Annotation

  4 novelets and 3 short stories by the creator of PERRY MASON and the best-selling American mystery writer of all time.

  * * *

  Erle Stanley Gardner

  Erle Stanley Gardner

  Corporal Cortland and Dr. Dixon in

  Only by Running (Flight into Disaster)

  Lester Leith versus Sergeant Ackley in

  To Strike a Match

  Jayson Burr and Gabby Hilman in

  Danger Out of The Past (Protection)

  Peggy Castle and Uncle Benedict in

  * * *

  Erle Stanley Gardner

  The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories

  The Case of the Murderer’s Bride, © 1957 by Erle Stanley Gardner.

  Only by Running (Flight into Disaster), copyright 1952 by Erle Stanley Gardner.

  The Candy Kid, copyright 1931 by Red Star News Co., copyright renewed by Erle Stanley Gardner.

  To Strike a Match (The House of Three Candles), copyright 1938 by Erle Stanley Gardner, renewed.

  Death Rides a Boxcar, copyright 1944 by Erle Stanley Gardner, renewed.

  Danger out of the Past (Protection), copyright 1955 by Erle Stanley Gardner.

  The Jeweled Butterfly, copyright 1952 by Erle Stanley Gardner.

  Novelets

  Corporal Cortland and Dr. Dixon in

  The Case of the Murderer’s Bride

  Lester Leith versus Sergeant Ackley in

  The Candy Kid

  Jayson Burr and Gabby Hilman in

  Death Rides a Boxcar

  Peggy Castle and Uncle Benedict in

  The Jeweled Butterfly

  Short Stories

  Only by Running (Flight into Disaster)

  To Strike a Match (The House of Three Candles)

  Dancer out of the Past (Protection)

  Erle Stanley Gardner

  An Unorthodox Introduction

  [biographical data]

  Name: Erie Stanley Gardner. Born in Malden, Massachusetts, on July 17, 1889. Admitted to the California bar in 1911. Died on March 11, 1970. After the death of his first wife, married on August 7, 1968, to the woman who had been his Executive Secretary for many years — Jean Bethell. One child by his first marriage, Grace Naso.

  [publishing history]

  Erie Stanley Gardner’s first magazine story, “The Police of the House,” was published in 1921. His first book was a Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, published in 1933. [As of 1970, thirty-seven years after Velvet Claws, Mr. Gardner had written 143 books, of which 82 are Perry Mason titles and 15 are nonfiction. | No other author in the United States has equaled his total sales. The last compilation gave sales in the United States and Canada alone as approximately 200,000,000 copies.

  [working day, early in career]

  He always had vivid recollections of putting in day after day trying a case in front of a jury, which is one of the most exhausting activities, then dashing up to the law library after court had adjourned to spend three or four hours looking up law points with which | Perry Mason-like] he could trip his adversary the next day, then going home, grabbing a glass of milk with an egg in it, dashing upstairs to his study, ripping the cover off his typewriter, noticing it was 11:30 p.m., and settling down with grim determination to get a plot for a story. Along about 3:00 in the morning he would have completed his daily stint of a 4000-word minimum and would crawl into bed, only to wake up about 6:00 with a new idea which he would transmit to the typewriter, then grab a hurried breakfast, shave and be on his way to the office where he’d rush through correspondence and dictation so he could beat it up to the courthouse and be on hand to smile at the jury promptly at 10:00... During nearly all this time he had a schedule of having a novelette in the mail every third day, a schedule which he rigorously maintained.

  [looking back on early-career working day]

  Why the heck does a guy live like that? Mr. Gardner didn’t know. He certainly didn’t do it for money. About half of his law practice was given away, fighting for people who didn’t have any money but whose rights had been infringed... When he came right down to it, Mr. Gardner guessed it was just an inherent desire to accomplish a lot, realizing that life was going to be too short to do it.

  [some personal characteristics]

  He couldn’t stand petty squabbles. He hated paper work. He didn’t have the time to bicker about details. He went in for adventure, horseback riding, travel, and photography.

  [sources of material; opinions; modus operandi]

  He drew on his wealth of experience in the solution of crime. He also had 25 years of experience as a practicing trial lawyer.

  He believed that readers like mystery stories because the story presents a problem which absorbs the attention of the reader and then brings that problem to a logical and final solution. Most readers are beset with a lot of problems they can’t solve. When they try to relax, their minds keep gnawing over these problems and there is no solution. They pick up a mystery story, become completely absorbed in the problem, see the problem worked out to a final and just conclusion, turn out the light and go to sleep.

  Few writers, he believed, analyze their methods of working out plots. He always did. To begin with, every story plot must have the lowest common denominator of public interest — the Cinderella basis, for example, used so often in Hollywood... Mr. Gardner had quite a list of basic plots, but they were his secret — let the other boys figure out their own.

  He thought modern detective stories far ahead of the earlier stories, so far as technique was concerned.

  How long did it take him to write a novel? Thirty years ago he dictated a book in a week or ten days, revised and polished it and got it into the hands of the publisher within two or three weeks of the time he started. Later he revised and re-revised, and did so much reading that whenever he got a chance to relax he threw a saddle on a horse, picked up a gun or a bow and arrow, or climbed in a car and went tearing out in search of new material and adventure.

  [number of series characters]

  He always had a yen for series characters, but he didn’t know how many he created. For some ten years prior to the publication of his first book, he wrote over 1,000,000 words a year which were sold to magazines. Back in the old wood-pulp days there was Senor Amaz de Lobo, professional soldier of fortune and revolutionist; Jax Bowman (he couldn’t remember anything about him!); Sidney Zoom and his police dog; the Patent Leather Kid, a suave, sinister chap; the firm of Small, Weston & Burke; Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, a lone wolf type who ran in magazines for something over 20 years; Whispering Sands; Speed Dash, a human fly who developed a photographic memory — Mr. Gardner’s first series character; Major Brane, free-lance secret service man; El Paisano, who could see in the dark; Larkin, a juggler who carried no other weapon than a billiard cue; Black Barr, a typical Western two-gun guy, who felt he was an instrument of divine justice; Hard Rock Hogan; Fong Dei; Crowder, Rapp; Skarle... | to say nothing of D.A. Douglas Selby; Bertha Cool and Donald Lam; Gramps Wiggins; Sheriff Bill Eldon; Terry Clane; Lester Leith; and, of course, the one and only Perry Mason).

  [number of pen names]

  A. A. Fair, Charles M. Green |his first |, Kyle Coming, Grant Holiday, Robert Parr, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Arthur Mann Sellers, Les Tillray, Dane Rigley, Charles M. Stanton.

  [the man behind the writer]

  For many years he investigated cases of innocent persons who had been wrongfully convicted, and, as a leading member of the so-called Court of Last Resort, he and several associates donated their time and at their own expense brought about ultimate justice in dozens of cases.

  An Unorthodox Postscript

  Dear Reader:

  Now, just what is unorthodox about the preceding Introduction? Its form or arrangement? Yes. The impression that its components are somewhat disjointed, perhaps lacking in the smooth flow usually found in an editorial foreword? Yes. But there is something else — something far more unorthodox.

  You had every right to assume that the Introduction you have just read was written by Ellery Queen. The front cover, the title page, the contents page all said so. Well, it is true that Ellery Queen wrote the longhand notes for the Introduction, organized the sequence of the notes, typed the first draft and the final copy, sent the text to the press for typesetting, proofread the galleys, and later the page proofs — hut Ellery Queen did not write the Introduction.

  A contradiction? Let us explain. When we persuaded Erie Stanley Gardner to permit us to publish his first book of short stories and novelettes — thus launching this Ellery Queen Presents series of original paperbacks — it was our intention to write an appreciative Introduction to Mr. Gardner and his work. But when we reread Erie’s personal letters to your Editor over the years, and some of Erie’s published reminiscences, we realized that the Introduction we had in mind had already been written — by Erle Stanley Gardner himself! And we realized further that we could not possibly write an Introduction as authentic and accurate as one entirely composed of statements written by Erie Stanley Gardner himself.

  So the Introduction preceding this editorial postscript is most unorthodox because it could have been completely enclosed by quotation marks. With the exception of the words in [brackets] and such necessary
but unimportant changes as substituting Mr. Gardner and he for /, and his for my, and changing to the past tense because of Mr. Gardner’s death, every word, phrase, clause, and sentence came directly from the person who knew more about Erie Stanley Gardner and his career and work than anyone else in the world — the author himself.

  So, let us end as we began — by quoting Mr. Gardner again. In the summer of 1951 we wrote to Erie and asked him, in connection with awards to be made later that year by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, to nominate the ten best active mystery writers. On August 7, 1951, Erie replied with o long letter in which he ex plained why he could not nominate the ten best. His letter closed as follows (and finally we use quotation marks): “... if I should select a list of ten people whom I considered the best mystery writers, I would always be haunted by the feeling that I had done an injustice to the eleventh, twelfth, fifteenth, and seventy-fifth.”

  Now that, dear reader, tells more about Erie Stanley Gardner, about his sensitivity and conscientiousness and deep-rooted sense of fair play, than any biographical sketch or even any critical appraisal — not about Erie Stanley Gardner the best-selling American mystery writer of all time, hut about Erie Stanley Gardner the man, the human being.

  Ellery Queen

  Corporal Cortland and Dr. Dixon in

  The Case of the Murderer’s Bride

  Lawrence B. Ives had two basic objections to the income tax. He objected to listing his occupation and he was annoyed that his business expenses could never be claimed as a deduction.

  Lawrence B. Ives was in the business of murdering women.

  So far as Ives was concerned, it was a reasonably safe and highly profitable occupation. It required a certain amount of research work, quite a bit of ingenuity, a pleasing personality, and a lot of reading.

  Ives read the newspapers. He read them carefully, concentrating on news of tragic accidents.

  Like many of our higher courts, Ives believed in following precedent. One tragic accident would arouse his interest. A duplication of that accident would start a file on the subject. A third such accident would cause him to start looking for a new wife. The fourth accident would then cause him to set his plan in motion.

  New wives were not as difficult to find as the accidents.

  Lawrence B. Ives never ceased to be astounded at the number of women who had passed the first third of their lives in a dull routine, who were starved for affection, and who had carefully saved their earnings.

  His wives were all of a general type: women who had sacrificed their chances for early romance because of an unselfish devotion to family. After the sisters and brothers had married and the parents had passed away, these self-effacing breadwinners learned to accept vicarious love affairs. Being starved for affection, they frequented the newsstands, buying magazines which dealt with romance, or they spent long evenings in the public libraries.

  Larry Ives was 36 years old, but he represented his age as a youthful 48. He spent considerable time and quite a bit of money buying his clothes. He was a good conversationalist and had a way of worming information out of librarians and from the clerks who presided over magazine counters. He also spent quite a bit of his time riding in public conveyances, looking for women who were reading the love-story type of magazine.

  In making applications for a marriage license, he never listed his prior matrimonial adventures; but that was a minor omission — one which he regarded as of no greater legal importance than driving 50 miles an hour in a 35-mile zone. He could never be prosecuted for bigamy since, whenever Larry took on a new love, he was always definitely finished with the old. In fact, he made certain that his wives were very, very dead before moving on to his next conquest.

  Earlier in his career, Larry had had to work with considerable rapidity. This had caused him to take certain risks. Now, with a large measure of financial stability, thanks to his unique gainful occupation, he didn’t need to work so fast.

  His current wife had been named Nan Palmer before she became the radiantly happy Mrs. Lawrence B. Ives.

  Nan Palmer’s outstanding characteristic had been family loyalty. She had had an unselfish devotion to those she loved. Her father had died when she was 12. By the time she was 16 she was supporting her mother, her sister Effie, and a younger brother.

  Effie had selfish charm and dazzling beauty and was always promising the family a wealth of luxuries after she had “made good in Hollywood.” She won a beauty contest when she was 18, and two divorces later had quit writing home.

  Nan had put the younger brother through two years of college, and then he was killed in Korea. Her mother had never been strong enough to work, but had lingered on for years.

  Nan’s salary had been good, but it had all gone for living expenses, the ever-present doctor bills and nursing fees. There had been less and less money for Nan to spend on herself. She had learned to make her own clothes, she never went to a beauty shop, and she had adapted her life to a steady routine of drudgery: eight hours at the office, a ride home in a crowded bus during the rush hour, shopping at the market, cooking for an invalid, washing the dishes, cleaning up the house, doing the washing and ironing, sewing clothes, falling into bed, getting up in the morning to the chore of getting breakfast, washing the dishes, making the beds, and leaving for the office.

  After Mrs. Palmer died, Nan had become so immersed in her routine that she didn’t know what to do with her leisure. She had never before had leisure. Now, she had time to read and she was thrilled by the adventures of heroines who were swept off their feet by gallant Prince Charmings who were always tall, generous, wavy-haired, thoughtful, handsome, and wealthy.

  Nan Palmer was made-to-order for Lawrence B. Ives.

  At first she couldn’t believe her senses. It seemed absolutely incredible when, after several chance meetings and brief conversations in the library, it became quite evident that Mr. Ives found her attractive.

  Ives had his line down pat. He was, he said, a lonely widower who had traveled around the world. He wanted intellectual as well as physical companionship. He had learned that all is not gold that glitters and that beneath many a plain exterior there beats a warm, affectionate heart which is capable not only of steady affection but which can at times pour forth streams of molten passion. They were married in Yuma, Arizona.

  Once having snared his victim into matrimony, it was a part of Ives’s campaign to stress his wealth and his exciting plans for their future together. He disapproved of his wife’s friends. He wanted to get her away from everything pertaining to her drab past.

  None of his requests seemed odd to Nan. She was more than willing to escape from the colorless life she had always lived. She cooperated wholeheartedly by investing his money in beauty treatments, in charm and posture lessons, and in a sizable wardrobe of new clothes. Larry’s wife, Nan reasoned, must be groomed to entertain as an attractive and charming hostess. She even took foreign-language courses so that she would be a credit to him when they went abroad. To Nan, life had just begun, and she planned to live it in the fullest possible manner.

  The drain on Larry’s capital caused him some dismay. It seemed a rather unnecessary expenditure on a woman who would be laid to rest in a few months. But the results, he had to admit, were esthetically satisfying. He was astounded at the change in the woman who had been drab Nan Palmer. She continued to wear her dark hair in a manner which best suited her simplicity. Her figure became strikingly attractive, and her taste in clothes proved to be unerringly chic — as well as consistently expensive.

  Her first bashful responses to love had suddenly been swept along on a tide of released emotion until Ives found himself thinking of “retiring” and settling down to enjoy himself with his loving wife.

  However, the chains of habit are strong. Sooner or later a man always returns to what the police list in their files as modus operandi. And so there came the day when Ives brought up the matter of life insurance.