Джеймс Холдинг - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 24, No. 3, March 1979

Dear Reader:

Murphy’s Law is an axiom of engineers and scientists that states: “If anything can go wrong, it will.” Several of this issue’s stories take their themes from Murphy’s Law.

In “Murphy’s Day” by Ernest Savage, detective Sam Train gets involved in a mixed-up kidnapping case that’s full of surprises. A number of things go wrong for Barry N. Malzberg’s hero in “The Appeal,” many of them cards that fall wrong and horses that don’t run right. “The Right Circumstances” don’t always lead to the best consequences, as we find in Robert Edward Eckels’ story. Some lives take a wrong turn in John Lutz’s “The Music from Downstairs.” Actors don’t always learn their lines, but the actors in William Bankier’s “Rock’s Last Role” have an even worse problem.

“The Hummelmeyer Operation” might fall victim to Murphy’s Law in James Holding’s story. And several characters could be said to share a Murphy’s Day in T. M. Adams’ “A Garden Full of Snow.”

Good reading.

Alfred Hitchcock

Of all the ridiculous escapades in which Cork has involved us over the years, not one could surpass our present predicament. Bad enough all those wasted years we spent gadding about these colonies in the clutch of his depraved desire to solve crimes. Bad enough that he let hang slack the accumulation of a vast mercantile fortune ready at hand for the taking. Bad enough that I, Wellman Oaks, a conscientious yeoman, have had to suffer his dalliances — balls in Charles Town, Boston Town, Philadelphia, and New York; ladies of frippance hither and yon; coursing events; pok-ar; duels (husbands); endless buckets of oysters and tankards of Apple Knock. Now he has a new fascination. Cork has a war.

It is our financial ruin, this Revolution. Gone The Hawkers, a fine trading vessel now prowling about as an American capital ship. Gone the talc works and the choklit factory. By Jehovah, even the worthless copper mine up on the Hudson is in the hands of the British troops. Probably using it as a necessary, and rightly so.

It’s all John Jay’s fault, damn his eyes. When the separation hostilities started, he dangled a carrot before Captain Jeremy Cork’s nose which he couldn’t resist.

“Certainly you could raise a regiment of your own,” he cajoled Cork that night back in ’76. We were in Philadelphia and had just settled the Declaration Plot affair, probably the most important case in Cork’s career as a detector. Oh, Cork was high in the stirrups, I can tell you. As full of himself as a six-foot-six man can get. “But you have demonstrated an uncanny sense of spione,” Jay the Tempter went on. “Field intelligence will be the crux of this war, and you’re the man for it, sir. You’re a woodsman, a mariner, a shrewd logician and student of the human condition.”

Cork’s chest was poutering like a pigeon in love. Damn fool. In love with himself. Spying, indeed!

I think it was Jay’s use of the title “spymaster” that lured the lamb into the chute.

“Full control?” Cork asked.

Jay blanched. “Well, within reason. You report directly to me, not Washington.”

There you have it. These rebels would well fit into the obscene subtleties of a French court on any given day. That was months ago, maybe a hundred years ago, or seemingly so. In that time, Washington has managed to lose every military encounter, despite Cork’s ardent supply of information from his network of informants. In fact, Cork seems better organized for war than most of the senior Continental officers.

Everything we do is secret. Half the time I don’t know where we are — or I’m told to forget it if I do. So my vagaries should be excused. I can tell you that, as of this writing, we were exactly thirty-five miles from New York by cade mecum calculation. It was summer, as unbearably hot a summer as Long Island has ever had. The safe house where Cork had set up his clandestine headquarters was fronted by a forgotten trail and backed by salt-sanded beach.

I aroused on an August morning which was already proving to be a hotted blister on this earth’s skin to find him huddled like a cold man at the rude table which served as our eating board, work table, and, twice, as a surgery slab for wounded agents.

He was looking at maps. Number 7, a redheaded Irishman in his thirties, sat across from him. All of them have numbers rather than names, don’t ask me why — but Jay is impressed. (The workie’s name is Reilly, and a bit of a lout.) Each agent, in addition to a number, has an identifying password in Injun jabber.

“Good morning,” I said convivially. Cork grunted something and Number 7 sat suspiciously mute.

“You’re sure?” Cork demanded of him.

“As sure as I am of me own mother, Captain. They brought The Angel’s crew in last Tuesday.”

“The full crew? No casualties?”

“Far as I can gather. The Angel’s officers have been paroled, of course, but you said you was only interested in the crew.”

“Correct.”

I poured a cup of small beer and sauntered over to the table. The maps were crude, but the details were not beyond me, mostly because Number 7 had bothered, spy that he was, to mark it “Wallabout Bay.”

I know the area well. Wallabout Bay is a belly of water that hangs off the East River in the upper reaches of Brooklyn. The old-time Dutchmen called it Wale Bogt, with good reason. At low tide, it is nothing more than a large expanse of mud flats, stench, and skeeters.

In ’76, the area was an American stronghold; then, on an August morn such as this one of which I write, Howe’s army poured ashore and devoured Long Island like carpenter ants spelling doom to all New York. The Wallabout was now a graveyard for British prison hulks.

Number 7 was tracing a line with a grimy finger. “ ’Ere’s the channel at low tide, Captain.”

“Yes, I know. The British call it The Wintering now.”

“There are nine of ’em moored along the channel.”

Cork squinted his eyes in thought as if to squeeze facts from his prodigious memory. “Nine? Then one is new.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “ Whitly, Scorpion, Prince of Wales, John, Stromboli, Good Hope, Falmouth, and Hunter.”

“And now the Jersey, Cap. She be the outermost ship in the southern curve of the channel.”

“Aha, that’s good news.”

I was appalled. “Good news? Another hellhold is good news?”

“No, Oaks, my joy is that a sixty-four-gun ship of the line no longer has fangs.”

“The problem, Cap, is which hulk Vs in.”

“It s the Jersey, you can be sure of it. The other ships in the south channel — Good Hope and Falmouth — are hospital ships. ‘Hospital ships,’ ” he scoffed, “a typical English euphemism. He’s in the Jersey, all right.”

Whoever this mysterious person was, my heart went out to him. A British prison ship is a foul purgatory. Living on two-thirds rations of weevilly biscuits, putrefied salt pork, and suet creates horrors in the body. Locked below decks in leaking vessels breathing dank air makes death attractive. Many an American sailor or soldier has so died a slow death in the bowels of these ships which, ironically, are dead themselves.