Doctor Death Vs. The Secret Twelve - Volume 1

by Harold Ward

  Doctor Death Vs. The Secret Twelve, Volume 1

  by

  Harold Ward

  Introduction by

  Will Murray

  Altus Press • 2012

  Copyright Information

  © 2012 Altus Press

  Publication History:

  “12 Must Die“ originally appeared in Doctor Death (February 1935)

  “The Gray Creatures“ originally appeared in Doctor Death (March 1935)

  “The Shriveling Murders“ originally appeared in Doctor Death (April 1935)

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press

  Special Thanks to Jack Irwin, Will Murray, Don O’Malley, Raymond Riethmeier & the Estate of Harold Ward.

  ISBN-10: 1618270486

  ISBN-13: 9781618270481

  Table of Contents

  Introduction by Will Murray

  12 Must Die:

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  The Gray Creatures:

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  The Shriveling Murders:

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Introduction

  Will Murray

  DELL PUBLICATIONS’ Doctor Death is an example of one of those rare pulp experiments of the 1930s—a magazine built around a malevolent master villain. Others followed—The Mysterious Wu Fang, Dr. Yen Sin, The Octopus and The Scorpion—but Doctor Death was the first out of the box.

  The roots of this doubtful enterprise are themselves debatable.

  Street & Smith’s the Shadow triggered the single-character explosion in 1931.

  In the beginning, it was unclear if the Shadow was a force for good, or for evil. Soon enough, that mystery was resolved. The sweeping success of the Shadow blazed the trail for all imitators, rivals and in this particular instance, potential adversaries.

  No doubt Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu was the godfather of this perennial pulp archetype. He was still going strong in 1935, when Doctor Death surfaced on America’s newsstands.

  The rise of the weird menace pulps, like Popular’s Horror Stories and Terror Tales, certainly fed the infernal furnace. As did a burst of horror films then being turned out by Hollywood.

  Specifically Doctor Death was an outgrowth of Dell’s All Detective Magazine, which specialized in melodramatic tales of tough detectives versus superhuman masterminds and like vicious villains. Ultra-mystery, one pulp observer called this new genre wrinkle at that time. It was all the rage, having started with Detective-Dragnet Magazine and its successor, Ten Detective Aces, a few years before.

  A previous Doctor Death had been running in the exciting pages of All Detective Magazine. But they were two distinctly different characters. One was an international supercriminal who wore a deathlike mask to hide his identity, and the other—well, let’s just say that there was a startling resemblance without recourse to any mask.

  The prototypal Doctor Death was bylined Edward P. Norris. It’s unknown if that was an honest byline, or a pen name of somebody better known. But it is known that a different writer penned that series. Stories of Doctor Death’s perennial nemesis, Nibs Holloway, go back to before the advent of All Detective. In fact, the Norris series might better be categorized as the adventures of Nibs Holloway—with frequent appearances by his arch-antagonist, Doctor Death, who finally meets his just deserts at series’ end.

  In the strangest conversion ever to befall a pulp magazine, All Detective folded with the January 1935 issue (in which the original Doctor Death also folded, but in a different way) only to be replaced by Doctor Death Magazine the very next month. Gone was Edward P. Norris. The byline became the bizarre Zorro—Spanish for “Fox.” And possibly a nod to Johnston McCulley’s seminal pulp swordsman of yore.

  Behind that surreal byline lurked a veteran pulpster.

  Harold Ward (January 5, 1879-March 1, 1950) was born in Coleta, Illinois and attended Brown’s Business College. He was a frequent contributor to two of the most celebrated pulps of the decades before—Weird Tales and Black Mask. If it weren’t for the pre-existing Doctor Death, I might theorize that “12 Must Die” might be one of Farnsworth Wright’s rejections converted into a bigger enterprise.

  A former cowboy, playwright, theater manager, sentimental songwriter, press agent and journalist, Ward was one of that legion of newspapermen who moonlighted pounding out pulsating purple pulp prose. His pen names may not all be known, but they include Ward Sterling, H. W. Starr, H. W. Howard, Frederick Owen Mayson, Philip Pierce and Jack Brown. He often wrote at night, typing two-finger style, leaving the final draft to his wife Gladys to type.

  Presumably Ward’s Weird Tales work drew him into undertaking this project. Ward had not appeared in All Detective prior to this—at least not under any recognizable pen name. In many respects, the ongoing conflict between the celebrated “supernatural detective” Jimmy Holm and the minions of Doctor Death read like a horrific version of Jimmy Christopher’s exploits as related in Popular’s Operator #5 magazine, then being published concurrently.

  It was an audacious series. Overt supernatural elements. The President of the United States as the head of an organization called the Secret Twelve, which included the head of the New York underworld, and assorted scientists and bigwigs.

  What can one say about Dr. Rance Mandarin, who became Doctor Death? A former Dean of Psychology at Yale (no doubt a member of the infamous Skull and Bones society), and an esteemed scientist who declared himself to be superior to Einstein, but who al
so claimed to be on a holy mission from God Almighty to hurl modern civilization back into a pre-industrial Dark Age. Yet at the same time, a raving occultist who celebrates the Black Mass, commanding unclean armies of risen zombies and destructive elementals. Not to mention a plethora of diabolical doom-ray devices.

  What other mad scientist would have the temerity to, for example, shrink the Vice President of the United States down to the approximate size of a chihuahua? Or demand that all American workers walk away from their factory jobs—in the middle of the Great Depression? Or, master stroke of all masterstrokes, attempt to drive the living out of civilization’s cities by flooding the world metropolises with newly-resurrected mummies yanked bodily from the musty tombs of ancient Egypt?

  Not for nothing did his creator write that the “maggots of madness” burrowed through Doctor Death’s brilliant, fevered brain “like feasting woodpeckers.”

  Maybe Ward was on to something. Maybe what ultimately transformed Rance Mandarin into the dreaded Doctor Death was nothing more or less than encroaching Alzheimer’s disease. Certainly “Zorro” gave us no better explanation for the personality disintegration that led to a celebrated scientist turning against Science itself.

  It’s easier to understand why Dell editor and former Navy man Carson W. Mowre abandoned All Detective in favor of Doctor Death. Probably sales of the July 1934 All Detective showing a crazed Doctor Death on the cover sold through the roof. And if pulp readers wanted more Doctor Death, well Dell would give them a meaner, madder, more malevolent Doctor Death. So they did!

  Doctor Death expired after only three monthly issues—a fate similar to that which befell every single villain-centered pulp which followed. It’s not difficult to understand the mortality rate among mad scientists and yellow perilists, their fellow travelers. If your protagonist is put in the unenviable position of being unable to land a mortal blow on his antagonist by virtue of editorial fiat, where do you go?

  As you’ll see in the frenetic pages that follow, all over the map. Harold Ward gave it his best shot. These novels are among the wildest thrill-rides in pulp history. Over the top and beyond the pale—even into other realms of reality.

  And like the indomitable Death, Zorro refused to give up. The same year Doctor Death Magazine expired, Ward attempted to adapt “12 Must Die” for a daily comic strip! That newspaper syndicates declined it is no surprise. The average reader of the funny pages was simply not prepared for such a sinister specter. The wild-eyed, crazy-haired raving mad scientist has become such a pulp and comic book cliché that it’s easy to forget that Zorro’s Doctor Death was, if not an original, at least an early materialization. Doctor Death inspired a wave of depraved human monsters ranging from the obscure Dr. Mortal to Marvel’s diabolical Doctor Doom. Batman fought an early villain known as Doctor Death. Another Doctor Death hosted horror comics in the 1950s. Who knows? Maybe Rance Mandarin had offspring, not to mention grandchildren.

  It’s difficult to trace the archetype for the maniacal mad scientist back to its roots. Inasmuch as the breed seemed to come equipped with the consequences a permanent bad hair day, perhaps we need look no further than the frizzy-haired Dr. Albert Einstein for a real-life model. Before that? The disturbed Victor Frankenstein, one supposes. Put them together, and you have… Dr. Frank Einstein.

  Pulp fans who lamented Doctor Death’s untimely demise were shocked and delighted in the 1980s when two unpublished novels, “Waves of Madness” (announced for publication as “Murder Music”) and “The Red Mist of Murder” (AKA “The Eye of Wisdom”), came to light and were serialized in the pulpzines Nemesis, Inc. and Pulp Vault. Not seen since those private publications, they will be included in Doctor Death Vs. The Secret Twelve, Volume 2.

  With these concluding stories, Harold Ward moves the nascent series into fresh territory. Evidently early reader reaction had come in and some fine-tuning was undertaken. The writing sharpens to a crispness not before seen, and much of the supernatural element that chokes the formative trio of Doctor Death novels gives way to flat-out pulp super-science. Charmion, the Egyptian queen who played a role in the second novel, becomes a dominant character in the concluding installments. Her relationship with the former Dr. Mandarin soars to sadomasochistic heights rarely seen outside of the sordid pages of Weird Tales.

  Even Doctor Death’s monomaniacal mindset is modified and rationalized, as “Zorro” informs us:

  ‘The Creator placed me here for a purpose,’ he went on... ‘That purpose was the destruction of science and scientists so that the world might be restored to its virgin state. But the world refused to believe. The Creator became discouraged. Then came Beelzebub. He put my mind onto another track. At his suggestion I turned against these men of science the weapons, they themselves, had created. Now I am allied to both God on high and Satan below. And yet you—fools that you are—attempt to hold me back.’

  With allies such as those, how could Doctor Death be defeated? Much less cancelled?

  But history records that he was.

  One might fantasize over what twists and turns the ongoing war between Jimmy Holm and Doctor Death might have taken, had the magazine flourished. Personally, I think the five novels that have come down to us are plenty.

  After all, how many times can one author retype the now-timeworn phrase, “the maggots of madness”, without losing his own sanity?

  Besides, it’s easy to read the concluding chapters of the strange saga of Doctor Death and assume that yes, Death and his cohorts did at last succumb to one of his own weird doom devices.

  12 Must Die

  A mad old wizard with the power to summon loathsome gray horrors from hell’s attic decrees that the country’s 12 most famous men must die as carrion for his ghostly vultures. A whole nation is panicked at the sinister super-scientists’s plan to change civilization. Only one man has a clue to the strange power of Doctor Death and that man faces torture and death to combat the master of carnage.

  Chapter I

  SERGEANT Ryan and Officer Mulrooney watched the big limousine speed along the boulevard.

  “That’s Colonel Atherstine,” Ryan said of the distinguished looking gentleman lounging in the back. “He invented that centrifugal gun that is doing away with gun powder and high explosives and—”

  The sergeant’s voice sobbed out of him in a wild shriek.

  “Did you see it?” he screeched, pulling at Mulrooney. “Did you see it?”

  “Holy Mary, protect us,” Mulrooney was muttering, watching where the big car had swerved, jumped the curb, and smashed into a tree. “It’s gone! It’s gone!”

  Ryan, staring at the empty space where the car had suddenly vanished, was tugging at his whistle with leaden hands.

  “It’s gone!” Mulrooney kept sobbing.

  “Holy Mary, protect us!”

  “Somebody’ll have to protect you if you don’t shut up that wailing! Come on.” The other man’s terror steadied the sergeant and he shrilled a blast on his whistle.

  Half dragging the choking officer, Ryan ran toward the vacant spot where the limousine had been only a moment before.

  From down the block came the shriek of an answering whistle as the traffic cop at the corner leaped to the rescue. From all sides the crowd surged in, hurling questions.

  The two officers reached the spot where the car had leaped the curb. They stopped, their eyes bulging. There they stood, gaping, until the lieutenant piled out of the riot car.

  “Now what happened?” he growled.

  “’Twas a huge thing,” Ryan babbled. “It was a man, higher’n the buildings roundabout—a man with a frightful shape and eyes! Dark he was and indistinct—just like a puff of smoke. I saw him grab the car and lift it up and throw it through the air like a kid throws a baseball...”

  “Nonsense,” snapped the lieutenant. “Let’s get this straight. There were a lot of people on the street. Did anyone else see this thing? Did you see it, Mulrooney?”

  The officer shook his sha
ggy head.

  “I did not, sir,” he responded. “But I did see the car disappear. Headed right for the tree it did, all of a sudden as if the driver had lost control. Crashed into it. Then—puff! It was gone. As for the other thing that Ryan’s talking about, I—”

  “Curse it, man, I’m psychic!” Ryan roared. “We’ve a banshee in our family and—”

  “It’s the heat,” the lieutenant volunteered. “A day or two in the hospital will put you all right again.”

  “But, I’m not crazy!” Ryan howled as two burly attendants pushed him into the wagon. I’m—”

  He was still raving as the wagon shot around the corner, siren shrieking.

  The lieutenant turned to Mulrooney.

  “The beat and the sight of the accident—”

  Mulrooney scratched his head again.

  “There’s the busted glass, sir. And there’s plenty of us saw the car disappear, just like it had dissolved in air, sir. How you going to get around that?”

  The lieutenant shook his head.

  “Maybe the heat’s driven you nuts, too,” he growled, taking out his notebook. “Grab off a bunch of witnesses and let’s get their names.”

  Chapter II

  Gray Things of the Dark

  HIGH above the city streets, a man leaned out of a window overlooking the boulevard, his deep set eyes taking in every detail of what had happened. He shook his head sagely. Then, stepping back, he pulled the window down and seated himself at a desk piled high with typed papers and penciled memoranda.

  “Number one,” he muttered to himself, his sad eyes wearing a strained, far-away look. “But no. Atherstine was of too small caliber to be number one. He was more in the nature of an experiment. Now I must revise my list.”

  He took a small memorandum book from a drawer and thumbed its pages carefully, making changes and alterations here and there. Finally he tossed it back into the pile. Again his eyes took on a sad, weary expression.

  “John Stark,” he muttered. “It has to be him. There is no other way. He is my friend—the best of them all. But because of his money, his position, his philanthropies, he can do more damage to the world than all the others.”