The Last Black Bat Story

THE LAST BLACK BAT STORY

         For years now many pulp researchers have been looking for the last promised Black Bat story, The Lady of Death by author Stewart Sterling. We had a starting date for our search since the last published story, Hot, Willing, And Deadly, also by Stewart Sterling, published in the Winter 1953 issue of BLACK BOOK DETECTIVE to go on. At this time the stories were a year apart, so if they had the title of the next story, then surely it was already written.

         But where, and when could it have been printed? We knew that it was likely the title would be changed, but we felt the author would keep his byline on the story, or reasonably figured thusly. So over the years, while in correspondence with Monte Herridge, we looked at just about every Stewart Sterling story we came across. All to no avail. Finally, Monte wrote to say he had found a suspicious story, and what did I think about it. He sent me a photocopy of the story, and I reluctantly began reading it, thinking this would probably be another false trail.

         It wasn’t. Imagine my surprise, as I read the story, how much this sounded like Hot, Willing, And Deadly, including the format and similar characters. The more I got into the story, the more I recognized it for what it was – the missing Black Batstory, The Lady of Death.

         The story is, The Lady’s Out For Blood by Stewart Sterling, and it was published in TRIPLE DETECTIVE, Spring 1953, V9 N1. Whereas Hot, Willing, And Deadly was 35 pages in length, The Lady’s Out For Blood is only 31 pages in length, and reading the story you see a few pages where something has been removed from the story. My guess would be the roles of Butch and Silk; who were normally in the stories. Their counterparts were not in this story.

         In my correspondence with Norman Daniels, the lead author of the Black Bat series, he once told me that the new editor, a woman, had demanded more sex, thus the change to Stewart Sterling at that time. Hot, Willing, And Deadly had plenty of sexual suggestions to satisfy the new editor. And in that story Tony Quinn drops his pretended blindness, and becomes D.A. of Vulcan City in Ohio. It is a strange story in the series, and not in keeping with the long-lived Black Bat we knew so well over the years. The story involved prostitutes, venereal disease, and murder.

         InThe Lady’s Out For Blood, a young girl has been shot and is dying. A mysterious phone call alerts the police, and when they find the girl, she is almost dead, but claims to have accidentally shot herself with the gun. The Medical Examiner (ME this time instead of D.A.) doesn’t like the set up, and refuses to rule the case an accidental shooting or suicide. Strangely, he does a lot of snooping, even venturing out at night to investigate the people involved. Not the normal activity of a medical examiner, but right up the path for D.A. Tony Quinn, alias, theBlack Bat.

         Similar to Hot, Willing, And Deadly, there are some complicated twists in the story. First, the man in the case is married, but having an affair with the young girl. All the time he’s been promising to get rid of his wife. At the very first, the girl has a gun, and plans on killing herself. The man stops her.

         Later, she does turn up dead. As the story unravels for the ME, he finds out there are other forces at work – the man’s fat wife, and her young male chauffeur; these two are having an affair also. The husband wants to murder his fat wife so he can be with the young girl, and confides in the young chauffeur, who tells his mistress. She decides to have the girl brought to her, and knocks her out, placing her in in her own bed. When the husband comes to kill his wife, he shoots the young girl in his wife’s bed instead. The fat wife has him return the girl to her own apartment, where she will eventually be found and die from the gunshot wound. Thus, the lady of death. The young girl knows that it was her lover who shot her, thus her claim of accidental shooting.

         Also in the story, a girl assistant jumps from nowhere into the story suddenly, very likely the role originally played by Carol Baldwin. She is used as bait for the roaming husband, and has a hard time resisting his advances. But the ME arrives just in time to save her from being murdered by the fat wife. From there, after the police arrive and take the husband and wife to jail, the ME explains everything to his assistant, almost exactly as D.A. Quinn did in Hot, Willing, And Deadly.

         The changes: As already mentioned, Butch and Silk were dropped from the story, D.A. Tony Quinn becomes ME Myro Catin of Naveral City, Ohio. A beard is added for effect. Carol Baldwin becomes a girl named Paulette. Changes over. What the reader is reading is, The Lady of Death.

         Okay, so we now know that The Lady of Death was written, and does exist. Now we still have another Stewart Sterling mystery, the Phantom Detective’s last case, The Merry Widow Murders. Well, it doesn’t exist, but I discovered where it was coming from. The author was rewriting an older pulp story of his, one that might surprise you. But I will detail that one another time.

         I very much appreciate Monte Herridge for his help in locating this lost story. Long and hard research eventually pays off. Happy reading.

The Black Bat Novel That Disappeared

THE BLACK BAT NOVEL THAT DISAPPEARED

At the end of 1951, there was probably a decision at the THRILLING GROUP to drop some of their titles. With the Winter 1952 issues of BLACK BOOK DETECTIVE and G-MEN DETECTIVE, chances are both titles were included in the shake up. The next story in the Dan Fowler series was advertised as Each Night I Die by C.K.M. Scanlon, while the next Black Bat story was advertised as The Eyes of Murder. Following is the announcement in BLACK BOOK DETECTIVE:

"Next issue's Novel: The Eyes of Murder by G. Wayman Jones. Plus - An all-star array of other crime and mystery stories!"

         But the Spring 1952 issue did not appear. Instead, the next issue was Stewart Sterling’s Hot, Willing – And Deadly, Winter 1953, one year later. The same thing happened over at G-MEN DETECTIVE, there was no Spring 1952 Dan Fowler story. Instead, Richard Foster’s The White Death appeared one year later, Winter 1953. Something happened the previous year. My guess is, both titles were canceled. Curiously, Stewart Sterling was brought in for the Phantom Detective in 1952, which makes me wonder if The Eyes Of Murder wasn’t his. Strangely, there is a 1941 Dan Fowler titled The Eyes of Death, and I had a suspicion that he might have planned on rewriting that into a Black Bat yarn.

It gets stranger. The Spring 1953 issue of 5 Detective Novels contains Sterling’s Model For Murder, a similar title to The Eyes of Murder. But let’s go back to 1952, and look at Sterling’s Phantom Detective entries. We have three stories, Candidate For Death, Fall 1952; The Staring Killer, Winter 1953; and Odds On Death, Spring 1953. However, it’s the Winter 1953 story we are concerned with. Here is the Blurb for The Staring Killer.

“It is Muriel Havens alone who has seen The Staring Killer committing a heinous crime. She knows he has pushed a man off a subway platform to death under the train wheels – and what’s more, The Staring Killer knows that she has witnessed the murder. For an instant, as he races past her, the killer gives her one glaring stare – a look she can never forget. It’s a peculiar, frightening stare that seems to bore straight through her hypnotically. A stare that spells death!

The killer’s staring eyes are a challenge that Muriel can’t disregard. At great personal danger, she drifts into the waterfront district, posing as one of the water front babes – determined to find The Staring Killer and help unearth his sinister machinations.”

         Sounds like “The Eyes of Murder” to me.  At the time he was writing The Phantom Detective, Sterling was also writing Myro Catin stories. When the Black Bat was suddenly resurrected, and they asked him for a quick story, he must have made a few changes to Hot, Willing – And Deadly, and it was accepted in place of The Eyes of Murder. They must have asked for more stories, so he turned the second Myro Catin story, The Lady of Death into a Black Bat. At the same time, Norman Daniels, who had moved to California, sent an outline for The Celebrity Murders, and those were the line up for Winter, Spring, and Summer, 1953. But only the Winter 1953 story was published. The Black Bat was canceled again. Sterling reverted The Lady of Death back to Myro Catin, and published it as The Lady’s Out For Blood, TRIPLE DETECTIVE 1953. That’s what I think happened.

There is a footnote to all this, as well. Back at The Phantom Detective, Norman Daniels’ Murder’s Agent was published in the Summer 1953 issue. The announcements listed the next story as The Merry Widow Murders by Robert Wallace, and the plot reads curiously similar to Sterling’s 1943 Spider novel, When Satan Came To Town. The Spider was about to become The Phantom Detective. There was also some similarity to that novel and Odds On Death, PHANTOM DETECTIVE, Spring 1953. Want to bet Sterling wasn’t rewriting some old novels? Nothing wrong with it, authors did it all the time in the pulps. I hope someone proves me wrong, and manuscripts are discovered for The Eyes of Murder and The Merry Widow Murders, but remember in Candidate of Death when the Phantom Detective became The Shadow? Think about it, if I’m right, the Black Bat became the Phantom Detective in The Staring Killer, and The Spider became the Phantom Detective in The Merry Widow Murders. Only in the pulps!