The Nemesis of Evil Read online

  “Prince Zarkon? Thank heaven you’re here! I really hadn’t expected you this quickly, but your rooms are being made ready now.”

  They shook hands. “These are my lieutenants, Mr. Ryan. Scorchy Muldoon, Nick Naldini, Menlo Parker, Doc Jenkins, and my pilot, Ace Harrigan.”

  Ryan greeted them in turn, inquired into what they would like to drink, and invited them to choose seats before a huge fieldstone fireplace in which flames crackled. Zarkon got directly to the matter at hand.

  “Why was your paper investigating this cult?” he asked.

  Ryan ran the fingers of one hand through his dark, gray-flecked hair. He frowned thoughtfully.

  “Let me see, now, if I can phrase this accurately,” he said. “Our state is known far and wide as a haven for cultists of the so-called lunatic fringe. Buddhism, Vedanta, Bahai, Zen, these are the most respectable of the religions locally represented. But we also have more than our share of flying saucer groups, Atlantis cults, mediums, and spiritualists, and just about anything else you can think of.”

  He frowned again. “Now, for the most part, the adherents of these fringe groups and cults are decent, honest, law-abiding citizens, sincere in their rather exotic interests and religious beliefs, and freely and openly exercising their constitutional rights. But,” he said emphasizing the word with a lifted finger, “the occultists leave themselves peculiarly open and vulnerable to unscrupulous hoaxers, downright charlatans, and spellbinders who use drugs, sex, and Satanism to stir the emotions. We have a lot of elderly people who settle here for retirement in our beautiful climate. It is this kind of person, the gullible, the sick, the frightened, who are such easy prey to the occult gangster, the occult racketeer. Gordon Halleck will be here in a moment — I called him to come over when you announced your arrival by radiophone — and he can fill you in on just how big and rich and powerful the occult underworld can be, at least in potential. We feel it our duty to protect the people, even against themselves, by digging into and exposing the occult rackets, where such can be exposed. And we have plenty of reason to think this Brotherhood of Lemurian Wisdom is one of the rottenest and most unscrupulous of them all!”

  When Gordon Halleck arrived, his bushy eyebrows were wriggling up his scalp, nervously. He was obviously impressed by Prince Zarkon, and avowed his eagerness to cooperate in every way with his investigations.

  “I have here the coroner’s report on poor MacAndrews,” he said, handing some papers to the Ultimate Man. “And Mr. Ryan had a private team of specialists perform a very thorough and extensive autopsy on the body. Trouble is, you see, there’s no known cause of death. His heart just — well — stopped.”

  “Had he any history of heart disease?” asked Zarkon.

  Robert Russell Ryan spoke up. “Absolutely not! His heart was as sound as a dollar.”

  “How do you happen to know that?” inquired Zarkon. The publisher replied that all of his employees belonged to a company-financed health plan as one of the fringe benefits of their employment, and that MacAndrews had been thoroughly checked over about six weeks before his death. Zarkon checked through the coroner’s report and read the autopsy statement. It was completely negative.

  No drugs or poisons or foreign substances of any kind had been found, nor were there any wounds or unusual marks upon the body, save for a few minor scratches and contusions on the chest where MacAndrews had seemingly for some reason rubbed into the dirt and grit at the bottom of the mountain path. Zarkon nodded, handed the papers to Doc Jenkins for his scrutiny, and addressed a rapid series of questions to Halleck.

  “How did MacAndrews gain entry into the cult?”

  “He permitted himself to be converted, if that’s the right word, at one of the public meetings at their main temple in downtown Los Angeles,” said Halleck. “He donated ten thousand dollars to their cause, his pretended savings; actually, the money was supplied by the paper.”

  “How much had he reported to you before he died?”

  “Nothing concrete, just suspicions. He rose rapidly in the hierarchy of the Brotherhood, but until very recently was not high enough to be privy to any of the dirty work we suspect is going on. He was going to call me about noontime, following his first meeting with the Circle of Disciples, convened at dawn by this fellow they call Lucifer.”

  “When MacAndrews was working undercover on a case, as he was here, was it his custom to write his notes down or to keep them in his head?”

  “Generally, he would write his information down as he gathered it, and send it along to me through a go-between.”

  “Was a go-between used in this case?” Zarkon asked. Halleck shook his head. “No. He thought that would be too dangerous.”

  “Yet you found no notes when you searched his flat, and he had not sent anything along to you?”

  Halleck replied in the negative.

  “Had anyone else searched his flat, could you tell?”

  “No, just the sheriff. And he’s been co-operating with us fully. MacAndrews once saved him from an undeserved jail sentence. He recognized his name on the press card he found and called me at once. He showed me everything he found, and I found nothing of interest on my own,” said Halleck.

  Zarkon thought intently for a moment, then addressed a new question to the editor.

  “Was there ever an undercover case like this one, where MacAndrews kept notes but did not send them to you?”

  Halleck started to shake his head, then blinked surprisedly and nodded. “Yes, by golly, there was! The Bryson case — remember that one, chief? Mac used to scribble his notes down and mail them to himself under a phony name at a post office box in, where was it, yeah, Yarbro City!”

  Doc Jenkins shuffled his big feet and cleared his throat apologetically. At Zarkon’s inquiring glance, the oafish man said: “That’s a little whistle stop east of here about fifteen miles.”

  Zarkon nodded his thanks and asked Halleck if he could remember the number of the post office box MacAndrews had used on that occasion.

  “No, I don’t, but I can find out for you. We paid for the box rental, so it’s in our files somewhere.”

  Zarkon asked him to report the number to them here as soon as the office opened. Then he turned to Nick Naldini.

  “First thing in the morning, Nick, rent a car locally and drive out to Yarbro City. Perhaps MacAndrews followed the same procedure in this case. At least it’s worth a try.”

  Nick Naldini nodded affably, but a sparkle of excitement twinkled in his lazy black eyes. Scorchy Muldoon, however, pouted and eyed the lanky magician rebelliously.

  “How come he always gets the fun, chief? It ain’t fair! Sure an’ I’m spoilin’ for a little action meself.”

  Zarkon shook his head without replying, but Nick Naldini gave the peppery little boxer a leering grin.

  “Because, boy, the chief doesn’t wish to have you spread yourself all over the highway, taking along a couple of dozen taxpayers with you when you go,” he drawled wickedly.

  Scorchy Muldoon flushed, but said nothing, merely grumbling under his breath. Doc Jenkins grinned and skinny Menlo Parker cackled. It was a standing joke among the lieutenants of Zarkon that the red-headed pugilist was the worst single driver they had ever seen in their lives. What was so remarkable about this was that Scorchy Muldoon was so enormously competent in so many other areas of endeavor. He could, in a pinch, pilot a plane nearly as well as Ace Harrigan himself, and he could speak almost as many languages as could Jenkins, the man with the camera eyes and tape-recorder brain. When it came to fighting, of course, Scorchy was an undisputed whiz: He was a powerhouse when it came to rough-and-tumble, and could more than hold his own against the top boxers, wrestlers, judo, or kung fu experts in the world.

  But when it came to driving a car, he was lucky to get a full block away from the place he started from without smashing a tail light, scratching a fender, or scaring some poor pedestrian halfway to heart failure.

  As soon as Zarkon had completed his qu
estioning of Halleck, the editor left in his own car for the lengthy drive back to Los Angeles. He had to be at the plant, he explained, in order to put the paper to bed. As soon as he had gone, Zarkon turned to the publisher.

  “How well do you know this man of yours, Halleck, and how far do you trust him?” he asked.

  The publisher blinked. “Why — why — I’ve known him for twenty years — ever since I took over control of the corporation when my father died! I would trust Gordon Halleck implicitly, with my life, if such were necessary! He’s the smartest, toughest, most honest and hard-hitting man I’ve had in my pay, at least since Steve Wilson retired from my Chicago paper. And if you remember the days when Steve Wilson was editing the Chicago Illustrated Press, you know what a crime buster he was; and that should give you some idea of how high my opinion of Gordon Halleck is! Surely, Prince Zarkon, you don’t for one minute think he’s mixed up in this filthy business?”

  Zarkon shook his head. “Not seriously,” he said. “But at this stage, all I have is a lot of questions and very, very few answers. And let me remind you of one thing, Mr. Ryan: Somebody informed Lucifer that MacAndrews had penetrated the cult. MacAndrews was an old hand at this game of working from the inside; he would never have given himself away through a momentary slip. Somebody at your end must have betrayed him....”

  Ryan paled and bit his lip, his eyes haunted and thoughtful. The implications of Prince Zarkon’s calm statement were, to say the least, shattering. And even frightful.

  Chapter 5 — The Hidden Camera

  Not all of the newspapers in that part of California had reason to be as reticent about the MacAndrews mystery as did the Illustrated Press, which buried it in a small item on the inner pages.

  One of the big metropolitan dailies, which specialized in old-fashioned sensationalism, played it up big on the front page, and even got a photo of the murdered man’s face at the city morgue. Ramming the story through, the paper got it on the streets in time for their afternoon edition.

  Among the subscribers to that particular newspaper was Miss Elvira Higgins of Palma Laguna, the editor of the Borderlands Report. The same Miss Elvira Higgins whose loudly phrased questioning of the validity of the Brotherhood’s claims to occult knowledge had aroused the attention and might arouse in time the ire of Lucifer.

  The young lady was turning the crank on her mimeograph, which was set up on her kitchen table, when the afternoon newspaper arrived on her doorstep. Opening it, her attention was immediately caught by the glaring headline that thundered in big black letters, “CULTIST SLAIN IN MYSTERY DEATH.”

  The photograph of the dead man’s face, which occupied most of the remaining space on the front page, brought a gasp of amazement to the young woman’s luscious, well-formed lips, for she knew the still-unidentified man, or at least she had met him. Only two days before, he had interviewed her right here in her apartment, ostensibly on the behalf of the Brotherhood. She had found him rather likable, although she had reason to heartily disapprove of the organization in which he served. And now he was dead struck down mysteriously, and at the very base of Mount Shasta!

  That last piece of information intrigued her greatly, for in recent years there had been many mysterious goings-on around that particular mountain. Curious lights had been seen flickering about the crest of the peak, and observers had been quoted in the sensationalist press as having watched through binoculars strange robed and hooded men busied about weird ceremonies upon the mountain itself on more than one occasion.

  As it happened, Elvira Higgins maintained a healthy streak of skepticism in her makeup. For years she had been interested in curious events, mysterious phenomena, inexplicable mysteries. What had begun as an intellectual curiosity in college had developed into a fascinating hobby, which had led her to the collecting of reports and sightings and incidents such as this, which had in turn led to the establishment of her magazine. Mount Shasta in particular interested her. In her files there was a bulky folder stuffed with news clippings concerning the mystery mountain.

  On impulse, Elvira Higgins returned to the kitchen, removed the stencil from the mimeograph, put her car keys in her purse, and took a California road map from the kitchen drawer. She determined to explore the death site in person. There was not much hope that she could find a clue the county sheriff and the metropolitan police had missed, but she was a firm believer in psychometry and believed that a sensitive person, such as herself, could sometimes read indications left in the atmosphere of a place in the form of vibrations or an astral residue.

  The state highway passed near enough to the foot of Mount Shasta for her to cover the remaining distance on foot. And the newspaper, on its inner pages, contained a drawing of the mountain marked to show the exact position at which the corpse had been found. With a little frown of determination creasing her brows, the attractive redhead watched the road ahead of her, her mind busied with thoughts and speculations.

  By the time her car turned off the highway and followed a bumpy dirt road to the woods at the foot of the mountain, the shadows of evening were beginning to thicken.

  Elvira Higgins took her flashlight from the glove compartment, snatched up the newspaper sketch, which she had torn from the page, and climbed out from behind the wheel. Her high heels were not exactly ideal footgear for such rocky and broken terrain, but the plucky girl gritted her teeth and made her way to the base of the mountain. By the time she got to the spot marked with a big black “X” on the map, she had two runs in her stockings and had broken off one heel. But her eyes were gleaming with excitement and her bosom heaved with the thrill of mystery and adventure.

  The place where the body had been found was, by now, completely deserted. The police, reporters, and the crowd of sight-seers had long since gone. The position of the body on the gritty path was marked with white chalk. The girl began looking around her, alertly searching with her eyes and her mind for something — anything — that was out of the ordinary.

  She found it almost at once. Why it had been overlooked by everyone else remains one of the unsolved riddles of psychology. Perhaps it was because police tend to think like police. At the scene of a murder, their minds tend to the direction of bloodstains, footprints, rifle cartridges, cigar butts. What Elvira Higgins spotted almost instantly was nothing remotely like those clues.

  At about shoulder height on the mountain wall there was a small horizontal crack or crevice. It was stuffed with broken rock. In itself, there was nothing mysterious about the fact. But Elvira Higgins had studied the geology of her native state, and she knew that, while the crevice itself was in a wall of ordinary mountain granite, the rocks stuffed into it were common, ordinary ground shale.

  Now, why would anybody pick up a handful of ground shale, and stuff a crevice with it?

  That was the question that rose to Elvira’s mind the moment her bright green eyes fastened upon the miniature mystery. The answer came almost at once.

  To hide something.

  Shifting the flashlight to her left hand, Elvira reached up and carefully removed the shale, piece by piece. At the back of the crevice she found something small and flat that had been hastily wedged inside.

  It was a miniature camera no bigger than a box of matches, to which an elastic strap was fastened. Her heart pounding with excitement, Elvira slipped the tiny camera into the pocket of her jacket and began to make her way back to where she had parked her car.

  From a rocky ledge far above, keen, cold, hard eyes watched her every move through the lenses of a powerful pair of field glasses.

  It was simplicity itself for Nick Naldini to open the lock on the post office box. As Mephisto the Marvelous, the former stage magician had often vied with his great and good friend Harry Houdini in opening locks without resorting to anything so mundane as a key. Nick wore about him at all times a slim-bladed, odd-looking instrument that could be concealed in the palm of his hand and that could open anything up to a safe with a combination lock.

 
; He rented a car at the nearest Avis office, disguised himself as a typical tourist in a loud sports shirt and dark glasses, and entered the post office at Yarbro City during the noon hour, when post offices are most busy. Nobody paid any attention to him as he strolled with lazy slouch into the small alcove lined with post office boxes, found the one MacAndrews had used, unlocked it with a twist of the curious little instrument, took out half a dozen thick, cheap envelopes embossed with the name and the address of the residence hotel MacAndrews had been staying at, slipped them into his pocket, and strolled lazily back to his rented car.

  He drove directly to Ryan’s palatial estate in Seagrove. Zarkon and the others were just finishing their breakfast coffee when he entered with the envelopes. Opening them and scrutinizing their contents brought a chorus of groans from the five lieutenants.

  “Cripes, looks like he kept his notes in some kinda Arabic!” loudly complained Scorchy Muldoon.

  Doc Jenkins examined them and said in his slow, dull way that while they might look something like simplified Arabic to the untutored eye, there was no legitimate resemblance at all.

  “Looks to me like some sort of private code,” he said slowly. “Always thought a complete made-up language and alphabet, including invented grammar and punctuation, would make about the most unbeatable code ever devised. Seems like an awful lot of work for a reporter to go to, though. You make anything of it, chief?”

  Doc Jenkins handed the notes to the Master of Fate. Behind his oafish clumsiness lurked a genuine respect, for, while he had spent years bending his amazing mental talents to the mastering of languages from Abyssinian to Zapoltopec, Zarkon was in this, as in so many other ways, his superior.