The Trail of the Cloven Hoof, A Mystery

This post is brought to you by Strange Detectives by G. W. Thomas. When I started reading this serial novel by British author, Arlton Eadie, I immediately recognized a kindred tale. (I have admit I haven’t read much Eadie after I read “The Invisible Bond” (Weird Tales, September 1930). Its overt racism made me lose interest in him as a writer.) A weird Mystery set in a Devon moor is classic Sherlock Holmes territory and “The Wounds His Body Bears” in Strange Detectives is from the same tree. In my tale, Delamare and his Watson, Bainbridge, go to the remote estate of Floxbury to protect the owner, the beautiful Miss Beatrice Floxbury-St.Anne, from an ancient curse involving faeries and werewolves. I started “The Trail of the Cloven Hoof” hoping that Eadie’s racism might be less evident (we’ll see) and that it may please me as much as I hope Floxbury Manor will please you.

“The Trail of the Cloven Hoof” appeared in seven segments in Weird Tales, July August September October November December 1934 and January 1935. It came afer “Vampires of the Moon” by A. W. Bernal and was followed by “Rulers of the Future” by Paul Ernst. It is unusual for a serial to run so long. Serials in most Pulps were four parts. According to Tellers of Weird Tales, this novel was the longest serial WT used.  One letter writer, Julius Hopkins of Washington, DC. said: “…I am glad to read the conclusion of The Trail of the Cloven Hoof  by Arlton Eadie. It is an excellent ending and the serial is good too, but I don’t think that serials in monthly magazines should have more than four parts…”

Eadie was born in 1886. Eadie also sold stories to Hutchinson’s Magazine in the UK. Along with G. G. Pendarves, H. Russell Wakefield and Garnett Radcliffe, he lived in England but sold to the American magazine. He died quite young, in March 1935, so this novel was one of his last. Farnsworth Wright had four stories to follow including another serial.

All seven episodes received an illustration from H. R. Hammond, admittedly one of the worst illustrators of the magazine. These seven images aren’t too bad. Most show our hero, Doctor Hugh Trenchard, in creepy moor scenes or buildings investigating the mystery of the Cloven Hoof.

Part One

The story opens with recently graduated physician, Hugh Trenchard, stumbling around in the misty dark on a Devonshire moor. He hears two guns shots and rushes to find a man on the ground. As he approaches, he is passed by what he thinks is a moor pony. The man on the ground is wounded on the head. Hugh takes him into his house and does what he can for him.

The man wakes. He cries that a ghostly terror with a cloven hoof is outside in the mist. Hugh goes back outside, taking a lamp and a revolver from the homeowner’s large supply, and sees footprints in the mud. Before he returns to the injured man, a voice tells him: “I am the Terror that walks by night–the uncrowned King of the Moor! Take heed how you trespass on my domain, lest you share the fate of Silas Marle–the meddling fool whom I have this night sent to his last account! Put up your gun, stranger, and go your way. No weapon forged by mortal man can avail against me–” Hugh tries to shoot but a cloven hoof knocks the gun from his hand.

Marle demands that Hugh get a lawyer and two doctors. The two medical men are to certify that he is perfectly insane. The lawyer is for the writing of a new directive.

The story goes in another odd direction, as Hugh leaves Marle to find medical assistance. He goes to a nearby hospital, a private sanatorium. The gatekeeper, Dawker, tries to block him but Trenchard climbs the gate and plugs him. Going inside, he meets the master of the hospital, the very creepy Dr. Lucien Felger, who tries to chloroform him for the operating table. The foreign doctor operates in the UK with the assistance of the disreputable, Dr. Nathaniel Mutley. Hugh uses his gun to stay safe long enough to call for the police. He quickly realizes that the voice on the other end is Dawker. He calls the real cops and leaves, Felger promising to deal with him later.

The police don’t give Trenchard’s account much credence, even suspecting him a little of attacking Marle. Sergeant Jopling does tell Hugh that whatever the Cloven Hoof is, it killed Marle’s wife a year earlier. Hugh forgets the cops because his jovial and red-haired friend, Dr. Ronald “Ronnie” Brewster shows up to help take care of Marle. Brewster is an older, experienced doctor but also a joker. The two share laughs over some of the old books of lore that mention the Cloven Hoof:

“‘But of alle Thynges are as naught beside ye Foule and Nameless Thynge whyche, fearsome beyonde measure, haunteth ye Desolate Moore of ye Auncient Kyngdome of Wessex. Of its aspect no man hath lyved to telle. It slaythe wythe Arte and Cunnynge beyonde very belief, nathless it leaveth ye Cloven Trayle of its Devyl’s Foot wheresoever it walketh. Onlye by thys Synge may it be knowne, for ye outer aspect (by ye whyche it cajles and deceives its Victyms) is evere changefulle. There be tymes when it cometh in the guise of a Holye Clerke; anon it appeareth as a Fair Knight bedight in costlye velvet and whyte Samyte, or trussed in harness cap-a-pie. Anon (as seemthy best fytted to lure its Victym to hys Doom) it cometh in the guise of a Maiden, ravishing to the eye and fair wuthal, who knocketh on ye Casement, bessechynge entry. But wo to hym–“

A knock at the door is followed by a female voice. Hugh answers it. A bedraggled woman enters. She is beautiful and Hugh is instantly enamored. (Hammond’s illo above.) She is Joan Endean, who has escaped from Felger’s sanatorium. She gives Hugh a package and makes him swear to keep it for a month and not look at the address. Dawker and two toughs show up to retrieve Joan. She slips off while Hugh stalls them. When Sergeant Jopling shows up they discover she has gone and that Silas Marle has been stabbed to death with a dagger that has a cloven hoof handle.

Comments

From “the Eyrie”: Fred Anger of Berkeley, CA. had the first positive letter for the serial: “…The first installment of The Trail of the Cloven Hoof is as good a piece of weird fiction as it is possible to find. Mr. Eadie has given us nothing but the best in all the years he has been writing. The Trail of the Cloven Hoof equals if not excels The World-Wrecker of several years ago. Congratulations, Mr. Eadie.” The serial starter shared top award with E. Hoffman Price and H. P. Lovecraft’s “Through the Gate of the Silver Key”.

Part Two

Dawker blames the killing on Joan but when Hugh, Brewster and Jopling return to the body, it is gone. A trail of cloven hoof prints shows who has taken the victim. The next day they follow the trail using bloodhounds. The trail leads to the sanatorium before it is confused by a handkerchief dipped in aniseed. The handkerchief belonged to Joan Endean.

Hugh receives a letter, which Jopling notices, from Joan. It tells him to meet her at a secluded spot at midnight near the Devil’s Cheesepress, a mountain rock. Hugh goes, meets Zacary Durdon, a local fisherman, who recites the old legends like those of the druids (illo) and Lord Tybault who became the phantom huntsman of the area. After this interlude, Hugh gets to the rock and is knocked out. It is a trap set by Felger. Hugh wakes up and thinks he is about to be dragged into the asylum but it is Brewster and Jopling who have him. Hugh goes home to rest his head while Brewster chides him for falling for such an obvious trap. (So does the reader!)

Joan tricks the injured man in crossing the street to an abandoned house, where she asks about her package. Hugh admits he lost it. Joan laughs, imagining Felger’s face when he sees the packet is blank papers. Joan disappears. Returning, Hugh and Brewster go to see the lawyer, Shale, who had originally been called to Silas Marle’s bedside. The lawyer reveals that Marle wanted Hugh to inherit all his possessions,if he died or disappeared, as long as he was willing to find and kill The Terror of the Moors.

Part Three

Hugh accepts the challenge and moves into Marle’s house along with Ronnie Brewster. While exploring the house, Hugh finds a secret door. Behind it is Marle’s laboratory, which houses a large safe. Inside, Hugh finds the duplicate of the stolen package. Here is the document that Joan mimicked. Reading the letter with the sealed document, Hugh and Ronnie learn the history of Marle’s work for the government. During WWI, Marle was working in a munitions factory since his all students enlisted. After the first time the Germans used poison gas, the Ministry pulls Silas in for his expertise.

His mission is to create a weapon of last resort, based on the idea that all the chemicals needed for an explosion are found in the human body. Marle creates a gas that turns these into an explosion, making every soldier in the enemy’s army a potential bomb. The Americans joining the war put the weapon on hold. But Marle is now custodian of this secret, placing the documents in his safe, the package Trenchard now holds.

Hugh and Ronnie are interrupted in the reading of the letter when Renshaw of Scotland Yard crashes in with a couple other agents. Only after Hugh explains why they are in the house does Renshaw calm down. (Ronnie doesn’t make matters better by spurring the policemen on.) The Scotland Yard man joins them in the reading of the rest of the letter.

Hugh also reads about how Marle and his wife took on a deserter named “Crazy Jake” as a helper. Silas finds Jake singing portions of the formula. The dullard has a savant’s ability to memorize papers he sees. The Professor learns that a foreign spy, working out of the sanatorium has been paying Jake for these songs. Jake is taking the final formula when Marle places two drops of the gas in Jake’s drink. The man explodes before he can unwittingly betray his country. Marle sees that Jake’s body has been torn in half by the explosion, his upper portion mostly undamaged. (Hammond’s illo above.) The body disappears, with nothing making it into the papers. Six months later, in the dead of winter, Marle sees Jake’s face and upper body again!

Comments

More letters: Harold F. Keating of Quincy, MA. said in passing: “…while the third installment of The Trail of the Cloven Hoof is Eadie’s best yet. It introduces an entirely new idea in fantasy fiction…”I wish he would have illuminated this comment. Which new idea? I suspect it is the human bomb concept.

Alvin Earl Perry of Rockdale, TX. echoed this: “…Arlton Eadie’s serial The Trail of the Cloven Hoof, is coming along remarkably well, although I consider it merely an old plot with a new twist…” He later wrote (March 1935) to add: “The Trail of the Cloven Hoof ended well…I’ve noticed you never fail on good serials–keep up their high class.”

Julius Hopkins of Washington, DC. said: “… I am following The Trail of the Cloven Hoof with much interest and regret very much I have to wait a whole month between installments…” He requests the return of another Eadie character, Count Roulette from “The Eye of Truth”.

Part Four

Silas Marle finishes his tale with meeting the thing that was once Crazy Jake. It threatens to destroy him and raves like a meglomaniac. Jake runs away, leaving the marks of cloven hooves. Later, maybe by mistake, the thing jumps Marle’s wife, shocking her to death. After this, Marle builds Moor House into a fortress and fills it with guns. His narrative ends with a last appeal to destroy the Terror of the Moor.

Renshaw asks Hugh to relate what happened to him after the end of the letter. Hugh tells him all that we have seen in the story so far, mentioning Joan Endean. Renshaw shakes his head, saying he knows her. She is well known to Scotland Yard. Hugh’s affections take a one-eighty turn. He now feels Joan has used and abused him. He can’t wait to see her again to tell her off. Renshaw tells them to lock their door this time. He admits secret passages may make locks irrelevant. He goes.

Trenchard is unsure what to do with Marle’s secret formula. Brewster tells him to put it back in the safe. Hugh is unsure, thinking the device weak. Ronnie shows him his mistake. The safe is an invention of Marle’s with pockets of gas inside the walls. Any safecracker who tries to cut into the block will get a nasty surprise. Hugh locks up the package with a new confidence. Ronnie and Hugh decide to put in short-wave radios in their homes so they can talk to each other more easily.

Hugh and Ronnie go to bed. Hugh decides to sleep in the same room that Marle was murdered in. He doesn’t even get to bed when Felger shows up with a gun, demanding the secret package. Trenchard jumps out the window to escape and finds Joan hiding nearby. She takes him back inside and shows him that Felger hadn’t really been there. Hugh doesn’t understand, but he rushes to Ronnie’s side. He has been chloroformed and if he hadn’t been saved that moment, he probably would have died. While the two men talk, they smell breakfast cooking but Joan has disappeared again.

Next morning, Ronnie Brewster goes off to his office. Hugh decides to do some exploring in an effort to find any secret doors. He climbs down a slope that leads to a cave. Inside is Renshaw, who shows him the inside where an old mine provides many passageways. Hugh becomes suspicious but too late! He is stuck  in the dark. Has Renshaw betrayed him?

Part Five

Renshaw pulls Hugh along and shows him his secret watch-spot, a number of old rabbit warrens that look at the front and side of Moor House. The police had been watching the house for seeks. Hugh has a new trust and appreciation for the Scotland Yard man. The cops have a cottage nearby where other men rest, taking turns to watch the house. Hugh and Renshaw discuss the night before. The police saw him and Joan enter the front but no sign of Felger. Hugh is now convinced there is a secret passage. He suspects it is part of the old mine. Renshaw declares he and his men will do a thorough search.

Hugh goes to town to see the lawyer, Shale. Trenchard wants money to buy a car and to build a garage for it. Shale says he might not need to worry about it because there has been a very generous offer to buy the property from the recently created Country Hotel Development Syndicate. Hugh is suspicious and puts the lawyer off. He compares the handwriting on the offer with the letter than had taken him out to the Cheesepress. They are the same. It is a ploy of Dr. Felger’s.

Hugh hires a local builder who is interested in constructing old-appearing buildings to match their houses. After reading about a monster attack in the newspaper, he uses his new car to race out to Gupworthy to the farm of a man named John Thacker. After seeing his daughter, he goes to the cider press to talk with Thacker. The man seems dazed and can’t recall anything. Hugh notices the man has needle marks in his arm.

Dr. Felger appears at this point, laughing at him. The two square off for a private conversation. Felger tells what seems a long and unrelated lecture on a plant called Daiura obliterare, which comes from the remote island of Lanzarote, where Circe was said to live in Greek myth. “he Apples of Lethe” as the plant is also called causes memory loss. Trenchard realizes Felger has been injecting the farmer and thinks to have him arrested for practicing medicine without a license. He has forgotten about Dr. Nathaniel Mutley, Felger’s nefarious accomplice. The villain throws chloroform in Hugh’s face and escapes. (Hammond’s illo above.)

Later, at home, he finds Joan has saved him from Felger. The two embrace, admitting their love for each other with words. Ronnie Brewster tells Hugh his plan to impersonate Felger. Inspector Renshaw shows up and Hugh explains about the memory loss injections. When he goes for the book in Marle’s library that proves the substance exists, it has been stolen. Hugh, for a second time, declares there is a secret entrance to Moor House.

Part Six

Inspector Renshaw and Hugh meet. The cop tells him about his lack of luck sending out the dogs as soon as he heard about Farmer Thacker. The dog team gave up when they discovered a traveling circus, Carl Magno’s Colossal Congress of Wild Animas and Living Wonders of the World, in the area. The scent of the elephants and other animals, not the freaks, ruined the scent.

Hugh goes to Brewster’s medical office and spies someone peaking out of the curtains. He goes around back with his gun in hand and captures Dr. Felger in the study. Only it isn’t Felger but Ronnie in his disguise, which is very convincing. Ronnie plans to use the disguise to get inside the sanatorium.

That night Hugh is at home reading when someone comes tapping at his door. It is Dawker. He wants $500 immediately to rat out Felger. Trenchard steals some of his thunder when he reveals he already knows that Felger is Rudolf Braschutter, the author of the stolen book. Dawker also says that one of Hugh’s friends is not what he seems. Hugh turns him down, telling him to go the police. Dawker leaves, firing his pistol at Hugh in anger.

Inspector Renshaw comes running when he hears the shots. He and Hugh go inside to talk. Renshaw talks about how Marle left Hugh in the middle of a storm of trouble. When he points out that Hugh doesn’t even know if the sealed packet in the safe is real or another fake, Hugh goes to the safe room to see. But he doesn’t open the safe because they hear Ronnie Brewster’s voice over the radio. Someone is trying to break into his house! There is a shot! Hugh and Renshaw speed over too.

When they arrive they find Sergeant Jopling and the local police and a body., Dawker’s. He has been shot in the head from behind by someone shorter than him. Hugh suspects Felger but Jopling says it could have been Joan Endean for she has been found hiding with a gun. Renshaw places her in cuffs and takes her off to the local jail. Hugh becomes suspicious and has Jopling calls Scotland Yard. Renshaw is not one of their inspectors. Both he and Joan have disappeared. Ronnie Brewster points out that Renshaw looks like Felger without his bushy beard.

They decide it is time for Ronnie to use his disguise as Felger to save Joan. Hugh and Ronnie wait until dark, then drive to the back of the sanatorium. There they find a caged window on the ground floor. They pull off the bars and enter a storeroom. Ronnie asks for Hugh’s gun. The duo find a bigger room with straw and a chain. Ronnie figures this was used for an animal but wants to test the theory by placing the chain around Hugh’s neck. Hugh agrees. Snap. Ronnie reveals himself as the true Dr. Felger and Hugh will be the victim of the Terror of the Moors. (Hammond’s ill above.)

Part Seven

Now that the cat is out of the bag, Felger tells Hugh all about how he surgically fused the half-dead Crazy Jake to a deer he had in his operating theater. He did this to get the final portion of the gas formula but Jake isn’t very cooperative. Wearing a helmet with horns on it, he becomes the Terror of the Moors. And like Frankenstein;s monster, Jake demands a mate, Joan Endean, who he has fallen in love with. (None of this is really a surprise. Margaret Brundage’s cover for the first installment pretty much gives it away. That cover is one of her best though.)

Hugh is left in chains, to be tormented by his and Joan’s impending doom. Hugh goes back through all the previous events, realizing how Felger/Brewster had really manipulated everything. The reader gets it all again in case they haven’t figured this out for themselves. Trenchard is awakened from his terrible reverie when something metal hits his throat. He turns on the flashlight he still possesses to see a file hanging on a string. Above, from a trapdoor, is Renshaw. The Scotland Yard man tells him Joan is in the sanatorium, and that she isn’t a criminal at all. She is really the daughter of Sir Arnold Edgeworth and a Secret Service agent. Hugh is overjoyed to hear this but needs to escape to help her.

Trenchard files away at his chain but is not able to break it when Felger returns. Like any Bond villains, he doesn’t kill Hugh quickly. Instead, he reveals a circular basin in the floor that has a jet of water. On this stream he places a glass ball, which bobs around but eventually falls on the hard floor and breaks. Felger replaces this with a ball filled with Marle’s gas. Having captured Hugh, he has taken his keys and now possesses the secret papers. Felger plans to test the gas on his captive while he flies away with Joan, soon to be a slave of the memory loss drug. He leaves.

Hugh continues to saw away but someone else comes. It is Jake, the Terror of the Moor. Hugh convinces him that Joan is in trouble. Jake breaks the chain and Hugh pockets the gas globe. Mounting the deer-man’s back, the two race to Cow Castle where Felger keeps his aeroplane. It is a wild ride across the moors and up the slope of the mountain to get Hugh there in time to stop Felger from injecting Joan. The doctor pulls a gun but Hugh has his gas globe. It is stalemate. Felger will take the formula back to his undisclosed foreign country and Hugh can keep the girl. As the plane races away, Felger tries to shoot the couple. Hugh throws the gas globe in the plane but it appears not to break.

But the plane doesn’t get away just yet. The Terror of the Moor is standing in the runway. The deer-man jumps onto the plane and it flies off. Seconds later a bright explosion tells us of the end of Felger and his creation. Hugh and Joan look at each other lovingly…

Comments

In the February 1935 issue, S. J. Friscia of NYC, says: “I give credit to Arlton Eadie for his serial story, The Trail of the Cloven Hoof. It is a story that keeps your interest to the end. I like a story that has a tinge of mystery. I hope this author contributes another story.”

In the March 1935 issue, Carroll Wales of Denmark, ME. says: “…This summer I have been in hospital, and it as here that I read your August issue. It sure helped to pass the time away and provide hours of enjoyment. The Trail of the Cloven Hoof is one of the best serials you have ever published. Keep up the good work.”

Mrs. A. G. Edwards of Wewoka, OK couldn’t decide which was better The Trail of the Cloven Hoof or the new serial, Rulers of the Future.

Not everyone was pleased. J. Walter Briggs of Rhinebeck, NY disagreed: “…I am glad The Trail of the Cloven Hoof is finished, as that was the poorest yarn ever wished on readers. Please don’t do it again. Did you read the ms. before buying it? or flip a coin perhaps?”

Conclusion

There is a lot to unpack here. The “new idea” must have been the exploding body gas, which would have made a good story on its own. The rest is pretty standard stuff, with evil sanatoriums, a Doctor Moreau surgeon, a haunted house with secret passages, the secret villain, the beautiful girl in peril. These are the props of Gothic literature. Such material is expected in a Weird Tales story, so no real surprise there. What does strike me is that Arlton Eadie pads the segments so heavily. The entire meeting with Zacary Durdon and his song, the lengthy memoir of Dr. Marle, much of this makes the whole thing feel like a short story that is extended to its extreme limit. I suppose the fact that this was Eadie’s first serial explains his lack of skill there. He would follow it with Carnival of Death (Weird Tales, September-December 1935). John Pelan has another explanation: Farnsworth Wright edited ten thousand words from the novel, making it less elegant and clear. I haven’t seen this rare hard cover version, so I can’t really comment but I suspect some of the missing material concerns Renshaw who comes and goes too much.

The real litmus test here: is the story scary? Not particularly to my mind. It more often feels like a Mystery novel than a Horror novel, those two branches from the Gothic tree. One of the comments in the letter column expressed that they liked a Mystery studded with terrors. And Mystery fiction after 1934 would supply many more of these. Agatha Christie got her start in 1933 and would use Horror motifs in her novels. More expert was John Dickson Carr, who also started about this time, whose Locked Room Mysteries often featured supernatural-appearing elements (all proven false, of course). The use of a secret enemy buried in the heart of the group of detectives is quite familiar to fans of Doc Savage, which started in 1933 as well. So to be fair to Arlton Eadie, he could not have read all these later examples as most of them hadn’t been written yet.

Instead, Eadie might have been familiar with G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, and certainly H. G. Wells whose Science Fiction elements underpin the explanation of how a deer-man centaur could exist. Whatever his inspiration, the novel is rambling, filled with surprises that aren’t that surprising and plenty of Pulpy cheese. To go back to my original concerns, the racism of “The Invisible Bond” doesn’t appear since no person of color is in the book, another common form of racism in the Pulps.

Is this tale a kindred spirit to my own Strange Detectives?  I have to say, yes, certainly. (Though I hope my tales read a bit faster.) The sanatorium setting and animal-man/Dr. Moreau stuff was done better by Edmond Hamilton in “The Dogs of Dr. Dwann” (Weird Tales, October 1932) and the girl with the questionable background who turns out to be an agent reminds me of Tarzan the Untamed (The Red Book Magazine, March-August 1919). But these and a dozen other Pulp and Gothic cliches don’t stop this from being a fun read. (Hugh’s thick-headedness allows the plot to unfold though you want to slap him.) Not everyone wants their Mystery fiction filled with monsters and marvels, but some of us do.

For more unusual detectives…