Doctor Death Vs. The Secret Twelve - Volume 1 Read online

  A newspaper lay among the papers atop the desk. On the front page was the picture of a man with iron gray hair and the rugged, clean-cut face that goes with the highest type of manhood. The seated man picked it up and gazed at it for a moment, a look of agony creeping over his countenance.

  “Farewell, old friend,” he said sadly, laying the paper down. “When next we meet it will be—death.”

  He strode across the room and, opening the door, stepped into the hallway and pressed the elevator button. A moment later he was on the sidewalk mingling with the throng.

  The newsboys were selling extras on the streets—extras telling of the strange disappearance of Colonel Robert B. Atherstine and his chauffeur before the very eyes of two policemen and hundreds of onlookers.

  The thin man purchased a paper from the stand on the corner and, leaning against the side of the building, glanced over the glaring headlines.

  “They make much over this,” he muttered to himself. “What, then, will they say when the real news breaks—when they learn that the death of Atherstine was but an experiment?”

  Folding the paper, he stuffed it into his pocket and moved silently through the throng. There were those who turned to gaze at him a second time, so gaunt and cadaverous did he look and so weirdly glaring were his deep-set eyes.

  “He looks like Death, itself,” whispered a woman to another, turning to look back at him.

  Her companion shuddered.

  “The thinnest man I ever saw,” she responded.

  Before the great fireplace in the drawing room of his magnificent home, John Stark, America’s greatest financier, philanthropist, backer of a thousand ventures in the field of science and invention, sat brooding over a letter. Laying it on the table at his elbow, he gazed searchingly into the fire as if seeking in the glowing coals the solution of his problem.

  “Somehow, this doesn’t appeal to me as the work of an ordinary crank,” he said, gazing frowningly at the printed page again.

  John Stark:

  The world has gone too far. It is time that we returned to the simple life of our forefathers. I am sending a letter similar to this to a number of other men—scientists in the main—whose brains have made this country what it is, a nation of machines. One by one, they must go. The great buildings must crumble into dust. Factories must cease their activities and man must again live by the sweat of his brow.

  I have selected you as the first to go. Others have preceded you; they were but experiments. I have nothing against you personally. In fact, I esteem you highly as a man. But because of your money and position I must make an example of you that the others may know that I do not threaten in vain. Perhaps, when I have shown my power the world will take heed and cease its madness.

  I am the possessor of a mighty force so weird, so sinister, so extraordinary that you, like every other man, would scoff if I but mentioned it to you. Yet with it, I am as great as Jehovah.

  For obvious reasons, I must remain unknown. Therefore, I merely sign myself:

  Doctor Death.

  P.S. You have my permission to show this to the police if you wish. All the standing armies of the world could not prevent me from carrying out my resolution.

  John Stark arose and paced the floor, his brow corrugated in thought. In the fireplace the logs crackled merrily. He loved the open blaze. It always reminded him of the days of his youth—days spent on the plains, under the clean, blue skies.

  Even in the summer, he always had a fire laid in the evening. Tonight, for some reason, the smell of the burning wood brought no solace. He stopped his nervous pacing for a moment as a log toppled and fell, shooting a shower of sparks chimneyward.

  “The man is right,” he muttered. “Whoever he is, he speaks the truth. The world has gone mad—money mad—mad on science and invention. God, if we could but return to the days of our fathers. But it can never be.”

  “I am glad that you agree with me,” a quiet voice interrupted.

  Stark whirled on his heel, a startled look on his face.

  Just outside the circle of light cast by the burning logs stood a shrouded figure, tall, masked, clad from head to foot in somber black. His eyes gleamed sinisterly through the slits of his mask.

  “I am Doctor Death,” he introduced himself. “Again let me say that I am glad that you agree with me, although I cannot grant your statement that we can never go back. We can, we will, and we must. Nevertheless, your remarks make my task the easier, knowing that you are in full accord with my views.”

  John Stark smiled in spite of himself.

  “May I ask how you gained entrance to my house?” he demanded.

  The sinister figure shrugged his shoulders.

  “You may ask, but I need not reply,” he said with a low chuckle. “Are you ready to die, John Stark?”

  Stark leaned forward, his every faculty alert. Something told him that this calm, cold figure garbed in the habiliments of the grave was no bluffer. His fingers stole toward the row of buttons beneath the desk, but the other halted him with a gesture.

  “It will do you no good to ring,” he said quietly. “Your servants are all asleep—put out of commission by a method known only to myself.”

  John Stark was a man of action. For an instant he poised, then leaped.

  He halted, staggering back, his hand before his eyes as if to shut off the light.

  “God!” he murmured.

  The sinister figure had merely extended his hand. From the long, bony fingers leaped sparks as if from an electric dynamo. Around the figure of John Stark danced a yellowish-blue flame; his body covered with it. A change came over his face—a look of astonishment, of deadly fear. His ruddy cheeks grew pinched, his great body seemed to shrivel and shrink.

  His legs buckled and he sank in a little heap to the floor, pitched forward to his face, twisted and lay upon his back, arms outspread, eyes staring straight at the ceiling.

  THE masked man made no move. For what seemed ages he stood there, arm extended, his gleaming eyes pensively watching the sparks that shot from his finger tips and the dancing flames that surrounded the huddled figure on the floor.

  His robe rustled as from a gust of wind. He whirled. The cowl dropped from his head, revealing a thin, cadaverous face, a great hooked nose and sunken eyes that gleamed from beneath their brows like the twin fires of hell.

  “Back!” he roared. “Back, you devils!”

  In the background hovered a myriad of shadowy things—monstrous, deformed, twisted, indistinct shapes. They cowered before him, their gangrenous jaws slavering, their long, talon-like fingers twisting and untwisting. They seemed about to launch themselves at him, yet they retreated before his advance.

  “He was my friend, you spawn of hell!” the man who called himself Death snarled. “When I am gone you may satiate yourselves. But while I am here, keep your distance. I have left him—for you.”

  Slowly the dancing flames died down. The worm-gray things in the background drew a bit closer, glaring at him with their sulphurous eyes. Shrugging his thin shoulders, the robed man turned away. For an instant he bent over the desk, searching among the papers for that which he sought. It was the letter. Picking it up, he laid it upon the breast of the dead man.

  “Number one,” he said in a hollow, subdued voice. “Number one—and the best of them all.”

  He turned sadly away. The hell-pack swept over the body of the murdered man. They pawed at him, pulling his hands, his arms, his body, satiating themselves in the vitality that still remained before rigor mortis set in. The library reeked with a hellish charnel scent...

  Chapter III

  The Living Dead

  DETECTIVE INSPECTOR JOHN RICKS was a policeman of the old school. His broad shoulders slightly stooped, he had worked himself up from a humble beat to the position of head of the greatest detective force in the world. He was a “copper” from the soles of his square-toed shoes to the top of his head. His cold, gray eyes glared at an unfriendly world from u
nder a thatch of graying brows, his mouth was hard and uncompromising, his mustache, cropped short, seeming to accentuate his bull-dog jaw.

  His general attitude was one of distrust and antagonism. He had clubbed and fought his way to the top, was honest to the core, a disciplinarian, a driver, beloved and feared by his subordinates—a man who demanded obedience and who was willing to enforce it, if need be, with club and fist.

  Just now he was glaring across the big desk in his private office into another pair of eyes as cold and gray as his own. The name of Hezekiah Spafford was one to conjure with in the world of science. He was an L.L.D., an F.R.S., an M.D., a Ph.D., and innumerable other things, most of which accumulated during a more than ordinarily busy life, he had forgotten himself.

  A Vermont Yankee by birth, he had forged his way through the field of education until there were no other worlds to conquer. Loaned to Oxford University, he had spent several years in England and, upon his return to America, had devoted himself to chemical research.

  Hezekiah Spafford was the man who had discovered the process of making dress goods out of corn silk. It was he who had demonstrated that radium exists in considerable quantities in ordinary water and that synthetic coal can be manufactured at a much less cost than the real article can be extracted from the ground. His services had been sought by the financial magnates of the nation; his word was law in research and discovery.

  “The work of a crank,” Ricks snapped, tapping the letter he held in his left hand with the blunt forefinger of his right. “I’ll give you a couple of guards. They’ll take care of you.”

  Hezekiah Spafford leaned forward, his lantern jaw outthrust belligerently.

  “I disagree with you,” he said bluntly. “Crank though he may be, the man who wrote that letter is dangerous.”

  The sudden jangle of the telephone halted Ricks’ tart reply. He crooked his elbow, shifted his half-smoked cigar to the opposite corner of his mouth and pressed the receiver to his ear. For a moment only did he listen. Then, replacing the receiver with a bang, he pressed a button on his desk, leaped to his feet and jammed his hat atop his head, seemingly at a single motion.

  “Maybe you’re right, after all,” he snapped. “John Stark has been murdered. One of those letters was lying beside him.”

  He turned on his heel as a dozen men rushed into his office. His eyes were glowing with suppressed excitement.

  “You, Hanson!” he roared. “Assign two good men to guard Spafford! Tell ‘em that I’ll hold them personally responsible for his safety. Tell them to stick with him day and night. The rest of you come with me. John Stark has been killed—murdered!”

  He charged out of the office at the head of a squad of picked men.

  “Whatever it is, it must be a damned big case,” Desk Sergeant O’Rourke whispered to Lieutenant Piquot as he watched the cavalcade dash to the cars waiting, motors running, at the curb. “The old man’s taking charge himself.”

  An instant later the air was split with the doleful wailing of the sirens.

  Ricks knew what to expect before he entered the door of the Stark mansion at the head of his men—knew before the white-faced butler, shaking like a man with the palsy, led him to the library where the lights were now turned on in every socket. Yet, hardened policeman that he was, he was not prepared for the sight that met his eyes—the sight that brought him up with a cry of astonishment at the threshold—the sight of the horrible thing that lay stretched upon the carpet.

  In life John Stark had been a strong, robust, middle-aged man. In death he was but a semblance of a human being—a thing of dried skin stretched over a framework of bones. He resembled a toy balloon from which the air had been removed, his skin wrinkled and parchment-like, as if he had been dead for many years.

  Ricks recoiled from the sight as if from a blow. He stared down at the stiff, contorted figure, the outspread arms doubled unnaturally, the fingers clenched.

  “That’s Stark, all right,” he said, half to himself. Then to the men who grouped around him: “But, what the hell happened? What killed him? He looks as if he’d been dead for months. Yet it was only this afternoon that I saw him, talked with him, and he was as healthy and robust as—”

  He stopped in the middle of the sentence, sniffing the peculiar odor that filled the room.

  “What do you say, doc?” he demanded of the medical examiner who was kneeling by the dead man’s side.

  The physician looked up with a startled expression.

  “You say that you talked with him today?” he asked.

  Ricks nodded.

  “Just before three o’clock,” he answered.

  The medical examiner shrugged his padded shoulders.

  “Yet I’d be willing to swear in any court in the land that he’s been dead for at least a week,” he said stubbornly. “And what killed him? There’s not a mark on his body. Who said he was murdered?”

  “I did,” Inspector Ricks answered, sniffing the air again. “Do you get that awful odor? It’s like sulphur and something musty—like a tomb that’s been closed for a long time and—”

  “I’ve heard of the odor of death,” the medical examiner said, rubbing his sleeve across his sweating forehead. “But this is the first time I ever actually smelled this. It’s the smell of death mingled with the brimstone of hell.”

  Ricks whirled and confronted the trembling butler.

  “Who found him?” he roared. Then to his own men: “You fellows listen to this. Take it all in. For we’re going to get the man who killed Stark. Get that? Stark was a friend of mine.”

  FOR a full five minutes the Inspector quizzed the servant, cross-examining him with the skill of a veteran. And through it all the man’s story remained the same. For the first time in his life he had gone to sleep at his post. Suddenly he had awakened. The house was quiet. John Stark was a childless widower and kept but a few servants.

  There was a feeling of death in the house. Something—some vague, sixth sense, had told him where to look for it. Rushing to the library, he had found his master—dead. There was nothing more to be told. He had immediately telephoned to the commissioner before waking the other servants.

  Inspector Ricks turned on his heel and faced the squad of plainclothesmen under his command.

  “Get busy,” he snapped. “You, Casey and Harrigan, talk to the servants. Connets and Gillespie, go over the locks: you heard what this man said about everything being fastened up as far as he knew. You fingerprint guys do your stuff. The rest of you comb the house.”

  “Got to perform an autopsy, chief,” the medical examiner said, rising from where he had been kneeling beside the body. If he was murdered it must have been with some subtle poison. There isn’t a sign of a wound on him that I can find.”

  Ricks grunted disdainfully.

  “Did you ever see or hear of a poison that would leave a man looking like him?” he questioned. “No? Well, neither did I. So that’s out.”

  He whirled and faced his men again.

  “Yet we know that he was killed—killed in some bizarre, outlandish fashion,” he said. “He didn’t die a natural death.” He picked up the letter that had been found on the dead body and tapped it significantly with his finger. “Here’s an open-and-shut confession of the crime. It’s up to us to find this killer—this man who calls himself Doctor Death. He—”

  HE stopped for an instant, his startled eyes glaring at his subordinates. Detective Conners had dropped to his knees, tearing at his breast for his crucifix, his eyes bulging from their sockets, his lips mouthing prayers. The others had, with one exception, fled shrieking from the room. The one exception, Inspector Jimmy Holm, pointed a dramatic finger at something behind the Inspector’s back.

  Ricks whirled. Then he sucked in his breath and staggered back as if from a blow.

  “Almighty God!” he said tensely.

  John Stark had risen to his feet!

  Dead though he was, he was standing in the middle of the room, one emaciat
ed hand resting on the edge of the desk, the other extended unnaturally in front of him. The light from a bridge lamp struck him squarely in the pupils, reflecting from his glassy eyes glitteringly.

  Ricks’ heart constricted, jumped a beat, then burst into activity again as the goose flesh chased itself up and down his spinal column. He took a step forward, his fists doubled.

  “We were friends in life and I’m not afraid of you now!” he snapped.

  He stretched forth his hand and touched the fingers of the other. Again he shuddered. For the parchment-like skin was cold with the awful chill of death. Yet John Stark had risen from the floor and was now standing before him.

  Conners gave a horrible, screaming cry and, leaping to his feet, rushed from the room in the wake of the others.

  John Stark was moving!

  Slowly, automatically, he lifted a foot and thrust it forward, dragging the other after it. Every movement was stiff and mechanical. His dead face turned neither to the right nor to the left, his lifeless eyes gazed unblinkingly straight ahead. Across the room he moved, raising each foot stiffly, setting it down again, dragging the other after it. He reached a chair. His body doubled at the joints and dropped into it, his eyes still staring to the front.

  “Zombi!”

  Ricks whirled on his heel to the man who had made the ejaculation. Tall, slender, dark, keen-faced, Jimmy Holm was leaning forward, his eyes taking in every detail.

  “Meaning what?” the Inspector demanded, his brusque voice shaking in spite of himself.

  “The voodoo curse,” the younger man answered. “The man who killed him won’t let him sleep in his grave. He’s a slave to his murderer. I saw the same thing in Haiti. Dead men working in the cane fields.”

  “Huh!”

  Ricks cast another glance at the awful thing that sat, glaring icy-eyed, straight ahead. Then he stepped to the door and roared at his subordinates.