THE prolific Donald E. Keyhoe had a story in a majority of the issue of Flying Aces from his first in January 1930 until he returned to the Navy in 1942. Starting in August 1931, they were stories featuring the weird World War I stories of Philip Strange. But in November 1936, he began alternating these with sometime equally weird present day tales of espionage Ace Richard Knight—code name Agent Q. After an accident in the Great War, Knight developed the uncanny ability to see in the dark. Aided by his skirt-chasing partner Larry Doyle, Knights adventures ranged from your basic between the wars espionage to lost valley civilizations and dinosaurs. In their seventh outing from the pages of the November 1937 issue of Flying Aces, Knight and Doyle are sent to China and find themselves embroiled in a dramatic oriental sky mystery confronted by a death-ray that destroys all in it’s path! Can Agent “Q” avoid a mutated death within that eerie ray as he faces “Death Over China!”

On the twisted body of that ruthless killer they had gunned from the skies, Richard Knight found an ominous message. “I will call again,” those brush-written characters announced, and appended was the dread symbol of Mo-Gwei—the sign of “The Devil”! Then “muted death” whipped across those gloomy heavens to fulfill that satanic threat. And as the shattered bodies of wretched airmen plunged to the earth, there came an infernal laugh. The cone of silence had found new victims!

• Download “Hell Over China” (November 1937, Flying Aces)