"Stalked By the Golden Jaguar"
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dochermes"Stalked By the Golden Jaguar"
10/19-10/20/1943
I.
Kelly O'Connor slammed shut the dilapadated old book she had been studying, and muttered a single word more appropriate for a hardened sailor in a storm than for a pretty young reporter in the day room of the NEW YORK MESSENGER. Middle-aged Will Townsend, seated at his own desk nearby, grinned affectionately. He had been putting on weight the past year and had stealthily punched a new hole into his belt to accomodate the more substantial girth.
Watching Kelly was no hardship. She was tall and slender, with long dark red hair and bright green eyes, as well as an upturned nose and full lips. In her light yellow dress, belted around the waist, she was more appealing a sight than all the dumpy middle-aged reporters he had to face every day.
"It must be something unusual for you to stick around the office after the whistle blows, O'Connor," he remarked. "This is the first time I ever saw you here after dark. I thought you had a frantic social life, always out dancing and going to Broadway shows."
"I wish." Kelly said. "Twenty-three and already an old maid married to the newspaper business."
"You've been shoving your nose into a hundred different books here since five o'clock," asserted Townsend.
"I've been trying to get some information for a story I'm working on," answered Kelly. She gestured at the rows of wildly random volumes in the shelves that encircled the walls. "Look at all these books you guys have been bringing in for a generation. All sorts of strange and unsavory topics are covered but not one can tell me the truth about the Golden Jaguar cult practiced by a certain tribe from the jungles of Ecuador."
"A good reporter has sources," suggested Townsend. "Why not ask them?"
"I'm going to." Kelly took down a phone from its hook where it sat on the desk she shared with senior reporter Skip Leinster.
"What about Carla Colan?" suggested Townsend. "She's been to Rio. She's quite a traveler and she writes some stories for our paper."
"I don't get along with Carla. Her articles seem pretty flimsy to me. But I know a real expert! I'll try Big Jim Newton." She twirled the dial with an impeccably manicured finger. "Ring, ring, ring, pick up already. Oh. Hello!"
A slick voice with an unfamiliar accent came along the wire.
"Oh, is that you, Tomas?" asked Kelly. "I want to speak to Mr. Newton."
Polite surprise tinged the meticulous tones. "Why, Mr. Newton went out in response to your call an hour ago, Miss Kelly."
"What's that?" demanded Kelly. "Went where?"
"Why, surely you remember, Miss Kelly." A faint uneasiness seemed to edge the Ewa's voice. "At about nine o'clock you called, and I answered the phone. You said you wished to speak to Mr. Newton. After my master talked to you, he then told me to have his car brought around to the side entrance. He said that you had requested him to meet you at the cottage on Duck Lake shore."
"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed Kelly. "This is the first time I've phoned Big Jim Newton for weeks! You've mistaken somebody else for me."
The servant did not argue but simply replied, "As you say, miss."
Kelly replaced the phone and turned to Townsend, who was leaning forward with aroused interest.
"Something fishy here," scowled Kelly. "Tomas, Jim's Ewa servant, said I called an hour ago, and Jim went out to meet me. Townsend, you've been here all evening. Did I call up anybody? That retired headhunter has me doubting myself."
"No, you didn't," emphatically answered older reporter. "I've been sitting right here close to the phone ever since six o'clock. Nobody's used it. And you haven't left the day room during that time. I would have noticed."
"Well, say," said Kelly, uneasily, "This sounds like monkey business. I think I better drive up to Duck Lake. If this is a joke, Newton may be over there waiting for me to show up and I don't want him mad at him over a misunderstanding."
Townsend pulled his jacket on and reached for a fedora which had seen better days. "Count me in."
"Why? I'm just going to ask Big Jim a few questions. I don't need a chaperone, will."
"It's not that, O'Connor. But that fake phone call worries me. Someone's pulling shenanigans. Newton might've got mixed up with some gangland types. I still carry my old Army automatic when I go to bad parts of town."
With a sinking feeling, Kelly O'Connor realized it would be too suspicious for her to argue further. She wanted to go by herself because her instincts told her the Green Devil might be needed. In the lining of her spacious brown leather handbag was concealed a green silk bandana mask, thin gloves and a sash with some miniature tools in tiny pouches. With Townsend along, she couldn't get into her Green Devil guise if there was trouble.
"We'll use my car, the DeSoto," offered Townsend. "I'm allowed extra gas rations because I do some weekend work for the city."
"Sounds good to me," she agreed. "The tires on my roadster are getting smooth as a baby's bottom."
As the city lights fell behind them, and houses gave way to clumps of trees and bushes, velvet black in the star-light, Townsend said: "Do you think Tomas made a mistake?"
"What else could it be?" answered Kelly without seeming to give it much thought.
"Somebody might have been playing a joke, as you suggested. Why should anybody impersonate you to Newton?"
"How should I know? But I'm about the only acquaintance he'd bestir himself for, at this time of night. He's reserved, suspicious of people. I don't think he has a lot of friends but he took a liking t me."
"Something of an explorer, wasn't he?"
"You bet. He spent over a year in the worst part of Ecuador where there really are headhunters and cannibals. Came back with three servants from the Ewa tribe. His story was that they saved his life and he swore to take to care of them."
"How'd he make his money?" Townsend asked, abruptly.
"I've never asked him. But he has plenty of it."
As they headed north, patches of trees on each side of the road grew denser, and residential houses became more gradual. After an hour's drive from the city, they found the broad silver mirror called Duck Lake. The twisting road meandered along the curving shore.
"Where's Newton's lodge?" inquired Townsend.
Kelly pointed. "See that thick clump of shadows, within a few yards of the water's edge? It's the only cottage on this side of the lake. The others are three or four miles away. None of them occupied, this time of the year. There's a car drawn up in front of the cottage."
"No light in the shack," grunted Townsend, pulling up beside the long low roadster that stood before the narrow stoop. The building reared dark and silent before them, blocked against the rippling white sheen behind it.
"Hey, Jim!" called Kelly. "Big Jim Newton!"
No answer came, only a vague echo rolling down from the wooded hills.
"Devil of a place at night," muttered Townsend, peering at the dense shadows that bordered the lake. "I'm used to street lamps."
Kelly slid out of her side of the car. "Newton must be here, unless he's gone for a midnight stroll along the lake."
Their steps echoed loudly and emptily on the tiny stoop. Kelly banged on the door and shouted. Somewhere back in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note. There was no other answer. She grabbed the doorknob shook the door. It was locked from the inside.
"I don't like this," Townsend growled. "Car in front of the cottage, door locked on the inside but nobody answering us. Something's wrong. I'll kick the door in..."
"No need." Kelly fumbled in his pocket. "I know where he hides a key." She walked over to a nearby tree and groped around its roots until she came up with something wrapped in a piece of soft leather.
"How comes it you know where Newton keeps a key to his shack?" demanded Townsend.
"What's with that critical tone in your voice? I AM a reporter. I interviewed him a few times and once he had lost his key when we got here. Turn on your flash, will you? I can't find the lock. All right, I've got it. Hey, Jim! Are you here?"
Townsend's flash played over chairs and card tables, coming to rest on a closed door in the opposite wall. They entered and Townsend heard Kelly fumbling about with an arm elevated. A faint click followed and Kelly sighed in disappointment.
"The juice is off. There's a line running out from town to supply the cottage owners with electricity, but it must be dead. As long as we're in here, let's go through the house. Big Jim may be sleeping soundly after some brandy hit him..."
She broke off with a sharp intake of breath after opening the door that led to the bedroom. Her colleague's flashlight played on the interior, showing an overturned chair, a smashed table and a crumpled shape that lay in the midst of a dark widening pool.
"Good God, it's Newton!" Townsend's gun glinted in his hand as he played the flash around the room, sifting the shadows for any lurking shapes. The light rested on a bolted rear door and then on on an open window, the screen of which hung in tatters.
"We've got to have more light," he grunted. "Where's the switch? Maybe a fuse has blown."
"Outside, I think near that window." Stumbling, Kelly led the way out of the house and around to the window. Townsend flashed his light, grunted.
"The switch has been pulled!" He pushed it back in place, and light flooded the cottage. The light streaming through the windows seemed to emphasize the blackness of the whispering woods around them. Townsend glared into the shadows, tense and unhappy. Kelly had not spoken for what to her was a considerable time.
Back in the house they bent over the body which lay in the middle of the blood-splattered hardwood floor. Big Jim Newton had been a stocky, strongly built man of early middle age. His skin was tanned and weather-beaten, hinting of tropic suns. His features were covered with a layer of dried blood. His head lolled back, disclosing a raw gaping wound beneath his chin.
"His throat's been cut!" stammered Kelly. "Someone murdered Jim."
Townsend shook his head. "Not cut but torn right out. Good God, it looks like a big cat had ripped him."
II.
The man's neck had savagely ripped out with muscles, arteries and the windpipe severed. In the gore, white bones of the vertebrae showed plainly
"He's so bloody I wouldn't have recognized him," muttered Townsend. "How did you know him so quickly? The instant we saw him, you cried out that it was Newton."
"Come on, he's the same size and build as Jim, and he's in Jim's bedroom. Besides that, I know that lightweight summer suit and his prematurely grey hair," answered the other. "But what in God's name killed him?"
Townsend straightened and looked about. "Where does that door lead to?"
"To the kitchen but it's locked on this side."
"And the outer door of the front room was locked on the inside," muttered Townsend. "Doesn't take a genius to see how the murderer got in and he went out the same way. Taking his pet with him."
"What do you mean, his pet?" Kelly had decided to play dumb a little. Two years solving mysteries as the Green Devil had sharpened her observation and hardened her to violence... but Townsend didn't need to know that about her.
"Does that look like the work of a human being?" Townsend pointed to the dead man's mangled throat. "I've seen sheep mauled by the big mountain lions in the Rockies.."
"Whatever tore Jim's neck apart also tore that window screen," added Kelly. "It wasn't cut with a knife."
"But there's no mountain lions in these parts...."
"Anyway, a mountain lion isn't smart enough to throw the electric switch before he climbs in through the window! That's asking a lot of a cat," scoffed Kelly. "Was Big Jim fooling around in the dark, then? Not so. When I pushed the switch back in place, the light came on in here. That shows it had already been on and its button hadn't been pushed back. Whoever killed Newton had a reason for wanting to work in the dark. Maybe this was it!" The redhead indicated with a prod of her toe, a stubby gun of blue steel that lay not far from the body.
"From what I hear about Newton, he was quick enough on the trigger." Townsend slipped on a glove from his coat pocket, carefully lifted the revolver by the barrel, and looked aroun the chamber again. With a single long stride, he reached it and bent over the sill.
"One shot's been fired from this gun. The bullet's in the window sill. At least, one bullet is, and it's logical to suppose it's the one from the empty chamber of Newton's gun. Here's the way I reconstruct the crime: something sneaked up to the shack, threw the switch, and came busting in through the window. Newton shot once in the dark and missed, and then the killer to work on him."
"What are you doing wasting your time at the MESSENGER?" asked Kelly. "You should be working for J Edgar Hoover."
"Better turn this this gun over to the coppers. I don't expect them to find any fingerprints except Newton's, but you never know. Say, it's a good thing you have an alibi."
Kelly sounded annoyed. "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"Why, there's the servant who'll tell the police to you called Newton to lure him to his death."
"Why on Earth should I do such a thing?" hotly demanded the redhead.
"Don't get that notorious Irish temper stirred up," laughed Townsend, "I saw you in the day room all evening. I'll swear to it in court. That's an unshakable alibi."
III.
III.
Kelly slumped with sudden fatigue as she watched Townsend drive away and turned toward the boarding house which stood dark and silent at barely ten-thirty at night. That was no surprise. She was the only boarder under sixty years of age.
What a wearying day. A confused jumble of emotions and images whirled through her mind as she tried to arrange everything in order. Uneasily she remembered Townsend's cryptic remark: "Either Tomas is lying about that telephone call, or..." The veteran reporter had left the sentence unfinished, casting a glance at Kelly that was as inscrutable as his speech. Nobody believed the Ewa was deliberately lying. His devotion to his master was well known—a devotion shared by the other servants of the dead man.
Police suspicion had failed to connect them in any way with the crime. Apparently none of them had left Newton's town house during the day or the night of the murder. Nor had the murder-cottage given up any clues. No tracks had been found on the hard earth, no fingerprints on the gun other than the dead man's nor any except Townsend's on the light switch. If Townsend had had any luck in trying to trace the mysterious phone call, he had not divulged anything.
Kelly remembered, with a twinge of nervousness, the way in which they had looked at her, those Ewa from deep in the Amazon. Their features had been immobile, but in their dark eyes had gleamed suspicion and a threat. She had seen it in the eyes of Tomas, the stocky shortest man of the group; in Rodrigo, the Egyptian, an older man with only a few teeth left in a sagging face; and in Matim, a tall sinewty man who looked like a born fighter. Not a bunch of matinee idols.
Getting out of her car in the alley next to the boarding house, Kelly unleashed such a yawn that her jaw popped. She needed sleep. Then something sudden and smothering enveloped her head, and powerful arms locked fiercely about her. Her reaction was as instinctive and violent as that of an outraged bobcat. She exploded into a frenzied burst of action. With a bucking heave, she got the bag off from over her head, and freed her arms from the arms that pinioned her around the chest. But another pair of arms hung like chains to her legs.
A naturally ferocious scrapper, Kelly had managed to get a retired trainer to teach her some boxing. She was quick and accurate, but she always ended up fighting opponents much bigger and stronger than she was. Her uncanny Green Devil gift of deflecting everything from knives to bullets sometimes helped in a brawl but not under these circumstances.
Staggering for balance, she lashed out blindly and felt the jolt of a solid hit shoot up her arm. Her other arm was caught in a savage grasp and twisted up behind her back so violently that she felt as if the tendons were being ripped free. Hot breath hissed in her ear. Bending her head forward, she jerked it backward again with all the impact she could. She felt the back of her skull crash into something softer, which must be a man's face. There was a groan, and the crippling grip on hier arm relaxed.
With a desperate wrench she tore away, but the arms that clung to her legs tripped him. She pitched headlong, spreading her arms to break the fall, but even before her fingers touched the ground, something exploded against her head and she knew only dreamless dark.
Kelly's first conscious thought was that she was being tossed about in an open boat on a stormy sea. Then as her dazed mind cleared, she recognized that she was lying in an automobile which was speeding along an uneven road. Her head throbbed intolerably. She was bound hand and foot, and wrapped in some heavy wool blanket. Bewilderment clouded her mind as she sought for a clue to the identity of the kidnappers. This had to be connected to Jim's murder but how? Then a sudden suspicion brought out the cold sweat on her skin.
The car lurched to a halt. Powerful hands lifted her and she felt herself being carried over a short stretch of level ground, and apparently up a step or so. A key grated in a lock, a door rasped on its hinges. There was a click, and light shone through the folds of the cloth over Kelly's head. She felt herself being lowered onto what felt like a bed. Then the cloth was rolled away, and she blinked in the glare of light.
She found herself lying on the bed in the room in which James Newton had died. And about him stood, arms folded, three grim and silent shapes: Tomas, Rodgrigo, and Matim. There was dried blood on Tomas' face, and his lip was cut. A dark blue bruise showed on Matim's jaw. Kelly got some satisfaction at seeing that.
"The missy awakens," said the eldest Ewa, in his prissy English.
"What the Hell is wrong with you, Matim?" demanded Kelly, trying to struggle to a sitting posture. "What do you mean by this? Get me untied or..." Her voice trailed away, a shaky resonance of futility as he read the meaning in the angry dark eyes that regarded her.
"In this room our master met his doom," said Rodrigo.
"You called him on the phone and lured him into a trap," said Tomas.
"But I didn't!" raged Kelly, jerking wildly at the cords which cut into her flesh. "Damn it, I knew nothing about it!"
"Your voice came over the wire and our master followed it to his death," repeated Tomas. "A Golden Jaguar was waiting in ambush."
A panic of helplessness swept over Kelly. If even her colleague Townsend suspected that somehow she, Kelly O'Connor, was connected with Newton's death, how could she hope to convince these grieving Ewa otherwise. It seemed hopeless.
"The reporter Will Townsend, was with me all evening," he said, in a voice straining for control. "He will told you that he did not see me touch a phone, nor did I leave his sight. I could not have killed my friend, your master, because while he was being killed, I was either in the day room of the MESSENGER, or driving from there with Townsend."
"How it was done, we do not know," answered the Ewa, tranquilly. "The ways of your people are beyond us. But we know that somehow, in some manner, you caused our master's death. And we have brought you here to pay for your crime."
"You mean to murder me?" demanded Kelly, getting alarmed for the first time. Nearly always, as the Green Devil, she had a few plans for escape or a trick or two ready. But this time, her mind had gone blank with fear.
"Our honor demands your death."
Kelly opened his mouth, then closed it, recognizing the utter futility of argument. She had automatically begun working on her bonds. It felt like clothesline. Left alone, she thought she could manage to get loose, but there was no time
Rodrigo came forward with a shallow tin bowl filled with water, in which strips of rawhide lay. "These are the tools of execution, missy," he announced somberly. "Fresh rawhide which has been soaking three days in water. Perhaps you do not known this but rawhide shrinks by half as it dries. Tied around your neck, these straps will cut off your air slowly, so very slowly...."
IV.
IV.
Kelly made an undecipherable croaking noise twice before she found enough voice to say, "I'm beginning to get a little nervous. You birds aren't fooling around."
"This is not a thing we do happily," said Matim. "But honor demands it! We have sworn loyalty to our master. His killer must die the same night."
The Green Devil made no reply. Some veneer of courage still remained in place. She set her jaw hard, feeling that if she opened her mouth to speak, she would end up begging for her life. Her first night as the Green Devil, she had vowed to never plead when her time was up.
Rodrigo lifted the long thin rawhide strips from the bowl of water and nodded to his companions. Without warning the light went out.
In the darkness Kelly's heart began to pound harder. The Ewas stood still, patiently, expecting the light to come on again. But Kelly instinctively felt that the stage was set for some drama darker and more hideous than that which menaced her. Silence reigned; somewhere off in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note. There was a faint scratching sound, somewhere quite close...
"Where is that flashlight?" muttered a voice which Kelly recognized as Martim's. "I thought I left it on the card table. Wait!"
Kelly had heard Tomas bump up against furniture in the dark; but she was watching the window, a square of dim, star-flecked sky blocked out of blackness. And as the Green Devil watched, she saw something dark and lithe rear up in that square, silhouetted against the stars.
A scream sounded from inside the room, the crash of a wildly thrown missile There was a scrambling sound, and the intruder blotted out the square of starlight for an instant. Whatever it was, it was inside the room.
Kelly, lying helpless in her bindings, heard complete bedlam break loose in that dark room. Screams, shouts, strident cries of agony mingled with the smashing of furniture, the impact of blows, and a hideous tearing sound that made Kelly's flesh crawl. Once the battling pack staggered past the window, but Kelly made out only a dim writhing of limbs, the pale glint of steel, and the terrible blaze of a pair of eyes she knew belonged to none of her three captors.
Somewhere a man was moaning horribly, his gasps growing weaker and weaker. There was a last convulsion of movement, the groaning impact of a heavy body; then the starlight in the window was for an instant blotted out again, and silence reigned once more in the cottage on the lake shore; silence broken only by the death gasps in the dark, and the labored panting of a wounded man.
What on Earth had happened? Could it be one of her fellow mystery vigilantes rescuing her? Maybe the Dragon of Midnight? Or the Scarecrow? Then why not reveal himself?
Kelly heard some one floundering clumsily in the darkness, and it was from this one that the racking, panting was emanating. A circle of light flashed on, and in it Kelly saw the blood-smeared face of Martim.
The light wandered erratically away, dancing crazily about the walls. Kelly heard an Ewa blundering across the room, moving like a seriously drunken man. The flash shone full in the Green Devil's face, blinding her. Fingers tugged awkwardly at her bindings. A knife edge was dragged across them, slicing skin as well as hemp.
Matim sank to the floor. The flash thumped beside him and went out. Kelly groped for him, found his shoulder and found the cloth was soaked with what she knew must blood.
"You spoke truth, missy," the Ewa whispered. "How the call came in the likeness of your voice, I do not know. But I know, now, what slew our master. After all these years have passed... but they never forget and they never forgive. Beware! The fiend may return. The green stones were cursed...I told our master, missy but... he would not listen, he—"
A sudden welter of blood drowned the laboring voice. Under Kelly's hand the great body stiffened and twisted in a brief convulsion, then went limp.
Groping on the floor, the Green Devil failed to find the flashlight. She groped along the wall, found the switch and flooded the cottage with light.
Turning back into the room, a stifled cry escaped her lips at the carnage.
Matim lay slumped near the bed. Huddled in a corner was Tomas, his hands, palms upturned, limp on the floor at his sides. Rodrigo sprawled face down in the middle of the room. All three were dead. Throats, breasts and bellies were slashed to ribbons; their garments were in strips, and among the rags hung bloody tatters of flesh. Tomas had been disemboweled, and the gaping wounds of the others were like those of sheep after a mountain lion has ranged through the fold.
A blackjack was still stuck in Tomas's belt. Rodrigo's dead hand clutched a knife, but it was unstained. Death had struck them before they could use their weapons. But on the floor near Matim lay a great wide-bladed machete, and it was red to the hilt. Bloody stains led across the floor and up over the window sill. Kelly retrieved the flash, snapped it on, and leaned out the window, playing the white beam on the ground outside. Dark, irregular splotches showed, leading off toward the dense woods.
With the flash in one hand and the machete in the other, Kelly followed those stains. At the edge of the trees she came upon a track, and the hairs lifted on her scalp. A foot, planted in a pool of blood, had limned its imprint in crimson on the hard loam. And the foot, bare and splay, was that of a human.
That print upset vague theories of a feline killer, stirred nebulous thoughts at the back of his mind—dim and awful race memories of semi-human ghouls, of werewolves who walked like men and slew like beasts.
A low groan brought her to a halt, his flesh crawling. Under the black trees in the silence, that sound was heavy with grisly probabilities. Gripping the knife firmly, she flashed the beam ahead of hier The thin light wavered, then focused on a black heap that was not part of the forest.
Kelly bent over the figure and stood transfixed, transported unexpectedly from a mundane world into nightmare.
V.
It was a naked copper-skinned man that lay at her feet, his glassy eyes reflecting the waning light. His legs were short, bowed and gnarled, his arms long, his shoulders abnormally broad, his shaven head set plump between them without visible neck. He seemed at first to be wearing some sort of mask shaped to resemble the head of a yellow and black spotted cat.
But it was at the corpses's fingers which Kelly looked longest. At first glance they seemed to be wearing strange gloves. A second's examination revealed a mad truth. At the wrists, the hands turned into paws which were soaked in fresh blood. The creature was not wearing a mask or gloves. He really was part jaguar.
A light step behind her made Kelly whirl around. Her dimming light played on a tall figure, and Kelly sighed, "Carla Colan! What are you doing here?" in no great surprise. She was so numbed by bewilderment that the strangeness of the man's presence did not occur to her.
"What in God's name is this?" demanded the taller woman, taking the light from Kelly's hand and directing it on the mangled shape. "What in Heaven's name is that?"
"A forbidden terror from the Amazon!" Kelly found her tongue at last, and speech came in a rush. "A Golden Jaguar! I was trying to dig up some dirt on them today. He belongs to a native cult in South America which worships a Jaguar god. They do bidding of the cult's shaman, which as far as I figure out mainly consists of executing the enemies of the cult."
"That's a wild tall tale, what's really going on?" demanded Colan, in seeming incredulity.
"God only knows. But he must have been the monster that killed Newton. He killed Newton's three servants tonight and would have killed me, too, I suppose, but Matim wounded him, and he evidently dragged himself away like a wild beast to die in the woods—"
Colan seemed curiously uninterested in Kelly's rushing narrative.
"Sure he's dead?" she muttered, bending closer to flash the light into the hideous face. The illumination was dim; the battery was swiftly burning out.
As Kelly was about to speak, the yellow-furred face briefly convulsed. Green eyes gleamed as with a last surge of life. A clawed hand stirred, lifted feebly up toward Colan. A few guttural words seeped through the lips; the fingers writhed weakly, extending the retractile claws. Then he shuddered, sank back and lay still. He had been stabbed under the heart, and only a beast-like vitality had carried him so far.
Colan straightened and faced Kelly, turning the light on her. A beat of silence cut between them, in which the atmosphere was electric with tension.
"You understand what he said?" It was more an assertion than a question.
Kelly's heart was pounding, a new bewilderment vying with a rising wrath. "Yes," she answered shortly.
"What did that fool say?" softly asked Colan.
Kelly set his teeth and stubbornly took the plunge reason cried out against. "He was speaking Portugese, close enough to Spanish that I caught the meaning. He said, "My Lady, tell the priests of my vengeance; they will give you what I promised you.'"
Even as she ground out the words, Kelly crouched, nerves taut for the impending attack. But before she could move, the black muzzle of an automatic trained on her.
"Too bad you understood that death-bed confession, Kelly," said Colan, coolly. "I don't want to kill another woman. I've kept blood off my hands so far through this affair. Listen, you're not rich, what reporter is? how'd you consider cutting in on a fortune? Wouldn't that be preferable to getting a slug through your guts and being planted alongside those poor losers down in Newton's shack for them to get the blame?"
"Nobody wants to die," answered Kelly, his gaze fixed on the light in Colan's hand—the glow which was rapidly turning redder and dimmer.
"Good!" snapped Colan. "I'll give you the low down. You might as well Newton got his money in Brazil. He stole two fistfuls of emeralds from the Golden Jaguar sect, which they had stored in their sacred hut; he killed a priest of the cult in getting away. Matim was with him. But they didn't get all the gems. And after that the Bakwanga took good care to guard them so nobody could steal what was left.
"I knew this fellow, Roberto, when I was in Danarak. I was after the emeralds then, but I never had a chance to locate them. I met Roberto a few months ago, again. He'd been sent from his tribe with an elder to retrieve the emeralds. But the elder was the one who spoke English and he died of pneumonia.
"Roberto was frantic to get back to his people, and he spilled the whole story of the thief. He told me that if he could kill Newton and bring the emeralds back, his tribe would make him a prince. He knew that Newton was somewhere in New Yor, but he was helpless find him without being able to speak the lingo. I offered to arrange his revenge the thief, if Roberto would agree to give me some of the emeralds his tribe hoarded.
"He swore by their god, the Golden Jaguar. I brought him secretly into these hills, and hid him up yonder in a shack the existence of which nobody suspects. Night after night I went through the thing with him, until he learned the procedure: to watch in the hills until he saw a light flash in Newton's shack. Then steal down there, jerk the switch and kill. These Jaguar men can see like cats at night. After all, they really do have cat's eyes.
"I called Newton up myself; it wasn't hard to imitate your voice. You know you sound like a twelve year old, don't you? And I had an alibi. While Roberto was tearing the life out of Newton, I was dining at a well-known night club, in full sight of a hundred people.
"I came back here tonight to smuggle him out of the country. The last thing I wanted was for him to get caught and spill the whole story. But his blood- lust must have betrayed him. When he saw the light flash on in the cottage again, it must have started a train of associations that led him once more to the cottage, to kill whoever he found there. It turned out he slaughtered the three Indios in time to save you! I saw the tag-end of the business, saw him stagger away from the shack, and then you following him.
"Now then, I've explained it all. I think you and I could work together, Kelly. You've got more nerve than good sense, but that's useful outside the law. What do you say, you want to join me and take a share of the Golden Jaguar emeralds?"
The glow went out. In the sudden darkness, Kelly, her pent-up outrage exploding at last, yelled: "Hell, no!" and sprang aside. The pistol cracked, an orange jet sliced the darkness, and Kelly's inexplicable ability saved her life. One hand whirled around in a tight circle. In some manner no one understood, she deflected the bullet without her hand even being scratched... and the bullet ricocheted directly backwards to punch into Carla Colan's grinning mouth and exit out the back of her head.
"What the hell? It was the voice of Townsend.
"You... I'm glad to see you, Will" Kelly stuttered, having no clue where to even start explaining.
"Sorry I didn't get here earlier. I was just coming around the bend of the lake shore and saw a light in Newton's cottage, then your flash bobbing among the trees. I couldn't hear what Carla was saying but I saw the gunblast. Suicide, huh? Wonder why?"
"I think she was just stark foaming-at-the-mouth looney. You suspected Colan all the time?"
The older reporter grinned wryly. "I ought to say yes, and establish myself as a regular genius. But the fact is, I suspected you all the time. That's right. That's why I came up here tonight, trying to figure out your connection with the murder. You've been showing up somehow at so many crime scenes that I figured you had underworld connections, O'Connor. Your flimsy explanations smelled phony to me. I had a sneaking suspicion that I'd bumped into a girl master-mind trying to put over the 'perfect crime.' Imagine that. I've got to stop reading those pulp magazines!"
"Sheesh, I'll say you owe me an apology. A good reporter can smell crimes before they happen. I guess now we need to get to the phone in Newton's cottage, though. You're going to call the police and me... I'm going to give the whole story to the night desk. THE MESSENGER will have an exclusive for the morning edition no other rag in town knows about!"
Kelly made no further comment. She was privately amused by the way she had not had an opportunity to get into her mask or helmeted costume the entire episode. Looks like the Green Devil had enjoyed a little vacation, she thought.
3/10/2023
10/19-10/20/1943
I.
Kelly O'Connor slammed shut the dilapadated old book she had been studying, and muttered a single word more appropriate for a hardened sailor in a storm than for a pretty young reporter in the day room of the NEW YORK MESSENGER. Middle-aged Will Townsend, seated at his own desk nearby, grinned affectionately. He had been putting on weight the past year and had stealthily punched a new hole into his belt to accomodate the more substantial girth.
Watching Kelly was no hardship. She was tall and slender, with long dark red hair and bright green eyes, as well as an upturned nose and full lips. In her light yellow dress, belted around the waist, she was more appealing a sight than all the dumpy middle-aged reporters he had to face every day.
"It must be something unusual for you to stick around the office after the whistle blows, O'Connor," he remarked. "This is the first time I ever saw you here after dark. I thought you had a frantic social life, always out dancing and going to Broadway shows."
"I wish." Kelly said. "Twenty-three and already an old maid married to the newspaper business."
"You've been shoving your nose into a hundred different books here since five o'clock," asserted Townsend.
"I've been trying to get some information for a story I'm working on," answered Kelly. She gestured at the rows of wildly random volumes in the shelves that encircled the walls. "Look at all these books you guys have been bringing in for a generation. All sorts of strange and unsavory topics are covered but not one can tell me the truth about the Golden Jaguar cult practiced by a certain tribe from the jungles of Ecuador."
"A good reporter has sources," suggested Townsend. "Why not ask them?"
"I'm going to." Kelly took down a phone from its hook where it sat on the desk she shared with senior reporter Skip Leinster.
"What about Carla Colan?" suggested Townsend. "She's been to Rio. She's quite a traveler and she writes some stories for our paper."
"I don't get along with Carla. Her articles seem pretty flimsy to me. But I know a real expert! I'll try Big Jim Newton." She twirled the dial with an impeccably manicured finger. "Ring, ring, ring, pick up already. Oh. Hello!"
A slick voice with an unfamiliar accent came along the wire.
"Oh, is that you, Tomas?" asked Kelly. "I want to speak to Mr. Newton."
Polite surprise tinged the meticulous tones. "Why, Mr. Newton went out in response to your call an hour ago, Miss Kelly."
"What's that?" demanded Kelly. "Went where?"
"Why, surely you remember, Miss Kelly." A faint uneasiness seemed to edge the Ewa's voice. "At about nine o'clock you called, and I answered the phone. You said you wished to speak to Mr. Newton. After my master talked to you, he then told me to have his car brought around to the side entrance. He said that you had requested him to meet you at the cottage on Duck Lake shore."
"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed Kelly. "This is the first time I've phoned Big Jim Newton for weeks! You've mistaken somebody else for me."
The servant did not argue but simply replied, "As you say, miss."
Kelly replaced the phone and turned to Townsend, who was leaning forward with aroused interest.
"Something fishy here," scowled Kelly. "Tomas, Jim's Ewa servant, said I called an hour ago, and Jim went out to meet me. Townsend, you've been here all evening. Did I call up anybody? That retired headhunter has me doubting myself."
"No, you didn't," emphatically answered older reporter. "I've been sitting right here close to the phone ever since six o'clock. Nobody's used it. And you haven't left the day room during that time. I would have noticed."
"Well, say," said Kelly, uneasily, "This sounds like monkey business. I think I better drive up to Duck Lake. If this is a joke, Newton may be over there waiting for me to show up and I don't want him mad at him over a misunderstanding."
Townsend pulled his jacket on and reached for a fedora which had seen better days. "Count me in."
"Why? I'm just going to ask Big Jim a few questions. I don't need a chaperone, will."
"It's not that, O'Connor. But that fake phone call worries me. Someone's pulling shenanigans. Newton might've got mixed up with some gangland types. I still carry my old Army automatic when I go to bad parts of town."
With a sinking feeling, Kelly O'Connor realized it would be too suspicious for her to argue further. She wanted to go by herself because her instincts told her the Green Devil might be needed. In the lining of her spacious brown leather handbag was concealed a green silk bandana mask, thin gloves and a sash with some miniature tools in tiny pouches. With Townsend along, she couldn't get into her Green Devil guise if there was trouble.
"We'll use my car, the DeSoto," offered Townsend. "I'm allowed extra gas rations because I do some weekend work for the city."
"Sounds good to me," she agreed. "The tires on my roadster are getting smooth as a baby's bottom."
As the city lights fell behind them, and houses gave way to clumps of trees and bushes, velvet black in the star-light, Townsend said: "Do you think Tomas made a mistake?"
"What else could it be?" answered Kelly without seeming to give it much thought.
"Somebody might have been playing a joke, as you suggested. Why should anybody impersonate you to Newton?"
"How should I know? But I'm about the only acquaintance he'd bestir himself for, at this time of night. He's reserved, suspicious of people. I don't think he has a lot of friends but he took a liking t me."
"Something of an explorer, wasn't he?"
"You bet. He spent over a year in the worst part of Ecuador where there really are headhunters and cannibals. Came back with three servants from the Ewa tribe. His story was that they saved his life and he swore to take to care of them."
"How'd he make his money?" Townsend asked, abruptly.
"I've never asked him. But he has plenty of it."
As they headed north, patches of trees on each side of the road grew denser, and residential houses became more gradual. After an hour's drive from the city, they found the broad silver mirror called Duck Lake. The twisting road meandered along the curving shore.
"Where's Newton's lodge?" inquired Townsend.
Kelly pointed. "See that thick clump of shadows, within a few yards of the water's edge? It's the only cottage on this side of the lake. The others are three or four miles away. None of them occupied, this time of the year. There's a car drawn up in front of the cottage."
"No light in the shack," grunted Townsend, pulling up beside the long low roadster that stood before the narrow stoop. The building reared dark and silent before them, blocked against the rippling white sheen behind it.
"Hey, Jim!" called Kelly. "Big Jim Newton!"
No answer came, only a vague echo rolling down from the wooded hills.
"Devil of a place at night," muttered Townsend, peering at the dense shadows that bordered the lake. "I'm used to street lamps."
Kelly slid out of her side of the car. "Newton must be here, unless he's gone for a midnight stroll along the lake."
Their steps echoed loudly and emptily on the tiny stoop. Kelly banged on the door and shouted. Somewhere back in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note. There was no other answer. She grabbed the doorknob shook the door. It was locked from the inside.
"I don't like this," Townsend growled. "Car in front of the cottage, door locked on the inside but nobody answering us. Something's wrong. I'll kick the door in..."
"No need." Kelly fumbled in his pocket. "I know where he hides a key." She walked over to a nearby tree and groped around its roots until she came up with something wrapped in a piece of soft leather.
"How comes it you know where Newton keeps a key to his shack?" demanded Townsend.
"What's with that critical tone in your voice? I AM a reporter. I interviewed him a few times and once he had lost his key when we got here. Turn on your flash, will you? I can't find the lock. All right, I've got it. Hey, Jim! Are you here?"
Townsend's flash played over chairs and card tables, coming to rest on a closed door in the opposite wall. They entered and Townsend heard Kelly fumbling about with an arm elevated. A faint click followed and Kelly sighed in disappointment.
"The juice is off. There's a line running out from town to supply the cottage owners with electricity, but it must be dead. As long as we're in here, let's go through the house. Big Jim may be sleeping soundly after some brandy hit him..."
She broke off with a sharp intake of breath after opening the door that led to the bedroom. Her colleague's flashlight played on the interior, showing an overturned chair, a smashed table and a crumpled shape that lay in the midst of a dark widening pool.
"Good God, it's Newton!" Townsend's gun glinted in his hand as he played the flash around the room, sifting the shadows for any lurking shapes. The light rested on a bolted rear door and then on on an open window, the screen of which hung in tatters.
"We've got to have more light," he grunted. "Where's the switch? Maybe a fuse has blown."
"Outside, I think near that window." Stumbling, Kelly led the way out of the house and around to the window. Townsend flashed his light, grunted.
"The switch has been pulled!" He pushed it back in place, and light flooded the cottage. The light streaming through the windows seemed to emphasize the blackness of the whispering woods around them. Townsend glared into the shadows, tense and unhappy. Kelly had not spoken for what to her was a considerable time.
Back in the house they bent over the body which lay in the middle of the blood-splattered hardwood floor. Big Jim Newton had been a stocky, strongly built man of early middle age. His skin was tanned and weather-beaten, hinting of tropic suns. His features were covered with a layer of dried blood. His head lolled back, disclosing a raw gaping wound beneath his chin.
"His throat's been cut!" stammered Kelly. "Someone murdered Jim."
Townsend shook his head. "Not cut but torn right out. Good God, it looks like a big cat had ripped him."
II.
The man's neck had savagely ripped out with muscles, arteries and the windpipe severed. In the gore, white bones of the vertebrae showed plainly
"He's so bloody I wouldn't have recognized him," muttered Townsend. "How did you know him so quickly? The instant we saw him, you cried out that it was Newton."
"Come on, he's the same size and build as Jim, and he's in Jim's bedroom. Besides that, I know that lightweight summer suit and his prematurely grey hair," answered the other. "But what in God's name killed him?"
Townsend straightened and looked about. "Where does that door lead to?"
"To the kitchen but it's locked on this side."
"And the outer door of the front room was locked on the inside," muttered Townsend. "Doesn't take a genius to see how the murderer got in and he went out the same way. Taking his pet with him."
"What do you mean, his pet?" Kelly had decided to play dumb a little. Two years solving mysteries as the Green Devil had sharpened her observation and hardened her to violence... but Townsend didn't need to know that about her.
"Does that look like the work of a human being?" Townsend pointed to the dead man's mangled throat. "I've seen sheep mauled by the big mountain lions in the Rockies.."
"Whatever tore Jim's neck apart also tore that window screen," added Kelly. "It wasn't cut with a knife."
"But there's no mountain lions in these parts...."
"Anyway, a mountain lion isn't smart enough to throw the electric switch before he climbs in through the window! That's asking a lot of a cat," scoffed Kelly. "Was Big Jim fooling around in the dark, then? Not so. When I pushed the switch back in place, the light came on in here. That shows it had already been on and its button hadn't been pushed back. Whoever killed Newton had a reason for wanting to work in the dark. Maybe this was it!" The redhead indicated with a prod of her toe, a stubby gun of blue steel that lay not far from the body.
"From what I hear about Newton, he was quick enough on the trigger." Townsend slipped on a glove from his coat pocket, carefully lifted the revolver by the barrel, and looked aroun the chamber again. With a single long stride, he reached it and bent over the sill.
"One shot's been fired from this gun. The bullet's in the window sill. At least, one bullet is, and it's logical to suppose it's the one from the empty chamber of Newton's gun. Here's the way I reconstruct the crime: something sneaked up to the shack, threw the switch, and came busting in through the window. Newton shot once in the dark and missed, and then the killer to work on him."
"What are you doing wasting your time at the MESSENGER?" asked Kelly. "You should be working for J Edgar Hoover."
"Better turn this this gun over to the coppers. I don't expect them to find any fingerprints except Newton's, but you never know. Say, it's a good thing you have an alibi."
Kelly sounded annoyed. "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"Why, there's the servant who'll tell the police to you called Newton to lure him to his death."
"Why on Earth should I do such a thing?" hotly demanded the redhead.
"Don't get that notorious Irish temper stirred up," laughed Townsend, "I saw you in the day room all evening. I'll swear to it in court. That's an unshakable alibi."
III.
III.
Kelly slumped with sudden fatigue as she watched Townsend drive away and turned toward the boarding house which stood dark and silent at barely ten-thirty at night. That was no surprise. She was the only boarder under sixty years of age.
What a wearying day. A confused jumble of emotions and images whirled through her mind as she tried to arrange everything in order. Uneasily she remembered Townsend's cryptic remark: "Either Tomas is lying about that telephone call, or..." The veteran reporter had left the sentence unfinished, casting a glance at Kelly that was as inscrutable as his speech. Nobody believed the Ewa was deliberately lying. His devotion to his master was well known—a devotion shared by the other servants of the dead man.
Police suspicion had failed to connect them in any way with the crime. Apparently none of them had left Newton's town house during the day or the night of the murder. Nor had the murder-cottage given up any clues. No tracks had been found on the hard earth, no fingerprints on the gun other than the dead man's nor any except Townsend's on the light switch. If Townsend had had any luck in trying to trace the mysterious phone call, he had not divulged anything.
Kelly remembered, with a twinge of nervousness, the way in which they had looked at her, those Ewa from deep in the Amazon. Their features had been immobile, but in their dark eyes had gleamed suspicion and a threat. She had seen it in the eyes of Tomas, the stocky shortest man of the group; in Rodrigo, the Egyptian, an older man with only a few teeth left in a sagging face; and in Matim, a tall sinewty man who looked like a born fighter. Not a bunch of matinee idols.
Getting out of her car in the alley next to the boarding house, Kelly unleashed such a yawn that her jaw popped. She needed sleep. Then something sudden and smothering enveloped her head, and powerful arms locked fiercely about her. Her reaction was as instinctive and violent as that of an outraged bobcat. She exploded into a frenzied burst of action. With a bucking heave, she got the bag off from over her head, and freed her arms from the arms that pinioned her around the chest. But another pair of arms hung like chains to her legs.
A naturally ferocious scrapper, Kelly had managed to get a retired trainer to teach her some boxing. She was quick and accurate, but she always ended up fighting opponents much bigger and stronger than she was. Her uncanny Green Devil gift of deflecting everything from knives to bullets sometimes helped in a brawl but not under these circumstances.
Staggering for balance, she lashed out blindly and felt the jolt of a solid hit shoot up her arm. Her other arm was caught in a savage grasp and twisted up behind her back so violently that she felt as if the tendons were being ripped free. Hot breath hissed in her ear. Bending her head forward, she jerked it backward again with all the impact she could. She felt the back of her skull crash into something softer, which must be a man's face. There was a groan, and the crippling grip on hier arm relaxed.
With a desperate wrench she tore away, but the arms that clung to her legs tripped him. She pitched headlong, spreading her arms to break the fall, but even before her fingers touched the ground, something exploded against her head and she knew only dreamless dark.
Kelly's first conscious thought was that she was being tossed about in an open boat on a stormy sea. Then as her dazed mind cleared, she recognized that she was lying in an automobile which was speeding along an uneven road. Her head throbbed intolerably. She was bound hand and foot, and wrapped in some heavy wool blanket. Bewilderment clouded her mind as she sought for a clue to the identity of the kidnappers. This had to be connected to Jim's murder but how? Then a sudden suspicion brought out the cold sweat on her skin.
The car lurched to a halt. Powerful hands lifted her and she felt herself being carried over a short stretch of level ground, and apparently up a step or so. A key grated in a lock, a door rasped on its hinges. There was a click, and light shone through the folds of the cloth over Kelly's head. She felt herself being lowered onto what felt like a bed. Then the cloth was rolled away, and she blinked in the glare of light.
She found herself lying on the bed in the room in which James Newton had died. And about him stood, arms folded, three grim and silent shapes: Tomas, Rodgrigo, and Matim. There was dried blood on Tomas' face, and his lip was cut. A dark blue bruise showed on Matim's jaw. Kelly got some satisfaction at seeing that.
"The missy awakens," said the eldest Ewa, in his prissy English.
"What the Hell is wrong with you, Matim?" demanded Kelly, trying to struggle to a sitting posture. "What do you mean by this? Get me untied or..." Her voice trailed away, a shaky resonance of futility as he read the meaning in the angry dark eyes that regarded her.
"In this room our master met his doom," said Rodrigo.
"You called him on the phone and lured him into a trap," said Tomas.
"But I didn't!" raged Kelly, jerking wildly at the cords which cut into her flesh. "Damn it, I knew nothing about it!"
"Your voice came over the wire and our master followed it to his death," repeated Tomas. "A Golden Jaguar was waiting in ambush."
A panic of helplessness swept over Kelly. If even her colleague Townsend suspected that somehow she, Kelly O'Connor, was connected with Newton's death, how could she hope to convince these grieving Ewa otherwise. It seemed hopeless.
"The reporter Will Townsend, was with me all evening," he said, in a voice straining for control. "He will told you that he did not see me touch a phone, nor did I leave his sight. I could not have killed my friend, your master, because while he was being killed, I was either in the day room of the MESSENGER, or driving from there with Townsend."
"How it was done, we do not know," answered the Ewa, tranquilly. "The ways of your people are beyond us. But we know that somehow, in some manner, you caused our master's death. And we have brought you here to pay for your crime."
"You mean to murder me?" demanded Kelly, getting alarmed for the first time. Nearly always, as the Green Devil, she had a few plans for escape or a trick or two ready. But this time, her mind had gone blank with fear.
"Our honor demands your death."
Kelly opened his mouth, then closed it, recognizing the utter futility of argument. She had automatically begun working on her bonds. It felt like clothesline. Left alone, she thought she could manage to get loose, but there was no time
Rodrigo came forward with a shallow tin bowl filled with water, in which strips of rawhide lay. "These are the tools of execution, missy," he announced somberly. "Fresh rawhide which has been soaking three days in water. Perhaps you do not known this but rawhide shrinks by half as it dries. Tied around your neck, these straps will cut off your air slowly, so very slowly...."
IV.
IV.
Kelly made an undecipherable croaking noise twice before she found enough voice to say, "I'm beginning to get a little nervous. You birds aren't fooling around."
"This is not a thing we do happily," said Matim. "But honor demands it! We have sworn loyalty to our master. His killer must die the same night."
The Green Devil made no reply. Some veneer of courage still remained in place. She set her jaw hard, feeling that if she opened her mouth to speak, she would end up begging for her life. Her first night as the Green Devil, she had vowed to never plead when her time was up.
Rodrigo lifted the long thin rawhide strips from the bowl of water and nodded to his companions. Without warning the light went out.
In the darkness Kelly's heart began to pound harder. The Ewas stood still, patiently, expecting the light to come on again. But Kelly instinctively felt that the stage was set for some drama darker and more hideous than that which menaced her. Silence reigned; somewhere off in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note. There was a faint scratching sound, somewhere quite close...
"Where is that flashlight?" muttered a voice which Kelly recognized as Martim's. "I thought I left it on the card table. Wait!"
Kelly had heard Tomas bump up against furniture in the dark; but she was watching the window, a square of dim, star-flecked sky blocked out of blackness. And as the Green Devil watched, she saw something dark and lithe rear up in that square, silhouetted against the stars.
A scream sounded from inside the room, the crash of a wildly thrown missile There was a scrambling sound, and the intruder blotted out the square of starlight for an instant. Whatever it was, it was inside the room.
Kelly, lying helpless in her bindings, heard complete bedlam break loose in that dark room. Screams, shouts, strident cries of agony mingled with the smashing of furniture, the impact of blows, and a hideous tearing sound that made Kelly's flesh crawl. Once the battling pack staggered past the window, but Kelly made out only a dim writhing of limbs, the pale glint of steel, and the terrible blaze of a pair of eyes she knew belonged to none of her three captors.
Somewhere a man was moaning horribly, his gasps growing weaker and weaker. There was a last convulsion of movement, the groaning impact of a heavy body; then the starlight in the window was for an instant blotted out again, and silence reigned once more in the cottage on the lake shore; silence broken only by the death gasps in the dark, and the labored panting of a wounded man.
What on Earth had happened? Could it be one of her fellow mystery vigilantes rescuing her? Maybe the Dragon of Midnight? Or the Scarecrow? Then why not reveal himself?
Kelly heard some one floundering clumsily in the darkness, and it was from this one that the racking, panting was emanating. A circle of light flashed on, and in it Kelly saw the blood-smeared face of Martim.
The light wandered erratically away, dancing crazily about the walls. Kelly heard an Ewa blundering across the room, moving like a seriously drunken man. The flash shone full in the Green Devil's face, blinding her. Fingers tugged awkwardly at her bindings. A knife edge was dragged across them, slicing skin as well as hemp.
Matim sank to the floor. The flash thumped beside him and went out. Kelly groped for him, found his shoulder and found the cloth was soaked with what she knew must blood.
"You spoke truth, missy," the Ewa whispered. "How the call came in the likeness of your voice, I do not know. But I know, now, what slew our master. After all these years have passed... but they never forget and they never forgive. Beware! The fiend may return. The green stones were cursed...I told our master, missy but... he would not listen, he—"
A sudden welter of blood drowned the laboring voice. Under Kelly's hand the great body stiffened and twisted in a brief convulsion, then went limp.
Groping on the floor, the Green Devil failed to find the flashlight. She groped along the wall, found the switch and flooded the cottage with light.
Turning back into the room, a stifled cry escaped her lips at the carnage.
Matim lay slumped near the bed. Huddled in a corner was Tomas, his hands, palms upturned, limp on the floor at his sides. Rodrigo sprawled face down in the middle of the room. All three were dead. Throats, breasts and bellies were slashed to ribbons; their garments were in strips, and among the rags hung bloody tatters of flesh. Tomas had been disemboweled, and the gaping wounds of the others were like those of sheep after a mountain lion has ranged through the fold.
A blackjack was still stuck in Tomas's belt. Rodrigo's dead hand clutched a knife, but it was unstained. Death had struck them before they could use their weapons. But on the floor near Matim lay a great wide-bladed machete, and it was red to the hilt. Bloody stains led across the floor and up over the window sill. Kelly retrieved the flash, snapped it on, and leaned out the window, playing the white beam on the ground outside. Dark, irregular splotches showed, leading off toward the dense woods.
With the flash in one hand and the machete in the other, Kelly followed those stains. At the edge of the trees she came upon a track, and the hairs lifted on her scalp. A foot, planted in a pool of blood, had limned its imprint in crimson on the hard loam. And the foot, bare and splay, was that of a human.
That print upset vague theories of a feline killer, stirred nebulous thoughts at the back of his mind—dim and awful race memories of semi-human ghouls, of werewolves who walked like men and slew like beasts.
A low groan brought her to a halt, his flesh crawling. Under the black trees in the silence, that sound was heavy with grisly probabilities. Gripping the knife firmly, she flashed the beam ahead of hier The thin light wavered, then focused on a black heap that was not part of the forest.
Kelly bent over the figure and stood transfixed, transported unexpectedly from a mundane world into nightmare.
V.
It was a naked copper-skinned man that lay at her feet, his glassy eyes reflecting the waning light. His legs were short, bowed and gnarled, his arms long, his shoulders abnormally broad, his shaven head set plump between them without visible neck. He seemed at first to be wearing some sort of mask shaped to resemble the head of a yellow and black spotted cat.
But it was at the corpses's fingers which Kelly looked longest. At first glance they seemed to be wearing strange gloves. A second's examination revealed a mad truth. At the wrists, the hands turned into paws which were soaked in fresh blood. The creature was not wearing a mask or gloves. He really was part jaguar.
A light step behind her made Kelly whirl around. Her dimming light played on a tall figure, and Kelly sighed, "Carla Colan! What are you doing here?" in no great surprise. She was so numbed by bewilderment that the strangeness of the man's presence did not occur to her.
"What in God's name is this?" demanded the taller woman, taking the light from Kelly's hand and directing it on the mangled shape. "What in Heaven's name is that?"
"A forbidden terror from the Amazon!" Kelly found her tongue at last, and speech came in a rush. "A Golden Jaguar! I was trying to dig up some dirt on them today. He belongs to a native cult in South America which worships a Jaguar god. They do bidding of the cult's shaman, which as far as I figure out mainly consists of executing the enemies of the cult."
"That's a wild tall tale, what's really going on?" demanded Colan, in seeming incredulity.
"God only knows. But he must have been the monster that killed Newton. He killed Newton's three servants tonight and would have killed me, too, I suppose, but Matim wounded him, and he evidently dragged himself away like a wild beast to die in the woods—"
Colan seemed curiously uninterested in Kelly's rushing narrative.
"Sure he's dead?" she muttered, bending closer to flash the light into the hideous face. The illumination was dim; the battery was swiftly burning out.
As Kelly was about to speak, the yellow-furred face briefly convulsed. Green eyes gleamed as with a last surge of life. A clawed hand stirred, lifted feebly up toward Colan. A few guttural words seeped through the lips; the fingers writhed weakly, extending the retractile claws. Then he shuddered, sank back and lay still. He had been stabbed under the heart, and only a beast-like vitality had carried him so far.
Colan straightened and faced Kelly, turning the light on her. A beat of silence cut between them, in which the atmosphere was electric with tension.
"You understand what he said?" It was more an assertion than a question.
Kelly's heart was pounding, a new bewilderment vying with a rising wrath. "Yes," she answered shortly.
"What did that fool say?" softly asked Colan.
Kelly set his teeth and stubbornly took the plunge reason cried out against. "He was speaking Portugese, close enough to Spanish that I caught the meaning. He said, "My Lady, tell the priests of my vengeance; they will give you what I promised you.'"
Even as she ground out the words, Kelly crouched, nerves taut for the impending attack. But before she could move, the black muzzle of an automatic trained on her.
"Too bad you understood that death-bed confession, Kelly," said Colan, coolly. "I don't want to kill another woman. I've kept blood off my hands so far through this affair. Listen, you're not rich, what reporter is? how'd you consider cutting in on a fortune? Wouldn't that be preferable to getting a slug through your guts and being planted alongside those poor losers down in Newton's shack for them to get the blame?"
"Nobody wants to die," answered Kelly, his gaze fixed on the light in Colan's hand—the glow which was rapidly turning redder and dimmer.
"Good!" snapped Colan. "I'll give you the low down. You might as well Newton got his money in Brazil. He stole two fistfuls of emeralds from the Golden Jaguar sect, which they had stored in their sacred hut; he killed a priest of the cult in getting away. Matim was with him. But they didn't get all the gems. And after that the Bakwanga took good care to guard them so nobody could steal what was left.
"I knew this fellow, Roberto, when I was in Danarak. I was after the emeralds then, but I never had a chance to locate them. I met Roberto a few months ago, again. He'd been sent from his tribe with an elder to retrieve the emeralds. But the elder was the one who spoke English and he died of pneumonia.
"Roberto was frantic to get back to his people, and he spilled the whole story of the thief. He told me that if he could kill Newton and bring the emeralds back, his tribe would make him a prince. He knew that Newton was somewhere in New Yor, but he was helpless find him without being able to speak the lingo. I offered to arrange his revenge the thief, if Roberto would agree to give me some of the emeralds his tribe hoarded.
"He swore by their god, the Golden Jaguar. I brought him secretly into these hills, and hid him up yonder in a shack the existence of which nobody suspects. Night after night I went through the thing with him, until he learned the procedure: to watch in the hills until he saw a light flash in Newton's shack. Then steal down there, jerk the switch and kill. These Jaguar men can see like cats at night. After all, they really do have cat's eyes.
"I called Newton up myself; it wasn't hard to imitate your voice. You know you sound like a twelve year old, don't you? And I had an alibi. While Roberto was tearing the life out of Newton, I was dining at a well-known night club, in full sight of a hundred people.
"I came back here tonight to smuggle him out of the country. The last thing I wanted was for him to get caught and spill the whole story. But his blood- lust must have betrayed him. When he saw the light flash on in the cottage again, it must have started a train of associations that led him once more to the cottage, to kill whoever he found there. It turned out he slaughtered the three Indios in time to save you! I saw the tag-end of the business, saw him stagger away from the shack, and then you following him.
"Now then, I've explained it all. I think you and I could work together, Kelly. You've got more nerve than good sense, but that's useful outside the law. What do you say, you want to join me and take a share of the Golden Jaguar emeralds?"
The glow went out. In the sudden darkness, Kelly, her pent-up outrage exploding at last, yelled: "Hell, no!" and sprang aside. The pistol cracked, an orange jet sliced the darkness, and Kelly's inexplicable ability saved her life. One hand whirled around in a tight circle. In some manner no one understood, she deflected the bullet without her hand even being scratched... and the bullet ricocheted directly backwards to punch into Carla Colan's grinning mouth and exit out the back of her head.
"What the hell? It was the voice of Townsend.
"You... I'm glad to see you, Will" Kelly stuttered, having no clue where to even start explaining.
"Sorry I didn't get here earlier. I was just coming around the bend of the lake shore and saw a light in Newton's cottage, then your flash bobbing among the trees. I couldn't hear what Carla was saying but I saw the gunblast. Suicide, huh? Wonder why?"
"I think she was just stark foaming-at-the-mouth looney. You suspected Colan all the time?"
The older reporter grinned wryly. "I ought to say yes, and establish myself as a regular genius. But the fact is, I suspected you all the time. That's right. That's why I came up here tonight, trying to figure out your connection with the murder. You've been showing up somehow at so many crime scenes that I figured you had underworld connections, O'Connor. Your flimsy explanations smelled phony to me. I had a sneaking suspicion that I'd bumped into a girl master-mind trying to put over the 'perfect crime.' Imagine that. I've got to stop reading those pulp magazines!"
"Sheesh, I'll say you owe me an apology. A good reporter can smell crimes before they happen. I guess now we need to get to the phone in Newton's cottage, though. You're going to call the police and me... I'm going to give the whole story to the night desk. THE MESSENGER will have an exclusive for the morning edition no other rag in town knows about!"
Kelly made no further comment. She was privately amused by the way she had not had an opportunity to get into her mask or helmeted costume the entire episode. Looks like the Green Devil had enjoyed a little vacation, she thought.
3/10/2023
