Oscar Cook

[dem]

Thanks to SFF audio for reviving this gem!

Hugh Rankin Piecemeal (Weird Tales, Feb. 1930).

"A grim, powerful story of a weird crime - a fearful fate befell Mendingham on a London houseboat"

Attachments:

PiecemealByOscarCook.pdf (486.83 KB)

[ripper]

Having previously only been exposed to Cook's contributions to the Pan Book of Horror Stories, I recently managed to read 'Si Urag of the Tail' and was surprised by the difference in tone. Whereas the Pan stories were rather nasty, 'Si Urag...' was just strange. It started off quite nicely, I thought, but just got odd when it introduced Si Urag. Dwarves living in trees, a carnivorous underwater plant and a guy with a tail. It was all just a bit too strange for my liking. I suppose I was expecting another Pan-type story, so that may well have contributed to my disappointment, as I rate the 'Warwick' tales highly.

[johnnymains]

Have found an article where Oscar Cook tells a short story - however it's a weird re-writing (?) by a journalist, just typing it out. Until then, another little snippet:

[johnnymains]

Here you are - some previously undiscovered Oscar Cook yarns for a Saturday morning. Enjoy.

Wells Journal, Friday October 10, 1924

HAUNTED ROOM AND OTHER STORIES FOR THE SUPERSTITIOUS.


The Resident, Mr. Oscar Cook, who relates his experiences during eight years continuous service the island in Borneo: The Stealer of Hearts (Hurst and ’Blackett), gives a quite unemotional, matter-of-fact account of an extraordinary ghost of an Englishman which called aloud and opened and shut doors it passed through.

Mr. Cook was guest in the house of a shrewd, longheaded planter who talked shop and gave him no hint that the place was haunted. Oscar went to sleep, and then: “Suddenly I was awake. Nothing, no sound or presence, as far as I knew, had aroused me. I was simply awake. I closed my eyes and was about to fall asleep when I heard footsteps coming up the steps that led from the garden to the front door.

‘Boy!’ The call was clear and decisive. There came no answer. Bov!’ This time the call was sharper. Still no reply. The footsteps descended the stairs to the kitchen. ‘ Boy!’ The call was long, loud, and angry; yet no answer came. Then up the stairs came the footsteps. They passed hack along the passage. The dividing doors were closed. Along the diningroom, out into the verandah they went. The creak of the gates reached me, and I heard the closing of the latch. Down the steps the footsteps clumped, out into the garden, and then silence!"

At breakfast he asked his host what he had been up to during the night. The host said he had not stirred. It had been G___ G___, who had died through drink, on the bed in which Mr. Cook had slept, and he had been buried out in the garden. The host’s predecessor had seen his spirit and shot at it. The host himself had seen it. The haunting, though unexplained was a fact.

NATIVE SUPERSTITIONS.

But the writer sorely was troubled by the mysterious effects which followed his defiance of native superstitions. They devoutly believe that if a piece of casuarina wood is taken on a boat storms and contrary winds will follow. On one occasion he ordered them to take a supply of this wood, and then, after yielding to their entreaties sailed away without it; but he secretly put a twig of the wood in his pocket.

"As we hauled off from the island no condition could have been more perfect. There seemed to lie no possibility of a storm: no reason tor the wind to change. . . Shortly afterwards the wind changed. It blew right in our teeth, its velocity gradually increasing. Dark clouds began to appear on the horizon scudding at first across the sky, then finally banking up one on the top of another. I looked at Sabtu and our eyes met. In his eyes I saw a mute appeal. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out a small twig twig, which I placed on Sabtu's knee. He threw it overboard with what sounded like a Malay curse. Gradually the wind veered round and the sky cleared. Soon we were again sailing merrily to our destination. . 'Coincidence!’ I kept saying the word over and over to myself, and yet, was it?
"

[dem]

These would have been at home in Stephen Jones' Dancing With The Dark. Am not so sure about "previously undiscovered." As the reporter suggests, both are extracts from the then very recently published Borneo: Stealer Of Hearts, which was still being reprinted as recently as 2009.

[johnnymains]

Sept 23, 2017 14:41:30 GMT dem said:

These would have been at home in Stephen Jones' Dancing With The Dark. Am not so sure about "previously undiscovered." As the reporter suggests, both are extracts from the then very recently published Borneo: Stealer Of Hearts, which was still being reprinted as recently as 2009.

Oh well. Will have to get a copy now to have a look. 

[dem]

I'm no longer sure about On The Highway. In his Index To The Weird Fiction Magazines (privately printed, 1962), T. G. L. Cockcroft credits authorship to Oscar Cook but the magazine acknowledges Cargray Cook. American setting suggests the two Cooks are separate entities.

Cargray Cook - On The Highway: (Weird Tales, Jan. 1925). Wild automobile ride, with Death at the wheel. Three pager. On reaching his 21st birthday, Charles Clairborne inherits $6 million, and splashes $12, 000 on a Gordon-Rennet sports car, "the fastest model in the world, the only car of its kind in America - and mine." Taking to the highway, Clairbourne is furious at his inability to outpace a mystery racer. So this clown wants a race, does he? Two pedestrians freeze in the middle of the road ....

Locus list the following stories as Oscar's contributions to Hutchinson's publications:

The Brass Spear - Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, Jan 1926
The Creature of Man - Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, Apr 1925
The Day of Blossoming - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Aug 1925
Dead Souls - Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, Jul 1925
Golden Lilies - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Sep 1922/ The Master Thriller Series #26, 1939
The Great White Fear - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Jun 1925
Jade - Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, Aug 1926
Si Urag of the Tail - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Jan 1923
“Tembuku” - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Mar 1925

[johnnymains]

Nov 18, 2017 17:37:36 GMT dem said:

I'm no longer sure about On The Highway. In his Index To The Weird Fiction Magazines (privately printed, 1962), T. G. L. Cockcroft credits authorship to Oscar Cook but the magazine acknowledges Cargray Cook. American setting suggests the two Cooks are separate entities.

Cargray Cook - On The Highway: (Weird Tales, Jan. 1925). Wild automobile ride, with Death at the wheel. Three pager. On reaching his 21st birthday, Charles Clairborne inherits $6 million, and splashes $12, 000 on a Gordon-Rennet sports car, "the fastest model in the world, the only car of its kind in America - and mine." Taking to the highway, Clairbourne is furious at his inability to outpace a mystery racer. So this clown wants a race, does he? Two pedestrians freeze in the middle of the road ....

Locus list the following stories as Oscar's contributions to Hutchinson's publications:

The Brass Spear - Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, Jan 1926
The Creature of Man - Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, Apr 1925
The Day of Blossoming - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Aug 1925
Dead Souls - Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, Jul 1925
Golden Lilies - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Sep 1922/ The Master Thriller Series #26, 1939
The Great White Fear - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Jun 1925
Jade - Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, Aug 1926
Si Urag of the Tail - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Jan 1923
“Tembuku” - Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Mar 1925

Richard Dalby thought that the story was by Oscar - will go through my correspondence with him, can't remember if he wrote it on a letter or it was during a telephone conversation.

[Middoth]

Does anybody remember what "The Crimson Head-Dress" is about?
www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?890452

[Middoth]

[samdawson]

That's some very impressive artwork on His Beautiful Hands

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

From East of Kinabalu : Tales from the Borneo Jungle by Datuk Leslie Davidson:

I then turned to Oscar Cook’s book Borneo — The Stealer of Hearts. It gave a fascinating picture of the Labuk a few years further on, at the end of World War I. Mr Cook was obviously a complex character. He lived in North Borneo for eight years from 1911 to 1919. After being sacked as a planter from Woodford Rubber Estate and being unable to get any other estate company to employ him, he joined the Chartered Company. In his last two years, he was the District Officer of Labuk and Sugut, with his headquarters on the island of Klagan. A few sentences will show Mr Cook’s feelings for the area:

“The Labuk! Encircled with swamps and jungles, traversed by rivers, bounded by hills and sea. It is as if a soul were imprisoned within those mighty barriers; as if a slow, long, lingering tragedy were being enacted, as if through the years and years of the past, and through the years and years to come, this soul were striving for freedom, to reach the light of the sun. So, over the district there broods a spirit of sombre sadness which touches and dwells in the hearts of its men.”


Mr Cook goes on to quote the colony’s principal medical officer as stating that on no account should any European officer be stationed in the Labuk for more than eight months on account of its unhealthiness and isolation. Mr Cook mentions that his three expatriate predecessors in Klagan had all died tragically, whilst he himself was not in the best of circumstances and had not been accepted back for a further tour of duty in North Borneo.

I was to find out later that the circumstances which Oscar Cook referred to were used by Somerset Maugham in his short story “The Door of Opportunity“ in which the main character, Alban Torel, was based on the unfortunate Oscar Cook. Mr Cook gives his version of the story in his book. I am sure it is more accurate than Mr Maugham’s. In brief, the story was as follows:


In 1918, although all activities on Tungud Estate had been long aban- doned, there was one small tobacco estate, the Labuk Tobacco Co., which had been re-started a few miles further up the Labuk at the junction with Trusan Sapi. Both the Dutch manager and the assistant of this estate had been warned by the DO several times about their rough treatment of their workers.

After the end of the war, a batch of Vietnamese workers who had recently been in the Allied pioneer labour corps in France arrived on the estate. They were obviously not prepared to put up with the sort of treat- ment which the Dutch planters normally meted out to their workers. On Chinese New Year they revolted. They stole the assistant’s gun, shot him dead, set fire to the tobacco sheds and set about terrorising the other work- ers and their families.

The estate manager was fortunate that he was out in the field when the riot started. He escaped with his life and fled downstream to Klagan to get help from the District Officer. Oscar Cook had a contingent of six armed police constables and a police sergeant on the station. The planter thought this force would be more than ample to restore order. Cook decided, however, not to tackle the rioting workers with this group, but instead sent off a message to Sandakan asking for help. He reasoned that the only European left behind on the estate was already dead. The loyal workers, headmen and the 50 or so women and children who were in the hands of the rioters were, he said, “only Javanese natives”. He did not think it was worth risking any of his policemen to save them.

During the two days of waiting, the estate manager apparently begged Oscar without success to take the police up to the estate, or to let him take them up himself. Oscar writes:

“Then followed what will always seem to me to be the two longest days of my life — days of waiting — during which, although I was certain I had acted rightly, my mind foresaw the inevitable verdict of ‘Coward’, pronounced upon me by the great majority of the Europeans in the Territory.”

On the third afternoon, a contingent of 50 police arrived at Klagan. Oscar was able to persuade the major in charge that there was no real rush, and that the attack should be the following morning. Oscar collected an additional group of around 50 natives armed with spears and parangs, to come with them. (I was lucky to get an eye-witness account of these events from one of these 50 natives, Orang Tua Jaffri, who was still living in the area when I arrived. His account agreed in most particulars with Oscar Cook’s.)

The party apparently forded the Labuk at Paranchangan in darkness and arrived at the labourers’ village at dawn on the fourth day. The workers surrendered instantly, except for the leader of the rioting gang who fired four random shots from the direction of a small hut. The com- mand was given to fire. The policemen poured volleys of shots into the house. Unfortunately the four shots had not been fired from the hut, but from the garden behind it.

The occupants of the hut were a Javanese worker, his wife and two babies who apparently had nothing to do with the riot. The father was killed and the Vietnamese who had fired the shots from the garden was later captured. Oscar reported that the weeping woman, with her two children clinging to her, was found on the steps of the hut with the dead body of her husband. He expressed no regret over this tragic incident. In fact, he reported that he was, “greatly disappointed at the absence of a fight’.

This was the end of Mr Oscar Cook’s career in North Borneo. His actions — or, rather, lack of action — created, as he predicted, a huge outcry amongst the local community. He was indeed branded as a coward and sent back to the UK in disgrace. Was he just being prudent in abandoning the labour force to their fate for four days — or was it a cowardly action? _ To Oscar himself, his actions seemed be absolutely correct and prudent. However, I imagine Capt. Beeston would have jumped into a canoe with six policemen and sorted the whole thing out in an hour or two.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

It seems that the Labuk area often had a negative impact on Europeans who dwelt there:

Nothing much seemed to have happened in the Labuk area since the departure of Oscar Cook except that, after a huge flood which inundated the island in 1918, the government had decided to move the District Office down to Beluran. The Labuk Tobacco Estate had been abandoned after the riot, and had never been re-opened
Of my expatriate predecessors in the Labuk, my countryman Robert Burns had lost his head; the vicious Mr van Marle, his Dutch assistant and his two overseers had been imprisoned for brutality and expelled from the country; the rubber planter van Houten had left the country bankrupt; the assistant of the short-lived Labuk Tobacco Co. had been murdered. The three District Officers who had resided in Klagan had, according to Oscar Cook, died in tragic circumstances. Oscar himself had been branded as a coward and kicked out of the country.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

The fact that Somerset Maugham's short story The Door of Opportunity is based on Oscar Cook's actions, or lack of them, in Borneo is interesting.
There is a TV version of the story made in 1970.

It was part of W. Somerset Maugham a TV Series of 50 minute episodes, made in 1969-70. Naturally as it was by the BBC an episode is missing, believed wiped.

From imdb:

"A colonial administrator's act of cowardice gets him sent home from the East, but he seems oblivious to the contempt with which he is viewed. Surely his friendly, companionable relationship with his wife seems to him quite unchanged."