Thane controlled himself by an effort, and answered the major’s question. “Rice got Kyle out of jail when we found that Slawson was—going— to kill us. It was for our own protection. But—Kyle failed. And Slawson came here to get us all. He—did!”
Plimpton and the trooper who had gone with him returned at that moment with a board that Doctor Max pronounced suitable. The doctor superintended the placing of the wounded man upon it, and watched him borne away toward the house.
“Careful,” he called after them. “Don’t jar him, or you’ll cause a hemorrhage!”
Denvers said to him, “Is there no chance for him at all?”
The old doctor looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “Every chance. I’m going in there and give him another hypo. He’ll live.”
“But—but I just heard you tell him he was dying!”
“Yes, of course. But I didn’t say when. I knew you wanted to ask him questions, and a man who knows he’s dying always answers truthfully.” The doctor smiled faintly. “I’ve seen much, major, and I’ve learned a trick or two.”
He hurried into the house after the improvised stretcher.
Denvers looked after him, puzzled, then turned to Betty. “This has been a terrible experience for you, Miss Dale. Have you phoned your paper yet?”
She shook her head. “I—I’ve been too upset. I think I’ll do it now.”
A few minutes later, Doctor Max came out of the house. “I’ve given him a dose of morphine. Lucky I brought a hypo along.” He was just putting the hypo away in a bag. “It’s one thing I always carry with me. The other things—” he snapped his fingers— “fol-de-rol! Stethoscopes—bah! Tongue depressors in waxed paper—bah! I’ve practiced for fifty years, and I did just as well by my patients before all these new-fangled devices came into use! It’s all bosh!” He took a card from his pocket, and gave it to Denvers. “I’m going home now. The ambulance from the hospital should be here any minute, and I can’t wait. I’ve got a delivery coming along any minute now.”
He bowed to Betty, and went swiftly toward the gate.
Denvers said to Betty, “Funny old man. The real old-style practitioner. Too bad there aren’t more of them—” He stopped, pointed at the mausoleum. “That’s queer—who put the light on over there?”
Betty saw that the electric light in the crypt was turned on. They went a few paces toward it, and saw the interior of the crypt through the wide open door.
Denvers exclaimed, “Somebody’s in there—looks dead to me!” They dashed inside, Betty only a step behind him.
Within the crypt he stopped short. “What the hell!”
TWO bodies lay there. One was calm, dignified in death, the other was bloated, hideous. On the middle finger of the right hand of the bloated body was the queer Egyptian ring.
A couple of troopers crowded in behind Betty and the major.
Betty said, her face white, “It’s—Judge Farrell!”
Denvers growled, “Yes. But who’s the other? He’s been dead at least a week, and he looks just like him!”
He knelt beside the bloated body, and detached several sheets of paper that had been pinned to the coat.
Betty read them over his shoulder.
The first two were papers that Betty had given to “X.” They contained a description of Sam Slawson. Across the first was written in a disguised hand. “Compare this man’s fingerprints with those of Sam Slawson.”
The second sheet was a record of the criminal activities of Slawson. It related, among other things, that Slawson had been arrested in the past, for impersonating various people, that the most daring of his impersonations had taken place recently, when he had walked into Judge Farrell’s stockbroker and withdrawn a large sum in securities, posing as the judge. He had never been caught for that, and there was nothing definite to prove that it was he who had committed the crime. He had later been arrested on a charge involving kidnaping, and was serving a long term when he had been mysteriously aided to escape a week before Kyle.
As Major Denvers read on, his amazement grew.
He turned to the third sheet, and he and Betty read the closely written, disguised handwriting. It said:
Dear Major Denvers: Perhaps this will make it easier for you to piece things together. There are three bodies here. The bloated one is that of Sam Slawson, whose record you have just read. You can check this with Slawson’s fingerprints. The other man’s body is that of the true Judge Farrell. He died a week ago. Slawson has been impersonating him since two days before election. Slawson is the one who tortured Crome, then killed him. Slawson wanted to make Crome reveal to him the hiding place of this other body—Judge Farrell’s. For if he got rid of it, there would be no evidence to prove that he himself was not Farrell—after the other four were killed. You will find another body in the tunnel underneath the crypt. It is that of the Princess Ar-Lassi. She was a Bulgarian adventuress who married the Egyptian prince, Mehemet Ar-Lassi, acquiring the title after she had murdered her husband. As your further investigation will disclose, she was once associated with Slawson, and recognised him. She threatened to expose him as an impostor, and he had to accept her as an ally. It was she who gave him the ring on his finger, as well as the Egyptian poison which he used so hideously. The poison is the venom of the giboon viper of Africa—deadly, horrible in its action. Slawson finally gave the princess a dose of her own poison. He didn’t need her any longer, for he had found the body of the governor-elect, and hidden it in the tunnel underneath. Trusting that will clear the matter up for you, I am, An Old Friend.
Major Denvers looked up from the note, whistled in amazement. And, as if in echo, there came from beyond the gates an eerie, chilling whistle, bearing a faint note of triumph.
Both the major and Betty thrilled to the strange sound of that whistle—but in different ways.
Major Denvers glanced down at the card which Doctor Max had given him, exclaimed, “What the hell!”
For all the letters on that card were disappearing, with the exception of the letter “X,” which stood out in bold relief.
Octopus of Crime
Chapter I
Guns in the Night
A FAST roadster came to a skidding stop at a spot where shadows lay like huge, ungainly serpents across the gray surface of the city streets. A tall man leaped out. He closed the car’s door quickly, moved along the sidewalk with swift, silent steps.
Walking the length of one block, he turned left down another, slowing when he reached a bright corner light that was holding at bay the night’s curtain of chill darkness.
Opposite this light, the big marble front of the Union Bank & Safe Deposit Company rose in glittering magnificence. A special guard in horizon blue was on patrol duty here. The guard turned once, glanced at the lone pedestrian, turned away.
There was nothing about the man’s appearance at that distance to stir suspicion. He was quietly dressed in a gray suit and topcoat. Neat, respectable, middle-aged, he looked like some late office employee, a bookkeeper perhaps, hurrying home from work.
But the instant the guard turned a corner of the building to patrol its north side, the gray-haired man crossed the street and approached the bank’s heavy doors.
He pressed his body into the vestibule, took something from an inner pocket of his coat. This was a small leather case containing an assortment of complicated, strangely shaped tools of the finest chromium steel. Some were straight and slender like darning needles. Some had elaborate goose necks. Others had tiny pivotal extensions.
The man used them with amazing speed and dexterity. Before the bank guard returned to his west side beat the man in gray had opened the building’s outer doors and slipped between them. Another set of inner doors faced him.
Now the man in gray drew a flashlight from his pocket, working with still greater care. By attaching a small steel tape to hidden terminals, to insure an unbroken circuit when the doors were opened, he disconnected the sensitive alarm system which protected
the bank. Then he used the tools again, probing the secret of this inner lock as he had the first, and entered the bank.
The glow of a single overhead night light sprayed dim radiance on his face. The features of that face were blunted, inconspicuous. But the eyes blazed with a strangely intent, strangely compelling light. They flashed intelligence, magnetism, power, that seemed incongruous to those prosaic features. They suggested that this tall, gray-clad man who had so unceremoniously entered a great banking institution of the city was a figure of force and mystery. They gave the only clue to his identity as one of the most daringly ingenious criminal investigators in the world.
For the gray-clad man was Secret Agent “X,” master of a thousand faces, genius of disguise, pledged to ceaseless warfare against the destructive forces of the underworld.
ONCE again this man whose real name and identity had never been revealed, was following what appeared to be the black shadow of vast, organized crime. Once again he had become an apparent outlaw in his efforts to track down the lawless.
The trail he was following tonight was dim, indefinable as yet. Certain things had made him suspicious. Certain whispers had reached his ever-alert ears. A series of crimes had occurred in many States. They were so perfect, so efficiently worked out in every detail that, to the mind of Agent “X,” they betrayed the stamp of a single master hand. Menace that was nation-wide was reflected in them. Menace like dread, poisonous tentacles reaching out toward many states. Now, true to a pledge he had made to an official high in Washington’s governmental circles, Secret Agent “X” was investigating.
He crossed the lonely interior of the bank on his rubber-soled shoes. He passed the barred windows of the cashiers’ cages; passed the neat desks where the bank’s officials sat in the daytime, moved on toward a stairway leading down to the safe-deposit vaults.
It was in one of these that the Secret Agent’s interest lay. Its contents might reveal or conceal evidence of the strange, dark thing he suspected. If he were right in his suspicion it would send him out to do battle again with the underworld—to fight a wave of terror that threatened to become a veritable juggernaut sweeping and crushing all before it.
At the bottom of the stairway a steel grille rose from floor to ceiling. There was a locked door in the center of it. Behind this was a small room with a desk used by the man who kept the vault records. At the other side of the room was another grille of inch-thick bars, protecting the safe deposit vault where tier upon tier of locked metal boxes gleamed dully. A small bulb burned here also. It was strangely like looking into the mouth of some subterranean hell. The bars made distorted shadows. The metal strong boxes reflected weird lights. The breathless quiet of the huge bank building seemed ominous.
A slender, goose-necked bit of steel in the Agent’s skilled fingers probed the lock aperture in the first grille. The bulb in the vault beyond gave him sufficient illumination. He did not need to use his flashlight. But suddenly, as though some evil thing had breathed on it, the bulb in the vault went out.
The Agent tensed. His hand with the small metal tool in it paused. He waited in absolute darkness. Was this some part of the bank’s alarm system that he had overlooked?
He pocketed his tool, crept cautiously back up the marble stairway to the floor above. The overhead bulb here had gone out, also. The whole great building was utterly dark. He glanced out one of the bank’s barred windows. The corner street light had also been extinguished.
Then Agent “X” heard a noise. It came from beyond the bank’s front doors. It was a single muffled cry; weird, disturbing—a cry of human agony. Agent “X” leaped toward the door, stopped. There was a sound here, too. It was a strange hissing noise, like air coming through some constricted escape—or like the hissing of some giant reptile. It increased each second, seemed to be coming nearer and nearer.
The Agent’s scalp tingled with excitement, curiosity. Fear he had long ago cast out. It had no place in his perilous work with the threat of death always present. But, for good and sufficient reasons, he did not want to be discovered here.
He stepped through the swinging gate into the section set apart with a low partition for the bank’s officials. He crouched behind a desk, stared tensely at the door, listened to that odd noise, trying to identify it. Then he understood.
As though the hiss were a dragon’s fiery breath upon the door, something glowed there, something inhumanly bright. It crept around the lock that Agent “X” had so deftly picked with his delicate tools. It ate a hungry circle in the very metal of the door itself, cutting the lock out of its setting. It was the greedy flame of a white-hot torch. Some one was breaking into the bank.
EVERY muscle taut, Agent “X” waited. He had come to the bank to trace down if possible the source of a hidden menace. Now that menace was manifesting itself dramatically, making its presence felt even before he had accomplished his purpose. The Union Bank & Safe Deposit Company was being raided by bandits who worked in the dead of night with amazing skill and speed.
The lock of the door dropped inward with a metallic clink. The heavy door swung open. It seemed to Agent “X” that the darkness of the street outside disgorged at least a dozen masked figures. They entered swiftly, soundlessly. One clicked on a flash. The two nearest to “X,” silhouetted against the hand light, looked like crouching monsters.
“X” saw then that one of them held a sub-machine gun. The man’s finger was crooked like a talon through the blued trigger guard. The wicked snout of the weapon was longer than that of any machine gun muzzle “X” had seen.
A powerful flashlight swept the interior of the bank, settled on the gleaming, clocklike face of the great vault where the bank’s cash assets were kept. One of the bandits barked an abrupt order.
The Secret Agent took his gas pistol from his pocket. He seldom carried lethal weapons. The gun in his hand was effective within a radius of twenty feet. It could knock a man unconscious, swiftly, silently. But it would be futile against a stream of bronze-jacketed machine gun bullets.
The Agent had other defensive equipment. He wasn’t afraid. He waited, trying to see the faces of these men, wondering how they would go about the opening of this great vault with its ponderous mechanism and time-lock.
One of them was bringing forward an elaborate gas torch on rubber-tired wheels like a movable tea table. This was the same implement that had eaten so readily through the heavy bronze doors. “X” saw at once that it was no ordinary acetylene torch. Huge cylinders of super-compressed air whipped the gas at its outlet end into crucible heat. He got a whiff of the gas itself, realized that this was no calcium carbide product. Here was something new.
At a low-voiced order, the man operating the torch pressed a lever. The dazzling jet of flame leaped out. Agent “X” was amazed at the ease with which it ate into the vault’s molybdenum steel. They were attacking the time-lock itself. As though it were hardly more than solder, the tempered steel melted away. The man at the torch’s end wore a mask to protect his eyes. It gave him the look of a devil.
There was no question now that they would succeed in their plan. Here was another of those devilishly ingenious crimes—a link in that chain that Agent “X” had sensed. Here was a group of the very criminals he had set himself to fight. He couldn’t stand by and watch them loot the vault of hundreds of thousands. For once, it was a situation when he could logically summon the police.
Stealthily, “X” edged around the desk, crept toward the door. With the bandits preoccupied over the vault he hoped to leave unseen. But hardly had he moved when a guttural voice sounded in the darkness against the wall at his left. One of the bandit gang had been stationed inside as a guard. The bright beam of a flashlight swung toward Agent “X.” A hoarse order was given.
From the snout of the sub-machine gun in the crouching bandit’s hand a flicker of greenish flame spewed forth. There were no sharp reports. Only a series of dull pops. The gun was silenced—the first of its kind “X” had ever seen.
But even as he tried to leap aside, there came the sickening smack of bullets striking him. They beat a weird tattoo against his chest. He staggered, clawed at the air a moment, while breath whistled through his teeth. Then he collapsed on the floor and lay still.
Chapter II
The Law’s Net
THE bandit with the gun ceased firing abruptly. He and the man with the light walked over to the spot where Agent “X” lay. The gunman gave the inert body a vicious kick. He turned “X” over on his back, stared down.
There was no indication of life. It seemed certain that no living thing could have withstood that hail of merciless, bronze-jacketed lead. The gunman grunted, spat, moved back to his position by the wall. The man with the light walked close to the vault. The killing of a human being was only a minor incident to these men.
But Agent “X” wasn’t dead. When the hail of machine-gun bullets had struck his chest it had seemed that someone was delivering a series of sledge-hammer blows close to his heart. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest—one of the most ingenious in existence. Two shells of metal, the inner one hardest manganese steel, the outer one bronze alloy, with an insulating stuffing of raw silk between.
Even bullets fired at close range couldn’t puncture that inner shell. But the concussion of the sub-machine gun pellets fired so closely had battered him into unconsciousness. They had gone through the outer bronze alloy covering of the vest, buried themselves in the raw silk, flattened noses pressed against the inner shell. The holes in his clothing showed plainly. He was unconscious. It was natural for the bandits to think he was dead.
He lay helpless while they succeeded in burning the time-lock mechanism of the great vault. They swung the ponderous door open, stuffed hundreds of thousands of dollars into canvas sacks, withdrew from the bank like a pack of slinking gray volves. A high-powered car purred outside. Gears clashed. The car sped away into the night….
Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2 Page 28
