Terrors (4 page)

And yet, were it not for C. W. Enterprises, Seacoast City, the world’s
hub of commerce, culture, and transportation, would lie helpless before the marauding forces of crime and corruption.

The lobby level of the Central Railroad Tower plays host to an oyster bar, a cigar and news-stand, a dry cleaning establishment, a newsreel theater, and the Central Barber Shop.

It is in the last named establishment that our story begins.

Two men sat in adjacent barber chairs.
The nearly identical jackets of their fine hundred-dollar suits hung on the establishment’s brass coat rack. Their nearly identical fedoras, blocked and brushed, awaited them on the hat stand. Despite their careful grooming there was something vaguely disquieting about these men. Perhaps it was the cold expression in their eyes. Perhaps it was the abnormally
wide, flat appearance of their mouths.

The co-proprietors of the Central Barber Shop, twin brothers Alberto and Roberto Morelli, danced around their customers, snipping here, powdering there. The brothers’ hair was wavy, graying; each wore a neatly-trimmed mustache.

Each customer had already been carefully shaved with an imported straight razor of finest Toledo steel and the precious faces of both customers were covered with lightly
scented, damp towels. Unlike most men in their position, for whom the towels were heated before application, these two insisted upon theirs being chilled. The Morellis thought this odd, but their business ethic required them to provide the service that their customers demanded.

Kneeling before one customer, Clarence Willis, the Morelli Brothers’ faithful employee, worked his shoeshine magic on
a pair of handmade cordovan bluchers. In Clarence’s hands shoe wax coated leather like honey on a clabbered milk muffin, brushes danced like Bojangles’ feet, and a soft flannel cloth popped and rang like a bullwhip.

A battered Emerson radio stood on the shelf between rows of potions and elixirs, the voices of the greatest tenor and soprano in the world emerging in a live broadcast from the great
Metropolitan Opera Palace. A copy of the Seacoast City
Daily Reporter
lay beside the radio. The Morelli brothers had been reading the paper when their customers arrived, Roberto scanning the main headlines while Alberto studied the box-score of yesterday’s game between the Seacoast City Superbas and the Jenkintown Yellow Sox.

The front page story, copied from a wire service, told of the mysterious
disappearance in California of sultry movie vamp Isabella del Sueño. The reporter hinted slyly that Señorita del Sueño was sharing a tryst with Roland Ramirez, her co-star in the recent romantic western,
Ride, Vaquero
. The sports section’s ace scrivener, one Billy Trout, mourned at length over the Superbas’ fourth loss in their past six games, 5 to 3 in eleven innings.

The glorious music that
had filled the barbershop was suddenly was cut off, replaced by the breathless voice of an announcer.

This is Joseph van Horn in the WSCR newsroom. We interrupt this broadcast to bring you news of a daring robbery. Thieves have made off with the newest and most precious exhibit at the Municipal Museum of Art and History. As has been previously reported, the precious gems and golden scepter recently
discovered by the Hopkinson Expedition and believed
to be the legendary crown jewels of the Lost Continent of Lemuria, were to go on display to the public at a grand ceremony scheduled for six o’clock this evening
.

As the display was being set up a mysterious gas was released in the museum, which was closed in preparation for the gala event. Curators, guards and workers alike were rendered unconscious.
When they recovered, the jewels were missing
.

Police have no clues as to the identity or location of the criminals involved, but the public is urged to be on the lookout for suspicious characters
.

The Emerson switched back to the opera.

The customer in one barber chair removed the cold towel from his freshly shaven face. “Well, waddaya think of that?” he inquired.

The customer in the other
chair removed his towel as well. “It’s a cryin’ shame, a cryin’ shame. A honest citizen can’t do nothin’ nowadays without runnin’ into criminals and crooks, can he?”

The two men burst into raucous laughter.

“Hey, barber,” one of them growled, “you and your partner there, you seen us here, right? Lookit the clock, you better notice what time it is.”

Alberto Morelli blinked. “But—why?”

“Never
you mind why,” the customer growled. “Just remember. You get me? We’re Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown. We been here for the past hour.”

He climbed out of the chair. “Here,” he snarled. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills held in place by a gleaming money clip. “This should help you remember us!”

He peeled a large-denomination bill off the roll and handed it to Alberto.

“And you,
too!” The customer peeled a second bill of the same denomination from the roll and handed it to Roberto.

“Now, where’s that shoe-shine boy?” He reached into his pocket and extracted a silver dollar. A deep crease appeared between his eyes. “Where’d he go?”

But Clarence Willis was nowhere to be seen. The only clue to his whereabouts was a tattered comic book left open on his shoeshine stool,
and the door of the closet where he stored his push-broom, his shoeshine kit, and the instruments and tools of his humble profession when not in use. The door stood slightly ajar.

Alberto Morelli took the few steps required to reach that door and carefully closed it.

“That Clarence, he just disappears sometimes,” Alberto explained. “He’s not too bright, you know. He’s a good boy, we try and
take care of him, but sometimes he just disappears.”

At this very moment, forty-two stories above ground in the topmost suite of the Central Railroad Tower, a shadowy figure was moving among an array of instruments and tools of a very different sort. Electrical devices hummed and cast an orange radiance that gave the room an eerie glow, for opaque steel shutters were drawn across the windows.
By coincidence the sounds of WSCR gave warmth and presence to the otherwise scientific surroundings. At this moment the station was broadcasting Emil Waldteufel’s
Les Patineurs
.

A woman sat on a tall stool. Her fingers were long and graceful. As the hands of a great cellist draw music from the bow and strings of her musical instrument, hers sped with unerring accuracy and ultimate sensitivity
across a panel of knobs and switches. Needles flickered and dials glowed before her sharp eyes.

Behind her a pair of doors slid back, their sound a soft hiss that most would have missed, but the woman perched atop the tall stool whirled. The figure she beheld was a humble one. A man with stooped shoulders and downcast eyes, his clothing clean but plain, clearly the veteran of countless washings
and numerous patchings, his feet encased in shoes that were scuffed and worn.

As the doors hissed shut behind him the man concealed himself behind a screen. Moments later there emerged a figure who would hardly have been taken for the same individual, yet it was he.

“Wizard,” the woman perched atop the stool whispered in greeting. She nodded her head. Her blue-black hair was braided in an exotic
fashion, her features astonishingly like those of the famed bust of Cleopatra, her skin the color of ebony.

“Nzambi.”

The speaker was tall. One might even think that he was the same person as the humble figure who had disappeared behind the screen, drawn to his full height, his muscular shoulders and slim waist merely suggested by the shimmering red material of his costume. By some oddity of
the lighting in the room, perhaps, or perhaps by some clever device of the weaver’s art, the eye could hardly focus on his closely cut tunic and trousers.

Strange as was the effect of his costume, even stranger was that of an attempt to focus on his face. He wore no mask, nor would an
observer say that his features were invisible, yet the eye would fix itself involuntarily to the left or to the
right of his face. A group of observers attempting to agree upon a description of him would discover to their embarrassment that they were uncertain as to the length of his hair, the slope of his nose, the height of his forehead or the color of his eyes.

“Are you aware of today’s events at the Municipal Museum of Art and History, Nzambi?”

“The Jewels of Lemuria were stolen. Our agent at police
headquarters notified me, Wizard.”

“This is a serious matter.”

“Cannot the police handle it?”

“If it were a simple jewel robbery I would leave it in their hands. They bumble but they are no less competent than most officialdom. But I am concerned that this matter goes far deeper than the theft of a crown and a scepter. What do gold and emeralds and sapphires mean? Very little, my dear, very
little.”

“Why, then? Why does this matter warrant the attention of the Crimson Wizard?”

“Have you heard of the Society of the Deep Ones?”

“Vaguely. There is a lodge with a similar name, I’ve heard mention of them on a radio show. They are the butt of humor.”

The Wizard laughed without mirth. His was a bitter laugh, the laughter of one who responds to irony rather than humor.

“The Society
of Deep Ones is no object for amusement. Their tentacles reach high and low, they reach deep into society. That radio show you mention—I know it well, everyone knows it well—it is part of their campaign of disinformation, designed to fool us into thinking that they are not serious. But they are. They are very serious. And very dangerous.”

The lovely Nzambi slid from her perch atop the tall stool.
“Their reputation is that of a silly group of people who get together and playact. They wear vainglorious costumes and give themselves titles like ‘Lord High Octopus’ and ‘Mistress of the Mystic Seabed.’ They exchange secret passwords and practice mock-religious rituals, like a group of schoolchildren playing at grown-up ceremonials.”

“Indeed.” The Wizard brushed past Nzambi and studied an assemblage
of complex electrical gear. Hands that were hard for the eye to follow, that seemed strangely out of focus, made delicate adjustments. The Wizard turned away from the instruments and faced his lovely assistant once more.

“That is part of their diabolically clever means of operating. The Society of Deep Ones has deep roots, roots that burrow into the sands of time, Nzambi. They are the inheritors
of a religious tradition with its origins among the peoples of the ancient world. They are the heirs of a civilization that was old when our own ancestors were barely emerging from savagery to develop the arts of thought, of mathematics, of astronomy and of writing. Arts which were copied by even more primitive Europeans who turned the fruits of our own civilization against us and laid low the
once mighty empires of the Dark Continent.”

Perhaps the Wizard gestured, perhaps it was the play of light on the unique material in which he was garbed, but energy appeared to play across his figure.

Once again he spoke, his voice deep yet soft, cultured and marked with precision.

“Were the human race to be called for judgment, Nzambi, there would be much to answer for. The sins of our petty
species are many and horrendous, and the greatest of them may be our pride. We think that our vaunted intellect, our skill with tools and with weapons, entitle us to lord it over the rest of Creation. The authors of our holy books place words in the mouth of God, giving Man dominion over all of nature. What a foolish pretense that is!”

Nzambi smiled ruefully. “But Man does rule the planet, does
he not, Wizard?”

The laugh that emerged from the weird vision that was the Crimson Wizard was a compound of painfully gotten wisdom and bitter amusement. “Man thinks he rules the planet. Let us hope that he is wrong, for the legacy of our generation will be nothing but misery and pain for our descendants, should we even survive to have any. No, Nzambi.”

The Wizard paused. He strode across the
room and stood over his assistant. Although her slim, tall figure towered over most women and many men, she was obliged to tilt her head backwards if she hoped to catch even a glimpse of his stern, elusive, ever-shifting features.

“No,” he repeated. “There were species before ours whose civilizations would put our own to shame, whose achievements were such that we should be awe-struck and reduced
to fear and trembling had we but the remotest inkling of their greatness and their threat. The descendants of those beings dwell to this day midst the distant stars, and their agents walk among us, unknown, unrecognized, as plain before us as the purloined letter before the Parisian
sureté
in M. Poe’s brilliant tale.”

With a swirl of red, the Crimson Wizard swept from the room.

Fleeting moments
passed.

A panel slid back atop the Central Railroad Tower. The hangar that topped the soaring structure was invisible from any other building in Seacoast City. Within the hangar stood an array of the world’s most advanced aircraft—a Cierva gyroplane, a Sapphire-MacNeese SM-10 monoplane, and a miniature lighter-than-air craft. The mechanics who maintained the fleet had been vetted for reliability
and were as highly skilled as they were highly paid. Any of the Wizard’s aircraft was ready for use at any time.

On this occasion the Wizard selected the lighter-than-air craft. It was coated with a special paint developed by the Wizard’s scientific aide, Nzambi. It was the world’s least reflective pigment, rendering the miniature Zeppelin virtually invisible by day or by night.

To the Wizard
the craft was almost a person. He had named the airship
Kpalimé
after his ancestral city in Africa, but when he settled behind the controls of the miniature Zeppelin and spoke her name, it was if he spoke the name of a beloved woman rather than a machine.

Unlike most Zeppelins,
Kpalimé’s
propellers were powered by silent compressed air generators. Thus, the tell-tale buzz of internal combustion
or Diesel engines that announced the presence of conventional airships was absent.
Kpalimé
was as silent as she was elusive. In her, the Crimson Wizard could approach his target unseen, unheard, undetected.