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The Stretelli Case and Other Mystery Stories

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 5 months ago

Wallace, Edgar - The Stretelli Case and Other Mystery Stories (1930)

 

Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was a publishing phenomenon in his day, his name being synonymous with the word "thriller," a genre some would credit him with inventing.

 

Wallace was incredibly prolific; he belongs to that group of logorrheic authors–Erle Stanley Gardner, John Creasey, Charles Dickens, and a few others–who wrote books like their hair was on fire. One would naturally expect a lowering in quality with an increase in quantity (it seems to be a natural law), but I must leave that judgment to others who have waded through most, if not all, of Wallace's output.

 

THE STRETELLI CASE AND OTHER MYSTERY STORIES (1930) seems to be a brief sampling of his work, a collection of eleven short stories loosely classified as "mysteries"; while thriller elements are certainly present in most of them, the stories, with one exception, are indeed mysteries of one sort or another (the exception being "The Know-How"). Several stories feature detectives per se; most of them have people under pressure who must decipher baffling situations in order to correct deformations in the social fabric–or just save their imperiled fannies.

 

The dates and places of first publication for these stories are nowhere in the book. A diligent search of the Internet yielded information on only one: "Code No. 2," published in EVERY WEEK for July 24, 1916 and republished in EQMM in the Spring 1942 edition. If anybody out there knows more about these stories, please let us know.

 

THE STRETELLI CASE AND OTHER MYSTERY STORIES (1930)

by Edgar Wallace

International Fiction Library

Hardcover

Short Story Collection: 11 Stories

? Pages (no pagination)

 

CONTENTS:

1. "The Stretelli Case"

--"'I'm a poor man, Mr. Mackenzie, but I would have spent my last sou for that woman! She had plenty of money–thousands–but not a penny did she give me. Not that I wanted it.'"

"'I have seen him: I saw him yesterday for the first time,' she said, 'and the sight of him convinces me that my sister has been murdered.'"

--Comment: Detective-Inspector Mackenzie's last case provokes in him that "unquenchable antagonism between his sense of duty, his sense of justice, and his grim sense of humor." Dr. Mona Stretelli of Madrid comes to him, convinced that Margaret, her sister, has been murdered by her husband, Mr. Morstels. Margaret, however, had a bad reputation with the authorities, since she "belonged to the bobbed-hair set that had its meeting place in a Soho restaurant. She was known to be an associate of questionable people; there was talk of cocaine traffic in which she played an exciting but unprofitable part," and so on. Imagine Mackenzie's surprise, then, when Mona does a complete about face and announces her intention to marry Morstels; and of what significance is it when Mona purchases a paste ring once owned by Marie Antoinette? Be prepared for a plot twist near the end.

 

2. "The Looker and the Leaper"

--"'But my dear, good man,' I said impatiently, 'don't you realize that a man of Steven's character does not call daily on your wife to tell her funny stories?'"

"'Now watch me, Steve,' said Dick, and at the sight of Dick with a gun in his hand even his best friends drew back."

--Comment: Is it always true "that the ultra-clever father has a fool for a son"? Dick Magnus and Steven Martin- gale, both scions of wealthy business magnates, wooed Thelma–"cold and sweet, independent and helpless, clever and vapid"–and "To everybody's surprise, she married Dick." Perhaps one could write it off to hormones, those "little X's in your circulatory system which inflict upon an unsuspecting and innocent baby such calamities as his uncle's nose, his father's temper, and Cousin Minnie's unwholesome craving for Chopin and bobbed hair." By story's end, we are left with a conundrum: Did the leaper fail to look before the looker made his leap, or was it all just a horrible accident?

 

3. "The Man Who Never Lost"

--"He could almost hear the man tell the girl, 'That's the celebrated Twyford–the fellow with the system who breaks the bank regularly every week.'"

"'It requires a heart of iron to work my system,' he said. 'It is just because I am getting human that I am giving it up.'"

--Comment: Aubrey Twyford, The Man Who Could Not Lose, has won over 700,000 pounds in ten years at Monte Carlo's gambling casinos; but when Bobby Gardner decides to go for broke and try to win enough to marry Madge Brane, will Twyford divulge his unbeatable system and thus guarantee his own loss?

 

4. "The Clue of Monday's Settling"

--"'So there it is, my dear. Somewhere in the world is a clever thief in the possession of nearly a third of a ton of negotiable paper. And I am responsible.'"

"'You mean that I should let Bennett take the case in hand?' asked John Antrim, with a little grimace. 'I mistrust amateur detectives, and although I admit your cousin is clever–he is also the veriest amateur.'"

--Comment: Five million pounds' worth of British, French, and Italian notes go missing from a strong-room on a trans-Atlantic ocean liner, and John Antrim and his daughter May face certain financial ruin; also missing are six towels, a fact of consuming interest to Bennett Audain, who "certainly understood the psychology of the criminal mind better than any police officer that ever came from Scotland Yard–an institution which has produced a thousand capable men, but never a genius." For him, a word association test clinches it: If you heard the word "key," would you think "wind"; and if the word was "Monday," would you think "unpleasant"?

 

5. "Code No. 2"

--"No. 2 Code is a very secret one. It is the code which the big agents employ. It is not printed, nor are written copies circulated, but is learnt under the tuition of the Chief himself. The men who know Code No. 2 do not boast of their knowledge, because their lives hang upon a thread–even in peace time."

--Comment: It's spy-versus-spy on the eve of World War One: Sir John Grandor, Chief of Intelligence, has his doubts about one of his own people; even though the one he suspects is killed, it still remains for a smart female agent to thwart a plan to transmit the stolen code to the Central Powers. (The code-stealing gadget, by the way, itself seems straight out of a James Bond movie.)

 

6. "The Mediaeval Mind"

--"There can be no question that the D'Ortons were mediaeval minded....They were men who sincerely hated the spirit of the time, though they were not averse from its conveniences. Electric light and motor cars, and expensive flats in Park Lane–all the advantages which are to be had by pushing buttons and turning switches were tolerable despite their modernity. They loathed the vulgar rich and despised the still more vulgar poor."

--Comment: Jean D'Orton, half-sister to the D'Orton brothers, is very, very rich and anxious to marry Jack Mortimer; the fact is, however, she doesn't come into her fortune until she is twenty-five or gets married. In the meantime, her half-brothers have been, shall we say, improvident with her money, and the prospect of Jean's wedding has dire implications for them: "'it means,'" says one, "'penal servitude for all of us.'" What to do? Well, how about shanghaiing Jack and forcing Jean to marry an escaped convict; that always works, doesn't it? The biters get very decisively bit in this one.

 

7. "The Know-How"

--"But he, of all men, knew the shrew behind those deep blue eyes, knew something of the meanness of her soul, and of those red lips of hers....'Shall I tell you something? ....You don't matter two rows of pins....When your husband changed his wife, he lost the best leading woman in the world.'"

--Comment: Storm and stress in the production of a musical play, one in which no one, not even the producer, has any confidence. A Cinderella story for the understudy, but a mystery story this is not.

 

8. "Christmas Eve at the China Dog"

--"A man with an iron-gray beard stood in the doorway. The bemused host did not see him for a moment, and when he did a frown gathered on his plump face.

"'Hello, who the devil are you?' he asked.

"The stranger did not reply. He raised an automatic which was in his hand and fired twice, and Walter Merrick fell across the table stone dead. Before the most excitable could scream, the door closed with a crash and a key was turned."

--Comment: The paths of old war buddies intersect when Walter Merrick approaches air taxi pilot Tam M'Tavish, offering him five hundred pounds to help him perform a despicable act vis-a-vis another man's wife; then comes that fateful evening in Paris at the "Chien de Chine," and Tam quite unwittingly lays the foundation for a perfect alibi.

 

9. "The Undisclosed Client"

--"Her left hand rested on the table. Sure of her agreement, he reached out and covered it with his, and she did not draw her hand away. So far and no farther he went. This almost resemblance to Lady Alice was rather amusing–added a piquancy to the situation. To make love to one woman and to blackmail her twin...it was amusing."

--Comment: Lester Cheyne is a lawyer whose success lies, shall we say, outside the normal channels of the law; putting pressure on wealthy people for their indiscretions is his stock in trade, and everything is humming along nicely until he encounters the Girl in the Brown Coat....

 

10. "Red Beard"

--"John, his hands widespread on the table, stared at his murderer, and in his last moment of life God gave him vision.

"'I'm glad...didn't shoot,' coughed John Mildred thickly, and smiled.

"Then he sat down carefully in his writing-chair and as carefully died. I found him reclining over the table, his head on his arms, and 'phoned Central Office."

--Comment: A spy is murdered in his flat, yet he is clearly overheard telling his assailant that he's glad his own gun jammed; Brinkhorn and Templey investigate on behalf of the Department. By the time they're finished, Templey will have connected the disparate dots of the spy executed in the Tower of London, a disappearing index card, a ship sinking in the Irish Sea, a colored birth-mark on a child's leg, bread passed and wine poured with the left hand, and his partner's resignation from the Department.

 

11. "The Man Who Killed Himself"

--"'Good God!' cried George Dixon. 'You're not going to find THAT way out! Think, think, Preston! You used to be so clever at this sort of thing when we were at Oxford. Don't you remember our crime club discussions, how you used to work out the solution of all the story mysteries, and plan to the minutest detail mysteries even more mysterious than appeared in newspapers? Surely some of that old ingenuity remains?'"

--Comment: For seventeen years Preston Somerville has been blackmailed by a nonentity named Templar; but when the latter drags Somerville's daughter into the glare of hostile publicity, Preston is moved to desperation, his actions taking him through the valley of the shadow....

 

Michael

 

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