He was silent. Then I said: “And now the ace of trumps. You remember how Crapaud offered Von Eberhardt a cigar?”
“Well?”
“Look,” I said, and threw down a print. It was an excellent photo. One could see Eberhardt, Crapaud, and the unmistakable luxury of the salon. “Take that magnifying glass and look at the cigar-case, my friend,” I said. Cherubini took the large lens which I handed him and looked. Clearly defined in the polished lid of the case was an image of Cherubini, lurking behind the curtains, perfectly recognizable.
“Who wins?” I asked.
And Cherubini said: “You win.”
“And now who goes to Devil’s Island?” I asked.
Cherubini simply said: “How much for the plate?”
And I replied: “Tell Crapaud this: If he does not give me that letter of the Minister Lamoureux, then the day will come when one of his superior officers will hand him a revolver containing one cartridge.”
“You are mad!” said Cherubini. Nevertheless, three days later Crapaud’s nerve broke, and I got the letter, which I returned to the Minister.
I asked Karmesin: “What, you returned it free of charge?”
“Certainly,” said Karmesin. “I simply asked him to pay my expenses.”
“How much?”
“Chicken-feed. Fifty thousand francs,” said Karmesin. “But am I a blackmailer? Bah.”
“And Crapaud?”
“He left the country very suddenly and, I believe, came to an evil end in the Belgian Congo, in the time of the Congo Atrocities. Probably some cannibal ate him. Or a lion. Who knows? Perhaps an elephant trod on him. I hope so. He was a villain. He was also a fool. He overreached himself. I was not the first person whom he had tried to blackmail in that manner. Only he was a little too clever. It should be a lesson to you: never be too clever. Also, beware of cameras. And furthermore, remember the folly of Crapaud, and if ever you come into possession of an incriminating document, you will know what to do.”
“What?”
“Photograph it immediately,” said Karmesin.
Floor, please
by Stephen Vincent Benét[3]
A parasite is a snob...
Once upon a time (and it was not so many years ago) any attempt on the part of scholars, historians, or mere editors to link the names of great literary figures with the lowly detective story was greeted with impolite noises. Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize winners writing detective stories? Ridiculous twaddle and insidious propaganda! Yet in the eight short years since EQMM has practised what it has preached, we have proved the truth again and again and again — that literary snobbishness is the sin of critics, not of writers... Consider, if you will, the Nobel Prize winners: six English and American authors have won the most coveted of all literary awards — an award made in the field, may we remind you, of idealistic literature; and of these, five — Rudyard Kipling, Sinclair Lewis, John Galsworthy, Eugene O’Neill, and Pearl S. Buck — have written tales (in the case of O’Neill, dramas) of crime or detection.
Consider, if you will, the winners of Pulitzer Prizes: every single one of the following has appeared in the pages of EQMM — Edith Wharton, Louis Bromfield, Elmer Rice, Marc Connelly, Susan Glaspell, T. S. Stribling, Stephen Vincent Benét, Ellen Glasgow, John Steinbeck, and soon we hope to bring you tales by Oliver La Farge and Robert E. Sherwood.
Oh, the literary snobs have conceded, in their patronizing way, that one of the earliest stories in the Bible is a tale of murder, and that it is possible, from a perverted point of view, to regard Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as a detective story — indeed, as a psychological thriller; but they laugh off these classical examples as prodigious freaks of nature. Perhaps murder can be judged a freak of nature, but paradoxically the study of murder, in all its fictional forms, is a compellingly instinctive and natural theme — and if murder comes, can the detective be far behind?
Yet the literary snobs, from their ivory towers leaning so Pisa-like in the clouds, look down their long noses at the detective story. But the writers, we repeat, don’t. They recognize the detective story as a difficult and artistic medium, worthy of their sincerest efforts. How else explain that in addition to the famous literary figures mentioned above, EQMM has published detective-crime stories by Mark Twain, W. Somerset Maugham, Theodore Dreiser, H. G. Wells, Ernest Hemingway, J. B. Priestley, William Faulkner, James Hilton, Arnold Bennett, Charles G. Norris, John van Druten — an incomplete roster which does injustice to many other fine writers.
Snobbery, as Berton Braley has said, is the pride of those who are not sure of their position. How different the literary attitude to detective stories would be if the critics themselves could be persuaded to try to write detective stories!
Snobbery, said Isaac Goldberg, is but a point in time. Let us have patience with our inferiors. They are ourselves of yesterday...
Detective-crime stories written by the famous names of literature are usually of two types. Tales like Maugham s“ Footprints in the Jungle,” Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers,” Hemingway’s “The Killers,” Faulkner’s “The Hound,” and Steinbek’s “The Murder” belong to the higher levels, if not the highest levels, of their authors’ literary development. The other type of detective-crime story written by celebrated literary figures belongs to the authors’ salad days — when the writers were doing experimental, transitional, or formative work.
The story by Stephen Vincent Benét which we reprinted previously — “The Amateur of Crime” — was one of Mr. Benét’s early stories, first published in 1927. The Stephen Vincent Benét tale we now offer is an even earlier effort; it first appeared in a pulp magazine in 1924 — yet only four years before john brown’s body, although thirteen years ahead of the DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER.
Admittedly — and we have no hesitation in stressing the fact — “Floor, Please” is not representative of Stephen Vincent Benét’s fully developed talent. Its interest, both for the detective-story reader and the general reader, is chiefly incunabular. But wherever the tale may rank in the scale of Benét’s literary achievement, it proves the catholicity and integrity of the author’s work: for Stephen Vincent Benét, in company with virtually every other well-known and famous figure in literature, was not ashamed to write a detective story, not ashamed to sign his name to it, and not ashamed to have it reprinted many years after it was first written.
“Floor, please!” said Sally Bunch mechanically. Then she smiled. “Why, it’s Mr. Cavendish! Hot, isn’t it, Mr. Cavendish?”
The young man smiled in reply, displaying teeth so white and even that, as his personal stenographer had remarked, “it just wasn’t right they were in a man.” “Yes, it is hot,” he remarked in his pleasant voice.
Sally glowed.
“Those Palm Beach suits now,” she proffered timidly. “I hope you don’t think I’m fresh, Mr. Cavendish, but — well, I got a kid brother — he thought — are they really as cool now as the advertisements make out they are?”