Cover

OTTO PENZLER PRESENTS

AMERICAN MYSTERY CLASSICS

THE BIGGER THEY COME

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER (1889-1970) was the best-selling American author of the 20th century, mainly due to the enormous success of his Perry Mason series, which numbered more than 80 novels and inspired a half-dozen motion pictures, radio programs, and a long-running television series that starred Raymond Burr. Having begun his career as a pulp writer, Gardner brought a hard-boiled style and sensibility to the early Mason books and to his series starring Bertha Cool and Donal Lam. For over a quarter of a century he wrote more than a million words a year under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, the most famous being A.A. Fair.

OTTO PENZLER, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of the Mysterious Press (1975), a literary crime imprint; MysteriousPress.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; Penzler Publishers (2018); and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

Title

THE BIGGER

THEY COME

ERLE STANLEY

GARDNER

writing as A. A. Fair

Introduction by

OTTO

PENZLER

AMERICAN

MYSTERY

CLASSICS

Penzler Publishers

New York

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

WHEN READERS think about Erle Stanley Gardner, they mostly conjure Perry Mason, partly for the eighty-six novels in which the trial lawyer was the primary character, but also for the long-running television series that starred Raymond Burr and is still a late-night staple in re-runs.

But Gardner also wrote thirty novels under the A.A. Fair pseudonym, all about the private detectives Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. The Bigger They Come (titled Lam to the Slaughter in the U.K.), the first novel in the series, was published in 1939, but Gardner’s authorship was not revealed until the end of World War II. For most authors, thirty books would be a full career but for Gardner it was fewer than a quarter of the 130 novels he produced.

Many readers prefer the novels about this unlikely detective duo to his more iconic defense lawyer because the characterization is sharper than in the Mason and other novels and they have the one element noticeably lacking in much of Gardner’s other works—humor.

Bertha Cool is the senior member of the team. A large, gray-haired woman in her sixties, she founded the private investigation agency in 1936 when her husband Henry Cool died. Her twinkling eyes give her a grandmotherly appearance that is belied by her tough-mindedness and equally tough language. Her battles with weight are an ongoing challenge, as she has weighed as much as 275 pounds. She prefers to wear loose, unconfining garments and has been described by her partner as looking like “a cylinder of current jelly on a plate” when she walks.

Donald Lam is a disbarred lawyer who has had many brushes with the police. In The Bigger They Come he is hungry, desperately in need of a job, and he manages to convince Mrs. Cool that, despite his diminutive appearance—he is five feet, six inches, tall and weighs 125 pounds—he is man enough to be a detective. He tries to prove it by never backing down from a fight but usually gets beat up. Though small, he is considered very attractive by most women, though Elsie Brand, the firm’s pretty and shy secretary, proves elusive in spite of Lam’s relentless pursuit.

After being hired by Mrs. Cool, Lam’s first assignment is simply to serve a subpoena but he is unable to locate the man. In fact, no one seems able to find him.

As it happens, the book was based on a real-world quirk in the law that Gardner, a lawyer, discovered and, as a crusader for much of his life, wove into the plot. He learned that there are certain conditions in Arizona that made it possible to commit murder with impunity as long as the murderer never left the state. Although a work of fiction, when it was published lawmakers were made aware of this loophole in the law and closed it.

There were numerous elements in the Cool-Lam series that returned on a regular basis. References to Mrs. Cool’s weight are common (with various books listing it between 160 and 275 pounds), as are numerous mentions of her avaricious greed and her foul mouth, though the most common epithet quoted is the mild, if bizarre, “fry me for an oyster.”

Most books remind readers of Lam’s quick wit and profound knowledge of the law. Although he often is referred to as disbarred, he claims he wasn’t ever officially disbarred but that he merely talked to much. When Bertha asks him what he talked too much about, he is both embarrassed and feisty when he acknowledges that he told someone how he could commit a murder and get away with it. (Although the methods were different, other lawyers in fiction—and, let’s be honest, probably in real life—explained to clients that murder was the solution to their problems, notably Melville Davisson Post’s Randolph Mason and Lawrence Block’s Ehrengraf.)

Gardner’s style changed quite a bit over the years. He started his career as a writer for the pulp magazines that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. Authors were famously paid a penny a word by most of the pulps, but the top writers in the top magazines managed to get all the way up to three cents a word. This munificent fee was reserved for the best of the best of their time, some of whom remain popular and successful to the present day (Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich), some of whom only are remembered and read by the modest coterie that avidly reads and collects pulp fiction (Carroll John Daly, Arthur Leo Zagat, Arthur J. Burks). One who earned the big bucks regularly, especially when he wrote for Black Mask, the greatest of the pulps, was Erle Stanley Gardner.

Gardner had learned and honed his craft in the pulps, so it is not surprising that the earliest Perry Mason novels were hard-boiled, tough-guy books, with Mason as a fearless, two-fisted battler, rather than the calm, self-possessed figure that most readers remember today. Reading the first Mason novels, The Case of the Velvet Claws, published in 1933, and The Case of the Careless Kitten, published twenty years later, it is difficult to remember that they were written by the same author. Both styles, by the way, were first-rate, just different.

Gardner was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1889. Because his father was a mining engineer, he traveled often as a child. As a teenager, he participated in professional boxing as well as promoting unlicensed matches, placing himself at risk of criminal prosecution, which gave him an interest in the law. He took a job as a typist at a California law firm and after reading law for fifty hours a week for three years, he was admitted to the California bar. He practiced in Oxnard from 1911 to 1918, gaining a reputation as a champion of the underdog through his defense of poor Mexican and Chinese clients.

He left to become a tire salesman in order to earn more money but he missed the courtroom and joined another law firm in 1921. It is then that he started to write fiction, hoping that he could augment his modest income. He worked a full day at court, followed that with several hours of research in the law library, then went home to write fiction into the small hours, setting a goal of at least 4,000 words a day. He sold two stories in 1921, none in 1922, and only one in 1923, but it was to the prestigious Black Mask. The following year, thirteen of his stories saw print, five of them in Black Mask. Over the next decade he wrote nearly fifteen million words and sold hundreds of stories, many pseudonymously so that he could have multiple stories in a single magazine, each under a different name.

His output was prodigious. He wrote 1,200,000 words annually during most of the 1920s and 1930s. That is a novel a month, plus a stack of short stories, for a fifteen-year stretch. In 1932, his most productive year, he wrote an unimaginable 2,400,000 words—the equivalent of a full-length novel every other week.

In 1932, he finally took a vacation, an extended trip to China, since he had become so financially successful. That is also the year in which he began to submit his first novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws. It was rejected by several publishers before William Morrow took it, and Gardner published every mystery with that house for the rest of his life. Thayer Hobson, then the president of Morrow, suggested that the protagonist of that book, Perry Mason, should become a series character and Gardner agreed.

The Mason novels became an immediate success so Gardner resigned from his law practice to devote full time to writing. Eager to have privacy, he acquired parcels of land in the Southwest and eventually settled into the “Gardner Fiction Factory” on a thousand-acre ranch in Temecula, California. The ranch had a dozen guest cottages and trailers to house his support staff of twenty employees, all of whom are reported to have called him “Uncle Erle.” Among them were six secretaries, all working full time, transcribing his dictated novels, non-fiction books and articles, and correspondence.

He was intensely interested in prison conditions and was a strong advocate of reform. In 1948, he formed the Court of Last Resort, a private organization dedicated to helping those believed to have been unfairly incarcerated. The group succeeded in freeing many unjustly convicted men and Gardner wrote a book, The Court of Last Resort, describing the group’s work; it won an Edgar for the best fact crime book of the year.

In the 1960s, Gardner became alarmed at some changes in American literature. He told the New York Times, “I have always aimed my fiction at the masses who constitute the solid backbone of America, I have tried to keep faith with the American family. In a day when the prevailing mystery story trends are towards sex, sadism, and seduction, I try to base my stories on speed, situation, and suspense.”

While Gardner wrote prolifically about a wide variety of characters under many pseudonyms, most notably the thirty novels about Cool and Lam, all his books give evidence of clearly identifiable characteristics. There is a minimum of description and a maximum of dialogue, and Gardner’s heroes are not averse to breaking the exact letter of the law in order to secure what they consider to be justice. They share contempt for pomposity. Villains or deserving victims are often self-important, wealthy individuals who can usually be identified because Gardner has given them two last names (such as Harrington Faulkner).

Whether the books feature Perry Mason, D.A. Doug Selby, Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, or non-series characters, Erle Stanley Gardner’s writing always entertains. You don’t sell more than 300,000,000 books by failing to deliver.

—OTTO PENZLER

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

PUSHING MY way into the office, I stood just inside the door, my hat in my hand.

There were six men ahead of me. The ad had said between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. If appearances were any indication, some of them were optimistic liars. For the most part, we were a seedy-looking outfit.

A straw-haired secretary behind a typewriting desk banged away at a typewriter. She looked up at me. Her face was as cold as a clean bedsheet.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to see Mr. Cool.”

“What about?”

I moved my head in a comprehensive gesture to include the half-dozen men who were looking up at me in casually hostile appraisal. “I’m answering the ad.”

“I thought so. Sit down,” she said.

“There seems,” I observed, “to be no chair available.”

“There will be in a minute. You may stand and wait, or come back.”

“I’ll stand.”

She turned back to her typewriter. A buzzer sounded. She picked up a telephone, listened a moment, said, “Very well,” and looked expectantly at the door which said “B. L. Cool, Private.” The door opened. A man, who looked as though he was trying to get to the open air in a hurry, streaked through the office. The blonde said, “You may go in, Mr. Smith.”

A young chap with stooped shoulders and slim waist got to his feet, jerked down his vest, adjusted his tie, pinned a smirk on his face, opened the door to the private office, and went in.

The blonde said to me, “What’s your name?”

“Donald Lam.”

“L-a-m-b?” she asked.

“L-a-m,” I said.

She jotted it down, and then, with her eyes on me, started making shorthand notes under the name. I could see she was cataloguing my personal appearance.

“That all?” I asked when she’d covered me from head to foot with her eyes and finished making pothooks with her fingers.

“Yes. Sit down in that chair and wait.”

I sat and waited. Smith didn’t last long. He was out in less than two minutes. The second man made the round trip so fast it looked as though he’d come out on the bounce. The third man lasted ten minutes and came out looking dazed. The door of the outer office opened. Three more applicants came in. The blonde took their names, sized them up and made notes. After they were seated, she picked up the telephone and said laconically, “Four more,” listened for a moment, and hung up.

When the next man came out, the blonde went in. She was in there about five minutes. When she came out, she gave me the nod: “You may go in next, Mr. Lam,” she said.

The men who were ahead of me frowned at her and then at me. They didn’t say anything.

Apparently she didn’t mind their frowns any more than I did.

I opened the door, entered a huge room with several filing cabinets, two comfortable chairs, a table, and a big desk.

I put on my best smile, said, “Mr. Cool, I—” and then stopped, because the person seated behind the desk wasn’t Mister.

She was somewhere in the sixties, with gray hair, twinkling gray eyes, and a benign, grandmotherly expression on her face. She must have weighed over two hundred. She said, “Sit down, Mr. Lam—no, not in that chair. Come over here where I can look at you. There, that’s better. Now, for Christ’s sake, don’t lie to me.”

She swung around in her swivel chair and looked me over. I might have been her favorite grandson coming in for a cookie. “Where do you live?” she asked.

“I haven’t any permanent address,” I said. “Right at present I’m in a rooming house on West Pico.”

“What’s your training?”

“Nothing,” I told her, “that does me any good. I had an education that was supposed to fit me for the appreciation of art, literature, and life. It didn’t have anything to do with making money. I find I can’t appreciate art, literature, or life without money.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Parents living?”

“No.”

“You’re not married?”

“No.”

She said, “You’re just a little shrimp. I don’t s’pose you weigh over a hundred and twenty, do you?”

“A hundred and twenty-seven.”

“Can you fight?”

“No—I do sometimes, but I get licked.”

“This is a man’s job.”

“And I’m a man,” I retorted hotly.

“But you’re too small. People would push you around.”

“When I was in college,” I said, “some of the boys used to try it. They gave it up after a while. I don’t like to be pushed around. There are lots of ways of fighting. I have my way, and I’m good at it.”

“Did you read the ad carefully?”

“I think I did.”

“Did you consider yourself qualified?”

“I have no ties on earth,” I said. “I think I’m fairly courageous. I’m active, and, I hope, intelligent. If I’m not, somebody wasted a lot of money giving me an education.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

“When did he die?”

“Two years ago.”

“What have you been doing since then?”

“Odd jobs.”

Her face didn’t change expression. She smiled at me benignly and said, “You’re a God-awful liar.”

I pushed back my chair.

“Being a woman,” I said, “you can call me that. Being a man, I don’t have to take it.”

I started for the door.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I think you stand a chance of getting the job.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Don’t be a sap. Turn around here and look at me. You were lying, weren’t you?”

What the hell! The job was gone anyway. I swung around and faced her. “Yes,” I said, “I was. It’s a habit I have. Oddly enough, however, I prefer to have my prevarications called to my attention in a more tactful manner.”

“Ever been in jail?”

“No.”

“Come back here and sit down.”

That’s what pounding the pavement does for your morale. I went back and sat down. I had exactly ten cents in my pocket. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday noon. The employment agencies either couldn’t or wouldn’t do a thing for me. I’d finally resorted to answering the ads that looked just a little fishy on their face. That’s the last step.

“Now tell me the truth,” she said.

“I’m twenty-nine,” I told her. “My parents are dead. I’ve had a college education. I’m reasonably intelligent. I’m willing to do almost anything. I need the money. If you give me the job, I’ll try and be loyal.”

“Is that all?” she asked.

“That’s all.”

“What’s your name?”

I smiled.

“Then I take it Lam isn’t your real name?”

I said, “I’ve told you the truth. Now, I can keep on talking if you want—I’m rather good at that.”

“I fancy you are,” she said. “Now tell me, what did you really study in college?”

“What difference does that make?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said. “But it was the way you answered questions about your college education that made me realize you were lying. You never went to college, now, did you?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t graduate?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You weren’t expelled?”

“No.”

She pursed her lips. “Do you know anything about anatomy?”

“No, not much.”

“What did you study in college?”

“Want me to improvise?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Not now—yes, I do, too. This job needs a liar. It also needs a convincing talker. I didn’t like your first lie. It wasn’t convincing.”

“I’m telling you the truth, now,” I pointed out.

“Quit it, then. Lie to me for a while.”

“What about?”

“Anything,” she said, “only make it sound convincing. Build it up. Embroider it. What did you study in college?”

“The love life of microbes,” I said. “So far scientists have only considered the propagation of microbes in terms of guinea pigs. No one has ever considered it from the standpoint of the microbe. Now, when I refer to the love life of a microbe, you are doubtless inclined to interpret it in terms of your own—”

“I haven’t any,” she interrupted.

“—outlook on life,” I went on smoothly without paying any attention to her interruption. “Now, given an even temperature, a reasonable amount of nourishing food, microbes become exceedingly ardent. In fact, the—”

She held up her hand palm outward as though she were pushing the words back in my mouth. “That’s enough of that God damn tripe,” she said. “It’s glib but it isn’t good lying because nobody cares. Tell me the truth. Do you know one single damn thing about microbes?”

“No,” I told her.

Her eyes glittered. “How did you stop them from pushing you around when you were in college?”

“I’d prefer not to go into that—if you want the truth.”

“I want the truth, and I want the information.”

“I use my head. I have been called mean,” I said. “Everyone has to protect himself in life. When he’s weak somewhere, nature makes him strong elsewhere. I figure things out. I always have. If a man starts pushing me around, I find a way to make him stop, and before I’m through he’s sorry he ever started pushing. I don’t mind hitting below the belt if I have to. I guess I even get a kick out of it. That’s because of the way I’m made. A little runt is apt to be mean.

“Now if you’re through amusing yourself at my expense, I’ll be going. I hate being laughed at. Some day you’ll find it’s been rather expensive amusement. I’ll work out a scheme and get even with you.”

She sighed, not the wheezy sigh of a fatigued fat woman, but a sigh that marked a load off her mind. She picked up the telephone on her desk, and said, “Elsie, Donald Lam gets the job. Clear that riffraff out of the office. Put a sign on the door that the position has been filled. There have been enough bums in the office for one day.”

She slammed the receiver back on its hook, opened a drawer, took out some papers and started reading. After a few moments, I heard the scrape of chairs and muffled sounds from the outer office as the waiting applicants filed out.

I sat still, speechless with surprise, waiting.

“Got any money?” the woman asked abruptly.

“Yes,” I said, and then added after a moment, “some.”

“How much?”

“Enough to last me,” I told her, “for a while.”

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