by Unknown
Since those days, I have licensed many stories from Black Mask for book publication. I initiated a Black Mask Web site, blackmaskmagazine.com, in 2000. In 2007, I licensed back to EQMM, now published by Dell, the right to run a Black Mask department. Christmas 2008 saw the first CD issue of Black Mask Audio Magazine, full-cast dramatizations with sound effects and music of classic Black Mask tales produced with Blackstone Audio. Included will be a full-length performance of The Maltese Falcon authorized by Dashiell Hammett’s estate.
For readers interested in how the stage was set for the appearance of Black Mask magazine in 1920, here are a number of observations and facts about fiction magazines in America that may put my personal history in perspective.
Prior to the Civil War, magazines, like newspapers (which also published fiction), were local affairs primarily associated with cities. For example, all of the magazines that published Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction during the 1830s and 1840s were sold through subscription lists and published for readers near cities like Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. At most, such publications had no more than three thousand subscribers.
Even Charles Dickens, whose novels were serialized in magazines and who became the first popular fiction sensation in America in the 1840s, reached only a small segment of the American population.
It was not until the American Civil War that literacy in the United States blossomed to numbers that would support a true mass market for magazine fiction. But it was the dime novel (five- and ten-cent weekly libraries of rough-paper books), and not magazines, that first found a regional, and then a national, audience for fiction during the last half of the nineteenth century.
Although it is primarily the American West that provides the mythology for most dime-novel fiction, the second-favorite theme of these first mass-market American fiction publications was crime and detection in the great cities, particularly New York. These two major themes of nineteenth-century dime-novel fiction, those that feature the American cowboy hero of the bright plains, or those that feature the American detective hero of the dark cities, became the two great streams of popular fiction and popular culture in twentieth-century America.
The longest-running American detective hero, Street and Smith’s Nick Carter, got his start in an 1886 dime novel that was so popular the character was featured in a weekly dime-novel series, the Nick Carter Library. In 1915, it became Street and Smith’s first mystery pulp, Detective Story Magazine. Similarly, in 1919, the dime-novel series starring the iconic hero Buffalo Bill, the New Buffalo Bill Weekly, became Street and Smith’s first Western pulp, Western Story Magazine.
But it was not Street and Smith that killed the dime novel. It was a genius of American magazine publishing, Frank Andrew Munsey (1854–1925), who invented the American pulp fiction magazine and ended the reign of the crudely designed dime novel. In 1896, Munsey’s Argosy magazine became the first true pulp, switching to an all-fiction format of 192 pages on seven-by-ten-inch untrimmed paper. With a cover price of less than half (ten cents) of more exclusive (twenty-five-cent) slick-paper magazines, circulation grew like a revelation, and by 1903 Argosy sold half a million copies per month.
Munsey was the first to take the new high-speed printing presses to print on inexpensive pulp paper to produce large runs of genre-fiction magazines at discounted cover prices that attracted a large working-class readership that could not afford and was not interested in the content of more expensive slick-paper magazines. Munsey also saw that large circulation could attract advertising as a major source of publishing income. The Argosy for December 1907 provides a wonderful history of the magazine, and of Munsey’s publishing struggles, “told” by Munsey.
Modern magazines, both pulps and slicks, arose at the turn of the twentieth century as a handmaiden to technological advances in printing and marketing. Magazines could be produced as designed objects with color covers, line drawings, and half-tone images to create a graphic editorial environment to sell their content. They also became a powerful emotional and visual marketing environment to sell new brand-name products.
Along with other mass-market consumer products emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century, new national methods of distribution were developed for the widely popular pulp fiction magazines. Although subscriptions were still important, pulp magazines became impulse items, bargains of inexpensive entertainment with brightly painted, four-color covers beckoning readers at newsstands, drugstores, and other outlets all across America.
Munsey’s innovation became an entire pulp magazine industry and made many publishing fortunes. Munsey established the practice of closing magazines, or changing their content, as soon as they became unprofitable. He would quickly start new ones in their place. At first his pulps like Argosy and All-Story magazine featured all types of fiction. But in 1906 he began publishing Railroad Man’s Magazine, the first special genre pulp magazine, which featured only railroad stories. Eventually his company, and those that followed his example, produced detective, Western, love, adventure, horror, and special-interest fiction pulps of every stripe imaginable. Whatever genre sold was imitated. Pulp readers wanted escapist entertainment that was simple, fast reading, exciting, and graphically illustrated. In time there were over three hundred different shifting pulp fiction titles of all genres.
Of all the pulp fiction magazine titles collected by the Library of Congress from all issues on copyright deposit, only three titles were considered such “extremely rare and valuable” contributions to the history of American culture that they were transferred to special holding facilities in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress: Amazing Stories, Black Mask magazine, and Weird Tales.
This distinguished collection of novels, novellas, and short fiction from Black Mask is the best book presentation of America’s most universally acclaimed pulp fiction magazine. That means many, many hours of exceptional entertainment. Enjoy!
—KEITH ALAN DEUTSCH
Roxbury, Vermont
Come and Get It
Erle Stanley Gardner
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER (1889–1970) was born in Malden, Massachusetts, and studied law on his own; he never got a degree, but passed the bar exam in 1911, practicing law for about a decade. He made little money, so he started to write fiction, selling his first mystery to a pulp magazine in 1923. The rest, as many have said, is history. For the next decade, he published approximately 1.2 million words a year, the equivalent of a full-length novel every three weeks. It was not until 1933, however, that he wrote his first novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, which introduced his incorruptible lawyer, Perry Mason, who went on to become the bestselling mystery character in American literature, with 300 million copies sold of eighty-two novels (though Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer outsold him on a per-book basis). While just about all mystery readers have read at least one Perry Mason novel, just as they’ve seen at least one episode of Perry Mason, the television series that starred Raymond Burr for nine hugely successful years, only the most dedicated fans have seen the six motion pictures in which Mason is far more sophisticated and smooth than in the early novels, which are fairly hard-boiled. Matinee idol Warren William played Mason in The Case of the Howling Dog (1934), The Case of the Curious Bride (1935), The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935), and The Case of the Velvet Claws (1936). Ricardo Cortez starred in The Case of the Black Cat (1936), and Donald Woods in The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937).
“Come and Get It” stars Gardner’s major pulp character, Ed Jenkins; it ran in April 1927.
Come and Get It
Erle Stanley Gardner
Ed Jenkins was warned by a crook he had once befriended to be on his guard against a “girl with a mole,” that she would lead him into deadly peril. This crook was shot the instant he left Ed’s apartment. Seemingly by accident, Ed soon meets the girl with the mole. She takes him to the mysterious head of a newly organized crime trust. Ed is given a “job” to do, threatened with death if he re
fuses and is offered as a reward certain blackmailing papers that have been held over the head of Helen Chadwick, the one girl in his whole career for whom he seriously cares. Ed is double-crossed. He strikes back. A murder is framed against him and an ambush set wherein he is to be shot with all the evidence of guilt upon him. He narrowly escapes, and now the duel to the death is on between the “Phantom Crook” and the icy-eyed leader of the crime ring. This series of three completed episodes is the most thrilling work the popular Mr. Gardner has yet produced.
I GAZED INTO THE black muzzle of the forty-four “Squint” Dugan was holding to my face, and secretly gave him credit for being much more clever than I had anticipated. I had hardly expected to be discovered in my hiding place, least of all by Squint Dugan.
I watched the slight trembling of his hands, and listened to the yammering of his threats. Dugan is of the type that does not kill in cold blood, but has to bolster his nerves with dope, arouse his rage by a recital of his wrongs. Gradually, bit by bit, he was working up his nerve to tighten his trigger finger.
“Damn yuh, Ed Jenkins! Don’t think I ain’t wise to the guy that hijacked that cargo. Fifty thousand berries it was, and you lifted it, slick and clean! Just because you worked one of those Phantom Crook stunts don’t mean that I ain’t hep to yuh. I got the goods on yuh, an’ I’m collectin’ right now. I ain’t alone in this thing, either; not by a hell of a lot, I ain’t. There’s men back of me who’ll see me through, back me to the limit.…”
He blustered on, and I yawned.
That yawn laid the foundation for a little scheme I had in mind. Crooks of the Dugan type really have an inferiority complex. That’s what makes ’em bluster so much. They’re tryin’ to make the other man give in, tryin’ to sell themselves on the idea that they’re as good as the other bird.
“Rather chilly this evening,” I remarked casually, after that yawn had had a chance to soak in, and got up, calmly turned my back on the blustering crook and stirred up the fire with the poker. Apparently I didn’t know he was alive.
That got him. His voice lost the blah-blah tone, and rose to almost a scream.
“Damn yuh! Can’t yuh understand I’m croakin’ yuh? I’m just tellin’ yuh what for. I’m puttin’ out your light, yuh hi-jackin’ double-crossin’ dude crook. You’ll never see the sun rise again.…”
I had been holding a chunk of firewood poised over the top of the wood stove, and, without warning, I tossed it at him—not in a hurry, just easily, smoothly.
If he’d had any guts he’d have stood his ground and fired, but he didn’t have the nerve. He quailed a bit before his muscles tightened his trigger finger, and that quailing was what I had counted on.
A knowledge of fencing is a fine thing, particularly for a crook, and I’d hooked the toe of that poker through the guard of his gun and jerked it out of his hand before his wrist had dropped from the blow I struck first.
“Now I’ll talk,” I said, as he cowered in the corner before the light that was in my eyes.
“You don’t need to tell me there’s been a crime trust organized. I know it. I bargained with the very head of that trust to receive certain papers in return for services rendered, and he held out on me. I can’t locate him, but I do know certain members of the gang, and I’m declaring war.
“You got hi-jacked out of fifty thousand dollars’ worth of hooch, and the reason you couldn’t get any trace of it afterward was because it was dumped in the bay. I didn’t want the hooch. I just wanted to attract somebody’s attention.
“Now you go back to the man that sent you and tell him to tell the man higher up to tell the man who is at the head of this crime trust that Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, is on the warpath, that until I get those papers they can’t operate. I’ll spoil every scheme they hatch up, ball up everything they try to pull; and if anyone harms a hair of the head of Helen Chadwick in the meantime, I’ll forget my rule of never packing a gun, and start on the warpath and murder the outfit.
“Now get going!”
It was tall talk, but it was the kind of talk that gets through with men like Dugan. Those crooks had never seen me really in action, but they had heard tales from the East. A man can’t be known as the Phantom Crook in a dozen states, because he can slip through the fingers of the police at will, without having something on the ball.
Squint Dugan knew that I meant what I said. He took the opportunity to go, and he didn’t stand on the order of his going. I knew that my message would reach the chief of that gang, would come to the ears of the man who was so careful to keep his identity a secret from all save his most trusted lieutenants. Also I knew that I had been careless, that I had slipped in allowing them to get a line on my apartment, and that I would have to get another hideout, and be more careful when I did it.
Before Dugan was down the stairs I was working on a new disguise, planning a new place to conceal myself. It was to be a war to the bitter end, with no quarter given nor asked, and I knew it and the other side knew it. Also, I had won the first round, taken the first trick.
My disguise I slipped in a handbag—a white beard, slouch hat, shabby coat. I took a heavy cane and locked the apartment. It was a cheap joint in a poor district, and the rent was paid. I wouldn’t be back.
Before I put on the disguise I took a cab to Moe Silverstein’s. Moe knew every crook in the game, never forgot a face or a gem and was the smoothest double-crosser in the business.
He looked up as I entered his room on the third floor of a smelly tenement. As soon as he saw me he began to rub his hands smoothly together, as though he were washing them in oil. He was fat, flabby, bald, and he stunk of garlic. His eyes were a liquid, limpid brown, wide, innocent, hurt. He had the stare of a dying deer and a heart of concrete.
“Mine friend, ah, yes, mine friend. It is so, mine friend, Ed Jenkins, the super-crook, the one who makes the police get gray hairs, and you have something for me, friend Jenkins? Some trinket? Some bauble? Yes?”
I drew up a chair and leaned forward, over the table, my face close to Moe’s, so close I could smell the gagging odor of the garlic, could see the little muscles that tightened about his eyes.
“A new crook, Moe—a girl with a mole on her left hand. She goes by the name of Maude Enders. Where can I find her?”
His eyes stayed wide, but it took a tightening of the muscles to do it. His hands stopped in their perpetual rubbing.
“For why?”
“Do you know the Weasel?”
His hands began to rub again.
“The Weasel is dead, and I remember no dead crooks. I can make no money from them. It is only the live ones who can make money for Moe Silverstein.”
I nodded.
“Yes, I know all of that; but the Weasel was at my apartment just before he was killed. He came to warn me of this girl with the mole, to tell me that she would trap me; and then he was killed with the words scarcely cold on his lips—killed by crooks who had followed him in a closed car.”
Again he raised his shoulders, ducked his neck and spread his palms.
“But he is dead.”
“Exactly, and the woman with the mole got acquainted with me, and through her I met the man who poses as the head of the new crime trust, the new mastermind of the tenderloin. He is fat with skin that does not move and has eyes that are like chunks of ice. I want to locate the woman with the mole, and, through her, her master.”
Moe stopped all motion. He became a frozen chunk of caution, poised, tense, thinking, pulled out from behind his mask.
“Why?”
“Because this man has some papers I want, papers he held out on me. I want to warn him that unless I get those papers he will die.”
Actually he shrunk away from me, drew back from the table.
“I know nothing of what you speak. There is no girl with a mole in the game. This talk of a new crime trust is police propaganda for more men. You are crazy, Ed—and soon you will be dead, and then I will have to forget you, to lose
another fine prospect. You could deliver much to me if you wanted to work, Ed, but you just hang out on the fringes and meddle.… I do not know of the people you mention, and soon you will be forgotten. Good-bye.”
As I went out of the door his hands had resumed their rubbing, but his eyes had slipped; they were two narrow slits through which there came stabbing gleams of cold light. I was satisfied.
I went down the steps, doubled back, slipped down the corridor, and hid in a closet, a tight, dark, nasty-smelling closet, and waited.
An hour passed, and then there came the sound of quick, positive steps, steps that pounded down the hall with a banging of the heels, steps that paused before Moe’s door.
Again I peeked.
This would probably be my man. He was broad-shouldered, red-faced, aggressive. A young fellow with lots of pep, quick, positive motions, an outthrust chin, coal-black eyes, latest model clothes and dark, bushy eyebrows. His hands were small, slight, dark, jeweled. His face was scraped, massaged, pink. There was a swagger about him, a bearing.
He vanished within the door, and Moe did not throw him out. There was the soft slur of Moe’s voice, the harsh bass of the visitor’s tones, and I slipped down the hall, down the stairs and out.
The sheik came out in about half an hour, looked cautiously around him, walked a block, rounded a corner and doubled abruptly back, crossed the street, waited a few minutes, and then went on about his business with no further worry about his back-track.
I followed him to the Brookfield Apartments, waited half an hour, picked him up again and followed him to the Mintner Arms, an exclusive bachelor apartment house where only men of the highest references were admitted.