by Otto Penzler
“You mean that black delivery truck?” cut in Eric.
“That’s the one,” said Traile. “But I’ve a hunch that it was no ordinary truck. There was no name on it. The driver and the man with him looked foreign. Also, that black glass in the side looked like the old speakeasy-door kind, the type you can see through and not be seen. There may have been more men inside.”
As he spoke, Traile leaned down and switched on the miniature radio set.
“What’s the idea of that?” queried Bannister.
Traile lifted the set to his knee.
“Doctor Yen Sin is using a special microwave radio to transmit orders to his agents. We caught one message, but—” He bent over quickly as one hand in the church-steeple quivered. “We’re in the beam! He must be sending a message to those men in the truck.”
“Then why don’t we hear it?” objected Allen.
“They’ve shifted to a waveband out of our range, but the indicator is wired higher and it registers.” Traile stared down at the trembling needle. “Step on it, Eric! Get to Kent’s place as fast as you can!”
The sedan shot forward, grazed a bus, wove swiftly through traffic. At Forty-seventh Street, a policeman whistled peremptorily for them to slow down. Allen had already jerked his gold F.B.I. shield from an inner pocket. He flashed it, shouted at the officer. The sedan sped on. Two minutes later, as Eric was swinging left in the upper Fifties, Allen gave a startled exclamation.
“Wait a minute! We’ve lost the other car.”
“We can’t stop now,” said Traile. “That may be part of the scheme, to cut them off.”
“What do you think they’re up to?” Bannister asked in alarm.
“It must be connected with the Vare Diamond,” Traile responded crisply.
It was only half a block from Fifth Avenue to the old brownstone house which served as bachelor quarters for Harley Kent, well-known collector of rare jewels. As the sedan slid to a halt in front of the building, Traile looked quickly down the street. Then, still holding the micro-set, he jumped out and motioned for the others to follow.
“There’s a chance they may have—” He stopped, as the door opened and a frightened-looking manservant came running down the steps.
“What’s wrong?” Allen demanded.
“Mr. Kent—he’s been murdered!” cried the man.
“Good Lord,” rasped the F.B.I. agent. He sprang up the steps. Traile and the others quickly followed with the servant. As they entered, Traile shoved the strapped set under his arm and drew his .38.
“When did it happen?” he asked the manservant in a low tone.
“I don’t know, sir,” the man wailed. “I just came in and found him there—” He pointed a trembling hand into the library.
—
Traile pushed him ahead, cast a keen glance around the hall before following Bannister and Eric into the room. Allen stood transfixed, a few feet from the doorway. Traile looked, then he, too, stopped in his tracks.
In a high-backed chair at the head of the library table sat Harley Kent. His hands were tied behind the chair, keeping his body from falling forward. A wide strip of purplish tape covered his lips, except at one spot where dark blood had oozed out and was slowly dropping. The dead man’s eyes were open with an agonized stare.
But that tortured face, terrible as it was, held Traile’s eyes only a moment. For Harley Kent had been stripped to the waist, and his bared chest stabbed three times with a red-hot iron. The three ugly wounds formed a triangle, with one hole over the heart, and directly in the center of the triangle was a tiny gilt seal. It was in the shape of a skull.
For a moment no one moved. Then Traile stepped close to the dead man.
“Another murder in the name of the Chuen Gin Lou,” he said in a hard voice.
Eric looked down at the seal, and a grimace twitched his lips.
“Michael, that thing has the same hideous expression as the Golden Skull!”
Traile slowly nodded, stooped to look at the mutilating wounds in Harley Kent’s breast. As he straightened, he saw the manservant shudder and turn away. Mark Bannister was gazing with a horrified fascination at the corpse.
“God!” he said thickly. “He must have gone through hell before he died.”
Allen had not spoken since he entered. But as the servant stepped back, the lanky F.B.I. man suddenly bent over. He stood up with a large plush jewel case in his hands.
“This must be the answer,” he said harshly. “The devils probably got away with some valuable stones.”
Just as he started to open it, Traile caught a furtive movement near the door.
“Wait!” he rapped out. But it was too late. Even as he spoke, Allen pressed the catch. The lid of the jewel case flew open, and a dark, fragrant vapor instantly poured forth.
“The incense!” Eric cried thickly. He took a blind step forward, fell to his knees. Traile had sprung toward the doorway, where the servant was stealing out. But as the fragrant anesthetic engulfed him, an unwanted weakness sent him staggering. Allen and Bannister were both crumpling to the floor. A terrific pain shot through his head. He caught at the table, then as he saw the servant’s tense face in the entry he let himself fall with a groan. The next second he heard the man racing up the hall toward the front of the house.
He pulled himself up, stumbled toward the door. While his sleepless brain refused to yield to the drug, a feeling of exhaustion threatened to overcome him. He forced himself on, gripped the knob and pulled the door open. The fresh air from the hall was like a dash of cold water in his face. He gulped in a deep breath, tightened his grasp on the pistol, which had almost slipped from his fingers.
From the entrance of the house came a peculiar whistle. Traile lunged toward the vestibule, sucking deep breaths into his lungs. As he reached the door, he saw the false servant signal hastily toward the street, then a motor roared, and the black truck swiftly drew up in front.
—
Abruptly, the other man turned and saw Traile. His pinched face contorted in amazement and terror. Then, like a cornered rat, he sprang. Traile’s gun was already lifted. He slashed it fiercely along the side of the spy’s head. With a howl, the man teetered backward, rolled down the steps.
Two men had leaped from the front seat of the truck. Dismay spread over their features as Traile appeared. One of them jumped back, shouting toward the rear of the machine. Instantly, a section of dark glass slid open in the side of the truck. The muzzled snout of a silenced machine gun poked up at Traile.
Traile flung himself down, firing as he dropped. The man behind the machine gun toppled to the floor of the truck. Another figure sprang to take his place, but the driver stopped him with a furious yell.
“You fool! We’ve got to get him alive!”
“It’s too late!” The false servant had scrambled to his feet, blood streaming down his face. “Beat it! G-men!”
A taxi was thundering down the street from the direction of Fifth Avenue. In a hurried side-glance, Traile saw two of Allen’s agents on the running boards. With frantic haste, the Invisible Emperor’s spies jumped into the speed-truck and fled. Traile stood up, pumped two shots at the rear of the machine, but it raced on and was quickly swallowed up in traffic.
“Let it go!” Traile exclaimed, as one of the agents shot a hasty question at him. “I need your help inside.”
He had left the library door open, and when he and the first of the squad entered they found the three victims beginning to stir. Traile and the others carried them out into the hall, and they soon revived. Bannister was the first one able to speak.
“What the devil happened?”
“We walked into a neat trap,” Traile said with a slight note of curtness. “Kent had been dead hours before we got here—but Yen Sin twisted it to his advantage and nearly won.”
Ten minutes later, the entire group returned to the library for a final examination of the scene while they waited for the police. Suddenly a clicking sounded from the m
icro-set which Traile had laid on the table. Then, to his astonishment, the voice of the Yellow Doctor spoke.
“I congratulate you, Mr. Traile, but you have only delayed our meeting.”
There was a hush as the assembled men stared at the miniature radio. Then the sibilant voice of Yen Sin continued.
“And to Citizen Nine, I give this final message: You have until midnight to live!”
Chapter 8
Murder Garden
Night had fallen over Manhattan. From the roof of the towering Hotel Lordmore, the vast expanse of lighted streets below was pleasantly remote, a picturesque background for Mark Bannister’s sumptuous penthouse.
Along the stone guard-wall at one end of the roof, Michael Traile stood with a field glass raised to his eyes. The millionaire paced restlessly back and forth beside him.
“It’s after ten,” Bannister grated out. “If Allen’s coming up with more men, why isn’t he here?”
Traile did not seem to have heard him. He moved the glass slowly over the twinkling lights on the East River, on out toward the Sound, then back to the nearest skyscraper.
“An excellent view,” he said as he put down the glass.
“To hell with the view!” exploded the millionaire. “Do you realize I’m likely to go like Kent and poor old Courtland?”
“I don’t think you need worry,” Traile said calmly. “This place is almost impregnable.”
Bannister stared back through the gloom, to where Eric Gordon and two F.B.I. men stood near the brightly lighted penthouse.
“That’s what I thought,” he muttered. “But from all you’ve told me, this Doctor Yen Sin must be almost superhuman. And now that Cloyd has disappeared—”
He shook his head gloomily.
Traile turned a moment later, as Eric quickly approached them.
“Your elevator signal is buzzing,” Eric said to Bannister.
Bannister strode toward the penthouse. Traile and Eric followed him through a Japanese gate, one of the curios the millionaire had brought back from the East. It opened into a walled Oriental garden, partly roofed and rather flamboyantly blending Chinese and Japanese motifs. A pale purple moon shone dimly on a tiny arched bridge, under which ran an artificial brook. Back in the shadows stood a pagoda-shaped shrine. Colored lanterns, farther on, illuminated an open display of Samurai swords, Chinese highbinder hatchets, and other Oriental weapons of a past day.
The millionaire scowled about him as he stalked through the garden.
“This place is going to be changed. After today, I don’t want anything Chinese around me!”
“I don’t blame you,” said Eric. “Even the sight of a Chink laundryman gives me the jitters now.”
In the large reception hall, Bannister stopped before his private switchboard. He spoke into a phone, listened, then turned a knob marked Elevator.
“It’s Allen and his men,” he grunted.
Traile’s dark eyes were watching the indicator. The car came up swiftly, stopped automatically. Bannister peered through the observation panel, touched the release which opened the double doors. Allen and the operative named Johnson stepped out. Bannister frowned.
“Where are the rest of your men?”
The lanky senior agent shrugged.
“Helping the cops search Chinatown. After Weller phoned me about the layout up here, I didn’t think we’d need any more.”
The millionaire glowered at him. Allen rubbed his jaw, looked around curiously.
“Weller said the elevator is the only way to get up here. I guess this job’s a cinch.”
“I told him there was also an emergency exit,” snapped Bannister. He pointed to a heavy door with massive double locks. “However, it can be opened only from this side, and there’s a similar door—locked the same way—at the bottom of the steps. It opens into the hall of the floor below. Both doors are connected with these burglar-alarm bells on the switchboard.”
Allen nodded, glanced at Traile.
“I guess we won’t see the Yellow Doctor tonight….By the way, here’s your gun. You left it at the Kent place.”
Bannister gave Traile a sour look. “A lot of help you’d have been, if anything had happened while we were driving to the hotel tonight. They might have kidnapped me—and I’d probably have died like Harley Kent.”
Traile inspected the magazine of the .38, slid it back into the butt.
“In that case,” he said, “you would have died very quickly.”
“It’s plain he was tortured,” snapped the millionaire. “How do you know how he died?”
“I should know,” Traile said coolly. “I was the one who killed him.”
Bannister took a step backward.
“You?” he rasped. Then the angry glare returned to his eyes. “This is no time for jokes!”
“I’m not joking,” said Traile. He looked at Eric and Johnson, who were staring at him in amazement. Then he turned back to the millionaire. “I killed him in self-defense. Harley Kent was the Gray Man I shot at the Courtland mansion.”
Bannister looked from him to Allen. The senior agent nodded.
“That’s right. The slug found in Kent’s heart tallied exactly in rifling marks with a test bullet fired from that .38.”
“But I don’t understand,” Bannister said dazedly.
“It’s quite simple,” Traile told him. “They were attempting to cover up the truth. From the medical examiner’s report, Kent’s body must have been brought to his home soon after the Gray Men escaped from the Courtland place. They bound it as you saw, then stabbed it with a red-hot poker, also plunging the iron into the bullet hole in his left side so it would look like the other wounds. Either they forgot the bullet in their haste, or they had no means of probing for it.”
“But—Harley Kent, a criminal!” Bannister exclaimed. “Why, it’s impossible!”
Traile’s deep-tanned face was stern.
“He was evidently driven to it by desperation. If I’m right, the Gray Men are rich and influential victims of the Yellow Doctor. Perhaps one or two are willing members, actuated by greed in joining the Invisible Empire. But I think most of them have been trapped by blackmail or some other insidious scheme, and then forced to do Yen Sin’s bidding.”
The millionaire looked horrified.
“Then that’s what he intended to do with me!”
“It looks that way,” Traile said grimly.
“What about the gray faces of those men?” put in Agent Johnson. “You think they were made up, like that girl this morning?”
Eric Gordon winced. Traile shook his head.
“Nothing that complicated. I believe they wear some kind of thin rubber masks which conform partly with their real features, yet conceal their identity. That adhesive tape on Kent’s mouth gave me a hint. I found sticky spots where something had adhered to his face. I thought of a mask, and that fitted in with what I noticed about that wound. They must wear the masks so they will be able to distinguish each other when they’re carrying out some mission, and still be disguised from other members of the Invisible Empire—perhaps even from one another.”
“The thing’s fantastic,” Bannister said incredulously. “What possible good could it do this Invisible Emperor?”
As Traile replied he led the way out to the unlighted sun deck.
“Getting them more deeply involved would be the initial reason. I suspect that he’s building toward some tremendous goal, and he wants to get those men completely in his power so that they can’t rebel at the last. But whatever it is, the stakes are sure to be enormous.”
Allen savagely bit off the end of a cigar.
“After what happened to Jim Stone, I’d like just one minute with that yellow fiend!”
—
He scratched a match on the guard-wall. Bannister jumped nervously at the sound. Allen paused with the blazing match half-raised to his cigar.
“By the way, where’re Murdock and Weller?”
“On the other sid
e,” volunteered Eric.
“Let’s go around there,” said Allen.
As they started along the dark walk by the guard-wall, the musical sound of chimes came from somewhere in the penthouse.
“Eleven o’clock!” Bannister said in a strained voice. “By God, I’m going in where it’s light!”
He wheeled back along the sun deck, but he had not taken four steps when a voice rose in a shout from the other side of the roof.
“Help! Something’s happened to Weller!”
Traile whirled to Eric Gordon and Allen.
“You two stay here with Bannister!”
Johnson snapped on a flashlight as he ran after Traile.
“Hold it out to the side,” Traile flung over his shoulder.
The light swerved and, as they reached the Japanese gate, fell on the chunky figure of Agent Murdock. The man’s round face had a stunned expression.
“This way!” he jerked out hoarsely.
They followed him through the garden. Beyond the little arched bridge Murdock halted, pointing dumbly to the floor. Kneeling there before the shrine, bent over with his forehead to a prayer mat, was Weller. His face, as seen from the side, was the color of old parchment.
Traile shot a swift look backward, then stooped over the silent figure. The man did not move as he touched him. He grasped the agent’s shoulder, shook it. Weller toppled over sidewise, his body rigidly retaining its queer, kneeling pose.
“He’s dead!” gasped Johnson.
Traile wheeled, took the flashlight, and swept it about the garden.
“Did you see it happen?” he demanded of Murdock.
Before Murdock could answer, Bannister and the others appeared from the direction of the sun deck. Eric Gordon and Allen were trying to keep the millionaire back. But he pulled away from them.
“I insist on knowing what—” He broke off as he saw the queerly rigid body. “My God, he’s been killed!”
“Weller!” groaned Allen. He sprang forward, but Traile stopped him.
