The Hammering Man

By Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg

“The Hammering Man” (also published as “Decidedly Odd”) is part of Edwin Balmer and William B. MacHarg’s Luther Trant series, a 12-story sequence of mysteries featuring a detective armed with psychoanalysis. (It doesn’t hurt that Trant also has a keen analytical mind and can unravel the greatest of puzzles). The series began in 1909 in Hampton’s Magazine and was collected as The Achievements of Luther Trant in late 1910. In "The Hammering Man," Trent must unravel the puzzle of a advertisement with ties to Russia and a cypher with a hidden clue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Sep 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781479464814

Book preview

Table of Contents

THE HAMMERING MAN

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

THE HAMMERING MAN

by Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2021 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Hampton’s Magazine, May 1910.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION

The Hammering Man (also published as Decidedly Odd) is part of Edwin Balmer and William B. MacHarg’s Luther Trant series, a 12-story sequence of mysteries featuring a detective armed with psychoanalysis. (It doesn’t hurt that Trant also has a keen analytical mind and can unravel the greatest of puzzles.). The series began in 1909 in Hampton’s Magazine and was collected as The Achievements of Luther Trant in late 1910.

The Trant stories hold an important place in the development of the scientific detective genre. They appeared before the more-famous Craig Kennedy tales of Arthur B. Reeve, which are not as well written. Indeed, Balmer & MacHarg are stylistically on par with Arthur Conan Doyle in the finest Victorian sleuth tradition.

Chicago-born Balmer (1883-1959) is best remembered these days as the co-author (with Philip Wylie) of the classic science fiction novels When Worlds Collide—made into George Pal’s 1951 movie of the same title—and After Worlds Collide. But he was a prolific author and editor, primarily in the mystery genre, with numerous novels to his credit. He also edited Redbook (before it became a women’s-interest magazine) from 1927 to 1949.

William B. MacHarg (1872-1951) was Balmer’s brother-in-law, born in New Jersey, who became a prolific pulp author. He published quite a few mysteries, including a long-running series of police procedurals in Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post featuring (as the New York Times wrote in his obituary, a good-headed cop, O’Malley. Wildside Press collected some of the O’Malley stories in The Detective O’Malley MEGAPACK® in 2018.

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

CHAPTER I

ADVERTISED IN CIPHER

One rainy morning in April, Luther Trant sat alone in his office. On his wrist as he bent closely over a heap of typewritten pages spread before him on his desk, a small instrument in continual motion ticked like a watch. It was for him an hour of idleness; he was reading fiction. And, with his passion for making visible and recording the workings of the mind, he was taking a permanent record of his feelings as he read.

The instrument strapped on Trant’s arm was called a sphygmograph. It carried a small steel rod which pressed tightly on his