Alias Whispering White* is a comic Western short story by W. C. Tuttle, first published in *Adventure Magazine* in December 1918, narrated by Ike Harper, a laconic Arizona cowpuncher. Ike and his partner Magpie Simpkins are prospectors in the Southwest when a young man named Franklyn Burt arrives with a wire offering twenty thousand dollars for their mining claim on behalf of his employer, Hartley Adams. Frankie is clearly troubled, and it emerges that the real reason for his visit is personal: he is in love with Marion White, his employer's niece, who is being pressured by her guardians—her aunt and uncle, the socially ambitious Wilberforce and Louisa Van Veen of Redfield—into marrying a European nobleman known as the Duke of Northmore. Marion's true uncle, Samuel White, a wealthy South American expatriate known as "Whispering White," has long been believed dead. Frankie needs someone to impersonate the returning uncle and use that authority to derail the engagement. Magpie seizes the role with cheerful audacity, announcing himself as Whispering White of Brazil, and recruiting Ike along as "Bedrock Benson." On the train east they acquire a third companion, a genially ugly drifter named Homely Hobbs, who hates dukes on principle and signs on as unofficial bodyguard. The journey from Silver Bend to Redfield is punctuated by brawls, a crooked card game settled in total darkness by all parties shooting at each other's muzzle flashes, and Magpie's purchase of an ice-cream suit and an oversized hat suited to his invented Brazilian persona. Arriving in Redfield, the trio immediately attracts a newspaper reporter, and Magpie's announcement that he is Whispering White—and that he is not in favor of Marion's engagement—runs in the local paper before they reach their hotel. The patrician Van Veen household is thrown into consternation. Wilberforce Van Veen ("Pinky"), a mild, hen-pecked man secretly delighted by the disruption, takes an instant liking to the newcomers and falls into an extended session of drinking with Ike and Homely that ends in an automobile crash into a garden folly, a nap in the wreckage, and an overheard conversation between Marion and the Duke—the first hint that the Duke is more than merely titled and fatuous. The climax arrives at the Van Veen reception. Magpie enters late, roughing up the contemptuous butler on the way in. The moment he and the Duke of Northmore lay eyes on each other, the comedy turns sharp: Magpie recognizes the "Duke" as Diamond Duke, a notorious card cheat and con man from Mesquite whom Magpie once shot in a confrontation over a crooked game—and who had faked death to escape. The Duke bolts upstairs; Magpie pursues, shooting. Homely, roused from his drunken stupor, joins the chase and fires from the staircase but overshoots as the Duke dives through a ground-floor window and disappears into the night. Magpie's shot clips the Duke's necktie; Homely's shatters the window. The reception dissolves in fainting ladies and fleeing guests, Pinky Van Veen blissfully fiddling a cowboy song amid the wreckage. With the Duke exposed and fled, Frankie Burt finally presses his suit, and Marion accepts him in the garden. The three Westerners collect their congratulations, shake hands all around, and catch the ten-thirty train back West. The final twist is Homely's: departing east on his own business, he shouts from the platform that if they ever reach Pernambuco, Brazil, they should ask for Whispering White—because he is the real one. The story is a genial frontier comedy of manners pitting frontier irreverence against Eastern pretension, and its engine is the gap between what the West considers genuinely dangerous—crooked card games, real guns, genuine outlaws—and what the East mistakes for danger: bad table manners and loud neckties.
By W. C. Tuttle · First published 1918 · Genre: Western, Adventure, Comedy