by Otto Penzler
Somebody gave a strained laugh at the false alarm they had all had. Kenshaw took off his glasses, wiped them ruefully, as though disappointed it hadn’t been the payoff after all.
MacKenzie said, “You’re alienating whatever sympathy’s due you, by pulling a stunt like this.”
“I’m not asking for sympathy,” was Hardecker’s coldly ferocious answer. “It’s atonement I want. Three lives were taken from me: my only son, my daughter-in-law, their prematurely born child. I demand payment for that!”
Lambert said aloud, for his own benefit, “Jennie won’t believe this when I tell her.”
Prendergast clutched his throat all at once, whimpered: “I can’t breathe! He’s done it to me, so help me!”
MacKenzie, hostile now to Hardecker, tried to steady him just on general principle. “Gas around the heart, maybe. Don’t fall for it if you’re not sure.”
“Don’t fall for it,” was the ungrateful yelp, “and if I drop dead are you gonna bring me back?”
“He ought to be arrested for this,” said Kenshaw, displaying emotion for the first time. His glasses had clouded over, giving him a peculiarly sightless look.
“Arrested?” snapped Lambert. He wagged his head from side to side. “He’s going to be sued like no one was ever sued before! When I get through with him he’ll go on relief.”
Hardecker threw him a contemptuous look. “About ten minutes,” he said. “He seems to prefer the more certain way. Stubborn, eh? He’d rather die than admit it.”
MacKenzie gripped the seat of his chair, his churning insides heaving. He thought, “If this is the McCoy that I’m feeling now, I’m going to bash his head in with a chair before I go. I’ll give him something to poison innocent people about!”
Megaffin was starting to swear at their tormentor, in a whining, guttural singsong.
“Mazzeltov,” seconded Lambert, with a formal nod of approval. “Your breath, but my ideas.”
“Five minutes. It will almost certainly fail if it’s not downed within the next thirty seconds.” Hardecker pocketed his watch, as though there were no further need for consulting it.
MacKenzie gagged, hauled at the knot of his tie, undid his collar button. A needle of suffocating pain had just splintered into his heart.
Only the whites of Prendergast’s eyes showed, he was going off into some fit or fainting spell. Even Lambert quit pulling at his cigar, as though it sickened him. Kenshaw took off his glasses for the third time in five minutes, to clear them.
A pair of arms suddenly shot out, grasped the silver bowl, swung it. It was uptilted over someone’s face and there was a hollow, metallic groaning coming from behind it, infinitely gruesome to hear. It had happened so quickly, MacKenzie couldn’t be sure who it was for a minute, long as he had been sitting at the macabre table with all of them. He had to do it by a quick process of elimination. Man sitting beside Lambert—Kenshaw, the scholarly-looking one, the man who had had least to say since the ordeal had begun! He was gulping with a convulsive rising and falling of his Adam’s apple, visible in the shadow just below the lower rim of the bowl.
Then suddenly he flung it aside, his face was visible again, the drained receptacle clanged against the wall where he’d cast it, dropped heavily to the floor. He couldn’t talk for a minute or two, and neither could anyone else, except possibly Hardecker, and he didn’t, just sat staring at the self-confessed culprit with pitiless eyes.
Finally Kenshaw panted, checks twitching, “Will it—will it—save me?”
Hardecker folded his arms, said to the others, but without taking his eyes off Kenshaw: “So now you know. So now you see whether I was right or not.”
Kenshaw was holding his hands pressed tightly to the sides of his head. A sudden flood of words was unloosed from him, as though he found it a relief to talk now, after the long unbearable tension he’d been through. “Sure you were right, and I’d do it over again! I’m glad he’s gone. The rich man’s son that had everything. But that wasn’t enough for him, was it? He had to show off how good he was—Horatio Alger stuff, paddle your own canoe from riches to more riches! He couldn’t take a job with your own firm, could he? No, people might say you were helping him. He had to come to the place I worked and ask for a job. Not just anonymously. No, he had to mention whose son he was, to swing the scales in his favor! They were afraid to offend you, they thought maybe they’d get a pull with you, through him. It didn’t count that I’d been with them all the best years of my life, that I had someone home too, just like he had, that I couldn’t go anywhere else and mention the name of an influential father! They fired me.”
His voice rose shrilly. “D’you know what happened to me? D’you know or care how I tramped the streets in the rain, at my age, looking for work? D’you know my wife had to get down on her knees and scrub dirty office corridors? D’you know how I washed dishes, carried sandwich boards through the streets, slept on park benches, all on account of a smart aleck with Rover Boy ideas? Yes, it preyed on my mind, why wouldn’t it? I suppose you found the threatening letters I wrote him, that’s how you knew.”
Hardecker just shook his head slightly in denial.
“Then he got on the elevator that day. He didn’t see me, probably wouldn’t have known me if he had, but I saw him. I knew him. Then we fell—and I hoped he was dead, I hoped he was dead! But he wasn’t. The idea took hold of me slowly, waiting down there in the dark. The torches started making noise, and I grabbed him, I was going to choke him. But he wrenched himself free and took out his gun to defend himself against what I guess he thought was a fear-crazed man. I wasn’t fear-crazed, I was revenge-crazed, I knew what I was doing!
“I grabbed his hand. Not the gun, but the hand that was holding it. I turned it around the other way, into his own heart. He said ‘Elinor, Elinor!’ but that didn’t save him; that was the wrong name, that was his wife not mine. I squeezed the finger he had on the trigger with my own, and he fired his own weapon. So the police were right, it was suicide in a way.
“He leaned against me, there wasn’t room enough in there to fall. I flung myself down first under him, so they’d find us that way, and eased him down on top of me. He bled on me a little while and then he quit. And when they came through I pretended I’d fainted.”
Hardecker said, “Murderer. Murderer.” Like drops of ice water. “He didn’t know he’d done all that to you; oh, why didn’t you give him a chance at least, why weren’t you a man? Murderer! Murderer!”
Kenshaw started reaching downward to the floor, where he’d dropped his glasses when he had seized the antidote. His face was on a level with the tabletop. He scowled: “No matter what they’ve all heard me say just now, you’ll never be able to prove I did it. Nobody saw me. Only the dark.”
A whisper sounded: “And that’s where you’re going. Into the dark.”
Kenshaw’s head vanished suddenly below the table. The empty back of his chair whirled over sidewise, cracked against the floor.
They were all on their feet now, bending over him. All but Hardecker. MacKenzie got up from his knees. “He’s dead!” he said. “The antidote didn’t work in time!”
Hardecker said, “That wasn’t the antidote, that was the poison itself. He hadn’t been given any until he gulped that down. He convicted himself and carried out sentence upon himself with one and the same gesture. I hadn’t known which one of you it was until then. I’d only known it hadn’t been my son’s own doing, because, you see, the noise of those torches wouldn’t have affected him much, he was partly deaf from birth.”
He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I didn’t summon you here under false pretenses; his estate will be divided in equal parts among the four of you that are left. And now I’m ready to take my own medicine. Call the police, let them and their prosecutors and their courts of law decide whether I killed him or his own guilty conscience did!”
Villain: Dr. Yen Sin
The Mystery of the Golden Skull
DONALD E.
KEYHOE
DONALD EDWARD KEYHOE (1897–1988) had two careers—wildly divergent except to cynics. He became an international sensation for his book The Flying Saucers Are Real (1950), which grew from a True magazine article and sold five hundred thousand copies. He averred that the U.S. government knew that UFOs existed but kept it silent to avoid a public panic. He wrote several additional books on the subject of extraterrestrials and made a controversial appearance on television to discuss his findings, only to have CBS cut off all audio on the live broadcast.
He was a successful writer for The Nation, The Saturday Evening Post, and Reader’s Digest, before turning to pulp fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, creating fantastic stories for the prestigious Weird Tales, as well as thrilling aviation stories for Flying Aces, Dare-Devil Aces, Battle Aces, and Sky Birds. His major contribution to the pulps was Dr. Yen Sin, also known as the “Invisible Emperor,” the “Yellow Doctor,” and the “Cobra.”
Dr. Yen Sin was the titular villain in a short-lived (three-issue) pulp magazine that superseded a similar magazine from the same publishers titled The Mysterious Wu Fang, which had ceased publication in March 1936. The title characters of both magazines were “Yellow Peril” villains in the mold of Dr. Fu Manchu.
In Washington, D.C., Yen Sin employs modern technology as well as such diabolical weapons as death rays, inventions from his scientific laboratories, blow guns, and dacoits. He is opposed by Michael Traile, who professes that he has not slept for twenty-seven years, having lost the power of sleep at age two because of a brain injury. The Hindu doctor performing the operation had to remove the portion of the brain that controlled sleep. Traile’s parents engaged a fakir who taught him the yoga trick of complete relaxation and, to avoid boredom, he was educated constantly, his intelligence developing rapidly as a result. He is expert at everything.
“The Mystery of the Golden Skull” was originally published in the July/August 1936 issue of Dr. Yen Sin.
THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN SKULL
Donald E. Keyhoe
Chapter 1
The Man Who Did Not Sleep
THE ROARING VOICE of the city had died away to a murmur. It was the hour when Manhattan slumbered. High up in a dark building near Fifth Avenue, a furtive figure sat at the window of an unlighted room, a pair of binoculars raised to his eyes. His pose had the instinctive stealth of the East, though the man on whom he was spying was almost two blocks away.
Suddenly a faint buzzing sounded in the phones which covered his ears. He bent his head, spoke into the mouthpiece strapped to his chest.
“Control, Group Two.” His voice was strained, for he had been watching constantly for more than six nerve-racking hours.
“Observer Nine,” came a muffled voice. “Neither Michael Traile nor Eric Gordon has left the building.”
“I can see Traile,” grated the man at the window, “but he has been alone for two hours.”
“Gordon must be in some other room,” muttered the second voice. “We’ve kept the place covered—”
“Resume position,” curtly ordered the man in the darkened room. As he leaned over the sill, dim light from the street far below fell on the sallow features of a Eurasian.
He lifted the binoculars again, gazed out into the night. A deep blue had begun to tinge the blackness above the skyscraper canyons, but it was still two hours until dawn. Beyond an expanse of lower buildings, a tall structure loomed. The man trained his glasses on a yellow rectangle near the top and almost at his own level.
The powerful lenses bridged the intervening space, seemed to bring that lighted window to within a few yards of him. He was looking into a large room, apparently intended for a den. But the furnishing was not complete, for the library table was littered with curios, books, and various objects. A huge packing box stood on the Persian rug which covered the floor.
A man was moving back and forth, emptying the box. He was very tall, and his lean face was tanned to the color of bronze. It was a keen face, and strong. The pleasant set of his lips relieved a hint of grimness about the jaw.
The hidden watcher swore to himself. This man Traile showed no sign of weariness, yet the reports proved he had not slept in thirty-one hours. The spy kept the glasses focused as the other man went back and forth from the box to the table. Traile seemed to be hunting for something.
With growing bewilderment, the spy saw the objects which appeared. Already the packing box had yielded a pair of foils, a violin, a jeweler’s lathe, and several pieces of chemical apparatus. In quick succession, Traile produced a set of boxing gloves, three cameras of varying sizes, and a dozen pistols ranging from a small French derringer to a Colt .45 automatic. Books and a score of cartons and bundles followed. One carton was torn, and as Traile lifted it some theatrical make-up materials spilled to the floor. He tossed the things onto the table, turned and drew a leather-covered case from the packing box.
This was evidently the object of his search. He laid the case on a pedestal beside a big easy chair. Seating himself, he started to unsnap the buckles. Then he paused, and the spy saw a tired expression cross his tanned face. He stretched his long arms, sank back. For a moment the hidden observer thought he was going to sleep. But instead, Traile idly lighted a cigarette and looked out into the night.
Though he was two blocks away, the spy jerked back, for Traile’s dark eyes, as seen through the glasses, appeared to be boring straight into him. The impression persisted as he forced himself to keep watching. Even at that distance, he could feel the power of that motionless figure.
A peculiar, far-off expression came into Traile’s dark eyes. He seemed to be thinking intently. He finished the cigarette, lighted another, then picked up a newspaper from the arm of his chair. His movements were oddly lazy.
The spy gave a sigh of relief as that penetrating gaze was cut off. He laid down the binoculars, wiped his damp brow.
Several minutes passed.
—
He was about to lift the glasses again when a queer signal buzzed in his phones. He hurriedly pressed a button at the base of the mouthpiece. There was a double click, then a calm, sibilant voice spoke in Chinese.
“Main Control. Summarize the latest reports on Michael Traile.”
The words were in an obscure dialect. The Eurasian replied nervously in the same tongue.
“Personal observation transferred from Number Nine to Group Control at eight fifty-nine. At nine one, suspected apartment entered by Traile and unknown man. Obtained photograph of latter by telephoto camera with night lens.”
“Very good,” came the emotionless comment. “As I supposed, it is one of the new secret stations for the Q-Unit operating against the Invisible Empire. Proceed.”
“Unknown man left at ten seventeen. At ten forty-five Eric Gordon entered apartment, bringing small black box, probably a portable radio.”
“What report from the observer detailed to Gordon?” inquired the unseen Chinese.
“Gordon came directly from laboratories of World Radio and Cables,” answered the spy. “Observer Eight reports rumor of Government arrangement with the company for Gordon’s service.”
“Continue the report on Michael Traile,” came the toneless command.
“Examined the black box, moved out of my range to the left. Returned in two minutes, conversed with Gordon until one o’clock. Gordon then disappeared, but Observer Nine reports he did not leave building. Believe he is in another room, sleeping. But there is something strange about the man Traile. He has not slept since Group Two took over observation.”
There was a sound as of harshly indrawn breath.
“Impossible! He had already gone without sleep for the forty-eight hours he was observed by Group One. You must be mistaken.”
“No, Master,” said the spy, nervously. “I am certain. And there is another odd point. From the material he has unpacked, he must have a hundred hobbies.”
“I am aware of that,” the unseen Chinese answered curtly. “But this other
matter is vitally important. You are sure he is still awake?”
“Yes, I can see him clearly.” The half-caste lifted the binoculars. “He has just put down the paper he was reading. He is smoking a cigarette…Ai! This is puzzling! A few minutes ago he seemed tired. Now he looks refreshed, as though he had slept for hours.”
“There is only one explanation,” said the other man rapidly. “The cigarette must contain some mysterious drug which enables him to do without sleep for long periods. Watch closely—what is he doing now?”
The spy carefully focused the glasses, gazed into the distant room.
“Master, you will think me mad—he has opened a case of child’s toys!…He is standing up—he has gone out of my range—now he is coming back with the black box which Gordon brought….He is connecting it with wires to a toy church….He is looking at the clock in the church steeple.”
“That is enough,” interrupted the man he had called Master. “I think I understand now.”
There was a long pause.
“An expert rifleman could easily kill him from this observation point,” ventured the half-caste.
“The secret of that drug is more valuable to me than his death,” came the emotionless answer. “Here are my orders.” He spoke swiftly for a minute. “Report at once if he leaves at four o’clock.”
The phones clicked twice. The spy looked down at the luminous hands of his wristwatch. It was ten minutes to four.
—
As the carton of make-up material spilled to the floor, Michael Traile glanced quickly toward the adjacent room. The sound had not awakened Eric. He could see the young Southerner where he lay sprawled, half-dressed, on the only bed the “Q-Station” boasted. Eric’s hair was rumpled, and even in sleep his face had a boyishly genial look. He was breathing deeply.
