Tag Archives: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

Faith – Dashiell Hammett (Unpublished)

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Fifty men are sitting in the barracks of the canning factory listening to Morphy rail about the factory, the boss, the equipment, the pay.  They are described as “migratory workmen”, which means they were Americans who traveled the USA doing those jobs that Americans won’t do.

Feach laughs, which is considered a huge faux pas.  Morphy asks what is so funny.  He says, “I’ve saw worse, and I expect to see worse” ironically not referring to his grammar.

The next night Morphy proclaims there is no God.  Feach clearly believes otherwise. Morphy demands proof of God’s existence.  Several nights later, Feach wags his finger at Morphy and screeches, “Of course there’s a God!  There’s got to be!”  It took him a week to come with that?  Pascal put more thought into it.  He also cites “the moon and the sun and the stars and flowers and rain.”  Morphy is unimpressed and says “Edison could have made them for all you know.”  Yeah, except he wouldn’t have let God get the credit.

Feach’s most convincing argument is that he knows there is a God because God cursed him.  He had a wife and kid in Ohio — lightning burned down his house with them in it.  He started work in a coal mine and 3 days later a cave-in killed 14 men.  He worked in a box factory that burned down within a week.  He was sleeping in a house in Galveston that was destroyed by a hurricane.  He shipped out of Charleston and all hands except him drowned.  Tough break about the wife and kid, but I’m not seeing the curse.  Feach thinks God is trying to kill him — what a glass-half-empty kind of guy.

Feach says it is happening “because I done a thing” but doesn’t elaborate.  Morphy says “A hell of a Jonah you are!”  Feach warns them that something bad is coming, and not just that last episode of Ray Bradbury Theater in 5 days.

That night, Feach pours gasoline around the 2 barracks and burns them to the ground.  His excuse to Morphy is “Maybe I done it.  And maybe Something used me to do it.  Anyways, if it hadn’t been that, it’d maybe been something worse.”

I’m not sure where Hammett was going with this one.  Are Feach’s tragedies self-inflicted?  Maybe he set the fire that killed his wife and kid, but he didn’t cause a hurricane.

Or was killing his family the thing he done and God really was trying to kill him with the other calamities?  If so, then Hammett muddled the narrative by having the box factory burn down — that could have been by Feach’s human hand.

Was the box factory the same situation as the barracks — him causing a disaster to prevent a larger disaster?  We know he is a fire-bug.  Or was God indeed working through him?

I liked the story and the style.  Of course, it was unpublished, therefore maybe not finished.  If you take it as a fragment, it’s pretty good.

Other Stuff:

You’ll Always Remember Me – Steve Fisher (1938)

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Our star wakes up to Pushton blowing the beagle bugle.  He goes down the row of beds, tearing the covers from everyone.  He yells, “Get up!  Get up!  Don’t you hear Pushton blowing his lungs out?”  Who is this grizzled leader?  Sgt. Hartman?  Sgt. Foley?  Sgt. Carter?  [1] No, it is 14 year old Martin Thorpe at the Clark Military Academy.

He is unhappy with the school despite the double tuition his father has to pay to keep them from expelling him.  He thinks, “I swear there isn’t a 14 year old in it that I could talk to without wanting to push in his face.”  He feels this way because he thinks he is smarter than everyone else, so I’m sure guys from 15 to 50 (and above, but alliteration, ya know) find his mug imminently punchable also.

He is trying to get the latest on his pal Tommy Smith.  A senior tells him the governor didn’t come through, so he will be hung on Friday.  Martin didn’t think they had the evidence to convict Tommy of “putting a knife in his old man’s back.”  He has the hots for Tommy’s 15 year old sister Marie, but fears her brother’s execution might be a downer for their relationship.

Martin had been at the Smith house the night of the murder.  Tommy wanted to marry a girl his father did not approve of.  Martin says, “Tommy was a nice enough sort.  He played football at the university, was a big guy with blond hair and a ruddy face, and blue eyes.  He had a nice smile, white and clean.”  So I kinda want to punch him.

Detective Duff Ryan thinks Martin might be more involved than he admits.  He confronts Martin about the time the class mascot goat broke its legs in a stunt . . .  what a scamp.  Then there was the time he pushed a kid into an oil hole and wouldn’t let him out . . . just some horseplay.  Remember when he roped that calf, stabbed it, and watched it bleed to death . . . er, OK.  And he got sent away for observation when he poisoned a neighbor’s two Great Danes . . . alright, there might be a problem.

Well, once you hear about Martin’s shenanigans and hijinks, ya kinda know where this is going.  Of course, he killed the old man and set Tommy up for it.  He does have at least one more evil deed left for the story.  Suffice it to say, the name PUSHton was probably not chosen at random.  In fact, the name is spelled Push-ton in the first paragraph of the story.  I was ready to both praise the fore-shadowing and criticize the ham-handedness.  Nah, I was just going to mock it.  The paperback version also spells it Push-ton, but Push- is at the end of a line, so I guess the middle of the line Push-ton on the Kindle is just an editing error.  Quite a racket they have:

  1. Sell a 2.8 pound paperback book that is physically impossible to read.
  2. Force purchaser to then get the Kindle version.
  3. Maximize profit by doing no editing on the e-version.

Well-played, Amazon.  Well-played.

That goofiness aside, it is a fun, short read.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Kudos to Gunnery Sgt. Vince Carter for being the only one not to use the steers & queers gag.
  • First published in the March 1938 issue of Black Mask.

The House of Kaa – Richard Sale (1934)

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Jack Kirk is walking down the street and kind of has the willies.  He slips into a place even more willie-inducing, Gorgan & Wilkins Reptile Importers.  He finds the eponymously-named Gorgan and the eponymously-named Wilkins and the just-plain-weirdly-named-for-a-dude-from-India, Wentworth Lane.

Lane feels he is drawing suspicion because he only exports Regal Pythons.  He is ready to quit because he has heard The Cobra is in town.  Just to make things confusing, The Cobra is a self-appointed superhero who kills bad guys with darts containing cobra venom. Gorgan shoots Lane for his disloyalty.

Kirk is ordered to dispose of the body, so drives it out to Yorkshire.  He is followed by a black sedan driven by Deen Bradley of the Bombay Department of Justice.  These are the worst-named Indian characters in literary history.  He handled the car with dexterity, never shifting his cobra eyes (!) from the red tail light of the cadaver car before him.

The American suddenly saw the brake-light of the other machine flare into being.  Kirk slowed momentarily and as he did so, a limp bundle tumbled lifelessly from the car.

Wait, what?  Isn’t the American Kirk, who is in front of the Indian?  How did he see the tail-light of the car behind him?  Why would the 2nd car even apply the brakes?  Anyway, Bradley picks up Lane’s only-mostly-dead body and takes him to the hospital.

Lane is near death with 3 slugs in him.  The doctors inject him with Adrenalin.  He recognizes Bradley as The Cobra.  He only manages to say, “Code word Pythons . . . House of Kaa” before croaking.  That night the police find the cadaver of Jack Kirk. Protruding from his neck is a small dart.

At Scotland Yard, Inspector Ryder suggests to Commissioner Marshall that they not look too hard for The Cobra.  Kirk was a known thug.  The Cobra had cleaned up the streets in a way the police couldn’t.  Marshall admonishes him that they are a nation of laws, that vigilantism often gets the wrong people killed, that The Cobra must receive a fair trial before a jury of his peers.  No, wait — he says to drop the investigation.

Marshall and Ryder are visited by Bradley.  The author refers to Bradley as an American, so I guess the excerpted passage above makes sense after all.  Although, I have to wonder why an American is working for the Bombay Police Department if this is not a sitcom.  A colonial Brit, I might buy.  In fact, I guess Lane is not an Indian either, but just a Brit posted in India.  Are there actually any Indians in India?  I keep hearing big talk about a billion people, but they all seem to be Anglos.

Bradley says there have been a series of jewel thefts in Bombay.  Most notorious is the Kubij Opal belonging to Rajah Sarankh.  Bradley is investigating how these jewels are getting into London past the watchful scrutiny of your Revenue Officers.  I like how the real crime is that the government might not be getting their cut.

The officers deduce that Gorgan & Wilkins Reptile Importers are the center of the smuggling operation.  They hide jewels in food and feed them to the snakes.  By the time the snakes poop them out, they have arrived in England.

Bradley next visits Gorgan & Wilkins Reptile Importers.  He tells them he followed Lane’s work in Bombay and wants to be part of the organization.  When challenged, he even gives the password, Home of Kaa.  Actually, Lane said House of Kaa.  This story is 80 freakin’ years old — no one ever thought to correct that?

They figure out that Bradley is the “Yank dick” — hehe, yank dick — that Lane had warned them was hanging around the office in Bombay.  They decide to send him downstairs to be fed to the 30 foot python.  There is a pretty nifty fight in the snake pit and justice prevails . . . unless you are a 30 foot python just doing what comes naturally — then you get a bullet in the noggin.

It is a pretty slight story, but well-told.  The fight in the snake room is really the only reason for the story, but that’s enough.

Other Stuff:

  • First published in the February 1934 issue of Ten Detective Aces.  Also that month: Tina Louise is born; her first words were bitching about Gilligan’s Island.
  • Kindle gets the title wrong as House of Raa.
  • Kaa means “possession” in Hindi, but c’mon, this had to be a Jungle Book homage.

The Dilemma of the Dead Lady – Cornell Woolrich (1936)

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1.

Babe Sherman, “a good looking devil,” is packing his steamer trunk for a boat ride home from France.  He used his looks to fleece a woman out out her life savings earned at the largest jewelry store on Rue McClanahan de la Paix.  He also managed to pull a switcheroo with a string of pearls at her store, swapping out a $75,000 [1] string with a diamond clasp for a cheapo string.

He is hiding the pearls in a secret compart-ment in his shoe heel when there is a knock at his door.  A woman’s voice says, “Let me in, Bebe, [2] it’s me!”  He opens the door and she wonders why he’s dressed and packing a trunk.  He says he’s just going on a business trip, but she spots his ticket to the US.  The get into a tussle about the money he stole from her — one of them tussles that undoes the tiny screws on a shoe heel — and the pearls spill out.

Knowing he can’t let her leave, “he flung the long loop of pearls over her head from behind like a lasso.”  C’mon, how freakin’ long is this string of pearls?  Is it one o’ them 6 foot strings like flappers wore?  If so, how tall are his heels that he hid them in?  What are they, from the Tom Cruise collection?

So, he strangles her with the string of pearls.  It says they are on “a platinum wire” but that seems a little far-fetched.  Babe laments that she is “Dead.  Strangled by a thing of beauty, a thing meant to give pleasure” just like the woman in Florida who choked to death giving a blow job.  Ironically, a pearl necklace might have saved the Florida woman’s life.  But I digress.

2.

As always seems to happen, the porter knocks on his door while a dead woman is on the floor.  Christ, it’s like they have ESP.  Babe quickly realizes the only way out is to take the corpse with him in the steamer trunk.  He unpacks some of the hotel towels, robes and ashtrays, then “dragged her over, sat her up in the middle of it, folded her legs up against her out of the way, and pushed the two upright halves closed over her.”  He slaps a label on the trunk indicating it is to be delivered to his cabin, not put in the hold, and opens the door.

Babe and the porter take the trunk downstairs in an old cage elevator.  There seems to be a concern whether the elevator will take the weight.  So no one has ever ridden down from the 3rd floor with their luggage [3] before?

The elevator lands safely, and the porter takes the trunk to a taxi.  Babe wants the trunk stowed inside, but the driver wants it “tied on in back, on the top, or even at the side.”  How does that side storage work?  Finally a 2.5 X fare persuades the driver to put the trunk in the back seat.  At the train station, Babe tries to book a private compartment, but is forced to share one with a Yank.

3.

Babe insists the trunk be stowed in the hall outside his cabin, but the conductor says it is against the rules.  Babe flashes a few francs and persuades him.  Finally, after the train is in motion, he swings the trunk into it.  Babe discovers his compartment mate is a cop.

When they arrive at the ship, a familiar scene plays out.  The ship steward says the trunk is too large for a cabin and must be stowed in the hold.  The cop says, “Listen, I’m in there with him . . . put it where the guy wants it to go.”

4.

So the huge trunk goes into the cabin.  Babe figures he is going to have to resolve this situation in 2 days because the Frenchwoman is going to start stinking up the joint like a Frenchman.

His first move is to try to switch cabins.  That seems possible until the steward realizes who he is.  Suddenly nothing is available.  He suspects the cop got to the steward.

The cop ups the game by purposely spilling liquid shoe polish on Babe’s white shirt.  He has no way to retrieve a shirt from the trunk and can’t go to the dining-car dressed like that since he isn’t from Florida.[4]

The rest is very episodic, much like Woolrich’s earlier story in this anthology Two Murders, One Crime.  Fortunately, he is great at this kind of story.  Both stories turn into a rambling comedic pas de deux between a cop an a killer.  Both would have made great episodes of AHP.  Chandler might be the great stylist in this collection, but for pure entertainment, Woolrich is my favorite.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] $1.3 million in today’s dollars.
  • [2] His name is Babe, but the woman calls him Bebe.  OK, that’s French for baby, but it’s a strange choice by the author since it just looks like a typo.
  • [3] I never really looked at that word before.  You lug it around; it is literally your luggage.  I wonder which word came first.
  • [4] I am stilled scarred by a 50 year old guy I saw at lunch today wearing a wife-beater.  It wasn’t a 4-star restaurant, but have a little class, dude.
  • First published in the July 1936 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.
  • Also that month: It got up to 114 degrees in Wisconsin.  Bloody global warming!

The Cat-Woman – Erle Stanley Gardner (1927)

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Big Bill Ryan knows Ed Jenkins is flat broke. Ed is a crook.  Once his bankers found out, they quietly stole his money assuming he wouldn’t call the cops.  If it’s any consolation to him, they will be jumping out of windows in a couple of years.  I guess Ed wasn’t much of a crook; I don’t remember Don Corleone getting rolled like that.  Bill has a job for Ed and hands him a note.

Two hours after you get this message, meet me at apartment 624, Reedar Arms Apartments.  The door will be open — HMH.

Ed shows up at the address and finds a woman in a negligee despite the fact she knew a man would be there in 2 hours.  Oh, right — I get it.  The woman pulls out a $500 bill and hands it to the guy which is not the transaction I’m used to.  She follows it with 19 others as payment for the guy to do a simple job.  She wants him to steal a necklace, and to kidnap her niece.  She says, “Mr. Jenkins, once you have my niece, you can do anything with her that you want.  You must keep her for 2 days.  After that, you may let her go or keep her.”

He declines.  She counters that the necklace he would be stealing actually belongs to her.  Also, she is the legal guardian of the niece and gives him permission to kidnap her.  Not only that, she will let him meet the niece and she will agree to be kidnapped.  It is just a ruse to get the insurance money for the necklace.  I don’t get the role of the niece . . . although I could be talked into just about anything for $10,000 and a young woman to be named later.[1]  Somehow, Ed has the supernatural reputation of being able to get away with crimes even when caught, so the police aren’t an issue.  Ed agrees to take the gig.

She arose, slipped out of the negligee, and approached the suitcase.  From the suitcase, she took a tailored suit and slipped into it.

That’s it?  These stories might have a better pedigree than the ones in the Spicy Adventure Megapack, but they are a lot less fun.  This is especially maddening from Erle Stanley Gardner.  His books often had really c*ckteasing titles and covers, but the insides never delivered.

The woman drives them to a large house where she introduces Ed to her niece Ellery Queen Jean Ellery.  Jean has inherited the family subtlety and asks, “I understand you are going to kidnap me.  Are you a caveman or do you kidnap ’em gently?”  She says, “Life here is the bunk.”  She is happy to be kidnapped.

The woman explains this is the house of Arthur Holton and she is his personal secretary.  Tomorrow night, he is going to announce their engagement and give her the necklace.  At 9:30, she will pocket the original, let her niece test-drive a fake, and an assistant will grab Jean, tie her up and stow her in the trunk of a car that will be left for Ed.  To convince the insurance company this was a legit robbery, she suggests Ed arrive at the party, announce he was shafted by Holton in a business deal, and wave his gun around at the guests.  He will then escape to a seaside house the woman has rented for him where he and Jean will pose as a married couple.  And, oh yeah, he must not open the trunk until he reaches the cottage.  What the hell is this mysterious Clintonesque Get Out of Jail Free Card he possesses?

He worries about her double-crossing him and calling the cops although showing his face at the party, waiving a gun around, and kidnapping Jean might be enough to get their interest . . . you know, if not for the GOOJFC.  She agrees to write an affidavit explaining everything, have it notarized, and filed with a trust company.  We finally get her name — Hattie M. Hare.[2]  At the lawyer’s office, he catches the lawyer pocketing the signed confessions and handing the trust company an envelope of blank paper.  And here we go.

Of course, “the niece” was not the niece.  The real Jean never trusted her aunt and turns out to be cute, resourceful, and a graduate of stunt driving school.  Hattie grabs Jean and Ed goes Brian Mills on her.  He thinks back to “years I had been a lone wolf, had earned the name The Phantom Crook, one who could slip through the fingers of the police.  There had been a welcome vacation while I enjoyed immunity in California, but now all that had passed.”

Hattie gets away, but Ed saves Jean just as the police show up.  They are ready to haul him in, but everything is explained, showing him to be innocent.  Jean’s rich father vows to see Ed’s “name is cleared of every charge against you in every state, that you are a free man, that you are restored to citizenship.”  Well, it’s all well and good that her fat-cat father will bribe the judiciary in several states, but what had been keeping Ed out of jail all this time?

A pretty good one.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] The niece is 20, so that’s not as creepy as it seems.
  • [2] So much attention is devoted to cats — the title, Hattie’s cat-like eyes and movement, a leopard skin Davenport, a tiger rug, a painting of a cat — and Gardner names her after a rabbit?
  • First published in the February 1927 issue of Black Mask.
  • Also that month:  Buster Keaton’s The General is released.
  • The Kindle version repeatedly misspells Erle as Erie.