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.
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.
"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.
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!
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