Cover Date: November-December 1947
Volume 25 #9
Copyright Date: Friday, October 3, 1947
Author: Lester Dent
Editor: Babette Rosemond
Story Length: 28,470 words, twelve chapters
WHMC: The collection contains five folders for this story, f.1121-1125
Recurring Characters. Doc Savage and Monk are the only characters present in this story.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
“Once Over Lightly” by Kenneth Robeson
“Or The World Will Die” by John D. MacDonald
“Operation Successful” by Stanley C. Vickers
“Second Visitor” by Peter Reed
“Pride Is A Good Thing” by Don James
“Worse Than Murder” by Henry Ricser
Mary Olga Trunnels is lured to a bizarre desert resort by her old friend Glacia Loring, who claims to have a wonderful job. The “job” is to hold Glacia’s hand while her Uncle Waldo tries to sell the location of a wartime freighter loaded with processed uranium. Two fat brothers named Montgomery and Harold Keeper, with their lawyer and a few hired hands, have already killed Waldo and are hunting the chart. Doc Savage is drawn in when a phony Indian pilot is shot. The trail ends at a dusty ranch where the brothers hold Glacia and Monk. A bluff about a radio in a walking stick creates the opening; the prisoners are freed and the uranium map recovered. The “once over lightly” was never a vacation; it was the last chance for men who thought a sunken cargo could buy them a new life.
This story begins with a telegram that echoes the telegram Lester Received at the beginning of December 1930 in which Dell publisher Richard Martinsen urged Dent to come to New York to write stories.
The main character is a young woman named Mary Olga Trunnels whose nickname is Mote. This is an obvious play off her initials. Her friend, Gloria Loring is in California and sends a telegram urging her to come to work for her.
Mary is working for Mr. Truffle who is a bit of an ass. She plays off his nature and gets herself fired immediately, saving the trouble of giving a two-week notice.
The flight from New York City to Los Angeles takes ten hours. She is met by a native American named Coming Going. He talks in grunts and monosyllable sentences. He turns out to be an employee of the state department in disguise named Joe Lybeck. He is also a pilot, and they fly out to Sammy’s Springs in a little two-seater plane.
Their destination is a local hotel of an exotic nature. Mary meets Gloria and is set up with a salary of $80 per week. This is equivalent to nearly $1,100 in 2024 dollars.
Doc Savage and Monk appear in chapter two. There is no mention of the other aides. Doc is at the hotel for a vacation.
The story mentions Kickapoo Snake Oil. This is a reference to a popular patent medicine sold some years earlier by the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. This was just one of many companies selling quack cures that were useless and even harmful. The Food and Drug Administration sued the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company in federal court and effectively put them out of business in 1911. There are actually three Kickapoo tribes recognized by the federal government that are located in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
Gloria’s uncle Waldo is at the hotel. He has a valuable and very mysterious item he wants to sell. He is a retired sea captain from the merchant service.
Glacia has a .25 caliber automatic pistol. This caliber pistol is considered a very poor choice by many modern shooters as being inadequate for self-defense. The round was developed in 1905 by John M. Browning. At the time it was considered to be the smallest caliber possible having a centerfire primer.
Uncle Waldo’s attorney is C. V. McBride in Los Angeles, California. His phone number is Cay 3-3101. This may seem decidedly strange to modern readers, but it was the system in use at the time this story was written. In this example, the term “Cay 3” indicates the specific telephone office (and switchboard) routing for the call which was completed manually by an operator. This was during the era when all phones were rotary dial. Each dial had specific groups of three individual letters assigned to each number. This system was automated in the 1960s.
Mary approaches Doc Savage for help but is rebuffed as Doc is supposedly on vacation.
Doc Savage’s special odorless anesthetic gas is used in the story. It is used on Mary and Glacia in a stairwell. Unfortunately for Doc Savage, Mary knows about the gas from an FBI lecture she attended. It turns out her former employer was the Metro Detective Agency of New York City. She had been confused when people around her mentioned Doc Savage. He was someone she was unfamiliar with. But she later made the connection with Clark Savage, Jr. who was a person she was familiar with. She revisits Doc Savage and catches him in the act of doing some finger-print development using iodine vapor. She notices his gold-flaked eyes during the visits and feels uncomfortable due to their hypnotic quality. Doc Savage does warn her to beware of new friends who have big jaws. That is all he will say.
Mary meets a Mr. Montgomery in the next chapter. Coming Going introduces Mary and Glacia to McBride who happens to have a very large jaw. His daughter Collen and his secretary
Mary slips into Montgomery’s room and listens. Dent inserts a quote from an ancient English poet. John Dryden (1631-1700) was a poet and playwright. He was appointed England’s first poet laureate in 1668. His influence in literary circles at the time caused his contemporaries to label the period the “Age of Dryden.”
Mary gets caught spying on Montgomery. Colleen describes her as “Nell-the-girl-detective.” This is likely a reference to a detective story that first appeared in 1880. Edward L. Wheeler was the author of many popular detective stories. Nell was the main character in a story titled “New York Nell, the Boy-Girl Detective.” Wheeler is probably best known for his Deadwood Dick stories that appeared in print via the dime novel from 1877-1897.
Montgomery is about to shoot Colleen when Coming Going knocks on the door. He says there is an electrical problem, and the fuse box is in this room. He ends up getting shot. Montgomery and his companions escape. Monk follows and is captured.
Mary refers to Doc Savage and Coming Going as secret agents. Doc scoffs at that idea remarking he has been unable to do anything secretly for some time.
The gimmick for the story is revealed to be a cargo of refined uranium that was about a ship captained by Waldon. It sank somewhere on its voyage to Europe. Waldo reported it sunk in deep water, but it appears that was not true, and he was trying to sell the material.
Doc Savage and Mary end up captured by a member of the gang. They are taken to a remote ranch house at the Lazy-M Ranch. All the main characters are there. Monk is tied up beneath a table and is unable to free himself.
The gang discusses leaving the country. Patagonia is mentioned with an allusion to Adolf Hitler living nearby. In fact, newspapers of the time were filled with articles about Adolph Hitler landing in Patagonia from a German submarine:
–Legend That Hitler Still Lives Flourishes in South America
–Hitler Lives in Chilean Rumor
–Bormann Said in Patagonia
–Hitler-Braun Myth Gathers Moss in Chile
The climax occurs when Doc Savage works a clever trick on the gang. He manipulates them into a hysterical panic and then physically beats them down once they are distracted.
All in all, the story was very well written. Lester Dent has traveled a very long distance as a writer. The biggest trouble with the story is its short length. It is only 28,000 words long, which is about half of what the larger-than-life stories were from the early thirties. The main flaw that I found was in the plot. It turns out that the lawyer was crooked, and they got the map from him. The timeline as to exactly when this happened is vague. An argument could be made that the gang was tying up loose ends by trying to find Waldo’s will. However, in the end, they were going to flee, leaving the copy of the will in the hotel lock box.
This story is likely mentioned in a letter between Lester Dent and Doc Savage editor Babette Rosemond dated January 15, 1947. Dent starts out referring to a March 1 deadline. This is likely “Let’s Kill Ames” which was submitted in March. Dent follows up with a proposal to have a female adventurer story told in first person. This is reflected in the dialog for Mary Trunnels which is all in the first person. The plot would involve her attempts to woo Doc with her feminine charms in hopes of getting him to recover a treasure lost during the war.
The letter has a handwritten response on the bottom signed “BR.” It suggests a “scientific or chemical secret” as the treasure. But then she asks if that idea has also been used too much. She closes with the idea of using a “bacteriological” weapon. Dent ends up using refined uranium of the atom bomb variety.
Source: WHMC Folder C3071_18