Over the past decade—thanks to the intense upsurge of interest in the financial aspects of genre fiction and the collecting of authors such as Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, W.E. Johns and so on—a new breed of instant bookseller has appeared and bookselling itself has become (to use an already outdated word) yuppified. Specialist collecting magazines, edited and written for the most part by people who probably think an issue point is where babies come from, have sprung up with a strong emphasis on hard cash rather than knowledge or research. In such magazines Grosset & Dunlap is invariably noted as a publisher of new American fiction, advertisements may be found for signed First Editions which turn out not only to be reprints but reprints issued after the author's death, and dealers, for the most part, seem unaware that a First Edition, however scarce, by a collected author is essentially worthless if it looks as though it's been stored in a Dutch barn for 20 years.
George Locke will have no truck with any of this nonsense. Cock an eyebrow as one may at some of his prices and barring the odd hiccup, what you get from George is the real McCoy, with 30 or more years worth of booklore and hard experience behind it.
However, we are not here to puff George's wares but quite another aspect of him. Over the years he's written, and published himself, Search & Research, various Ferret Fantasy Christmas Annuals, Science Fiction First Editions, and (surely his magnum opus,) the mammoth A Spectrum of Fantasy, all of which are invaluable reference tools without which no serious collector or dealer should be. And on occasion, to describe or elucidate some arcane bibliographical point (the three variants of R. C. Sherriffs The Hopkins Manuscript, say, or the nine variants of Wells' The Time Machine,), or simply for amusement, he has resorted to fiction—specifically parody. Here is his bibliographic sleuth Morlock Tomes with a tale sparked off by an entry in that indispensable guide Locked Room Murders And Other Impossible Crimes—which just happens to be the work of one of your editors.
JACK ADRIAN
'Come in, my dear Clotson!' Morlock Tomes cried. 'Your visit is most timely. My memory is severely taxed. I hope you can help me.'
'As your chronicler, I'm sure that I can,' I said. He waved at a set of galley proofs on his desk. 'What do you make of those?'
I examined them. 'Why, very fine proofs indeed—printed on imitation vellum.'
'Genuine vellum,' Tomes said. 'I don't mean that.'
I could see that, taxed memory or not, Tomes' penchant for forcing his faithful confidant to extract every piece of information as though it was a peculiarly deeprooted molar was unimpaired. I had to play along with him. 'The tide is Locked Room Murders and other Impossible Crimes,' I said. 'A bibliography, by one Robert Adey. On a subject that should interest you immensely.'
'It does—particularly one of the entries. See here. Item 1221. Louis Zangwill's A Nineteenth Century Miracle. What do you make of it, Clotson?'
I studied the entry very carefully. 'The detective has a name very similar to yours.'
'Indubitably. What else?'
'Why—er—I don't see anything else.'
'Does nothing strike you as familiar?'
'No.'
Tomes smote his fine, high brow in anguish. A regal bruise appeared. Absently dabbing witch hazel onto it, he said, 'There is something hauntingly familiar about it, but I cannot recall what it could be.'
'Is it perhaps the nature of the puzzle? The mystery of a man being washed from the deck of a steamship in the English Channel simultaneously with the appearance of his drowned corpse through the skylight of a house in London. That, surely, is the kind of case you would have essayed to solve in the old days.'
'Essayed to solve? No two ways about it—I would have solved it. Clotson, did I solve it?'
I reached far back along the dark, often noisome, corridors of my memory. A recollection, fleeting and grey like a rat in a sewer, came briefly within range.
'Yes, I think I do remember. I chronicled that tale. It was in the early years of our literary association, not long after A Study in O'Hara and The Sign of the Just were published. We thought that a new periodical called The Chesil Magazine might prove to be a rewarding outiet for my accounts of your adventures. Do you remember now—I sent off a specimen. A minor piece, I recall . . .'
'Yes, yes! It's coming back. The editor praised your style yet rejected the tale. It was too parochial, he said. He didn't think his readers would be interested in such a minor affair in such a remote part of the world . . . Did he ever return your manuscript?'
'No!' I cried. 'And this Louis Zangwill stole the plot and transplanted it to a British setting. I seem to remember that the correct solution to the mystery could not, for some reason, be applied to the new, British setting. So Zangwill substituted the pitifully unimaginative one recorded by Mr. Adey—that the dead man had never been on board.'
'Mr. Zangwill may not have been guilty of plagiarism,' Tomes said. 'After all, the case did receive some publicity in the Press. So why don't you restore your wounded pride to its usual high state of egotism with some witch hazel tea while I think.'
He sat back and lit a leisurely pipe, content now that a lacuna in his memory was filled. Presently, he started to talk, meditatively.
'We first learned of Titus Q. Goonhilly in Singapore. I recall receiving a letter, forwarded from Hong Kong. He expressed great fear for his life. Forces were bent on destroying him. Professor Andreas Abelman Veeblefetzer (whom I knew to be the fourth most dangerous man in Barnsley) had flown to the area in his balloon. He was engaged upon a devilish scheme to induce a local volcano to erupt by emptying four tons of Mexican red peppers into its crater. But Goonhilly, a chili baron, had learned of his scheme and threatened to expose him. Consequently, he was a marked man. Stealthy gentlemen in black overcoats followed him wherever he went.
'He needed help. Would I protect him? He was travelling to Savai, in Western Samoa, and he would expect me to meet him there at my earliest convenience. Goonhilly was a wealthy man, and had considerable influence with his country's government. He would, he said, be travelling under the alias of Athanasius Brown.
'Don't you remember, Clotson? I had sent you out to buy a newspaper while I read the letter, and when you returned and I mentioned Athanasius Brown, you told me that there was a report of his death in the paper.
'We were too late!
'I remember the report clearly; a remarkably competent piece of work considering the area. Mr. Brown had been at Savai for a couple of days. On January 7, 1883, he decided to take a trip in a small boat, to go fishing, despite the fact that there was a strong wind blowing, from a quarter a little south of west. Two white people— their names I forget—accompanied him. They were later identified as first generation Americans. According to them, at 3.25 pm on January 7, a freak wave struck the boat. Although it did not founder, Mr. Brown (who by all accounts was a poor swimmer) was washed overboard. His body was not found, although later some shreds of clothing were identified as having belonged to him. The not unnatural conclusion was that a shark had partaken of his reportedly ample bulk.
'Despite the fact that clouds were low and grey, witnesses on the shore were able to confirm the wave and the time; the boat was only half a mile out to sea.
'In the same newspaper, I found the report of another death—a very strange death indeed.
'At about 3.30 pm of January 7, in the grounds of an American merchant's house on Wallis Island, nearly 300 miles to the east of Savai, the naked body of a man fell from the branches of a large tree. It struck a large stone ornament. It was assumed that the fall, which split his head open, had killed him. The report identified the man, known in the area, as Goonhilly. The editor did not link the two identities (which was left to me, reading the newspaper) and contented himself with speculating long and fruitlessly on where Goonhilly had come from and where his clothes had gone.
'Now, how was it possible for Brown to have been swept overboard a mere half mile from the coast of Savai, yet almost simulta
neously make violent impact with a marble replica of George Washington nearly 300 miles away?
'There was no way, in 1883, in which such a crime—for crime it was—could have been committed. Even in 1979, with helicopters and all 20th century technology at our disposal, it could not have been done.'
Tomes relit his pipe and gazed at the ceiling. I could see that he was now luxuriating in the reliving of one of his triumphs. 'Do you recall in what manner I solved the problem, Clotson?'
'Not entirely, Tomes.'
'When we arrived at Savai, we located the witnesses. Gradually, from the mists of their memories of a murky afternoon in January, we learned that Professor Veeblefetzer, pursuing his nefarious schemes, had launched a balloon from a headland jutting out to sea shortly before 3.15. It was a hazardous undertaking. At times, the balloon was swallowed up by the billowing bases of the clouds as it was blown across the wide bay by the strong wind.
'I now reconstruct what happened. The balloon flew unerringly to its prey—the little fishing boat. As it passed over, Professor Veeblefetzer cast a hook down. It caught in Goonhilly's clothing, ripped part of it away—the part which was later found in the water nearby. A second hook caught Goonhilly fair and square. He was hoisted up into the basket of the balloon, which prompdy ascended into the clouds, all the while that Goonhilly's companions (who had been angling from the other side of the boat) thought that he had been washed overboard by the coincidental freak wave.
'I do not know what happened in the balloon. I can only presume that Professor Veeblefetzer permitted it to be carried for many hours north east by the strong wind. Perhaps at the given time he saw Wallis Island beneath him and threw Goonhilly out of the basket then. Perhaps he simply tossed him blind over the side and the body fortuitously alighted, if that be the word, on Wallis Island. It is of litde moment.
'What is important is that Goonhilly was thrown overboard almost exactly twenty-four hours after he had been snatched from the boat.'
'But—but—' I stuttered.
'Yes, my dear Clotson. Twenty-four hours later, but on the same date. You see, like Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg, the vile Professor Veeblefetzer had crossed the international date line, which runs between Savai and Wallis Island.'
'You are a genius, Tomes,' I said.
'That is precisely what you said at the time.'
'Well, it was one of your greatest triumphs, after all.'
Tomes shook his head sadly. 'A minor triumph only. We were unable to prevent Professor Veeblefetzer from succeeding in his scheme. Krakatoa erupted in that very same year.'
JOHN DICKSON CARR
A Razor in Fleet Street
Received wisdom is that plays and playlets don't work. Not as reading matter, at any rate. The reader, the argument goes, cannot take continuous dialogue. . . cannot take the different typefaces used to distinguish between speech and scene description . . . will be irritated by the jumps in the narrative flow that will surely occur every time he or she checks which particular character is speaking.
All nonsense, of course. And, come to think of it, remarkably similar in bossiness to the reason publishers give when asked about the dearth of short-story volumes on the market: they don't sell because no one reads short stories—or the excuse offered by second-hand booksellers when you wonder why they have so little fiction in stock: it doesn't sell because no one reads fiction (this latter never fails to drive both your editors wild).
In the hands of a master-storyteller the play or playlet can be as entertaining, indeed as riveting, as a short story or a novel. When read, that is, as opposed to listened to. A certain amount of imagination is of course needed to fill in, say, undescribed location details, but, really, not so very much more than is required when reading the average text story.
John Dickson Can, the undisputed master of the miracle problem, was a storyteller par excellence. He was also an expert, and prolific, radio dramatist in the British rather than his native American tradition, although he brought to the plays and documentaries he wrote for the BBC during the War a good deal of the atmospheric sound colour, special effects and musical histrionics (e.g., sudden harsh cords struck at moments of high tension or crisis) that were obligatory in American radio drama.
Radio suspense, if it is to work at all, needs a special type of mind. The hints and clues must be simple and fairly presented, but not facile; too, although Can enjoyed bamboozling his listeners (just as he enjoyed bamboozling his readers) there was no point in baffling them utterly. His technique was to lay on the atmosphere, to lead his listeners into (as Dorothy L. Sayers once wrote about his books) 'the menace of outer darkness', yet at the same time drop into conversation ambiguous words and phrases which will later prove to be crucial had the listener interpreted them correctly. In his classic 'The Dead Sleep Lightly' there is a daytime scene in a cemetery to a background of falling rain. The rain FX is useful since it lends a note of dreariness to the proceedings, but still the locale could be anywhere until a character speaks of a 'nightmare of tombstones'. Instantly a whole series of eerie and disturbing images is conjured up. However, in the same scene there are at least three highly significant lines and one whopping verbal clue which the listener—and for that matter the reader—takes in then passes over simply because he or she is so wrapped up in the strange and unsettling situation. On the other hand, Can did not invariably need an eerie atmosphere to get over his effects. In the crucial opening scene of his famous 'Cabin B-13' the reader/listener is hoodwinked by the very normality of the events taking place.
In 'A Razor In Fleet Street' there is an outright impossibility. . . which of course is no such thing. Readers are warned that every word, whether in scene description or dialogue, is important—although some are more important than others. Readers are also advised to use their imaginations . . . to picture each scene, or tableau, in their minds.
JACK ADRIAN
TABLEAU ONE
The scene is London. The curtain rises on a private sitting-room in a small, old-fashioned, expensive hotel in a small, old-fashioned, expensive street that runs down to the Thames from the Strand. Fleet Street, lined with huge newspaper buildings and small shops, is close by, as you can partly see (when there isn't a fog) by crossing the road to stand by the statue of Dr Johnson in St Clement's churchyard. Hampden's Hotel is dingy, self-consciously dingy, like a certain famous shop in St James's. The carpets are old, but of the best quality, like the staff. Some of the staff have been there longer than the oldest regular visitor can remember. The atmosphere is redolent of friendly deference and easy courtesy. Even the lift is a vintage one. Without doubt, the oldest lift in London, it rises and descends so slowly, and with such creaks and tremblings, that it is no wonder rumour tells how it is pulled up and lowered by a mysterious boy turning a windlass in the cellar. Two new patrons have just ascended to the second floor of Hampden's and been shown to their rooms by an ancient porter. They are Bill Leslie, an American, on his first visit to London, and Brenda, his English wife. Bill is romantic about London, and London, always polite, obligingly tries to live up to Bill's notions of what it ought to be. As a start, London provides him at once with that rarity, a thick fog, and from the shrouded river the deep notes of ships' sirens sound melancholy warnings. As the porter, well tipped, closes the door, Brenda Leslie laughs delightedly.
Brenda: Bill, darling, don't look so bewildered! Bill: Was I looking bewildered, Brenda?
Brenda: I know the furniture is red plush and dates back to the eighteen-sixties! I know we can't get a private bathroom! Bill: By George, the waiters look as old as the furniture! Brenda: But if only we'd gone to Torridge's or the Hautboy, or—
Bill: Brenda, you don't understand.
Brenda: No?
Bill: Who the devil wants to go to those swank hotels? This is London!
Brenda: Bill, I'm afraid I still don't understand.
Bill: I've been in the Diplomatic Service for seven years. I've been stationed in three capitals. But I'v
e never been here.
Brenda: It's a lovely old town. It's—home.
Bill: It's home to me, too, in a way. It's put a spell on my imagination ever since I was a boy so-high. Sherlock Holmes! Dr Fu-Manchu! Hansom-cabs rattling through the fog . . .
Brenda: Darling, you don't think we still ride about in hansoms?
Bill: No, but it's the spirit of the thing! Here! Look out of this window!
Brenda: Yes?
Bill: Grey-and-black buildings. A lovely fog. Night falling. And— yes! Listen!
Brenda: What? I don't hear anything.
Bill: It's one of your famous barrel-organs. What's the tune, Brenda? Do you know it?
Brenda: Something about 'She's a lassie from Lancashire.' It's an old one.
Bill: But it's right, don't you see? Everything's right. And if I crane out of the window—sideways, like this—I can see down to the river. At least, I could except for this fog. That's where the bodies fall from the wharfs, and the police launches—
Brenda: Bill! Please listen to me! Bill: Yes?
Brenda: I love you terribly, Bill. But of all the romantic Americans I've ever met, you have the most fantastic ideas about England. You don't really expect to find Scotland Yard men, in bowler hats, trailing your every step, do you?
Bill: That wasn't the point, Brenda! I only said— Brenda: When you think about it, just remember that barrel-organ. Safe. Stodgy. Comfortable. That's London, Bill. Will you remember?
As Bill gives his wife a friendly hug, the telephone rings. Bill, in mocking tones, exclaims as he goes to answer it:
So they've got telephones here! Hallo, Bill Leslie here. What's that? The police! Must be some mistake. What? Well, I guess you'd better send the gentleman upstairs. Thank you.
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