One-tenth of this country’s population possesses nine-tenths of its purchasing power. This small minority cannot spend its income. Most of it is re-invested to make more profits, and thus, year by year the disparity increases. The great impoverished nine-tenths, mostly workers, cannot buy the goods they create. Hence unemployment increases. The more unemployment, the less the purchasing power, and so on—a vicious cycle which leads only to a final terrible collapse. The only remedy is a more equal spread of our national income. Permit the workers to buy the products of their labor. With our modern machinery, this means a luxury income. Nothing less will do. If you doubt this solution, try to find another. It seems to me simple mathematics. That it is also simple justice should not lessen its merit.
A loving family man, who instilled in his children, and through them his grandchildren, a deep sense of tolerance, in terms of both race (he was also an active participant in the Washington state-area NAACP in the 1930s) and politics, as well as a tradition of political activism, Robert Pearsall’s beliefs were more so the product of a conviction that people deserved to be treated equally, no matter their social status, than any hard-line dedication to Leninist or Marxist theory.
While much of Robert’s personal history may be in question or incomplete, one thing is not conjecture: his prodigious output of fictional works. While his stories, well over ninety in number, appeared primarily in pulp magazines, they oftentimes appeared in newspapers as well; some he seemingly sold to the newspapers directly, while others were printed in newspapers owned by The Frank A. Munsey Company. He wrote stories that ran a gamut of genres, from drama to mystery to westerns, but it is his tales of the Orient that is our focus at the moment.
The adventures of Hazard and Partridge suggest a detailed understanding of ancient and modern Chinese history on Robert’s part; locations, characters, societies and other occurrences that Hazard and Partridge come across are linked, in one form or another, to actual events and persons throughout China’s long history. Stories such as those contained in this book automatically draw comparisons to Sax Rohmer and the various intrigues of the nefarious Dr. Fu-Manchu. While many aspects can be compared and contrasted, one fact is evidently clear: Rohmer, by his own admission, had never set foot in China and had no understanding of China, outside of his journalistic visits to London’s Chinatown and Limehouse districts when concocting his Fu-Manchu tales, whereas Pearsall had definitely spent some time in China and drew upon such experiences for his stories.
The Ko Lao Hui, the evil secret society through which Koshinga works his devilish deeds, was real, to some extent. The history of secret societies in China is nearly as long as Chinese history itself, with various groups participating variably in the creation, success, or overthrow of several Chinese dynasties throughout the centuries. Groups with deep connections and dedications to Buddhist and Taoist ceremony and cosmology, the societies were homes for a myriad of individuals, from brigands and bandits to revolutionaries and everyday criminals. Following the overthrow of the native, ethnic Han Chinese Ming dynasty by the foreign, Manchurian Qing dynasty, many secret societies assumed a nationalistic/ethnocentric nature, espousing “overthrow the Qing, restore the Ming.”
The Ko Lao Hui, or “Elder Brothers Society,” was one such group whose origins are shrouded in mystery. While their earliest years seem to show an amalgamation of rituals and codes belonging to several different groups, it can be stated with certainty that they began to assert themselves as an individual entity in the last years of the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping Rebellion, the bloodiest, continuous civil war in human history, with at least 20 million deaths, lasted roughly from 1851 to 1864, and was largely religious and nationalistic in nature. The movement that led to the rebellion was started by a man named Hong Xiuquan (or Hung Hsiu-ch’üan, in the Wade-Giles system of Romanization, with which Pearsall would have been familiar with), a failed civil services examinee who claimed, via dreams and visions he received while ill, that he was the second son of the Christian God, younger brother of Jesus of Nazareth, whose mission it was to both finish Jesus’ work in bringing God’s kingdom to Earth, and also to slay the foreign demons, the Manchus, who had overrun God’s predestined, Earthly capitol. Hong acquired a small group of devotees, which eventually grew into a large following, and eventually a military force, which began a war against the Qing dynasty, taking the ancient capital of Nanjing as the center of a new quasi-Christian kingdom in China, with Hong as its king; before its downfall, the Taipings (whose name translates into “Heavenly Kingdom”) had taken over an enormous portion of Chinese territory. With the Qing dynasty inept and incapable of defeating the Taipings, the Manchus relied on two sources of help—aid from the Western Powers, who saw it in their best interests to prop up the weak Qing, as opposed to dealing with the highly-nationalistic Taipings; and private armies, raised by elite Chinese loyal to the Qing cause. One of these loyalists was a wealthy farmer and Confucian scholar named Zeng Guofan, who raised an army in the province of Hunan, and was pivotal in the destruction of the Taiping state.
It was during the last years of the rebellion that Zeng’s army was first infiltrated by members of the nascent Ko Lao Hui, and the army’s travels allowed for the society to spread; when Zeng disbanded his army following the Taipings’ defeat, former soldiers (possibly at least 30% of whom were full-members of the Ko Lao Hui) went to find work in areas throughout China, increasing further the society’s influence. As the society’s strength grew, it moved beyond the gambling houses that had made it wealthy and began moving in circles inhabited by revolutionaries, which led to the group gradually assuming an anti-foreign, anti-Manchu position. In 1891, the Ko Lao Hui were involved in a wave of attacks upon foreign missions, consulates, orphanages and churches; also in 1891, C.W. Mason, an official at a British customs house in the Ko Lao Hui’s homeland of Hunan, was caught and sentenced to nine years in prison for smuggling from Hong Kong a significant cache of weapons for use in a planned revolt against the Qing, spearheaded by the Ko Lao Hui. Several more attacks on foreign establishments, with the apparent goal of both weakening the Qing as well as their relationship with the powers of Europe and America, continued in successive years, culminating in a revolt in December of 1906, in which members of the Ko Lao Hui destroyed several foreign churches and consular buildings—an uprising that took armies from four surrounding provinces to quell.
Given the fact that Pearsall was in China as a U.S. Marine the year before the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, which ultimately led to the abdication of the Emperor and the establishment of the Republic, as well as (possibly) several years before he enlisted in the U.S. Army, it is extremely likely that he had heard of the Ko Lao Hui, as it was something of a poorly-kept secret they were involved in various anti-Manchu activities. Furthermore, owing to their reputation as being anti-foreign (which, of course, included anti-American), Pearsall no doubt heard accounts of the group’s attacks on American interests, possibly from witnesses or survivors, and decided to use this group as the template for his evil society. The Boxer Uprising, even decades after its conclusion, was still a fresh memory in the collective mind of the West, and any related groups, the Ko Lao Hui included, would have featured prominently in discussions of anti-Western movements of the recent past.
Even the diabolical Koshinga, leader of the Ko Lao Hui and hell-bent on overrunning the Western world, has a basis—in name at least—in Chinese history. Zheng Chenggong was a powerful military commander and Ming loyalist during the waning days of the dynasty; Zheng was given the title Guoxingye (“Lord of the Dynastic Surname”) by the Ming emperor, which in Western accounts was transliterated as “Koxinga,” or “Koshinga.” Born in 1624, Koshinga was the son of Zheng Zhilong, a Chinese pirate, and a Japanese mother, Lady Tagawa; through Zheng’s services and Koshinga’s success in the civil service exams, the family earned favor at the Ming court. As the Manchurian Qing descended from the north, Koshinga and his father defended the Ming, first in Xiamen, on Chin
a’s southeastern coast. As the loss of Xiamen appeared imminent, Koshinga fled across the straits to Taiwan, at the time called Formosa by the Dutch settlers who had ruled the island for several decades. Koshinga’s army defeated the Dutch in 1662, driving them from the island, which was made the center of Koshinga’s new dynasty, the Kingdom of Tungning; much like Chiang Kai-shek several centuries later, it was Koshinga’s intent to use Formosa as a base from which to launch a reclamation of the mainland. This dream, however, was never realized, due to Koshinga’s death shortly after conquering Formosa; his son, Zheng Jing ascended to the throne of Tung-ning, which survived as an independent kingdom until 1683, when a Qing fleet invaded the island, and brought it under imperial control.
Stationed in both China and the Philippines (which Koshinga also threatened during his short reign on Formosa), it would not be surprising if a young Robert Pearsall had learned of Koshinga’s exploits, particularly before and immediately after the Revolution of 1911, when anti-Manchu sentiment—one of Koshinga’s hallmarks—was at an all-time high.
Other references to China’s past found in the Hazard & Partridge narratives, from the revolution-prone history of the Shaanxi (Shensi) province, to the invaluable importance of the Shu-king to Chinese literary history, exude the knowledge of an individual who was intimately aware of his subject matter, an intimacy that can come only from personal experiences. Even the instances where Robert takes some artistic license, such as his depiction of Taoist monks as particularly evil and conniving in “Silver Sycees,” could reveal remnants of his years abroad; could this have been influenced by young socialist-minded Chinese he met on his travels, who rejected the old ways and old religions, as many Chinese youth did at the time of the revolution? We will probably never know, but it is certainly not outside the realm of possibility.
In closing, now that the author, his times and possible inspirations have been noted, what of the eponymous adventurers of this work? What sets them apart from other sleuths, battling against evil or Asiatic criminals? As mentioned, comparisons will be drawn between Hazard and Partridge, and Rohmer’s Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie. More than likely, Pearsall was aware of this and gave specific attention to the characterization of his protagonists. Despite being first in the series’ title, Hazard does not appear until several stories in, and even then with a bit of suspicion on Partridge’s part. As for Partridge, he is akin to Rohmer’s Petrie and even Conan Doyle’s Watson, in the sense that he acts as narrator for the reader, but there the similarities end. Petrie and Watson, for the most part, act as peripheries to their respective partners’ actions—both participate much in the same way as the reader, befuddled and astounded by Smith’s or Holmes’ deductive abilities. It is certainly true that Petrie and Watson play important roles in their particular narratives, but it is Smith and Holmes who are the true stars of their stories.
In regards to Hazard and Partridge, neither plays an ancillary role, but rather the personalities and talents of both combine to form the “star” of the series. Hazard, quick to action and unrivaled in deductive abilities, is complemented by Partridge’s personal knowledge of China, her people and their customs, and by Partridge’s ability to bide his time, preferring to wait and let things slowly unravel so as to gain a better understanding of the situation.
This characterization, combined with Pearsall’s knack for conveying exotic landscapes, ever-unfolding mysteries, rapid action, and settings based more on historical fact than one might initially imagine, coalesce to produce works unique to the author and his personal history, as well as stories that belong alongside the greats of the pulp magazine genre.
I wish to personally thank Matthew Moring of Altus Press, for asking me to provide an introduction to Robert James Pearsall’s works. I am also indebted to Andrea Cacek and Sandra Pearsall, two of Robert’s granddaughters, without whose help the personal history of their grandfather would be woefully incomplete.
Rogues’ End
SO, I understand, it is now called. Then it was Land’s End—that pretty little precipice behind Cragcastle, where the rock falls sheer a hundred feet to the usually turbulent inlet. It lay at the narrow end of Breakneck Gorge, the upper end of which embraced the isolated freak of a house known as Cragcastle.
Lawyer Osborne had told me his recently deceased client, John Maxon, had built the house. And, in truth, its remoteness matched well with that eccentric provision in his will which had caused me, a stranger to everybody concerned, to take up a solitary residence in Cragcastle. And which, as a consequence, gave me the novel experience, on the first night of my stay there, of sitting across the table from a visitor whom I had just admitted and of whom I knew absolutely nothing—except that he intended to kill me.
“As soon as I read of your father’s will,” said this stranger, “I knew I had you.”
He was and was not a man of prepossessing appearance. Superficially, he was handsome—well-formed, well-dressed, in the late forties, with quite regular features. A closer look, however, showed that he had a coldly sensual mouth and a brutal jaw and that his eyes were bloodshot. Crookdom and the underworld know such faces well; they are the natural result of years of vice and vicious profiteering working upon unusual intelligence as a basis. In my own person I should probably never have known this man well enough to have had him for an enemy.
“Your father probably figured,” he went on, “that, it you were a coward, you wouldn’t come back, and, “if you changed into a man of passable courage, fit to be his son, you would. That was where he made a mistake. You came back, and still you’re a coward. In fact, you came back because you’re a coward. The money you stole was all gone, of course. And you figured I was probably dead or gone or broken mentally—which last I might well be—and you’d rather take a chance on facing me than a certainty of beachcombing it the rest of your life. A hundred thousand is worth taking a chance for—and even worth living in this mansion a year for. Though mainly—” his eyes flitted around the bare room—“it isn’t fit to house ghosts in, and I hope yours will be—uncomfortable.”
Herein his animosity caused him to exaggerate. True, the room in which we sat contained little else than our two chairs and the old oak table on which he had ordered me—somewhat to my amusement—to keep my hands. But that was because I’d carefully denuded it of everything else—sofas, chairs and the like—before he came in. Even while he urged the masquerade on me, Osborne had very earnestly warned me against personal danger, and I wanted to make quite sure that, if I had a caller, we should sit where we did.
Really, Cragcastle was a fine rambling—or rather climbing—old country house, quite comfortably supplied, even to a telephone and electric light and heat.
But I suppose Hardridge, as my visitor had named himself, referred mainly to its isolation, perched as it was five hundred yards up the seaward slope of Mount Tamalpais, five miles from the nearest Village and four from the nearest house.
I replied that he was hard to please, since the setting couldn’t be beaten for a murder.
And indeed Hardridge seemed outwardly to have every chance of accomplishing his intention. We both believed we were alone in the house; he had also made certain that I carried no weapon, and he himself held an effective-looking revolver in a clearly efficient hand. But he rested that hand on the table, with the gun pointed only in my general direction; so I could have concluded the scene at any moment. However, I didn’t want to check him yet, there being too much I wanted to know to let slip a chance for knowledge.
On his part, up to now Hardridge had been enjoying himself perfectly well in gloating over my supposed helplessness. Assassins are usually rhetoricians as well—which fact has saved many lives.
“However,” I added, “I’ll probably be as comfortable as you, dead or alive. For, of course, there’ll be no doubt as to who killed me. In fact, Osborne warned me against you before I came over. He’s the executor, you know. You’ll either hang or go to San Quentin—”
At tha
t last word Hardridge’s face went livid. His revolver flashed up, and for an instant I thought we were both dead men.
“—— you,” he cried—it was his first touch of real passion—“cut that. Don’t you dare—”
“For a longer term than I caused you to get last time,” I went on steadily. “That’ll be some consolation to my ghost.”
Few men will fire in the middle of another man’s sentence; that was one reason I completed mine. But there was another reason, too. His outburst partially confirmed a suspicion certain of his remarks and certain things in his appearance had given me—that he had been in prison and believed I had sent him there, and I wanted to prove or disprove it.
You see, I hadn’t yet learned why he wanted to kill me.
“You think so,” he rasped, lowering his revolver. “Well, you’ll not have that comfort. Those of the ring that are left are back of me in this, and they’ll see me through. Because you’re a traitor doesn’t prove all men are. Because I trusted you doesn’t prove I’m altogether a fool, either. My getaway is safe. And I’ve money, too. Plenty of it. My pro rata in that pool you stole didn’t break me by a long shot, though it did break most of the others. No, John Maxon, it’s not prison but life that’s ahead of me—life!” he exulted. “And for you, death and the fishes! For I’ll drop you into the bay; I wouldn’t poison the earth with you. Pah! Nothing but poisonous toadstools could come from your carcass.”
The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 2