[The cover shows a cheerfully idiotic 1920s British gentleman sauntering cluelessly down a busy "Old West" main street as various calamities barely miss killing him.] ____________________________________________________________________________ .|, COHERENT An ASHistory Series --+------------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` SUPER STORIES #30 - Alley Abroad Featuring Alistair Dorchester copyright 2012 by Dave Van Domelen ____________________________________________________________________________ Editor's Note: When anything became successful in the pulp era, it spawned rafts of imitators, and the publisher of the White Hat pulps was hardly immune to the phenomenon. The pages of Haunted Western Stories were often padded out by the pseudonymous writings of pulp authors aping the style of someone more successful than they, but perhaps the most jarring of the knockoff tales found in Haunted Western Stories had to be the Edwardian comedy of manners starring the Wodehouse-inspired Alistair "Alley" Dorchester and his manservant Jamison. There were at least three and possibly as many as five different authors penning Alley's tales under the name C.D. Lane from 1919 through 1922. Most of the Alley stories played upon the contrast between Alley's own burbling first-person narration and the somewhat more grounded perspective of Jamison, but not all of the hands behind the C.D. Lane name were deft at switching cleanly between perspectives. We now present the last of the original stories of Alley and Jamison, as they engage in that other pulp pasttime, the crossover. Originally published in Haunted Western Stories #52, June 1922. While the writer of record is the usual C.D. Lane, it is likely that the story was written by the man who wrote most of the White Hat pulps of the early 1920s, Thomas Craine. This is also notable as being one of the very few White Hat pulp stories never to explicitly refer to him as the White Hat, or by his given name of Dirk Landon, simply calling him a man in a white hat. However, as you'll be see, his identity is fairly obvious by the end of the vignette. =============================================================================== The door swung open and admitted a gust of autumn air, as well as something generally considered to be nearly as substantial. "Hullo the pub!" Alistair proclaimed, straightening his boater hat and brushing some of the dust from his somewhat rumpled jacket. "I don't suppose anyone has seen my man, Jamison? Short fellow, a bit on the round and boring side? No? I say, I thought you Yanks were friendly types...." Nearly everyone in the bar was ignoring Alistair with the sort of practiced indifference that he suspected his aunt practiced on a daily basis. She had a way of looking through one as if there was no one in the room, although Alistair suspected it might be encroaching cataracts. One man, however, finally turned to acknowledge Alistair. A somewhat grizzled looking chap sitting at the bar next to another man in a dashing white hat, the two men did look like they were perhaps cousins. Certainly cut from the same bolt of rough cloth. The grizzled chap spoke a few quiet words to the man in the white hat, who nodded. "Howdy, pard. You look a mite lost," the grizzled man said without introduction. Ah, that dreadful American familiarity, not even introducing himself. "Ah, hello. My name is Alistair Dorchester, although the fellows call me Alley," he touched the brim of his boater. Perhaps the man would take the hint and drop his own name. He was doomed to be disappointed, however, as the stranger beckoned Alley follow him to a booth in the back without a word. "Ah, yes. I could stand a drink. Do you suppose they brew a decent tea in this establishment? I've rather given up on finding a proper sherry this side of the pond." The man shrugged as he slid into the booth, a rather complicated maneuver that impressed Alley rather a bit. He'd known fellows to trip over themselves attempting something like that. "So...Alley. What brings you here?" "Ah, that's a rather engrossing tale, even if it's I who tells it...." * * It all started when my aunt got on me for being a silly little twit for I suppose was the hundredth time, and I don't know why it bothered me so much more than usual, perhaps it was the fact it was the hundredth time and such a significant number is hard to ignore, eh? "Jamison," I said to Jamison, he's my valet, "how can I get Aunt Doris to take me seriously? I'm not a little boy anymore...I even served in the Great War!" Jamison, being the soul of discretion, didn't remind me that my service in the war was spent typing up quartermaster reports in Admiralty House. But my typing did get rather good by the end of the war, and I was proud of that and Jamison knew it. Not everyone can operate one of those confounding devices, you know! Where was I? Oh yes. Jamison suggested that perhaps Aunt Doris would take me more seriously with a proper seasoning in the ways of the world. After all, when I was of an age to tour Europe, the Hun was trying to conquer it, which made travel planning beastly difficult. And he suggested that even should it not have the desired effect, a tour would at least remove me from Aunt Doris's presence for a few months, which was a worthwhile end in itself, eh? But Europe is still rather depressingly ravaged by all that fighting, and rather a lot of the interesting places were burned down. What use is traveling about to soak up the beneficial effects of history when there's no history there anymore, because some bally Jerry has blown it up? Still, some sort of tour seemed a meritorious plan, and after wracking my gray matter over a glass of port, it hit me. Where would I go? Hm? America! Well, obviously there wasn't much suspense in that, since I'm here, aren't I? I suppose some revelations defy dramatic tension, my good man. But not just anywhere in America, I would travel to the fabled Wild West of the Bill Hickock shows! What tales I'd have to tell the drones upon my return! And Aunt Doris has never been farther from home than Seville, so I'd have one up on her, eh? Jamison took care of all the arrangements, of course, it's why I retain him. A proper liner to cross the big pond, no sense *wallowing* in savagery! I'm man enough to admit I spent some of the journey confined to my cabin with a touch of the mal de mer, as the French so charmingly put it. We made final port in Galveston, a charming little town, although I understand it suffers horribly from storms. And then we took the train, to get the proper Wild West experience! A pity there's no more of those big shaggy cow-like things anymore, I would have liked to try my hand shooting them from the train. Bang! Haw! The trip was educational, I suppose, but rather dull. The only bright spot was a bit of play acting arranged by the line's owners, I believe. A pretend train robbery, quite exciting at the time, although on reflection I realized that the costuming was hardly authentic. They even retained an actor to play the role of one of those dashing "Mystery Men" from the popular fiction. I pray Aunt Doris never finds out I read popular fiction, she always turns her nose up at it. * * "I find San Francisco a bit of a disappointment, I must admit," Alley shrugged. "A bit more open and rough-hewn than London, but nothing like the dusty gold mining towns from the pulps. I do wish you people would learn to drive on the proper side of the road, though, I got separated from Jamison when some bounder nearly ran me down!" Through it all, the other man had listened attentively, occasionally nodding but not speaking. Alley was starting to find the silence more than a touch irritating. "Say, the service here is terrible...when will the steward come to fetch our drinks order? Oh, and listen to me chatter on...you've yet to even introduce yourself, let alone get in a word edgewise." The other man sighed heavily. "The name's Abe Landon. And I'm afraid I have bad news for you." "We have to order at the bar?" "No. Well, yes, but that's not what I mean...." * * * * A short, round, balding man slumped into the empty bar stool next to a man in a white stetson hat. "Small beer, please," he sighed, his accent marking him as a Brit. "You look like you've had a rough day," the man in the hat said, sparing a glance at the booth in back. "It has been a rough life," the man sighed. "I've followed my employer halfway across the globe, enduring an attack at sea by a German U-boat gone pirate and a robbery of the train we were taking across the desert. Sheer luck saved our skins, and I don't think the young master even realized we were at hazard. And then he manages to get struck dead by an automobile not an hour after we return to what I thought was the safety of civilization. Oh, how rude of me. My name is Albert Jamison, valet to the dearly departed Alistair Dorchester. Once I've fortified myself here, it's my sad task to arrange for his remains to be transported back to the family estate...." =============================================================================== Author's Notes: Written for High Concept Challenge #33, "Neo-Edwardian Comedy of Manners and/or Christian Rapture". Since the latter runs somewhat counter to ASH's setting and I didn't feel like making up a whole new setting for HCC, I decided to run with the first part. If you're new to Coherent Super Stories, one of the conceits of most (but not all) of the issues is that they come from a sort of intermediate universe where all of the ASH backstory appeared in media. Coherent Comics was a robust small publisher like Archie Comics that managed to survive (albeit with gaps in publication) for most of the second half of the 20th Century, and which owned the rights to several pre-1950 properties in the same way that DC and Marvel bought up the rights to defunct publishers in the real world. As such, there's no guarantee that the stories in CSS are in continuity with "present day" ASH stories, leaving us free to come up with stuff that might not actually be a good fit for the mainline. Like Alley. Alley Dorchester is a thinly veiled pastiche of Bertie Wooster, of P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie & Jeeves stories. While I've read several of the original short stories, I largely modeled Alley's behavior on various roles played by Hugh Laurie, such as Bertie Wooster himself, and several characters in Blackadder. Yes, before he became famous stateside as House M.D., Laurie was mostly known for playing vapid upper class twits. ;) The White Hat is ASH's recurring western hero, first seen in Coherent Super Stories #12, and also featured in #13 and #25. Abe Landon is his deceased uncle, who haunts him and demands vengeance against the men who killed him. So, the fact that the ghostly Abe is the only one who can see Alley is indeed far worse news than the lack of table service. I don't have any plans to write the other adventures of Alley and Jamison, either pre-mortem or post-mortem (and there were probably some Topper-esque tales written about Alley's ghost), but you never know what the future (and the High Concept Challenge) will bring. ============================================================================ For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art, and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH ! To discuss this issue or any others, either just hit "followup" to this post, or check out our Yahoo discussion group, which can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ash_stories/ ! There's also a LiveJournal interest group for ASH, check it out at http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?int=academy+of+super-heroes (if you're on Facebook instead, there's an Academy of Super-Heroes group there too). ============================================================================