The plane began to descend. It banked, nosed into the wind, slid downward out of the night like a huge bird. Landing lights on its wings winked on and off. Other lights answered below.
The velvet-smooth surface of the field swept up. It was glistening with rain. The plane’s air wheels touched the ground. They lifted, touched again, settled. The plane taxied up to the hangars, fishtailed to a stop.
AGENT “X” leaped out. For a moment he looked around. A curious mechanic was moving forward. An officer, protected from the chill drizzle of the rain, stared at him from an open doorway. Then he saw a man in a glistening slicker running toward him.
“X,” who never forgot a face, stared intently. When light from the hangar’s open doorway fell on the man, “X” nodded to himself. The approaching figure was someone he knew—a trusted Department of Justice operative named Saunders; a man who had often been active in the dangerous field of counterespionage. On at least a half dozen occasions in the past, Agent “X” had talked to him.
But Saunders’ face was a blank when he came up. He didn’t recognize Agent “X.” The Agent’s masterly disguise fooled him. Saunders, thick-set, powerfully built and sandy-haired, peered under his wet hat brim.
“Are you Mr. Pond?” he asked.
The Agent nodded.
“I was told to meet you when you landed. I’ve got a car out in the street. But first, if you don’t mind—”
Again the Agent nodded. He knew what Saunders wanted. Caution was ingrained in the men who worked for the Federal bureaus. “X’s” hand dived into his pocket, came out grasping a wallet. From it he drew a card bearing the name of Elisha Pond. Saunders didn’t know that this was one of a dozen aliases. He didn’t know that the man called Pond carried other cards which he could have produced just as readily. He didn’t know that the man before him was Secret Agent “X.” He was merely obeying orders from a superior, as the pilot of the army plane had done.
“O.K.,” he said. “Step this way if you please, sir. It’s a nasty night, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the Agent grimly. He had an idea it was nastier than Saunders realized. He sensed strange, dark things in the air. He followed the stocky form of Saunders to the waiting car, a small, weather-beaten coupé.
“My own bus,” said Saunders proudly. “She doesn’t look so nice, but she’s a sweetheart on the road.”
Both men climbed in. Neither of them saw the shadow that moved along the hangar wall. Neither of them saw the dark, intent face that gleamed for a moment under the splashing drops of the rain.
There was a public telephone booth in a small cigar store opposite the field gate. As Saunders’ car splashed away, the shadow by the hangar wall ran over to the booth. In a moment he was speaking softly into the mouthpiece of a phone, using a foreign tongue. Another man, a half-mile away, was answering him, also in the same tongue. The second man hung up, slipped out into the dreary darkness.
Saunders tried to make conversation as he and Agent “X” sped along. “X” answered only in monosyllables. He was oppressed by a sense of impending trouble, wondering about the mysterious reason for his summons to Washington. He liked Saunders, but the man was only a small cog in some vast thing that was under way. The sandy-haired Federal operative lighted a cigarette. He sent the little car whizzing along, driving with careless ease.
It was Secret Agent “X” whose eyes roved the street ahead with the closest attention. It was “X” who first saw the dark car pointed at a crazy angle toward the curb. For a moment his fingers closed over Saunders’ arm.
“Someone’s skidded,” said Saunders. “And nearly smashed up.”
A man in a chauffeur’s uniform was bent over one wheel of the car ahead. He straightened, raised a hand in signal.
“They’re in trouble,” said Saunders. “Let’s see what’s the matter.”
He braked his little car, began to slow down. The Agent’s eyes had become burningly bright. But the chauffeur looked all right. He was dark-skinned. He seemed to be a mulatto. Saunders brought his car to a stop, cranked down a window.
“What’s the trouble, fellah?” he said.
The brown-skinned chauffeur came forward, holding something in his hand.
“Look,” he said. “Broken!”
He thrust his hand through the side window of Saunders’ coupé, opened the fingers. Then it was that Agent “X” hissed a sharp warning; but he was too late.
Something crackled in the brown-skinned man’s hand. It was like a dried puffball. A jet of brownish powder squirted from its collapsed sides. The powder filled the interior of the car. It went into the two men’s faces, blinded them as though hot needles had been thrust against their eyes. Saunders swore fiercely and lashed out with his fist.
“You double-crosser. I stopped to help you and—”
WORDS choked in his throat as the brownish powder passed between his lips. Agent “X” did not try to speak. He jerked at the car’s door, tried to get out, hoping that the night air and rain would clear his vision. He rubbed at his eyes with one hand, but it only seemed to drive the hot needles deeper into his nerves.
Dimly then he heard the sound of running feet around him.
He heard crisp orders shouted in a foreign tongue that made him start. A master linguist he had a basic knowledge of many languages. This was one he had heard before, but it seemed out of place, fantastic in his present surroundings. The brown-skinned chauffeur had been joined by others.
Hands caught hold of Secret Agent “X.” He lashed out with his fists, tried to fight free; then something was thrown over his head. A noose was jerked around his neck. He had a sense of enveloping cloth. A pungent, smothering smell was in his nostrils. It was like a strange, Oriental incense; but the sweetish odor of it was cloyingly oppressive.
He raised his hands, tried to pull away the hood that had been flung over his head. The dizzyingly sweet odor in his nostrils was filling his lungs now, choking off breath, making him reel on his feet.
Saunders beside him gave a hoarse, gurgling cry. He, too, had been attacked in the same way.
Blinded, smothering, Agent “X” was at a hopeless disadvantage. The onslaught had come before he had been on his guard, before he had conceived of the possibility of any enemy being present.
Cold fury filled him. He battled desperately to keep his faculties, to free himself from the smothering hood before darkness came. But the fumes in his lungs were mastering him. He slipped on the wet pavement, sank to his knees. His legs seemed to crumple under him. As blinding lights danced before his pain-racked eyes he fell into the black depths of unconsciousness.
Chapter III
Death by Torture
HORROR beat upon him when he woke up. He had a sense of appalling catastrophe. He had lost all track of time. He seemed to be in a dark, still room. Then he became conscious of a sound. A man’s voice, low-pitched and precise.
The Agent’s eyes still burned, but when he raised inflamed lids he found that he could see. He started, and breath hissed between his teeth. He was in a room. It was a man’s voice he heard. And he saw in that first instant of returning consciousness that both he and Saunders were prisoners. There were steel handcuffs on his ankles and wrists. These were attached to rings in the wall behind; Saunders looked like a man stretched out on a crucifix. His head still hung down.
Then “X’s” eyes swivelled again to the man who was speaking. His attitude was as calm as the quiet tones of his voice, but his appearance made the Agent’s body grow rigid. For the man wore a green mask over his face. It was a livid, poisonous green, like the scales of some reptile, and, through slits in the mask, his eyes glittered as coldly and evilly as the beady eyes of a snake.
“You have waked,” the man was saying. “Your friend is waking also. You will now be able to answer questions I shall ask.”
Agent “X” turned his head. Saunders’ eyes, red and inflamed, were opening.
“What the hell—” he muttered. “Say, what
’s this. You—”
The man in the green mask held up his hand. His eyes glittered behind the green of the cloth that covered his face. There was a measured inhuman dryness in his speech.
“Wait,” he said. “It is not for you to ask questions. That is for me. You need only answer.”
“I’ll answer nothing,” said Saunders. “I’ll see you in hell for this.”
“That may be,” said the green-masked man quietly. He chuckled, and there was something about the sound of that chuckle that tightened the skin along Agent “X’s” spine. He had been in the presence of some of the world’s most desperate criminals—men without heart or soul. He sensed now that he was in the presence of a murderer. He muttered a warning to Saunders.
The green-masked man turned on him.
“You need not be afraid to talk—Elisha Pond,” he said. “Your secrets are known already. You were summoned to Washington tonight for a special reason. You are the man about whom strange rumors have circulated, I think. You are called—”
The green-masked man stopped speaking for a moment and walked forward. He probed with tense, inquisitive fingers, picked at the lifelike plastic material on the Agent’s face.
“That is a disguise you are wearing—a most remarkable one. It is my belief that you are the man called Secret Agent ‘X,’ the man, they say, who can make himself up in a thousand different ways.” Green Mask’s chuckle came again. “Whether you talk or not now, Elisha Pond—it is unimportant. You will talk later, when I am ready—and if I give you another chance. Look!”
The man lifted his hand. In it was the telegram that had brought Agent “X” to Washington.
“Code!” the green-masked man said. “Government code. Very ingenious, isn’t it? Very difficult to read—but listen.”
In a clear voice the man who had captured Agent “X” and Saunders began to decipher the message on the telegram—the message instructing “X” what to do in a certain room of a certain house upon his arrival there. It was from a high and mysterious Government official. The green-masked man read it as easily as though it had been addressed to him. Then his voice grew harsh.
“This paper has saved you some unpleasantness. If I hadn’t seen it, and if you still refused to talk, I would take means to make you. For you are an important man, Elisha Pond. Otherwise you would not have been summoned to Washington. You are expected to perform a great service for your country. But it is evident to me that I know more at the moment than you. The rest I shall learn from the sender of this telegram—and from your friend here.”
Again Saunders spoke, fury mottling his face. “Not from me, you won’t—you double-crossing mug.”
“I don’t like your speech,” said the green-masked man quietly. “You were instructed to take this gentleman, Elisha Pond, to a certain address. You will now give me that address.”
“You heard me,” said Saunders. “Come over here and I’ll give you a poke in the eye.”
“Fool!” rasped the Green Mask. He clapped his hands suddenly. The door of the room opened. Four figures glided in. The eyes of Secret Agent “X” stared at them burningly. Saunders gaped in amazement. If this had been a weird, drug-distorted nightmare, the four who had entered could not have been more grotesquely horrible. They, too, wore green masks, but not a simple cloth mask like the man in the chair. Hideously carved devil faces of some thin wood covered their features. They looked savage, barbaric. Leering mouths, huge noses, distended nostrils—with the sinister glitter of their own eyes flashing through holes in the wood. One of them spoke—and Agent “X” recognized again the foreign tongue he had heard before.
The man in the chair gave answer, using the same strange dialect.
“Chinks!” breathed Saunders—but “X” knew he was wrong.
The man in the chair turned again, faced Saunders.
“I give you one more chance,” he said. “Will you talk or shall the Kep-shak be used—the pollen of the blossom that loosens men’s tongues?”
A cold sweat stood out on the Agent’s forehead. Some inkling of what was to ensue filled him. He turned his head toward Saunders.
“Talk,” he said. “Tell him what you know!”
This wouldn’t be much—only an address. Its concealment was not worth a man’s agony. But Saunders shook his head. He was a powerful man, arrogantly confident of his own physical endurance.
THE green-masked man in the chair clapped his hands again. The four others stepped forward. One of them drew a knife, slit the sleeves of Saunders’ coat from shoulder to wrist, laying bare his arms. Another drew something from behind his back that was like a tiny devil’s claw. With an abrupt, expert stroke he drew it across Saunders’ skin, leaving a line of red scratches. A third man came forward with a metal box in his hand. He lifted the cover, drew out a pinch of grayish powder.
“Talk!” said the Agent again. “Talk, Saunders.”
The thick-set Federal man gritted his teeth. His lips remained locked.
The man with the pinch of powder made a swift motion. He tossed the powder on the scratches along Saunders’ arm, rubbed it in with his thumb, stepped back. A slow change came over Saunders’ face. The muscles in his cheek began to tense. His body began to move. He writhed in the steel bracelets that held him, bucking his shoulders up, trying to tear his wrists loose. But the cuffs were locked tightly. The strong steel held.
His lips opened then. Breath whistled between his teeth.
“God!” he muttered. “God!”
The ruddy glow of his face was paling slowly now. Beads of sweat stood out on his skin. Agent “X” tried desperately to work loose, to aid him. But the steel of the handcuffs bit into his own skin. They held tight.
“I’ll talk,” said Saunders with a sudden groan. “You win, Green Mug. I’ll talk.”
The words were wrenched from his lips by pain. He was a brave man, but the agony of a strange, exotic drug seeping into his veins through the scratches in his arms was too much. He babbled the address to which he had been directed to take Agent “X.” The green-masked man in the chair nodded. Agent “X” listened. Then the green-masked man spoke.
“You are a fool, Saunders. I don’t like fools. And you would be a nuisance if you lived. Also your death will be a lesson—to Elisha Pond!”
Horror crawled along the spine of Agent “X.” He had feared something like this. A cry sprang to his lips.
“If you do, Green Mask—I’ll see that you die yourself.”
Green Mask bowed ironically. “Another fool,” he said. “Look—and profit by what you see!”
He gave a low signal. The man with the powder stepped forward. Another pinch of the hideous gray stuff landed on Saunders’ tortured flesh. A groan came from his bloodless lips. He writhed horribly, tried to speak, but only a discordant babble came from his quivering mouth.
Agent “X” strained until veins stood out on his forehead, until the handcuffs bit cruelly. He called harshly for this terrible thing to stop. Green Mask did not answer. The four others were silent, their glittering eyes turned upon their victim.
At the last, Agent “X” did not look. Horror, nausea, weighed him down. The hissing gasps that came from Saunders’ throat seemed to lash the still air of the room. The walls seemed to throw the sound back in whispers of hellish laughter. Then silence followed, and when Agent “X” looked again, Saunders’ powerful body hung slack in the steel cuffs that held him. Saunders was dead.
Weak himself from the ghastliness of what had taken place, Agent “X” sagged in his fetters. He had faced death and torture in his life, but he could not calmly see others suffer.
The green-masked man spoke a low order. The four who had performed his bidding disappeared as they had come. Green Mask arose calmly. He slipped into a hat and coat he had thrown over the back of the chair. His glittering, evil eyes became fixed on Agent “X.” Agent “X” answered the look with fierce, silent hatred. The green-masked man buttoned his coat leisurely, turned his hat brim down.<
br />
“Let this be a lesson,” he said. “I go now to receive the instructions meant for you. I go to learn exactly why you have been summoned by plane to Washington. And if the reason is what I think, I will have use for you later.”
With a mocking salute, the man turned and strode across the still room. An instant later a door opened, closed, and was locked. It was followed by the sound of receding footsteps.
Chapter IV
The Living Dead
AGENT “X” stared at his surroundings. The room he was in was bare, except for the one chair and a small table. There were no sounds, no street noises. Apparently the green-masked man had taken the others with him, left no guards, trusting to the strength of those forged steel handcuffs.
The Agent tested them. They were locked so closely to the flesh that they made painful pressure against his skin. The metal rings behind him were bolted into beams in the wall. He was apparently a hopeless captive. He rolled his eyes toward the still form of Saunders, cursed silently under his breath. He had seen many men die, but few as horribly as this.
Then Agent “X” began to move. He arched his body backwards. He thrust his hands down and brought his heels up. He could touch his shoe with his finger tips now. The steel cuffs cut cruelly into his wrists. He ignored the pain, stretched down farther still.
The fingers of his right hand groped along his left shoe sole. They paused, pried the leather of the sole apart at a point just in front of the heel. Working laboredly in his cramped position, he slipped something out. It was a four-inch piece of metal—a file. One side of it was highly tempered steel. The other side had a crystalline black substance set into it, held by grooved edges and mineral cement. It was a sliver of black diamond, thin as isinglass, but with a finely toothed cutting edge that was fashioned to rend the hardest of metal.
Turning this file in his hand, holding it in tense fingers, Agent “X” pressed the diamond-set edge against the connecting links of his handcuffs. With a steady, rhythmical movement he drew it back and forth and felt the tiny crystalline teeth bite into the metal. Minute flakes of steel fell away. The groove that his diamond file made grew deeper and deeper.
Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated) Page 43
