Killer's Law E-Book

L. Ron Hubbard

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Mystery & Suspense Short Stories Collection
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 120

Beschreibung

Sheriff Kyle of Deadeye, Nevada, is headed east to the nation’s capital. Kyle’s about to discover that the law can be even wilder in the big city than in the Wild West. It’s a fact that hits home when he’s accused ... of murder. Welcome to Washington D.C., where corruption and intrigue are all in a day’s work. Kyle’s got no alibi, no memory, and apparently doesn’t have a prayer ... unless he can find a way to outwit and outfox the masters of deception and double-crosses. Ominous footsteps, hard-hitting fists, and the flash of gunfire all come at you fast and furious as Killer’s Law delivers a capital mystery.

Leseprobe

SELECTED FICTION WORKSBY 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

© 2012 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.

Cover artwork, Story illustrations, Story Preview illustration and Story Preview cover art are from Detective Fiction Weekly and are © 1936 Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from Argosy Communications, Inc. Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. 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 978-1-59212-579-1 ePub versionISBN 978-1-59212-767-2 Kindle versionISBN 978-1-59212-287-5 print versionISBN 978-1-59212-276-9 audiobook version

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007928124

Contents

FOREWORD

KILLER’S LAW

THEY KILLED HIM DEADCHAPTER ONEC HAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREE

THE MAD DOG MURDER

THE BLOW TORCH MURDER

STORY PREVIEW: BRASS KEYS TO MURDER

L. RON HUBBARD IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF PULP FICTION

THE STORIES FROM THEGOLDEN AGE

GLOSSARY

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 Golden 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!

Killer’s Law

Killer’s Law

WHEN Kyle stepped off the Capitol Limited and into the confused fury of Washington, a headline caught his glance:

SENATOR MORRAN BEGINSCOPPER QUIZ

A few hours from now, his own name would be blazing there, black as the ink in which it would be printed. Kyle knew nothing of prophecy; his interest was in getting through this stampede of people and completing his mission. Already he was creating a mild sensation. Palo Alto hat, silver thong, scarlet kerchief, high-heeled boots and his six feet three of gawky, bony height commanded attention.

He stood for a moment in the crowded, clanging dusk, looking toward the lighted dome of the Capitol, trying without much success to savor the scene and feel patriotic. A redcap, eyeing his huge bag now that Kyle had dragged it all the way through the station from the train, swooped down with confidence born of the stranger’s obvious confusion. The action met abruptly explosive resistance.

Kyle said, “Hands off.”

The redcap retained his hold as a legal right to a tip. Kyle gave the handle a twist which sent him reeling. A few people paused to watch.

A cop said, “What’s the matter here? Keep moving, you.”

Kyle said testily, “Move along, hell. I’m Sheriff Kyle of Deadeye, Nevada, and I got an appointment to meet Senator Morran—”

“Yeah?” the cop said.

“Could I be of assistance?” said a smooth-faced gentleman. “Your name, I think, is Kyle. Senator Morran sent me down to meet you.” He laughed good-naturedly and nodded to the cop. “That’s all right, Officer.”

The cop was satisfied. The redcap departed without tip.

“My name is Johnson, Sheriff,” the smooth-faced man said. “John Johnson. Just call me Johnny.” He laughed. “And now we’ll see about getting you to the senator.”

“Hold it,” Kyle said. “How do I know who you are?” He had to bend over to look at Johnson. He did so and said, “Why don’t you just run along and tell the senator I’ll be with him soon. I’m taking a cab.”

“Well—” Johnson turned toward a waiting limousine and Kyle’s glance collided with the chauffeur’s. He moved away while Johnson still hesitated, and hailed a cab.

“Soreham Hotel,” he told the driver.

The Soreham Hotel was lighted in every window, its walks aglitter with dinner gowns, its lobby thick with political cigar smoke and the aura of martinis. Kyle asked the desk clerk for the senator’s room number and a house phone.

The phone didn’t answer. He went up.

Senator Morran’s room was 310. Its door, open to darkness, surprised Kyle. The faint hall light reached poorly into the room, but showed a dark, irregular streak, running jaggedly along the floor.

Kyle was in the act of stepping backward when the room exploded into Roman candle brilliance. The pain came fractionally later, just as the lights careened out again. His last conscious impression was of himself, trying to push the floor away with his hands.

They shook him into light and sound and cuffed him into attention, and though it took seven of them, they held him in the chair.

The room was a flood of sound, a maelstrom of confusion. Reporters were surging against a police cordon at the door. Politicians, bloodhounding newsprint, were issuing statements. Flashbulbs were bursting. And the center of attention, Kyle noted, as he had always been in life, was the senator.

The silver mane which had thrilled women voters for two decades was in noble repose, except at the ends where it was darkly matted. The strength, the nobility of pose were gone, and the hands, which in their youth had bulldogged many a steer and later had been lifted in appeal to many a constituent, were motionless, expressionless—their mute story told by a heavy candlestick lying beside them.

In the upper abdomen a knife hilt was visible.

Kyle’s feelings shut out the sounds about him. He had known Senator Morran well. The old man, as much as anything, had won him his job. He had always regarded Morran as a staunch, friendly and fearless warrior for the things he himself believed in. He had come too far to be welcomed by this, and suddenly Kyle felt alone and sick.

He realized the desk clerk was pointing him out and a flashbulb battered at him. Somebody asked, “Why did you kill him, mister?” and he awoke to the fact that this question had been thudding into him for five full minutes. The realization choked him.

“His knife, all right,” somebody said. “See? Matches the empty sheath. Five-inch blade. Five-inch hole. Fits.”

“Why did you kill Senator Morran?”

“Damn you,” Kyle said. “Get the hell away from me. I didn’t kill him!”

“Why did you kill Senator Morran?”

He tried to get up but they thrust him roughly back. “Here. Here, look in my pockets. He wired—”

“We looked.” They waited then.

Kyle said, “I’m Sheriff Kyle from Deadeye. He wired me, had me bring him some documents. I brought my bag straight to—” He stopped, stared around the room. “Where’s my bag?” he howled at them.

It took three of them to get him back into the chair. “We’ll find the bag,” said the detective. “First we want to know why you killed Senator Morran.”

Rage was beginning to rise in him, but he held it in check. He sat still until they stopped asking him. He watched a reporter, hat uptilted, cigarette dangling, who had an illusion about solving murders himself, get told off.

“Get out of here, Mike!” snarled a detective.

“So you got a monopoly on questions, Haggerty,” said the reporter, and wandered over and stared down at the corpse. He was making sympathetic noises with his tongue when the late senator’s secretary arrived.

Mike said, “Hey, Cronin! If you’re through playing with this stiff, cover it up. Can’t you see we got ladies present?”

Somebody draped a sheet over the senator, leaving one matted lock of gray hair, one gray hand showing.

“What was the senator doing today to cause all this, miss?” Mike asked.

The woman moaned something and Kyle stared at her. He knew most of the senator’s employees in a vague way, for they had accompanied him West from time to time. But he did not know this girl.

“Just his regular work,” she sobbed.

“How about the copper investigation?” said Mike. “I understand he was starting on that tomorrow?”