Excerpt 2 on Tarzan as detective
“There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much
neglected as the art of tracing footsteps.” -- A Study in Scarlet (Doyle 61)
That “The Battle for Teeka” was later picked up by Ellery Queen’s Mystery
Magazine is remarkable. There the story was billed on the front cover as
“Something Different.” Burroughs did not consciously frame the story as a
mystery, so much as a chase story. Much later he tried to mine the idea of
Tarzan as detective. In a letter to Jack Byrne, at Argosy, he wrote that he was
thinking of “making Tarzan something of a jungle Sherlock Holmes” (qtd in
Taliaferro 308). The resultant story was “Tarzan and the Jungle Murders,” sold
not to Argosy but to Thrilling Adventures. Vernon suggests, though, that Tarzan
flirted with the conventions of detective fiction from the very beginning. In the
search for Tarzan’s heritage, Tarzan provides clues through the locket and the
cabin itself and D’Arnot uses the then-new practice of fingerprinting to prove that
the Greystoke title belongs to the ape-man (Vernon 29). [. . .]
Collingwood says, “nowadays the identification is with the detective” for
“the intellectual excitement of solving a puzzle” (86). The ratiocination that
Tarzan performs, in the abduction of Teeka and of Jane, is perhaps of a simpler
level than what C. Auguste Dupin does in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue,” or what Sherlock Holmes does in Doyle’s The Sign of Four. But editors
at Ellery Queen’s claim that Tarzan “outdoes” (“Old” 67) every other modern
detective including Poe’s. And the process of observing details that lead to a
valid conclusion is the same. Just as the detective’s goal is to follow the
footsteps of the criminal, either literally or figuratively, so Tarzan sets out in this
story to follow Toog.
In The Sign of Four, Sherlock Holmes identifies the three detective keys
needed, by way of a French follower, Francois le Villard: “He possesses two out
of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of
observation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge, and that may
come in time” (Doyle 65). In “The Greek Interpreter,” he describes his brother,
Mycroft Holmes, as his “superior in observation and deduction” (Doyle 399); but
Mycroft fails as a detective, not because he lacks knowledge but because he has
“no ambition and no energy” (Doyle 400). The aggregate of the two passages
leaves the reader with five key ingredients for the detective’s role: observation,
deduction, knowledge, ambition, and energy. Each of these areas can be
identified in Tarzan in “The Battle for Teeka.”
Observation is the beginning point of every detective case. Without
observation, the clues will be overlooked. Watson, the fictional chronicler of
Sherlock Holmes, has the power of observation. When Holmes asks him to
examine a hat in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” he is able to observe
the wear on the hat, including the discolored band, the owner’s initials, and the
missing elastic. He sees the hat is dusty and some attempt has been made to
ink over some discoloration. These are the observations necessary to determine
what kind of man the owner is. Likewise, Tarzan, when he discovers Teeka’s
kidnapping, searches the ground with eyes and the air with his nose. It is his
nose which finds the first clue, and he announces to the apes that a stranger has
been there.
Sherlock Holmes relies on Toby, the bloodhound, for his sensory
information, but Tarzan is able to gather olfactory evidence for himself. In
“Tarzan and the Jungle Murders,” Tarzan sees the evidence necessary to
understand the crime – the footprints of the people who left the downed plane
and the angle of the bullet that killed the pilot. But it is what he smelled at the
crash site that clinches his investigation. When he apprehends the parties
involved, he is able to determine the murderers by scent, but because such
evidence will not convince the other parties, he supplies substantiation through
throat “imprints” (“Jungle Murders” 190), the angle of attack, and finally the
presence of a limp in the footprints leaving the plane. Holmes, like Ramsgate in
“Jungle Murders,” is accustomed to the visual dominance of civilization and
would consider absurd Tarzan’s claim: “I carried in my memory the smell of
Zubanev” (191). In “The Battle for Teeka,” the narrator claims that the sense of
smell is more accurate than “photographs and Bertillon measurements” (154), a
system of cataloging of physical features.
After noting the smell of the stranger, Tarzan says he will follow the
outsider and bring Teeka back. The narrator claims that “[h]ad the stranger bull
been within sight they would have torn him to pieces; but it did not occur to them
to follow him” (150). Livingstone reports, concerning the soko, that “an intruder
from another camp is beaten off with their fists and loud yells. If one tries to
seize the female of another, he is caught on the ground, and all unite in boxing
and biting the offender” (Last 325). This is a variation of theme in “The Lion,”
where Mamka is avenged and Numa is taught a lesson. The apes all volunteer
to pursue Toog as well, but Tarzan points out that if the bulls all leave, the
females and children will be unprotected and more abductions might occur.
Tarzan takes only Taug as his accomplice.
Observation alone is insufficient, though. The second criteria Holmes
identifies is that of deduction. The observer must understand what the clues
mean. In the case of the hat, Watson fails. He tells Holmes, “I can see nothing.”
Holmes responds: “On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail,
however, to reason from what you see” (203). The deductions Holmes makes
regarding the owner of the hat seem as remarkable as Tarzan’s claim to have
known a man by his smell. Yet, in both cases, the reader believes. Tarzan
deduces from the unconscious form of Gazan and the absence of Teeka that
Teeka has been kidnapped rather than having gone of her own whim. In the first
novel, when Jane is abducted by Terkoz, Tarzan follows by deducing the
meaning of clues. The narrator combines the observation with the meaning in an
extended passage:
Here, on this branch, a caterpillar has been crushed by the
fugitive's great foot, and Tarzan knows instinctively where that
same foot would touch in the next stride. Here he looks to find a
tiny particle of the demolished larva, ofttimes not more than a speck
of moisture.
Again, a minute bit of bark has been upturned by the scraping
hand, and the direction of the break indicates the direction of the
passage. Or some great limb, or the stem of the tree itself has
been brushed by the hairy body, and a tiny shred of hair tells him
by the direction from which it is wedged beneath the bark that he is
on the right trail. (Apes 140)
Knowledge comes into play in two ways, the knowledge of nature and the
knowledge of individuals. In the case of the hat, Holmes deduces that the hat
owner is intellectual and that his wife has ceased to love him. The first is a claim
of science and the second a claim of psychology. The natural science that Doyle
had in mind is called anthropometry, a part of Alphonse Bertillon’s measurement
scheme. While its general intent was to identify repeat criminals, one belief
contained in it was that head size was an indicator of intelligence. Holmes tells
Watson that the hat-owner’s intelligence is proven by the hat’s “cubic capacity”
(203). Burroughs, likely, would have understood; he had been at the Chicago
Exposition where Frank Boas had provided head measurements to fair-goers to
help establish their level of intelligence. The aspect of the wife’s affections
comes from Holmes’s “knowledge” that a woman who loves her husband will
regularly brush his hat. While the reasoning in both cases may be suspect, the
pattern is established. When Tarzan follows Jane, he uses the knowledge that a
squashed caterpillar will cling to the object with which it comes in contact; thus,
“a speck of moisture” is a viable clue. The apes being creatures of habit, Tarzan
is able to guess where the apes are likely to move next and look for clues there,
because of his knowledge of their psychology. Even after the rain, Tarzan
follows Toog by knowing the “well-marked trails” were “the most logical path for
the thief to follow” (Jungle Tales 153).
Mycroft Holmes fails as a detective because he is sedentary. Tarzan
leads no sedentary life. He is constantly active, both in body and in spirit. He
has the ambition needed, in this case, because Teeka is more than a cow of
Kerchak’s tribe. His affection for Teeka, though muted, is established in the first
story. His affection for her balu is shown in “The Fight for the Balu” and “The
God of Tarzan,” as well as his admonition to Mumga that her life would pay for
any mistreatment or inattention that Gazan received while he and Taug were
away. His motivation to retrieve Teeka is stronger than it would have been had it
been any other member of the tribe.
The final quality that Holmes identifies is energy. This is likely the easiest
of the five qualities to document in Tarzan. He not only begins the pursuit
immediately, without rest, but, when he senses the rain approaching, he
“accelerate[s] his pace” (152). He follows for two days, then fights along with
Taug to free her from now three captors, who are joined by unnumbered
reinforcements. His energy is notable.
While Tarzan may possess the requisite characteristics to succeed as a
detective, following Holmes’s rationale, the story itself holds little mystery. That it
was republished in Ellery Queen’s (given a new title: “Tarzan, Jungle Detective”)
might be considered a mystery. It contains detection without mystery, and the
detection is accomplished largely in a manner that cannot include the reader
because of Tarzan’s reliance on smell. This negates what E.T. Guymon, Jr.,
says is crucial in a mystery or detective story, the reader’s “matching of wits”
(362). To accomplish this, the reader must be given the same evidence that the
detective has. Because the smell of a criminal is not transferred to the reader
when Tarzan encounters it, that clue fails to engage the reader. The narrator
gives visual clues – “the imprint of a huge handlike foot and the knuckles of one
great hand were sometimes plain enough for an ordinary mortal to read” (153) –
but the smells of Toog or any of the apes are left undescribed. Ordinary mortal
readers are left to take it by faith that Tarzan’s nose is infallible. Near the
beginning of “Jungle Murders,” the narrator explains that “the sense of smell
never failed” and “it always told a man what was what” (149), that is, if the man is
Tarzan. But any avid mystery reader will leave “Jungle Murders” saying the
author didn’t play fair. And “The Battle for Teeka” just doesn’t sit square as a
mystery.