Лестер Дент - The Fantastic Island

"The Count is playing his piano," Pat said in a small voice.

"He said he only played when somethin' was goin' to happen to somebody," Monk remembered aloud.

"How can we hear it from this high place?" Ham asked tensely.

"This radio apparatus makes more noise than a piano," Pat said fearfully. "If we can hear him, he must have heard us!"

Ham said grimly, "It must be because he heard us sending the radiogram that he's playing on his piano."

Suddenly the music stopped. But the notes continued to throb their eerie menace for seconds, it seemed, before quietness clamped down.

"Let's get out of here!" Monk jerked, breaking the ominous hush.

"Do not be in a hurry," a suave voice interposed. It was Count Ramadanoff who spoke. No one having heard that sinister voice before could have mistaken it. The prisoners stared helplessly, trying to locate it.

Then a huge slab of stone in the tower wall swung outward. From within a hidden recess, the Count stepped forth. He carried a modern automatic pistol in his hand.

"I always plan my radio room with 2 entrances," he purred. "And dictaphones are useful household articles to one such as I. And now — since you have violated my hospitality — I must dispense with your valued company. You are accordingly sentenced to labor in my pits. Strong-backed coolies sometimes last a month. Last year, a big Frenchman endured for 2 weeks."

Monk's hand thrust down and squashed out the feebly flaming alcohol lamp. In the pitch darkness which flooded the tower room, he hurled the glass lamp bowl at the spot where the Count — revolver in hand — had been.

At the same instant, all of Monk's great muscles acted to wrench his body to one side. The action undoubtedly saved his life. Saffron gun flame and a bullet blasted out of the Count's revolver. The lead slammed so close to Monk that it jerked a quick breath from his lips.

A loud curse from the Count indicated that the man had been struck by the flung lamp. Both Monk and Ham leaped forward in the darkness to overpower him before he could recover from the blow. But not more than a single step did they take . Then a blighting force seemed to rocket through their bodies.

Pat also felt the enervating force. It tingled from the feet to the tips of the fingers, freezing the muscles into instant, cramped immobility. As firmly as though they were glued to their tracks, their feet were fastened to that steelplate floor. They could only tremble; they could not cry out.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

A white beam slashed from the Count's flashlight. He barked an order and out of the same secret entrance through which he had originally appeared, a shadowy man-figure emerged. The man moved silently and slapped handcuffs on the wrists of the three.

The Count reached back and turned off an electrical switch. The numbing force which held the prisoners fast to the floor flowed out of their bodies again … and they were free to move.

"As you must have deduced," the Count's suave voice sounded from beyond the flashlight, "these steel floor plates — in alternate strips — are wired to take charges of electricity . You were rooted to the floor by the electrical current as efficiently as though you had sat on an electric railway track and grasped the third rail. I myself, as you see, am wearing sandals insulated by thick rubber and so am immune to the shock ."

He paused impressively.

"I have just one thing more to say," he continued. "In view of your belligerent attitude, I have decided not to send you to the pits but to keep you here in the Palace under my close observation. Kindly proceed down the stairs and we will join another member of your group: Professor William Harper Littlejohn — 'Johnny', as I believe you refer to him."

Near the bottom of the winding stairway, the Count requested his prisoners to halt. He indicated a long slot in the tower wall which looked out upon an inner courtyard. Hemmed in as it was on all sides by starkly-rearing palace walls, the courtyard was in effect a dungeonpit. A dozen feet above the flagstoned yard, a balcony ran entirely around.

"Under the balcony," the Count's voice sounded in a silky purr, "observe your new quarters."

They looked. Thick iron bars extended from the balcony edge into the flagstoned floor below, marking off a number of bare prison cells.

Count Ramadanoff spoke again. "Do you observe that bundle of rags in the cell off to the left? Look closely."

While they strained their eyes in the courtyard gloom, the interminable red lightning rippled out of the island volcano and sent its ghostly glare over the heavens. Cleverly-arranged reflectors at the top of the courtyard dungeon directed the hellish glow downward to the flagstoned floor.

The still bundle of rags in the barred cell was bathed in the blood-redlight.

"Johnny!" Monk and Ham jabbed fiercely.

And Pat echoed it. "That's Johnny in there!"

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

"You will be interested to know," the Count's odious voice continued, "that the cell bars are movable. They are actuated electrically. I have only to press a button, and they rise out of the floor to allow a prisoner to step out into the courtyard. Or to allow the prisoner to be visited by an inhabitantof the courtyard."

"What inhabitant?" Pat asked quickly, impelled by a foreboding curiosity. "I don't see any."

But the next instant … she did!

A bulky shadow stirred from the flagstones, propelled itself out into the redvolcanic glare.

Pat gave a little choked cry of sheer horror and started back. Ham leaned forward, his fingers clutched so tightly on an imaginary sword cane that the knuckles were white splotches on his skin. Monk crouched, his simian bulk frozen.

"Blazes!" he gulped.

The courtyard below had an incredible inhabitant. Monk, Ham, and Pat possessed what is commonly called an "iron nerve". Yet the thing below aroused in them absolute horror, a feeling of desperation. They seemed hardly able to breathe as they stared at it.

"It ain't real!" Monk choked, at the same time knowing he was mistaken.

"It is quite real," murmured the Count

They stared, as fascinated as birds suddenly confronted by a snake. Suddenly Pat emitted a low strangled cry, spun, and covered both eyes with her hands. She trembled.

"Your chief — this famous 'Doc Savage'," the Count droned, "would no doubt be greatly interested by our little friend in the courtyard."

As a matter-of-fact, some very interesting things were at that moment on the point of happening to Doc Savage.

In the skyscraper section of midtown New York, a man so thin that at first glance he seemed to be walking sidewise — and who had a skin so white that it rivaled the pallid waxiness of a lily — strode along with a briskness which belied his fragile physical appearance.

The man — 'Long Tom' or Major Thomas J. Roberts, electrical wizard, as he was known to the World at large — was another of Doc Savage's aides. Long Tom's specialty was electricity, of which he had profound knowledge. Electrical patents recorded under his name were legion.

Long Tom looked like a man on his last legs. But appearance in his case was a terrific lie. His chalk-white face did not indicate ill health. He happened to be one of those rare individuals who — no matter how much they expose themselves to the Sun's rays — cannot get a tan. There was incredible strength in his fragile-appearing body.