The Doctor Satan

by The Complete Series from Weird Tales

  Girse and Bostiff watched stolidly. If ever an investigator opened that box nothing would be found but a pinch of ashes. A pinch of ashes that had been a man, planning to betray the master.

  Doctor Satan’s voice sounded, calmly. “Danger has been eliminated from within. Now no one on Earth knows my real identity. It remains only to eliminate danger from without.”

  Bostiff spoke, his dull eyes fixed on Doctor Satan’s mask. “The danger from without, Master?”

  “Yes. The danger that lies in Ascott Keane. There is the only danger I recognize. The Police? Ludicrous! Private detectives? Bodyguards hired by wealthy victims? They are children! But in Ascott Keane lies a threat.”

  The red-gloved hand touched the light-switch. Slowly the red bulbs faded out, bathing the room in a lowering darkness like that of a lurid rapid sunset.

  “But the threat of Ascott Keane is to be removed at once. Walstead saw him. Walstead showed him the note. Keane will act on that knowledge and with that action he will be trapped.”

  CHAPTER IV

  In front of a triple mirror before which was a bench holding hundreds of tiny pots and jars, Ascott Keane worked deftly. His fingers flew from jar to features, pot to face. And as they flew, his face subtly altered. Already it was no longer the face of Keane. It was a countenance which to Beatrice Dale was vaguely familiar though she could not yet name it.

  “That hideous death shrub!” she said. “I can’t see how it is used by Doctor Satan.”

  “You’ve seen Indian fakirs make a tree grow in a pot, haven’t you?” said Keane. “Usually it’s a miniature orange tree. They make it grow before your eyes, and pick an orange from it. Well, Doctor Satan’s wizardry is something like that; only he utilizes a form of thorn-bush that flowers in human substance instead of earth.”

  He reshaped his lips with a collodion-like red lacquer, and the girl cried aloud. Keane’s face was that of Walstead. Line for line it was Walstead’s slightly puffy countenance that was reflected in the mirror. A close friend of the dead millionaire would have been deceived.

  “What are you planning to do, Ascott?”

  Keane began pinning thin pads to the lining of his coat to give his lean strong body the bulk of Walstead’s puffy body.

  “Doctor Satan said in his note to Walstead to put the money in a trash can at Broadway and Seventy-Sixth Street. Very well, I’m going to take Walstead’s place. Made up as him, I’ll drop a package in that can and wait to see who picks it up.”

  Beatrice shook her beautiful, coppery brown head. “Walstead’s death isn’t out in the papers yet, but surely Doctor Satan must know that the man is dead. Or are you hoping to fool him?”

  “Doctor Satan,” said Keane dryly, “hardly has to wait to get his information from the newspapers.”

  “Then he’ll know that the man who looks like Walstead, and who drops the package in the trash can, can’t possibly be Walstead.”

  “That’s right,” said Keane, drawing on the padded coat and scrutinizing himself in the triple mirrors.

  “But he’ll know it’s you! And he’ll most certainly try to kill you.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” said Keane, putting on a hat of the type worn by Walstead.

  “But Ascott…”

  “It’s like this,” said Keane. “Doctor Satan hasn’t met me yet. I want him to underestimate me, so I am rather stupidly disguising myself as Walstead and going to the place where Walstead was to have gone, in the hope that Doctor Satan will trap me. In that event”—his jaw squared—“I think he’ll be sorry.”

  He stepped away from the mirrors. And it was not Keane who moved—it was Walstead!

  In an antique Italian cabinet there was an extra wide drawer. Keane pulled this out. In it was a rolled papyrus that closely resembled the papyrus that had been spread wide in Doctor Satan’s black room. Beside the papyrus was a little stone jar.

  Keane opened the jar and took from it a bit of greenish paste, which he touched to his forehead, the soles of his shoes, and the palms of his hands.

  “Marvelous beings, the ancient Egyptians,” he said softly. “I recognized the blue fire that burned my chair and would have consumed me if I’d been in it. The fire burned in many a temple along the Nile, but what the Egyptian wizards concocted they usually made fruitless by further research.”

  Beatrice caught his arm, her eyes fearful.

  Keane pressed her hand. “Don’t worry about me, my dear. I’ll be back soon, and I think I’ll be back with news that this Doctor Satan, new peril to a city at yet ignorant of his existence, has passed on to the hell he should have reached long ago.”

  He walked to the door, moving as Walstead had moved. His eyes met the girl’s deep blue ones. Then he was gone.

  * * * *

  Nine o’clock! Upper Broadway was crowded with night shoppers and movie-goers. Among the crowds near Seventy-Sixth Street moved a tall, slightly paunchy man who kept his face shadowed by the brim of his hat, a face that many in the city would have sworn was that of a ghost of the dead Walstead.

  On the northeast corner of Broadway and Seventy-Sixth Street a trash can showed. The man disguised as Walstead crossed to the can. Under his arm was a small parcel done up in newspaper. He dropped the parcel in the can, and walked on. Without a backward glance he rounded the next corner.

  But once around the corner, Keane stopped and went back, moving like a shadow. He peered through the double angle of a corner plate-glass window at the trash can.

  The can was of wire, with interstices in its walls through which the contents could be seen. When Keane has tossed the package into it, the can had been half full of refuse. Now the old papers and odds and ends of trash seemed to be melting away, like water draining down through a hole. Lower and lower the contents sank till finally the can was empty.

  Keane shook his head a little, eyes gleaming like ice. “Transmission of substance through empty air!” he breathed.

  None in the crowds so close to the can had noted the way the refuse slowly disappeared from within it, but Keane had caught it all. Moreover, he had seen that the trash had disappeared first from the north side of the can, as though it were flowing in that direction, melting into thin air as it flowed.

  The north side of the can. Toward him.

  Keane slunk into a doorway. His quick eyes roved over the Broadway crowd, and in a moment they rested on a figure that tensed his body. A tall, shambling man, across the street from the trash container, was walking slowly toward the Seventy-Second Street subway entrance. Under his arm was held a parcel done up in newspaper.

  Keane’s lips thinned. Doctor Satan was making sure he saw the parcel and followed the carrier! He stepped unobtrusively from the doorway and into the Broadway crowds, where he followed the tall, shambling figure to the subway entrance. Was the tall figure that of Doctor Satan himself, or one of his helpers? Keane did not know; but he did know that he would have shot the man down in cold blood, had he not been fully aware that no weapon as crude as an automatic could prevail over an opponent like Doctor Satan.

  * * * *

  The tall figure got off the subway at a Greenwich Village station. Keane followed, a block behind, his body was taut as a stretched tendon. He knew he was to be trapped, to be brought to a carefully devised death. He knew that, for the moment, Doctor Satan had dropped all other plans to concentrate on removing him.

  He was prepared for violence as he walked along the dark village street after the tall figure. He was ready for anything from a bullet or knife in the dark to an attack and abduction by masked men springing on him from dark area-ways; but he was not prepared for the thing that actually did happen.

  At one moment he was following the tall figure. At the next the figure ahead had disappeared and Keane was still moving forward, though he had willed his body to halt while he glanced around to see where the figure coul
d have gone.

  Keane strove to stop, to walk to right or left. He could not; his muscles were driven by another’s will. And now another thing happened—a thing even more frightening. He began to lose his sight.

  The dark street, the partly lighted buildings lining it, the sidewalk before him, all slowly faded from his sight. But his body kept moving slowly, surely forward.

  In a moment he was blind. He could see not one thing. But his feet seemed able to see. They bore him on without a stumble, raising for curbs, lowering him for gutters. Thus with no man forcing him, apparently, blindfolded as surely as if thick cloths were tied over his eyes, Keane moved to the will of Doctor Satan, toward the trap.

  He felt himself turn. Under his hand was an iron railing.

  He felt himself going down steps. A door creaked open in front of him. He walked on, totally blind, and heard the soft creak, and a slam, behind him.

  More stairs downward. Hands outstretched to scrape along the moist walls of a passage like a low tunnel. Steps again.

  A clang over his head as though a stone trap-door had been battened down above him. Finally a swish of drapes and a gentle, yet deadly-sounding voice that made every nerve-end in his body twitch.

  No need to speculate on the ownership of that voice! The arrogance that lay behind the softness of it hold him. It was the voice of Doctor Satan himself.

  CHAPTER V

  Slowly Keane’s eyesight returned to him, to telegraph to his mind weird, nightmare pictures.

  Black-draped walls closed him in. Lounging against one wall were two men—a man with a giants torso and no legs, and a creature with a hairy, ape-like face in which were set bright, cruel little eyes.

  Across from them was a metal brazier, set on a high tripod, in which a small flame flickered. In the center of the room was a metal table, bare save for a small pinch of yellowish powder. And over this table was bending the man who had spoken—a figure that set the blood to leaping in Keane’s veins as his heart thudded with sudden acceleration in his breast. A tall figure robed in red, with a red mask over the face, red gloves on the hands, and a red skullcap from which protruded small mocking imitations of Satan’s horns.

  Doctor Satan turned from the metal table. His black eyes burned at Keane through the eyeholes of the red mask.

  “Welcome, Ascott Keane,” came sardonic words. “We are honored that you should have gone to such trouble to visit us in our modest lair.”

  Keane’s face, looking, in the red glare that illuminated the room, like something cast in bronze, remained impassive. Wordlessly he watched the diabolical figure in red.

  The cultured tone was edged with steel as Doctor Satan continued.

  “You committed suicide when you resolved a month ago to devote your life to destroying me. Oh, yes, I knew of the resolve the instant it was made. I have ways of knowing what is in men’s minds; though I concede that you were able, shortly after that, to shield your brain from me. Tell me, Ascott Keane, what warned you of my existence?”

  Keane stood straight and tall before the red-robed figure. His resemblance to Walstead faded, in spite of make-up, with the altering of his expression. He was Keane again, regardless of collodion-painted lips and padded clothes.

  “A month ago,” he said, “I talked with the son of a bankrupt friend of mine. The boy, a wild and not very strong character, said nothing significant. But I too can read a little of what is in men’s minds; and in his I caught a glimpse of a figure in Satan’s masquerade. I got a hint of the man’s background and motives: a rich man, still young. Jaded with purchased thrills, with no more humanity in his heart than a snake—out to become the world’s leading criminal. A man whose whimsical choice of a name, Doctor Satan, could not have been more apt in expressing his purpose. A sleek beast, playing a monstrous game. A thing to be stamped out as soon as possible.”

  The black eyes gleamed through the satanic mask. “Young Monroe, you are talking about. Fortunately he did not know my identity at that time. And now no one will ever know. Monroe is no longer in a position to talk. And some papers he left behind with his lawyer have been destroyed within the hour.”

  Now the arrogant voice was gentle again.

  “So you decided to be the one to annihilate me. Noble Keane! But the roles will be reversed. It is you who will be annihilated. I marked you at the start as a nuisance to be eliminated. Wealthy yourself, with a fairly analytical mind, you have entertained yourself for years by scotching crime. But your career ends with me, Keane. It ends now, in this room.”

  Girse and Bostiff slowly left the wall they had been lounging against. Girse came with quick, small steps to Keane’s left side. Bostiff hitched his great body, with swinging movements of his huge arms, to Keane’s right side.

  Keane still stayed motionless. Futile to attempt to overpower Doctor Satan physically: it could not have been done even had the gigantic Bostiff and the agile Girse not been there in the black-walled room. The walls of the trap he had entered were strong walls; and its teeth were sharp teeth, from which there seemed no escape.

  Doctor Satan repeated an order he had given once before on that day. “Bostiff,” he said softly, “the iron box.”

  The legless giant hitched his way to the wall, drew back a sable drape, and pulled from the niche in the stonework the coffin-like metal box.

  Doctor Satan stared at Keane with green-glinting eyes. The stare held, minute after minute. Keane’s eyes slowly glazed.

  “You are asleep,” droned Doctor Satan at length.

  “I am asleep,” breathed Keane.

  Girse and Bostiff stared at each other with savage expectance on their faces.

  “You shall do whatever I command.” Doctor Satan said.

  “I will do whatever you command,” said Keane, like an automaton.

  Doctor Satan’s red-gloved hand went out toward Keane’s head. He plucked three hairs and laid them over the small mound of yellowish powder on the table. Act for act, he was duplicating the scene in which a treacherous disciple had been reduced from a man to a pinch of ashes.

  “Take the lid from the box, Bostiff.”

  The legless giant lifted the iron cover from the coffin. Within it could be seen scattered fine ash.

  “Keane, lie down in the box—”

  The black eyes gleamed with a feral light as Ascott Keane slowly walked to the box and lowered his body into it. Keane lay there, gazing up with wide, glazed eyes.

  Bostiff placed the lid back on the box.

  His dull eyes went from the box to the niche in the wall.

  “No,” Doctor Satan answered his unspoken question, “we’ll not put the box in its crypt. Leave it where it is. I want to watch this.”

  The red-gloved hands clenched with eloquent triumph; the red-robed figure towered in the room. Then Doctor Satan turned to the metal table.

  He picked up a bit of the yellowish powder and crumbled it between powerful fingers. The tiny heap on the table burst into clear blue flame. The eyes of Doctor Satan and his two servants turned toward the metal box in which lay Keane.

  Swiftly the box glowed dull red, cherry red, white-hot. Its rays beat against the faces of the three, set the sable drapes to billowing a little. And in that white-hot metal coffin a thing of flesh and blood was lying or had been lying when the blue flame began to burn.

  The metal box lost its fierce white glow. The heat rays beating from it faded in intensity. Doctor Satan’s red robe stirred with the deep breath he drew.

  “And so ends Ascott Keane,” he said vibrantly. “The one obstacle in my path. I can be a king—an emperor—now, in time.”

  He turned to Girse and Bostiff.

  “Go. I have no more need of you.”

  Bostiff hitched his huge body silently toward an end wall.

  He drew aside a drape and opened a door. Girse followed him out of it.
>
  Alone, Doctor Satan went to the cabinet and drew from a drawer the ten bundles of currency containing one hundred thousand dollar bills apiece. The bundles disappeared beneath the red robe. His hand went toward the switch that controlled the red illumination of the room.

  But his finger did not touch the switch. His hand remained suspended in the air, while he watched the iron coffin. And his red-robed body was as immobile as that of a statue.

  The lid of the coffin was moving.

  Slowly, steadily, it raised, to slide from the box and clang against the floor.

  A hand and arm appeared above the edge of the box, which was still black-hot. The hand was unharmed. The coat sleeve above it was charred a little at the cuff; that was all.

  Another hand and arm appeared, and then the body of Ascott Keane from the waist up as he sat in the coffin.

  Silently, rigidly, Doctor Satan glared at him, and Keane got out of the coffin and stood beside it. Wisps of smoke rose here and there from singed garments, but his flesh was not even reddened by the fierce fire, and his gray eyes bored steadily at the black eyes behind the mask.

  “What the Egyptians discovered,” he said softly, “they rendered fruitless by succeeding discoveries. I read the origin of your blue flame in your first attempt on my life, Doctor Satan, and I took the precaution of using as armor some of the green paste the old priests used against the consuming fires of their enemies.”

  He took two slow steps toward the red-clad figure.

  “You should have watched your flame, instead of the iron coffin, Doctor Satan. You would have seen then the flame burned blue throughout; it should have burned red if any body was devoured.”

  The breathing of the red-masked man sounded in the tense hush of the room.

  “Now we are alone, Doctor Satan. You have considerately sent your men way, as I hoped you would do. We’ll see if your powers are as strong as you think they are.”

  The glare faded from Doctor Satan’s eyes, leaving them glacially cold.