Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Page 42

“You’re Felix Landru, the dope peddler, are you?”

  “Oui, m’sieu, I am Felix Landru,” spoke the Agent tensely. Now he had an inkling of what had happened.

  The general tossed the slip to him. He read it with a sudden quickening of pulses.

  “Felix Landru has just been found unconscious at the St. Etienne Inn on Bordeaux Street. Has a fractured jaw. Fingerprints compared with those on record. They are identical.”

  “An impostor, eh?” snarled the general. “Not Felix Landru. Yet your disguise is perfect. I think you are a far greater prize than Landru! There is only one man in the world who could do as smooth a job as that. You must be that criminal they call Secret Agent “X!”

  Chapter XI

  THE HAND OF KARLOFF

  THE Agent was trapped. Even General Mathers didn’t know that he had the secret sanction of a high government official in Washington. And that secret could never come out even if “X” had to go to jail. It was part of the pledge he had made.

  Detectives were waiting outside. The general had but to grab his revolver and call them in. Mathers’ hand started for the weapon. Immediately “X” pounced forward. He brought his right hand down on the fleshy part of the official’s arm.

  He jabbed a tiny hypodermic needle into the arm. The harmless but powerful drug had instantaneous effect. It happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, that the general did not think to cry out. Now it was too late. Without making a sound, Mathers slumped into his chair, unconscious.

  “X” had obtained the little hypodermic when he dropped the cigarette. The instrument had been hidden in a compartment in the heel of his shoe. The Agent had palmed the hypo, intending to drop it in the sleeve of his raised arm, had the general demanded to see if he held anything except the cigarette.

  There was no time to lose. “X” was in an even more difficult situation now. Suppose one of the detectives should look in? The general was merely in a drug-induced coma, yet he appeared to be dead. The man would hardly pause to ask questions. A look at the general, a look at “X,” and he would be apt to start shooting.

  Noiselessly the Agent locked the door. Strapped around his right leg just above the ankle was his portable kit of make-up material. He set out his vials and tubes. While he studied Mathers’ features, he removed the disguise of Felix Landru. He worked feverishly. Men had been talking outside. Now there was a significant silence. “X” knew the reason. The voices had ceased in the office, and the detectives were growing anxious.

  To forestall an investigation, the Agent began talking, first in the whining accent of Landru, then in the general’s thunderous voice. While he was molding a new disguise, he crept to the window and looked out. There was no way of escape below, but one could grab the window ledge overhead and climb to the floor above—with capture before he got out of the building almost a certainty. “X” had another plan, daring, audacious, one that required cold nerve, great skill, and perfect timing.

  He finished his disguise. It was not an elaborate one. He had not the time to work in identical pigmentation and exact features. A close scrutiny would reveal that he was not the general. “X” had to take a chance. He did not change to the official’s clothes. Hauling Mathers to a coat closet in the office, he locked him in.

  Some one knocked.

  “Everything all right, General Mathers?” The voice was McAllister’s.

  The Agent was tense, dry lipped. His eyes burned with feverish excitement. He was not at all sure that his disguise would get by. Instead of answering the detective, “X” grabbed a chair and deliberately hurled it through the window. The loud crash was followed by the musical clatter of falling glass.

  “X” uttered deep, full-throated groans, such as might have come from the general. The detective outside was rattling the knob and pounding on the door. He called to the other federal men. Footsteps beat on the tiled floor of the corridor.

  “You can’t get away, you scoundrel!” exclaimed “X,” imitating the general’s thunderous voice.

  The Agent snatched up the service revolver, and fired several times at the shattered window. Then he ran to the door and unlocked it. Assistants swarmed in. Posing as the general, “X” was rubbing his jaw, as though he had been struck. He pointed at the smashed window with his smoking gun.

  “Out there, men!” he cried hoarsely. “The blackguard slugged me and made a dash for it. But he can’t get away. After him, McAllister!”

  THE detective already was climbing out the window. Creager was following him. The room was suddenly packed with a milling mob. Attention was focused on the man at the window. That was the Agent’s cue.

  Picking up Landru’s hat, “X” quietly left the office. He went down the corridor to a washroom. There he quickly changed to one of his stock disguises. From a photograph he had seen of Landru on the crook’s dresser at the St. Etienne, “X” knew that the former Apache wore the brim of his hat downward. Therefore the Agent turned it up, pulled the hat low on his forehead. Now there was not a vestige of his recent disguise as a Frenchman in manner and make-up.

  While the futile search went on in the building, “X” strolled out the main entrance and hailed a cruising cab. De Ronfort had brought only half of his smuggled narcotics to Eddie’s Place. That dope was now in the possessions of the Federal Bureau. The count still had the balance. “X” would call on the Frenchman as an emissary of Landru, who was in the custody of the law.

  At the Perseus Arms, however, he learned that de Ronfort had checked out an hour before. And he had not left a forwarding address. De Ronfort was frightened. Possibly he was afraid that if Landru was caught, he would squeal. Or he might have left to dispose of his contraband goods in another section of the country. Maybe he was eloping with Paula Rockwell. That scare at Eddie’s Place might have shown de Ronfort the need for quick work. Once married, the sly, ingratiating aristocrat would have little trouble maneuvering a joint bank account, or one in his own name, from the rattle-brained heiress.

  With the Blake fortune behind him, de Ronfort could easily become the narcotics king of America, wielding the power of an absolute despot. It was a terrifying thought. The Agent pictured millions enslaved to de Ronfort through the tyranny of dope.

  Wherever the Frenchman was going, “X” knew he would keep in touch with Paula Rockwell. There was a chance that the smuggler right now was at the Blake penthouse. The Agent returned to one of his hideouts long enough to freshen up and change to the disguise of A. J. Martin. As a newspaperman, he went to the Blake apartment building. But he stopped outside. He would wait. If de Ronfort were there, he might come out. Paula Rockwell had no aversion to newspaper people, yet an interview might reveal nothing of what he wanted to learn.

  The dial over the private elevator indicated that the car was at the top floor. At this hour Whitney Blake probably had retired. If the girl was out, the car likely would be on the first door, with the operator waiting for her return. “X” remained inconspicuously in the lobby. One of the public elevators was in use, carrying cleaners and all-night workers.

  Close to half an hour later, the Agent’s monotonous wait was rewarded by the appearance of Paula Rockwell. She came down in the business elevator with a scrubwoman and a janitor. Why had she avoided the private one? She was nervous, extremely so, and her manner was actually furtive. Evidently her departure was a secret from those in the penthouse. “X” was curious about the reason.

  The girl hurried from the building. She held her bag up to shield her face as she crossed the sidewalk. Instead of leaving in one of her own cars, with the private chauffeur, she hired a taxi. The Agent beckoned to another cab, and instructed the driver to follow the car ahead.

  Paula Rockwell’s taxi took her to a slum section, where she would go ordinarily only with an escort. The machine stopped before the Genoa Café, a cheap restaurant and saloon, where a few, shabby men and slatternly women were dancing to the tinny strains of a battered player piano.

  The Agent sauntered into the place
a few moments after the girl entered. He ordered a small beer at the bar. At a corner table not far from the bar sat Remy de Ronfort, his suavity gone, lines of worry etched in his handsome face.

  PAULA was sitting across from him, holding his hand and talking earnestly. The count had been drinking. His eyes were glazed and bloodshot. A bottle of whiskey stood on the table. He tossed off two glasses of liquor without a chaser. It was hard for “X” to believe that a man, aristocratic supposedly in everything but his scruples, was affected so much by what had happened at Eddie’s Place. Had something else occurred in the meantime? “X” could not tell from their conversation, for the tinny, jangling piano drowned out their words.

  With a cautious side glance, “X” saw Paula Rockwell hand de Ronfort some bills. There was a hundred-dollar greenback on top. A flash of relief shone in the Count’s face. Then he began showing impatience. He tossed off another drink, and jammed his hat on, without thought to appearance. The girl grabbed his arm. Her manner was that of worried protest. “X” cursed the noisy piano. But for that, he might have heard their talk. De Ronfort shook his head and jumped up. He and the girl went to the sidewalk. As they passed the bar, “X” caught a few words.

  “But can’t you tell me?” the girl was saying. “Are you leaving just because you got an unsigned note of warning? Probably it’s some silly crank!”

  Then they were out of earshot again. The Count beckoned to a taxi. Paula was in tears now. De Ronfort almost shoved her into the back seat. There was a brief embrace. He motioned for the driver to start. The girl began to weep without restraint.

  The smuggler hired another cab. “X” was no longer interested in the girl. She had given him a lead. As soon as de Ronfort’s car got underway, the Agent jumped in another taxi. The first car sped through night traffic to Union Station.

  De Ronfort rushed into the waiting room and straight to a ticket office. A line of people was ahead of him. “X” waited to one side, his face behind a newspaper. As soon as the Frenchman had obtained his ticket and walked away, the Agent elbowed in ahead of the next buyer, who choked off a protest when he saw the blazing light in “X’s” eyes.

  “What was the destination of that last ticket?”

  The clerk looked curiously at the Agent and shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to give out that information,” he said slowly.

  “X” flashed a detective’s badge. “Give me a ticket to the same destination,” he ordered in a low but harsh voice.

  “Yes, sir—yes, sir!” responded the clerk respectfully. “With a sleeper, sir?”

  The Agent nodded. The clerk pulled a train fare and a pullman ticket from the rack and stamped them.

  “Seventeen seventy-six, please. The train leaves in three minutes. Track forty-two.”

  “X” slapped down a twenty dollar bill and raked up his change with the tickets. He started on a run for the entrance to Track 42. Until now he did not know where his ticket would take him. He glanced at it. Montreal. Out of the country.

  The Agent looked up to meet a greater surprise. Four men were slipping through the crowd toward de Ronfort. They had hard, pasty faces, wicked eyes, cruel mouths. They were nervous, almost palsied, and their spasmodic movements added to their vicious appearance.

  As Corbeau, the drug-addict gunman, “X” had known them. They had watched Serenti die horribly of the loathsome green death. They had shot Gus Tansley so that he bled out his life in less than a minute. They were the drug-mastered fiends of the somber, sadistic Karloff, and they were after Count Remy de Ronfort.

  Chapter XII

  DEATH TO THE AGENT

  PUZZLED, the Agent moved close. De Ronfort was starting through the train gate, when one of Karloff’s rat-faced gunmen shoved in ahead of him, and pushed the Count back. The smuggler began a dignified protest, but he stopped abruptly when he found himself surrounded by three others. They pulled back their coat lapels and showed badges.

  What was it all about? Karloff’s men posing as federal officers and nabbing de Ronfort. Apparently the Count was not one of the big dope ring. Yet possibly he had challenged Karloff’s authority, and the evil chief was striking in his usual brutal way.

  The gunmen rushed the Count across the big waiting room. Trained to avoid scenes in public, de Ronfort went along without protest. But the moment they got him into a sedan, he began to struggle furiously. Physically he was probably more than a match for the four dope-ravaged thugs. Watching from the side of a pillar, “X” saw him slam one of them between the eyes and give another an uppercut that put the man out of the fight.

  But the aristocrat’s polo-trained physique was helpless before the deadly threat of an automatic. He suddenly ceased his struggles. “X” knew a rod was probably jabbing the Count in the ribs.

  De Ronfort still clung to his suitcase. The sedan started. “X” feared there would be gunplay this time, so he did not hire a taxi. Instead, he commandeered a car, turning on the ignition with a specially constructed key for that purpose. If the car was wrecked or bullet-riddled, the owner would get money for a new one from the inexhaustible funds of Elisha Pond.

  “X” wanted that suitcase of dope that de Ronfort was carrying. Traffic was thin now, and the sedan sped to a back street where the driver would not have to stop for lights. In a short while they were out of the city and racing along a lonely suburban road. The Agent kept a quarter of a mile to the rear, so that it wouldn’t seem that he was following the mobsters. For a long while his attention was absorbed by the pursuit. Then he happened to glance in the reflector above him.

  He muttered savagely, clutched the steering wheel until it seemed that the white skin over his knuckles would split. He clenched his teeth. Bunches of muscle stood out on his jaw. His narrowed eyes blazed with anger and excitement.

  In the mirror he saw a hard and sinister face, a face that conjured up pictures of sudden and horrible death. Karloff. Karloff was in a car close behind, and that car was crowded with his dope-crazed slaves. Karloff’s men were ahead of him and behind him. And there were no roads or lanes branching off.

  “X” was hemmed in!

  Just then the car ahead stopped by a field. A short way beyond flowed the black waters of a river. De Ronfort was shoved from the car. He still clutched his suitcase. No effort was made to take it away from him. It was pathetic, the way he clung to that supply of narcotics. “X” plainly saw what was to take place. It was the end of the journey for de Ronfort. Surely the Count could not be blind to the significance of the stop.

  Yet fear had mastered him. All the fight was drained from him. He was trembling and helpless, as helpless and wretched as Serenti had been before the horrible green death ended his tortures. Yet the count was not a drug addict. Instead, he was a rank, quivering coward. He stood there like an idiot, his eyes seeing nothing. Stupidly he held onto the suitcase, while the drug addicts piled from the car.

  The Agent now was in as deadly peril as the Count. There was no escape on either side, sure death behind, and but a sliver of a chance of getting by those mobsters in front. But a desperate situation called for a desperate chance. And that was what the Agent took.

  Suddenly he jammed down on the gas. The high-powered car leaped ahead as though impelled by rage and bent on annihilation. “X” held the wheel rigidly, steering straight for the mobsters. Panic froze the drug addicts, they stared pop-eyed at the charging car.

  One of them screamed in terror. Frightened witless, they crouched in frenzied fear, directly in the path of the roaring machine. Grimly the Agent exerted more pressure on the accelerator. He was not bluffing. They had a chance to move. If they chose to stay there, he would run them down.

  A SNARLING command burst from the rear. Karloff had poked his head from the other car and was lashing his men with vile oaths. The mobsters came to life. They sprang aside. Fear and hate twisted their faces repulsively. Guns went into action.

  The Agent ducked low as the automatics thundered out whining destruction. Lead shrie
ked by the car. A bullet smashed into the windshield, showering razor-edged splinters over “X.” Flying glass cut him, pierced his clothes and lacerated his flesh. But he kept his foot on the accelerator.

  The mobsters were at the side of the road, madly raking the car with lead. The Agent whizzed by. Suddenly he slammed on the brakes. The car jumped, skidded sidewise. Before it lost momentum, “X” swung it straight again. The car stopped close to de Ronfort. Men were shouting, cursing. Smoking, flame-spouting guns snarled wickedly. Karloff’s car came to a shrieking stop. The mob chief had lost his deadly calmness. He was cracking out orders like a top sergeant. But those orders were not carried out. Drug-starved to make them obedient, the hopheads were gripped by hysteria and no match for the wild, mad confusion.

  To their frenzy “X” owed his life. They wasted plenty of lead. Bullets, aimlessly, blindly fired, came dangerously close. The Agent was crimson from glass cuts, but he kept down, protected by the body of the car. He opened the left-hand door.

  De Ronfort was standing close by, like a man under the spell of catalepsy. Without speaking, “X” grabbed him roughly by the front of the coat, and yanked him into the car, hauling in the suitcase after him. De Ronfort was just a shivering, teeth-chattering hulk. The Agent shoved him down in the seat, and wasted no time in talking.

  A quick shift of gears, and the car bounded forward again. De Ronfort cowered down, actually whimpering. Karloff’s car had started up again. It was close behind. Bullets ripped through the back of “X’s” machine. He felt a tug at his hat, and knew that if he had been in an upright position, his skull would have been shattered.

  The river was directly ahead. A dock led from the road out into the stream. Sudden uneasiness gripped “X.” He glanced to the right and left. There was no turn. He was racing at a mile-a-minute clip along a dead-end road.

  De Ronfort beside him, uttered a scream of agony. The Agent turned and saw blood streaming down the man’s neck. “X” did not know whether the count had been hit by a bullet or a piece of glass. De Ronfort was shaking like an addict deprived of his drug for a week. A rank, abject coward, he was overwhelmed, crazed by fear.