The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32 Read online

  The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32

  by

  Frederick Nebel

  Introduction by

  Will Murray

  Altus Press • 2013

  Copyright Information

  © 2013 Altus Press

  Publication History:

  “Introduction” appears here for the first time. Copyright © 2013 Will Murray. All Rights Reserved.

  “Death Alley” originally appeared in the November, 1931 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “Hell’s Pay Check” originally appeared in the December, 1931 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “Six Diamonds and a Dick” originally appeared in the January, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “And There Was Murder” originally appeared in the February, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “Phantom Fingers” originally appeared in the March, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “Murder on the Loose” originally appeared in the April, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “Rogues’ Ransom” originally appeared in the August, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “Lead Pearls” originally appeared in the September, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “The Dead Don’t Die” originally appeared in the October, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “The Candy Killer” originally appeared in the November, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  “A Truck-Load of Diamonds” originally appeared in the December, 1932 issue of Dime Detective Magazine. Copyright © 2013 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Argosy Communications, Inc.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press

  Special Thanks to Joel Frieman, Ron Goulart, Ken McDaniel, Will Murray, Rick Ollerman, Rob Preston & Ray Riethmeier.

  Introduction by Will Murray

  DASHIELL HAMMETT was an American original. While he had many imitators, no writer was ever his equal. When Hammett left the pages of Black Mask in 1930, he left a stark and gaping void.

  Editor Joseph Shaw looked to one writer to fill that void. That writer was Frederick L. Nebel. In the pages of Black Mask, but nowhere else, Nebel was Hammett’s designated successor.

  True, Raymond Chandler became Hammett’s heir apparent, but Chandler didn’t come along until 1933, which puts him in another category altogether. And Chandler was hardly a prolific pulpster, while Nebel was one of Black Mask’s regular star contributors.

  When he was preparing his retrospective Hard-Boiled Omnibus for publication in 1946, Shaw wrote Nebel the following:

  Simon & Schuster have asked me to write an introduction as to what made Black Mask and its recognized style click. Well, that’s the story of you and Dash, particularly, and Ray Chandler when he came along later. It isn’t my story—I never “discovered” an author; he discovered himself. I never “made” an author. He made himself. And you and Dash made that first distinctive style.

  Shaw’s editorial assessment is incontrovertible. And it’s interesting that he does not mention the hard-boiled pioneer Carroll John Daly, who while wildly popular was no stylist.

  A high school dropout who worked on the New York docks and in Canadian farms, Nebel began writing about outdoorsy he-man types like Captain Fortune and Typhoon MacQuade for Fiction House’s Action Stories, and assorted Mounties for North West Stories. For Lariat, he wrote of a cowboy hero he named the Driftin’ Kid.

  Nebel broke into Black Mask in 1926. Most of his early output consisted of the now-legendary Kennedy and MacBride stories and a series featuring “Tough Dick” Donohue of the Inter-State Detective Agency, who debuted in 1930. Modeled after Hammett’s popular Continental Op tales, Donny Donohue functioned as a natural successor to the unnamed Op, whom Hammett retired in 1930, bowing out in the same issue of Black Mask that witnessed Donohue’s debut.

  Nebel and Hammett were good friends, but the former denied being influenced by the latter. He explained the way of it to Ron Goulart:

  The so-called Black Mask story was developed by a few writers who happened to be producing that particular type of fiction when Joe Shaw became editor. The only B.M. writers I knew well at the time were Hammett and Whitfield: we spent a lot of time together socially and I don’t recall that we ever talked about Shaw’s influence as an editor. We were too busy clowning around in bars to talk shop. Besides, we never read one another’s published work. I did read The Maltese Falcon, but that was about a year after it appeared in book form….

  Since we were not influenced by each other’s work I can only surmise that we reflected the times we lived in. Certainly we were in no way editorially influenced by Joe Shaw. For my own part I know that Shaw never told me how to write for him, or what to write, nor did he ever ask for a revision or make one himself. He was an extraordinarily enthusiastic man, warm and cooperative, and I think his most important contribution to the magazine was his ability to let a writer write in his own way….

  Truthfully, Fred Nebel wrote in a cool, detached voice that was distinctively his own. His characters possessed a reservedly sentimental side that was also unique. Nebel was an original.

  When Popular Publications’ Harry Steeger launched Dime Detective in 1933, he plundered the pages of Black Mask for star writers around whom to build his new enterprise. Joe Shaw couldn’t have been too happy, but what could he do? Nebel, Erle Stanley Gardner and others were freelancers. They could write for whoever solicited their work. And to lure them into his service, Steeger offered them a penny a word above their going Black Mask rates.

  Fred Nebel debuted in Dime Detective with a knockoff of “Tough Dick” Donohue—Cardigan of the Cosmos Detective Agency. A character named Jack Cardigan had appeared in the first of Nebel’s Black Mask stories starring Captain Steve MacBride and John X. Kennedy of The Free Press, “Raw Law.”

  “A tall, lean, dark-eyed man, this Cardigan, rounding thirty years,” wrote Nebel, introducing him. “Men said that he was reckless, case-hardened, and a flash with a gun. He was.”

  Later in the serial Nebel added:

  Something might be added; he was ruthless. As a detective, he’d been hated and feared by more crooks than perhaps any other man in the Department—inspectors, captains, lieutenants and all the rest included. Because he was hard—tough—rough
on rats; rats being one of his favorite nicknames applied to a species of human being that shoots in the dark and aims for the back.

  At the end of that 1928-29 serial, Detective Cardigan quits the force to start his own detective agency. Some critics have suggested that the two Cardigans are identical. That may well be. However, in his introductory story, “Death Alley,” Nebel’s protagonist goes by the name of Steve Cardigan. Thereafter, he’s just plain Cardigan. But just a few stories along, in “Lead Pearls,” his first name is inexplicably given as Jack. For this publication, we’ve corrected those early occurrences of “Steve” for a more pleasant reading experience.

  This apparent case of an author forgetting his long-running hero’s first name may not be as inexplicable as it first appears to be. In making up an issue of a magazine, pulp editors sometimes discovered they had two or three protagonists bearing the same first name among the contents! Invariably they had to change one or two. That could be the case here. In time, after avoiding the issue of Cardigan’s honest name, Nebel might have reasserted his original authorial intention. According to “Six Diamonds and a Dick,” Cardigan had been operating in St. Louis for three years, roughly coinciding with the time Jack Cardigan quit the force. Yet “Lead Pearls” implies that Cardigan has been with the Cosmos Detective Agency for at least seven years, not necessarily in St. Louis. Throughout the series, his attitude towards cops in general belies any sense of past fraternity. All that can be stated with certainty is that this Cardigan remains Jack for the rest of the series.

  Other than George Hammerhorn, the agency’s head man, only one recurring character of consequence joins Cardigan during some of his cases—Cosmos operative Patricia Seaward, who debuts in the two-part sequence comprised of “Six Diamonds and a Dick” and “And Then There was Murder.” Once in a while, she pulls his bacon out of the fire. It’s suspected that Lester Dent, a Nebel fan, might have borrowed some of Patricia Seaward’s fire in creating Doc Savage’s cousin Patricia Savage. A ship in an early Doc novel was called the Seaward.

  Forty-four Cardigan stories unreeled from Fred Nebel’s typewriter over the next four years. They were gems. Freed from Joe Shaw’s super-restrictive blue pencil, Nebel penned his Cardigan tales with an open enthusiasm absent from the darker, more grim Donohue stories. Reportedly Nebel was receiving a handsome four cents a word rate for these stories.

  In fact, once Jack Cardigan got off the ground, Nebel retired Donohue. After 1933, only one more appeared in Black Mask and that appears to have been a rejected Cardigan story revised into a Donohue installment—Donohue is said to be working for the Cosmos agency in “Ghost of the Chance.” A certain giveaway.

  Just as he had with Black Mask, Nebel became Dime Detective’s star contributor. A biographical page in the second issue kicked off a long series of similar author profiles. It may be significant that the first writer selected was Frederick Nebel.

  He wrote:

  Writing is my business, the one and only. It’s no lark but on the other hand I can think of worse jobs. I started from scratch, had some tough breaks and some good ones—and the tough ones fewer than the good. I’ve written almost every type of story. My first yarns were based on a pilgrimage I made to the Canadian Northwest, where my great-uncle was a pioneer. Once I shipped on a Norwegian tramp and knocked around the Caribbean. I’ve lived in France and in England. Was born in New York 27 years ago and spend about a month there every year. Like the city at night. There was a time where I worked on the waterfront.

  I react quickly to a Scotch joke or just straight scotch… Masefield, Conrad, Rupert Brook… a perfect motor… Katherine Cornell… white water… the smell of coffee boiling over a woods fire… summer fog… a dark-haired girl (my wife)… Charlie Chaplin. This could go on forever but I believe there should be a law against it.

  Six or seven months of the year I spend in Maine. The remainder of the year I go places and see things. Don’t play tennis, bridge or marbles. Like pistol shooting but prefer the bow and arrow. Play a fair game of chess and a rotten game of poker. I can resist anything but temptation and I whistle in the bath tub.

  In 1936, flushed with the success of Warner Bros.’ Smart Blonde—the first Torchy Blaine film based on the MacBride and Kennedy stories—and breaking into slicks like Cosmopolitan and Collier’s, Nebel dropped out of Black Mask entirely. Joe Shaw’s departure was more-or-less a trigger for that.

  “I cut away from the pulps completely, all at once, circa 1937,” he later recalled. “The demise of the magazine was doubtless hastened by the departure, more or less at the same time, of several of those writers who had sustained it since the late Twenties. But of course the handwriting was even then appearing on the wall.”

  Nebel’s last pulp sale was a final Cardigan case, “No Time to Kill,” in the May, 1937 Dime Detective. He never looked back.

  Like Hammett, Nebel was disinclined to allow his pulp short stories to be reprinted in hardcover. Hammett didn’t mind paperback reprintings, but Nebel preferred his old pulp stuff to remain buried in magazine back issues. When in 1946 Joe Shaw selected two for possible inclusion in his pioneering Hard-Boiled Omnibus, Nebel balked.

  “He was a little upset when I refused to let him include two of my novelettes in his anthology,” Nebel later related.

  At the time, he told Shaw, “The reason why I don’t want to see my old Black Mask stuff between boards is because I think it served its purpose well when it was first published but I honestly cannot see what purpose it would serve now. These times have moved fast. The stories, published between ten and fifteen years ago, seem now to be dated. The very sense of timeliness that made them good does not, I think, make them so good now. I can work up no enthusiasm.”

  Because of that thinking, Nebel fell out of the public consciousness until after his death and a new generation of anthologizers began including his tales in their collections. Since the 1960s virtually every hard-boiled anthology has included a Fred Nebel story. To do otherwise smacked of sacrilege.

  While several Cardigan stories have been anthologized over the years, only one collection—containing a mere six novelettes—has ever been assembled. Until now.

  Here is volume 1 of The Complete Casebook of Cardigan. Here also is Fred Nebel at his finest. Of the 11 stories in this volume, only two have seen print since their original magazine appearances. All are sterling specimens of the Hardboiled School of pulp writing.

  Death Alley

  Chapter One

  Death Ride

  MAX SAUL, humming “The St. Louis Blues,” prodded the catch base of the Mauser’s butt, drew out the magazine, slipped in eight nickel-cased bullets, jammed the magazine back into the butt and jacked a shell into the chamber.

  Cardigan said, “Now for God’s sake, Max, watch your step. Last week Pat O’Hara was one of us and tonight he’s pushing up daisies. This client Ludwig Hartz is a nice enough old guy but he’s got that going-places-and-doing-things complex. Even at a time like this.”

  Saul slid the flat automatic into his hip pocket.

  “Once a yama-yama girl told me I’d live to a ripe old age. She said I had wonderful eyes too.”

  Cardigan ignored the humor, went on in a deep, blunt voice.

  “If I thought Brodski was behind that kill, it would be all right. But I don’t. I don’t think this mill strike has a thing to do with it. Bush fell on Brodski because the dumb Polack instigated the strike and once made a crack that he’d blow Hartz’s head off—and because Brodski has no alibi. But that’s not enough, Max.”

  Saul chuckled.

  “I know, I know, Jack. You’ve got Mrs. Hartz on the brain. And that nice-faced lounge lizard Everett.”

  Cardigan swore. He strode to one of the windows—a big man, a hard party, rangy in the framework and good-looking in a rough, male way. The St. Louis summer night sky was overcast. Motor cars whirred past on Lindell Boulevard.

  Cardigan pivoted.

  “Why the hell shouldn’t I have her on th
e brain?” he demanded. “She’s twenty years younger than Hartz. The night after Pat was killed she and Everett told Hartz they were going to see The Mikado. On a hunch—I was all worked up about Pat’s death—I tailed them. They went out to Sherick’s gambling joint, the Ritz, in the county. They were known there. And I saw Clara Hartz cornered by a big guy who frightened her. He faded when Everett appeared. She got a look at me but I made believe I didn’t see her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell papa Hartz?”

  “I’m no snitch—unless it gets me somewhere. Hartz is dead against gambling and if he knew she went out there it would be just too bad for her. She’s worried. She’ll come to me. And it’s damned lucky for her she wasn’t out there a night later—when that machine-gun mob raided the place and got away with a hundred thousand.”

  Saul said, “And damned lucky, for you—the way you used a fake police badge to get in there,” Saul put on his straw hat. “Well, toodle-oo, Jack.”

  “Watch yourself, Max.”

  “You know what that yama-yama girl said.”

  Saul went out.

  Pat O’Hara was dead. Dead and shoving up daisies. He’d taken unto himself six slugs from a super .45. He must have had a flash of intuition in the limousine carrying him and Ludwig Hartz, the milk magnate, through Forest Park, that unholy night. He’d thrown Hartz to the floor of the car, yanked at his gun—and then taken the lead smack in the chest as the mystery car sped past. Brunner, the chauffeur, had jammed on brakes, smashed a mudguard against a tree—and fainted. Hartz had roared for help.

  Detective-sergeant Bush had nailed Brodski, leader of the milk strike. Everybody blamed it on the strike. Everybody but Cardigan—and he was only toying with a vague idea. The Cosmos Agency had sent out Max Saul from New York to replace O’Hara, as assistant to Cardigan, the regional head. Either Cardigan or Saul had been with Hartz at all times since the murder.

  Cardigan was pouring a pony of Bourbon when the telephone rang. He finished pouring, downed the drink neat and crossed the room rasping his throat.