Secret Agent "X": The Complete Series Volume 2
by
Paul Chadwick & Emile C. Tepperman
Introduction by
Will Murray
Altus Press • 2013
Copyright Information
© 2013 Altus Press
Publication History:
“Introduction” appears here for the first time. Copyright © 2013 Will Murray. All Rights Reserved.
“City of the Living Dead” originally appeared in the June 1934 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
“Hand of Horror” originally appeared in the August 1934 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
“Octopus of Crime” originally appeared in the September 1934 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
“The Hooded Hordes” originally appeared in the October 1934 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press
Special Thanks to Brian Earl Brown, Matthew Higgins, Tom Johnson, Chris Kalb, Will Murray, Rick Ollerman, Don O’Malley & Bill Thom
Introduction by Will Murray
THIS second Altus Press volume of the exploits of Secret Agent “X” begins with the story originally published in the magazine’s fifth issue, dated June 1934.
“City of the Living Dead” was blurbed in the previous issue as “City of Living Death” and was going to be set in the mythical Midland City. This was rechristened Branford. Why both story title and locale name were changed is one of those unsolvable pulp mysteries. As is the author of this novel.
Paul Chadwick ghosted the initial quartet of the Agent’s adventures. He may have written this one as well. But I have never been entirely comfortable with this identification. The story seems to deviate from the atmospheric Chadwick style which flavored not only this series, but his Wade Hammond tales running in Ten Detective Aces at the same time. And the still-growing collection of secret aliases is entirely absent. But if Chadwick didn’t write this one, who did? The truth is as impenetrable as the enigmatic “X’s” true identity.
Twenty years after publication of this story, DC Comics discovered that comic books with gorillas splashed on the cover caused sales to jump dramatically. This led to a tidal wave of gorilla covers in the 1950s and ’60s, which has since abated.
Evidenced by the dearth of Depression-era gorilla covers, pulp editors never caught on to this sure-fire sales gimmick. One wonders if Secret Agent “X” editor Rose Wyn noticed a bump in circulation with this issue, and if she thought H. W. Reusswig’s cover factored into the equation.
The July issue of Secret Agent “X” was skipped, indicating trouble meeting the monthly deadline. Had Chadwick stumbled? Or did the fault lie with whoever wrote “City of the Living Dead”?
In any case, a new Brant House soon stepped forth. The author behind “Hand of Horror” (August, 1934) has been identified as Emile C. Tepperman. Before two years passed, he would be ghosting the adventures of The Spider and Operator #5 for Popular Publications. He’s also suspected of writing a few Phantom Detective novels for the Thrilling chain, such as “The Murder Syndicate” and “The Web of Murder.” His chief claim to pulp fame were the long-running “Masked Marksman” stories from The Spider and his “Suicide Squad” series which headlined Ace G-Men. But in 1934, he was new to the field, writing his Marty Quade thrillers for Ten Detective Aces. This is his first pulp novel, and already his hardboiled style is in evidence. But “Tepp’s” characteristic lighhearted touch is not. The unremittingly grim realm of Secret Agent “X” was no place for that. “Hand of Horror” is a credibly grisly first effort by a writer who went on to pen more “X” mysteries.
“Octopus of Crime” (September, 1934) may be one of Paul Chadwick’s top Secret Agent “X” novels. It certainly is pivotal. In this story, he returns to the series he originated with a vengeance. Here Chadwick introduces disgraced former cop, Jim Hobart, who will loom large in many adventures to come. Hobart went on to organize the Hobart Detective Agency, an important limb of the Agent’s growing crime-crushing organization. In his pre-“X” days, Paul Chadwick was the Street & Smith editor in change of Air Trails, and penned many pulp tales of heroic aviators. In this story, he gives “X” a small fleet of aircraft, one of which, the Blue Comet, will serve our hero well in the exciting exploits to come—as long as Chadwick was writing them at least.
“Octopus of Crime” also occupies a minor footnote in Golden Age comic book history as well. In 1940, the parent company of Periodical House—known by that time as Ace—launched a comic book line. One of their first superheroes was Magno, the Magnetic Man. His origin story, from Super-Mystery Comics #1 (July, 1940) was a bald retelling of “Octopus of Crime,” with Magno taking the role of Secret Agent “X,” who had his own comic strip under the name of The Phantom Fed in Sure-Fire Comics.
Rounding out this volume is another strong series entry—Chadwick’s “The Hooded Hordes” (September, 1934). If ever a Secret Agent “X” story read like it had been plotted for Popular’s Operator #5, this is it. Nothing less than the fate and future of the United States of America rests in the hands of the unknown agent. The true-life inspirations for most “X” novels are difficult to trace, 75 years later. But this one is not.
In 1934, The Special Committee on Un-American Activities was formed to look into Nazi propaganda then infiltrating the U.S. and into the influence of other “foreign subversives.” It uncovered what was dubbed the Business Plot—an unsuccessful effort by fascists to seize control of the White House. In 1938, it was supplanted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, otherwise HUAC—which sounds very much like this story’s DOACs—Defenders of the American Constitution. HUAC would look into the Ku Klux Klan, and the Communist Party, but it was Red subversion more than any other entity which inspired “The Hooded Hordes.”
Their cruel employment of bombs and molten lead as means of intimidation harkens back to the acid-wielding extortionists of the inaugural Secret Agent “X” novel, “The Torture Trust.” Several top pulpsters contributed to this series, but only Paul Chadwick plumbed the true cold depths of pulpy horror.
Operating behind a multiplicity of aliases like The Shadow, and whistling mysteriously like a melancholy Doc Savage, Secret Agent “X” battled diabolical forces and foes the likes of which neither classic Street & Smith hero ever faced. Turn the page and see why “X” stands apart in a dark pulp world unique to only him.
City of the Living Dead
Chapter I
Unseen Invaders
JAWS grim, gaze bleakly intent, a man in a long-bodied roadster drove swiftly toward the rich manufacturing city of Branford. Mysterious, compelling lights of unusual intelligence showed in the depths of his eyes.
Those eyes searched the black river past which the highway wound; searched the road before him, watched the white-painted fence posts that flashed endlessly by. The roar of the smooth-running engine came as a single great organ note, a throaty diapason of power, holding the car at its sixty-mile-an-hour pace. A bend in the river made the lighted windows of Branford visible—pin pricks gleaming in the sable curtain of the night.
The man’s gaze became still more intent. His hands tightened over the wide rim of the wheel.
Staring at those lights ahead he was visioning something else. Above Branford’s roof tops he seemed to glimpse a hovering, sphinxlike presence—the bony-jawed spectre of Death itself with scythe uplifted as a threat and portent of evil to come.<
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The highway so far had been unnaturally deserted. The man had passed no other cars either going to or coming from Branford. But, as he neared the city limits, an air of grim activity became apparent.
Khaki-clad figures stood in tense groups. Powerful buff-colored autos and police motorcycles lined the road. A harsh voice shouting an abrupt command slowed the approaching roadster.
“Halt! What’s your business, stranger?”
The man behind the roadster’s wheel stared into the alert eyes of a state trooper who stood challengingly, rifle held ready, bayonet fixed.
The stranger fished in a pocket, drew out a paper and presented it to the trooper. It bore the name Doctor Julius Smith, U. S. Public Health Service. The trooper glanced at it sharply, nodded and stepped back.
The car leaped forward with a whine of gears, crossed a bridge, and entered the city proper.
Lights in houses showed plainly now, but the streets themselves were as deserted as the highway had been. Here and there a shadowy figure moved, walking quickly from one door to another, as though fearful of some dread danger. Here and there a head showed behind a closed window, peering out furtively at the roadster speeding down an avenue toward the square.
The state trooper who had admitted the man didn’t know that his credentials were faked. The city itself had no inkling of the identity of this night-riding stranger. The few who stared as he passed penetrated no farther than the surface of his inconspicuous features, little dreaming that those features formed a marvelously clever disguise.
IF they had been told the name this stranger went by in the high Government circles where his activities were followed, they would still have been in the dark. For the man at the wheel was a hidden hunter of criminals, one who inspired terror and wonder along the black alleys of the underworld. A man who had been suspected and hounded by the police themselves on many occasions when his daring methods had brought him into conflict with the law. A man, finally, who was an eternally baffling enigma to the law and the lawless alike—the man called “Secret Agent ‘X.’”
Tonight the citizens of Branford had something far more startling to occupy them than mere curiosity as to the business and identity of a strange man in a roadster. An epidemic of encephalitis, that mysterious form of sleeping sickness more vicious than its African cousin, was raging.
The sinister malady had broken out three weeks before. It had spread from one or two people to dozens and scores of others. A quarantine of martial strictness had been drawn around the city and its suburbs in a frantic effort to check it.
To break through that quarantine line from the inside meant certain arrest and the risk of being shot. All persons entering Branford were questioned and checked with an eagle eye. Once having gone in, they must not get away again. For the sleeping sickness, making of its victims veritable living dead, carried horror with it that was like the crawling touch of icy fingers.
The disease had come upon the city under the most extraordinary circumstances. Nine gorillas had escaped from the experimental department of Drexel Institute in the heart of Branford, where scientists had been using the great apes as living laboratories. The gorillas had been inoculated with encephalitis virus in an attempt to find the cause and cure for this most enigmatic of modern diseases, the germ of which even the finest collodion filters could not isolate.
Then fate had stepped in with a horrible jest. The gorillas had broken loose. Efforts to control a deadly disease had resulted in the worst epidemic of sleeping sickness the country had ever known.
Always a rare malady, there were no more than several hundred cases now. But an aura of horror advanced before the spread of the disease like a ghastly herald of doom. For, in the first period of encephalitis, its victim passes through a stage of facial rigidity in which the features are devoid of all expression—the stage known as the Parkinsonian Mask. Then comes the terrible listless coma from which there is often no awakening.
Secret Agent “X” was aware of all this. Uneasy questions forced themselves upon his mind. What would happen if the malady spread beyond the limits of Branford? What if it reached the teeming, near-by millions of New York? What if it sent octopuslike fingers from there to other great centers of population—Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, Los Angeles?
The answer came with horrible certainty. Once out of control, the disease would spread as rapidly as the licking flames of a prairie fire. Congested areas would be the focal points of infection. A hundred cases would become a thousand in a week. A thousand would grow to a hundred thousand in a month.
The United States would be visited by a plague as ravaging as those of the Middle Ages, when the mournful bells of the corpse gatherer’s wagons tolled through the midnight streets of London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Worse, the victims of this disease would be living corpses, waiting for the relief of slow death, medical science itself baffled and helpless.
But there was more even than this. The whisper of a hideous suspicion had brought Agent “X” through the quarantine lines to risk death itself. An intimation of something as terrible as the spread of the malady had caused him to wire his intentions to a high official in Washington known in the secret files as “K9.”
For behind the spread of the sleeping sickness Agent “X” had traced the dim outline of a crime pattern almost too startling to be believed.
THE newspapers had stated simply that escaped gorillas had started the epidemic. But Agent “X,” reading and rereading the published facts, had felt uneasy questions growing in his mind. Why was it that the great apes were seen solely at night? Why had only one of them actually been shot? And why was it that Branford’s richest citizens had first been afflicted with the disease?
These items pieced together had nourished the dark suspicion in Agent “X’s” mind. These were the indecipherable riddles that had brought him to Branford in search of answers.
Fear lay like a pall around him in the quiet, deserted streets. He drove his car slowly, eyes glowingly alert. As he approached the city’s main square, a weird illumination whitened the sky ahead.
The shimmering, questing beams of dozens of searchlights mounted on emergency fire and police trucks filled the air. They were probing through the vegetation of the square, playing over tree trunks and branches, reaching along the faces of buildings. Behind the searchlights, grim-eyed men held rifles ready. The hunt for the escaped gorillas was on, as it had been for many nights past.
Explanations of the apes’ mysterious disappearance had been put forward. Some said they had fled to the sewers for hiding. Others said they had found refuge in some deserted building. Still others claimed some madman had given the great beasts harborage.
Yet, wherever they stayed in daylight, they were still appearing unexpectedly at night. And those who met them and were scratched or bitten came down with the dread disease. Not only this; mosquitoes, it was now claimed, inoculated with virus from biting human hosts, were also spreading the malady. Thus the threat grew hourly worse. And it was into this living hell that Agent “X” had voluntarily come.
Here in Branford, following his policy of helping men and women to live in peace and happiness, he was prepared to face what might be the greatest crime riddle of his career. Disguised as Julius Smith of the U. S. Public Health Service he hoped to unearth hitherto unknown facts.
A police car stopped him at the edge of the square. His credentials were looked at again. Then he was allowed to proceed. There were three immediate courses open to him. He could go to the office of Doctor Traub, Branford’s commissioner of health, and present his papers. From Traub he would learn all the latest details. He could go to Drexel Institute and learn the circumstances surrounding the gorillas’ escape. Or he could take part in the search for the gorillas themselves in these first hours of darkness when the apes appeared to be most active. In hiding apparently during the day, it was just after nightfall that they went abroad in quest of food.
It was thi
s that appealed most to Agent “X.” Doctor Traub and the institute could wait. Horror at the invisible invasion of a dread disease, sympathy for the victims, made him crave direct action.
He swung away from the square. The first and only gorilla to be caught had been shot at that spot. It seemed to “X” that the battery of searchlights would keep the others away. A gnawing suspicion in his mind made him seek the section where the city’s rich dwelt.
He drove swiftly along a wide avenue, passing only a few other cars. These were police cruisers, or those of doctors marked with green crosses. The night seemed to hold menace and mystery. The spectre of death still hovered above Branford. A dank miasma of evil seemed to rise from the lawns and grass plots.
Over his face and hands Agent “X” rubbed a special solution which would keep away mosquitoes and night-flying insects.
HE came at last to a street of stately, high-walled mansions. In front of them flowed the river. Beyond, on the opposite shore, burned the campfires of National Guardsmen, stationed there to see that even wealthy citizens of the town did not try to escape. A millionaire’s launch had been surprised and riddled a few nights before, and its owner killed. A trooper caught accepting a five-thousand-dollar bribe to let a wealthy merchant through the quarantine lines had been summarily court-martialed.
Agent “X” parked his car and prowled ahead on foot. The silence and loneliness of the city were more apparent than ever now. Lights showed in the houses ahead, but the citizens had barricaded themselves as for a siege. Windows were closed; many blinds were drawn. Sounds of human habitation were few.
Somewhere a dog barked. “X” could hear the faint voices of the guardsmen across the river. The night air was still. He moved across quiet lawns, still as a wraith, alert as an Indian. In his clothing he carried some of the strange offensive and defensive weapons that had become a part of his equipment. If he saw a gorilla he was prepared.
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