Ah, the glory that was gore and the grandeur that was grue! Even the translator’s footnote has its criminological charm: “It should be remembered that a very large number of Parisian doorkeepers or concierges are secret agents of the Prefecture de Police.” And finally, to fill our cup of bloodhound bliss, the detective admits his failure, consults the great Monsieur Lecoq himself, and is put on the right track. And yet, in all these now-hackneyed devices, glitter the truly historic moments in detective-story history.
In England, at this time, a writer using the pen-name of James M’Govan began to achieve an impressive popularity; his books ran into umpteenth editions. Today his pseudonym is known only to a select coterie of enthusiasts, and first editions of his work are unheard-of. Our own copy of
9. James M’Govan’s
BROUGHT TO BAY
Edinburgh: John Menzies, 1878
bears a full-page inscription in which M’Govan reveals his true identity — probably the only time he admitted authorship of the M’Govan stories in writing or in print. The inscription reads: To David L. Cromb this collection of GOOD LIES is given by the author, Wm C. Honeyman. According to Mr. Cromb, an English literary agent, “M’Govan” was a little, bandylegged man, with a black spade beard; he invariably wore a velvet jacket; his chief interest in life was playing the violin and he was rarely seen without his violin case; his house in Newport-on-Tay was actually named Cremona. Indeed, truth is often stranger than fiction: Isn’t that a perfect description of the typically eccentric stock-detective-character?
It is interesting to note in passing that the brilliant George Bernard Shaw wrote his first and only detective story in 1879 — eight years before Sherlock Holmes made his debut in print. According to F. E. Loewenstein’s letter in “John O’ London’s Weekly,” issue of November 16, 1945, the story was titled The Brand of Cain, and its plot was based on the scientifically accurate fact that a photograph sometimes reveals marks on the skin that are invisible to the naked eye: small-pox pustules, for example, before the eruptions become visible. In the story a woman has murdered her husband. During the struggle the husband has struck his wife in the face with a brand which he had been heating in order to stamp his monogram. The wife manages to obliterate the mark before the police see it, thus saving herself from arrest. Later, however, she is persuaded by a photographer to sit for a portrait, and in the dark-room the photographer finds an unaccountable mark on the negative. The mark is identified eventually as “the brand of Cain.”
The publishing history of this tale is almost impossible to credit, in view of Bernard Shaw’s gigantic present-day reputation. He submitted the story in 1879 to the six top British magazines of the time, including “The Cornhill,” “Blackwood’s,” and “Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.” They all declined with thanks. Four years later, the story still unsold, Mr. Shaw sent the only copy of the manuscript to Hawkes & Phipps, a Birmingham firm of stereotype founders who supplied ready-set columns for the Press. Nothing further was heard, and when Mr. Shaw inquired in January 1884, he was informed by Hawkes & Phipps that they knew nothing of such a manuscript, and to this day no trace of the manuscript has been found — not since that pre-Sherlockian day more than half a century ago.
In America, at this time, the lush period of our Dime Novel was in full flower. George Munro had started publishing the first Dime Novel detective series in 1872 — Old Sleuth Library; Old Cap Collier was soon to make his bow, in 1883, “piping” the New Haven Mystery; and less than a decade later Nick Carter was to begin one of the longest crime-crushing careers in history. Between 1870 and 1910 more than six thousand different detective Dime Novels were published in the United States, but less than a score of them were books of short stories. The earliest one
10. DETECTIVE SKETCHES
[By A New York Detective]
New York: Frank Tousey, April 2, 1881
deserves cornerstone recognition. And while such stalwart manhunters as Clark, Sharp, Old King Brady, and Felix Boyd were flourishing, the female of the species was slowly organizing, fighting for equal sleuthian rights. Between the Dime Novel pictorial wrappers appeared occasional capers of Lady Bess, Lizzie Lasher (The Red Weasel), and Lucilla Lynx. The Ellery Queen collection contains all the known books of Dime Novel shorts, secured for us by our good friend Charles Bragin, the foremost authority on and collector of Dime Novels. Mr. Bragin was the “secret agent” for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also collected certain types of Dime Novels. When Mr. Bragin purchased a miscellaneous lot of Dime Novels, at auction or out of some dusty attic, he usually gave President Roosevelt first choice of the Dime Novels he wanted, and Ellery Queen first choice of the short stories. It is doubtful if President Roosevelt was ever aware that Ellery Queen shared some of his most precious “finds” in this field.
The next key book is one of the most famous works in English literature. Who among us, with even a spark of boyhood in his heart, will ever forget The Suicide Club or The Pavilion on the Links[7] in
11. Robert Louis Stevenson’s
NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS
London: Chatto & Windus, 1882
Stevenson fused ferreting and fantasy; he revealed roguery through the rose-colored reflector of romance. Yet it was Stevenson’s genius to be a romanticist with feet of realism. As early as 1892 Stevenson saw the handwriting on the wall so far as the future of the detective story was concerned; in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne he wrote: “We had long been at once attracted and repelled by... the police novel or mystery story, which consists in beginning your yarn anywhere but at the beginning, and finishing it anywhere but at the end; attracted by... the peculiar difficulties that attend its execution; repelled by that appearance of insincerity and shallowness of tone, which seem its inevitable drawback. For the mind of the reader... receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate mechanism... If the tale were gradually approached, some of the characters introduced (as it were) beforehand, and the book started in the tone of a novel of manners and experience briefly treated, this defect might be lessened and our mystery seem to inhere in life.” This remarkable prescience (and omniscience) more than fifty years ago!
Two years after NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS, there appeared in book form a literary riddle whose fame has increased steadily with the passing years. This tale of pure mystery
12. Frank R. Stockton’s
THE LADY, OR THE TIGER?
New York: Charles Scribner, 1884
has no detective in the story, but there are countless detectives outside the story — all created by the author’s last sentence which reads: “And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door, — the lady, or the tiger?” This question has transformed every reader (literally millions since 1884) into an Armchair Detective. It is interesting to record, however, that no satisfactory solution of the problem has ever been advanced.[8]
7
Conan Doyle considered
8
This statement is no longer true. Jack Moffitt submitted a short story called