He pressed the disc microphone on its black cord to the wall; put the body of the instrument, which was the earphone, to his head. He turned on the delicate rheostat controls.
But no sounds of foot vibrations reached him. Here was concrete proof that his escape to the top of the building had not been suspected.
The section of the factory building he was in came to the eighth floor level. The roof of another wing showed. The Agent went out on this, walked silently along under the stars till he came to the framework of a fire escape which led to the ground.
He stopped to get his bearings. There must be a secret alarm system on the high wall enclosing the factory on two sides. This he must avoid; and he must avoid, too, that side of the building where the shop of Colosimo & Rici was located. Cautiously he descended to the factory yard at the fire escape’s bottom.
He approached the factory wall, looked up, paused. For seconds he marveled at the Octopus’s cunning. Before his understanding eyes was an alarm system no man would expect to find in such a place—the latest scientific protection device known to modern penology.
A series of three glass lenses was set in the factory building at the end of the wall. These lenses, hidden from the street outside by a projecting bit of boarding, focused along the wall at levels of one, two, and three feet.
THE barbed-wire on top of the wall was only a blind. A man might be careful not to touch it, thinking it was electrically charged. He might jump the wall, clearing it and the wire entirely—and still those hidden lenses would record on some dial below the fact of his presence.
For, to the Agent’s experienced eye, they were the lenses of the invisible infra-red, photo-electric alarm system, used in some of the most modern State penitentiaries.
Any opaque body, passing between those lenses and the photoelectric eye that received the rays at the opposite end of the wail, would instantly give warning.
Agent “X” made no attempt to climb over the wall. His one means of escape lay in the side of the building facing directly on the street. He moved around the junk-filled factory yard, locating at last an old spindle of insulated wire. He cut off fifty feet of this, rolled it up and climbed the fire escape to the second floor.
He opened a window on this floor on the side of the building directly over the street. He looped the wire through a radiator pipe inside, so that it hung double down the outside wall of the building. Then, hanging by the wire, he closed the window to within a few inches, and made the descent to the street.
The wire hung down still, but Agent “X” had both ends. He pulled on one, winding it in till the other snaked up, passed through the pipe and came down. He was out of the building now, with no clues left behind except that one window partially open. It was not noticeable from the street.
The darkness swallowed Agent “X” as he hurried away. He did not go to the drive-yourself car parked two blocks distant. Criminal eyes might be watching that. He chose the darkest, most unfrequented streets.
In a deeply shadowed spot between two buildings he stopped, reaching skilled, experienced fingers toward his face. The features of Van Camp disappeared under his touch. He stripped off the volatile substance and the transparent adhesive that had changed his features into a likeness of the criminal lawyer. He took the gray toupee from his head.
There was no time or opportunity for an elaborate disguise. But the Agent carried small tubes and vials of material with him. He used these to create one of his “stock” disguises.
When he emerged from the shadows he no longer resembled Van Camp. Ten years seemed to have fallen from his age. He walked quickly to a lighted boulevard and signaled a cruising taxi. This bore him to the hotel where Van Camp was registered.
The Agent bought himself a paper, strolled casually through the lobby, not glancing to left or right. A spy of the Octopus might be somewhere in the hotel.
His pulse beat increased as he took the elevator to the eighth floor. He had Van Camp’s key now. He folded his paper, walked resolutely along the hall. The instant the elevator door had closed, he entered suite 806 again.
VAN CAMP was still unconscious, exactly as “X” had left him. He was lying peacefully on the couch in the front room, as though asleep. But there was need for fast work. Any instant some sinister agent of the Octopus might arrive.
“X” slipped on a pair of gloves, went through the lawyer’s luggage again. He unstrapped the suitcase, brought out a small portable radio set. This was the thing that his photographic brain had recorded. This was what he had thought of instantly when he’d seen the image of the Octopus on the television screen, and heard the master criminal’s words come through the loudspeaker.
It seemed strange that Van Camp should bring a radio all the way to Chicago. Stranger still, considering that a radio instrument was already in the room, supplied by the hotel itself. It could mean only one thing. Van Camp expected to receive broadcasted signals from his chief. What sort of broadcast—and on what wave length?
The Agent examined tensely the brown radio box in his hands. At first glance it appeared to be an ordinary stock model midget set of cheap make.
But the back of it was sealed up. This was odd. Most radios of this type, he knew, had open backs to make the tubes and terminals easily accessible.
“X” turned one of the two dials which appeared to be wave-length and volume controls. He saw with a glow of excitement that this was a dummy front. The control snapped into some sort of socket with a click when he turned it. He turned the other to a corresponding position. Suddenly the whole front panel of the box came off in his hand. Behind it was another inset panel—and the Agent’s eyes snapped.
Here was a radio set such as he had never seen before. It was, in fact, two miniature sets, exactly alike, housed in the same cabinet; but with separate controls. One side of the panel was red Bakelite, the other blue. There were four control dials altogether; and, in the precise center of the panel, was a small loudspeaker with a screw head above it. This looked like the hand-setting screw of a clock. Then “X” bent forward with abrupt interest, noticing something else.
The front panel of the radio inside was scorched and cracked. There was an odor of burnt varnish and rubber. The whole cabinet was still warm, although Van Camp had been unconscious for nearly an hour! The Agent’s hands tensed. He thought quickly.
This mysterious fire inside the set explained itself. The strange radio bore an important relation to the activities of the criminal organization. And the Octopus, as soon as he had learned that “X” was impersonating Van Camp, had taken pains to destroy it. He had sent out some sort of radio impulse so powerful that it had short-circuited and burned up the mechanism of the set.
“X” snapped the false front back into place, tucked the set under his coat and started for the door. But he froze abruptly in his tracks. A faint sound had come from the doorway into the corridor. It was the metallic scraping of a skeleton key being inserted into the lock. It meant that one or more of the Octopus’s men had arrived to learn what had happened to Van Camp.
Chapter XX
The Mysterious Message
AN emotion deeper than terror filled Agent “X.” Discovery now would mean the death blow to his plans, destroy the progress he had made. Knowing the Secret Agent still lived, the Octopus would change every sign and signal by which he controlled his organization.
“X” leaped to the window, stared down. It was an eight-story drop to the street. He looked along the face of the building, eyes narrowed calculatingly. A narrow ledge ran around the level of the floor he was on. It was a bare four inches wide. But it presented his only chance.
He looked at the radio set tucked under his arm. He couldn’t take that and maneuver the ledge, too. He must sacrifice it or be discovered. The Agent made an instantaneous decision. Another second and the door into the corridor would open.
He put the mysterious radio cabinet down quietly, slipped out of the open window. He stood upright in the cold ni
ght air, gripped the outside of the frame, then like a human fly, he crept along the face of the building.
Risking quick death by a plunge to the street, he flattened himself to the building’s side, moved crabwise along the narrow ledge. He passed two lighted windows. Guests of the hotel were unaware of the strange being who moved so close. He came to a fifth window that was open slightly. Was the room empty, or was its occupant asleep? “X” did not know. He must take a chance.
Clinging to his precarious hold, he raised the window softly and slipped into the room. In the dim light inside he saw the mound of a sleeper in a bed. But he cat-footed across the room to the door that led into the hall.
So softly that the sleeper did not stir, Agent “X” opened the door and went out. The corridor was deserted. The man with the skeleton key must have passed into Van Camp’s suite. By a few seconds only Agent “X” had escaped detection. And he dared not go back for the radio set now.
He descended into the lobby, strolled into the night streets….
TWO nights later Secret Agent “X” sat in absorbed concentration before a table in his Chicago hideout. Forty-eight hours of intensive activity lay behind him.
The living room of his hideout had become a mad jumble of apparatus and equipment. He had made purchases from more than a dozen leading radio supply stores in Chicago. He had torn apart, built up, tested a score of complex receiving sets.
There were coils of wire, sheets of metal, dozens of tubes, dozens of condensers scattered about the floor of the apartment. Glue pots and soldering irons added to the confusion. Scraps of foil lay on the floor as though a silver snowstorm had fallen. Every available spot where anything might be set was covered. But in all this clutter and confusion, Agent “X” worked with grim, unswerving persistence.
Before him on the table now was a superheterodyne set which he himself had assembled. This set covered wave lengths from twelve to five hundred and sixty meters. At almost any intensity the audio amplifier gave undistorted output. Trimmer condensers and other balancing devices had been abolished. Static interference had been reduced to a minimum by a low-pass filter circuit of unique design.
Secret Agent “X” had demonstrated his mastery of a branch of science which is a life career for many men. For, with its other qualities, this all-wave set possessed amazing sensitivity.
Broadcasts from many parts of the world had come in on it. Calls from London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit—all the great cities of Europe and America. Police calls had come, too. Calls from ships, planes, and from hundreds of private stations.
For nearly twelve hours at a stretch Agent “X” had remained in that room, listening. There was hardly a station in the United States, Canada or Mexico, private or commercial, that he had not tuned in on for a moment at least as he sought patiently for some broadcast that might fit in with the clue of Van Camp’s strange set.
And now, suddenly, a mysterious message was coming in out of the night. The Secret Agent’s eyes were glowing with the light of rapt intensity. On a wave length lower than that of any other call he had received so far, a strange jumble of words was being repeated at fifteen-minute intervals.
“Tee — ten — sent — to — ner — del — that — ree — dows — un — tues — night — oh —”
Those jerky syllables were in a man’s voice—a voice that Agent “X” could never mistake. It was the precise, obviously disguised voice of the Octopus.
But what was the master criminal saying? There was a maddening, unfathomable riddle in those spaced syllables. “Sent — to” and “tues — night” were the only ones that appeared to make any sense. Something had happened, or was going to happen Tuesday night; but what? Every second syllable vanished, and these gaps of silence formed an amazing puzzle.
Three times the Agent listened to the strange message, then leaped to another instrument standing on a chair near by. This was a complex directional aerial attached to the radio. Copper wire was coiled in the flattest possible plane, mounted on a rotating central post. A micrometer screw controlled the movements of this coil.
Feverishly “X” turned this screw until the message, coming in a fourth time, grew louder. A gold-foil galvanometer at the base of the aerial showed at last that maximum volume had been attained. Any slight movement beyond that point made the message dim. A small radio beam compass also worked in conjunction with the aerial. The Agent studied this tensely. The clocklike face of the compass turned as the aerial was rotated, but the needle remained stationary. From the relation of the two, the Agent got exact bearings. The red compass line, corresponding to the plane of the aerial, showed almost due east.
“X” suddenly rose. He packed up his radio set and other instruments with speed and care. In quick strides he left his hideout. The night air felt good after the prisonlike life he had been living for twelve hours. He deposited his equipment in the seat of his car, drove like a demon in a southerly direction away from Chicago. There was no telling how long the Octopus’s message would continue to be broadcast.
FOR a half hour “X” raced through the night, thundering over night-darkened country roads. Twenty-five miles south of Chicago he turned off into a narrow side lane and parked in a grove of trees. Here he set up his instruments again and bent over them intently.
Five minutes, and that mysterious call was once more being repeated.
“Tee — ten — sent — to — ner — del — that — ree — dows — un — tues — night — oh —”
A second time the Agent adjusted his radio beam compass and directional aerial until the supersensitive leaves of the special galvanometer showed maximum intensity. Now the red line on the clocklike face of the compass was pointing a tiny fraction north of due east. It was no more than a single degree on the compass’s graduated face. Agent “X” set a screw-head which locked the line where it was.
He opened a detailed scale map of the United States put out by the Geodetic Survey. It did not vary from actual distance by more than a tenth of a mile at most.
“X” marked the two positions from which he had taken the directions, marked the compass points in fractions of degrees. Like an astronomer photographing a star from two different points, he now had a paralax.
Careful mathematical estimates of the sides of this elongated isosceles triangle would enable him to determine where they converged. This would be the spot from which the mysterious broadcast had been made.
Back in his hideout Agent “X” covered a sheet of paper with exact geometrical symbols and figures. With a ruler marked off in millimeters and a pair of the finest calipers he went over the Geodetic Survey map.
When he straightened at last, his eyes were snapping pools of light. The broadcast of the Octopus was coming from a county in western New York State. The Agent had the precise spot marked off on his map. The station was somewhere in a circle, not more than a half mile in diameter. The data collected by means of his precise scientific instruments could not lie.
The Agent changed to his disguise of Martin, the newspaper man, again. He got in touch with Hobart at once, arranged to have the ex-dick meet him at the Chicago airport within half an hour.
“X” beat the detective to the airport, chartered a fast plane and a skilled pilot from a commercial flying company. In this he and Hobart flew to Buffalo.
THE Agent had a hideout in Buffalo, too, also a car garaged under another name. He kept Hobart waiting while he got this car. Then, with Hobart beside him on the seat and his elaborate scientific equipment packed in the rear, he headed off into the country.
Twice Agent “X” consulted his road map. A State highway led him close to his objective. He swung into a country road, the ruts of which made the big car jounce like a ship on a stormy sea. But in spite of the bad condition of the road and its many curves, Agent “X” switched off the car’s lights.
Guided only by the dim light of the stars he drove ahead, eyes seeming able to pierce the darkness. Jim Hobart swore as a p
articularly bad rut made the car leap and clatter.
“That crack-up in that plane of yours had nothing on this, boss! I’ll be needing an air cushion to sit on for the next week.”
Agent “X” gave a low command for quiet; then whispered to Hobart to keep his automatic handy. He stopped, flicked on the dim instrument board light a moment, and consulted both his road map and the Geodetic map again.
He switched off the light, listened, but nothing sounded except the moaning of the night wind through the trees of the rocky, wooded country. Agent “X” spoke guardedly.
“I want you to stay here, Jim, and keep watch of the car while I scout around. Don’t move till I get back.”
“X” slipped like a wraith into the darkness, walking surefootedly. Black as the night was, things to him were visible. He had trained himself long ago to see under circumstances in which other men could not.
Cautiously he walked through the sparse woods. Any moment he expected to come upon some old barn or house which held sinister secrets. Perhaps within the next hour he would come to grips with the Octopus, the man who mysteriously controlled a crime corporation covering the whole United States.
A half hour passed and Agent “X” saw nothing but trees, ground and rocks. Systematically he searched that circle he had marked out on his map. With the thoroughness of a hound, never lapping over back tracks, he went over the circle, crossing its diameter first, going over one half, then the other.
At last after two hours he stopped, eyes bright, jaws grim. Failure had marked his course tonight; failure after all those precise recordings and careful computations.
There was no single sign of human life within this circle out of which the broadcast had come. There was no hidden station, no barn, house, shack, cave or suspicious point. It was only what it appeared to be—empty, desolate country. Once again the Octopus had checkmated him.
Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2 Page 40
