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Lost Legion. The Lost Legion were created by Francis Whitlock and appeared in thirteen stories and story serials in The Popular Magazine from 1907 to 1914, beginning with “An Echo of the Inquisition” (The Popular Magazine, June 1907).

The Lost Legion are a group of mercenaries, although that label conjures up the image of a squad of trained military men acting in concert, and that's not the case with the Legion. The members of the Legion usually work solo or in pairs. The Legion are

a number of adventurous men who were eager to undertake any enterprise from the exploration of an unknown wilderness to the direction of a revolution...so long as adventure promised and the pay was good there was always an available supply of these men. Owing to the peculiar nature of the employment of these members of the Lost Legion, vacancies in the ranks were of frequent occurrence, but recruits were always clamoring for admission.

The Legion is run by Jabez Cooper, a nasty piece of work. In exchange for enough money to pay the Legion's salary, expenses, and (when necessary) funerals, and to lay some profit aside--a sum that usually runs into the tens of thousands (no small sum by 1907 standards) Cooper will get enough men to take care of any problems. If an American ballet dancer needs to be rescued from the harem of an "Arab" sheik, if a kidnap victim is being held for a princely ransom by a group of anarchists, or if the reigning king of a tiny Eastern European country needs to be overthrown Cooper is the person who is called.

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