Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2

by Paul Chadwick

  Concealed in hidden pockets of his suit were nearly a half dozen of the odd devices he was in the habit of carrying.

  The coupé he was in, seemingly an ordinary stock model car, had sheets of light-weight armor plate along the back and sides. This plate, of the finest manganese steel, was proof even against machine-gun bullets. The Agent had used it tonight, half suspecting he was walking into a trap.

  Even in this armored car he knew he was challenging death. But fear had no place in his dangerous, desperate work. Fear he had cast out long ago. His pulses were beating with excitement now, with the thrill of the chase, with the hope that the mysterious code message and the man he was to meet in the next half hour would throw some light on the strange activity of the dreaded DOACs.

  In the fast-moving cars he passed were couples and groups of well-dressed people on their way to evening entertainment. Soon they would be drinking, dancing, laughing, sitting in comfortable seats at popular shows.

  Their gay and smiling faces were in sharp contrast to the dark, brooding menace Agent “X” had set himself to combat. Yet, if that menace were allowed to go unchecked, the secure world that these people knew would end. There would be bloodshed, misery, terror spread across the face of America. The DOAC organization with its poisonous, insidious propaganda would rise like a savage tide sweeping all before it.

  The corner lights of Morgan Street appeared directly ahead. The Secret Agent pressed the brake pedal of his armored coupé. No other car was parked here now. His own would appear plainly to the unknown cryptographer when he passed.

  Agent “X” backed his coupé into Morgan Street, facing the boulevard, ready to go in either direction if a strange car should signal him to follow. His own parking lights were on. He turned off the dashboard light. In the dark interior of the car he sat, waiting, smoking cigarettes, eyes watchful.

  Once a black limousine came along Morgan Street and passed him. There were four men in it. The Agent tensed, prepared to hear the crash of bullets. But the car rolled by, the men did not look his way. A policeman swinging his nightstick sauntered down the block, passed out of sight. The traffic along the boulevard appeared to thin. The Agent looked at his watch.

  Ten minutes to nine. The city crowds, pleasure bent, had already arrived at their destinations. The hour of “X’s” strange rendezvous was drawing near.

  He watched every car that passed now with an intent gaze that missed nothing.

  Nine came. A minute went by—two—and then the Agent sat straight forward in his seat, hand poised over the gear shift of his coupé. For a small sedan was rumbling by. There was a lone man at the wheel. As he came opposite Morgan Street, the man turned his head for a bare instant. Then the tail light and front headlights of his car winked four times.

  Smoothly Agent “X” meshed his clutch, and released the brake. Smoothly he rolled onto the wide boulevard. But his eyes were focused intently on the car ahead. Its red tail light was a secret symbol of mystery.

  The sedan had not slackened its pace. Only by that brief, winking of light had the man in it betrayed that he was responding to the Agent’s ciphergram.

  “X” turned into the boulevard and rolled after the car ahead. He cut down the intervening space till the sedan was only the distance of a half city block in front of him. He was following as he had said he would, waiting now for the man to lead the way.

  Ten blocks farther, and the driver of the sedan turned off the boulevard. He sought a side street, a wide thoroughfare in the uptown residential section of the city. Here he kept up the same steady pace and the Agent followed.

  Then suddenly Agent “X” hunched forward over the wheel. A hundred feet ahead, out of the mouth of an intervening street, another car plunged. Its speed indicated it had left the boulevard at the same time as the sedan, driven along a parallel way, and deliberately cut in at this point. The rear curtains were down. “X” could not see inside. But he had caught a glimpse of several heads as the car made the turn.

  THE sedan in front suddenly speeded up and “X” saw in that instant that the bigger car was giving chase. Fury possessed him, fury and a sense that he was fighting some vast ruthless force. For there was maddening efficiency in the way the other car behaved. Those in it had been lurking somewhere along the boulevard. They had seen the signals the sedan had flashed, seen and given chase. They had waited till the sedan was well away from the lighted boulevard before coming close. What were their intentions?

  The next few minutes developed into a roaring, rocketing chase. Stark fear seemed to possess the man in the sedan. He was driving ahead like a madman, driving so fast that in the first moments of the chase he drew away from the limousine, and from Agent “X” following.

  Then the limousine speeded up, too. In a moment the Agent heard the crackling tattoo of machine gun fire. The men in the limousine were shooting at the fleeing sedan. “X” pressed the accelerator of his own car nearly to the floor boards. It leaped ahead dangerously through the dark street. Lights were appearing in windows along the way. The quest of the writer of the ciphergram had plunged “X” into a fierce turmoil of action. Its culmination came quickly.

  As he drew close to the limousine, the rear curtain moved aside. Something was shoved through an opening. A winking eye of flame appeared. Spidery crossed lines showed on the shatter-proof glass of the windshield of “X’s” car. The snap and crack of bullets sounded.

  “X” lifted a bullet-proof metal panel which rose nearly to his eyes. Lead struck against this.

  Then the men in the car lowered the snout of their weapon. A front tire on “X’s” car blew with a ripping explosion. A giant’s hand seemed trying to wrench the wheel from his grip.

  The next second became a fight with death, a fight to see that his coupé did not leave the street, plunge across the sidewalk and wreck itself against the side of a house. Muscles in his arms and shoulders stood out. He held the wheel steady.

  So fast had he been traveling, so torn by bullets was the tire, that it flapped around the rim of the wheel, beating against the fender. And, as the plunging car slowed, it came off the wheel entirely, and the coupé jounced along on one metal rim.

  Agent “X” brought the car to a standstill, leaped out. His eyes were livid pools of light. The muscles of his face were set into masklike rigidity. The chase was far ahead now, nearly two blocks beyond the point where he had been shot at. He could still hear the popping of bullets.

  A cruising taxi, attracted by the noise, came whirling out of a side street. Agent “X” leaped to the running board. The taxi driver, seeing the Agent’s bullet-ravaged car tilted against the curb, seemed to regret his haste in coming to the scene so soon. A tight-lipped command from “X” jerked him into action.

  “Follow that car ahead. Step on it!” the Agent ordered.

  The taxi driver’s reactions were almost automatic. The dynamic light in the Agent’s eyes, the snapping tones of his voice, left no other alternative. The taxi plunged ahead.

  Far behind in the night the thin wail of a siren sounded. Some one had telephoned. The police were coming. But “X” feared what might happen to the man in the sedan before they arrived.

  STRAINING his eyes over the taxi driver’s hunched shoulders, he saw the sedan forced to the curb. He saw the limousine stop, saw men swarm out, but could not make out clearly what happened. Those other figures which had come out of the limousine appeared to be lifting the driver of the sedan across the street bodily.

  They thrust him inside. The limousine leaped forward again while the taxi was still a block behind.

  In a burst of speed it passed the parked sedan, empty now. “X” saw that it, too, had been raked with bullets. Both rear tires were riddled into ribbons. The rear window was smashed. So were two of the side windows. He wondered if the man were still alive. If so, what would those others do to him?

  The hideous answer to that came quickly. They had left the residential district behind. They tore through a section of sm
all stores, then the street cut between open building lots. The taxi driver was swearing.

  “I can’t catch ’em, boss. This bus is too slow, I’ll burn ’er out.”

  Agent “X” didn’t answer. The driver was obviously doing his best. The clattering whine of the straining motor told that. But he had seen what the driver of the cab had not. The car ahead had pulled up to the curb beside one of the vacant lots. The door opened and something was heaved out—something that lurched and tottered on its feet for a moment then pitched forward, falling.

  The limousine roared on into the night; the taxi after it. But Agent “X,” seeing the hopelessness of trying to overtake that speeding car in this cab, issued another sharp command to the driver.

  “Stop on the next block.”

  The taxi drew into the curb close to the spot where the car ahead had halted. Before it had ceased to roll forward, Agent “X” yanked the door open and flung himself out

  The man he had seen fall was not on the sidewalk. He was a dark, seemingly shapeless blob on the other side of it, face pressed downward against the earth.

  Agent “X” leaped forward and turned him over. A gasp of sheer horror fell from his lips. For the man was dead, his features screwed into distorted agony. His lips were wide apart in what appeared at first a hideous grin. But a clot of lead, once molten, now hardened into terrible solidity, thrust from his mouth. It hung down over his chin like a grotesque untrimmed beard. The man’s tongue had been silenced forever.

  Chapter III

  Dangerous Clues

  THE taxi driver left his cab, followed “X” and stared down at the dead man, eyes wide, voice a hoarse rasp.

  “Jeez—who is it? What did they do to that guy?”

  The Agent made no reply. He did not know himself who the man was. He stooped quickly, thrust a hand into the man’s coat pocket. His fingers encountered a worn wallet and a few letters which he drew out, clicking on a small flashlight.

  “Gordon Ridley, Twenty-four Warner Avenue,” was the name on the letters and on the name card in the wallet.

  Agent “X” put both into his own coat, and searched the man’s other pockets to see if there was anything else to identify him. Nothing but a bunch of keys, which “X” pocketed, also.

  “Who is he?” the taxi man repeated. “Those guys took him for a ride.”

  Agent “X” nodded, then swivelled his head suddenly. The note of a police siren was sounding down the block. Headlights of a swift car appeared. Other sirens yelped thinly, blocks away, like hounds giving tongue.

  “The cops,” breathed the taxi driver.

  Agent “X” drew a couple of dollars from his own wallet, put them into the dazed taxi man’s hands, enough to cover his fare. He turned then and strode swiftly across the big vacant lot.

  “Hey!” the taxi man yelled after him. “Wait!”

  “X” paid no attention, moving on into the shadows, breaking into a run at the last as he heard the brakes of the first radio patrol car screech to a halt. He did not want the delay of endless questions. The police would want to know what he knew about the dead man. They would hold him as a material witness, perhaps try to implicate him in the crime.

  He vaulted a fence, turned right down another street, cut between two dark houses, then turned left, zigzagging like a pursued fox.

  Somewhere behind him a police whistle shrilled. He could hear excited voices, the sound of running feet. He soon left both behind. But he was not taking any chances.

  Under cover of the darkness his skilled fingers worked with uncanny dexterity. He removed a layer of plastic material from his face, added another pigment, darkening his skin, built up new contours from the tubes he took from his pocket. He seemed a swarthy Latin when he came into the light again. The taxi man would not be able to identify him if they should meet. Neither would those in the murder car if by any chance they had gotten a glimpse of him in his coupé.

  He hailed another taxi on a cross street, said:

  “Warner Avenue.”

  “What number, chief?” the taxi driver asked.

  The Agent said: “Just drive along. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  They swung into Warner Avenue, a section of cheap rooming houses. The Agent eyed the numbers on the buildings as they passed. He ordered the cab to stop when forty showed, paid his fare and continued on foot.

  Sauntering on the opposite side of the street, he saw No. 24 across the way. The house that the dead man lived in was like the others on that block—red brick, dilapidated, hinting of respectability gone into decay. There was a “room to let” sign in the front window.

  The block seemed quiet, broodingly sinister. Night wind rustled the leaves of the few sparse trees. Somewhere a fretful child was crying faintly. These were the only sounds.

  AGENT “X” crossed the street, eyes alert, pulses quickening. He climbed the cracked steps of No. 24, took out the keys that he had removed from Ridley’s pocket. His knowledge of locks made him choose the right one instantly. He opened the door, entered a musty carpeted hall. A small bulb covered with peeled yellow paint cast a saffron glow over a hat stand, an old chair, and a small table. Somewhere in the basement rooms he heard footsteps, as of a large woman moving about a kitchen. A doorway showed a flight of stairs leading down.

  He passed this, moved by an old-fashioned parlor and up a flight of stairs to the floor above. This it seemed likely would be where the rented rooms were located.

  Again his knowledge of locks served him. Several doors were shut. Another key on Ridley’s ring opened one. “X” found himself in a small hall bedroom.

  Tensely he looked around. The place had an eeriness to it. It was the room of a murdered man—the room, perhaps, of a man belonging to a powerful and deadly secret society. Before making inquiries of the landlady, Agent “X” began a swift search of that room.

  He went to the door, shoved the old-fashioned bolt home, strode to a small dresser standing against the wall. With speed and thoroughness his hands roved through the drawers.

  Nothing here but a few pieces of clothing and some toilet articles. The closet in the room held an overcoat, two pairs of shoes, a couple of empty boxes. Ridley’s belongings showed that he had been in poor circumstances financially.

  A battered suitcase was stuffed under the bed. The Agent drew this out eagerly. Some old magazines were stuffed in it, a few more clothes. In the cover flap were some letters addressed to Ridley.

  “X” glanced through them, gathered that they were from a married sister on the West Coast. They threw no light on the menace that Ridley’s cipher had indicated.

  The Agent was puzzled. How had Ridley come to use the Playfair cipher? What connection, if any, had Ridley with the DOACs? Again, the Agent’s deductive faculties began working. A man sufficiently cunning to use a complicated cipher would hardly leave incriminating evidence lying about his room for the prying eyes of a landlady to see. But that didn’t mean there was nothing here.

  “X” began a more thorough search of the room then. He had looked in all the obvious places. He began systematically going over every foot of wall space and every stick of furniture. He turned the chairs upside down, searched the bottoms. He pulled every drawer out of the dresser, looked beneath them. He took the bedcovers off, searched them and the mattress. Nothing came to light.

  Then he stared at the floor. There was a worn carpet on it, nailed down, showing the uneven ridges of irregular boarding beneath. Something caught and held the Agent’s eye.

  At one corner of the carpet, that nearest the window, the tack heads looked brighter. He verified this by getting down on hands and knees. The other tacks showed rust spots, or worn places where feet had tramped. These were newer, unworn. The Agent’s eyes glowed. Such little things he had trained himself to observe, things that other people might have passed by.

  He took out his compact tool kit, removed from it a thing like a small chisel. He thrust the edge of this under one of the tacks.


  The tack came up easily, showing that it had been removed before, or that the wood beneath was rotten.

  In less than a minute he had all the tacks in the corner up. The board beneath was sound. The Agent’s pulses beat faster. He saw that at some time this piece of boarding had been sawed in two, a foot from the wall. There were nail heads in it, but, when he inserted his chisel device, the board lifted easily. The nail heads were only dummies.

  Beneath the boarding was a space a foot square between the floor and the ceiling of the room below. In this hidden space were several articles. One, which instantly attracted the Agent, was a folded bit of rubber like a bathing cap. The Agent picked it up. His hand trembled then, for he saw at once that it was not a bathing cap, but a hood, made to fit tightly over the head, with eyeholes and a breathing space cut for the mouth.

  He recalled the raids on police headquarters and National Guard barracks made by strangely garbed figures. Staring at the thing in his hands he had a sense of eeriness. Here was the hood of a DOAC member. Vivid blue, skull-like, it would, he knew, make its wearer look like a grotesque human vulture.

  HERE was proof, also, that Ridley had belonged to the DOAC organization, proof that the hideous molten lead murders could be attributed to the secret society, as “X” had guessed.

  The Agent stuffed the hood in an inner pocket. Its presence on him would be like a death warrant if he should be caught by the DOACs. And, if he fell into the hands of police and it were found, it would mean imprisonment. But neither possibility worried him. His eyes were bright with the thrill of the quest.

  He picked up the other articles in the floor space. These consisted of a wicked looking Webley, a box of shells beside it, and an envelope containing a small pamphlet and a square of paper. He pulled the paper out, stared at it frowning.