by Lin Carter
“Is this Choy Lown still alive?” inquired Zarkon.
“No, he was nearly a hundred back then, and that was in 1933, or thereabouts,” said Ricks. “He’s gone to his ancestors years ago; all that network of hidden passages, all those winding ways and secret mantraps — and the entrances to them, like Wang Foo’s, and the Tai Yuan Oriental Shop, right down the street — they were abandoned years and years ago. If somebody’s opened them up again, he’s probably set himself up as a second Choy Lown. And that means trouble!”
“We are en route to Wang Foo’s right now, by private helicopter,” said Zarkon. “Can you meet us there with a warrant? The name of the suspect in the Streiger killing is Pei Ling.”
“Probably not his real name,” mused Ricks. “I’ll try to get a ‘John Doe’ warrant — if I can find a judge who’s up and around at this hour! May take a while, Prince ...”
“Any official objections if. I try to get inside before you come, Inspector? Without a warrant, you understand. The matter is of some urgency. They have one of my men in there; a man acting as my agent, that is. He may be dead already, but I can’t risk waiting for you and your boys.”
“No objections from this end, Prince,” said Ricks. “You hold an honorary commission in the force, anyway. But for gosh sakes, be careful! That place is crawling with deadly devices ...”
“I will; thank you, Ricks. See you soon,” acknowledged Zarkon, signing off.
The Silver Ghost was winging its way over the breadth of Long Island. Before another twenty minutes had elapsed, they would be soaring across the river. Dawn was gold and crimson in the east.
Zarkon sat bent over a street-map of Knickerbocker City, tracing the route to their goal. But his attention was not on the map at all.. He was thinking of Chandra Lal.
The faithful Hindu had gone alone into deadly danger, acting on behalf of Zarkon and the Omega men. Loyal as one of his own men, and as reckless of danger, was Chandra Lal. Even now, the stalwart Rajput might be dead; at this very moment, he might be on the brink of death.
If the trusting Hindu came to a grim end because of his zeal to be of service to Omega, Zarkon knew he could never forgive himself ...
CHAPTER 17 — The Invisible Intruder
By now it was morning. Still the streets of the great metropolis were empty and deserted, although before long men and women would emerge from the towering apartment houses on their way to work. But as for now, the streets lay bare in the gray-gold light.
The Silver Ghost had crossed the breadth of Long Island and soared across the waves of the river, and now flew among the tower-tops of Knickerbocker City. Silent as a floating leaf, the big helicopter drifted through the fresh morning air on its whispering propeller blades. Directly above Fifth Avenue the glittering aircraft hovered, then pointed its nose downtown in the direction of squalid, teeming Chinatown.
Zarkon sat beside Ace Harrigan as the crack test-pilot guided the craft over the streets of the city.
“Head south, Ace, and watch for Mott Street,” the Ultimate Man directed the young aviator. “It should be easy enough to find Wang Foo’s Tea Shop from there. Graumann Street is in back of it, so keep your eyes peeled for the old Amalgamated Press Building on Graumann, that will be your major landmark. It’s the only skyscraper in the vicinity of Chinatown, so it ought to be easy enough to spot from the air.”
“Right, chief,” Harrigan grinned. “Where are we going to land, once we spot Wang Foo’s? I can bring the Ghost down just about anywhere, like in the middle of the street. Say the word.”
“According to this map, there should be a parking lot only a block away from Wang Foo’s,” said Zarkon. “Land the chopper there and wait for Inspector Ricks to show up with his squad.”
“We could land right in front of the place, chief,” protested Harrigan.
“No doubt; but that would give the show away,” Zarkon pointed out. “By the time we got in and found our way to the warren of secret passages Ricks mentioned, the Grim Reaper would have had sufficient advance warning to disperse his gang and to dispose of Chandra Lal. There is just a slim chance that Chandra Lal is still alive. While that chance holds good, I am not going to risk imperiling the Hindu’s life by grounding the Ghost right in front of the tea shop. I am going in alone, by the roof —”
“Chief!” groaned Scorchy Muldoon from the back of the cabin, “what about the rest o’ us? Me, I’m dyin’ fer a bit o’ action! Sure an’ yer not gonna make th’ rest o’ us wait fer th’ cops t’ arrive?”
Zarkon smiled grimly at the aggrieved tone of the little prize-fighter’s voice, but his determination remained unshaken.
“I’m going to do just that, Scorchy,” he advised. “One man may be able to get in unobserved, without triggering the alarm. But we wouldn’t stand much chance with the whole gang of us charging the front door.”
“Aw, fer th’ luvva Mike!” said Scorchy, disgustedly. But he knew his chief too well to continue fruitlessly protesting. When Zarkon had once decided upon a plan of action, there was little hope of persuading him to change his mind.
“Chief, I packed the equipment cases, everything but the new location-finder,” said Menlo Parker. “What are you taking in with you?”
“Just the vibrasuit and the tell-tale,” said the Man of Mysteries.
“Righto! I’ll get ‘em out,” muttered the skinny scientist. Unbuckling himself from the restraining harness, he began unloading equipment from the big cases bolted to the floor of the cabin behind the passenger seats. Doctor Ernestine Grimshaw craned about to watch him with interest and curiosity.
“There’s the Amalgamated Press Building ahead now, chief,” said Ace Harrigan. Zarkon nodded and told the handsome young aviator to take the copter up and to circle until he directed otherwise. Then he left his seat and began to don the gear which Menlo Parker handed to him.
The principal article of equipment consisted of a loose coverall garment fashioned from some odd glassy substance which seemed to be threaded through with metallic fibers. Zarkon climbed into this and zipped it shut, wriggling his hands and feet into the extremities of the curious garment. Doctor Ernestine Grimshaw noticed that the loose, baggy sleeves of the odd garment terminated in tight gloves, while the leg coverings ended in stretch-plastic overshoes, which fitted snugly over Zarkon’s gray suede shoes. Batteries were slung about the waist of the weird-looking transparent suit and it was topped by a close-fitting hood-like affair, which Zarkon pulled over his head. Odd-appearing goggles with thick milky lenses fitted over his eyes, and about his brows he settled a curious lamp which pointed in the direction of his gaze no matter where he looked. This last item resembled the head-lamp worn by coal miners.
“What’s all this about?” the lady doctor demanded of Doc Jenkins, in a mystified tone of voice.
The big pale freckled man with the outsized hands and feet explained in his dull, placid voice. “One of the chief’s inventions,” he grunted absently. “We call it the vibrasuit. Powered by those batteries on the belt-harness. ‘S made of some special kinda plastic, with a network of boron fiber woven throughout. Current from th’ belt-batteries runs through the whole suit, you see, and creates an electromagnetic aura that surrounds anybody wearin’ the stuff. Vibrates in the same exact frequency of visible light — that’s the octave right smack between ultra-violet and infra-red, from four thousand to seven thousand seven hundred angstroms —”
As the big, dumb-looking man with the miracle memory seemed about to launch on a technical lecture on the electromagnetic spectrum, the girl cut him off with a pert query.
“Okay, okay; but what does it do?” she demanded.
Doc Jenkins looked grumpy: one of his main pleasures in life was to display the astonishing collection of miscellaneous information stored in his amazing mind, ready for instant. retrieval. He sighed.
“Well — the vibration-field sorta ‘jams’ the light waves, just as you can blank out one radio broadcast with another in the same frequency,
cancelling both.”
The girl looked faintly incredulous.
“You mean it makes him invisible?” she cried sharply.
The big mate shrugged amiably. “Just about,” he said. “It’s not optically perfect yet — the chief an’ Menlo are still tinkerin’ with it. But it’s good enough to pass in a dimly-lit environment.”
The girl murmured something to herself, rolling her eyes.
“How come I’ve never heard of it?” she inquired, with just a trace of skepticism in her tones. “An invention like that ought to have hit every front page in the country ...”
Doc Jenkins grinned hugely. “Well, you know, Miss, we don’t exactly like t’ advertise! We c’n work a whole lot better when the opposition don’t know what kinda equipment we can bring to bear on ‘em.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” the girl nodded. Then another puzzle occurred to her. “Listen, though, if this trick suit cancels out light-rays, how does he see from inside the thing?”
Menlo cackled approvingly. His frosty eyes almost held a trace of warmth as he glanced at the lady doctor.
“Not a bad question at all — for a woman,” he snapped nastily. “Got some brains in her head, this one does. That headlamp the chief is wearin’ projects in the ultra-violet, y’see, and those fancy goggles see in the same frequency. An’ UV is part of the light spectrum invisible to the unaided human eye.”
The girl looked dazed, but impressed. “An invisible man that sees by invisible light!” she murmured. “Wow!”
By this time Zarkon had adjusted the vibrasuit and settled its equipment into place, tightening the baggy plastic coveralls by means of small elastic straps so that it clung to his body.
“Ready to test now,” he said to Menlo, his voice slightly muffled as it came through the mouth-grid. He adjusted a small flat instrument case mounted just below his left shoulder. A high-pitched whine rang through the cabin of the all-but-silent craft. Ernestine Grimshaw blinked her eyes. The figure of Zarkon faded from sight in a ghostly manner, leaving only a trace of blur on the empty air.
She squinched her eyes shut, rubbed them, and looked again. Nothing whatsoever of the Ultimate Man could be seen, save for the faint blur in mid-air. She could readily understand how, in dim lighting or a shadowy place, even that blurriness would be unnoticeable. The effect was truly uncanny.
“How’s the UV set, chief? Goggles workin’ okay?” inquired the frail little physicist.
“Functioning perfectly,” said Zarkon’s voice from empty air.
Parker reached out with a flat, stubby pistol in his hand. It was made of glassy plastic and rather resembled a child’s toy water-pistol.
“I’d feel easier if you took th’ gas-gun with you, chief,” snapped the waspish scientist. “And here’s the tell-tale.”
“Very well,” said the Lord of the Unknown. The plastic weapon and the small transparent hand-device both faded out of sight as soon as they entered the vibratory field which radiated from the suit. At this further display of scientific legerdemain, the blond girl repressed a gasp. Obviously, both the weapon and the instrument case were of substantially the same construction as was the suit itself.
“Ready, Ace,” said Zarkon’s voice. The aviator nodded cheerfully and brought the Silver Ghost down until it floated over the roof tops of Chinatown. Scorchy and Nick unfastened the cabin door and tossed out a flexible ladder made of nylon cord. There was no visible sign that Prince Zarkon had left the craft, although Ernestine Grimshaw strained her eyes to perceive such. But suddenly she was aware of an indescribable sensation that someone had left her side; it was as if there were some sixth sense of whose existence she had been unaware till now, that told her an invisible presence was no longer within the cabin.
The sensation was eerie and uncanny; almost, the plucky girl physician shivered at the strangeness of it all.
“Hold her steady, Ace, he’s almost down,” said Nick Naldini in his rusty, sepulchral voice. The aviator nodded, without looking up from the instrument panel.
Ernestine Grimshaw leaned over Doc’s legs to peer out of the cabin window. From that viewpoint, she could see the rope ladder hanging beneath the Silver Ghost. It did not trail away behind the ship as it would ordinarily have done. Instead, it hung straight, as if weighed down by some invisible pressure.
And, even as the girl watched the incredible sight, suddenly the unseen weight left the bottom rungs of the ladder. It bounced up and trailed off, floating on the wind. Scorchy and Nick began to reel it in and then bolted the cabin door shut.
As the girl watched, one of the dust-scummed skylights on the roof top suddenly became unlocked in an inexplicable manner. A moment later it closed itself again.
The Silver Ghost floated up and away from the roof top of Wang Foo’s Tea Shop, leaving Zarkon alone behind, to prowl his invisible way deeper into the Grim Reaper’s lair!
CHAPTER 18 — The Death-Trap
Before he had penetrated very far into the maze of dimly-lit rooms, it became obvious to Prince Zarkon that the squalid old building had been abandoned for a very long time. Such pieces of furniture as still remained in the rooms on the second storey of the dilapidated structure were shrouded in old canvas tarpaulins, which were stiff with splotches of ancient paint, and whose folds were heavy with fine, impalpable dust. These rooms were airless and stifling, and had obviously not been opened in many years. The windows, which gave forth on the crooked Chinatown street, were thickly scummed with dirt, their catches rusted shut.
If the building had any inhabitants at all, Zarkon reasoned, they must reside either on the street level or in whatever storerooms or tunnels lay hidden beneath the streets of the city. The invisible figure turned to a rickety stairway and began cautiously to make its way down.
In one hand, Zarkon held the small instrument case he had referred to in the helicopter as “the tell-tale.” At every step he took, the Man of Mysteries directed the sensitive antennae of this apparatus at floor, walls, and ceiling. From time to time a small red bulb winked, its glimmer invisible to any eye but his own. When this occurred, Zarkon would pause to trace the wiring of some device hidden within the walls and would adjust the vernier on the instrument case until he had managed to override the concealed device.
The tell-tale was little more than a powerful electrometer which registered the presence of any electrical device within its proximity. Such electrometers are familiar instruments, with many uses. Zarkon, however, had ingeniously combined the function of other mechanisms within the design of the small box he held; among these was the ability to detect and trace hidden wiring, and to analyze and report the frequency and intensity of an electric circuit.
Through the patient and scrupulous use of the telltale, Zarkon was thus enabled to discover in advance every detection device and alarm circuit he encountered on his way down to the street floor, and to disarm them, one by one. There were quite a few of them, he found, and they were cunningly hidden. But none of them, no matter how ingeniously they were rigged to detect the presence of an intruder, delayed him more than a few minutes.
He reached the street floor and searched it carefully, finding nothing of interest. Beyond the tearoom itself lay a long-abandoned kitchen filled with a rusty stove and mildewed cook pans, and beyond that he found a number of- dusty and airless rooms obviously used at one time for storage, and still piled high with old crates, bales, and boxes.
Nowhere did the Lord of the Unknown find any evidence that the structure had been inhabited in recent years. Dust lay in thick layers on the warped floor-boards and the air was musty with the odors of moldy tea and old cooking, and vitiated from being so long closed up. Searching the storage rooms at the rear of the building led Zarkon’s quest to a dead end.
Again the Master of Omega unlimbered the small, flat mechanism. This time he activated a portion of its miniaturized instrumentation not previously employed in his search of the upper rooms. Now it projected a sonar-like pulse of radio waves, while
he watched a row of meters. The beam of radio pulsations would inform him of any hidden cavities behind the walls.
In a few moments, the invisible man had located one such, which was concealed behind a stack of dusty crates.. Examining this pile of boxes carefully, Zarkon was not surprised to see that not only were they fastened together into a rigid mass, but that this mass served to conceal what could only be a secret door. In another moment, Zarkon had the door open and found the black stairway leading down by which the limp body of Chandra Lal had been carried not very long before. Able to see in the impenetrable darkness by reason of his ultra-violet headlamp and the ultraviolet goggles, the Lord of the Unknown began a slow and cautious descent of the hidden stair.
In a dimly-lit room whose walls were hung with sumptuous and priceless tapestries of ancient Oriental work, a robed and hooded man sat behind a magnificent inlaid desk, studying a sheaf of documents.
The chamber was decorated with a luxuriousness so extreme as to be virtually palatial. Low divans piled high with silk cushions stood along the tapestry-covered walls; low tabourets of exquisitely-carven mahogany, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, stood before these. An enormous incense burner of antique workmanship, fashioned from pure silver, hung by chains from the ceiling, leaking threads of blue smoke redolent of nard and myrrh and sandalwood.
