Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

One seeks hard with Curtiss Stryker for a mot juste. Let us say that he was an enigma to all, perhaps most of all to himself.

While many of the pulp writers of the 1930s had survived improbable and checkered pasts before merging their careers into fiction, Curtiss Stryker begs the extreme. Sailor, soldier-off or tune, gunrunner, World War I hero, aviator, bootlegger, big-game hunter, member of a dozen secret cults: If even half of his boasts were true, it would be too much for any one man — to say nothing of a writer who drifted from the pulps into hackwork obscurity. And yet…

Stryker brought a distinct and convincing verisimilitude to all genres in which he wrote, present through the excesses of the pulp formula and the demands of deadlines. A fellow pulp writer once remarked: “Sure, I’ve never been to Asia or Africa even though I write yarns about those places. I’ve never been to Hell, either — but I still write about it. ” With Curtiss Stryker one wonders.

This is most evident in Stryker’s best known work, a series of stories involving the battles of occult investigator, John Chance, against his evil counterpart, Dread, master of black magic. These episodic novellas (billed, as the pulps liked to do, as “A Complete Novel In Every Issue!”) began in the January 1934 issue of Black Circle Mystery and ran monthly until that pulp folded in June 1936. Part of the notorious Black Circle Publishing Group, Black Circle Mystery was not one of the higher paying pulps, nor did the series begin to attract the readership of such character pulps as Doc Savage, The Shadow, or The Spider. Nonetheless, John Chance vs. Dread was one of the longer-lived minor pulp series, and the stories eventually acquired a cult following among pulp collectors. “Sign of the Salamander,” the first episode of the series, is here reprinted for the first time.

The novella is typical of the series, displaying the eccentricities of Stryker’s style. One senses immediately that he is striving to break away from the confines of the pulp formula, all the while restrained by the editorial considerations of his day.

An author is invariably accused of identifying with his characters — of projecting his idealized self-image into his heroes. I rather think that both John Chance and Dread were a part of Curtiss Stryker — and I hesitate to believe that Stryker’s visions of Hell were taken exclusively from guidebooks.

— Kent Allard, author of

Drive-Thru Fiction,

The Futility of Awareness,

etc.

Fog hung like a dismal mask over the small mountain town. The headlamps of the Packard roadster poked yellow beams through the grey blanket, probing recklessly up the narrow road that climbed Laurel Mountain. The car scarcely slowed as it reached the gap that enclosed the town of Dillon, and its headlights picked out the main street with its double row of storefronts.

Its cream finish ghostly in the mist-hung night, the powerful roadster moved past the darkened storefronts, many with windows boarded and an NRA eagle peering from the murky panes. A few lights shone from outlying houses, and on ahead a big puddle of light spread out from a pair of gas pumps. The Packard braked and pulled into the station.

The stenciled lettering on the dusty windows read Martin’s General Merchandise and below that, in a different stencil, & Service Station. It was past ten o’clock, but this one place of business remained open. Half a dozen overalled patrons lounged about the pair of benches that flanked the screened doorway, chewing tobacco and furtively passing a quart fruit jar whose contents warded off the late evening chill. They watched with careful curiosity as the Packard drove up. Behind the storefront windows, other blurred faces craned inquisitively.

The roadster looked sleek and new and expensive. Despite the chill mountain air, its top was down, suggesting it had been driven hard up from the summer heat of the lowlands that evening. A girl reclined easily on the leather cushions of the passenger side, looking sleek and expensive herself with a fox fur wrap drawn over the trim shoulders of her summer frock. Blonde hair was marcelled beneath a white beret, and there was a pleasant windblown effect that offset her patrician features. The driver was a dark, athletically built young man with that sort of tan that makes one think of tennis courts and swimming pools. He wore casual evening dress, but was hatless. Leisurely he stepped down from the car, tossed his coat over the seat and stretched taut limbs.

“Evening, folks.” A heavy-set figure emerged from the screened door. “Can I help you?”

“A tank of ethyl for the car, if you please,” the driver told him. “And some information for me.”

The attendant busied himself with the pump. “Sure. What can I help you all with?”

“You got a phone in here?”

“Got a public phone there at the back.”

“A gentleman phoned Knoxville from there this afternoon,” the young man explained. “Asked to speak with John Chance. Very important, he said.”

“Well, it’s a public telephone, but there’s a door on the booth,” the attendant said testily.

“The fellow said he was calling from Martin’s Store,” the other continued. “Said he’d meet us here tonight. Said his name was Cullin Shelton. We had rather a late start, so I wondered whether he’d grown tired of waiting. Perhaps I might phone him, if he’s not here now.”

“That’s two-fifty,” said the attendant, cutting off the pump. “Shelton was around here most of the evening, Mr. Chance. I reckon he’s gone back to his place over at the hotel by now, seeing as he’s not here.”

“And which hotel is that?”

“There’s only one, the Dillon Hotel,” replied the other with ponderous patience. “On down the street there’s the sign.”

“Then I’ll go look him up.”

“Doubt you’ll get much use out of that,” the attendant advised. “Shelton was hitting it pretty hard all day.”

“Well, he said it was important,” said the driver, climbing back into the roadster. He cranked the engine.

“Must be to make you all drive all this way from Knoxville,” hazarded the beefy proprietor.

“Good night.” The Packard slipped smoothly into gear and rolled away from the pumps. The idlers at Martin’s Store watched it drive away with cool appraisal.

“I wonder if we should have phoned,” suggested the girl, speaking in a faintly accented voice.

“Oh, leave it to me, Kirsten,” her companion assured her. “It was worth the wild-goose chase just to get away from the muggy heat of the city.”

“The way they watched us…” she began. “There’s evil here.”

“Rot. Mountaineers are a close-lipped lot. Did you see them hide that moonshine when we drove up? Good job you were along, or they’d have marked me down for a revenuer.”

“I rather think we should have waited — or phoned,” she persisted.

“But you were the one in so great a hurry. Hello — here it is.”

The Packard turned in before a two-storey structure of dark mountain stone. A sign out front of the wide veranda said Dillon Hotel and Vacancy. Only a few lights burned in the shaded windows.

“Honeymoon Hotel, here we are,” laughed the driver.

“Oh, stop it.” Penciled brows drew in a frown of annoyance. She peered anxiously at the darkened hotel to her right.

A lean figure suddenly lurched forth from the shadows of the porch, overturning a rocker with a startling crash. He shambled across the veranda, half-fell down the wide steps to the ground. He wore surveyor’s boots and field dress, and a canvas coat that flapped about his gaunt frame. Supporting himself against the banister, he stared back at them through red-rimmed eyes.