“X’s” swift movements, however, took him by surprise. Long, crushing, irresistible fingers seized his gun wrist, twisted it sharply. Other long fingers gripped his shoulder, heaved with all the power of “X’s” supple body. Frisch went tumbling backward in the narrow corridor, backward into Gilly and the others, catapulting into them with a force that threw them off their balance, tumbling them to the floor in a tangled, confused heap.
And “X,” in that moment of respite, under the awe-struck gaze of Betty Dale, produced from a pocket the key that the Skull had given him, inserted it in a slot in the wall at his elbow. A panel slid open, and he thrust her through it, stopped but a second to deliver a straight-arm jab into the jaw of Gilly who was struggling up out of the mess of writhing men on the floor. Gilly was the only dangerous one at the moment, for he still had a gun; Frisch having dropped his under the cruel pressure of “X’s” fingers.
Gilly tumbled backward, groggy from the straight-arm jab, and “X” stepped through the opening, inserted his key on the other side, and watched the panel slide closed again.
Betty was waiting for him, white-faced. Her eyes were starry. “I might have known,” she said, “that you wouldn’t let him—”
He put one hand over her mouth, smiling as he did so. “Of course I wouldn’t, Betty. But we’ll talk about that later. Now, we must get out of here. Let’s see where we are.”
They were in another narrow passage branching off at right angles from the one they had just quit. It was, like the others, dimly lit by a single small bulb at the end.
He led her along it, silently.
“But how can we ever get out?” she asked. “That man said that no one—”
“Wait!” was all he told her.
He used his key at the other end to admit them to another corridor, much wider, with doors on either side. “X” thought he recognized this as the corridor along which was the door of Tyler’s cell.
He opened the second door on the left and, sure enough, there was the grisly sight of the man who had been the victim of the Skull’s fiendish ingenuity. It was this room that Betty had been made to look into through the barred aperture in the “execution room.”
Tyler was no longer chained. No needle had sprung from the knob though “X” had taken the precaution to stand at one side, and to keep Betty behind him as he turned the knob. Evidently events had been moving too fast even for the Skull since last night, and he had not had time to replace the needle. But when the door opened a bell began to ring, the same as last night. The alarm was given once more, and the Skull now knew which corridor they were in.
Tyler looked up at them inanely, without the slightest sign of intelligence in his eyes. His hands were shaking as if from palsy, and his lower jaw hung slack, as if out of his control, allowing saliva to dribble down to his chin.
Betty uttered a horrified gasp, leaned against the wall for support.
“X” stepped into the room, gripped Tyler by the arm. “Come on,” he said in a gentle voice. “I’ll take you out of here.”
But Tyler shrank back, uttering an incoherent sound that was between a scream and a moan.
Suddenly the hidden amplifier in the corridors came to life once more, echoing the voice of the Skull. “Fannon is now in corridor H, in Tyler’s cell. Every one is to converge on corridor H. Do not let him escape again. Converge on corridor H!”
AT the same moment a panel high up in the wall began to slide up, revealing the same barred aperture through which Betty had been forced to look. As the opening, at first narrow, began to widen, “X” could see the bright light of the powerful spotlight in the execution room focused on it. Once that opening got wide enough, he would be bathed in its rays, helpless against the Skull who was undoubtedly still there.
Shrugging, he relinquished his grip on Tyler, slipped out of the room, and slammed the door. In the corridor Betty was still leaning weakly against the wall. “How terrible!” she murmured. “That man must be destroyed before he does the same thing to more people.”
“He will be,” the Secret Agent assured her grimly. “Now let’s worry about ourselves.”
He led the way along the corridor, just as the amplifier announced, “Fools! Can’t you find corridor H? Binks has not returned yet. You must find it yourselves. Fannon cannot escape; he must be found and killed; the girl, too.”
Betty asked tremulously, “Is there no way out?”
“X” had taken a peculiar, boxlike contraption from his pocket; this was no larger than a package of cigarettes, but it had a hole at either end, in which, Betty could see, there were lenses. He now stooped and removed the framework that had fitted under the sole of his shoe, and which he had worn on the way in with Gilly and Binks. He placed this in his pocket, and examined the floor as they went along. They worked their way through two more passages, and came to an elevator without encountering anybody. As they went down in the elevator, Betty asked, “What is that box—a camera?”
He smiled. “No, but it is the instrument of our salvation. It is a box containing a specially angled series of lenses which I built myself. It is constructed in accordance with a little known theory of light refraction, and shows markings invisible to the naked eye.
The elevator stopped, and they came out into another corridor.
“X” stooped and looked through the lens, then allowed Betty to do so. She saw faint scraping marks on the floor.
“This is one of the passages through which I entered with Binks. I wore a short piece of gray graphite attached to the sole of my shoe when I came in, and particles of the graphite detached themselves as I walked. By following them we will get out!”
She looked up at him, suddenly smiling, suddenly hopeful. “And then?”
“And then,” he told her grimly, “I must begin all over again—work my way once more into the ranks of the Servants of the Skull. He must be destroyed!”
They were now following the particles of graphite through a damp tunnel that gave every evidence of being far below the surface of the ground. This was not one of the elaborately constructed passages, but evidently the outlet of route number seven, that by which Binks had brought him and Gilly in. The amplifier did not reach here, but far behind them they could still hear its metallic tones, hear confused shouts as men scurried around in search of them.
This tunnel led them at last into a small room without windows. There was a door at the opposite end which “X” tried, but found locked. There was no light here, but “X” used his thin pocket flash.
Betty waited while he brought out the kit of chromium steel tools which he had taken from the bag. In a few moments he had the lock open, swung the door wide—and Betty gasped behind him. For behind the door was a blank concrete wall.
“X” tapped the wall, and found that it was solid. There was no egress from the room except by the door by which they had come.
Betty asked, “Must we go back?”
“There’s something queer here,” said the Secret Agent. He stooped and examined the floor with the box-lens. “Here are particles of the graphite leading away from this blank wall. We must have come in through here all right, but this wall is solid, there’s no doubt of that.”
He went back to the other door, into the tunnel, and opened it a crack, then stopped, rigid. From the tunnel, not a hundred feet away, had come the tread of many feet. Then, as he listened, motioning Betty to silence, Binks’ cackling voice came to them.
“If they came along here, they’re trapped all righty. There’s a room down the end of this tunnel, but he won’t know how to get out of it, nohow. The door ain’t got no lock on the inside, an’ you fellows can just rake that room with your machine guns.”
They heard Gilly say, “Boy, gimme a chance at that guy. I’ll cut him in half with lead!”
“X” cautiously closed the door, noting as he did so, the truth of Binks’ statement—there was no way to lock the door from the inside. He snapped his flash on again, saw Betty gazing at hi
m with trustful eyes. She had every confidence that he would get her out of this impossible situation.
Once more he crossed to the door opening on the concrete wall. He closed it, began to throw his light along the wall of the room, on either side of the door. The approaching footsteps sounded louder outside.
Suddenly “X” uttered an exclamation of satisfaction.
Betty asked, “What is it? Have you found a way out?”
“I think so. See this lever? I believe I remember now what this room must be. I was blindfolded when we came in, and couldn’t tell just what was going on. Let’s see what happens.”
He jerked the lever downward. For a moment nothing happened, then there was a smooth whirring of well-oiled machinery, and the whole room began to move upward.
The room was an elevator.
They heard shouts from the tunnel outside, oaths in Binks’ cackling voice. Then the stuttering of a machine-gun. But they were already well above the level of the tunnel, and the shots had no effect.
Betty cried, “We’re going to escape! We’re going to escape!”
“We’re not out yet,” the Secret Agent said grimly. “As I recall it, the entrance to this route was through a cellar. We still have to reach that. And Binks and his crew know we are on our way and can head us off.” He took her hand. “This is going to be a gruelling ordeal, Betty. You must keep a stiff upper lip. I—have doubts now, about our ever getting out of here alive.”
Betty’s mouth was firm, but her eyes were wet. “I—don’t care. If you die—then I should like to die—too.”
The Agent gripped her hand, pressed it. They waited together for the elevator to reach the upper level, for whatever lay in store beyond.
Chapter XII
THE SKULL’S COUP
THERE was a grinding noise, and the elevator came to rest. “X” opened the door which had presented to him only a blank wall before, and found that it now led into a narrow hallway. The quartz markings on the floor appeared under the box-lens, and they followed these.
They were apparently in an empty house of some sort. No light entered here, for the windows were boarded up with steel shutters like those on the windows in the headquarters of the Skull.
The markings led them to another small room, with another door opening on a blank wall. Here the Agent did not hesitate. He sought and found a lever in the wall, pressed it, and the elevator descended swiftly. When it stopped, the agent put his hand on the knob, opened the door a crack, and stopped. Just outside he had caught the sound of whispered words. There were men out there in the darkness, waiting for them. Softly he closed the door, turned to Betty in the dark.
“Binks must have taken a short cut,” he told her. “They’re out there, waiting for us.”
“What are you going to do?”
“They must have heard the noise of the machinery,” the Agent told her. “They know we are here and are waiting for the door to open. If we don’t come out pretty soon they’ll come in after us.”
“And then?”
“Too much depends on our getting out. Nothing must stop us!”
She couldn’t see his face in the dark, but she heard the grim resolve in his tone.
Soon, Binks’ voice came to them. “Go on, Gilly, I’ll hold the flashlight. You go on in there an’ mop ’em up. They ain’t got no guns. It’ll be a pipe!”
“Okay!” Gilly exclaimed. “Here I go!”
“X” crouched beside the door, holding Betty behind him. They were in such a position that they would be screened by the door when it opened.
They heard Gilly approach, felt the door give under his push. A beam of light penetrated the crack. There was a hard push from Gilly and the door swung wide. Gilly had pushed it with the snout of the sub-machine gun which he held at his shoulder. For a second that snout showed in the doorway, and “X,” reaching a long arm around the door, gripped it and tugged.
Gilly uttered a shout, came tumbling into the room after the gun, sprawled on the floor. The gun slipped from his hands as he tried frantically to rise. He was in the center of the room, outlined by the beam of the flashlight. For “X” to have stepped out there from behind the door would have meant death from the other guns in the darkness.
Binks shouted, “Go on in there, boys! Blast him before he gets his hands on Gilly’s gun!”
There was a rush of feet toward the doorway. But “X” slammed it shut in the faces of the advancing attackers, stooped to the floor, and yanked upward on the lever.
The door heaved inward under the thrust of a heavy shoulder, and the big, brutish form of Gelter, one of the men who had gone on the mission to kidnap Betty, appeared, with a gun in his hand.
But the room had already begun to move upward in response to “X’s” touch on the lever. The floor of the room was now higher than the outer floor, and Gelter tripped, sprawled half in and half out. The floor rose to the accompaniment of shouts from the men outside, and Gelter struggled to maintain a hold, with his legs hanging over the edge of the rising floor.
Gilly scrambled to his knees; murderous, slitted eyes on the Secret Agent. He reached for his machine gun. “X” took a quick step forward, brought the edge of his open hand down in a chopping blow to his neck, and the little gunman slumped down, unconscious, his grip on the Thompson relaxing.
And just then Betty Dale shrieked—again and again. “X” looked at her swiftly, turned his eyes to follow the wavering finger that pointed. Gelter had waited too long; the floor had risen to the top of the doorway, clamping his body at the waist. As he felt the inexorable pressure, the big kidnaper’s face turned yellow with terror. His big, hairy arms strained against the floor in a futile attempt to stop it from rising. His eyes were on “X” and he shouted hoarsely, “God! Stop it! It’s crushing me!”
“X” leaped to the lever, depressed it. The elevator stopped for a moment, then moved downward; but not before there was a horrible crunching of bones, and Gelter screamed shrilly, then became silent as his body slumped on the floor.
The floor, moving downward, released him from the terrible grip, and he slid off, falling into the outer room below. The flashlight was still flaring up at them. “X” picked up the submachine gun, put it to his shoulder, aiming low into the room below, and pressed the trip.
Lead belched from it into the floor of the cellar room below. There were confused shouts, cries of panic, and a rush of feet away from the spraying lead. Binks’ voice, raised in a cackling, querulous shout of anger, rose above the stuttering of the gun. “C’mere, you monkeys! He’s comin’ down. Get him!”
But the flying lead, on top of the sight of Gelter’s broken body hurtling down upon them, was too much for the innately cowardly men. They fled, and Binks followed them. His flashlight disappeared, leaving the place in utter darkness. By the time the elevator was down to the level of the cellar room once more, there was no opposition to the egress of “X” and Betty Dale.
The Secret Agent gave Betty his flashlight, told her to keep the pencil of light ahead of them. He advanced before her, the machine gun still at his shoulder. Her light showed they were in a cellar, flicked around and found the door, opening upward. “X” went up the steps first, looked out and saw that the alley above was clear. He stepped up, followed by Betty, and quickly moved into a darker spot, whispering over his shoulder, “Douse the light.”
She did so, and not a moment too soon. For a patrolman came running into the alley, no doubt attracted by the shots. He saw the open cellar door, clicked on his flashlight, drew his gun, and stepped down into it. “X” seized the opportunity to grip Betty’s arm and dash with her into the back entrance of the pool room through which he had entered that afternoon. The sight of the machine gun at his shoulder cowed the occupants of the pool room, and they shrank out of the way.
The Secret Agent rushed Betty through, out into the street. As he had expected, Binks and the others had not given up the chase so easily. A black car was waiting at the curb. The minute “X
” appeared in the doorway of the pool room, the muzzle of a Thompson was thrust out of one of the windows. “X” had his Thompson at his shoulder and spitting fire before the gunner in the car could get set. “X” kept his finger on the trip this time, till the drum was empty. He saw the Thompson in the car drop from a suddenly nerveless hand and clatter to the gutter, saw a close-cropped head loll out of the window as the frightened driver shot the car from there.
Even before the car had disappeared around the corner, “X” had hurried Betty in the opposite direction. Around the near corner he dragged her, dropping the empty Tommy, and down the street until he saw a cruising cab.
He flagged this, bundled her into it, and gave an address uptown. In the cab Betty tried to catch her breath. Finally, when she was breathing more regularly, she said, “I don’t know how you did it, but I’m sure no one else in the world could have got out of that nightmare prison! Where are you going now?”
“X” was fingering the radio in the cab, trying to tune in to some station that would be broadcasting news. He said morosely, “First I’m going to take you where you’ll be safe. Then I’m going to work on the Skull once more. I’ll never feel you’re really safe till the Skull is destroyed.”
HE found a station, tuned it in, and sat back as the announcer said, “A sensational item of news has just reached me. Harrison Dennett, the noted real estate operator and subway contractor, upon whose home an unsuccessful attempt at robbery was made this afternoon, did not have such good luck this evening. At six-thirty tonight he was kidnaped from his automobile. The kidnapers seemed to have vanished into thin air with their victim, leaving not the slightest trace. In the car was left a card bearing the gruesome reproduction of a skull. This card has been left at most of the major crimes that have been committed in the past few months. There is no doubt that some fiendish master of crime has—”
“X” snapped off the radio, lapsed into thought.
“What does it mean?” asked Betty.
Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Page 11
