The Exploits of Elaine

Arthur B. Reeve

Description

The scientific detective known as the “American Sherlock Holmes” pursues a ruthless arch villain in this high-stakes suspense novel

Professor Craig Kennedy and his loyal sidekick, newspaper reporter Walter Jameson, first learn of the Clutching Hand and his gang when they investigate a string of murders involving the policyholders of Taylor Dodge’s insurance company. After receiving a threatening note signed by the arch criminal, Dodge himself is robbed and killed, and his daughter, Elaine, turns to Kennedy for help. Using the latest advances in forensic science, the professor uncovers the exotic and deadly scheme behind the murders. But when the Clutching Hand and his band of evildoers kidnap Elaine, Kennedy must shed his lab coat and leap into action before it’s too late.
 
First appearing in the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine, Craig Kennedy was one of the most popular detectives of the early twentieth century. Arthur B. Reeve also wrote the screenplay for the serial version of The Exploits of Elaine, which starred popular silent film actress Pearl White.
 
This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Sujets

• Détective
• Classics
• Mystery

Informations

• Publié par: Open Road Media
• Date de parution: 24 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781480444584
• Langue: English

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The Exploits of Elaine
Arthur B. Reeve

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

ARTHUR B. REEVE
When Sherlock Holmes took the world s readership by storm in the 1890s, authors and publishers alike saw the potential for success with the creation of a series detective. Although a little late to the game, few authors were as popular as Arthur B. Reeve (1880-1936) and his character, the scientific detective Craig Kennedy, who made his debut in The Silent Bullet (1912) and appeared in an additional twenty-three novels and short story collections.
Born in Patchogue, New York, the son of Jeannie (Henderson) and Walter F. Reeve, he graduated from Princeton University in 1903 and went on to study law, which he never practiced, becoming a journalist instead. Reeve grew interested in scientific crime detection when he wrote a series of articles on the subject, and he subsequently created Craig Kennedy, the most popular detective in America for several years. Much of that vast popularity was due to silent film serials, also written by Reeve, about a young heroine named Elaine who constantly finds herself in the clutches of villains, only to be rescued at the last moment by the white-coated Kennedy.
Reeve s stories were the first American mysteries to gain wide readership in Great Britain. They are not read much today, for pseudoscientific methods and devices that were of great interest then are all outdated-and many of them never had a solid technical basis in the first place. Reeve s major achievement was his application of Freudian psychology to detection two decades before psychoanalysis gained substantial public acceptance. During World War I he was asked to help establish a spy and crime detection laboratory in Washington, DC.
Reeve wrote only four mysteries not involving Kennedy: Guy Garrick (1914), Constance Dunlap: Woman Detective (1916; short stories), The Master Mystery (1919; a novel based on a motion picture serial starring Harry Houdini; written with John W. Grey), and The Mystery Mind (1920; a novel based on a motion picture serial about hypnosis; also written with Grey).
CRAIG KENNEDY
One of the first popular scientific detectives in mystery fiction was the American Craig Kennedy, preceded in England by R. Austin Freeman s Dr. John Thorndyke. At the height of his fame, Kennedy was known as the American Sherlock Holmes.
Scientific miracles are commonplace in his cases; for example, such technical marvels as lie detectors, gyroscopes, and a portable seismograph that can differentiate between the footsteps of different individuals were all accurately predicted. Like Holmes, Kennedy is a chemist who uses his knowledge to solve cases. He is also one of the first detectives to use psychoanalytic techniques.
Kennedy is a professor at Columbia University who also works as a consulting detective. A man of action as well as thought, he is a master of disguise and uses a gun when circumstances require it. Inspector Barney O Connor of the New York Police Department frequently asks for unofficial help from Kennedy. Walter Jameson, Kennedy s roommate, is a newspaper reporter who chronicles his adventures and also tries to solve cases on his own, with a predictable lack of success.
Films
Kennedy made his first film appearance in a 1915 Path serial, The Exploits of Elaine . Although Elaine-portrayed by the popular Pearl White-is the nominal central character, it is her friend Kennedy (Arnold Daly) who does battle against the mysterious Clutching Hand. Clutching Hand, seeking Elaine s inheritance, is extraordinarily scientific himself, wielding death rays and creating poison-kiss epidemics; in one episode, Kennedy brings a dead girl back to life with Dr. Leduc s method of resuscitation, a machine he wheels out of a corner of his well-equipped laboratory. There were two sequels featuring both Elaine and Kennedy: The New Exploits of Elaine (1915) and The Romance of Elaine (1916).
Kennedy uses the wireless and x-rays and is shot with phosgene bullets and trapped in a vacuum room in the 1919 fifteen-chapter serial The Carter Case (subtitled The Craig Kennedy Serial ). Herbert Rawlinson played the detective. In 1926, Kennedy (Jack Mower) was a subordinate character in the ten-chapter serial The Radio Detective , coming to the aid of the hero (Jack Daugherty), an inventor and devoted Boy Scout leader whose radio wave discovery is a gangster s target. Kennedy retired for ten years, emerging only when challenged by an old villain.
The Clutching Hand . Stage and Screen, 1936 (fifteen-chapter serial). Jack Mulhall, Marion Shilling, Yakima Canutt, Ruth Mix, Mae Busch, Robert Frazier. Directed by Albert Herman.
The director of a large industrial corporation announces the discovery of synthetic gold and is kidnapped by the unknown Hand. The hooded villain contacts his many (numbered) agents by way of television as he sits before multileveled monitors; the electronic and video tape gimmickry rampant throughout the serial and upon which the solution depends is extraordinarily sophisticated for its day.
Television
In the early days of television Donald Woods starred in Craig Kennedy, Criminologist (1952), a series of twenty-six half-hour programs.


CHAPTER I
THE CLUTCHING HAND
“JAMESON, HERE’S A STORY I wish you’d follow up,” remarked the managing editor of the Star to me one evening after I had turned in an assignment of the late afternoon.
He handed me a clipping from the evening edition of the Star and I quickly ran my eye over the headline:
“THE CLUTCHING HAND” WINS AGAIN
NEW YORK’S MYSTERIOUS MASTER CRIMINAL PERFECTS ANOTHER COUP
CITY POLICE COMPLETELY BAFFLED
“Here’s this murder of Fletcher, the retired banker and trustee of the University,” he explained. “Not a clue—except a warning letter signed with this mysterious clutching fist. Last week it was the robbery of the Haxworth jewels and the killing of old Haxworth. Again that curious sign of the hand. Then there was the dastardly attempt on Sherburne, the steel magnate. Not a trace of the assailant except this same clutching fist. So it has gone, Jameson—the most alarming and most inexplicable series of murders that has ever happened in this country. And nothing but this uncanny hand to trace them by.”
The editor paused a moment, then exclaimed, “Why, this fellow seems to take a diabolical—I might almost say pathological—pleasure in crimes of violence, revenge, avarice and self-protection. Sometimes it seems as if he delights in the pure deviltry of the thing. It is weird.”
He leaned over and spoke in a low, tense tone. “Strangest of all, the tip has just come to us that Fletcher, Haxworth, Sherburne and all the rest of those wealthy men were insured in the Consolidated Mutual Life. Now, Jameson, I want you to find Taylor Dodge, the president, and interview him. Get what you can, at any cost.”
I had naturally thought first of Kennedy, but there was no time now to call him up and, besides, I must see Dodge immediately.
Dodge, I discovered over the telephone, was not at home, nor at any of the clubs to which he belonged. Late though it was I concluded that he was at his office. No amount of persuasion could get me past the door, and, though I found out later and shall tell soon what was going on there, I determined, about nine o’clock, that the best way to get at Dodge was to go to his house on Fifth Avenue, if I had to camp on his front doorstep until morning. The harder I found the story to get, the more I wanted it.
With some misgivings about being admitted, I rang the bell of the splendid, though not very modern, Dodge residence. An English butler, with a nose that must have been his fortune, opened the door and gravely informed me that Mr. Dodge was not at home, but was expected at any moment.
Once in, I was not going lightly to give up that advantage. I bethought myself of his daughter, Elaine, one of the most popular debutantes of the season, and sent in my card to her, on a chance of interesting her and seeing her father, writing on the bottom of the card: “Would like to interview Mr. Dodge regarding Clutching Hand.”
Summoning up what assurance I had, which is sometimes considerable, I followed the butler down the hall as he bore my card. As he opened the door of the drawing room I caught a vision of a slip of a girl, in an evening gown.
Elaine Dodge was both the ingénue and the athlete—the thoroughly modern type of girl—equally at home with tennis and tango, table talk and tea. Vivacious eyes that hinted at a stunning amber brown sparkled beneath masses of the most wonderful auburn hair. Her pearly teeth, when she smiled, were marvellous. And she smiled often, for life to her seemed a continuous film of enjoyment.
Near her I recognized from his pictures, Perry Bennett, the rising young corporation lawyer, a mighty good looking fellow, with an affable, pleasing way about him, perhaps thirty-five years old or so, but already prominent and quite friendly with Dodge.
On a table I saw a book, as though Elaine had cast it down when the lawyer arrived to call on the daughter under pretense of waiting for her father. Crumpled on the table was the