Mike Resnick - Chronicles of Lucifer Jones Vol 1 1922-1926 Adventures

The Chronicles of Lucifer Jones
Volume I: 1922-1926
ADVENTURES
by Mike Resnick
Being a Stirring Chronicle of Intrigue, Romance, Danger, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Thrilling Triumphs over Fierce Beasts and Fiercer Men in the Mysterious and Exotic Dark Continent, as Recounted by the Daring, Resourceful, Handsome, and Modest Christian Gentleman Who Experienced Them

This,
my very favorite book,
is dedicated to
CAROL
my very favorite person

Table of Contents

1. The White Goddess

2. Partners

3. The Vampire

4. Slave Trading

5. The Mummy

6. A Red-Letter Scheme

7. The Mutiny

8. An Affair of the Heart

9. The Lost Race

10. The Lord of the Jungle

11. The Best Little Tabernacle in Nairobi

12. The Elephants Graveyard

CAST OF CHARACTERS

The Dutchman , who prefers to think of his slave-trading operation as an International Employment Placement Service.

Erich Von Horst , a con man's con man.

Herbie Miller , ivory poacher and part-time vampire.

Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt , a pair of brothers from Pittsburgh who became gods at the lost kingdom of the Malaloki.

Burley Rourke , a doctor specializing in diseases of the gullible.

Rosepetal Schultz , who differs from most ancient Egyptian queens in that she was born twenty-three years ago in Brooklyn.

The Rodent , undersized killer of either sixteen or thirty-five men, who changed his name from the Weasel for professional reasons.

Mr. Christian , officer aboard the good ship Dying Quail.

Bloomstoke , a tall, bronzed British nobleman who is living with a tribe of apes while hiding from his creditors.

Neeyora , just your typical naked blonde white goddess, who tips the scales at four hundred pounds, give or take an ounce.

Capturing Clyde Calhoun , who brings em back alive. Not intact, but alive.

Amen-hetep III , whose mummy carries a half-clad girl through the streets of Cairo before checking in at Shepheard's Hotel.

Major Theodore Dobbins , a man with a taste for rich widows, who is also a speculator in certain perishable commodities imported from far exotic China and points east.

And our narrator, The Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones : his religion is a little something he and the Lord worked out between themselves one afternoon, his tabernacle is the most prosperous brothel in British East Africa, and he has serious disagreements with the authorities of fourteen different African nations over the finer points of the law. On the other hand, he means well.

ADVENTURES
(1922-1926)

Chapter 1
THE WHITE GODDESS

I knew a real live vampire. It was in Africa about seventy years ago, and his name was Herbie Miller. He didn't look much like a vampire, I supposewalked around in khaki pants that he cut off above the knees, and his hair wasn't slicked down or nothing. I can't say he was real fond of crosses, but daylight didn't bother him none, and he had no problems walking over running water, except that he couldn't swim and narrow bridges scared the hell out of him.

I don't know why he should have been so interested in me, especially considering that I was a man of the cloth back then, but he was. When he wasn't trying to nab me in the neck, which was pretty difficult inasmuch as poor Herbie was barely five feet tall with his boots on, he kept coming up with crazy schemes about how I should go to the local hospitalnot Schweitzer's, but one you've probably never heard ofand borrow some blood, for which he promised to pay me in pounds or dollars or rupees or whatever else he'd gotten off one of his more recent meals.

You know, I think about Herbie and some of the others I met, and I'd have to say that even without the animalsand I never did see all that many of them anyway, except for the time I was an ivory poacherAfrica was a pretty interesting place to be back then. I had my flock and my tabernacle, and of course there was Herbie, who came smack-dab between my little business excursions into opium and brothels, and there were Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt, a pair of brothers who became gods, and there was Capturin Clyde Calhoun and a batch of others.

Africa was full of colorful folk like that in the old days. They called themselves adventurers and explorers and hunters and missionaries, but what they mostly were were outcasts. They gathered in the civilized cities, most of them: Johannesburg, Nairobi, Mombasa, Pretoria, places like that. Every now and then they'd go out into the bushonly bad pulp writers ever called it the jungleafter everything from ivory to lost gold mines to half-naked white priestesses. A lot of them found ivory, and a few found gold, but the only man I ever knew who went into the bush and found himself a white woman was an Irishman named Burley Rourke.

I met him just a few days after I got off the boat, young and hopeful and sporting my first beard. Due to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings during an informal game of chance, I had been invited to inspect the premises of the Johannesburg gaol, which, while tastefully appointed, was nevertheless not the temporary residence I would have picked had the choice been mine.

Rourke was lying on a cot in the adjacent cell. He was a tall, cadaverous man, with bushy black eyebrows and an enormous dimple on his chin. He had the longest, whitest, most delicate fingers I had ever seen on a man, and since even his fingernails were clean, I asked him if he, like myself, was being incarcerated due to a certain flexibility toward the hard and fast rules of the game. He allowed that this was indeed the case, and I asked him if his trade was cards or dice.

Neither, he said. I'm a doctor, specializing in diseases of the gullible.

That's when I knew we were going to hit it off just fine.

How about yourself? said Rourke. You look like some kind of preacher man, all done up in black like you are.

Indeed I am, Brother Rourke, I said with some modesty. I don't know how a respectable man like me got involved with all them sinful characters in the first place. I suppose I was just following the good Lord's mandate to consider every man my brother. Course, I never have gotten around to viewing all the women exactly as sisters.

And what religion do you preach? asked Rourke.

One me and the Lord worked out betwixt ourselves one afternoon, I said.

Actually, the way I see it, my calling was determined the day I was born. We had a little farm outside Moline, Illinois, and once I was alive and secure, my mother sent my father to the county courthouse to register my name, which was to be Lucas Jones or Lucius Jones, I'm still not sure which. But my father was a man who loved his liquor, and by the time he got there he came up with as close an approximation as he was capable at the time.

Which is how I got to be Lucifer Jones.

Anyway, they say that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and I guess toting the name Lucifer around made me painfully aware of who I was named after. I just naturally kind of gravitated toward the church, especially after I saw the size of our poorbox, and pretty soon me and God formed sort of a two-man company, and I went out and did His business. And a pretty good business it was, until the day a couple of Federal men came around. Up until then I had always thought that paying income taxes was voluntary, like going into the army and such. Well, I'd have stayed and fought them, but the Lord says that vengeance is His, so I took off down the Mississippi one night and hopped the first ship out of New Orleans.

Well, now, said Rourke when I'd told him the story, adding only a minimum number of poetic flourishes, I do believe we're going to be friends, Saint Luke. You don't mind if I call you that, do you?