“X’s” unwilling chauffeur slowed up almost imperceptibly, half-turned toward the bluecoat outside. But the Agent divined his purpose at once, pressed the hard end of a fountain pen flashlight into his shoulder blade. “Just keep going,” he ordered softly.
The driver obeyed.
As they left the bridge behind, “X” moved over to the right side of the seat so that the man at the wheel could not see him in the rear vision mirror. “Turn left,” he instructed. “Drive downtown till I tell you to stop.”
The owner of the car did as directed. At the next corner there was a red light. “I’ll have to stop for this,” he said over his shoulder. “Is it okay for me to—” His voice trailed off, and he braked to a stop with a bewildered expression on his face. Then he pulled over to the curb and swore. For he had been talking to thin air.
As he had slowed up for the light, his passenger had opened the right-hand door and leaped from the car, disappearing into the lunch hour crowd around city hall. The only evidence that he had even been present in the car was a folded twenty-dollar bill which he had placed conspicuously in the slot of the door handle.
Chapter XVIII
THE MONSTER PAYS A VISIT
THE Agent crossed City Hall Park at a fast walk, and entered the drug store at the corner of Broadway and Chambers. He looked up the number of Ranny Coulter’s house, and hurried into a phone booth, put in the call, hoping that nothing had happened there yet.
He was relieved to hear Jack Larrabie’s voice over the wire.
He said crisply, “This is Fearson, Larrabie. Is young Coulter there with you?”
“Yes,” Larrabie answered. “We were just leaving to go down to headquarters. Harry Pringle’s father, the deputy commissioner, has offered to deputize us so that we can go after the monster. We’re sick and tired of sticking in the house and doing nothing!”
The Agent’s voice rang with a sudden note of authority as he said, “Neither of you must leave the house till I get there, Larrabie! There is a truck parked outside which may be waiting for you to come out. Do nothing until I arrive. Is that clear?”
“Well—” young Larrabie said reluctantly.
The Agent interrupted him. “On no condition must you go out. I’ll be there in less than a half hour. And stay away from the windows, too!”
He hung up without waiting for an answer, but he did not leave at once. Instead he turned his back to the glass door of the booth, set up his portable mirror on the corner of the small shelf where the telephone rested, and set to work on his face. Within three minutes, Arvold Fearson had disappeared. Mr. Vardis now stood in the booth. Though the gray suit was the same, the Agent’s whole bearing was different.
As he stepped out of the booth, he no longer walked with the shuffling slouch of Fearson. Instead, he strode erect, with head held high. So perfect was the transformation, that by the very change in bearing he seemed to be inches taller than Fearson had appeared.
Out on Broadway, he met a scene of wild excitement. The street was aswarm with police. Frazer and the plain-clothes men must have recovered by this time from the effects of the ammonia gas and given the description of Fearson.
Plain-clothes men were peering into the faces of every passer-by. The office buildings were being combed by a flood of officers that had been thrown into the district. They were apparently determined that the supposed murderer of Marcy should not escape.
But Mr. Vardis passed unquestioned, for he in no wise resembled the fugitive. He hailed a cab, gave directions to drive to the Coulter home. “If you hurry,” he said to the cabby, “you can make it in twelve minutes; I want you to do better than that—I want to get there in ten. And there’s ten dollars in it for you.”
The cabby grinned, and stepped on the gas.
So far, all of “X’s” genius had been futile in combatting this dreadful monster that terrorized the city. He had been forced to fight blindly, depending on chance, waiting for the monster to make a mistake. Even now, as he sped uptown, he realized that there was only one chance in a hundred that the truck in front of the Coulter home had anything to do with the monster. But that one chance had to be looked into. In a battle like this, nothing could be passed by lightly.
The cab made it in ten minutes.
It turned into Madison Avenue two blocks below the Coulter home, and the driver headed north.
TRAFFIC was light at this time of the afternoon, and “X” could see far ahead over the cabby’s shoulder. He saw the two sandwich men on the corner in front of the Coulter house, saw the large truck across the street. He consulted his watch, saw that he was well within the twenty-minute time limit and breathed a sigh of relief. He had outlined in his mind a tentative plan for investigating that truck without arousing the suspicions of its occupants, if there were any.
He leaned forward, said to the driver, “When you get up to that corner where the sandwich men are standing, pull up next to them.”
The driver nodded, began to slow up. They still had one street intersection between them and the Coulter house. The green traffic light on the avenue turned red, and the cabby braked to a halt at the corner. A block away the sandwich men paced lazily with all the appearance of a couple of down-and-outers working for a day’s pay. No one would have suspected them of carrying sub-machine guns concealed under those signs.
Somewhere in the immediate vicinity there would also be the two men assigned as bodyguards to Larrabie and Coulter.
But “X” had eyes only for the truck. At the distance of a whole block, his keen eyes examined it carefully. It was all white, with black lettering on its side, announcing that the “Snow-Cap Laundry Does Your Sheets Like New.” It was facing north, away from him, and he could not see the driver’s compartment. But he suddenly noted something that caused his whole body to grow tense.
Projecting from the roof of the truck was a short length of metal tube which was curved at the top, so that the opening faced toward the Coulter house. “X” had seen many of these in war times, knew that at the first sight of one of these rising upon the crest of a barren ocean, stark panic had been wont to tread the decks of the proudest ocean liners. It was a periscope such as is used on submarines! Somebody within that truck was watching the house across the street!
It took but a second for the Agent to note this, even while the cab was slowing up for the red light. Now he leaned forward, said tensely, “Don’t mind the red light—shoot ahead, quick. If there’s a fine, I’ll pay it!”
But the driver shook his head. “Nix, mister. It’d be my fourth ticket—I’d lose my license. They’re hard on us hackmen.”
And then things began to happen.
The Agent saw the door of the Coulter house open, saw Ranny Coulter and Jack Larrabie come out and start to descend the steps to the sidewalk. His eyes smouldered. They had deliberately broken their promise to him, had not waited the full twenty minutes.
And now, almost simultaneously with the appearance of the two young men, the rear doors of the waiting truck were flung open, and a swarm of the stiff-walking, robot-like men deployed into the street. They rushed toward Larrabie and Coulter, silently, purposefully intentful; each carried a silenced automatic.
Secret Agent “X” leaped from the cab. But he was too far away. Things happened too fast.
Coulter and Larrabie had stopped, transfixed, at the sudden eruption of attackers. It was the two sandwich men at the corner who stopped the rush of the robots. Even as “X” was leaping from the cab, they swung their sub-machine guns clear of the sandwich boards, and directed a hail of lead at the attackers. The sweep of their slugs bowled over the robot-like men as if they were nine-pins—but did not kill them; their bullet-proof clothing stopped the slugs, though they had the wind knocked out of them by the terrific impacts. Not one was left standing. They littered the gutter, started to crawl back toward the truck. The sandwich board trick had been successful so far.
BUT now there descended from the truck the huge, ungainly s
hape of the murder monster. Its robots had failed; it was swinging into action itself. It paid no attention at all to the two machine gunners, no attention to the squirming forms of the robots who were creeping back to the shelter of the truck, but lumbered with a dreadful singleness of purpose—straight toward the two stupefied young men on the steps of the house.
The Secret Agent had started to run toward the scene, but he was still almost a block away. A police whistle shrilled near by. Women passers-by screamed, others ran helter-skelter to places of safety.
The two sandwich men frantically shoved fresh clips in their Tommy guns, raised them to their shoulders, and almost as one man they pumped a rapid, steady stream of lead at that horrible figure—to no avail. The slugs buried themselves in the outer covering of the monster, staggering it a little, but not swerving it from its course.
It made a straight line toward its objective.
Larrabie and Coulter turned to run into the house. The monster raised its hand, pointed that deadly finger, and young Coulter, who had been a trifle in the lead, suddenly staggered, and became enveloped in a sheet of flame!
He screamed once, then rolled down the steps to the street, uttering choked cries which quickly changed to incoherent moans, and then died to nothingness as his scorched, crisp body jerked and twitched convulsively and lapsed into pitiful stillness.
Young Larrabie had stopped, aghast, beside his friend. The monster called out in a resonant voice that seemed to rise to the rooftops, “Come here, Larrabie. It’s you I want. Come here or die!”
As in a trance, Larrabie approached the monster.
By this time Secret Agent “X” had reached the corner beside the two sandwich men, who were reloading once more, holding their ground regardless of the danger that the monster might turn its dreadful finger of doom upon them too. “X” seized a loaded Tommy from the hands of the nearest, saying, “It’s all right. I’m from Jim Hobart!”
He swung the machine-gun toward the monster. His purpose was to wait till the monster got into motion once more, then direct the stream of lead at a spot just above its middle. The bullets could not pierce its protective coating, of course, but if they struck at a point just above the monster’s center of gravity, they might topple him over.
But he never pulled the trip of the gun. For the monster suddenly reached out, gripped young Larrabie about the middle, and lifted him off the ground. Then, carrying him under its arm, it returned to the car, not hurrying, turning its massive, hideous head from side to side to survey the situation. To fire the sub-machine gun now would only mean the death of young Larrabie who had slumped in his captor’s arms, apparently in a faint.
The injured robots had crawled into the truck, and the monster followed them, unmolested.
“X” watched, helpless to intercede, with bitterness in his heart, as the door swung shut, and the truck got into motion, sped away.
Above, the hum of an airplane motor became audible.
The Agent glanced upward, and his eyes glittered as he saw the huge flying machine circling in the air. It kept its altitude, did not dive, but the radius of its circle increased gradually. Bates had been on the job. Now, if those flyers only did their work well .... Secret Agent “X” nodded grimly to himself. He said to the two sandwich men, “Get rid of those signs—drop them right here with the machine guns—and disperse. Here comes the police.”
The two men obeyed quickly, disappearing around the corner, piling into a car which had been parked there. No one in the fast gathering crowd tried to stop them, or noticed them. Everybody was gathered around the still smouldering body of Ranny Coulter, commiserating with his hysterical parents who had rushed out of the house.
Secret Agent “X” effaced himself in the crowd just as the first police car appeared.
Chapter XIX
BIRD’S-EYE TRAIL
THAT afternoon the papers were devoted almost exclusively to the startling events of the day. The murders in Belvidere Road, the horrible killing of Ranny Coulter, and the abduction of young Larrabie were the subjects of excited comment throughout the city.
The police were still searching ineffectually for the truck in which the murder monster had escaped with Larrabie as his prisoner. A radio car had given it close chase for a while, until a small porthole in the rear of the truck had swung open. Through this porthole had appeared the pointing finger of the monster, and the police car had suddenly burst into flames; the two policemen in the car had been burned to death.
No one had seen the laundry truck after that. Examination of records revealed, of course, that there was no such firm as the “Snow-Cap Laundry.” It was not understood how the truck could have made its escape with every exit from the city guarded, with hundreds of plain-clothes and uniformed men searching the streets and garages.
With all this bustle and excitement Secret Agent “X” did not concern himself. He was ensconced in a darkened room in one of his retreats, engaged in doing a peculiar thing.
This room was exceedingly large, some thirty feet in length. At one end a white motion-picture screen was hung on the wall. At the other end, Secret Agent “X” was engaged in threading a reel of film into a motion-picture projection machine. This completed, the Agent threw a switch, and the machine began to hum as the reels turned, the arc-light of the projector throwing a beam of light across the room.
The Agent now stood tensely, watching the motion pictures which were flashed on the screen. There appeared a bird’s-eye view of a portion of the city, including that section of Madison Avenue where the Coulter home was located. The Agent saw the frantic, running specks which were men and women in panic, he saw a sheet of flame in the street, and his lips compressed grimly as he realized that this was the burning body of Ranny Coulter.
But his eyes followed the motions of the object that he knew was the murder truck leaving the scene of the crime.
The picture flickered often, darkened sometimes to an indistinguishable blur, but it always cleared, always kept that fleeing truck in view.
These pictures had been taken by an aerial camera built in under the cockpit of the plane which had circled over the scene of the crime. It was one of the two planes which “X” had kept in readiness for just such an emergency. Knowing that the monster used a truck for transportation, the Agent had provided this means of tracing its movements.
He waited tautly, watching the flickering film. The next few minutes would tell whether the camera had been able to follow that truck to its hidden destination—a thing the police had so far failed to do.
On the screen there appeared the vast network of streets that was New York City, with humans that resembled minute ants scurrying everywhere. And through it all the Agent followed the movements of that blob that was the murder monster’s truck, speeding northward, then east to the river front where it stopped at a deserted spot.
From the truck there swarmed a number of specks that were men. They were carrying two large flat objects which they fastened to the sides of the truck, and then they hurried around to back and front for a moment. Their work over, they climbed back inside, and the truck once more resumed its course, this time proceeding much more slowly, threading its way back into the heart of the city.
The Agent stirred at his spot beside the projector. He understood why that truck had not been traced. The license plates had been changed, and the truck itself had been disguised by fastening thin sheets of metal over the sides. These were probably of a different color, with another name. No wonder the police had lost it—they were still looking for a white laundry truck.
Now the disguised truck proceeded sedately through traffic, passing traffic officers, radio cars, driving boldly to its destination under the very eyes of the entire police force.
Its destination was a street on the west side of town, where genteel brownstone houses rubbed elbows with garages and tall apartment houses. The truck turned in to one of these garages, disappeared from view.
The film continued t
o wind through the projector, flashing further bird’s-eye pictures on the screen. But “X” had no more interest in it. He had turned away into a cubbyhole just off the projection room, where a large-scale map of the city hung on the wall. On this map he was engaged in tracing the movements of the truck, which his photographic memory had recorded faithfully from the film.
In a moment his pencil rested on the exact spot where the truck had disappeared. His face was alight with a strange glow. He had traced the monster to its hole!
Chapter XX
HELL’S HEADQUARTERS
IT was close to dusk when a dignified gentleman in a gray suit drove a large and expensive looking sedan into the street on the west side of town where the monster’s truck had disappeared.
The gentleman noted, as he drove down the street, that there were several men loitering near the corner. Among them were two whom he knew as Stegman and Oliver.
On the corner was a large apartment house, and next to it was a row of old, three-story brownstones. On the other side of the street there were several garages. The Agent drove slowly, as if not certain of his destination. Finally he slowed up, swung the car into the driveway of a large garage in the middle of the block.
There were a dozen cars on the floor, here, though the space would have accommodated thirty or forty. Several of these were trucks, though none, of course, bore the name of the Snow Cap Laundry. A single attendant, who was built along the lines of a heavyweight prize-fighter, was in charge.
He approached the sedan, looking inquiringly at the driver.
“What is it, mister?”
The Agent descended leisurely from the car, said affably, “I’ve just moved into the neighborhood and I was looking for a good garage to store my car. What do you charge in here?”
The attendant cast an appraising glance at the visitor, and said surlily, “The boss ain’t in, mister.”
Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Page 29