by Otto Penzler
Sherman stumbled off in the middle of all of them, unresisting. But he did crack up completely when the captain—just as they were taking him inside— folded a yellow wireless message and showed it to the chief officer. “Funny part of it is,” he heard him say, “this came in not fifteen minutes ago, from the New York City police authorities, asking us to hold this man Fowler for them, for blackmail, for preying on people on ships and trains, impersonating a detective abroad. The badge is phony, of course. If our friend here had kept his hands off him for just a quarter of an hour more—”
Sherman didn’t hear the rest of it. There was a rush of blood to his ears that drowned it out, and the laughter of the Furies seemed to shriek around him while they prodded him with white-hot irons. All he knew was that he was going to die for a murder that could have been avoided, in order to cover up one that otherwise would quite probably never have been revealed!
The House of Kaa
Richard Sale
A PROLIFIC WRITER for the pulps, Richard Sale (1911-1993) also wrote such successful novels as Lazarus #7 (1942), Passing Strange (1942), Not Too Narrow—Not Too Deep (1936), which was filmed in 1940 as Strange Cargo, and For the President’s Eyes Only (1971). He devoted most of his writing energy to writing and directing movies, including Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), the Frank Sinatra vehicle Suddenly (1954), and Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955).
Among his pulp fiction, he is most remembered for the reporter/detective series about Daffy Dill, written for Detective Fiction Weekly, and his adventure-packed tales written for Ten Detective Aces about The Cobra, one of the early examples of what is generally known among pulp aficionados as a “Weird Menace” or “Avenger” story. Such characters as The Shadow, The Avenger, The Spider, Operator 5, and The Phantom Detective were among the most popular figures in the pulps. They mainly dressed in costumes, usually with masks, sometimes with capes, as they wreaked justice without bothering about the police, judges, or juries.
In “The House of Kaa,” first published in the February 1934 issue of Ten Detective Aces, villains abound and The Cobra kills them with impunity. No masked avenger is worth his salt unless confronted by larger-than-life crooks, and those in the following story meet the standard.
The House of Raa
Richard Sale
The python mauled the corpse
Scotland Yard thought it strange that the firm of Gorgan & Wilkins imported only regal pythons. But no law was being broken. And they thought it very strange when the Cobra, a lone avenger from India, suddenly appeared in London. But the Cobra had once helped them, so there was no investigation. And the greatest surprise of all was the &Z appearence ofDeen Bradley of the British Intelligence—who had an amazing plan to offer.
JACK KIRK, whose profession had never been anything but sordid murder, paused before the dreary brownstone house on Rokor Street. He glanced all about him in a wary and frightened sort of way.
He could have sworn that some one was following him. If not some one—something! A black, misshapen, baroque giant. A flitting spectre.
Kirk had seen a shadow—only for an instant.
Then the shadow had disintegrated like the whispering dissipation of a gliding ghost.
Kirk shook his shoulders and blamed it on his imagination. He went slowly up the short flight of stairs in the front of the house and glanced at the sign over the door. It read:
GORGAN & WILKINS-REPTILE
IMPORTERS
Quickly, Kirk pulled a key from his pocket, inserted it in the lock, and opened the door. He entered with alacrity, slamming it after him.
The main hall was dark as pitch. But Kirk knew where he was going. He ascended the long, creaking staircase to the second floor of the dreary place. A solitary light on the second floor led him to a door marked “Office.”
He rapped sharply four times and entered.
Three men were in the room. He recognized them as Maxie Gorgan, John Wilkins, and the man from India, Went worth Lane. They had been talking but now they looked up at him.
“Sit down, Jack,” Gorgan smirked. “Lane here is reporting on our—ah—Indian importations.” He grinned knowingly.
Kirk smiled and sat down. Lane bit his lip angrily.
“You can be as sarcastic as you like, Maxie,” he snapped, “but I tell you it’s so. I don’t know about this end, but I do know that the police are close to catching us in Bombay. There was an American operative on my trail for several days before I left for London. You know, the one we checked on.”
“What do they suspect you of?” Gorgan leered. “Maybe they think you’re maltreating snakes!” He laughed harshly. “Listen, Lane, you’re an agent for a company. You’re an importer of reptiles from India.”
“But the trouble is—the only reptiles I ever import to you are regal pythons. It’s damned suspicious.”
“If you’re afraid—” Gorgan began coldly.
Lane leaped to his feet, his eyes blazing.
“You want me to deny I am. Well, I’m not lying for any one. And you can’t make me! I am afraid! And I’m going to get out!”
Gorgan eyed Wilkins surreptitiously and nodded. Kirk, watching the proceedings, was mildly amused. He failed to see what had gotten Lane’s wind up so. Lane had been a good reliable man on the Bombay end.
“Just a second, Lane,” Wilkins purred softly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we’ve misjudged you. We don’t want you to quit.”
“No,” Gorgan added with a trace of acerbity, “you can’t quit.”
“Well, I’m going to nevertheless,” Lane declared stridently. His voice lowered as he leaned forward. “Did you ever hear of the Cobra?” he whispered.
Gorgan and Wilkins looked dumb. They shook their heads.
“Did you, Kirk?”
Jack Kirk smiled amusedly.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Sure, I’ve heard of him. Some sort of a guy who thinks he’s a public avenger. Goes around alone.”
Lane nodded. “That’s he—the Cobra.”
“But he’s supposed to be in India.” Kirk was enjoying this baiting Lane. “You know how those yarns get around the underworld. The last thing they had on that guy was when he put down the Persian uprising in Bombay. Last month, I think.”
Lane said, “Yes, last month. And we started this business last month. It was all right when we got away with those emeralds and that Mahar diamond. I thought the whole layout was foolproof. But I haven’t felt right since I shipped the Kubij opal to you. That’s a damned unlucky stone. It belonged to Sarankh, a rajah of the Hindustan country. I hired three dacoits to steal it, paid them well, and sent the stone through the customs with our regular snake freight.
“Right after that, this American detective came around and asked a lot of queer questions. But we have a good front with this reptile-importing set-up and I got around him.
“Then the Cobra stepped in—and I was so upset over the affair that I took the first and fastest boat here to see you. I tell you, a child could guess the answer from the fact that the only snakes we ship are pythons!”
Wilkins laughed. “Don’t be an ass!”
Jack Kirk leaned forward. “What’s this about the Cobra, Lane?” he asked frowning. “What happened?”
“The three dacoits I hired,” Lane explained soberly, “were found dead the day before I left for London—dead from cobra venom! And there were tiny darts in their throats!”
“Darts?” Kirk echoed, feeling his own throat in dread.
Lane smiled mirthlessly. “Yes, darts. The mark of the Cobra. A dart in the throat covered with noxious cobra venom. That’s how the devil gets his name.”
“Listen,” Gorgan snarled, “don’t let him hypnotize you, Jack. This Cobra stuff is crazy! I’ve had enough of this cock-and-bull yarn, Lane. You’re welching and you’re taking the easiest way out. There’s nothing wrong. The Kubij opal will arrive tomorrow with our python shipment.”
“I tell you, I’m afraid!” Lane cried. “I’m qu
itting, Maxie. I’m getting out. I don’t want any money from the jewels. I want my life. You can split my share among the three of you.”
Maxie Gorgan rose steadily to his feet. His voice was icy and sinister. His hand stole stealthily inside of his coat.
“You can’t quit this game, Lane,” he warned.
Lane looked at him coolly, evenly.
“You heard me, Maxie,” he replied fearlessly. “When the Cobra steps in—I step out. And that’s final.”
The three shots from Gorgan’s pistol sounded like one. Three hot slugs buried themselves in Lane’s chest like lightning. Lane stared at Gorgan’s tense face in stupefaction. His lips moved soundlessly. He struggled bravely to speak. Blood poured from his mouth. His legs sagged and he fell forward on his face, crashing to the floor with an ominous thump. He did not move after he hit.
Kirk wet his lips and put out the cigarette he had been smoking.
“God, Max!” Wilkins exclaimed in horror. “You shouldn’t have done it!”
Gorgan shrugged and put his gun back.
“It’s his own funeral. I told him. We can’t afford to have a welcher, Wilky. There’s too much money involved. Besides, there’s only a split of three now, and dead men tell no tales. Kirk—get rid of this stiff. Use the car outside. Dump him out at Yorkshire.”
Kirk sighed.
“Okay, chief,” he said.
Jack Kirk did not notice the black sedan which followed him and his macabre burden through Surrey. Kirk was intent upon the operation of his vehicle, since even the slightest accident would incur the intervention of police. And with a dead man to be explained, Kirk was taking no chances.
The black car tailed him tenaciously out past Surrey into the suburbs of London.
Nor could Kirk see the figure at the wheel of the mystery car—a dark incongruous figure, covered by a black cloak, its face concealed by the dark shadows of the turbid night.
To a prowling cat, whose green eyes might have pierced the darkness, the hawklike features of Deen Bradley would have been discernible. Deen was an operative of the Bombay Department of Justice. High-foreheaded, dark-skinned, he had black eyes which glittered coldly like ebony diamonds, hard, unemotional. He had no mustache. His face was thin and sharp. His lips, narrow and straight-lined.
He handled the car with natural dexterity, never shifting his cobra eyes from the red tail-light of the cadaver-car before him.
At Yorkshire, Kirk left the main highway and swerved to the right. Deen followed quickly, stepping down on the gas.
The American suddenly saw the brake-light of the other machine flare into being. Kirk slowed momentarily and, as he did so, a limp bundle tumbled lifelessly from the rolling car.
Then, Kirk sped away with amazing alacrity, his engine roaring sonorously into the night.
The fog drifting across the open countryside swallowed the lights of his car.
Deen slammed his brakes to the floor of the sedan, and the automobile skidded perilously to a halt. Beside it, in a ditch, lay the bundle which had been thrown from Kirk’s car.
Deen leaped from the sedan and ran forward. He found a man, bleeding profusely and unconscious. He bent down and lifted up the fellow on his right arm.
The face of Wentworth Lane stared at him, eyes sightless and horrible.
“Zah!” Deen muttered in repugnance. “So it is murder, too!”
He grasped the wrist of the unconscious Lane and felt for a possible flicker of life.
Instantly he jumped to his feet and dashed for the sedan, carrying Lane in his arms. His strength was astonishing. He carried Lane, who was heavy-set, as though the latter was a child. Carefully he laid the wounded man on the cushions. Then he hopped agilely into the front seat and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
Twenty minutes later, Lane was on a white-enameled operating table in the Yorkshire hospital while two doctors bent over him, working furiously to save his life. Deen stood by, anxiously waiting.
Presently one of the doctors looked up and shook his head.
“He’s dying.”
Deen frowned. He asked, “There is no chance?”
“None. I don’t see how he keeps alive. Two bullets through his right lung. A third against his spine. It’s miraculous!”
The dying man gasped paroxysmally.
“Can he be made to talk?” asked Deen.
The doctor shrugged dubiously. He turned to a nurse.
“Adrenalin,” he snapped.
He leaned over the naked chest of Lane and drove a hypodermic syringe into the flesh directly over the heart. Then he emptied the contents.
Momentarily, there was no visible result.
Then Lane’s staring eyes gained the power of sight and recognition. They glanced around furtively. Finally they rested on Deen’s dark face.
“You—”
“Yes. It is I. From India. I followed you. Quick, you must speak. You are dying.”
Lane coughed rackingly.
“Gorgan,” he muttered whisperingly. “Pythons—code word is—House of Kaa—”
His lips had hardly stopped moving when he sighed. His body relaxed.
The doctors made preparations to transfer the corpse into the mortuary for identification and signing of the death certificate. With the American to establish identity—
But when they glanced around for him, Deen was gone.
That night, the police found the cadaver of Jack Kirk in Rokor Street, London. Kirk was sprawled crazily in the gutter—dead. Protruding from his throat was a small dart, about a half an inch long.
The chief medical examiner found that Kirk had died as the result of the violent neurotoxic destruction of cobra venom.
And throughout the underworld of London, a dire, foreboding wail echoed—a wail that spelled the nemesis of criminals.
The Cobra had come to England!
“Well, what are we going to do?” Commissioner Marshall asked sharply.
Inspector Ryder shrugged. The two men were sitting in the commissioner’s office at the C. I. D. headquarters in Scotland Yard. In Marshall’s hand was the coroner’s report on the Jack Kirk murder the night preceding.
“I’d suggest nothing,” the inspector said with a flip of his hand. “The department has been after Kirk for two years. He was a killer. One of the few English bandits who carried and used a gun. He was working for that Gorgan-Wilkins reptile firm over on Rokor Street. There’s something damned queer going on over there, too. As far as I’m concerned, chief, I’d let it go.”
“You mean—drop the case entirely?”
“Yes, sir.” Ryder leaned forward. “We’ve had excellent reports about this Cobra from Bombay headquarters. It was he who brought those Persian renegades to justice after they murdered Kil-gore, one of the C. I. D.’s best men.”
“I remember that,” Marshall nodded.
Ryder grimaced. “We owe him a good turn. Commissioner—I don’t know who or what the Cobra is. But I do know that he gets results because he goes outside of the law. He saved me a lot of trouble getting Kirk. And there must be a reason. I wager that important business has brought the Cobra to London.”
“Very well,” the commissioner sighed. “Drop investigation.”
At that moment, there was a knock on the door. An attendant looked in. “Mr. Bradley to see you, sir.”
“Send him in.”
The door opened, and the dark-skinned, hawk-faced Deen Bradley walked in.
“Happy to know you, Bradley,” Marshall exclaimed, rising and shaking hands with sincere enthusiasm. “Meet Inspector Ryder. Bradley is one of the best in Bombay, Ryder.”
“I know,” the inspector said. “Thanks for helping us out on that Kilgore case down there.”
“I did very little,” Deen replied softly. “In reality, you should thank him who calls himself the Cobra.”
“That’s a coincidence!” Marshall cried. “Your Bombayan avenger happens to be in London. Did you read it? The Kirk affair.”
&
nbsp; “The commissioner’s called off an investigation,” Ryder remarked, eyeing the American keenly.
Deen nodded without a trace of emotion, said: “Very wise.”
“But what brings you here?” Marshall queried. “Bombay cabled me to watch for you and give you any aid you asked.”
Deen sat down and pulled a peculiar greenish cigarette holder from his pocket. Slowly, he inserted a cigarette in it and lighted it.
“For the last month,” he began, “there have been strange robberies in India along the eastern coast. Emeralds and diamonds of priceless value have been purloined by hired dacoits. Most notorious was the recent theft of the Kubij opal of the Rajah Sarankh.”
“We heard of that,” put in Ryder.
“All these jewels are being exported from India,” Deen continued. “Somehow they are being smuggled out—past the customs officials. More paradoxical—they are being smuggled into England past the watchful scrutiny of your revenue officers here.
“I resolved to investigate. It was no general sneak-thief job, I knew. It appeared to be an international imbroglio, carefully planned and executed. A jewel ring. I tracked a Wentworth Lane to London to lead me to the lost jewels. Last night, he too was murdered—by his own cohorts.”
“But how can these jewels get into England past the customs?” the inspector demanded. “They are very rigid, you know.”
“True, they are rigid,” Deen murmured. “But do the customs men cut open the bellies of regal pythons to look for stolen jewels?”
Ryder stared at the American, dumbfounded.
“Good Gad!” he cried sharply. “Smuggling by snakes! You mean, then, that Gorgan-Wilkins reptile outfit is the center of the ring! They import nothing but pythons. And they hardly ever sell any of the snakes. The reptiles just disappear. I checked that when I first became suspicious of that company.”
“You see,” Deen explained, “it is very simple. The jewels are stolen in India by hired dacoits. Then, securely wrapped, they are placed in food which is swallowed by the pythons immediately prior to shipment. Since a big snake takes ten to eighteen days to assimilate and digest its food before throwing off waste, the seven-day sea trip to London is completed within that time. When the snakes arrive, they are killed and the jewels recovered from the stomach!”