Terrors Page 5

He rose from his place and crossed the room. He twirled the tumblers on a heavy safe and locked the jewels in it. He rose to his full height and said, “Señorita, as much as it would please me to entertain you, I’m sure you wish to return to your home and resume your career. You can board a train in the morning and be home in a few days. I advise you to telephone ahead and arrange for protection. We are dealing with evil forces here and they seem to have chosen you for a special role. Do you recall, despite your drugged state, anything that they said to you? Either before you were taken to the riverfront building or while you were there.”

  The lovely actress frowned. “They didn’t really mistreat me. They seemed in awe. They seemed to know that my family were from Spain. That we are of royal Bourbon blood.”

  “They treated you, then, with the deference due to royalty?”

  “Yes, but—something more than that. They seemed almost to worship me. And yet I felt that they intended me no good.”

  “You are a most perceptive woman, Señorita. There have been tribes who make gods and goddesses of mortals. They generally favor handsome youths and beautiful maidens. They dress them in finest raiment and shower them with luxuries. But then, when their calendar so dictates, ‘when the stars are right,’ as they sometimes express it, they slay their deities. I’m afraid, if I hadn’t intervened, you were doomed.”

  “And you saved my life.”

  “For the time being. But those monsters made good their escape. I blame myself. I should have brought assistance and laid a trap for them, but I didn’t realize how serious the menace was. I thought at first that we were dealing with ordinary jewel thieves. Such was not the case. The gems and trinkets that they placed upon you, Señorita, are unimaginably old and incalculably valuable, but the gems are the least of our concern. These beings are not human, not part of the natural order of our world at all. Their ancestors came from some malign locale beneath the sea. They owe allegiance to no wholesome or decent god or nation but to the foul world from which they came.”

  The Crimson Wizard paced back and forth, halting at last before a tall window facing toward the Saturn River. A glow illuminated the night sky where flames leaped upward from the now-demolished, abandoned warehouse.

  “Someday,” the Wizard intoned, “someday I will penetrate to the heart of this foul spew. Someday they will be destroyed. They must be. The only alternative would be too horrible to contemplate. But the time is not yet.” With a bitter grin he quoted, ‘the stars are not yet right.’

  “Still,” and behind the shimmering scarlet swirls that hid his features he raised his eyes to the heavens, “still, they must not escape unscathed. They must be pursued and punished for what they have attempted and for what they have done.”

  The Wizard summoned a trusted female aide from the aircraft hangar. He instructed her to accompany Señorita del Sueño to an exclusive but inconspicuous inn where she would spend the night under an assumed name and under the watchful eye of the Wizard’s employee. In the morning they would proceed by luxury rail-liner to the West Coast. The Wizard would see to the return of the jewels to the Municipal Museum of Art and History.

  The actress departed, first expressing her gratitude to the Wizard and inviting him to attend the premiere of her next picture. She would, in all likelihood, be in attendance herself. Such was a premise of the Hollywood studio structure and its system of stardom. She would, she stated, take pride in entertaining the Wizard at her table at the celebratory banquet which she expected to precede the showing of the film.

  The Wizard’s expression, had Señorita del Sueño been able to see it through the swirling crimsons and scarlets that concealed his identity from the world, would have been one of wry amusement. “I should be delighted,” he told her as he bent over her hand, “but of course I cannot make a promise, as my obligations are many and often unforeseen.”

  As soon as the actress was gone the Wizard whirled to engage his assistant in conversation. “If you please, Nzambi, our task is far from complete.”

  “Of course.” With amazing rapidity and precision she shut down Bunsen burners, sealed reports, and closed notebooks in which were recorded the endless experiments of the Crimson Wizard’s laboratory. Moving with a grace that masked her speed she disappeared behind a concealing screen.

  When she reappeared she was garbed in a costume similar to that of her employer save for its color. Where the Wizard’s outfit was of shimmering scarlet, Nzambi’s was of a rich, brilliant yellow. To the Wizard she was Nzambi but to the world she was known only as the Golden Saint.

  Together they moved to the elevator that mere hours earlier had brought one Clarence Willis, an humble shiner of shoes and brusher of shoulders from the Central Barber Shop many stories below. For the world had no inkling that the wielder of polishing cloths and whisk brooms was also the famous mystery man whose exploits thrilled multitudes.

  The elevator plunged silently toward the lobby of the Central Railroad Tower, but it did not stop in that marble-floored sanctuary of Mammon. One story below the lobby was conducted a great enterprise that connected Seacoast City’s pulsing multitudes with the rest of a great nation. Here iron-muscled leviathans loaded and unloaded their precious freight of passengers arriving in the great metropolis to conduct business transactions, to seek fame and glory on the electric-lighted stage, or merely to spend a few days gaping at the incredible skyscrapers of the city. These last would then return to village or farm, filled with tales to brighten their evenings for years to come.

  But even now the elevator plummeted past the level where glistening rails led from Seacoast City to the rest of the continent. There was still another level, a level known to none but an inner circle of important and trustworthy men. For beneath the boulevards and the skyscrapers of Seacoast City there still flowed an underground waterway that fed the Saturn River.

  The waterway had followed its ancient course for thousands of years before the coming of the settlers who pioneered Seacoast City. The pioneers and city-builders had covered over this tributary, leaving only the Saturn River itself to carry commerce to and from the metropolis. By now, most of the great city’s denizens had forgotten all about this stream, or had never heard of its existence. But the Crimson Wizard made use of it.

  Now two figures, one garbed in shimmering scarlet and the other brilliant gold, stood on a deserted river-bank. Above their heads a stone ceiling arched away, and above it the bustling railroad station, and above this the towering office building where throngs of workers plied their craft and earned the bread that fed their families.

  A few dim lights provided what little illumination there was in the cavern. The only sounds were the gentle lapping of water and the soft footsteps of the man and the woman.

  A narrow quay extended into the dark stream. The Crimson Wizard and the Golden Saint strode to the end of the pier. The Wizard knelt and undogged the hatch of a metal-skinned, football-shaped craft. The craft’s name was graven in inconspicuous relief on her hull: Mulungu. The Wizard and the Golden Saint climbed into the small water-vehicle. Without exchanging a word the two figures proceeded silently to switch on previously quiescent systems, check levels of fuel and oxygen and weaponry, and settle themselves before the panel that held the craft’s instruments and controls.

  “It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Nzambi?” the Wizard commented.

  The Golden Saint agreed. “Not since the time we took on that supposed ghost of a German U-boat, Wizard.”

  The Wizard nodded his head. “That was a glorious adventure, wasn’t it?”

  “If you consider coming within a hair’s breadth of a hideous demise, I suppose it was,” the golden-clad woman replied,

  “But of course. Without peril, what is life?” The Wizard chuckled sardonically.

  “There are other things.”

  By now the Wizard had piloted Mulungu beneath the city’s teeming streets and buildings and guided it, along with the swift-flowing stream, into the Saturn River. The river,
in turn, fed Seacoast Harbor. From the harbor it was a short journey into the ocean itself.

  Nzambi’s graceful fingers flew over the submersible’s control panel. Mulungu was invisible to the ships that plied lanes of commerce to and from Seacoast City. The submersible’s windows showed nothing save the occasional luminous fish that plied the waters off the coast. At this hour of the night, even with a full moon casting its rays onto the city and its adjacent waters, utter darkness surrounded the craft.

  The Crimson Wizard switched on a detector similar to that which he had utilized aboard the Zeppelin Kpalimé. Here on board Mulungu the eyepiece served as a sort of reverse periscope, permitting the Wizard to scan the sea-bed as Mulungu skimmed along, propelled by silent blades powered by an advanced motor similar to that which propelled Kpalimé through the air.

  “I see it!” the Wizard exclaimed.

  “They leave their spoor even in the sea?” the Golden Saint exclaimed.

  “Everywhere they go, yes.” The Wizard’s voice was grim. “It’s fortunate that we came upon their path as quickly as we did. Water is not as stable an element as earth. The constant flow of currents would surely have carried away every trace of them had we not found their trail soon after they laid it down.”

  The Wizard lifted his eye from the viewer. To Nzambi he said, “Here, have a look at this.”

  The yellow-clad woman bent over the viewer. After a moment she lifted her head. “Their trail wavers through the water like the body of a giant serpent.”

  “So it does.”

  “And—look!” She had stooped and taken one more sighting through the device, then straightened and pointed through the window of Mulungu. “I think I can see them.”

  The Wizard followed his assistant’s pointing finger. “Yes. But so many!”

  Ahead of them, swimming in almost military formation and with more than military precision, a squadron of figures could be seen. They were vaguely human-like in shape, but none could mistake them for humans. They were bereft of clothing, their bodies the albino-white of creatures who avoided the healthful influence of the sun as scurrying vermin avoid the light of farmers’ torches.

  Some of them appeared to be carrying weapons.

  Healthier denizens of the sea circled, their own teeth exposed in hungry grins as if yearning to pounce upon the white creatures, yet held at bay by the monsters’ unity and their deadly weapons.

  “They’re bound for home,” the Wizard ground out. “My guess is they’re headed for a marshalling point where they will be picked up by their companions. They’ll be in a craft that makes Mulungu look as primitive as Kpalimé would make a Lilienthal kite. I’d love to get a look at their vehicle, but I’m afraid Mulungu would be no match for it. So we’ve got to act before they reach their rendezvous point.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Nzambi complained. “Are they fish? Do they have a civilization?”

  The Wizard made a gesture with both hands, as if he were summoning up an image from a distant land and time. “Our people, Nzambi, worshipped gods of the sea. So did the Greeks, the Phoenicians, all the ancient peoples who lived near water. Each race had legends of lost cities and continents, the flood of Noah, the sinking of Atlantis, the lost continent of Mu. The jewels that these monsters stole from the museum and with which they bedecked their erstwhile queen, Isabella del Sueño, may or may not have come from Lemuria. That puzzle remains to be solved. But there is no doubt that the sea contains wonders and terrors far beyond any imagined by mere men.”

  “Then you’re saying that they have a city.”

  “They have a civilization—if you wish to call it that. And we must stop this band of monsters from getting back there. A great and final Armageddon will someday be fought between the beings of the sea and those of the land, but the time is not yet right for that battle. What we engage in this night is a mere skirmish on the outskirts of a war.”

  By now the submersible was cruising above the white monstrosities. The Wizard leaned forward, straining for a better view of the beings. They did not swim like any normal aquatic creatures so much as they writhed and squirmed, their progress suggesting the motion of leeches across the flesh of their hapless victims.

  At the head of the band of monstrosities the Wizard observed one larger than the others, its head surrounded by a ring of writhing tentacles the color of freshly spilled blood. The leader, seemingly sensing the presence of Mulungu, turned its hideous face and bulbous eyes toward the submersible. Its tentacles waved, its hideous broad mouth gaped.

  The armed monstrosities turned their weapons toward Mulungu.

  Without command from the Wizard, Nzambi pressed a stud on the control panel of the submersible. With a hiss and a stream of bubbles, a sleek pressure bomb issued from Mulungu and sped through the water toward the white creatures. As it approached them it exploded in a burst of gold and scarlet flame. The shock wave rocked Mulungu but the sturdy little craft righted itself without apparent damage.

  Such was not the case with the white creatures. Some dead, some injured, some merely dazed, they floated helplessly and harmlessly. From the dark waters surrounding the scene of the brief but violent encounter, marine predators swooped upon the pallid flesh, devouring the beings one after another.

  Only, as the Wizard and Nzambi watched, the tentacle-crowned leader of the band proved itself capable of rapidly recovering from its shock. With a furious rippling of its tentacles it dived to the muddy sea-bottom. A cloud of particles rose, obscuring the scene. By the time it had settled there remained no evidence of the white creatures or of their leader.

  “It has escaped,” Nzambi intoned.

  “Just so.” The Crimson Wizard relieved his assistant at the controls of Mulungu. He turned the little craft back toward Seacoast City and her berth in the dimly-lit, echoing cavern deep beneath the Central Railroad Tower.

  The next morning the Morelli brothers, Alberto and Roberto, arrived at their tonsorial establishment on the ground floor of the Central Railroad Tower. To their surprise their floor-sweeper, shoe-shiner and general man-of-all-tasks, Clarence Willis, was already present, assiduously preparing the shop for its day’s trade.

  To the even greater surprise if the Morellis, Willis was accompanied by a honey-complected, raven-haired, sloe-eyed vamp clad entirely in white. When the brothers stood staring at this startling beauty, Clarence Willis spoke in his slow drawl.

  “This is my cousin, Ruby Mae Jones. She just arrived from Savannah. I was thinkin,’ bosses, we could use a manicurist here. And Ruby Mae, she do needs a job.”

  Roberto Morelli looked at Alberto Morelli. Alberto Morelli looked at Roberto Morelli. The brothers offered identical shrugs.

  Alberto said, “Sure, we give her a try.”

  Roberto said, “We got Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown comin’ in today for manicures. We try you out on them, Ruby Mae.”

  Clarence Willis and his “cousin,” Ruby Mae Jones, exchanged a knowing glance.

  The Golden Saint Meets the Scorpion Queen

  The first body was found by children ice-skating on the frozen surface of the Saturn River. It was that of a derelict, one of Seacoast City’s unfortunates.

  They dwelt in slums. Those who could afford even the small rent required by the owners of noisome tenements crowded into rooms designed to hold the newest arrivals in this wondrous land of opportunity. They toiled twelve hours a day, six or even seven days a week, bent over sewing machines in the sweatshops of Seacoast City’s infamous garment district, or shoveling coal and hauling metal by the ton in the city’s industrial quarter.

  They were the fortunate ones.

  The less fortunate were without even the shelter of a tenement roof. These were the ones who slept in doorways, or crates, who broke into abandoned buildings and set up squatters’ villages in vacant apartments or in fetid basements. These were the ones who sweltered in Seacoast City’s humid summers and shivered in the great metropolis’s frigid winters.

  And now ice-sk
ating children had found a man, his limbs stiffened in death, his face a mask of hopeless fear.

  The first child to find the body was a young girl. She wore a colorful cap and matching scarf and mittens, all of them lovingly knitted by her adoring mother. Her winter coat was warm, and beneath it she was bundled in sweater and tights.

  Her closest companion was a boy of similar age, a friend and classmate of the girl’s. They were skating with a group of friends, playing tag and crack-the-whip. The girl who found the body prided herself as being as strong, as clever, and as brave as any boy in her class. She had insisted on being the end skater in the whip, and when her companions sent her whizzing across the frozen Saturn River, she screamed with delight and with the sheer exhilaration of speed.

  Then she saw what lay on the white surface, and her scream turned to one of shock and of fear. She stared in horrified fascination at the pallid face, so dreadfully captivated that she failed to notice the phalanx of tiny white creatures marching in almost military formation away from the body. Had she noticed them—and against the white ice they were all but invisible—she might have compared them to army ants, but ants they were not.

  In a little while the police arrived. A kindly officer took the names and addresses of the girl who had found the body and of her closest friend. He took them to the precinct house and a police matron questioned them while the officer phoned their parents to come for the children.

  There wasn’t much they could tell the police. It had snowed that day, the children were tired of staying cooped up in their homes, and they had managed to get their parents to permit them to go out for the day. The weather had been freezing for the past week. There had been two heavy snowstorms plus this morning’s lighter snowfall. The Saturn River had frozen for the first time in decades, and even in Seacoast Harbor there had formed a thin coating of ice.

  Fireboats and tugs patrolled the harbor, a vital artery in the commerce of the great metropolis and of the nation, breaking up ice formations so as to facilitate the arrival and departure of mighty freighters. Most portentous was the fleet of heavily-laden freighters that had been unable to move from the harbor.