Mask of Death Page 5

  _5. Death's Lovely Mask_

  Chichester's home sat on a square of lawn between the new boulevard andthe bay shore like a white jewel in the sun. It looked prosperous,prosaic, serene. But to Keane's eyes, at least, it seemed covered withthe psychic pall that had come to be associated in his mind with thedreaded Doctor Satan. He walked toward the blandly peaceful-looking newhome with the feeling of one who walks toward a tomb.

  "A feeling that might be well founded," he shrugged grimly, as hereached the porch.

  He could feel the short hair at the base of his skull stir a little ashe reached the door of this place he believed to be the latest lair ofthe man who was amused to call himself Doctor Satan. And it stirredstill more as he tried the knob.

  The door was unlocked.

  He looked at it for several minutes. A lock wouldn't have mattered toKeane, and Satan knew that as well as Keane himself. Nevertheless, toleave the door invitingly open like this was almost too obliging!

  He opened the door and stepped in, bracing himself for instant attack.But no attack of any kind was forthcoming. The front hall in which hefound himself was deserted. Indeed, the whole house had that curiouslybreathless feeling encountered in homes for the moment untenanted.

  Down the hall was an open double doorway. Keane stared that way. Hehimself could not have told how he knew, but know he did, that beyondthat doorway lay what he had come to find. He walked toward it.

  Behind him, the street door opened again, very slowly and cautiously. Aneye was put close to the resultant crack. The eye was dark, exoticallylovely. It fastened on Keane's back.

  Keane stared in through the doorway. He was gazing into a library,dimmed by drawn shades. He entered it, with every nerve-end in his bodysilently shrieking of danger.

  The street door softly closed after admitting a figure that moved onsoundless feet. A woman, with a face like a pale flower on an exquisitethroat. Madame Sin.

  Her face was as serenely lovely as ever. Not by a line had it changed.And yet, subtly, it had become a mask of beautiful death. Her eyes weredeath's dark fires as she moved without a sound down the hall toward thelibrary. In her tapering hands was the gold-link bag.

  * * * * *

  In the library, Keane stood with beating heart over two stark, stillbodies that lay on the thick carpet near a flat-topped desk. One waswizened, lank, a little undersized, with dry-looking skin. It was thebody of Chichester. At first it seemed a corpse, but then Keane saw thechest move with slow, deep breaths, as the breast of the woman back atthe hotel had moved.

  But it was not this figure that made Keane's heart thud and his handsclench. It was the other.

  This was a taller figure, lying on its back with hands folded. The handswere red-gloved. The face was concealed by a red mask. The body wasdraped by a red cloak. From the head sprang two little knobs, orprojections, like Lucifer's horns. Doctor Satan himself!

  "It's my chance," whispered Keane. "Satan--sending his soul and mind andspirit from his own shell--into that of others--Madame Sin--Chichester.Now his body lies here empty! If I killed that----"

  Exotically beautiful dark eyes--with death in their loveliness--watchedhim from the library doorway as he bent over the red-robed figure.Sardonic death in lovely eyes!

  "No wonder Gest thought that Wilson was killed in the conference room,just before he could tell of the roulette wheel, as if Doctor Satan hadbeen there himself! Satan _was_ there! And he was on the roof gardenearlier, and in the roulette room! A trance for the woman, the crowdingof Satan's black spirit into her body--and she becomes Madame Sin, withSatan peering from her eyes and moving in her mantle of flesh! A trancefor the unfortunate Chichester--and Satan talks with Gest and Kroner asthe Blue Bay treasurer, and can strike down Wilson when he comes toreport! Chichester and Madame Sin--both Doctor Satan--becoming lifeless,trance-held shells when Satan's soul has left them!"

  But here was Satan's physical shell, lying in a coma at his feet, to bekilled at a stroke! His deadly enemy, the enemy of all mankind,delivered helpless to him!

  "But if I do kill the body," Keane whispered, "will I kill the spirittoo, or banish it from the material world so that humanity won't againbe troubled? Satan's spirit, the essential man, is abroad in anotherbody. If I kill this red-robed body, will it draw the spirit out ofmortal affairs with it? Or would it simply deprive it of its originalhousing so that I'd have to seek Satan's soul in body after body, as Ihave till now sought him in the flesh in lair after lair? That wouldbe--horrible!"

  He drove away the grim thought. It was probable that with the death ofhis body, Doctor Satan in entirety would die, or at least pass out ofmortal knowledge through the gateway called death. And the mechanics offorcing him through that gateway was to kill the body.

  Behind him, Madame Sin crept closer and closer on soundless feet. Herred lips were set in a still smile. The gold-link purse was extended alittle toward Keane. Her forefinger searched for the movable bar thatchanged angles of the queer, metal cage within.

  Keane's hand raised to strike. His eyes burned down at the red-cladfigure of the man at his feet, who was mankind's enemy. Behind him,Madame Sin's finger found the little bar....

  It was not till then that Keane felt the psychic difference caused bythe entrance of another into a room that had been deserted save forhimself. Another person would not have felt that difference at all, butKeane had developed his psychic perceptions as ordinary men exercise anddevelop their biceps.

  With an inarticulate cry he whirled, and leaped far to the side.

  "The wall behind the spot where he had beendisappeared."]

  The wall behind the spot where he had been disappeared as the gold-linkbag continued to point that way. The woman, snarling like a tigress,swung her bag toward Keane in his new position. But Keane was notwaiting. He sprang for her. His hand got her wrist and wrenched to getthe gold-link purse away from her. It turned toward her, back againtoward him, with the little bar moving as her hand was constricted overthe thing in the purse.

  It was a woman's body he struggled with. But there was strength in thefragile flesh beyond the strength of any woman! It took all his steelypower to tear from her grasp the gold-link purse with its encloseddevice. As he got it, he heard the woman's shrill cry of pain andterror, felt her sag in his arms. And then he heard many voices andstared around like a sleepwalker who has waked in a spot different fromthat in which he had begun his sleep--a comparison so exact that for onewild moment he thought it must be true!

  He was in a familiar room.... Yes, Doctor Grays' room at the Blue BayHotel.

  The people around him were familiar.... There was Gest. There wereKroner and Doctor Grays, and--Beatrice. There were the Blue Bay chief ofpolice, and two men.

  But the limp feminine form he held in his arms was Madame Sin, the furyhe had been fighting in Chichester's library! And in his hand was stillthe gold link bag he had wrenched from her!

  The woman in his arms stirred. She looked blankly up at him, staredaround. A cry came from her lips.

  "Where--am I? Who are you all? What are you doing in my room? But thisisn't my room!"

  Her face was different, younger-looking, less exotic. She wasn't MadameSin; she was a frightened, puzzled girl.

  Keane's brain had slipped back into gear, and into comprehension of whathad happened.

  "Where do you think you are?" he said gently. "And what is your name?"

  "I'm Sylvia Crane," she said. "And I'm in a New York hotel room. Atleast I was the last I knew, when I opened the door and the man in thered mask came in...."

  She buried her face in her hands. "After that--I don't know whathappened----"

  "Nor do any of us," quavered Gest. "For God's sake, Keane, give us someidea of what has happened here, if you can!"

  * * * * *

  It was over an hour later when Beatrice and Keane entered the door ofhis suite. It had taken that long to explain to the people in DoctorGrays' rooms. Even
then the explanation had been but partial, and mostof it had been frenziedly and stubbornly disbelieved even though proofwas there.

  Keane's shoulders were bowed a little and his face wore a bitter look.He had thwarted Doctor Satan in his attempt to extort a fortune from theresort. But once more his deadly enemy had got away from him. He hadfailed.

  Beatrice shook her head.

  "Don't look like that. The fact that you're here alive is a miracle thatmakes up for his escape. If you could have seen yourself, and that girl,when the police brought you back from Chichester's house! As soon asthey set you down in the doctor's rooms, you and the girl came together.You fought again for her purse, as you say you started to do inChichester's house ten hours ago. But you moved with such horribleslowness! It was like watching a slow-motion picture. It took you hoursto raise your arm, hours to take the purse from her hand. And yourexpression changed with equal slowness.... I can't tell you how dreadfulit was!"

  "All due, as I said, to this," Keane sighed.

  He stared at the little metal cage he had taken from the purse.

  "The latest product of Doctor Satan's warped genius. A time-diverter, Isuppose you might call it."

  "I didn't understand your explanation in Grays' rooms, after you'dbrought those people out of their dreadful coma," said Beatrice.

  "I'll try again."

  Keane held up the geometric figure.

  "Time has been likened to a river. We don't know precisely what it is,but it seems that the river simile must be apt. Very well, we and allaround us float on this river at the same speed. If there were differentcurrents in the same river, we might have the spectacle of seeing thosenearby move with lightning rapidity or with snail-like slowness as theirtime-environment differed from ours. Normally there is no suchdifference, but with this fantastic thing Doctor Satan has succeeded inproducing them artificially.

  "He has succeeded in working out several sets of angles which, whenopposed against each other as this geometric figure opposes them, caneither speed up or slow down the time-stream of whatever it is pointedat. The final angle is formed by this movable bar in its relation to thewhole. By its manipulation, time can be indefinitely retarded orhastened. He utilized the bizarre creation in this way:

  "In New York he contacted a quite innocent party by the name of SylviaCrane. He hypnotized her, and forced his spirit into her body while herswas held in abeyance. Then 'Madame Sin' registered here. She madeacquaintance with Weems. On the roof garden, she pointed the infernalfigure at him, with the little bar turned to retard time. The result wasthat Weems suddenly lived and moved at immensely retarded speed. It tookabout twenty-four hours for his arm to raise the champagne glass to hislips, though he thought it took a second. Our actions were so swift bycomparison that they didn't register on his consciousness at all. Heconfessed after I'd brought him out of his odd time-state with thedevice, that he seemed to raise his glass while in the roof garden, andstart to lower it when he found himself abruptly in Doctor Grays'bedroom. He didn't know how he got there or anything else. It was thesame with the nine in the roulette room. They came back to normal speedonly a second or two after being retarded in the roulette room. But itwas hours to us, and meanwhile they seemed absolutely motionless."

  "How on earth did you ever get a hint of such a thing as this?" saidBeatrice.

  "Weems' watch gave a pointer. It was all right, the jeweler said, but itwouldn't run. Well, it did run--but at a speed so slow that it could notbe recorded. The roulette wheel was another. The ivory ball did not rolldown the side of the wheel because the wheel was rotating--with infiniteslowness after being retarded by the same thing that made the peoplelook like frozen statues. Satan, as Madame Sin, couldn't do anythingabout the wheel. But he--or 'she'--could and did take the watches fromall concerned, to guard against discovery that way. However, there wasno chance to get Weems' watch; there were always people around."

  "You said Doctor Satan moved in the body of Chichester as he did in thegirl's body."

  "Yes. I got a hint of that when I observed that Chichester and MadameSin never seemed to be in evidence at the same time. Also because theexact sum of Blue Bay's cash reserve was so readily learned. Again whenWilson was killed in a room where only the three officials sat. He waskilled by Chichester, who was at the moment animated by Satan's soul. Hewas killed, by the way, by a _speeding-up_ of time. The rest wereretarded and suffered nothing but nerve shock. Wilson was killed whenthe speed of his time-stream was multiplied by a million: you can stop aheart without injuring it, but you can't suddenly accelerate a heart, orany other machine, a million times, without bursting it. That's why hisheart looked as though it had blown up in his chest."

  Keane stopped. The bitter look grew in his eyes.

  "This failure was wholly my own fault," he said in a low tone. "I knewwhen I found the duplicate financial statement in Madame Sin's roomsthat it was a trap to draw me to Chichester's home. Doctor Satan wouldnever have been so careless as to leave a thing like that behindinadvertently. Knowing it was a trap, I entered it, and found Satan'ssoulless body. If I'd destroyed it immediately.... But I didn't dreamthat Madame Sin would follow me so quickly."

  * * * * *

  Beatrice's hand touched Keane's fleetingly. He was looking at thegeometric figure and did not see the look in her eyes.

  "The world can thank heaven you're alive," she said softly. "With youdead, Doctor Satan could rule the earth----"

  There was a knock at the door. Gest was in the hall.

  "Keane," he said. "I suppose this will sound like a small thing afterall you've done. You've saved us from bankruptcy and saved Lord knowshow many people from a living death from that time-business you tried toexplain to us. Now there's one more thing. Workmen in Chichester's hometell us that they can't build up one of the walls of the library, whichis non-existent for some reason. There the room is, with one wall out,and it can't be blocked up! Do you suppose you----"

  Keane nodded, with a little of his bitterness relieved by a smile.

  "I remember. The time-diverter was pointed at that wall for an instantas the girl and I struggled. Evidently it was set for maximumacceleration, to burst my heart as it did Wilson's. It got the librarywall, which is gone because in the point of the future which it almostinstantly reached, there is no library or home or anything else on thatspot. I'll bring it back to the present, and to existence again, so youwon't have a physical impossibility to try to explain to nervous guestsof Blue Bay Resort."

  "And after that," he added to himself, "I'll destroy this invention ofHell. And I wish its destruction would annihilate its inventor alongwith it--before he contrives some new and even more terrible toy!"