The Complete Novels

by Don Wilcox

  “And how I mean it! Listen, honey. I’m dead sure that devil Jag Rouse has picked tonight.”

  “To attack?”

  “Yes. If he does, we’re in for a serious time. He’s got twice our number of men. And we can’t be sure our men will stand up under fire—for us.”

  Vivian’s fingers tightened in Ross’ hands.

  “I’ve thought of that,” she said. “If the sailors knew you were hurling them at Rouse to hold him off—while you and I slipped away—”

  “I’ll take care of that.” Ross’ eyes snapped. “I’m taking a chance with those birds anyway you look at it. They think I’m a master killer—and they’re going to keep thinking it. But if they’re willing to fight our battle, I’ve got an obligation to them.”

  “You’re a square shooter, Mr. Bradford,” said Vivian. “But I think you’re fixing to get yourself shot.”

  “I want you to leave, Vivian. At once. There’s no sense in staying any longer on account of your uncle. You saw him slip back into his madness a few minutes ago. It’s an unnatural madness. It’s nothing that we humans can cope with.”

  “Ross!”

  “Vivian, you’ve got to cancel him from your mind—”

  “I’m packed, Ross,” Vivian said quietly. “What next?”

  “Get Jimpson’s rowboat. Tell Jimpson to go with you—and Hank—Susan—Fantella, too. The five of you can make it. Row back to the fishermen’s village and wait there for an outbound boat—”

  “And leave you here alone?” the girl wailed.

  “Never mind about me. Take this address.” He scribbled a New York street number on a scrap of envelope. “I may meet you at the fishermen’s village, but don’t wait. Take the first boat either to England or Iceland, and from there to the States. My name will be good for passages for all of you.”

  The sound of footsteps slipping along the carpeted corridor caused Ross and Vivian to turn. The steps stopped short of the corner as if to avoid ringing the bell. Then the faces of Sue Smith and Hank Switcher peered around.

  “Hssst!” said Hank. “Talleyho!”

  “Are the decks clear?” Sue whispered.

  Ross motioned them to come on. “It’s a private conference but we’ll include you. In fact, we need you.”

  Sue pointed to the sailor outfit Hank was wearing. “The boy friend thinks he’s disguised. Isn’t he a case?”

  “You’d better add a few scars to your face, Hank,” said Vivian, “if you want to pass for a regular.”

  “And you’d better lay low, disguise or no disguise” said Ross. “I’m in a tight spot with these sailors tonight. Will they fight or won’t they? If they see me fraternizing with you—”

  “They’ll fight us both,” Hank muttered. “All right, I’ll lay low. And I’ll add the scars. Any more advice?”

  “Straighten your shoulders,” said Sue, “and they’ll never suspect you’re Hank Switcher. . . What’s the dope, Ross?”

  “I’m sending you three on to the fishermen’s village. Also Fantella and Jimpson. I’ve given full instructions to Vivian—so be off.”

  “Just a minute, my dear Mr. Bradford,” said Sue. “Since when do you give instructions to me? I want to stay and see the show.”

  “You can’t. Listen, my friend,”

  Ross snapped his fingers in a way that meant business, “I’ve got a tough bunch of criminals to handle, and I don’t want to waste any orders on civilized people. . . Hank, see that Sue goes with you.”

  “What ever you say,” said Hank with a salute, “but I’m still all blisters from rowboating. What’s more, that fellow Jimpson saw a Nazi sub skimming past the island tonight.”

  Ross’ eyes narrowed. So the long-threatened sea war was moving on Flinfiord at last. In all probability the news that this was to become a British air and submarine base had already leaked through to the Nazis. All the more reason that Ross must stay, fight this power of evil to the last ditch.

  “Take your chances on the subs—and blisters.” Ross glanced at his watch. “Good luck, folks. My sailors are waiting.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” said Sue. “I’ll turn my gun over to Hank. He shoots first and inquires about the reward afterward . . . Oh, pardon me.”

  “Yeah, pardon her,” said Hank, “for talking to you while you’re kissing . . . Skip it . . .”

  Out on the parade ground Ross faced seven hard-faced sailors who listened to him eagerly. They were sizing him up, he knew that. This was his first leadership under fire. But as he told them his plan for meeting the Rouse gang, they nodded their agreement, nudging each other whenever they caught an implication of his vast criminal achievements.

  “Finally,” he said, “there’s this I must add. You corporals and you men are fighting for me. I’m fighting for you. You know why. Every man of us would rather bag big game. Don’t think that I’ve forgot how we came here. None of us have any principles. We’d murder each other if we hadn’t any bigger jobs to do. But Jag Rouse and his East Villagers are as good as handpicked for their treachery. And your ex-captain, I’ll wager, is still in line for Graygortch’s thirteenth discipleship. So let ’em come. We’ve got pickings.”

  “Let ‘em come,” the seven corporals agreed.

  Across the parade ground Pudgy came racing out of the darkness.

  “They’re coming!” he yelled. “They’re a mile out of the village, marching up the mountain trail, a whole mob of ’em!”

  “Let ’em come!” Ross snapped. “No alarms, though. They mustn’t know we know. . . Okay, men. Down to the river ford!”

  CHAPTER XXV

  Hank Switcher raced up and down the basement stairs at least a dozen times, according to his own count. But nowhere could he find Jimpson. He searched the sub-basement caverns with a flashlight in each hand. He crawled back through the waste chute to the basement level, re-searched the power-plant chamber, peered under pipes and around the glass-encased turbines and generators. But there was no Jimpson.

  As a matter of fact Jimpson wouldn’t have risked hiding in the power room, for there were too many high-tension wires for comfort, even for an engineer. Hank noted the signs warning that super-charged wires lined the glass cases over every vital instrument. This place wasn’t to be tampered with.

  By the time he gave Jimpson up and returned to the rest of the party, Susan Smith was gone.

  “She’s as jumpy as a cat,” Hank mumbled. “Maybe she’s gone on down to the boat.”

  “How could she know der trail?” Fantella asked. “Dot Jimpson iss der only vun—”

  “Then he’s gone down with her.” But this supposition was a mistake. It took half an hour of steep climbing to check it. But when Hank, Vivian and Fantella reached the water’s edge, puffing and panting from carrying their luggage, they found no one.

  Hank tossed aside the camouflage of limbs and packed the cases in the rear of the rowboat.

  “Orders iss orders,” said Fantella, getting into the boat. “Meester Bradford said go. Ve’d better make hay while der sun don’t shine.”

  “I hate to leave them,” Vivian said. “Hank, do you think Sue will be all right?”

  “We’d better trot back up the trail,” Hank growled.

  “The least we could do is leave a note for Ross and tell him how many of us got away. You wait here, Fantella.”

  Most of an hour was lost in the climb, and by this time some big trouble had broken loose somewhere across the uplands. Hank could hear the rattle of machine guns and the crack of rifles from the upper reaches of the river.

  “You boy friend knew what he was about, sending you away,” Hank muttered. “Hurry and write that note.”

  “There,” said Vivian. “I’ll slip it under his door. If we find either of them down at the boat when we get back, I’ve told him I’ll leave another note there.”

  “I can’t figure where in the hell she could have gone. But she’s out for a story, and she may be over at the river counting machine gun bullets. Come
on, let’s get out of here.”

  Hank caught Vivian’s hand and they went chasing through the castle, heedless of telltale bells at every turn.

  But at the South Pole Plaza under the big tower something brought them to a dead stop. That something was Graygortch.

  “Vivian!”

  The old man’s voice echoed like a low roar of thunder through the spiral staircases.

  “Vivian, I was looking for you.” The old man reached out with his steel fingers, motioned to her to come. “And Bradford—where is he? I told him to be ready!”

  His words shot out like brittle steel bullets. There was angry impatience in his eyes. Hank Switcher caught it all, and the chill of impending doom half-paralyzed him.

  “Come on, Vivian,” he whispered, trying to pull her away. “Don’t listen to him. Don’t!”

  The girl, strangely, seemed to be fastened to her tracks. Far from yielding to Hank’s lead, she rather held him with her, forced him to submit to the same terrifying hypnotism that had caught her. For now the old man’s luminous glare was casting its spell.

  “Come with me,” said Graygortch. “Both of you.”

  Hank cast about for an avenue of escape. There were plenty of them, for numerous halls led off the South Pole Plaza, and there were no guards to turn him back.

  But Vivian required him, and he had no thought of deserting her. Still, he wondered if Graygortch realized his mistake. He blurted, “I’m not Bradford, you know.”

  “Bradford has forfeited his right,” the old man said solemnly. “He should have been here. I have no time to wait. I’ll nullify his marriage, and you shall take his place.”

  “No—no, I couldn’t do that,” Hank protested. “I wouldn’t think of it.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself. You may be only a common sailor,” said Graygortch, “but you are now appointed to be Vivian’s husband, the chief of the guards, the protector of the castle.”

  “No—no. I’ve no right—”

  “Come with me” Graygortch motioned them to the spiral stairs.

  The first gong rang out and the timbers shuddered with the vibrations.

  Now Hank moved along beside Vivian and her uncle in forbidden ascent.

  “This is a new privilege,” said Graygortch. “Never before has this sacred ascent been graced by anyone but myself. But this is my last climb. From now on these stairs are yours.”

  “Uncle Bill, I’m not going with you. I can’t. Let me go back. Please—I can’t!”

  “You’re too modest, child. Make up your minds to it, you’re entitled to all this.”

  “No, Uncle Bill—”

  “Hush, child. These mysteries are yours to consume.”

  By that time Hank realized it was more than the old man’s verbal persuasion urging them up the stairs. He was exerting a bizarre force upon them—something intangible, subtly, yet as demanding as the pull of a steel chain. When Hank tried to resist it, he found his feet nevertheless moving forward, keeping pace with the slow measured steps of Graygortch.

  At each landing—Boom! Like a giant clock the great gong notes rang out, no two of them the same. People as far as the villages must know that Graygortch was climbing.

  The massive black draperies were having their effect upon Hank by this time, clothing him with a weird sense of engulfing doom.

  “Lights along the drapes,” he whispered to Vivian.

  “From his eyes?” she asked.

  The more Hank watched, the more this seemed to be the case. Those two dull red circles of light, like dim headlights, were evidently emanating from Graygortch’s human eyes.

  They neared the top. An automatic pistol was in Hank’s perspiring hand—the same little pearl-handled number that he’d held the time a swift turn of circumstance made him do murder.

  The eighth and final gong rang out. They were at the top. Hank took in the place at a glance. He’d been here before, but not on official business. The place was not so bleak or empty as on that day when he and Ross had taken refuge here.

  On that day, he recalled, the machine guns had clattered from the lower roofs, cutting a spray of chips and dust from the massive stone windows. Tonight the machine guns were in action again and their echo from the headwaters of the Flinfiord set up a dull rattling dance here in the huge tower top.

  The thirteen big rectangular windows seemed even more vast with the night’s blackness staring through them. And now, as the gigantic webbed disc coasted downward the whole black sky formed an opaque lid to the open tower top.

  Then a bomber slipped through the sky and Hank regained his lost dimension—the vertical depth of this immeasurable universe—the bigness of sky that dwarfs the earth and everything on it.

  These were strange thoughts for Hank Switcher, and yet appropriate, for he was uncertain whether the fates would let him go on as a part of this earth. Or whether they were about to snatch him up into some unearthly, unknown realm.

  His thoughts came down to earth with a thud. The dim colored lights of the instruments revealed two eavesdroppers peeking over the tower top.

  One was Susan Smith. She had smeared black on her face to avoid catching the light, protection enough to take a chance on Graygortch’s dim eyesight. Her face was showing over the very top of the tower, and Hank knew she must be supported by a loop of rope.

  A few feet beyond her was Jimpson, lying on this topmost edge of the circular wall, his dark-clad body and twisted legs quite visible.

  A roof climb had brought them here, and Hank realized that Sue Smith’s ambitions to follow through for a story knew no bounds. But what must a climb of this sort have cost the brownskinned little engineer with the mud-chain legs?

  “Do you see them?”

  Vivian whispered it almost inaudibly in Hank’s ear. Hank crossed his fingers. It was a good time to keep them crossed.

  Graygortch now seated himself in the small semicircular bench at the table of control instruments. He motioned Vivian and Hank to join him. When the three sat side by side, Graygortch again pressed a lever and the vast webbed disc lowered still farther. It stopped with its circle of thirteen cylindrical shafts pointing through the thirteen windows.

  At once it began. The thirteen crystal guns threw out a spray of thirteen mammoth light rays that inflamed the heavens far and wide.

  The light rays broke off—and a violent crash of thunder tore loose with ear-shattering fury. The tower rocked and shuddered. The whole castle must have vibrated like a doll house.

  Again the lights flashed out, and now the deadly roar of thunder was matched by the ghastly whine of high winds. From far below came the sounds of a heavy sea pounding against the crags.

  Again and again the violent light smashed out into the heavens, and each time the earth groaned and trembled more violently. Hank heard Vivian cry out.

  “It’s the end of everything!”

  And through the next lowering of the earthquake’s roar he caught her terrified beseechings.

  “Ross! Ross! Where are you?”

  In those minutes of mounting horror Hank threw the weight of his courage into a single effort. His hand froze on the little pearl-handled pistol, thrust it at Graygortch’s body, and he shouted for the storm to be turned off.

  Then he tried to pull the trigger. But those hard, evil, luminous eyes that he had seen before now expanded before him, paralyzing him, damning him, immersing him in a whirlpool of hate.

  The paralysis held Hank to the very fingertips. His arms were cold steel, the same as the gun. He was being swept away by the madness . . . Vivian was shrieking. . .

  Then Hank caught sight of the colored lights approaching the center of the vast webbed wheels They were bringing in the sensations of violent evil with their gradual approach. Segment by segment the network of metal and crystal grew bright to the point of blindness.

  Graygortch was trying to bring those lights all the way to the center. How, Hank did not know. But against the screaming winds the old man was shou
ting his intentions.

  At first Hank couldn’t catch the weird message. He was too much overwhelmed by the nature of those thirteen, brilliant, blinding blots of light—for each blot of light was a face, slowly coming closer—closer—closer!

  Nearly all of the thirteen faces were coming clear, like visions through lenses slowly coming into focus.

  The black mustached visage of Adolph Hitler was unmistakable. And others from the high ranks of Nazi war lords were shining like angels of evil through the blazing spots.

  But one of the thirteen did not come clear, and Hank saw that Vivian, too, was watching it curiously. It was then that the words of Graygortch took on meaning.

  “When they all come in,” he cried the words in a slow distinct rhythm, “I’ll transfer the power to you, Vivian.” The girl nodded. She must have known, from the horrified countenances of Susan Smith and Jimpson, that they understood the hideous fate ahead for her.

  “The thirteenth is yet to be chosen,” Graygortch sang out. “I must force the rival candidates to come to a decision . . . All thirteen must find their way to me completely before I blend their powers—”

  “Blend them—how? the girl called.

  “In you, Vivian . . . I am through. In a moment it will be all yours . . . Your heritage But first—”

  Now the thirteenth blaze of light began to take form. For a moment Hank thought it was going to be a handsome cleancut visage on the order of Ross Bradford’s. Then the features thickened and the head grew to resemble Jag Rouse. Still, the details did not come clear.

  “One of you,” Graygortch called out, “must win over the other. I command you bring your contest to a close.”

  Hank passed his gaze over the gallery of evil faces, one by one, and came back again to the undetermined thirteenth.

  “Rouse, if you succeed in killing Bradford,” Graygortch shouted into the screeching winds, “I will make you the disciple . . . Bradford, if you kill Rouse, you will be my disciple, to take your place with Hitler . . . Goebbels . . .”

  The old man went down the line of twelve, calling names. Some of them Hank knew. Others were even of unknown nationality. But whether obscure or far famed, they were Graygortch’s disciples of death—the pick of the earth’s men of evil.