OF OTHER
DAYS AND OTHER SPIDERS
It
was 1933, almost 90 years ago. To some, it was a long time ago. To others, the
year is a memorable time in their own past history. True, the old timers are
fading away now, but a few still remember the year, as do many of the young
readers – the fans of the pulp heroes. It was the year Doc Savage began his long, adventurous life in the pulp magazines.
There were other great heroes joining him that year: The Phantom Detective, G-8 And His Battle Aces, The Lone Eagle, The
Moon Man (TEN DETECTIVE ACES), Nick Carter (in a new resurrection), Pete Rice, and The Spider, to name just a few. These larger-than-life hero
characters were a resurgence of the older DIME
NOVEL characters of the previous century.
The
pulp hero magazines, or single character pulps, as a lot of folks prefer calling
them, had actually begun in 1931 with The
Shadow. But it is 1933 that will give the magazines their most forcible
push. It was the year of Doc Savage, the
beginning of the heyday of the pulp magazines that would last for the next
twenty years. Please forgive me if I sound like I have a slight case of
nostalgia. I probably do. But this is a special period, 1933 to 1953. Twenty
years of the greatest fictional heroes of all time. We may never see their
likes again.
One
character magazine that appeared in in October 1933 was The Spider, and featured a hero of gigantic stature. But this
article is not about him. However,
following the debut of that hero, two
months later, December 1933, was a novelette titled, Spawn of The Spider by Frederick C. Painton (ALL DETECTIVE). It might be noted that Mr. Painton had numerous
short-lived series running in the pulp magazines, but Spawn of The Spider and its sequel, Spider’s Return in March 1934, is memorable because this Spider is a super crook!
Fortunately,
we do have a hero to fight this super villain, and maybe we should first take a
look at this shining knight before looking at the dastardly villain. So,
without further ado, our hero is … Captain Gary Galt; he is lean in body, with
a bronzed face, and a shock of yellow hair. He is also a master of disguise, a
dead shot, and speaks five languages fluently. And what’s more, he has the
cleverness of the devil himself.
In
Spawn of The Spider, we learn that
Captain Galt, a U.S. Secret Service agent, while assigned to the Middle East,
and attached to a big American oilman by the name of A. P. Hargrave, is framed
for a crime and imprisoned in France for twenty years. However, Captain Galt
soon escapes and plans to get even with Hargrave, whom he believes
double-crossed him.
Galt
is on the same ship as Hargrave, who is returning to America. Our hero decides
to break into Hargrave’s cabin and steal his valuable diamonds from the safe.
But while he is in the act he is caught by the beautiful Lura Tellaire, the
mysterious woman employed as Hargrave’s secretary.
“
---Leave if where it is, Captain,” said a soft, feminine voice. “I can kill you
easily at this distance.”
He
squinted his eyes in the direction of the speaker. There, in negligee and
scarlet pajamas stood Lura Tellaire, A. P. Hargrave’s confidential secretary.
She
was a beautiful woman, no doubt of that. Her black hair fell in waving folds on
each side of her olive face. Her long, narrow eyes – almost Chinese in their
effect, he thought – were heavy lidded and alluring. Her tall, slim body was
perfectly proportioned, and her full red lips had a soft, seductive appeal. She
smiled now lazily at Captain Galt’s obvious chagrin.
But
instead of turning him in, she offers to become his lover, and promises that if
he joins with her, she would lead him to more fortune than Hargrave’s mere
diamonds. Galt agrees to play along with her to discover what her game really
was. However, he has no plans on becoming her lover – you see, he has all ready
fallen in love with Hargrave’s lovely niece, Janice Marsh, and though he feels
no remorse against stealing Hargrave’s diamonds, he does draw the line at
cheating on his future bride.
As
the story unfolds, we learn that the mysterious woman is a member of the Brotherhood of The Spider, an equally
mysterious group of criminals that are operating in America. The members of the
gang are called spiders, naturally.
They are ranked by colors; for instance, the criminal lieutenants are green
spiders, while the group leaders are gold spiders.
The
Spider murders Hargrave, and
captures both Captain Galt and Janice Marsh, and takes them aboard his private
yacht bound for the Bahamas. But Lura Tellaire really loves Captain Galt by
this time and helps him escape. As they have distanced themselves from the yacht,
they look back and see the Spider standing
on the deck of the ship as the vessel explodes.
We
have this description of the Spider:
the man who stood there with arms folded on his breast was tall and heavy, yet
he was not fat. He had a huge, noble head in which deep-set eyes burned with a
peculiar glitter that seemed half insane. His hair was black, his skin dark,
his face solid, reflecting tremendous will power. There was cruelty in the
mouth, power in the chin, ruthlessness in the hawk-like nose. The small room in
which they now were made the Spider seem
a towering giant. He turned and faced them. His only emotion reflected in the
increased glitter in his eyes.
Needless
to say, if there was going to be a sequel, the Spider had to survive the explosion on the yacht. And remember, in
the first story Gary Galt had watched the brooding figure of the half mad
villain lighted by the glare of the burning ship. He had seen it a split second
before an explosion had sent the vessel asunder. He could have sworn the Spider had died in that instant.
The
plot of Spawn of The Spider was deep,
but not complicated. The villain was a super criminal who had gathered the
beggars together under one leader, one master plan. The beggars were pushing
drugs in their guise of selling pencils on the streets. The Spider had used his own sister, Lura
Tellaire, to get close to A. P. Hargrave. Vengeance and fortune were at the
bottom of the affair. Hargrave had married Lura, and that night the Spider kills him so his sister will
inherit Hargrave’s fortune. To complicate matters, Lura was really in love with
Captain Galt, who loved Janice.
To
further complicate matters, Galt’s old boss, Hugh Jeffrey, the Secret Service
chief of the Middle East division, wants Captain Galt to return to the Secret
Service. He refuses until one of his old friends in the Service is brutally
murdered by the Spider. This gives
Captain Galt incentive to run the Spider
to ground, so he plays along with Lura until he weeds out the identity of
the Spider.
This
was a very nice entry, but should have been twice as long as it was. There was
too much in too short a story, but a topnotch yarn, regardless.
In
the second story, Spider’s Return, March
1934, a number of strange crimes have occurred; a trench digger is stolen, as
is a diving bell, and gas masks! Naturally, Gary Galt believes the Spider is back, which indeed, he is.
Hugh Jeffrey still wants Galt back with the Service, and meanwhile Gary Galt
and Janice Marsh are preparing for their wedding.
So
we automatically know there is going to be complications. Naturally. The Spider hates Captain Galt, and desires
justice for himself. This should make for an equally interesting story as the
first one, but unfortunately it only moderately lives up to Spawn of The Spider.
After
a lot of action, Gary Galt figures out the Spider’s
scheme. It appears that this dastardly villain plans on robbing the
National Gold Reserve by tunneling with the trench digger, using the diving
bell under water, then breaking into the place through an outer wall below
ground that is protected by a poisonous gas. Simple.
Fortunately,
or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the Spider is killed during the battle for the gold. Or at least I
haven’t heard about a third story in the series yet – though anything is
possible. For whatever it means, it appears that Galt is back with the Secret
Service at the end of the story. But he is taking some time off to marry Janice
Marsh. I guess they will live happily ever after.
Tying
up the loose ends: How, you may ask, did the Spider survive the explosion on the ship in the first story? That
is a good question. However, we are merely told, in one short paragraph, that
the Spider had merely remained in
the water after the ship went down, until a fishing boat picked him up. Never
forget, in the pulps anything is possible. Remember Doctor Death? Nothing
seemed to kill him.
Surprisingly,
there were more than one Spider in
the bloody pulps, even though Richard Wentworth was undoubtedly the most
popular, and best remembered. For instance, there was the Johnston McCulley
novelettes that ran in DETECTIVE STORY
MAGAZINE in 1918-1919. For more information on this character, those
interested should read The Other Spider by
Robert Sampson, ECHOES SPECIAL ISSUE, June
1982.
One
item that shocked me when I read Spawn of
The Spider was that the author used the spelling of okay as okeh. Of all the
pulp stories I’ve read until now, I had only ran across this particular
spelling in stories written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts. To my knowledge,
Frederick C. Painton is a real person, so this gives us researches a warning
not to rely completely on certain phrases, spellings, and quirks in identifying
authors. We could be surprised in the end. There were Okeh records that
produced jazz music, I believe.
Finally,
my thanks to Will Murray for suggesting these two stories for my research, as
well as providing them so I could read them. If the readers are interested in
these two fascinating stories, they are available to the pulp fans as they have
been reprinted in BEHIND THE MASK, a
companion publication to ECHOES. The
stories appeared in issues 17 and 19, respectively.
Happy
reading.
