“The Mystery of Djara Singh” was written by Alexander M. Reynolds and first appeared in The Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 30, no. 179 (Nov. 1897). Alexander M. Reynolds (1866-?) was a Californian mining engineer who wrote fiction and, in 1894, a street map of Seattle. “The Mystery of Djara Singh” is a surprisingly entertaining occult mystery.

Djara Singh is a Tibetan Prince who visits New York City and becomes a sensation, touted by the press and wined and dined. Singh lives well at the best New York hotel. At the same time several banks in the city are robbed of large amounts of money under mysterious and improbable circumstances, trays of old coins vanishing in front of witnesses and the like. Professor W. K. Miriam, the professor of “Oriental Philosophies” in Columbia College, visits the Chief of Police of N.Y.C. and tells him that he, Miriam, had spent time in India investigating psychic phenomena “among the mysterious religious sects of the highlands of that country,”¹ and that he has seen men separate their spirits from their bodies and telekinetically manipulate matter, and “if there are men who possess the extraordinary faculty described, would not the commission of such crimes be to them a very simple matter?”²

The Chief is initially dubious but agrees for politeness' sake to investigate the matter. He wires Scotland Yard and the Police Commissioner of Calcutta, asking for information on Djara Singh and for robberies committed by Singh while he was in London. Calcutta wires back, informing him that Singh was “formerly priest among mysterious religious sect in Haujab. Reported deposed account irregularities.”³ Scotland Yard responds to the wire by telling the Chief that there were a few mysterious bank robberies, similar to those in New York City, while Singh was there.

The Chief mulls this over and after another bank robbery decides to consult with “a professional spiritualist and fortune teller, an alleged Italian, who went by the imposing name of Rienzi Di Colonna. He was a most unmitigated scoundrel, as the Chief had had occasion to know in the course of his professional duties.”⁴After a “singularly frank, honest conversation”⁵ about Djara Singh, Colonna agrees to be hired to spy on Djara Singh. Colonna, though a crook and scoundrel, is also learned about astral projection and various psychic abilities, and can do what the Chief asks. However, Colonna warns the Chief that Singh “may also have powers that will make my mission an uncertain and perhaps dangerous undertaking, and one liable to end in unknown disasters.”⁶

Ten days later Colonna is dead. His spirit left his body to spy on Singh and never returned, and his body died of unknown causes. Singh immediately leaves New York. Ten weeks later the Chief receives a letter from Tokyo telling him that

The writer, while he cannot but admire the boldness of an experiment so much in advance of your civilization, must presume to doubt its wisdom, and to suggest that before conclusions are again tried with unknown forces, it would be well to know something of the strength of those you seek to oppose, and of the power with which it is intended to overthrow them.⁷

the chief of police is studying occult philosophy and speculating upon the advisability of introducing into the police department a corps of trained spiritualists.⁸

In the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century San Francisco was a flourishing literary metropolis. It was home to Ambrose Bierce (see: “The Damned Thing”), Emma Dawson (see: “A Stray Reveler”), W.C. Morrow (see: “Over An Absinthe Bottle”), as well as a large and productive group of science fiction writers, chief of whom was Robert Duncan Milne (see: “A Question of Reciprocity”). Reynolds was not a full-time writer, as Bierce et al. were, but “The Mystery of Djara Singh” fits well among their work, both stylistically and as fantastika. The story is told in a sparse, sardonic, journalistic style, similar (if less emphatic) to that of Bierce. The droll, matter-of-fact tone of “Djara Singh” is a pleasing difference to the paid-by-the-word verbiage of the dime novel detectives and the Victorian posturing of so many contemporary British detectives. Richardson’s approach is ahead of its time; the occult aspects are taken for granted by the characters, so there is none of the lecturing on Buddhism or theosophy that appear in similar works (see: Ozmar the Mystic).

One interesting aspect of “The Mystery of Djara Singh” is its anticipation of occult detective stories. The occult detective genre proper did not begin until the appearance of Flaxman Low (see: The Flaxman Low Adventures) in 1898, but there were numerous precursors to the genre and to the character dating back to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Desolate House” (original: “Das öde Haus,” 1817). The Chief is another of these precursors. While not the first American proto-occult detective—Fitz-James O’Brien’s Harry Escott, from “The Pot of Tulips” (1855), deserves that title—the Chief is the first American professional crime-solver to tackle an occult case, and anticipates the private eye occult detectives to come.⁹ Anticipates, but not predicts: “Djara Singh” disappeared from view as soon as it was published, only being rediscovered in the twenty-first century.

¹ Alexander M. Reynolds, “The Mystery of Djara Singh,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 30, no. 179 (Nov. 1897): 398, Making of America, University of Michigan, accessed Nov. 13, 2018, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/ahj1472.2-30.179/420:2?page=root;rgn=full+text;size=100;view=image;q1=djara+singh.

² Reynolds, “Djara Singh,” 400.

³ Reynolds, “Djara Singh,” 401.

⁴ Reynolds, “Djara Singh,” 403.

⁵ Reynolds, “Djara Singh,” 403.

⁶ Reynolds, “Djara Singh,” 404.

⁷ Reynolds, “Djara Singh,” 406.

⁸ Reynolds, “Djara Singh,” 406.

⁹ Mary Fortune’s Constable Lumsden, in “The Phantom Hearse” (Australian Journal 25, no. 292 [Sept. 1889]: 45-62) is the first professional crime-solver who turns occult detective. Prasil, “Chronological Biography of Early Occult Detectives.”