Fri 25 May 2018
Pulp PI Stories I’m Reading: SCOTT CAMPBELL “The Case of the Vanished Bonds.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[16] Comments
SCOTT CAMPBELL “The Case of the Vanished Bonds.” Felix Boyd #1. The Popular Magazine, February 1904. Collected in Below the Dead-Line (Street & Smith, paperback; 1906; G. W. Dilingham Co., hardcover, March 2006). Currently available in various Print on Demand editions. Silent Film: Edison, 1915, with Robert Conness as Felix Boyd.
The foreword to the hardcover edition credits New York City police inspector Thomas Byrne for creating the phrase “below the deadline” referring to “the immediate arrest of every crook found day or night in that part of the metropolis lying south of Fulton Street.” This includes (I am told) Wall Street and the location of the fabulous diamond houses of that era.
Felix Boyd is something of a mystery man. He is hired by a distraught banker whose shipment by single messenger of valuable bonds has gone missing en route to the sub-treasury where they were being sent. But when the case is solved, he refuses payment for succeeding, remarking that he is paid by the year, not the job, evidently by some third party not yet identified.
The messenger, quite trusted, it seems went straight from the banker’s office to the sub-treasury, but when he arrived, the bonds were gone from his bag, but the gold inside still there.
Some investigation on Boyd’s part, however, reveals that he did stop once, to talk to an acquaintance on a doorstep with the bag on the ground. The solution from there is easy enough, but it does require Boyd, described as an American Sherlock Holmes, to disguise himself as a Jewish gentleman to elicit information from the foreman of the work crew inside the building where the messenger had stopped.
Ordinarily this statement may fall into the category of too much information, but since you nor anyone else is likely to read this story any time soon, it is not likely for me to lose any sleep over it.
I have not yet read any of the other stories in the book, of which there are eleven more, but I enjoyed this one enough that I will, even though the detection is, shall we say, rather rudimentary. But besides a mystery boss for Mr. Boyd, there is a mystery mastermind behind the theft of the bonds, but he gets away, only to be behind the scenes again in upcoming adventures.
May 26th, 2018 at 12:36 am
Obscure, but not so much I haven’t at least heard of Felix Boyd. I think there is also a talkie called BELOW THE DEADLINE, but have no idea if it is related.
As for Felix Boyd the few mentions I’ve seen seem more related to Nick Carter than Sherlock Holmes.
May 26th, 2018 at 11:30 am
Felix Boyd and Nick Carter are cut from the same cloth, all right — straight from the Street & Smith dime novel era.
May 26th, 2018 at 2:54 pm
The October, 1914, issue of The Edison Kinetogram, a publication marketing Edison’s moving pictures, ran this short article on its series of adaptions of the Felix Boyd stories from Below the Dead Line:
“These absorbing stories tell the thrilling adventures of “Felix Boyd,” a famous detective in solving crimes of widely different types.
“Each story as it appears will be complete in itself, but in addition will carry with it a compelling power that creates a desire to see the next one in the series.
“Such popular artists as Robert Conness will play the roles of Felix Boyd,the detective, and Yale Boss, that of Terrance Gowan, the faithful Irish lad whose keen wit adds materially to Boyd’s many successes. In the part of Coleman, a central office detective, you will find Richard Neill. The portrayal of Wycoff, the criminal, will be handled by Bigelow Cooper in a masterful way.
“On October 17th, the first of these pictures will be released…and other will appear at irregular intervals.
“Are you going to get your share of the profits these releases will surely carry with them? Arrange your bookings now.”
( Having nothing to do with the subject at hand, this nonetheless is a fascinating historic item that appeared in the following issue of Kinetogram, typewritten on White House stationary and signed by President Woodrow Wilson:
“It would be a patriotic act in the interest of the neutrality of the nation and the peace of mankind if the audience in this theatre would refrain during the showing of pictures connected with the present war from expressing either approval or disapproval.” )
The Kinetogram ran a one-page plot summary and cast list along with a still from individual episodes of the Below the Dead Line series in the following issues:
“The Case of the Vanished Bonds” October 1914 issue, movie released 17 October 1914; still of Conness talking to a man in an office
“Dickson’s Diamonds” November 1914 issue, movie released 21 November 1914; still of Conness in office with two other men
“The Man Who Vanished” December 1914 issue, movie released 26 December 1914; still of Conness as the detective in disguise
May 26th, 2018 at 2:55 pm
Cited by Steve from the preface of the hardcover version of Below the Dead-Line as the coiner of the phrase used in the book’s title; Thomas Byrne, the New York City police inspector, also popularized the phrase “rogues gallery” and was well-known as a tough-guy practioner of the third degree. The writers of Nick Carter stories would use him as character. When Theodore Roosevelt became the police commissioner of the New York City force, he removed Byrne from office.
Meanwhile six years before the Edison movie shorts featuring Felix Boyd, French director Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset in Paris established the genre of the cinematic detective with Nick Carter, le roi des detectives, 1908; a series of six short movies featuring Nick Carter. Jasset combined the criminal Zigomar, from the stories by Leon Sazie, with Nick Carter for a second series, Zigomar contre Nick Carter, 1912. This second series was widely popular in Japan and inspired there a new series of Zigomar stories based on the movie written by Kuwano Toka, which was the pen-name of Kuwano Masao ( Charles Exley, Sato Haruo and Modern Japanese Literature, 2016 .)
Keeping international while returning to “The Case of the Vanished Bonds,” here is a short write-up of the movie version of that story then appearing at the Castle Cinema from the Swansea, Wales newspaper, Cambrian Daily Leader, 1 May 1915:
“‘The Case of the Vanished Bonds,’ a strong Edison detective drama, is bound to arrest general interest. Felix Boyd was inclined to believe that Gorman knew where the missing bonds were, so in the disguise of a Jewish pedler he investigates and catches Gorman removing the bonds from their hiding-place. Cornered, Gorman fires upon Boyd, but misses and is in turn shot by Coleman, Boyd’s assistant.”
May 26th, 2018 at 2:59 pm
Randy Cox, expert extraordinaire of early 20th-Century detective stories, described the Felix Boyd stories, actually written by Frederick W. Davis under the Scott Campbell pen-name, in his Dime Novel Companion: A Source Book, 2000. The forty-eight Felix Boyd stories appeared in Popular Magazine between 1904 and 1908, appearing in two sub-series: “Below the Dead-Line” and “The Adventures of Felix Boyd.” These were reprinted in five paper-covered editions.
Bob Sampson, whose breadth of knowledge and command of prose when writing about stories from pulp magazines would amaze me, included a segment on Felix Boyd in Yesterday’s Faces: The Solvers, 1987. Sampson observed, “Felix Boyd not only embodies many of Holmes’ characteristics but the stories, themselves, are strongly flavored with second-hand Doyle.” On Felix Boyd’s forgotten status, Sampson noted, “Unfortunately , paper covers do not preserve reputations as surely as cloth bindings. In hardback, Boyd may have received recognition–or more recognition than he currently enjoys, Ellery Queen being one of the few commentators to cite him. At it is, cloth-bound immortality was denied Felix.”
The citation of Felix Boyd by Ellery Queen, in Queen Quorum, is extremely incidental–as a passing example of a dime-novel hero–, although Queen cites him in connection to a fascinating episode. He described the activities of Charles Bragin, who would hunt down dime-novel material for President Franklin Roosevelt. Ellery Queen was Bragin’s second most important customer.
Jess Nevins, encyclopedist of popular fiction, writes about Felix Boyd in The Evolution of the Customed Avenger: The 4,000-Year History of the Superhero, 2017. “(Nick) Carter was the second-most imitated fictional hero internationally during his Golden Age, after Sherlock Holmes,…. Typical of these imitations was Frederick W. Davis’s Felix Boyd,…. Boyd is a New York City private detective, in manner modeled on Sherlock Holmes, but in approach to detection most influenced by Nick Carter. Boyd carries two revolvers and shows no compunction about using them, and his enemies–street-level thugs, vicious murders, and amoral blackmailers–are closer to Carter’s than Holmes’s.”
May 26th, 2018 at 3:24 pm
Great research on your part, Darryl. I’m overwhelmed. Thanks very much!
May 27th, 2018 at 5:42 pm
In The Evolution of the Costumed Avenger: the 4,000-Year History of the Superhero, Jess Nevin thought that Street & Smith’s The Popular Magazine was an odd place for the forty-eight Felix Boyd stories, as the stories by Frederick W. Davis, under the Scott Campbell pen-name, were too rough-hewed for the gentil, general-interest magazine.
“Boyd, in particular, is notable because his 48 magazine appearances were in The Popular Magazine, a solidly middle-of-the-road, middle-class pulp magazine (as opposed to the less respectable dime novels that were [ Nick ] Carter’s main venue),…,” wrote Nevin.
The Nick Carter stories belonged more to the dime-novel genre than they belonged to the mystery genre. An impulsive simplicity comes through this type of story where the author, some times addled by alcohol, just typed without thinking, pushing the story along. In this immediacy, the reader just fell forward, not worried about what he tripped over but where he would land.
In the years after the transition from nickel libraries to pulp magazines, the Nick Carter stories in the newer format could be bland. Reading something without the frenzy and fantastic, a long-time Nick Carter reader rightly could have said, this is not a Nick Carter story despite the character’s name. As they say in business-speak, the genre still was storming and norming and in those transitional years, a character such as Nick Carter, so dependent on genre to define him, would seem temporarily without substance until the genre was better defined.
The Felix Boyd stories perhaps were acceptable in The Popular Magazines given the genre’s mutable standards at the time. With the Felix Boyd stories, Frederick W. Davis, who also wrote pre-pulp magazine Nick Carter stories, seemed to be using what had been successful in the past. The pulp-magazine format had become uniform but the genre still was in flux.
May 27th, 2018 at 5:44 pm
President Wilson’s direction in 1914 not to respond in any way whatsoever to war scenes in the moving pictures says so much. It shows a president who is comfortable hectoring the country as he might have admonished the freshmen at Princeton. It helps explain the repression of the press during the Great War. The view of the past just got a little wider with this item.
How an atmosphere that engendered something like Wilson’s instructions would have affected popular entertainment them is impossible to completely say today. Trying a century later to unravel a relation this tight, such as between Frederick W. Davis and his readers with the Felix Boyd stories, is a Gordian knot, so intertwined that we are bound to misunderstand most of it. Best to cleave through as best as we can.
I had one of those moments reading the review when Felix Boyd made himself up as a Jewish peddler. The idea of this disguise is so bound up with prejudice and stereotyping that I had to give myself a mental pass to not think too much about it. I cannot justify it and since I am not a hundred-twenty years old, I am not in a possession where I can even try to justify it.
May 27th, 2018 at 6:46 pm
That particular scene made me sit up and wince also. I will have to correct you on one point, however. Boyd did not disguise himself as a peddler, but as someone in the “prokerage bishness” wishing to rent an office in the building still under construction or being renovated. This is the only phrase I am sure I need to use in order to illustrate an aspect of the story I decided to gloss over in my comments.
May 27th, 2018 at 5:47 pm
Probably Francis Nevins instantly could say which of the Ellery Queen cousins wrote the quote, cited by Bob Sampson in Yesterday’s Faces: The Solvers, about Felix Boyd. Sampson used the collective name without indicating which cousin, Dannay or Lee. Being benighted myself on such matters, I likewise shall continue with the combined non de plume.
As I said before, the mention by Queen of Felix Boyd was very much in passing, and the passage itself dealt with dime novels. Furthermore the Felix Boyd stories did not appear in dime-novel publications. The writer of these stories Frederick W. Davis, however, had a long dime-novel pedigree.
“…,in 1889, Nick Carter was to begin one of the longest crime-crushing careers in histor. Between 1860 and 1928 more than six thousand different detective Dime Novels were published in the United States, but less than a score of them were books of short stories. The earliest one DETECTIVE SKETCHES (By A New York Detective) New York: Frank Tousey, April 2, 1881 deserves cornerstone recognition. And while such stalwart manhunters as Clark, Sharp, Old King Brady, and Felix Boyd were flourishing, the female of the species was slowly organizing fighting for equal sleuthian rights. Between the Dime Novel pictorial wrappers appeared occasional capers of Lady Bess, Lizzie Lasher (the Red Weasel), and Lucilla Lynx. The Ellery Queen collection contains all the known books of Dime Novel shorts, secured for us by our good friend Charles Bragin, the foremost authority on ad collector of Dime Novels. Mr. Bragin was the “secret agent” for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who collected certain types of Dime Novels. When Mr. Bragin purchased a miscellaneous lot of Dime Novels, at auction or out of some dusty attic, he usually gave President Roosevelt first choice of the Dime Novels he wanted, and Ellery Queen first choice of the short stories. It is doubtful if President Roosevelt was ever aware that Ellery Queen shared some of his most precious ‘finds’ in this field.” ( Queen’s Quorum, 1951 ) ( A slightly altered version of this appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1949 from the 1948 edition of Queen’s Quorum. )
E.M. Sanchez Saavedra, who I remember from the Dime Novel Round-Up when Randy Cox helmed that ship, posted 17 December 2011 a biographical piece on Charles Bragin on John Adcock’s Yesterday’s Papers website ( http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2011/12/charles-bragin-and-dime-novel-reprints_17.html ). Sanchez does not mention the Roosevelt connection; maybe he thought it apocryphal or he had not heard of it. If it is true, the question that bedevils me is what type of dime novels did Roosevelt want?
May 27th, 2018 at 5:50 pm
In Yesterday’s Faces: The Solvers, 1987; Bob Sampson held the Felix Boyd stories in high opinion.
“This mixture of realistic detail, toughness, and melodramatic action is interested in several ways. It is a clear example of the dime novel making the transition between a 32-page pamphlet and a family-oriented magazine of general fiction. And it also permits us a sharp look at the larval stage of his development,” wrote Sampson.
Sampson expanded on this:
“Most stories are set firmly in New York City, described in as intense detail as Doyle ever lavished up London.
‘It was at this time, on a warm, unseasonable night, well along in December, that Mr. Felix Bond finally got at his work.
‘A damp mist was in the air, lending a sickly yellow glare to the street lights. The pavements were wet and slippery and all that was left of the last fall of snow lay foul and black here and there in the gutters’
“It is half Nick Carter and half Sherlock Holmes: a hyperactive, deducing genius prowls the mean streets, one hand gripping a pistol, the other clutching a disguise. All around him that vanished world shimmers to hard form: ramshackle stables, clay alleys greasy in rain, over-decorated drawing rooms dense with possessions, construction sites…
“Similar scenes had appeared for years in various dime novel series, although without the intensity of select detail or the urge to social reform which heated the Naturalists’ prose. So it is no surprise that the Felix Boyd stories borrow the Naturalistic School’s manner without adopting its purpose. Scott Campbell is writing adventure fiction, not social criticism. But he contrives to play the hot orange action against backgrounds reflecting social degradation and despair almost inadvertently, as his melodrama hammers along.”
Sampson had such an incredible grasp, finding importance in the Felix Boyd stories, for example. He was a master at making those connections.
May 27th, 2018 at 6:51 pm
You are quite correct about Bob Sampson. I met him only once, but we corresponded by old-fashioned mail for a long time before his death. I learned a lot from him about pulps and pulp fiction.
May 29th, 2018 at 4:04 pm
I’m sorry I didn’t read these comments before this, but you guys have done well here in discussing the Felix Boyd stories. The only thing I can add is that it is highly probable that Fred Dannay was the writer behind those statements as Ellery Queen. Fred was the one who built up the collection of detective short stories and who wished to give academic respectability to the genre.
May 29th, 2018 at 6:39 pm
It’s obvious who did the heavy lifting in these comments, Randy, but I’m glad you finally had a chance to read them. As for me, I now know a lot more about Felix Boyd than I did a week ago, that’s for sure. Thanks again, Darryl!
October 3rd, 2019 at 4:27 pm
Does anyone know anything about Scott Campbell aka Frederick W. Davis? I just heard he lived in my city, New Bedford MA about 100 years ago. He seems to be lost in our local history. It would be nice to have some biographical info. Thanks! Rick Taylor
October 3rd, 2019 at 4:41 pm
Rick
Alas, I know nothing about the Campbell/Davis, the author. Maybe someone will come along who can tell us more.