Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5

by Paul Chadwick

  “Where’s Doctor Marko then?”

  “I don’t know where he is. I only see him sometimes. I’ll tell you how to get there.”

  “You mean the chapel?”

  “No, guy—no.”

  “Where then?”

  “You go to the chapel first, but—some of us go farther. You get in the coffin, see? You press the button. It takes you where the doctor hangs out.”

  Syd Brody panted for breath. He wasn’t lying. “X” could see that. Abject terror had made him tell the truth as perhaps he never had before.

  “The coffin!” he babbled again. “You gotta believe me! It sounds phony—but, jeez, it’s the truth. It goes down, see—just like an elevator. It travels somewhere—takes you where the Doctor is, and takes you back. I guess he’s nuts.”

  “When were you going to see him again, Brody?”

  “To night! After I finished with—the job. He wants to know about it—and I was to bring the can back.”

  “I see.” The Agent’s voice was quiet. “I see, Brody. Thanks.”

  “You ain’t gonna do it then? You won’t let that stuff out?”

  “No, Brody. I’ll save you for the police.”

  The Agent slowly wound the rubber hose back up. He replaced the deadly cylinder in the bag, pulled the zipper shut. He took a slender syringe from a shelf, sucked up a colorless liquid from a vial. He approached Syd Brody purposefully.

  “What the hell’s the idea now? You gonna give me a shot of dope? I don’t need it. I’m O.K.”

  The Agent didn’t answer. He gave a quick jab of the needle into Brody’s arm. Brody’s bitter curses slowly died on his lips. His head sank forward. His eyes closed again. He would be out for many hours, or until the Agent chose to wake him.

  “X” unlocked the bracelets, lifted Brody out of the chair, laid him beside Sleeber. Both men had served their purpose as pawns. He made himself up as Brody quickly. He put on the gangster’s clothes, then went to a shelf, and selected certain secret equipment, offensive and defensive devices, including two small bottles. He stowed them away, took up the black bag, turned out the mercury light. He set forth once again on the trail of horror and death.

  Through the night, he drove. The black bag was close beside him on the seat of the car. Back to the chapel again where Doctor Marko had appeared in his flickering aura of flame. He parked his car, strode swiftly to the chapel’s door on foot. He unlocked it with the new set of master keys he carried. He entered the dark interior, bag in hand. It was as still as when he’d left it. No one who did not know would guess that this was a secret meeting place of criminals.

  He turned on his flash in the stuffy gloom, centered it on the coffin again. He approached it slowly, raised the black lid once more—and climbed into the long, black box. Then he let the lid sink shut. In the dusty, smothering darkness, he turned on his flash, looked about him.

  Directly overhead, hidden so that no one looking in would see it, was a small electric button. The Agent lifted his finger, and pushed it in.

  AT once there was a faint sound of whirring far below. The coffin trembled, moved. It might have been an automatic elevator as Brody had said. It seemed to sink downward slowly into the bowels of the earth. It was another example of Doctor Marko’s genius. But there was no admiration for this human monster in the Agent’s mind. He was thinking of Betty Dale, wondering whether he would ever see her again; wondering whether this casket he now lay in was symbolic of what his own fate soon would be. It would take him to Doctor Marko, but how would he fare when he arrived?

  The black box was still sinking. “X” had no idea of its speed. He couldn’t tell how far below the chapel’s floor it was moving. But when seconds had passed it stopped. The whirring sound was louder now. Well-oiled, automatic machinery clicked near by. He heard the sound of some sort of sprocket chain. The coffin began to move again; but forward this time. It slid along with the slow motion of a boat on an under-ground river. It was moving obviously through a tube.

  Then the forward motion ceased as the other had done. The coffin began a slow, uncanny climb—an elevator going up. There was no mystery or magic about it, the Agent knew. It was all done by automatic machinery. Conveyors in factories could duplicate its motions.

  The coffin stopped at last with a metallic click. A brief, breathless silence followed while the Agent waited. No sound came from whatever room he was in. He flexed his muscles and slowly raised the lid.

  He was in another vaulted chamber with dim lights burning overhead; so dim that for a moment the Agent could barely see. Then he adjusted his eyes to the light. It was a smaller room than the chapel. There were several doors around. But at the room’s end there was a metal screen, as there had been in the chapel.

  And as “X” stared, the weird apparition, the man of flame, appeared once more.

  “Speak, Brody!”

  The voice of Marko was as harsh as ever, uncanny, coming from that mask of flame. The Agent licked his lips. He was trembling in spite of himself.

  “It went—all right, Doctor!”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  The Agent held up the black bag. He said, in the voice of Brody: “I brought the can back—like you asked. There wasn’t any hitch.”

  “No hitch!” The flame man’s laughter filled the room. It woke mocking echoes in the vaulted roof. “No hitch for you, so far—Agent ‘X’.”

  “Doctor—I don’t get you!”

  “No! You’ve done some clever work tonight. I’ve underestimated your talents I’ll admit. I’m really sorry you turned my offer down.”

  There was silence, while pressure seemed to mount in the Agent’s brain. Silence, while he checked back to see where the slip had come. The only flaw he could find was—that things had gone too smoothly.

  “Your brilliant escape was discovered and reported to me too late, Agent ‘X.’ The sawed manacles made me realize my blunder in leaving you your watch. You had your cutting blade in that, of course. I didn’t know exactly what you’d do, what disguise you might assume next. But I telephoned the Veronica five minutes ago. When I learned that Sleeber had vanished and that every one was alive I began to suspect the truth.

  “But you made quick time. Your present disguise is excellent. You talk and act almost precisely as Brody would. If the coffin conveyor you came in did not contain a simple identifying device I might even now be in doubt. But I’ve borrowed from the police technique—and improved upon it somewhat. That button you pressed to start the coffin, Agent ‘X.’ Just another little thought of mine!

  “It’s surface which looks like mother of pearl is really a platinum plate with a thin wash of insulating chemical across it. The ridges on your finger cut through this wash and touched the metal. Electricity, working on the principle of the telautograph, transmitted the image of your fingerprint to another plate in this room. It did not correspond to Brody’s—which I keep among others of my men. You see now why your disguise is useless!”

  The Agent nodded slowly, mechanically. There was a light sweat on his hands, and in his heart a weight of icy dread. The cunning of this man seemed limitless. But the Agent made a sudden desperate play. He whipped open the black bag, drew the deadly cylinder out, thrust the tube toward the spot where Marko stood.

  “I understand—but you will die, Marko—by your own choice method—with me!”

  Even this savage threat didn’t shake the man of flame. His voice had a wearily scornful ring.

  “Fool! I’d expected something more original! Do you suppose a man of my ability wouldn’t have anticipated that? I give that gas to the men in my employ. Naturally I know it may be turned against me. I’ve taken means to prevent it—even as I can prevent you carrying out your threat now. There is a fitted respirator over my nose. I breathe through a screen of cellulose saturated with a chemical impervious to gas. Let it escape—and you die alone!”

  Marko’s words struck the Agent for the moment dumb. But Marko continued with
a note of gloating triumph. “Your stupid gesture in bringing the gas back here as a threat is not entirely wasted. There is an execution to be done. You shall perform it, Agent ‘X.’ That very cylinder in your hand shall be used effectively on your blond friend, Miss Dale!”

  Chapter XX

  VICTIMS OF THE DUSTY DEATH

  THE Agent stood like a statue, his knuckles white on the cylinder of gas. Then abruptly he dropped it, and his hands dived into his pockets, emerging a split second later with the two small bottles he had carried from his hideout.

  Lips set, eyes smoldering, he moved to uncork them and bring the mouths together. The liquids they contained were harmless while separated. Mixed, they formed a detonating agent more powerful than nitroglycerin. The Agent was going to blow Doctor Marko and all that this hateful room held into nothingness. To wipe an unthinkable criminal from the face of the earth he was ready to live up to the ultimate pledge of his strange career—by committing an act that spelled certain self-destruction.

  But the man of flame seemed to anticipate some desperate move. As “X” touched the corks a signal bell began to clamor. Two masked figures bounded through a door, and hurled themselves at “X.”

  The Agent hesitated an instant. The two liquids to be effective would take a second to blend. Marko had robbed him even of that second. He dropped them back into his pocket, drew his gas gun, and fired straight into the face of the nearest man.

  Instead of falling, the man only coughed and came steadily on. Marko cried out in brutal triumph. The Agent grasped the truth. These men, too, were wearing respirators impervious to gas. He could see them faintly now. The things were fitted, covering the nostrils just below the masks, making the nose itself only slightly larger.

  “X” lashed out with bare fists, grappling with the nearest man, fighting till he felt a gun muzzle thrust against his neck. Then the voice of Marko sounded.

  “Quiet, ‘X’—or I give the order to shoot.”

  The Agent dropped his hands to his sides, and was made a helpless prisoner by the two masked men. They led him quickly through a door into another room beyond, where the Agent gasped in stifling horror.

  For here was the final stage of Doctor Marko’s private hell. Two glass cabinets stood in the center of the floor. They were transparent prison chambers with human beings in them. The Agent’s eyes opened wide with wonder at the sight of one—Rodney Breerton.

  Breerton, held erect in a locked metal frame behind the glass. Breerton, ashen with terror, sweat dripping from his face, eyes rolling.

  In the other fantastic prison cabinet was the slim form of Betty Dale. Horror clutched at the Agent’s throat as he saw her. She was alive, but dread of the death that awaited her, showed in her face. Her eyes were staring. She seemed on the verge of complete collapse.

  A floodlight swung directly above the glass-walled boxes, making the occupants as visible as though they were on the center of a stage. The rest of the room was in comparative darkness, and, as the masked men held Agent “X,” Doctor Marko himself entered. The aura of flame still surrounded his body and face, hiding his features as before. The static field moved with him. He was like a flaming ghost. But his voice was harshly real.

  “My observation chambers, Agent ‘X.’ Interesting experiments have been made in them. Animals were first used to test and perfect my gas. Now you will have a chance to see how a human being reacts.”

  Marko clapped his hands, and one of the masked men left the Agent’s side, while the other still held the gun against his neck. A cylinder of the gas was brought from a shelf.

  While Breerton struggled and screamed behind the glass-walled prison, the black-masked guard calmly pressed the end of the rubber tube over a metal nozzle.

  “Now!”

  Marko uttered the word with gloating emphasis. A faint hiss sounded, then the piercing shriek that Rodney Breerton gave died in a way that Agent “X” was never to forget. It died, and Breerton’s body seemed to shrink. A slight vapor misted the sides of the glass for a moment. When it cleared a withered skull grinned out. Breerton’s clothes hung limp. He had become a crumbling, scarecrow dummy.

  The Agent felt weak, and sickened. He was glad that Betty Dale had closed her eyes, glad that this final horror had not been graven in her mind.

  Marko spoke again. “It is your turn, Agent ‘X.’ You see how the thing is done. Simple enough! Walk forward, and slip the hose over the nozzle on the chamber that Miss Dale is in. Come, it will only take a moment.”

  The straining note of a born sadist was in Marko’s voice now. The man had no emotions, save those of a reptilian monster. He was not human. He was not fit to live. When the Agent did not move, he spoke again.

  “Come! My man will do it, if you do not. Nothing can save her now. But, if you prove yourself by doing this, I may still relent. You have learned your lesson tonight. We understand each other better. From now on, perhaps you will obey.”

  THE Agent made a movement then. Through the cold horror that clouded his brain, that stifled action, he had reached a decision. Now, in the next few seconds, the final showdown between himself and this monster would come.

  He lifted the cylindrical can. He uncoiled the tube. Slowly he approached the glass box where Betty Dale stood. She had passed through the whole gamut of mental suffering. It seemed that she could no longer register fear. Only her eyes moved as she followed “X’s” actions. Only the darkness in their blue depths showed that she understood.

  The black tube in the Agent’s hand was close to the nozzle opening now. His other hand was on the valve screw that controlled the gas. Marko was silent. The second guard was watching. The room was tense. The man behind “X” still held the gun.

  Then “X’s” muscles tautened. His right arm, holding the black tube, shot through the air. His left hand released its grip. The metal can swung in an arc like a pendulum, and circled around his back. It cracked against the side of the guard’s head as the gun exploded. The Agent had thrown himself to one side.

  A bullet made a spidery hole through the top of the glass box that Betty Dale was in. It missed her head by inches. She screamed. The guard behind “X” dropped inertly. The other stepped back, raised his gun. “X” ducked, and charged, with all the desperation of horror in his leap. Again lead screamed above his head—this time barely missing Marko.

  The Agent knocked the gun muzzle sideways, struck savagely at the masked man’s body. His fists sank into flesh. The man groaned, and dropped. There was a swirling, flaming movement behind “X.” He turned. Marko was running across the floor. A heavy door slammed shut.

  In the breathless stillness that followed, Marko’s voice suddenly sounded, seemingly close at hand, coming through some sort of microphone. There was fury in it, cruel mockery as well.

  “You are a fool—a fool—Agent ‘X.’ You force me to kill you, and the girl. You force me to destroy you like squealing rats. You are trapped now. The door is locked on my side. There is a gas outlet in the ceiling above you. I shall go to the corridor overhead, and turn it on. I gave you your chance. You threw it away. Now you must die!”

  The voice ceased speaking. The faint sound of footsteps followed. The horror that had numbed “X” deepened.

  But, in that brief moment balanced on the brink of death, the Agent turned, and began to work like a madman. Betty Dale, staring from the cracked box didn’t understand. The Agent stooped over one of the fallen guards. He pressed tense fingers against the man’s face, located the thin rubber band that held the strange respirator in place, and drew it off. That Betty Dale might live, this man must die.

  Before thinking of himself, he stepped forward, broke the rest of the glass with a single blow of his gas gun’s muzzle, and thrust the respirator in.

  “Put it on, Betty. You’ll be safe.”

  Still she did not grasp his meaning. Tenderly, quickly, the Agent raised the respirator to her face, and adjusted it. He went back to the other guard then, took the respirator fro
m him also, and put it on himself.

  He reached down, felt through the man’s pockets and found a set of keys. He leaped to Betty’s glass-walled box again, tried several of the keys, and found one that fit the locks. In a moment she was free. He pulled her out.

  Then, as she stood close to his side, a faint hiss sounded. It came from above their heads. It was like the venomous hiss of a hidden snake.

  “Close your eyes, Betty—don’t look!”

  HE tried to make his voice sound casual; yet he couldn’t keep the shuddering horror from it. He didn’t want her to see the result of that gas barrage, didn’t want her to witness two men being turned to dusty bones.

  He didn’t look himself as the heavy gas drifted down. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, couldn’t smell it. The chemical odor evidently didn’t come until it had done its fiendish work.

  The hissing stopped at last, and he stole a single sideways glance. The masked guards, who a moment before had been well-muscled men, were now crumbling skeletons. The gas had done its work.

  He placed a sudden fearful hand over Betty’s pale lips, signaled for her not to open them. Gas taken through the mouth would be just as deadly as that breathed. Only respirators could save them now.

  Tense seconds passed, and the faint sensation of breathlessness behind the respirators began to fade. The gas, as he had guessed, was of a type that quickly dissipated. It was some devilish blend of chemicals known only to Marko. The fumes of it mixed with the air, thinned, decomposed, shortly after its hideous task was finished.

  But still he motioned Betty Dale to silence. He walked close to the door, his set of master keys in his hand. Then he stood still in dread amazement. There was no keyhole in sight. Whatever lock the door might have was on the other side. They were trapped in this chamber of death.

  Betty Dale read the Agent’s expression. Her eyes held his in mute understanding. But she looked puzzled at his next act.

  For he took the two corked bottles out of his pockets again. He emptied three fourths of the contents of one out on the floor. He drew the stopper of the other, walked ten feet away, and emptied it in like manner. Then he quickly poured what was left of the two liquids into one bottle. He waited a few seconds, watching grim-faced while the two liquids blended, giving off vapor, changing color, finally growing still.