Speed Saunders

**Cyril "Speed" Saunders** is a detective in New York City in Earth-Two. He was formerly a government agent as part of the River Patrol, investigating various aquatic crimes—he is now simply a standard investigator. Speed is a very impulsive detective, one who operates off of sudden hunches and feelings rather than rigorous deduction.

## Biography

### 1937

In early 1937, Speed Saunders heard from a bayman who had found several dead bodies of Chinese men floating in the river. As he investigated the harbor, he noticed a boat in the waters that never seemed to come to shore. He investigated the boat and found that its crew were smuggling Chinese immigrants. He incapacitated the crew and brought them to justice. After solving the case, Speed intended to go on a vacation in Long Island Sound. He rented a boat, the *Daisy*, but soon after departing found that a young woman had stowed away in the cabin. Her brother, an inventor, had recently died and entrusted her with plans for a typewriter that he had invented. A group of gangsters led by Spider Liverman were now after her and the plans. Sure enough, the *Daisy* was soon accosted by a speedboat driven by Spider's men, and he attacked Speed. Saunders was able to get the upper hand, and incapacitated Spider and his men long enough to get them back to shore and into custody. Speed soon learned that his friend Arthur Bell, owner of a sugar plantation on San José Island, had been murdered. Saunders took a private plane to San José to investigate, defying his boss's wishes. He met up with May Adams, a mutual friend of Arthur's. He uncovered Nick del Borno, a rival plantation owner, hiding out in a mission run by a bogus priest. Saunders incapacitated them, and they confessed that Nick had killed Arthur Bell in order to improve his business. Speed later spotted a bank robbery and trailed the perpetrators, but wound up captured and detained in a dark basement for his troubles. He managed to escape and found that the building in question was near the dock, and the robbers had a small boat docked nearby. Speed hid himself inside as the robbers got in, apparently making a delivery to some market. Operating off of a daring hunch, Speed found that the men were smuggling fish with stolen gold cut into their stomachs, and brought them to the police.

In the summer of 1937, a gorilla was transported from Borneo to a zoo in New York, but mysteriously disappeared that night. It soon resurfaced, speaking English and throwing a stick of dynamite into a crowded city street, killing many people. The man responsible for the gorilla's rampage was a mad scientist, who appeared as Speed and the police confronted the gorilla at the docks. He had exchanged the gorilla's brain for a human one, giving it a sudden and violent self-awareness. The man took responsibility and believed that he had power over the gorilla, but it tackled him into the water, causing them both to drown. Later, Speed witnessed a rodeo cowboy get shot to death while riding. With help from another cowboy, Speed tracked down the culprit, who confessed to having been fired from the rodeo and wanting to get revenge on the program by killing Tex. Soon after, Speed trailed an escaped convict named Fred Dunn, serving time for grand larceny, onto a ship to New England, posing as a stowaway with him. The two were found out and jumped off of the boat, finding refuge on a smaller fishing vessel. Dunn seemed to enjoy helping the captain operate the ship, and after Saunders revealed that he was a detective, Dunn pleaded with him to let him free to work peacefully on the boat. Saunders was inclined not to do so, but upon arriving on land received a phone call from his boss telling him that charges against Dunn had been dropped. With that, Saunders moved on with his life and Dunn went on to have a calm and fulfilling career as a fisherman. Later, spotting a suspicious vagrant in the street, Speed trailed him to a meeting with racketeer Mike Molona. Speed disguised himself as Molona's butler as the two met with the mayor over a lucrative deal of some kind. The vagrant soon revealed himself to be an undercover cop, having worked for over two years to nail Molona. The two criminals were swiftly brought to justice with relatively little input from Saunders.

At the end of the year, Speed took a much-needed vacation with his friend Madge Allen. Soon before they returned home on their passenger ship, Madge complained that she was being followed by an Indian man, but he didn't show his face again until they landed in Seaboard City, Massachusetts. When the two separated, Madge spotted the man again and called Speed for assistance. Before he arrived, Madge also received a telegram from banker Arthur Harde telling her to come to Cornton, Maine to settle the estate of her uncle. The two traveled to the late Mr. Allen's estate, where Harde and her uncle's butler Monroe advised Madge to sell the estate for half of what it was worth, but Madge wouldn't budge. That night, Speed and Madge were attacked in the dark, but were saved by a third party. The attacker was Harde, and the savior was the Indian man, named Sak-Ri-Ko, who had restrained Monroe moments before. Madge had saved a maharaja's son after he'd fallen from a pony years ago, and the maharaja had sent Sak-Ri-Ko to protect her. She offered him a position as her new butler, and he accepted, while Speed brought Harde and Monroe to justice.

### 1938

While a fleet of battleships were docked in New York Harbor, Speed heard from an ensign on shore that he had overheard a plot to blow up the reef with a submarine filled with explosives, blocking the ships' exit from the harbor. Speed dove under the harbor and located the submarine in question, inside of which were a group of anarchists discussing their plot: a time bomb in the submarine which would detonate within the hour, fulfilling the scheme that Speed had heard earlier. Speed was spotted, beaten up, and tied up as the anarchists made their escape. With time ticking down, Speed escaped his restraints and piloted the sub out to sea, escaping it less than a minute before its explosion. After working a job in California, Speed was driving back to New York when his car blew out a tire in Texas, an hour west of Dallas. He was approached by three Native Americans of the Objaw-wa tribe, who asked him for his assistance, and he happily helped them take down a group of thieves who were stealing from the tribe's oil fields. Returning to New York, Speed took down murderer Mike Saro and his gang, as well as the corrupt judge who presided over his case.

Speed's friend Doris Dane, along with her nephew Dick, brought him along on a mission to Hondoku Island to rescue her brother, aviator Malcolm Dane, who had crash-landed there two months prior. Overcoming dangerous currents and hostile natives, they found that Malcolm had strangely become the leader of an evil tribe of cannibals, and only just managed to flee with their lives. Through unclear circumstances, Malcolm was brought to his senses. Speed and the Danes returned to civilization, catching the connecting ship *Calvon* in Liverpool to return to America. Speed gave Doris the gift of a pearl necklace, but they were soon stolen. After a convoluted chase for the pearls, the culprit fell overboard clutching them to his apparent death. Speed then brought down an opium-smuggling operation run by Mike Bruno, who had used a convoluted plan involving dead bodies to apparently obfuscate his intentions. Speed then helped out an inventor who had a criminal on his tail violently attempting to extort his plans from him. The thief shot at Speed, and Speed killed him in self-defense. Shortly after, Speed solved a murder involving high-level diamond merchants: Donald Brent had killed John Hilton apparently to acquire a valuable diamond of his, but Speed and Hilton's son Jim Hilton tracked him down. Saunders then shut down a massive counterfeiting operation involving Dave Grogan, but that was in fact run by an unassuming old stationery-shop owner. Shortly afterward, Speed put a stop to some hostility in Chinatown surrounding a supposedly cursed jade statue of Buddha. He then solved the murder of novelist Phillippa Rowen, who had been tracking a gangster known as Bettini for information. As Speed discovered with the help of Rowen's secretary Betty Palmer, Bettini had poisoned Rowen with a cigarette laced with prussic acid.

Speed investigated the murder of Barney Jones, a man who had been shot dead in the streets of New York. He had lived long enough to say something about "snow falling upward" to the officer on the scene. Speed traced this clue to an air grille in the street, where blowing air caused the snow to get blown vertically. The grille stood in front of a store near the scene of the crime, the owner of which had owed Jones money. Other suspects included Jones's ex-girlfriend Rosita Fernandez, and banker Walter Weston. Speed confirmed Weston's alibi, while Fernandez eventually confessed that she had had relations with the store owner, Ordway, who was looking to kill Jones and take his money. Speed tracked down Ordway, who violently resisted arrest, and shot him dead.

### 1939

At the beginning of the year, Speed tried to take a vacation into the snowy mountains, but found himself helping a woman, Margot Lee, who had been framed for the murder of Joe French by a member of her former gang. Speed and Margot tracked down the true killer and brought him to justice. He then solved a convoluted murder of a renowned gems expert, and apprehended a butler who had killed a member of the family he served to get at the family's prized jewels. Speed then brought down Faro Fleming, a gambler who was paying off a basketball player to throw games, and apprehended a member of a league of assassins who was killing men who'd refused to join them. He was approached by a newspaper publisher named Hawkins, who encouraged Saunders to pursue a "dope ring" in the city, but Saunders soon discovered that Hawkins was the biggest dope dealer of all, and he was only using Speed to take out the competition. Hawkins as well as his enemies were brought to justice. Speed investigated a fatal explosion in a chemical lab that police had written off as a suicide, soon determining that it was in fact a carefully orchestrated murder by a jealous scientist. He then brought in a maid and gardener who had collaborated to kill their employer, a famous writer, in an attempt to gain his fortune in his will. Speed solved a murder at a circus in which a jealous performer killed a colleague by wiring a hollowed-out mammoth tusk, stolen from a museum, over an angry elephant's tusks and using it to gore his victim. Toward the end of the year, Speed took down a serial killer calling himself Skull-Face who preyed on women seeking beauty products; a fur trapper killing and robbing hunters in eastern Canada; and a spy stealing American military weapon plans and handing them off to foreign nations.

### 1940

At the start of the year, Speed took down a cult in Cuba led by a zealot called the Snake Master.

## Notes

1. ↑ After being the leader of a tribe of cannibals at the end of *Detective Comics* #14, Malcolm Dane is peacefully aboard a passenger liner with Speed and the others in the following issue. No explanation is given for this discrepancy.

## References

1. ↑ *Detective Comics* #1a: "Speed Saunders and the River Patrol." (March 1937) Stoner, Elmer Cecil (w, p), Flessel, Creig (i).
2. ↑ *Detective Comics* #3a: "Speed Saunders and the River Patrol." (May 1937) Flessel, Crieg.
3. ↑ *Detective Comics* #4a: "The Mystery of San José Island." (June 1937) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Crieg (art).
4. ↑ *Detective Comics* #5i: "Speed Saunders." (July 1937) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Crieg (art).
5. ↑ *Detective Comics* #6a: "The Mystery of the Lost Ape." (August 1937) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Crieg (art).
6. ↑ *Detective Comics* #7i: "Speed Saunders at the Rodeo." (September 1937) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
7. ↑ *Detective Comics* #8a: "Speed Saunders and the River Patrol." (October 1937) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
8. ↑ *Detective Comics* #9a: "Speed Saunders." (November 1937) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
9. ↑ *Detective Comics* #10a: "Speed Saunders, Ace Detective." (December 1937) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
10. ↑ *Detective Comics* #11a: "Speed Saunders of the River Police." (January 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
11. ↑ *Detective Comics* #12a: "Speed Saunders." (February 1938) Gardner, Fox (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
12. ↑ *Detective Comics* #13a: "Speed Saunders." (March 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
13. ↑ *Detective Comics* #14a: "The Mystery of Hondoku Isle." (April 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
14. ↑ *Detective Comics* #15a: "Speed Saunders." (May 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Flessel, Creig (art).
15. ↑ *Detective Comics* #16a: "The Case of the Missing Corpse." (June 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
16. ↑ *Detective Comics* #17a: "The Snake Death." (July 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
17. ↑ *Detective Comics* #18a: "The Hilton Diamond." (August 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
18. ↑ *Detective Comics* #19a: "The Grogan Case." (September 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
19. ↑ *Detective Comics* #20a: "The Jade Buddha." (October 1938) Gardner, Fox (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
20. ↑ *Detective Comics* #21a: "The Glass of Poison." (November 1938) Gardner, Fox (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
21. ↑ *Detective Comics* #22k: "The Snow Murder." (December 1938) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
22. ↑ *Detective Comics* #23a: "The Ski Murder." (January 1939) Gardner, Fox (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
23. ↑ *Detective Comics* #24a: "The Persian Jewel Mystery." (February 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
24. ↑ *Detective Comics* #25a: "The Death Sled." (March 1939) Fox, Gardner (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
25. ↑ *Detective Comics* #26k: "The Basketball Mystery." (April 1939) Gardner, Fox (w), Guardineer, Fred (art).
26. ↑ *Detective Comics* #27c: "The Killers of Kurdistan." (May 1939) Guardineer, Fred.
27. ↑ *Detective Comics* #28b: "The Dope Ring." (June 1939) Guardineer, Fred.
28. ↑ *Detective Comics* #29f: "The Perfect Crime." (July 1939) Guardineer, Fred.
29. ↑ *Detective Comics* #30g: "The Crossbow Mystery." (August 1939) Guardineer, Fred.
30. ↑ *Detective Comics* #31f: "The Mammoth Mystery." (September 1939) Guardineer, Fred.
31. ↑ *Detective Comics* #32f: "The Skull-Face Cult." (October 1939) Guardineer, Fred.
32. ↑ *Detective Comics* #33f: "The Northwoods Mystery." (November 1939) Guardineer, Fred.
33. ↑ *Detective Comics* #34g: "The Spy Mystery." (December 1939) Guardineer, Fred.
34. ↑ *Detective Comics* #35f: "The Voodoo Vengeance." (January 1940) Guardineer, Fred.