by Harold Ward
He overlooked nothing, watching every minute detail, leaving nothing undone, forcing every joint in his phrenetic program to dovetail together. He was a super-criminal—the master mind of all master minds, an arch villain—the greatest intellect in all the world—a modern Aladdin gone wrong, possessed of a magic lamp and persisting in rubbing it the wrong way, bringing forth a genie of evil rather than of good.
What might the man not have made of himself had he allowed his talents to flow in the right direction? Jimmy asked himself.
Standing on the deck of the Sea Gull with his fellow creatures of the tomb as they sailed through the North Atlantic and entered the dreamy Mediterranean, this fact was forced upon Holm more and more. In many respects, the trip would have been a delightful pleasure cruise had it been made under other conditions.
The Zombi had already been accepted by the officers and crew. What little they ate, Death gave them himself, watching carefully to see that no salt entered their meals. They were allowed the freedom of the ship, wandering about, unmolested by the others. It was seldom that Death called upon them. For the time being they were allowed to take their ease.
It was this freedom that eventually gave Jimmy the opportunity for which he was seeking. It was seldom that he appeared on deck in the daytime. He noticed that the others shunned the light and he had no wish to expose himself too often to Doctor Death’s keen gaze.
Without intellect, there was something about the clicking of the wireless that attracted the attention of these walking dead men.
Hour after hour they stood in the door of the wireless shack, Jimmy beside them, watching the dazzling sparks, listening to the click of the messages as they came through the ether. The operator finally learned to accept them, barely looking up as their shadows fell across the doorway.
And out of this Jimmy Holm evolved a great plan. Yet to work it he must wait until conditions were right. He must have darkness and freedom of the deck—a time when none of the crew was about. And, eventually, that opportunity came.
IT was raining. The moon, obliterated by the storm clouds, hid her head and the deck was in complete darkness. Everybody was below. Jimmy Holm, dodging furtively through the tropical downpour, reached the door of the radio shack and, his face again assuming the blank, dull expression of the Zombi, stood watching the operator at work.
“Going to learn the business, old man?” the operator grinned. Then he shuddered.
“Nevertheless, you give me the creeps, you walking spook,” he added.
Waiting for the opportunity, Jimmy Holm struck. The wireless man went down like a stunned ox, a look of amazement creeping over his face. He was completely out.
Holm hastily slammed the door, which had been open—for the night was torrid in spite of the storm—then sprang to the key, rapped out:
S-O-S! S-O-S!... Captain James Holm of the New York Detective Bureau on board the yacht Sea Gull somewhere in Mediterranean. Destination, some Egyptian or Algerian port. Doctor Death and Miss Fererra aboard. Notify Inspector Ricks, N. Y.... S-O-S!... S-O-S!...
Again and again he repeated the message. Finally came an answering spark.
“O.K. Sea Gull,” the answer came. “S.S. Snark relaying your S-O-S and signing off.”
Something struck Holm with force enough to make him see stars. He whirled. The radio operator had recovered consciousness and, crawling to his feet, had swung on the detective. Luckily, the latter was nearest to the door. The wireless man tried to rush past him to summon help. Finding his way blocked by the pseudo Zombi, he opened his mouth to sound an alarm. Holm seized him by the throat. For an instant they battled, threshing about the tiny cabin like two huge boa constrictors.
The ship lurched. They went down, Holm on top. The head of his antagonist struck against a corner of the wall cupboard. He collapsed limply in the detective’s arms.
Holm arose. As he turned to go, something peculiar about the attitude of the man on the floor attracted his attention. He bent down, his finger on the wrist of his late antagonist. There was no pulse.
The man was dead.
For a moment Jimmy Holm was in a panic. Above him, he could hear the officer on the bridge as he stomped to and fro. A door opened and someone in loose rubber boots came toward the wireless cabin.
“Shf! Shf! Shf!”
The footsteps stopped just outside as if the newcomer was about to investigate the closed door of the wireless room. Then, evidently changing his mind, he went on.
Holm breathed a sigh of relief. Then his eye fell upon the form of the dead operator again.
He dodged furtively to the door and, opening it a crack, peered out. There was no one in sight.
Straightening up, he allowed his face to drop into the blank, dead stare of the Zombi again and, sliding through the door, shuffled mechanically across the slippery deck. A moment later he was safe in the cubby-hole of a hold which he and the two dead men shared.
The message had been sent. Unless something unforeseen had transpired, Inspector Ricks would already be on his way, half a hundred men, the pick of the nation, at his heels.
The Sea Gull, he had overheard Death tell Nina, was a converted rum runner—a pleasure craft of a millionaire who had been caught by the depression. Now, with the Eighteenth Amendment dead and forgotten, it had been used for smuggling purposes; under Death’s direction it had been refurnished and redecorated until it shone like a naval cruiser. For weeks it had been in dry dock undergoing this process of cleaning and repainting.
“But,” she asked in amazement, “it was only a few days ago that you learned of this Egyptian secret. How, then, did you know that you would need this craft?”
Death chuckled.
“Need I remind you that I have retreats everywhere?” he answered. “I rented this boat for one of them. Perhaps I might never want it; on the other hand, I might need it at a moment’s notice. Therefore, I had it ready, steam up, prepared to sail at any time upon orders from me.”
Again the wonderful sagacity and farsightedness of the mad old wizard had been demonstrated.
The crew, too, as Holm was to learn, had been selected for this very purpose. Captain Cullom, the captain and owner, had commanded the craft in her rum-running, smuggling days. He had a hatred for the law that intensified even that of Doctor Death.
His officers had sailed with him in the old days. All of his men had taken part in deeds without the law. Many of them had served Death before. They asked no questions and answered none. Little wonder that this sinister old scientist, whose face was as well known to all of them as their own, dared appear among them without any attempt at disguise.
THE body of the radio operator was discovered within an hour. It apparently created but little commotion. Holm understood these men well enough to know the reason why. They lived by the sword and died by the sword, asking no quarter and giving none. That the operator had been killed by some member of the crew to satisfy a grudge was taken as a matter of fact.
Meanwhile, Holm searched the horizon next day, seeking the smoke of a ship. Ricks, he was certain, would notify every warship in the Mediterranean the moment he had received the “S-O-S.” Every port would be guarded and every foot of water front patrolled. But, possessed of an uncanny ability to keep out of the beaten tracks of ships, the result of his smuggling and rum-running experience, Captain Cullom suddenly became twice as canny as before. The engines idled lazily, the trim yacht little more than moving through the greenish-blue waters. Did he suspect something? Again Holm was kept in a fever of wonder.
It was mid-afternoon when the lookout gave a hail. Captain Cullom hastily picked up his glasses and surveyed the horizon. Then, with a nod of his head, he issued an order down the tube and the engines sprang into action again. Five minutes later the boat once more came to a stop.
Nearby a buoy floated lazily atop the water.
Holm, leaning over the rail, gave a sudden gasp of astonishment. Then he understood all.
From out of the
heart of the blue-green waters emerged the conning-tower of a submarine. It was less than a hundred yards away as it reared its gleaming deck above the surface amidst swirling eddies, like some great reptile of the deep come up for air. It floated atop the waves, rising and falling with the swell, low, long, narrow, evil-looking.
The circular hatchway opened and a man’s head appeared. For an instant he stood there sizing up the Sea Gull. Then, with a wave of his hand, he dropped back again into the bowels of the ship.
A launch was already being lowered from the yacht. Into this their belongings were lowered, several trips being required for the transfer. Doctor Death stood close by and personally supervised the lowering of the huge box containing the elemental monstrosity and several smaller boxes, the contents of which Holm could only guess at.
Their belongings transferred, the stairway was lowered down the side of the ship and Death and his little party embarked. Five minutes later they had stepped aboard the submarine and passed down the “companion” to the narrow saloon beneath the flush deck.
“Welcome to your new home,” Doctor Death said to Nina with a smile, waving his hand at the room. “I made no attempt to change things since we will be aboard such a short time—a few hours at most. This is, I might say, one of the German subs condemned by the conference. I purchased it at a trifling cost at auction in anticipation of some such necessity.”
Death excused himself and stepped out into the passageway. A moment later he returned. There was a change in him. A subtle change. His manner was furtive. There was a restless tension about him which he seemed unable to hide.
An instant later there was a peculiar, dull explosion, muffled by the iron hulk of the ship.
Holm, seated in the hold beside his glassy-eyed companions, leaped to his feet.
“My God!” he exclaimed hoarsely. He stopped. There came another explosion, the sharp staccato of rifle fire.
The hatchway was open. From the distance he heard frantic calls for help. All was noise and confusion. A man above him laughed harshly.
“Got him the first time!” he shouted.
Holm, the two Zombi following him, shuffled along the companionway to the stairs. Again the calls for help and the tramp of many feet on the deck came floating down through the hatch. The door of the saloon was open. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Death standing in front of a bookcase selecting a volume, apparently unmoved. Nina Fererra stood poised like a bird in the center of the room, her lovely mouth half open, one white hand pressed against her breast, her big amber-colored eyes filled with astonishment and fear.
His companions in his wake, Holm strode stiffly up the companion ladder.
They were closer to the Sea Gull now, a scant fifty yards separating the two crafts. The yacht’s bow showed a gigantic hole through which the water was swirling. Her stern was lifted high in the air. Several of the crew were in the water, clinging to bits of wreckage. Another group was making frantic efforts to launch one of the lifeboats.
The crew of the submarine stood upon the deck. Rifles in hand they were potting the drowning men as coolly as if shooting pheasants on land. One of them had mounted a machine gun amidships. Even as Jimmy stepped onto the deck, he turned it on the men launching the lifeboat. They sprawled about amidst the shrieks of laughter from the butchers on the submarine.
Then, with kaleidoscopic ability, the stern of the Sea Gull seemed to leap higher in the air. Like an arrow falling from above, she plunged downward, her suction dragging those around her down into the cavernous waters like a whirlpool.
The water around the submarine was filled with drowning men—men who begged piteously for mercy and received none—men who shrieked for help and were given bullets.
It was only by the exercise of all the will power he possessed that Holm managed to keep his face unchanged as, his two strange companions behind him, he returned to the hold.
“God!” he said in a husky whisper. “Torpedoed! Murdered by the wholesale.”
He staggered to a chair and dropped into it weakly, covering his eyes with his hands. He had no strength. His legs refused to bear his weight.
From above came the clomp of feet down the companionway and the slam of the hatch as it automatically sealed itself.
The low purr of the great Diesel engines came to his ears. Then a steady, powerful throb which vibrated through the length of the huge steel craft.
They had submerged. And behind them not a man was left to tell the tale.
The Sea Gull had become one of the mysteries of the deep.
Chapter XIV
Meat of Blood
JIMMY HOLM had long since made up his mind to kill Doctor Death. Time after time he had almost attempted it, only to have his plans foiled at the last minute. Some malign influence seemed to guard the sinister old scientist, watching over him constantly, shielding him from all harm.
He felt no qualms of conscience. Would one temporize with a mad dog? he asked himself. Rance Mandarin was a mad dog, a menace to society. And, as such, he must die. But, meanwhile, Jimmy Holm dared make no move that would result in failure. The cost would be too great. Not that he cared for himself. He was already reconciled to any fate that might overtake him. But Nina must be protected at all costs.
Down in the hold with the Zombi, wide-eyed, lying by his side, he tried to sleep. But slumber came to him fitfully—peopled with drowning men, with the shrieks of the dying, with calls for mercy. In his dreams he saw the faces of the men who had been his daily companions on board the Sea Gull floating atop the water; they held their hands out to him appealingly, begging him to help them, though his hands were tied. And again and again he saw the sinister face of Doctor Death leering at him in the darkness, chortling at the misery of his fellow creatures.
Despairing of sleep, he shuffled out of the barren little cubicle and, his two companions with him, climbed mechanically up to the deck. They seemed to have accepted him as their leader, following him wherever he went; he realized that it was the influence of his thought upon them. Their presence aided him, since it made him less conspicuous.
The night was dark and moonless. Ahead was a gray, rock-bound coast toward which the long, low craft was steadily approaching. For’ard in the bow stood a dark figure, muffled from head to foot in a long ulster, conning every detail of the approaching shore.
Holm almost shrieked with joy. It was Death and, for the nonce, alone. There was no mistaking that tall, gaunt figure, even in the darkness. Creeping forward, he put all of his strength behind the blow. The man did not even shriek as he went down, grasping feebly at one of the stanchions... slipping.
Then he slid silently down the smooth, wet sides of the steel monster into the sea.
A song of joy surged through Jimmy Holm’s heart. Doctor Death was dead. Nina Fererra was free! The world safe!
He was tempted to throw aside his disguise and to rush down into the bowels of the submarine and announce himself to the officers and crew. Something held him back. Instead, he dropped into the mechanical shuffle that was becoming almost a part of him now and, followed by the others, clomped mechanically down the companionway ladder.
“We are almost there, my dear!”
Jimmy Holm started. The voice came from the saloon. With an effort he controlled himself, wondering if his ears had deceived him. As he shuffled past the open door he managed to twist his stiff body sideways a trifle.
Doctor Death stood, one arm leaning against the bookcase, in conversation with Nina Fererra.
Again he had failed.
He had killed another man in place of Doctor Death. In the darkness he had mistaken someone else for the sinister monster.
He staggered a trifle as he gained his resting place and dropped weakly to the floor.
Again the sinister influence that surrounded Doctor Death was working in his behalf.
Somewhere in the bowels of the ship a bell tinkled. Instantly the engines slowed down and the boat lost speed. A second later the hatch c
over was closed and locked. He knew from the way the boat ceased pitching and rocking that they had submerged.
There was a scraping sound as if the submarine had grounded on a rock and slipped off.
“We are entering a cavern—one of my retreats—through a submerged tunnel,” he heard Death explain to Nina. “The opening is little larger than the boat and it takes the most careful navigation to negotiate it.”
A moment later the submarine rose to the surface, inside the cavern.
THEY were anchored near a sandy beach, the huge lights of the submarine flooding the whole interior of the great cavern. Several acres in extent, the walls rising like great ramparts on all sides, the roof closed above them like a great dome. The place was enormous, terrible in the intensity of its silence. Their voices, when they spoke, echoed back, reverberating again and again.
The work of unloading the submarine had already been commenced. A narrow flight of steps cut in the rock led up one of the sides of the cavern, twisting back and forth until they lost themselves in the darkness. Up these stairs the various parcels and packages were carried, the crew working at feverish heat.
Death paced back and forth upon the sandy beach superintending the work, a glowing cigar between his lips. A little to one side stood Nina, wrapped in her heavy ulster, for it was cold and chill down here in the bowels of the earth, despite the hot country above. Jimmy and the two Zombi stood a little way off in the darkness. It was with difficulty that he kept his teeth from chattering with the cold. Zombi, he reflected, were not supposed to be affected by the weather.
Finally, the last package carried up, Death waited until the bearers had returned, then turned to Nina.
“Come,” he said, leading the way up the stairs.
Holm noticed that the two officers of the submarine followed—the captain and the engineer. Death had ordered a keg of rum broached and the remainder of the crew were now around it on the beach making merry under the light of the boat’s great lamps.