Bill Pronzini: Hoodwink

“And all eight are coming to this pulp convention?-“

“Right,” Dancer said. “Don’t ask me how Lloyd Underwood-he’s the head of the convention committee-managed to dig up all of us, but he did it.”

“Anyone else whose name I’d know?”

“Probably. Bert Praxas, Waldo Ramsey, Jim Bohannon, Ivan and Cybil Wade, Frank Colodny.”

I recognized all of those names. It was a pretty impressive list; the first five were a kind of Who’s Who of pulp writers in the forties, and the sixth, Frank Colodny, had been a well-known editor of the Action House line of pulps.

I said, “All of them don’t live in California now, do they?”

“No. Convention people flew Bohannon in from Denver, Praxas from New York, and Colodny from Arizona. Most of us arrived last night.”

“When does the convention start?”

“Officially, it starts tomorrow. But there’s a get-acquainted party tonight at the hotel, for the Pulpeteers and some of the convention people. I can get you in if you’re interested.”

“I’m interested. Which hotel?”

“The Continental.”

“Is that where you’re staying?”

“Right. Room six-seventeen.”

“How many days does it run?”

“Until Sunday.” Dancer fumbled inside the rumpled sports jacket he was wearing and came out with an ocher-colored brochure printed, appropriately, on pulp paper. “Here’s the program they sent me. It’ll tell you when the panels are scheduled, what they’ll be about.”

“Thanks. I’ll read it later.”

He jabbed out his cigarette in the ashtray I keep on the desk for clients and promptly lit another one. I watched him without a trace of envy. It had been almost two years since I’d quit smoking because of a lesion on one lung that had turned out to be benign-this time. I seldom even thought about cigarettes any more.

There were a dozen or so seconds of silence. Then Dancer waved his hand in a deprecating way, as if he were annoyed with himself, and said, “Ah hell, I’m jerking you around here. I didn’t just drop by because of the convention. There’s something else.”

“Uh-huh,“I said.

“You figured I was after something.”

“I figured.”

“Not much gets by you, right?”

“Me and Hannigan,” I said.

That got my a nimbly laugh. “Okay. I don’t want much; just a favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

“Do a little snooping for me.”

“What kind of snooping?”

“There’s something screwy going on and I want to find out what it is. I can’t pay you anything, you know that. But you’re going to be there any way, and I can introduce you around, give you a chance to rap about pulps with me and the other old farts.”

“Tell me what’s going on that’s screwy.”

“I can do better than that,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

He hoisted the briefcase onto my desk, unlatched it, and took out a nine-by-twelve manila envelope. “This came in the mail three days ago. Take a look.”

I opened the envelope and withdrew its contents-the photocopy of an old forty-page manuscript carbon. You could tell it had been copied from an old carbon from the dog-ears, tears, and faded and smeared typeface. In the middle of the topmost sheet was a one-word title: “Hoodwink.” No author’s name or address appeared in the upper left-hand corner of that sheet nor any of the others.

“It’s a novelette,” Dancer said. “Set in England in the Victorian era. Psychological suspense, not too bad. You remember a big-budget Hollywood flick came out in 1952, called Evil by Gaslight}” “Vaguely.”

“Well, the movie was written by somebody named Rose Tyler Crawford. Supposed to be an original screenplay, not adapted from any other medium. But the plot of the movie and the plot of this story are identical. Only difference is the title and the names of the characters.”

“Plagiarism?”

“So it would seem.” Dancer took something else out of the briefcase-a plain piece of white paper this time-and handed it over to me. “This came with the manuscript,” he said.

It was a letter, typed in business format, on a different typewriter from the manuscript, and addressed to Dancer. It said:

Enclosed is a copy of an original manuscript entitled “Hoodwink” which I have hi my possession. Also in my possession is proof that you are the one who plagiarized it and sold it to Hollywood under the name Rose Tyler Crawford and the title Evil by Gaslight. Bring five thousand dollars ($5,000) with you to the pulp convention in San Francisco. In cash, small bills only. I will contact you there. If you do not bring the money, I will notify your agent and all your publishers that you are a plagiarist. I will also notify the film company which produced Evil by Gaslight, and turn over all material in my possession to the newspapers.

There was no signature written or typed.

When I looked up Dancer said, “Well?”

“That’s my line,” I said. “Are you Rose Tyler Crawford?”

He made a snorting sound. “Christ, no. I wish I had been, though. Whoever she is or was, she probably made a potful.”

“Then what’s the point of trying to extort money from you?”

“You tell me. That’s why I want you to snoop around.”

“Maybe it’s not extortion,” I said. “Maybe it’s somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”

“I doubt that; I don’t know anybody clever enough or smartass enough. It might be a publicity stunt for the convention, too-but I talked to Lloyd Underwood and a couple of others this morning, and they say they don’t know anything about it. I don’t see that they’d lie if they did know.”

“Why did you think it might be a publicity stunt? There’d be no guarantee you’d make it public. And besides, one incident like this wouldn’t be enough to attract attention to a pulp convention.”

“How about five incidents like this?”

“What?”

“I talked to the rest of the Pulpeteers, too,” Dancer said. “Seems I’m just one of a crowd. Each of them also got photocopies of ‘Hoodwink’ and extortion letters identical to mine.”

We spent another fifteen minutes kicking it around. It was screwy, all right. Why would anybody accuse six different writers of plagiarizing the same manuscript and then try to extort money from each one? And why wait thirty years after the alleged plagiarism took place to make the accusations and the demands? It could be some sort of mass extortion ploy, — but the only way one of those can work is if each of the potential victims thinks, first, that the extortionist really does have something incriminating against him, and second, that he’s the only one being victimized. All six of the Pulpeteers could hardly be plagiarists. And the extortionist had to know- at least he did if he was sane-that one of the six would be sure to mention it to another, and pretty soon everybody would know everybody else had been approached. Nobody was going to pay off under those circumstances.

So what was the point of it all?

According to Dancer, none of the others had any more of an idea than he did. All of the envelopes, as far as he’d been able to determine, had been mailed in San Francisco, which meant that any one of several million people, including the convention organizers and a few dozen friends, relatives, and casual acquaintances of the six writers, might be guilty. The “Hoodwink” novelette had been unfamiliar to everyone, although they all remembered Evil by Gaslight; the movie still ran pretty often on TV. The author’s style had also been unfamiliar-probably that of a beginner, they all agreed, rather than an established professional.