The Hydra Monster

by Lee Falk

  "Hodgins was the man in the hospital?"

  "Yeah, they didn't want him to talk to you, or to anybody."

  "Where is he now?"

  Mumm's thumb pointed at the Bay he'd just been saved from. "Probably in there someplace, with a lot of scrap iron for company," he answered. He shook his head, shedding water. "Who are you anyway, some kind of fancy cop?"

  "No, I work alone," answered the masked man. "And I have a special interest in Hydra."

  "They got a special interest in you, too," said Mumm. "Look, I suckered you over in 'Frisco figuring you'd tail me. This place here, they call it the death house."

  "I can guess why."

  "I ... I was going to set you up. Lead you in there and let them finish you off," said Mumm. "Here I try to get you killed and you save my life . . *

  "Every man's life is precious," said the Phantom.

  "That's not what Hydra thinks."

  "How'd you get tied in with them?"

  "They got a charge against me dropped. It would have meant maybe five years in prison," said Mumm. "I guess I should have taken prison. because Hydra owns me for life."

  "They did own you," the masked man told him. " As far as they know, you're dead. A lot of bodies that go into the Bay and out into the Pacific never turn up again."

  Nodding slowly, Mumm said, "Yeah, you're right. Maybe I can get away from here, try over again someplace else."

  "First lead me to Hydra headquarters."

  "There is no headquarters. I was conning you before."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Hydra is everywhere and nowhere," Mumm continued. "They recruit you and they keep tabs on you. When they want you, they always know where to contact you."

  "There has to be a central headquarters."

  "Probably, but they don't let a flunky like me in on stuff like that. Could be any place, here, New York, Cairo, Paris . . . any place."

  "What about this death house?"

  "They've only used this dump for a few months," answered Mumm. "Pretty soon, they'll move again. They use this house . . . well, to take care of people."

  "How many men are in there now?"

  "Two at least. A big, lardy guy called Learman and a red-haired kid named Cisco," said Mumm. "There may be others."

  The masked man was staring into the fog, in the direction of the lonely house. "I think I'll have a look inside this Hydra death house."

  "That's not smart," warned Mumm. "You'll never come out of there alive. Nobody does."

  The Phantom turned to grin at him. "You did," he reminded Mumm. Then he was gone in the grey mist.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The fog hung silent and thick around the masked man. Then the tall, wooden, death house emerged into view. There were no lights in the place now, no sound.

  The Phantom reached out, tugged at a drain pipe. It felt sturdy and secure. He went climbing up the side of the house, moving quickly by the shuttered windows and the ornate, woodcarved decorations known as "gingerbread." At the top of the house was a turret room, shingled with scallop shingles, a black, metal weathercock atop it.

  He pulled the shutters of the turret window open, tried the window. It was not locked. He pushed it quietly up. In the far-off jungles of Bangalla, in the DEEP WOODS, they said the Phantom could see in the dark. While this was not literally true, the masked man was able to see

  uncommonly well where there was very little light.

  This small, round room contained several odd implements. At first the Phantom thought this might be some sort of display of ancient torture 'lcvices. Then he discerned that the implements had been recently used. A rack, an iron maiden, a brazier for heating coals.

  The hallway beyond the torture room was filled with darkness. Standing there the Phantom used all his highly developed senses. He got the impression there was no one in the entire house.

  "Did they take off as soon as they threw Mumm into the Bay?" he asked himself. "Well, even so, they may have left some clue behind."

  He commenced a methodical search of the death house. In a room on the second floor he discovered an electric chair and, on the other side of a glass wall, a lethal gas chamber. He learned, as he explored further, the entire house was filled with a fantastic variety of mechanisms of persuasion, torture and death. There was even, in a first door room, a gigantic meat grinder.

  "It's like a museum," the Phantom reflected. "A museum devoted to the worst side of man's nature."

  His search, while it told him a good deal about the methods and morals of Hydra, gave him no hint of where he should go next. He had much experience in judging men, and he believed Mumm had told him the truth about not knowing where the local branch of the Hydra society was located.

  "Maybe the police can go over this place with their equipment and find something," said the Phantom. "But, somehow, I doubt it."

  He crossed the threshold of a room at the rear of the first floor. There were a few throw rugs on the floor, nothing else in there. "Another dead end," he said to himself.

  Then the door slammed shut behind him, making a strange, metallic, buzzing sound. The sound was echoed by the room's two windows, as heavy shutters dropped into place.

  His broad shoulder hit the door seconds after it closed. He couldn't budge it. "Reinforced with something, steel probably."

  The Phantom paced the room, hunting an exit.

  The room was intensely dark. So he smelled the smoke rather than saw it. It was drifting in through the tiny crack under the door. From outside, too, came an unmistakable crackling sound.

  "Fire," said the trapped Phantom. "They've set the place on fire."

  Mumm jumped when he realized the wolf was standing beside him. "I'm . . . I'm on your side," he hastened to tell Devil in a higher than usual voice.

  The heavyset man had decided to stay in the vicinity of the death house a few minutes, to see how the masked man fared. His main interest was in himself, in getting away from the Hydra organization for good and all. Yet he was curious, too. Which is why he was still standing out here in the night fog.

  The Phantom's trained wolf had been told to remain up in the field, to await his return. Devil, though, had an uncanny way of sensing when his master was in danger. That instinct had compelled him now to leave his place uphill and approach the house.

  "What . . . what do you want?" Mumm finally managed to say.

  Devil's muzzle pointed at the house in the fog us he growled.

  "Yeah," answered Mumm. "He's there. I told him he hadn't ought to, but he . . . my god, look!"

  Flames showed at the lower windows of the death house, flames which tinted the surrounding log a harsh orange. In a moment the upper windows turned burning red, too. Then, the wooden outer walls of the old Victorian house began to burn.

  Devil growled more savagely. He went trotting toward the now-blazing house.

  "There's nothing you can do," called Mumm. Then he, too, ran for the death house.

  Up ahead someone cried out in pain.

  Mumm found the red-haired Cisco lying on the ground, his gun a few feet from him and his right wrist bloody. Devil stood over the young man, snarling.

  "Why," said Cisco feebly, "did you sic him on

  me?"

  "He isn't mine. He belongs to that guy." Mumm picked up the fallen gun. "What'd you do to him?"

  "Nothing," said Cisco. He was gingerly reaching out his pocket handkerchief with his good hand.

  "Learman told me to stick out here and watch until they got the house going."

  "Who?"

  "The guys at the tower."

  "Is that guy still in there?"

  "In and locked up tight."

  Hesitant, Mumm said, "I better try to save him."

  Cisco pressed the folded handkerchief to his bleeding wrist. He laughed. "Can't anybody save him now."

  CHAPTER NINE

  The room grew hotter and hotter, more and more acrid smoke came seeping in.

  As the Phantom paced
the room, seeking some way out, he felt an uneven spot underfoot. Kneeling, he pulled aside one of the throw rugs. Beneath he felt the outlines of a trapdoor.

  Tugging, the masked man lifted the door in the floor open. "Does this lead out of here? Or only into some further trap?"

  He placed his face close to the opening. Unmistakably came the smell of the Bay, salt and sealife. "Must be the way they tried to dispose of Mumm," he decided. "So it should lead out to the water."

  In the corridor outside the room the fire was roaring louder.

  taking a breath, the masked man dropped through the floor. He fell through a slick-walled lube for several feet, then shot out into the water. frog-kicking, he aimed for the surface.

  The fog all around looked bloody and soot- smeared. The whole huge house was burning now, shutters, gingerbread, scalloped shingles, all blazing in the misty night.

  Using the burning house as a beacon, the Phantom swam back to shore.

  Devil met him as he stepped from the water.

  The masked man's hand swung toward a waterproof holster, then relaxed. "Still here?" he asked the approaching Mumm.

  "I should be long gone, I know. But I sort of wanted to see how you made out in there."

  "I got out in one piece," said the Phantom. "Though it looks like Hydra had a nice little trap set for me."

  "That's what Cisco says," the heavyset man told him.

  "Cisco? You've talked to one of the men from the death house?"

  Smiling grimly, Mumm answered, "He talked to me.

  "Where is he?"

  "Over there. He's unconscious at the moment. I had to persuade him to talk. Turns out he knows a bit more about Hydra than I do."

  The masked man did not approve of what Mumm had done to his former associate. But that

  wouldn't keep him from making use of any information obtained. "What did you find out?"

  "They've got a control building over in Sausa- lito," said Mumm. "They can observe this place from there with closed circuit television gear. And control some of what goes on in the death house, like closing that door on you, and so on. They call the place the control tower, but it's really an old factory."

  "How many men there?"

  "Three, maybe four. Cisco doesn't know their names, he says, which I believe. Learman, the fat guy from here, may be there by now, too."

  "Where exactly is this factory?"

  Mumm gave him the address. "You going to go there alone again?"

  "I like working that way." The Phantom strode to the sprawled-out Cisco's side. He made sure that he was still alive and in relatively good condition. Then, using Cisco's belt and shoe laces, he tied him up. "We'll leave him here for the police or firemen to find. He may have more to say about Hydra when he's safely in custody." Rising, he stood with hands on hips. "What about you?"

  Mumm spread his hands wide. "This is where I disappear. If you meant what you said."

  "Yes, I did."

  "So long then," said Mumm. "Thanks " He took a few backward steps, then turned and hurried away. The fog swallowed him up.

  "Now let's get to the control tower," the Phantom told Devil.

  Sausalito lies alongside the Bay, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The old factory was across the roadway from the water. There was a boatyard and the remains of a houseboat showing through the thinning fog on the bay vide of the shore road.

  Weeds grew high beside the high wire fence which enclosed the complex of three long, low brick buildings. Beer cans, milk shake cartons, french fiy bags clustered against the fence, as though they were trying to push their way through to the factory grounds.

  The Phantom, in belted raincoat and dark glasses again, stepped out of the taxi which had brought him here from nearby Tiburon.

  Devil leaped out as the Phantom paid the driver.

  "That's a very well-behaved dog," said the plump, bespectacled cab man.

  "Actually," said the Phantom, "he's a wolf."

  "Oh, yeah, sure." The driver laughed. "A wolf, ha. Well, goodnight."

  When the cab was gone the Phantom moved into the scrubby lot which bordered the Hydra outpost.

  The Phantom, with Devil trotting close behind, slowly circled the factory. The mist was thinning considerably, lights from the houses which dotted the low hills showed as yellow blurs.

  At the rear of the complex he once more shed his outer clothes to return to his mask and costume. Leaving the grey wolf to stand guard over the neat pile of civilian attire, he headed for the back fence of the factory grounds.

  He halted three feet short of the interlacing of wire. From out of his belt he drew a small metal tool and tossed it against the fence. Nothing happened, no sizzle, no buzz of alarm.

  The masked man backed up for a running start. He vaulted the fence, landing wide-legged on the gravel beyond. Like the Hydra's death house, the factory was dark.

  Up ahead, clearly visible in the thinning fog, yawned the open, rear door of the nearest factory building.

  "Too convenient," decided the Phantom. He ran swiftly across the gravel, avoiding the inviting open entryway. As he ran by, at a distance of about twenty feet, he caught a glimpse of packing cases inside.

  On a windowless side of the middle brick building the Phantom spotted a metal ladder leading to the roof. He tested it, determined it wasn't electrified and climbed up. He crossed the tar- paper roof toward a curving skylight. Down on the Bay the lights of dock restaurants and shops were clearly visible.

  The masked man crouched beside the skylight, looked down into the factory. It was too dark to see much of anything, but his keen sense of hearing told him there was no one below.

  He got the skylight open, dropped straight down ten feet to the floor. He brushed against a low stack of cardboard boxes. From between two of them a piece of paper came fluttering.

  The fog was thin enough now to let through

  moonlight. The Phantom was able to read

  the slip of paper. A page from a memo pad with the words "Be sure to ship to V" scrawled across it There was also a date, a date only a few days earlier.

  He folded the small sheet into his belt.

  " I wonder if they've abandoned this place, too," the Phantom thought as he roamed the dark and deserted warehouse.

  He came next to an office. Here it was evident someone had made a recent and hasty retreat. The smell of cigarettes still lingered in the air, all the desk drawers and file drawers were pulled out and empty. Even the wastebasket had been upturned.

  The Phantom righted it, noticing a spec of white at the bottom. He retrieved it, a small scrap of airmail paper. The only words written here were "no mistakes!" followed by an initial signature. The initial was "V".

  "V again," said the Phantom to himself. He put the fragment with the memo he'd found.

  Then he entered a corrugated, metal passageway which connected this building to the next.

  The moonlight was bright in here, flowing down through the skylights. This was another warehouse, nearly empty save for a few packing cases. On his immediate right stood a workbench containing a large tool box, a sprawl of wrenches and a blow torch.

  There was no one in the vast room.

  The Phantom took three more steps.

  Then a booming voice ordered, "Don't move Stay exactly where you are!"

  The voice continued, "You are covered from all sides."

  The Phantom spun, scanning the entire room. It still appeared to be empty.

  "Where are they?" he asked himself as he drew one of his .45 automatics from its holster.

  "You are a disturbance," the loud voice went on. "You are causing trouble. We cannot permit that."

  His acute sense of hearing developed in the jungle, told him the voice was coming from the right of him.

  "You must be destroyed," it continued.

  "A speaker planted someplace in that wall," the Phantom determined. "And a taped voice at that, judging from the way it sounds."

 
; He hurried to the work table, picked up the tool chest. "Looks like they've taken off again," he said. "But I'd like to have a look at that tape."