wrote, "When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them. They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job-lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the 
world and a broader life." He could have been talking about Jack Kane . . .

Major characters (in no particular order):
~ Dan Hammerton:
  ". . . big shot gambler and bolita king . . ."
~ Pete Rundell:
  ". . . a quiet, efficient reporter—not the phony type you see in the movies, TV, or hear on the radio."
~ Jack Kane:
  ". . . was the opposite of Rundell, especially in character. Even among his fellow reporters he was as popular as arsenic on caviar."
~ Dick Tate:
  ". . . ace bellhop and ice-water carrier . . ."
~ Calbert Front:
  ". . . the desk clerk, a bizo named Calbert Front—appropriate name for a hotel clerk . . ."
~ Capt. Chester Eldredge:
  ". . . head of Homicide . . ."
~ Detectives Irv Whitman and George Spell:
  ". . . his aides . . ."
~ Frank Mullady:
  ". . . of the ID Bureau . . ."
~ Mabel McCoy:
  ". . . was one of the telephone operators at the Herald."
~ Mary McCracken:
  ". . . was toil-worn and wrinkles creased her forehead and hands."
~ "Silent Sam," a.k.a. "Clue No. 1":
  "In the center was a big cage, and in it an aristocratic-looking parrot."

Comment: Didn't anybody think to examine the corpse?

References and resources:
- "bolita king": Bolita is/was "a type of lottery which was popular in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries in Cuba and among Florida's working-class Hispanic, Italian, and black population" (Wikipedia; HERE).

- "Beside the body was a .32 Colt": Probably meaning the automatic pistol described in (Wikipedia; HERE).

- "You take Marilyn Monroe": "a major popular culture icon" according to (Wikipedia; HERE).

- "The face of Kane went passed [sic] red and began to technicolor.": A film process that's been around a lot longer than we realized (Wikipedia; HERE).

- "Why, you know I wouldn’t take a C-note from you": A reference having nothing to do with music (Wikipedia; HERE).

- "If I was Eisenhower—": At the time, President of the U.S.-of-A. (Wikipedia; HERE).

- "I’ve had enough of this Jackie Gleason and Burns and Allen liverwurst, ladies and gentlemen.": Three of the most popular TV comedians of the '50s (Wikipedia; HERE and HERE).
- According to FictionMags, dozens of stories attributed to "Thomas Thursday" appeared in various slicks and then pulps starting in 1918 and running all the way to 1959, some of them in the sports and Western genres, with the majority being crime fiction; his only series character was Chief Howard, featured in just three stories for Famous Detective and Smashing Detective, but he's not in today's narrative.
- See Bill Pronzini's article about Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep (1939) on the Mystery*File weblog (HERE) and Kevin Burton Smith's comprehensive article at The New Thrilling Detective Web Site about Michael Shayne (HERE).

- Perry Mason has a brush with a talking bird in The Case of the Perjured Parrot (the 1939 novel: The Passing Tramp HERE and Goodreads HERE; and the 1958 TV episode: IMDb HERE).

The bottom line:

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