Doctor Death Vs. The Secret Twelve - Volume 1 Page 18

  Nina Fererra smiled happily.

  Suddenly there came an interruption. One of the President’s secretaries entered, a telegram in his hand.

  “For Mr. Holm,” he said, handing the wire to Jimmy.

  Holm tore open the yellow envelope and glanced at the typed sheet. His face paled. Then he handed the message to Ricks. The latter glanced at it, then passed it to the President, who read it aloud.

  CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR APPROACHING WEDDING. TAKE WARNING, GOD GAVE ME THE RIGHT TO DESTROY AND THE WEAPONS WITH WHICH TO WORK. THE WORLD MUST BE SAVED FROM ITSELF AND I AM THE INSTRUMENT. I GO BUT I WILL SOON RETURN.

  Doctor Death.

  The Gray Creatures

  Walking cadavers! Blood-thirsty, nauseous gray creatures! In the dank tombs of Egypt where he seeks the secret of resurrection, Doctor Death strikes at his pursuers with the terrible inventions of his warped brain. This gripping account of a brave detective’s struggle against a scientific fiend is packed with thrills and horror.

  Chapter I

  DETECTIVE INSPECTOR JOHN RICKS of the homicide detail leaned forward in his swivel chair, dropped his huge feet from atop the desk, and glared quizzically under his bushy eyebrows at his subordinate. A policeman of the old school was Ricks—a man who had fought and clubbed his way up from the bottom of the ladder to the command of the greatest body of manhunters in the world. He growled at Jimmy Holm.

  “So you think that Doctor Death has another ace up his sleeve, eh? And that he’ll harm the girl you want to marry. Why?”

  “Because,” Jimmy said tensely, “he started out to kill the twelve leading scientists of the nation. We stopped him with his task unfinished. Others have since taken the places of those he killed. And Doctor Death has done nothing. But his is a single-track mind. Knowing him as I do, I am afraid of this inactivity. It is ominous—horribly so. It is at Nina that he will strike first in order to cripple us.”

  “She’s guarded,” Ricks said reassuringly.

  “What good are guards when one deals with a man like Doctor Death?” Holm answered despondently.

  Leaning forward, he picked up the telephone and called a number. For what seemed ages he sat there, the receiver glued to his ear.

  “She falls to answer,” he said, his youthful face suddenly becoming drawn and haggard. “I’m going—”

  THERE was a knock at the door. In response to Ricks’ bluff “Come in,” a shirt-sleeved teletype operator rushed in from the adjoining room.

  “Detectives Lambroso and Bryan, sir!” he ejaculated. “Both—”

  Ricks’ big feet came down from the desk with a smash that jarred the floor.

  “Quick!” he roared. “What happened?”

  “Dead! Killed!” the operator answered. “They—”

  But Ricks and Holm were already out of sight down the hallway, buttoning their coats as they ran.

  Lambroso and Bryan had been the men assigned to guard Nina Fererra.

  The big police car came to a stop with a screeching of brakes in front of the little house in the suburbs where Nina Fererra, Doctor Death’s one-time assistant and ward and now the affianced bride of Captain Jimmy Holm, resided. The two officers leaped out and ran to the group of men standing in the darkness around the figures of their two comrades.

  Ricks seized a flashlight from one of them and allowed the beam to play for a moment over the prone figures.

  Both had met death in the same way—from a knife thrust in the throat.

  Ricks turned to Jimmy Holm. The young man was already on the porch of the darkened cottage, his finger pressed against the button. Receiving no response he grasped the knob and pushed open the door. The hall was in darkness. He found the light button. The chandelier in the ceiling sprang into life.

  In the center of the little living room a woman lay face downward on the floor. With a shriek of agony Jimmy Holm leaped across the room.

  “Mrs. Enright, the housekeeper,” he said weakly, staggering back a pace. “Nina?”

  Ricks had turned and was charging up the stairs, half a dozen men at his heels.

  At the head of the stairway a door was open. It was Nina’s room. He stopped and, pressing the light button, stood for an instant taking in every detail.

  Jimmy Holm shouldered him out of the way. The bed had not been slept in. He whirled on his heel as a card, stuck in the glass of the dressing table, caught his eye.

  Upon the card in the well-known chirography of Dr. Rance Mandarin, alias Doctor Death, was written:

  Stop and reflect. I have the right to destroy and the brain with which to do the work. The world must be saved, and I am the instrument selected for the work.

  I promised to return and I have kept my promise. I need Nina. What I need I take.

  Doctor Death.

  The telephone in the reception hall tinkled. One of Ricks’ men picked up the receiver and answered.

  “For you, sir!” he called up the stairway.

  There was an extension in the hallway just outside the little boudoir. Ricks picked up the instrument.

  “Inspector Ricks!” he snapped.

  He listened for a moment. Then he issued orders with machine-gun rapidity. When he hung up the receiver he was almost as white and haggard as Jimmy Holm.

  “There’s hell popping over on the east side!” be said. “From the looks of things, Death’s struck there as well as here. Coming?”

  Holm nodded dumbly. Side by side they raced back to the car.

  Chapter II

  Marked for Slaughter

  THERE was a feeling of death in the air. Patrolman John Braddock, making his eleven o’clock rounds, sensed it and shivered. Then, cursing himself for a fool, he pulled his belt up another hole and whistled through his teeth to keep up his courage.

  The street lamps on either corner illy illuminated the narrow street. Yet they were strong enough to bring out in bold relief the sprawling figure of the man who lay, arms outstretched, just inside the old-fashioned, ornamental iron fence that separated the quaint, three-story brick home of Harmachis, the Egyptian, from the sidewalk.

  “Huh!” Braddock grunted, unlatching the gate and stepping inside. Taking his flashlight from his pocket, he allowed the beam to play over the outflung limbs, while he poked the stiff form in the ribs with his nightstick. “Wake up!”

  There was no movement. Braddock stooped and, transferring his night stick to his left hand, seized the recumbent man by the shoulder and shook him roughly. Then, warned by the limpness of the other’s movements, he turned him over and gazed down into a pair of dead, glassy eyes.

  “Ah!” he ejaculated, dropping the flaccid body to the sidewalk and leaping back a pace.

  The face of the dead man was aged and weathered, the skin, parchment-like, wrinkled in a thousand tiny creases, drawn tightly over the cheek bones. Yet he was not old. But his body seemed far too small for the neatly tailored suit he wore. There was something peculiar about the appearance of the man. He reminded Braddock of a lemon that has been sucked of all its juice and dropped in the sun to dry.

  A sudden something swirled from the body—a peculiar, indescribable, horrible something that swept past the officer’s face like a wave of cold, chilling air, carrying with it a feeling of loathsomeness and horror. It covered him, for a moment, like a blanket of nauseous, fetid vapor; it seemed to dance and spiral about him—reaching out for him with chilling, clammy fingers. Then it was gone, leaving him gasping for breath.

  “God!” he said hoarsely, dodging through the gate.

  There was a patrol box at the corner. Braddock lumbered to it and called headquarters. In the act of making his report, he stopped suddenly, his voice dropping to a husky, frightened whisper.

  “My God, sergeant!” he exclaimed. “I’m seeing things! Seeing things, I tell you! The dead man’s up—he’s walking! Walking...”

  He dropped the telephone receiver and dashed madly toward the house of Harmachis, the Egyptian, his whistle trilling a wild summons
for help.

  The dead man had risen to his feet. For the infinitesimal part of a second he stood there, swaying like one who suffers from overindulgence in drink. Then, as Braddock, forgetting his fears, reached the gate, he turned his cold, glassy eyes on the officer, his lips drawn back over his fangs in a wolfish snarl.

  Laying his hand on the knob, he opened the door and entered.

  From out of the silence came a gurgling laugh, slow, mirthless, fearsome.

  Then it was that Braddock rushed back to the call box and babbled a story that caused the desk sergeant to telephone madly to his superior officer, far on the other side of town—the story that caused Inspector John Ricks and Captain Jimmy Holm to break all speed records in getting across the city.

  Braddock’s report to Ricks was short and concise. When he finished the Inspector stepped back to the center of the street and gazed up at the narrow, darkened front of the house of Harmachis, the Egyptian.

  Of weather-beaten limestone, dirtied by the smoke of the surrounding buildings, it was a relic of a bygone generation, rearing its three stories in the midst of a district now largely given over to skyscrapers and warehouses.

  Stepping onto the porch, he gave the knob a quick turn. The lock was not set. The door opened beneath his touch.

  His men crowding into the doorway behind him, he pressed the bulb of his flashlight and snapped the electric switch just inside.

  “This him?” he inquired, jerking his thumbs at a pitiful huddle in the center of the reception hall.

  Braddock shook his head dumbly.

  “He’s not the one that was outside, sir,” he answered. “This bird looks like a foreigner of some sort. There’s a nest of ’em live here. Fellow named Harmachis or something like that, runs the joint. That’s not him, sir. Must be one of the servants.”

  Ricks grunted and bent over the murdered man. There was no need to gaze a second time at the distorted face staring unseeingly up at the ceiling lamp to know that the man was dead. The horrible wound in the neck was mute evidence of that fact. So brutal had been the attack that the head was almost twisted from the body as the head of a chicken is twisted off by the busy farmer’s wife.

  Ricks, accustomed to scenes of violence, took a fresh cigar from his pocket and, biting off the end, thrust it into his mouth and chewed violently.

  “This man, Harmachis?” he demanded. “Who is he and what does he do? Damned funny that he hasn’t shown up with all this confusion going on. And where’s the body of the guy you claim beat it from the door yard?”

  Braddock shrugged his massive shoulders.

  “He’s rich, I guess,” he responded, ignoring the last question. “I think that he’s some sort of big-wig with the other Egyptians. At any rate, I’ve seen a lot of ’em going in and out of here. He seldom shows himself though.”

  Ricks jerked his finger up the stairway and told off a group of his men to search the upper part of the house. Then, followed by the remainder of his command, he stepped through the open door of the reception room into what appeared to be the main floor living room. The light from the hallway was strong enough for him to locate the switch. He snapped on the light. For an instant he stood there, his brow corrugated in thought.

  The room was furnished like a palace. Costly rugs covered the floor. The furniture was magnificent, the chairs overstuffed, the walls decorated with panels in high relief.

  Ricks shrugged his shoulders and chewed his cigar thoughtfully.

  A SUDDEN shout from one of his subordinates brought him out of his reverie. Turning, he ran up the thickly carpeted stairs to the second floor, where his men stood in an awed group just outside an open door.

  “Dead men!” one of them said in a hushed, awed voice. “Hell, Chief, this isn’t just an ordinary murder! It’s a massacre!”

  Ricks shouldered his way through the excited group and took a step inside the lighted room.

  Then he swore like a man possessed.

  The room was a charnel house.

  He stepped forward, only to crash against some obstruction. The lights went out and darkness dropped like a shroud.

  “Flashlights!” he roared.

  Something swept over them—something like a whirlwind that crashed against them, almost lifting them from their feet. It was like the fetid breath of some horrible monster. They struggled against it...

  “Flashlight!” Ricks roared again, bracing himself against the invisible attack.

  A giant hand reached out from the darkness and grasped him by the throat. He struggled madly, gasping and choking. His breath was shut off as by a noose. He reached upward in an effort to seize the wrists of the man who was throttling him.

  One of his men succeeded in getting his flashlight into action. The beam struck the big Inspector squarely in the face. For a moment more he struggled. Then the grip about his throat suddenly lessened as his assailant slumped to the floor. He sucked the air into his tortured lungs in great gulps. Staggering back a pace, he leaned against the wall for support.

  Other flashlights were out now. The men under his command came charging into the room, the rays of their torches cutting through the blackness like knives through cheese.

  “What is it, chief?” someone shouted.

  Ricks swallowed hard in an effort to recover his breath.

  Then the lights flashed on again.

  They stopped suddenly, staring, first at Ricks, then at a man who lay on the thickly carpeted floor at his feet, his neck half severed from his body.

  Where had he come from and who had killed him? Only a few seconds had elapsed between the time the lights went out and when they came on again. Yet in that interval this man had entered the room, attacked Inspector Ricks and had, in turn, been killed.

  Ricks, his breath pumping back into his lungs again, straightened up to take command. He stared at the dead man.

  “His throat is cut and yet there is no blood,” Ricks grunted hoarsely.

  Holm, who had been searching frantically through the lower floor, ran up. For a moment he listened to his superior. Then, stooping, he touched his fingers to the face of the dead man on the floor.

  “Zombi!” he exclaimed. “The man has been dead for days. The flesh is cold—hard. The work of Doctor Death beyond a doubt.”

  Braddock, who had crowded in despite the plainclothes men, stared at the dead creature, his eyes bulging.

  “That’s the one who—who was outside in the yard!” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  Dead men! The place seemed filled with them. The room was a long, low-ceilinged salon, the floor tiled and covered with expensive rugs, the walls hung with rare tapestries. More like the lounging room of some Eastern potentate than the interior of a drab and almost shabby building such as this, thought Ricks as he leaned against the door jamb and tenderly massaged his bruised windpipe. The furniture was rich, covered with black and gold to match the hangings on the walls.

  The place was a veritable museum, filled to overflowing with priceless curios. Scattered here and there were beautifully carved teakwood tables on which were statuettes of incalculable value; rare vases filled each separate niche while several mummy cases leaned against the wall.

  And the room was peopled with the dead.

  Beside the door lay two men, their dark, swarthy complexions and coarse, black hair attesting their nationality. Another, better dressed than the others, whom Ricks rightly surmised to be Harmachis, was sprawled across a low divan in the corner. Near him, where it had fallen from his hand, lay a scroll of aged papyrus. That he had been translating it was apparent. A pencil and pad of paper were on the low table beside the divan. Ricks reached forward and picked it up.

  As truly as Osiris lives, so truly shall his followers live. As truly as Osiris is not dead, he shall die no more. As truly as Osiris is not annihilated, he shall not be annihilated. As truly...

  The translation, made in English, broke off in the middle of the sentence. Ricks, gazing down at the dried parchment skin of H
armachis, knew the reason and shuddered.

  A fourth man, apparently the steward of the establishment, lay crumpled before one of the tables, where he had been working. Some household accounts, evidently from nearby tradesmen, were scattered over the floor. Beside him were the fragments of a shattered vase which his arm had struck as he went down.

  There was not a mark on any of them. Aside from the man who lay beside the door the prints of whose bloody fingers were still upon Rick’s throat, any one of them might have died a natural death except for one thing.

  All of them had been sucked dry; their skins were withered and parchment-like. Little wonder that Inspector John Ricks cursed under his breath and chewed his cigar savagely.

  Jimmy Holm, standing beside the Inspector, his keen eyes taking in every detail, suddenly uttered an exclamation and leaped forward to where Harmachis sprawled across the divan.

  “Look!” he said excitedly.

  Ricks moved to where he stood. Holm pointed down at the body of the dead man. A scrap of paper was pinned to the Egyptian’s breast. On it was hastily scrawled in pencil:

  The cogs of my machine mesh. If the world would be preserved, science must be destroyed.

  A new star has appeared upon the scientific horizon. Edgeworth. Young though he is, his experiments with the solar rays threaten to disrupt the primal plan of things.

  He will be the next to go, even though he was not one of those originally marked for slaughter. Others may fall meanwhile, but it is he who, in the end, must die. He is the most dangerous man living today.

  Doctor Death.

  Chapter III

  Master of Carnage

  FOR a full sixty seconds time stood still for Detective Jimmy Holm. So, as he suspected, the Doctor was still determined to destroy science, by carrying out his mad purpose of killing the scientists he had marked. Doctor Rance Mandarin, himself America’s leading scientist, filled with the insane idea that he had been selected by an Almighty God to turn back the wheels of time and start the world at the beginning again, had almost accomplished that purpose.