Frank Orndorff 21 min read

The Great Detective Pemberton, who never fails to get his man, takes on a baffling case, one that will carry him into the unknown terrors of the upper air, with a sting-in-the-tail ending.

Frank Orndorff's 1928 story is a clever hard-SF and horror tale with an O. Henry twist. Fun, inventive golden-age pulp. Read it for an unusual early yarn that sends a celebrated detective into the mysteries of the high atmosphere, blending mystery, science, and menace, capped by a surprise ending, in the exuberant style of the earliest pulps.

In its time

Published in 1928, during the 1920s, the pulp era proper.

Reading it

21 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Frank R. Paul