After too long we finally get the third volume of Semi Dual stories. While Steeger Books had published three prior Semi Dual serials, these were all toward the end of the series.
This volume picks up from where Vol. 2 left off. For those who forgot who this is, a re-introduction.
Semi Dual is really Prince Abdul Omar of Persia (his father was a Persian nobleman; his mother, a Russian princess). He is an astrologer, mystic, telepath, and psychologist. The series appeared from 1912 to 1934 in several major pulp magazines, and was never been reprinted until now.
His name “Semi Dual,” we learn, is due to his methods of investigations: “by dual solutions: one material, for material minds; the other occult, for those who cared to sense a deeper something back of the philosophic lessons interwoven in the narrative.”
The series was written by J.U. Giesy and Junius B. Smith, who both lived in Utah. Giesy was a doctor; Smith, a lawyer. Both were interested in astrology. They both wrote for the early pulps, and Giesy had several popular series himself. We get the brief bios that appeared in the Argosy, though I don’t buy into the idea that astrology was ever accepted in a court of law as valid science.
The House of the Ego: The Complete Cabalistic Cases of Semi Dual, the Occult Detector, Vol. 3, reprints the next two stories that were serialized between September 1913 and December 1913 in The Cavalier. This actually ends the series in The Cavalier, as it would be merged into All-Story to become All-Story Cavalier Weekly, where Semi Dual continued to appear for awhile.
As before, the series is part of Steeger’s larger “Argosy Library”, with the same trade dress as the rest. But as this trade dress has changed with volume #101 of the Library, this one is now different from all prior volumes. In fact, volumes 1, 2, and 3 are all different in appearance.
As before, reporter Gordon Glace is our narrator in these stories. Again, we have Police Inspector Bryce, as well (no first name given), but no mention of the detective agency the two had formed in the prior story. Unless the editors published these works out of order or something, as I know the agency features in future stories.
First up is the title story, “The House of the Ego” (three-part serial: Sept. 20 and 27, and Oct. 4, 1913). Glace kicks things off when he is asked by his editor to check out this “House of the Ego,” where a Swami Bhutia operates. He is a Hindu, teaching his own varient of religious/occult beliefs, and who has been getting several followers, mainly weathly women. It should be noted that this was something of a phenomenon around this time. After speaking with Dual about it, he is told that Bhutia is a fake and that the stars portend that something will happen soon, and Glace will be part of it.
Bryce soon brings Glace in to meet the chief of police and a few others. It seems a young woman, recently come of age and now wealthy, has apparently fallen under the Swami’s spell, and has moved in to the House, as do others who wish to learn more. She has no plans on leaving, despite the wishes of her family and fiancé. This must be what the stars foretold. Can Glace help bring this woman to her senses, especially as he decides to move in as well under the pretense of learning more? Or has Glace put himself in danger, should he be exposed? What role will Semi Dual play in this? Will they succeed in exposing the Swami and freeing her?
And we have the short story “The Ghost of a Name” (Dec. 20, 1913), which was cover featured and the artwork used as the cover of the first volume! The artwork from All-Story from June 1913 is used as the cover of this volume. This time we have a murder/suicide case. Glace is sent the home of a retired and rich broker, now widowed. He is dead, strangled. And his nephew, who lives there as his secretary, is shot in his bedroom, an apparent suicide. But he’s not dead.
It seems the uncle had changed his will, instead leaving the bulk of his estate to another nephew, whom he previously had disapproved of. Is this a clear-cut case of murder/suicide? Semi Dual doesn’t think so. We have a case that figures as much on physical evidence as spiritual in revealing what really happened.
These are an interesting contrast in stories.
So what will come next? I really hope we get Vol. 4 soon, which will probably reprint the two stories that appeared in All-Story Cavalier Weekly in 1914 and 1915. After that are two stories in All-Story Weekly in 1915 and ’16, which may comprise Vol. 5. I am actually holding off on reading the prior volumes, as the serials they contain are stories #28, 30, and 33 (the last) from the overall series, and I want to work my way up to them.
