June 1945
CHANCE
OF A GHOST
George
Chance’s (aka the Green Ghost) friend Ned Standish, of the
Kingsport Standishes, a summa
cum laude graduate
of Miskatonic University, has been accused of murder. Although Chance
calls Standish “Commissioner,” he is actually an Assistant Police
Commissioner for one of New York City’s boroughs, as are Weston,
Kirkpatrick, Woods, Foster, Quistrom, Gordon, Warner, Hombert, and
others. Chance refers to other vigilantes active at the time he began
his career, such as the Black Bat, Captain Midnight, the Phantom
Detective, the Domino Lady, and Ki-Gor. Chance’s wartime missions
began with liberating Professor Horatio Smith, who was something of a
modern-day Scarlet Pimpernel, from a supposedly unescapable German
prison camp. Subsequent missions for the OSS included a strange
encounter with a hideously wriggling whitish worm at an abandoned
chateau in Northern France and one with a revolting frog-mouthed,
tentacle-lipped creature that accosted him in the sewers of Paris.
Standish went over the file on flapper girl Toby Basinger’s case
with D.A. Skinner. A lookalike for Standish murdered Basinger, who
killed an ex-girlfriend of Chance’s, nightclub singer Angel de la
Ruse. Chance’s aide Joe Harper smokes Red Apple Cigarettes.
Short
story by George Chance, edited by Win Scott Eckert in Legends
of New Pulp Fiction,
Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2015. The Green Ghost (aka
the Ghost) appeared in the pulp magazine The
Ghost, Super-Detective (later
retitled The
Ghost Detective,
and then The
Green Ghost Detective).
Kingsport, Massachusetts and Miskatonic University are from H. P.
Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos tales. Commissioner Weston appears in
the tales of a vigilante who can cloud men’s minds. Commissioner
Stanley Kirkpatrick is from the Spider stories. Commissioner Woods is
from the Green Lama’s pulp exploits. Commissioner Charlie Foster is
from the Secret Agent X tales. Commissioner Arthur J. Quistrom is
from Leslie Charteris’ novel The
Saint in New York.
Commissioner Gordon operated as a whispering vigilante in pulp novels
by Laurence Donovan. Commissioner Jerome Warner is from the Black Bat
stories. Commissioner Hombert and D.A. Skinner are from Rex Stout’s
Nero Wolfe novels. Captain Midnight is from the radio series of the
same name. The Phantom Detective appeared in pulp stories by Robert
Wallace. The Domino Lady is a pulp heroine created by Lars Anderson.
Ki-Gor is a jungle hero who appeared in pulp tales by John Peter
Drummond. Professor Horatio Smith is from the movie Pimpernel
Smith.
The Scarlet Pimpernel is from Baroness Orczy’s novels, of course.
The seemingly unescapable prison camp is Loki from Farmer’s
authorized Doc Savage novel Escape
from Loki,
which is also the source of the whitish worm, which Doc encountered
in Baron de Musard’s chateau during World War I. The frog-mouthed,
tentacle-lipped creature is Dewer, who encountered occult detective
Jules de Grandin in Seabury Quinn’s story “The Bride of Dewer.”
Toby Basinger and Angel de la Ruse are from Howard Hopkins’ Green
Ghost story “Ghost of a Chance,” although Basinger’s name is
Eckert’s invention. Red Apple Cigarettes appear in a number of
films, including Pulp
Fiction,
Four
Rooms,
and Romy
and Michele’s High School Reunion,
as well as a number of other works by Eckert.
The various deputy Commissioners explains why various Pulp heroes in New York. People have speculated that The Whisperer is the same person as Commissioner Gordon from Batman. This could mean that Gotham was a fictionalized version of New York. Or maybe Gordon left New York to become Commissioner of Gotham City.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, Win asked the members of the Facebook group Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe (on which both he and I are moderators) to name some New York Police Commissioners from the pulps for a story, though he didn't specify which one. I was the one who suggested Warner, Foster, and Quistrom. I'm honored that Win used my suggestions. He's the man. :)
DeleteThat's cool!
ReplyDelete