Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3

by Emile C. Tepperman

They ran down to the curb.

  The chauffeur was a stocky, stolid-faced man they had never seen before. He opened the door as they came up, called out, “Get in.”

  Gilly piled in, “X” after him. The driver slammed the door and stepped on the gas almost in the same motion. As the car jumped away from the curb, “X,” looking back, saw the policeman top the fence. He didn’t even notice the car, which was already rounding the corner into the river front street.

  A FEW blocks down, the driver pulled up at the curb, and turned around grinning. “I bet you guys thought you was forgotten!”

  Gilly said, “I hope to tell you, pal. I thought we would have to shoot it out with that dumb cop. How come you was there, pal?”

  “Me? My name’s Gordon. I drive for the boss. He always has me around when there’s a job on the books, in case that nitwit, Binks, can’t get there to bring the boys in. Sort of insurance. We’ll drive around for a while, then go to another place an’ see if Binks is there.”

  Gordon drove them around for an hour. At the end of that time, he stopped off and made a telephone call. When he came out he said, “Okay. We’ll meet Binks now. He says to come to entrance number seven.”

  Number seven proved to be a pool parlor in a cheap residential section not far from Slocum. “X” and Gilly got out of the car. Gordon said, “Go through the pool room an’ you’ll find an alley in back, at the right. Go half-way up the alley to where you see a cellar door. Stop there till Binks comes.”

  He drove off, and they followed his instructions. Binks was waiting for them, his head just above the open cellar door. “Too bad,” he crackled. “Too bad, boys. That was an awful flop. Well, come on, we might as well go back.”

  They stepped down into the cellar, and Gilly closed the door over their heads at Binks’ direction. Then the halfwit gave them hoods to put on again, and led them through passage after passage, up and down flights of stairs. “X” was still carrying his black bag, and he had to hold on to Gilly with the other hand.

  After what seemed an interminable time, they stopped and Binks said, “Take ’em off, boys.”

  “X” put the bag down and removed his hood. He saw that they were in the same anteroom where he had waited for his instructions that morning. Binks picked up the bag, saying, “I’ll take it now. The Skull will want to keep that till the next time.”

  “Look here,” the Agent protested. “That’s only borrowed. I have to return it to my friend.”

  Binks paid him no attention, but shuffled out. “Tell it to the Skull,” he threw back. “His orders was to bring him the bag.”

  “X” and the gunman were left alone. Gilly said, “Well, it looks bad for us, pal. The Skull don’t like guys that flop, no matter how come.”

  “Flop?” the Agent asked.

  “Sure. You was supposed to get them pearls. The guy busted in on you when he wasn’t supposed to even be around, but the Skull won’t take that for an excuse. He don’t take excuses.”

  “Well, why did we come back then?” The Secret Agent did not tell Gilly that he had the pearls in his pocket.

  Gilly laughed harshly. “Where could we go? In the first place, we’d both be picked up in no time wandering around the city. And in the second place, I’d hate to be on the lam from the Skull. Did you see what he did to Tyler? How’d you like to have the same thing happen to you?”

  HE stopped as the door facing them started to open. The Skull’s voice came through it. “I will see Fannon first.”

  Gilly looked at “X” and grinned. “Well, so long, pal. You was a good fellow while you lasted. What kind of flowers do you like?”

  “X” paid him no attention, but walked in.

  The door closed behind him, as before. The room was very faintly lighted, disclosing the Skull seated at a desk at the far end of the room. Once more “X” noted the four foot wide strip running across the floor.

  The hideous death’s head of the Skull grinned at him out of the vermilion hood. The boss raised one vermilion-gloved hand, motioned him to remain where he was at the door. With the other hand, he indicated a short-wave radio set on the desk at his elbow. “Wait,” he said. “I am just getting the police calls on your job.”

  “X” stood close to the door, measuring the distance between himself and the desk. He was tempted to make a quick leap, lock his hands about the throat of that repulsive figure, and throttle him to death. But he restrained the impulse. It looked too easy. So clever a man as the Skull had not left himself unguarded in this room. He waited. And soon the radio came to life.

  “Calling all cars! Be on the lookout for Frank Fannon, ex-convict wanted for burglarious entry into the home of Harrison Dennett. Dennett reports nothing stolen, as he forced Fannon to replace the loot. Fannon escaped with one companion, identified as Jack Gilly, after gunfight with patrolman. Both are dangerous. Exert great care in stopping suspects. Fannon is forty, tall—”

  With a vicious gesture, the Skull snapped off the radio. “So you failed?” It was more a statement than a question, low-voiced, ominous. The glowing death’s head brooding in the semi-dark seemed to be evolving some Satanic form of punishment “You know how failure is rewarded here?”

  Again the Secret Agent measured the distance between himself and the desk. So far the breaks had been with him. With patience he would no doubt prevail. But patience was what he had little of today, with Betty Dale a prisoner in the hands of some unknown enemies. A slight rustling sound at his left diverted his attention for the moment, and he smiled to see that it was a large rat scampering across the floor from one hole to another. He turned back to the Skull.

  “What makes you think I’ve failed?”

  “Didn’t you hear the radio? Dennett stated to the police that you put the jewels back in the safe. That, my friend, is failure!”

  “But you told me that Dennett would be away, that I would have a clear coast. Instead, he surprised me in the middle of the job.”

  Slowly the Skull’s head shook from side to side. “It makes no difference. I make the best preparations for you that I can. Sometimes a little thing miscarries. Then you must use your own wits to save the situation. You thought more of escaping with a whole skin than of my orders. My men learn that it is no good coming back here with a whole skin and empty hands. They would be far better off to die on the job.” He paused. “I am sorry that I must treat you as I would treat any of the others, Fannon. I had hoped that you would make good, for you have possibilities. But now—”

  He stopped, for “X” had put his hand in his pocket. “If that is a gun, Fannon, it’ll do you no good. Keep your hand in your pocket!” Accompanying the words, a blinding spot-light snapped on, no doubt in response to a button the Skull had pressed on his desk. It blared full in “X’s” eyes, blinding him, making it impossible for him to shoot even if he had had a gun.

  “X” stood still in the light, and forced his lips into a smile. “It is not a gun,” he said calmly. “It is the pearls from Harrison Dennett’s safe. I got them after all; I wanted to spring them on you as a surprise.”

  From behind the spotlight came the Skull’s vicious snarl. “You lie! You haven’t got those pearls. They’re in Dennett’s safe where he said he made you replace them!”

  “X” shrugged. “If you will allow me to take my hand out, I will show them to you.”

  “All right. Take your hand out. You are helpless under the spotlight anyway. I call your bluff, Fannon. Let me see the pearls, or you go to the chair! Like Tyler!”

  SLOWLY, carefully, “X” withdrew his hand from his pocket holding the two gems in his fingers. They glowed with deep, mysterious color under the spotlight. Anyone could see that they were pearls of immense value.

  From the Skull there came the wheeze of a sudden, amazed intake of breath. A moment there was silence, then the spotlight clicked off. “X” blinked his eyes, peered through the sudden comparative darkness in which he could see once more.

  The Skull said, “Fannon, I h
ardly believe my eyes. How did you do it?”

  “X” explained coolly. “Dennett thought I put them back. But when he opens his safe, he will discover that the hand is quicker than the eye. There’s only a worthless key in the safe now.”

  “Give them to me,” the Skull ordered eagerly.

  “X” took a step forward, but the Skull exclaimed, “Wait. Do not come closer. Put them in the basket.”

  The Skull pressed a button, and from the side of his desk there began to slide out a bamboo pole with a hook on the end of it. From this hook there hung suspended a small wicker basket. The basket came to rest about a foot from the Agent, and he deposited the two gems in it. Slowly the pole began to recede. It was operated by some sort of spring attached to the side of the desk.

  “X” reflected that the Skull took plenty of precautions. He would not even allow his men to come close enough to the desk to put anything on it. It would be difficult to overcome him—especially when time pressed. Perhaps the best way would be a quick leap across the intervening space. He set himself, poised on the balls of his feet, his body taut. This was the moment. The Skull’s attention was away from him for the second, for he was leaning over the desk, reaching eager, vermilion-gloved hands for the pearls.

  “X’s” knees bent. Three swift steps. Now!

  And he stopped. For again there was that scraping sound in the corner of the room. The Skull raised his eyes irritably. The rat was scampering across the room now, directly toward the desk. “X” relaxed. The opportune moment was gone. He must wait for another.

  And then his body grew rigid. For the rat, scurrying toward the desk, had reached the four-foot wide strip in the floor. There was a violent flash, the smell of scorching flesh, and the rat seemed to shrivel, curl up. It remained motionless on the edge of that four foot strip, scorched crisp.

  “Damn those rats!” the Skull exclaimed. He looked up at “X.” “So you know now!” The horrible, flesh-less skull seemed to leer more wickedly than ever. “That is why I did not want you to come closer. Had you tried to attack me, tried to jump me, the same thing would have happened to you that just happened to the rat! That—” he laughed harshly—“is how I treat all rats! Good joke, eh, Fannon?”

  “X” tried to imagine how the real Fannon would react to what he had just seen. Frightened? Awed? That was it. Even a hardened, worldly-wise ex-convict like Fannon would be awed at beholding such infernal cleverness.

  “Gosh, boss,” he said. “I’d never rat on you! Look—I brought you the pearls. You didn’t know I had them. I could have taken a powder with them!”

  “That is true, Fannon. I will remember it. I need an honest man as lieutenant here. You are intelligent, clever. You have just shown your loyalty. Perhaps you noted that the calibre of the men I have here is not high. You have a good chance to become second in command. Now,” he raised a hand and beckoned, “you may come closer to the desk while I talk to you.”

  “X” looked surprised, hesitated. “You want me to cross the room?”

  “Yes.”

  It was asking much, with the body of the electrocuted rat still on the floor, but “X” squared his shoulders, and without further hesitation, he went toward the desk, stepping full on the strip in the floor. He was staking everything again on his confidence in his own uncanny intuition about human nature.

  He had a momentary feeling of coldness along his spine as his foot came down close beside the dead rat, but nothing happened. He came close to the desk, noting that the Skull’s hand had come above the glass top now, holding an automatic trained on his stomach.

  HE stood there quietly, looking into the cavernous physiognomy of evil that leered up at him.

  “Bravo!” exclaimed the Skull. “I wondered if you had confidence in me. There is a switch under the desk here. I shut off the current with my foot. Not many men would have had the courage to cross that strip at my command. You see, I am testing you in many ways, Fannon. You may now step back.”

  “X” said, “Thank you,” and stepped back to the door. He saw the Skull make a movement with his foot under the desk.

  “The current is on again, Fannon.” The Skull put down the automatic. “The gun was merely a precaution in case you were tempted to attack me in spite of your professed loyalty. It is a habit of mine never to trust anyone fully. I don’t even trust Binks entirely, and he is harmless enough.”

  The Skull seemed now to be in a mellow mood. But “X” waited tensely, silently. He felt there was something else coming, something behind the Skull’s new affability. And all the time his thoughts were darting back to that empty apartment of Betty Dale’s. When, when would he be able to get to that!

  The Skull was talking again. “Frankly, Fannon, I had my doubts about you. Something happened in one of the corridors last night; something that I have not solved yet. One of my men was killed. Rufe—you met him. He had apparently discovered some one in the passage who had no business there. That some one killed Rufe. I entertained some suspicions of you!”

  “Why should I want to kill Rufe?” the Secret Agent asked. “It was my first night here. How would I be able to find my way around in those passages?”

  “I thought of all that, Fannon, and that is why you are still alive today. It couldn’t have been you, or any of my servants; for everybody is locked in at night. And that leads me to the only other logical conclusion—that there is an outsider prowling loose in the corridors. If there is, I have a good idea as to his name. Fannon,” the Skull leaned over the desk, emphasizing each word, “have you ever heard of Secret Agent ‘X’?”

  IF the situation had not been so tense, the Agent could have enjoyed the sardonic humor of being asked whether he had ever heard of himself. As it was, he merely nodded, composing his voice to a casual tone. “I’ve heard of him. They say he’s poison to crooks, and poison to the police also. You think he’s the one who’s doing the prowling?”

  “I believe so. It wouldn’t be strange if he interested himself in me. I am now the most powerful man engaged in criminal activities in America, perhaps the only one mentally worthy of the steel of such a man as this Secret Agent ‘X’.”

  “From what I have seen,” said “X,” “I think you could give him cards and spades.”

  “Perhaps, Fannon, perhaps.” There was a measure of pride to be detected in the Skull’s voice now. “It may be that I have him in a tight spot right now.”

  “X” tensed. Had the Skull been playing with him all along? He told himself that it could not be. He was too keen a judge of people to have been deceived. He would have detected a false note in the Skull’s speech before now. Still, the Skull was clever. Every man, even “X” himself, was bound at some time to meet a man who was his mental superior.

  The Skull’s next words set him at rest on that score. The Skull was not playing with him. But they brought to the Agent a new problem. For the master said, “You will recall, Fannon, that when I sent you to Dennett’s, I also sent Nate Frisch with some other men on another mission. Well, that mission has been accomplished successfully. Take this key.” He threw across the room a small flat key similar to the one Binks used. “Binks has gone out to meet some of the men, so you will have to guide yourself.”

  “X’s” eyes gleamed. Was this to be the opportunity? He caught the key in the air, and waited.

  “Use that key in the slot of the panel at the end of the corridor. Go through the opening, and turn left. You will find a heavy, barred door. Unbar it, then wait till I press the button from the inside, which unlocks it.”

  The Agent nodded. He was going to be left alone, with a key. Was the Skull growing careless, or was he trusting him?

  The Skull went on. “I will need you in that room. Nate Frisch has gone on another errand; and anyway, I think your higher intelligence will be better suited to my needs in this case. For in that room, Fannon, is the answer to the identity of Secret Agent ‘X’! It is the master stroke of mine that will remove him from my path! Go now, and wa
it at the barred door!”

  The door behind the Secret Agent opened, and he stepped out into the anteroom. Here was something that required careful action. Without a doubt he must go into that room behind the barred door and see what the Skull’s stroke of genius consisted of.

  He made his way down the corridor, through the sliding panel, and unbarred the heavy door. As he waited, he searched his subconscious mind, and was amazed to discover that the thought of Betty Dale’s possible predicament overshadowed his present task. He had never thought that the emotion of deep friendly regard—almost of protectorship—had grown so strong in him. Perhaps it was the realization that he was here, helpless to aid her at the moment, which preyed so upon him.

  His revery was interrupted by a slight click, following which the heavy door swung open, revealing a room in utter darkness. “X” entered grimly, and the door swung shut behind him. He couldn’t see a foot in front of him now.

  SUDDENLY a dull glow began to grow high up along the wall, and “X” started, his lips forming into a thin line as he realized where he was. The glow dimly illuminated the forbidding figure of the Skull standing in a niche in the wall. And below the niche, built into the floor, was the electric chair in which Tyler had been executed. And beside the chair was a trussed-up figure that stirred and uttered a helpless little moan.

  The wire mesh that had separated the room into two parts before was now raised so that a man could pass under it. “X” took an involuntary step toward that pitiful figure on the floor, but stopped, restraining himself by an iron exercise of will power.

  And suddenly the spotlight from up above burst into brilliant luminance, bathing the chair and the trussed-up figure in a merciless light.

  And “X” gasped. For that helpless figure on the floor was the golden-haired figure of Betty Dale.

  She was bound and gagged, but her eyes were wide open, reflecting hopeless resignation.

  From the niche came the Skull’s voice. “This lady, Fannon, is known as Miss Betty Dale. She is in the confidence of Secret Agent ‘X,’ and should be in a position to supply us with some very interesting information about that gentleman. She is unwilling to talk, but I feel sure we can remedy that.”