"The Master Magician" -- Loring Brent (ARGOSY, February 25th, 1933) PART 2

I kind of feel like a chump now for splitting this story into two nights of reading and two blog-posts.  When I got into bed and started reading last night, I discovered that the remainder of "The Master Magician" took me no more than 20 minutes to devour.  I probably could have sat up and finished the story all in one go the night before if I'd but realized.  Oh well.

To recap where we left our hero Peter Moore last time, Moore and his friend Roger Pennekamp have realized that an old enemy, the magician and would-be dictator Zarlo, has returned to exact revenge on them for deposing him in the Philippines six years earlier.  With the three men who'd aided them already dead and several attempts made on Pennekamp's life, Moore and Pennekamp resolve to take the fight to Zarlo, wherever he may be holed up.  This resolve is strengthened when Moore's traveling companion, the thrill-seeking heiress Susan O'Gilvie, is kidnapped to lure Moore into Zarlo's clutches.  An impromptu seance, at Pennekamp's insistence, suggests the island of Soononga, more commonly known as Skull Island, is the site of Zarlo's hideout.

Traveling to Soononga, Pennekamp's ship is stormed by a boarding party of black pirates (my guess being that these aren't blacks of African descent, but rather dark-skinned Polynesians, given the location) and Moore is taken captive, along with sniveling American wimp Jason Whitelaw, who has come along in hopes of convincing Susan that he loves her and she'll hopefully love him back.

Brought before Zarlo, Moore is given a glimpse of the possible fates that await him -- the skulls of the three men who'd preceded him in dying at Zarlo's hand are on display with neatly-lettered placards describing who they were and how they died, and more ominously, Zarlo shows Moore "Ronga" -- a former American business man, regressed to a snarling, mindless beast by Zarlo's magic, more than eager to feast on raw human flesh.  Zarlo assures Moore that should Moore make any attempt to escape, Ronga will follow him like the best-trained of bloodhounds.

Before long, of course, Moore breaks free and, with Whitelaw showing what he's made of for a change, sets off to rescue Susan and give Zarlo a taste of his own mad medicine...

Wow, what a story! Action, adventure, romance, exotic locales, mysticism, monsters (one made from a human being, no less!), betrayal, and so much more crammed into so few pages, I can say in all honesty that "The Master Magician" is a story that grabs the reader by the lapels and doesn't let go until the ink's dry on the last punctuation mark.

The characters are rich and interesting, and nothing about them feels forced or unnatural.  From Susan's headstrong conviction that whichever possibility offers the most excitement must be the truth to Peter's horrified ruminations on what would happen if he, a man who just wants some peace and quiet, were to marry Susan, these all feel like real people.

I also liked Brent's committal to remaining non-committal on the subject of the occult, carefully presenting every seemingly-supernatural event as one that has a rational explanation...but maintaining an open-mindedness towards the notion that that explanation might not be the "correct" one.  Sure, it's likely that Zarlo kept Ronga an animal through keeping him drugged and under hypnotic suggestion...but maybe, just maybe, he did use his mystical powers to drive a man's soul out of his body, leaving only a brutal monster behind.

This story really slapped me upside the head and took me by surprise, and I'll say no more about it other than to advocate you really check it out.