That night Mr. Rater read in the stop press of an evening newspaper:
A passenger, believed to be M. Heinrich Dissel of Brussels, fell overboard from the mail boat Princess Josephine as the steamer was entering Dover Harbor. The body has not yet been recovered.
“Well, well!” said the Orator, unmoved by the tragedy.
The body of Heinrich Dissel had not been found when the Orator paid his visit of condolence on the stricken brother.
He discovered M. Theodor examining the contents of the small valise that the Dover police had handed to the dead man’s relatives.
“I am bewildered,” said Theodor, shaking his head. “I have just been on the telephone to Brussels, but apparently there is not the slightest reason for suicide. His affairs were prospering, everything in his office was in order — so far as the poor fellow’s affairs could be in order — and he had over a thousand pounds in his bank. The other day he lamed himself playing tennis, and I can only suppose that a sudden lurch of the ship brought the weight of his body on to his injured ankle...”
“Insured?” asked Mr. Rater.
Theodor nodded slowly.
“Yes — I had forgotten that. When I paid his debts I insisted that he should insure with an English company. It was perhaps a little heartless, but it was necessary that I should have security.”
“For fifteen thousand?”
“I think that was the sum. But the money is nothing — I am overwhelmed with grief at this terrible tragedy. Poor Heinrich—”
“Insured in the name of Dissel?” interrupted the Orator.
M. Theodor hesitated.
“No. Our family name is—”
“Schtalmeister,” said the Orator, nodding. “I know.”
Only for a second was Theodor disconcerted.
“We changed our names by deed—” he began.
“I know,” said the Orator. “You had two uncles, didn’t you? One was called Theodor Louis Hazeborn and one called Heinrich Frederick Dinehem. Your mother named you Heinrich Frederick Dinehem a week after you were born. A month later she moved into another district in London and had a violent quarrel with your uncle Heinrich. So she went and registered your birth all over again!”
M. Theodor was white but silent.
“You started life with two names and you’ve been carrying on the good work. With a clever little mustache you were Heinrich in Brussels and Theodor in London — a receiver of stolen property in both places. When your mother changed her mind, she gave us a lot of trouble.”
“You are mad,” gasped Theodor agitatedly. “My brudder—”
“You are your brother — and that falling overboard was pretty easy for you, wasn’t it? I saw a diploma in your Brussels office — long distance swimming, eh? You got ashore and had a car waiting, I’ll bet. You’re the bird I’ve been waiting for — the bird in two places at once. Get your hat.”
Find the Woman
by Kenneth Millar
In a recent issue of EQMM we wrote briefly on the terse, tough, ’tec tale more commonly referred to as the hardboiled detective story. There is no doubt that the Hammett-Daly-Nebel-Chandler species exerted a powerful and important influence on the whole genre, but for some time now it has seemed to us that the old “Black Mask” formula has been fading (except in the movies, but Hollywood is always behind, not ahead of deep-rooted literary movements). It is our belief also that the sensationalism of the 7-minute-egg school has been tempered with the more enduring qualities of the intellectual approach, thus combining the best of both main avenues of technique. In a way this belief has been confirmed by the results of EQMM’s first detective-story contest.
Of the 838 manuscripts received from detective-story writers all over the world, only a small percentage projected hard-fisted “realism.” Most of the 838 stories came from American authors — so the small ratio of “toughies” seems indicative of the new trend, which is a half turn away from hardboiledism. On the other hand, we should not leap to conclusions. Perhaps there is another explanation. It takes a finer degree of sheer writing ability, a finer edge of creative observation, to bring off a really successful hardboiled whodunit. That would mean that fewer writers make the grade, produce grade-A tough stuff. That, rather than a going-out-of-vogue, might account for the startling fact that only one of the fifteen prizewinners in EQMM’s first contest is classifiable as a hardboiled detective story.
And even that one — Kenneth Millar’s “Find the Woman” — is not a pure hardboileder. True, it presents in Rogers, the private dick, a Hammett-Chandler tough hombre; it offers a hard, realistic crime situation, heavily underlined with sex; it unfolds a plot sequence typical of the bone-hard school, stressing physical violence and action; it betrays the surface cynicism we have come to expect in the upperworld and underworld characters who people hardboiled stories; it emphasizes the tough talk and the brutal force-of-circumstance which clothe, in dialogue and development, the basic plot structure of the now accepted American form. And yet with all this, Kenneth Millar’s story is not pure hardboiledism: its characters are not psychologically black-and-white, and there are undertones and overtones in “Find the Woman” not usually woven into the hard fabric of tough ’tecs.
A few facts about the author: Kenneth Millar became infected with the detective-story virus by exposure to his wife, Margaret Millar, author of WALL OF EYES, FIRE WILL FREEZE, and THE IRON GATES (all published by Random House). At the time his prizewinning “Find the Woman” was written, Mr. Millar was an Ensign in the U.S. Navy, on active duty; he airmailed his manuscript to EQMM from the South Pacific theatre of war.
Kenneth Millar’s first book was THE DARK TUNNEL (Dodd, Mead), an excellent novel of suspense and pursuit in which the author “tried to treat a romantic and melodramatic plot in a realistic manner, with a hero who is not particularly heroic...” Those are Mr. Millar’s own words and we wonder if they don’t describe his short story, “Find the Woman,” much more accurately and pointedly than your Editor has...
I had seen her before, and made a point of noticing her. I make a point of noticing people who make a thousand a week. I do that because a thousand a week is fifty thousand a year.
Mrs. Dreen did the national publicity for Tele-Pictures. She was forty and looked it, but there was electricity in her, plugged in to a secret source that time could never wear out. Look how high and tight I carry my body, her movements said. My hair is hennaed but comely, said her coiffure, inviting not to conviction but to suspension of disbelief. Her eyes were green and inconstant like the sea. They said what the hell.
She sat down by my desk and told me that her daughter had disappeared the day before, which was September the seventh.
“I was in Hollywood all day — we have an apartment there — and left her alone at the beach-house, about ten miles north of here. When I got home to the beach-house last night she was gone.”
“Did you call the police?”
“It didn’t occur to me. She’s twenty-two and knows what she’s doing, and apron strings don’t become me.” She smiled fiercely like a cat and moved her scarlet-taloned fingers in her narrow silk lap. “Anyway it was very late and frankly I was a trifle stewed. I went to bed. But when I woke up this morning it occurred to me that she might have drowned. I objected to it because she wasn’t a strong swimmer, but she went in for solitary swimming. I think of the most dreadful things when I wake up in the morning.”