Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 4 Read online

  “X” dragged the unconscious gang-man to a closet and locked him in it. Then he put on the waxen mask which he had removed from Number Two and sat down at the radio transmitter.

  The door of the radio room opened and a waxen face was thrust through the aperture. “Did the Senor ‘X’ or what is he called come up here, Number Two?” asked the man—evidently Count Camocho.

  “Nix,” growled “X.” “Has he given you the slip again?”

  Camocho cursed and slammed the door without answering. “X” turned to the controls of the radio. His practiced eyes swept the layout. The transmitter was a flexible outfit capable of covering the police bands as well as the true short waves. Used with a continuous spark gap arrangement, it might well have been the cause of the electrical disturbance which had tied up police radio communication. “X” plugged in a microphone, adjusted dials, and turned switches. He watched the various meters on the panel climb. The transmitter was now adjusted for the particular frequency used by the police radio prowl cars.

  Placing the microphone directly in front of him, “X” spoke distinctly and softly: “Calling all cars. Secret Agent ‘X’ calling all cars. Listen! The headquarters of the Seven Silent Men is on the top floor of the Falmouth Tower Building. A secret entrance is provided, leading from the last floor occupied by business offices. This entrance is a door marked ‘Private’ at the end of a short hall. Move at once!”

  Because he was not sure that this particular radio channel was clear, “X” carefully repeated the message three times. Since the radio room, like the rest of the Seven headquarters, was perfectly sound-proof, he had no way of knowing whether or not police squad cars were racing towards the Falmouth Tower. Why should they obey him at all? Agent “X” was thought to be a criminal. He was simply hoping that in their desperation the police would heed.

  Chapter XX

  THE BISHOP

  “X” OPENED the door cautiously and tiptoed down the stairs. At the bottom of the steps, he paused. The headquarters, which had been the scene of such furious activity only a few moments before, was now filled with a sinister, foreboding hush. “X” was about to step from the stairway into the Oak Room, when the sound of the voice of Number One checked him:

  “Leads, we’ve played a desperate game, you and I. We’ve played it well. The streets are filled with people, begging for me to take over the city and steer it—straight to hell!” Number One chuckled. “Even the mayor has agreed to resign if I will become city manager and rid the country of the Seven Silent Men. I’m ready to leave this place forever!”

  “Are you sure you haven’t forgotten something?” asked Leads anxiously.

  “Not a thing. Most of the professional gunmen whom we hired have been locked in the execution chamber. It is upon their heads that the blame for all these crimes will rest.”

  “But when the police swarm over this building, they will—”

  “Find death,” interrupted Number One. “The building is mined. An electric time fuse is waiting to be started at any moment. Nothing will remain that can possibly give a clue as to who the Silent Men were. Silence has been our golden rule. Now that our work is done, it will guard us so that we may enjoy the fruits of our labors.”

  “And the girl, Betty Dale?” asked Leads. “What have you done with her?”

  Number One laughed. “I have left her here, as I shall leave you.”

  “What do you—”

  A single shot crashed out. Agent “X” leaped from the stairway into the Oak Room. A door had opened and shut behind Number One. A wisp of gun smoke crawled through the dead air over the body of Milo Leads. Leads’s face twitched in agonized death writhings.

  Had he desired to do so, “X” might have pursued Number One. But his chief concern was for Betty Dale. For all he knew, she might be in the maniacal hands of the Bishop. He sprinted across the Oak Room to the door that led into the passage approaching the execution chamber. A piteous scream lent wings to his feet. He skidded around an abrupt corner and came suddenly upon an open door. Beyond was a small cell and inside was Betty Dale.

  The girl was struggling in the arms of the Bishop. The mobster’s right hand was clenched over the hilt of a long knife. His left hand held the girl in its merciless grip. He had raised the knife for a killing thrust just as “X” sprang into the room.

  The Bishop turned with a snarl, lowered his head, and like a maddened bull rushed upon “X.” The Secret Agent side-stepped, avoiding the criminal’s knife thrust. He led with his left fist to the Bishop’s jaw. The maniac recoiled, shook his head, and rushed again. “X” brought the barrel of his automatic down with terrific force to the Bishop’s head. The man’s crooked legs melted beneath him. He sank to the floor.

  “X” sprang to the support of Betty Dale. She stared for one searching moment up at the wax mask. A little joyful sob burst from her throat. “It’s you! I know it’s you!”

  “X” gathered her in his arms. “Pull yourself together, Betty,” said “X” gently. “We’ve got to get out of here. You’ve got to save the police!”

  She raised her head. “I don’t understand,” she said, blinking back tears of relief. “But whatever you say—”

  A strange murmur filled the cell. “X” turned and saw that the crippled man was stirring slightly and muttering. The Bishop’s voice grew stronger. “Vait,” he whispered. “Don’t beat me, Carl. I am your brudder, Joseph; yet you beat me!”

  “X” CROSSED quickly to the cripple’s side. He saw that the man’s eyes were staring vacantly, insanely at the ceiling. “I cannot help it if my mind is no goot,” the Bishop whispered. “I do not know vhere I hid der odder plates. I could make more if you had not pour acid on my fingers. My fingers—” the Bishop held his scarred hands above his head and stared at them—“My fingers are no goot now because of acid. You vant to destroy them so the police cannot catch me. Who vould know me now that I am sick and crippled? Better you should have saved for me my hands!”

  Betty looked inquiringly at “X.” “What does he mean?”

  “X” shook his head silently. The Bishop was speaking again. “Carl, my brudder, vhy do you hurt me because I can’t remember. All der plates I give you but the vons I forget—”

  “X” took Betty’s arm. “We haven’t any time to waste. Number One is waiting to get this place filled with police. Then he is going to try and blow this building up—if he gets the chance!”

  “Then you know who Number One is?” Betty asked as they hurried out into the oak room.

  “X” nodded. “He is Carl, the Bishop’s brother. And of course the Bishop is the German engraver, Joseph Fronberg—the counterfeiter whom the police think is dead. But we haven’t time, Betty!”

  “X” hurried her to the sliding door and unlocked it by means of the penny with the number three stamped on it. Soon they were in the secret elevator, speeding downward. When the car came to a stop, “X” pulled off the waxen mask he had been wearing and concealed it under his coat. He opened the door and led Betty out into the hall. Outside the building, a police siren was wailing.

  “X” seized the girl by the arm. “Betty, there will be police here in any moment Tell them that the building is about to be blown up. Get them to get the people out of here. Have them send out warnings—”

  Agent “X” stopped suddenly. An elevator had just bobbed to the floor level. It was loaded with police. He had no time to talk with them. He sprang towards the stairway and bounded down the steps. Flight after flight he passed until he came to the tenth floor—leased entirely by Abel Corin’s firm. He entered the general office where a telephone switchboard girl was just taking her place for the morning’s work.

  Aside from this girl, the office seemed deserted. She stared, amazed, at the man who ran across the general office towards the sumptuous reception hall that fronted Mr. Corin’s office. She called on him to stop, but Secret Agent “X” seemed to have suddenly gone deaf. He charged the door of Corin’s private office, smashed it op
en with a heave with his shoulders, and closed it behind him.

  Chapter XXI

  SECONDS OF DOOM

  ABEL CORIN jerked around from the cabinet before which he had been standing to see the man who had just broken into his office and was now striding across the chessboard patterned floor.

  “What is the meaning of this, sir?” the business executive demanded. His eyes dropped to the automatic in the Agent’s hand.

  “Good morning, Carl,” said Secret Agent “X” mockingly.

  “What do you mean, sir?” demanded Corin. “You’ve made a mistake. My name is Abel Corin.”

  “It is Carl Fronberg,” “X” insisted “Carl Fronberg, the man who would turn the city into an underworld empire for his own evil purposes.”

  Corin laughed. “What fantastic tale is this?”

  “The truth. The Bishop told me—the Bishop who is Joseph Fronberg, master of counterfeiting. Diseases warped your brother’s mind and body. You destroyed the only means the police had of identifying him—his fingerprints. As far as the police were concerned, Joseph Fronberg was dead. But you took the plates which he had made before his sickness. With your head for organization, you built up the greatest counterfeit gang that I have ever run across. I think it more than likely that you were the brains behind the original Fronberg gang instead of your brother, Joseph. No one seems to know where you got your start in business, you know. It might well have been from counterfeiting.”

  Corin’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” he asked, softly.

  “I think you know,” replied the Agent. “You have been trying to get me to face you openly for some time now. Here I am. Curiously enough, with all your juggling of wax masks and numbers in an attempt to conceal your identity, it was the floor of this office which gave you away!”

  Corin stared speechlessly at the floor.

  “As soon as I heard the name by which you called your crippled brother, I knew who you were,” said the Agent. “For the peculiar, diagonal gait of that cripple resembled nothing so much as the movement of a certain playing piece on a chess board. The bishop piece in chess can move diagonally only! Chess suggested that name for your crippled brother. And the very floor of this office screams that you are a chess enthusiast! Carl Fronberg, alias Abel Corin, is also Number One of the Seven Silent Men!”

  Corin’s eyes were scornful. “And now where are you, Mr. ‘X’? Are you any nearer your objective than you were at first? Who would believe your story? Turn me over to the police? Man, in one hour from now I shall be the police!” He strode across the room and flung open the front windows. “Do you hear them? Thousands of people keyed to revolt! They are pleading for me to save them!”

  Agent “X” could hear well enough. Wind screamed down the canyon between the lofty buildings and sucked up the roar of a thousand throats. The name of Abel Corin was on every lip.

  “Do you hear?” shouted Corin, and in his anger his voice slipped to a higher register so that it sounded exactly like the voice of Number One. “They are shouting: ‘Let Corin run the city and wipe out counterfeiting!’”

  Corin sprang to his desk, seizing it as though he were about to tear it to pieces. His words came quick and sharp like a string of exploding firecrackers. “New York is mine! How New York once laughed at me, Carl Fronberg, an immigrant! It called me ‘Dumb-Dutch!’” Corin twisted the name into a venomous snarl. His face was purpling with rage. “I’ve made New York pay for that name it gave me—Dumb-Dutch! But I changed my name. I trampled on the mob without them knowing it. I’ve twisted and squeezed and pinched millions from them. And they will pay more and more! In these two fists of mine I’ll hold the power to crush the people or watch them grovel. I, Carl Fronberg, once a ridiculed immigrant, shall have the power of an emperor!”

  Corin’s voice hushed to burlesque seriousness. “Go to the window, Mr. ‘X’ and shout that Abel Corin is a thief, a murderer. Do you think those morons out there will believe you—you who are hunted like a rat by the police?”

  Only then did Secret Agent “X” speak. He nodded his head soberly. “You’re absolutely right—about them not believing me. But, there is one man they will believe.”

  “Who?” shouted Corin.

  “Abel Corin,” replied “X” calmly.

  CORIN sneered. “You poor fool! Do you suppose that because they are going to trust me with the managership of this city that my conscience dictates that I should confess my crimes to them?”

  Secret Agent “X’s” eyes narrowed. “You have told them, Abel Corin.” The deadly seriousness of his voice made Corin tremble.

  “What do you mean?” he gasped.

  “X” smiled slowly. “You are afraid, aren’t you, Corin? You always were a coward at heart. Your thirst for vengeance, your greed for power, gave you a sort of synthetic courage. Yet always, you were the coward, hiding behind a woman’s skirts. You made Alice Neves your dupe. You played upon the sincere affection with which she regarded you, criminal though she may be. Every message that you sent over the radio or wrote on paper was signed with her name—the inverted Seven. The very name of your gang was developed from her name—for Neves becomes Seven when inverted. You made her take risks you would not take. You—”

  A sob cut through the Agent’s sentence. From the little closet off Corin’s office, came a pitiful figure. It was Alice Neves. She wore a man’s dark suit of clothes. The diamond insignia, the number seven, was on the lapel of her coat. Her blue black hair was streaming. She walked straight towards Corin, pointing an accusing finger at him. “Is that true, Abel? Is what this man says true?” she asked huskily.

  Corin shook his head. “It’s absurd!”

  “But it’s true! You’re lying to me. Abel. After I stole, lied and cheated, even killed for you.” Then Alice Neves moved so quickly that even “X” was not alert enough to stop her. He saw the flash of something that glittered like silver in her hand. He uttered a harsh cry, sprang towards her. But the girl’s hand had darted up. The long, thin knife was driven straight into her left breast. She tottered and fell full length behind Corin’s desk.

  “X” forgot Corin for the moment in his anxiety over the woman. He dropped to his knees, hoping that her self-inflicted wound was only slight But he did not need a moment to determine that her wound would be fatal.

  “It is better so!” came Corin’s harsh voice.

  “X” looked up. A smile of self-satisfaction had spread across his face. “With Alice gone, and Leads gone, and my brother too mad to tell—”

  “But you have told!” cried Agent “X.” “You and every other one of the Silent Seven committed murder and signed a confession in the record book. The witness who watched you sign your confession must have been Milo Leads, since he was the only man beside the Bishop who knew your true identity. Milo Leads was your right-hand man. If it had not been for Leads’ dope and duplicity, you would not have gone far towards your objective.

  “From your conversation with Leads, I gathered that you held some threat over his head—something else beside the exposure of the murders he was responsible for. Leads was always in trouble with some woman. He was fundamentally a weak character. When Leads saw the possibility of huge monetary returns, he gladly fell in with your scheme rather than have you expose his true character.

  “And remember that inside of an hour, the confessions of every one of your gang will be in the hands of the police.”

  Corin laughed. “But I destroyed that record book. None could touch it but me because of a battery of machine guns hidden behind the panel of the closet in which it rested. Had anyone else touched the record book, he would have been instantly riddled by bullets!”

  “X” NODDED. “I thought of that. I took the trouble to trace out the electrical circuit that operated your machine-gun trap and turn it off before I removed the confessions from the book—”

  Corin’s face went suddenly from purple to ashy gray. He chewed his lower lip. Then, suddenly, a crafty gleam stole into his
eyes. His hand dropped to the desk. One finger poised over a brass ash-tray. He pushed the tray to one side, revealing a black-handled electrical switch. “X” saw that tiny wires ran from it across the desk and to the large cabinet at the other side of the room. The Secret Agent’s heart pounded in his throat.

  “Now, will you surrender, Mr. ‘X’?” asked Corin. “I started a time fuse going just a few minutes before you entered. In this office is enough T.N.T. to blow the entire top off this building. But I have only to touch this switch under my hand, and the time fuse will be cut out of the circuit and the building will be blown to pieces at once! Now, do you surrender?”

  “X” knew that Corin was in deadly earnest. The man dared not risk standing trial as the leader of the Seven gang. He preferred sudden death. But “X” knew that if Corin touched that switch and the building was blown to bits, thousands of innocent people might be killed. Not the flicker of an eyelash betrayed the thought that was going through Agent “X’s” mind at that moment.

  His eyes were steadily fixed on Corin’s face. But the automatic in his pocket was nosing straight towards Corin’s right arm. He knew that the pain of a bullet in the arm would cause Corin to jerk his hand back—a reflexive action that it would be impossible to resist. He squeezed the trigger of the automatic with extreme care. He could not miss at such a distance.

  A sharp, metallic click—nothing more. The automatic was empty. But Corin had heard that click. It startled him. “X” saw the man’s finger drop towards the switch.

  In those seconds when destruction seemed evident, Agent “X” moved faster than he had ever moved before. He leaped towards the desk. His left hand clawed at Corin’s hand. His right fist drove upwards towards Corin’s jaw. Corin fell backwards to the floor, dragging switch and wire with him. He was unconscious—but he was lying directly on top of the fatal switch.