Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Page 47

  “What do you mean?” The Agent grew rigid with apprehension.

  Blake laughed sardonically. “I can kill them from where I sit, without moving from this chair! You don’t believe me, I see. Then look! You came here for Silas Howe! There—see him!”

  ONE of Blake’s fingers moved ever so slightly. There was a clicking sound. A section of the wall opened outward, revealing a sort of closet. The Agent stepped back in horror. He felt that the blood would congeal in his veins. For there was Silas Howe, the criminal who wore the reformer’s cloak. He fell forward into the room, a corpse with the rigidity of rigor mortis already apparent—and his face showed the hideous, poison hue of the green death!

  “There he is!” repeated Blake harshly. “A blundering fool if there ever was one! He became overly confident—even careless. He let you shadow him here! I anticipated that he might become a liability in time. He blundered into my hands five years ago when he appropriated for his own use fifty thousand dollars meant for a charitable fund.

  “I caught him then, threatened him with exposure, made him grovel at my feet—and afterwards cleared him to put him under obligation to me for life. Now he is dead, killed by me of necessity. But, my friend, he is still useful—just as you, too, will be useful—dead!”

  A harsh exclamation came from the Secret Agent’s lips. He started forward, eyes blazing. Blake grew tense, alarmed at once. He raised a warning hand, and “X” stopped.

  “I know who you are!” said Blake, with a hoarse note of something closely akin to awe in his voice. “You must be the one—the only person I gave thought to as an obstacle to my plans. You must be the criminal known as Secret Agent ‘X.’ You are a strange man, an interesting man, I have heard. Except for that peculiar twist which makes you an outlaw, go about fighting your own kind, I would like to have you in my organization. But—no! You are an idealistic fool! I have heard that, too.”

  Whitney Blake leaned forward and glared at “X.” “You don’t want to cause the deaths of those federal men below, do you? You don’t like to kill even criminals. Then don’t take another step forward. If you do—they die, like rats in a trap, when I open the valves of the cyanic gas tanks.

  “I have taken pains to make it possible for me to wipe out those who do my work—the wretched drug addicts in the basement of this building. And—if you move from where you stand—I shall use the same means on the federal men.”

  The Agent stifled his rage. He needed a clear mind. He could save himself. But by doing so, he would cause the deaths of many men. He saw by the movement of Whitney Blake’s hands that rows of buttons were under the arms of that chair. One of those buttons, “X” knew now, controlled the lights. That was how Blake had plunged the room in darkness the night he had killed Twyning.

  Blake laughed softly. “Suppose my drugs are confiscated,” he said. “That means only a loss of time. I have the formula. They won’t take that from me, because it’s in my head. Eventually my plan will succeed. And no one will suspect me. Stand where you are, Agent ‘X.’ I’m summoning my secretary, Rivers. Remember—a move that displeases me, and I’ll kill those federal men in my laboratory.”

  Blake pressed a button. Soon the quiet-laced Rivers entered. His manner was unassuming, yet “X” knew he was of the same ruthless nature as his employer. He must be or Blake would not have hired him. Probably he was under obligation in some way to his master also, a slave of his own fear like Howe.

  “Rivers, take the late Mr. Howe back to his own suite,” instructed Blake. “Return immediately. We must dispose of this meddlesome gentleman. He is Secret Agent ‘X,’ a man of many disguises. Perhaps you have heard of him. Before we give him the green death by hypodermic injection, I’m going to have a look at his actual features. Merely curiosity—an old man’s whim.”

  The secretary bowed, then dragged the corpse through the open panel that led down to Howe’s suite.

  “You see, young man,” said Blake. “I’ve protected myself against a possible raid. Howe signed a full confession, taking the responsibility for the ‘drug blight’, as the newspapers call it. For that confession, I promised the poor fool immunity. Strange, isn’t it, the man is dead! He looked moldy, didn’t he?”

  Tense seconds passed while the Agent dared not move for fear of causing the deaths of those men below. Then Rivers returned. He came up behind “X” with irons to handcuff him. Once those steel links slipped over “X’s” wrists it would be the end. Yet the Agent grimly held his hands out behind him. If they clicked shut, he soon would look like the man in the apartment below—green, moldy.

  WHITNEY BLAKE was trembling with excitement now as he gloated over his distinguished victim. His voice came hoarsely.

  “I will assist myself in administering the green death, Rivers. I have a hypo here already. But first I want to see our guest as he really is. First I want to peel that stuff from his face and look at features that ten thousand detectives and police would risk their lives to see.”

  A surge of deep emotion swept through the Agent. He felt the cold steel touch his wrists. A slight shudder passed through his body—not from fear of his own safety; but because of what those irons symbolized. The shackling, sinister yoke of crime on a whole huge community. Men and women ruined, destroyed body and soul.

  It was now or never—one daring, desperate play, or the loss of everything for which he had worked, and annihilation by the green death.

  Before Rivers could snap on the cuffs, “X” seized his wrists in a vise-like grip.

  Every fiber of the Agent’s muscular, powerful, highly trained body grew taut. He bent down, yanked forward like a steel spring suddenly uncoiling. As he did so, the unsuspecting Rivers rose and shot into the air.

  The maneuver that “X” had used was amazing but simple. It was an age-old Jiu-jitsu trick of leverage. The Agent had hurled the secretary over his head by means of it. The thing was done with lightning, incredible speed. There was no fumbling, no lost motion. “X’s” full power was in the throw.

  He hurled the servant straight toward Whitney Blake as though Rivers had been a piece of iron in some weight-throwing contest. The vicious old financier was transfixed with fear, unable to move, paralyzed in his chair.

  Rivers catapulted through the air, arms and legs spinning like the vanes of a windmill.

  Crack! His head rammed against Blake’s in a terrific collision. The chair tipped over backwards. The men struck the floor with a deadweight thud, together. “X” leaped forward instantly and knelt beside them. Expertly he felt their skulls. Possibly they sustained slight fractures. Concussions surely, but they would live to answer to the law for their crimes. Blake would go to the electric chair.

  The Secret Agent cut the wires to the buttons under the chair arms. Then he hastened through the panel and down the ladder to Howe’s suite. Quickly he searched through the reformer’s clothes till he found the confession Blake had mentioned. He read it over tensely. The murdered man had taken the entire blame for the drug ring.

  The Agent considered awhile. At the teakwood desk, he spread the confession out and studied the handwriting minutely for seconds. Then he took up another sheet of stationary and began writing with laborious care.

  “I am doomed,” he wrote in Howe’s own hand. “I knew it would come. There is no chance of escape. I am resigned to my fate, but I write this hastily with the prayerful hope that it will get into the proper hands. I have finally discovered the instigator of the horrible drug plague. The human devil behind it is Whitney Blake. Whitney Blake, the financier. From a man named Twyning, Blake stole a formula and method for breaking down the molecular composition of coal-tar derivatives into a powerful synthetic narcotic. Blake killed Twyning. He killed Count de Ronfort, because he did not want de Ronfort to marry his ward. Now he means to kill me. But I will not give him the chance. I am taking my own life. Silas Howe.”

  The Agent rose and laid the note under a paperweight. Then he propped the corpse of Silas Howe in the chair at
the desk with the pen before him. Soon the federal men would come, and they would find the note. “X” was taking away Howe’s confession, and in its place was leaving one in what looked to be the dead man’s handwriting.

  For the first time in his life Agent “X” had committed forgery. Yet it was not for gain, nor to rob anyone. It was to leave evidence that would doom a vicious criminal to the punishment he deserved.

  Agent “X” had forged the truth.

  He turned off the light, went noiselessly from the suite, and passed out into the corridor. From there he went down into the street.

  Many police cars were there now, more coming. A cop stopped him, but the Agent’s press card under the name of A. J. Martin let him through.

  Grim-faced detectives were constantly pouring into the building, following the lines of radium paint that “X” had left. General Mathers’ men were at work inside, making the greatest narcotic haul in the city’s history.

  For a time the Secret Agent watched, eyes glowing. Then he turned away into the darkness, and moved off slowly. A minute passed and his figure vanished from sight—but suddenly a strange, eerie whistle came out of the shadows. It was weird, birdlike, yet pitched in a minor key.

  It was the peculiar call of an amazing and enigmatic person—the person known as Secret Agent “X,” Man of a Thousand Faces, man of mystery and destiny. It signified that once more the master investigator had completed a relentless campaign against crime. The melodious note faded away as slowly as it had come. The work of Secret Agent “X” was done.

  Curse of the Waiting Death

  Satan’s signals! Those were the lights that gleamed above a bandit pack. Death’s own will-o’-the-wisps, with the power of an unseen curse behind them—a curse that made the police stand off, and made Secret Agent “X” pledge himself to battle on the volcano brink of destruction!

  Chapter I

  SIGNALS OF SATAN

  THE great plate-glass windows of Jules Pierrot’s Jewelry Shop cracked, split and snapped in a dozen places. Jagged, star-shaped holes appeared. Long slivers of shimmering glass broke away and fell to the sidewalk in a jangling cascade. Near the curb, six masked men, just emerging from a parked sedan, advanced slowly, laying a barrage of bullets before them.

  Pedestrians in front of the fashionable store scattered and fled like frightened rabbits. They ducked for cover, sought shelter wherever they could find it.

  A girl in expensive clothing, with silver fox furs draped over one shapely shoulder, ran like a mad thing close to the building’s facade. She passed near one of the masked bandits. Something gleamed at her white throat; something that caught the rays of the weak winter sun and sent out prismatic colors. It was a big diamond bar pin.

  The bandit snarled in his throat like a hungry wolf. He grabbed the girl’s slim arm. His hooked fingers flashed forward, closing over the diamond. He ripped savagely, and the front of the girl’s dress tore open as the clasp of gold came loose. The bandit pushed her roughly away. She stumbled, fell to her silken knees, then leaped away again and dashed on, screaming fearfully, her high heels clicking over the pavement. The bandit pocketed the precious gem.

  Others were already reaching through the shattered windows, scooping the glittering stones from the display racks. The leader of the vicious, marauding gang and one lieutenant, entered the store. Frightened customers, paralyzed with the sound of the din outside and the whining bullets that had glanced through the shop, huddled against counters. Clerks stood white-faced, trembling.

  While the gunman guard crouched, with feet apart, the black snout of the sub-machine gun menacing all, the leader smashed a huge display counter with a single blow of a pistol butt. He gathered up piles of sparkling stones, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires—and dumped them into a canvas sack. His eyes behind the black mask held wolfish greed. His hands were tense as talons as he worked.

  Jules Pierrot, owner-manager of the store, seeing a fortune vanishing before his eyes, ran from a back office. He was wringing his white hands, biting his lip, his small, immaculately dressed figure bobbing along. Consternation twisted his pink-and-white face with its carefully waxed mustache.

  “Stop! Stop!” he screamed, “Help! Police!” In a frenzy that was almost hysterical he flung himself toward the man who was pilfering the trays.

  The machine gun instantly clattered with a ruthless, measured note. Its snout quivered like the black, evil head of a snake lashing itself in fury.

  Bullets slapped and slashed against the spotless vest of Jules Pierrot. He gasped, screamed piercingly, and flopped to the floor in a thrashing, grotesque heap. Crimson oozed from his clothing sogging it down. Crimson dribbled from his open, gasping mouth. The bandit leader at the counter calmly ignored the horrible squirming of the dying man. Jules Pierrot kicked pitifully, then lay very still.

  Another of the gang came in from outside. The clerks, frozen with fear at the sight of their employer murdered before their eyes, obeyed meekly when they were ordered to open the safe. Some of the shop’s most treasured possessions were stored in this. Every flashing stone and bit of gold was scooped into the bandit’s pockets or the canvas sack of the leader. Systematically, surely, ruthlessly, the raid went on.

  FIVE blocks away from the scene of the crime a small, compact coupé hurled furiously ahead. A man was hunched in it, his knuckles showing hard and white as they pressed the black rim of the wheel.

  Under the instrument panel before him a hidden radio blared out police calls. The strident voice of the announcer gave the news of the Pierrot robbery in a numbered headquarters’ code.

  “Cars seventeen and twenty-six,” it said. “Go to Forty-eight Vanderbilt Avenue. Number nineteen. Cars seventeen and twenty-six.”

  The man at the coupé’s wheel wasn’t a detective or policeman. He had no official connection with any law-enforcing body in the land. Yet he knew what No. 19 meant. A store was being robbed. Another crime was being committed in a city already terrorized by the black wave of lawlessness that seemed to be engulfing it.

  The coupé driven by the man corresponded to neither of the numbers that the police announcer had called. Yet the concealed short-wave radio beneath its instrument panel was as efficient as that in any official cruiser. The coupé itself was fifty per cent more efficient.

  Its tonneau and chassis housed a collection of uniquely strange mechanisms. Sheathed armor plating of finest manganese steel was hidden beneath the enameled aluminum body, making it practically bulletproof. Small racks of tear gas bombs, and flares were slung underneath, ready to be released at the merest touch on hidden levers. A special, electric-field detector behind a sliding panel in the driver’s door made it possible for the owner to guide the car along a highway at night without lights, utilizing the presence of parallel telephone wires alone.

  Sensitive audiophonic ears in the car’s roof could pick up sounds at great distances. These were only a few of the amazing devices that its inconspicuous exterior concealed. Outwardly commonplace, the car was as mysterious as its driver.

  Behind the prosaic features of the man at the wheel was hidden an identity that the police of a dozen cities had speculated upon, an identity that the underworld feared and hated; yet knew nothing definite about—the identity of the man called Secret Agent “X”!

  Scores of rumors had run rife about him. Plots, by the law and the lawless alike, had been laid to trap him. Dark schemes had been hatched to blot him out of existence, by means of poisons, knives and bullets. Yet he still remained alive, an active menace to evil-doers, one of the most daringly unique criminal investigators in all the world. He was a genius of disguise, a master of a thousand faces, a person pledged to ceaseless warfare against the destructive, disintegrating forces of crookdom.

  The features showing now formed an elaborate disguise, as impenetrable as scores of others he had worn. Volatile plastic substances, overlaid above flesh-tinted pigment, followed the contours of his own face, yet changed it, so that even his own
parents would not have known him. His hair was a carefully made toupee. His features were mediocre and inconspicuous.

  Yet the odd burning light in his eyes seemed to hint at personal magnetism and great intellectual powers. Behind that disguised face a formidable brain seemed to be at work—and was. Agent “X” was on the trail of crime again, out to do battle with evil and match his wits against a mystery that was as sinister as it was deep.

  The radio before him still sounded, calling the police cars. And, as his own coupé sped onward toward the scene of the crime, he suddenly saw one of them.

  A green roadster shot out of a side street, roared into Vanderbilt Avenue. Agent “X” swung around on screaming tires and followed it. The police car’s siren was wailing. The men in it were hawk-faced, clean-cut, alert. A sawed-off shotgun was in the hands of one. They seemed ready to do their duty in an effort to save life and property, and beat off a gang of desperate bandits.

  The shattered glass front of the jewelry store came into sight. Agent “X” pressed down on the brake pedal of his roadster and tensed. He saw the black bandit car, saw the men with guns standing outside the shop, saw the heap of shattered window glass and the raided display racks. But he was watching the two cops as closely as he was the bandits.

  And, as he looked, a strange, seemingly inexplicable thing occurred. One of the killers on the sidewalk turned and saw the approaching police cruiser. He spoke sharply to a companion. The man he had addressed yanked a small pistol from his belt, aiming not at the oncoming car, but straight into the air. His hand jerked. Something shot from the pistol’s muzzle.

  THERE was a streak in space, a sudden, brilliant flash of green light. A fiery ball like a Roman candle hovered for a moment in the air. It drifted earthward, went out slowly, sparks issuing from it, and two more balls of fire from the pistol’s muzzle followed it. These were a bright, livid crimson, like some devil’s eyes, disembodied and drifting weirdly through space.