The Exploits of Captain O'Hagan

By Sax Rohmer

The author of the Fu-Manchu novels offers tales of chivalry, adventure, and derring-do in this 1916 story collection.
 
Honored with a Victoria Cross and a Distinguished Service Order, Capt. Bernard O’Hagan prizes valor above all. A man of quick wit and short temper—he wastes no time challenging any offense—and backing up those challenges with his legendary skills as a fighter. Luckily for the good people of London, O’Hagan is on the side of justice.
 
This volume follows the eccentric nobleman through his various adventures, from foiling a plot for blackmail to ridding a young lady of an unwanted suitor. The Exploits of Captain O’Hagan includes the stories “He Patronises Pamela,” “He Clears the Course for True Love,” “He Meets the Leopard Lady,” “He Buries an Old Love,” “He Deals with Don Juan,” and “He Honours the Grand Duke.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504075657

Sax Rohmer

Sax Rohmer (1883–1959) was a pioneering and prolific author of crime fiction, best known for his series of novels featuring the archetypal evil genius Dr. Fu-Manchu.

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THE EXPLOITS OF CAPTAIN O’HAGAN

Sax Rohmer

Introduction

Dr. Fu-Manchu is literature’s ultimate villain: a Chinese master criminal of untold wealth, intellect, and occult powers—a man whose goal is world conquest.

The Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the twentieth century aroused fears of a Yellow Peril, and Rohmer recognized that popular literature was ready for an Oriental archcriminal. His research for an article on Limehouse, the Chinese district of London, uncovered the existence of a Mr.King, an actual figure of immense power in that area, whose enormous wealth derived from gambling, drug smuggling, and the organization of many other criminal activities. The apparent head of powerful tongs and their unsavory members, Mr. King was never charged with a crime, and his very existence was considered questionable. One foggy night, Rohmer saw him—or someone who might have been him—from a distance; his face was the embodiment of Satan. This was Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor.

Fu-Manchu is a diabolical fiend who ruthlessly seeks to become emperor of the world. In addition to possessing degrees from three European universities, he has vast knowledge of the occult and of secrets of chemistry, medicine, and physics unknown to Western man. He also commands the gangs of Asia and is master of the secret sects of the East—Dacoits, Hashishin, Phansigars, and Thugs.

Fu-Manchu is a Chinese noble descended from members of the Manchu dynasty. The most sinister villain in history, the Devil Doctor is nevertheless bound by the code of a gentleman: his word is inviolate.

Fu-Manchu’s constant adversary is Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who, with his companion, Dr.Petrie, seems hopelessly overmatched against the formidable doctor. Vaguely connected with Scotland Yard, Smith was knighted for his efforts to thwart Fu-Manchu, although he would admit that he did not earn the honor by superior intellect. He frequently owes his life to sheer luck, and even more often, to the beautiful Karamaneh, once a slave in Fu-Manchu’s power, and later, Petrie’s wife.

Late in his career, Fu-Manchu temporarily abandons his attempt to conquer the world and joins forces with the West to defeat the growing threat of communism.

With infinite attention to detail, Rohmer deliberately gave an impossible name to his villain, Fu and Manchu both being Chinese surnames.

Tall and slender, Fu-Manchu generally wears a yellow robe or a black one with a silver peacock embroidered on the front. He wears a black cap on his smooth skull. Often portrayed with what is now known as a Fu-Manchu moustache, he is in fact clean-shaven so as not to interfere with his disguises—at which he is a master. His eyes are his most notable physical feature: long, magnetic, and truly cat green—so piercing and compelling that one often senses his gaze even in advance of his presence.

Rohmer once wrote that, just after he had created his character, he had an extraordinary experience. Fu-Manchu appeared in his bedroom. He asserted his independence of the author, telling him of his plans for world conquest: I, the Mandarin Fu Manchu, shall go on triumphant. It is your boast that you made me. It is mine that I shall live when you are smoke.

The fact that it is almost impossible to hear mention of a sinister Oriental without instantly thinking of the Devil Doctor demonstrates the vitality of Fu-Manchu.

Films

Rohmer’s insidious doctor made an early screen debut in 1923, in a series of short British films with Harry Agar Lyons as a somewhat rigid Fu-Manchu and Fred Paul as Denis Nayland Smith; the rather close adaptations of episodes from the Rohmer source include fungi cellars and coughing horrors. Nearly all the Fu-Manchu cinematic exploits that followed do not stray far from the source that inspired them.

The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. Paramount, 1929. Warner Oland, Jean Arthur, Neil Hamilton, O. P. Heggie. Directed by Rowland V. Lee. Based on The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. During the Boxer Rebellion, foreign devils kill Fu Manchu’s wife, and the doctor vows revenge. Soon he is in England eliminating all the white officers who took part in suppressing the uprising. Ultimately Scotland Yard exposes him and he drinks poisoned tea. (Warner Oland, whose performance has been called bloodcurdling, is the screen’s premier sinister Oriental; later he atones by portraying Charlie Chan.)

The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu. Paramount, 1930. Oland, Arthur, Hamilton, Heggie. Directed by Lee. The poisoned tea was merely a potion; the dead Fu-Manchu escapes through a panel in the side of his coffin and continues his revenge. Finally, the Yard reports that one of Fu-Manchu’s own bombs has torn him to pieces in a secret Thames-side den—but one can never be sure.

Daughter of the Dragon. Paramount, 1931. Oland, Anna May Wong, Sessue Hayakawa, Bramwell Fletcher, Frances Dade. Directed by Lloyd Corrigan. Loosely based on Daughter of Fu-Manchu. The Petrie family, Fu-Manchu’s hated enemies, receive word that he has been seen again. The Chinese doctor is shot, but before he dies, he makes his daughter—a dancer—vow to carry out his revenge on the last of the Petries. The two young people, however, begin a tragic love affair.

The Mask of Fu Manchu. MGM, 1932. Boris Karloff, Karen Morley, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, Charles Starrett. Directed by Charles Brabin. Now sinisterly civilized, Fu-Manchu—doctor of medicine, science, and philosophy—and his evil daughter (Myrna Loy) seek the lost tomb of Genghis Khan. Warns Nayland Smith, Once Fu Manchu puts the mask of Genghis Khan across his yellow face and takes that scimitar into his hands, all Asia rises!

Drums of Fu Manchu. Republic serial, fifteen chapters, 1940. Henry Brandon (Fu-Manchu), William Royle, Robert Kellard. Directed by William Witney and John English. From incidents in several Rohmer novels. Fu-Manchu and his daughter (Gloria Franklin) again seek the Khan’s tomb and scepter, this time directing their activities mainly from California’s Chinatowns.

For many years Fu-Manchu remained silent, the changing attitudes toward the Chinese forcing him from the screen. Then, in 1965, an elaborate new series began, the first in color and of the time period, featuring the towering British horror star Christopher Lee as the evil doctor, with Dublin filling in as London of the 1920s. Later films in the series used locations in Spain, Brazil, and Turkey.

The Face of Fu Manchu. Seven Arts (British/German), 1965. Lee, Nigel Green, Howard Marion-Crawford, Karin Dor, Joachim Fuchsberger. Directed by Don Sharp. An original story. Fu Manchu, aided by his daughter (Tsai Chin) and called by Nayland Smith cruel, callous, brilliant, the most evil and dangerous man in the world, destroys all life in a remote English village by means of poison gas. The doctor is eventually tracked to a monastery in Tibet, where an explosion supposedly kills him, but over the smoke his voice snarls: The world has not heard the last of Fu Manchu!

The Brides of Fu Manchu. Seven Arts (British/American), 1966. Lee, Douglas Wilmer (replacing Green as Nayland Smith), Marion-Crawford, Chin, Heinz Drache. Directed by Sharp. An original story. At his secret headquarters, Fu-Manchu holds captive twelve girls from powerful political and industrial families, forcing them to collaborate with him in his electronic conquest of the world.

The Vengeance of Fu Manchu. Seven Arts (British/American), 1968. Lee, Wilmer, Marion-Crawford, Chin, Tony Ferrer, Wolfgang Kieling, Horst Frank. Directed by Jeremy Summers. An original story. Fu Manchu arranges to have Nayland Smith accused of the murder of his pretty Chinese servant and, at an Interpol convention, plots to have all the police chiefs of the world replaced by doubles under his control.

Kiss and Kill, Commonwealth (British), 1970. Lee, Richard Greene (replacing Wilmer as Smith), Marion-Crawford, Chin, Maria Rohm. Directed by Jess (Jesus) Franco. An original story. The evil doctor sends out infected girls to plant kisses of death on the world’s leaders. Among the first victims is Nayland Smith, who is unaccountably merely blinded, remaining so for most of the film.

The Castle of Fu Manchu. Commonwealth (British), 1972. Lee, Greene, Marion-Crawford, Chin. Directed by Jésus Franco. An original story. Fu Manchu plots to control the world’s waterways—especially such routes as the Suez and Panama Canals—with a device that can create icebergs in the Caribbean; he is finally traced to Istanbul, where he has seized as headquarters a Turkish national monument: the Anatolian Castle.

There were several later films so abysmal that they will not be mentioned here.

Radio and Television

The satanic doctor appeared in several successful radio series in both the United States and England during the 1930s; most memorable were the serial dramatizations presented on The Collier Hour and drawn from Collier’s magazine. NBC once made a pilot telefilm with John Carradine as Fu-Manchu and Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Nayland Smith, but a program never materialized. In the early 1950s Republic released for television a series of thirteen half-hour programs featuring a corpulent, less vigorous Fu-Manchu (Glen Gordon) in the somewhat reduced circumstances of a television budget, leavened in large measure by action stock footage from the studio’s files.

Otto Penzler

A NECESSARY FOREWORD

In presenting for perusal a selection of private notes dealing with the sometimes eccentric doings of my gallant friend and compatriot, Captain the Hon. Bernard O’Hagan, V.C., D.S.O., I desire in the first place to assure my reader that O’Hagan is in no degree related to anyone else of the name.

Recent circumstances have led him to resume military duties; but the splendid response of Democracy to the trumpet-call Pro Patria has in no way unsettled his singular opinions. In the face of