Night Brings Wisdom – Three Stories by Georges Surdez

Book Details

Night Brings Wisdom – three stories of murder, revenge, blackmail, actors, impersonation and the medals that courage earns by Georges Surdez, the master of Foreign Legion fiction.

Night Brings Wisdom (1931) – With his lieutenant caught in the net of a vicious money-lender, it was up to gruff Legionnaire Porchot to find—or smash—a way out

The Junkman Calls (1937) – A Complete Novelet of the Legion’s Fighting Men—and of the Medals That They Die to Win

Legionnaire Pro Tem (1939) – In this lively novelette an American actor on vacation in Morocco borrows a Foreign Legion uniform—and finds he’s played with fire.

Georges Surdez (1900-1949) made a particular study of the French Foreign Legion. He visited the headquarters of every regiment, and many outposts of the Atlas, Sahel and Sahara. His stories show a breadth of understanding of those fine fighting men second to none.

Night Brings Wisdom – Three Stories contains 12 illustrations.

Files:

1. NightBringsWisdom.epub

Excerpt: Legionnaire Pro Tem

RICHARD LACEY was aware that the warped sense of humor of his friends was responsible for his misadventures in Morocco. But as he could never be certain of the precise point where events snapped beyond their control, he was to grow very puzzled when he sought for suitable retribution upon Travers and McGarron.

As a matter of fact, it had been Richard himself who had suggested a trip to North Africa. He remembered that late spring twilight in Paris, when he had paced the salon of the royal suite in a hotel beyond the means of contemporary kings. And he had been the only one of the three to complain then, the only one who suffered from boredom.

Travers was seeking material and photogenic young women for the silver-screen—not a dull occupation in the French capital,—while McGarron was engaged in justifying his membership in the I.B.F.O.W., International Bar Flies of the World.

“I don’t want to see camels,” McGarron had protested sadly. “Listen, Dick, there are a couple of swell zoos right in this town.”

“Shouldn’t think you’d want to investigate Africa,” the practical Travers reminded tactlessly. “You did a sheik-and-sand pic two or three years back. The critics groaned; and the customers yawned. Think you can interest Consolidated in another ‘Moon over Sahara’? Why, they didn’t dare to keep dates in the cafeteria for months after the release.”

Richard Lacey reacted like a thoroughbred horse who feels the spur. He straightened to his full height—six feet one inch for the fan magazines, and a good half-inch over five feet ten, in reality. His broad shoulders squared in the superbly draped tweeds. He informed them, who were grinning, that he was twenty-nine years old, a free man. What did it avail a man, he challenged, to earn five thousand bucks a week, if everything was as ashes on his palate? He needed rest, a change!

“Too, too bad!” McGarron clucked gloomily. “Our Handsome Dick is tired of fame and glory. Fed up with working for mere dough. In a few words, he wants to get away from it all!”

“You think you’re funny!”

As Richard shrugged, indicating his nonchalance, his features subconsciously shaped, his muscles contracted, expressing the unswerving purpose of a strong man challenged. The others laughed.

“It’s in an omelette, and it isn’t eggs,” McGarron stated.

Richard was a handsome young man, with a classic profile. But his beauty was not his whole fortune. As somebody had gushed, when he first loomed on the firmament: “Dick Lacey is the American youth, clean-cut, the type that a mother desires for her only daughter.”

He had been “typed!” That had been his secret sorrow. He said bitterly that he was given no chance to act. His pictures had to start with his delivering the groceries, and to end when he vanished, one arm around his country sweetheart, behind a door marked: “Fourth Vice-President, Seas and Oceans Grocery Chain.”

IN his six years’ reign he had been allowed two tries: The Legionnaire in “Moon over Sahara,” and the swashbuckling gentleman of fortune in “The Scarlet Cloak.” Both had been super-super-productions, and each had cost at least a fourth of the published figures.

The more polite critics had said of the first that as a Legionnaire, Dick resembled the high-school fullback at a masquerade ball. The second had led to more vicious attacks: “Dick wields a rapier for six reels, with a superb cleaver-technique. Nevertheless he does not slice his bologna very thin.” There had been worse things written: “A ferocious leer as out of place on Handsome Dick’s good-natured face as sideburns on a Kewpie doll.”

Richard Lacey knew what was to blame: his press-agenting. His background was known—Middle West, soda-clerk, filling-station attendant, and stock-companies. No one had associated him with exotic settings or glamorous adventures. Perhaps he looked somewhat self-conscious in a costume role. But if the fools once knew that he had been in North Africa, perhaps—look at the idiots who had attained the reputation of adventurers by safety-first, high-priced expeditions for tigers and elephants!

“I’ll go alone, then,” he said shortly.

Richard did not think he would have to go alone, nor did he have to do so. Both his friends were very fond of him, if amused at his behavior. Where he went, they went.

And to North Africa he went. He refused to use his own car. Trains and buses would do, give him closer touch with people and events, he insisted. They roamed from Tunis to Biskra, to Algiers, to Oran, to Fez and Meknes, to Casablanca and Mogador. And Lacey was pursued by his fame. Other travelers forgot Moors, mosques and minarets to gape at him. He drew more attention than the Kutubia, or the Tombs of the Sultans.

Then chance or a fortunate inspiration guided them to Ksar-Mejoula in the Middle Atlas. There local color had not been arranged by the Syndicate for Tourism, and in the savage panorama of stark hills, a small city of mud-brick dwellings huddled on the banks of a torrent. Even the modern touch of the military camp, pine-board barracks roofed with red tin in a rectangle of glittering barbed wire, struck an ominous note.

Excerpt From: Georges Surdez. “Night Brings Wisdom.”