Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3

by Emile C. Tepperman

  The Agent gave a low chuckle of laughter again. The sound was as harshly abrupt as the crack of a whip.

  “Turn that gun the other way! If you shoot—this bomb will drop. One bump—and there won’t be enough left of you or this building to scrape up. Stand clear—all of you—or you’ll get rubbed out.”

  The Agent moved his right hand, made motions with his fingers close to the round top of the bomb. He seemed to be twisting a screw head.

  “I’ll start the fuse,” he snapped, “if you don’t stand dear!”

  One of the gangsters, a hophead judging by his chalk-white complexion, made a sudden whimpering sound.

  “Geez! Lay off him! Leave the guy alone! A pal of mine was down by the river last night and seen the island go up in smoke. He told me about it—an’ if that’s the kind of apple that done it I don’t wanna fool wit it.”

  AGENT “X” took the initiative. He moved forward with a menacing motion, and the gangsters stepped back. He was only partially bluffing. He couldn’t start the fuse by turning a screw, but, for all he knew, even a slight jar might serve to detonate it. He was using it as a means of escape, playing a deadly game with these hirelings of Sanzoni’s.

  The leader spoke sharply to one of his men. “Go up and get the big boss,” he said. “Ask him to come down here. Tell him there’s a crazy guy threatening to blow the place up.”

  They had backed out into the main part of the cellar now. They faced Agent “X” as he emerged from the wine room.

  He saw that these men had no inkling of the truth. They didn’t know the nature of the protection that a master criminal had given their boss, Gus Sanzoni.

  A moment later there was a creaking on the stairs, then a wheezing sound as the fat criminal, Gus Sanzoni, came down into the cellar. His small, piggish eyes were bright as he spoke in an unctuous, oily tone, thinking evidently that “X” was some half-mad criminal with a new sort of racket.

  “Come on now, fella,” he said smoothly. “I’ll pay you big to take that thing outta here. You’re a smart fella, and I like smart guys. You’ve got a good racket, and I’m willing to come across. Just take that thing out easy, I got guests upstairs.” “X” intercepted a flashing signal from fat Sanzoni’s eyes. He saw two of the gangsters edging slowly nearer, ready to make a sudden lunge while Sanzoni talked. They thought “X” was some kind of a crazy terrorist. They planned to take the bomb away from him by guile.

  “X” spoke again quickly, staring Sanzoni straight in the face. “No tricks,” he said harshly, “or none of you will live. This thing can’t be fooled with—and I didn’t bring it in. It was here already—and has been here for days. Look in your wine cellar. It was sealed in the wall there. I just took it out.”

  More jeers came, but Gus Sanzoni looked startled.

  “Go and see,” he wheezed. “You, José, find out if the guy’s telling the truth.”

  A swarthy gangster detached himself from the group and disappeared into the wine cellar that “X” had so lately left. He came back big eyed, and nodded.

  “It’s God’s truth, boss! There’s a hole in the wall—a place for that thing to roost in. The cement’s been cut away. That bomb must have been there—and this guy took it out.”

  Sudden pastiness spread over Sanzoni’s fat face. His breath seemed to choke him, wheeze in his throat.

  “Some one,” he gasped, “planted it there—to kill me!” he clenched his big hands, screamed sudden orders. “Search—you fools! There may be others!” His eyes glinted with cunning as he stared at “X.”

  “You must be a detective,” he went on. “You must have got wind of the fact that that thing was there.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the Agent answered slowly, each syllable falling dramatically from his lips.

  “I am Secret Agent ‘X,’” he said.

  He had reason for letting Gus Sanzoni and his men know who he was. He was gambling with death—staking his wits against the Grim Reaper, not to preserve his own life—but hoping to save the lives of others.

  For he recalled vividly the words of the document found in Ballantine’s safe. “Any undercover attempt to thwart my plans will only result in catastrophe.” The Secret Agent had to think of those thousands who would be brought close to the brink of eternity when the Terror learned that some one was after him. If the Terror suspected the law was on his trail, he might make good his threat—send out the impulse that would plunge the city into the vortex of bloody horror.

  But if he understood it wasn’t the law, but Secret Agent “X,” a man supposedly a desperate criminal like himself, and whom the police had many times tried to capture and imprison, he would take other means. He would try assuredly to kill the Agent as a dangerous rival. But he would see the uselessness of destroying the city’s thousands.

  THAT was the Secret Agent’s mad gamble. Fear for once lay cold against his heart. Fear for the citizens who did not know their danger. Fear that he was playing too reckless a game. What if the Terror should suspect? But he could not think of that— He turned almost fiercely on Sanzoni.

  The fat gangster’s jaw had dropped at mention of the dread name of Agent “X.” The eyes of his men had grown wide. Rumors, whispered along the byways of the underworld, had reached their ears. The pall of impenetrable mystery that lay over the Secret Agent’s activities made his character fearsome, awe-inspiring. That fear whitened the face of Sanzoni now. He obviously believed himself in the presence of an arch-criminal, pitiless, enigmatic, inhuman. He tried to speak, but only a wheeze came from his bloodless lips. One fat hand ineffectually pawed the air.

  Agent “X” took advantage of the momentary sensation his disclosure had made. He made an abrupt movement, so quick that none in that room could follow it. His right hand, clutching the deadly bomb, swung down under his arm. His left snapped forward, the gas gun appearing as though by magic in his fingers—its muzzle pressed against the fat belly of Sanzoni.

  “Now,” he snapped, “you will come with me! I want to talk to you—and if any of your men shoot or try to interfere, two things will happen. First, I’ll pull the trigger of this gun. Second, this bomb will drop—and blow you to pieces.”

  Gus Sanzoni was quaking now. Prosperity had made him soft. Fear had a leechlike hold upon him. He found his voice at last.

  “Keep away, boys,” he said weakly. “I’ll see what—what this man wants. Stand clear of the stairs.”

  With Sanzoni mounting ahead of him, “X’s” gun at his back, the Agent guided the gangster from the cellar and took the bomb with him.

  “Out that door,” he commanded. “Quick!”

  With gangsters trailing them at a respectful distance, Agent “X” prodded Sanzoni along the dark street to his parked car. He took a roundabout route, away from the lighted entrance of the building.

  “Get in,” he ordered when they reached the car.

  For a moment Sanzoni hesitated. A jab of the gun made him jump. “X” threw the car into gear and shot away from the curb, the gun still in his hand. Driving swiftly through the night-shrouded streets, he turned and stared at the fat criminal. There was a look of flashing magnetic power in the Agent’s eyes now that evil-doers found hard to meet. Backed by the steady pressure of the gun, it menaced Gus Sanzoni, while the Agent asked a question.

  “Who is the man who gives you protection, Sanzoni?”

  The gangster’s lower jaw dropped. He swayed a little in the seat.

  “I—” his breath came to a wheezing end. He began again. “I—can’t—tell—you!”

  “No!” There was harsh derision in the Agent’s tone. “I’ll answer that question myself then. The mayor of this city hands it out. Isn’t that right?”

  Another jab of the gun followed “X’s” words. The fat gangster’s silence and widening eyes gave mute confirmation to what “X” had said.

  “And you’ve been pulling a lot of fast ones lately, Sanzoni,” went on the Agent. “Your men have been having it all their own wa
y, without police interference. Who’s the fellow you divvy up with—that’s what I want to know? Come on, tell me, or I’ll pull the trigger of this gat—and dump you out in a ditch.”

  This was the kind of talk Sanzoni understood. He had left riddled sodden corpses lying in ditches himself in his time. He saw violent death staring him in the face, and a trembling seized his body. He clenched and unclenched his fat hands.

  “I—I don’t know,” he wheezed. “Honest, I never seen the guy. I just get orders—by telephone—where to leave the stuff. I leave it where he says. He’s got the mayor sewed up somehow. The bulls have been laying off my men like you say.”

  The Agent’s face was masklike for a moment. An uncanny judge of human nature, he knew that Sanzoni was telling the truth. This was what he had half expected. This was what the document in Ballantine’s safe had led him to believe. Sanzoni himself didn’t know who the Terror was. “X” didn’t speak again. His purpose in forcing Sanzoni to come along with him had not been merely to question the man.

  His gas gun flashed up now, quick as a striking snake. The Agent fired full into the fat gangster’s face, cutting off the scream that bubbled to Sanzoni’s lips. Sanzoni tumbled side-wise against the side of the car, inert as a bag of meal.

  Making sure he was not being pursued, Agent “X” drove quickly to the same garage where a few hours before he had taken Bugs Gary. The ex-convict, formerly a Sanzoni man, was still his prisoner, in the house behind the garage. Now “X” carried the unconscious form of the gangster chief into the same house.

  HE got out a hypo needle, gave Sanzoni an injection of anesthetic drug, which would insure his remaining out for at least twenty-four hours, unless the Agent chose to wake him with a counteracting stimulant.

  Then “X” left the hideout, got into his car again, and drove away as swiftly as he had come. Time was a precious thing. Time—that Death might be held at bay.

  Agent “X” looked down at the gray bomb now lying on the seat beside him. He was carrying one of death’s very germs through the night. He would take it somewhere, examine it carefully, make it yield whatever secrets it held. It might hold some clue to the Terror’s identity. It was a bet that must not be overlooked.

  But in any examination there was danger that it might explode. For this reason he must take it far from the city’s teeming population, far from all human habitation. And speed was imperative. The Terror might try to bring things to some swift and ghastly climax.

  Hunched over the wheel, knuckles white on its black rim, Agent “X” sped through the night. He had a definite objective now, a definite line of action.

  He stopped at another hideout farther up town to make a quick change of disguise. When he emerged, he was no longer a nondescript, unshaven night prowler. He was a sandy-haired, blunt-featured young man, dressed in an ordinary business suit. He was A. J. Martin, newspaper man, connected with a large syndicate. But the deadly bomb lay on the auto seat beside him. The look of strained intensity still showed in the Agent’s eyes.

  He raced along a wide avenue in the suburbs, drew up at last before a high iron gate with a broad field and low buildings beyond it. With the bomb under his arm, wrapped now in an old cloth, Agent “X” strode to the gate.

  A sleepy watchman was on duty. He peered, nodded. “H’yer, Mr. Martin, gettin’ an early start this mornin’?”

  The Agent merely grunted as he walked toward one of the airplane hangars. Far across the field, lights showed. A truck had come to a standstill. A fast, sturdy mail plane was getting ready to take off for the west.

  SETTING the bomb down, Agent “X” unlocked and rolled back the hangar doors. He slipped into a teddy-bear flying suit which he took from a locker, adjusted a suede helmet on his head, slipped goggles over his forehead, ready to be snapped down.

  Then he rolled out the small, compact plane that squatted in the hangar like some caged bird. It was swift, powerful, with the staggered wings, low camber and sweepback of any Army ship. It was the Secret Agent’s famous Blue Comet.

  A mechanic shuffled out from the operations office; but Agent “X” had the bomb stowed away, the plane on the deadline and the motor warming before the man arrived.

  Five minutes later he took off, sweeping up into the still black sky, carrying in the cockpit with him the metal cylinder that was the concentrated essence of Doom.

  He climbed in short, swift spirals till the airport was far below, then headed the cowled nose of his plane northward, toward a lonely mountain field he knew. A rough log building stood there, with tools in it, and some laboratory equipment. Agent “X” had used it before to examine bombs and deadly gases. If any accident should occur, only one life would be wiped out—his own.

  He planned to make a swift, thorough examination of the bomb, then return to battle with the Terror, perhaps with knowledge that would aid him in the one-sided fight.

  But, with suburban lights still streaking below, some airman’s instinct warned “X” to look up. His goggled and helmeted head turned. He stared back along the plane’s sleek fuselage, and suddenly his hand tensed on the control stick.

  A tiny, ghostly flame had appeared in the blackness above and to the rear. It was not a star; not a signal light on another ship. It was the feather of flame from the exhaust stack of a plane that he could not see. He closed his own throttle a moment, heard the whine of a racing motor.

  Then a cry came from the Agent’s lips. For, as though the night had drawn itself together, into a vicious, mailed fist, something lashed down out of the blackness. Another flame sprang into sight now. It was greenish, flickering—and above the whine of the unseen motor he heard the staccato reports of a machine gun in action.

  He knew in that instant that death was close. The other ship was above and behind. The silhouette of his Blue Comet could be seen against the ground lights. His own exhaust plume was visible also. And, with the crackling abruptness of a lightning bolt, the murderous attack came. Only the Agent’s quick thrust of the stick saved him from instant annihilation under the first deadly burst.

  Bullets crackled through the Blue Comet’s orange wings. The Agent sideslipped away—but the brief, erratic flutter of the control in his hand conveyed a message of sinister warning. One of his ailerons had been struck. He was already crippled—with a murderer striking for his life.

  Chapter XV

  THE PLUNGE

  AT the moment “X” sensed his ship had been hit, he thought of the bomb. The deadly cylinder was tucked under his seat. It was wedged so as not to fall out—but any instant now it might explode.

  If one of those ripping slugs so much as struck it a glancing blow, swift destruction would blast the night. Hours spent over war-torn fields in France years ago had taught Agent “X” all the tactics of aerial battle. As a youthful officer in Allied military intelligence, he had seen service on land, on sea and in the air. For the secret mysterious work of espionage knew no limitations, no frontiers. Only the picked few were chosen. Only the incredibly resourceful and daring survived.

  The Agent did not attempt to dive away from that probing stream of lead. To do so would have been to court instant death. He drew the stick back into his lap, shot up in a screaming, hurtling zoom, with the thunderous power of the radial lifting his ship at elevator speed. Then he thrust the control to the left side of the pit as the plane came on its back, attempting a quick wing-over. But that crippled, damaged aileron played him false.

  As though a giant steel cable had jerked it, the plane twisted around. It remained on its back, then side-slipped sickeningly. The next instant, as the attacking ship flashed by overhead, it threatened to go into a deadly flat spin.

  Agent “X” eased it out gently, adjusting himself to the unequal aileron surface. For a moment the bullets were forgotten. His fight was with the treacherous unstable medium of the air itself—and with a ship that would not obey her controls.

  Dread clutched at his heart, dread that he might plunge down into those popu
lous suburbs. Human beings were sleeping down there. Men and women, children and little babies. If his plane, freighted with that sinister egg of death struck, peaceful well-cared-for homes would be transformed into charnel houses.

  The killer above him was not considering that. In his savage desire to slay the being who was drawing close to his secrets, he was willing that hundreds of others should die. The Terror had said that his spies were ever watchful. One of them must have reported the theft of the bomb from Sanzoni’s headquarters. Perhaps he had men planted among the fat mobster’s own gang.

  And now the attacking plane had turned, and leaden slugs were coming again. These were tracers. “X” could see their flaming paths. They testified to the flying murderer’s efficiency. And he was handling his guns like an accomplished air fighter. Could this be the Terror himself, or was it merely another hireling, a paid gunman of the air?

  “X” did not know. White-lipped, blazing-eyed, he was fighting to hold death at bay. By piloting with the stick at an angle, using the full surface of the partially destroyed aileron to hold the wing up, he was accomplishing the seemingly impossible—flying level And this time he side-slipped away, letting the ship fall off on the good wing, and straightening out when the danger was momentarily passed. If he had not been crippled, he could have outflown and out-maneuvered this other pilot, though in sheer, straightaway speed, the attacking ship seemed as swift as the Blue Comet. In a moment Agent “X” saw why.

  A screaming power dive carried the murder ship below him. He got a glimpse of its silhouette against a body of water, a suburban lake.

  His airman’s eye identified it at once. It was a seaplane; stubby winged, unbelievably swift. Planes of this type were the fastest in existence, capable of speeds that won all records for velocity. Its twin pontoons were slim as knife blades. Its fuselage was streamlined like a torpedo. He was up against a terror of the air.

  It came screaming up at him like some monster hornet with the bright lash of its sting playing an evil spray of fire. The other pilot planned to rake his underside now. That, too, was a fighting maneuver. Agent “X” had seen great German Gothas turned into flaming funeral pyres by the swift upward thrust of a pursuit ship, during the War.