by Lin Carter
The only source of illumination afforded this sumptuous chamber came from the eyes of a monstrous idol of Eastern craft, which reposed in a wall-niche directly behind the robed figure seated at the inlaid desk. This grotesque idol of Tibetan design, representing a squatting manlike monstrosity with innumerable heads, was fashioned from gilded brass. Each head glared with goggling eyes, grimacing with snarling, wide-lipped mouths that bristled with tusks and fangs. From each mouth an exaggerated carven tongue lolled hideously.
The many eyes of the manifold heads were fashioned from red glass, and were illuminated from within so that they cast dim rays of ruby light in all directions.
The hooded man bent over the papers, as if subjecting them to a thoughtful scrutiny. From time to time he would reach out with one silk-gloved hand and add a notation to the margin of one of the papers with a small pen.
The room was utterly soundless, save for the slight rustling sound the hooded man made as he moved the sheaf of papers, the occasional scratching of the pen as he added a note to one of the documents, and the almost inaudible hiss and sizzle of the incense burning within the hanging silver lamp.
Quite suddenly, one of the dim rays of scarlet radiance began to flicker on and off. It was as if something had interfered with the source of hidden luminance. The hooded man turned to study the grimacing, many-headed idol. He noted in particular which of the dim red rays was flickering in so curious a manner.
Then he spoke aloud, in a soft but penetrating voice.
“Chu Ming.”
A fold of gorgeous tapestry moved aside, revealing a tall narrow doorway in which stood a tall, lean Eurasian with slant green eyes and a shaven skull. Clothed only in a loincloth of scarlet crimson silk, he was nearly naked, his sallow torso an imposing mass of writhing muscle. He saluted the hooded man in a humble manner by pressing his hands together before his heart and bowing over them. As he did so, presenting the edge of his hands before him, it could be seen that they were peculiarly deformed. One continuous ridge of hard callus ran from the base of his wrist up the sides of his hands to the tip of the little finger. Doubtless many hours of karate practice had been required to create so grim a metamorphosis: those hands had been transformed by countless hours of toil into lethal weapons.
“Yes, Master?” responded the yellow man in a hissing and sibilant attempt at English.
“An uninvited stranger is approaching by Tunnel Four,” said the hooded one. “Take him alive if you can.”
The other bowed again and vanished into the dark doorway. His disappearance was so swiftly accomplished, and in so soundless a manner, as to seem almost magical. One moment the naked muscular yellow man was there — and the next moment he had vanished into the blackness.
The tapestry fell back into place, once again concealing the narrow black opening in the wall.
The hooded man returned to his study of the papers upon his desk.
The red eye of the hideous idol continued its silent signal.
Zarkon had traversed the length of the tunnel without thus far triggering an alarm. But there were other electronic wards which the Grim Reaper had installed to watch over the avenues which led to his secret lair.
Among these were the cunningly-concealed lenses of hidden televisors. These Zarkon had not bothered to disengage, since the electromagnetic aura of force radiated by his vibrasuit would render him invisible to any watching eye, and would even fool the hidden cameras his tell-tale had detected.
But he had at last triggered one of the secret alarms wherewith the network of subterranean tunnels was kept under continuous scrutiny.
The instrument which the invisible Zarkon bore ever in his hand could only detect and trace installations of an electronic nature. However subtly concealed, the current in the wiring of these alarm-systems could easily be located and circumvented by Zarkon’s tell-tale.
But the alarm he had finally triggered into action, however, was of a totally-different nature. It was a simple, heat-sensitive solenoid which could detect even the warmth given off by a clothed human body. The reaction within the solenoid was purely a chemical one, and thus remained undetectable by Zarkon’s apparatus.
The invisible man had been traversing the tunnel beneath Wang Foo’s Shop by slow and cautious stages. Every seven or eight feet the Lord of the Unknown was forced to pause while he traced and over-rode a detector which, if not attended to in the proper manner, would trigger one of the death-traps wherewith the tunnel was heavily mined. It was slow work, and could not be hurried.
Zarkon was engaged in defusing the ninth of these which he had so far encountered, when Chu Ming came upon him. This particular trap was in the floor of the tunnel — a pit whose floor was lined with sharp pointed wooden stakes. The Ultimate Man had been testing electrical signals. He had already found the proper impulse which opened the trap — it yawned blackly before his feet — and was attempting to find the signal that closed and locked it, when the yellow man appeared as if from thin air.
The Eurasian peered about, unable to see the man he had been sent to kill. But even though he could not find him with his eyes, Chu Ming knew that he was there — there by the edge of the trap.
Chu Ming had been raised in the jungles of Burma. He had been trained from the cradle as a hunter of tigers, and of men. The jungle aisles are black as death; little daylight penetrates the roof of intertangled boughs overhead. For this reason, Burmese jungle-hunters, such as Chu Ming, are trained so as to develop their sense of smell.
Thus it was that when Chu Ming came through the secret door in the side of the tunnel, and faced the yawning pit of spikes, while he could not see the invisible man before him, he could smell that someone was there. He smelled a plastic garment, elastic webbing, hot batteries; and, behind these, he sensed the characteristic odor of human flesh.
So acute was the olfactory sense of the karate killer, that he knew exactly where Zarkon stood by the edge of the pit.
His features distorted in a bestial snarl, the yellow-skinned giant sprang like a leopard upon the unseen figure by the open pit. For a moment they grappled together — the naked yellow man seemingly in battle with the empty air!
Then, his arms closing with crushing pressure about his unseen opponent, Chu Ming enveloped the invisible man in his terrible grip.
Locked together in silent combat, they swayed at the brink of the pit —
Then fell into it. And the sharp spikes sprang up to greet them!
CHAPTER 19 — The Body in the Pit
Ace had landed the giant helicopter in the empty parking lot on the outskirts of Chinatown as the Lord of the Unknown had directed him to do. Then the five Omega men, with Ernestine Grimshaw tagging along behind, had piled out of the sleek super-craft and prepared for the assault on the Grim Reaper’s stronghold. They unholstered and checked their weapons, odd-looking pistols of some light, molded plastic, that seemed as flimsy and ineffectual as children’s toys.
Actually, these weapons were remarkably powerful and potent, when used with unerring accuracy. Fired by compression, they employed bullets of hard rubber rather than of steel-jacketed lead. It was Zarkon’s desire, in such cases, to disable and eliminate opposing gangs, rather than to kill or cripple them. A dead man cannot be brought to the bar of justice for judgment, and can therefore make no retribution for his crimes against civilization. Neither can he serve as a source of needed information or evidence, or give testimony against his bosses. For such reasons, to say nothing of purely humanitarian scruples, Zarkon used these so-called “mercy-guns” when a shoot-out was impending.
The hard rubber bullets, when fired against nerve centers or vulnerable places such as the hinge of the jaw, the center of the forehead, or the nape of the neck, could down an enemy without killing him. The Omega men sometimes grumbled about this trace of “squeamishness” in their leader. To such as Nick and Scorchy, the only good foe is one who is permanently out of action. Still, experience had taught them that the mercy-guns — when
fired with the unerring accuracy in which Zarkon had schooled his men — proved remarkably effective in rendering a gangster hors de combat.
Having made certain that their weapons were in fighting trim, Zarkon’s lieutenants next donned protective body-armor of molded plastic similar to the flak-jackets worn by modern infantry. This was only prudent, since the crooks they would shortly be going up against had no such Zarkonian scruples, and would be throwing hot lead at them. Unlimbering gas grenades and powerful flash-bombs, the Omega men were ready for the assault. They now awaited only the arrival of the authorities to charge the Grim Reaper’s hideout. As soon as Detective Inspector Ricks arrived, with a combat-ready squad of Knickerbocker City’s Finest, the battle would begin.
One minor annoyance was Doctor Ernestine Grimshaw. The attractive blond girl flatly refused to he left behind in safety. Her argument was that she had been in on this case from the start, and now that the curtain was about to rise on the last act of the drama, she highly resented suggestions that she remain in the Silver Ghost.
“Oh no, you don’t,” said the young lady with firm determination, as Scorchy Muldoon and Nick Naldini strove vainly to convince her to stay in the parking lot. “You clowns are not going to talk me into staying behind! Why, I never had so much fun in my life! You’re not going to get me to miss all the excitement — I want to find out who the Grim Reaper is, too!”
“But, Doc, lissen —” protested Scorchy Muldoon.
The blond girl shook her head adamantly.
“Not on your tintype, Charley!” she snapped. “Cut the chatter and let’s get to it. Quit yakking — you’re not gonna change my mind, so slip me one of those trick guns of yours and hand me one of those bullet-proof Mae Wests you guys use, and let’s hop to it! Don’t worry, Thyroid, I’ll stay behind and let you bozos go in first; but I’m not going to miss the big scene, no matter what.”
Scorchy stammered helplessly, flushing with fury at the repetition of the lady doctor’s disparaging pet name for him, which he resented as he always resented allusions to his height, or lack of same. But in the face of such determination his protests were futile.
Exchanging a helpless shrug with Nick Naldini, Scorchy gave the girl a set of the body-armor and showed her how to use one of the mercy-guns.
Viewing the brief confrontation with a fierce sniff, skinny old Menlo Parker rolled his eyes heavenward.
“Women!” he snorted disapprovingly, in that one eloquent word summing up the age-old battle between the sexes.
They did not have to wait very much longer before Ricks arrived with two squad cars crammed with the police department’s tactical assault force. The cops pulled up beside the big chopper and piled out into the parking lot. They wore much the same body-armor as Zarkon’s men, together with heavy plastic face-shields and helmets and riot-guns. The men who would spearhead the attack had tear-gas grenades clipped to their body harness.
Behind them came Ricks himself, a grim-jawed, keen-eyed senior officer. He was accompanied by a second man dressed in an ordinary suit, with a lean tanned face and grizzled hair.
“You must be Inspector Ricks,” said Nick Naldini smoothly. In brief words he introduced his associates; Ricks nodded a grim greeting to the men, most of whom he already knew, if only by reputation.
“Faith, an’ I hope yez have th’ warrant,” said Scorchy, his Killarney-blue eyes bright with zest for the coming battle. “Sure an’ I’d hate t’ hafta wait some more!” With a good old-fashioned slug-fest in the offing, Scorchy’s brogue crept into his voice, transforming it to what Nick Naldini called his “road show imitation of Barry Fitzgerald.”
“Right here,” said Ricks, slapping his breast-pocket. “Where’s Prince Zarkon?”
“He’s already gone in, over the roof tops,” said Ace Harrigan. “The chief’s worried about Chandra Lal — you know, Inspector, Jerred Streiger’s body-servant. He followed Pei Ling inside over an hour ago. Closer to two hours, I guess, by now. We just hope the Reaper hasn’t turned the Invisible Death against him ...”
“Well, we’ll soon find out,” said Ricks curtly, watching his men assemble in formation for the assault.
“Who’s this?” demanded Menlo Parker, cocking a suspicious thumb at the other man.
“Val Kildare of the FBI,” said Ricks. “Ever since he broke the Wu Fang murders some years back, he’s been pretty much the Bureau’s ‘Chinatown man.’ Knows as much about this part of town as anybody I could get; luckily, he’s been recently assigned to the Bureau’s Knickerbocker City office, so it wasn’t hard to enlist his aid.”
“If you’ll recall, Ricks, I volunteered for this one,” Kildare grinned. “I tried a few pot-shots against this place myself, back in the old days. Trying to keep Wu Fang from teaming up with Choy Lown. We all ready to go?”
The sergeant in charge of the tactical assault force signaled his men were prepared.
“Then move on in,” said Ricks brusquely. “We’ll forget the bull-horns this time, and take advantage of the no-knock law. Just bust on in and immobilize everyone inside. Move out!”
The armored cops left the parking lot at a trot, edged around the corner, crossed the street, and charged the front door of the dilapidated tea shop building. The lock gave with one crash of a heavily-booted foot, and the first rank was inside the building before the echoes of the shattering door had died on the early-morning air.
In the wake of the assault troops came Ricks and Kildare, guns at the ready, with the Omega men at their side. The cops, forming a thin blue line, vanished one by one into the seemingly-deserted building. Once inside, they split into three groups, one squad clumping up the stairs to search the upper storey, the second combing the street level, while the remainder of them sought to find the cellars.
“This place is probably honeycombed with alarm systems, but we can’t worry about that,” growled Ricks. “Busting in like this is probably going to stampede the whole gang into flight, and this whole block is a maze of secret tunnels. What the hell ... we’ll risk letting the little fish get away, so long as we can hook the king-fish himself.”
“The entrance to the secret passages is in the rear storeroom,” rapped Kildare in a hard voice.
“This way, men!” Ricks bawled. The sergeant left two men to guard the front entrance with their riot guns held at the ready, while the rest of them piled into the back room. Finding the hidden door, they ripped it open with crowbars and began clumping down the rickety wooden steps.
Lights casting cones of piercing brilliance through the musty gloom, they found the black tunnel and went through it cautiously. Kildare had expected death-traps, but they encountered no difficulties along the route. They could not, of course, have known that Prince Zarkon had already been along this same route, and that he had carefully disarmed the traps one by one, as he located them by means of the tell-tale.
Suddenly the lead man stopped short, barking a gruff order. Directly before his booted feet yawned a black pit. Flashlights blazed, sending rays of brightness searching through the gloom. The sharp stakes were clearly visible by this illumination. They probed skyward, like the naked fangs of some fearsome and enormous reptile.
Repressing a shudder of revulsion, the blond girl mumbled something about not having missed all this fun for anything, but her voice was faint and trembling. Had not the trap been sprung, they would have come upon it unawares in the dark, and more than a few of the police officers would have tumbled headfirst into the death-pit.
Kildare edged forward, his flashlight beam searing through the blackness.
“Great Scott, there’s a man down there,” he said ill a low voice.
“You sure?” demanded Ricks, crowding forward. “Confound it all, you’re right! Dead as a doornail, too — one of those spikes went right through his throat, almost severing his head from his body. Can’t quite see at this blasted angle — get more light down there, sergeant!”
He leaned over the brink of the pit, staring downward, his gr
im features suddenly pale.
“Can’t make him out,” he said huskily. “Is it ... is it ... it’s not Zarkon, surely!”
At the words, Scorchy Muldoon gulped and turned white as paper, his generous sprinkling of freckles standing out with startling clarity against the unnatural pallor of his skin.
By his side, Nick Naldini’s eyes narrowed and his lips compressed. A muttered oath in the sort of vile, gutter-Italian seldom heard this side of the back-alleys of Naples came hoarsely from him.
The Omega men crowded around the brink of the deathpit with their hearts in their mouths, jostling aside the tactical assault cops, while they directed the beams of their powerful lamps into the steep and narrow depths of the black pit where an unknown man had come to a ghastly end ...
CHAPTER 20 — The Kiss of Shiva
Slowly, by indeterminate stages, Chandra Lal returned to consciousness. His head felt woozy and light, as if all mentation had been sucked out of his brain, leaving it empty. This curious sensation aside, the hawk-faced Hindu felt no particular discomfort, although his bonds cramped his limbs and his extremities felt numb from long confinement.
Raising his head, he peered about him sharply, a quick sense of danger giving him the surge of adrenalin he needed to overcome the groggy, lightheaded sensation he had experienced upon first awakening.
He was bound to a light cane chair in a semi-dark room with thick, luxurious carpeting and silken drapes. Save for himself, the silent chamber was devoid of occupancy. The scent of incense was heavy on the motionless air, together with a sharp medicinal reek he could not identify.
The brawny Rajput searched his memory for some notion of how he had come into this place and what had happened to him here. He remembered another room, starkly bare, and a robed and mysterious figure, faceless and hooded, which had stood between him and a bank of merciless lights. He recalled a series of questions issued to him by the robed figure, which he had staunchly refused to answer. Then the mystery man, whom he now realized was the Grim Reaper, had barked a curt order. Chinese thugs had ripped down Chandra’s jacket, had torn his sleeve away, revealing one bare arm. Then from the gloom had emerged a glittering hypodermic loaded with some colorless fluid. The needle had been thrust into his arm, and then ... and then ...