Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Read online

  Secret Agent "X": The Complete Series Volume 3

  by

  Emile C. Tepperman & Paul Chadwick

  Introduction by

  Stephen Payne

  Altus Press • 2014

  Copyright Information

  © 2014 Altus Press

  Publication History:

  “Introduction” appears here for the first time. Copyright © 2014 Stephen Payne. All Rights Reserved.

  Servants of the Skull originally appeared in November 1934 issue of Secret Agent “X” magazine.

  The Murder Monster originally appeared in December 1934 issue of Secret Agent “X” magazine.

  The Sinister Scourge originally appeared in January 1935 issue of Secret Agent “X” magazine.

  Curse of the Waiting Death originally appeared in February 1935 issue of Secret Agent “X” magazine.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press

  Special Thanks to Brian Earl Brown, Stephen Payne, Ray Riethmeier & Bill Thom.

  Introduction

  Stephen Payne

  EDUCATED guesses based on observation, converted to hypotheses, tested as experiments, analyzed for conclusions: Such is the basis of the scientific method and even trial and error logic. And such an approach, though probably not as formal, determined whether a particular pulp magazine, especially a hero or character book, achieved success—or died on the vine. The more astute pulp editors, practiced at such thinking, intentionally sought writers who had developed proven track records, those who could pen tales crackling with excitement and pulsing with energy. These were the wordsmiths who commanded the attention of armies of readers and who earned fortunes for their editors and publishers. These were the folk like editor John Nanovic and writer Lester Dent on Doc Savage and Nanovic (again) and Walter Gibson on The Shadow; boss Harry Steeger and Norvell Page of The Spider and Steeger once more and Robert Hogan of G-8 and His Battle Aces.

  Less perceptive editors struggled to find effective tale spinners for their publications, and readers rewarded those magazines accordingly. Among others, these books included such “masterpieces” as Captain Satan, by William O’Sullivan; the initial novels in Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer, by Major Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson; The Black Hood, by G.T. Fleming Roberts; and far too many others. It is obvious that being a “big name” like Street & Smith or Popular did not guarantee success for a book, nor did the lack of a name. And the usual “market forces” greatly affected the chances of a pulp’s success. But the editors’ “smarts,” that awareness of readers’ preferences and a willingness to experiment, profoundly influenced a book’s chances in the marketplace. And here is the place that Rose Wyn of Periodical House/Ace Publishers found herself in 1934: her imprint, at best a third-tier operation, printed few hero periodicals of any note, outside of Ten Detective Aces, Flying Aces, and Western Aces. Frankly these were not exactly stars in the heavens. Oh, and then there was a little book entitled Secret Agent “X.” It was, at the time, Wyn’s only single character book.

  The wife of publisher A.A. Wyn, Rose herself was a pulp editor. She had launched the adventures of the Secret Agent, at best a derivative character, to compete against Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Phantom Detective, and the Spider. With the majority of her “big guns” being snatched away by better paying pulp houses, Wyn had assigned fictioneer Paul Chadwick to scribble the adventures of the Man of a Thousand Faces. But he just was not working out. Maybe it was the imitative way he handled the Agent; maybe it was, frankly, his style of writing, at best “faux creepy,” that Chadwick employed. Whatever the case, Wyn had to do something, quickly, to salvage her publication. For some reason unknown today, she gave a young Emile Tepperman the opportunity to write a group of stories. Had she hired him as a permanent replacement for Chadwick? Or had she assigned him as a stopgap before she could find a permanent scribe? Unless more evidence turns up, we will probably never know the answer to this question. The questions we can answer, however, are twofold: How effectively did Tepperman handle the Secret Agent’s adventures? And how much influence did he exert on the future of Secret Agent “X?” To answer the first question, we will examine, briefly, Tepperman’s first X novel, “Hand of Horror” (August 1934), then look closely at the duo of Tepperman entries in this volume, “Servants of the Skull” (November 1934) and “The Murder Monster” (December 1934). We will see that with his understanding of style, plot, characters, and settings, Tepperman could have performed a creditable job on Secret Agent “X.” Further, we will find that far from being a “failed” experiment, Tepperman’ brought a new humanity, a new “realism” (if such existed in the early hero pulps) to the character of Secret Agent “X.” Indeed Emile Tepperman paved the way for Wyn to hire a young G. T. Fleming-Roberts, who would become the most effective and talented writer to handle the character.

  To launch his time on the magazine, Tepperman wrote “Hand of Horror,” a decent though not noteworthy tale with the usual Chadwickian trappings. Our new Brant House develops the narrative around a ruthless master criminal with political ambitions and a weird method of murdering his enemies, the so-called “bloated death.” This is actually an exotic venom, always a favorite of Tepperman’s predecessor, Chadwick. Couple this with a femme fatale, constant focus on the Agent, and spooky atmosphere, and we see a narrative not much distinguished from one by Chadwick himself. Then comes Tepperman’s next entry, “Servants of the Skull.” Here we see what he really might have accomplished with the series, and it is remarkable, both for its realism and its innovation.

  The prose alone is critical to realizing that we have a new writer on our hands. Tepperman composes his stories with a leaner, less pretentious, less melodramatic approach to the subject matter. At the most atomistic level the reader notices this quality particularly in Tepperman’s diction. It is a distinct contrast to the work by Paul Chadwick. Consider this opening scene from “Servants of the Skull,” the first of the Tepperman entries in this volume:

  The thirty-odd men in the artificially lighted room looked up from their various occupations with tense expectancy when the heavy iron-bound door swung open. These men represented a strange conglomeration of criminal types; crafty, hard, ruthless, their predatory natures were reflected in the very manner in which they moved and talked. It would have seemed, at first glance, that there existed no power on earth that could control these men, no power to make them toe the mark. Yet, when that door opened, they all, without exception, froze in their places. The eyes of many reflected a nameless fear; others exhibited a sort of sullen defiance. Not one of them smiled or laughed.

  Here we see few of the Gothic images that Chadwick so often used. Tepperman is direct, even blunt in his word choice. There is precious little of the Gothic effects we see in Chadwick. Indeed, juxtapose this sample of Tepperman’s work with two from Chadwick, this one from the first Secret Agent “X” novel, “The Torture Trust” (February 1934):

  The prison guard’s feet made ghostly echoes along the dimly lighted corridor of the State Penitentiary. The sound whispered weirdly through the barred chambers, dying away in the steel rafters overhead. The guard’s electric torch probed the cells as he passed, playing over the forms of the sleeping men. It was after midnight. All seemed quiet within the great, gloomy building that was one of society’s bulwarks against a rising tide of crime.

  This passage from the opener of Paul Chadwick’s “The Spectral Strangler” (March 1934) presents a similar tone of Go
thic melodrama:

  [Federal Detective] Bill Scanlon stood waiting. Then he relaxed. A cat with coal black fur and glowing green eyes spat at him and slunk away. It might have been an evil omen, but Scanlon wasn’t superstitious. He thought it was only the cat he had seen... A shadow detached itself from the blackness of a house stoop opposite the maple. Slinking spiderlike, the shadow moved after Scanlon, stalking from tree to tree, hedge to hedge, and stoop to stoop, drawing closer—always closer.

  What a different way of using language that the two writers employ! Paul Chadwick’s diction is meant to convey a sense of weirdness and foreboding. However, its real effect is to cause readers to roll their eyes at the narrator’s melodramatic overkill. It is like watching really bad Vincent Price (actually a capable thespian) or, better, Bela Lugosi at his most extravagant (Think White Zombie and Lugosi’s notorious work for filmmaker Ed Wood). Emile Tepperman, on the other hand, employs the language in a much more crisp fashion, yet keeps his diction evocative. Here is realism, not Gothic melodrama. In the future career of Tepperman, it will become the hallmark of a prose style that will eventually seem to celebrate the brutal, the cruel in life.

  Yet this begs the question: In popular literature, especially in the pulps, why should this kind of tougher, more realistic diction have any advantages over a more melodramatic kind? It certainly does—and it did even during the Depression. In the first place it is more in tune with the style that would become the industry standard by the mid-to-late 1930s. Second, Tepperman’s mode of expression is frankly more efficient in portraying the story. In other words his word choice is unencumbered by the unnecessary “special effects” recorded in the above passages by Paul Chadwick. Last, such word choice more effectively engages the readers’ interest. It inspires them to move more deeply into the text, not to ridicule it.

  In the same vein is Tepperman’s syntax, his manner of arranging phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs. As the lines from “Servants of the Skull” illustrate, Tepperman composes in a “rat-a-tat” kind of style perfectly suited to the subject matter that his fiction portrays. Note this section from the same narrative, wherein the eponymous villain threatens X’s companion Betty Dale:

  The Skull went on: “What will you say, Miss Dale, when I tell you that this electric chair does not kill! It will maim you! Maim you mentally and physically, will make you an imbecile within five seconds of the moment I pull this switch... That, Miss Dale, is what will happen to you. You will be thrown out into the street to be found by your friend and protector, Secret Agent ‘X’! I shall send you as a challenge to him—a challenge from the one man who is his match!”

  Like the writer’s diction, a less melodramatic style tends to move the storyline, and of a necessity the readers’ eyes’, with much greater speed over the page. Also it more realistically depicts the way people would speak (if the pulps can be said to portray realism!).

  If the styles of the Tepperman and Chadwick show obvious differences, then so too do their plots. In Chadwick’s hands the Man of a Thousand Faces battles all manner of pulp super criminals wielding terrifying death weapons. In “The Torture Trust” it may be the Masters of Death, who seek money and power and who use acid to attain their goals. The devious Black Master, a Shadowesque villain, lusts after vast wealth, his method for gaining it being a new asphyxiating gas (“The Spectral Strangler”). With Chadwick’s other early “X” yarns, the Agent encounters a super flame thrower, the Flammenwurfer (“The Death-Torch Terror”), and an opportunistic master spy, the Green Mask (“Ambassador of Doom”), selling military secrets. And then there is the group of medical extortionists from the notorious “City of the Living Dead,” a story which merits no response, save, “What the hell were they thinking?” With the exception of this final entry, this is pretty standard pulp fare, if not derivative stuff, as far as Chadwick’s handling of plot goes. Every one of the villains is out for power or wealth, with little to distinguish miscreant A’s goals from those of miscreant B. Only their modus operandi might differ. In addition the order of events from one month’s adventure is nearly always the same as the next one. The Agent will investigate a criminal mastermind’s machinations, only to be exposed at a crucial time. Then he will effect a daring escape from the criminal’s clutches (or from those of the police), a la the Shadow, don a new disguise, and recommence his investigation. Altering his features like most people change socks, he will move through the remainder of the story until the final battle with the resident fiend. Here the Secret Agent will expose the man’s real identity, then, whistling his eerie call, disappear to the amazement of the police or other onlookers. This is strict adherence to a formula, plain and simple.

  In Chadwick’s defense it was difficult to come up with a new menace, month after month. This may explain why his fictional threats to society had to grow ever more deadly and horrible, ever more paranoid. Though it may seem counterintuitive, this may also account for editor Rose Wyn’s likely problems with Chadwick’s narratives. Wyn, as editor, would clearly see where the book was going with Chadwick as scribe. If a plot requires a new horror every month, then the next month’s number and the next will necessitate ever more horror and fear, along with a villain just as horrible and fearsome to perpetrate it. This type of narrative circumstance will then force the writer, especially the formulaic one, to grope for plots more desperately each time. Eventually he will move in the direction of diminishing returns. Readers, too, will become satiated with such material, desensitized to the point that the pulpster’s work will have little or no impact.

  Very likely, then, switching gears was uppermost in Rose Wyn’s mind when she assigned Secret Agent “X” to Emile Tepperman. He, in contrast, would bring a new kind of plot angle to the mysteries. I’ve mentioned his first “X,” “Hand of Horror,” which is not much different from one of Chadwick’s fictions. With Tepperman’s next story, “Servants of the Skull,” we see a rather imitative effort, true enough, one possibly inspired by Walter Gibson’s work on The Shadow. But in comparison to an early piece by Paul Chadwick, Tepperman executes the plot with class and style. Agent “X,” instead of being exposed early on, remains ingeniously hidden in disguise until... well, you’ll have to read this for yourself! And the resident villain, the Skull, is equally adept at maintaining his own masquerade, not being revealed until Tepperman is good and ready to unmask him—not any earlier. The point is this: here is a writer who knows how to plot a story. He gives just enough information to tantalize the readers, then compels them to move deeper into the plot. In doing so, he encourages mystery about both story and characters until the very end of the proceedings.

  The same is true of Tepperman’s next novel, “The Murder Monster.” The plot revolves around a bizarre group of mute, lookalike robots who shoot flames from their fingertips, thereby murdering their victims. The Murder Monster, their weird master, is another Gibsonesque villain. And he is almost as strong an opponent for Agent “X” as is the Monster’s predecessor, the Skull. Equally as original is the explanation that Tepperman provides for the villain’s minions. A well-plotted story, “The Murder Master” moves with a relentless pace that never lets up until the final exciting scene. Lest I forget, the narrative’s plot contains an interesting sidelight that amounts to pulp social commentary, in this case regarding the treatment of criminals.

  Today many of us think that more humane policies towards the incarcerated are the product of our more “enlightened” age. And we know that pulp novels are the last place to see such progressive ideas because all pulps were racist and classist, if not fascistic in their ideology. Such is far from true. Tepperman’s Brant House has a conscience of sorts, as this early section of “The Murder Monster” reveals. Here a group of university men from Ervinton College are playing an exhibition football game against felons from State Prison:

  The visiting team deployed from the field, trotted into the basement through the side entrance of the main building, where showers and a locker room
had been set up for them. The convicts watched them gloomily, in marked contrast to the hilarity of the college boys. For they were not going home to well-cooked meals in comfortable dining rooms, to the fond glances of proud parents, to the arms of sweethearts. They were going in to a dreary supper and dismal cells, to their lonely thoughts and gnawing memories.

  It is as though Tepperman is acknowledging that these men’s identities are not what they have done; rather their identity is wrapped up in who they are, that is, human beings. And because they are human, they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, even if they are criminals and (especially if they are most likely from the lower classes). Of course, it does not hurt that this particular bunch from “The Murder Monster” apparently has a sense of its past criminal behavior. Those without lacking a conscience are treated with open contempt, in line with most pulp fiction of the day.

  This portrayal of characters is another feature distinguishing Tepperman’s work from that of Paul Chadwick, being most obvious in the men’s treatment of felons. The original Brant House depicted criminals as a shabby, dirty class of people, “lowlifes” who are tough with their guns, but cowardly without them. Further, they are animalistic, with wolf imagery predominating as Chadwick’s means of describing them. This traditional portrayal dates all the way back to ancient writers like Pliny the Elder and even to writers of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. It is shorthand for the person who is predatory, ravenous, ruthless. The novel “Curse of the Waiting Death” states that a masked bandit is “like a hungry wolf,” for example. “The Torture Trust” declares thugs to be “slavering, red-jawed wolves.” And last, Chadwick paints one “Fat” Hickman of “The Sinister Scourge” as a man with “lips drawn back in a wolfish leer.” In each instance, these criminals (and for that matter, most of Chadwick’s criminals) are predators who deserve anything that happens to them. And it makes sense that a man hunter like Secret Agent “X” would have to track and eliminate them. He is a virtual avenger of God (or, in this case, the State) who, in this early period, stoically and relentlessly pursues his foes, in order to protect the innocent (us).