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ending. I gave it a 10. Then came “Front-Page Frame-Up,” a novelette for Black Mask in February 1941. Detective Jeff Cardin, investigating a blackmail racket on a wet, nasty night gives a lift to the Anderson girl and she starts screaming for help the minute they reach a populous crossroad. Jeff is forced to quit his job. He becomes a private dick. This complex story is told in the first person in a lively, sometimes humorous style, and could be one of my best stories for Black Mask . Everything works. I gave it a 9 or 10.
    Finally there’s “Stranger in Town,” my last story for Black Mask, about 5000 words in the April 1941 issue. A clever story, very different. Corey, a cop, is back in town from a sanatorium. All the crooks are scared. In trying to cover themselves, they … but it is such a good story I won’t give any more of it away. A very well written, different, hard-boiled detective tale. 10.
    I commented:
I like the way that story unfolds, Hugh. It reminds me of High Noon in reverse. It is a story that is difficult to analyze exactly how it achieves its effects.
    I agree with you. In some ways you can’t take apart a great story like it was a mechanical device, Keith. When a story really works, it is like a living thing. If you cut it up to analyze it, you just won’t find the spark that makes it so good.
Pseudonyms Used by Hugh B. Cave and Other Names Under Which His Works Have Appeared
    Supplied with annotations by the author

PERSONAL PEN-NAMES—
    C. H. Barnett
    Cary Barnett
    Hugh Barnett
    Allen Beck
    Judy Case
    Justin Case
(The jokey “Justin Case” was by far the most frequently used of my pen-names, with some seventy stories originally appearing under that name in the Spicy publications.
    Some of my Justin Case stories were also reprinted by the editors of the Spicy magazines under the various house names Paul Hanna, R. T. Maynard, William Decatur, J. C. Cole, T. V. Faulkner, Max Neilson, and—gasp!—John Wayne.
    I still use the name Justin Case occasionally.)
    Carl Hughes
    Geoffrey Vace
(My second most–frequently used pen-name. But the first three Geoffrey Vace stories, appearing in Oriental Stories and Magic Carpet Magazine , both edited by Weird Tales’ Farnsworth Wright, were actually written by my brother, Geoffrey Cave.)

HOUSE NAMES OR OTHER BYLINES—
    Ace Williams
(I believe this was an editorial house name for the Standard Publications Thrilling line of magazines. I had one story appear under this byline in the May, 1932 issue of Thrilling Adventures .)
    Jack D’Arcy
(This was the name of an actual pulp writer but two of my stories somehow appeared under his name.)
    Maxwell Smith
(This also was the name of an actual pulp writer whose stories appeared in many Street & Smith titles during the 1920s. For whatever reason it appeared as the byline for a story that my brother Geoffrey wrote for Amazing Detective Stories in 1931. Later it appeared as the byline on a few of my overseas reprints of pulp stories as well.)

LONG LIVE THE DEAD

Too Many Women
This story about gumshoe Bill Evans and the dead lady appeared in Black Mask in May 1934 and was the first tale of mine to be published in that magazine. I was 23 years old at the time and had been writing for the pulps since I was 19. Black Mask, edited by the legendary Joseph T. (“Cap”) Shaw, had developed the hardboiled private eye story, and, during the early 1930s, among its regular contributors were Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raoul Whitfield, Paul Cain, Horace McCoy, and Frederick Nebel. By the time Black Mask felt I was ready to mingle with these authors, I had been published in such pulps as Ace High , All Detective , Argosy , Astounding, Dime Mystery , Ghost Stories , Short Stories (23 times!), Strange Tales , Top-Notch and Weird Tales , to name just a few.
    HBC
    Gumshoe Bill Evans finds that the murdered girl was only one of many
    W ith rain slapping his face and more rain drooling from the