Spy Killer (Stories from the Golden Age) Read online

  bucko: a person who is domineering and bullying.

  bucko mate: the mate of a sailing ship who drives his crew by the power of his fists.

  Bund: the word bund means an embankment and “the Bund” refers to a particular stretch of embanked riverfront along the Huangpu River in Shanghai that is lined with dozens of historical buildings. The Bund lies north of the old walled city of Shanghai. This was initially a British settlement; later the British and American settlements were combined into the International Settlement. A building boom at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century led to the Bund becoming a major financial hub of East Asia.

  Chi: Chicago.

  cholera: an infectious disease of the small intestine, typically contracted from infected water.

  chow bench: a short round table with four stools that fit underneath it.

  clothes press: a piece of furniture for storing clothes, with hanging space and sometimes drawers or shelves.

  Colt .45: a .45-caliber automatic pistol manufactured by the Colt Firearms Company of Hartford, Connecticut. Colt was founded by Samuel Colt (1814–1862), who revolutionized the firearms industry.

  Concession: something conceded by a government or a controlling authority, as a grant of land, a privilege or a franchise. In Shanghai, there was land set aside by treaty as a spot where foreigners could live and trade, which is referred to as the Concession; otherwise known as “the Bund.”

  coup de grâce: (French) a finishing stroke.

  cutter: a ship’s boat, powered by a motor or oars and used for transporting stores or passengers.

  down in the mouth: dejected; depressed; disheartened.

  embrasures: (in fortification) openings, as a loophole through which missiles may be discharged.

  Frisco: San Francisco.

  Genghis Khan: (1162?–1227) Mongol conqueror who founded the largest land empire in history and whose armies, known for their use of terror, conquered many territories and slaughtered the populations of entire cities.

  G-men: government men; agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  gunwale: the upper edge of the side of a boat. Originally a gunwale was a platform where guns were mounted, and was designed to accommodate the additional stresses imposed by the artillery being used.

  hard-boiled: tough and cynical.

  Hell to Halifax: a variation of the phrase “from here to Halifax,” meaning everywhere, in all places no matter how far from here. “Halifax” is a county in eastern Canada, on the Atlantic Ocean.

  Huangpu: long river in China flowing through Shanghai. It divides the city into two regions.

  Kalgan: a city in northeast China near the Great Wall that served as both a commercial and a military center. Kalgan means “gate in a barrier” or “frontier” in Mongolian. It is the eastern entry into China from Inner Mongolia.

  kirei na: (Japanese) beautiful.

  mailed fist: superior force.

  merchant prince: an extremely wealthy, powerful and prestigious merchant.

  Mikado: the emperor of Japan; a title no longer used.

  No: (Japanese) classic drama of Japan, developed chiefly in the fourteenth century, employing verse, prose, choral song and dance in highly conventionalized formal and thematic patterns derived from religious sources and folk myths.

  Old Glory: a common nickname for the flag of the US, bestowed by William Driver (1803–1886), an early nineteenth-century American sea captain. Given the flag as a gift, he hung it from his ship’s mast and hailed it as “Old Glory” when he left harbor for a trip around the world (1831–1832) as commander of a whaling vessel. Old Glory served as the ship’s official flag throughout the voyage.

  Peking: now Beijing, China.

  postern: a small gate or entrance at the back of a building, especially a castle or a fort.

  rapier: a small sword, especially of the eighteenth century, having a narrow blade and used for thrusting.

  Rising Sun: Japan; the characters that make up Japan’s name mean “the sun’s origin,” which is why Japan is sometimes identified as the “Land of the Rising Sun.” It is also the military flag of Japan and was used as the ensign of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the war flag of the Imperial Japanese Army until the end of World War II.

  sampan: any of various small boats of the Far East, as one propelled by a single oar over the stern and provided with a roofing of mats.

  sayo: (Japanese) yes; indeed; that’s right.

  sayonara: (Japanese) goodbye.

  Scheherazade: the female narrator of The Arabian Nights, who during one thousand and one adventurous nights saved her life by entertaining her husband, the king, with stories.

  scimitar: a curved, single-edged sword of Oriental origin.

  sculling oar: a single oar that is moved from side to side at the stern of a boat to propel it forward.

  Shanghai: city of eastern China at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and the largest city in the country. Shanghai was opened to foreign trade by treaty in 1842 and quickly prospered. France, Great Britain and the United States all held large concessions (rights to use land granted by a government) in the city until the early twentieth century.

  Shina-lin: (Japanese) Chinese officials.

  SS: steamship.

  taicho: (Japanese) leader of a small group.

  taisho: (Japanese) colonel.

  Tobi-dasu!: (Japanese) Jump out!

  tomodachi: (Japanese) friend; companion.

  tonneau: a waterproof cover, generally of canvas or vinyl, that can be fastened over the cockpit of a roadster or convertible to protect the interior.

  tramp: a freight vessel that does not run regularly between fixed ports, but takes a cargo wherever shippers desire.

  tsumesho: (Japanese) guard room.

  USS: United States Ship.

  White Russian: a Russian who opposed the Bolsheviks (Russian Communist Party).

  yakunin: (Japanese) government official.

  Yellow Sea: an arm of the Pacific Ocean between the Chinese mainland and the Korean Peninsula. It connects with the East China Sea to the south.

  L. Ron Hubbard in the

  Golden Age of

  Pulp Fiction

  In writing an adventure story

  a writer has to know that he is adventuring

  for a lot of people who cannot.

  The writer has to take them here and there

  about the globe and show them

  excitement and love and realism.

  As long as that writer is living the part of an

  adventurer when he is hammering

  the keys, he is succeeding with his story.

  Adventuring is a state of mind.

  If you adventure through life, you have a

  good chance to be a success on paper.

  Adventure doesn’t mean globe-trotting,

  exactly, and it doesn’t mean great deeds.

  Adventuring is like art.

  You have to live it to make it real.

  — L. Ron Hubbard

  L. Ron Hubbard

  and American

  Pulp Fiction

  BORN March 13, 1911, L. Ron Hubbard lived a life at least as expansive as the stories with which he enthralled a hundred million readers through a fifty-year career.

  Originally hailing from Tilden, Nebraska, he spent his formative years in a classically rugged Montana, replete with the cowpunchers, lawmen and desperadoes who would later people his Wild West adventures. And lest anyone imagine those adventures were drawn from vicarious experience, he was not only breaking broncs at a tender age, he was also among the few whites ever admitted into Blackfoot society as a bona fide blood brother. While if only to round out an otherwise rough and tumble youth, his mother was that rarity of her time—a thoroughly educated woman—who introduced her son to the classics of Occidental literature even before his seventh birthday.

  But as any dedicated L. Ron Hubbard reader will attest, his world extended f
ar beyond Montana. In point of fact, and as the son of a United States naval officer, by the age of eighteen he had traveled over a quarter of a million miles. Included therein were three Pacific crossings to a then still mysterious Asia, where he ran with the likes of Her British Majesty’s agent-in-place for North China, and the last in the line of Royal Magicians from the court of Kublai Khan. For the record, L. Ron Hubbard was also among the first Westerners to gain admittance to forbidden Tibetan monasteries below Manchuria, and his photographs of China’s Great Wall long graced American geography texts.

  Upon his return to the United States and a hasty completion of his interrupted high school education, the young Ron Hubbard entered George Washington University. There, as fans of his aerial adventures may have heard, he earned his wings as a pioneering barnstormer at the dawn of American aviation. He also earned a place in free-flight record books for the longest sustained flight above Chicago. Moreover, as a roving reporter for Sportsman Pilot (featuring his first professionally penned articles), he further helped inspire a generation of pilots who would take America to world airpower.

  L. Ron Hubbard, left, at Congressional Airport, Washington, DC, 1931, with members of George Washington University flying club.

  Immediately beyond his sophomore year, Ron embarked on the first of his famed ethnological expeditions, initially to then untrammeled Caribbean shores (descriptions of which would later fill a whole series of West Indies mystery-thrillers). That the Puerto Rican interior would also figure into the future of Ron Hubbard stories was likewise no accident. For in addition to cultural studies of the island, a 1932–33 LRH expedition is rightly remembered as conducting the first complete mineralogical survey of a Puerto Rico under United States jurisdiction.

  There was many another adventure along this vein: As a lifetime member of the famed Explorers Club, L. Ron Hubbard charted North Pacific waters with the first shipboard radio direction finder, and so pioneered a long-range navigation system universally employed until the late twentieth century. While not to put too fine an edge on it, he also held a rare Master Mariner’s license to pilot any vessel, of any tonnage in any ocean.

  Capt. L. Ron Hubbard in Ketchikan, Alaska, 1940, on his Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition, the first of three voyages conducted under the Explorers Club Flag.

  Yet lest we stray too far afield, there is an LRH note at this juncture in his saga, and it reads in part:

  “I started out writing for the pulps, writing the best I knew, writing for every mag on the stands, slanting as well as I could.”

  To which one might add: His earliest submissions date from the summer of 1934, and included tales drawn from true-to-life Asian adventures, with characters roughly modeled on British/American intelligence operatives he had known in Shanghai. His early Westerns were similarly peppered with details drawn from personal experience. Although therein lay a first hard lesson from the often cruel world of the pulps. His first Westerns were soundly rejected as lacking the authenticity of a Max Brand yarn (a particularly frustrating comment given L. Ron Hubbard’s Westerns came straight from his Montana homeland, while Max Brand was a mediocre New York poet named Frederick Schiller Faust, who turned out implausible six-shooter tales from the terrace of an Italian villa).

  Nevertheless, and needless to say, L. Ron Hubbard persevered and soon earned a reputation as among the most publishable names in pulp fiction, with a ninety percent placement rate of first-draft manuscripts. He was also among the most prolific, averaging between seventy and a hundred thousand words a month. Hence the rumors that L. Ron Hubbard had redesigned a typewriter for faster keyboard action and pounded out manuscripts on a continuous roll of butcher paper to save the precious seconds it took to insert a single sheet of paper into manual typewriters of the day.

  L. Ron Hubbard, circa 1930, at the outset of a literary career that would finally span half a century.

  That all L. Ron Hubbard stories did not run beneath said byline is yet another aspect of pulp fiction lore. That is, as publishers periodically rejected manuscripts from top-drawer authors if only to avoid paying top dollar, L. Ron Hubbard and company just as frequently replied with submissions under various pseudonyms. In Ron’s case, the list included: Rene Lafayette, Captain Charles Gordon, Lt. Scott Morgan and the notorious Kurt von Rachen—supposedly on the lam for a murder rap, while hammering out two-fisted prose in Argentina. The point: While L. Ron Hubbard as Ken Martin spun stories of Southeast Asian intrigue, LRH as Barry Randolph authored tales of romance on the Western range—which, stretching between a dozen genres is how he came to stand among the two hundred elite authors providing close to a million tales through the glory days of American Pulp Fiction.

  A Man of Many Names

  Between 1934 and 1950, L. Ron Hubbard authored more than fifteen million words of fiction in more than two hundred classic publications.

  To supply his fans and editors with stories across an array of genres and pulp titles, he adopted fifteen pseudonyms in addition to his already renowned L. Ron Hubbard byline.

  ______

  Winchester Remington Colt

  Lt. Jonathan Daly

  Capt. Charles Gordon

  Capt. L. Ron Hubbard

  Bernard Hubbel

  Michael Keith

  Rene Lafayette

  Legionnaire 148

  Legionnaire 14830

  Ken Martin

  Scott Morgan

  Lt. Scott Morgan

  Kurt von Rachen

  Barry Randolph

  Capt. Humbert Reynolds

  In evidence of exactly that, by 1936 L. Ron Hubbard was literally leading pulp fiction’s elite as president of New York’s American Fiction Guild. Members included a veritable pulp hall of fame: Lester “Doc Savage” Dent, Walter “The Shadow” Gibson, and the legendary Dashiell Hammett—to cite but a few.

  Also in evidence of just where L. Ron Hubbard stood within his first two years on the American pulp circuit: By the spring of 1937, he was ensconced in Hollywood, adopting a Caribbean thriller for Columbia Pictures, remembered today as The Secret of Treasure Island. Comprising fifteen thirty-minute episodes, the L. Ron Hubbard screenplay led to the most profitable matinée serial in Hollywood history. In accord with Hollywood culture, he was thereafter continually called upon to rewrite/doctor scripts—most famously for long-time friend and fellow adventurer Clark Gable.

  The 1937 Secret of Treasure Island a fifteen-episode serial adapted for the screen by L. Ron Hubbard from his novel, Murder at Pirate Castle.

  In the interim—and herein lies another distinctive chapter of the L. Ron Hubbard story—he continually worked to open Pulp Kingdom gates to up-and-coming authors. Or, for that matter, anyone who wished to write. It was a fairly unconventional stance, as markets were already thin and competition razor sharp. But the fact remains, it was an L. Ron Hubbard hallmark that he vehemently lobbied on behalf of young authors—regularly supplying instructional articles to trade journals, guest-lecturing to short story classes at George Washington University and Harvard, and even founding his own creative writing competition. It was established in 1940, dubbed the Golden Pen, and guaranteed winners both New York representation and publication in Argosy.

  But it was John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding Science Fiction that finally proved the most memorable LRH vehicle. While every fan of L. Ron Hubbard’s galactic epics undoubtedly knows the story, it nonetheless bears repeating: By late 1938, the pulp publishing magnate of Street & Smith was determined to revamp Astounding Science Fiction for broader readership. In particular, senior editorial director F. Orlin Tremaine called for stories with a stronger human element. When acting editor John W. Campbell balked, preferring his spaceship-driven tales, Tremaine enlisted Hubbard. Hubbard, in turn, replied with the genre’s first truly character-driven works, wherein heroes are pitted not against bug-eyed monsters but the mystery and majesty of deep space itself—and thus was launched the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

  The names alone are
enough to quicken the pulse of any science fiction aficionado, including LRH friend and protégé, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt and Ray Bradbury. Moreover, when coupled with LRH stories of fantasy, we further come to what’s rightly been described as the foundation of every modern tale of horror: L. Ron Hubbard’s immortal Fear. It was rightly proclaimed by Stephen King as one of the very few works to genuinely warrant that overworked term “classic”—as in: “This is a classic tale of creeping, surreal menace and horror. . . . This is one of the really, really good ones.”

  L. Ron Hubbard, 1948, among fellow science fiction luminaries at the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto.

  To accommodate the greater body of L. Ron Hubbard fantasies, Street & Smith inaugurated Unknown—a classic pulp if there ever was one, and wherein readers were soon thrilling to the likes of Typewriter in the Sky and Slaves of Sleep of which Frederik Pohl would declare: “There are bits and pieces from Ron’s work that became part of the language in ways that very few other writers managed.”

  And, indeed, at J. W. Campbell Jr.’s insistence, Ron was regularly drawing on themes from the Arabian Nights and so introducing readers to a world of genies, jinn, Aladdin and Sinbad—all of which, of course, continue to float through cultural mythology to this day.