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from The Technique of the
Mystery Story (1913)
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The detective of modern fiction is a combination of the stock principles already noticed with such further and varying characteristics as the author may invent. In so far as the personal traits of the detective can differ from Sherlock Holmes, the author is so far less liable to the charge of plagiarism.
A good example of how one of the later
writers has invested his detective with fresh qualities
may be noted in this extract from "Midnight at Mears
House," by Harrison J. Holt:
At the time of his coming to Mears
House, Garth looked very much as he does to-day —
a short, slight man of about my own age, well-built and
energetic, but of a nervous rather than a muscular type
of energy. He has grown a trifle stouter since, to be
sure, but otherwise I can see little change in him. He
was as bald then as he is now, and had the same trick
of carrying his head a little to one side, as though
the weight of it were too much for his neck to support.
I have never seen a head more beautifully shaped than
his, with a wide, high forehead, dark eyes far apart
and rather prominent — it was hard to believe them
blind — the nose and chin of an old Roman Emperor,
and a somewhat small but finely modelled mouth.
His ears, however, were the most
remarkable of his features — not that they were
unusual in shape or size, but because they were so low
as to appear almost misplaced, and on account of their
extraordinary quality. I doubt if anyone was ever
gifted with a more wonderful sense of hearing.
Certainly I have never met anybody, even among those
born blind, who could distinguish and interpret sound
with such unerring, almost uncanny skill. Without this
power — which he had developed to an altogether
incredible degree — he could never have achieved
the results he did: he has told me so many times. The
tiniest noises, unremarked or meaningless to most
people, were packed with significance to him. Each
registered its own distinct, unequivocal impression,
producing an emotion or resulting in a co-ordination of
ideas which often enabled him to arrive instantly at
the most momentous conclusions.
Especially was this the case in regard
to the tones, inflection, and timbre of the
human voice. From these he was able to deduct an
astonishingly large number of facts concerning the
person speaking — such as his age, nationality,
occupation, physical and mental state of health,
disposition, and character. This, as I am well aware,
may strike the reader as fanciful and even
preposterous. It seemed so to me at first, and yet I
learned later that to a lesser degree this power of
divination was no uncommon thing among the blind,
though I have heard of very few instances in which it
proved so uniformly infallible.
I should not forget to mention as well a
veritable sixth sense which he possessed — a sort
of clairvoyance which made up in great measure for his
lost sight. And yet clairvoyance is hardly the right
word to describe it. It was rather as if he had some
strange invisible organ of sensibility, some occult
medium, by means of which he became aware of things
seemingly beyond his apprehension. Doubtless a
psychologist could state it far more intelligibly; I
can only repeat that he had some such way of
sensitizing himself, as it were, so as to receive
impressions not communicable through the ordinary
channels of the senses.
Just how much this faculty, combined
with his marvellously developed hearing, has aided him
in his work, it would be hard to say. Personally I
think he overestimates its value to him, and underrates
the part his brain has played in the mastering of these
abstruse problems. Without a very high degree of mental
acuteness, the clearest and soundest of reasoning
powers, and what — for want of a better word
— I must call a sympathetic imagination, his
unusual psychical and auditory perceptions would, I
feel sure, have been of little help to him. It is, in
my opinion, far more to the brilliant qualities of his
mind, his marked analytical and synthetical abilities,
and his unrivalled skill as a constructive logician,
that he chiefly owes his success.
Again, some authors try to give their
detectives prominence by using methods exactly opposite
to those of Sherlock Holmes. LeDroit Conners, in Samuel
Gardenhire's book, "The Long Arm," thus asserts his
confidence in himself:
"You cannot understand how strongly such
matters appeal to me. It is a faculty with me almost to
know the solution of a crime when the leading
circumstances connected with it are revealed. I form my
conclusion first, and, confident of its correctness,
hunt for evidence to sustain it. I do this because I am
never wrong. It is not magic, telepathy, nor any form
of mental science; it is a moral consciousness of the
meaning of related facts, impressed upon my mind with
unerring certainty."
"I do not understand you," I said.
"When I am given certain figures," he
replied, "the process of addition is instantaneous and
sure. So, when I know of established incidents relating
to a matter, they group themselves in my mind in such a
manner as to reveal to me their meaning.
"You say a gift developed; perhaps.
Rather an instinct, as the faculty of scent to the
blood-hound and the acute ear to the hare, an unfailing
sight to the hawk and a sense of touch to the serpent.
Deductive knowledge depends on reason, but inspiration
is an exalted — no, perhaps I should say an acute
sense of something else. The beasts, unclothed except
by nature and unfed except by season and conquest, must
make existence out of an absolute impression of
certainty that is neither analytical nor deductive. I
fear I am in that category, my dear fellow. I know
things because I know them — that is, some
things."
This is decidedly in contrast to Holmes'
statement,
"Now I make a point of never having any
prejudices, and of following docilely wherever fact may
lead me."
The foregoing is in line with this bit
of Poe's wisdom:
"The mass of the people regard as
profound only him who suggests pungent contradictions
of the general idea. In ratiocination, not less than in
literature, it is the epigram which is the most
immediately and the most
universally appreciated. In both, it is of the lowest
order of merit.
"What I mean to say is, that it is the
mingled epigram and melodrame of the idea that Marie
Roget still lives, rather than any true plausibility in
this idea, which have suggested it to L'Etoile."
Burton E. Stevenson works on this
principle when his detective in "The Holladay Case"
says:
"I think we're too apt to overlook the
simple explanations, which are, after all, nearly
always the true ones. It's only in books that we meet
the reverse. You remember it's Gaboriau who advises one
always to distrust the probable?"
"Yes. I don't agree with him."
"Nor I."
But it is a dangerous experiment for inexperienced authors to put forward views heterodox to the accepted laws of Detective Fiction, and it must be done with skill and judgment.
In Luther Trant's work, his scientific
apparatus enables him to dispense with the more usual
methods.
"No, thank you," he said, refusing the
proffer of the paper. "I read from the marks made upon
minds by a crime, not from scrawls and thumbprints upon
paper. And my means of reading those marks are
fortunately in my possession this morning. No, I do not
mean that I have other evidence upon this case than
that you have just given me, Mr. Eldredge," Trant
explained. "I refer to my psychological apparatus
which, the express company notified me, arrived from
New York this morning. If you will let me have my
appliance delivered direct to your house it will save
much time.'
Rouletabille appreciated the dramatic
value of what Poe called the pungent contradiction of
the general idea. In
"The Mystery of the Yellow Room," by Gaston Leroux, the
following conversation occurs:
"Have you any idea as to the murderer's
station in life?"
"Yes," he replied; "I think if he isn't
a man in society, he is, at least, a man belonging to
the upper class. But that, again, is only an
impression."
"What has led you to form it?"
"Well, — the greasy cap, the common
handkerchief, and the marks of the rough boots on the
floor," he replied.
"I understand," I said; "murderers don't
leave traces behind them which tell the truth."
"We shall make something out of you yet,
my dear Sainclair," concluded Rouletabille.
Like Lecoq, this young man was not infallible; but his author made him this way for the same reason. Because he figures in a novel, and the infallible detective must do his work in a short-story.
Rouletabille's strong card is pure
reason.
"How did you come to suspect Larsan?"
asked the President.
"My pure reason pointed to him. But I
did not foresee the drugging. He is very cunning. Yes,
my pure reason pointed to him."
"What do you mean by your pure reason?"
"That power of one's mind which admits
of no disturbing elements to a conclusion. The day
following the incident of 'the inexplicable gallery,' I
felt myself losing control of it. I had allowed myself
to be diverted by fallacious evidence; but I recovered
and again took hold of the right end."
Again, he says:
"M. Sainclair, you ought to know that I
never suspect any person or anything without previously
having satisfied myself upon the 'ground of pure
reason.' That is a solid staff which has never yet
failed me on the toad and on which I invite you all to
lean with me."
His pure reason is of the subtlest
variety, and his fine work throughout the book commands
always the admiration of the connoisseur. In a
seemingly inexplicable situation he exclaims:
"Let us reason it out!"
And he returned on the instant to that
argument which lad already served us and which he
repeated again and again to himself (in order that, he
said, he should not be lured away by the outer
appearance of things): "Do not look for Larsan in that
place where he reveals himself; seek for him everywhere
else where he hides himself."
This he followed up with the
supplementary argument:
"He never shows himself where he seems
to be except to prevent us from seeing him where he
really is."
And he resumed:
"Ah! the outer appearance of things!
Look here, Sainclair! There are moments when, for the
sake of reasoning clearly, I want to get rid of my
eyes! Let us get rid of our eyes, Sainclair, for five
minutes — just five minutes, and, perhaps, we
shall see more clearly."
Rouletabille's subtlety of reasoning
rose almost to clairvoyance. In his desperate endeavors
to discover the identity of Larsan, he relates his
experience thus:
"And why did all the others sit so
silent and so motionless behind their dark glasses? All
at once, I turned my head and looked behind me. Then I
understood, more by instinct than anything else, that I
was the object of a common physical attraction. Someone
was looking at me. Two eyes were fixed upon me —
weighing upon me. I could not see the eyes and I did
not know from where the glance fixed upon me came, but
it was there. I knew it — and it was his glance.
But there was no one behind me, nor at the right, nor
the left, nor in front, except the people who were
seated at the table, motionless, behind their dark
glasses. And then — then I knew that Larsan's eyes
were glaring at me from behind a pair of those glasses
$#151; ah! the dark glasses, — the dark glasses
behind which were hidden Larsan's eyes. If I mention
this incident here, it is for the purpose of
showing to how great an extent I was haunted by the
image of Larsan, hiding under some new form, and
lurking unknown among us. Dear Heaven! Larsan had so
often proved his talent — I may even say his
genius — in this respect, that I felt that he was
quite capable of defying us now, and of mingling with
us while we thought that he was a stranger — or,
perhaps, even a friend."
So fearful is he that one of the
seemingly well-known people about him may be Larsan in
disguise, that he says to Sainclair:
"Hold your left hand in your right for
five minutes and then ask yourself: 'Is it you,
Larsan?' And when you have replied to yourself, do not
feel too sure, for he may, perhaps, have lied to you,
and he may be in your own skin without your knowing
it."
There is nothing imitative about this young detective. His methods are unique. His pure reasoning is most subtle; and though the farthest possible remove from realism it presents a semblance of reality that is entirely convincing.
In "The Whispering Man" Mr. Henry
Kitchell Webster employs a very different principle for
the use of his detective. It may be called the
principle of The Inspired Guess, and though improbable,
perhaps not more so than the laws of detective fiction
permit. The Whispering Man thus describes it himself:
"I had happened to tell him once that I
believed that I always knew a criminal when I saw one,
without knowing how or why — by just looking at
him. He didn't scout that theory as you would if I were
to give you a chance."
"And you believed all the while," I
repeated, incredulously, "that McWilliams was the man?"
"Not believed; knew. Oh, I don't know
how. That's the whole point. That's what I've been
preaching all the evening. The only certain knowledge
is the inspired guess."
One of the most remarkable Detectives of
Fiction is Mr. Zangwill's Grodman, who in "Big
Bow Mystery," thus discourses:
"It grew daily clearer to me that
criminals were more fools than rogues. Every crime I
had traced, however cleverly perpetrated, was from the
point of view of penetrability a weak failure. Traces
and trails were left on all sides — ragged edges,
rough-hewn corners; in short, the job was botched,
artistic completeness unattained. To the vulgar, my
feats might seem marvelous — the average man is
mystified to grasp how you detect the letter 'e' in a
simple cryptogram — to myself they were as
commonplace as the crimes they unveiled. To me now,
with my lifelong study of the science of evidence, it
seemed possible to commit not merely one, but a
thousand crimes that should be absolutely
undiscoverable. And yet criminals would go on sinning,
and giving themselves away, in the same old grooves
— no originality, no dash, no individual insight,
no fresh conception! One would imagine there were an
Academy of crime with forty thousand armchairs. And
gradually, as I pondered and brooded over the thought,
there came upon me the desire to commit a crime that
should baffle detection. I could invent hundreds of
such crimes, and please myself by imagining them done
but would they really work out in practice? Evidently
the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the
subject whom or what? Accident should determine. I
itched to commence with murder — to tackle the
stiffest problems first, and I burned to startle and
baffle the world — especially the world of which I
had ceased to be. Outwardly I was calm, and spoke to
the people about me as usual. Inwardly I was on fire
with a consuming scientific passion. I sported with my
pet theories, and fitted them mentally on every one I
met. Every friend or acquaintance I sat and gossiped
with, I was plotting how to murder without leaving a
clue. There is not one of my friends or acquaintances I
have not done away with in thought. There is no public
man — have no fear, my dear Home Secretary —
I have not planned to assassinate secretly,
mysteriously, unintelligibly, undiscoverably. Ah, how I
could give the stock criminals points with their
second-hand motives, their conventional conceptions,
their commonplace details, their lack of artistic
feeling and restraint."
And in the same book, we get this
description of the contrasting official detective:
Wimp was at his greatest in collecting
circumstantial evidence; in putting two and two
together to make five. He would collect together a
number of dark and disconnected data and flash across
them the electric light of some unifying hypothesis in
a way which would have done credit to a Darwin or a
Faraday. An intellect which might have served to unveil
the secret workings of nature was subverted to the
protection of a capitalistic civilization.
(End of Chapter XII)