The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Stories Read online

  The Ripper of Storyville

  and Other Ben Snow Tales

  EDWARD D. HOCH

  Copyright ©1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1997

  by Edward D. Hoch

  Cover painting by Barbara Mitchell; cover design by Deborah Miller

  Crippen & Landru logo by Eric D. Greene

  ISBN: 1-885941-19-6

  (978-1-885941-19-0)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Crippen & Landru, Publishers

  P. O. Box 9315

  Norfolk, Virginia 23505-9315

  USA

  E-Mail: [email protected]

  Web: www.crippenlandru.com

  THE RIPPER OF STORYVILLE

  FOR JIRO AND KAZUE KIMURA

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  FRONTIER STREET

  THE VALLEY OF ARROWS

  GHOST TOWN

  THE FLYING MAN

  THE MAN IN THE ALLEY

  THE RIPPER OF STORYVILLE

  SNOW IN YUCATAN

  THE VANISHED STEAMBOAT

  BROTHERS ON THE BEACH

  THE 500 HOURS OF DR. WISDOM

  THE TRAIL OF THE BELLS

  THE PHANTOM STALLION

  THE SACRAMENTO WAXWORKS

  THE ONLY TREE IN TASCO

  A LONG WAY FROM HOME: THE TRAVELS OF BEN SNOW

  BEN SNOW: A CHRONOLOGY BY ORDER OF PUBLICATION

  BEN SNOW: WHEN AND WHERE THE STORIES TAKE PLACE

  INTRODUCTION

  In a way this collection of my first fourteen stories about western detective Ben Snow is really two books in one, so it’s only fitting that the introduction is in two parts. The character of Ben Snow owes its existence today to a pair of editors, Hans Stefan Santesson and Eleanor Sullivan, who could not have been more dissimilar. Both were close friends of mine and both harbored a special fondness for Ben Snow, an unlikely character to turn up in the pages of a mystery magazine.

  Hans, a longtime mystery and science fiction editor, used a handful of my stories in The Saint Mystery Magazine and Fantastic Universe until both magazines suspended publication in 1960. After some months in limbo, the Saint’s creator, Leslie Charteris, worked out a deal with a new publisher and The Saint resumed publication in both the United States and Great Britain.

  Hans suggested I try a new series for him, about a western detective character. Thus was Ben Snow born, with a name combining Bruno Fischer’s detective Ben Helm with that of Mr. Snow from the hit musical Carousel. Ben’s horse, Oats, was christened much later by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine editor Eleanor Sullivan, who knew of my admiration for the writings of Joyce Carol Oates.

  Ben was a fast draw and a crack shot in those early stories, so good with a gun that he was often mistaken for Billy the Kid, who died a year before Ben Snow’s first recorded adventure. I believe both of them were born in 1859, despite some confusion noted in Marvin Lachman’s excellent essay and chronology at the end of this volume. The first two stories, “Frontier Street” and “The Valley of Arrows,” were written and submitted almost simultaneously in late 1960. Hans Santesson bought them both, for the British and American editions, but chose for some reason to publish “The Valley of Arrows” first. Now these two stories have been restored to their rightful order. The only other changes are a few words, mainly about Native Americans, which seem contrary to the language in later stories.

  Because the British edition of The Saint began publication six months ahead of the U.S. edition, most of the early Snow stories appeared first in England. They received favorable comment from the beginning, and one of the greatest thrills of my young career occurred at a Mystery Writers of America cocktail party when Cornell Woolrich insisted on meeting the author of “The Ripper of Storyville” so he could tell me personally how much he admired the story.

  One of the problems in assembling this collection has been the quality of a few of these early Ben Snow stories. I believe “The Ripper of Storyville,” “The Flying Man” and one or two others are worth preserving. Our first thought was to collect only these stories together with the later ones. However, it seemed that each of the seven had something of interest, some plot point or historical background important to the saga. After all, where else could you find Ben Snow solving a presidential assassination or journeying deep into Mexico?

  So here they are, all seven of them. Read them with a bit of tolerance for a young writer.

  II

  There were no new Ben Snow stories published from January 1965 till May 1984. My other series characters were doing well and I had virtually forgotten about Ben until the spring of 1983 when mystery writer John Ball announced plans to revive The Saint Mystery Magazine. I was writing frequent stories of locked rooms and impossible crimes by that time, and the plot for a new Ben Snow story sprang immediately to mind. A steamboat would vanish on the Mississippi River, much as Conan Doyle and Ellery Queen had made trains disappear between stations.

  When I saw John Ball at a party during Edgar Awards week in 1983, I told him the good news. I would revive the Ben Snow series for The Saint. He looked at me and said they wanted no historical mysteries, only those set in the present day. Ben Snow was dead again.

  But the idea of the vanished steamboat was just too good to abandon. It had to be written and it had to be a Ben Snow story. I spoke to Eleanor Sullivan, who’d become editor-in-chief of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine following the death of Fred Dannay in 1982. She liked the idea, and Ben was back in business. He’s been at EQMM ever since, thanks to Eleanor and her successor, Janet Hutchings, who has a special fondness for the historical mystery.

  That is, really, what the Ben Snow stories are—not westerns but historical mysteries. In these stories the reader will find him solving mysteries in such distant places as the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and a wax museum in Sacramento, California. In addition to that vanished steamboat we have an old-fashioned locked room involving a phantom stallion and an early air conditioning machine. Perhaps best of all we have “The Trail of the Bells,” Eleanor Sullivan’s personal favorite among the Ben Snow tales she published.

  Enjoy them all.

  Edward D. Hoch

  Rochester, New York

  June 1997

  FRONTIER STREET

  A tinkling piano—there was always a tinkling piano off somewhere in the corner—mingled with the clink of glasses and the murmur of voices as the man called Ben Snow pushed his way through the swinging doors of the Golden Swan . . .

  “Is Len around?” he asked the tired bartender. “Tell him Ben Snow is here.”

  The man nodded and moved down the bar, still polishing the beer mug he held in one hand. Over the bar Ben saw the ten-foot-wide painting that gave the place its name—a painting of a single golden swan surrounded by unclad bathing girls in a variety of poses. Len, they said, had brought the thing West himself, on trains as far as they went and then the rest of the way by stage and wagon. It wasn’t much as art, but cowhands and ranchers often came from miles around just to see it.

  Now, with the tobacco smoke hanging in layers, there was nothing much else to look at in the Golden Swan. The piano player looked bored, pounding out some old song Ben hadn’t heard since the days back in New Mexico. Business wasn’t too good this night at the Golden Swan—only a few customers who looked standard, only a few drifters like you found in any bar west of Texas.

  “Come in, Mr. Snow. I’m happy you could come!”

  Ben focused his narrow eyes on the short, smiling man in the doorway at the rear. Len Antioch—the power on Frontier Street, the boss of the Golde
n Swan, with his brother a force to be reckoned with in Arizona. Short and smiling, but somehow very deadly. Ben had never really spoken to the man during his two months on Frontier Street. That was why the summons this morning had been so strangely unexpected. Now he simply shrugged and followed the man into the rear office, not knowing just what to expect.

  Inside, beyond the door marked PRIVATE, Ben Snow settled down into one of the few comfortable chairs in town, opposite the battered desk that served as Len Antioch’s home base. “Well?” he asked quietly.

  “Drink, Mr. Snow?”

  “Too early in the day.”

  Len Antioch grunted. “Then I’ll get right to the point. I know who you are, Snow. I’ve known for the past several weeks.”

  “Who I am?” Ben repeated, pretending to be puzzled.

  “Let’s not fool around,” Len said, the smile fading quickly from his face.

  “I want a job done. The new deputy sheriff . . .”

  “Killed? You want him killed?”

  Len Antioch’s smile returned. “I see we speak the same language, Billy.”

  “The name is Ben, remember? Ben Snow.”

  “Sure, Ben. A thousand dollars for the deputy’s body before sundown.”

  “A thousand . . .”

  “It’s a lot of money, Ben. It would be a lot of money even back East, and out here it’s a fortune.”

  “You could hire a gun for fifty dollars,” Ben observed, unconsciously shifting the holster on his hip.

  “Not one like you, though. Not one like you. I want the best and I pay for the best. A thousand bucks if the deputy is dead by sundown.”

  Ben Snow got slowly to his feet and walked over to the desk. Without seeming to change his expression he shot out a lightning fist and caught Len on the tip of his jaw. He staggered backward, crashing into the wall behind him.

  “What the hell!” His hand automatically shot toward the desk drawer, but Ben already had dropped the lightning right hand to his own gun.

  “You’ve got me confused with someone else, Mr. Antioch. I’m not a hired killer. Remember that.”

  Then he turned and was gone, and Len stared after him with hatred in his eyes . . .

  For Ben Snow it was a town like many others, and Frontier Street was a path that seemed to lead through the center of his life. The story was always the same, wherever he went. Always it started with the rumors, then the whispered tales, finally the open accusations. On Frontier Street it was no different. He remembered all the men he’d half-killed with his fists when they said those familiar words. And the few he’d brought down with his Colt when all else failed.

  He went into the little lunchroom across the muddy street from the Golden Swan, sat down at a soiled wooden table and signaled Gus for the usual. Old Gus sometimes seemed like the only real friend he had in town. The only male one, at least.

  “Hello, Ben. How’s things today?” Gus had been a gold prospector some time, years before, until an Indian arrow lost him his left arm. Now he cooked food, such as it was, for the cowhands who wandered into town.

  “Great, Gus. Busy?”

  “Two people all morning. Nobody eats anymore.”

  Ben was just clearing his throat for an answer when the door swung open behind him. He never liked to sit with his back to the door and now he turned quickly to face the newcomer. It was the deputy, Reilly, the man Antioch wanted killed.

  He was a handsome young man with features deeply tanned by years under the desert sun. A dark scar on one cheek was the only blemish, and even this could be overlooked in a town like Frontier. A much more important blemish on Reilly was one not quite visible. He was an honest man who took his job seriously.

  “You’re Ben Snow, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.

  “That’s the name.”

  “You were just talkin’ with Len Antioch.”

  Ben’s muscles tensed. “You get around.” He watched the light glisten off the deputy’s badge, saw his hand dropping toward his gun.

  “Draw, Snow! I know who you are,” he shouted suddenly, crouching into a gunfighter’s squat.

  But he was too close, and Ben was too fast. Gus screamed a warning from behind the counter, and that was all the distraction he needed. His big fist smashed into the side of Reilly’s head, sending the deputy sprawling. His boot came down on the man’s gun hand and the fight was over as quickly as it started. He put his lips close to Reilly’s ear as he yanked him back to his feet.

  “Listen, dope—I didn’t take Antioch’s money. I’m not going to kill you or anyone else if I can help it. Now leave me the hell alone.”

  He pushed the deputy back into a chair and headed for the door, tossing Gus a quarter for the lunch he never got. There was no peace anywhere on Frontier Street today. Maybe in Cathy Norris’s dress shop, he decided suddenly, crossing the street once more. It should be quiet there.

  Cathy was older than Ben—almost thirty-five, he guessed—but she had a certain youth about her that went well with her middle-aged business sense. He liked Cathy, liked her better than any of the other women he’d met during these months in Frontier. She ran a dress shop just down the street from the Golden Swan, a shop that annually imported the latest New York and San Francisco fashions for quick sale to the forty or fifty females young enough and rich enough to still care about their clothes.

  Cathy had come West with her mother and father ten years earlier, and like so many others they’d met the Utes in the Colorado Mountains. She’d wakened screaming one morning as the arrows rained down upon them, and when it was all over she found her father’s body outside the wagon. The Indians had carried off her mother but somehow missed her. The experience would have broken most women in their mid-twenties, but Cathy had survived it with only a touch of hardness and cynicism to show for that day. She’d told Ben the story almost the first time they’d met, as if proud of the tragedy.

  “Well,” she greeted him with the usual smile, “what’s the good news this morning, Ben? Come to buy a dress?”

  “The news is all bad. I’ve been up an hour and I’ve already used my fists on two men.”

  “Not the sheriff, I hope,” she said, going on about the business of arranging a great fluffy dress for display.

  “Just as bad. His deputy, Reilly.”

  “No!”

  “And Len Antioch, too.”

  “Are you crazy, Ben? If Reilly doesn’t lock you up, Len will probably shoot you.”

  He dropped into a chair and rubbed his forehead with a leathery hand. “It’s always the same, in every town.”

  “You know what they say about you?” she asked, her voice suddenly low.

  “I know what they say. I’ve listened to the same whispers for nine years now.”

  The door of Cathy’s shop swung open and Sheriff Vic Pedley strolled in, his iron-gray mustache glistening with tiny drops of sweat. “What’s this all about, Snow?” he asked without preliminaries, in the familiar slow voice of an old lawman. “You slugged my deputy over at Gus’s place.”

  “It was one of those things, Sheriff. He went for his gun without any cause.”

  “Says he had cause. Says you’re workin’ for Len Antioch and his brother now.”

  Ben looked the sheriff up and down, watching for any move that would signal a sudden drawing of his gun. But there was none—the lawman apparently wanted only to talk. “It’s not true, Sheriff. I had conversation with Antioch, but that’s all. I don’t work for gamblers.”

  “Then suppose you tell me just who you really are. You rode into town two months back without a word, and you’ve just been around ever since. You don’t work at any of the ranches, and you don’t work for Antioch. What do you do?”

  “I’m on my way to California,” Ben answered. “Just stopping over in Frontier.”

  “On your way from where? New Mexico?”

  Ben’s body tensed. “I’ve been there. Years ago.”

  “Nine years ago?” Sheriff Pedley’s hand was pois
ed over his gun as he spoke.

  “Let’s all get some coffee,” Cathy suggested, brushing quickly between them. “Let’s go over to Gus’s and have some coffee.”

  The tension eased for an instant and Ben relaxed. He didn’t want trouble in front of the woman, and apparently neither did the sheriff. But before anyone could make a move for the door it opened once more, to admit a breathless Deputy Reilly.

  “Quick,” he gasped. “Someone’s killed Len Antioch . . .”

  Someone had indeed killed Len Antioch, and already Frontier Street was alive with the news. Men on horseback rode shouting past, and from all directions came running people converging on the Golden Swan. It was as if the President had died.

  “Everyone out,” the sheriff was shouting to Reilly. “Clear everyone out of here. Give us room to breathe.”

  “That means you too,” Reilly said, pushing Ben back through the office door. Beyond, in back of the big old desk, Ben caught a glimpse of a bloody head and a hand stretched out across the floor.

  He walked back across the muddy street, against the rush of people, and collared Gus on the opposite side. “I need some coffee and food. How about it?”

  “Sure, sure. Did you see him? Did you see Len’s body? Who killed him?”

  “They don’t know yet. It looked to me like someone had beaten him over the head with a pistol butt.”

  Old Gus snorted, opening the door with his one good arm. “Probably that no-good brother of his done it. You know Harry?”

  “Seen him around,” Ben mumbled, deep in thought.

  He drank his coffee in silence, and it was twenty minutes later when the sheriff joined him at the table. “Got a few questions to ask you, Snow.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Pedley’s face was grim. “What did you and Len talk about this morning?”

  “He offered me a thousand dollars to kill Reilly,” Ben answered honestly.

  “You accepted?”

  “No, I hit him and knocked him down and left. I’m not a hired killer, whatever you and everyone else might think.”