IV
The origin of the detective novel need not concern us greatly. Like all species of popular art, its beginnings are probably obscure and confused. Enthusiastic critics have pointed to certain tales in the Old Testament (such as Daniel’s cross-examination of the elders in the story of Susanna) as examples of early crime-detection. But if we were to extend our search into antiquity we would probably find few ancient literatures that would not supply us with evidence of a sort. Persian sources are particularly rich in stories that might be drawn into the detectival category. The Turkish and the Sanscrit likewise furnish material for the ancient-origin theory. And, of course, the Arabian The Thousand Nights and a Night offers numerous exhibits of criminological fiction. Herodotus, five centuries B.C., recounted what might be termed a detective tale in the story of King Rhampsinitus’s treasure-house — a story of a skilfully planned theft, the falsifying of clues (no less an act than decapitation), the setting of traps for the criminal, the clever eluding of these snares, and — what should delight the modern romanticist — a “happy ending” when the scalawag wins the hand of the princess. This ancient Greek tale, by the way, might also be regarded as the inspiration for the common modern device of having a crime committed in a locked and sealed room. But even the story of Rhampsinitus was not solely Egyptian: Charles Johnston, of the Royal Asiatic Society, has variously traced it, both in its general plot and its details, to the Thibetan, the Italian, and the Indian. And we may find it, in its essentials, retold in modern English and staring at us, in gaudy wrappers, from the shelves of our favorite bookstore. Another tale of Herodotus to which might be traced the prevalent cipher-message device of the nineteenth-century detective-story writer is the one which relates of the code pricked by Histiaios on the bald head of his slave in order to convey a secret message to Aristagoras. Chaucer has retold, in “The Tale of the Nun’s Priest”, a story from Cicero’s De Divinatione; and the Gesta Romanorum has long been a mine of suggestions for the modern writer of crime-mystery fiction.
Antiquity unquestionably was familiar with all manner of tales and legends that might be academically regarded as the antecedents of the modern detective story; and it is interesting to note that the current connotation of the word clue (or clew) is derived from the thread with which Ariadne supplied Theseus to guide him safely from the Cretan labyrinth after he had slain the Minotaur. However, all such genealogical researches for the remote forebears of the modern crime story may best be left to the antiquary, for they are irrelevant to our purpose, which is to trace the origin and history of the specialized branch of literary form called the detective novel. While many such tales may be unearthed in the ancient records of imaginative narrative, they did not become unified into a type until toward the latter half of the nineteenth century; and it is from that time that the entire evolution of this literary genre has taken place.
It would be possible, no doubt, to find indications of the later detective novel in many books during the early decades of the last century. Poe, however, is the authentic father of the detective novel as we know it to-day; and the evolution of this literary type began with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
(1841), “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842), “The Gold-Bug” (1843), and “The Purloined Letter” (1845). In these four tales was born a new and original type of fictional entertainment; and though their structure has been modified, their method altered, their subject-matter expanded, and their craftsmanship developed, they remain to-day almost perfect models of their kind; and they will always so remain, because their fundamental psychological qualities — the very essence of their appeal — embody the animating and motivating forces in this branch of fiction. One can no more ignore their basic form when writing a detective novel to-day than one can ignore the form of Haydn when composing a symphony, or the experimental researches of Monet and Pissarro when painting an impressionist painting.
For fifteen years after Poe there was little detective-story fiction of an influential nature. Desultory and ineffectual attempts were made to carry on the Auguste Dupin idea, chiefly in France, where Poe’s influence was very great. Perhaps the most noteworthy is to be found in Dumas’ Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1848) where D’Artagnan enacts the role of detective. But even here the spirit of adventure overrides the spirit of deduction, — Le Vicomte de Bragelonne is, after all, a sequel to Les Trois Mousquetaires. Five years later, in 1853, came Dickens’s Bleak House; and in this novel appeared England’s first authentic contribution to modern detective fiction. This novel, to be sure, contains many elements which to-day would not be tolerated in a strict detective story; and its technic, as was inevitable, is more suited to the novel of manners; but Inspector Bucket (who, by the way, was drawn from Dickens’s personal friend, Inspector Field of the Metropolitan Police Force of London) is a character who deserves to rank with Dupin and the famous fictional sleuths who came later. In The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which unfortunately remained unfinished at the time of Dickens’s death in 1870) we have a straightaway detective story which might almost be used as a model for this type of fiction.
But ten years of criminal waters, so to speak, had passed under the detectives’ bridge when The Mystery of Edwin Drood appeared; and Dickens cannot be regarded as, in any sense, a precursor, or even developer, of the crime-mystery technic. In 1860 Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White had been published; and The Moonstone had followed eight years later, two years before the world was aware of the mysterious murder of Edwin Drood and the ensuing unresolved melodrama amid the picturesque purlieus of old Rochester and the opium dens of Shadwell. Indeed, it was Wilkie Collins who carried on the tradition of Poe in England, and, by giving impetus to the detective-story idea and purifying its technic, paved the way for Gaboriau. Sergeant Cuff, though we hear his name but seldom to-day, deserves a larger and more conspicuous niche among the literary immortals of crime detection, for few of his later brethren have proved themselves more efficient than did he when called upon to solve the mystery of the great diamond which Colonel Herncastle had secured. But Collins, because of the nature of his numerous other books, will always be classed as a dealer in adventures and mysteries, despite his contributions to the evolution of strictly problematic crime literature. At that early date the analytical crime story was not considered worthy of any writer’s entire time and energy.
V
It was not until the appearance of Gaboriau’s L’Affaire Lerouge (The Widow Lerouge) in 1866, that the first great stride in the detective novel’s development was taken. This book was the first of a long series of detective novels by Gaboriau, in which the protagonist, Monsieur Lecoq, proved himself a worthy successor to Poe’s Auguste Dupin. If we call Poe the father of detective fiction, Gaboriau was certainly its first influential tutor. He lengthened its form along rigid deductional lines, and complicated and elaborated its content. Le dossier No. 113 (File No. 113), published in 1867, has deservedly become a classic of its kind; and Monsieur Lecoq, which appeared in 1869, will, despite the remarkable fact that the criminal in the end outwits and eludes the sleuth, always remain one of the world’s foremost detective stories. With Gaboriau’s L’Argent des autres (Other People’s Money), published posthumously in 1874 (Gaboriau died in 1873), the detective novel was permanently launched, and during the past fifty years it has taken a conspicuous and highly popular place in the fictional field.
But though Gaboriau remains to-day the foremost writer of detective fiction during the period following Poe and Collins, mention should in justice be made of that other French exponent of the roman policier, Fortuné du Boisgobey, whose name is often bracketed with Gaboriau’s. Boisgobey was a prolific writer of detective fiction, and his work had the undoubted effect of popularizing this type of story in France. Moreover, there is no doubt that he influenced Conan Doyle, if, indeed, Doyle did not go to him for actual suggestions. Boisgobey’s first detective work was Le Forçat colonel, which appeared in 1872; and this was followed by Les gredins, La tresse blonde, Les Mystéres du nouveau Paris, Le billet rouge, Le Cri du Sang, La bande rouge, and others. La main froide was published as late as 1889.
Five years after the death of Gaboriau another writer of detective tales entered the field — the American, Anna Katharine Green — and this author has hewed to the line for nearly half a century, producing a large number of some of the best-known detective novels in English. The Leavenworth Case, which appeared in 1878, had a tremendous popularity; but its importance lay in the fact that it went far toward familiarizing the English-speaking public with this, as yet, little-known genre, rather than in any inherent contribution made by it to the genre’s evolution. This book and the numerous other detective novels written by the same author appear to many of us to-day, who have become accustomed to the complex, economical and highly rarified technic of detective fiction, as over-documented and as too intimately concerned with strictly romantic material and humanistic considerations. However, their excellent style, their convincing logic, and their sense of reality give them a literary distinction almost unique in the American criminal romance since Poe; and Mrs. Rohlf’s detective, Ebenezer Gryce, is as human and convincing a solver of mysteries as this country has produced. There is little doubt that the novels of Anna Katharine Green have played a significant part in the historical evolution of the fiction of crime detection: certainly no roster of the foremost examples of this branch of literature would be complete without the inclusion of such books of hers as Hand and Ring, Behind Closed Doors, The Filigree Ball, The House of the Whispering Pines, and The Step on the Stair.
A book which played a peculiar part in the history of the detective novel is The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume. This story, based on the technic of Gaboriau and influenced by the writings of Anna Katharine Green, represents what is perhaps the greatest commercial success in the history of modern detective fiction, and throws an interesting light on the English public’s avidity for this type of literary diversion during the closing years of the nineteenth century. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab has sold over half a million copies to date, and the record of its early editions is eloquently indicative of the fact that the detective novel as a definite genre had, even at that time, made a place for itself in the Hall of Letters. The book, however, added nothing new to the technic or the subject-matter of detective fiction, but adhered sedulously to the lines already laid down.
Not until the appearance of A Study in Scarlet in 1887 (which, incidentally, was the same year in which The Mystery of a Hansom Cab appeared), and The Sign of Four in 1890, did the detective novel take any definite forward step over Gaboriau. In these books and the later Sherlock Holmes vehicles Conan Doyle brought detective fiction into full-blown maturity. He adhered to the documentary and psychological scaffolding that had been erected by Poe and strengthened by Gaboriau, but clothed it in a new exterior, eliminating much of the old decoration, and designing various new architectural devices. In Doyle the detective story reached what might be termed a purified fruition; and the numerous changes and developments during the past two decades have had to do largely with detail, with the substitution of methods, and with variations in documentary treatment — in short, with current modes.
But in as vital, intimate, and exigent a type of entertainment as detective fiction, these modes are of great importance: they mark the distinction between that which is modern and up-to-date and that which is old-fashioned, just as do the short skirt and the long skirt in sartorial styles. The Sherlock Holmes stories are now obsolescent: they have been superseded by more advanced and contemporaneously alive productions in their own realm. And the modern detective-story enthusiast would find it hard sledding to read Gaboriau to-day — even Monsieur Lecoq and Le dossier No. 113. Poe’s four analytic tales are a treasure-trove for the student rather than a source of diversion for the general reader. The romantic and adventurous atmosphere we find in “The Gold-Bug” has now been eliminated from the detective tale; and the long introduction to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (really an apologia), and the unnecessary documentation in “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” act only as irritating encumbrances to the modern reader of detective fiction. Even in “The Purloined Letter” — the shortest of the four stories — there is a sesquipedalian and somewhat ponderous analysis of philosophy and mathematics, which is much too ritenendo and grandioso for the devotees of this type of fiction to-day.
VI
The first detective of conspicuous note to follow in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes was Martin Hewitt, the creation of Arthur Morrison. Hewitt is less colorful than Holmes, less omnipotent, and far more commonplace. He was once, Mr. Morrison tells us, a lawyer’s clerk, and some of the dust of his legal surroundings seems always to cling to him. But what he loses in perspicacity and incredible gifts, he makes up for, in large measure, by verisimilitude. His problems as a whole are less melodramatic and bizarre than those of Holmes, except perhaps those in The Red Triangle; and his methods are not as spectacular as those of his Baker Street predecessor. An obvious attempt has been made by Mr. Morrison to give to detective fiction an air of convincing reality; and by his painstaking and even scholarly style he has sought to appeal to a class of readers that might ordinarily repudiate all interest in so inherently artificial a type of entertainment.
In R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke the purely scientific detective made his appearance. Test tubes, microscopes, Bunsen burners, retorts, and all the obscure paraphernalia of the chemist’s and physicist’s laboratories are his stock in trade. In fact, Dr.Thorndyke rarely attends an investigation without his case of implements and his array of chemicals. Without his laboratory assistant and jack-of-all-trades, Polson, — coupled, of course, with his ponderous but inevitable medico-legal logic — he would be helpless in the face of mysteries which Sherlock Holmes and Monsieur Lecoq might easily have clarified by a combination of observation, mental analysis, and intuitive genius. Dr. Thorndyke is an elderly, plodding, painstaking, humorless and amazingly dry sleuth, but so original are his problems, so cleverly and clearly does he reach his solutions, and so well written are Dr. Freeman’s records, that the Thorndyke books rank among the very best of modern detective fiction. The amatory susceptibilities of his recording coadjutors are constantly intruding upon the doctor’s scientific investigations and the reader’s patience; but even with these irrelevant impediments most of the stories march briskly and competently to their inevitable conclusions. Of all the scientific detectives Dr. Thorndyke is unquestionably the most convincing. His science, though at times obscure, is always sound: Dr. Freeman writes authoritatively, and the reader is both instructed and delighted.
Craig Kennedy, the scientific detective of Arthur B. Reeve, on the other hand, is far less profound: he is, in fact, a pseudo-scientist, utilizing all manner of strange divining machines and speculative systems, and employing all the latest “discoveries” in the realm of fantastic and theoretic physical research. He is not unlike a composite of all the inventors and ballyhoo doctors of science who regularly supply sensational research copy for the Sunday Supplement magazines. But Mr. Reeve’s stories, despite their failure to adhere to probability and to the accepted knowledge of recognized experimenters in the scientific fields, are at times ingenious and interesting, and there is little doubt that they have had a marked influence on modern detective fiction. They are unfortunately marred by a careless journalistic style. Among the many Craig Kennedy volumes may be mentioned The Poisoned Pen, The Dream Doctor, The Silent Bullet and The Treasure-Train as containing the best of Mr. Reeve’s work.