"And I will raise the dead to feast upon those that live"—Ishtar's Descent into Hades.
BILL ZEIGLER, private investigator, lifted his head with a start and stared across his paper-littered desk at the office door. In the corridor beyond, feet pounded heavily, drew near. He glanced, frowning, at the clock on the wall, saw that it was ten after midnight and pushed back his chair.
"The devil!" he muttered irritably.
Fists hammered frantically at the door, and hoarse breathing was audible from beyond the thin partition. Zeigler thrust his hand under his coat, loosened the automatic in its holster.
"Who is it?" he demanded with his hand on the knob.
An unintelligible croaking sound from the hall was his only answer.
Zeigler jerked the door open quickly and stepped back. A loose-jointed figure in shabby clothes tumbled across the threshold, tripped and sprawled upon the floor. A black head lifted; a pair of large frightened eyes fastened appealingly upon Zeigler.
"Mist' Zeigler? You Mist' Zeigler?" The eyes, like boiled eggs, shone white against the black skin. The thick lips were flecked with foam.
"I'm Zeigler. What do you want?"
The Black man scrambled shakily to his feet and stood hunched and trembling.
"He's dyin', Mist' Zeigler ... He say to me, you get Simms; you get Massalon; you get Zeigler ... He say, get 'em tonight; I'm dyin' ... He say, if you don't, th' man out'n hell gonna burn you too! You ain't police, Mist' Zeigler?"
"No, I'm not the police," Zeigler said, then, his eyes narrowing: "You're not doped, are you?"
"Honest I ain't, Mist' Zeigler!" The black hands, dangling limber from the shabby sleeves, lifted in a gesture of supplication. "You got to come, Mist' Zeigler ... He's dyin'—"
Zeigler's eyes narrowed, appraising the Black man keenly. This was no ruse; the man was half dead with terror. He shrugged.
"All right," he growled. "I'll go."
He shoved the Black man into the hall, snapped off the light and closed the door. Marching the stammering black ahead of him, he swung down the corridor and descended the steps into the street. His roadster was parked at the curb.
"Get in," he ordered. Then, "Which way?"
"East Ambrose," the Black man said, "down past the railroad yards."
Puzzled by the strange summons, but unable to extract any rational explanation from the fear-fuddled Black man, Bill Zeigler shot the car through the deserted business section, swung off through the wholesale district, skirted Chinatown and swept past the railroad yards into a district of hovels and shanties. They turned two street corners, then, in the middle of a particularly disreputable block, the Black man indicated a drab shack in the window of which a yellow light gleamed wanly.
HIS guide scrambled from the car and shuffled toward the door, leading the way. The flimsy porch creaked under Zeigler's tread. The Black man pushed the door open, and Zeigler, with one hand thrust into his coat, gripping the automatic, stepped into the room.
The yellow light from a smoking oil lamp threw its wan radiance on a scene of squalor. Outlined beneath a dirty sheet, the body of a man lay on a cot near the wall. Bill drew near, squinting, felt the hair on his scalp bristle as his eyes made out the horrid thing that lay against the pillow. With an involuntary shudder, he bent and stared at the grotesque parody of a human head that was thrust out from beneath the covering. Flabby flesh, pale with the sick pallor of decay, lay loose upon the bony framework of a face. From two sunken pits of shadow the eyes stared with glassy fixity.
Bill Zeigler sucked in his breath. "My God!" he gasped. "Cooked alive!"
"A week he's been layin' there," the Black man wailed. "Wouldn't let me git no doctor, no police ... Then tonight ..."
"Who did it?" Zeigler demanded.
"I don' know, suh ... honest. I jest found him a-layin' outside." The Black man pushed past him, seized the man's shoulder and began to shake him. "Jager! Jager!" he said hoarsely. "He's here."
The corpse-like face twitched; puffy lips peeled back, baring yellowed, uncared-for teeth. "Zeigler!" The word was a whisper that was forced with effort from the horrid mouth. The glassy eyes, suddenly alive, rolled toward Bill Zeigler's face. "You're not Ott Zeigler!"
"He's my uncle," Bill said.
The eyes flashed with a savage light, turned toward the Black man. "I told you to get Ott Zeigler, you ape!"
"He wasn't home, Jager," the Black man gulped. "I done tried to git Massalon an' Simms too. But this here Zeigler is the only one I could find."
"Well, get out of the room!"
Ducking his head in evident fear, the Black man backed from the room and closed the door behind him. The man on the bed watched him go, then turned to Zeigler. "Massalon, Simms, Zeigler!" he said, his hideous lips spitting out each word with a bitter emphasis. "I ought to let them die. But I got enough on my conscience ... an' I'm dyin' ... Listen!" From beneath the cover a scarred lean arm shot out and seized Bill's wrist in a convulsive grip. "Look at me! Then go to your uncle and the others and tell them what you've seen. Tell them Galen Jager sent you with his dying breath. Tell them the man we murdered in the Gran Chaco has come back from hell!"
He paused, leering at Bill Zeigler's incredulous face. "You think I'm raving? Listen! We cut his throat from ear to ear and buried him in the jungle. That was ten years ago. And then, last week ... his dead face in the fog ... the eyes shining like fire ... The scar was there on his throat. I tried to run, but he grabbed me, dragged me away ... Look at me now, man!" ... The voice grew faint; the speech was punctuated by painful gasps; the eyes rolled drunkenly.
"Who was he?" Bill Zeigler demanded.
"His name? What is a name to a soulless thing from hell? You don't believe? It was the Hindu that brought him back from hell—his servant, Gandhara Dutt, a foul, skinny devil who boasted that he could bring back the dead ..." The sentence was broken off abruptly; the ghastly head lifted; the emaciated body jerked upright. "My God! Look there! Look!" A shrill scream burst from him.
HALF convinced that the man was insane, Bill whirled to follow the direction of a bony finger that stabbed the air, indicating the window. Then he himself stiffened, felt the breath choke in his throat. Like a ghost evoked by the dying man's scream, a turbaned head was thrust against the greasy pane. A sallow, cadaverous face hung for a moment in the wan light and vanished.
"The grave-robber!" Jager screamed. "Gandhara Dutt! Get him, kill him!" He fell back with a spasmodic shudder as Bill Zeigler spun about and dived for the door.
Gripping his automatic, Bill kicked the door open and stared out into the moonless dark. A lean tall shadow, moving against the lesser blackness of the night, leaped to the running board of a waiting car.
Bill cleared the creaking porch and plunged out in pursuit. The car door slammed, headlights lashed out, the purring of a powerful motor rose to a roar, and the heavy sedan lurched forward. Halting in a cloud of dust, Bill Zeigler sent soft curses after the tail-light.
As he slid into his roadster seat a scrap of paper which had been propped on the steering wheel fluttered to the floor. Without stopping to pick it up, Bill kicked the motor into action and leapt forward in pursuit of the racing sedan.
The swift events, the incredible story, tumbled about confusedly in Bill's mind. But it was more than a good guess that the occupants of that racing car held the key to the whole macabre puzzle. Bearing down heavily on the accelerator, Bill held the car in the rutted road and kept his eyes glued to the bobbing tail-light.
The chase led away from the heart of town, into an exclusive residential section. Here the big sedan threaded a circuitous route through tree-lined drives in a futile effort to shake off its pursuer. Finally it slowed, came almost to a stop.
Suspecting an ambush, Bill slammed on his brakes. He was within a block of his quarry when he saw a figure leap from the running board into the glare of his headlights. For a moment it paused as the big car plunged away; then, as Bill started forward again, the lean shadow dived into a hedge and vanished.
Bill braked his roadster to a shuddering stop. He had suddenly realized that the vast dark house which loomed beyond the encircling hedge was the home of Caraway Simms—the Simms whom the dying man had mentioned, the Simms who had once been his uncle's partner, and was now his bitter enemy.
As he hesitated, considering his next move, Bill's eye fell on the scrap of paper which had dropped from the steering wheel when he had leaped into his car. He picked it up, held it in the glare of the dash light, felt his skin prickle queerly as he read the scrawled message:
> They are doomed. Save yourself. Keep out of this or your fate shall be worse than Jager's. Blood for Blood! —The Man out of Hell.
FOR a moment Bill Zeigler hesitated. After all, it wasn't his affair. No one had really retained him to mix himself in this ugly business. And the picture of that horribly burned face was still livid in his memory. There could be no question as to the deadly seriousness of this threat; the fact that the trail led to the house of Caraway Simms was proof enough that there was more than a fever-crazed imagination behind the stammered words of a dying derelict.
Crumpling the scrap of paper in a muscular fist, he squared broad shoulders and crawled from the car.
Beyond the hedge a wide, tree-dotted lawn sloped upward to the sprawling, silent house. A night light shone dimly through the glass panel of the front door. Bill stared about in the darkness, now ominously still. The shadow that had leaped from the car had vanished. Bill crossed the lawn to the front door.
But with hand on knocker he paused. Through the glass panel a movement in the dimly lighted hallway caught his eye. He peered in.
A girl was standing by a closed door on the left of the hall, a young girl, whose arresting loveliness startled him, almost as much as the mystery of her rapt, half-fearful attitude. She was dressed in a loose orchid negligee, and the flowing gold of her hair tumbled over one shapely shoulder in a shining cataract. She was, Bill realized, Allene Anson—Caraway Simms' step-daughter. Bill had not seen her in years, could scarcely believe that this striking beauty was the child of twelve he remembered. But why was she standing there by the door, so strangely intent, her blue eyes wide, her lips parted, listening, as if for some sound she dreaded?
Bill seized the knocker and tapped softly. With a violent start the girl turned a frightened face to the door and approached softly. A moment later Bill confronted her with the most disarming smile he could muster.
"Why," she stammered, her strained features relaxing with relief, "why it's Bill Zeigler!"
"You remember me, Allene?"
"Of course, but why..."
"Because I've got to see your stepfather at once."
"Come in," she said in a tremulous whisper. The look of fear had returned to her face. "I'm glad you came; you'll tell me what it means..." She closed the door behind him, laid a hand on his arm in a grateful gesture. "I'm scared to death, and I don't know what to do. All day he's been sitting in there." She nodded toward the closed door. "It's his private museum. I think he's losing his mind, Bill. He carries a loaded gun, and I can hear him mumbling and talking to himself. Once I tried to get him to take something to eat. He just looked at me queerly and asked, 'Do the dead come back?' Then he shut the door in my face.
"There's something ghastly here in this house, Bill... You must know something ... Why have you come here—at this hour?"
"To get at the bottom of it," Bill replied grimly. He looked into her tear-wet eyes, and his own softened. "Don't worry," he said. "I'll see you through it."
He took a step toward the closed door, but she drew him back. "I'm afraid, Bill," she said in quick panic. "He might kill you. I tell you he—acts like a madman."
"I'll handle him," Bill said. "You—"
The word died on his lips. He felt the girl clutch his arm and huddle fearfully against him as a blood-chilling scream rang out from behind the closed door. It echoed away into silence, and a man's broken voice stammered hoarsely:
"The eyes! My God, the eyes!" Bill sprang to the door.
---
"There are eyes behind that door! There are eyes! There are eyes!"—Count Kostla.
THE door was locked. Bill rattled the knob, hammered with his fists.
"Simms!" he called, "Simms!"
Heedless of the interruption, the voice within the room continued in a low, moaning soliloquy: "No, it can't be! They did not move! The eyes did not move! The dead are dead!"
Zeigler whirled on the girl. "Who's in there with him?" he demanded.
"No one," she answered. "He's been in there alone all day. He's mad, I tell you, stark mad!" Her face was pale with fear. "You won't believe me, but he's talking to a wax figure!"
"A wax figure?" Bill repeated incredulously.
"Yes," she said. "That's what started it, I think—the madness. Artists often bring their works to his private museum for safe-keeping, you know. Well, a week ago a Russian—Gorgondoff, was his name—brought this wax figure and left it."
"But what's it like?" Bill interrupted.
"A horrible thing!" She shuddered. "It's in a great air-tight glass case, the life-size figure of a man. It represents a scene from Dante's Inferno—a man burning in hell. It's awful!"
"Then why does he keep it," Bill asked, "if it scares him?"
"But it didn't at first," she replied. "It was only this morning that it began to affect him this way. Then he swore that the face had changed its expression. He called me in this morning and asked me if I didn't think the face looked different. And," she added hesitatingly, "you mustn't think I'm mad too, but it did! I didn't tell him that though. I could see that he was afraid of something which gave him a feeling of both guilt and horror. . . ."
Bill looked at her sharply. "I wonder," he said, "how much you know. Do you know where your stepfather—"
The words froze in Bill Zeigler's throat. An unearthly wail of terror rose out of the silence of the closed room, swelled in volume till their ears tingled, then was drowned suddenly in the deafening roar of a shot-gun. There came the sound of shattering glass, the scuffle of feet.
Bill Zeigler seized the girl by the shoulders. "Go to your room," he snapped, "and lock the door. Hurry!"
"But Bill . . ." She hesitated.
"Don't argue!" he rasped.
He whirled and faced the door. The scream rang out again, shrill as the death cry of a wounded animal. Then suddenly it was choked down to a strangled moan, a whimper that faded into silence.
Bill flung himself against the door. Shoulders that had furnished the heavy artillery for a famous football squad crashed against the heavy barrier with a shuddering impact. The door shook, but did not yield.
Bill backed away to the far wall, paused for a deep breath and charged it again. And this time, as his weight struck the door, it flew open like a sprung trap, and Bill lurched forward into the dark room, trying to recover his balance as he realized that he had been tricked. At the last moment someone had unlocked the door.
He might have managed to stay on his feet if he had not stumbled, but something soft and heavy tripped his foot. He hurtled forward, sprawled across the object that lay upon the floor. It was a body, and as he raised his head, his nostrils quivered to a stench like the smell of burning flesh!
He heard the door slam behind him, and staggering to his feet, found himself in total darkness. Gripping his automatic in a rigid fist, he turned about slowly, blinking blindly against the dark, listening.
ABRUPTLY he straightened, felt the wind of his sucked-in breath whistle between his teeth. Straight ahead of him, in the direction of the door, two bodiless eyes blazed out of the blackness with a red, unearthly light. Appalled, yet fascinated, Bill stared dumbly while the spectral orbs faded to pin points of fire, then flared wide again with horrid radiance.
And now they moved, swinging from side to side as if propelled by the weaving motion of a huge body. And they came nearer! Warily Bill retreated, his heart knocking out a crazy tune against his ribs. Now he understood the maniacal shriek which had come from beyond the closed door. Now he understood the terror of the dying derelict, for he knew that no mortal man that walks the earth has eyes which shine in the dark with a radiance of their own!
He sought to muffle his footfalls, tried to calm the crazy beating of his heart. But the ghastly eyes followed the course of his retreat unerringly. It was uncanny, unnerving, even to a man of Zeigler's coolness. Suddenly he took hold of himself. He quit retreating and raised the automatic. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?"
He almost hoped that there would be no reply. But it came, in a voice that whispered and whined like the wind at night.
"I am the Man out of Hell! I have come for the blood they owe me!"
"Stand where you are!" Bill rasped, "or I'll send you back full of lead!"
A harsh laugh, accompanied by a spitting sound like the crackle of burning faggots. "Can bullets harm me," asked that same inhuman voice, "when the worms and the grave have failed?"
"Then laugh this off!" Bill snarled.
His finger tightened on the trigger, and with a sputter of orange flame the weapon spat its slugs straight at the frightful eyes.
There followed a second in which Bill stood dazed and confounded, holding the empty pistol in his hand. Then a cold wave of terror such as he had never before felt washed over him, and he began once more to retreat in blind, unreasoning panic. For those dreadful eyes had absorbed his lead, and continued their advance unchecked.
And now, with mounting horror, he saw them lunge swiftly toward him. He dived to one side, fell against something which toppled, and sprawled to the floor clutching a plaster statue in shaking hands. He hurled it, saw the baleful eyes, now almost above him, duck swiftly. As the plaster shattered on the floor, Bill threw himself backward, staggered to his feet and made a wild plunge in the direction of the door.
He reached the wall. His fingers, groping blindly, found the bolt. Then a hand, cold and hard as stone, fell heavily on his shoulder. He whirled, lashing out with his fists. But something heavy as a sash weight crashed into his head. His knees buckled, and a swirling torrent of darkness swallowed him up.
BILL ZEIGLER with an effort opened his eyes. He lay on his back, staring at a high ceiling crossed by carved cedar beams. He raised his head, sank back with a groan, as memory flowed back into his mind. He was, he gathered, still in the room where the monster had attacked him. The police had arrived. Two uniformed officers stood near him, and two plain clothes detectives were staring down at the body of a man in a silk dressing gown that lay nearby, the face covered by a towel. As Bill raised himself, one of the detectives turned to glare and snarl.
"So you came around finally, Sherlock?" It was Lieutenant Olmsley of the Homicide Bureau, whose unpleasant face was twisted now in an almost wolfish grin of evil satisfaction. He and Zeigler had met before, on cases which occasionally developed to the lieutenant's discredit. And Olmsley was not the sort to forgive or forget.
"Where's Miss Anson?" Bill asked, ignoring the other's jibe.
"In her room, safe and sound, small thanks to you," Olmsley said. "And now let's hear your version. The girl tells us that a wax figure broke out of a glass case, killed her step-father, attacked you and ran out the front door." He grinned.
Bill got up slowly, staring about him with renewed interest. A low stage with fragments of the shattered glass case rising from its edges, stood in the center of the room. The wax figure was gone. Bill stepped to the body that lay upon the floor and lifted the towel. He straightened with a grimace, let the towel fall back. What had been the face of Caraway Simms was a ghastly and unrecognizable mass of burned flesh.
"Well," Olmsley said, "I'm waiting."
Then, grimly, Bill started at the beginning and related all that had happened.
But when he told Jager's story, he omitted the names of his uncle and of Caul Massalon. He was not ready to involve them in the official investigation.
"So this fellow Jager told you to warn Simms that a man from hell had come back to get him?" Olmsley asked, eyeing Zeigler skeptically. "How did the colored boy happen to come to you in the first place?"
"He had to come somewhere, didn't he?" Bill asked. "He couldn't get to Simms. He was afraid of the police. What was more natural than for him to come to a private agency?"
Olmsley stroked his chin, squinted narrowly. "The whole business is the fishiest damned thing I ever ran across," he said. "Sure you and the girl didn't frame up to bump the old man off?"
Bill Zeigler laughed harshly. "And then I knocked myself unconscious, I suppose? That's a good sample of your usual goofy thinking, Olmsley!" He turned and started for the door.
"Just a minute," Olmsley called. "We'll want you to repeat that story later."
"All right," Bill threw over his shoulder. "You know where to find me."
In the corridor he met the doctor who had just come from Allene's room. She had been badly shaken by the tragedy, he was told, but was resting now under the influence of a sedative. It would be best not to disturb her until morning.
Starting toward the front door, Bill reached in his pocket for a cigarette. His hand encountered a loose scrap of paper. He drew it out hurriedly. The angular scrawl resembled that on the note he had found in the car. Holding it nearer the light, he read:
> You have seen my vengeance. If you continue to meddle, you shall taste it! I shall not spare you again!—The Man out of Hell.
---
"Nor Death, that lulleth all, can lull my ghost,
One sleepless soul among the souls that sleep."
—Archias of Byzantium.
OTT ZEIGLER was a towering figure of a man, with a great leonine head crowned by a thatch of graying sorrel hair. Wrapped in a flannel dressing gown, he paced the floor of his study.
From the leather lounge chair in which he sat blowing spirals of smoke into the dim atmosphere of the room, Bill Zeigler watched his uncle and waited for some comment on the appalling story which he had just finished telling.
Watching the man as he moved against the bizarre background of his study walls, hung with strange weapons and trophies of his travels, Bill felt the old dislike for his uncle reviving. There had always been something slightly repellent about this forceful, magnetic, secretive man.
Now Ott Zeigler paused, folded his long arms behind him and lifted his cold gray eyes to his nephew's face. "And so," he said, "you've come here to accuse me of murder?"
"I've come here to warn you," Bill Zeigler replied. "And I've come also for information. If you don't tell me what you know, you needn't expect me to continue to shield you by hiding your connection with this affair from the police."
"You'd betray your own blood, eh?"
"I'm taking no chances with that girl's life," Bill answered evenly, "and I've got my own life to think of too. As for you and Caul Massalon, you can look out for yourselves."
"I'll look out for myself," Ott Zeigler assured him. "And," he added, his veiled eyes suddenly gleaming, "since you mention Massalon, I'll give you my true opinion of the whole affair. There's the man who's at the bottom of it all!"
"He's the man who committed that murder in the Gran Chaco ten years ago. Now, mind you, I'm admitting nothing. Perhaps I profited by it; perhaps Simms did—strange things happen in a lawless land. But I tell you Caul Massalon cut the man's throat. And I'll tell you another thing I know." His eyes narrowed and his voice fell to a whisper, thin and harsh. "That man was dead! There can be no doubt of that. I saw him buried!"
"And you think Massalon . . .?"
"I'm sure of it! Who else could it be? He's powerful and unscrupulous, and he wants to get rid of the rest of us because of what we know. He once threatened to get both Simms and me!"
"But what about Jager?" Bill protested, "and the Hindu, Gandhara Dutt, and the figure from the case—the thing that attacked me in the dark?"
Ott Zeigler lowered his eyes, fidgeted with the tassel of his robe. "I'm not attempting any detailed explanations," he said impatiently. "I remember the Hindu servant, but I put no stock in his childish claims of witchery and magic. Moreover, the Hindu himself couldn't have done all this. I tell you it's Massalon!"
"And the man who was murdered in the jungle?" Bill asked. "What was his name?"
"Ask Caul Massalon," said Ott Zeigler.
And that was all Bill could get out of him. He went away with a feeling of disgruntled disappointment. Had his uncle lied? Perhaps—about his own guilt. But in the main, there had been a ring of truth and plausibility in his contentions. That the three former partners had in recent years hated each other, Bill knew. He also knew that Caul Massalon was shrewd and conscienceless and powerful. Then why not . . . ?
Yet, despite his frantic reasoning, Bill was aware of a disturbing feeling of doubt, an alarming sense of something unearthly and diabolical at the root of it all.
AFTER a cold shower and a hasty breakfast, Bill returned to his office and found Presslar, his assistant, already there. A thin, wiry man in his middle thirties, with prematurely graying hair and sleepy eyes that veiled an astonishing alertness, Presslar looked up from the desk as Bill entered. "Gossip around headquarters says you're mixed up in the Simms murder."
"Up to my ears," Bill conceded. "Listen, Press, drop everything and get on this." Rapidly he sketched the events of the previous night. "What I want you to do," he finished, "is to get a line on Caul Massalon. Make inquiries in the underworld resorts, see who he contacts, find out what he's up to. Also, if you have time, try to run down this fellow Gorgondoff who brought the wax figure to the Simms museum—supposed to be a sculptor. Ask about him at the art department of the library and the galleries."
Presslar was reaching for his hat even as that single syllable left his thin lips.
BILL hurried to the Simms house. He found Allene resting on a lounge in the sun room. As his bronzed face and broad shoulders appeared in the doorway, she smiled.
"I want to know what happened in there last night. I—" she hesitated, tried to smile, "—I couldn't get much out of the police!"
"They don't know too much," Bill told her. "Whatever it was, I tried to fight it off there in the dark. But," he shrugged, "you can't really fight a thing you can't see."
She shuddered. "I locked myself in my room, as you told me to," she said. "But when I heard the shots, I couldn't stay there any longer, alone. I crept downstairs, and I guess I was shaking like a leaf. Just as I started into the hall I saw that—that thing run out the door. Bill, it was the figure from the case!"
"But a man must have been substituted in some way."
"I don't see how," she objected. "My stepfather was alone in the museum all day. No one came to see him. The servants will tell you that too. All the other doors to the museum were heavily bolted on the inside. If a substitution was made, what happened to the original figure?"
Bill frowned thoughtfully. Again the ghastly thought of something more than human came back to haunt him. Resolutely he shrugged it off. "Could a living man have been in the case all the time?"
"Standing there holding one position for seven days in an air-tight case? What sort of man would that be?"
Reeves, the butler, interrupted their conversation. He announced that Mr. Zeigler was wanted on the telephone.
It was Presslar. "Chief?" he called over the wire. "Listen. Just got a line on this Gorgondoff bird. I ran across a long-hair with a studio down in the art belt who used to know him by sight. He gave me his address. But I'm keeping an eye on Massalon. Shall I drop him and ...?"
"No, no," Bill said. "Hang on to him. I'll see the other fellow."
"Crest Apartments, 2830 East Margrave, then."
Bill racked the phone and hurried back to Allene. "Lucky break," he announced. "Press got a line on this Gorgondoff. I'm going around to see him."
"You call me at once, won't you, Bill?"
He stood over her, looking down gravely into the lovely face so strained and anxious. "Of course," he promised. He held her hand a moment, repressed an impulse to duck down and kiss her, then hurried from the room.
BILL located the address, a drab flat in the shabbily pretentious studio quarter of the city. The manager, a squat, oily individual, admitted to having had a tenant by the name of Gorgondoff. But the man, he said, was no longer there. He had been gone for several days, though his rent did not expire for two weeks yet. He had left a note instructing the manager to leave his rooms locked until he returned.
In reply to Bill's questions, the manager described the sculptor as a big, dark, foreign looking person, of peculiar habits. He had lived there for a month and a half. He had made no friends, rarely spoke to anyone, and admitted no one to his studio. The strangest thing about him was that he had brought no trunks with him, only a handbag and a huge wooden box. The manager apparently had puzzled about this. The box, he said, had been rudely shaped like a coffin, but larger, and so heavy that it had required several men to carry it in. The man had taken this box with him when he left. There had also been a Hindu with the man when he came, but he had not been seen since.
"Then he had no friends, no one I could ask about him?" Bill asked.
"Well," the manager said, "there was one fellow, a painter—he's got a room here. Once he went into Gorgondoff's studio without knocking. I heard Gorgondoff cursing him. He must have seen something the other didn't want him to see. But later I saw them together often."
"Where's the painter?" Bill inquired.
"That's funny," the other replied. "He's gone too. Left the same day without a word."
"I think," Bill said, "we'd better have a look inside that studio."
"Oh, no, no," the man protested, his hands fluttering. "I couldn't do that. He said for no one to go in!"
"Listen here," snapped Bill, poking a thick forefinger in the man's face, "do you want to have the police come in?"
"No, no. It would ruin business."
"Very well. I'm a private dick. And I'm going to have a look around that studio, or I'll guarantee you I'll have the police down here in ten minutes. And all your neighbors will know it!"
The manager capitulated, led him upstairs and through a long hall to a locked door. He fitted a key into the lock, and they pushed in. They passed through a dingy bedroom into a bare studio adjoining. Bill looked the place over carefully, but found no scrap of paper or clothing, or other forgotten belonging to testify as to its occupant. Suddenly he stiffened, sniffed suspiciously.
Zeigler stepped to the door of the bathroom and swung it open. Instantly a stifling reek assailed his nostrils. He drew back, then stared at the bathtub, a nauseous horror sweeping over him.
"God!" he gasped. Holding his breath, he drew near. Half buried in a puddle of quicklime lay the grotesquely huddled body of a man. It was naked, and the knees and the awful hand thrust up above the surface were rotted as with leprosy. The face, like the face of Simms and Jager, had been horribly burned—and the quicklime had eaten it half away, baring the white, gleaming bones of the skull!
---
"Yea, I have issued from the House of Terror."—The Book of the Dead.
STAGGERING back from the frightful stench, Bill bumped into the pudgy manager, saw that the oily face had suddenly gone bloodless, the eyes wide with terror.
Bill pounded downstairs to a telephone, called headquarters and got Olmsley on the wire. "Hello, Big-shot," he greeted. "This is Zeigler. Got a hot tip for you. I've just located the apartment of the man who brought the wax figure to Simms—2830 East Margrave."
"What of it?" Olmsley rasped.
"Nothing much," Bill said ironically. "Only there's a dead man in his bathroom in a tub of quicklime. You might trot out here and clean up the mess."
He slammed down the receiver on Olmsley's startled oath and hurried back upstairs. But a further examination of the rooms revealed nothing. Gorgondoff had been careful and cunning. Bill left before the police arrived.
He drove to a wax museum on Plummet Street and asked the proprietor where the wax effigies were made. The man gave him addresses of several factories in distant cities. Bill immediately sent wires to each of these places asking if a man named Gorgondoff had ever been in their employ or had been a customer. He requested that they wire him collect.
As he hurried up to his office door a man across the hall called to him. "Your phone's been ringing to beat hell."
"Thanks," Bill said, thinking that Presslar had perhaps been trying to locate him. Well, whoever it was would call again. Bill dialed the Simms' number and got Allene on the wire.
"Found something," he announced. "Rather horrible, too. After what I've seen, I'm damned glad this fiend seems to be leaving you out of his program."
"But, Bill," she gasped, "that's what I've been trying to phone you about. I got a letter . . . Listen:
> "I will have no meddling with my vengeance! Tonight I shall come back for you. Blood for blood!—The Man out of Hell."
Sweat broke out on Bill's forehead, and his brows knit darkly with anger and alarm. But his voice, when he spoke again, was full of a confidence he did not feel. "Don't worry, Allene," he growled. "I'll see that you're safe if it takes a standing army to guard you!"
AS darkness fell that night, a menacing quiet lay over the Simms' estate, a hush that was both sullen and ominous. Standing on the terrace of the great house, which was now ablaze with lights, Bill Zeigler stared out across the grounds. Moonlight lay white as hoar frost on the wide, tree-dotted lawn, in strange contrast to the tall, thick hedge that cast its own deep shadow along the borders of the estate. Here and there shadowy figures stirred; a shaft of moonlight gleamed on a gun barrel; muted voices whispered.
Bill told himself that every precaution had been taken, that neither he nor Allene had anything to fear. Yet somehow, this preternatural calm disturbed him. Carefully he checked over every detail of his hastily planned defense. Had he forgotten anything?
He had not relied alone upon police protection, which consisted of a half dozen or so detectives and harness bulls—for the fiend was doubtless prepared to meet a guard of that strength.
He had thrown a cordon of hired guards around the whole estate—fifty of them, picked huskies, well armed with pistols, rifles, and riot guns. Others patrolled the grounds inside. In addition to this front-line defense, there was a six-foot policeman at every entrance to the house and a couple of detectives inside.
An ugly sort of dread, persistent and inescapable, still lingered in Bill's mind.
The Thing was cunning, inhumanly shrewd. Simms had believed himself safe, locked in his museum, gun in hand. Yet all these guards could not have saved him. How would the monster strike this time?
Feet scraped on the flagged walk, as a dim figure approached. Presslar's lean, rugged face loomed out of the dark. "Well, Chief," he greeted, "the layout looks good. I almost got shot myself just seeing if I could slip past them."
"Good," Bill said. "But I'm still not completely satisfied. This fiend's more cunning than you realize. He can't get in, perhaps. But has it occurred to you he may already be inside? Suppose he hid himself last night, stayed here?"
"But we've searched the place," Presslar protested.
"I know. But I'm going to give it one more thorough going-over—every foot of the grounds, every square inch of the house. If we don't find him then, I'm ready to swear that the girl is safe!"
Presslar nodded, squinted off into the dark. "Late this afternoon Massalon had a caller—one Pete (Good-eye) Vignola."
"Ex-beer-baron, now likely in the kidnapping racket," Bill said. "Well, go on."
"They had a long pow-wow in Massalon's brokerage office, then went to Vignola's office up above his beer garden. A couple of Vignola's thugs conferred with them there. After that Massalon went to Enrico's Restaurant and I followed him in and took a table behind him. While he was eating, a Hindu, nicely dressed, came from somewhere behind me, passed behind Massalon's chair, and as smoothly as a sleight-of-hand artist, slipped a letter into his outside coat pocket."
"Damn!" Bill exclaimed. "Did you follow the Hindu?"
"Yeah, but lost him trying to trail his big car with a cab. When I came back to the restaurant, Massalon who—had not noticed, or had pretended not to notice the Hindu's letter, was just putting it back into his pocket.
"I waited until he was through and followed him out. In the theatre crowd at the corner, I jostled him, and lifted a letter from his pocket..."
"Great!" Bill applauded. "Up to your old tricks!"
"Wait," Presslar cautioned. "That's where I fumbled, Chief. I got the wrong letter. The other letter was in a white envelope; the one I got was in a gray one."
Presslar produced the letter, and Bill carried it to the light which shone from one of the front windows. Under the letter-head: "Dr. Wolff's Sanitorium, Verano by the Sea," was the following message:
> Dear Sir:
>
> Your inquiry about our patient, Carmichael, received, and I'm hurrying to answer as you asked. The young fellow's well under control, you may be sure. If he wasn't batty when you sent him here, he's damned sure batty now. I keep him locked in a cell, and part of the time in a straight-jacket.
>
> Faithfully yours,
> G. Wolff.
Bill was frowning thoughtfully as he folded the letter and thrust it into his pocket. "Looks like some more of Massalon's dirty work," he told Presslar. This doctor probably took his degree in submachine-gunnery. But it doesn't seem to help us much in this case. Well, let's get the search started."
WITH two patrols of four men each they went over the house from cellar to roof. From the dimmest corner of the attic to the coal chute, they covered every foot of possible—and impossible—hiding space. They searched the garages, the gardener's dwelling and the servants' quarters, and the grounds.
Bill glanced uneasily at his wrist watch. It was ten thirty. "For the rest of the night," he said, "we'll take turns standing guard at Miss Anson's door."
Only just now, with the worst sort of menace hanging over both of them, was he beginning to realize just how much Allene Anson might some day mean to him.
At midnight he left the house once more to prowl nervously about the grounds. Presslar, sleepy but competent, had just relieved him at Allene's door. Bill himself was beginning to feel the strain of the last twenty-four hours. He needed rest, but he could not sleep. He could not rid his mind of the feverish dread which had, in the last few hours, gripped him so hard. He could not shake off the fearful premonition of peril.
Fifteen minutes passed, and he was still restlessly pacing the lawn, when, like an answer to his fears, a cry, shrill and piercing, shattered the moonlit silence.
Bill spun about, feeling a chill sweep over him. Breathing hard, he whipped out his automatic and pounded across the lawn. The scream, which had broken off with horrible suggestive suddenness, seemed to have come from the garden behind the house.
He cleared a low hedge with a leap and stumbled among rose bushes, staring wildly about him. Then he saw one of the guards—a still and huddled figure upon the ground. Goose-flesh pimpled his body. The monster had struck again!
From all directions wavering shadows ran toward him. "Back to your posts!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs. "He's in the grounds; don't let him get out!"
He sprang across the hedge and ran toward the house. Vaulting over the balustrade, he dashed madly for the door and a new uproar within reached his ears.
A woman's voice—Allene's—rose in a harrowing scream of terror. Feet pounded on the stairs. Shouts and curses mingled in a confused discord. With his heart hammering violently, Bill plunged into the house.
He pushed past the running detectives on the stairs, saw two policemen battering at the door of Allene's room. A frightened voice droned monotonously in his ears. "I seen him ... he dragged Presslar into the room ... locked the door... I seen him... I seen..."
Bill shoved the man aside and threw his own weight against the oaken barrier. His shoulder hit the door, with a force that numbed his whole upper body. But there was a splintering of wood, and the door gave.
He lurched into the room, regained his balance, stood frozen for a giddy instant at the sight that met his eyes. Through the smashed window beyond the bed a grisly shape was vanishing—a monstrous naked thing, indescribably hideous. And under one huge arm it bore the limply unconscious figure of Allene!
AS BILL sprang forward, the monster leaped, swung by one arm from the branch of a nearby tree—a horrid ape-like silhouette against the moon-bright sky—then dropped to the ground below.
Bill followed, vaulting the low window sill. He landed on the ground with a jar that sent the breath from his lungs. But no bones seemed broken—and he was only a few yards behind the fleeing apparition!
"The side gate!" he yelled. "Stop him!"
Men ran from the front of the house. The beam of a flashlight shot out, limning momentarily the ghastly shape of the naked giant. The limp form of Allene was slung over one massive shoulder.
Bill, diving madly ahead of the others, found himself outdistanced by the racing demon. "Fire at his legs!" he shouted.
Guns barked, spurts of flame lashed the darkness. Three guards stood shoulder to shoulder in the gateway, their guns belching fire and lead. The fiend plunged on into the rain of bullets. The guards closed in. Then, with a babel of agonized cries, they crumpled and fell before a spray of fire that burst, crackling, from the monster's hand like miniature lightning.
Bill, leading the chase, hurdled the inert bodies, dived into the street, emptying his automatic at the phantom's flying legs. Then suddenly, from behind, blazing headlights swept out, bathing the fleeing ogre in a flood of light. Swerving aside to avoid the wheels of the roaring car, Bill saw it sweep past and come to a halt with grinding brakes a dozen yards ahead of the running monster. The door swung open, and into this the fiend with his burden vanished.
Bill dived for the tire rack, grasped it and clung desperately, trying to lift himself up. The car jerked forward, and with a sudden swerve flung him rolling to the ground. He scrambled groggily to his feet as the guards ran up firing at the vanishing tail light.
Bill stared dazedly at a police car that rushed past in pursuit, then turned miserably back to the house.
As yet he was scarcely able to realize that the dreadful thing had happened! It seemed an unbelievable nightmare which his mind could not accept. How had the thing entered the place? How was it possible for him to have pierced the guard cordon and reached Allene?
He saw lights flashing in the garden. A group of guards had gathered about the man whose agonized screaming had first given the alarm. They had thrown water on him and revived him. Now he stared about him, stammered dazedly. As Bill pushed through the crowd, the man pointed toward a soft spot of earth beneath a tree. Some one flashed the beam of a flashlight upon the place, and a policeman gasped. There was a sunken trough in the ground, where dirt and leaves had fallen into a shallow grave.
"You mean he came out of that?" a guard choked incredulously.
"Out of that!" the man on the ground mumbled fearfully. "The place was level and covered with dry leaves. ... I was standing right here and I seen the dirt move. ... Then a head came up ... then the body. ... I was too scared to move. ... Then it grabbed me. ..."
The men blinked, ashen faced, open mouthed. "My God!" a husky guard muttered. "I've had enough of this. I don't mess with things that come out of graves!"
Bill went into the house. In Allene's room a group of detectives stood silent around the bed—collapsed men, struck dumb by the ghastly sight. Bill stared, then turned away, sickened by the horror his eyes encountered. It was Presslar, but what was left of his face was unrecognizable—a revolting mass of burned flesh, from which bared cheek bones protruded. The neck was broken too, and the horrible head dangled from the edge of the bed like the bulb of a wilted onion.
---
"Thunder armed, quick to ire
He, in vengeance swift and dire!"
—The Rigveda.
DAZEDLY Bill stumbled downstairs, trying to collect his scattered thoughts, trying to tell himself that this whole grim business was only a ghastly dream from which he would presently awaken to find Allene safe. He slumped down into a chair, sat there clenching and unclenching his fists. He leaned back, the soft cushions easing his tired body. He closed his smarting eyes, decided he would wait there for news from the police car which had followed the escaping demon.
But Bill had had no sleep for two days and almost two nights. He dozed.
He awoke with a start, jerked himself upright and stared bewilderedly about. Gray dawn was creeping in at the windows. He sprang to his feet, muttering imprecations under his breath. A bleary-eyed policeman in the doorway grinned.
"What's the latest?" Bill snapped anxiously. "Did they trail the car?"
The big policeman shrugged. "Tried to, but it got away from them. Didn't even get the license number. The plates had been taken off."
Bill found his hat and slammed out the door into the bitter dawn. He went to his apartment, bathed and shaved, then gulped a hasty breakfast and went to his office. But the thought of Presslar's fate made the place distasteful. And the thought of Allene, alive and in the hands of the beast man, sickened him. He tried to tell himself that, since the fiend had carried her away, she was still alive. But what unspeakable fate might face her now?
He called the telegraph office and found replies to his telegrams awaiting him. But none of the factories had any record of Gorgondoff. That trail was cold then. He must look elsewhere, quickly!
Since Presslar's report of Massalon's conference with the gangster, Vignola, and the communication of the Hindu, Bill's suspicions of the unscrupulous broker had quickened. But how to strike at him? How unearth his connection with the affair?
He took out the letter which Presslar had lifted from the broker's pocket. Not much there. But if this were another one of Massalon's evil schemes, it might at least furnish him with some clue as to Allene's whereabouts.
HE DROVE to the little town of Verano, on the coast, twenty-five miles away. From there he climbed by a winding road into the hills and came eventually to a great stone house set among the cliffs above the sea. A high rock wall surrounded the place, and a heavy iron gate barred his way. The sign above the gate read:
> Dr. Wolff's Sanatorium—Private.
Bill got out to open the gate, but found it locked. He went back to the car and honked his horn.
Presently a tall, heavy-set man with swarthy face and dark curly hair, emerged from the front door and came briskly down the walk. He was wearing a laboratory smock, and Bill was surprised to note that his manner suggested an educated man rather than a gangster.
"You're Dr. Wolff?" asked Bill.
"Yes."
Bill, prepared to be belligerent, was surprised by the man's courteous manner. "Caul Massalon," he said, "sent me out to see your patient, Carmichael, and make a report on him." He thrust forward the letter. "He told me to bring this along to identify myself."
The man read the letter, then looked up, peering at Zeigler hesitantly. "You're an alienist, perhaps?"
"No," Bill said, "just an employee of Massalon's."
"Ah, I see." The doctor pondered. "Well," he said at length, "it's a rather irregular procedure, but you may drive in."
Zeigler drove in, then followed the man up the gravelled walk to the front of the house. They entered a reception room, where the doctor asked Bill to wait.
Bill sat down, stared about him. The place was not unusual in any way. Was he on a cold trail again? No, everything pointed to Caul Massalon as the master mind behind the diabolical happenings of the last two days. He had already killed Jager and Simms. What other motive could explain their deaths? What except that Massalon had determined to close their mouths forever and bury the secret of his ten-year-old crime? If Massalon had imprisoned here a man who was not really mad, the poor devil might well be able to furnish some incriminating evidence with which Massalon could be forced to a show-down.
Dr. Wolff's return interrupted his thoughts. "You may see him," the doctor said. "Follow me."
They went down a long corridor and stopped before a heavy door fastened with a huge bolt. Wolff opened the door and they stepped into a cell-like room. A high window was criss-crossed with iron bars, and the light was dim. But as Bill's eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, he became aware of the still figure of a man seated in one corner of the room, his torso enclosed in a straight-jacket. The man was young—about his own age—and extremely tall and thin. The head was abnormally large and crowned with a thatch of dark, unruly hair, beneath which an enormous bulging forehead shone white as a roc's egg. The face, of a lean and tragic cast, with features pale and delicate as wax, baffled Bill with its queer expression. He could not tell whether it was insanity or an abnormal intelligence that gleamed from the black eyes.
"How are you, Carmichael?" Bill asked to break the unpleasant silence.
The man's pale face clouded with a scowl; his black eyes flashed feverishly. "How am I?" he shrilled. "I am imprisoned!"
Stealing a glance at Wolff, Bill leaned forward eagerly. "Why are you imprisoned?" he asked. He expected Wolff to interrupt, but the doctor remained silent. Now he would learn something, if the man were really sane. "I've come to investigate your case," he added.
The man called Carmichael rose, writhing in the straight-jacket, straining his arms until the blood-vessels swelled in his temples. "They say I am mad!" he hissed, "But I am a genius! You hear? The greatest genius on earth!" He stepped forward snarling. Bill backed away, his hopes collapsing.
Then abruptly the man stopped, lifted his head with a maniacal cry, and fell backward upon his narrow bed, his body jerking, his lips flecked with foam.
"Can I do anything?" Bill asked.
Wolff turned. "Yes," he replied. "You see, you've brought on a fit. I'll have to ask you to hurry to the drugstore at Verano and have them send out a prescription at once." He snatched a pad and pen from his pocket and wrote a hurried scrawl. "You needn't wait for it," he added. "They'll send it out, and I'm sure you've seen enough for your report."
BILL hurried to his car, drove through the iron gates and sped along the winding road. He had wasted more time. The man was a hopeless lunatic now, regardless of what he had been when Massalon had confined him there. Nothing could be learned from him. Massalon was a man who guarded his secrets well! Then abruptly a suspicion crept into Bill's mind. Suppose Massalon had missed the letter, anticipated an investigation, warned Wolff in advance? The man who had acted the lunatic might not be the prisoner, Carmichael, at all!
Bill slowed the car. He decided to drive back and surprise the wily doctor, pretending he had lost the prescription.
As the car nosed around a bend in the road Bill gave the steering wheel a savage wrench to swing it back around toward the sanatorium. Then suddenly he slammed on the brakes. A girl had stepped out from a parked car and was signalling him to stop.
"I'm stalled," she said with an apologetic smile. "Could you help me?"
Bill glanced at the car—an expensive looking cream-colored sedan. It had been drawn off toward a dense thicket on the far side of the road. It was empty.
"It started sputtering," the girl explained, "and I just had time to pull it off the road before it died."
Bill crawled from behind the wheel, stared about warily. There was no one else in sight. He moved toward the car, and the girl fell in step with him, dropped a little behind. Then abruptly Bill whirled, cursing himself for a fool as he felt the cold muzzle of a pistol jab his ribs.
A feminine voice, now hard as nails, snapped authoritatively, "Grab air!"
Bill glared at the small face from which the smile had faded. Small white teeth were gritted now behind the painted lips.
Slowly his hands rose, then swept out swiftly. His left hand, seizing her wrist, swung the gun up and aside with a quick twist that brought a cry of pain to her lips as the weapon dropped from distended fingers.
"Not so fast..." The sentence broke off. Feet crunched behind him, and he pivoted to face two husky ruffians who had sprung from behind the thicket.
Bill leaped aside as the first thug lunged for him, sent a sledge-like fist crashing into the snarling face. Checked momentarily, the man wavered, staggered back with a grunt of pain as Bill's left caught him in the pit of the stomach.
But the second ruffian was on him now, ducking to avoid a murderous right hook, grappling with beefy arms, while Bill pummeled his body with short, vicious jabs. He flung himself aside to avoid the returning charge of the first attacker, and snatched for his automatic.
But he was too late. Something unseen tripped him. He stumbled, grabbed the torso of his attacker and dragged the man down with him.
The two locked bodies rolled in the dirt, twisting, jabbing and straining. Bill was panting now, battling desperately. It was obvious that they intended to take him alive, and he recalled with a flash of vivid horror the significant words of the threat:
"Your fate shall be worse than Jager's."
Then through the sweat and dirt and blood that dimmed his eyes, Bill saw the second ruffian dart forward and bend above him as the girl thrust into his hand a folded rag reeking with the sickening stench of chloroform.
The damp rag with its stifling fumes slapped against his face. Coughing, choking and spitting, he reared and twisted. But thick fingers cupped over his face held the gagging rag in place, while the soporific fumes slowly dimmed his senses.
---
"If it is writ, he too shall go
Through blood, for blood spilt long ago."
—Chorus from Agamemnon.
BILL opened his eyes in darkness so thick that it seemed to have solidity and weight. He was weak, dizzy, so nauseated by the chloroform that at first he was scarcely conscious of the dull ache of his bruised and battered body. Then he realized that his wrists were bound securely behind him, his feet were tied together, and he was lying upon a clammy concrete floor.
But he could see nothing, and the black, stifling darkness was full of unguessed and evil threat. Fear such as he had never before known surged up in him, fear not simply for himself, but what was more overwhelming, fear for Allene, now that he was powerless to save her. Through his mind flashed a series of frightful pictures—the fiend, the soulless ghoul, who burned living bodies with his ghostly fire, who defied man's most murderous weapons with impunity and bedded his hideous body in a grave—this demon, holding the helpless girl in his arms, fondling her!
Expert hands had tied him, and the ropes cutting into his raw wrists and ankles held fast.
Eventually, after what seemed an aeon of this agonizing suspense, he heard a door grate. There came the creak of rusted hinges, a low mutter of voices. Reflected light flickered on the walls of his prison and went out. Rolling his body over, he heard the door close.
Then a pencil of light shot out, played upon his face. He lay still, peering from beneath lowered lids at shadowy and indistinguishable figures beyond the light, feeling his taut nerves shudder.
The light went out, and the bodies moved nearer. Something touched his foot. He doubled his legs suddenly and shot them out like a projectile, felt them collide with a body which fell back with a grunt of pain.
Growls and curses ripped the darkness, and heavy hands fell on him from all sides, slamming him flat against the clammy floor. He writhed and struggled savagely as his nostrils quivered again to the nauseous odor of chloroform.
Again the dank rag was pressed against his face and held there by rough hands while the stinging fumes burned into him. He struggled, holding his breath for as long as possible before breathing the stuff into his gasping lungs. Then suddenly he allowed his body to go limp. And a moment later the rag was lifted away.
"Didn't take so much that time," a harsh voice grated.
"He's weak now," another replied.
Half stupified, but clinging to his remaining consciousness, Bill lay submissive while they blindfolded him, lifted him from the floor and carried him out. He was thrown into a car, whirled swiftly through winding streets, and lifted out again.
A COOL wind dank with the smell of stagnant water blew over him. He felt himself being lowered into a boat. It rocked as his captors clambered in. Oars dipped water, and the craft moved ahead. In the rough handling his blindfold had slipped down a bit so that with one eye he was able to see the dark waterfront slipping past. The boat swung about, and a seaplane came into view.
Dark figures stood on the pier, a crisp authoritative voice spoke. "Search her thoroughly—there, in the shadows around the pontoons. We want no stowaways."
Feeling that a struggle would be useless and perhaps fatal, since he was not only bound but half stupefied by the chloroform, Bill continued to pretend insensibility. He was lifted, lowered through the hatch into the cabin of the seaplane and flung down upon the duralumin floor.
The powerful motor roared and the seaplane spurted forward, lifted away from the water. Bill's body rolled slightly, and with each roll he rubbed his head against the floor, gradually pushing the blindfold down from his eyes.
The bellow of the engine increased in intensity as the great craft mounted steadily. Then, above the deluge of sound, a shrill voice rang in his ear, "All right there! I've been watching you. Come out of it!"
Bill's shoulder was seized by a clawlike hand that jerked him over upon his back. With a start of alarm, rather than surprise, he stared up into the gaunt, crafty face of Caul Massalon.
"Ah!" Massalon grated, "the wise guy!" He pounced down like a vulture on his prey, knelt with his bony knees digging into Bill's body. One knotted fist clutched a thin-bladed dagger. "So you lifted my letter!" he snorted. "But I outsmarted you!" He ducked his head so that his leering features pressed close above Bill's face. "And now," he hissed, "you're going to die!"
Sweat, the cold sweat of a man facing his last moment, broke out in glistening beads upon Bill's brow. A beam of light wavered on the murderous blade in the man's hand. "Where's the girl?" Bill spat.
"The girl?" Massalon asked.
"Certainly—Allene Anson. I knew you were at the bottom of this all along, you dirty rat! I should have come straight to you, pounded your damned face into a pulp, made you confess..."
"Confess? That murder ten years ago? But I didn't do it, my friend. You're misinformed."
"You lie!" Bill hurled at the face, now wreathed with a gloating grin. "But I don't give a damn about that—I'm talking about these other murders, and the kidnapping done by this monster of yours—this Man out of Hell!"
Massalon's eyebrows lifted. "Even when you face death, you'll have your joke, eh?"
"Why deny it," Bill asked, "if you're going to kill me anyhow?"
"Why you fool!" Massalon roared. "Do you think I don't know you're hand in glove with him? Don't play innocent, for it won't save you!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean this!" Massalon stormed. He snatched from his pocket a scrap of white paper, unfolded it and thrust it before Bill's startled eyes. Scrawled on it was a brief, grim message:
> Your doom is sealed, Massalon. Before the clock strikes seven tonight, I shall come for you. Blood for blood!
>
> The Man out of Hell.
SPEECHLESS, Bill turned bewildered eyes to Massalon's gaunt face. The man, now in a fury, continued to rage. "I knew who it was all along—I knew who it had to be! But he tried too much. He tried to trap the fox, and the fox escaped him!"
He whipped a watch from his pocket, bared the dial to Bill's eyes. It read three minutes to seven. "You see that?" he laughed harshly. "Three minutes from now he was to come for my blood! We are now two thousand feet from the earth, where even men from hell cannot follow. I have not only escaped him, but I have his accomplice in my clutches!"
"Good God!" Bill stammered. "Are you mad?" He could not believe that the man was simply acting. "Who do you mean—whose accomplice?"
"Whose? Whose do you suppose? Ott Zeigler's!" He broke into a cackling laugh. "Is it possible you've been really taken in? Don't you know that he was the murderer—there in the jungle? Simms and I were there—why deny it? But it was his powerful hands that killed the man! And now he wants to kill us too, to hide his crime! He is the Man out of Hell!"
"But, I swear..." Bill choked out, his mind floundering in confusion. "No, it can't be! You're lying..."
"Why, as you say, should I lie—since I'm going to kill you?"
That was logical. "But you can't believe," Bill stammered in dismay, "you can't believe I've helped with this hellish scheme?"
"And why not? You are his nephew. You are always near the crime, and you are never harmed!" The man's voice was cold now, like the steel of the weapon in his hand. His eyes narrowed wickedly. "You needn't trouble to lie now. It's too late!" He pushed the point of the dagger with a slow pressure against Bill's breast. "Your body will never be found," he finished hoarsely.
Breathless, feeling that slow, sharp pressure increase, Bill's mind swirled in a maelstrom, as he tensed his body for one last desperate effort. Then, abruptly a wrenching crash sounded from the rear.
Massalon spun around and paused, frozen stiff in that absurd position while the dagger dropped from his distended fingers. Jerking upright, Bill stared, saucer-eyed, at the hatch through which a grotesque and terrifying figure was descending into the cabin.
HUGE naked legs appeared, heavily muscled and with bulging veins that shone a ghastly blue against the reddish, parchment-like skin. Naked except for a loin cloth, the whole ghoulish body followed, descending slowly into view—the massive torso, the ape-like arms, the huge prehensile hands out-thrust. And then a crowning horror—the head, crag-like and shaggy, with matted hair from which sea water dripped and glistened.
With goose-flesh prickling his body, Bill stared past the dumb and frozen figure of Massalon at the monster's slow approach. The flesh of the face, ochre colored and veined with red, shrunk close about the cheekbones, and the awful, avid mouth, was like something that had rotted in a grave. And out of this horrid mask stared glassy eyes that glittered with an inhuman luminosity.
Spraddle-legged, the demon inched his way toward the paralyzed Massalon, who fell back with a shriek, beating the air before him with his hands.
"In the name of Heaven..." he screamed.
"In the name of Hell!" echoed a voice, weird as a banshee's cry. A great arm reached out, prodigious fingers seized the cowering Massalon. They lifted his body, which wilted at their touch, and flung it across a seat.
And now the baleful eyes turned upon Bill Zeigler.
"You will continue to meddle," said the appalling voice, "and I will come for you in your good time. Massalon thought to escape me, and I waited under the water, clinging to a pontoon. He flew away, bearing his doom with him. I shall come back for you, and I shall take you to a hell you have not dreamed of!"
Twisting to one side, Bill flung his body away from the horrid legs as the fiend stepped past him and went forward.
"Where are we now?" Bill heard the inhuman voice demand.
"About ten miles from Verano," the quaking voice of the pilot answered.
"Sweep back!" the monster ordered. "Back over Verano at this same altitude!"
Back through the cabin came the grisly phantom, and Bill glimpsed a parachute now, strapped to the monstrous back. The demon lifted Massalon and, dragging his senseless body behind him, climbed up the steps through the hatch and vanished.
A sudden rush of air returned to Bill's lungs as he rolled his body over, maneuvered about so that his hands could seize the dagger that Massalon had dropped. With it he managed to sever the ropes that held his wrists. Then he cut his feet free and sprang up. From the window he saw the lights of Verano glittering beneath him like a sea of stars. He hurried to the hatch, thrust his head out and stared about. The fiend, with his horrid burden, had vanished.
HOLDING the dagger before him, Bill moved toward the pilot's back. He thrust the point of the dagger beneath the man's shoulder.
"Head back to town," he grated.
Chalk-faced and speechless, the pilot obeyed.
The seaplane settled down upon the water and taxied to the pier. The pilot was no match for Bill, and the dagger glistened wickedly. He submitted while Bill herded him through the hatch. They crossed the padded back of the plane and scrambled to the pier.
"All right," Bill growled, seizing the other's arm, "the station house for you, and no tricks!"
The man took a step forward, whirled suddenly, and jerking loose from Bill's grip, plunged into the water. A shower of spray rose from the dark surface. Then the man's head and arms appeared, threshing the water with long strokes.
Poised to dive after him, Bill abruptly checked himself. Why waste time chasing the man now? Somewhere Allene was helpless in the fiend's power!
He turned toward town. Threading the dim waterfront district with swift strides, he pondered the new aspect which the case had taken on. It was a dreadful thought that his own uncle could be the perpetrator of this series of horrors; yet Massalon's words and his subsequent death at the fiend's hands had hammered this conviction into Bill's mind.
Now, by a simple process of elimination, Ott Zeigler stood disclosed as the fiend behind it all. Jager, Simms, Massalon—three links in the guilty chain—were dead. And the fourth link still lived with the horrid secret locked in his black heart. Cursing himself for having been duped by the man's cunning, Bill hailed a taxi and gave the address of Ott Zeigler's apartment...
"Now for the showdown!" he muttered between gritted teeth as he strode up the steps.
---
"Go thou, and fill another room in hell!"
—Richard II.
"BUT he'll be back, sir," Henson, the manservant, insisted, "in just a few moments. I'm certain of it. He just went for a little walk, even left the light burning in his study. ... You might sit in there and wait, sir, if you'd like."
Bill eyed him, scowling. Henson's angular figure, with the perpetually drooping shoulders, shifted nervously; his long, putty-colored face wore a strained look.
"How long has he been gone?"
"Why, sir, since eight o'clock—about twenty minutes."
Bill strode into the study with Henson shuffling along behind.
"There are magazines there, sir," Henson ventured. "And ... anything else you'd like, sir?"
"Yeah," Bill growled, "a shot of brandy."
"Yes, sir."
Henson returned with the tray. Bill poured a stiff drink, looked at him sharply. "You're sure he'll be back in a few minutes?"
"Quite sure, sir. ... I'm familiar with his habits."
Obviously, something was weighing on Henson's mind, but as Bill knew, Henson would die rather than reveal his master's secrets. Bill dismissed him, finished the liquor with a gulp and began pacing the study floor.
Was Henson lying? He couldn't be sure. The lighted room seemed to indicate that Ott Zeigler had not been gone long. Perhaps he was conferring with his henchmen, receiving their reports on the night's business. But it was the thought of the girl, the girl whose whereabouts his uncle was bound to know, that made Bill clench his fists and swear savagely.
He slumped back in the chair, drumming his fingers nervously on the arm. It was the inaction, the intolerable suspense of waiting that set his nerves quivering like plucked strings. But what else was there to do? He dared not leave the place for fear of missing Ott Zeigler when he came in.
He leaned back wearily, allowed his eyelids to droop, to close. A soft languor crept over him, a pleasant restfulness. He breathed deeply, rhythmically ... slept.
Bill opened his eyes, shook his head groggily, feeling a slight dizziness. How long had he dozed—fifteen, twenty minutes? He stared at the clock, then sprang to his feet with a mutter of anger and alarm. Both hands of the clock pointed up—twelve o'clock!
"Henson!" he bellowed. "Henson!"
THROUGH an open door he saw a shadow move furtively in the next room. He sprang through the door, seized the quaking menial by the collar.
"I might have known!" he thundered into the sallow, frightened face. "That brandy had a phoney taste! Drugged me, eh?"
"No, sir ..." Henson stammered, "... just a little sleeping potion, sir ..."
"And why a sleeping potion?" Bill demanded.
"Well, sir," Henson blurted, cringing before the threatening glare, "he told me not to let you follow him ... said not to tell you ... to keep you here."
"And where is he now?"
"At his summer lodge on the lake, sir. You see, well, it seemed that there was some danger, and he did not wish you to be mixed up in it ..."
He flung the servant aside.
Plunging out into the chill, dark street, Bill craned for a taxi, then swung briskly toward a glittering Rent Car sign. If he had only shaken the truth out of Henson sooner! Hours would have been saved. But now that he was on a hot trail again he wouldn't be shaken off until the business was finished! Lake Carlotta, where his uncle's summer lodge stood on an island, was only fifteen miles from town.
A newsboy with the midnight edition scuttled yelping around a corner. "Death-Ray Fiend Strikes Again!"
Bill whistled to him, thinking that the body of Massalon must have been found. He bought a paper and carried it into the dim glare of a street lamp. He started, leaned closer, dazed, incredulous, as he read:
> **DEATH-RAY DEMON BURNS FIFTH VICTIM**
>
> Ott A. Zeigler, 54, wealthy retired sportsman, was murdered tonight at his island retreat on Lake Carlotta, the victim, police said, of the "Death-Ray Fiend" whose depredations have given the authorities one of the most baffling criminals of all time.
>
> With his face and body horribly burned, Zeigler's murder was similar to that of C. P. Simms, a former business associate, and three others who have met death at the monster's hands: Galen Jager, unemployed sailor; K. K. Presslar, private detective; and Wade Burgess, artist.
>
> Morton Hill and Rolph McLaren, guests of Zeigler's, witnessed the killing and described its horror. Suffering from shock, both Hill and McLaren were in Hillcrest Hospital.
>
> Police had a message, supposedly left on Zeigler's body by the slayer, which read:
>
> *Neither the heights of the air, nor the depths of waters, nor the rocks of the hills, shall hide them in the day of my vengeance.* —The Man out of Hell.
>
> Morton Hill, a lawyer, told authorities Zeigler's life had been threatened and the sportsman had retreated to the heavily guarded island as a precautionary measure. He said he and Zeigler and McLaren were sitting in front of the summer house when the murderer suddenly appeared. Hill said he and McLaren rose to protect Zeigler, but that crackling flames had issued from the monster's hands and that almost immediately he lost consciousness.
>
> Frank Pettis, a guard, said he heard the screams of Zeigler and his companions and came around the house in time to see the fiend dragging away the heavy body of Zeigler. He emptied his gun, but the demon threw the body of Zeigler into a swimming pool and then jumped in after it.
>
> With additional police reserves called, more than a hundred men surrounded the pool while it was drained. The body of Zeigler was found, but the slayer had disappeared into an 18-inch drain pipe. Hurrying to the other end of the drain where it emptied into the lake, officers with flashlights sighted the monster retreating into a bend of the huge pipe. Poison gas was pumped into the pipe for thirty minutes. At the end of that time, Detective Chris Lineman, protected by a gas mask, entered the pipe's mouth. Seeing that the fiend was apparently unharmed and approaching, he retreated. In another moment the naked demon had come out of the pipe, and spraying the stunning death rays, fought his way through a cordon of police and plunged into the lake.
>
> The monster was not seen after vanishing in the lake. Tracks found later on the marshy shore, and two abandoned flat irons, indicated that the demon had walked across the floor of the lake. But this theory was discredited, since no human could have stayed under the water for that length of time.
>
> Sergeant Olmsley, who also figured in the Simms murder case, said that no plausible explanation had been made of how the murderer gained access to the heavily guarded island. The only theory advanced was that he had walked across the bed of the lake and crawled through the drain pipe into the swimming pool.
>
> A farmer on the Junction highway reported seeing a heavy, dark sedan, with the rear compartment curtained, speeding toward Verano at about ten o'clock. The farmer's description of the car led police to believe it was the same as used in the Allene Anson kidnapping.
BILL did not wade through the mass of expert opinion and speculation which followed. His head was swimming feverishly. The bottom had dropped out of all his theories. Now he groped in the icy dark of doubt and confusion. The Man out of Hell! The dread words fell on his ears now with a more hideous sound than ever. Conjectures which assailed his very sanity forced themselves upon him. What was the thing? A corpse come back from the grave, revived by some ghastly and unspeakable rites? A zombie—a grisly, soulless ghoul, neither man nor beast nor devil? Impossible! His common sense told him that. Yet the Thing existed, had done what no human creature could do! And Allene was at this moment in its power!
Sick with horror and dismay, Bill leaned weakly against the lamp post and stared dejectedly through the thin haze of light with unseeing eyes. He racked his jaded brain for some faint glimmer of hope, some clue, however flimsy, that he could follow.
Then he stiffened, crumpling the paper in excited hands. He had suddenly remembered the words which the monster had thundered at the pilot of Massalon's plane: "Sweep back over Verano!" Verano! The sanatorium of Dr. Wolff! Had it been simply a coincidence that the monster had given that direction?
Bill did not wait to follow out the new line of reasoning. His brain was sick of futile groping. Anything to lead him out of this agony of inaction was welcome. It was a dark and obscure trail, but a glimmer of hope lighted it.
He hurried toward the "We Rent 'Em, You Drive 'Em" sign with brisk, determined strides.
---
"But let him try me more, and by the Fates,
He'll soon be knocking at the gates of Hell!"
—The Incantation of Theocritus.
ON THE road beyond Verano, at a point about a half mile from the Wolff Sanatorium, Bill swerved the car aside, shut off the lights and left it. From here he would go on afoot.
He hurried along the winding road, sniffing the chill air from the sea, sensing an electric tension in the shadowy night that keyed his nerves to fever pitch. A premonition of peril, stark and imminent, brooded over the night.
Presently the great stone house came into view. Behind its high rock walls it huddled, grim and sinister at the base of bare cliffs that towered darkly behind it. Two lighted windows shone out of the shadows like yellow eyes watching his approach. Bill went softly now, muffling his footsteps, peering cautiously about him. Involuntarily he shuddered at the memory of the monster's preternatural powers. Should he have come alone? Yes, for force had failed against this infernal monster. What was required was stealth and patience—and an infinite cunning.
Crouching behind one of the massive portals, Bill stared through the gate into the grounds. The moon, now riding high above the sea at his left, cast eerie shadows through the foliage of the tall trees. An aura of unutterable evil seemed to emanate from the place, a foul miasma of horror, breathing its dank breath against his face.
Cautiously he began to lift himself over the gate. He reached the top and dropped down silently into the shadows of the wall inside the grounds. There he lay still, listening, probing the shadows with his eyes before going on. Then, on hands and knees, he began a circuit of the grounds, keeping within the shadow of the wall.
At the back of the house a light burned beyond the iron bars of a basement window. Figures moved dimly in the light. Stealthily Bill crept across the yard, stole toward the window. He dropped flat upon his stomach and peered in. Then he was gasping for breath.
On a sort of a couch that was covered with a glass case like a jeweler's tray lay the naked body of a man. His hair was gray, his face a hideous mask of suffering. He was so thin that the ribs were outlined grotesquely beneath the wrinkled flesh. Bracelets and anklets of steel held him to the couch on which he lay.
Staring down at this wreck of human flesh with a look of cool detachment, stood the man called Wolff, while leaning over his shoulder, his scrawny neck outthrust, his cadaverous face grinning repulsively, was the Hindu in the black turban—the same skinny shadow that Bill had followed on the night that the dying Jager had called him from his office.
Bill tensed, straining his ears, as the doctor spoke, the words flowing unctuously over his heavy lips. "A poor specimen, Gandhara," he said. "But we shall try it, anyhow."
The Hindu nodded, stepped toward an iron tank in a corner of the room. From the tank a snake-like tube of rubber ran into the prison of glass, and as the lean hands of the Asiatic pressed a lever, a cloud of greenish fog flowed into the case where the victim lay.
THE eyes of the tortured wretch bulged outward. He writhed and gasped in agony. The swart doctor bent close, watching his prisoner's reaction with pitiless eyes. "Good," he said presently, "that will do."
The Hindu lifted the lever, picked up an electric fan from the floor and snapped on the current. Then, as Wolff lifted the case, the air current from the fan swept the greenish cloud toward the window and straight into Bill Zeigler's face.
As the detective fell back with stinging nostrils and burning eyes and throat, a more intense horror burned in his mind, for he had caught one vivid glimpse of the naked body from which the green fog was lifting. It had been covered with ghastly blotches like patches of rotting flesh!
Burying his face in his hands, Bill fought back the impulse to cough as he rolled over, his body jerking spasmodically. Struggling with pain and suffocation he heard the voice of Wolff drift through the window. "It is of little value, Gandhara. He's too weak."
"The girl, perhaps, Sahib?"
Bill straightened with a rush of blood mounting to his head.
"Yes," came the voice, "she is young, healthy. But she has wonderful blood—priceless for our purpose—we must save her for that."
Bill frowned. What "purpose" did the doctor have in his twisted mind? The detective's tortured brain conceived unspeakable horrors. He heard the voice of Wolff resume:
"When he has fetched us young Zeigler, Gandhara, we shall have an excellent specimen—the very type! Well, now for the other business!"
The light in the room went out.
Bill sprang to his feet, flattened himself against the house. His temples were throbbing, and cold sweat dripped from his brow. The monster was here, no doubt of that now. And Allene—Allene was here too! But even now they were preparing...
He staggered up, scuttled soft-footed around the house. A light burned in a high window which he judged must open upon the cell of the madman, Carmichael. Then, as he stared, a light flashed in a similar window to the left of it.
The dark branches of an elm tree brushed this window. Quickly Bill swung up into the tree, crawled cat-like along a limb toward the light, stared inside.
He caught his breath. Allene stood near one wall of the cell-like room, her loose gold hair glinting in the dim light, one white hand clutching a torn, sheer negligee about the half-hidden contours of her slim moulded body. With her other hand she was moving aside a picture that hung on the wall. And now a crudely cut hole on the wall appeared, and framed in it the strange pale face of Carmichael.
"Where are they?" the girl whispered anxiously. "I heard them moving..."
Carmichael smiled wearily. "We must wait," he said, "until things are quiet. The key fits; I've tried it! Your door is barred on the outside. When I'm sure where they are, we'll make a break."
"But can't we now?" she pleaded.
"We must wait," he insisted, his dark eyes flashing. And his face vanished as the picture moved back into place.
BILL backed along the limb, slid to the ground. Here he crouched, examining his automatic. Then, with a finger taut on the trigger, he scuttled toward the front of the house. Again he crouched still, listening. Allene's cell was on the ground floor. Except for the lights above and the lights below the other parts of the house were dark.
He tiptoed softly up the steps and tried the front door. The knob responded. It was unlocked. He opened it, gave it a little shove and stepped to one side. Nothing happened. He peered around the sill of the door. The reception room and the hall beyond were shrouded in darkness.
He crossed the reception room, paused at the entrance to the dark hall. He turned to look over his shoulder. The hair on his scalp bristled. The figure of the skinny Hindu sprang toward him, a leaping black silhouette against the moonlight.
Bill's trigger finger jerked, a spurt of flame lashed the dark. A bony arm like an iron rod struck his wrist, knocked the pistol from his hand. He lashed out with murderous fists slamming savagely to the Hindu's lank body that writhed and twisted under the crushing punishment, but clung with an amazing strength. Snake-like arms encircled Bill's body, and straining to free himself, he rolled with his assailant to the floor. Vise-like jaws clamped on his shoulder, teeth sank into the flesh as they threshed and twisted. Then with a sudden jerk Bill tore himself loose, slammed his knotted fists into the snarling face.
The body beneath him went limp. He straightened, then stiffened as a hand, cold and hard as iron, grasped his neck, jerked him from the floor and flung him spinning across the room.
He staggered groggily to his feet, felt his blood curdle in his veins at sight of the ghastly shape towering in the moonlight from the open door. It was the monster himself—the Man out of Hell!
Throwing all his strength into one desperate lunge, he hurled his body toward the door. The hideous shape moved, the horrid eyes blazed and something struck Bill which sent his brain spinning in his skull like a top. Yawning gulfs of darkness swallowed his fading senses as he crumpled to the floor.
Consciousness returned in gradually encroaching waves. There was a persistent clammy odor, like the smell of a vault; a dim low room swam confusedly before his half opened eyes. He opened them. He seemed to be lying, naked to the waist, on a sort of operating table, his wrists and ankles manacled. Test tubes and bottles and retorts, and other curious equipment glistened on a long laboratory table. In the center of a concrete wall a dark vault like a huge oven loomed, its iron door swinging open. Bill listened. Hearing no sound in the room, he turned his head the other way. The opposite wall was a honeycomb of smaller vaults just wide enough to accommodate the coffin-like box which each contained. The room was like a ghastly burial vault!
JERKING his head up, Bill stared at the heavy door, then at the sound of footsteps outside, he lowered it quickly, resumed his attitude of unconsciousness. Peering from beneath lowered lids he saw the cadaverous Hindu, his oily face swollen and pocked with plasters, precede the swarthy doctor into the room. Between them they bore a stretcher on which lay a sheet-covered figure with a face so utterly pale, so horribly death-like with its gaping jaw and wax-like flesh that at first Bill did not recognize it as the face of Caul Massalon.
Then with a shudder of horror he saw the stretcher come to rest upon the floor, while the two fiends lowered from a vault one of the coffin-like boxes. Into this they lifted the frightful body and dropped the lid.
"His blood," said the man called Wolff, "was bad, Gandhara—practically worthless. What we need is more youth, more fresh blood!"
Listening in awed terror to these ominous words, a passage from the Odyssey drifted weirdly through Bill's swirling thoughts, a passage which described how the pallid inhabitants of hell clutched ravenously at Odysseus, crying for fresh blood to fill their ghastly bodies. Had the blood been drained from Caul Massalon's body for such a purpose?
"Ah," said the Asiatic with an evil leer, "but we have young Zeigler now, Sahib!"
"Yes," the infamous doctor agreed. "After my examination I am convinced that he is a perfect specimen. And now—"
They moved toward the opposite wall of the room and Bill could hear the sound of the iron vault door being swung wide. Its horrible significance dawned upon him.
Wolff approached, stared a moment at Bill's motionless body and pronounced, "Still unconscious," then added with a cynical laugh, "The heat will no doubt revive him." He began to roll the table on which Bill lay toward the far wall.
Bill's brain raced madly. He would not submit to the unmentionable tortures they were preparing. He would die fighting. But he must think of Allene too, choose the moment in which there would be some chance of escape, some chance to save her!
He kept his eyes closed, controlling his nerves with a grim, desperate effort. His hands and arms were released. They were lifting him now. He lay limp, relaxed, determined to choose the moment when they were thrusting him into the oven to throw himself violently upon them.
Then abruptly, with a shock of panic and dismay, he felt himself lowered, dropped. His body touched cold metal, his eyes flew open, saw a steel lid drop with a clang above him!
Half swooning in a sweat of terror, Bill moved his body in its metal coffin, saw that the horrid thing was of thin steel, perforated with small holes. Through one of these holes he stared out into the room. Wolff and the Hindu were moving toward the door. "And now," said the doctor pleasantly, "we'll fire the furnace."
They went out and the door was closed.
Shaken with unfathomable horror, Bill lay in a frozen trance and stared at the steel lid of the coffin. If it was locked, he was doomed—doomed beyond any hope of escape! Now the words of the monster flowed back into his mind. "I will take you to a hell you have not dreamed of!"
---
"Have mercy on me!" cried I out aloud,
"Spirit or living man, whate'er thou be!"
—The Inferno.
FOR a moment which was like an age of anguish and terror, Bill lay there, his trembling hands lifted to push against the lid, but paralyzed, dreading the answer to the terrible question. Then, gritting his teeth, he forced his hands up, pushed. Half stunned with relief, he felt it yield. They had not locked it!
He pushed it open, clambered out, dashed to the door. Then he learned why his captors had been so careless. For the door was of steel, barred on the outside. The weight of his shoulder did not even shake it. Glancing wildly about for some weapon with which to attack it, his eye fell upon the coffin which contained the bloodless corpse of Caul Massalon.
Urged on by a desperate hope, Bill ran to the coffin, threw back the lid, and mastering his revulsion, lifted out the ghastly cadaver. He hurried with it to the steel case from which he had escaped, lowered it in, slammed the lid and fastened it with a latch.
Striding back across the room, he paused to let his eye run over a case of chemicals on the laboratory table. A thin tube of clear liquid attracted his glance and he frowned, staring at the label—H₂SO₄. He flogged his memory, visions of his college chemistry class whirling through his mind. Then he had it! A distillate of green vitriol—sulphuric acid! He snatched the tube and hurried to the wooden coffin from which he had removed Massalon's body. He clambered in and lowered the lid.
He had not been a moment too soon. Raising the lid a fraction of an inch, he peered out, saw Wolff, followed by the Hindu, enter the room, rubbing his hands.
They proceeded to the oven and Wolff thrust in a tentative hand. "Good," he pronounced. "In with him now, before it's too hot!"
Straining, they lifted the steel case, shoved it into the oven, slammed the iron door and fastened it. Then Wolff adjusted the dial on the outside. "I've set it to gradually increase the heat for a two hour period," he said, as he turned. "We'll see something interesting then."
Shivering at the thought of the frightful torture he had so narrowly escaped, Bill lay tense and breathless, and saw with infinite relief that the two fiends were leaving the room.
As soon as they were out, he sprang from his hiding place, ran to the door and tried it again. But as before, it was barred. He turned back, determined to find some way to open it, when the sound of the bar on the outside being moved quietly sent him scampering back to cover.
He had just lowered the lid of his gruesome hideout and adjusted his eye to the crack, when the door swung open and Allene, followed by Carmichael, stepped into the room. She stared about her, wide-eyed with fright, then turned to the man who was closing the door. "Why have we come here?" she asked in a terrified whisper. "Can we escape from here?"
Carmichael turned, straightened to his full height, stared at her with a curious look which seemed suddenly to disconcert her. For she stepped back, self consciously gathering about her the gossamer froth of silk that covered her slender body, and gazed with sudden alarm at the strange face to which Bill's eyes were also oddly attracted. The great dome-like forehead gleamed in the faint light and Bill suddenly sensed the presence of power there, as if the currents from a tremendous intellect were pulsing from the enigmatic eyes.
Then Carmichael spoke. "This farce can go on no longer," he said. "Sooner or later you would learn all."
"What do you mean?" she stammered, suddenly aghast. "You will not help me?"
"I mean," he said solemnly, "that I am in love with you—that I cannot allow you to go away except with me."
"My God!" she gasped. "Then you are with them—the monster—Wolff?"
"Wolff," he said, "is a dying wreck—a human guinea pig in these experimental chambers."
"But I thought this was his place..."
"It was his place!"
"Then who is the master now—this monster?"
For a moment a dark cloud passed across the transparent whiteness of Carmichael's features. His tall frame came erect, a gleam of diabolical pride flashed in his dark eyes. "I am the master!" he said.
BILL gasped, clutching the phial of deadly acid, ready to leap to her rescue, but restraining himself until the imperative moment.
"You?" It burst from Allene, an incredulous sob.
He drew nearer, stood over her. "Yes," he repeated. "I am the master."
With terror and revulsion struggling in her face, the girl suddenly flung herself away from him, backed to the wall.
"Stop!" came the startled command from Carmichael's lips. He grasped her shoulder, pulled her away from the wall. "You will destroy us all!" His thin hand was shaking now as he pointed to a black metal box like a meter that was attached to the wall behind her.
"But why...?"
"It's the timing apparatus," he said, "and the firing switch for a charge of dynamite that would blow this place to atoms. If I should set the hands on that dial for a certain hour, and then press the button below it..."
"Let me press it!" She sprang toward him. He pushed her back, stood between her and the deadly switchbox.
Slowly, Bill began to raise the lid of the coffin. The man's face was turned away from him. Now was his moment. Then he checked himself.
"No," Carmichael said to the girl. "You shall not be harmed."
Quickly Bill drew back. Any move now would jeopardize her chance of escape. If she could only reach safety, he would stay and take his chances. He listened in suspense for the next words.
"Then let me go," she pleaded.
"With me!" Carmichael said. "You will go away with me?"
"Never!" she cried. "You beast, you monster!"
"Wait!" he told her, in a voice curiously softened. "Before you condemn me, listen! I was born all intellect and no emotion. I was what is called an 'infant prodigy.' I knew calculus in my cradle. I had only two things in my life—science, and my father.
"He was an electrical engineer. Ten years ago, in the Gran Chaco, your stepfather and three other men murdered him treacherously. They stole the treasure he had discovered and enriched themselves. A Hindu servant who was devoted to my father came to the university where I was studying and told me the story.
"I was almost deranged with grief and rage. Caul Massalon, who had kept an eye on me, suspected my knowledge of the crime. I was tricked, brought to this prison with an ex-gangster for a jailer.
"For months I was on the verge of madness; then I grew calm, deadly calm, throwing the whole power of my mind into a dream of vengeance."
"But the monster," she interrupted, "this horrible thing that you told me was a demon—a work of magic?"
"He is a work of magic," Carmichael replied, a strange light shining in his pallid face. "Every age has its own magic—ours is the magic of electricity!"
"Electricity!" she echoed dazedly.
"Yes. Shall I tell you of the years I spent planning my robot part by part, here in my prison cell? Six years I worked, and I made him perfect—a terrible and wonderful creature!
"At the university they said that I would be another Steinmetz, but I have surpassed him! When the plans were complete, I sent them by the Hindu to Gorgondoff, a brilliant Russian I knew at the university. Gorgondoff made him in two years. Then we took possession of this place easily. Gorgondoff impersonated Wolff, forcing the latter to continue to write his reports to Caul Massalon."
"Oh, it's horrible," Allene cried. "Horrible!"
"Perhaps." He smiled. "But what a work of genius my monster is. A marvel, the dream of great minds through all the ages! Flesh-like rubber (Gorgondoff's invention) covers his duralumin body, and a steel mesh imbedded in it makes him invulnerable to man's weapons. Inside, a multiplicity of radio receiving circuits of different wave lengths, operating mechanical systems, controls his movements. The energy for operating him is transmitted from the electrical laboratory in the upper story of this house.
"With the television scanning and transmission system in his head, and a miniature broadcast receiver, he has senses of super-human sharpness. Through him the operator can see and hear and speak. Transmitted radio power gives him the strength of a gorilla! And from his fingers can be released an electric current that will stun or kill, as you wish. He is a monster, yes, but a monster like the gods of fable—like Thor with his terrible hammer!"
Listening awed and dumbfounded, Bill felt the man's compelling power. The intensity of his speech, the gesture of Satanic pride, were at once repulsive and fascinating.
"And why are you telling me all this?" Allene cried.
"Because," he said, "I want you like I have never wanted anything! You shall go away with me!"
"And this hideous monster?"
"No," he said, "I am no longer interested in my Man out of Hell. My vengeance is accomplished. I am through. I shall give him to Gorgondoff, as I promised, in return for his help."
CARMICHAEL smiled. "Many things that you would call horrible, I'm afraid. Gorgondoff is a Nihilist. With 'The Man out of Hell' and others like him, he will wreak on the world such a program of destruction that the dead will turn over in their graves! Think of the possibility of such a brood of demons! In these experimental chambers, Gorgondoff is perfecting the most deadly poisons and gasses, testing each carefully on living subjects—poisons and gasses which produce dozens of unspeakable forms of death. He is breeding the most formidable disease germs of every known species, and many unheard of. His monsters will release on the world the plagues of the middle ages—The Black Death, the Cholera, and others as terrible. I have been only playing with this thing that I have made. Gorgondoff will make him the scourge of the earth!"
As Carmichael talked, Bill Zeigler felt stealing over him a numbing horror such as no corpse arisen from the grave could have inspired. Ghosts and demons and ghouls were the terror of primitive minds—childish fancies compared with this soulless Thing of iron with lightnings and plagues at his fingertips—an advancement in horror that made the others seem trivial and unsubstantial. He swore that if Allene could only contrive to escape, he would stay and press the dynamite switch, if it cost him his life!
"How can you permit such abominable things?" the girl sobbed.
Carmichael shrugged. "I take no pleasure in cruelty," he said, "but to me, humans are no more than flies. Many more of them will pass through Gorgondoff's laboratories—human guinea pigs, like the ones he has now."
"You mean—here?" she cried. "Now?"
"Certainly."
She flung herself upon him like a fury, beating at him with her fists, sobbing with rage and terror.
"This will not help," he said. "But I might grant them a merciful death."
"What is your price?" she challenged.
"You!" he said.
She stared at him, appalled. "Then I will kill myself rather than submit to you!" she answered.
Carmichael gloated hungrily on her beauty—the magnificent hair, falling in golden ripples about the face, the graceful contours of the tense young body half revealed under the shimmering silk.
"I must have you!" he muttered, his black eyes gleaming feverishly. Then he dropped his head, muttered, as if to himself, "And I am still master here!" He raised his eyes again to her face. "And if I promise...?"
The sentence was cut short. The door behind them had opened. They whirled, and Bill, staring past them, saw in the embrasure of the door the ghastly figure of the monster—the Man out of Hell.
"Who is the master?" asked the voice of Gorgondoff through the robot's horrid mouth. "You were the master. But you have betrayed me. I am the master now!"
---
"Listen, wayfarer, to the words of my death!"
—Inscription at the City of Brass.
AT THE monster's words, Bill saw Carmichael straighten, his body tense, his face livid. "Get out of here!" he stormed.
A laugh, deep, guttural, ominous, replied. "Your monster, it seems does not know his master's words," the voice from the robot taunted. "Gorgondoff is master now. And Carmichael and the woman who inspired his treachery shall be two more guinea pigs in his laboratory. You fool, did you think you could double-cross me?"
"You defy me then?" Carmichael asked hoarsely. He looked at the girl who stood back to the wall, paralyzed with terror, staring at the frightful automaton. Then he whipped a revolver from his pocket and emptied it at the monster's eyes.
The robot ducked his shaggy head and lunged forward. At the same instant, Carmichael doubled his body into a ball and flung himself like a projectile at the monster's legs. It was his only chance—to trip the thing and avoid the terrible hands.
As Carmichael's body struck the iron legs, the thing swayed, reached down, then toppled and fell. Simultaneously, Bill sprang from his hiding place, darted past the sprawled bodies.
"Bill! Oh, Bill!" the girl cried, running toward him.
He grasped her arm, pushed her quickly from the room, and followed. Looking back from the doorway, Bill saw Carmichael scrambling to his feet just as the robot's arm reached out and seized his leg, dragged him back.
Bill jammed the door shut and shot the heavy bolt across it. The girl was sobbing now, her body trembling as she huddled against him, muttering incoherent words.
Bill stared down the dim tunnel-like hall that ran across the basement to a flight of steps visible at the far end. "Let's go," he whispered hoarsely. "We're not out yet!"
With one arm about her shivering figure, he hurried toward the steps, gripping the phial of deadly acid in his hand.
At the top of the steps they emerged in the long, dark hall, paused there listening. Then abruptly, a horrid crash in the basement below, electrified them to action. Dragging the girl along with him, Bill plunged toward the front of the house.
A lean figure, seen dimly against the glass of the front door, moved toward them as they approached. "Stop!" growled the voice of the Hindu.
Shoving the girl behind him, Bill flicked out the stopper of the phial with his thumb, and as the gun in the Hindu's hand spat its lethal flame, he ducked quickly to one side, and flung the deadly acid into the Asiatic's face. With a howl of pain, the Hindu fell back, flailing the dark with his arms as the vitriol burned into his flesh.
Bill flung him aside. They sprang out the door, leaped down the steps and dashed across the grounds to the gate.
It was locked. Glancing back, Bill saw the robot's fiery eyes blaze in the doorway of the house and move toward them.
Lifting Allene to the top of the gate, Bill flung himself over and caught her as she dropped into his arms. "My God!" he exclaimed. "You've got no shoes!" The satin slippers had fallen from her feet.
"It doesn't matter."
"But it does!" Still holding her panting body in his arms, he began to run down the road. Pausing to look back, he saw that the monster had vanished. Hopefully, he slackened his pace. "We'll make it to the car," he gasped, "then—"
THE words were scarcely out of his mouth when a column of light slashed out from the darkness behind them and threw their distorted shadows on the road ahead. Whirling, Bill saw the great gates open, and an instant later, a big car with blazing headlights leaped through, the noise of its engine rising to a roar.
On their right, the hills rose sharply to the towering black cliffs above. Still bearing the girl in his arms, Bill plunged up through the boulders and thorny brush. Painfully he climbed, grasping the brush with his free hand to keep from slipping.
"Let me down, Bill," the girl pleaded. "I can climb..."
He shook his head and struggled on. Stopping for breath, he saw the big car come to a halt below them, while a huge and grisly figure leaped out and began to scale the steep hillside with the agility of a mad gorilla.
Bill scrambled on with the energy of desperation. Reaching a more gentle slope, he began to run toward the shadowy cliffs ahead. He reached a place where scrub cedar dotted the hillside, and ducking in and out, was able for a brief time to elude the frightful pursuer. And then he ran square up against a cliff wall. Sheer and steep, it blocked their way. He struck off to the left, following its base, and presently, with a gasp of relief, sighted a dark gap in the cliffside that indicated the mouth of a cave.
Bill dived into the cave. He rested Allene on her feet, and leaned panting with exhaustion against the cave wall. "I wish I'd had time to set that dynamite switch!" he choked out.
"I pressed the button," Allene said.
"You did?"
"Yes—when the monster came in. But I didn't have time to set the dial. I didn't even have time to see when it was set for!"
"Damn!" Bill swore. "Then we can't tell—but there's a chance, if we can just hold out long enough."
"Perhaps," she whispered, "we'd better get farther in. There's sand and dirt here, and I can walk. You're exhausted!"
Groping along the walls, and feeling carefully before them with their feet, they proceeded into the black depths of the cave. Then suddenly, light showed ahead of them. "An opening!" he exclaimed. They hurried toward it.
The cave narrowed at the opening, and they emerged upon a high ledge that overlooked the sea. The moon, hanging low over the water, paved a path of gold across the leaden expanse of the waves. They sagged weakly against the cliff, breathing heavily.
"A godsend—this cave!" Bill panted.
He began to explore the ledge. At one end it broke off sharply, a sheer drop of two hundred feet or so. He walked to the other end, climbed up for twenty or thirty feet among loose rock and giant boulders and was halted abruptly, unable to go farther. A queer, cold feeling of alarm took possession of him. He returned to Allene's side. "I might as well tell you," he said, "there's no way off this ledge except through the cave."
"Maybe he won't find us, Bill?"
"But if he does."
"If he does," she answered quietly, looking up at him, "I guess it's the end."
He put an arm about her, drew her body close, and for a wordless moment kissed the pale face that was turned up to his. Then he released her, stepped to the cave's mouth, peered in. He drew back with a shudder, hurried to her side.
"He's coming!" she cried.
Bill nodded. He lifted her in his arms and climbed as high as he could among the boulders above the ledge. Then, with their backs to the sheer wall of stone that blocked their escape, they stood and waited, staring down over the cliff's edge. Below them, lashed by foaming breakers, the jagged points of submerged reefs thrust up above the water like enormous black teeth.
"Darling," he said softly, "you stand here near the edge. I'll do what I can to fight him back. If I fail..."
She nodded, gazing down at the churning water which sent up a ghostly music.
FROM the cave's mouth they could hear the steady crunching of the monster's heavy tread. Again Bill held the girl close, felt her warm lips return his kiss, then drew away. He looked about for a weapon. He picked up two heavy, jagged rocks, and holding these ready, waited.
Then abruptly the horrible eyes were visible, the massive body emerged from the cave's mouth. It stopped, turning its baleful orbs full upon them.
Leaping forward, Bill hurled a rock at the horrid head. It ducked. A second missile followed, struck the robot's body and rebounded. The monster stood still. "Resistance will do no good," said the voice of Gorgondoff. "Carmichael is dead and cannot save you. If you surrender, you shall live for many months perhaps—in my laboratory. If you resist, your deaths will be hellish! Will you give up?"
"Take me," Bill offered. "Let her escape, and I promise to come with you."
A hollow, fiendish laugh replied. The monster moved toward them, began slowly and relentlessly climbing the boulder-strewn incline. Seizing rocks blindly, Bill hurled them with all his strength at the approaching horror. But the Thing came on, bowing its neck against the hail of stones. And inch by inch, Bill backed away, panting, gasping, feeling the stinging sweat from his brow dim his eyes as he continued the desperate retreat, hurling the stones which could slow the monster's progress but could not check him.
Now he felt the body of Allene behind him and knew that he had reached the last ditch. He could retreat no farther. Whirling about he saw that the girl had moved to the cliff's edge, stood there poised for the leap. "It's all over," Bill gasped.
He stumbled back, fell against a huge boulder that rested at the edge of the steep path. Had it shuddered slightly when his body struck it? Could it be dislodged? He reached out swiftly, grasped Allene, drew her back. "Here!" he cried, "Push! Throw all your strength against it."
He jammed his shoulder savagely against the huge rock, saw that it was balanced there on an insecure base. It was a last desperate hope, and they threw every ounce of strength into the effort, felt the boulder totter slightly, then rock back.
The monster was upon them now. A yard beyond the stone against which they were straining, he paused, stretched out his great arms toward them. A shower of jagged flames leaped into the air with a hissing crackle, threw lurid light upon their strained and horror-stricken faces, swept nearer, singeing their hair, scorching their flesh.
THEY gathered the last ounce of their failing strength, released it in a final shove. The great boulder tottered back, then forward. It hung for a terrible instant, poised there. They hurled their bodies against it. There was a crunching groan as it finally toppled from its base. They fell back against the cliff, blind with terror and exhaustion.
Down went the groaning boulder, shaking loose surrounding rocks which joined the crushing avalanche. Then through the cloud of dust they saw the grotesque shape of the horrid automaton. Thrown back over the cliff's edge, it whirled seaward amidst a deluge of rocks, the terrible flames still spewing from its fingers.
Bill staggered to his feet, saw that Allene had fainted. Still dizzy with exhaustion, he lifted her in his arms and stumbled down to the ledge. Then he plunged into the cave and began to thread the dark tunnel. He must escape from this trap before Gorgondoff himself should have time to come out to avenge his monster.
But nearing the opening he stopped suddenly, almost dropped the girl to the ground, as the sound of a terrific explosion boomed thunderously. A red glare now lighted the tunnel's entrance.
Allene, revived by the shock, lifted her head. "What is it?" she cried. Then joyously, "The explosion! That den of horrors is destroyed!" She threw her arms around Bill's neck in a delirium of relief, struggled to the ground, and grasped his hand as they ran out together.
The great house was a blazing inferno.
They stood and gazed at the now crumbling pile about which the flames leaped hungrily. It was as if Hell itself had reached up to reclaim its own. Then Bill turned to the girl. She looked up into his face, and for the first time in many hours, both smiled.
"Before I carry you another yard," Bill said, "there's something I want to ask you." He grinned. "It's a little abrupt, perhaps, and under the circumstances ... I wonder if I should wait until tomorrow."
"Are you asking my advice?" she inquired. "If you are, I think procrastination is a deplorable habit." She thrust her face up to his, lips parted invitingly. He drew her close, and the rest of the conversation was indistinct.
**THE END**