Bill Harris Action and Adventure
Bill Harris Taten und Abenteuer is a booklet series of novels by the German writer and parapsychologist Rudolf Schwarz , which was published in 1949 by the Rotar publishing house in Giessen under his pseudonym Ralph Black . Thematically it can be assigned to adventure literature.
Preface
Each booklet begins with an identical introduction, which describes the framework story:
“Bill Harris, sportsman and millionaire, is applying for admission to the Adventure Club. The Adventure Club consists of 100 members who must have proven adventures. If a member leaves, a new member is accepted on the condition that he or she must first successfully complete 99 tasks set by the 99 members of the club.
One of these tasks is described in this booklet. The solution is made difficult not only by the difficulty of the task, but also by the fact that a personal enemy of Bill Harris by the name of John Mortimer is doing his utmost to thwart success. "
action
The extremely rich Bill Harris lives in a villa, surrounded by hunting trophies and mementos of his past travels and deeds. Bored of parties and cultural events, he is always drawn to new adventures. His goal is now to become a member of the exclusive adventure club, for which he must, however, fulfill the tasks set by the members. His yacht “Orion”, but also his own planes, helicopters and boats are available to him. He is always loyally supported by his loyal valet Webster, with whom he shares a striking visual similarity. John Mortimer, on the other hand, himself a member of the club, left no stone unturned to prevent his archenemy from being accepted. However, his motives for this remain unclear.
Book 1: "The robbery of the atomic bomb"
Bill Harris is at home when he is given his first assignment by a letter from the Adventure Club. A nuclear bomb has been stolen from a naval arsenal of a great power by agents of a southern country . It is certain that the bomb is now in the capital of this country known by name. The task is to recover the atomic bomb in the interest of world peace before it can be used or recreated.
Harris first instructs his servant to pack his bags and reserve a flight to Paris . Before he leaves, he gets information from his friend Harry Roger, who works at a physics institute, about the construction and location of the bomb and borrows a radiation meter from him . From Paris he continues the journey first by train, then by a Mediterranean steamer and finally by train again, reaching the capital of the southern country . After taking a hotel room, he roamed the city in a carriage for three days and took radiation measurements, whereby he noticed increased values in the area of a modern, public building as well as in a suburb. On the same evening he went to the public building and, despite a police patrol, entered it with a dangerous climb. There, however, he does not find the bomb he is looking for, but the radiation station of a hospital.
The second noticeable radiation source is an old, abandoned factory building in a suburb. Before he can penetrate there, however, he is taken into custody by a European introducing himself as a police officer and allegedly driven in a darkened car to the mansion of the police chief. After a long wait, however, he realizes that he has been tricked. The house is far in the country and is uninhabited and abandoned. The whole show only served to take away his irreplaceable radiation meter. Back at his hotel, he only discovers a brick in the pocket of the instrument and a scornful message from his mortal enemy, John Mortimer.
The following night he drives out into the suburb again and is initially able to shake off Mortimer, who is following him. He enters the building through a cellar window and locks a sleeping, armed guard in his room. Unseen he watches Mortimer, who searches the boxes lying around with a companion and the radiation meter, but then gets into a firefight with the guards. After the police intervened in the fight, the hall caught fire. Harris escapes from the burning factory after a scuffle with Mortimer. To his disappointment, however, he found only hundreds of wristwatches in the box that had been snatched from his enemy. Their radium-coated luminous dials emitted radiation.
Without his measuring device, it has become much more difficult for Harris to locate the bomb. He therefore introduces himself directly to the country's war minister as a nuclear researcher and is immediately recruited to manufacture more bombs. When he is to be transported to his new place of work the next day, he meets Mortimer in the car, who has also been recruited as a researcher. The vehicle is darkened and after a short drive it is reloaded onto a ship. The two self-proclaimed researchers find themselves in a remote fortress on an island, where the stolen bomb is given to them as a “sample” for building further nuclear weapons. The two competitors now have to work together in order not to be exposed with fatal consequences. On the second day, Harris made contact with his servant Webster with a smuggled short-wave transmitter and ordered him to get his yacht "Orion" ready. He hides the atomic bomb in his luggage and replaces it in the safe with a dummy. When he determined the position of the island with a sextant the following day , he was watched by an officer. Shortly afterwards, the transmitter is stolen from his room, which is why he hides the bomb in the garden. As previously agreed, one of the following nights she picks Webster up in a helicopter, from which they transfer to a seaplane. This enables them to reach Harris' yacht “Orion”, with which they are safe in neutral waters a short time later.
As promised during the forced community, the two opponents are now tossing a coin around the atomic bomb. The defeated Mortimer avoids any contact during the journey home, but can bribe his steward to add a sleeping pill to the drinks at an on-board party. In response to the news of the return home, the club has called a general meeting to assess the fulfillment of the task set.
While the stunned crew slept off their intoxication, John Mortimer had stolen the suitcase with the bomb from the ship's safe and is now presenting it to club members as evidence of Bill Harris' failure. When he arrives minutes later, however, he is carrying the real bomb in an identical suitcase, which is confirmed by an employee of the arsenal. Mortimer's conversation with the steward had been overheard, so countermeasures had been taken. Harris was represented at the party by his "double" Webster and had left the "Orion" prematurely. To the applause of the club members, Harris is confirmed that the task has been successfully completed, whereupon he receives an envelope with the next assignment from the president's hands.
Book 2: " Cojeyamenia , the horror of the jungle"
The letter from the adventure club was already half-forgotten in the desk drawer when Bill Harris decided to open it one night. This time the order is to hunt down a specimen of the legendary Cojeyamenia in Bangweollosee in northern Rhodesia , called the “lion of the water” by the natives. The creature should be responsible for ensuring that there are no hippos in the whole lake .
On board a steamer of the P&O shipping company , Bill Harris arrives in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania . On the way he made the acquaintance of Professor Macdonald, a zoologist . He too heard the stories about the Cojeyamenia , which is supposed to roar like a lion. However, he is skeptical as there have been no confirmed sightings. However, he reports to Harris that an unknown creature would have killed hippos several times, something no known predator living today is capable of. He therefore considers a cryptid to be possible, a surviving prehistoric animal species, but also a deception by humans. Bill Harris travels by train to Lake Tanganyika , over which a steamer takes him to Northern Rhodesia. Since there is no conventional means of transport here, he puts together a large caravan of porters for the way to Bangweollosee, which in addition to the expedition luggage also transports a small gliding boat . Upon reaching the lake, a permanent camp is set up and Harris immediately establishes contact with the natives, whose chief invites him to a festival. He is warmly received, but nobody wants to talk about Cojeyamenia . Only when he was offering a rifle as a bonus does a tribe member named Muombo come into his tent at night. The medicine man in the village had forbidden everyone to tell the white man about the creature, since one had to fear his revenge.
Bill Harris therefore pretends to only want to hunt hippos and sets off with the planing boat on the marked path to the swampy southern part of the lake. After a herd of hippos has been sighted, he follows it with Muombo, hoping for an attack by the Cojeyamenia . In fact, they hear a terrible roar during the night and the next morning they find a mangled hippopotamus, but also traces of people. They follow the refugee herd for several days and are startled again in one night by the eerie roar. However, Bill Harris can observe how some natives, under the guidance of the medicine man, sneak around in the darkness in front of his tent and make the noise with a kind of musical instrument. In the morning they find another killed hippopotamus, which, in addition to the known mutilations, also has the bullet hole of a large-caliber rifle. After they were able to overtake the herd of hippos by boat during the day, they lay down in a cave to rest. When he wakes up, Harris sees Muombo fleeing from some tribesmen in the distance and falling after being shot. Only by shooting the medicine man for his part can Bill Harris prevent the fallen man from being killed. Muombo is only slightly injured but has a story to tell. In the darkness he had noticed a strange white man at the speedboat and was then caught by the medicine man's men. After a relative secretly untied him, he escaped. Full of foreboding, they examine the boat, find the tanks empty and all spark plugs unscrewed. Now the mystery of the strange white man is also being solved: Bill Harris arch enemy John Mortimer has left a card with a derisive comment on the planing boat.
Already touched by the loss of the boat, they decide to wait for the herd of hippos to arrive in the cave. But they are quickly besieged there by natives and a rifleman at the far edge of the forest, so that the expedition runs out of water. However, Bill Harris can make his way to the source at night and fill a canister. In order to satisfy his hunger, he shoots an earth pig on one of the following nights . When recovering the prey, however, he clashes with a hippopotamus, which, to his surprise, is attacked by a huge creature. This resembles a huge newt with long claws and beak-like teeth. While the fight quickly turns out to the disadvantage of the hippo, Bill Harris escapes in the dark. Hardly back in the cave he heard the lion-like roar of the Cojeyamenia , which Harris now believes , according to Professor Macdonald's ideas, to be a specimen of a species of predatory dinosaur that has survived since prehistoric times .
The next morning, the enemy's camp is empty, fled from the creature, and Mortimer didn't stay behind either. When Harris replenished the supplies by hunting in the following days, he found an injured antelope cub , which he took with him into the cave. A few nights later, the little antelope reacts excitedly before the snorting of a hippopotamus can be heard from the ravine, followed by the now well-known roar of the Cojeyamenia . When Muombo hangs out a line with pieces of meat to dry at dawn, they notice that the lizard is now hiding in a crevice directly under its cave. This means that their hiding place is under siege again, and the creature cannot be lured out to shoot in daylight. A wall of boulders is therefore erected at the entrance to the cave to protect against a night attack. This turns out to be a stroke of luck, because the following night the creature sneaks around the cave, lured by the sounds of the little antelope and even tries to penetrate through the protective wall. The fired shots all go wrong, after which it becomes apparent that the reserve ammunition was left in the planing boat. By following the tracks of rats, they discover the entrance to another, larger cave. While Harris laboriously expands this path, the monster undertakes another attack, but falls back down with the remains of the wall. Muombo and most of the equipment have already been brought through the narrow passage when Harris, while trying to rescue the small antelope, suddenly faces the Cojeyamenia . At first undecided between the two victims, the creature rushes first on the fleeing animal, while Bill Harris is able to save himself in the neighboring cave after the magnesium torch suddenly goes out .
At daybreak they discover another exit from the cave and can refill the ammunition supplies on the boat. The Cojeyamenia , however, remains initially undetectable, which is why Harris piles up a pile of wood piece by piece in front of the entrance to the old cave from the height of the mountain, which he finally sets on fire. The intoxication that penetrates the cave finally drives the giant lizard out, where Bill Harris can kill the animal with two shots. It is hard work to strip the creature's skin, which it initially conceals in a crevice. In a three-day march you reach a high mountain, from where smoke signals are given for days and finally contact can be made with the expected carrier caravan. Muombo and also the skin of the Cojeyamenia travel on with this. With the help of the spare parts he brought with him, the planing boat with which Harris visits a station on Lake Tanganyika can be repaired. Here he learns that John Mortimer is still in the area, allegedly on the lion hunt. In fact, however, he has the carrier caravan ambushed, Muombo kidnapped and, in addition to other luggage, also robbed the remains of the lizard. Harris stands empty-handed in front of the hypocritically smiling Mortimer when the two rivals meet in the hotel lobby. Shortly afterwards, however, the released Muombo reports, after whose report the mood of the man who was cheated of his prey suddenly improves.
Both opponents reach home on the same ship, awaiting a hastily convened general meeting of the Adventure Club. While Bill Harris is still waiting in the anteroom, John Mortimer reports on his failure and presents a huge lion skin with huge saber teeth as the creature he is looking for. When Harris joins, however, the dizziness is blown, Muombo created these ivory teeth and put the fur underneath Mortimer. On the other hand, he declared the real dinosaur skin to be a crocodile, whereupon Mortimer left it behind. Harris can now present the now stuffed Cojeyamenia to the astonished club members, whereupon the solution to his second task is confirmed.
Places and time
Both the place of residence of Bill Harris and the location of the adventure club are not explicitly mentioned, but due to the names of the participants are likely to be in the English-speaking area. The Explorers Club in New York could have been the model for this exclusive community . The fact that amounts of money are always given in dollars also indicates a more American than British background. The central location of the "robbery of the atomic bomb", the capital of that southern country , is described as a metropolis. Due to the route of travel, it may be a Mediterranean country. The Cojeyamenia, on the other hand, is hidden on the Bangweollosee in northern Rhodesia in eastern Africa .
There is no clear time. The atom bomb is already discussed in the first issue, but the Second World War is no longer mentioned. In the course of the plot it is explained that currently only one country in the world has finished atomic bombs. This statement was only valid before August 29, 1949, when the first Soviet atomic bomb detonated. All of this generally points to the second half of the 1940s.
Narrative style
The booklets are written from the perspective of an authoritative narrator . It is largely told chronologically and in the present tense. Embedded in a framework story, each issue nevertheless forms a complete story.
Compared to the other novels by Ralph Black , the texts in this series of books seem much less edited. For example, in “ Cojeyamenia , the horror of the jungle”, the name of the magic priest changes from Unde-Unde to Ube-Ube in the course of the plot, without a reason being given.
A curious side effect of the secrecy at that time is the apparently insufficient knowledge of the otherwise technically well-versed mechanical engineer with regard to the recently developed nuclear weapons. The stolen atomic bomb is described as a steel cylinder that fits in a cigar box, while the bombs of the 1940s were more in the form of a small car.
publication
- 1949: "Bill Harris Deeds and Adventure", Rotar-Verlag, Giessen; Staple novels in DIN A5 format , stapled, title page in color, otherwise b / w printing
- "Bill Harris Deeds and Adventure 1: The Heist of the Atomic Bomb ", 31 pp.
- "Bill Harris Deeds and Adventure 2: Cojeyamenia, the horror of the jungle ", 32 pp.
The edition in Rotar-Verlag was originally designed for 100 issues, of which only the first 2 appeared. The reasons for this are unknown, but the fact that the publisher went out at about the same time suggests economic reasons. However, titles were already given for all planned editions. The retail price was 30 pfennigs .
Individual evidence
- ^ For the Rotar-Verlag , Giessen, no further publications apart from the mentioned booklets are verifiable. It was never included in the commercial register (district court Gießen, register court).
- ↑ The titles of all planned editions are printed on the back of the two published issues.
- ↑ Publishing house delivery: Presse-Vertriebs-Gesellschaft Frankfurt / M., Mainzer Landstrasse 225-227.
