Glowing eyes
Glowing eyes is a detective novel by the German writer and parapsychologist Rudolf Schwarz , which was published under his pseudonym Ralph Black in 1950 by the Karl Mayer publishing house in Stuttgart.
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An experience of Bob Ransom, their youngest colleague, is discussed among employees at Backwood's town bank. He had visited the cinema the previous evening with his bride, Lydia Cornwell, and on the way back he had crossed the water house , a covered bridge over a weir. They noticed two moving lights that looked like shining eyes on the great weir in the Ouse River. In the middle of the weir, accompanied by a scream, they suddenly sank into the water to the horror of the observers. While Harry Simmers, the oldest colleague and head of the bank office, does not take the story seriously, bank director Montague Norman sends him immediately to see police chief Charles Sharp. He is also Mayor of Backwood and is interrogating Bob Ransom in the presence of Inspector Rasper. Although Bob hides the presence of Lydia out of consideration, the inspector learns this from Harry Simmers, an old war comrade. However, the investigation of the weir and reservoir remains without result.
The event quickly became known in the city after a report in the Backwood Herald . Editor-in-chief Mr. Knifer gives the causers the name glowing eyes . The first threatening letter also lands on his desk, demanding money from the city's citizens. Anyone who sees the glowing eyes should pay a thousand pounds sterling into the poor account of the city bank for every blinking of the lights within three days, otherwise they would not have another three days to live. This letter, immediately published in the newspaper, is met with divided echoes of concern and disbelief. Soon after, the first monetary claim for £ 10,000 goes to Mr. Mearkels, owner of a spinning mill. He pays immediately and tries to hide the matter from the police. However, since he had received the same payment shortly before, the police suspected an insider at the bank as the gangster's tipster. When Inspector Rasper observed the weir at night, he too saw the lights that simply sink into the water after a call. Shortly thereafter, timber merchant Simon Richmond was extorted £ 5,000 and bank director Norman himself £ 2,000, both of whom paid immediately. Again, the monetary claim conspicuously corresponds to payments that those affected had previously received.
Inspector Rasper, who is under pressure because of the affair, now decides to provoke the criminals. At his request, machine manufacturer James Cockerill has £ 3,000 transferred. The following evening he is walking along the river with his friend Mr. Cornwell, Lydia's father. As expected, the glowing eyes appear at the weir and charge £ 3,000 with three flashes, but the police lying in wait cannot seize them. That same night, the police chief was knocked down in his garden, and the gangsters put a warning in his pocket. When Inspector Rasper arrives, he is told of a break-in at the city bank. The vault of the Poor's Fund was broken into and the contents, largely made up of the extorted funds, amounting to over £ 26,000, were stolen. The young Lydia Cornwell has also been missing since the same night. When investigations are opened the next morning, there is no trace of Bob Ransom either.
The two young people are spotted a few days later by Scotland Yard's Inspector Mortimer Black at the Carlton Hotel in London , where they meet a Mr. Leaflet. This is the publisher Bob Ransoms, who writes detective novels under a pseudonym. On behalf of this publisher, Ransom had assessed a submitted manuscript about a year ago, in whose plot he now believes, to his surprise, to recognize the current crimes of the glowing eyes . Since the suicide of two young people is mentioned in the further course of the story , Ransom felt threatened and fled Backwood with his fiancée. The author of the manuscript only contacted a post office box at the time, the given name Mike Nelson is probably wrong. Since the book was not published, it is assumed that he belongs to the group of criminals based on his knowledge. To the annoyance of Inspector Black, the young couple disappeared again the next day.
In Backwood, the manufacturer Cockerill now publicly refuses to accept the glowing eyes ultimatum . He confirmed this to Inspector Rasper and demonstrated his shooting skills. The police tried to have the money transferred anyway. However, the gangsters do not fall for it, but reaffirm their threat against Mr. Cockerill if he does not pay himself. Since Inspector Rasper and Police Chief Sharp cannot change Mr. Cockerill's mind, they decide to keep him company on the night of the ultimatum. The factory site on the river is also being surrounded by the police. In the course of the night, however, the manufacturer was lured out of his villa by the news of the break-in into his office and shot on the river bank, the perpetrators escaped via the weir. In the factory office, the safe was broken into and the transferred £ 3,000 stolen. Apparently a criminal in the fog pretended to be constable Surey of the police and knocked down one of the guards. The police are now asking Scotland Yard for assistance.
To everyone's surprise, in a recently amended will, the late James Cockerill declared Mr. Harry Simmers of the town bank, to whom he was distantly related, his heir. For Inspector Rasper, however, the main suspect is not this one, but the bank messenger Mr. Molton. Apart from Cockerill himself and Rasper, he was the only one who knew about the £ 3,000 in the safe, and he also claims to have been to the river on the night of the murder. The fact that he is also the brother-in-law of Constable Surey and used to be with the police himself reinforces the suspicion. When Molton also admits that he used to work in a safe factory, he is arrested by the police. The public hearing about the death does not provide any new information. The following evening Rasper receives an unexpected visit from Inspector Black from London in his apartment. After discussing the case, he said he wanted to take over the position of the arrested messenger Molton under the pseudonym Maurice Bulk .
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On a foggy morning, a girl throws herself off a bridge in London into the Thames , and the body is identified as Lydia Cornwell. In doing so, she died exactly as once predicted in the manuscript. Old Cornwell, her father, developed a severe nervous fever after this news. Bob Ransom, on the other hand, remains gone for the time being. The glowing eyes are no longer seen for the time being. Despite his perfect disguise, Inspector Black made little progress, which is why he gave up his position and left for London. On the evening of the next day, Colonel Burberry White, a retired officer, reports that the suspicious lights have reappeared on the weir. A voluntary relief corps is now being organized by the police to monitor the river day and night. A little later, the old Cornwell is lured out of his house at night and pelted with a firecracker. Explosives also explode in the house of the bank director and in the editorial office of the Backwood Herald . When there was an exchange of fire at the river one of the following nights, Inspector Rasper discovered the missing Bob Ransom in the framework of the water house and arrested him.
However, the arrested person refused to give any testimony. Although Harry Simmers and old Cornwell stand up for him, public opinion is soon against him, with Molton being mistaken for his accomplice. One is all the more upset when Ransom escapes from police arrest a few days later. Molton is also nowhere to be found. When the assembled city council, chaired by the mayor and police chief Sharp, inspected an underground ventral run the following day, the glowing eyes of the worthy gentlemen lurked in the dark. Inspector Rasper then gets into the tube and is first shot at, then knocked down. After another exchange of fire, he meets Inspector Black in the canal, but he disappears again without further explanation. In the evening he visits Rasper in his apartment to consult with him. Black had returned to Backwood immediately after his fake departure and appeared several times in the role of Glowing Eyes in order to provoke the real criminals. The attacks with the fireworks also served this purpose.
From a villa in Backwood, an anonymous man descends through a secret passage to the river. Meanwhile, he has a telephone machine pretend that he is still at home. Via winding paths and an old apiary he reaches a corridor running through the weir. Warned by an alarm system, he knows that another person is already there. He shoots it down and throws it out of a sluice into the river. After the police notice the activity at the weir, old Colonel White is rescued from the river with a gunshot wound and taken to the hospital alive. When Rasper visits him there the following day, he is astonished to see that Colonel White was just another disguise for the now wounded Inspector Black. He also points out that the apiary obviously has an important function for the glowing eyes . Research reveals that the property is owned by the city and is currently managed by the city bank. Director Norman reveals to police that the apiary is operated by his employee Harry Simmers. While Inspector Rasper is still questioning his old comrade Simmers, the apiary is blown up by a remote-controlled bomb and the passage in the weir is flooded.
On Rasper's next visit to the sick, Inspector Black shows him a letter from Bob Ransom, who was researching the author of the mysterious manuscript in London. An elderly writer had told him that when he worked for a London bank he had a colleague named Mike Nelson , who was known for his talent for disguising and imitating other people. After his time at the bank, he would have started an apprenticeship with a locksmith. As a special feature, the old man could still remember a deep scar over his left eyebrow. After Rasper has read this, he tells Black that he knows this man very well, but that he has no evidence for the crimes.
At their next meeting, Harry Simmers reveals to Rasper that Mike Nelson is the real name of the bank director, Mr. Norman. The will that was changed in his favor was also a forgery created by Norman. Rasper then secretly follows Simmers to the bank director's villa and overhears a conversation between the two. Here Norman says that the old writer's whole story about Mike Nelson was just a staged ruse. As soon as he noticed this, the inspector lost consciousness through a gas trap. When he comes to, the house is empty and the director's car is gone. However, Mr. Norman had a fatal accident on his escape in the fog. His wrecked car has £ 10,000 and a passport in the name of Mike Nelson , but the photo is not the director's. In both the car and his house there is no evidence of the dead man's involvement in the crimes of the Glowing Eyes .
The largely recovered Inspector Black, in his role as Colonel White , now invites some of those involved in the affair to the mansion of the dead director. These include the manufacturer Mr. Mearkels and the timber merchant Mr. Simon, both of whom had paid large sums to the Glowing Eyes . The next guests are old Cornwell and Mr. Knifer of the Backwood Herald . Inspector Rasper and Police Chief Sharp appear from the police. White informed those present that the late Mr. Norman had left a kind of diary in place of a will, which should now be read out. Here a certain Mike Nelson reports that in his youth he lived in misery with two comrades in London, these were Charles Cronlew , who wanted to become a farmer overseas, and James Crollick , whose dream had been to become an engineer. His wish, however, was already back then to work in a bank. The three young people's dreams seemed to come true, while Crollick had made his way in the machine industry and, after an invention, had opened his own factory in Backwood, Nelson worked his way up in banking to become director of the Backwood town bank. Her comrade Cronlew also seemed to have made money when he turned up one day in Backwood. However, a curse turned out to be a misfortune caused by the three young people while they were still in London. While drunk, they had rammed another boat on a boat trip on the Thames. An old man drowned while they were still able to save two children. All three had changed their names afterwards.
However, while Nelson and Crollick had carved out good positions, Cronlew's savings were soon exhausted, so he began to blackmail his old comrades. They agreed on the condition that Cronlew take in the orphaned granddaughter of the drowned man, while Nelson himself got his now grown son a job in his bank. After a few years, however, out of boredom , Cronlew had begun to trace all sorts of old shafts and tunnels in Backwood and to write fantastic stories about them. This also included the manuscript sent to London, the rejection of which had seriously offended the very vain man. To the horror of his comrades, he then began to carry out the crimes described in the book in order to get the attention he believed he deserved. Nelson and Crollick tried to hold him back, but could hardly stop him. To protect Cronlew , Crollick alias Cockerill even got involved in the double game with Inspector Rasper and wanted to warn his old friend of the police trap on the foggy night by the river. It was an unfortunate accident that he shot himself with a dropped pistol. While Cronlew had initially stopped all activities after this tragedy, his vanity stirred again after Inspector Black's imitation of the glowing eyes . He also held this alias Colonel White responsible for the death of Lydia Cornwell. When he found him in the passage in the weir, he shot him down and threw him into the river. Nelson, alias Norman, now also considered his position in the city untenable and decided to flee. In order to pay off part of his debt he forged the will of his dead friend Cockerill in favor of Harry Simmers, who was none other than the son of the man who drowned at the time.
Inspector Black now reveals himself and also reveals Cronlew's identity , it is old Cornwell. He tries to escape with the help of technical devices installed in the house of his friend Norman and finally threatens to blow up the whole villa. But when his foster daughter Lydia, to everyone's surprise, comes in alive, he gives up his resistance. Now all the puzzles are cleared up, Bob Ransom, Harry Simmers and Molton report on their adventures. Lydia was accidentally pronounced dead in London after a missing person report when a similar young woman threw herself into the Thames. To be on the safe side, Bob Ransom and Lydia had exploited this flaw until Inspector Black tracked them down again.
The novel ends with the wedding of Lydia and Bob Ransom, who has taken over Harry Simmer's old job as the bank's clerk. Simmers, in turn, follows Mr. Norman as director of the city bank. While Police Chief Sharp has just been re-elected mayor, Rasper has been promoted to chief inspector. Old Cornwell alias Cronlew, on the other hand, died of a heart attack shortly after he was sent to prison, despite a surprisingly mild verdict.
Places and time
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The central setting, Backwood on the Ouse River, is obviously fictional, but not without role models. However, these are not found in Great Britain , rather the description of the weir including its lock system and the characteristic water house Esslingen am Neckar is borrowed, where the author lived in his youth. The parallels here extend to the naming of individual terrain points such as the Hammer Canal . A model for the James Cockerill factory in Backwood can also be found in the factory facilities of the Esslingen machine factory on the banks of the Neckar, for which the author himself worked as a consulting advertising engineer . Major subplots take place in London .
There is no clear time. Several participants took part in the First World War . International conflicts or even the danger of war are not mentioned. The crisis in British industry in the post-war period is also not addressed, despite the financial transactions described. All of this points generally to the period between the world wars, but most likely to the early 1930s.
Narrative style
The book is written from the perspective of an authoritative narrator . It is largely told chronologically and in the present tense. Towards the end of the plot, there is a flashback in the form of reading out diary entries. Stylistically, it is a classic detective novel with English influences, whereby the author also shows a clear anglophilia .
publication
- 1950: "Glowing eyes", Karl-Mayer-Verlag, Stuttgart
- Hardcover, 311 p., All-linen binding with gold embossing and dust jacket, cover image: Cziffra National, printing: Scharr, Wörner & Mayer, Stuttgart
The edition by Karl-Mayer-Verlag appeared as the third of a planned series of five novels by Ralph Black , of which only three were published.
Individual evidence
- ^ "Reconstruction through advertising", advertising agency Dr. Schwarz, Erkenbrechtsweiler 1945
- ^ The Karl-Mayer-Verlag , Stuttgart, Haußmannstrasse 198-200, was deleted from the commercial register in 2008 (HRA 4465, Stuttgart District Court, Central Register Court).
- ↑ published: “ Hunt for JM ”, “ The experiment of Dr. Delaware ”,“ Glowing Eyes ”; unpublished: “Horror in the Spessart”, “Vengeance of a Dead”.
