The New Adventures of Diamondstone the Magician

By Pro Se Press

There's a Full House...The Lights are Dimmed...The Audience is Seated..and The best seat in the house is saved for You in the Front Row for THE NEW ADVENTURES OF DIAMONDSTONE THE MAGICIAN from Pulp Obscura by Pro Se Productions in conjunction with Altus Press!

Created by master Pulp author G. T. Fleming, Diamondstone the Magician was a seasoned sleight of hand artist and stage illusionist who dabbled in the investigation of crime as an amateur detective. Aided by his friend and assistant, Absalom, Diamondstone uses his skills, tricks, and wits to confound, confuse and capture criminals who believe that they can outsmart justice using smoke and mirrors!

From out of the past comes New Tales of the Magician Sleuth written by Chuck Miller, Russ Anderson, Jr., Lee Houston, Jr., and Nicholas Ahlhelm

Watch as Diamondstone gives some of his finest performances ever as he steps into the spotlight to solve strange cases and exciting new mysteries in THE NEW ADVENTURES OF DIAMONDSTONE THE MAGICIAN from Pulp Obscura!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013

Pro Se Press

Based in Batesville, Arkansas, Pro Se Productions has become a leader on the cutting edge of New Pulp Fiction in a very short time.Pulp Fiction, known by many names and identified as being action/adventure, fast paced, hero versus villain, over the top characters and tight, yet extravagant plots, is experiencing a resurgence like never before. And Pro Se Press is a major part of the revival, one of the reasons that New Pulp is growing by leaps and bounds.

Book preview

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF DIAMONDSTONE THE MAGICIAN

Copyright © 2013 Pro Se Productions

Published by Pro Se Press at Smashwords

The stories in this publication are fictional. All of the characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the publisher.

Edited by – Nikki Nelson-Hicks

Editor in Chief, Pro Se Productions - Tommy Hancock

Submissions Editor - Barry Reese

Director of Corporate Operations – Morgan Minor

Publisher & Pro Se Productions, LLC Chief Executive Officer - Fuller Bumpers

Pro Se Productions, LLC

133 1/2 Broad Street

Batesville, AR, 72501

870-834-4022

[e-mail]

www.proseproductions.com

Cell Number Four copyright © 2013 Chuck Miller

The Olympian Murders copyright © 2013 Russell Anderson, Jr.

The Death Dealer copyright © 2013 Lee Houston, Jr.

The White Light copyright © 2013 Nicholas Ahlhelm

Front Cover Art by Mike Fyles

Book Design, Logos, and Additional Graphics by Sean E. Ali

E-book Formatting by Russ Anderson

The New Adventures of Diamondstone the Magician is a work of the PULP OBSCURA imprint

PULP OBSCURA is an imprint of Pro Se Productions and is published in conjunction with titles from Altus Press, collecting the original adventures of lead characters featured in PULP OBSCURA titles.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CELL NUMBER FOUR

by Chuck Miller

THE OLYMPIAN MURDERS

by Russell Anderson, Jr.

THE DEATH DEALER!

by Lee Houston, Jr.

THE WHITE LIGHT

by Nicholas Ahlhelm

MEET THE MAGIC CIRCLE

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

CELL NUMBER FOUR

by Chuck Miller

Tiara Summit, Illinois said Diamondstone the Magician. A grandiose name for a wide place in the road in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, said the man driving the big touring car. It ain’t nearly as fancy-looking as it sounds.

They were driving through the section of southern Illinois called Little Egypt. It was mostly rural, with an economy based largely on farming and coal mining. Diamondstone, once a popular stage magician, now an amateur—but very skilled—consulting detective, yawned and stretched. He wound down the passenger-side window of the automobile and tossed a handful of peanut shells out onto the road. He was a large man with a full head of startling red hair.

You and I and the rest of the world would never have heard of it, Absalom, if not for a famous bank robber who had the bad fortune to be captured here. He escaped from the jail, as was his wont, but he was killed before he got ten miles from the town.

You’re talking about Hal Rallston, said the driver, Diamondstone’s assistant and confidante, a dark-skinned man by the name of Absalom. He was a hell of a character, wasn’t he?

"That he was. A mystery man. Nobody really knows where he came from. He burst on the scene from nowhere, a new John Dillinger, cutting a swath of robbery and murder across the Midwest.

"There are several different stories about what happened to Hal Rallston. The fact is, nobody knows the whole truth. Rallston probably wasn’t his real name. Unlike Dillinger and Parker and Barrow and so on, he seemed to have no family, and to have come from nowhere. His biggest coup was the robbery of an armored car transporting a large amount of gold to Chicago, as part of the economic reshuffling that followed the Gold Reserve Act.

Some say it was two million dollars worth. Some say it was ten times that. Whatever the true figure was, it was enough to have a noticeable impact on the international economy. The robbery of the century—hell, the millennium. Rallston and a gang of ten men held up the armoried car then vanished. Over the next several months, the other gang members—all ten of them—turned up dead, under a variety of circumstances. Rallston did not. He turned up alive, in Tiara Summit, though he didn’t stay alive for long.

And to this day, Absalom said, nobody knows where Rallston hid the gold.

"Correct. He was caught a few months after the spectacular robbery, right here in Tiara Summit. He had been caught by a deputy sheriff breaking into the office of a local construction company, captured without very much fuss, and held for a week in the new jail, in Cell Number Four. That much is written in stone.

"Once they determined for sure that the prisoner was Rallston, the legal wrangling began. The feds wanted him, of course, and so did a dozen other jurisdictions. They let him hang fire here until they could iron it all out.

One day, he broke out of the jail, and that’s where the truth starts getting hazy. The ‘official’ version says he carved a gun out of soap, painted it with shoe polish, and bluffed his way out. But some say he had a real gun smuggled in to him. There are at least seven different theories about who smuggled it in and how they did it. Most of them involve corruption in places ranging from the lowest to the highest in the land.

Two million bucks worth of gold, Absalom observed, could be a springboard for all sorts of chicanery. Anybody’d be tempted by that, it seems to me, from the humblest deputy to the director of the F.B.I.

Indeed. Rallston was on the run for less than 24 hours. The sheriff, Mary Klass, killed him, but not before he put three slugs into her. Crippled her for life, they say.

Absalom expertly guided the automobile over the cracked and rutted road, avoiding the more glaring potholes and fissures. It required a great deal of concentration. Diamondstone fell silent for a while, idly munching peanuts and indulging in pointless speculation about the truth behind the life and death of Hal Rallston. They had not come here to inquire into the mystery of Rallston and the fate of the gold he stole. Not directly, anyhow, though Diamondstone had faint hopes.

Countryside gave way to a threadbare residential area—an uneven row of dreary old houses, most of them less than a century old, but looking as ancient as anything one might find in the Valley of Kings, half a world away.

Suddenly, they were in downtown Tiara Summit, a two-block stretch of government and commercial edifices lined up on both sides of the road like two rows of teeth, complete with gaps. They found the building they were looking for, the Summit County sheriff’s office and county jail. This two-story brick faux-Victorian structure was much newer and less weathered than its fellows. It appeared to be the newest and cleanest building in town. Indeed, it was only three years old.

Strange, then, that it should be the only building in town with a reputation for being haunted.

Absalom pulled the car to the curb in front of the building and shut off the motor.

I have a... feeling about this place, Absalom, Diamondstone said. When we’re talking to these locals, be sure and maintain your, ah, protective coloration.

The other man sighed. I’ve got the dim-witted darkie shtick down pat, boss, he said sourly. "You know, I’m damn near as smart as you are. If we lived in a different world, you’d be the one demeaning yourself while I hogged all the glory."

Diamondstone laughed, though he knew his friend wasn’t exactly joking. "I sympathize, truly, but we have to play the hand we are dealt in this life. The dumber—ah, that is to say, the less sophisticated you appear to be, the less guarded people will be around you. It has served us well more than once."

Absalom nodded. Don’t mean I have to like it, though, he said. But you’re right. Can’t argue with results. At least I’m not Chinese. I’d have to draw the line at that pidgin English routine. You reckon there’ll ever come a day, boss, when nobody thinks you’re dumb because your skin ain’t white or because you speak another language?

Yes, Diamondstone said with conviction. Evolution pretty much demands it. I’m afraid it might not be within our lifetimes, though.

Miss Mary Sunshine, Absalom muttered.

***

You must be Mister Diamondstone, said the sheriff, rising from behind his desk and coming around to shake hands.

The sheriff, Paul Adderly, was appropriately unassuming. He looked to Diamondstone like a bookkeeper dressed up in a lawman’s uniform for Halloween. The deputy, Karl Klass, had an odd look in his eye and a twitchy manner about him. He had the air of a man haunted relentlessly by his own undisciplined imagination. He stood up and nodded to Diamondstone and Absalom, but did not offer to shake hands.

I’m not saying this jail is haunted, said Adderly. "I want to make that plain. But some mighty queer things have been going on. I had no idea what to do about it. Didn’t know there was anything a body could do in a situation like this. It was Clara Tarvell that came up with the idea of giving you a call."

Ordinarily, Diamondstone would have turned down any offer to play ghost hunter. But there was something about this case...

Tell me what’s been going on, sheriff, the big redhead said gently.

"Well, there’s some strange things. Noises and so forth. I’ve heard them myself, off and on. Nothing that just flat-out had to be a ghost and couldn’t possibly be anything else, mind you, but a lot stranger than anything I’m used to hearing. Bumping and scraping where there just shouldn’t be any. Once I did hear something that kind of sounded like a voice whispering something I couldn’t understand. Two or three times I heard what sounded like somebody breathing heavy. And it sounded like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere, if you get my meaning.

"Now, my deputy here has heard a lot more of it than I have. He sleeps here, you know. Has a little camp bed in the back room. He says he’s heard voices, and I believe him. And I got no idea where voices would be coming from. The walls are pretty thick, and the building on the left side is unoccupied. I’ve had Karl go in there and shout at the top of his lungs, and I didn’t here a thing in here. If somebody is playing tricks, I don’t know how they manage it.

But most of this ghost stuff comes from Clara Tarvell. She’s the one that insisted on getting in touch with you. She calls herself some kind of psychic, and she claims she detects all sorts of emanations from this building. That’s the word she uses. Emanations.

Diamondstone smiled. What word would you use?

One that I ain’t gonna say out loud. But I started thinking maybe Clara Tarvell’s idea wasn’t such a bad one. She thought we ought to call in somebody big, some kind of psychic investigator. I didn’t feel like going that far, but I’ve read about you, the way you’ve investigated other queer situations and turned up the truth behind them. Maybe you can do the same here. Whatever it is.

I hope your faith in me isn’t misplaced, Diamondstone said. Let’s go have a look at the cells.

The sheriff nodded. They’re upstairs, he said. "We got two regular cells, then the maximum security one. That’s where the trouble comes from. I think it’s mostly psychological, even in my own case. Like I say, I’ve heard things up there, or thought I did. But I could be imagining it, knowing what I know about what all happened here in the past. Maybe I ought not to admit that... And it ain’t like anything really horrible happened here. But, you know, this was home to Hal Rallston for a week, and that all ended up pretty bad for everybody