SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: MR. SMITH KICKS THE BUCKET

"Mr. Smith Kicks the Bucket" by Fredric Brown  (first published in Street & smith's Detective Story Magazine, August 1944 as "Bucket of Gems Case:"; reprinted under the current title in Four-and-Twenty Bloodhounds, edited by Anthony Boucher, 1950 [abridged UK edition:  Crime Craft, 1957]; in The Saint Detective Magazine, September 1957 [and in that magazine's Australian edition, May 1958, and its UK edition, June 1958]; and in Carnival of Crime:  The Best Mystery Stories of Fredric Brown, edited by Francis F. Nevins and Martin Harry Greenberg, 1985)

Fredric Brown (1906-1972) was one of the most original writers in the mystery and science fiction genres of the  mid-Twentieth century.   His novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint, won an Edgar Award for best novel in 1948; many of his books in both genres have gone on to be considered classics.  His most popular detective characters were Ed and Am Hunter, a young man and his uncle who went on to open a detective agency, but early in his career, Brown had another character -- the efficient and somewhat colorless Henry Smith, an investigator for the Phalanx Insurance Company and the protagonist of six short stories from 1941 to 1947, with a seventh appearing in 1962.  This was the fifth in the series.

Thorwald is the program manager of the radio program sponsored  by the Jewelers' Mutual Co-operative Association, Bucket of Gems,  show whose gimmick is to dramatize the history of a famous gem in each episode; the writer of the best essay on the topic of one of the gems will receive a prize -- a bucket of gems.  Smith gains entry to the program manager by displaying a replica of the Kent ruby, which is insured by Phalanx.  Smith is there to sell Thorwald on a policy to insure the contents of the "bucket of gems," or the actual stones used in the program,  should they be stolen.  Thorwald does not think he needs insurance because of the guards and heavy protection he has already arranged.  But the Kent ruby is valued at $100,000, in part because of its bloody history, and the Phalanx policy covers only $30,000 of that -- should that gem be stolen, the program owners would be out $70,000.

Of course the Kent ruby is stolen.  From a room containing only Smith Thorwald, two private detectives, two police officers, and Carmichael, the collector who owned the ruby.  No one has left the room, so where is the ruby?  It's up to Smith to solve the case in his quiet and assured manner...and he does literally kick the bucket.

A skilled reader of detective stories and an expert on jiggery-pokery should be able to solve the case as easily as Smith did, but the fun is still there.  Brown specialized in the odd, the weird, and the seemingly impossible.  I think you will enjoy this one.

The September 1957 issue of The Saint Detective Magazine is available on-line.  For those interested, it also has some great stories by Leslie Charteris, Aaron Marc Stein, August Derleth, Louis Golding, Richard Hardwick, Richard /Sale, Sax Rohmer, and Charles E. Fritch,