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  Solar Pons Versus the Devil’s Claw

  SOLAR PONS VERSUS THE DEVIL’S CLAW

  Following the characters created by August Derleth.

  The Solar Pons stories written by Basil Copper are the only ones authorised by Arkham House Publishers, Inc., by whom they were first commissioned, and by the estate of August Derleth.

  SOLAR PONS VERSUS THE DEVIL’S CLAW

  BASIL COPPER

  SAROB PRESS 2004

  Published May 2004 by

  SAROB PRESS

  (Robert Morgan)

  “Ty Newydd”, Four Roads, Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire, SA17 4SF, Wales, U.K.

  First Edition ISBN’s

  1 902309 44 8 (Limited Edition)

  1 902309 45 6 (Deluxe Edition)

  copyright © Basil Copper 1977/2004

  Cover Art copyright © Les Edwards 2004

  Introduction copyright © Richard Lancelyn Green 2004

  This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, events and places portrayed are either fictitious or are represented entirely fictitiously.

  Typesetting & Design by SAROB PRESS

  http://home.freeuk.net/sarobpress

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  ANTONY ROWE LIMITED

  Bumper’s Farm, Chippenham, Wiltshire, SN14 6LH

  an ebookman scan

  CONTENTS

  Solar Pons Versus the Devil’s Claw

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  INTRODUCTION

  One: DEATH OF A TYRANT

  Two: THE TERRIFIED TEACHER

  Three: RUMOURS SPREADING

  Four: THE DEVIL’S WALTZ

  Five: THE CEMETERY AT NIGHT

  Six: TERROR IN THE VAULT

  Seven: ENTER ANDREW PETERS

  Eight: CHALCROFT MANOR

  Nine: PONS INVESTIGATES

  Ten: THE MAID’S STORY

  Eleven: DINNER AT THE MANOR

  Twelve: IN THE GRAVEYARD

  Thirteen: ATTEMPTED MURDER

  Fourteen: CHALCROFT COLLEGE

  Fifteen: THE MISSING WILL

  Sixteen: DEADLY POISON

  Seventeen: NIGHTMARE

  Eighteen: PONS IS ENIGMATIC

  Nineteen: THE RUINED TOWER

  Twenty: EXIT INSPECTOR STONE

  Twenty-One: BAITING THE TRAP

  Twenty-Two: NIGHT ON THE TOWER

  Twenty-Three: A DEMON AT BAY

  Twenty-Four: CASE CLOSED

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  NOTE

  DEDICATION

  This one is for

  Paul and Beppie Emmelkamp

  Friends par excellence

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Though written some twenty-five years ago, my only Solar Pons novel has never before been published, so this is its first time in print.

  I am not writing NEW Solar Pons stories. My Solar Pons material was authorised and commissioned by Arkham House Publishers, Inc., back in the 1970s, and was written then but, owing to changes at Arkham House, they were never published by that imprint. The tales remained in limbo for something like twenty years before the originals began to be published by Fedogan and Bremer of Minneapolis. All date from the 1970s and early 1980s so perhaps original copyright lines should have been printed together with the new publication dates which would have obviated all misunderstandings. So, the present volume and all other Pons tales from my pen were commissioned and authorised by the then editorial and legal personnel at Arkham House (who, incidentally, were hoping that I would write the 12 volumes I had originally promised them) and by the estate of the late August Derleth who was a great friend of mine and very enthusiastic about my work.

  Basil Copper

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘Sherlock Holmes is dead. Long live, Sherlock Holmes!’ This was the cry that arose in December 1893 when the Strand Magazine shocked its readers by publishing Dr Watson’s account of ‘The Final Problem’ with its ominous frontispiece showing ‘The Death of Sherlock Holmes’. It seemed that the great detective had met his end at the Reichenbach Falls locked in the arms of his arch rival, Professor Moriarty. He had certainly disappeared, but he could never die. He returned in many different guises. John Kendrick Bangs portrayed him as the leader of the Shades in The Pursuit of the Houseboat (a sequel to an earlier book, The Houseboat on the Styx), and others followed suit. Rivals stepped into his shoes and claimed to be his direct heir. Sexton Blake, who made his debut in 1893 in the pages of the Halfpenny Marvel, took rooms on Baker Street and for well over half a century delighted readers with adventures narrated by many different hands.

  Holmes himself was far from dead. The Hound of the Baskervilles burst upon the world in 1901, and in 1903 readers celebrated his Return and discovered that he had been living and working in London since 1894. He remained at 221b Baker Street until his retirement to the Sussex Downs after the turn of the century. Thereafter he could on occasion be coaxed into activity, and he made his last bow in 1914 when he came to the aid of his country at the outbreak of the First World War. The last of Dr Watson’s narratives was published in 1927. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle prepared to lay down his pen, an unlikely successor was waiting to pick it up. This was August Derleth (1909-71), a native of Sauk City in Wisconsin, who had started writing at the age of thirteen and by seventeen had won his way into the well-respected pulp magazine, Weird Tales. In 1928 he wrote to Doyle asking if there would be more stories and was told there would not. He explained how it came about in a letter to Fred Danny (one half of ‘Ellery Queen’) and again in a letter (dated 21 February 1944) to Vincent Starrett, the great Sherlockian expert: ‘I was badly bitten by the Holmes bug in my teens, and finally, when I was 19, wrote to Sir Arthur to complain that there were no new adventures of the immortal Sherlock. He made no promise to write more; so I determined to carry on the tradition as best I could.’ A note on the back of an early manuscript suggests that Doyle was not averse to the idea. The stories were to be pastiches in honour of the ‘master’, but they would not bear his name. The new detective was, in Vincent Starrett’s phrase, ‘an ectoplasmic emanation of his great prototype’. He was christened Solar Pons (the ‘bridge of light’) and was a younger and more clubbable man (having been born in 1880). He had worked in British Intelligence during the Great War and was at his peak in the 1920s. He had his own ‘Boswell’, Dr Lyndon Parker; a brother, Bancroft (similar to Holmes’s brother Mycroft) and a long-suffering landlady, Mrs Johnson. He did not live in Baker Street but at 7B Praed Street, a location which was suggested to Derleth (who had never visited London) by John Rhodes’ book, The Murders in Praed Street.

  A batch of stories was soon ready for publication. ‘The Adventure of the Black Narcissus’ was the first to appear in Dragnet (February 1929), and three more followed in the same magazine. Unfortunately the magazine then ceased publication because of the dire economic situation. Two more were published in other pulp magazines (Detective Trails and Gangster Stories), but the remainder were set aside. Derleth’s ambitious plans were put on hold, but his enthusiasm was undiminished. On 4 November 1929 he wrote to Conan Doyle describing himself as ‘an intense admirer’ and asked if he might have an inscribed copy of The Sherlock Holmes Short Stories (which John Murray had just published). Doyle tore the letter in half and replied in a short note: ‘I am interested in the Psychic & General Bookshop, 2 Victoria Street, S.W. Any books ordered there I would autograph, ‘ACD.’ An order was placed and Doyle inscribed a copy on 19 December 1929. It was six months before his death.

  The Pons stories remained in limbo until 1943 when Derleth offered one t
o Fred Danny (of ‘Ellery Queen’ fame) for inclusion in The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944). It was so well received that Derleth decided to revise some of the earlier stories and to work on new ones. Twelve were collected in 1945 as In Re: Sherlock Holmes - a work. The book was published at Arkham House (which Derleth and Donald Wandrei had founded in 1939), but it had its own distinctive imprint: ‘Mycroft and Moran’. It was followed by further volumes which mirrored the Sherlock Holmes canon in their titles and in the number of cases within them: The Memoirs (1951), The Return (1958), Some Reminiscences (1961), and The Casebook (1965). Other important ‘Pontine’ publications include a novel, Mr Fairlie’s Final Journey (1968), The Chronicles of Solar Pons (1973), and a collection of previously unpublished work, The Final Adventures of Solar Pons (1998).

  The stories have a touch of burlesque. Pons, as one critic said, is ‘a clever impersonator, with a twinkle in his eye’. He is not Sherlock Holmes, but his mentor suffuses his every action. The stories stand apart and have their own internal logic. Derleth’s greatest concern was that his knowledge of England and of the English rhythms of speech was often inadequate. A number of English authors with whom he corresponded were called in to correct errors which might otherwise have crept into the later stories. They pointed out, for example, that Pons should be described as living ‘in’ Praed Street rather than ‘on’ it; that Ascot had no definite article (unlike the Derby) because it was a place rather than a race, and that the head of Devon police would be a Chief Constable, not a High Commissioner (which is the name given to the ambassadors of the member states in the British Commonwealth).

  Basil Copper was among those with whom Derleth corresponded towards the end of his life. He was embarking on a literary career and had written asking if Arkham House would be interested in publishing his work. Derleth responded at once in a warm and friendly manner, and a bond developed between them.

  After Derleth’s death, Copper fulfilled Derleth’s long-held desire for an omnibus edition. He corrected the slips which had arisen through Derleth’s lack of familiarity with English usage and terminology and The Solar Pons Omnibus appeared in 1982. By then Copper was also the author of a series of sequels which were written with the blessing of James Turner (the new acting manager of Arkham House). The second series consisted of six volumes of stories and one novel. The first four had a slightly chequered history as they were published in paperback by a New York company, Pinnacle, who made textural changes which destroyed much of the 1920s atmosphere. They were The Dossier of Solar Pons, The Further Adventures, The Secret Files, and Some Uncollected Cases, and they appeared in 1979 and 1980. The Exploits and The Recollections followed in 1993 and 1995, published in attractive editions by Fedogan and Bremer of Minneapolis. The last in the series is the present volume, The Devil’s Claw.

  It is perhaps the finest of them all for it combines the qualities for which Basil Copper is famous - a cleverly- constructed plot, worthy of the author of the Mike Faraday thrillers, and touches of gothic horror, worthy of the author of Necropolis. There are echoes of Wilkie Collins, Sheridan le Fanu, M.R. James, and of Doyle and Derleth. The crypt where the crime takes place recalls the one which Holmes visits in ‘The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place’ and the legend of the Devil’s Claw bears comparison with that if the Hound of the Baskervilles. The story also recalls Derleth’s account of ‘The Devil’s Footprints’ - which he based on the mysterious footprints in the snow discovered in Devon in 1855.

  The Devil’s Claw offers a bizarre and compelling problem for Solar Pons. What is the explanation behind the mysterious affair at Chalcroft Manor? Are the wet claw marks round the corpse of Simon Hardcastle those of the devil? Pons and Parker are at hand to unravel the threads. Vincent Starrett said that the Solar Pons stories are ‘the only substitutes for Sherlock Holmes that satisfy’, and he added: ‘I recommend them to nostalgic Holmesians as stories that come as close to the great originals as perhaps it is possible to come’. Basil Copper is the equal of August Derleth and both are worthy heirs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  Richard Lancelyn Green

  London, 2004

  SOLAR PONS VERSUS THE DEVIL’S CLAW

  One: DEATH OF A TYRANT

  “A PENNY FOR THEM, PARKER.”

  “Eigh?”

  I struggled up in my armchair in the familiar sitting-room at 7B Praed Street, conscious that the fire was dying on the hearth and that I had been neglecting my duty. In truth I had been out late the night before on a serious case and had had only three hours’ sleep.

  Consequently, nature had caught up with me and when I had come in at tea-time I had at first dozed intermittently in my chair and had then, I suppose, passed into a deep sleep.

  “What time is it, Pons?”

  “A little after six, Parker.”

  The lean, aquiline features of my friend, Solar Pons, looked solicitously in my direction. He went over to the scuttle and replenished the fire with coal, sending great red sparks dancing up the chimney. It was a bitterly cold day in early January and a rime of frost sparkled on the roofs outside under the pale glare of the street-lamps. I was about to get up to assist him when he pressed me gently back in my chair.

  “Do not disturb yourself, Parker. You must be tired after your efforts of yesterday.”

  I passed my hand over my eyes and came to full consciousness.

  “It was a trifle fatiguing, Pons.”

  My companion proceeded to the switch by the door and flooded the room with light. He hastened to the window and drew the thick curtains against the night.

  “Mrs Johnson will be up in a few minutes. She has prepared an excellent high tea, I understand.”

  He smiled mischievously.

  “I take it you have no objection if we eat early this evening. I have been up to North London on a case and have passed most of the day out of doors with no opportunity of eating.”

  “By no means,” I said. “I could do justice to anything in this weather, but Mrs Johnson’s cooking is always exceptional.”

  “She would be pleased to hear you say so,” said my companion equably, throwing his greatcoat casually over the back of a chair and going to warm his thin fingers at the reviving fire. I was on my feet now, feeling considerably better after my hour’s rest, and made haste to clear the table of my stethoscope and some medical journals.

  “Your day must have been more strenuous than mine, Pons.” He sat down in his own armchair and stretched out his feet to the warmth from the hearth.

  “I do not know about that, Parker, but it was deuced cold at any rate. I was keeping a hot meat shop under observation.”

  He chuckled again at my expression.

  “Or at least the apartments above it. I fancy Roscoe Abernathy will be out of his stride by the appearance of Scotland Yard officers with warrants in the early hours of tomorrow morning.”

  I paused near the door, conscious of our good landlady’s stately tread on her way up the stairs from the regions below. “What had he been up to, Pons?”

  Solar Pons tented his slender fingers before him and looked dreamily into the fire.

  “Forgery and murder among other things, Parker. Undone by a child’s pinafore button. One would hardly credit it, given the nature of the man.”

  “It sounds an interesting case, Pons.”

  “It is, it is,” he said languidly. “But I am at present engaged on something that promises to be entirely more bizarre and deadly. Come in, Mrs Johnson!”

  The well-scrubbed face of our good-natured landlady appeared round the door-panel, her nose much reddened, I surmised, from her shopping expedition that afternoon in the searching wind of the bitterly cold streets.

  She gazed at us with satisfaction.

  “Ah, I thought you were both in, gentlemen. I hope you are ready for your tea.”

  “We are indeed,” I said, going to help her with the tray.

  There was an agreeable aroma from the covered dis
hes Mrs Johnson was setting out and for a few moments there was silence in the room apart from the muted noises of crockery and cutlery being placed in position. I sat myself down eagerly at table while Mrs Johnson paused on her way to the door.

  “What time is your visitor expected, Mr Pons?”

  “At a little after seven, I believe. We have just time to do justice to your excellent repast.”

  Mrs Johnson beamed with satisfaction.

  “Thank you, Mr Pons. I will send him up as soon as he arrives.”

  Our landlady had no sooner quitted the room than we set to with a will. In the brief interval between the first and second courses I put the question to Pons I had been pondering over ever since Mrs Johnson’s question.

  “You have a client, Pons?”

  “I have, Parker, and I would like you to stay when he arrives, if you are not too fatigued.”

  “I should be extremely interested.”

  Solar Pons nodded with satisfaction.

  “You mentioned something earlier, Pons, about a bizarre and deadly affair on which you are engaged. Might this be it?”

  “It might indeed, Parker,” he returned gravely. “Take a look at this if you would be so good.”

  He passed a slip of pasteboard across to me. I took it and studied it curiously.

  It bore the legend, ‘Hugh Mulvane’ and the address given was Chalcroft Manor.

  In a firm but somewhat hastily scrawled hand was written across the visiting card: For God’s sake help me, Mr Pons, in this terrible affair. I will take the liberty of calling upon you soon after seven o’clock tomorrow evening.

  I took a look at the postmark of the envelope which lay by my companion’s plate.