William Campbell Gault (1910 – 1995) was a highly regarded, prolific writer of mysteries (31 crime novels), and a very successful author of action books for young adults (33 novels), mostly about competitive sports and fast cars. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, and educated at the University of Wisconsin, Gault moved to Southern California after serving in World War II and became a full time writer.
His first mystery pulp story, “Marksman,” appeared in Clues magazine in 1940. He wrote several hundred detective stories before he produced his first novel, Don’t Cry for Me (1951), which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Between 1946 and 1950 Gault wrote nine detective tales for Black Mask, five of them starring his colorful, articulate detective, Mortimer Jones. Gault’s Black Mask stories were so popular that they were almost always featured on the magazine’s cover.
Mortimer Jones is a typically athletic William Campbell Gault hero, a knock-about fellow who likes people, enjoys sports, and adores the finer things in life, especially fancy cars. But Jones is also something uncommon in the hard-boiled hero, a detective who is a quietly observant, compelling, first-person narrator. Mortimer Jones was a precursor of Gault’s greatest series character, ex-LA Rams guard-turned-South California private eye, Brock Callahan. One of the first of the compassionate private eyes, Brock was also one of first series detectives to have a steady girlfriend. In fact, critics and fellow authors like Fredric Brown, Dorothy B. Hughes, Bill Pronzini, and Kevin Burton Smith have all noticed that Gault was one of the first American authors of detective mysteries to pay more attention to the human relations in his novels than the details of the mystery. In this regard, Ross Macdonald, a writer often credited with transforming the classic American detective mystery from a popular genre formula into important, mainstream novels concerned with real families facing contemporary problems, dedicated his last novel to William Campbell Gault.
Gault’s popularity never faltered. By the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, Gault turned away from the detective novel and concentrated on the young adult adventure novel, which was more lucrative for him. He gathered an avid younger audience that has continued to renew itself. Then, in the 1980s, Gault began writing a new series of novels about his most durable hero, Brock Callahan. William Campbell Gault never stopped writing or publishing. His last novel was published in 1995, shortly before he died.
“Cold, Cold Ground” appeared in the January 1947 issue of Black Mask Magazine.
Keith Alan Deutsch
Mortimer Jones, the Duesenberg driving detective,
Solves the murder of Flame Harlin, a hot dame who fixed it so her killer would end up in the cold, cold ground.
IT WAS early fall, and faintly chilly, outside. In my office, the thermometer was well over seventy, but Miss Townsbury had brought some chill with her.
Make no mistake, form no mental picture because of the ‘Miss’. She was between forty and fifty years of age, dressed in some brown and eye-repelling type of ribbed silk. An iceberg, in brown silk. Blue eyes, blue as frozen sea water, and features sharp as icicles, with an icicle’s thinness to her spare figure. There was nothing about her to indicate that she had ever melted or would ever melt.
She was telling me about the girl named Flame. Flame was the daughter of her brother’s second wife—if you follow me. That is, her brother had married twice. For his second wife, he had married a divorcee. This divorcee had a daughter by her first marriage. This daughter’s name was Flame. I hope it’s all clear. Flame was missing.
Miss Townsbury had begun to suspect something was amiss when she wrote to Flame (Miss Flame Harlin) at her apartment in town, inviting her to come up and spend a weekend at the Townsbury country place. There had been no answer.
Miss Townsbury had phoned, twice, without success. This morning, she had come to town to do some shopping and had dropped in at the girl’s apartment. The accumulation of newspapers and mail at the front door, the accumulation of milk bottles at the rear door, had convinced Miss Townsbury that things were not as they should be. I asked her if she had gone to the police. She shook her head emphatically. “I didn’t think it wise to bring them into it, Mr. Jones.” She paused. “Not until we are sure that Miss Harlin is—really missing.” If she wasn’t sure, why had she come to me?
At twenty dollars a day (and expenses), I thought it best not to ask that question.
I asked some other questions.
Miss Harlin was an entertainer, a comedienne.
Did she sing? Did she juggle? Did she crack jokes?
She sang. “Though her voice wasn’t anything extraordinary, you understand. That doesn’t seem necessary, today, however. She had—whatever it is the public wants, today. Her songs were very well received.”
I knew what the public wanted, today and every day, and so did she. She was being genteel. I asked: “She isn’t married, of course?”
A thin, cool smile. “No. She was engaged, at one time, to a Mr. Rodney Carlton. There’s a possibility …” She stopped.
I said: “You think there’s a possibility they may have eloped?”
“Eloped?” The gaze came up to meet mine, then moved away. “Eloped? No. I suppose that could be a polite phrasing.” The gaze direct again. “Miss Harlin, I might remind you, is an entertainer. She has always lived an undisciplined life. Her standards of conduct are theatrical standards. Am I being clear?”
I gave her a reproving glance. I said softly: “You’re being completely frank, Miss Townsbury. Have you any reason, other than those, to believe that Miss Harlin might have done what you’re suggesting?”
The figure stiffened in my leatherette chair. “None. However, under the circumstances, you can see why I came to a private detective.”
“The police,” I told her, “are very discreet in matters of this kind. You wouldn’t need to fear any unpleasant publicity.” Not much, I thought, not much.
The cold eyes surveyed me haughtily. “Are you telling me, in your indirect way, that you don’t want this case, Mr. Jones?”
I hastened to correct her on that. I explained about ethics, and the necessity for private operatives to cooperate with the police, and the rest of the blarney that gives my work its high moral tone.
She relaxed again, with a rustle of heavy silk. She answered all the rest of my questions quickly and competently. When she rose to leave, she said: “I do think, if you don’t discover anything in a reasonable length of time, we should go to the police.”
I told her I thought that would be best.
She left, and I went to the window, as is my fashion. There was a Mercedes town car parked at the curb. As she approached it, a tall and dark man in a chauffeur’s uniform stepped out of the car to open the door on the curb side. I watched, until the Mercedes moved around the corner with a contemptuous snort from its tail pipe.
Such high-class trade I get in my shabby office. Was it my reputation? The penuriousness of my clients? What it was in this case, I didn’t find out until later. Anyway, I decided that I would go and see this Rodney Carlton, first.
Downstairs, I stood on the curb a minute, watching a kid punt a football. It kept sliding off his foot wrong—he wasn’t getting directly behind the ball. Well, he had a lot of years ahead of him.
I walked up two blocks, to where the Dusy was parked. I started her elegant motor, and headed her east.
The very-near-east, where the rooming houses are, I passed through. The upper-east, where the fine apartments are, I also passed through. In the far-upper-east, the neighborhood can’t make up its mind. There are some new apartments, and some fine old homes. There are some cottages, new and inexpensive, but pleasant and in good taste.
This Rodney Carlton’s address was one of the cottages. A low white place, with red shutters, with a red door. With a man in the front yard.
THE MAN had a golf club in his hands. It looked like a nine iron. He was trying to chip some balls he had into a washtub in the middle of the yard. He’d play each shot carefully and easily, with fine form, but they were all short.
“More wrist,” I said. “You’re not getting enough wrist into them.”
He looked up at me and out at the car. He studied me. Then: “You can’t be a collector, not with a Duesenberg. Are you selling insur— Who the hell are you. anyway?”
I shook my head. “My name is Jones, Mortimer Jones. I’m looking for a girl named Flame Harlin.”