There was no one in sight along the dark street; but a sound suddenly rose above the clicking of the ice-coated branches. It was a whistle—faint, melodious, eerie. It had a strangely ventriloquistic quality that seemed to fill the whole air at once.
As Burks stood listening tensely, trying to locate it, it died away. Then, somewhere down the street, an auto engine roared startlingly into life. Gears muttered, whined, grew silent as a fast car swept away into the night.
Chapter II
A Daring Disguise
THE man who had displayed the press card didn’t go to any newspaper office. He drove swiftly through the winter darkness, staring straight ahead. His eyes were like living coals. His knuckles on the black wheel of the car were white and tense.
Before his gaze, the dead, distorted face of Bill Scanlon seemed to hover. Scanlon whom he had known and worked with in days gone by! Scanlon who had guided him, aided him along the rough road of a perilous profession! Scanlon, loyal to the point of death, who had once even saved his life.
What would Scanlon’s wife and young son say when they heard he had been slain? They knew his work was dangerous. They were never sure when he would return. But that wouldn’t make their sorrow at his passing any less.
The man at the car’s wheel muttered huskily, softly to himself. The words came almost like a chant.
“There’s a kid and a woman waiting!” he said.
The glowing light in his eyes seemed to deepen as his lips moved. It grew more steely, more bright, like flame reflected from the polished, gleaming point of a sword. If wise old Bill Scanlon had failed in his mission, fallen a victim to the unseen strangler, then the police must be right. Then this was no ordinary murder menace. The killer back of it all must have the cunning brain of a fiend.
The man of mystery made sure no one was following him. He turned the battleship nose of his roadster into a cross-town street, sped westward toward the river, entering upon a long, smooth drive that followed the curving line of the shore.
Millionaires’ homes and huge apartment houses rose on one side of the drive. On the other were paths and a parkway leading down to the water, curtained now in darkness. The man threaded his way through evening traffic, parking at last on a side street.
He leaped out of the car and walked forward, the burning look of intense emotion still in his eyes. He turned a corner, moved faster still, then stopped suddenly to press a hand to his side. A twinge of pain had come for an instant. Under his fingers was the scar of an old wound received on a battlefield in France.
A fleeting, bitter smile played over the tall man’s lips. Years ago doctors had predicted that the wound would kill him—that he had only a few months to live. But he had gone on living just the same. There was in his body energy that seemed inexhaustible—energy that even death could not seem to conquer. There was an iron will like a living dynamo that drove him on night and day. He had work to do, strange, secret tasks to perform. He wasn’t ready yet to answer the call of the Grim Reaper.
He turned into an avenue running parallel with the drive, walking blocks beyond the spot where he had parked his car before heading back toward the river again. He was on a dark street now—a street deserted, with a high wall on one side of it.
Over the wall, against the night sky, the chimneys and peaked roof of a house were faintly visible. It was a huge pile of masonry, bleak and austere—the old Montgomery mansion left empty by the litigation of heirs who could reach no agreement in the settlement of an estate. It had stood empty for years while the legatees battled like wolves.
The man moved along the wall, creeping deeper into the shadows. Suddenly he stopped. His burning eyes scanned the block in both directions. No one was in sight.
Deftly he inserted a key in a door so nearly the color of the wall itself that it seemed hidden.
The door opened, the man moved inside as silently as a shadow. He was in a place of desolation and ruin now. In the old garden behind the Montgomery mansion.
Statues fallen from their pedestals lay like pale ghosts on the weed-grown grass. A summer house, tumbled down and rotting, showed like the skeletal ribs of a great beast.
He picked his way past a fountain that had long since run dry, entering a rear door of the old house. He moved by feeling alone, moved as one familiar with his strange surroundings.
It wasn’t until he was safe inside the house that he flashed on a small light. He was behind the old butler’s pantry now. Ahead of him were great silent rooms where moths burrowed in the once rich carpets and where rats scurried across the floors.
He pulled at a tier of shelves against the pantry wall, and suddenly the shelves swung outward. The man stepped behind them into the darkness of a hidden chamber. He swung the shelves after him, touched a switch, and lights in the strange room came on. It was a hideout containing many peculiar and remarkable objects.
SEATING himself before a three-sided mirror with movable rod lights above it, the man’s long hands began to do strange, mysterious things to his face. Under their magic touch his whole appearance underwent a transformation.
The blunt, roundish features of the business man melted away, disappeared. The eyebrows changed. The hair of the head revealed itself as an elaborate toupee.
Suddenly the man appeared as he really was—as no one, not even his few closest intimates ever saw him.
The rod lights overhead sprayed radiance on brown hair, on smooth-shaven features that had a boyish cast to them. On gray eyes with a steely glint in their depths.
It was only when he turned to pick something off the shelf that light fell on his face at another angle. Then new lines were brought out—lines that made him seem suddenly older—lines of poise and maturity—with the record of countless experiences and adventures written into them.
He stared at his own reflection for a moment, seeming to salute it grimly.
Secret Agent “X”—the man of a thousand faces—a thousand disguises—a thousand surprises.
The man who was a scourge to the criminals prowling the black alleys of the underworld. The man regarded by the police as criminal himself—even now suspected of murder.
He couldn’t set them right, either. He was committed to secrecy and silence; committed to move into terrible dangers and walk into the shadow of the Valley of Death alone.
The police couldn’t know what document reposed in the strong box on a shelf above his head. For an outsider to plumb its secrets would have meant death. The lid of the strong box concealed a charge of terrible explosive to protect its contents from meddlers. But every word of the document was emblazoned in the Secret Agent’s mind. He could have quoted it from memory, word for word, paragraph for paragraph.
It was unsigned, but it bore the coat of arms of the United States Government. And he knew that the telegram which had reached him that day by way of the First National Bank had also come straight from Washington, D.C. Before destroying the latter, the Agent read it again, committing it to memory as he had the document.
Mark Roemer, kidnapped chemist, whose assistant was murdered, employed under cover by Chemical Warfare branch of Army. Was working on important formula. Consequences of his disappearance may be disastrous. Advise you investigate immediately.
This, too, was unsigned; but was couched in a Government code. The Agent alone knew its high source. Between the lines of it he seemed to read a second, more sinister message, written by the trailing claws of crime—claws that were weaving a horrible spider’s web of murder—building a menace so great that no man could say what hydra-headed horror might rise from it.
Mark Roemer kidnapped! His woman assistant murdered! A taxi driver and an underworld character slain—their bodies left like carrion in a vacant lot! And now brave-hearted, shrewd old Bill Scanlon murdered, too! A sinister crime pattern ran through it all.
Agent “X” crumpled the telegram viciously, touched a match to it, dropped it into a metal dish to burn. Even before he had received it, he had been watching the Roeme
r case, scenting the unseen miasma of horror surrounding it.
The telegram did not state what formula Roemer had been at work upon, what strange thing he had discovered. But Agent “X” had an inkling. If he were right, then the four ghastly murders were forerunners of others even more terrible.
He faced the mirror again, looked at himself.
Secret Agent “X.” Who was he? No one knew. Whispers there were—whispers in a few high places. There were those who said he had the Government’s backing, that he was a lone campaigner in the war being waged on organized crime.
His fingers began to move again. From a shelf cluttered with jars and sticks of grease paint, nose and cheek plates, and dozens of ingenious makeup devices, he selected what he wanted.
He dabbed pigments on his face, covered his skin with a strange volatile substance and sculptured it into new lines. Strips of transparent, tissue-thin adhesive tape changed the contours of his face muscles. He covered his own brown hair with a white, cunningly made toupee, blackened and thickened his eyebrows. As he worked, deftly, surely, his keen eyes studied a photograph on the shelf before him.
Tonight, in his efforts to unravel the mystery and horror of the strangler murders, he was prepared to take a daring, desperate step.
When at last he rose from his seat, he had the exact likeness of the man in the photograph—a distinguished public official. There was the same silvery-white hair. The same gaunt, thin-lipped face. The same shaggy, menacing eyebrows. Once again “X’s” skilled fingers had achieved a seemingly magical disguise.
He changed his suit and overcoat, dressed carefully, slipped a set of mysterious chromium tools into his pocket, and selected two weapons from his strange arsenal. Then he set out, pausing only long enough to start the mechanism of a hidden seismographic machine which would record the vibrations of footsteps if any one entered his hideout during his absence.
He threaded his way through the desolate garden and out onto the dark street.
Turning his face downtown, he strode swiftly along and hailed a passing cab, being careful to keep his coat collar up and his hat brim pulled down. The light in his eyes showed like a steady, glowing flame. He had started on a vengeance quest for the murderer of Bill Scanlon.
Chapter III
Murder Club
THERE was grim method in the movements of Secret Agent “X” after he left his hideout. Step by step, he began to trace the course of the murder wave that had resulted in his old friend’s death.
He went first to a sequestered suburb on the outskirts of the city. Here he dismissed his cab and walked again through the night. He had followed the strangler homicides in the papers as he did all murder cases that threatened to be difficult of solution. He knew what festering spot had first given birth to the cancer of this hideous crime.
He strode swiftly along a street of badly cared for wooden houses, turned a corner, and came to a lot which at first glance appeared to be vacant. But there was a high barbed-wire fence around it. In its center, dimly seen, was a cluster of low, shabby buildings. They were buildings which were huddled together as though drawing away from the scrutiny of prying eyes. They were dark and silent now. Murder had laid its pall of quietude upon them.
Agent “X” had seen pictures of these buildings in the papers. From this place Mark Roemer, the Government chemist, had been kidnapped. Somewhere among those buildings Roemer’s woman assistant, Cora Stenstrom, had met death at the hands of the invisible strangler.
There was a barbed-wire gate at one side of the enclosure for coal and supply trucks to enter. There was another smaller gate secured by a heavy lock where Roemer and those who came to see him had been in the habit of going in and out.
The Agent paused beside this. A policeman patrolling his night beat sounded measured footsteps up the block. The Agent waited in the light of a street lamp till the cop came alongside.
The policeman stared at the Agent, gave a sudden start, then touched his cap respectfully.
“Good evening, inspector,” he said. “Can I be of any help, sir?”
Agent “X’s” daring disguise had proven adequate. He shook his head, and, when the cop had gone on, he took the kit of chromium tools from his pocket. There were many of them, seemingly fragile, yet cunningly shaped. He held one in his hand, a glittering piece of goosenecked steel. With quiet efficiency he attacked the lock on the gate. In less than a minute the lock snapped open and Agent “X” passed inside.
He moved like a shadow across the barbed wire enclosure toward the jumbled buildings that loomed ahead. He drew another tool from his pocket kit, approached the door of the largest of the buildings. His hand moved toward the lock, then paused. He was staring at the door’s edge.
Someone had been at work here recently. He squinted, nodded understandingly. A burglar alarm had been installed since the murder had taken place. This building was Government property. The work of Mark Roemer had been subsidized by the Government. The Government had taken pains to checkmate any further attempt to pry into the secrets that the building held.
Agent “X” reached into his kit again, drew out a slender band of coiled metal that was like a steel measuring tape. He unwound it from its cylindrical case, probed with the end of it around the door’s edge till he found the plates of the burglar alarm.
Forcing the end of the thin steel under the inside plate, he drew the steel to its full length and thrust the other end into the moist ground.
The Agent knew the workings of burglar alarm systems—knew that there were two plates, and that it was the separation of these two plates when the door was opened that caused the alarm to sound. By grounding the inner plate he had prevented the breaking of the electric circuit.
He now opened the door quietly and entered. Once inside, he clicked on a flashlight with a bulb no larger than a kernel of wheat. It threw a tiny spot of radiance through a concentrating lens, a beam that would not be seen from outside but which enabled the Agent to pick his way. His eyes were glowing eagerly.
He located the laboratory in the building. Here were storage tanks for chemicals and jars and bottles of strange, poisonous-looking acids. Here were gleaming, copper-sheathed retorts, crystal refiners, an air-compressing machine, vacuum pumps, and a refrigeration plant. Here was all the paraphernalia for research into little-known and sinister fields of science. Here was where Mark Roemer and his assistant had worked.
It was from this laboratory that Roemer had been kidnapped. It was in it that the body of his assistant had been found. There seemed to be the dullness of death in this deserted building mingled with the acrid odor of chemicals.
Agent “X” walked to the laboratory’s window, the one that newspaper accounts of the crime said had been jimmied. For long seconds he studied it, raising it softly, examining the marks that the intruder’s jimmy had made. Then he gave a low exclamation.
Marks in the wood of the window frame showed that the pressure which had caused them had come from inside the building. They had been made after the window had been opened. Someone had left those marks purposely, made it seem that the window had been jimmied. The police had apparently overlooked this.
Like a flitting wraith, the Secret Agent moved about the big laboratory, studying, sniffing, nodding to himself. A wide field of chemical research had been under way here. It was impossible to say without careful study what angle of it Roemer had been concentrating upon before his disappearance; but the Agent had his own ideas.
FEELING that he had learned all he could, he left; reconnecting the burglar alarm again, leaving the building as he had found it. He made his way down the street toward a brightly lighted avenue, passing the bulky form of the patroling cop placidly walking his beat.
The Agent’s next stopping point was a vacant lot a half-mile farther on. It was a dreary spot, filled with rubbish and the rusty bodies of old motor cars. A lean cat whisked from behind a barrel looking back at him with lambent green eyes.
The Agent moved between
tin cans and piles of rubbish, pausing at last to stare at a bare spot on the ground.
News photographers a few days before had taken pictures of this spot. The tabloids had published the pictures. A thrill-hungry public had gazed at them. It was a spot of death—the spot where a taxi man and a petty criminal, a lone jackal of the underworld, had been found dead. The bodies were gone now; but Agent “X,” reconstructing the crime bit by bit, seemed to see their empurpled faces and outthrust tongues at his feet. They, too, had been killed by the unseen hands of the ghostly strangler.
He looked back at the curb, at the place where the deserted taxi had been found. Then, pondering silently, tensely, he walked on and engaged another cab.
This time he went back toward the city limits.
When he reached the street where the murder of Scanlon had occurred, he ordered the driver to proceed slowly. The Federal detective’s body had been removed. The police cruiser and headquarters car were no longer standing at the curb. But, up the block in front of the address written on Scanlon’s cuff, an official car of some sort was parked.
Agent “X” told his cabman to drive on and turn a corner. He paid his fare, got out, and walked cautiously back.
The house that corresponded to the number on Scanlon’s cuff was a simple two-story affair. There was a light burning on the ground floor. A hedge ran around the yard.
The Agent walked by the chauffeur who dozed at the wheel of the parked car and slipped quietly into the yard. He moved like a shadow along the building’s side. His heart was beating faster now. He was running a great risk. Who was inside?
The shades were closely drawn. He couldn’t see. He would have to trust entirely to his disguise. But before revealing himself he wanted, if possible, to learn what was going on.
He slipped quickly to the rear of the house, tried a door. It was locked, but once again he took his tool kit from his pocket and deftly picked the lock. Then, so quietly that those inside heard nothing, he entered.
He tiptoed to the closed sitting-room door and listened for a moment. A man and a woman inside were talking. The man had the bullying voice of a routine police officer. The tones of that voice were strangely familiar.
Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated) Page 14
