Doc Ardan and The Abominable Snowman

by Guy d'Armen

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Oh, you will,” Elisabeth said softly, and kissed her cheek gently. “You’ll beg to come with me.”

  In the upper cellar, Burma had discovered and released Le Chiffre from his cell. The small man was volubly cursing Elisabeth and Denis and Karl.

  “Where is Madame Elisabeth, Monsieur? I must locate her.”

  “I have no idea,” the other man growled, “and I don’t aim to find out.”

  “Not so fast. You know your way around this chamber of horrors. You’re going to help me find her, and the new girl–a redhead–who came here earlier today.” Burma began to reach inside his trenchcoat, then stopped, slowly withdrawing his hand.

  Le Chiffre had anticipated Burma, producing a gleaming Eversharp razor blade from the heel of his left shoe. “I’ll flick this blade in your eyeball. Don’t twitch, don’t sneeze, you understand? Nod slowly if you agree.”

  Burma nodded, and Le Chiffre took off.

  Ardan and Rolf approached the late Benet’s laboratory. The scientist held up a hand, tapped his nose and raised two fingers. His sense of smell, akin to an ape’s, far exceeded that of a normal human.

  There were two… somethings… waiting in the laboratory.

  Rolf understood Ardan’s signal, and the two went in.

  Nevertheless, neither was prepared for the ferocity of the attack. Sharp claws extending from rubbery webbed hands embedded in the wall inches from Ardan’s head. Razor sharp teeth with exceedingly long canines snapped at his face. The scientist dove past the creature, and the creature’s other set of claws raked across his chest, drawing blood. Doc jabbed a strong elbow into the creature’s back.

  The other fish-man backhanded Jens Rolf across the room, knocking him almost senseless. The second creature then leapt for Ardan, who rolled to the side and bounced up lightly on his feet.

  The first creature freed its claws from the wall, and now both approached the scientist, backing him into a corner.

  Four sets of claws came flying at Ardan.

  “Never,” said Adélaïde, “never will I willingly accompany you.”

  “You will, darling, but let us not argue. Soon you will love me.”

  “You’re delusional. What you’ve said makes no sense. You decided to collect on Natas’ reward, and yet you still have the gem and I’m hanging in your dungeon.”

  “As for you, I thought I had made myself clear. I have decided to keep you for myself. As for the Eye… I quickly discovered its special properties, and how to tap into them. One as well-traveled as I picks up quite a bit, you know. Human servitors are tedious; with the Eye I have created two completely loyal, relentless servants.”

  Her expression became wistful. “As the years have passed, it has become increasingly difficult to stay ahead of the forces of so-called ‘justice,’ moving from town to town, city to city, stopping only long enough to rejuvenate once or twice and then moving on. Now I can stop running, return home to Čachtice Castle. The Carpathians are particularly beautiful this time of year, as autumn approaches. As you’ll see.

  “These servants will go forth and gather the sustenance I require. All they’ll need is the lake nearby the castle in which to replenish themselves. No more vagabond lifestyle. Home.

  “So you see, I too have reason to keep the Eye for myself, and fully intend to do so. I am tired of running.”

  She went over to Ilona and began releasing her chains. “By tomorrow, we–the three of us–will be home.”

  Ilona slumped to the cold floor, senseless. Elisabeth left her there and returned to Adélaïde, made a swift cut above her left breast, and began to sup. As the blood flowed into Elisabeth’s mouth, Adélaïde began to go into another world; it was pleasurable, but another part of her mind screamed silently in resistance.

  Uncounted minutes passed, and Adélaïde came back into focus. She saw Ilona approaching Elisabeth from behind. Her approach seemed somewhat stealthy, and Adélaïde surged with hope. Elisabeth had made a tactical mistake in releasing the other girl. But she was weakened and pale… Would she be able to immobilize Elisabeth?

  Ilona crept closer and closer, reaching in toward Elisabeth, who still was bent over Adélaïde, draining her life-blood. Adélaïde faded out and in once more again, and now Ilona was impossibly closer, about to grab the Madame and thrust her away from Adélaïde. Ilona took her shoulders, and Elisabeth reached back an arm, slipping it around her waist and pulling her in toward her victim.

  Elisabeth kissed Ilona, covering her lips in Adélaïde’s blood, then made another cut above the girl’s right breast. The blood started to pour out, and she pushed Ilona’s mouth down to the wound.

  Ilona drank greedily of Adélaïde’s blood.

  The now-healthy and budding greenery which snaked around her feet seemed to be moving slightly, as if intercepting any stray falling droplets of blood.

  Elisabeth returned to her victim’s breast and joined Ilona in the feast.

  Doc Ardan’s superfirer pistols hummed busily, shooting hundreds of rounds of anesthetic “mercy bullets” at the two misshapen amphibians.

  To no avail. The creatures advanced upon him. And advanced. Then stopped.

  Rolf had regained his senses. He chanted words in an ancient and arcane language.

  “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn. Iä!”

  The two monsters who had been Karl and Denis strained. Their eyes swelled in their sockets but they were otherwise immobilized.

  “Hurry!” the German mystic yelled at Doc. “This hex will not hold them long!”

  Doc nodded once and went for the opposite corner of the laboratory, an area he had not been able to reach during the pitched battle.

  Moving faster than most humans could conceive, the bronze man began to gather and piece together large pieces of old, dusty equipment.

  “Faster!” Rolf yelled.

  “I am,” came Ardan’s curt reply. Finishing the assembly, he hefted it under his massive, cabled arm. The object was black and conical, the tip coming to a rounded point of glass or some other transparent substance.

  Doc reached inside his equipment vest and pulled out a small rectangular box. He wired the box to the cone, which came to life with a high pitched whine. The transparent emitter at the tip illuminated. He pulled out two pairs of goggles, put one on and tossed the other to the German.

  Ardan nodded at Rolf, who released the spell and collapsed.

  The two fish-men came toward them, moving faster than their deformed shapes gave them any right to.

  Doc flipped a switch on the black cone, and the light of a thousand suns, powered by Radium-X, burst out from the emitter.

  The beam hit Denis, then Karl, and both fish-men shrieked and burst into flames. Within moments, both had dissolved. All that remained was two piles of ashes on the floor, and a stench.

  Burma came running into the room, pistol in hand, and stopped short at the sight and smell. “Mmm. Burnt rancid fish. My favorite.”

  Elisabeth and Ilona were still bent over Adélaïde. She became more and more pale, but paradoxically felt a strange warm sensation exploding out from the center of her body.

  Mercifully, she had almost passed from consciousness when Ardan, Rolf and Burma burst into the dungeon.

  “She’s almost there! Don’t stop!” Elisabeth ordered Ilona, and turned to face the men.

  Ardan held the Radium-X projector under his left arm, a superfirer in his right hand. He sprayed Adélaïde’s attackers with mercy bullets, but Elisabeth laughed it off, while Ilona continued to draw the remainder of Adélaïde’s blood.

  Ardan tossed the spent superfirer away and hefted the projector into position.

  Simultaneously, Rolf uttered incantations–”Iä! Iä! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu fhtagn! Méne!”–and the Eye of Dagon exploded off of Elisabeth’s graceful white neck in a detonation of blood and bluish light.

  The gem bounced on the stone floor and rolled towa
rd Ardan. Before he could seize it, the energy released from the Eye crackled and struck the Radium-X projector, frying and fusing circuits.

  The projector began to heat up and blaze white hot in an uncontrolled reaction. Ardan dropped the projector before it could burn his hands. It bathed the room with sun-like light. Burma, sans goggles, was blinded.

  Elisabeth and Ilona screamed and collapsed, writhing on the floor. “The light! The Sun!”

  “The projector is going to blow. It’ll take out the whole cellar, maybe more. I can’t stop it!” Doc yelled at Rolf. He gestured to Burma. “Help him out of here. I’ll follow you with Adélaïde and these two.”

  Ardan turned toward Adélaïde, but paused at Rolf’s hand on his arm.

  “These women,” Rolf said. “I understand and respect your policy of humane rehabilitation. But these women are gone. You cannot help them.”

  Doc paused a moment further, then nodded and went toward Adélaïde.

  Minutes later, he burst from the front of the Benet mansion. Adélaïde looked like a small child cradled in his massive arms, broken chains trailing from her wrists. He placed her gently in the back seat of the Citroën.

  Roger Noël gunned the engine and floored it, Ardan mounted on the running board, as a violent explosion rocked the Cordon Jaune headquarters.

  Just before sunrise, large boulders shifted and rolled down the piles of rubble in the debris of the Benet mansion. A large vine, now the circumference of a man’s torso, pushed the rocks away. At one tip of the vine was a pod which vaguely resembled a Venus Fly Trap. The vine slithered free, and glided down the Paris streets.

  Anyone who may have observed this singular phenomenon could also have heard, just at the edge of audible range, a tiny whispering voice, barely distinguishable from the slight breeze.

  “Nourrissez-moi ! Nourrissez-moi!”

  The murmurs gradually faded into the morning dawn.

  FROM: Lieutenant Montferrand, Division Protection, Service National d’Information Fonctionnelle, Paris.

  TO: SNIF.

  DATE: August 26, 1946

  SUBJECT: Silver Eye of Dagon

  The Eye of Dagon has been secured and turned over to Doctor Ardan. Jens Rolf has provided Ardan with detailed and specific instructions for its safekeeping.

  There was no sign of Le Chiffre anywhere in the Cordon Jaune headquarters, nor of any of the other women employed in his house of ill-fame. It is presumed they all escaped in the confusion prior to the explosion.

  Burma’s blindness was temporary, and Ardan has given him a clean bill of health. According to Ardan and Rolf, A.L. will suffer no lasting ill effects from her experience.

  When the rubble was cleared from the lower cellar of the Benet mansion, Elisabeth and Ilona Harczy’s bodies were recovered and taken to the morgue. However, the next day, the bodies were inexplicably gone.

  Recommendation: The International Police Commission should be on the lookout for two women matching their descriptions.

  Deep in the Arctic, in a solitary fortress, Doctor Francis Ardan checked on the Eye of Dagon. It was stored safely away from those who would use it for ill purposes. Likewise Doctor Benet’s Radium-X projector.

  He moved silently into the next chamber, a warm room decorated in the fashion of an Adirondack hunting lodge. Then, through the fortress’ insulated walls, he heard the mechanical whine of rocket engines.

  In a huge stone fireplace, embers from a once-crackling fire still glowed. A large bearskin rug in front of the fireplace was askew. A note was pinned on the mantle, near a half-empty bottle of Veuve Clicquot and one champagne flute (Ardan did not drink):

  My Dearest Francis (the note began),

  What a wonderful storehouse of treasures your little hideaway is! I left you the gem this time, although you know, of course, I easily could have taken it. Thank you for refueling the Cirrus X-9 for me. I know you’ll be cross with me for making off with it again, but really, how else can I make certain we’ll see each other once more?

  Au revoir, mon sauvage.

  Mon amour,

  Adélaïde

  He shook his head ruefully and smiled faintly. He just couldn’t seem to hang on to those damn rocket packs.

  But he didn’t really care.

  Finally, in this story, previously published in Tales of the Shadowmen 1, Win Eckert depicts what might have happened twenty years after the events of City of Gold and Lepers. …

  Win Scott Eckert: The Vanishing Devil

  Prologue: New York, 1949

  In an empty penthouse suite on the 86th floor of the grandest skyscraper in New York, the telephone rang five times before the line clicked over. Inside a cherry-paneled box in the telephone alcove, a mechanical arm lifted the receiver. A pre-recorded vinyl disk was inserted against one needle, while a fresh wax cylinder was inserted and aligned with another.

  A voice began reciting, “This is the Doctor. Please speak–”

  “Doctor Ardan! This is Louise–”

  “–into the receiver loudly and clearly enunciate your words. State the nature of your business and how we may contact you. Your message will be recorded and immediately conveyed to the Doctor or one of his associates. Thank you. Begin speaking now.”

  “Doctor Ardan–Francis! This is Louise Ducharme. My daughter, Justine, has disappeared!”

  Sussex, 1949

  Doctor Francis Ardan reflected that the Great Detective was quite spry for a man of 95 years. The tall, lean, grey-eyed man moved freely about the cottage, filling leather-bound footlockers with books, clothing and other personal items.

  Ardan had been in London for a scientific conference and had taken the opportunity to visit his old mentor. Or rather, one of his former mentors who had participated in the strange training program devised for him by his father. The program had been instituted from Doc’s birth and was designed to create a superman capable of tracking down and defeating evil all over the world.

  There had been many others involved in his preparation for the fight against the criminal element. Professor Kennedy, who had instructed him in scientific detection. The sallow Frenchman, M. Senak, who had taught him the trick of temporarily paralyzing an attacker by pinching the nerves where neck met shoulder. Wentworth, who, along with Indian fakirs, had coached him in adding or subtracting six inches from his height. The list went on. Of all, though, Ardan reserved his highest admiration for the hawk-nosed man bounding about the Sussex cottage.

  Now, observing the elderly Detective, and considering his mastery of disguise, Ardan wondered if the excessive wrinkles and liver spots weren’t a sham. However, by unspoken agreement, Ardan had never pried into the Detective’s beekeeping activities, even when he was a boy brimming with curiosity. In turn, his former instructor in the fine art of detection and deduction had never inquired into Ardan’s synthesis of the African Kavuru elixir received from their mutual cousin.

  As the Detective packed the trunks, Ardan finished relating details how he and a masked vigilante called the Yellow Jacket had disrupted the annual assassin’s auction being held in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

  “And you?” the bronze man asked, finishing his story. “Where are you off to this time, sir?”

  “Tibet, Ardan.” The Detective tossed a copy of The British Bee Journal in a bag and sat down on the divan, curling his legs under him like a cat. “An extended stay. I’m afraid you arrived just on the eve of our departure. Russell is up in the City, finalizing our legal and financial arrangements with M.”

  “I’m sorry for dropping in unannounced, sir. The neuroscience conference in London ended earlier than expected.”

  “Not at all, not at all. You know you are always welcome here, my dear Francis.” The older man’s grey eyes twinkled.

  “It’s been a long time since I went by ‘Francis Ardan.’ “ In fact, it was the name he had used a boy, when he had spent summers being coached by various experts on the Continent while living with his great aunt Michelle Ardan; here
in England learning the fine art of detection from the Master, as well as Thorndyke and Blake; and later still when adventuring in Asia in the 1920s. “The only ones who still call me that are you and Lupin.”

  The Great Detective’s eyebrow arched at the mention of the notorious thief, with whom he had finally made his peace some years before, but the ringing telephone cut off his retort.

  “Hallo? Yes? Yes, Violet, tonight will be fine. Yes, we depart at first light tomorrow. Very well. Yes, goodbye.” He wrapped his mouse-colored dressing gown around him, curled up again, and started to fill his clay pipe with a foul smelling shag. “My niece, Violet, you know. Recently widowed, she was married to one of M’s men. She’s letting the cottage in our absence with her son, Clive. Dickson will keep an eye on them for M while we’re gone.”

  The Great Detective lit the pipe, inhaled deeply and continued to speak when the telephone rang again.

  “Confound it,” he said, borrowing a phrase, “what does she want now?”

  On the other end of the line, a mechanical voice intoned, “Important message for the Doctor. Important message for the Doctor. Important message–”

  Bemused, he handed the receiver to Ardan. “Apparently this is for you.”

  Ardan took the telephone. “This is the Doctor.”

  As Ardan spoke, an audible click indicated that his voice had been recognized, and over a trans-Atlantic hiss, a tinny message recorded on a wax cylinder in New York began to play back.

  “Doctor Ardan–Francis! This is Louise Ducharme. My daughter, Justine, has disappeared from her laboratory above Le Chateau Mireille club! All the doors and windows were locked from the inside, and there’s no trace of her! If you get this message, please come to Paris immediately. I’ve been instructed not to contact the authorities, but I am desperate. I’ve tried your friend, Captain Morane, but he’s away on a case. You’re my last hope. Please help me. I’m staying at–wait. That smell. Like ozone… What is that blue light–?” There was a sound of a high-pitched whine, followed by the dull thud of the phone hitting the carpeted floor, after which the message ended abruptly and the line clicked off.