Dr Satan - [Pulp Classics 6]

by Edited By Robert Weinberg

  He began pacing up and down before his big ebony desk.

  * * * *

  He chanced to be looking at the chair when it happened. The chair, also ebony, was pushed a few feet back from the desk. It was tilted back a bit, with the felt pad slightly away from the movement of his body as he had left it.

  It squatted there, a dark inanimate thing at one instant. At the next there was a soft pouff of sound - and the chair leaped into blue incandescence. Lambent flame played over it, so hot that it blasted the faces of Keane and Beatrice five feet away. For perhaps four seconds the blue flame persisted. Then it died out as suddenly as it had appeared.

  And the chair was no longer there. In its place was a little heap of fine ash, smoldering on the carpet.

  Keane gazed slowly into Beatrice’s horrified eyes. “I don’t know about Doctor Satan yet,” he repeated coolly, “but apparently he knows a great deal about me! - Well, what is it, Rice?”

  Keane’s man stood in the library doorway, staring first at his master and then at the tiny heap of ash that was all that was left of the ebony chair.

  “Mr. Walstead Just died, air,” he said. “It was in the lobby of the building, Just as he was about to step into the street. He’s lying down there now.” Rice’s eyes flashed bleakly. “There’s something pushing up through his head, sir. Little sharp spikes of something, like branches of a little tree, or bush.

  * * * *

  3.

  Three miles away, in a windowless, black-draped room, a figure bent over a metal table in the attitude of a high priest bending over an altar.

  The figure looked like one robed for a costume ball, save that in every line of it was a deadliness that robbed it of all suggestions of anything humorous or social.

  Tall and spare, it was covered by a blood-red robe. Red rubber gloves swathed the hands. The face was concealed behind a red mask that curtained it from forehead to chin with only two black eyes, like live coals, showing through eyeholes.

  Lucifer! And to complete the mediaeval portrait of the Archfiend, two horned red projections showed above the red skullcap that hid the man’s hair.

  Before him, on the metal table, a thin blue flame died slowly down into a sprinkling of yellowish powder from which it had originally been born. The blue flame was the only light in the room. By its flicker could be seen three other men, crouching around the walls and watching the flame with breathless intensity.

  One of these three was a young man with an aristocratic but weak face. The other two were creatures like gargoyles. The first was legless, with his great, gorilla-like head, set on tremendous shoulders, coming up only to a normal man’s waist. The second was a wizened small monkey of a man with bright, cruel eyes peering out from a mat of hair that covered all his features.

  The blue flame on the metal table died out. The red-clad figure straightened up. A gloved hand touched a switch and. the room was illuminated with red light.

  “Ascott Keane,” said the man in Satan’s costume, “has escaped the blue flame.”

  The three men around the walls breathed deeply. Then the younger, with the weak face, scowled. “How do you know that, Doctor Satan?”

  “If the flame has consumed him,” Doctor Satan said, “the blue flame fire would have burned red while his body was devoured. It did not burn red.”

  The younger man walked toward the table. He moved with a curious air of ringing defiance. “How do you control the flame, Doctor Satan?”

  The coal black eyes burned into his through the eyeholes in the red mask.

  “It is all in here,” Doctor Satan said at last, pointing to an ancient roll of papyrus spread flat on a stand near the metal table. “The ingredients of the flame were compounded first in Egypt, five thousand years ago. To these ingredients are added powdered bits of the person of the one to be consumed by the flame. Fingernail parings, hair, buts of discarded clothing, for instance. Then when the powder is burned, the person burns, though a thousand miles of distance separate him from the blue fire.”

  “Yet Keane escaped,” said the young man, watching Doctor Satan narrowly.

  “I had no bits of Keane’s person to place with the chemicals. He is too shrewd to have allowed hair or nail clippings to be smuggled from his home. I had only a sliver of the chair in which he customarily sits. Obviously he wasn’t in the chair when I touched off the fire, and so escaped death.”

  * * * *

  The young man lit a cigarette. The frightened defiance of his every gesture was heightened by the manner in which he lit it. “The death tree, Doctor Satan. How do you work that?”

  “It is a species of Australian thornbush,” Doctor Satan said without hesitation. “Rather, it was, till with a certain botanical skill I altered it into a thing that flowers in two hours or less, rooting in a man’s brain. The only drawback is that the seed, a tiny thing that floats in air, must be inhaled by the victim, to lodge in the nasal passage and later work its way up to the brain.”

  “You have more seeds of this tree?”

  “Yes,” said Doctor Satan. His manner was strange, his voice almost gentle, but there was a deadliness in the very gentleness. The monkey-like little man with the hairy face, and the legless giant with the huge shoulders, stirred restlessly in their positions by the wall.

  “Why didn’t you use the flame on Ryan and Walstead and Billingsley?” questioned the young man. “That would have been easier than killing them with your thornbush.”

  “Easier,” conceded the grim figure in red, “but not quite so spectacular. I wanted those three to die as fantastically as possible, so the requests I make on other rich men will be more quickly granted.”

  Doctor Satan walked to the stand on which the papyrus rested. He pulled out a drawer and took from it ten bundles of currency. In each bundle were thousand dollar bills. And the band around each bundle proclaimed that each contained a hundred such bills.

  * * * *

  “The first contribution,” Doctor Satan said. “From William H. Sterling, the philanthropic manufacturer of automobiles. One million dollars.”

  The young man stared at the heap of currency with glistening eyes. A fortune, in such small compass that it could be concealed under a man’s clothes!

  But now, at the same time, he seemed suddenly to sense the mockery of Doctor Satan’s geniality, and of his apparent frankness in disclosing his affairs. Color drained from his face, and more drained from it at Doctor Satan’s next words. “You know a great deal about me, don’t you, Monroe?”

  Monroe swallowed painfully, then straightened his shoulders. “Yes, I know a lot. I know your real name - a family name familiar to everyone in the United States. I know your philosophy of life; how you, an enormously wealthy man, tired of all the thrills that money can buy, have turned to crime. I know you intend to make your crimes pay as part of your game. I know you have studied the occult and the scientific, in preparation for this debut. And now I know how you control two of your murder tools - the blue flame and the tree of death.”

  * * * *

  Doctor Satan’s eyes bored Into Monroe’s till the younger man gripped the edge of the metal table for support.

  “Yes, you know a lot, Monroe,” he crooned. “More than anyone else living. You wouldn’t think of betraying me, would you?”

  “Not if you treat me fairly, Doctor Satan. But if you try to double-cross me, you are lost. In a safe deposit box which is to be opened by my lawyer In case an ‘accident’ happens to me there is a full account of yourself ...”

  His voice trailed off into a frightened squeak at the look in Doctor Satan’s coal-black eyes. The red-clad figure appeared to loom taller and taller, till it almost filled the room. And now all the defiance was gone from Monroe’s posture, leaving only the fright.

  “What are you - going to do?” he panted. “What ...”

  Again his voice trailed off, but this time it ended in a thickness like that of beginning sleep.

  Doctor Satans’s eyes, glittering,
ruthless, held Monroe’s eyes. Doctor Satan’s hand passed slowly before Monroe’s face. The monkey-like man and the legless giant watched from the wall.

  “You are asleep.” Doctor Satan’s voice sounded somnolently in the silent, windowless room.

  “I am asleep,” breathed Monroe, wide, glassy eyes fixed on the red mask.

  “You will tell me all you know and all you hope to do.

  “I will tell you all I know and all I hope to do.”

  “What are your plans concerning me?”

  * * * *

  For a second, Monroe’s still features twisted, as though even in hypnosis his will fought to avoid answering that question. Then his lips moved mechanically.

  “I am going to inform the police how to find you when you collect your next looted million. Then I am going to take the money, and the seeds of the death tree and the chemicals for the blue flame, and collect more money myself.”

  “It is enough,” said Doctor Satan, still in that almost gentle voice.

  The monkey-like man and the legless giant looked at each other. Doctor Satan had pronounced a death sentence.

  Doctor Satan spoke to them, eyes never leaving Monroe’s face. “Girse. Bostiff.” The two moved toward Monroe. The monkey-like man known as Girse hopped like a deformed ape. Bostiff hitched his giant torso over the floor with his thick arms, using his calloused knuckles as feet.

  “The iron box, Bostiff.”

  Bostiff hitched his way to one wall, pushed back the stable drapes and drew from a three-foot niche a coffin-like box that gleamed dully in the red light.

  Doctor Satan’s hand went out. He plucked three hairs from Monroe’s blond head. He laid the hairs on a small pile of the yellowish powder on the metal table.

  “You will lie down in the box, Monroe,” he droned.

  The blond young man walked with Jerky steps to the metal coffin and lay down in it.

  “The lid, Bostiff.”

  Picking up the massive iron cover of the coffin as easily as though it were a pot lid, the legless giant put it on the box. Then, without further orders, he dragged the metal coffin back to its niche in the wall and slid it home in the surrounding stonework.

  * * * *

  Doctor Satan picked up a pinch of the yellowish powder and crumbled it sharply in his fingers. The tiny heap on the table burst into blue flame. The three blond hairs writhed and were consumed.

  The end of the metal coffin, showing from the niche, was suddenly red-hot, then glowing with white incandescence. Slowly it faded to deep, hot red in color, and back to black.

  Girse and Bostiff watched stolidly. If ever an investigator opened that box nothing would be found but a pinch of ashes. A pinch of ashes that had been a man, planning to betray the master.

  Doctor Satan’s voice sounded, calmly. “Danger has been eliminated from within. Now no one on Earth knows my real identity. It remains only to eliminate danger from without.”

  Bostiff spoke, his dull eyes fixed on Doctor Satan’s mask. “The danger from without, Master?”

  “Yes. The danger that lies in Ascott Keane. There is the only danger I recognize. The Police? Ludicrous! Private detectives? Bodyguards hired by wealthy victims? They are children! But in Ascott Keane lies a threat.”

  The red-gloved hand touched the light-switch. Slowly the red bulbs faded out, bathing the room in a lowering darkness like that of a lurid rapid sunset.

  “But the threat of Ascott Keane is to be removed at once. Walstead saw him. Walstead showed him the note. Keane will act on that knowledge - and with that action he will be trapped.”

  * * * *

  4.

  In front of a triple mirror before which was a bench holding hundreds of tiny pots and Jars, Ascott Keane worked deftly. His fingers flew from Jar to features, pot to face. And as they flew his face subtly altered. Already it was no longer the face of Keane. It was a countenance which to Beatrice Dale was vaguely familiar - though she could not yet name it.

  “That hideous death shrub!” she said. “I can’t see how it is used by Doctor Satan.”

  “You’ve seen Indian fakirs make a tree grow in a pot, haven’t you?” said Keane. “Usually it’s a miniature orange tree. They make it grow before your eyes, and pick an orange from it. Well, Doctor Satan’s wizardry is something like that; only he utilizes a form of thorn-bush that flowers in human substance instead of earth.”

  He reshaped his lips with a collodion-like red lacquer, and the girl cried aloud. Keane’s face was that of Walstead. Line for line it was Walstead’s slightly puffy countenance that was reflected in the mirror. A close friend of the dead millionaire would have been deceived.

  “What are you planning to do, Ascott?”

  Keane began pinning thin pads to the lining of his coat to give his lean strong body the bulk of Walstead’s puffy body.

  “Doctor Satan said in his note to Walstead to put the money in a trash can at Broadway and Seventy-Sixth Street. Very well, I’m going to take Walstead’s place. Made up as him, I’ll drop a package in that can - and wait to see who picks it up.”

  Beatrice shook her beautiful, coppery brown head. “Walstead‘s death isn’t out in the papers yet, but surely Doctor Satan must know that the man is dead. Or are you hoping to fool him? “

  “Doctor Satan,” said Keane dryly, “hardly has to wait to get his information from the newspapers.”

  “Then he’ll know that the man who looks like Walstead, and who drops the package in the trash can, can’t possibly be Walstead.”

  “That’s right,” said Keane, drawing on the padded coat and scrutinizing himself in the triple mirrors.

  “But he’ll know it’s you! And he’ll most certainly try to kill you’“

  “That’s what I’m hoping, said Keane, putting on a hat of the type worn by Walstead.

  “But Ascott ...”

  “It’s like this,” said Keane. “Doctor Satan hasn’t met me yet. I want him to underestimate me, so I am rather stupidly disguising myself as Walstead and going to the place where Walstead was to have gone, in the hope that Doctor Satan will trap me. In that event” - his Jaw squared - “I think he’ll be sorry.”

  He stepped away from the mirrors. And it was not Keane who moved - it was Walstead!

  In an antique Italian cabinet there was an extra wide drawer. Keane pulled this out. In it was a rolled papyrus that closely resembled the papyrus that had been spread wide in Doctor Satan’s black room. Beside the papyrus was a little stone Jar.

  Keane opened the Jar and took from it a bit of greenish paste, which he touched to his forehead, the soles of his shoes, and the palms of his hands.

  “Marvelous beings, the ancient Egyptians,” he said softly. “I recognized the blue fire that burned my chair - and would have consumed me if I’d been in it. The fire burned in many a temple along the Nile, but what the Egyptian wizards concocted they usually made fruitless by further research.”

  Beatrice caught his arm, her eyes fearful.

  Keane pressed her hand. “Don’t worry about me, my dear. I’ll be back soon, and I think I’ll be back with news that this Doctor Satan, new peril to a city at yet ignorant of his existence, has passed on to the hell he should have reached long ago.”

  He walked to the door, moving as Walstead had moved. His eyes met the girl’s deep blue ones. Then he was gone.

  * * * *

  Nine o’clock! Upper Broadway was crowded with night shoppers and movie-goers. Among the crowds near Seventy-Sixth Street moved a tall, slightly paunchy man who kept his face shadowed by the brim of his hat, a face that many in the city would have sworn was that of a ghost - of the dead Walstead.

  On the northeast corner of Broadway and Seventy-Sixth Street a trash can showed. The man disguised as Walstead crossed to the can. Under his arm was a small parcel done up in newspaper. He dropped the parcel in the can, and walked on. Without a backward glance he rounded the next corner.

  But once around the corner, Keane stopped and went back, m
oving like a shadow. He peered through the double angle of a corner plate-glass window at the trash can.

  The can was of wire, with interstices in its walls through which the contents could be seen. When Keane has tossed the package into it, the can had been half full of refuse. Now the old papers and odds and ends of trash seemed to be melting away, like water draining down through a hole. Lower and lower the contents sank - till finally the can was empty.

  Keane shook his head a little, eyes gleaming like ice. “Transmission of substance through empty air!” he breathed.

  None in the crowds so close to the can had noted the way the refuse slowly disappeared from within it, but Keane had caught it all. Moreover, he had seen that the trash had disappeared first from the north side of the can, as though it were flowing in that direction, melting into thin air as it flowed.