by Harold Ward
“What ails you?” he roared.
“He’s in the other room!” the frightened man howled. “I ran right into him. He—”
He stopped, his face turning an ashy gray. Ricks whirled, his gun belching fire.
The thing stood in the doorway, slobbering and snarling at them. Ricks pulled the trigger until every chamber was empty. His bullets had no effect. The horror charged. Hurling the empty gun into the bloated, mottled face, Ricks plunged forward to meet it, his fists striking out like pile drivers. He felt himself seized in an iron grasp and thrown across the room. He brought up, bruised and battered, against the table. Gasping for breath, he saw Riley leap forward, only to go down in a senseless heap, his jaw broken.
Again Ricks charged. The senseless, gaping mouth mumbled something. An iron fist crashed against his temple, the concussion jarring him from head to toes. Then consciousness left him.
He was seated in a chair, bound, when he regained consciousness. In front of him sat the terror, its cold, glassy eyes glaring at him. Riley lay where he had fallen. Instinctively Ricks knew that the ex-policeman was dead. In another chair sat Mrs. James, bound like himself, a cloth tied over her mouth. Her terrified eyes gazed at it piteously.
“Metempsychosis, my dear Inspector,” the giant said slobberingly. “Pardon me if I do not speak plainly, but I have not yet entirely mastered the knack of using this uncouth creature’s body. Metempsychosis is, I might say, one of the forbidden mysteries—Black Art—of which I am, as you have already discovered, a past master. It has to do with the transmigration of the soul into the bodies of other men and lower animals. In the distant past it was practiced extensively but gradually became a forgotten art until, today, I am probably the only living man who understands it.
“I found this thing, whose body I am now inhabiting for the nonce, in a lunatic asylum. By methods known only to myself, I separated his soul from his body, then seized upon the empty shell for my own use. The frail form of Rance Mandarin is hidden away where I can regain it when I so desire. But the spirit of Doctor Death lives in the framework of this thing you see before you.
“I hate you personally,” he went on, “but chiefly, you are constantly interfering with my plans. Had you been out of the way, the men of science whom I sought to convert to my way of thinking would long ago have ceased to oppose me and the wheels of industry would have stopped. It is you who have kept the world where it now is instead of allowing it to go back to where it was in the beginning—as it was intended to remain.”
He got up and loomed over the bound man.
“That is why I am going to kill you,” he said slowly. “Understand, I bear you no malice. But it is necessary that you be put out of the way in order that destiny be fulfilled.”
He stopped, noting that Ricks’ glance stole to his chest where several steel-jacketed slugs had entered.
“You wonder why you did not kill me,” he chuckled. “Simply, my dear Inspector, because I am already dead. By that I mean that the body I inhabit is that of a dead man. And of what avail are bullets when sent against flesh that is already putrid?”
He took a step forward, his huge hands reaching toward the bound man.
“The body I selected is muscular enough to make short work of a squad of your best men,” he went on. “That is why I picked it out. Not long ago I passed a lunatic asylum. In the yard were a group of men—imbeciles, all of them. I noted the bodily development of this mad thing whose frame I am now occupying, the breadth of his shoulders, the play of his back muscles, his enormous hands. I knew your own strength and I wanted to handle the job of killing you myself. I called to him and he came to me. Little by little, I won his confidence. And then, when the time came, I killed him, laying his body aside until I needed it. Now that time has arrived. My tools have already botched several tasks. There will be no botching here.”
He gave a maniacal chuckle. His huge fingers encircled Ricks’ throat. They closed down. They were like a huge collar being slowly drawn taut. His hands tied, Ricks could not struggle. Only his heels played a devil’s tattoo on the carpeted floor. His breath was shut off. His eyes almost bulged from their sockets, so tight was the grip. Deeper and deeper, the great fingers dug into his windpipe. Over him he saw the bloated, senseless face, the mouth twisted into an imbecilic grin. He felt himself going...
As from a great distance he heard a shout. The head seemed to leap from the body. For a moment it was in the air, apparently without support. Then Jimmy Holm’s face appeared. The pressure around his throat relaxed for an instant. He sucked a mouthful of air into his tortured lungs. Then the grip was tightened again.
ARRIVING to keep his appointment, Jimmy Holm had found the door unlocked. Something—some sixth sense—had warned him of danger and he had entered the house on tiptoe, every faculty alert. He had reached the library door just in time to see the final act of the tragedy, to hear the sinister Doctor’s words.
Even while he stood there, his mind was working at lightning speed. His gun was in his pocket. He knew that ordinary bullets would not prevail against this monster, this insane thing who, master of the dead that he was, killed by the very power of his thought.
His eye suddenly lighted upon the rosette of swords hanging above the fireplace. Walking on tiptoe, he dodged into the room so furtively that Doctor Death, mouthing his dread words to his victim, failed to hear him. Not even the terrified old woman, her eyes taking in every detail of the murder of her master, noted his entrance.
Slowly his hand stole up until it grasped the hilt of a huge cavalry saber. He jerked it from its place and swung it with a side stroke that severed the elephantine head from the gigantic body.
He leaped back, the saber uplifted again.
For, even as the head—the eyes still open and glaring balefully—dropped to the floor, the great fingers tightened again around the Inspector’s throat. The powerful will of Doctor Death remained in the gigantic body of the idiot, even though that body was chopped to pieces.
Headless, the body of the bloated dead thing still leaned over the form of the unconscious Inspector, the fingers locking themselves about his throat like the jaws of a bulldog.
The saber fell across the huge wrists, severing the hands from the arms. For an instant longer the body stood balanced upon its huge feet. Then it swayed dizzily and landed with a thud upon the floor.
But the cold, dead fingers retained their iron grip about the throat of the dying policeman. Jimmy Holm seized them and pried them apart. It required all of his strength to pull them from the bull-like throat.
Inspector Ricks slumped back against the cushions, the air sucking into his lungs in great gasps while Jimmy Holm, jerking his knife from his pocket, cut the thongs which bound the big detective’s wrists.
On the floor where it had fallen, the bestial face of the dead thing glared up at them, a deadly hatred in its eyes. Its thick lips opened and it spoke.
“You win, Jimmy!” it gurgled. “Again you win. But my time is coming. When next I strike at you it will be through someone else—through someone you love!
“I am not dead,” the bodiless head went on. “I merely confined my spirit within this body for the nonce in order to carry out my purpose. You have destroyed the body and now my spirit goes—to come to you again in another guise...”
A fog-like vapor filled the room. For an instant it circled and gathered itself into a compact mass—a gray, opaque, formless wraith. Then, like a puff of smoke in the wind, it disappeared.
Jimmy Holm sat in the back room on the upper floor of an obscure hotel in a tiny eastern village and sucked moodily at his pipe. The room was a large one. In the center was a big table around which were placed twelve chairs. The curtains had been pulled down and every bit of light excluded. There was but one door. In the hallway in front of it several grimfaced men were grouped. In spite of their efforts to make themselves inconspicuous, there was a certain something about them that marked them for what they were—policem
en.
Another knot of men lingered beneath the windows. Upon the roof was mounted a machine gun. The squad of men who served it lay face downward, only their heads protruding above the coping. Half a hundred more were hidden in the basement; the grounds were filled with them. They lurked furtively in the shadows, taking advantage of every tree and bush. Yet the casual passerby would have noted nothing unusual, so carefully did they keep from sight.
Chapter XIX
The Secret Twelve
SAVE for the fact that more tourists than usual seemed to have been in the little town during the day, the inhabitants knew nothing of the honor that was to be bestowed upon them that night. Only the proprietor of the little hotel knew—he and his most trusted help. For the building was the property of a man high in the circles of the nation. On several occasions in the past meetings had been held here which, had news of them leaked out, might have upset the balance of the nations of the world.
One by one, two by two, men had drifted into the little town and, apparently, left again. In reality, they had driven to a certain seldom frequented place, their lights extinguished, parked their cars in the darkness and after night had fallen, furtively returned to their posts of duty.
Jimmy Holm looked up as the door opened and a man, his coat collar pulled up, the brim of his black hat drawn down over his eyes, entered. He shook hands, then seated himself at the table. As he turned his head, his profile showed, shrewd, direct, a man with a bulging brow and a hooked, predatory nose. It was Amos Bosworthy, the financier.
As he seated himself, he glanced down at his wrist watch.
“Two o’clock,” he muttered. “The others?”
“Should be here immediately,” Holm answered.
An instant later Thomas Whipple, the airplane magnate, and Professor Phineas Drexell of Yale University came in together. Like Bosworthy, they were muffled to the eyes. They were followed by Professor Levi Henworthy of Harvard, who came alone. Then came James Peabody and Herbert C. Hallover, both of the Eastern Electric. Doctor Daniel Darrow, the great chemist, whose home was in Philadelphia, was the seventh.
EIGHT of the twelve chairs were filled. The eight men smoked in silence, only their occasional glances toward the door showing that anything out of the ordinary was about to transpire. Again the door opened and a bulky man entered. They nodded. He was known by sight to all of them as Milton David, head of the David Detective Agency, the greatest private detective bureau in the world. As he seated himself a small swarthy, black-eyed individual slid through the half-opened door and seated himself without a word.
“Tony Caminetti!” David whispered to the man seated beside him. “Uncrowned king of New York’s underworld.”
The eleventh man to enter was a tall, thin individual well past the prime of life. He nodded briefly and glanced at Holm. It was Charles W. Blake, one of the heads of the United States Secret Service.
“Are we all here?” he asked.
Holm nodded.
Blake stepped to the door and opened it to its full width. Then, as the twelfth man stepped into the room, the others, recognizing him, leaped to their feet.
“Gentlemen!” said Blake, “The President of the United States!”
For a moment no one spoke. The President nodded and took his place at the head of the table.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “be seated, please. We have much to do tonight and little time in which to do it. We will proceed to business immediately.”
Again they seated themselves. They were all alert now, all eyes focused on the gray-haired, kindly faced man at the head of the table. He looked at them sadly, his fingers strumming lightly on the arm of his chair.
“I have called you gentlemen together for the purpose known to all of us,” he said. “The very foundations of our government are threatened. Murder runs rampant throughout the nation—murder different from that to which we have been accustomed—and God knows the shedding of blood at any time is horrible enough. Some of you have been threatened, are fugitives from this man who calls himself Doctor Death—forced to hide away like criminals in order to protect yourselves. To you I have no excuses to offer for this gathering. To such of you as have not been threatened, I have this single excuse: gentlemen, the country needs you.”
His voice had grown crisper as he talked. Now his face settled down into stern lines. He leaned forward, his kindly gray eyes glittering with suppressed anger.
“For the first time in the history of this glorious nation of ours, our leading men have been forced to skulk in the dark—to meet in such obscure places as this, under guard. At the very beginning of our national existence our forefathers were forced to do the same thing. The enemy we face today is a thousand times more powerful. We face the greatest menace of all time. The forces of hell have been unleashed in our midst and no man knows where they will strike next.”
His voice dropped. The others leaned forward in order that not a word be missed.
“This is a big job,” he went on. “I summoned you here to this out-of-the-way place because I, the President of the United States, dared not take a chance of meeting you elsewhere, lest it endanger your lives and mine. The plan which I am about to propose to you is not my own. It’s from the head of the detective bureau of the largest city of the land—Inspector Ricks—who even now lies on a bed of pain in a hospital as a result of an encounter with this fiend who calls himself Doctor Death.
“The job we have is a problem in surgery. We must remove a malignant growth from the body politic with as little injury as possible to the patient. Inspector Ricks believes that he has evolved such a scheme. Feeling himself incompetent to handle the task himself, he has asked that it be turned over to another whom he believes better fitted by study and force of circumstances to cope with this menace than any other man.
“The person to whom he wishes to delegate the task of scotching this menace is our young friend here, Mr. James Holm. I, as the leader of this nation, pledge to him my unqualified support and the cooperation of the entire forces of the nation—including the army and the navy. I ask the remainder of you to do the same. What do you say?”
For a moment there was silence as all eyes were turned on Jimmy Holm. Then Blake, of the United States Secret Service, nodded with impressive solemnity.
“My men are yours to command, Mr. Holm,” he said quietly.
One by one the others gave their promise. Tony Caminetti was the last to speak.
“Gentlemen,” he said in an awed voice, “for the first time in my life I find myself on the side of law and order. I am accepted on the same plane with men who have been little more than myths to me. You can guess that the sensation is different from anything that I’ve ever experienced. I haven’t got the faintest idea where I and the men and women under me come in.
“But, Mr. President and gentlemen, I pledge you my word that, from the moment I reach my quarters until this menace is killed, organized crime in these United States will cease, so that the officers of the law may devote their entire time to the task of saving the nation. I pledge you, Mr. President and Mr. Holm, the word of Tony Caminetti—the word that has never been broken to friend or foe.”
His black eyes sparkled as he spoke. He rose to his feet, hands resting on the edge of the table, face turned toward the head of the nation.
“The forces of the underworld will work hand in hand with the officers of the law,” he went on. “I pledge you that, gentlemen.”
“And when Tony Caminetti gives his word, by God, he keeps it!” Milton David said explosively.
All eyes were turned on Holm again. In a low voice, he briefly outlined his plan. They sat incredulous—open mouthed. Yet no one disagreed.
“God in Heaven! Who would have realized that we, a group of educated men living in the Twentieth Century, would be forced to go back to medieval methods in order to cope with this menace?” Thomas Whipple exclaimed.
“We are all agreed, then,” the President said as he arose to go. “Dayli
ght will soon be here, gentlemen, and the coming of the sun must find us back in our accustomed places if this plan is to be successful. The Secret Twelve—the strangest organization that has ever been formed in this beloved country of ours—will adjourn. Until further notice, we will take our orders from Mr. Holm. He becomes our chief. Is there anything else to come before this meeting?”
Jimmy Holm held up a restraining hand. “But one thing more, Mr. President,” he said. “I have told you that the woman I love is in the hands of this monster. Of late I have had a feeling that she has been trying to break through the veil of space to talk to me. But, surrounded as she is, by the creatures of this man who calls himself Death, her thought waves have failed to reach me. Our first task is to find Death. Are we to wait until he strikes again or are we to carry the battle to him? I believe in taking the offensive.
“Nina Fererra can assist us in carrying this fight to our enemy.
“But we must break down this resistance that has been built up against us—against the thought waves which she is trying to send to me. I suggest, therefore, Mr. President, that you proclaim next Sunday as a day of prayer throughout the nation. Ask every man, woman and child to send their thought waves hurtling through space against this monster. With millions of such emanations filling the air, it is my belief that the menace will be temporarily crippled and that, through Nina Fererra, we will get in touch with Doctor Death.”
The President bowed gravely.
“Your orders will be carried out,” he said.
None noticed the strange glitter that came into the deep set eyes of Professor Levi Henworthy of Harvard. His fingers, resting on the arms of his chair, clinched until the knuckles showed white. Yet he gave no sign as he, like the others, nodded assent.
Chapter XX
The Stolen Body