The Dead Brain: Pursued Around the World 100 Years Ago, #1

By George R. Booker

Max Wheeler is accused by his wife of murdering her lover and ends up in prison. When he can't stand it anymore, he breaks out. On the run from the police, he meets Boche Boche, who has lost his memory. Together, the two end up on a freighter that takes them all the way to South America.

Immerse yourself in the adventures of a wrongly accused man and experience a time when computers and smartphones didn't exist.... This is the first volume of the exciting Max Wheeler series - Pursued Around the World 100 Years Ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: George R. Booker
• Release date: Apr 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215044704

George R. Booker

George R. Booker discovered his passion for writing at an early age and wrote his first short stories as a teenager. After completing his studies in English literature, he initially worked as a journalist for various newspapers and magazines. However, George R. Booker is best known to his fans as an author of adventure novels. His novels are mostly set in the 1920s and 1930s and tell of dazzling personalities, spectacular crimes and dangerous adventures. Booker skillfully combines historical events and characters with fictional elements, creating a fascinating world full of intrigue and mystery. For Booker, the period between 1920 and 1930 is particularly interesting because it was marked by profound changes. It was a time of upswing and cultural flourishing, but at the same time there were political and social conflicts. This period offers Booker a wealth of stories and characters to capture and bring to life in his novels. In particular, his Max Wheeler novels and the stories about the detective Nick Retro are becoming increasingly popular. George Booker always emphasizes that he is first and foremost a storyteller who wants to take his readers into another world and entertain them. His novels are praised by readers for their exciting plot, multifaceted characters, and precise research. Booker is a frequent writer. To get his many ideas down on paper, he prefers the form of the short novel. It is therefore not unusual for him to publish one or even two new books every month.

Book preview

Chapter 1.

The night then was cold, rainy and dark. I could hardly wish for a better night.

When the rain showers and gusts of wind passed over the slate roof, the cold penetrated to my bones through the soaked, musty-smelling linen pants and the jacket, which had been secretly tailored from the gray woolen blanket.

Strangely, I felt my bones as if they were icy, iron rods. But my skin and my face burned as when I had helped to bore dark gorges through the rocky body of the virgin: High altitude sun - glacier fire!

From the roof, two thick wires ran at a slight incline across the yard and up the high wall to a nearby hill.

Two ... one insulated, the other oxidized copper due to the effects of weather. Wires that conducted death, but also gave light, power, heat.

The wires were about fifty centimeters apart and swaying in the breeze. I have never been a tightrope walker. You become anything when there's a need. And I was tired of this life. I had unquestionably become thirty pounds lighter in the last eight months, when all I had done was sew ugly slippers and not once dined decently. I estimated my weight at one hundred and ten. If the wires held, and if I could manage the feat of getting all the way over to the thick wooden pole of the power line on these metal struts that represented the way to freedom - the only possible way, at least something had been gained. But not everything by a long shot.

From the floor of the red brick building I had brought myself a piece of a broken flagpole. As a balancing pole.

I sat down on the edge of the hatch, slipped off the clumsy leather shoes and put on the other ones - made of rubber fabric, also homemade, just like the rubber gloves I squeezed over my fingers. One must be careful with such wires, especially when the insulation of the positive conductor is already badly damaged by the ravages of time and one cannot be credited with not losing one's balance despite total sobriety.

Down in the courtyard, a dark shadow walked back and forth. The man was indifferent to me, also his carbine. The instructions demanded that he watch over the high brick wall, which still carried an inwardly sloping extension of eight barbed wires at the top. So far, none of my comrades had managed to get over this wall.

I grabbed the bar and began to walk down this path, which was truly not an everyday path. I had closed the roof hatch again. And that was good. So for weeks people racked their brains as to how engineer Max Wheeler might have left the Hotel Düsterburg.

The first gliding steps on the two wires might have cooled my enterprising spirit to the freezing point eight months ago. The eight months of slippers and state hotel food - and the prospect of sixteen more months: Better to break my neck or go through an electric execution here on my own body!

Next ...

Left foot advanced on the insulated wire, let right foot follow wide-legged on the copper strip ...

Teeth clenched ...

Aha - the skeleton also warms up, the joints become supple, the fresh air is good for you ...

Play with death ...

My God - not the first time ...

When the blasting shot went off too early in the Jungfrau Tunnel, I was actually already in my grave with both feet ... The jump behind the pile of rubble should not have taken place a fraction of a second later.

Damn - that gust of wind just now almost sent me to the feet of the guard downstairs. The poor guy wouldn't have gotten a bad scare over that pile of bloody human flesh.

I became more careful again. When the wind took a break, I managed to take five steps forward.

So - now the wall was behind me ...

Up to the hill and wooden pole still about thirty meters ...

I sweat. I had never sweated before. Not even then, when I had discovered the rail break and was running towards the Malmö-Stockholm express train. And that night, many lives were at stake. Today it was only my own, and nobody cared about that. The world had forgotten Max Wheeler.

But my once so excellently trained body gradually remembered its former capabilities. With the growing self-confidence, it also went faster.

Treacherous night wind ... Beast!!! Acts as if it wanted to draw breath again and blows quite suddenly into my back in such a way that my left foot slips ...

The rod swooshes down into the depths ... I hang on the copper strip ... pendulum back and forth ...

The two wires swing ... swing ... The black, wrapped one touches my glove ... Swings back ... For a moment, the familiar tingling ran through my left hand ... The glove doesn't completely insulate after all.

The beast wind stops hissing again ...

And I hang only with one hand on the copper strip, stretch the other far forward, clutch the wire, open the first ... work my way in this way to the thick, tarred pole ...

Thanks also, caring colleagues, you have attached crampons to this pole ...!

I have the first stage behind me.

My legs tremble, my arm muscles flutter. I lean against the mast below, and rain and wind fan my sweat-soaked face. I no longer scold the wind as a beast. Now it seems to me like cool caressing women's hands caressingly wishing me luck. Behind me lies the large dark building with the countless windows ...

Individual windows are bright: the hallway windows! Occasionally a shadow glides by behind these windows. The poor employees of the Hotel Düsterburg don't even have peace at night. The hotel guests have it better. They are allowed to pursue their hunting inclinations undisturbed from nine o'clock on. My hunting prey per night averaged thirty bugs and a dozen fleas.

My overworked muscles calmed down again. I had to remember to do the second part of my program, because the nights in April are not too long here in southern Sweden. It gets light at seven, and by then I absolutely had to have left the soil of my homeland.

I turned towards the town lying in the valley, crossed a small river whose wooden bridge had recently been renewed by my former comrades, and now saw the rows of lights of the railroad station on the left and individual bright villas in old, densely overgrown gardens waving over on the right.

I had only paid so much attention to the literary greats of my homeland that I had remembered in time at the Hotel Düsterburg that the famous spiritual woman, whose works have been translated into all languages, lived here in the city. I also knew that she owned a castle-like villa here, which was situated in an ancient castle park.

So it was necessary to look for the villa. Because only this woman with the golden heart would help me. Without her, this pleasure trip would end very soon.

The streets of the villa suburb were as if deserted. Only cats and dogs betrayed the approach of spring, despite the miserable weather. I observed different four-legged pairs of lovers, which prepared loudly or quietly according to character disposition the Schäferstündchen. Cats tend to behave quite boorishly. If all the sweet human Fräuleins also wanted to screech so piercing marrow and leg, the much-tortured police would have even more to do.

A policeman was leaning sleepily under a lantern. It is truly fortunate that the police ministers are still so backward as to put their people into a uniform that can be recognized from afar. How easily one could run into their arms if the officers resembled plain philistines.

I made a bow around said lantern and spied diligently for a castle-like building. Then I stood in front of a lattice gate and felt the engraved letters of the brass sign with my fingertips, climbed over the fence and crept along the avenue until I noticed on the right two bright windows on the high ground floor - the only lighted windows of the mighty home of the great poetess. In front of the windows stretched a balcony, and there stood a person, a man, half crouched. The dim light showed me a rainy velour hat, an upturned Ulster collar, and a prudent profile with a very straight nose and blond goatee.

This gentleman bothered me. He did not fit into my program. If he wanted to steal, and if he behaved clumsily in doing so, that could have unpleasant consequences for me, too.

Everybody is out for themselves. Especially after eight months of free quarters in the state hotel. I began to climb up the iron beam of the balcony. The wind and the rain and a pair of cats in the nearby bushes made sure that the man didn't hear me. When I lifted my head over the balcony parapet, one wing of the French window was half open, and the gentleman had disappeared. I had arrived too late and had to abandon for the time being the intended discussion with the stranger, who unquestionably would not have been a match for the fist of the former amateur champion of the King Tor boxing club.

To turn back?! - No, because that would have been tantamount to voluntarily returning to the Hotel Düsterburg. - A curtain hung in front of the half-open door. It moved slightly back and forth, and when I pushed it a little to the side, I saw a blond young woman sitting upright in a white lacquered, carved bed on the left, pressing a blue silk quilt against her chest with both hands. Her face was in shadow, since the tilting bedside lamp with a yellow funnel shade was turned so that the light hit the stranger, who was standing even further to the left next to a three-piece dressing table.

The man spoke. I only caught individual words.

A certain young lady, whose name would be too much honor for her to mention here, can give information about why Max Wheeler will never again commit any emotional stupidities, among which I also count my rescue of the Malmö-Stockholm express train at that time. People are not worth sacrificing themselves for in any way, and women even less so.

Here things were different. Here I did not intend to play Lohengrin, who frees Elsa von Brabant from an enemy. Here it was about myself, and I owed it to myself to put an end to this scene in there as soon as possible.

The voice of the blond child there in the bed had just affirmed once again that she could hand over nothing ... nothing more to the blackmailer by the holy God, when I already had the miserable wretch by the neck ...

From the bed a soft cry ...

The guy flew over the balcony parapet below into a taxus hedge, got up, looked for his hat and ran down the avenue.

I returned to the bedroom. The young girl stared at me and tearfully said, Is he gone ...? You must be a detective, sir?

Yes ... And you, miss?

She hesitated ... So you ... don't know me?

No. I have only been here in this city for a short time, a very short time. I was previously employed in a state institution. Moreover, an urgent assignment calls me to Trelleborg this very night, my lady. Could you somehow procure me a suit, a coat and linen and so on, and lend me a bicycle?

Her face I still could not see clearly, especially since her now still the dissolved blond hair had fallen forward.

She was silent for seconds. I felt her inquiring looks. And I suspected that she had seen through me.

You ... are from Hafdengarden? she whispered ....

Yes. I am the engineer Max Wheeler, who was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary for manslaughter. You may have read about it in the newspapers. Admittedly, it was over eight months ago.

My God - - Wheeler!!! - Oh, I want to help you ... I ... I am the parlor maid of the lady who owns this villa. The lady is out of town, and the chauffeur is also on vacation. - Turn around ... I just want to throw on a robe. I'll take you to the garage, to the chauffeur's parlor.

I will climb down into the garden again, I simplified her suggestions. Come into the garden, please ...

She came. She had a long leather coat on, a car cap on and goggles in front of her eyes.

She left me alone in the chauffeur's room to get the car ready for the trip to Trelleborg. The chauffeur's clothes fit me well, and afterwards I took a small suitcase with me to give the impression of a simple traveler.

We drove away. She was at the wheel. I was next to her. We exchanged only a few words, as before. And shortly before six o'clock we stopped on the road not far from Trelleborg. I got out, took the suitcase, thanked the girl and overlooked her hand, which she casually held out to me - wanted to overlook her ...

Take it, then, she cried impatiently. "You need money, after