“Zara: Master of Murder” was originally published in the November 1942 issue of The Spider Magazine. Zara Iskander rose from underworld filth to enslave all peoples with an amazing hypnotic control. He forced strong men to commit suicide in remorse for murders they had never committed. He forced Nita to betray The Spider, the man she loved above all others. He made Commissioner Kirkpatrick a traitor to his oath of office, which he held higher than life itself. Yet, his crowning glory was saved for The Spider!
By late 1942, when other pulp series were showing signs of age and were slowing down, The Spider was roaring along at full speed. Even though the series was only eight issues from the end of its run, it still packs quite a punch and is another thrill-a-minute ride.
This story is an excellent example of the staying power of The Spider. Here we have a super villain with an amazing hypnotic power to control the minds of others. And if that isn’t bad enough, he also wields a mystery weapon… some sort of electrical gun that zaps its victims. So, as you might guess, there’s plenty of Spider action and people are dying like flies. A few plot loopholes, yes, but then most pulp stories had them, and they are to be expected. It’s a most enjoyable story.
Zara plans to rule the world. In 1942, when this story was published, readers were quite familiar with megalomaniacs who sought to rule the world. Adolph Hitler‘s armies were burning across Europe, and America had been drawn into the war less than a year before. So the story must have resonated with them, making it just a bit more real.
To achieve his brutal and evil objectives, Zara will first eliminate obstructions and acquire wealth. The wealth will come from blackmail. Men will be killed; other men will be framed for the crimes, and will pay millions to avoid the chair. And as for the obstructions, the greatest is Richard Wentworth. Zara sends his lieutenant Muley with a list of five men to be murdered in a specific way. As for Wentworth, Zara will frame him, himself!
Zara claims The Spider is only the first of those who must be destroyed because they stand in his way. With The Spider gone, the rest will be easy.
The greatest obstacle to world domination
This makes me wonder. Why did he pick on Richard Wentworth as his greatest obstacle? Did he know Wentworth’s secret? Apparently so. But how? In nearly every Spider story, it seems that the chief villain knows that Richard Wentworth is The Spider. Yet it’s never explained how they know this. It must be an open secret in the underworld. So much for a secret disguise… But I digress.
Wentworth receives a phone call from Zara boasting that at 8:30 tonight Wentworth will commit a murder. Wentworth shows up at the specified spot, and sure enough… he is framed for a murder. Outside the Byddle Liquor Shop, Wentworth encounters Lt. Littleton. Zara shows up and shoots both men with his strange electric gun, knocking them both unconscious. The sinister mastermind shoots Littleton with Wentworth’s gun, and leaves, taking the incriminating murder weapon with him. Wentworth has been framed!
Now at this point, the logical minded of you may start asking questions. If it is so vital that Wentworth be removed from Zara’s path, why didn’t the sinister mastermind just kill him while he lay unconscious? But no, that would have been too easy. And it would have ended the magazine series, right then and there. So later in the story, it is explained that Zara could have killed Wentworth when he was zapped unconscious by the liquor store, but he wants to kill him in his Spider guise. Seems to me that if Zara was really all that intent upon taking over the world, he wouldn’t pass up such a golden opportunity. But then, I guess if this guy was in his right mind, he wouldn’t be your typical crazed master criminal.
Another question pops up here, for the curious minded. Exactly what kind of arsenal does The Spider have? One of his automatics is stolen by Zara. Yet he seems to have plenty more where that came from. In future scenes, he has a pair of automatics. And reference is made to caches of weapons hidden all over the city by The Spider, for emergencies. Emergencies that always seem to come up. It seems that The Spider must go through handguns as rapidly as The Shadow does. And that’s pretty fast!
Later, Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick shows up at Wentworth’s home, suspicious that Wentworth is responsible for Littleton’s killing. While he’s there, a phone call arrives for Wentworth, from Zara. He’s blackmailing Wentworth, and has the murder weapon. Well, this doesn’t worry Wentworth too much because he had a coating of collodion on his hands.
Collodion, a flexible coating made of cellulose, coats his hands. He prefers it to gloves, because it gives him an edge. Bare hands are less apt to fumble. And as a side effect, it also effectively blurs his fingerprints. So blackmail using the murder weapon isn’t much of a threat after all. Pretty clever, that Spider!
There’s a second phone call. This one is for Commissioner Kirkpatrick. On the other end of the line is The Spider. He tells Kirkpatrick of a new weapon that uses an electric shock. It was used on Lt. Littleton. Since Wentworth stands right there, it makes me wonder, who was on the other end of the line? Was this a recording made by The Spider earlier? Or was it a sound-alike stooge? It’s never explained in the story, so the reader can select the option he prefers. Or he can just ignore it altogether.
Richard Wentworth, a life in peril
As the story progresses, several attempts are made upon Wentworth’s life. Apparently, Zara doesn’t feel so strongly about killing him while in his Spider garb, after all. Ah, a change of heart. Good thing he didn’t feel that way back at the liquor store!
Nita gets to dress up as The Spider in this story. In fact, she plays the entire second half of the story in that guise. In one scene, she helps Wentworth escape police headquarters in The Spider’s garb. Later she is captured by Zara in the outfit, and is enslaved by his hypnotic control. Eventually, she betrays The Spider and the secret locations of his weapons/money caches, still guised as The Spider. And when the big climax to the story comes, she battles on as The Spider.
Ram Singh doesn’t get much to do in this story. He makes an abbreviated appearance at the story’s beginning, and then is found with his own knife driven between his shoulder blades. That puts him in the hospital for the rest of the story. Jenkyns and Jackson aren’t even mentioned. Nita’s the one who gets plenty of action, here.
Zara has this amazing power to control the minds of others. He can even compel a man to shoot himself! He does that in the presence of Commissioner Kirkpatrick. And then he forces Kirkpatrick to turn his gun upon himself. If not for the interruption of The Spider’s crazed laughter, Kirkpatrick would have committed suicide!
There’s no scientific gizmo involved in the control; it’s the amazing power of the mind. And Wentworth controls that same power! In one scene, when Wentworth is a prisoner, Zara says, “I suspected that you were an adept.” He refers to some occult secret that Wentworth had learned in the lamaseries of Tibet. And Wentworth needs that mental mastery to battle against the amazingly powerful Zara.
The power of the mind
In the climax of the story, there’s a titanic contest of minds between The Spider and Zara. The Spider has issued a challenge in the newspapers. He will duel Zara in a battle of wills, to see which can compel the other, by sheer will power alone, to commit suicide. Zara accepts. What ensues carries on for pages and is most amazing. Even when Zara deploys his secret electrocution weapon, the dirty cheater, Wentworth surges on, his will forcing him to remain standing, to speak, to move forward to the attack!
There are a couple of airplane scenes, which I always enjoy. Since the nation was at war at this time, readers are assured that when an unidentified airplane is discovered in the air, Army aircraft rush to intercept. The first time, he evades the fighters by landing on a golf course. The second time, The Spider engages in an aerial battle with Zara, finally rams his plane into Zara’s. The two men parachute to the waters below, where the final confrontation occurs in the choppy waters of the Sound.
When the story reaches the last few pages, we find Nita, Commissioner Kirkpatrick and his wife, Lona, all under the mental sway of the master of hypnotic control, Zara. But when Zara dies, a particularly bloody and gruesome death, they are immediately released. Of course, this isn’t the way actual hypnotism works, but in the pulps… and the movies… when the hypnotist dies, his control evaporates. Hey, nobody ever claimed this was actual science, here!
And speaking of science, Zara’s electric ray gun is explained as follows:
“That secret weapon is a hypersonics device. I don’t know by what process Zara protected himself against it, but the way the thing operated is this: It would emit sonic vibrations, too high to be heard by the human ear. Its effect is to contract the muscles of the body, and it knocks out by a species of artificially induced heart-attack.”
It should be noted that when this story was originally submitted to Popular Publications, it was titled “The Great God Murder.” Editors chose to change it to “Zara: Master of Murder.” Maybe they wanted to play down any sacrilegious tone.
With typical irony, every man’s hand is turned against The Spider in this tale… even those whom he fights to save. This is typical of most Spider stories. The odds are always badly stacked against him. He can only trust his four aides, Nita, Ram Singh, Jenkyns, and Jackson. And in this story, even Nita turns against him, while under the mental control of Zara.
Final points of interest
I found a couple of things of special interest here. In one scene, Wentworth injects himself with adrenaline. It helps him overcome the effects of the electric ray gun. Adrenaline was rather new at the time, and was seen as something of a wonder drug.
Later, we see The Spider pull out a phial of some powdered chemical. He pours it on a wastebasket fire and black smoke billows upward. It makes me think he must have a lot of other phials hidden about his person, each for a different emergency. Kind of like Batman‘s utility belt… or Doc Savage‘s vest.
We do get to see the pipe organ in Wentworth’s music room again. He taps the vents of two pipes; a hidden door opens; inside is a secret closet where he changes to the face and guise of The Spider. I want one of those rooms in my house. And I want a pipe organ to go with it!
I really liked this story. The concept of a battle of minds was quite well done. No need for guns or mysterious plagues… just a contest of two indomitable wills. An excellent Spider story by the man who wrote more of them than any other, Norvell Page. I think you’ll like it as much as I did.
So, where to get it? Girasol Collectibles has a replica reprint available for $35, postpaid. You can get an ebook version from Radio Archives for $3.99, for your computer or mobile device. Sanctum Books is reprinting The Spider, too, but this one isn’t available, yet. You could be reading this tonight! You won’t regret it.
