The Nemesis of Evil Read online

  Only one who had chanced to observe the baldheaded man who had, a quarter of an hour earlier, entered the house by the back door might have perhaps noticed a curious thing about the old man who now left by the front. And that was that both men had worn the same suit of clothing.

  The old man with silvery hair and beard approached the car, nodded curtly to the two men within, and got in himself, taking the rear seat. One of the young men handed him a briefcase. The old man opened it. It contained nothing but an expensive pair of gloves made of the finest pigskin.

  The old man carefully donned the pair of gloves and took up a slim malacca cane with a gold ball for a tip. Then, settling himself back in a dignified manner, he caught the eye of the man behind the wheel whose visage he perceived in the rear-view mirror, and nodded briefly.

  The car pulled away from the house and headed via the shortest route into Palma Laguna.

  In the city of Palma Laguna, the state police maintain a headquarters on Powell Street near the old Victoria Theater. It is a large building of several stories, housing rooms of files and documents, a complete laboratory of criminology, and a small block of detention cells. As it happened, the four men seized at the old abandoned farmhouse earlier that afternoon were temporarily housed in those cells while the authorities checked their fingerprints with Washington. It was the intention of Chief Orville Patterson, as soon as the identities of the four crooks had been established, to take them downtown to the municipal police headquarters and turn them over to be booked for kidnapping, attempted murder, and the illegal possession of firearms.

  The arrival of Mr. Harrison J. Porteur, however, changed all that. His long black Supra pulled up before the state police headquarters almost before the last man had been fingerprinted. Showing his card to the officer on duty in the reception area, he was ushered at once to the detention block. Mr. Harrison J. Porteur was not only the most celebrated and successful criminal lawyer in Palma Laguna, but he was also a former lieutenant governor of the state, with unimpeachable political connections.

  Chief Patterson swore colorfully when he learned the identity of their distinguished visitor, who represented himself as the lawyer representing the four prisoners. Harrison J. Porteur insisted on seeing his clients instantly, so that he might advise them of their legal rights. And, in the city of Palma Laguna, or, for that matter, in all the length and breadth of the great state of California, there could scarcely be found a law-enforcement officer so suicidally foolish as to refuse something upon which Mr. Harrison J. Porteur insisted.

  “Show him to the cellblock, dang it,” the state police chief growled. “He can have twenty minutes, but no more. And be shore an officer is present at the time. These are desperate men, dang it all. And dang all politicians, anyway!”

  Mr. Harrison J. Porteur entered the cell where the four captives were being held. He introduced himself pompously, and insisted on shaking hands all around. The four men, it was later reported to Chief Patterson, did not seem particularly surprised or even impressed that so distinguished a senior member of the state bar should have been chosen to represent them. In low, confidential terms, the famous lawyer informed them of their rights, cautioned them against replying to any questions unless he, himself, or one of his staff, was present at the time, and warned them against signing any statement or confession. Then, advising them that he would propose them for bail at the first hearing, the dignified old man left the cell, left the building, entered his car, and drove away.

  Twenty minutes passed.

  Suddenly the cellblock exploded in an uproar of terrified, agonized screams. Alarms rang out, police officers came pelting down the hall on the double to the block of cells. Therein the four prisoners writhed on the floor, their features ghastly and pallid and bedewed with sweat, their screams redolent of unendurable agony.

  One by one they expired within seconds.

  The police surgeon pronounced them dead seven minutes later. He could give no reason for their singular and untimely demise. They had died of no apparent cause whatsoever.

  Chief Orville Patterson did not curse upon this occasion. His emotions were truly beyond the ability of words to describe. Upon his sunburned, perspiring brow he wore a brand new Stetson, an expensive masculine chapeau of the kind favored by western sheriffs on television and the silver screen. The ten-gallon headgear had been purchased by Chief Patterson only the day before. This was the first opportunity he had found to wear it.

  Chief Patterson was inordinately proud of this new addition to his cranial wardrobe. He was firmly of the opinion that it added considerably to the dignity and impressiveness of his appearance — an opinion, I might add, that was not in the least shared by Mrs. Patterson.

  Despite his fondness and attachment for the spotless and expensive new Stetson, the emotions that boiled and seethed within the breast of Chief Patterson pleaded with a thousand eloquent tongues for some expression beyond the vulgarly verbal.

  Chief Patterson took his broad-brimmed new Stetson from off his brow, placed the hat carefully in the center of the floor, and then jumped up and down upon it until the exquisite item of headwear had been trampled into utter and complete ruin.

  Then he flung himself down in a chair, mopped his streaming brow with a bandanna no less scarlet than was that item of his physiognomy, and commanded his assistant to get him Prince Zarkon on the phone at the suburban home of the publisher of the Los Angeles Illustrated Press.

  When Zarkon returned the receiver to its cradle, his face, normally expressionless, was tense and grim.

  “What’s up, chief?” inquired Scorchy Muldoon.

  “Our adversary has moved a bit quicker than I had expected,” said Zarkon gravely. “I blame myself: I should have anticipated this, knowing his alacrity.”

  “Chief, what are you talking about?” asked Doc Jenkins, his watery blue eyes puzzled.

  “The four men we captured today are already dead.”

  The five Omega men looked at one another blankly.

  “Dead? What happened to them?” snapped Menlo Parker in his peevish manner.

  Zarkon shrugged. “They seem to have been murdered by Harrison J. Porteur,” he said grimly.

  Doc Jenkins’ mouth fell open. After some thirty seconds, he remembered to close it.

  Now Robert Russell Ryan stepped forward. His fine, aristocratic features mirrored his distress and incredulousness.

  “That’s absolutely impossible!” he said flatly. “Why, Harrison is one of my best and oldest friends, a man of the most unquestioned integrity —”

  “It’s even more impossible than you might imagine,” Zarkon rejoined, with just a trace of grim humor in his voice. “Especially since Harrison J. Porteur has been in Boston attending a congress of the American Bar Association since last Friday!”

  Ryan paled and bit his lip. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “Lucifer,” he said.

  Zarkon nodded. “Lucifer,” he repeated. “He has beaten us to the punch, as Scorchy might say. However, it may turn out for the best, in the end.”

  “How do you figure that, chief?” demanded Nick Naldini in his lazy drawl.

  “We now have four fresh corpses, each one apparently slain by the same unknown method by which Lucifer disposed of MacAndrews,” the Man of Mysteries replied. “We are too late to examine the corpse of the unfortunate reporter, but we are not too late to study the bodies of the four murdered gangsters. Lucifer had to get them out of the way quickly before I had a chance to question them at length; he knows my abilities from of old, and he knows that I could break through any obstinacy or conditioning he could devise. I intend to perform the autopsies personally. If we can learn the secret of the mystery deaths, we may not only have a clue to the whereabouts of Lucifer’s secret headquarters, but also perhaps even discover a way to prevent him from committing new murders by this unknown method. Ryan, we will take two cars this time, for I will need certain equipment that is rather bulky. Doc, get
equipment case 14, will you? And load it in the car. We leave immediately for state police headquarters.”

  The Omega men went into action while Robert Russell Ryan called his chauffeur and ordered two cars brought around to the front.

  Scorchy tugged at Nick Naldini’s arm and drew him aside as they stood under the porte-cochere waiting the arrival of their new transportation.

  “Hey, Nick, does anything strike you as kind of funny about this business?” he inquired.

  “Funny? Funny! The whole blasted thing is funny, if you’ve a taste for gallows humor, boy,” said the lanky magician querulously.

  “No, I mean about the chief. What he said in there. I dunno,” Scorchy grumbled, scratching his fiery thatch vigorously as if to stimulate the processes of thought. “Seems to me from what the chief said that he, well knows this Lucifer bird!”

  Nick rubbed his lean jaw reflectively, tugging on his sleek little tuft of black Mephistophelian beard.

  “Seems to me you’re right, boy,” he drawled thoughtfully, “It is odd, at that. You still got those pictures we got from the four boys in the red bathrobes? Let’s see ‘em; what with all that’s been going on, I haven’t yet had a chance to ... Great Leaping Jehosaphat!” Taking the picture and squinting at it closely, he seemed stunned by what he saw. For once the stage magician lost his lazy air of indifference. He fairly staggered back on his heels.

  Almost hopping with impatience, Scorchy grabbed his friend by one bony elbow.

  “What is it, me bucko? Who is it? What in the name of St. Paddy himself and all the saints o’ Ireland is the mystery?”

  Despite the vehemence of his compatriot’s voice, Naldini seemed oblivious to the stream of questions. He stared down at the picture in his hand with stunned, unbelieving horror as a man might stare at a cigarette that had suddenly transformed itself into a squirming cobra. Shock and utter disbelief were written upon his long-jawed, sardonic visage.

  “It isn’t possible,” he whispered hoarsely to himself. “It — just — isn’t — possible!”

  “What isn’t possible, you skinny vaudevillian?” Scorchy Muldoon virtually screeched in the tall man’s ear.

  Nick eyed him solemnly. Nick’s voice quavered and dropped to deep, sepulchral tones as he tapped the glossy enlargement with a long forefinger. “This isn’t. Because it’s a picture of a dead man. Jehosaphat preserve me, I identified the corpse myself!”

  “I think we’re ready to go,” said Elvira Higgins unexpectedly from right behind Muldoon and. Naldini, causing them both to jump nervously into the air.

  Chapter 10 — Sinestro

  They began to pile into the cars, the Omega men bundling aboard their equipment. Suddenly, Menlo Parker waved his hands for attention.

  “Hold on, here! Whoa!” he yelled, eyes snapping angrily.

  “What is it, Menlo?” asked Zarkon patiently. The skinny scientist pointed one frail, bony hand at Miss Elvira Higgins.

  “We’re not taking her with us, are we?” he demanded peevishly, his thin lips set in an expression of disapproval. Ace, Doc, Nick, and Scorchy exchanged grins; Menlo Parker was famous among them for this cantankerous dislike of the female sex. A confirmed bachelor, the cadaverous physicist had become in recent years a devout misogynist. It was a running gag among the Omega men that Menlo Parker had developed an allergy to face-powder, perfume, and soprano voices through sheer concentration of will, like an acquired taste.

  Zarkon turned to regard the young woman thoughtfully “Perhaps it would be better if you refrained from accompanying us, miss,” he said quietly. “We may be going into danger.”

  The girl sniffed loudly and set her small, stubborn chin.

  “You’re certainly not going to leave me behind,” she said determinedly. “I’ve already been kidnapped once, remember. No doubt Lucifer has me down on his list of people he would happily do without. Will I be in any greater danger if I stay behind all alone, like a sitting duck, than if I go along with the six of you?”

  “There’s something in what you say,” Zarkon was forced to admit. “But I still think you’d be safer here.”

  Her blue eyes widened innocently. “Safer off here in this big empty house all alone, than I would be in the middle of state police headquarters, surrounded by your Omega people? Nonsense! And besides, I don’t want to miss out on the fun.”

  “Aw, let her come along, chief, I’ll keep an eye on her,” offered Scorchy magnanimously. Nick chuckled.

  “I just bet you will! If we’re lining up for the honor of protecting the young lady, let me offer my own services,” he said gallantly. “The last time you had her in your care, she got run off the road, kidnapped, tied up, and almost shot. Some protection, boy!”

  Scorchy balled his fists and opened his mouth to issue a rebuttal to this bit of brutal candor, but Zarkon intervened wearily.

  “The young lady can come with us, if she wishes,” he said. “Stop squabbling, you two! We’re losing time.”

  Scorchy subsided; Nick grinned satanically; Menlo fumed and grumbled; but they all got in for the drive to state police headquarters. Late afternoon was upon them, stretching long shadows across the highway and painting the west with brilliant hues.

  In the lead car, Scorchy and Elvira Higgins shared the back seat while Zarkon and Nick occupied the front, with Nick behind the wheel. Ace Harrigan drove the second car, with Doc and Menlo and Robert Russell Ryan as his passengers.

  Scorchy was still baffled over Nick Naldini’s violent reaction to the bald, bullet-head man in MacAndrews’ photograph, whom the magician had seemed to recognize.

  “Chief, what’s all this about this bird, Lucifer? What you were sayin’ back at the house gives me the notion you know the guy from somewhere; and Nick, too. Right?”

  “That’s correct, Scorchy,” said Zarkon somberly. “His real name, or at least the name under which he was known at the occasion of our first encounter, was Sinestro.”

  “Sinestro,” repeated Scorchy Muldoon to himself, his brow wrinkling with thought. “Sinestro ... boy, that sure does sound familiar, but I just can’t place it. When did we ever tangle with a crook by that name, chief?”

  “He is not a crook exactly, but a brilliant if deranged scientist. And my first encounter with him was five years ago, which was before you joined Omega, which explains why the man is unfamiliar to you,” replied the man in gunmetal gray.

  Scorchy sat up, eyes sparkling. “Sinestro! Why, sure! You mean Dr. Zandor Sinestro, the famous inventor. The one who went bad and tried to blackmail the U. S. Government with a stolen H bomb!”

  “That’s the man,” nodded Zarkon heavily.

  “Wasn’t he sent to prison for life, Prince Zarkon?” asked Elvira Higgins, speaking up for the first time since the ride began. The Ultimate Man nodded again.

  “He was given a life sentence in the federal penitentiary, yes, but ostensibly he died in prison of a heart ailment after serving only two months of his term,” said Zarkon. “I was out of the country at the time, on a mission, but my lieutenant, Mr. Naldini here, identified the body.”

  Nick shrugged unhappily. “I could have sworn the corpse was Sinestro’s,” he complained, looking unhappy. “You could have fooled me. I checked. him out thoroughly ...”

  “I wouldn’t blame myself, if I were you, Nick,” said Zarkon grimly. “The corpse probably was that of Sinestro: but it probably wasn’t a corpse?”

  Scorchy blinked, incredulous.

  “Huh? How’s that, chief? You mean ... he worked one of those tricks like where a guy goes into catatonia or somethin’ and just looks like he’s dead? Suspended animation, or like that?”

  Zarkon shrugged indifferently. “Something like that, perhaps. We have no way of really knowing just how the trick was worked right now, nor does it particularly matter. It served to free him from the penitentiary without causing a general manhunt for an escaped convict. After all, nobody is looking for a man who’s dead and buried. It’s only one of the mysterious
factors involved in this case; when we’ve cracked the case itself, perhaps we will have the answers to the other riddles.”

  “I should have insisted they perform an autopsy on the corpse,” groaned Nick Naldini in a hollow voice. “Faking dead is one thing: I’d like to see Sinestro come back after a couple of prison doctors had carved him up to take a squint at his liver!”

  “One thing puzzles me even more than how Sinestro faked his death,” Zarkon admitted, to change the topic of conversation. “And that is — why Mount Shasta?”

  “Huh?” asked Scorchy, screwing up his face. “Whaddaya mean ‘why Mount Shasta,’ chief?”

  “Just what I said. Zandor Sinestro chose Mount Shasta as the scene for his conferences with his confederates. But why choose such an out-of-the-way place, so difficult to get to, so open and exposed to the view of anyone who might be watching through binoculars or a telescope? The Brotherhood has branches or lodges in several California cities, doesn’t it, Miss Higgins?”

  “It does, four that I know of, at least,” the girl replied crisply. “One in San Jose, one in Oakland, and two in Los Angeles, with one of those two being the Mother Temple.”

  “Precisely. When he could have met with his underlings in absolute privacy behind closed doors in one of his own lodges, why did Sinestro — or Lucifer, as he calls himself now — pick such a peculiar place as the slope of a mountain?”

  “That is a funny one, chief, now that you mention it,” mused Nick Naldini, thoughtfully.

  Elvira Higgins sat up straight, clasping her huge purse with both hands, green eyes dancing excitedly.

  “I believe I can answer that question, Prince!” the girl said animatedly. “You’d have to be in the world of the occult to know it, I guess, but for some years now that particular mountain has enjoyed a rather unsavory, if not uncanny, reputation.”