The City of the Dead 6 (The Ghoul In The Grave)

By Morse, Carleton E Morse presents The City of the Dead, featuring Captain Friday. If you like high adventure, come with me. If you like the stealth of intrigue, come with me. If you like blood and thunder, come with me.

Midnight, on the third night in the old abandoned graveyard, better known as The City of the Dead. A melancholy silence is settled on the cottage of Mayor Joshua Friday, lifelong caretaker of the old cemetery.

Jimmy Parker, a prisoner, sleeps uneasily in one bedroom. His girlfriend, Phyllis Carroll, lies in a bed before the flickering embers of the dying front room fire. The knife wound in her back breaks her light breathing with barely audible molds.

Dr. Tooner is sleeping heavily on the lounge, ready to attend her at an instant notice. The mayor and his son, Captain Friday, private investigator, occupy the double bed in the bedroom assigned to Miss Carroll before she was stabbed. Earlier this evening, but let Captain Pridey tell it.

Earlier in the evening a skeleton had suddenly been thrust through the front door to collapse on the rug, almost at Phyllis Carroll's feet. It was a skeleton neatly wired together, joint by joint. Around its spinal column was fastened a message which said, I have come out of the grave marked Theodore Beverly, but I do not belong in his grave. I am not his skeleton.

Theodore Beverly was Miss Carol's grandfather and was supposedly buried in the city of the dead 14 years ago. He likewise had buried half a million dollars worth of black pearls in the city of the dead before he died and left instructions where to find them, in papers received by his granddaughter on her 20th birthday.