Liquid Death And Other Stories

by John Russell Fearn

  Liquid Death And Other Stories

  by John Russell Fearn

  Selected and Edited by Philip Harbottle

  "Liquid Death" first published in 1953, as by "Griff." "Death Asks the Question" first published in Thrilling Mystery Stories in 1937. "Foolproof" first published in Vengeance Shorts: Second Selection in 1946. "Beast of the Tarn" first published in Thrilling Mystery Stories in 1937. "Safety in Numbers" copyright (C) 2002 by Philip Harbottle. "Glass Nemesis" first published in Passing Show in 1938. "The Wailing Hybrid" first published in Thrilling Mystery Stories in 1938. "Boomerang" copyright (C) 2002 by Philip Harbottle. "Last Extra" copyright (C) 2002 by Sydney J. Bounds and Philip Harbottle. "The Stain that Grew" first published in Thrilling Mystery Stories in 1938.

  First Printing: July 2002

  INTRODUCING JOHN RUSSELL FEARN'S CRIME & DETECTIVE STORIES

  JOHN RUSSELL FEARN began his writing career as a pioneer exponent of science fiction, appearing in all of the specialist American pulp sf magazines in the early 1930s. Many of the best of these stories have already been republished by Wildside Press, and others are in preparation.

  However, Fearn was also a prolific and successful writer in other genres, especially in the field of crime and detective fiction.

  As early as 1938, he successfully introduced a new kind of science fiction under the pseudonym of "Thornton Ayre". The new technique (which Fearn called 'webwork') involved connecting seemingly unrelated elements together to unravel a mystery. The method was already well known in detective fiction, the leading exponent at that time being Harry Stephen Keeler.

  At the same time, Fearn also began writing crime and mystery stories for the pulp magazines, and his first stories appeared in Thrilling Mystery Stories. This magazine is now a rare and valuable collector's item, and few modern readers will have seen copies. This present collection contains several of his short stories and novelettes from Thrilling Mystery Stories, here reprinted for the very first time. They will surprise and delight fans of the author and crime buffs alike.

  By 1939, Fearn was expressing to friends his liking for crime mysteries, in preference to sf writing, but commercial exigencies dictated that, as a full time writer, he had to continue to concentrate more on science fiction during the early years of the war.

  By the mid 1940s, however, Fearn was beginning to raise his sights from the pulp magazines, and he began to move into new book-length markets. Over the next few years, Fearn wrote numerous novels for English hardcover and paperback book publishers—science fiction, westerns, and detective fiction. His most successful detective creations (writing as "John Slate" and "Hugo Blayn" respectively) were "Maria Black" and "Dr. Carruthers" who appeared in several novels. The Slate and Blayn novels are classics of the 'locked room' and 'impossible crime' genres. But there were many equally brilliant one-off crime novels written under other names, including "Thornton Ayre" and "Frank Russell", many of which appeared in the Canadian magazine, the Toronto Star Weekly. The magazine printed a complete novel every Saturday in a tabloid newspaper format, as its "Novel of the Week." The Star Weekly was a prestige market, and regularly attracted stories by the likes of Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Wilson Tucker, Roy Vickers, and one of the greatest writers of detective fiction, John Dickson Carr.

  Fearn was a great fan of Carr's work, and his own crime stories contain similar ingredients: a horrifying and baffling murder, locked rooms, and cerebral detection employing both scientific methods and psychological insights into the criminal mind, with a liberal sprinkling of dry humour. Because most of Fearn's detective fiction appeared under pseudonyms, which at the time were not known to be his, it has not achieved the same attention as his science fiction, but the situation is beginning to change.

  Since Fearn's death in 1960, I have been working ceaselessly to uncover all of his pseudonyms, and to arrange for the republication of his best stories. The first substantial academic recognition for his detective fiction came with the publication of Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1979; revised, 1991.)

  Adey wrote that, during and after the war, "the one writer who continued to concentrate his powers almost exclusively on impossible crime novels was John Dickson Carr. The only other author who produced them in any quantity was John Russell Fearn and he used half a dozen different names and as many publishers." However, Adey's pioneering work listed only a few of Fearn's many crime stories, some of which I have only identified and discovered in recent years.

  During the last dozen years of her life, I had acted for Fearn's widow, Carrie. As her literary agent, I arranged for the reprinting of many of Fearn's "known" stories, but it was only after she died that I made an amazing discovery.

  My contact with her had arisen in 1970 when, as editor of the British sf magazine Vision of Tomorrow, I was in regular contact with Walter Gillings, who had earlier edited the pioneering British magazines Tales of Wonder and Fantasy. Gillings had discovered a number of Fearn sf mss still in his possession; they had been accepted years before but had remained unpublished when wartime conditions forced the magazines to fold. He passed them on to me, and I arranged for their use in Vision of Tomorrow, after first purchasing the rights from Mrs. Fearn, whom I had discovered was still living at the Blackpool home she had shared with her husband. She invited my wife and I to visit her, in order to complete the transaction personally.

  Anxious to help her further, I implored her to search amongst Fearn's papers to see if he had left any other unpublished sf mss, which I would arrange to purchase on my next visit in a few weeks' time.

  When I called again, it was to find Mrs. Fearn visibly distressed. She handed me a small cache of mss, insisting "that was all there was." She confided in me her dread of entering Fearn's writing study because of the poignant memories it evoked. I learned, in fact, that she had not been able to bring herself to enter the room since his death ten year's before. Not wanting to disappoint me, she had steeled herself to make a special effort. Naturally, I respected her feelings; thereafter the subject of the study and any mss it may have contained was never mentioned between us. And I had no reason to believe that it actually contained any further mss, other than those she had given me. Mrs. Fearn became a good friend of my wife and myself, and when our daughter Claire was born in 1972, we made frequent holiday visits. Childless herself, she was delighted to become Claire's honorary "Auntie."

  It was only after her death in 1982, that I learned from her solicitor that following Claire's birth in 1972, Mrs. Fearn had added a codicil to her will, bequeathing all Fearn's copyrights to me. I contacted her executor, who allowed me access to Fearn's study, in order to salvage any books and papers it might contain.

  I found the room to be a veritable Aladdin's Cave of mss, books, and cans of cinema films, written and produced by Fearn himself, using amateur and semi-professional actors and actress friends. Many exciting literary discoveries were made, including many unpublished western, science fiction and detective novels and short stories.

  My elation at these discoveries was tempered with a great sadness. Her devotion to her husband's memory had deprived Mrs. Fearn of the considerable sums I would have paid her back in 1970 for all of the additional sf mss, whilst as her literary agent I could have also tried to place the additional western and detective material with other publishers. It was money she sorely needed, but money did not signify in her thoughts and memories. And, in fact, I believe she may well have acted deliberately, in order to benefit my daughter and myself after her death.

  Liquid Death and Other Stories is the first of a projected series of new books—exclusive to Wildside Press—that will present the best of Fearn's detecti
ve fiction for a new generation of readers, both classic reprints (appearing for the first time under his own name) together with entirely new "lost" stories appearing for the very first time. It is a series no discerning reader of detective fiction will want to miss, and will be welcomed by all fans of the author.

  —Philip Harbottle

  Wallsend, June 2001

  LIQUID DEATH

  I

  THE MAN IN the cloth cap, coarse flannel shirt, and corduroy trousers tied just below the knee with string was obviously a laborer. For this very reason he looked distinctly incongruous as he waited outside the polished green door of a typical London house of the Georgian period. After his ringing at the bell there was a long interval, then the door opened and a manservant gazed out into the late summer afternoon in obvious horror.

  "Tradesmen's entrance is at the rear," he stated briefly. "On your way, my man."

  "I would if I wus a tradesman—but I'm not." The man gave a broad grin. "Nick Gregson's the name, pal. I want to see the guv'nor."

  "You cannot possibly mean…"

  "I mean Henry Garside, the bloke as owns them 'ouses down Stepney way. The ones that's bein' demolished now."

  The manservant frowned and then seemed to recollect something. "Am I to understand you are connected with the demolition firm, Mr.—er—Gregson?"

  "Right, pal. And I must see the guv. It's important."

  The manservant's nostrils distended. "I will enquire if the master is at home. Wait there."

  The laborer shrugged and took a firmer hold of the stiff brown paper parcel he was hugging. Or rather, it was dirty yellow, splashed with whitewash, and advertised a famous cement. Plainly it had been picked up on the demolition site.

  "This way," the manservant directed coldly re-appearing. "And wipe those boots, if you don't mind."

  Nick Gregson humbly did as ordered and then took off his cap from lank hair as he followed the majestic being across a somber, spotless hall to a nearby door. Once beyond it, Nick found himself facing a tubby, middle-aged man in a velvet smoking jacket, reclining in a deep armchair beside the fire. Having evidently been prewarned as to the appearance of his visitor, he expressed no surprise as he viewed him.

  "Well, my man? And what can I do for you? Excuse my not asking you to sit down. Those working clothes are hardly…"

  "Aw, that's all right, guv'nor. This won't take long."

  Gregson brought the dirty paper bag more clearly into view and was about to dump it on the Shereton occasional table when a howl of protest stopped him.

  "Not on your life, man! Don't you dare dump anything on that table! Come to the point, can't you?"

  "All right. See this bag? In it there's five hundred sovereigns! Queen Victoria, from the look of 'em."

  "Why come to me?" Henry Garside's pink face was impatient.

  "Because I thought as 'ow you might like to buy 'em. Nice price for sovereigns these days, guv'nor. Around forty-five quid a sov. isn't it?"

  "I'm not certain of the exact market value. And I repeat—why come to me? Why don't you take them to a pawnbroker, or somebody?"

  "Because a bloke like me might get looked at, with five 'undred sovereigns! 'Sides, there's a reason why I've come to you. I found these this afternoon in an old tin box in number six, Fordney Crescent, one of them rows of 'ouses of yours which we're wreckin'. I s'pose I should've let the foreman know about it, but instead, I got to thinkin'. I found 'em, and there's some sort of law about buried treasure that lets a man keep what he finds—or a part of it, or summat."

  Garside's impatience had gone. He was looking astonished instead. After thinking for a moment he took up a newspaper from the stand beside him and spread it over his immaculate trousers.

  "Come over here, my man. Let me see some of those coins."

  Nick Gregson moved swiftly and, from the cement bag, poured about a score of the old, stained coins on to the newspaper. Garside picked several of them up in turn, examined them intently, and finally began to nod his bald head slowly back and forth.

  "Mmm, seems little doubt about it, my man. So you found them in number six, Fordney Crescent, did you? Whereabouts?"

  "Under the ground floor—but I kept it to meself."

  "Very illegal of you—but I'm damned if I blame you for that! Let me see, now; my tenant at number six was—" Garside mused with his mouth open. "Oh, yes, Mrs. Brice. The little widow with hardly a penny to her name. Dead now, though. No guarantee the sovereigns were hers, anyway. So you came to hand them over to me? That was very honest of you, Mr. Gregson. To be strictly accurate, the police should be told."

  The laborer's expression changed. "Now, wait a minute, guv. I didn't come to give 'em to you. I want to sell 'em. More chance of doing it to you than to a pop-shop. Somebody might try an' say I pinched 'em. Five hundred sovs. take a lot of explaining."

  "On my property, Mr. Gregson—therefore I call them mine."

  "Findings keepings, I say."

  "No doubt…" Garside's face melted slowly into a grin. "However, I'm not a hard man and you are obviously far more in need of money than I am. I'll buy them from you—at twenty-two pounds fifty a sovereign."

  Gregson glared. "What in hell sort uv a bargain is that? These is worth forty-five pounds each—or near it."

  "Exactly. Hence the fifty-fifty. You hardly expect me to pay market value, do you? What would I get out of it?"

  "Same's you've paid me! Fair's fair, I say."

  The smile on Garside's cherubic faded again. "Better take my offer, Mr. Gregson. If I withdraw it, I can claim all these, and you'll get nothing. You seem good at sayings; you would do well to remember one about looking a gift horse in the mouth."

  Gregson scowled in thought and rubbed the back of his weather-beaten neck. Then, at last, he sighed.

  "Okay—I'll take it. I'll probably get nothing the other way. Let's see—that's twenty-two pounds fifty, five hundred times, and…" he broke off, floundering.

  "Eleven thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds, my man, and consider yourself well paid. Let me see them all. Here—put them on the rug."

  Garside spread the newspaper at his feet and emptied the dirty bag over it. For the next twenty minutes Garside was busy counting and re-counting, then at last he struggled from his knees to his feet and lumbered across to a wall safe.

  "Naturally, you'll prefer cash?" he asked over his shoulder.

  "I ain't got no blasted bank account, if that's what you mean."

  "Quite so." From the safe Garside took the required amount in high denomination notes and handed them over. Gregson went through them steadily with a dirty thumb and forefinger, and finally he nodded.

  "Thanks, guv. Not what I expected, but it'll have to do."

  "And should you find any more sovereigns on my property in the course of its demolishing, we can perhaps do further business, my friend. Good day to you."

  Gregson nodded and took his departure at the side of the scandalized manservant—and it was about this time that a similar scene to the Gregson-Garsideperformance was being enacted in the Soho district; and this time, the setting was Reuben Goldstein's, the pawnbroker.

  Reuben Goldstein was no longer a young man. His eyes had no longer their intense keenness. He did not hear so well any more, either—but there was not much he missed. And he watched with interest as two customers arrived together almost at closing time. One was a man of apparent age—early eighties at least—and with him was a powerful young man who proudly carried a wooden box on one broad shoulder. Plainly it was heavy, for he dropped it with considerable force on the counter and then mopped his sharp-featured face.

  "Good evening, gentlemen." Goldstein looked from one to the other and rubbed his gnarled hands together.

  "And vot is your pleasure?"

  The elderly man, impeccably dressed, raised his malacea cane briefly. "Open it up, Harry. Let him see."

  "Okay, grandpa." The young man pulled a small screwdriver from his pocket, removed three screws from
the box's wooden lid, then heaved it up on hinges. The pawnbroker gazed fixedly, much as Edmond Dantes must have done when he first beheld the treasure of Monte Cristo.

  "Sovereigns!" he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "I never saw so many sovereigns all at vun time!"

  "Mr. Goldstein, there are five thousand sovereigns there!" The elderly man spoke with firm, cultured quietness. "The collection of a lifetime. I am eighty-six years of age, and have spent my life collecting sovereigns as a hobby. Now I know I have not much longer to go, I am selling my possessions, and that naturally includes these. I assume you are interested? My grandson here remarked that you are one of the fairest dealers in this region."

  "I always give a square deal!" Goldstein looked very resolute about it, his hooked nose nearly touching his chin. "But five t'ousand! That is a lot of gold."

  "Course it is! I wouldn't be wasting my time on trifles, believe me. It isn't money I need; just commonsense value for my offspring. Take them—take them. Look at them. Test them."

  Goldstein scooped up a handful of the coins and disappeared to mysterious regions at the shop's rear. The young man and the elderly man exchanged glances and waited. Then, at length, Goldstein came back.

  "Obviously, I cannot take time to count five t'ousand coins, so I…"

  "There are five thousand, Mr. Goldstein. You have my word on that. And, let me tell you, it has never been broken."

  "I vould not doubt it for a moment—not for a moment. And I vould like to do business. These sovereigns I have tested are perfect—real gold."

  The elderly man looked indignant. "Did you think they were brass?"

  "I am a business man," Goldstein said solemnly. "I have to weigh gold and test it with acid. If those two tests are right, then I am glad. But to count and test five t'ousand of them is a long job. Ve can do business," he finished firmly, "if you trust me with these sovereigns until this time tomorrow night."