Hades & Hocus Pocus

By Lester Dent

Two classic noir novellas about young men who find treacherous jobs during the Great Depression
In Hades, Alexander Titus, a former Olympic decathlon star, comes to Hollywood looking for work. He and his friend Haw Gooch are down to their last dollar when they find jobs as bodyguards for erratic film producer Roger Quinlan. Quinlan seems quite paranoid, claiming that he’s being stalked by a demon and that he found Hades in a cavern in New Mexico. The story sounds crazy, but when Titus is framed for murder, he realizes Quinlan’s alleged hell might be the one place where he can also find the truth. In Hocus Pocus, two penniless traveling magicians respond to an ad for a mind reader. A psychology professor hires them to infiltrate a group of evangelists who incorporate mind reading into their preaching. Cal “Marvelous” Merton and his assistant, Imagination Daly, will study the evangelists’ methods and report back on whether their mind reading is genuine. But as Merton and Daly join the New Apostles, the air of danger is palpable, and questions arise about their employer and what exactly they’re investigating.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Jan 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781453292617

Lester Dent

Lester Dent (1904–1959) was born in La Plata, Missouri. In his mid-twenties, he began publishing pulp fiction stories, and moved to New York City, where he developed the successful Doc Savage Magazine with Henry Ralston, head of Street and Smith, a leading pulp publisher. The magazine ran from 1933 until 1949 and included 181 novel-length stories, of which Dent wrote the vast majority under the house name Kenneth Robeson. He also published mystery novels in a variety of genres, including the Chance Molloy series about a self-made airline owner. Dent’s own life was quite adventurous; he prospected for gold in the Southwest, lived aboard a schooner for a few years, hunted treasure in the Caribbean, launched an aerial photography company, and was a member of the Explorer’s Club. 

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Hades & Hocus Pocus

Lester Dent

Contents

Introduction by Will Murray

HADES

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

HOCUS POCUS

Chapter I. THE MARVELOUS MERTON

Chapter II. THE MYSTERIOUS SMITH

Chapter III. TURKEY BUZZARD

Chapter IV. THE NEW APOSTLES

Chapter V. THE WATCHMAKER

Chapter VI. HORROR IN A BOX

Chapter VII. THE DILEMMA

Chapter VIII. THE WORN-OUTS

Chapter IX. THE MIND READING

Chapter X. HOCUS-POCUS—PRESTO!

Chapter XI. MANHUNT

Chapter XII. OZARK TRAIL

Chapter XIII. ISLAND

Chapter XIV. HARD ON THE HEART

INTRODUCTION

IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT Lester Dent would one day write for Argosy, the first, and some believe best, of the pulp magazines. Argosy was Dent’s favorite fiction magazine, especially in his early writing days before he began Doc Savage. His wife Norma recalls with chagrin that they never made plans to go out on Wednesday nights because that was the night her husband stayed home and devoured the current issue. Argosy was published each Wednesday.

Among pulp writers, Argosy was a prestigious market. It regularly featured such giants as Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. Merritt, Max Brand (and all of his other aliases), Johnston McCulley and Erle Stanley Gardner, with whom Lester Dent had a long-running feud over which of them could outproduce the other in sheer wordage. Dent was especially fond of the fantastic serials of George F. Worts who, under the pseudonym of Loring Brent, penned the exploits of Peter Moore, an adventurer who was known throughout the Orient as Peter the Brazen or the Man of Bronze. Dent was strongly influenced by Worts’ writing.

Exactly when Lester Dent first set his sights on the Argosy market is unknown. He may have submitted to it early in his career without success. Certainly, as Dent began to tire of Doc Savage and aspire to the slick magazines, he must have looked to the higher-paying Argosy—considered to be a stepping-stone to the slicks—with eager eyes.

It was not, however, until 1936, after Dent had been writing professionally for seven years, that he placed a novelette, Hades with the magazine. The next year another novelette, Hocus Pocus appeared. Then a novel, Genius Jones. Then nothing—although Lester Dent continued to write for more than twenty years, he wrote no more fiction for his favorite magazine.

Two factors made it possible for Lester Dent to write for Argosy in the first place. One was his reduced obligation to Doc Savage. As early as 1933, Dent had experimented with various ghost writers, often with limited success. His aim was to free up his time so that he could turn to other fiction markets. The ambitious Missouri writer disliked being tied down to one magazine and one publisher, as he was with Doc Savage and Street & Smith. In spite of his efforts, Dent had written very little outside of the Doc Savage series for over three years.

Then, in 1935, Street & Smith hired Laurence Donovan to write Doc novels in tandem with Dent. This was in an apparent attempt to publish the magazine twice a month. Dent had refused to produce twenty-four Doc adventures annually. The firm relented, but not before Donovan had added nine novels to Dent’s 1935 supply, enough to carry the magazine for two years.

Dent, with the help of various ghosts, continued to generate Doc stories until mid-1936, putting Doc Savage well ahead in inventory manuscripts. Abruptly, in July, he took a six-month vacation from Street & Smith.

It happened that, in June (and here the second factor enters the picture) Fiction House’s Jack Byrne left that company to become Argosy’s new editor. Once installed, Byrne let it be known in the trade that he was looking for new blood. Inasmuch as Byrne had been Dent’s editor at Fiction House in the pre-Doc Savage days, the door could not have been more open. Dent lost no time. He submitted a novelette entitled Storm, which was serialized in Argosy’s December 5, 12 and 19, 1936 issues under the more fitting title of Hades.

Flush with this triumph, Dent turned to another elusive market, Black Mask. He sold only two stories to Black Mask, Sail and Angelfish, both about a Miami-based detective named Oscar Sail whom Dent modeled after himself to some degree. Dent considered these two stories his best work, and Joseph T. Shaw the finest editor he had worked with. It was only Shaw’s sudden firing in late 1936 that stopped the flow of Sail stories. When Shaw left, Dent lost his drive to undertake the extensive writing and rewriting Black Mask demanded of its writers, although a third story had been discussed.

In February, 1937, Dent returned to Doc Savage, but not before he had finished a second novelette for Argosy—Spook. By this time, Jack Byrne had been promoted to managing editor of the Munsey line, the publishers of Argosy. Chandler Whipple was the new editor, and he asked Dent to substantially revise Spook as it had been submitted. Dent complied and the story was published as Hocus Pocus in the May 22, 29 and June 5, 1937 issues.

Hades and Hocus Pocus, as Robert Sampson said in his earlier study of Lester Dent’s Argosy phase, The Argosy Novels, (The Man Behind Doc Savage, 1974, Robert Weinberg, editor) form a natural pair. Unlike the Black Mask stories, these two novelettes are clearly cloned from Doc Savage genes. Dent worked harder on these stories than he did on the Doc adventures, but they were not attempts to perfect his craft in the way the Oscar Sail stories had been. They were unrepentant pulp.

Like the Black Mask stories, Hades and Hocus Pocus possess autobiographical components. It has been said of Lester Dent that he was each of his pulp heroes, that he grafted bits of himself onto his protagonists. In the case of Doc Savage, whom he did not originate, Dent became Doc as closely as it was possible for him to emulate the Man of Bronze through his sailing, flying and treasure-hunting explorations. Nowhere in Dent’s fiction are his characters so closely patterned after himself than in the two novelettes which comprise this book.

Alexander Titus, the protagonist of Hades, physically mirrors Dent. He is six foot, two inches, weighs two hundred pounds and sports a crop of fuzzy red hair. Lester Dent was never an Olympic decathlon champion, but his strength was reputedly as enormous as that displayed by Titus. Both Dent and Titus were born in a small Missouri town. In fact, Titus’ last name may derive from Titus Creek, which is near La Plata, Dent’s birthplace.

Cal Merton, the hero of Hocus Pocus, does not possess many of Dent’s physical attributes—except for a general likeableness and gangling frame—but he, like Dent, was born on a Missouri farm and attended the State Teachers College in Kirksville. Dent was never a traveling magician, but he had a strong interest in magic and performed for friends.

Neither of these characters are typical pulp supermen, but the situations in which Dent places them are right out of Doc Savage. As Dent was never really able to live up to Doc Savage, these two novelettes seem to be a form of wish-fulfillment in which Lester Dent’s alter-egos are faced with challenges worthy of the Man of Bronze. Because Alexander Titus and Cal Merton are simple, down-home types, they react to danger differently than would Doc Savage. No gadgets, weapons or scientific resources. They deal with the fantastic just as anyone else might—or as Lester Dent might have imagined he would were he suddenly embroiled in one of his own Doc Savage plots.

The Doc Savage influence on Dent’s work for Argosy is strong. Protagonists aside, most of the other characters are of the bizarre type who populated the early Doc adventures. Both leads are assisted by second bananas who appear to be graduates of Monk Mayfair Charm School. Ham Brooks doppelgangers appear and irritate the hero. Even Alexander Titus displays some attributes belonging to Doc’s aide, Renny Renwick, most notably the giant fists and elephantine physique. In fact, almost all of the other characters are variants of people who had or would appear in Doc Savage.

This phenomenon is the result of one of Dent’s writing tricks—the use of the tag to delineate a character. Tags are mannerisms, physical quirks or other devices used by some pulp writers to make their characters distinctive. This was used as a substitute for deep characterization. Dent was extremely fond of the tag, as he proclaimed in his Writer’s Yearbook article, Wave Those Tags:

In Doc Savage, a pulp, this external tagging has been utilized freely. One of the characters is always dressed in the height of sartorial perfection, the fancy clothes being his tag. Another character has one of his tags following around after him; it’s a pet pig. A third uses words of the most ungodly length, jawbreakers nobody can understand, at the slightest excuse. And Doc himself has been labelled freely with typical hero tags—great size, bronzed skin, compelling flake-gold eyes, quiet manner, amazing strength, fabulous knowledge of various subjects.

Because the number of good tags is limited, Dent’s Argosy characters sport Doc Savage tags in different combinations. Some characters are all tag, and reappeared later with only their names changed. Thus, the giant woman, Herculena Johnson, in Hades is transplanted to Fortress of Solitude as the two Amazons, Titania and Giantia. In Hocus Pocus, the Marvelous Merton is smitten by the spiritual qualities of Saint Neeta. Doc Savage was haunted by similar madonna-like women from The Man of Bronze down to The Red Spider.

The locales—Hollywood, Death Valley and Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri—are all familiar ones. Dent visited each of them and they all, at one time or another, figured in Doc Savage’s adventures. The boathouse on the Lake of the Ozarks in Hocus Pocus is probably the same one from which Doc borrowed Cadwiller Olden’s booby-trapped boat in Repel.

The plots are also out of Dent’s seemingly inexhaustible well of Doc Savage concepts. Certain phenomena in Hades will be familiar to those who have read The Mystic Mullah. Dent revived this plot for the final Doc novel, Up From Earth’s Center. The mystery behind Hocus Pocus lay at the bottom of many Doc tales. Both novelettes share a common theme, that of the ultimate triumph of the pure of heart and determined of mind and arm over strange evil. That evil may be spawned in the pagan town of Hollywood, it may invade the chaste corn fields of Missouri, (which, in an early draft of Hocus Pocus’ opening chapter, were those of familiar La Plata), it may even threaten civilization, but it is no match for Dent’s Missouri-bred heroes. They may be inadvertent heroes—unversed in the use of weapons and big-city guile—but they are heroes nonetheless.

Lester Dent’s last effort for Argosy, written during another hiatus from his Doc Savage chores in August, 1937, is cut of similar pulp. The hero of Genius Jones is something of a Tarzan of the Arctic, whom Dent transplants to New York City. Genius Jones is a complete innocent to civilization’s ways, but he conquers a horde of swindlers, gold-diggers and gangsters in spite of that handicap. This novel—Dent’s longest work—is long on humor and short on the fantastic. It may have been an attempt to give Chandler Whipple the Lester Dent version of a standard Argosy serial.

After Genius Jones, Dent wrote no more for Argosy. He did outline a sequel, entitled Genius, but inexplicably the novel was never written. Dent went on a six-month tour of Europe, beginning in February, 1938, only two months after Genius Jones was published, and this may have interfered with the sequel. Chandler Whipple—or his successor who took over in 1939—may have vetoed the outline. Mrs. Dent believes that, by 1938, Dent had established a market with the magazine, and that was all he was looking for at the time. That he never again wrote for Argosy might also be laid to the renewed demands of Doc Savage.

Whatever the reasons, Lester Dent’s brief argosy had ended, and an important chapter in his writing career closed forever.

Will Murray

June 1, 1979

North Quincy, Massachusetts

HADES

CHAPTER I

FROM AN AFFADAVIT

By Roger P. Quinlan

... do take oath I never dreamed aught but the interests of science would be served by what I did ... And now, in the face of what has happened, and what may happen, which appalls me infinitely more, I can, as Milton, but think: Whence and what art thou, execrable shape?

... event of my violent death, my motion picture films may be of aid in combatting ...

The best that thou sawest was, and is Not; and shall Ascend out of the bottomless pit, And go into perdition, and they that dwell on

The earth shall wonder.

—The Scriptures.

ALEXANDER TITUS CLAMPED HIS elbows to his ribs, cocked his head back and ran. His hat shook off his fuzzy red hair. The missing hat emphasized the ample size of his ears. His coattails threshed.

Alexander Titus held his mouth as if he wanted to bite something.

The tall, dark and very, very handsome young man Titus was chasing reached his taxicab and dived frantically inside. The cab whistled its tires on the pavement in its haste to take off.

Titus put on speed. Four years ago it was in the dashes that he had piled up his best decathlon points in the Olympics. He nearly caught the cab. Had he been eight feet tall, and not six-feet-two, he might have succeeded in grabbing the spare tire. But the cab got away.

Titus stopped and said: Black hair, a female-eyebrow-moustache, big feet. And he had that taxi following behind him.

Ordinarily, he did not talk to himself. But he knew that he could remember things better if he said them out loud.

Titus scratched thoughtfully in his thatch of red hair, then patted it down and went back to pick up his hat. No one else had seen the brief excitement, because at the moment there had been no other pedestrians on this poor Hollywood street of rooming houses. Titus stood on the sidewalk, looking belligerent and puzzled, for a while, then walked around the corner to the house where he and Haw Gooch had a room.

The rooming house was a white wooden box three stories high, with small windows. The carpet was worn down to the thread, and most of the stair treads squeaked.

Haw Gooch sat on a chair, facing the bed. The chair did not have a particularly high back, but Haw’s head hardly reached above it. He gave the impression of being as wide as he was tall, and he had recently had his head shaved. His ears were hardly more than bristle tufts.

An array of medals and prize cups was spread out on the bed in front of Haw.

Haw, without looking around, said: Here’s one: ‘Daddy,’ the little boy says, ‘give me a dime and I’ll tell you what the iceman said to mama.’ And daddy gets all excited and says: ‘O.K. Here it is.’ And the little boy says: ‘The iceman said, Want any ice this mornin’, Missus?’ ... Haw, haw! Pretty good, eh? I just thought it up.

Titus walked over, looked out of the window, didn’t see anything alarming, then came back and looked at the medals.

Doing some figuring again, eh?

Haw grinned sheepishly and rubbed his nose, or as much of it as gloved fists had not mashed level with the rest of his homely face. Look, Titus, we gotta eat. And Uncle John down at the hockshop would give up something on these.

Put ’em back! Titus directed firmly. The medals and a few newspaper clippings are all I’ve got to show that I was on the front pages of every good newspaper in the world four years ago.

And you didn’t turn professional and cash in, Haw sighed.

Titus laughed. I’m not kicking. I didn’t go into athletics to get rich. It’s no profession to pick for a lifework.

Haw sighed again, more deeply. "Boy, you were good. You still are. You should’ve tried for last summer’s Olympic team. A trip to Berlin. Regular eats. Imagine! Imagine!"

I have, several times, Titus admitted. But right now, my imagination is busy with something else.

Watcha mean, Titus?

Let’s go down to the pig stand and start eating our last dollar. I’ll tell you on the way.

There was a white pig, probably made of wood and tin, on the roof of the building. The structure itself was round with a cone roof, and sat smack in the middle of an acre of gravel beside which ran a busy black boulevard.

PETE’S PIG PALACE

That was what the neon signs said. It was just another of Hollywood’s queer lunch stands.

A squeal and a java, Haw told the girl back of the counter.

Same, Titus said.

Haw squinted at Titus. You mean to tell me some fellow started following you around? And he ran when you tried to talk to him?

That’s it.

And you didn’t know him? And you don’t have any idea why he was tailing you?

Not a smell of an idea.

What was the taxi license number?

The taxi license plates, Titus explained, were smeared with mud.

But there ain’t been any rain recently.

I thought of that, too, Titus said.

Their barbecued pork sandwiches were placed before them, napkin wrapped and stuck through with a toothpick. The coffee followed, in thick mugs. They ate silently, taking small bites, but looking as if they would like to take big ones, and both loaded their coffee with plenty of sugar, Titus having previously explained the energy-giving value of it.

As Titus stirred his coffee, he prodded around in his memory. But no recollection could he find of having met the very handsome dark man with the large feet—the fellow who had reason for the following. It was puzzling.

Other than Haw, Titus considered that he had only one real acquaintance in Hollywood. Carl Brockman, head of a motion picture distributing outfit. Swell people, Carl. He’d promised to keep an eye open for a job for Titus and Haw when they landed in Hollywood three weeks ago looking for work. Carl wasn’t the kind who said something like that and then forgot about it, either. Titus decided he’d phone Carl, on the chance that a job might have turned ...

Haw chuckled, Here’s one. The actor goes into the restaurant and says: ‘Bring me a Hollywood breakfast.’ The waiter says: ‘What’s that?’ The actor says: ‘A big pork chop, a bulldog and a bottle of whisky.’ The waiter, stumped, says: ‘Why the bulldog?’ And the actor, holding his head, yells: ‘To eat the pork chop, you fool!’ Haw, haw! Good, eh? I just made it up.

Titus sighed and put their dollar on the counter. Give me a nickel package of that butterscotch candy, he said to the waiter.

He liked butterscotch candy.

A