Final Proof Read online

  Copyright © 1898 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Introduction and notes © 2020 by Leslie S. Klinger

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks and Library of Congress

  Cover design by Heather Morris/Sourcebooks

  Cover image: Tokyo Amateur Dramatic Club Presents Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton. Michael Biddle, 1957 or 1958. Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-42138. Courtesy of Michael Biddle.

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the Library of Congress

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  www.sourcebooks.com

  This edition of Final Proof is based on the first edition in the Library of Congress’s collection, originally published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons/The Knickerbocker Press in 1898.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ottolengui, Rodrigues, author. | Klinger, Leslie S.,

  editor.

  Title: Final proof : or, The value of evidence / R. Ottolengui ; edited,

  with an introduction and notes, by Leslie S. Klinger.

  Other titles: Value of evidence

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Library of Congress ; Poisoned Pen

  Press, [2020] | “This edition of Final Proof is based on the first

  edition in the Library of Congress’s collection, originally published by

  Sons/The Knickerbocker Press in 1898”--Title page verso.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020018068 (trade paperback)

  Classification: LCC PS2509.O46 A6 2020 (print) |

  DDC 813/.4--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018068

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Prefatory

  I: The Phoenix of Crime

  II: The Missing Link

  III: The Nameless Man

  IV: The Montezuma Emerald

  V: A Singular Abduction

  VI: The Aztec Opal

  VII: The Duplicate Harlequin

  VIII: The Pearls of Isis

  IX: A Promissory Note

  X: A Novel Forgery

  XI: A Frosty Morning

  XII: A Shadow of Proof

  Reading Group Guide

  Further Reading

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  Foreword

  Crime writing as we know it first appeared in 1841, with the publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Written by American author Edgar Allan Poe, the short story introduced C. Auguste Dupin, the world’s first wholly fictional detective. Other American and British authors had begun working in the genre by the 1860s, and by the 1920s, we had officially entered the golden age of detective fiction.

  Throughout this short history, many authors who paved the way have been lost or forgotten. Library of Congress Crime Classics bring back into print some of the finest American crime writing from the 1860s to the 1960s, showcasing rare and lesser known titles that represent a range of genres, from cozies to police procedurals. With cover designs inspired by images from the Library’s collections, each book in this series includes the original text, reproduced faithfully from an early edition in the Library’s collections and complete with strange spellings and unorthodox punctuation. Also included are a contextual introduction, a brief biography of the author, notes, recommendations for further reading, and suggested discussion questions. Our hope is for these books to start conversations, inspire further research, and bring obscure works to a new generation of readers.

  Early American crime fiction is not only entertaining to read, it also sheds light on the culture of its time. While many of the titles in this series include outmoded language and stereotypes now considered offensive, these books give readers the opportunity to reflect on how our society’s perceptions of race, gender, ethnicity, and social standing have evolved over more than a century.

  More dark secrets and bloody deeds lurk in the massive collections of the Library of Congress. I encourage you to explore these works for yourself, here in Washington, D.C., or online at www.loc.gov.

  —Carla D. Hayden, Librarian of Congress

  Introduction

  In December 1893, Sherlock Holmes’s death (two years earlier) was announced to the reading public in “The Final Problem,” the last of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes published in the Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1893. When Holmes vanished from the scene, a score of American and English writers rushed to fill the vacuum, with tales of official and amateur detectives of all types and kinds. Among them was a young American dentist with the unlikely name of Benjamin Adolph Rodrigues Ottolengui. Early in his career, he began to read detective fiction because, he said, it “sharpens my wits. It is like solving chess problems. The analytical powers of the brain are developed. Therefore, a properly constructed detective story, free from pruriency, is wholesome reading.”1 Perhaps, like Arthur Conan Doyle, he turned to writing while waiting for patients to engage his services.

  Ottolengui’s first try at crime fiction was a novel, An Artist in Crime, first published in 1892; this was swiftly followed by three other novels: A Conflict of Evidence (1893), A Modern Wizard (1894), and The Crime of the Century (1896). All featured a pair of sleuths: a professional, Jack Barnes, and an amateur, Robert Leroy Mitchel. Ottolengui wrote no further novels, however, and took up penning short stories about Barnes and Mitchel—following in the footsteps of Conan Doyle, who had also written two Holmes novels before turning to the shorter format. The first four of Ottolengui’s short stories, included in this volume, were commissioned by Jerome K. Jerome, the publisher of the highly successful London-based magazine The Idler. The stories appeared in 1895. Another appeared in 1898, published in The Black Cat, an American magazine featuring short fiction; several more were written for the present volume, also first published in 1898. Ottolengui’s success was not limited to the United States. Early on, his books were reprinted several times and translated into German, French, Danish, and Polish, among other languages.

  Though for many years mystery scholars thought that Ottolengui had abandoned crime fiction after 1898—Anthony Boucher, the prominent mystery critic, wrote that he had “abandoned the sleuth for the tooth”—in fact, Ottolengui wrote six more stories published under the series title of Before the Fact. The series appeared in 1901 in Ainslee’s Magazine. However, with that final burst of literary energy in 1901, Ottolengui returned to his scientific pursuits, including advances in dentistry, photography, and entomology. Ellery Queen called him “one of the most neglected authors in the entire history of the detective story,” and perhaps without Queen’s inclusion of the present volume in his highly influential Queen’s Quorum: A History of the Detective Crime Short Story as Revealed in the 106 Most Important Books Published in this Field Since 1845 (first published in 1948), Ottolengui’s cri
me fiction would have vanished into the fog.

  Later scholars, such as LeRoy Lad Panek, have seen Ottolengui’s work for what it was: clear, compelling tales, based on reason and not the detective’s personality, that introduced forensic tools and scientific reasoning that were ahead of their time. For example, in “The Phoenix of Crime,” Ottolengui advances the theory of forensic dentistry, complete with reproduction of a dental chart.2 In “A Shadow of Proof,” his detective uses an X-ray to find a lost item of jewelry. Yet his aim was not didactic. In his remarks at the beginning of The Crime of the Century, Ottolengui wrote:

  After all, the major object of fiction is to entertain, and even though a little instructive lesson may be deftly interwoven with the plot, I fear that the modern novel is too highly spiced with philosophic dissertations. And in seeking to entertain is it not best to offer something out of the common? Something a little different from the dull routine of daily existence?3

  As a result, the stories in this volume feature jewel robberies, too many corpses, cowboys, Aztec idols, and talking monkeys as well as serious suggestions for the budding science of forensics. Ottolengui was evidently fascinated by the science of the day and was apparently widely read in bacteriology, hypnotism (both of which subjects have a prominent part in his novel A Modern Wizard), archaeology, the history of the Aztecs, Darwinism, and other scientific developments and discoveries. His work also contains many shrewd observations on human nature, especially with regard to the social customs of his own patients, New Yorkers of the Gilded Age. Yet he also apparently knew the underworld of New York, well described in his novel The Crime of the Century.

  Ottolengui certainly acknowledged his debt to Conan Doyle and, at the same time, sought to capitalize on that author’s success. An advertisement for An Artist in Crime published in an American newspaper in 1896 hailed Ottolengui as “the American Conan Doyle, and his New York detective is quite as ingenious as the famous Sherlock Holmes.”4 In the first story in this volume, “The Phoenix of Crime,” Ottolengui’s wealthy amateur sleuth Robert Leroy Mitchel shows off to his sometimes-partner, professional investigator Jack Barnes:

  “…but how do you know that I came off in a hurry and had no coffee at home? It seems to me that if you can tell that, you are becoming as clever as the famous Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Oh, no, indeed! You and I can hardly expect to be as shrewd as the detectives of romance. As to my guessing that you have had no coffee, that is not very troublesome. I notice three drops of milk on your coat, and one on your shoe, from which I deduce, first, that you have had no coffee, for a man who has his coffee in the morning is not apt to drink a glass of milk besides. Second, you must have left home in a hurry, or you would have had that coffee. Third, you took your glass of milk at the ferry-house of the Staten Island boat, probably finding that you had a minute to spare; this is evident because the milk spots on the tails of your frock-coat and on your shoe show that you were standing when you drank, and leaned over to avoid dripping the fluid on your clothes. Had you been seated, the coat tails would have been spread apart, and drippings would have fallen on your trousers. The fact that in spite of your precautions the accident did occur, and yet escaped your notice, is further proof, not only of your hurry, but also that your mind was abstracted,—absorbed no doubt with the difficult problem about which you have come to talk with me. How is my guess?”

  “Correct in every detail. Sherlock Holmes could have done no better.”5

  Despite his subsequent literary obscurity, Ottolengui’s work is an important bridge between the dime-store novels and sensational detective fiction that prevailed in the mid-nineteenth century and the later stream of American crime writing that began in the 1920s. With the exceptions of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich—all of whom made their reputations with work other than detective fiction—Ottolengui is the first American writer featured in Ellery Queen’s chronological history of detective short stories. Ottolengui’s creations were a long step forward from the police detectives and wild amateur sleuths that were staples of the dime novels. Jack Barnes, for example, is a serious professional detective with his own agency. Robert Leroy Mitchel, though he is an amateur, is a gifted reasoner, usually “out-deducing” the professionals. Mitchel takes on the prevention of crime out of a sense of duty arising from his wealth, often at significant risk to his own person. Yet he is not above using this “duty” as a handy pretext for acquiring a collection of fabulous gemstones, to prevent the gems from tempting others to do evil.

  Like Holmes and Watson, Mitchel and Barnes share a deep friendship, but unlike Conan Doyle’s duo, they are also rivals. Mitchel loves to outdo Barnes, and in their first outing, An Artist in Crime, he wagers $1,000—more than $30,000 in 2020 dollars6—that he can outwit Barnes. Tellingly, at the end of “A Frosty Morning,” Mitchel tells Barnes that he was luckier than Barnes in coming to the solution of the mystery—but that he doesn’t believe in luck.

  Ottolengui may have been inspired by the work of Arthur Conan Doyle, but he brought his own wide interests to bear on his crime fiction and introduced many original ideas. While his sleuths Barnes and Mitchel would never replace the immortal Watson and Holmes, their adventures deserve a broader audience than they have had to date.

  —Leslie S. Klinger

  1 “Writing Detective Stories,” Little Falls (MN) Weekly Transcript, February 15, 1895.

  2 Gardner P. H. Foley, in his column “A Treasury of Dentistry” in the Journal of the American College of Dentists (vol. 51, no. 4 [Winter 1984]: 14), noted that interest in the tale was revived a few years later when a young girl’s body was found in Yonkers, NY. The local sheriff, familiar with Ottolengui’s story, asked a dentist to create a chart of her teeth, which led to her identification.

  3 Rodrigues Ottolengui, The Crime of the Century (New York; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896), iv.

  4 Oakes Weekly Republican (Dakota Territory), January 10, 1896.

  5 See pages 1–2.

  6 www.measuringwealth.com

  Prefatory

  The first meeting between Mr. Barnes, the detective, and Robert Leroy Mitchel, the gentleman who imagines himself to be able to outdo detectives in their own line of work, was fully set forth in the narrative entitled An Artist in Crime. Subsequently the two men occupied themselves with the solution of a startling murder mystery, the details of which were recorded in The Crime of the Century. The present volume contains the history of several cases which attracted their attention in the interval between those already given to the world, the first having occurred shortly after the termination of the events in An Artist in Crime, and the others in the order here given, so that in a sense these stories are continuous and interdependent.

  —R. O.

  I: The Phoenix of Crime7

  I

  Mr. Mitchel was still at breakfast one morning, when the card of Mr. Barnes was brought to him by his man Williams.

  “Show Mr. Barnes in here,” said he. “I imagine that he must be in a hurry to see me, else he would not call so early.”

  A few minutes later the detective entered, saying:

  “It is very kind of you to let me come in without waiting. I hope that I am not intruding.”

  “Not at all. As to being kind, why I am kind to myself. I knew you must have something interesting on hand to bring you around so early, and I am proportionately curious; at the same time I hate to go without my coffee, and I do not like to drink it too fast, especially good coffee, and this is good, I assure you. Draw up and have a cup, for I observe that you came off in such a hurry this morning that you did not get any.”

  “Why, thank you, I will take some, but how do you know that I came off in a hurry and had no coffee at home? It seems to me that if you can tell that, you are becoming as clever as the famous Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Oh, no, indeed! You and I can hardly expect to be as shrewd as the det
ectives of romance. As to my guessing that you have had no coffee, that is not very troublesome. I notice three drops of milk on your coat, and one on your shoe, from which I deduce, first, that you have had no coffee, for a man who has his coffee in the morning is not apt to drink a glass of milk besides. Second, you must have left home in a hurry, or you would have had that coffee. Third, you took your glass of milk at the ferry-house of the Staten Island boat, probably finding that you had a minute to spare; this is evident because the milk spots on the tails of your frock-coat and on your shoe show that you were standing when you drank, and leaned over to avoid dripping the fluid on your clothes. Had you been seated, the coat tails would have been spread apart, and drippings would have fallen on your trousers. The fact that in spite of your precautions the accident did occur, and yet escaped your notice, is further proof, not only of your hurry, but also that your mind was abstracted,—absorbed no doubt with the difficult problem about which you have come to talk with me. How is my guess?”

  “Correct in every detail. Sherlock Holmes could have done no better. But we will drop him and get down to my case, which, I assure you, is more astounding than any, either in fact or fiction, that has come to my knowledge.”

  “Go ahead! Your opening argument promises a good play. Proceed without further waste of words.”

  “First, then, let me ask you, have you read the morning’s papers?”

  “Just glanced through the death reports, but had gotten no further when you came in.”

  “There is one death report, then, that has escaped your attention, probably because the notice of it occupies three columns. It is another metropolitan mystery. Shall I read it to you? I glanced through it in bed this morning and found it so absorbing; that, as you guessed, I hurried over here to discuss it with you, not stopping to get my breakfast.”

  “In that case you might better attack an egg or two, and let me read the article myself.”