The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

Jack Kirk did not notice the black sedan which followed him and his macabre burden through Surrey. Kirk was intent upon the operation of his vehicle, since even the slightest accident would incur the intervention of police. And with a dead man to be explained, Kirk was taking no chances.

The black car tailed him tenaciously out past Surrey into the suburbs of London.

Nor could Kirk see the figure at the wheel of the mystery car — a dark incongruous figure, covered by a black cloak, its face concealed by the dark shadows of the turbid night.

To a prowling cat, whose green eyes might have pierced the darkness, the hawklike features of Deen Bradley would have been discernible. Deen was an operative of the Bombay Department of Justice. High-foreheaded, dark-skinned, he had black eyes which glittered coldly like ebony diamonds, hard, unemotional. He had no mustache. His face was thin and sharp. His lips, narrow and straight-lined.

He handled the car with natural dexterity, never shifting his cobra eyes from the red tail-light of the cadaver-car before him.

At Yorkshire, Kirk left the main highway and swerved to the right. Deen followed quickly, stepping down on the gas.

The American suddenly saw the brake-light of the other machine flare into being. Kirk slowed momentarily and, as he did so, a limp bundle tumbled lifelessly from the rolling car.

Then, Kirk sped away with amazing alacrity, his engine roaring sonorously into the night.

The fog drifting across the open countryside swallowed the lights of his car.

Deen slammed his brakes to the floor of the sedan, and the automobile skidded perilously to a halt. Beside it, in a ditch, lay the bundle which had been thrown from Kirk’s car.

Deen leaped from the sedan and ran forward. He found a man, bleeding profusely and unconscious. He bent down and lifted up the fellow on his right arm.

The face of Wentworth Lane stared at him, eyes sightless and horrible.

“Zah!” Deen muttered in repugnance. “So it is murder, too!”

He grasped the wrist of the unconscious Lane and felt for a possible flicker of life.

Instantly he jumped to his feet and dashed for the sedan, carrying Lane in his arms. His strength was astonishing. He carried Lane, who was heavy-set, as though the latter was a child. Carefully he laid the wounded man on the cushions. Then he hopped agilely into the front seat and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

Twenty minutes later, Lane was on a white-enameled operating table in the Yorkshire hospital while two doctors bent over him, working furiously to save his life. Deen stood by, anxiously waiting.

Presently one of the doctors looked up and shook his head.

“He’s dying.”

Deen frowned. He asked, “There is no chance?”

“None. I don’t see how he keeps alive. Two bullets through his right lung. A third against his spine. It’s miraculous!”

The dying man gasped paroxysmally.

“Can he be made to talk?” asked Deen.

The doctor shrugged dubiously. He turned to a nurse.

“Adrenalin,” he snapped.

He leaned over the naked chest of Lane and drove a hypodermic syringe into the flesh directly over the heart. Then he emptied the contents.

Momentarily, there was no visible result.

Then Lane’s staring eyes gained the power of sight and recognition. They glanced around furtively. Finally they rested on Deen’s dark face.

“You—”

“Yes. It is I. From India. I followed you. Quick, you must speak. You are dying.”

Lane coughed rackingly.

“Gorgan,” he muttered whisperingly. “Pythons — code word is — House of Kaa—”

His lips had hardly stopped moving when he sighed. His body relaxed.

The doctors made preparations to transfer the corpse into the mortuary for identification and signing of the death certificate. With the American to establish identity—

But when they glanced around for him, Deen was gone.

That night, the police found the cadaver of Jack Kirk in Rokor Street, London. Kirk was sprawled crazily in the gutter — dead. Protruding from his throat was a small dart, about a half an inch long.

The chief medical examiner found that Kirk had died as the result of the violent neurotoxic destruction of cobra venom.

And throughout the underworld of London, a dire, foreboding wail echoed — a wail that spelled the nemesis of criminals.

The Cobra had come to England!