Today many of us think that more humane policies towards the incarcerated are the product of our more “enlightened” age. And we know that pulp novels are the last place to see such progressive ideas because all pulps were racist and classist, if not fascistic in their ideology. Such is far from true. Tepperman’s Brant House has a conscience of sorts, as this early section of “The Murder Monster” reveals. Here a group of university men from Ervinton College are playing an exhibition football game against felons from State Prison:
The visiting team deployed from the field, trotted into the basement through the side entrance of the main building, where showers and a locker room had been set up for them. The convicts watched them gloomily, in marked contrast to the hilarity of the college boys. For they were not going home to well-cooked meals in comfortable dining rooms, to the fond glances of proud parents, to the arms of sweethearts. They were going in to a dreary supper and dismal cells, to their lonely thoughts and gnawing memories.
It is as though Tepperman is acknowledging that these men’s identities are not what they have done; rather their identity is wrapped up in who they are, that is, human beings. And because they are human, they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, even if they are criminals and (especially if they are most likely from the lower classes). Of course, it does not hurt that this particular bunch from “The Murder Monster” apparently has a sense of its past criminal behavior. Those without lacking a conscience are treated with open contempt, in line with most pulp fiction of the day.
This portrayal of characters is another feature distinguishing Tepperman’s work from that of Paul Chadwick, being most obvious in the men’s treatment of felons. The original Brant House depicted criminals as a shabby, dirty class of people, “lowlifes” who are tough with their guns, but cowardly without them. Further, they are animalistic, with wolf imagery predominating as Chadwick’s means of describing them. This traditional portrayal dates all the way back to ancient writers like Pliny the Elder and even to writers of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. It is shorthand for the person who is predatory, ravenous, ruthless. The novel “Curse of the Waiting Death” states that a masked bandit is “like a hungry wolf,” for example. “The Torture Trust” declares thugs to be “slavering, red-jawed wolves.” And last, Chadwick paints one “Fat” Hickman of “The Sinister Scourge” as a man with “lips drawn back in a wolfish leer.” In each instance, these criminals (and for that matter, most of Chadwick’s criminals) are predators who deserve anything that happens to them. And it makes sense that a man hunter like Secret Agent “X” would have to track and eliminate them. He is a virtual avenger of God (or, in this case, the State) who, in this early period, stoically and relentlessly pursues his foes, in order to protect the innocent (us).
Of course, the Man of a Thousand Faces is not completely emotionless. He does show signs of horror at his enemies’ plans (as “The Torture Trust” notes) and friendliness towards allies like Jim Hobart and Betty Dale — but not much more. It is as if he does not want to become too close to people, not even to those who should be dearest to him. Here we see a distinct problem with Chadwick’s earliest “X” work: the originator of Secret Agent “X” missed a terrific opportunity to imbue his fictional creations with life. As a consequence, readers could not identify with (read “root for”) a protagonist and supporting players of such shallow characterization. They and the master of disguise become figures with as much life as a casket.
In contrast, Emile Tepperman, with his fresh ideas on characterization, offers us a more believable Man of a Thousand Faces. In “Hand of Horror,” “X” is human enough to walk onstage, whistling a tune from H.M.S. Pinafore, as Will Murray and Tom Johnson have noted (The Secret Agent X Companion 89). This is lightheartedness personified! On the opposite end of the spectrum, “Servants of the Skull” presents us with an Agent equally as human. In one episode from this one, he shows more than a little pessimism, if not fatalism. It is a prefigurement of the mindset Operator #5, Jimmy Christopher, will later express during Tepperman’s Purple Invasion cycle. Here in “Servants” the situation is dire: The Man of a Thousand Faces and Betty Dale are trying to escape certain death in the Skull’s lair. To Betty’s exclamation that she and the Agent are free from the Skull’s clutches, the Agent replies, “We’re not out yet… This is going to be a grueling ordeal, Betty. You must keep a stiff upper lip. I — have doubts now about our ever getting out alive” (“Servants of the Skull”). Later in “The Murder Monster,” the Man of a Thousand Faces “[feels] a surge of bitter repugnance” at the fate of the robots in the story. It is extremely doubtful if Chadwick would have depicted Secret Agent “X” in such terms. And it is as questionable that Chadwick would have given as much care to the “X”-Betty Dale dynamic.
In Chadwick’s initial series entries we see Betty as a young woman who enjoys a friendship with the Secret Agent, but their connection is stiff, formal. She “loves him from afar,” so to speak. So the series’ legend goes, he cannot become too deeply involved with her because it would endanger her life. In other words, criminals would strike at him through Betty. Also it would divert “X” from his war on crime and criminals. What really happens, from a narrative perspective, is the fact that Chadwick fumbles the ball again, failing to explore the relationship with Betty and Secret Agent “X.” She thus becomes little more than a plot device to advance the story, an all-purpose damsel in distress and all around cliché of the Thirties professional woman. In comparison to Doc Savage’s cousin Pat Savage, a prototype for the modern woman, Betty Dale’s development is shallow, in Chadwick’s depiction.
Tepperman’s vision of Betty metamorphoses into something warmer, more human, as does her connection with the Secret Agent. It is clear that the two experience something like love, though she never sees his true face (not until “City of Madness” by Fleming-Roberts, in fact). Furthermore she has become one of his “lieutenants,” Tepperman’s narrator informs in “The Murder Monster,” as though to say the Secret Agent has pulled her deeper into his service. She suffers agony when she does not hear “X’s” voice, the same entry tells us, and feels calmed again only when he calls her. Moreover, as this new Brant House expresses in a text note in “The Murder Monster”: “And Betty had grown to care more than she liked to admit for this strange man [emphasis added]…” Something is going on here, and it is not mere infatuation. Apparently, Betty is really falling for the Agent, and the feeling for him is mutual. In reality this is a new direction Emile Tepperman was taking the series, one Chadwick could not have envisioned. Secret Agent “X” was gaining much more emotional depth.
If Betty Dale changed subtly under Tepperman, so too did the corps of the Secret Agent’s operatives, with the introduction of Harvey Bates to the series. Here in “The Murder Monster” he is merely “Bates,” head of the Agent’s other detective agency. Interestingly he sounds like an intelligent, if not educated man, much different from Jim Hobart, the redheaded ex-cop. Also Tepperman’s version of Bates gives G. T. Fleming-Roberts a springboard from which to launch, as much as Chadwick’s take does. As far as the portrayal of Jim Hobart goes, the owner and operator of the Hobart Detective Agency alters a bit, as well. Chadwick’s Brant House had always maintained that Hobart worked for A. J. Martin, but that he, Hobart, never realized his boss was actually the Man of Mystery. With Tepperman, Jim Hobart has strong suspicions in this direction, as the following text note from “The Murder Monster” discloses: