The final number in the seventh volume of 'Weird Tales' unfolds much as its predecessor did, with instalments of the same two serialised novellas, a couple of novelettes and a set of short stories. There are eleven of the latter, along with a vignette that's over and done with in just two pages, not much more than the only poem this time out. The cover story isn't as good as its predecessor but the reprint novelette by F. Marion Crawford is excellent and there's an effective new one from H. P. Lovecraft, easily the biggest name to us a century on. Few of the authors represented were debuting here though and Arthur J. Burks was back after his cover story in the previous issue.

Crucially, like the previous issue, this one's a mixed bag with as many stories missing the mark as spearing the bullseye. To enforce that, the cover story counts as both. It's 'The Foot Fetish', which was the second of Howard R. Marsh's two stories for 'Weird Tales', though he was an explorer and adventurer who wrote prolifically for many pulps in the twenties and thirties, including under the pseudonym of Ivan March.

It starts out as a painfully dated caricature, with June Hubbard wandering around San Francisco's Chinatown mumbling about "the leering, luring eyes which appraised her golden bea-u-ty". That's just a tease though, because it redeems itself in paragraph five by pulling back to show that she's been conditioned to expect that by years of Chinatown stories only to find that it isn't true in the slightest. I liked that shift, though it quickly shifts back into the yellow peril stereotype the pulps were known for. Sure, the denizens of Chinatown may not have leering, luring eyes but they fail to have much else in the way of character to replace them.

You see, she has a blemish on her foot, likely a birthmark. When she visits "one of these dark little stores which promise hidden riches" and tries on a slipper, the young man assisting her is shocked enough to set the rest of the story into motion. Whatever we think it might mean, "foot fetish" is not sexual here. A fetish is an object believed to have a mystical quality and, in this instance, it's June's birthmark, which has powerful meaning to the locals. It prompts June's dad to out himself as a racist, the story to leap into action and, unfortunately, end with a relatively simple ruse. It's over far too quickly.

Fortunately, it's followed by one of the stronger stories, 'Spider-Bite' by Robert S. Carr, not quite as prolific as Marsh but just as varied in his output. This is his third of ten contributions to 'Weird Tales' and it was his most substantial, as the only novelette. It's an Egyptian tomb story but while it does involve a mummy, it doesn't quite follow the traditional road. Sure, Professor Ashbrooke's party follows a riddle through the many passages and traps in an ancient tomb to reach a target chamber, the story turns out to be less about the mummy of Za and more about the technique in play to bring him through the ages. It's neatly creepy and I liked it a lot.

And so it goes. Even the two novellas being serialised are of mixed quality. 'The Devil-Ray' is solid, building on an impressive opening in the May issue with some unexpected twists and turns. This is the story about American jewel thieves in Austria finding weird science. George Ferris is the only one who makes it to this middle of three instalments and it's a busy one for him. He saves the life of the leading lady when her horse plunges off a cliff, reveals his true purpose to her and battles the burly Colonel Von Schaang in a duel. I'm eager to see how this wraps up next month. Some of that is telegraphed here but I want to see the Leipische Ray in action!

I've been far less sold on 'The Derelict Mine', by Frank A. Mochnant, which wraps up this month. It doesn't impress me anymore here. Sure, I liked the setting, not just the derelict mine of the title but the fact that it's in Australia, but neither is explored fully. It was mildly creepy in its first part and the second hinted at dastardly plans by the elder James Seymour Geraldton for his nephew. I must admit that the former weaves a tortuous plot and there are scenes here both gruesome and weird but none of it really seems to matter. In the end, everything's foiled by a convenient nature and the whole thing seems underwhelming. I'm not shocked that Mochnant never wrote anything else for 'Weird Tales' or indeed for any other pulp.

Most of the authors did, only a handful being represented by their only work. The most surprising of those is Charles Frederick Stansbury, partly because he worked in the industry, as the editor of 'The Penny Magazine' but mostly because 'Nerve' is an agreeably weird story, only three pages in length but with just as many memorable scenes and characters. There's the warden of the Tombs, for a start, who knows a particular prisoner hates him with a passion, so invites him into his office, gives him a straight razor and orders him to shave him. That's nerve! Mostly, it's a look back at an awful time in science, when psychiatrists were alienists and they injected rattlesnake venom into the blood of wet-brained inmates and beat them to "stay the paroxysms of these tempests of the brain". It's a short piece but a powerful and memorable one.

I'd list that one among my favourites from this issue, along with 'Spider-Bite' and a bunch of other stories. The next after that one to impress me is 'Ghosts of the Air', the only 'Weird Tales' story by J. M. Hiatt and Moye W. Stephens together, though the former would be back with a solo short in the November 1926 issue. It's an aerial ghost story that surrounds a highly talented but unpopular wingwalker called Essley. Does Bert Cottrell deliberately tip him off the wings of his plane during a cross-country flight? Well, six months later, we may get the answer in gruesome fashion.

'Hurtling Horror' is another collaborative story with a similar pedigree. It's the only such by Earl W. & Marion Scott, though the former would have a poem in the issue for November 1928. Both of them were prolific pulp author and, like similar examples above, versatile ones who wrote in any genre for any title. This places the traditional death-by-ape story in a city setting, Salisbury Quinn killed in a rough part of Chicago, then Flossie Wren and others. However, it takes some wild turns, which are as agreeable as the eventual reveal and, of all things, a jump scare with a kitten. That's pretty cool, albeit not as cool as I imagine that the vaudeville act of Arlo Saxon and his Wrestling Baboon must have been like.

Crawford's 'The Upper Berth' is strong too, but it ought to be as this issue's Weird Story Reprint. I really ought to get round to his novel, 'The Witch of Prague', especially having read another novel of that title recently that referenced it, but maybe he's better at shorter lengths.

This one, which was first published in 1885, is presented without its framing story for some reason but it remains intact otherwise. It's about an old sailor, Brisbane by name, who experiences weird terror in cabin 105 on the 'Kamchatka' for an Atlantic crossing. He has the lower bunk but the one above seems to be populated by a ghost, a freaky ghost, if not a dangerous one, who continues to commit suicide over and over again. This story is followed by the only verse on offer this month, a suitably nautical poem called 'A Grave' by debutante Lilla Poole Price.

I liked the Arthur J. Burks too, 'Asphodel' by name, though it's far less substantial than the cover story of the previous issue. Like 'The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee', Burks puts us right back into a secluded valley again, but this is less of a story and more of a mood piece, with an old man and an unusual way to feed his carpet of asphodels, floral symbols of death. I've read Burks before but in other publications and with mixed results. With two impressive stories in a row for 'Weird Tales', I find myself looking forward to more. Sadly, he won't have another new story until December 1926.

And that brings me to the Lovecraft, which is the last of my favourites from this issue, though it's a lesser known story of his that pales in comparison to the one from the April issue raved about in 'The Eyrie' by readers and writers both.

That was 'The Outsider' and major-name-of-the-time Ray Cummings raves about it and its author: "Who in blazes is H. P. Lovecraft? I never heard the name before. If he is a present-day writer—which I can not imagine he is—he deserves to be world-famous." Mrs. C. J. Esden suggests that "It affected me as much as did Stevenson's 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'". And a certain "August Derleth, Jr., of Sauk City, Wisconsin", fresh from his own debut in May, unsurprisingly chimes in too, daring to describe it as "better than any work of Poe". Given who he became, it isn't surprising to find his comments end with: "Give us more, many more by Lovecraft, please!"

'The Moon-Bog' isn't up to that standard but it's a good story nonetheless. Denys Barry is dead, a rich American who returns to his ancestral Ireland to fix up his family's rundown castle. That's not a bad thing and it plays into Lovecraft's own worship of the old world, but draining the bog makes the locals rather panic stricken. You see, there's a curse, of course, and a grim guardian spirit and you can imagine where the story goes from there. However, you'd have to imagine the classicisms as much as the lovely phrasing, "pale wistful naiads from the haunted fountains of the bog" and a vision of "white-clad bog-wraiths ... slowly retreating toward the still waters and the island ruin".

That leaves half a dozen more stories that don't reach those heights, many of them for the same reason, but don't disgrace the issue either.

'The Death Crescents of Koti', a final story of three for Romeo Poole, is a neatly weird Polynesian fantasy story with a dark volcanic cave and a lesser race supposedly long since exterminated, but it suffers from a frustratingly clichéd and convenient ending. 'The Charm That Failed', a vignette by George Ballard Bowers, his second such along with a couple of other previous stories, is decent enough even with old-fashioned language, but it's so short and sudden that it's over before we've got into it. 'The Life Serum', again a fourth story of four, this time by Paul S. Powers, is one of the pseudo-scientific stories editor Farnsworth Wright talks up in 'The Eyrie', with Dr. Biuret seeking a panacea of life. It's agreeably gruesome with a revenge acid attack, but it's also obvious.

'Their Last Job' is predictable again, enough so that I wrote the ending in my head halfway in, but it has a good setup and some memorable characters. Toots was a thief and would-be cop killer but he reformed and the policeman he shot is an oddly forgiving soul. Nance is his wife and she bears him a son that they call Jack and this story is all about him and why Toots and Nance are mad. If it wasn't so obvious, it would be memorable. The same goes for 'Ti Michel' by W. J. Stamper, also his final contribution to 'Weird Tales' after five stories the previous year. We're in Port Liberté, Haiti and the revenge tale feeds into an obvious conclusion. It's not hard to guess why Ti Michel serves his customers rum from the left cask but gendarmes from the right.

The weakest of the lot to my thinking is 'The Strange Case of Pascal', the second of two stories in 'Weird Tales' by Robert Eugene Ulmer. It's set up well enough, with an honest doctor partnered in business to a careful criminal. Of course, it's the honest doctor, David Pascal, who's imprisoned for fraud, while the careful criminal, Louis Blenheim, gets the business and the girl both. Of course, it comes down to the former's inevitable revenge, but it's as unsatisfyingly indirect as it is suitably weird. Ulmer never wrote for another pulp, so his pair of 'Weird Tales' stories serve as his epitaph.

And that's about it, because there aren't any new ads to speak of. The full page ad at the front is the same offer of a dozen books for a buck as in previous months. The largest ad at the back is the half page one for 'Safe Counsel' we've got used to. Frankly, the best ads are the ones placed there by the publisher to advertise the very magazine I'm reading. Only $2.50 for a full year's worth of issue of 'Weird Tales'? Twist my arm, why don't you!

Next month, to kick off volume eight, the conclusion of 'The Devil-Ray' and the beginning of a new novel by Greye La Spina called 'Fettered'. There's a new 'Jules de Grandin' story by Seabury Quinn, a new one by E. Hoffman Price and a Weird Story Reprint by Nathaniel Hawthorne. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by Farnsworth Wright click here
For more Wierd Tales titles click here