Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5

by Paul Chadwick

  Time was against him already. It was close to eleven now. But he’d telephoned the Veronica Cafe, found that the fence hadn’t as yet arrived, and had sped here as quickly as he could in an extra car that he kept in a mid-town garage.

  This was parked at the end of the block, and the Agent had come that far on foot, for an auto was standing in front of Sleeber’s now. It was a big limousine with gleaming enamel and nickled trimmings, and a uniformed chauffeur up front. The license number told “X,” who knew many things about Sleeber, that this was the imposing private vehicle which the receiver of stolen goods maintained.

  He debated only an instant on what course to follow—then adopted a simple plan. Shadows lay thick in the street. The chauffeur was staring stiffly ahead, waiting for his master. “X” approached the limousine cautiously from the rear.

  Indian fashion, hidden by the big car’s back, he edged around, and squatted by the rear right tire. His fingers found the tire valve and unscrewed the metal dust cap. He turned the cap over, pressed the grooved top into the intake hole, and quickly screwed the threaded valve plug up. As it neared the top threads of the intake pipe, escaping air began to hiss. The Agent left it there. The noise was too faint for the chauffeur to hear, yet the fat balloon tire would deflate in a few moments.

  “X” backed away and retreated into the shadows. At the end of the block he got into his own car again, started the motor, and sat with it slowly turning over.

  He had only a minute to wait. Light showed as Sleeber’s door opened, and the fence, who lived like a prince, came down the steps. He was a tall man in his early fifties; a man with a hard sly face, and courtly manners. No one would have taken him for a criminal. As a front, he maintained a small legitimate business, and the activities that had made him rich were carried on in a way that defied police detection. He disposed of stolen goods at a usurious commission, trafficking even with foreign crooks, and through a score of different outlets.

  Imposing now in evening clothes, dressed in the height of style, he did not guess that he had been marked for hideous death by the very man he had helped bring across the ocean.

  The chauffeur got out and opened the car door for him. Sleeber climbed in, and the limousine rolled away. Instantly Agent “X” followed.

  Two blocks, and the limousine drew into the curb again. A distressed chauffeur got out to see what had caused the flat. He bent over the deflated rubber as Agent “X” in his own car slid up opposite. The Agent stepped to the street—and the chauffeur straightened. He never knew what hit him as “X’s” balled fist caught him beside the ear. He dropped, and the Agent pulled the limousine’s door open.

  Sleeber turned, thinking his own chauffeur wanted to speak to him about the flat. Then his eyes widened, he opened his mouth to cry out, but gave a choking cough instead. For the Agent had brought another of his gas guns, and the spurt of dense, anesthetizing vapor went straight into Bruno Sleeber’s throat.

  Even as the fence toppled forward, the arms of Agent “X” caught him, pulled him out of the luxurious limousine, and lifted him to the seat of the coupé which stood with its engine running close by.

  He sped away with the unconscious man slumped in the seat beside him, rolling as inertly as a sack of meal. Fifteen blocks he drove grimly, swiftly, then turned the car into a narrow drive. He winked the headlights four times in quick succession, and the door of a small garage rolled back automatically as a mechanism operated by counter-weights and a photo-electric cell went into action.

  THE Agent drove in, closed the door after him, and lifted his unconscious burden. There was an exit in the rear of the garage which led, through a narrow passage, to the interior of a boarded-up house. Sleeber was not the first man “X” had carried through that space. In his strange and secret work he had had occasion to transport other criminals to this hidden hideout in the same manner.

  In a room with drawn shades and closed shutters, he switched on a powerful mercury vapor lamp. It gave a brilliant glow closely approximating sunlight. Beneath it, the Agent studied the face of his prisoner.

  In underworld haunts and fashionable clubs where the wealthy fence was often seen, Agent “X” had come in contact with him before. He had heard Sleeber talk, stored the inflections of his voice away in his memory. He did not revive Sleeber. Time was too precious. Instead, he gave him an injection of a drug that would insure his staying unconscious for many hours. Then “X” began creating an imitative disguise.

  He worked with grim haste and methodical precision. He was an actor getting ready for the stage of death. The man before him had been doomed to die in a horrible way. Agent “X” was voluntarily assuming his role, so that he might have the best possible chance of coming in contact with Doctor Marko’s executioner. Disguised as Sleeber, he would be free to move wherever he chose around the Veronica Cafe. But, as his long deft fingers moved, an image of Betty Dale hovered before his mind’s eye, and there was around it an aura of dire dread.

  In ten minutes his face was completely changed again. He was no longer Sullivan, the man whom the police had arrested and whom Marko had made his prisoner. He was Bruno Sleeber, ace fence of the underworld, and criminal de luxe.

  Sleeber’s clothes came close to fitting him. He padded them where necessary, put on thick-soled shoes to add a half inch to his height. When all was ready, he switched off the light, and returned to his car.

  A ten-minute ride through night-darkened streets, and he drew up on the block where the gaudy neon sign of the Veronica Cafe winked in and out. It was a place of ill-repute. Sleeber never let his underworld acquaintances visit his home. He always visited them. A certain top room of this shoddy cafe was reserved for his guests.

  They were assembled and impatient when Agent “X” climbed three flights of creaking stairs, and passed through a curtained doorway. They greeted him boisterously, a motley, sinister-looking crowd of men and women vulgarly dressed. A perfumed blonde threw her powdered arms around his neck, and kissed him.

  “Bruno, dearie—how’s the ol’ boy been?”

  A beefy-faced man proferred him a cold and pudgy hand. Others—fawning, crafty, parasites of the underworld—came up and patted him on the back. Yet, evilly unwholesome as they appeared, he couldn’t wish them the death that Doctor Marko had ordained. He looked at his watch. It was eleven thirty now. He glanced around the room, wondering from what quarter doom would creep.

  “What’s the matter, dearie, you seem nervous tonight?”

  It was the blonde again, her heavily mascaraed eyes upon him. He couldn’t tell her that Death with his sweeping scythe was on the way. He shrugged carelessly, said:

  “Business is getting so good it keeps me on the jump.” He made ferocious gestures at a rabbitlike waiter in a soiled jacket, roared: “Bring a dozen bottles of Scotch and whatever else the gang wants. Let’s get some life into this party!”

  The men and women yelled approval. The painted blonde seated herself before a creaking piano, and proceeded to hammer out the opening bars of a popular tune. The waiter scuttled off to fill the order.

  When the liquor was brought, the guests began downing it as though they had never seen alcohol before. The air grew thicker with smoke. The blonde at the piano began to get into the mood.

  BUT the Agent only was conscious of the slowly crawling hands of his watch. Twenty minutes of twelve now. It might be suicide to wait much longer. His eyes had examined every inch of the room. Unless the waiter of this place was in league with Marko, which didn’t seem likely, there were only two avenues of approach open to the secret assassin with the gas. One was the rear window by the fire escape. The other was the small skylight in the roof. Either was admirably fitted to make this room a chamber of death.

  The Agent rose, and excused himself suddenly. “Listen, folks—all of you stay here. I’ve got to go an’ give a guy a buzz. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Protests followed. The blonde tried to detain him. A redheaded girl who had already had
too much to drink hiccoughed on his arm. He pushed them away, growled:

  “Who’s the boss? Who’s paying for this brawl?”

  There was a grim glint in his eye which they took for annoyance. They didn’t know that he might be saving them from death. Impulse prompted that he shout a warning to them all. But he fought impulse down with iron will. There was Betty Dale to be considered. And if Marko was not stopped, others who had more right to live than these might die horribly.

  He stepped through the curtained doorway into the hall, and at once he became a different man. The breezy arrogance of Sleeber vanished. He was Agent “X,” grim, tense, striving to hold back the hands of death.

  He knew the type of building this was. He walked to the hall’s rear, and found a door with a stairway inside leading up. He mounted at once to a skylight cover held down with hooks. These he unfastened, silently, cautiously, and pushed the cover slowly up.

  Cool night wind brushed against his face. Darkness, with the glow of the city lights blotched eerily upon it, met his eyes. He turned his head in all directions, saw that the roof was empty. He drew the skylight cover aside, crawled out on the tarred roof surface on hands and knees.

  His heart was pounding now. His scalp felt tight. He hoped for the sake of those revelers below, and for Betty Dale’s sake, that his present course was right.

  He inched forward toward the rear coping of the roof, every sense alert. The top of the fire escape ladder showed, curving up and over to the spot where it was bolted. Even as he reached it he heard a faint, ringing scrape of metal. He moved still closer, bringing his face to within an inch or two of the iron rods, and the noise became louder. Some one below was climbing stealthily up.

  The Agent risked a cautious glance over the edge. Beneath him, against the spotty darkness of a paved court, he saw a shadowy, moving figure; a man ascending. His slow, deliberate movements were sinister in themselves.

  The Agent drew his head back, waited. As long as the sound of scraping feet on metal continued, those in the room below were safe. The sound grew fainter, stopped, and the Agent risked another look.

  The man had reached the floor of the party now. He was crouched on the landing, a black, huddled shape. In his left hand was a small black bag.

  As “X” looked he slipped a black mask across his face. With this on as a guard against light from inside falling on his skin, he moved closer to the window, peered inside.

  There was something macabre about his crouching figure. He was a man calmly, evilly, planning the best means of committing wholesale murder. For “X” had no doubt as to what that black bag contained. In it was the secret, deadly substance with which Marko had wiped out a score of lives already—the dusty death.

  But the window did not seem to suit the man. He felt it with tentative fingers, drew back, and turned to look up. The Agent ducked out of sight. The metallic thrumming of the iron ladder rungs commenced again.

  “X” WAITED now close to the roof, hardly daring to breathe. His hands before his face were like crooked talons. He might himself have been a crouching beast, preparing for some primitive battle. His eyes, close to the surface of the roof, were smoldering coals.

  The precious bag of deadly gas came over the coping first. The masked assassin was running no possible risk of dropping it. He rested it on the roof, thrust his head and shoulders up.

  At that instant the Agent’s hands and arms thrust out like plunging pistons. His fingers curled around the masked man’s neck, pressing his throat, shutting off any cry. He jerked back savagely, lifted the man bodily by the head, dragged him out full length on the roof.

  For a moment the man fought back, writhing with snakelike fury, kicking, struggling. His arms wrapped themselves around the Agent. His knuckles beat with frenzied strength. Then his right hand sought his pocket.

  The Agent thwarted this by rolling over, lying full length on the masked assassin. His fingers seemed locked in a grip of death. He stared down bleakly into the eyes that glared their hate up at him. He held his merciless pressure till the man’s tongue protruded, till his eyes began to glaze—till his struggles ceased.

  Then the Agent took his hands away. The man lay still with faintly fluttering pulse. “X” turned away a moment and snatched up the small black bag. He drew a zipper fastening open, stared at the metal cylinder inside. It was hardly larger than a coffee can. Yet it was bound with hoops of steel, showing that the stuff inside was under tremendous pressure. There was a screw nozzle at one end. A length of black rubber hose led out from this. It was coiled snakelike in the bottom of the bag. Here was death in a form as horrible as any the Agent had ever seen. He closed the black bag with trembling fingers.

  Sounds of music, laughter, revelry drifted upward from the room below. The Agent drew the black mask off the face of the man he had knocked out. He recognized the brutal features of a former gangster chief, Syd Brody, who had risen to fame and wealth on a tide of illegal beer, one of the most heartless butchers in all gangdom.

  The Agent took a small hypo needle from an inner pocket. He gave Brody a quick jab of its slender point. That would keep him unconscious till a stimulant revived him.

  “X” lifted the man to his powerful shoulders, crooked a finger of the same arm that held him through the handle of the black bag. With his double burden he began the slow, dangerous descent of the fire escape. In the courtyard behind the cafe, he paused to rest a moment. Then he continued out through an alley to his waiting car. Two pedestrians gaped in amazement as he came in view; then sniggered, thinking that this was an aftermath of some drunken brawl. In a second, Agent “X” with his prisoner was speeding away.

  Chapter XIX

  DOCTOR MARKO

  BACK in the hideout where he had taken Sleeber, the Agent set to work. Here he had brought Syd Brody, also. The two unconscious, evil figures, the weird glow of the mercury vapor lamp, made the room a chamber of horrors. “X” with his triple-sided make-up mirrors, his cameras, sound-recording devices, and tubes and vials of secret pigment, seemed like the high priest of some diabolic cult.

  He propped Brody up in a special chair that was bolted to the floor. As Marko’s men had done to him, he snapped metal rings over Brody’s wrists and ankles. He brought a case of chemicals from a cabinet, selecting a strong inhalant stimulant. He spilled a few drops on a piece of cotton, stuffed it into a paper cornucopia, and tied it over Brody’s face. This was an antidote of the drug injection.

  In two minutes Brody began to stir. His muscles tightened in the metal bonds. Color began to seep back into his face. “X” took the cornucopia off. Brody opened heavy-lidded eyes.

  The former gangster’s first reaction was a startled curse, and an attempt to leap from the chair. The metal bracelets held him down. He cursed again through clenched teeth, darted swift glances around the room, focused his gaze on “X.” He did not speak. He had the look of a trapped animal. It was “X” who broke the silence.

  “All right, Syd Brody—you’re here—and you’re going to talk.”

  “Damn you, Sleeber—you crazy heel! What—what do you think you’re doing!”

  Brody’s eyes switched for a moment from “X’s” face to the slumped figure against the wall. He could see clearer now. He suddenly strained forward and gave a muffled cry. His eyes started from his head. He licked his lips.

  “Sleeber—that’s him! That’s Sleeber over there!”

  His eyes swung back to “X.” Fear came to his face. He sank back breathing harshly.

  “Never mind which is Sleeber. You’re going to talk!” There was cold relentlessness in “X’s” voice, a note that made Brody understand.

  “Secret Agent ‘X’,” the name came hoarsely from his lips. “You—you—I thought the Doctor said he had you!”

  “The Doctor!” “X’s” voice was low-pitched, cutting as steel. “The Doctor, Brody, that’s what I want you to talk about! Where is he?”

  Craft took the place of fear in Brody’s eyes. He no
dded slowly, stared at “X” in speculation. “Huh, you’d like to know?”

  “Yes, where is Doctor Marko?”

  Brody began to regain some of his poise. He thought now he had a bargaining point. His sly grin showed it.

  “I ain’t a squealer, see? You picked the wrong guy, mug. I don’t open up for nobody. Ask the bulls!”

  The Agent nodded. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  He said nothing more for the moment. He turned his back, walked forward to the black bag that rested on a table. He pulled the zipper back, took the gleaming metal cylinder out, began uncoiling the black tube.

  “They said you were tight-lipped, Brody, and I guess they’re right. But—there’s plenty of others who will talk. I don’t need you.”

  He straightened the black tube out, moved slowly toward the door.

  “What are you gonna do?” Brody’s abrupt question was like a strangled cry. He had tensed in the chair again. His body was shaking. “Put that thing down! It—it’s got gas in it. Don’t touch it. Leave it alone.”

  “I’ll handle it all right, Brody. I know what it is. Just sit as still as you can.”

  “Oh, God! You ain’t gonna—you don’t mean you’re gonna turn it on? It—it’ll kill you, guy!”

  “Not me, Brody. I’ll be outside. I’ve seen this stuff work before.”

  A scream of fear tore from Syd Brody’s quivering lips. He strained till his whole body seemed to swell. “No—no! Jeez—you can’t do that! Listen, listen—I’ll talk!”

  “You were going to turn it on Sleeber’s party, Brody. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t rub out a murdering rat. You’ve got it coming to you.”

  SWEAT had broken out on Syd Brody’s ashen face. His brutal, primitive brain had not sufficient imagination to feel for others. But now the threat of the dusty death was aimed directly at him. His nerve broke utterly. He became a blubbering, twitching hulk of frenzied fear.

  “I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” he screamed. “Only give me a chance! Keep that stuff—inside the can! I’ll spill—everything I know!”