Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 Part 2

"He said he was headed for Shelton," went on Hammersly's spoken thoughts. "If I slip across the ice I can intercept him at Black's woods." b.u.t.toning his coat closely, he followed the stranger out into the night.

I was glad the moon had come up for my walk home, glad too when I had the door locked and propped with a chair behind me. I undressed in the dark, not wanting any grisly, sunken-eyed monster to be looking in through the window at me. For maybe, so I thought, maybe he was after all not headed for Shelton, but perhaps planning on another of his ghastly tricks.

But in the morning we knew he had been going toward Shelton. Scientists, doctors, and learned men of all descriptions came out to our village to see the thing the papers said Si Waters had stumbled upon when on his way to the creamery that next morning.

It was a skeleton, they said, only that it had a dry skin all over it. A mummy. Could not have been considered capable of containing life only that the snow around it was lightly blotched with a pale smear that proved to be blood, that had oozed out from the six bullet holes in the horrid chest. They never did solve it.

There were five of us in the store that night. Five of us who know.

Hammersly did what we all wanted to do. Of course his name is not really Hammersly, but it has done here as well as another. He is black-whiskered though, and he is still very much of a sphinx, but he'll never have to answer for having killed the man he once brought back to life. Hammersly's secret will go into five other graves besides his own.

Monsters of Moyen

_By Arthur J. Burks_

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Now," said Kleig hoa.r.s.ely, "watch closely, for G.o.d's sake!_"]

"The Western World shall be next!" was the dread ultimatum of the half-monster, half-G.o.d Moyen!

_Foreword_

In 1935 the mighty genius of Moyen gripped the Eastern world like a hand of steel. In a matter of months he had welded the Orient into an unbeatable war-machine. He had, through the sheer magnetism of a strange personality, carried the Eastern world with him on his march to conquest of the earth, and men followed him with blind faith as men in the past have followed the banners of the Thaumaturgists.

A strange name, to the sound of which none could a.s.sign nationality.

Some said his father was a Russian refugee, his mother a Mongol woman.

Some said he was the son of a Caucasian woman lost in the Gobi and rescued by a mad lama of Tibet, who became father of Moyen. Some said that his mother was a G.o.ddess, his father a fiend out of h.e.l.l.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

But this all men knew about him: that he combined within himself the courage of a Hannibal, the military genius of a Napoleon, the ideals of a Sun Yat Sen; and that he had sworn to himself he would never rest until the earth was peopled by a single nation, with Moyen himself in the seat of the mighty ruler.

Madagascar was the seat of his government, from which he looked across into United Africa, the first to join his confederacy. The Orient was a dependency, even to that forbidden land of the Goloks, where outlanders sometimes went, but whence they never returned--and to the wild Goloks he was a G.o.d whose will was absolute, to render obedience to whom was a privilege accorded only to the Chosen.

In a short year his confederacy had brought under his might the millions of Asia, which he had welded into a mighty machine for further conquest.

And because the Americas saw the handwriting on the wall, they sent out to see the man Moyen, with orders to penetrate to his very side, as a spy, their most trusted Secret Agent--Prester Kleig.

Only the ignorant believed that Moyen was mad. The military and diplomatic geniuses of the world recognized his genius, and resented it.

But Prester Kleig, of the Secret Service of the Americas, one of the _few_ men whose headquarters were in the Secret Room in Washington, had reached Moyen.

Now he was coming home.

He came home to tell his people what Moyen was planning, and to admit that his investigations had been hampered at every turn by the uncanny genius of Moyen. Military plans had been guarded with unbelievable secrecy. War machines he knew to exist, yet had seen only those common to all the armies of the world.

And now, twenty-four hours out of New York City, aboard the _S. S.

Stellar_, Prester Kleig was literally willing the steamer to greater speed--and in far Madagascar the strange man called Moyen had given the ultimatum:

"The Western World shall be next!"

CHAPTER I

_The Hand of Moyen._

"Who is that man?" asked a young lady pa.s.senger of the steward, with the imperious inflection which tells of riches able to force obedience from menials who labor for hire.

She pointed a bejeweled finger at the slender, soldierly figure which stood in the prow of the liner, like a figurehead, peering into the storm under the vessel's forefoot.

"That gentleman, milady?" repeated the steward obsequiously. "That is Prester Kleig, head of the Secret Agents, Master of the Secret Room, just now returning from Madagascar, via Europe, after a visit to the realm of Moyen."

A gasp of terror burst from the lips of the woman. Her cheeks blanched.

"Moyen!" She almost whispered it. "Moyen! The half-G.o.d of Asia, whom men call mad!"

"Not mad, milady. No, Moyen is not mad, save with a l.u.s.t for power. He is the conqueror of the ages, already ruling more of the earth's population than any man has ever done before him--even Alexander!"

But the young lady was not listening to stewards. Wealthy young ladies did not, save when asked questions dealing with personal service to themselves. Her eyes devoured the slender man who stood in the prow of the _Stellar_, while her lips shaped, over and over again, the dread name which was on the lips of the people of the world:

"Moyen! Moyen!"

Up in the prow, if Prester Kleig, who carried a dread secret in his breast, knew of the young lady's regard, he gave no sign. There were touches of gray at his temples, though he was still under forty. He had seen more of life, knew more of its terrors, than most men twice his age--because he had lived harshly in service to his country.

He was thinking of Moyen, the genius of the misshapen body, the pale eyes which reflected the fires of a Satanic soul, set deeply in the midst of the face of an angel; and wondering if he would be able to arrive in time, sorry that he had not returned home by airplane.

He had taken the _Stellar_ only because the peacefulness of ocean liner travel would aid his thoughts, and he required time to marshal them.

Liner travel was now a luxury, as all save the immensely wealthy traveled by plane across the oceans. Now Prester Kleig was sorry, for any moment, he felt, Moyen might strike.

He turned and looked back along the deck of the _Stellar_. His eyes played over the trimly gowned figure of the woman who questioned the steward, but did not really see her. And then....

"Great G.o.d!" The words were a prayer, and they burst from the lips of Prester Kleig like an explosion. Pa.s.sengers appeared from the lee of lifeboats. Officers on the bridge whirled to look at the man who shouted. Seamen paused in their labors to stare. Aloft in the crow's-nest the lookout lowered his eyes from scouring the horizon to stare at Prester Kleig--who was pointing.

All eyes turned in the direction indicated.