“Dragon Lord of the Underworld” was originally published in the July 1935 issue of The Spider Magazine. In the heart of New York’s Chinatown, on his imperial throne, guarded by swordsmen and gunmen and a labyrinth of death traps, sat the Arch-Criminal of all time. Master of life and death, of disease, of horrible, crawling things — the Emperor of Vermin released destruction over city and nation.
This is a bloody good Spider adventure… emphasis on bloody. You know what to expect from The Spider: action, violence, bloodshed, mass murder, mayhem, gore. This story offers it to you in buckets-full! As is usual, the action barely pauses for a tender moment between Richard Wentworth and Nita van Sloan, and then barrels on along without barely missing a beat. The body count is exceptionally high in this tale. It tops a thousand innocent souls. There are several yeww moments, such as when Wentworth commands his driver to send the vehicle forward, driving over dozens of crunching corpses. If it’s over-the-top action you’re looking for, this story offers it to you in abundance.
Ssu Hsi Tze, the Chinese warlord who resides in Chinatown, is intent upon organizing the criminal underworld of New York City… and eventually the entire nation.
As our story opens, The Spider confronts a small-time criminal named Craven and his two cronies. They have refused the offer of Ssu Hsi Tze, and are now regretting it. They are killed right in front of Wentworth’s eyes. Soon Ssu Hsi Tze makes his presence known. Fifteen innocent citizens die from the bites of a black widow spider, and The Spider knows it’s not accident Ssu Hsi Tze has struck!
Ssu Hsi Tze strikes
Ssu Hsi Tze strikes once more, at Wentworth himself in Nita’s apartment. A glass globe is tossed through the window, to shatter upon the floor. From inside scramble a dozen of the most deadly spiders in the world — the Kara Khoum spiders of the Gobi. They are meat eaters, attracted to the scent of humans. In the mad scramble, Nita is kidnapped by the minions of the mighty Ssu Hsi Tze. The gauntlet has been tossed down, so to speak. The challenge has been made.
The first thing Wentworth does is to track down Ssu Hsi Tze to his hidden lair in the bowels of Chinatown. He follows the beautiful San-guh Liang-guh through the twisty, underground mazes filled with sinister and ugly death traps. Finally, he meets the man Ssu Hsi Tze himself. It’s an interesting confrontation.
The name Ssu Hsi Tze literally means “master of vermin,” and it truly fits the madman who holds it. He intends to raise millions to send to China to help his countrymen in their fight against foreign aggressors. And he makes tempting promises to The Spider: “When China has the money she needs, I shall exterminate for you the vermin which undermine your government and pilfer your wealth. I shall wipe them from the face of the earth and give back to you a country purged of its evils and its illnesses.” Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. But wait, there’s more: “Furthermore, I can promise that during my reign there shall be no increase of crime: that there shall only be such killings as are strictly necessary.” Sounds hard to refuse… if he means it.
But, if The Spider refuses the offer of Ssu Hsi Tze: “I shall wipe out whole cities so that I may loot them more easily and quickly. I shall loose my plague of spiders upon the cities, and other fearful plagues.” But you know you can’t trust a guy like this. Once he gets what he wants, he’ll only want more. The Spider sees through his empty promises. And that’s when the carnage starts.
The carnage starts
Soon, “the sidewalks were thick with bodies, black motionless blobs, that a few moments before had been men and women. They lay in agonized huddles upon the pavements, in doorways, sprawling across the gutters. Spiders! Vipers! Scorpions! The street was a shambles of such crawling horrors.” The evil Ssu Hsi Tze strikes again and again. He robs The Inter-City Bank that is defenseless. “Bloated spiders, writhing snakes, still scuttled across the marble flooring. Behind the bars of cashiers’ windows, blue-coated Chinese worked, oblivious of the black death crawling and scampering about them.” Yes, the minions of Ssu Hsi Tze are immune to the crawling and slithering death.
The atrocities go on, mounting higher and higher. As is typical of a good Spider tale, it’s relentless. The tension builds, the stakes grow exponentially until the amazing climax. It makes for quite a story!
Very few know the true fact hidden behind the misshaped visage of The Spider. There are The Spider’s three faithful servants: Jackson his chauffeur and all-around man; old Jenkyns, his butler and contact man; and Ram Singh, his mighty bodyguard. Ram Singh gets to see plenty of action in this adventure. Jackson, less so. And Jenkyns is briefly mentioned, no more. Of course Nita van Sloan knows, and she gets to do some fighting this time around, along with getting kidnapped, which seems standard. And then there is Professor Brownlee.
Professor Brownlee is an old, old friend of Wentworth. It was Brownlee’s misfortunes, years ago, that turned a young Richard Wentworth to the path that was to become The Spider. The college lad, young Dick Wentworth, had saved Brownlee from disgrace, and since then the older man had been his staunch ally and unfailing friend. This issue of The Spider Magazine is a key one, in that the character of Professor Brownlee is killed off. He had been a recurring character in earlier stories, but this is his end. Sad…
Another recurring character is Nita’s dog. The Great Dane named Apollo would tower over any man if he were to stand on his hind legs. He’s faithful and brutal. Just what Nita needs, and Richard uses to his own advantage, here.
1930s version of a drama-queen
The character of The Spider is a unique one. To everything he acts intensely. Indeed, he always seems to over-react. One might say he was a 1930s version of a drama-queen. But while a drama-queen over-reacts for others, Richard Wentworth over-reacts internally. He doesn’t just get mad… “Rage that almost blinded Wentworth sprang to life, shook him with its intensity” and later, “Suddenly, more powerfully than before, rage shook Wentworth too — blinding, hot, reckless rage.”
There are some interesting details revealed in this story. In the back of his car is a hidden button. When pressed, the seat slides forward and reveals a wardrobe of closely hung clothing, a mirror ringed with powerful neon tubes for light, and a tray of make-up materials, all the essentials of disguise. The Spider is a master of disguise, of course, and this gives us some insight as to how he accomplishes it.
As for those disguises, he appears as a gawky tourist. But that’s the only disguise that Richard Wentworth uses in this story… not counting The Spider disguise, of course.
Another interesting detail is the secret room that Richard Wentworth has had built into Nita’s apartment. Somewhat like The Shadow‘s sanctum, this is a place where he can create his disguises and plan his strategies. Pretty cool!
Today in the 21st century, we have antivenins for just about every snake and spider bite. Not so in the 1930s. Readers are reminded that, “The Spider was the hardest of all vermin to eradicate, and of all the family, the black widow was the toughest. There was no serum, of course, very little knowledge indeed even of the venom.” And in this tale, many die from that fatal bite!
The police commissioner is Patrick O. Flynn in this story. Richard Wentworth’s good friend Stanley Kirkpatrick had been commissioner, but was elected governor several months before this story. So now The Spider has a new commissioner to deal with. Kirkpatrick is still around, and in fact Ssu Hsi Tze kidnaps him, and it’s up to The Spider to free the hostage. As it would turn out, his job as governor wouldn’t last. Six months after this story in “The Mayor of Hell,” Kirkpatrick would return to his job as New York City’s top cop.
Female villains
Unlike some of the other hero pulps out there, The Spider stories had no compunctions about featuring female villains. And along with their evil ways, came their grisly ends. San-guh Liang-guh, the right hand of Ssu Hsi Tze, is as evil as they come. And in the end, she dies by knife. But even worse is the fate of another bad girl, Flo Delight. She gets cut in half by a giant sword. Yeck!
There were no loose ends in this story, at least not ones that I noticed. But there was one point of curiosity that was never explained. At the story’s climax, Gov. Kirkpatrick is forced to walk across an electrified floor. Unless he follows a very specific path, he will set off bombs all over New York City. And the section upon which he now stands will become active in 30 seconds, forcing him to move. Yet, later, he follows The Spider’s directions and reverses his path until he is back where he started. And the bombs don’t blow up. We were told that particular section of the floor would set off the bombs after 30 seconds… and it’s well after that. But no BOOM! It was never explained why, and that nagged at me.
But other than that one loophole, I found the story to be well written… tightly written… and with a mile-a-minute action. A lot of fun to read. Hard to put down. It’s what you expect in a Spider novel. This one delivers.
