The Lives of Carruthers
III. secret source
In The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler developed his parody of the thriller by creating a novel within his novel, ‘Conway Carruthers, Dept. Y’, the spirit of which entwines and then takes over the reality of his protagonist, physicist Professor Barstow.
After coming across a copy of this lurid thriller in the lounge of his hotel – the jacket shows ‘a lantern-jawed man with a blue jowl and an automatic pistol’, and the title is in blood-red letters – Barstow opens it at random and reads a scene that awakens a long-buried romantic streak in him. He immediately turns to the start of the novel to read it in earnest. Ambler pokes more fun at the genre’s conventions through Barstow’s reactions to the book’s hero:
‘Nothing was beyond the powers of this remarkable man. His age, judging by his relations with other character in the book, might have been in the neighbourhood of forty. Against this evidence, however, must be set the evidence of his physical prowess which would have done credit to an Olympian athlete of twenty-five. On the other hand, he had somehow found the time during his adult lifetime to save the lives of, or otherwise befriend, natives of a remarkable number of countries. The gratitude of these fortunates contributed largely to his success. Certain death might stare him in the face and he would extricate himself from his predicament by means of a trick learnt from a Patagonian Indian or a Bessarabian moujik. The outcome of a humanitarian encounter with a Chinese juggler or a Batavian stevedore would retrieve an apparently hopeless situation from disaster.’
In the excerpt of the novel set on a fire escape, Ambler had already satirised the way the heroes of thrillers often escape danger via tricks they’ve conveniently learned from exotic-sounding people in their pasts: Conway Carruthers uses a length of silken cord ‘made for him by a Japanese fisherman whose life he had saved’ which has ‘helped him out of many a tight corner’, and also knows the ‘secrets of the lasso’ from ‘an Arizona cowboy whom he had befriended’ – expertise that allows him to dramatically snatch the villain’s gun from his hand. Now Ambler is mocking that idea again, but also the thriller trope of the middle-aged secret agent who can accomplish physical feats that would be incredible in someone half their age.
As the scope of Ambler’s satire widens, so does our knowledge of Carruthers. We learn that he is not a young man, and that in addition to his physical prowess he possesses ‘amazing insight into human character and motives’. Frank L. Packard’s Jimmie Dale was also a very perceptive fellow, but Ambler’s wording is suggestive of classic detectives such as Sherlock Holmes.
We are told that Carruthers notices everything from the glint of a knife behind him to ‘the slight scratch by the keyhole of the old escritoire’, and that he is extremely well connected, with everyone from cabinet ministers to royalty confiding their secrets in him: both these details feel very much in the E Phillips Oppenheim stamp. A few sentences later, we are informed that Carruthers belongs to ‘that illustrious company which numbers Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, Arsene Lupin, Bulldog Drummond and Sexton Blake among its members’. This provides more context still: all but one of those characters are British.
Ambler also gives us a little more of the plot of the novel, as Barstow eagerly follows Carruthers’ journey ‘on the trail of his prey’:
‘In London he saw an attempt on Carruthers’ life foiled; in Paris he saw the Chef de la Sûreté welcome Carruthers as an old friend; in a suburb of Berlin he saw Carruthers fight his way out of a den of international crooks. The ever-competent Carruthers, a grim smile on his thin lips, a steely glint in his eye, pursued his quarry with the Professor at his elbow and a smiling fate to guide him for forty-three pages before reality intervened.’
This is of course describing a thoroughly clichéd thriller, but if you’re a fan of the genre you’re there at Carruthers’ elbow with Barstow, aren’t you? I want to read that! I want to see the attempt on Carruthers’ life in London, I want to see him fight his way out of a den of international crooks in Berlin!
All of this means that we as readers can now make some further deductions about Conway Carruthers in addition to those we made from the initial excerpt on the fire escape. The character is middle-aged, probably British, and in the tradition of characters like Sherlock Holmes, Bulldog Drummond and Raffles.
Chapter 3 gives us further information. Having crashed his car and woken up believing himself to be Conway Carruthers, Professor Barstow boards the train for Paris at Havre, his scarf hiding the lower half of his face and his hat pulled over his eyes:
‘Concealement, he told himself, was important at that stage for it was possible that he might be recognised. Still, thanks to the faultless organisation of Department “Y”, he has a convincing alias. As Professor Barstow, the eminent physicist, his presence would excite no suspicion, where the name of Conway Carruthers would arouse both suspicion and counter-productive fear.
He took out his passport and examined it.
Everything was in order. But for the name it might have been his own. He smiled grimly at the idea of the worthy Professor Barstow embarking on so hazardous an undertaking. It was almost as amusing as the picture of Groom confiding in Conway Carruthers of the Secret Service under the impression that he was a harmless scientist. Little did the arms-maker know what that mistake would cost him.
He rang for the waiter and ordered an aperitif.’
Ambler is having lots of fun here, playing with dramatic irony. As readers, we also find it an amusing idea that the worthy professor is now embarking on a dangerous mission, but unlike him we know that this is what is happening. It’s also clear from this passage that Barstow’s assumed persona is intended to be a professional agent: ‘Conway Carruthers of the Secret Service’, more specifically of Department Y, who he knows to be faultless organisers who can create perfect false passports for their agents.
Barstow’s adventure as Carruthers takes a different path from the novel that triggered it, but is equally action-packed. The plot features the following elements:
A secret formula for a nuclear weapon that could lead to the deaths of millions;
A ruthless arms manufacturer determined to secure the weapon’s formula;
A laboratory in a remote and exotic landscape where the weapon is being developed;
A long-distance train journey culminating in an assassination;
A highly competent British secret agent, who is by turns relaxed and grim-faced;
A showdown between the agent and the chief villain, accompanied by their threatening henchman, giving a megalomaniacal speech about how they will change the world;
A high-speed car chase through mountain roads, culminating in one car going off the cliff and exploding; and
The British agent saving the world from catastrophe against all odds.
If you were to use more than a couple of these in a thriller today, you would likely be seen as either imitating or parodying the James Bond series – but all were long-standing clichés in the genre when Ambler used them in 1936.
It’s nevertheless striking just how modern The Dark Frontier feels when read nearly a century later. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, in his 1989 introduction to a reissue of the novel Ambler claimed that the target of his parody had been ‘the old secret service adventure thriller as written by E. Phillips Oppenheim, John Buchan, Dornford Yates and their cruder imitators’. He also mentioned Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, Lupin, Bulldog Drummond and Sexton Blake in the novel.
But none of these quite fit the mould of ‘the old secret service adventure thriller’, and stylistically the novel doesn’t feel especially like any of them, either. In the last chapter, I compared a few passages in the novel to American pulp fiction, and the prose generally has a much leaner tone than the often arcane and discursive formulations of earlier British thriller-writers. For example, take this from Dornford Yates’ thriller Blind Corner, which was published in 1927, preceding The Dark Frontier by just nine years:
‘Before a torch could be lighted, Punter let out a yell.
“By ----,” he cried, “it’s that ---- that keeps the inn!”
To me his words came like a thunderbolt, and, between my relief and my astonishment, for a moment I felt quite dazed. Then it occurred to me that this was the moment to attack and that a sudden assault, coming upon them while they were so much engaged with the turn events had taken and were still uncertain what to think or do, would probably fare better than we could have hoped: so I took my pistol and torch, and, directing the face of the latter towards the house, gave the agreed signal, counted two seconds, and fired.
This was as Carson had arranged, and nothing could have been better, for the five of us fired almost at once, and so unexpected a volley would, I should think, have disconcerted a Napoleon himself.’
Even in context, I suspect that for most 21st-century readers this kind of thing is fairly tough-going. The sentences are long and elaborate, and the language is generally more formal than we are used to today. Buchan and Oppenheim predate Yates, and their prose is broadly in this vein. In contrast, compare to Ambler’s use of short unadorned sentences in the passage Professor Barstow reads from ‘Conway Carruthers of Department Y’:
‘With a hiss the cord snaked out. Krask heard it. The next thing he knew was that the Mauser had been snatched from his hand. He paused, baffled. Then panic seized him. He turned to run. He did not get far.
“One more step,” said Carruthers pleasantly but with a steely ring to his voice, “and you’re a dead man!”’
This feels much closer to Ian Fleming than Yates, Buchan or Oppenheim. For example, here’s a passage from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, published in 1963:
‘The girl looked past him again. Her clenched right hand went up to her mouth. She said something, something Bond couldn’t understand, from behind it. Then a voice from very close behind Bond, said softly, silkily, “Don’t move or you get it back of the knee.”’
If you didn’t know this was published nearly three decades after The Dark Frontier, you might be forgiven for wondering if Ambler was parodying Fleming. Here’s another example, from Casino Royale, published in 1953:
‘Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold.’
And The Dark Frontier:
‘For an instant, the hard line of his mouth softened. Then the mask reasserted itself.’
You Only Live Twice, published in 1964, has this curt demonstration that James Bond is a tough, competent fellow:
‘Steps were approaching! Bond undid the thin chain from around his waist, wrapped it round his left fist, took the jemmy in his right hand, and waited, his eyes glued to a chink in the dusty-smelling material…’
And The Dark Frontier has this:
‘Carruthers unwound from about his waist a long length of silken cord. It had been made for him by a Japanese fisherman whose life he had saved.’
The obvious explanation for the resemblance is that Fleming was simply following and developing conventions and linguistic traits that had been used by thriller-writers who predated Ambler, and so were able to be parodied by him in The Dark Frontier.
Yes, but who? Again, Phillips Oppenheim, Buchan and Yates didn’t have this tone. And while they all wrote some adventure thrillers that involved espionage, none wrote what one would categorise as straightforwardly secret service stories. Their heroes tended not to be secret agents, but well-connected gentlemen who take part in adventures more for sport than as a profession. I think something else is going on: a third influence, one that Ambler never mentioned directly but nevertheless did indicate. Let me take that snippet of his again and bold what I mean:
‘I intended to make fun of the old secret service adventure thriller as written by E. Phillips Oppenheim, John Buchan, Dornford Yates and their cruder imitators…’
In the same introduction, Ambler discussed Stella Gibbons’ 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm. This was in large part a parody of Mary Webb’s 1924 bestseller Precious Bane and other novels in the ‘regional romantic’ genre. Ambler felt that Cold Comfort Farm had ‘followed the narrative pattern of the genre it was to destroy’: Gibbons had drawn closely on plots used by Webb and others in the genre, as well as specific characters and incidents. I think he did the same when it came to writing The Dark Frontier, and that he used the work of one author in particular as his springboard and template: a writer who wrote several secret service adventure thrillers and who was also a ‘cruder imitator’ of Oppenheim, Buchan and Yates. His name was Sydney Horler.
