His vision blurred and his brain hazy from pain, “X” puzzled foggily to determine the cause of the fire. There was a peculiar glow to the flame that was unlike ordinary combustions. He recalled the terrific explosion that had knocked him out. Again he studied the flame—like opals on fire. Then he understood. The rival mobsters had fired a phosphorus bomb.
Already the burning chemical was eating through the top, dripping fire onto the rear cushions. If those flaming globules dropped on “X” they would cling and eat like acid. The poisonous fumes were pouring into the car. “X” was but a few seconds from unconsciousness. He knew it.
Some of the phosphorus had got into the engine, and there was danger of an explosion. Even if “X” did get free, he would be exposed to the menace of Tommy guns. The left forward door was jammed, and the one next to the driver’s seat would open onto sure death. Peril cleared his brain. He contemplated the left rear door. That was his one chance, yet near it phosphorus was dripping from the burning top. He had to risk that vicious chemical, or be broiled to death.
The Secret Agent took a knife from his pocket and ripped the leather covering from the front seat. Using this as a shield over his head and body, he climbed to the rear, careful not to step on the phosphorus.
Instantly his improvised leather shield was dotted with fiery particles, but he got the door open, and flung himself from the roaring holocaust into the road. He hurled the blazing covering away, stepped gingerly to avoid phosphorus on the ground, and made for the ditch. A wild shout came from the other car. “X” gave a violent leap. He had been spotted.
While in mid-air a Tommy gun began streaming lead around him. Bullets seared across his back as he fell, but the mobster did not shift his aim soon enough to finish the Agent.
Some of the brush was afire, for the bomb had scattered the phosphorus. “X” managed to avoid the flames as he crawled through the brush toward the dope car. That direction saved his life, for the gangster was raking the ditch with machine-gun fire farther down, obviously thinking that the person, if he lived, was making his escape to the rear.
The firing from Martel’s men had dwindled with ominous significance. “X” detected only two guns in operation from the side. Then came a piercing outburst that rose shrilly above the savage rattle and roar of the Thompsons.
A man cursed madly. The Agent recognized the voice of Fat Hickman. The killer’s stream of oaths was suddenly cut off in a withering blast of gunfire. Another gang execution had taken place. That ended the battle. Possibly one Martel man still lived, but he was not staying to meet the same fate as his companions.
By now the Martel sedan was a mass of flames. Any moment the fire would reach the gas tank. “X” was close enough to be killed by an explosion. As swiftly as he could; he crawled through the bushes. The mobsters, triumphant but begrimed and bloody from the battle, returned to the dope car. The engine started, and the machine swung around to head back the way it came.
Climbing the bank of the ditch, “X” darted to the rear of the machine, and clutched onto the spare tire. It was a desperate risk.
About a quarter of a mile away there boomed a thunderous explosion as flames reached the gas tank of the Martel sedan. “X” clamped his jaws as he looked back at the flaming wreck. To him that demolished car was like a symbol of the destruction that was being wrought to fatten the bank accounts of vicious, greed-mastered men like Martel.
Yet Martel was insignificant compared to the drug menace that was breaking into this racket.
Chapter IV
MONSTERS OF EVIL
THE dope car swung off onto another road, and headed in the direction of the city. Agent “X” quickly took something from an inner pocket of his coat. This was a small, flat object that looked like a pocket camera.
He snapped it open, pressed a black disc attached to a cord to the rear of the sedan, put the cameralike box to his ear and fingered a screw head on its side. At first only a confused blur of sound reached him. He tuned his amplifying device down, selecting the sounds he wanted. And in a moment he began to catch bits of conversation. He learned that a Martel spy had been caught and tortured into talking. That was why the mobsters were prepared for the hi-jackers.
“X” began to grow concerned about his next move when the car reached the city. If the driver took a route through the center of town, “X” would have to get off, for a man hanging onto a spare tire would get the instant attention of a night-patrolling cop. And the Agent didn’t like the idea of following in a taxi. The gangsters would surely be watching to see if they were trailed.
But the Agent’s worry on this score was dispelled when the car neared the city, for the driver headed toward the river. The auto sped along the dark, deserted waterfront between the columns of a ramp. “X” hoped that one of the men would say something that would give him an idea of their destination. He was riding with killers. If they found him, he would soon be floating in the river.
The driver traveled within the speed limit, for with their illegal freight, they could not afford to be stopped. “X” believed it was a hot car anyway, stolen for the trip, to be abandoned after it was unloaded.
Drawing near a tumbling down old condemned warehouse, the car swerved to a driveway alongside it, and next to the high brick wall surrounding a packing plant. As the car crossed the sidewalk, “X” dropped from his perch, and darted to the corner of the wall.
The machine stopped a short stretch down the alleyway in front of a small workman’s cottage. Four of the men leaped out, scanned the driveway in both directions, and then pulled eight large suitcases from the machine.
If those suitcases were filled with narcotics, the runners had made a very profitable trip, for, computed at current prices, that quantity would sell in the tens of thousands.
It was close to sunrise now. Trucks were rumbling over the cobblestones. Early gangs of dock workers were shuffling to the piers. “X” now knew one of the hideouts. But with dawn approaching, there was little he could do. He might visit the cottage later in the day, disguised as a peddler or a tramp hunting for a hand-out. Or he might wait until darkness. But, in his present disguise as Spats McGurn, his appearance would arouse suspicion. He started to turn away, when some one came out of the cottage.
“X” stepped into the shadows. The mobster started the car, and backed out. The Agent’s eyes blazed with excitement. That changed his plans, but suited him perfectly. When the machine neared the sidewalk, he again took his position on the rear tire. But he didn’t intend to stay there long.
At the first stop for traffic, “X” stepped to the pavement, walked to the side of the car, and thrust the muzzle of his gas gun through a lowered window. As the mobster turned, a jet of gas sprayed directly into his face. The man gasped, started to curse and go for his gun. Then he collapsed over his steering wheel.
By the time the traffic cleared, the Agent was in the driver’s seat, with the mobster slumped beside him, overcome by the gas. “X” drove to another of his hideouts, in the tenement section more than two miles from this spot. The dope runner was still unconscious when the Agent stopped. Putting one of the man’s arms over his shoulder and holding the wrist, “X” grabbed him around the waist, and dragged him across the sidewalk. An early pedestrian stopped and stared.
“Too much celebration,” explained the Agent, and hauled the mobster into the dim and dingy hallway. There “X” got the fireman’s grip on the man, and carried him up three flights of stairs.
“X’s” place was in the back, a typical tenement double room, shabbily furnished, but with cross-ventilation. It was not the ventilation that had interested the Agent, but the fact that one of the windows was close to the fire escape of the next building, offering a chance of escape in an emergency.
AFTER he locked the window and drew the blinds, the Agent bound and gagged his captive, then went back to the car, which he drove to another section of the city and abandoned. A hot car would draw a cop instantly. He didn’t want a
blue-coat prowling around the tenement where his hideout was located.
By the time he returned it was daylight and the effects of the gas had worn off. The mobster was conscious and struggling with his bonds. “X” placed some white powders, neatly squared on white paper, on a tray and held them in front of the dope runner. The man was a drug addict, sweating and writhing in his need for easement. “X” removed the gag.
“If you yell,” he said, holding the gas gun menacingly, “it’ll only be once, understand? I’m not going to fool with you. What is your name? Whom do you work for? Your system is screaming for a shot. Here it is. Enough to make you do a toe dance. Talk—and I’ll give it to you.”
As Martel had said—dope was power. This man was born a cur and a weakling, but he feared gang reprisal. It took an hour before his tongue began to wag. But when he started, he chattered like a man in a delirium.
“I’m Louie Corbeau. Geez, fella, give me a sniff, just one little sniff! I’ve got to have it. I’ll kill a cop, do anything for you, for one of them decks. I’m dyin’, mister, dyin’! Your foot ever go to sleep? Well, that’s the way I am. Only a billion needles are stickin’ into me from head to foot. Let my hands loose so I can grab onto something. Geez, I can’t stand it! I’m goin’ nuts. You ain’t human, mister. Can’t you see I’m dyin’ for want of a shot?”
The Agent looked at the man with a coldness that was beyond pity or contempt. Just as this man was a dupe for the leaders of the dope ring, so he was a pawn for “X” in the Agent’s grim, relentless drive against that ring. “X” was aloof. Like a great surgeon, he employed his genius for the betterment of humanity, and for this killer and criminal in his power he felt only scorn.
“Corbeau, you can squirm until your nerves crawl out of your flesh,” said “X” grimly, “and this morphine will stay on the tray. This is barter and trade. Give me information and you’ll get the dope.”
“Geez, I’ll talk!” blurted Louie Corbeau. “I don’t know much. The mob is located in that condemned warehouse at Haswell and Riverfront. I’ve only been a snowbird three months, boss. Honest! I got hurt in an auto smash up. Went to the hospital. An orderly kept givin’ me cigarettes every day. After I was discharged, I nearly went goofy when I couldn’t get any. Then a fella told me I could get the stuff to quiet my nerves. I had to join the mob—an’ now I’m squealin’ on him!”
There was terror in the man’s voice. The Agent’s eyes blazed. A trace of pity showed in them now. This man was an instinctive criminal, but he had been lured into the clutches of the gang. Here was an insidious way in which the ring worked. When it wanted a recruit, it first made him a drug addict. Once under the ring’s control, a dope fiend would commit an atrocity to get a supply of narcotic. Each new addict became an ally of the gang.
“X” questioned and cross-questioned Corbeau. The hophead told the truth, for the Agent’s skillful, rapid-fire examination did not trip him. There was no countersign to use, nothing but the mobster’s face to admit him to the hideout. The leader of the local organization was a killer named Karloff, he said. “X” obtained also the names and descriptions of the other mobsters. And then he went to work. He gave Corbeau the drug his system craved, and a powerful hypnotic which induced sleep instantly.
The Agent needed the drug addict in a relaxed condition, because the man’s face had been so distorted by agony that “X” would not have been able to determine the exact features.
THE Agent brought out his triple mirrors, peeled off the disguise of Spats McGurn, and in a few minutes he molded his plastic, volatile make-up material until Corbeau would have thought he was gazing into a mirror if he had looked at “X.”
After changing to Corbeau’s clothes, the Agent gagged his prisoner again, manacled him with steel bracelets, and left the tenement. He ate breakfast at a cheap lunch counter, and went directly to the hideout at Haswell and Riverfront. There was no signal. A man entered. If he did not belong, he probably would never get out as he had gone in. “X” walked into the workman’s cottage.
It was a three-room shack, actually occupied by a machine operator in the big packing house opposite. The workman, of course, was a mob member, who acted as a blind. The factory man was cooking ham and eggs when “X” came in. He greeted the Agent casually, calling him Corbeau. “X” nodded.
He had learned the layout of the place from his captive, and he went immediately to a small, windowless storeroom, raising a trapdoor that led into a tunnel. In a crouch he ran along this passage to a flight of steps, which took him into the large cemented basement of the condemned warehouse. The place was apparently the temporary quarters of the drug ring, for it had none of the luxurious furnishings of Martel’s hideout.
A number of rooms had been partitioned in the big house. There were tables, chairs, and army cots. A few mobsters were in the main room. A man with the scar of a bullet wound on his right cheek addressed him as Corbeau. From his captive’s descriptive, “X” knew this was Gus Tansley.
Somewhere in the building a man was shrieking for help. That was Serenti, who had been caught by the police and questioned. He had talked too much, and Karloff was punishing him by cutting off his drug supply.
At “X’s” hideout, Louie Corbeau had gibbered out the story of Serenti, for the latter’s fate would be his if it were discovered that Corbeau had told any of the secrets of the ring.
A dark, evil-faced man suddenly appeared at the Agent’s side. His approach had been so stealthy that not even “X’s” keen ears had caught any sound. The man was Karloff. “X” recognized him by the description Corbeau had given.
“Did you dispose of the machine?” asked the mob leader, speaking with a slight lisp, his voice possessing at the same time a metallic ring.
“Sure, Karloff,” answered the Agent, imitating Louie Corbeau’s voice. “I always do what you say. Now do I get my shot?”
Corbeau and the others had risked their lives to bring in a supply of the drug that would not have been exhausted by them for years, but the suitcases had been sealed. It would have been worth their lives to have opened one. Karloff kept his men under the lash by doling out drugs only when their nerves began to rebel.
He was a long, somber man, dark and sinister. His wicked eyes were like points of fire. His upper teeth protruded a little, giving him a perpetual leer. Wearing a long black coat and a high stiff collar, he had a funereal look. His black hair was plastered down on his forehead, straight across, like a bang.
“Come!” he ordered, beckoning “X.” He repeated the command and the gesture to the others. Then he drifted away like a wraith, the men obediently following.
KARLOFF led them to a group of barred cells that had been strong rooms when the huge, tumbling warehouse was in use. From one of the cells came blood-curdling screams; pitiful, heart-rending wails.
“X” saw Serenti then, the man who had talked too much. He was hardly a man any longer, but a live thing in the throes of exquisite torture. The Agent glanced coldly at Karloff, but the leader’s face was a mask that revealed nothing that went on in the cunning killer’s brain. “X” marked him as a sadist who feasted on cruelty, who was governed by inhuman traits.
Serenti threw himself against the bars and reached through with a bloody, clawlike hand, pleading for relief: His arm was bare, showing the skin, hard and toughened by countless hypo punctures. Blood streamed down Serenti’s face from deep, self-inflicted scratches. In his agony he had clawed himself unmercifully. “X” saw ugly welts and lumps on his head. Mad frenzy had made Serenti pull his hair out by the handfuls. His hands were crimson talons of raw, lacerated flesh caused by clutching the rusted iron bars, and by pawing the rough cement walls.
Nature had made the sufferer fight pain with pain. Serenti had gnawed at his tongue until it was swollen and looked like a hunk of pounded beefsteak. Crimson drooled from his cracked lips. He had slashed his arms with long finger nails. He had torn his clothes to ribbons. The craving for drugs had made Serenti demented; a
writhing, sweating, cawing, bundle of rasped and outraged nerves.
“They’re eatin’ me up!” he screamed madly. “Ants! Big red ants. Millions of them. They’re tearin’ me to pieces. But I can get rid of them. Pour gasoline over me, Corbeau! Then touch a match to me, Tansley! I’ll burn ’em off! I’ll burn them big red ants. They can’t eat me to pieces. I’ll fix ’em.”
He babbled away in a nightmarish delirium, while his companions looked on without compassion. A blaze flared in the Agent’s eyes. Karloff had the fixed expression of a hideous idol. He showed no sign of emotion. Here was an example of the tremendous power drugs could give a man like Karloff. He was a despot. An addict, deprived of his drug and shrieking for the powder that would end his suffering, would sell his life or take a life for “just one little shot.”
Serenti collapsed and clawed at the cement floor. The grinding of his teeth sounded like the rasp of a steel file against granite. He raised to his knees and cried like a lost child. Getting up, he staggered across the cell and pounded his fists against the wall.
“I’ve got to have it!” he blubbered. “Give me one little shot, Karloff. Just one little shot. Then I’ll go out and kill anyone you want. I’m being eaten—alive—eaten alive!”
“Serenti likes to talk,” said Karloff softly, his voice almost a purr. “He became very friendly with the cops last week. He even told where one of our hideouts was located. He’s been a week without his dope. But we mustn’t be too severe. Here, Serenti, here is your shot.”
Karloff spoke as gently as a mother to her sick child. Serenti uttered a hysterical cry and threw himself against the bars again. He reached out both hands for the white capsules which Karloff produced.
“You’re my friend, Karloff!” he screamed. “You’re my best pal, my only pal. I’ll do anything for you. Anything!”
Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Page 35
