The Poisoned Pen

Arthur B. Reeve

Description

A dozen astonishing mysteries from the case files of scientific detective Craig Kennedy

Whenever the New York City police department encounters a mystery so strange it seems impossible to solve, they head to Columbia University in search of Professor Craig Kennedy. When he’s not lecturing students on the science of chemistry, Kennedy uses his superlative intellect and his facility with the latest technological advancements to capture the city’s most diabolical villains. In “The Confidence King,” he matches wits with a thief whose counterfeiting skills extend from paper currency to fingerprints. In “The Firebug,” Kennedy stops an arson epidemic by means of sophisticated handwriting analysis. And in the title story, the surprise antidote to a case of cyanide poisoning turns out to be as dangerous as it is effective.
 
First appearing in the pages of Cosmpolitan magazine, scientific detective Craig Kennedy was so popular during the early twentieth century that he became known as the “American Sherlock Holmes.”
 
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: 9781480444539
• Langue: English

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The Poisoned Pen
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.


THE POISONED PEN
Kennedy’s suit-case was lying open on the bed, and he was literally throwing things into it from his chiffonier, as I entered after a hurried trip up-town from the Star office in response to an urgent message from him.
“Come, Walter,” he cried, hastily stuffing in a package of clean laundry without taking off the wrapping-paper, “I’ve got your suit-case out. Pack up whatever you can in five minutes. We must take the six o’clock train for Danbridge.”
I did not wait to hear any more. The mere mention of the name of the quaint and quiet little Connecticut town was sufficient. For Danbridge was on everybody’s lips at that time. It was the scene of the now famous Danbridge poisoning case—a brutal case in which the pretty little actress, Vera Lytton, had been the victim.
“I’ve been retained by Senator Adrian Willard,” he called from his room, as I was busy packing in mine. The Willard family believe that that young Dr. Dixon is the victim of a conspiracy—or at least Alma Willard does, which comes to the same thing, and—well, the senator called me up on long-distance and offered me anything I would name in reason to take the case. Are you ready? Come on, then. We’ve simply got to make that train.”
As we settled ourselves in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman, which for some reason or other we had to ourselves, Kennedy spoke again for the first time since our frantic dash across the city to catch the train.
“Now let us see, Walter,” he began. “We’ve both read a good deal about this case in the papers. Let’s try to get our knowledge in an orderly shape before we tackle the actual case itself.”
“Ever been in Danbridge?” I asked.
“Never,” he replied. “What sort of place is it?”
“Mighty interesting,” I answered; “a combination of old New England and new, of ancestors and factories, of wealth and poverty, and above all it is interesting for its colony of New-Yorkers—what shall I call it?—a literary-artistic-musical combination, I guess.”
“Yes,” he resumed, “I thought as much. Vera Lytton belonged to the colony. A very talented girl, too—you remember her in ‘The Taming of the New Woman’ last season? Well, to get back to the facts as we know them at present.
“Here is a girl with a brilliant future on the stage discovered by her friend, Mrs. Boncour, in convulsions—practically insensible—with a bottle of headache-powder and a jar of ammonia on her dressing-table. Mrs. Boncour sends the maid for the nearest doctor, who happens to be a Dr. Waterworth. Meanwhile she tries to restore Miss Lytton, but with no result. She smells the ammonia and then just tastes the headache-powder, a very foolish thing to do, for by the time Dr. Waterworth arrives he has two patients.”
“No,” I corrected, “only one, for Miss Lytton was dead when he arrived, according to his latest statement.”
“Very well, then—one. He arrives, Mrs. Boncour is ill, the maid knows nothing at all about it, and Vera Lytton is dead. He, too, smells the ammonia, tastes the headache-powder—just the merest trace—and then he has two patients, one of them himself. We must see him, for his experience must have been appalling. How he ever did it I can’t imagine, but he saved both himself and Mrs. Boncour from poisoning—cyanide, the papers say, but of course we can’t accept that until we see. It seems to me, Walter, that lately the papers have made the rule in murder cases: When in doubt, call it cyanide.”
Not relishing Kennedy in the humour of expressing his real opinion of the newspapers, I hastily turned the conversation back again by asking, “How about the note from Dr. Dixon?”
“Ah, there is the crux of the whole case—that note from Dixon. Let us see. Dr. Dixon is, if I am informed correctly, of a fine and aristocratic fam