Doctor Death Vs. The Secret Twelve - Volume 1 Page 17

  Chapter XXX

  Death’s Conflagration

  FOR a little space of time they waited quietly, grimly, for some sign of the old man who called himself Doctor Death. That he would move against them again was a certainty. There was something sinister about his silence. It was as if he lay in wait for them like a great beast of prey, waiting to leap out at them when they least expected it.

  Suddenly Ricks leaped forward, a cry on his lips. Into his limited vision something had shown itself in the darkness—a hunched, stooped shape creeping on all fours down the hall. It was Doctor Death. The old man straightened himself erect and leaped toward the door which opened from the hallway into the room adjoining that in which they were confined.

  “The Zombi!” Nina Fererra shrieked.

  She dashed into the other room, the others at her heels. Stretching forth her hand and seizing the dial-like machine from the table, she hurled it to the floor. It crashed into pieces.

  The dark, evil form of Doctor Death loomed over her, his face twisted into a look of diabolical rage.

  “Damn you! You she-devil!” he roared.

  Holm leaped toward him, but, whirling on his heel, he jumped over the pile of corpses and dashed through the broken door into the cellar.

  “God, what a mess!” Ricks said.

  “Those infernal elementals out there in the darkness, ready to leap at us the moment the fire goes down and he—Death—waiting for us downstairs. We’ve got to—”

  He stopped, then turned with a sudden shout of warning to the others.

  A tongue of flame, leaping high, had attacked the drapes which hung from the boarded windows, the better, probably, to hide their bareness. He seized them, tearing them from their rods, hurling them to the floor.

  Unfortunately, unfamiliar as he was with the room, the very place he threw them was a spot where, not long before, in experimenting, Death had spilled some sort of inflammable oil. It had eaten its way into the dry pine boards. Now, as the flames touched it, it ignited, filling the house with smoke and flames.

  There was no use trying to stop the fire now as it roared through the dry timbers. In a minute the room was an inferno, driving them into the hallway in spite of their fear of the elementals. But there was little danger from this source, since the light and heat would drive them, too, ahead of it.

  Down the hall they ran, turning the corner into the narrow side hallway which led to the rear doorway through which Ricks and his men had entered the night previous.

  Ricks, in the lead, recoiled as from a blow. He leaped back just as a bullet embedded itself in the wall close to where he had been standing.

  Doctor Death stood in the doorway, a gun in his hand. The light of the fire behind them threw his cadaverous, saturnine face into bold relief.

  Racing down the front stairway into the cellar, he had located a weapon in some hidden cache known only to himself. Then, hurrying back up the stairway in the rear, knowing that the fire had blocked their retreat, he was standing in wait for them.

  And now that his occult powers had failed him, he had turned to mundane weapons.

  They were trapped. Just around the corner they heard his stealthy breathing and knew that he was coming. In a moment he would be in front of them, raking the hallway with bullets. Behind them the fire, roaring like a blast furnace, was drawing nearer.

  Ricks, seeking a way to escape, chanced to see a door. There was something familiar about it. Then recollection came to him. It was the entrance to the room where he and his men had fallen through the trap.

  It was their only chance. If the trap was still in working order they could drop through it into the cellar and there possibly find some other means of escape.

  The thought was father to the deed. With a whispered word to his companions, he jerked open the door and leaped inside. He slammed it shut and shot the bolt just as Doctor Death rounded the corner, his gun belching lead.

  For an instant Ricks thought deeply. He remembered that he was beside the door on the other side when the trap had sprung. Now, warning them to keep together, he groped his way through the darkness to where he was certain the other exit was located.

  For a moment he failed to find it. Death was fumbling at the locked door. They could hear him cursing under his breath. He was a maniac now—a homicidal maniac of the most horrible order. Forgotten was the idea that he was the viceroy of the Creator—forgotten everything in his desire to kill—to destroy.

  Ricks could not locate the entrance. Shrieking like a madman, Doctor Death fired through the panels of the other door. The bullets whistled around them. The others dropped to the floor as the madman shot from every angle in his desire to satisfy his lust for killing.

  THEN Ricks found that for which he sought. He gave a little cry of satisfaction. His hand groped along the wainscoting and located the knob. A sudden twist and the floor dropped from beneath their feet.

  They were in the basement now, in the same room where Ricks’ men had been confined when the Inspector and Holm and Nina had rescued them. They groped their way out of the open door and into the passageway.

  But the windows were boarded shut.

  “The crowbar!” Jimmy Holm gasped.

  Above them the house was a roaring furnace. They could hear the roof crash as the burning timbers gave way. Soon the entire upper part would come tumbling into the cellar.

  Holding hands, they dashed through the passageway to the little room where the two officers had had their harrowing experience. It took Holm but a minute to grope his way through the darkness to where the windlass had stood. On the floor beside it lay the crowbar that he had dropped when he dismantled it.

  Now they must find a window.

  The smoke was drifting down on them. The cellar was filled with it; it stifled them, torturing their lungs, making breathing almost an impossibility.

  How they found an opening is a question. Groping along the wall, their fingers outstretched, one of them located a pane of glass. Boards had been nailed on the outside. Jimmy Holm dashed the crowbar through the glass and, using all his strength, pried off the covering. With the board off, the light of the fire showed them their way clearly. It took but an instant to tear the window out. Then they lifted Nina Fererra through and the others followed to gulp great draughts of the pure air.

  When they were on the outside, Jimmy Holm noticed that he still carried the crowbar.

  The gaunt old house was a veritable pyre, its blazing timbers shooting flames to the heavens. In the distance they could hear the shriek of a siren as the volunteer fire department left the village of Lake Whatcum, followed by a horde of honking automobiles.

  They dodged into the bushes beneath the trees, fearful of the bullets of the madman. That he had made his escape from the burning house was a certainty. They could hear him shrieking and howling as the flames licked their way through the dried wood of the ancient house.

  Suddenly he discovered them where they had taken refuge in a little grove close to the lake. He gave an excited shout and emptied a clip of bullets at them. They dodged behind trees. Then, for a moment, there was silence. The flames lighted up their hiding place with the clearness of noonday.

  A TREE close to where they were standing suddenly toppled and fell, bringing down another in its crash.

  “The dissolution ray!” Nina Fererra exclaimed. “He keeps the machine in the little stone building by the side of the house.”

  Trees were toppling around them on all sides, now, several missing them by inches. At any minute one of the giants was likely to fall upon them, for Doctor Death was aiming the ray close to the ground; it was eating only the bottoms of the trees, leaving the upper parts intact.

  Nina Fererra screamed as a falling limb swept across her shoulders, pinning her to the ground. Then it was that Jimmy Holm went berserk. Crowbar in hand, he leaped forward across the clearing towards the open door of the little stone house, his breath coming in great gasps.

  Doctor Death shoute
d with joy as he saw the charging man. He pulled the trigger of his gun again and again until the hammer fell on empty shells. But Jimmy Holm miraculously came through the hail of bullets unscathed.

  Through the door of the little stone building he dashed, his crowbar raised. The iron hovered for an instant above the great machine that buzzed and hummed like a live thing, throwing off sparks that lighted up the whole of the interior.

  Death screamed madly as he saw what the other was about to do. He hurled his empty gun into Jimmy’s face. Holm staggered. Then he brought the iron bar across the machine with a force that shattered its delicate parts into a thousand fragments. The humming suddenly ceased and he knew that he had won.

  Weakly, for he had exhausted himself in his mad race across the clearing, he turned to meet the onslaught of the man who called himself Doctor Death.

  But Doctor Death had disappeared.

  The little fire truck came whirling through the gates, its siren shrieking, a long row of automobiles filled with villagers behind it. But they were too late. The tall, gaunt building fell with a crash that sent a shower of sparks far into the heavens.

  From somewhere, far out in the forest, came a wild shriek. Then, a cry of maniacal laughter.

  “Jimmy!” a voice cried. “Jimmy! Oh, Jimmy Holm.”

  There was a hushed awed silence—a silence unbroken save by the crackling and roaring of the devouring flames.

  “Jimmy!” the voice shouted once more. “Oh, Jimmy! Listen to me! Goodbye. We will meet again—soon!”

  Then came another burst of wild laughter.

  It was the voice of Doctor Death.

  THE Secret Twelve were meeting again. Now there were more than the usual quota, for Ricks was present, while Nina Fererra, looking more beautiful than ever, came in leaning upon the arm of Jimmy Holm. The men seated around the table leaped to their feet.

  “God bless you, young lady, for what you have done for the nation!” the President of the United States said with the trace of a sob in his voice.

  Nina Fererra smiled.

  “Jimmy—Mr. Holm,” she said, “tells me that you wish me to explain certain things to you.”

  The President bowed low. Then, when she had seated herself, the others dropped into their chairs.

  “Where shall I commence?” she asked.

  “The Zombi!” Ricks exclaimed. “I’ve heard of such things being in Haiti, but I never believed the yarn, until I saw John Stark—and then the others.”

  Chapter XXXI

  The Final Threat

  “DOCTOR MANDARIN—or Doctor Death as he calls himself, is a past master of the powers of concentration,” Nina said with slow deliberation. “Many people, like salesmen, have it to some extent, in their powers of what is called suggestion—making a person want something. Some orators can sway audiences by the force of their own concentration. You’ve all seen stronger minds dominate weaker ones. Well, Doctor Death’s power is phenomenal. He has developed it to a science.

  “He can kill by the very power of his thought—as well as reduce people to unconsciousness. He taught me his strange power. At times my power of concentration was as strong as his, as witness his inability to blast you last night in the hallway of the old house.”

  “But for Zombi—” Ricks interrupted.

  Nina hesitated for an instant, then went on.

  “Perhaps I should start at the beginning,” she said. “Doctor Death took me when I was young and impressionable. He implanted into my youthful mind the idea of rebuilding the world. It was not until later that I realized that he was insane. He taught me science—a smattering of the black arts. He conceived the idea of taking fresh bodies and, by injecting a metallic solution into their veins, make them susceptible to certain thought waves. Just as sound waves are sent through the air, so could he send thought waves through the air by means of a small condensing set which caused these dead men, filled with the liquid I have just mentioned, to respond up to a certain point. It was this condensing set that I turned on when we were attacked by the Reds. Then the Zombi responded to my thoughts.”

  She shuddered.

  “I afterward turned it off,” she said. “It is awful to kill, even in self-defense. Doctor Death was attempting to reach it, to turn it on again so that he might have the Zombi attack us, when you saw him in the hallway. I got to the machine just in time and destroyed it, thus circumventing him.”

  Ricks nodded.

  “For which we are duly thankful,” he smiled. “And what about the elementals?”

  Nina Fererra shrugged her shoulders.

  “Frankly, I do not know,” she answered. “Doctor Death never took me into his confidence on that score. It has always been my idea that they were scientifically constructed electro-magnetic vortices—whirlwinds having a rough resemblance to the human form—generated by Doctor Death by some means unknown to me.

  “On the other hand, as you are all probably aware, it is the popular belief that every thought of man passes into another world and becomes an active entity by coalescing with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the nether world. Thus, good thoughts become beneficent powers and evil thoughts become demons. Whether that is right or whether my idea of the electro-magnetic vortices is correct is something that I cannot answer.”

  The President nodded and smiled.

  “Personally, I am interested in the mundane more than in the supermundane,” he said. “I am anxious to know what sort of machine, or device, it was that Doctor Death used in destroying the aircraft plant—the machine with which he threatened to reduce the world.”

  Nina Fererra’s brow clouded.

  “I can only explain it in the broadest terms,” she said. “Doctor Death did not go into details to me. I attempted to dissuade him, hence he refused to give me any information. Roughly speaking, this dissolution ray machine—as the newspapers called it—gave off certain vibrations. Doctor Death was able to localize these vibrations in certain areas as well as concentrate them on certain materials, which is the reason they did not destroy animate as well as inanimate substances.

  “As I understand it, these vibrations communicated themselves to the electrons, neutrons and protons of the matter on which they were concentrated, stepping up their speed of revolutions so tremendously that their orbits were enlarged toward infinity.

  “Thus the atoms themselves were torn apart and reduced to nothing but positive and negative charges of electricity and unattached atomic nuclei which were blasted into space. In other words, the matter completely disappeared, leaving no trace whatever—not even of the electrical charges of which its atoms were composed. Have I made myself clear?”

  The President’s eyes twinkled.

  “You have made it clear to me that you understand such things far better than I do,” he answered.

  “What about the hand—your hand—that I saw?” Jimmy demanded with a shudder.

  Nina paled. “If that is what I think it is, it is the worst of all. He has been working on a new machine which he claims can disassemble the human body, by using the same atomic principle on animate objects as does the dissolution ray machine on inanimate. Since I turned against him, he stopped taking me into his confidence. He has just finished the machine—that much I know—because he told me he was going to use me in an experiment. I was given a sleeping potion with a hypodermic needle. When I awakened, he chortled fiendishly and said it had worked—dissembled and reassembled. But I’ve never seen it.”

  Ricks groaned. “I can’t believe it, and yet—how about this metempsychosis?”

  Nina Fererra shook her head.

  “Frankly, I don’t understand that,” she answered. “There must be some explanation for it. If we could proceed scientifically and not lose our heads at the things happening.”

  RICKS scratched his grizzled head, a perplexed look in his eyes.

  “I still believe that good old-fashioned police methods are better than the newfangled ideas,” he growled. “But, I’ll admit
, when it comes to this new stuff, you’ve got to have somebody on the job who understands it. Jimmy is my bet for that. I’m having him boosted to a captaincy. But even Jimmy got captured in some screwy way. Jimmy swears that he followed you that other night. On the other band, Muggs Dent, the gun from Caminetti’s mob that saw him laid out, says that there was no skirt present. How do you figure that out?”

  “That must be hypnotism,” Nina Fererra answered. “Doctor Death wanted Jimmy, so he used his concentrative powers to make Jimmy see what he wanted him to see. He impressed upon Jimmy’s mind the thought that I was passing the hotel. Jimmy followed what he thought was me and became an easy prey to Doctor Death’s men.”

  Ricks shrugged his shoulders.

  “Police methods will have to be revolutionized if that menace isn’t scotched pretty soon,” he said thoughtfully.

  For a long time there was silence. Then the President of the United States arose from the table and, clasping the hand of Nina Fererra, shook it heartily.

  “Again I say that the thanks of every man, woman and child in the United States are due you, Miss Fererra,” he said. “It has been hard for us to realize what we have gone through. But when realization does come to all of us—as it has come to a few of us—”

  He hesitated.

  “I shudder when I think of what almost happened,” he finally went on. “The United States of America, the greatest nation on the globe, a prey to a maniac. It is horrible—unthinkable!”

  “Doctor Death may be a maniac, but he is the most dangerous man alive today,” Ricks interrupted. “The chap’s uncanny—devilish. Sometimes I’m of the opinion that he can read the minds of others.”

  “He has demonstrated that to me on innumerable occasions,” Nina Fererra said.

  The President held up his hand for silence.

  “My friends,” he said, “I understand that Miss Fererra is about to change her name—that, before the sun goes down tonight, she will be Mrs. James Holm. I, therefore, on behalf of the nation that she has saved, wish to present to her something that she can always cherish. I pin upon her breast—The Congressional Medal.”