Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938

While Mickey Doolin’s plans for profiting from being a stool-pigeon ended as most convicts would like to see all similar plans end, there have been instances where convicts gained their liberty by assisting prison officials without any intention of doing so. Bob Durant, an oil stock swindler serving a term in a western prison, was the central figure in a case of this kind.

Durant was educated, more or less refined, and was of a type among whom are seldom found informers. During the day he worked in the prison library, and on five nights of the week he taught a class of journalism in the institution school. Because of his like-able personality and readiness at all times to write letters for other inmates and to advise them, he was liked by both officials and the inmate body.

At some time during his life Durant had done newspaper work and his contributions to the prison publication showed that he possessed some writing ability and for this reason he was permitted to organize the first journalism class in the prison. Durant was smart enough to realize that his success with this class would probably determine the amount of time he would have to serve on his five-year term, consequently he worked tirelessly with his students. Durant soon learned that his class was more interested in fiction writing than reportorial work, so he frequently gave them story assignments based upon plots which he would outline for them. He was outlining one of these plots one night when the warden unnoticed, stood in back of him.

“Now, men,” Durant said, “there is one important rule to follow in writing, particularly while you are learning, and that is to confine your writing to subjects and locales with which you are familiar. That is why I am going to give you an idea for a story tonight which will have a prison as its locale. Here is the situation: A warden of a prison is worried because of the large amount of dope finding its way into his prison. His guards are unable to locate the source of the dope, but its use in the institution has become so widespread that news of it has reached the outside world.

“In this prison the inmates are permitted to make curios for sale outside, such as the ladies beaded bags which some of you fellows make. This is the manner in which the dope is being smuggled into the prison. One of the prisoners, who makes a practice of buying up these bags from other inmates who have no outside markets is the man who is the ‘dope king.’ He is trusted and unsuspected by the prison officials. He frequently sends out bags in quantities of a dozen or more to outside customers on approval. Some of these are purchased by these customers and others are returned to the prisoner as undesirable. In the lining of the returned bag the dope is concealed, and any of you who are familiar with morphine or cocaine know that many hundred dollars’ worth of the narcotics, at prison prices, could be concealed in one of these bags. Now your problem is to write a story and have the warden find a solution to his dope problem without using a stool-pigeon. You have good material there for a story and I want you to do your best with it. You will submit your completed manuscripts two weeks from tonight and the best story will be published in our local paper.”