X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard by Harry Stephen Keeler

Author:Harry Stephen Keeler [Keeler, Harry Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Scotland Yard;murder;crime;british;detective
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2018-03-06T17:46:56+00:00

DOCUMENT LXXXV

Excerpts, from registered letter of date January 12, 1937, from Gilbert Whittimore, Hotel Bourdonnais, 163 Avenue des Champs Elysées, Paris, France, to Aleck Snide, Hotel Russell, Russell Square, London.

“For you see, I casually brought up to the Stooge the case of the gypsy woman in New York and the Tarot cards. He knew right away what Tarot cards were... And I commented, idly, that it was strange a subject as potentially rich as the Tarot had never been made the subject of a single short-story or novel.

“And he blandly tells me it had! And, with a half yawn, I asked him where.

“Well, he said, he ran across a short-story once in a published book of short-stories called ETCHINGS—a story that had something in it about Tarot cards. ‘Being used,’ he said—and by God if he doesn’t rehearse sketchily the identical plot found in Marceau’s ‘story.’ I was tickled as a boiled owl—because it corroborated my own theory—that Marceau didn’t conceive the tale. And I ‘werry’ gently asked the Stooge then if all the stories in the book were about Tarot cards. Oh no, he said, there was every type of story imaginable in the book. One, he said, dealt neither with scientific nor occult things—it was just a piece of sheer irony—the simple tale of—and so help me, Aleck, if he didn’t sketch out the whole story of ‘A Cheque for 200 Guineas.’

“...book itself, he said, a sort of ‘half-regular-thickness sized book’ (as he described it) ‘bound in brilliant scarlet’ (as he also described it)...

“And then and there I laid off. For I had all I wanted.

“...but I wasn’t so able to find... book of short-stories, for Etchings wasn’t listed in a single bookseller’s catalogue—even Rahcorsters, which lists damned near everything published anywhere. No bookseller, of the several I tried, had ever heard of ETCHINGS. Bradgear’s, the biggest second-hand book dealer in London, had no copy—nor remembered ever having had such. The London public library—and all the circulating private libraries—Mudies, Smiths, Booklovers, Rolandi’s, Times Book Club—all, in fact, had no record of ETCHINGS. Then I realized that it had been privately printed. Privately circulated, moreover, chiefly by autographed gift copies. Nevertheless, I cabled across to America for a possible report on it... even wired Marcella Burns Hahner, in Chicago, manager of the world-famous Marshall Field and Company book department. And even Mrs. Hahner said she could unearth no trace whatsoever of any such book as ETCHINGS. Published on either side, Mrs. Hahner said, of the Atlantic. And it’s said, Aleck, that if Marcella Burns Hahner can’t find it—it isn’t published. Yet, by God, I knew it had been...

“By this time I’d rustled up, via Kent County probate records, a copy of the listing of the portable assets of Marceau’s estate. And their disposal. Sure enough, amongst his books—all sold after his death—was one called ETCHINGS. No author given; no publisher. With all his other books it was sold (and probably through some favoritism on the part of the Kent

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