The unknown seven: A detective story

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"The unknown seven" by Herman Landon is a detective novel written in the early 20th century. It centers on criminologist Kingdon Cole, who is drawn into a shadowy conspiracy tied to a missing man, Malcolm Reeves, an enigmatic scientist named Professor Carmody, and a secret council of seven masked figures. Expect urban intrigue, psychological pressure, and high-stakes cat-and-mouse play set against a clandestine New York backdrop.

The opening of the novel finds Kingdon Cole staking out Professor Carmody when a mysterious woman in a limousine—calling herself Miss Brown—whisks him to a hidden suite atop a skyscraper. There, seven masked men try to bribe and coerce Cole into dropping the Reeves case; when he refuses, they plunge him into darkness, warn him via speaking tube, and present the now-insane Reeves as leverage, even threatening a brain operation to break Cole’s will. Cole narrowly escapes an ether-laced “operation” by seizing a knife and overpowering a disguised “surgeon,” after which the masked group abruptly claims they did not harm Reeves and urges Cole to pursue a new lead: Doctor Dickson Latham, a nerve specialist they suspect, based in part on Reeves’s reaction to a staged resemblance. At the start of the next day, Cole visits Latham under an alias to take his measure; the doctor appears genial and competent as the excerpt ends mid-consultation.