IT was a long story, but at last it was finished, to Mayhem’s intense satisfaction. He had been hanging on every word.
“Hercules, eh? That clears up so many mysteries. The man-eating birds—ostriches, you say? And the hydra was a squid? Amazing. Even the shirt of Nessus that was supposed to have killed Hercules—Doctor Mayhem seemed amused.
“Yeah.” Pete glanced at the door. “It seems to me I came here with the idea of asking you if you could cure Bigpig. That was quite a while ago, but I’d still like to know.”
“I’m afraid not,” The scientist’s voice was regretful.
Manx sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to keep him away from goldenrod, if I expect him to stay in condition for more fights, then,” he said.
Mayhem slapped his hand to his forehead.
“Oh, I forget, Pete. Your friend told me to tell you he was finished with the wrestling profession. He said that when he got out of the hospital he was going back to Montana.”
There was silence for two minutes. At length Pete drew himself together and made for the door.
“See you later, Doc,” he said, “I’ve got something important to attend to, right away.”
“You have? What?”
Mr. Manx’s grin was enough to frighten babies.
“Oh, nothing much,” he shrugged, as he closed the door behind him. I just want to send Bigpig some—flowers.
MEN DIE ALONE
When a Man of Mystery Returns from the Dead, a Ghastly Heritage of Disaster Blights a Peaceful Lodge!
CHAPTER I
The Devil Man
A MONSTER and a madman!
Director Lester Trask, furious at the interruption that would mean the retake of this scene, nevertheless could not help but appreciate the incongruity of the tableau.
That was his business. That was why he was up in the high Sierra country, shooting Greater Films’ “Devil Man.” According to the advance notices, “Devil Man” was to be the most blood-chilling, shocking picture ever to star Di Votan, runner-up to Karloff and Lugosi.
Trask’s lips tightened as he looked at the star, who was shaking with nerves and something more. Eyeing the twisted, grotesque make-up of the “Devil Man,” he understood why Votan was becoming a neurotic wreck under the strain of roles that made him warp his huge body into postures never meant for a normal man.
That crooked spine, the angle of the neck all awry, were not natural to Votan, of course. Neither was the contorted face that hideously resembled the mask of a beast. No wonder the man drank heavily, Trask thought, and no wonder he had already had several nervous breakdowns.
Votan was the monster. And the madman—
Trask’s voice cut the chill air like a whiplash.
“Gonder, what in hell’s the big idea? This is the third scene you’ve wrecked today!”
Greater Films couldn’t afford to waste celluloid. It was a small independent company that depended chiefly on borrowed stars and the private fortunes of the Rice brothers, who owned it. Old Enoch Rice’s miserliness had sent the troupe on location to the Rice lodge in the Sierras, where no rental need be paid. Still, it had served the purpose, with little redecoration, a coffin or two and some fake cobwebs.
It was a pleasant place, set amid the towering mountains miles from the nearest settlement. Under other circumstances Trask might have enjoyed his job, but not when he had to play nursemaid to a nervous wreck. Now Seth Gonder was here once again.
Ever since the beginning of the assignment, Gonder had caused trouble. Head of a crackpot sect in Los Angeles, twice arrested for “attack with homicidal intent,” and once sent to an institution for a brief period, only his private fortune had enabled him to keep on being a public nuisance. He was a short, squat man with thinning mouse-colored hair, apparently perfectly normal at most times. At present his eyes had a glassy stare and his thick lips were puffed out.
“YOU know what the idea is,” Gonder said, glaring at Trask. “When ‘Devil Man’ was published as a book, I warned the publishers to suppress it. And when the Rices intended to make it into a picture, I told them to stop.”
“Listen, Gonder, I’ve had you put off the lot more than once,” Trask said angrily. “So help me, if you break up another scene—”
“ ‘Devil Man’ mustn’t be filmed,” Gonder almost shrieked. “There is secret wisdom in it that mustn’t reach the eyes and ears of the uninitiated. The author got hold of knowledge that has been hidden for centuries—hidden because there was a curse on the one who revealed it. It’s too dangerous! You know what happened to the author.”
“Yeah,” Trask said. “He died without any reason at all. Of course, he was past eighty-seven.”
“The curse killed him,” Gonder snarled. “I have been appointed of God to suppress ‘Devil Man’ and I shall do it!”
A hoarse sound came from Di Votan. He took a step back, the clamps and braces bound tightly to his body keeping him from assuming a normal posture.
“The Devil Man is more than a legend! He was supposed to have been an Egyptian, in the reign of Thotmes, who acquired the secret of eternal life. By killing others and stealing their life-forces, he prolonged his own existence for centuries. He was killed at last, but his spirit did not die. He must be forgotten, since thought is powerful enough to bring back the dead.”
Trask looked around. A brawny youngster in khaki shirt and puttees was lounging against a pine not far away. Andy Hathaway, the caretaker of the lodge, was a husky chap.
“Andy!” Trask called.
“At your service.” Hathaway came over. He had a slow way of talking, and mild blue eyes that seemed imperturbable.
“Throw this screwball out and see that he stays out.”
“Right. C’mon, mister.”
Hathaway’s capable hand closed about Gonder’s neck. The sect leader had only time to shoot one parting barb.
“You’re playing a fool’s game, Trask! You can’t fight a curse. And I’m telling you ‘Devil Man’ will never be finished. Anyone who helps with the picture is asking for trouble!”
Curiously, despite the blazing heat of the day, Trask felt an icy shudder of premonition crawl down his spine. It was like the tiny thunder-head he could see hovering over a western snow-capped peak. Was that a portent?
“Nuts!” Trask snapped. “Places, boys. Sound okay?”
“Check,” came the reply.
“Camera? All right, quiet. Action!”
Shooting resumed where it had left off. One of the actors—a character man—stood leaning carelessly against a pine, a pistol loaded with blanks in his hand. Di Votan, still upset, was staring blindly after Gonder, and Trask had to speak twice to him before the star came into camera range. Votan’s eyes were glassy.
“What’s wrong, Di?” the director asked.
“Eh? Nothing. Nothing at all.”
THE gross, warped body of the giant lumbered forward as sound-mixers and cameramen went to work. A camera on an overhead portable crane shifted along, panning down to the actors. Votan was playing the part of the Devil Man, who had cornered a victim in the wilderness and was about to murder him in order to steal his life-force. Screwy stuff, Trask thought, but it was box-office.
Votan was a great actor, though. That was obvious in every movement, each gesture, as the giant advanced with a slow, plodding stride toward the character man. Tense now, the character actor raised his gun and aimed it.
“Back! Keep back, you devil! I’ll shoot!”
Votan didn’t reply. That was odd. He should have had a line of dialogue here. But it wasn’t worthwhile to reshoot the scene for it.
“Keep back! Don’t—don’t touch Trask’s eyes narrowed. Involuntarily his body tensed. This acting was a little too good. That note of fear in the character actor’s voice was rather unpleasantly convincing.
The gun went off. Unharmed, Di Votan moved forward, his twisted body lurching, his huge, shaggy hands extended. They clamped about the “victim’s” throat. Votan bent the
man back, ignoring the frantic attempts to break his grip. His face was a rigid, frozen mask, his hands reddening with effort. The cameras ground, recording every detail.
“Break it up!” Trask ordered suddenly. “That’s enough!”
But Votan didn’t release his grip. He was hunched over like a beast, the body of the actor dangling realistically from his hands.
“My God!” someone yelled. “He’s killing the guy!”
Trask ran forward, a blast of cold air chilling his spine. Votan wasn’t acting. Then what the hell was he doing?
Votan’s frightfully masked face lifted, and he screamed:
“I’ll kill him! I’ll kill you all!”
“Di!” Trask’s voice was shaking. “Stop it!”
The director sensed that the others were at his heels, all of them running forward, converging on the suddenly berserk horror-star. The unconscious man dropped from Votan’s hands, sprawled motionless on the ground.
Di Votan whirled, facing Trask. His blindly staring eyes were unhuman, shallow and glitteringly reptilian. The director felt a shudder of horror ripple through him. This wasn’t Di Votan, the actor, who stood crouching, hideous and terrible. It was the Devil Man!
The blast of an automobile horn came from the road nearby. Votan cast a swift glance in that direction, turned and fled. The bulky form went racing through the pines down the slope, to vanish almost immediately in the underbrush.
Trask looked at the road, saw a car there. The big shots themselves—William and Enoch Rice, the owners. That was bad. They were sore at Di Votan already, because of what they considered his eccentricities. If they learned of this latest inexplicable escapade—
“Di’s been at the bottle again,” Trask said softly to the others. “Go get him, some of you. Bring him back and keep him quiet.”
A wink was enough to make the crew understand the situation, and all of them liked Trask. Three promptly set off after Di Votan.
LES TRASK turned and went toward the automobile, biting his lip. It was pure coincidence, of course. There was no harm really done. Already the actor Votan had attacked was walking away weakly, supported by a companion. But remembrance of the cult leader’s words affected Trask unpleasantly. What had he said? The Devil Man once existed. He was killed at last, but his spirit did not die. Suppose that wandering, evil ghost had returned . . .
Rot! Trask stopped beside the car, noting that in the back sat William Rice, a fat man with a shining bald head, who was mopping his face with a silk handkerchief. Beside him sat his brother, co-owner of Greater Films. Enoch Rice, a thin, meagre, pinch-faced man, always reminded Trask of Scrooge. Incongruously his mop of white hair stuck up like an old Fijian’s.
The Rices’ personal physician, Maddern, had been driving. Beside him sat a remarkably pretty girl, Susan Kane, the brothers’ second cousin and only relative.
William Rice took out a battered pipe and began to load it as he nodded to Trask. Enoch merely grunted.
“Thought we’d join you for a few days,” Dr. Jim Maddern said. “What’s wrong with Di Votan?”
“Nothing. Why?”
Enoch Rice squinted unpleasantly. “The hell there isn’t. He’s drunk again, eh? If he didn’t have a cast-iron contract, I’d fire him like a shot.”
“And lose our biggest moneymaker,” Trask said. “He’ll be okay. Leave him to me.”
William provided a respite. Painfully he heaved his gross bulk to the ground.
“Need some bicarb,” he muttered. “Get it, Susan, will you? Out of my grip.”
He burped slightly and waddled toward the lodge, followed by his brother. Dr. Maddern’s dark eyes blinked at Trask behind horn-rimmed glasses.
“What a business,” he said unhappily. “Between William’s digestion and Enoch’s asthma, I’m going crazy.”
“This is the sixth time they’ve been here this year, isn’t it?”
Trask was merely making conversation. He was worrying about Di Votan, and whether the crew had been able to capture him.
“Yes, they might recover their health if they lived here permanently. But—” Maddern shrugged, then waved to Hathaway, the caretaker, who was coming toward them. “Is the place fit to live in, Andy?”
“Sure. Some rats got in lately, but I fumigated and got rid of ’em.”
Hathaway smiled at Susan and helped her with the luggage. Dr. Maddern wandered toward a rustic bench and sat down, motioning to Trask to follow. Taking out a pen-knife, he began to pare his thick, stubby nails.
“I need a rest, after that drive. But no. The minute I get in the house, I’ll have to unpack a stethoscope. Fanatics, the Rices. Nobody can mention death in their presence. They won’t admit they’ll ever die, and yet they pay me to keep them from dying.”
Trask knew of the odd arrangement. If the Rices should die, Dr. Maddern’s stipend would naturally cease.
“It keeps him on his toes,” Enoch had once said maliciously.
“Yeah.” Trask stood up. “It’s going to rain, or snow, maybe. I’d better have the grips take in the stuff.”
There was something else he had to do. It was much more important. He had to find Di Votan. The crew was reporting failure.
CHAPTER II
Death Before the Storm
TRASK went to the edge of the highway and stood there, frowning. The clouds were obscuring the whole sky now, and the temperature had dropped sharply. That meant no more outdoor shooting until the storm had passed. Luckily there were a number of inside shots that could be made within the lodge.
But where was Di Votan?
Gonder, the cult leader, came out of the underbrush. His eyes were even more glassy with fear than before. He raised his hand to forestall Trask’s outburst.
“Wait. I’m going. I’ll not stay here any longer, after what’s happened. I saw it all from where I was hiding.”
“What do you mean?” Trask demanded, for he felt something ominous in the squat man’s statement.
“The Devil Man has come back,” Gonder stated flatly. “For centuries his soul has wandered, homeless, without a body. He had no power, since no one remembered him. Now many people have turned their thoughts to the Devil Man. He drank power from their minds, and here he found the focal point—a re-creation of a situation that once actually existed. Di Votan is—is—”
The cultist hesitated.
“Let us say Di Votan is possessed. There is a deep truth behind the old legend of men who were possessed by demons. Votan’s body is inhabited by the soul of that ancient Egyptian.”
“The hell he is!” Trask snapped, more loudly than he had intended. “I told you to get out.”
“I’m going. It would be unsafe even for me to stay here now. You do not realize that the mere presence of the Devil Man is a curse. Those around him die, as though his existence is poisonous.”
Gonder strode away. Trask turned back to the lodge, feeling vaguely uneasy. The tenseness of the impending storm was in the air all about him. True, the book “Devil Man” had mentioned that those around the central character were apt to meet disaster. But that was pure superstition that even the author had ridiculed.
Trask’s laugh was a failure. He kept remembering the odd and utterly inexplicable change in Di Votan, the different look in his face and in his eyes . . .
He went into the lodge, found the Rices, Dr. Maddern, Susan, and Andy Hathaway sitting around the roaring flames in the living room’s stone fireplace. William Rice was looking for his pipe and mopping his bald head nervously.
“Where is the damn thing, anyway?” he mumbled. “I wish we hadn’t come up here.”
Trask picked up the pipe from a table and handed it to him. Rice pulled out a pouch, shaking his massive head.
“This storm is going to cost us plenty.”
“We don’t have to worry about outdoor shots,” the director said, “but we do need indoor ones.”
William Rice blew out smoke, making a wry face.
“Ugh! This pipe�
��s backfiring. Was that Gonder I saw sneaking around?”
“It was. He’s a damn nuisance.”
“Say,” Enoch Rice put in, his white hair bristling, “we might use the curse angle in the publicity. It might help.”
“Yeah,” Trask said sardonically. “And then again it might not. There’s good and bad publicity, and a curse isn’t good, no matter how silly it is.”
He stopped talking then, because William Rice was coughing and choking violently. The pudgy white hands tore at the collar. The face was dank with sweat. The pipe thudded to the floor.
“I—I—oh!” William Rice gasped.
HE fell bonelessly, lay motionless. Dr. Maddern sprang forward. “What is it?” Enoch’s voice was shrill. “Maddern, what is it?”
“Dunno,” the doctor grunted, without turning his attention from the unconscious man. “Susan, get my bag. The stethoscope.”
Susan was close to Andy Hathaway, shuddering against him. She hesitated to go alone, but finally went on her errand. Trask, listening to the wind outside the windows, suddenly went icy cold. He had just mentioned the curse when William Rice had collapsed. He had mentioned a curse that brought death—
The curse of the Devil Man!
It had brought death to fat William Rice, with his bald head and his bad digestion. The gross body lay still and silent in its bed in one of the upstairs rooms. Dr. Maddern’s face was grimly set as he came back.
“Dead without reason,” he said, “as far as I can tell without a post-mortem.”
Enoch cowered by the fire, shaking.
“We’ll go back. We can’t stay here with a lunatic running around—”
“Lunatic?” Trask scowled.
“Yes, a homicidal maniac! Di Votan! Andy told us what happened.” Trask glanced at Andy Hathaway, who disclaimed responsibility with a shrug.
“Didn’t know it was a secret till I’d spilled the beans,” the young caretaker said in a soft aside. “Votan couldn’t have had anything to do with this,” Trask said to Enoch, ignoring Hathaway.
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