"A Gentleman of Color" -- P.C. Wren (GOOD GESTES, 1929)

Beau Geste is perhaps the most famous story of the French Foreign Legion.  It's been filmed several times, most famously with Gary Cooper in the title role.  But author P.C. Wren didn't stop there; he wrote two sequel novels, Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal, as well as a short story collection, Good Gestes, from which today's story derives, and a number of other Legion-related novels not starring Beau Geste and his brothers.  Something right off the bat that I thought was real interested is that Otto Penzler, in his introduction to the story, is careful to mention that the story was written in another time, one less politically-correct then our own, and that it contains elements that may offend modern readers.  There was no such warning before "The Wings of Kali," wherein the hero threw piglets at Muslim assassins to drive them away.  So why the warning here?

"A Gentleman of Color" concerns itself with Legionnaire Yato, a small, wiry Japanese man serving alongside the Geste boys.  A talented barber, artist, and fluent in English, French, Russian and German, Yato is as

inoffensive and polite as they come.  This, of course, attracts the ire of some of the more loutish members of the Legion.  An attempt to toss Yato in a blanket fails when Yato finally stoops to defending himself, beating three men silly and breaking the arm of Klingen, a fourth bully.

Klingen, an incredibly vain man, won't take the insult of a broken arm lightly, and begins a long campaign of verbal abuse and mean-spirited pranks on Yato, without actually touching the man.  He reminds Yato frequently and loudly that he is a colored man, and therefore inferior to white men, if he's a man at all.

The final straw comes when Klingen realizes that Yato visits one house in town fairly frequently.  Figuring he has a girl there, Klingen decides the ultimate insult would be to seduce her away from "the yellow monkey." Klingen being Klingen, his idea of "seduction" is to force himself on the girl he finds there and leave her sobbing in pain and shame when he's done.

When Yato gets wind of what happens, he plans to avenge the young lady very carefully.  And when he's done, Klingen will be the "gentleman of color"...

It seems so odd to me; of the three Foreign Legion stories presented in The Big Book of Adventure Stories, two are essentially comedies.  "Snake-Head" hinges on the fact that old Thibaut Corday has mistaken the legend of Perseus for a retelling of his own strange adventure, while "A Gentleman of Color"'s strength lies in its embodiment of Ambrose Bierce's statement that meekness is "uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while" and the irony that the titular "gentleman of color" is Klingen after suffering Yato's vengeance, rather than Yato himself.  It's odd to me because I don't see anything inherently funny about the French Foreign Legion; I would expect most Legionnaire fiction to focus on the hardships and the fighting, not on M*A*S*H* style hijinks.

"Suicide Patrol" -- George Surdez (ADVENTURE, August 1934)

George Surdez is perhaps best remembered as the man who invented "Russian Roulette."  The term first appeared in an eponymous story written by Surdez and published in Colliers' magazine in 1937, though Surdez describes a much deadlier version in which only one chamber is left empty before spinning the cylinder.  However, Surdez was also a prolific pulp writer in general, having published more than a hundred stories in Adventure magazine alone, many of them stories of the French Foreign Legion, such as today's story.  A longer one, this one actually took me two nights to read but I was too tired to do any writing last night, so here we are talking about it all in one go.

Legionnaire James "Jacques" Carroll of Fourth Company, stationed at Kasbah-Tadla, has a problem.  Well, two of them.  Two recent American recruits, Dacorda and Zerlich, seemingly

Cover courtesy Galactic Central

offer nothing but trouble.  Dacorda is quick to anger and prone to starting brawls, while Zerlich, an older man, is clearly not cut out for the Legion life.  During an engagement with an aggressive local tribe, Dacorda takes a tumble into a ravine, and Zerlich is first in after him -- not to rescue him, but to rifle through his belongings as he lies unconscious and bleeding, much to Carroll's consternation.

To make matters worse, during a barroom brawl Dacorda's rosary (referred to in the text as a scapular, though the description given is clearly of a rosary) is stolen, and Zerlich persuades Dacorda that Carroll is to blame.  Carroll, doing a little investigating, manages to retrieve the rosary and finds the identity of the thief -- Zerlich himself? What's going on here?

Somehow, the viewpoint character is the blandest of the bunch here.  Everyone else, it seems, has personality and quirks and things to make them interesting, while Carroll is just a joe schmoe everyman and it doesn't work for me.  Even characters who only get a couple paragraphs of "screen-time" feel more fleshed out and real then Carroll does.

The relationship between Dacorda and Zerlich is nuanced and fascinating, especially once Zerlich's secrets are revealed.  In some ways Dacorda comes across as the better man - as quick as he is to anger, he's quicker to forgive and holds no ill will against Zerlich for acting against him.  In a moment of seemingly-uncharacteristic wisdom, Dacorda explains that after what they've gone through during their short time in the Legion...it changes people, and changes their perspective and what they hold as valuable.

"Snake-Head" -- Theodore Roscoe (ARGOSY, January 7, 1939)

Greetings, readers, Bill here.  Well, my lovely long weekend with my lady has drawn to a close; she's on her way home to Maryland and I'm left with an empty bed and my own lackluster cooking.  But she'll be back to visit again next month, and we're looking at mid-January for her to move in with me, so that'll be nice and gives me something to look forward to.  For now, to fill her absence, let's take a look at a bit of pulp.  I actually read today's story on Wednesday night last week after posting "The Soul of a Regiment," and have been sitting on it for a couple days.  After this story, however, we'll be taking a short break from The Big Book of Adventure Stories; my reading this weekend, done on my Kindle while Gina was sleeping, consisted of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male.  Also, during a trip to our local Barnes and Noble this weekend, I discovered that War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches has finally returned to print, meaning my decade-long quest to find a copy in good condition that wasn't priced into the stratosphere has come to a close.  I'm not sure if I'll return to The Big Book of Adventure Stories after reviewing Rogue Male or if I'll dive into Global Dispatches for a bit.  We'll see.  Today's story, a humorous tale of adventure amidst the French Foreign Legion, originally appeared in Argosy in the January 7, 1939 issue; also appearing in that issue was Burroughs' The Synthetic Men of Mars, which I'm sure I'll cover here someday.

Thibaut Corday, a crusty old storyteller known for his tales of service in the Legion, may have finally been outdone.  Finding a copy of Bulfinch's Mythology on a cafe table, Corday is flummoxed to discover that one of the stories told within is a story about him! Oh, sure, the author changed the names of the participants and "exaggerated" events some, but everything is essentially as he experienced it ten years earlier.

Corday's unnamed companion tries to explain that the book collects Greek myths, thousands of years old, but Corday is insistent -- this "Perseus" character is him! He launches into an explanation, telling of how he found himself isolated and cut off in a box canyon, captured by vicious Kabyle tribesmen after he wounded their Sheik's son.  He's to be put to horrible death: a starved rat placed on his stomach under a copper bowl, and a fire lit on top of the bowl to encourage the rat to dig down into his bowels.

Just before the rat starts digging, Corday is granted a reprieve; a delegation from another tribe arrives, one which was to bring the princess whom the Sheik's son was to marry.  They announce that they were attacked and the princess taken to the cave of the Snake-Woman, a monstrous hag whose evil eye turns all who behold it to stone.  When none of the Kabyles are willing to risk facing the Snake-Woman to retrieve the princess, Corday, in a fit of inspiration, bellows out that he will do it -- in exchange for his freedom.  The Sheik, giving Corday an evil eye of his own, agrees, but explains that no one has ever lived to escape the realm of the Snake-Woman...

Yes, it's a retelling of the story of Perseus and Medusa in 1920s North Africa, and you know what readers? It's a damn fine tale, and one that works out great.  I love that we're given a Weird Menace that wouldn't have been out of place in the shudder pulps like Weird Tales, and then the story turns around and, via the unnamed framing narrator to whom Corday's telling the story, a sound, rational explanation is given for it all -- not that Corday believes too much of the rational explanation, despite being the one to kill the Snake-Woman in pitched combat.  Corday, an uneducated and simple man, is content to believe in what his own eyes tell him is true and leaves it at that.

The story's pacing is tighter than anything, with the reader barely given time to draw breath between incidents of high adventure; Corday drawn into a sniper's duel with the Sheik's son, Corday stretched out and beginning to feel the heat of the fire and the claws of the rat, Corday being lowered on a rope into Stygian darkness to face off against the Snake-Woman with only a scimitar and a mirror at his disposal.  Roscoe's prose really makes the reader feel the tension of the race against time Corday has found himself in as he struggles blindly to make it through the cavern system inhabited by the Snake-Woman (and her hundreds of hissing pets) in time to save the princess from petrification.

Altus Press has been reprinting the Thibaut Corday stories in a set of collected editions.  I'm intrigued enough by what I saw of the character here that they're definitely going on my wish-list.