American Sherlocks by Nick Rennison (reading like a writer .TXT) 📕

moving velvet, Cartwright would have died. Her whole story would have had to come out then; she would have heard it bandied by unclean lips on the street-corners; to know that her father, the father who did not even recognize her, was a murderer. A merciful Providence? I’ll always wonder, Sydney.’

LEDROIT CONNERS

Created by Samuel Gardenhire (1855-1923)

Conners, an upper-crust private investigator working in New York, is, in many ways, a very Holmes-like figure, although Conan Doyle’s great detective would be unlikely to approve of this American counterpart’s methods. Conners depends on intuition rather than deduction, rapidly forming his conclusions about a case and then working backwards to get the evidence to confirm them. He is a sophisticated, metropolitan man but his background is, to say the least, unusual. He was born in the Canadian wilderness where his Native American mother died, the victim of a wolf attack, and was then brought up by his father. The eight stories featuring LeDroit Conners, told by a Watson-like associate and admirer, were first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1905 and then collected in a single volume entitled The Long Arm the following year. They were the work of Samuel Gardenhire, a Missouri-born lawyer who had turned to writing fiction in middle age. His first novel, Lux Crucis, a historical epic about St Paul, was published in 1904. The tales of LeDroit Conners are untypical of Gardenhire’s fiction – he wrote no other crime stories – but they remain very readable.

THE PARK SLOPE MYSTERY

The proximity of his office to my studio enabled me to see LeDroit Conners almost daily, and I consequently soon came to be on terms of intimacy with this remarkable man. Yet it was a tragedy which touched my own little family that first cemented our association and made me, in the end, his companion in so many curious adventures. Upon the occasion to which I allude I had finished my morning bath and was standing before the mirror, razor in hand, when a cry from the dining room below startled me. It was followed by such confusion, that before I could collect my startled wits I had inflicted a sharp wound upon my cheek, yet, scarcely conscious of any pain, I ran to the head of the stairs to send down an answering call. Then, razor and all, with my features besmeared with blood and lather, I made my appearance in the breakfast room, where my wife, Jennie, stood with the morning paper in her grasp, and her mother, Mrs Barrister, with pallid face and staring eyes, sat rigid upon the sofa.

‘What is it?’ I asked, excitedly, dashing the razor among the breakfast things and going to Jennie’s side.

She thrust the paper into my hand, indicating an article under black headlines, and seated herself beside her mother. Stripped of its sensational introduction, which naturally ‘featured’ the chief events of the tragedy, the article read as follows:

‘One day last week a handsome woman, nearing middle age, appeared at the Park Slope Police Station, evidently for the purpose of making a complaint. Her face showed traces of tears, and her manner was that of one suffering from fright. Before she could make her wishes known to the sergeant in charge, an elderly gentleman came upon the scene. He arrived in a carriage which was driven hastily to the door, and as he entered and saw the woman an exclamation either of anger or apprehension escaped him. He was recognized by the sergeant as a prominent citizen of the vicinity, and was not interrupted when he drew the woman to one side and conversed with her in a low tone.

‘Mollified or reassured by what was said to her, she recovered her composure and consented to accompany the gentleman from the station. Her companion remained long enough to explain to the officer that the coming of the woman was a mistake, which she regretted, and that both desired no publicity about the matter. These persons were Dr Charles Haslam, an old and well-known resident of the Park Slope, and Mrs Martha Sands, his housekeeper. The significance of this visit will appear when it is learned that last night, at half-past nine o’clock, Dr Haslam shot the woman to death. The murder took place at the handsome residence of the doctor on Banning Street, a fashionable thoroughfare in Brooklyn’s most aristocratic neighbourhood.

‘The crime in its details was as gruesome as though committed by some ruffian in the slums, the head of the unfortunate woman being blown to pieces by a charge from a heavily loaded shotgun.

‘Immediately prior to the tragedy, officers Flynn and Davis were walking up Banning Street towards the Park, when they were startled by the explosion of a gun, evidently in the second story of the Haslam house. They were at that time directly in front of the entrance. Fearful of either an accident or worse, they ran up the steps to make inquiry. The answer to their ring was delayed, but finally Edward Gray, the butler, opened the door. Pale and frightened, in answer to their questions he informed them that he did not know the meaning of the noise; that Dr Jerome Sadler, an adopted son of Dr Haslam, had gone upstairs to investigate, and that he, Gray, had remained behind only to answer the call at the door. Mystified by the man’s demeanour, the officers entered the hall, and immediately encountered Dr Sadler coming down the main stairway, greatly agitated. In a shaking voice he told them that Dr Haslam had killed the housekeeper, the murder having taken place in the study on the second floor.

‘Proceeding at once to the room in which the tragedy occurred, the officers found the body of the unfortunate woman lying upon the floor, the head in a pool of blood. The face was shattered almost beyond recognition, and death must have been instantaneous. The weapon with which the crime had been committed was leaning against an angle of the mantel. All