Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2

by Paul Chadwick

“A job—say! I’d turn handsprings from here to Kalamazoo to get one!”

  “Supposing it was dangerous?”

  Hobart laughed with a tinge of bitterness. “Remember I was a police dick once, Mr. Martin. I used to get into some tough spots. For two bits right now I’d play dentist to a lion with the toothache. That’s how bad I need a job.”

  “I’ve got one for you,” said the Agent quietly, “that may make a lion with a toothache look like child’s play. Want it?”

  “Do I want it! When do I start?”

  “Seven o’clock tomorrow. I’ll stop by for you on the way to the field.”

  “Field?”

  “Yes, we’re going to fly out to Chi in the morning.”

  THE Agent’s Blue Comet was still in a hangar on the Boston airport. It was the other of his two ships that the mechanic wheeled out the next morning. This was a trim swift cabin monoplane that would comfortably seat four people. Gas could be stored in the extra place if the necessity arose. It was capable of long-distance cross-country hops. Streamlined outside, the interior was as luxurious as a limousine. The Agent had use for both types of ship in his varied and dangerous work.

  Jim Hobart’s eyes popped when he saw the plane, and realized for the first time that Agent “X” was going to fly it.

  “I didn’t know you were a pilot, Mr. Martin—and I didn’t know you owned a bus like this.”

  “Live and learn,” said Agent “X” quietly.

  The ex-dick’s eyes were shining. Agent “X” smiled. He hadn’t done wrong in picking Jim Hobart. Here was a fellow who was ready for anything.

  The plane took off from the field with the swift grace of a bird. This ship was orange and black. Agent “X” called it the Oriole. It was almost as speedy as the Blue Comet. Its cowled radial motor developed a maximum four hundred and fifty horsepower. The cabin fuselage contained numerous gadgets not apparent to the casual eye and not possible in an open-type ship. There were oxygen tanks for extremely high altitudes, a heater to make the cabin comfortable in winter cold, a special compartment in the rear for a gyroscopic stabilizer and an elaborate radio sending and receiving set.

  There had been no other ships on the field as he took off. But, fifteen miles out of the city, “X” looked down and saw another swift plane rising from what appeared to be a bit of pasture land below. It climbed swiftly, displaying speed and power, stayed parallel for a short space; then struck off at a tangent. In ten minutes it was a mere speck on the horizon. A moment later it had gone.

  Mile after mile reeled off below them. He swung over to the silver ribbon of the Hudson, followed it up to Albany, cut across toward Syracuse. The swift ship seemed to devour space. He knew he would be in Chicago long ahead of the passenger liner bearing Van Camp. He intended to be at the airport when the commercial plane landed.

  Hobart sat alertly beside the Agent, asking an occasional question regarding the operation of the ship. Once Agent “X” demonstrated how his gyroscopic stabilizer could fly the plane level with no hands on the controls. Hobart nodded appreciatively as the swift ship flew itself. Agent “X” switched off the stabilizer, sank back into the luxurious leather-padded seat in front of the instrument board.

  Then, out of the sunlit morning sky, the shadow of death came quickly, riding like some evil-visaged vulture of doom.

  Something struck the cabin of the Oriole as if lightning had forked from that serene blue sky. A crackling, smashing lance of destruction passed through the swift plane’s roof. Splinters of metal, fabric, rained upon the shoulders and heads of Agent “X” and Hobart. The lightning-like lance, thrust by death’s quick hand, smashed on down through the ship’s rubber carpeted floor, making unsightly holes.

  It was the Agent’s deft touch on the controls that saved them in that first perilous moment.

  He thrust the rubber-knobbed stick sidewise, kicked the rudder pedal as far as it would go, threw the plane into a wingover that almost snapped Hobart’s head off his neck. The monoplane corkscrewed through the air. As it did so, fiery tracer bullets probed for it. In the sky above, a dark-winged biplane dived at them and, on the biplane’s nose, behind the whistling propeller arc, a brace of synchronized machine guns chattered and danced with the insane, ghoulish cackle of a destroying idiot.

  Chapter XIV

  The Crash!

  HOBART swore fiercely, shouting a question. There was no time for Agent “X” to answer. The vicious cackle of the flying lead had stirred old memories in his mind. He’d been a youngster in the grim red days of the World War; but a youngster who had ridden the flaming skies, tramped through shell-torn trenches, played at death in a hundred different ways, pursuing the desperate missions of the Intelligence Service.

  Agent “X” side-slipped. The bright orange monoplane seemed to drop toward earth on one wing. He pulled it out of the slip, dropped its nose for a moment, picked up roaring speed in a short power dive. But again the feathery lines of the tracers came dangerously close.

  He suddenly drew the stick back into his lap and sent the nose of the monoplane hurtling almost straight up to the clouds. Hobart, unused to aerial acrobatics clutched the sides of the seat with all his might. But the sheer speed of the plane seemed to counterbalance gravity.

  Agent “X” let the ship mount till it was on its back at the top of a loop. Then he did a sudden wing-over again, straightening out at a higher level, headed in the opposite direction.

  Now he got a glimpse of the attacking ship. It was a dark-winged biplane, rakish, sinister. There were two cockpits; but it seemed as fast and maneuverable as a pursuit ship. There were machine guns in the rear pit, too, and he could dimly see two heads, faces hidden by goggles. Here was more evidence of efficiency and organization. This plane was equipped solely and obviously for the bloody business of murder.

  It came thundering straight down out of the sky again. The Oriole was unarmed. The men in this dark ship meant to destroy it. “X” had only the mechanical perfection of his own plane and his skill and wits to depend on.

  For a brief second he looked up. There were sweeping cirrus clouds far above him. Those clouds would afford protection if he could reach them. But the men in the other plane seemed to divine his thought. They laid a barrage of deathly steel-jacketed bullets across the sky. The attacking ship still had the advantage of altitude.

  Agent “X” was too wise in the methods of air combat to try to escape by diving. That stubby-winged biplane looked as though it would have an edge over him in a drop. He’d seen many a novice during the war go to a flaming death trying to dive away from an enemy.

  Agent “X” headed toward the other plane, bored steadily forward till the lines of the tracers came dangerously close.

  The two planes were rocketing toward each other with cometlike speed. Bullets lashed the tip of the Oriole’s right wing. Once again “X” side-slipped away; then screamed down and up in an outside loop that threatened to tear the wings from the ship. When he was level again he continued to climb, the throttle pushed forward to the quadrant stop.

  But the dark biplane possessed stupendous climb also. It pulled out of its dive, soared up on stubby wings, turned and relentlessly followed.

  “They’re killers, Mr. Martin,” screamed Jim Hobart hoarsely. “It looks like a tough spot. What do you figure it means? Who are they?” His voice rose above the droning blast of the engine.

  Agent “X” answered grimly.

  “Part of a gang I’m trying to get a line on, Jim. They must have been doing some snooping of their own, found I was interested in them and figured I was going to Chi. That’s where their headquarters are.”

  “Gangsters from Chi,” muttered Hobart. “I thought the end of prohibition had put a finish to their racket.”

  “This is a bigger racket than alky ever thought of being, Jim. You’ll get a line on it if we—”

  The sinister crackle at breaking glass interrupted his words. A burst from the plane behind had side-swiped the cabin of the O
riole, shattered a window. Cold air streamed in. The Agent’s eyes blazed. Then he gave a sudden exclamation. For a tongue of flame was licking the inside of a partition between the two windows. Incendiary bullets.

  THE flame threatened to catch the plane’s cloth-covered interior, whipped on by the wind that was coming through the broken window. “X” dropped the control stick an instant, snatched a small extinguisher from beneath the instrument panel, and sent a hissing jet of chemical toward the burning spot. The flame went out; but the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun sounded again.

  Grimly Agent “X” set himself to avoid those probing bullets. The men behind him knew their job. Their ship seemed as fast as his. A few incendiary bullets through the wings, and their own plane would become a flaming inferno. He was amazed that the gang he was fighting was aware of his intention of going to Chicago. It proved that the Octopus had a thousand eyes as well as a thousand sinister claws.

  A smudge of smoke on the horizon showed now. Chicago! It wasn’t more than twenty miles distant. A sudden gleam came into the Agent’s eyes. Following the mysterious instruction of the Octopus, men were trying to kill him. He was to be wiped out before Van Camp arrived in the city, before some sinister meeting of the criminals took place. Perhaps the only way he could avoid suspicion was to appear to die.

  For a second he cut the motor, talked quickly as the plane fell in another swift side-slip.

  “I’m going to gamble, Jim—let them think they’ve got us. It’s the only way. When we hit, get away from the ship as fast as you can and keep under cover.”

  “You mean—you’re going to crash?”

  Agent “X” nodded grimly. He was fighting a crime corporation capitalized for millions, fighting men who stopped at nothing to achieve their sinister purposes. He stood ready now to sacrifice the Oriole, a ship that had cost altogether eight thousand dollars. But the vast resources given into his hands had been for the purpose of combating crime. Money was no object if the spending of it would bring criminals to justice.

  As though he were wounded, or as though something had happened to the mechanism of the ship in that last burst. Agent “X” threw the Oriole into a series of erratic maneuvers. These were cunningly calculated to save them from the probing bullets of the plane behind as well as to lose altitude.

  He dropped the nose into a sickening spin, making sky and ground below mingle in a mad, dizzying scramble. White-faced, but game to the limit, Jim Hobart clung to his seat, strained against his safety belt.

  Agent “X” knew without looking that the other plane was following, ready to administer a coup de grace when he straightened out.

  He jerked the monoplane out of the spin, but instantly, as incendiaries screamed close to his wings, he pulled the plane’s dive into the beginnings of another loop. At the top of it he seemed to lose all control. The orange ship dropped off on one wing, swept downward as though strung on a giant pendulum. From side to side it swept in a series of breath-taking plunges, like a dry leaf fluttering earthward.

  And, as it lost altitude, Agent “X” reached under the instrument board and pulled toward him the handle of a small lever. There was a hiss, a roar, and instantly the air behind the plunging plane was filled with dense black smoke. It seemed that the incendiaries had fired the ship.

  Hobart, not catching the significance of “X’s” tug on the lever, jerked his head around, eyes aghast. For the sky behind them was veiled in a pall of smoke.

  “We’re afire!” he yelled, above the rumbling of the motor. But Agent “X” shook his head, pointing to the lever.

  “That’s what I want them to think!” he said.

  He had loosed a chemical into the feed line which came back through the engine exhaust in this dense, black vapor. Like the “smoke pots” used in movie shots of aerial warfare, it gave the effect of fire.

  HE sat at the controls tense-faced now. The realistic crash landing he planned was a death-defying trick. Below were open fields interspersed with clumps of second-growth trees, their green tops feathering in the morning breeze.

  The Agent opened a small trap in the floor, stared down. A deft touch on the ailerons, and the plunging plane slipped more to the left. Agent “X” calculated the distance down to the last foot. Above, ready to administer more leaden death if he should pull out of the aerial contortions that seemed the plunges of a doomed plane, was the other ship. He could faintly see it through the swirling plumes of smoke.

  He let the Oriole side-slip swiftly toward the woods, judging the height of the trees. The wind was singing a devil’s paeon in struts and wires now. Agent “X” yelled to Hobart.

  “We may have a bad crack-up. I’m going to take a chance. Don’t forget—get out of the plane as soon as we hit.”

  Agent “X” did not elaborate; but he had a reason for his words. He wanted to make their crash as conclusively realistic as possible.

  At the last second, as the ship swooped toward the woods, “X” brought the nose up to kill air speed. The orange plane “mushed” down among the pliant trees. Automatic wing slots opened up and checked the speed still more. The plane settled on the tops of the trees. Its weight tore branches. The weight of the engine pulled the nose down. It plunged into the green sea of foliage like some sea monster sinking below waves.

  Branches made a terrific racket against the sides of the cabin fuselage. The light of the sky was blotted out by the green darkness of the leaves. Agent “X” had cut the switch. He braced himself, shouted to Hobart as the plane finally struck the ground.

  There was soft forest loam here. It acted as a shock absorber, checked the concussion of the plane’s fall. With a grinding, cracking series of bumps the plane came to a standstill.

  Agent “X” unsnapped his safety belt, kicked the side door open.

  “Out—quick!” he said.

  The lanky Hobart tumbled onto the forest floor. Agent “X” grabbed his suitcase, pitched it out ahead of him, then reached under the plane’s instrument panel again. He threw a small, inconspicuous switch. A faint noise like a concealed buzzer sounded somewhere inside the engine cowling.

  Agent “X” tumbled out after Hobart, grabbed the ex-dick’s arm. “This way! Run!”

  Under cover of the trees, while the black plane circled low overhead, they plunged forward across the forest floor. Fifty feet and Agent “X” suddenly pulled Hobart down on the ground, flat on his face.

  As he did so there was a roar behind them. A mighty wind seemed to howl and shriek through the branches. The slender wings and gleaming fuselage of the Oriole blew into a myriad pieces as an electrically discharged time bomb exploded in the interior of the ship.

  Chapter XV

  The Way of the Octopus

  THE terrific blast of the bomb was followed by a second of silence. Then bits of metal from the shattered plane rained down making a spatter like hail on the trees. The motor whine of the dark ship was plainly audible. It was circling overhead.

  “Don’t move!” hissed Agent “X.”

  The biplane dived low, so low that its tail assembly almost fanned the foliage that concealed them. Three times the plane circled. Then the drone of its motor faded into the distance.

  “God!” breathed Hobart. He wiped sweat from his face, turned wide eyes on “X.” “There must be something big going on, Mr. Martin. They tried to knock us out of the air. You cracked up a plane worth more dough than I’ll ever have if I live to be a hundred. What the hell’s it all about?”

  “I don’t know exactly myself, Jim. I flew out to Chi to find out.”

  “Did the paper send you or did you come on your own?”

  Secret Agent “X” smiled, tapped the lanky ex-dick on the shoulder. “Don’t ask too many questions.”

  Hobart’s steady eyes met “X’s.” He flushed, spoke with quiet vehemence. “I ain’t trying to stick my mug into your affairs, Mr. Martin. Any dope you want to hand me, O. K. But you’re the boss—and I know you’re on the level. All you gotta do is tell
me what to do, and you can count on me to do it. I’d just like to get a line on who these damn killers are.”

  The Agent rose, faced the other soberly for a moment. “Those men up there were small fry, Jim—just paid gunmen. Get that. Somebody hired them to do a job. It’s that somebody I want to get the low-down on.”

  Jim Hobart nodded, dusted loam off his clothes, and followed as the Agent struck off through the woods, suitcase in hand. “X” was careful to keep in the thickest cover till they were a good distance from the spot where the Oriole had crashed. He turned suddenly on Hobart.

  “We’ve got to get to Chi now. Those birds think we’re dead. They’ll report to their boss that they got us. That gives us the start on them.”

  There was a highway about a half mile from the spot where the Oriole had blown up. Cars lined it and several men, attracted by the noise of the explosion, were running across the fields to investigate.

  Agent “X” turned and walked in the opposite direction, motioning Hobart to follow. At the end of half an hour they came to another road leading into Chicago, followed it to a suburban village and there chartered a taxi.

  “X” directed the driver to one of the better known hotels in the heart of the city. He spoke quietly to Hobart as the cab rolled through the streets.

  “We’re a couple of traveling salesmen from New York, Jim. Your name is Calvin Prentiss, mine’s B.J. Morgan. Those are the monikers we’ll sign on the register.”

  “You should have been a dick instead of a news shark, Mr. Martin,” said Hobart admiringly. “You’d have been a wow.”

  A grim smile twitched the corners of the Agent’s mouth. The cab drew up before their hotel.

  “Remember,” he said. “Calvin Prentiss and B.J. Morgan.”

  It was a big hotel, popular with transients. Agent “X” engaged adjoining rooms under the names he had mentioned to Hobart. He looked at the clock. The plane from the East, bearing Van Camp, was due to arrive in Chicago in about an hour. That would give him plenty of time to get out to the airport; but there were certain things to be done first.