Gun in Cheek (23 page)

But an octopus has no feeling. It has but one vital spot, and that is the devil-brain or heart in the back of what should be the monster's neck. It is a voracious, sack-like ball of body, a body as elastic as rubber, one that can stretch and expand into a snake. It is the world's most awful bundle of awfulness, a writhing, squirming mass of hell-fury, attaching itself to its victim with four hundred vacuum cups on its eight snaky legs. It is the ocean's most crafty thug, a killer and eater of sharks, and—at times—a fighting, darting villain that can put a sperm whale, their only natural enemy, to rout. A sharp knife will cut through it like butter, and yet it is an almost impossible thing to kill, for its strength is beyond measure. It is as soft as jelly, and yet as tough as a wire cable. In short, it is the monster-supreme of earth or sea or Hell.

Squirting ink and grumbling, a master-devil grunting, smacking and squealing with the sheer joy of an opportunity to fight, the thing was rapidly drawing one of its victims to its mouth. And such a mouth! It was but a gaping pocket, soft and fleshy, yet just within lurked its big, horny beak, opened exactly like a parrot's bill to receive its first taste of the sailor's blood.

Admiral Blunt and Old Eternity Bill plunge forward, "yelling like madmen." Blunt picks up a pick-axe one of the sailors dropped and whacks off a tentacle that shoots forward and curls around his ankle. "No blood came from that severed tentacle; there were just a few drops of blue ooze." Another tentacle tries to clutch Old Eternity Bill, but he rams his .38 "straight between the monster's slant eyes" and fires seven shots, at least one of which penetrates a vital spot and causes the giant octopus to sink back into the well. Then the blue-jackets wade in with axes, crow-bars, and pinch-bars and hack the mother and her smaller offspring into "stringy strings."

Not long after this battle of battles, Old Eternity and his men find Yang Po-liang holed up in his Seventh Temple of Yama. ("God of gods," Mandell says, "this looks like the king dodo bird of them all.") They bully the old man, trying to get information about Holly and Andy out of him, but he refuses to say anything more than "Do not lay your hands upon me, vermin of the goat!" A group of sailors take axes and start to chop up the great statue of Yama which looms nearby, trying to "get to the bottom of the secrets of this hell-hole of torture." The great statue tilts forward like a cut tree about to fall, its jade eyes leering. Yang screeches and rushes forward, and of course the statue falls on him and crushes him flat under a ton of wreckage.

The scene then switches to "the big house on the headland," an isolated place two hours north of San Francisco, flanked by a large lagoon that opens into the sea, where Holly and Andy are being held captive along with the "Japanese consulate," Mr. Takahasha. It is here that we meet the murder-crazed commanders of the mysterious submarine—"the three vons"—and here that the thrilling climax takes place.

The three vons are German U-boat officers from World War I, who have become pirates and mercenaries of the sea and who, because they relish the thought of another war, have thrown in with Whang and Yang. The idea is to foment a global conflict that will wipe out the major powers of the time—the United States, England, Japan, even Germany—and thus leave world domination to the Chinese and their allies. The head von is Captain Felix von Zeigler, who speaks with "an affected Oxford whang" and who says things like "They tell me you are a deucedly clever scamp when it comes to making a bit of trouble." The other two vons are Lieutenant Friedrich von Rheim, who speaks broken English (" 'It vass dangerous pizness!' "), and Lieutenant Bruno von Schiller, who speaks with an American accent (" 'You have about as many brains as an empty bottle, my friend' ").

The three vons want Takahasha to write a note that will "accidentally" fall into the hands of the US President, a note that is supposed to be top secret and that says that Japan is preparing to declare war on the United States. Takahasha refuses, which prompts von Zeigler to perform a torturing trick with a cigarette. After Lee intervenes on the Japanese's behalf, von Zeigler decides the prisoners need some time alone; besides, it is past time for the three vons to begin their nightly drunken bacchanal.

Lee and Holly and Takahasha are taken into an underground passage that leads past four huge yellow guard dogs named Hans, Fritz, Katje, and Ada and into a mammoth cavern "like an awesome amphitheatre, a hundred and fifty feet high to the coral-red ceiling." In this cavern is a pool of saltwater, and in the pool is the mysterious submarine. It seems there is a great hole in the outer wall, underwater, which opens into the sea, and so the submarine can glide in and out at the will of the vons.

The prisoners are put on board the submarine, under guard of a motley crew of Germans, South Americans, and Chinese. The three vons get drunk together. Dr. Lafferty worries that they ought to get out of there. Whang Sut Soon doesn't do much of anything. Then, after dark that night, Lafferty looks out to sea "and screeche[s] with terror" when he sees the starboard lights of fighting ships—US destroyers.

The conspirators head for the submarine. But by this time, Lee, using his wiles and plenty of oil ("Submarines sweat oil . . . from every ladder rung . . . from every bulkhead"), has managed to slide off the chain binding his left wrist. He uses that length of chain to knock out a couple of the guards and then goes running around searching for weapons. In the torpedo compartment, he finds cases of hand grenades and removes three. He is helping Holly and Takahasha up into the conning tower when he hears Whang, Lafferty, and the three vons approaching.

Lee whips out a grenade, yells for the villains to stop or "I'll blow you all to hell!" Lafferty and Whang stop, but the three vons are too drunk to be intimidated. A Luger pistol appears in Felix von Zeigler's hand; he sings a couple of lines of "Deutschland,
Deutschland Uber alles
," and then starts shooting. Which leaves Lee no choice except to hurl his grenades and blow Whang, Lafferty, and the three vons to hell as promised.

Some time later, Old Eternity Bill arrives, having been told the location of the hideout by Cherry Blossom (whose real name turns out to be Dark Flower). Old Eternity says he is retiring, adopting Dark Flower and taking her east because "she'll be a lot of company for an old bat like me." Mr. Takahasha breaks down and pleads undying loyalty to the United States. And Lee kneels beside Holly, "her tears like a cooling rain against his cheek." One has the distinct impression that they will live happily ever after, and there will be lots of dingy-dingies to call him Papa.

And there you have
The Dragon Strikes Back
, an alternative classic with a little bit of everything—a truly wonderful piece of work. The brain of Tom Roan must have been marvelous to behold.

The brain of Pronzini boggleth to consider it.

the Death Merchant

"Anything you like, Theo," said Drummond. "I'm perfectly happy talking about you. How the devil do you do it?" He sat up and stared at the other man with genuine wonder on his face. "Eyes differentnose—voice—figure—everything different. You're a marvel—but for that one small failing of yours."

"You interest me profoundly," said the clergyman. "What is this one small failing that makes you think I am other than what I profess to be?"

Drummond laughed genially.

"Good heavens, don't you know what it is? It's that dainty little trick of yours of tickling the left ear with the right big toe that marks you every time. No man can do that, Theo, and blush unseen."

—"Sapper,"

The Black Gang

G
entleman rogues, as any aficionado of detective fiction knows, were popular long before their uncouth cousins, the violence-oriented antiheroes, came into vogue in the second half of this century. The British in particular have always had a special fondness for the outlaw (or reformed outlaw), providing he is well-bred, witty, urbane, gallant, and given to a certain sentimentalism when it comes to the poor and the downtrodden. Such an outlaw, of course, is the modern version of Robin Hood—the anti-Establishment hero tilting at authority, mocking its representatives, lusting after adventure and embracing danger with both hands, but ever ready to lay down his life for a proper cause.

The first of these fictional rogues was sportsman and thief A. J. Raffles, the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, E. W. Hornung. Raffles (and his Boswell—or, if you prefer, his Watson—Bunny) made his debut in
The Amateur Cracksman
(1899) and carried on his life of crime until Hornung's death in 1921. But that was not the end of his career; Philip Atkey, under his pseudonym of Barry Perowne, revived the character in the 1930s, reformed him (he no longer steals for thrill or gain but to help others, in the true Robin Hood fashion), and has kept him alive to the present in a series of short stories.

The early success of Hornung's Raffles inspired other writers to try their hand at a gentleman rogue: Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin, Frank L. Packard's Jimmy Dale, "The Gray Seal," and Thomas W. Hanshew's Hamilton Cleek. For our purposes here, Hanshew and Cleek are by far the most interesting of these.

Thomas Hanshew was an American dime novelist who had worked on the Nick Carter series, among others, for Street & Smith, and who came to admire the "pure" detective story form. Dissatisfied with his lot as an uncredited purveyor of obscure sensationalism, he decided to purvey a brand of sensationalism that was neither obscure nor uncredited and that would garner him a legitimate reputation as a detective-story writer. Thus he begat Hamilton Cleek, "the man of Forty Faces," a.k.a. "the Prince of Mauravania," a.k.a "the Vanishing Cracksman."

Cleek is something of a unique character for several reasons. The first is that despite Hanshew's American heritage, Cleek is British and operates for the most part in London and environs.

His compatriots are also British (or French), and the manner in which he solves his cases is a mixture of Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, and Nick Carter. Except for a tendency on Hanshew's part to have his English characters speak like Teddy Roosevelt, whom Hanshew obviously admired ("Bully boy! Bully boy!"), it might be difficult for anyone unfamiliar with the author's background to determine that he was not himself a British subject.

The second unique quality about Cleek is that he possesses a curious ability to disguise himself at a moment's notice, which is why he is known as "the man with the Forty Faces." Unlike other masters of disguise, however, such as Nick Carter, Cleek does not need makeup, false whiskers and hair, or other theatrical trappings. He has been blessed with extreme mobility of features as well as a kind of rubber-textured skin and is therefore able to twist his face into unrecognizable features or into a lookalike image of someone else. This amazing talent is particularly handy when he infiltrates the lairs of his archenemies; even up close, as Messrs. Barzun and Taylor point out in A Catalogue of Crime, none can "tell a hawk from a Hanshew."

In the early stages of his career, Cleek is a master thief who taunts the police with cryptic notes informing them of what he will steal next and then disguises himself and proceeds to steal the item from under their very noses. In the opening "chapter" of
Cleek, The Master Detective
—a 1918 collection of short stories masquerading as an episodic novel—we are told that Cleek "was the biggest and the boldest criminal the police had ever had to cope with, the almost supernatural genius of crime, who defied all systems, laughed at all laws, mocked at all the Vidocqs, the Lupins, and Sherlock Holmeses, whether amateur or professional, French or English, German or American, that ever had or ever could be pitted against him, and who, for sheer devilry, for diabolical ingenuity, and for colossal impudence, as well as for a nature-bestowed power that was simply amazing, had not his match in all the universe."

A rogue among rogues, you will admit.

But then a strange thing happens: Cleek falls in love. The object of his affection is not Margot, his beautiful accomplice in crime and leader of a band of French Apaches, but a well-born Englishwoman named Ailsa Lorne. When an "almost supernatural genius of crime" falls, he falls hard; Cleek's passion for Ailsa is of such monumental proportions that, to the disbelief of everyone (including the reader), he returns to Superintendent Narkom of Scotland Yard half of a fortune in jewels stolen from the daughter of Ailsa's uncle, Sir Horace Wyvern. And with the jewels he includes a letter:

There's some good in even the devil, I suppose, if one but knows how to reach it and stir it up.

I have lived a life of crime from my very boyhood because I couldn't help it, because it appealed to me, because I glory in risks and revel in dangers. I never knew, I never thought, never cared, where it would lead me, but I looked into the gateway of heaven last night, and I can't go down the path to hell any more.

The letter goes on to say that if Narkom and Wyvern will agree to a meeting with Cleek, he'll return the other half of the jewels and convert a useless life into a useful one by making the Vanishing Cracksman disappear forever. Narkom and Wyvern are only too willing to meet with Cleek. On his arrival, he hands over the rest of the jewels, tells them he has broken with Margot and the Apaches, and says, "I want to know if it is my fault that I am what I am, and if it is myself I have to fight in the future or the devil that lives within me. I'm tired of wallowing in the mire. A woman's eyes have lit the way to heaven for me. I want to climb up to her, to win her, to be worthy of her, and to stand beside her in the light." Then he asks Sir Horace to examine him and to let him know "if I or Fate's to blame for what I am."