Cops and Robbers

Cops and Robbers

THE SQUEALER--Edgar Wallace-- Doubleday, Doran ($2).

THE MURDER IN THE PALLANT--J. S.

Fletcher--Knopf ($2).

THAT DINNER AT BARDOLPH'S--R. A. J.

Walling--Morrow ($2).

THE PORTRAIT INVISIBLE--Joseph Gollomb--Macmillan ($2).

A "squealer" is a thief who betrays thieves. The squealer about whom Author Wallace has written is also a receiver of stolen goods; when a robber refuses the meagre price which he offers for purloined bonds or jewels, the squealer tells the police on him. This is an insult rather than an injury to the police. The wily foxes who play in Scotland Yard resent the squealer's impudently informative gratuities. Especially, one Detective Barrabal who "stroked his silky moustache ... with half-closed eyes. 'Squealer,' he said softly, 'I'm going to get you!' " But so multifarious are the disguises and devices with which Squealer cloaks his criminal doings that no one, not even the reader, can guess who he is. Dangerous doings centre around a London import and export concern; there is jolly old Frank Sutton, who runs this company; his gen eral manager is a surly individual, Captain John Leslie, known to be an ex-convict, to whom Sutton in his generous but perhaps too innocent fashion has given "another chance;" functioning under Captain Leslie is the inscrutable Tillman, always poking his nose into everyone's business. Frank Sutton's secretary, who seems to know him very well, is a hardened specimen ; but Beryl Stedman, his fiancee, is a pure sweet girl. Her guardian is Lew Friedman, an ex-convict, reformed, very eager to effect her marriage to jolly Frank Sutton. There is also a newspaper reporter who scuttles about like a comic ghost. Robberies are going off all the time, like firecrackers, and Squealer is up to his tricks. It is plain that, in actuality, he is one of the persons named above. But which one? Is there any way to find out without waiting for the last chapter? There is. The squealer could not possibly be Beryl Stedman because she is a pure sweet girl, the only one in the story.

It could not be Captain Leslie because she loves him and because he is too surly and obviously criminal in his behavior.

It could not be Lew Friedman because the finger of suspicion points at him too soon; nor will the astute reader mistake Tillman's inscrutability for that of a "squealer." Who wishes to marry Beryl Stedman although, she, while she admires his generous, open nature, cannot bring herself to love him? Is not the squealer suspected of being a bigamist and is not merry Frank Sutton overfamiliar with his gaudy secretary? In the big unmasking scene at the end of the book, everything is neatly explained. Sutton is indeed the squealer and he will hang for his bad acts; his secretary is his accomplice. Captain Leslie is none other than the shrewd Detective Barrabal; he will marry Beryl. Tillman is a newsmonger, whose disagreeable imposture does not prevent his comic confrere from getting the real scoop on the squealer mystery.

It is easy, though not conventional, to explain away a mystery story after reading it. In process of perusal, The Squealer is baffling enough; and though it is quite possible to determine the true identity of the criminal in a few moments of quiet rumination, readers will probably not care to spare these from their galloping journey through its pages. Author Wallace, an Englishman with a big severe face, knows well how to excite his morbid compatriots; in a day of detective stories that are less horrible and more like complicated acrostics than those in which famed Sherlock Holmes so indefatigably performed, the name of Edgar Wallace wears at least a thorny remnant of the wreath that long ago surmounted the dark fancy of Conan Doyle. Once a news-&-Sunday-school-boy, then a young London rapscallion of miscellaneous tendencies, he is now a wealthy and prolific as well as an admired writer of mystery novels and mystery plays.

The Squealer is by no means the only stalk in the wild wintry harvest of detective stories. In The Murder in the Pallant, Author Fletcher, an American expert, beats loudly and with big sticks, upon this deep bass conundrum: who killed Mr.

Postlethwaite? It might have been Lady Cardyne, it might have been a lodger with a cast in one eye, it might have been an office boy, a butler, a maid, either one of (two clerks, or even Alderman Benniwell, the good friend of Police Superintendent Croft. Can curiosity, as well as the author, solve this mystery? Most assuredly.

Author Joseph Smith Fletcher, once a distinguished journalist, has on 32 different occasions purveyed to the public voracity for blood and deduction. He should be, and is, proficient.

The Portrait Invisible, down to the delayed adjective in its title, apes the grand manner. Its problem--who is the murderer of Judge Robert Craigin?--is harder to solve without looking for the answer in the back of the book. This is partly because Author Gollomb does not waggle his index finger at the criminal as noticeably as convention demands. Nonetheless famed Columnist Heywood Broun, at best a timid rascal, was frightened by the book and kept awake. That Dinner at Bardolph's does not take itself so seriously.

There are six men at a dinner party. One of them, a lecherous tub-of-guts, gets murdered. Who killed him? Surely the most likable member of the party. Not at all.

The murderer, too, is a dirty thug. The detectives grab him just when he is about to escape by jumping out of the back cover.

The stories mentioned above rate well.

Others that do likewise are: THE HOUSE OF DR. EDWARDES--Francis Deeding--Little, Brown ($2). Lunatics, almost as bloodthirsty as the famed Count Dracula, prowl about Central Europe.

THE VOICE OF SEVEN SPARROWS--Harry Stephen Keeler--Button ($2). Murder, embezzlement, treasons, stratagems, spoils, all the way from New Orleans to Asia. A man named Smith receives an envelope containing a deuce of spades with red Chinese characters; these are like the characters in the story.

TRAGEDY AT RAVENSTHORPE--J. J. Con-nington--Little, Brown ($2). The lights go off at a masquerade party. Afterward, the somewhat patchy plot has as many complications as the measles.

TRACKS IN THE SNOW--Lord Charnwood--Dial ($2). The famed biographer of Abraham Lincoln has a severe case of the ramifications.

AMERICAN DETECTIVE STORIES--chosen by Carolyn Wells--Oxford University Press ($1.50). AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES--chosen by Carolyn Wells-- Oxford University Press ($1.50). Notable in each case for a short work by famed Edgar Allan Poe, U. S. hair-raisers are selected by a lady who is herself adept in barbarous inventions. New Decameron

THE NEW DECAMERON--Edited by Hugh Chesterman -- Brentano's ($2).

Most collections of short stories are unsatisfactory to read at one sitting in so far as the effect of each individual story is blurred and dissipated by the juxtaposition of other, totally incongruous stories.

The New Decameron, published annually, now for the fifth time, contains short fictions linked loosely together as were the tales in the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75). There is a party of prolix persons aboard a yacht--each tells a story which suggests a story to another member of the talkative congregation. The narratives, so garlanded together, demand the credulous and sympathetic mood which belongs to such a gathering. The Lady of Fashion's Tale, by Author E. M. Delafield, astutely probes the emotions of a woman whose lover is surfeited with her affection. In The Professor's Tale, Gerald Bullett studies a middle-aged recollection of young and tragic love. Like these, the nine remaining stories are bizarre, moody, concerned with subtler emotions, with achieving subtler effects than short stories intended for magazine consumption. The best is perhaps A. E. Coppard's Tale of the Detective's Friend.