The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

Chapter 2 ~ Magnetron and the Hogalum Society

"This elite fellowship utilized the most advanced technology available—technology which surpassed that yet conceived by the most brilliant minds in academia and which dwarfed the comparatively primitive gadgetry of the most powerful governments on Earth."

In my day the mystery burned hot, the question dwelling upon the lips of every man, woman, and child in the civilized world, to wit, was the Hogalum Society genuine? Were there strange goings-on taking place in secret, stalwart agents keeping order independently of governments and other revered institutions, veracious men of action resolutely battling evil in all its multifarious forms?  The answer is yes!  The Hogalum Society not only existed, it thrived.  Its counterparts in the treacherous underworld of foreign connivance and treasonous domestic misconduct had nothing but contempt for the most adroit law enforcement agencies of the day, dedicated and praiseworthy though they may have been.  But they trembled at the mere mention of the Hogalum Society, I can assure you.

"Why?" you ask.  Very well, I will tell you.  The Hogalum Society counted among its members several of the most intelligent and resourceful men walking the face of our planet.  This elite fellowship utilized the most advanced technology available—technology which surpassed that yet conceived by the most brilliant minds in academia and which dwarfed the comparatively primitive gadgetry of the most powerful governments on Earth.  These incorruptible men supported the civilized world while remaining above its rank influence and petty foibles.  The Hogalum Society was an unsung benefactor of mankind, but the tool of no individual man, government, nor other entity.

How can I know these things? How can I, a humble tinkerer, be privy to these hitherto unknowable secrets?

I hereby proudly proclaim: I am a member of the Hogalum Society.  I joined this august body in 1866, shortly after meeting in London with the men who comprised it then: Dr. Anton Karswell Valkusian, the enigmatic psychological and metaphysical practitioner and researcher; Dr. Leonardo Cerebelli, the brilliant physicist and engineer; and Atticus Satyros, the well-known magician, mentalist, and escape artist.  This disparate assemblage of diverse talents was catalyzed to brilliant endeavor by none other than Dr. Yngve Baltasar Hogalum, the group's leader and chief provocateur.

This was not my first encounter with the illustrious doctor.  In 1863, Dr. Hogalum had dragged my limp, half-dead body from a corpse-littered battlefield near Richmond, Virginia and nursed me back to health.  It was then that my strange visions first manifested, and it was Dr. Hogalum who suggested that they might be more than mere hallucinations.

By 1866, I had recovered fully from my injuries and was travelling in London when I was I was reacquainted with Dr. Hogalum by the strangest of coincidences.  On a whim, I had responded to a personal advertisement in the Telegraph, through which the advertiser sought "unconventional thinkers," a curious qualification for which I hoped my contumacious mental indiscipline would suffice.  As I came to find, the advertiser was none other than Dr. Hogalum, who was recruiting a replacement for a Hogalum Society member whose formerly robust nervous constitution had buckled under the strain of his arduous duties and who was therefore deemed inadequate to the challenge.

After hours of enervating interviews and an unusual initiation ritual involving bushel baskets of Lasiodora parahybana tarantulae and a keg of Thrale's Russian Imperial Stout, I was subsequently made a full member of the Hogalum Society.  Imagine my pride at being accepted into this noble patriciate of great men and great deeds—and the humbling burden of doubt in my own meager endowments.

Three years later, Pierce Coburn from New South Wales joined our ranks, and we were six.  The years that followed were the happiest of my life.  Rarely was there not some stimulating conundrum to be unraveled, and never were we at a loss in the unraveling.  Innumerable minor quarrels and the few truly distressing altercations that transpired over the years could in no way diminish the luster of our achievements—or my measureless esteem for these intrepid and effulgent paladins toiling in obscurity for a better world.

I shall have much to say about my Hogalum Society fellows later, but at the moment I am obliged to address the indomitable intellect that was Dr. Hogalum.  After his untimely demise in the late summer of 1877, I spent many days overcome by grief, my mind's-eye blurred by the persistent image of his gaunt figure and inscrutable countenance.  In time, I came to the realization that the legacy of the good doctor lived on within me.  As long as mankind remained bedeviled by villainy, and while there remained within me the breath of life and astuteness of mental faculty, I felt duty-bound to carry on in his memory.

I embarked forthwith upon a course of action which—but for my having conceived it—could otherwise only have been described as inconceivable.  Even the surviving Hogalums would in due course openly deride my plan, and indeed, in retrospect I have some inkling of their theories on my descent into madness.  They were quite incorrect, as I would prove later, but even now I feel the sting of their mockery.