Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 4 Read online

  “Here, Daniel!” he cried to the dog. “Stop it! Get back to your kennel!”

  The dog flattened its ears, dropped its tail at once, and slunk away, rolling the whites of its eyes at its master, as though grim discipline had taught it to obey. The man turned ungraciously to the white-haired stranger.

  “Well—what do you want?” he said.

  Secret Agent “X” pushed his handkerchief into his pocket with a deliberately trembling hand. He leaned against his cane, panted for a second or two, then drew an ancient alligator skin wallet from his pocket. He adjusted steel-rimmed glasses on his nose, fumbled in his wallet prodigiously, and finally pulled forth a yellowed card. On this was printed: “Alfred Burpee, Editor Emeritus, Flower Lovers’ Quarterly.” With solemn dignity Secret Agent “X” handed the card to the frowning, bearded man before him.

  “Mr. Brownell, I believe,” he said. “It gives me pleasure to introduce myself, and it gives me pleasure also to meet a brother horticulturist of such distinctive taste as yourself.” He waved a hand toward the carefully kept flower beds on all sides. “This is indeed a choice display of garden landscaping you have here. It is what I am in the habit of referring to in my articles as ‘floral chromatization.’ It is, however, what I should expect of a man whose exhibit is the talk of the flower show now being held.”

  The bearded man was rolling the stub of a cigar between his moist red lips. His gimlet eyes still bored into the face of the stranger who had introduced himself as Alfred Burpee. There was nothing on that face but guileless admiration and gentle interest. The Agent fumbled in his portfolio and drew out a copy of the Flower Lovers’ Quarterly. He turned the pages eagerly.

  “I still do articles for this, Mr. Brownell, though I am a bit too old to stand the exigencies of editorial work. I do articles—and it is my belief that you, if you would be so kind, could give me material for one of the best I have ever done. That you have unusual taste is evident. That you are a man of considerable talent I earnestly believe.”

  The bearded man flipped the pages of the magazine “Burpee” had given. The look of suspicion had begun to leave his eyes. His whole manner was growing relaxed. He cleared his throat importantly.

  “You saw my orchid exhibit then?”

  “I did. And I was so impressed with it that I asked the young lady attendant if I might pay my respects to the owner of such beautiful flowers. She was so kind as to give me your address. And here I am. I hope that you will find it possible to spare a few moments of your time.”

  “You want to do an article, eh?”

  “Exactly—something with color photos if possible, and—”

  A certain grimness came into Brownell’s voice as he interrupted. “I’m sorry—no photos! I don’t like people with cameras walking about—spoiling the flower beds.”

  “Then let us say just an article,” the Agent said mildly. “Something that would be helpful to other horticulturists and give them an inkling of how you achieve your success.”

  THE bearded Brownell turned and beckoned for Agent “X” to follow. He strode off across the lawn, and “X” admonished him gently.

  “Not too fast please—for an old man!”

  Brownell showed his visitor many lavish displays of flowers. “X” saw a number of gardeners and their assistants at work. Brownell seemed to have little to do except spend his apparently unlimited resources caring for his estate. Huge greenhouses spread on a spacious lot behind the mansion. Brownell took Agent “X” through these, also. There were many handsome flowers here, many varieties of orchids even; but none of the saffron kind that had been shown at the exhibit. The Agent let wistfulness sound in his voice as he spoke.

  “Beautiful! Beautiful!” he said, “but I see you do not keep the precious gold of your special plants in with the more common sorts. Or perhaps the flowers I saw at the show are all you have of that variety. In any case I want to congratulate you on raising some of the handsomest and most unique specimens of the orchid family it has ever been my privilege to behold.”

  Pride gleamed in the eyes of Brownell at the Secret Agent’s flattery. He shrugged suddenly. “I did not intend to let any visitors here in on my secret. But after all, there’s no reason why you, Mr. Burpee, shouldn’t know. Come this way, please.”

  Agent “X” hid the thrill of excitement he felt. He had played his cards well, played on the vanity of a man to whom no other emotion except fear would appeal. For, that the man before him was vain of his yellow orchids, he had sensed months ago. Otherwise he would not have laid them at the feet of the woman he wished to impress.

  Brownell led Agent “X” into the big house itself. It showed signs of recent expensive redecoration. The Agent’s bearded host ushered him down a flight of winding stairs into a cellar room. A door showed at the end of this. Brownell opened it, motioned “X” to enter. He did so, and gasped at what he saw.

  For here in this moist chamber, warmed even now by coils of steam pipes; here without any scrap of daylight or vent to the outside air, the prize saffron orchids grew, rearing their spotted yellow heads among jumbled piles of rock, on specially constructed concrete tables. They were everywhere “X” looked, sprouting amid rank green leaves, almost like some startling fungous growth. The plants seemed to be staring at him as though they had life of their own.

  He put surprise into his voice, made his eyes widen.

  “No sunlight! Good gracious, sir, you mean you raise these lovely flowers in this dark cellar chamber?”

  The man who called himself Brownell smiled. “In a cellar chamber—yes. In the dark—no! Look!”

  He gestured toward the ceiling where an intricate grillework of glass tubing showed. It seemed somewhat similar to slender Neon lighting tubes, but was arranged differently. No light was visible in them now. The light that revealed the bright flowers came from a big bulb Brownell had switched on when he opened the door.

  “There is my sun,” he said. “There is the light the orchids are grown in.”

  “Light!” echoed the Agent skeptically, in the tone of a puzzled old man. He adjusted his glasses again, peered up at the gleaming tubing as though to detect some illumination.

  AGAIN the man called Brownell laughed in the depths of his wiry black beard. “You can’t see it,” he said. “It is invisible—beyond the range of the spectrum which human eyes can detect. Yet it is there—just as invisible and just as powerful as the ultra-violet rays which can blister the skin. That’s where my orchids get their power to grow, and, because this light is never lacking, I’ve been able to create hybrids never produced before.”

  “It is incredible,” said the Agent softly. “You’ve been experimenting with these flowers for years I suppose?”

  “Yes, ever since I was a very young man. And it took me a long time to develop this light. I’m proud of it. It’s rather an accomplishment you must admit—and I’m glad I have the leisure to indulge my hobby.”

  “An exceedingly constructive hobby,” murmured the Agent. “And a great deal of time and patience must have gone into it.”

  “More perhaps than you realize,” said Brownell boastfully. “Very few men would have had the will power to persist. It took me months, even, to gage the right intensity of my ultra-ray light. A trifle too little and the flowers would grow pale and die! A bit too much, and it would literally burn them up. Do you feel anything odd in your head right now?”

  The Agent nodded, smiled.

  “A slight buzzing it seems. It is most remarkable—and how you can control such a thing is a mystery to me!”

  “It would be,” said Brownell superciliously. “But I’ll give you an idea how it’s done.”

  He led Agent “X” to the end of the cellar chamber where the saffron orchids grew, opened a door into still another room. No plants showed here. It was filled with complex electrical mechanism. There many small tubes, many elaborate coils of wire, dials and delicate rheostat controls. An electric motor in a dust-proof casing gave out a low, co
ntinuous hum.

  The tubes in the outer chamber where the plants grew were all connected to one central outlet which went through the wall of this power room. There was a big graduated dial and a leverlike handle near the low-humming motor. It reminded “X” of a control in some great ocean liner.

  “There is my light throttle,” said Brownell. “With that I control the invisible candlepower in the next room and in here, too, for the light that those tubes generate can come right through stone walls, right through metal, glass, anything! I have an insulating substance in the outside walls and ceiling, or else, if I turned the lever too far every one in this house might—”

  Brownell checked himself suddenly; frowned as though his enthusiasm had made him say a little more than he had meant. He added rather brusquely:

  “This branch of my horticultural hobby won’t interest you, Mr. Burpee.”

  The Secret Agent was smiling. The wrinkled contours of his disguised face were deceptively gentle. Never had he looked more benign; never more harmless.

  “On the contrary, Mr. Brownell,” he said. “I am most interested—fascinated, I might even add! For many months I have wondered how you raised those exquisite orchids.”

  “Many months! They have never been on exhibition before!”

  “Never on public exhibition—but, you can see how rapt my interest in them has been!”

  SLOWLY, while a gradual change came over Brownell’s face, the Secret Agent reached in his pocket. He took out an envelope, took from it a withered flower; one whose yellow spotted petals nevertheless showed. With the flower he displayed a small color plate, made while the bloom was still fresh enough to reveal accurate tints. Brownell’s bearded mouth gaped for a moment.

  “Where—where did you get that?” he asked.

  “In the apartment of a very lovely lady,” said “X” softly. “In the apartment of Vivian de Graf! It was one of the last of the flowers you sent her—before an assassin’s bullet struck her down. Too bad that your gallant attentions so aroused the jealousy of her devoted husband!”

  Brownell made a sound in his throat like a curse. Suddenly, furiously he struck the dried flower and color plate from “X’s” fingers. He stepped back, stood with feet apart, glaring and panting at his white-haired visitor. The change that had come over his face above the beard was startling. It was furious, contorted in its anger, eyes glittering slits, veins standing out on the sweating forehead. It was the face of a hideous, sadistic criminal, the face of a man who, for all his esthetic love of flowers, had the instincts of a ruthless, predatory beast.

  “So,” he said. “Alfred Burpee. eh? The editor of a flower journal—interested in orchids—and in the light I raise them by!”

  Suddenly Brownell threw back his head, opened a cavern of a mouth in his black beard, and gave vent to hideous laughter. He choked at the end of it, squeezed tears from his eyes. “Light!” he bellowed. “Light, eh!”

  With a move so quick that the Agent could barely follow it, he thrust the lever attached to the big dial near the motor all the way to its end stop. The motor’s low hum rose to an ear-splitting whine. Instantly the sensation of buzzing in the Agent’s brain increased. Increased. Instantly the room began to grow dark, and the beaded, distorted features of the man before him began to fade, while Brownell’s wildly evil laughter sounded mockingly. “Light! Light!” he screamed again. “Light—but you can’t see in it!” The bearded criminal had geared up his mechanism, until the blinding darkness, a by-product of his experiments on plants, had descended as it had months ago over the terror-stricken crowds at the points where the raids had taken place.

  But Agent “X” was not terror-stricken, not even surprised. As quickly as Brownell had increased the power of the strange mechanism, his own hand darted to his side pocket. He brought out the helmet mask of Emil de Graf, slapped it over his head, and brought the goggles before his eyes.

  The invisible rays had not had time to paralyze his optic nerves. The helmet was instantly effective. He could see Brownell adjusting a gleaming helmet on his own head; hear the man bellowing again.

  “Light! You’ll get it this time so it will blind you like a mole—blind you so that you’ll never see again as long as you live—if you live. You’ll get so much light it will split your damned head wide open!”

  Brownell gave a final tug to the helmet, reached under a shelf in the room, and drew forth one of the wicked, metal-tipped whips that the devil-dark gang had used.

  With a thin smile on his lips behind the helmet he wore, Agent “X” gave the knob of his silver-headed cane a twist. The knob came off. He drew from the cane’s hollow interior another long, snakelike whip.

  BEFORE Brownell could use his own lash, before he could even turn to see that the man before him was helmeted like himself, Secret Agent “X” struck. His first blow knocked the whip from the other’s hand, brought a screaming curse to Brownell’s amazed lips. His second blow stopped the bearded man’s forward lunge by laying a biting lash across his chest so stingingly that it almost cut the clothing above it.

  Brownell instinctively cowered back as the blinded, stricken victims months ago had done. And Agent “X” plied the whip with the memory of those tortured victims’ screams in mind. He plied it ruthlessly, plied it till Brownell had huddled back into the farthest corner of the room, till he was screaming for the Agent to stop, till his coat showed long rents where the metal tips had struck.

  Then Agent “X” stepped forward and snatched the helmet from the man’s head. Brownell screamed even more fearfully now.

  “The light! The light!” he cried. “It will blind me! Blind me! Turn off the lever for God’s sake!”

  Agent “X” stepped forward and put the lever back to the position it had been in when he entered the room. Then he stood over the cowering Brownell with the whip still in his hand. Words, harshly uttered, grated between clenched teeth. The mild old man, “Burpee,” had become a living, human scourge, a champion of justice.

  “Your criminal plot was a clever one,” he said. “It seemed foolproof, and it might have been—except for certain things. Your pose as a public defender gave you unusual opportunities to smell out men with criminal instincts and hound them, ruin them, till they were fit material for your plans. And none of them guessed that the man they hated so was actually their leader. None of them knew that the unseen Chairman who directed their activities was actually—Norman Coe!”

  The Agent laughed mirthlessly, staring at the bearded, abject man in the corner. “Norman Coe, head of the Citizens Banking Committee, champion of depositors’ rights!”

  “X” opened his portfolio, drew out a tablet and a pencil, thrust them into Coe’s hands. The darkness was lifting now. Coe would soon be able to see again even without his mask.

  “Write,” said “X” sternly. “Tell exactly how you tricked your own criminal allies as well as the public. Tell how you discovered the blinding ray in your experiments with flowers; how you thought of it as a cover for desperate crime. Tell how you hid the stolen money for a time in one of the closed banks where your Directors’ Room was; and how you retired from your position on the committee after a time, and supposedly left the country for a visit to England.

  “Tell how you changed your name to Brownell and planned to spend your stolen millions in luxurious retirement. Tell how your colossal vanity wouldn’t let you resist the temptation to exhibit your prize flowers. Tell everything, Coe, down to the last detail, and sign it! Or, as surely as I stand here, I’ll turn the light lever over again and blind you, and then whip the life out of you as your fiends did the life of Ellen Dowe!”

  Under this terrible threat the trembling hand of Norman Coe wrote. Behind his black beard which had seemed an adequate disguise his bloodless face twitched.

  When he had finished at last, Agent “X” pocketed the signed confession and suddenly fired his gas gun full in Coe’s face, knocking him unconscious for many minutes to come. He spent a few moments examinin
g the light producing mechanism, then left the underground chamber as he had come. As he passed through the room where the orchids were, he stopped and gasped abruptly. Every poisonous saffron bloom lay wilted and dead, killed by the increased rays that Coe’s frenzy of rage had loosed for a time. The Agent shrugged, moved on out of the cellar chamber and up into the house.

  The incurious gardeners at work outside glanced up, and saw only an old, white-haired man shuffling by again. The Agent walked down the hill as he had come. A faint melodious whistle like the strange call of some wild bird floated after him. It was the eerily unique whistle of Secret Agent “X,” and it indicated now that a baffling and unique case was finally finished.

  Within twenty minutes after “X” had left the home of “Brownell,” the police head of the city where the yellow orchids had been exhibited, received Coe’s signed confession along with mysterious but precise details concerning the man at 36 Rose Hill Road and the light-producing mechanism in the cellar room. The police head was an intelligent man who kept abreast of the country’s news events. With an inspector and a dozen picked detectives he went at once to round up a criminal whose capture he knew would be a nationwide sensation, a criminal whose extraordinary cunning had taken the skill of a master crime hunter to match.

  Talons of Terror

  Chapter I

  DRINKERS OF BLOOD

  THE morning sunlight that slanted down across the austere town residence of Lewis Forman, the millionaire railroad magnate, made a striking contrast to the gloomy, half-terrified countenances of the servants who were huddled together in the sitting room.

  Police were bustling within and without the palatial mansion. Several police cars sat at the curb. A uniformed officer was on guard at the door.