The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime - Michael Sims [86]
As for Malvino the Magician, that charlatan could be mighty thankful that it was not he whom the honorable gentlemen of the committee had subjected to manhandling. For Malvino had the eyes of a hawk. So much Godahl had ascertained earlier in the evening when he, in the guise of a murderous cabby, was subjecting the Italian to the indignity of a gag.
WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON
William Hope Hodgson was born in the quiet countryside of Essex, on the English coast northeast of London. Perhaps he found life as the son of a clergyman too claustrophobic, because at an early age he left home for a life of derring-do. Unlike many writers of adventurous tales, he actually adventured. In eight years at sea as a young man, he traveled around the world three times. Travel remained a favorite pastime during his brief life.
Hodgson specialized in eerie tales of the supernatural, some of which are definitely in the horror genre but partake as well of science fictional elements. He didn’t like to be limited by genre expectations. His sole other venture into crime fiction also overlaps with the supernatural—Carnacki the Ghost Finder. But Hodgson’s reputation rests primarily on two books: his long, faux-archaic novel The Night Land and a shorter novel, The House on the Borderland, about which horror master H. P. Lovecraft muttered the backhanded compliment that “but for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality,” it would be a classic “of the first water.” Despite Lovecraft’s reservations, this novel has long been acclaimed a classic of literate horror writing.
The Gault stories appear as entries in the ship captain’s diary—a damning document for which he presumably has an ingenious hiding place. Naturally he never quite tells all until the final scene. Even in his diary, Gault is judicious about what he reveals and when he reveals it. In some of the stories, he indulges in allegedly humorous asides on the perfidy of women; he can’t outwit a villainess without generalizing and moralizing. Most of the stories end with Gault explaining his own cleverness. But the gimmicks are genuinely clever and the tone lively. Gault possesses the artistic thief’s primary trait: a gleeful disregard for law and an ungentlemanly pride in his own cleverness.
“The Diamond Spy” first appeared at a tragic time, in the August 1914 issue of The London Magazine. Hodgson reprinted it three years later in his collection Captain Gault: Being the Exceedingly Private Log of a Sea-Captain. In April of the next year he was killed by a German artillery shell at Ypres.
THE DIAMOND SPY
S.S. Montrose,
June 18.
I am having enough bother with one or two of the passengers this trip, to make me wish I was running a cargo boat again.
When I went up on the upper bridge this morning, Mr. Wilmet, my First Officer, had allowed one of the passengers, a Mr. Brown, to come up on to the bridge and loose off some prize pigeons. Not only that; but the Third Officer was taking the time for him, by one of the chronometers.
I’m afraid what I said looked a bit as if I had lost my temper. “Mr. Wilmet,” I said, “will you explain to Mr. Brown that this bridge is quite off his beat; and I should like him to remove himself, and ask him please to remember the fact for future reference. If Mr. Brown wants to indulge his taste in a pigeon flying, I’ve no objections to offer at all; but he’ll kindly keep off my bridge!”
I certainly made no effort to spare Mr. Brown; and this is not the first time I have had to pull him up; for he took several of his pigeons down into the dining-saloon yesterday, and was showing them off to a lot of his friends—actually letting them fly all about the place; and you know what dirty brutes the birds are! I gave him a smart word or two before all the saloon-full; and I fancy