The Adventure Megapack: 25 Classic Adventure Stories

by Dorothy Quick

  “Mon Dieu!” said Radoub. “Casmir!”

  Then he burst into a laugh. Only such a short time ago he had been warning Casmir, on the parade ground of the Legion, against running away!,

  They walked along the. street to-gether, and Casmir explained matters.

  He had run away, it seemed, on the same night that Radoub had made his evasion, had boldly taken the train for Oran, and, with the good luck that comes with daring, had found the matter perfectly easy.

  “I was never stopped or questioned once,” said he. “But here it is different. I cannot get across. It seems that they are watching the boats. I went down to the steamboat quay yesterday, and there was an official at the gangway of the boat for Marseilles, He was demanding the papers of all the passengers—the men. To leave this place one must be either a fish or a sea bird, it seems, and I am neither.”

  “Come into this cafe, and let us talk,” said Radoub.

  They entered a shabby cafe that was close by, and Radoub called for coffee and food for them both.

  “How much money have you?” said he.

  “A hundred francs,” replied Casmir. “I had a hundred and forty to start with. I had received a money order from a relation for two hundred francs the morning I was talking to you. It cost me sixty francs to get this rig. It was that money order that fixed me in my idea of bolting, and I am beginning to wish now that I had never received it.”

  “Courage,” said Radoub.

  He said nothing for a few minutes, and then he began to disclose his plan. There were ships always leaving Oran for the French and Spanish ports. Ship captains of the lesser mercantile marine were venal folk; for eighty francs, say, the pair of them might be able to get a passage on some bark; a place in the hold, on top of the cargo, would do.

  “Ah,” said Casmir, brightening up, “now you are talking! If any man can do the trick, you can; you have the gift of the gab and a way with you that I have not.”

  “Well, then,” said Radoub, “let’s go down to the wharves now, right away, and try and fix up the business.”

  But Casmir demurred.

  “There is no use in our going about the streets together,” said he, “for, if one is caught, the other will be nabbed, too. I’ll meet you here in an hour if you will go and try and do the business. The cafe won’t run away, and you may be very sure that I won’t, either.”

  Radoub saw at once the reason in this, and off he started, leaving Choc with Casmir.

  Choc was fond of Casmir, who had often fed him with scraps; all the same, Radoub borrowed a piece of string from the dingy waiter and tied the end of it round the dog’s neck.

  “That will give you something to hold him by,” said he, “in case he’s up to any of his tricks.”

  Then he paid the bill and started off, leaving Casmir seated and holding the dog by the string.

  * * * *

  There are two harbors at Oran. An outer anchorage, not very good in rough weather, unless the wind is off the land, and a small, inner harbor, a little hole of a place, always full because of its small size.

  Radoub came along the quay side, walking in a leisurely manner and smoking a cigarette. Beside the warships in the harbor there were two small, bark-rigged vessels, one discharging grain, the other with closed hatches and evidently a full cargo.

  Radoub was walking toward the gangplank of the latter, when a hand fell on his arm, and, turning, he found himself face to face with Sergeant Pel-letier, of the military police of Sidi-bel-Abbes.

  “That’s all right,” said the sergeant, releasing Radoub’s arm and placing his hand on his shoulder in a fatherly way. “And you may be thankful your uniform was returned. Whoever sold you this rig sent it back, left it at the barrack gates, done up in a parcel. Mon Dieu! Radoub, but I would never have thought it of you, to play a fool’s game like this! A smart Legionnaire like you, time nearly expired and all. What made you?”

  Radoub laughed.

  The game had gone against him, and there was no use in grumbling.

  His mind was engaged less on the business of arrest than on the problem of what he should do about Casmir and Choc.

  To regain possession of Choc, he would have to give Casmir away, and Choc being condemned to death, there was no use in regaining possession of him. So he did nothing.

  He lit a cigarette, and, walking side by side with Pelletier, he went to the station, and twenty minutes later he was in the train returning to Sidi-bel-Abbes.

  At the barracks, he was placed promptly under arrest, and he marched off to his cell with that terrible light-heartedness which is a legacy of the Legion, inherited from crime.

  As no single item of his uniform was lost, he only received a month’s imprisonment, and, at the end of the month, the Legion was marched off south, where the Arabs were kicking up a dust, and hard fighting helped him to work off the stiffness caused by imprisonment.

  He seemed to have forgotten Casmir, who had not been recaptured, and the dog, which was never heard of again; yet, in the great battle that was fought that month near the Oasis of the Three Palms, an old Legionnaire—the same who told me this story—fighting beside Radoub, was amazed, even in the heat of battle, at the fury of the latter.

  “He was working off the dog,” said the old fellow. “It is always so with the Legion, and that is what makes the Legion so terrible in battle: They are not so much fighting with the enemy, monsieur; they are bayoneting the past, and what the past has done to them.”

  THE WHISPERING CORPSE, by Richard B. Sale

  CHAPTER I

  CHAMBER OF DEATH

  It was a circular room with a smooth, marblelike glisten on the stony walls. The taciturnicy of death hung grimly over the place, enveloping it like turbid fog. There was only dim light. This did not dispel the unholy gloominess, but only served to increase the eerie ebony shadows which cavorted about grotesquely like tiny dervishes. On the marble walls were dull metallic handles which opened the huge drawers of the walls. These were arranged vertically in systematic columns like a steel filing cabinet.

  Detective Bart Trevor, criminal nemesis at large, stepped soundlessly past the open door of the room and went in. He paused, screwing up his face wryly at the macabre aspect of the place. All around Trevor, cleverly concealed in slablike chambers, were bodies.

  Trevor shivered.

  He suddenly saw two men standing across the room from him, apparently straining to hear something. He walked over to them, his shoes slithering scrapily on the chilly cement floor. The two men jumped at the sound, momentarily startled.

  “Hello, Bart,” said Inspector Bill Brandt soberly. “You might’ve knocked when you came in. This place gives me the creeps. I never could go for the morgue much.”

  Trevor said, “Hello, inspector. Well, I got here.”

  Brandt nodded and turned to the man at his side. “Go ahead, Karl. Tell Trevor what you told me. Tell him why I phoned him to rush down here.”

  Karl Topeka, the grizzled old German attendant of the city morgue, shook his head sombrely at Trevor. His face was sallow beneath his white hair, and his eyes were wide in horror.

  “What is it?” Trevor asked, puzzled.

  “It iss one of the corpses,” Topeka replied in a weird, sibilant whisper. “It wass talking tonight. It wass calling your name, Herr Trevor!”

  Trevor stared at the German. “Calling my name?” he exclaimed. “You mean one of these dead stiffs sat up tonight and called for me?”

  “Ja, ja!” averred Topeka. “That wass it! Gott, it wass terrible! Here I wass sitting, reading my newspaper. All of a sudden I heard some one whispering. I thought it wass my imagination. But no—it wass not! One of the corpses wass really whispering!”

  Trevor scoffed, “Impossible!”

  “That’s what I said,” Inspector Brandt cut in. “But damn my ears if I didn’t hear it myself just a second or two before you came in!”

  “You must both be crazy!” Trevor cried. “A dead man can’t speak�
�not even in a whisper.” He hesitated and eyed them carefully. “Which body is doing the ghost work?”

  Inspector Brandt opened his mouth to explain. But he quickly closed it again with a snap! Another voice sliced out of the gloomy morgue walls. It was uncanny—a ghastly rasping slither like the hissing warning of an angry snake.

  “Bart Trevor—Bart Trevor.…”

  Trevor gasped in astonishment and fright and whirled around to face the wall. The unearthly summons seemed to emanate right from the panel in front of them. It struck an icy dread into Trevor’s pounding heart and left him panting hotly.

  “That iss it!” Topeka groaned. “Listen!”

  “Bart Trevor—Bart Trevor.…”

  It was like a banshee wail, the horrible plea of a damned lost soul searching among the grisly dead for a friend. Those were the only two words it said. None more.

  “Try answering,” snapped Inspector Brandt. “Try anything! Bart, for God’s sake, I can’t stand that sound!”

  In a wary, tremulous voice, Trevor replied, “I’m here.”

  There was no further sound. Only the oppressive silence of the damp morgue.

  “I’m here,” Trevor repeated earnestly. “Bart Trevor is here. Who is it? What do you want?”

  The answer came, slowly. Trevor went taut and listened. Karl Topeka reeled away, profoundly affected by the awesome paradox. Inspector Brandt gripped Trevor’s arm crushingly.

  “Go to Circle Drive—a, man lies in Circle Drive—he has been slain by the Murder Master.…”

  Bart Trevor’s eyes narrowed instantly. Such pertinent information taxed his credulity to a breaking point. A corpse was dead. A corpse could not direct police to a murderer’s lair. And while a moment before he had almost believed that a dead man was whispering, now he smiled crookedly and turned to the inspector.

  Trevor said nothing. He jerked his head towards the door and walked towards it. Karl Topeka was standing there, shuddering. Trevor patted the old man’s shoulder and took him upstairs away from the place. Inspector Brandt followed on his heels.

  * * * *

  Once away from the morgue, Trevor said, “It’s a phony, inspector! I don’t know how, but some one has rigged up something down there and is trying to make it look like spirit work.” He turned to Topeka. “Any one been down there this last week or so?”

  “Lots of people,” said Topeka. “They always come to identify the bodies.”

  “Did any one try to identify the corpses in that particular panel we were in front of?” Trevor queried.”

  The German shook his head. “No.”

  Trevor scowled. “Who’s in there? Room for three stiffs, isn’t there?”

  “Ja,” Topeka said. “There iss three of them there. One iss a colored man. We don’t know who he iss. The other iss a sailor. They found him in the East River.”

  “Know who he is?”

  “No. But we know the third. It iss Robert Herrick, the racketeer who wass murdered yesterday.”

  “Herrick!” snapped Trevor. He thought rapidly. “Body is still there waiting for an autopsy, eh?”

  Topeka nodded.

  “I don’t get it yet, inspector,” Trevor said. “But I’d advise you to have your medico start sawing that corpse right away. I’ve got a hunch what this is all about. Herrick was up for investigation in this exposé of the Gruen Protective Association. Herrick was Gruen’s right-hand man, you know. And the association is just a blind to bleed the sweating tailors of the city. Cleaners and dyers. Graft stuff, chief. Gruen was probably afraid that Herrick would squawk under pressure. So Gruen either bumped him—or had him bumped!”

  “The Gruen graft ring!” Inspector Brandt exclaimed. “But isn’t that the case you’re working on, Bart?”

  “I’ll say it is,” Trevor replied. “I’ve not only worked on it—I’ve finished it! I’ve got papers to prove that Walter Gruen and his gang of lecherous crooks have taken honest working men in this city for a ride of nearly five million dollars. Five million! And I’ve got the proof to back up the charge! It’ll send all those crooks up the river for a long time.”

  Inspector Brandt frowned. “I’m beginning to see things,” he said. “The idea of that whispering corpse is to get you off the case and onto something else. If my hunch is right, Gruen is behind it. He’s trying to sidetrack you.”

  “Maybe,” said Trevor, “and maybe not. I think that Walter Gruen is a little anxious. He’s probably missed some very important documents which I had to steal from his own office. And he wants them back.”

  “God, Bart,” Brandt cried, “you’d better be careful. He must be out to get you. He’ll kill you!”

  Trevor laughed harshly. “No,” he said, “he won’t kill me, inspector. He’s had plenty of opportunity to do that. What he wants now are those papers. And while I’m alive they can follow me, hoping to find them. But if I were dead—Gruen could never recover them!”

  “But why you?” Brandt questioned. “Hasn’t the district attorney got them? He’ll issue the warrants for the arrests.”

  “The D. A. only has copies. I and I alone know where those documents are. And in case I should die suddenly, they’ll find their way swiftly to his office. I’m taking no chances on losing them while I’m alive. After that, it’s some one else’s worry.”

  Trevor’s eyes gleamed. He felt in his rear pocket for the reassuring bulge of his revolver. Then he tightened his coat around his neck and said, “I’ll be seeing you, Brandt.”

  The inspector asked, “Where’re you going?”

  “Out to Circle Drive,” Trevor replied. “It ought to prove interesting. And if there is a dead man there, although I seriously doubt it, why perhaps I’ll be able to work up a little charge of murder against Gruen and his gang, too.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Bart!” protested Brandt “Your luck can’t hold out forever. I tell you Gruen will have you bumped out there before you know it!”

  “Not,” said Trevor smilingly, “before he knows where those papers are.”

  * * * *

  Trevor reached the sidewalks swiftly. The night was cold and a bitter wraithlike wind scorched his cheeks and blew his breath up into a gray opaque cloud. He hunched his shoulders to keep out the chill and scanned the curbing for a taxi. Circle Drive was a long distance from there.

  A yellow hack sped up to the curbing at that instant, and the driver, anxious for a fare, called out, “Cab, sir?”

  “Yeah,” Trevor said, walking to it. “Circle Drive. And a dollar if you do it in twenty minutes!”

  “Right!”

  The driver climbed back into the front seat. There was the repellent whine and clash of grating gears, the thunder of the motor, and the taxi jumped forward into the night.

  Ten minutes later, Bart Trevor became aware of the fact that the taxi was taking him nowhere near the vicinity of Circle Drive. The driver was guiding the machine dexterously in the opposite direction, avoiding red lights and brightly illumined highways, and backtracking down dark side streets. Trevor’s lips tightened. He glanced out of the car. Then he leaned forward and knocked vigorously on the glass, panel which separated him from the driver. The driver turned.

  “Where are you going?” Trevor demanded stridently.

  The driver grinned and shook his head. Trevor looked grim. That glass panel prevented any sound issuing from the interior of the hack.

  Trevor sat back and quickly tried to open one of the doors. It was locked. And so was the other one, too. It was a neat little trap. The handles which lowered the glass of the windows were dismounted. There was no way out of the interior. The only air Trevor got was that which whistled up through the mat-covered floorboards of the taxi.

  Intentfully he drew his glinting blue-steel revolver from his hip pocket. He leaned forward, the gun steady in his right hand, and rapped against the glass panel with it. The driver turned, looked slightly surprised at the ugly yawning nozzle of the revolver, and then waved a contemptuous hand and laughed.
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  Trevor was puzzled. He could easily pot the fellow through the back of the skull at such point-blank range. But that would be suicide. He’d kill the driver, leave the hack without control, and perish in the ensuing crash himself!

  He took careful aim at the thigh of the driver’s right leg. That would only make a flesh wound, put the fellow’s leg out of commission enough to make him stop the car.

  Crack!

  Trevor pulled the trigger steadily and felt the gun leap in his hand as a hot slug hurtled out of the barrel.

  Outside the driver heard the explosion, despite the glass panel which muffled it. He whirled and took one wild glance at the glass.

  Trevor himself was staring at it in amazement. For there, embedded in the panel, was the flattened lead pellet from his weapon, its flight abruptly halted. The glass was not even splintered. There were no jagged radiating lines from the vortex where the slug had struck. There was not even a hole through the glass.

  The glass of the cab was bulletproof!

  The driver turned and kicked the accelerator to the floor. The yellow taxi lanced ahead like a catapult!

  At the same instant, a shrill piercing hiss flooded through the rear of the car. Trevor heard it, surveyed the car for the source fruitlessly. A queer fetid odor permeated through the tonneau, falling heavily upon Trevor’s laboring lungs.

  A nauseating dizziness encompassed him and the world swam before his eyes like a spinning gyroscope. He could not focus. Now he could not see. There was a cavernous roaring in his ears, and his body went numb. Down, down he sank to a fathomless abyss below. It was like years, that swaying and sinking. He hit with a soundless thud. Then oblivion.…

  CHAPTER II

  TERROR TORTURE

  When Bart Trevor regained consciousness, he could see nothing. He was an entity in a world of solid ebony pitch. He could not see his hand in front of his eyes. And the air was heavy, pungent with hostility.

  Trevor groaned softly and rubbed his chest. It was terribly sore and each breath stung through him like myriad needles pricking his insides. He sat up dazedly. There was an odd odor on his clothes. Ether!