by Harold Ward
The man at the foot of the table half rose from his seat, then dropped back again, his face drained of blood.
“Heaven help us!” he exclaimed.
The others leaned forward, their faces blanched and terror-stricken.
“I have left things just as I received them,” the President continued. “I wanted you to see the latest horror this monster has perpetrated. It is so weird—so fearful—so damnable—that words cannot express it.”
HE bent forward and with fingers that trembled unlocked the brief case that lay before him. From it he took a small shoe box done up in brown wrapping paper.
“This arrived at the White House by special delivery late this afternoon,” the President continued. “Look!”
He lifted the lid. The others crowded around, peering over his shoulder. In the box was the tiny figure of a man, perfect in every detail, yet smaller than a new-born infant.
“Dennison!” Blake, chief of the United States Secret Service exclaimed. “Dennison, vice president of the United States! Dead! His body reduced to that!”
“Struck down by some new hellish contrivance of the sinister monster who menaces the world,” the President said bitterly. “Here is the note that came with it.”
He tossed a card upon the table. Upon it was written in the crabbed chirography they had all learned to know so well:
Abdicate. Turn the nation over to me. Make no move against me or he who is next to you will share a like fate.
Doctor Death.
All eyes were turned to the Secretary of State who sat beside his chief.
“Now that the vice-president is dead, you are next in line, Mr. Secretary,” Blake of the Secret Service said huskily.
The Secretary of State stirred uneasily.
“I know this monster too well! I admit that I am afraid—fearfully so,” he said candidly. “Nevertheless, I vote, Mr. President, that we immediately put into effect our plan for carrying the offensive to this man. A man can die but once, as some one has so aptly remarked. We must scotch this menace—kill him as we would a mad dog—”
He stopped suddenly, a peculiar look creeping over his wrinkled face.
“Water!” he gasped.
A man leaped forward with a glass of water. The Secretary of State raised it to his lips with an effort. It dropped to the floor with a crash.
“I’m burning up!” he said, his voice turning to a hoarse cackle.
“Look!” Ricks of the homicide bureau shrieked. “He’s shriveling up!”
For a moment only the great statesman stood before them. His face was growing thin and angular. His clothes slipped from his body in a pile at his feet. Then he, too, dropped.
They leaped backward, panic-stricken, their lips mouthing prayers, recoiling before the horrible tragedy that was taking place before their eyes.
For, so swift was the transformation, that the huge figure of the Secretary was already reduced to that of a small boy. He grew smaller and smaller...
The figure moved—feebly. The mouth opened and closed as this thing that had been a man glared up at them with eyes that were sightless, the tiny, doll-like head swaying slowly from side to side.
Then it slumped to the floor. The Secretary of State was dead.
For what seemed an eternity no one spoke. Darrow, at the foot of the table, always a nervous man, pitched forward in a swoon.
IT was the President who spoke first. His voice was dry and husky. He was forced to clear his throat in order to speak above a whisper.
“You have seen, gentlemen!” he exclaimed.
He turned his eyes with an obvious effort away from the body of his dead friend—from the hideous caricature of a man that lay on the little pile of clothes at his feet.
“Horrible! Diabolical!” he said. “We must move—do something at once. The whole world is menaced. This—this devil must be killed. What is the answer to be?”
Again there was silence. Each man was busy with his thoughts. Then Blake of the Secret Service spoke:
“We must start at the beginning again, Mr. President,” he said. “Under such conditions there is only one fitted to take charge—Holm.”
The President nodded affirmatively and turned to the others.
“Are we all agreed?” he demanded.
There was a general nodding of heads. The President turned to the youngest of the eleven who remained.
“Again I call upon you, Captain Holm.” he said. “In the name of the government of the United States, I again place you in supreme command of this fight against the greatest menace the world has ever known—against Doctor Death.”
There was a sudden rap on the door. Blake opened it a crack and peered out. A yellow envelope was handed in.
“For you, sir,” he said, passing it to the President.
The President opened it with fingers that trembled.
“From him,” he said. “Listen!”
WHAT I PROMISED DO I PERFORM STOP I SAID THAT I WOULD STRIKE DOWN THE ONE NEXT TO YOU AND I HAVE KEPT MY WORD STOP AGAIN I CALL UPON YOU TO ABDICATE IN MY FAVOR STOP I WILL RID THE WORLD OF ALL SCIENCE AND INVENTION AND START THINGS AT THE BEGINNING AGAIN STOP GOD’S PLAN HAS GONE AWRY AND I HAVE FORMED A TEMPORARY ALLIANCE WITH THE DEVIL STOP MY ORDERS ARE BRIEF STOP YOU WILL HAVE A WEEK IN WHICH TO CARRY OUT MY COMMAND STOP AT THE END OF THAT TIME YOU AND YOUR CABINET MUST HAVE ABDICATED IN MY FAVOR THE PATENT OFFICE MUST BE DESTROYED AND WORK ON ALL INVENTIONS CEASED STOP ALL SCIENTISTS MUST BE SEGREGATED IN A SINGLE GROUP SO THAT I MAY STRIKE THEM DOWN AND THE WORK OF DEMOLISHING ALL PUBLIC BUILDINGS MUST BE STARTED IMMEDIATELY STOP REMEMBER I WILL BROOK NO DEVIATION FROM MY PLAN STOP IF CONGRESS IS NOT CONVENED AND WORK STARTED WITHIN THE WEEK I STRIKE AGAIN STOP NEXT TIME THE SLAUGHTER WILL BE GENERAL STOP NOT ONE BUT MILLIONS WILL FALL STOP I DEATH HAVE COMMANDED
DOCTOR DEATH
Doctor Death! The very thought of the sinister old scientist with his skull-like face and gaunt, cadaverous body always brought a chill of dread to Jimmy Holm. Even now, as he wended his way through the hotel lobby, the meeting ended, his muscular body quivered with emotion.
Master of the occult, sorcerer, endowed with the brain of a giant, Death was, as the President had remarked, the greatest menace to civilization the world had ever known. And he still lived. Holm had thought him dead, crushed beneath an avalanche of rock in far-off Egypt.
Egypt! Holm stopped suddenly, his every faculty alert. He was just outside the door of the great hotel when a woman glided past him. A subtle whiff of some exotic perfume assailed his nostrils.
He whirled. A little way off, almost lost in the crowd, was a tall, slender figure. Her hair, silvery-gold, unbobbed, was fastened in a long plait around her head. As she walked away from him she raised her bare, rounded, ivory-like arm in a peculiarly feminine gesture to pat a vagrant wisp in place. Upon her slender wrist was a bangle.
With a quick word of warning to the man at his side, Jimmy Holm leaped forward. That elusive scent! The slender graceful figure. And now that bangle. He remembered it only too well. She had worn it that memorable evening in Egypt when she had held court in front of the pyramid-tomb of Anubis, the jackal-headed god.
No, there could be no mistake. Either Jimmy Holm, keen, astute, though romantic, captain of detectives, was suffering from an optical illusion or the woman ahead of him was Charmion, queen of Set.
There could be but one solution—but one answer to the puzzle. The presence of Charmion on the streets of New York meant that, for some unknown reason, she had come to America with Doctor Death. Death, foiled in his attempts to wrest the secret of reviving the dead from the Egyptian tomb, had brought Charmion back as a consolation prize. Under his spell, she would probably assist him.
Luck was breaking for Jimmy Holm; he had but to follow Charmion and she would lead him to the one man he sought.
The streets were filled with the usual after-theatre crowd. Holm fought his way through the press, but was unable to gain on the woman ahead. She was walking faste
r. Once she turned and glanced back at him. He was certain that he was right. It was Charmion. They passed a picture house which was vomiting forth its vast audience. By the time Holm forced his way through the woman was half a block away, still walking rapidly. He quickened his pace.
She turned the corner onto a darkened thoroughfare, then stood waiting in the shadows, an enigmatic smile hovering over her beautiful face.
“Jimmee!” she exclaimed, leaping forward and seizing both hands of the man who rounded the corner excitedly in her own. “I am mooch glad to see you!”
A car, its lights extinguished, slipped noiselessly up to the curb. A man leaped out.
Something bright—something that glistened in the moonlight—appeared in his bony hand.
Chapter II
Death by Shrinking
THE detective whirled on his heel, his hand groping for his revolver, as he felt the needle scratch his neck.
A sinister face stared into his own—a thin, gaunt face with high cheek bones and eyes that glittered like the twin fires of hell. The face of Doctor Death.
A feeling of lethargy swept over him. He was dropping... dropping... dropping...
He heard people running toward them, excited voices. A policeman shouted...
They were moving. He struggled to fight off the horrible feeling that was gripping him—the thing that was paralyzing every muscle in his body. In spite of all his efforts, it was creeping through him faster and faster... He heard the low silvery laughter of the Egyptian siren.
“Eet was so easy,” she said.
Then came oblivion.
Twisting here and there, dashing around corners, the car threw off pursuit and came to a stop in a dark gloomy alley in the rear of an abandoned church. Death gave a quick signal. A door was opened. He swung the car onto a ramp; the door swung shut behind him as he allowed the big car to coast through the darkness into a huge basement room.
A single tiny light sprang into life in the ceiling. Death leaped from behind the wheel and signalled to two of the figures standing back among the shadows. They shuffled forward, their movements jerky and mechanical, their eyes staring straight to the front. They were Zombi—animated corpses—men given the semblance of life by the injection of metallic solution into their veins.
“Quick!” he snarled to Charmion. “The injection I gave him is short-lived. He will recover soon. Bind him in a chair and place him in front of the machine.”
The Zombi picked up the detective and carried him to a chair. Charmion seized a rope and wound it around him until he was trussed like a fowl for the basting.
“He ees readee,” she exclaimed.
Death was jerking a series of switches connected with the huge piece of mechanism slightly resembling a motion picture projecting machine, in front of which a large silvered screen gleamed through the semi-darkness. The stage set, he turned to the unconscious man in the chair. Taking a small hypodermic case from his pocket, he extracted a needle and, jamming it into the other’s flesh, pressed home the plunger.
The detective groaned, shuddered, opened his eyes and glared about wildly for an instant.
“Fool!” Death snarled. “As usual, you fell into my trap.”
His sunken eyes gleamed wildly. He leaned forward, his mouth drooling spittle. his cadaverous form twitching with anger.
“Traitor!” he snarled again. “I should have struck you down when I struck the Secretary. But no; I wanted you here where I could work on you alone, Jimmy. I wanted to see you writhe beneath my death-dealing rays—to gloat over you!”
He held up his left arm. It was stiff, showing an ill-healed break at the wrist. The wrist had been broken when the lid of the Egyptian sarcophagus had fallen on Death’s arm, as a result of Holm’s interference.
“That came from my kindness to you in letting you live before,” he snapped. “But for you, the world would already be within my grasp. But, now—now, I must start at the beginning again.”
With a sudden motion, he threw on the switch. A thousand tiny sparks leaped and scintillated from the electrodes. The air was filed with a hellish blue-green light.
“Look!” he exclaimed.
Upon the screen appeared one of the busiest streets in the city. But now it was almost deserted. Death swung the camera-like device from side to side until he had found that for which he sought. It was a policeman, swinging wearily down the sidewalk, gazing up occasionally at the buildings on either side. At the corner was call box. He unlocked it, picking up the receiver to make his report.
“My range finder,” the scientist chuckled. “With it, I was able to gaze in on your meeting tonight and strike down my victim before your eyes.
“Suffice to say that it is a step ahead of television, inasmuch as it needs no sending apparatus, taking up the waves as they come through the ether and condensing them again on the delicate screen upon which you are gazing. Worked in combination with my other device it is, I think you will agree, a masterpiece. Now watch closely.”
He stepped to a nearby bit of apparatus and threw on another switch. Turning to the first piece of mechanism, he twisted a crank as a photographer focuses his camera; it seemed to cut out all background, leaving the figure of the policeman standing in bold relief against the silvery screen. Again he adjusted a tiny thumbscrew. The policeman grew larger and larger until he monopolized the entire sheet. Every feature of his honest Irish face showed clearly.
“The nice thing about the apparatus—I stumbled upon it by accident, I might say,” Death resumed, “is the fact that it is so delicate that it can be manipulated practically by thought alone.
“Unfortunately, however, I have not yet gotten it to a stage of perfection where I can bring in pictures from localities with which I am not familiar. On the other hand, I can project upon that screen the face and figure of any one I know—even to the exclusion of all others.
“I do not profess to understand entirely how it is done, as I said. It is necessary to vacuumize his brain, as it were, in order to secure the reaction upon the screen. The same metallic mixture that I use in animating my Zombi is used in its manufacture. You note how they respond to my thought waves.”
FOR a moment he forgot his hatred in his joy of explaining the creation of his maddened brain. Then, he leaped forward toward the screen, his gaunt face taut with emotion, his eyes gleaming wildly.
“The accursed policeman!” he snarled. “Watch me strike him down!”
He stopped suddenly as Charmion touched him on the arm. He nodded, his mood suddenly changing.
“I lack the time,” he said.
He swung the gigantic camera-like affair around until it pointed toward the terror-stricken man in the chair.
“The human body,” he said with the air of a teacher lecturing to a class, “contains about two per cent mineral matter—sodium calcium, iron and the like. The remainder is composed of elements which are naturally liquid—largely water. By turning another knob, this machine extracts the water—evaporates it, if you will. It reduces the body to its normal solid chemical constituents, thereby causing it to shrink to the size of a small doll. I can bring that about either instantaneously, as in the case of the Secretary of State, or slowly. In your case, my young friend, it will be as slow as possible.”
He chortled gleefully.
“This machine’s rays are too small for what I need” he went on. “In another retreat is a larger outfit—one that, when I put it together, will circumvent the globe, striking men down by the thousands. But this will suffice for my present needs. I want to see you writhe beneath its rays as the moisture is drained from your body drop by drop. I want to hear you scream to cry to Almighty God for help—to beg me for mercy—the mercy that will be denied you!
“I regret that my apparatus works better in the darkness; I would that I might turn a flashlight onto your face so that I could watch every quiver—every tremor of your body—see the blood drained from your face until it is dry as old parchment—”
/> His hand leaped to the switch.
A revolver cracked. He shrank back, the blood dripping from a flesh wound in his wrist.
From out of the shadows leaped a man.
It was Jimmy Holm!
Doctor Death shrank back, his face drained of its color.
“You!” he exclaimed.
Holm sprang to the man in the chair. His revolver still menacing the sinister scientist, he quickly loosened the bonds with which the other was tied. The man in the chair leaped to his feet and jerked off the wig which covered his thatch of iron-gray hair, and with a swipe of his handkerchief removed the grease paint from his face.
It was Inspector Ricks!
Holm chuckled.
“We knew from what had already transpired that you could, in some manner, look in on what we were doing,” he said. “Therefore, taking no one else into our confidence, Ricks dressed as me for the nonce. We knew that sooner or later you would strike at me. It was Ricks’ idea to assume my role for a while in order that I might shadow the shadower, as it were.
“Your sending Charmion as a lure was a beautifully planned piece of business,” he went on. “Only you failed to take into consideration the fact that we were watching for just such a coup, although we had no idea from which direction it would come.
“At first it was I who followed Charmion, then Ricks took my place. Even she was deceived, for the Inspector is no slouch at acting, as you will admit. I clung to the spare tire of your machine as you whirled through the streets to this place. An old trick, but effective.
“It was planned that, in case I failed to keep on your trail, Ricks would disclose his identity at the last moment, in the hope that you would spare him, since it was I you were really after.
“Luckily, this place was in semi-darkness, else the ruse might have been detected earlier. I was frightened when the policeman started shooting at the car, lest he nick me by mistake. Several of his bullets flew close to me.