The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.38 - 1936/7?
Robert Curtis (1889-1936) was private Secretary to Edgar Wallace. Meeting for the first time in 1913, and after serving in the Great War, he was reunited with Wallace in 1918. One of his roles was to copy out the master's dictations; he accomplished this at such speed that he was known as the fastest secretary in England. After Wallace's death, he completed several of his unfinished manuscripts, film scripts and plays into novels in the style of Wallace. He also wrote several original novels. Corpses Can't Walk was published shortly after Curtis' death.
Curtis has produced an interesting, if not particularly gripping, straightforward tale of dering-do. Once we read that the batty but harmless Professor Jonathan Stone has invented a cheap means of manufacturing gold, then we know he is in for trouble. Sure enough, not long after a visit from a short, fat, with greasy hair and a double chin rotter called William Smith, who wants to purchase the invention. the worst kind of trouble does occur. Smith not only had an ample waist line and pendulous cheeks, but had flabby-looking hands and a trace of a foreign accent. In other words, he is the typical pick-off-the-thriller-shelf rogue. The offer of £100,000 to Stone is not enough to tempt him. When Smith watches the professor replace the cardboard box with the formula in his safe, then burglary and worse is sure to follow. And it does. Mersham Manor House is raided, but the safe is found empty; the place is ransacked and the professor is found dead, with a knife in his back.
However, this is not before the story's hero, Michael Pollard, has got involved. The 25-year-old is a recent member of a secret service unit and lives in a comfortable flat on the top floor of a large block in the West End. He is supported by George, a thick-set man, with a cauliflower ear, who serves as valet, cook, housemaid, and general factotum. Pollard is rung up by Joan Chailey, the professor's niece, calling for help from Mersham - something terrible has happened...then the 'phone went dead. So, off our hero goes, in his long, low-slung, slender two-seater...a greyhound of the road. On arrival he is met by the Professor, a man of striking appearance - tall, slim, with black hair brushed straight back from an intellectual forehead, a pale, thin face, with prominent cheek-bones, and a rather spare, closely cropped black beard. he had dark eyes - so dark that they seemed to be absolutely black...[he had] a small black mole on his left cheek-bone. What a sinister description; surely not the professor? No, it isn't. It is Carl and his assistant is the aforementioned Smith, who is really Schmidt. Pollard naively accepts a glass of whisky and...then came darkness and silence. When he comes round, he finds Joan locked in a room upstairs. Everyone else has disappeared. Thus begins the tale and the subsequent attempts to track down Schmidt and the tall, thin man - who turns out to be Carl Dana, leader of a gang of international cut-throats, who has already captured a Foreign Office secret and had then turned to acquiring the professor's gold discovery.
It's all good, if not clean, fun. Pollard's car plays its part in several chases; an aeroplane is involved at the end (luckily Pollard can add flying to his many talents); Carl is supported by the mysterious Zora Vanoff - who is in it just for the money - and his henchman Zornoff, who had murdered the professor. Joan is knocked out and imprisoned again, but will not divulge the whereabouts of the professor's little blue book containing his golden mysteries. A mysterious Chinaman is brought into the story - this only makes sense at the end. Schmidt meets his just deserts through Dana's revolver; and Dana himself makes a much more spectacular end. And the reader knows how things will turn out for Pollard and Joan, as the clue is in the very last sentence - Her eyes were very tender, and she was beckoning him out into the garden.
The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.40 - 1937?
One of the reasons I am enjoying reading the Crime-Book Society's offerings, is that their writers offer up a variety of styles and stories. Andrew Soutar's tale couldn't be more different from Robert Curtis'. Apart from the very last Chapter (no. XIV) of Silence, the narrative is by Rupert Orion, a minor painter and a member of the Secret Service. He is in love with the much younger Irene Padua, a magical beauty, who adores her youthful cousin Orlando Padua. Unfortunately for Rupert, Irene has fallen for Glenister Howard, who also turns out to be a member of the same secret service. Rupert and other spies - Carriman, Maccabe, Bruce and Glenister are summoned to a meeting by their boss Colonel Fitzbean. Orlando, a very clever boy, has invented something which could affect the future of the world. The Colonel opens a box, which contains a small nickel-plated object that suggested a hypodermic syringe. It was so small that it could have been carried in the waistcoat pocket without inconvenience. A stray cat is brought in; the syringe is levelled at it; it drops dead! Call it the silent death, or the silent pistol, as you will... Tiny pellets holding poison can be fired - the propelling force is radium - and kill anyone in a crowded room without the shooter being suspected.
Within a fortnight, Prince Kashnir is to visit the country; the Colonel was fearful that such a device could be used by Indian trouble-makers against the Prince. So he successfully offered £100,000 to the inventor; hence the object was in the room. Then a 'buzzer' sounds; the Colonel, after listening to the call, rushes out of the room and drops dead. On the left breast of Colonel Fitzbean there was a tiny puncture no larger than that of the head of a pin. And what is far worse, the 'pistol' has disappeared. On a few more occasions, the same fate awaits others: Maccabe; a fortune teller Madame Zodalan; a wealthy American, Peskett Grisch, who dies at the Opera in Paris . Each time, Rupert is at hand to try and figure out who is responsible. He meets up with Prince Kashnir in the French Capital and offers to escort him to England. However, he is drugged! I had slightly lost track of who was doing what to whom by now; but followed the story to New York. Here, yet another victim, Rochelle, an American investigator, dies in a taxi after saying goodbye to Rupert.
Then, Chapter XIII, where all is explained by Rupert Orion; it is confirmed in the final chapter, which is written by Glenister Howard. Well, this reader, for one, never saw the denouement coming. In fact, I had to look back to one or two events depicted in earlier chapters. Only, then did I 'twig'! Well done, the author, even though once or twice I found the story a bit of a struggle.
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