Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 68, July 1949

Leaves from the Editors’ Notebook Queen’s quorum: Part Two by Ellery Queen[6]

When the world was born, Man came first and Woman second. God so ordained. When the detective in fiction was born, Man again came first and Woman second — so Man himself ordained. If we think of Poe’s Dupin as the Adam of story-book sleuths, who is the Eve? The Lord said: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.” And out of the man’s rib made He a woman — and so it came to pass in fictional ferretry. A full twenty years after the creation of Dupin an unknown writer brought forth the first detectivette, and so shrouded in mystery is her origin that we still have only tentative data on her nativity. We do know that

5. “Anonyma’s”

THE EXPERIENCES OF A LADY DETECTIVE

London:? Charles H. Clarke, 1861

actually exists as a book, but we have never set eyes on a copy of it. A sequel was published three years later titled REVELATIONS OF A LADY DETECTIVE (London: George Vickers, 1864) and from this second series we learn that Mrs. Paschal, the first petticoated policeman, embarked (using her own words) in a career at once strange, exciting, and mysterious when her husband died suddenly, leaving her badly off. An offer (still quoting the lady herself) was made to her through a peculiar channel. She accepted without hesitation, and became one of the much-dreaded, but little-known people called Female Detectives, at the time she was verging on forty (even in the literature of detection Life Begins At Forty). Mrs. Paschal’s brain, she tells us, was vigorous and subtle; she was well born and well educated, so that, like an accomplished actress, she could play her part in any drama with nerve and strength, cunning and confidence, and resources unlimited... That was nearly a hundred years ago: women have not changed — in real life or in fiction.

In 1862 Thomas Bailey Aldrich made a curious and interesting contribution to the detective short story — a contribution which today is completely unhonored and unsung, for the simple reason that it is so completely unknown, and consequently unread. In

6. Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s

OUT OF HIS HEAD

New York: Carleton, 1862

Chapters XI through XIV (titled The Danseuse, A Mystery, Thou Art the Man, and Paul’s Confession) constitute a detective short story of approximately 5000 words. This excerpt from Aldrich’s novelette reveals the author’s enormous debt to Poe: the style, although retaining Aldrich’s cameo-cut phrasing, clearly shows the influence of Poe, and the general plot derives just as clearly from The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Yet, in the character of his detective, Paul Lynde (“It is a way of mine to put this and that together!”), and in the specific construction of the plot, Aldrich adds at least three significant points of development to the detective story: one. he created the first variation-solution to Poe’s basic conception of the “locked room” mystery; two, he carried on Poe’s tradition of an eccentric sleuth, but Aldrich pushed the characterization to the absolute extreme — for Aldrich’s detective is not merely an eccentric, he is a madman; three, Aldrich wrote what is probably the earliest example of a detective story in which the protagonist is not only the detective but also the murderer, in the sense that the detective himself is responsible for the murder having been committed. Add to these developments of technique the fact that Aldrich’s OUT OF HIS HEAD contains the first detective story written by an American to appear in book form after the publication of Poe’s tall TALES — the first in seventeen long and barren years! — and recognition, however belated, must be accorded to the historical importance of Aldrich’s “unknown” experiment.

Thus far our cornerstones stick closely to the pure detective story, which is composed of three essential ingredients: first, a detective story must contain a detective who detects; second, the detective should be the protagonist; and third, the detective should almost invariably triumph — that is, he (or she) should unmask the murderer, catch the thief, snare the swindler, or thwart the blackmailer. But what of the crook story in which a criminal is the principal character and in which the criminal outwits the forces of law and order?

The antihero, representing “detection in reverse,” has not yet cracked open his (or her) eggshell in the short form — he is still germinating; but even the detective world was so made that certain signs come before certain events. The first important foreshadowing of crime-in-the-ascendancy in the short story is

7. Mark Twain’s

THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY

New York: С. H. Webb, 1867

This acknowledged classic of legend and folklore is an early example of the confidence game in fiction. If this statement surprises you, reread Mark Twain’s tale of trickery and ask yourself: When the slick stranger filled Jim Smiley’s frog, Dan’l Webster, full of quail-shot, wasn’t he really playing the con?

It is time now for France to make its first significant contribution to the detective short story, and it is only literary justice that le premier pas be taken by the first great French master of the detective story. In

8. Émilе Gaboriau’s

LE PETIT VIEUX DES BATIGNOLLES

(the little old man of batignolles)

Paris: E. Dentu, 1876

London: Vizetelly, 1884

the title story is a novelette about detective Méchinet; but the book also contains a short story titled Missing! in which the “famous” detective Retiveau, nicknamed Maitre Magloire, investigates the disappearance of Theodore Jandidier, an honorable manufacturer of the Rue du Roi de Sicile. This historically important short story is a typical Gaboriau murder-novel in miniature — longwinded for modern taste but full of French flavor, Gallic gusto, and ratiocinative realism. Quotations from the story reveal the Gaboriau touch: for example, when it is learned that M. Jandidier has “vanished, evaporated,” we are told that alarm spreads and that prudent people invest money in sword sticks and revolvers; detective Magloire is described as “a man of no little energy, and a fervent believer in the value of time... his alacrity was proverbial”; the chief suspect is a character named Jules Tarot — “a mother-of-pearl worker... he polishes the shells, and is most skilful in imparting the proper nacreous iridescence”; there is that delicious detectival moment, so dear to the hearts of classicists, when “all the drawers were turned out, and all the cupboards carefully explored,” when Magloire “ferreted in every nook and corner, ripped up the mattresses and pillows on the bed, tried the stuffing of the chairs, but all to no avail... nothing suspicious could be found”; that even more nostalgic moment when, anticipating Sherlock Holmes, the detective mutters: “It’s singular”; that “unexpected” denouement when the man of severe morality is exposed as a gambler on the Bourse, when the virtuous husband is revealed to have kept a mistress.

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]

The second most famous literary puzzle is without doubt Cleveland Moffett’s THE MYSTERIOUS CARD. This short story, the theme of which has been rewritten by dozens of authors since, first appeared in the Boston magazine, “The Black Cat,” February 1896; it was published in book form by Small, Maynard of Boston some time between 1896 and 1912 — the exact year is unknown, even the Library of Congress having no date on record.

One version of “the mysterious card” theme has eluded our most persistent book researches. It tells how a sailor on shore leave finds a piece of paper with unfamiliar words on it in a foreign language. The sailor takes it to various people for translation, but in each instance the person consulted refuses to divulge the meaning of the words and instead beats up, kicks, and otherwise abuses the poor sailor. Finally the sailor returns to his ship, the riddle unsolved. On shipboard he meets an archeologist who, the sailor thinks, might be able to satisfy his now uncontrollable curiosity. The sailor approaches the man at the rail of the ship, relates the whole back history, emphasizing his complete innocence. The archeologist agrees to translate the words on the paper and, no matter what they may mean, not to hold the sailor responsible. The sailor takes the slip of paper from his pocket and is about to hand it to the archeologist when a sudden gust of wind lifts the scrap from his hand and tosses it on the sea, where it immediately disappears from sight. And thus the mystery remains unanswered forever.

(to be continued next month)