If you missed the last one…
This post is brought to you by Strange Adventures, a companion volume to Strange Detectives by G. W. Thomas. Arthur Conan Doyle will always be the author of Sherlock Holmes but he also wrote some pretty good adventure stories as well. My favorites include “The Terror of Blue John Gap” (underground monster), “The Brazilian Cat” (man trapped in a cage with jaguar), The Lost World, and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) which was a Mystery, a Gothic, an adventure and a false monster occult tale. Strange Adventures offers some fun in a similar vein with detectives and occult investigators taking on monsters in the Old West, in the Alps and in modern British Columbia.
The year 1929 sees some changes for August Derleth. He began his Solar Pons series for which he is almost as famous as his Cthulhu Mythos stories, with five tales, though only one has fantastic material in them. (I have not included the non-fantastic stories.) Augie wrote to Arthur Conan Doyle upon hearing that the Sherlock Holmes author did not intend to write any more stories in that canon. Doyle declined his offer to continue the series, leading to the first and perhaps greatest example of fan fiction ever created. Changing the names to others that sounded similar, Derleth avoided copyright conflicts and in the end wrote more Solar Pons stories than Doyle had Sherlocks. In 1929, these tales were published in the obscure detective Pulps but would eventually be collected by Derleth’s own press, Mycroft & Moran beginning in 1945.
Also of note, Derleth did not collaborate with anyone in 1929 including Marc R. Schorer. And no story illustrations either. Next year he will get his first with “The Pacer”.
“An Occurrence in an Antique Shop” (Weird Tales, January 1929) follows Morrison who owns a carving of a pirate stabbing a sailor. He insists to Clavering that the sword’s tip is going deeper into the victim. Later Morrison is found dead, having been a sailor and possibly a pirate. This rather ineffective tale will get a better version with “Something In Wood”, a Cthulhu Mythos version.
“‘Melodie in E Minor'” (Weird Tales, February 1929) has Jack and Amy living in squalor and hating each other. Amy torments Jack by playing the same piece of music of the title over and over. Amy’s brother, Jim, lives with them, making the meals. One day Jack comes home but Amy doesn’t. Only after the piano starts playing “Melodie in E Minor” by Rachmaninoff once again does Jack admit he murdered Amy and that it is not her playing the piano.
“The Deserted Garden” (Weird Tales, March 1929) has Mr. Jerym Waring travel to Wales to see an ancient garden that may have once belonged to the Romans. There he discovers a stone with mysterious writing. He refuses to take heed of the innkeeper’s warning and visits the site on May Eve. He sees Pan and his goat friends. He is found dead the next day surrounded by hundreds of hoofprints.
“A Dinner at Imola” (Weird Tales, April 1929) continues the story from 1928’s “The Philosopher Stone”. Messer Niccolo Machiavelli (yes, that guy) has his spy, Giulo follow Cesar Borgio. The Bull has been visiting a magician named Luigi Reni, bringing him a portrait of Duke Paolo di Colonna. Reni gives Borgia back the painting and a pack of strange candles. These are burned at the dinner in the title. As Colonna’s candle burns down he cries out, “I am burning” and dies from Borgia’s sorcery. This story mentions di Orsini who died in “The Philosopher’s Stone”.
“The Adventure of the Missing Tenants” (The Dragnet, June 1929) is a Mystery with a fantastic feel. An Italian count has disappeared from a house with a reputation. At least three other owners have disappeared mysteriously from the building. Pons and Parker look around and find some knot holes in the bookcases near the fireplace. The detective puts two hoses into the holes and fills the space with knock-out gas. The fireplace falls down into a secret recess, exposing a doorway. From here a man flees. He is the first owner and the man who designed the house, a mad scientist who does obscene experiments in pain. This one has plenty of Gothic strangeness and a Sci-Fi Pulp explanation. Doyle had used a similar style of tale with “The Crooked Man”. (For more, go here.) For more on the occult detective stories of Sherlock Holmes, go here.
“The House on the Highway” (Weird Tales, June 1929) has two men stranded somewhere between Madison and Sauk City. They approach what looks like a deserted house but an old man answers the door. He suffers from consumption. He lets the men sleep there but apologizes for all the visitors he gets in the night. Visitors he says are dead. Only his daughter doesn’t visit, since she probably married and left. The next day the two men walk to the next farm to use the phone. They tell of their stay and the old man. The wife of the farmer is the old man’s daughter. The old man died of consumption seven years ago. Pretty typical ghost story though I noticed some similarities to the later “Colonel Markesan”, with the old man being terrible and evil instead of kindly.
“Old Mark” (Weird Tales, August 1929) is a longer tale that should have had an illustration. Set in Wales again, an archaeologist, Carson Fielding, is found dead. The scientist fought with the local government and was refused the chance to dig in the Roman ruins. The narrator retraces his steps before his death. The local legends include tales of “Old Mark”, a Celto-Roman necromancer named Marcus Vibius Galacinus. The old stories tell that the evil mage trapped a demon in an urn, which his dead body carried off to some unknown place. The narrator spends his time retracing his illegal digs. He comes across a stone that Fielding pulled up. Underneath is a silver urn with its seals broken open. A few locals end up dead before the narrator learns that the urn held Mark’s demon and that a burning crucifix placed in the urn would make it uninhabitable. He does this causing the demon to flee, leaving behind the words: “INTERITVS. EXTRA. SI. NON. INTRA.” (Destruction Outside If Not Within) in ashes. The tale ends with a mention of an old woman seeing dead Mark’s body running across a field with a shape like a big, black dog at his side.
Derleth’s inspirations are fairly obvious this time. M. R. James’ most famous “Count Magnus” has many similar details. Also quaint tales of Montague Summers and a black dog may have been used tOo. Though derivative, this story also shows the author working at a much longer tale. Something we will start to see more of in 1930.
“Scarlatti’s Bottle” (Weird Tales, November 1929) is another Italian tale, which mentions di Orsini and Colonna from the previous tales. Duke Gonzaga, a rival of Cesar Borgia, receives a bottle from Scarlatti, another magician. Gonzaga is told the magic in the vessel can’t hurt him if he doesn’t open it. Which, of course, he does. Something inside the bottle strangles him to death. A note inside the bottle says: “I feared you would not like my bottle imp, Highness, Duke Gonzaga; so I cautioned you accordingly.”
“He Shall Come” (Manuscripts, December 1929) is one of the more obscure of Derleth’s tales. I haven’t been able to read it but Alison M. Wilson in her August Derleth: A Bibliography (1983) describes it thus: “On a train, a priest encounters a mysterious stranger who engages him in a rather blasphemous argument.” The story was reprinted in the Arkham House volume Not Long For This World (1948) but was cut from the paperback. It also appeared in The Ghoul, April 1942. The plot sounds similar to “The Extra Passenger” (Weird Tales, January 1947) which was filmed for TV.
“The Inheritors” (Weird Tales, December 1929) has Momsen buying a haunted house. He invites the narrator to join him for February 17th, the only day of the year that the house is haunted. Momsen tells the history of the house that began with the builder, Henrik van Damm being stabbed to death from behind. He cursed the unseen killer to four generations. Afterwards, letters are discovered that the wife of the hated man, convinced her lover to do the deed. His name was Moomsenn, which Momsen figures is an earlier version of his name. Every year afterwards, if the house is frequented on the 17th of February, the descendant of Moomsen is found dead with a burn on his chest. The narrator and Momsen get drunk then face the specter. Momsen dies (of course). The narrator feels a cold wind passing away along with the curse.
Conclusion
The more of these early stories I read, the more I begin to see themes that Derleth will return to in later tales. “The House on the Highway” may have been a dry-run for “Colonel Markesan”. Or it may not. Both stories have an old man who talks to ghosts. The effect of both stories are quite different. The old man in the deserted house is a friendly fellow who freely admits he talks to ghosts. The protagonist of “Colonel Markesan” has to deal with an exceptional evil man who tortures the dead. The basic idea is the same but the two stories arrive at different places. To be honest, there are only so many ways to flip an idea like a haunted house and a big reveal the next morning. Still, Derleth seems to be trying as many variations as he can come up with.
Mythos Fiction from RAGE m a c h i n e Books
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