Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 4 Read online

  “Then you have no statement to make about this darkness?”

  De Graf waved his hand. “My dear fellow, if I had any, you as a layman would hardly understand it! But, as I said, I have no interest—”

  The Agent saw the uselessness of talking to the man. He thanked him and left.

  But as he drove away, “X” found a vague suspicion gnawing at his mind. De Graf had been almost too offhand. Even though he were a man lost in a world of experiment and theory, it seemed incredible that any scientist could feel such utter lack of interest in a phenomenon so directly allied to his own field.

  The Agent had sensed strong undercurrents in the man’s personality. De Graf was the suppressed type, of course, one whose brain had driven human emotion into the background. But emotion was there, lurking. And there was no saying into what strange channels it might be diverted. The Agent decided to order Hobart to have a man keep track of the scientist’s comings and goings.

  Two hours later “X” had received reports on Lorenzo Courtney from both his investigating groups. These reports were not as complete as he would have liked. Yet they contained much valuable information. It would take days or weeks to unearth all the details of Courtney’s life.

  The whole matter of the dead man’s connection with a crashed bank was there. Hobart had sent him a newspaper clipping including a statement made by Norman Coe, head of the Citizens Banking Committee, giving the details which had caused Courtney’s indictment before a grand jury.

  This statement proved conclusively that even at that period of his life Courtney had gone in for unethical practices. He had taken part in the misappropriation of depositors’ money. He was on his way to becoming a criminal then.

  And the reports from his two investigating groups had given “X” a list of Courtney’s friends, of the clubs he frequented, the restaurants he patronized, the names of his tailor, his barber, his doctor. Bates and Hobart had done good work. Until a counter order from “X” stopped them they would go on collecting data until a clear picture of the man had been constructed.

  But “X” could not wait longer. Every hour that passed complicated the difficulties of the situation. Courtney was dead, and those interested in his welfare might wonder where he had disappeared, grow suspicious. That must not happen.

  Eyes staring into the dark streets before him, hands clutching the wheel of his car. Agent “X” drove back to the secret hideout where Courtney’s body lay. He had a plan in mind—a scheme that no other investigator of crime would have thought of, much less undertaken. This was to create a disguise more daring, one fraught with greater possibilities of danger, than any he had attempted in his whole career—the disguise of Lorenzo Courtney.

  Chapter XII

  SECRET ORDERS

  IN the seclusion of his hideout he set feverishly to work. A small electric clock on a shelf marked off the seconds, warning “X” that the thing he planned was dependent more than anything else on time. The impersonation he was about to make was not like the stock disguises he had used many times before.

  To create this disguise, all his artistry, all the amazing scientific skill of the Man of a Thousand Faces, was required. Lorenzo Courtney’s features had changed completely now. Rigor mortis had set in. The face of the sleekly groomed ex-banker had the masklike rigidity, the pinched nostrils, the sunken cheeks of death. The strong mineral poison he had taken had added a horrible grayish hue to his face. Courtney could not now be used as a pattern for disguise.

  The Agent quickly developed the plates he had made, set them with special fixative, dried them in a fan dryer, and made quick prints.

  Then, after removing Courtney’s outer clothing, he put the body back into the recess under the couch. In creating this disguise he preferred to make use of his prints and measurements, and his own graphic impressions of the man in life.

  While his long fingers worked their magic, he turned on the phonographic record of Courtney’s last speech.

  Then his own lips moved. He was imitating the sound of Courtney’s voice, the suave English accent that the banker had affected.

  He imitated the man’s features on his own face, slipped a black toupee over his own brown hair, carefully combed the artificial locks until they duplicated the lustrous blackness that had crowned Courtney’s head.

  For seconds after the disguise seemed complete, he worked on, adding the deft touches that distinguished his masterly impersonations from the crude attempts of other investigators. The tiny lines, the moles, the slight skin blemishes that made the disguise perfect.

  When he arose and donned Courtney’s clothing, the effect was weirdly startling. The dead man seemed to have come to life in the room. Fate had played into “X’s” hands to the extent of making Courtney as tall and broad-shouldered as himself. The only point in this strange case where Fate had chosen to be kind, and that kindness might lead the Agent to his death.

  For his data concerning Courtney was still incomplete. Never had he undertaken an impersonation upon which so much depended, armed with less information about the man he was impersonating. The outward perfection of his disguise was the one thing he could depend on. For the rest, he must trust to his wits.

  Among the facts Jim Hobart had sent him were the two addresses Lorenzo Courtney maintained. One, the old-fashioned brick mansion on a fashionable avenue where his mother reigned like a dowager empress; the other, Courtney’s bachelor apartment.

  “X” had quietly confiscated the contents of Courtney’s pockets. A wallet, containing a roll of bills and an uncashed allowance check from his mother. Cards to several exclusive clubs. A ring with more than a dozen keys on it.

  “X” LEFT his hideout, carefully keeping to the shadows and cutting across two vacant lots till he reached another street. Here he walked several blocks before summoning a taxi. The address he gave the driver was that of Courtney’s apartment.

  The place, when he reached it, was very much as “X” had visioned it—a flamboyant suite of chambers in an ultra-smart building. A dizzy blonde at the telephone desk nodded at him. There was a flash in her eyes and a knowing moue of her red lips that seemed to speak of intimate acquaintance. The Agent returned her smile with a wink. He said: “Good evening,” to the elevator boy, and ascended to Courtney’s floor.

  The shape of the keyhole told “X” which key on Courtney’s ring would fit the lock. He opened the door, entered, and listened a moment to see if there were anyone about. Courtney might have a servant. But none appeared. And “X” saw a moment later that the kitchenette and serving pantry showed lack of use.

  He became tensely active at once. The hungry gleam of the quest was in his eyes. A small secretary with locked drawers stood at one side of the living room near a luxurious davenport. The Agent opened this quickly and searched it, but found nothing save many letters addressed in various types of feminine hand-writing.

  He cast these impatiently aside. He wasn’t interested in Courtney’s affaires de coeur. What he wanted was some clue to the man’s criminal activities.

  He began a quick, deft search of the whole apartment. This was routine work for a man who had been associated with criminals and their ways for years. Systematically, thoroughly, he went over the room, examining the walls first, tapping them for hidden compartments, lifting rugs, scrutinizing furniture.

  His search was half completed when he came to a handsome antique straight-backed chair covered in rich tapestry. An irregularity in this caught his eye—a tiny roughness on one leg, below and behind the seat. He turned the chair around and found a corresponding rough spot on the other side. The varnished finish did not quite match. With his knife blade, “X” probed, and the varnish came loose to reveal a circle of plastic wood.

  He turned the chair over. Its bottom had nothing to attract attention—ordinary black cloth covered the webbing over the springs. But his fingers felt along it, and encountered an unnatural piece of metal. He pressed it. Something clicked. He turned the chair upright ag
ain, pushed up on the seat, and gave an exclamation of satisfaction. The seat, he found, was held by pivots hidden beneath the plastic wood, and formed the top of a small box, in which lay several objects.

  One of these held the Agent’s fascinated gaze. It lay there like a coiled snake about to spring—a rawhide whip of pliant leather. The end of it was divided into three small lashes, each tipped with steel like one of the old-time cat-o’-nine-tails. And there were brownish smears on one of the tips. Dried human blood.

  Here was one of the terrible whips that had been used on men and women as though they had been cattle. Here was concrete proof that Courtney had been a member of the band.

  The Agent thrust the whip aside and drew out what lay beneath it, his eyes glittering with excitement. For he now held in his hand a mask of black cloth. But a quick examination of it brought disappointment and a puzzled look to the Agent’s eager eyes. There was nothing covering the eyeholes, no goggles like those he had felt on the man he had fought in the bank, and seen so graphically in the shots of Hobart’s film. This mask was of plain black silk.

  TWO GUNS, a small blackjack, and a compact set of burglar tools completed the contents of the box. Courtney’s hidden equipment alone was enough to convict a man of felony.

  Then the sharp ringing of the telephone interrupted “X’s” search. He answered it instantly, using Courtney’s suave voice. It was a girl, one of Courtney’s “big moments,” judging from her petulant complaints. When was he going to see her? Why had he neglected her? Why hadn’t he answered her letters?

  Playing the role of Courtney, “X” stalled. Business matters had kept him occupied. He had been called out of town suddenly. He had not forgotten her. He finally stilled the girl’s syrupy gushings and hung up.

  He continued his search of the apartment, overlooking no possible hiding place, until he had convinced himself that he had found Courtney’s only secret cache. The man evidently did not possess one of the mysterious helmets which enabled the members of the bandit gang to see in the darkness. And this puzzled Agent “X.”

  He closed the secret box in the chair, paced the apartment for a time. Two courses were now open. He could wait here till something of importance reached him, some clue to Courtney’s activities; or he could move as Courtney through the clubs and restaurants where the young banker had been an habitué. The first plan seemed more logical. This was Courtney’s private retreat. He would receive important messages here, surely. But the inactivity of waiting tore at the Agent’s nerves.

  In a fever of impatience he continued his pacing of the room. Three more calls came, all from women. “X” listened to each intently, weighing every word spoken in the hope that there would be some inkling of Courtney’s connection with the gang. There was not; and Agent “X” began to wonder if he had pursued the right course.

  Frequently in his life great issues had depended on guesswork, hunches. More than once the uncanny correctness of his hunches had brought him success. Now, his instinct told him that sooner or later information of value would reach him at this apartment. But his senses cried out for action; his imagination painted ghastly pictures of what might be taking place outside, even at this moment.

  At eleven o’clock, after he had been tempted a dozen times to leave the place, the telephone in Courtney’s apartment rang for the fifth time since his entrance. And now it was no feminine voice that greeted him.

  His fingers tensed over the receiver as a slightly muffled man’s voice sounded. Agent “X” got the impression that the person was talking through a cloth, to disguise his speech. “X” crouched eagerly over the instrument.

  “Courtney?” the voice said.

  “Yes—Courtney speaking,” the Agent replied.

  A slight pause. Then a muffled voice made a sudden, clipped statement in a tone of dry authority. A statement that brought a thrill to the Secret Agent’s taut nerves.

  “We meet at twelve. I shall expect you, Lorenzo Courtney.”

  Chapter XIII

  MURDERER’S HIDEOUT

  NO OTHER word was spoken. The muffled voice was silent. The receiver clicked up. But Agent “X,” turning in taut excitement from the phone, no longer wondered if his decision to remain in Courtney’s apartment had been wise. He knew it had been, for there was every reason to believe that the man to whom he had just listened was the leader of the devil-dark gang.

  Yet the message had been too brief to be satisfactory. Members of the band who used scourging, torturing whips to clear the way for their criminal activities were meeting at midnight. But where?

  “X” was aware suddenly of his perilous lack of information concerning Courtney; aware of the difficulties the man’s self-inflicted death had thrown in his way. Courtney’s hideously mocking laughter seemed to ring in his ears. Courtney’s dying words echoed in his mind. “You will never know—now—”

  Agent “X” walked to the secretary in Courtney’s apartment, sat down for a moment and studied the itemized reports that Bates and Hobart had rushed to him. The list of young Courtney’s friends held his attention.

  Certain characteristics of the devil-dark criminals were known to “X” now. They were not ordinary underworld characters. They did not haunt the murky byways of crookdom. That was why neither Bates, nor Hobart, nor the police had been able to pick up details concerning them. And Thaddeus Penny had corroborated “X’s” own impression that the mysterious raiders were men of education, even culture.

  “X” had a theory to explain this. Lorenzo Courtney had been living proof of his theory. Educated, well-bred men did not go in for crime generally unless other customary fields of activity were closed to them. Courtney had been a failure in banking. He had left his profession in disgrace, with the threat of a prison sentence hanging like a shadow over his life. He had been greedy, ambitious, vain at heart. Failure, disgrace, had brought out the innate criminal instincts that lurk in many men. The same forces would bring out those characteristics in others.

  And on the list of Courtney’s friends which Hobart had given him was one which a card in Courtney’s wallet also showed. This was a man named Chauncey Doeg, a man who, according to Hobart’s data, had even served a two-year sentence for defrauding the mails in connection with the advertising of a certain bond issue. Doeg, like Courtney, had been a member of the younger sporting set, a polo player, yachtsman, and society gallant, much sought after by the mothers of debutantes, until disgrace had clouded his life.

  Disgrace, obscurity, would be bitter pills for such a man to swallow; for the most intolerable poverty of all to bear is the poverty of those who have once possessed regal luxury.

  Secret Agent “X” struck the secretary sharply with a clenched fist. His eyes were gleaming with the quest again. His logical brain had unearthed the possible hidden seeds of crime. He had made his decision—and was ready once more to gamble. But before he left Courtney’s apartment he did an odd thing for Agent “X.” He went to a glass decanter, poured himself a drink of whiskey and tossed it off. This was not because he needed stimulant. It was to make his disguise of the wastrel Courtney even more complete, by adding the odor of liquor on his breath. Twenty minutes later a car slowed and stopped at the corner of a block of shabby apartments. Agent “X,” still disguised as Courtney, was behind the wheel. He got out, sauntered halfway down the block, and merged suddenly with the black shadows at the mouth of a tradesmen’s entry. Here, with a view of the buildings on the street’s opposite side, he waited. One of those buildings held the apartment of Chauncey Doeg. And “X” had taken pains to learn that the banker was at home. He had asked Betty Dale, the one girl in the city who knew the true nature of his daring work, to call Doeg’s number. She had been instructed by the Agent to ask for “Charles Doeg,” then apologize timidly for calling the wrong party. She had reported to “X” that Chauncey Doeg was home.

  “X” WAITED now with a feeling of impatience, a feeling of uncertainty that he had to fight down, akin to the same emotion he had
had in Courtney’s apartment. Yet now it was even worse. For he had definite information that there was a secret meeting tonight. And, if his surmise concerning Doeg was wrong, the knowledge that the meeting had passed without his attendance would be intolerably bitter.

  Yet all the facts pointed toward the verification of the Agent’s theory. These shabby apartments where Doeg dwelt proved that the once prosperous banker had come down in the world. He had had no doting and wealthy mother like Courtney to give him an allowance. If Courtney had been tempted into crime, how much greater must the temptation of Doeg be? And “X,” in his conversation with Betty Dale, had made quick check-up on the man. She was in a position to know, and she had given him certain facts.

  Doeg’s character had changed since his stay in prison. He had become silent, irritable, appearing only in fashionable circles, and then to attend the wedding of a boyhood friend. For the rest he kept to himself, brooding apparently over his grievances.

  But minutes ticked by, and the Agent’s uneasiness grew. He looked at his watch. Eleven thirty, and still no sign of Chauncey Doeg.

  It wasn’t till twenty minutes of twelve that a heavy-set figure appeared in the vestibule of the apartment opposite. A shabby coat of a once modish and expensive cut fitted powerful shoulders. Above a white silk scarf a brutally aggressive chin showed, framing the thick lips of a sullen mouth. “X” recognized Chauncey Doeg from the minute description Betty Dale had given him.

  The young ex-banker peered up and down the block for a moment. Then he stepped imperiously to the curb and summoned a passing taxi.

  “X” left his hideout as soon as the taxi’s tail-light was a disappearing red eye dawn the street. He walked swift strides to his own coupé, made a U-turn and followed the cab, careful not to get too close.

  Once, to avert any possible suspicion in Doeg’s mind that he was being followed, “X” took a chance, speeded up and plunged into a right-angle street. Then he swerved around a corner, raced along a parallel block and came back in on the route that Doeg’s taxi was following.