by Brant House
Where he lay upon the floor, “X” was directly above a sliding steel plate in the floor of the garage. By means of this door, the killer had managed secret entrances into the mystery car. Probably his own men were under the impression that the mystery car was robot driven.
“X” rolled away from the sliding door, and pushed it open. A black hole yawned up at him, and he could smell the damp odor of earth. Without hesitation, “X” dropped into the pit below. This was evidently a passage similar to the one “X” had explored when he had visited the Pyke house.
Suddenly, “X’s” keen ears heard a sound of heavy breathing. His hands struck out, encountered a tightly drawn piece of wire. Instantly, the tunnel was lighted. Forty feet ahead of him, stood a man—a man whose face was the replica of Jim Hobart’s. He seemed to have no sort of weapon. He was simply leaning on a crude wooden lever that stuck out of the wooden floor. His shoulders shook with silent laughter.
“People who don’t know this passage generally get tangled up in my burglar alarm system,” he said. “This place, Agent ‘X,’ is my last stand against the police—and against you. It has been carefully prepared to insure my security. For instance, I shall be forced to kill you in a few seconds. It shall be done quite simply, and in a manner that you will find quite unavoidable. You will be found by the police at a later date. I rather imagine they will be able to identify you—from your real face.
“As you may have imagined, I took an impression of your real face when you were unconscious and in my power. I made a perfect mask from your face in that plastic substance known as ‘synthetic flesh.’ That mask I have carefully hidden. As soon as you are dead, it will be turned over to the police. They will identify you from it. Agent ‘X’ will be pronounced dead. They will look no farther for the man behind the Corpse Legion.”
“X” inched nearer the master criminal.
The man broke into a sardonic laugh. “No, no, Agent ‘X.” You cannot trick me. Were you to shoot me from where you stand, you would die the same way. Don’t bother with trickery. It will avail you nothing.”
Every muscle in the Agent’s body was drawn tense. While the killer had been talking, he had advanced five feet. The man was still far away. Probably, he was armed, while the Agent had only his bare fists. He must entrust everything to his own agility and strength.
But even as the Agent sprang forward, the killer leaned full weight upon the lever in his hands. There was a deep, rumbling sound like a distant earthquake. Timbers in the walls and ceiling of the passage creaked, buckled. A beam fell across “X’s” shoulders, knocking him to the floor. He struggled to rise, but at that moment, the sky seemed to fall upon him. An avalanche of earth and wood descended. Then all was smothered in blackness.
* * * *
Stunned, but only for a moment, “X” regained consciousness to find himself entombed alive. He was in a situation that would have driven another man stark mad; but “X” considered his position sanely, knowing that with only a limited supply of air, a few minutes of panic might be fatal. Though earth and timber covered him, it was not impossible to move. The beam that had fallen prematurely had struck him to the floor of the tunnel, but it had also fallen aslant of another wooden member. Now, that same beam supported the greater part of the wreckage and prevented the weight of the fallen structure from crushing him.
Opening his eyes, “X” found that a few starry points of light filtered through the debris only a few feet ahead of him. As he had dropped his flashlight when the tunnel had caved in, he was forced to work blindly. He pulled aside a splintered board in front of him, and wormed his way forward. Digging in the dirt, he dislodged another piece of wreckage and thrust it to one side. He pushed aside loose earth, and found that he was able to thrust his head through an opening. He saw that only that part of the tunnel in which he had been standing had collapsed.
Not far ahead, where the killer stood, the timbers were still sound. “X” realized that the gang leader, in constructing the tunnel, had concealed cables, levers and wires in such a manner that moving a single lever would release the whole flimsily constructed passage. This trap had not been particularly prepared for Agent “X,” but was a simple means for the killer to burn his bridges behind him or bottle up his enemies in case of emergency.
It meant straining every muscle to the utmost; for once he had crawled from beneath the sheltering beam, he had to carry tremendous weight of the wreckage on his back. Fully ten minutes must have passed before “X” wormed clear of the pile of earth and wood and was able to stand upright. Ten minutes! His foe might have escaped in that time.
Agent “X” hurried, as quickly as caution would permit, up the passage to a rude flight of stairs at its terminal. He climbed the steps to bump against a round manhole cover set in the floor above. He raised it slowly and peered into a basement, evidently that of the old house which had been the destination of the mystery car. The room was dimly lighted and apparently deserted.
He pushed the iron manhole cover up farther, seized its rim to prevent it from falling back on the basement floor, and climbed through the opening. Quietly, he lowered the cover into place.
* * * *
The room housed the furnace and coal bin. It was when he opened an unpainted door in the west wall that he made an important discovery. Precious as time was, he stood in the door staring about him. And from every conceivable inch of wall space, faces out of the past, faces of men long since dead, stared back at him with hollow, sightless eyes. They were masks that were perfect replicas of human faces. Beneath each one was a label. Near at hand, he saw the mask of “Big Tim” Riley, gang boss of prohibition days. Next to the Riley mask was another fashioned after the face of dead Willy Hymes. Everywhere were death masks, accurately tinted. This explained what “X” had long since guessed—that the corpse-gang was made up of living men wearing the faces of the dead.
“X’s” eyes hurried about the room. He was hunting for one face that did not belong to a criminal. The future of Betty Dale depended upon him finding the mask that the gang leader had made in her image. Otherwise, she would eventually be hounded by the police. Only the mask of Betty Dale would prove to the police that she was not the person seen behind the mystery car’s machine gun.
At the opposite end of the room, beside the one vacancy in the otherwise unbroken line of criminal death masks, he saw the lifelike features of Betty Dale. He hurried across the room and took the mask from the wall. It was made of very thin, flexible material—so flexible that when worn over the face, facial expressions on the mask were made possible by moving the muscles of the real face beneath.
“X concealed the mask of Betty Dale beneath his coat, and was about to turn away when he noticed the vacancy on the wall near by. Two masks had hung there; the labels were still in place. One label read Jim Hobart. The other read The real face of Secret Agent ”X.”
So anxious had “X” been to find the mask that would clear Betty Dale, that he had forgotten for the moment that the master criminal was in possession of a record of the Agent’s true features. He remembered the killer’s threat—the police were to find the mask that recorded the real face of Agent “X” and they were to compare it with the real face of the man entombed in the passage below.
“X” sprang toward the door leading from the room. Perhaps he was already too late. Perhaps the master criminal had already sent the mask to the police.
From the next room, stairs extended up to the first floor of the house. “X” raced to the top and turned into a kitchen. From there, he cut across the dining room to come to a stop in front of a door leading from an old-fashioned reception hall. He stopped to listen. On the other side of that door, a voice was speaking:
“Hello, police headquarters. This is Dr. Jules Planchard speaking. I was kidnapped by the corpse-gang. I have just made my escape from the leader of the gang—the man called Secret Agent ‘X.’ I was pursued by this ‘X’ person when I ran through a passage leading fro
m the garage to the house . . . Yes, I am certain that the man is Agent ‘X.’ I alone have seen his true face. What is more, I have a permanent record of that face—a mask made by the Agent himself. Death masks seem to be his hobby—masks of the persons he has impersonated. You will find the mask of ”X’s” true face in a Gladstone bag in the living room of the old Van Startz house. He was really quite an artist along that line . . . Yes, was. Agent ‘X’ is dead. You will find his body in the tunnel leading from the garage to the Van Startz house. The tunnel caved in while he was pursuing me.
Agent “X” tried the knob of the door. It was locked. His master keys had gone the way of his other special equipment. He backed away from the door, hunched his shoulders, and flung himself upon the panel. The lock burst. He catapulted into the room and sprang toward the desk where sat a man in blue overalls. “X’s” right hand rammed into his empty coat pocket, his forefinger outthrust so that it appeared his coat pocket covered a gun.
“I have you covered!” he barked.
The man in blue overalls calmly pushed aside the telephone, and turned around. His breath hissed through the mask that cleverly counterfeited the face of Jim Hobart. “How unfortunate,” he murmured softly. “How very unfortunate that you haven’t got a gun. Really, you don’t think I would have undertaken to impersonate you without learning something about your methods, do you? You have no liking for lethal weapons. Now, I have no foolish scruples about taking human life.”
“Quite evident,” replied the Agent.
The man at the desk laughed softly. He opened a drawer in the desk, calmly took out an automatic. “Do you happen to know who I am, Agent ‘X’?”
“X” nodded. “I knew just as soon as I understood how the corpse-gang was created. No man in the country knows as much about criminal physiognomy as you do. You have had access to all police records. In the past, you have known every criminal who was impersonated by members of your gang. You have made death masks before!”
“X” took a step toward the desk. “Oddly enough,” he continued, “the personal trait which told me who you were, you were unable to disguise by any mask. Perhaps, it is only a habit of yours that you have overlooked in your impersonations. Perhaps, it is a physical defect. The other night when we visited the Stinehope bank building, you found your opportunity to fade out.
“The raid on the Stinehope bank, you arranged ahead of time—just as soon as you learned that Foster and I were going to the bank. That raid had a double purpose. Not only did the gang manage to save the loot it had stored in the bank vault, but it gave you a chance to fade out of the picture. You wrote that note saying that Stinehope had been kidnapped, when actually—”
The killer’s laugh broke through “X’s” sentence. “So I am Stinehope!”
“Still trying to run a bluff?” asked “X” quietly.
The killer stood up and took a step toward “X.” The automatic in his hand was unwavering. “Bluff? Of course, I’m bluffing. My entire life has been a bluff to hide my hatred of the law—and the men who represent it. Day after day I have schooled myself until I can impersonate any male voice. Then I sought for the perfect disguise, I was already skilled in the making of death masks. I needed something to produce practical masks as pliant as human flesh.
“Synthetic flesh solved my problem. Do you think I am after wealth? Only for what it can buy—the service of killers. I built up my army from the discontented victims of the depression and from groups of wealthy young thrill seekers. With my flexible masks, they were able to impersonate criminals who had long since died. I told them that the police would be too terrified to raise a hand against them. Actually, it was because of my machine gun bullets that the police had no opportunity to come in actual conflict with my men!
“I have killed over a hundred police, and my career is not yet finished. But yours, Agent ‘X’, has come to a definite end. And you will die without knowing who I really am!”
“X” held up his hand. “Never for a moment have I imagined you were Stinehope. Stinehope died the night your gang was forced to raid the Stinehope Bank in order to recover the loot. You were the first member of the gang to enter the bank that night. When you met Stinehope in the Krausman store that day, you immediately noticed that he was about your build and of the same blond complexion. Even then you must have planned that when you wanted to retire to safety, Stinehope would die and his body be panned off for yours.
“That night in the bank, you killed Stinehope after getting him to the top floor of the bank building. Then you came down to direct the activities of your men. I knew you were there. I did not see you, but I heard you breathe. It was that odd habit of yours of breathing forcefully in tense moments that gave you away.
“Then, as soon as you saw that Foster and I had a chance to escape, you went up the fire escape to the room where you had left Stinehope. You obliterated his features so that his body could not have been told from yours. You changed clothes with him. You wrote that note accounting for Stinehope’s disappearance. Then you threw Stinehope out of the window. If you had only been able to work without breathing—”
The gun in the killer’s hand jerked. A bullet sung past “X’s” head. Another plumped into his chest and was stopped by the bulletproof vest he always wore. “X” hurled himself at the killer. His fingers caught the man’s wrist. A quick wrench, and the gun spun across the floor. Then the murderer knew the might of Agent “X.” He attempted to dig his nails into “X’s” throat. “X” launched a terrific right that pounded into the killer’s chest, driving out his breath and sending him toppling backwards to fold across the desk. His hands grasped thin air as he tried to struggle to his feet.
Then, a sudden, dull plop. “X” saw the killer’s legs jerk. The man rolled from the desk, clutching at the front of his overalls. A dark stain was already spreading across the blue denim. He staggered backwards and collapsed on the floor.
“X” pivoted. Coming slowly across the room, dragging a rusty chain that was attached to his left leg, was a very dirty, very haggard Jules Planchard. The plastic surgeon stared dully at the man on the floor. The silenced gun drooped in his extended hand.
“Dead,” he whispered like a man in a dream. “I have killed him. Weeks I have hunted the man who stole my formula for synthetic flesh. I had worked on it for years. It was the only artificial substance in the world that might have been grafted to living tissue. I had it nearly perfected. Then, he stole all my notes. Stole them through that damned woman I thought my friend—Felice Vincart. I should have killed her, too. The spy! Then he brought me here because he was afraid of me. He would have killed me had not Felice Vincart begged him not to. She loved me once—though she stole from me. But now—but now I have killed him!” His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. “I have killed him!”
Suddenly, the gun in the hands of Jules Planchard came up. He thrust the muzzle into his own mouth.
“Stop!” Secret Agent “X” sprang toward the crazed doctor. But before he could reach him, the gun had popped. Planchard fell forward on his face.
“X” stooped over the fallen doctor. He picked up the silenced automatic which had fallen from his hands after his suicide. He put the gun into his pocket, and went over to the desk. He took a piece of paper from the memo pad and scribbled a note. He removed the mask of Betty Dale from his coat and was placing it beside the note when he was suddenly aware of a harsh, familiar voice shouting in the next room.
For a moment, the Agent’s heart stood still. He sprang to the door. Hand on the knob, he paused. In the room beyond, he distinctly heard the voice of Inspector Burks. Furthermore, he could make out the inspector’s words:
“The telephone call referred to a black bag that contained the real face of Agent ‘X’,” Burks was saying. “This must be the one.”
Agent “X” yanked the door open.
The silenced gun was in his hand. Burks and a plainclothes man were facing a small black traveling bag on the davenport in t
he living room. Burks’ fingers were on the clasps!
Not for a fraction of a second did “X” hesitate. His future activities depended entirely upon the speed and accuracy of his movements. The silenced gun plopped once. It was a snap shot that nicked the handle of the black bag. Burks uttered a startled oath, and let it drop. He turned, snatching at his gun. But in the time required for Burks and his companion to turn, “X” had crossed the room to within a few feet of where they stood. Apparently, without aiming, “X” squeezed the trigger of the silenced gun a second time. Total darkness. The bullet had shattered the only light globe in the room
“The bag!” Burks shouted. “Grab the bag!” And Burks himself grasped at blackness, encountered a coat-sleeved arm, and hung on. He led a powerful right hook that landed. The arm in his hand went limp. A body sagged to the floor.
“Got him!” he shouted. “Lights, somebody!”
* * * *
As police burst through the French doors of the living room, flashlights lanced the gloom. Burks stared down at the man he had knocked out. It was one of his own detectives.
From out of nowhere, came a strange, eerie whistle. Burks sprang to the open front door. “This way!” he shouted. “Surround the house. Search the grounds!”
But his search was in vain. A few minutes later, a young detective came running excitedly to the inspector.
“He’s dead!” shouted the man. “Secret Agent ‘X’ is dead!” He seized the inspector’s arm and dragged him into the library where Planchard had committed murder and suicide.
“The guy with the mustache is Dr. Jules Planchard!” explained the young detective. “I remember seeing him in the papers. The other guy—”
“He looks exactly like that private dick, Hobart, we pulled out of the closet in Memorial Hall.” Burks cut in.
