by Jerry
“Even through this armor, sir, the ray sometimes affects me to the extent that I grow dizzy, see double, and suffer various hallucinations, such as seeing pink baboons, gaunt triple-headed wolves, and giant black spiders as large as coal-scuttles, studded with eyeballs of glowing fire. Doctor Von der Vogel is similarly attacked, often hearing at night diabolical music issuing from about the banks of the Hudson, such as is produced by cymbals, tom-toms, and saxophones, together with a sound like the screaming of tigers calling their mates in the jungle.”
“Ahum! Them Mongolian broadcasters are th’ bunk, ain’t they?” said Samuel Jones, soothingly. He had cautiously gotten hold of his red-covered classified telephone-book, and was thumbing the letter “B.” As he explained afterward, he was looking for the telephone number of a bug-house.
“DURING the last two years,” the armored mystery went on, “we have been attacked in every conceivable manner. For instance, drivers of huge trucks try to run us down, whenever we cross a street. Doctor Von der Vogel was chased last month by a ten-ton truck that smashed three plate-glass windows, before it was brought to a stop. The driver subsequently alleged that he thought he had gone crazy, having just had a drink of what he called etherized benzine. He at once lost control of his truck when he saw Doctor Von der Vogel walking ahead of him, in his shining armor. All this, of course, was the work of the Tartars.
“In spite of the machinations of the yellow powers, we have persevered in our researches into their secret ray. It is obvious that the only way to combat them is to duplicate their radio mind-controlling instruments, and then engage them in a war of extermination, with their own diabolical apparatus. Many people, realizing this, have financially aided us in our researches. Yet these people have been, one by one, either alienated from us, or assassinated in cold blood, by the Asiatics.
“At this moment, we are on the verge of a complete discovery of the secrets of the Mongolians’ radiohypnotic ray; but our hands are tied for lack of supplies. The work requires very costly materials, particularly radium. We use this element in a powerful vacuum-tube, which the yellow arch-scientists term, literally, the super-white-death-ray generator. We, too, have generated the ray, but we have not been able to direct it. In order, sir, to interest you in what we have so far accomplished, I have brought with me a number of blueprints and technical notes.”
With this, the shining visitor pulled from his briefcase a mass of papers. Some of them were covered with closely-spaced and completely illegible handwriting, which had been done in brilliant purple ink; while others were profusely strewn with drawings of fantastic-looking apparatus lettered with outlandish names, such as “helium-vaporizer,” “spectrum-filler,” “radium-nozzles,” “electronic-compressor,” and “proton-gun.”
The seeker of scientific frauds for the Mazerka Magazine spent almost an hour inspecting these papers and listening to his visitor’s explanations of them; but the longer he looked and listened, the more he felt as if he belonged in the same boat with a slab-footed Papuan Islander trying to find out how to boil fish in an electric washing-machine. In other words, as Samuel Jones later put it, he got as balled up as a Greek immigrant in the subway.
“It’s too deep for me—on paper, anyway,” he mumbled, apologetically, to his caller. “How about it, if I visit your layout?”
“We should be glad to have you visit our laboratory,” replied the armored mystery. “It will be dangerous, however, as you will at once fall under the sinister surveillance of the Tartars. Sir, do you feel courageous enough to face the peril of radio-assassination?”
“AHUM! Everything has been tried on me, but that,” grimly asserted the Mazerka Magazine’s scientific-fraud excavator. “Whereabouts is your hangout?”
“Our laboratory,” replied the discoverer of the Mongolians’ ray, “is difficult of access, as it is necessarily far from electric power and even telephone lines. But there is a young woman, a Miss Audrey Valois, at an address in Newark, who will be glad to bring you out, in her car.
“Some time ago, sir, I went to Washington, wearing my polished steel armor, to acquaint the Attorney-General with the terrible peril menacing this country, in the white death-ray of the Tartars. I asked for a force of secret-service agents to guard our laboratory, until we could complete our combative apparatus, which we should then turn over to the government, as a priceless gift. But a courteous assistant of the attorney-general, after hearing fully of the matter from my lips, said that there was not a man in the entire secret-service department who could be trusted in such a stupendous crisis, and that it would, therefore, be impossible for the Attorney-General to aid me.
“As I was returning sadly from Washington, this striking person, Audrey Valois, whose attention had been attracted by my armor, engaged herself in conversation with me. I quickly found that she, having a keen intellect, and being an interested female student of radioactive phenomena, was also being harassed by the Tartars. Miss Valois, who is a clever young woman, has since rendered us many services. I shall give you a note of introduction to her; and she, I am sure, will be glad to bring you to our laboratory at any time of the day or night.”
The next afternoon, when the scientific investigator for the Mazerka Magazine was on his way to Newark, standing in an uncomfortable jam of subway-passengers, he felt somebody roughly shove something into his coat-pocket. Snatching at it, instantly, he found that it was a tightly-folded newspaper.
Glaring around in the crowded train, Samuel Jones saw nobody who looked particularly suspicious to him, although he did notice a muscular-bodied person in a black derby hat, who had his face stuck into a pink racehorse paper, in which he seemed thoroughly engrossed.
Unfolding the newspaper that had been mysteriously thrust into his pocket, he found smeared over the newsprint, in big crimson-inked letters, these threatening words: “BEWARE—DEATH!”
Under these words, a big crudely-made red arrow pointed to this small news item down in the lower left-hand corner of the page——
“ECCENTRIC SCIENTIST MEETS DEATH
Newark, March 26.—Dr. P.V. Von der Vogel, a peculiar old German scientist living near Park Ridge, where he has a laboratory said to be filled with strange radium and radio apparatus, and who, for some mystical reason, has lived day and night in a suit of massive steel armor, of the kind worn in the Middle Ages, was found here early this morning lying in a lonely street, his armor completely flattened and his body terribly crushed. He appears to have been run down by a heavy motor truck and instantly killed.”
“Ahum!” muttered Samuel Jones, looking rather chilled; and he felt of the old heavy six-shooter he wore buried on his hip. Again glaring about him, he observed that the muscular-bodied man in the black derby, whose face had been stuck in a pink race-horse paper, had disappeared.
AUDREY VALOIS of Newark, to the amazement of Samuel Jones, was a glorious blonde with a silk-clad ankle that would have been a credit to the leading movie star of a suffering husband’s super-drama.
“I suppose I don’t look much like a woman student of electronic phenomena,” she remarked, smiling at the scientific-fraud excavator in a way that made him feel like a shingle nail close to an electro-magnet.
“Hell, no!” ejaculated Samuel Jones, before he knew what he was saying. Then, after an embarrassed pause, he blurted out—“I thought you’d have hornshell glasses an’ big feet!”
Audrey Valois laughed, in a gracious and amused manner.
“Oh, I’ve put those away,” she responded, lightly. “And as yet I haven’t been compelled, like Count Vrennisky, to wear any forged-steel garments.”
Then, swiftly, she grew serious.
“I see you have a paper,” she observed, in a grave voice. “Have you read about the murder of Doctor Von der Vogel?”
Samuel Jones unfolded the newspaper that had been stuck in his pocket, and showed the girl the warning that had been scrawled on it.
“An agent of the yellow papers gave it to you—you are already
marked!” exclaimed Audrey Valois, in a low voice. She gazed at Samuel Jones’ garish green silk necktie in a troubled and solicitous manner. “Count Vrennisky has telephoned me about you; and I have my car ready to take you out to his laboratory. But I fear the danger is going to be too great—”
“Listen, that danger stuff is mostly bunk to me,” interrupted Samuel Jones, bluntly. “There’s a flock of bad eggs in this neck of the woods who’ve sworn they’re goin’ to boil me in bootleg whiskey, on account of th’ things I found out about ’em for th’ Mazerka Magazine; so I guess a couple more disgruntled gents way over in Tibet won’t make very much difference.”
Audrey Valois put the fraud-investigator into a snappy sapphire-blue roadster; and, as Samuel Jones subsequently stated it, they headed for the hang-out of the armored mystery.
Getting away from Newark, they spun, for about thirty miles, along a boulevard leading up through the New Jersey hills. At length they turned off into a bad dirt road that rambled among orchards of leafless, brown-limbed apple trees, and then wound upward about the high, rocky face of a dark cliff overlooking the Hudson.
During this ride, it was apparent to Samuel Jones that a big motor truck with a cluster of hard-looking customers riding on it, was following the roadster. This didn’t look good to him at all, especially after what he had read about the squashing of Doctor Von der Vogel, presumably by some similar gasoline-driven juggernaut. However, he could feel the comfortable hardness of the old six-shooter on his hip, and he said nothing.
At the upper end of the rough, steep road, the two occupants of the roadster arrived at a high and gloomy looking old moss-grown stone mansion, which stood among a few tall beech trees, directly above the Hudson River.
It was a cold, murky day. There was an increasing chill in the air.
The discoverer of the Mongolians’ ray met his two callers in the dark, grotto-like entrance of the old mansion. He was still clad in his gleaming armor.
“Miss Valois, I cannot see very well through the anti-ray screen before my face,” he said to the girl. “I was forced to double it this morning, because of a radiohypnotic attack of extreme intensity, that was directed upon me while I was attending the coroner’s inquest into the death of Doctor Von der Vogel. Therefore, will you please inform me whether Mr. Jones is displaying any of the colors?”
“Displayin’ the colors!” exclaimed Samuel Jones, looking mystified.
“He is,” replied Audrey Valois, in a low voice. “He is wearing a green silk necktie with dark red figures on it.”
“The mark of surveillance,” said the armored mystery. “Are there any others?”
“Yes. He has on an olive-green hat.”
“Special instructions issued concerning him—that’s bad!” muttered the powerful voice in the armor.
“I just put that hat on to-day,” said Samuel Jones, apologetically. “I generally wear a gray one—”
“The control-interference is very active!” exclaimed the discoverer of the Mongolians’ ray.
“What color are your socks?” inquired Audrey Valois. Before Samuel Jones could reply, she had taken hold of one of his trouser legs and lifted it up.
“Green!” she exclaimed, in a tone of horror, “—and a red silk arrow!”
“Why, that’s a threat of death!” announced the deep, drum-like voice in the gleaming armor.
“Ahum! I don’t see how I come to get so much green on me,” remarked Samuel Jones, innocently.
IN silence, the armored mystery led his visitors into the old mansion. They followed him through a long, gloomy corridor; then down into the cellar, and into a small, cavern-like room with no windows and only one door. Its floor, walls and ceiling were sheeted with galvanized steel; and it contained a big, rough wooden table which was completely filled with the strangest-looking apparatus in the world.
There were induction coils on pyrex bases, galvanometers, batteries of photo-electric cells and arc-lamps; and a long black tube, like a telescope, or a gun, running up through the roof. Below the black tube was mounted a huge, weird-looking, shining glass vacuum-globe, nearly two feet in diameter. Inside of it were a row of small glittering mirrors; and at the bottom was a big cone that scintillated as if it were a mass of pure radium. It illuminated the laboratory with a silvery-white glow, like soft moonlight. There was no other source of light in the room.
From this apparatus a bundle of silk-covered wires ran to a small switchboard set up beside the table, which was studded with meters and electrical controls.
The discoverer of the Mongolians’ ray motioned his visitors to sit down on a rude bench opposite his instruments.
“Before I explain to you the machines you see before you, Mr. Jones,” came the deep voice from within the suit of armor, “I shall first tell you something of the bizarre operating methods of the Tartars, and reveal to you the significance of the examination I made of you a moment ago.
“Sir, one of the most fantastic features of the Mongolians’ surveillance system is their use of identifying colors, which are imposed on businesses, on families, and on private persons. Yellow and orange stand for safety; while green, blue and purple indicate the enemy, the goats, the outsiders, and, together with black, are the marks of certain death.
“Thus, if a subject is found amenable to radiohypnotic control, he is caused to develop a mania for orange, heliotrope, and canary-bird-yellow ties and socks. He is then dismissed as of no further importance, and is thereafter referred to as ‘solid ivory.’ “Brilliant yellows, magenta, and, sometimes, flaming scarlets, indicate actual members of the death-ray organization of the Tartars, and also the numerous white sympathizers of the yellow powers. Such sympathizers, however, generally try to avoid any particular markings, keeping out of the public eye, and eating in upstairs restaurants and chop-suey establishments. Persons in the habit of eating in those places are therefore to be regarded with suspicion.
“Combinations of red and green indicate that the victim is dangerous. Garish greens with red figures, particularly arrows, are threats of death by radio-hypnotic control.
“A victim doomed to death is nearly always taken off by causing him to contract some ordinary illness, and then imposing upon him doctors who prescribe poisons. Many doctors appear to be under the influence of the Tartars at all times. The nerves of the victim are also broken down by causing various persons in neighboring apartments to practise unceasingly on flutes, piccolos, harps and saxophones with cowbell and fire-engine attachments.
“The Mongolians are also attacking our nation, as a body, in subtle ways. They are destroying our morals, by controlling the publishers of women’s fashion magazines and trying to induce the female sex entirely to stop wearing clothes. How well they are succeeding in this you can see by merely glancing at your wife—or anybody else’s, if you have none—”
“Ahum! Th’ present styles suit me pretty good,” interrupted Samuel Jones, contentiously. “And, anyway, if th’ pigtails is doin’ all this, what is th’ purpose of all their radio-ray cannonadin’ ? What are they plannin’ to do when th’ girls cast off their last garter, an’ the country is all shot to pieces?”
“Sir, think!” exclaimed the armored mystery, in his deep, powerful voice, like the sound of a beaten drum. “The day the Asiatics gain control will be the day when the sun will set upon the white race. Heaven preserve us from that cataclysm!”
“That sounds like a lot of boloney,” observed Samuel Jones, thoughtfully.
A RATHER strained silence ensued.
The investigator of scientific frauds got up and walked over to look at the fantastic apparatus on the laboratory table. Curiously, he fingered one of the electrical controls on the switchboard beside, the instruments.
“Whrrrooo-o-o-o!” shrieked out some sort of black iron machine, right at Samuel Jones’ feet, almost startling him out of his shirt. Instantly, the needles of all the meters on the switchboard in front of him flew clear over to the ends of their scales. Purple ton
gues of fire crashed over switches and knobs. The huge glass vacuum-bulb burst into a blinding, blood-red glow, which changed successively to orange, yellow, green, blue, and then to a ghastly, dazzling violet. Copper wires burst into puffs of fire and smoke. Then something went off close behind Samuel Jones’ head, with a terrific bang; the laboratory was filled with a hot, blinding sheet of flame—and instantly there was silence and utter darkness.
“Oh!” groaned the voice from within the now invisible suit of steel armor.
The discoverer of the Mongolians’ ray clankingly pushed open the laboratory door; and his speechless visitors staggered out into the basement. In the murky light that was filtering in through some small cellar windows up in the gray stone wall, Samuel Jones saw that he was all scorched and singed.
“By heaven, sir!” exclaimed the armored mystery, in a despairing voice. “You have exploded the proton-gun, and destroyed a ten-thousand-dollar charge of radium that I had mounted in the vacuum-globe. Why did you tamper with that switchboard? Probably I can repair the instruments; but I have no more radium. I hope you will replace it, sir.”
“Ahum!” said the blackened investigator of scientific frauds, spitting out what he afterwards asserted was a couple of shovelfuls of ashy-tasting soot. “Harrumph!
“Did you mention the sum of ten thousand dollars?”
“You could ill afford personally to make good such costly damage, I suppose,” said the deep voice in the shining armor, sadly. “But could you arrange a donation from the scientific investigation fund in your charge, to enable me to replace the radium you have destroyed?”
“Well—I wouldn’t feel very good about it,” replied Samuel Jones, in a troubled and shaky manner.
The armored mystery turned away, and silently bowed his gleaming helmet.
“Please, Mr. Jones, help him!” cried Audrey Valois, quickly, catching at his hand. “If your conscience troubles you about drawing on your scientific fund, you could replace it in small amounts, or all at once, in some future time, when you could afford it.”