Seabury Quinn - Demons of the Night

[dem bones]

Seabury Quinn - Demons of the Night: And Other Early Tales (Black Dog Books, 2009)

Greg Hildebrandt

Gene Christie - Introduction: The Early Work of Seabury Quinn

Demons of the Night
Was She Mad?
The Stone Image
Painted Gold
The Cloth of Madness
Romance Unawares
Ravished Shrines
Out of the Land of Egypt
In the Fog
The Black Widow

Appendix A
The Law of the Movies

Appendix B

Seabury Grandin Quinn - A Bibliography of Written Works

Blurb:

Edited and with an introduction by Gene Christie.
The Early Tales of Seabury Quinn

Best known as a prolific contributor to Weird Tales, Seabury Quinn created an impressive body of literature prior to and parallel to his first sales to "the unique magazine." Demons of the Night spotlights those early works, including Quinn's first published article, his first fiction sale, and stories from the extremely rare "Washington Nights' Entertainment" and "Problems of Professor Forrester" series.

Three of the works collected in this volume were previously unknown, and five have never appeared in print in unedited form anywhere since their original magazine appearances, as long as nine decades ago.

Bonus: Also included is an extensive bibliography of the writings of Seabury Quinn.

Demons of the Night: (Detective Story Magazine, 19 March 1918). Reputedly Quinn's first published fiction, merging the urban legends of death at the fancy dress party and the phantom hitch-hiker. On completing a late night errand on behalf of his manager, Krump, a middle-aged bank clerk, stops at a bar hosting a Halloween party. His eyes drift to the most attractive woman in the room, who, unsurprisingly, appears to be in the company of a handsome guy of her own young years. To Krump's astonishment, the young woman ditches her date and approaches his table. Alma du Boise (that's her on the cover), who shares her name with the murder victim in the gruesome 'Taxicab Mystery,' wonders if he'd be so kind as to escort her back to her place?

Was She Mad?: (Detective Story Magazine, 25 June 1918). Narrated from a padded cell. Destitute and starving, aspiring chanteuse Miss Vickers answers a suspiciously worded help wanted ad to become live-in private secretary to a sinister oriental, "Mr. J. Jones." Easy money, the luxury of her own, lavishly furnished room (albeit one with barred windows), and if you wrap the pillow tight around your head you won't even hear the muffled screams in the night or the lunatic howling of her employer's deliberately-starved guard dogs. "If the glass on my walls did not stop a robber, the dogs would most surely keel heem. They would tear anyone they caught to pieces, Mees Veekers .... It would be most difficult for anyone to get into my house - or out of it." Our heroine is wondering how on earth she can possibly escape even before she learns the horrible truth; Jones and his tiger men are "anthropophagi," a cannibal cult who nightly dine on young women!

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The Stone Image: (The Thrill Book, 1 May, 1919). Betty Haig persuades husband Phil to buy a spectacularly ugly Oriental statuette from a New Jersey gift shop. The tusked and taloned idol enslaves Betty, kills the cat, then attempts to do the same to Mr. Haig, its sworn enemy. Introducing 'Dr. Towbridge' and Nora McGinnis, who is housekeeping for the Haigs just then. She quits in disgust when the evil image winks at her.

Great fun, so far. Is She Mad? anticipates the narrated-from-a-padded-cell approach favoured by multiple early Weird Tales authors by five years.

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Painted Gold: (Young's Magazine, May 1919). Lieutenant Rathburn Thomas, 32, regarded by his peers as "non-practising misogynist" due to his indifference toward the opposite sex, has never bothered with women, bitterly resents his sudden overwhelming longing for the company of a girl he met at a dance. Miss Susan Gregory wears lipstick, and that can only mean a common vamp! No matter that "when she sat, she veiled her ankles with her skirts with all the circumspection of a Bronte heroine," she's not the wife for a man of breeding! Nice girls don't paint!

Then one night they're mugged and stranded by a gangster taxi driver ... A rather charming love story.

The Cloth of Madness: (Young's Magazine, Jan. 1920). "Some vengeful old rajah had it woven for the special benefit of some friends he suspected of forgetting that the harem is sacred, inviolate .... All read and full of funny, twisty black lines, like snakes and lizards and — Why, Alvarde, it's like an X-ray of a guilty conscience!"

Gloating deathbed confession of famed interior decorator Jamison Alvarde, his health having fallen into rapid decline since that awful morning when both his wife Edith, and best friend, Hector Fuller,were discovered in their beds, "hopelessly imbecile." Best known and probably finest of Quinn's pre-Weird Tales horror stories.

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Romance Unawares: (Young's Magazine, Sept. 1920). Everyone in Douglaston agrees that David Hardester, 35, and Gertrude Marsden, 32, were made for one another and simply must marry. Everyone, that is, except them. Friends since childhood, they are quite happy to continue as the best of platonic pals — until a night stranded in the haunted Indian burial decides them that maybe everyone has a point.

Ravished Shrines: (Real Detective Tales, July 1925). Major Sturdevant and his Boswell, Loomis, investigate the theft of the lance head said to have pierced Christ's side from its shrine in Falstone Cathedral, the first of several artefacts and relics to be pilfered from English churches, Cathedrals and synagogues over six months. All part of a plot by Russia Communists — in blackface — to destroy religious faith and overthrow Capitalism. "Ha! That's the explanation. I suspected some such devilry the moment I found that cigarette stump in the church last night." Very "of its time." On this evidence, it might have been a mercy if Quinn's great "lost" series had stayed that way.

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Out of the Land of Egypt: (Real Detective Tales, Aug. 1926). "Reach for the moon, you polecat, or I'll blow your head off!" Sturdevant and Loomis again (we learn the latter is a reporter on the Washington Clarion Call, this time augmented by young George Cyril St. John Babbington Harwarden of the British Embassy. The beautiful spy, Nedjma, who happens to be Harwarden's fiancée, has been abducted by Sidi Hamouda, the fiendish leader of Egyptian anti-Brit conspirators who is wanted for murder and conspiracy on several continents. The trail leads to Dr. Eubank's private sanitarium, where Hamouda has had "delightful love toy" Nedjma committed as a madwoman. Hamouda plans to transfer her to his seraglio once the heat has died down.

In the Fog: (Real Detective Tales, Feb. 1927). Benjamin Franklin University and environs, Washington. Professor Frank Harvey Forrester to the rescue of beautiful young Muntaz "the Lady flower" Banjjan (née Rosalie Osterhaut), a Filipino-American orphan bought and sold by multiple slave traders before Chandra Roi, aka Opium king 'Singapore Charley,' "one of the rottenest characters on the whole China coast" brought her to the US when the East grew too hot for him. Forrester traces kidnapper and girl to a mysterious old house. When the abductor, a turbaned "monkey faced" dwarf armed with a scimitar, attacks, Forrester accidentally kills him in self-defence. Furious at the loss of his enforcer, Chandra Roi, who fancies himself the new Fu Manchu, has muscled stooges Chitu and Sookie pinion Forrester to the floor to experience the torture of the copper bowl (in this case, they make do with a heated biscuit tin).

The Law of the Movies: (Motion Picture Magazine, Dec. 1917). Quinn's first professionally published article, in which he marvels at the glaring legal absurdities marring the storylines of such recent screen dramas as The Rack, Illusive Isabelle, Her Better Self, The Girl Back Home and something involving a curmudgeonly alchemist.

[cauldronbrewer]

May 28, 2023 11:51:40 GMT dem bones said:

Seabury Quinn - Demons of the Night: And Other Early Tales (Black Dog Books, 2009)

I hadn't seen this, though I have read "Cloth of Madness" elsewhere. At first I was going to say that the cover was a bit over the top, but on further reflection it's probably a good fit with the covers his stories received for Weird Tales. The story descriptions don't make these sound like lost gems.

[dem bones]

Jun 1, 2023 19:19:27 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

May 28, 2023 11:51:40 GMT dem bones said:

Seabury Quinn - Demons of the Night: And Other Early Tales (Black Dog Books, 2009)

I hadn't seen this, though I have read "Cloth of Madness" elsewhere. At first I was going to say that the cover was a bit over the top, but on further reflection it's probably a good fit with the covers his stories received for Weird Tales. The story descriptions don't make these sound like lost gems.

That will be a failing on my part then, as while "lost gems" may be stronging it, I've had a far better time with these than many of the post 'thirties de Grandins. Was She Mad ? is the stuff of an alt-Not At Night compilation. Would particularly like to read more of Prof. Forrester and Rosalie. Actually, to be more specific, I'd like to read more of Rosalie.

The eye-popping cover painting depicts a scene in the title story, which you can read here should you wish.

The Black Widow: (Real Detective Tales, Jan. 1928). "Something was radically wrong. Within twenty-four hours, two men had been found dead after a terrific struggle with some unknown person or thing, the black mummy had pointed triumphantly toward each — actually altering its position — yet there was no tangible reason for the deaths, nothing science could lay hold on, to explain why they died."

Forrester and Rosalie investigate the sudden demise of his Swedish colleague, Professor Jansen, who trashed the archaeology room before dropping dead while unwrapping the mummy he smuggled out of Egypt. The following night, an intruder to the same building expires in agony while attempting robbery. Can the Professor and his ward prevent the cursed mummy from murdering again?