There was a rush of feet along the corridor. Denvers’ voice called out. “Open up before we shoot the lock off!”
“X” waited for no more. Lithely he swung himself out of the window, clutching the drain-pipe with both hands. Then he wrapped his legs around it, boosted himself to a little higher hold with his hands. He looked up. The roof was ten feet above him. The cornice would afford a good grip to lever himself onto the roof. But the task of getting there….
While he worked himself up. slowly, inch by inch, there was the explosion of a heavy service revolver inside, followed by a rush of feet into the room he had just quit.
He heard Denvers exclaim, “Empty! He must have gone out the window!”
A head peered out, looked downward first, then saw the drain-pipe. “X” had managed to work himself up level with the top of the window, above the head of Denvers. When Denvers turned to look up, as he must, “X” would be spotted, helpless on the drain-pipe.
And then the thing occurred that saved the situation for the Secret Agent. He knew what it meant the moment he heard the scream. It seemed that the lurking hand of horror had chosen exactly the right moment to strike again—the right moment, this time, for the man who was trying to track it down.
The scream came from the top floor, from a room at the rear; one of the rooms that was being searched.
It was the scream of a man—but so inhuman, so horribly permeated with stark terror, that it was impossible to recognize whose throat had uttered it. It was a long scream, more of fright than of pain—a scream that a man will utter when he understands that dreadful doom has descended upon him.
There was just that one, long-drawn-out scream, and then a pregnant silence that seemed to fill the house, and the dreary grounds about it with a sense of overwhelming catastrophe.
Denvers jerked his head inside without looking up.
“X” continued his laborious upward climb, listening the while, for any sounds that would give him a clue to what was happening.
His fingers scraped on sharp sliver-like projections from the lead pipe, and began to bleed. The muscles of his lower legs ached from the strain of supporting his body. But he worked upward indomitably, upward, until at last his lacerated fingers were able to touch the coping of the roof.
FIRST one hand, then the other. He gripped hard, and let his feet swing free, then kicked upward, and hooked the back of his right foot on to the coping. He levered himself up, crawled onto the roof, and lay gasping. It had been a task that racked both the nerves and the muscles.
“X” allowed himself only a half minute to regain his breath, then made his way across the roof to the rear of the house. He trod softly, for he knew that these roofs were thin, and the men in the hall below might hear his steps on the sheet tin.
He stretched full length on the roof at the rear, and looked over.
Light streamed from the room immediately below. Loud voices came through the window. “X” listened carefully, trying to visualize the scene below. He knew that they would think of the roof next; knew that he would be trapped there. But he had to hear what had taken place. Had to know whom the ghastly hand of horror had struck at this time….
And in the room below, a group of men were clustered about a ghastly spectacle on the floor.
Betty Dale stood just outside the doorway, and watched with wide-eyed terror. She could not see the thing on the floor, because of the crowd in the small bedroom.
Denvers had broken through, shouting, “What’s happened?”
Thane stood there, perspiration on his forehead. Governor-elect Farrell knelt on the floor beside a threshing, agonized body. Half a dozen troopers stood around, helpless to aid.
A low groan issued from the man on the floor. His body twitched spasmodically. Incoherent words came from his throat.
Betty pushed her way through. Her heart was thumping wildly. She was afraid to look, for fear that she would see—the Secret Agent.
But when she saw the man who lay dying on the floor, her body relaxed, though she was dumb with the horror of the spectacle. It was Hanscom!
Beside him lay his cigar—the last cigar he would ever smoke. Hanscom’s collar had burst the way Rice’s had. His throat was swelling fast. His fingers were clutching at the bloated flesh, he was trying to talk, though his windpipe was rapidly becoming sealed. In another moment he would choke to death.
Denvers knelt beside Farrell, raised the dying man’s head. Thane said, “Look out, major. Maybe you’ll get the poison if you touch him.”
Denvers paid him no attention. He said, “Can you talk, Hanscom? What happened? Who did this to you?”
Farrell urged him, also, in a hushed voice, “Try to tell us, John. Can’t you say even one word? Give us his name. A clue, anything. Try to say just one word!”
Hanscom made a tremendous effort. His bloated body heaved up in Denvers’ arms, impelled by a last mighty impulse. His eyes glared up desperately, wildly, roved from Thane, who was standing just above him, then down to Denvers and Farrell He opened his horribly swollen mouth from which saliva drooled, and two cracked, parched words issued from distended lips: “Sam—Slawson!”
Then his face started to blacken, his eyes to bulge, and Betty Dale turned away, almost fainting. She leaned against the wall, head on arm, nauseous and frightened, while Hanscom died.
In the suddenly hushed room, the major asked in a low voice, “Who—is this Sam Slawson?”
No one seemed to know….
Chapter XX
The Steel Door
SECRET AGENT “X” slowly inched his body back from the coping. He had heard enough. Though he had not been able to see into that room of death, he had been able to evoke a picture of the scene from the things that had been said.
He stole back to the drain-pipe. Going down it would not be as difficult as going up had been, though, perhaps, more dangerous.
He looked down. Three stories below he could see the dim figures still patrolling the grounds.
He swung himself over, gripped the drain-pipe with hands and feet, and slid downward slowly. He passed the window of the top floor room that he had escaped from; then the second floor, then the ground floor. At the ground floor he stopped, clung precariously, while he glanced down. A trooper was almost immediately beneath him, a little to his right. That was where the garage was built into the house. The trooper had apparently been placed on guard over the hearse, which was evidence.
“X” could not descend to the ground. To do so would have been suicide.
He glanced in at the ground floor window. It opened into the hallway. There was a dim light at the door, and he could see nobody there, at the moment. His muscles were becoming cramped, he was beginning to slip. The descent from the roof had not been easy.
He swung one leg in at the window, and in another moment he stood in the hall. The door of the rear room where Rice and Gates had been killed, was open. A couple of troopers were there, and a man who knelt beside Gates’s body—evidently the medical examiner had arrived.
“X” could hear steps descending the staircase from the upper floor, could hear Denvers, and Judge Farrell, and then Senator Thane’s voice raised in angry protest.
He heard Judge Farrell say: “You were in the room with Hanscom, Thane. You could also have shot Gates—you know you’re a crack shot!”
He didn’t get Thane’s reply, for he was gliding down the hall toward the basement stairs. He had to get to some place where he could plan his next move, where he could shed the disguise of Governor-elect Farrell. It was imperative that he work fast; death was visiting these public men in swift succession. What was the object of the murderer?
If he could only get a chance to read over the papers Betty had given him relating to Sam Slawson, the escaped convict, the man whose name had been on Hanscom’s dying lips.
He opened the door to the basement steps, and just then a trooper came out of the rear room, saw him, and raised a shout.
The trooper d
rew a gun, and “X” stepped into the darkness of the basement staircase, swung the door to behind him.
He crouched low, ran down the steps. And it was well he did, for there were the repeated, smashing reports of the trooper’s thirty-eight, and the slugs tore through the door over his head.
He reached the bottom and groped his way ahead, feeling along the wall.
Above him the house burst into a bedlam of excitement. He heard faint, hoarse shouts, running feet.
He reached the end of the wall, felt a wooden wall across his path. He turned left along this wooden wall and touched a door. There was a hasp on this door, and a padlock hanging from its open end.
“X” opened the door, and stepped through.
Not a moment too soon. The door at the head of the stairs was wrenched ajar, and a man at the top threw the beam of a powerful flashlight into the cellar.
“X” felt around. He was in a sort of large bin. In one corner was a pile of old clothing. “X” started to pull the clothing away. If his calculations were right, there should be a door to the garage right here. The garage backed up against the cellar, and when he had got out of the coffin, he had noticed a door in the concrete wall.
“X” found the door; it was locked, but he also found something else. The floor under his feet at this point gave out a hollow sound as he trod on it. He stooped to examine it in the dark, while excited voices, hurrying feet, passed the door of the bin.
“X” ran his hands along the floor, and encountered a steel ring set into a square of metal about three feet by three. He pulled at this ring, and the metal square lifted at one end, rose on hinges. It was a trapdoor, and seemed to have been in use, for the hinges were well-oiled, silent.
“X” thrust his foot into the hole that yawned beneath him, and it encountered a wooden step. Quickly, he went down the steps—there were four of them—and lowered the trapdoor after him.
THE darkness here was more intense than it had been in the bin. There was a musty odor about the place, a feeling of dampness.
He waited silently, while the search was being conducted overhead. He ventured to flash his torch around, and found that he was at the beginning of a tunnel that led due east under the garage. The thin beam of light traveled for a distance down the underground passage, and dissolved into the darkness. If the tunnel continued in the same direction, he judged, it should lead to the mausoleum. If it did, that would explain many of the curious things that had happened in the house that night.
He heard voices close above him. There was Denvers, Judge Farrell, and Thane. Then the sound of Betty Dale’s voice. Good girl. She had come along with them on the chance that if he was cornered again, she might create another diversion to help him escape. Apparently they had not suspected her of turning off the lights before—had probably thought that it was done from the balcony.
He heard Thane say, “What’s this, a bin?”
And Judge Farrell’s voice: “Yes. This is where I was held. But there’s nobody here now. Where could he have got to?”
Denvers said, “You want to be more careful, judge. Don’t go poking around in the dark. From what’s been happening here it seems that you’re on somebody’s list to get the works.”
The footsteps receded. They were leaving the bin.
“X” put his hand up to the trapdoor. If he could get up into that bin now, he might be able to work his way back into the house; perhaps take a look at Hanscom’s body. There might be a clue—
He stopped, rigid. His hand had touched something cold—something that was moving across the under surface of the trapdoor. It was a steel plate, sliding across it. Even as he felt it, it slid all the way across, with a little click.
He snapped on his flashlight. There was a steel door clear across the trapdoor. It fitted snugly into a groove in the wall at either end. Somebody must have pressed a button up in the bin, causing it to move into place. Somebody up there—somebody who knew he was in the tunnel—had deliberately shut him in; trapped him—unless he could get out at the other end.
Chapter XXI
The Missing Body
WITH a philosophical calm that another man would have been far from feeling, Secret Agent “X” turned away from the curtain of steel that blocked him off from entrance to the house.
He swung his flashlight along the tunnel, and set out to follow its beam. Perhaps he could get out at the other end. If it led to the mausoleum, it would serve to show him how the murderer of the Princes Ar-Lassi had disappeared. He intended, also, to inspect the other coffins in the crypt. For he remembered that the princess had referred to a missing body when she spoke to Rice and Thane and Hanscom and Gates.
The flashlight started to cast a pale yellow glow. It was weakening rapidly. “X” had progressed about a hundred feet along the tunnel. It was wet underfoot; water was seeping in from somewhere. Little things scurried away from him at his approach. One or two brushed his legs. Rats.
THE flashlight was growing weaker fast. He snapped it off to save the battery, and felt his way along in the dark, hand on the moist wall. The ground here was soft, and the sides had been shored up with timber. The passage was not high enough for him to stand up in; he had to walk in a semi-crouching attitude.
Suddenly his foot struck something on the ground, and he almost tripped, but recovered his balance by clinging to the boards at the sides. As he did so, there was a scurrying of small bodies away from the spot.
He knelt and put out his hand, touched the body.
It was the body of a man, and it had been dead several days, for it was cold and stiff. The clothing was of a fine texture, expensive.
The body lay in about an inch of water.
Here, then, was the answer to the secret that the Princess Ar-Lassi had offered to sell to the four conspirators. Perhaps a sight of the features of this dead man would solve the enigma in a flash.
“X” took out his flashlight, snapped it on.
And then, before he got a chance to see that face, there was a soft plop and a flash of fire from ahead of him in the tunnel. Even with a silencer, the explosion reverberated dully in the narrow confines of the passageway.
A single shot, and it had come from farther on in the passage. And the aim had been that of a marksman. For the flashlight was shot out of “X’s” hand, leaving him in utter darkness, and his whole arm tingling with a sudden paralyzing numbness.
“X” sprang back from the body, crouched low, his knees in the water. He hugged the wall, keeping himself rigid and silent. The blackness ahead was thick, impenetrable. It was impossible to see even a shadow. Whoever it was that lurked beyond in the tunnel, it was evident that he was an expert marksman. “X’s” mind reverted to the remark he had heard Judge Farrell make to Thane. Thane was a crack shot.
The Secret Agent had no gun, not even the gas gun; he had hurled that at the trooper in the hall. The man at the other end didn’t know this; didn’t know that “X” was unarmed. Which probably explained why he didn’t use a flashlight himself.
There was a slight sound of splashing from up ahead, stealthy movement. The unknown was advancing. He didn’t know whether he had wounded “X” or not.
“X” rubbed his numb arm to restore circulation. It tingled warmly, and after a moment he could move it without feeling that prickling sensation of numbness.
He put his hand into the water, felt around until he located a loose, moist clod of earth. He picked this up, and hurled it in the direction of the advancing man.
He heard a soft thud, an exclamation, and the quick, muted staccato reports of an automatic. He counted the shots—five. The man must have held his finger down on the gun when the clod of earth struck him, and the automatic had emptied itself. If this was the man who had shot Gates, then he had had only six shots left, and he had used them all.
“X” started to advance toward him, started to step over the body in his path. And then he stopped.
HE had heard a sound he recognized. It was just a l
ittle sound, but it was a sound that precedes death. It was the sound of a pin being pulled from a grenade.
“X” turned and ran back toward the house; ran as fast as he could in the dark without tripping. His shoes splashed loudly in the water. And that saved him. For just in back of him there was a terrific explosion.
“X,” though a good distance from the explosion, was knocked off his feet, hurled to the ground. The wooden boards of the tunnel crashed about him. Swirling smoke filled the tunnel, accompanied by the acrid fumes of cordite.
He was slightly dazed, and lay in the water for a while, then slowly raised himself to his feet. The force of the explosion had not been great, but, concentrated in the narrow tunnel, it had done plenty of damage. “X” knew that the passage was closed to him now, with that unidentified body still on the other side of the debris.
The man who had thrown the grenade had accomplished a double purpose; he had blocked “X” in, and had given himself the opportunity to get that body out undisturbed.
“X” was groggy from the fumes. There was a rent in the right shoulder of his coat, and a long gash in his forehead where a flying piece of wood had cut him.
He stumbled away from the gases that began to fill the tunnel. He got back to the four steps, and put his hand up to the trapdoor. The steel sheet was still in place. No egress there. The air was getting thin. He had difficulty in breathing. If he remained here for a little white longer, he would be overcome.
He turned and worked his way back to the spot where the explosion had occurred. The water was deeper now than it had been before—at least an inch, for he could feel it sloshing about his ankles. Either the explosion had forced the water up, or else a water line running somewhere in the tunnel had burst.
The fumes here were thicker. He pawed at the debris in front of him, with the faint hope that it could be moved away. The damp, wet earth lay thick across the passage, piled in tight. The explosion had torn the boards away, and the earth had caved in from all sides. There was no telling how thick it was here, how much digging would be necessary to get to the other side of it. He started to claw at it with his hands; then, suddenly, he stopped.
Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2 Page 26
