Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5

by Paul Chadwick

  He held the bottle gingerly, picked up a length of black rubber tubing which had been used as an outlet of the deadly gas, and walked again to the locked door. Holding the tube at an angle with its end against the crack of the door he poured the liquid from the bottle into the top. He was treating it with his potent “soup” as cracksmen treat the door of a safe.

  When the door on all sides had been doused with the oily liquid, the Agent set the bottle down, and went to the nearest skeleton dummy. He stooped and picked up the dead guard’s automatic.

  With the gun in his hand he motioned to Betty Dale to go to the side of the room farthest from the door. She did so, looking frightened. The Agent motioned for her to turn her back, and cover her ears.

  Then he faced the door. It was a dangerous act he was about to perform. He knew the power of the explosive he had mixed. He had brought it thinking it might serve some desperate purpose in Doctor Marko’s stronghold. Yet even “X” had not anticipated such a use for it as this. He hoped he had gauged the quantity right. If not—then Betty Dale and he might never leave this room.

  He raised the gun, took quick aim, and fired.

  THE bullet struck the door close to the crack where the explosive had seeped in. A blinding sheet of flame leaped out. A thunderous report that jarred the whole room followed. The cabinet that held Breerton’s unsightly remains flew apart. Bottles and canisters fell from the shelf. Glass sailed through the air and fell in tinkling showers. Betty screamed, and pressed against the wall as though a mighty hand had pushed her. The Agent himself was knocked off his feet, dazed for a moment.

  But he got quickly up again, saw in the first glance that his scheme had worked. The locked door had blown from its fastenings. He had made a way of escape.

  He turned, and drew Betty from the corner. She, too, was dazed, but unhurt. She followed as he led her. Then, at the threshold of the shattered door, “X” stopped.

  In the center of the vaulted room before him a glaring, flamelike figure stood. Doctor Marko, thinking his victims dead, had returned. The shattering explosion at the door had taken him by surprise. And there was another figure cowering beside him that made the Agent stare with widening eyes.

  Carlotta Rand!

  Her white face and staring eyes showed that the explosion had almost stunned her. It was the flame man who recovered first. With a cry of fury, he leaped as “X” raised the automatic in his hand. He leaped—not at the Agent, but at the trembling, white-faced Carlotta. Clutching her slim waist as she gave a startled cry, he swung her straight in front of him, using her as a shield. And as she struggled futilely, divining his purpose too late, Marko’s taunting voice sounded. He had drawn close to a side exit now. He spoke with bitter malice.

  “Shoot, Agent ‘X.’ Fire—and kill this charming girl. Send a bullet through her—if you have the nerve!”

  As the Agent hesitated, the criminal laughed wildly. “You and your blond friend escaped the gas! Clever—very clever. But I have outplayed you at every turn. You used explosives effectively. I have mine also. There are bombs enough beneath this floor to raise a city block. I have only to pass through this door behind me, lock it, and press a button. At the end of a five minute period during which I shall escape, you and your blond friend, this house and everything in it, will be blown to atoms. There will be no clues—nothing for the police to find. Marko will be blamed—but Marko will be free!”

  Marko was edging closer to the exit as he spoke, pulling Carlotta Rand in front of him. “Shoot, Agent ‘X’—why don’t you shoot and prevent it? Miss Rand is easy to look at—a pleasant target for bullets. One shot will drop her. Then you can get me! But you won’t do it—will you, ‘X?’ I know you! There is that perverse gallantry again. You won’t shoot a woman in cold blood. You are afraid! You are too soft. You are squeamish, Agent ‘X’!” Echoes in the vaulted roof caught Marko’s taunting laughter.

  Carlotta Rand gave a desperate, frenzied scream as the Agent raised his gun. She ducked her head an instant as though to shut out the sight of the weapon’s stabbing flame. And at that moment, the Agent pressed the trigger.

  HE did not seem to aim. Only a tiny section of the flame man’s head was showing. But, as the Agent fired, Carlotta Rand fell forward—not because “X” had hit her, but because the hands of Marko behind her had suddenly relaxed. They dropped at his sides. Like a ghostly, flickering apparition, Doctor Marko took three steps out into the room. Then suddenly his knees buckled under him. The glaring light in his eyes, died out. He pitched forward on his face.

  The room was silent save for the sobbing of Carlotta Rand. She lay on the floor where she had fallen. “X” passed her, and walked up to the weird figure of the man of flame. He stooped down, groped with his fingers, turned the body over. The cold uncanny static flames played about his hand. But, looking close, he could see through them plainly. He sucked breath between his teeth and nodded. For the face that stared up out of them was familiar…. It was the face of Colonel Stanley Borden!

  “X” was not entirely surprised. After tonight, after the sight of Breerton in the cabinet of dusty death, after Carlotta Rand’s appearance, he was prepared.

  Doctor Marko, the man who looked like Borden, would never plot fiendish crime again. The Agent’s single bullet had struck him between the eyes. And as the Agent’s hand felt along his body, he learned in part the secret of the flames. There was a chemical wash of some sort spread over the supposed colonel’s clothing, over his face and hands. The fumes of it in the air close to his body made electric waves in the atmosphere visible. Somewhere not far away a static broadcasting machine was going, making these shifting electrodes luminous.

  Marko’s lips would never confess the details of his hideous career, but there was one who would. The Agent rose, and lifted Carlotta Rand to her feet. His voice was low, stern.

  “We meet again. And I know now that you were his accomplice. You helped him in everything he did. You are as bad as he.”

  “No—no, I didn’t want to, but—” her voice broke with misery, fear and loathing—“I am his wife! Once, long ago, I loved him. I was only a girl. I didn’t know what he was—and what he would become. Then—when I found out—it was too late.”

  “He murdered the real Colonel Borden?”

  She nodded miserably. “Yes—in Europe. When Andreas escaped from prison, he told me he’d been pardoned. I believed him. He said he was going straight—and I believed that, too. I thought—he had learned his lesson. He raised a beard, and changed his name—to forget the past, he said. He asked me to invite Colonel Borden to our house. I knew how to make myself attractive to men. But I didn’t know Andreas, my husband, was using me as a murder lure. Not until he murdered Borden—after he’d become our friend and told us many things about himself.

  “Then Andreas said I was just as guilty as he. He said—I was a murderer, too. He had a great surgeon graft Borden’s living skin on his own face—then he killed the surgeon. It was horrible. He was like the ghost of Borden; but I got used to him—and fear made me do everything he said.”

  She paused, and sobs shook her. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper when she resumed. “I—am glad he’s dead! The law can do what it wants with me. I’m glad you killed him. You were the only one who could—even though he trapped you—and almost won.”

  “With Cariati you mean?”

  “Yes—he knew the count’s evil background, knew you half suspected him of being Marko. After what happened on the boat, he used the count to trick you. He said he left Cariati’s telephone number where those gunmen, Relli and de Coba, died. I remember how he gloated over that, and over Breerton’s disappearance at the party. He did that to puzzle you, just as he pretended to quarrel with me—when he knew you were listening.”

  “We are under Colonel Borden’s house now?”

  “Yes, all the property on this block was left to Borden by his father. Even the funeral parlor that my husband used as a meeting place.”

 
“You know who the criminals under him were?”

  “No, but he has a list of them in the safe where he said he put your photographs. I will show you where they are.”

  “And you will tell the police all that you have told me—leaving my name out?”

  “Yes. I will tell them—anything you say!”

  She led the way to a secret safe behind a bit of tapestry at the end of the vaulted room. The Agent opened it easily, took out the photographs of himself, and burned them up. He glanced at the list of criminals, put it back into the safe, shut the door.

  Silently, the three of them climbed a flight of stairs to the huge old house above. The Agent pointed to the telephone, and turned to Carlotta Rand. He knew that she would obey, knew that her husband’s death had released her from the bondage of abject fear. And he would see in his own strange way that the law did not deal harshly. Marko was dead. His criminals would be rounded up. Carlotta Rand would not be held after the trials were over.

  “Call the police in ten minutes,” he said. “That will give us a chance to get away. Tell Commissioner Foster when he comes that some one who looked liked Syd Brody shot your husband. Leave my name out—and I will be your friend.”

  For a moment the Agent’s strange magnetic eyes remained fixed on Carlotta Rand. Then he led Betty Dale to a side door. It opened, and the darkness swallowed them. Their footsteps died away, but presently a strange, melodious whistle sounded that made Carlotta start. She did not know it was the whistle of Agent “X”—signaling that his work was done.

  Legion of the Living Dead

  Chapter I

  HELL ON WHEELS

  IT was an afternoon in late spring and from a cloudless sky the sun beat shimmering rays on the stream of motor cars that flowed sluggishly along the narrow canyon between the rows of tall buildings. Along the sidewalks men and women, many of them richly attired, hurried about their business and pleasure. It was a street of wealth, a main stem of American finance.

  But the men and women in the street seemed oblivious to the criminal monster who preyed like a vampire upon this veritable artery of wealth. Had they noticed the faces of the men in the great black touring car that cruised along slowly with the traffic, they might have lost some of their sense of security. For these men were grim-faced police—one of many specially picked squadrons that had been patrolling the streets day and night, waiting for the radio call to duty—and probably to their own destruction.

  The man at the wheel of the squad car was young for a position that involved so much responsibility. His face told of many anxious moments, of the torment of trying to fathom the unfathomable. He steered the car without apparent effort, yet his every nerve was keyed to a high pitch. His brilliant eyes strained ahead; yet sometimes sought the rear vision mirror, watching for that with which human forces seemed powerless to cope.

  Suddenly, from the radio speaker came the voice of the police announcer. At the first word, the driver of the squad car detected a different note in the man’s voice. The drab monotone was gone; rather the announcer’s voice was colored with a tremor of excitement and dread. He was exercising his duty in transmitting the message that had come to him, but he seemed to know that in doing so he was sending some of his companions to their doom.

  “Special cruiser twenty-four…. Calling special cruiser twenty-four,” came from the loudspeaker. “Proceed at once to the Krausman store. Robbery going on. Robbery going on at Krausman store…. Number one-three…. Number one-three.”

  The last group of figures was simply a code which the department used to identify the activities of a mysterious criminal gang which had terrorized the city with daring thefts accompanied by what amounted to nothing short of wholesale butchery.

  As the driver of the squad car set his siren going, another very human appeal came from the radio loud-speaker. For a moment, the vast police organization was forgotten. It was simply one anxious father speaking to his son: “For the love of God, watch your step, Jimmy!”

  The jaw of the young man at the wheel of the squad car was thrust far forward, as his foot came down heavily upon the accelerator. The police announcer was an elderly man who had been pronounced unfit for active service. It was his son who manned the wheel of Special Cruiser Twenty-four. Duty had made heavy demands upon father and son. The anxiety of the father could well be imagined. He might just as well have pronounced his own son’s death sentence.

  A wide lane in the traffic appeared miraculously before the speeding, screaming squad car. The police sat on the edge of the cushions. Their knuckles whitened as they clenched the butts of heavy revolvers. Now and again one of the men would send a strained glance back through the rear window.

  Suddenly, the man beside the young driver pinched his companion’s arm. “It’s coming!” His voice was hard and brittle, strained to the breaking point. The driver’s lower jaw protruded a bit more. He uttered a heartening oath through clenched teeth. His eyes flashed upward toward the rear vision mirror. The stretch of cleared street behind them was broken by a sinister blot of speeding destruction. A long-nosed streamlined roadster, black as midnight was rapidly overhauling them.

  THE police car was still three blocks from the scene of the robbery and the car behind them seemed to have no speed limit. Nor did the driver of the black roadster have any compassion for human life. The police cruiser swerved sharply to avoid hitting a careless pedestrian. A split second later, the black roadster bore down upon the frightened man. The pedestrian became panic stricken, put out both arms in a ridiculously futile effort to halt the speeding car, and in the next moment was knocked flat—a piteous blot that lay deathly still on the pavement.

  The roadster was within a few feet of the squad car. Through the rear window, the police could see the two men crouched low and motionless in the cockpit. With a dexterous yank on the wheel, the driver of the police car sent the cruiser far to the left, trying to block off the black speed demon. But the driver of the roadster was a match for any man. As the police car swerved to the left, the roadster swung to the right. With a sudden almost unbelievable burst of speed, the roadster pulled alongside. The ugly black snout of a machine gun protruded over the door of the racer.

  “Let ’em have it!” shouted a policeman. He leaned out so far that he almost touched the black destroyer. His revolver blasted at the noxious face of the man at the wheel. At such short range he couldn’t have missed.

  The staccato voice of the machine gun shattered the roar of the two overtaxed motors. Leaden hell raked the police cruiser from stem to stern. One policeman, who had been daringly balanced far out over the door of the car, pitched over the side and beneath the grinding wheels of the black juggernaut. The young driver jerked suddenly upright. A slug had drilled his chest. His teeth ground together with a nerve-shattering sound that he never heard.

  The steering wheel spun in his hands, completely out of control. His pain-taut right leg crammed every ounce of gas into the powerful motor. The police car broke into a rubber-burning skid, careened across the street, caromed against a car, hurtled over the curb, to crush innocent bystanders beneath its bounding wheels. Screams from a hundred throats filled the street with terrific clamor. The police cruiser slammed broadside through the glass window of a department store and crumpled against a solid wall, a mass of wreckage.

  But the roar of the black roadster dinned in the distance. Though the driver had received at least two shots that would have ordinarily proved fatal, the car sped unerringly onward in its mad flight of destruction, to disappear up an alley some blocks away.

  Hysterical screams, frantic cries for help, drowned out the groans of the maimed that the killers’ car had left in its wake. The sidewalk was strewn with corpses. Hoarse-voiced traffic police battled their way through the panicky throng toward the wreckage in front of the department store. A policeman, who had been thrown from the wrecked car, struggled to his feet. Both of his hands clutched at his side, in an instinctive but hopeless effort to stanch th
e blood that flowed from a jagged wound. He tottered forward to fall at the feet of a traffic policeman.

  The traffic cop knelt. His arms went about the shoulders of the fallen man. His fingers clenched tightly as if he hoped by some super-human effort to check the ebbing life. The wounded man opened his eyes and recognized the man who held him.

  “Fergeson,” came his husky whisper, “that—that man in that roadster! The man with the machine gun. I shot him—shot right through him. He was Mack O’Brien’s big gunman. He was Slash Carmody in the flesh!”

  The traffic policeman stared incredulously at the wounded man. For Slash Carmody, killer formally employed by one of the underworld barons, had died in the electric chair in Sing Sing not more than forty-eight hours ago.

  TWO blocks farther up the street from the point of the police car disaster was the famous Krausman Jewelry Store. A few minutes before the police cruiser had received its instructions to proceed to the jeweler’s, Mr. Peter Krausman was sitting in his office placidly smoking a thick, mahogany-colored cigar. He was a large, swarthy-skinned man with an unpleasantly crooked nose. Replacing his somber Oxford-gray garments with something brighter, and adding the flash of gold rings bobbing at the lobes of his ears, an artist would have had a perfect model for a Gypsy king.

  Yet while Krausman seemed to be basking in the security of his own wealth, his impassiveness was a mere pose. Every nerve fiber within his body tingled in anticipation of action. His heart throbbed with slow, steady strokes; his mighty brain dwelt upon but one problem—a problem only remotely related to the jewelry business.