by Brant House
“Looks that way,” said the enthusiastic young detective. “But it’s just a mask. Don’t you get it? This guy must be Secret Agent ‘X’!”
Burks knelt beside the corpse. With fingers that trembled with excitement, he lifted the flexible mask that covered the gang leader’s face.
“Good Lord!” he breathed. “Why, he was supposed to be dead! Why, of all the fakes!” He gripped his companion’s arm. “I begin to see! By heaven, no wonder he knew what all the oldtime criminals looked like. Why, he was a nut on making death masks of criminals, in the old days. When Foster hears this, it’ll damn near kill him!”
“Who is it, inspector?” asked the young detective, leaning over Burks’ shoulder.
“Who is it? Well, it’s the ex-police commissioner of this city! It’s Major Derrick himself! He retired several years ago when a policeman accidentally shot and killed his son. That must have been why he wanted to square things with the police!”
“But look at this mask on the desk,” said another man. “It’s the face of that girl reporter on the Herald!”
Burks strode to the desk, picked up the mask of Betty Dale and looked at it inside and out. Then he regarded the note which rested beside it. Aloud, he read:
“This will clear Betty Dale, won’t it, Burks? In the basement of this house, you will find many masks of many people who are dead or alive. You will understand how Derrick created the corpse gang. Derrick used this mask to frame Betty Dale—probably because her father was on the police force when Derrick’s son was killed. Sorry to deprive you of the pleasure of seeing my face. But look around you. Perhaps I am in this room right now!”
A tiny letter “X” was penciled at the bottom of the note.
Burk’s eyes darted about the room. “Every man inside this room and close the door!” he ordered. “I’m going to see which of you has makeup on his face!”
The group of detectives looked at each other as though they thought Burks had suddenly lost his mind. And little wonder; for a mile or more away, one lonely man stood in a completely equipped scientific laboratory. It was a room known only to Secret Agent “X.”
Light from the door of a small portable furnace cast strange, ruddy lights over the man’s features—irregular and dirt smeared features they were, for the Agent’s makeup had undergone considerable damage in the past thirty or forty minutes.
He stood perfectly still, fascinated by the flames inside the furnace. If one might have been permitted to look over the Agent’s shoulder, one might have seen a strange thing in the heart of the flames. It was a little terrifying. Red and yellow tongues of fire licked up and around what appeared to be a human head—or at least a human face. The features were sagging, becoming more and more distorted as the flames devoured it.
But it was not a human head. It was only a mask, perfectly modeled after the true features of the living Secret Agent. No man would ever see the like again.