Invisible Death Read online

  “I know who hit is, Redneck, blast it!” the sloppy man said grumblingly. He touched two fingers to the sagging brim of the Stetson, which he wore pushed well back on his head, exposing a grimy, gleaming, knobby brow. “Prince, you seemta hear about things quicker’n I do ... this-here’s Mr. Mather; Mr. Mather, this-here’s Prince Zarkon of th’ Omega agency, helpin’ us out with this mess on behalf of th’ city Homicide Bureau .. . show’m th’ letter, Redneck, blast it all! This-here’s my nevvy from Gawrgya, Prince; name of Redford Pickett. Family calls’m Redneck.”

  Zarkon greeted Ogilvie Mather quietly. The jumpy little man in the impeccable suit gave him a damp, listless handshake. The Georgia-born deputy, grinning embarrassedly, dug a small gray envelope out of his rear pocket and handed it to the Nemesis of Evil. Leaving Nick Naldini to elicit pertinent data from Ogilvie Mather and Constable Oglethorpe Gibbs, the Prince crossed over to a petite French Empire desk, switched on a desk lamp, and subjected the contents of the square little envelope to a careful scrutiny under his powerful lens. The gray notepaper bore a Hammerville Bond watermark, which meant that it could have been purchased virtually anywhere, in any of thousands of department stores or stationery shops across the country. The message, neatly lettered with a heavy black felt-tipped pen, read as follows:

  Pulitzer Haines and Jerred Streiger ignored my warnings. They suffered the Invisible Death, and are no more. You are next, Ogilvie Mather! Sign over your holdings in the Magnum Publishing Syndicate to the Pan-Global Corporation, Geneva, Switzerland; and deliver the stocks themselves and the transferral certificate to the red brick house on the corner of Mountainair and Farmwell Streets in uptown Knickerbocker City. The house is vacant. Just insert the papers through the mail slot in the front door. Do this and you will live, Ogilvie Mather. Fail to do this, and you will meet the Invisible Death. This is the first of seven warnings from —

  The Grim Reaper

  After a few reassuring words to the rabbity Mather, Zarkon left the house. Constable Oglethorpe Gibbs and his nephew Redneck joined the two Omega men at their vehicle. The dilapidated officer looked vaguely embarrassed; he tugged at the end of his long nose and scuffled his shoes in the gravel-strewn driveway.

  “Sure am glad to have yer help on this baby, Prince,” he said. “Really outa moh league this time. Never git nothin’ much out here, ‘cept’n when somebody’s maid makes off with a paira diamond earrings, or some fool kid steals a car and has hisse’f a joy-ride. This-here’s the biggest thing happened out this way since them ‘Grove o’ Doom’ murders back in ‘33 up at the Chittenden place. Afore moh time, that one wuz, thank th’ Good Lord! But now I got me plumb in the middle of all this-here crazy gray-note-an’-Invisible-Death nonsense, an’ it’s upta me t’cope wif. So I shore am right pleased yore here, Mister Prince; an if’n there’s anythang I can do t’help ya, please feel free.”

  Nick Naldini preened his blue-black beard and mustache with a Mephistophelean leer.

  “There’s something you can do for me, Constable,” husked the lanky magician with a sardonic twinkle in his eye. “And that is, explain how a couple of lawmen with your accents ended up here, right smack in the middle of the Long Island aristocracy!”

  Constable Oglethorpe Gibbs grinned sheepishly.

  “Yew noticed hit, too, huh, Mister Naldiny? Figger as how Redneck an’ I about lost our Georgy-talkin’ ways; we been up here so long, by now folks don’t hardly notice.”

  “They don’t, eh?” chuckled Nick.

  “Yep. Fact is, Pappy moved north near-’bout fifty year ago, and settled down right around here, built hisse’f a good old country store (‘course, this were all farm country, back then ). We Gibbses jest stayed on. Redneck, here, he come up ten, twelve year ago, to he’p me out wif all the work, an’ also on account of he were all alone ina world when his Pap done up an’ died. Blast it all, he’s done stayed ever since!”

  “I guess I’m answered,” Nick grinned satanically. Zarkon cleared his throat.

  “As for your offer of help, Constable, I appreciate it; let’s hope your confidence in the efficacy of my aid in this case will not prove misplaced. Obviously, the first thing to do is to contact Detective Inspector Ricks of Homicide and have him check out the ownership and rental history of the red brick house to which the Grim Reaper directs Mr. Mather to deposit the stock certificates. Then you might ask him to contact Interpol and find out as much as he can about this corporation in Switzerland. Doubtless it will prove to be just another of those dummy corporate fronts the Swiss are so famous for, along with their anonymous numbered bank accounts; but it’s worth checking, anyway.”

  “Yessir,” breathed Oglethorpe Gibbs earnestly. “I’ll do everythang yew say!”

  “And one thing more,” added Zarkon. “Find out which of Mr. Mather’s servants joined his staff, say, over the last three months, and get the name of the employment service from which he hired them. Let me have that information as soon as you get it, will you? I will be staying at the Streiger estate for at least the next day or two.”

  They exchanged a parting handshake and Zarkon drove away. Constable Oglethorpe Gibbs looked after the expensive imported foreign limousine admiringly.

  “Shore do talk nice, thet feller,” he breathed. “Talks jest like one o’ them acter-fellers ona teevee. Blast it, boy, hit’s near about as good as readin’ a book, justa lissen at thet Prince feller talk! Hoo-eee!”

  “Shore is, Oggie,” said Redford Pickett amiably.

  “An’ don’t call me Oggie, dadrat it! Call me Uncle Oggie, boy, an’ show yer manners! Feller’d think yew was brung up wif th’ hogs.”

  “Shore will, Oggie. Uncle Oggie, thet is,” said Redford Pickett agreeably.

  CHAPTER 8 — Dr. Grimshaw’s Story

  When Zarkon called Scorchy Muldoon and Ace Harrigan at their room in the Holmwood Inn and instructed them to go out to Dr. Ernest Grimshaw’s office and question the physician on the results of his examination of the body of Jerred Streiger, it came as a very welcome diversion.

  Since they had arrived earlier that afternoon in the small Long Island town, Ace and Scorchy had done little more than wander into bars and question people about strangers in the neighborhood. To call their inquiry fruitless would be to employ an understatement: as the burly bartender of the Kitkat Club observed in response to Scorchy’s question —”There ain’t been any strangers around here until you come, stranger.”

  Now that they were actually going to get out and do something, Scorchy’s woeful manner vanished as if by magic. The redhead grinned all over his face, blue eyes shining; he rubbed his palms together briskly. “Ohboyohboyohboyl” he chortled. “Action at last?”

  “Sure,” said Ace Harrigan in a bored manner. “If you call chatting with some old geezer of a country pill-pusher ‘action.’ ”

  They got out and piled into the big sports car and tooled away from the inn. Dr. Grimshaw’s office was in the Professional Building, which fronted on the town square, right opposite the courthouse. A light was still on in the clinic, so apparently Zarkon’s guess that country doctors don’t keep bankers’ hours had been an accurate one.

  Scorchy rang the bell. A voice, muffled and distracted-sounding, told him to come in. He pushed the door open and entered, with Ace Harrigan at his heels. Everything was white porcelain and stainless steel, scrubbed and sparkling and smelling of disinfectant.

  “Doc Grimshaw?” inquired Scorchy.

  “Be with you in a moment,” murmured a voice from behind a white partition. They heard the clink and tinkle of instruments being put in a metal dish of some sort, the rush and gurgle of water. Then:

  “That’ll be all, Timmy. See you next week.”

  “Okay, Doc. Thanks a lot!”

  A freckle-faced boy of ten or eleven emerged from behind the screen tenderly carrying against his chest a small, tousled puppy with a freshly-bandaged paw. He ducked out the door.

  Scorchy glanced at Ace and shrugged.

  “M
aybe we got the vet’s office by mistake,” suggested the fiery-haired little boxer. He got up to go; then a white-gowned figure appeared from behind the screen and his jaw fell halfway to the floor. Even Ace Harrigan gasped and blinked.

  “Who are you two birds, more of them big city reporters?” snapped an acid voice.

  “You ain’t no Dr. Ernest Grimshaw!” Scorchy protested feebly.

  “Ernestine Grimshaw, dammit,” snarled the white-gowned physician testily. “First an’ only time I get my name in the big city papers, and they spell it wrong!”

  The cause of the astonishment of Scorchy Muldoon and Ace Harrigan was clearly visible in the tumbling masses of golden curls which framed the winsome, heart-shaped face of the lissome, blue-eyed girl in the white laboratory gown. As for that gown itself, I need say no more than to observe that it curved out in just the right places, and curved in at all the other places.

  In short, Doctor Ernestine Grimshaw was something to write home about. Or to leave home for. A stunningly beautiful young woman with flashing eyes.

  But with a temper. And a tongue!

  She eyed the two of them contemptuously. Of the two, Ace Harrigan came rather near to being something girls dream about, with his lean, trim, athletic figure, frank open face, healthy golden tan, and crisp short curly hair. But Ernestine Grimshaw was obviously not impressed. She eyed his tan disapprovingly.

  “Lacotatin superfluity,” was her only comment.

  As for the peppery little bantamweight, who barely came up to her armpit, she dismissed him even more sharply.

  “Thyroid deficiency,” she snapped. Scorchy, whose temper invariably flared at the slightest allusion to his modicum of inches, flushed scarlet and glared.

  “Now, you be after mindin’ yer tongue, me colleen,” he growled, the brogue creeping into his tone as it did when he got temperish.

  “With a Barry Fitzgerald accent, yet!” groaned the girl doctor. “Look here. It’s been a long, hard day and I want nothing more than to get out of here and into someplace dark and smoky, where I can curl up with a nice dry martini. So if you two newspaper clowns will just clear out and make up your own lies for a change, instead of merely misquoting them, I’ll be plenty grateful. Scoot, now. Vamoose!”

  It was, as things turned out, Ace Harrigan who cooled tempers down and made peace all around. The crack aviator might have made a first-rate diplomat, with his natural gift for tact, had it not been that a career of crime-fighting promised more action. They dropped Ernestine Grimshaw off at her room in the boardinghouse, cooled their heels on the sidewalk while she changed into something slinky, then squired her into the Cozy Oak for prime ribs and baked potatoes with sour cream, washed down with liberal doses of dry martini on the rocks.

  The girl doctor turned out to be something almost, if not quite, human. At least after working hours.

  “I still can’t get over it,” she observed around a morsel of succulent beef. “I always heard Prince Zarkon surrounded himself with some pretty sharp professional talent. But for the life of me, I can’t imagine ol’ Thyroid Deficiency here being able to do much of anything besides dress in ghastly taste and talk like something out of a road company production of Abie’s Irish Rose ...”

  Scorchy nearly choked in mid-swig on his Dr. Pepper. Ace turned a guffaw into a bad imitation of a cough: the feisty little bantamweight prided himself on his success with the ladies, and generally, when an attractive young girl hove into view during one of these adventures, he and Nick Naldini made a habit of one-upping each other for the charmer’s favor. But this hard-tongued beauty, with the tumbling curls that were like sunshine spun into silk, seemed to have gotten Scorchy’s number from the start.

  “Aw, c’mon, Doc, lay off, willya?” moaned the Pride of the Muldoons. “We’re here on business, dang it all! This is important stuff, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” the girl agreed absently. “A stroke is always important, in my book. Poor man! Richer’n Croesus, house like Buckingham Palace, and fifteen million stashed away in gilt-edged securities. And — blooey. One little blood clot ... where no blood clot had any right to be.”

  Ace Harrigan pounced on that one. “You still haven’t isolated the cause of death, then?” he asked keenly.

  The girl shrugged, which did delicious things to the blond curls and the slinky dress. “Sure. A blood clot. But why the old man should have one beats me. Arteries were clean as a whistle. Nary a smidge of cholesterol from stem to stern. And you could drive a donkey-engine with a heart as tough and strong as his.”

  “Aren’t there drugs that will cause a clot?” inquired the handsome young aviator. “Any trace of them in his bloodstream?”

  The girl finished her third martini and sucked meditatively on her olive for a moment before replying.

  “The answer to the first one is ‘yes,’ and the answer to the second one is ‘no,’ ” she said, chewing into the olive. “I checked the old boy out. Blood, brain, heart, liver, stomach. Everywhere that something which shouldn’t have been there might be, if you follow me after three martinis. Nothing. No foreign substance of any kind — and nothing that could possibly have caused the clot.”

  “You’re sure there was a clot?” Ace asked. She nodded.

  “Yep. Found it right where I thought I would. Just a clot — nothing odd about it. But why he developed a clot is more than I know.”

  Ace settled the bill and tucked the tip under the third martini glass where the waiter was certain to find it if he looked. They wandered toward the door. Ernestine Grimshaw stretched lazily, smooth creamy arms extended to the sky, and yawned, drinking in the fresh clean night air.

  “What a meal! And Lou makes great martinis. Enough to make a girl G.P. feel almost human, after a day spent among the hernias, cataracts, and varicose veins of the community!” She eyed them both in a less-unfriendly manner. “You ginks ought to come prowling around more often. It’s nice to have dinner bought for you; if I look another frozen food in the face, I’ll gag.”

  “Say, howcum you were fixin’ up that kid’s pup, anyway?” it occurred to Scorchy Muldoon to ask,

  “Why not?” yawned Ernestine Grimshaw sleepily. “We got no resident vet around here. And it sure was a cute little feller! God, I could sleep for a week ... what great prime ribs! You two clowns come around tomorrow at quittin’ time and let’s do all of this over again. Questions and answers, prime ribs and martinis.”

  Ace grinned; there was something about this young lady he found irrepressibly amusing and delightful.

  The red light was blinking on the dash. Ace unlimbered the mobile telephone unit, uh-huh’d into it a couple of times, then hung it up and snapped into action.

  “Hop to it, Scorchy! The chief wants us back at Streiger’s place, pronto. Something’s happened, dunno what. Climb in.”

  “Wow! Sure. Let’s go. Uh — sorry, Doc, we’d drive you home but, you know, we — uh —”

  “Oh no you don’t, Short, Snub-Nosed, and FunnyLookin’. You’re not dumping Ernestine Grimshaw, M.D., on a moonlit street corner with three great martinis sloshing around inside, doing weird things to the forebrain!” With a determined snort, the blond girl got in the back seat and closed the door.

  “Lay on, MacDuff! And don’t spare the horses,” she said firmly. “You can always take me home later. I’ll go with you to Streiger’s place. After all, I never met a Balkan Prince before. It might turn out to be fun!”

  CHAPTER 9 — The Game’s Afoot

  They were driving from the mansion of Ogilvie Mather, on their way back to Twelve Oaks, when the alarm buzzed. Zarkon took a flat metal case out of the pocket of his gray jacket and studied the dials. His golden features maintained their normal inscrutable calm, but Nick recognized the glint of excitement in his eyes.

  “Step on it, Nick. Use the siren if you have to,” was all the Prince had to say. Nick sighed, his shoulders heaving histrionically.

  “Sometimes this habit of keeping everything to yourself
gives me a bit of a pain, chief,” he complained. “What’s going on? What does that signal mean?”

  “It means that one of the staff at Twelve Oaks has just left the property,” Zarkon said impassively. Nick glanced at him, exasperatedly.

  “What about it?” he demanded.

  “Maybe nothing, or maybe a lot. I was expecting this to happen, but not quite this soon. Can’t you go any faster? What about using the siren?”

  “Chief, I’m pushing this buggy all the way as it is,” said Nick from between clenched teeth. “I don’t need the siren, there’s no traffic on these local roads at this hour. What signal? For the luvva Houdini, chief, what’s going on?”

  Zarkon looked slightly uncomfortable. He did not like to discuss his methods, sometimes; this, apparently, was one of those times. He cleared his throat at Nick’s mutinous glare.

  “Did you happen to notice my behavior back at Twelve Oaks when I questioned Streiger’s servants?” he asked, seemingly striving to change the subject.

  “Sure,” said Nick grimly. “You were democracy in action; you shook hands with everybody, even the teen-aged gardener’s kid helper, and what about it? You mean there was something I missed? I thought you were just displaying ‘the common touch,’ à la Kipling, to put them all at their ease!”

  Amusement gleamed briefly in Zarkon’s enigmatic eyes, and was gone. He reached into his pocket and drew out a card of straight pins.

  “There was a little more to it than that, Nick,” he confessed. “My friendly actions were to disguise the fact that I tried to unobtrusively stick one of these pins somewhere in the clothing each of Streiger’s servants wore.” He showed the card to Nick, who glanced at them with a puzzled frown. Save for the fact that the heads of the pins were tiny silvery beads, instead of being flat like the heads of most straight pins, there was nothing about them that seemed remarkable to the eye.