For a guy I first figured was a house name at Columbia
Publications old Seven Anderton really got around. First I
learned that he had a bunch of stories in Argosy circa late
1920s into the 1930s (although so far I haven't found any in
my issues) and someone on another list gave his autobiography
from Argosy
(which Todd reprinted here). And from that I learned that he
left home early and hoboed around, rode with Pancho Villa,
was bad into drink before a woman became his wife and he
sobered up. Not mentioned was his term in prison which
respectable sources tell me he was serving when he published
his first story. But before that first story another writer
sold a story "Seven Anderton" to Blue Book in 1926 and said
he had it from the horses mouth but then writers have been
lying about that long before E.R. Burroughs really made it a
cliche in the pulps. Oh, and I checked the Brad Day index and
old Seven had a long story in Amazing Quarterly back in
1932.
So old Seven was real and continued to sell stories until his
death in 1958. Today I checked our archives and our Juri (you
still on the list Juri?) wrote about him back in 2000,
shortly before I joined the list. He mentioned that
Anderton's stories about Edna Pender in the 1950s were among
the ground-breakers for female private eyes.
Hmmm...there were two "Ware and Pender" stories in my issues
of "Famous Detective" and so I pulled out the February 1952
issue (the same with the Hunt Collins story) and read "Hot
Ice House-Warming."
All I can say is Wow! This is the toughest broad I've yet
discovered in pulp fiction. She is a female Mike Hammer. No
lie. Steve Ware is her partner in St. Louis and is the first
person narrator but he was never really much of a success
until he hooked up with Edna Pender and he knows it. We see
the story through his eyes but this is not an equal
partnership. Ware does what Edna tells him and hangs on for
dear life.
She is ugly. A Sergeant Polcher comes to take away her gun
and her permit and she stops him cold. "By gawd," he
declared, "there ought to be a law against a female being
that ugly."
"Did you ever see her smile?" Steve asked.
"No, but I've heard her swear. I had to look some of the
words up; they were lulus."
I figured the point was she didn't smile but a page later she
did and Steve Ware made his point plain. "Steve forgot
everything else in watching the smile. Miss Pender certainly
had the most unfortunate face that ever grew on a woman, but
her infrequent smile brought about a major miracle with the
job lot of mismatched features. It was like an optical
illusion, producing something that was almost--or perhaps
more than--beauty."
He says to her about officer Polcher: "Why don't you smile at
Polcher?" She sways back "I'd laugh out loud at him...if he
didn't make so damn mad. He wants my gun! Fat chance: before
I get through I'm going to curl his hair, but tight."
I was now beginning to realize that this was not simply some
dashed off story for the penny a word or less that Anderton
received. This is a carefully, artfully developed character.
Miss Pender does not like cops or any authority because she
grew up poor and tough and doesn't trust them. I wonder if
this is a reflection of Anderton's personal experience? She
berates Ware for being too friendly with the cops.
In this story a woman has just been released from prison and
the police are following her because she is the widow of a
robber from who they never recovered the loot. Edna Pender
takes her side against the cops and against other gang
members after the loot. Pender hides her, which is not
against the law as the woman walked down the whole sentence.
The cops have no right to hold her. Pender is aided by taxi
drivers and other regular citizens who trust her far more
than the police. A taxi driver says: "They say I am a damned
crook and I say as long as nobody think so but the cops, and
Miss Pender is my friend, I will get along."
So later in the story a bad guy tries to kill her. She was
laying in wait for him and the hunter becomes prey. Because
she wanted to question him, she tries to shoot the gun out of
his hand. But the bullet glances off the weapon and travels
up his arm creating a nasty wound. The guy dies from shock.
Steve Ware later says she didn't kill the guy, he died of a
heart attack. "Then I brought it on," she retorted, "and I
want the credit."
Edna Pender is at one point captured by a crooked cop and
tied up in an old ice-house. Steve and Sergeant Polcher
follow the crooked cop to the ice-house.
Do they rescue Pender? Not on your life. She has worked
herself free and is waiting on the guy who locked her
up.
Howell, the crooked cop, opens the door with Sergeant Polcher
and Ware hiding and watching (and doing the 1st person
narration). "There was a sudden flurry of action and a scream
from Howell as he reeled back and fell, rolling. Something
burst from the door and landed on top of him. It was Miss
Pender. She was a dirty and disheveled bunch of action and
fury; she struck again and again at Howell's head."
They yell at her to stop, don't kill him.
"Miss Pender looked around, saw them and rose with her
shoulder bag in her left hand and a set of brass knuckles
gleaming on the other. Hair awry, clothes torn, soiled and
covered with ancient sawdust, she stood astride her moaning
victim. Polcher say afterward that she should have put her
foot on Howell's chest and howled."
As Howell lay on his back groping for his armpit, Miss Pender
kicks his hand away. Ware chides her for not telling him
about Howell and she says to her partner, "You always go to
the cops," she glared at Polcher, "and they wouldn't have
believed me. I'd have done all right if you hadn't come
along. All I ask is that you don't be damn nuisances now.
This is my meat," she kicked Howell, "and I'm going to
recover the Solomon stuff."
Howell, his eyes filled with blood, begs Sergeant Polcher to
save him.
"She's crazy."
Miss Pender put her brass knuckles in her purse and grabs a
pistol. "This can be simple," she said, "or the louse can get
where he can stall. I'm going to talk to him a while inside
that insulated icehouse. It smothers noise. I tried
it."
Ware and Polcher decide to do just that. She asks them to
leave the door cracked so she can see to shoot. But before
this takes place a confederate of Howell's comes out of the
darkness and grabs Sergeant Polcher and puts a gun to his
head. "This gun is cocked," the newcomer warned. "One wrong
move, and I will pull the trigger."
Steve Ware was "frozen. A move for his gun would most
certainly mean death for Polcher."
Rara friends, if you think Edna Pender would be stopped by
the threat to honest Sergeant Polcher you haven't been paying
attention. She did at least shoot first the threatening gun
hand which made his shot miss the good sergeant. Then she
blew a kneecap off the bad guy.
Someone tells the sergeant he was lucky she at least shot the
gun hand first.
"You have ridden Edna ever since she was a kid making
faces at you on the shanty town beat."
Polcher grunted. "She made faces. Who could tell?"
Friends this is the real deal. I am a collector...well maybe
an accumulator is more like it. I own thousands of old mags
and I buy still more...digging through them and sometimes
wondering what drives me to do so. Here is the reason. It is
finding, totally unexpectedly, a gem of a story and a writer
I never heard of who just may have authored other little
wonders that might be in that next mag I buy.
Richard Moore
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 12 Sep 2003 EDT