The Nemesis of Evil Page 7

  His floating fingertips touched one man on the inner wrist, just above the base of the thumb: The red-robed man gasped, turned pale as cake icing, and sat down suddenly, paralyzed with pain from collarbone to fingertips. Another man felt the delicate brush of those dangerous, deadly fingers just below and behind his left ear: He sagged to the floor like a puppet whose strings have suddenly been severed by invisible knives. The third man, a little behind the rest, saw his comrades crumple to the feather-light touches of the man in gun-metal gray. His eyes widened; he wet his lips nervously with the point of his tongue. Stepping to one side, he raised his gun to Zarkon’s midsection. And as he did so, his eyes also raised to meet the gaze the Lord of the Unknown bent upon him. Those black eyes blazed with uncanny fires, urgent, commanding, compelling.

  All expression drained from the man’s face. He stood stiff and lifeless, like a pole stuck in the earth, his eyes glazed and empty. Doc Jenkins came up and accepted without comment the pistol the man handed him. And the newspaper publisher expelled his breath in relief and surreptitiously swabbed his brow with a pocket handkerchief. Those black, hypnotic eyes, he realized, were truly irresistible.

  “How did he ...?” Ryan gestured helplessly at the sprawled figures.

  Nick Naldini grinned. “It’s called adhti, one of the least-known of the martial arts, practiced only in Tibet. Precise pressure of the fingertips on the nerve centers; takes incredible discipline and practice to master it. No one outside of Tibet ever did it until the chief came along.”

  Just then Scorchy came up the cellar steps, limping and cursing a blue streak. The lump on his forehead was purple and yellow by now, and he had a scraped jaw and blood on his shirtfront. Curiously, his right shoe was charred black and was missing most of the sole and all of the heel. Even his sock was singed and he limped, favoring the foot as if suffering from burns or blisters.

  Nick Naldini sighed with relief to see that his friend was safe. Then he threw back his head and voiced a loud horse laugh. “Too much power that time, eh, boy? I knew you’d do it! Someday you’ll blow your silly foot off, you crazy hothead!”

  Scorchy flushed crimson. “Sure an’ if me hands weren’t tied ahind me back, I’d be after strangling you to death with your own waxed mustaches, you vaudeville bottomliner!” he shrilled.

  Ryan looked on without comprehension. Turning to Menlo Parker, he asked what that was all about.

  “It’s Scorchy’s favorite device,” the skinny scientist said waspishly. “Flash-powder in a hollow heel on one of his shoes; you can trigger it with a touch in just the right place — with your other foot, if your hands are tied. Scorchy loves it so, he keeps stuffing in more powder each time he loads it up. From the appearance of his pedal extremity, ahem, it looks like he just about blew his shoe off.”

  “This guy was bending over me with a gun,” said the Pride of the Muldoons aggrievedly. “How was the likes o’ me to know there was too much blessed powder in the compartment?” Then he grinned wickedly. “The poor galoot was so surprised he instinctive-like raised both hands to cover his eyes, but forgot he had a gun in one hand. Sure ‘n he all but blew his face off!”

  “Is this all of them?” asked Zarkon. Scorchy counted the recumbent bodies, mentally adding in the one left behind in the basement, and nodded affirmatively.

  “Car’s around the back,” he grunted. “Girl’s downstairs still dazed in light-shock, but okay. You found the stool-pigeon an’ the picture?”

  “We did,” said Zarkon, briefly. “Menlo, go down and help Miss Higgins upstairs; Nick, you’ve got a knife, cut Scorchy’s bonds.” Turning to Ryan, he asked if the millionaire had a telephone in his car. The publisher shook his head.

  “No matter, Menlo has a radiophone in his equipment. Who has jurisdiction out here? The state police?”

  Ryan nodded. “Chief Orville Patterson is the man to speak to. I’m afraid I don’t know the number.”

  “No matter. Doc will know it. Would you care to sit down? You look a trifle pale.”

  Three big state police cruisers came in response to the call, preceded by an ambulance from the Palma Laguna hospital. The ambulance was needed for the man who shot himself at the sound of Scorchy’s explosion. As it turned out, the thug had been drilled cleanly through the flesh, without injury to either bone or muscle; the medics fixed him up and left in the empty ambulance.

  Names of such importance as Robert Russell Ryan and Prince Zarkon of Novenia had brought out the chief of the state police for this county himself to personally investigate the incident. He was a fat, red-faced, cigar-chewing man in neat chinos and a fancy Stetson, with a loud, belligerent manner.

  No sooner had Prince Zarkon showed the fat officer his credentials and the famous names they bore, than this truculence dissipated as if by magic. The celebrated signatures on Zarkon’s papers drained the noisy belligerence from his voice, and he became almost fawning and obsequious, permitting Zarkon a free hand with his preliminary investigation.

  Zarkon went through the garments of the four captives swiftly but missed nothing. Not one of them had a scrap of identification on him, and utterly nothing to connect him to the Brotherhood of Lemurian Wisdom, but this was only to be expected. The long black Supra had been rented four days ago from a rental agency in Copper Springs, or so the state police reported after a swift call or two. The name was probably an assumed one and the renter’s identification and license forged; but all of this would be checked out later by the authorities.

  The shack was a temporary base and contained nothing in the way of clues outside of a couple of cigar butts and a portable short-wave radio through which, announced Scorchy, the crooks had reported to their superior or superiors.

  Zarkon nodded, turned to the officer in charge. “Chief Patterson, I’d appreciate it if you would have your people find out where this instrument came from. It looks quite new, as if recently purchased. There can’t be too many stores in the vicinity of Palma Laguna that would carry a set this sophisticated. It looks to me like an Army field radio with modifications, so you might check out all local Army and Navy surplus stores. Doc, you have noted the precise dial-settings?”

  The big man nodded. Zarkon shook hands with Chief Patterson, who seemed bewildered at the swift precision of Zarkon’s thought processes.

  “We will be going now, with this young lady,” he smiled. “You will be wanting us to sign statements later, I assume? We are staying with Robert Russell Ryan, the publisher of the Illustrated Press, at his estate in Seagrove. Please let me know the result of your queries; I will be particularly interested in learning the identities of your four prisoners, once that has been established.”

  “The one with the big horse-teeth is Leo Martelli,” Doc Jenkins said in his dull, offhand way. “Formerly a gunslinger for the Rocetti combine in Vegas. Wanted in Des Moines for an armed robbery, a four-year-old rap. Believe you’ll find him on the FBI ‘yellow’ list, too.”

  Chief Patterson nodded dazedly.

  They left shortly thereafter, crowded into Ryan’s car. It was such tight quarters that they had to double up. Scorchy Muldoon noticed this and, with a joyful gleam in his eye, offered to give Elvira Higgins a seat on his lap. Nick Naldini, however, also had an eye for pretty girls and swept into the breech, twirling his waxed and pointed mustachios and flashing toothy smiles.

  “Pray forgive the oafish crudities of my colleague, Muldoon, my dear young lady!” he said in his best histrionic manner, with a low bow and flourish. “And permit your servant, Nicholas Van de Vere Naldini, to afford you somewhat more comfortable accommodations in the front seat.” Murmuring a suave flow of flowery compliments, the former stage magician took the bewildered young lady by the arm and was soon cozily ensconced beside her in the front seat, which left a glowering, angry Scorchy to find a place in the back.

  “Outmaneuvered again, eh?” chuckled Doc Jenkins to the little Irishman. The big man always found it comical, the way the runty little Irishman and the suave, lank
y vaudevillian fought over pretty girls.

  “Hush up and move over, you big goon,” muttered Scorchy with a glare. “And git yer elbow outa me eye, fer th’ luvva Mike!”

  During the length of the trip the lanky magician joked and chattered smoothly with the girl, and looked as if he found the ride agreeable. Scorchy, however, jammed between the big man with the wonder brain and skinny little Menlo Parker, suffered in glowering silence all the way back to the exclusive Seagrove suburb of Palma Laguna.

  During the trip, Menlo Parker endured the crowded conditions in a frigid silence, his shriveled features stiff with disdain. It was not the fact that they were eight people crammed into one car that so annoyed the frail but brilliant scientist, but that one of them was of the feminine gender. Among the Omega men, the skinny electrical genius was notorious for his disapproval of anything that dressed in skirts and daubed itself with perfume. Still and all, even Menlo couldn’t protest bringing the girl back with them; they could hardly leave the plucky young woman by the side of the highway.

  In a large, well-lighted room with walls of whitewashed concrete, a bald, bullet-headed man turned frowningly away from a panel crowded with dials and indicators. Beside him stood a slim, suave Eurasian with saffron skin and shaven pate, his weak eyes concealed behind the thick lenses of powerful spectacles.

  Amidst that panel with its array of instruments, a circular screen of ground glass was set. This televisor glowed with lambent luminosity. The scene depicted within showed an aerial view of the shack in the woods, with the police cruisers drawn up before it. The camera itself seemed to be in motion somehow, as if it were affixed to an airplane or, perhaps, some manner of helicopter.

  Lucifer scowled thoughtfully, thumbing his lower lip. At this expression of worried concentration, the smooth-faced Eurasian elevated his brows in silent inquiry.

  “Is it trouble, Master?” the Eurasian lisped in a soft voice.

  “It is trouble, Ching,” Lucifer affirmed grimly. “But it is a development that has been anticipated. The leader of those men was Prince Zarkon of Novenia, an old adversary, of whose arrival I have been warned. He and I have crossed swords before, and to my detriment. But this time I have been forewarned, and adequate measures have been planned to deal with him and with his confederates, the Omega men.”

  “What are your instructions, Master?” inquired Ching in his whispering, sibilant tones, eyes keen and wary behind thick lenses.

  “A good question,” mused Lucifer. “We have two alternative courses of action open to us. Had Zarkon’s interruption of my affairs been unexpected, the most prudent course would perhaps have been to terminate all phases of this operation immediately and go into hiding until such time as the Prince of Novenia and his men are called away to busy themselves in another case on the far side of the globe. But forewarned is forearmed, says the trite but accurate old adage. We shall do nothing of the kind.”

  “What then, Lord?”

  “Success lies in flexibility, Ching! We must assume that Zarkon now has possession of the photographs that the reporter, MacAndrews, took of the Council of Disciples and of myself. He will identify the men in those pictures.”

  “Is it certain the pictures have fallen into his hands, Master?”

  “I strongly doubt that the men of Group 1 had sufficient time to destroy the pictures before their, arrest, so swiftly did Zarkon trace them to the abandoned farm.”

  “What will this Prince Zarkon do?”

  “Zarkon will recognize me from the picture taken surreptitiously by the traitorous Ahriman, even as I recognized him in the televisor. Knowing that this operation is one of my schemes, he will redouble his efforts to root me out. Therefore, the second alternative course of action is indicated, and that is to strike swiftly and boldly. The men of Group 1 must be silenced before they can be persuaded to speak. There is much they could tell Zarkon that he would like to hear, and it will not take him long to unlock their lips ...”

  “Perhaps. But, Master, the members of Group 1 have been immunized against the consciousness- suppressing drugs used in police interrogation; and they are hard, tough men. Is it not probable that they will resist questioning for quite some time?”

  Lucifer shook his bald head. “Unfortunately, it is not possible, Ching. They must be silenced immediately, and permanently. I have a plan whereby I can bend the sequence of coming events into a channel favorable to our schemes. I believe I can lead Zarkon and his agents into a trap, silencing Group 1 and disposing of the Omega force at virtually one and the same time.”

  “I fear, Master, that I do not understand,” Ching lisped obsequiously. “Does this Zarkon possess knowledge of a truth serum not in the pharmacopoeia? How can he persuade to speech men previously immunized against all known truth drugs?”

  “Through his devilish hypnotic power,” growled Lucifer. “No ordinary human being can resist for long the magnetic gaze of Zarkon, Prince of Novenia. Why, even I, Lucifer, have felt the power of those eyes ...”

  The Eurasian rubbed the tips of his fingers together gently.

  “Shall I instruct Group 2 to activate? Perhaps an assassination team, striking swiftly —”

  “No. We shall employ Group 2 against Zarkon. As for the members of Group 1, I believe this situation calls for the Hand of Death! There is no time to be wasted, Ching. Prepare the Hand immediately, and summon my transportation.”

  The mighty man with the bald brow turned imperiously and strode from the room to don more suitable garments. The Eurasian looked after him thoughtfully, then shuddered delicately and fastidiously.

  The former employers of the biochemist, Ching, had been the rulers of an oriental country who had made good use of his peculiar talents in Indochina. There, he had personally been responsible for the murder of more than two hundred political captives and foreign soldiers and airmen. He never thought about it.

  Cold, callous, cunning was Ching.

  But even his blood ran cold at the thought of the Hand of Death!

  Chapter 9 — Lucifer Strikes!

  To the casual gaze of a tourist or camper or even a forest ranger, nothing would have seemed out of the ordinary. It was a clear, bright, sunshiny day, the sort of day for which this part of California was celebrated.

  Mount Shasta loomed against the azure sky, a mighty monument to the grandeur of nature. Wild, rugged, lonely, it seemed aloof above the world and untouched by the hands of men.

  A cloud appeared in the blue. It was white and fluffy, that cloud, and nothing about it was particularly odd or curious, save for the very fact that it was there. For, save for that one white, thick, woolly cloud, the sky was pure and empty and crystal clear.

  The cloud drifted across the sky and gathered about the crest of the mountain. And there it seemed to linger for a brief while. But after a moment or two, the cloud parted from the peak of the mountain and floated in the direction of Palma Laguna.

  It seemed to be moving just a little faster than clouds can move and not be torn apart under the impetus of the winds. Had anyone been watching at that particular moment, he might have been curious. Even suspicious. But no one was watching.

  As the cloud approached the outskirts of Palma Laguna, it sank lower and lower toward the surface of the earth. And then a queer transformation came over it. The fluffy surface was torn by a sudden turbulence, as from some unguessable internal disruption. Then the white vapor whereof it was composed began to shred and tatter. Soon it was whipped away upon the winds, to disperse like steam.

  And thus there was exposed to view the nucleus of the mystery cloud. It was an airship of peculiar design, a glimmering metallic ovoid like a tear drop, obviously some make of helicopter from its whirring vanes and tapering rear extremity.

  The odd thing about the flying craft was not its design but its color. It was entirely coated with a glassy, blue-gray enamel. Something about this odd, elusive shade made it peculiarly difficult to see. The eye virtually slid off it without more than barely half
registering its image.

  This strange craft sank into the shelter of tall trees and vanished from view. These trees enclosed a secluded country house obviously chosen for its extreme privacy; at least, no other homes were near, and the border of tall trees virtually hid the structure from all but the most intent of watchers.

  Had there been any such, he would have seen a progression of inexplicable events. First, the roof of the garage opened like a candy box to receive the sinking aircraft, and closed upon it once it had come to rest. The aircraft seemed to be powered by an engine of advanced design: It was almost completely inaudible, even in flight. Following the disappearance of the mystery ship, a man left the shelter of the garage by a small side door. He was tall and magnificently developed, with an imperious stride and a kingly posture. His head was bald and he was impeccably attired in a sober, conservative business suit of somber, muted tones.

  The bullet-headed man who carried himself so regally entered the secluded house by the back door. Eleven or twelve minutes elapsed, during which a long black limousine, an expensive imported Supra identical to the one that had forced Scorchy Muldoon and Elvira Higgins off the highway about an hour and a half earlier in the day, pulled up in front of the house. Two bespectacled, soberly-dressed youngish men with briefcases sat in the car without going to the door.

  The front door opened and yet another man emerged into view. He was an older man, who walked with a slow, infirm step. His magnificent brow was adorned with neatly-trimmed hair of a silvery hue. A short, immaculate Imperial clothed his strong jaw and firm-set lips, and he wore a pince-nez clamped to the bridge of his aquiline nose. There was nothing at all odd or noteworthy about his appearance: he seemed a man of substance and position, even of authority. He, too, carried a briefcase.