by Otto Penzler
He heard me through before he uttered a word. Then, dropping his glasses in his coat pocket, he answered me sharply.
“Failure? Who has said anything of failure? You do me a great injustice, friend Rat. Are your pigeons all in readiness? All right. Von Berghem never fails. Look!”
He pressed his hands to his face. For a moment I thought he was going to weep, for he made strange clawing motions with his fingers. Then he lowered his hands.
I sprang to my feet, suppressing a cry with difficulty. Where his eyes had been were now black, sightless sockets. On each of his palms lay a fragile, painted, porcelain shell—and in the hollow of each shell was a tiny cotton packet, tied with silk thread.
Villain: General Zaroff
The Most Dangerous Game
RICHARD CONNELL
ALTHOUGH A SUCCESSFUL AND PROLIFIC short story writer who also enjoyed some success in Hollywood, Richard Edward Connell (1893–1949) is known today mainly for “The Most Dangerous Game,” one of the most anthologized stories ever written and the basis for numerous film versions, including the 1932 RKO film of the same title (called The Hounds of Zaroff in England), with Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, and Leslie Banks; A Game of Death (RKO, 1945, with John Loder, Edgar Barrier, and Audrey Long); and Run for the Sun (United Artists, 1956, with Richard Widmark, Jane Greer, and Trevor Howard). It has often served as the basis for slightly looser adaptations in other media (especially radio and television), sometimes credited and sometimes not.
At the age of eighteen, Connell became the city editor of The New York Times, then went to Harvard, where he was the editor of The Harvard Lampoon and The Harvard Crimson. Upon graduation, he returned to journalism but was soon offered a lucrative job writing advertising copy. After serving in World War I, he sold several short stories and became a full-time freelancer, becoming one of America’s most popular and prolific magazine writers; he also produced four novels. Many of his stories served as the basis for motion pictures, notably Brother Orchid (1940, starring Edward G. Robinson, Ann Sothern, and Humphrey Bogart, based on his 1938 short story of the same name). Connell wrote original stories for several films, including F-Man (1936, with Jack Haley) and Meet John Doe (1941, directed by Frank Capra, starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story. He was nominated for another Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Two Girls and a Sailor (1944, with June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, and Van Johnson). He also wrote the screenplay for Presenting Lily Mars (1943, starring Judy Garland and Van Heflin), based on Booth Tarkington’s novel.
“The Most Dangerous Game” was originally published in the January 19, 1924, issue of Collier’s magazine, winning the O. Henry Memorial Prize; it was first collected in Connell’s Variety (New York, Minton Balch, 1925).
THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME
Richard Connell
“OFF THERE to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery—”
“What island is it?” Rainsford asked.
“The old charts called it Ship-Trap Island,” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it? Sailors have a curious dread of the place. I don’t know why. Some superstition—”
“Can’t see it,” remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.
“You’ve good eyes,” said Whitney with a laugh, “and I’ve seen you pick off a moose moving in the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can’t see four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night.”
“Nor four yards,” admitted Rainsford. “Ugh! It’s like moist black velvet.”
“It will be light enough in Rio,” promised Whitney. “We should make it in a few days. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey’s. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting.”
“The best sport in the world,” agreed Rainsford.
“For the hunter,” amended Whitney. “Not for the jaguar.”
“Don’t talk rot, Whitney. You’re a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?”
“Perhaps the jaguar does.”
“Bah! They’ve no understanding.”
“Even so, I rather think they understand one thing—fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death.”
“Nonsense,” laughed Rainsford. “This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two classes—the hunters and the huntees. Luckily you and I are hunters. Do you think we have passed that island yet?”
“I can’t tell in the dark. I hope so.”
“Why?”
“The place has a reputation—a bad one.”
“Cannibals?”
“Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn’t live in such a God-forsaken place. But it’s gotten into sailor lore, somehow. Didn’t you notice that the crew’s nerves seemed a bit jumpy today?”
“They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even Captain Nielsen.”
“Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who’d go up to the devil himself and ask him for a light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could get out of him was: ‘This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.’ Then he said, gravely: ‘Don’t you feel anything?’ Now you mustn’t laugh but I did feel a sort of chill, and there wasn’t a breeze. What I felt was a—a mental chill, a sort of dread.”
“Pure imagination,” said Rainsford. “One superstitious sailor can taint a whole ship’s company with his fear.”
“Maybe. Sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense which tells them when they are in danger…anyhow I’m glad we are getting out of this zone. Well, I’ll turn in now, Rainsford.”
“I’m not sleepy. I’m going to smoke another pipe on the after deck.”
There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the yacht’s engine and the swish and ripple of the propeller.
Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, puffed at his favourite briar. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him. “It’s so dark,” he thought, “that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids—”
An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times.
Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea closed over his head.
He struggled to the surface and cried out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain cool-headedness had come to him, for this was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The lights of the boat became faint and vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out by the night.
Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming slowly, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he could do possibly a hundred more and then—
He heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high, screaming sound, the cry of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror. He did not know what animal
made the sound. With fresh vitality he swam towards it. He heard it again; then it was cut short by another noise, crisp, staccato.
“Pistol shot,” muttered Rainsford, swimming on.
Ten minutes of determined effort brought to his ears the most welcome sound he had ever heard, the breaking of the sea on a rocky shore. He was almost on the rocks before he saw them; on a night less calm he would have been shattered against them. With his remaining strength he dragged himself from the swirling waters. Jagged crags appeared to jut into the opaqueness; he forced himself up hand over hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the top. Dense jungle came down to the edge of the cliffs, and careless of everything but his weariness Rainsford flung himself down and tumbled into the deepest sleep of his life.
When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him vigour; a sharp hunger was picking at him.
“Where there are pistol shots there are men. Where there are men there is food,” he thought; but he saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the shore. Not far from where he had landed, he stopped.
Some wounded thing, by the evidence a large animal, had crashed about in the underwood. A small glittering object caught Rainsford’s eye and he picked it up. It was an empty cartridge.
“A twenty-two,” he remarked. “That’s odd. It must have been a fairly large animal, too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It is clear the brute put up a fight. I suppose the first three shots I heard were when the hunter flushed his quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he trailed it here and finished it.”
He examined the ground closely and found what he had hoped to find—the print of hunting boots. They pointed along the cliff in the direction he had been going. Eagerly he hurried along, for night was beginning to settle down on the island.
Darkness was blacking out sea and jungle before Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line, and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, as there were so many lights. But as he forged along he saw that all the lights were in one building—a château on a high bluff.
“Mirage,” thought Rainsford. But the stone steps were real enough. He lifted the knocker and it creaked up stiffly as if it had never before been used.
The door, opening, let out a river of glaring light. A tall man, solidly built and black-bearded to the waist, stood facing Rainsford with a revolver in his hand.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Rainsford, with a smile that he hoped was disarming. “I’m no robber. I fell off a yacht. My name is Sanger Rainsford of New York City.”
The man gave no sign that he understood the words or had even heard them. The menacing revolver pointed as rigidly as if the giant were a statue.
Another man was coming down the broad, marble steps, an erect slender man in evening clothes. He advanced and held out his hand.
In a cultivated voice marked by a slight accent which gave it added precision and deliberateness, he said: “It is a great pleasure and honour to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home.”
Automatically Rainsford shook the man’s hand.
“I’ve read your book about hunting snow leopards in Tibet,” explained the man. “I am General Zaroff.”
Rainsford’s first impression was that the man was singularly handsome; his second, that there was a bizarre quality about the face. The general was a tall man past middle age, for his hair was white; but his eyebrows and moustache were black. His eyes, too, were black and very bright. He had the face of a man used to giving orders. Turning to the man in uniform, he made a sign. The fellow put away his pistol, saluted, withdrew.
“Ivan is an incredibly strong fellow,” remarked the general, “but he has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb. A simple fellow, but a bit of a savage.”
“Is he Russian?”
“A Cossack,” said the general, and his smile showed red lips and pointed teeth. “So am I.
“Come,” he said, “we shouldn’t be chatting here. You want clothes, food, rest. You shall have them. This is a most restful spot.”
Ivan had reappeared and the general spoke to him with lips that moved but gave forth no sound.
“Follow Ivan if you please, Mr. Rainsford. I was about to have my dinner, but will wait. I think my clothes will fit you.”
It was to a huge beam-ceilinged bedroom with a canopied bed large enough for six men that Rainsford followed the man. Ivan laid out an evening suit and Rainsford, as he put it on, noticed that it came from a London tailor.
“Perhaps you were surprised,” said the general as they sat down to dinner in a room which suggested a baronial hall of feudal times, “that I recognized your name; but I read all books on hunting published in English, French, and Russian. I have but one passion in life, and that is the hunt.”
“You have some wonderful heads here,” said Rainsford, glancing at the walls. “That Cape buffalo is the largest I ever saw.”
“Oh, that fellow? He charged me, hurled me against a tree, and fractured my skull. But I got the brute.”
“I’ve always thought,” said Rainsford, “that the Cape buffalo is the most dangerous of all big game.”
For a moment the general did not reply, then he said slowly: “No, the Cape buffalo is not the most dangerous.” He sipped his wine. “Here in my preserve on this island I hunt more dangerous game.”
“Is there big game on this island?”
The general nodded. “The biggest.”
“Really?”
“Oh, it isn’t here naturally. I have to stock the island.”
“What have you imported, General? Tigers?”
The general grinned. “No, hunting tigers ceased to interest me when I exhausted their possibilities. No thrill left in tigers, no real real danger. I live for danger, Mr. Rainsford.”
The general took from his pocket a gold cigarette case and offered his guest a long black cigarette with a silver tip; it was perfumed and gave off a smell like incense.
“We will have some capital hunting, you and I,” said the general.
“But what game—” began Rainsford.
“I’ll tell you. You will be amused, I know. I think I may say, in all modesty, that I have done a rare thing. I have invented a new sensation. May I pour you another glass of port?”
“Thank you, General.”
The general filled both glasses and said: “God makes some men poets. Some he makes kings, some beggars. Me he made a hunter. But after years of enjoyment I found that the hunt no longer fascinated me. You can perhaps guess why?”
“No—why?”
“Simply this: hunting had ceased to be what you call a ‘sporting proposition.’ I always got my quarry…always…and there is no greater bore than perfection.”
The general lit a fresh cigarette.
“The animal has nothing but his legs and his instinct. Instinct is no match for reason. When I realized this, it was a tragic moment for me.”
Rainsford leaned across the table, absorbed in what his host was saying.
“It came to me as an inspiration what I must do.”
“And that was?”
“I had to invent a new animal to hunt.”
“A new animal? You are joking.”
“I never joke about hunting. I needed a new animal. I found one. So I bought this island, built this house, and here I do my hunting. The island is perfect for my purpose—there are jungles with a maze of trails in them, hills, swamps—”
“But the animal, General Zaroff?”
“Oh,” said the general, “it supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have a quarry with which I can match my wits.”
Rainsford’s bewilderment showed in his face.
“I wanted the ideal animal to hunt, so I said, ‘What are the attributes
of an ideal quarry?’ and the answer was, of course: ‘It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.’ ”
“But no animal can reason,” objected Rainsford.
“My dear fellow,” said the general, “there is one that can.”
“But you can’t mean—”
“And why not?”
“I can’t believe you are serious, General Zaroff. This is a grisly joke.”
“Why should I not be serious? I am speaking of hunting.”
“Hunting? Good God, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder.”
The general regarded Rainsford quizzically. “Surely your experiences in the war—”
“Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder,” finished Rainsford stiffly.
Laughter shook the general. “I’ll wager you’ll forget your notions when you go hunting with me. You’ve a genuine new thrill in store for you, Mr. Rainsford.”
“Thank you, I am a hunter, not a murderer.”
“Dear me,” said the general, quite unruffled, “again that unpleasant word; but I hunt the scum of the earth—sailors from tramp ships—lascars, blacks, Chinese, whites, mongrels.”
“Where do you get them?”
The general’s left eyelid fluttered down in a wink. “This island is called Ship-Trap. Come to the window with me.”
Rainsford went to the window and looked out towards the sea.
“Watch! Out there!” exclaimed the general, as he pressed a button. Far out Rainsford saw a flash of lights. “They indicate a channel where there’s none. Rocks with razor edges crouch there like a sea-monster. They can crush a ship like a nut. Oh, yes, that is electricity. We try to be civilized.”
“Civilized? And you shoot down men?”
