"Something
terrible lay that way. It was my business to find out what it was."
- Professor
Challenger (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, 1912)
Max
Rittenberg was an Australian-born author of German-Lithuanian
extraction who studied science and medicine in Cambridge, England,
which briefly secured him a teaching post in South Africa – before
returning and settling down in England.
In
1907, Rittenberg launched a magazine, titled The Organizing,
aimed "at advising businesses how to operate more efficiently."
Several of his earliest published work, such as How to Compose
Business Letters (1909), concern this very subject, but what's of
interest to us is the period between 1911 and 1915. A brief period in
Rittenberg's career when he tried his hands at writing fiction and
created a pair of consulting detectives of a scientific bend, Dr.
Xavier Wycherley and Professor Magnum.
Some
of the short stories about Dr. Wycherley were reworked and published
as a full-length novel, The Mind-Reader (1913), but the
seventeen recorded cases about Professor Magnum were all but
forgotten after their initial magazine appearances – even
Rittenberg's children were completely unaware of their existence.
This series may have continued to languish in literary limbo if it
weren't for the efforts of anthologist extraordinaire, Mike
Ashley.
Ashley
has done a lot to bring these transitional detective stories, between
the Doylean Era and the Golden Age, back under everyone's attention.
One of the earliest stories from the Prof. Magnum series, "The
Mystery of the Sevenoaks Tunnel," was republished in The Mammoth
Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries (2006) and he
contributed a piece, entitled "The Strange Case of Max Rittenberg,"
to Mysteries Unlocked: Essays in Honor of Douglas A. Greene
(2014). So this put Rittenberg and his work back on the radar of many
mystery enthusiasts, which lead to the inevitable reprint of all his
work.
A
small, independent publishing outfit, Coachwhip
Books, republished The Mind-Reader back in 2011 as a
twofer volume with Gelett
Burgess' Astro, the Master of Mysteries (2012). Last year,
they gathered all of the Professor Magnum and published them as The
Invisible Bullet and Other Strange Cases of Magnum, Scientific
Consultant (2016). Of course, Ashley introduced this volume of
short stories and gives a lot of background information on both
Rittenberg's (family) life and short-lived career as a crime-writer.
So, I recommend you read his introduction if you want to learn more
about the author of these stories.
Before
plunging into this volume, I should describe the protagonist of these
stories, Professor Magnum, who's basically a Professor
Challenger-type of character (see cover illustration) that took a
stab at Sherlock Holmes' profession. A bearded, scientific
consultant, whose "manner was brusque and rough-edged to the
point of boorishness," which often results in him yelling "rubbish" at people who uttered something he deemed
nonsensical – which is only accepted because he gets results. They
also accept his steep fees for this very reason. Magnum is assisted
by a young Welshman and analytical genius, Ivor Meredith, who suffers
from a crippling shyness where the opposite sex is concerned. He
plays a vital role in one of the stories, but more about that latter.
 |
| Max Rittenberg's comeback |
I'll
try to keep the descriptions and commentary on the stories as short
and concise as possible, because, as you probably know by now, my
reviews of short
story collections tend to expand faster than German territory
during the 1930s.
The
first story, "The Mystery of the Sevenoaks Tunnel," was
originally published in The London Magazine in October 1913,
which concerns the questionable circumstances surrounding the death
of Mr. Abel Jonasson. Apparently, he had fallen, or jumped, from a
speeding train when he was all alone in a second-class compartment,
but trouble arises for a family member when the insurance company
flatly refuses to cough up the insurance money – claiming their
client took his own life and they fell back on the suicide clause.
Magnum wrangles a very Doylean explanation from such clues "a
phial of atoxyl" found in the dead man's pocket and gives a
delightful demonstration to the representative of the insurance
company how a man could have been driven from a closed railway
compartment.
Note:
this story only deals with the how of the crime and leaves as the
questions, of the who and why, dangling in the wind. It's (strongly)
hinted at, but not resolved.
"The
Queer Case of the Cyanogen Poisoning" appeared as "The Cyanogen
Affair" in Blue Book, October 1913, and has Professor Magnum
and Meredith investigating a mass poisoning at the family residence
of Sir Julian Boyd. All of the family members suffer from severe
gastric pains, but every means of administrating poison to the family
has been eliminated and nothing was found to be contaminated or laced
with poison. So the family temporarily abandon the house as Magnum,
while helping himself to "a brace of fat and moneyed-looking
cigars," grapples with the problem in the library. It's an OK
story that the observant reader can partially solve with some
semi-educated guesswork.
The
third story of the lot, "The Bond Street Poisoning Bureau," was
published simultaneously in The London Magazine and Blue
Book of December 1913, which is a fairly typical pulp-ish,
melodramatic thriller that were common at the time – coming with a
lurid illustration of the gun-toting villain with a miner's helmet.
The villain in question is Kahmos, "the poison-merchant,"
who presents himself as a crystal-gazer and clairvoyant, but his
actual profession is selling instructions for murder. A formidable
opponent for someone like Magnum, but, personally, I do not really
care for these kind of stories.
Next
up, "The Mystery of the Vanishing Gold" originally appeared in
the January, 1914 issue of The London Magazine and concerns
the impossible disappearance of "about twenty thousand pounds'
worth of gold," but not in the way you might think. A two-horse
lorry, accompanied by several bank detectives, accompanied a cargo of
gold ingots from the docks to the Bank of England. The gold was
weighted at the docks, but, upon their arrival at the bank, they had
lost in both weight and value! Magnum figures out this trick was
accomplished by combining modern science with some old-fashioned
skullduggery.
"The
Secret of the Radium Maker" was published in Blue Book in
January, 1914 and deals with a subject that often turns up in the
work of the scientific mystery writers from the early years of the
previous century – namely the valuable chemical element of the
story-title. Rittenberg brings the element back in a later story and
Jacques Futrelle also has story revolving around it, "The Last
Radium," which I reviewed here.
Anyhow, in this outing, Magnum is engaged by Mr. J. Warren Fennimore
as a scientific consultant in the purchase of "an entirely new
process for extracting radium from pitchblende." This would
make him a lot of money, but he wants to be sure before signing any
large checks. What Magnum finds is both an honest inventor and clever
kind of fraud.
The
following entry, "The Invisible Bullet," came from the March,
1914 issue of Blue Book and is one of my three favorite
stories from this collection, which is a locked room mystery that
showed the genre was slowly moving away from the shopworn bag of
tricks of the nineteenth century – one that was filled with secret
passages, unknown poisons and deadly animals slipped through cracks
or keyholes of sealed rooms. As a matter of fact, it's the kind of
locked room trick one would expect from a Golden Age practitioner,
such as John
Dickson Carr or Clayton
Rawson, which may mean this trick was the first example of this
particular type of impossible crime. Strangely, the solution also
reveals the story to be ancestor of Alan
Green's massively underrated What a Body! (1949). But not
in the way you might think.
Anyway,
the story opens with the shooting of Barclay Walsh, two bullets in
the back, while he was exercising in Sergeant McIntosh's Gymnastic
and Fencing Academy, which is situated on the top story of a tall,
pleasant-looking stone building. One of the first person's on the
scene is Magnum and he confirms to the police that nobody could have
left the premise unseen. However, that's exactly what seems to have
happened, but there's an additional mystery: what happened to the
bullet that left the body? The entire floor of the fencing school is
meticulously searched without result.
As
I noted before, the solution is very cunning and ahead of its time
for an impossible crime tale from just before the First World War.
Recommended for everyone interested in locked room mysteries and the
history of this beloved sub-genre.
My
second favorite from this collection is "The Rough Fist of Reason,"
simultaneously published in Blue Book and The Novel
Magazine of April, 1914, which delves into a popular fad of the
period – spiritualism and spirit-photography. Magnum is asked by
Miss Cicely Cotterell to wrench her aunt, Miss Dallas, away from the
influence of Mr. Slivinski. A man who claims to be able to photograph
astral bodies of (enlightened) people and his especial effects does
not relay any of the well-known tricks, but on something completely
new. So you can qualify this story as a semi-impossible crime story,
which is always a plus, but the punch of this story is in sad and
tragic ending. It shows that the presence of a meddlesome detective
can have dire consequences.
"The
Three Ends of a Thread" was first published in the May, 1914 issue
of Blue Book and reprinted in the July, 1914 installment of
Short Stories Illustrated, which derives its interest from
Magnum nearly being outsmarted by the criminal – who came really,
really close to beating him. A very important piece of paper vanished
from the steel safe of an American businessman, William H. Cleveland,
but he rules out a burglary. Cleveland only wants to know if the
paper could have been dipped "in some chemical which would eat
it up silently into vapor during the night," but Magnum would
come close to regretting taking what looked like an easily earned
fee.
"The
Empty Flask" first appeared in print in Blue Book of
June, 1914, which confronts Detective-Inspector Callaghan of
Scotland Yard and Magnum with a chilling poisoning mystery: an
Austrian Baron was poisoned in his London hotel-room, but the problem
is that both the hotel-room and the corpse showed no traces of any
deadly toxins. Curiously, the bedside flask of the baron, usually
filled with orange-flower water, was empty and bone dry. What caused
the death of the Baron is quite ingenious. Absolutely horrifying and
cruel, but ingenious nonetheless.
"The
Secret Analyses" appeared in the July, 1914 issues of Blue Book
and Short Story Illustrated, but did not particular care about
this one. Magnum's right-hand man, Meredith, gets kidnapped and his
captors want a copy from Magnum of a highly confidential report he
has been working on for the Admiralty – relating to "a certain
new torpedo charge explosive." Not really my kind of crime
story.
The
next story in line, "The Mystery of Box 218," originally
published July, 1914, as "The Virgin Vault" in Short Story
Illustrated, which tells of a seemingly impossible theft from a
locked strong-box inside a sealed and guarded bank vault. Holborn
Safe Deposit has a vault surrounded by foundations "of steel and
concrete." The single entrance to the vault goes through "a
steel grille" and the opening of the lattice-work allowed a
clear view of the whole interior, which is constantly being watched
by "a uniformed commissionaire" - who's in possession of
the sole key of the grill and he watches as valuables are transferred
to or from a strong-box. However, this did not prevent a string of
pearls mysteriously vanishing from the strong-box of a diamond
merchant.
 |
| Max Rittenberg (1880-1963) |
Magnum
immediately came up with a simple, but elegant, explanation for the
problem: a criminal might have gotten an impression of the key of the
diamond merchant, "rented a box near to 218," and opened
218 as it were his own with the duplicate key. However, this
immediately rejected and the actual explanation is far more involved,
but also less impressive. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see a
Berkeley-Queen style false solution in such an early story.
The
following story, "The Mystery of the Tide," is another kidnap
story and was lifted from the pages of the March, 1915 issue of Blue
Book. A message in a bottle is fished from the murky waters of
London's waterways and the author of the letter is Lester Oakeshott
of Vancouver, Canada. For the past three years, he has been having a
good time in Europe after a financial windfall, but his relatives
have not received any personal communications. However, he has been
cashing checks all over the continent. So he seemed to be doing well.
But now it turns out he has been the victim of kidnappers and the
police asks Magnum to help them pinpoint the location where he's
being held captive. A good story for what it is, but kidnap plots are
largely wasted on me. There is, however, one semi-exception at the
end of this collection.
My
third favorite from this collection, "The Secret of the Tower
House," first appeared in the September 1914 issue of Blue Book,
but was also published that very same month in The Novel Magazine
as "The Hidden Menace," which brings Magnum and Meredith to the
home of Mr. Anstruther – who has recently lost two of his highly
prized Aberdeen terriers. All of a sudden, they were died and the
veterinary who examined the cadavers to determine an exact cause of
death, but Anstruther is convinced they had been deliberately
poisoned. Rittenberg wrote here what is, essentially, a medical
mystery with deep, dark shades of the historical mystery, because the
solution takes a look at one of blackest pages in English and London
history. I suspect devoted readers of Christopher
Fowler will love the everlasting hell out of this particular
story.
"Dead
Leaves" was originally published in Blue Book, November,
1914, and republished in the April, 1915, in The Novel Magazine,
in which Magnum is tasked with finding the missing will of a dead
man. A pretty meh story.
"The
Three Henry Clarks" came from the December, 1915 publication of
Blue Book and shows the kind of plot-ingenuity that would
become the standard during that luminous period known as the Golden
Age. During a short period of time, three man, all named Henry Clark,
succumbed to the effects of a deadly poison and one of them collapsed
at Scotland Yard. The method for administrating the poison may very
well be the cleverest aspect of the plot, but the whole scheme and
the whodunit-angle showed a new era of detective-fiction was looming
on the horizon.
The
penultimate story from this collection, "Cleansing Fire," comes
from the February, 1915 issue of Blue Book and has Magnum
investigating a suspicious fire at the factory of a fur-merchant on
behalf of Sir George Herries of the Imperial Fire, Life and Accident
Insurance Co., Ltd. - who wants to put "the fear of God into
these shifty-eyed little manufacturers." Magnum finds himself
among the immigrant workers of the fur-merchant and is fleeced for
some ten pounds by Polish workers with "hard-luck stories,"
but what is really interesting is the who-and why behind the fire. It
anticipates a famously obscure story by a full decade. I won't
exactly say which story, but you can find it in this
anthology.
Finally,
there's "Red Herrings," also published as "The Disappearance of
Mr. Holsworthy" in Blue Book of January 1915, which is
another one of Rittenberg's kidnap tales, but this particular story
has some interesting aspects that even I found fascinating. Mr.
Holsworthy is the Home Secretary and his captors snatch from the
streets of London in broad daylight, but what is really astounding
are the ransom demands and instructions from his captors – which
are both startling and ingenious. They don't want cash money, gold,
silver or diamonds, but "a hundred thousand pounds' worth of
radium" that "could be comfortably carried in a waistcoat
pocket" and "disposed of in driblets in any part of the
civilized world." But the true genius is in the delivery
method: the radium was to be attached to four carrier pigeons that
were to be released in a flock of fifty others. The pigeons would be
delivered to the office of a leading newspaper and the method is
basically full-proof.
Unfortunately,
Magnum never had to proof how smart he really is by figuring out a
way to tail the bird, because the government refused to pay the
ransom. It would set a dangerous precedent. So the only way out for
him was being found before the kidnappers decided to get rid of him.
A story with a lot of promise, but Rittenberg took the easy way out.
Nevertheless, still an interesting story and in particular how they
snatched the Home Secretary from a busy street.
So,
all in all, The Invisible Bullet and Other Strange Cases of
Magnum, Scientific Consultant is a solid and historically
interesting collection of detective stories from the period between
the Doylean Era and the Golden Age. Naturally, not every single story
within its pages is a paradigm of fair play, but, as said before,
these stories fell between eras. A time when the rules and concept of
fair play were not yet clearly defines. However, that makes some of
the entries all the more impressive, because they took the first
steps on that new path the genre was taking. Steps that were, at the
time, also taken by likes of R.
Austin Freeman, G.K.
Chesterton, Edwin
Balmer and Arthur
B. Reeve. I think many would consider that to be excellent
company to find yourself in.
Well,
so far another bloated review of a short story collection. I tried to
keep it short, but there you go. I might have something shorter for
my next blog-post. Maybe.
However,
Ronald leaves the inn in the wee hours of the morning and
Glenthorpe's bedroom is found empty, but the key is,
uncharacteristically, sticking in the lock on the outside of the
door. A track of boot-prints lead from the inn to the mouth of a pit,
which is a part of "a number of so-called hut circles"
that were "prehistoric shelters of the early Britons,"
where a workman was lowered into by rope and finds the murdered
remains of Glenthorpe – stabbed in the chest. A sum of 300 pounds
and a table-knife, used by Ronald at dinner, are missing. So things
don't look very good for the missing Ronald. 
The
ghosts of past centuries, even millenniums, appear throughout the
book, which range from the prehistoric, stone-age dwellings and the
bullet tinted wall of the inn telling of a long-ago battle between a
gang of smugglers and the King's troops to the sporting magazines
from the 1860s at the inn's fireside bookshelf – all of them
alluding to a different and sometimes better, more prosperous time.
They make the impoverished state of the small, dying village even
more tragic. If that's not gloomy enough, there's the encroaching
marshlands, the dank swamps and the ghost of a cursed woman in white
who haunts the region. But there are also whispers among the locals
of a ghostly dog, "Ol Black Shuck," roaming the dense
woods. So the book also has a touch of Conan Doyle's The Hound of
the Baskervilles (1902). 
