'According To The Plan Of A One Eyed Mystic' and 'Bequest of Evil' contain intreasting similarities.
In both cases there is a plan to sell secret weapons, there is a base by the seashore - in one case, on 'Death Island' somewhere north of Labrador, in the other in Labrador.
The head honcho in one is a short man referred to as 'Lucky Napolean'. He is supposedly a a european gangster. In the other book, his name isn't known, but he uses the alibi 'Mister Mystic' - he is a short man, with brown skin, and apparantly missing an eye.
'Bequest of Evil' is confused to the point of incoherency. An attempt is made to kidnap Doc. It fails. Monk is told he has inherited the Canadian estates of the Earl of Mayfair, along with five million dollars. He goes to the estate, where he is captured.
Its explained they wanted him because they thought he was an electronics expert! The famous Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, Chemist Extraordinare!
Then it turns out that the Earl of Mayfair isn't dead after all, and he looks just like Monk - like enough to impersonate Monk with ease. Oh, and did I mention that Earl Mayfair is actually a British Secret Agent?

'According to The Plan of a One Eyed Mystic' is almost as confused. Here a scheme to make people think that their minds have been swapped into other people's bodies is being perpetuated as part of a plan involving the
Sterling Instrument Company, which is making something for the war that is so secret that even Doc cannot gain any information when he calls the plant - an occurance he considers surprising. Something to do with the A-Bomb, perhaps?

Reading the two books together really gives me the idea that there was a Mad Scientists Lair somewhere along the Labrador coast, that it was run by a one-eyed man, and that he had developed several intreasting weapons and had made a deal to sell them to the Nazis. Or rather, to sucker the Nazi's into showing up with a submarine stuffed with money, and then murdering them all and taking everything. The kidnapping of scientists must have attracted Doc's attention, and he was already investigating when Monk is captured. Following Monk gives him the leads needed to storm the hidden base, after provoking a fight between the henchmen and the Nazis.
The tale - no doubt a complex one - is heavily garbled, and furnishs material for two seperate books.

So is Monk an Aristocrat?
Considering that he hates being referred to by his given names, and makes a point of dressing and acting like some sort of sideshow buffoon makes me think its just an act. A clumsy clown like show, at odds with his brains and his upbringing, I suspect.

Another treat, this one from Mad Eyes:
' Doc had whipped out a strange-looking pair of binoculars. These were superlensed. They showed all objects in four dimensions at any distance. ' *

In Four Dimensions ??

It gets better. The villains use enormous suction machines to draw lighting down from the sky into special conduits and storing it in immense copper spheres.
The henchmen use paralysis rods, that have thin wires attached to them, but its never explained what the other end of the wire is attached to. Men are driven mad with visions of amoeba and paramecium projected onto their retinas by super-magnifying 'metallic' contact lens.

Ooo. How is this for an explanation? '"These cars are a type of Super-Diesel, which draws nearly all of its energy from the stratosphere. "'
Say....whaaaat?
This isn't even pseudo science. Its nonsense.
Much of the action takes place in a quarry beneath a sanitarium named 'Cragsrock'. Which is all blown up by the bad guys during the final scenes.
Tres gothic, tres dramatique...

On the other hand, theres a plot to discredit Savage via impersonation by Andrus Davidson, a 'unsuccessful actor', and the whole scheme to take over the world is masterminded by his 'plump' sister Jane Davidson. Savage is supporting research into projection microscopy and Professor Spargrove's discovery of bacteriovores.

*Are they talking about the Sagan-Tesla conjectured fourth cardinal direction 'Zorth' ?

Two years ago, my wife showed up after a local auction was over to help her father load his purchases. It had been the estate sale of a batchelor that died without progeny. He'd been a heavy reader, and they had been selling paperbacks by the box full. Too bad I missed that part.
While walking through the house, Liz noticed several lots that had'nt sold because no-one wanted them: three bookcases full of science and astronomy books.
Needless to say, she grabbed the auctioneer, and in two minutes was the proud owner.
Then she called me.
We filled the back of the Volvo station wagon until the springs bottomed out. We also filled the passenger side of Liz's pickup. Seven empty bookcases were included, and a complete set of Hockey News from November 1952.
Total price ? $62.50.
Now -- ignoring of the bookcases and the sports magazine -- the science books were still there because nobody wanted to haul them away, let alone pay 25 cents for them. I could understand ignoring the books on string theory - they went to the Salvation Army shortly there after - but several hundred books on stars and dinosaurs and lasers and particle physics and, and -- (deep breath).
The astronomy/ astrophysics section alone was about ten times larger then the local librarys.
They would have been thrown out; the man's surviving family did not want them, the hundred-odd people attending the auction didnt want them, and his cat could'nt read them.
Its easy to ask ' what does that say about this town?' but conversely, this man was a resident of this town, and very few people knew about this hoard.
Makes you wonder how many 'closet scientifiphiles' there are in North America.

It occurs to me that a rough-and-ready estimation of airborne pollutants would be to track the amount of business each areas window washers have. Most windows need washed because of airborne dust, after all.
So the questions are - is such data availible?
And what sort of sampling frequency is available - beyond the 'summer only' state?