Chapter XXI
Tentacles of the Octopus
DISCONSOLATELY Agent “X” went back to the car where Hobart was waiting. “X’s” shoulders drooped for the first time since he had begun his quest for the master of crime—the Octopus. Out of the darkness Hobart’s hushed voice reached him.
“That you, boss?”
“Yes.”
“Any luck?”
“No, Jim.”
Hobart cleared his throat, asked a hesitant question.
“What was you after, boss?”
“A big shot, Jim—a crook who makes all other crooks in the country look like small fish.”
“Gees! And you thought he was hanging out in this dump?”
“Yes, I did. Figures told me so—and figures don’t lie!”
Agent “X” gave no explanation of this seemingly cryptic statement. He lapsed into grim-lipped silence.
Hobart and “X” stayed the rest of the night in a small commercial hotel in a little town outside Buffalo. They registered again as traveling salesmen.
When morning came Agent “X” drove out alone to the circle he had marked on the map. He convinced himself that his night-time search had been right. There was no hidden broadcasting station here.
When he returned to his hotel room, Hobart held out a morning paper excitedly.
“Look, boss—here’s the dumbest kidnap racket I’ve ever heard of a crook pulling. A guy has warned a millionaire that he’ll grab the millionaire’s kid if the millionaire don’t cough up two hundred grand in advance. Tie that if you can—a crook asking advance payment for a job he ain’t done yet! Fat chance he’s got to get it, with the federal government clamping the lid down on kidnapers. He ought to have grabbed the kid first and asked for his dough afterwards, like the rest of ’em. Even the crooks are getting sappy these days.”
Agent “X” took the paper with no comment. The news item bore the address of a small mid-Western community. It said:
Warner Mandel, wealthy brewer of this city, yesterday received a note threatening that his small son would be kidnaped if he did not place two hundred thousand dollars in the hands of criminals within the next forty-eight hours.Details for delivery of the cash were given in the note, it is understood. The police and Mr. Mandel have refused to disclose what these arrangements were. A cordon of police, State detectives and federal men nave been thrown around Mandel’s suburban mansion. This demand of unknown extortionists to frighten a prospective victim into paying is more evidence of the bravado of modern criminals. In this case it is doomed to failure, however. Mandel states that he cannot be intimidated. He has no fears for his small son. His estate has been turned into a fortress. Commissioner Davenport of this city, in charge of activities to checkmate the criminals, gives as his belief that they will not even attempt to carry out their threat.
Agent “X” stared at the paper. The light in his eyes became so intense that Hobart, watching him, gave a hoarse exclamation.
“What is it, boss? That guy Mandel ain’t a friend of yours, is he?”
“No—not a friend.”
“But you know something about him.”
“I think I do!”
Silently Agent “X” took a piece of paper from an inner pocket. On it was printed the strange message he had received on his special radio the evening before.
“Tee — ten — sent — to — ner — del — that — ree — dows — un — tues — night — oh—”
Before the fifth and sixth syllables respectively, he inserted two others, “War” and “Man” and put the word “note” between “sent” and “to.” Sent note to Warner Mandel.
Agent “X” got up, paced the room excitedly. Here was conclusive evidence to him that the Octopus was the man who had threatened the millionaire brewer. And if the Octopus was behind the proposed kidnaping there was a likelihood, almost a certainty, that it would be carried out, despite the heavily armed police cordon. He turned to Hobart.
“There’s nothing phoney about this stunt, Jim. One of the cleverest crooks in the U. S. is behind it—the man I’ve been looking for.”
Jim Hobart shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry, boss. There’s been a lot of kidnapings lately. The cops are on their toes. With them on the look-out for the next twenty-four hours no crook will have a chance of getting inside the Mandel place.”
A grim smile twitched the Secret Agent’s lips. Hobart didn’t know as he did that the Octopus was a man of satanic genius and unexpected originality. Neither did the police. And yet he couldn’t warn them. Publicity would be given such a warning—publicity that would reach the ears of the Octopus, and let him know Agent “X” still lived.
“X” made a quick decision. “Pack up your duds, Jim. It’s time we got started.”
“Where to now, boss?”
“Out to the place where this kidnap stunt is going to be pulled.”
WHEN they reached the city where Warner Mandel lived, Jim Hobart was again disappointed at the inactive role his employer, Martin, gave him.
“Just hang around the hotel, Jim,” said the Secret Agent. “Your name this time is Bill Conrad. I’ll call you if I need you. Keep your ears and eyes open.”
“X” got himself a small furnished room in another part of the city. For more than an hour he combed the ether with his all-wave radio. No further messages flashed out of the sky.
As the afternoon deepened and the shadows of evening came, they seemed to portend evil. Tonight at midnight the forty-eight-hour limit would be up. The shadow of the Octopus would fall in sinister fashion over Warner Mandel’s son.
Agent “X” drove by the big Mandel estate. It was on the outskirts of the city. He saw that the newspaper report was right. Mandel’s big place had been turned into a fortress.
It covered a whole city block. At each corner, though it was still daylight and the period stipulated by the kidnapers had not elapsed, a radio patrol car was stationed. Every hundred feet along the fence that skirted the place a guard with a rifle stood. Plain-clothes detectives and federal men were sauntering about the lawn.
The Mandel child was nowhere in sight. Hidden behind the walls of the house, with other plain-clothes men inside, it seemed fantastic to suppose that any criminal could get to him. But Agent “X” wasn’t at ease.
“X” saw a tradesman on his way to the kitchen entrance stopped. He was cross-questioned by the police. His delivery auto was searched before he was allowed to enter. An armed detective got up on the seat with him. This spoke well for Commissioner Davenport’s thoroughness. But the silent closing down of the evening shadows seemed as ominous to “X” as the slow, purposeful curling up of an Octopus’s tentacles.
He drove by again after dark, saw that the guards had been doubled and that searchlights had been set along the fence. Their bright beams illuminated all four streets in both directions. When “X” tried to enter one of these streets, he was stopped, questioned, and told to detour through another block.
The Secret Agent’s eyes were bright. He must get inside that cordon of police. To be at hand if the Octopus dared to strike, he stood ready to risk exposure or death at the hands of the police. But there was only one way to achieve his end. He must make a desperate play as he had done before in his strange warfare on crime.
Throughout the afternoon he had Jim Hobart make discreet inquiries concerning the city’s police. Four deputy inspectors had been assigned to the Mandel case. Two for day detail. Two others for night. Hobart got the names and addresses of these men from the city’s newspaper office. One, assigned to night duty, was a bachelor living alone in a small apartment. This one was Deputy Inspector Thomas Dulany.
A HALF hour before Deputy Inspector Dulany was scheduled to start for his post of duty that night he received a visitor. A tall man with a pleasant face and alert eyes rang his bell. The man handed the inspector a card bearing the name of Dillon. It stated that he was from the State’s superintendent of insurance.
“I’d like a f
ew words with you on this Mandel matter,” said the man called Dillon. “There are some insurance hazards involved. In case anything should happen, the superintendent’s office must be prepared to render decisions.”
Inspector Dulany looked at his watch, motioned to the front room of his apartment. He was a ruddy-faced, competent looking man who bore the mark of good living on his even features.
“Haven’t much time,” he said. “I can give you just fifteen minutes, Dillon.”
“Splendid,” said the other. “That will be ample for my business with you.”
He walked behind Dulany into the drawing room of the small apartment, made sure there was no other occupant and that the shades were drawn. Inspector Dulany motioned to an overstuffed chair, took one himself opposite.
“Now, Dillon, what is it you want to know?”
The visitor fumbled a moment in his coat pocket.
“Let’s see—I have a questionnaire here,” he said.
His hand came out more quickly than it went in, so quickly that Deputy Inspector Dulany had only a bare moment to see that the fingers contained not papers, but a gun.
Before he could open his mouth or leap out of his chair, there was a faint hiss. Vapor from the muzzle of the gun shot into his face. It was harmless vapor, but Dulany gave one convulsive movement and slumped back into his seat. He looked like a man taking a peaceful after-dinner snooze.
The man who called himself Dillon went instantly to work. There was little time for what he had to do. Much depended on it. Certainly his own life and safety. But he wasn’t thinking of those. He was thinking of the Octopus, and of the amazing, daring threat that had been made.
His disguise of Dillon came off, revealing the strange, changeable countenance of Secret Agent “X,” that countenance which in some lights seemed youthful, almost boyish, in others strongly mature.
The Secret Agent brought Dulany’s shaving mirror from the bathroom, set it up on the drawing room table. He took his portable tubes of plastic material from his pocket. He brought out other tubes of pigment. One of these matched Dulany’s coloring. Agent “X” began to transform his own face.
At the end of ten minutes he had achieved again one of his remarkable disguises, a disguise displaying the talent which had placed him at the head of impersonators throughout the world. Two Deputy Inspector Dulanys seemed to be in that room.
Agent “X” lifted the real inspector as though he were as light as a child, carried him into his bedroom and stretched him comfortably on the bed. He then took the police officer’s credentials. After this he gave Dulany a harmless hypo injection which would insure his staying unconscious for the remainder of the night.
In Dulany’s car, looking like Dulany and with Dulany’s credentials, Agent “X” went to Warner Mandel’s estate. Two city detectives recognized Dulany at once. “X” was admitted without comment.
As a credited police official he was free to go where he wished over the Mandel estate, inside and out. He took note of the servants carefully, learned that they had all been with the Mandels three years or more. The precautions to guard the Mandel boy were even more impressive viewed from the inside.
Agent “X” didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He was guarded in his speech, watching Deputy Inspector Grogan, who was his colleague. When he saw that Grogan refrained from intruding himself on the family, he did likewise. He caught a glimpse of Warner Mandel, however, a big man, who seemed cheerful and confident.
THE early hours of the evening moved by uneventfully. Agent “X” chatted with Grogan, learned that in the opinion of the cops all these elaborate precautions were something of a joke. They were attributed to the fear hysteria which a wave of kidnapings in the U. S. had caused. “X” could not tell this man or others of the dread cunning of the Octopus.
But, as midnight came, his sense of uneasiness deepened; his sense that some climax would be reached soon. A light summer drizzle fell on the lawn and shrubbery. The sky overhead was pitch black. But the searchlights on the four sides of the Mandel estate cut brilliant swathes of radiance through the darkness.
Agent “X” strolled along the fences, seeing that the armed guards were vigilant. No one outside the police had entered the Mandel place. But suddenly from the upper floor of the big house came a piping, childish scream.
It was unexpected, abrupt as the sudden crack of a gun in the night. That scream electrified the army of police and federal operatives into action. It tingled through the blood of Agent “X”; made him exclaim harshly, and tore toward the house at a run.
The scream was repeated; then it seemed to be choked off. A detective flashed his torch toward the roof. Lights appeared in many windows. The detective who had flashed the torch gave a shout of sheer amazement. He pointed wildly, stumbled, almost fell.
Agent “X” was near enough to see what had excited him. A black something was hurtling down off the roof of the house. It did not reach the ground. It dropped ten feet, swooped through the air, skimming high over the heads of the staring police.
Agent “X” caught a glimpse of the small, frightened face of a child. He heard again that piping scream; saw another face in that black thing above. There were no wings on the thing, no propeller. It was like the glistening black body of a wheel-less racing car. It made no sound except a faint sigh as it swept through the air.
The police held their fire, fearing they would hit the child. But suddenly, out of the front of the black car overhead, a flickering point of light came and went. A series of pops sounded.
Around “X” men staggered and fell, cursing, groaning. Crimson masked horribly the white face of a detective near by. The man threw up his hands, fell to the lawn, shot dead where he stood. The black, deathly car, with the kidnaped child in it, soared up over the tree tops and disappeared in the night sky. The horrible realization clutched “X” that the Octopus had made good his threat.
Chapter XXII
The Octopus Speaks Again
HE was utterly stunned for a second, as dumfounded as the police around him. The Octopus had accomplished the seemingly impossible, snatched the Mandel child from under the very nose of the law.
Agent “X” did not speak to the men about him. His eyes were glowing with deep emotion. His thoughts were racing. The sight of that black car stirred old memories. A theory was already coming to life in his mind. But the excitement around him precluded thought at the moment.
Men were shouting orders. The wounded were groaning horribly. The siren of a police car rose into a frenzied wail. The car shot away in the direction that the sailing thing had taken. From the house came the sudden scream of an hysterical woman. Agent “X” turned and ran across the lawn.
A cop inside the house was frenziedly calling an ambulance. Deputy Inspector Grogan was on hand. “X” followed him up a flight of stairs to the second story of the house. Somewhere ahead the screams of the woman sounded. A big man went lunging down a hall: Warner Mandel.
The woman was in a small blue decorated bedroom at the end of the hall. A tiny rumpled bed stood by a window. Small bed things were disarranged.
The Agent felt a tug at his heart, felt compassion for this woman, the mother of the kidnaped child. The fiend whose tentacles reached over the whole country had brought sorrow to another home.
“Harold! My baby!” shrieked the woman. The big man tried to comfort her. Detectives and federal men were milling about. A door showed at the side of the bedroom, opening into the child’s nursery. Agent “X” entered this room and saw that a window was raised. This in turn gave onto a flat, open sun roof. A white-faced maid was talking excitedly to a detective.
“It was here, sir, I first heard him cry out,” she said. “Some one must have carried him through that window.”
Agent “X” went out on the sun roof, now dark. Grogan followed him. The roof was forty feet square, flat. A low railing ran around it. Agent “X” went to this. At one side the paint of the railing was scraped. It was from her
e that the uncanny black car had plunged, down and over the trees into the night sky with its pitiful, innocent burden.
Agent “X” turned back into the house, stopped suddenly.
An abrupt sound had stilled the crying of Mrs. Mandel, stilled the hoarse, excited chatter of the detectives. It was the sound of a series of crashing, frenzied blows.
“Good God—what’s that?” Warner Mandel’s voice boomed out above this new noise.
The sound seemed to come from the servants’ wing. “X” started down the corridor at a run. Deputy Inspector Grogan and two detectives behind him. The crashing continued, as though a mad man were swinging a club.
A white-faced maid popped out of a door at “X’s” right, wringing her hands. “It’s Mr. Seymour’s door, sir. It’s him making that noise, sir.”
“Mr. Seymour?”
“Yes—poor Harold’s tutor, sir. There must be something terrible happening to him.”
Agent “X” leaped to the door of the tutor’s room, reached for the knob, struck a thundering blow with his fist.
“Open—quick!” he shouted.
But the door was locked. The detectives came up, added their fists to the din.
The crashing noises inside the room ceased abruptly. But no footsteps approached to open it. Agent “X” stepped back, shoulders hunched like a football player about to tackle, ready to crash through. Then he stopped as if frozen.
Another sound came through the door now. It was a single staccato crack, the report of a gun. It was followed by the ghastly thud of a falling body.
Head down, arms stiff, Agent “X” plunged against the door. The panels cracked, a piece of woodwork gave way. The door burst open. The detectives were at his heels, and they started in amazement. A man lay on the floor, a gun fallen from his fingers, a pool of blood at his head.
“It’s Mr. Seymour!” shrieked the terrified maid. “He’s killed himself!”
THAT the man was a suicide was obvious. But Agent “X” hardly looked at him in that first instant. He was staring at the side of the room, looking at a heavy chair that was splintered and broken.
Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2 Page 41
