The Avenger 35 - The Iron Skull (6 page)

“I wonder if that was the last mile I just walked,” said Cole to himself. “Let’s be on the lookout for any sudden intrusions of poison gas.”

Nothing happened for several minutes.

Nothing happened for several minutes more.

From out of the ceiling came a voice. “Cross to the door with the red knob,” instructed the echoing voice. “Open it.”

“Do I have a pleasant surprise awaiting me?”

No further words came down from above.

Shrugging, Cole did as instructed. The door opened onto a surprising room.

“By Jove!” It was surprising in that it was furnished like an 1890s parlor. A bentwood rocker, a claw-footed table, pussy willows under a bell glass, antimacassars on the armchairs, sentimental pastoral scenes in gilt frames on the walls. The illumination came from a hanging Tiffany lamp and a pink-shaded table lamp.

Gingerly, Cole entered. There was no one else in there.

He’d taken three steps across the brown and gold hooked rug when his entry door closed behind him. “Very cozy,” he said aloud. “Makes me yearn for my pipe and slippers.”

Sitting down on a candy-striped loveseat, Cole studied his surroundings. There was only one other door, a heavy oaken one across the parlor.

He rested his hands on his knees. “Pity I didn’t bring my mandolin.”

Then the oaken door swung open, very slowly and quietly. A hooded man in a wheelchair rolled into the parlor. “How do you do, Mr. Wilson.”

Cole said, “Would you be mine host?”

“You have a reputation for flippancy,” said the hooded man. “I would suggest you curb the humor and pay close attention to what I am going to say to you.”

“It’s also known as gallows humor,” said Cole, “but as you wish. I’m nothing if not an obliging guest.”

“First, as to who you are.” He rolled his wheelchair to the exact center of the rug nearest Cole. “You are Cole Wilson . . . young and ambitious, a mechanical-engineering wizard. You have a streak of Robin Hood in you and are forever intent on projecting your love of dangerous adventure to aid those weaker than yourself.”

“Yes, tha’s me. A cross between Errol Flynn and Albert Einstein.”

The hooded man began to peel off the glove from his right hand. “I’m more interested in your mechanical-engineering abilities than I am in your philanthropic bent,” he said. “As to who I am . . . have you ever heard of a man named Ulrich Blau-Montag?”

Cole narrowed one eye, thinking. “Name strikes a distant gong in my—I say!” He snapped his fingers. “Yes, I remember. Blau-Montag was a German scientist. He supposedly had worked out a nearly perfect humanoid robot.”

“Perfect,
not nearly perfect. What else do you know of him?”

“Poor chap kicked off years ago, died quite young in some kind of laboratory accident.”

The hooded man removed the glove and dropped it to his lap. “Ulrich Blau-Montag was also an exceptionally handsome man. Handsome in the classic sense . . . in the style of your Tyrone Power and Robert Taylor. An extremely good-looking man.”

“Nice combination, beauty and brains.”

“Contrary to the stories circulated by the powers in Berlin at the time . . . he did
not
die,” continued the hooded man. “There were many times when he wished he had, but his will to stay alive was exceptionally strong.”

“Why’d the Berlin chaps wish him to be believed dead?”

“His accident coincided with one of his breakthroughs in robotics. It was decided that from then on, Blau-Montag would work in secret.” He tapped his metal fingers on the arm of his chair. “He awoke after the accident to discover that one arm, one leg, and most of his face were gone. He had seen the cripples produced by the First World War and he knew he was more horrible-looking than any of them. He knew that even Germany’s finest plastic surgeons could do little for him. However, he then had an illuminating insight. His own field of study could save him. He would fashion himself limbs of metal, rubber, and wire. Even more than that, he would build himself a new face. A face made of metal and synthetic skin. And as long as he was reconstructing himself, he would make some improvements. For instance . . .” Using his left hand, he raised his right hand and pointed at the bell glass on the table next to Cole’s chair.

A sizzling beam of light shot out of the forefinger. The glass shattered.

“Yowie!” Cole threw himself off the loveseat.

“No need to be frightened, Mr. Wilson . . . yet.”

“I don’t like to get caught out in showers of glass.” Cole brushed at his sleeve, then sat in an armchair which faced the hooded man.

The hooded man held his right hand up, metal fingers spread wide. “There are many other talents and abilities built into this,” he said. “Young Blau-Montag also rebuilt and redesigned his head . . .” He laughed, a dry rattling laugh. “Something few men are ever given the opportunity to do, eh? At any rate, when his work was completed—and it took many long painful months—Blau-Montag was a combination of the best of a flesh-and-blood human and the most sophisticated robot ever conceived.”

“And our hero has come to America with his robots?”

“He has been here for several years, preparing for his mission.”

“Which is?”

“To destroy America.”

“An ambitious undertaking,” observed Cole. “Even for you, Herr Blau-Montag.”

“I do not call myself Blau-Montag any longer,” he said, leaning forward in his wheelchair. “No, I have adopted the name some of my former colleagues took to calling me behind my back some years ago.” He raised his left hand up toward his head. “I am the Iron Skull.” He pulled off the hood.

Smitty roared.

It was two men who’d jumped him as he’d stepped into the old warehouse. Big men, flesh and blood, and not robots. They were both using blackjacks.

Roaring again, Smitty ducked a nasty swing by one of the blackjacks.

“I feel like the guy in the carnival who’s got to keep dodging baseballs.”

The giant pivoted and threw a punch.

The blow connected and took one of his assailants hard in the abdomen. The man woofed out his breath, then doubled up on himself. He went staggering backward, taking shorter and shorter steps on his heels until he hit the floor.

“Jerk!” accused the other man as he struck Smitty across the cheekbone.

The blow caused Smitty to straighten up for a second. Lowering his head, he butted this one in the chest.

“Oof!”

Smitty butted again.

The man was lifted off the floor. He came down on one foot and stumbled against a high stack of cardboard cartons.

The boxes came tumbling down, falling on the man and knocking him down to the floor.

“Okay now.” Smitty dived. He gripped the man’s right hand and shook it like a cat shakes a rat. The blackjack dropped.

“You damn jerk!”

“You keep saying that,” said Smitty, “and I’m going to lose my temper.” He grabbed the man up, holding onto his coat front.

“Jerk!”

Smitty threw him. “Yep, I lost it.”

The man cartwheeled through the air. He hit another stack of cartons, a higher one. It came cascading down around him.

Thunk!

The other man had come up behind the giant and brought a wooden crate down over his head.

Smitty’s knees bent, and he lurched forward. The shadowy room seemed to be bobbing up and down.

His big right hand slipped for an instant into his coat pocket. Turning, he made a grab for the man who’d crowned him with the crate.

The man kicked out, foot connecting with Smitty’s knee. “Yow!” said the giant. He managed to clutch at the man’s coat lapel for a few seconds, then let go and went hopping around and howling.

The other thug had disengaged himself from the muddle of cartons. “Let’s scram. This jerk’s too tough!”

His associate threw a body block into Smitty and then ran to the fallen crates. “Yeah, let’s lam!”

“Yow! Ow!” cried the hopping giant.

The two hoods ran for the rear door of the warehouse and thrust out into the cold day.

Smitty ceased his cavorting. He straightened up, smiling to himself. “Lady bird, lady bird,” he said, “fly away home.”

Cole Wilson did not flinch, did not turn away. “Pleased to meet you,” he said in a normal voice.

The Iron Skull crumpled his silken hood in his flesh-and-blood hand. Only half of his face had skin on it. The right side was made of glistening metal. The right eye was obviously glass. His mouth opened in an odd up-and-down way, like that of a ventriloquist’s dummy. His teeth were silver. “I didn’t return myself completely to my earlier handsomeness,” he told Cole.

“So I surmised.”

The Iron Skull laughed, little sharp puffs of laughter spurting out through metal teeth. “You may know that it was common once, some centuries ago, to wear a tiny replica of a human skull around one’s neck. A
memento mori.
In the midst of life we are in death, and all that.” Touching his flesh fingers to the metal side of his face, he laughed once more. “With a similar purpose I let my face remain this way to remind myself that I am now part machine.”

“Myself, I’d have settled for a string around the finger.”

“I admire your calm, Mr. Wilson,” said the Iron Skull. “Very few people can look me in the face without showing some sign of revulsion.”

Cole watched him for several silent seconds. “Now that we’ve had our Lon Chaney interlude and everybody’s unmasked,” he said, “suppose you tell me why we’re here.”

The Iron Skull backed his chair toward the wall, reached up with his live hand, and pulled a tasseled bellpull. “Yes, an excellent suggestion. We’ll get down to business.” He came rolling back toward Cole. “Let me point out that I have a proposition for
you.
Not for the rest of your associates.”

“I don’t know as how we want to break up the act.”

“That’s not one of the choices you have to make.”

The door at the Iron Skull’s back opened. Plump Nevins came in, followed by the frail older man.

“Yes, sir?” said Nevins.

“I understand,” said the Iron Skull, without looking around at them, “that there have been several more failures.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call them—” began Nevins.

“You bungling fools!” cried the Iron Skull.

“What happened,” said the frail old man, “couldn’t be help—”

“And as for you, Clareson! Wasn’t the Kirby Macauley robot your special pride and joy? Now where is it? In the hands of the very people we are sworn to destroy.”

“The monitoring equipment is in perfect order,” said frail old Clareson. “I don’t see how I can be held responsible for the Gray girl’s realizing it was a robot. It seems to me the fault, if any, lies in the design and not—”

“I cannot work with you any longer!” The Iron Skull pushed down hard with one hand on the arm of his wheelchair. His legs made a mechanical creaking as he stood.

The old man put his hands up in front of his face, protesting, “No, I didn’t do—”

The Iron Skull stared at him and the artificial eye began to glow red. A thin line of intense scarlet light shot from the eye to the cringing Clareson.

The old man screamed as the line of light burned into him. It went straight through his chest, starting the wall behind him to smoldering. He died as he toppled over to the floor.

The burning eye clicked off. “Do something about that wall, Nevins,” ordered the Iron Skull. “I don’t want this room burning down around our ears.”

Nevins gave an anxious look around, then slapped at the blackening smoldering spot with his bare hands.

Letting out a ratcheting sigh, the Iron Skull sank back into his wheelchair. “I rebuilt my right lung as well,” he said to Cole. “When I become annoyed, as I often must, it causes a slight shortness of breath.”

“Oh, really?” said Cole, poker-faced.

Nevins blew on his singed palm, then thrust it into his armpit. “I really must protest this,” he told the Iron Skull.

“If you continue to, you’ll join Clareson on the carpet.”

“But . . . how can you expect us to continue our work when you—”

“Our work will continue,” the Iron Skull assured him. “Now get out of here, and take that doddering idiot’s body with you.”

“You know I don’t like to touch—”

“Do it!”

Nevins nodded his head a few times. He got a grip on the frail old man’s corpse and dragged him over to the door.

“You’re wrinkling that rug, Nevins, be careful.”

Cole left his armchair and opened the door for Nevins. “Allow me, old chap.”

When Nevins and the dead man were gone, the Iron Skull said, “You can see that I’m in need of qualified assistants.”

Cole sat down again. “I don’t like to get involved in labor-management squabbles.”

The Iron Skull intertwined his real and his metal fingers.

“I can use a man with your qualifications, Wilson.”

“You mean you’d like me to work with you?”

“Yes, exactly.”

Cole rubbed his chin. “I don’t know,” he said. “The working conditions don’t sound that good. And you seem to have a pretty abrupt retirement plan.”

“Let me put it to you this way,” said the Iron Skull. “If you do not agree to work with me, you will die at once. Die in a manner similar to that idiot Clareson.”

“Okay, I understand that side of the coin. And if I do agree to lend a hand?”

“You will live awhile longer.”

“I got better job offers than this when I was a kid during the Depression,” said Cole, grinning. “And another thing . . . you’ve got two of my friends locked up in your dungeon. “What about them?”

“I have no long-range use for them.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning they will live until I decide to kill them,” answered the Iron Skull. “I kept MacMurdie alive because I was awaiting the outcome of a certain mission. I know that now, and so there is really no earthly reason for his continued existence.”

“Mac’s a pretty handy chap to have around a laboratory,” Cole said. “So is Josh.”

“I won’t work with a black man,” said the Iron Skull, “no matter how brilliant he may be.” He started rolling toward the door Nevins had used. “Any more discussion of this particular matter will only annoy me. Come along, Wilson, I wish to show you something.”