The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (3 page)

Stationed in both China and the Philippines (which Koshinga also threatened during his short reign on Formosa), it would not be surprising if a young Robert Pearsall had learned of Koshinga’s exploits, particularly before and immediately after the Revolution of 1911, when anti-Manchu sentiment—one of Koshinga’s hallmarks—was at an all-time high.

Other references to China’s past found in the Hazard & Partridge narratives, from the revolution-prone history of the Shaanxi (Shensi) province, to the invaluable importance of the
Shu-king
to Chinese literary history, exude the knowledge of an individual who was intimately aware of his subject matter, an intimacy that can come only from personal experiences. Even the instances where Robert takes some artistic license, such as his depiction of Taoist monks as particularly evil and conniving in “Silver Sycees,” could reveal remnants of his years abroad; could this have been influenced by young socialist-minded Chinese he met on his travels, who rejected the old ways and old religions, as many Chinese youth did at the time of the revolution? We will probably never know, but it is certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

In closing, now that the author, his times and possible inspirations have been noted, what of the eponymous adventurers of this work? What sets them apart from other sleuths, battling against evil or Asiatic criminals? As mentioned, comparisons will be drawn between Hazard and Partridge, and Rohmer’s Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie. More than likely, Pearsall was aware of this and gave specific attention to the characterization of his protagonists. Despite being first in the series’ title, Hazard does not appear until several stories in, and even then with a bit of suspicion on Partridge’s part. As for Partridge, he is akin to Rohmer’s Petrie and even Conan Doyle’s Watson, in the sense that he acts as narrator for the reader, but there the similarities end. Petrie and Watson, for the most part, act as peripheries to their respective partners’ actions—both participate much in the same way as the reader, befuddled and astounded by Smith’s or Holmes’ deductive abilities. It is certainly true that Petrie and Watson play important roles in their particular narratives, but it is Smith and Holmes who are the true stars of their stories.

In regards to Hazard and Partridge, neither plays an ancillary role, but rather the personalities and talents of both combine to form the “star” of the series. Hazard, quick to action and unrivaled in deductive abilities, is complemented by Partridge’s personal knowledge of China, her people and their customs, and by Partridge’s ability to bide his time, preferring to wait and let things slowly unravel so as to gain a better understanding of the situation.

This characterization, combined with Pearsall’s knack for conveying exotic landscapes, ever-unfolding mysteries, rapid action, and settings based more on historical fact than one might initially imagine, coalesce to produce works unique to the author and his personal history, as well as stories that belong alongside the greats of the pulp magazine genre.

I wish to personally thank Matthew Moring of Altus Press, for asking me to provide an introduction to Robert James Pearsall’s works. I am also indebted to Andrea Cacek and Sandra Pearsall, two of Robert’s granddaughters, without whose help the personal history of their grandfather would be woefully incomplete.

Rogues’ End

SO, I understand, it is now called. Then it was Land’s End—that pretty little precipice behind Cragcastle, where the rock falls sheer a hundred feet to the usually turbulent inlet. It lay at the narrow end of Breakneck Gorge, the upper end of which embraced the isolated freak of a house known as Cragcastle.

Lawyer Osborne had told me his recently deceased client, John Maxon, had built the house. And, in truth, its remoteness matched well with that eccentric provision in his will which had caused me, a stranger to everybody concerned, to take up a solitary residence in Cragcastle. And which, as a consequence, gave me the novel experience, on the first night of my stay there, of sitting across the table from a visitor whom I had just admitted and of whom I knew absolutely nothing—except that he intended to kill me.

“As soon as I read of your father’s will,” said this stranger, “I knew I had you.”

He was and was not a man of prepossessing appearance. Superficially, he was handsome—well-formed, well-dressed, in the late forties, with quite regular features. A closer look, however, showed that he had a coldly sensual mouth and a brutal jaw and that his eyes were bloodshot. Crookdom and the underworld know such faces well; they are the natural result of years of vice and vicious profiteering working upon unusual intelligence as a basis. In my own person I should probably never have known this man well enough to have had him for an enemy.

“Your father probably figured,” he went on, “that, it you were a coward, you wouldn’t come back, and, “if you changed into a man of passable courage, fit to be his son, you would. That was where he made a mistake. You came back, and still you’re a coward. In fact, you came back because you’re a coward. The money you stole was all gone, of course. And you figured I was probably dead or gone or broken mentally—which last I might well be—and you’d rather take a chance on facing me than a certainty of beachcombing it the rest of your life. A hundred thousand is worth taking a chance for—and even worth living in this mansion a year for. Though mainly—” his eyes flitted around the bare room—“it isn’t fit to house ghosts in, and I hope yours will be—uncomfortable.”

Herein his animosity caused him to exaggerate. True, the room in which we sat contained little else than our two chairs and the old oak table on which he had ordered me—somewhat to my amusement—to keep my hands. But that was because I’d carefully denuded it of everything else—sofas, chairs and the like—before he came in. Even while he urged the masquerade on me, Osborne had very earnestly warned me against personal danger, and I wanted to make quite sure that, if I had a caller, we should sit where we did.

Really, Cragcastle was a fine rambling—or rather climbing—old country house, quite comfortably supplied, even to a telephone and electric light and heat.

But I suppose Hardridge, as my visitor had named himself, referred mainly to its isolation, perched as it was five hundred yards up the seaward slope of Mount Tamalpais, five miles from the nearest Village and four from the nearest house.

I replied that he was hard to please, since the setting couldn’t be beaten for a murder.

And indeed Hardridge seemed outwardly to have every chance of accomplishing his intention. We both believed we were alone in the house; he had also made certain that I carried no weapon, and he himself held an effective-looking revolver in a clearly efficient hand. But he rested that hand on the table, with the gun pointed only in my general direction; so I could have concluded the scene at any moment. However, I didn’t want to check him yet, there being too much I wanted to know to let slip a chance for knowledge.

On his part, up to now Hardridge had been enjoying himself perfectly well in gloating over my supposed helplessness. Assassins are usually rhetoricians as well—which fact has saved many lives.

“However,” I added, “I’ll probably be as comfortable as you, dead or alive. For, of course, there’ll be no doubt as to who killed me. In fact, Osborne warned me against you before I came over. He’s the executor, you know. You’ll either hang or go to San Quentin—”

At that last word Hardridge’s face went livid. His revolver flashed up, and for an instant I thought we were both dead men.

“—— you,” he cried—it was his first touch of real passion—“cut that. Don’t you dare—”

“For a longer term than I caused you to get last time,” I went on steadily. “That’ll be some consolation to my ghost.”

Few men will fire in the middle of another man’s sentence; that was one reason I completed mine. But there was another reason, too. His outburst partially confirmed a suspicion certain of his remarks and certain things in his appearance had given me—that he had been in prison and believed I had sent him there, and I wanted to prove or disprove it.

You see, I hadn’t yet learned why he wanted to kill me.

“You think so,” he rasped, lowering his revolver. “Well, you’ll not have that comfort. Those of the ring that are left are back of me in this, and they’ll see me through. Because you’re a traitor doesn’t prove all men are. Because I trusted you doesn’t prove I’m altogether a fool, either. My getaway is safe. And I’ve money, too. Plenty of it. My
pro rata
in that pool you stole didn’t break me by a long shot, though it did break most of the others. No, John Maxon, it’s not prison but life that’s ahead of me—life!” he exulted. “And for you, death and the fishes! For I’ll drop you into the bay; I wouldn’t poison the earth with you. Pah! Nothing but poisonous toadstools could come from your carcass.”

It’s not easy to hear oneself reviled so and make no defense, but I could hardly have opened my mouth without betraying that I wasn’t the man he thought me. What I had gotten from Hardridge so far was not as much knowledge as food for conjecture. As for the smooth-talking lawyer, Osborne, who’d drawn me into the affair and got me to come to Cragcastle, he’d really said nothing about Hardridge but only warned me against danger in general.

Anyway, I placed little confidence in anything Osborne had told me. His appearance of candor had been too perfect to be genuine. I’ve learned to beware of the confessed rascal who looks me straight in the eye—there’s always some other deviltry hidden behind his confession. This, I was sure, was Osborne’s case. Although the will itself—John Maxon, Sr.’s, disposing of Cragcastle and the rest of the Maxon estate—was evidently genuine, Osborne had calmly proposed to me, a stranger, a plan involving false impersonation, perjury, theft and perhaps a few other violations of the law. Profit, about fifty thousand each. I couldn’t pick out the unsound spots in his proposal, except that he wasn’t a man who would be content to divide such profits evenly. Naturally I wanted to see what was behind his proposal, and a week must necessarily elapse before I could sail on my own business; so I came in with him.

I came the more readily since I knew I really needed some amusement to take my mind off the absorbing problem into which I would presently plunge. It can hardly be hinted at in the present connection, but, if you remember that throne-shattering society, the Ko Lao Hui, the part it played in the Chinese revolution and the part it would have played had its monstrous leader, Koshinga, lived, then you’ll know what it meant when the word was passed to a few of us that Koshinga had not died. Or, rather, that a certain man had arisen in China who claimed to be Koshinga. China has been my hobby for years—and in face of this rumor I was chained to San Francisco for a week.

But, to return, within twenty-four hours after meeting Osborne I took up my solitary residence in Cragcastle, which was the peculiar punishment, test or merely eccentric requirement imposed by the senior Maxon’s will upon his only son and heir. At ten o’clock of my first evening there Osborne’s warning of immediate danger had been substantiated. In answer to a knock, I had opened the door, and Hardridge had thrust his revolver against my chest.

To his desire to punish before killing, to view my writhing soul as well as my writhing body, I probably owed my life. But I’d disappointed him in the first respect, and I felt he would soon seek the ultimate satisfaction.

“You’re far from complimentary,” I said. “Crook, coward, traitor—well, maybe I’m all three. But you haven’t yet accused me of being a fool, and a fool I’d certainly be if I came and played with death in this house without seeing to my cards. And would a coward sit in such a game quite as calmly as I’m sitting unless he was sure he held the winning hand?”

I could tell by the violence of his rejoinder that these two questions had been troubling him all along.

“A cur like you—” he began.

I didn’t feel like enduring any more; so I raised my right hand, that had never shifted from its first position on the table, a short three inches. The movement caught his attention, and his eyes shifted to the taut string that extended downward from my closed hand, and disappeared through a hole in the top of the table.

AND the sentence he had begun died on his lips. It was interesting to note how, like a weakening shadow, uncertainty flitted over his face. There’s no threat so unnerving as a mystery.

I smiled.

“Puzzling, isn’t it? If I were to lower the top—so—and curve it—so—it forms a question-mark. Well, I’ll answer the question.” I pulled the string taut again and caught his eyes and held them. “The other end of the string—” I measured my words—“is tied to the trigger of an automatic. The muzzle is about two inches from your vest. You may feel of it if you like.

“Oh,” I added swiftly as almost brainless rage flashed into his eyes, “you’d be willing to die killing me, of course. But you can’t; I’ve made sure of that. I can riddle you with bullets before you can get your revolver up, and the shock of the first one will destroy your aim. That’s right; sit still— There—” as his left hand stole under the edge of the table—“touch it lightly, for your health’s sake. You see. Now put your hand on the table again and shove your revolver across the table with your finger-tips, butt forward.

“Don’t be foolish,” I said reasonably as he hesitated. “Don’t you understand I’m going to let you go and give you another chance for murder and myself another chance for entertainment?”

“Don’t tell me that,” rasped Hardridge roughly but obeying me nevertheless. “What’s your game? Why don’t you end it?”

Of course, I was playing the part of John Maxon, Jr., badly—that is, judging from Hardridge’s conception of that gentleman. But to act as Hardridge suggested might involve unpleasant consequences, being myself without the law. Then, too, Hardridge was the only possible open sesame I knew of to the mystery of Osborne’s real motive in persuading me into my present masquerade.

“We all change with the years,” I said carelessly. “You may leave when you like.”

I picked his revolver up, glanced at it, leveled it at him and arose.