Harrington shook his hand firmly and tried to draw Nordgren toward him so they could speak together. Nordgren’s arm broke off at his shoulder like a stick of dry-rotted wood.
For a long breathless moment Harrington just stood there, gaping stupidly, Nordgren’s arm still in his grasp, the crowd silent, Nordgren’s expression as immobile as that of a crucified Christ. Then, ever so slowly, ever so reluctantly, as if there were too little left to drain, a few dark drops of blood began to trickle from the torn stump of Nordgren’s shoulder.
The crowd’s eyes began to turn upon Harrington, as Nordgren ever so slowly began to collapse like an unstrung marionette.
Harrington awoke the following noon, sprawled fully dressed across a couch in his own suite. He had a poisonous hangover and shuddered at the reflection of his face in the bathroom mirror. He made himself a breakfast of vitamin pills, aspirin, and Valium, then set about cutting a few wake-up lines to get him through the day.
Harrington was not really surprised to learn that Trevor Nordgren had died in his sleep sometime during the night before.
Everyone knew it was a drug overdose, but the medical examiner’s report ruled heart failure subsequent to extreme physical exhaustion and chronic substance abuse.
Several of the science fiction news magazines asked Harrington to write an obituary for Trevor Nordgren, but Harrington declined. He similarly declined offers from several fan presses to write a biography or critical survey of Nordgren, or to edit proposed anthologies of Nordgren’s uncollected writings, and he declined Warwick’s suggestion that he complete Nordgren’s final unfinished novel. Martin E. Binkley, in his Reader’s Guide to Trevor Nordgren, attributed this reticence to “Harrington’s longtime love-hate relationship with Nordgren that crystalized into professional jealousy with final rejection.”
Damon Harrington no longer attends conventions, nor does he autograph books. He does not answer his mail, and he has had his telephone disconnected.
Columbine Books offered Harrington a fat one million advance for a third trilogy in the best-selling Fall of the Golden Isles series. When Harrington returned the contract unsigned to Helen Hohenstein, she was able to get Columbine to increase the advance to one and a half million. Harrington threw the contract into the trash.
In his dreams Harrington still sees the faceless mass of hungry eyes, eyes turning from their drained victim and gazing now at him. Drugs seem to help a little, and friends have begun to express concern over his health.
The mystery of Damon Harrington’s sudden reclusion has excited the imagination of his public. As a consequence, sales of all of his books are presently at an all-time high.
SIGN OF THE SALAMANDER
By Curtiss Stryker With an Introduction by Kent Allard
One seeks hard with Curtiss Stryker for a mot juste. Let us say that he was an enigma to all, perhaps most of all to himself.
While many of the pulp writers of the 1930s had survived improbable and checkered pasts before merging their careers into fiction, Curtiss Stryker begs the extreme. Sailor, soldier-off or tune, gunrunner, World War I hero, aviator, bootlegger, big-game hunter, member of a dozen secret cults: If even half of his boasts were true, it would be too much for any one man — to say nothing of a writer who drifted from the pulps into hackwork obscurity. And yet…
Stryker brought a distinct and convincing verisimilitude to all genres in which he wrote, present through the excesses of the pulp formula and the demands of deadlines. A fellow pulp writer once remarked: “Sure, I’ve never been to Asia or Africa even though I write yarns about those places. I’ve never been to Hell, either — but I still write about it. ” With Curtiss Stryker one wonders.
This is most evident in Stryker’s best known work, a series of stories involving the battles of occult investigator, John Chance, against his evil counterpart, Dread, master of black magic. These episodic novellas (billed, as the pulps liked to do, as “A Complete Novel In Every Issue!”) began in the January 1934 issue of Black Circle Mystery and ran monthly until that pulp folded in June 1936. Part of the notorious Black Circle Publishing Group, Black Circle Mystery was not one of the higher paying pulps, nor did the series begin to attract the readership of such character pulps as Doc Savage, The Shadow, or The Spider. Nonetheless, John Chance vs. Dread was one of the longer-lived minor pulp series, and the stories eventually acquired a cult following among pulp collectors. “Sign of the Salamander,” the first episode of the series, is here reprinted for the first time.
The novella is typical of the series, displaying the eccentricities of Stryker’s style. One senses immediately that he is striving to break away from the confines of the pulp formula, all the while restrained by the editorial considerations of his day.
An author is invariably accused of identifying with his characters — of projecting his idealized self-image into his heroes. I rather think that both John Chance and Dread were a part of Curtiss Stryker — and I hesitate to believe that Stryker’s visions of Hell were taken exclusively from guidebooks.
— Kent Allard, author of
Drive-Thru Fiction,
The Futility of Awareness,
etc.
Fog hung like a dismal mask over the small mountain town. The headlamps of the Packard roadster poked yellow beams through the grey blanket, probing recklessly up the narrow road that climbed Laurel Mountain. The car scarcely slowed as it reached the gap that enclosed the town of Dillon, and its headlights picked out the main street with its double row of storefronts.
Its cream finish ghostly in the mist-hung night, the powerful roadster moved past the darkened storefronts, many with windows boarded and an NRA eagle peering from the murky panes. A few lights shone from outlying houses, and on ahead a big puddle of light spread out from a pair of gas pumps. The Packard braked and pulled into the station.
The stenciled lettering on the dusty windows read Martin’s General Merchandise and below that, in a different stencil, & Service Station. It was past ten o’clock, but this one place of business remained open. Half a dozen overalled patrons lounged about the pair of benches that flanked the screened doorway, chewing tobacco and furtively passing a quart fruit jar whose contents warded off the late evening chill. They watched with careful curiosity as the Packard drove up. Behind the storefront windows, other blurred faces craned inquisitively.
The roadster looked sleek and new and expensive. Despite the chill mountain air, its top was down, suggesting it had been driven hard up from the summer heat of the lowlands that evening. A girl reclined easily on the leather cushions of the passenger side, looking sleek and expensive herself with a fox fur wrap drawn over the trim shoulders of her summer frock. Blonde hair was marcelled beneath a white beret, and there was a pleasant windblown effect that offset her patrician features. The driver was a dark, athletically built young man with that sort of tan that makes one think of tennis courts and swimming pools. He wore casual evening dress, but was hatless. Leisurely he stepped down from the car, tossed his coat over the seat and stretched taut limbs.
“Evening, folks.” A heavy-set figure emerged from the screened door. “Can I help you?”
“A tank of ethyl for the car, if you please,” the driver told him. “And some information for me.”