Invisible Death

by Lin Carter

  Ace Harrigan brought the big chopper down on the same unused tennis court he employed as a makeshift chopper landing pad earlier. They piled out one by one and walked around to the front of the house.

  Their timing was almost perfect. Long, black, air-conditioned limousines were pulling up smoothly before the front entrance to disgorge dark-suited mourners returning from the funeral of the murdered millionaire. Among these, Zarkon recognized Constable Oglethorpe Gibbs, remarkably fresh and dapper for once, and his huge, cheerful nephew. They greeted him respectfully and Constable Gibbs drew the Lord of the Unknown aside for a few moments of confidential conversation.

  “What was that all about?” inquired Doctor Ernestine Grimshaw, as Zarkon rejoined his comrades.

  “A call from Ricks,” said the Omega Man. “He knew the funeral was this afternoon and called Gibbs on the chance we might be out here. An item of information has come through from Palfrey of Z5 in London, acting in co-operation with Interpol.”

  “Something important?” demanded the girl interestedly.

  “Any morsel of information we can acquire on this case is of some importance,” said Zarkon evasively.

  “How’s that?”

  “I have my suspicions, but little evidence,” admitted the Man from Tomorrow. “Every datum I can gather tightens the noose about the suspect’s throat another knot.”

  The girl looked at him blankly.

  “Do you mean — you know who the Grim Reaper is?” she breathed incredulously.

  “Of course,” said Zarkon absently. “I have known his identity for two days now. But proving my suspicions, well, that is another matter —”

  The girl was about to ask another question, and a more pointed one, but just then a large, jovial, red-faced man in impeccable mourning clothes came bustling up with a pale, sandy-haired, subdued young man in tow.

  “Prince Zarkon, how charming to see you again! Pity it has to be under such unhappy circumstances,” he said heartily.

  “Mr. Seaton,” Zarkon acknowledged his greetings. They shook hands, then Seaton gestured at the downcast young man at his side.

  “I don’t believe you have met Mr. Caleb Streiger, have you? Cal, m’boy, this is His Highness, Prince Zarkon of Novenia. He has been investigating your uncle’s demise.”

  Zarkon exchanged greetings with the gangling young man, who seemed to be all elbows and knees, and introduced both men to Ernestine Grimshaw. The guests who had attended the funeral of Jerred Streiger were by this time trooping into the house, where Sherrinford the butler and one of the maids collected their hats and topcoats. Zarkon, the Omega men, and Dr. Grimshaw were the last to enter the mansion.

  As the red-faced lawyer came bustling up, Zarkon excused himself briefly to visit the restroom. When he rejoined the company a few moments later, Josiah Seaton was beaming in his self-important and slightly pompous manner. Casting a pointed glance around the group so as to count heads and make certain everyone was present, Seaton cleared his throat with a loud harrumph, gathering the attention of the mourners, who were a group composed principally of Streiger’s household staff.

  “I believe we are all here, now, all of us who are mentioned in the will, that is,” said Josiah Seaton in his expansive manner. “May I suggest that we go in to the study and I will read the document in question.”

  One by one they entered the big, book-lined room and settled themselves on the chairs and divans, while the lawyer carried his raincoat and briefcase to a large desk. Setting down the briefcase at his feet, he snapped it open and withdrew an important-looking document therefrom. This he opened with a crackle of thick paper, cleared his throat, and glanced around one last time to make certain he had their full and undivided attention.

  Zarkon, who had lingered behind with Constable Gibbs for a few moments, quietly entered and took a chair near the door.

  Then Josiah Seaton began to read aloud the last will and testament of Jerred Streiger.

  CHAPTER 24 — The Grim Reaper Unmasked

  After a while, Scorchy Muldoon exchanged an eloquent glance with Nick Naldini, and politely smothered a yawn behind the palm of one hand. If Zarkon had hoped to learn anything of interest or of value, or if he had thought that the will of Jerred Streiger was likely to contain any last-minute surprises, it became increasingly obvious as time wore on that the Lord of the Unknown was going to be disappointed.

  The bequests contained in Streiger’s will were exactly as Josiah Seaton had predicted they would be — which ought to have come as no surprise to anyone, come to think of it, since it had been Seaton himself who had drawn the will up for Streiger in the first place.

  Decent but unsurprising sums of money were settled upon Mrs. Callahan, the housekeeper, Sherrinford, the butler, Borg, Streiger’s bodyguard, Pipkin, the gatekeeper, Canning, the deceased millionaire’s private secretary, and most of the other servants on the staff of Twelve Oaks, including, of course, Chandra Lal, who had been Streiger’s valet. These bequests were generous enough in their way, but comprised only a small fraction of the total value of the estate, the bulk of which, including Jerred Streiger’s majority stockholdings in the Worldwide Steel Corporation, went to the Streiger Foundation itself. As for the murdered man’s only close living relative, his nephew Caleb, whom as Seaton had informed Prince Zarkon earlier the murdered millionaire had disliked, he received only a modest annual stipend, together with the property and furnishings of Twelve Oaks itself. The shy, awkward young man flushed, bowed his head slightly, and rubbed his bony-knuckled hands together nervously when his portion of the estate was read off. But whether this was an angry reaction to being so largely cut out of the Streiger wealth, or young Caleb’s natural reaction to being singled out in public, it was hard to say, although privately Scorchy and the others would have chosen the latter as most likely.

  In his fulsome, hearty manner, the red-faced lawyer read the document through to its end, cleared his throat again, asked if there were any questions, received only a politely negative murmur as reply, and stood up, stuffing the will back into his briefcase, which he placed up on the desk in preparation for his departure.

  “Well, then, if there are no pertinent questions, I believe that will be all,” he said pleasantly. “I’m sure the members of the staff will wish to return to their duties, unless Mr. Caleb Streiger has instructions, ah, to the contrary?”

  “No, no, that’s p-perfectly all right,” said that young man hurriedly.

  “Well, then. Thank you all for your time — ah Your Highness has a question?” The lawyer sounded politely inquisitive, for just then Zarkon had gotten to his feet and began walking to the center of the room. “There is one more thing, Mr. Seaton, if you don’t mind,” said the Man of Mysteries quietly.

  “No, of course not, my dear sir! Please go ahead

  “Thank you.” Zarkon turned to look at the mourners, who regarded him blankly. Scorchy and Nick exchanged a mystified glance, then shrugged in unison and turned to hear what their chief had to say.

  “As some of you probably know, the Knickerbocker City Homicide Bureau has called me in to assist the local authorities in investigating the death of the late Mr. Streiger,” said Zarkon in a low voice. “There is considerable evidence to suggest that the death of Jerred Streiger was not due to natural causes, but was a deliberate act of murder on the part of person or persons unknown. Since all of you gathered here knew the deceased man, and are naturally concerned that his murderer or murderers be brought to justice and are made to pay for their crimes, it seems only fitting and proper that I share with you now the results of my investigation thus far.”

  The deep, quiet, perfectly modulated tones of the Man of Mysteries, his commanding mien and piercing magnetic gaze, held the crowd of mourners as might some seasoned actor or practiced orator or brilliant trial attorney. He stepped forward to a position toward the front of the room where they could all see and hear him without difficulty.

  “My first task,” began Zarkon, “was of
course to ascertain to my own satisfaction that Jerred Streiger had, in fact, been murdered. While law-enforcement officers do not ordinarily suspect the victim of a heart attack to have died from other than natural causes, there were curious circumstances surrounding Mr. Streiger’s death which suggested the presence of a crime. Not the least of these, certainly, was the fact that the dead man had been for some time receiving threatening letters. This is no particular secret, I am sure, to those of you who were Mr. Streiger’s employees. The last of these threats, received on the day of his death, predicted the very hour of his demise.

  “Now, there are, of course, ways in which a heart attack can be caused by deliberate means, but these are generally used in those murders which are carefully planned to look like natural deaths. I refer to certain drugs or poisons which can precipitate a heart seizure, or to the injection of an air-bubble into the blood-veins, or to the use of a chemical agent which causes a blood clot to form. In the case of Jerred Streiger, circumstances would seem to rule out these methods. His physician found no trace of any foreign substance in the corpse, and the drugs or poisons which could have brought on a heart attack by artificial means all leave a chemical residue in the body. The only exception to this is the use of curare, the poison employed by South American Indian tribes to envenom their blowgun darts; the presence of curare in the body, however, can generally be detected by its effect upon the cells of the brain. And, as for the injection of an air-bubble into the blood-vein, that would of course leave a puncture-wound, which, although no bigger than a pin-prick, could still be detected in the course of an autopsy. So in the case of Jerred Streiger, I had to look still further to discover the method of the murder.

  “I know of only one other way of inducing a blood clot to form, which I will describe presently. This particular method of murder is rather intricate and complicated, and requires the use of an instrument within fifteen feet of the victim. When I first examined the murder room I carefully measured off the distance in all directions from the spot on which Jerred Streiger collapsed. The room is so arranged, of such proportions, and the furniture situated in such a manner, that there was only one place where the murderer could have concealed himself from view and yet have been within range to bring his weapon to bear upon his victim: he would have had to stand in the flower beds outside the room, just beyond the French windows. From that position he could have used his device, even though the drapes were drawn. And, such is the position of the table lamp, that it would have thrown Jerred Streiger’s shadow on the drapes so that, even although he could not actually see into the room, the murderer would know precisely where to aim his weapon.

  “Therefore, I opened the windows and looked outside. There, exactly where I expected to find them, I discovered the imprint of the feet of an unknown person. The size of the footprints was unusually small, suggesting the murderer to have either been a rather small man, or a woman or a child. But the prints were those of a man’s shoes, and not a woman’s, and there are no children on the property. From this evidence, and from the fact that the impression of the murderer’s shoes in the soft loam, which were pressed considerably deeper into the earth at the toe than at the heel, suggesting that the murderer had to stand virtually on his tiptoes in order to see the shadow on the drapes and bring his weapon to bear, all combined to convince me that the murderer was a very short man with very small feet. When I questioned each and every member of the staff in trim I discovered that the gardener’s boy, a young Chinese named Pei Ling, matched each of these requirements. I also learned that he was one of the most recent members of the staff here at Twelve Oaks. He seemed the most likely suspect.”

  “Do you mean,” demanded the lawyer incredulously, “that a teen-aged gardener’s boy is the Grim Reaper?”

  Zarkon shook his head negatively.

  “I did not say that, Mr. Seaton. The boy, Pei Ling, was the actual murderer; but the Grim Reaper is another person entirely, and would have to be.”

  “Pray continue, then. And forgive the interruption.”

  Zarkon nodded and resumed his narration.

  “My organization uses a small radio broadcasting instrument which has been miniaturized to a size no bigger than a pinhead,” he said. “Using one of the little tricks of misdirection taught me by my associate, Mr. Naldini, a former stage magician, I attached one of these tiny instruments to the clothing worn by the Chinese boy. Since I could not be absolutely positive that it was he and no other had been the murderer, I attached a similar instrument to the garments of every member of the staff. I then summoned two more of my associates from my headquarters with a new radio location-finder attuned to the carrier-wave broadcast by these instruments, and we kept watch. If any member of the staff should leave suddenly or unexpectedly, which might be an indication of his or her guilt, it was our plan to follow that person’s movements by means of the map-grid of this device.

  “As some of you know, Pei Ling did in fact leave Twelve Oaks not very long after Mr. Streiger’s death. Through the use of my instrument we managed to track him to the outskirts of the Chinatown section of the City, but unfortunately he passed beyond the limited range of my set and so we were unable to follow his movements beyond that point. But it seemed very likely that my suspicions regarding Pei Ling’s culpability in the murder were now confirmed. An additional confirmation came when I learned the fact that another man of wealth and important holdings, similarly threatened by notes of the same tenor, who died of similar causes under similar circumstances, had also just before the advent of these threatening letters added a person of Oriental extraction to his staff. That person, I later learned, had been acquired through the identical employment service through which Jerred Streiger had hired the boy Pei Ling. It would seem that we were confronted with a Chinese gang of criminals, such as had once plagued the city police during the era of the Tong wars.”

  “I gather from your words, then,” said Josiah Seaton interestedly, “that this Grim Reaper, the mastermind behind these murders, is an Oriental gangland leader?”

  “Not necessarily,” murmured Zarkon. “Although such could indeed have been the case. But there was a certain criminal organization, formerly active in Knickerbocker City’s Chinatown district, whose leader had been a sage or savant of venerable authority among the citizens of the district: a mysterious figure held in superstitious awe by the residents. He himself was long-since dead, but there was no reason why his place could not have been taken by another. Since this individual dwelt in seclusion in a secret place, there was no real argument against his successor being of Caucasian descent, since even his followers saw him but rarely.

  “The decisive bit of evidence came into our hands from the very brave deed of Mr. Streiger’s personal valet, Chandra Lai, who happened to see Pei Ling fleeing from the estate, decided his actions were of a suspicious nature, and took it upon himself to follow the boy to his hideout, this secret headquarters of which I have been speaking. Chandra Lal managed to inform us by telephone of the address before he was taken prisoner by the gang. Unfortunately, the building is in a part of Chinatown where the houses are connected by a veritable maze of tunnels and secret passages so most of the gang managed to escape during the early hours of this morning when the police staged their raid. Among those who got away was the Grim Reaper himself. Fortunately for the cause of justice, however, his escape was futile, for by this time conclusive evidence has come to light which establishes his true identity beyond question.”

  The rosy-faced lawyer blinked in surprise.

  “Do you mean — you know who this murderous fiend actually is?” he gasped.

  Zarkon nodded, his face grimly expressionless. The mourners exchanged sidelong glances in which excitement and apprehension were curiously mingled. It was almost as if each of them suspected that the person seated next to him might in secret he the sinister criminal mastermind who struck from nowhere with the unseen power of the Invisible Death.

  “Well, then, good heavens,
man — tell us! Who?” demanded lawyer Josiah Seaton.

  “There sits the Grim Reaper,” said Zarkon, leveling a hand.

  Consternation showed in the pale, tense, excited features of those present as they craned their heads around in order to ascertain who it was among them whom Prince Zarkon had accused.

  And then gasps of amazement burst from the astounded throng as they realized the identity of the individual singled out by Zarkon’s pointing hand.

  That person flushed and stammered, fidgeting with hands and feet, crimsoning as he became the object of their concentrated gaze.

  It was the murdered man’s nephew, Caleb Streiger!

  Constable Oglethorpe Gibbs, who happened to be seated directly behind the nervous and rabbity young man, sprang to his feet and seized him by the arm in his strong, calloused hands. In a moment a metallic click sounded through the hubbub and uproar of excited voices, as the law officer locked the awkward youth’s bony wrists in a pair of strong handcuffs.

  “Well, now I git it!” snorted that remarkably homely and slovenly officer. “Thet-thar is why Mister Prince Zarkon asked me t’pick a chere right behind this ‘un. Young feller, yer unner arrest fer th’ murder ‘o Jerred Streiger, late o’ this county. Enythang yew say is likely t’be used aginst yew, yew murderin’ young skunk, yew! Redneck, fetch me moh car.”

  “Faster’n a houn’dawg kin skritch his ear, Oggie,” said the strapping young deputy with a cheerful grin. Then, noting the fierce expression on the other’s knobby visage, he amended his words hastily. “Uncle Oggie, thet is!”

  Through the stir and chatter, one figure sat motionless as if completely paralyzed with amazement. It was the corpulent, red-faced, smooth-tongued attorney, Josiah Seaton. Rarely was the clever lawyer at a loss for words: but this was one of those times. The expression of surprise on his normally jolly and well-fleshed features was so acute as to suggest slack-jawed idiocy.