Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2

by Paul Chadwick

  The Agent’s reply was clipped, brief.

  “Stick close. I’ll be up!”

  “You mean tonight, boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “X” dropped the receiver back in its cradle. He lifted a pencil, drew a clipping from his desk. A photo from a newspaper file was attached. It showed the hard, sleek face of Michael Carney, former big shot, serving a ten-year stretch for grand larceny.

  AGENT “X” studied the face thoughtfully, familiarizing himself with every line and contour. If certain things transpired tonight, he wanted to be sure he would recognize that face if he saw it. For Carney was reputed to have “salted” away nearly five million dollars during his bootleg operations. He had been too smart to keep records or receipts. The federal government had failed to indict him on a charge of income tax evasion is it had other big shots. There’d been no bank deposits, no investments. His wealth was a matter of rumor only.

  The grand larceny charge had come, some said, as an underworld frame-up. It had been proved in court that Carney had “borrowed” from friends and lost in bad investment the comparatively small sum of fifty thousand dollars. He’d offered to make restitution; but public sentiment had been against him. Carney, because of his character, had been sentenced to the ten-year stretch. The police, however, hadn’t been able to scare him into telling where his fortune was cached. Carney had stoically faced the long prison term.

  But a threat had been made against him recently from another source—a threat more terrible than any the police had voiced—a threat from the DOACs.

  A note had come to Carney in prison, written by the DOACs, demanding that he reveal to them the location of his hidden fortune. If he refused, the DOACs stated that they would remove him from prison and make him tell by a means of their own.

  Carney, shaken, had begged for extra protection. The law could not make him tremble; but the threat of the DOACs did. Underworld whispers had told him of those men whose mouths had been stopped with lead. But the prison warden had laughed at the DOAC threat. The press had made fun of Carney for his nervousness. The DOACs, it was claimed, would never dare raid the state’s prison.

  “X,” watching every sign of DOAC activity, had dispatched Hensche to Meadow Stream to report if the DOACs really attempted to make good their threat. Now that report had come.

  “X” took another look at Carney’s photo, started to put it back in his desk, hesitated. Reaching a sudden decision, he shoved it into an inner pocket of his coat. Then he looked at his watch.

  It was after eleven now. Hensche had said that the raid was scheduled for somewhere around midnight. Meadow Stream was two hundred miles away.

  Once more “X” left his office and hurried to his near-by hideout. Here, behind a locked door, he seated himself before a triple-paneled, collapsible mirror. His fingers worked with deft assurance, removing again the disguise of E.E. Winstead.

  Now for a moment “X” appeared as he really was. Here, uncovered in that locked and secret hideout, was the face that the police of a dozen cities would have paid thousands to see. Here was the face that the underworld had speculated upon at various times, the face that not even the Agent’s few intimates had ever knowingly laid eyes upon.

  It was a remarkable face, as strange as the man himself. In direct light it appeared surprisingly youthful, even boyish. But when the Agent turned his head and the light beams fell at a different angle, the planes and contours of maturity showed. Power, inward strength, intelligence, were written on those features. Firm lips, a straight aquiline nose, a strong chin; the hair a gleaming chestnut brown.

  A few seconds only it remained uncovered; then the Man of a Thousand Faces began creating another disguise. This was a quick one, taking him hardly a minute to build up.

  It was a disguise he had used many times—the disguise of A.J. Martin, inquiring newspaper man. If he were to meet Hensche, this was the disguise he must wear. For it was the disguise under which all the Agent’s operatives knew him in the battle he was waging against the DOACs.

  He left his hideout, chartered another cab and gave the address of the municipal flying field. He urged the driver to all possible speed, with a promise of double fare.

  THE cab lurched through streets quieted now of the day’s activities. Down a long avenue, four blocks left, then out into the suburbs, where the undisturbed peace of night lay. But there was no peace for the Agent, no rest in his desperate struggle against the forces he had pledged himself to overcome.

  The cab halted before a white-painted gate where a sleepy watchman challenged it. “X” paid the driver, showed a card in his wallet to the watchman and was admitted.

  An air beacon swung a long finger into the night sky. A bulb burned in the operations office at the side of the field. Agent “X” stopped here, registered the fact that he was going up, strode quickly past a long row of locked and deserted hangars.

  He paused by one, snapped open a padlock and plunged into the dark interior. An overhead light which he switched on revealed the trim lines of one of “X’s” crack planes.

  Orange and blue in color, the ship was a single-seater, streamlined throughout. With staggered wings and a cowled radial engine, it had the grace of an Army or Navy pursuit job. Agent “X” called it the Blue Comet. It was a ship capable of the highest speeds.

  He looked at it fondly for an instant, then went to the tail and began pushing it from the hangar. A dolly under the skid added to the smooth-running air wheels up front, made the plane easily manageable by one man on the ground as well as in the air.

  On the concrete apron in front of the hangar “X” lifted the tail from the dolly, snapped off the hangar light and closed the door. The plane’s nose was pointed toward the field. It crouched in the darkness like an eager bird, ready to leap into the sky.

  “X” slipped a suede helmet over his head, climbed into the one cockpit and wound up the electrically operated inertia starter. In a moment the motor sprang into thundering life. At sound of it the man in the operations office switched on the field’s floodlights.

  One minute of warming, and “X” took off into the night sky with the thrumming, taut swiftness of a rocket. He climbed steadily, banked only once, then hurtled ahead toward the spot two hundred miles away where the clenched fist of the DOAC menace threatened to loose a sinister lightning bolt.

  Even the criminal, Mike Carney, didn’t deserve the torture that awaited him if he fell into the DOACs’ hands. No man did. Led on by a thirst for gold to expand their sinister projects, the DOACs would force the secret of his fortune from Carney’s lips even if they had to tear him limb from limb to do it. The Agent didn’t doubt that such an organization had devised forms of torture too horrible to think of.

  But besides his desire to save a human being from torment, was an even stronger desire to gather more data concerning DOAC activities. How could they hope to gain entrance to the state prison unless they had spies among the guards or inmates, men who would help them from the inside? And if there were such spies “X” wanted to learn their identities.

  His mind swiftly turned over the strange events of the night as he sent the ship hurtling through the black sky. Towns, cities and villages streamed by below him. He flew high, sighting at last the small, peaceful river on which the prison town of Meadow Stream was located. Its grim, gray walls, he knew, lifted directly from the river shore. One of the state’s oldest penal institutions, its various buildings were castlelike, symbolic of the might and majesty of the law. Many a famous murderer had spent his last hours in its death-house before the hot, searing power of electricity ended his earthly career.

  Agent “X” shut off his motor, glided down out of the darkness. His quick airman’s eye had spotted a field not more than a half mile from town, along the highway that led to Meadow Stream. Its green color looked like open turf.

  He swept earthward in a long glide, ready to switch on the motor again if the field proved impractical for a landing. A pale moon and a
ground haze made the task hazardous.

  At the last he clicked on his landing lights for a brief instant, saw that the field was adequate, and side-slipped in.

  Quietly as a rubber-tired carriage coming to rest, the Blue Comet rolled to a stop. Agent “X” leaped out There was a dump of bushes at the end of the field. “X” rolled his plane to these, turned it about, facing the wind for a quick take-off. He removed his flying helmet, stuffed it into the plane, and set off toward the town.

  Almost immediately he broke into a run. For a sudden, wailing sound shattered the silence of the night. It was a siren, somewhere on the walls of the prison, rising higher and higher, like the scream of some demented thing, giving warning that danger and death impended.

  Chapter VI

  The Raiders

  A SEARCHLIGHT blazed blue-white in the darkness that lay ahead. Agent “X” moved forward with the long, rhythmic strides of a runner trained to conserve his breath. But a hundred yards down the road he saw the lights of a car coming along behind him.

  He stepped into the center of the highway, held up his hand and the car slid to a stop. One man was in it, a farmer, judging by his clothes, stirred by the siren’s note, coming to see what it meant.

  The Agent climbed onto the running board. He ignored the suspicious glances the driver gave him. The car shot ahead toward the town and the prison.

  Lights were beginning to flare up in houses along the way. People were dashing into the streets. The farmer charged through them, honking his horn. The car sped past a railroad station, took a curve on two wheels, and came to a stop two hundred yards from the prison.

  A half-dozen searchlights were blazing now. Leaping from the farmer’s car, the Agent saw movement on top of the prison wall. Above the wailing clamor of the siren, still sounding, he heard the popping of rifles and the rhythmic chatter of machine-gun fire.

  As he watched, a man by one of the prison turrets threw up his arms and hurtled to the ground. He had been shot by a sniper somewhere in the darkness below.

  Agent “X” reconnoitered. He left the farmer, slipped into the shadows, angled straight toward the prison. The raid seemed to be centering on one side of the rectangular wall.

  Cautiously he crept forward. Armed and desperate killers, he knew, were there in the darkness, murderers gathered together in an amazing organization.

  A row of houses lined one side of the road. They led almost up to the prison gates. Agent “X” slipped behind these, moving steadily forward till he was within five hundred feet of the prison wall.

  Gathered around the last house of the row he saw crouching figures. A searchlight on the prison wall bathed the ground before them in eerie bluish-white light. Against this background Agent “X” caught glimpses of sinister hooded heads.

  The DOAC raiders were here in full force, hiding behind their strange headgear. As yet they had made no attempt to scale the prison wall. They were answering the fire of the guards. But “X” saw a group, with ladders, held in readiness. A DOAC marksman with a high-powered rifle aimed directly at the nearest searchlight. The man fired. His aim was excellent. The light went out with a hissing sputter. There was a gap in the path of illumination now.

  Down this path of darkness, straight toward the prison wall, a hooded figure ran. The guards on top of the wall could not see him. But “X” could make out his figure silhouetted against lighter ground beyond. The man carried something—a strange roundish object with projecting rods like small electrodes at one side.

  He moved close to the prison wall, flung the object upward. An instant later something happened to one of the turrets where armed guards crouched behind their bullet-proof barriers. There was a ripping, tearing sound like a giant lightning bolt, a blaze of orange light.

  A bomb had obviously been detonated—but a bomb of a different sort than any “X” had ever seen. This one seemed to suck inward, creating a terrific vacuum that disintegrated animate and inanimate matter alike.

  The turret vanished before “X’s” eyes. Stones and the sprawling, mangled figures of men swept together, then dropped. The Agent clenched his fists, cursed harshly under his breath. For the DOAC raid was bolder and more ruthless than he had anticipated. They were using war-time tactics to gain their end.

  Other hooded men carrying more of the strange bombs ran forward. They attacked the two corner turrets. The chattering machine guns atop the prison wall kept up till the last. One of the hooded forms went down writhing. His companion caught up his fallen bomb, hurled that and his own, and another turret was silenced. Then a score of the raiders swarmed forward.

  Four carried ladders. There was no fire from the wall above now, nothing to stop them planting the ladder against the stone barrier.

  From the direction of the town a roaring motor sounded. “X” saw some of the men before him turn. Like sinister gray ghosts four of them crossed the street, mysterious bombs in their hands.

  “X,” powerless at the moment, saw them take position where they could see the road to the prison.

  The car coming evidently bore armed men from the town bent on seeing that the raid was not carried out.

  THEN one of the hooded figures flung a bomb with uncanny accuracy as the car charged down the narrow street. Agent “X,” watching, aghast, saw the strange bomb drop directly on top of the speeding vehicle. A terrible thing occurred instantly. Again came that ripping, tearing sound.

  The car seemed to collapse inward as though a huge fist had clutched it, crunched it. A mighty, invisible force worked havoc in the darkness. One of the car’s passengers, a man with gun in hand, was leaping out. As the bomb exploded he seemed to burst apart, killed horribly before “X’s” eyes.

  “X” realized then that the DOACs had developed a new and terrible weapon. Was this what they planned to use in their assumption of power? The destruction of the car filled with men coming to the rescue of those in the prison was a terrible warning. The street grew silent and deserted after the catastrophe. The raiders began swarming over the prison walls.

  Eyes gleaming in the darkness, Agent “X” reached into his coat. From a hidden pocket he drew the DOAC hood of Ridley’s that he still carried. He quickly put this over his own head, then moved forward and mingled among the other hooded figures.

  The men about him did not speak. They were armed with rifles and machine guns. A few still carried some of the super-destructive bombs. Their job seemed to be to see that those who went over the prison wall were not disturbed by any one from the outside. “X” heard sounds of firing within the prison now. Two more ripping concussions sounded as more of the strange bombs were detonated.

  Three hooded men moved forward and “X” followed them. They passed the bodies of two DOACs who had fallen, slain by fire from the top of the wall before the machine gunners and marksmen with rifles had been slaughtered. “X,” with a swift movement, stooped and gathered up one of the fallen men’s weapons, a Winchester repeater. Carrying this, he felt sure he would be taken by the DOACs as one of their own band.

  He followed them up the ladder, climbed to the top of the prison wall and down another ladder to the ground. A guard on a far-off corner of the wall took a potshot at him. A bullet whined dangerously close to his head.

  But the raiders inside seemed to be having things their own way. A shudder passed along “X’s” spine. He saw the body of a slain guard at his feet—a body mangled and mutilated by one of the bombs till it was hardly recognizable as a man. His sense of fury against the DOACs increased. They had displayed the callous brutality of fiends tonight. Yet he felt certain that the men around him were only carrying out orders. It was those who directed their movements that he wanted to locate.

  He saw lights in the warden’s office, then saw, through a barred window, that an assistant warden on night duty was being forced by the DOACs to open a corridor door leading to the cell blocks.

  The warden had apparently issued an order. For no more bullets were fired by the guards remaining
on the prison wall.

  A minute passed—two—and “X” saw a group of DOACs coming from the warden’s office leading a prisoner.

  For a moment “X” saw only the hulking silhouette. Then, as the prisoner came closer, “X” recognized the features of Michael Carney. Carney’s suave, smooth face looked white. It might have been prison pallor. More likely it was terror of the men who had come and taken him out. A DOAC walked on either side leading Carney. Another walked behind him, a rifle prodding his back. To the DOACs, this prisoner represented a possible five million dollars.

  “X” joined the group about the former big shot gangster. They moved toward the ladder, two hooded men ascending first, then Carney.

  They had accomplished their purpose now. Once over the wall, the DOACs strode into the darkness, walking swiftly toward the spot where they had cars waiting.

  “X,” as though acting on prearranged orders, joined the small group around Carney. Playing a desperate role, “X” elected himself one of Carney’s guards. His eyes, behind the slit in the weird blue hood he wore, glittered brightly. His pulses were hammering.

  LIKE gray ghosts the hooded men moved through the night. They stopped at last, and “X” made out the bulks of several big autos. Carney was thrust into an open touring car. A DOAC sat on either side of him. Two more sat in the driver’s seat. Agent “X” and another DOAC took the small collapsible seats in the rear of the car. Seven passengers in all, the car whined off into the night, its headlights still out. All around “X” was movement as other cars slipped away from the hidden parking space by the prison.

  The DOACs did not drive through the town. They took a road skirting it. By the pale glow of the moon they shot ahead, a long cavalcade of killers and terrorists, their destination unknown to “X.”

  Stealthily he drew from his pocket a strange weapon—firing concentrated ammonia. It seemed a slight thing with which to fight armed and desperate men. But “X” had a plan.