Doctor Death Vs. The Secret Twelve - Volume 1 Page 12

  IT was a barracks-like place, gaunt, devoid of architectural beauty, surrounded by a great open space, choked with weeds and overgrown with hazel brush and thistle. It stood on the edge of a muddy creek at the extreme edge of the town in which Professor Levi Henworthy lived. One of the twelve scientists marked for death, he like the remainder of those still alive, was a member of Jimmy Holm’s secret organization.

  In Colonial days, according to tradition, the building had been an ale brewery. Three stories in height, built of the same rock with which the creek was lined, it had withstood the ravages of time and the Revolutionary War. Then someone had turned it into an inn. It had flourished for a few years. Lack of custom and its poor location had left it vacant again.

  The Civil War had taken away the last of the family of owners. He had remained on a Southern battlefield, dying without a known heir. Then had followed a legal battle. It had finally fallen into the hands of one of the lawyers. He, too, had died. Tenantless, it still stood, a monument to the sturdy old pioneer who had built it, a hangout for tramps and a roosting place for owls and swallows—a cold, bleak, windowless pile of rock and mortar—shunned by the townspeople and slowly going to wrack and ruin.

  The cellars were deep caverns of silence and stygian gloom, far below the level of sagging, rotting timbers and falling masonry. In recent years no one entered them except occasional small boys on a dare. The general plan of the huge, ruinous mass of stones and mortar might contain, for all the inhabitants of the town knew, or cared, a dozen dark secrets. A hundred murders might well be concealed within the height and depth of such a pile.

  Within the confines of the town lived a man who was seeking a place in which to establish a business which thrived best far from the light of day. The tumbledown pile appealed to him. Quietly, for he was a man who seldom let his right hand know what his left hand was doing, he armed himself with a suitable flashlight the day following the formation of the Secret Twelve. Ascertaining that no one was watching, he dodged furtively through the tangle of bushes and trees with which the ruined building was surrounded and made his way inside.

  Being a careful man, he went about his task of exploration cautiously. He crept noiselessly down the rickety stairs into the cellar, feeling his way at first, stopping often to listen. Once he had reached the lower level, he dug a small flashlight from the recesses of his bulky pocket and continued on his way, often bending low lest he bump his head on some low-hanging beam.

  Suddenly he stopped, every faculty alert, the beam of his flashlight turned down almost at his feet.

  Someone had been in the cellar ahead of him. The marks of feet were imprinted in the sodden earth.

  The flashlight in his hand trembled violently. He was a nervous man and one who frightened easily. He played the beam into the gloomy corners.

  He heard a sound. It seemed to come from the deeper shadow that was between him and the corridor.

  The goose pimples raised themselves on his back. Cold chills chased themselves up and down his spinal column.

  “Who-o-o’s there?” he said faintly, his voice cracked and trembling.

  There was no answer. Yet he was certain that something in the shadow moved.

  “Answer or I’ll shoot!” he said bluffingly.

  The answer was a shriek of maniacal laughter. His heart missed a beat. Then, with a wild yell of fright, his flashlight making queer, grotesque shadows ahead of him, he ran.

  Something crashed against his head with force enough to fell an ox. The flashlight dropped from his hand as he went down.

  He was stunned only for a minute. He opened his eyes and glared about, forgetting for an instant, where he was. The flashlight was still burning. Then he leaped to his feet, his eyes focused on the thing the ray of the pocket lamp brought out.

  For the infinitesimal part of a second he stood there. Then, screaming like a madman, he turned and ran from the building. Not until he was back in the sunshine again did he stop for breath. Then, leaning against a tree, he stopped and took counsel with himself.

  There was a dead man in the cellar!

  The question was whether to report the matter to the authorities or not. He finally decided that it would be best to make a clean breast of the discovery.

  He ended the argument with himself by marching virtuously to the police station and telling his story. Two officers were detailed to accompany him back to the ruined building.

  THEY found the body of a tall man, gaunt almost to the point of emaciation, his nose hooked like that of a great bird of prey, his eyes deeply sunken.

  Yet, when he was exposed to view at the local mortuary, there was not a mark of any kind on him to show that he had met with foul play. That he had wandered into the cellars in a fit of mental aberration and died there was the opinion of the local police and the physician who made the perfunctory examination.

  Who was he? There was nothing in his pockets to disclose his identity. Yet there was something vaguely familiar about the withered countenance—something strangely reminiscent. A photographer was called in and a picture was taken, for the police department of the little village at the edge of the college town was not equipped with photographic apparatus. The likeness of the dead man was sent to New York for identification.

  The arrival of that photograph sent Jimmy Holm scurrying across country in an airplane, sent a hundred newspaper men in his wake and caused the wires to buzz like a swarm of angry bees.

  The dead man found in the cellar of the abandoned ale brewery at the edge of the little college town was Doctor Rance Mandarin, alias Doctor Death!

  Early on the morning following the day the body was found, the owner at the little mortuary which had suddenly found itself famous, unlocked the door and stepped inside. Then, as was his custom, he snapped on the light to look at the famous corpse.

  What he saw caused him to turn and rush out of the room onto the street in search of an officer.

  The body of Doctor Death had disappeared.

  In its place on the slab lay the form of Professor Levi Henworthy, the town’s most famous citizen.

  Jimmy Holm, seeking to catch a few hours’ sleep at the village inn, was awakened by the raucous jangle of the telephone on the table beside his bed. Yawning, he stretched forth his arm and, picking the receiver from the hook, called a sleepy “Hello!” into the mouthpiece.

  An instant later he was wide awake.

  The voice that came over the wire was that of Nina Fererra.

  “Jimmy!” she exclaimed, her voice agitated. “Watch yourself. He has circumvented you again. He killed Professor Henworthy. It was he who, in the body of Henworthy, attended your meeting and overheard your plot to beat him...”

  “Nina, for God’s sake, where are you?” he demanded excitedly.

  “I cannot—dare not—tell you,” she answered. “Listen, for I must talk fast. He has gone to assume his own body again. Your plans are all for naught and—oh, Jimmy, he is getting ready to strike again! He is planning something big—some coup more terrible than all his others. He—but here he comes...”

  “Where are you, Nina? For God’s sake, where are you?” Holm demanded.

  But the telephone was dead. Nor could he trace the call. Central sleepily informed him that she had no recollection of having rung the hotel.

  Dressing like a fireman, he had ran from the hotel and to the mortuary, only to meet the proprietor as he rushed onto the street.

  Doctor Death had won again.

  Chapter XXI

  The Dead Hand

  JIMMY HOLM was puzzled. Frankly so. And he was honest enough to admit it. Again the grim old man who called himself Doctor Death had taken the offensive and all the plans so carefully made were thrown in the discard. The killing of Professor Henworthy and the assumption of his body had been a master stroke. The attendance at the meeting of the Secret Twelve had been nothing less than a stroke of genius.

  How long had the sinister Doctor been masquerading as the dead professor
? Had he killed Henworthy weeks earlier? How had the crime been committed? There was not a mark on the educator to show that he had died anything but a natural death. But Jimmy Holm, knowing the weird power that his enemy possessed, shook his head knowingly.

  That Doctor Death was in full possession of all of the Secret Twelve’s cherished plans was almost a certainty. Many of them had been discussed at the meeting. Prior to that gathering, Holm had visited the educator at his home and had talked them over fully. Henworthy had been one of the instigators of the society, working from the very beginning with the officials.

  To Henworthy, Jimmy had disclosed the hiding places of the other men condemned to die. If, at that time, Henworthy had been Death in disguise, then the life of none of them was safe. He must move and move rapidly. Racing back to his room, he called them—these men who had been condemned to die—one after another, on the telephone and told them what had happened. It was arranged that each should immediately change his base and that no one—not even Jimmy himself—should know where they had gone. When it became necessary to call them together, certain signals would be used. Until then, it was every man for himself.

  That the sinister scientist was a master of metempsychosis Jimmy Holm knew only too well. He remembered, thanks to Nina Fererra’s assistance in restoring his memory, that memorable night when he had, for a moment, tested the powers of the aged Doctor. And the memory of that terrible encounter with the headless giant in Ricks’ study was too vividly impressed upon his memory to be so soon forgotten. Ricks still hovering between life and death in the hospital, his gigantic frame but a shadow of its former self, was still another proof of Doctor Death’s ability to strike through the bodies of his victims.

  The thought of Nina Fererra flashed through his mind. Death had used her before. Might he not use her again? He shuddered at the thought of it. Yet she was tied to the fiend—chained by invisible links that even the power of love could not break.

  “Next time I strike it will be through someone you love!”

  He shuddered as he thought of the words mouthed by the bodiless head the night he had rescued Ricks from the crushing grip of those relentless fingers. Nina Fererra. It was through her that the old man would strike next.

  Ricks? He smiled in spite of himself. Ricks, the hard-headed scoffer who refused to believe in the occult, even though it had been demonstrated before his very eyes. He wondered, when this latest news of Death’s activities reached the Inspector, whether he would change his mind. Or would be still growl that, sooner or later, there would be a logical explanation of everything?

  One question continued coming to the fore: Why had Death left his body temporarily in the cellars of the abandoned ale brewery? Was there something about him, ghoul that he was, that required damp, dank places? If such was the case, it would be an easier task to locate him. But during his sojourn with the old man he had witnessed no such necessity. Yet Death had built his residence in the cave. But that had been the better to handle his Zombi and elementals.

  Yet there must be some motive. For Doctor Death, canny old wizard that he was, never did things without a reason. It was that reason that he must search out. Once he had found it, the riddle would be nearer solution.

  The more he thought, the more confused he became. Finally he gave up in despair and, drawing the telephone closer, put in a call for Blake. To the Secret Service man he told his problem. But Blake, as much of a scoffer as Ricks, argued, like that hard-headed limb of the law, that sooner or later, all that had happened would be logically explained. Meanwhile, he said, there was nothing to do but wait.

  As the days went by the sinister scientist was conspicuous by his inactivity, laughing up his sleeve while the police moved heaven and earth in an effort to find him. Night alter night, Holm sat in moody silence, his brow furrowed in concentration, in an effort to commune with Nina. But the thought waves which, in times gone by, had been sent to him by the girl, were silenced.

  In the end he was compelled to declare himself baffled.

  MEANWHILE the suggestion made to the President had been carried out.

  The proclamation had been issued. Every church in the land had devoted a day to prayer and meditation in an effort to overcome the evil thought waves emanating from the brain of Doctor Death. That they were successful seemed to be demonstrated by the lack of activity on his part.

  Then, like a bolt out of a clear sky, he struck—hitting in a thousand different places at once. Every part of the country felt the wave of hatred that surged over the nation. A deluge of elementals swept over the land. In the form of cyclones and tornadoes, they danced and gyrated, destroying property, taking lives, spreading devastation in their wake.

  No man was safe. The farmer, plowing in his sun-baked field, felt the scourge as did the rich man, taking his ease in some air-conditioned office, high above the noise and tumult of the city. The humble housewife paid the same penalty as her wealthier sister of the gold coast.

  Vainly did Holm, backed by the President of the United States and the Cabinet, implore the United States Weather Bureau to locate the source of these peculiar looking clouds which always appeared in the shape of a distorted man—a man with flopping, swinging arms—dancing and thundering over the countryside. The officials could tell nothing. From the north, south, east and west, they appeared out of cloudless skies, giving no warning, striking—dodging back into the void from which they came.

  It had been Holm’s idea that, once the scourge was located even within a distance of several hundred miles, he could, by concentrating his forces, locate the Doctor. But now he was compelled to confess himself baffled.

  Nor could the others high in the ranks of the Secret Twelve give him any assistance. They were as badly puzzled as he was himself.

  Then Doctor Death struck in another way—a way so heinous, so diabolical as to surpass all understanding.

  Sitting alone in his bachelor quarters, exhausted after a hard day’s work, all of the lights extinguished save a small globe that burned in a shaded bridge lamp, Jimmy Holm bowed his head in meditation in an effort to bring, by concentration, the thought waves by which, he felt certain, Nina Fererra would, if she still lived, try to communicate with him.

  Suddenly something brushed against him. He opened his eyes. He sensed her—felt her presence in the room.

  Every faculty was alert now. At last victory was his. Again he leaned his head against the cushions, his mind concentrated on communicating with the woman he loved.

  Again something touched him. This time he felt it against his cheek. It was cold, clammy. It startled him. He opened his eyes.

  Floating in the air was a human hand!

  He leaped to his feet. For a moment he stood there gazing at the apparition, too stupefied to move. Then it suddenly darted forward, its fingers working convulsively as if seeking to wrap themselves about his throat. He leaped back a step, striking at it, smashing it to the floor.

  It lay there, palm upward, the fingers moving slightly. He had a feeling that it was looking at him—that it had eyes that were glaring at him malevolently.

  The fingers doubled convulsively. He almost shrieked aloud.

  He recognized it now. Those long, slender fingers with the pointed, polished nails—fingers that were the color of ivory.

  It was the hand of Nina Fererra!

  He bent forward and picked it up. It was cold—chill and clammy. Dropping into the chair again, he held it under the light. The fingers bent lightly about his own, giving his hand a gentle pressure—a pressure that he remembered only too well.

  The hand of Nina Fererra! He recalled that night in Ricks’ library when other hands—the hands of the mad man—had been twisted about the Inspector’s throat—the saber stroke that had severed them from the headless body; the head of the dead thing lying there on Ricks’ rug had spoken to him. “I go now,” it had said.

  “This time you win, Jimmy. But I will strike again—through someone you love!”

&n
bsp; He realized now that he had felt all along—but had refused to admit—that Nina Fererra was dead, killed by the monster who held her captive.

  And Doctor Death, by means of some diabolical power known only to himself, had sent this proof to him.

  He pressed the dead hand against his cheek...

  The fingers suddenly slipped from his grasp and seized him by the throat. For an instant he was startled—paralyzed with fear—fear of the unknown. Then, as he felt the fingers tighten, he tried to pull them off. They clung to him, leech-like. Tighter and tighter they pressed against his windpipe, the sharp nails cutting into his flesh. He tried to scream—to shout for help. The breath was crushed out of his body. He was weak from lack of it.

  He was struggling desperately now, prying at the terrible thing, bending back the fingers, pulling, tearing. The sweat stood out on his brow in great globules. The room swam about him in ever-widening circles.

  Finally, with a desperate effort, he succeeded in loosening the choking hold. He hurled the accursed thing from him and dropped back into the chair, his brain reeling.

  For an instant it lay where he had thrown it. He arose and staggered toward it. It leaped away from him, moving like a measuring worm, the slender fingers stretching forth with a pulling motion, then humping up as the stump was drawn forward.

  Cursing like a madman, Holm seized a book and hurled it at the gruesome thing. It leaped aside, dodging the missile by an inch. Then, before he could lay hands upon another weapon, it disappeared, vanishing in thin air.

  He staggered into the bedroom and fell across the bed, his senses reeling.

  The sudden b-r-r-r-r of the telephone at his elbow brought him up standing. Even before he picked up the receiver and shouted into the mouthpiece he knew that Doctor Death had struck.

  Nor was he disappointed. The news that came thundering over the wire was so astounding, so unbelievable that even he, knowing better than any other man alive the ability of the man be was pitted against, shuddered.

  For Doctor Death had struck again—struck with a new weapon which, for want of a better title, the papers dubbed “The Dissolution Ray.”