lows? And Doctor Satan thought he could deal us the same doom. And he almost did! If we'd been a little farther away from these fabric shields of ours"
"How do they stop Doctor Satan's weapon?" said Beatrice. "And how can he strike—as he does—from a distance?"
"His weapon, and this fabric I made," said Keane, "go back a long way beyond history, to the priesthood serving the ancestors of the Cretans. They forged the weapon in wizardry, and at the same time devised the fabric to wear as protection against their enemies who must inevitably learn the secret of the weapon too. It is the father of the modern voodoo practise of making a crude image of an enemy and sticking pins into it."
He drew a long breath.
"A small image is made in the likeness of the person to be destroyed. The image is made of substance pervious to fire. In the cases of Croy and Varley, I should say after descriptions of how they perished, of wax. The image is then burned, and the person in whose likeness it is cast bums to nothingness as the image does—if the manipulator knows the secret incantations of the Cretans, as Doctor Satan does. But I'll give you more than an explanation; I'll give you a demonstration! For we are going to strike back at Doctor Satan in a manner I think he will be utterly unprepared for!"
He went to the opened suitcase, looking like a being from another planet in the ill-fitting garments he had thrown together after analyzing Varley's death. He took from the suitcase a thing that looked like a little doll. It was an image of a monkey-like man with a hairy face and long, simian arms.
"How hideous!" exclaimed Beatrice.
"Not as hideous externally as internally," said Keane. "This is a likeness of a creature named Girse, one of Satan's followers, who is only prevented from being as fiendish as Satan by lack of genius for it. I wish it were the image of Satan himself. But that would be useless. Satan, using the ancient death, would be prepared for it himself."
"It's made of wax?" said Beatrice, understanding and awe beginning to glint in her eyes.
"Made of wax," Keane nodded.
He looked around the office, saw no metal tray to put the little doll on, and flipped back a corner of the rug. The floor of the office was of smooth cement. He set the image on the cement. With her hand to her breast, Beatrice watched. The proceeding, seeming inconsequential in itself, had an air of deadliness about it that stopped the breath in her throat.
Keane looked around the office again, then strode to the clothes he and Beatrice had flung to the floor in their haste a moment ago.
“Sorry," he said, taking her garments with his own and piling them on the cement. "We'll have to send down to Fifth Avenue for more clothes to be brought here. I need these now."
On the pile of cloth he placed the image of Girse. Then he touched a match to the fabric. . . .
In the developing-room, Doctor Satan fairly spat his rage as he stared at the two wax dolls on the red-hot iron plate. The dolls were not burning! Defying all the laws of physics and, as far as Satan knew, of wizardry, the waxen images were standing unharmed on the metal that should have consumed them utterly.
"Damn him!" Doctor Satan rasped, gloved hands clenching. "Damn him! He has escaped again! Though how"
He heard breathing begin to sound stertorously beside him. His eyes suddenly widened with incredulity behind the eye-holes in his mask. He whirled.
