Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (33 page)

Zirn was not unversed in the art of fisticuffs. He got in one good punch. It rocked
Long Tom back three paces. But that blow only made the puny electrical wizard all
the madder.

He charged back in with a tigerish expression, and it was all Emile Zirn could do
to keep his nose from being smeared across his face, and retained some teeth in his
mouth.

Zirn went down and Long Tom stood white-knuckled over him as if wishing the fallen
one would rise for more.

Zirn would have none of it. He threw up helpless hands in abject surrender.

Doc Savage strode up and got between the two. For Zirn’s safety, it was evident. He
eyed the other.

“You are Emile Zirn,” Doc said.

“One of them,” the man said shakily, feeling of his askew jaw. One bruised eye was
turning purple. He expelled a tooth.

“Explain yourself.”

A female voice came out of nowhere to say, “Allow me to do that.”

Simon Page’s detached voice gasped out, “Fiana! You’re safe!”

FIANA DROST stepped out of the cobwebbed shadows. She had found a black cape somewhere
and was wearing it wrapped tightly about herself. It gave her the funereal aspect
of a female Dracula. Lifting an accusing hand, she pointed one tapered finger at Emile
Zirn.

“That man is a secret agent of Tazan,” she accused.

Emile Zirn began hissing like a snake. He glowered at the sable-cloaked woman.

“What about the other Emile Zirn?” asked Doc.

Fiana curled one lip contemptuously. “Secret agents of Tazan all call themselves by
that name. It is one way to confuse the enemy and also conduct their espionage with
impunity. Whenever one Zirn is captured or killed, the others continue in his place,
making it seem as if a single resourceful man were perpetrating wonders, thereby adding
to their legend.”

Monk asked, “You mean that other Zirn was a Tazan spy!”

“Yes! Of course!”

“Then why did the invisible thing kill him out there in Ultra-Stygia?”

“That is easily explained,” said Doc Savage. “Zirn parachuted from our plane. The
Cyclopes did not know him by sight. So they assumed he was a Egallan agent infiltrating
Ultra-Stygia, and fell upon him, unaware of the truth.”

“What about the bat medallion we found on him?” wondered Monk.

Fiana Drost reached into the neck of her blouse and pulled out an identical emblem
on a silver chain. “You mean like this one?”

“Uh-oh,” said Monk. “You have one, too?”

Fiana nodded. “We of Egallah carry them as a means of identification. They are also
excellent tools for cutting of throats, or inflicting punctures that make it appear
as if vampires have bitten a victim.’’ She demonstrated this by snapping the chain
and applying the points of two steely bat ears to Emile Zirn’s pulsing throat.

Zirn’s eyes became sick. A touch of green came to his smooth cheeks.

Fiana said bitingly, “Doubtless the Tazan dog took one of these from an Egallan loyalist,
intending to employ it to pass as fellow countrymen if ever caught.”

Monk let out a great gusty breath.

“All this double-crossing stuff has got me dizzy.”

Doc Savage said, “We will sort this out later. Zirn, where is the darkness maker?”

“I do not know.” Zirn’s tone was thin and unconvincing.

Doc Savage reached down, effortlessly lifting the hapless man to his feet. Removing
one mailed glove, he began applying chiropractic pressure to the man’s neck.

Doc Savage’s greatest skill was surgery. He had learned to do many things well, but
nothing more expertly than to deal with the human body in all of its intricacies.

It was a simple thing for the big bronze man to render a foe unconscious by applying
these skills. But Doc had also managed, through experimentation and long practice,
to produce other results. He did this now.

When Doc was through, Emile Zirn stood rigid, body paralyzed, eyes very wide. These
latter were all that were capable of movement, for they wheeled about in their sockets.

Doc began saying, “I can release you from this paralysis at any time. If you are willing
to talk.”

Zirn’s eyes ricocheted back and forth in his head wildly.

“If you are prepared to talk, move your eyes over to the right and I will release
you,” Doc offered.

Emile Zirn’s eyes went so far to the right they almost hopped into his right ear.

Doc made further manipulations, and mobility returned to the man’s stiff form.

“What is the counter-attack plan?” he demanded.

Zirn’s mouth formed strange shapes. He was evidently torn between his national loyalty
and his sense of self-preservation.

A bullet came out of nowhere and made a tiny black hole in the center of his forehead,
settling his dilemma for all time. Zirn toppled forward, smashed onto his face, soon
quit quivering.

Doc Savage whirled.

Standing a few yards behind them stood General Basil Consadinos, jet eyes aglow.

Fingering his neat mustache points, he said, “Allow me to answer that question for
you.”

ON EITHER SIDE of General Basil Consadinos hovered uniformed riflemen, faces seemingly
cut from stone under their steel helmets.

The muzzles of their rifles were trained squarely upon Doc Savage.

The general’s right arm was raised. He brought it down in a sharp chopping motion.

In unison, the rifles discharged, making tremendous noise and echoing in the close
confines of the dim-lit cavern. Stabbing flame spurted from each gun barrel.

Two high-powered bullets struck Doc Savage in the center of the chest. He tumbled
backward, went down hard.

Bellowing his rage, Monk got his superfirer up and picked off the two soldiers with
a pair of short bursts that felled them instantly, the potent mercy slugs doing their
usual quick work. Their eyes rolled up in their heads and they corkscrewed at the
knees.

Long Tom rushed in to take charge of the general. Consadinos attempted to resist.
Long Tom kicked him in both shins, a tactic that was neither expected nor preventable.
The general grabbed at his legs and started hopping, testing each one for support.
Neither could quite accomplish the job properly.

Long Tom dragged the surprised general back to the others.

Doc Savage was getting to his feet. The bronze man was coughing hard. Two modern military
rifle bullets are nothing to laugh at, not even when one is protected by alloy-mesh
armor. But the bronze giant was not injured, merely bruised.

When he got control of his breathing, Doc addressed the stiff-necked general.

“Your counter-attack plans.”

“—Are a secret you will never pry from my lips,” returned Consadinos stiffly.

“In that case,” inserted Fiana Drost, “let us cut his throat now and be done with
it.”

The general flinched visibly.

“The darkness device,” pressed Doc. “Where is it?”

General Consadinos’ mustached mouth curled into a sneer. “You will never find it.”

Doc Savage regarded the general steadily in silence.

“You are our prisoner,” he said at last.

“Preposterous! Utterly! You are in
my
country. It is
you
who are
my
prisoners.”

By way of showing him the error of his thinking, Doc marched the general on a tour
of the winding catacombs that lay under Ultra-Stygia.

The sparsely-illuminated passageways were all but deserted. They soon discovered why.

One great tunnel led north, in the direction of Egallah, as the crow flies. It was
filled with the steady
pad-pad-pad
of heavy feet. The rafters shook in sympathy.

Monk peered around a corner. He saw only eyes. Processions of round, staring varicolored
eyes. An eerily undulating wave of them.

“Doc, they’re marchin’ them invisible nightmares straight to Egallah!”

Doc demanded of the general, “That is your counter-attack?”

“One portion of it, perhaps,” Consadinos admitted, fingering his mustache points.

Long Tom said, “We overheard them talk about unleashing ‘the Snow of Silence’ on Egallah.”

Suddenly, Doc Savage’s trilling rose in the tunnel, becoming a chilly thing that chased
itself around the overhead rafters. He fixed General Consadinos with his eerily active
flake-gold eyes.

“General, how did you plan to deliver the anthrax spores?”

“Anthrax!” gulped Monk.

Long Tom snapped his fingers sharply. “The Snow of Silence!”

The slack expression on the general’s face told plainly that Tazan’s war minister
understood that the jig was up.

Monk made a fierce face. “Say, if he’s usin’ anthrax on Egallah, that means….”

Doc Savage nodded grimly. “He is the one who tried to assassinate me by mailing those
infected items to Pat—the raccoon coat and the ring-tailed monkey.”

The general paled. He saw the accusing looks in the eyes of Doc Savage and his men.
Their faces had turned to hard bone.

Monk laid a heavy paw on braided shoulder boards and shook Consadinos vigorously,
all but loosening teeth.

“Out with it, guy! We don’t take kindly to assassins.”

“It was Emile Zirn who was the actual agent of death,” Consadinos bleated.

Long Tom demanded, “Which one?”

Their tour of the catacombs had brought them back to Emile Zirn’s inanimate corpse.
The general pointed to the dead man with the purplish-red smear on his forehead, the
result of a bullet-split skull.

“That one.”

“On your orders?” pressed Doc. A frost had come over the bronze man’s ceaselessly
whirling flake-gold optics, congealing them.

Consadinos nodded somberly. “I admit this. Zirn perpetrated this act before leaving
New York. It was revenge for the slaying of our king, whose corpse your man Roberts
caused to be delivered to our embassy.”

Long Tom countered, “Doc had nothing to do with that! It was John Sunlight.”

A gasp erupted. It sounded so shocked that all heads turned to fix it.

The sound had come from Fiana Drost. Her natural pallor was a bloodless white now.

“What—? How did—?” she managed weakly.

“What is the matter?” asked Doc, looking at her strangely.

Then she spoke the words that chilled their very marrow.

“Why do you speak of my father?”

A shocked silence hung in the clammy claustrophobic air.

Doc Savage broke it.

“John Sunlight is—
was your father?”

Fiana Drost lifted her chin defiantly. “I am not proud to admit this, but yes. He
raised me. I have not seen him in years.”

“You are the offspring of the terrible Sunlight?” said General Consadinos, himself
shocked white.

Doc turned, asked, “You know of Sunlight?”

The general shrugged. “Who does not? Sunlight is well known in this region. Or was
until he vanished. He goes by many names. Janos Nepfeny. Ioan Soarelui. Jan Slunce.
It is all much the same. The Devil incarnate—John Sunlight.”

Fiana spoke up. “My father—is a very evil man. I know this. But well did he teach
me the art of espionage. I am my father’s daughter. I admit this. I never knew my
mother and have long feared that my father killed her when he was done with her.”

Shocked, Doc asked, “Done?”

“I suspect that once he had a daughter to rear, my father had no use for my mother.
He—he did away with her.” Fiana hung her head sadly. “I could never learn the truth
from him.”

The stunning confession held them rigid. Silence froze their tongues.

“You say you have not heard from your father in years?” asked Doc Savage finally.

“Yes. Is he—dead?”

“We believe so,” said Doc.

Fiana looked deeply shaken. She ran disturbed fingers through her dark hair. “That
is almost a relief. But I do not know what else to tell you.”

“We will attend to that angle of this affair later,” decided Doc.

The bronze man turned to General Basil Consadinos. A little of the animation had returned
to his metallic eyes.

“The darkness machine and the anthrax. Tell us everything.”

Whether it was the weird revelation, or his perilous situation, General Consadinos
suddenly appeared to turn a trembling new leaf. He began unburdening himself.

“The devil’s device is stored in my headquarters office. As for the counter-attack—”
He consulted his wrist watch. “It is en route to the capital city of Egallah even
as we speak. It is far too late. You cannot stop it.”

“Where is this office?” asked Doc.

Consadinos jerked his head. “South of here, in the tunnels.”

“Thank you,” said Doc, who then knocked him flat with his fist.

The crunching of jaw against knuckles spoke eloquently of the fact that the bronze
man did not pull his punch in the slightest. Thus was the general repaid in full for
his attempt on Pat Savage’s life.

Doc turned to the others. “I will seek the darkness machine. Locate Ham, if you can.”

Monk grinned. “Gotcha, Doc.”

They moved in different directions, Simon Page trailing along, a strange apparition
of haunted green eyes, and seemingly nothing more.

In their search for Ham Brooks, no one noticed Fiana Drost double back to the spot
where General Consadinos had fallen. In her bloodless fingers, she clutched the enameled
black medallion in the form of a sharp-winged bat.

Kneeling down beside the unconscious man, she calmly inserted the bat’s needle-like
ears into his jugular vein, and yanked them out swiftly.

Crimson cascaded out, bubbling merrily.

Fiana Drost stood up, kicked the dying man in utter contempt, and hurried back to
the others.

AS it happened, the efforts of Monk, Long Tom and the others were an exercise in futility.
Doc Savage discovered Ham and the darkness machine in the same place.

General Consadinos’ “office” could hardly be dignified with the term. It was a cave
of sorts, rather modest, and carved out of the living rock. Lacking even a door, a
curtain was draped before it for privacy purposes.