Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 2

by Paul Chadwick

  In a few seconds both of them were drenched with crimson. None of the workers attempted interference. The Agent himself saw that it was a fair fight.

  Di Lauro had his foe on the way out. Grimly he bored into the union advocate, slugging in flesh-splitting blows. He pounded a hard left to the head, sunk a sickening right to the stomach, cut loose with a deadly onslaught to the chin. The union leader was finished.

  Then the crowd suddenly melted away. Five uniformed guards came sprinting from the mill. They carried tear-gas bombs, guns, blackjacks, and they were roaring threats at Leon Di Lauro.

  IT was the Agent who told the agitator to run. Those guards were not headed on a kindly mission. Given the license, they might even kill Di Lauro. The agitator took one sharp look at the oncoming group, muttered savagely, and headed down the residential street that adjoined the mill grounds. The guards redoubled their speed.

  The Agent broke into a swift run, too, following Di Lauro, careful not to lose sight of the man.

  All the while he had been maneuvering for the end of the strike, he had been thinking of Betty Dale and the gruesome fate awaiting her if he failed to obey the DOACs. He had to get back to Washington in time, and a whipping southeast wind worried him. A headwind could cut a plane’s speed in half. Even now the Agent’s margin of time was so scant that he was filled with a chilling, gnawing fear—but he wanted to catch Di Lauro.

  Suddenly a siren screeched. A black touring car careened around the corner of a side street, swung into the road ahead of the Agent.

  “X” gasped in terror. He saw death in that rocketing car. He visioned Betty Dale being thrown to those drooling old men, the leering DOAC executioners. How could he save himself? How could he get away from the men in that car, so he could save Betty from leaded destruction?

  The ugly snouts of Tommy guns were protruding from the bounding, roaring car. The siren never ceased its shrill, ear-splitting blast. Obviously that shrieking racket was to drown out the snarling thunder of blazing sub-machine guns.

  Those death-dealing weapons were manned by men in vivid blue hoods, by members of the DOACs! The siren increased in deafening intensity. The machine’s exhaust began to snort and boom.

  Spouts of angry flame spewed from the Tommy guns. The roar of the pounding guns merged with the shrieking siren and the exhaust’s explosions. But those jagged tongues of powder flame didn’t lick out at the Agent, now darting for cover.

  The target was Leon Di Lauro, the agitator.

  Di Lauro stopped suddenly. His head went forward and his feet flew into the air as though he had tripped over a wire stretched knee-high across the road.

  The Tommy guns poured a wicked stream of lead into the bearded man. Before he hit the ground, his body had been pierced a hundred times. He had been converted into a human sieve.

  The death had come with merciful swiftness, for Di Lauro had died before the first shots had ceased echoing. The car came to a screeching, grinding, tread-destroying, skidding stop. Three hooded men leaped out. One carried a smoking pot. The others held grim-looking tongs. The dead man’s jaws were pried open. A shaft of molten lead descended from a ladle. The dead body gave a convulsive shudder as the live metal shriveled tissue.

  The corpse was left in the center of the road, with a beard of lead attached to the broiled flesh of the chin. The Agent ground his teeth. The murder car streaked down a side street. DOAC vengeance had reached South Bolton, and that vengeance made the Agent searingly conscious of Betty Dale’s peril.

  Chapter XVI

  Sky Terrors

  THE workers had swung around again. They were heading toward the corpse. “X” gnawed at his lips and surveyed them for a tense moment. They had been swayed by the words of Leon Di Lauro. Now they would be infuriated over his murder. And they might turn their fury on the Agent thinking he was an accomplice of the killers, because he had apparently pursued Di Lauro under the muzzles of their guns.

  The least they would do would be to hold him for a thorough questioning, and now a delay would mean that another life would be taken by the fiendish DOACs. Up a side street in the residential section, “X” saw a man stepping into a car.

  He dashed for that car. A cry sounded behind him. The mill guards were heading the mob. They were coming after him!

  Something whined above the Agent. It was a bullet. The sweet, smiling face of Betty Dale rose before him. The roar of the mob behind him sounded like an angry storm at sea. “X” had done his work in South Bolton. He had broken the backbone of the strike, had prevented untold misery. He was the benefactor of those men behind him. Yet those he had protected would destroy him, and, finishing him, would rob Betty of life, too.

  The car ahead was starting. The driver was shifting gears quickly. In a moment he would be on high, speeding away from harm. The guards were shooting at “X.” From a second-story window a man hurled a bottle at him.

  The Agent dodged the missile. From another window an earthenware jug came spinning. The Agent saw it too late to avoid it entirely. The jug struck his shoulder, jolting him off balance. The Agent stumbled, regained his stride, and catapulted through the air.

  His hands flung out, clutching the spare tire on the back of the moving car. His hands slipped, but he dug his fingers into the treads. Those treads saved him from the charging mob. “X” was dragged a quarter of a block before he could get sufficient hold to draw himself up.

  Once his feet were off the ground, he quickly muscled himself to the top of the car, and crawled across the fabric. He lowered himself to the running board beside the terrified driver. “X” was loath to take advantage of the frightened fellow, but he was in no position to trust a stranger. The driver uttered a shout of alarm. The Agent cut it short with a sense-shattering left hook to the point of the jaw.

  The car swerved to the gutter, bounced onto the sidewalk. Grabbing the wheel and swinging the machine into the street again, the Agent shoved the unconscious man across the shiny leather, and slid into the driver’s position. Shots winged above him. Mob leaders bellowed for him to stop. “X’s” answer was to jam the accelerator to the floor. The car plunged forward, and purred into top speed.

  The mad pack was left behind. The Agent raced the car for a few blocks, then he slackened the speed to conform to traffic regulations, and headed into town. The car owner had received a mule’s-kick clout. “X” knew how to time a punch to get the full force of his power and weight into the impact. The fellow would be unconscious for an hour, groggy for a day. But he would be rewarded. The Agent never stinted when he paid off those who aided in his war against crime.

  He drew up in front of a drug store. He knew an unconscious man would draw a crowd, but he had to risk further interruption. He rushed into the store to a telephone booth and called a number. In a few minutes he was talking to his operative, Jim Hobart.

  “Get to the flying field as quickly as you can,” he ordered Hobart. “If you beat me there, charter a fast plane and follow me to Washington. Never mind the expense. Go to my apartment there, and wait for a call. I’ve got to travel six hundred miles in three hours, and it looks as if I’ll be bucking a headwind.”

  The Agent hung up. Jim Hobart was reliable. He’d follow orders without question. Outside, “X” found a crowd gawking at the unconscious man in the car. The Agent’s punch had drawn blood from the mouth, and that was why passers-by knew the fellow wasn’t sleeping. “X” had expected the gawkers, but he had hoped the police wouldn’t interfere. A motorcycle cop was trying to arouse the Agent’s knockout victim.

  “X” had to do some convincing bluffing.

  “Say, you’re the man I want!” he exclaimed to the cop. “I’ve just called headquarters. Told them to detail a radio car to get a motorcycle escort for me. I’m from the governor’s office. Been investigating the strike. This man was hit by a brickbat. Don’t know the extent of the injury. Must get him to the hospital. Then I have to go to the flying field. Have to rush to the Capital for a conference with
the governor. Clear the way, officer. Quick, now! Not a minute to lose!”

  THE Agent fired his orders so quickly that the cop didn’t have time to think or question his right to give them. “X” was in the car and the engine was humming. The motorcycle cop leaped onto his machine, sounded the siren, and secured the right of way for the “governor’s representative.”

  At the hospital, less than half a minute was lost, while stretcher bearers took the unconscious man inside. “X” left the information that the fellow’s car would be at the flying field. He stuffed three crisp twenties into the man’s pocket as payment for the blow on the chin and the trouble he had caused.

  With the cop shrieking his siren and speeding in the lead, traffic lights meant nothing to the Agent. At the field, he shook hands with the officer, brushed the cop’s coat, deftly slipping a ten-dollar bill into the policeman’s pocket.

  Leaving the car for the owner to pick up later, “X” rushed onto the field. Jim Hobart was there. A mechanic was climbing out of the Blue Comet’s cockpit. Another attendant stood by, ready to give the propeller a whirl.

  “She’s waiting for the gun, boss,” said Hobart. “Everything’s been checked. But, say, I picked up something hot.” He drew the Agent aside. “A.J., the DOACs have an arsenal located somewhere in the east. I don’t know where, but it’s supposed to be a whopper—enough fireworks to outfit a dozen regiments and raze a city. The same rumor has it that smaller arsenals are located in strategic positions throughout the nation. You know what that means, A.J. The DOACs are planning a surprise revolution. When they’re ready, the whole country will be attacked at once. We’re liable to be under DOAC rule any time.”

  Tenseness embossed ridges of muscle on the Agent’s jaw. He was heavy-hearted and tormented with worry over Betty Dale. Even now, it might be too late to save her. Suppose he had engine trouble? Suppose he hit a storm? Sleet, piling up, had cracked many a wing. There were a thousand possibilities of disaster. Any one would be fatal to the girl.

  And now the press of duty weighed down on the Agent. An arsenal. It had potential destruction for thousands. His first duty-governed impulse was to change his plans, to remain and trace down the rumor. But the rumor might be nothing more than that, and then he would always be harassed with the knowledge that he had sacrificed Betty Dale to his own sense of duty.

  “I ought to get more details on that arsenal,” he told Hobart, to whom he was A.J. Martin, newspaper man. “But, Jim, what would you do if a girl you knew, and liked, got into the hands of the DOACs, and they had threatened to silence her with molten lead?”

  “Huh?” retored the gruff Hobart. “Do? Why, I’d go thirty-six thousand miles into hell for her!”

  The Agent nodded and ran his tongue over his lip in a moment of meditative silence. Then he snapped into action, vaulting into the cockpit of the Blue Comet, and signaling to the mechanics to give the propeller a kick.

  “You said it, Jim!” he exclaimed fervently. “Thirty-six thousand miles into hell is only a pleasant little stroll when you’re going after a girl like Betty Dale. See you in Washington.”

  His last words were drowned by the roar of the motor, but Jim Hobart already had his instructions. The Agent was far from relieved of worry, but his heart was lightened, now that he was heading for Betty’s rescue. It was two o’clock when he took off. At five he had to be on the square in the Capitol rotunda. He had three hours to make six hundred miles.

  ONCE before he had shot his Blue Comet through space as swiftly as that, but weather conditions had been favorable. Already, while the town of South Bolton was still in sight, his plane was laboring against an insidious headwind. He sought altitude, and the icy air informed him that he was facing a storm. Maybe he could get above it. The Blue Comet was a plucky little craft. It had got through heavy weather before, but not at the speed the Agent had to make.

  “X” kept his eyes glued to the speedometer and the clock. The minute hand seemed to be tripping at double time, while the indicator on the mileage dial changed figures with heartbreaking slowness. Although time was more precious than his life now, he had too much time for thinking. His imagination tortured him. He tried to concentrate on the DOACs, tried to shut out worry by planning moves against that legion of fiends. But the horrible fate that hovered over Betty Dale was like a scalpel thrust into his harried consciousness.

  The screeching wind rose in velocity. Tempest weather set in. For an agonizing hour the Agent didn’t fall below his schedule. If he maintained this speed, he would reach Washington in time. But ahead, glowering storm clouds were billowing in ugly masses. Already slivers of ice stabbed at his face. Valiant, defiant, the Blue Comet bumped along like a machine on a rocky road. What would happen, though, when it bucked the ferocity of the snarling, ripping, twisting upheaval of the storm ahead?

  The Agent frantically nosed the plane upward, trying to get above that sullen black menace. But before he had climbed a thousand feet, the storm struck. A lashing gale shrieked around him. Whirling missiles of ice beat against the fabric of the wings. The stays sang against the racing wind, the uprights groaned and creaked, the fuselage shuddered. Yet higher and higher the Blue Comet soared, its roaring propeller slashing the knife-edged sheets of sleet.

  The storm’s savagery didn’t dimmish. Ice clung to the wings, ice that could cripple a plane. “X” gritted his teeth and kept on climbing. Numb and blue, he clutched the stick with raw, stiff hands. The bitter cold was splitting the skin. But the chill dread of losing time punished him more than the cruel weather. The plane was going up, but not ahead. Helplessly the Agent cursed. All nature seemed to be conspiring against him.

  Although it was still daytime, the Agent couldn’t see ten feet ahead. On every side, black, maddening chaos closed in on the Blue Comet. Another thousand feet of altitude, and the panic. The fury of the whipping, thundering storm had redoubled. “X” was failing! The odds were so heavy that he wouldn’t reach Washington at all. He wouldn’t even be able to make a forced landing. The storm would crack him up.

  The Agent muttered savagely. His frost-encircled eyes were burning slits. His mouth tightened to a scar of determination. His half-frozen face set grimly, the muscles bunching into fighting knots. If he had to take defeat, he was taking it snarling and battling to the last.

  He couldn’t get above the storm. He couldn’t get under it. Maybe he could get around it. Recklessly he side-slipped and zoomed the Blue Comet directly south. The gale slugged the sturdy little craft with a shrieking broadside that almost flipped the plane over and sent it into a fatal spin.

  “X” threw all his skill into the fight against the storm’s cyclonic force. The blasting hurricane toyed with the battered ship. A guy wire snapped. The Agent clenched his jaws and kept the plane riding athwart the wind. Any moment, he expected the wind to damage a wing or rip off the tail. Suddenly something crashed against an upright on the right wing.

  THE Agent peered through the stinging curtain of sleet. Another object shot by the ship. “X” uttered a gasp of fright. A bird! That was what had struck his plane. Wild geese, probably victims like himself of the storm’s fury. If one of those creatures had hit the propeller, the steel blade would have been shattered like brittle glass.

  A hysterical laugh escaped him. Then he muttered a curse. Was he losing his grip, going insane? This killing ordeal was enough to rob anyone of reason, but he had to master himself, had to keep himself in control. He held the plane on its new course. The Blue Comet roared through the heavy darkness. Was there no end to this storm? A sense of defeat deadened the Agent. Only his iron will kept him from lapsing into a coma. He wasn’t going to win. Betty Dale would be sacrificed. To “X,” this storm seemed like the end of the world.

  Then he gave a choking cry. He saw a shaft of light piercing a rift in the storm clouds. The sun! He drew the stick back still farther, fed gas to the laboring motor, shot up through the hole in the clouds into dazzling, gleaming sunlight. Life seemed magically tran
sformed. Below, the storm clouds still roiled and eddied. The Blue Comet was in high, thin air at an eight-thousand-foot altitude.

  Ahead was a clear vista of blue. He sent the plane above the path of the wind. His heart was pounding with exultancy. He glanced at the clock, made a swift calculation. There was still time! Unless he struck another storm area or had motor trouble, he could reach the Capitol around five o’clock.

  In comparison with his wretchedness of a short while before, he felt almost light-hearted. He had found a gap in an almost impenetrable barrier, and his mind refused to be shrouded with doubt. It was like awakening from a hideous nightmare to find sunlight pouring through the window.

  Time was passing swiftly, but the Blue Comet was proving its worth. Once the air speed indicator showed that the plane was traveling two hundred miles an hour.

  For the first time since Betty was kidnaped, the Agent relaxed. He lay back in the cushioned seat, almost dozed off. The mileage was mounting on the indicator. The sun was far on its western course when “X” saw the blue ribbon of the Potomac.

  A few minutes later he was spiraling down to Boiling Field. The plane had scarcely taxied to a stop when he leaped out of the cockpit, motioned mechanics to take the Blue Comet to the hangar, raced toward a line of parked cars. He hired a machine, and baited the driver with a five-dollar bill to jam the accelerator to the floor.

  But this time the car didn’t have a motorcycle cop clearing the way. The driver had to stop for traffic lights. Those delays ate up the precious seconds.

  IT was five o’clock when the machine careened into Pennsylvania Avenue. The Agent was wild-eyed with suspense. Would the DOACs give him a few minutes’ grace? Or had his chance vanished with the tolling of the hour?

  “X” was three minutes late when the car scraped to a stop in the Capitol grounds. The Agent paid the driver, and bounded to the gravel. He raced inside the rotunda. His keen eyes swept anxiously across the floor. Less than a dozen people were here. None had the searching, impatient look of a waiting person.