The Nemesis of Evil Page 14

  Moments later the white wall of sleep gas thinned out and the mastermind of crime regained his unimpeded view of the huge stone chamber.

  Bodies lay slumped about. Some were his own thugs in their red robes, but others he could recognize as the bodies of the Omega men. Brother Shaitan — he who had been known as Robert Russell Ryan, millionaire publisher of the Los Angeles Illustrated Press — lay sprawled amid the others. So was the girl occultist, Elvira Higgins.

  Lucifer’s fierce eyes probed the stone room, searching — searching!

  Then his gaze found the object for which it had sought. The strong mouth curved in a gloating smile of triumph. Again, Lucifer laughed.

  For the body nearest to the great archway — the archway now blocked by a heavy grille of steel bars — was clothed in the characteristic gray suede jacket and slacks always worn by Zarkon, Lord of the Unknown!

  Chapter 19 — Back from the Dead!

  Scorchy was in a mood particularly grim and gloomy. The reasons for this were several, and obvious. For one thing, he had his hands tied behind him by stout cords. For another, he was locked in one of a row of stone cells. And for a third, Lucifer’s thugs had stripped the feisty little prize-fighter down to his socks and shorts.

  He cherished in his mind the memory of the cheerfully grinning gangster who had pulled off his clothes with many an off-color wisecrack. That this should have happened in the very presence of Elvira Higgins was but an added thornprick in the pride of Scorchy Muldoon. In just a few short hours, he had conceived an enormous infatuation for the pretty, red-headed girl. It made him mad to think how foolish he must have looked, plucked like a chicken right in front of her, and unable to do anything about it!

  The worst thing of all, as far as Scorchy was concerned, was that Zarkon was not imprisoned with them.

  Zarkon’s whereabouts were not known to the Omega men. He had been downed by the gas, they knew, or guessed, for they had all seen his gray-clad body sprawled on the oil-stained concrete floor.

  But that had been the last they had seen of the Ultimate Man. They had slumped into unconsciousness a moment after, and knew nothing more until awakening in their separate cells a little while ago.

  Where Was Zarkon? Why was he not imprisoned with his men? Had Lucifer set him apart from the rest of them for some fiendish punishment, some malicious torment, that he must suffer alone under the gloating gaze of the deranged criminal mastermind?

  They did not know; but he was not here.

  This worried Scorchy, for the Pride of the Muldoons loved his chief with a fierce, undivided love that was just this side of idolatry. Scorchy could not imagine the world without Prince Zarkon in it, or his life without the man he was humbly proud to think of as his master. It was the not-knowing that rankled so bitterly....

  Scorchy’s one and only consolation was that Nick Naldini had also suffered the discomfiture of bondage and the indignity of being stripped almost to the buff. The histrionic protests the whiskey-voiced vaudevillian had croaked while being peeled had delighted Scorchy’s risibilities. If he had to be forcibly undressed, the affront to his dignity was soothed and solaced, knowing that Nick had suffered the identical ignominy.

  And, whereas Scorchy, although short, had a fine, compact, well-muscled build, such as would hardly bring a pitying smile to the lips of any pretty girl, Nick Naldini was skinny as a rail and looked pretty silly in his shorts.

  The red-robed gangsters had come crowding into the big stone room just as soon as the sleep gas had dissipated and become harmless. They had carried the unconscious bodies to this row of cells, then stripped the Omega men almost to the buff, permitting them to retain their undershorts and socks only. Lucifer was wary of these men and treated them with respect, but he knew their custom of concealing a variety of small gadgets and devices unobtrusively about their person, and could not trust the Omega men to be safe and secure, even under lock and key, and tightly bound, unless they had been relieved of their garments.

  So he had ordered them undressed before consigning them to individual cells. All of them had suffered the same embarrassment and disgrace at the hands of their captors, save for Elvira Higgins alone. Lucifer had spared the young woman from this discomforting experience on the grounds that, not being a member of the Omega organization, she was unlikely to be carrying infernal devices. His men had, however, been instructed to relieve her of her bag and to carefully go through the pockets of her clothing in order to remove from her person any suspicious object or device.

  Lucifer’s instructions had meticulously been carried out; the attractive redhead had protested vehemently and loudly, but the thugs had offered her neither insult nor indignity, and she subsided once the cell door was slammed and locked.

  Only one occupant of the power room had not rejoined them in the cell block, and that was the millionaire newspaper publisher, Robert Russell Ryan.

  Somehow in the fall down the iron stairs, the traitor whom the Omega men had permitted to accompany them throughout this entire adventure had hit his head on a steel rail. He had died instantly from a concussion of the brain.

  So abruptly ended the life of a man born to wealth, power, influence, and social position, whose overweening political ambitions made him dissatisfied with anything except high office, and who had turned to a secret career of crime in order to fulfill his unholy lust for power. It was a sad, almost a tragic, end for one born to a life of ease and luxury, with advantages denied the many and enjoyed only by the few.

  But few traitors live to enjoy the fruits of their betrayals, and such was the case with Robert Russell Ryan.

  Scorchy groused and cussed and grumbled for a long time after the red-robed thugs had thrown him inside the cell and locked the door. Then he had squirmed into a more comfortable position and began to work on his bonds. There wasn’t much he could have done, to free himself from the cell even if he had managed to get his wrists untied, since he had been relieved of all his gadgets. But the tough little Hibernian would have felt a lot better, down deep inside, with his hands free.

  Unfortunately, perhaps owing to their former experience with Menlo Parker, the thugs had knotted Scorchy’s bonds with considerable care and ingenuity. They had not used handcuffs this time. The reason for this was simple: To those who know the tricks of the escape artist, it is always easier to get out of handcuffs than it is to free yourself from ropes.

  The lock on a pair of handcuffs can always be picked. It is not so difficult to escape from them as the man in the street may think. If it were, professional escape artists would avoid using handcuffs on the stage, whereas in fact they virtually delight in them.

  But to free yourself from well-tied ropes is incomparably tougher. There’s only one way to get your hands free from ropes, and that is to cut them. Without a knife blade or some sharp instrument, you’re stuck.

  So it was with Scorchy Muldoon. And to make matters worse, the thugs had not even used ordinary ropes, but nylon cords, which were difficult even to cut through.

  After a while, his wrists chafed raw and his fingers numb with weariness, Scorchy just plain gave up. It must very nearly be day by now, he thought to himself. It had been a long and a very busy night. He was pretty worn out from all the excitement and exertion of the fight, the capture, and so on, not to mention the climbing of the mountain itself.

  So he settled back as comfortably as he could, cleared all worries out of his mind, and took a nap. There was simply no reason not to snatch some sleep while he could.

  Lucifer was sure to make certain he was awake when it was time for him to die.

  As for Nick Naldini, the former stage magician and escape artist knew all the tricks of his trade. Even bound with a stout length of nylon cord, the scrawny magician with the Mephisto mustache could probably have Houdinied his way to freedom in less time than it would take me to describe how he did it.

  But Lucifer knew all about Nick Naldini and his stage career. Each of the Omega men had been thoroughly re
searched by Lucifer’s agents long before. And for the lanky magician, the mastermind of criminality had devised a mode of bondage that would have defied the skills of Houdini himself.

  In essence, it was quite simple. An injection had rendered his hands and arms temporarily strengthless.

  Nothing exotic in the way of obscure pharmaceuticals had been used to render Nick Naldini helpless. It had perhaps appealed to Lucifer’s sense of humor to employ ordinary Xylocaine — the variety of local anesthesia commonly used by good dentists to deaden all sensation in an aching jaw!

  Unable to use his hands at all, Nick sat back and soothed his lacerated ego by imagining the things he would like to do to Lucifer, had he the crime lord helpless and at his mercy. There were quite a few things he would like to have done to Lucifer, and the more he thought about it, the more interesting and ingenious amusements came to mind.

  After a while, even this mild form of mental entertainment began to pall. And before long, Nick Naldini fell into a doze as well, for he too was worn out from the fatigue and tension of the long, exciting day.

  He slept deeply — so deeply that he did not see the small, hunched, red-robed figure as it crept on furtive, silent feet past his cell.

  The robed figure paused outside Nick’s cell and peered inside for a moment. Then it glided on.

  It moved silently and secretly, in an ominous manner.

  In one hand it carried a wicked knife with a broad blade and sharp edges. It was a knife of the variety made famous by the late Colonel James Bowie, who employed it to good advantage in the Battle of the Alamo.

  It was the sort of knife that could slit a throat with uncanny ease.

  The robed figure paused outside of the cell in which Scorchy Muldoon snored and snoozed. Metal clinked against metal as it drew from beneath its robes a ring of keys and tested them, one by one, in the lock.

  Eventually, the red-robed one found the right key. It grated in the keyhole. The lock clicked with a metallic sound. The cell door opened and the robed figure glided within and approached the slumped form of Scorchy Muldoon on furtive, stealthy feet.

  Scorchy never quite knew what had awakened him. He had been dreaming, he afterward remembered — confused dreams, full of lurking, shadowy figures and brooding eyes glaring through the darkness, with a chill undercurrent of tension and menace.

  But suddenly he came awake, all at once, tingling with apprehension — to find a shadowy, faceless form looming over him!

  For a single split second, he thought he was still dreaming. Then he saw the gleam of the big knife in the hands of the red-robed figure and realized icily that this was no dream.

  Scorchy opened his mouth to yell. But strong, thin fingers closed over it, clamping his jaws shut, stifling his outcry.

  Then the figure raised its other hand, the one holding the naked blade, and pulled back the hood that had concealed its features. And Scorchy stared up into the face of the man who had entered his cell in so sinister a manner.

  And then he had good cause to wish he could yell out.

  For the face of the man bending over him belonged to a dead man!

  Chapter 20 — The Stone Spear

  Lucifer, at that same moment in time, was savoring his ultimate triumph.

  He sat like an emperor in his great throne-like stone chair, which stood in the hall of the dangling stalactites. His hands clutched the arms of the chair, as if to reassure himself by the tightness of his grip that this long-dreamed-of triumph was real and not a dream.

  Through his televisor, he had watched the Omega men dragged from the power room, limply unconscious from the gas he had injected into the chamber.

  Under his brooding, triumphant eyes they had been searched and stripped, one by one, the pitiful little men who had, in their ignorance and folly, dared to pit themselves against his own gigantic brain and iron will.

  He feared them no more. He could have ordered them to be slain on the spot, but he wished for a more dramatic manner of death for his enemies, so that he could savor the sweetness of his victory to the full. Let them be bound securely and locked in separate cells, he had commanded. Later there would be a mass execution, to be celebrated with due formality.

  And so they were taken away.

  All but their leader.

  As for the sprawled, unconscious figure of the man in the rumpled gray suede, Lucifer commanded that he be brought to the foot of the throne.

  And then Lucifer had entered the throne room, stepping over the drugged and senseless body of his archenemy, to ascend the throne. The act pleased him in its symbolism.

  He looked down from the height of the throne at the crumpled figure sprawled motionlessly at his feet. There was nothing to fear from Zarkon, Lord of the Unknown, now. The gas that had rendered Zarkon unconscious was a potent nerve gas that acted by contact with the skin. You did not even have to breathe it in for it to act upon you.

  Soon, in mere moments, Zarkon would struggle to consciousness again. But Lucifer feared nothing, for two guards stood to either side of him, their rifles leveled at the unconscious figure. Swift and clever as he was, Zarkon was helpless: The pointing rifles would hold him effectively at bay.

  Odd, thought Lucifer with a cold smile, how the mighty Zarkon looked smaller than usual in so lowly a position! Erect, alert, in action, the man was as mighty as a colossus — a figure of awe and terror to evildoers. But now, in the ignominy of his final defeat, the slumped form looked shrunken and diminished.

  The body of Zarkon had been tossed down unceremoniously at the foot of the throne in such a position that his face was turned away. The gloating eyes of Lucifer rested their scrutiny on the back of Zarkon’s head. Those meticulously arranged locks of pewter-gray hair were disarranged now, he saw. And the flesh of Zarkon’s nape caught his eye with its peculiar tint of saffron.

  How many times, in the bitter loneliness of his cell, had he puzzled over the peculiar shade of Zarkon’s skin, wondering what race or what mixture of races had produced the amazing superman who had become a living juggernaut, crushing supercriminal after supercriminal beneath his heel.

  It annoyed him that he could not see the face of his helpless enemy. He would have delighted in gloating over the slack jaw, the lax lips, the closed eyes. And how it would have thrilled him to have the very first thing that Zarkon saw upon awakening from the drugged sleep be the triumphant visage of himself — Lucifer!

  He almost bade his guards turn the man over so he could watch life and consciousness return to his face. But even as his lips parted to utter the curt command, the limp figure stirred, sighed, and began to waken.

  Lucifer leaned forward, gripping the arms of his throne in an ecstasy of anticipation, watching hungrily as the huddled figure stirred to wakefulness.

  By his side the rifles were leveled, covering the half-conscious man.

  The figure of Zarkon tried to sit up. As it did so, its head sagged down dizzily, and the pewter-colored hairpiece fell off, revealing a hairless skull.

  Lucifer smiled, taking pleasure in this small, undignified action. He knew, of course, that Zarkon’s head was devoid of hair, although he had no idea why, and that the Man of Mysteries commonly wore a gray wig.

  Now the bald, wobbling head lifted feebly, and the man at the foot of the throne looked up weakly, stared up directly into the eyes of Lucifer — and gasped.

  A similar, unbelieving cry broke from the lips of the mastermind of crime!

  For the man who knelt before him, while he wore the garments of Zarkon, did not have the face of Zarkon.

  It was the face of Ching!

  At that precise moment, Scorchy Muldoon was staring with wide, unbelieving eyes into the face of a man he had never expected to see alive again.

  It was Menlo Parker!

  The wizened little scientist took his hand away from Scorchy’s mouth and bent to saw through the nylon cord that bound his wrists behind him.

  “Sure an’ I’d be after swearin’ ‘tis a ghost ye
are, Menlo, me pal,” wheezed Scorchy in a faint voice, “were it not that me ould mither always taught her little Scorchy they was no sich things on this earth! Speak, Menlo — say somethin’ — tell me ye’re after bein’ real!”

  “Hesh up, you dumb Irishman!” spat the little scientist with his usual peevish bad temper. “Of course I’m real, you dopey Mick!”

  Scorchy closed his eyes happily. “ ‘Tis yerself, Menlo, an’ no skulkin’ phantom, that’s fer sure,” he said, blissfully. “Is it alive ye are, then, an’ that wicked fiend was after tellin’ us as how he had struck ye down with th’ Hand o’ Death —”

  “If you mean Lucifer, he thought he was telling the truth,” snapped the frail little man. “He used the Hand of Death on me, all right, but something happened; dunno what. Damned thing didn’t work for some reason. Happens I was watching his eyes after he had touched me, so just about the time I realized nothing was happening to me, I sensed from his expression the very moment he expected me to start yellin’ ... so, always happy to oblige a fiend, I started kickin’ and squawkin’ like a scalded alley cat. Kept it up for thirty seconds, then slumped down and did my best to look deader’n a doornail. Fooled the big egotist, too, by golly! He had one of his thugs haul me off an’ dump me in a storeroom. Soon as the lug’s back was turned I knocked him cold with a karate chop to the nape of his ugly neck ... musta clipped him harder than I really meant to, ‘cause I broke his fool neck. So I just changed clothes with the corpse and snuck out of there in these dang-fool robes, with the hood pulled up so nobody could spot my kisser. I been sneakin’ around in the shadows ever since, tryin’ to keep out of sight. Saw ‘em drag you birds in a while ago, so I stole the ring of keys, an’ ... there, by gosh, you’re free. That nylon is danged tough stuff, lemme tell you!” One by one, Scorchy Muldoon and Menlo Parker entered the other cells along the row and cut their friends loose. They gathered in the corridor outside, a sorry-looking bunch, in their shorts and socks. The unhappy expressions on their faces would have brought a smile to the lips of Elvira Higgins under less extraordinary circumstances, but the young lady was too grateful to be free and too tactful to comment on the appearance of the Omega men.