Review: “The Last Word in Mysteries”, William Hope Hodgson, 1914.
This is another story that first only appeared in Hodgson’s American pamphlet Cargunka and Poems and Anecdotes before appearing in The Dream of X and Other Fantastic Visions; Being the Fifth Volume of the Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson.
It bears some resemblance to Hodgson’s 1911 story “The Ghosts of the Glen Doon” in that it is set around San Francisco and uses the same basic gimmick.
Here the narrator is a ship’s Captain, and he relates how his wife was kidnapped and found.
The suspects in the kidnapping, Mr. and Mr.s Murgan, have their house searched three times without the woman being found.
Eventually a boiler is discovered beneath the house where the woman is held.
MarzAat 