Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2

by Paul Chadwick

  Given hours in which to work, he knew he could file these rivets off. But time was too precious. He had overheard the astoundingly cruel scheme that the head criminal had outlined. Knowing that their cards were almost played out, they would soon be leaving Branford; leaving terror and suffering behind them; leaving Betty Dale ill with a malady that no doctor could cure.

  “X” could not tell how effective the serum injection he had received would be. He could not tell how much time there was left for him to work in. He must escape while his nerves and his muscles were still unimpeded by the onslaught of the disease, before the paralyzing coma of encephalitis disabled him. When that happened, he would be out of the running for a long time—perhaps forever.

  He studied the door, his quick brain devising and discarding a dozen schemes. Suddenly his eyes brightened. He stared at the light bulb above his head. It hung three feet from the ceiling. If he jumped, he could reach it. And there above the bulb was wire. Wire—that was the one thing he needed.

  With deft fingers he inserted his diamond-set bit into the socket of the tiny penlike tool. He measured the rivets of the outside bolt with his eyes, estimated the length of the bolt. Then he began drilling eight inches behind it on a line that was parallel.

  Quickly, expertly, he worked. Strong alternating movements of his wrist and the teeth of the bit sank into the metal. Small curlicues of steel dropped away beneath it, fell to the floor. He kept a sharp ear out for footsteps in the corridor.

  The steel of the door was nearly an inch thick. It took him ten breathless minutes to drill the hole behind the bolt.

  Then he walked back to the center of the small room under the light. He leaped up, caught the wire above the bulb, yanked it from the ceiling. The room was plunged instantly in darkness. But he had his own small light for later use. Now he worked in the stuffy blackness; tearing off the insulation, drawing out slender copper strands.

  At last he had a wire over two feet long. He brought the ends of this together, twisted till the double, foot-length wires had become as one, with a small loop left at the end.

  He approached the door again, bent the wire carefully, thrust the loop through the hole he had drilled.

  A minute of careful movement. The Agent manipulated the wire with deft fingers. Then he was rewarded. He had caught the loop over the handle of the bolt.

  A slow, steady pull and he drew the bolt toward him. It squeaked once. He waited, listening with every nerve taut. Another pull, and the bolt’s end slid out of its socket The door swung open.

  But Agent “X” did not move. If they caught him again, he knew he would never have another chance. He could win now only by caution and by the exercise of all the cunning he possessed. The odds against which he was pitted seemed hopeless. He waited inside the door of the dark room until footsteps sounded. The gangster detailed to keep an eye on him was coming back.

  “X” waited until the man was opposite the door. Then, almost in one movement, it seemed, he thrust the door open and sprang out into the dim corridor.

  The gangster, still clad as an ape, had the hairy, masklike hood of his costume thrown back. He gave one hissing gasp. It was cut short as Agent “X” smashed a balled fist against his chin. The blow was calculated, delivered by a man who had had training as a boxer and wrestler.

  Before the gangster collapsed, Agent “X” slipped an arm around him; pulled him into the dark room.

  There he worked quickly, drawing the man’s strange gorilla costume off his body. The gangster was tall, brutal-looking, with a face almost as ugly as the ape mask he had worn. The furry costume had made him seem huge.

  Agent “X” flashed his small light on the man’s features. For seconds he examined them, eyes strangely intent. Then he drew his hypo needle and his make-up set from his pocket. He had a tube of the plastic, volatile material that he always carried with him. There was also a thin vial of whitish pigment. He spread this over the gangster’s face till his features appeared gray as death.

  Over this Agent “X” spread the make-up material and quickly molded it into new lines. He had no mirror. He was working from memory only. But the disguise he wore himself was impressed indelibly on his mind.

  Under his deft fingers, the features of the unconscious gangster changed. To the casual glance they became the features of the man called Doctor Preston.

  “X” did not use all of his material. He saved out as much as he could, pocketed it. No telling when he might need it again! Next he injected nearly a gram of his anesthetizing drug into the gangster’s veins, making sure the man would stay out even after the effect of the punch had worn off.

  Standing up, flashing his light on his handiwork, Agent “X” smiled, grimly satisfied. The man lying on the floor appeared as Doctor Preston, with the pallor and rigidity of sleeping sickness upon him.

  Agent “X” changed his own features as nearly like the gangster’s as he could, then stooped and picked up the horrible gorilla costume. He slipped the hood of it over his own head, closed the zipper fastenings that the long, dark hair prevented from showing.

  He could see through the eyeholes, breathe air through the nostrils. A downward pressure with his chin, and the gorilla mask responded in a hideous way, opening its mouth, showing white fangs. No wonder the citizens of Branford had been terrified and thoroughly convinced that the thing they saw was one of the escaped gorillas from Drexel Institute.

  The Agent’s next moves were purposeful. Before he left this place, before he made an attempt to capture the criminals, he must investigate the mystery of Hornaday’s disappearance, and learn what he could about the curative serum.

  Walking easily, naturally, as though he belonged there, he moved along the corridor. The dim overhead light cast a hideous contorted shadow at his feet—the shadow of a monstrous ape.

  There were five or six doors along this hallway. Most of them gave into deserted, dust-laden storage rooms. Listening at one before he opened it, he heard strange animal sounds. There were rustlings, the scrape of claws, an occasional hoarse grunt. In the air, seeping around the cracks of the door, was a pungent animal smell.

  With tense fingers the Agent unbolted the door, stepped across the sill. Huge iron cages, looking as though they had been purchased second hand from a circus, ranged the walls. In them were the great, hairy forms of real gorillas—the anthropoids that had been stolen from Drexel Institute. Five of the cages were empty, however. There were only four of the animals left. These seemed dazed and sickly.

  Heads rolling on slack necks, eyes goggling horribly, hairy skin hanging loosely, they clung to the bars and looked at him. One wrinkled its nose, snarled gutturally in its furry chest.

  THE apes, he could see, were not well. No wonder the criminals’ supply of serum was running short. The anthropoids from which they obtained it were succumbing to the unwholesomeness of this damp, airless place. The presence of chill steel and concrete made the building unfit for human or animal habitation. Hideous and fierce-looking as these great beasts were, Agent “X” felt sorry for them.

  The way they had been treated was further evidence of the inhuman attitude of the criminals. At the institute the gorillas had been properly fed and cared for. They had been made as comfortable and happy as possible, and used as living laboratories only that mankind might combat a terrible disease.

  He moved around the room, saw a cluttered table with bottles and syringes upon it. These he examined quickly, interest flaming in his eyes. But here was none of the finished product. That apparently was kept behind the steel wall, in the room from which the deep-voiced man had spoken.

  The Agent left the apes, entered the corridor again, stopping before the next door. This was bolted also. His heart beat faster. He slid the bolt back softly. There was no telling what the room might contain.

  He groped for and found a light switch beside the door; clicked it on. Under the glow of the ceiling bulb, he saw a skeleton-thin man lying on a narrow cot.

  Waste
d as his face was by disease. Agent “X” recognized the man. He had seen pictures of him in medical journals, and at Drexel Institute also, in the office of Doctor Gollomb. This was Hornaday, the worker who had so mysteriously disappeared.

  Agent “X” leaped forward. Something on the man’s wrist gleamed in the light, catching his eye. Metal cuffs, the steel links of which were snapped to the bed. Here was mute evidence of what he had suspected. Hornaday was a slave of the criminal gang.

  At first he thought the man was merely sleeping. Then he bent closer and horror crawled over his flesh. Hornaday was sleeping, but not with the normal sleep of fatigue. His skin was grayish, ghastly, showing traces of masklike rigidity. His pulse was weak. Hornaday was suffering from sleeping sickness.

  Then the Secret Agent’s eyes lighted on a small syringe on a table. There was a bottle beside it containing a small amount of colorless liquid. The covering of one of Hornaday’s skinny arms was slit to the elbow.

  Agent “X” rolled the cut garment up. On Hornaday’s skin several scars showed, one recent. Evidently the man had been given injections of the serum also. Yet they had not cured him.

  Agent “X” picked up the syringe and bottle. He examined them, frowned. Intuition made him leap to a conclusion. He pressed the plunger of the syringe into the bottle until the reservoir was half filled. Then he leaned forward and gave the sleeping man a shot of the fluid.

  A faint tremor passed over Hornaday’s blue-veined lids. A sound like a gasp came from his lips. But the jabbing pain of the needle was insufficient to arouse him from the coma. His gasping whisper stirred around the walls of the high-ceilinged room like the haunting voice of some being from another world.

  Agent “X” waited tensely. The man did not move again. If anything he seemed to have sunk deeper into the strange coma. There were a couple of rickety chairs in the room. Agent “X” sat down on one.

  SOMEWHERE in the big building he could hear confused sounds. The steel walls of the place distorted them. He knew the gangsters must be housed somewhere near—those who had not gone forth into the night on their deadly, hideous missions.

  Agent “X” knew that before long he might be lying on a bed as this man was—among the living dead.

  It was nearly half an hour before Hornaday stirred again. As the minutes passed, a slow change came over him. The Agent, alert to small details, noticed this. His eyes were tensely watchful.

  The liquid in the bottle that “X” had injected was working slowly in Hornaday’s system. It had been necessary for the circulating blood to carry it around many times. Now its effect was evidenced in quickened breathing and a slow suffusion of blood to the deathly skin.

  One of Hornaday’s thin hands moved. There was something ghastly, nightmarish, in the way his clawlike fingers stirred. They seemed to be groping, groping for some hope, some desired thing that was forever beyond his reach. A moan came at last from the man’s lips. He turned his head on the pillowless cot. Slowly his eyelids slid down from eyes that still held the glassiness of his long sleep.

  Agent “X” arose, bent over the man. Second by second the glossiness faded from Hornaday’s eyes. They grew brighter; the man’s sickly face assumed harsh lines of hate and fear as he stared up into the hooded features of the Agent. His lips came back from his teeth. His hands clenched. He made a throaty cry like an animal in pain.

  “Hush!” the sibilant warning of Agent “X” sounded strangely in that room, coming from behind the apelike mask. “I am a friend,” he said softly.

  “Friend!” Hornaday echoed the word harshly. A cackling, fearful laugh came from his lips. Agent “X” silenced it with a quickly thrust hand encased in a hairy glove.

  “Listen to me,” he said tensely. “You are a prisoner of these gangsters. You want to escape—go back to the world you belong in. What if I tell you I can help you?”

  Agent “X” removed his hand. Hornaday lay quiet, staring up at him. Bright, feverish spots of color flamed in his gaunt cheeks. He reached forward to clutch the Agent’s arm, forgetting that his wrists were cuffed. The steel links brought him up quickly, and he cursed with savage bitterness.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here? Take off that hood and let me see your face.”

  The Agent shook his head.

  “You don’t know me; but I know you. Doctor Gollomb has told me all about you. They are wondering where you’ve gone. An epidemic is raging. I came to Branford to investigate.”

  “And how did you get in here? What are you wearing that costume for—like the others?”

  “I knocked one of them out. He’s lying unconscious now. I’m wearing this so that they’ll not suspect.”

  “One of them may come at any instant. They will suspect—if they find you here.”

  “I know it. That is why you must talk quickly and tell me what I want to know. I gave you an injection of the liquid in that bottle. It was the liquid that brought you back to consciousness.”

  HORNADAY nodded, his mouth bitter again. “It’s a weakened solution of my own serum,” he said. “It doesn’t cure, but it brings me back when they need me. I’d rather be left to die.”

  “Where’s the real serum?”

  “They have it. I never see them. They only wake me and ask me questions. The last time I would tell them nothing. Then they had me tortured. Look!”

  Hornaday thrust a foot from the cot. Agent “X” saw that the soles of his feet had been burned.

  “They don’t care now whether I die or not. The apes are dying, too. I warned them that they wouldn’t live in this place. I don’t know what it’s all about. It’s madness. They must all be insane.”

  Agant “X” had let the sick man talk on. Now suddenly he asked a question, his voice vibrant.

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  Hornaday blinked at him.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen them. Several times I’ve been taken into the room at the end of the hall where they’ve talked to me through a slit in the wall, but I’ve never seen them. They seem to know a lot about medicine. But they must be insane!”

  “No, not insane, in the ordinary sense of the word, Hornaday,” said “X” quietly. “They’re criminals. They’re racketeers, the worst I’ve ever come in contact with. They’ve injected dozens of Branford’s rich citizens with sleeping sickness, then sold your serum at exorbitant prices. Do you get it?”

  Hornaday lay for a moment as though dazed. His forehead was furrowed in thought as he assimilated the details of the amazing plot. Then he spoke hoarsely.

  “Good God—and you don’t know who they are, either?”

  “I’m suspicious of one at least, but I’ve no proof to back my theory. Caution’s the only thing that will turn the trick now. A false move, and they’ll get wise and clear out—leaving the people of Branford to the ravages of this plague. Here’s what I want to know, Hornaday. Can you develop more of the serum if I get you out of here?”

  Hornaday answered slowly, a feverish light in his eyes.

  “I’m washed up—too sick to work. But I could direct others. They took all my notes when they had the gangsters kidnap me. But I can remember—everything. If the gorillas haven’t died—if they can be taken care of and put in condition again, or others bought, more serum could be made. We’d give the people the cure free. The institute would pay for it.”

  Agent “X” breathed a sound like a sigh of relief.

  “Good! You’ll have to do it—to save those who are sick now—and keep the epidemic from spreading.”

  “I will!” Hornaday gasped. “For God’s sake get me out of here if you can—I’ll—”

  Fear leaped suddenly into the sick man’s feverish eyes. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Listen! I hear some one coming. They’ll kill us both if they find you here!”

  Chapter XVII

  Sinister Mission

  AGENT “X” heard footsteps, too. More than one person was moving along the hall, coming toward them. He stooped, whisper
ed quickly in Hornaday’s ear.

  “They may have seen the light already. I can’t turn it out now. If they come in—act as though you were in a coma again. Don’t talk or move whatever happens. You must live—understand—to save the people of Branford!”

  Hornaday nodded, his face deathly white. The Agent had offered him hope; now there was a chance that that hope might be snatched away.

  Agent “X” had noticed that there was a crack under the door of this room. That was why he dared not turn out the light. He must depend upon his wits again in case—

  The footsteps stopped outside the door. The door opened and Agent “X,” bending over Hornaday’s cot, turned quickly. Two men stood there, both in gorilla costumes, one with the hood drawn back. He had the hard brutal face of a gangster.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” he asked.

  Agent “X” fell easily into the jargon of the underworld.

  “This guy made a noise,” he said, jerking his thumb toward Hornaday. “I came in to see what it was. He musta had bad dreams.” A harsh laugh came from his lips—a laugh that disarmed the two gangsters. The man who had spoken asked another abrupt question.

  “What about the other guy in room G? You was watching him. How is he?”

  Agent “X” made a downward motion with his gloved hand.

  “Out cold,” he grated. “Couldn’t take it.”

  The other man laughed.

  “The boss wants to see you,” he said. “He’s got a job he wants done.”

  Agent “X” turned, following the others out of Hornaday’s room. His pulses were hammering. He was going to hear the voice of one of the bosses again. And now, playing a different role, in the confidence of this ruthless gang, he hoped to learn secrets that were as yet unfathomed.

  The three of them walked along the chill hallway, into the room at its end.

  The man who had spoken to “X,” the man with his hood down and his sinister face showing, rapped on the wall again. A voice spoke presently, the deep voice of one of the heads of this sinister ring.