Suddenly a brilliant flash of light stabbed upward. After the utter darkness inside the compartment, it almost blinded him. It was as though the night flamed with purple fire.
The light continued. It was the livid glow of a landing flare dropped by the pilot of the plunging plane. Agent “X” saw terrain then—fields, fences and clumps of trees far below. Here and there the square dot of a house showed, with smaller dots that were outlying buildings. These were farms. They were over open country.
The plane, utterly out of control, yawed sickeningly, great wings fanning the air, tail sweeping from side to side. The shouts of the men up forward rose in a frenzy of terror.
Abruptly Agent “X” bent lower, staring down through the rent in the metal. Something like a circular white flower blossomed beneath the ship, starkly outlined by the landing flare against the darker countryside. It was an opening parachute. One of the plane’s passengers had jumped.
Another and another chute appeared as “X” watched, a grim light of triumph in his eyes. He widened the hole in the flooring with quick, tense thrusts of his hacksaw to open up a fuller range of vision. He counted the chutes as they blossomed out till twelve had appeared. The gangster criminals were leaving the plane, deserting it as rats desert a sinking ship.
The Secret Agent rose abruptly from his bent position. He stabbed the sharp point of the hacksaw forward, puncturing the wall between the prison compartment and the plane’s cabin.
The engines had not been shut off. They roared and moaned, changing pitch with every erratic maneuver the great ship made. When air currents, or the crazy sweep of its jammed elevators turned its nose upward, the labored beat of the steel propellers slowed the motors to a furious, complaining whine. When the nose dropped and the ship swept into a power dive, the engines, free of strain, rose to frenzied shriek as the revolutions mounted.
Agent “X” was struggling against time. He had taken a desperate chance to rid the ship of the criminals. He had gambled that they were not air-minded enough to stand for long the erratic movements of the plane. A greater fear had forced them to risk the chutes in order to escape a more certain death. But, in driving them out, the Agent was bringing destruction close to himself. For the ship was losing altitude with every sickening lunge.
“X” came to a steel cross piece in the duralumin wall head. It slowed the blade of his hacksaw. He made another cut parallel with it, sawed across the top, pulled fiercely at the metal panel. If he didn’t get through to the pilot’s cockpit and reach the controls in the next few seconds he would be smashed to a jelly in the shattered, battered wreck of the ship when it struck the ground.
Sweat bathed his body as his fingers tore the metal strip. There was a plaster-board lining beyond. That snapped and crumbled under the swift lunge of his fist; but the hole he had cut was still not big enough to get through—and the steel cross-piece was impeding his progress. He drew his hacksaw under it, sawed frantically, till the blade’s note rose above the engine’s roar.
THE plane was within a thousand feet of the ground now. It gave a sickening, forward lunge that lost another hundred feet of altitude.
Desperately he turned and bent above the floor opening. He drew the metal strips from under the jammed control cables where they passed through the pulleys. He unwound the other from the cables themselves. The cables came free. They slid through the pulleys as wind pressure forced the elevators level. The pulley wheels whined.
The ship’s erratic maneuvers ceased. It almost leveled out. But there was no hand at the controls. The plane was still a plaything of the wind and air currents. With the engines full on it began a long sickening power dive toward the earth.
Secret Agent “X” worked like a madman. There were houses below—there were sleeping humans all unaware of the great rocketing tri-motor above. What if the plane struck a building? He could vision the wild holocaust of death and destruction that would result. Hot flames searing the night landscape. Smoke like a funeral pyre.
He had cut below the steel cross-brace now. He pulled at the duralumin with fierce tugs, cutting his hands. He kicked the plasterboard lining through with lunges of his shoe. Then, at last, the hole was large enough. He stooped and shoved his head and shoulders through, drawing his body after him.
There was a deadly evenness about the ship’s forward movement now. It was like the calm before the storm. It was as though the plane, a sensate thing, had resigned itself to utter destruction.
Agent “X” rose to his feet, lunged down the aisle in the cabin between rows of empty seats. The interior of the great plane was almost as large as that of a railway car.
The pilot’s door ahead was open. A short flight of steps led up to it. Dials gleamed on the instrument panel in the glow of electric bulbs.
The plane had dual wheel controls—a mechanism familiar to Agent “X.”
He leaped into one of the leather-cushioned seats, stared through the front vision window—and his heart seemed to rise in his throat.
Directly ahead, not more than five hundred feet below, were the lights of a small country village. For a second he caught a glimpse of the main street; saw a cluster of people in front of a drug store staring up, attracted by the increasing roar of the three great motors.
The Agent gripped the wheel controls, and beneath his disguise the veins stood out on his forehead like knots. For the terrific blast of the air stream was holding the elevators and ailerons in their present position as rigidly as though they were frozen.
WITH all his might he drew back on the control, feet pressed against the rudder bars, praying that he could avert the threatening disaster, praying that he could keep the plane from plunging like a destructive meteor into that peaceful village below.
For age-long seconds it seemed hopeless. Through the shimmering arc of the middle propeller the lights of the village still showed, growing larger every instant. They appeared as steadfast as a target in a cannon’s sight. Muscles in the Agent’s arms and shoulders knotted, bulged.
Then gradually, like the bow of a ship swinging slowly up on a great swell and making the horizon line sink, the nose of the big plane began to rise.
The lighted street sank from sight. The propeller appeared to crawl up the side of a building, up, up, till the rooftop showed. The Agent gave a final, desperate pull on the wheel. The steel chains in the sprockets passing from the control wheel down to the cables were so tight that it seemed they must snap.
But the peaked roof of the building sank from sight, too. The upper branches of a tall elm tree rushed into view. The plane, almost level, hurtled through them with a sickening swish and clatter. The big steel propellers sliced leaves and twigs, sending them showering to the ground. The plane’s fat air wheels swept through the bigger branches as it lunged upward, beating the tree top with its widespread tail assembly.
The propellers caught the air, snarled with a new note. The three radial motors whined with the deep-voiced pull drone. Agent “X” fed gas to them; drew the wheel back almost to his lap—and the great plane roared upward, mounting dizzily after the tremendous momentum of its dive.
He had saved it from crashing; saved the villagers from the death that had swooped down at them out of the night sky; he had saved his own life.
But as the huge tri-motor climbed steadily into the night sky the Agent’s mind raced. He had won this round with the criminals, had escaped from an apparently hopeless trap. But his real battle was only just beginning.
When the altimeter showed four thousand feet, he left the controls for a moment and went back into the cabin. There was nothing here to identify the men who had been in the plane. They had taken the bank cash with them when they jumped. But the Agent tensed suddenly.
On a small shelf at the rear of the cabin compartment were the things they had taken from his own pockets; his make-up equipment, tool kit, amplifier, bullet-proof vest—everything. He put the vest on, thrust the other things back into his coat, went to the controls of t
he plane again. He banked, swung due west, and looked at the compass.
Familiar with all the terrain around the city, he could give a good guess as to where he was now. He stared out a side window. The faint gleam of river water below, a string of lights set along a highway, gave him his bearings. He identified the village he had almost crashed into. He swung the ship toward the west, followed the river for a few miles. Then he throttled the motors to mere idling speed, pointing the plane’s nose groundward.
Somewhere below was a small airfield belonging to an airplane company that had gone bankrupt during the depression. Agent “X” had passed it many times in his car. It was a possible landing place.
But it was marked by no lights, and the criminals had used all the landing flares. “X” switched on the electric landing lights in the wing. Under their glow he caught a faint glimpse of the field he sought. The ghostly tops of the old hangars guided him.
Landing the huge tri-motor here would be a ticklish business even in daylight. At night, only a man of iron nerve and consummate skill could achieve it without cracking up. But the Agent side-slipped neatly into the small field, yawed the plane’s tail back and forth to kill speed. The air wheels touched the dim stretch of rusty green with hardly a bump, and he came to a stop in the center of the field.
Instantly he leaped out and examined the big plane. There were no Department of Commerce markings on it, no identification of any sort. It was a tramp craft of the air, an evil ship of darkness. Reaching under the control panel he opened up a petcock. The pungent smell of gasoline filled the air. It trickled into a dark puddle under the big fuselage.
Agent “X” waited till it spread. Then he got a cloth from under the pilot’s seat, soaked it with gas; balled it up, touched a match to it and tossed it into the plane’s interior.
Another match made a flaming cauldron out of the gas puddle beneath the plane’s fuselage. Agent “X” ducked and ran toward the dark outline of scrubby woods at the field’s farthest edge. He could hear a man’s voice calling out excitedly in a house near the field.
The landing of the tri-motor had aroused curiosity. People would be coming to investigate. But he would let them think he had burned up in the plane. This was an impression he was most anxious to give the criminals, also.
He looked behind him. Bright gasoline flames were licking up around the plane’s metal body now. Cloth and woodwork in the interior of the ship had caught, making the cabin window glow like evil red eyes in the side of some night monster. Then the partially filled gas tank exploded with the heat of the flames beneath. The instrument panel blew back into the cabin of the plane, and the cabin itself became a roaring furnace filled with sprayed gasoline. Windows blew out; white-hot flame melted the metal of the body.
As Agent “X” turned and plunged into the woods he knew there would be nothing left to show how he had escaped from the tail compartment that had held him prisoner.
Chapter V
The Mark of Horror
A CAR chartered in a suburb near the old air field whirled Secret Agent “X” back to the city. Tense and impatient, he sat in the tonneau of the vehicle that rolled smoothly through the night, to all appearances a respectable, gray-haired business man.
“X” ordered the driver to stop at a certain street corner in the heart of the city. He paid his fare, strode briskly away in the darkness. Shadows of night enveloped him.
Four blocks from the spot where he had left the car Agent “X” suddenly entered the vestibule of a small walk-up apartment. Its halls, musty and dark, were lit by flickering gas light. Its janitress, a slovenly old woman, lived in the basement, appearing only when some tenant called her. Here was one of the many hideouts which Secret Agent “X” maintained.
In the seclusion of this small, cheaply furnished apartment, Agent “X” performed miracles with his hands. He stripped off the make-up which had made him resemble a middle-aged man. That disguise had served its purpose, was feasible no longer. The police would be on the lookout for the alleged bank examiner who went by the name of Garrison.
For the space of two minutes Secret Agent “X” appeared as he really was. The gray hair resolved itself into an ingeniously made toupee, which, when removed, revealed sleek brown hair beneath. The pastiness and wrinkles of flabby middle age left behind them the firm, unwrinkled flesh of a strong and distinguished face.
Even his few intimates had never seen Agent “X” like this; never glimpsed those features that were really his own. For they, like his name and identity, were secrets that he guarded with his life.
His face was remarkably youthful for a man who had been through so many strange experiences. It held power, character, understanding. The eyes had the clear brilliance of an original, penetrating mentality. There was kindness and humor, but unflinching determination in the even, mobile lips.
Hawklike strength marked the faintly curving line of the nose; scholarly intelligence was visible in the high, broad forehead. And, like the mystery surrounding his identity, there was mystery in those even features, too. For they seemed to change in different lights.
When the Agent turned his head, selecting a tube of make-up material, preparatory to creating another miracle of disguise, the oblique light brought out lines of maturity, revealed momentarily the visible records that a thousand strange adventures had written on this alertly youthful countenance.
His fingers moved, working the plastic, volatile make-up material over his face. Ingenious pigments covered the skin. This uncanny ability at disguise which made Secret Agent “X” a “Man of a Thousand Faces” had more than once formed the only barrier between himself and hideous death. Upon that ability he had over and over again gambled at desperate odds with life itself the stake. So far, he had always won. So far, no living soul had been able to unmask Secret Agent “X.”
When he rose from his mirrors ten minutes later he had become another person. His features now seemed thinner than formerly, his hair was sandy. The faint hawklike curve of his nose had been straightened. He appeared a mild looking young man of about thirty, with nothing to distinguish him from a thousand other such young men. He changed his suit, for a baggy pepper-and-salt tweed that matched the sandiness of his complexion, then walked quickly out of the apartment.
But he still wore the bullet-proof vest beneath this suit The strange assortment of things that he was accustomed to carry were hidden in the pockets. Inconspicuous though he looked, he was still Secret Agent “X”—a man of mystery and destiny.
At a mid-town garage, he ordered the fast roadster he kept there under the name of A.J. Martin, Associated Press reporter. His other car was still standing a few blocks from the Union Bank & Safe Deposit Company. A telephoned call to another garage sent a mechanic after it. The Agent found it expeditious to keep several cars under various cognomens, as well as a number of hideouts.
In this other roadster he drove quickly to a street which held an assortment of small rooming houses. He entered one, asked for Thomas McCarthy, and was conducted to a rear room on the second floor. Here a man of about seventy, white-haired, but still alert and spry, came forward to greet him. He was a veteran police detective, retired now on his small savings and pension. The quick sparkle of his blue eyes showed that he still had an active interest in life.
“Hello, Mr. Martin,” he said. “What can I do for ye, my boy?”
Agent “X” smiled. McCarthy and a few others like him, were among the small number of trusted persons he occasionally employed to aid him in his daring work against the underworld of crime. They shadowed suspects under his direction, supplied bits of information valuable to the Agent. But they did not know that they were working for the greatest investigator alive.
“I’ve got a little job for you, Tom,” the Agent said. “Some fellows I’m watching made a get-away by plane from an airfield outside this city. I want you to hang around that field for about twenty-four hours and let me know what you see. There’s fifty bucks in the job. Would yo
u be willing to tackle it?”
“Would I?” Thomas McCarthy beamed. “It ain’t the money, of course,” he qualified hastily. “It’s just that a feller don’t like to get rusty—and I like to do what I can to help you, Mr. Martin. You’re a hard working newspaper chap with a head on your shoulders. Some day they’ll make you editor of the whole damn sheet.”
“Maybe,” smiled Agent “X.” “And maybe I’ll get fired.”
He took out his wallet, drew out five ten dollar bills and handed them to McCarthy. The old headquarters dick tried to conceal his interest. But Agent “X” knew that the man needed new clothes, knew that this fifty dollars represented money to buy things for numerous small grandchildren. The old man’s pension was a barely liveable one.
“I don’t like to take anything till the job’s done,” said McCarthy, pocketing the bills. “But I’ll give you your money’s worth, boy. Lead me to that field.”
GIVING instructions as he drove, Agent “X” went back along the route that the gangsters had followed when they had taken him prisoner in their closed car. Though his eyes had been taped, he followed it accurately, coming at last to the field from which the big tri-motored ship had taken off.
This proved to be nothing more than a huge open lot where a real estate development had fallen through. But the marks of the ship’s air wheels in the turf showed plainly. A barnlike building at one end of the open field held sliding doors. There were other buildings around the field’s edge; old sheds, a neglected junk shop, a warehouse with windows boarded up.
“Keep out of sight,” whispered “X.” “Watch that big building over there. I’ll stop by at your place tomorrow.”
“O.K.,” said McCarthy. Then he drew Agent “X” back into the shadows for a moment spoke eagerly.
“I’ll put you wise to something since you’re a bright lad. I was talking to Captain McGrath over at the Tenth Precinct Station this afternoon. There’s gonna be a commissioners’ meeting in this city tomorrow night. Police chiefs are coming from all over the country, and a big gun named Beale is gonna give a talk. He’s a professor of criminology or something. Maybe if you could get into this meeting, young feller, you’d get a lot of hot copy for your sheet.”
Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2 Page 30
