Mask of Death

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  Mask of Death

  By PAUL ERNST

  [Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Weird TalesAugust-September 1936. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  [Sidenote: _A weird and uncanny tale about a strange criminal who calledhimself Doctor Satan, and the terrible doom with which he struck downhis enemies_]

  _1. The Dread Paralysis_

  On one of the most beautiful bays of the Maine coast rested the townthat fourteen months before had existed only on an architect'sdrawing-board.

  Around the almost landlocked harbor were beautiful homes,bathing-beaches, parks. On the single Main Street were model stores.Small hotels and inns were scattered on the outskirts. Streets werelaid, radiating from the big hotel in the center of town like spokesfrom a hub. There was a waterworks and a landing-field; a power houseand a library.

  It looked like a year-round town, but it wasn't. Blue Bay, it wascalled; and it was only a summer resort....

  Only? It was the last word in summer resorts! The millionaires backingit had spent eighteen million dollars on it. They had placed it on afine road to New York. They ran planes and busses to it. They were goingto clean up five hundred per cent on their investment, in real estatedeals and rentals.

  On this, its formal opening night, the place was wide open. In everybeautiful summer home all lights were on, whether the home in questionwas tenanted or not. The stores were open, whether or not customers wereavailable. The inns and small hotels were gay with decorations.

  But it was at the big hotel at the hub of the town that the gayetiesattendant on such a stupendous opening night were at their mostcomplete.

  Every room and suite was occupied. The lobby was crowded. Formallydressed guests strolled the promenade, and tried fruitlessly to gainadmission to the already overcrowded roof garden.

  Here, with tables crowded to capacity and emergency waiters trying togive all the de luxe service required, the second act of the famous BlueBay floor show was going on.

  In the small dance floor at the center of the tables was a dancer. Shewas doing a slave dance, trying to free herself from chains. Thespotlight was on; the full moon, pouring its silver down on the openroof, added its blue beams.

  The dancer was excellent. The spectators were enthralled. One elderlyman, partially bald, a little too stout, seemed particularly engrossed.He sat alone at a ringside table, and had been shown marked deferenceall during the evening. For he was Mathew Weems, owner of a large blockof stock in the Blue Bay summer resort development, and a very wealthyman.

  Weems was leaning forward over his table, staring at the dancer withsensual lips parted. And she, quite aware of his attention and hiswealth, was outdoing herself.

  A prosaic scene, one would have said. Opening night of a resort de luxe;wealthy widower concentrating on a dancer's whirling bare body; peopleapplauding carelessly. But the scene was to become far indeed fromprosaic--and the cause of its change was to be Weems.

  * * * * *

  Among the people standing at the roof-garden entrance and wishing theycould crowd in, there was a stir. A woman walked among them.

  She was tall, slender but delicately voluptuous, with a small, shapelyhead on a slender, exquisite throat. The pallor of her clear skin andthe largeness of her intensely dark eyes made her face look like aflower on an ivory stalk. She was gowned in cream-yellow, with thecurves of a perfect body revealed as her graceful walk molded her frockagainst her.

  Many people looked at her, and then, questioningly, at one another. Shehad been registered at the hotel only since late afternoon, but alreadyshe was an object of speculation. The register gave her name as MadameSin, and the knowing ones had hazarded the opinion that she, and hername, were publicity features to help along with the resort openingnews.

  Madame Sin entered the roof garden, with the assurance of one who has atable waiting, and walked along the edge of the small dance floor. Shemoved silently, obviously not to distract attention from the slavedance. But as she walked, eyes followed her instead of the dancer'sbeautiful moves.

  She passed Weems' table. With the eagerness of a man who has formed aslight acquaintance and would like to make it grow, Weems rose from histable and bowed. The woman known as Madame Sin smiled a little. Shespoke to him, with her exotic dark eyes seeming to mock. Her slenderhands moved restlessly with the gold-link purse she carried. Then shewent on, and Weems sat down again at his table, with his eyes resumingtheir contented scrutiny of the dancer's convolutions.

  The dancer swayed toward him, struggling gracefully with her symbolicchains. Weems started to raise a glass of champagne abstractedly towardhis lips. He stopped, with his hand half-way up, eyes riveted on thedancer. The spotlight caught the fluid in his upraised glass and flickedout little lights in answer.

  The dancer whirled on. And Weems stayed as he was, staring at the spotwhere she had been, glass poised half-way between the table and hisface, like a man suddenly frozen--or gripped by an abrupt thought.

  The slave-girl whirled on. But now as she turned, she looked more oftenin Weems' direction, and a small frown of bewilderment began to gatheron her forehead. For Weems was not moving; strangely, somehowdisquietingly, he was staying just the same.

  Several people caught the frequence of her glance, and turned their eyesin the same direction. There were amused smiles at the sight of thestout, wealthy man seated there with his eyes wide and unblinking, andhis hand raised half-way between table and lips. But soon those who hadfollowed the dancer's glances saw, too. Weems was holding that queerattitude too long.

  The dancer finished her almost completed number and whirled to thedressing-room door. The lights went on. And now everyone near Weems waslooking at him, while those farther away were standing in order to seethe man.

  He was still sitting as he had been, as if frozen or paralyzed, withstaring eyes glued to the spot where the dancer had been, and with handhalf raised holding the glass.

  * * * * *

  A friend got up quickly and hastened to the man's table.

  "Weems," he said sharply, resting his hand on the man's shoulder.

  Weems made no sign that he had heard, or had felt the touch. On and onhe sat there, staring at nothing, hand half raised to drink.

  "Weems!" Sharp and frightened the friend's voice sounded. And all on theroof garden heard it. For all were now silent, staring with graduallymore terrified eyes at Weems.

  The friend passed his hand slowly, haltingly before Weems' staring eyes.And those eyes did not blink.

  "Weems--for God's sake--what's the matter with you?"

  The friend was trembling now, with growing horror on his face as hesensed something here beyond his power to comprehend. Hardly knowingwhat he was doing, following only an instinct of fear at the unnaturalattitude, he put his hand on Weems' half-raised arm and lowered it tothe table. The arm went down like a mechanical thing. The champagneglass touched the table.

  A woman at the next table screamed and got to her feet with a rasp ofher chair that sounded like a thin shriek of fear. For Weems' arm, whenit was released, went slowly up again to the same position it hadassumed when the man suddenly ceased becoming an animate being, andbecame a thing like a statue clad in dinner clothes with a glass in itshand.

  "_Weems!_" yelled the friend.

  And then the orchestra began to play, loudly, with metalliccheerfulness, as the head waiter sensed bizarre tragedy and moved toconceal it as such matters are always concealed at such occasions.

 
Weems sat on, eyes wide, hand half raised to lips. He continued to holdthat posture when four men carried him to the elevators and down to thehotel doctor's suite. He was still holding it when they sat him down inan easy chair, bent forward a bit as though a table were still beforehim, eyes staring, hand half raised to drink. The champagne glass wasempty now, with its contents spotting his clothes and the roof gardencarpets, spilled when the four had borne him from the table. But it wasstill clenched in his rigid hand, and no effort to get it from his oddlyset fingers was successful....

  * * * * *

  The festivities of the much-heralded opening night went on all over thenew-born town of Blue Bay. On the roof garden were several hundredpeople who were still neglecting talk, drinking and dancing while theirstartled minds reviewed the strange thing they had seen; but aside fromtheir number, the celebrants were having a careless good time, with nothought of danger in their minds.

  However, there was no sign of gayety in the tower office suite atop themammoth Blue Bay Hotel and just two floors beneath the garden. The threeofficers of the Blue Bay Company sat in here, and in their faces wasfrenzy.

  "What in the world are we going to do?" bleated Chichester, thin,nervous, dry-skinned, secretary and treasurer of the company. "Weems isthe biggest stockholder. He is nationally famous. His attack of illnesshere on the very night of opening will give us publicity so unfavorablethat it might put Blue Bay in the red for months. You know how adisaster can sometimes kill a place."

  "Most unfortunate," sighed heavy-set, paunchy Martin Gest, gnawing hislip. Gest was president of the company.

  "Unfortunate, hell!" snapped Kroner, vice president. Kroner was aself-made man, slightly overcolored, rather loud, with dinner clothescut a little too modishly. "It's curtains if anything more shouldhappen."

  "Hasn't the doctor found out yet what's the matter with Weems?" quaveredChichester.

  Kroner swore. "You heard the last report, same as the rest of us. DoctorGrays has never seen anything like it. Weems seems to be paralyzed; yetthere are none of the symptoms of paralysis save lack of movement. Thereis no perceptible heart-beat--yet he certainly isn't dead; the completeabsence of rigor mortis and the fact that there is a trace of bloodcirculation prove that. He simply stays in that same position. When youmove arm or hand, it moves slowly back to the same position again onbeing released. He has no reflex response, doesn't apparently hear orfeel or see."

  "Like catalepsy," sighed Gest.

  Kroner nodded and moistened his feverish lips.

  "Just like catalepsy. Only it isn't. Grays swears to that. But what itis, he can't say."

  Chichester fumbled in his pocket.

  "You two laughed at me this evening when I got worried about gettingthat note. You talked me down again a few minutes ago. But I'm tellingyou once more, I believe there's a connection. I believe whoever wrotethe note really has made Weems like he is--not that the note was pennedby a crank and that Weems' illness is coincidence."

  "Nonsense!" said Gest. "The note was either written by a madman, or bysome crook who adopted a crazy, melodramatic name."

  "But he predicted what happened to Weems," faltered Chichester. "And hesays there will be more--much more--enough to ruin Blue Bay for ever ifwe don't meet his demands----"

  "Nuts!" said Kroner bluntly. "Weems just got sick, that's all. Somethingso rare that most doctors can't spot it, but normal just the same. Wecan keep it quiet, and have him treated secretly by Grays. That'll stoppublicity."

  He rapped with heavy, red knuckles on the note which Chichester had laidon the conference table. "This is a fraud, a thin-air idea of some smallshot to get money out of us."

  He turned to the telephone to call Doctor Grays' suite again for a laterreport on Weems' condition. The other two bent near to listen.

  A breath of air came in the open window. It stirred the note on thetable, partially unfolded it.

  "... disaster and horror shall be the chief, though uninvited, guests atyour opening unless you comply with my request. Mathew Weems shall beonly the first if you do not signify by one a. m. whether or not youwill meet my demand...."

  The note closed as the breeze died, flipped open again so that thesignature showed, flipped shut once more.

  The signature was: Doctor Satan!