“Yes?”
“The doctor we squirted juice into has passed out cold, boss. That grade A stuff works like nobody’s business.”
The grating laugh of the man behind the steel wall sounded.
“That is excellent. We’ll have use for that culture again tonight. Members of the mayor’s family, and the families of the aldermen and commissioners have been inoculated, as you know. Now I want one of the commissioners himself inoculated. I’m speaking of Health Commissioner Traub. We can’t have him interfering with our more ambitious plans.”
The laugh of the man behind the wall was almost satanic.
“This is an important job and I want it done quickly. I’m going to send two of you out. Who’ll volunteer?”
The Agent’s mind was working swiftly. This fiend behind the wall wanted to put Commissioner Traub out of the way just when the epidemic would be at its worst. It seemed a diabolical climax to this fearful crime wave—but behind the move Agent “X” read deep significance.
Neither of the two men beside him spoke. Here was a chance for him to leave the building unsuspected, but he kept quiet, waiting for a cue.
“There’ll be an extra grand a piece for those who do it when the job is done,” said the man behind the wall.
Only then did Agent “X” speak.
“Let me in on it, boss,” he husked eagerly.
One of the two men beside him also volunteered at the mention of money. The other tried to cut in. They began quarreling fiercely until the stern voice of the unseen boss silenced them.
“You two who spoke first,” he said.
Agent “X” waited for further instructions. These came quickly. The small door under the eye slit in the wall opened. Two of the toothlike injectors were thrust out.
“They are filled with grade A culture,” the man behind the wall said. “One or both of you can work on Traub. It makes no difference so long as he gets plenty of it.”
He gave them Traub’s address, then added a warning.
“Don’t come back till you’ve done the job. There’s a special meeting tonight in the mayor’s office. They’re going into a huddle on a certain matter. Commissioner Traub will be there. After the meeting’s over, he’ll probably go directly home. Wait outside his house and then get him. Do the thing right or you’ll have to chisel into another racket. I don’t play ball with men who fall down on a job—and I don’t hand out money to them either.” A short laugh sounded. The metal covering of the eye slit closed with an emphatic click.
Agent “X” turned. Following the other gang members he left the room, headed for one of the building’s secret exits. And at that moment a faint, chill sweat broke out on the Agent’s forehead. For he began to feel symptoms of weakness, dizziness. The terrible virus of the encephalitis bacilli was beginning to show itself in his blood. Could he keep himself going during the next hour to accomplish the daring, desperate things that must be done?
IN the office of the mayor of Branford a group of excited men were assembled. They were men whose faces were haggard with worry, whose eyes held somber shadows of fear. The mayor had just read them a letter he had received by special delivery less than an hour ago. It was typewritten, signed by a “Doctor Blank,” the name also typewritten. It offered to sell to the City of Branford serum that would cure the disease of encephalitis.
The charge would be one million dollars in cash. In the event that the offer was accepted, the letter demanded the acceptance be made known by radio broadcast from the Branford station. To prove that “Doctor Blank” was no quack, the letter gave certain references—the names of persons living in Branford who had already received treatment and were on the way toward being cured.
The mayor, a small, thin man, struck the letter fiercely as he eyed his commissioners and the group of aldermen seated before him.
“I’ve looked up these references,” he said. “It’s true. Some of our wealthy citizens have been receiving treatment. They have been cured. This man, whoever he is, is no quack.”
An alderman shot a question.
“Didn’t these ‘citizens’ you refer to give you the doctor’s name?”
“No. They don’t know who he is. The patients were taken out of their houses to be cured. The treatments were made in secrecy and the doctor refused to divulge his name.”
The commissioner of police spoke harshly. He was bending forward, staring at the mayor.
“Your honor,” he said. “In my opinion the writer of that letter is a crook—a criminal. This is an extortion racket.”
“You mean he can’t really make the cures?”
“That is not what I mean. I mean that he has deliberately spread the disease so that we will be forced to buy his cure. It explains a good deal of the mysteries that have puzzled us all during the past few weeks. It explains why the gorillas have never appeared in the daytime. Some man is keeping them under cover. The same man who stole them—the man who wrote that letter!”
The mayor nodded somberly.
“I have come to the same conclusion, commissioner. The proof lies in the fact that the families of Branford’s officials have now been victimized. This is a holdup, gentlemen!”
The room broke into a frenzy of excitement. Aldermen talked furiously. The commissioners crowded close to the mayor’s desk. Two seized the arm of the police chief and demanded that the law take steps to catch the criminals. The mayor rose to his feet, held up his hand for silence. His voice was trembling now.
“The fact remains,” he said brokenly, “that our own children are sufferers. Our doctors have found no cure for the disease—isn’t that true, Commissioner Traub?”
The head of the health department nodded. His fat face was twitching with emotion.
“It Is true,” he said huskily.
“Then,” said the mayor, “this quack or criminal—whatever you choose to call him—has the upper hand. He has the only cure that has been found. Are we going to let our children get worse and die slowly? Or are we going to vote that the payment be made from the city treasury?”
A moment of tense silence followed the mayor’s speech. Then an alderman spoke impassionedly.
“The treasury is depleted already. Red Cross work, visiting nurses, special guards, and additions to the police have taxed the city heavily. We won’t even consider payment. We won’t pander to this criminal. As a member of the city council, I demand that the police do their duty.”
Two other members of the aldermanic council turned on him harshly.
“Are you a married man, Harrison?”
“No.”
“Is any member of your family ill with sleeping sickness?”
“No, but—”
The others shouted him down jeeringly. But he shouldered his way forward, shook a finger under Chief Baxter’s nose.
“What do we pay you for, chief? What is the law doing while this criminal is at work?”
Baxter’s face turned red with embarrassment.
“The law’s hands are tied,” he answered huskily. “We don’t know who this man is—don’t know where the gorillas are being kept—”
“Can’t that special delivery letter be traced?”
“It was dropped in a corner mail box. It is typewritten. There are no fingerprints on it—I have already looked. If we accept his offer by radio broadcast, there is no way of telling where he is listening in.”
“But if payment should be made, can’t he be traced and caught then?”
“Perhaps—but if he is as clever as he has shown himself to be so far, he will devise a foolproof arrangement. I suggest that we get the serum first, then hunt him down. I’ll gladly contribute a year’s salary. My little girl is ill with sleeping sickness.”
The alderman who had objected to raiding the city treasury, the man with no victim in his family, was shoved aside and shouted down. A quick ballot was taken. It was voted by the city council to raise the necessary appropriation at once and send a broadcast to “Doctor Blank�
� accepting his offer.
Chapter XVIII
A Criminal Revealed!
IN the dense shrubbery outside Commissioner Traub’s house two silent figures waited. Their hairy costumes and the masks that covered their heads made them appear as monstrous, sinister apes.
Beneath the hood he wore, Secret Agent “X” was fighting a silent, terrible battle. He was fighting with the first symptoms of sleeping sickness, now even more apparent. He was fighting to retain the alert faculties that would be needed tonight. For already he had a plan and a secret hunch. He did not know yet how many gangsters were in the secret hideout he had discovered. He knew that the police could not succeed in entering it without his help. And, before he acted, he wanted to verify a theory and arrange a course that would accomplish results. Hornaday must be gotten out; the gorillas that were left must be saved; some of the serum must be procured. He had not forgotten Betty Dale, could not forget her. Her face with its sunny frame of golden hair seemed to hover before his mind’s eye. Yet what he had to do single-handed seemed hopeless.
Nearly an hour passed before they saw a car approaching along the dark street. Then Agent “X” touched the arm of the man beside him.
“There are three others with the commissioner—we can’t get him now.”
Some of Traub’s friends at city hall had brought him home. He left them at the curb, walked into his house alone, but their presence prevented the possibility of any attack outside. Agent “X” was glad. He fingered the horrible injection device in his hand, stared at Traub’s house. The man beside him had no inkling as to his secret thoughts. But by quiet will power that the other was hardly conscious of, Agent “X” assumed the leadership.
They crept to the rear of Traub’s house. A light had appeared in a room there. Commissioner Traub was not going to bed at once. The events of the past few hours had set his nerves on edge. Agent “X” could see his restless shadow on the drawn shade. “X” spoke softly to his companion.
“I’ll go in and do the job. You stay out here. Whistle if anybody comes.”
The other grunted, glad enough to let “X” take on the dangerous work of entering the house.
The Secret Agent crept forward. Behind the hideous ape mask his eyes were glowing. Even the microbes of the encroaching disease could not dim the fire in their depths. And the serum injection he had received, coupled with his great will power, was still holding the bacilli at bay.
HERE was the sort of job he had had years of experience in. Entering a house noiselessly was no new task for him. He did not go to the lighted window. There was a door to the left of it—the door to a dark kitchen. This was locked; but the Agent still had his pen-shaped tool kit. He removed one of the hairy gloves, slid a section of the zipper fastening in the front of his suit open. The lock before him was a simple affair. A minute, and he had the door open and was creeping silently into the house.
His heart had increased its beat. His whole body was tense, every sense alert. More than his companion outside realized depended on the success of what he planned to do.
He moved down a short hall, came to the door of the room where Commissioner Traub was pacing. The door was slightly ajar. “X” caught sight of the commissioner’s flabby, worried face. Traub looked older. Tonight’s development, the letter from the mysterious “Doctor Blank,” had apparently shaken him terribly.
Agent “X” held the tooth-shaped injector in his right hand. In his left he held his own hypo needle—the needle containing the same anesthetizing drug that had knocked the gangster out earlier that night.
He opened the door quickly, crossed the threshold. Traub turned and saw him.
A look of utter astoundment made the commissioner’s jaw drop. He did not cry out. He stood there, staring at this hairy apparition that confronted him.
Agent “X,” through the eyeholes in the gorilla mask, was staring also. He was staring with the fixed, analytical intensity of a man who was a brilliant student of human nature. He was watching every faint, flickering expression on Traub’s fat face.
He advanced, holding the toothed injector in his right hand. Traub looked at that stupidly for a moment. His face grew ashen.
“Here—get out!” he roared. “What do you mean—”
He stopped speaking, backed away. Still the Secret Agent advanced. His thumb clicked the injector open. Its terrible teeth offered grim menace. Traub was like a man stricken with palsy. He leaned against his desk, his whole gross body quivering. His voice came in a terrified bleat.
“Get out! Get out—there’s some mistake—you don’t know—”
“No mistake,” said “X” icily. “You’ve been slated to get it. The boss told me.”
“Oh!” Mottled red spread over Traub’s face now. His voice came thick with fury. “The double-crosser!”
In that one sentence Traub had betrayed himself—and, as his fingers groped frantically for a gun that he kept in his desk drawer, Agent “X” leaped forward.
He dropped the tooth-shaped injector to the carpeted floor. His balled fist lashed out, landed flush on Traub’s jaw. The commissioner’s head snapped back. He staggered against the desk, slid to the floor and lay still, inert as a fallen sack of meal.
Quickly Agent “X” jabbed the point of his anesthetizing hypo needle into the commissioner’s arm. The man would stay out for hours now. Then “X” raised his head and listened.
For seconds he waited tensely, fearing that Traub’s harsh voice had waked some one in the house. But there was no sound. “X” crossed the room quietly and closed the door into the corridor. Then he came back to Traub’s side.
FOR nearly two minutes he studied Traub’s face from every angle. The commissioner had bulbous features, a complexion that was usually ruddy. To a man who was the master of the thousand faces, these characteristics would not be hard to duplicate.
Agent “X” set to work quickly. When he had conserved his plastic material in doctoring up the face of the unconscious gangster back in the hideout, he had not guessed how soon he would have use for it himself. Now he was glad he had conserved it. He pushed back the ape mask hood of his costume.
There was just enough material left in the tube to accomplish what he wanted. He selected one of his small vials of colored pigments, quickly rubbed it over his face, imitating Traub’s natural complexion. Then he remolded his features, giving them the bulbous look of Traub’s. He worked fast, tensely. The gangster was waiting outside. Any instant some one might wake in the house. But he did not rise from Traub’s side until he had put the last, final touches to a make-up that was a masterpiece of creation, considering the short time he had had to work.
Traub was a fatter man than Agent “X.” The Agent, resourceful as always, had already figured out a way to get around that when the time came. His face was now molded into the right, flabby bulbous proportions. It seemed to be the face of Commissioner Traub, rising grotesquely from the hairy gorilla suit.
Before covering his head again with the ape mask hood, Secret Agent “X” crossed quickly to Traub’s desk. He seated himself, lifted the telephone from its hook and called the home of Chief Baxter.
When the chief got on the wire, Agent “X” spoke quickly, but his voice was the thick voice of Traub. For nearly five minutes he talked, uttering words that brought gasps of amazement to Baxter’s lips. Detailed instructions followed, to which Baxter agreed. Then Agent “X” hung up.
He slipped the hood over his head again, left the room and the house as quietly as he had come.
Out on the dark lawn, his gangster colleague greeted him with harsh surliness.
“What the hell took you so long?”
Agent “X” laughed.
“I went through the commish’s desk. Thought maybe I could locate a little extra change. Figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone.”
“Got him then?”
“Yeah. I knocked him out cold first so he wouldn’t squawk.”
“And you got s
ome money, too?”
“Only a little change. Maybe I’ll split with you later if you don’t say nothin’ to the boss.”
“O.K.”
The two figures crept across the lawn. Keeping in the shadows, they moved down the block toward the car that was parked there.
CHIEF BAXTER was tense with excitement. The siren of his special car wailed in the night as he turned into the driveway of the mayor’s house.
The mayor was just getting ready for bed. Baxter’s furious ring at the door brought him downstairs in his bath robe and slippers.
“Chief!” he gasped. “What the—”
Baxter gave the mayor no time for questioning. He spoke hoarsely.
“We’re going to round up that double-damned crook doctor and his gang! We’re going to save this city a million dollars—and we’re going to save our kids.”
“When?”
“Tonight! Traub—don’t ask me how—got on the trail of him! He’s got the goods on the doctor. He don’t know who he is—but he knows where he and his gang are hanging out. They’re in the old gas works down on Canal Street. They’ve got a regular organization. Traub has given me all the dope.”
“Why don’t you go after them then?”
“Not for an hour. Traub’s told me how to get in—but he’s going there first to oil the way. He’s wangled an interview with this crook doctor. There’s a bunch of gangsters there all heeled. There’ll be a fight. We’re going to throw a cordon around the place—an’ we’ve asked some of the troopers to help us. There’s serum there. We’ve got to get that and save the apes, Traub says.”
Chief Baxter paced the floor. He could hardly contain himself. Every few minutes he went to the mayor’s telephone, called up one of his inspectors and bawled orders. Silently along the city’s darkened streets, blue-coated men and men in plain-clothes were assembling. And across the river, in the state troopers’ camp, an officer was issuing abrupt orders. A detachment of armed troops was to be sent into the city, daring the epidemic to catch the fiendish gang behind it. Word was spreading from lip to lip. Men were talking in hushed voices. Baxter left the mayor’s house and sped to headquarters.
Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2 Page 13
