Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Page 37

  “Sounds something like that Serenti tip-off,” said Wells. “Maybe it’s the same gang moved to a new hide-out. We missed ’em the last time. I hope we’ll get ’em now. I’d like to blast the top off a couple of heads to make up for what happened to my pal, Broderick.”

  The Agent motioned for Wells to come along, Everything was dovetailing nicely. Wells knew that Serenti had talked, and Broderick, a victim no doubt of the mob that took Serenti’s life, was a friend of the federal detective.

  They left the narcotic bureau and piled into the car outside, driven by Creager, a man grown gray in the department. For the most part they were silent as the car roared through the early morning streets, but “X” gave clipped instructions which the men memorized before the car stopped a half block from the warehouse.

  He detailed two of the detectives to break in the front entrance. Lorson and McAllister he sent to crash in the doors on either side. The Agent took Wells to the cottage.

  THE body of Gus Tansley lay where the mobster had died. Wells, case-hardened to violent deaths, gave the corpse an incurious glance and grunted. “X” wondered grimly how Wells would react if he should learn that this man had died a short while before in the arms of the person he thought was Mathews.

  The Agent and Detective Wells were the first to reach the basement. The place was deserted, yet there remained evidence of recent occupation. The body of Serenti lay in the cell. The floor of the big room was splattered with crimson, but, to “X’s” intense disappointment, Karloff and his mobsters were not in evidence.

  “It’s the same man, all right,” said Wells, gazing at the green, horrible face of the dead Serenti. “They sure took the wag out of that guy’s tongue. Must have embalmed the sucker with green paint.”

  The other federal men arrived, covered with cobwebs, but with nothing to report. On the upper floor they had not found even tracks. Karloff and his men had obviously left via the tunnel and the cottage, taking the suitcases of dope with them.

  The Agent, his voice harsh, gave a quick order.

  “Lorson, send in word to headquarters. Have the medical examiner come. I want to find out how long Serenti and the other stiff have been dead. The rest of you give this dump a thorough search. Don’t miss anything. Knock on the walls, open up the furniture, collect anything you see.”

  Lorson started for the stairs, but he didn’t get far. Suddenly there was a terrific, rocking explosion. The concussion threw them to the floor. Three more detonations came in quick succession, booming blasts that tortured their eardrums and rumbled through the old building like heavy thunder. Then came a smashing, deafening roar from one of the basement rooms.

  Instantly the whole building was resounding with the snarl of mounting flames. The crackling above them was savage and intense. A shower of liquid fire had been sprayed over the top of the partition of the basement room, coming dangerously close to the federal men. Some sort of incendiary time bombs had exploded.

  The Agent’s jaw clamped viciously. He recognized those flaming opalescent globules. Burning phosphorus. Karloff had placed his infernal machines around the building. Undoubtedly some one had been sent to watch federal headquarters, in anticipation of a raid. Corbeau had been suspected of being a spy. That was why Karloff had fled—and left these engines of destruction behind him.

  “Come on, men,” said the Agent, lifting his voice above the crackle of the flames. “This place isn’t going to be healthy in a minute.”

  Veterans though they were, the sudden explosion of the bombs and the sight of the flames on all sides had had a demoralizing effect on the men. They obeyed the Agent like sheep, and he led them into the tunnel. But halfway through he realized that escape was cut off in that direction. Harsh crackling sounds came from the cottage, too. He rushed forward and raised the trapdoor. A billow of smoke puffed into the tunnel instantly. Fiery tongues licked at him.

  He turned, and with the others sped back to the basement. There was no escape above, the old warehouse was a blazing inferno. They were surrounded by fire. Karloff’s bombs had been placed with fiendish cunning and thoroughness. They were trapped.

  Chapter VI

  MURDERER’S BULLET

  THE building, long condemned, was as dry as tinder. Its rotten old beams and worm-eaten walls burned like kindling wood. The temperature in the basement was mounting to withering furnace heat. Already it was so hot that the sweat dried the instant it oozed from their pores. Every breath of stifling air was like fire drawn into the lungs. Thick, poisonous, suffocating smoke poured into the basement.

  None of the detectives thought he would get out of the roaring holocaust except as a sack of charred bones. They were brave men, used to seeing death at close range and steeled to the prospect of going out violently.

  “We’ll save the folks funeral expenses anyway, boys,” yelled Creager. “I’m sorry for you gents who have wives and kids. I’ve helped send a dozen men to the chair, but I never thought I’d fry, too.”

  From the street came the shriek and clangor of fire engines. But rescue from outside was impossible. Yet Agent “X” had not given up. He wasn’t ready to die. His work was not finished. Too much depended on his living. Cut off from above, cut off from the tunnel, there still must be a way out. One direction remained. That was toward the street in the forward part of the basement.

  “Come,” he shouted to the detectives. “Grab my hand, Wells. You, Creager, grab hold of Wells. Are you all here? Sing out! That’s it! Come on!”

  With the federal men close behind, “X” ran to the forward wall. He felt along it until he found the door of a coal bin. He had a flash, but the light wouldn’t penetrate the heavy smoke. He got the door open and the men inside. It was comparatively cool here. The air was clear enough to use his light. He flashed it on, directing a beam across the ceiling. Then he gave a shout. About ten feet above was the iron disc of a manhole plate.

  “Climb on my shoulders, Wells,” he cried. “Shove that cover off.”

  The Agent crouched. Wells grabbed his hands, stepped on his thigh, and swung around to his shoulders. Supported by the Agent, who clamped powerful hands on the man’s calves, Wells experienced little difficulty in removing the manhole cover. It opened onto the sidewalk.

  Firemen rushed to help them, and in a few moments the detectives were getting clean air into their lungs. A throng had gathered. The street was strewn with hose. A half dozen companies had been called out. Firemen were playing streams on the blazing building, but their efforts were directed entirely to keeping the fire in the confines of the condemned warehouse.

  Reporters, officials, curiosity seekers, began pushing toward the Federal men. “X” had to get away. For all he knew, Mathews had been discovered. Maybe at this moment cops were scouring the city for the impostor who had taken five federal men on a raid.

  “Wells,” the Agent addressed one of the detectives, “stall off this mob for me. Tell the reporters I’ll have a statement prepared at my office. I want to follow down another lead—alone. So long!”

  “X” ran along inside the police line. A cop got in his path, and the Agent flashed the federal badge belonging to Mathews. That cleared the way. Around the next corner, he hailed a cab, and rode to the railroad station. He barged through to it, went out a side exit and hurried to one of his hideouts.

  Here he changed quickly to the disguise of A. J. Martin, newspaper man. Out in the street again he sped in a second cab to an office he maintained under this name.

  The Agent was bitterly disappointed at the outcome of the raid. The fire had consumed whatever evidence the building might have contained. Karloff and his sinister crew had fled, taking the dope with them. Their whereabouts was unknown even to “X.” This troubled him.

  HE paced the floor of his office for a moment, then reached for the phone. Posing as a press man connected with a big syndicate, he had a staff of operatives working for him, running down minor leads and obtaining information that was vital to his activities. T
here was shadowing to be done, routine investigations to be made, and other tasks that any competent man could perform. The dangerous, uncertain missions he reserved for himself.

  The man he phoned now was Jim Hobart, an ex-detective, and one of the Agent’s most skilled and trusted operatives. He was a bluff, red-headed, rawboned young man. Framed by an underworld czar he had been dismissed from the force on graft charges. Now having got back into the good graces of the police by rendering them service in one of the Agent’s cases, he had been allowed to take out a license and open up a private detective agency.

  It was known as the Hobart Agency, and no one except Jim knew that A. J. Martin was the real proprietor. Even he did not guess that the man who had helped him and employed him was the mysterious, ever alert Secret Agent “X,” whose real identity was an eternal enigma. In his eyes “X” was just what he seemed, a high-pressure newspaperman out to get inside stories of crime.

  Under the Secret Agent’s direction Hobart had organized a staff of a dozen skilled operatives, men and women in all classes of life and of all ages. By giving a brief order to Jim, “X” could send any one of these men or women out on a shadowing or investigating job. This left his own time free for the really important tasks that no one save himself would have the skill and daring to undertake.

  Hobart had been working on details of the drug menace, tracing down the rumor that even the police were being reached by the sinister gang. He answered “X’s” call now, his voice crackling with excitement.

  “Plenty of things are happening, boss. You sure had the right tip. This dope wave has hit the department. It’s hard to believe, but you remember Eddie Broderick? A damn good guy. Rough and tough, but a credit to the force. Well, he’s done for, washed up. They found a hypo in his locker, and his arm looks like it was used for a pincushion. He can’t explain how he took to snow, except that the thing came to him, and he almost went crazy until some cokey introduced him to the needle.”

  Jim Hobart was full of news, bad news, showing how the sinister ring was spreading. The police department had been hit by the drug evil. The commissioner had managed to stifle publicity, but he couldn’t prevent the facts from getting to a tireless investigator like Hobart. The Agent’s operative went on to tell what else he had learned.

  Dolph Palmer, a deputy inspector of the narcotic bureau, had been caught pilfering confiscated drugs. He had admitted his evil habits, but claimed that he’d developed a severe nervous affliction that puzzled the doctors, and which could be soothed only by dope.

  Bob Lane, on the police force for twenty years, a typical, honest, courageous cop, the sort who walk a beat until retirement, was in prison on a murder charge. He had held up a small drug store, killed the proprietor to get the store’s supply of narcotics. There was mystery surrounding his addiction, too. He could give no reason why he used drugs, except that suddenly the awful craving had mastered him.

  “It’s bad enough when the coppers get on the stuff,” continued Jim Hobart, “but when kids take to dope, it’s awful. You wouldn’t think there’d be cokeheads at the private schools—but take Miss Laurel’s place for girls. That’s about the most high-hat, hoity-toity outfit in town. A gal has to have blue-blood ancestors, a couple of financial pirates for grandfathers, and an inheritance that’d pay off an army before she gets into the Laurel brain factory.”

  Hobart paused a moment and the Agent asked a horrified question.

  “You mean those child-heirs to millions are taking narcotics?”

  “Worse than that, boss,” came Hobart’s answer. “Their folks have kept the story out of the papers, but last night Miss Laurel’s little queens turned out one of the wildest riots in history. One of them got a vial of dope somewhere. Another tried to steal it. She got a paper knife through her ribs. That started it.

  “By the time the show was finished, Miss Laurel’s dormitory looked like a battlefield. Dope made those gals hell-cats. More than half of them are hopheads. Ten are in private hospitals, and they’re all under observation. The papers don’t dare print a word, because they’ll lose a million dollars worth of advertising from some of the gals’ papas.”

  An intense light shone in the Secret Agent’s eyes. The drug evil was raging and spreading like a plague. Cops, children, people of wealth. Dope knew neither class nor creed. With only a week needed to make a drug addict, this insidious, mysterious ring would soon have the whole city in its power.

  “X” had to act quickly. The indefatigable Hobart had a long list of crimes of violence attributed to the new dope evil. The Agent stopped him in the midst of his recital. “You’ve done a swell job, Jim,” he said. “Now I want you to try to discover what the drug victims themselves don’t know. How did they become addicts? That’s what we’ve got to find out. Keep in touch with the office. I don’t know how long I’ll be away this time.”

  He hung up and for a moment sat at his desk in deep thought. A mysterious, brooding figure, hidden behind an impenetrable disguise, the Secret Agent was plotting his course of action against one of the worst criminal rings he had ever faced.

  FOOTSTEPS sounded in the hallway outside. Something was dropped in the special mail box attached to the door. The footsteps passed on.

  The Secret Agent arose quickly, opened the box and took out a long, thin envelope. It was sealed with wax. The color of the wax told him instantly that it was a confidential report from another of his operatives, one Lloyd Hankins.

  He tore the end of the envelope off immediately, spread out the papers inside.

  The report concerned Count Remy de Ronfort, a European of shady reputation whom “X” was suspicious of and had asked Hankins to investigate. De Ronfort was a descendant of a noble French family, but had become a criminal. He had been in America five weeks, according to Hankins’ report, but so far hadn’t indulged in activities that would interest the police. His time had been spent wooing Paula Rockwell, the fluffy, pretty ward of a retired financier, Whitney Blake.

  Charming and aristocratic, de Ronfort was considered a catch for the season’s debutantes by their parents, who didn’t know his reputation. Hankins’ report was brief. He had been shadowing de Ronfort, but had learned little more than what had already been recorded in the society columns. De Ronfort had recently become engaged to Paula Rockwell.

  The Agent went at once to his own secret files. He was not satisfied with Hankins’ report. He had some data of his own on the man. The count had a long criminal record on the Continent, but the full list of his adventures outside the law was tucked away in the hidden archives of the Paris Sûreté.

  The society columns told of de Ronfort’s vast country estates in France, but it was recorded in the Agent’s authoritative files that the man was penniless, except for what he had made through underworld activities.

  He had been associated with dope smuggling activities in Europe. That was why “X” was interested in him. The man was clever, highly educated, with influential contacts throughout the world, and he was a thoroughgoing scoundrel. He had been suspected of purchasing large quantities of crude opium in China and India. Later the police of France had connected him with the activities of a ring engaged in smuggling in the refined products of heroin and morphine. He was said to be a purveyor of narcotics to the rich and black-sheep nobility of several of the world’s metropolises.

  The Agent’s own suspicions seemed justified. The count’s conduct had been beyond criticism in America. Yet perhaps he was the power behind the ring now dispensing free drugs. The count lacked neither the ability nor the bent for such a position.

  The Agent glanced at a newspaper lying on his desk. He had folded it to a photograph. This was a picture of Remy de Ronfort with Paula Rockwell. They made a dashing couple. There was an announcement of a party in honor of the engaged couple, to be given at Blake’s house the following night.

  THAT interested the Agent. Temporarily checkmated in his attempt to catch Karloff, he was ready to try any new lead that had promis
e. A way to meet Count de Ronfort instantly suggested itself. He reached for the telephone, called the city room of the Herald.

  “Miss Betty Dale,” said the Agent when the connection had been made. The girl he had called was one of the few people in the world, besides a high Washington official known as K9, who knew the nature of his strange work. She was the daughter of a police captain who had been slain by underworld bullets. Her contempt for the criminal class was as great as that of the Agent’s himself.

  A clear, confident voice came over the wire. “Yes, this is Miss Dale of the Herald.”

  A faint gleam appeared in the Agent’s eyes. “You’re going to the Blake party tomorrow night, are you not, Miss Dale?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s right, I’ve been detailed to cover the affair. Who are you?”

  Agent “X” ignored the question.

  Instead of answering he asked another of his own. “How about taking Ben Buchanan, clubman and man-about-town, as your escort?”

  There was a little gasp, a pause, then a cold note crept into the voice that came over the wire. “I’m sorry, Mr. Buchanan, there must be some mistake. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of an introduction. And the first edition goes to press in half an hour. I’m very busy—if you don’t mind—”

  “You haven’t answered my question!”

  “No; and I don’t intend—”

  “X” knew she was about to hang up on him. Betty, golden-haired, pretty as some artist’s model, had a will of her own and could take care of herself. He puckered up his lips suddenly, leaned forward and sent into the telephone’s mouthpiece a whistle that had a strange birdlike note. It was melodious, yet eerie—a sound that once heard could never be forgotten. It was the whistle of Secret Agent “X.” He listened after he had given it. The voice at the end of the wire changed again. It was low and tense now, with a quaver of emotion in it.