The Collection (83 page)

He
was tempted to use it instead, to take the quicker way instead of the slower,
more painful one. But he took it apart, throwing each tiny piece as far out
into space as he could. Maybe some of them would form orbits out there and
maybe others would fall hack. But no one would ever gather
all
the
pieces and manage to put them together again.

He
finished, and the world he lived on was less than a yard in diameter now and it
was still shrinking. He disconnected his gravplates because there wasn't any
use trying to stand on it. But it was as heavy as it had ever been; there was
still enough gravitational pull to keep him bumping gently against it. Of
course he could push himself away from it now and go sailing off into space.
But he didn
^'
t. Somehow, it was companionship.

A
small world, he thought, and getting smaller.

The
size of an orange now. He laughed as he put it into his pocket.

THE CRIME STORIES

The
pulps, those gaudy-covered, cheap-paper, jack-of-all-fiction magazines that
flourished during the first half of this century, provided a training ground
for dozens of writers who eventually went on to bigger and better literary
endeavors. William E. Barrett, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Horace McCoy,
and Tennessee Williams wrote for them. So did Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Max
Brand, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Zane Grey, Robert Heinlein, John Jakes, Louis
L'Amour. And so did John Dickson Carr, Raymond Chandler, Erie Stanley Gardner,
Dashiell Hammett, John D. MacDonald, Rex Stout, Cornell Woolrich--and Fredric
Brown.

Brown
was working as a proofreader for the
Milwaukee Journal
when he sold his
first pulp story, "The Moon for a Nickel," to
Street & Smith's
Detective Story Magazine
in 1938. This first taste of success was all the
impetus he needed; before long he was selling regularly to a wide variety of
pulp markets--crime stories to
Clues, Detective Fiction Weekly, Detective
Tales, Dime Mystery, Phantom Detective, Popular Detective, The Shadow, Strange
Detective Mysteries, Ten Detective Aces, Thrilling Mystery;
science fiction
and fantasy stories
in Astounding, Captain Future, Planet Stories, Thrilling
Wonder Stories, Unknown, Weird Tales;
even a couple of westerns to
Western
Short Stories.
By 1948, his success in the pulp marketplace--coupled with
the novels he
had begun to
publish in 1947 with
The Fabulous Clipjoint,
winner of the Mystery
Writers of America Edgar as Best First Novel of that year--allowed him to
devote his full time to writing.

He
continued to sell to the pulps until their paperback original- and TV-induced
demise in the early 50s--in all, publishing more than 150 stories in that
voracious medium. Although fantasy and science fiction were his professed first
love, the bulk of his output was in the mystery and detective field: upward of
100 stories. Some three-score of these were reprinted in his two hardcover
mystery collections,
Mostly Murder
(1953) and
The Shaggy Dog and
Other Murders
(1963).  Several others--novelettes and novellas, for the
most part--were later expanded or combined into novels. For instance, "The
Santa Claus Murders"
(Detective Story,
October 1942) became
Murder
Can Be Fun
(1948); "The Gibbering Night"
(Detective Tales,
July
1944) and "The Jabberwocky Murders"
(Thrilling Mystery,
Summer
1944) were combined into
Night of the Jabberwock
(1950);
"Compliments of a Fiend"
(Thrilling Detective,
July 1945) was
developed into 1949's
The Bloody Moonlight
(not into the 1950 novel also
called
Compliments of a Fiend,
as some people suppose); and "Obit
for Obie"
(Mystery Book,
October 1946) became
The Deep End
(1952).

But
there are still more than 60 of Fredric Brown's pulp stories that have never
been reprinted anywhere since their original magazine publications, or have
only appeared in obscure anthologies or in digest crime magazines in the 50s
and 60s. To be sure, some of these stories are badly dated; and others, written
hurriedly for money and under deadline pressure, are of mediocre or poor
quality. Still, more than a few have merit, some considerably so. Minor Brown
they may be, but they are nonetheless deserving of disinterment from their
crumbling pulp tombs for the enjoyment of modern readers. Seven of these
comprise this long-overdue book--the first but not, Dennis McMillan and I both
hope, the last such collection.

My
personal favorite here is "The Spherical Ghoul"
(Thrilling Mystery,
January 1943), which has a typically wild and wonderful Brown plot--its
ingredients include a morgue at night, a horribly disfigured corpse, mayhem
aplenty, and a classic locked-room mystery--and one of the cleverest (if
outrageous) central gimmicks you're likely to come across anywhere. It puzzles
me why Brown failed to include it in either of his own collections. And why no
one (except
The Saint Magazine
in 1962, and yours truly in a 1981 horror
anthology called
The Arbor House Necropolis)
has ever bothered to
reprint it.

The
lead story, "Red-Hot and Hunted"
(Detective Tales,
November
1948), is also very good Brown. It utilizes one of his favorite themes: the
madness, or apparent madness, of either the protagonist or another main
character--in this case, a stage actor named Wayne Dixon who may or may not
have murdered his wife. The hallmark of any Brown story, aside from its unusual
plot, is the maintenance of a high level of suspense; "Red-Hot and
Hunted" has this quality in abundance.

"The
Cat from Siam"
(Popular Detective,
September 1949) is another
variation on the madness theme, with that same quality of suspense and a
beautifully eerie tone. What Brown does with the Siamese cat of the title, and
with such simple devices as a chess game, some gunshots in the dark, and a new
kind of ratsbane, should provide a
frisson
or two.

"Listen
to the Mocking Bird"
(G-Man Detective,
November 1941) makes use--as
does another of my favorite Brown shorts, "Whistler's Murder"
(reprinted in
The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders)--
of old Vaudevillean
characters; in this story, a mimic who specializes in bird calls. Its plot is
both solidly plausible and satisfying, making the story one of his pre-World
War II best.

The
flute was Fred Brown's favorite musical instrument; he played it often if not
well, for pleasure and relaxation. His love for the flute and for music in
general are evident in "Suite for Flute and Tommy-gun"
(Detective
Story,
June 1942). Again, a clever plot and an unusual blending of its
various components make this an above-average story.

"The
Moon for a Nickel" is hardly one of Brown's strongest yarns, but the fact
that it was his first published fiction makes it important from the historical
point of view. It also demonstrates that from the very first, he had all the
tools that would later make him so successful--the fast-paced storyline, the
wry style, the eye, ear, and feel for the unusual.

Brown
wrote relatively few stories featuring private detectives--prior, that is, to
his creation of the team of Ed and Am Hunter in
The Fabulous Clipjoint.
"Homicide
Sanitarium" (
Thrilling Detective,
May 1944) is one of those few,
and another neglected gem. Any number of fictional private eyes have taken
undercover jobs in sanitariums, but none for quite the same reason as
pint-sized and newly married Eddie Anderson: he's hunting an escaped homicidal
maniac, and what better place for a lunatic to hide, after all, than in a
private loony-bin that allows its patients to come and go as they please? The
plot twists are numerous and baffling, and the delightful surprise Brown
springs on the final page is surprising indeed.

Fredric
Brown was one of the best storytellers of his time. These seven vintage tales
from his pulp years may be minor, as noted earlier, but that doesn't diminish
their value in any way. They're pure entertainment, from a writer who
understood the meaning of that word as well as--if not better than--any producer
of popular culture.

What
more could a reader ask?

She
didn't come home for supper and by eight o'clock I found some ham in the
refrigerator and made myself a sandwich. I wasn't worried, but I was getting
restless. I kept walking to the window and looking down the hill toward town,
but I couldn't see her coming. It was a moonlit evening, very bright and clear.
The lights of the town were nice and the curve of the hills beyond, black
against blue under a yellow gibbous moon. I thought I'd like to paint it, but
not the moon; you put a moon in a picture and it looks corny, it looks pretty.
Van Gogh did it in his picture The Starry Sky and it didn't look pretty; it
looked frightening, but then again he was crazy when he did it; a sane man
couldn't have done many of the things Van Gogh did.

I
hadn't cleaned my palette so I picked it up and tried to work a little more on
the painting I'd started the day before. It was just blocked in thus far and I
started to mix a green to fill in an area but it wouldn't come right and I
realized I'd have to wait till daylight to get it right. Evenings, without
natural light, I can work on line or I can mold in finishing strokes, but when
color's the thing, you've got to have daylight. I cleaned my messed-up palette
for a fresh start in the morning and I cleaned my brushes and it was getting
close to nine o'clock and still she hadn't come.

No,
there wasn't anything to worry about. She was with friends somewhere and she
was all right. My studio is almost a mile from town, up in the hills, and there
wasn't any way she could let me know because there's no phone. Probably she was
having a drink with the gang at the Waverly Inn and there was no reason she'd
think I'd worry about her. Neither of us lived by the clock; that was
understood between us. She'd be home soon.

There
was half of a jug of wine left and I poured myself a drink and sipped it,
looking out the window toward town. I turned off the light behind me so I could
better watch out the window at the bright night. A mile away, in the valley, I
could see the lights of the Waverly Inn. Garish bright, like the loud jukebox
that kept me from going there often. Strangely, Lamb never minded the jukebox,
although she liked good music, too.

Other
lights dotted here and there. Small farms, a few other studios. Hans Wagner's
place a quarter of a mile down the slope from mine. Big, with a skylight; I
envied him that skylight. But not his strictly academic style. He'd never paint
anything quite as good as a color photograph; in fact, he saw things as a
camera sees them and painted them without filtering them through the catalyst
of the mind. A wonderful draftsman, never more. But his stuff sold; he could
afford a skylight.

I
sipped the last of my glass of wine, and there was a tight knot in the middle
of my stomach. I didn't know why. Often Lamb had been later than this, much
later. There wasn't any real reason to worry.

I put
my glass down on the windowsill and opened the door. But before I went out I
turned the lights back on. A beacon for Lamb, if I should miss her. And if she
should look up the hill toward home and the lights were out, she might think I
wasn't there and stay longer, wherever she was. She'd know I wouldn't turn in
before she got home, no matter how late it was.

Quit
being a fool, I told myself; it isn't late yet. It's early, just past nine
o'clock. I walked down the hill toward town and the knot in my stomach got
tighter and I swore at myself because there was no reason for it. The line of
the hills beyond town rose higher as I descended, pointing up the stars. It's
difficult to make stars that look like stars. You'd have to make pinholes in
the canvas and put a light behind it. I laughed at the idea--but why not?
Except that it isn't done and what did I care about that. But I thought awhile
and I saw why it wasn't done. It would be childish, immature.

I was
about to pass Hans Wagner's place, and I slowed my steps thinking that just
possibly Lamb might be there. Hans lived alone there and Lamb wouldn't, of
course, be there unless a crowd had gone to Hans's from the inn or somewhere. I
stopped to listen and there wasn't a sound, so the crowd wasn't there. I went
on.