Secret Agent "X" – The Complete Series, Volume 3

Introduction Stephen Payne

EDUCATED guesses based on observation, converted to hypotheses, tested as experiments, analyzed for conclusions: Such is the basis of the scientific method and even trial and error logic. And such an approach, though probably not as formal, determined whether a particular pulp magazine, especially a hero or character book, achieved success — or died on the vine. The more astute pulp editors, practiced at such thinking, intentionally sought writers who had developed proven track records, those who could pen tales crackling with excitement and pulsing with energy. These were the wordsmiths who commanded the attention of armies of readers and who earned fortunes for their editors and publishers. These were the folk like editor John Nanovic and writer Lester Dent on Doc Savage and Nanovic (again) and Walter Gibson on The Shadow; boss Harry Steeger and Norvell Page of The Spider and Steeger once more and Robert Hogan of G-8 and His Battle Aces.

Less perceptive editors struggled to find effective tale spinners for their publications, and readers rewarded those magazines accordingly. Among others, these books included such “masterpieces” as Captain Satan, by William O’Sullivan; the initial novels in Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer, by Major Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson; The Black Hood, by G.T. Fleming Roberts; and far too many others. It is obvious that being a “big name” like Street Smith or Popular did not guarantee success for a book, nor did the lack of a name. And the usual “market forces” greatly affected the chances of a pulp’s success. But the editors’ “smarts,” that awareness of readers’ preferences and a willingness to experiment, profoundly influenced a book’s chances in the marketplace. And here is the place that Rose Wyn of Periodical House/Ace Publishers found herself in 1934: her imprint, at best a third-tier operation, printed few hero periodicals of any note, outside of Ten Detective Aces, Flying Aces, and Western Aces. Frankly these were not exactly stars in the heavens. Oh, and then there was a little book entitled Secret Agent “X.” It was, at the time, Wyn’s only single character book.

The wife of publisher A.A. Wyn, Rose herself was a pulp editor. She had launched the adventures of the Secret Agent, at best a derivative character, to compete against Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Phantom Detective, and the Spider. With the majority of her “big guns” being snatched away by better paying pulp houses, Wyn had assigned fictioneer Paul Chadwick to scribble the adventures of the Man of a Thousand Faces. But he just was not working out. Maybe it was the imitative way he handled the Agent; maybe it was, frankly, his style of writing, at best “faux creepy,” that Chadwick employed. Whatever the case, Wyn had to do something, quickly, to salvage her publication. For some reason unknown today, she gave a young Emile Tepperman the opportunity to write a group of stories. Had she hired him as a permanent replacement for Chadwick? Or had she assigned him as a stopgap before she could find a permanent scribe? Unless more evidence turns up, we will probably never know the answer to this question. The questions we can answer, however, are twofold: How effectively did Tepperman handle the Secret Agent’s adventures? And how much influence did he exert on the future of Secret Agent “X?” To answer the first question, we will examine, briefly, Tepperman’s first X novel, “Hand of Horror” (August 1934), then look closely at the duo of Tepperman entries in this volume, “Servants of the Skull” (November 1934) and “The Murder Monster” (December 1934). We will see that with his understanding of style, plot, characters, and settings, Tepperman could have performed a creditable job on Secret Agent “X.” Further, we will find that far from being a “failed” experiment, Tepperman’ brought a new humanity, a new “realism” (if such existed in the early hero pulps) to the character of Secret Agent “X.” Indeed Emile Tepperman paved the way for Wyn to hire a young G. T. Fleming-Roberts, who would become the most effective and talented writer to handle the character.

To launch his time on the magazine, Tepperman wrote “Hand of Horror,” a decent though not noteworthy tale with the usual Chadwickian trappings. Our new Brant House develops the narrative around a ruthless master criminal with political ambitions and a weird method of murdering his enemies, the so-called “bloated death.” This is actually an exotic venom, always a favorite of Tepperman’s predecessor, Chadwick. Couple this with a femme fatale, constant focus on the Agent, and spooky atmosphere, and we see a narrative not much distinguished from one by Chadwick himself. Then comes Tepperman’s next entry, “Servants of the Skull.” Here we see what he really might have accomplished with the series, and it is remarkable, both for its realism and its innovation.

The prose alone is critical to realizing that we have a new writer on our hands. Tepperman composes his stories with a leaner, less pretentious, less melodramatic approach to the subject matter. At the most atomistic level the reader notices this quality particularly in Tepperman’s diction. It is a distinct contrast to the work by Paul Chadwick. Consider this opening scene from “Servants of the Skull,” the first of the Tepperman entries in this volume:

Here we see few of the Gothic images that Chadwick so often used. Tepperman is direct, even blunt in his word choice. There is precious little of the Gothic effects we see in Chadwick. Indeed, juxtapose this sample of Tepperman’s work with two from Chadwick, this one from the first Secret Agent “X” novel, “The Torture Trust” (February 1934):

This passage from the opener of Paul Chadwick’s “The Spectral Strangler” (March 1934) presents a similar tone of Gothic melodrama:

What a different way of using language that the two writers employ! Paul Chadwick’s diction is meant to convey a sense of weirdness and foreboding. However, its real effect is to cause readers to roll their eyes at the narrator’s melodramatic overkill. It is like watching really bad Vincent Price (actually a capable thespian) or, better, Bela Lugosi at his most extravagant (Think White Zombie and Lugosi’s notorious work for filmmaker Ed Wood). Emile Tepperman, on the other hand, employs the language in a much more crisp fashion, yet keeps his diction evocative. Here is realism, not Gothic melodrama. In the future career of Tepperman, it will become the hallmark of a prose style that will eventually seem to celebrate the brutal, the cruel in life.

Yet this begs the question: In popular literature, especially in the pulps, why should this kind of tougher, more realistic diction have any advantages over a more melodramatic kind? It certainly does — and it did even during the Depression. In the first place it is more in tune with the style that would become the industry standard by the mid-to-late 1930s. Second, Tepperman’s mode of expression is frankly more efficient in portraying the story. In other words his word choice is unencumbered by the unnecessary “special effects” recorded in the above passages by Paul Chadwick. Last, such word choice more effectively engages the readers’ interest. It inspires them to move more deeply into the text, not to ridicule it.

In the same vein is Tepperman’s syntax, his manner of arranging phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs. As the lines from “Servants of the Skull” illustrate, Tepperman composes in a “rat-a-tat” kind of style perfectly suited to the subject matter that his fiction portrays. Note this section from the same narrative, wherein the eponymous villain threatens X’s companion Betty Dale:

Like the writer’s diction, a less melodramatic style tends to move the storyline, and of a necessity the readers’ eyes’, with much greater speed over the page. Also it more realistically depicts the way people would speak (if the pulps can be said to portray realism!).

If the styles of the Tepperman and Chadwick show obvious differences, then so too do their plots. In Chadwick’s hands the Man of a Thousand Faces battles all manner of pulp super criminals wielding terrifying death weapons. In “The Torture Trust” it may be the Masters of Death, who seek money and power and who use acid to attain their goals. The devious Black Master, a Shadowesque villain, lusts after vast wealth, his method for gaining it being a new asphyxiating gas (“The Spectral Strangler”). With Chadwick’s other early “X” yarns, the Agent encounters a super flame thrower, the Flammenwurfer (“The Death-Torch Terror”), and an opportunistic master spy, the Green Mask (“Ambassador of Doom”), selling military secrets. And then there is the group of medical extortionists from the notorious “City of the Living Dead,” a story which merits no response, save, “What the hell were they thinking?” With the exception of this final entry, this is pretty standard pulp fare, if not derivative stuff, as far as Chadwick’s handling of plot goes. Every one of the villains is out for power or wealth, with little to distinguish miscreant A’s goals from those of miscreant B. Only their modus operandi might differ. In addition the order of events from one month’s adventure is nearly always the same as the next one. The Agent will investigate a criminal mastermind’s machinations, only to be exposed at a crucial time. Then he will effect a daring escape from the criminal’s clutches (or from those of the police), a la the Shadow, don a new disguise, and recommence his investigation. Altering his features like most people change socks, he will move through the remainder of the story until the final battle with the resident fiend. Here the Secret Agent will expose the man’s real identity, then, whistling his eerie call, disappear to the amazement of the police or other onlookers. This is strict adherence to a formula, plain and simple.

In Chadwick’s defense it was difficult to come up with a new menace, month after month. This may explain why his fictional threats to society had to grow ever more deadly and horrible, ever more paranoid. Though it may seem counterintuitive, this may also account for editor Rose Wyn’s likely problems with Chadwick’s narratives. Wyn, as editor, would clearly see where the book was going with Chadwick as scribe. If a plot requires a new horror every month, then the next month’s number and the next will necessitate ever more horror and fear, along with a villain just as horrible and fearsome to perpetrate it. This type of narrative circumstance will then force the writer, especially the formulaic one, to grope for plots more desperately each time. Eventually he will move in the direction of diminishing returns. Readers, too, will become satiated with such material, desensitized to the point that the pulpster’s work will have little or no impact.

Very likely, then, switching gears was uppermost in Rose Wyn’s mind when she assigned Secret Agent “X” to Emile Tepperman. He, in contrast, would bring a new kind of plot angle to the mysteries. I’ve mentioned his first “X,” “Hand of Horror,” which is not much different from one of Chadwick’s fictions. With Tepperman’s next story, “Servants of the Skull,” we see a rather imitative effort, true enough, one possibly inspired by Walter Gibson’s work on The Shadow. But in comparison to an early piece by Paul Chadwick, Tepperman executes the plot with class and style. Agent “X,” instead of being exposed early on, remains ingeniously hidden in disguise until… well, you’ll have to read this for yourself! And the resident villain, the Skull, is equally adept at maintaining his own masquerade, not being revealed until Tepperman is good and ready to unmask him — not any earlier. The point is this: here is a writer who knows how to plot a story. He gives just enough information to tantalize the readers, then compels them to move deeper into the plot. In doing so, he encourages mystery about both story and characters until the very end of the proceedings.

The same is true of Tepperman’s next novel, “The Murder Monster.” The plot revolves around a bizarre group of mute, lookalike robots who shoot flames from their fingertips, thereby murdering their victims. The Murder Monster, their weird master, is another Gibsonesque villain. And he is almost as strong an opponent for Agent “X” as is the Monster’s predecessor, the Skull. Equally as original is the explanation that Tepperman provides for the villain’s minions. A well-plotted story, “The Murder Master” moves with a relentless pace that never lets up until the final exciting scene. Lest I forget, the narrative’s plot contains an interesting sidelight that amounts to pulp social commentary, in this case regarding the treatment of criminals.

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:

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:

Who could the “someone else” be but the Man of a Thousand faces himself? Perhaps this new treatment of Hobart signals a change in his relationship with the Agent. But alas, we will never know, given that this new Brant House scribbled only one more entry, “Talons of Terror,” for the magazine. Doctor Blood, its sinister mastermind, is as horrible a villain as “X” ever encountered, being a character from the weird menace tradition. And like the other three “X” stories by Tepperman, it deserves another reading.

Examined superficially, this final contribution might seem to have ended the influence of Emile Tepperman on Secret Agent “X.” It might even cause us to regard his labor on the magazine as an experiment that failed. Yet his tenure there was not futile. Quite the contrary, he penned some entertaining fiction for the Secret Agent; and he did so in many ways. Born from a willingness to take narrative risks, his new insights lent vitality to the characters. His leaner, innovative plots more effectively moved the stories forward. And his more realistic style brought dynamism to a series in danger of stagnation. Secret Agent “X” was primed to move into its next and greatest phase, the G. T. Fleming-Roberts era. Who would have thought four stories could do so much? Truly Secret Agent “X” remains the Man of a Thousand Faces, a Thousand Disguises — and a Thousand Surprises!