Inside the Lines
By Earl Derr Biggers
They set off, the providential Samaritan in the lead. They went through the waiting room and onto a broad platform, almost deserted. A guard’s whistle shrilled. The stranger tucked a helping hand under Jane Gerson’s arm to steady her in the sharp sprint down a long aisle between tracks to where the Paris train stood. It began to move before it had reached its mid-length. A guard threw open a carriage door, and they hopped. With a rattle of chains and banging of buffers, the Express du Nord was off on its arrow flight from Calais to the capital.
The carriage, which was of the second class, was comfortably filled. Miss Gerson stumbled over the feet of a puffy Fleming nearest the door, was launched into the lap of a comfortably upholstered widow on the opposite seat, ricochetted back to jam an elbow into a French gentleman’s spread newspaper, and finally was catapulted into a vacant space next to the window on the carriage’s far side. She giggled, tucked the skirts of her pearl-grey duster about her, righted the chic sailor hat on her chestnut-brown head, and patted a stray wisp of hair back into place. Her meteor flight into and through the carriage disturbed her not a whit. As for the Samaritan, he stood uncertainly in the narrow cross aisle, swaying to the carriage swing and reconnoitring seating possibilities. There was a very narrow place next to the fat Fleming and a vacant place next to Jane Gerson.
The Samaritan caught the girl’s glance in his indecision, read in it something frankly comradely, and chose the seat beside her. “Very good of you, I’m sure,” he murmured. “I did not wish to presume—” “You’re not,” the girl assured. There was something so fresh and genuine in the tone and the level glance of her brown eyes that the Samaritan felt distinctly satisfied with the cast of fortune that had thrown him in the way of a distressed traveller. He sat down with a lifting of the checkered Alpine hat he wore and a stiff little bow from the waist.
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Earl Derr Biggers
Earl Derr Biggers, son of Robert J. and Emma E. (Derr) Biggers, was born in Warren, Ohio, and graduated from Harvard University in 1907. He was a member of The Lampoon.
Biography.
He worked briefly as a journalist for The Plain Dealer in 1907 and then for the Boston Traveller until 1912 before turning to fiction. Many of his plays and novels were made into movies. His first novel, Seven Keys to Baldpate, was famous in 1913, and George M. Cohan quickly adapted the story as a hit Broadway stage play of the same name. Cohan starred in the 1917 version, one of seven film versions of the play, and a 1935 revival.
The novel was also adapted into two films with different titles, House of the Long Shadows and Haunted Honeymoon, but they had essentially equivalent plots. More than ten years later, Biggers had even greater success with his Charlie Chan detective novels series. The popularity of Charlie Chan extended even to China, where audiences in Shanghai appreciated Hollywood films. Chinese companies made films starring this fictional character.
Derr Biggers publicly acknowledged the real-life detective Chang Apana as the inspiration for the character of Charlie Chan in his letter to the Honolulu Advertiser on June 28, 1932. Biggers lived in San Marino, California, and died in a Pasadena, California, hospital after suffering a heart attack in Palm Springs, California. He was 48.
Earl Derr Biggers
