"THE HAND THAT WIELDS THE SCYTHE II"
Mar. 13th, 2023 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermesV.
After Bane left Rook's house, he drove straight to Big Stanislaus's dive down on the waterfront. It posed as a low-grade drinking joint but it was a hub for shady deals and negotiations. Only a few derelicts huddled about the bar that near to closing time, and he noticed that the bartender was a man that he had never seen before. He stared apprehensively at the infamous Jeremy Bane, but jerked a thumb toward the back door, masked by dingy curtains, when the Dire Wolf asked abruptly, "Tommy here?"
Bane passed through the door, traversed a short dimly-lighted hallway and rapped authoritatively on the door at the other end. In the silence he heard rats scampering. A steel disk in the center of the door shifted and a suspicious blue eye glittered in the opening.
"Open the door, Big Stanislaus," ordered Bane impatiently, and the eye was withdrawn, accompanied by the rattling of bolts and chains.
He pushed open the door and entered the room whose illumination was scarcely better than that of the corridor. It was a large, dingy, drab affair, lined with bunks. Fires sputtered in braziers, and Big Stanislaus was making his way to his accustomed seat behind a low counter near the wall. Bane spent but a single casual glance on the familiar figure, the well-known dingy tuxedo jacket from better days. Then he strode across the room to a door in the wall opposite the counter to which Big Stanislaus was making his way.
This was a "Stupor" joint and Bane knew those figures in the bunks were addicts lost in the near-coma of Stupor. Why the police had not raided it, as they had raided and destroyed other drug dens, he didn't know. Heavy-duty bribes, most likely.
A characteristic smell pervaded the dense atmosphere, in spite of the reek of the drug itself and unwashed bodies, the dank odor of the river, which hung over the waterfront dives or which welled up from their floors. Big Stanislaus's dive, like many others, was built on the very bank of the river. The back room projected out over the water on rotting piles, at which the polluted river lapped sluggishly.
Bane stepped through the door and pushed it closed behind him, ready to react to an attack from any direction.
He was in a small dingy room, bare except for a crude table and some chairs. An oil lamp on the table cast a smoky light. And in that light he saw Tommy Ciro. The man stood bolt upright against the far wall, his arms spread like a crucifix, rigid, his eyes glassy and staring, his mean, ratty features twisted in a frozen grin. What was going on? He did not speak, and Bane's gaze, traveling down him, halted with a shock. Johnny's feet did not touch the floor by several inches.
Bane's long-barreled 38 Smith & Wesson jumped into his hand like a conjuring trick. Tommy Ciro was dead and that grin was only a facial contortion of horror and agony. He was pinned to the wall by skewer-like iron spikes through his wrists and ankles, his ears nailed to the wall to keep his head upright. But that was not what had killed him. The front of Johnny's shirt was charred by a round, blackened hole.
All of this, Bane took in within a split-second.
The Dire Wolf wheeled, opened the door behind him and stepped back into the larger room. The light seemed dimmer, the smoke thicker than ever. No mumblings came from the bunks. The fires in the braziers burned dimly with blue smoke spirals. Big Stanislaus crouched behind the counter. His shoulders moved as if he were tallying beads on an abacus.
"Big Stanislaus!" Bane's voice grated harshly in the murky silence. "Who's been in that room tonight besides Tommy Ciro?"
The man behind the counter straightened and looked full at him, and Bane felt his skin crawl. Above the worn out jacket an unfamiliar face returned his gaze. That was not Big Stanislaus; it was a Gelengi. Bane glared about him as the men in the bunks rose with supple ease. They were not the usual assorted riff-raff of a Stupor parlor. They were all Gelengi, and those hooded black eyes were not clouded by drugs. This was the trap he had been expecting.
With a bound, the Dire Wolf sprang toward the outer door but they were already on him. His gun crashed deafeningly in the enclosed space and a man staggered in mid-stride. Then the lights went out, the braziers were overturned, and in the stygian blackness hard bodies caromed against him. Long-nailed fingers clawed at his throat, thick arms locked about his waist and legs.
Alternating hands, Bane's left whipped out in short jabs and backhands, crushing flesh and bone under each blow. With his right, he wielded the gun barrel like a blackjack. After a minute, the sheer number of the Gelengi overcame the advantage his enhanced speed gave him. He forged toward the unseen door stubbornly, dragging his assailants by sheer strength. It was like wading through quicksand.
Knives could not penetrate the flexible Trom armor under his clothing but his exposed face and hands were getting sliced up. A silk cord looped about his neck, shutting off his wind, sinking deeper and deeper into his flesh. Blindly, he jammed the muzzle against the nearest body and pulled the trigger. At the muffled concussion something fell away from him and the strangling agony lessened. Gasping for breath, he groped and tore the cord away. But that left him exposed and he was borne down under a rush of heavy bodies. Something smashed savagely against his head. Lights flashed before total darkness took him.
VI.
The smell of the river was in Jeremy Bane's nostrils as he regained his senses, river-scent mingled with the odor of stale blood. The blood, he realized, was clotted on his own scalp. His head ached and he tried to raise a hand to it, thereby discovering that he was bound hand and foot with cords that cut into the flesh. A candle was dazzling his eyes, and for awhile he could see nothing else. Then things quickly began to assume their proper proportions, and objects grew out of nothing and became identifiable.
The healing factor which Tel Shai knights enjoyed enabled him to recover within minutes from head trauma. An impact strong enough to break the scalp and knock him unconscious for more than a few minutes would often produce coma and death for the average Human. But the Dire Wolf was already functioning normally.
He was lying on a bare floor of new, unpainted wood, in a large square chamber, the walls of which were of stone, without paint or plaster. The ceiling was likewise of stone, with heavy, bare beams, and there was an open trap door almost directly above him, through which, in spite of the candle, he got a glimpse of stars. Fresh air flowed through that trap, bearing with it the river-smell stronger than ever. The chamber was bare of furniture, the candle stuck in a niche in the wall. Bane reflected wryly he had regained consciousness in much worse dungeions and jail cells.
He tried to struggle to a sitting position, but that made his head swim, so that he lay back and swore fervently. He yelled wrathfully, and a face peered down at him through the trap—a square, yellow face with beady slanted eyes. He cursed the face and it mocked him and was withdrawn. The noise of the door softly opening checked Bane's profanity and he wriggled around to glare at the intruder.
And he glared in silence, feeling an icy prickling up and down his spine. Once before he had lain bound and helpless, staring up at a tall black-robed figure whose crimson eyes glimmered from under the shadow of a dusky hood. But that man was surely dead.
"Timur Kasten, then it IS you."
"Aye!" The Alchemist threw back his cowl to reveal a dramatic visage. The face was that of a man with a clean-shaven head and a black mustache that came down either side of his mouth to his chin. Thick eyebrows rose up at a sharp angle over eyes with bright red irises. It was a brutal, merciless face which stared angrily at Bane.
"You have to be a brother or something, Temur Kasten is dead." demanded Bane.
"No. I live. We of my craft have many potions that heal even the worst wounds and bring one back from having one foot on the threshold. I live! And now I am ready to take up my work where I left off, though I must rebuild much. Many of my former followers had forgotten my authority. Some required to be taught anew who was master."
"So you've been teaching them," grunted Bane, recovering his pugnacious composure.
"True. Some examples had to be made. One man fell from a roof, a snake bit another, yet another ran into knives in a dark alley. Then there was another matter. Rook betrayed me in the old days. She knows too many secrets. She had to die. So that she might taste agony in anticipation, I sent her a page from my Doom Book."
"And you killed Tommy Ciro," accused Bane.
"Of course. All lines leading from the girl's apartment house are tapped. I myself heard your conversation with Ciro. That is why you were not attacked when you left the building. I saw that you were playing into my hands. I sent my men to take possession of Stanislaus's dive. He had no more use for his jacket, presently, so one donned it to deceive you. Ciro had somehow learned of my return, as these stool pigeons are great gossips. But he had time to regret. A man dies hard with a white-hot point of iron bored through his breast."
Bane said nothing and presently the Alchemist continued, "I wrote your name on that page because I recognized you as my most dangerous opponent. It was because of you that my lieutenants turned against me.
"I am rebuilding my empire again, but more solidly. First I shall consolidate my base here, and create a political machine to rule the city. The men in office now do not suspect my existence. If all were to die, it would not be hard to find others to fill their places—men who are not indifferent to the clink of gold."
"That near-death experience left you insane," growled Bane. "You think you can control a whole city government from a waterfront dive?"
"It has been done before," answered the Alchemist tranquilly. "I have so many poisons in my arsenal, so many addictive serums. This street drug Stupor began as an Alchemical formula. Addicts have no shame, they will do whatever I ask. I will operate behind a white American, a figurehead whom men will think the real power, while I remain unseen. You might have been that man, if you had a little more intelligence."
"I still say you're crazy. You need to put be on heavy meds," snarled Bane. "Do you think you can substitute a whole city government and get away with it?"
"I can and will. These men will die in various ways, and men of my own choice will succeed them in office. Within a year I will hold this city in the palm of my hand, and there will be none to interfere with me."
g
Lying staring up at the bizarre figure, whose features were again shadowed beyond recognition by the hood, Bane's flesh crawled with the conviction that the Alchemist was insane in the worst way. Bane, who knew the city relied on him for protection from whatever menace the Midnight War might spawn, lay bound and helpless before him. The Dire Wolf's every muscle was taut as he pulled against his bonds.
"Always the man of violence," mocked Kasten, with the suggestion of scorn in his voice. "So short-sighted. You put your trust in guns and fist, as if they could stop stride of cunning and long-term planning! Well, you have struck your last. Smell the river damp that creeps in through the ceiling? Soon it shall enfold you utterly and your dreams and aspirations will be one with the mist of the river."
"Where are we anyway?" demanded Bane. "Smells like New Jersey."
"Indeed we are in a remote part of New Jersey, the river where the marshes begin. Once there were warehouses here, and a factory, but they were abandoned as the city grew in the other direction, and have been crumbling into ruin for twenty years. I purchased the entire island through one of my agents, and am rebuilding to suit my own purposes an old stone mansion which stood here before the factory was built.
"None notices, because my own henchmen are the workmen, and no one ever comes to this marshy island. The house is invisible from the river, hidden as it is among the tangle of old rotting warehouses. You came here in a motorboat which was anchored beneath the rotting wharves behind Big Stanislaus' establishment. Another boat will presently fetch my men who were sent to dispose of Rook."
"Good luck to them, they'll need it," commented the detective.
"You give yourself false hope. I know she summoned that wildman, Shiro Mitsuru, to her aid, and it's true that my men failed to slay him before he reached her. But I suppose it was a false sense of trust in the Tiger Fury that caused you to make your appointment with Ciro. I rather expected you to remain with the foolish girl and try to protect her in your way."
Somewhere below them a gong sounded. Kasten did not start, but there was a surprise in the lift of his head. He closed the black book.
"I have wasted enough time on you," he said. "Once before I bade you farewell in one of my dungeons. Then the treason of my lieutenants saved you. This time ther will be no upset of my plans. The only men in this house are my assassins, who know no law but my will. I go, but you will not be lonely. Soon one will come to you."
And with a low, chilling laugh the phantom-like figure moved through the door and disappeared. Outside a lock clicked, and then there was stillness.
The silence was broken suddenly by a muffled scream. It came from somewhere below and was repeated half a dozen times. Bane scowled. It was the shrieking of the insane. After these cries the silence seemed even more stifling and menacing.
Bane calmed himself and began to formulate plans. There was a way out of every trap, there was a way to win every battle, he just needed to see it. Again the velvet-capped head of the Gelengi leered down at him through the trapdoor.
"Grin while you can!" snapped Bane, tugging at his cords until the veins stood out on his temples. Then he saw the leer change suddenly to a startled look. The head vanished from the trap and there came a sound like the blow of a butcher's cleaver.
Another face was poked into the trap, a handsome bronzed visage with a shock of coarse black hair and tiger eyes.
"There you are!" laughed the apparition.
"Shiro!" replied the Dire Wolf. "What the devil are you doing here?"
"Softly!" muttered the Tiger Fury. "Let not the accursed ones hear!"
He tossed the loose end of a rope ladder down through the trap and came down in a rush, his slippered feet making no sound as he hit the floor. He held a long knife in his teeth, and blood dripped from the point.
Squatting beside the Dire Wolf, he cut him free with reckless slashes that threatened to slice flesh as well as hemp. The Tiger Fury was quivering with half-controlled zeal.
Bane sat up, chafing his raw wrists.
"Where's Rook? What's the situation?"
"She's here! In this nightmare stronghold! That was Rook screaming a few minutes ago," broke in the Tiger Fury.
"But that sounded like a mad woman!" Bane almost whispered.
"Sadly, Rook IS mad," said Shiro somberly. "Listen, Jeremy, and then judge if the fault is altogether mine.
VII.
"After you left," Shiro began, "the Gelengi let down a man from the roof on a rope, so I broke his head and I killed three more who sought to force the doors. But when I returned to Rook, somehow she didn't recognize me. She ran off into the street, and as she ran shrieking along the sidewalk, a big van zoomed up and a Gelengi stretched forth an arm and dragged her into the car, while I was being slowed by having to fight a few more of them. They're not the best assassins but they sure work in big numbers.
"You know I'm fast but catching a car on foot is asking a bit much. Then a car pulled up next to me. It was driven by a young man who absolutely stank of beer and he had seen the van rush off while I shook my fist at it. Well, I yanked him out from behind the wheel and peeled out. He shouldn't have been driving anyway. I caught sight of the van by sheer luck and saw it stop at the river bank.
"By this time, I was really worked up and wanted blood. I ran through the darkness, but before I could reach the bank I saw four Gelengi leave the car, carrying Rook who was bound and gagged, and they entered a waiting speedboat boat and headed out into the river toward an island which was just visible in the gloom.
"A few seconds too late again! Was I furious! I jumped up and down on the shore like a madman, and was about to leap in and swim, when I spotted an old rowboat chained to a pile. You know the Kumundu trick for snapping chains, Jeremy. In a few minutes, I was rowing after the Gelengi like a torpedo.
"Before I could reach them, they made it to a wharf on the marshy shore ahead of me, so I was not too far behind as they carried Rook through the shadows of the crumbling shacks all around.
"You know how I get. Before I could catch up with them they had reached the door of the big stone house that we're in right now. A steel fence surrounded it, with razor-edged spearheads set along the top but I was up and over it without getting a scratch. Inside was a second wall of stone, but it stood in ruins.
"I crouched in the shadows near the house and saw that the windows were heavily barred and the doors strong. Moreover, the lower part of the house is full of armed men. So I climbed a corner of the wall, and it was not easy, but presently I reached the roof which at that part is flat, with a parapet. I expected a watcher, and so there was, but he was too busy taunting his captive to see or hear me until I twisted his fool head around on his neck. Oh, here is his dagger, you might find it useful."
Bane mechanically took the wicked, wavy-bladed weapon. "Wait, Shiro, go back a bit. what caused Rook to go crazy like that?"
"Jeremy, there was a broken wine bottle on the floor, and a goblet. I had no time to investigate it, but I know that wine must have been poisoned with one of Temur Kasten's Alchemy potions. No idea how long the effects will last."
"There may not be any cure or antidote," the Dire Wolf said. "But whether she's dead or alive, we'll finish off Kasten for doing that to her. Let's try that door."
It was of heavy teak, braced with bronze straps. "It is locked," muttered the Tiger Fury. "Between the two of us, though, what door can stand?"
He was about to launch his shoulder against it when he stopped short, raising one hand for silence. "Someone approaches!" he whispered, and a second later Bane's hearing caught a cat-like tread.
Instantly Bane acted. He shoved the surprised Tiger Fury behind the door and sat down quickly in the center of the room, wrapped a piece of rope about his ankles and then lay full length, his arms behind and under him. He was lying on the other pieces of severed cord, concealing them, and to the casual glance he resembled a man lying bound hand and foot. The Tiger Fury understood. He had been outraged at being manhandled so cavalierly but a grin came over his face.
Bane worked with the celerity of trained mind and muscles that eliminates fumbling delay and bungling. He accomplished his purpose in a matter of seconds and without undue noise. A key grated in the lock as he settled himself, and then the door swung open. A giant Gelengi stood framed in the opening. His head was shaven, his square features passionless as the face of a copper idol. In one hand he carried a curiously shaped ebony block, in the other a mace such as was borne by the horsemen of Azfahan, straight-hafted iron bludgeon with a round head covered with steel points, and a knob on the other end to keep the hand from slipping.
He did not see Shiro because when he threw back the door, the Tiger Fury was hidden behind it. Shiro did not strike him as he entered because the Tiger Fury could not see into the outer corridor, and had no way of knowing how many men were following the first. But the Gelengi was alone, and he did not bother to shut the door. He went straight to the man lying on the floor, scowling slightly to see the rope ladder hanging down through the trap, as if it was not usual to leave it that way, but he did not show any suspicion or call to the man on the roof.
He did not examine Bane's cords. The Dire Wolf presented the appearance the Mongol had expected, and this fact blunted his faculties as anything taken for granted is likely to do. As he bent down, over his shoulder Bane saw Shiro glide from behind the door as silently as a panther.
Leaning his mace against his leg, spiked head on the floor, the Mongol grasped Bane's shirt front with one hand, lifted his head and shoulders clear of the floor, while he shoved the block under his head. Like twin striking snakes the Dire Wolf's hands whipped from up behind him and locked on the Gelengi's bull throat.
There was no cry. Instantly the Gelengi's dark eyes distended and his lips parted in a grin of strangulation. With a terrific heave he reared upright, dragging Bane with him, but not breaking his hold, and the weight of the Dire Wolf pulled them both down again. Both rough-skinned hands tore frantically at Bane's wrists; then the giant stiffened convulsively and brief agony reddened his black eyes. Shiro had driven his fist between the Mongol's shoulders so hard so that the man's chest burst open from the transmitted shock.
Bane caught up the mace and tossed it aside with disdain, Used to fighting with his silver daggers, he much preferred the blade which Shiro had given him.
"The door's open," said Bane. "Let's go!"
There were no keys on the body. Bane doubted if the key in the door would fit any other in the building, but he locked the door and pocketed the key, hoping that would prevent the body from being soon discovered.
They emerged into a dim-lit corridor which presented the same unfinished appearance as the room they had just left. At the other end stairs wound down into shadowy gloom, and they descended warily, Bane feeling along the wall to guide his steps. Shiro seemed to see like a cat in the dark as he went down silently and surely. But it was Bane who discovered the door. His hand, moving along the convex surface, felt the smooth stone give way to wood—a short narrow panel, through which a man could just squeeze. When the wall was covered with tapestry—as he knew it would be when Kasten completed his house—it would be sufficiently hidden for a secret entrance.
Shiro, behind him, was growing impatient at the delay, when somewhere below them both heard a noise simultaneously. It might have been a man ascending the winding stairs and it might not, but Bane acted instinctively. He pushed and the door opened inward on noiseless oiled springs. A groping foot discovered narrow steps inside. With a whispered word to the Tiger Fury he stepped through and Shiro followed. He pulled the door shut again and they stood in total blackness with a curving wall on either hand. Bane pulled a pencil flashlight from an inner jacket pocket and narrow stairs were revealed, winding down.
"This place must be built like a castle," Bane muttered, wondering at the thickness of the walls. He snapped off the flash and they groped down in darkness too thick for even the Tiger Fury to pierce. And suddenly both halted in their tracks. Bane estimated that they had reached the level of the second floor, and through the inner wall came the mutter of voices. Bane groped for another door, or a peep-hole for spying, but he found nothing of the sort. But straining his ear close to the stone, he began to understand what was being said beyond the wall, and a long-drawn hiss between clenched teeth told him that Shiro likewise understood.
VIII.
The first voice was that of Temur Kasten. There was no mistaking that hollow reverberance. It was answered by a piteous whimpering that brought fresh fuel to Bane's rage.
"No," the Alchemist was saying. "I have come back, not from Death itself but certainly from mortal wounds. I was saved by the my assistants whom I have taught to administer my restorative serums. You are at a loss as to how you got here?"
"I don't understand!" It was the voice of Rook, half-hysterical, but undeniably sane. "I remember opening a bottle of wine, and as soon as I drank I knew it was drugged. Then everything faded out—I don't remember anything except great black walls, and awful shapes skulking in the darkness. I ran through gigantic shadowy halls for a thousand years—"
"They were hallucinations of madness, of the juice of the black pomegranate," answered Quilt. Shiro was muttering blasphemously in his beard until Bane admonished him to silence with a fierce dig of his elbow. "If you had drunk more you would have died like a rabid dog. As it was, you went insane. But I knew the antidote—possessed the drug that restored your sanity."
"Why?" the girl whimpered bewilderedly.
"Because I did not wish you to die like a candle blown out in the dark, my beautiful white orchid. I wish you to be fully sane so as to taste to the last dregs the shame and agony of death, subtle and prolonged. For the exquisite, an exquisite death. For the coarse-fibered, the death of an ox, such as I have decreed for your friend Bane."
"That will be more easily decreed than executed," she retorted with a flash of her old defiant spirit.
"It is already accomplished," the Alchemist asserted imperturbably. "The executioner has gone to him, and by now the Dire Wolf is in the land of ghosts."
"Oh, God!" Rook moaned. At the sick grief and pain in that sound, Bane winced and fought a strong desire to shout out denial and reassurance.
Then she remembered something else to torture her. "Shiro! What have you done with Shiro?"
The Tiger Fury's fingers clamped like iron on Bane's arm at the sound of his name.
"When my men brought you away they did not take time to deal with him," replied the Alchemist. "They had not expected to take you alive, and when fate cast you into their hands, they came away in haste. He matters little. True, he killed four of my best men, but that was merely the deed of a wild animal. He has no mentality. He and the Dire Wolf are much alike, mere masses of brawn, brainless, helpless against a superior intellect like mine. Presently I shall attend to him. His corpse shall be thrown on a dung-heap with a dead pig."
Bane felt Shiro trembling with fury. Only his grip on the Tiger Fury's arm kept the maddened fighter from attacking the stone wall itself in an effort to burst through to his enemy. The Dire Wolf was running his free hand over the surface, seeking a door, but only blank stone rewarded him. Temur Kasten had not had time to provide his unfinished house with as many secrets as his rat-runs usually possessed.
They heard the Gelengi clap his hands authoritatively, and they sensed the entrance of men into the room. Staccato commands followed in Azfahanan, there was a sharp cry of pain or fear, and then silence followed the soft closing of a door. Though they could not see, both men knew instinctively that the chamber on the other side of the wall was empty. Shiro almost choked with helpless rage. He was penned in these infernal walls and Rook was being hauled away to some agonizing doom.
The Tiger Fury whirled and gripped Bane's shoulder with a grasp that would have injured a normal Human. "Enough with strategy and plans! It's time to hear this cult apart."
"You're right!" said the Dire Wolf. "There must be another door somewhere!"
IX
After Bane left Rook's house, he drove straight to Big Stanislaus's dive down on the waterfront. It posed as a low-grade drinking joint but it was a hub for shady deals and negotiations. Only a few derelicts huddled about the bar that near to closing time, and he noticed that the bartender was a man that he had never seen before. He stared apprehensively at the infamous Jeremy Bane, but jerked a thumb toward the back door, masked by dingy curtains, when the Dire Wolf asked abruptly, "Tommy here?"
Bane passed through the door, traversed a short dimly-lighted hallway and rapped authoritatively on the door at the other end. In the silence he heard rats scampering. A steel disk in the center of the door shifted and a suspicious blue eye glittered in the opening.
"Open the door, Big Stanislaus," ordered Bane impatiently, and the eye was withdrawn, accompanied by the rattling of bolts and chains.
He pushed open the door and entered the room whose illumination was scarcely better than that of the corridor. It was a large, dingy, drab affair, lined with bunks. Fires sputtered in braziers, and Big Stanislaus was making his way to his accustomed seat behind a low counter near the wall. Bane spent but a single casual glance on the familiar figure, the well-known dingy tuxedo jacket from better days. Then he strode across the room to a door in the wall opposite the counter to which Big Stanislaus was making his way.
This was a "Stupor" joint and Bane knew those figures in the bunks were addicts lost in the near-coma of Stupor. Why the police had not raided it, as they had raided and destroyed other drug dens, he didn't know. Heavy-duty bribes, most likely.
A characteristic smell pervaded the dense atmosphere, in spite of the reek of the drug itself and unwashed bodies, the dank odor of the river, which hung over the waterfront dives or which welled up from their floors. Big Stanislaus's dive, like many others, was built on the very bank of the river. The back room projected out over the water on rotting piles, at which the polluted river lapped sluggishly.
Bane stepped through the door and pushed it closed behind him, ready to react to an attack from any direction.
He was in a small dingy room, bare except for a crude table and some chairs. An oil lamp on the table cast a smoky light. And in that light he saw Tommy Ciro. The man stood bolt upright against the far wall, his arms spread like a crucifix, rigid, his eyes glassy and staring, his mean, ratty features twisted in a frozen grin. What was going on? He did not speak, and Bane's gaze, traveling down him, halted with a shock. Johnny's feet did not touch the floor by several inches.
Bane's long-barreled 38 Smith & Wesson jumped into his hand like a conjuring trick. Tommy Ciro was dead and that grin was only a facial contortion of horror and agony. He was pinned to the wall by skewer-like iron spikes through his wrists and ankles, his ears nailed to the wall to keep his head upright. But that was not what had killed him. The front of Johnny's shirt was charred by a round, blackened hole.
All of this, Bane took in within a split-second.
The Dire Wolf wheeled, opened the door behind him and stepped back into the larger room. The light seemed dimmer, the smoke thicker than ever. No mumblings came from the bunks. The fires in the braziers burned dimly with blue smoke spirals. Big Stanislaus crouched behind the counter. His shoulders moved as if he were tallying beads on an abacus.
"Big Stanislaus!" Bane's voice grated harshly in the murky silence. "Who's been in that room tonight besides Tommy Ciro?"
The man behind the counter straightened and looked full at him, and Bane felt his skin crawl. Above the worn out jacket an unfamiliar face returned his gaze. That was not Big Stanislaus; it was a Gelengi. Bane glared about him as the men in the bunks rose with supple ease. They were not the usual assorted riff-raff of a Stupor parlor. They were all Gelengi, and those hooded black eyes were not clouded by drugs. This was the trap he had been expecting.
With a bound, the Dire Wolf sprang toward the outer door but they were already on him. His gun crashed deafeningly in the enclosed space and a man staggered in mid-stride. Then the lights went out, the braziers were overturned, and in the stygian blackness hard bodies caromed against him. Long-nailed fingers clawed at his throat, thick arms locked about his waist and legs.
Alternating hands, Bane's left whipped out in short jabs and backhands, crushing flesh and bone under each blow. With his right, he wielded the gun barrel like a blackjack. After a minute, the sheer number of the Gelengi overcame the advantage his enhanced speed gave him. He forged toward the unseen door stubbornly, dragging his assailants by sheer strength. It was like wading through quicksand.
Knives could not penetrate the flexible Trom armor under his clothing but his exposed face and hands were getting sliced up. A silk cord looped about his neck, shutting off his wind, sinking deeper and deeper into his flesh. Blindly, he jammed the muzzle against the nearest body and pulled the trigger. At the muffled concussion something fell away from him and the strangling agony lessened. Gasping for breath, he groped and tore the cord away. But that left him exposed and he was borne down under a rush of heavy bodies. Something smashed savagely against his head. Lights flashed before total darkness took him.
VI.
The smell of the river was in Jeremy Bane's nostrils as he regained his senses, river-scent mingled with the odor of stale blood. The blood, he realized, was clotted on his own scalp. His head ached and he tried to raise a hand to it, thereby discovering that he was bound hand and foot with cords that cut into the flesh. A candle was dazzling his eyes, and for awhile he could see nothing else. Then things quickly began to assume their proper proportions, and objects grew out of nothing and became identifiable.
The healing factor which Tel Shai knights enjoyed enabled him to recover within minutes from head trauma. An impact strong enough to break the scalp and knock him unconscious for more than a few minutes would often produce coma and death for the average Human. But the Dire Wolf was already functioning normally.
He was lying on a bare floor of new, unpainted wood, in a large square chamber, the walls of which were of stone, without paint or plaster. The ceiling was likewise of stone, with heavy, bare beams, and there was an open trap door almost directly above him, through which, in spite of the candle, he got a glimpse of stars. Fresh air flowed through that trap, bearing with it the river-smell stronger than ever. The chamber was bare of furniture, the candle stuck in a niche in the wall. Bane reflected wryly he had regained consciousness in much worse dungeions and jail cells.
He tried to struggle to a sitting position, but that made his head swim, so that he lay back and swore fervently. He yelled wrathfully, and a face peered down at him through the trap—a square, yellow face with beady slanted eyes. He cursed the face and it mocked him and was withdrawn. The noise of the door softly opening checked Bane's profanity and he wriggled around to glare at the intruder.
And he glared in silence, feeling an icy prickling up and down his spine. Once before he had lain bound and helpless, staring up at a tall black-robed figure whose crimson eyes glimmered from under the shadow of a dusky hood. But that man was surely dead.
"Timur Kasten, then it IS you."
"Aye!" The Alchemist threw back his cowl to reveal a dramatic visage. The face was that of a man with a clean-shaven head and a black mustache that came down either side of his mouth to his chin. Thick eyebrows rose up at a sharp angle over eyes with bright red irises. It was a brutal, merciless face which stared angrily at Bane.
"You have to be a brother or something, Temur Kasten is dead." demanded Bane.
"No. I live. We of my craft have many potions that heal even the worst wounds and bring one back from having one foot on the threshold. I live! And now I am ready to take up my work where I left off, though I must rebuild much. Many of my former followers had forgotten my authority. Some required to be taught anew who was master."
"So you've been teaching them," grunted Bane, recovering his pugnacious composure.
"True. Some examples had to be made. One man fell from a roof, a snake bit another, yet another ran into knives in a dark alley. Then there was another matter. Rook betrayed me in the old days. She knows too many secrets. She had to die. So that she might taste agony in anticipation, I sent her a page from my Doom Book."
"And you killed Tommy Ciro," accused Bane.
"Of course. All lines leading from the girl's apartment house are tapped. I myself heard your conversation with Ciro. That is why you were not attacked when you left the building. I saw that you were playing into my hands. I sent my men to take possession of Stanislaus's dive. He had no more use for his jacket, presently, so one donned it to deceive you. Ciro had somehow learned of my return, as these stool pigeons are great gossips. But he had time to regret. A man dies hard with a white-hot point of iron bored through his breast."
Bane said nothing and presently the Alchemist continued, "I wrote your name on that page because I recognized you as my most dangerous opponent. It was because of you that my lieutenants turned against me.
"I am rebuilding my empire again, but more solidly. First I shall consolidate my base here, and create a political machine to rule the city. The men in office now do not suspect my existence. If all were to die, it would not be hard to find others to fill their places—men who are not indifferent to the clink of gold."
"That near-death experience left you insane," growled Bane. "You think you can control a whole city government from a waterfront dive?"
"It has been done before," answered the Alchemist tranquilly. "I have so many poisons in my arsenal, so many addictive serums. This street drug Stupor began as an Alchemical formula. Addicts have no shame, they will do whatever I ask. I will operate behind a white American, a figurehead whom men will think the real power, while I remain unseen. You might have been that man, if you had a little more intelligence."
"I still say you're crazy. You need to put be on heavy meds," snarled Bane. "Do you think you can substitute a whole city government and get away with it?"
"I can and will. These men will die in various ways, and men of my own choice will succeed them in office. Within a year I will hold this city in the palm of my hand, and there will be none to interfere with me."
g
Lying staring up at the bizarre figure, whose features were again shadowed beyond recognition by the hood, Bane's flesh crawled with the conviction that the Alchemist was insane in the worst way. Bane, who knew the city relied on him for protection from whatever menace the Midnight War might spawn, lay bound and helpless before him. The Dire Wolf's every muscle was taut as he pulled against his bonds.
"Always the man of violence," mocked Kasten, with the suggestion of scorn in his voice. "So short-sighted. You put your trust in guns and fist, as if they could stop stride of cunning and long-term planning! Well, you have struck your last. Smell the river damp that creeps in through the ceiling? Soon it shall enfold you utterly and your dreams and aspirations will be one with the mist of the river."
"Where are we anyway?" demanded Bane. "Smells like New Jersey."
"Indeed we are in a remote part of New Jersey, the river where the marshes begin. Once there were warehouses here, and a factory, but they were abandoned as the city grew in the other direction, and have been crumbling into ruin for twenty years. I purchased the entire island through one of my agents, and am rebuilding to suit my own purposes an old stone mansion which stood here before the factory was built.
"None notices, because my own henchmen are the workmen, and no one ever comes to this marshy island. The house is invisible from the river, hidden as it is among the tangle of old rotting warehouses. You came here in a motorboat which was anchored beneath the rotting wharves behind Big Stanislaus' establishment. Another boat will presently fetch my men who were sent to dispose of Rook."
"Good luck to them, they'll need it," commented the detective.
"You give yourself false hope. I know she summoned that wildman, Shiro Mitsuru, to her aid, and it's true that my men failed to slay him before he reached her. But I suppose it was a false sense of trust in the Tiger Fury that caused you to make your appointment with Ciro. I rather expected you to remain with the foolish girl and try to protect her in your way."
Somewhere below them a gong sounded. Kasten did not start, but there was a surprise in the lift of his head. He closed the black book.
"I have wasted enough time on you," he said. "Once before I bade you farewell in one of my dungeons. Then the treason of my lieutenants saved you. This time ther will be no upset of my plans. The only men in this house are my assassins, who know no law but my will. I go, but you will not be lonely. Soon one will come to you."
And with a low, chilling laugh the phantom-like figure moved through the door and disappeared. Outside a lock clicked, and then there was stillness.
The silence was broken suddenly by a muffled scream. It came from somewhere below and was repeated half a dozen times. Bane scowled. It was the shrieking of the insane. After these cries the silence seemed even more stifling and menacing.
Bane calmed himself and began to formulate plans. There was a way out of every trap, there was a way to win every battle, he just needed to see it. Again the velvet-capped head of the Gelengi leered down at him through the trapdoor.
"Grin while you can!" snapped Bane, tugging at his cords until the veins stood out on his temples. Then he saw the leer change suddenly to a startled look. The head vanished from the trap and there came a sound like the blow of a butcher's cleaver.
Another face was poked into the trap, a handsome bronzed visage with a shock of coarse black hair and tiger eyes.
"There you are!" laughed the apparition.
"Shiro!" replied the Dire Wolf. "What the devil are you doing here?"
"Softly!" muttered the Tiger Fury. "Let not the accursed ones hear!"
He tossed the loose end of a rope ladder down through the trap and came down in a rush, his slippered feet making no sound as he hit the floor. He held a long knife in his teeth, and blood dripped from the point.
Squatting beside the Dire Wolf, he cut him free with reckless slashes that threatened to slice flesh as well as hemp. The Tiger Fury was quivering with half-controlled zeal.
Bane sat up, chafing his raw wrists.
"Where's Rook? What's the situation?"
"She's here! In this nightmare stronghold! That was Rook screaming a few minutes ago," broke in the Tiger Fury.
"But that sounded like a mad woman!" Bane almost whispered.
"Sadly, Rook IS mad," said Shiro somberly. "Listen, Jeremy, and then judge if the fault is altogether mine.
VII.
"After you left," Shiro began, "the Gelengi let down a man from the roof on a rope, so I broke his head and I killed three more who sought to force the doors. But when I returned to Rook, somehow she didn't recognize me. She ran off into the street, and as she ran shrieking along the sidewalk, a big van zoomed up and a Gelengi stretched forth an arm and dragged her into the car, while I was being slowed by having to fight a few more of them. They're not the best assassins but they sure work in big numbers.
"You know I'm fast but catching a car on foot is asking a bit much. Then a car pulled up next to me. It was driven by a young man who absolutely stank of beer and he had seen the van rush off while I shook my fist at it. Well, I yanked him out from behind the wheel and peeled out. He shouldn't have been driving anyway. I caught sight of the van by sheer luck and saw it stop at the river bank.
"By this time, I was really worked up and wanted blood. I ran through the darkness, but before I could reach the bank I saw four Gelengi leave the car, carrying Rook who was bound and gagged, and they entered a waiting speedboat boat and headed out into the river toward an island which was just visible in the gloom.
"A few seconds too late again! Was I furious! I jumped up and down on the shore like a madman, and was about to leap in and swim, when I spotted an old rowboat chained to a pile. You know the Kumundu trick for snapping chains, Jeremy. In a few minutes, I was rowing after the Gelengi like a torpedo.
"Before I could reach them, they made it to a wharf on the marshy shore ahead of me, so I was not too far behind as they carried Rook through the shadows of the crumbling shacks all around.
"You know how I get. Before I could catch up with them they had reached the door of the big stone house that we're in right now. A steel fence surrounded it, with razor-edged spearheads set along the top but I was up and over it without getting a scratch. Inside was a second wall of stone, but it stood in ruins.
"I crouched in the shadows near the house and saw that the windows were heavily barred and the doors strong. Moreover, the lower part of the house is full of armed men. So I climbed a corner of the wall, and it was not easy, but presently I reached the roof which at that part is flat, with a parapet. I expected a watcher, and so there was, but he was too busy taunting his captive to see or hear me until I twisted his fool head around on his neck. Oh, here is his dagger, you might find it useful."
Bane mechanically took the wicked, wavy-bladed weapon. "Wait, Shiro, go back a bit. what caused Rook to go crazy like that?"
"Jeremy, there was a broken wine bottle on the floor, and a goblet. I had no time to investigate it, but I know that wine must have been poisoned with one of Temur Kasten's Alchemy potions. No idea how long the effects will last."
"There may not be any cure or antidote," the Dire Wolf said. "But whether she's dead or alive, we'll finish off Kasten for doing that to her. Let's try that door."
It was of heavy teak, braced with bronze straps. "It is locked," muttered the Tiger Fury. "Between the two of us, though, what door can stand?"
He was about to launch his shoulder against it when he stopped short, raising one hand for silence. "Someone approaches!" he whispered, and a second later Bane's hearing caught a cat-like tread.
Instantly Bane acted. He shoved the surprised Tiger Fury behind the door and sat down quickly in the center of the room, wrapped a piece of rope about his ankles and then lay full length, his arms behind and under him. He was lying on the other pieces of severed cord, concealing them, and to the casual glance he resembled a man lying bound hand and foot. The Tiger Fury understood. He had been outraged at being manhandled so cavalierly but a grin came over his face.
Bane worked with the celerity of trained mind and muscles that eliminates fumbling delay and bungling. He accomplished his purpose in a matter of seconds and without undue noise. A key grated in the lock as he settled himself, and then the door swung open. A giant Gelengi stood framed in the opening. His head was shaven, his square features passionless as the face of a copper idol. In one hand he carried a curiously shaped ebony block, in the other a mace such as was borne by the horsemen of Azfahan, straight-hafted iron bludgeon with a round head covered with steel points, and a knob on the other end to keep the hand from slipping.
He did not see Shiro because when he threw back the door, the Tiger Fury was hidden behind it. Shiro did not strike him as he entered because the Tiger Fury could not see into the outer corridor, and had no way of knowing how many men were following the first. But the Gelengi was alone, and he did not bother to shut the door. He went straight to the man lying on the floor, scowling slightly to see the rope ladder hanging down through the trap, as if it was not usual to leave it that way, but he did not show any suspicion or call to the man on the roof.
He did not examine Bane's cords. The Dire Wolf presented the appearance the Mongol had expected, and this fact blunted his faculties as anything taken for granted is likely to do. As he bent down, over his shoulder Bane saw Shiro glide from behind the door as silently as a panther.
Leaning his mace against his leg, spiked head on the floor, the Mongol grasped Bane's shirt front with one hand, lifted his head and shoulders clear of the floor, while he shoved the block under his head. Like twin striking snakes the Dire Wolf's hands whipped from up behind him and locked on the Gelengi's bull throat.
There was no cry. Instantly the Gelengi's dark eyes distended and his lips parted in a grin of strangulation. With a terrific heave he reared upright, dragging Bane with him, but not breaking his hold, and the weight of the Dire Wolf pulled them both down again. Both rough-skinned hands tore frantically at Bane's wrists; then the giant stiffened convulsively and brief agony reddened his black eyes. Shiro had driven his fist between the Mongol's shoulders so hard so that the man's chest burst open from the transmitted shock.
Bane caught up the mace and tossed it aside with disdain, Used to fighting with his silver daggers, he much preferred the blade which Shiro had given him.
"The door's open," said Bane. "Let's go!"
There were no keys on the body. Bane doubted if the key in the door would fit any other in the building, but he locked the door and pocketed the key, hoping that would prevent the body from being soon discovered.
They emerged into a dim-lit corridor which presented the same unfinished appearance as the room they had just left. At the other end stairs wound down into shadowy gloom, and they descended warily, Bane feeling along the wall to guide his steps. Shiro seemed to see like a cat in the dark as he went down silently and surely. But it was Bane who discovered the door. His hand, moving along the convex surface, felt the smooth stone give way to wood—a short narrow panel, through which a man could just squeeze. When the wall was covered with tapestry—as he knew it would be when Kasten completed his house—it would be sufficiently hidden for a secret entrance.
Shiro, behind him, was growing impatient at the delay, when somewhere below them both heard a noise simultaneously. It might have been a man ascending the winding stairs and it might not, but Bane acted instinctively. He pushed and the door opened inward on noiseless oiled springs. A groping foot discovered narrow steps inside. With a whispered word to the Tiger Fury he stepped through and Shiro followed. He pulled the door shut again and they stood in total blackness with a curving wall on either hand. Bane pulled a pencil flashlight from an inner jacket pocket and narrow stairs were revealed, winding down.
"This place must be built like a castle," Bane muttered, wondering at the thickness of the walls. He snapped off the flash and they groped down in darkness too thick for even the Tiger Fury to pierce. And suddenly both halted in their tracks. Bane estimated that they had reached the level of the second floor, and through the inner wall came the mutter of voices. Bane groped for another door, or a peep-hole for spying, but he found nothing of the sort. But straining his ear close to the stone, he began to understand what was being said beyond the wall, and a long-drawn hiss between clenched teeth told him that Shiro likewise understood.
VIII.
The first voice was that of Temur Kasten. There was no mistaking that hollow reverberance. It was answered by a piteous whimpering that brought fresh fuel to Bane's rage.
"No," the Alchemist was saying. "I have come back, not from Death itself but certainly from mortal wounds. I was saved by the my assistants whom I have taught to administer my restorative serums. You are at a loss as to how you got here?"
"I don't understand!" It was the voice of Rook, half-hysterical, but undeniably sane. "I remember opening a bottle of wine, and as soon as I drank I knew it was drugged. Then everything faded out—I don't remember anything except great black walls, and awful shapes skulking in the darkness. I ran through gigantic shadowy halls for a thousand years—"
"They were hallucinations of madness, of the juice of the black pomegranate," answered Quilt. Shiro was muttering blasphemously in his beard until Bane admonished him to silence with a fierce dig of his elbow. "If you had drunk more you would have died like a rabid dog. As it was, you went insane. But I knew the antidote—possessed the drug that restored your sanity."
"Why?" the girl whimpered bewilderedly.
"Because I did not wish you to die like a candle blown out in the dark, my beautiful white orchid. I wish you to be fully sane so as to taste to the last dregs the shame and agony of death, subtle and prolonged. For the exquisite, an exquisite death. For the coarse-fibered, the death of an ox, such as I have decreed for your friend Bane."
"That will be more easily decreed than executed," she retorted with a flash of her old defiant spirit.
"It is already accomplished," the Alchemist asserted imperturbably. "The executioner has gone to him, and by now the Dire Wolf is in the land of ghosts."
"Oh, God!" Rook moaned. At the sick grief and pain in that sound, Bane winced and fought a strong desire to shout out denial and reassurance.
Then she remembered something else to torture her. "Shiro! What have you done with Shiro?"
The Tiger Fury's fingers clamped like iron on Bane's arm at the sound of his name.
"When my men brought you away they did not take time to deal with him," replied the Alchemist. "They had not expected to take you alive, and when fate cast you into their hands, they came away in haste. He matters little. True, he killed four of my best men, but that was merely the deed of a wild animal. He has no mentality. He and the Dire Wolf are much alike, mere masses of brawn, brainless, helpless against a superior intellect like mine. Presently I shall attend to him. His corpse shall be thrown on a dung-heap with a dead pig."
Bane felt Shiro trembling with fury. Only his grip on the Tiger Fury's arm kept the maddened fighter from attacking the stone wall itself in an effort to burst through to his enemy. The Dire Wolf was running his free hand over the surface, seeking a door, but only blank stone rewarded him. Temur Kasten had not had time to provide his unfinished house with as many secrets as his rat-runs usually possessed.
They heard the Gelengi clap his hands authoritatively, and they sensed the entrance of men into the room. Staccato commands followed in Azfahanan, there was a sharp cry of pain or fear, and then silence followed the soft closing of a door. Though they could not see, both men knew instinctively that the chamber on the other side of the wall was empty. Shiro almost choked with helpless rage. He was penned in these infernal walls and Rook was being hauled away to some agonizing doom.
The Tiger Fury whirled and gripped Bane's shoulder with a grasp that would have injured a normal Human. "Enough with strategy and plans! It's time to hear this cult apart."
"You're right!" said the Dire Wolf. "There must be another door somewhere!"
IX
