The Crevice
By Isabel Ostrander
The news of his passing travelled more quickly than the extras which rolled damp from the presses could convey it through the avenues and alleys of the city, whose wealthiest citizen he had been, and through the highways and byways of the country, which his marvellous mentality and finesse had so manifestly strengthened in its position as a world power.
At the banks and trust companies, there were hurriedly-called directors’ meetings, where men sat about long mahogany tables and talked constrainedly about 2the immediate future and the profound changes that the death of this great man would necessarily bring. In the political clubs, his passing was discussed with bated breath.
At the hospitals and charitable institutions which he had so generously helped to maintain, in the art clubs and museums, and in the Cosmopolitan Opera House—–in the founding of which he had been a leading spirit and unfailingly thereafter, its most generous contributor—–he was mourned with a sincerity no less deep because of its admixture of self-interest.
In aristocratic drawing rooms, whispers were heard over the tea cups. The luck of Ramon Hamilton, the rising young lawyer whose engagement to Anita Lawton, daughter and sole heiress of the dead financier, had just been announced, was remarked upon with the frankness of envy, left momentarily unguarded by the sudden shock.
For three days, Pennington Lawton lay in a simple but veritable state. Telegrams poured in from the highest representatives of the State, clergy, and finance. Then, while the banks and charitable institutions momentarily closed their doors, and flags throughout the city were lowered in respect to the man who had gone, the funeral procession wound its solemn way from the aristocratic church of St. James to the graveyard. The last extras were issued, detailing the service; the previous obituaries were printed, the final pæans of praise were sung, and the world went on its way.
During the two days thereafter, multitudinous affairs of more imperative public import were brought to light; a celebrated murder was committed; a notorious band of criminals was rounded up; a political boss toppled and fell from his self-made pedestal; a diplomatic scandal of 3far-reaching effect was unearthed, and in the press of passing events, the fact that Lawton had been eliminated from the scheme of things faded into comparative insignificance, from the point of view of the general public.
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Isabel Ostrander
Isabel Egenton Ostrander (1883–1924) was a mystery writer of the early twentieth century who used her name and the pseudonyms Robert Orr Chipperfield, David Fox, and Douglas Grant. Christopher B. Booth is sometimes (falsely) credited as her pseudonym.
Biography.
She was born in New York City to Thomas E Ostrander and Harriet Elizabeth Bradbrook. Her Ostrander pedigree goes back to seventeenth-century Kingston, New York. She married songwriter Arthur J. Lamb in June 1907 and filed for divorce 11 months later.
In the discussions of which writer invented the blind detective, Ostrander is one of the candidates.
The first book publication of her Damon Gaunt is a 1915 novel At One-Thirty. Still, there might be a misplaced earlier short story: the periodical publication of many mystery short story writers is often lost or partial. For example, blind detective Thornley Colton appeared in some short stories in People’s Ideal Fiction Magazine in early 1913 that wasn’t collected in book form until 1915, while Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah reached the periodicals in 1913, but anthologization in 1914. In no case is a bibliography complete for periodicals, and either might be the first, though Max Carrados was the first in book publication.
In the 1920s, Ostrander was notable enough that Agatha Christie parodied her in her Tommy and Tuppence anthology, Partners in Crime. In it, Tommy and Tuppence model their detective skills after Ostrander’s characters, McCarty and Riordan.
Isabel Ostrander
