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CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR NICK RENNISON
THE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
‘An intriguing anthology’ – Mail on Sunday
‘A book which will delight fans of crime fiction’ – Verbal Magazine
‘It’s good to see that Mr Rennison has also selected some rarer pieces – and rarer detectives, such as November Joe, Sebastian Zambra, Cecil Thorold and Lois Cayley’ – Roger Johnson, The District Messenger (Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London)
THE RIVALS OF DRACULA
‘These 15 sanguinary spine-tinglers… deliver delicious chills’ – Christopher Hirst, Independent
‘A gloriously Gothic collection of heroes fighting against maidens with bone-white skin, glittering eyes and blood-thirsty intentions’ – Lizzie Hayes, Promoting Crime Fiction
‘Nick Rennison’s The Rivals of Dracula shows that many Victorian and Edwardian novelists tried their hand at this staple of Gothic horror’ – Andrew Taylor, Spectator
‘The Rivals of Dracula is a fantastic collection of classic tales to chill the blood and tingle the spine. Grab a copy and curl up somewhere cosy for a night in’ – Citizen Homme Magazine
To Eve with love and thanks
INTRODUCTION
‘After Holmes, the deluge!’ the author and Sherlockian critic Vincent Starrett once wrote. He was referring, of course, to the vast number of private detectives and other crime-solvers who peopled the pages of the English and American popular magazines in the wake of the astonishing success of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character.
The magazine press of the day had very nearly as voracious an appetite for content and stories as TV does today. The most significant of these magazines was The Strand. Founded by the publisher George Newnes, it first appeared in January 1891. Its editor was Herbert Greenhough Smith who was to continue in that role for the next thirty-nine years. It was Smith who had the perspicacity to spot immediately the potential in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories. Forty years later, perhaps with a little benefit of hindsight, he recalled the moment in 1891 when he received the manuscripts of two of the stories. ‘I at once realised that here was the greatest short story writer since Edgar Allan Poe… there was no mistaking the ingenuity of the plot, the limpid clearness of the style, the perfect art of telling a story.’ The first of the Holmes short stories, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, was published in the July 1891 edition of The Strand Magazine. A literary phenomenon was born. The connection between Holmes and The Strand was to last until 1927 and the publication of ‘The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place’, the final tale of the great consulting detective. Apart from the first two novels, every Holmes story made its first British appearance in the pages of The Strand.
However, The Strand did not just provide a home for Holmes and Dr Watson. Stories of other fictional detectives of the period, several of them represented in this collection, were published in its pages. These included Dick Donovan, created by Greenhough Smith’s father-in-law JE Preston Muddock, EW Hornung’s gentleman thief AJ Raffles, Lois Cayley, a feisty ‘New Woman’ who appeared in stories by Grant Allen, and Richard Marsh’s Judith Lee. Arthur Morrison’s Martin Hewitt made his debut in The Strand in 1894, at least in part to fill the gap left by Conan Doyle’s decision to kill off Holmes in ‘The Final Problem’ which had been published the previous December.
Nor, of course, was The Strand the only such periodical on the newsstands. There were dozens and dozens of similar magazines in the 1890s and 1900s and nearly all of them featured crime stories. Arthur Morrison’s Horace Dorrington stories made their first appearance in The Windsor Magazine as did Guy Boothby’s tales of the occultist and criminal mastermind Dr Nikola and Arnold Bennett’s Cecil Thorold stories. The Idler, edited for several years by Jerome K Jerome, author of Three Men in a Boat, published some of William Hope Hodgson’s ‘Carnacki’ stories, about an investigator of the supernatural. (In 1892, The Idler also published the very first parody of Sherlock Holmes – ‘The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs’ by Jerome’s co-editor Robert Barr.) GK Chesterton’s Father Brown stories featured in The Pall Mall Magazine. (There seemed to be a fondness at the time for naming periodicals after famous London streets.) Other, smaller magazines also had their detectives. Loveday Brooke, one of a number of female detectives in the fiction of the period, appeared in The Ludgate Monthly; Headon Hill’s Sebastian Zambra was to be found in The Million and Victor Whitechurch’s railway detective Thorpe Hazell, appropriately enough, graced the pages of The Railway Magazine as well as The Royal Magazine and Pearson’s Magazine.
It is from this vast pool of periodical fiction that I have drawn the majority of the stories in this book. As with the first volume in this series (The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes) what I wanted to do more than anything was to demonstrate the sheer variety of crime stories published between 1890 and 1914. People often assume that there is little worth reading from that era other than the Holmes stories and that the fictional detectives of the time are all Sherlock clones. Neither of these assumptions is true. Conan Doyle was inarguably the best writer in the genre in the decades immediately before the First World War but that does not mean he was the only one with great talents. Arthur Morrison, R Austin Freeman and Baroness Orczy – to name just three – were all highly skilled writers of popular fiction who can be read with great pleasure today. And while there were undoubtedly characters who were cheap copies of Doyle’s detective (I have included David Christie Murray’s John Pym as an example of one of these) they were vastly outnumbered by those who were very different. It was almost a matter of pride among self-respecting authors to come up with a character that did not echo Sherlock Holmes. From the blind detective Max Carrados to Arthur Morrison’s utterly ruthless, almost monstrous creation, Horace Dorrington, from Baroness Orczy’s pioneering Scotland Yard detective Lady Molly to John Dollar, EW Hornung’s ‘Crime Doctor’, there are plenty of characters who are memorable in their own right.
In this new volume of stories, I have avoided including any of the ‘Rivals of Sherlock Holmes’ who appeared in my first collection. It would have been easy enough to pick another Father Brown story by GK Chesterton or another tale about Jacques Futrelle’s ‘Thinking Machine’, Professor Augustus SFX Van Dusen. There are plenty of very readable stories featuring those two characters from which to choose. However, in pursuit of my wish to demonstrate the variety and range of late Victorian and Edwardian crime fiction, I have picked fifteen entirely different ‘Rivals’ for this volume. And only one writer from the first book – Headon Hill - also makes an appearance in this one.
When fans of crime fiction refer to its ‘Golden Age’ they usually mean the era of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham but there was an earlier period in the history of the genre that was just as rich and fascinating. The years between 1890 and the outbreak of the First World War saw the emergence and establishment of Sherlock Holmes as the greatest of all fictional detectives. No one disputes his pre-eminence but he had plenty of rivals. As Vincent Starrett pointed out, there was a ‘deluge’ of them. As I hope this second volume of stories proves, many of them deserve to be remembered and read today.
MR BOOTH
Created by Herbert Keen (fl. 1896)
Mr Booth (we never learn his Christian name) appears in a series of stories collectively entitled ‘Chronicles of Elvira House’ which were published in The Idler magazine in 1896. They are narrated by Mr Perkins, an unworldly, middle-aged clerk in an insurance office who lodges at the boarding house of the title and persuades his friend Booth to take rooms there as well. Booth is a former detective and a much shrewder individual than his friend. In most of the stories Perkins or somebody he knows blunders into a tricky, possibly criminal situation and Mr Booth, through his knowledge of human nature, comes to the rescue. The ‘Chronicles of Elvira House’ are slight stories in themselves but they have a great deal of charm and are richly redolent of the era in which they were written. I have been unable to find any information whatsoever about the author Herbert Keen. Possibly it was a pseudonym; possibly he wrote nothing other than the stories of Mr Booth and Mr Perkins.
THE MISSING HEIR
My friendship for Mr Booth was cemented by his rendering me a great personal service, for which I shall ever be grateful to him. I regret to say that he obstinately refused to admit that he had done anything to make me his debtor, when I in vain endeavoured to persuade him to accept some substantial recognition of my obligation. I did, indeed, succeed in forcing upon him a cat’s-eye scarf-pin of his own selection, which I thought, not only hideous in itself, but ridiculously inadequate, even as a mere memento. If he survives me, however, the contents of my will may convince him that he cannot baulk my fixed determination; meanwhile, I can, at least, enjoy the satisfaction of relating the episode.
I have already said that I was a clerk in the Monarchy Assurance Office, and until a certain eventful evening, about a year after Mr Booth came to reside at Elvira House, I never imagined, in my wildest dreams, that any improvement in my position or prospects was likely to occur. I was already on the wrong side of fifty, and had reached the limit of salary allotted to the subordinate staff. Younger men had been promoted over my head to more responsible posts; and I had long since realised, without bitterness, that my services were not regarded as entitling me to especial consideration. I had no friends among the Directorate, no influential connections, and no outside expectations from any source whatever. Fortunately, I had always contrived to make my modest salary suffice for my requirements, and had even saved a little money: so that, being totally devoid of ambition, I was leading a perfectly contented existence, undismayed by the certainty of being forced to retire into private life at the end of another ten years or so on a pension of infinitesimal proportions.
I never had a spirit to contract a debt which I could not pay, and therefore I was quite calm when, on being summoned from the drawing-room one evening, I was informed by the faithful footman George, in an awe-stricken whisper on the landing outside, that a mysterious ‘party’, who refused his name and business, was waiting to see me. George, though young in years, was not without experience in the class of callers who are objects of distrust and perturbation to impecunious boarders. The Major, for instance, was never at home to anyone on any consideration whatever; and George understood that he was entitled to claim a shilling from his master for every obnoxious visitor whom he succeeded in turning away from the premises. Constant practice in this respect had sharpened the lad’s wits, and his warning glance plainly told me that, in his opinion, the person below was a dun.
I descended, however, without the least apprehension on this score, and was confronted in the entrance-hall by a young man, who obsequiously addressed me by name. He handed to me a cheap card, on which was inscribed with many flourishes the distinguished appellation, ‘Mr Farquhar Barrington’. He was a tall, slim, respectable-looking youth, neatly, though somewhat shabbily dressed, with rather prominent features, sandy hair, and a clean-shaven face. Before I could say a word he whispered hastily behind his hand.
‘I have some valuable information of immense importance to you, sir, and must beg for a private interview.’
The man’s manner, rather than his words, vaguely impressed me, and I invited him into the dining-room, which was then unoccupied. All traces of our recent meal had been cleared away, and the long table, denuded of its cloth, was ignominiously displayed in the guise of a series of wide boards, supported by trestles, and sparsely covered with green baize. While I turned up the one dim gas-jet which remained alight, my visitor carefully closed the door behind him, and threaded his way among the scattered chairs to the seat which I indicated by the fireplace.
‘Mr Perkins,’ he said solemnly, ‘permit me to congratulate you.’
‘Why?’ I enquired, staring at him.
‘Because you have only to say a single word to find yourself in possession of a handsome sum of money.’
‘Indeed, how?’ I enquired curiously, but not particularly moved.
‘Never mind how, Mr Perkins. You shall know in one minute. At present nobody in the world knows or suspects but myself.’
This sounded rather startling, and I gazed at him with renewed interest while he sat facing me. He had a thin, curved, hawk-like nose, high cheek-bones, small light blue eyes, deep-set and close together, very thin lips, and a strong lower jaw. His complexion was yellow and freckled, and I now judged him to be considerably older than I had at first supposed. His dress consisted of a long frock-coat, much frayed and worn at the wrists and elbows, a tall hat bronzed with age, trousers with a threadbare pattern, and enormous boots, all bulged and cracked. His linen, what there was of it, was decidedly dingy; round his neck he wore a greasy old silk tie, and his large bony hands were gloveless. Yet, in spite of his unprepossessing exterior, his resolute manner, and the absolute calmness with which he submitted to my scrutiny, impelled a vague respect.
‘You think I’m a beggar or a lunatic, of course,’ he said quietly.
‘I do not recognise your name,’ I said, glancing in perplexity at his card.
‘No, and what is more, you do not even know it,’ he replied; and then, in answer to my look of surprise, he added, ‘That is an assumed name. My real name will be forthcoming if we do business; otherwise I prefer to remain, so far as you are concerned, Mr Farquhar Barrington.’
‘You might just as well have called yourself plain John Smith,’ I said, inclined to laugh at the fellow’s cool impudence.
‘First impressions go for something. My appearance, I know, is not in my favour. I assumed a name that might attract,’ he replied, in a matter-of-fact way.
‘How can you expect me to do business, as you call it, if you don’t tell me who and what you are?’ I exclaimed, irritably.
‘What does it matter to you, Mr Perkins, who and what I am?’ he answered, imperturbably. ‘It is much more to the point that I know who and what you are. I don’t want anything from you; on the contrary, I come as a benefactor. If you will sign this, you will never regret it.’
He produced a folded paper as he spoke, and handed it to me. It was a short document, very neatly and formally written in legal phraseology, on a sheet of blue foolscap, with a red seal at the end. I opened it carelessly at first, and then read it through with attention. It was in the form of a bond, by which I undertook, in consideration of certain information, to pay to someone – a blank space was left for the name – one half of any money I might recover by means of such information.
‘Your name is not filled in,’ I remarked, when I had mastered this remarkable production.
‘It shall be filled in when you sign,’ he said, with a laugh.
I read the document again, but with the aid of all the intelligence I could muster, I failed to see anything in it that was not fair and straightforward. It pledged me to nothing except to pay this man half of any money I might receive through his information. It did not bind me to employ him about the business, and it left me entirely free to make use or not of his information, as I pleased.
‘One half seems a considerable pro
portion,’ I said.
‘It is better than nothing,’ replied Barrington, for so I suppose I had better call him. ‘Take time, if you please, for reflection. Do you know of any money due to you from anyone?’
‘No,’ I answered, truthfully.
‘Any expectations? Any rich relatives? Think, Mr Perkins!’
He spoke half mockingly, yet with sufficient earnestness to put me on my guard. I deliberately reflected, but without result, while he sat watching me with admirable self-control.
‘I think you ought to tell me a little more,’ I said at length, rather feebly.
‘Not a word, unless you choose to sign,’ he replied, with quiet determination.
‘Very well,’ I said abruptly, after a further pause, ‘I’ll sign.’
I now know that my decision was very hasty and unwise, but at the time I believed either that Barrington’s boasted information would turn out delusive, or else that it referred to some small unclaimed dividend in a long-forgotten bankruptcy due to a remote ancestor of mine. I had heard of such cases, and of consequent disappointment, but so far as I was concerned, as I expected nothing, I was not uneasy.
‘There seems to be no ink here, and we shall want a witness,’ he remarked coolly, as he spread the document on the table, and screwed together a portable pen which he took from his pocket.
‘What sort of witness?’ I enquired, ringing the bell.
‘Anyone who is intelligent enough to write his name and to prove, if necessary, that you signed the document of your own free will, Mr Perkins,’ said Barrington, testing the nib of the pen on his thumb-nail.
I thought of the lad, George, but, alas it was before the days of School Boards, and I doubted whether he could write; therefore, when he appeared in answer to the bell, I requested him to bring the ink, and to ask Mr Booth, who was in the smoking-room, if he would be good enough to step this way.
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