Monsters of Moyen
_By Arthur J. Burks_
"_Now," said Kleig hoarsely, "watch closely, forGod's sake!_"]
"The Western World shall be next!" was the dread ultimatum of the half-monster, half-god Moyen!
_Foreword_
In 1935 the mighty genius of Moyen gripped the Eastern world like a handof steel. In a matter of months he had welded the Orient into anunbeatable war-machine. He had, through the sheer magnetism of a strangepersonality, carried the Eastern world with him on his march to conquestof the earth, and men followed him with blind faith as men in the pasthave followed the banners of the Thaumaturgists.
A strange name, to the sound of which none could assign nationality.Some said his father was a Russian refugee, his mother a Mongol woman.Some said he was the son of a Caucasian woman lost in the Gobi andrescued by a mad lama of Tibet, who became father of Moyen. Some saidthat his mother was a goddess, his father a fiend out of hell.
But this all men knew about him: that he combined within himself thecourage of a Hannibal, the military genius of a Napoleon, the ideals ofa Sun Yat Sen; and that he had sworn to himself he would never restuntil the earth was peopled by a single nation, with Moyen himself inthe seat of the mighty ruler.
Madagascar was the seat of his government, from which he looked acrossinto United Africa, the first to join his confederacy. The Orient was adependency, even to that forbidden land of the Goloks, where outlanderssometimes went, but whence they never returned--and to the wild Golokshe was a god whose will was absolute, to render obedience to whom was aprivilege accorded only to the Chosen.
* * * * *
In a short year his confederacy had brought under his might the millionsof Asia, which he had welded into a mighty machine for further conquest.
And because the Americas saw the handwriting on the wall, they sent outto see the man Moyen, with orders to penetrate to his very side, as aspy, their most trusted Secret Agent--Prester Kleig.
Only the ignorant believed that Moyen was mad. The military anddiplomatic geniuses of the world recognized his genius, and resented it.
But Prester Kleig, of the Secret Service of the Americas, one of the_few_ men whose headquarters were in the Secret Room in Washington, hadreached Moyen.
Now he was coming home.
He came home to tell his people what Moyen was planning, and to admitthat his investigations had been hampered at every turn by the uncannygenius of Moyen. Military plans had been guarded with unbelievablesecrecy. War machines he knew to exist, yet had seen only those commonto all the armies of the world.
And now, twenty-four hours out of New York City, aboard the _S. S.Stellar_, Prester Kleig was literally willing the steamer to greaterspeed--and in far Madagascar the strange man called Moyen had given theultimatum:
"The Western World shall be next!"