He was not quick enough.
The lights flashed on, and the Overlord was once more exposed to the baleful glare of the terrible space-black eyes. So fearful was the hate asmolder in those two dark pits beneath the shaggy bangs, that Fane shrieked aloud.
"Great Dzchan—spare me!"
"Go on and scream," purred Satan icily, his long steel forefinger pointing at his victim's ashen face. "Scream now, and get it over with. Because when I get through with you, you'll be silent for a long, long time. This mad scheme of interplanetary war is too much, Fane, too much! Oh, don't think you can escape me. I promised long ago I'd kill you—and I always keep my promises."
Two stories above, Inspector Drexx, wriggling about in the black topmost room of the tower, suddenly felt his head and shoulders drop into nothingness. By a violent wrench he managed to fling himself back from the brink to safety.
Abruptly a light blinked on somewhere below, and the officer twisted his blond head until he could peer down the hole into which he had so nearly toppled. Two levels beneath him, the steel-gray eyes glimpsed a slowly advancing figure robed in black. The shrouded form extended a hand in the gesture of pointing, and it sparkled in the clear neon glow. Drexx knew the hand was made of steel.
The police officer redoubled his efforts to free himself. In his haste, Satan had not tied the strips of cloth as well as he might have, and Drexx joyfully found his bonds to be gradually loosening.
From the lighted floor beneath came a sudden stifled scream. Panting from his exertion, Drexx strained his ears and listened attentively. Wafted up the ladder-well came an indistinct murmuring. The trussed giant hung his head over the pit's edge, until he faintly caught a few words.
". . . can't escape . . . promised I'd kill you . . . keep my promises." The voice was that of Prince Satan, and it was vibrant with hate. A second voice, so distorted that it could belong to anyone, choked, "Don't—don't kill me!"
Inspector Drexx logically assumed that the words issued from the throat of Lavorkis. Satan was going to commit cold-blooded murder under his very nose, while he lay helplessly bound only a few yards away!
Drexx wasted no more time in listening. He strained at his bindings with the power of a Martian plainsman. Under the sudden surge of energy, he felt the knots of the bands about his chest slip a little further. He gritted his strong teeth and strained mightily. The clumsily tied bonds gave a little bit more. If only Satan's exaggerated sense of the theatrical would make him delay that murder half a minute longer!
After his desperate plan had failed so miserably, Fane's courage melted with the swiftness of snow on the sun-baked surface of Mercury. Now, with all fight taken out of him, he trembled as he watched the advance of his macabre adversary, shuddered at the twitching of the dread white scar, seethed with horror at the invincible talons of glittering steel which remorselessly reached out for him.
Held powerless in the grip of hypnotic eyes, the Overlord staggered backward. For several slow steps he was unable to summon the will to turn and flee, but finally the swelling mutter of the angry flood spurred him to action. If he was to save himself, he must act quickly.
Fane leapt around the corner of a long apparatus table standing conveniently near, and was about to make another great leap for the ladder-steps. Satan continued his relentless advance without haste. He was secure in the belief that
