“X” was also curious as to the source of the power that fed the electric chair. The voltage used in that heavy cable would require a very large dynamo—and he had not heard any noise such as a dynamo is bound to make.
When the elevator came to rest, Binks stooped and raised the lever that opened the door. “X” asked him, “How far is it now?”
The halfwit said, “It’s right close. Better not make any noise now. It’s at the end of this here passage.” The panel of the elevator slid open revealing another passage that turned at right angles a few feet away. “X” kept his gas gun handy. He would give the Skull no opportunity to use any of the devious defenses that the master of crime had erected about himself. He would give him a quick dose of the gas at first sight.
Binks stepped out of the elevator, and the Agent made to follow him. “X” was carefully watching Binks, expecting that the halfwit might resort to some trick at the last moment. He did not expect what really took place. Binks touched nothing with his hands. He merely took a step forward, and as his foot pressed into one of the boards on the floor, the elevator door slid shut with a bang, closing “X” into the darkness of the small compartment.
“X” understood at once, though too late, that Binks had led him through all these passages merely to get him into this one elevator; he was trapped.
Swiftly he stooped to the lever, pressed it downward. The door did not open. Binks must have disconnected it from the outside. “X” tried the other lever that started the car, but that, too, failed to respond.
And from out in the corridor he heard the sardonic laughter of the Skull.
Chapter XIX
THE CREEPING DEATH
“X’S” lips clamped tight. He took out his pencil flash and inspected his narrow prison. The walls were of wood, expertly joined. With his implements, and given time, he could work his way out of here. But he knew that he would not be given time. The Skull had big things on his hands now, and would hasten the end.
From outside the Skull taunted him. “You aren’t the only great impersonator, Mister ‘X’! My own impersonation fooled you to the end; fooled you so that you let me out of that chair when you had me helpless!”
“Impersonation?” The Agent’s head snapped up. In that instant he understood what the Skull meant. He exclaimed, “Then—you are Binks?” talking at the blank walls of the little cubicle.
“Now you know, my friend. But you know too late to do you any good. You made a mistake when you spared the poor, half-witted Binks. It was those scars and mutilations on my face that led you astray. Merely a tight-fitting rubber mask, my friend. And now—”
“X’s” mind raced backward, from point to point of his contacts in this place. It was possible. He recalled that Binks had never appeared at the same time as the Skull. Always there had been a period of waiting between the time the halfwit left him and the appearance of the master. And no wonder that no one else in the place had ever been trusted with the secret of the entrances and exits. The Skull had never, in effect, trusted anybody but himself. He had been able to snoop around, to overhear the conversations of his men; always in dim light, so that the rubber mask on his face would not be discovered.
“And now—” the Skull had said.
And now there was a soft whirring of well-oiled machinery, and the elevator started to descend slowly, ominously.
And “X” heard the Skull say, “Do you know where you are going, my friend? You are descending to a chamber on the level of the river. And I am going to open certain valves—” He laughed. “Your body will be found in the river in a few days—bloated, rotted. And in just thirty minutes the poor halfwit, Binks, will go to the main room and let out two of my men who are to go and pick up the first payment of ransom money!” The voice rose to a paean of triumph. “Thirty minutes exactly! And my plan succeeds. Triumph! Triumph! And for you—your death, my friend, shall be unwept, unhonored and unsung!”
The cage descended for a long time. “X” wondered if Jim Hobart had succeeded in following him to the entrance in the garage; and if so, whether the police would believe his story that the car had disappeared into the apparently empty garage. He doubted that they could find their way in here, even if they did believe him; doubted that they could pierce the clever camouflages the Skull had placed in the way—the movable ramp in the interior of the garage, the long trip underground on some sort of moving vehicle while he was blindfolded.
“X” decided that there was little to hope for help from the police. The lives of those men in the cells upstairs depended on him alone. And he was caged here, with the prospect of death by drowning.
The elevator ceased its motion. For several minutes there was silence. “X” reflected bitterly that the Skull had quoted the ancient poet with great aptness: “Unwept, unhonored and unsung!” Truly that would be his fate. None would ever know that the Secret Agent had toiled here mightily to save men from a hideous fate. He would simply vanish from the earth, and the body of an unknown man would be fished out of the river. The papers would report it as the suicide of a derelict.
Elisha Pond and others whom the Agent had created would walk no more in their accustomed haunts, and some would wonder where they had gone. Betty Dale would awake in the old Montgomery Mansion, and make her way home. If she escaped the future attentions of the Skull, she would wonder at “X’s” nonappearance, await him, perhaps, for years. And then, at last, she would reluctantly yield to the conclusion that he must be dead. She alone might guess how he had perished. And he knew that her sorrow would be great. He visualized her, waiting from year to year, hoping against hope that he would some day present himself to her in another disguise.
Above everything Secret Agent “X” felt most poignantly the fact that the Skull would remain with a free hand to wreak his insidious will upon helpless men and women—to go on destroying the minds and bodies of intelligent men in his ruthless climb to power.
All these things flashed through his subconscious being with kaleidoscopic swiftness as the cage descended. His conscious intelligence, in the meanwhile, was coping with the problem in hand. For Secret Agent “X” was not one to bow his head and await what seemed to be inevitable. For more times than one the things that had appeared to be inevitable had turned out to be avoidable by the exercise of his keen brain.
Now he was swiftly examining the ceiling of his cage. There was a flat plate screwed into the center of the ceiling, probably the terminal of the cable that lifted the elevator. “X” took a small screwdriver out of the flat black case in his pocket, and raised himself so that he could reach the plate.
It was the only thing that offered itself to work on, and he was not one to remain idle under any circumstances. In order to raise himself, he pressed his knees outward against the sides of the cage, which was no more than two feet wide. Then he rested his back against one wall, pushed the soles of his shoes against the opposite wall. In this manner he managed to raise himself so that he could reach the plate with the screwdriver.
He was off the floor, and working on the first of the screws by the time the cage came to a stop. And it was to this that he owed his life. For he heard the Skull shout from above:
“All right, Mister ‘X’! This is a quicker end than I planned for you, but I am short of time. See how you like swimming down there. Good-by forever!” And the Skull’s laughter rose cruelly, mercilessly, while the floor of the cage dropped open with a sudden jerk.
Had “X” been standing on the floor he would have been hurled down the shaft that now yawned below!
THE Agent clung to his precarious hold, pressing his feet against the opposite wall, looked down. About fifteen feet below, at the bottom of the shaft, was an opening. And just below the opening he could see the white foam of swirling water. The river was rushing in here, the water making low, grumbling noises as it was forced in by a tremendous pressure from somewhere at the mouth of that tunnel that must lead from the waterfront.
No man could have
lived down there. Refuse shot past at express train speed. Even as he looked, a heavy piece of rotten lumber was slammed against a side of the watery tunnel below there; slammed with a crash that would have shattered a man’s ribs.
The Skull must just have opened the valves, and the inrush of water was devastating to anything it might catch there. “X” assumed that the Skull would soon open another valve that would lead the water out again through another pipe, back to the river where his body would have been carried had he fallen down there. And while he watched he was afforded another evidence of the Skull’s devilish ingenuity.
For, probably in response to another switch or lever, a heavy grating slid over the top of the opening over the rushing water. He smiled grimly. The Skull was taking no chances on his climbing out of there once he fell through the opening.
“X” estimated the distance to the grating below, allowed his body to relax, and jumped straight down through the open trapdoor. He landed on all fours, bending his knees and elbows to take up the shock of the drop. His right hand slipped between the bars, and he went down, his head striking the grating. For a moment he was stunned; the cold, swirling water below licked at his hand, hanging down, and drops cascaded on his cheek.
He rolled over on his back, and breathed deeply to get air into his lungs and drive the dizziness from his head. He lay there for a while with his eyes closed. The right side of his head hurt badly, and he put up a hand to feel blood where the skin had cracked.
His make-up was ruined, rubbed off in spots. He could not pass for Hilary any longer unless he took the time to touch himself up. And that was out of the question. He felt that speed was essential now; the Skull believed him dead, and must be taken by surprise.
He looked up to see the trap door in the elevator above him snap shut with a clang. He watched as the cage rose a little way, then stopped once again. Suddenly he felt the grating upon which he was resting heave. It was sliding away from under him! Either the Skull could see that he hadn’t fallen through yet, or else he was just making sure.
The water had risen now so that it was bubbling above the grating. In a moment there would be nothing for him to rest upon. He would drop down into that maelstrom.
He glanced upward quickly. The shaft of wood came down flush with the opening here; there was no handhold except the elevator tracks, and these were slippery with grease. “X” tried to brace himself against the opposite wall as he had done in the elevator, but the walls were wet where the water from below had slapped against them, and his feet slipped. The grating was halfway open now. It was sliding into a slot in the wall into which it fitted snugly. He stood on the slowly moving bars, back to the wall, and watched the space in front of him grow wider and wider—the space into which he would be hurled when his foothold slid entirely away from under him.
The moving bars made a rasping sound against his wet rubber heels. He looked down into the water below, watched it foam past, rumbling and roaring as if impatient at being deprived for so long of its prey. He wondered how long a strong swimmer could live down there. A sudden sound above him drew his gaze upward, and he saw that the trapdoor of the cage had opened once more. The cage was descending upon him at express train speed.
IF it didn’t stop it would crush him there, or else hurl him into the water. He crouched, ready to dive, and noted something for the first time. The grating had opened wide now, leaving him only about four inches to stand on. He could see clearly now, and noticed that there was a cord of some sort stretched across the opening, fluttering around in the foaming waters.
Barely had his brain grasped the significance of this cord stretched across the opening, before the cage was upon him. Only a half-inch of foothold remained, and he was ready to dive, when that sixth sense of his held him there. And he was not crushed. For the cage had stopped with a sudden lurch, not a foot from his crouched head; it stopped with a jerk that would have dislodged anybody clinging to its sides.
And with that half-inch of foothold remaining to him, “X” did the thing that his sudden understanding of the situation dictated. He stooped far over, gripped that cord, and yanked it upward. At the same tune he reached up and gripped the hanging edge of the open trapdoor in the cage.
His pull on the cord brought instant response in the form of a clamorous bell ringing somewhere above. The last half-inch of grating disappeared from under his feet, and he let go the cord, clung with both hands to the trapdoor.
His quick intuition had grasped the situation instantly. That cord was there to tell the Skull whether or not his man had fallen through the opening. If the bell rang, the Skull knew the job was done; if it didn’t he knew that his victim was still clinging to the elevator. So he had dropped the cage with a jerk to dislodge him. And now that “X” had pulled the cord, the Skull would think that he had gone through this time.
And “X” had judged correctly. For the grating started to slide back once more, until it covered the opening again. If the Agent had fallen through, he would be trapped there in the rushing water, unable to climb out. And the water was now a good half-inch above the bars of the grating, rising faster and faster.
“X” did not look down again. He devoted his attention to getting back in the elevator. His hold on the edge of the trapdoor had been precarious, but now he could stand on the grating. He reached up, gripped the lever just inside the cage, lifted himself by that, then managed to scramble up by getting a purchase on the upper edge of the trapdoor for here it was hinged to the wall of the cage.
He raised one foot, then the other, and levered himself up. He was now resting his fingertips on the hinged edge of the trapdoor. He strained his muscles, and inch by inch he moved himself upward.
Now he had his back against one wall, and the soles of his shoes against the other, resting on the lever. He was well within the cage when the trapdoor suddenly swung shut beneath him. With a sigh of relaxing muscles he rested on the floor; if the trapdoor had remained open another half minute he would have been compelled to give up his hold and drop back to the grating.
Slowly, the cage began to rise. The Skull must by now be convinced that he was beneath the grating, carried along by the rushing force of the river water. He had dropped his gas gun and screwdriver in the first mad fall of the elevator. If he should come to grips with the master of murder he must use some other means to fight him.
He waited, breathing deeply, while the cage rose for what he estimated were about three flights. It was dark in the cage; but the Agent did not take out his flashlight. Darkness was his friend now.
When the elevator came to a stop, Secret Agent “X” rose to his feet and tried the lever that controlled the door. It worked. The Skull had apparently hooked up the connection again from the outside, intending no doubt to use the cage when he was through with the valves controlling the river flow.
The panel slid open, and “X” stepped into the corridor. He did not close the panel behind him. It might be necessary to have it conveniently open on the way back.
Chapter XX
ALIAS THE SKULL
NOW, the Agent proceeded swiftly from passage to passage, his uncanny instinct for direction guiding him right. Yet he was cautious, proceeding soundlessly through the empty passages. For he was unarmed, and the Skull would be fully equipped and dangerous; even though he might be taken by surprise at finding “X” still alive.
The Agent met no one as he retraced his steps and reached the huge barred door of the execution chamber. He did not stop here, but made his way into the next corridor, opened a door and stepped carefully into the anteroom of the Skull’s private sanctum. This was where he had originally been searched by Rufe Linson when he came as Fannon. Before him was the door without a handle. The door which led to the inner lair of the Skull.
Quickly, silently, “X” stooped before that door, and laid out at his side the flat black case containing his chromium steel instruments. From this case he extracted a long, thin, tempered steel tool, which he in
serted in the crack between the door and the jamb. He knew that the door was opened electrically from within, and being familiar with such mechanisms, he knew exactly what tool to use.
The steel jimmy, a perfect conductor of electricity, closed the circuit which controlled the door, and it swung open on well-oiled hinges.
The room within was utterly dark. Would it be occupied?
The Agent tensed as he saw that the face of the Skull was gleaming at him from the darkness—that luminous face, weird and revolting.
“X” waited tautly. He was in the light, at the mercy of the demoniac master of evil who sat there. Not a word was spoken. The Skull’s face did not move.
Suddenly, “X’s” eyes began to gleam. He sensed something; no man could sit there so quietly, absolutely immovable. With a quick motion he produced his flashlight, clicked it on, directed its beam at the desk. Its rays bathed the hideous face. And the Agent, with a sigh of relief, scooped up his tools, darted into the room. He stopped short just within; he had been about to dart across to the desk—and in doing so he would have stepped on that four-foot strip of electrically charged floor.
The Agent jumped, cleared the strip, and came close to the desk. The thing that glowed there luminous and ugly was not the head of a man, but a mask—the mask which the Skull used. It was painted with phosphorus to resemble the bony structure of the head, and in the dark the phosphorus gleamed in the semblance of a skull. Over the back of the chair lay the vermilion-hooded cloak of the master of crime.
That mask and cloak could mean only one thing. That the Skull was still out in the guise of Binks. “X” glanced at his watch; ten-thirty. Yes. The Skull had said where he was going. He would be in the main room now, preparing to take some men out to collect the ransom for the first of the millionaires.
The Agent found a shaded lamp on the desk. He turned this on; it cast a dull light, sufficient to illuminate the room. In the wall to the left of the desk there was an open panel. “X” could see a narrow spiral staircase just outside the panel, leading upward. He knew where it went, from his knowledge of the location of the rooms; it led up to the niche in the execution chamber, where the Skull held his cruel rites.
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