HORROR IN GREEN
Police sirens were screaming on the hilltop above the amusement park, and Doc Savage left hastily, gliding down to the water and using his fabulous strength to launch the speedboat. He was so far out on the river before the first officer entered the park that the presence of the speedboat was not connected with the three dead men by the gate.
The Hudson was wide at that point, and Doc used binoculars, a pair of which were pocketed in the unusual speedboat to study the wharf before the Coastal Yacht Club. He saw standing upon the wharf the Khan Nadir Shar, tall and exotic in appearance, even from that distance; and behind the Khan, the sprawled forms that were the girl, Joan Lyndell, and bleached, brown Tananese. The latter were still unconscious from the effects of the chemical-salt shrapnel, but the Khan must have escaped the stuff.
Doc Savage did not send the speedboat across to the wharf, but only studied the scene through the binoculars long enough to become certain that no police had come upon the abandoned yacht club, a fact that was not remarkable considering that the club was on a section of the river front little frequented at this season of the year.
Doc went downstream, crossed to the Manhattan shore and tied up at the point at which he had left his car.
The mysterious thin man who had been rescued from the Tananese at the refinery was still in the car, unconscious from the drug which Doc had administered, his attitude surprisingly like that of a sleeping man, and Doc went over his clothing, something he had done before. He did it more thoroughly now.
The garments were costly, and had been fashioned by a tailor in Shanghai, China. There was nothing in the man’s pockets, nor concealed in seams or lining of his clothing.
Doc got a case out of the car-door pocket, filled a hypo needle with a dark fluid and emptied it into the sleeping man’s arm. The fellow then stirred and began to show life, sitting up finally. He did not speak for a long time; when he did, his words were clear, his sentence structure coherent.
“What quaint methods you use,” he said dryly.
“Want to talk?” Doc asked.
“Loquacity was always a failing of mine,” the stranger smiled. “What shall we discuss? The weather? Rather chilly, what?”
Doc’s weird flake-gold eyes rested unmoving upon the man’s face, and the fellow, for the first time, showed a trace of uneasiness.
“I can administer drugs which will cause you to talk,” Doc told him. “That may be necessary.”
The man bowed slightly. “I believe I remarked that your methods are quaint.”
“It is possible you are keeping quiet because you misunderstand the situation,” Doc told him.
The stranger studied Doc’s bleached features intently.
“You are aiding Joan Lyndell?” he asked. “Is that right?”
Doc watched the man’s face. It was as devoid of expression as any he had ever seen, and Doc had made an intensive study of the tricks emotions play on faces.
“So far,” Doc said, “I have only been endeavoring to aid my men. I was thrust into this. There has been no explanation of what it is all about.”
“Are you going to help Joan Lyndell?” asked the man.
“I help only those who deserve it,” Doc countered.
The man said jerkily, “Then you will not help her.”
“Why not?”
“She is the Mystic Mullah,” said the stranger bluntly.
* * * *
Doc put questions, but the stranger closed up and fell back upon his facetious manner of answering questions. He remarked that the air was bracing; that he was hungry; that the river was beautiful with the morning sun upon it—and he would not commit himself beyond that.
He did not try to get out of the car as Doc drove north toward the abandoned yacht club. He refused twice to give his name. But that information was forthcoming when they reached the yacht club.
The Khan Nadir Shar came striding to meet Doc. The tattooed serpent design was brazen upon the Oriental potentate’s forehead, and he looked very healthy, very powerful.
The Khan did not see the thin man in Doc’s car until he was close. Sight of the fellow caused him to wrench up abruptly. His hand drifted to a pocket, flicked in, and came out with a gun which he must have taken from one of the unconscious Tananese.
“So you succeeded,” he said distinctly, carefully.
“What do you mean?” Doc asked.
The Khan bobbed his hook-nosed head at the stranger.
“Oscar Gibson,” he said.
“Is that his name?” Doc queried.
“It is,” the Khan nodded.
“You know his business?” Doc demanded.
“Many men know that—to their sorrow,” said the Khan. “This man is——”
“It’s a damned lie!” Oscar Gibson rapped suddenly.
“This man is an agent of the Mystic Mullah!” continued the Khan.
“A lie!” exploded Gibson. “It cannot be proved!”
The Khan’s forehead grew red and angry around the tattoo mark which marked him as the divinely ordained ruler of Tanan, a monarch who possessed absolute power over his subjects, as had his royal ancestors for many generations before him.
“This man knows who the Mystic Mullah is—if the creature is actually a living being, or perhaps I should say, living beast,” the Khan said crisply. “It was in my capital city of Tanan that suspicion first shadowed his path, and my soldiers seized him. He told them he was an agent of the Mystic Mullah. Then he—escaped.”
Oscar Gibson made a snarling sound. His hands whipped to his breast and tore at his shirt and undershirt. Opening them, his chest was revealed. His torso was hideous. Instead of skin, there was a nodular expanse of scar tissue.
“Coals from camp fires,” gritted Gibson. “They dropped them on me, glowing red-hot, one at a time! I told them what they wanted to hear, not the truth.”
“My chief, Mihafi, was in charge of the soldiers who seized you,” the Khan told Gibson precisely. “Mihafi said there was no torture.”
“A lie!” Gibson snapped. “Mihafi lied!”
Doc Savage looked at Gibson intently.
“A few minutes ago, you gave me the name of the person who is the Mystic Mullah,” he said. “Have you any proof of that?”
“Only conviction,” said Gibson; “nothing else.”
The Khan’s voice became suddenly shrill.
“Who did he name?” he demanded.
Doc Savage seemed not to hear, but walked toward the yacht club and around it until he saw the girl, Joan Lyndell.
They worked together, the three men, transferring Joan Lyndell and the Tananese into the yacht club, for it was possible that some curious person might sight the prone, motionless forms, if they were left outside, and call the police.
Doc Savage administered restoratives to the bleached, brown men in quick succession, first tying them securely, so that they could not move about. After all of the Tananese were conscious and fastened, Doc revived the girl.
There was something admirable in the way the young woman recovered from her period of senselessness, for she was not at all hysterical, and did not speak until she had full command of her faculties.
Oscar Gibson looked closely at Doc Savage, then away in such a manner that his glance conveyed meaning.
“A remarkable young woman,” he said pointedly.
Doc Savage began speaking. His voice was quiet. He showed by no mannerism that he was perturbed, or that he was concerned over the fact that all five of his aides were in the hands of the Mystic Mullah’s followers. He told of what had happened in the amusement park across the river.
“Now,” he finished, “who is the Mystic Mullah?”
The Khan Nadir Shar bowed his head slightly. “A devil, a fiend such as your white man’s hell, or the mot ghalat of my people, never produced! The Mystic Mullah is a menace to my subjects, to myself, to all of the world!”
“Be specific,” Doc requested.
The girl took up the explanation.
“Years ago, my father went to Tanan,” she said. “He was the first white man to come there, and the only white man ever permitted to live there. He was a trader, and he established a trading organization, building it until it spread over Tanan and the surrounding desert and mountains. Four years ago he died, and——”
“Made you probably the richest woman in the world,” Oscar Gibson interjected bluntly. He wheeled upon Doc Savage. “She has more money than any two of your rich men put together. She may be the wealthiest person alive.”
Joan Lyndell eyed the young man coldly.
“You have insufferable manners,” she told him. “I wish I knew who you are.”
“He is an agent of the Mystic Mullah,” snapped the Khan.
“A lie!” yelled Gibson.
“We were talking about the Mystic Mullah,” Doc suggested.
Joan Lyndell turned her back on Gibson. There was a composure about her manner, an easy sureness.
“More than a year ago, we first heard of the Mystic Mullah,” she said. “A man was found dead in the street, a wealthy man, one holding a high position in my trading company. Not until weeks later did we learn that this man had been driven distraught by the apparition of a hideous green face which would appear at night, demanding money of him and threatening death unless he complied.
“The sums demanded were tremendous! The man was a millionaire, compared with American money, but complying with the demands would have left him a pauper. Obviously, he was killed because he refused.”
The Khan Nadir Shar said abruptly, in a voice in which emotion was thick: “We speak only of the rich. It is not for them I worry. Let us speak of the poor, my subjects who have died since that day, a year past, when the Mystic Mullah first struck.”
Joan Lyndell nodded.
“We began to hear of the Mystic Mullah,” she said. “The stories were horrible—of men who died with fantastic green serpents, the green soul slaves of the Mystic Mullah, crawling over them. And the souls of these men became slaves of the Mystic Mullah. We do not know how many have died. Perhaps a thousand; perhaps more. But there has been enough that all of Tanan is terrified, and none dare mention the Mystic Mullah in public.”
“Aimless killing?” Doc asked.
Joan Lyndell shook her head. “On the contrary, it has a very definite purpose. Only those who do not believe the Mystic Mullah is a supernatural power, not human at all, are the victims. In other words, the Mystic Mullah is building himself up an invisible empire founded on terror.
“Countless thousands of Tananese do his slightest bidding, or the bidding of those who are his subjects, because they fear not to do so. There are deaths every day. Always, they are the same. They are stricken in the night, or the darkness. They are heard screaming. Sometimes those who rush to them see hideous green things about them, but these vanish, and the victims are left with broken necks, always.”
The young woman was speaking slightly bookish English, an indication that she had conversed in a foreign language so much that she found her mother tongue a bit awkward.
“There is talk that I am to be overthrown,” the Khan Nadir Shar put in grimly. “There is to come a day when the Mystic Mullah will take my life with these things he calls his green soul slaves. And, later, he will spread his domain over all of Asia, and perhaps beyond.”
Oscar Gibson, looking steadily at Doc Savage, asked, “How much of it do you believe?”
Joan Lyndell glared at him. “You are calling me a liar!”
Gibson scowled at her.
“I’ll call you anything I please, my dear young lady,” he advised. “The billion or so dollars that you are worth does not overawe me.”
“You will keep quiet until you are called on,” Doc told him.
Gibson smiled thinly, fiercely. “Do not let yourself be taken in,” he said.
* * * *
The Khan, as if to end the bickering, resumed: “Terror has seized all of Tanan. You cannot realize what horror has come over my people. They are distraught. This monster, this Mystic Mullah, is like an invisible demon, striking down all who oppose him, demanding gifts of money, of arms, and slaying through the medium of his green soul slaves those who refuse.”
“Unless you know the Orient, it is difficult to understand how such a thing could happen,” said Joan Lyndell. “In Tannan, the people are superstitious. For centuries, they have kept white men out, which was all the more difficult because Tanan is one of the richest countries in the world. It is a strange land, where firearms are still almost unknown, and where the sword and the lance are the standard fighting weapon.”
She paused and studied Doc Savage, as if wondering how much belief he attached to the somewhat fantastic story she was telling.
“My own holdings in Tanan are endangered by the Mystic Mullah,” she said. “Many of my most faithful men have perished. I know, to an absolute certainty, that I myself shall die unless the monster is stopped.”
She began speaking more rapidly.
“We discussed many methods of fighting the Mystic Mullah,” she said. “I am wealthy. The Khan is rich—according to American standards. We could have imported an army, but we were afraid it would not work. The Mystic Mullah can amass thousands of men, and the mountain passes into Tanan would withstand the most modern army. We could have used airplanes, except that there are few suitable fields.
“But, too”—she spread her hands—“the Mystic Mullah is only a name, a hideous green face in the night, a face no one has been able to touch, nor to harm, although I personally have emptied a revolver into it. How could an army fight something like that? So we came for you.”
“I had heard of you,” said the Khan. “Your fame is such, Doc Savage, that it has reached even remote Tanan.”
He said this bombastically, in a manner that under circumstances less grim would have been faintly reminiscent of a politician passing out flattery.
“We took every precaution to keep our destination a secret,” added the girl. “But it doesn’t seem to have done any good.”
Oscar Gibson squinted at her. His expression was skeptical; his whole manner one of disbelief, not of the story being told, but of the sincerity of the young woman herself.
“You are very concerned over the fate of your wealth,” he said dryly.
The girl eyed him with utter coldness. “I am interested in the capture of the Mystic Mullah for another reason,” she said.
Gibson lifted his brows. “Yes?”
“Yes,” Joan Lyndell said steadily. “When my father died, his neck was found broken; and there was no mark upon his body, nor was there any conceivable explanation of how his neck had snapped.”
Oscar Gibson started slightly, opened his mouth, shut it, then slowly moistened his lips. He began looking intently at the floor.
* * * *
Doc Savage glanced at Gibson, as if on the point of questioning him; but something about the man’s expression caused the bronze man to turn away and bend above one of the bound Tananese.
It was gloomy in the room, due partially to the boarded windows, but due also to the fact that the morning, which had started out so clear and cool, was changing, after the manner of New York weather, clouds springing up magically out of nowhere and settling over the bright sun and sinking like a fog into the deep cut through which the Hudson ran.
The Tananese only glared at the bronze man. Doc addressed him in the dialect of Tanan, speaking it so perfectly that the Khan showed surprise and the young woman gave him a sharp glance.
“Who is the one who calls himself the Mystic Mullah?” Doc asked.
The Tananese answered promptly, insultingly.
“A faithful dog knows his master,” he said.
“And it is a wise dog which finds a new master when the old one can no longer care for him,” Doc replied.
The Tananese shrugged, clipped his lips together and shut his eyes. He lay perfectly still, his whole attitude that of one absolutely determined not to speak and resigned to whatever fate befell him as a consequence.
Doc turned to another prisoner, but did not address him immediately. Instead, he sank beside the man and remained there, motionless. After a bit, he drew from a pocket a small flat case and held it where the Tananese could see it.
The case held only a lock-picking device and other small implements, none of them dangerous, but the prisoner did not know that and, judging from his expression, used his imagination to picture some lethal horror inside the case.
The Khan Nadir Shar came over and said solemnly, “You cannot persuade these men to talk. They are from a mountain tribe of Tanan, a fierce, utterly cruel clan which has been a source of terror for centuries.”
“Human nature is very much the same the world over,” Doc told the Khan. “Watch him break down.”
The bronze man held the shiny case closer to the eyes of the Tananese captive, forcing the man to look at it with an unwinking intentness. So softly that its presence was at first scarcely noticeable, the bronze man’s fantastic trilling note eased out of nothingness and began to trace its exotic notes. It was a pæan of utter unreality, and it had a marked effect upon the Tananese. The fellow stared. He breathed loudly.
What Doc Savage was doing smacked of black magic, but the explanation was simple; he was slowly building up a hypnotic spell. Once hypnotized, the Tananese might be induced to talk.
But his plan was never completed.
Oscar Gibson shrilled suddenly, “Watch out! Across the room!”
Doc Savage looked up. Hideous green things were coming toward him. They were almost transparent; he could see completely through some of the thinner ones. They averaged as long as his arm, but some were thin as ropes, others almost as thick as Doc’s vast chest.
“The green souls!” gasped the girl, Joan Lyndell.
* * * *
Springing to the side and backward, the young woman swooped and picked up an automatic from the pile of weapons which had been taken from the captured Tananese. Oscar Gibson saw her move, lunged as if to seize her. The young woman began shooting at the green horrors. Gibson veered away from her, got one of the guns and himself began firing. The smashing of the guns was ear-splitting.
The emerald things were not visibly affected by the bullets. They came along the floor, some seeming to crawl on the dusty planks, others a few inches in the air. Their color blended surprisingly with the darkness; at times they were almost invisible.
They reached the first bound captive and he emitted an awful shriek and threshed about. The olivaceous, serpentine bodies squirmed on. They did not travel smoothly. At times they jerked about. Again, they almost stopped. They piled together and seemed to merge into larger corporeities.
There were more of them now. Hundreds! They danced across the floor like fantastic dervishes, like evil harpies creeping out of some cavernous lair on the other side of the vast room, where it was too dark to distinguish details.
Joan Lyndell and Oscar Gibson had emptied their guns by now. And they had done no good.
“Get out of here!” the girl cried loudly. “They cannot be harmed!”
She began to retreat. The Khan followed her, hands out before him as if to ward off the incredible green bodies.
Doc Savage, instead of going back toward the door and the outside, advanced. He bent forward a little. His flake-gold eyes strained to view the green things more closely.
Oscar Gibson yelled, “Careful! If you touch them, they’ll kill you!”
Doc Savage did not answer. He picked up a fragment of trash from the floor, threw it. The missile went entirely through the largest of the absinthe-tinted things, causing a minor disturbance in its body.
Doc got a second piece of trash, a lump of plaster. He stepped close, threw again. He was trying to fathom the mystery of the things. But the light was insufficient. He raced fingers through his pockets, searching for matches.
So intent was Doc Savage upon the green horror he was investigating that he did not note that other olive-hued things were banking close on either side, threatening to cut off his retreat to the door.
The prisoners were screaming now, shrieking as if their very souls were coming out. And as they were touched by the serpentine marauders, they began to writhe about in the throes of death agony. The necks of the first to be affected were already beginning to jerk, to snap about as if in the grip of invisible giants.
Doc Savage abandoned his investigation of the fat green body and swung to the nearest prisoner. He scooped the fellow up, got him across a shoulder; then got two more of the captives, one under either arm.
He took two paces toward the door—stopped. The green things had moved to the wall, shutting off retreat. He was trapped.
* * * *
The horrors were closing in. There were more hundreds of them. The whole room seemed to have turned green.
One drifted toward Doc Savage. He whipped down, to the side. One of the Tananese he was carrying contorted and managed to get his bound legs underfoot. Tripped, Doc sank to a knee. The other two Tananese began to kick and flail about. It was obvious that they did not want to be rescued.
Doc dropped them. There was nothing else to do. He needed all his agility to escape the green things. He worked backward. One of the serpentine objects came close; Doc ducked, and it all but touched him. Sliding backward, he was almost against another. They were on all sides.
One of the Tananese was yelling, “Watch the green soul slaves of our master overcome this white devil ghost!”
Again and again, Doc tried to reach the door. Each time, he was cut off. He sprang high into the air. He got down and crawled. He tried battering holes in the plaster with his fists, hoping to break through the wall. But he encountered a wall of thick planks. Evidently the yacht club building had been enlarged long ago.
The bronze man was breathing noisily now. It was one of the few times in his life that he had been trapped with no avenue of escape at hand. His present position seemed hopeless. He began to wrench off his coat, to rip off the sleeves, to cover his hands, his face.
Then there was a shout from the door. Oscar Gibson came leaping inside. He carried an old sail, a fragment of twelve-ounce duck fully a dozen feet square.
“Watch it!” he shouted, and flung the sail out before him.
The effect was surprising. The green things were caught by the sail, borne down, whipped aside. Gibson skidded the sail forward, whipped it up again and literally fanned the green things aside.
“Now!” he barked.
There was no need for the suggestion. Doc Savage was leaping through the space the fanning sail had cleared. Together, he and Gibson reached the door and gained the outside.
“Thanks,” Doc Savage said quietly.
Gibson grinned, said nothing.
“Let’s try the other side of the club,” Doc rapped. “Those things came from somewhere!”
They ran through the soft mud, splashing and slipping, reached the end of the old yacht club and sloped around. They skidded to a stop and stared.
A giant of a man stood before them, a fellow with a vast frame and tremendous bones and little flesh to spare, a man who had a pair of fists so huge that they seemed out of proportion, even when compared to his huge form. He was busy tearing a gag out of his mouth with hands that bore ugly red welts, as if they had been seared with hot irons. There were more of the welts across his face.
“Holy cow!” he boomed when he had the gag out.
It was Renny, Doc’s big-fisted engineer aide.