He waited, seeming to hang on slack controls for an instant, then side-slipped again, as the bullets came close. Compared to him, the pilot of the attacking snip was a rank amateur—for all his masterly equipment. But the Agent’s shattered aileron was the hazard that made the outcome unpredictable. It seemed to be getting worse, as fabric and cracked metal worked loose.
For all his skilled touch on the controls, the Blue Comet was flying like a wounded bird. As he slipped this time, the ship would not straighten out immediately. And, when it did, its cowled nose dropped and it fell into a screaming spin that made black sky and lighted ground blend into a mad, dizzy jumble.
THE Agent fought desperately, sweat oozing out under the clamping curve of his helmet. Twice he stopped the corkscrew turns, sent the ship into a long glide, only to have it spin again. The third time he half rose in the cockpit, leaning far out over the padded coaming, adding his weight to the slender balance of the controls. The ship dived, leveled, and began a long climb.
Savagely, as though sensing that victory was close at hand, the other ship banked and came on. The Secret Agent pressed the Blue Comet’s throttle forward to the quadrant stop, gave the blasting cylinders of his radial the last drop of gas they could take. The pull drone of the steel prop as it bit into the air rose to a deafening scream. The slanted orange wings rocketed the plane skyward.
But the other ship still had the advantage of altitude. And its hurtling climb was equal to the Blue Comet’s. But Agent “X” had a plan. If the blind god of Chance favored him, if those raking bullets did not strike him or the bomb, he might yet escape the flying killer by reaching altitudes that the seaplane could not attain. For wing surface must count, given equal horsepower. And he believed his own wings were at least a foot broader.
Yet the hopelessness of his scheme was soon brought home. A steel-jacketed bullet glanced against a flat flying wire with a mocking spang. He presented too good a target. The man in the seaplane could not fly, but he could shoot. And the muzzles of his twin synchronized guns would accomplish what his hand on the controls might not. Those tracers made it too easy for him to point the nose of his ship at the crippled, helpless Blue Comet.
With a tug at his heart, Agent “X” made a swift decision. There was one last chance to save himself and the precious bomb—and to save those on the ground below from awful death. If he threw the bomb overboard, or left it in the plane with him dead or wounded at the controls—the result would be the same. An explosion that would surely wipe out other lives when the terrible engine of death struck. Yet if he sacrificed his plane, jumped now, taking the bomb with him—he might win his fearful game with death.
That was the final plan that Agent “X” had evolved. To make use of his seat-pack parachute, hold the bomb in a dizzy plunge earthward. To let the faithful Blue Comet crash pilotless, hoping that it would miss human habitation. Even if it struck, the disaster would not be as great as though the bomb were in it.
He braced the control stick with his knee, reached down and drew the gray cylinder from under his seat. Bullets slashed close around him, as though the fiend in the seaplane sensed some trickery, and was making desperately certain that his blood lust were not cheated. One of the crystal, gleaming dials on the Blue Comet’s instrument panel, a Sperry horizon indicator of latest design, smashed into a myriad needle-sharp particles that stung the Agent’s face. The engine gave a sobbing cough as a fuel gauge went next.
Bleak-eyed, holding the bomb beneath his right arm, his hand clamped around it, Agent “X” swung a leg over the ship’s side. Never had he so hated to sacrifice a piece of inanimate mechanism. The swift Blue Comet had been like a symbol of his power and vengeance over the black forces of crime. Its destruction seemed an omen of his own inescapable defeat. But if in sacrificing it he helped to bring about the Terror’s downfall, then the valiant ship would have been lost in a human and precious cause.
The weight of his body unbalanced the crippled plane. It turned, hurled him out—and the next instant Agent “X” was plunging earthward through the still dark sky.
One thing alone was fixed in his mind as his body dropped like a stone through space. The bomb! The deadly cylinder that his stiff arm and clawlike fingers clutched. He had made chute jumps before. The first, years ago over a field near Charlrois, when the high tide of the German advance was engulfing all Belgium in a red wave of fear. And when Agent “X,” as a brilliant Intelligence operative, was being dropped into enemy-held territory. Many other jumps had followed in the intervening years. But never had he gone overside with such an engine of death in his grasp.
He made a delayed jump now, did not pull the ripcord till he had fallen a thousand feet below the spot where he had left the Blue Comet’s cockpit. That was his only chance of escaping leaden death. For he knew the killer would not stop at blasting him from his ship. Guessing his daring maneuver perhaps, the man above, who knew no mercy, would try to complete his work.
Not till the ground with its sparkling lights came dangerously close did Agent “X” reach for the slender wire. Then he tugged it calmly, surely, and felt the harness jerk about his body blisteringly as the pilot chute leaped out and the big envelope of the chute itself blossomed.
His clutch on the bomb was vise-like. The strange silence of his slower descent was as though he had been whisked into another world. But, listening, he could hear the motor of the seaplane, and it seemed to him that the other ship had turned and was swooping down. The ground was only eight hundred feet below him. But he knew that in the next few minutes relentless death would be on his heels again.
Chapter XVI
SINISTER CLUE
IT came even before he had reckoned. The seaplane was in a power dive. His airman’s ears told him that. The ship was hurtling down out of the night straight toward his opened chute. The white spread of it must be faintly visible even in the darkness—presenting a perfect target.
He waited till the engine’s roar was echoing almost in his ears—waited till something zipped close beside him in the darkness. It was a tracer he knew. The acrid smell of the phosphorous was in his nostrils.
Then his left hand tugged at the parachute’s shroud lines. He gathered them in expertly, spilled air out of the great, white umbrella—and the chute fell off on that side, rocked dizzily and plunged a good hundred feet lower.
The seaplane came around in a snarling bank. He was surprised at the quickness of the maneuver. Its guns were chattering again as his fingers dug into the shrouds. The ground was only six hundred feet down now. The flying killer was desperate to get him. He heard a sound that brought a coldness to his heart. It was the spat of a bullet against the top of his chute. He looked up. A dull glow showed. An incendiary tracer had gone through the fabric, left a burning ring. Here was death in a new guise!
With hands taut as talons the Secret Agent gathered in the shrouds away from the side where the burning spot appeared. He tugged fiercely; let the big envelope sag away, hoping to blow the fire out. But the wind blast was not great enough. It only fanned the slow flame—and Agent “X” knew that he was poised on the very brink of eternity. The small, cankerlike flame festered in his chute. The ground five hundred feet below. The bomb under his arm—and the bullets of the killer above seeking to do still more damage. He must not drop too fast—lest the shock of landing set off the death cylinder he carried. Yet he could not risk another bullet in the fabric of his chute. One more, and the wind that spilled from the holes would increase his velocity to such an extent that the bomb would surely explode when he hit.
Now, before the greedy flame had grown too great, he must stake everything—win or lose.
The plane was coming for him, its guns chattering madly. It had swooped lower, its pilot anticipating another hundred-foot drop on the part of “X”. But the Agent gathered in the shroud lines now and clutched them tightly, cutting the chute’s surface in half, falling away crazily—pitching downward to what seemed inevitable destruction. But
“X” was watching the ground, figuring his odds as calmly as though this were some pleasant outdoor sport he were indulging in.
The pilot of the death ship, thinking evidently that the chute had been destroyed, not supposing that any man would take such chances purposely, held his fire.
Night wind was sweeping the chute toward a lighted avenue. The slender lines of telegraph wires showed. A vacant field was beyond them, with dark shrubbery at its farther edge. There were houses all around, and lights were appearing in them, as sleepers, wakened by the machine-gun fire, got up to see what it was.
Agent “X” held his breath. He was falling at a terrible speed. The telegraph wires were directly below now. Tangled in them, he would not be able to retain his hold on the bomb. It would fall to the hard ground—and that would be the end, for himself and a hundred others in the suburban houses around.
He released the shroud lines then—played his last card, let the chute billow out again. For a second his speed was unabated—and wind whistled through the rent where the sullen phosphorous flame still burned. But the spread of the fabric was still great enough to act as a partial cushion. His calculation had been uncanny. His earthward velocity decreased. The wind carried him over the gleaming wires. The dark turf of the field beyond swept up.
And now “X” got ready for the greatest ordeal of all—the shock when he struck with the added weight of the bomb. He drew his legs up under him, bent his knees to act as springs, pressed the metal cylinder against his middle and doubled up over it, both arms around it as though it had been a football. And the next instant he hit!
It was a moment when all existence seemed to hang suspended; a nightmarish second that he was never to forget. For the wind pulled him off his balance, dragged him over the hard, frozen ground, and the shocks were like some malicious fiend striking out deliberately for the bomb.
“X” ROLLED over on his back, took the full force of the blows against his body, protecting the bomb with his own flesh. And, when the chute caught and stopped at last in the shrubbery at the field’s end, he lay dazed for a moment.
Then in the blackness above him he heard the sinister drone of the seaplane again. And it brought him to his senses like the voice of doom. He set the bomb down, drew a knife from his pocket and slashed himself free of the chute harness.
The next instant, as a dark shape hurtled down out of the night, he was sprinting toward the grove of trees, plunging in amongst greenbriar and dwarf cedars as bullets sought to destroy him.
But he knew he could not be seen now. He held the bomb safely, raced deeper into the woods, and the slashing stream of lead that clipped branches and spatted against the ground, swung away. Agent “X” was safe.
But he did not think of that. His desperate, daring work had made him slur over such contrasts. Safety—danger, came in too swift rotation. He only knew there was work to be done, an unheard-of menace to be battled. More than ever speed was imperative. For the Terror, learning how “X” had struggled to preserve the bomb, might suspect that he had some deeper motive than desire to chisel in on Gus Sanzoni’s racket. And it was apparent, from the air attack on “X,” that the Terror’s spies were everywhere; that he had secret knowledge of the underworld.
The Agent got out of his flying suit, wrapped it around the deadly cylinder. He paused suddenly. From far off there came a jarring crash—then silence.
That would be his faithful Blue Comet, passing to destruction. It was nothing but a tangled piece of wreckage now. He only hoped that no house or building had been in its path. He could not fly to his mountain laboratory in it. There wasn’t time to charter another ship. He was far from an air field.
He emerged from the woods, saw a small, suburban village ahead. It was late, long after midnight. The narrow streets were empty, the houses dark. But a few parked cars stood about, their owners too poor or too niggardly to rent garage space.
The Secret Agent moved quickly toward one. He could not dally with convention. In his battles with crime he used whatever means came to hand, when emergency pressed close. He would borrow a vehicle now, settle with its owner later if there was any loss. Those who unknowingly aided the Secret Agent always received double the value of the service rendered.
One of the cars was a common standard make. A key on the Agent’s ring, adjustable to any lock tumblers of a certain size, opened the door and started the ignition. In a moment he was driving away into the open country, with the deadly bomb beside him.
He located what appeared to be a deserted farm, judging by the condition of the buildings, and drove his borrowed car into an old barn. Here he turned up a box and laid the bomb on it.
Using the car’s headlights as laboratory lamps he spread out the compact portable tools that had been hidden in his pockets and strapped to his body during the chute jump. There were others that he would have liked to have but with these he had often before accomplished seeming miracles. There were files, a pair of clippers, screwdrivers, a hacksaw, and the goose-necked and pivoted bits of metal with which he opened locks. These would have to do in the strange task before him.
Quietly, calmly, he set to work, removing the bomb’s dust cap again, baring the intricate radio-impulse mechanism. A sudden horror filled him as he looked at it. What if the Terror should send out the fatal dots and dashes on a wave-length of nineteen meters just to blast him into eternity? This bomb would not explode, but eleven others might. He would be safe—but a whole city might be bathed in blood and death. For he had figured that all twelve of the hidden bombs must be sensitive to the same impulse.
His fingers trembled slightly as he began to disassemble the ghastly infernal machine. But soon they steadied. Here was work that called for the utmost care and caution. He located the bomb’s fuse and a tiny gunlike hammer which could be liberated by clockwork to descend on the detonating cap. He breathed easier when both had been removed.
He examined each piece that he took out, made brief but precise notes on a piece of paper. A micrometer gauge, accurate to the thousandth of an inch, gave him fractional measurements.
He viewed the inner casing of the bomb. It had been made to fit a thirty-seven millimeter shell, such as are used in the new aerial war cannon. The criminal genius who had devised the bomb had merely adapted it for a still more terrible use. And Agent “X” bent forward suddenly. For at the bottom of the case was a manufacturer’s mark, stamped into the metal.
The Agent focused a double-lensed magnifier upon it. It was the registered design of an American shell maker—the Schofield Arms Company, a small munitions concern which had prospered recently on orders for light arms and small caliber aerial cannon received from several Balkan States.
The mark itself did not excite “X.” He had seen it before during an investigation into the world munitions’ traffic, when he had collected data on the giant Skoda works, on the Vickers plants in England, and on a half dozen other European and United States concerns.
What did excite him was a fact stored away in his own memory. For he knew that the Schofield Arms Company was controlled by American interests, American investors, and foremost among them was a man the Agent had talked to only a few days before. This was Harrigan—member of the Bankers’ Club and close associate of Mayor Ballantine—who had gone out to interview Ballantine on Monte Sutton’s yacht, and had later been caught by “X” rifling the mayor’s safe.
Chapter XVII
IN DEATH’S STRONGHOLD
EMOTION filled “X” as he continued his work. His startling discovery of the clue connecting Harrigan’s concern with the murder machine was like a whiplash spurring him on.
He removed the appalling explosive itself next. It was contained in a celluloid case. It was a greenish, greasy acid. The faint fumes coiling from it were like a miasma of death. He buried most of it under the barn floor where he could return for it later. He took out an infinitely small sample to be submitted to chemical analysis. And even these few grains, he knew, could reduce a
man’s body to a bloody pulp.
He quickly reassembled the empty bomb, did it up again in his flying clothes, and left the deserted farm as he had come.
Grimly he drove through the darkness in the borrowed auto, headed back toward the city. There were still several hours of darkness left. There was much to be done in them.
In the next hour Agent “X” sent out commands to both of his undercover organizations. He commissioned Bates to investigate secretly the Schofield Arms Company and obtain all possible data as to their present activities in high-explosive manufacture. He asked Jim Hobart to locate Harrigan immediately.
Then Agent “X” went to the hideout where Bugs Gary and Gus Sanzoni were still unconscious prisoners. “X” had a move in mind more daring than any he had ordered Bates or Hobart to perform. It was a move that no other criminal investigator in the world would have thought of undertaking—a move that only Secret Agent “X,” Man of a Thousand Faces, was fitted to make, by talent and training.
He went to the couch at the side of the room where the gross, slumped figure of Gus Sanzoni lay. Every shade in the house had been drawn. Special, light-proof shutters of opaque boarding had been fitted by “X” on the inside of the windows in the chamber where he had deposited his prisoners. He switched on a small mercury vapor lamp now. Its beam made the room as bright as day. An achromatic globe over the lamp acted as a color-filter in bringing out the natural tints of Gus Sanzoni’s fat face.
Agent “X” studied the mobster intently. Sanzoni was breathing slowly and stertorously in his deep, drug-induced sleep. The Agent took a leatherette case of medicines and chemicals from a cabinet drawer. He tied a paper cone over Sanzoni’s face, let fall a trickle of blended ammonia spirits in a piece of cotton at the cone’s end. The fumes filled Sanzoni’s nostrils, entered his lungs.
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