Dr. Satan Part 8

"Might be, at that." a man snickered beside her. "Looks like she's got a nightie on.

Dazedly the beautiful girl looked around at the crowds. And it could be seen that the nightgown simile was not far from the mark.

Sheer strips of some stuff swathed her body, were draped loosely around her legs. That was all she wore, the sheer stuff through which her form could be vaguely seen as through mist.

"What is she - a veil dancer?" snorted another man.

The traffic cop from the corner began to force his way to the block-up in the center of the square. Like a statue swathed in mist, the girl stood in the cleared s.p.a.ce. And now the door of the town car opened and an elderly man stumbled out. His eyes were wide with horror. He staggered toward the girl, hands outstretched as though groping his way.

Suddenly the girl moved. She poised on one slippered foot and from the folds of gauze that covered her she drew a short, slim blade. Her voice raised in a shrill, eery incantation, the words of which could not be distinguished. She waved the sword. She began to dance.

"A publicity gag," someone shouted. "She's a sword-dancer after a newspaper write-up."

The crowd laughed and yelled agreement. Some fool began to beat time to the girl's slow rhythmic steps by clapping his hands. But horror was growing on the face of the elderly man from the town car. And on the face of the cop, as he came nearer through the crowd, was amazement and. something like awe.

"It's Jane Ivor," he panted suddenly. "By the saints - Jane Ivor'"

The dancing girl whirled more rapidly, more wildly. Her great dark eyes glitters with lurid fires. She performed her sword dance in the middle of the city's main street with more abandon.

"That's the girl," shouted the man who was clapping time. "If publicity's what you want, you'll get it."

The girl seemed not to hear him - seemed not to hear or see anybody. Her supple left hand tore at her breast, and a strip of the gray gauze enfolding her came loose and floated to the ground, exposing her smooth white shoulders.

"Now you're going to town!" laughed the man who clapped. "More, more!"

Jane Ivor---" panted the traffic cop, tearing his way forward with ever less ceremony.

"My daughter!" groaned the elderly man from the town car, fighting the heedless mob between him and the girl.

The girl began to sing more wildly. And now the crowd stilled a bit as a few words could be distinguished in her chant, and as more and more of the swathing gauze was torn from her body. People began looking at one another inquiringly.

"Satan...my master..." some of the words of the girl's chant sounded. "Devil...wors.h.i.+p...."

The swathing gauze was nearly all on the street now. And a woman cried out a bit as the meaning came home to all. No publicity seeker would go quite so far. No girl would dare such censure in a mere quest for notoriety.

"Let me through, d.a.m.n you." shrieked the elderly man, fighting at the heedless ranks still between him and the girl.

"Get out of the way, you dumbbels," raged the cop, beginning to use his night stick. Jane Ivor - let me get to her!"

There was stunned silence, in which the girl's chant sounded louder, more weird than ever. Then, like a concerted echo, the crowd repeated the name.

"Jane Ivor! Jane Ivor!"

A young man in the outer fringe of the crowd gasped.

"Good G.o.d! It is Jane Ivor! Most beautiful deb in the city: Daughter of John Ivor, the distilling magnate! Kidnapped a week ago, along with her kid brother! And now she comes back - like this!

In the cleared spot on the avenue now danced a girl with moonlight hair and eyes, who wore nothing but frayed, high-heeled slippers. Her eyes were frenzied as she waved the slim sword above her head and chanted. And now the words of the incantation were only too clear.

"Satanic Majesty, I wors.h.i.+p you. You, the Devil, are my master. Death to your enemies!"

The crowd, coming through heedless laughter and growing confusion to something like terror, gave back before the girl's s.h.i.+mmering blade. That sword was obviously razor-sharp, and she was slas.h.i.+ng it around with horrifying abandon.

"The Devil's my master! Death to his enemies!"

The pirouetting white figure circled the ring of cars and people shutting it in. And then a man yelled.

"My G.o.d! - look at her eyes!"

The girl's black eyes seemed about to start from her head. Wild white formed a rim around the pupils.

"She's mad! Get her before she kills somebody!"

"Satan is my master! I wors.h.i.+p the Devil ---"

Screaming now, the crowd that had been laughing rolled back from the girl. The man who had been clapping time, ashen-faced, led the rush. Several other men, with the traffic cop beside them, leaped for her.

"Back!" she screamed, slas.h.i.+ng with the sword. "You are enemies of Satan! I will kill all enemies of the Devil!"

"Jane," cried the elderly man, breaking at last through the milling crowd. "Jane - my own daughter - - -"

"Back - I'll kill --- "

The elderly man, sobbing, gasping, fell back from the keen blade that had darted toward his heart.

"Jane - don't you know me? It's Dad!"

"Back---"

The traffic cop sprang at her. Like a tigress she stepped away, blade flas.h.i.+ng. The cop's face turned sickly as the blade grazed his cheek. And then, the others were on her, horrified, deathly afraid of the blade in her mad fingers, but risking their lives to catch the lovely maniac before others in the crowd died to the bite of the blade.

"Enemies of the Devil! Enemies of the Devil!"

Her shrill voice was a clarion call, a bugle note of madness. But they got her at last, hands gripping her white flesh firmly, though as compa.s.sionately as possible.

The elderly man approached her as she struggled in the grip of the men, who tried to cover her writhing white body with their coats.

"Jane," he groaned, "Look at me, recognize me! It's John Ivor, your father, Jane."

The girl only glazed at him out of great eyes in which the whites were lunatic rings around the pupils, and tried to gouge his face with taloned fingers.

"Jane Ivor!" "Released by the kidnappers - but insane!" the young man breathed. "Wait till I get that story into the paper! Insane heiress back from kidnap h.e.l.l to do nude sword dance in the main street!

He ran for a phone. And the knot of men holding Jane Ivor, once the city's most popular debutante, went with her to the town car which still stood beside the half-completed building, and put her in it with her white-faced father.

2. Satan's Threat The air was tense, still, in the best private room of Louisville's finest hospital.

Four people were in that room. One, tied with webbed linen to the iron bed, was Jane Ivor. The second was her father, who sat with fingers gripping the edge of his chair till they showed white in the reflected sun-glare from the cream-colored walls. The third was the chief of staff of the hospital, an internationally known psychiatrist. The fourth was a figure such as might have stepped out of a nightmare or a masquerade ball.

This figure was tall, spare. It was cloaked from heat to heels in a red garment that enveloped it utterly. Over its face was a cloth mask, also red. On its hands were red rubber gloves, and hiding the head and hair was a red skull-cap from which projected two k.n.o.bs in mockery of Lucifer's horns.

Keen eyes blazed through the eyeholes of the mask. Steel-gray eyes, icily calm.

The girl with the mad eyes writhed on the bed against the bonds. But her struggles were patently to get to the weird red figure, although in her eyes was stark horror of it.

"Satan," she whispered. "Master, I must serve you."

The figure uttered words which made the red mask move a bit over shrouded lips.

"Yes. I am Satan. And you must serve me. You hear?"

"I hear and I obey," whispered the girl.

"Jane -" faltered John Ivor, in a cracked voice.

The red-garbed figure held up a stern hand. The fingers of that hand seemed s.h.i.+elded in fresh blood as the sunlight caught the smooth red rubber of its glove.

John Ivor, Louisville's richest citizen, bit his lips for silence. The red mask moved with more words.

"You must serve me, even though, perhaps, I be not Satan after all."

For an instant the wildness in the girl's eyes faded a very little. Perplexity, fear, took its place.

"But you are Satan. You told me so, many times. And you told me I must serve you."

"That is true," the red-clad figure droned. "But I may have deceived you. Would it matter if I had deceived you?"

The girl said nothing for an instant. The light of perplexity was still stronger in her lovely eyes, still was robbing the light of madness that had originally showed there. And as it did so, the doctor and the father leaned tensely forward; for perplexity is a thing of sanity, not madness.

"Would it matter if I had deceived you, and was not Satan after all, but only a man?" the red-clad figure said.

The girl answered indirectly.

"You are Lucifer. You told me so. And you told me I must obey you, and kill your enemies..."

"I am sure it would make no difference to you if I were only a man, instead of Satan incarnate," said the masked lips smoothly.

"But you are Lucifer - - -"

It was almost a scream that came from the girl's lips. But again, there was a subtle difference from that scream and the mad laughter that had come from her lips before.

"Watch," commanded the red-garbed one quietly.

He took off the red rubber gloves, revealing long-fingered hands that were almost inhumanly powerful, but which yet were indisputably human. He removed the skull-cap and mask from his face.

And that face, like the hands, was indisputably mortal. It was a strong face, with level gray eyes under coal-black brows; and with a high bridged, patrician nose over a long, firm chin.

The girl half rose in spite of her bonds. Her eyes were wide and glazed as they glared at the revealed face. Her cheeks were white with nerve shock.

"You are a man," she whispered in a strangled voice. Then more loudly: "A man! You are only a man! Then I need not serve you! Oh, G.o.d, you're not Lucifer, and you have no power--"

Her words stopped as though cut with the sharp sword she had waved an hour before. She dropped back to the bed. The doctor rose quickly, and the father gasped.

"She has fainted," said the man in red quietly. "That is all. A tremendous nerve-shock, but she will be all right. And when she comes to, she will no longer be mad. The discovery as far as she is concerned, that the dread master she thought she must serve is only mortal, will restore her sanity."

The doctor stared at him.

"I can almost believe you, Mr. Keane," he said slowly, "though when Miss Ivor was brought in here I would have sworn nothing could ever cure her madness. Who are you, that you know the mind so well, and know so well the exact thing to do to cure her? "

Ascott Keane shrugged powerful shoulders.

"It doesn't matter who I am." He turned to John Ivor. "We'll leave her here in good hands for a little while," he said. "Shall we go to your home?"

"Yes," breathed the father of the girl who had been mad. "Yes. Anything you say. You have saved my girl. Now, if you could only do something for my boy - - -"

"That's what we shall talk about," said Ascott Keane.

In John Ivor's home on the boulevard, Keane and Ivor faced each other in a quiet library room. The phone has Just rung, and word came from the hospital that Miss Ivor had regained consciousness and was indeed sane, though broken by some terrible experience she had gone through and of which she refused to speak. John Ivor's face was still pale, and his hands still trembled; but in his eyes there was a measure of relief.

"Thank G.o.d for your arrival!" he said brokenly. "If there is anything I can do to - -"

Keane waved his hand.

"Forget that. I'm a wealthy man myself, perhaps richer than you are. Tell me everything about the kidnapping. I think I know most of it, but tell me anyway."

John Ivor sighed brokenly.

"It's hard to speak of it. A week ago today my daughter, Jane, and my son, Harold, started for the country club. Jane was going to play tennis with some friends, and Harold had a golfing engagement. They left - and did not come back."

"At six-thirty, an hour after they should have returned, I phoned the club. They had not gone there. No one had seen them, or knew anything about them. I wasn't too much worried, however, till my man came to me with a plain envelope and said there was a message in it left by some man who refused to wait for an answer.

"I opened the envelope and took out the message. It was the one that ha been shown in the papers: an announcement that Harold and Jane had been kidnapped and were being held for ransom, the amount of which and place of delivery would be given later.

"I still wasn't sure the letter was anything but the grim prank of some moron, but then the police phoned that they had just found Jane's wrecked roadster. It was in the ditch. And in the car - Ivor's voice cracked - was a man's handkerchief saturated with chloroform, and my daughters racket. With the racket were Harold's golf clubs.

"That night I got a note demanding that I pay one million dollars for the return of my boy and girl. I was to give the money at two in the afternoon, a week from that day, to a man who would receive it at a certain building under construction, where there would be no one on the sidewalk to try to stop him.

"I went to the police with everything. I knew it was risky, but so often kidnappers kill their victims anyway, and go on with their plans as if the victims were still alive, that I thought it more risky to keep the thing to myself."

Keane nodded.

"All as I have read for myself," he said. "Go on."