Bill Pronzini - Tales Of Mystery

TALES OF

MYSTERY

Edited by BILL PRONZINI

BONANZA BOOKS

New York

Copyright 1983 by Bill Pronzini

All rights reserved.

This 1986 edition is published by Bonanza Books, distributed by Crown Publishers, Inc., by arrangement with Arbor House.

Originally published, in a slightly different form, as The Arbor House Treasury of Detective & Mystery Stones from the Great Pulps.

Printed and Bound in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Arbor House treasury of detective and mystery stories from the great pulps. Tales of mystery.

Reprint. Originally published: Arbor House treasury of detective and mystery stories from the great pulps. New York : Arbor House, c1983.

1. Detective and mystery stories, American. 2. American fiction-20th century. I. Pronzini, Bill. II. Title.

PS648.D4A68 1986813'.0872'0886-9750

ISBN 0-517-61819-2

h g f e d c b a

CONTENTS

Introduction

Arson Plus

DASHIELL HAMMETT

Knights of the Open Palm

CARROLL JOHN DALY

The Mopper-Up

HORACE MCCOY

Red Pavement

FREDERICK NEBEL

Parlor Trick

PAUL CAIN

The Living Lie Down with the Dead

CORNELL WOOLRICH

Holocaust House

NORBERT DAVIS

Blue Murder

FREDRIC BROWN

Hear That Mournful Sound

DANE GREGORY

The Day Nobody Died

D. L. CHAMPION

Fatal Accident

JOHN D. MACDONALD

See No Evil

WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT

Crime of Omission

JOHN D. MACDONALD

The Girl in the Golden Cage

JOHN JAKES * 306

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

"Arson Plus," by Dashiell Hammett. Copyright 1923 by Popular Publications, Inc.; renewed 1950 by the Estate of Dashiell Hammett. First published in Black Mask. Reprinted by permission of the Harold Matson Co., Inc.

"The Mopper-Up," by Horace McCoy. Copyright 1931 by Pro-Distributors Publishing Company, Inc. First published in Black Mask. Reprinted by permission of the Harold Matson Co., Inc.

"Red Pavement," by Frederick Nebel. Copyright 1931 by Pro-Distributors Publishing Company, Inc. First published in Black Mask. Reprinted by permission of Mrs. Dorothy B. Nebel.

"The Living Lie Down with the Dead," by Cornell Woolrich. Copyright 1936 by Popular Publications, Inc.; renewed 1964 by Cornell Woolrich. First published in Dime Detective. Reprinted by permission of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.

"Blue Murder," by Fredric Brown. Copyright 1943 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. First published in The Shadow Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.

"Hear that Mournful Sound," by Dane Gregory. Copyright 1942 by Popular Publications, Inc. First published in Detective Tales as "Lynch-ville Had a Barber." Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Fatal Accident," by John D. MacDonald. Copyright 1948 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.; renewed 1975 by John D. MacDonald Publishing, Inc. First published in The Shadow Mystery Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"See No Evil," by William Campbell Gault. Copyright 1950 by Popular Publications, Inc. First published in New Detective as "See No Murder." Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Crime of Omission," by John D. MacDonald. Copyright 1951 by Popular Publications, Inc.; renewed 1978 by John D. MacDonald Publishing, Inc. First published in Detective Tales. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"The Girl in the Golden Cage," by John Jakes. Copyright 1953 by Standard Magazines, Inc.; renewed 1981 by John Jakes. First published in Thrilling Detective under the pseudonym of Alan Payne. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Knights of the Open Palm," by Carroll John Daly. From The Black Mask, June 1, 1923 issue. Copyright 1923 by Pro-Distributors Publishing Company Inc. Copyright renewed 1950 and Assigned to Fictioneers Inc., a division of Popular Publications Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Blazing Publications Inc., proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"Parlor Trick," by Paul Cain. From Black Mask, July 1932 issue. Copyright 1932 by Pro-Distributors Publishing Company Inc. Copyright renewed 1959 and Assigned to Fictioneers Inc., a division of Popular Publications Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Blazing Publications Inc., proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"Holocaust House," by Norbert Davis. From Argosy, November 16, 1940 and November 23, 1940 issues. Copyright 1940 by Frank A. Munsey Company Inc. Copyright renewed 1967 and Assigned to Popular Publications Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Blazing Publications Inc., proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"The Day Nobody Died," by D.L. Champion. From Dime. Detective February 1944 issue. Copyright 1943 by Popular Publications Inc. Copyright renewed 1970 by Popular Publications Inc. Reprinted by special arrangement with Blazing Publications Inc., proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications Inc. All Rights Reserved.

INTRODUCTION

They were seven by ten inches in size, printed on untrimmed woodpulp paper, with vividly colored enameled covers that, for the most part, depicted scenes of high melodrama. They contained stories just as vividly colored and melodramatic as their artwork, stories of mystery, detection, adventure, war on land and sea and in the air, life in the Old West, modern-day romance, science fiction, fantasy, and sometimes sadistic horror. They were the successors to the dime novels and story weeklies of the ninete enth century, mass-produced to provide cheap reading thrills for imaginative young adults and the so-called "common man," selling for a nickel or a dime in their early years and a quarter in their final ones. They flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s, and at the height of their popularity, in the mid-thirties, there were more than 200 different titles on the newsstands-titles such as Black Mask, Dime Detective, Weird Tales, Thrilling Mystery, Big Chief Western, Crime Busters, Ace G-Man, The Whisperer, Captain Satan, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Pirate Stories, Gangland Stories, Zeppelin Stories.

They were the pulps.

Their "father," the man who invented them, was cold, calculating, and avaricious Frank A. Munsey. (Munsey was widely disliked, especially by those who knew him well. One of the latter group wrote on the occasion of his death in 1925, "Frank Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day the talent of a meat packer, the morals of a money changer and the manner of an undertaker.") Munsey began his publishing empire inauspiciously enough in 1882, while still under thirty, with an eight-page fiction weekly of stories for children called Golden Argosy. It was not a success, and by 1889 he was in a severe financial bind. In an effort to get out of it, he shortened the title of his magazine to Argosy and began filling it with adventure stories for young adults. The revamped publication did well enough to allow him to start another magazine in 1891, this one named after himself. Munsey's, which was an inexpensive, illustrated, general periodical, was a success-so much so that Munsey again revamped Argosy to emulate his namesake in style and content.

It was in the mid-1890s that Munsey had his greatest inspiration: He restructured Argosy for the third time, turning it into an all-fiction magazine, and began publishing it on rough woodpulp paper. His ostensible reason for this move was that he felt any given piece of fiction was more important than what it was printed on, but in reality his reason was that pulp paper was much cheaper. By the turn of the century, Argosy's circulation topped 80,000 copies per month, and a few years later it soared to 250,000 copies. Munsey's profit from the early success of Argosy and Munsey's was estimated at nine million dollars, and he soon upped that figure substantially by introducing The All-Story (later All-Story Weekly) and The Cavalier -capital gains sufficient to warm the icy heart of any skinflint.