The New Adventures of Richard Knight Read online

  “Put her down.” Richard squeezed the automatic’s trigger.

  The wounded Bapet staggered under the heavy fire. The monster stumbled and fell to one knee.

  “Pour it on,” Larry shouted. “She’s hurt.”

  Thick greenish fluid leaked from the puckered wounds covering her body. The dagger-like teeth gritted together. The creature rose to her feet, staggering under the withering fire from the sheriff’s office. She lurched forward on unsteady feet.

  “Keep it up. We can’t let her get inside,” Richard shouted.

  “You’re going about this wrong.” Gus’ weak voice reached his ears. “You can’t stop her with bullets. They don’t affect her.” He staggered to the desk chair and collapsed into the chair.

  “Don’t let up.” Richard ran to the old man’s side. He cradled the bloody face in his hands. “How do we stop her?” Richard shook him gently. “Gus, how do we stop her?”

  The rheumy eyes opened slowly. Gus blinked several times trying to focus. “Dick, you need an obsidian arrowhead or a knife, that’s the only thing that’ll stop her.”

  “Obsidian.” He rummaged through his pockets. “Like this.” He pulled the sharp pointed black stone from his pocket.

  The old man nodded. “That’ll work, pity you don’t have the time to make an arrow and a bow.” A pain filled look wrinkled his features. “The Kaiser’s boys really nailed me this time.”

  “I can rig up a spear.” He snatched a broom from the corner of the room and snapped the head from the shaft. Richard pulled a knife from his pocket and cut a slit into the jagged tip. He forced the black tip into the wood. “Will this work?”

  Gus shook his head. “Too flimsy, you need to wrap something around the notches in the stone and around the shaft to give it strength.”

  “Buy me some time,” Richard shouted. “I may be able to kill this thing.”

  “You need to hurry, Dick. We’re running out of bullets.” Larry shouted in turn.

  “Knight, we don’t have much time left,” Irene screamed. “She’s at the sidewalk now.”

  “Fraulein, we must preserve the fighting spirit and pride of the German race.” Schmidt’s rifle clicked empty. He crawled toward the broken window. Lifting the weapon above his shoulder, he wiggled through the jagged glass and charged the advancing monster.

  The rifle butt struck the Bapet on her slavering jaws. The mandible popped loudly, the creature’s head snapped to the side. A line of green drool dripped from the open mouth. Dark eyes fastened on the wounded man. Recognition slowly dawned in the dark inhuman eyes. A large scaly hand lashed out, landing on the German’s jaw. Schmidt flew through the air. His back slammed against the rock wall of the sheriff’s office. He wilted to the sidewalk like a ragdoll.

  “Hurry up, Dick.” Larry yelled. “Mr. Ghost is down.”

  Richard stripped the laces from his brogans; he wrapped the strings around the stone notches and tugged them tightly around the shaft. “I’m nearly finished, give me another minute.”

  “We may not have another minute.” Irene fired her last bullet. She gripped the hot barrel of her weapon tightly, ready to go down fighting.

  Larry centered the rifle’s sights on the creature’s eyes. “Maybe this will slow you down a little,” he mumbled, his finger gently closed on the trigger. The recoil drove the metal butt plate hard into his shoulder. The ex-marine worked the bolt, cycling his last round into the chamber.

  A bright green splotch blossomed from the creature’s eye. It fell forward on its knees, head bowed toward the slick sidewalk. A low moan escaped the monster’s lips. The head lifted slowly. Its remaining eye locked on Larry.

  “Why won’t you die?” Larry squeezed the trigger. The final bullet sailed true, striking the golden orb. A splash of green covered the Bapet’s face. She slumped to the concrete and lay still. “I did it,” Larry shouted. ‘I killed her.”

  “Don’t go near that thing.” Richard pulled him away from the door.

  “What are you doing?” Larry pulled away from his grasp.

  “Gus told me about her. Bullets won’t kill her.” Richard gripped the makeshift spear tightly in his hands.

  “And that will?” Irene demanded. “We put over a hundred bullets into that thing and you expect to stop her with a pointed stick?”

  “If I’m right, she’s playing possum, waiting for one of us to get close.” Richard moved quietly to the door. The chain rattled as he removed the top latch. The knob turned easily under his hand. The door swung open on well oiled hinges. “Give her a few minutes,” he whispered. “See if she moves.”

  “She can’t get up, not after all the damage we did to her.” Larry stared at the creature. The arms quivered. “I don’t believe it,” he mumbled taking a step back.

  “You two get back to the rear door. If it gets past me you’ll have to run for it.” Richard stepped outside. The snow crunched under his feet.

  Large claw tipped hands palmed the sidewalk. Muscles flexed and rippled under the skin. With a massive push, the creature raised its head and chest from the sidewalk. A dark pungent fluid drained from the empty eye sockets. The head swiveled. Her nose flared, isolating their scents.

  A growl came from her inhuman throat. She pushed herself up to her knees and clambered awkwardly to her feet. Her claw tipped hands swiped the air, blindly searching for her victims. She staggered forward, arms constantly moving.

  Richard gripped the spear with both hands. He dodged the searching arms and drove the black tipped stone through her tough hide. A scream erupted from her throat as the obsidian tip sank in her flesh.

  A clubbing blow caught Richard’s shoulder. The arm numbed instantly. The misshapen hands closed on the shaft, pulling the spearhead from the wound. She smiled evilly, her pointed teeth on display.

  Larry ran to Richard’s side. His hands wrapped around the broom handle and pushed. The sharpened stone disappeared under the leathery skin. The Bapet’s smile disappeared. A look of panic and pain stretched her face. The monster pushed back with all her strength.

  Irene appeared behind them, adding her muscle and weight to the struggle. The extra mass drove the spear point deeply into the muscled chest. The creature stiffened, mouth opened in an inhuman scream, as the stone sliced into her beating heart. The Bapet collapsed, sinking to the icy sidewalk.

  Richard gave the spear a final push. Satisfied the weapon had ended the monster’s life he walked away from the creature.

  “Herr Knight,” Schmidt’s weak voice reached his ears. “I would like a word with you before I breathe my last breath.”

  Richard staggered to his side. “Yes, Herr Giest.” He stood over the ace, staring into his dying eyes.

  “I regret that we will not be able to meet each other in the air.” Blood flecks bubbled from Schmidt’s mouth collecting on his wrinkled chin. “We would have shared a glorious battle.”

  Richard nodded. “I would have been honored to have met you in combat.”

  “That was not to be.” His eyes grew heavy. Schmidt blinked slowly. His eyes remained closed for a longer interval each time. The chest movement grew weaker and weaker until it ceased.

  Richard stared at the old pilot. “He was an honorable man.”

  “It’s over.” Irene pulled a dagger from her rear pocket. “I’ll take my leave now.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Larry jumped into her path. “Going to make a report to Uncle Adolf?”

  “Let her go, Larry.” He turned to face the Nazi agent. “Get out of my country. Tell your superiors that we’ll be ready for them if they decide to attack. Now leave and don’t return.”

  The pair stood in the darkness, watching while the shadows swallowed Irene. Larry turned to Richard, his face hidden in shadow. “What are we going to do now?”

  “We radio M and make our report and then we wait for more soldiers to arrive.” He ran dirty fingers through his unruly hair. “We’ve got to make sure no one removes that arrow.”


  THE END

  THE HOSTAGE ACADEMY

  by I.A. Watson

  The masked guards manhandled their prisoner up the ancient stone stairs to the precipice. He had no idea where he was being dragged. The black hood covered his head, muffling his curses. The tight straightjacket bound his arms with no possibility of escape. He stumbled once on the uneven steps but the thugs held him up and kept him moving.

  He could feel when he got to the platform. Colder air blew up from below carrying a dusty charnel smell. He was struck from behind, knocking him to his knees. He heard a girl’s frightened intake of breath.

  “Ricardo!”

  It was Benita! Benita Nayarre, once one of the forgotten Spanish settlers from what the press loved to call the Lost Valley, now ward of Major General John Brett, Chief of Army Intelligence – and dear friend of Brett’s best agent, the man called Richard Knight!

  The prisoner made no acknowledgement. He knelt unsteadily, unable to use his arms for balance.

  “The mysterious operative Q,” another voice said. The man spoke with the cold Germanic tones of a passionless academic. “You will make a most interesting study, I think.”

  “Ricardo, we are in the place of the dead!” Benita called out. The girl could see what the hooded captive could not, the vast expanse of the hollowed mountain, the antique carvings on natural pillars that supported the dark interior, and the thousands of skulls affixed to the cave walls and archways.

  “Yes. I believe it is time that Mister Knight understood where he is and what he faces,” the cruel speaker mused. “It is time that he understood why there is no escape from the Hostage Academy. Ever.”

  One of the guards dragged the bag from the prisoner’s head. The captive’s first view was of the carved ebony masks that his warders wore beneath their dark robes. His second was of the captured Spanish heiress who was handcuffed to a column beside the cavernous drop.

  Benita Nayarre gasped again as she saw the prisoner’s face. She knew that pug expression and that broken nose well – but it wasn’t Richard Knight! Larry Doyle stared back at her through blackened eyes and even managed a split-lipped grin. “Don’t worry kid,” he told her. “Ol’ Richard Knight’s gonna see you safe outta here!”

  The Germanic scholar moved from the shadows. “Your lessons will be long and painful, Mister Knight,” Dr Nadalmetzger told Doyle. “And most instructive for my researches.”

  “Yeah, somebody’s gonna get a lesson,” the kneeling captive promised. “Pretty damn soon!”

  CHAPTER I

  ONLY DEAD MEN KNOW

  It had all started in the driving November rain at Senator Alden’s funeral. The official memorial had taken place in the public eye in front of the press cameras. By the Senator’s wish his interment in his family plot was a private affair, limited to friends and relations. No more than two dozen people stood in the cold Maine downpour to hear the priest commend Arthur K. Alden to his maker.

  There should have been more. Even a year earlier there would have been. But in the past twelve months the Senator had shifted his position and his politics. He was no longer a stout believer in American defense who voted every time with the lobby that foresaw a European war spilling over the Atlantic. Recently he’d become erratic in his allegiances, quarrelling with old political allies, alienating his local support. Some supposed that the old man was losing his mind.

  And now he’d lost his life. The Boeing B-17C had gone down less than ten miles from its airstrip with no survivors. It was hard to say now if his political party was shocked or relieved.

  Alden’s old friends still stood by him though, even if they were exasperated with his recent vacillation and committee filibustering. Major General Brett was one of the pallbearers, in formal military dress with a chestful of ribbons. After the ceremony was over he didn’t join the other mourners who scurried for their cars or took refuge from the torrent in the church porch. He moved over to where his ward stood under a black umbrella beside the man who’d saved her life so many times.

  Benita took her guardian’s arm and squeezed it sympathetically. She knew that Alden and Brett had been close once. The funeral meant something to the Chief of Army Intelligence.

  “Well?” Brett asked Richard Knight without any preamble.

  “It was an accident,” the agent replied equally bluntly. “I raked over every nut and bolt of that wreckage. It was dirt in the fuel intake, just a stupid clog that got into the works.”

  “You’re sure?” Air accidents happened, but when they killed U.S. Senators General Brett took a special interest.

  “I took the remains down to the lab in Washington, had the boys crawl over it with microscopes and the works. Best anyone can tell, this was down to machine error.”

  “That is not good,” Benita contributed, “but it is better than murder, si? I am sorry for the Senator and his family, but glad that for once there is nothing sinister.”

  Brett nodded. “I suppose so. Trouble with this line of work is after a while everything starts to look suspicious.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Knight. He’d satisfied himself that there was nothing odd about the accident – until he’d come to the funeral. Now he had one nagging doubt. “I thought Senator Alden had four grand-kids?” He’d only counted three amongst the drenched graveside mourners.

  Brett looked downcast. “Yeah. Honey. Only child of Arthur’s second daughter. She walked out on the family to make her own way in life over a year ago.” He frowned. “I thought she might have turned up for her grandpa’s funeral though. She was such a sweet kid once.”

  Benita was shocked. In the enclosed world of the Lost Valley such negligence would have been unthinkable. “What could have happened that this girl would turn so far away from her familia?”

  “Some kind of scandal, I think. Arthur never talked about it.” The General sighed. “In fact he didn’t talk about much about anything at all after Honey left – at least not to me.”

  “And then he started casting weird veto votes and withdrawing his support from the very projects he’d spent three terms setting up,” Knight noted.

  “You think there is some connection?” Benita asked.

  The agent shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll never know now.”

  But Benita Nayarre decided different.

  ***

  It was two weeks later that Knight returned to the Catskills airfield where he was due to meet up with the New England smart set for a weekend of skiing and partying. He had to keep up his cover as an effete playboy, and three days of luxury with some vigorous exercise on the slopes was no real hardship. None of the idle millionaires who expected him could know that he’d just flown in from Turkey where he’d settled a knotty question about a stolen file from the Consul’s personal office. Two men faced lifetimes in federal prison and a third was in his grave because of that trip.

  Knight’s custom Northrop airplane taxied in for a perfect landing. Like Richard Knight himself the trim blue aircraft was more than it seemed. A few moments work could convert the rich man’s toy into a deadly flying machine with weapons conventional and exotic.

  The agent hadn’t expected to find his best friend Doyle waiting for him at the hangar. He also hadn’t expected the look on the ex-Leatherneck’s face.

  Knight hoisted himself from the cockpit and dropped to the tarmac with a fluid leap. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “I’m sorry, guy,” Doyle answered. He reached out and gripped Knight’s shoulder. “It’s Benita.”

  A chill rippled through the airman. “What about her?”

  “She’s dead, Knight. She’s gone.”

  Knight hadn’t realized he could live with his heart scooped out. “What happened?”

  Doyle had taken the call from General Brett. “She was out west. She’d chartered a Bellanca, flown to California, to Los Angeles. I dunno why. But on the way back her plane went down over the desert.”

  Knight swiveled back to his waiting Northrop as if to fly acro
ss the country and search the wreckage himself. Doyle caught him. “They found the plane, buddy,” he apologized. “They found her body.”

  Knight turned away. Querida, she’d called him, when she’d pressed into his arms. Her hair smelled like orange-blossom and her eyes were deep and dark as a starry Mediterranean night. She’d loved him and he’d been busy, always busy. His hands doubled to fists.

  “You wanna slug someone, slug me,” Doyle offered. “She was a real swell dame. If you need to take a pop I’ll take it on the jaw for her.”

  The rage went out of Knight – for now. “I don’t want to slug you,” he told Doyle. “But two plane wrecks in three weeks doesn’t sit well with me. Something stinks. I’m heading for the West coast.”

  “And I’m coming with you,” promised Larry Doyle.

  CHAPTER II

  A RESCUE TOO LATE

  Knight slammed the airstrip manager into the wall so hard that the pins came out of the corkboard behind him. Dockets and schedules scattered all over the floor.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me, buster!” the agent growled through gritted teeth. “I want to know everything you know about the girl who hired that Bellanca and I want to know now. You can tell me while you got teeth or you can tell me after, but you’re going to talk!”

  The clerk went deathly white. He’d made the mistake of telling the G-man that he was too busy to help. “I don’t know much!” he blurted.

  Doyle pulled Knight off the quivering administrator. “Cool down some,” he advised his angry friend. He’d never seen Knight this agitated before. “Let me talk to the guy.”

  The manager shied away from Knight. “Keep him away from me!” he told Doyle. “He’s nuts!”