The Agent did not have to simulate horror, but he directed that genuine horror into the channel of expression that would be employed by the character he played. He started to rise. Then horror piled upon horror.
He could not move. His legs were numb. His body was without feeling. His arms were like useless sticks. Secret Agent “X” was paralyzed.
His brain was clear. He still retained power of speech. But the lines of communication were down between his brain and body. For one moment, “X” almost slipped out of character, almost betrayed that he wasn’t Danny Dugan.
He was a prisoner in his own body, as helpless as though encased in a concrete cast. Would this be forever? Had that insidious drug inflicted by the DOAC emissary turned him into a petrified man?
“You have been inoculated with the sap of the nam-nam tree,” explained the spokesman of the ghostly council.
Faint hope came to the Agent, but he didn’t let on that the DOAC’s statement held any significance for him. The nam-nam tree was native to equatorial Africa, to the miasmatic swamps of that sweltering, poisonous region. A distillation of the nam-nam sap had been used for generations by cannibals to benumb their victims. The effect lasted but a few hours. The Agent marshaled this fact up from his profound knowledge of pharmacology, and felt that the situation wasn’t entirely lost.
A frenzied, pain-laden scream pierced the silence. The mad cry burst from the throat of a demented man, a person crazed with unbelievable torture. The Agent’s spirit surged against the fetters of paralysis. Were these bestial DOACs breaking a man on the rack, dismembering him alive?
“Say, mister,” “X” shouted frantically, keeping to the role of Danny Dugan, “you got me all wrong. I ain’t a bad guy, honest I ain’t! Hell, mister, just because I took a job to stay out of jail, does that mean I should be killed? They don’t treat a murderer this bad. Give a guy a chance, will you? Look! I’m turned to rock. Send me to a hospital and I’ll never touch a dime of that ‘X’ stiff’s dough.”
“You’ll have your chance,” droned the spokesman. “Tell us about the Agent! Where does he live? What are his plans? What does he know about us? ‘X’ is the cause of you being in this fix. You owe him nothing but hatred. Tell us what we want to know. Then your troubles will be over, and his troubles will begin.”
Again came that hair-raising torture cry, answered by insane laughter as though a madman were gloating over a mutilated victim.
“God, fellas.’” exclaimed the Agent, still posing as Danny Dugan. “Have a heart! I’ll be nuts in a minute. I don’t know nothing. I give it to you straight This damned ‘X’ ain’t never talked to me, even. I wouldn’t be able to tell him from an Eskimo. Never got a peek at him in my life. I just run errands, I tell you! You think a guy like him would let a palooka in the policy racket know his business?”
“X’s” outburst was followed by a tense minute of deathly silence. The council of the DOACs didn’t move, but sat like cowled specters. The Agent was steeled to disaster, but the uncertainty, the nerve-racking suspense, stabbed him like a curly stiletto. He felt that this sinister silence was a lull before a frightful orgy of wickedness — and he was right. Suddenly the spokesman uttered a metallic command.
A BLACK curtain was swept back behind the Agent. Two of the hooded DOACs turned the paralyzed “X” around so he could witness revolting brutality.
Before the Agent stood a platform. Three shaggy, emaciated, tottering, cackling ancients bent their creaking bones in obeisance to the evil council. They were scarcely more than animated skeletons. Their legs and arms didn’t seem thicker than broom-sticks. Long noses, drooped close to their mouths. Their mummified bodies were clothed in scant leather aprons. Their sunken eyes glittered madly.
But it wasn’t these creatures of bedlam who held the Agents intent interest. It was the pitiful wretch whose haggard face was thrust through a stout bullhide screen. The man seemed as mad as his tormentors, crazed by all the refinements of the torturer’s ghastly art.
This terrified victim of DOAC savagery was young, in his middle twenties, although stark, raving terror had drained his hair of its natural pigments. It was white! The captive’s eyes rolled as though he were in a death convulsion. His bloated tongue protruded from his mouth like a hanging man’s. His face was blotched with the scarlet rash of fear.
Near him stood a kettle filled with smoking, bubbling lead! One of the wild-eyed ancients dipped a ladle and poured a fiery stream of glowing, sparkling destruction back into the iron pot.
Some of the molten metal splattered, seared the face of the moaning captive, splashed deep burns into the pipestem legs of the leering madmen. They set up a raucous shrieking, a pandemonium of pain.
A command from the hooded spokesman subdued them.
“Once those idiots were young and had their reason,” said the DOAC to “X.” “That was six months ago. That first man was a promising lawyer, the next a brilliant young surgeon, the third a professor of economics. They plotted against our organization of altruism and nobility, and they have paid. Our experts relieved them of reason, drained their youth and substituted dying senility. Now they are going to show you what we do with traitors and enemies. That young man last week was a trusted lieutenant in our army of liberty. He conspired against us. He will now pay! Proceed!”
The Agent roared his protest. His brain tried to penetrate the wall of paralysis that enveloped him. But he was helpless. All he could do was sit and cry out against the nauseating inhumanity of the DOAC punishment.
THE specters who once had been men danced around the platform, howling, giggling and chattering in insane, fiendish, glee. The victim’s head waggled from side to side. Fear made it impossible, for him to form words, to plead mercy. He could only utter throaty cries of horror. He was racked by delirium, scarcely aware of the brutal fate that awaited him.
The Agent kept begging the DOAC leader to prevent this unspeakable atrocity, but the hooded devil was silent. So great was “X’s” inner struggle, that he toppled off his chair. But he wasn’t to be spared the unholy sight.
DOACs picked up his numbed body and held it on the chair. Two of the slavering ancients grasped ugly wrought-iron tongs and pried the victim’s jaws apart. The third madman twitched and trembled as he flitted around the bubbling kettle. He dipped into the molten-metal like a cook inspecting some choice soup. The victim uttered a shriek and fainted. “X” relaxed a little. Nature, at least, was humane.
But DOAC fiendishness had no limit. A hypodermic stimulant was produced. An injection was shot into the victim’s arm, restoring him to nightmarish consciousness. Quickly the drooling ancient lifted a ladle spilling with fiery liquid lead.
The monster paused over the condemned man. The ancient’s hideous lips were lathered with foam. It was a nauseating picture, for the old man almost collapsed with fiendish ecstasy. A shrill, triumphant jungle howl burst from his throat.
A stream of flowing lead sizzled through the air. A heartrending scream came from the DOAC traitor. It was instantly clipped off as the liquid fire splashed into the doomed man’s mouth. There was a horrible gurgling that almost robbed the Agent of his senses. It was followed by a broiling sound. Fumes arose, fumes that, a second before, had been part of a being, a personality.
The execution was over in less time than it took to empty the ladle. The head of the murdered man lolled through the aperture in the bullhide screen. The senile killers rolled on the floor, exhausted from their homicidal orgy. Not a sound had come from the hooded DOACs. Painful silence settled on the catacomb of horror. Then the hooded spokesman addressed the Agent.