The Pulp Era
After-Dinner Story William Irish
Arguably the greatest writer of suspense fiction of all time, Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich (1903–1968) was born in New York City, grew up in Mexico and New York, and was educated at Columbia University, to which he left his literary estate.
Writing as Cornell Woolrich, William Irish, and George Hopley, he was a sad and lonely man, pathetically dedicating books to his typewriter and to his hotel room. An alcoholic and almost certainly a closeted homosexual, Woolrich was so antisocial and reclusive that he refused to leave his hotel room when his leg became infected, ultimately resulting in its amputation.
Not surprisingly, the majority of his work has an overwhelming darkness, and few of his characters, whether good or evil, have much hope for happiness — or even justice. Although his novels and stories require a good deal of suspension of disbelief, relying on an inordinate amount of coincidence, no twentieth-century author equaled Woolrich’s ability to create tension.
Hollywood producers recognized the cinematic quality of his narratives of the everyday gone wrong, and few writers have had as many films based on their work as Woolrich has, including Convicted (1938), starring Rita Hayworth, based on “Face Work”; Street of Chance (1942), with Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor, based on The Black Curtain (1941); The Leopard Man (1943), with Dennis O’Keefe and Jean Brooks, based on Black Alibi (1942); Phantom Lady (1944), with Ella Raines and Alan Curtis, based on the novel of the same title (published in 1942); Deadline at Dawn (1946), with Susan Hayward, based on the novel of the same title (published in 1944); Rear Window (1954), with Grace Kelly and James Stewart, based on “It Had to Be Murder”; and sixteen others, including two directed by François Truffaut: The Bride Wore Black (1968), with Jeanne Moreau, based on the novel of the same title (published 1940); and Mississippi Mermaid (1969), with Catherine Deneuve, based on Waltz into Darkness (1947).
“After-Dinner Story” was originally published in the January 1938 issue of Black Mask Magazine; it was first collected in After-Dinner Story (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1944).
Mackenzie got on the elevator at the thirteenth floor. He was a water-filter salesman and had stopped in at his home office to make out his accounts before going home for the day. Later on that night he told his wife, half-laughingly, that that must have been why it happened to him, his getting on at the thirteenth floor. A lot of buildings omit them.
The red bulb bloomed and the car stopped for him. It was an express, omitting all floors, both coming and going, below the tenth. There were two other men in it when he got on, not counting the operator. It was late in the day, and most of the offices had already emptied themselves. One of the passengers was a scholarly-looking man with rimless glasses, tall and slightly stooped. The time came when MacKenzie learned all their names. This was Kenshaw. The other was stout and cherubic looking, one of two partners in a struggling concern that was trying to market fountain pens with tiny lightbulbs in their barrels — without much success. He was fiddling with one of his own samples on the way down, clicking it on and off with an air of proud ownership. He turned out to be named Lambert.
The car was very efficient looking, very smooth running, sleek with bronze and chromium. It appeared very safe. It stopped at the next floor down, the twelfth, and a surly-looking individual with bushy brows stepped in, Prendergast. Then the number 11 on the operator’s call board lit up, and it stopped there too. A man about MacKenzie’s own age and an older man with a trim white mustache were standing there side by side when the door opened. However, only the young man got on; the elder man gripped him by the arm in parting and turned away remarking loudly, “Tell Elinor I was asking for her.” The younger answered, “ ’Bye, Dad,” and stepped in. Hardecker was his name. Almost at the same time 10 was flashing.
The entry from 11 had turned to face the door, as all passengers are supposed to do in an elevator for their own safety. MacKenzie happened to glance at the sour-pussed man with the bushy brows at that moment; the latter was directly behind the newest arrival. He was glaring at the back of Hardecker’s head with baleful intensity; in fact MacKenzie had never seen such a hundred-watt glower anywhere before except on a movie “heavy.” The man’s features, it must be admitted, lent themselves to just such an expression admirably; he had a swell head start even when his face was in repose.
MacKenzie imagined this little by-play was due to the newcomer’s having inadvertently trodden on the other’s toe in turning to face forward. As a matter of fact, he himself was hardly conscious of analyzing the whole thing thus thoroughly; these were all just disconnected thoughts.
Ten was still another single passenger, a bill collector judging by the sheaf of pink, green, and canary slips he kept riffling through. He hadn’t, by the gloomy look he wore, been having much luck today; or maybe his feet hurt him. This one was Megaffin.
There were now seven people in the car, counting the operator, standing in a compact little group facing the door, and no more stops due until it reached street level. Not a very great crowd; certainly far from the maximum the mechanism was able to hold. The framed notice, tacked to the panel just before MacKenzie’s eyes, showed that it had been last inspected barely ten days before.
It never stopped at the street floor.
MacKenzie, trying to reconstruct the sequence of events for his wife that night, said that the operator seemed to put on added speed as soon as they had left the tenth floor behind. It was an express, so he didn’t think anything of it. He remembered noticing at this point that the operator had a boil on the back of his neck, just above his uniform collar, with a Maltese cross of adhesive over it. He got that peculiar sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach many people get from a too-precipitated drop. The man near him, the young fellow from the eleventh, turned and gave him a half-humorous, half-pained look, so he knew that he must be feeling it too. Someone farther back whistled slightly to show his discomfort.
The car was a closed one, all metal, so you couldn’t see the shaft doors flashing up. They must have been ticking off at a furious rate, just the same. MacKenzie began to get a peculiar ringing in his ears, like when he took the subway under the East River, and his knee joints seemed to loosen up, trying to buckle under him.
But what really first told him — and all of them — that something had gone wrong and this was not a normal descent, was the sudden, futile, jerky way the operator was wangling the control lever to and fro. It traveled the short arc of its orbit readily enough, but the car refused to answer to it. He kept slamming it into the socket at one end of the groove, marked Stop for all eyes to read, and nothing happened. Fractions of seconds, not minutes, were going by.
They heard him say in a muffled voice, “Look out! We’re going to hit!” And that was all there was time for.
The whole thing was a matter of instants. The click of a camera shutter. The velocity of the descent became sickening; MacKenzie felt as if he were going to throw up. Then there was a tremendous bang like a cannon, an explosion of blackness, and of bulb glass showering down as the light went out.
They all toppled together in a heap, like a bunch of ninepins. MacKenzie, who had gone over backward, was the luckiest of the lot; he could feel squirming bodies bedded under him, didn’t touch the hard-rubber floor of the car at all. However, his hip and shoulder got a bad wrench, and the sole of his foot went numb, through shoe and all, from the stinging impact it got flying up and slapping the bronze wall of the car.
There was no opportunity to extricate one’s self, to try to regain one’s feet. They were going up again — on springs or something. It was a little sickening too, but not as bad as the coming down had been. It slackened, reversed into a drop, and they banged a second time. Not with the terrific impact of the first, but a sort of cushioned bang that scrambled them up even more than they were already. Somebody’s shoe grazed MacKenzie’s skull. He couldn’t see it but quickly caught it and warded it aside before it kicked him and gave him a fracture.
A voice near him was yelling, “Stop it! Cut it out!” half-hysterically, as though the jockeying up and down could be controlled. Even MacKenzie, badly frightened and shaken up as he was, hadn’t lost his head to that extent.
The car finally settled, after a second slight bounce that barely cleared the springs under it at all, and a third and almost unnoticeable jolt. The rest was pitch darkness, a sense of suffocation, a commingling of threshing bodies like an ant heap, groans from the badly hurt and an ominous sigh or two from those even beyond groaning.
Somebody directly under MacKenzie was not moving at all. He put his hand on him, felt an upright, stiff collar, and just above it a small swelling, crisscrossed by plaster. The operator was dead. There was an inertness that told MacKenzie, and the rubber matting beneath the operator’s skull was sticky.
He felt then for the sleek metal wall of the enclosure that had buried them all alive, reached up it like a fly struggling up glass, with the heels of his hands and the points of his elbows. He squirmed the rest of his body up after these precarious grips. Upright again, he leaned against cold bronze.
The voice — there’s always one in every catastrophe or panic — that had been pleading to “Cut it out!” was now begging with childish vehemence: “Get me outa here! For the love of Mike, I’ve got a wife and kids. Get me outa here!”
MacKenzie had the impression it was the surly-looking follow with the bushy eyebrows. The probabilities, he felt, were all for it. Such visible truculence and toughness are usually all hollow inside, a mask of weakness.
“Shut up,” he said, “I’ve got a wife too. What’s that got to do with it?”
The important thing, he recognized, was not the darkness, nor their trapped position at the bottom of a sealed-up shaft, nor even any possible injuries any of them had received. But the least noticeable of all the many corollaries of their predicament was the most dangerous. It was that vague sense of stuffiness, of suffocation. Something had to be done about that at once. The operator had opened the front panel of the car at each floor, simply by latch motion. There was no reason why that could not be repeated down here, even though there was no accompanying opening in the shaft wall facing it. Enough air would filter down the crack between the jammed-in car and the wall, narrow though it was, to keep them breathing until help came. They were going to need that air before this was over.
MacKenzie’s arms executed interlocking circles against the satiny metal face of the car, groping for the indented grip used to unlatch it. “Match,” he ordered. “Somebody light a match. I’m trying to get this thing open. We’re practically airtight in here.”
The immediate, and expected, reaction was a howl of dismay from the tough-looking bird, like a dog’s craven yelp.
Another voice, more self-controlled, said, “Wait a minute.” Then nothing happened.
“Here I am; here, hand ’em to me,” said MacKenzie, shoveling his upturned hand in and out through the velvety darkness.
“They won’t strike, got all wet. Glass must have cut me.” And then an alarmed “My shirt’s all covered with blood!”
“All right, it mayn’t be yours,” said MacKenzie steadyingly. “Feel yourself before you let loose. If it is, hold a handkerchief to it. That bulb glass isn’t strong enough to pierce very deep.” And then in exasperation he hollered out, “For the love of God! Six men! Haven’t any of you got a match to give me?” Which was unfair, considering that he himself had run short just before he left his office, and had been meaning to get a folder at the cigar store when he got off the car. “Hey, you, the guy that was fiddling with that trick fountain pen coming down, how about that gadget of yours?”
A new voice, unfrightened but infinitely crestfallen, answered disappointedly: “It — it broke.” And then with a sadness that betokened there were other, greater tragedies than what had happened to the car: “It shows you can’t drop it without breakage. And that was the chief point of our whole advertising campaign.” Then an indistinct mumble: “Fifteen hundred dollars capital! Wait’ll Belman hears what a white elephant we’ve got on our hands.” Which, under the circumstances, was far funnier than was intended.
At least he’s not yellow, whoever he is, thought MacKenzie. “Never mind,” he exclaimed suddenly. “I’ve got it.” His fingertips had found the slot at the far end of the seamless cast-bronze panel. The thing didn’t feel buckled in any way but if the concussion had done that to it, if it refused to open...
He pulled back the latch, leaning over the operator’s lifeless body to do so, and tugged at the slide. It gave, fell back about a third of its usual orbit along the groove, then stalled unmanageably. That was sufficient for their present needs, though there was no question of egress through it. The rough-edged bricks of the shaft wall were a finger’s width beyond the lips of the car’s orifice; not even a venturesome cat could have gotten a paw between without jamming it. What mattered was that they wouldn’t asphyxiate now, no matter how long it took to free the mechanism, raise it.
“It’s all right, fellows,” he called reassuringly to those behind him, “I’ve got some air into the thing now.”
If there was light farther up the shaft, it didn’t reach down this far. The shaft wall opposite the opening was as black as the inside of the car itself.
He said, “They’ve heard us. They know what’s happened. No use yelling at the top of your voice like that, only makes it tougher for the rest of us. They’ll get an emergency crew on the job. We’ll just have to sit and wait, that’s all.”
The nerve-tingling bellows for help, probably the tough guy again, were silenced shamefacedly. A groaning still kept up intermittently from someone else. “My arm, oh, Gawd, it hurts!” The sighing, from an injury that had gone deeper still, had quieted suspiciously some time before. Either the man had fainted, or he, too, was dead.
MacKenzie, matter-of-factly but not callously, reached down for the operator’s outflung form, shifted it into the angle between two of the walls, and propped it upright there. Then he sat himself down in the clear floor space provided, tucked up his legs, wrapped his arms around them. He wouldn’t have called himself a brave man; he was just a realist.
There was a momentary silence from all of them at once, one of those pauses. Then, because there was also, or seemed to be, a complete stillness from overhead in the shaft, panic stabbed at the tough guy again. “They gonna leave us here all night?” he whimpered. “What you guys sit there like that for? Don’t you wanna get out?”
“For Pete’s sake, somebody clip that loudmouth on the chin!” urged MacKenzie truculently.
There was a soundless indrawn whistle. “My arm! Oh, my arm!”
“Must be busted,” suggested MacKenzie sympathetically. “Try wrapping your shirt tight around it to kill the pain.”
Time seemed to stand still, jog forward a few notches at a time every so often, like something on a belt. The rustle of a restless body, a groan, an exhalation of impatience, an occasional cry from the craven in their midst, whom MacKenzie sat on each time with increasing acidity as his own nerves slowly frayed.
The waiting, the sense of trapped helplessness, began to tell on them, far more than the accident had.
“They may think we’re all dead and take their time,” someone said.
“They never do in a case like this,” MacKenzie answered shortly. “They’re doing whatever they’re doing as fast as they can. Give ’em time.”
A new voice, that he hadn’t heard until then, said to no one in particular, “I’m glad my father didn’t get on here with me.”
Somebody chimed in, “I wish I hadn’t gone back after that damn phone call. It was a wrong number, and I coulda ridden down the trip before this.”
MacKenzie sneered, “Ah, you talk like a bunch of ten-year-olds! It’s happened; what’s the good of wishing about it?”
He had a watch on his wrist with a luminous dial. He wished that he hadn’t had, or that it had gone out of commission like the other man’s trick fountain pen. It was too nerve-racking; every minute his eyes sought it, and when it seemed like half an hour had gone by, it was only five minutes. He wisely refrained from mentioning it to any of the others; they would have kept asking him, “How long is it now?” until he went screwy.
When they’d been down twenty-two and one-half minutes from the time he’d first looked at it, and were all in a state of nervous instability bordering on frenzy, including himself, there was a sudden unexpected, unannounced thump directly overhead, as though something heavy had landed on the roof of the car.
This time it was MacKenzie who leaped up, pressed his cheek flat against the brickwork outside the open panel, and funneled up the paper-thin gap: “Hello! Hello!”
“Yeah,” a voice came down, “we’re coming to you, take it easy!”
More thumping for a while, as though somebody were jigging over their heads. Then a sudden metallic din, like a boiler factory going full blast. The whole car seemed to vibrate with it, it became numbing to touch it for long at any one point. The confined space of the shaft magnified the noise into a torrent of sound, drowning out all their remarks. MacKenzie couldn’t stand it, finally had to stick his palms up flat against his ears. A blue electric spark shot down the narrow crevice outside the door from above. Then another, then a third. They all went out too quickly to cast any light inside.
Acetylene torches! They were having to cut a hole through the car roof to get at them. If there was a basement opening in the shaft, and there must have been, the car must have plunged down even beyond that, to subbasement level, wound up in a dead end cul-de-sac at pit bottom. There was apparently no other way.
A spark materialized eerily through the ceiling. Then another, then a semicircular gush of them. A curtain of fire descended halfway into their midst, illuminating their faces wanly for a minute. Luckily it went out before it touched the car floor.
The noise broke off short and the silence in its wake was deafening. A voice shouted just above them: “Look out for sparks, you guys below, we’re coming through. Keep your eyes closed, get back against the walls!”
The noise came on again, nearer at hand, louder than before. MacKenzie’s teeth were on edge from the incessant vibration. Being rescued was worse than being stuck down here. He wondered how the others were standing it, especially that poor guy with the broken wing. He thought he heard a voice scream: “Elinor! Elinor!” twice, like that, but you couldn’t be sure of anything in that infernal din.
The sparks kept coming down like a dripping waterfall; MacKenzie squinted his eyes cagily, kept one hand shielded up over them to protect his eyesight. He thought he saw one spark shoot across horizontally, instead of down vertically, like all the others; it was a different color too, more orange. He thought it must be an optical illusion produced by the alternating glare and darkness they were all being subjected to; either that, or a detached splinter of combusted metal from the roof, ricocheting off the wall. He closed his eyes all the way, just to play safe.
There wasn’t much more to it after that. The noise and sparks stopped abruptly. They pried up the crescent-shaped flap they had cut in the roof with crowbars, to keep it from toppling inward and crushing those below. The cool, icy beams of torches flickered through. A cop jumped down into their midst and ropes were sent snaking down after him. He said in a brisk, matter-of-fact way: “All right, who’s first now? Who’s the worst hurt of yez all?”
His torch showed three forms motionless at the feet of the others in the confined space. The operator, huddled in the corner where MacKenzie had propped him; the scholarly-looking man with the rimless glasses (minus them now, and a deep gash under one eye to show what had become of them) lying senseless on his side; and the young fellow who had got on at the eleventh, tumbled partly across him, face down.
“The operator’s dead,” MacKenzie answered as spokesman for the rest, “and these two’re out of their pain just now. There’s a guy with a busted arm here, take him first.”
The cop deftly looped the rope under the armpits of the ashen-faced bill collector, who was knotting the slack of one sleeve tightly in his other hand and sweating away like a fish in the torchlight.
“Haul away!” the cop shouted toward the opening. “And take your time, the guy’s hurt.”
The bill collector went up through the ceiling, groaning, legs drawn up under him like a trussed-up fowl.
The scholarly-looking man went next, head bobbing down in unconsciousness. When the noose came down empty, the cop bent over to fasten it around the young fellow still on the floor.
MacKenzie saw him change his mind, pry open one eyelid, pass the rope on to the tough-looking mug who had been such a crybaby, and who was shaking all over from the nervous reaction to the fright he’d had.
“What’s the matter with him?” MacKenzie butted in, pointing to the floor.
“He’s dead,” the cop answered briefly. “He can wait, the living come first.”
“Dead! Why, I heard him say he was glad his father didn’t get on with him, long after we hit!”
“I don’t care what you heard him say!” the cop answered. “He coulda said it, and still be dead now! Nuts. Are you telling me my business? You seem to be pretty chipper for a guy that’s just come through an experience like this!”
“Skip it,” said MacKenzie placatingly. He figured it was no business of his anyway, if the guy had seemed all right at first and now was dead. He might have had a weak heart.
He and the disheartened fountain pen entrepreneur seemed to be the only two out of the lot who were totally unharmed. The latter, however, was so brokenhearted over the failure of his appliance to stand up under an emergency, that he seemed hardly to care whether he went up or stayed down or what became of him. He kept examining the defective gadget even on his way up through the aperture in the car roof, with the expression of a man who has just bitten into a very sour lemon.
MacKenzie was the last one up the shaft, except the two fatalities. He was pulled in under the lip of the basement opening, from which the sliding doors had been taken down bodily. It was a bare four feet above the roof of the car; in other words the shaft continued on down past it for little more than the height of the car. He couldn’t understand why it had been built that way, and not ended flush with the basement, in which case their long imprisonment could have been avoided. It was explained to him later, by the building superintendent, that it was necessary to give the car additional clearance underneath, else it would have run the risk of jamming each time it came down to the basement.
There were stretchers there in the basement passageway, and the bill collector and the scholarly-looking man were being given first aid by a pair of interns. The hard-looking egg was gulping down a large glass of spirits of ammonia between clicking teeth. MacKenzie let one of the interns look him over, at the latter’s insistence; was told what he knew already, that he was okay. He gave his name and address to the lieutenant of police in charge, and walked up a flight of stairs to the street level, thinking: The old-fashioned way’s the best after all.
He found the lobby of the building choked with a milling crowd, warded off a number of ambulance chasers who tried to tell him how badly hurt he was. “There’s money in it, buddy, don’t be a sucker!” MacKenzie phoned his wife from a nearby booth to shorten her anxiety, then he left the scene for home.
His last fleeting impression was of a forlorn figure standing there in the lobby, a man with a trim white mustache, the father of the young fellow lying dead below, buttonholing every cop within reach, asking over and over again, “Where’s my son? Why haven’t they brought my son up yet?” And not getting any answer from any of them — which was an answer in itself. MacKenzie pushed out into the street.
Friday, that was four days later, the doorbell rang right after supper and he had a visitor. “MacKenzie? You were in that elevator Monday night, weren’t you, sir?”
“Yes,” MacKenzie grinned, he sure was.
“I’m from Police Headquarters. Mind if I ask you a few questions? I’ve been going around to all of ’em checking up.”
“Come in and sit down,” said MacKenzie interestedly. His first guess was that they were trying to track down labor sabotage, or some violation of the building laws. “Matter, anything phony about it?”
“Not for our money,” said the dick, evidently because this was the last leg of what was simply a routine questioning of all the survivors, and he refused to differ from his superiors. “The young fellow that was lying dead there in the bottom of the car — not the operator but young Wesley Hardecker — was found by the examiner to have a bullet embedded in his heart.”
MacKenzie, jolted, gave a long-drawn whistle that brought his Scotty to the door questioningly. “Whew! You mean somebody shot him while we were all cooped up down there in that two-by-four?”
The dick showed, without being too pugnacious about it, that he was there to ask the questions, not answer them. “Did you know him at all?”
“Never saw him in my life before, until he got on the car that night. I know his name by now, because I read it in the papers next day; I didn’t at the time.”
The visitor nodded, as though this was the answer he’d gotten from all the others too. “Well, did you hear anything like a shot while you were down there?”
“No, not before they started the blowtorches. And after that, you couldn’t have heard one anyway. Matter of fact, I had my hands over my ears at one time. I did see a flash, though,” he went on eagerly. “Or at least I remember seeing one of the sparks shoot across instead of dropping down, and it was more orange in color.”
Again the dick nodded. “Yeah, a couple of others saw that too. That was probably it, right there. Did it light up anyone’s face behind it, anything like that?”
“No,” MacKenzie admitted, “my eyes were all pinwheels, between the coal blackness and these flashing sparks coming down through the roof; we’d been warned, anyway, to keep them shut a minute before.” He paused thoughtfully, went on: “It doesn’t seem to hang together, does it? Why should anyone pick such a time and place to—”
“It hangs together beautifully,” contradicted the dick. “It’s his old man, the elder Hardecker, that’s raising a stink, trying to read something phony into it. It’s suicide while of unsound mind, and has been all along; and that’s what the findings of the coroner’s inquest are going to be too. We haven’t turned up anything that throws a doubt on that. Old man Hardecker himself hasn’t been able to identify a single one of you as having ever known or seen his son — or himself — before six o’clock last Monday evening. The gun was the fellow’s own, and he had a license for it. He had it with him when he got in the car. It was under his body when it was picked up. The only fingerprints brought out on it were his. The examiner finds the wound a contact wound, powder burns all around it.”
“The way we were crowded together down there, any kind of a shot at anyone would have been a contact,” MacKenzie tried to object.
The dick waved this aside. “The nitrate test shows that his fingers fired the shot. It’s true that we neglected to give it to anyone else at the time, but since there’d been only one shot fired out of the gun, and no other gun was found, that don’t stack up to much. The bullet, of course, was from that gun and no other, ballistics has told us. The guy was a nervous, high-strung young fellow. He went hysterical down there, cracked up, and when he couldn’t stand it any more, took himself out of it. And against this, his old man is beefing that he was happy, he had a lovely wife, they were expecting a kid, and he had everything to live for.”
“Well, all right,” objected MacKenzie mildly, “but why should he do it when they were already working on the roof over us, and it was just a matter of minutes before they got to us? Why not before? That don’t sound logical. Matter of fact, his voice sounded calm and unfrightened enough while we were waiting.”
The detective got up, as though the discussion were ended, but condescended to enlighten him on his way to the door: “People don’t crack up at a minute’s notice; it was after he’d been down there twenty minutes, half an hour, it got him. When you heard him say that, he was probably trying to hold himself together, kid himself he was brave or something. Any psychiatrist will tell you what noise’ll do to someone already under a strain or tension. The noise of the blowtorches gave him the finishing touch; that’s why he did it then, couldn’t think straight any more. As far as having a wife and expecting a kid is concerned, that would only make him lose his head all the quicker. A man without ties or responsibilities is always more cold-blooded in an emergency.”
“It’s a new one on me, but maybe you’re right. I only know water filters.”
“It’s my job to be right about things like that. Good night, Mr. MacKenzie.”
The voice on the wire said, “Mr. MacKenzie? Is this the Mr. Stephen MacKenzie who was in an elevator accident a year ago last August? The newspapers gave—”
“Yes, I was.”
“Well, I’d like you to come to dinner at my house next Saturday evening, at exactly seven o’clock.”
MacKenzie cocked his brows at himself in the wall mirror. “Hadn’t you better tell me who you are, first?”
“Sorry,” said the voice, crisply. “I thought I had. I’ve been doing this for the past hour or so, and it’s beginning to tell on me. This is Harold Hardecker, I’m head of the Hardecker Import and Export Company.”
“Well, I still don’t place you, Mr. Hardecker,” MacKenzie said. “Are you one of the men who was on that elevator with me?”
“No, my son was. He lost his life.”
“Oh,” said MacKenzie. He remembered now. A man with a trim white mustache, standing in the milling crowd, buttonholing the cops as they hurried by...
“Can I expect you then at seven next Saturday, Mr. MacKenzie? I’m at — Park Avenue.”
“Frankly,” said MacKenzie, who was a plain soul not much given to social hypocrisy, “I don’t see any point to it. I don’t believe we’ve ever spoken to one another before. Why do you single me out?”
Hardecker explained patiently, even good-naturedly, “I’m not singling you out, Mr. MacKenzie. I’ve already contacted each of the others who were in the car that night with my son, and they’ve all agreed to be there. I don’t wish to disclose what I have in mind beforehand; I’m giving this dinner for that purpose. However, I might mention that my son died intestate, and his poor wife passed away in childbirth in the early hours of the following morning. His estate reverted to me, and I am a lonely old man, without friends or relatives, and with more money already than I know what to do with. It occurred to me to bring together five perfect strangers, who shared a common hazard with my son, who were with him during the last few moments of his life.” The voice paused, insinuatingly, to let this sink in. Then it resumed, “If you’ll be at my house for dinner Saturday at seven, I’ll have an announcement of considerable importance to make. It’s to your interest to be present when I do.”
MacKenzie scanned his water-filter-salesman’s salary with his mind’s eye, and found it altogether unsatisfactory, as he had done not once but many times before. “All right,” he agreed, after a moment’s consideration...
Saturday at six he was still saying, “You can’t tell me. The guy isn’t in his right mind, to do a thing like this. Five people that he don’t know from Adam, and that don’t know each other. I wonder if it’s a practical joke?”
“Well, if you feel that way, why didn’t you refuse him?” said his wife, brushing off his dark blue coat.
“I’m curious to find out what it’s all about. I want to see what the gag is.” Curiosity is one of the strongest of human traits. It’s almost irresistible. The expectation of getting something for nothing is no slouch either. MacKenzie was a good guy, but he was a guy after all, not an image on a stained-glass window.
At the door she said with belated anxiety, “Steve, I know you can take care of yourself and all that, but if you don’t like the looks of things, I mean if none of the others show up, don’t stay there alone.”
He laughed. He’d made up his mind by now, had even spent the windfall ahead of time, already. “You make me feel like one of those innocents in the old silent pictures, that were always being invited to a big blowout and when they got there they were alone with the villain and just supper for two. Don’t worry, Toots, if there’s no one else there, I turn around and come back.”
The building had a Park Avenue address, but was actually on one of the exclusive side streets just off that thoroughfare. A small ultra-ultra cooperative, with only one apartment to a floor. “Mr. Harold Hardecker?” asked Mr. MacKenzie in the lobby. “Stephen MacKenzie.”
He saw the hallman take out a small typed list of five names, four of which already had been penciled out, and cross out the last one. “Go right up, Mr. MacKenzie. Third floor.”
A butler opened the single door in the elevator foyer for him, greeted him by name and took his hat. A single glance at the money this place spelled would have been enough to restore anyone’s confidence. People that lived like this were perfectly capable of having five strangers in to dinner, subdividing a dead son’s estate among them, and chalking it off as just that evening’s little whimsy. The sense of proportion alters above a certain yearly income.
He remembered Hardecker readily enough as soon as he saw him coming toward him along the central gallery that seemed to bisect the place like a bowling alley. It took him about three and a half minutes to get up to him, at that. The man had aged appreciably from the visual snapshot that was all he’d had of him at the scene of the accident. He was slightly stooped, very thin at the waist, looked as though he’d suffered. But the white mustache was as trim and needle-pointed as ever, and he had on one of the new turned-over soft collars under his dinner jacket, which gave him a peculiarly boyish look in spite of the almost blinding white of his undiminished hair, cropped close as a Prussian’s.
Hardecker held out his hand, said with just the right mixture of dignity and warmth, “How do you do, Mr. MacKenzie, I’m very glad to know you. Come in and meet the others and have a pickup.”
There were no women present in the living room, just the four men sitting around at ease. There was no sense of strain, of stiffness; an advantage that stag gatherings are apt to have over mixed parties anyway, not through the fault of women, but through men’s consciousness of them.
Kenshaw, the scholarly-looking man, had a white scar still visible under his left eye where his glasses had broken. The cherubic Lambert had deserted the illuminated fountain pen business, he hurriedly confided, unasked, to MacKenzie, for the ladies’ foundation-girdle business. No more mechanical gadgets for him. Or as he put it, unarguably, “A brassière they gotta have, or else. But who needs a fountain pen?” The hard-bitten mug was introduced as Prendergast, occupation undisclosed. Megaffin, the bill collector, was no longer a bill collector. “I send out my own now,” he explained, swiveling a synthetic diamond around on his pinky.
MacKenzie selected Scotch, and when he’d caught up with the rest the butler came to the door, almost as though he’d been timing him through a knothole. He just looked in, then went away again.
“Let’s go and get down to business now, gentlemen, shall we?” Hardecker grinned. He had the happy faculty, MacKenzie said to himself, of making you feel perfectly at home, without overdoing it, getting in your hair. Which looks easier than it is.
No flowers, candles, or fripperies like that were on the table set for six; just good substantial man’s board. Hardecker said, “Just sit down anywhere you choose, only keep the head for me.” Lambert and Kenshaw took one side, Prendergast and Megaffin the other. MacKenzie sat down at the foot. It was obvious that whatever announcement their host intended making was being kept for the end of the meal, as was only fitting.
The butler had closed a pair of sliding doors beyond them after they were all in, and he stayed outside. The waiting was done by a man. It was a typical bachelor’s repast, plain, marvelously cooked, without dainty or frivolous accessories to detract from it, salads, vegetables, things like that. Each course had its vintage corollary. And at the end no cloying sweets — Roquefort cheese and coffee with the blue flame of Courvoisier flickering above each glass. It was a masterpiece. And each one, as it ended, relaxed in his chair in a haze of golden daydreams. They anticipated coming into money, money they hadn’t had to work for, maybe more money than they’d ever had before. It wasn’t such a bad world after all.
One thing had struck MacKenzie, but since he’d never been waited on by servants in a private home before, only in restaurants, he couldn’t determine whether it was unusual or customary. There was an expensive mahogany buffet running across one side of the dining room, but the waiter had done no serving or carving on it, had brought in each portion separately, always individually, even the roast. The coffee and the wines, too, had been poured behind the scenes, the glasses and the cups brought in already filled. It gave the man a lot more work and slowed the meal somewhat, but if that was the way it was done in Hardecker’s house, that was the way it was done.
When they were already luxuriating with their cigars and cigarettes, and the cloth had been cleared of all but the emptied coffee cups, an additional dish was brought in. It was a silver chalice, a sort of stemmed bowl, holding a thick yellowish substance that looked like mayonnaise. The waiter placed it in the exact geometrical center of the table, even measuring with his eye its distance from both sides, and from the head and foot, and shifting its position to conform. Then he took the lid off and left it open. Threads of steam rose sluggishly from it. Every eye was on it interestedly.
“Is it well mixed?” they heard Hardecker ask.
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter.
“That will be all, don’t come in again.”
The man left by the pantry door he had been using, and it clicked slightly after it had closed behind him.
Somebody — Megaffin — asked cozily: “What’s that got in it?” evidently on the lookout for still more treats.
“Oh, quite a number of things,” Hardecker answered carelessly, “whites of eggs, mustard, as well as certain other ingredients all beaten up together.”
MacKenzie, trying to be funny, said, “Sounds like an antidote.”
“It is an antidote,” Hardecker answered, looking steadily down the table at him. He must have pushed a call button or something under the table, for the butler opened the sliding doors and stood between them, without coming in.
Hardecker didn’t turn his head. “You have that gun I gave you? Stand there, please, on the other side of those doors and see that no one comes out of here. If they try it, you know what to do.”
The doors slipped to again, effaced him, but not before MacKenzie, facing that way, had seen something glimmer in his hand.
Tension was slow in coming on, the change was too abrupt, they had been too steeped in the rosy afterglow of the meal and their own imminent good fortune. Then too, not all of them were equally alert mentally, particularly Megaffin, who had been on such a fourth dimensional plane of unaccustomedness all evening he couldn’t tell menace from hospitality, even when a gun was mentioned.
Its first focal point was Hardecker’s own face — that went slowly white, grim, remorseless. From there it darted out to MacKenzie and Lambert, caught at them, paled them too. The rest grew allergic to it one by one, until there was complete silence at the table.
Hardecker spoke. Not loudly, not angrily, but in a steely, pitiless voice. “Gentlemen, there’s a murderer in our midst.”
Five breaths were sharply indrawn together, making a fearful “Ffff!” sound around the table. Not so much aghast at the statement itself, as aghast at the implication of retribution that lurked just behind it. And behind that was the shadowy suspicion that it had already been exacted.
No one said anything.
The hard, remorseless cores of Hardecker’s eyes shot from face-to-face. He was smoking a long slim cigar, cigarette-thin. He pointed it straight out before him, indicated them all with it without moving it much, like a dark finger of doom. “Gentlemen, one of you killed my son.” Pause. “On August 30, 1936.” Pause. “And hasn’t paid for it yet.”
The words were like a stone going down into a deep pool of transparent water, and the ripples spreading out from them spelled fear.
MacKenzie said slowly, “You’re setting yourself above the properly constituted authorities? The findings of the coroner’s inquest were suicide while of unsound mind. Why do you hold them incompe—”
Hardecker cut him short like a whip. “This isn’t a discussion. It’s—” a long pause, then very low, but very audible, “an execution.”
There was another of those strangling silences. They took it in a variety of ways, each according to his temperament. MacKenzie just kept staring at him, startled, apprehensive. Apprehensive, but not inordinately frightened, any more than he had been that night on the elevator. The scholarly-looking Kenshaw had a rebuking look on his face, that of a teacher for an unruly pupil, and the scar on his cheek stood out whitely. Megaffin looked shifty, like some small weasel at bay, planning its next move. The pugnacious-looking guy was going to cave in again in a minute, judging by the wavering of his facial lines. Lambert pinched the bridge of his nose momentarily, dropped his hand, mumbled something that sounded like, “Oy, I give up my pinochle club to come here, yet!”
Hardecker resumed, as though he hadn’t said anything unusual just now. “I know who the man is. I know which one among you the man is. It’s taken me a year to find out, but now I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt.” He was looking at his cigar now, watching the ash drop off of its own weight onto his coffee saucer. “The police wouldn’t listen to me, they insisted it was suicide. The evidence was insufficient to convince them the first time, and for all I know it still may be.” He raised his eyes. “But I demand justice for the taking of my son’s life.” He took an expensive, dime-thin, octagonal watch out of his pocket, placed it face up on the table before him. “Gentlemen, it’s now nine o’clock. In half an hour, at the most, one of you will be dead. Did you notice that you were all served separately just now? One dish, and one alone out of all of them, was deadly. It’s putting in its slow, sure work right as we sit here.” He pointed to the silver tureen, equidistant from all of them. “There’s the answer. There’s the antidote. I have no wish to set myself up as executioner above the law. Let the murderer be the chooser. Let him reach out and save his life and stand convicted before all of you. Or let him keep silent and go down to his death without confessing, privately executed for what can’t be publicly proved. In twenty-five minutes collapse will come without warning. Then it will be too late.”
It was Lambert who voiced the question in all their minds. “But are you sure you did this to the right—”
“I haven’t made any mistake, the waiter was carefully rehearsed, you are all perfectly unharmed but the killer.”
Lambert didn’t seem to derive much consolation from this. “Now he tells us! A fine way to digest a meal,” he brooded aloud. “Why didn’t you serve the murderer first, so then the rest of us could eat in peace at least?”
“Shut up,” somebody said, terrifiedly.
“Twenty minutes to go,” Hardecker said, tonelessly, as a chime signal over the radio.
MacKenzie said, without heat, “You can’t be sane, you know, to do a thing like this.”
“Did you ever have a son?” was the answer.
Something seemed to snap in Megaffin. His chair jolted back. “I’m gettin’ out of here,” he said hoarsely.
The doors parted about two inches, silently as water, and a black metal cylinder peered through. “That man there,” directed Hardecker. “Shoot him where he stands if he doesn’t sit down.”
Megaffin shrank down in his seat again like a whipped cur, tried to shelter himself behind Prendergast’s shoulder. The doors slipped together again into a hairline crack.
“I couldn’t,” sighed the cherubic-faced Lambert, “feel more at home if I was in the Brown House at Munich!”
“Eighteen minutes,” was the comment from the head of the table.
Prendergast suddenly grimaced uncontrollably, flattened his forearms on the table, and ducked his head onto them. He sniveled aloud. “I can’t stand it! Lemme out of here! I didn’t do it!”
A wave of revulsion went around the table. It was not because he’d broken down, analyzed MacKenzie, it was just that he didn’t have the face for it. It should have been Lambert with his kewpie physiognomy, if anyone. The latter, however, was having other troubles. He touched the side of his head, tapped himself on the chest. “Whoof!” he murmured. “What heartburn! He should live so long, I don’t take this up with my lawyer!”
“This is no way,” said MacKenzie surlily. “If you had any kind of a case—”
“This is my way,” was Hardecker’s crackling answer. “I’ve given the man his choice. He needn’t have it this way; he has his alternative. Fourteen minutes. Let me remind you, the longer the antidote’s delayed, the more doubtful its efficacy will be. If it’s postponed too long, it may miss altogether.”
Conscious of a sticking sensation in his stomach, as though a mass of concrete had lodged there, MacKenzie felt a burning sensation shoot out from it. There is such a thing as nervous indigestion, he knew, but... He eyed the silver goblet reflectively.
But they were all doing that almost incessantly. Prendergast had raised his head again, but it remained a woebegone mask of infantile fretfulness. Megaffin was green in the face and kept moistening his lips. Kenshaw was the most self-controlled of the lot; he had folded his arms and just sat there, as though waiting to see which one of the others would reach for the salvation in the silver container.
MacKenzie could feel a painful pulsing under his solar plexus now, he was in acute discomfort that verged on cramp. The thought of what this might be was bringing out sweat on his forehead.
Lambert reached out abruptly, and they all quit breathing for a minute. But his hand dodged the silver tureen, plunged into a box of perfectos to one side of it. He grabbed up two, stuck one in his breast pocket, the other between his teeth. “On you,” he remarked resentfully to Hardecker.
Somebody gave a strained laugh at the false alarm they had all had. Kenshaw took off his glasses, wiped them ruefully, as though disappointed it hadn’t been the payoff after all.
MacKenzie said, “You’re alienating whatever sympathy’s due you, by pulling a stunt like this.”
“I’m not asking for sympathy,” was Hardecker’s coldly ferocious answer. “It’s atonement I want. Three lives were taken from me: my only son, my daughter-in-law, their prematurely born child. I demand payment for that!”
Lambert said aloud, for his own benefit, “Jennie won’t believe this when I tell her.”
Prendergast clutched his throat all at once, whimpered: “I can’t breathe! He’s done it to me, so help me!”
MacKenzie, hostile now to Hardecker, tried to steady him just on general principle. “Gas around the heart, maybe. Don’t fall for it if you’re not sure.”
“Don’t fall for it,” was the ungrateful yelp, “and if I drop dead are you gonna bring me back?”
“He ought to be arrested for this,” said Kenshaw, displaying emotion for the first time. His glasses had clouded over, giving him a peculiarly sightless look.
“Arrested?” snapped Lambert. He wagged his head from side to side. “He’s going to be sued like no one was ever sued before! When I get through with him he’ll go on relief.”
Hardecker threw him a contemptuous look. “About ten minutes,” he said. “He seems to prefer the more certain way. Stubborn, eh? He’d rather die than admit it.”
MacKenzie gripped the seat of his chair, his churning insides heaving. He thought, “If this is the McCoy that I’m feeling now, I’m going to bash his head in with a chair before I go. I’ll give him something to poison innocent people about!”
Megaffin was starting to swear at their tormentor, in a whining, guttural singsong.
“Mazzeltov,” seconded Lambert, with a formal nod of approval. “Your breath, but my ideas.”
“Five minutes. It will almost certainly fail if it’s not downed within the next thirty seconds.” Hardecker pocketed his watch, as though there were no further need for consulting it.
MacKenzie gagged, hauled at the knot of his tie, undid his collar button. A needle of suffocating pain had just splintered into his heart.
Only the whites of Prendergast’s eyes showed, he was going off into some fit or fainting spell. Even Lambert quit pulling at his cigar, as though it sickened him. Kenshaw took off his glasses for the third time in five minutes, to clear them.
A pair of arms suddenly shot out, grasped the silver bowl, swung it. It was uptilted over someone’s face and there was a hollow, metallic groaning coming from behind it, infinitely gruesome to hear. It had happened so quickly, MacKenzie couldn’t be sure who it was for a minute, long as he had been sitting at the macabre table with all of them. He had to do it by a quick process of elimination. Man sitting beside Lambert — Kenshaw, the scholarly-looking one, the man who had had least to say since the ordeal had begun! He was gulping with a convulsive rising and falling of his Adam’s apple, visible in the shadow just below the lower rim of the bowl.
Then suddenly he flung it aside, his face was visible again, the drained receptacle clanged against the wall where he’d cast it, dropped heavily to the floor. He couldn’t talk for a minute or two, and neither could anyone else, except possibly Hardecker, and he didn’t, just sat staring at the self-confessed culprit with pitiless eyes.
Finally Kenshaw panted, checks twitching, “Will it — will it — save me?”
Hardecker folded his arms, said to the others, but without taking his eyes off Kenshaw: “So now you know. So now you see whether I was right or not.”
Kenshaw was holding his hands pressed tightly to the sides of his head. A sudden flood of words was unloosed from him, as though he found it a relief to talk now, after the long unbearable tension he’d been through. “Sure you were right, and I’d do it over again! I’m glad he’s gone. The rich man’s son that had everything. But that wasn’t enough for him, was it? He had to show off how good he was — Horatio Alger stuff, paddle your own canoe from riches to more riches! He couldn’t take a job with your own firm, could he? No, people might say you were helping him. He had to come to the place I worked and ask for a job. Not just anonymously. No, he had to mention whose son he was, to swing the scales in his favor! They were afraid to offend you, they thought maybe they’d get a pull with you, through him. It didn’t count that I’d been with them all the best years of my life, that I had someone home too, just like he had, that I couldn’t go anywhere else and mention the name of an influential father! They fired me.”
His voice rose shrilly. “D’you know what happened to me? D’you know or care how I tramped the streets in the rain, at my age, looking for work? D’you know my wife had to get down on her knees and scrub dirty office corridors? D’you know how I washed dishes, carried sandwich boards through the streets, slept on park benches, all on account of a smart aleck with Rover Boy ideas? Yes, it preyed on my mind, why wouldn’t it? I suppose you found the threatening letters I wrote him, that’s how you knew.”
Hardecker just shook his head slightly in denial.
“Then he got on the elevator that day. He didn’t see me, probably wouldn’t have known me if he had, but I saw him. I knew him. Then we fell — and I hoped he was dead, I hoped he was dead! But he wasn’t. The idea took hold of me slowly, waiting down there in the dark. The torches started making noise, and I grabbed him, I was going to choke him. But he wrenched himself free and took out his gun to defend himself against what I guess he thought was a fear-crazed man. I wasn’t fear-crazed, I was revenge-crazed, I knew what I was doing!
“I grabbed his hand. Not the gun, but the hand that was holding it. I turned it around the other way, into his own heart. He said ‘Elinor, Elinor!’ but that didn’t save him; that was the wrong name, that was his wife not mine. I squeezed the finger he had on the trigger with my own, and he fired his own weapon. So the police were right, it was suicide in a way.
“He leaned against me, there wasn’t room enough in there to fall. I flung myself down first under him, so they’d find us that way, and eased him down on top of me. He bled on me a little while and then he quit. And when they came through I pretended I’d fainted.”
Hardecker said, “Murderer. Murderer.” Like drops of ice water. “He didn’t know he’d done all that to you; oh, why didn’t you give him a chance at least, why weren’t you a man? Murderer! Murderer!”
Kenshaw started reaching downward to the floor, where he’d dropped his glasses when he had seized the antidote. His face was on a level with the tabletop. He scowled: “No matter what they’ve all heard me say just now, you’ll never be able to prove I did it. Nobody saw me. Only the dark.”
A whisper sounded: “And that’s where you’re going. Into the dark.”
Kenshaw’s head vanished suddenly below the table. The empty back of his chair whirled over sidewise, cracked against the floor.
They were all on their feet now, bending over him. All but Hardecker. MacKenzie got up from his knees. “He’s dead!” he said. “The antidote didn’t work in time!”
Hardecker said, “That wasn’t the antidote, that was the poison itself. He hadn’t been given any until he gulped that down. He convicted himself and carried out sentence upon himself with one and the same gesture. I hadn’t known which one of you it was until then. I’d only known it hadn’t been my son’s own doing, because, you see, the noise of those torches wouldn’t have affected him much, he was partly deaf from birth.”
He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I didn’t summon you here under false pretenses; his estate will be divided in equal parts among the four of you that are left. And now I’m ready to take my own medicine. Call the police, let them and their prosecutors and their courts of law decide whether I killed him or his own guilty conscience did!”
The Mystery of the Golden Skull Donald E. Keyhoe
Donald Edward Keyhoe (1897–1988) had two careers — wildly divergent except to cynics. He became an international sensation for his book The Flying Saucers Are Real (1950), which grew from a True magazine article and sold five hundred thousand copies. He averred that the U.S. government knew that UFOs existed but kept it silent to avoid a public panic. He wrote several additional books on the subject of extraterrestrials and made a controversial appearance on television to discuss his findings, only to have CBS cut off all audio on the live broadcast.
He was a successful writer for The Nation, The Saturday Evening Post, and Reader’s Digest, before turning to pulp fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, creating fantastic stories for the prestigious Weird Tales, as well as thrilling aviation stories for Flying Aces, Dare-Devil Aces, Battle Aces, and Sky Birds. His major contribution to the pulps was Dr. Yen Sin, also known as the “Invisible Emperor,” the “Yellow Doctor,” and the “Cobra.”
Dr. Yen Sin was the titular villain in a short-lived (three-issue) pulp magazine that superseded a similar magazine from the same publishers titled The Mysterious Wu Fang, which had ceased publication in March 1936. The title characters of both magazines were “Yellow Peril” villains in the mold of Dr. Fu Manchu.
In Washington, D.C., Yen Sin employs modern technology as well as such diabolical weapons as death rays, inventions from his scientific laboratories, blow guns, and dacoits. He is opposed by Michael Traile, who professes that he has not slept for twenty-seven years, having lost the power of sleep at age two because of a brain injury. The Hindu doctor performing the operation had to remove the portion of the brain that controlled sleep. Traile’s parents engaged a fakir who taught him the yoga trick of complete relaxation and, to avoid boredom, he was educated constantly, his intelligence developing rapidly as a result. He is expert at everything.
“The Mystery of the Golden Skull” was originally published in the July/August 1936 issue of Dr. Yen Sin.
Chapter 1 The Man Who Did Not Sleep
The roaring voice of the city had died away to a murmur. It was the hour when Manhattan slumbered. High up in a dark building near Fifth Avenue, a furtive figure sat at the window of an unlighted room, a pair of binoculars raised to his eyes. His pose had the instinctive stealth of the East, though the man on whom he was spying was almost two blocks away.
Suddenly a faint buzzing sounded in the phones which covered his ears. He bent his head, spoke into the mouthpiece strapped to his chest.
“Control, Group Two.” His voice was strained, for he had been watching constantly for more than six nerve-racking hours.
“Observer Nine,” came a muffled voice. “Neither Michael Traile nor Eric Gordon has left the building.”
“I can see Traile,” grated the man at the window, “but he has been alone for two hours.”
“Gordon must be in some other room,” muttered the second voice. “We’ve kept the place covered—”
“Resume position,” curtly ordered the man in the darkened room. As he leaned over the sill, dim light from the street far below fell on the sallow features of a Eurasian.
He lifted the binoculars again, gazed out into the night. A deep blue had begun to tinge the blackness above the skyscraper canyons, but it was still two hours until dawn. Beyond an expanse of lower buildings, a tall structure loomed. The man trained his glasses on a yellow rectangle near the top and almost at his own level.
The powerful lenses bridged the intervening space, seemed to bring that lighted window to within a few yards of him. He was looking into a large room, apparently intended for a den. But the furnishing was not complete, for the library table was littered with curios, books, and various objects. A huge packing box stood on the Persian rug which covered the floor.
A man was moving back and forth, emptying the box. He was very tall, and his lean face was tanned to the color of bronze. It was a keen face, and strong. The pleasant set of his lips relieved a hint of grimness about the jaw.
The hidden watcher swore to himself. This man Traile showed no sign of weariness, yet the reports proved he had not slept in thirty-one hours. The spy kept the glasses focused as the other man went back and forth from the box to the table. Traile seemed to be hunting for something.
With growing bewilderment, the spy saw the objects which appeared. Already the packing box had yielded a pair of foils, a violin, a jeweler’s lathe, and several pieces of chemical apparatus. In quick succession, Traile produced a set of boxing gloves, three cameras of varying sizes, and a dozen pistols ranging from a small French derringer to a Colt .45 automatic. Books and a score of cartons and bundles followed. One carton was torn, and as Traile lifted it some theatrical make-up materials spilled to the floor. He tossed the things onto the table, turned and drew a leather-covered case from the packing box.
This was evidently the object of his search. He laid the case on a pedestal beside a big easy chair. Seating himself, he started to unsnap the buckles. Then he paused, and the spy saw a tired expression cross his tanned face. He stretched his long arms, sank back. For a moment the hidden observer thought he was going to sleep. But instead, Traile idly lighted a cigarette and looked out into the night.
Though he was two blocks away, the spy jerked back, for Traile’s dark eyes, as seen through the glasses, appeared to be boring straight into him. The impression persisted as he forced himself to keep watching. Even at that distance, he could feel the power of that motionless figure.
A peculiar, far-off expression came into Traile’s dark eyes. He seemed to be thinking intently. He finished the cigarette, lighted another, then picked up a newspaper from the arm of his chair. His movements were oddly lazy.
The spy gave a sigh of relief as that penetrating gaze was cut off. He laid down the binoculars, wiped his damp brow.
Several minutes passed.
He was about to lift the glasses again when a queer signal buzzed in his phones. He hurriedly pressed a button at the base of the mouthpiece. There was a double click, then a calm, sibilant voice spoke in Chinese.
“Main Control. Summarize the latest reports on Michael Traile.”
The words were in an obscure dialect. The Eurasian replied nervously in the same tongue.
“Personal observation transferred from Number Nine to Group Control at eight fifty-nine. At nine one, suspected apartment entered by Traile and unknown man. Obtained photograph of latter by telephoto camera with night lens.”
“Very good,” came the emotionless comment. “As I supposed, it is one of the new secret stations for the Q-Unit operating against the Invisible Empire. Proceed.”
“Unknown man left at ten seventeen. At ten forty-five Eric Gordon entered apartment, bringing small black box, probably a portable radio.”
“What report from the observer detailed to Gordon?” inquired the unseen Chinese.
“Gordon came directly from laboratories of World Radio and Cables,” answered the spy. “Observer Eight reports rumor of Government arrangement with the company for Gordon’s service.”
“Continue the report on Michael Traile,” came the toneless command.
“Examined the black box, moved out of my range to the left. Returned in two minutes, conversed with Gordon until one o’clock. Gordon then disappeared, but Observer Nine reports he did not leave building. Believe he is in another room, sleeping. But there is something strange about the man Traile. He has not slept since Group Two took over observation.”
There was a sound as of harshly indrawn breath.
“Impossible! He had already gone without sleep for the forty-eight hours he was observed by Group One. You must be mistaken.”
“No, Master,” said the spy, nervously. “I am certain. And there is another odd point. From the material he has unpacked, he must have a hundred hobbies.”
“I am aware of that,” the unseen Chinese answered curtly. “But this other matter is vitally important. You are sure he is still awake?”
“Yes, I can see him clearly.” The half-caste lifted the binoculars. “He has just put down the paper he was reading. He is smoking a cigarette... Ai! This is puzzling! A few minutes ago he seemed tired. Now he looks refreshed, as though he had slept for hours.”
“There is only one explanation,” said the other man rapidly. “The cigarette must contain some mysterious drug which enables him to do without sleep for long periods. Watch closely — what is he doing now?”
The spy carefully focused the glasses, gazed into the distant room.
“Master, you will think me mad — he has opened a case of child’s toys!... He is standing up — he has gone out of my range — now he is coming back with the black box which Gordon brought... He is connecting it with wires to a toy church... He is looking at the clock in the church steeple.”
“That is enough,” interrupted the man he had called Master. “I think I understand now.”
There was a long pause.
“An expert rifleman could easily kill him from this observation point,” ventured the half-caste.
“The secret of that drug is more valuable to me than his death,” came the emotionless answer. “Here are my orders.” He spoke swiftly for a minute. “Report at once if he leaves at four o’clock.”
The phones clicked twice. The spy looked down at the luminous hands of his wristwatch. It was ten minutes to four.
As the carton of make-up material spilled to the floor, Michael Traile glanced quickly toward the adjacent room. The sound had not awakened Eric. He could see the young Southerner where he lay sprawled, half-dressed, on the only bed the “Q-Station” boasted. Eric’s hair was rumpled, and even in sleep his face had a boyishly genial look. He was breathing deeply.
For an instant, as Traile picked up the scattered materials, a bitter light came into his eyes. If only he, too, could know that precious gift of sleep — could shut out everything for even one short hour. But Death was the only sleep he would ever know.
He turned back to the packing box, his thoughts still somber.
It had been twenty-seven years since that childhood injury which had made him a man apart. It had happened in India, where his parents were traveling. He had been only two years old, but he knew the story by heart. A skull fracture... a hasty operation by a Hindu surgeon... then the discovery that the man had damaged the lobe of the brain controlling the function of sleep. Sleepless nights and days when they feared that he would die... the Yogi who had trained him to relax his body completely, even though his mind would ever be awake. His strange boyhood back in the States... a day and a night tutor, to keep his wakeful brain occupied with one subject after another... a physical instructor to balance that strenuous mental life with games, exercise, sports.
Traile found the leather case he bad been seeking. He sat down, started to open it, then paused, realizing a sudden weariness. He stretched, relaxing his tall form to the utmost, then sat back and idly lighted a cigarette. For a few minutes he stared out into the night, through the bulletproof window.
If he were right, somewhere in the vastness of Manhattan was hidden the most dangerous man in the world — Dr. Yen Sin, malignant wizard of crime, and head of that unholy organization, the Invisible Empire. Traile’s jaw hardened. The Yellow Doctor had escaped him in Washington, and now he would be fully on guard. But there was one advantage. Dr. Yen Sin would be looking for five Q-men — instead of one man connected with five Federal departments.
He lighted another cigarette; the tobacco helped him to relax. With his mind still on the Yellow Doctor, he opened his newspaper. For a week he had watched for something that would give a clue to Dr. Yen Sin’s activities, if he were really in New York.
His restless eyes flicked over the headlines. A gang killing... a senator’s speech, warning of the danger of inflation... a hint of sabotage in the sinking of a new submarine, on its trial runs before being delivered to the Navy... a murder trial... a rehash story on the week-old disappearance of John J. Meredith, prominent Wall Street figure, and a missing-persons item hooked up with it.
Traile’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he read the last story. Two of the cases were believed murder, but the bodies had not been found. The police knew of no motives...
He put down the paper and turned quickly to the leather box. His bronzed face was now alert; all his tired expression had vanished during that brief “relax-period.” He opened the case. At first glance, it appeared to be filled with toys, each one clipped separately to the canvas lining. There was a tiny church, with a clock in its steeple; a brass soldier, with a bayoneted rifle; a small model ship; a toy pistol hardly two inches long; and a score of other similar objects.
Traile stood up briskly, crossed the room and brought back a small black box. It was a special microwave radio, a new self-powered type, developed by World Radio and Cables. It was still switched on, but so far he had failed to hear the strange Chinese code which Eric and one of the company engineers had caught two nights ago.
He connected two wires with tiny binding posts at the back of the toy church. Like most of his collection of “miniaturia,” the church was not what it seemed. It was a diminutive radio, with a sensitive directional indicator.
As he sat back, waiting, his eyes strayed over the things which cluttered the room. They were like monuments down the long vista of sleepless years, even to the language books on the table. He had been a linguist at ten. At fifteen, his mind had been that of a mature man. Since then his life had been a constant seeking for new hobbies, new problems to ward off the desolation of endless nights. It was this which had accidentally led him into the web of the Yellow Doctor’s criminal empire.
A faint hum from the toy church told him that the miniature tubes were warm. He glanced at the black box. The standard broadcast and licensed shortwave bands were tuned out. Anything which came in now would be from an unlicensed station, transmitting in the micro-frequencies no ordinary receiver would catch. He set the dials again at the point where the mysterious code had been heard. But there was only silence. He waited a minute or two, then stood up and moved restlessly about the den. It was not quite four. There would be a long, lonely stretch before Eric would awaken. He picked up a hobby magazine, rummaged through it.
Suddenly, from the room where Eric slept, a low-pitched buzzer sounded. He hurried into the room, slid open a small panel which hid a special switchboard. There were several numbered sockets. A bulb was flashing over the symbol “Q-5,” which was his designation when he was working with the Department of Justice. The line was a direct wire to the Bureau of Investigation, at Washington.
“Michael?” came a barked query as he plugged in the phone. He recognized the voice of Director John Glover.
“Right,” he said. Back of him, Eric stirred.
“I’ve a lead on Doctor Yen Sin,” Glover said hastily. “The son of Peter Courtland was stabbed to death half an hour ago at the entrance to my hotel. It was done by a Chinese who got away. Before he died, young Courtland gasped out something about his father and the Invisible Empire. He had just arrived from New York, and was evidently bringing me a message.”
“You haven’t notified your Manhattan office?”
“No, the State Department says you’re in full charge of the Invisible Empire case.”
“Give me fifteen minutes,” said Traile swiftly. “Then phone Lexington Street to send two squads of agents to surround the Courtland place on Riverside Drive. Tell them to close in quietly. I’ll fire a shot if I need help.”
“Got it,” barked Glover. He hung up, and Traile turned to find Eric Gordon dressing.
“What’s up?” Eric asked eagerly.
Traile told him while he slipped off his smoking jacket and fastened a shoulder harness in place.
“You’d better take a gun, too,” he advised, as he put on his coat. “If Courtland is mixed up with Doctor Yen Sin, we may run into anything.”
Eric was ready in less than a minute. He hurried after Traile as the taller man strode into the den. They were almost at the steel-backed door to the hall when a sharp da-dit-da-dit rasped from the micro-set. Traile snatched up a pencil and pad.
“Here — you can take code faster than I can! I’ll check the direction.”
Eric began a hasty scribble, but the code abruptly ended. There was a long buzz, then from the silence which followed came a sinister, toneless voice.
“Main Control. Interpreter, Group Six, stand by.”
Traile went rigid. It was the voice of the Invisible Emperor!
“Holy smoke!” Eric said tensely. “It’s Doctor Yen Sin!”
Traile motioned him to silence, for the Yellow Doctor was speaking again. This time the words were Chinese. After a few moments there was a pause.
“What did he say?” Eric exclaimed.
Traile wheeled to a wall map of Greater New York.
“He simply counted from one to ten in Shamo dialect. What was that first code?”
“X-three-D, repeated,” said Eric.
“Probably the call number of this ‘Group Six,’ ” muttered Traile. He took up a ruler, looked at the hour hand of the tiny church-steeple clock. “The bearing is just about a hundred and sixty degrees.”
“—eleven, twelve, thirteen,” came the calm words of the Invisible Emperor. “Alternate two-five interval, Interpreter.”
“Look!” said Eric excitedly. “Your bearing line goes within a block of Chinatown, between Pell Street and the East River.”
Traile seized a strap from a bundle and swiftly fastened the micro-set to the miniature church.
“Come on,” he said, thrusting the set under his arm. “We can take a cross-bearing on the way to the Courtland place, and trace the station later.”
“Why not follow it now?” demanded Eric as they went into the hall.
Traile set a special lock on the steel-backed door.
“The Courtland lead is more important. We might be hours locating the transmitter, and even then they may be operating it by remote control.”
Chapter 2 The Corpse with the Twisted Head
The elevator came up, and they descended to the first floor. The lobby was deserted except for the desk clerk and two drowsy bellhops.
“You’re up early again, Mr. Scott,” yawned the clerk. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
“In the daytime,” Traile replied tersely. He led the way to the garage at the rear of the apartment hotel, and in a few moments his car was rolling out into the night. Free of building interference, the micro-set brought the voice of Dr. Yen Sin to an audible note.
“—at one-minute intervals, Group Six,” came the silken accents both he and Eric had grown to hate. A monotonous buzzing followed.
“Watch the indicator,” Traile said as he turned westward.
“All Group Controls, attention!” the voice of the Invisible Emperor came with a sharpened note. “On suspicion of treachery, Female Agent Twenty-two is being removed—”
“No, no!” a woman screamed. “You can’t do this — I haven’t betrayed you!”
The words faded out with a moan. Eric whirled frantically.
“That was Sonya Damitri’s voice! For God’s sake, Michael, follow that bearing!”
Instead, Traile jammed his foot down on the throttle, sent the car racing across Sixth Avenue.
“Doctor Yen Sin forced her to trick you before! Don’t fall for it again.”
“But that yellow fiend’s going to kill her!” Eric cried wildly. “She saved our lives that night — we’ve got to help her!”
“The whole thing is a plant,” rapped Traile. “I was a fool not to see—”
The shriek of a police siren drowned the rest. Eric spun around.
“It’s a prowl car.” He clutched the strapped set. “I’m going to take these and ask them to help me find her!”
“Stay where you are,” muttered Traile. He slowed as the police car drew alongside, then with a swift movement turned his spotlight handle. The beam fell on a dark and vicious face under a low-drawn police cap. Traile saw a bloody rip in the man’s half-buttoned blue coat just in time.
The pseudo-policeman snarled an oath, and then the driver jerked the police car into Traile’s path. Traile stood on the brakes, snatched at his .38.
“San hai!” yelled the dark man.
Three crouching figures leaped up in the rear of the prowl car. They were outside with the swiftness of rats. Traile fired pointblank. The first man went down with a screech. Traile threw the gears into reverse. A yellow face flashed through the spotlight beam. Eric’s gun blasted around the right side of the windshield. The Chinese pitched over.
The prowl car roared backward as Traile reversed. The third Chinese sprang to its running board. Before Traile could fire, he leaped across and landed on the hood of the sedan. Eric lunged around his side of the windshield, gun leveled.
A stream of dark vapor shot from a pear-shaped bulb in the hand of the yellow assassin. Eric’s finger tightened convulsively on the trigger as he slumped back. His gun roared, spurted red flame. The Chinese gave a gurgling cry and toppled down against the windshield.
As Eric sagged back, a cold fury swept over Traile. He whipped the .38 toward the prowl car. Two shots crashed, and the man with the bloody coat fell limply over the door. The driver cut his wheels with a desperate speed. As the two machines scraped together, he twisted hastily in his seat. The ringed snout of a silenced gun poked across at Traile.
Traile’s shot and the jump of the silenced weapon were simultaneous. A bullet ripped the seat cushion near Traile’s shoulder. Then the prowl car raked past with a dead man at its wheel.
Above the scraping of fenders, as the cars pulled free, came the trill of a whistle. It was echoed by another not far off, then a siren wailed out in the night. Traile braked to turn, sent the car charging ahead. Those might be real police, or they might be more of the Yellow Doctor’s agents. He took the next corner on two wheels, rolling the dead Chinese into the street. Without slowing, he switched off his lights, plunged into the first alley he saw.
As the whistle blasts faded away, he stopped, anxiously bent over Eric. With relief, he felt the other man move. He quickly propped him up at the window. Eric began to breathe more normally, and in a few moments he opened his eyes. He tried to sit up.
“Take it easy, old man,” said Traile. “You’ll be all right in a minute.”
“What happened?” Eric asked dazedly.
“That killer sprayed you with some kind of anesthetic. They must have had orders to take us alive.”
“I remember now,” Eric mumbled. “It smelled like incense, then everything turned black.”
“I was afraid at first he’d killed you,” Traile said grimly. “Thank Heaven the Yellow Doctor overplayed his hand and gave me warning. But we’d better get out of this area in case he has others looking for us.”
He started the car, and they emerged cautiously from the alley. He switched on the lights, zigzagged through the Fifties, and swung into Broadway at Fifty-seventh Street. By this time Eric had almost recovered.
“How’d you know they were fake cops?” he asked huskily.
“I wasn’t sure,” said Traile. “But it was obvious he wanted us to follow that bearing into a trap of some kind. When the police car appeared so quickly, I had a hunch they were Yen Sin’s killers.”
“Then they must’ve bumped off the real cops to get their uniforms and the car,” said Eric.
Traile’s bronzed face was hard.
“Undoubtedly. I saw a bloody knife-slit in one man’s coat. And the blood was fresh, so this thing must have been very recently planned.”
“But I still don’t see,” said Eric, “how Yen Sin knew you’d be tuned in to catch those messages.”
Traile gazed thoughtfully ahead as the sedan crossed Columbus Circle. “There’s only one answer. He’s spotted that Q-station. I was evidently being watched from somewhere — unless Doctor Yen Sin learned through someone at the company that we were going to listen in for that code.”
“I never spilled a word,” Eric said indignantly. “And I sneaked out the set without anybody seeing me.”
“Then the first idea must be right. It’s clear that the messages were designed to lead us into a trap. From the way those last signals faded, they were obviously using a narrow beam pointed straight at the building. If it hadn’t been for Glover’s call, I’d probably have followed that lead — at least until Yen Sin brought Sonya into it. That was plainly intended to bring you racing to help her. And he knew I wouldn’t let you go alone.”
“I still can’t believe she did it on purpose,” Eric said miserably.
Traile slowly shook his head.
“You’ll save yourself many heartaches if you forget her, Eric. Even though she’s an unwilling agent, remember she’s still in his power. Yen Sin holds her father prisoner at his base in China, ready to torture him — or kill him if she should betray him.”
A stricken look filled Eric’s boyish face.
“Then you checked on her story?” he asked in a low tone.
Traile glanced at the dash clock, increased the car’s speed.
“Yes, through a source in Shanghai. Her father is Grand Duke Sergius Damitri — one of the old Czarist regime. When the Revolution broke out, he fled with Sonya and her mother. They tried to reach Spain — Sonya’s mother was Spanish — but they couldn’t get out of the Orient. The Grand Duke became mixed up in espionage. His wife died, and Sonya was practically brought up to become an agent for the White Russians. Then a year ago Doctor Yen Sin drew her father into his web, held him as a hostage, and since then has forced her to act as a spy for the Invisible Empire.”
Eric’s blue eyes blazed.
“The damned fiend! To think of his having a white woman in his power!”
“She’s only one of hundreds. Iris Vaughan is another example. He enslaved her through opium, so he’d have a spy in the British Embassy at Washington.”
“Too bad the Embassy protected her after the raid on Yen Sin’s hideout,” said Eric. “She might have told plenty.”
The sedan reached Seventy-second Street. Traile slowed, turned toward Riverside Drive, speeded up again.
“She was to be turned over to us next day, but she escaped that night,” he said with a trace of glumness. “I thought we were clever when we managed to trace her to San Francisco. I know now that Yen Sin had her lead us there so we’d think he had fled to the Coast. And then she vanished right under my nose.”
“Anyway, it did some good,” Eric pointed out. “We linked our San Francisco communications with the other Q-stations.”
“Thanks to your work,” assented Traile. He turned northward into the drive which paralleled the Hudson. A faint grayness had come into the sky, against which the rows of towering apartments, broken by an occasional mansion, bulked in dark silhouette.
“We’re almost there,” Eric said quickly, as Traile leaned out around the windshield.
“Yes, I know.” A sharp alertness had come into the taller man’s face. “I was looking to see if by chance the D.J. cars had beat us to the place.”
“You really think Courtland is working with Doctor Yen Sin?” exclaimed Eric.
“Not willingly. But the Yellow Doctor may have found some shady spot in old Courtland’s life. In that event, he’ll be a potential enemy.”
A moment later, the car swung in toward the entrance of the Courtland place, which comprised one whole square block. Suddenly, Traile put on the brakes. The huge gates were open, but there in the center and barring the way was a shining crimson pole. In the headlights it was the color of blood.
“Good Lord!” Traile whispered. He leaped out.
“What is it?” Eric gasped as he caught up.
“It’s a Chinese funeral pole!” Traile said tensely. “I’m afraid we’re going to be too late.”
He raced up the curving drive with Eric close at his heels. No lights shone from the mansion. He ran up the steps. The door was open, and from somewhere beyond there came an eerie will-o’-the-wisp glow. The silence all but shrieked.
Traile tiptoed to the doorway through which the flickering light showed. It led to a drawing room. He took one step inside, then halted, appalled, with Eric gazing white-faced past his shoulder.
Two yellow Chinese candles shone down from the head of an open coffin directly before them. An icy shudder went over Traile. He was looking down on the back of a corpse — but the dead man’s face was staring upward!
With horror, Traile saw the bloodstains which had dyed the man’s white collar. Peter Courtland had been decapitated, and his head sewn on again — backward!
Chapter 3 The Golden Skull
Eric turned away, sickened, as Traile stepped closer to stare in amazement. Just beyond the candles, on a stand beneath a mirror, a queer bright object was gleaming. Leering down at the pale dead face below was a small golden skull.
Eric gazed blankly at it, but Traile’s dark eyes suddenly filled with consternation.
“My God! The Chuen Gin Lou!”
“What do you mean?” Eric asked thickly.
“The Circle of the Golden Skull — one of the oldest, most dreaded secret societies of China. It’s supposed to have died out. Doctor Yen Sin must have revived it, made it part of the Invisible Empire.”
Eric looked back at the dead man and shivered.
“It’s horrible enough, murdering him, but to sew on his head that way—”
“It’s part of their ritual, based on the Chinese penal code,” said Traile, as Eric broke off. “When a Chinese criminal is beheaded, it is the custom to sew his head on backward before giving the body to his relatives. Courtland must have been about to betray Yen Sin. This thing has been staged as a warning to others in the Empire.”
Eric gripped his gun, peered around into the shadows.
“It’s like a tomb,” he whispered. “I wonder if they killed all the servants, too.”
“We’ll search the place as soon as those agents arrive,” Traile answered. His eyes had hardly left the golden skull. There was a curious fascination about it. It had been molded by a master hand, and with diabolical artistry. Its proportions were perfect, though it was less than half the size of a human skull. In the flickering candlelight, a mocking grin seemed to play across its hideous metal face. Eric looked at it, startled.
“Lord! For a second, I thought it was moving!”
“It’s only the light,” said Traile. He thrust out his hand as Eric came closer. “Don’t touch it. There may be some solid basis for that old fantastic story.”
Eric stared at him.
“What story?”
Traile hesitated before he answered.
“The Chuen Gin Lou is said to have been a mysterious murder cult ruled by a golden skull. The skull was supposed to have the power of death. Only the members ever knew the truth, but there are well-educated Chinese who still believe that ‘He who looks upon the Golden Skull must either kill or die.’ ”
Eric’s jaw dropped.
“Don’t tell me you believe that!”
Traile’s dark eyes were somber.
“Eric, I’ve seen strange things in the East. I am not easily affected, but there is something about that skull—”
He stopped, glanced quickly at his watch.
“Those D.J. agents should be here in a few minutes. You know Bill Allen, and he’ll probably be in charge. I wish you’d meet him — tell him to hurry in here. I’ll examine Courtland’s body, meanwhile.”
Eric grimaced.
“You’re welcome to that part. I’ll be glad to get out of here.”
As he went out, Traile stooped over the dead man. The beheading had been done by a skilled hand, for the cut was straight. The bloodstained stitches also gave evidence of surgical knowledge. Traile’s lips tightened. Unless he was badly mistaken, this was the work of the Yellow Doctor himself.
He holstered his automatic, started to search Courtland’s pockets. He did it cautiously, knowing Yen Sin’s predilection for setting deathtraps in unlikely places. The dead man’s pockets were empty. Traile turned, was bending over the golden skull when he heard something from the left side of the house. It grew swiftly into the sound of a woman’s footsteps, a woman who was running desperately, fearfully.
Traile stepped back quickly into the shadows, took a hasty glance about him. The nearest concealment was a large urn on a taboret. He crouched behind it. The next instant a girl darted in from a door at the side. With a start, Traile recognized the pretty face of the blonde English girl, Iris Vaughan.
Her head was bare, and her bright hair shone in the light of the candles. She halted for a moment, cast a fearful look about the room. From the half-opened bag on her arm she had taken a small, pearl-handled pistol.
She gasped as she saw the coffin and its terrible occupant. For a second, Traile thought she would faint. But the desperate light came back into her eyes, and she forced herself to go on. With her gaze averted, she passed the dead man’s bier. She had reached the stand under the mirror when Traile silently moved from behind the urn. He kept to one side, so that she would not see his reflection. He was within a few feet of her, the thick rug muffling his step, when she suddenly turned. All the color went out of her face.
“Michael Traile!” she moaned. She stood as though paralyzed, then with a frantic motion tried to snatch up the gun she had laid down. Traile’s long fingers closed on the weapon. He calmly dropped it into his pocket. The girl shrank back with a little cry. Traile’s dark eyes searched her frightened face.
“So the Doctor didn’t intend the Golden Skull to be left here.”
She tried to speak, made a helpless gesture. Traile looked down at the gruesome figure of Peter Courtland.
“Once before, I told you there was no diplomatic immunity for murder.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” she said wildly. “I never even knew!”
“Then why are you here?” Traile interrupted.
“He sent me—” The words broke in a sob. “Please let me go — I swear I knew nothing of this awful murder!”
Traile eyed her sternly.
“Where is Doctor Yen Sin hidden?”
“I don’t know!” she whispered. “All my orders come indirectly—”
“You’re lying,” said Traile, but part of the sternness went out of his face. She was dangerous, yet there was something pitiful about her.
He hesitated. “If you will give me the information I need, I’ll see that you are protected against his vengeance.”
“You’re mad!” she cried. “Nothing could save me! In God’s name, give me the skull — let me go—”
“What is its secret?” Trail demanded.
Iris Vaughan turned deathly pale. “I can’t tell you — I don’t know!”
“Perhaps you would rather tell the police,” Traile said calmly.
With a trembling hand, she took something from the vanity bag on her arm. He reached out quickly, thinking it was another weapon. To his astonishment, she opened a jeweler’s box and an enormous oval-shaped diamond blazed up at him. “Here!” she said tensely. “This is worth a thousand times the gold in that skull. Take it!”
Traile stared down at the shimmering jewel.
“The Vare Diamond!”
“It’s not stolen, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said in a breathless whisper. “But it’s yours — in exchange for the skull.”
“I’m sorry.” Traile lifted his head as the sound of hastily applied brakes came from outside. “But you have one last chance to talk, before the Department of Justice men get here.”
She caught at him with frantic hands.
“Please don’t let them take me!”
He could feel the warmth of her body as she clung to him. He looked down, steeling himself against the passionate appeal in her upturned face. For an instant, her very soul seemed to be in her eyes.
“Save me!” she whispered. “I promise I shall not forget!”
He reached up to disentangle her arms. Outside, another car stopped with tires squealing. Iris moved back despairingly as a thud of feet sounded from the reception hall. But suddenly a wild hope flashed into her eyes.
Traile shot a look at the mirror. A bulky figure had plunged into the room. In that split second, he saw a strange gray face. Then he dived headlong back of the coffin.
The silenced gun he had seen gave a muffled clunk. The slug tore through the coffin, and wood splintered three inches above his head. He rolled over, came up with his .38 blasting. The other man jumped back, gun arm dangling. He made a vain attempt to shift the weapon and reload.
“Drop it!” clipped Traile.
The man’s queer gray face jerked spasmodically, and the silenced gun slipped from his fingers. His eyes, small and deep-sunken, never moved from Traile. Hoarse voices abruptly were audible, then a French window to the conservatory burst open. Traile half-wheeled, expecting to see Bill Allen’s agents. But to his dismay, he was looking on three more gray-faced men.
As the three leaped into the drawing room, Iris struck at Traile’s elbow. The .38 roared, drilled a hole in the wall. Its crashing report was followed by the ominous click of another silenced pistol. The mirror back of Traile shattered into a thousand fragments. He flung a swift-aimed shot at the first of the trio of Gray Men.
The man screamed hoarsely, stumbled and fell in a heap. Traile hurled himself toward the coffin as the other two leveled their guns. A sweep of his hand, and the candles went to the floor. In the darkness he heard a venomous hiss of lead from the raiders’ pistols.
From the direction of Riverside Drive, an exhaust whistle throbbed four times. Instantly, a beam of light swept the lawn beyond the veranda. A fifth Gray Man dashed into the room.
“Come on!” he rasped. “They’re surrounding the place.”
“But the Golden Skull!” snarled another voice. “We haven’t found it.”
“I have it!” came the panicky voice of Iris Vaughan. “But we’ll never escape now.”
Traile leaped toward her as she started to run to the window. By the faint light from the shifting searchlight of the D.J. men, he saw the gleam of gold. He tore the skull from her hands, whirled toward the urn. In the shadows back of him, Iris gave a scream.
“It’s gone! Someone—”
A crash of gunfire drowned her cry. The shots came from behind the mansion. Two of the Gray Men were silhouetted as they hastily picked up their dead comrade, carried him through the French window. Traile had barely placed the skull inside the urn and wheeled to the hall doorway when a flashlight probed through the dark. The man he had wounded snarled an alarm. Bullets plunked into the doorframe as Traile charged into the hall.
He dodged through the library, hurriedly opened a window, and dropped to the ground outside. A powerful spotlight in the hands of an agent covered him at once.
“Get ’em up!” the man ordered sharply.
“Hold it, Johnson,” snapped another voice. The lanky form of Bill Allen appeared, with Eric close behind.
“They’re getting away on the other side,” Traile said hastily, as Allen recognized him. Even as he spoke, there was another burst of shots. He and the others sprinted around the front of the mansion. A big car was racing down the exit drive. It swerved suddenly, charged across the lawn and plunged through the hedge which bordered the yard. Behind it came a second machine, engine roaring. It whirled through the beam of an agent’s searchlight, and for a moment Traile saw the terrified face of Iris Vaughan, where she cringed down by one of the Gray Men.
Bill Allen had raised a tommy gun for a burst at the car. At sight of the girl, he swore and pointed the weapon lower. A stuttering blast ripped at the wheels, but the bullets missed the tires. At furious speed, the car tore through the break in the hedge and was swallowed up in the gloom. Down near the main entrance to the estate, a D.J. car roared away in hot pursuit.
Traile swung quickly to Bill Allen, as several D.J. men ran toward the senior agent.
“The police will be here in a few minutes. I want them to think that Eric and I are agents of yours — that we arrived here at the same time you did. Here’s your story: You had a tip from Washington, dashed out here, and ran into a fight with some gangsters who got away.”
“That bird I saw with the girl didn’t look like any gangster,” Bill Allen muttered. “He looked like a corpse.”
“You’ll find a real one inside,” Traile said grimly. “But pass that word to your men, and then have them search the place. I’ve something to show you.”
Allen gave hasty instructions to his men, and they scattered to search the mansion. Traile had drawn Eric aside.
“You recognized her?” he said in an undertone.
Eric nodded, his blue eyes still wide with excitement.
“Sure, it was Iris Vaughan — but where on earth were she and those—”
“I’ll explain in a minute. But don’t tell anyone but Allen that we know who she was.”
Bill Allen strode back and joined them.
“Now, would you mind telling me what the hell—”
“Come on,” Traile cut in. “We’ve no time to waste.”
He led the way to the drawing room, tersely explaining what had happened. The lights were on, and one of the agents was just starting on to the conservatory, after an amazed stare at Courtland’s body. Traile waited till he had gone, then retrieved the golden skull from the urn, while Allen gingerly examined the dead man.
“I don’t want the police to know about this skull,” Traile said rapidly. “It must have some tremendous importance. The Gray Men were sent here to recover it. Not only that, the Vaughan girl offered me the Vare Diamond in exchange.”
Bill Allen gaped at him.
“The Vare Diamond! Why, that stone’s worth a third of a million if it’s worth a penny.”
“I know that.” Traile scanned the floor near the coffin. “I thought she dropped it, but she evidently found it again.”
Eric pointed to a pool of blood nearer the opened window.
“You must’ve finished one of those Gray Men, all right.”
Traile’s tanned face was flinty.
“If he’d been a better shot, I’d be stretched out here with poor old Courtland.”
Allen shook his head bewilderedly.
“I thought you were screwy tonight, when I got Glover’s order and you told me about Doctor Yen Sin and the Invisible Empire. But after this—”
“This is only a hint of Yen Sin’s diabolical methods,” interrupted Traile. “We’re likely to have more than a hint when he finds we have the skull.”
All three gazed at the golden object for a second.
“I can’t see what anybody’d want of that thing,” grated Bill Allen. “Unless they were to melt it down—”
“And tonight’s work proves it’s not that,” rapped Traile. He lit a cigarette, took a turn back and forth. “From all the rumors and stories about it, the Golden Skull must be a sacred symbol. If you knew Chinese superstition, you’d understand Doctor Yen Sin’s desperate efforts to regain possession of it. Millions of Chinese blindly worship lesser things than this.”
“Then why did they leave it here?” asked Eric, puzzled.
Traile frowned down at the skull. “It may have been used in the ritual. The red funeral pole bears that out; it means, literally, that ‘a man lies in a coffin within this house.’ But someone must have left the skull by mistake.”
A whine of sirens announced the approach of the police.
“Eric, you and I had better slip outside,” Traile said quickly. “We want to be as inconspicuous as possible while the police investigate this.”
As they were hurrying out with Bill Allen, one of the D.J. agents came downstairs.
“No sign of anybody up there, sir,” he told the senior agent. “And Johnson reports the servants’ quarters deserted.”
“The servants have probably been kidnapped,” Traile said as they reached the main entrance. “If I know the Yellow Doctor, they won’t be seen again.”
“By Heaven, he can’t get away with this!” said Allen angrily.
A police car had come to a halt before the funeral pole and a strongly Irish voice was heard in a profane outburst.
“At least they’re real cops,” Traile muttered. He hid the golden skull under his coat. “Explain things as fast as you can, Bill. Eric and I will stay back with your men until you’ve arranged it so we can leave.”
“I’ll do my best,” said the lanky agent.
But it was almost an hour before he could finish explaining to the satisfaction of the homicide squad. By this time police and reporters were swarming over the place, and a crowd had gathered at the gates.
Several of the D.J. men grouped themselves about Traile as he went out to his car, and the bulge under his coat apparently passed unnoticed. Bill Allen climbed into the rear of Traile’s car, with two agents armed with tommy guns. Two machines filled with the rest of the D.J. men formed a close escort in the dash for Lexington Avenue.
Traile drove as fast as he dared through the early morning traffic. His bronzed face was stonily set, and his dark eyes flicked ceaselessly from right to left at each new intersection. By now, Yen Sin would undoubtedly know the truth. There probably had been spies in that crowd back at the mansion. But there seemed to be no one following, and it would be difficult for anyone to pick them up on the zigzag route he was taking.
On the front seat between him and Eric reposed the mysterious, gleaming skull. Eric kept looking down at it with a morbid fascination. Suddenly he stared across at Traile’s hard-set face.
“Michael, you remember what you said: ‘He who looks upon the—’ ”
“Yes, I remember,” said Traile. “Why?”
“It’s already come true,” Eric exclaimed. “You looked at the skull, and in a few minutes you killed a man. If you hadn’t, you would have died.”
“Only a coincidence,” muttered Traile. But he glanced down at the thing beside him. The Golden Skull seemed to leer back mockingly at him.
Chapter 4 The Invisible Emperor
In an otherwise dark room hidden beneath Manhattan, one eye of a small Buddha suddenly glowed with emerald light. A yellow hand reached out from the gloom, and a sharp-nailed finger touched the rim of what appeared to be a roulette wheel. As the numbered wheel turned, the second eye of the Buddha became green, until it glowed with the same intensity as the first.
“Report,” came the emotionless voice of the man seated beside the Buddha.
“Control, Group Three,” a whisper came from the lips of the Buddha. “The police and Federal agents still hold position H. Number Ninety-three, using reporter’s credentials, penetrated grounds and mansion. No prisoners observed, and no sign of — the Skull.” The last two words were in an oddly altered tone.
A pointed saffron face, like a mocking picture of Satan, appeared for a moment above the wheel. In the emerald glow from the Buddha’s eyes it was a weird hue.
“Police statements in regard to Citizen Fourteen?” the Yellow Doctor inquired.
“Removal believed underworld vengeance for refusing tribute to racketeers,” was the muffled response from the Buddha. “This evidently based on report from Department of Justice agent in charge.”
The tawny eyes slowly narrowed.
“Maintain close observation on the Federal officers. For some reason, they are withholding information. Courtland’s son mentioned the Invisible Empire before he died.”
The eyes of the idol dimmed, then one went dark. Doctor Yen Sin leaned over the table on which the wheel and the Buddha stood. There was a row of pearl buttons in an onyx panel. He pressed the second button from the right. A faint, irregular buzzing sounded from the idol, and the numbered wheel began to rotate slowly.
The Crime Emperor sat back, a shadowy figure in the fan-backed Bilibid chair. A minute passed, and the wheel began its second revolution. Suddenly it stopped, swung back through an arc of forty degrees. Doctor Yen Sin reached out a yellow claw, and the buzzing signal ceased. Instantly the Buddha’s eyes lit up.
“Group One,” a sullen voice said.
The Yellow Doctor leaned forward.
“Your signal was transmitted at four fifty-three and five nineteen,” he said coldly.
“I heard it, but couldn’t answer,” the other man said with a trace of harshness. “A bullet damaged the set, and I’ve just repaired it.”
Yen Sin gazed down at the numbered wheel. It was still moving, but almost imperceptibly.
“You have had time to reach Headquarters B. Why are you still in motion?”
“It’s taken all this time to shake off the police,” came the muttered retort. “We’re lucky we weren’t killed.”
The Crime Emperor looked unseeingly at the green eyes of the Buddha.
“Present orders revoked,” he said with a return to his usual emotionless voice. “You will bring the Skull at once to Headquarters A.”
There was a pause, then the Buddha rasped out the answer.
“We didn’t get it! There was a mix-up — Agent Eighty-five had it — someone got it away from her in the dark.”
A look of fury swept over the malignant face of Doctor Yen Sin. But when he spoke, his voice was icily controlled.
“Full report,” he ordered.
“When we reached there,” the voice from the idol said hoarsely, “Number Three entered, with Two and Five following. I heard a shot and ran after the others. I found Number Three slightly wounded, and Agent Eighty-five captured by a man who was evidently a police officer. This man shot and killed Number Two, then knocked over the candles. Agent Eighty-five was fleeing with the Skull when it was snatched from her hands. The place was almost surrounded — we barely had time to carry out Number Two and escape.”
In the green light from the Buddha’s eyes, the Crime Emperor’s face held a furious look.
“Transfer to Agent Eighty-five,” he directed.
“She escaped in the other car,” was the sullen reply from the idol. “We separated at once.”
There was a long interval, during which faint sounds of traffic came through from the microphone in the distant car.
“Follow these orders,” Doctor Yen Sin said abruptly. He spoke for two minutes, then depressed a button. The Buddha’s eyes dimmed, glowed again as the indicator wheel swung to its former position.
“Control, Group Three.”
“Main Control,” Yen Sin now said swiftly. “The Golden Skull was not recovered. Concentrate for necessary action. Groups Four and Five will reinforce you. Report at once any movement on part of the Federal men.”
As the light faded from the idol’s eyes, he stood up, the silken folds of his mandarin costume falling about his figure. Though the room was now completely dark, he stretched out his hand to the exact spot where a light switch was located. A soft luminance spread over the room, revealing the details of the secret chamber. A richly colored Arabian rug, hung like a tapestry, covered most of one wall. Across from it was a large blackboard, on which were written words in both English and Chinese. In the center of the board was a sketch not unlike that of some intricate football maneuver.
On a rosewood table beside a divan was a tray bearing a teapot, a cup, and an empty dish, testimony to the sparse diet to which the Yellow Doctor adhered. Books and a number of photographs, the latter varying from miniatures to enlargements, cluttered one corner. A map case partly obscured a full-length mirror of peculiarly dark glass.
Doctor Yen Sin turned to an odd diagram which had been painted on one wall. It appeared to be a sketch showing the arrangement of streets in a small village. Colored lights showed at the ends of the streets and at some intersections. Beneath the diagram was a switchboard with a built-in Dictaphone.
The Crime Emperor inserted a plug in a socket, and one of the lights immediately flickered. He spoke in Chinese for a few moments, made another connection.
“Yes, Master?” came the hasty query, also in Chinese.
“What report from Group Six concerning the captives?” Doctor Yen Sin asked a trifle sharply.
“They have not appeared or reported, Master,” the other man replied anxiously.
“Broaden the beam and search the area near Position D,” ordered the Yellow Doctor. “There is a chance they have been forced into the other headquarters. Let me know the result.”
“Yes, Master.” The Dictaphone clicked. Doctor Yen Sin turned away. He crossed the room, moving with an almost feline step, and halted before the map case. He stood there a moment, his weird eyes flitting over the crayon lines which had been drawn on a chart of Long Island Sound. In the slant of his cheekbones, and by his height — for he was taller than most Chinese — an expert might have traced the Manchurian blood which coursed in the veins of the Yellow Doctor.
He glanced aside, stooped, and picked up one of the enlarged photographs. It was a gruesome scene — a tableau of murder. A crumpled body upon the floor... a dark stain on the man’s shirtfront... the half-crouched form of the murderer, with a dripping knife in his hand, and his startled, ghastly face turned toward the camera...
Doctor Yen Sin’s thin lips curled. There was something comical about that look of horror and dismay. The poor fool had thought himself so clever. He had never dreamed that he had been led every step of the way into committing that murder. But since then there had been time for him to learn.
A sudden clicking, as of distant castanets, caused the Crime Emperor to wheel quickly. A bright red light was shining above the painted diagram. Another light was blinking where two lines intersected. Doctor Yen Sin hastily crossed to the switchboard. As he plugged a connection, a rough voice became audible through the Dictaphone.
“Don’t be a little fool! What’s one Chink more or less?”
“Are you crazy?” a feminine voice gasped. “The Emperor will kill you for this.”
“If he’s so tough,” came the grated answer, “why’s he scared to show himself? I’ve still got to see the Chink I can’t handle.”
The girl moaned something, but the man cut her short.
“Get smart, baby! I’ve been watching you, and you got class enough for Ricco. We can take it on the lam before anybody gets wise. I can get a hundred grand for that rock, out on the Coast. You play along with Ricco, and you’ll—”
“Let go of me!” the girl cried out.
Sounds of a scuffle came through the Dictaphone. Doctor Yen Sin calmly pressed a button, reached toward a switch at one side.
“You she-devil!” came a snarl from the unseen man. “I was goin’ to give ya a break, but now—”
The sepulchral note of a deep-toned gong broke into his angry threat. In the same moment, light shone through the dark glass at one side of the secret room. The Yellow Doctor glanced toward the glass as footsteps echoed through the amplifier. A short passage was visible, its walls decorated with scores of red-and-gold circles. Each had a black center.
In a second, two figures came into view. The first was Iris Vaughan. Her blonde hair was flying, and her pretty face was transfixed with a look of terror. Both greed and fear showed on the swarthy face of the man who pursued her. With a sudden leap, he caught the girl by one shoulder and spun her around. A brutal jerk, and he tore the jewel case from her fingers. A violent shove sent her back against the dark glass.
The deep-toned gong struck, and there followed a thudding sound from beyond the turn of the passage. The thief’s swarthy face turned pasty. He whirled, the jewel case in one hand, a blood-smeared stiletto raised in the other. As he turned, the Yellow Doctor coolly threw a switch. The dark glass slid silently into a niche, and Iris Vaughan stumbled, almost fell into the room.
There was another thud, and a massive gate settled into place where the passage turned. As the gangster saw his escape cut off he sprang around with an oath. Then he froze.
From each of those red-and-gold circles a dark-stained blade was swiftly moving outward!
“You yellow butcher!” Ricco screamed. He hurled himself at the Crime Emperor. The stiletto flashed up — and scraped to a stop in midair. Behind the clear glass panel which had replaced the dark one, Doctor Yen Sin slowly smiled.
“You expressed a desire to see me, Mr. Ricco?” came his sibilant voice from some spot above the passage.
A tortured shriek burst from the gangster’s lips as the swords began to gash his sides. He twisted around madly, pounding upon the glass.
“For God’s sake, don’t kill me! I didn’t mean it — I’ll do anything!”
The last word rose to a cry of mortal anguish. Iris Vaughan cowered away, hiding her face in her hands. The Yellow Doctor reached out toward the switchboard, and the faint whir of a hidden motor rose to a whine. One last dreadful scream rang out. Then Ricco’s pierced body sagged, quivering, on the blades which had taken his life.
Without emotion, Doctor Yen Sin opened the heavy glass panel. He picked up the jewel case, calmly glanced at its contents. Stepping back into the secret room, he turned to the Dictaphone.
“The post of Number Five, Group Eight, is vacant,” he announced tonelessly. “Correct the rolls and make the following disposal of the body.” He spoke briefly in Chinese, then turned his tawny eyes on Iris Vaughan. The girl’s face was sick with fear.
“I couldn’t help it,” she whispered. “He was hiding there at the third entrance. He sprang and killed Lun Shan—”
“The book of Mr. Ricco has been closed,” said the Yellow Doctor. “But there is another matter — of real importance.”
At the sudden harshness in his voice, the girl spoke breathlessly.
“I was hurrying to tell you. I reached the mansion ahead of—”
“The details have been reported,” interrupted the Crime Emperor. “All but one.” His weird eyes bored into her. “Who has the Golden Skull?”
“Michael Traile,” she answered, and there was renewed dread in her face.
The pupils of Yen Sin’s eyes enlarged with incredible swiftness, until they were black pools of fury. He took a step toward the girl, one yellow claw clenched.
“I did all I could!” she cried piteously. “But he tricked even the Gray Men.”
There was a sharp buzzing, and the eyes of the Buddha glowed with green light. Doctor Yen Sin opened a sliding door which had been concealed by a tapestry.
“Be in readiness at your station,” he curtly ordered. As the blonde girl hurried out he closed the door and stooped over the idol. “Main Control. What report on Position H?”
“Federal men leaving in three cars,” was the hasty reply. “Believe the Golden Skull in second car. Man observed carrying something under his coat. Did not observe personally but from description believe him to be Michael Traile. Senior Agent Allen and two men with machine guns in rear seat. Machine guns also in cars forming close escort. Success of direct action extremely doubtful.”
Doctor Yen Sin looked down. The numbered wheel was moving very slowly.
“Maintain contact without arousing suspicion,” he ordered. “Repeat this order to cooperating groups, then shift to Number Three waveband. Further instructions will follow.”
As the wheel ceased to move, the Buddha’s eyes changed to clear white light.
“Send Sonya to me at once,” Yen Sin directed. “Then stand by for special code to Headquarters B.”
Two minutes later a girl entered from the direction in which Iris Vaughan had disappeared. She was lovely, with a foreign, exotic beauty in which the warmth of sunny Spain and the cool aloofness of a Russian aristocrat were oddly blended. Her dark eyes, as she faced the Yellow Doctor, had a tragic, hopeless look. Yen Sin smiled mirthlessly at her.
“I have need of your talents, my dear Sonya.” The tone was a deliberate mockery.
The girl’s glance shifted to the gruesome figure suspended on the bloody swords in the passage. She stepped back in horror.
“No, it is neither of our expected — guests,” said the Crime Emperor silkily. “They have been delayed, unfortunately.” He had spoken in Chinese, but he abruptly changed to Russian. As he finished speaking, Sonya faced him with blazing eyes.
“No! I will not do it!” she cried defiantly. “This is some trick to make me help trap them again.”
The oblique eyes of Doctor Yen Sin drew into slits.
“I have a photograph of your honorable father, taken as he received your last little — gift. Perhaps if I let you see it—”
All the fiery rebellion died out of her face.
“I’ll go,” she said in a broken voice. Her shoulders were drooping as she turned away. When she had gone, Doctor Yen Sin turned again to the Buddha. White light flashed, then swiftly he began his instructions.
Chapter 5 The Rainbow Death
Traile’s eyes searched the street ahead. “We’re too well-guarded for him to try a mass attack,” he said grimly. “If he strikes, it will be something unexpected.”
“It’s only three more blocks,” said Eric. “Looks as though we’ll get through O.K.”
“I still think you’ve got this Yellow Doctor overrated,” Bill Allen grunted from the rear seat. “I’ll admit he pulled a fast one out there at the Courtland place, but he can’t buck the whole police system of New York City.”
Trail swung the car into Lexington Avenue.
“You still don’t understand the Invisible Empire. Yen Sin’s spies keep him informed, and he gets around the police by trickery.”
“Well, I’d like to see him get around these tommy guns,” retorted the lanky D.J. man.
Traile looked down at the miniature radio set.
“Too bad we didn’t get a good cross-bearing,” he said to Eric. “We’ve lost our chance to locate that station.”
Eric’s face shadowed, and Traile knew he was thinking of Sonya Damitri.
The leading D.J. car slowed as they neared the building which housed the F.B.I. offices. The hour was not yet seven, and there were but few cars parked along the street. Traile pulled in close to the first machine, and the other D.J. car stopped behind him.
Early pedestrians stared as the agents jumped out with their guns poised. Traile thrust the golden skull under his coat and motioned for Eric to bring the radios. Allen and his men closed in as they went toward the building.
They were almost at the entrance when there came a crash of shots from back of them. Traile wheeled. A limousine was drawing up at the curb across the avenue. Fifty feet behind it, and darting in diagonally, was a taxicab. Guns were blazing from the rear of the cab, and Traile saw one of the limousine windows shatter.
Three or four D.J. men were racing toward the spot. Two more shots crashed from the taxi, then a pinched yellow face glared around toward the running agents. A look of terror crossed the features of the Chinese. He frantically swerved his pistol.
Two tommy guns roared simultaneously. The Chinese toppled back, riddled with lead. The bloody face of a second Oriental was visible as the taxi wildly leaped ahead. As he slumped from view, another machine gun burst drilled both tires on the left side. The taxi skidded crazily, plunged headlong against a lamppost and overturned. The driver fell out limply, lay still.
As the firing began, Traile shot a hurried look around the entrance and into the lobby. This might be an attempt by Yen Sin to draw attention so that other spies of the Invisible Empire could regain the skull. But there was no sign of an attack.
A crowd was beginning to gather in the street. A big man, of powerful build, had jumped from the rear of the limousine. As two of Allen’s men approached, Traile saw the big man motion anxiously, then all three bent over the crumpled form of the limousine chauffeur.
“Jumping Jupiter!” Allen erupted. “That’s Mark Bannister those Chink gunmen tried to rub out!”
“Another millionaire,” Traile muttered, half to himself. “I wonder what Yen Sin is after.”
In a moment Bannister hurried toward them with one of the agents. Traile would hardly have recognized the financier, though he had seen pictures of him. In addition to being a financial power, with his hotels, his steamship line, and his brokerage house, Mark Bannister was known as a Beau Brummel. But now his handsome face was haggard with fear and strain. His cheeks were unshaven, and there were dark circles under his eyes. Blood was dripping from a small cut on his jaw, where flying glass had struck.
“Which one?” he rasped to the man beside him, as he reached the group.
“This is Special Agent Allen,” said the other, indicating the lanky D.J. man.
The millionaire jerked around to Allen.
“I’m Mark Bannister. I want to see you — alone!”
Allen hesitated, glanced at Traile. Traile spoke in an undertone.
“You question him first, while I examine the skull up in your lab.”
Allen motioned to one of his men.
“Take charge, Weller. Find out all you can, and explain to the cops what happened.”
Traile and Eric entered an elevator with the millionaire and Bill Allen. The operator looked, wide-eyed, from Allen’s tommy gun to the cut on Bannister’s jaw. The financier glared at him, stamped out at the fourteenth floor, almost falling over a wrinkled old charwoman who was mopping up the corridor.
As Bannister and Allen disappeared into an office, Traile nodded for Eric to follow him into the laboratory. The technician on duty was a pleasant-faced agent named Jim Stone. Traile knew him from a former visit, when Director Glover had introduced him as Roger Scott, a private criminologist who was to be given the run of the place.
“What happened down below?” Stone asked, after Traile introduced Eric. “I heard the shooting, but couldn’t see much from the window.”
Traile explained briefly.
“Hell’s bells!” said Stone. “That and the Courtland murder will split the town wide open.”
“How did you know about Courtland?” Traile asked sharply. “Police teletype?”
“No, there was a radio news flash almost an hour ago. All about his head being sewed on backward and—” Stone stared as Traile brought the gold skull from under his coat. “What the devil is the idea of that?”
“That’s what we want to know,” said Traile as he put the skull down on a table. “Let me have a magnifying glass, will you? I haven’t had time for a careful examination.”
“You mean you found this thing?” exclaimed Stone, amazed.
Traile hesitated only a moment.
“It was at the head of Courtland’s coffin, but don’t mention that to anyone. I’m explaining to you because there’s some danger connected with it, and it will have to be closely guarded.”
Professional interest quickly conquered Stone’s first astonishment. He brought a magnifying glass, switched on a bright light. Traile took the glass, bent over the gleaming skull, and looked through the eye sockets. After a brief scrutiny he carefully turned it upside down and peered in through the throat opening. The skull was empty, and except for a few scratches the interior of the metal shell was unmarked.
“What did you expect to find?” asked Eric, as Traile straightened up with a look of disappointment.
“I thought some secret of the cult might be engraved inside,” Traile answered a trifle shortly. The puzzle was beginning to annoy him.
“Maybe it’s written so small that this glass won’t show it up,” suggested Stone. “I can put it under the big microscope.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to see,” said Traile. “But you might as well try it.”
Stone started to pick up the skull, then grasped it in both hands. “Say, that thing’s heavy! I wouldn’t mind having what it’s worth in cash.”
“It’s probably worth about ten thousand dollars,” stated Traile. “But I’ve had proof that it’s valued for some other reason.”
“Ten thousand bucks would be plenty of reason for me,” said Eric.
“Same here,” grinned Stone. He carried the skull over to a large compound microscope and was placing it on the stage when Allen hastily entered the room. Behind the agent came Bannister. Allen closed the door, turned to Traile and addressed him by the name he had temporarily assumed.
“Scott, I’ve already told Mr. Bannister that you’re working with us on this Courtland case. He has some information that should help us.
“It’s help for myself I want,” the millionaire said bluntly. His hard eyes probed at Traile. “You saw what happened down there — I escaped death by a miracle — my bodyguard was murdered—”
“Bodyguard?” said Traile.
“He was acting as chauffeur,” snapped Bannister, “because the regular man disappeared — vanished like five more of my employees! I tell you it’s maddening — knowing there’s something closing in on you — knowing there are eyes watching you all the time.”
He looked around fiercely at Eric and Stone, who were both staring at him, then pulled a crumpled paper from his coat pocket.
“Here’s a sample of what I mean. Read that, and for ‘Citizen Nine’ substitute ‘Mark Bannister’!”
The message was typewritten in green ink. Traile’s dark eyes passed quickly over the words.
At 8:03, Citizen 9 called from his penthouse apartment on top Hotel Lordmore, speaking by direct wire to the hotel manager. Gave instructions that Citizens 12 and 14 were to be brought up secretly from garage in basement—
“Think of it!” rasped Bannister. “One of my own hotels — my private wire! But go on — go on!”
Citizens 12 and 14 arrived by private penthouse elevator at 8:10. During dinner, Citizen 14 produced copy of latest secret report on his movements. Announced he was going to the police. Citizens 9 and 12 argued against this, but at 10:35 he left for that purpose. At 11:15, Citizen 12 departed after phoning down to his private detective escort to meet him on mezzanine floor. Citizen 9 stationed special guard at switchboard controlling the private elevator, with orders to keep current shut off. Retired at 11:50, after searching entire apartment.
Traile looked up slowly.
“Is this report accurate?”
“It’s exact!” the millionaire said harshly. “The thing is uncanny. Our conference didn’t start until dinner had been served and my servants had been sent downstairs.
Traile studied the lower edge of the paper.
“A piece had been cut off here. Did you do it?”
Bannister did not answer for a moment. Then he rammed his hands into his coat pockets and spoke abruptly.
“All right, I’ll tell you! I’ve received thirty of those damned reports, some even describing things I thought nobody could possibly know. Each one has contained mention of something private, personal.” He made a savage gesture. “Every man in my position has made mistakes on the way up. But how these devils ever learned—”
“Then it’s blackmail?” Traile asked calmly.
“It must be!” grated Bannister. “But they haven’t asked a cent. After each report — except this one — I’ve had a mysterious phone call. I’ve been told to go to a certain place to meet someone — but a different spot has been named every time. I’ve gone three times, with private detectives hiding nearby — but no one appeared.”
“If you’d come to us sooner—” began Allen, but the millionaire cut him off with a snort.
“Never mind about that! I’m here now and I want protection. I heard the news that Courtland’s been murdered, and after what just occurred I know I must be next on the list.”
Traile looked at him keenly.
“The man called ‘Citizen Fourteen’ in this message was Peter Courtland, wasn’t he?”
Bannister started.
“What makes you think that?”
“It’s evident that no rich man complained to the police about being threatened,” said Traile, “or the detectives on the Courtland case would have seen a connection. It’s fair to assume that he was seized on his way to Centre Street.”
The haggard expression came back into the millionaire’s face. “You’re right, it was old Courtland. He and Merton Cloyd came last night to help me form a scheme to fight this mysterious group. They were getting reports like this, too.”
Allen cleared his throat.
“You and the others hadn’t any idea, then, who was back of the letters?”
Bannister started to shake his head, then paused.
“Cloyd and I didn’t, but something last night made me think that Courtland knew more than he was telling. I asked him if he’d made contact with these devils. He denied it, but the way he acted—”
A woman’s querulous voice was suddenly audible from out in the hall. Its shrill accents were cut off by a muttered snarl and the sound of a blow. As Allen ran to the side door there was a stifled cry, and a clatter of something against the panels.
“Be careful!” rapped Traile. “Stand to one side when you open it!”
Allen gripped the knob, jumped back. As the door opened, the handle of a mop slid down and struck the floor. Just beyond, the old charwoman was struggling to her feet, a bruise on her wrinkled face. Traile helped her up.
“Thanks, sir — but I’ll be all right now,” she said in a quavering voice.
“What happened?” Allen demanded.
The old woman whimpered, rubbing her bruised cheek.
“It was a man, sir — I come on him sudden-like, and there he was, with his ear to the door, listenin’—”
“What did he look like? Which way did he go?” Allen broke in impatiently.
“His face was queer — almost like a dead man’s.” The old woman looked fearfully toward the stairs to the lower floors. “You’d best be careful — he’s a bad one.”
“It must have been one of the Gray Men,” Traile said to Allen in a lowered voice. “If you work fast, you may be able to catch him.”
Allen dashed toward the front offices, and in a few moments his agents were spreading out in a hasty search. The old charwoman picked up her mop and bucket, shuffled down the hall. Traile turned back into the laboratory as he saw that Stone had come into the hall with Bannister and Eric.
“We shouldn’t have left the skull unguarded,” he said anxiously.
“Nobody could’ve come through from the front,” replied the technician. “There are always three or four men up there.”
Traile locked the door as Bannister and Eric followed him into the room. Stone switched on one of the special illuminators attached to the microscope.
The millionaire gave a puzzled look at the skull, then glanced back at Traile.
“You appear to have influence here. I want some of your agents to guard me.”
“My connection is unofficial,” said Traile. “But Allen can probably arrange it.”
As he started out with Bannister, he turned to Eric.
“You’d better stay here with Stone. Keep your gun ready, in case you hear anyone else at that door.”
When they reached Allen’s office, the senior agent was just putting down the phone.
“No luck yet,” be said irritably, “but I’m having all entrances watched.”
The millionaire gruffly stated his request for D.J. agents to guard him. Allen hesitated.
“So far, Mr. Bannister, it’s not a Federal case. The Courtland murder and the attack on you are police matters. Those secret reports don’t actually constitute a crime.”
“What about the abduction of my servants — my two secretaries?” rasped Bannister. “I came here because I don’t want publicity. The police will spread it all over the papers. You people have a reputation for doing things quietly.”
Allen gave Traile a sidewise glance. “What do you think?”
Traile’s dark eyes rested on the millionaire’s haggard face.
“Mr. Bannister, have you ever heard of the Invisible Empire?”
Bannister shook his head.
“No, what is it?”
“It’s the organization back of those reports,” replied Traile.
An angry color darkened Bannister’s face. “If you already know about this business, why didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t know about the letters,” Traile said calmly. “But from the Courtland evidence—”
He stopped as Eric Gordon burst into the office.
“Come on!” Eric exclaimed. There was an excited light in his blue eyes. “Stone’s found out something.”
All three men jumped to their feet.
“What is it?” clipped Traile, as they hurried toward the laboratory.
“I don’t know,” Eric said tensely. “He said one of the light rays showed up some writing that seemed to be inside the metal. Then all of a sudden he got a scared look, and sent me back here to get you.”
“It may be the key to the whole thing,” Allen said in an eager voice.
Traile nodded, started through the room adjoining the laboratory. He was halfway to the connecting door when a muffled hissing became audible from the other room. Then a voice rose in a scream of agony.
“It’s Stone!” shouted Allen.
Traile sprang for the door. He flung it open, then jumped back in amazement. A cloud of weirdly beautiful smoke was swirling within the laboratory. In its opaque, shimmering haze shone every hue of the rainbow.
Somewhere from the depths of that pastel-colored smoke came a terrible, frenzied cry. It died away, and there was only the muffled hissing which had been heard at first.
The opening of the door had brought some of the smoke billowing into the other room. It puffed into Traile’s face, stinging his eyes. He stumbled against Bannister. Then, realizing that the smoke was not immediately poisonous, he drew a deep breath of fresh air and dashed into the laboratory.
Through the eddying smoke he glimpsed something jerking around madly near the center of the room. He could vaguely see flashes of colored light, like fireworks seen through a heavy fog. The hissing came from that spot.
Half-blinded, he managed to find a window and raise it. Not until the colored smoke had blown away from where he stood did he risk taking a breath. The rest of the room was still hidden from view. He could hear Allen coughing, and the others stumbling around in the smoke.
“Keep back until it’s clear!” he called out.
A figure staggered toward him, almost collapsed at the open window. It was Bannister.
“What is it?” gasped the millionaire.
“I don’t know,” Traile answered tautly. He strained his eyes for a sign of Jim Stone. The hissing began to diminish, and in a few moments it had ended. The eerie smoke dissipated rapidly as fresh air blew into the room.
As Allen and Eric Gordon appeared in the colored haze, Traile stepped toward the center of the laboratory. The queer flashes of light had ceased with the hissing, but the last of that strange and beautiful smoke still hovered over the spot.
As it started to fade, a bony hand became visible. Then swiftly the smoke thinned, revealing the dreadful thing which lay beneath. Traile stared down in stark horror.
There on the floor was a rainbow-colored skeleton! It was all that remained of Jim Stone.
Chapter 6 The Woman in Rags
Allen swayed back, white and sick. “Oh, my God!” he whispered.
Eric and Bannister looked down with stunned faces at the shimmering, gruesome figure. Faint wisps of colored smoke still eddied around the rainbow-hued skeleton. The effect was one of horrible beauty, more dreadful than bleached white bones would have been.
“Oh, God!” Allen said again. He pulled his eyes away, looked dazedly at Traile. “What terrible thing—”
Traile shook his head, then knelt down, his lean face pale under its tan. A slight breeze was blowing in from the opened window. Suddenly the left arm of the skeleton quivered, then a tiny cloud of bright ashes fluttered into the air. The next moment the hand and forearm crumbled into rainbow-colored dust.
Traile stood up and quickly closed the window. But the crumbling process continued, until in a minute, only a vague-shaped, sinister pile of colored ash remained on the marble floor. He gazed at it a moment longer, then with a start turned to the big microscope. In the horror of his discovery, he had forgotten the golden skull. Allen followed his swift glance.
“It’s gone!” he said hoarsely.
Traile bent over the mounting stage to which the skull had been fastened. One side was mottled with the same colors as those of the rainbow ashes. He heard an exclamation, looked up into Allen’s tortured face.
“The stuff that killed him must have been a part of the skull!” rasped the D.J. man.
“No,” Traile said grimly, “he was killed by something else, so that someone could get the skull out of here. Look at this clamp. It’s twisted from a jerk, and there’s a scraping of gold on the setscrew.”
Eric Gordon ran across to the hall door.
“It’s still locked,” he exclaimed.
“A master key would take care of that,” rapped Traile. He wheeled to the half-dazed Allen. “They’ll be trying to get it out of the building. It’s doubly important now—”
A savage look replaced the sickness in the senior agent’s eyes.
“By God, if I catch the fiend who did this—” The rest was lost as he ran toward the front offices.
His whirlwind exit sent a flurry of rainbow ash into the air. Bannister stared at it and shivered. Traile turned to Eric.
“Did Stone give you any other hint of what he learned about the skull?”
“Not a word,” mumbled Eric. “But whatever he saw, it gave him a bad scare. He jumped back and told me to get you as fast as I could. I may be wrong, but I think it was something beside the writing that scared him.”
“I should have had a dozen men in here guarding him,” Traile said self-accusingly. “I might have known something would happen.”
“Why was that little gold skull so important?” Bannister interposed curiously.
Traile’s bronzed face was stern. “Because Courtland’s murderers left it at the head of his coffin.”
The millionaire started.
“But why, in Heaven’s name?” Traile was hurrying from window to window, examining the ledges.
“I believe it was a mistake,” he answered. “Since then, agents of the Invisible Empire have tried desperately to recover it. And now they’ve succeeded, unless—” He stopped short.
“What’s the matter?” Eric asked.
“The charwoman!” Traile whirled toward the door to the hall. “I was a fool not to guess it before.”
He jerked open the door, then spun around to Bannister. “Warn Allen not to let that woman get out of the building! We’ll be searching for her at once.” Eric raced after him to the rear elevator shafts. When a car came up, Traile shot a sharp look at the attendant and then spoke. “Have you seen the charwoman who works on this floor?”
“Ya mean the new one?” said the operator. “She’s up on Sixteen. I saw her a few minutes ago.”
Traile sprang into the car.
“Take us up!” When they reached the floor, he flung a crisp order at the man. “Go back to Fourteen and find Mr. Allen — Bureau of Investigation. Tell him to rush a squad up here!”
“Yes, sir!” gulped the operator. The car started down. Traile drew a fresh cartridge clip from a leather pocket under his belt.
“Take the left corridor,” he whispered to Eric, as he rammed the magazine into his gun. “She’ll probably have other spies helping her, so be on your guard.”
A determined look came into Eric’s youthful face. He hurried away on tiptoe. Traile took the other hall, watching each door that he passed. It was only seven thirty, and all the offices still appeared to be deserted. He made a right-angle turn, was almost to the next one when he saw an open window at the end of a side corridor leading to a fire escape. As he started toward it, Eric appeared from the other direction.
“No sign of her—” the younger man began.
“Quiet,” whispered Traile. He leaned out warily, then straightened. “There’s a window open in the second office to the left. Cover the door while I sneak in from this direction.”
He stole out onto the fire escape, noiselessly made his way to the office window. As he reached it he heard a gasp, then he saw the charwoman run for the door. She threw it open, then gave a moan as Eric confronted her in the shadowy entrance. Traile saw her cringe away from him, a wretched figure in tattered black, her streaked gray hair tumbling down over her eyes.
“Watch her, Eric!” he said sharply. “She’s a cold-blooded murderess!”
Eric made no answer. Traile climbed through the window, after a quick glance to be sure that no one else was in the room. As he saw the torment in Eric’s eyes, he grasped their captive’s shoulder and pulled her around. A strange sight met his gaze.
Gone were the wrinkled features of the old charwoman. Only a smudge of make-up here and there remained to betray the secret. An oval face, lovely with a foreign, exotic charm, looked up at him in despair.
“Good God!” he said, half under his breath. He reached out toward the tangled hair. Two slim hands, no longer gnarled, flew up to her head, but it was too late. As he lifted away the wig, the lustrous black hair of a beautiful woman was revealed. The last faint hope vanished from Eric Gordon’s blue eyes.
“Sonya!” he groaned. “To think you could do that awful thing!”
A haunted look crossed her face.
“I didn’t kill him,” she said in a shaken voice. “It was only intended to drive him from the room while—”
“While you stole the golden skull,” Traile finished grimly. “But you killed him, nevertheless.”
“No, no! I was not the—” She broke off, drew herself up with a quiet dignity. “Arrest me if you will. I am a criminal — yes. But I have never killed anyone.”
Eric had come into the room, was watching her in misery. But at her last words some of the hope came back into his face.
“Michael, she’s telling the truth! Look at her eyes — you can see—”
Traile smiled bitterly.
“I’m afraid your infatuation has blinded you, Eric.”
“It’s not infatuation!” Eric burst out hotly. “If she weren’t any good, I’d never care—”
A slow flush came into Sonya Damitri’s pale cheeks as he left the sentence unfinished.
Traile broke in coldly before she could speak.
“Even if you’re telling the truth, you’re still an accessory to murder.”
“Didn’t you hear?” Eric cried fiercely. “She wasn’t the one who did it — she’s innocent!”
The girl gave him a sad smile from under her long black lashes.
“I shall never forget — that you believed in me,” she said softly.
There was a sudden movement in the doorway.
“Good work,” came a muffled snarl. “Raise your hands — you two!”
Traile had wheeled as the man appeared. There in the doorway stood one of the gray-faced men. His oddly sunken eyes glared over a leveled gun. For a split second, Traile hesitated, but Eric was in his line of fire. Slowly, he raised his hands. The Gray Man stepped into the room. He closed the door, snatched Eric’s gun and thrust it into his pocket.
“Get the other one,” he harshly ordered Sonya. His bloodless lips seemed hardly to move when he spoke.
The girl hastily took Traile’s gun, laid it on a desk. He saw her wince before the look in Eric’s eyes.
“Where is the Golden Skull?” demanded the Gray Man. His queer eyes flicked toward the dirty water in the bucket which Sonya had carried.
“It’s still in there,” she said in a low voice. “They haven’t dropped the line.”
“It will be down in a few seconds,” said the man. “Be ready to hook on the bucket while I take care of these two.”
A frightened light came into her great black eyes.
“You can’t kill them!” Her expression quickly altered, under his penetrating glare. “The last orders were that they were to be taken alive.”
“There’s no chance for that now,” retorted the Gray Man. “I’d better finish them.”
“You know the penalty for disobeying!” the girl exclaimed. “Tie them up, or lock them in that closet.”
Something scraped, out on the fire escape. Sonya picked up the bucket and carried it to the window. As the Gray Man drove the two captives toward the closet, Traile saw a hook dangling just outside. The girl grasped it, and in a moment he saw the bucket disappear upward.
“Hurry up and finish changing,” the Gray Man muttered nervously. “Those agents may be up here any minute.”
Sonya took up a thick briefcase from the desk, and ran into the room adjoining the office. The man twitched his gun toward Eric.
“Reach back and open that door. And don’t try any tricks.”
Eric obeyed in angry silence. The Gray Man cast a hasty look into the closet, evidently searching for something to bind and gag the two men. Traile had not moved, after being forced back toward the wall, but his dark eyes never left their captor’s face. Suddenly the Gray Man stiffened.
“Turn around!” he said in a muffled tone.
Eric started to obey, but Traile halted him with a swift warning.
“Watch out! He intends to slug you!”
The Gray Man lunged toward him, stopped with a snarled oath, swerving his gun back and forth to cover them.
“Turn around, both of you!” he rasped. “Unless you want a dose of lead!”
Eric tensed, but Traile signaled with a jerk of his head.
“Hold it! He doesn’t dare kill us.”
There was a gasp, and Sonya reappeared. The ragged dress of the charwoman had been replaced by a smart knitted suit, and a small sport hat covered her dark hair. Instead of the shabby shoes, she wore a pair of modish pumps. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “I told you — look out!”
Her cry was directed at Eric. In the brief instant when the Gray Man’s gaze jerked toward her, Eric had crouched for a spring. But the other man had whirled, lifting his gun for a furious blow. Traile hurtled between him and Eric. The butt of the pistol, descending with a force that would have crushed Eric’s skull, struck Traile’s shoulder.
That sudden leap had knocked Eric backward into the closet. The impact of the gun numbed Traile’s left arm, swung him around. He lashed out with his right, and the Gray Man’s pistol jetted flame toward the ceiling. But before Traile could wrest the gun from his hand, a vicious blow to the stomach sent him reeling. The door slammed as he fell against Eric, then the lock clicked, and the voices of Sonya and the Gray Man quickly died away.
It was half a minute before Traile could get his breath from that blow to his solar plexus. Eric frantically bent over him in the dark.
“Michael! Oh, good Lord, he’s been shot!”
“No — only took my wind,” Traile managed to groan. He pulled himself to his feet. “We’ve got to break out of here.”
He turned his uninjured shoulder, and together they crashed against the door. At the second attempt, a panel splintered. As the door burst open, Allen and three of his men charged into the room.
“What the hell?” yelped the senior agent as he recognized them.
“No time to explain!” said Traile. “They hauled the skull up to the roof!”
“They must be crossing to the next building,” snapped Allen. He and his agents raced for the elevators.
Traile’s gun was still lying on the desk. He picked it up, went out into the hall. Another squad of agents appeared. Traile tersely described Sonya while Eric stood by unhappily. The operatives quickly separated to look for her and continue their search for the Gray Man. Traile and Eric silently went down to the fourteenth floor.
Ten minutes later a glum-faced group assembled in Allen’s office.
“They’re a slick outfit, all right,” growled the senior agent. “They got away clean.”
“What about the girl?” Eric asked, staring at the floor.
The agent named Weller spoke up.
“She went right out the front way, before we got the second warning.” He grinned ruefully. “When you’re looking for an old charwoman, you don’t stop a classy dame like that.”
Traile was the only one who saw the relief in Eric’s eyes. There was a brief silence, then he turned to Bannister.
“Do you happen to know whether Harley Kent still owns the Vare Diamond?”
The millionaire looked surprised.
“So far as I know. Why?”
“I want to pay him a visit.” Traile looked at Allen. “I think you’d better come, too.”
“What about the protection I asked for?” said Bannister. In the last half-hour, his unshaven face had become more haggard than ever.
“You can go along with us,” said Allen. “We’ll talk over the details on the way.”
As they went out, two men came along the hall which led to the laboratory. They were carefully carrying a porcelain tray with a pane of glass for a cover. As Traile glanced down, the hall lights sparkled in the rainbow dust which had once been a man.
Chapter 7 “You Have Till Midnight to Live”
For almost half an hour, the talking Buddha had been silent. Before the idol, the Yellow Doctor sat like some grim statue of Satan. His glittering, tawny eyes were fixed in space. Only the restless tapping of his talon-like fingers betrayed the tension within him.
Suddenly the eyes of the Buddha glowed bright green. The Crime Emperor swiftly leaned forward.
“Main Control!” The words all but crackled.
“The Golden Skull is recovered,” a voice said rapidly. “A Federal technician examining it was destroyed. Operating group safely withdrawn, and Agent Twenty-two also clear. No clues left unless by the Gray Man cooperating.”
Dr. Yen Sin slowly sat back in his chair.
“What report on Michael Traile?”
“Left the building ten minutes ago with man known as Citizen Nine, Gordon, and Agent Allen,” was the reply from the idol. “Gordon carried small black box strapped to what appeared to be a toy church. Party was delayed at the door by arrival of Police Commissioner, presumably investigating Courtland case, also by detectives covering the action in Lexington Avenue. Traile and Allen conferred privately with the commissioner, then followed Gordon and Citizen Nine into a car. Personal observation transferred to Group Two.”
The Crime Emperor touched one of the buttons before him. A buzzing was audible, and the numbered wheel began to rotate slowly. In a few seconds the Buddha’s eyes, which had dimmed, shone brightly again.
“Group Two.” A husky voice spoke against a muffled background of traffic sounds. “On Fifth Avenue, following car containing—”
“I am already informed,” Dr. Yen Sin interrupted, “as to the occupants. Notify me at once when they arrive at Hotel Lordmore.”
“They’re not going to the Lordmore,” came the hurried reply from the talking Buddha. “Observer in crowd overheard senior agent’s orders to the escort, to follow them to residence of Harley Kent.”
The Yellow Doctor’s robed figure stiffened.
“This should have been reported at once!”
“We tried, but the signal wasn’t answered,” began the other nervously. “I thought—”
“Break contact!” said Dr. Yen Sin. “Proceed as rapidly as possible to the Kent residence. Assign one man to carry out these instructions.” He spoke incisively for almost a minute. “Act at once on his signal. I shall delay the escorting agents, but count on no more than two minutes.”
As the eyes of the idol darkened, the Crime Emperor quickly bent over the row of buttons before him.
With Eric Gordon at the wheel, the sedan swung away from the curb, moving slowly through the crowd which had gathered. Michael Traile, seated in the rear with Bannister, glanced back carelessly. The car with the escorting agents was following at a short distance.
“I hope you don’t expect another attack,” Bannister said uneasily.
Traile shook his head.
“It’s not likely, now. Besides, this car is armored and the windows are bulletproof.”
The millionaire drew a breath of relief.
“Thank Heaven for that! I’ve had enough to last me for a long time.”
“It beats me,” Allan grated from the front seat, “how they’ve got away with everything. The Courtland affair was bad enough — but that damned business right in a Federal building—”
“I told you we were fighting a master criminal,” Traile said a trifle wearily. He lighted a cigarette, leaned back and relaxed his tightened muscles. “Every important move he makes is planned like a military maneuver, with detailed orders to every man — or woman — involved.”
From his position at the right, he could see Eric flush. Bannister shook his head.
“It’s incredible, a thing like that here in Manhattan. If I hadn’t had proof through those secret reports—”
“I was going to ask you about those,” said Traile. His words had an oddly lazy note, the result of his complete relaxation. “Have you tried to trace the sender?”
“Yes, but it was useless,” growled the millionaire. “Some came by ordinary mail, some by messengers who could give only vague descriptions of the person who paid for them. They’ve been sent to my Wall Street office, my hotels — even to my yacht.”
Traile’s dark eyes were on the rear-vision mirror up forward.
“The one this morning?” he asked absently.
Bannister scowled.
“It was at the desk when I hurried down. One of the clerks had heard the radio flash about poor old Courtland, and knowing our association he called me at once. When I reached the desk, he told me the letter had been brought in by a special messenger, about an hour before. It was marked Urgent.”
Traile gazed through the smoke from his cigarette.
“If we only knew his exact motive,” he mused. “Blackmail, yes — but if I know the Invisible Emperor that’s only a means to an end.”
A queer hunted expression came into Bannister’s eyes.
“Until this morning,” he began slowly, “I never considered anything but plain blackmail. But after Courtland’s murder — and those Chinese gunmen—” He hesitated, made an impatient gesture. “It’s ridiculous, I suppose, but I suddenly recalled an episode which occurred in China almost six years ago.”
Both Allen and Eric started, and Traile’s bronzed face lost its indolent look.
“I didn’t know you’d been in China,” he said quickly.
The millionaire nodded.
“It was in connection with my importing business — my freight steamship line. I was there about a year, and I’d put over some pretty shrewd deals, when strange things began to happen. One of my ships caught fire — two of my confidential men disappeared — I was threatened with death unless I paid tribute to some mysterious Chinese. I fought back, but things became so bad that I had to leave. The officials at Shanghai told me that they were helpless — that this devil called the Shek would revenge himself if I ever returned.”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Traile said in a grim voice. “The man they called the ‘Cobra’ was none other than Doctor Yen Sin, the man we are seeking.”
Bannister looked at him in consternation. “What! You mean to say this Invisible Emperor is a Chinese?”
“Right — and in my opinion the most dangerous man alive! A super-scientist, an evil genius with the ruthless will of a dictator — and an Oriental hatred for the white race that amounts to a mania.”
There was perspiration on the millionaire’s forehead, and Traile saw the fear in his eyes.
“Then I was right,” Bannister said hoarsely. “It’s personal vengeance he’s after.”
Traile’s eyes were again on the rear-vision mirror.
“Perhaps so,” he muttered. “But in these other cases—” He whirled, stared through the window behind him.
“What’s the matter?” exclaimed Allen.
“A suspicious-looking car has been following along with the traffic,” Traile answered. “I noticed it at one side of the escort machine when we left Lexington Avenue. It just now turned and dashed into Forty-fifth Street.”
“You mean that black delivery truck?” cut in Eric.
“That’s the one,” said Traile. “But I’ve a hunch that it was no ordinary truck. There was no name on it. The driver and the man with him looked foreign. Also, that black glass in the side looked like the old speakeasy-door kind, the type you can see through and not be seen. There may have been more men inside.”
As he spoke, Traile leaned down and switched on the miniature radio set.
“What’s the idea of that?” queried Bannister.
Traile lifted the set to his knee.
“Doctor Yen Sin is using a special microwave radio to transmit orders to his agents. We caught one message, but—” He bent over quickly as one hand in the church-steeple quivered. “We’re in the beam! He must be sending a message to those men in the truck.”
“Then why don’t we hear it?” objected Allen.
“They’ve shifted to a waveband out of our range, but the indicator is wired higher and it registers.” Traile stared down at the trembling needle. “Step on it, Eric! Get to Kent’s place as fast as you can!”
The sedan shot forward, grazed a bus, wove swiftly through traffic. At Forty-seventh Street, a policeman whistled peremptorily for them to slow down. Allen had already jerked his gold F.B.I. shield from an inner pocket. He flashed it, shouted at the officer. The sedan sped on. Two minutes later, as Eric was swinging left in the upper Fifties, Allen gave a startled exclamation.
“Wait a minute! We’ve lost the other car.”
“We can’t stop now,” said Traile. “That may be part of the scheme, to cut them off.”
“What do you think they’re up to?” Bannister asked in alarm.
“It must be connected with the Vare Diamond,” Traile responded crisply.
It was only half a block from Fifth Avenue to the old brownstone house which served as bachelor quarters for Harley Kent, well-known collector of rare jewels. As the sedan slid to a halt in front of the building, Traile looked quickly down the street. Then, still holding the micro-set, he jumped out and motioned for the others to follow.
“There’s a chance they may have—” He stopped, as the door opened and a frightened-looking manservant came running down the steps.
“What’s wrong?” Allen demanded.
“Mr. Kent — he’s been murdered!” cried the man.
“Good Lord,” rasped the F.B.I. agent. He sprang up the steps. Traile and the others quickly followed with the servant. As they entered, Traile shoved the strapped set under his arm and drew his .38.
“When did it happen?” he asked the manservant in a low tone.
“I don’t know, sir,” the man wailed. “I just came in and found him there—” He pointed a trembling hand into the library.
Traile pushed him ahead, cast a keen glance around the hall before following Bannister and Eric into the room. Allen stood transfixed, a few feet from the doorway. Traile looked, then he, too, stopped in his tracks.
In a high-backed chair at the head of the library table sat Harley Kent. His hands were tied behind the chair, keeping his body from falling forward. A wide strip of purplish tape covered his lips, except at one spot where dark blood had oozed out and was slowly dropping. The dead man’s eyes were open with an agonized stare.
But that tortured face, terrible as it was, held Traile’s eyes only a moment. For Harley Kent had been stripped to the waist, and his bared chest stabbed three times with a red-hot iron. The three ugly wounds formed a triangle, with one hole over the heart, and directly in the center of the triangle was a tiny gilt seal. It was in the shape of a skull.
For a moment no one moved. Then Traile stepped close to the dead man.
“Another murder in the name of the Chuen Gin Lou,” he said in a hard voice.
Eric looked down at the seal, and a grimace twitched his lips.
“Michael, that thing has the same hideous expression as the Golden Skull!”
Traile slowly nodded, stooped to look at the mutilating wounds in Harley Kent’s breast. As he straightened, he saw the manservant shudder and turn away. Mark Bannister was gazing with a horrified fascination at the corpse.
“God!” he said thickly. “He must have gone through hell before he died.”
Allen had not spoken since he entered. But as the servant stepped back, the lanky F.B.I. man suddenly bent over. He stood up with a large plush jewel case in his hands.
“This must be the answer,” he said harshly. “The devils probably got away with some valuable stones.”
Just as he started to open it, Traile caught a furtive movement near the door.
“Wait!” he rapped out. But it was too late. Even as he spoke, Allen pressed the catch. The lid of the jewel case flew open, and a dark, fragrant vapor instantly poured forth.
“The incense!” Eric cried thickly. He took a blind step forward, fell to his knees. Traile had sprung toward the doorway, where the servant was stealing out. But as the fragrant anesthetic engulfed him, an unwanted weakness sent him staggering. Allen and Bannister were both crumpling to the floor. A terrific pain shot through his head. He caught at the table, then as he saw the servant’s tense face in the entry he let himself fall with a groan. The next second he heard the man racing up the hall toward the front of the house.
He pulled himself up, stumbled toward the door. While his sleepless brain refused to yield to the drug, a feeling of exhaustion threatened to overcome him. He forced himself on, gripped the knob and pulled the door open. The fresh air from the hall was like a dash of cold water in his face. He gulped in a deep breath, tightened his grasp on the pistol, which had almost slipped from his fingers.
From the entrance of the house came a peculiar whistle. Traile lunged toward the vestibule, sucking deep breaths into his lungs. As he reached the door, he saw the false servant signal hastily toward the street, then a motor roared, and the black truck swiftly drew up in front.
Abruptly, the other man turned and saw Traile. His pinched face contorted in amazement and terror. Then, like a cornered rat, he sprang. Traile’s gun was already lifted. He slashed it fiercely along the side of the spy’s head. With a howl, the man teetered backward, rolled down the steps.
Two men had leaped from the front seat of the truck. Dismay spread over their features as Traile appeared. One of them jumped back, shouting toward the rear of the machine. Instantly, a section of dark glass slid open in the side of the truck. The muzzled snout of a silenced machine gun poked up at Traile.
Traile flung himself down, firing as he dropped. The man behind the machine gun toppled to the floor of the truck. Another figure sprang to take his place, but the driver stopped him with a furious yell.
“You fool! We’ve got to get him alive!”
“It’s too late!” The false servant had scrambled to his feet, blood streaming down his face. “Beat it! G-men!”
A taxi was thundering down the street from the direction of Fifth Avenue. In a hurried side-glance, Traile saw two of Allen’s agents on the running boards. With frantic haste, the Invisible Emperor’s spies jumped into the speed-truck and fled. Traile stood up, pumped two shots at the rear of the machine, but it raced on and was quickly swallowed up in traffic.
“Let it go!” Traile exclaimed, as one of the agents shot a hasty question at him. “I need your help inside.”
He had left the library door open, and when he and the first of the squad entered they found the three victims beginning to stir. Traile and the others carried them out into the hall, and they soon revived. Bannister was the first one able to speak.
“What the devil happened?”
“We walked into a neat trap,” Traile said with a slight note of curtness. “Kent had been dead hours before we got here — but Yen Sin twisted it to his advantage and nearly won.”
Ten minutes later, the entire group returned to the library for a final examination of the scene while they waited for the police. Suddenly a clicking sounded from the micro-set which Traile had laid on the table. Then, to his astonishment, the voice of the Yellow Doctor spoke.
“I congratulate you, Mr. Traile, but you have only delayed our meeting.”
There was a hush as the assembled men stared at the miniature radio. Then the sibilant voice of Yen Sin continued.
“And to Citizen Nine, I give this final message: You have until midnight to live!”
Chapter 8 Murder Garden
Night had fallen over Manhattan. From the roof of the towering Hotel Lordmore, the vast expanse of lighted streets below was pleasantly remote, a picturesque background for Mark Bannister’s sumptuous penthouse.
Along the stone guard-wall at one end of the roof, Michael Traile stood with a field glass raised to his eyes. The millionaire paced restlessly back and forth beside him.
“It’s after ten,” Bannister grated out. “If Allen’s coming up with more men, why isn’t he here?”
Traile did not seem to have heard him. He moved the glass slowly over the twinkling lights on the East River, on out toward the Sound, then back to the nearest skyscraper.
“An excellent view,” he said as he put down the glass.
“To hell with the view!” exploded the millionaire. “Do you realize I’m likely to go like Kent and poor old Courtland?”
“I don’t think you need worry,” Traile said calmly. “This place is almost impregnable.”
Bannister stared back through the gloom, to where Eric Gordon and two F.B.I. men stood near the brightly lighted penthouse.
“That’s what I thought,” he muttered. “But from all you’ve told me, this Doctor Yen Sin must be almost superhuman. And now that Cloyd has disappeared—”
He shook his head gloomily.
Traile turned a moment later, as Eric quickly approached them.
“Your elevator signal is buzzing,” Eric said to Bannister.
Bannister strode toward the penthouse. Traile and Eric followed him through a Japanese gate, one of the curios the millionaire had brought back from the East. It opened into a walled Oriental garden, partly roofed and rather flamboyantly blending Chinese and Japanese motifs. A pale purple moon shone dimly on a tiny arched bridge, under which ran an artificial brook. Back in the shadows stood a pagoda-shaped shrine. Colored lanterns, farther on, illuminated an open display of Samurai swords, Chinese highbinder hatchets, and other Oriental weapons of a past day.
The millionaire scowled about him as he stalked through the garden.
“This place is going to be changed. After today, I don’t want anything Chinese around me!”
“I don’t blame you,” said Eric. “Even the sight of a Chink laundryman gives me the jitters now.”
In the large reception hall, Bannister stopped before his private switchboard. He spoke into a phone, listened, then turned a knob marked Elevator.
“It’s Allen and his men,” he grunted.
Traile’s dark eyes were watching the indicator. The car came up swiftly, stopped automatically. Bannister peered through the observation panel, touched the release which opened the double doors. Allen and the operative named Johnson stepped out. Bannister frowned.
“Where are the rest of your men?”
The lanky senior agent shrugged.
“Helping the cops search Chinatown. After Weller phoned me about the layout up here, I didn’t think we’d need any more.”
The millionaire glowered at him. Allen rubbed his jaw, looked around curiously.
“Weller said the elevator is the only way to get up here. I guess this job’s a cinch.”
“I told him there was also an emergency exit,” snapped Bannister. He pointed to a heavy door with massive double locks. “However, it can be opened only from this side, and there’s a similar door — locked the same way — at the bottom of the steps. It opens into the hall of the floor below. Both doors are connected with these burglar-alarm bells on the switchboard.”
Allen nodded, glanced at Traile.
“I guess we won’t see the Yellow Doctor tonight... By the way, here’s your gun. You left it at the Kent place.”
Bannister gave Traile a sour look. “A lot of help you’d have been, if anything had happened while we were driving to the hotel tonight. They might have kidnapped me — and I’d probably have died like Harley Kent.”
Traile inspected the magazine of the .38, slid it back into the butt.
“In that case,” he said, “you would have died very quickly.”
“It’s plain he was tortured,” snapped the millionaire. “How do you know how he died?”
“I should know,” Traile said coolly. “I was the one who killed him.”
Bannister took a step backward.
“You?” he rasped. Then the angry glare returned to his eyes. “This is no time for jokes!”
“I’m not joking,” said Traile. He looked at Eric and Johnson, who were staring at him in amazement. Then he turned back to the millionaire. “I killed him in self-defense. Harley Kent was the Gray Man I shot at the Courtland mansion.”
Bannister looked from him to Allen. The senior agent nodded.
“That’s right. The slug found in Kent’s heart tallied exactly in rifling marks with a test bullet fired from that .38.”
“But I don’t understand,” Bannister said dazedly.
“It’s quite simple,” Traile told him. “They were attempting to cover up the truth. From the medical examiner’s report, Kent’s body must have been brought to his home soon after the Gray Men escaped from the Courtland place. They bound it as you saw, then stabbed it with a red-hot poker, also plunging the iron into the bullet hole in his left side so it would look like the other wounds. Either they forgot the bullet in their haste, or they had no means of probing for it.”
“But — Harley Kent, a criminal!” Bannister exclaimed. “Why, it’s impossible!”
Traile’s deep-tanned face was stern.
“He was evidently driven to it by desperation. If I’m right, the Gray Men are rich and influential victims of the Yellow Doctor. Perhaps one or two are willing members, actuated by greed in joining the Invisible Empire. But I think most of them have been trapped by blackmail or some other insidious scheme, and then forced to do Yen Sin’s bidding.”
The millionaire looked horrified.
“Then that’s what he intended to do with me!”
“It looks that way,” Traile said grimly.
“What about the gray faces of those men?” put in Agent Johnson. “You think they were made up, like that girl this morning?”
Eric Gordon winced. Traile shook his head.
“Nothing that complicated. I believe they wear some kind of thin rubber masks which conform partly with their real features, yet conceal their identity. That adhesive tape on Kent’s mouth gave me a hint. I found sticky spots where something had adhered to his face. I thought of a mask, and that fitted in with what I noticed about that wound. They must wear the masks so they will be able to distinguish each other when they’re carrying out some mission, and still be disguised from other members of the Invisible Empire — perhaps even from one another.”
“The thing’s fantastic,” Bannister said incredulously. “What possible good could it do this Invisible Emperor?”
As Traile replied he led the way out to the unlighted sun deck.
“Getting them more deeply involved would be the initial reason. I suspect that he’s building toward some tremendous goal, and he wants to get those men completely in his power so that they can’t rebel at the last. But whatever it is, the stakes are sure to be enormous.”
Allen savagely bit off the end of a cigar.
“After what happened to Jim Stone, I’d like just one minute with that yellow fiend!”
He scratched a match on the guard-wall. Bannister jumped nervously at the sound. Allen paused with the blazing match half-raised to his cigar.
“By the way, where’re Murdock and Weller?”
“On the other side,” volunteered Eric.
“Let’s go around there,” said Allen.
As they started along the dark walk by the guard-wall, the musical sound of chimes came from somewhere in the penthouse.
“Eleven o’clock!” Bannister said in a strained voice. “By God, I’m going in where it’s light!”
He wheeled back along the sun deck, but he had not taken four steps when a voice rose in a shout from the other side of the roof.
“Help! Something’s happened to Weller!”
Traile whirled to Eric Gordon and Allen.
“You two stay here with Bannister!”
Johnson snapped on a flashlight as he ran after Traile.
“Hold it out to the side,” Traile flung over his shoulder.
The light swerved and, as they reached the Japanese gate, fell on the chunky figure of Agent Murdock. The man’s round face had a stunned expression.
“This way!” he jerked out hoarsely.
They followed him through the garden. Beyond the little arched bridge Murdock halted, pointing dumbly to the floor. Kneeling there before the shrine, bent over with his forehead to a prayer mat, was Weller. His face, as seen from the side, was the color of old parchment.
Traile shot a swift look backward, then stooped over the silent figure. The man did not move as he touched him. He grasped the agent’s shoulder, shook it. Weller toppled over sidewise, his body rigidly retaining its queer, kneeling pose.
“He’s dead!” gasped Johnson.
Traile wheeled, took the flashlight, and swept it about the garden.
“Did you see it happen?” he demanded of Murdock.
Before Murdock could answer, Bannister and the others appeared from the direction of the sun deck. Eric Gordon and Allen were trying to keep the millionaire back. But he pulled away from them.
“I insist on knowing what—” He broke off as he saw the queerly rigid body. “My God, he’s been killed!”
“Weller!” groaned Allen. He sprang forward, but Traile stopped him.
“Wait! Don’t touch him yet.” He probed the flashlight around again, then turned quickly to Bannister. “Those colored lanterns don’t help much. Switch on some bright lights.”
Bannister shook his head.
“The lanterns are the only ones connected in the garden.”
Traile bent for a hasty scrutiny of Weller’s body. Then, at his direction, Murdock and Johnson carried the dead agent into the reception hall. He closed the glass door to the garden, handed Allen the flashlight.
“Keep it pointed at that door. Eric, you and Johnson watch toward the sides of the roof. Fire at anything that moves.”
“I thought you searched this place,” Alien muttered.
“We did,” Traile said grimly. He looked at Murdock. “Now, let’s hear what you know.”
The man tore his eyes away from the grotesquely stiffened form on the floor.
“I thought he was somewhere near me. He’d been wandering around in the garden. Then I heard something buzz, like a bee, right close to my ear. It gave me a start, and I began looking for Weller. When I found him he was bent down in front of that heathen shrine, just like he was praying. He was shaking as though he was scared to death, and he wouldn’t say a word. That’s when I yelled for help.”
Allen took his gaze from the glass door for a brief stare at the dead man. “He must’ve had some kind of fit. But I never heard of rigor mortis setting in so fast.”
Traile motioned to Bannister. “Help me turn him over.”
The millionaire recoiled.
“I wouldn’t even touch him! You can’t tell what killed him.”
“I can guess,” Traile said shortly. He turned the dead agent onto his back. Weller’s head was still bent, and his limbs rigidly fixed in their curious position. Traile looked at the wildly dilated eyes, then pointed to a small brown spot under Weller’s jaw.
“There’s the answer. A tiny dart or needle went in there. That smear is lakta, a Malay poison. There’s enough left on the outside to stop a full-grown tiger.”
As he stood up the others looked at him with horror.
“Then that buzz I heard—” Murdock said, ashen-faced.
“Was either that dart — or another one meant for you,” Traile finished.
Bannister suddenly turned and closed the door to the sun deck.
“Leave it open,” Traile said quickly.
“You’re crazy!” rasped the millionaire. “The dart must have been shot from the top of that office building across the street. They may shoot another at any second.”
“None of Yen Sin’s killers are on top of that building,” snapped Traile. “The danger is here on this roof.”
“Then why are you standing here idle?” stormed Bannister. He made a furious gesture. “You’ve bungled it from start to finish — had me get rid of my bodyguards — refused to call in the police—”
Traile went after him as he spun around toward his private telephone.
“What are you going to do?”
“Get some real protection up here!” snarled Bannister. “You’ve let one man be murdered, and I’m likely to be the next!”
“You will be,” Trails said sharply, “if you try to send that signal!”
Bannister froze, glaring down at Traile’s leveled gun.
“Have you lost your senses?” he said hoarsely.
Traile’s dark eyes drilled into the other man’s face.
“The game’s up, Bannister. You’re a good actor — but not good enough.”
The millionaire tamed a chalky white.
“You’re stark mad!” he cried. “Grab his gun, one of you!”
Johnson jumped toward Traile, but Allen halted him with a brusque command. Traile searched the millionaire, handed a Mannlicher pistol to Eric.
“Keep him covered. Don’t let him get near that switchboard. He’d signal Yen Sin’s agents down in the hotel — and there may be two or three dozen of them planted in different rooms, waiting to come up here.”
Eric’s blue eyes were wide with astonishment.
“Then he’s really a member of the Invisible Empire?”
“Probably its chief agent in New York,” Traile answered. The attack in Lexington Avenue was a fake. Doctor Yen Sin deliberately sacrificed those Chinese gunmen for effect, so that Bannister wouldn’t be suspected while he helped to recover the gold skull.”
“I tell you you’re crazy,” fumed the millionaire. “I never heard of him until today — except as the ‘Cobra.’ ”
A cold smile lighted Traile’s lean face.
“The secret reports and those other half-truths were clever business, Bannister — but you gave yourself away when you played the role of the Gray Man. You see, while you were unconscious at Kent’s home, I found one of the rubber gloves you wore as a Gray Man. Later Allen turned the glove inside out and took the fingerprints. They matched perfectly with those on the report you’d been handling.”
Murderous fury leaped into the other man’s eyes.
“I knew I should have killed you!”
Traile motioned with the .38.
“Turn around. Face the wall and keep your hands up against it.”
Bannister obeyed with an oath. Traile stepped back close to Allen, took from his pocket what appeared to be a thick toy pistol.
“Use this on him if you have to,” he whispered. He put the miniature gun on a stand by the F.B.I. man. “We don’t want to shoot him. I’m almost positive he’s Yen Sin’s key man in New York, and if we can make him talk we’ll wipe the Invisible Empire off the map.”
Allen had his left hand partway out of his coat pocket. He dropped whatever he had been about to withdraw.
“Then you’re not ready for—”
“Not yet,” Traile said in an undertone. “It’s clear that one of the Yellow Doctor’s assassins has been smuggled onto the roof. I think I know where he’s hiding.”
“Then take Murdock and Johnson and go after him,” Allen said hastily.
“No, you don’t know those devils. If he found he was trapped, he’d be sure to get one or two of us before he died. I’ve a plan for nabbing him. Give me a minute or so to steal around on the sun-deck side, and get near the gate. Then turn the flashlight away from the garden.”
“All right,” Allen agreed reluctantly. “But for Heaven’s sake be careful.”
With a final glance about him, Traile stepped through the door at his right and was soon hidden in the shadows. He had left the flashlight pointed toward the garden so that no one could see beyond it and observe his departure. He tiptoed along in the darkness, with his gun poised for a quick shot. His movements had the stealth of a stalking tiger.
He paused until his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, then went on toward the gate. He was moving now with infinite caution, making sure of each deep shadow. The glow from the flashlight shone through from the other end of the garden. He stopped, crouched down by the gate, waiting for the light to be shifted.
It was turned away in a few seconds, and he could see through the glass door at the farther end. Bannister was still facing the paneled wall, with Eric covering him. Allen and his two men were looking nervously about them. Only the dim light of the colored lanterns shone in the garden.
It was then that Traile noticed that the artificial moon had been turned off. He edged past the gate, moved silently toward the shrine. Within a few feet of it he suddenly halted. Was it imagination, or had a faint sound come from the shadows near the display of Oriental weapons?
He crouched at one side of the shrine, staring toward the spot. A minute passed. He heard Bannister’s angry voice, muffled by the glass door, and Allen’s curt response. Then silence again, a silence which grew more tense with every passing second.
From somewhere in the penthouse the sweet, musical sound of the chimes was audible again. Bannister at once burst into another angry protest. And in that moment the shrine began to move!
Traile sprang back, flattened himself against the decorated wall of the garden. His suspicion was right. The chimes were a signal to Bannister, controlled from the hiding place of the assassin.
Pivoting at one corner, the shrine swung open on noiseless hinges. Traile held his breath, for it was the side next to him which had swung away from the wall. Motionless, he waited, almost as dark as the shadow where he stood. As the shrine ceased to move, his finger took up the slack of his trigger.
No one appeared. Traile strained his eyes to pierce the darkness back of the shrine. Finally a faint pat-pat came to his ears, accompanied by a low, swishing sound. A shadowy figure seemed to rise from out of the floor. Traile watched in brief amazement, then the truth burst on him.
The shrine had concealed a secret stairway to a room on the floor below.
The man ascending the stairs was almost at the top, when, to Traile’s dismay, whispering voices sounded from below. The full peril of the situation struck him like a blow. A dozen of the Yellow Doctor’s spies must be coming up those steps.
Before he could hurl himself against the shrine, a robed form came into view. Traile’s pulses gave a leap.
It was Doctor Yen Sin!
Chapter 9 The Three Hatchets
Traile sprang and rammed his gun against the Yellow Doctor’s side, forcing him to block the narrow opening.
“Don’t move!” he said fiercely.
For just an instant, fear showed in the Satanic face before him. Then the cold mockery came back to Yen Sin’s eyes.
“So you decided to hasten our meeting, Mr. Traile?”
A low, metallic clink sounded from the other side of the garden. Traile half-whirled, trying to watch both directions. There stood a glaring Chinese with a hatchet!
As the man’s arm whipped forward, Traile desperately hurled himself sidewise. The hatchet buried itself in the shrine, just beyond his shoulder.
There was a rush of feet, and three men leaped from the stairway as Yen Sin stepped aside. Already off balance, Traile was thrown to the floor. A hand gripped his throat, cutting off his attempt at a shout. He jerked the gun toward the man’s head, but it was wrenched away.
As he was held down, one of the men hastily taped his mouth. Two more twisted his arms, then brought him to his feet at the Crime Emperor’s low-spoken command. He looked hopefully toward the penthouse door, but Bannister was still haranguing furiously and the muffled sounds of that silent battle had gone unheard.
Doctor Yen Sin calmly surveyed the scene beyond the glass door, from his vantage point in the gloom. Then he turned, spoke in a low tone to a sallow-skinned Eurasian. The half-caste went back toward the secret stairway, reappeared with a girl. As she tore herself free from the man’s grasp, Traile recognized the beautiful face of Sonya Damitri. The Yellow Doctor fixed his weird eyes on her.
“You will go with Kang Fu, and do as I instructed.”
She turned, hopelessly, with the Eurasian and two more spies closely following. They disappeared to the left of the arched bridge. Doctor Yen Sin nodded to the men holding Traile.
“To the right,” he said in whispered Chinese. “And move exactly as I ordered.”
Twisting his arms so that he was forced to walk on tiptoe, Traile’s captors marched him toward the side of the penthouse. As they neared the door to the reception hall, he saw Allen looking anxiously around the room. Eric had Bannister covered, but the millionaire’s head was twisted around and he was snarling something over his shoulder.
There was a sudden crash from the dim-lit garden. Allen jumped toward the glass door, and his two agents raced after him. Instantly, Traile’s captors plunged into the hall with him, and at the same moment Sonya appeared from the sun-deck side, two armed men crouching back of her.
Eric had whirled as the two doors burst open. He jerked his gun toward the left, then stood paralyzed at sight of Sonya. Bannister was on him in a flash. He snatched at the Mannlicher, and in a moment both men were on the floor, struggling for the gun.
Allen and the two agents had spun around at the first sound of action. After an instant of amazement, Murdock sprang at the men holding Traile. Something buzzed by Traile’s shoulder, and a dark spot appeared on Murdock’s cheek. The agent jerked to a stop, his eyes bulging. His lips opened convulsively, then his knees buckled and he fell to the floor.
The glass door was swiftly flung open, and three Burmese dacoits leaped at Allen and Johnson. With an ape-like jump, one of the thugs hurled himself onto Johnson’s back. The agent went down with the dacoit’s fingers locked around his throat. His head struck the floor with a thump, and he ceased to move.
The two other thugs seized Allen before he could turn. His right arm was wrenched around behind him with bone-breaking force. He groaned, let his pistol fall. With despair, Traile saw that Bannister had gained possession of the Mannlicher. Eric was writhing on the floor from a vicious blow to the groin.
As the millionaire jumped up, there was momentary silence. Then from the shadows of the garden, Doctor Yen Sin slowly came forward. He glanced around the room without emotion, turned to Bannister.
“If you had followed instructions,” he said icily, “this would not have been necessary.”
Bannister had a frightened look.
“I didn’t have a chance. Traile was onto me.”
The Yellow Doctor smiled contemptuously.
“I am afraid you lack in courage, my friend.”
“I’m in a spot,” the millionaire said harshly. “He guessed the truth this morning. They’ve probably got agents here in the building, ready to grab me.”
“They will not trouble you,” replied Doctor Yen Sin. He looked sardonically at Allen. “You should have advised at least some of your men not to ask for rooms on the topmost floors.”
Allen lunged at him.
“You yellow devil! What have you done with them?”
His captors hauled him back. The Crime Emperor regarded him without expression, then turned.
“And you, Mr. Traile — I gave you credit for more ingenuity.”
Traile met his gaze coolly. Doctor Yen Sin looked at his taped lips, beckoned to Traile’s guards.
“Bring him closer.” When they had obeyed, he fixed his strange, tawny eyes on Traile’s face. “I shall not insult your intelligence by any pretense about your eventual end. But I shall make it more swift in exchange for certain information.”
He signaled to the Eurasian who had used Sonya as a shield.
“Kang Fu, assist Mr. Traile to speak.”
The half-caste approached with an ugly grin. Traile set his jaw. Kang Fu reached out, brutally ripped away the tape. It was like a fiery lash across Traile’s lips, but he made no sound. Doctor Yen Sin gave him a thin smile.
“An heroic display of bravery, Mr. Traile. And now, the first question. What is the drug which enables you to go without sleep for so long?”
Traile made no answer. The Yellow Doctor frowned, then nodded to the men holding him. They forced Traile against the wall, twisting his arms until it seemed they would be torn from their sockets. Drops of perspiration stood out on his forehead. He saw Sonya close her eyes, shuddering. A red-hot agony shot through his ever-wakeful brain. Then, abruptly, that torturing pull was relaxed.
“He would faint before he would speak,” he heard Yen Sin mutter. “Hold him there. We will try another way.”
Eric Gordon had almost recovered from Bannister’s cruel blow. As he staggered to his feet, the Crime Emperor gestured curtly to the millionaire.
“Keep him back.” He turned, whispered to the Chinese whom Traile had seen in the garden. The man disappeared, came back quickly. In spite of himself, Traile started as he saw the three hatchets the Chinese carried.
“I see you have heard of this ceremony,” Doctor Yen Sin said with ironic amusement. “Perhaps you are ready to answer the first question?”
Traile’s eyes shifted for an instant to Allen. The F.B.I. man was looking helplessly toward the door to the darkened sun deck. Yen Sin quickly followed Traile’s glance, but Allen was now staring at the floor. The Yellow Doctor motioned to the waiting hatchet man. Eric burst out with a cry as the Chinese took his position.
“Tell him, Michael, for God’s sake!”
“It would do no good,” said Traile, grimly.
His captors drew away on each side, still holding his arms twisted so that he was forced against the wall. He felt them tense as the Chinese drew back the first hatchet.
“One,” said Doctor Yen Sin.
The hatchet man’s arm shot forward. With a savage swish, the weapon dashed toward Traile. For an instant it seemed aimed straight between his eyes. Then it whirled past and thudded into the wall an inch from his head. The quivering handle almost touched his ear.
The Crime Emperor looked at him with slitted eyes.
“Now, are you ready to speak?”
Before Traile had time to reply, Eric recklessly leaped past Bannister and struck at Traile’s nearest guard.
“Get back!” Traile groaned. “They’ll only kill you, too.”
Kang Fu and a dacoit seized Eric, pulled him away. Doctor Yen Sin gazed shrewdly from Traile to Eric.
“I perceive a swifter means for my purpose,” he said to the millionaire.
At his brief order, Traile was hustled to one side, and Eric pinioned against the wall in his place. Sonya Damitri ran toward Yen Sin, but he thrust her aside. She turned wildly to Traile.
“You brought him into this! Save him, while there is yet time.”
The Crime Emperor’s yellow face darkened.
“I will have no more of your maudlin sympathy for this young American!” He gave a command, and a ferocious-looking Burmese dragged the girl out of the way. Then he turned to Traile. “Her suggestion, however, is the one I intended to make. I will free him when it is safe — if you answer my two questions. The first one you know. The second: What are the names of the other Q-men?”
Traile faced him stonily.
“I’ll tell you, if you include Allen and Johnson — and swear by the bones of your ancestors that you’ll free them.”
Yen Sin’s brows drew together, then he looked around at Allen and the unconscious agent on the floor.
“I agree,” he said, shortly. “But they will not be liberated in this country.”
“Very well,” Traile said. “Then here are your answers. There is no drug — I can’t sleep because of an accident. And there are no other Q-men.”
The Yellow Doctor stiffened, then the pupils of his queer eyes dilated with a violent passion.
“Do you expect me to believe such childish lies?” He whirled to the hatchet man, pointed at Eric. “Finish your work!”
“Wait!” Traile cried. “I’ve told you the truth!”
But the second hatchet was already whizzing through the air. Sonya screamed, and Traile turned cold with fear. Then, with a tremendous surge of relief, he saw that Eric fortunately had not tried to dodge. The hatchet had half-buried itself in the paneled wall, so that now the two handles kept his head from moving.
Yen Sin turned a look of icy hate on Traile.
“A last chance! Answer — or the third hatchet goes squarely between the others!”
Eric’s boyish face was white, but his lips were trying to smile.
“All right!” Trails said desperately. “I’ll tell you! Here in the back of my wristwatch... a supply of the capsules...”
Yen Sin’s tawny eyes lit with an eager flame. At his sharp command, the dacoit at Traile’s right loosened his grasp to unstrap the watch. Traile jerked his arm free, swung with all his might at the man on his left. The thug’s head snapped back from the blow, and Traile dived madly for the toylike gun on the stand. The first dacoit plunged after him with a snarl of fury. Traile snatched up the miniature weapon, but the Burmese was on him before he could touch the trigger. Three more of Yen Sin’s agents were racing to the spot. Traile slammed his fist into the dacoit’s throat. As the man’s clawing hands fell away, he pressed the stubby trigger.
Zip! A cartridge of tear-gas concentrate burst against the wall. The steamy vapor almost instantly filled the room. Traile had frantically rolled to one side as he fired the tear-gas gun. He could dimly see two of Yen Sin’s men pile over the one he had crippled.
He jumped up, trying to find Allen. Pandemonium had broken loose behind him. Suddenly, a hazy figure bumped against him. A wild blow scraped along his shoulder, and he heard the other man curse. “Allen!” he rapped out.
“Where’s the doorway?” the agent said thickly.
Above the clamor, Yen Sin’s choked voice rose with a note of rage. Traile pushed Allen in the other direction. He heard the door being opened, felt cool air on his face. The senior agent stumbled outside. He was about to follow when a vague figure lunged into view. There was a gun in the man’s extended hand. He sprang, tore the weapon away. The man struck blindly at him, missed. Traile landed a left hook, sent him reeling backward.
Three shrill blasts of a whistle sounded from outside on the roof. They were echoed almost at once from somewhere near. Trail dashed through the doorway, leaped to one side. A fan of white light was spreading from the top of the building diagonally across the street. It flashed toward the hotel roof, then the whistle blasts were drowned by the piercing shriek of a siren.
Chapter 10 Death Trap
Three or four staggering figures were brilliantly outlined in the glare which swept the garden. One of the spies dashed his hand across his streaming eyes. When he caught sight of a man crouching down by the guard wall, he fiercely lifted his arm. Traile fired as he saw the man’s raised hatchet.
The Chinese lurched back, and the weapon dropped from his hand. He doubled over and fell. At the same moment Allen’s whistle shrilled another signal. From behind the floodlight, a tommy gun began to chatter. The spies in back of the hatchet man wilted to the floor.
As the tommy gun ceased to pound, the siren on the office building roof lessened its piercing shriek. From four directions, down in the streets of Manhattan, that shriek was quickly answered. Traile plunged back into the penthouse. The tear gas was being sucked out toward the garden, and he could now see the spot where Eric had stood. The two hatchets still protruded from the wall, but there was no sign of the young Southerner.
He stumbled over Murdock’s body, felt his way toward the glass door. Panicky voices were audible from the direction of the elevator. He ran toward it, but the doors had clicked shut. Through the steamy whiteness of the tear gas, the observation panel was visible. He dimly saw the group which had crowded into the car. Eric was struggling in the hands of Kang Fu and Bannister. In front of Sonya and two Asian spies stood Doctor Yen Sin.
Traile leaped toward the switchboard, but the car was starting to move and the special switch had no effect. He had a last glimpse of the Crime Emperor’s malignant face, then the car dropped from sight. He dashed out onto the roof. Allen was shouting through cupped hands at the squad of F.B.I. men over on the other building.
“Come on!” Traile broke in. “They’ve escaped and taken Eric!”
They ran past the bullet-torn gate. The dying hatchet man cursed them in Chinese as they hurried by. Traile turned to the shrine.
“Why not the emergency doors?” exclaimed Allen.
“Bannister has the keys,” clipped Traile. He poised the automatic, went down the narrow stairway, with Allen close behind. They emerged in one room of a special suite. A faint odor of incense was perceptible. The windows were closed and shuttered.
There were signs of hasty flight as they rushed through the other rooms, but no one was to be found. Traile led the way into the hall, just as more Federal agents with drawn guns appeared from the main elevators.
“Three of you stay up here — hunt for Clark’s squad!” yelled Allen. “The rest of you come along!”
They ran to the first elevator. As it shot downward, Traile fired a query at the frightened operator.
“How many doors to the penthouse shaft?”
“Three beside the roof, sir,” gasped the man. “Top floor, main, and the garage in the basement.”
“Drop us all the way,” rapped Traile. He looked at the leader of the squad. “Are the police closing in all right?”
“Yes, but I heard some shooting,” the agent replied quickly.
When they reached the basement, they found a scene of wild confusion. An F.B.I. man dashed up to Allen, a bloody arm dangling.
“That Chinese and the bunch with him got away! They had a dozen men in cop’s uniforms hidden around, and we got mixed up.”
Traile ran toward the first car he saw, a big Duesenberg. Allen and three others tumbled in after him, and he sent the machine speeding up the ramp. As they reached the street, the senior agent called something to a policeman in a squad car. The police machine roared ahead, with Traile keeping close behind.
“They’re heading toward the East River,” Allen yelled above the howl of the sirens.
Traile grimly nodded.
“They’ll probably make for Bannister’s yacht on Long Island Sound.”
Three minutes later the cars halted by a small dock opposite Blackwell’s Island. Nearby, a motorcycle man lay dead under his wrecked machine. Another officer, obviously wounded, ran toward them, cursing and groaning.
“They jumped on an express cruiser! They’re going up the West Channel!”
A red-faced lieutenant ran for the nearest phone, but it was several minutes before a fast police boat swung in to the dock. Traile and the others jumped aboard, and the boat sped ahead in pursuit of the fleeing craft. As they approached Ward Island, the man at the searchlight gave an exclamation.
“There’s a cruiser runnin’ without lights!”
The darkened boat heeled to pass through the narrow channel. As it swung into the wider expanse of the East River, south of the Bronx, a green rocket flared up from the gloom beyond. It was answered by a red rocket from the commuting-cruiser. The searchlight man swerved the beam toward the spot from which the green signal had come. It fell on a trim white yacht some distance ahead.
“Hell!” he said, startled. “Why, that’s the Mahola — Mark Bannister’s yacht!”
“Keep your light on the cruiser,” Traile said hurriedly. “They’ll trick us if they get the chance.”
After one attempt to dodge out of the beam, the commuter ploughed straight for the yacht. Traile frowned thoughtfully at the smaller craft.
“There’s something odd about this,” he muttered to Allen. “Even if we can’t stop it, they must know that the yacht will be caught before it reaches open sea.”
“Maybe we’ve been fooled,” Allen said hastily. “They might not be aboard at all.”
Traile looked at the searchlight man.
“Have you a pair of field glasses?”
“Right back of you,” said the policeman.
Traile focused them on the cruiser. He could see several figures in the luxuriously-fitted cockpit at the stern. Doctor Yen Sin was looking back impassively. He saw Kang Fu, and he thought he glimpsed Eric lying helpless at the half-caste’s feet. Bannister seemed to be arguing with the Crime Emperor. Yen Sin shook his head, turned, and vanished within the cabin.
“Don’t let them out of your beam for a second,” Traile said to the man at the searchlight. “The most dangerous criminal alive is in that boat.”
“You don’t mean Bannister?” the cop gasped.
“No, but he’s mixed up in it,” said Traile.
“The yacht’s lights are going on,” exclaimed Allen.
Traile stared toward the vessel. Only the riding lights had been showing. Now, lighted portholes made two strings of yellow dots along the yacht’s side. Another light glowed, up on the bridge, then a powerful searchlight swept around toward the police boat. Traile shielded his eyes, tried to see ahead. In a moment the searchlight shifted, and he saw another police boat putting out from Flushing Bay. He raised the field glasses. Bannister and Doctor Yen Sin were now visible up in the deckhouse, as the cruiser slowed and turned in toward the Mahola. He saw Kang Fu and another man drag Eric to his feet.
The commuting-boat passed out of sight on the other side of the yacht. Traile put down the glasses, took out his pistol. Allen followed suit, and his agents made ready to board the yacht. It was almost two minutes before they reached the Mahola. The police boat quickly circled around to the starboard side, where the express cruiser rode at the gangway, empty.
Muffled voices could be heard aboard the yacht. Traile flung a warning to the agents and police as he jumped to the gangway.
“Be on guard every second! That devil’s up to something. And watch out for the girl and a prisoner.”
The deck was deserted. The boarding party spread out, covering port and starboard sides. Traile and Allen hastily searched the bridge, ran aft toward the main salon. The muffled voices seemed to come from below. There was a peculiar background of throbbing, metallic sounds which made the words and the source hard to determine.
Several of the others joined them as they stole down the main companionway. The dining saloon was as empty as the one above, but the voices were somewhat louder. Suddenly Traile heard Bannister’s grating accents.
“But it cost me more than a million!”
“What are a few millions compared with all there is at stake?” came the calm retort of Doctor Yen Sin.
Traile ran silently into the passage aft of the dining saloon. As the others followed, Bannister’s harsh voice was heard again in protest.
“I tell you this is madness! We’ll be trapped like rats!”
“Traile and those others will be the ones to die,” the Yellow Doctor’s response sounded from behind a closed door. “After that, no one will guess the truth.”
“You butcher!” Traile heard Eric Gordon cry out fiercely. “They’ll get you some day for—”
The sound of a blow cut off his outburst. Traile motioned swiftly for the agents and police to group themselves at the sides of the door.
“Is the device ready?” Yen Sin’s query came from inside.
“Not quite,” said a nervous voice Traile did not recognize. “We want to be sure.”
There was a sudden, high whine, like the whistle of a speaking tube. Then someone rasped a few indistinct words.
“What’s the matter?” Traile heard Bannister demand.
“It’s Fricht!” shrilled the man with the nervous voice. “The fool says he left his set on the—”
“Michael! Allen!” Eric’s shout rang out behind the door. “For Heaven’s sake get off—”
The words ended with a moan, then there was stark silence. Traile seized the doorknob, jumped aside and flung open the door. The agents and police sprang forward with guns leveled. Then they stared at each other in blank amazement.
There was not a soul in the stateroom.
The red-faced lieutenant jumped inside, yanked open the only visible door. Nothing but a small closet was revealed. He kicked at the back of it, looked around in bewilderment.
“Where th’ hell did they go? They couldn’t have got out that porthole.”
Traile gazed hurriedly around the stateroom. A box of long, black cigarettes lay on the lower bunk, near a small leather satchel like a man’s overnight kit. He bent over the partly open satchel. For a moment he stared, puzzled, at its contents. Then a dismayed look flashed across his face and he whirled around.
“Get off the yacht as fast as you can!”
There was a hasty exodus from the stateroom. Traile snatched up the leather satchel and dashed after Allen.
“What is it?” the senior agent said breathlessly.
“No time to explain!” snapped Traile.
As the police charged out on deck, the alarmed coxswain started his engine. The officers and F.B.I. men tumbled down the gangway. While the last ones were still scrambling aboard, the coxswain started the boat ahead. Allen made a flying leap and landed on the gunwale.
“Hold on!” he bellowed. “There’s one more man.”
The distance was already too great for Traile to hurdle. He turned and raced toward the bow. Gripping the satchel, he jumped. The impact tore one of the handles from his grasp. Before he could prevent it, the satchel opened and spilled its contents into the water. He let go of the bag, struck out toward the police boat. He was within twenty feet of it when a terrific explosion blasted the night.
The concussion, coming through the water, was like a sudden blow. The police boat rocked violently, and he saw several men thrown down. He dived to escape the heat of the blast, came up on the other side of the boat. As Allen helped him aboard he could partly make out the wrecked yacht through the glare of the flames.
The explosion had occurred amidships, and had practically blown the vessel apart. Even as he looked, he saw it break in two, and the blazing bow and stern sections begin to sink. He cast an anxious glance across the water.
“Where’s the boat that came out from Flushing?”
A grizzled harbor policeman shook has head.
“They were lying close by the port side. I’m afraid they’re done for.”
“Poor devils,” muttered Traile. He turned to the coxswain. “You’d better head for the darkest spot along shore. We may not be safe yet.”
The boat swerved. Allen stared at Traile.
“But what could happen now? Yen Sin and his mob are at the bottom of the East River — what’s left of them.”
Traile gazed toward the sinking wreckage of the yacht. He slowly nodded.
“I still don’t get all of it,” Allen said. “I can see that Yen Sin and those others must have been behind some secret door in the stateroom. But what was he trying to do?”
Traile looked at the listening policemen. “He intended to finish us, but the scheme backfired,” he replied briefly.
Allen shivered.
“That poor kid Gordon — and the girl! It’s hard, their going like that. But at least we’re rid of the Yellow Doctor.”
The grizzled harbor man eyed Traile curiously.
“What gets me, how did you know it was goin’ to happen?”
“I read the first lines of a message in that satchel,” Traile answered. “That gave me the hint.”
“Well, thank God for that!” said the policeman fervently.
But as he went forward, Traile drew Allen away from the other men.
“Can you stand a shock?” he said in an undertone.
“Huh?” said Allen. “What do you mean?”
“I want all the others to think that Doctor Yen Sin is dead.”
Allen started.
“But, good Lord, he couldn’t be alive! You yourself—”
“I admitted he was at the bottom of the East River. Unfortunately, he’s very much alive. The Mahola was torpedoed.”
“Torpedoed!” Allen whispered dazedly. Then he swore under his breath. “Jumping Jupiter! That lost-submarine business that’s been in all the papers!”
“Exactly,” Traile said in a grim voice. “I read about it myself, and never even suspected. But it’s a perfect means of escape for Yen Sin, if he’s too closely pressed.”
“I see it now,” Allen said savagely. “Bannister’s a director of the Lodin Submarine Corporation. He worked it so that a bunch of crooks were in the crew on the test runs, and they took command by force.”
“And they’ve simply been hiding somewhere, or lying submerged in the daytime,” assented Traile, “getting signals from Yen Sin or Bannister. Tonight, they evidently came up on the other side of the yacht and took off everyone from the express cruiser. Then they submerged to the periscope, eased off a little way in the dark, and waited until we were on board the yacht before firing the torpedo.”
“But how the devil did you get wise?” Allen queried.
“The man called Fricht was evidently on the yacht to maintain communication with the sub and with Dr. Yen Sin. That satchel contained a compact two-way radio. There was an extension cord for plugging in the transmitter, but the receiver was already switched on. Fricht must have left it that way in his hurry to escape.”
“So that’s how we heard them!” interjected Allen. Then he added excitedly: “We can still capture them. With your Navy connection, you can get some destroyers out in the Sound — they could drop nets or depth bombs, and bottle the sub up—”
Traile gravely shook his head.
“Eric is a prisoner, and I’m going to save him if it’s humanly possible. Yen Sin will think he’s safe now. He’ll hide out for a day or two to make sure, and then shift to some base in New York. He won’t give up this mysterious scheme of his, you can bank on that.”
“I believe you’re right,” Allen said quickly. “He wouldn’t have built up that group of Gray Men and all his spy system, unless he was after something big.”
“Today’s events, with that desperate business about the Golden Skull, prove that.” Traile gazed soberly across the water toward the distant skyline of Manhattan. “Allen, I’ve a feeling that we haven’t heard the last of the Chuen Gin Lou.”
Chapter 11 The Hong Kong Chest
Outside the Q-Station, purple dusk was settling over the city, but within Michael Traile’s heavily curtained den the lights were blazing. Traile stood before the wall map of Greater New York, his eyes on the area known as Chinatown. There was weariness in the pose of his tall figure. The bronze of his face had paled somewhat from long hours spent indoors.
He turned restlessly, went into the adjoining room. His glance passed over Eric Gordon’s bed, and the sad look in his eyes deepened. It had been four days since Eric had vanished as a prisoner of Doctor Yen Sin. He slid back the panel which covered the special telephone system that Eric had installed. One of the lines was a direct wire to his contact officer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He plugged the connection.
“Q-four,” he said, when a voice answered. “Any further report from the patrol?”
“Not a thing, sir,” the officer replied. “I’m afraid they got away.”
“Hold to the same schedule,” said Traile. He disconnected, was about to make another call when his door buzzer rasped. He went to the vestibule, glanced up at the mirror which was placed to show whoever was outside. It was Allen.
“I was about to call you,” he said as he admitted the F.B.I. man. A hopeful look replaced his weariness as he saw the excited expression on the lanky agent’s face. “What’s happened?” he asked.
“It’s not about Eric, I’m sorry to say,” Allen responded. “But I’ll bet my shirt it’s connected with Yen Sin.”
Traile closed the steel-backed door. Allen was hastily taking an X-ray film from a large manila envelope.
“It’s got me going in circles,” he exclaimed. “This was just one of several routine jobs done in the last three days. It was an exposure made of an ordinary document we suspected of being a forgery. But here’s what we found!”
He lifted the shade from a table lamp and held the film close to the light. Traile leaned down, stared at the X-ray picture. The typewritten words of the document stood out clearly against a blurred but terrible background. A diabolical face looked out from behind the legal lettering, a face like some hideous thing seen in a nightmare. It had no ears, and its lips were stretched wide so that the teeth showed from jaw to jaw. The eyes were two slits of staring horror, and the lower part of the nose had been cut away.
“Good Heaven!” Traile whispered.
“I damn near fell out of my chair when I saw it,” Allen said. “Then I realized it was a picture of some poor guy that had been tortured. Right away I thought of Doctor Yen Sin—”
He started, for Traile had snatched the film and was bending over it feverishly.
“I got men after the bird we think forged it,” he began, but Traile cut him short.
“We’ll have to go to your office! My microscope outfit is in Washington.”
“But what’s the idea?” said Allen, blankly.
Without answering, Traile held the film almost against the lamp. The face was still blurred, and the close-spaced lines of the document obscured much of the detail, but he could catch the general effect. The cheeks were shrunken, and the emptiness of the eyes was more horrible than it had seemed at first. The forehead, where the legal writing did not cover it, was marked with a mass of tiny blurred scratches or cuts, suggestive of slow, deliberate torture.
“Hellish!” Traile muttered as he straightened up. “Only one man in the world would ever have thought of it.”
“What I don’t see,” said Allen, “is why or how it was ever printed on that paper. It must have been done with invisible ink, of course, but what idea could they—”
He stopped as Traile laid down the film and went rummaging through a pile of newspaper clippings on his desk. In a moment Traile returned with the photograph of a gaunt, elderly man. He penciled the eyes to a solid blackness, blocked out the ears and altered the mouth and nose. As he held it up beside the film, Allen jumped. Then he stared at the name under the photograph.
“Holy mackerel! It’s John J. Meredith — the broker who disappeared two weeks ago.”
Traile’s dark eyes held a strange light.
“It’s part of the answer, Allen! We should have seen it before.”
He put the film and the clipping into the envelope.
“Look here,” said Allen aggrievedly, “if you’ve figured out something, you might—”
They both turned at the sound of the buzzer. Traile stepped to the door, glanced up at the angled mirror. With a puzzled look, he beckoned to Allen. The F.B.I. man stared up into the glass. The reflection showed a tall Hong Kong chest, beautifully carved, standing on end just outside the door. There was no one in sight.
“How many people know about that X-ray?” Traile whispered.
“Only myself and Griel — the assistant lab man who took Stone’s place,” Allen replied. “But why?”
“It couldn’t be that, then,” Traile said, as though to himself. He pushed a wall-switch button, and a bright light outside shone down on the carved chest. Several Chinese characters, painted on the lid, were at once discernible. The mirror reversed them, and it took Traile a few seconds to read the short inscription. Suddenly he turned pale, sprang to unlock the door.
“Watch your step,” Allen said tensely. “It may be a trick to bump you off.”
But Traile heedlessly ran out, and with shaking hands unfastened the brass clamps of the long lid. It swung open like a door. A broken cry came to his lips as he looked inside. Within the chest was a stiffened form, held upright by three web belts. And the white, waxen face which showed in the light was the face of Eric Gordon!
“My God!” groaned Allen. “They’ve killed him.”
Traile, after his first short cry, made no other sound. He reached out one hand, touched the pale cheek of that pitiful figure. It was as cold as marble. Like a man in a stupor, he turned to Allen.
“We must — take him — inside,” he said dully.
They closed the lid, laid the chest flat, and then carried it into the second room. Without a word, Traile unfastened the belts. He shook his head as Allen bent to help him. Unaided, he lifted Eric’s body and laid it upon the bed. For more than a minute he stood looking down at the cold white face.
“Eric!” he whispered. “Eric...”
Allen’s eyes blurred. But after a moment he touched Traile’s arm.
“You can’t let it get you like this. He wouldn’t want you to—” He stopped, pointed down. “Look, there’s something in his left hand.”
Traile gently pried apart the stiff fingers. The object was a small glass bottle with a paper rolled up inside. He removed the paper, saw that it was a message in Chinese. Dull anger, then a sudden wild hope, came into his eyes as he read. He whirled toward the den. Allen followed, stared in amazement as Traile switched on his microwave set and fumbled with the dial.
“What’s up?” he asked in a startled voice, but the taller man was now springing to the window. A few minutes after Traile threw back the heavy curtains, a low hum became audible from the miniature radio. Then a mocking voice spoke.
“I am sorry, Mr. Traile, to have caused you these moments of grief.”
Traile’s face was stony, but Allen flushed with rage.
“It’s Yen Sin!” he rasped.
Traile motioned him to keep silent.
“You will tilt your desk lamp so that it shines directly on your face,” the voice of the Yellow Doctor went on silkily. Then, as Traile obeyed, “That is better... stand back a little farther, if you please.”
“For God’s sake, Traile, are you crazy?” Allen burst out “He’ll kill you!”
“The glass is bulletproof,” Traile muttered over his shoulder.
“Keep your face toward the window,” came the sharpened accents of Doctor Yen Sin. “And for Mr. Allen’s benefit, it will do no good to take a bearing on this station. It will be moved within five minutes.”
Allen let out an explosive gasp. There was a pause, then the suave voice continued.
“As you probably have guessed, Mr. Traile, you are being observed through binoculars. The observer is a lip-reader. You will enunciate clearly to avoid mistake.”
“I understand,” Traile said bitterly. “What are your conditions for reviving Eric Gordon?”
There was another pause.
“He is alive now,” was the Crime Emperor’s calm reply. “However, he is in a state of completely suspended animation, and I am the only one who can restore his normal functions. I warn you, if you attempt to use adrenalin or a similar preparation, it will kill him instantly.”
“What are your conditions?” Traile repeated, this time harshly.
Again there was a pause, evidently while the lip-reader relayed his query.
“Your agreement to surrender yourself unarmed, alone, within an hour,” answered Doctor Yen Sin. “The proper drug will then be delivered to any surgeon you designate. It is simply a matter of an intravenous injection.”
“I agree,” Traile said grimly. He waved Allen back as the agent frantically tried to protest.
He could hear the hiss of the Yellow Doctor’s indrawn breath.
“I accept your word,” Yen Sin spoke rapidly. “It is now almost eight o’clock. You will leave the building exactly at eight. A private car will draw up at the Forty-eighth Street entrance, and the chauffeur will address you as ‘Mr. Scott’ — in keeping with your present role. You will enter. He will take you to another location, where one of my agents will give you further instructions. If there is any attempt to have yourself followed, or any variation from this order, your young companion will never awaken.”
“I have your sworn word that you’ll send the drug?” Traile demanded.
“You have,” said the Yellow Doctor, “on condition that you are my — guest — by nine o’clock.”
The miniature radio became silent. As Traile stepped out of the glare of light by the window, Allen made a helpless gesture.
“I think you’ve lost your senses. Eric couldn’t be alive. Yen Sin’s lying just to get you in his power.”
Traile went past him, into the room where Eric Gordon lay. He knelt, felt for a heartbeat, then held a small mirror to Eric’s nostrils.
“You see?” Allen said. “There’s not a sign of life.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Traile answered. “I’ve seen a Hindu miracle man go into a similar trance and let himself be buried alive for two weeks. But I never could learn what drug he took, or what they used to revive him.”
“You can’t go through with this,” Allen persisted desperately, as Traile took off his shoulder harness. “It’s suicide.”
Traile looked down at Eric’s pallid face while he put on his coat.
“If I don’t, it will be murder.” He turned abruptly and went into the other room. At the door he paused, looked sharply at the Federal man. “No rush call to your men, to try to have me followed. Until Eric is revived I’m holding you also to the promise I made Yen Sin.”
Allen’s face was a picture of misery.
“Damn it, I can’t let you go, knowing what—”
“You’ll help me by staying here with Eric,” Traile broke in. “After eight o’clock, call the best doctor you know and have him waiting.”
He put out his hand. Allen gripped it, swore helplessly. Traile went to the elevator. He rang, and the car came up. He went down to the lobby, was almost at the Forty-eighth Street side when he remembered about the X-ray film. He had intended to tell Allen. He hesitated, but already the clock was striking eight.
He turned and went on out. A long black car was sliding up to the curb. It was, he thought with grim humor, vaguely like a hearse.
Chapter 12 The Room of the Dolls
In the dimly-lighted chamber which contained the talking Buddha, a panel had silently opened. Doctor Yen Sin paused in the aperture, spoke in Mandarin dialect to someone in the passage behind him.
“I have finished with him. Prepare the scene as I directed earlier, so that it will make the proper impression upon our friends.”
“Tche, Master,” the other man answered hastily.
The Yellow Doctor stepped into the room, and the panel closed behind him. He paused, glanced impassively at the clock, then began to remove the long rubber gloves which covered his hands. There was blood on the tips, and in place of his usual embroidered robes he wore a jacket similar to a surgeon’s operating gown, save that it was shorter and was decorated with silken braid.
He laid the gloves aside, was about to remove the surgical gown, when the eyes of the Buddha glowed with white light. Impatiently, he touched a long-nailed finger to a button on the table before him.
“I ordered that all routine reports were to be received by Kang Fu.”
“This is an emergency, Master,” the half-caste’s anxious voice came from the idol. “I believe the man Traile is trying to betray you in spite of his promise.”
The Crime Emperor gazed fixedly at the Buddha.
“Condensed report,” he directed.
“Followed instructions at his hotel and while being transferred,” Kang Fu said hurriedly. “Met Agent Eighty-five at Position E, entered car with her, apparently not followed. No police or Federal men seen on arrival of car outside the Black Dragon, but on descending to the lower floor he was immediately noted by three men, one now identified as Department of Justice operative. The three men have stationed themselves in position to relay signals. One is watching Traile, another is on the balcony, and the third at a window on the rear court.”
“Where are Traile and Agent Eighty-five now?” the Yellow Doctor inquired.
“Near the roulette table in the Lotus Room,” replied the Eurasian. “Agent Eighty-five was signaled to delay until further instructions.”
Doctor Yen Sin turned and looked at the diagram painted on the opposite wall.
“It is a simple problem.” He rapidly gave instructions, adding: “Allow ten minutes for Group Seven to get placed. Also, make arrangements to escort Citizens Five and Eight by one of the other entrances instead of through the Black Dragon.”
“Citizen Five has already been admitted,” came the reply from the Buddha. “He arrived early, and was taken to the usual room.”
“Very well, proceed with your orders,” directed Doctor Yen Sin.
The light faded from the eyes of the idol. The Crime Emperor gazed down with a thoughtful look on his saffron face. Then with sudden decision, he crossed to the Dictaphone under the painted diagram. He inserted a plug, and one of the lights on the diagram flickered.
“Advise Citizen Five that I will speak with him,” Doctor Yen Sin said coldly.
“But, Master, he has not yet arrived,” was the quick answer.
The Yellow Doctor stiffened.
“He was admitted some time ago, through Entrance Three?”
“Something must be wrong, Master,” the unseen man replied in alarm. “The Frenchman, Lecoste, went to escort him here, twenty minutes ago, but they did not return. I wondered at his being so early—”
The word was broken as Yen Sin snatched the plug from its socket. With a look of rage, the Crime Emperor whirled to the Buddha. He jabbed a button, spoke fiercely in Chinese, then slid open the hidden panel and hurried into the passage. A few seconds later a similar panel opened in one side of a small octagonal room. The section which the Yellow Doctor had entered was almost in darkness. A partition had been built across the center of the room, almost touching the walls on both sides. Back of it was a heavy chair, placed so that the occupant could easily see through the special black glass in the middle of the partition, and yet be invisible from the other side. A microphone and several switches were mounted on a small shelf just under the rectangular black glass.
Yen Sin hurriedly passed through the narrow space between the left side of the partition and the wall. A light shone down on the other half of the octagonal room, revealing three glass panels which formed a bay at the front. The panel at the left had been partly slid back into a niche in the wall. Beyond the three panels a long room with a table and chairs was visible. A ceremonial pedestal stood just inside the center panel.
After one furious glance at the opened section. Doctor Yen Sin turned swiftly toward the front of the partition. Directly under the rectangle of black glass was a cabinet about three feet square. It was almost filled with hideous-faced masculine dolls. There were two rows of them, all dressed in men’s attire, like ugly little puppets in some wholly male farce.
On the upper shelf, between the third and fifth doll, was an empty space. Where the fourth puppet had been, two insulated wires had been neatly clipped. As the Yellow Doctor saw the space and the severed wires, a murderous flame blazed up in his tawny eyes. He went to the side of the partition, stepped back of it to where the microphone stood. One talonlike hand raked at a switch.
“Kang Fu!” he rasped out.
“Yes, Master!” came the frightened half-caste’s answer.
“Warn all searching parties!” the Yellow Doctor snarled. “Citizen Five and Lecoste have stolen one of the dolls!”
In the softly-lighted Lotus Room, under the ornate restaurant known as the Black Dragon, Michael Traile stood coolly waiting. From the moment he had entered with Iris Vaughan, he had been aware of furtive movements among the group of men and women who filled the room. The wooden-faced croupier at the roulette table, a German by his appearance, was watching him from the corner of his eye.
As another minute passed, Traile turned to the blonde girl beside him.
“Since we are to await the Doctor’s pleasure,” he said carelessly, “we may as well sit down.”
He motioned toward a divan, but Iris Vaughan, who had been nervously watching the other end of the room, shook her head.
“No, we are to go on now,” she whispered. Her pretty face was colorless under her rouge. Traile looked down at her, as he followed into the hall.
“One would think you were to be the victim,” he said ironically.
Her luminous blue eyes, too bright from opium, took on a certain hardness.
“It is not my fault if you choose to be a fool. You came here of your own free will.”
They had turned toward the right. Traile saw three or four men near a door a few yards away. A dark-haired girl in a red evening gown, with a light cloak thrown over her shoulders, was just entering. She glanced around quickly, gave a start as she glimpsed Traile.
It was Sonya Damitri.
For a fraction of a second, her black, mysterious eyes seemed to be trying to convey some message. Then she hurried on into the room. The men near the door closed about Traile as he followed with Iris. His eyes swept quickly about the room. It appeared to be the office for the gambling establishment. A fat Chinese sat behind a desk, a benevolent smile on his face.
He was looking toward Sonya, who had turned to a large wardrobe cabinet at one side, when a muffled cry sounded — apparently from the wall behind the cabinet. In the same instant, the phone on the desk rang shrilly.
Before the Chinese could pick up the instrument, the doors of the cabinet burst open. Sonya gasped and stepped back. A man leaped out, a pair of brass knuckles on each hand. A small, bloody spike protruded from the center knuckle on each hand.
“Lecoste!” Sonya cried out in astonishment. “What are you—”
“Get out of my way!” rasped the Frenchman. He whirled toward the hall. The men near Traile sprang after him. The Frenchman struck viciously with the spiked knuckles. One man fell back with a shriek. Lecoste drove his left fist into another man’s face. Suddenly the Chinese gave a screech of terror as a second man appeared from the passage back of the cabinet.
The light showed the rubber mask of a Gray Man. But it was not this which had brought that squeal of terror to the Oriental’s lips. His slanting eyes were fixed on a hideous little doll the man carefully gripped in both hands. As Iris Vaughan saw the doll she, too, gave a cry of fear, then turned and fled.
Sonya had leaped back into one corner. The two remaining men struggling with Lecoste suddenly jumped for the hall. Holding the puppet vertically with both hands, the Gray Man stepped through the cabinet, made for the doorway. In his haste, he stumbled over the doorsill, fell headlong on the doll.
Instantly, there was a flash of rainbow fire. As the weirdly-colored blaze leaped up, Traile threw himself back. A terrific heat swept out after him, then the room began to fill with the rainbow smoke.
The Gray Man’s voice rose in a frightful scream, the same frenzied cry which Jim Stone had given before he died. Gasping for breath, Traile felt his way along the wall. Cool air from somewhere led him on. He reached the cabinet, vaguely glimpsed Sonya as she ran into the passage.
He quickly followed. She went down a flight of steps, vanished around a turn. Above the hissing of the Rainbow Death, and the clamor from beyond the office, Traile heard her give a stifled exclamation. He reached the bottom of the steps, saw a heavy door standing ajar. A Chinese lay dead nearby, two ugly wounds in temple and throat showing where Lecoste’s knuckle-spikes had stabbed him.
There was a telephone in a small recess just inside the entry. The wires had been cut. Traile stepped over the dead man, looked swiftly along the passage. There was but a single light, and its glow was feeble. He could barely see the girl as she paused before the seemingly solid brick wall at the end. She reached up, pushed at a spot about the height of her shoulder. A section of the brickwork lifted like a gate, and she stepped through. The section descended quickly.
Traile ran to the end of the passage, felt around for the hidden release. One brick moved inward under his hasty pressure, and the gate slid up. He found himself in another passage, wider than the first. It led off into blackness. He listened intently, caught the sound of Sonya’s swift footsteps from the dark. Brushing one hand along the wall to guide him, he followed as silently as possible.
The footsteps ceased and he halted immediately. From somewhere back of him, but at a distance, he could hear a commotion. Two shots made muffled reports, and he thought someone screamed.
Then, suddenly, light showed through a vertical crack ahead, as a door was slowly opened. He waited, unmoving. The slit widened into a rectangle, and he saw the girl’s slender figure silhouetted in the opening. She looked back into the darkness, then hurried inside. Traile ran on tiptoe, caught the edge of the door as it started to close. In a second he was in the room.
Sonya’s back was turned, and she seemed to be looking down in horror at something on a black table. Her figure screened it from Traile’s view. He hastily glanced around. One look, and he knew he was in the torture chamber of Doctor Yen Sin.
Back in the gloom stood a darkened suit of armor, with a row of gas jets which could be turned upon it, after some luckless victim was placed inside. From a beam overhead hung a stained pair of saw-toothed leg irons, mute testimony to the manner in which some ill-fated wretch had been suspended in agony. A rack, an iron boot by a forge, and a score of other torture devices gave evidence to the horrors which had taken place within this chamber.
They were all ranged along one side of the room. The other wall was bare, and of an odd, shiny blackness. But Traile had only a moment to inspect it. For Sonya, after that horrified glance down at the table, was turning away. He was at her side in a flash, one hand raised to stop the cry he expected. Her red lips parted in amazement, but only a moan came.
“Are you mad?” she whispered. “Why didn’t you escape when you had the chance, up there?”
He started to reply, then he saw the thing on the table. For a second, he thought he was looking again on the mutilated body of Peter Courtland. There, on a decorated black velvet pall, lay a corpse in evening clothes. Like Courtland’s, his head had been cut off and sewed on again, backward. Two tall candles shone down on the distorted face of the dead man. And there between them was the Golden Skull!
Traile stared in fascination at the gleaming metal face, while Sonya frantically tugged at his arm. Then he shook her off, took a quick step and bent over the corpse. It was only after a second glance that he recognized the agonized features of Merton Cloyd.
“You must get away,” Sonya was saying wildly. “You should never have followed me.”
Traile’s lean face was cold.
“You know why I am here.”
“You can never hope to capture him,” she said hopelessly. “He is too well guarded.”
Traile’s dark eyes bored into her.
“I am not trying to capture Yen Sin. I came to save the man who unfortunately has fallen in love with you.”
Astonishment filled her lovely eyes.
“But I don’t—” She turned, with a suddenly frightened look. At the same moment Traile thought he heard a faint scuffing from the black gloom of the torture chamber. As he wheeled for an anxious glance, Sonya gasped and seized his arm. But before she could pull him aside, there was a swishing sound from above.
Then a noose flashed down over their heads.
Traile caught desperately at the rope, but it was already tightening about their necks. Sonya was swiftly drawn against him, her white hands futilely clutching at the noose. He had a brief glimpse of a snarling brown face, where a dacoit had crawled out on the beam above. Then a sibilant voice spoke hurriedly, and through the door he had left open came the Yellow Doctor.
A look of disappointment shot over the Burmese’s face. He kept the noose taut, but ceased his pull on the rope. Dr. Yen Sin calmly approached, a scalpel gleaming in one claw-like hand.
“You are a few minutes late, Mr. Traile — but since you have already broken our agreement, it is no matter.”
“I’ve kept my word,” Traile said, his voice thick from the pressure of the noose against his throat. “I could have escaped when that fire bomb went off.”
The Yellow Doctor gave him a sneering smile.
“You are lying. I have already had a report. You followed Sonya through the secret entrance, thinking your agents were close behind you.”
Sonya was struggling to widen the noose. She flung an angry look up at the dacoit.
“Clumsy fool!” she said in Hindustani. “I drew him straight under you. You did not have to catch me, too.”
“It will be only a brief inconvenience,” Doctor Yen Sin said smoothly. “Kang Fu will be here with help in a moment.”
He had stopped close to Traile, the scalpel half-raised with a mocking significance.
“I am sorry to tell you, Mr. Traile, that your men have been intercepted.”
Traile’s face hardened.
“I obeyed your instructions to the letter. If I was followed, I know nothing of it.”
The Crime Emperor smiled contemptuously.
“Lies will not help you now. You chose to break faith, and for that, your friend will die.”
“I’ve surrendered myself,” Traile retorted fiercely. “I demand that you send the drug to revive him.”
Sonya Damitri twisted around, her great black eyes fixed on him with a strange expression. The dacoit up on the beam growled something in his throat. Doctor Yen Sin looked up sharply. In the same moment, light showed through the shiny black wall, disclosing that it was glass. Several figures were moving in the adjoining room. Desperation came over Traile as he saw Kang Fu and three of Yen Sin’s killers. In another second, they would be entering through some secret door, and his last chance would be gone.
He stole a look toward the beam. The rope was pulled halfway around an upright to the ceiling, but the dacoit’s eyes were on the Yellow Doctor, as he started to mutter something. Traile’s hands shot up and gripped the rope. Doctor Yen Sin sprang forward with a snarl. But that sudden, violent jerk had done its work.
Pulled off-balance, the killer came plunging down headfirst. Yen Sin jumped back just in time. The hurtling form of the Burmese struck against his arm, and the scalpel fell from his hand. Then the dacoit thudded against the floor.
Traile’s fingers were frantically widening the noose. As he cast it aside, the Yellow Doctor whirled to seize the knife. Traile crashed into him with a force that sent him back against the wall. Then he snatched up the scalpel and dashed for the door he had entered.
Sonya had sped out into the passage. Traile pulled at the door as he raced past, and it closed to a narrow slit. He was about to run in the direction from which he had come when the girl reappeared, caught at his arm.
“This way!” she whispered tensely.
He hastily followed her around a bend in the bricked tunnel. A connecting passage and two doors were dimly visible in the gloom.
“Take the second door,” she said in a low tone. “Hide inside until I can come back.”
Her voice rang out in a scream as he sprang into the darkness back of the opened door. He hauled the door almost shut, his pulses pounding as he heard the howls of Yen Sin’s assassins in answer to Sonya’s cry. In a few seconds there was a rush of feet, then a fierce jabbering of foreign voices.
“The left passage!” he heard Sonya tell them. The snarling voices and sounds of running feet died away. Traile waited, then to his dismay the voice of the Crime Emperor came from only a few feet away. It was harsh with anger.
“If you had signaled from Entrance Three, he would have been caught before this could have happened.”
“But the wires had been cut,” Sonya protested in a voice that trembled. “And the rainbow fire had so frightened me—”
“Return and find Agent Eighty-five,” the Yellow Doctor interrupted coldly. “I wish to question her, after the council meeting.”
“I am sure she was not to blame,” Sonya began, but Doctor Yen Sin peremptorily cut her short. Traile heard her move away, and after a moment he caught the soft footsteps of the Crime Emperor as he also departed.
He waited a minute, then cautiously opened the door. Indistinct sounds came from both directions outside. He looked back into his hiding place. It was a small room, littered with boxes — some empty, some of them unopened. He saw several trunks, two of them heavily roped. There was another door. He closed the one where he stood, moved across in the dark and tried the other. It was locked.
He stood in the dark, thinking intently. Yen Sin’s killers might return and search this area when they failed to find him. It was doubtful that Sonya could get back in time to help him, and he was still not sure of her. At any moment, her dread of the Yellow Doctor might cause her to change her mind.
There was a slim chance that he could escape through the Black Dragon restaurant and return with a huge raiding party. But it was the only way he could see to force Yen Sin to save Eric.
He started to open the door, holding the scalpel partly up his sleeve. Suddenly there was a click from behind him, and without further warning the other door swung open.
There stood one of the Gray Men!
Chapter 13 The Cult of the Golden Skull
As the light from the passage beyond fell on Traile, the Gray Man jumped back with an oath. His right hand plunged under his coat. Traile leaped, whirling the scalpel out of his sleeve. The Gray Man gave a cry of fear, threw himself aside. The blade scraped the edge of the door.
The Gray Man’s hand reappeared with an automatic. Traile dropped the knife, seized the arm with the gun. A furious twist, and the weapon clattered to the floor. A muffled howl of pain came through the mouth-slit of the rubber mask. Then Traile’s fist crashed on the other man’s jaw. The Gray Man staggered, then came back with a snarl.
He swung wildly with his left. Traile shifted, landed an uppercut that sent the Gray Man reeling. Before he could recover, Traile snatched the mask away. The hate-filled eyes of Mark Bannister glared into his.
“I thought so!” Traile said grimly.
With a sudden lunge, Bannister dived at the gun. But Traile had seen the purpose which tensed the millionaire’s face. As Bannister’s head went down, Traile swung with all his might. There was a crack like a half-muffled shot, and the millionaire sagged to the floor.
Traile bent over him, made sure that the man was not shamming. A hasty glance showed him that Bannister had been alone. The passage through which he had come ended with a dark glass door, of the type which he had seen before. The wall was decorated with red-and-gold circles. He closed the door, took out his cigarette lighter and lit it. With this to guide him, he cut the rope from one of the trunks. After a quick scrutiny, he removed Bannister’s coat and tie, then bound the unconscious man. He substituted the millionaire’s tie and coat for his own, pressed the adhesive edges of the rubber mask onto his face, and dropped Bannister’s gun into his pocket. There was a signet ring on the millionaire’s right middle finger. He slipped it onto his own.
A minute later he stepped out into the other passage. He had left the millionaire concealed as much as possible behind the boxes and trunks, and had improvised a gag. If luck were with him, he would be out of the secret base and on his way to phone for help before Bannister recovered or was found.
They were about the same height, and though Bannister was slightly heavier, the difference would not be easily noticed. In the left lapel of the millionaire’s coat was a peculiar little ribbon which Traile suspected was a mark of identification. That and the gray mask should carry him through.
He was nearing the door to the torture chamber when he saw a similar door about twenty feet farther on. It was open, and a stolid Chinese was following another of the Gray Men inside.
Traile paused, waiting for the door to be closed, but it remained open. He started on, intending to pass by hastily. But before he could reach it, the door to the torture chamber slid silently back, and the candlelight from the gruesome scene within fell squarely upon him.
The man who had opened the door was Kang Fu. He looked sharply at Traile, then glanced at the ribbon in his lapel. Then he turned and spoke toward the center of the gloomy room.
“Here he is now, Master.”
The malignant face of the Yellow Doctor appeared in the candle glow. He beckoned imperiously to Traile.
“Come in, I have a final instruction for you.”
Traile’s heart sank. If he attempted to escape now, the alarm would be flashed before he could reach the entrance. He stepped inside, and Kang Fu closed the door. The Crime Emperor motioned the Eurasian out of earshot.
“I am anticipating trouble with Citizen Ten,” he said in an ominous voice. “He is already in the Council Room. Go in and keep close watch on him until the others arrive. Do not forget your part. You, also, are supposed to be an unwilling member of the Empire.”
“I know,” Traile said in a harsh tone which closely resembled Bannister’s voice.
The Yellow Doctor’s weird eyes probed at his masked face.
“There is no occasion for fear about tonight’s affair,” he said impatiently, “if that is what troubles you. My men are searching, and Traile cannot escape. The deaths of Citizen Five and Lecoste have already been covered. Nothing can ruin our plans now.”
Traile silently nodded. Doctor Yen Sin gestured to Kang Fu.
“When you have played the role of escort for Mr. Bannister, bring me one of the skull seals.”
The half-caste looked at the gruesome display on the table, and Traile saw that the Golden Skull was gone.
“It has been returned to its proper place,” the Crime Emperor said curtly. “I decided not to use it, as long as Traile knows the way into this room and is still at large.”
At the mention of Traile’s name, Kang Fu’s sallow face took on an ugly expression. He looked significantly at the torture devices.
“When he is captured, Master, I hope you will let me take part in—”
“We will speak of that later,” Doctor Yen Sin halted him. He waved a yellow claw, and the Eurasian opened the door. Traile followed him out into the passage. His hand closed around the butt of Bannister’s gun as they started on, but his plan was abruptly thwarted. A searching party with flashlights was coming through the tunnel, and a burly Sikh was now standing guard at the secret gate in the brick wall.
The door through which the other Gray Man had gone was still open. Kang Fu stepped aside to let Traile precede him. Traile entered, a helpless feeling coming over him that some irresistible Fate had him in its hands. Then he thought of the cold, white face of Eric Gordon, and the grim set came back to his jaw.
The room he had entered was not unlike the reception room of a small club, except that there was an Oriental touch to the furnishings. A thickset Chinese with horn-rimmed glasses began to open a record book on a desk, but after a second glance at Traile he stood up and drew aside a tapestry. A narrow corridor lay beyond. It was only about twelve feet in length, and as Traile neared the other end a solid door noiselessly opened.
It closed behind him as he went in. He looked back and saw that Kang Fu had disappeared. Then he heard a sound and glanced around. The Gray Man he had already seen was turning hastily. Traile guessed that he had been trying to peer through one of the sections of dark glass which formed the wall.
The man stared at him through the eye-slits of his rubber mask, then abruptly seated himself near the end of a long table. Traile saw that numbers had been neatly painted on the table, running in sequence from 1 to 16. The Gray Man had seated himself before the number 10.
Traile moved his eyes swiftly about the room. The walls on his right and left were composed of the peculiar black glass. Steel uprights divided the glass into sections six feet wide, and these were further divided into squares, so that they appeared like huge, dark French windows. He could see nothing beyond them.
At the other end of the room was a clear glass bay, formed of three heavy panels connected by metal frames and extending upward at least nine feet. This bay closed off the space behind it. Directly back of the center glass panel was a tall ceremonial pedestal. There was a round hole in its top.
A light was shining at an angle from the high ceiling. Its rays slanted down on the front of a wide partition behind the glass bay. In the middle of this partition, and just under a black rectangle, was an open-faced cabinet. Traile barely hid a start as he saw it. The cabinet was almost filled with ugly little puppets like the one which had caused the Rainbow Death.
There was something gruesomely suggestive about the faces of those hideous dolls. He stepped forward, moving carelessly, aware that sharp eyes were probably observing him from behind the dark glass walls. The Gray Man at the table jerked around as he passed.
“Be careful, you fool!” he said in a harsh whisper.
The door at the rear of the council room opened before Traile could reply. Two more of the masked men appeared. Kang Fu and two Chinese were briefly visible before the door closed. The newcomers stared at the cabinet, then silently took places at the table.
Traile sat down in front of the space marked 9. His chair was the first on the left, at the end near the glass bay. Citizen Ten was at his right, and the other men were seated across the table and farther down. The one at the space marked 6 looked again at the cabinet, and Traile saw him tremble.
The man’s eyes seemed to be fixed on a puppet in the lower right-hand corner. It was a grotesque little figure, perhaps a foot high, with a bald, ugly head too large for its body. On the front of its tiny shirt was a red splotch, like a drop of blood, as though the puppet represented a man who had been stabbed.
The heads of the other dolls were also too large for their bodies, each being about the size of a man’s clenched fist. Their lips and nostrils were sewn together with thread, and their eyes were tiny, vacant slits.
A wave of horror suddenly swept over Traile. He had been partly prepared; Allen’s X-ray film had hinted at the fate of Meredith. But that frightful puppet show turned him sick and cold, as he realized the truth about those hideous dolls.
Each one bore the shrunken head of a murdered man!
Behind the rubber mask an icy perspiration bathed Traile’s forehead. For a moment he thought that nausea would overcome him. But by a tremendous effort he controlled his sickened stomach.
A terrible fascination drew his eyes back to the puppets. He had seen shrunken heads before, in the Jivaro Indian country of South America. He had even witnessed the grim procedure which followed a head-hunting raid upon an enemy tribe. The slitting of the scalp from the hairline to the back of the neck... the removal of the skull... the sewing up of the scalp, the mouth, nostrils, and ears to retain the hot sand which kept the features intact while the empty head was boiled and toughened.
That had been bad enough, even in a savage atmosphere, with the victims as deadly as their killers. But this horrible display before him almost froze his blood.
The rear door opened again, and seven other Gray Men entered. He saw each one look toward the shrunken heads, and in more than one man’s hasty stare he read despair and horror.
Without a word, the masked men took their seats. Only their strained breathing broke the hush of the room. Traile watched them from behind his mask, saw their tight-clenched hands, saw their bodies go taut with fear. The tension swiftly increased.
From somewhere behind the glass bay came the sharp clash of a gong. Every man at the table jumped. As Traile jerked around he saw a dim light shine up through the hole in the tall, carved pedestal. Then, slowly, a gleaming object moved up into view.
It was the Golden Skull.
The jangling clash of the gong faded away. Traile gazed at the leering face of the skull, concealing a shudder as he thought of its grim secret. He started in spite of himself as an almost toneless voice came from those golden jaws.
“It is unfortunate that two more members of the Chuen Gin Lou will be absent — permanently.”
The words were somewhat muffled by the thick glass, but Traile recognized the voice of Yen Sin.
“Citizen Five bribed an agent of the Invisible Empire,” continued the voice from the Skull. “He attempted to withdraw from the Chuen Gin Lou, but met with a misfortune. His end was — colorful.”
The man next to Traile shivered. Traile looked at the cabinet. He was close enough to see two severed wires where the death’s-head doll had been fastened. It was obvious that an alarm had been disconnected. He remembered that Sonya had mentioned “rainbow fire.” Evidently Doctor Yen Sin had placed a chemical bomb inside each puppet, arranged so that a slight impact or even tilting would set it off.
“The absence of Citizen Thirteen will be explained later — if necessary,” the Yellow Doctor went on sibilantly. “But you have been summoned here for more important matters.”
Traile heard a click, then one section of the dark glass swung back. A light went on in a vault, at the front of which was a large stack of engraved certificates.
“Citizen Seven, you will examine a few of the exhibits,” directed the Invisible Emperor.
The Gray Man addressed went quickly to the vault. He picked up three or four of the certificates.
“They’re bonds!” he exclaimed. “Good Heaven, there must be—” He broke off, hastily turned. “They’re stolen! These four were stolen in the Union Trust robbery a year ago!”
“Your memory is excellent,” came the mocking reply from the Skull. “You need not examine the rest. They are in the same category.”
Three or four of the Gray Men gasped. Traile looked in amazement at the pile of bonds. There were, he knew from his reading of financial journals, almost a billion dollars’ worth of stolen bonds in the United States. Normally only a small portion would ever be recovered or sold as legitimate bonds through dishonest brokerage houses. But it was plain that the Yellow Doctor had, through his vast criminal empire, drawn the larger part of the stolen securities from their various hiding places. The possibilities staggered his already taut brain.
“Details are unnecessary,” he heard the silky voice of the Invisible Emperor. “The bonds will be equally divided, for sale through your banks and brokerage offices. It will be forty-eight hours before the truth is generally known. By that time—”
“But, my God!” cried Citizen Seven. “The losses have already been paid by the insurance companies. The market will have to absorb them again — it’ll mean a panic worse than Twenty-nine!”
“I am not interested in the stock market of America,” the hidden Chinese said coldly. “Here are my orders: As rapidly as the bonds are sold, they will be converted into foreign securities or jewels, as I direct, and these will be delivered to me by—”
“You’re mad!” the man next to Traile broke in furiously. “It’ll wreck the country — ruin us all—”
“Silence!” rasped the Invisible Emperor.
But Citizen Ten whirled frantically to the others.
“You damned fools, are you going to let him finish us? We’ll be ruined — they’ll jail us for—”
The crash of the unseen gong cut him off. He turned, shaking, looked toward the Golden Skull. There was a dead silence as the reverberations of the gong ceased. Then the Crime Emperor spoke in an icy tone.
“Perhaps you would rather go to the electric chair for — murder!”
“You tricked me into killing him!” the Gray Man said hoarsely. “By Heaven, I’ll take my chances with the police!”
Traile had slid his hand into his pocket, was watching tensely. If the rest should rebel, there might be a chance...
“May I suggest,” said the Invisible Emperor softly, “that you turn and look to your right?”
The Gray Man turned, went rigid. Diagonally across from the vault, another section of the dark glass had opened, revealing the torture room.
Though Traile had already seen the mutilated corpse, a chill ran down his spine. For beside the dead man’s bier was a small guillotine. Its slanting blade was raised, and an ugly stain covered most of the surface. In the background stood several shadowy figures.
“Cloyd!” the Gray Man whispered as he saw the face of the corpse. He stumbled backward, dropped heavily into his chair. There was a sound like a faint mirthless laugh from the Golden Skull.
“I trust,” said the Invisible Emperor, “there will be no further objections.”
Citizen Ten buried his head in his hands. No one spoke. The pivoted black glass slowly began to close. It was almost shut when from the passage beyond the torture chamber came the unmistakable crack of a pistol shot.
Traile and several of the Gray Men leaped to their feet. A bright light flashed on in the torture chamber, as the waiting assassins whirled and ran for the passage. Then the Yellow Doctor’s voice crackled from the amplifier back of the Skull.
“There is no cause for alarm. My men have obviously captured a certain spy who has been hiding in the base.”
Traile was tightly gripping his gun. This might be a break...
There was a sound of fierce struggling, as the passage door opened. A dozen of Yen Sin’s killers appeared, dragging two men with them. Traile silently groaned as he recognized Bill Allen. His eyes shifted to the second man. Then he stood paralyzed.
It was Eric!
Chapter 14 The End of the Rainbow
In that first moment, Traile almost doubted his senses. But the Yellow Doctor’s men viciously shoved their captive into the lighted room and he saw that it was really Eric Gordon. The deathly pallor of the young Southerner’s face had given way to an angry flush. He struggled for a second more, then gave up as he saw its futility.
Traile had instinctively sprung forward to help the two men. But even as he moved, he knew it was useless, and he transformed his hasty action into a threatening gesture. Bill Allen cursed him, and Eric gave him a savage glare.
Behind the group of dacoits and Chinese killers, three more figures appeared. Traile’s eyes narrowed back of his mask slits as he saw Sonya with Iris Vaughan and Kang Fu. Then he realized that she could not know him, that she had not been able to return to the room where he had left Bannister.
Above the confusion and jabber of voices, an imperious command came from the Golden Skull.
“Kang Fu! Explain this, at once!”
The Eurasian gave Eric a half-frightened look.
“How this man recovered, I do not know, Master. He was leading the other one and a small party of Federal agents when Agent Eighty-five gave the alarm.”
There was a short pause, and Traile guessed that the Yellow Doctor was looking at Iris Vaughan through the rectangle of dark glass. The blonde girl came forward nervously.
“I know nothing about it, either — I had just come in through Entrance Four when I saw them.” She motioned to Sonya. “I was with her. We were unable to use the other entrance.”
“What of the raiding party?” the Invisible Emperor demanded.
It was Kang Fu who answered.
“One of the men was killed. The others were shut out when we closed the emergency door. Group Five has been sent to take care of them.”
“And you still have not found the man Traile?” came a harsh query from the Skull.
“No, Master, but it is impossible for him to escape,” the half-caste replied hastily.
“Are you blind?” the Invisible Emperor said in a fierce voice. “This entire affair is a conspiracy. Traile must have known about the drug, and he simply pretended to agree to my conditions so he could discover the base. He must have some scheme to wreck our plans.”
For just an instant, Traile caught a strange look in Sonya Damitri’s eyes. And he knew, then, how Eric had been revived. But Kang Fu’s next words snatched his mind from that brief, revealing thought.
“These two must know what Traile intends, Master. It should not take long to make them talk.”
Before Yen Sin could answer, Traile wheeled toward the glass bay, which he knew shielded the Yellow Doctor.
“Let me handle them!” he said harshly. “I’ve a score to settle with both of them.”
He thought Sonya gave a start, in spite of his careful imitation of the millionaire’s grating voice. But Yen Sin’s answer showed he had no suspicion.
“Very well. Kang Fu will assist you.”
The tight band about Traile’s heart relaxed. He nodded to the Eurasian. Kang Fu ordered the others to take out the captives. They were starting through the opening to the torture room when, without the slightest warning, the black section next to the vault whirled open on its pivots.
Then Mark Bannister plunged into the room.
There was a stifled exclamation from the Golden Skull, and Yen Sin’s voice rose sharply.
“Kang Fu! Seize the man behind you!”
Traile had leaped back the instant he saw the millionaire. Kang Fu spun around, halted with a look of stupefaction. As Traile snatched the gun from his pocket, the half-caste frantically raised his own pistol.
Traile fired. Kang Fu crumpled to the floor, and Bannister tripped over him in his furious charge. One of the Gray Men clawed out at Traile’s gun hand. Traile jumped sidewise, stiff-armed the other man.
In the sudden confusion, Eric had wrenched away from his captors. He hurled himself down after the half-caste’s pistol. A squealing Chinese dashed after him with a knife. Traile drilled the man through the head. Two of the Gray Men were almost on him. He slammed the gun across the nearer one’s face. The rubber mask tore away, and he saw a bleeding gash. Before the second man could reach him, Traile hurdled a chair and jumped onto the table.
The second Gray Man dived at his legs. He lashed out, kicked the man squarely under the jaw. The Gray Man fell back with a strangled groan. Traile flung a look upward, crouched swiftly. Two dacoits were springing to drag him down. He leaped up with all his might, hooked one arm over the top of the center bay-panel.
Clutching hands caught at his feet. He kicked backward, felt the thud of his foot against flesh. His gun had slipped from his fingers as he grasped the top of the panel, pulled himself up with both hands.
Back of the partition, the Satanic face of the Yellow Doctor glared up at him. As he swung himself over the top, a gun blasted from the council room. The slug made a scar on the bulletproof panel, ricocheted up to the ceiling. Two more shots crashed against the glass as he dropped.
He struck beside the pedestal. Like a flash, the black rectangle was slid aside, and the snout of a peculiar weapon appeared. He threw himself flat. There was a twang, and a steel dart buried itself in the side of the pedestal.
As Yen Sin stepped back to recharge the gun, Traile sprang to his feet. The Crime Emperor stabbed a yellow talon at a button before him, and the right bay-panel swished back into a niche. Bannister and four of Yen Sin’s killers darted toward the opening.
Traile whirled, snatched one of the death’s-head dolls, and hurled it toward the onrushing men. A horrified look shot into Bannister’s face as he saw the doll. He jumped back, threw his hand before his eyes.
There was a brilliant flash, an awful shriek, and the millionaire was lost in a blaze of rainbow fire. As Yen Sin ran toward the other side, Traile saw two more groups closing in. He turned desperately and jerked one after another of the deadly puppets from their wires. He saw it land near the pile of bonds, and another blaze up near the door to the torture room.
Alarm bells were clanging wildly above the hiss of the Rainbow Death and the screams of the dying men. Traile felt his way toward the right side of the bay, to the opening through which Yen Sin had fled.
The Yellow Doctor’s voice was audible from across the council room. As Traile ran toward the spot, the rainbow-colored smoke billowed from a sudden draft. He saw three or four of the Gray Men dashing to the rear door. Eric was hastily drawing Sonya away from the flames. The girl swayed against him, almost overcome by the smoke.
From the direction of the torture chamber came a rattle of shots. Traile heard Allen bawl out something. He stumbled on toward the other side of the room. The pile of stolen bonds was blazing fiercely, and by the glare he caught sight of a yellow-robed figure only a few yards away. He leaped to bar the opening for which Doctor Yen Sin was making.
The Crime Emperor gave a baffled snarl, whirled to spring past the heap of blazing paper. The flames eddied out at him. He threw one hand before his eyes, staggered back into the vault. Then a wall of rainbow fire billowed across the entrance.
The heat forced Traile back. His feet struck Kang Fu’s body, and as he tripped to his knees he saw part of a rainbow skeleton where Bannister had dropped. The draft sent the smoke whirling again, and he saw Allen and two of his men charge into the room, handkerchiefs held at their nostrils.
“Watch out!” Traile called huskily as they neared him. “Some of Yen Sin’s killers may still be here.”
The senior agent limped toward him, his mouth bleeding, and his clothes torn half from him.
“I think the damned rats are taking it on the lam,” he said thickly through the handkerchief. “The other four squads finally got in through that restaurant.”
Traile quickly pointed toward the blazing bonds.
“Keep your guns trained over there. Yen Sin was forced into that vault, and if the smoke hasn’t stupefied him he’ll try to make a break.”
A few moments later Eric reappeared, but Sonya was not to be seen. Eric met his gaze firmly.
“I helped her escape, Michael.”
Traile slowly nodded.
“I understand, old man. I hope she gets away.”
Allen came over to them, stared through one of the open bay panels at the Golden Skull. Traile saw the grimace which came to his face.
“Then you guessed what that X-ray was?”
The F.B.I. man grimly wagged his head.
“Yes, when Eric told me that Yen Sin had threatened to cut off his head and shrink it for a present to you. I doped it out then that Meredith’s shrunken head was inside the Golden Skull. Poor old Stone must have made an X-ray of the skull at the last minute. Nobody thought to look at the machine, and later that forged paper must have been X-rayed on the same film.”
“It was a fiendish idea,” Traile muttered. “The original Golden Skull was probably only a symbol, but Yen Sin used this one to keep a merciless hold on the Gray Men. I suspect that he tricked a number of them into helping kill Meredith, perhaps by threat of torture. Those tiny marks we saw on the forehead are undoubtedly the signatures of the members of the cult.”
The two agents with Allen stared in astonishment at Traile’s revelations. He peered toward the vault, went on hurriedly.
“After cutting off the ears, and mutilating the nose and lips, he simply plated the head with gold to hide what it really was and to preserve the signatures. That way, he had the corpus delicti and what amounted to a signed confession in form he could easily move from one place to another. Those other shrunken heads evidently served the same purpose for later members. If someone hadn’t taken the real skull to Courtland’s home instead of one of the seals, we’d probably never have known.”
“Well, we’ll know plenty when we get another X-ray and read those names,” muttered Allen.
Traile’s dark eyes were grave.
“We’d better forget the Gray Men, Allen. To publish the truth about this might wreck Wall Street — and the country. Better by far to drop the skull in that fire and destroy the heads later. After all, most of those poor wretches were driven by torture and blackmail, and tricked into those killings.”
Allen looked fiercely toward the vault.
“I hope I’m there to see it when they strap Yen Sin in the chair!”
Traile shook his head.
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that. The yellow butcher is probably roasted by now.”
To his amazement, the voice of Yen Sin replied sonorously through the Golden Skull.
“I am sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Traile. The ‘Yellow Butcher’ is quite alive — as you may soon regret.”
Traile stared down, speechless.
“Holy Moses!” Eric breathed. “He’s evidently got away to some other part of the base.”
Traile looked grimly at the now silent skull.
“That vault looked solid. But I was a fool not to suspect there was another entrance.”
“We might still catch him!” grated Allen.
A briefly bitter smile came to Traile’s lips.
“No, he wouldn’t have mocked us if he hadn’t already been safe.” Then his eyes fell on the colored flames consuming the stolen bonds. “But there’s one thing certain. He’ll find no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.”
We Are All Dead Bruno Fischer
The multitalented Bruno Fischer (1908–1992; sometimes recorded as 1995) began his writing career as a contributor to literary journals, which were as nonlucrative in the 1930s as they are today. When he discovered pulp magazines, he knew he had found his home and produced more than three hundred stories between the late 1930s and the late 1950s.
Under his own name but even more frequently using the pseudonyms Russell Gray and Harrison Storm, Fischer gravitated toward stories of terror in the short-lived subgenre known as “weird menace” pulps. Deformed and depraved villains were abundant, as were beautiful women to stalk, torture, and terrorize — frequently saved by stalwart heroes, although not always, which maintained a level of suspense.
When censors pressed for a shutdown or tempering of that violent horror market, Fischer learned to write crime stories for such pulps as Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Real Detective Tales, among many others. As the pulps began to die in the late 1940s, he became one of the first authors to switch to the paperbacks that had pushed the magazines aside and published twenty-five novels, about half of which were published by various hardcover houses, though his most successful book was a Gold Medal paperback original, House of Flesh (1950), which sold nearly two million copies.
A lifelong Socialist, he was the editor of The Socialist Call, the official weekly of the Socialist Party, until his pulp writing was too great a drain on his time and energy. He retired in order to divide his time between New Mexico and a Socialist cooperative community in New York’s Putnam County.
“We Are All Dead” was originally published in the May 1955 issue of Manhunt.
1
The caper went off without a hitch except that Wally Garden got plugged.
There were five of us. My idea had been that three would be enough, figuring the less there were the bigger the cut for each. But Oscar Trotter made the decisions.
Looking at Oscar, you might take him for a college professor — one of those lean, rangy characters with amused, intelligent eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He sounded like one, too, when he didn’t feel like sounding like somebody else. Maybe he’d been one once, among all the other things he’d ever been.
But there was no question of what he was now. He could give the toughest hood the jitters by smiling at him a certain way, and he could organize and carry out a caper better than any man I knew.
He spent a couple of weeks casing this job and then said five men would be needed, no more and no less. So there were four of us going in soon after the payroll arrived on a Friday afternoon. The fifth, Wally Garden, was cruising outside in a stolen heap.
Wally was far and away the youngest of us, around twenty-three, and he wasn’t a regular. I didn’t know where Oscar had picked him up; somebody had recommended him, he’d said. It must have been somebody Oscar had a lot of confidence in because Oscar was a mighty careful guy. Wally was supposed to be very good with a car, but I think what made Oscar pick him was that he was moon-faced and clear-eyed and looked like he was always helping old ladies across streets.
Protective coloration, Oscar called it. Have one appearance during the job and another while making the getaway.
So there was the kid, and Oscar Trotter who could pass for a professor, and Georgie Ross who had a wife and two children and made like a respectable citizen except for a few days a year, and Tiny who was an old-time Chicago gorilla but could have been your kindly gray-haired Uncle Tim.
As for me, I’d been around a long, long time in thirty-four years of living. I’d almost been a lawyer, once. I’d almost married a decent woman, once. I’d almost...
Never mind. I was thirty-four years old and had all my features in the right places, and whenever Oscar Trotter had a job I was there at his side.
Wally Garden’s part was to swipe a car early in the afternoon and pick us up on a country road and drop us off at the factory and drive slowly for five hundred feet and make a U-turn and drive slowly back. He picked out a nice car — a shiny big Buick.
The factory manufactured plastic pipe. It was in New Jersey, on the outskirts of Coast City where real estate was cheap. The office of the large, low, sprawling plant was in a wing off by itself. From that wing a side door opened directly out to a two-lane blacktop road that had little traffic. There was an armed guard who arrived with the payroll and stayed until it was distributed, but he was an old man who was given that job because he couldn’t work at anything else.
Oscar decided it would be a cinch. And it was.
We were in and out in seventy seconds — five seconds under the schedule Oscar had worked out. We barged in wearing caps and T-shirts and denim work pants, and we had Halloween masks on our faces and guns in our hands. Tiny had the guard’s gun before the sluggish old man knew what was up. Seven or eight others were in the office, men and women, but they were too scared to cause trouble. Which was just as well. We weren’t after hurting anybody if we could help it. We were after dough, and there it was on a long table in an adjoining room, in several hundred little yellow envelopes.
Seventy seconds — and we were coming out through the side door with two satchels holding the payroll, pulling off our masks and sticking away our guns before we stepped into the open air, then striding to the Buick Wally Garden was rolling over to us.
Some hero in the office got hold of a gun and started to fire it.
The newspapers next day said it was a bookkeeper who had it in his desk. One thing was sure — he didn’t know a lot about how to use it. He stood at a window and let fly wildly.
None of the slugs came near us. Anyway, not at the four of us out in the open he was firing at. But he got Wally who was still a good twenty feet away. Got him through the car window as if he’d been an innocent bystander.
The car jerked as his foot slipped off the throttle and it stalled and stopped after rolling a few more feet. Through the windshield we saw Wally slump over the wheel.
Oscar yelled something to me, but I knew what to do. Sometimes I could think for myself. I ran around to the left front door.
The shooting had stopped. No more bullets, I supposed.
Wally turned a pale, agonized face to me as I yanked open the car door. “I’m hit,” he moaned.
“Shove over,” I said.
He remained bowed over the wheel. I pushed him. Oscar got into the car through the opposite door and pulled him. Groaning, Wally slid along the seat. Georgie and Tiny were piling into the back seat with the satchels. There was plenty of screaming now in the office, but nobody was coming out, not even the hero. I took Wally’s place and got the stalled engine started and away we went.
Sagging between Oscar and me on the front seat, Wally started to cough, shaking all over.
“Where’s it hurt, son?” Oscar asked gently.
Wally pushed his face against Oscar’s shoulder, the way a frightened child would against his mother’s bosom.
He gasped, “I feel... it stabs... my insides... bleeding.”
He was the only one of us wearing a jacket. Oscar unbuttoned it and pulled it back. I glanced sideways and saw blood soaking a jagged splotch on the right side of his shirt. It looked bad.
Nobody said anything.
2
Tiny sat twisted around on the back seat watching through the rear window. It wasn’t what was behind us we had to worry about as much as what was ahead. Pretty soon there would be roadblocks.
We traveled three and two-tenths miles on that road, according to plan. Then I swung the Buick left, off blacktop and onto an oiled country road running through fields and woods.
It was a bright spring afternoon, the kind of day on which you took deep breaths and felt it was good to be alive. Beside me Wally Garden started to claw at his right side. Oscar had to hold his hand to keep him from making the wound worse than it was.
Again I made a left turn. This time there was no road to turn onto but only an open field. Wally screamed between clenched teeth as the rough ground jounced the car.
Beyond the field were woods — big stuff, mostly, oaks and maples, with a fringe of high shrubs. Two cars, a Ford and a Nash, were where we’d left them this morning behind the shrubs. I rolled the hot car, the Buick, quite a way in among the trees.
It was dim in there, and cool and quiet. Wally’s eyes were closed; he’d stopped squirming in agony. He would have toppled over if Oscar hadn’t been holding him.
“Passed out?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” Oscar said.
Getting out of the car, he eased Wally’s head and shoulder down on the seat. Wally lay on his side twitching and moaning and unconscious.
The Buick was going to be left right here — after, of course, we’d wiped off all our prints. The way we planned it, we’d hang around for two-three hours before starting back to New York in the two other cars. Until then we had plenty of time on our hands. We used some of it to make a quick count of the loot in the two satchels.
When Oscar Trotter had cased the job, he’d estimated that the take would be between forty and fifty grand. Actually it was around twenty-two grand.
What the hell! After a while you get to be part realist and part cynic, if the two aren’t the same thing in this rotten racket. Nothing is ever as good as you plan or hope or dream. You’re doing all right if you get fifty percent, and don’t lose your life or freedom while doing it.
Every now and then I’d leave the others to go over for a look at Wally. The third time I did his eyes were open.
“How d’you feel, kid?”
He had trouble speaking. He managed to let me know he was thirsty.
There wasn’t any water, but Georgie had a pint of rye. Wally, lying cramped on that car seat, gulped and coughed and gulped and pushed the bottle away. I thought it probably did him more harm than good.
“I’m burning up,” he moaned.
I felt his brow. He sure was.
I went over to where Oscar and Georgie and Tiny were changing their clothes beside the Nash. This would be an important part of our protective coloration — completely different and respectable clothes.
The alarm was out for five men in a Buick, at least four of whom had been seen wearing caps and T-shirts and denim pants. I felt kind of sorry for anybody within a hundred miles who would be in T-shirts and denim pants. But we wouldn’t be. We’d be wearing conservative business suits and shirts and neckties, and we’d be driving two in a Ford Georgie owned legally and three in a Nash Oscar owned legally, and why would any cop at a roadblock or toll gate waste time on such honest-looking citizens?
Except that in one of the cars there would be a wounded man. This was one contingency Oscar hadn’t foreseen.
I said to Tiny who was standing in his underwear, “Give me a hand with the kid. He’ll be more comfortable on the ground.”
Oscar stopped buttoning a freshly laundered white shirt. “Leave him where he is.”
“For how long?” I said.
There was a silence. I’d put our plight into words. This was as good a time as any to face it.
Oscar tossed me a smile. About the worst thing he did was smile. It was twisted and almost never mirthful.
“Until,” he said, “somebody blunders into these woods and finds him.” He tucked his shirt-tail into his pants and added hopefully, “It might take days.”
Wally was nobody to me. But I said, “We can’t do that.”
“Have you a better idea, Johnny?” Oscar said.
“You’re the big brain,” I said.
“Very well then.” Oscar, standing among us tall and slightly stooped, took off his horn-rimmed glasses. “Gentlemen, let us consider the situation.”
This was his professorial manner. He could put it on like a coat, and when he did you knew he was either going to show how bright he was or pull something dirty.
“The odds are highly favorable,” he drawled, “that before midnight we four will be out of New Jersey and in New York and each safe and snug at home. But not if we’re burdened by a wounded and probably dying man. We’ll never make it. If by chance we do make it, what do we do with him? At the least he needs a doctor. A doctor finds the bullet wound and calls in the police. Perhaps Wally wouldn’t talk. Perhaps he will. He may be delirious and not know he’s talking.” Oscar’s smile broadened. “There’s no question, gentlemen, that we’d deserve to have our heads chopped off if we stuck our necks out so far.”
Tiny said uneasily, “Yeah, but we can’t just leave him here to die.”
“Certainly not.” Oscar’s eyeglasses swung gently from his fingers. “He might die too slowly or scream and attract a passing car. There is, I’m afraid, only one alternative.”
All right, but why did he have to say it in that mocking, lecturing manner, and why did he have to keep smiling all the time?
Georgie was down on one knee lacing his shoes so he wouldn’t have to look at anybody. Tiny was scratching his hairy chest unhappily. I was a little sick to my stomach. And Oscar Trotter smiled.
“Tiny, your knife, please,” Oscar drawled. “A gun would be too noisy.”
Tiny dug his switchblade knife out of a pair of pants draped over the hood of the Nash. Oscar took it from him and moved to the Buick as if taking a stroll through the woods.
I turned away. I couldn’t stop him, and if I could I wouldn’t have. I’d seen that kid only twice in my life before today, the first time less than a week ago. I didn’t know a thing about him except his name. He was nobody at all to me. But I turned away and my hands shook as I set fire to a cigarette.
Then Oscar was coming back.
“Well, Johnny,” he taunted me, “from the first you wanted less men to cut in on the loot, didn’t you?”
I had an impulse to take a swing at him. But of course I didn’t.
3
Much of the next three days I watched Stella jiggle about Oscar’s apartment. She was a bit on the buxom side, but in a cozy-looking, cuddly-looking way. She went in for sheer, tight sweaters and little else, and she had what to jiggle with. She belonged to Oscar.
I didn’t know what the dames saw in him. He was no longer young and you couldn’t call him handsome by a long shot, but he always had a woman around who had both youth and looks. Like Stella, who was merely the current one. She was also a fine cook.
I was staying with them in Oscar’s two-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive. I’d come down from Boston for that New Jersey caper, and afterward there was nothing to take me back to Boston. Oscar was letting me use the spare room while I was making up my mind whether to stay in New York or push on to wherever the spirit moved me.
On that third day Oscar and I went up to the Polo Grounds to take in a ball game. When Stella heard us at the door, she came out to meet us in the foyer.
“There’s a friend of yours in the living room,” she told Oscar. “A Mr. Brant. He’s been waiting over an hour.”
I stepped to the end of the foyer and looked into the living room. The meaty man sitting on the sofa and sucking a pipe was definitely no friend of Oscar’s. Or of mine. He was Bill Brant, a city detective attached to the DA’s office, which meant he was a kind of free-wheeling copper.
Oscar touched my arm. “I expected this. Merely the MO. I’ll do the talking.” He turned to Stella. “Go do your work in the kitchen.”
“I haven’t any. Dinner’s cooking.”
“Go find something to do in the kitchen,” he snapped.
She flounced away, wiggling almost as much as she jiggled. But the thing is that she obeyed.
Oscar trained his women right. She was used to being sent out of the room or sometimes clear out of the apartment when business was being discussed. She was no innocent, of course, but in his book the less any woman knew, the better. It might be all right to trust Stella today, but who knew what the situation would be tomorrow? So she went into the kitchen and we went into the living room.
“Well, what d’you know!” Bill Brant beamed at me. “Johnny Worth too! Another piece fits into the picture. I guess you came to town for the Jersey stickup?”
“I did?” I said and went over to the portable bar for a drink. I didn’t offer the cop any.
“What’s this about New Jersey?” Oscar was asking.
“We’re cooperating with the police over there. You’re a local resident. So was Wallace Garden, who was found dead in the Buick.”
“You misunderstood my question.” Oscar was using his mocking drawl. “I’m not interested in the jurisdictional problems of the police. I’m simply curious as to the reason for your visit.”
“Come off it,” Brant said. “That payroll stickup has all your earmarks.”
I helped myself to another drink. I hadn’t been very much worried, but now I felt better. That, as Oscar had guessed, was all they seemed to have — the MO, the modus operandi, the well-planned, perfectly timed and executed armed robbery that cops identified with Oscar.
“Earmarks!” Oscar snorted. “Do they arrest citizens for that these days?”
“No, but it helps us look in the right direction.” Brant sucked on his pipe. “That killing too. It’s like you not to leave loose ends, even if it means sticking a knife into one of your own boys.” He twisted his head around to me. “Or did he have you do the dirty work, Johnny?”
That was one thing about Oscar, I thought — he did his own dirty work. Maybe because he enjoyed it.
Aloud I said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Brant sighed. What had he expected, that we’d up and confess all as soon as he told us he had a suspicion? We knew as well as he did that he didn’t even have enough to take us to headquarters and sweat us, and likely never would have. But he was paid to try, and he hung around another ten minutes, trying. That got him nothing, not even a drink.
After he was gone, Stella came in from the kitchen and said dinner would be ready soon.
4
Another day passed and another. I was on edge, restless. I took walks along the Drive, I dropped in on friends, I went to the movies. Then I’d come back to Oscar’s apartment and there would be Stella jiggling.
Understand me. I didn’t particularly hanker for her — certainly not enough to risk fooling around with anything of Oscar Trotter’s. Besides, I doubted that she would play. She seemed to like me, but strictly as her husband’s friend. She was completely devoted to him.
No, it was just that any juicy dame within constant eyesight made my restlessness so much harder to take.
We were playing Scrabble on the cardtable, Oscar and Stella and I, when the doorbell rang.
It was evening, around eight-thirty. Oscar, of course, was way ahead; he was unbeatable at any game that required brains. Stella was way behind. I was in the middle, where I usually found myself in everything. As it was Stella’s turn to play, I went to answer the doorbell.
A girl stood in the hall — a fairhaired, blue-eyed girl in a simple gray dress and a crazy little gray hat.
“Mr. Trotter?” she said.
“You’re right, I’m not,” I said. “He’s inside.”
Without being invited in, she stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind her. “Please tell him Mrs. Garden would like to see him.”
“Sure.” I started to turn and stopped. “Garden?” I said. “Any relative of—”
I caught myself. In my racket you became cautious about naming certain names under certain circumstances, especially when you weren’t supposed to know them. There were all kinds of traps.
Gravely she said, “I was Wally’s wife.” She put her head back. “You must be Johnny. Wally told me about you.”
I gawked at her. Standing primly and trimly in the foyer, she made me think of golden fields and cool streams and the dreams of youth.
I said, “Wait here,” and went into the living room. Stella was scowling at the Scrabble board and Oscar was telling her irritably to do something or pass. I beckoned to him. He rose from the cardtable and came over to me.
“Wally’s wife is in the foyer,” I said.
Oscar took off his eyeglasses, a sign that he was disturbed. “He never mentioned a wife to me.”
“To me either. He wasn’t much of a talker.”
“What does she want?”
“Seems to me,” I said, “our worry is what does she know. If Wally—”
And then she was in the living room. Having waited maybe thirty seconds in the foyer, she wasn’t waiting any longer. She headed straight for Oscar.
“You must be Mr. Trotter,” she said. “I’m Abby Garden.”
Abby, I thought — exactly the name for a lovely girl of twenty, if she was that old.
Oscar put his glasses back on to stare at her. He seemed as startled as I’d been that such a dish could have been the moon-faced kid’s wife. But he didn’t say anything to her. In fact, his nod was rather curt. Then he looked across the room at Stella.
Stella was twisted around on her chair, giving Abby Garden that feminine once-over which in a moment took in age, weight, figure, clothes, make-up. Stella didn’t look enthusiastic. Which was natural enough, considering that whatever she had the other girl had better.
“Baby,” Oscar said to Stella, “take a walk to Broadway and buy a pack of cigarettes.”
There were cigarettes all over the apartment. At another time he might have given her the order in one word, “Blow!” but this evening he was being polite about it in front of a guest. It amounted to the same thing. Stella undulated up the length of the room, and on the way her eyes never left the girl. No doubt she didn’t care for being chased out for her. But she left, all right.
Me, whenever I told a dame to do anything, she either kicked up a fuss or ignored me. What did Oscar have?
I fixed drinks for the three of us. Abby wanted a rye highball without too much gingerale. Her hand brushed mine as she took the glass from me. That was sheer accident, but all the same my fingers tingled.
“Now then, Mrs. Garden,” Oscar said. His long legs stretched from the armchair in which he lounged. “What’s your business with me?”
She rolled her glass between her palms. “Wally told me his share would come to thousands of dollars.”
“And who,” he said, “might Wally be?”
“Please, Mr. Trotter.” Abby leaned forward. “We can be open and aboveboard. Wally had no secrets from me. I didn’t like it when he told me he was going in on that... that robbery. He’d already done one stretch. Six months for stealing cars. Before I met him.” She bit her lower lip. “I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
Oscar looked utterly disgusted. He had no use for a man who blabbered to anybody, including his wife. Wally may very well have endangered us all.
“So?” Oscar said.
“Oh, you needn’t worry I told the police. They asked me, of course. They questioned me for hours after they found poor Wally. But I told them I knew nothing about any holdup or who was in it.” She gave him a piece of a small smile. “You see, I didn’t want to get into trouble. After all, if I’d known beforehand, I was a kind of accessory, wasn’t I?”
“So?” Oscar said again.
“There was one detective especially — a fat man named Brant. He kept asking me if I knew you.” She looked Oscar straight in the eye. “He said you killed Wally.”
“Now why would I do any such thing?”
“Brant said Wally was wounded during the getaway and then you or one of the others killed him with a knife to get him out of the way.”
“My dear,” Oscar said, more in sorrow than in anger, “can it be possible you fell for that line?”
“Is it a line? That’s what I want to know.”
Oscar sighed. “I see you’re not familiar with police tricks. This is a particularly shabby one. Don’t you see they made up this story to induce you to talk?”
“Then he wasn’t killed with a knife?”
“No, my dear. The bullet killed him. He died in my arms. Wasn’t that so, Johnny?”
“Yes,” I said.
5
That word was my first contribution to the conversation, and my last for another while. Nursing a Scotch-on-the-rocks, I sat on the hassock near Abby’s legs. They were beautifully turned legs. I looked up at her face. She was drinking her highball, and over the rim of the glass her wide blue eyes were fixed with rapt attention on Oscar, who was, now, being a salesman.
He was as good at that as at anything else. His honeyed voice was hypnotic, telling her how he’d loved Wally like a son, how he would have given his right arm to have saved him after that dastardly bookkeeper had plugged him, how the conniving, heartless coppers were out to make her hate him and thus betray him with that fantastic yarn that he, Oscar Trotter, would either have harmed or permitted anybody else to have harmed a hair of one of his own men.
He was good, and on top of that she apparently wasn’t too bright. He sold her and she bought.
“Wally always warned me not to trust a cop.” She split a very warm smile between both of us. “You look like such nice men. So much nicer than that fat detective.”
Oscar purred, “Then I take it we’re friends, Abby?”
“Oh, yes.” She put her highball glass down on the coffee table. “And in a way we’re partners, aren’t we? When will I get my share?”
Suddenly there was frost in the room. The cheekbones ridged Oscar’s lean face.
“What share?” he said softly.
“Why, Wally’s share. He earned it, didn’t he?” She was completely relaxed; she was free and easy and charming. “I read in the papers that there were twenty-two thousand dollars. One-fifth of that—”
“Young lady,” Oscar cut in, “are you trying to blackmail me?”
“Not at all. I simply ask for what I’m entitled to. If money is owed to a man who dies, it goes to his wife.”
She said that wide-eyed and innocent-faced, her earnest manner holding no hint of threat — merely a young and probably destitute widow wanting to clean up financial matters after her husband’s untimely demise.
Huh! A few minutes ago I’d thought she wasn’t so bright. Now I changed my mind.
I spoke up. “She’s got something there, Oscar.”
“You keep out of this.”
“Not this time,” I said. “I suggest we each give her five hundred bucks.”
Oscar pushed his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes. Then he nodded. He had no choice. We’d be in a bad way if she were to chirp to the cops.
“How much will that come to?” Abby asked me.
“Two grand. Wally wouldn’t have gotten a fifth anyway. He was only the driver. Believe me, we’re being more than fair.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said, and gave me a smile.
This was why I’d jumped in to negotiate — to get some such smile out of her, a smile of sheer joyous gratitude. A man has already gone quite a distance with a dame who thinks she’s beholden to him for money. And with this one I was after going on and on and maybe never stopping.
“Just a minute,” Oscar said.
Abby and I shifted our attention from each other to him.
“Prove you’re Wally’s wife,” he said.
“But I am.”
Oscar looked stern. “I know every switch on every con game. We don’t even know Wally had a wife. If he did, we don’t know you were the one. Prove it.”
“Why, of course,” she said. “I have my marriage license and other things at home. If you want me to bring—”
“I’ve a better idea,” I said. I wasn’t one to pass up any chance when I was on the make. I got off the hassock so quickly I almost spilled what was left in my glass. “I’ll go with you right now and look over whatever you have.”
“That’s so good of you,” she said so sweetly that my heart did a complete flip.
Oscar nodded and closed his eyes. When we left, he appeared to have fallen asleep in the armchair.
6
According to the marriage license, they’d been married seven months ago by the county clerk here in New York.
I sat in the only decent chair in the place. Nearby a train rumbled on the Third Avenue El. She didn’t quite live in a slum, but the difference wasn’t great. There wasn’t much to this room, and there was less to the bedroom and kitchen and bathroom. They were all undersized and falling apart.
Wally’s cut of the loot would have meant a lot to him and her, if he’d lived through it.
I handed the marriage license back to Abby. She fed me other stuff out of the shoebox on her lap — snapshots of her and Wally, his discharge papers from the army, the deposit book of a joint savings account containing less than fifty dollars, a letter from her mother from somewhere in Iowa complaining because she’d gone and married a man named Wallace Garden whom none of the family had met.
“Good enough,” I said.
“How soon will I get the money?”
“Soon as I collect it from the others. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Two thousand dollars,” she reminded me.
“That’s right,” I said.
Abby put the lid on the shoebox and carried it into the bedroom. She didn’t jiggle and wiggle like Stella. Her tight, slender figure in that trim gray dress seemed to flow when in motion.
I wanted her as I hadn’t wanted anybody or anything in a very long time.
Take it easy, I warned myself while waiting for her to return. I could mark myself lousy in her book by rushing. All right, she’d been married to that round-faced kid, who’d been what he’d been, meaning no better than I, and she hadn’t acted particularly upset over his death. But I didn’t yet know what made her tick. I only knew that she looked like moonlight and roses and that it would be wise to handle her accordingly. She was already grateful to me. She’d be a lot more grateful when I brought her the two grand. Then would be time enough to take the next step — a big step or small step, depending on how she responded.
So I was a perfect little gentleman that evening. She put up a pot of coffee and we sat opposite each other at the table and she was as pleasant to talk to as to look at. She spoke of her folks’ farm in Iowa and I spoke of my folks’ farm in Indiana.
When I was leaving, she went to the door with me and put her hand in mine. And she said, “I’ll see you soon, Johnny.”
“Do you want to see me or the money?”
“Both,” she said and squeezed my hand holding hers.
I walked on a cloud clear across town and then a couple of miles uptown to Oscar’s apartment. I hadn’t as much as kissed her good-night, or tried to, but what of that? My hand still tingled from the feel of hers.
I laughed at myself. Johnny Worth, the cynical hard guy, acting like a love-sick schoolboy! But I laughed at myself happily.
Oscar and Stella were in bed when I let myself in. Oscar heard me and came out of his bedroom in a bath-robe.
“She was Wally’s wife, all right,” I told him. “Tomorrow I’ll go collect the dough from Georgie and Tiny.”
“You seem anxious,” he said with an amused twist to his mouth.
I shrugged. “We promised her.”
“I can read you like a book, Johnny.” He nudged my ribs with his elbow. “Make much headway with her?”
I shrugged again.
“I guess not if you’re back so early,” Oscar said, leering amiably. “I can’t imagine what she saw in that punk Wally. She has class. Well, good hunting.”
“Good-night,” I said and went into my room.
7
Next afternoon I set forth to make the collection for Abby. Oscar had given me his five hundred in the morning, and of course I had my own, so that left Georgie and Tiny to go.
Georgie Ross lived out in Queens, in a neat frame house with a patch of lawn in front. His wife and two teen-aged daughters hadn’t any notion of how he picked up extra money to support them. His regular job, as a traveling salesman in housewares, didn’t keep him very busy or bring in much income. He had time on a weekday afternoon to be mowing his lawn.
He stopped mowing when he saw me come up the street. He stood middle-aged and pot-bellied.
“For God’s sake,” he complained when I reached him, “you know better than to come here.”
“Relax. You can say I’m a bill collector.”
“Just don’t come around, that’s all I ask. What d’you want?”
“To collect a bill. Five C’s for Wally Garden’s widow.”
His eyes bugged out. “You’re kidding,” he said. Meaning, if I knew him, not about the widow but about the money.
I told him I wasn’t kidding and I told him about Abby’s visit last evening.
“Listen,” Georgie said, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his suddenly sweaty face, “I’m not shelling out that kind of dough for anybody’s wife. I have my own family to think of. My God, do you know what my two girls cost me? Just their clothes! And my oldest, Dinah, is starting college next year. Is that expensive! I got to hang onto every penny.”
“Some of those pennies were supposed to have gone to Wally.”
“It’s his tough luck he wasn’t around to collect.” He leaned against the handle of the mower. “I tell you this: we give her two grand now, she thinks she has us over a barrel and keeps coming back for more. Oscar ought to handle her different.”
“How?”
“Well, he handled her husband,” Georgie said.
That was a quiet, genteel street, and he fitted into it, by looking at him, the way anybody else in sight did. He resumed mowing his lawn.
I tagged after him. “Use your head, Georgie.”
“You don’t get one damn penny out of me.”
I knew I was licked. I’d ask Oscar to try. He could persuade him if anybody could. I left Georgie plodding stolidly behind the mower.
Tiny was harder to find. He was like me, without anywhere to stay put. He was paying rent on a mangy room he’d sublet downtown, but he only slept in it. I made the rounds of the neighboring ginmills. What with lingering in this place and that and shooting the breeze with guys I knew, I didn’t come across Tiny until after nine o’clock.
He was sitting wide-shouldered and gray-haired at the bar, drinking beer. He was always drinking beer.
He said, “Gee, am I glad to see you.” Picking up his glass, he slid off the stool and we went to an isolated table. “I’ve been trying to get Oscar on the phone,” he said, “but he ain’t in. Stella says she don’t know where he went.” He glanced around. “Johnny, there’s been a city dick asking me questions this afternoon. A fat guy.”
“Brant?”
“Yeah, that’s the name. He’s got it, Johnny. He knows who was in on it and what happened to Wally and all.”
I thought of Abby.
“Go on,” I said.
“Remember last Wednesday when the five of us went over the route in Oscar’s car? It was hot and when we came back through the Holland Tunnel from Jersey we stopped for beer on Tenth Avenue. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“Somebody that knew us saw the five of us sitting in that booth together.”
I let out my breath. Not Abby.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Search me. This Brant, he wasn’t telling. Some goddamn stoolie. He knew four of us — me and you, Oscar and Georgie. The one break is he hadn’t never seen Wally before. Brant is one cagy cookie, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I figure they showed the stoolie Wally’s picture, but he wasn’t sure. If he’d been sure, they’d be piling on us.”
“That’s right,” I said. “The cops can’t make any move officially unless they can link us to Wally. I saw Georgie this afternoon and he didn’t mention being questioned.”
“He’s been by now, I guess. The way I figure, this stoolie didn’t spill till today.” Tiny took a slug of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I don’t get it, Johnny. A stoolie sees four of us and a strange guy in a beer joint. What makes this Brant so all-fired smart he can tell from that Wally was the strange guy and we was the ones did the job way over in Jersey a couple days later?”
“Because Oscar is too good.”
“Come again?”
“The caper bore the marks of genius,” I said, “and Oscar is a genius. Then Brant drops into Oscar’s apartment a few days ago and finds me staying there, so he’s got two of us tagged. Then he learns we two plus you and Georgie were drinking beer with a fifth guy who could’ve been Wally Garden, and he’s got us all.”
“The hell he has! All he’s got is thoughts running in his head. He needs evidence. How’ll he get it if we sit tight?”
“He won’t,” I said.
This was a good time to tell him about Abby. I told him.
When I finished, Tiny complained, “What’s the matter with Oscar these days? First he lets us all be seen together in a beer joint—”
“I don’t remember any of us objected. In fact, I remember it was your idea we stop off.”
“Sure, but Oscar should know better. He’s supposed to have the brains. Then he don’t know the kid had a wife and would blab every damn thing to her. Where’d he pick up Wally, anyway?”
“He never told me,” I said. “But there’s the widow and we promised her two grand. I want five C’s from you.”
Tiny thought about it, and he came up with what, I had to concede, was a good question. “You said you saw Georgie this afternoon. Did he shell out?”
“Not yet.”
“Expect him to?”
“Sure.”
“Bet he don’t?”
“Look, Oscar will get it out of him. I’m asking you.”
Tiny said cheerfully. “Tell you what I’ll do, Johnny. When Georgie shells out, I’ll shell out.”
And he looked mighty pleased with himself. He had confidence in Georgie’s passion for hanging onto a buck.
8
So after chasing around for hours I had only the thousand I’d started out with. Well, that wasn’t hay and the evening was young. I could bring the thousand to Abby and tell her it was part payment. She would be grateful. She would thank me. One thing could lead to another — and perhaps tonight would be the night, the beginning.
I took a hack to her place.
Through her door I heard music going full blast. I knocked. No answer, which wasn’t surprising considering all the row a hot dance band was making. I knocked louder. Same result. I turned the knob and found the door unlocked.
Abby wasn’t in the living room. The bedroom and the bathroom doors were both closed. The band music, coming from a tiny table radio, stopped and a disc jockey’s voice drooled. In the comparative quiet I heard a shower running in the bathroom. I sat down to wait for her to come out.
The music started up again. It was too raucous; my mood was for sweet stuff. I reached over the table to turn off the radio, and my hand brushed a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses. She hadn’t worn them when I’d seen her, but women were vain about such things. Probably only reading glasses.
She’d stopped showering. Now with the radio off, there was no sound in the apartment. Suddenly it occurred to me that I ought to let her know she had a visitor. Thinking she was alone, she might come trotting out without anything on. I wouldn’t mind, but she might, and I was still on the perfect little gentleman technique.
I went to the bathroom door and said, “Abby.”
“I’ll be right out.”
I hadn’t time to wonder why she hadn’t sounded surprised to hear a man in her apartment and why at the least she hadn’t asked who I was. The explanation came almost at once — from the bedroom.
“What did you say, baby?” a man called.
“I’ll be right out,” she repeated.
Then it was quiet again except for the thumping of my heart.
I knew that man’s voice. If there was any doubt about it, there were those eyeglasses on the table. A minute ago I’d given them hardly a glance because I hadn’t any reason then to take a good look to see if they were a woman’s style and size. They seemed massive now, with a thick, dark frame.
The bathroom doorknob was turning. I moved away from there until the table stopped me, and Abby came out. She was wearing a skimpy towel held around her middle and not another thing.
Her body was very beautiful. But it was a bitter thing for me to see now.
She took two or three steps into the room, flowing with that wonderful grace of hers, before she realized that the man standing by the table wasn’t the one who had just spoken to her from the bedroom — wasn’t the one for whom she didn’t at all mind coming out like this. It was only I... I who had been dreaming dreams. Her free hand yanked up and across her breasts in that age-old gesture of women, and rage blazed in her blue eyes.
“You have a nerve!” She said harshly.
Again he heard her in the bedroom and again he thought she was speaking to him. He called, “What?” and the bedroom door opened, and he said, “With this door closed I can’t hear a—” and he saw me.
Oscar Trotter was without jacket and shirt, as well as without his glasses.
I had to say something. I muttered, “The radio was so loud you didn’t hear me knock. I came in.” I watched Abby sidling along the wall toward the bedroom, clinging to that towel and keeping her arm pressed in front of her, making a show of modesty before me, the intruder, the third man. “I didn’t expect she was having this kind of company,” I added.
He shrugged.
A door slammed viciously. She had ducked into the bedroom, where her clothes would be. He picked up his glasses from the table and put them on.
There was nothing to keep me here. I started to leave.
“Just a minute, Johnny. I trust you’re not sore.”
I turned. “What do you expect me to be?”
“After all, you had no prior claim on her.” Oscar smiled smugly. “We both saw her at the same time.”
He stood lean and slightly stooped and considerably older than I, and dully I wondered why everything came so easily to him — even this.
“Next time,” I said, “remember to lock the door.”
“I didn’t especially plan this. I asked her out to dinner. My intention was chiefly business. Chiefly, I say, for I must confess she had — ah — impressed me last night.”
This was his high-hat manner, the great man talking down to a lesser being. Some day, I thought wearily, I’d beat him up and then he’d kill me, unless I killed him first.
“You understand,” he was drawling, “that I was far from convinced that our problem with her would be solved by giving her two thousand dollars. I had to learn more about her. After dinner we came up here for a drink.” That smug smile again. “One thing led to another. You know how it is.”
I knew how it was — how I’d hoped it would be with me. And I knew that he had never for one single moment made the mistake of acting the little gentleman with her.
I had forgotten about the money in my pocket. I took it out and dropped it on the table.
“Georgie and Tiny weren’t keen about contributing,” I told him. “There’s just this thousand. You’ve earned the right to worry about the balance.”
“I doubt that it will be necessary to give her anything now. You see, I’ll be paying all her bills. She’s moving in with me.”
“How nice,” I said between my teeth. “I’ll be out of there as soon as I pack my bags.”
His head was bent over the money. “Take your time,” he said as he counted it into two piles. “I still have to tell Stella. Any time tomorrow will do.” He pushed one pile across the table. “Here’s yours.”
So I had my five hundred bucks back, and that was all I had. Before I was quite out of the apartment, Oscar, in his eagerness, was already going into the bedroom where Abby was.
I went out quietly.
9
That night I slept in a hotel. I stayed in bed most of the morning, smoking cigarettes and looking up at the ceiling. Then I shaved and dressed and had lunch and went to Oscar’s apartment for my clothes.
I found Stella all packed and about to leave. She was alone in the apartment. I could guess where Oscar was.
“Hello, Johnny,” she said. “I’m leaving for good.”
She wasn’t as upset as I’d expected. She was sitting in the living room with her legs crossed and taking a final drink of Oscar’s liquor.
“I know,” I said. “When’s she moving in?”
“Tonight, I guess.” She looked into her glass. “You know, the minute she walked into this room the other night I had a feeling. Something in the way Oscar looked at her.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure I am. He was too damn bossy.”
I went into the guest bedroom and packed my two bags. When I came out, Stella was still there.
“Johnny,” she said, “have you any plans?”
“No.”
“I called up a woman I know. She owns a rooming house off Columbus Avenue. She says she has a nice furnished apartment to let on the second floor, with kitchenette and bath. She says the room is large and airy and nicely furnished. A young married couple just moved out.”
“Are you taking it?”
“I think I will.” She uncrossed her knees and pulled her skirt over them. “Two people can be very comfortable.”
I looked at her sitting there rather primly with eyes lowered — a placid, cozy, cuddly woman with a bosom made for a man to rest his weary head on. She wasn’t Abby, but Abby was a ruined dream, and Stella was real.
“You and me?” I murmured.
“If you want to, Johnny.”
I picked up my bags. “Well, why not?” I said.
10
Stella was very nice. We weren’t in love with each other, but we liked each other and got along, which was more than could be said of a lot of couples living together.
We weren’t settled a week in the rooming house near Columbus Avenue when Oscar phoned. Stella answered and spoke to him. I dipped the newspaper I was reading and listened to her say we’d be glad to come over for a drink that evening.
I said, “Wait a minute.”
She waved me silent and told Oscar we’d be there by nine. When she hung up, she dropped on my lap, cuddling the way only she could.
“Honey, I want to go just to show I don’t care for him any more and am not jealous of that Abby. You’re sweeter than he ever was. Why shouldn’t we all still be friends?”
“All right,” I said.
Oscar answered the doorbell when we got there. Heartily he shook Stella’s hand and then mine and said Abby was in the kitchen and would be out in a minute. Stella went into the kitchen to give Abby a hand and Oscar, with a hand on my shoulder, took me into the living room.
Georgie and Tiny were there. Georgie hadn’t brought his wife, of course; he kept her strictly away from this kind of social circle. They were drinking cocktails, even Tiny who was mostly a beer man.
“Looks like a caper reunion,” I commented dryly. “Except that there’s one missing. Though I guess we could consider that his widow represents him.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Oscar said pleasantly, “Here, sour-puss, maybe this will cheer you up,” and thrust a cocktail at me.
I took it and sipped.
Then Abby came in, bearing a plate of chopped liver in one hand and a plate of crackers in the other. She had a warm smile for me — the impersonal greeting of a gracious hostess. Stella came behind her with potato chips and pretzels, and all of a sudden Stella’s jiggling irritated me no end.
Abby hadn’t changed. There was no reason why I had expected she would. She still made me think of golden fields and cool streams, as she had the first time I’d laid eyes on her.
I refilled my glass from the cocktail shaker and walked to a window and looked out at the Hudson River sparkling under the sinking sun.
“Now that was the way to handle her,” Georgie said. He had come up beside me; he was stuffing into his mouth a cracker smeared with liver. “Better than paying her off. Not only saves us dough. This way we’re sure of her.”
“That’s not why he did it.”
“Guess not. Who needs a reason to want a looker like that in his bed? But the result’s the same. And you got yourself Stella, so everybody’s happy.”
Everybody was happy and everybody was gay and got gayer as the whiskey flowed. But I wasn’t happy and the more I drank the less gay I acted. Long ago I’d learned that there was nowhere a man could be lonelier than at a party. I’d known it would be a mistake to come, and it was.
Suddenly Georgie’s face turned green and he made a dash for the bathroom. Oscar sneered that he’d never been able to hold his liquor and Tiny grumbled that the only drink fit for humans was beer and I pulled Stella aside and told her I wanted to go home.
She was not only willing; she was anxious. “Fact is, I don’t feel so good,” she said. “I need air.”
We said our good-byes except to Georgie whom we could hear having a bad time in the bathroom. An empty hack approached when we reached the sidewalk and I whistled. In the hack, she clung to me, shivering, and complained, “My throat’s burning like I swallowed fire. My God, his whiskey wasn’t that bad!”
“You must be coming down with a cold,” I said.
She wobbled when we got out of the hack and she held her throat. I had to half-carry her up the steps of the brownstone house and into our room. As I turned from her to switch on the light, she moaned, “Johnny!” and she was doubled over, clutching at her stomach.
For the next hour I had my hands full with her. She seemed to be having quite an attack of indigestion. I undressed her and put her to bed and piled blankets on her because she couldn’t stop shivering. I found baking soda in the kitchen and fed her a spoonful and made tea for her. The cramps tapered off and so did the burning in her throat.
“Something I ate,” she said as she lay huddled under the blankets. “But what? We didn’t have anything for dinner that could hurt us. How do you feel, honey?”
“Fine.”
“I don’t understand it. That Abby didn’t serve anything to speak of. Nothing but some chopped liver and—” She paused. “Honey, did you have the liver?”
“No. I can’t stand the stuff.”
“Then it was the liver. Something wrong with it. Call up Oscar and see if the others are all right.”
I dialed his number. Oscar answered after the bell had rung for some time. His voice sounded weak.
“How are you over there?” I asked.
“Terrible. All four of us sick as dogs. And you?”
“I’m all right, but Stella has indigestion. We figure it was the chopped liver because that was the one thing she ate that I didn’t.”
“Could be,” Oscar said. “Georgie seems to be in the worst shape; he’s sleeping it off in the spare room. Tiny left a short time ago. Abby’s in bed, and that’s where I’ll be in another minute. What bothers me most is a burning in my throat.”
“Stella complained of the same thing. First I ever heard of indigestion making your throat burn.”
“All I know,” Oscar said, “is that whatever it is I have plenty of company in my misery. Abby is calling me.”
He hung up.
I told Stella what he’d said. “The liver,” she murmured and turned on her side.
That was at around one o’clock. At three-thirty a bell jarred me awake. I slipped out of bed and staggered across the room to the phone.
“I need you at once,” Oscar said over the wire.
“Do you feel worse?”
“About the same. But Georgie has become a problem.”
“Is he that bad?”
“Uh-huh. He went and died on my hands. I need your help, Johnny.”
11
Georgie lay face-down on the bed in the guest room. He was fully dressed except for his shoes.
“Tiny took him in here before he left,” Oscar told me. “After that I didn’t hear a sound out of Georgie. I assumed he was asleep. Probably he went into a coma and slipped off without waking. When I touched him half an hour ago, he was already cold.”
Oscar’s face was the color of old putty. He could hardly stand without clinging to the dresser. Abby hadn’t come out of the other bedroom.
I said, “Died of a bellyache? And so quickly?”
“I agree it must have been the chopped liver, which would make it ptomaine poisoning. But only Georgie ate enough of the liver to kill him. Abby says she remembers he gorged himself on it.” Oscar held his head. “One thing’s sure — he mustn’t be found here. Brant is enough trouble already.”
“This is plainly an accidental death.”
“Even so, the police will use it as an excuse to get as tough as they like with us. We can’t afford that, Johnny, so soon after the Coast City job. Best to get the body out.”
I looked him over. He didn’t seem in much better condition than the man on the bed.
“I can’t do it alone,” I said.
He dug his teeth into his lower lip and then fought to draw in his breath. “I’ll help you.”
But most of it had to fall on me. I fished car keys out of Georgie’s pocket and went looking for his Ford. I found it a block and a half up Riverside Drive and drove it around to the service entrance of the apartment building. At that late hour it was possible to park near where you wanted to.
Oscar was waiting for me on the living room sofa. He roused himself and together we got that inanimate weight that had been pot-bellied Georgie Ross down the three flights of fire stairs and, like a couple of men supporting a drunk, walked it between us out of the building and across the terribly open stretch of sidewalk and shoved it into the Ford. For all we could tell, nobody was around to see us.
That was about as far as Oscar could make it. He was practically out on his feet. I told him to go back upstairs and I got behind the wheel and drove off with Georgie slumped beside me like a man asleep.
On a street of dark warehouses over on the east side, I pulled the car over to the curb and got out and walked away.
Stella was up when I let myself in. She asked me if I’d gone to Oscar’s.
“I was worried about them,” I told her. “Tiny and Georgie left. Oscar and Abby are about in your shape. How’re you?”
“Better, though my stomach is very queazy.”
I lay in bed wondering what the odds were on chopped liver becoming contaminated and if a burning throat could possibly be a symptom of ptomaine poisoning. I watched daylight trickle into the room and listened to the sounds of traffic building up in the street, and I was scared the way one is in a nightmare, without quite knowing of what.
Eventually I slept. It was past noon when I woke and Stella was bustling about in the kitchen. She was pretty much recovered.
Toward evening I went out for a newspaper. When I returned, Brant was coming down the stoop. Being a cop, he wouldn’t have had trouble finding out where I’d moved too.
“Nice arrangement,” he commented. “You shack up with Oscar’s woman and Oscar with Wally Garden’s widow. This way nobody gets left out in the cold.”
“You running a gossip column now?” I growled.
“If I were, I’d print an item like this: How come Johnny Worth’s pals are getting themselves murdered one by one?”
I held onto myself. All I did was raise an eyebrow. “I don’t get it.”
“Haven’t you heard? George Ross was found dead this morning in his car parked near the East River Drive.”
He had already spoken to Stella, but I didn’t have to worry that she’d told him about last night’s party and who’d been there. She wouldn’t tell a cop anything about anything.
I said, “That’s too bad. Heart attack?”
“Arsenic.”
I wasn’t startled. Maybe, after all, it was no surprise to me. Arsenic, it seemed, was a poison that made your throat burn.
I lit a cigarette. Brant watched my hands. They were steady. I blew smoke at him. “Suicide, I suppose.”
“Why suicide?”
“It goes with poison.”
“Why would he want to die?”
“I hardly knew the guy,” I said.
“You’ve been seeing him. You were in a beer joint with him a week ago Wednesday.”
“Was I? Come to think of it, I dropped in for a beer and there were some guys I knew and I joined them.”
Brant took his pipe out of his fat face. “Two days later you and he were both in on that Coast City stickup.”
“Who says?”
A cop who was merely following a hunch didn’t bother me. We sparred with words, and at the end he sauntered off by himself. He hadn’t anything. He couldn’t even be sure that Georgie hadn’t been a suicide.
But I knew, didn’t I? I knew who had murdered him and had tried to murder all of us.
12
Oscar didn’t say hello to me. He opened the door of his apartment and just stood there holding onto the doorknob, and his eyes were sick and dull behind his glasses. Though it was after six o’clock, he was still in his pajamas. His robe was tied sloppily, hanging crooked and twisted on his long, lean body. He needed a shave. He looked, to put it mildly, like hell.
I stepped into the foyer and moved on past him into the living room. He shambled after me.
I said, “I suppose Brant came to see you before he did me.”
“Yes.”
“So you know what killed Georgie.”
He nodded tiredly.
“Abby still in bed?” I asked.
“I made her dress and go to a doctor when I learned it was arsenic. Don’t want him coming here, not with the cops snooping. Whatever he gives her for it, I’ll take too.”
“Better not,” I said. “Likely she’ll mix more arsenic with it.”
Oscar took off his eyeglasses. “Explain that, Johnny.”
“I don’t have to. You know as well as I do why she put arsenic in the chopped liver.”
He stood swinging his glasses and saying nothing. He was not the man I had known up until the time I had left the party last night, and it was not so much because he was ill. It was as if a fire had burned out in him.
“Boy, did she sucker you!” I said. “Me too, I admit. But it was mostly our own fault. We knew she didn’t fall for your line that you hadn’t killed Wally. We kidded ourselves she’d be willing to forgive and forget if we paid her off. We wanted to believe that because we wanted her. Both of us did. Well, you got her. Or the other way around — she got you. She got you to bring her to live here where she could get all of us together and feed us arsenic.”
“No,” he mumbled. He looked up. “She ate the liver too. She’s been sick all night and all day. She’s still in a bad way even though she managed to get out of bed and dressed.”
“Huh! She had to put on an act.”
“No, I can tell. And she wouldn’t poison me. Look what she’d give up — this nice home, plenty of money. Why? For a stupid revenge? No. And she’s fond of me. Loves me, I’m sure. Always affectionate. A wonderful girl. Never knew anybody like her. So beautiful and warm.”
He was babbling. He was sick with something worse than poison, or with a different kind of poison. It was the sickness of sex or love or whatever you cared to call it, and it had clouded that brain that always before had known all the answers.
“Try to think,” I said. “Somebody put arsenic in the chopped liver. Who but Abby would have reason?”
“Somebody else.” That old twisted smile, which was not really a smile at all, appeared on his thin lips. “You, for instance,” he said softly.
“Me?”
“You,” he repeated. “You hate my guts for having gotten Abby. You hate her for being mine instead of yours.”
I said, “Does it make sense that I’d want to kill Georgie and Tiny and Stella also?”
“There was a guy put a time bomb on an airplane and blew a lot of people to hell because he wanted to murder his wife who was on the plane. Last night was your first chance to get at Abby and me — and what did you care what happened to the others?”
“My God, you’re so crazy over her you’d rather believe anything but the truth.”
“The truth?” he said and kept smiling that mirthless smile. “The truth is you’re the only one didn’t eat the liver.” He put on his glasses. “Now get out before I kill you.”
“Are you sure she’ll let you live that long?”
“Get out!”
I left. There was no use arguing with a mind in that state, and with Oscar it could be mighty dangerous besides.
The usual wind was sweeping up Riverside Drive. I stood on the sidewalk and thought of going home to eat and then I thought of Tiny. What had happened to him since he had left Oscar’s apartment last night and had dragged himself to his lonely little room? At the least I ought to look in on him.
I walked over to Broadway and took the subway downtown. I climbed two flights of narrow, smelly stairs in a tenement and pushed in an unlocked door. There was just that one crummy room and the narrow bed against the wall and Tiny lying in it on his back with a knife sticking out of his throat.
13
I must have expected something like this, which was why I’d come. There had been four of us involved in the killing of Wally Garden. Now only two of us were left.
I touched him. He wasn’t long dead; rigor mortis had not yet begun to set in. She had left her apartment on the excuse that she was going to a doctor and had come here instead.
There was no sign of a struggle. Tiny wouldn’t have suspected anything. Lying here sick and alone, he’d been glad to see her — to see anybody who would minister to him, but especially the boss’s lovely lady. She had bent over him to ask how he felt, and he must have been smiling up at that clean fresh young face when she had pushed the knife into his throat, and then she had quickly stepped back to avoid the spurting blood.
That was a switchblade knife, probably Tiny’s own, the knife Oscar had borrowed from him to kill Wally Garden. Which would make it grim justice, if you cared for that kind of justice when you also were slated to be on the receiving end.
I got out of there.
When I was in the street, I saw Brant. He was making the rounds of Georgie’s pals and he was up to Tiny. It was twilight and I managed to step into a doorway before he could spot me. He turned into the tenement I had just left.
I went into a ginmill for the drink I needed and had many drinks. But I didn’t get drunk. When I left a couple of hours later, my head was clear and the fear was still jittering in the pit of my stomach.
I’d never been much afraid of anybody, not even of Oscar, but I was afraid of Abby.
It was her life or ours. I had to convince Oscar of that. Likely he would see the light now that Tiny had been murdered too, because who but Abby had motive? If he refused to strangle her, I would, and be glad to do it, squeezing that lilywhite throat until the clear blue eyes bulged and the sweet face contorted.
I got out of a hack on Riverside Drive. The wind was still there. I huddled against it a moment and then went up to the apartment.
Abby answered the door. She wore a sleazy housecoat hugging that slender body of hers. She looked limp and haggard and upset.
“Johnny,” she said, touching my arm, “I’m glad you’re here. The police took Oscar away.”
“That so?” I stepped into the apartment.
She closed the door and tagged after me. “They wouldn’t tell why they took him away. Was it because of Georgie?”
“No. I guess they’re going to ask him how Tiny got a knife in his throat.”
Abby clutched her bosom — the kind of gesture an actress would make, and she was acting. “It couldn’t have been Oscar. He wasn’t out of the house.”
“But you were, weren’t you?” I grinned at her. “You got only one of us with the arsenic, so you’re using other methods, other weapons. Have you anything special planned for my death?”
She backed away from me. “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“You blame all four of us for Wally’s death. You’re out to make us pay for it.”
“Listen, Johnny!” She put out a hand to ward me off. “I didn’t care very much for Wally. When I married him, yes, but after a while he bored me. He was such a kid. He didn’t tell me a thing about the holdup. Not a word. All I found out about it was from the police, when they questioned me later. I heard your name and Oscar’s from that detective, Brant. So I tried to make some money on it. That’s all I was after — a little money.”
“You didn’t take the money. Instead you worked it so Oscar would bring you to live with him where you could get at all of us.”
“I like Oscar. Honest.”
“Don’t you mind sleeping with the man who killed your husband?”
She tossed her blonde hair. “I don’t believe he did. He’s so sweet. So kind.”
I hit her. I pushed my fist into her lying face. She’d meant death for Georgie and Tiny, and she would mean death for me unless I stopped her.
She bounced off a chair and fell to the floor and blood trickled from her mouth. I hadn’t come to hit her but to strangle her. But something besides fear possessed me. Maybe, heaven help me, I was still jealous of Oscar. I swooped down on her and grabbed her by her housecoat and yanked her up to her feet. The housecoat came open. I shook her and her breasts bobbed crazily and I slapped her face until blood poured from her nose as well as her mouth.
Suddenly I let go of her. She sank to the floor, holding her bloody face and moaning. At no time had she screamed. Even while I was beating her, she’d had enough self-possession not to want to bring neighbors in on us. She started to sob.
I’d come to do more to her, to stop her once and for all. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I looked down at her sobbing at my feet, lying there slim and fair-haired, battered and bleeding, feminine and forlorn, and there was nothing but emptiness left in me.
After all, hadn’t we killed her husband? Not only Oscar, but Georgie and Tiny and I as well were in a community of guilt.
I turned and walked out of the apartment. I kept walking to the brownstone house, and there in the room Stella and I shared a couple of plainclothes men were waiting for me.
14
They grabbed me, and Stella rose from a chair and flung herself at me.
“Honey, are you in trouble?”
I said dully, “Not much with the cops,” and went with them.
For the rest of that night they sweated me in the station house. No doubt they had Oscar there too, but we didn’t see each other. They kept us apart.
Sometimes Brant was there, sucking his pipe as he watched the regular cops give me the business. There was no more fooling around. They still had questions about Wally and about Georgie, but mostly they wanted to know about the murder of my pal Tiny.
Once, exhausted by their nagging, I sneered at them like a defiant low-grade mug, “You’ll never get us.”
Brant stepped forward and took his pipe out of his mouth. “Maybe we won’t get you,” he said gently, “but somebody else is doing it. Three of you already.”
After that I stopped sneering. I stopped saying anything. And by morning they let me go.
Before I left, I asked a question. I was told Oscar had been released a couple of hours before.
I made my way home and Stella was waiting and I reached for her.
But there was no rest for my weariness against her cuddly body. She told me Oscar had been here looking for me with a gun.
“When was this?”
“Half an hour ago,” she said. “He looked like a wild man. I’d never seen him like that. He was waving a gun. He said you’d beaten up Abby and he was going to kill you. Honey, did you really beat her up?”
I had taken my jacket off. I put it on.
Stella watched me wide-eyed. “If you’re running away, take me with you.”
“I’m not running,” I said.
“But you can’t stay. He said he’d be back.”
“Did he?” I said hollowly.
I got my gun from where I’d stashed it and checked the magazine and stuck the gun into my jacket pocket.
She ran to me. “What are you going to do? What’s going on? Why don’t you tell me anything?”
I said, “I don’t want to die,” and pushed her away from me.
I went only as far as the top of the stoop and waited there, leaning against the side of the doorway. I could watch both directions of the cheerful sun-washed street, and it wasn’t long before Oscar appeared.
He looked worse than he had yesterday afternoon. His unshaven face was like a skeleton head. There was a scarecrow limpness about his lean body. All that seemed to keep him going was his urge to kill me.
Maybe if I were living with Abby, had her to love and to hold, I wouldn’t give a damn what suspicions I had about her and what facts there were to back them up. I’d deny anything but my need for her body, and I’d be gunning for whoever had marred that lovely face.
I knew there was no use talking to him. I had seen Oscar Trotter in action before, and I knew there was only one thing that would stop him.
I walked down the steps with my right hand in my pocket. Oscar had both hands in his pockets. He didn’t check his stride. He said, “Johnny, I—”
I wasn’t listening to him. I was watching his right hand. When it came out of his pocket, so did mine. I shot him.
15
And now we are all dead.
There were five of us on that caper. Four are in their graves. I still have the breath of life in me, but the difference between me and the other four is only a matter of two days, when I will be burned in the chair.
It was a short trial. A dozen witnesses had seen me stand in the morning sunlight and shoot down Oscar Trotter. I couldn’t even plead self-defense because he’d had no gun on him. And telling the truth as I knew it wouldn’t have changed anything. The day after the trial began the jury found me guilty.
I sent for Stella. I didn’t expect her to come, but she did. Yesterday afternoon she was brought here to the death house to see me.
She didn’t jiggle. Something had happened to her — to her figure, to her face. Something seemed to have eaten away at her.
“Congratulations,” I said.
Stella’s voice had changed too. It was terribly tired. “Then you’ve guessed,” she said.
“I’ve had plenty of time to think about it. Oscar didn’t have a gun on him. I know now what he was about to do when he took his hand out of his pocket. He was going to offer me his hand. He had started to say, ‘Johnny, I made a mistake.’ Something like that. Because he still had a brain. When he’d learned that Tiny had been knifed in bed, he’d realized I’d been right about Abby. But the irony is that I hadn’t been right. I’d been dead wrong.”
“Yes, Johnny, you were wrong,” she said listlessly.
“At the end you got yourself two birds with one stone. You told me a lie about Oscar gunning for me, and it turned out the way you hoped. I killed him and the state will kill me. I’ve had plenty of time to think back — how that night at Oscar’s, as soon as we arrived you hurried into the kitchen to give Abby a hand. Why so friendly so quickly with Abby who’d taken your man from you? I saw why. You’d gone into the kitchen to put arsenic in the chopped liver.”
“You can’t prove it, Johnny,” she whispered.
“No. And it wouldn’t save me. Well, I had my answer why you were so eager to take up with me the minute Oscar was through with you. You had to hang around his circle of friends, and you had to bide your time to work the killings so you wouldn’t be suspected. You succeeded perfectly, Stella. One thing took me a long time to understand, and that was why.”
“Wally,” she said.
I nodded. “It had to be. If you’d hated Oscar for throwing you over for Abby, you mightn’t have cared if you killed the others at that party as long as you got those two. But there was Tiny’s death — cold, deliberate, personal murder. The motive was the same as I’d thought was Abby’s. The same master plan — those who’d been in on Wally’s death must die. And so it had to be you and Wally.”
Stella moved closer to me. Her pretty face was taut with intensity.
“I loved him,” she said. “That wife of his, that Abby — she was a no-good louse. First time I ever saw her was when she came up to the apartment to see Oscar, but I knew all about her. From Wally. That marriage was a joke. You wouldn’t believe this — you were crazy over her yourself, like Oscar was — but she was after anything wore pants. That was all she gave a damn for, except maybe money.”
“I believe you,” I said. “You must have been the one who persuaded Oscar to take Wally in on the caper.”
“We fell for each other, Wally and I. One of those screwy, romantic pickups on a bus. We saw each other a few times and then planned to go away together. But we hadn’t a cent. I knew Oscar was planning a big job. He thought he kept me from knowing anything that was going on. But I knew. Always. And I was smarter. I got a guy who owed me a favor to bring Oscar and Wally together. Oscar took him in on it.” Her mouth went bitter. “How I hated the rackets! I wanted to get out of them. I hated Oscar. We had it all figured. We’d take Wally’s cut, the few thousand dollars, and go out west and live straight and clean. A little house somewhere and a decent job and children.” Her head drooped. “And Oscar killed him.”
“He might have died anyway from the bullet wound.”
“But not to give him at least a chance!” Stella hung onto her handbag with both hands. “You know why I came when you sent for me? To gloat. To tell you the truth if you didn’t know it already and laugh in your face.”
But she didn’t laugh. She didn’t gloat. She looked as sick and tired of it all as I was. She looked as if, like me, she no longer gave a damn about anything.
“It doesn’t give you much satisfaction, does it?” I said. “It doesn’t bring Wally back. It doesn’t make it easy to live with yourself.”
She swayed. “Oh, God! So much death and emptiness. And I can’t sleep, Johnny. I’ve had my revenge, but I can’t sleep.”
“Why don’t you try arsenic?” I said softly.
She looked at me. Her mouth started to work, but she didn’t say anything. Then she was gone.
That was yesterday. Today Bill Brant visited me and told me that Stella had taken poison and was dead.
“Arsenic?” I said.
“Yeah. The same way Georgie Ross died. What can you tell me about it?”
“Nothing, copper,” I said.
So that makes five of us dead, and very soon now I will join them, and we will all be dead. Except Abby, and she was never part of the picture.
Wasn’t she?
Stella was kidding herself by thinking she’d killed Oscar and me. Georgie and Tiny and finally herself, yes, but not us.
I needn’t have been so quick with my gun on the street outside the brownstone house. I could have waited another moment to make sure that it was actually his life or mine.
Now, writing this in my cell in the death house, I can face up to the truth. I had shot him down in the clear bright morning because he had Abby.
Horror Insured Paul Ernst
Paul Frederick Ernst (1900–1983) was a frequent contributor to Weird Tales, notably with his series about Dr. Satan, “the world’s weirdest criminal,” whose nemesis is the occult detective Ascott Keane. The series ran in the mid-1930s. Ernst claimed that most of these stories, and his other supernatural tales, came to him in dreams so perfectly constructed, which he remembered in the morning, that he merely had to sit down and transcribe them.
Doctor Satan wears a red cloak, red gloves, a red mask, and a skull cap with horns on it. We never learn who (or what) he is. Doctor Satan is assisted by the ugly, monkey-like dwarf Girse and the legless giant Bostiff. Keane is accompanied by his secretary, with whom he is in love, the beautiful Beatrice Dale.
The Doctor Satan series lasted only eight episodes. Ernst created works in a wide variety of genres, including mystery, horror, and, most famously, his pseudonymous hero character, The Avenger, written as Kenneth Robeson. The Robeson byline was used by Lester Dent for a long run of Doc Savage magazines, one of the most successful pulps of its time. Because of the tremendous sales in recounting the adventures of “The Man of Bronze,” the publisher convinced Ernst to write about “The Man of Steel,” The Avenger, which the author claimed was the worst writing he ever did, though fans disagreed and his twenty-four novelettes were later reprinted as paperback books.
“Horror Insured” was originally published in the January 1936 issue of Weird Tales; it was first collected in The Complete Tales of Doctor Satan (Boston, Altus, 2013).
1
It was noon. The enormous National State Building hummed like a beehive with the activity of its tenants. Every office spewed forth men and women on their way to lunch. The express elevators dropped like plummets from the seventy-ninth floor, while the locals handled the crowds from the fortieth floor down.
At the top floor an express elevator tarried beyond its usual schedule. The operator paid no attention to the red flash from the starter downstairs signaling the Up cages to start down as soon as possible. He acted as though he was beyond schedules, as indeed he was.
This elevator, though not entirely private, was at the disposal of Martial Varley, owner of the building, whose offices took up the top floor. Others could ride in it, but they did so with the understanding that at morning, noon, and evening the elevator waited to carry Varley, whose appearances at his office occurred with time-clock regularity. Hence, if the cage waited inactively those in it knew why and did not exhibit signs of impatience.
There were half a dozen people in the elevator that paused for Varley to ride down. There was an elderly woman, Varley’s office manager, and two secretaries; and there were two big business men who had been conferring with Varley and were now waiting to go to lunch with him.
The six chatted in pairs to one another. The cage waited, with the operator humming a tune. Around them, in the big building, the prosaic business of prosaic people was being done. The glass-paneled doors to Varley’s office opened. The operator snapped to attention and those in the cage stopped talking and stared respectfully at the man who came to the cage doors.
Varley was a man of sixty, gray-haired, with a coarse but kindly face dominated by a large nose which his enemies called bulbous. He wore the hat that had made him famous — a blue-gray fedora which he ordered in quantity lots and wore exclusive of all other colors, fabrics, or fashions.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Ed,” Varley boomed to one of the two business men in the cage. “Phone call. Held me up for a few minutes.”
He stepped into the elevator, nodding to the others. “Let’s go,” he said to the operator.
The cage started down.
The express elevators were supposed to fall like a plummet. They made the long drop to the ground in a matter of seconds, normally. And this one started like a plummet.
“Damn funny, that phone call I got just before I came out of my office,” Varley boomed to the two men he was lunching with. “Some joker calling himself Doctor Satan—” He stopped, and frowned. “What’s wrong with the elevator?” he snapped to the operator.
“I don’t know, sir,” the boy said.
He was jerking at the lever. Ordinarily, so automatic was the cage, he did not touch the controls from the time the top floor doors mechanically closed themselves till the time the lobby was reached. Now he was twitching the control switch back and forth, from Off to On.
And the elevator was slowing down.
The swift start had slowed to a smooth crawl downward. And the crawl was becoming a creep. The floor numbers that had flashed on the little frosted glass panel inside the cage as fast as you could count were now forming themselves with exasperating slowness. Sixty-one, sixty, fifty-nine...
“Can’t you make it go faster?” said Varley. “I never saw these cages go so slow. Is the power low?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” said the operator. He jammed the control against the fast-speed peg. And the cage slowed down still more.
“Something’s wrong,” whispered one of the girl secretaries to the other. “This slow speed... And it’s getting warm in here!”
Evidently Varley thought so too. He unbuttoned his vest and took his fedora off and fanned himself.
“I don’t know what the hell’s the matter,” he growled to the two men with him. “Certainly have to have the engineer look into this. There’s supposed to be decent ventilation in these shafts. And if they call this express service... Gad, I’m hot!”
Perspiration was bursting out on his forehead now. He began to look ghastly pale.
Fifty-two, fifty-one, fifty... the little red numbers appeared on the frosted glass indicator ever more slowly. The elevator would take five minutes to descend, at this pace.
“Something’s the matter with me,” gasped Varley. “I’ve never felt like this before.” One of the secretaries was standing near him. She looked at him suddenly, with wide eyes in which fear of something beyond normal comprehension was beginning to show. She shrank back from him.
“Get this cage down,” Varley panted. “I’m — sick.”
The rest looked at each other. All were beginning to feel what the girl, who had been nearest him, had felt. Heat was beginning to radiate from Varley’s corpulent body as if he were a stove!
“Good heavens, man!” said one of the two business men. He laid his hand on Varley’s arm, took it away quickly. “Why — you’re burning up with fever. What’s wrong?”
Varley tried to answer, but couldn’t. He staggered back against the wall of the cage, leaned there with arms hanging down and lips hanging slack. There was no longer perspiration on his face. It was dry, feverishly dry; and the skin was cracking on his taut, puffed cheeks.
“Burning!” he gasped. “Burning up!”
The girl secretary screamed, then. And the man who had put his hand on Varley’s arm jerked at the operator’s shoulder.
“For heaven’s sake get this cage down! Mr. Varley’s ill!”
“I... I can’t,” gasped the boy. “Something’s the matter — it never acted like this before—”
He jerked at the controls, and the elevator did not respond. Slowly, monotonously, it continued its deliberate descent.
And abruptly a scream tore from Varley’s cracking lips. “Burning! Help me, somebody—”
The slowly dropping cage became a thing of horror, a six-foot square of hell from which there was no escape because there were no doors opening onto the shaft at the upper levels, and which could not be speeded up because it did not respond to the controls.
Screaming with every breath he drew, Varley sank to the floor. And those who might otherwise have tried to help him cowered away from him as far as they could get. For from his body now was radiating heat that made a tiny inferno of the elevator.
“God!” whispered one of the men. “Look at him — he really is burning up!”
The heat from Varley’s body had become so intense that the others in the cage could hardly stand it. But far worse than their bodily torment was the mental agony of watching the thing that for a week had New York City in a chaos.
Varley had stopped screaming now. He lay staring up at the gilded roof of the elevator with frightful, glazing eyes. His chest heaved with efforts to draw breath. Heaved, then was still.
“He’s dead!” shrieked one of the secretaries. “Dead—”
Her body fell to the floor of the cage near Varley’s. The elderly woman quietly sagged to her knees, then in a huddled heap in the corner as her senses fled under the impact of a shock too great to be endured.
But the horror that had gripped Varley went on. “Look! Look! Look!” panted the office manager.
But he had no need to pant out the word. The rest were looking all right. They’d have turned their eyes away if they could, but there is a fascination to extremes of horror that makes the will powerless. In every detail they were forced to see the thing that happened.
Varley’s dead body was beginning to disappear. The corpulent form of the man who a moment ago had been one of the biggest figures in the nation seemed to have been turned to wax, which was melting and vaporizing.
His face was a shapeless mass now; and the flesh of his body seemed to be melting and running together. As it did so, his limbs writhed and twitched as if still imbued with life. Writhed, and shriveled.
“Burning up!” whispered the office manager, his eyes bulging with horror behind their thick lenses. “Melting away... burning up...”
It was so incredible, so unreal that it was dream-like.
The cage descended slowly, slowly, like the march of time itself which no man could hasten. The operator stood like a wooden image at the controls, staring with starting eyes at the heap on the floor which had been Varley. The two business men shrank together, hands to their mouths, gnawing the backs of their hands. The office manager was panting, “Look... look... look...” with every breath, like a sobbing groan. And Varley was a diminishing, shapeless mass on the floor.
“Oh, God, let me out of here!” screamed one of the business men.
But there was no way out. No doors opened onto the shaft here. All in the cage were doomed to stay and watch the spectacle that would haunt them till they died.
On the cage floor there was a blue-gray fedora hat, and a mound of blackened substance that was almost small enough to have been contained in it.
Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven... The cage descended with its horrible, unchangeable slowness.
Twenty-five, twenty-four...
On the floor was Varley’s hat. That was all.
The operator was last to go. Eleven, ten, the red numerals on the frosted glass panel read. Then his inert body joined the senseless forms of the others on the floor.
The cage hit the lobby level. Smoothly, marvelous mechanisms devised by man’s ingenuity, the doors opened by themselves; opened, and revealed seven fainting figures — around a gray-blue fedora hat.
Three o’clock. On the stage of the city’s leading theater, the show, Burn Me Down, was in the middle of the first act of its matinee performance.
The show was a musical comedy, built around a famous comedian. His songs and dances and patter carried it. To see him, and him alone, the crowds came. Worth millions, shrewd, and at the same time as common as the least who saw him from the galleries, he was the idol of the stage.
He sat on a stool in the wings now, chin on fist, moodily watching the revue dance of twenty bare-legged girls billed as the world’s most beautiful. His heavy black eyebrows were down in a straight line over eyes like ink-spots behind comedy horn-rimmed glasses. His slight, lithe body was tense.
“Your cue in a minute, Mr. Croy,” warned the manager.
“Hell, don’t you suppose I know it?” snapped the comedian.
Then his scowl disappeared for a moment. “Sorry.”
The manager stared. Croy’s good humor and even temper were proverbial in the theater. No one had ever seen him act like this before.
“Anything wrong?” he asked.
“Yeah, I don’t feel so hot,” said Croy, scowling again. “Rather, I feel too hot! Like I was burning up with a fever or something.”
He passed a handkerchief over his forehead. “And I feel like trouble’s coming,” he added. He took a rabbit’s foot from his vest pocket and squeezed it. “Heavy trouble.”
The manager bit his lip. Croy was the hit of the show — was the show. “Knock off for the afternoon if you feel bad,” he advised. “We’ll have Charley do your stuff. We can get away with it at a matinee—”
“And have the mob on your neck,” interrupted Croy, without false modesty. “It’s me they come to see. I’ll go on with it, and have a rest afterward...”
The twenty girls swept forward in a last pirouette and danced toward the wings. Croy stood up.
“It must be a fever,” he muttered, mopping at his face again. “Never felt like this before, though.”
The stage door attendant burst into the wings and ran toward the manager. The manager started to reprimand him for leaving his post, then saw the afternoon newspaper he was waving.
He took it from the man’s hand, glanced at the headlines.
“What!” he gasped. “A man burn up? They’re crazy! How could a... Varley — biggest man in the city!..”
He started toward the comedian.
“My God, could it be the same thing happening here?... Croy! Croy — wait—”
But the famous comedian was already on the stage, catapulting to the center of it in the ludicrous stumble, barely escaping a fall, that was his specialty.
The manager, clutching the newspaper, stood in the wings with death-white face, and watched. Croy went into a dance to the rhythm of the theme song of the show. He was terribly pale, and the manager saw him stagger over a difficult step. Then his voice rose with the words of the song:
“Burn me down, baby. Don’t say maybe. Put your lips against my lips — and burn me down!”
The audience half rose. Croy had fallen to his knees on a dance turn. The manager saw that the perspiration that had dewed his forehead no longer showed. His skin looked dry, cracked.
Croy got up. The audience settled back again, wondering if the fall had been part of his act. Croy resumed his steps and his singing. But his voice was barely audible beyond the fifth row:
“Burn me down, Sadie. Oh-h-h, lady! Look into my eyes and burn me—”
Croy stopped. His words ended in a wild high note. Then he screamed almost like a woman and his hands went to his throat. They tore at his collar and tie.
“Burning!” he screamed. “Burning—”
The manager leaned, shaking against a pillar. The newspaper, with the account in it of what had happened to Varley, rattled to the floor.
It was the same! The same awful thing was happening to Croy! “Curtain!” he croaked. “Bring down the curtain!”
Now the audience was standing up, some of them indeed climbing to their seats to see what was happening on the stage. Croy was prone on the boards, writhing, shrieking. The canvas backdrop billowed a little with the heat coming from his body.
“Curtain!” roared the manager. “For God’s sake — are you deaf?”
The curtain dropped. Croy’s convulsed body was hidden from the sight of the audience. With the curtain’s fall, he stopped screaming. It was as though the thing had sliced through the sound like a great descending guillotine. But it was not the curtain that had killed the sound.
Croy was dead. His limbs still jerked and writhed. But it was not the movement of life. It was the movement of a twisted roll of paper that writhes and jerks as it is consumed in flame.
The manager drew a deep breath. Then, with his knees trembling, he walked out onto the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, trying to make his voice sound out over the pandemonium that ruled over the theater. “Mr. Croy has had a heart attack. The show will not go on. You may get your money at the box-office on the way out.”
He fairly ran from the stage and back of the curtain, where terrified girls and men were clumped around Croy’s body — or what was left of it. Heart attack! The manager’s mouth distorted over that description.
Croy’s body had shrunk — or, rather, melted — to half its normal size. His features were indistinguishable, like the features of a wax head with a fire under it. His clothes were smoldering. The heat was such that it was hard to stand within a yard of him. The big, horn-rimmed glasses slid from his face. His body diminished, diminished...
A stage hand came racing back. Behind him trotted a plump man in black with rimless spectacles over his eyes.
“I got a doctor,” the stage hand gasped. “From the audience.”
He stopped. And the doctor stared at the place where Croy had lain, and then gazed around at the faces of the others.
“Well?” he said. “Where is Croy? I was told he was dangerously ill.”
No one answered. One after another stared back into his face with the eyes of maniacs. “Where is he, I say?” snapped the doctor. “I was told—”
He stopped, aware at last that something far worse than ordinary illness was afoot back here.
The manager’s lips moved. Words finally came. “Croy is — was — there.”
His pointing finger leveled tremulously at a spot on the stage. Then he fell, pitching forward on his face like a dead man.
And the point on the stage he had designated was empty. Only a blackened patch was there, with a little smoke drifting up from it. A blackened patch — with a pair of comedy horn-rimmed glasses beside it.
2
In the elevator control room of the Northern State Building, a man in the coveralls of an electrician bent over the great switchboard. He was examining the automatic control switch of the elevator in which Varley had ridden down from his top-floor office for the last time in life; had ridden down — but never reached the bottom!
Grease smeared the man’s face and hands. But an especially keen observer would have noted several things about the seeming electrician that did not match his profession.
He would have noticed that the man’s body was as lithe and muscular as that of a dancer; that his hands were only superficially smeared with grease, and were without calluses; that his fingers were the long, steely strong ones of a great surgeon or musician. Then, if he were one of the very few in New York capable of the identification, he might have gone further and glanced into the man’s steely eyes under coal-black eyebrows, and stared at his patrician nose and strong chin and firm, large mouth — and have named him as Ascott Keane.
The building manager stood beside Keane. He had treated Keane as an ordinary electrician while the building engineer was near by. Now he gave him the deference due one of the greatest criminal investigators of all time. “Well, Mr. Keane?” he said.
“It’s about as I thought,” Keane said. “A device on the order of a big rheostat was placed on the switch circuit. In that way the descent of the elevator could be slowed as much as the person manipulating the switch desired.”
“But why was the elevator Mr. Varley rode down in made to go slower? Did the slowness have anything to do with his death?”
“No, it had to do only with the spectacle of his death!” Keane’s face was very grim. His jaw was a hard square. “The man who killed Varley wanted to be sure that his death, and dissolution, were witnessed lingeringly and unmistakably, so that the full terror of it could be brought out.”
He straightened up, walked toward the door. “You’ve set an office aside for me?”
“Yes. It’s next to my own on the sixtieth floor. But you aren’t going to it yet, are you?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Well, there might be fingerprints. Whoever tampered with the control board might not have been careful about clues.”
A mirthless smile appeared on Keane’s firm lips. “Fingerprints! My dear sir! You don’t know Doctor Satan, I’m afraid.”
“Doctor Sat—”
The building manager clenched his hands excitedly. “Then you already know about the phone call to Mr. Varley just before he died.”
“No,” said Keane, “I don’t.”
“But you named the man who called—”
“Only because I know who did this — have known since I first heard of it. Not from any proofs I’ve found or will ever find. Tell me about the phone call.”
“There isn’t much. I’d hardly thought of it till you spoke of a Doctor Satan... Varley was leaving his office for lunch when his telephone rang. I was in his office about a lease and I couldn’t help hearing a little of it — his words, that is. I gathered that somebody calling himself Doctor Satan was talking to Varley about insurance.”
“Insurance!”
“Yes. Though what a physician should be doing selling insurance, I couldn’t say—”
“Doctor Satan is not exactly a physician,” Keane interrupted dryly. “Go on.”
“That’s all there is to tell. The man at the other end of the wire calling himself Doctor Satan seemed to want to insist that Varley take out some sort of insurance, till finally Varley just hung up on him. He turned to me and said something about being called by cranks and nuts, and went out to the elevator.”
Keane walked from the control room, with the building manager beside him. He went to the elevator shafts.
“Sixty,” he said to the operator.
In the elevator, he became the humble workman again. The manager treated him as such. “When you’re through with the faulty wiring in sixty, come to my office,” he said.
Keane nodded respectfully, then got out at the sixtieth floor.
A suite of two large offices had been set aside for him. There was a door through a regular anteroom, and a smaller, private entrance leading directly into the rear of the two offices.
Keane went through the private entrance. A girl, seated beside a flat-topped desk, got up. She was tall, quietly lovely, with dark blue eyes and copper-brown hair. This was Beatrice Dale, Keane’s more-than-secretary.
“Visitors?” said Keane, as she handed a calling-card to him.
She nodded. “Walter P. Kessler, one of the six you listed as most likely to receive Doctor Satan’s first attentions in this new scheme of his.”
Keane was running a towel over his face, taking off the grease — which was not grease but dark-colored soap. He took off the electrician’s coveralls, emerging in a perfectly tailored blue serge suit complete save for his coat. The coat he took from a closet, shrugging into it as he approached the desk and sat down.
“What did you find out, Ascott?” said Beatrice.
Her face was pale, but her voice was calm, controlled. She had worked with Keane long enough to know how to face the horrors devised by Doctor Satan calmly, if not fearlessly.
“From the control room?” said Keane. “Nothing. The elevator was slowed simply to make the tragic end of Varley more spectacular. And there is Doctor Satan’s autograph! The spectacular! All of his plans are marked by it.”
“But you found out nothing of the nature of his plans?”
“I got a hint. It’s an insurance project.”
“Insurance!”
Keane smiled. There was no humor in the smile. There had been no humor in his smiles — or in his soul — since he had first met Doctor Satan, and there would be none till finally, somehow, he overcame the diabolical person who, already wealthy beyond the hopes of the average men, was amusing himself by gathering more wealth in a series of crimes as weird as they were inhuman.
“Yes, insurance. Send in Kessler, Beatrice.”
The girl bit her lip. Keane had told her nothing. And the fact that she was burning to know what scraps of information he had picked up showed in her face. But she turned obediently and went to the door leading into the front office.
She came back in a moment with a man who was so anxious to get in that he almost trod on her heels. The man, Walter P. Kessler, was twisting a felt hat to ruins in his desperate fingers, and his brown eyes were like the eyes of a horrified animal as he strode toward Keane’s desk.
“Keane!” He paused, looked at the girl, gazed around the office. “I still can’t quite understand this. I’ve known you for years as a rich man’s son who never worked in his life and knew nothing but polo and first editions. Now they tell me you are the only man in the world who can help me in my trouble.”
“If your trouble has to do with Doctor Satan — and of course it has — I may be able to help,” said Keane. “As for the polo and first editions — it is helpful in my hobby of criminology to be known as an idler. You will be asked to keep my real activities hidden.”
“Of course,” gasped Kessler. “And if ever I can do anything for you in return for your help now—”
Keane waved his hand. “Tell me about the insurance proposition,” he said.
“Are you a mind-reader?” exclaimed Kessler.
“No. There’s no time to explain. Go ahead.”
Kessler dug into his inside coat pocket.
“It’s about insurance, all right. And it’s sponsored by a man who calls himself Doctor Satan. Though how you knew?”
He handed a long envelop to Keane. “This came in this morning’s mail,” he said. “Of course I paid no attention to it. Not then! In fact, I threw it in my waste basket. I only fished it out again after reading the early afternoon papers — and finding out what happened to poor old Varley—”
He choked, and stopped. Keane read the folded paper in the long business envelope:
Mr. Kessler: You are privileged, among a few others in New York City, to be among the first to be invited to participate in a new type of insurance plan recently organized by me. The insurance will be taken out against an emotion, instead of a tangible menace. That emotion is horror. In a word, I propose to insure you against feeling horror. The premium for this benevolent insurance is seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. If the premium is not paid, you will be subjected to a rather unpleasant feeling of horror concerning something that may happen to you. That something is death, but death in a new form: If you do not choose to take out my horror insurance, you shall burn in slow fire till you are utterly consumed. It may be next month or next year. It may be tomorrow. It may be in the privacy of your room, or among crowds. Read in this afternoon’s paper of what will shortly happen to two of the town’s leading citizens. Then decide whether or not the premium payment asked is not a small price to pay for allaying the horror the reading of their fates will inspire in you.
Keane tapped the letter against his palm. “Horror insurance,” he murmured. “I can see Doctor Satan’s devilish smile as he coined that phrase. I can hear his chuckle as he ‘invites’ you to take out a ‘policy.’ Well, are you going to pay it?”
Kessler’s shudder rattled the chair he sat in. “Certainly! Am I mad, that I should refuse to pay — after reading what happened to Varley and Croy? Burned alive! Reduced to a shapeless little residue of consumed flesh — and then to nothingness! Certainly I’ll pay!”
“Then why did you come to me?”
“To see if we couldn’t outwit this Doctor Satan in future moves. What’s to keep him from demanding a sum like that every year as the price of my safety? Or every month, for that matter?”
“Nothing,” said Keane.
Kessler’s hand clenched the chair-arm. “That’s it. I’ll have to pay this one, because I daren’t defy the man till some sort of scheme is set in motion against him. But I want you to track him down before another demand is presented. I’ll give you a million dollars if you succeed. Two million...”
The look on Keane’s face stopped him. “My friend,” said Keane, “I’d double your two million, personally, if I could step out and destroy this man, now, before he does more horrible things.”
He stood up. “How were you instructed to pay the ‘premium’?”
For a moment Kessler looked less panic stricken. A flash of the grim will that had enabled him to build up his great fortune showed in his face.
“I was instructed to pay it in a way that may trip our Doctor Satan up,” he said. “I am to write ten checks of seventy-five thousand dollars each, payable to the Lucifex Insurance Company. These checks I am to bring to this building tonight. From the north side of the building I will find a silver skull dangling from a wire leading down the building wall. I am to put the checks in the skull. It will be drawn up and the checks taken by someone in some room up in the building.”
His jaw squared. “That ought to be our chance, Keane! We can have men scattered throughout the National State Building—”
Keane shook his head. “In the first place, you’d have to have an army here. There are seventy-nine floors, Kessler. Satan’s man may be in any room on any of the seventy-nine floors on the north side of the building. Or he may be on the roof. In the second place, expecting to catch a criminal like Doctor Satan in so obvious a manner is like expecting to catch a fox in a butterfly net. He probably won’t be within miles of this building tonight. And you can depend on it that his man, who is to draw up the skull with the checks in it, won’t be in any position where he can be caught by the police or private detectives.”
Kessler’s panic returned in full force. He clawed at Keane’s arm. “What can we do, then?” he babbled. “What can we do?”
“I don’t know, yet,” admitted Keane. “But we’ve got till tonight to figure out a plan. You come to the building as instructed, with the checks to put in the skull. By then I’ll have weapons with which to fight” — his lips twisted — “the Lucifex Insurance Company.”
3
The National State Building is situated on a slanting plot in New York City. The first floor on the lower side is like a cavern — dark, with practically no light coming in the windows from the canyon of a street.
Near the center of that side was an unobtrusive small shop with “Lucian Photographic Supplies” lettered on it. The window was clean-looking, yet it was strangely opaque. Had a person looked at it observantly he would have noticed, with some bewilderment, that while nothing seemed to obstruct vision, he still could not see what was going on behind it. But there are few really observant eyes; and in any event there was nothing about the obscure place to attract attention.
At the back of the shop there was a large room completely sealed against light. On the door was the sign, “Developing Room.”
Inside the light-proof room the only illumination came from two red light bulbs, like and yet strangely unlike the lights used in developing-rooms. But the activities in the room had nothing to do with developing pictures!
In one corner were two figures that seemed to have stepped out of a nightmare. One was a monkey-like little man with a hair-covered face from which glinted bright, cruel eyes. The other was a legless giant who swung his great torso, when he moved, on arms as thick as most men’s thighs. Both were watching a third figure in the room, more bizarre than either of them.
The third figure bent over a bench. It was tall, spare, and draped from throat to ankles in a blood-red robe. Red rubber gloves were drawn over its hands. The face was covered by a red mask which concealed every feature save the eyes — which were like black, live coals peering through the eye-holes. A skullcap fitted tightly over the head; and from this, in sardonic imitation of the fiend he pretended to be, were two projections like horns.
Doctor Satan stared broodingly at the things on the bench which were engaging his attention. These, innocent enough in appearance, still had in them somehow a suggestion of something weird and grotesque.
They were little dolls, about eight inches high. The sheen of their astonishingly life-like faces suggested that they were made of wax. And they were so amazingly well sculptured that a glimpse revealed their likeness to living persons.
There were four of the little figures clad like men. And any reporter or other person acquainted with the city’s outstanding personalities would have recognized them as four of the nation’s business titans. One of them was Walter P. Kessler.
Doctor Satan’s red-gloved hand pulled a drawer open in the top of the bench. The supple fingers reached into the drawer, took from it two objects, and placed them on the bench.
And now there were six dolls on the bench, the last two being a man and a woman.
The male doll was clad in a tiny blue serge suit. Its face was long-jawed, with gray chips for eyes, over which were heavy black brows. An image of Ascott Keane.
The female doll was a likeness of a beautiful girl with coppery brown hair and deep blue eyes. Beatrice Dale.
“Girse.” Doctor Satan’s voice was soft, almost gentle.
The monkey-like small man with the hairy face hopped forward.
“The plate,” said Doctor Satan.
Girse brought him a thick iron plate, which Doctor Satan set upon the bench.
On the plate were two small, dark patches; discolorations obviously made by the heat of something being burned there. The two little discolorations were all that was left of two little dolls that had been molded in the image of Martial Varley, and the comedian, Croy.
Doctor Satan placed the two dolls on the plate that he had taken from the drawer: the likeness of Beatrice Dale and Ascott Keane.
“Kessler went to Keane,” Doctor Satan said, the red mask over his face stirring angrily. “We shall tend to Kessler — after he has paid tonight. We shall not wait that long to care for Keane and the girl.”
Two wires trailed over the bench from a wall socket. His red-gloved fingers twisted the wires to terminals set into the iron plate. The plate began to heat up.
“Keane has proved himself an unexpectedly competent adversary,” Satan’s voice continued. “with knowledge I thought no man on earth save myself possessed. We’ll see if he can escape this fate — and avoid becoming, with his precious secretary, as Varley and Croy became.”
Small waves of heat began to shimmer up from the iron plate. It stirred the garments clothing the two little dolls. Doctor Satan’s glittering eyes burned down on the mannikins. Girse and the legless giant, Bostiff, watched as he did...
Fifty-nine stories above the pseudo-developing shop, Keane smiled soberly at Beatrice Dale. “I ought to fire you,” he said.
“Why on earth—” she gasped.
“Because you’re such a valuable right-hand man, and because you’re such a fine person.”
“Oh,” Beatrice murmured. “I see. More fears for my safety?”
“More fears for your safety,” nodded Keane. “Doctor Satan is out for your life as well as mine, my dear. And—”
“We’ve had this out many times before,” Beatrice interrupted. “And the answer is still: No. I refuse to be fired, Ascott. Sorry.”
There was a glint in Keane’s steel-gray eyes that had nothing to do with business. But he didn’t express his emotions. Beatrice watched his lips part with a breathless stirring in her heart. She had been waiting for some such expression for a long time.
But Keane only said: “So be it. You’re a brave person. I oughtn’t to allow you to risk your life in this private, deadly war that no one knows about but us. But I can’t seem to make you desert, so—”
“So that’s that,” said Beatrice crisply. “Have you decided how you’ll move against Doctor Satan tonight?”
Keane nodded. “I made my plans when I first located him.”
“You know where he is?” said Beatrice in amazement.
“I do.”
“How did you find it out?”
“I didn’t. I thought it out. Doctor Satan seems to have ways of knowing where I am. He must know I’ve located here in the National State Building. The obvious thing for him to do would be to conceal himself on the other side of town. So, that being the expected thing, what would a person as clever as he is, do?”
Beatrice nodded. “I see. Of course! He’d be—”
“Right here in this building.”
“But you told Kessler he was probably miles away!” said Beatrice.
“I did. Because I knew Kessler’s character. If he knew the man who threatened him was in the building, he’d try to do something like organizing a raid. Fancy a police raid against Doctor Satan! So I lied and said he was probably a long distance off.” Keane sighed. “I’m afraid the lie was valueless. I can foretell pretty precisely what Kessler will do. He will have an army of men scattered through the building tonight, in spite of what I said. He will attempt to trace Doctor Satan through collection of the checks — and he will die.”
Beatrice shuddered. “By burning? What a horrible way to—”
She stopped.
“What is it?” said Keane urgently, at the strained expression that suddenly molded her face.
“Nothing, I guess,” replied Beatrice slowly. “Power of suggestion, I suppose. When I said ‘burning’ I seemed to feel hot all over, myself.”
Keane sprang from his chair. “My God — why didn’t you tell me at once! I—”
He stopped too, and his eyes narrowed to steely slits in his rugged face. Perspiration was studding his own forehead now.
“It’s come!” he said. “The attack on us by Satan. But it wasn’t wholly unexpected. The suitcase in the corner — get it and open it! Quickly!”
Beatrice started toward the suitcase but stopped and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Ascott — I’m... burning up... I—”
“Get that suitcase!”
Keane sprang to the desk and opened the wide lower drawer. He took a paper-wrapped parcel from it, ripped it open. An odd array was disclosed; two pairs of things like cloth slippers, two pairs of badly proportioned gloves, two small rounded sacks.
Beatrice was struggling with the snaps on the suitcase. Both were breathing heavily now, dragging their arms as if they weighed tons.
“Ascott — I can’t stand it — I’m burning—” panted the girl.
“You’ve got to stand it! Is the case open? Put on the smaller of the two garments there. Toss me the other.”
The garments in question were two suits of unguessable material that were designed to fit tightly over a human body — an unclothed human body.
Beatrice tossed the larger of the two to Keane, who was divesting himself of his outer garments with rapid fingers.
“Ascott — I can’t change into this — here before—”
“Damn modesty!” grated Keane. “Get into those things! You hear! Quickly!”
Both were no longer perspiring. Their faces were dry, feverish. Heat was radiating from their bodies in a stifling stream.
Beatrice stood before Keane in the tight single garment that covered body and arms and legs.
“These gloves on your hands!” snapped Keane. “The sack over your head. The shoes on your feet!”
“Oh, God!” panted Beatrice.
Then she had done as Keane commanded. From soles to hair she was covered by the curious fabric Keane had devised. And the awful burning sensation was allayed.
There were eye-slits in the sacks each wore. They stared at each other with eyes that were wide with a close view of death. Then Beatrice sighed shudderingly.
“The same thing Varley and Croy went through?” she said.
“The same,” said Keane. “Poor fellows! Doctor Satan thought he could deal us the same doom. And he almost did! If we’d been a little farther away from these fabric shields of ours—”
“How do they stop Doctor Satan’s weapon?” said Beatrice. “And how can he strike — as he does — from a distance?”
“His weapon, and this fabric I made,” said Keane, “go back a long way beyond history, to the priesthood serving the ancestors of the Cretans. They forged the weapon in wizardry, and at the same time devised the fabric to wear as protection against their enemies who must inevitably learn the secret of the weapon too. It is the father of the modern voodoo practise of making a crude image of an enemy and sticking pins into it.”
He drew a long breath.
“A small image is made in the likeness of the person to be destroyed. The image is made of substance pervious to fire. In the cases of Croy and Varley, I should say after descriptions of how they perished, of wax. The image is then burned, and the person in whose likeness it is cast burns to nothingness as the image does — if the manipulator knows the secret incantations of the Cretans, as Doctor Satan does. But I’ll give you more than an explanation; I’ll give you a demonstration! For we are going to strike back at Doctor Satan in a manner I think he will be utterly unprepared for!”
He went to the opened suitcase, looking like a being from another planet in the ill-fitting garments he had thrown together after analyzing Varley’s death. He took from the suitcase a thing that looked like a little doll. It was an image of a monkey-like man with a hairy face and long, simian arms.
“How hideous!” exclaimed Beatrice. “But isn’t that Doctor Satan’s assistant Girse?”
Ascott Keane nodded. “Yes. I wish it were the image of Satan himself, but that would be useless. Satan, using the ancient death, would too obviously be prepared for it just as I was.”
Beatrice stared at the image for a moment, perplexity in her eyes. “But — Ascott! Didn’t you tell me that Girse was dead? Wasn’t he — consumed instead of you when...?”
Keane nodded. “Yes, he was — and I was foolish enough for a while to believe what I saw as final. But Doctor Satan knows as much about the ancient evil arts as I do — at least as much — and I know of a way to bring a dead person back, even if the body is destroyed, so long as I had the foresight to preserve some parts like hair or nail-clippings. I forgot that any close associate of Doctor Satan must be killed twice, so long as Satan is free to work his magic. That is why I made this image of Girse as soon as I realized what Doctor Satan is doing. There’s just a chance that he hasn’t prepared any protection for Girse, on the assumption that I already considered Girse out of the picture forever.”
“It’s made of wax?” said Beatrice, understanding and awe beginning to glint in her eyes.
“Made of wax,” Keane nodded.
He looked around the office, saw no metal tray to put the little doll on, and flipped back a corner of the rug. The floor of the office was of smooth cement. He set the image on the cement. With her hand to her breast, Beatrice watched. The proceeding, seeming inconsequential in itself, had an air of deadliness about it that stopped the breath in her throat.
Keane looked around the office again, then strode to the clothes he and Beatrice had flung to the floor in their haste a moment ago.
“Sorry,” he said, taking her garments with his own and piling them on the cement. “We’ll have to send down to Fifth Avenue for more clothes to be brought here. I need these now.”
On the pile of cloth he placed the image of Girse. Then he touched a match to the fabric...
In the developing room, Doctor Satan fairly spat his rage as he stared at the two wax dolls on the red-hot iron plate. The dolls were not burning! Defying all the laws of physics and, as far as Satan knew, of wizardry, the waxen images were standing unharmed on the metal that should have consumed them utterly.
“Damn him!” Doctor Satan whispered, gloved hands clenching. “Damn him! He has escaped again! Though how—”
He heard breathing begin to sound stertorously beside him. His eyes suddenly widened with incredulity behind the eye-holes in his mask. He whirled.
Girse was staring at him with frenzy and horror in his eyes. The breath was tearing from his corded throat, as though each would be his last.
“Master!” he gasped imploringly. “Doctor Satan! Stop—”
The skin on his face and hands, dry and feverish-looking, suddenly began to crack. “Stop the burning!” he pleaded in a shrill scream.
But Doctor Satan could only clench his hands and curse softly, whispering to himself, “I did not foresee it, Girse. I brought you back with the essential salts, one of the most guarded of all occult secrets, and I was sure that Ascott Keane would never suspect. But he did, damn him, and he was ready for me...”
Girse shrieked again, and fell to the floor. Then his screams stopped; he was dead, and this time there would be no return; the essential salts could be used to restore a man only once. Girse’s body moved on, jerking and twisting as a tight-rolled bit of paper twists and jerks in a consuming fire.
“Keane!” whispered Doctor Satan, staring at the floor where a discolored spot was all that remained of his follower. His eyes were frightful. “By the devil, my master, he’ll pay for that a thousand times over!”
4
At half-past twelve that night a solitary figure walked along the north side of the National State Building. The north side was the one the Lucian Photographic Supplies shop faced on, the side street. It was deserted save for the lone man.
The man slowed his pace as he saw a shining object hanging from the building wall about waist-high, a few yards ahead of him. He clenched his hands, then took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
The man was Walter P. Kessler. And the flourish of the white handkerchief in the dimness of the street was a signal.
Across the street four floors up in a warehouse, a man with a private detective’s badge in his pocket and a pair of binoculars to his eyes. He watched Kessler, saw the shining object he was approaching, and nodded.
Kessler drew from his pocket an unaddressed envelope. In it were ten checks made out to the Lucifex Insurance Company. He grasped the receptable for the checks in his left hand.
The receptacle was a cleverly molded skull, of silver, about two-thirds life size. There was a hole in the top of it. Kessler thrust the envelope securely into the hole.
The skull began to rise up the building wall, toward some unguessable spot in the tremendous cliff formed by seventy-nine stories of cut stone. Across the street the man with the binoculars managed at last to spot the thin wire from which the silver skull was suspended. He followed it up with his gaze.
It came from a window almost at the top of the building. The man grasped a phone at his elbow.
He did not dial operator. The phone had a direct line to the building across the way. He simply picked up the receiver and said softly: “Seventy-second floor, eighteenth window from the east wall. Hop it!”
In the National State Building a man at an improvised switchboard on the ground floor turned to another. “Seventy-second floor, eighteenth window from the east. Get everybody.”
The second man ran toward the night elevator. He went from floor to floor. At each floor he opened the door and signaled. And on each floor two men, who had been watching the corridors along the north side, ran silently toward the other local elevators, which had shaft doors on every floor all the way up to the top. At the same time a third man, at the stairs, drew his gun as he prepared to guard more carefully yet the staircase, rarely used, threading up beside the shafts.
And on the ground floor within fifty yards of the man at the switchboard, a chuckle came from the masked lips of a red-robed figure who stood straight and tall in a red-lit room.
Across the street the man with the binoculars suddenly picked up the phone again.
“Damn it — they tricked us. Somebody took the money in on the sixty-third floor!”
Changed orders vibrated through the great building. And the red-robed figure in the room at the heart of the maze chuckled again — and moved toward the bench.
Doctor Satan picked up one of the dolls remaining there. It was the image of Kessler. He placed it on the iron plate, which was already heated by the wires trailing from the socket. He watched the little doll broodingly.
It writhed and twisted as the heat melted its wax feet. It fell to the plate. And from the street, far away, sounded a horrible scream.
Doctor Satan’s head jerked back as if the shriek were music to his ears. Then, once more, his hissing chuckle sounded out.
“For disobeying commands, my friend,” he muttered. “But I knew you’d be obstinate enough to try it—”
He stopped. For a second he stood as rigid as a statue swathed in red. Then, slowly, he turned; and in his coal-black, blazing eyes was fury — and fear.
There was an inner door to the developing-room, but the door was locked, and it still stood locked. It had not been touched. Neither had the outer door. Yet in that room with the red-robed figure was another figure now. That of Ascott Keane.
He stood as rigid as Doctor Satan himself, and stared at his adversary out of steel-gray, level eyes.
“It seems we are alone,” Keane said slowly. “Bostiff, I suppose, is retrieving the money from Kessler. And Girse? Where is he?”
Doctor Satan’s snarl was the only answer. He moved toward Keane, red-swathed hands clenching as he came. Keane stood his ground. Satan stopped.
“How—” he asked.
“Surely you do not need to ask that,” said Keane. “You must have penetrated the secret of transferring substance, including your own, from one place to another by sheer power of thought.”
“I have not!” rasped Doctor Satan. “Nor have you!”
Keane shrugged. “I am here.”
“You discovered my hiding-place and hid here while I was out, a short time ago!”
Keane’s smile was a deadly thing. “Perhaps I did. Perhaps not. You can provide your own answer. The only thing of importance is that I am here—”
“And shall stay here!” Doctor Satan’s soft voice lifted. The fear was fading from his eyes and leaving only fury there. “You have interfered in my plans once too often, Keane!”
As he spoke he raised his right hand with the thumb and forefinger forming an odd, eery angle.
“ ‘Out of the everywhere into the here,’ ” he quoted softly. “I have servants more powerful than Girse, whom you destroyed, Ascott Keane. One comes now — to your own destruction!”
As he spoke, a strange tensity seized the air of the dim room. Keane paled a little at the blaze in the coal-black eyes. Then he stared suddenly at a spot in thin air to Doctor Satan’s right.
Something was happening there. The air was shimmering as though it danced over an open fire. It wavered, grew misty, swayed in a sinuous column.
“ ‘Out of the everywhere into the here,’ ” Doctor Satan’s voice was raised in final triumph. “The old legends had a basis, Keane. The tales of dragons... There was such a thing, is such a thing. Only the creations the ancients called dragons do not ordinarily roam Earth in visible form.”
The sinuous misty column at the right of the red-robed form was materializing into a thing to stagger a man’s reason.
Keane found himself gazing at a shimmering figure that looked like a great lizard, save that it was larger than any lizard, and had smaller legs. It was almost like a snake with legs, but it was a snake two feet through at its thickest part, and only about fourteen feet long, which is not typical serpentine proportion. There were vestigial stubs of wings spreading from its trunk about a yard back of its great, triangular head; and it had eyes such as no true lizard ever had — eight inches across and glittering like evil gems.
“A dragon, Keane,” Doctor Satan purred. “You have seen old pictures of some such thing, painted by artists who had caught a glimpse of these things that can only visit earth when some necromancer conjures them to. A ‘mythical’ creature, Keane. But you shall feel how ‘mythical’ it is when it attacks you.”
A hiss sounded in the dim room. The serpentine form was so solidly materialized now that it would scarcely be seen through. And in a few more seconds it was opaque. And weighty! The floor quivered a little as it moved — toward Keane.
Its great, gem-like eyes glinted like colored glass as it advanced, foot by foot, on the man who had pitted himself against Doctor Satan till the death of one of them should end the bitter war. But, Keane did not move. He stood with shoulders squared and arms at his sides, facing the red-robed form.
“ ‘Out of the everywhere into the here,’ ” he murmured. His lips were pale but his voice was calm. “There is another saying, Doctor Satan. It is a little different... ‘Out of the hereafter into the here!’ ”
The unbelievable thing Doctor Satan had called into being in the midst of a city that would have scoffed at the idea of its existence suddenly halted its slow, deadly approach toward Keane. Its hiss sounded again, and it raised a taloned foot and clawed the thin air in a direction to Keane’s left.
It retreated a step, slinking low to the floor, its talons and scales rattling on the smooth cement. It seemed to see something beyond the reach of mortal eyes. But in a moment the things it saw were perceptible to the eyes of the two men, too. And as Doctor Satan saw them an imprecation came from his masked lips.
Three figures, distorted, horrible, yet familiar! Three things like statues of mist that became less misty and more solid-seeming by the second!
Three men who writhed as though in mortal torment, and whose lips jerked with soundless shrieks — which gradually became not entirely soundless but came to the ears of Satan and Keane like far-off cries dimly heard.
And the three were Varley and Croy and Kessler.
A gasp came from Doctor Satan’s concealed lips. He shrank back, even as the monstrosity he had called into earthly being shrank back.
“ ‘Out of the hereafter into the here,’ ” Keane said. “These three you killed, Doctor Satan. They will now kill you!”
Varley and Croy and Kessler advanced on the red-robed form. As they came they screamed with the pain of burning, and their blackened hands advanced, with fingers flexed, toward Satan. Such hatred was in their dead, glazed eyes, that waves of it seemed to surge about the room like a river in flood.
“They’re shades,” panted Doctor Satan. “They’re not real, they can’t actually do harm—”
“You will see how real they are when they attack you,” Keane paraphrased Satan’s words.
The three screaming figures converged on Doctor Satan. From death they had come, and before them was the man who had sent them to death. Their eyes were wells of fury and despair.
“My God!” whispered Doctor Satan, cowering. And the words, though far from lightly uttered, seemed doubly blasphemous coming from the lips under the diabolical red mask.
The hissing of the dragon-thing he had called into existence was inaudible. Its form was hardly to be seen. It was fleeing back into whatever realm it had come from. But the screaming three were advancing ever farther into our earthly plane as they crept toward the cowering body of Doctor Satan.
“My God!” Satan cried. “Not that! Not deliverance into the hands of those I—”
The three leaped. And Keane, with his face white as death at the horror he was witnessing, knew that the fight between him and the incarnate evil known as Doctor Satan was to end in this room.
The three leaped, and the red-robed figure went down...
There was a thunderous battering at the door, and the bellow of men outside: “Open up, in the name of the law!”
Keane cried out, as though knife-blades had been thrust under his nails. Doctor Satan screamed, and thrust away from the three furies, while the three themselves mouthed and swayed like birds of prey in indecision over a field in which hunters bristle suddenly.
“Open this door!” the voice thundered again. “We know there’s somebody in here—”
The shock of the change from the occult and unreal back to prosaic living was like the shock of being rudely waked from sound sleep when one has walked to the brink of a cliff and opens dazed eyes to stare at destruction. The introduction of such a thing as police, detectives, into a scene where two men were evoking powers beyond the ability of the average mortal even to comprehend, was like the insertion of an iron club into the intricate and fragile mechanism of a radio transmitting-station.
Keane literally staggered. Then he shouted: “For God’s sake — get away from that door—”
“Open up, or we’ll break in,” the bellowing voice overrode his own.
Keane cursed, and turned. The three revengeful forces he had evoked for the destruction of Doctor Satan were gone, shattered into non-existence again with the advance of the prosaic. And Doctor Satan—
Keane got one glimpse of a torn red robe, with dots of deeper crimson on its arm, as the man slid through the inner door of the room and out to — God knew where. Some retreat he had prepared in advance, no doubt.
And then the door crashed down and the men Kessler had stubbornly and ruinously retained in his fight with Doctor Satan burst in.
They charged toward Keane. “You’re under arrest for extortion,” the leader, a bull-necked man with a gun in his hand, roared out. “We traced the guy that took the dough from the skull here before we lost him.”
Keane only looked at him. And at something in his stare, though the detective did not know him from Adam, he wilted a little. “Stick out your hands while I handcuff you,” he tried to bluster.
Then the manager of the building ran in. “Did you get him?” he called to the detective. “Was he in here?” He saw the man the detective proposed to handcuff. “Keane! What has happened?”
“Doctor Satan has escaped,” said Keane. “That’s what has happened. I had him” — he held his hand out and slowly closed it — “like that! Then these well-intentioned blunderers broke in, and—”
His voice broke. His shoulders sagged. He stared at the door through which the red-robed figure had gone. Then his body straightened and his eyes grew calm again — though they were bleak with a weariness going far beyond physical fatigue.
“Gone,” he said, more to himself than to anyone in the red-lit room. “But I’ll find him again. And next time I’ll fight him in some place where no outside interference can save him.”
A Shock for the Countess C. S. Montanye
The stories of Carleton Stevens Montanye (1892–1948) appeared in numerous pulp magazines, including Argosy, Top-Notch, Pep Stories, Thrilling Detective, Complete Stories, and he achieved the peak of any pulp writer’s career by selling numerous stories to Black Mask, beginning with the May 1920 issue and continuing through the issue of October 1939.
His most famous character, Captain Valentine, made his Black Mask debut on September 1, 1923, with “The Suite on the Seventh Floor,” and appeared nine more times in two years, concluding with “The Dice of Destiny” in the July 1925 issue. The gentleman rogue was also the protagonist of the novel Moons in Gold, published in 1936, in which the debonair Valentine, accompanied by his amazingly ingenious Chinese servant Tim, is in Paris, where he has his eye on the world’s most magnificent collection of opals.
Among his other characters were Johnny Castle, a private eye; detective Dave McClain; the Countess d’Yls, a wealthy, beautiful, brilliant, and laconic old-fashioned international jewel thief; Monahan, a tough, not-too-bright yegg; and Rider Lott, inventor of the perfect crime. Montanye also was one of the writers of the Phantom Detective series under the house name Robert Wallace.
“A Shock for the Countess” first appeared in the March 15, 1923, issue of Black Mask.
From the terraces of the Chateau d’Yls, the valley of Var was spread out below Gattiere, threaded with the broad bed of the River Var, swirling over its stony reaches from its cradle in the Hautes-Alpes. The snow-crowned mountains frowned ominously down but in the valley summertime warmth prevailed — quietude disturbed only by the song of birds and the voice of the river.
On the shaded promenade of the Chateau, the pretty Countess d’Yls stared thoughtfully at the unwinding river of the dust-powdered highway, twisting off into the dim distance. Beside her, a tall, well-built young man in tweeds absently flicked the ash from his cigarette and tinkled the ice in the thin glass he held.
Once or twice he surreptitiously considered the woman who reclined so indolently in the padded depths of a black wicker chair. The Countess seemed rarely lovely on this warm, lazy afternoon.
Her ash-blond hair caught what sunshine came in under the sand-colored awning above. Her blue eyes were dreamy and introspective, her red lips meditatively pursed. Yet for all of her abstraction there was something regal and almost imperious in her bearing; a subtle charm and distinction that was entirely her own.
“I do believe,” the Countess remarked at length, “we are about to entertain visitors.”
She motioned casually with a white hand toward the dust-filled road. The man beside her leaned a little forward. A mile or less distant he observed an approaching motor car that crawled up the road between clouds of dust.
“Visitors?”
The Countess inclined her head.
“So it would appear. And visitors, mon ami, who have come a long way to see us. Observe that the machine is travel-stained, that it appears to be weighted down with luggage. Possibly it is our old friend Murgier,” she added almost mischievously.
The face of the man in tweeds paled under its tan.
“Murgier!” he exclaimed under his breath.
The Countess smiled faintly.
“But it is probably only a motoring party up from Georges de Loup who have wandered off the main road, Armand.”
The man in tweeds had torn the cigarette between his fingers into rags. As if held in the spell of some strange fascination he watched the motor grow larger and larger.
“There are men in it!” he muttered, when the dusty car was abreast the lower wall of the Chateau. “Four men!”
The woman in the wicker chair seemed suddenly to grow animated.
“Mon Dieu!” she said in a low voice. “If it is he, that devil!”
The man she addressed made no reply, only the weaving of his fingers betraying his suppressed nervousness. The hum of the sturdy motor was heard from the drive, way among the terraces now.
There was an interlude — voices around a bend in the promenade — finally the appearance of a liveried automaton that was the butler.
“Monsieur Murgier, madame.”
The man in tweeds stifled a groan. The Countess turned slowly in her chair.
“You may direct Monsieur Murgier here, Henri.”
The butler bowed and turned away. The man in tweeds closed his hands until the nails of them bit into the palms.
“God!”
The Countess laid a tense hand on his arm.
“Smile!” she commanded.
The Monsieur Murgier who presently sauntered down the shaded promenade of the Chateau was a tall, loose-jointed individual with a melancholy mustache and a deeply wrinkled face. A shabby, dusty suit hung loosely and voluminously about his spare figure. A soft straw hat was in one hand; he was gray at the temples.
When he bowed over the slender fingers of the Countess there was a hidden glow in his somber eyes.
“To be favored by the presence of the great!” the woman murmured softly. “Monsieur, this is an honor! May I make you acquainted with the Marquis de Remec?”
She introduced the visitor to the man in tweeds, who bowed stiffly. Somewhere back around the corner of the promenade the drone of the voices of those who had been in the car sounded faintly.
“A liqueur, m’sieu?” the Countess asked. “A cigar?”
Her visitor shook his head, gazed on the peaceful panorama of the valley of the Var.
“Thank you, no. My time is limited. My journey has been a long one and I must make a start for Paris with all due haste. You,” he explained courteously, “and the Marquis will put yourselves in readiness with as much rapidity as possible. You are both my guests for the return journey!”
The man in tweeds whitened to the lips. His startled glance darted to the Countess. The woman had settled herself back in the black wicker chair again and had joined her fingers, tip to tip.
“Accompany you to Paris?” she drawled. “Are you quite serious?”
The wrinkled face of Monsieur Murgier grew inflexible, brass-like!
“Quite serious,” he replied. “You are both under arrest — for the theft of the de Valois pearls!”
For a week, intermittently, Paris had known rain — the cold, chilly drizzle of early springtime. Because of the weather cafés and theatres were crowded, fiacres and taxis in constant demand, omnibuses jammed and the drenched boulevards deserted by their usual loungers.
From Montmartre to Montparnasse, scudding, gray clouds veiled the reluctant face of the sun by day and hid a knife-edged moon by night.
The steady, monotonous drizzle pattered against the boudoir windows in the house of the Countess d’Yls, mid-way down the Street of the First Shell. Within, all was snug, warm, and comfortable. A coal file burned in a filigree basket-grate, the radiance of a deeply shaded floor lamp near the toilette table, where a small maid hovered like a mother pigeon about the Countess, diffused a subdued, mellow glow.
The evening growl of Paris came as if from faraway, a lesser sound in the symphony of the rain.
“Madame will wear her jewels?”
The Countess turned and lifted her blue eyes.
“My rings only, Marie, if you please.”
The maid brought the jewel casket, laid it beside her mistress, and at the wardrobe selected a luxurious Kolinsky cape which she draped over an arm. The Countess slipped on her rings, one by one — flashing, blue-white diamonds in carved, platinum settings, an odd Egyptian temple ring, a single ruby that burned like a small ball of crimson fire.
When the last ring glinted on her white fingers she dropped the lid of the casket, stood and turned to a full length cheval mirror back of her.
The glass reflected the full perfection of her charms, the sheer wonder of her sequin-spangled evening gown, the creamy luster of her bare, powdered arms, shoulders and rounded, contralto throat. Standing there, the soft light on her hair, she was radiant, incomparable, a reincarnated Diana whose draperies came from the most expert needles of the Rue de la Paix.
“I think,” the Countess said aloud, “those who go to fashionable affairs to witness and copy will have much to occupy their pencils on the morrow. My gown is clever, is it not, Marie?”
“It is beautiful!” the maid breathed.
With a little laugh the Countess took the Kolinsky cape.
“Now I must hasten below to the Marquis. Poor boy, it is an hour — or more — that I have kept him cooling his heels. Marie, suspense, they say, breeds appreciation but there is such a thing as wearing out the patience of a cavalier. The really intelligent woman knows when not to overdo it. You understand?”
“Perfectly, madame,” the maid replied.
The Countess let herself out and sought the stairs. She moved lightly down steps that were made mute by the weight of their waterfall of gorgeous carpet. Murals looked down upon her progress to the lower floor, tapestries glittered with threads of flame, the very air seemed somnolent with the heaviness of sybaritic luxury.
Humming a snatch of a boulevard chansonette, the Countess turned into a lounge room that was to the right of the entry-hall below. The aroma of cigarette smoke drifted to her. When she crossed the threshold the Marquis de Remec stood, a well-made, immaculately groomed individual in his perfectly tailored evening clothes.
“Forgive me, Armand,” the Countess pleaded. “Marie was so stupid tonight — all thumbs. I thought she would never finish with me.”
The Marquis lifted her fingers to his lips.
“How lovely you are!” he cried softly. “Ah, dear one, will you never say the word that will make me the happiest man in all France? For two years we have worked together shoulder to shoulder, side by side — for two years you have been a star to me, earth-bound, beautiful beyond all words! Two years of—”
The Countess interrupted with a sigh.
“Of thrills and danger, Armand! Of plots and stratagems, plunder and wealth! I think, mon ami,” she said seriously, “if we are successful tonight I will marry you before April ends. But wait, understand me. It will be a secret. I will still be the Countess d’Yls and you will remain the Marquis de Remec to all the world but me. Then, my friend, if either of us suffers disaster one will not drag the other down. You see?”
She seated herself beside the Marquis, considering him wistfully.
“But tonight?” he said in a stifled voice. “The de Valois affair is the hardest nut we have yet attempted to crack! Tonight we will need all of our cunning, all of our wits!”
The Countess lifted airy brows.
“Indeed?”
The Marquis leaned closer to her.
“There is not,” he explained rapidly, “only Monsieur Murgier of the Surete to consider — the knowledge that he has been blundering after us for months — but the Wolf as well! An hour ago only, François picked up some gossip across the river, in some dive. The Wolf steals from his lair tonight questing the de Valois pearls! Do you understand? We must face double enemies — the net of Murgier, the fangs of the animal who sulks among the Apache brigands of the river front. And this is the task you give to set a crown upon my every hope!”
The Countess d’Yls touched his hand with her pretty fingers.
“Does the threat of Murgier and the presence of the Wolf pack dismay you?” she questioned lightly. “You, the undaunted! You who have been the hero of so many breathless adventures! Armand, you — you annoy me.”
De Remec stood.
“But this is different!” he cried. “Here I have something at stake more precious than gold or jewels — your promise! I... I tremble—”
The Countess laughed at his melodrama.
“Silly boy! We shall not fail — we will snatch the famous pearls from under the very noses of those who would thwart and destroy us. Voilà! I snap my fingers at them all. Come now, it grows late. Had we not better start?”
The other glanced at his watch.
“Yes. François is waiting with the limousine—”
When they were side by side in the tonneau of the purring motor, the Countess glanced at the streaming windows and shivered.
“Soon it will be late spring,” she said quietly. “Soon it will be our privilege to rest city-weary eyes on the valley of the Var. I intend to open the Chateau in six weeks, mon ami. It will seem like heaven after the miserable winter and the rain, the rain!”
The car shaped a course west, then south. Paris lifted a gaudy reflection to the canopy of the frowning clouds, flashing past in its nightly pursuit of pleasure. The Countess eyed the traffic tide idly. Her thoughts were like skeins of silk on a loom that was slowly being reversed. She thought of yesterday — of the little heap of jewels in the boudoir of the villa at Trouville that had been the scene of that week-end party, of herself stealing through the gloom to purloin them — of the Marquis bound on the same errand — of their meeting — surprise — their pact and the bold, triumphant exploits they had both planned and carried out.
The red lips of the Countess were haunted by a smile.
It had all been so easy, so exciting, so simple. True, the dreaded Murgier of the Law had pursued them relentlessly but they had always outwitted him, had always laughed secretly at his discomfiture, rejoicing together over their spoils.
Now, tonight, it was the de Valois pearls — that famous coil the woman had had strung in Amsterdam by experts. Tomorrow Madame de Valois would be bewailing its loss and the necklace — the necklace would be speeding to some foreign port, safe in the possession of the agent who handled all their financial transactions.
“The Wolf!” the Countess thought.
Surely there was nothing to fear from the hulk of the Apache outlaw — a man whose cleverness lay in the curve of a knife, the slippery rope of the garroter, the sandbag of the desperado. How could the Wolf achieve something that required brains, delicate finesse? It was only the chance that Murgier might upturn some carefully hidden clew that was perilous—
“You are silent,” the Marquis observed.
“I am thinking,” the Countess d’Yls replied dreamily.
A dozen more streets and the motor was in the Rue de la Saint Vigne, stopping before a striped canopy that stretched from the door to the curb that fronted the Paris home of Madame de Valois. The windows of the building were brightly painted with light. The whisper of music crept out. Set in the little, unlighted park that surrounded it, the house was like a painted piece of scenery on a stage.
A footman laid a gloved hand on the silver knob of the limousine door and opened it. The Marquis de Remec assisted the Countess to alight. Safe from the rain under the protection of the awning they went up the front steps and entered the house.
“You,” the Countess instructed cautiously, “watch for Murgier and I will take care of the Wolf whelps! If the unexpected transpires we will meet tomorrow at noon in the basement of the Café of the Three Friends. François has been instructed?”
“He will keep the motor running — around the corner,” the Marquis whispered.
Then, pressing her hand: “Courage, dear one, and a prayer for success!”
To the Countess d’Yls it seemed that all the wealth and beauty of the city had flocked to the ballroom which they entered together.
Under the flare of crystal chandeliers Fashion danced in the arms of Affluence. Everywhere jewels sparkled, eyes laughed back at lips that smiled. Perfumes were like the scents of Araby on a hot, desert breeze. Conversation blended with the swinging lilt of the orchestra on the balcony — the shuffle of feet and the whisper of silks and satins filled the room with a queer dissonance.
Separating from the Marquis, the Countess, greeting those who addressed her with a friendly word, a smile or bow, promptly lost herself in the crush. Murgier’s assistants she left to the attention of de Remec. She decided, first, to mark the presence of Madame de Valois and the pearls — after that she would seek the Wolf or his agents in the throng.
After some manoeuvering the Countess discovered the location of Madame de Valois. The woman was dancing with a gray-bearded Senator — an ample, overdressed burden from whose fat neck the famous rope of pearls swayed with every step. The Countess watched the woman drift past and then turned to seek the footprints of the Wolf.
In and out among the crowd she circulated, disregarding those she knew, scanning anxiously the faces and appearance of those she had never before seen. An hour sped past before she believed she had at last discovered the man she sought. This was a beardless youth in shabby evening attire who lingered alone in a foyer that adjoined the south end of the ballroom.
Watching, the Countess touched the elbow of a woman she knew, discreetly indicated the youth and asked a question.
“That,” her friend replied, “is a Monsieur Fernier. He is a young composer of music from the Latin Quarter. Madame de Valois invited him tonight so that he might hear the orchestra play one of his own dance compositions. He is so melancholy, do you not think?”
“From the Latin Quarter,” the Countess told herself when she was alone again. “I will continue to watch you, Monsieur Fernier!”
A few minutes later the Marquis de Remec approached.
“Three agents of Murgier present!” he breathed, drifting past. “The doors are guarded. Be cautious, dear one!”
Another sixty minutes passed.
It was midnight precisely when the Countess saw the putative student from the Latin Quarter make his first move. The youth took a note from his pocket and handed it to a footman, with a word of instruction. The servant threaded a way among the crowd and delivered the message to Madame de Valois. The woman excused herself to those about her, opened the note, read it, and after several more minutes began to move slowly toward the ballroom doors. The Countess, tingling, tightened her lips. A glance over her shoulder showed her that Fernier had left the foyer.
What was the game?
A minute or two after Madame de Valois had disappeared through the doors of the ballroom the Countess had reached them. She looked out in time to behold the other woman crossing the entry-hall and disappearing through the portieres of the reception room beyond. There was no one in evidence. Certain she was on the right trail and filled with a growing anticipation, the Countess waited until the portieres opposite ceased to flutter before moving swiftly toward them.
The metallic jar of bolts being drawn, a scraping sound and then a damp, cool current of air told the Countess that without question the long, French windows in the reception room, opening out on a balcony that overlooked one side of the park, had been pushed wide. She parted the portieres cautiously and looked between them.
The chamber was in darkness — Madame de Valois was a bulky silhouette on the balcony outside — and voices mingled faintly.
On noiseless feet the Countess picked a stealthy way down the room. Close to the open windows she drew back into a nest of shadows, leaned a little forward and strained her ears.
There came to her the perplexed query of Madame de Valois:
“But why do you ask me to come out here? Who are you? What is the secret you mention in your note?”
A pause — the suave, silky tones of a man:
“A thousand pardons, Madame. This was the only way possible under the circumstances. My secret is a warning — unscrupulous people are within who would prey upon you!”
“You mean?” Madame de Valois stammered.
“I mean,” the man replied, “your pearls!”
Another pause — plainly one of agitation for the woman on the balcony — then the man again:
“Madame, allow me to introduce myself. Possibly you have heard of me. Paris knows me as the Wolf! Madame will kindly make neither outcry nor move — my revolver covers you steadily and my finger is on the trigger! I will take care of your pearls and see that no one takes them. Madame will be so kind as to remove the necklace immediately!”
Madame de Valois’s gasp of dismay followed hard on the heels of a throaty chuckle. Came unexplainable sounds, the words:
“Thank you. Adieu!”
— then the woman tottering in through the open windows, a quivering mountain of disconcerted flesh, making strange, whimpering sounds.
Madame de Valois had hardly reached the middle of the reception room before the Countess was out on the balcony and was over its rail. A single glance showed her the shadowy figure of the Wolf hastening toward the gates at the far end of the park that opened on the avenue beyond.
With all the speed at her command the Countess ran to the other door in the street wall that was to the right of the house. The door was unlocked. She flung it open and surged out onto the wet pavement, heading toward the avenue, running with all speed while her fingers found and gripped the tiny revolver she had hidden under the overskirt of her evening creation.
She reached the gates at the northern end of the park at the same minute footsteps sounded on the other side of them. They gave slowly, allowing a stout, bearded man to pass between them. The Countess drew back and waited until he turned to close the gates after him.
Then she took two steps forward and sank the muzzle of her weapon into the small of his back.
“Do not trouble yourself to move, Monsieur Wolf,” she said sweetly. “Just keep facing the way you are and I will help myself to the pearls without bothering you.”
She could feel the quiver of the man’s back under the nose of the gun.
“You will die for this!” the Wolf vowed.
The Countess found the smooth, lustrous coil of Madame de Valois’s necklace in his side pocket and stuffed it hastily into her bodice.
“Possibly,” she agreed amiably. “But this is no time to discuss the question. Pay attention to what I say. If you move before two minutes elapse I will shoot you down in your tracks! Continue to keep your face glued to the — gates — and—”
Dropping her weaponed hand, the Countess surged around the turn of the wall where the avenue joined the side street and raced across the petrol-polished asphalt toward François and the waiting limousine. Hazily aware of the growing tumult in the house itself, the Countess was stunned by the sudden crack of a revolver, the whistle of a bullet flying past her, the hoarse bellow of the Wolf’s voice:
“Police!... Police!... Thieves! There she goes!... In that car...”
Pausing only to fire twice at the howling Apache, the Countess, sensitive to the fact that a machine was rolling down the street toward her, climbed into the limousine.
“Quick!” she cried breathlessly. “Off with you, François!”
Like a nervous thoroughbred, the car sprang toward the junction of the avenue beyond. The Countess pressed her face to the rear window. The other motor was a thousand rods behind, a car with pale, yellow lamps — a police car — one of the machines of the Surete.
“Across the river!” the Countess directed through the open front glass of the limousine. “We will shake them off on the other side of the Seine!”
Across a bridge — over the night-painted river — past cafés and then into a district of gaunt, silent warehouses, the limousine panted. Twice more the Countess looked back. The pale, yellow lamps behind followed like an avenging nemesis.
“Round the next corner and slow down,” the Countess commanded crisply. “The minute I swing off, speed up and head for the open country—”
On two wheels the limousine shot around into the black gully of a narrow, cobble-paved side street. Its brakes screamed as it slowed for a minute before lunging forward again. Shrinking back behind a pile of casks that fronted one of the warehouses, the Countess laughed as the second car whirled past.
“The long arm of Murgier!” she sneered. “What rubbish!”
Still laughing a little, she moved out from behind the casks — to stiffen suddenly and dart back behind them again. A motorcycle had wheeled into the silent street and a man was jumping off it.
The Countess, frantic fingers clutching the pearls of Madame de Valois, knew it was the Wolf even before his level tones came to her.
“Mademoiselle,” the Apache said. “I know you are there. I saw the shimmer of your gown before you stepped back behind those casks. You cannot escape me. Hand the necklace over!”
“The theft of the de Valois pearls?” the Countess d’Yls cried softly. “Monsieur is joking!”
Murgier, on the shaded promenade of the Chateau, touched the tips of his disconsolate mustache.
“There is really,” he said almost wearily, “no use in pretending surprise or indignation. Four days ago we bagged the Wolf — he made a full and complete confession...”
The sunlit quiet of the promenade was broken by the throaty cry of the Countess d’Yls. She jumped up, her blue eyes cold, blazing stars.
“Yes, you devil!” she said unsteadily. “Yes, Monsieur Ferret, we took the pearls — I took the pearls! The Wolf did not get them! No one else shall! I have hidden them well! Take me, take us both — jail us — you will never find the necklace — no one ever will!”
Murgier snapped his fingers twice. The men who had come up the dusty road in the travel-stained motor rounded the corner of the walk. The Countess laughed insolently at the man who faced her.
“In a measure,” Murgier said quietly, “your statement is true. No one will ever reclaim the de Valois pearls. Let me tell you something. When the Wolf made his appearance that night at the warehouse, you saved the necklace from him by dropping it into the mouth of an open cask. Is that not correct? You marked this cask so you might distinguish it again. When you foiled the Wolf your agent began a search for the cask. It had been stored away in the warehouse — there were difficulties — so far your aid has not been able to locate it — but you have hopes. Madame Countess, it is my duty to disillusion both you and—” he nodded toward de Remec — “your husband. There was one thing you over-looked — the contents of the cask in question—”
The Countess drew a quick breath, leaning forward as if to read the meaning of the other’s words.
“The contents?”
Murgier smiled.
“The cask,” he explained, “we found to be half full of vinegar. The pearls are no more — eaten up like that! Pouf! Let us be going.”
A Shabby Millionaire Christopher B. Booth
As was true for so many writers for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, Christopher Belvard Booth (1889–1950) was prolific, producing ten mysteries under his own name between 1925 and 1929 and another eight crime novels between 1924 and 1935 under the pseudonym John Jay Chichester. Approximately fifty short crime stories, published in Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine, all appeared in the 1920s and 1930s as well. Booth also wrote a number of Western stories, five of which were filmed. After that avalanche of fiction, Booth appears to have vanished, as no works attributed to him appeared in the 1940s or after. Booth, born in Centralia, Missouri, also worked as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News and later owned his own newspaper.
Mr. Clackworthy appears in two short story collections, Mr. Clackworthy (1926) and Mr. Clackworthy, Con Man (1927); in both of them he preys on victims who deserve to be swindled: greedy bankers, crooked stock brokers, and their ilk. Readers rooted for the grifter even though, like so many of the crooks of the era, he did not play the part of Robin Hood; he kept the money. Clackworthy was described by his publisher as “a master confidence man, smooth-spoken, grandiloquent, full of clever schemes for the undoing of rascals more unscrupulous than himself.” His partner, James Early, is a roughneck henchman who was so well known to the Chicago police that he was given the nickname “The Early Bird.”
“A Shabby Millionaire” was originally published in Detective Story Magazine; it was first collected in Mr. Clackworthy, Con Man (New York, Chelsea House, 1927).
That genial harvester of “easy money,” Mr. Amos Clackworthy, was again in funds. And none too soon; for eight unprofitable months he had seen his best-laid plans miscarry, his shrewdest schemes come to naught but approaching bankruptcy.
When it had seemed as if the ebb tide would sweep his last dollar from him, together with his sumptuous establishment in Sheridan Road, where he had lived for more than three years in ease and luxury, there had come a turn in his luck. Even without working capital — that confidence-inspiring display of wealth which had lured so many wealthy victims — he had been able to trim a certain Mr. MacDowell, and a canny Scot at that, to the merry tune of twenty thousand dollars.
Not a great sum for a man who had accustomed himself to the spending pace of a millionaire, but it had certainly saved Mr. Clackworthy from the humiliation of bankruptcy court, and the rich furnishings of his apartment from the auctioneer’s hammer. The immediate future was safe.
Mr. Clackworthy sat in a high-backed chair beside his rosewood library table, the elbows of his dinner coat resting upon the arms, and the tips of his long, slender fingers touching lightly. Upon his face there was a pensive expression, as he looked at the far wall, where there hung a small painting.
Across the room was Mr. Clackworthy’s friend and chief assistant, James Early, nicknamed in those crass days, when his movements were of extreme and often embarrassing interest to the police, “The Early Bird.” The latter occupied his favorite seat by the window which looked down upon Sheridan Road and its endless procession of motor vehicles.
The master confidence man’s thoughtful mood, his meditative abstraction, gave James an expectant thrill. Perhaps, he told himself hopefully, a new scheme was under way. In funds or out of funds, The Early Bird knew only complete happiness when they were engaged in one of those fascinating adventures to which he referred as “raking in the coin.”
Some minutes had passed in silence; presently Mr. Clackworthy relighted his cigar which had gone out, exhaled a cloud of rich, blue smoke, and reached to the table for a magazine. The Early Bird’s thin shoulders heaved a sigh, and a groan of disappointment escaped him.
“Something seems to trouble your peace of mind, James,” murmured the master confidence man, and there was the suspicion of a twinkle in his eye.
“My piece of mind, huh?” growled The Early Bird. “Mebbe I ain’t got no eight-cylinder noodle on me; mebbe I’m only a light four and only hittin’ on three cylinders at that, but I can tell you something.”
“I never turn a deaf ear to words of wisdom, James,” chuckled Mr. Clackworthy. “Pray, proceed, although, before you do, I must assure you that I intended no reflection upon your mentality.”
“Yeah, I gotcha, boss,” grunted The Early Bird, “but I’m gonna spill you an earful just the same. When I see you sittin’ there, lookin’ like a medium gone into a trance, I says to myself, ‘The boss is cookin’ up somethin’; the boss has got a hen on, and in a couple of minutes I’m gonna hear biddie doin’ a proud cackle.’ And now there you go, stickin’ your nose inside one of them there magazines. Huh, readin’ that truck ain’t gonna help us to grab any new kale!”
Mr. Clackworthy laughed, as he fingered the point of his Vandyke beard.
“Evidently,” he said, “you observed my thoughtful mood, as I sat here looking at my little painting on yonder wall. I was wondering what price it would have brought at a forced sale.”
“Mebbe five bucks,” ventured The Early Bird, who depreciated art as well as literature.
“Oh, come, James!” remonstrated the master confidence man. “You forget that picture is a Hulbert. Haven’t I told you that I paid two thousand five hundred dollars for it?”
“Say, boss, don’t waste no time talkin’ about pitchers when we’ve busted our hoodoo and has got things breakin’ our way again. What if we did get our mitts on twenty thousand smackers when we throwed the hooks into that Scottish goof? I ain’t denyin’ that there’s been times when a century note looked like all the dough in the world, but, the way you’re livin’, it ain’t gonna last forever. Huh, there was days, when you was hittin’ it up good, that fifty thou’ wasn’t so much.”
Mr. Clackworthy’s mood became more sober, and he nodded his head in agreement with the remarks of his coplotter against the safety of carelessly chaperoned bank balances.
“James, you are right; there were those days when we had twenty or thirty thousand in cash that we could risk on a turn of the wheel and take a loss without embarrassment. More than once I have seen our personal fortune come very close to a quarter of a million.
“However, my friend, as I sat here speculating what that painting would have brought under the auctioneer’s hammer, it forced me to a fresh realization of how narrow was our escape from disaster, and how important it is—”
“That we step out an’ clip another woolly lamb,” finished The Early Bird, with a grin of delight. He hitched forward in his chair in an attitude of engrossed attention. “Crank up the old talkin’ machine, boss, an’ lemme listen to that favorite record, ‘We’re gonna go fishin’ for suckers.’ Boss, lemme in on the who, when, and how of this new trimmin’ expedition.”
“The plan so far, James,” responded Mr. Clackworthy, “is, I regret to say, in a somewhat nebulous state, but—”
“Whatcha mean neb-nebulous state?” interrupted the other. “Trim down them words to my size an’ lemme have the facts in first-reader langwich. Y’know I ain’t chummy with that Webster guy like you are.”
“I mean that the scheme is not in definite shape — little more than a bare idea, the details of which are to be decided. The next victim on our list is as yet unknown. The how is a bit hazy, too, but as to the when I can answer you. Immediately, James, immediately. Also, my dear friend, I can answer you where. We shall very shortly depart for that popular resort where the ailments of the rich are taken and left behind upon their return. It’s a good rule, when seeking wealth, to go to a place where wealth is to be found. And it is a foregone conclusion that we shall find such surplus wealth at Boiling Springs.”
The Early Bird wrinkled his shallow forehead and stared at the master confidence man, with a dubious and questioning expression.
“Y’mean, boss,” he demanded incredulously, “that you’re gonna grab a rattler for this Boilin’ Springs place without knowin’ who you’re gonna throw the hooks into, or how you’re gonna do it?” Since Mr. Clackworthy usually had his schemes perfected to precise detail, this mode of procedure was somewhat surprising.
The master confidence man smiled blandly.
“When one goes fishing, James,” he answered, “there is no way of knowing what particular fish will be caught, but when one fishes in a stream where the finny tribe is plentiful, uses good bait, and has a little patience, there’s a rather good chance that the hook will be swallowed.”
“But what’s the bait?” The Early Bird urged pleadingly. “Ain’tcha just said that you didn’t know how you was gonna—” The question jarred to a stop, as Mr. Clackworthy picked up the magazine from the table and began to turn the pages.
“I have noticed here, James, an article that has ensnared my interest; it is, in a way, a biography. The subject thereof is none other than Mr. Rufus Gilbanks.”
Across the face of The Early Bird there flashed an expression of joy.
“Gee, boss! The millionaire oil man!” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “Whatcha mean is that Gilbanks is puttin’ up at Boilin’ Springs, and that we’re gonna trot down there an’ skim off a few thousand barrels of flowin’ gold. Lead us to ’im, boss!”
“Not so fast, James. I have not said that Rufus Gilbanks was to contribute to the rehabilitation of our fortune. In fact, I have no such thought in mind. Calm yourself and allow me to read you a few extracts from this most interesting article.
“In the first place, Mr. Gilbanks is referred to as ‘the silent mystery man of American oil.’ He rose from obscurity and remains in as much obscurity as he can manage. He detests publicity and the spotlight; he has never sat for a photograph. Except for a very poor snapshot now and then, the curious public can merely speculate as to what Mr. Rufus Gilbanks, one of the country’s richest men, looks like. He never talks for publication; he moves in a cloak of mystery. Let me read you a brief word picture of the man.”
“Spiel,” grunted The Early Bird. Mr. Clackworthy turned to the magazine and read:
“A tall man with a beard, which would seem to serve the purpose of shielding his features from exposure to the gaze of a curious public, Rufus Gilbanks might be considered distinguished in appearance, except for a carelessness of attire that is almost shabby. His clothes, ready made and inexpensive, cling to him in a wrinkled mass. His collars never fit him and are usually a trifle soiled. No jewelry, except a heavy watch chain spread across his vest, and to this chain there is fastened a worn silver dollar said to bear the date of 1867, and generally supposed to be the first dollar which the multimillionaire oil man ever earned.”
The master confidence man put down the magazine and smiled; the smile broadened into a grin, and a throaty chuckle reached The Early Bird’s ears, as the latter struggled in vain to understand just what the other was driving at.
“Boss,” he complained, “I don’t getcha — I don’t getcha a-tall.”
Mr. Clackworthy’s hand went to his pocket and reappeared with an ancient silver dollar. He tossed it into the air, with a flip of his fingers, and the coin described a brief arc across the room. The Early Bird caught it and saw that it bore the date of 1867.
“Is... is it Gilbanks’s dollar?” he gasped. “Y’mean that you’ve had somebody lift it offn him?”
“Not Mr. Gilbanks’s dollar, James, but one like Mr. Gilbanks’s dollar. If you think it’s easy to lay hands on a coin like that, try it. I got it from a dealer, and it cost me fifty.”
“A good-luck piece?” inquired The Early Bird, being able to think of no other plausible explanation.
“I trust so, James, and I have a hunch that it’s going to bring us quite a bit of good luck — the coin, along with a few other properties. A watch chain with heavy gold links, a supply of collars too large for me, and a couple of hand-me-down suits badly in need of pressing. I already have the beard.”
The Early Bird’s eyes widened, and across his face there came a look of extreme apprehension.
“Holy pet goldfish, boss!” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. “Whatcha mean is that you’re gonna go down there to Boilin’ Springs an’ tell them rich guys that — that you’re Rufus Gilbanks? Nix on that stuff, boss! It’s five years in stir, if they catch us at that sort of game.”
“I shall tell no one any such thing,” Mr. Clackworthy retorted severely. “I shall deny it. Moreover, I shall deny it extensively and repeatedly.” He paused for a moment and then laughed. “You know, James, the human mind is peculiar; if you deny a thing often enough you convince a considerable number of people that it must be true. It is upon that bit of psychology that I am building our plans of taking our next victim to a trimming. Ring for Nogo, and we shall drink a toast to the success of our new adventure.”
Crimson Shackles Frederick C. Davis
In addition to nearly sixty full-length novels, Frederick C. Davis (1902–1977) wrote more than a thousand short stories, producing more than a million words a year during the 1930s and 1940s. He created several series characters, including Professor Cyrus Hatch under his own name, Lieutenant Lee Barcello under the Stephen Ransome byline, and twenty pulp thrillers about Operator 5 as Curtis Steele. None of his creations, however, was more popular than the Moon Man — Stephen Thatcher, a policeman by day and a notorious robber by night.
The son of the police chief, Sergeant Thatcher was utterly dedicated to helping those unable to handle the trials of America’s Great Depression, even if it meant breaking the law. In the tradition of Robin Hood, he stole from the wealthy to give to the poor.
To keep his true identity a secret, Thatcher donned the most peculiar disguise in all of pulp fiction — not a mask, but a dome made of highly fragile one-way glass, fitted with a breathing apparatus that filtered air. The glass, known as Argus glass, was manufactured in France and was, at the time, unknown in the United States. As the perpetrator of innumerable crimes, he was the most-hunted criminal in the city, saving lives in equally impressive numbers along the way.
There were thirty-nine adventures about the Moon Man, all published in Ten Detective Aces between May/June 1933 and January 1937.
“Crimson Shackles” was originally published in the March 1934 issue of Ten Detective Aces; it was first collected in Davis’s The Night Nemesis (Bowling Green, Ohio, Purple Prose Press, 1984).
Chapter I Nemesis in Scarlet
A red light flickered on the switchboard in police headquarters. Phone Sergeant Doyle plugged in. Over the wire came a strident voice:
“They’re robbing the place! They’re robbing the museum! Send the police!”
Doyle jerked up straight. “Who’s calling? What museum? Talk fast!”
“The Van Ormond collection. They’re taking it! Men in red masks. They’re — he-elp!”
The cry was prolonged, piercing. Doyle, pressing the earphones close, heard a clattering thump that told of the distant telephone being dropped to the floor. Then there was another scream, far away:
“They’ve got me!”
The line went dead even as Doyle plugged into the socket labeled “Broadcasting Studio.” “Hell’s hinges!” Doyle gasped. As the studio answered he blurted: “Mason! Squad call! The museum in the Van Ormond place is being robbed! Snap it out!”
“On the air!” Mason sang back.
Across the corridor, in a room half filled with filing cabinets, the announcer pushed the phone away. His lips worked fast as he leaned toward the microphone and threw a cam.
“Calling cars Five, Ten, Fifty-one, Seventy-four! Calling Five, Ten, Five-one, Seven-four! Top speed to the Van Ormond place, Glassford and Buckingham Streets. The private museum is being robbed. All other cars stand by for further reports!”
Through the night air the invisible power of the radio antenna lightninged.
Squad call!
The police sedan cruising along the side of City Park was not a squad car, though it was one of the police fleet. Its radio was tuned to the headquarters wave length, and its loud-speaker was rattling.
“Top speed to the Van Ormond place! The museum is being robbed by men wearing red masks.”
Red masks!
The two men in the car jerked startled eyes toward each other. The grim-faced detective at the wheel muttered: “By damn!” One dismayed moment his jaw-muscles bunched hard beneath his leathery skin. Then his foot thrust against the accelerator and he swung the sedan through a sharp U-turn.
Detective Lieutenant Gilbert McEwen, ace sleuth of the plain-clothes division of police headquarters, born hunter of men, sent the police car whizzing up the avenue with all the power eight cylinders could furnish.
“Red masks!” the young man beside McEwen exclaimed. “Sounds like—”
“The Red Six!”
Detective Sergeant Stephen Thatcher, son of the chief of police, realized even more keenly than McEwen the startling import of the frenzied squad call. The Red Six, the most daring criminal combine that had ever operated, were at work again — preying even at that moment on the famed, priceless Van Ormond collection.
Tires whined as McEwen swerved around a corner. At the far end of the block the Van Ormond home stood, an imposing edifice of white stone. The museum wing extended along the street up which McEwen sped the car. As he trod on the brakes he saw other cars lined up at the curb, with men guarding them — masked men.
Black-masked faces turned toward McEwen’s sedan as it creaked to a stop.
Swiftly he ducked out, grabbing at his service gun. Steve Thatcher eased to the sidewalk beside him. Except for the parked cars, the street was empty. None of the radio patrol machines had yet appeared. Seconds would bring them — but even as McEwen ran toward the entrance of the museum, its broad door opened and half a dozen masked men crowded out.
Gun metal flashed in the light of the street lamps. The nozzles of the masked men’s revolvers became black spots pointed at McEwen’s hurrying figure.
“Stay back and you won’t be harmed!” a voice called in sharp warning.
McEwen fired.
The quiet of the street disappeared in the thunder of roaring revolvers. The masked men answered McEwen’s bullet with a fusillade. Slugs clacked against the buildings beyond and caromed screamingly off the sidewalk. Hornets of lead flew as McEwen ducked for the shelter of a doorway and yelled to Steve Thatcher:
“Cover, Steve!”
The blasting bullets separated Thatcher from McEwen in one swift moment. He ducked into the shelter of a car standing by the curb. Another blasting chorus of reports rang out, and again lead whined, forcing McEwen deep into the doorway and Thatcher low behind the car.
The black-masked men were like an advancing army. Separating from the door, alert, ready to fire again should either McEwen or Thatcher dare show themselves, they left a clear space across the sidewalk. Instantly other men appeared, some carrying suitcases, some bearing paintings still in their frames, others carrying glass display racks.
As they scrambled inside the cars at the curb with their priceless booty, still more masked men appeared in the doorway of the museum. And the faces of these men, the last to appear, unlike the others were covered with red. On the foreheads of their masks were Roman numerals: II, III, IV, V, VI.
As the pillagers hurried into the waiting cars, the whine of a siren sounded far away — the shrill warning of one of the squad cars coming like a banshee down the next avenue.
McEwen risked another shot. Bullets swarmed at him and he ducked back, cursing. Steve Thatcher was crouching low in the shadow of the car. He saw masked men advancing toward him, closing him in. He crouched to spring away; but at that instant light flashed down the street, and tires rubbed the pavement as a squad car swung into view.
Instantly there was a shout, and the masked men whirled to attack the car. Bullets rained at it, crashing against the windshield. The men in the seat huddled back before the storm of gunfire. For one instant attention was distracted from Steve Thatcher — and one instant was enough for his quick, sure move.
He was crouched behind a heavy roadster. He twisted the rumble-seat handle and leaped up. Swiftly he slid into the hollow darkness of the rear compartment, and let the seat click back into place.
The blasting guns sounded muffled as Steve Thatcher crouched. He lay on his side, gun directed at the closed rumble lid. He heard heels beating on the pavement. Then the car swayed as some one stepped on the running board, and the starter ground.
Swiftly the car lurched away.
Gil McEwen stood backed in the doorway, grimly gripping his revolver. His coat was ripped in two places where bullets had cut through. His hat was punctured. Breathing hard, he reached out and risked a shot as the cars snarled past him.
Withering fire answered his attack. The hot breath of bullets forced McEwen to drop, gasping. One short moment, and the cars of the museum thieves were streaking away, a black, mechanical herd.
“After ’em!” McEwen yelled at the squad car stopped near the corner.
Motors were roaring. The wail of the siren was growing louder. A second squad car darted into sight as McEwen sprinted toward the first. A third swung from the opposite direction. A fourth was streaking down the avenue toward the intersection. McEwen scrambled through the door of the foremost car as it started up in chase.
The plunderers were already at the farther corner, turning both ways. All the black fleet twisted out of sight as McEwen’s sedan reached the halfway point of the block. Behind him the other squad cars were racing. They picked up speed swiftly as the intersection neared. Then—
McEwen yelled hoarsely: “Look out!”
From a hidden spot beyond the corner, a huge van appeared. It looked as big as a box car as it swung to enter the street. A moving barricade, its length crossed the pavement — and there it stopped. Two men leaped from its seat and sprang away. Before the radio cars could stop, the two men had darted out of sight beyond the corner buildings — and the outlet of the street was blocked.
Brakes screeched as McEwen’s car slowed. He thumped against the windshield, thrown forward. Shouts came from the cars behind as brakes smoked and bumpers clashed. McEwen stumbled out, gun in hand, and ran past the huge hulk of the van.
Far up and down the avenue flanking the park, black cars were racing.
McEwen sprang back. “Get after ’em! Corner ’em! Get around the block! By damn, you’ve got to move fast!”
Gears snarled. Bumpers clanked again. Engines raced as the squad cars backed. McEwen climbed into the van and spent a wrathful moment trying to start its engine, but the ignition had been locked. When he climbed down, the radio cars, jouncing over the curbs in their frantic haste to chase the escaping thieves, were rushing toward the far and unbarricaded corner.
“Yeah,” McEwen said sourly as they swerved out of sight. “ ‘Get after ’em and corner ’em.’ ” He started grimly for the open doorway of the Van Ormond museum. “A swell chance they’ve got. A swell chance!”
Complete darkness enveloped Steve Thatcher. The exhaust of the rushing roadster rumbled in the closed space around him. He was swayed back and forth by the turning of the car as it swung past corners. For long minutes he lay listening, gun in hand, as the roadster sped over smooth pavement.
Then it began to tremble over rougher streets. Steve Thatcher guessed bricks or cobbles. This continued for moments. Thatcher tried to reason where the car was, but it was hopeless. There were more turns, and a continued trembling of the car chassis; and then, abruptly, a swerve and a stop.
The men in the front of the car got out. There were quick, muffled voices, and heels tapping the pavement. The purring of other cars sounded close. Gradually the sounds lessened, then vanished completely. Thatcher waited, listening, through long moments of silence.
He edged forward, and pushed at the padded rumble-seat cover. It held firm. It was latched in place; and there was no handle on the inside. Thatcher had had no opportunity to slip something in the crack to keep the catch from clicking into its socket. He was locked securely in.
He fumbled out a folder of matches and struck a light. Turning on his back, he could see the latch-belt resting in its socket. He thrust at it, and it moved. Striking another light, he brought out a key, and used it to press the bolt back. It was almost free when—
A click sounded. The rumble seat swung up. Over the edge appeared a hand gripping an automatic. The barrel of the gun looked down at Steve Thatcher as he stared.
“Come out!” a voice commanded.
Thatcher dragged himself up quickly. Doing so, he saw another hand and another gun pointing at him from the opposite side. Now two heads appeared, two faces that were masked in black. The same voice commanded curtly:
“Drop your gun and climb out!”
The beam of a flash light sprang into the rumble space, blinding Thatcher. Wry-faced, helpless in the stare of the two guns, he obeyed orders; he dropped his own weapon. He climbed over the side, while the two masked men covered him.
“Enjoy your trip?” one asked tartly.
“You knew I was in there all the time, did you?” Thatcher asked disgustedly.
“Certainly. This way, if you please.”
The firm direction of the guns belied the suave politeness of the suggestion. Thatcher’s arms were taken by curling fingers. He was led across a black sidewalk. Glancing around quickly, he saw a dark, deserted alleyway, flanked by sooted brick walls. A lifetime of living in the city gave Thatcher no clue to his whereabouts. Abruptly he was stopped before a placarded door.
The door was opened, and he was pushed through it. He found himself in a vast, musty room. It was filled with old furniture piled high. A single bulb threw black shadows on the brick walls. With the gun prodding him, Thatcher was led along a lane through the furniture, toward another door.
There the hands left his arms. The guns prodded him again. The voice commanded:
“Go inside.”
Steve Thatcher stepped past the sill. The door was closed behind him. Bright light dazzled him a moment. His returning vision revealed to him a small room contrasting utterly with the larger one he had just left.
This one was hung with tapestries. Old paintings hung on the walls. Statuettes stood on pedestals. Valuable, all of them; Thatcher realized that at a glance. But his gaze left them at once, and centered on a desk in the room, over which soft light was flooding.
Behind that desk a man was sitting. His face was masked with a red domino. On its forehead was the Roman numeral II.
“Good evening,” he said, “Mr. Moon Man!”
Chapter II Secundus Speaks
Steve Thatcher’s muscles jerked tight. He peered appalled at the smiling face of the man at the desk. Words struggled behind his pressed lips, words of protest that would not form.
“You are, of course, Mr. Thatcher,” the red-masked one went on, “the Moon Man. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Secundus. I am the chief of what was until recently the Red Six, and what is now the Red Five.”
Stephen Thatcher could do no more than stare.
“I was really very gratified to see you lock yourself in the rumble seat of my roadster,” Secundus continued smoothly. “I had been planning to get in touch with you. Now that we are alone, we can talk.”
“Talk — about what?” Thatcher blurted.
“If you recall the late Primus, which you no doubt do,” said the red-masked man, “you scarcely need ask. Sit down, Mr. Thatcher. Sit down.”
Thatcher sank into a luxurious chair because his legs were threatening to give way. He stared dismayed at the man who called himself Secundus as that gentleman, still smiling, poured whisky from a decanter into two glasses and shot seltzer into them. He pushed one highball toward Thatcher and settled back comfortably.
“No doubt this is an unpleasant surprise to you, Mr. Thatcher,” Secundus remarked. “You thought you were free of the Red Six, did you not? You believed that no one save Primus knew you to be the Moon Man. A mistake, Mr. Thatcher. I knew.”
Secundus sipped. Thatcher did not even move to touch his drink. His eyes clung fascinatedly to the red mask.
“By the simple expedient of overhearing you talking with Primus when he called you to our headquarters a month ago, Mr. Thatcher. I learned then that your thumbprint matches perfectly that of the Moon Man which is on file at police headquarters. I learned, Mr. Thatcher, your secret.”
Thatcher could not move.
“Interesting, indeed,” Secundus went on. “Knowing that Detective Sergeant Thatcher, son of the chief of police, is leading a double life. That, on the one hand, he is a respected officer of the law, and on the other the most notorious criminal wanted by police headquarters.
“Interesting indeed. The chief of police bending every effort to capture the Moon Man, not knowing the Moon Man is his own son. Gilbert McEwen striving his utmost to bring the Moon Man to justice, not dreaming that the Moon Man is his closest friend, the young man engaged to marry his only daughter.”
Thatcher asked hoarsely: “Why... why did you have me brought in here? What do you want? If—”
Secundus’ smile returned. “Your crimes, I believe, as the Moon Man, include innumerable robberies — so many that you should be sent to jail for the rest of your life, Mr. Thatcher. I believe, also, there is the matter of several kidnapings and a murder. I suspect that you are innocent of the murder, but you could never prove that now. Could you, Mr. Thatcher?”
“I asked, what do you want?”
“I’m coming to that. The point I am making is that if you were caught, you’d doubtless die in the electric chair. But that, I fancy, is the least horrible consequence your exposure would bring about. Even more terrible would be the tragedy it would bring into the life of your father. And the girl you love, Gil McEwen’s daughter — what would she do if she learned that her fiancé is the Moon Man?”
“God! Don’t—”
“Naturally,” Secundus continued, sipping, “you dread exposure worse than death. Well, then, let us not think of it. I intend to keep your secret, Mr. Thatcher — on the same terms made to you by the late Primus, who introduced you into the organization of the Red Six — now the Red Five.”
“You can’t force me to—”
“Co-operate with us? I think I can, Mr. Thatcher. You must realize that you are inescapably caught. You will again become one of us, you will again follow our orders. You will again act as our special informer on police activities. You will serve us loyally, Mr. Thatcher, as long as we wish you to — unless you desire that your father, and McEwen, and your sweetheart shall learn that you are, in fact, the notorious Moon Man.”
Thatcher said grimly: “You know I didn’t rob for the sake of the money. You know I played the Moon Man and robbed to help—”
“That doesn’t matter, Mr. Thatcher. You are the Moon Man, and that is the whole point. Let’s not argue.”
Thatcher leaned forward tensely. “You’re right,” he said in a sibilant whisper. “To me exposure would be worse than death. I’ll face anything rather than that. I’ll... I’ll even commit murder. Do you understand that? Murder.”
“You’re threatening me, Mr. Thatcher.”
“I won’t allow you to hold that weapon over my head. I won’t allow you—”
“I?” Secundus rose quickly. “I alone, Mr. Thatcher? You are laboring under a delusion. I am not the only one of us who knows your secret. Look!”
Secundus stepped to the side of the room and pulled a cord. A tapestry drew back from the wall. Disclosed behind it was an open, glassless window. Beyond it lay another room like the one in which Thatcher stood. Seated in that room, facing Thatcher now through the opening, were four men.
All of them were masked. All the masks were numbered. On the scarlet foreheads were the consecutive Roman numerals III, IV, V, and VI.
“They, you see,” said Secundus, “have listened to our little conversation. You see how futile protest is, Mr. Thatcher — unless you choose to attempt five murders here and now. That, I suggest, would scarcely be wise.”
Thatcher stared at the red-masked faces beyond as the voice of Secundus lost its suavity and hissed.
“One move of treachery on your part, Thatcher, one suspicious action, and your secret will be disclosed instantly to your father, the chief of police. Remember — always remember — ‘We give silence for silence!’ ”
Steve Thatcher’s mind whirled. Echoing in his memory were words once spoken, in grim determination, by Gil McEwen. By McEwen, who had sworn some day to bring the Moon Man to justice:
“Nothing’ll stop me from putting that crook in the electric chair — not even if you were the Moon Man, Steve.”
Slowly Steve Thatcher pushed open the door labeled “Chief of Police” on the second floor of headquarters. He found Gil McEwen pacing the floor wrathfully. He found his father, Chief Peter Thatcher, silver-haired and kindly-faced, seated in his cushioned chair behind the old rolltop desk. Chief Thatcher came erect and Gil McEwen stopped short when Steve Thatcher entered.
“Steve!” McEwen blurted. “Where’ve you been?”
Thatcher answered grimly: “I made a try at following that gang, Gil, but I didn’t get very far.”
“Well, by damn, you’re safe, anyway,” McEwen growled. “ ‘Didn’t get very far’! Neither’ve I. It’s the damnedest thing I ever ran up against!”
“What did they get out of the museum, Gil?” Thatcher asked.
“Everything they could take! All they left were the pieces too big to carry out. Alarms, guards, nothing stopped ’em. They had plenty of nerve!”
Thatcher asked tightly: “No clues?”
“Clues!” McEwen snarled. “Clues, Steve, are sadly lacking. You think a shrewd gang like that would leave any clues about? Not one! Only it’s plain as day that the job was pulled with inside help. It had to be done that way.
“The electric alarms were switched off. The two night watchmen were surprised and tied up. Somebody inside had to throw off the switches, and unbolt the outer door — that’s the way they got in. But who?
“Blake and Eswell are at the place now, grilling hell out of the servants, but they won’t get anywhere. The servants weren’t in on it. Most of ’em were off duty. It was a maid that found out what was going on — she’d been out too, but she came back early, and saw the masked men and the cars outside. She ran in to a phone by another entrance. I’m telling you, none of the servants were working with the gang — it goes higher than that.”
“Gil,” Chief Thatcher said quietly, “you can’t mean that one of the family actually helped the crooks rob their own museum?”
“That’s exactly what I do mean, chief. If it wasn’t the servants who opened the way to the gang, then it’s got to be one of the Van Ormonds. What’s worse, trying to find out which one of ’em did it is hopeless. The crime ring is so powerful and so feared that nobody connected with it dares talk. If there’s any danger of their talking, you know what happens to ’em. The same thing that happened to Amos Colchester a month ago — and he died of lockjaw.
“Tetanus got him. Lord, it was horrible! He received a little brass head as a warning. It’s fear of dying the same frightful way that keeps the members of the crime ring silent. If they don’t keep their mouths shut, tetanus will make ’em!”
McEwen jerked open a drawer of the chief’s desk and lifted an object wrapped in paper. It was the size of an apple, the modeled head of a man done in brass. The face was a grotesque mask, the lips drawn into a sardonic grin, the eyes protruding. McEwen peered at the ghastly image and shuddered.
“Colchester looked like that when he died. Well, he — one of the biggest men of the city — had been drawn into the crime ring, and he died because there was danger of his talking. That’s the way they work, those crooks — they blackmail respectable people into helping them pull off their crimes. The people they hook have position and influence and are able to give them valuable tips. They follow orders because they dread exposure — and death by tetanus.”
Steve Thatcher swallowed hard as he listened.
“How the hell’re we going to break up an organization like that?” McEwen demanded, thrusting the brass image back into the drawer. “An organization that works in complete secret and has such a powerful hold on their tools? By damn, for all we know half the élite of this town are members of the gang. Politicians, bankers, big business men, society women, debs — anybody. Yes, and it’s possible that the crime ring’s got a man right here in this headquarters as a spy!”
Steve Thatcher winced.
Gil McEwen was pacing the floor. “There’s only one thing I’m sure of, Chief. One thing. The master mind behind this gang is the Moon Man.”
Steve Thatcher asked through a dry throat: “How can you be sure of that, Gil?”
“How? The Moon Man ran the show during the robbery of the Embassy Ball last month, didn’t he? I saw him myself, didn’t I, directing the whole thing? Certainly! The Moon Man’s the ringleader.”
“But—” Thatcher’s words came with difficulty — I... “perhaps the Moon Man is only a tool of the real ringleaders, Gil. Perhaps he’s been forced into helping execute crimes, as others have been. If the real ringleaders found out, somehow, who the Moon Man is, and used that information to force him to work with them under threat of exposure—”
McEwen humphed. “Maybe you’re right, Steve, but I don’t think so. I believe he’s the master mind. Ten times I’ve had him cornered, and each time he’s slipped away. His luck can’t last forever. The day’s coming when I’ll crack down on him — crack down so hard—”
The knob rattled and the door opened. A girl stepped into the room eagerly. She was smartly dressed, young, pretty. She was Sue McEwen, Gil’s only daughter and Steve Thatcher’s fiancée. She stepped to him smiling, and he took her in his arms.
“Steve darling—” She kissed him warmly. “I hoped I’d find you here. I want you to drive me home, and then we’re going to have a good, long talk.”
She greeted her father and Chief Thatcher as Steve Thatcher frowned. He forced a smile and answered: “Sue, dear, there’s nothing I’d like better—”
“Because it’s not very long now until we’ll be married,” she said softly, turning back, “and there are so many things we’ve got to plan. It’s so wonderful, Steve — dreaming it all out and—”
“But I can’t, Sue. I can’t go with you tonight.”
“Steve!” Sue drew back, hurt. “But I won’t let you do anything else tonight. What is there more important? You’re going to drive me home and—”
“Please, Sue,” Steve Thatcher pleaded. “I know I’ve been treating you shamefully, and I’d go with you if it were possible — but it isn’t. Believe me. I... ”
He stumbled into silence. The disappointment in Sue’s eyes sent a twinge through him.
“Steve,” she said quietly, coming toward him, “you’re troubled about something. I can see it in your eyes. What is it? Won’t you tell me? Let’s go home together and talk it all over and—”
Tell her!
White-faced, cold, Steve Thatcher stepped past Sue quickly. “Nothing’s wrong,” he mumbled, and she called pleadingly, “Steve!” but he closed the door. He dared not even glance back as he ran down the steps, and hurried out of the entrance of police headquarters.
Agony shone in his eyes as he crossed the street. He hurried into the corner drug store, shouldered into a telephone booth, and hesitated with the receiver in his hands. Looking up, he could see the lighted windows of the chief’s office.
In that room were the three people dearest to him. Sue — his father — Gil McEwen. Three people who must never learn Steve Thatcher’s secret — never.
Thatcher called a number. It was a very private number known only to him and one other. In a moment a voice answered.
“Angel!” Thatcher said quickly.
“Boss!”
The voice was Ned Dargan’s — Dargan, the ex-pug, secret lieutenant of the Moon Man. Side by side they had worked in defiance of the written law, bound by deepest friendship and loyalty. For long months not even Dargan had known that Steve Thatcher was the notorious criminal who robbed and robbed again, cloaked in a robe of black and masked with silver glass. The secret learned, they had become bound even closer by it. And now Steve Thatcher spoke swiftly to the one man in the world he could trust.
“Angel, they’ve trapped me again!”
“Boss! The Red Six? Gosh, I thought you’d broken clear of ’em! Gosh, Boss, you can’t let ’em drive you—”
“Listen fast, Angel. The Red Six is now the Red Five. They’re at work again. I found out tonight that Secundus, who’s taken the place of Primus as chief of the crime ring, knows that I’m the Moon Man. He’s got me cornered—”
“Boss, you can’t let ’em—”
“They’ve got me, Angel. What they’re going to do with me this time I don’t know — but we’ve got to act fast, or they’ll use me as the Moon Man again. McEwen’s gunning for me, thinking that the Moon Man is the leader. Somehow we’ve got to get at the Red Five and stop ’em before—”
“Anything you say, Boss!”
“Bless you, Angel. Listen. You can get over to the Royale Apartments in a few minutes. The headquarters of the Red Five is on the top floor. I want you to watch that place. Trail anybody you see leaving the secret headquarters. If we can find out who the Red Five are, Angel, we’ll hold trump cards. But it’s dangerous — damn’ dangerous.”
“Never mind that, Boss!”
“Watch yourself, Angel.”
“Depend on me, Boss. I’m leaving now.”
Steve Thatcher hung up the receiver. For a moment he sat in the booth, white-faced, filled with anxiety. He remembered the brass image in Chief Thatcher’s desk — the metal face twisted into the horrible risor sardonicus of lockjaw. He recalled the way Amos Colchester had died the month previous — in horrible agony. Ghastly death because he had dared defy the red-masked crooks.
“Angel,” Steve Thatcher moaned, “watch yourself!”
Chapter III The Brass Horror
The imposing building of the Royale Apartments stood in the shadow of the city’s tallest skyscraper, the Apex Building. Tonight the street flanking it was deserted except for occasional passers-by. It was almost midnight when a young man went striding past the elaborate door of the apartment house, coat collar turned up and head lowered.
The brim of his hat shadowed his cauliflower ear. The tilt of his chin hid the fact that he had no neck.
Ned Dargan.
Dargan glanced into the lobby as he passed. It was quiet and empty. The grille of one of the elevators was standing open, and the operator was sitting inside it — a huge man with a brutal, apelike face. Trudging on, Dargan glanced up, toward the cornices. On the top floor curtained windows were glowing with soft light.
The headquarters of the Red Five was in use.
Dargan walked the length of the block, crossed the street, and turned. When he reached the lobby of the Apex Building he stepped inside it. He stood in the shadow of a pillar, peering across the street into the foyer of the Royale.
Long, empty minutes passed.
Then Dargan saw the brutelike elevator operator turn, step into the cage, and close the grille. Immediately Dargan darted out of the shadow and across the street. Quietly he stepped into the foyer and walked back to the elevator door.
Only one car was in use at this time of night. The indicator above the bronze panels was moving. Dargan watched it swing farther and farther as the car slid upward in the shaft. At last the needle paused, showing that the cage had stopped at the top floor of the building.
Dargan had learned what he had come to learn. Some one was coming down from the secret headquarters of the Red Five. He slipped out of the foyer quickly, recrossed the street, and ducked again into the shadow of the Apex entrance. Another long minute passed. Dargan could see the floor-indicator of the elevator moving again. Presently the grille opened, and a man stepped out.
He was a stocky man, dressed expensively. He walked out of the foyer and onto the sidewalk. Glancing right and left, he turned, striding briskly away. Dargan watched him alertly until he reached the next corner.
Then Dargan followed. Keeping to the opposite side of the street, eyes fast on the man who had left the headquarters of the Red Five, he quickly swung his short legs. He turned when his man turned, crossed, and eased closer.
So Dargan shadowed his quarry along two dark blocks. Then again the man turned past a corner. Dargan hurried. He reached the corner — and hesitated.
The sidewalk beyond was empty.
Dargan went on, eyes shifting right and left. He saw that there were no doorways along the first half of the block into which his man could have ducked. Two sedans were parked at the curb, but they seemed empty, and Dargan dared not move closer to peer into them. Anxiously he hurried on, to the next corner.
The intersecting street was also empty. Dargan’s quarry had vanished.
Covering his consternation by keeping on the move, Dargan turned back on the opposite side of the street. His shifting eyes found no answer to the disappearance of the man he had been following. Again, at the far corner, he turned back.
So he spent long moments, stealthily searching — and finding no sign of his quarry.
Quickly he went on, seething with disgust. He walked again past the front of the Apex Building, glancing toward the top floor of the Royale. Now the highest windows were dark.
“Nobody else there,” Dargan muttered.
Saying blasphemous things about himself as a shadower, he walked away. The room which he had rented under a false name was not far. He hurried toward it. Head still bent, scowling at his failure, he was not aware that, a block behind him, a man was following.
He was the expensively dressed man whom Dargan had been trailing — and now he was trailing Dargan.
Dargan reached the house in which he lived, climbed the steps, and pushed in without glancing back.
Three minutes later the expensively dressed man entered a cigar store a block away and sidled into a telephone booth. He called a number from memory. A voice answered:
“Oriental Importing Company.”
“Quintus calling.”
“Secundus. You may speak.”
“Leaving headquarters a few minutes ago, I was trailed by some one. I ducked into a parked car, and he lost me. I trailed him to his room. He lives there under the name of Sam Daniels.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. He may be a detective. Possibly he’s one of our number. It does not matter. He has been indiscreet, and he may be dangerous.”
“I recommend action, Quintus.”
“I’ll take action — at once.”
The man who called himself Quintus — V of the Red Five — pronged the receiver. Immediately he called another number from memory. He talked quickly, in low tones that could not possibly carry through the double glass panels of the phone booth. When, a short minute later, he stepped out, his eyes were glittering grimly and his mouth was a thin, cruel line.
Ned Dargan climbed a flight of stairs. He inserted a key in the lock of a front room. He stepped in, clicking the light switch. He was in the act of flinging off his hat when his muscles froze.
A young man was seated in a chair beside the table — Steve Thatcher.
“Boss!”
Thatcher sprang up. “Angel, have you been on the job? What did you learn?”
Dargan made a disgusted noise. “Boss, I’m lousy. I spotted a guy coming out of the Royale, and lost him — lost him, damn it! I didn’t even get a good look at his face.”
“He learned you were following him?”
“I guess so,” Dargan moaned. “I had a swell chance to spot one of the Red Five, and I muffed it. But next time, Boss — next time I’ll hang on!”
Steve Thatcher’s eyes were narrowed and thoughtful. “I hope to God there’ll be a next time, Angel, but — Listen! You’ve got to move out of here. You’ve got to beat it — tonight.”
“What? Why, Boss?”
“Because it’s too dangerous to stay. You may’ve been spotted by the man you tried to follow. If you have been — Lord, Angel, do you realize what that means?”
“If anybody makes a pass at me,” Dargan threatened, doubling one huge fist, “I’ll—”
Steve Thatcher gestured impatiently. “You know what happened to Amos Colchester last month. You know how he died. Tetanus! Once the germs get into you, Angel, you’re lost. Any little scratch on the skin, even so small you wouldn’t notice it — and you’re done for. Nothing that doctors can do will stop the infection once it sets in. God, Angel, I don’t want that to happen to you!”
“Yeah, but — what about you, Boss? You’re in a damn’ sight tighter place than I... ”
“Never mind that, Angel. Get your grip packed. Get out of this room tonight — now.”
“Boss, I’m not going to run out on you when—”
“You can take a room under another name in some other part of town, Angel. I tell you you’ve got to do it! If you’ve been spotted, it’s the only way—”
Steve Thatcher broke off as a knock sounded on the door. Ned Dargan turned sharply. His hand slipped toward his hip pocket, where an automatic nestled, as they peered at the panels. Thatcher quickly stepped close.
“Who’s there?”
“Western Union.”
Thatcher hesitated, frowning, then stepped back and gestured Dargan to answer the summons. Dargan, squaring his shoulders, turned the knob. His hand was still on his gun; but when he saw the uniformed boy outside, his fingers unflexed.
“Sure that’s for me?”
“Sam Daniels?”
Dargan peered at the small, square box in the boy’s hand. Quickly he signed, and took the parcel. He closed the door, heard the messenger going down the stairs, and looked up to find Steve Thatcher staring at him widely.
“Careful, Angel!”
Thatcher jerked gloves from his pocket and pulled them on. He took the box from Dargan’s blunt fingers and tore at the string. He ripped off the paper and lifted the cover. An inarticulate gasp broke through his lips as he peered at the thing inside.
It was the modeled brass head of a man, the eyes bulging, the lips drawn into a horrible grin — the grimace that denoted death by tetanus!
Dargan lifted horrified eyes to Steve Thatcher’s face. Thatcher recoiled from the box, and blurted:
“It’s their — warning!”
“Gosh, Boss! They have spotted me!”
Thatcher’s face was deathly white. “Angel, put on gloves — quick!” As Dargan complied with alacrity, Thatcher strode to the window and looked out upon the empty street. Quickly he drew the shade. “Don’t touch anything — not anything you can avoid touching. Don’t even pack now, Angel.”
“Gosh, Boss, I—”
“There might be a pin somewhere in your stuff. A pin dipped in bacilli tetani and placed so that it’ll prick you. That would be enough, Angel. Come on — we’re going.”
Dargan muttered angrily. “Okay, Boss, I’ll beat it. But you can’t come with me. What if somebody saw us leaving together? They’d know then that you’re working with me — and you’d get one of those ugly brass heads yourself!”
“I’m taking that chance. I’m going with you, Angel, because it’s up to me to see that you get out of here safe. Grab that hat, and come on!”
Steve Thatcher stepped to the hallway door and inched it open. Dargan shouldered beside him as he stepped out. The corridor was silent and empty. They went down the steps together, alert, tense.
At the outer door Thatcher paused, listening. He turned his coat collar up, pulled his hat brim down. He twisted the knob, glanced out, and stepped across the sill.
“Grab the first taxi you see, Angel. Better stay at some hotel tonight. Tomorrow find another room. Get yourself all new clothes, and let me know—”
“Boss! Look out!”
They were halfway down the steps. Dargan cried out as a shadow moved in the darkness below. A man raised from a huddled position and sprang in front of Thatcher and Dargan. His movement was so swift that Thatcher did not have time to pause before he lunged.
The unknown man’s right hand swung up, and the blade of a knife glittered in the street lights.
“Look out, Boss!”
Dargan snapped it, twisting forward. His right fist shot beyond Thatcher’s shoulder. His hard knuckles cracked against the assailant’s jaw. The man jerked back. The knife, slashing downward, hissed close to Thatcher’s face.
“Look out for it — poisoned!” Thatcher gasped.
He leaped aside as the unknown man straightened, still clutching the knife. Dargan ducked low, arms thrown into the defense position of a professional boxer. His eyes glittered as he danced out, toward the man with the knife. Again the arm swung, the knife glittered.
Cloth ripped. Steve Thatcher groaned as he heard the sound. Dargan raised on tiptoes, slamming out his fists. The other man rushed in desperately. Dargan snatched at the knife and caught the man’s wrist as their bodies strained in a clinch.
Suddenly they dropped, rolling over. Thatcher saw the knife glittering between the two of them. He was leaping toward Dargan when Dargan broke free and jumped up. The other man lay on the pavement, writhing. Dargan’s fists grabbed into his clothes; he jerked the man up.
One terrific straight-armed clout, smashing full into the assailant’s face, sent him sprawling in the gutter.
Dargan whirled.
“Skip, Boss!”
He raced along the sidewalk with Thatcher at his side. Past the next corner they darted. Headlights were shining in the street; a car was approaching. Colored lights proclaimed it a taxi. Thatcher signaled it to a stop and jerked the door open.
“Inside, Angel! Did he get you?”
“Sliced through my coat, Boss — never touched me! If any of them saw you with me—”
“Take it fast, Angel!”
“So-long, Boss!”
Thatcher slammed the door. The taxi spurted away, with Dargan peering out the window. Thatcher hesitated as it rolled past the intersection into the darkness of the street beyond. His impulse was to rush back to the man who had attacked them; but he checked it.
Turning, walking swiftly, he lost himself in the darkness of the streets.
“Thank God, Angel,” he moaned, “they didn’t get you!”
Chapter IV The Scarlet Power
Black headlines streamed across the front page of the afternoon newspaper:
Seated in his father’s chair, in the chief’s office in police headquarters, Steve Thatcher read the account for the twentieth time.
Lloyd Van Ormond, youngest son of the noted family, had collapsed at the breakfast table that morning. Rushed to the hospital, his case was diagnosed as tetanus. There was a small cut on his arm, evidently made by a sharp knife, through which the bacilli had entered his body.
Grimly Steve Thatcher read that. It was Van Ormond then, a tool in the hands of the Red Five, who had attacked Dargan and Thatcher on the steps of the rooming house. In the fight with Dargan the poisoned blade had cut him. Now he was gripped in the throes of lockjaw — dying.
“No hope is held out for his recovery,” the newspaper article read.
Steve Thatcher glanced up as the door banged open. Gil McEwen marched in, red of face. He dropped into a chair, chewing angrily on a cigar. Steve Thatcher half rose and asked anxiously: “Did he talk any, Gil?”
“Talk?” McEwen blurted. “He couldn’t talk. Jaw’s locked. Got sent to the hospital too late. Haven’t I been there all day, trying to get something out of him? I tried to make him write what he knew, but all he would write was that it was an accident.”
McEwen sighed wearily. “Maybe. On the other hand, it’s a certainty that Van Ormond had been drawn into the crime ring. They’d forced him to be one of them. He was forced to help them steal his father’s collection. Poor guy — dying like that. You ought to know, Steve. You saw Colchester die.”
“I know,” Thatcher said quietly.
Only too well he knew. But for the swift power of an ex-pug’s fists, the man dying in the hospital tonight might have been Ned Dargan — or Steve Thatcher.
“Van Ormond’s death will only tighten the hold of the crime ring on the others. It’ll make ’em still more afraid of dying the same way. By damn, it’s driving me crazy! Trying to fight—”
The telephone clattered sharply. McEwen broke off with a growl as Thatcher took up the instrument. A suave voice came over the wire.
“Good evening, Stephen Thatcher. I recognize your voice. This is Secundus talking.”
Thatcher’s hand went white around the phone as he sent a sharp glance toward McEwen. “What do you want?”
“You are to be at our headquarters within ten minutes, Mr. Thatcher. Ten minutes at the outside. Orders are waiting for you.”
Thatcher breathed hard. “And if I don’t come?” he demanded grimly.
“You know full well the absolutely certain result that would have. Your father and McEwen will be informed of your secret identity. You will not forget that — we give silence for silence.”
Thatcher swallowed hard. “All right. All right.”
“Within ten minutes.”
And the line went dead.
Steve Thatcher rose stiffly. McEwen was eyeing him. The leather-faced detective grimaced. “What do you think about this thing, Steve? Who do you think is behind it?”
Thatcher’s throat tightened. “I... I’m stumped, Gil,” he said strainedly. He put on his hat and strode to the door, as McEwen eyed him strangely. “Just got an important call — I’ve got to go.”
McEwen’s bright eyes haunted him as he ran down the stairs. In the police garage he climbed into his roadster. He started off, swinging into the street, hands clamped white to the steering wheel. “Within ten minutes,” Secundus had commanded inexorably, and Steve Thatcher was obeying.
Rendezvous with the red power!
Steve Thatcher walked quickly from his car into the richly decorated lobby of the Royale Apartments. He stepped into the elevator and the huge, brutal-faced operator clacked the door upon him. The giant’s eyes pierced Steve Thatcher during the ride up. When the cage stopped, Steve crossed an empty corridor.
He pressed a button at a door. An electric lock clicked. Stepping through, Thatcher found himself in a small, curtained room. Except for a table at one side, it was empty. Thatcher’s gaze dropped to an object lying on the table — a black domino mask.
A voice came from behind the curtains: “Cover your face, if you please.”
Feverishly, Steve Thatcher obeyed. In a moment the curtains parted, and two men came through. They were attired in tuxedoes, and their faces were also covered with black dominos. They stationed themselves beside Thatcher and suggested politely:
“This way.”
Impotent rebellion tore at Steve Thatcher’s mind as he was led along a dim corridor. A door was opened before him. He was led across a room to a chair which was facing a wall. He was gestured into it, and when he sat the two black-masked men withdrew.
Silence in the room. Steve Thatcher rose and crossed quickly to the door. He found it locked. Another door in the room was also firmly fastened. The window was thickly curtained. Puzzled, Steve Thatcher returned to the chair, and sat again facing the wall.
Startled, he saw an image appear on it. The image was being thrown across the room, through a small porthole in the opposite wall, through which a lens looked. The picture was that of another room, richly furnished, brightly lighted. In the center sat a desk, and behind the desk was seated a man wearing a red mask, on the forehead of which was the Roman numeral II.
The image moved as Thatcher watched it. The lips of Secundus parted and suddenly a voice spoke in the room where Steve Thatcher sat.
“What you see,” came the voice of Secundus, “is an image produced by wired television, Mr. Thatcher. I am in an adjoining room, speaking to you. I cannot see or hear you — indeed, no one can while you remain locked in — but you will be able to witness everything that is said and done in this office during the next few minutes. The wired television apparatus will allow you to look in upon me exactly as though you were present, and a microphone and loud-speaker will reproduce every word.
“Watch!”
The flickering image of Secundus had been looking straight at Steve Thatcher. Now the red-masked man sat back, and pressed a button on his desk. A moment of silence followed, while Steve Thatcher watched, puzzled, fascinated. Then a door, on the far side of the room in which Secundus sat, opened swiftly.
A girl took three swift steps inward and stopped. At sight of her, Steve Thatcher jerked to his feet and cried out in anguish. The girl’s face was clearly visible on the screen, and her name burst explosively from Thatcher’s lips: “Sue!”
The sound of Thatcher’s voice brought no response from the image of the girl on the screen. She could not hear him. She was standing, rooted with surprise, gazing at the red-masked man at the desk. As her lips moved, her reproduced voice echoed in the room with Thatcher: “Where is my father?”
Secundus said, gesturing: “Sit down, Miss McEwen.”
“I came here because I received a telephone message that my father had been hurt,” Sue McEwen said quickly. “Where is he? Who are you? Why are you masked?”
“Permit me,” Secundus said, rising and gesturing again toward the chair. “The message concerning your father was only a trick, I must confess. So far as I know, he is in perfect health, and certainly is not here. It was only a means of bringing you here, Miss McEwen.”
Steve Thatcher moaned again as he watched: “Sue!” The girl turned and strode to the door through which she had entered; but her pulls at the knob were futile; now it was locked. She was pale now, and frightened. She exclaimed: “You’re one of the Red Six!”
“Chief of the Red Five,” Secundus corrected politely. “Please sit down. I have very interesting information for you. You will not be harmed, of course. You won’t sit down?”
Sue McEwen stood defiantly. “What do you mean? Is this a kidnaping? Don’t you realize that I will be missed and that—”
“You will be released in a few minutes, Miss McEwen. I will explain quickly. This, you see, is our headquarters — where the organization of the Red Five is centered. Here we make our plans. You have become a part of them — an important part.”
Sue McEwen blurted: “You must be mad! Once you let me go, I’ll have this building surrounded by radio cars in five minutes! You and your headquarters will—”
“You won’t do that, Miss McEwen. Because, you see, you are about to become one of our workers. You are a young woman with many important connections, some of them in police headquarters. We will make valuable use of you. Through your friends, on and off the detective force—”
“Absurd!” Sue exclaimed. “How do you think you can force me to do as you say? I demand that you let me go at once.”
“In a moment, Miss McEwen. You will work with us quite willingly, I’m sure, and keep our secret as faithfully as our other workers keep it. For, you see, I am about to make a disclosure to you. Some one very close to you is a member of this organization — and you wouldn’t want him arrested as a criminal, would you, Miss McEwen?”
Steve Thatcher, watching the image, stood stunned.
The girl’s voice came: “I don’t believe that!”
“It’s quite true. I am speaking, Miss McEwen, of your fiancé, Stephen Thatcher.”
Steve Thatcher moaned in anguish. Intently he watched the image of the girl. She took a quick step closer to Secundus.
“Steve! One of you? That’s preposterous!”
“Not at all, Miss McEwen. He is not only a member of this organization. He is also the notorious criminal known as the Moon Man.”
Cold weakness overcame Steve Thatcher. He sank appalled into the chair. His eyes clung haggardly to the image on the wall.
Sue McEwen laughed shortly. “You’re talking like a madman. Steve Thatcher is the finest person alive. He could never—”
“A difficult thing to believe, I’m sure, Miss McEwen,” came the voice of Secundus. “A difficult thing to convince you of. I shan’t try — I shall leave that to you. There is one means of proving conclusively that Steve Thatcher is the Moon Man.”
Again the girl declared indignantly: “I don’t believe it!”
“Your father, Gil McEwen, has the thumbprint of the Moon Man on file at headquarters. No doubt you are thoroughly familiar with it. It will be a simple matter, you know, to compare Steve Thatcher’s thumbprint with that of the Moon Man. I assure you, you will find them identical.”
The girl was staring transfixed at Secundus. The red-masked man was smiling suavely. And still Steve Thatcher watched, paralyzed.
“I have only one further thing to say, Miss McEwen,” Secundus continued. “Until you convince yourself that what I say is true, I advise you to remain silent concerning this visit you have paid me. If you decided, prematurely, to send the police crashing into this headquarters it would result, certainly, in the arrest of Steve Thatcher as the Moon Man.
“It has been a hard shock to you, to learn his secret. It would be a severe blow to Steve Thatcher’s father — no doubt it would break the old man’s heart and perhaps kill him. It would even crush Gilbert McEwen to discover that his daughter’s fiancé is the Moon Man.
“I urge discretion upon you, Miss McEwen. You had best remain silent. And, when orders come to you from us, obey them without question. Now — good-night.”
The girl was still standing, gazing dumfounded at Secundus. Now the door opened, and two masked men advanced. They led the girl toward the door, and she dazedly went with them through it. It closed — shutting her from view.
Suddenly the televised image vanished off the wall.
Steve Thatcher jerked to his feet in the dim light. He swiftly crossed the room and strained at the door knob; but the door would not give. Throat tight, chilled to the core, he stood motionless.
“Sue!” came in agony through his lips.
One of the three who must never know — had learned. The girl Steve Thatcher loved. The girl he was engaged to marry. Sue, who had once contemptuously called the Moon Man “nothing but a petty pilferer.” In her was bred the creed of her father — hatred for the Moon Man’s kind. And now she knew!
“Sue!”
The latch of the door clicked. Steve Thatcher snatched at the knob. He jerked over the sill and stopped short. Two black-masked men were in the corridor. In their hands automatics were gripped, leveled. Behind them stood Secundus, a smile on his lips.
“You dared do that!” Thatcher blurted.
“I fancy,” Secundus answered calmly, “you now find additional reason for loyalty to us — since the young lady has become one of us.”
“I’ll kill you for that!”
The leveled guns stopped Steve Thatcher’s furious step forward. Secundus’s smile did not fade. His hand slipped inside his coat and he withdrew an envelope, proffering it to Thatcher.
“So we grow strong,” he said. “Your orders, Number Thirteen. You will obey them, of course, to the letter.”
Steve Thatcher found the envelope in his hands, and he fumbled it into his pocket. Secundus strode down the hallway and disappeared through a door. The guns prodded Steve Thatcher. He was forced along the corridor, into the curtained vestibule.
There he was suddenly left alone. He sensed that the automatics were still trained on him behind the curtains, but he gave no heed to the threat. He ripped the black mask off his face. Swiftly he stepped through the doorway into the corridor.
It was empty. Frantically he punched the button of the elevator. The torture within him made the minutes seem ages until the car appeared. With the evil eyes of the brutelike operator studying him, he rode to the foyer. He ran out it, glancing swiftly up and down the street.
Sue McEwen was not in sight. One agonized moment Thatcher hesitated. Then, grimly, he ran to his parked roadster. The starter snarled, and he jerked away from the curb. Swiftly he drove in the direction of Sue McEwen’s home.
Chapter V Moon Man’s Orders
Thatcher’s roadster bucked to a stop in front of a modest house in an outlying residential district. He ran to the porch, and punched the bell button. He waited anxiously until a shadow crossed the pane of the door.
The latch clicked, and Sue McEwen looked out. Steve Thatcher could not speak. The girl gazed at him silently a long minute, deep into his eyes.
“Sue, I’ve got to come in.”
“Of course, Steve. Do come in.”
Her voice was not strained now. She stepped back, and he entered. He kissed her, pressing feverish lips to her cool mouth. Quickly he strode into the living room beyond. In the lighter light, he saw that Sue’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes clouded with worry. She came toward Steve, forcing a smile.
“It’s the first time we’ve been alone in a long while, Steve.”
“Yes. I... I’ve got to talk with you.”
“What — about?”
She turned her eyes from him and sat down. Her manner puzzled him. She was trying to seem her old self, but the pain in her eyes, the lingering doubt, betrayed her. She looked up at Thatcher and smiled again.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve just heard a perfectly horrible story about a — a very dear friend of mine, and it’s upset me. I’ll be all right in a little while. I don’t believe it at all — I simply don’t.”
Thatcher sat down stiffly, peering at her. “Would it matter a great deal if it were true, dear?” he asked softly.
She gazed at him, not answering, as the color left her face. The moment of silence was torture to Thatcher. At last the girl smiled again.
“But I don’t believe it, so it can’t matter. A cigarette, please, Steve?”
He drew his silver case from his vest, eyes fast upon hers. He was startled when she took from him, not a cigarette, but the case. She peered at it — peered closer. The cold shock that passed through Thatcher was like a physical blow.
She was studying a smudge on the smooth silver — a print left by Steve Thatcher’s thumb.
“Darling — oh, God!” he blurted. “Please don’t!”
Now her eyes were wide, her lips parted in hurt amazement as she searched his eyes. He took the case from her and tucked it away. He tried to speak, but words choked him. It was her soft whisper that broke the strained silence.
“Steve! You are—”
“Sue, darling! Listen!” Thatcher caught her cold hands in his. “It’s true. I confess it’s true. But let me explain. I’ve got to tell you the truth—”
Her hands in his were unresponsive. She was stunned, her face blank. Words now poured past his lips.
“I did it — only to help, Sue! To help people who had to be helped — or they would die. You — you’ve been in social work. You know how terrible conditions have been — whole families starving — ill — human bodies broken by privation. You know that the city charities act slowly, and can’t take care of every one. It’s what I tried to do, Sue — to help those that couldn’t be helped otherwise — because it was more than I would bear to see them suffer.”
Sue did not speak.
“Once you called the Moon Man a petty pilferer, Sue. Because he stole small sums as well as large. He did it — I did it — because that money was necessary to save lives, to feed starving people. It was breaking the written law — I know. It was a higher law I was obeying, Sue — the law of humanity. I couldn’t stand by and see people starving and cold and sick. And so I stole — to help them.
“Yes, Sue. I’m the Moon Man. I’m the crook your father has sworn to send to the chair. I swear to you, Sue, that every penny I stole went to the needy. If I did anything more than steal it was because I was forced to do it to get money for them. There’s a murder charged against the Moon Man — but I’m innocent of that, before God! I swear it, Sue — I swear I’m telling the truth!”
Still Sue was silent, gazing deep into Steve Thatcher’s eyes.
“You have only my word for it, Sue, but you’ve got to believe me. Oh, Sue, believe what I’m telling you!”
Silence.
Steve Thatcher’s voice came quietly. “Perhaps it’s too much to ask, Sue. Perhaps it makes too much difference to you. Perhaps you can’t love a man — who’s done what I’ve done — ‘a petty pilferer.’ Perhaps you could never bring yourself to marry a man like me. I hope to God—”
He broke off, gazing at her in anguish.
“I love you, Sue — love you more than any one else in the world. It’d kill me if you stopped loving me but — I wouldn’t blame you. I wouldn’t blame you, Sue.”
She took her hands from his. She rose quietly and stood rigidly erect. He came to his feet beside her and searched for an answer in her eyes.
“Steve — please go.”
“Sue! You must—”
“Please go, Steve!”
He drew back. His face was haggard, his lips dry, his throat throbbing and tight. He said slowly: “I’ll go.”
She stood without moving as he took up his hat and walked to the door. He glanced back once, to see her still standing there, not looking at him. A tear glistened on her cheek as he closed the door; a single sob broke through her lips. And then sight of her was shut from him.
Hunched at the wheel, staring blankly into the gleam of his headlights, Steve Thatcher drove his roadster. A country road unrolled as his foot pressed hard to the accelerator; his engine roared and miles flashed past.
For an hour he had been driving, scarcely aware of his own actions, scarcely aware of where he was. The pinching pain in his heart had grown sharper with the moments. Leaden fatigue loaded him. At last, catching his bearings, he turned his car and drove back toward the city.
In front of police headquarters he parked. While minutes passed he sat slumped at the wheel. He was dropping the ignition key into his pocket when he heard the rattle of paper, and drew out a legal envelope, sealed.
“Your orders,” Secundus had said.
Grimly Thatcher tore the envelope open. He spread the closely typewritten page. To it a flat key was attached. He read by the light of the dash:
To: Number 13.
Concerning: Operations on the Municipal National Bank.
Subject: Orders.
Tomorrow night, the night following your receipt of these orders, the Municipal National Bank is regularly open from seven until nine o’clock P.M.
At exactly eight-fifty P.M. you will enter the bank. You will carry with you a small case containing the back robe and the glass mask which comprise the regalia of the Moon Man.
“Oh, God!” Steve Thatcher moaned.
You will ask to be allowed to look into safe-deposit box Number 109. This box, part of our preparations, is rented under the name of Milton Argyle. You will step into one of the booths provided for the purpose of handling the contents of such boxes and immediately garb yourself in the regalia of the Moon Man.
With sickened eyes Steve Thatcher read the remainder of the orders — orders which were part of a plan for looting one of the largest banks in the city — orders commanding him, as the Moon Man, to appear to control the movements of the criminal band which was to swoop down on the bank. The words swam in Thatcher’s vision as he finished.
He remembered the anguish in Sue McEwen’s eyes.
He read again the inexorable command: “Garb yourself in the regalia of the Moon Man!”
Chapter VI Menace in Scarlet
Eight-fifteen, read the old clock in the office of Chief of Police Peter Thatcher. It ticked sonorously in the empty silence of the room.
Steve Thatcher thrust the door open. He closed it tightly behind him and strode to the desk. He sat with hand upon the receiver of the telephone, eyes narrowed, lips pressed together, waiting.
Almost twenty-four hours had passed since the orders of the Red Five had been placed in his hands. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since he had last seen Sue McEwen.
Anxiously Thatcher waited with the phone in his hands. The seconds ticked by. And suddenly the bell shrilled. Instantly Thatcher had the receiver to his ear.
“Steve?” asked Doyle, the phone sarge downstairs. “Call for you.”
“Put it on!”
A new voice came over the wire. “Hello — Steve Thatcher?”
Thatcher said in a breath: “Angel!”
“Right, Boss!”
“Thank God you got my note, Angel! I sent it as soon as I heard from you — and a package.”
“I got ’em both, Boss. I waited to call you right on the dot, like you asked. Say. I don’t like it, calling you at headquarters when—”
“There was no other way, Angel. Is that package safe? You read that letter carefully?”
“I know it by heart, Boss!”
“It means a lot, Angel — everything. The plan’s got to click through to the split second. You’ve got to be careful — damn’ careful.”
“Trust me, Boss! But what about you? You’ll be taking an awful chance—”
“There’s no other way. For God’s sake, Angel, watch yourself. Remember — remember the brass head — the warning.”
“I’m not forgetting it! Time’s short now. I’ve got to go if—”
“Bless you, Angel — and good luck!”
Thatcher hung up the receiver. He glanced at the ticking clock as he rose. Quietly he left the office and trod down the stairs. He was passing the door which connected with the headquarters garage when he heard a voice booming — the voice of Gil McEwen.
Steve Thatcher paused, looking into the garage. McEwen was standing beyond the door, facing into the vast room. Against the walls a score of squad cars were lined. In the center space were forty-odd men, wearing police uniforms, members of the squad car crew. McEwen was snapping at them angrily.
“A swell bunch you are — fine!” he rasped. “You moved so damn’ slow that every one of the crooks’ cars got away from you the other night. What the hell do you do while on duty, anyway? Go off somewhere and eat picnic lunches? Stop in every speak-easy in every block? Look for blondes to pick up! By damn, no matter what you’ve been doing, from now on you’re going to be on the job!”
Steve Thatcher listened grimly.
“Every time after this a squad call goes out, you’re going to be clocked. If it takes you more than sixty seconds by the watch to answer the call, you’re sunk. Every damn’ one of you’ll go back to pounding the gas-house beats. You’re not worth a damn unless you move fast. You’ll move fast, all right, after this. You will — or else!”
Thatcher turned away, but McEwen’s voice stopped him again.
“I’ve got a hunch that something’s going to break tonight — something big — and my hunches are never wrong. I want double patrols in the downtown section. I’m going to be in one of the cars myself — just on that hunch. And if a squad call comes — you’re going to move faster than you’ve ever moved before, I promise you!
“That’s all — dismissed!”
Anxiously Thatcher turned away, glancing at his watch. Minutes had passed. It was nearly time for the orders of the Red Five to be executed. As Steve Thatcher hurried from the door of headquarters, McEwen’s words rang in his ears.
Double patrol! Got a hunch something’s going to break tonight — something big. I’m going to be in one of the cars myself.
Loaded with worry, Thatcher hurried to his roadster. He lifted the rumble cover and peered into the compartment, at a small black case lying there — the case containing the precious regalia of the Moon Man. With a sigh he climbed to the wheel and tramped on the starter.
Just as his car moved off, another drew to a stop on the far side of the entrance. A girl got out of it quickly. She was Sue McEwen, her face drawn, her eyes anxious. She saw Steve Thatcher at the wheel of the rolling roadster and took quick steps after him.
“Steve!” she called.
He did not hear. His roadster picked up speed as she called again. One moment she hesitated anxiously. Then, turning quickly, she returned to the wheel of her own car. Starting up, she began to follow the roadster that was carrying Steve Thatcher toward the Municipal National bank.
A red light stopped her, and Thatcher’s roadster gained. She spurted ahead several blocks, and then was surprised to see the other car swerve to the curb and stop. Steve Thatcher got out of it almost directly in front of the lighted windows of the Municipal National.
High overhead the clock in the spire of the Apex Building was indicating the hour: eight-forty-nine.
Steve Thatcher swung the black case from the rumble compartment of the roadster. He did not see Sue McEwen’s car stopping in the next clear space fifty yards behind. He walked through the swinging doors of the bank, into the lobby.
Bright light filled the bank. At the bronze grilles of the tellers’ windows queues of people had formed, waiting in line. Behind the counters employees of the bank were busy. As Steve Thatcher, cold and grim, crossed toward the grilled partition, his gaze went to one man standing in the file of depositors.
His hair was flaxen, falsely so. One of his ears was cauliflowered. He had no neck.
Ned Dargan.
Dargan was carrying a fat brief case. His eyes found Steve Thatcher and moved away quickly without a glint of recognition coming into them. Steve Thatcher moved on, to the grille door, and when a girl stepped close he said:
“I want box one hundred and nine. The name is Argyle.”
“Step this way, sir.”
Thatcher strode through the opened door. The girl took the key from him and suggested he wait in Booth B. As she strode back toward the open vault, Steve Thatcher sidled into the small, partitioned space.
He glanced at his watch.
Eight-fifty and a half.
The zero hour of the Red Five was at hand.
Latching the door, Thatcher quickly opened the small case he had carried in. From it he unrolled a long, voluminous black robe. He drew it over his shoulders swiftly. On his hands he pulled black gloves. He lifted carefully from the suitcase a sphere of silver glass — the precious mask of the Moon Man — and placed it over his head.
Steve Thatcher vanished and the Moon Man appeared.
Again he glanced at his watch. The globular mask seemed as bright and opaque from the outside as a mirror, but through it the Moon Man could see as clearly as though it were finest crystal. Seconds were ticking by. Into his black-gloved hand the Moon Man took an automatic.
The orders of the Red Five were singing through his tortured mind as he waited.
Suddenly, outside, in the lobby of the bank — a shrill whistle.
Instantly the Moon Man thrust wide the door. His black robe flapped as he strode toward the open vault. Against the wall, desks were arranged. A bound put him on top of one of them. He whirled, turning his gun upon the startled tellers behind the grille. Through his shell of a mask his voice rang muffled:
“Hands up! Everybody hands up!”
Startled cries rang out. Some hands lifted. A second of tense, alarmed silence followed. During it, the Moon Man’s eyes shifted quickly right and left behind his silver mask.
He jerked; a gasp of agony crossed his lips. His gaze paused on a girl standing in the lobby of the bank — a girl separated from the others — a girl peering at him in consternation.
Sue McEwen!
While the Moon Man’s command still echoed, the doors of the bank swung open sharply. Cars had drawn up outside, and from them men were pouring — masked men. Faces hidden behind black dominos appeared as if by magic. Guns flashed in the light. Into the Municipal National came the masked swarm.
Commands rang: “All hands up! Form lines against the wall!”
From his high vantage point, the Moon Man still stared at the girl who was gazing in horror at him. He tore his eyes from her, and peered at the door. Hordes of black-masked men were appearing. Two lines of them had formed outside the door, guarding the entrance, holding passers-by back.
Others were crowding the depositors against the wall, commanding them to raise their hands. One who was forced to comply with Ned Dargan. He lifted his arms, still holding the fat brief case. He saw Sue McEwen standing motionless; his eyes shifted in terror to the black apparition which was the Moon Man; and a sob caught in his throat.
The Moon Man leaped down. The orders from the Red Five had revealed to him the location of the electric button controlling the grille door which gave into the space behind the tellers’ desks. He pushed it, and the latch chattered. Instantly black-masked men came crowding through.
Then red-masked men appeared. They darted in from the sidewalk, guns leveled, eyes glittering. The Moon Man glimpsed Secundus, stationing himself in the center of the lobby. Tertius — III — sprang toward the grille door with Quintus — V — at his side. The others darted to positions of advantage. While women screamed, while men cried out hoarsely, the masked men moved swiftly.
Tertius stepped briskly behind one of the tellers’ cages. He saw the young man there desperately pressing a button on the floor with his foot. An expression of amazement was on the teller’s face. Tertius’s voice came swiftly.
“No use! The batteries on that alarm are dead — we’ve seen to that. Every alarm in the place is out of commission. Keep your hands up!”
The teller in the next cage, listening through the mesh partition, heard the amazing announcement. Instantly he whirled, and snatched at the telephone in his booth. He grabbed up the receiver and called huskily.
“Police! Robbery—”
He got no farther. Quintus was crowding in upon him. The gun in the hand of the red-masked man belched fire. The rocking report shocked through the room. In the tense silence that followed, the teller twisted away from the telephone. It dropped from his hands as red gushed upon his shirt. With a strangled moan he fell.
Murder!
“That’s a warning!” rang the voice of Quintus shrilly.
The Moon Man straightened, peering at the red mask numbered V. Behind the silver glass, his unseen face grew hard and grim. Cold fury turned his gun toward Quintus.
Then, a warning call froze him. He jerked, to see Secundus staring at him through the grille. Secundus’s glittering gun was directed at the black-covered form of the Moon Man. And the voice of the red-masked one rang in a hushed whisper:
“Silence for silence!”
Tertius shouted to the black-masked band: “Follow orders!”
The black-faced crooks were already swarming into the tellers’ cages, into the vault. Before their threatening guns the clerks and bookkeepers quailed. Canvas bags were whisked into view from the coats of the masked band. Money began tingling into the bags; fistfuls of currency were thrust into them. In the vault, three men were dragging from its place the huge safety drawer in which the cash reserve of the bank was stored.
The Moon Man’s eyes darted to one of the figures lined against the wall — Dargan, holding his hands straight up, the brief case clenched in one hand.
“Now, Angel!” he whispered softly. “Now!”
Dargan’s hands were moving. While guns faced him he dared click open the catch of the brief case. One hand slipped inside and came out gripping a shiny, elongated object. Swiftly Dargan tossed it, straight into the middle of the foyer.
A crash. A hollow report. White fumes sprang into the air.
Tear-gas!
There were other bombs in the case which Dargan held — bombs taken from the headquarters supply — sent to Dargan by Steve Thatcher during the day.
A shout of consternation broke from the masked men. They whirled as the blinding, choking fumes swelled to enormous volume. As they swung back, Dargan’s hand hurled another bomb.
The crashing puff released a fresh cloud of vapor, and the room filled with the stinging mist.
A gun barked, and a bullet tore through Dargan’s coat. He sprang toward the base of a stairway which led into the foyer and upward to a balcony overhead onto which doors opened. As he leaped up the steps bullets cracked at him; but the blinding gas was having its effect, and the aim of the gunners was untrue. Bounding, Dargan tossed another bomb, and another.
He bumped into some one on the stairs. He saw the face of Sue McEwen. She was peering at him, startled.
“Out of the way!” he gasped. “Up the stairs!”
Thicker fog blanketed him as he forced the girl higher. On the balcony, with Sue recoiling against the far wall, he paused and tossed more bombs. Now the room was full of muttered cursing, coughing, shouts of pain. Dargan, finding his case empty, grimly grabbed a gun from his pocket and retreated to Sue’s side.
“I’ll keep ’em away from you!”
The Moon Man, at the first crash, had begun working his way behind the grille toward the electrically-operated door. As he edged through it, he saw several black-masked men writhing on the floor, disabled. Tears were streaming from the eyes of the others. The Moon Man was edging toward the main entrance, gun leveled against possible attack, when he was startled by a sudden burst of gunfire in the street.
He wheeled, peered out. Police cars were swarming over the pavement outside. Uniformed men were leaping from them, guns out, rushing toward the doors. Flame and lead clashed again as the Moon Man backed away.
The clerk’s quick telephone call had brought results!
The black-masked men outside were retreating before the blasting fire of the squad car cops.
A bedlam of alarmed shouts rang inside the bank as the Moon Man whirled away. He groped through the choking fog, glimpsing red- and black-masked faces. And as he moved he heard a shout from outside:
“Fill that door!”
The voice of Gil McEwen!
Twisting back, the Moon Man saw McEwen leaping for the bank entrance. The black-masked gang had recoiled and the way was open. Those inside were crowding down upon McEwen as he pushed through. The detective drew up short, face-to-face with a red-masked man with leveled gun.
One instant, through the swirling fumes, they glared at each other — McEwen and Quintus.
The automatic in the hand of Quintus snapped out fire as McEwen bellowed and leaped. He dropped to one knee, his gun flashing in the dimmed light. Twice he fired, with deadly speed, with grim accuracy. And two bullets drilled into the chest of Quintus.
The red-masked man crumpled, clawing the air. He sprawled on the floor, gun dropping from his hands. McEwen leaped up again with a bellow of savage satisfaction.
Death to Quintus, murderer of the teller, sender of the brass warning to Ned Dargan.
The Moon Man was on the stairs now. As McEwen leaped farther into the bank, eyes streaming scalding tears, he retreated a few steps. McEwen paused, peering up.
He saw the glistening silver globe that was the Moon Man’s head. He saw the black-robed figure in the fog. A triumphant cry rang from his lips as he leaped forward.
McEwen’s gun crashed.
The Moon Man felt the bullet tug at his robe as he sagged back. He gasped in anguish. Swiftly he fired in return — sent a bullet which he prayed would miss McEwen. Then, leaping black lightning, he bounded to the balcony above, and raced along it.
He saw a door closing, glimpsed Dargan’s strained face an instant. He sprang to it. He pushed through, and whirled.
He backed to the door of the directors’ room, and behind his silver mask his streaming eyes widened upon Sue McEwen.
Dargan had forced her into the room, away from the gas and the bullets. She had retreated against the table. She stood immobile, peering at the black-robed figure with the globular head of silver. Her lips parted with a silent sob; and from the Moon Man’s shell of a mask came a groan.
Footfalls sounded on the balcony outside. Twisting, he shot the latch of the door. Fists crashed against the panels. McEwen’s voice came:
“Open up!”
Dargan gasped: “Gosh, Boss — it’s him! He’s got you cornered!”
The Moon Man tore his hidden eyes from the face of Sue McEwen. He crossed the room swiftly, to the windows on the opposite side. Swiftly he threw one up, and peered down. An alleyway lay below. It was deserted now; but in a few seconds, the Moon Man knew, the squad car men would be swarming into it.
Then the Moon Man saw a telephone pole within reach, a pole that reached as high as the building.
“Climb up, Angel!” he gasped, whirling back. “You can make it! You’ll be safe up there until you can get away without being seen!”
“Boss! I’m not leaving you now! Not when McEwen’s got you cor—”
“Up, Angel! Quick!”
The Moon Man forced Dargan across the room to the window. With savage insistence he obliged Dargan to climb through. Poised on the sill, Dargan peered back.
“Boss! Oh, God, Boss!”
“You did your work well, Angel! The Red Five’ll think it was the clerk’s telephone call that broke up the plan. Quick, Angel — up!”
“Don’t worry about me, Boss! I’ll get away, all right! Good luck, Boss — so-long!”
Dargan reached out, and gripped the pole. Swiftly he climbed, wrapping arms and legs around it. As he rose higher, fists pounded again on the door behind the Moon Man, and McEwen’s voice shouted:
“Break down that door! He’s in there! We’ve got him cornered this time!”
Now Dargan was near the top of the pole. He reached out a leg, steadied himself against the edge of the roof, then pushed over. He disappeared from view quickly.
The Moon Man turned. One quick glance he gave the pale, strained face of Sue McEwen. She was still staring at him, transfixed.
“Sue!”
She gave no answer.
With a moan, the Moon Man reached out the window for the pole. His fingers had not yet touched it when there was a rush of feet across the pavement below. He glimpsed men running into the alleyway — uniformed men — members of the squad car crew.
Swiftly he ducked back.
From below came a hoarse shout: “Cover those windows!”
The Moon Man retreated. Shouts continued to come from below. The door was still shaking with the hammering of McEwen’s fists. Now a shoulder crashed against the panels, and the wood cracked.
Sue McEwen took a quick step toward the Moon Man. She sobbed: “Steve, Steve!” He stood erect — a black-garbed figure with shining silver head — looking down at her.
“Sue!”
Quickly he lifted the mask of Argus glass from his head. His eyes were streaming with tears from the sting of the gas. He had been obliged to place his automatic on the table to remove the mask; and as he lowered it he saw, startled, Sue’s small hand snatch up the gun.
She leveled it.
“Take off the robe!”
“Sue — for God’s sake—”
“Take it off!”
Not understanding, he obeyed. When the robe and gloves were flung onto the table beside the mask, Sue stepped forward again. Her face was grim and drawn as she turned the gun in her hand. Swiftly she swung it — struck out with it — and the hard metal cracked to the side of Steve Thatcher’s head.
He recoiled, stunned. The bruise beside his temple was livid red, but he did not even feel the pain of it. He was peering dazed into Sue’s desperate eyes.
The girl quickly snatched up the robe and gloves and mask. She jerked open the drawer of a filing cabinet which sat in the corner. Quickly she stuffed the regalia into it, dropped the gun in. She slammed it shut; and then, without a glance at Steve Thatcher, she hurried across to the door.
She drew the latch.
Gil McEwen thrust in. He stopped short, gun leveled. His eyes snapped from the white face of his daughter to the haggard features of Steve Thatcher.
“Where is he — the Moon Man?” he demanded. “I saw him come in here!”
“He... he hit Steve with a gun — and climbed out through the window. He went down into the alleyway, Dad!”
McEwen leaped for the window. His voice roared down at the men below:
“Look for the Moon Man! He got down there! Scatter and grab him!”
Whirling back, halfway across the room, Gil McEwen stopped short.
“By damn, if he’s got away again! By damn, we’ve saved the bank from being robbed anyway! We’ve got one man, with a red mask, dead, and a full dozen of the others! We’re cracking into this gang! But the Moon Man — by damn—”
“He got out minutes ago, Dad!” Sue said swiftly. “I couldn’t open the door because Steve was — hurt so badly—”
McEwen strode to the door and stopped again. His eyes glittered back.
“What the hell are you two doing here, anyway?”
“We... we came here — seeing about the house we’re going to live in when we’re married, Dad. This bank holds a mortgage on it, and — we came to talk terms. We were going to surprise you—”
McEwen tore himself away. He went running down the stairs shouting orders to “get the Moon Man!” Sue McEwen turned slowly, and her eyes sought Steve Thatcher’s. He was gazing at her in amazed confusion.
“Steve!”
Sue McEwen went into his arms. He crushed her body close to his. Her cheeks pressed his warmly and her lips, close to his ear, whispered.
“I’ll never tell them, Darling — I’ll never tell!”
“God bless you!” murmured Steve Thatcher. “God bless you, Sue!”
“I can’t let it matter, Steve — not now. I understand. We can’t let it matter.”
From below Gil McEwen’s voice rang gruffly: “Get the Moon Man — get the Moon Man!” And in the room on the balcony the Moon Man clasped close to him the girl he loved.
The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon Eugene Thomas
Although the great pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s were noted for their fiction, Detective Fiction Weekly, one of the most successful of the mystery pulps, liked to run two or three true-crime stories in each issue. Easily one of the most popular series featured a female spy named Vivian Legrand, who was not identified as a heroine.
Beautiful, intelligent, and resourceful, she was also a liar, blackmailer, thief, and the murderer of her own father. Her exploits, which were reported by Eugene Thomas (1894–?), began to appear so regularly that doubt was cast upon their veracity — with good reason. Without apology, DFW continued to run stories about the woman dubbed “The Lady from Hell,” now acknowledging that the tales were fictional. Were any of the stories true? Was there really a woman named Vivian Legrand? There is little evidence either way, but only the most gullible would accept the notion that all the stories published as true had any genesis in reality.
Thomas, the author of five novels, created another series character, Chu-Seng, typical of many other fictional “Yellow Peril” villains. A Chinese deaf-mute with paranormal abilities, he works with the Japanese in their espionage activities against the United States in Death Rides the Dragon (1932), The Dancing Dead (1933), and Yellow Magic (1934). He is thwarted by Bob Nicholson, an American agent, Lai Chung, a Mongol prince, and a team of lamas who counteract Chu-Seng’s powers with their white magic.
“The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon” was originally published in the February 1, 1936, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.
Chapter I Crooks on Holiday
The lady from hell was standing on the upper deck of the little inter-island steamer as it neared the coast of Haiti. Her crown of flaming red hair was beaten back from her smooth forehead and her white dress modeled tightly to her body by the strong trade wind.
She and her companion in crime, Adrian Wylie, had just completed one of the most amazing coups in their whole career, and were now on a vacation. The Lady from Hell had been emphatic on that point before leaving Havana.
“Nothing is to tempt us into mingling business with pleasure,” she had told Wylie. “Not even if we stumble across the vaults of a bank wide open and unguarded.”
Now, the second day out from Havana, the sun was just rising over the blue bubbles dreaming on the horizon that were the mountains of Haiti, and still she could not account for the vague sense of disquiet, the little feeling of apprehension that had been growing in her ever since the steamer passed between Morro Castle and its smaller counterpart on the other side of Havana harbor.
No one on the little steamer dreamed that she was the notorious Lady from Hell, whose fame had already filtered even to the West Indies. And if they had, it would have seemed incredible that this graceful, beautiful woman could have started her career by poisoning her own father; could have escaped from a Turkish prison — the only time in her career that the net of the law had closed about her — could have held up and robbed the Orient Express, a deed that had filled the press of the world, although her part in it had never even been suspected.
The daring coup in Havana that had added a large sum to the bank account of Adrian Wylie, her chief of staff, and herself had not been brought to the attention of the Cuban police. And, although the police of half a dozen European countries knew her well and swore when her name was mentioned, there was not a single thing with which she could be charged, so cleverly had her tracks been covered, so adroitly her coups planned.
She turned away and began to stride up and down the deck. More than one passenger turned to stare at her as she passed with a rippling grace of motion, a little lithe stride that told of perfect muscles and the agility of a cat.
A sound made her turn as a passenger came up behind her and fell into step with her.
“Good evening, Mrs. Legrand,” he said in English, with the faintest of accents. “You are up early.”
“I was eager to catch a sight of Haiti,” Vivian responded with a smile. “The mountains there are lovely.”
“They are lovely,” he responded, “even though Haiti is my home I never tire of seeing her mountains grow about the horizon line.” Then he added, “We dock in a few hours. See that headland there,” and he pointed to an amethyst bulk that thrust itself out into the sea. “That is Cap St. Feral. The port is just beyond it.”
There was an impression of power, perfectly controlled, about Carlos Benedetti that was perfectly evident to Vivian Legrand as she surveyed him for a fleeting instant through narrowed eyes. His face was unhealthily pale, the nose slightly crooked, the black eyes very sharp and alert, beneath the close-cropped and sleek black hair. He had the air of one to whom the world had been kind, and from it he had learned assurance and a kind of affability.
But behind his assurance — this affability — the Lady from Hell sensed something that was foreign to the face he presented to the world, something that made her cautious.
“Do we dock?” she queried. “I thought that we landed in small boats.”
“The word was incorrectly used,” he admitted. “I should have said that we arrive. Cap St. Feral is not modern enough to possess a dock for a ship of this size, small as the vessel is.” He hesitated a moment. “I assume that you are not familiar with Cap St. Feral.”
“No,” Vivian said. “This is my first visit to Haiti.”
The man’s oblique stare was annoying her. Not that she was unaccustomed to the bold stare that men give beautiful women. But this was different. Had the man been wiser he might have taken warning at the hard light that lay in the depths of her geenish eyes.
But he went on suavely:
“To those of us who know the island it offers little in the way of entertainment,” he said, “but to a stranger it might be interesting. If you care to have me, I should be glad to offer my services as a guide while you are in port.”
A casual enough courtesy offered to a stranger by a native of a place. Vivian thanked him and watched, with a calculating eye, as he bowed and walked on down the deck. The man was sleek, well groomed and obviously wealthy. His spotless Panama was of the type that cannot, ordinarily, even be bought in Equador, where they are woven. A hat so fine and silky that usually they are reserved as gifts to persons in high position. And the white suit that he wore had not come from an ordinary tailor.
It was made of heavy white silk — Habatui silk that in the East sells for its weight in gold, literally.
Adrian Wylie found Vivian on deck. In a few swift words she told him of the invitation and of the intuitive warning she had felt.
Wylie nodded slowly. “That explains something that had been puzzling me,” he said. “For an hour last night the purser insisted on buying me drinks in the smoking room and casually asking questions about the two of us. And hardly five minutes after he left me I saw him talking earnestly to Benedetti at the door of the purser’s office. Evidently the man hunted you up for the first thing this morning, after his talk with the purser.”
Benedetti, they knew from the ship’s gossip, was an exceedingly wealthy sugar planter, who owned the whole of an exceedingly fertile island called Ile de Feral, not far from the port of Cap St. Feral. The Haitian Sugar Centrals — actually the sugar trust, so ship gossip ran — had attempted to drive him out of business, and failed miserably. Despite a price war, he had managed to undersell the trust and still make a profit. Then he had been offered a staggering sum for the island, and had refused. The offer was still open, so she had been told, and any time he cared to sell the sugar trust would be only too eager to buy him out.
A little smile formed on Vivian’s lips. Benedetti, she suspected, was accustomed to having his own way where women were concerned. And the Lady from Hell knew full well her own attractiveness as a woman.
But even the Lady from Hell, astute as she was, could not have fathomed the dark reason that lay behind Benedetti’s advances.
Chapter II Danger’s Warning
The faint sound of drums somewhere in the distance; a regular, rhythmic beat, as though a gigantic heart, the heart of Black Haiti were beating in the stillness of the blazing moon, hung over the little city of Cap St. Feral as the Lady from Hell, Wylie, and Benedetti rode through the sun-washed streets.
The heat that hung about them like a tangible thing seemed to be intensified and crystalized by the monotonous beating of the lonely drums.
The Lady from Hell turned to Benedetti with a question, the brilliant sunlight through the trees overarching the road catching her hair and turning it into a halo of flame about her exquisitely lovely face.
“Voodoo drums,” he said. “The night of the Voodoo Moon is approaching. The drums will keep on sounding until the climax of the Snake Dance. They’re beating like this all over the island, even in Port-au-Prince. Worshipers in the cathedral can hear the sound of the drums from the hills outside the city drifting through the intoning of the mass. Then, almost as if they had been silenced by a gigantic hand, they will all stop at the same moment — the climax of the Snake Dance.”
Vivian stole another glance at the people along the roadside as their car passed. Voodoo. It was something out of a book to her, something a little unsettling to come so closely in contact with. And it seemed difficult to believe that the happy, smiling faces were the faces of people who had run mad through the streets of Port-au-Prince, so history said, tearing President Guillaume Sam to bloody bits while he still lived.
Benedetti caught the thought in her mind.
“You have not lived here, Mrs. Legrand,” he said quietly. “You cannot understand the place that Voodoo holds in these people’s lives; the grip it has upon them. And you are not familiar with the effect of rhythms upon the nerve centers. It does strange things to blacks, and to whites things stranger still.”
He leaned forward and flung a few words in Creole French at the driver — words that Vivian Legrand, fluent as her French was, could barely follow. The car stopped before a long, rambling structure, of gleaming white coquina, half hidden behind crimson hibiscus bushes.
“I brought you here for lunch,” he said. “It would be unbearably hot on the ship and there is no hotel at which you would want to eat, even if you could, in the town itself. This is a little house that I maintain, so that I may have a comfortable place to stay when necessity or business compels me to be in town. I took the liberty of assuming that Dr. Wylie and yourself would have lunch with me here.”
Vivian looked about her curiously as their host opened the little gate and ushered them into the flower garden that surrounded the house.
From the whitewashed, angular, stone walls of the old house, almost smothered in pink Flor de Amour, her eyes went to the table set beneath a flowering Y’lang-y’lang tree in the center of the close-cropped lawn. An old woman stood beside it, an ancient crone with more than a trace of white blood in her, one of those incredibly ancient people that only primitive races can produce. Her face was a myriad of tiny wrinkles and her parchment skin had the dull, leathery hue and look that is common in the aged of the Negro race.
The woman turned slowly as the trio approached and her eyes fastened on Vivian. In her cold, yellow eyes was a look almost of fear. Something that was like lurking terror coiled in the depths of those alert, flashing eyes and rendered them stony, glassy, shallow.
And then, as Benedetti and Wylie went on past her she made a gesture, an unmistakable gesture for Vivian to halt, and her voice, lowered until it was barely a sibilant whisper, came to Vivian’s ears in French.
“Do not stay here,” she said. “You must not stay.”
There was definite horror in her eyes, and fear also, as her glance flitted from Vivian toward Benedetti. Despite the whisper to which her voice had been lowered there was fear to be distinguished in her tones also.
Her face was impassive as she turned away. Only her eyes seemed alive. They were cold, deadly bits of emerald. The Lady from Hell abhorred the unknown. All through her criminal career the unsolved riddle, the unsolved personality, the unexplained situation, inflamed her imagination. She would worry over it as a dog worries a bone.
And how her mind hovered over this problem with relentless tenacity, her brain working swiftly, with smooth precision. Her intuition had been right, after all. The feeling of danger, of disquiet, of apprehension that had haunted her ever since the coast line of Haiti came in sight over the horizon had not been wrong. She knew now, beyond a shadow of doubt, that danger hovered over her like a vulture.
The fear that she had glimpsed in the old woman’s eyes, Vivian reasoned, was fear for herself should she be caught warning the white woman. But what was the danger against which she was warned, and why should this old woman, who had never seen her before, take what was obviously a risk to warn her against it?
Luncheon was just over when a long hoot sounded from the steamer.
“The warning whistle,” Benedetti told her. “A signal to the passengers that the steamer will sail in an hour.”
He turned to Vivian.
“My roses,” he said, “are so lovely that I took the liberty of requesting Lucilla to cut an armful of them for you to take back to the ship as a remembrance.”
There was a distinct warning in the old woman’s veiled eyes as Vivian stretched out her hands for the big bunch of pale yellow roses that Lucilla brought; not only warning, but that same terror and fear that had stood starkly in them a short time before. Instinctively Vivian stiffened and looked about her, her nerves tense. Was the danger, whatever it was, ready to spring? But the scene seemed peaceful enough.
“How lovely they are!” she exclaimed, and wondered if it could be her imagination that made the old woman seem reluctant to part with the flowers. Then she gave a little exclamation of pain as she took them from Lucilla. “Like many other lovely things, there are thorns,” she said ruefully, gazing at the long, thorny stems, still slightly damp from standing in water.
“That is true,” Benedetti said, and there seemed to be an expression of relief in his eyes. “Our Haitian roses are lovely, but they have longer and sharper thorns than any other roses I know.”
“Don’t you think we had better be leaving?” Vivian queried, glancing at her watch. The shimmering heat haze that covered everything seemed to have blurred her vision, and she had to peer closely at the little jewelled trinket to make out the time. “It’s a long drive back to the ship.”
“There is still plenty of time,” Benedetti assured her. “The warning whistle is supposed to sound an hour before sailing time, but it always is nearer two hours.” Then he gave a little exclamation of concern. “But you are ill,” he said as Vivian swayed a little.
“Just the heat,” she said. “I am not yet accustomed to it.”
The flowers she had been holding tumbled to the table and thence to the ground. The long-stemmed yellow blossoms gave no hint of the fact that from the moment Benedetti’s message had been delivered to the old woman until the moment before they had been placed in Vivian’s hands their stems and thorns had been soaking in a scum-covered fluid brewed by Lucilla herself.
“You must go inside for a few moments. You must rest,” Benedetti said sharply. “I should have realized that you were not accustomed to heat. It might be fatal for you to drive back to the ship in this sun without a rest.”
Wylie, a look of concern on his face, took Vivian’s arm and helped her to her feet. Even then, with her vision blurred and an overpowering drowsiness creeping over her, the Lady from Hell did not realize that she had been drugged. It was not until she reached the threshold of the room to which she had been guided that the truth burst upon her dulled senses with the force of a thunderbolt.
Stacked neatly against the whitewashed walls of the room was the baggage she had left in her cabin on the steamer!
Dizzily, clutching at the door for support, she turned... just in time to see a short heavy club descend with stunning force on Wylie’s head. And then, even as her companion crumpled to the stone flooring, blackness flooded her brain.
Chapter III Vivian Legrand Trapped
Dusk had fallen with tropic swiftness before Vivian awoke. She had not been conscious of her journey, wrapped in coco fiber matting from the house where she had been drugged, to Benedetti’s launch, nor of the subsequent trip to the man’s home on the Ille de Feral.
Now, anger smoldering in her greenish eyes, she faced him across the dining room table. In the dim room the table floated in a sea of amber candlelight. Barefooted black girls passed in and out, their voices keyed to the soft stillness, a thing of pauses and low voices. The whole thing, to Vivian, seemed to take on a character of unreality — a dream in which anything might happen.
She waited for Benedetti to speak after the slender black girl drew out her chair for her. But the man did not, so finally she broke the silence herself.
“What do you hope to gain by this?” she queried.
“Won’t you try your soup?” he said bitterly. “I am sure that you will find it very good.”
He halted as one of the girls stopped beside his chair and said something in Creole in a low voice. He rose to his feet.
“Will you pardon me?” he said. “There is someone outside, with a message. I shall be gone only a moment.”
He disappeared through the door beside the staircase, the door that Vivian imagined led to the rear of the house.
Swiftly she beckoned the black maid to her, slipped the glittering diamond from her finger, and folded the girl’s hand about it.
“Come to my room tonight,” she whispered tensely, “when it is safe. No one will ever know. And in Port-au-Prince or Cap St. Feral you can sell that ring for sufficient to live like a blanc millionaire for the rest of your days.”
The girl’s face paled to a dusky brown, she glanced furtively from the glittering jewel in her hand to the pale face of the woman who had given it to her. Vivian caught the hesitation.
“I have others in my room,” she urged desperately. “You shall choose from them what you want — two — three — when you sell them there will never have been another girl in Haiti as rich as you will be.”
“I will come,” the girl said in a whisper and stepped back against the wall. A moment later Benedetti returned.
“I regret to have been so poor a host as to leave you alone for even so short a time,” he said.
“Please,” Vivian said shortly, and there was in her manner no indication of the triumph that filled her breast. “Why dissemble. You’ve brought me here for a purpose. Why not tell me what it is?”
Already a scheme was forming in that agile mind of hers. When the girl came to her room that night she would persuade her to find weapons — guide Wylie and herself to a boat so that they might escape. But was Wylie still alive?
Benedetti’s answer interrupted her thoughts.
“It is not so much what I hope to gain, as what I hope to keep,” he said smoothly. He paused, and through the silence there came to her ears that queer rise and fall of notes from drums that had followed her ever since she arrived in Haiti — the drums of the Voodoo Moon, Benedetti had called it. He leaned forward.
“You might as well know now,” he said abruptly. “You have until tomorrow midnight to live.”
“Unless?” Vivian queried meaningly. She was very sure that she knew what the man meant.
Benedetti calmly placed the spoon in his plate and pushed it aside.
“There is no proviso. I know nothing of your personal life — of your finances. They are no concern of mine. You may be extremely rich, or completely poor — that does not enter into the matter at all. You have nothing that I care to buy. All I know is that you are young and extremely beautiful.” He studied her with a cold dispassionate interest, then sighed, a bit regretfully, it seemed. “That is the reason you must die tomorrow night.”
The thing was utterly fantastic. Vivian listened in amazed fascination. She could hardly bring herself to believe that she had heard correctly. So sure had she been that the man’s interest in her rose from the fact that he was attracted to her that the thought there might be another, more sinister motive behind the drugging and kidnaping had not occurred to her.
Her green eyes narrowed a trifle — only that, but there was the impression of a steel spring tightening. Then she said quietly:
“Why must I die?”
“Because,” he answered, “tomorrow night is the night of the Voodoo Moon — the night when the Papaloi and the Mamaloi present Ogoun Badagri, the Bloody One, with the Goat Without Horns.”
“The Goat Without Horns?” Vivian repeated, uncomprehendingly. “What is that?”
“You,” the man said tersely. “Tomorrow at midnight, when the Voodoo Moon is fullest, you will be offered as a sacrifice to Ogoun Badagri, the snake god.”
For a moment the Lady from Hell stared at him, a chill feeling clutching at her breast. Then an alert look came into her eyes, a look that she quickly veiled. She was listening intently.
“You’re not actually in earnest?” she asked quietly. Every nerve was strained to catch that sound again — the drone of an airplane engine that had come faintly to her ears. It was louder now. “You are trying to frighten me, to trap me into something. You will find that I am not easily frightened or trapped.”
The sound of the plane was louder now. She shot a furtive glance at Benedetti. Could aid be on the way? Could Benedetti’s plans have gone wrong, and a search be underway for them?
“I am very much in earnest,” the man opposite her said. “You see, that is the secret of my successful defiance of the sugar trust, the secret of why my laborers never leave me, the secret of why I can manufacture sugar at a cost that the sugar trust cannot possibly equal and still make a profit. Once a year I present the Papaloi and the Mamaloi, the high priest and priestess of Voodoo, with a human sacrifice — a white man or woman — and in turn these two guardians of the great snake see to it that my laborers do not leave, and are kept content with the lowest pay scale in the island of Haiti.”
He broke off and smiled.
“You may relax, Mrs. Legrand,” he said. “That plane that you hear will not land here. It is the marine mail plane that passes over the island every night between eleven thirty and twelve o’clock.”
Vivian looked at him blankly. “Plane?” she said vaguely. “Oh, yes, that is a plane, isn’t it? Quite honestly, I had not noticed the sound before you spoke.”
It was so well done that it fooled him. She picked up the slender silver fruit knife that lay on the table in front of her, twisting it so that it shone in her fingers, a pale, metallic splinter of light. She regarded him with eyes that had turned mysteriously dark, and leaned forward a little. Her voice, when she spoke, was very soft, and it held a quality of poignancy.
“You seem to live alone here,” she said, and her eyes regarded him warmly. “Don’t you ever become — lonely?”
There was a world of promise and invitation in the soft tone, in the alluring lips.
He looked at her and tightened his lips.
“That is useless,” he said. “You are beautiful, one of the most beautiful women that I have ever seen, but a dozen such women as you could not make up to me for the loss of my plantation. No, my dear, your charm is useless.”
“But you wouldn’t dare,” she said. “A woman cannot simply disappear from a steamer without inquiries being made. This is not the Haiti of twenty years ago. The Americans are in control — they are the police...”
Benedetti shook his head. “Do not raise false hopes. You sent the purser of the steamer a note saying that you had unexpectedly found friends in Cap St. Feral and were breaking your voyage here. The same man who brought the note took yours and your companion’s baggage off the ship. By now he has probably forgotten your existence.
“There is nothing to connect you with me, and if inquiries should be made it will simply be assumed that you either left the island or were murdered by a wandering Caco. And as for an Haitian, who might know something of your disappearance, aside from the fact that the secrets of Voodoo are something that are never discussed, there is an island saying: ‘Z affaires negres, pas z’z affaires blancs.’ And you will find that the affairs of the Negroes are not the affairs of the whites. And then,” his voice was bland as he made the significant statement, “there is rarely any proof — left — when the great green snake god has completed his sacrifice.”
“And my companion — Dr. Wylie — what have you done with him?” Vivian queried steadily. A bright spark glowed in her narrowed green eyes for a moment. It died slowly.
“He is safe, quite safe,” Benedetti assured her, “for the time being. He also will be a sacrifice to Ogoun Badagri.”
He said it with simple, sincere ruthlessness; undisguised, but neither vindictive nor cruel.
“You are quite sure of yourself,” Vivian said softly, and had Wylie been there he would have recognized the meaning of that tone; the threat of that greenish glow at the back of her eyes. He had seen that cold light in her eyes before. But Benedetti, even had he glimpsed it, would not have known that it was like the warning rattle of a snake before it strikes.
Now, with a swift movement she flung the silver fruit knife she held at the gleaming shirt front of the man opposite her. Her aim was deadly, for few people could throw a knife with the skill and precision of the Lady from Hell.
But Benedetti had caught the glitter of the candlelight on the metal a split second before she launched the knife. His agile mind perceived her intention and he flung himself to one side just in time. The knife thudded into the high back of the chair in which he had been sitting and rested there, quivering.
“You are a fool,” the man commented curtly. Striding to the French windows he flung them wide, letting moonlight stream into the room. The sound of the drums came in louder, a barbaric rhythm beating in strange tempo with the pulse in her wrist.
“Look at that,” he said, flinging out an arm.
At the edge of the veranda, which ran along the front of the house, lounged a white cotton-clad Haitian, a three-foot cane knife clasped in his fist. Further along, at the edge of the beach, another man leaned against the bole of a coconut tree, and the glitter of the moonlight on steel betrayed the fact that he also was armed with a cane knife.
“Even if you had killed me,” he said quietly, “you would have been no better off. You could not escape from the island. There are no boats here. Even the launch on which you arrived has been sent away and will not return until after the ceremony. And if you had attempted to swim, the sea swarms with sharks.”
It was after midnight when Vivian went upstairs to her room again. Benedetti escorted her to the door.
“I am locking you in,” he told her. “It is really quite useless to do so. You could not escape. There is absolutely no possibility of success. But it is a precaution I always take with my annual — visitors.”
Then he drew from his pocket the diamond ring that Vivian had, earlier in the evening, given to the little black maid.
“You will find,” he said with a smile, “that it is useless to attempt to bribe my servants. The fear of the Voodoo in them is greater than the greed for money.”
With a slight bow he closed the door, leaving her staring at the blank panels with a sinking feeling in her heart. She was a prisoner in a prison without walls, and yet the sea that girdled the land was a barrier as effective as stone ramparts and iron bars. Instead of one jailer she had dozens — perhaps hundreds — for she realized that every laborer on the island was a potential guard, alert to halt any attempt to escape. She did not attempt to deceive herself by thinking that every native of the place did not know of her presence and the fate for which she was destined.
She wondered what prompted the old woman — Benedetti’s servant — to take her life in hand and warn her, back there in Cap St. Feral? The woman had, of course, realized Benedetti’s purpose in bringing her here, since it had been she who had prepared the drugged rose stems. It was not for a long time, and then only by accident, that Vivian was to discover that in a Haitian the desire for revenge can transcend even the fear of Voodoo, and that it was to avenge what she considered a wrong that the old woman had warned her.
Vivian turned her thoughts back to her position. She believed she knew where Wylie was being held. On her way down to the dining room a little earlier she had encountered one of the black maids with a tray; had noted the door through which the girl had passed. That, she reasoned, must be the room in which Wylie was held prisoner, unless there were other prisoners in the house of whom she knew nothing.
She smiled a trifle grimly at the thought of being locked in her room. If Benedetti only knew of how little importance a lock — particularly an old-fashioned one such as this — was to her. Opening her suitcase she took out a hand mirror with a long handle. Unscrewing the handle, she removed from the hollow interior a long slender rod of thin steel. This she forced slowly into the thin opening between door and jamb. The rod scraped on metal. She worked it up and down, slowly pressing inward. Bit by bit the sloping tongue of the lock was forced back into its sheath, until the blade slipped through. A twist of the door handle and Vivian was peering out into the corridor.
Darkness hung before her eyes. It was as if a curtain of some impenetrable texture hung before her. She knew nothing of the floor plan of the big, rambling house, but she knew that the room she had seen the girl entering was the last on her side of the corridor, and accordingly she made her way cautiously in that direction, feeling her way, finger-tips trailing the wall, listening intently every step or so for some sound that might warn her of the presence of another person.
Her hand trailing along the wall touched a door — the fifth one she had passed. This was the door she sought. Gently she tried the knob. It was locked. A few minutes’ work with the thin steel rod and the door swung inward with only the faintest of sounds. But even that was sufficient to betray her presence to Wylie’s alert ears.
“Who is it?” he queried.
“Shhh,” she whispered warningly, and, closing the door, crossed swiftly toward the chair where he sat beside the window.
In low, tense whispers she told him of her conversation with Benedetti and of the fate that was in store for both of them.
“We’ve got to get away tonight,” she finished. “It’s our only chance. There must be some way — perhaps we can make a raft. At least we can try.”
Chapter IV The First Victim
With Wylie by her side she made her way to the door; peered cautiously outside. By diligent practice the Lady from Hell had long ago acquired the chatoyant eye — the cat’s — good for prowling about and seeing things in the dark, but here in the corridor the blackness was intense, with a tangible quality that was numbing to the senses. The utter opacity was tactile, half fluid, like fog. She crept down the hallway with feline assurance, passing her fingers delicately over objects that came into her path with a touch light enough to stroke a butterfly’s wing. The house was a sea of silence, and on its waves the slightest noise made long and screeching journeys.
To Vivian’s hearing, sandpapered by suspense, the slight give of the polished boards of the staircase beneath their slow steps produced a terrific noise. By making each step a thing of infinite slowness, they crept forward safely. Each downward step was a desperate and long-drawn-out achievement, involving an exactly calculated expenditure of muscular energy, an unceasing, muscular alertness.
Once, as they reached the bottom of the stairs, there came from the dining room in which they stood the rattle of a clock preparing to ring out a quarter hour. It struck Vivian’s tense nerves as a thing of abominable violence — like countless, swift hammer strokes on the innumerable frayed ends of her nerves. She had the sensation of being driven into the woodwork of the floor upon which she stood, of being crushed under an immense and lightning-like pressure.
After what seemed an eternity they reached the further side of the dining room. Under her careful manipulation the latch of the door slipped slowly back. The door moved silently, slowly. A brilliant line of moonlight appeared. Vivian caught her breath sharply.
Standing there in the open ground in front of the veranda stood a Haitian, alert, watchful, armed with a machete.
There was no escape that way. Weaponless, they were helpless before the menace of that shining three-foot length of steel, even if they could cross the moonlit space that lay between the veranda and the man without being detected.
“The back of the house,” Vivian whispered to Wylie, her voice barely perceptible.
She knew that the door to the kitchen was beside the staircase they had descended. That much she had observed during her interview with Benedetti earlier in the evening. By locating the staircase first in the blackness, she found the door she sought and opened it. A passageway opened before them, dimly illuminated by a shaft of silver that poured through a half opened door at its further end.
Silently they made their way down the passage and cautiously peered through the partly opened door. Another disappointment.
It was a small room, one wall covered with shelves, boxes and bags stacked high on the other side with a single window, half way up the wall, through which moonlight poured. A storeroom of some sort.
Vivian reached out and caught Wylie’s arm, drew him silently into the little room and closed the door.
“There may be weapons here,” she said. But she was mistaken. The nearest approach was a broken kitchen knife used, probably, to slash open the burlap bags which stood against the wall.
It was a poor substitute for a weapon, but Vivian took it thankfully. And then she gave a gasp. Her hand, exploring a shelf, had come in contact with something clammy and sticky that clung and would not be shaken off. Her first thought was that it was some monstrous tropical insect. It seemed alive, it clung so persistently, despite her efforts to shake it loose.
Then, as Wylie snapped his cigarette lighter into flame, the tiny glow illuminated an oblong of sticky fly paper fastened to her hand. There was a pile of the sheets upon the shelf. Despite the tenseness of the situation she almost laughed at the uncanny feeling the thing had given her there in the darkness.
In the dim flame of Wylie’s lighter they searched again for anything that might prove of assistance to them in their predicament. Bags of flour. Bags of potatoes. Kegs of pig tails and pig snouts in brine — evidently food for the laborers. A half-emptied case of bacale — dried codfish, a staple article of diet in the West Indies — and a can of phosphorescent paint. Also row after row of canned food. But nothing that might be of assistance to them.
Climbing upon a box Vivian peered through the window, then turned back to Wylie, excitement in her voice.
“We can get out this way,” she whispered. “There is the limb of a tree almost against the window and shrubbery around the tree.”
“Anybody in sight?” Wylie queried.
“No one,” Vivian said, and pried the latch of the window with her broken knife blade. It came open with a tearing shriek that sounded like thunder in the silence. Disregarding the noise Vivian slipped through the window and swung on to the limb of the tree. Wylie followed her, and in a moment they stood on the ground in the midst of dense shrubbery.
“We will have to keep in the shadow,” she said as they crept silently through the bushes, only an occasional rustling leaf marking their passage. “The moment we step in the moonlight we’ll be seen, if anyone is watching.”
Even there in the bushes the brilliant moonlight illuminated the ground about them. A faint drumming ebbed to them through the brilliance, faintly touching the dark membrane of the night as they emerged on what seemed to be a well-defined path leading toward the beach.
A sudden opening in the trail, a burst of moonlight, and they stood on a strip of white sand with breakers creaming softly in front of them.
“There,” Vivian said, still keeping her voice low. “See that pile of driftwood. We’ll make a raft of that. Drag it to the water’s edge while I cut vines to lash it together.”
Feverishly they worked, Wylie dragging the heavy logs into position, lashing them firmly together with the vines that Vivian cut from the jungle’s edge, until at last a crazy-looking affair bobbed up and down in the ripple at the edge of the beach. Makeshift, clumsy, but it would float and it was an avenue of escape, the only avenue that had presented itself.
Vivian returned from a final trip to the jungle, dragging behind her three bamboo poles.
“We can use two of these to shove the thing with, until we get into deep water,” she said. “The other we can lash upright as a mast and use my dress as a sail.”
At that instant, from the path behind them, came the sound of voices. Vivian flashed a frantic glance at the jungle rearing up behind them, and then leaped on board the raft. Wylie followed. It dipped and swayed, but held their weight. The voices came nearer. Desperately Vivian braced her pole against the sandy bottom and shoved. Wylie followed suit. Sluggishly the clumsy craft moved away from the shore — five feet — ten feet — and than half a dozen men poured through the opening in the jungle and raced across the sand, splashed through the shallow water and surrounded the little craft, gleaming machetes raised threateningly.
Vivian did not see Benedetti when they returned to the house with their captors that night, nor was he visible when she awoke the next morning after a night spent in futile speculation and planning, and descended to the dining room.
A black girl served them breakfast. Golden sunlight poured through the wide French windows, beyond which they could see the beach and the green cove. Nowhere was there evidence of the fate that hung over them. But both knew, and the fact of that knowledge was evident in their eyes, in their short jerky words, that Death’s wings were already casting their shadows across them.
The sun was well up when they went on to the veranda. There should have been the click of machetes in the cane fields and the low, lazy laughter of the workers. But everything was still, and that stillness held an ominous meaning.
Wylie was frankly without hope — more so as the day wore on, and Vivian, although she had never admitted defeat, admitted to herself that she saw no way out of the impasse. Benedetti, she saw now, had made no mistake when he told her that escape was impossible.
The day wore on, and still Benedetti did not put in an appearance. Once Vivian asked one of the maids where he could be found and received in answer a queer jumble of Creole French that held no meaning. Later, they essayed a walk to the Sugar Central, whose smokestacks rose on the other side of the cane fields, but one of the ever-present natives stepped slowly in their path, his machete openly in evidence. From the corner of her eyes Vivian could see others, alert, ready, at the edge of the jungle. Their captors were taking no chances.
On the far side of the cleared space Vivian could see a break in the jungle where a path ended. From this path men kept coming and going, and this, she surmised, must lead to the place where they were scheduled to die that night.
It was after dinner when Benedetti made his appearance, and with him stalked tragedy.
Vivian and Wylie were on the broad veranda, walking up and down. Something — some sixth sense — warned Vivian of danger, even before she heard the quick, catlike tread behind her. She made an attempt to swing around an instant too late. Someone leapt on her. A strong arm was locked about her throat. A hand was clamped over her mouth. A knee dug into the small of her back. She wrenched, tore at the gripping hands, even as she saw other hands seizing Wylie; she was aware of Benedetti’s face, his features hard as stone. In the same second something dropped over her head and blotted the world into darkness.
How long she was held there motionless on the veranda she did not know. Then came a quick gabble of Creole in Benedetti’s voice and the smothering hand was removed.
She flashed a glance around. The place was deserted save for herself, Benedetti and one tall native who stood beside the veranda steps, the ever-present machete in evidence. Obviously a guard.
The man interpreted her look.
“Your companion is gone. You will never see him again,” he said, and his voice was indifferent. He might have been speaking of some trivial object that had disappeared. He turned back toward the dining room, where candlelight made a soft glow. Vivian followed. The house seemed curiously still, as if all life had departed from it save these two.
“Gone — you mean—” she could not finish the sentence.
Benedetti nodded and selected a cigarette from a box on a little side table; lit it at one of the candles.
“He will be the first sacrifice to Ogoun Badagri. When the great green snake god has finished with him they will come for you. You will be the climax of the ceremony,” he told her brutally.
“You mean that you — a white man — will actually permit these men to make a sacrifice of us?” she queried. She knew, before she said it, that any appeal to him would be useless, but her mind was going around frantically, seeking a method of warding off the death that was imminent.
“What is your life and that of your companion to me?” he asked. “Nothing — not so much as the ash from the cigarette — compared with the fact that your death means that I keep my plantation a year longer. I refused close to half a million dollars from the sugar trust for the island. Do you think, then, that I would permit a little thing like your life to rob me of it?”
Chapter V Voodoo Death
Vivian did not answer. Her eyes roamed around the room, although already every article in it had been photographed indelibly on her retina. A fly had alighted on the border of the sticky fly paper that lay in the center of the mahogany table. It tugged and buzzed, but the sticky mess held it too firmly.
“You may comfort yourself with the thought,” Benedetti went on, “if the fact is any comfort, that you are not the first. There have been others. The little dancing girl from the Port-au-Prince cabaret, a Spanish girl from Santo Domingo...”
He was not boastful, purely meditative as he sat there and smoked and talked, telling Vivian of the victims whose lives had paid for his hold on his sugar plantation. Vivian’s eyes were fastened on the feebly fluttering fly on the sticky paper. They, too, were caught like flies in a trap, and unless she could do something immediately — she faced the fact calmly; it would be the end.
Abruptly she leaned forward. There was a stillness in her pose, a stillness in her opaque eyes. Her hands coiled like springs. She found it difficult to keep her detached poise as the scheme began to unfold and take shape in her brain.
She smiled thinly. The air was suddenly electrical, filled with the portent of danger. Benedetti caught the feel of it, and peered at her suspiciously for a moment. The Lady from Hell knew that it was a thousand to one that she would lose. But, if her scheme worked, she could save Wylie’s live and her own, and Benedetti might be made to pay for the thing he had attempted — pay as he had never dreamed that he would have to pay.
Reaching out one hand she moved the candle in front of her, so that its glow fell more on Benedetti’s face than her own. Her voice, as she spoke, was quiet, almost meditative. But her eyes told a different story.
“How much time have I to live?” she said.
The man glanced at his watch.
“Roughly, two hours,” he said. He might have been estimating the departure time of a steamer, his voice was so calm. “It might be a trifle more or less — the time of my workers is not accurate. When the drums stop they will come for you. And when they start again — well, you will be there then.”
She rose to her feet, leaning lightly on the table.
“If I am to die,” she said hysterically, “I will die beautiful.” Then she added as an explanation, “My makeup is in my room.”
But he was on his feet too, alert, wary. “You must not leave my presence,” he said. “I cannot permit it. The sacrifice must go to the arms of Ogoun Badagri alive, not a corpse.”
His dark eyes held no recognition of the fact that she was a very beautiful woman. Vivian sensed, and rightly, that to him she was merely a woman who might thwart his plans. But she caught the implication in his last sentence.
“I shall not take poison,” she said. “You may come with me — watch me, if you wish.”
She took a step or two and groped blindly at the table for support. Instinctively he stretched out a hand to steady her.
That was the moment for which she had planned, the instant for which she had been waiting. Benedetti made the fatal mistake that many men had made with the Lady from Hell as an opponent — of underestimating her as an adversary.
Like a striking snake her hand darted to the table, seized one of the heavy candlesticks. Before Benedetti could interfere, had even divined her purpose, the heavy metal fell across his forehead with stunning force. He crumpled to the floor without a murmur.
Leaving him where he had fallen, Vivian ran to the door and peered out. The gigantic black on guard at the veranda steps had heard nothing. He was still standing there, unaware of the drama being enacted within the dining room.
Swiftly she turned back and her slender fingers searched the drawers of the carved mahogany sideboard against the wall until she found what she sought — a heavy, sharp carving knife. She balanced it speculatively in her hand. It would do, she decided.
The man was still standing there when she peered out the door again. He never saw the slender blade as it flew through the air, sped by a hand that had learned its cunning from the most expert knife thrower in Shanghai. The blade went through, sinking into the flesh at the base of his throat as though it had been butter. He died without an outcry.
Now she must work fast, if she were to escape and save Wylie too. Benedetti she bound and gagged and rolled against the sideboard where he was out of the way. But first she had taken his revolver from his side pocket.
Trip after trip she made, first to the flat tin roof of the house, and then to the front of the house. Finally she was satisfied with what she had done, and, snatching up a flashlight from the sideboard fled toward the path in the jungle that she knew led to the place of sacrifice.
A tropical squall was rising out of the sea beyond the little cove. A cloud, black in the light of the moon, was rising above the horizon. She glanced at it anxiously. Then she plunged into the jungle.
The valences of the palms were motionless against the moonlit sky. The atmosphere, as she pushed her way along, seemed saturated with mystery, dew dripping, bars of green moonlight between the trunks of the trees; the cry of night birds, the patter of something in the dark mystery of the tree roof overhead, the thudding of the drums that had never ceased. Out of that familiar hollow rhythm of drums that had begun to emerge a thread of actual melody — an untraditional rise and fall of notes — a tentative attack, as it were, on the chromatic scale of the beat. A tentative abandonment of Africa. It was a night of abandonment, anyhow, a night of betrayal and the peeling off of blanketing layers down to the raw.
Once she stopped short with a sudden emptiness in her chest at sight of what she thought was a man in the path ahead. But it was only a paint-daubed, grinning skull on a bamboo stake planted in the ground — a voodoo ouanga. Then she went ahead again. Evidently there were no guards posted. With every inhabitant of the island concerned in the ceremony in one way or another there would be no need for guards to be posted now.
The rapid sequence of events had edged Vivian’s nerves, and the boom of the drums — heavy, maddening, relentless, did nothing to soothe them. That passage through the jungle was galling, fraying the nerve ends like an approaching execution.
A red glow came to her through the trees, and seemed to spread and spread until it included the whole world about her in its malignancy. The drums, with that queer rise and fall of notes that it seemed impossible to achieve with taut skins stretched over drum heads, beat upon her senses, pounded until the air was filled with sounds that seemed to come from the earth, the sky, the forest; dominated the flow of blood with strange excitations.
She had formulated no plan for rescuing Wylie. She could not, until she reached the spot and saw what she had to contend with. She had the gun she had taken from Benedetti, but six cartridges against a horde of drum-maddened blacks — that was only a last resort.
And then she stood on the edge of a clearing that seemed sunk to the bottom of a translucent sea of opalescent flame.
Something that was age-old was happening in that crimson-bathed clearing, something old and dark, buried so deeply under the subtleties of civilization that most men go through life without ever knowing it is there, was blossoming and flowering under the stark madness of those thudding drums.
Coconut fibre torches, soaked in palm oil, flaring red in the blackness of the night lit up the space in front of her like a stage, the torchlight weaving strange scarlet and mauve shadows. Tall trees, lining the clearing opposite her, seemed to shelter masses of people, darker shadows against the red glow of the burning torches.
Two enormous drums, taut skins booming under the frenzied pounding of the palms of two drummers, stood on one side. A dozen, two dozen dancing black figures, male and female, spun and danced in the center of the clearing, movements graceful and obscene — animal gestures that were identical with similar dances of their ancestors hundreds of years before in Moko or the Congo.
And then she saw Wylie. He was tied to a post in the center of the clearing, and the dancers were milling about him. Beside him stood a woman whom Vivian instinctively knew must be the Mamaloi, the priestess of whom Benedetti had spoken.
Now and then the priestess gave vent to a sound that seemed to stir the dancers to greater activity — to spur the slowly humming throng of watchers to a point of frenzy; a sound such as Vivian had never heard before and never hoped to hear again. When she stopped, it would hang, incredibly high-pitched, small, like a black thrill in the shadow. It was shocking and upsetting out of that ancient thin figure.
Her eyes shifted from the aged figure to the sky line above the trees. The black cloud that, a short time before had been no larger than the palm of her hand on the horizon, was visible through the branches of the trees now. Even as she looked a faint flicker of heat lightning laced through it.
And then, as if at a conductor’s signal, more torches flowered on the edge of the clearing, and in their light the Lady from Hell saw half a dozen men staggering forward with an enormous thing of bamboo — a cage — and in that cage was a great snake; a boa constrictor, perhaps, or a python, although neither of them, she seemed to remember, was native to Haiti.
Chapter VI White Man’s Voodoo
They placed the cage in the center of the clearing, and Vivian saw that it had been placed so that a small door in the cage was directly opposite Wylie’s bound figure. The significance of that fact went through her like a breath of cold wind. If she failed, she also would be bound to that stake. Mentally she could see the little door in the cage opening, the great triangular head of the snake gliding slowly...
Swiftly she bent over and caught up a handful of the black leaf mold underfoot, smeared it over her face, her arms, her neck, her shoulders. A section of the dress she was wearing was ripped off and made into a turban that hid the flaming crown of her hair. More earth was rubbed onto the white of her dress.
Then, with swift leaps, she was on the outer fringe of the dancers, and the chaos of moving arms and legs caught her up and swallowed her as a breaking wave on the beach swallows a grain of sand.
It was a mad thing to do, a desperate thing. She knew that, normally, her crude disguise would not have fooled the natives. The Haitian black seems to have the ability to almost smell the presence of a blanc, much as an animal can smell the presence of another. But, in that flickering torchlight, the crudeness of disguise would not be so apparent, and in that unceasing madness of drums that went on like a black echo of something reborn, she hoped that her alien presence would pass unnoticed long enough for her to accomplish her object.
Slowly she worked her way through the writhing, dancing mass of figures toward the center. She knew that her time was short — that the lesser ceremony was approaching its height. Even as she reached the inner ring of dancers she saw the ancient Mamaloi joining in the dance, while the others kept a respectful distance from her. Monotonously, maddeningly, the priestess twisted and turned and shivered, holding aloft a protesting fowl. Faster and faster she went, and while all eyes were fastened on that whirling figure Vivian managed to reach Wylie’s bound figure.
A swift slash with the knife she had hidden beneath her dress and his hands were free.
“Keep still... don’t let them see that you’re not bound,” she whispered. Another motion and the bonds that fastened his ankles to the post were free.
Vivian moved about Wylie with graceful motions, imitating the movements of the blacks about her, and her voice came to him in broken, desperate whispers:
“Signal... you’ll recognize it... don’t move until then... dead tree by the edge of the clearing... that’s the path... I’ll be waiting there... it’s only chance...”
Then she was gone, breasting her way through the black figures that danced like dead souls come back from Hell in the evil glow of the sputtering torches. And then came a great shout as the Mamaloi caught the chicken she held by the head and whirled it around and around.
Throom... throom... throom. The drums were like coalescing madness. A moan went up from the onlookers and a chill went through Vivian.
She knew from what Benedetti had told her that the chicken was the prelude of what would happen to Wylie. Next, the old woman would slash Wylie’s throat... let his life blood spurt into a bowl with which the dancers would be sprinkled. Then would come the lesser ceremony, while the guard at the house would start with her for the ceremony that would end with the door in the great snake’s cage being opened...
Vivian snatched a torch from the hands of one of the dancers. The man did not even seem to be aware of the fact that it had been taken away. From beneath her dress she took a stick of dynamite with fuse attached — part of her loot from the storeroom — and touched the fuse to the flame of the torch.
It sputtered and she hurled it with all her strength at her command toward the overhanging tree beneath which the drummers sat, then fled for the bare naked branches of the dead tree that stood where the path entered the clearing — the spot where she had told Wylie she would meet him.
She had barely reached the spot when there came a tremendous concussion that shook the earth, and a gush of flame. The thing was as startling, as hideously unexpected to the drum maddened Haitians as a striking snake. Scream after scream — long, jagged screams that ripped red gashes through the dark, were followed by a swift clacking of tongues, a terrified roar as dancers and onlookers milled about, black bodies writhing in the light of the remaining torches. A black tide, rising, filled the clearing with terrified clamor. A moment later there was the sound of running feet and Wylie was at her side.
“This way,” she whispered, and guided him into the path.
Both of them knew that it would be only a moment before the startled natives recovered their wits and discovered that their victim was gone. Then they would take up their trail again immediately.
“Where are we going?” Wylie asked her as he ran behind her along the winding jungle trail.
“The house,” she answered tersely.
“The house?” He almost halted in his amazement. “But Vivian — that’s the first place they’ll make for. Even if you’ve found weapons we can’t hold them off forever.”
“Wait,” she said. “No time to explain now... But if things work out, we’ll be off this island before morning, safe and sound.”
From behind them a quavering yell rose on the air and the two fugitives knew that Wylie’s escape had been discovered. It was a matter of yards and of minutes now. Then they burst from the shadow of the jungle into the moonlight clearing.
“Follow me,” she said quickly. “Don’t take the path,” and he followed her footsteps as she twisted and twined about the space toward the steps.
At the steps he halted a moment in wonder at what he saw there, and then, in spite of the gravity of the situation, a chuckle broke from his panting lips.
“So that’s it,” he said, and Vivian nodded.
“That’s it. Be careful. It’s a slim enough chance, but there is just a chance it’ll work — the only chance we’ve got.”
“But even that,” he said, a thought striking him, as he threaded his way carefully up the steps to the veranda, “will only be temporary. Even if it holds them at bay until dawn — when daylight comes...”
“I know,” she said a trifle impatiently, “but long before then...” She broke off suddenly as their pursuers appeared, breaking out from under the palms, just as a flash of lightning came.
“They’re here,” he whispered. “If the scheme won’t work, then it’s all up with us.”
“It will work,” Vivian said confidently.
But, although her tone was cool, confident, there was anxiety in her eyes as she watched the black figures pouring out of the jungle. Vivian knew that her own and Wylie’s lives were hanging by the slenderest margin in their criminal career.
—
The Papaloi, the giant negro with the white lines and scar ridges criss-crossing his muscular torso, was the first to see them as another flash of lightning illuminated the veranda where they stood. He uttered a single bellow, a stentorian cry, which seemed to shake the house, and bounded toward the stairs. Behind him came part of his followers, while others rushed for the other pair of stairs.
The Papaloi leaped for the steps, his men close behind him. His feet landed in something that slid quickly under him, that clung to his soles. He lost his balance, fell asprawl, his followers in a momentary confusion that quickly increased to panic — the panic of the primitive mind confronted with something unseen that it cannot understand.
The hands of the gigantic black Papaloi were glued now to squares of sticky fly paper that he could not shake off — the fly paper that The Lady from Hell had taken from the storeroom and spent so much precious time placing upon the steps and around the veranda without encountering it, save along the narrow, tortuous trail along which Vivian had led Wylie.
There was a square of fly paper on the Papaloi’s face now, clinging there, flapping a little as if alive, persistent as a vampire bat. There were more on the side of his body where he had slipped. He struck at them and accumulated more.
The Mamaloi, that ancient crone, was in trouble also. She had slipped and in falling, had a sheet of fly paper plastered squarely across her eyes. She was uttering shrill cries of distress as she pawed at her face with hands that were covered with sticky fly paper and glue. All about the two, men and women were struggling, shouting in alarm. The silent attack had materialized out of nothing with such appalling swiftness, and continued with such devastating persistence that it robbed them of every thought save alarm.
Robbed of their spiritual leaders, terror was striking at the hearts of the voodoo worshipers. At the edge of the veranda, black men writhed in horror, snatching at one another for support, tearing at the horrible things that clung as if with a million tiny sucking mouths. Their machetes, covered with glue and flapping fly paper, had been dropped, forgotten in the confusion. Torches had dropped underfoot, forgotten, so that the struggle was in darkness, illuminated only by the light of the moon through the clouds and the flashes of lightning. Flypaper in their hair, across their eyes, clinging, hampering, maddening them with the knowledge that some frightful voodoo, stronger than their Papaloi or Mamaloi, had laid hands upon them.
A flare of lightning slashed from the very center of the storm cloud that was now hanging overhead. Its brilliance illuminated, for a moment, the figure of The Lady from Hell, standing at the edge of the veranda, her arms uplifted as if calling down the wrath of the heavens upon them. A shattering blast of thunder followed and a gust of wind swept across the clearing.
That gust of wind was the crowning touch, the straw that was needed to break the camel’s back of resistance in that struggling, milling black throng. It set all the loose ends of the fly-paper fluttering, where it was not fastened to bodies. And, more than that, it caught up the sticky squares that were still unattached and sent them dancing through the air.
There rose a howl of fear. The demons of these blancs, not content with lying in wait and springing out upon them, were now flying through the air; attacking them from the heavens, sucking from their bodies all their strength.
What use to resist when even the magic of the Papaloi and the Mamaloi was not sufficient to fight off the demons.
They bolted headlong, flypaper sticking to every part of their anatomy. They fell, scaled with the awful things, and promptly acquired more. Women fell and shrieked as they were trampled upon, not from the pain of the trampling feet, but from the fear that they might be left behind at the mercy of the demons. Men, blinded by the sticky things, ran in circles and clutched at whatever they came in contact with.
Then came the low drone of an airplane engine in the distance, flying low because of the storm. Turning, Vivian ran back into the dining room, where Benedetti still lay, bound upon the floor, his eyes glaring hatred at her. Calmly she sat down and wrote upon one of his letterheads which she found in the desk there. Then she snatched off the gag that muffled his mouth.
“The danger is all over,” she told the man, “for us. But for you trouble is just beginning.”
“You can’t escape,” he raved at her viciously. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but you won’t be able to leave the island. In an hour, two hours — by daylight at least — they will return, and what they will do to you won’t be pleasant.”
Vivian smiled. The invisible plane seemed to be circling the house now. She waved the paper she had written to dry the ink.
“What the American authorities in Port-au-Prince do to you will not be pleasant, either,” she told Benedetti. “Voodoo is forbidden by law. You have not only aided and abetted voodoo ceremonies, but you have also procured human sacrifices for the ceremonial. There was the little French girl from the Port-au-Prince cabaret, and the girl from Santo Domingo — you should not have boasted. For you murdered them as surely as if you had driven a knife in their hearts, and the law will agree with me.”
“You’ll never live to tell the Americans, even if they believed the tale,” he scoffed.
“Oh, yes I will,” she mocked. Her voice was as dry and keen as a new ground sword. “Within an hour I shall be on my way to Cape Hatien. Hear that,” and she raised an admonitory hand. In the silence the plane could be heard. She threw open the French windows. From where he lay Benedetti could see a Marine plane slanting down toward the comparatively sheltered waters of the little cove.
“In less than ten minutes,” she said, “the plane will have taxied up to the beach and the Marine pilot and his observer will be in this room, asking if we need aid. You see,” and her smile was completely mocking and scornful now, “you yourself brought about your own downfall — planted the idea in my brain when you told me that the plane passed overhead every night at about this time. There was a can of luminous paint in your storeroom. I saw it, and there he is coming to see what it’s all about — and to take you to Cape Hatien — unless...”
“Unless what?” he queried eagerly.
“Unless you sign this memorandum. It deposes that I have purchased this plantation from you — that you have received the purchase price — and that proper legal transfer to it will be made later.”
There was a calculating gleam in the man’s eyes as he made assent. His gaze flickered out through the open door to where the plane had already landed on the surface of the cove.
Vivian had caught that gleam. “Of course,” she went on smoothly, “we will have the Marine officers sign it as witnesses in your presence. Then you can accompany us back to Cape Hatien in the plane, and the lawyers of the Haitian Sugar Central will be glad to see that memorandum is put in proper legal form before I, in turn, resell the plantation to them. I shall not refuse the price they are willing to pay — and it will not matter to the sugar trust whether you or I are the owner.” She gazed at him for a moment. “Well, do you agree? — or do you go to Cape Hatien a prisoner?”
Benedetti shot a glance at the trim, uniformed figure coming cautiously up from the beach. Feverishly he scribbled his name at the bottom of the memorandum.
The Copper Bowl George Fielding Eliot
Best known for his military writings, George Fielding Eliot (1894–1971) was born in Brooklyn, New York, but his family moved to Australia when he was eight. He fought in the Australian army at the Dardanelles in 1915, then at the battles of the Somme, Passchendaele, Arras, and Amiens. He moved back to the United States after the war and joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a lieutenant. He studied military history and, after reading a 1926 pulp magazine, War Stories, decided he could earn extra money by writing and sold War Stories a narrative of a war experience, thereby beginning his life as a full-time writer, albeit only intermittently writing for the pulps. He took a job writing for The Infantry Journal in 1928, and produced the full-length novels The Eagles of Death (1930) and Federal Bullets (1936), a G-Man adventure. The first of his many books about the military, If War Comes (1937), written with Major Richard Ernest Dupuy, was a well-received survey of war zones; his The Ramparts We Watch (1938) was a prescient warning to America that its military needed to be prepared to defend Canada and South America against the combined attacks of Germany, Italy, and Japan. He was a military writer for the New York Herald Tribune from 1939 and worked as a correspondent for CBS during World War II, after which he was a columnist for the New York Post before syndicating his own column in 1950.
The straightforward analysis of Eliot’s highly regarded military books fail to prepare the reader for the extremity, both of language and subject, in his pulp fiction, and this “Yellow Peril” story is infamous among pulp fiction experts as one of the most brutal ever published.
“The Copper Bowl” was originally published in the December 1928 issue of Weird Tales.
Yuan Li, the mandarin, leaned back in his rosewood chair.
“It is written,” he said softly, “that a good servant is a gift of the gods, whilst a bad one—”
The tall, powerfully built man standing humbly before the robed figure in the chair bowed thrice, hastily, submissively.
Fear glinted in his eye, though he was armed, and moreover was accounted a brave soldier. He could have broken the little smooth-faced mandarin across his knee, and yet...
“Ten thousand pardons, beneficent one,” he said. “I have done all — having regard to your honourable order to slay the man not nor do him permanent injury — I have done all that I can. But—”
“But he speaks not!” murmured the mandarin. “And you come to me with a tale of failure? I do not like failures, Captain Wang!”
The mandarin toyed with a little paper knife on the low table beside him. Wang shuddered.
“Well, no matter for this time,” the mandarin said after a moment. Wang breathed a sigh of most heartfelt relief, and the mandarin smiled softly, fleetingly. “Still,” he went on, “our task is yet to be accomplished. We have the man — he has the information we require; surely some way may be found. The servant has failed; now the master must try his hand. Bring the man to me.”
Wang bowed low and departed with considerable haste.
The mandarin sat silent for a moment, looking across the wide, sunlit room at a pair of singing birds in a wicker cage hanging in the farther window. Presently he nodded — one short, satisfied nod — and struck a little silver bell which stood on his beautifully inlaid table.
Instantly a white-robed, silent-footed servant entered, and stood with bowed head awaiting his master’s pleasure. To him Yuan Li gave certain swift, incisive orders.
The white-robed one had scarcely departed when Wang, captain of the mandarin’s guard, reentered the spacious apartment.
“The prisoner, Benevolent!” he announced.
The mandarin made a slight motion with his slender hand; Wang barked an order, and there entered, between two heavily muscled, half-naked guardsmen, a short, sturdily built man, barefooted, clad only in a tattered shirt and khaki trousers, but with fearless blue eyes looking straight at Yuan Li under the tousled masses of his blonde hair.
A white man!
“Ah!” said Yuan Li, in his calm way, speaking faultless French. “The excellent Lieutenant Fournet! Still obstinate?”
Fournet cursed him earnestly, in French and three different Chinese dialects.
“You’ll pay for this, Yuan Li!” he wound up. “Don’t think your filthy brutes can try the knuckle torture and their other devil’s tricks on a French officer and get away with it!”
Yuan Li toyed with his paper knife, smiling.
“You threaten me, Lieutenant Fournet,” he answered, “yet your threats are but as rose petals wafted away on the morning breeze — unless you return to your post to make your report.”
“Why, damn you!” answered the prisoner. “You needn’t try that sort of thing — you know better than to kill me! My commandant is perfectly aware of my movements — he’ll be knocking on your door with a company of the Legion at his back if I don’t show up by tomorrow at reveille!”
Yuan Li smiled again.
“Doubtless — and yet we still have the better part of the day before us,” he said. “Much may be accomplished in an afternoon and evening.”
Fournet swore again.
“You can torture me and be damned,” he answered. “I know and you know that you don’t dare to kill me or to injure me so that I can’t get back to Fort Deschamps. For the rest, do your worst, you yellow-skinned brute!”
“A challenge!” the mandarin exclaimed. “And I, Lieutenant Fournet, pick up your glove! Look you — what I require from you is the strength and location of your outpost on the Mephong River. So—”
“So that your cursed bandits, whose murders and lootings keep you here in luxury, can rush the outpost some dark night and open the river route for their boats,” Fournet cut in. “I know you, Yuan Li, and I know your trade — mandarin of thieves! The military governor of Tonkin sent a battalion of the Foreign Legion here to deal with such as you, and to restore peace and order on the frontier, not to yield to childish threats! That is not the Legion’s way, and you should know it. The best thing you can do is to send in your submission, or I can assure you that within a fortnight your head will be rotting over the North Gate of Hanoi, as a warning to others who might follow your bad example.”
The mandarin’s smile never altered, though well he knew that this was no idle threat. With Tonkinese tirailleurs, even with Colonial infantry, he could make some sort of headway, but these thrice-accursed Legionnaires were devils from the very pit itself. He — Yuan Li, who had ruled as king in the valley of the Mephong, to whom half a Chinese province and many a square mile of French Tonkin had paid tribute humbly — felt his throne of power tottering beneath him. But one hope remained: down the river, beyond the French outposts, were boats filled with men and with the loot of a dozen villages — the most successful raiding party he had ever sent out. Let these boats come through, let him have back his men (and they were his best), get his hands on the loot, and perhaps something might be done. Gold, jewels, jade — and though the soldiers of France were terrible, there were in Hanoi certain civilian officials not wholly indifferent to these things. But on the banks of the Mephong, as though they knew his hopes, the Foreign Legion had established an outpost — he must know exactly where, he must know exactly how strong; for till this river post was gone, the boats could never reach him.
And now Lieutenant Fournet, staff officer to the commandant, had fallen into his hands. All night his torturers had reasoned with the stubborn young Norman, and all morning they had never left him for a minute. They had marked him in no way, nor broken bones, nor so much as cut or bruised the skin — yet there are ways! Fournet shuddered all over at the thought of what he had gone through, that age-long night and morning.
To Fournet, his duty came first; to Yuan Li, it was life or death that Fournet should speak. And he had taken measures which now marched to their fulfilment.
He dared not go to extremes with Fournet; nor yet could French justice connect the mandarin Yuan Li with the bandits of the Mephong.
They might suspect, but they could not prove; and an outrage such as the killing or maiming of a French officer in his own palace was more than Yuan Li dared essay. He walked on thin ice indeed those summer days, and walked warily.
Yet — he had taken measures.
“My head is still securely on my shoulders,” he replied to Fournet. “I do not think it will decorate your gate spikes. So you will not speak?”
“Certainly not!”
Lieutenant Fournet’s words were as firm as his jaw.
“Ah, but you will. Wang!”
“Magnanimous!”
“Four more guards. Make the prisoner secure.”
Wang clapped his hands.
Instantly four additional half-naked men sprang into the room: two, falling on their knees, seized Fournet round the legs; another threw his corded arms round the lieutenant’s waist; another stood by, club in hand, as a reserve in case of — what?
The two original guards still retained their grip on Fournet’s arms.
Now, in the grip of those sinewy hands, he was held immobile, utterly helpless, a living statue.
Yuan Li, the mandarin, smiled again. One who did not know him would have thought his smile held an infinite tenderness, a divine compassion.
He touched the bell at his side.
Instantly, in the farther doorway, appeared two servants, conducting a veiled figure — a woman, shrouded in a dark drapery.
A word from Yuan Li — rough hands tore the veil aside, and there stood drooping between the impassive servants a vision of loveliness, a girl scarce out of her teens, dark-haired, slender, with the great appealing brown eyes of a fawn: eyes which widened suddenly as they rested on Lieutenant Fournet.
“Lily!” exclaimed Fournet, and his five guards had their hands full to hold him as he struggled to be free.
“You fiend!” he spat at Yuan Li. “If a hair of this girl’s head is touched, by the Holy Virgin of Yvetot I will roast you alive in the flames of your own palace! My God, Lily, how—”
“Quite simply, my dear Lieutenant,” the mandarin’s silky voice interrupted. “We knew, of course — every house-servant in North Tonkin is a spy of mine — that you had conceived an affection for this woman; and when I heard you were proving obdurate under the little attentions of my men, I thought it well to send for her. Her father’s bungalow is far from the post — indeed, it is in Chinese and not French territory, as you know — and the task was not a difficult one. And now—”
“André! André!” the girl was crying, struggling in her turn with the servants. “Save me, André — these beasts—”
“Have no fear, Lily,” André Fournet replied. “They dare not harm you, any more than they dare to kill me. They are bluffing—”
“But have you considered well, Lieutenant?” asked the mandarin gently. “You, of course, are a French officer. The arm of France — and it is a long and unforgiving arm — will be stretched out to seize your murderers. The gods forbid I should set that arm reaching for me and mine. But this girl — ah, that is different!”
“Different? How is it different? The girl is a French citizen—”
“I think not, my good Lieutenant Fournet. She is three-quarters French in blood, true; but her father is half Chinese, and is a Chinese subject; she is a resident of China — I think you will find that French justice will not be prepared to avenge her death quite so readily as your own. At any rate, it is a chance I am prepared to take.”
Fournet’s blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins. The smiling devil was right! Lily — his lovely white Lily, whose only mark of Oriental blood was the rather piquant slant of her great eyes — was not entitled to the protection of the tricolour.
God! What a position! Either betray his flag, his regiment, betray his comrades to their deaths — or see his Lily butchered before his eyes!
“So now, Lieutenant Fournet, we understand each other,” Yuan Li continued after a brief pause to let the full horror of the situation grip the other’s soul. “I think you will be able to remember the location and strength of that outpost for me — now?”
Fournet stared at the man in bitter silence, but the words had given the quick-minded Lily a key to the situation, which she had hardly understood at first.
“No, no, André!” she cried. “Do not tell him. Better that I should die than that you should be a traitor! See — I am ready.”
Fournet threw back his head, his wavering resolution reincarnate.
“The girl shames me!” he said. “Slay her if you must, Yuan Li — and if France will not avenge her, I will! But traitor I will not be!”
“I do not think that is your last word, Lieutenant,” the mandarin purred. “Were I to strangle the girl, yes — perhaps. But first she must cry to you for help, and when you hear her screaming in agony, the woman you love, perhaps then you will forget these noble heroics!”
Again he clapped his hands; and again silent servants glided into the room. One bore a small brazier of glowing charcoal; a second had a little cage of thick wire mesh, inside of which something moved horribly; a third bore a copper bowl with handles on each side, to which was attached a steel band that glittered in the sunlight.
The hair rose on the back of Fournet’s neck. What horror impended now? Deep within him some instinct warned that what was now to follow would be fiendish beyond the mind of mortal man to conceive. The mandarin’s eyes seemed suddenly to glow with infernal fires. Was he in truth man — or demon?
A sharp word in some Yunnan dialect unknown to Fournet — and the servants had flung the girl upon her back on the floor, spreadeagled in pitiful helplessness, upon a magnificent peacock rug.
Another word from the mandarin’s thin lips — and roughly they tore the clothing from the upper half of the girl’s body. White and silent she lay upon that splendid rug, her eyes still on Fournet’s: silent, lest words of hers should impair the resolution of the man she loved.
Fournet struggled furiously with his guards, but they were five strong men, and they held him fast.
“Remember, Yuan Li!” he panted. “You’ll pay! Damn your yellow soul—”
The mandarin ignored the threat.
“Proceed,” he said to the servants. “Note carefully, Monsieur le Lieutenant Fournet, what we are doing. First, you will note, the girl’s wrists and ankles are lashed to posts and to heavy articles of furniture, suitably placed so that she cannot move. You wonder at the strength of the rope, the number of turns we take to hold so frail a girl? I assure you, they will be required. Under the copper bowl, I have seen a feeble old man tear his wrist free from an iron chain.”
The mandarin paused; the girl was now bound so tightly that she could scarce move a muscle of her body.
Yuan Li regarded the arrangements.
“Well done,” he approved. “Yet if she tears any limb free, the man who bound that limb shall have an hour under the bamboo rods. Now — the bowl! Let me see it.”
He held out a slender hand. Respectfully a servant handed him the bowl, with its dangling band of flexible steel. Fournet, watching with eyes full of dread, saw that the band was fitted with a lock, adjustable to various positions. It was like a belt, a girdle.
“Very well.” The mandarin nodded, turning the thing over and over in fingers that almost seemed to caress it. “But I anticipate — perhaps the lieutenant and the young lady are not familiar with this little device. Let me explain, or rather, demonstrate. Put the bowl in place, Kan-su. No, no — just the bowl, this time.”
Another servant, who had started forward, stepped back into his corner. The man addressed as Kan-su took the bowl, knelt at the side of the girl, passed the steel band under her body and placed the bowl, bottom up, on her naked abdomen, tugging at the girdle till the rim of the bowl bit into the soft flesh. Then he snapped the lock fast, holding the bowl thus firmly in place by the locked steel belt attached to its two handles and passing round the girl’s waist. He rose, stood silent with folded arms.
Fournet felt his flesh crawling with horror — and all this time Lily had said not one word, though the tight girdle, the pressure of the circular rim of the bowl, must have been hurting her cruelly.
But now she spoke, bravely.
“Do not give way, André,” she said. “I can bear it — it does — it does not hurt!”
“God!” yelled André Fournet, still fighting vainly against those clutching yellow hands.
“It does not hurt!” the mandarin echoed the girl’s last words. “Well, perhaps not. But we will take it off, notwithstanding. We must be merciful.”
At his order the servant removed the bowl and girdle. An angry red circle showed on the white skin of the girl’s abdomen where the rim had rested.
“And still I do not think you understand, Mademoiselle and Monsieur,” he went on. “For presently we must apply the bowl again — and when we do, under it we will put — this!”
With a swift movement of his arm he snatched from the servant in the corner the wire cage and held it up to the sunlight.
The eyes of Fournet and Lily fixed themselves upon it in horror. For within, plainly seen now, moved a great grey rat — a whiskered, beady-eyed, restless, scabrous rat, its white chisel-teeth shining through the mesh.
“Dieu de Dieu!” breathed Fournet. His mind refused utterly to grasp the full import of the dreadful fate that was to be Lily’s; he could only stare at the unquiet rat — stare... stare...
“You understand now, I am sure,” purred the mandarin. “The rat under the bowl — observe the bottom of the bowl, note the little flange. Here we put the hot charcoal — the copper becomes heated — the heat is overpowering — the rat cannot support it — he has but one means of escape: he gnaws his way out through the lady’s body! And now about that outpost, Lieutenant Fournet?”
“No — no — no!” cried Lily. “They will not do it — they are trying to frighten us — they are human; men cannot do a thing like that. Be silent, André, be silent, whatever happens; don’t let them beat you! Don’t let them make a traitor of you! Ah—”
At a wave from the mandarin, the servant with the bowl again approached the half-naked girl. But this time the man with the cage stepped forward also. Deftly he thrust in a hand, avoided the rat’s teeth, jerked the struggling vermin out by the scruff of the neck.
The bowl was placed in position. Fournet fought desperately for freedom — if only he could get one arm clear, snatch a weapon of some sort!
Lily gave a sudden little choking cry.
The rat had been thrust under the bowl.
Click! The steel girdle was made fast — and now they were piling the red-hot charcoal on the upturned bottom of the bowl, while Lily writhed in her bonds as she felt the wriggling, pattering horror of the rat on her bare skin, under that bowl of fiends.
One of the servants handed a tiny object to the impassive mandarin.
Yuan Li held it up in one hand.
It was a little key.
“This key, Lieutenant Fournet,” he said, “unlocks the steel girdle which holds the bowl in place. It is yours — as a reward for the information I require. Will you not be reasonable? Soon it will be too late!”
Fournet looked at Lily. The girl was quiet now, had ceased to struggle; her eyes were open, or he would have thought she had fainted.
The charcoal glowed red on the bottom of the copper bowl. And beneath its carved surface, Fournet could imagine the great grey rat stirring restlessly, turning around, seeking escape from the growing heat, at last sinking his teeth in that soft white skin, gnawing, burrowing desperately...
God!
His duty — his flag — his regiment — France! Young Sous-lieutenant Pierre Desjardins — gay young Pierre — and twenty men, to be surprised and massacred horribly, some saved for the torture, by an overwhelming rush of bandit-devils, through his treachery? He knew in his heart that he could not do it.
He must be strong — he must be firm.
If only he might suffer for Lily — gentle, loving little Lily, brave little Lily who had never harmed a soul.
Loud and clear through the room rang a terrible scream.
André, turning in fascinated horror, saw that Lily’s body, straining upward in an arc from the rug, was all but tearing asunder the bonds which held it. He saw, what he had not before noticed, that a little nick had been broken from one edge of the bowl — and through this nick and across the white surface of the girl’s heaving body was running a tiny trickle of blood!
The rat was at work.
Then something snapped in André’s brain. He went mad.
With the strength that is given to madmen, he tore loose his right arm from the grip that held it — tore loose, and dashed his fist into the face of the guard. The man with the club sprang forward unwarily; the next moment André had the weapon, and was laying about him with berserk fury. Three guards were down before Wang drew his sword and leaped into the fray.
Wang was a capable and well-trained soldier. It was cut, thrust, and parry for a moment, steel against wood — then Wang, borne back before that terrible rush, had the reward of his strategy.
The two remaining guards, to whom he had signalled, and a couple of the servants flung themselves together on Fournet’s back and bore him roaring to the floor.
The girl screamed again, shattering the coarser sounds of battle.
Fournet heard her — even in his madness he heard her. And as he heard, a knife hilt in a servant’s girdle met his hand. He caught at it, thrust upward savagely: a man howled; the weight on Fournet’s back grew less; blood gushed over his neck and shoulders. He thrust again, rolled clear of the press, and saw one man sobbing out his life from a ripped-open throat, while another, with both hands clasped over his groin, writhed in silent agony upon the floor.
André Fournet, gathering a knee under him, sprang like a panther straight at the throat of Wang the captain.
Down the two men went, rolling over and over on the floor. Wang’s weapons clashed and clattered — a knife rose, dripping blood, and plunged home.
With a shout of triumph André Fournet sprang to his feet, his terrible knife in one hand, Wang’s sword in the other.
Screaming, the remaining servants fled before that awful figure.
Alone, Yuan Li the mandarin faced incarnate vengeance.
“The key!”
Hoarsely Fournet spat out his demand; his reeling brain had room for but one thought:
“The key, you yellow demon!”
Yuan Li took a step backward into the embrasured window, through which the jasmine-scented afternoon breeze still floated sweetly.
The palace was built on the edge of a cliff; below that window ledge, the precipice fell a sheer fifty feet down to the rocks and shallows of the upper Mephong.
Yuan Li smiled once more, his calm unruffled.
“You have beaten me, Fournet,” he said, “yet I have beaten you, too. I wish you joy of your victory. Here is the key.” He held it up in his hand; and as André sprang forward with a shout, Yuan Li turned, took one step to the window ledge, and without another word was gone into space, taking the key with him.
Far below he crashed in red horror on the rocks, and the waters of the turbulent Mephong closed forever over the key to the copper bowl.
Back sprang André — back to Lily’s side. The blood ran no more from under the edge of the bowl; Lily lay very still, very cold...
God! She was dead!
Her heart was silent in her tortured breast.
André tore vainly at the bowl, the steel girdle — tore with bleeding fingers, with broken teeth, madly — in vain.
He could not move them.
And Lily was dead.
Or was she? What was that?
In her side a pulse beat — beat strongly and more strongly...
Was there still hope?
The mad Fournet began chafing her body and arms.
Could he revive her? Surely she was not dead — could not be dead!
The pulse still beat — strange it beat only in one place, on her soft white side, down under her last rib.
He kissed her cold and unresponsive lips.
When he raised his head the pulse had ceased to beat. Where it had been, blood was flowing sluggishly — dark venous blood, flowing in purple horror.
And from the midst of it, out of the girl’s side, the grey, pointed head of the rat was thrusting, its muzzle dripping gore, its black eyes glittering beadily at the madman who gibbered and frothed above it.
So, an hour later, his comrades found André Fournet and Lily his beloved — the tortured maniac keening over the tortured dead.
But the grey rat they never found.
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