Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

And the same grin.

At that moment, the surgeon made the first deep incision.

At that moment, screaming violins sliced the silence.

And now the surgeon spoke of infection and fever. The diagnosis was poor. Hopeless, really, but Taoka was trying desperately not to say that.

Trying desperately, Hearthstone thought, not to smile.

“Thank you, Doctor Taoka,” the old man said, his Japanese impeccable, his accent perfect. “This is awful news, of course, and I find myself terribly saddened by it. But I would like you to put the best face on your report. A happy face, if you please.”

“Professor Hearthstone… I’m afraid that I don’t understand.”

Hearthstone bent forward. “Sir, I would appreciate it very much if you would smile for me.”

Doctor Taoka was confused. Perhaps this was an American custom with which he was unfamiliar. He made to protest. But as his mind searched for a tactic that would not offend, his lips twisted unbidden into a perplexed grin.

Hearthstone thanked the surgeon and promptly shot him dead.

The first time they met, long before Hearthstone had ever seen Japan, the professor asked, “Are you demon or angel?”

“I am… The Shroud.” The answer came in a purring whisper. “I come for those who are evil. Those who are evil must suffer, then die.”

Hearthstone shivered, embarrassed to be frightened by such base melodrama. Silly to have come here, to headquarters, alone. The stranger had been waiting for him, had slipped from the shadows and whispered that he was an avenger, a ghost.

Don’t surrender to the fear, Hearthstone warned himself. Keep the madman talking until someone comes to check on you. Listen to his insane babbling, and kill him when the odds are in your favor.

Hearthstone turned to the window. Below, the San Francisco streets swam with fog, but it was a low fog. Across the street, it hung far below a theatre marquee bathed in the white glow of overhead lamps, a stark illumination that transformed the reaching gray tendrils into cottony puffs that resembled the cloudy floor of some Hollywood heaven.

Black letters on the marquee. Frankenstein double-billed with Dracula .

Ah, true melodrama. Hearthstone chuckled at that. “Sir, if it’s evil you’ve come for, I believe you’ve come to the wrong place. Messieurs Lugosi and Karloff are across the street.”

Silence.

“A small joke,” Hearthstone began, his throat constricting involuntarily as the stranger advanced, quiet as the evening fog. And then words spilled unbidden from the professor’s thin lips, driven by a pure, instinctive terror that he had never experienced previously. “A small joke… from a small, unimportant man. I deal only in narcotics, synthesized through methods I discovered while employed by some of our more adventurous captains of industry. Mere entertainments for the bored and the jaded, those who find no solace in the pleasures approved by modern society… I’m sure you understand. Perhaps you, sir… Perhaps you would like — ”

Laughter echoed from the velvet draperies that hung about the window. The inhuman sound forced Hearthstone to shrink away from the room’s lone source of light.

“Please understand,” Hearthstone begged, stumbling toward his desk, his eyes searching the room, “I am not a rich man, but if it’s money you want… ”

Mellow shadows pooled on the pine floor as The Shroud — now silhouetted in the gray glow of the window — moved forward. Planks complained as if punished by a heavy tread, but the self-proclaimed avenger was drifting toward Hearthstone like the wispy shadow of something floating outside on the night fog. The thing — Hearthstone’s instinctive fear told him that this could not be a man — came closer, its harsh laughter rising.

“A shadowshow for you, Professor. Without fee…”

Another sound. The swish of a cape on the hardwood floor. “Mister Lugosi,” the voice whispered, suddenly tinged with a familiar accent.

Red eyes burned in the darkness. Hearthstone reached out. fingers scrabbling across the stained blotter, and flicked on the desk lamp. The bulb flared, then exploded, and the brief instant of brightness momentarily blinded the professor.

The scent of ozone flooded the stuffy room. Hearthstone caught the sizzle of lightning and the slightest glimpse of a scarred neck spiked with twin bolts. “Mr. Karloff,” the voice enthused.

No longer the sound of a sweeping cape. Now heavy boots beat a slow rhythm across the pine floorboards.

Spots swam before Hearthstone’s eyes. He rubbed at them, blinking away tears. The spots danced, rotated, all but a single black globe that stared him down and made him sob.

“Anyone,” the voice whispered.

A black slit spread across the ebony circle and split into a grin.

“Anywhere… ”

Puddled against the wall.

“Anytime… ”

Slipped toward the window.

“Good night, Jacob Hearthstone,” said The Shroud. “And remember — next comes suffering.”

“Damn,” Professor Hearthstone said. “Double damn.”

He stared at Taoka’s face. The surgeon’s corpse didn’t grin. Rather it frowned, its thin lips blemished by a gout of blood that was already drying. And though the room was flooded with light, as were all the rooms within the professor’s compound, Hearthstone searched desperately for a single shadow.

None near Taoka’s bloody mouth. None in the corners of the room. None behind the satin draperies, nor beneath the lacquered desk, nor behind the rice-paper doors of the closet.

His bride had often asked him, “Why do we need all this light? You’ve already killed him, haven’t you?”

Always he corrected her without drawing attention to the correction, and always he pretended that yes, indeed, he was certain that he had killed the thing. ”It was a demon, and I am too much the cynic to believe that this world is cursed with the presence of only one demon. There may be others far more powerful than The Shroud.”

No, he would not remember. The path of memory was dangerous. Possibly fatal.

Hearthstone clapped his hands. Pulled himself into the present moment.

He stared at the dead surgeon. At the caked blood on his lips. At the corners of the room.

At the complete absence of shadows.

In the lore of San Francisco’s Chinatown, the incident was know as The Night Of The Axes. It was Professor Hearthstone’s finest moment. He had maintained a low profile for several months, partially due to worry over the strange nocturnal visit that had occurred at his headquarters, partially because his next move required careful planning.

Hearthstone had long coveted the secrecy that a Chinatown operation would afford his particular concerns. The police steered clear of the foreign population, and the professor felt that his business would go undetected if he could conduct it from a section of the city that was little known or understood.

The only problem with Hearthstone’s scheme was that there were others who already controlled the area. Namely the Wong Ching Benevolent Society, an organization known as much for its wealth as its ruthless behavior.

But within that equation lay the answer to the professor’s dilemma. If Chinatown understood wealth, then its occupants would understand him. And if the Wong Chings understood ruthless behavior, then ruthless behavior would be the order of the day.

Hearthstone recruited a pack of hale and hearty Irishman from one of the city’s more notorious waterfront bars and appointed a recently busted policeman named Thomas Clancy as their leader. Equipped with firefighting garb and axes, the Irishmen descended upon a restaurant called Sun Lim’s, which happened to serve as headquarters to the Wong Chings. When their axe blades grew dull and the tiled floors were well-oiled with Chinese blood, the merry Irish mob torched the building. They watched the flames dance, drinking strange Oriental liquor and singing a merry tune of their native land.