Merlin Kaggs

Merlin Kaggs is a fictional character in Willard Price's Adventure Series.

Merlin Kaggs worked along the Australian coast as a pearl smuggler and thief while maintaining his image as a legitimate businessman. His motivation shifted in later novels from profit to an obsessive desire for revenge against Hal and Roger Hunt over perceived slights, some real, some imagined. He posed a serious threat; he was clever and surprisingly courageous, always attempting to pull off audacious Coup d'état.

Although the details change subtly with each novel, the basic outline of Kaggs' early life is as follows. He was born in San Francisco, the only son of a clergyman. His father tried to get him to follow his footsteps into the church but Kaggs refused and eventually ran off to join the local street gangs.

Kaggs worked his way up the ranks. One night, however, he killed a drunken sailor who had got in his way, and was forced to flee San Francisco for the Muir Woods while the heat died down.

Kaggs later committed two more murders, but was caught and imprisoned in San Quentin. He was able to convince people he killed the two men in self-defense, however, and soon got out on good behavior. This ability to disguise himself as an innocent gentleman, usually as a reverend using the skills his father taught him, quickly became his modus operandi.

He later left San Francisco and began setting up his own crime syndicate centered on pearl smuggling. He quickly became an accomplished criminal, acting under the noses of the Navy and becoming adept at the use of espionage. When Kagg’s criminal empire was at its top, he was a force to be reckoned with.

He tracked down a famous scientist and zoologist who had set up a secret pearl colony on an island in the South Seas. Despite spying on him and having is apartment bugged, Kaggs was unable to discover the location of the secret island. He did, however, discover that two young naturalists, Hal and Roger Hunt, were employed to check up on the progress of the experiment.

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