by Harold Ward
The lips of the girl continued to move. She had never ceased her praying. Through it all, the perfect shoulders rose and fell as she kept going the big pump that was maintaining the clean pure air.
The maniac leader stopped short. Then a leering grin crept over his bloodstained face.
“They are prisoners, too!” he shouted, turning to the others and pointing to the shackles on their feet. “See, they are fastened like we were fastened. We will free them so that we may have more fighters when the keepers come back with help.”
The others crowded inside, grimacing and chortling with glee. The giant brought the axe against the side of the ring to which Nina was fastened. A second later she was free as he smashed the padlock which held her shackles.
A dozen men and women were swarming over Jimmy and Ricks—horrible creatures, frothing at the mouth, their eyes filled with lust and desire to kill. They came running from the corridor, bringing crowbars and files. In the twinkling of an eye the two officers were freed.
Holm pointed down at the hose through which the gas was still hissing softly. In vain did he try to explain to the maniac leader the meaning of that low, almost indistinguishable sound. The gorilla-like creature refused to listen.
“Come, friend!” he snarled. “Come with me. We will kill! Kill! Kill!”
THE steel-lined cell was a seething, howling mass of lust-inflamed, blood-maddened humanity; an inferno filled to overflowing with grotesque, half-naked, gibbering men and women milling about in an indescribable babel of excitement and sound. They surrounded the detectives, pulling at them, shouting, laughing, shrieking. They howled maledictions at their former keepers. They leaped, cavorted, cursed. Each tried to shout above his neighbor.
The gorilla-like leader towered over them, his bloody, hairy face twisted into a look of maniacal cunning. He held up his bloodstained axe and howled a stentorian command. The others surged around him, echoing and reechoing his words until the room was a saturnalia of sound. Turning, they rushed out into the dimly lighted corridor, carrying Holm, Nina and Ricks before them.
The gloomy passageway was piled high with the dead. The head keeper lay to one side, his head a battered thing of pulpy flesh and bone. His two bullies were sprawled on the floor close by, the face of each beaten to a gory, unrecognizable mass. The maniac-leader stopped his mad rush to wreak his vengeance upon their lifeless bodies.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” he shouted, raising his bloodstained axe and shrieking his battle cry above the tumult and confusion.
He seized Holm by the shoulder, and drew him closer, pointing with a forefinger from which the blood still dripped to where a pile of the inmates, slaughtered by the clubs and bullets of the keepers, lay in front of their wrecked cells.
“See? See?” he gibbered. “See how they killed us—as they would have killed you? Then we killed them. I told them that we would.”
He rocked his huge, hairy body from side to side, shrieking with merriment at sight of the dead keepers.
“There are others!” he yelled, turning to his followers. “Many others! We must kill them all. Let no one escape. The old man and the girl! We must kill them, also!”
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” the frenzied mob babbled. “Kill them all! Kill them all!”
THE leader dashed down the sloping darkened corridor which led deeper into the bowels of the earth. The others followed, carrying the detectives before them. The ape-man brought up suddenly in front of a cage set back in a pocket of darkness. A hideous face, the bestial lips parted in a snarl over long, yellow fangs, glared out at them from behind the iron bars. It was a grisly, bloated face, covered with long, matted hair; its eyes shone in the darkness like those of a cat.
The giant, shrieking with excitement, crashed his axe against the bars. The thing on the other side shrank back into the corner, his body trembling like that of a frightened animal. Again and again the huge, bloodstained maniac brought his weapon against the iron door, battering, hammering, prying. The frenzied mob behind him danced and gibbered, roaring its approval in a medley of discordant sounds.
Finally a bolt came. The giant leader seized the bar with his naked hands. Bracing his feet, he gave a mighty heave. Holm saw the huge muscles knot together as the big man threw every ounce of his maniacal strength into the effort. The flat iron bar gave way.
The hairy, naked thing cowered farther back in the corner, squealing with fear and rage. Using the bar that he had torn off, the giant secured a leverage and ripped the door to pieces.
“Come, friend!” he shouted, the others crowding behind him to gaze over his shoulder. “Come with us while we kill... kill... kill...”
He stepped inside the cage.
The naked, bestial thing leaped at him, burying its slavering fangs in his throat. The giant brushed him aside as one brushes away a mosquito. The thing leaped again. The mad leader crashed its head against the stone floor until it was a bloody pulp.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” he shouted, throwing the lifeless body back into the corner of the cage.
Turning, he raced outside again. Picking up his axe, he took his place at the head of his maddened followers.
The air was filled with a low humming. For an instant the tumult had died down. The leader cocked his head to one side and listened with a leering grin.
A sudden idea came to Holm—an idea so startling that it almost froze his blood. His heart pounded. Death had told him that here were located the huge machines by which he was impregnating the earth with the decomposing rays.
If he could get the mad mob inside that power house—if he could control them long enough to show them what he wanted—there was yet a chance of circumventing Death in his efforts to undermine the government buildings.
He turned to the huge leader and pointed to the door.
“Listen!” he said. “There are machines inside—the machines with which the old doctor makes his tortures.”
The madman twisted his face into a grimace. He seemed about to turn away. Then the sound of the motors attracted him again.
He held up his hand for silence, The others crowded around him, shrieking the louder, demanding what it was he heard. He grinned apishly and, turning, charged toward the metal-covered door at the end of the corridor. Raising his axe above his head, he brought it down upon the lock with force enough to shatter it into a thousand pieces.
Chapter XIX
Lunatic Saturnalia
IT was a small room in which they found themselves—the switchboard room of the power plant in the other room. The walls were covered with huge switchboards, dials and delicate electrical instruments. The leader charged at them with a shout of triumph.
From the door of the other side came half a dozen men. Huge, stolid, clad in overalls and jumpers, they were evidently the attendants in charge of the electrical machinery. They marched with military precision, lifting their feet mechanically, moving them ahead like automatons. Their glassy eyes stared straight to the front.
Death stood in the open doorway behind them, Charmion peering over his shoulder. Recognizing the futility of halting the insane horde with the power of his thought, because they had no brains on which he could work, he was sending his Zombis—the animated corpses with metallic-filled veins—in an effort to stop the work of destruction.
Holm and his companions, pushed into a corner by the rush of the maniacs, unable to get back through the door, watched the scientist’s every move. He leaned forward, his cavernous eyes glaring like those of an animal at bay, his high forehead creased in a mighty effort of concentration.
The sight of the Zombis filled the mad leader with the lust for battle. He leaped forward, his voice raised in a wild whoop. His bloodstained axe crashed down upon the head of the first of the cadaver phalanx; the skull was split like a pumpkin, the weapon burying itself to the hilt. The mad giant twisted it loose. The Zombi went down beneath the force of the blow, only to rise again and continue its slow, inexorable march.
They were in the
midst of the maniacal horde now. Their arms were stretched forward, their cold, dead fingers searching for the shrieking, gibbering throats. Fists beat futilely against their clammy faces...
They choked... squeezing the throats of their victims until the tortured lungs collapsed. Then, hurling them aside, they turned to the next. They crushed the maddened mob beneath the heels of their heavy shoes, stomping the life out of those they did not choke.
The lunatics broke and ran, only to rally again at the wild command of their insane leader. Again and again he led their charge against the walking cadavers of Doctor Death.
In the giant Death recognized an opponent worthy of his steel. He concentrated his whole force against this one man. The dead things attacked from all sides. The Goliath babbled happily as he struck at them. Insane though he was, he reminded Jimmy of the knights of old—men who went to their death singing songs of triumph.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” he howled his war cry again and again as, looking over the heads of his attackers, he rallied his frenzied followers.
His axe flashed and circled, crashing down with force enough to kill an ox. But still they came. A Zombi seized him by the throat, its fingers closing like a vise. The howling maniac shortened the hold on his axe and severed the arms at the wrists. The hands still clung, leech-like, to his bullish throat as he charged into the fray; the stumps grotesquely protruding ahead of him.
That one man diverted the tide of battle. Against him Death’s power of thought had no effect because his mind was already gone. And so gigantic was his strength that the six Zombis were unable to conquer him as they had won momentarily against the others. Half of the maniacs were down, the breath crushed out of them by the animated cadavers; the mad fiend rallied the others with his wild battle cry of “Kill!”
Filled with the blood lust, they formed around him again, tearing, biting scratching—gouging at flesh that knew no pain.
Time after time the Zombis were driven back by sheer force of numbers. Again and again they rallied, their fingers ever groping for the throats of their victims.
For an instant Jimmy Holm wondered why Death had not provided his creatures with weapons. The sight of the armless hands clinging to the throat of the mad man told him the reason. Death was placing his dependence in the strength of the dead things.
Through it all the giant madman whooped and hewed and slashed—chopping away until all opposition was crushed beneath his terrific rushes.
Death knew that he was defeated. A look of surprise crept over his cadaverous face. Turning, he darted back into the room from whence came the steady hum of the great dynamos and generators.
Holm, forced into a corner by the battle that was going on around him, had thrust Nina behind him, the better to protect her. Ricks, his great fists doubled, stood on the other side. Death, concentrating on the fight of the Zombis, had not seen them.
Here was an opportunity to seize him—an opportunity that none of them overlooked. With a quick word to the Inspector to follow with Nina, Jimmy dodged through the milling throng and into the larger room.
The mad giant was ahead of him. Horribly injured though he was, the blood gushing from a score of wounds, staggering as he ran, he yet covered the ground faster than did the older man. His axe was raised, ready to strike.
Charmion was ahead of Death. She glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes filled with indescribable terror.
“Kill! Kill!” the mad giant roared. “Kill them both! The old man and the girl!”
“Kill! Kill!” echoed the mob in the rear.
THE underground room was gigantic—colossal. It was filled to capacity with great generators, dynamos, coils, and other electrical machinery. Along the wall spike-like rods shot sparks in a single direction. Holm knew at a glance that this was the apparatus with which Death was filling the Washington area with the rays which were causing the electrolysis in the government buildings. The machinery was on full force. The very atmosphere seemed charged with electricity.
There was a slight incline which led to a narrow door at the opposite end of the great power plant. Charmion, a few paces ahead of the sinister scientist, reached it first and tugged madly at the bar. She was unable to raise it. Death, leaping to her aid, reached over her shoulder and seized the fastening.
She turned to make room for him. The high heel of her tiny slipper touched a drop of oil on the slippery incline. She fell, sliding down the sloping ramp straight at the feet of the frenzied mad man.
The giant’s bloodshot eyes gleamed balefully as he raised his great axe above his head.
“Kill! Kill!” he shouted. “Kill them both!”
“Kill! Kill!” the others echoed.
Holm, a pace behind and running at an angle to them, leaped—straight through the air—launching his body, his arm outthrust. He caught the handle as the weapon descended.
They went down in a pile at the bottom of the ramp. For an instant they wrestled for the axe. Then the giant’s body went limp from Holm’s telling thrust and the weapon was in Holm’s possession.
Charmion was already on her feet and almost to the door. Ricks, lumbering up behind, Nina by his side, was unable to reach her.
“Thank you, Jeemee!” she shouted.
Death had wrested the door open. She dodged through after him. He whirled, slamming it in their faces. They heard the bolt jammed home.
Holm, the bloodstained axe still in his hand, leaped away from the giant. The maniac’s eyes were glazed. The dead fingers of the Zombi still clung to his bull-like throat. He kicked spasmodically. Then his limbs stiffened and they knew that he was dead.
From behind lumbered the maniacal horde. Holm whirled, holding the axe aloft. To the crazed things, it was a gonfalon—a standard to rally around. Gibbering, shrieking, dancing and cavorting, they greeted their new leader with the same enthusiasm they had given the old.
Holm dodged across the room to the great control switch. He jerked it backward. The machinery suddenly ceased its humming.
Raising the axe, he crashed it against the nearest generator.
The maniacs, seeing their leader engaged in the work of demolishing the gigantic apparatus, howled with glee. Around them lay tools—bars, pieces of iron, steel, wrenches. They seized them and followed his lead.
Under the battering and hammering of the lunatics the huge power plant was soon a total wreck.
Holm turned to Nina and Ricks, the perspiration pouring off his face.
“The work is completed,” he said. “Let us go while these poor mad things are thus engaged.”
He stopped suddenly.
From the corridor through which they had entered came a dull boom! The rattle of earth! The crash of rocks!
With Holm leading the way, they turned and raced back toward the door through which Death and Charmion had escaped.
They were not yet half way across the floor when there came a second explosion. Another crash! The vaulted stone ceiling dropped before them, driving them back almost to the wall. Explosion followed explosion in quick succession. The entire north end of the cavern fell forward with a mighty roar.
The maniacal horde, shrieking and gibbering with fear, raced to Holm excitedly.
Death, in retreating, had followed his usual methods. The premises had been mined—planted with explosives. Now, from some secure spot, he was setting off the charges—burning his bridges behind him.
THEY were trapped inside the underground power house with a group of homicidal maniacs.
And when he found, he struck.
From the far west came the news of Kennedy’s death. Hector Kennedy, the brilliant young scientist who had been a protege of Professor Henworthy of Harvard. Kennedy, the man who, though still in his teens, had been thought worthy to take that distinguished man’s place on the faculty. Death had found him while he drove his car; he was on his way to the Yellowstone, it was said.
As in the case of Wentzell, the verdict had been heart failure.
But th
ere were those high in the affairs of the nation who knew the truth. Kennedy had been murdered—struck down by the powerful thought waves of the diabolical old man who had declared a war of extermination on all scientists.
Hypnosis, developed far beyond the tenth degree known to science, had been the cause of death. Through the air had gone the sinister old man’s will. And that will had been—death!
With the restraining hand of Jimmy Holm, head of the Secret Twelve, off the helm, the newspapers ran wild. The great presses spewed forth their editions at hourly intervals during the day and night. Excited groups gathered on the streets.
The police were unable to control the mobs. There was talk of calling out the militia. Kennedy had been the second man of science to be laid low within the week. Was Doctor Death responsible? The press asked the question again and again. What had happened?
Vainly, the officials attempted to show that it had not been proven that Death had had a finger in the pie. The deaths of the two men engaged in the same line of work and under almost similar circumstances was, they stoutly maintained, a coincidence. To which answer the press howled in derision. Something had gone wrong. An explanation was demanded.
Chapter XX
Clew to Horror
WITH Jimmy Holm, Inspector Ricks and Nina Fererra, the three people whom he hated more than all others combined—out of the way, Doctor Death ran amok.
When Holm had been constantly on his trail, he had been forced to keep a weather eye open while he worked. Now there was no necessity for such precaution and he devoted his entire time to putting into execution the threats that he had made.
For the first time in newspaper history a great news gathering organization had apparently broken its given word. Over the wires trickled the information that Death had been tricked—that the men gathered in the little island fortress were only “stooges”—people placed there for the purpose of diverting Death’s attention while his intended victims fled to cover.