Tales of a Steam Hotel: "The Looting of the Specie-Room" (1900) by Cutcliffe Hyne

C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne was a British writer who was "one of the most prolific and successful producers of early magazine SF" and novels like The Lost Continent (1899), but also wrote short stories of action, adventure and mystery – like his once popular Captain Kettle series in Pearson's Magazine. So a fictioneer in the tradition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who himself had a series of pirate stories published in Pearson's Magazine and authored the famous science-fiction novel, The Lost World (1912).

Fittingly, Hyne contributed one of those so-called, turn-of-the-century "Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" in "one of the artfullest pursers in all the Western Ocean passenger trade," Mr. Horrocks.

Mr. Horrocks appeared in a short series of six short stories, "Tales of a Steam Hotel," published between July and December 1900 in, where else, Pearson's Magazine. "The Looting of the Specie-Room" is the first story and introduces Horrocks as the experienced purser on the Liverpool-New York line of the Town S.S. Company. A purser, Horrocks reminds the reader, is not only the man for passengers to throw complaints at or tell them stories of the sea at dinner, but "answerable for a sight more than any Captain that ever wore uniform" – whose latest responsibility is 1.25 million dollars in gold bullion. A precious cargo stored in the ship's specie-room, tucked away under the saloon, walls, floor and roof made of steel plates and an unpickable lock on the door. So "nothing short of dynamite would open that specie-room to a man who hadn't a key." And the person in possession of the only key to the specie-room is Horrocks.

That becomes something of problem when half of the gold bullion disappears from the supposedly securely locked specie-room. So the assumption is Horrocks had been careless enough with the key to allow someone to make an impression of the key and make a duplicate, which places his job in peril. But not to his personal detriment.

"The Looting of the Specie-Room" is very much a first in a series and gives Horrocks a sketchy backstory. Horrocks is a bachelor who was bequeathed a considerable sum from a late uncle, "his wants were small, and his private income covered them easily," who uses his income as a purser to secretly finance a personal charity project. Horrocks created a false identity, Mr. Rocks of Rocks' Orphanage, to provide a home for "those wretched children of the slums." It's their "maintenance and relief" that's really at stake. However, Horrocks is not an entirely saintly character as it's made very clear he supplemented his income on the side by "various well-recognized methods" of the passenger trade.

Another troublesome aspect confusing the matter is the Chief Officer of the Birmingham, Godfrey Clayton, who desperately needed a large sum of money. Horrocks had teased him about the shipment of gold in the specie-room. But when Clayton gets arrested, Horrocks receives a letter begging him to clear up the case or get killed when he gets released.

The solution, or the key towards the solution, is more or less dropped in Horrocks lap. Simply works out the whole scheme from there. You have to keep in mind this short story was published a 124 years ago and barely resembles the traditional, fair play detective story that would emerge over the next twenty, thirty years – an acceptable enough excuse for breaking a few cardinal rules. That being said, I enjoyed Horrocks mildly toying with the idea of false-solutions as he considered and rejected the idea of having been hypnotized or chloroformed in order to make an impression of the key as absurd. No duplicate key was employed in the theft of the gold nor the parcel of diamonds that disappeared under similar circumstances during the voyage to New York.

Not that the actual locked room-trick is blistering original, but how it was done, and where, certainly counts for something this early in the game. The specie-room (SPOILER/ROT13) jnf oernpurq ol perngvat n qbbejnl sebz na nqwnprag pnova hfvat fhpu zbqrea tnqtrgf nf na bkl-ulqebtra synzr srq ol tnf sebz fgrry plyvaqref. Guvf qbbejnl jnf perngrq va n funqbjl cneg bs gur fcrpvr-ebbz naq na nppbzcyvpr (“n pyrire pnecragre”) jbexrq njnl gur genprf yngre jvgu serfu cnaryvat naq cnvag. Lrf, gur fbyhgvba vf cerggl zhpu n frperg rkvg, ohg abg n cer-rkvfgvat bar. Vg unq gb or znqr naq pybfrq ntnva. Fb vg pbzovarq gur neg bs ubhfroernxvat, fnsr penpxvat naq fzhttyvat gb perngr n ybpxrq ebbz gursg naq vzcbffvoyr qvfnccrnenapr bs unys n zvyyvba va tbyq sebz n fuvc. That's not bad at all for a short, borderline detective story about an impossible theft from 1900. You can read story here and judge for yourself.

A note for the curious: "The Looting of the Specie-Room" was adapted for the 1970s TV-series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, but not collected in any of the Rival-themed anthologies. I wonder how this obscure came to their attention. Anyway, "The Looting of the Specie-Room" was collected together with the other five stories in Mr. Horrocks, Purser (1902).

Owl of Darkness (1942) by Max Afford

Owl of Darkness (1942), alternatively published as Fly by Night, is the fourth and penultimate novel in the Jeffrey Blackburn series by Australian playwright and mystery writer, Malcolm Afford – who wrote under the thinly veiled penname "Max Afford." This fourth outing for Jeffrey Blackburn and Chief Inspector Read differs from their previous cases in which they tackled the locked room slaying of a High Court judge (Blood On His Hands, 1936), a seemingly impossible murder staged at a BBC radio studio (The Dead Are Blind, 1937) and strange stabbings at an ancient stone chapel (Death's Mannikins, 1937). Owl of Darkness is a fairly conventional country house mystery, except that the country house of this detective story is being invaded by a pulp-style comic book villain.

Over a two-month period, a character going by the name of "The Owl" exploded into the newspaper headlines following a series of daring robberies. It's not merely the crimes or the "fantastic sobriquet" of The Owl that captured the imagination of both the public and every crime reporter in Britain.

The Owl is not your ordinary housebreaker, but a fully costumed, caped and masked arch-criminal wearing "the wings and false face of an owl" with "two pale, lidless eyes" blazing "above the cruel hooked beak of a nose" – who "could seemingly come and go at will." His arrival is preceded by the hooting of an owl and always leaves behind his calling card reading, "Fly by Night." The Owl's first claim of fame was an attempt to blow up the strong room of a well-known bank to get to a small fortune in bonds. However, the master thief succeeded in stealing Sir Charles Mortlake's famous Cellini Cup from his private museum and grabbed headlines when the Duchess of Doone's had a diamond "snatched from her throat as she sat in her darkened box at Covent Garden." The Owl's latest exploit opened Owl of Darkness as Lady Evelyn Harnett had a valuable necklace stolen after a house party and was nearly caught, but escaped by diving through a window ("...flew through that window... like a bird!").

Chief Inspector Read has everyone breathing down his neck and not amused when Blackburn finally decides to show up, but this reader was amused when Read sat Blackburn down to read him the editorials criticizing his performance ("I don't see you smiling, Mr. Blackburn"). A fun scene followed by the arrival of Miss Elizabeth "Betty" Blaire, "the newspaper woman connected with that murder at the B.B.C.," who has a possible lead on the robberies. Her brother, Edward, is a chemist and researcher who received a generous offer from Sir Anthony Atherton-Wayne to develop an anti-toxic gas. Edward was set up in a cottage on the grounds of Sir Anthony's home, Rookwood Towers, in the village of Tilling. During his experiments, Edward accidentally discovered "a perfect foolproof substitute for petrol" at about one-twentieth its price. Edward wants to sell the formula as his agreement with Sir Anthony is for the development of an anti-toxic gas. Not a petrol replacement. Elizabeth brought along her fiance, Robert Ashton, who's Sir Anthony's private secretary and confirms her story.

So the news of the formula attracts the attention of certain individuals. One shady individual who got wind of the new invention is The Owl and has been sending his visiting cards to Edward with a very clear warning. Give up the formula or die. The Owl has given Edward two more days coinciding with his birthday party. A birthday party extended into a tense, nearly two week siege of Rookwood Towers during which The Owl has a run of the place. And an increasingly harassed Reads insists on keeping everyone at the scene. More on that in a moment. Something else needs to be addressed first.

The Owl is not the only person coming to Rookwood Towers with the intention to get their hands on the formula, legally or otherwise. There's an American representative of an oil company, Charles Todhunter, but the other party bidding against Sir Anthony and Todhunter needs some explaining as it's bound to confuse history savvy readers. Dr. Heinrich Hautmann is a foreign service officer, working for the German Minister of War, who came with his daughter, Elsa, to purchase the petrol formula – which would have been treason in 1942. Just talking business without selling the formula to the German representatives would have been considered treasonous. I found that odd for a mystery published several years deep into World War II. A quick search revealed Owl by Darkness is a novelization of the radio-serial Fly by Night broadcast on Australian radio from April 14 to July 21, 1937. So the story takes place before WWII and explains other apparent irregularities like no mention of the war or Read casually suggesting to someone they take a holiday on the Continent (where, Portugal?). But it could have been stated clearer the story takes place before 1939 to prevent confusion. For example, the chapters all start with the date/day and it needed was adding the year to the date or simply change the nationality of the Hautmanns. Just make them Dutch (Herman Houtman).

Interestingly, the wikipedia page of the radio-serial has a quote from a contemporary critic calling Fly by Night "swift and forceful" with every other minute a new twist, turn of events or surprising developments. Afford carried this successfully over to the fast-paced novelization which dumps a whole bag of genre tropes out over the story. Some incredibly time-worn, but all put to good and effective use. There are one or two quasi-impossible situations like a kidnapping from a locked, top floor bedroom, but not substantial enough to use the "locked room mysteries" tag on this review. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed how Afford made use of the rabbit warren of secret passageways, hidden doors and underground burial vaults perfectly suited for exploration, shenanigans and staging a murder or two. Strange, disfigured hands open hidden panels to grab at people and not everyone might who they claim to be or willing to tell everything they know. Not to mention a dash of blackmail, a disappearing letter, romance and the dawning realization The Owl could possibly be a resident or guest of Rookwood Towers.

Blackburn himself observes it "smacked too much of melodrama," but the whole case is melodrama personified with its eccentric young inventor, revolutionary formula and a masked arch-criminal running around the place – unimpeded by the heavy police presence. So, as far as the plot-ingredients and tropes are concerned, Owl of Darkness is not terribly original outside of the main plot-thread of the titular criminal. That being said, it's impressive Afford carted out all these old, hoary tropes and squeezed a relentlessly amusing country house caper out of them. Unironically throwing a costumed super villain from the pulps and comics into the mix is just ballsy. A character so absurd in a 1940s Golden Age mystery, it normally would have reduced any other mystery to ranks of a genre curiosity. Afford got away with it and written something a little more than a genre curiosity. Owl of Darkness could even been a minor classic had the main plot-thread, namely the identity and motives of The Owl, not been one of the most telegraphed solutions I've come across in a classic mystery novel.

I wish it was just me being in rare form as an armchair detective as my razor sharp mind cut through the intricate design of the plot, like a katana through silk, but Afford banks on (SPOILER/ROT13) gur ernqre orvat anvir naq arire nfxvat gur boivbhf dhrfgvba: ubj yrtvg vf guvf fhccbfrq eribyhgvbanel sbezhyn sbe n purnc, rnfvyl cebqhprq fhofgvghgr sbe beqvanel crgeby. Bapr lbh xabj jurer, be engure gb jubz, gb ybbx, gur cybg cenpgvpnyyl haeniryf vgfrys. I was also suspicious (ROT13) Rqjneq jnf qrcvpgrq fbzrjung bjyvfu jvgu oyvaxvat rlrf oruvaq guvpx yrafrq fcrpgnpyrf naq fhfcrpgrq ur pubfr gur bjy crefban gb vapbecbengr uvf tynffrf vagb gur pbfghzr, but I obviously gave that aspect too much thought.

So not the best or most challenging detective novel written during the WWII years, but certainly one of the most striking country house mysteries of the Golden Age. More importantly, it's never boring as the characters and plot developments ensure there's never a dull moment between chapters. I think detective fans with a soft spot for the gentlemen thieves and colorful criminals of the rogue branch of the genre will get the most out of this, especially fans of the Kaito KID capers from Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed series. It's not everyday you such a character let loose in a vintage country house mystery.

The Communicating Door and Other Stories (1923) by Wadsworth Camp

Wadsworth Camp was an American reporter, playwright and a noteworthy, often overlooked mystery writer from the 1910s, when the genre began to gradually move away from the Doylean era and rivals of Sherlock Holmes, who wrote most of his detective novels during the First World War – which were lean years for the genre. During those war years, Camp produced several, what can be called, proto-Golden Age mysteries. Similar to Frederic Arnold Kummer's The Green God (1911) and Isabel Ostrander's The Clue in the Air (1917), Camp's House of Fear (1916) and The Abandoned Room (1917) are in many ways ahead of their time, but, in other ways, hopelessly chained to their period. A reminder that the detective story, as we have come to know it today, was still very much a work-in-progress during the 1910s and '20s.

However, the best of these early, transitional mysteries (not penned by G.K. Chesterton or R. Austin Freeman) aren't without (historical) interest or completely lacking as detective novels. Camp is one of those fascinating, early pre-GAD mystery writers whose work read like a direct ancestor of John Dickson Carr, Hake Talbot and Paul Halter.

House of Fear takes place in an abandoned, decaying and reputedly haunted theater where the resident ghost of a dead actor prefers to play his part to empty seats, but gets disturbed when a theatrical producer wants to revive it – starting a procession impossible incidents and unnatural deaths. The Abandoned Room is thick with atmosphere reminiscent of Talbot's The Hangman's Handyman (1942) and Rim of the Pit (1944) with the dead ceasing to be dead upon being touched and other apparently supernatural happenings. Camp, of course, never reached their heights as a mystery writer, but liked them enough to seek out more. Camp was not the most prolific of mystery writers with choices being limited to Sinister Island (1915) and a collection of short stories.

The Communicating Door and Other Stories (1923) is listed online as a collection of seven ghost stories and the reason why I didn't give it much attention, until a reliable source identified them as detective stories. Several sounded promising enough. So on the big pile it went.

Just one more thing before delving into this collection... it takes a few stories to get to the really good stuff. So bear with me.

The collections opens with "The Communicating Door," originally published in the September 15, 1913, publication of The Popular Magazine, which can probably be blamed for getting the collection tagged as a bundle of ghost stories. Dawson Roberts, a young lawyer, is determined to rescue Evangeline Ashley from her husband, John Ashley, but he has tucked her away in Ashley House – a large, rambling place in the remote parts of northern Florida. Roberts is not deterred and travels to Florida to find a pallid, haggard and ghost haunted Evangeline at Ashley House. She only want to go with him, if he can proves she has only been imagining things ("...find a natural explanation"). This involves a ghost story surrounding one of her husbands long-dead ancestors and a communicating door locked, and rusted, shut for the better part of a century. "The Communicating Door" reads like the setup of one of Camp's locked room novels and concludes with several seemingly impossible incidents and an unnatural death. Camp impressively gives answers in short order, "everything can be normally explained," but leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the events have a natural or supernatural explanation. A short story with timely charm, even if it was already a good decade out-of-date by 1913.

A note for the curious: "The Communicating Door" is another example of Camp's detective fiction being a direct ancestor of Carr. Carr himself successfully stitched together the detective and ghost story in his short story "Blind Man's Hood" (1934) and the standalone novel The Burning Court (1937).

"Hate," originally published in the April 3, 1920, publication of Collier's and is a departure from Camp's usual murders in old, decaying haunted building to tell a crime story of the Roaring Twenties. David Hume and Edward Felton, "rival proprietors of secret and luxurious gambling houses," having being going at it over a beautiful chores girl, Baby Lennox. The so-called "politer underworld" agreed one would inevitably put the other out of the way. Hume fires the first proverbial shots by pulling a dirty trick on Felton placing him in jail, but bail is posted and Felton is determined to kill Hume. Camp's series-detective, Jim Garth, is present to see the first attempt fail and hear Hume promise, "when you get too much for me I won't try any cheap gun play" ("the cops will only wonder at the beautiful floral offering I'll send for your funeral..."). Felton thinks that's a splendid idea and Hume is found the next day gassed to death in his room. A murder-disguised-as-suicide with a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing towards Felton, but the courtroom wizardry of a young, hungry prosecutor secured a conviction – sending Felton to the death house to be electrocuted. After the verdict, the prosecutor begins to second guess himself and begs Garth to find out if he send the right man to the chair.

Right up until the end, "Hate" is not a bad 1920s crime story with a reverse take on the locked room mystery ("...suicides by gas, as a rule, lock their doors and are content without such extras as chloroform") and some courtroom dramatics, but the conclusion is a muddled, open-ended mess. The whole story is concerned with getting a confession from Felton, whether he's guilty or not and never bothers with the truth. Did he kill Hume or was it somebody else? Camp never gives an answer while an obvious solution is staring everyone in the face. Hume was already dying from an incurable disease. Everything suggested to me Hume killed himself and left behind evidence of murder to frame Felton, but botched it as the evidence under normal circumstances would never have resulted in a guilty verdict or even get to trial. Only a young, hungry prosecutor determined to make a name for himself ensured the plan worked. That would given the story a pitch-black ending as the prosecution hammered on "this revolting idea of the murder of a dying man to satisfy an evil vengeance before nature could interfere." So this story can be filed under "Missed Opportunities."

"The Dangerous Tavern," originally published in the July 24, 1920, publication of Collier's, hands Jim Garth "one of the queerest cases" of his career. A young, barefoot, half-dressed woman was found nearly frozen to death on a country road near a place called Newtown. The trail leads Garth to a remote, deserted and inhospitable tavern where he engages in a nighttime battle of cat-and-mouse with several dangerous criminals who don't shy away from murder. A fun, lively gangster story, but not really my thing.

"The Haunted House," originally published in the January 8, 1921, publication of Collier's, is the first truly good story from this collection. Jim Garth is asked by Simon Allen, an ex-poet, to come to the lonely village of Ardell to prove he's not the victim of self-hallucination. Simon lost his wife three years ago and, ever since, "the house has been full of Helen" and her presence is beginning to take a toll on his sister – who lives in the house with their invalided father. Simon knew Helen was unhappy in Ardell and longed for the city, which is why he's guilt ridden over her death and refuses to live in the house. Whenever he has to stay the night, Helen never fails to put in a ghostly appearance. So what's behind these haunting, domestic events? Garth has to take on the role of John Bell instead of Sherlock Holmes to get to the bottom of this case, which leads him down the dark, gloomy family vault. A very nicely-done, well-handled surprise is waiting for both Garth and the reader. Not to mention a good, not wholly unoriginal solution that wouldn't be out-of-place in a detective story from 1931.

So an excellent short story all around and, together with House of Fear and a short story later in this collection, Camp's best to the early Golden Age detective story. "The Haunted House" is another example of how Camp reminds of Carr. This time, the story recalled my favorite radio-play by Carr, "The Dead Sleep Lightly" (1942), which has one of my favorite lines, "but the dead sleep lightly... and they can be lonely too." Camp is a bit more wordy than Carr, but "Helen's only lonely... she wants company" ("it's wicked of you to be afraid of her") and "you wouldn't let her go when she was alive, Simon, you can't be cross with her for staying now that she's dead" landed just the same. I don't think Camp has ever been mentioned as a possible influence before, but wouldn't be surprised if a young Carr had read Camp's novels and short stories.

For example, "Defiance," published in the December 24, 1921, publication of Collier's, is another short story full with Carrian vibes and the damned cussedness of all things general – especially the setup. Dr. Jimmy Wilmot is visited one evening Stacy Baldwin, a young scoundrel, who has a bullet wound and a strange story to tell. When he arrived home that evening, someone was hiding behind the curtains with a revolver and fired a shot, but Baldwin carries a loaded cane and struck the arm behind the flash ("...if I didn't break a bone I gave a beastly bruise"). So he'll be on the look out for anyone with his arm in a sling. At the same time another patient arrives. A veiled woman with a beastly bruise on her arm and circumstances lead the doctor to discovering her identity, Anna Baldwin. The wife of Stacy Baldwin. What's worse, Dr. Wilmost has always loved Anna. Now he had unwittingly "delivered her helpless into the hands of her vicious husband." I don't Camp pulls it off as good as Carr would have done, but still a pretty solid, early Golden Age detective story from a writer who often appears to belong to a different era.

No original publication date or magazine appearance is known for the next story, "Open Evidence" (1923?), which could mean it was previously published under a different title or this is its first appearance in print. But whatever the case may be, it's unjustly forgotten, overlooked short story. Camp's best piece of detective fiction. A fully-fledged, Golden Age locked room mystery complete with false-solutions and a detective anticipating both Philo Vance and Ellery Queen. More importantly, the solution might be a first. I'll get to that in a minute.

The story takes place not in an old, dark and decaying building, but on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue office building where a writer, named Hudson, is kept from his work by the telephone ringing in the doctor's office next door. And it has been going on for twenty minutes. So goes to the janitor to complain, but, when he looks through the mail slot, they start to break down the door. They find the doctor lying on the floor, stabbed with one of his own scalpels, but the door is locked and bolted on the inside. However, the connecting door opens into Hudson's tiny workroom and only he knows nobody left through that door. Something that looks very suspicious and immediately calls in the help of a private investigator, Parsons, who looks more like a dandy than a private detective. Parsons draws up two dummy cases before revealing the real murderer and locked room-trick ("I will show you a more obvious exit"). That locked room-trick has, as of now, some historical significance (SPOILER/ROT13): n dhrfgvba nebfr fbzr lrnef ntb ubj bevtvany gur fbyhgvba gb gur frpbaq vzcbffvoyr zheqre va serrzna jvyyf pebsgf fhqqra qrngu jnf va avargrra guvegl-gjb, juvpu unf fvapr orpbzr fbzrguvat bs na byq qbqtr. Vg srryf yvxr vg zhfg unir orra hfrq orsber fhqqra qrngu, ohg abobql pbhyq pbzr hc jvgu na rneyvre rknzcyr. Ubjrire, V abgrq ng gur gvzr na rneyvre rknzcyr, be gjb, cebonoyl rkvfgf va na bofpher fubeg fgbel sebz gur gjragvrf. V guvax guvf bar dhnyvsvrf. Gur gevpx vf nqzvggrqyl n ybat-jnl-ebhaq irefvba bs gur gevpx, ohg abg gbb qvssrerag naq npuvrirf gur fnzr rssrpg (zheqrere fghzoyvat vagb gur ebbz nsgre gur ybpxrq qbbe vf oebxra bcra). So, you anthologists out there, take note of this unjustly overlooked locked room treasure from the early Golden Age. Same goes for Max Rittenberg's "The Invisible Bullet" (1914) and Laurence Clarke's "Flashlights" (1918).

The seventh and final story, "The Obscure Move," was originally published in the May, 1915, issue of Adventure and is a fun, lighthearted and warm story of crime and adventure. Morgan is a successful private detective, "commonsense and a sense of humor were his own stock in trade," who specialized in tracking down swindlers. The latest crook he's hunting down is a man named Duncan, of the Duncan Investment Company, who had fled with large sums of investment money. Duncan "revealed the attributes of an eel" as he keeps dodging Morgan, while the pursuing Morgan forces Duncan to turn in his tracks several times. A cat-and-mouse chase leading to a logging camp in Florida where they both get lost in the swamps. So they have to survive together, until they can find their way back to the camp. Such an ordeal allows for some misplaced sympathy to grow on Margon's part for someone who ruined numerous people, but not a bad story to round out this collection.

The Communicating Door and Other Stories is the mixed bag of tricks to be expected from an obscure, 1920s collection of only seven short stories, but here it can be put down to personal taste. Not a the lack of quality. "The Haunted House" and "Open Evidence" are the standouts of the collection and my personal favorites with "Defiance" following behind at a distance. "The Dangerous Tavern" and "The Obscure Move" are both well written, but not for me. Only the first two stories, "The Communicating Door" and "Hate," came up short, but even they had their moments. Not to be overlooked, the best stories showed Camp was not hopelessly shackled to the turn-of-the-century period of the genre and could write fully-fledged, Golden Age mysteries. And had he continued to write stories like "Open Evidence," Camp would not have been half as obscure as he's today. Very much worth a look!