Runkle smiled, not deigning to reply. His eyes were on the judge.
And Judge Rothmere suddenly threw a bombshell into the court room. In his august, judicial voice he announced, “Mr. Runkle, I will grant your motion. The defendant is dismissed!”
Nothing that the judge could conceivably have said or done could have caused greater consternation in the courtroom than those four words.
Men stared at each other as if their hearing had suddenly betrayed them. The bailiff and the guards stood speechless. District Attorney Fenton seemed suddenly to choke, then he waved his hands in the air and rushed up to the bench. “You can’t do that!” he shouted. “This man is a murderer! Are you crazy?” The unexpectedness of the decision had deprived him of all sense of discretion.
The killer at the bar remained unmoved, unspeaking, as if none of this concerned him in the least.
Runkle seized him by the elbow, urged him toward the door. “You’re free, do you understand? Get out of here before they hold you for something else. Beat it!”
Fenton turned from the bench, ran shouting after them. “Stop! Stop! I’ll swear out another warrant for him. He can’t go free. He’s a murderer!”
Judge Rothmere frowned, called out, “Mr. Fenton! Do you forget where you are? This is a courtroom!”
Fenton paid no attention to him, ran after the prisoner. The judge pounded with his gavel. “Bailiff,” he shouted. “Seize Mr. Fenton. I declare him in contempt of court!”
The bailiff stared at him uncomprehendingly, too dazed to act.
The judge half rose in his bench, thundered at the unfortunate bailiff, “Did you hear me?”
That official finally came out of his daze, stammered, “Y-yes, Your Honor,” and sped after the district attorney, gripping him by the arm. “Sorry, sir, it’s the judge’s orders!”
Fenton fumed in the bailiff’s grip, but the delay was enough to allow the robot killer and his attorney to leave the court room. As the door closed behind them, Fenton turned to the bench. There were tears of rage in his eyes. “Do you know what you’ve done, Judge? You’ve released a cold-blooded killer. He’ll kill again, as sure as you’re sitting there. Why did you do it?”
Judge Rothmere rose dignifiedly from the bench, tapped once with the gavel. “Court,” he announced quietly, “is adjourned till ten o’clock tomorrow morning! Till then, Mr. Fenton, I will parole you in your own custody to answer to a charge of contempt of this court!”
And the judge turned, left the bench and went out through the side door, leaving the room in a state of seething excitement.
He was out in the corridor now, but before crossing to his chambers across the hall, he walked down a few paces and peered around the bend. He could now see the front door of the court room through which Runkle and the killer had gone.
They stood there now, faced by five men in plain clothes who wore on the lapels of their coats badges of the Department of Justice. One of these men was saying to the baby-faced killer, “We want you, boy. We have a warrant for the arrest of one John Doe, now held by the state authorities, for questioning in a kidnapping investigation. I guess you’re our man.” He turned to the others. “Take him, boys!”
Runkle started to protest, but he suddenly found himself looking into the barrel of a revolver. The officer who had spoken before held that gun, and he said, softly, “We don’t want you—yet, mister. But we’ll take you along if you open your trap once more. Yeah, we’ll take you along—feet first!”
Runkle’s face went pale. Before he could collect himself, the other men had snapped handcuffs on the now struggling killer, and were leading him out of the building with a gun stuck in the small of his back.
Runkle started to shout after them, “You’re no officers—” but he stopped quickly, cowering, as one of them swung around, raised his gun. The man did not fire. He merely laughed, turned around and followed the others. So quickly and quietly had the thing been done that the few people in the corridor had not even noticed it until Runkle began to shout. Then it was too late, for the five men with their prisoner were gone.
Runkle sped after them, stood in the entrance watching the high-powered car into which they had climbed speeding around the corner on two wheels. He cursed, then shrugged, turned to the small crowd that had gathered behind him; “I got my fee, anyway,” he said, grinning. “And nobody can say I’m hiding him from the law, because you all saw him snatched from under my eyes.”
Around the bend in the corridor, Judge Rothmere had watched the drama with interest. He now turned and directed his steps toward the chambers. An attendant who had followed him from the court room approached, asked, “Can I help you, sir?”
“No. I won’t need you any more today. You may go home.”
The judge entered his chambers, using a key, and went into an inner room. Here a man lay on the floor, gagged, glaring up in impotent fury. He was dressed in an ordinary business suit, the judge wore a judicial robe, but there the difference ended. For their faces were exactly alike.
The man in the robe said, “I am sorry, Judge Rothmere, if I caused you inconvenience. It was necessary, in the cause of true justice, that I pose as you for a few minutes. I will leave you bound now, and I will also leave my mark before I go, so that it will be known that it wasn’t you who just sat on the bench. Otherwise you might have some difficult explaining to do.”
Now the man in the judicial robe left the gagged man, stepped into the outer room. Here he doffed the robes, raised long fingers to his face. Swiftly the features of Judge Rothmere disappeared, only to give place in a few moments to the face of A. J. Martin, newspaper man.
The whole transformation took less than six minutes. Now he spoke to the gagged man in the inner room. “If anyone asks you who did this, judge, you can tell them I left my card on the table out here.”
As he spoke, he deposited on the small table a card, on which there was the reproduction of a glowing “X.”
Then he silently opened the door and stepped into the corridor.
CHAPTER XI
ENTER—BRINZ
When the five men who wore the federal badges sped away in the car with the robot killer in their custody, the large clock on the City Hall building showed the time to be exactly twenty-nine minutes past ten o’clock. The whole thing was over, thirty-one minutes before the scheduled time for the arraignment.
The car swung around the corner and passed out of the sight and ken of the crowd surrounding Runkle and Fenton. But there were others who were interested in that car. Near the corner, a tan-and-gray cab had been parked all morning, with the flag up. The driver smoked cigarette after cigarette, but never took his eyes off the court house. Once in a while he would turn to say a few words to the sole occupant of the cab, or to answer a curt question. The occupant of the cab was a stocky, sullen sort of man, with a long, thin face that contrasted oddly with his squat body.
He chewed on an unlighted cigar, and leaned forward. “What time is it, Kardos?” he asked the driver.
“Twenty-five after ten,” Kardos replied. “The boss ought to be here soon.”
The stocky man with the long face continued to chew nervously on the cigar. “This business is gettin’ my goat. Workin’ for this guy, Kardos, is dangerous stuff. Linky Teagle works for him an’ he didn’t show up this morning. I’m wonderin’—”
He stopped, as Kardos stiffened in his seat, cried hoarsely, “Looka that! Some other crowd is takin’ that guy away!”
He pointed to the court house steps, down which were coming the five men with the federal badges, dragging along the prisoner known as John Doe.
The stocky man jerked open the door of the cab, leaped to the sidewalk. His hand went to his armpit, but he didn’t draw the gun. “What’s the use?” he said to the driver. “We can’t take the whole five of ’em.”
Kardos swung to him, “What’ll we
do, Brinz? We were told not to let anyone take him away.”
Brinz shrugged. “Tell you what—you tail them in the cab. See where they go—and for the luva Pete, don’t lose them. I’ll stick around, an’ when this boss of ours gets here, I’ll break the sad news to him. You call back when they hole out.”
The car with the five federal men swung around the corner, passing close to the cab. Kardos called out, “Okay, Brinz, here I go.” He shifted into gear, set off in the wake of the escaping car.
Brinz remained at the curb, still chewing his cigar. He appeared oblivious of the crowd that had swarmed out of the court house. But their voices were raised, loudly, excitedly, and he could hear them plainly. He heard Runkle cry, “I tell you, they were no federal men. Their badges were fakes! But they took me by surprise. By the time I knew what it was all about, they had that fellow out of the building!”
Brinz continued to listen worriedly. He heard District Attorney Fenton say bitterly, “So you say, Runkle! I’m willing to bet that you knew all the time what was going to happen!”
Brinz swung his eyes away suddenly from the crowd across the street. For a truck had drawn up quietly at the curb. Its side bore the lettering, “Interstate Express—Deliveries Everywhere.”
The driver’s compartment of this truck was entirely enclosed so that the man who sat behind the wheel could not be seen. A close inspection of the body would have shown that it was constructed of bullet-proof sheet steel, with a large double door at the back, and a small grilled window on either side.
Brinz stepped close to the grilled window. A deep, metallic voice spoke from the darkness within. “What has happened here? Is everything set?”
Brinz shook his head. There was a little awe in his tone, as if he were almost afraid to break the news. “It’s all gone haywire, boss. This here John Doe must have been brought up in court ahead of time. Just now he got taken away by five men in a car—practically snatched out of the court room, what it looks like. That crowd across the street is wonderin’ what’s happened.”
The metallic voice carried a note of rage. “Did you find out who those men were?”
“I didn’t, boss.” Brinz shuddered slightly, for that voice had sounded very ominous to him. He added eagerly, “But I tell you what I did—Kardos was in his cab over at the corner, an’ I told him to tail them. Maybe he’ll call back an’ give us some dope on them.” He went on swiftly as there came no answer from the truck, “I done the best I could, boss. I couldn’t stop ’em alone, could I? And anyway, Kardos’ll probably be calling back pretty soon.”
For a moment there was silence. Then the resonant voice said, “Kardos had better call back—for the sake of both of you!”
The side window closed with a snap, and the truck rolled away from the curb, disappeared around the corner.
Brinz wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat. There was a fine sweat on his face and on the back of his hands. He had been close to death just now. His broad nose, which had at some time been flattened by a smashing blow, twitched with the reflexes of relief from fright. He stood a moment undecided, then he suddenly nodded to himself and crossed the street.
He elbowed through the crowd in front of the court room until he was close to Runkle, and tapped him on the shoulder. The little attorney turned, said, “Hello, Brinz, where’ve you been for the last couple of years?”
“Here an’ there,” he answered evasively. “Can I talk to you—in private—Mr. Runkle?”
“Certainly. Are you in trouble again?”
“Yes. But not with the law. This is something different.”
Runkle regarded him curiously. “All right. Let’s go over to my office.”
He led the way out of the crowd, and down the street, Brinz walking close beside him, and looking furtively about as if he feared being observed.
One man observed them. That was District Attorney Fenton, who watched them speculatively until they turned into the shabby building past the next corner, where Runkle had his office.
Fenton’s eyes were veiled as he turned and re-entered the court house without speaking to anyone.
In the meantime, the car with the five men and the prisoner sped east for two blocks, slowed up and swung into a garage in the middle of one of the East Side slum blocks. The taxi that was following pulled up just beyond the entrance, and waited with its motor running.
Within the garage, the five men bundled their prisoner out. He was handcuffed now, but still silent, though there was growing fear reflected in the black, reptilian eyes.
The men gagged the killer, tied his ankles with wire, and joined the end of the wire to the handcuffs behind his back, rendering him helpless. Then they bundled him into the rear compartment of a showy green coupe that stood in the shadows in the rear.
A young, red-headed man sat at the wheel of this coupe. When the top of the compartment closed over the prisoner, he said to the five men, “All right, boys. You can go now. Get back to your regular jobs and forget all about this. Forget you ever flew to New York this morning!”
They did not notice the figure of Kardos, who had left his cab and stolen to the door, where he peered inside, noting what was taking place.
The pseudo-federal men grinned at the red-headed young man. “Don’t worry, Mr. Hobart. Our memories are going to be something terrible from now on. As far as we’re concerned, we never saw this town in our life!”
Kardos, outside, slipped away from the door as he saw them prepare to leave, and he returned to his taxicab, watched them walking away in different directions.
Inside the garage, the red-headed Jim Hobart issued swift orders to two mechanics, who took the car in which “John Doe” had been brought there, and rolled it on to a circular platform. They set to work upon it at once, removing the license plates first. Within two hours enough work would have been done on that car to make it impossible to recognize it as the one in which Runkle’s client had been abducted.
Jim Hobart, in the meantime, locked the rumble compartment of his coupe, in which the killer had been stowed, then drove slowly out of the garage and turned the corner. He headed north. But he did not see the taxicab that followed him at a discreet distance.
CHAPTER XII
GILLY THE GUNMAN
When Secret Agent “X” stepped out of Judge Rothmere’s chambers into the corridor of the court house, he made his way without stopping down the back staircase and out the rear entrance into Lafayette Street. A small sedan was parked nearby and in this he made his way uptown.
On the way he stopped and called the Hobart Detective Agency. Jim Hobart had just got back. “It’s okay, Mr. Martin,” he reported. “The boys got this John Doe as per orders, and I just delivered him at the apartment on Eighth Avenue at the address you gave me. He’s there now, all nicely tied up.”
“Good work, Jim,” the Agent commended. “I’ll get in touch with you later. There’ll be more work to do today,” he added grimly.
Before leaving the booth, he made one more phone call, to Bates. He ordered Bates to place two men on the task of shadowing Runkle, the lawyer, and of checking up on anybody he might meet.
That done, the Agent returned to his car and drove to the apartment on Eighth Avenue. He could not know that even at that moment, the taxi driver, Kardos, was phoning certain information to a number not listed in any telephone directory.
At the apartment, which was on the third floor of an old, run-down apartment house, the Agent nodded in satisfaction as he saw the bound and blindfolded figure of the robot killer squirming on the floor. Here was his only avenue of approach to the murder monster. By his own daring and ingenuity he had balked the monster in its attempt to rescue this killer; he now had him alone where it might be possible to apply sufficient pressure to draw out certain information.
Before removing the blindfold, the Agent stepped to a mirror and worked swif
tly on his own face. The features of A. J. Martin disappeared, were replaced by those of a thin, ascetic looking man in the middle forties. The purpose of this was to save the personality of A. J. Martin for future use; he was not ready to discard it, and if this killer should see him as Martin, the personality of Martin would be helpless.
“X” now stepped to the side of the killer, removed the gag. The killer’s features were smooth, expressionless. Only his eyes showed emotion, and they stared up at the Agent with mingled defiance and fear.
“X” examined him closely, stooped and touched his face with long, sensitive fingers. The killer shrank from his touch, looked around the room, for the first time became aware of his surroundings. He tried to roll away from “X’s” searching fingers on his face, but the Agent held him firmly with one hand.
Suddenly the Agent uttered an exclamation of surprise. His sensitive, probing fingers had found something that it would have been impossible for anyone whose senses were less keenly on the alert to discover. It was a slight ridge under the chin, so infinitesimal as to be invisible to the naked eye.
The Agent’s eyes glittered, as he seized the killer under the arms, dragged him, squirming and struggling, to the opposite side of the room where his makeup table stood. He placed him on the floor, and turned on the powerful lamp that stood beside the table.
The lamp, which the Agent used when he fashioned his careful disguises, bathed the helpless killer’s face in a merciless light, illuminating every detail of his features.
Now the Agent went to the cabinet in the corner, brought out a peculiarly shaped magnifying glass. This was constructed along the lines of the lenses used by bacteriologists, but more adaptable to being carried about for handy use. There was little that this instrument did not reveal when applied under a strong light.
“X” held the killer in a viselike grip while he examined his face. The glass showed a tiny line that ran under the chin from ear to ear. It was such a line as might have been left by a healing scar that was perfectly tended. The Agent followed that line from the right ear, up along the fringe of the killer’s scalp, and around to the other ear.
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