Dead Men Kill (Stories from the Golden Age) Read online

  SELECTED FICTION WORKS

  BY L. RON HUBBARD

  FANTASY

  The Case of the Friendly Corpse

  Death’s Deputy

  Fear

  The Ghoul

  The Indigestible Triton

  Slaves of Sleep & The Masters of Sleep

  Typewriter in the Sky

  The Ultimate Adventure

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Battlefield Earth

  The Conquest of Space

  The End Is Not Yet

  Final Blackout

  The Kilkenny Cats

  The Kingslayer

  The Mission Earth Dekalogy*

  Ole Doc Methuselah

  To the Stars

  ADVENTURE

  The Hell Job series

  WESTERN

  Buckskin Brigades

  Empty Saddles

  Guns of Mark Jardine

  Hot Lead Payoff

  A full list of L. Ron Hubbard’s

  novellas and short stories is provided at the back.

  *Dekalogy—a group of ten volumes

  Published by

  Galaxy Press, LLC

  7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200

  Hollywood, CA 90028

  © 2008 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.

  Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.

  Mission Earth is a trademark owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library and is used with permission. Battlefield Earth is a trademark owned by Author Services, Inc. and is used with permission.

  Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. Story Preview illustration from Detective Fiction Weekly is © 1936 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc. Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-59212-746-7 Mobipocket version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-545-6 epub version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-263-9 print version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-350-6 audiobook version

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927528

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  DEAD MEN KILL

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  STORY PREVIEW:

  THE CARNIVAL OF DEATH

  GLOSSARY

  L. RON HUBBARD

  IN THE GOLDEN AGE

  OF PULP FICTION

  THE STORIES FROM THE

  GOLDEN AGE

  FOREWORD

  Stories from Pulp Fiction’s Golden Age

  AND it was a golden age.

  The 1930s and 1940s were a vibrant, seminal time for a gigantic audience of eager readers, probably the largest per capita audience of readers in American history. The magazine racks were chock-full of publications with ragged trims, garish cover art, cheap brown pulp paper, low cover prices—and the most excitement you could hold in your hands.

  “Pulp” magazines, named for their rough-cut, pulpwood paper, were a vehicle for more amazing tales than Scheherazade could have told in a million and one nights. Set apart from higher-class “slick” magazines, printed on fancy glossy paper with quality artwork and superior production values, the pulps were for the “rest of us,” adventure story after adventure story for people who liked to read. Pulp fiction authors were no-holds-barred entertainers—real storytellers. They were more interested in a thrilling plot twist, a horrific villain or a white-knuckle adventure than they were in lavish prose or convoluted metaphors.

  The sheer volume of tales released during this wondrous golden age remains unmatched in any other period of literary history—hundreds of thousands of published stories in over nine hundred different magazines. Some titles lasted only an issue or two; many magazines succumbed to paper shortages during World War II, while others endured for decades yet. Pulp fiction remains as a treasure trove of stories you can read, stories you can love, stories you can remember. The stories were driven by plot and character, with grand heroes, terrible villains, beautiful damsels (often in distress), diabolical plots, amazing places, breathless romances. The readers wanted to be taken beyond the mundane, to live adventures far removed from their ordinary lives—and the pulps rarely failed to deliver.

  In that regard, pulp fiction stands in the tradition of all memorable literature. For as history has shown, good stories are much more than fancy prose. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas—many of the greatest literary figures wrote their fiction for the readers, not simply literary colleagues and academic admirers. And writers for pulp magazines were no exception. These publications reached an audience that dwarfed the circulations of today’s short story magazines. Issues of the pulps were scooped up and read by over thirty million avid readers each month.

  Because pulp fiction writers were often paid no more than a cent a word, they had to become prolific or starve. They also had to write aggressively. As Richard Kyle, publisher and editor of Argosy, the first and most long-lived of the pulps, so pointedly explained: “The pulp magazine writers, the best of them, worked for markets that did not write for critics or attempt to satisfy timid advertisers. Not having to answer to anyone other than their readers, they wrote about human beings on the edges of the unknown, in those new lands the future would explore. They wrote for what we would become, not for what we had already been.”

  Some of the more lasting names that graced the pulps include H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein—and, of course, L. Ron Hubbard.

  In a word, he was among the most prolific and popular writers of the era. He was also the most enduring—hence this series—and certainly among the most legendary. It all began only months after he first tried his hand at fiction, with L. Ron Hubbard tales appearing in Thrilling Adventures, Argosy, Five-Novels Monthly, Detective Fiction Weekly, Top-Notch, Texas Ranger, War Birds, Western Stories, even Romantic Range. He could write on any subject, in any genre, from jungle explorers to deep-sea divers, from G-men and gangsters, cowboys and flying aces to mountain climbers, hard-boiled detectives and spies. But he really began to shine when he turned his talent to science fiction and fantasy of which he authored nearly fifty novels or novelettes to forever change the shape of those genres.

  Following in the tradition of such famed authors as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, Ron Hubbard actually lived adventures that his own characters would have admired—as an ethnologist among primitive tribes, as prospector and engineer in hostile climes, as a captain of vessels on four oceans. He even wrote a series of articles for Argosy, called “Hell Job,” in which he lived and told of the most dangerous professions a man could put his hand to.

  Finally, and just for good measure, he was also an accomplished photographer, artist, filmmaker, musician and educator. But he was first and foremost a writer, and that’s the L. Ron Hubbard we come to know through the pages of this volume.

  This library of Stories from the Go
lden Age presents the best of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction from the heyday of storytelling, the Golden Age of the pulp magazines. In these eighty volumes, readers are treated to a full banquet of 153 stories, a kaleidoscope of tales representing every imaginable genre: science fiction, fantasy, western, mystery, thriller, horror, even romance—action of all kinds and in all places.

  Because the pulps themselves were printed on such inexpensive paper with high acid content, issues were not meant to endure. As the years go by, the original issues of every pulp from Argosy through Zeppelin Stories continue crumbling into brittle, brown dust. This library preserves the L. Ron Hubbard tales from that era, presented with a distinctive look that brings back the nostalgic flavor of those times.

  L. Ron Hubbard’s Stories from the Golden Age has something for every taste, every reader. These tales will return you to a time when fiction was good clean entertainment and the most fun a kid could have on a rainy afternoon or the best thing an adult could enjoy after a long day at work.

  Pick up a volume, and remember what reading is supposed to be all about. Remember curling up with a great story.

  —Kevin J. Anderson

  KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of more than ninety critically acclaimed works of speculative fiction, including The Saga of Seven Suns, the continuation of the Dune Chronicles with Brian Herbert, and his New York Times bestselling novelization of L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito!

  Dead Men Kill

  CHAPTER ONE

  Death from the Grave

  IN a voice which held the icy tones of death, the dark-clothed man in the open doorway rasped, “I have come to kill you, Gordon! I have come to kill you!”

  Gordon stiffened in his massive chair. His ruddy face went ashen; his thick fingers clutched at the corners of his desk. “Jackson!” he shrieked.

  The killer’s eyes were glassy. His hands reached out before him, grasping, talonlike. The pallor of the dead was on his wasted face. He was clothed in the garments of the grave! Silently, relentlessly, he walked forward.

  “Stop!” screamed Gordon. “My God, Jackson, what have I ever done to you?”

  The answer was toneless, harsh. “I have come to kill you, Gordon!”

  The clutching hands came closer. Gordon covered his face, tried to cower away. Beside him was a telephone. Furtively he reached out for it.

  If Jackson saw, he gave no heed. Blindly he came against the outer edge of the desk. Slowly he skirted the obstruction and came on.

  “Police!” cried Gordon into the receiver.

  If Jackson heard, he gave no sign. His hard, glassy eyes, sunken and horrible, were fixed on his victim’s throat. Gordon stared up and caught the odor which had assailed him from the first. It was the smell of moist earth mingled with the perfumes of the undertaking parlor. The stench of the grave!

  “I have come to kill you, Gordon!” repeated the murderer. It was as though this phrase was all that remained in the man’s mind.

  “My God, Jackson! Get away!” Too late, Gordon tried to scramble out from behind his desk.

  Jackson lunged, hands convulsing. When the sunken eyes were a foot away from Gordon’s, the fingers snapped down on the victim’s throat. There was a shriek and the crash of the overturned chair. Gordon whipped about, writhing under the maniacal strength of the hands.

  Shuddering sobs were coming from the victim’s distorted mouth. Slowly the body under the hands relaxed and lay still. Jackson’s fingers still clutched the throat.

  Seconds ticked by before the murderer moved. Then, with his expressionless face turned toward the door, he walked slowly from the room.

  The toneless phrase came again. “I have come to kill you, Gordon!” And the man who was dressed for the grave disappeared into the corridor.

  Inspector Leonard rushed from his desk into the squad room and spotted Detective-Sergeant Terry Lane. “Lane! Snap into it. Gordon’s been murdered and I think it’s a clue on your Burnham killing. The man on the switchboard heard Gordon shout ‘My God, Jackson, get away!’ into the phone. Get out there right away!”

  Terry Lane

  Detective-Sergeant Terrence Lane needed no further word. Like a shot, his wiry figure hurtled through the door, plunged down a flight of steps and swung aboard the scout car at the curb.

  “The Gordon residence!” shouted Lane to Monahan at the wheel. “And step on it!”

  The car roared up the street, Lane hanging to the running board, his blue eyes flashing, the wind tearing at his raven black hair. Monahan had given the wild figure a brief glance, decided that Terry Lane meant what he said, and the squad car ripped past a red light, lanced up a traffic-jammed avenue, screamed around a curve and then came to a stop before the imposing mansion which was the home of the late Ralph Gordon, a well-known wealthy sportsman.

  If Detective Lane was disheveled, he had good reason to be. For a week he had been on the trail of a killer he could never reasonably expect to apprehend. The papers were blatant in their denouncement of the police force in general and Terry Lane in particular.

  Since that fatal day seven days before when Edward Burnham, head of a power trust, had been found dead in his home, Lane’s life had been a nightmare. He had not known which way to turn, since the only conceivable clue had pointed the guilt to Hamilton, secretary to Burnham. And that was impossible. For Hamilton had been dead and buried for two weeks!

  Lane sprinted up the steps, kicked open the front door and stepped inside. Then, undecided, he stopped and stared about him. In the hall of that great home, in spite of the clamor of traffic outside its door, silence reigned. It was the sinister, clammy silence of death. An odor came to him oppressively.

  Worry flicked across Lane’s lean, nervous face and he looked down at his feet. There, in the center of the hallway, lay a blue gray cotton glove. When he picked it up, Lane again smelled that faint odor. Suddenly he recognized it.

  It was a pallbearer’s glove that he had found and from it came the stench of moist earth and sickening perfume. The odor of the grave!

  Jamming his first clue into his pocket, Lane ran into the room at his right and then stopped abruptly.

  As many times as the detective had witnessed death, his stomach retched at the sight before him. Gordon was sprawled on the floor, rigid and staring. His once-dapper clothes were ripped about the throat. The flesh beneath his jaw was blue and swollen. But it was the face which held Lane’s gaze. Surprise, horror and disbelief were mirrored there so strongly that even death had not erased them.

  Lane stepped forward with a shudder. He looked quickly about for some telltale bit of evidence, but nothing untoward rewarded him.

  From the street came the noise of sirens and screeching brakes, heralding the arrival of the wagon and the coroner. With them, Lane knew, would come the newshawks and cameramen. He dreaded their arrival more than he did the prospects of solving this second murder. It was certain that a few more scathing articles such as those which had recently appeared would ruin Terry Lane’s promising career.

  The coroner was the first man in the door. He was small and wizened, with a military mustache adding an incongruous note of jauntiness.

  Dr. Charles Reynolds was entirely too professional to be awed by the sight of a corpse.

  “Hello,” said Coroner Reynolds. “I don’t need my stethoscope to tell that bird’s stone dead.” He knelt quickly beside Gordon. “Deader’n hell. Strangled. The fellow that did that must have been a maniac.”

  He glanced at the detective. “Just the same thing as we found in the Burnham case. Any clue?”

  Dr. Reynolds

  “Nothing definite,” snapped Lane. “I wish there was.”

  He looked up to see that four bluecoats had come in. “Go through your routine, boys, but I’m afraid it won’t mean a thing.”

  Monahan came in, herding a scared butler in front of him.

  “This egg says he ain’t seen nothin’, Sergeant.”

  Lane gave the butler a brief scrutiny. “Who was
Jackson?”

  “I don’t know anything about it, sir,” quaked the butler. “Jackson, sir, he was Mr. Gordon’s secretary. He was buried last week, sir.”

  “Oh, cripes!” exclaimed Lane. “Another of those things! What did Jackson die of?”

  “I don’t rightly know, sir, but it was some sort of fever.” The butler’s knees were shaking. “There wasn’t nothing between Jackson and Mr. Gordon, sir. Jackson was a mighty fine young man. When he died, sir, we felt very bad.”

  “And we’re supposed to believe Jackson rose from the grave and killed Gordon,” Dr. Reynolds scowled. “Zombies—the walking dead—like they’re supposed to have in Haiti? Rot! I’ve been there—and I never saw any.”

  “I’ll handle this, Reynolds.” Lane drew the pallbearer’s glove out of his pocket and thumped it in front of the butler’s nose. “Ever see this before?”

  The butler moaned and then nodded his head dumbly.

  “Yes, sir. That is, I think so, sir. I bought those gloves very special for Mr. Jackson’s funeral!”

  “Then you wore this glove as a pallbearer?” Lane demanded.

  “No, sir!” Again the butler moaned. “I bought it for Mr. Jackson, sir. He had a very small hand, he did. That was on him when we lowered him into the grave, sir.”

  “What?” exclaimed Reynolds. “Well, I’ll say this much, Lane. The man that strangled Gordon had very small hands. The thumb prints say so.” The coroner shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing else I can do here now.”

  He picked up his black bag, and the door closed after him as he disappeared in the hall.