Doctor Death Vs. The Secret Twelve - Volume 1

by Harold Ward

“Explain!” he snapped.

  His quickly spoken word brought the other out of his hysteria quicker than anything else could have done.

  “The stamps!” he ejaculated. “From every part of the country the word comes in that people are dying—dying like flies. They—”

  Holm seized the babbling man by the shoulder and shook him roughly.

  “Calm yourself and give us the facts!” he snarled.

  The other swallowed hard. Then, straightened up, he seemed to gain control of himself.

  “There has been an epidemic of poisoning, sir,” he responded, speaking every word clearly and distinctly in order to maintain control over himself. “Telegrams are coming in by the hundreds—all along the same line.

  “Hydrocyanic acid has been mixed with the mucilage used on the new issue of stamps. People are dropping dead in post office lobbies, in stores, in offices—everywhere. The Postmaster General has ordered the sale of stamps stopped in all post offices—the immediate confiscation and burning of every stamp on hand throughout the nation. But, meanwhile—”

  His voice died away as the little party hurried out of the room.

  Chapter XVI

  Death’s Ultimatum

  NONE of them saw the evil face that peered out at them from a distant stack of filing cases. It was a thin face, gaunt, almost to the point of cadaverousness, the eyes sunken in their sockets, the face pale and twitching with emotion.

  He chuckled sinisterly.

  “Wise though you are, gentlemen,” he said mockingly, “you underestimate the ability of Doctor Death. My soul—my ego—is again in its proper shell. You thought, when you sent your pseudo-scientists to that little island in the midst of the gulf that I, with my range finder, would not soon discover the deception.

  “Bah! I know where every one of them is located. Let the poor fools of Secret Service men fret their heads off on the island. I will strike them down, one by one—these men of science—at my leisure. They are all marked men. But, meanwhile, I have other work to do.”

  From behind the files where he had hidden them away, he brought forth the documents he had stolen. He placed them in his inside pocket.

  Darkness was already falling. He opened the window a pace and crawled through.

  A guard, attracted by the draught, turned and started toward him, gun in hand.

  He staggered back as a wave of hatred swept over him. The gun dropped from his fingers and he collapsed in a little heap upon the floor.

  Death dodged across the great lawn from shadow to shadow until he reached a waiting car with curtains drawn. He crept inside and gave a hurried order.

  The car disappeared in the gathering darkness.

  An hour later a telegram was delivered to the already harassed Chief Executive. He opened it and handed it across the desk to Jimmy Holm without comment.

  WHAT I PROMISE DO I PERFORM, I ASKED YOU TO ABDICATE IN MY FAVOR ELSE TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES STOP I AM STRIKING FROM A HUNDRED DIFFERENT QUARTERS AT ONCE STOP NOT ONLY WILL WASHINGTON FALL BUT THE ENTIRE NATION WILL BE WIPED OUT STOP THEN OTHER NATIONS WILL FOLLOW UNTIL I RULE THE WORLD STOP YOU THOUGHT WHEN YOU CAUSED YOUR SCIENTIFIC MEN TO HIDE AWAY THAT I COULD NOT FIND THEM STOP FOOL EXCLAMATION WENTZEL DIES TONIGHT REGARDLESS OF WHERE HE MAY BE HIDDEN STOP

  DOCTOR DEATH.

  The rain was coming down in torrents as Jimmy Holm turned into the driveway that led to the old house at the end of a row of evergreen trees banked on either side by a dark, gloomy forest. The lightning flashed incessantly, intermingled with the steady rumble of thunder. The jagged flashes brought out every detail of the landscape in bold relief—the huge, rambling stone house with the barred windows and the ivy climbing up the walls. It showed every rut and mudhole in the macadamized driveway along which he was walking.

  The storm was increasing in fury each minute, the rattle of the rain against the trees and the incessant roll of the thunder making a medley of sounds that beat against the ear in cacophonous discord.

  Jimmy Holm was wet—soaked to the skin. Upon his face was several days’ growth of stubble; blended with the dye with which his skin was smeared, it gave him a sinister, evil appearance. His clothes were old and tattered and he carried himself with the slinking, furtive air of one who is almost down and out. This was the sort of night he had been longing for.

  For several weeks the work of tracking down the sinister Doctor Death had gone on unabated. Yet, from the day in the library that he had made his metempsychostic disappearance, no trace of him had been found. Every detective available had been put upon his trail, but to no avail.

  They knew that he was close by; the steady inroads of his accursed electrolysis machine for destroying the government buildings still went on unabated. Ten thousand engineers had been rushed to Washington from every part of the nation to assist in the battle to keep the great buildings from tumbling into their own cellars.

  Thanks to the efficient work of the post office department, the horrible epidemic of death which had threatened to sweep over the country had been halted. Every post office in the nation had been wired. Not only had the sale of stamps been stopped, but a complete list of those already sold that day was made out so far as possible and the purchasers forced to bring them back. Death’s cold hand had been stopped.

  Throughout the country a war of extermination had been declared even more vicious than that already ordered. Men were commanded to shoot at sight. Yet the wily old madman had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up.

  He had kept his promise in another way, too. Wentzel, the scientist, hidden away in a farm house in Northern Illinois, had been stricken down while he slept. Heart failure was given as the cause of his demise. Holm and his colleagues knew better. Death had struck at him through the air, killing him in some hellish manner.

  Ricks and Nina Fererra had been brought from the fortress on the rocky island and were again ensconced in New York. The Inspector had recovered sufficiently to be up and around. Holm wanted Nina closer in case of an emergency.

  Knowing the grim old maniac as he did, Holm had one consolation. Death, like many another and saner scientist, had one characteristic which worked against him. Regardless of how clever the experiment he was working upon, he was always ready to throw it aside in favor of a newer and, to his perverted intellect, better project. Thus, while the law was being constantly compelled to guess at the weapon with which he would strike next, yet the thought was ever before the brave men who were tracking him down that they no longer had to battle with the diabolical contrivances of the past. Aside from his Zombis and his elementals, it was seldom that Death resorted twice to the same thing.

  TO this grim old house set back in the midst of the forest Rumley, one of the best operatives of the Secret Twelve, had been traced. There he had disappeared. On the official records of the District of Columbia the place was described as a private hospital for the insane. The owner was ostensibly one Doctor Daniels. The similarity of the initials struck Holm as peculiar in checking over the report.

  Now he was bent upon investigating the place for himself.

  Holm shuddered in spite of his iron nerve. The very blackness that engulfed him, combined with the blinding rain, the incessant lightning flashes and the steady rumble of the thunder, was palpitant with evil. He kept seeing imaginary terrors looming up before him. Not a light gleamed in the three story expanse of brick. He dodged from tree to tree, from bush to bush, through the vast grounds, skirting the house until he reached a rear door. His hand reached out for the knob...

  From somewhere inside came a wild shriek of terror. Commingled with the roll of the thunder and a wild flash of lightning that darted across the heavens, it caused the detective’s blood to run cold. He dropped back into the shadows of a bush to reconnoiter.

  A cellar window was open a tiny space. Darting from his hiding place, he pushed it up a bit farther and shoved his body through the opening.

  FOR a moment he stood there hesit
ating, his every faculty alert. Then, certain that the room was empty, he took a tiny pencil flash from his pocket and pressing the button, allowed its thin beam of light to penetrate the darkness.

  He was in what appeared to have been once a vegetable cellar. That it had been unused for years was demonstrated by the dust upon the shelves and the innumerable cobwebs that filled the corners.

  Just across from where he stood was a door made of rough pine boards. He tiptoed across the concreted floor and, laying his hand on the latch, extinguished his light and pushed the door open a tiny crack.

  Only darkness there.

  Again he had recourse to his pencil flash. For a moment he allowed it to stab here and there through the darkness. Then he turned back, a puzzled expression creeping over his face.

  The stairs led downward instead of upward as he had expected.

  He made a second inspection of the room he was in. Even though he sounded the walls gently, tapping lightly so as to avoid making any sound that would attract attention, he failed to find another opening.

  A premonition of evil swept over him. Cold chills chased themselves up and down his backbone, and his hair bristled. Unconsciously his hand sought the butt of the revolver snugged under his armpit. He half drew it from his holster. Then, recalling several instances where, in prowling through Death’s lairs, he had accidentally stumbled into pitfalls and the gun was knocked from his hand by the fall, he tucked it away again and turned back to the window.

  In the interval that he had been in the cellar the window had been closed!

  He made a hasty examination. When he turned away there was a look of anxiety upon his face.

  The window was made of thick oaken boards. It would take a sledge hammer to smash it open for it was locked on the outside.

  Again he turned to the door on the opposite side of the room. He was a prisoner. There was no other way out. He could only go ahead.

  And he knew now that his visit had been expected. He was certain that Doctor Death was in the building somewhere. Probably by means of his range finder, he had been watching and waiting for him.

  On the other hand, there was always the chance that this was the legitimate institution that it claimed to be and that the window was merely left open to trap intruders. In asylums such as this was purported to be, many people are kept whose derangement is questionable—placed there by relatives to get them out of the way. Such people often have friends who seek to smuggle them out. The open window might have been merely for the purpose of catching such visitors.

  Yet Holm was psychic. Something told him that danger was ahead. Unconsciously, he walked on tiptoe as he approached the door and opened it again. Then, his pencil flash lighting the way and the fingers of his right hand hovering over the butt of his pistol, he started slowly down the steps.

  Holm expected the stairs to collapse with every step he took—to precipitate him into some dark well. In this he was agreeably mistaken. He reached the lower landing and found himself facing a door; other doors were on either side.

  Extending his hand cautiously, he tried the knobs. Only the door ahead of him was unlocked. He cut off his flash and, turning the knob, dropped to his knees to avoid the bullet that he feared might come from within. When none came, he straightened up again and once more pressed the button of the flashlight.

  The room in which he found himself was vast, resembling somewhat a dismantled dormitory. Like the room he had just quitted, it had but one door—across the floor from where he stood.

  He started toward it.

  Again that tiny signal in his brain warned him of danger.

  Nina Fererra was close to him. And she was in deadly peril!

  He threw caution to the wind now as he leaped across the floor to that second door. As he approached it he noted that there was a tiny peep-hole in the panel on a level with his eye.

  And on the other side there was a light.

  He cautiously placed his eye against the hole and peered within. What he saw there caused him to forget everything in his mad haste to get within.

  Nina Fererra lay upon an operating table. She was almost naked, her rounded arms and legs securely strapped. There was a gag in her mouth. On another table, bound in the same manner was Inspector Ricks.

  Doctor Death, clad in white operating gown and cap, his long, bony hands encased in rubber gloves, was bending over the form of the girl. In his fingers was a hypodermic syringe. On the other side of the table, a look of keen excitement on her beautiful face, was Charmion.

  “If I succeed it will be a triumph,” Death was saying. “And there is no reason why I should not succeed. Heretofore, it has been necessary for me to inject my metallic solution into the veins of the dead in order to secure my Zombis. But by pumping out the blood from living bodies and, at the same time, filling the veins and arteries with this solution while the brain still lives, I should have a Zombi of higher intelligence. This woman was a traitor to me, Charmion. This man is an enemy. Can you think of any better fate for them than to make living corpses of them—forced to obey my every command?”

  “Eet ees won’erful!” the Egyptian exclaimed, her eyes filled with admiration.

  HOLM’S fingers grasped the knob. He jerked open the door.

  A bell jangled raucously and the room was filled with a strange, weird, red light.

  Something cold and metallic dropped over his head and around his neck. It was jerked taut, almost strangling him.

  “Drop your gun, Jimmy!” the cold voice of Death rasped. “Otherwise, that piano wire noose about your neck will be pulled until it cuts your head from your body.”

  He turned and faced the young detective, a look of triumph hovering over his saturnine face.

  “You are the second man to try out my new electric magnetic detector, my pigheaded young friend,” he chuckled. “The other was your man, Rumley.

  “The magnetic detector,” he continued, “is the invention of a Chicago man and was first put in use in the Cook County jail, where it rings the bell and flashes the red light whenever a visitor carrying anything of a metallic nature enters the visitors’ room. I secured one and perfected it by adding to it the piano-wire noose for catching my visitors whenever they pay me an unexpected visit.

  “You have halted my experiment, but you are welcome, nevertheless.”

  Chapter XVII

  Torture Pit

  JIMMY HOLM tried to fight off the fears that beset him. The effort was vain. His eyes were grim as he watched the diabolical smile on the face of the sinister old man as he stepped toward him, leering with triumph. He stopped just in front of Jimmy and, doffing the white stocking cap which he had pulled, surgeon-like, over his thatch of snow-white hair, made a low, mocking bow.

  “Thank you,” he said, picking up the revolver that Holm had dropped to the floor and placing it in his own pocket. “Welcome to my little nest. And, by the way, if the wire about your neck is a trifle inconvenient, I would, nevertheless, advise you to make no attempt to rid yourself of it. It is so arranged that every ounce of pressure on it causes it to draw itself a trifle tighter.”

  He stepped across the floor to the tables on which Ricks and Nina were lying. Jerking off their gags, he loosened their bindings a trifle so that they could turn their heads.

  “Look at my latest acquisition,” he chortled. “Now I have all three of you—the three most important people in the world to me—and all in my net at one time.”

  He turned to the Egyptian.

  “This is worthy of a celebration, pretty one,” he exclaimed. “We must burn a votive sacrifice upon the altar of our gods for turning our enemies over to us.”

  The Egyptian pouted prettily. Drawing the rubber gloves from her white, slender fingers, she selected a cigarette. Lighting it with easy, catlike grace, she regarded the prisoners through the haze of smoke.

  “Moos’ we noot haff our leetle exper’ment?” she inquired.

  Death chuckled again. Placing his bony fingers und
er her rounded chin, he raised her head until her eyes looked into his own.

  “Always bloodthirsty, my pretty one,” he chided. “Have no fear. We will conduct our experiment—but it will be in a different way. I have something in view that will make the roses of pleasure come to your cheeks. It is—torture!”

  The Egyptian clapped her white hands together excitedly.

  “That ees goot!” she exclaimed, her frown changing to a smile. “We moos see bot’ Jimmee and the wooman writhe weeth pain. Pain pleases the gods, my doctaire.”

  Death accepted a cigarette from the woman and, lighting it with fingers that trembled from excitement, commenced pacing the floor. His brow was furrowed in thought and he gazed from Jimmy to Nina quizzically.

  “Let me torture them, doctaire,” the Egyptian said. “Een my country we have men who are skilled in sooch theengs. I have seen them work.”

  Death shook his head impatiently.

  “I have it!” he finally said. “It will pain him most if he can see the girl he loves suffer. That way, they will both be tortured, pretty one.”

  “That ees good!” the Egyptian siren said again, her eyes sparkling with pleasure.

  Holm tried to fight off the feeling of despair that was creeping over him. He had been in many tight fixes since he had assumed the task of running this grim monster to earth. But never had he been in such a predicament as at the present time. He cursed himself for a fool for not coming prepared—backed by half a hundred of his bullies from the police department. Instead, he had stumbled into this trap like a veritable amateur. He glanced across the expanse of room at the pallid faces of Nina and Ricks and a sense of the stark reality of the horrible situation swept over him.

  The noose was biting into his flesh deeper and deeper with each breath that he took. Breathing was a torture now. He was forced to struggle for each tiny speck of air that came into his lungs. And, as the muscles of his neck reacted to his breathing, the wire closed a bit tighter. Yet he looked across at Nina Fererra and smiled. And she answered him with a smile as courageous as his own.