Dr Satan - [Pulp Classics 6] Read online

  The home belonged to Samuel Billlngsley, retired merchant. It was a huge estate, high-walled. In the walls a new iron gate glistened, closing off the front driveway. It was a high gate, heavily barred - the kind of a gate that would be installed by a man afraid for his life. Beside that gate two men lounged. Each was big, heavily muscled, with a bulge at his armpit speaking of a gun in readiness.

  At the front door of the house another man was stationed; and there was one at the rear, and still another patrolling the grounds. This last one carried a rifle.

  The summer sun gleamed bright over the estate. The silence of the suburbs enveloped it, yet danger lowered like a black veil over the place.

  A long low roadster slid to a stop before the closed iron gate. A young man, dark-haired, with dark gray eyes, sounded the horn. Reluctantly the gate was opened. The man drove the roadster in and started toward the house, but was stopped by the two guards who stood before the car with an automatic apiece covering its driver.

  The young man glared. “Well?” he snapped. “Who the devil are you? What are you doing here?”

  “Same to you, buddy,” rasped one of the men, coming closer. “What’s your business here?”

  The young man glanced at the new, high gate and back to the guards.

  “I’m Samuel Billingsley’s nephew,” he said. “My name’s Merton Billingsley, I’ve been away for a month - and I come back to be stopped at the point of a gun at my own uncle’s house . . .”

  “Take it easy,” said the man gruffly. “We’re the old - I mean we’re Mr. Billingsley’s bodyguards. Hired us two days ago. Orders were to investigate everybody driving in here. Have you got any proofs that you’re his nephew?”

  The young man showed letters. His annoyance was giving way to curiosity - and alarm.

  “Bodyguard!” he exclaimed. “Why a bodyguard? Is my uncle’s life in danger?”

  The man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, but I guess it is or he wouldn’t have hired us. He didn’t tell us anything except to keep everybody out of the grounds.”

  Merton Billingsley clutched at the man’s arm. “Is he all right now? Have there been any attempts on his life so far?”

  “None yet,” said the man, holstering his automatic. “And I guess he’s all right - except he’s got a headache.”

  “A headache?”

  “Yeah. His high-hat butler came down here a half-hour ago, and said a doc had been called and we were to let him through. The old - Mr. Billingsley had a bad headache. The doc came ten minutes ago and is up in his room with him now. But aside from the headache, he’s all right ...”

  Through the golden summer sunlight, like Jagged lightning impinging on the ear-drums instead of the optic nerves, a scream lanced out. It was a thin, high shriek that drove the color from the faces of Merton Billingsley and the two guards. It came from behind a shaded window in the front corner of the great house.

  * * * *

  “My uncle’s room,” breathed Merton. “What ...”

  He swallowed, and jerked his head to the two guards. “On the running-board,” he snapped. “We’ll get to the house ...”

  The whine of gears drowned his words. With a guard on each side, the roadster sped down the graveled driveway and to the house.

  The door opened as Merton got to it. A gray-headed butler faced him.

  “Willys!” exclaimed Merton. “My uncle . . . what in God’s name is the matter with him?”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t know. He complained of having a terrific headache, sir. And I phoned for Doctor Smythe. Then, just a minute ago he screamed ...”

  Down the curved marble staircase to the front hall a man was stumbling - a middle-aged man whose features were distorted.

  “Smythe!” said Merton. “Uncle Samuel . . . tell me! Quick!”

  The doctor stared at him. He moistened his lips. “Your uncle is dead.”

  “Dead! But what happened to him? He was an old man, but he was in good health. What killed him?”

  “A plant,” whispered the doctor. “A kind of bush. Thorn-bush - God knows what! That thing, blossoming from his head

  Merton shook his shoulder savagely. “Are you insane? Pull yourself together! What’s this talk of bushes?

  “A bush . . . growing out of his head!” whispered the doctor, moistening his pale lips again and again.

  * * * *

  Merton started up the stairs. Smythe, rousing himself, grasped his arm. “Don’t go up there, Merton! Don’t!”

  Merton wrenched his arm away. “My uncle lies up in his room, dead - and you tell me not to go up to him!

  He took the stairs two at a time.

  “I’m warning you,” came the doctor’s shrill voice. “The sight you’ll see ...”

  But Merton went on, around the curve in the staircase, down the hall at the top.

  The door to his uncle’s room was closed. Impetuously he opened it and leaped inside the big bedroom. It was dim in there, shaded against the sunlight; but after a few seconds he saw it - his uncle’s body.

  It lay beyond the big bed, the corpse of a man of seventy, thin, clad in a silk robe. The body was twisted and distorted, but it was not the body that riveted the gaze of the dead man’s nephew; it was the head.

  The head was turned so that, though the body lay on its side, the face was pointed toward the ceiling. And from the top of the skull something was protruding. Merton’s hands crept toward his throat as he looked at it.

  A sort of bush, with leafless, sharp-pointed twigs branching out in all directions, grew from the top of the skull. It was like a hand with many small sharp fingers that had thrust up through the bone, with its thick, wrist-like stem rooting in the brain beneath.

  A tree, quick with life though rooted in death! Quick with life? As Merton stared with glazing eyes, he saw the leafless, sharp little branches crawl out a little farther. The thing was growing even as he watched it!

  With a low cry, he turned and ran from the room.

  * * * *

  2.

  In a Park Avenue penthouse two men were seated in a great room fitted out as a library. The room was lined with books, in sections which were unobtrusively but precisely labeled as sections of shelving in public libraries are labeled. Science, one of the largest sections, crammed with books, was tagged. Another read, Mythology; a third, Occult. Then there were Psychology, Engineering, Biology, many others, each containing dozens of volumes.

  The focal point of the big, lofty chamber was a huge ebony desk. It was at this desk that the two men were seated, one in a leather chair beside it, the other leaning back in a swivel chair from before it.

  The man in the visitor’s chair was about fifty, expensively dressed, a typical big business man with the suggestion of a paunch that comes with success and a striving after more millions instead of physical fitness. But there was one thing about this business man that was not typical. That was the expression on his face.

  Fear! The blind terror of an incoherent animal caught in a trap beyond its comprehension!

  His face was gray with fear. His lips were pallid and his hands were shaking with it. The sound of his ragged breathing was clearly audible in the almost cathedral-like hush of the great library.

  The man sitting proprietorially at the desk watched his visitor with almost clinical detachment, though sympathy showed in his deep-set eyes. A man to attract attention in any gathering on Earth, this one.

  He was a big man, but supple and quick-moving. His eyes, deep under coal-black eyebrows, were light grey; they looked calm as ice, as if no emergency could disturb their steely depths. He had a high-bridged, patrician nose, a long chin that was the embodiment of strength, and a firm, large mouth.

  His mouth moved, clipping out words with easy precision. “You say you got the note yesterday, Walstead?”

  Thus casually he addressed Ballard W. Walstead, one of the richest men in the city.

  “Yes,” said the man in the visitor’s chair.

&n
bsp; “Why did you come to me with it?”

  “Because, said Walstead, raising a trembling hand in a repressed gesture of pleading. “I thought if anyone on Earth could save me it would be you. Oh, I know about you, though I realize that not a dozen people in the world are aware of the real life of Ascott Keane. These few know you as one of the greatest criminal investigators that ever lived - a man whose achievements have something almost of black magic in them. They know that you’ve raised a hobby of criminology into an art that passes beyond the reach of genius.”

  Ascott Keane’s calm, steely eyes stared steadily into the frantic depths of the other man’s pale blue ones.

  “I am a dilletante,” he murmured. “I Inherited a fortune, and I loaf through life playing with first editions, polo ponies and big game hunting.

  “Yes, yes, I know. That’s the picture the world has of you. The picture you’ve deliberately painted; but I tell you I know your capabilities! You’ve got to help me, Keane’“

  Keane’s long, strong hand went out. “Let me see the note.”

  Walstead fumbled in his pocket and drew out a folded sheet of paper. Handling it as though it were a deadly serpent, he handed it to Keane, who spread it out on the desk.

  “Ballard Walstead,” Keane read aloud. “You are hereby given a chance to purchase a continuation of your rather useless life. The price of this continuation is the round sum of one million dollars. You may pay this in any way you please - even in checks, if you like, for if ever you attempt to trace the checks you will die. And if you refuse payment you will die even more quickly.

  “You will disregard this as a note from a crank, of course. But by noon tomorrow you will know better. You see, I have given two other men, Arthur B. Ryan and Samuel Billingsley, a choice similar to yours - and I believe they are going to defy me. Read in the afternoon papers what happens to them, Walstead. And believe me when I say that the same thing will happen to you if you do not meet my price. Directions will be given to you tomorrow noon as to where and how you are to pay the money. Your obedient servant, Doctor Satan.”

  * * * *

  Keane looked up from the paper.

  “Doctor Satan, he repeated. Into his steel-gray eyes came a hard, relentless glint. “Doctor Satan!”

  “You know him?” asked Walstead eagerly.

  “I know of him. A little. You read in the papers this afternoon of what happened to Ryan and Billingsley?”

  “Yes,” whimpered Walstead, “My God, yes! And that’s what will happen to me Keane, if you won’t help me.” He shuddered as though drenched with icy water. “A tree - growing out of a man’s head! Killing him! How can such things be done?”

  “That is something only Doctor Satan can answer. Did you get instructions about where to pay the money this noon, as is promised in this letter?”

  * * * *

  In answer, Walstead drew out another bit of notepaper.

  “Walstead:” Keane read. “Leave the money either in thousand-dollar bills or in checks up to twenty thousand dollars apiece, in the trash can at the corner of Broadway and Seventy-Sixth Street, tonight at nine o’clock. If checks, make them payable to Elias P. Hudge. Signed, Dr. Satan.”

  Keane’s eyes search Walstead’s again. “Are you going to do it?”

  “I can’t!” exclaimed Walstead hysterically. “I’m a wealthy man, but my affairs are in such a state that to take a million dollars in cash from my business would bankrupt me! I can’t!”

  * * * *

  Keane’s long, powerful fingers formed a reflective pent-roof under his long, powerful chin.

  “You’re going to defy Doctor Satan, then.”

  “I must!” cried Walstead. “I have no choice.”

  Keane’s fingers moved restlessly.

  “This Doctor Satan must have known your affairs were such that you couldn’t meet his order. And he must have foreseen that you would have to refuse his demand...Were you in your office when the second note was delivered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who delivered it?”

  Walstead shivered again. “That is one of the deepest mysteries of all. No one delivered it.”

  Keane stared.

  “Nobody delivered that note!” Walstead repeated. “I was alone in my office, reading over some papers. I turned away from my desk a moment. When I turned back, the note was there, on top of the other things. No one had come in. The window was closed and locked. Yet the note - was there. It - it was like witchcraft, Keane!”

  Keane’s fingers, stilled for a moment, moved restlessly again. “You may be speaking more truly than you know, Walstead. After you received the note, what did you do?”

  “I stayed in my office till four-thirty. Then I went down to the building lobby, and saw the afternoon papers. Screaming headings about the deaths of Rayn and Billingsley. After that I came here as fast as my chauffer could drive me.

  “Did anything unusual happen to you on the way?”

  Walstead shook his head. “Nothing. I got into my car at the office building, was driven straight here, and got out in front of your building.”

  “No one said anything to your? Or, perhaps, jostled you?”

  “No one,” said Walstead. Then his lips tightened. “Wait a minute. Yes! A man bumped into me just as I was coming into this building entrance.”

  Keane’s eyes narrowed till all that was apparent of them was two gray glints. “Can you describe him?”

  “No. I didn’t pay any attention to him at all, after I saw he had no weapon in his hand and meant me no harm. His shoulder brushed against my neck and cheek, and then he was gone, after apologizing.”

  * * * *

  Keane got up from his desk. He eyes were more inscrutable than ever. “I’ll do all I can to help you,” he said. “Suppose you run along now, Walstead.”

  Walstead jerked to his feet with frenzy and perplexity in his face. He was almost as tall as Keane, but didn’t give the appearance of being nearly so big.

  “I don’t understand, Keane. Are you throwing me over? Aren’t you going to act with me against this Doctor Satan?”

  “Yes, I’m going to act against Doctor Satan.” Muscle ridged out in Keane’s lean cheeks.”You go along home.”

  “I’d hoped you would let me stay here, with you, till the danger was past ...”

  “You will be in no more danger at home than you would be here,” replied Keane, with odd gentleness in his tone. “My man will show you to the door.”

  With the words, Keane’s man appeared; a silent, impassive-looking fellow who handed Walstead his hat and stick. Walstead, with many protests, went out . . .

  * * * *

  “Beatrice,” Keane called softly, when he was alone in the big library again.

  A section of the shelving, lined with books, swung smoothly away from the wall, forming a doorway. Through it came a girl with a shorthand notebook and a pencil in her tapering hands. She was tall and beautifully formed, with dark blue eyes and hair that was more red than brown.

  “You sent him away!” she said, eyes at once accusing and bitterly disappointed. “You wouldn’t help him. You sent him away.”

  “He is past help,” replied Keane. “The stranger that jostled him in front of the building - that stranger was death. Perhaps Doctor Satan himself, perhaps a helper.”

  ‘How can you know that?”

  Keane breathed deeply. “Doctor Satan must have known in advance that Walstead could not pay his demands. Hence he must have planned to use him from the start as a sacrifice - a third horrible example of what happens to wealthy men who defy him. The man who jostled him planted death’s seeds in him. He will die within the hour, with one of those unearthly shrubs forcing its way up through his skull.”

  “Still - you sent him away.”

  “I did, Beatrice. Suppose he died here. The police! Many questions! Detention! And I don’t way to be delayed; I have work to do now that makes any of my former tasks seem like unimportant games. Doctor Satan! With t
hree rich men dead, no others will defy him. He’ll loot the city - if I can’t stop him.”

  The girl, Beatrice Dale, Keane’s companion as well as secretary, fingered the notebook in which was recorded the talk between him and Walstead.

  “Who is Doctor Satan, Ascot? she said. “I don’t seem to remember that he has figured in any of your former work.”

  “He hasn’t; Doctor Satan is a new phenomenon. I’ve been expecting to hear from him ever since I heard the first whisper of his existence a month ago. Now, with these three fantastic murders, he makes his bow. Who is he? Where does he hide? What does he look like? I don’t know - yet.”