Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2

by Paul Chadwick

  “Norton Beale, gentlemen—a man who has hounded criminals all his life! A super-scientific sleuth who is responsible for many police activities against the underworld. Indirectly he has caused the deaths of many of our friends. I consider it fortunate that he has fallen into our hands. What shall be his fate, gentlemen?”

  AGAIN cries of “death” went up. Hatred glared on the faces of those who stared at Beale, hatred and fear of a man the Octopus said was their enemy. The Octopus spoke once more.

  “The prisoner we had here last week escaped the clutches of our official torturer. That must not happen again. Let Beale be taken to room 13 and given into the hands of poor Waldo’s successor. I recommend that the embrace of the Iron Virgin be used to teach Beale that he cannot fight such a group as ourselves with impunity.”

  Cries of approval filled the room. The face of the stocky prisoner went white. A sudden light sprang into his eyes. He spoke for the first time, spoke huskily in a voice that held deep fear.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “you are being tricked again. This man you see on the screen before you is an imposter. He is Secret Agent ‘X’ taking my place. He was not killed in the fire. It was he who called you here—not I. I was brought here a prisoner. He is having his revenge. I am the Octopus.”

  A stunned silence followed these words. Then came snarls of derision, cat-calls of disbelief.

  “Death to the liar! Kill him!” the board members howled.

  When the wolfish clamor had partially subsided, Beale’s voice rose again, a quavering note in it now.

  “It is true, gentlemen! I am your leader! It was necessary that I keep my identity hidden. The issues at stake were too big. But now you know who I am. Free me and we can go on as before.”

  Again cat-calls drowned his words. Beale’s own statements were being hurled back in his teeth. No one would believe that the famous criminologist and the Octopus were one. But Beale held up his hand, his voice grew frenzied.

  “I have proof, gentlemen—proof that I am telling you the truth! Each one of you bears on his chest in invisible tattooing the tentacles of an octopus. That was the system worked out by me, agreed upon when we first organized. I carry a design of the creature’s beak. I anticipated that a time might come when I would have to identify myself to you. Now is the time. That man on the screen is an imposter. Last night he took me prisoner, took the gold from the Morencia away from me. Not content with this he wanted to have me tortured, killed by my own men.”

  A sudden silence descended on the room now. Eyes stared at the face of the man on the television screen, stared back at Beale.

  “Let us test this man’s words,” said Sullwell. “If he bears the head of the Octopus on his chest he is what he claims to be.”

  Every man about the table was standing now, faces grim and strained.

  “Take him out to the mirror. I appoint three of you as a committee to verify his words or expose him as our enemy.”

  THE three named by Sullwell started for the door, then stopped dead in their tracks. A member of the board gave a scream of fear that was like a tortured clot of sound in his throat.

  For the door of the boardroom had mysteriously opened. The corridor outside was black with men.

  Federal men, detectives, blue uniformed cops from the Cicero police. The foremost of them carried riot guns and sub-caliber rapid firers. Others held drawn automatics and tear gas bombs. A grizzled head of the federal men spoke.

  “Kidnaping’s a racket Uncle Sam is interested in. You guys have kidnaped, among other things. If any of you make a move, we’ll mow you down.”

  Fear alone sent one of the criminal boardmen plunging for his gun. He went down under a snarling stream from the rapid-flrer. He kicked a moment and lay still.

  “That goes for the rest of you,” said the grizzled federal man. He turned to Professor Beale, whose face displayed an ingratiating smile. “You—” he started to say. But Beale interrupted him.

  “Good work, sir!” he said. “You were outside! You must have heard me trying to save myself from these devils by bluffing. It was the only way—but I doubt if it would have succeeded. I was only stalling. They’d have come to their senses and murdered me, realizing that Norton Beale could never be a criminal.”

  In the excitement, the ghostly presence on the television screen had been momentarily forgotten. Now the voice came from the loudspeaker again.

  “Norton Beale is a criminal! Norton Beale is the Octopus—the man who formed a criminal corporation in this country, the man who engineered the Mandel kidnaping, the theft of the gold from the Morencia and a dozen other crimes. You heard his confession. Now put him to the test. Go behind the mirror in the corridor. Have Beale walk toward it. The secret insignia, the head of the Octopus on his chest will show. That is concrete proof that all his lies can’t overcome.”

  Beale lifted his voice in shouting denial. The federal man and two others took him by the arm.

  “Sorry,” the federal man said, “but we were tipped off. We came here this afternoon and hid before any of you guys arrived. Somebody who knew all about it tipped us. So far, everything he’s said has panned out. If you’ve got that thing on your chest you’ll have to stand trial.”

  They took Beale out of the room. Ten minutes passed while those around the board table waited under the threat of police guns. Then Beale, shaken, his face putty-colored, was brought back. His own cunning method of identification had trapped him. He bore the mark of the Octopus on his body.

  “Slip the cuffs on him along with the others,” said the federal man. He turned, faced the screen. The lips of the image moved again.

  “You will find the Mandel child in Beale’s country place in the Westchester hills,” the image said. “The five million in gold from the Morencia will be in the blimp anchored on his estate when you get there.”

  An instant of silence followed, breathless in its portent, while the eyes of the man on the screen seemed to bore into the room with an almost supernatural light. Then the strange voice sounded once again.

  “Secret Agent ‘X’ signing off,” it said. “Good night, gentlemen.”

  Slowly before their eyes the image faded. A sound came from the loudspeaker, then. It was a whistle—the strange, uncanny whistle of Agent “X,” at once eerie and melodious. That, too, faded gradually as the image had done; and the only sound in the room was the hoarse breathing of tense, excited men.

  The Hooded Hordes

  Chapter I

  Calling Secret Agent “X”

  THE tall man in the office marked “E.E. Winstead” was restless. He glanced at his watch for the dozenth time, looked at the telephone cradled in its rack, went to the window and stared out.

  Below him, evening traffic moved glitteringly. Taxis, private limousines, roadsters and coupés rolled by. A swirling tide of humanity passed along the sidewalk toward the garish lights of the theatre district.

  As he watched, figures detached themselves from the crowds, stopped to buy papers at the stands or from one of the newsboys who were screaming shrilly, then moved on, antlike, bearing their bits of white away. There was a note of strident excitement in the continuous clamor of those newsboys.

  “Extra! Read all about the big moider! Senator Foster killed! Extra!”

  The tall man left his office, went down into the street, got himself a paper and returned. It was the third time he had done so within an hour. He seemed to crave action.

  A half dozen earlier editions lay on his desk. This one added little to the news about the murder. The lead of the story was the same.

  Senator Ronald Foster (D—Ark.), sponsor of a recent bill asking an appropriation of five hundred thousand dollars to combat the alleged nation-wide activities of a secret society known as the “DOACs,” was found shot to death this afternoon at his home in Washington. D.C. Senator Foster’s family was away. His secretary, Warren Knowlton, cannot be located.It is believed by the police that the senator’s death may in some way b
e connected with his rigorous efforts to stamp out the spread of the DOAC organization.

  The tall man sank into the big chair before his desk again. He found one new item at the end of the murder story of this latest edition. A maid in the senator’s home claimed she’d seen a strange car parked before the driveway some time in the middle of the afternoon.

  Carefully the man at the desk cut this item out, adding it to an envelope of clippings in a drawer. Those clippings were from many papers in all parts of the country. They told of strange crimes that had taken place in recent weeks of National Guard barracks and police headquarters raided in the dead of night by weirdly hooded figures; of machine guns, rifles, automatics and ammunition stolen in alarming quantities; of sporting goods stores that had been broken into and stripped of all weapons in Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Buffalo. All this was believed to be the work of the DOACs.

  In a dozen other cities, a chain of hideous murders had been reported. Men had been found dead, killed by molten lead poured into their throats. Men with ghastly gray beards of metal covering their chins. This might be the work of the DOACs, too.

  The tall man at the desk didn’t know. There was a frown of deep concentration in his intent, burning eyes. His long fingers reached up, touching his face in an absent gesture. That face, completely natural in appearance, was a marvelously clever disguise. The features under it were hidden so well that no one would have guessed their presence. They were concealed as cunningly as the identity of the tall man himself. For “E.E. Winstead” and the mysterious investigator of crime called Secret Agent “X” were one and the same.

  THE name was only another cognomen of the Man of a Thousand Faces—the man whose amazing, daring actions had aroused the curiosity of every detective bureau in the country as well as the underworld.

  It was a name chosen by Agent “X” in the campaign against crime inspired by a secret message straight from Washington, D.C.

  Sensing what the threat of the DOACs might mean, “X” had organized his own secret staff of skilled operatives. He had posted them in every state in the Union.

  Little was known about the DOACs. Progress, so far, had been pitifully slight. It was rumored that they planned a dictatorship of America; rumored that disgruntled, discontented people all over the country were joining their secret membership. The symbol of their power was a clenched fist hurling a lightning bolt.

  The telephone rang as Agent “X” bent over his clippings. It was a long-distance call from a state nearly a thousand miles away. The voice that came over the wire was that of Jim Hobart, one of the Secret Agent’s most skilled and trusted operatives. There was a quaver of excitement in Hobart’s tone now.

  “Calling E.E. Winstead.”

  “Winstead speaking.”

  “Solder has gone down again, boss. Two more customers in this territory received orders last night. My own firm may have been active. Haven’t been able to locate any parties to the deal. Prospects for advancement look swell. Saw what happened to sponsor of Washington code. What instructions have you?”

  Agent “X’s” fingers tightened over the telephone till his knuckles showed white. In those short, innocent-sounding sentences Jim Hobart had got across a message of horror. “Solder has gone down again,” meant that molten lead had been used as a murder weapon once more. “Two more customers in this territory received orders last night,” indicated that there had been two victims. And by his reference to the “sponsor of Washington code” Hobart was telling “X” that he’d seen about Senator Foster’s murder.

  The Secret Agent’s voice was devoid of emotion as he answered: “Continue sales work in that territory. Be careful of too rapid promotion. Call me again tomorrow.”

  He snapped the receiver up. The burning look in his eyes had deepened. Hobart, ex-police detective, suspended from the city force on graft charges that were the result of an underworld frame-up, had been given employment by the Agent. The ex-dick didn’t know for whom he was working. He thought that Winstead was the assumed name of A.J. Martin, an inquiring newspaper reporter who wanted to get inside facts about the DOACs for his paper.

  With Agent “X’s” guidance, Hobart had been able to join the ranks of the DOACs in one of their midwest chapters. But Hobart’s reports, though faithful, had been disappointing to “X.” The rank and file of the DOACs knew little. They merely received instructions and propaganda from an “inner circle,” which Hobart had been unable to penetrate as yet.

  Restlessly Agent “X” scanned the paper to see if these other brutal murders in the West had been recorded. They had not. Hobart had given him the news by wire long before it had reached the metropolitan press. Then suddenly Agent “X” started.

  His eyes, trained to miss nothing, focused abruptly on the personal columns of this late edition. There in bold type were words that made his pulses hammer.

  SECRET AGENT “X”

  The group of letters that followed the Agent’s name was as surprising as the public appearance of that name itself. The entry in the personal column read thus:

  SECRET AGENT “X.” BTXAM AHMSI GAKIG FMTDC SEMAN KNTGB NADUN GANAM TERAG BNGEP PNDNN ZMHHK STEUV SRDNP GDIOO SAMBG ANHOU LQTBU BVDXM APNLN BKUBD XHUEP PETEN LDENA MANGR ADLKO RAPEA OXAXX.

  The Agent tensed in his desk chair. Here was a code message or a cipher-gram. Some one wanted to get in touch with him. Some one had used the personal column of the paper as the only means of doing so.

  STARING at the word grouping, “X” knew that they might be in any one of many ciphers.

  With fingers that trembled he drew a pad and pencil toward him. It was second nature with him to attempt a solution of any code or cipher he might happen to see.

  He jotted down the established frequency table of letters beginning with “E”, one hundred and twenty-six, “T” ninety, “R” eighty-three. This table had been figured out by government experts. It showed the natural frequency of letters as they appeared in the English language, based on a comparative study of one hundred thousand words. But the letters in the newspaper appeared to follow no regular frequency.

  The discovery of this eliminated the possibility of a common substitution cipher. “X” reasoned that the man who had written the cipher would not have used code. Without a decoding book, patient weeks of labor were often required before a code could be read. “X” experimented with all the better-known ciphers; then glanced at the first three words again—his own name.

  His brain worked with lightning rapidity. Could it be that the key to the cipher was contained in those words? This seemed to be a logical conclusion. No one had gotten in touch with him previously to suggest a key. Until a key was found no cipher except those of the simplest forms could be solved.

  The full force of Agent “X’s” extraordinary deductive powers focused on the problem. All types of ciphers were known to him. The key words of most did not contain repeated letters. The word “secret” for this reason would not be likely to constitute a key. “X” was too short. This left “agent” as the most logical possibility.

  “X” drew up charts of the best-known ciphers. He tried the word “agent” in various positions without results, finally arriving at the diagraphic cipher known as the Playfair. This had often been used in the World War.

  He made the necessary twenty-five letter box, put the word “agent” at the top—its natural position—and went to work on the message again. Then almost instantly his eyes brightened. The first four letters of the first group, “BTXA,” spelled “have.”

  Quickly, with the expert ease of a man trained in cipher and code work, he deciphered the other groups, using the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal letters on the Playfair diagram he had made. The result was a message more significant than even he had anticipated.

  “Have information concerning menace threatening peace and safety of country. Please communicate through paper in same cipher to arrange meeting. Speed imperative.”

  For many seconds “X” studied this message.
The dynamic light of intelligence in his eyes seemed to glow like a living torch. Was this a trap, set by the DOACs themselves, after learning somehow that he was active against them? Or was it from some one willing to take a desperate chance and become an informer against the DOAC organization? For the wording of the message made “X” certain that it referred to the DOACs in one form or other.

  Working carefully with his diagram, using the Playfair cipher again, with the word “agent” as the key, he enciphered an answering message.

  “Confidential. YKKEI DALAS EPLGF DUZRA PLXAP DIXBE EFOIQ EGTUN AMTNH UAMTC NHIEU FMKTO-NUHMP SAOLN PMUKR EMDIM MIYQEV.”

  Translated, this message read:

  “Will be in parked coupé River Boulevard and Morgan Street, nine tonight. Flash lights four times. I will follow. Secret Agent ‘X.’”

  He figured the word rate on this, according to the paper’s published schedule, then put the message and the money in a sealed envelope addressed to the paper’s personal column. Out in the street he went quickly to a telegraph office twelve blocks away. Here, without giving his name or address, he handed the envelope to a special messenger for immediate delivery to the newspaper. It would appear in the next afternoon’s edition where the eyes of the Agent’s mysterious correspondent would surely see it.

  Chapter II

  The Seal of Death

  TWENTY-FOUR hours later, a smart coupé turned into River Boulevard, heading uptown. The lights of other cars showed beetle-like along the wide thoroughfare. On the black river the ports of ferries and steamers twinkled.

  The man at the car’s wheel bore no likeness to E.E. Winstead. His features were such that one would have said there was not even a family resemblance. Yet he was the same man who had read and answered a message in the Playfair cipher through the columns of the paper.

  So plastic and flexible was the strange, volatile material used by “X” in his disguises that it seemed living flesh. The new features he had created, though unlike Winstead’s, were just as commonplace. For the Agent didn’t want to attract attention to himself. And, just as he had taken precautions to make an elaborate disguise, so he had taken other precautions.