The Diabolical Doctor Satan by Paul Ernst

Book Details

The eight Doctor Satan stories by Paul Ernst appeared in Weird Tales in 1935 and 1936. Doctor Satan, an enormously wealthy man, tired of all the thrills that money can buy, turned to crime and became a cold-blooded monster. He employs both scientific and occult knowledge to commit fiendish and sinister acts of evil, and spectacularly gruesome murders.

Ascott Keane, strangest of detectives, with an equal knowledge of science and the occult, battles against the diabolical Doctor Satan to save society.

Doctor Satan (1935) – The world’s weirdest criminal and strangest detective come face to face—a thrilling, fascinating and utterly different mystery story

1. The Death Shrub
2. Ascott Keane
3. Doctor Satan
4. Satan’s Trap
5. The Two Titans

The Man Who Chained the Lightning (1935) – Another amazing tale of Doctor Satan, the world’s weirdest criminal, whose startling exploits will hold you spellbound

1. Death on the Wall
2. Beneath the Metropolis
3. The Red Trail
4. The Fifth Victim
5. Chained Lightning

Hollywood Horror (1935) – Doctor Satan, the world’s weirdest criminal, spreads terror in Hollywood in a powerful thrill-tale of blind, unreasoning fear and panic terror

1. Death in Life
2. Satan’s Decree
3. The Heart of the Web
4. Black Box of Death

The Consuming Flame (1935) – A violet flash, then the speeding car and its inhabitants vanished from sight leaving only a charred spot on the concrete of the highway. Another amazing tale of Doctor Satan, the world’s weirdest criminal.

1. The Night Explodes
2. The Death Engine
3. Satan Schemes
4. The Voice of Satan
5. Living Death
6. Two Metal Cubes

Horror Insured (1936) – Another amazing story about the exploits of the sinister figure who calls himself Doctor Satan, the world’s weirdest criminal—a tale of breathtaking incidents and eery power

1. In Satan’s Crucible
2. Lucifex Insurance Co.
3. Stroke and Counterstroke
4. The Screaming Three

Beyond Death’s Gateway (1936) – Doctor Satan and Ascott Keane battle to the death— in the Afterlife! A four chapter novelette.

The Devil’s Double (1936) – A powerful, blood-chilling thrill-tale about the Blue Death and the world’s weirdest criminal, who called himself Doctor Satan

1. The Mad Dancer
2. Satan’s Threat
3. Road to Hell
4. Hell’s Anteroom
5. The Scarlet Twain

Mask of Death (1936) – A weird and uncanny tale about a strange criminal who called himself Doctor Satan, and the terrible doom with which he struck down his enemies

1. The Dread Paralysis
2. The Living Dead
3. The Stopped Watch
4. The Shell
5. Death’s Lovely Mask

Fitting for an author who wrote mysteries, horror, and speculative science fiction, there is conflicting information about Paul Ernst. He was born sometime between 1899 and 1902 and died sometime between 1983 and 1985.

The Diabolical Doctor Satan has 10 illustrations.

Files:

1. Ernst-DiabolicalDrSatan.epub

Excerpt: Doctor Satan

1. The Death Shrub

BUSINESS was being done as usual in the big outer office of the Ryan Importing Company. Calls came over the switchboard for various department heads. Men and girls bent over desks, reading and checking order blanks, typewriting, performing the thousand and one duties of big business.

Yet over the office hung a hush, more sensed than consciously felt. The typewriters seemed to make less than their normal chatter. Employees talked in low tones, when they had something to communicate to one another. The office boy showed a tendency to tiptoe when he carried a fresh batch of mail in from the anteroom.

The girl at the switchboard pulled a plug as a call from the secretary of the big boss, Arthur B. Ryan, was concluded.

The office boy looked inquiringly at her as he passed.

“How’s the old man?” he asked her.

The girl shook her head a little.

“I guess he’s worse. That last call was important, and he wouldn’t take it himself. He had Gladys take it for him.”

“What’s the matter with him, anyhow?”

“A headache,” said the girl.

“Is that all? I thought from the way everybody was acting like this was a morgue, that he was dying or something.”

“I guess this is something special in the way of headaches,” the switchboard girl retorted, smoothing down the blond locks at the back of her head. “And it came up awful sudden. He walked past here at nine, two hours ago, and grinned at me like he felt great. Then at ten he phoned down to the building drugstore for some aspirin. Now he won’t take a call from the head of one of the biggest companies in the city! I guess he feels terrible.”

“A headache!” snorted the office boy. “Well, why don’t he go see a doctor?”

“I put through a call for Doctor Swanson, on the top floor of the building, ten minutes ago. He was busy with an appointment, but said he’d be down soon.”

“A headache!” shrugged the boy again. “And he can’t take it! Wonder what he’d do if he got something serious the matter with him?”

He swaggered on, and the hush seemed to deepen over the office. A premonitory hush? Were all in the big room dimly conscious of the sequence of events about to be started there? Later, many claimed they had felt psychic warnings; but whether that is fact or imagination will never be known.

A hush, with a drone of voices and machines accentuating it in the outer office. A silence, in which the doors of the executives, in their cubicles along the east wall of the office space, remained closed. A quiet that seemed to emanate from the blank, shut door marked Arthur B. Ryan, President.

And then the hush was cracked. The silence was torn, like strong linen screaming apart as a great strain rips it from end to end.

From behind the door marked President came a shriek of pain and horror that blanched the cheeks of the office workers. A yell that keened out over the hush and turned busy fingers to wood, and which stopped all words on the suddenly numbed lips that had been uttering them.

Ryan’s secretary, pale, trembling, ran from her desk outside the office door and sped into Ryan’s office.

“Oh, my God!” the shriek came more clearly to the general office through the opened door. “My head … oh, my God!”

And then the screams of the man were swelled suddenly by the high shriek of the girl secretary. “Look —look——”

There was the thud of a body in Ryan’s office, telling the plain message that she had fainted. And an instant later the agonized shrieks of the man in there were stilled.

For a second all in the general office were gripped by silence, paralyzed, staring with wide eyes at the door to the private office. Then the sales manager stepped to the open door.

A glance he took into Ryan’s office. All outside saw his face go the color of ashes. He tottered, caught at the door to keep from falling.

Then, with the air of a man dazed by a physical blow, he closed the door and stumbled toward the switchboard.

“Phone the police,” he said hoarsely to the girl. “My God . . . the police . . . though I don’t know what they can do. His head—”

“What—what’s the matter with his head?” the girl faltered as her fingers stiffly manipulated the switchboard plugs.

The sales manager stared at her without seeing her, his eyes looking as if they probed through her and into unplumbed chasms of horror behind her.

“A tree growing out of his head,” he panted. “A tree . . . pushing out of his skull, like a plant cracking a flower-pot it outgrows, and sending roots and branches through the cracks.”

He leaned against the switchboard.

“A death-tree, killing him, murdering him. Hurry! Get the—”

He lunged for her, but was too late. The switchboard girl had slid from her chair, unconscious. The screams, the atmosphere of horror, the look of terror on the man’s face, had been too much for her.

Excerpt From: Paul Ernst. “The Diabolical Doctor Satan.”