The Doctor Satan

by The Complete Series from Weird Tales

  Swiftly Keane reviewed the problem, one which he alone had become aware of; a string of events which singly had been noted by several people but which in their entirety had been remarked on by no one.

  One by one over the past two weeks four wealthy men in New York had done odd things. Each had disappeared from his office without warning, in three cases breaking important business appointments. Each had then been seen neither at home nor in any accustomed haunt for many hours. Following that, on his return, each had seemed to avoid both his home and his office, appearing only now and then at either place and letting his business take care of itself.

  Each, in those two weeks, had personally drawn large sums in cash from the United Continental Bank of New York—always that bank, never any of the others in which they kept money. Each of the four was living alone in his great home with only the servants, his family happening to be away at the time. And each, in the few times he was in home or office, did odd things which seemed to indicate a suddenly faulty memory.

  These things Ascott Keane, alone in the city, had noted and pieced together into a pattern he felt sure had sinister meaning. More, it was a pattern behind which he thought he could sense the figure of Doctor Satan in his red robe, with red rubber gloves hiding his hands, and red mask and cap hiding face and hair.

  John Weldman, copper magnate, had been the last to go through the queer antics. So to the wall outside Weldman’s estate Ascott Keane had taken his special moving-picture camera, which recorded movement in dark night by means of an infra-red ray attachment he had invented.

  And the camera had recorded the death of Weldman’s valet—which Keane had been too far away to prevent—and the movement of his dying lips: “…master… millions… shaving.…”

  Beatrice peered into Keane’s steely gray eyes.

  “What does it mean?” she whispered. “Do you know yet, Ascott?”

  “I think I do,” said Keane slowly. “I—think—I—do!”

  * * * *

  The flickering lightning to the south of New York lit with its rays a small graveyard in the heart of the downtown section of the city. It was a curious little cemetery, less than a hundred yards square. Long unused, it was dotted with crumbling tombstones over which long grass grew.

  On two sides of it a great factory, built in an L-shape, made a pitch-dark, five-story wall. On the third side an old apartment reared its height. On the fourth side, the street side, a high, rusty iron fence closed it off.

  A curious, forgotten place of death in the heart of New York, encroached on by the factory and the apartment building. But more curious yet was a figure which furtively approached the rusted gate in the fence and paused a moment to make sure no person was near.

  The figure was tall and gaunt. A low-brimmed black hat hid its head and most of its face. The rest of the face showed masked—a blank expanse covered by red fabric. A long black cloak covered the figure from neck to ankles, making it blend into the darkness.

  The gate creaked open and the figure glided in among the moldering tombstones.

  Beside one which lay prone in the rank grass, the figure stopped. Then it stepped on the six-foot slab—and the slab sank under it. A yawning hole appeared where the slab had been; a dark pit into which the figure disappeared.

  After an instant the slab rose and settled into place, apparently as it was before, looking as though it had lain there solid and undisturbed for a dozen years.

  Under it the black-cloaked figure went down a passage that slanted yet lower into the earth. The passage was lined with broken rock, and through the cracks occasional bits of rotted wood projected. They were remnants of ancient coffins, and with them now and then could be seen bleached white fragments. Bones.

  The figure opened a door at the end of the passage and stepped into a chamber as bizarre as it was secret.

  It was a cavernous room twenty feet square, lined with the broken rock as was the passage. It was very dim, with a small red lamp in the corner near the door as its only illumination. Along the far wall were cages, small, about the size of large dog-houses. In these cages four white figures squatted like animals. In the dim light their species could not be determined. They were simply whitish, distorted-looking beasts which seemed too large for their small cages.

  Leaning against the wall near the light were four figures that looked at first like sleeping men. But a glance told that they could not be that. Fully clad in expensive clothes, they leaned there like sticks, without flexibility or movement, more like dolls than men, perfectly fashioned in the image of Man but seeming to want motive power and direction.

  In the center of the room, drawing themselves to attention as the black-cloaked figure entered the weird chamber, were two creatures that would bring a chill to the spine of any man.

  One was an alert, agile little man with pale eyes shining cruelly through a mat of hair over his face. And this one, apelike in movement and thought, was Girse, Doctor Satan’s faithful servant. The other was a giant with no legs, who supported his hugely muscled torso on his hands, swinging it along on his knuckles as he moved. This was Bostiff, the second of Doctor Satan’s henchmen.

  The figure that had entered the room stood straight. Its shoulders moved, and the black cloak dropped. With a sweep of a hand, the black hat was removed, and the figure became a thing to haunt for ever the sleep of any who might chance to see it.

  A red robe sheathed body and limbs. Red rubber gloves were over its hands. The face was masked in red, and the head was covered with a red skull-cap so that even its hair did not show. From the skull-cap, in mocking imitation of Satan’s horns, two small red knobs projected. Lucifer! Someone going robed as Satan to a costume ball! But instinct whispered that this was no mere costume, that the man under the sinister make-up was as malevolent as his garb was mocking.

  “Master!” breathed Girse. “Doctor Satan!”

  Bostiff scraped his calloused knuckles along the floor uneasily and stared at Doctor Satan out of stupid, dull eyes.

  Doctor Satan glanced at the cages in which were dimly to be seen the curious, whitish animals. In his eyes, peering out of the eyeholes in the red mask, was a glint of velvet cruelty.

  “Have they been fed?” he asked, his voice a harsh monotone.

  “They have been fed,” replied Girse.

  “They have given no trouble?”

  “None, Master,” said Bostiff, grinning significantly.

  A feeble groan sounded from one of the cages.

  “One is ill?” snapped Doctor Satan.

  “One is near death,” retorted Bostiff. “The cold down here—”

  “No matter. All have their duplicates, so that any may die without hurting my plans. Any save the last to come here. And I intend to remedy that now—”

  The arrogant, harsh voice of Doctor Satan was drowned by a shriek from the cage in which the groan had sounded a moment before. The strange white animal in it suddenly reared up, or tried to, beating its head against the top of the cage. It rattled the bars for an instant, and then fell.

  There was deathly silence in the chamber under the graveyard. Then Doctor Satan strode to the cage.

  “Dead,” he said, indifferently.

  At the word, the other three animals in the adjoining cages set up a wailing and howling, chattering noises that sounded oddly like words.

  “Silence!” commanded Doctor Satan. The chattering ceased. “Bostiff.”

  The legless giant hitched his torso toward the cage.

  “Take this one into the next chamber.” Doctor Satan’s red-gloved hand went under his robe. It came out with an odd thing like a crystal tube an inch in diameter and nearly a foot long. “Place this against the body, with the free end slanting toward the south where the lightning still plays.”

  Bostiff visibly paled.

  “But that draws the lightning in here, Mast
er. The walls and roof will collapse—”

  “Do as I bid you!” grated Doctor Satan. “The walls and roof are safe. But the fires of heaven will consume that carcass, and so we are rid of it.”

  Bostiff grunted and nodded his great head. He opened the cage in which the white beast had fallen, and dragged it out. But now as the carcass was drawn nearer the light, it could be seen that it was not a beast at all. It was a man, elderly, naked, hideously scarred and emaciated. And so the other three left alive in their cages were men, penned up like animals in spaces too small to allow them to lie or stand at full length, pitiful captives held here for Doctor Satan’s purpose!

  Dumbly, cowering behind their bars, they watched the red-robed, fiendish figure.

  Doctor Satan went to a chest as Bostiff dragged the dead man through a door leading to another underground room like the first. He took from the chest a small object looking prosaic in this dimly lit chamber of horrors beneath a small, forgotten cemetery. It was a checkbook, on the United Continental Bank of New York City.

  Doctor Satan walked with the checkbook to the end cage. He handed it, and a pen, to the shadowy white figure within.

  “Make out five checks,” he commanded. “Three for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars apiece, two for a hundred thousand.”

  The cowering figure in the cage straightened a little, and refused to take book and pen through the bars.

  “Bostiff,” called Doctor Satan. His voice was soft, but there was in it an essence of terror that made Girse, the little ape-man, shiver.

  The legless giant came from the next chamber, leaving the door open. The doorway was suddenly flooded with light that beat at the eyeballs like whips. Through the portal could be seen the dead man who had been taken out of the cage. But when the flash was over, only charred remnants of the corpse were left. That was all. The crystalline rod in their midst waited to bring the next lightning flicker from the south to consume even the remnants.

  “Yes, Master?” said Bostiff, dragging his great body forward.

  “This man does not want to do as he is ordered. You will ‘persuade’ him—”

  “I’ll write them!” screamed the man in the cage suddenly. “My God, don’t let that legless fiend get me—I’ll write them!”

  Doctor Satan’s red mask moved slightly, as though beneath it his lips shaped themselves to a smile. He handed pen and book through the bars to the miserable, naked creature in the cage.

  CHAPTER III

  The Red Trail

  In the morning, which was flooded with calm sunlight after the night’s storm, Ascott Keane paused a moment before the impressive stone facade of the United Continental Bank.

  The bank building looked like a fortress, with thick walls and bronze doors that could have withstood an army. It spoke of comfortable, prosaic wealth, and the power to hold it indefinitely from marauders. It spoke of a world of skyscrapers and giant industrial plants and motor cars.

  It seemed to give the lie to the possibility of the existence anywhere of a person capable of looting it—a person like Doctor Satan who could laugh ironically at bronze doors and stone walls.

  Keane passed through the guarded entrance of the bank, and went to the rear of the great room within, past marble and glass counters, cages in which shelves of money changed hands, and desks at which transactions involving millions were being accomplished.

  At the rear was a private elevator which went up to a big office on the fourth floor of the building. The office was marked, President.

  Keane’s name gave him instant entree to the president of the bank. For Keane was known to this man not only as a wealthy citizen whose business would be useful, but also in his more secret role of marvelously capable criminal investigator.

  “Keane!” said Mercer, the president. “It’s good to see you. What brings you here?” He glanced at the electric clock on his desk. “Only nine-thirty in the morning! That’s practically dawn for you. At least that’s what you like to let people think.”

  Keane did not smile in return. He studied the man.

  Mercer was a small man, lean and leathery, with prim nose-glasses like a school teacher. One might be tempted to dismiss him as prim and fussy—till the jaw was noted. Mercer had a jaw like a steel trap, and blue eyes that were shrewd, capable, and honest-looking.

  “I’m here to ask about a few of your customers,” he said.

  “I think I know which ones,” said Mercer, the smile fading from his leathery face. “Sit down and tell me about it.”

  Keane took a chair at the end of Mercer’s desk. It was an enormous desk. On it there was no welter of papers; it was bare save for a large onyx electric clock which was at the back and end of the desk between Mercer and whoever sat in the visitor’s chair.

  “The men I wanted to talk to you about,” Keane said, “are Edward Dombey, Harold Kragness, Shepherd Case and lastly, John Weldman, all rich, and all depositors here.”

  Mercer leaned back in his chair, putting the tips of his fingers together and saying nothing, letting Keane talk before he told what he himself knew.

  “I’ve learned,” Keane went on, “that all four of these men have been making heavy withdrawals of cash here lately. For some reason each of them has found it necessary to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills with him. Yet here’s an odd thing.

  “Each of the four has deposits in other large New York banks. Between the four of them, indeed, they have large sums in no less than six of the biggest banks in the city. Yet they always have come here to draw their cash.”

  Mercer stirred. “I didn’t know that,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Well, it’s true. So I came here to see if I could find out why. And I think I have.” Keane glanced at the onyx electric clock. “That is, I believe I have—if the checks happened to be made out in this office.”

  Mercer nodded. “They were. All of them.”

  “All right, tell me about them,” said Keane, leaning back to listen in his turn.

  Mercer cleared his throat. “Those are the four men, and that’s the business I expected you to ask about when the girl announced your name,” he said. “Because there’s something damned queer about it, although I haven’t been able to puzzle out what it is.

  “It started two weeks ago. Harold Kragness came up here. He talked pleasantly enough with me for a moment or two and then said he wanted to cash a rather large check. A hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. He thought I’d better put my initials on it so the teller would pay the money without question.

  “That was queer—both his desire to get the sum in cash, and his idea that I should countersign his check. I wouldn’t have had to do that. He could get anything up to half a million downstairs without special arrangement. But I scribbled my initials on the check and—”

  “Just a minute,” said Keane. “Did he bring the check here already made out?”

  Mercer shook his head. “He wrote it out here on my desk, before my eyes. He waved it a minute or two to dry the ink, disregarding a blotter I passed him, and then handed it to me.”

  “It was his signature, all right?”

  “Oh, yes! No doubting it!”

  “Go on.”

  “Kragness went out with the check and cashed it downstairs. I thought about it a lot. Why should he want all that in cash? The obvious idea was that he might be blackmailed or something. But he didn’t look like a man under a strain. He was cheerful, laughing. And I certainly couldn’t question the genuineness of a check made out here in front of me.

  “I thought no more about it, then—till two days later. Then Dombey came in and went through the same rigmarole, only with a check for two hundred thousand dollars. After that the flow started.

  “Kragness came in again, and Dombey, and then Case, and finally Weldman. All well known to me. The four of them cashed check after check,
all for big sums. Never did any of the four seem worried or terrified, as they would have been if they were buying their way clear from some sort of danger. Yet—all those checks!

  “I was certain something was wrong. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. In each case the check was written here in the office by the man himself. Each man denied that anything was wrong, when I exceeded my rights and asked them bluntly.

  “I went so far as to put a private detective on the trail of one of them, Dombey—though for heaven’s sake don’t ever let anybody know that. The detective reported that Dombey met no suspicious characters. He went home with his money, where he seemed cheerful and unalarmed. His wife and daughter are away in Europe, you know—”

  “I know,” said Keane grimly. He glanced at the clock again. “Each man made out each check here, before your eyes, so that you could testify that nothing could possibly be wrong—”

  “Testify?” said Mercer quickly.

  “Let it go,” said Keane. “We’ll put it this way: each check is beyond suspicion, and you, the president of the bank, could swear to it. Which is an important part of the game.”

  “Game? Come, Keane! Tell me what’s wrong?”

  “It’s too soon, Mercer. Tell me one more thing. You say each of these four men is known to you personally. You couldn’t possibly be fooled by somebody made up to represent them?”

  “Not possibly!” said Mercer. “Besides, there were the checks, made out in their handwriting while I watched.”

  “The four seemed absolutely normal to you?” Keane persisted.

  Mercer hesitated for a full minute before he answered that. Then his voice was a little strained, a little chilled.

  “Normal? That’s a hard word to define. Each of them was undoubtedly the man he said he was. The four who came in here, and between them have drawn several millions in the last two weeks, were certainly Dombey, Kragness, Case and Weldman. And each seemed cheerful and without worries. And yet—”

  “Well?” prompted Keane as the man stopped.

  “Well, in spite of all that they didn’t seem what I would call ‘normal.’ It’s hard to describe it. And I can’t, as applied to them. I can only tell my own reactions.” He moistened his lips, and stared past Keane at the blank office wall. “There was something the matter with those men, Keane! Something devilish! All the time I talked to each of them, I could feel it. A sort of chill along my spine—a feel of horror.” He tried to laugh. “I used to feel that way when I was a boy and passed near a cemetery at night. That’s all I can tell you, Keane. I’m afraid it isn’t much.”