Curtain of Storm

New York: The Macmillan Company. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. 1933. First Edition. Hardcover. (in a Grosset & Dunlap (reissue) dust jacket) [nice copy, with a slight bump to the lower front corner and some discoloration in the gutters; the jacket is bright and attractive, with slight fading to the spine and a bit of wear at the spine ends and along the front flapfold]. The third and final mystery novel by this author featuring his character Galt -- aka the "Goldfish" -- a mysterious figure who seems like a combination of Sherlock Holmes, Philo Vance and The Shadow, and who works out of a triple-locked room in a New York private club. (He's a doctor of some sort, and a former psychology instructor at Harvard who, we're told, was forced to leave the school after his "prying into his private habits" drove a star football player to suicide.) In this adventure, he gets involved with the investigation into the murder of a famous neurologist who was apparently murdered by an orangoutang that he kept for purposes of experimentation. (NOTE that the dust jacket is from a Grosset & Dunlap (reprint) edition, although it's a perfect fit and was on the book when we acquired it.) Here's a thought: wouldn't it be hilarious if it was this handful of long-forgotten mystery novels that inspired the naming of the also-mysterious "John Galt" in Ayn Rand's 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged"? (It's not the craziest idea, given than Gollomb and Rand were both born in St. Petersburg, Russia -- albeit 24 years apart -- and she may well have been aware of him as a fellow emigré.) .