“What lie?” asked Susan.
“Why, the lie that the accused murderer wasn’t with her that night. She told it just to keep The Congressman on the hook, then when he got away, she kept on telling it, too dumb to realize her lie would put a man in prison for life and too thoughtless to care.”
“How do you know it was a lie?”
“Because it killed her.”
“Mother! I don’t see any connection.”
“He threatened her. He stood up there in the courtoom and told her he’d get her for her lie. So that’s the reason she moved around a lot. She told me she never stayed in one place long. She just moved herself, her pictures and magazines around and lived in a paper dream world with The Congressman because he had been the high point of her life back when she was young and rather pretty and sought after, before the fat and the inertia that had always been there came out of hiding. Since she wasn’t too bright, she stayed right here in the state, and being unimaginative, she took back her legal name, so as soon as the man she’d put in prison was paroled, he just got out and started looking for her. And when he found her he assaulted her because she’d been Pansy Field and killed her because she was Mary Oliphant.”
“What are you going to do?” Susan asked me.
“What do you think I’m going to do?” I said. “I’ll tell the police who killed Mary. It’s all very simple.”
But was it so simple?
On the way home, I got to thinking. If a man has been punished for a crime he didn’t commit, then doesn’t he have a right later to commit a crime for which he will not be punished?
That is poetic justice.
And, anyways, if I went to the police with my research and findings, they would just call me a psycho for thinking that Pansy Field’s heads could have anything to do with Mary Oliphant’s murder.
So I put the magazines and the pictures back in my linen closet behind all the sheets and if the police come up with some far-out suspect in the Mary Oliphant case, I’ll show them how far-out that murder really was.
But not before.
Detectives by Gaslight
Sam Moskowitz
Introduces
The Vanished Billionaire
by B. Fletcher Robinson
One of the least known and most underrated practitioners in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes was Bertram Fletcher Robinson. He contributed so much to the creation of The Hound of the Baskervilles that Sir Arthur Conan Coyle offered to add his name as a collaborator! Robinson, the editor of England’s famed magazine VANITY FAIR, was one of Doyle’s closest friends. They had met in South Africa covering the Boer War as correspondents and had sailed back to England on the steamship Briton.
On Conan Doyle’s return he went for a rest to Devon, accompanied by his friend Robinson. On April 2, 1901 he wrote from Rowe’s Dutch Hotel, Princetown, Dartmoor, Devon: “Here I am in the highest town in England. Robinson and I are exploring the Moor over our Sherlock Holmes book. I think it will work out splendidly; indeed, I have already done nearly half of it. Holmes is at his very best, and it is a highly dramatic idea — which I owe to Robinson.”
Robinson knew the legends of the area, and among those he told was one of a fearful ghostly hound. The concept of the hound as the center of the story and with Sherlock Holmes involved in its solving fascinated Doyle. Robinson helped him outline the situations of the story and took him on guided tours of the Moors to absorb atmosphere. He refused any offer of collaboration for his assistance in the construction of the crime masterpiece.
Robinson went on to write many fine detective stories himself, the best known The Chronicles of Addington Peace which appeared in 1905 from Harper’s. A very remarkable series he wrote was The Trail of the Dead written in collaboration with J. Malcolm Fraser, six connected stories which ran in Great Britain’s THE WINDSOR MAGAZINE, December, 1902 to May, 1903, only shortly after he had assisted A. Conan Doyle on The Hound of The Baskervilles. This series contains a full mosaic of background horror which Robinson managed to inject into those stories and introduced Sir Henry Graden, famous explorer and scientist cast in the detective’s role. His nemesis was Rudolf Marnac, an arch criminal that almost made Professor Moriarty seem like a gentle, reasonable sort of soul.
Those stories, like others of Robinson’s were not published in the United States. However, he achieved a popular reception in America with his Inspector Hartley stories which ran in PEARSON’S MAGAZINE. The waspish little inspector from Scotland Yard proved a brilliant diagnostician of the most confounding clues. The Vanished Billionaire is an excellent example of the indomitable Inspector Hartley in action. The story was originally printed in the February, 1905 issue of the American edition of PEARSON’S MAGAZINE.
Perhaps the major mistake Fletcher Robinson made was when he did not permit his name to be used as a collaborator on The Hound of the Baskervilles. Had he shared the credits for the endless reprinting of that mystery masterpiece, it surely would have ensured more careful evaluation of the fiction he did write under his own name and in collaboration with others. His works are well worth reviving.
The Vanished Billionaire
by B. Fletcher Robinson
I stood with my back to the fire, smoking and puzzling over it. The story was worth all the headlines they have given it; there was no loophole to the mystery.
Both sides of the Atlantic knew Silas J. Ford. He had established a business reputation in America that had made him a celebrity in England from the day he stepped off the liner. Once in London his syndicates and companies and consolidations had startled the slow-moving British mind. The commercial sky of the United Kingdom was overshadowed by him and his schemes. The papers were full of praise and blame, of puffs and denunciations.
Mr. Ford was a billionaire; he was on the verge of a smash that would paralyze the markets of the world. He was an abstainer, a drunkard; a gambler, a most religious man. He was a confirmed bachelor, a woman hater; his engagement was to be announced shortly. So was the ball kept rolling with the limelight always centered upon the spot where Silas J. Ford happened to be standing.
And now he had disappeared.
On the night of December 18th, a Thursday, he had left London for Meudon Hall, the fine old Hampshire mansion that he had rented from Lord Beverley. The two most trusted men in his office accompanied him. Friday morning he had spent with them; but at three o’clock the pair had returned to London, leaving their chief behind. From four to seven he had been shut up with his secretaries. It was a hard time for every one, a time verging upon panic; and at such times Silas J. Ford was not an idle man.
At eight o’clock he had dined. His one recreation was music, and after the meal he had played the organ in the picture gallery for an hour. At a quarter after ten he retired to his bedroom, dismissing Jackson, his body servant, for the night. Three-quarters of an hour later, however, Harbord, his secretary, had been called to the private telephone that Mr. Ford had lately erected to the neighboring town of Camdon. It was a message so urgent that he decided to wake his chief.