Crossover of the Week

Winter 1938 

THE THIRD EYE OF OSIRIS 

The Bimbashi Baruk receives a message from Sir Denis Nayland Smith asking him to meet him at Sir Lionel Bart’s reception in Aswan. Other guests at the party include the Graf, a clubfooted German; John Solomon; Professor Tör Andersen; and André de Savery. The Graf is really Adolph von Grundt, on whom Desmond Okewood has kept a close eye ever since they met in the Great War. Smith says the Americans have the Ark of the Covenant, which is probably buried in a warehouse somewhere. When Sir Lionel asks Baruk if he knows about the Eye of Osiris, he asks in turn if that was one of John Thorndyke’s cases back in the '20s, involving a jewel. Professor Andersen is really Fu Manchu. The real Andersen was murdered by the Si-Fan. Dr. Petrie has spoken highly of Sir Lionel. Gaston Max confirmed for Smith that the true Andersen’s body was in the Paris sewers where de Savery said it was. In 1905, Smith encountered Hanoi Shan. Fu Manchu, after confirming Sir Lionel is with Smith and the others, says only Dr. Petrie and young Greville are missing. 

Short story by David L. Vineyard in Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 14: Coup de Grace, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2017; reprinted in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 24), Jean-Marc Lofficier, ed., Rivière Blanche, 2018. Bimbashi Baruk is from Sax Rohmer’s Bimbashi Baruk of Egypt. Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Sir Lionel Barton (or Bart as he’s called here), Fu Manchu, the Si-Fan, Dr. Petrie, and Shan Greville are from Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels. Gaston Max appears in his own series of novels by Rohmer; one of these, The Golden Scorpion, has a cameo by an unnamed Fu Manchu. John Solomon’s stories were told by H. Bedford-Jones in several magazines, mainly The Argosy and People’s. André de Savery is an alias of Maurice Leblanc’s gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. Adolph von Grundt and Desmond Okewood are from Valentine Williams’ Clubfoot novels. The American government did seal the Ark of the Covenant in a warehouse after Indiana Jones recovered it, as seen in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dr. John Thorndyke encountered a jewel called the Eye of Osiris in R. Austin Freeman’s novel of the same name. Hanoi Shan is from H. Ashton-Wolfe’s Warped in the Making; Philip José Farmer identified him with Fu Manchu in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. 

This crossover writeup is one of over a thousand included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!