The Nemesis of Evil Page 13

  They began the ascent of the mountains, with Zarkon in the lead, followed by the girl, the four Omega men, and with Robert Russell Ryan gamely puffing along in the rear.

  The climb was not as difficult as it looked from the ground. For one thing, at least on this slope, Mount Shasta soared into the moonlit heavens by a series of tiers or stages that were not unlike immense steps. It was like a stairway built for giants, thought the girl occultist to herself, not without a slight tremor. She could not get out of her mind the uncanny history of this place where strange lights hovered at night, and weird cults held mystic rites, and men were slain by invisible flames.

  By moonlight, the scene was one of awful and tremendous grandeur. The night was silent as the grave, the thick pine woods huddled ominously close to the base of the mountain. There was no sound, except for the gasping as they breathed; the rasp and scuffle of shoe leather against gritty rock; and the far, faint sighing of the wind. Far above their heads, the summit of the mountain frowned down upon them like the knotted brow of a scowling stone titan.

  Elvira Higgins felt her heart pounding against her ribs, and began to wish she had never gotten interested in occultism.

  They climbed on, pausing from time to time to rest.

  When they reached it at last, they found the fumarole at some considerable distance down the slope from the peak, which meant that their climb was not as extensive as they had begun to expect. The black hole in the mountain’s flank was smaller than they could have wished; steam leaked from it, stinking powerfully of rotten eggs.

  Scorchy sniffed, said “Phew!,” and pinched his nostrils shut with thumb and forefinger. Doc Jenkins grinned, showing huge, square teeth.

  “Well, heck, I said the fumaroles were sulfurous, didn’t I?” he said apologetically.

  Zarkon climbed up to peer in the hole, ignoring the fumes, which made his eyes water. He clambered down again to report a cleverly-concealed steam-pipe hidden just within the lip of the craterlet.

  “The opening leads farther into the mountain,” he said, “and maybe provides another entrance. Let’s give it a try, anyway.”

  One by one they scaled the blister-like protuberance and slithered into the black hole, through disturbed whiffs of reeking vapor. Snarling and jostling each other, both Scorchy and Nick assisted Elvira to the entrance. Puffing and blowing, scarlet-faced with exertion, the millionaire publisher, as usual, brought up the rear. The older man had obstinately refused to be left behind on this final phase of the adventure, insisting he would see it through to the end.

  Once inside the fumarole, the Omega men found a narrow, low-roofed tunnel that slanted downward and then sharply to the right. Each man packed with his gear a small but powerful pocket flashlight, which came in handy here in the pitch-black tunnel. The floor was rough and uneven; they bumped their heads on the roof and skinned knees and elbows on the jagged protuberances of the floor. The air was very bad in here, for whiffs of stinging sulfur steam constantly blew back into the tunnel whenever the winds shifted.

  Eyes watering from the fumes, nursing a skinned knee, Scorchy bumped and crawled along, whispering a colorful profusion of Hibernian curses at every new discomfort.

  “Sure, an’ I know now why Mrs. Muldoon’s little boy was never innerestid in spelunkin’,” he groaned, lapsing into his brogue, as he usually did in times of stress or peril. “If I ivver git meself out o’ this black hole, divvil a man will tempt me inta another!”

  “Stop griping and keep your foot out-of my face,” snarled Nick Naldini, who was behind the feisty little Irishman. Then he gave voice to an anguished howl. “You did that on purpose, you little pipsqueak! Wait’ll I get out of here, I’ll pin your ears back so far you can use ‘em for a scarf around your silly neck on cold nights!”

  “Will you two birds pipe down,” grunted Doc Jenkins disgustedly, “the air’s bad enough in here without you addin’ all that hot air!”

  Finally the narrow tunnel debouched into a paved stone corridor. This was the first evidence of human habitation they had seen thus far, not counting the steam-pipe at the lip of the fumarole, obviously installed to discourage amateur mountain-climbers from attempting to explore the caverns. They got down into the corridor with many a sigh and groan of relief.

  Zarkon glided around the curve out of sight, as soundless as a moving shadow, to reconnoiter ahead. He returned shortly, warning them to keep their eyes open from here on in, for they were in enemy territory now. Drawing their mercy guns, the Omega men crowded on the heels of their chief.

  Neon tubing was set into the upper part of the stone walls, shedding a ghastly blue light. Any light at all was better than the darkness of the tunnel they had just crawled through; at least now they could see what they were getting into.

  The tunnel was deserted. They followed it to its end, where it branched into two directions. One led to storage chambers and a dormitory-like room where camp cots of the folding variety were set up, with blankets and pillows, all neatly arrayed.

  Cots, bedding, and all were Army surplus gear, they noticed.

  The other direction was more promising. It opened out at last onto a stone balcony that overlooked an enormous cavern, a domed chamber only partially artificial, where turbines loomed and hummed.

  “Wonder how they generate their power here?” said Ace Harrigan interestedly.

  Zarkon laid his finger across his lips. Just then two red-robed figures entered the huge power room from a side tunnel. Behind them came a slim, diminutive figure with saffron skin, thick glasses, and shaven pate. It was Ching.

  “Shall we pop ‘em off from here, chief?” suggested Scorchy, hefting his flat, plastic pistol meaningfully.

  Zarkon shook his head. From the many padded pockets that lined his gun-metal gray suede jacket, he plucked a fat tube of metal.

  “Gas grenade will be quieter, I think, and no less effective,” he said, stepping to the balcony rail.

  Suddenly a harsh voice spoke unexpectedly behind them.

  “Hands up, or I’ll shoot you down!” it grated.

  The Omega men froze, then slowly lifted their hands and turned to see who it was had gotten the drop on them.

  It was Robert Russell Ryan!

  Chapter 18 — The Traitor Unmasked

  Scorchy Muldoon stared at the lean, aristocratic man who stood holding the gun Prince Zarkon had given him back at state police headquarters in Palma Laguna. The Irishman’s eyes popped with surprise and his jaw dropped.

  “Is it you was th’ traitor in our midst, yourself!” he breathed, clenching his lifted hands into fists. “Faith, an’ I’ll pound yer fine face in fer ye, ye Judas!”

  “Scorchy!” said Zarkon warningly. The redheaded boxer subsided, growling.

  “Drop those guns,” panted the millionaire publisher breathlessly. “And you, Prince, lay that gas grenade or whatever it is down on the floor carefully, now, and no tricks!”

  Zarkon knelt and gently deposited the metal tube on the floor.

  “Now get up and step back away from it,” Ryan said, waving the pistol. Zarkon silently did as he was told.

  The newspaper publisher was white to the lips with fear or tension or excitement, or maybe from all three. His hair was tumbled disorderedly across his high, noble brow. His eyes gleamed wildly, like an animal’s at bay, and his tight, twisted features, slick and wet with perspiration, glistened in the harsh glare of the neon lamps.

  “I — I swear — I’ll shoot the first man who so much as twiddles his pinky finger,” he panted, his voice thick with excitement. “So don’t nobody move an inch — you too, young woman!”

  His bright, maniacal eyes switched back to the men he held before him with the pistol. There was a feral gleam of triumph in those alert, wary, frightened eyes, and a twisted smile on his lips. It made the handsome publisher look strangely ugly and brutish.

  Zarkon was watching him thoughtfully.

  “There are no bullets in that gun you’re holding,” he said qui
etly. “You didn’t think I’d give you a weapon that had any ammunition in it, did you?”

  Robert Russell Ryan gave a croaking sound from sneering lips. It was meant to be laughter, but sounded little like it.

  “More of your tricks, eh?” he grinned’ nastily. “You can’t fool me! I was too smart for you from the beginning, and you know it. You never suspected that I was —”

  “Brother Shaitan,” Zarkon completed it for him, gravely. “An apt pseudonym, since the Islamic version of the Devil is also known as ‘the Deceiver.’ ”

  “You ... knew?” the newspaperman croaked, a flicker of doubt gleaming momentarily in his fixed, fanatical eyes. Then his gaze hardened. “I don’t believe you!”

  “I didn’t know for certain, but I suspected,” said Zarkon. “There were only two men who knew MacAndrews had infiltrated the Brotherhood under an assumed identity: Gordon Halleck, who gave the assignment to MacAndrews, and you. You were curiously upset that Halleck sent MacAndrews in without first consulting you, although your editor, a senior employee, a trusted man, had no particular reason to check with you first. Neither did you have sufficient reason to be quite so distraught over the fact that an outsider had gained entry into the Disciples of Lucifer. When MacAndrews was killed, it had to be because one or the other of you had given his secret away to Lucifer. It could not have been MacAndrews, because he was an old hand at this undercover work, and was too sharp to make a serious slip that could endanger his life. Nor was it likely that Lucifer figured it out: He is a brilliant man, a scientific genius, but, despite his occult claims of mystical powers, he is no mind reader. From the very beginning of this case, I thought it likely that either you or Halleck, or some third party who still has not surfaced, had betrayed him.”

  “You couldn’t have suspected me!” panted Ryan furiously. “Why, I got you into this thing in the first place!”

  “An old, familiar trick, designed to avert suspicion from yourself,” said Zarkon easily. “I have seen it used many times before. It didn’t work then, and it didn’t work in this instance. But I kept an open mind on whether you or Halleck was Lucifer’s agent. I let your actions prove your guilt.”

  “What actions?”

  “Your unusual behavior. When a man in your position, or in Halleck’s, calls in outside aid, the normal thing to do is to share with him or with them whatever information you have, and then stay out of things while he or they do their job. Halleck we saw only that once, back at your home in Seagrove the night we flew in. He gave me the information he possessed, then went back to Los Angeles to do his job. That was normal behavior. But what did you do? Insisted on joining us, on tagging along every foot of the way. The question that occurred to me was, quite simply, why? Why did you dog our footsteps throughout every phase of this case? Not, like Miss Higgins here, because you enjoyed the excitement of the adventure, because you quite obviously did not enjoy a minute of it. I observed you in the moments of peril, and you were acutely suffering from tension and fear. Your true motive for tagging along on every excursion could only be that you were acting as Lucifer’s eyes and ears. Such, at least, seemed the most likely explanation.”

  Ryan snarled, his eyes cold and his expression nasty. The gun he clutched as a drowning man might clutch a straw, however, did not waver. It still pointed directly at Prince Zarkon.

  “There is only one thing about your complicity in the plot that still puzzles me,” admitted the Ultimate Man. “And that is: Why? Why should you, a respectable man with wealth, social position, power, involve yourself in a criminal conspiracy of these dimensions? What could Lucifer possibly have offered you that your millions could not buy without his aid?”

  Passion blazed in the eyes of the newspaper publisher.

  “ ‘Wealth’ — ‘power’ — ‘position’! I inherited these from my father,” he said viciously, his voice thick with emotion. “Everything I have came from him — gifts, nothing that I made or earned or won for myself! I always despised him; even now, I hate him.”

  Then something seemed to come over the sneering, sweating, white-faced millionaire. A strangely ominous, dreamy expression stole into his eyes.

  “Three times I ran for governor of the state,” he said in a soft voice, which trembled slightly to the intensity of his emotion. “And three times I offered my talents and my services to the people. Each time I spent a fortune on my political campaign. And each time ... the voters refused me ... denied me ... rejected me!”

  He laughed in a manner that sent shivers up the spines of those who heard the laughter. There was no humor in his laugh; it sounded like bits of broken glass being rubbed together.

  “Lucifer has promised me California to rule as a province of his empire, once he has overthrown the American Government,” he said softly, gloatingly. “And when I ascend my throne, the people of this state will wish they had never been born.”

  His voice rose suddenly into a hoarse, raw-throated shriek that rang and echoed through the cavernous room.

  “Ching! Ching! I am holding Zarkon and the Omega men at gun-point — up here, on the balcony. Send your men — on the double!”

  The little Eurasian with the thick-lensed spectacles had been busied below, overseeing some adjustments to one of the turbines. It was obvious from the way he jerked his head around and stared above him, startled, that he had heard nothing of the low-voiced, swift exchange between Zarkon and Robert Russell Ryan above the droning music of the power units.

  Now he rapped out a terse command and the big, red-robed thugs who had been working on the turbine went running up the spiral iron staircase, cursing and yanking at the hem of their robes as the voluminous garments tangled their legs.

  They came rushing up onto the balcony, lifting their heavy rifles in a menacing manner. Ching prudently kept himself well in the rear, so as to be out of the path of flying lead.

  Ryan was still rapt, glazed eyes staring blindly at some paradisiacal vision of the future only he could see.

  Then it was that Zarkon whirled into action. His transition from utter immobility into whizzing motion took them all by surprise. His lithe, gray-clad figure became a blur as he hurled himself across the platform. Like a striking panther, he pounced on the fanatic, dreamy-eyed publisher.

  At the top of the stairs Ching’s thugs gaped, blinking puzzledly at the superhuman speed with which the tall man moved.

  Ryan yipped and squeezed off a shot. His pistol was still aimed directly at Zarkon’s heart. Even the superhuman speed with which the Man of Mysteries could move could not have carried him out of the path of the flashing bullet. Indeed, he did not even attempt to evade the gunshot; instead, he sprang toward Ryan, hurtling himself directly into the bullet’s path.

  But something was odd. Something was wrong.

  There was no bullet! It was even as the Lord of the Unknown had stated just a few moments ago. The pistol he had handed to Robert Russell Ryan back at the state police headquarters building in Palma Laguna was indeed empty.

  Ryan shrieked, dropped his eyes to the empty gun, disbelief legible in his face. He had dismissed Zarkon’s prescient claim as an obvious bluff; now he knew better.

  But it was too late to do anything about it.

  “Hold it, you!” growled one of the thugs, lifting his rifle.

  Zarkon pounced upon the slim, aristocratic publisher, caught him by the hip and the armpit, hoisted him with effortless ease, pivoted — and threw him at the guard!

  The others were clumping up the iron stair behind the first, with Ching cautiously bringing up the rear. Ryan’s flying form crashed into the first guard, who lost his footing and went whirling over backward, knocking the others off balance. They were tumbling down the stairs in a cursing, blundering tangle of arms and legs and bodies, guns falling, to clank against the concrete floor below.

  With a howl, the Omega men sprang into action, jumping down the stairs to club the entangled men into unconsciousness. Zarkon did not bother with the stairs, but whipp
ed over the railing and dropped from the balcony, landing on the floor of the great room on all fours, as lightly and elastically as the proverbial cat.

  Ching had dodged back down the stairs and was trying to flee through the nearer of the stone archways that led to other, more remote parts of this warren of passages and tunnels. Zarkon overtook him with a sprint of blinding speed.

  The little Eurasian, his mask of suavity shattered, squealed and whipped out a gun from some hidden pocket in his robes. But Zarkon’s hand went floating out in one of those curiously weightless, seemingly casual gestures that were his own peculiar mode of hand-to-hand fighting. Gently as a caress, his fingers touched the lump of nerve ganglia at the hinge of Ching’s jaw.

  The pistol fell from strengthless fingers. Eyes glazing, Ching sagged bonelessly to slump on the floor.

  Alarms were going off now, filling the echoing stone room with a deafening clangor. A big glass televisor screen, set in the farther wall, lit up with the frowning face and glaring, ice-pale eyes of Lucifer. Obviously, some hidden watcher or concealed camera had glimpsed the turmoil in the big room and had tripped the alarms.

  Zarkon whipped about and flew for the nearest doorway. It was a huge stone arch, vaguely Gothic in design. Even as he flung himself across the room toward it, a heavy steel barrier dropped clangingly to seal it off.

  Lucifer laughed!

  And the Omega men were trapped.

  Gas began leaking in a steady stream from hidden vents in the wall. The vaporous streams intensified into a high-pressure jet. The gas was doubtlessly anesthetic in nature. The power room was huge, but such was the vapor billowing from the hidden vents that the room would probably be filled in minutes.

  White clouds thickened, obscuring Lucifer’s vision of the stone room. He cursed, fiddling with the controls.