The effect of the three flashes on the police car was instantaneous. Hardly slackening its speed, its siren still screeching madly, it swung around a corner, headed at right angles to the block where the robbery had taken place.
Tense, straining over his wheel, Agent “X” watched and listened. The cruiser’s siren, like a mournful banshee wail, was growing dimmer now. Increasing distance lessened its note. There could be no doubt about it—the cruiser had made a deliberate detour at sight of those red-and-green flashes. And Agent “X” had recognized the lights. An experienced airman, he knew a Very pistol when he saw one. It was a device used by flying men to signal their comrades night and day in the sky.
And it had been used as a signal now—a signal for the police not to meddle in what was going on. A signal for them to shy off from the scene of a murderous robbery. They were doing it, too—obeying, for some strange reason, a command from the underworld which they were officially pledged to fight.
Agent “X” could not understand it. Trained to probe the most difficult enigmas, here was a mystery so bizarre and forbidding that it was like a challenge hurled into his very face. If the police were bowing to signals from criminals, what chance did the law-abiding citizens of the city have? Was it graft that made them do it? That seemed unlikely, for “X” had had experience with most of the heads of the department. They were honest, determined men, enemies of his though they might be.
Something unbelievably sinister seemed to be in the wind. Some force, unknown to “X”, but hideously real, must have made those cruising cops yield to the signals of a criminal band. And it wasn’t the first time it had happened. Other cops in the past week had done the same thing—turned tail and run like rabbits when those mysterious green and red signals flashed. What uncanny power did the underworld wield? Even Agent “X” could not guess.
Their raid accomplished, the desperate men who had robbed Pierrot’s Jewelry Shop came out of the store and crossed the pavement. “X” stepped on the gas, racing the car forward again. One of the gang looked up and saw him coming. Once more the Very pistol flashed its green-and-red lights, but “X” paid no attention. He drove straight ahead.
Seeming to sense that here was no cop or detective who could be coerced; seeing a lone man driving a small, unofficial looking coupé, the bandits ran toward their own sedan. One of them stopped long enough to send a burst of bullets toward “X”. They punctured the aluminum shell, but stopped harmlessly against the manganese steel beneath. But a cobweb hole appeared in the non-shatterable windshield, and a chunk of lead whistled dangerously close to the Agent’s head. Still he came on, a fighting gleam in his eyes, hoping by direct action to find out who these men were and by what mysterious means they had cast a spell over the police.
THE gunman leaped into the sedan. Its door slammed shut. With a screech of gears and a pale feather of smoke from its exhaust it shot away from the curb. Agent “X” followed.
The car ahead seemed to have a super-powerful motor. Its pick-up was incredible. In that first minute it leaped away from the Agent. But his small coupé was devised for the highest speeds, also.
He touched a lever beside his hand. This connected the regular feed line with a special tank set close to the car’s gas filter. High-test fuel under pressure, containing a percentage of liquid hydrogen, newest of fueling agents, mixed with the gasoline supply. He pressed the accelerator. The small car seemed to hurl itself ahead.
It ate up the distance between itself and the other larger vehicle. A rear window slid up. Once again the black snout of a machine gun quivered and flamed. The gangsters were firing for “X’s” tires, not knowing that those innocent black rims had fine-meshed steel screening hidden under the pliable rubber. Bullets hit them but glanced off. The bandit aimed for the windshield again. And Agent “X” rocked the car from side to side with deft twists of the wheel, spoiling the killer’s aim.
Ten blocks were traversed. Police cars were conspicuous by their utter absence. The whole department seemed to be lying low. Not even a cop on patrol was in evidence. And then suddenly another large car turned into the street behind Agent “X”. He saw it in his rear-vision mirror, thought for a moment it was a squad car. Then he caught a glimpse of an ugly, bloated face hidden by a mask. His heart leaped. Here was evidence that the robbers were part of a large, organized band.
An instant later more proof came. As though in answer to some signal sent out, or as if acting on prearranged orders, a third car swung out of a side street ahead of him. It turned the corner slowly, but instantly put on speed. It was on his own side of the street. He would have to pass it parallelly, and from the open side windows a half dozen gun muzzles projected.
Here were killers regimented and organized to the highest possible efficiency. Here was a death car, waiting to riddle him with steel-jacketed lead. He wasn’t even sure that his armor plate would stand such a salvo at close range. Certainly the force of it would destroy his windshield and side windows, and, if a stray bullet didn’t lodge in his body, he would have only luck to thank.
But he couldn’t stop. The speedometer needle had touched eighty. His tires were making a humming screech on the pavement. His “souped-up” motor was roaring like a Niagara beneath its vibrating hood. To turn a corner or thrust brakes home now meant swift destruction—just as surely as the vehicle ahead stood for grim death. Yet the hands of Agent “X” were steady as rock as he raced forward to meet his fate.
Chapter II
THE PALL OF FEAR
A HUNDRED feet separated him from the car ahead. Fifty. Twenty-five. As the muzzles of the gangster submachine guns lifted to pour a deadly, withering, broadside fire into his speeding coupé, Agent “X” pressed back with his heel at a spot under the seat.
There was a faint click, a whir as a tiny, high-speed electric motor was set in motion. The piston of an air-pump moved with lightning rapidity inside a piece of mechanism as delicately constructed as a watch. A white chemical in solution was sprayed thickly into the interior of the coupé’s hot exhaust pipe. At the same moment Agent “X” shoved the cut-out open, leaving a vent directly behind the roaring engine.
Clouds of black, impenetrable vapor shot out from under his car, rising on all sides in a dense curtain.
His coupé was hidden as though a pall of soot had dropped upon it. Through the blackness, the thunderous reports of his unmuffled, “souped-up” engine made a din like a battery of guns going into action. The smoke screen enveloped the gangster car as well as his own, blinding them, preventing any accurate aim.
Agent “X” braked slowly and pulled to the left. There was danger of a sudden, terrible smash-up, if the gangster driver lost his head and made some panicky maneuver.
“X” shut off his engine suddenly, and, in the deathly silence which followed, as his car shot ahead under its own momentum, he heard the shrill scream of brakes as the gangster car was slowed.
He continued brake pressure himself, driving in utter darkness, with only the instrument board light and his sense of direction to guide him, and he saw the speedometer needle go steadily down.
When his tremendous momentum had been checked, when the car was barely creeping ahead, he swung still farther to the left, guiding the coupé expertly till the fat tires were brushing the curb. The sound ceased in a moment. Agent “X” swung the wheel at once, pulled his coupé into a side street, heading off at an angle from the route he had been following.
He pressed the button under the seat a second time, stopped the pump mechanism and closed the cut-out. Accelerating slowly, he drew out of the black smoke cloud. It had risen to the housetops now. Long, eerie arms of dark vapor, whipped by the wind, seemed a ghostly symbol of the black crime mystery he was battling.
He drove away from the gangsters. No use following them now. The car containing those who had robbed Pierrot’s shop would be blocks away. He had saved his life by a comparatively simple trick. The Agent had been ambushed by waiting cars before. He never all
owed himself to be caught in the same situation twice. The black smoke cloud was his answer to a danger he had anticipated before it arrived.
The sirens of fire engines were screaming as he drove away from the spot where the smoke screen had been laid. He passed a red truck with men hanging to glittering brass-work, roaring toward the scene of his escape. Some one had turned in a double alarm, thinking the black vapor meant an explosion or a fire. The bells of other engines were clanging. Three fire companies were converging on the spot. None of them guessed that the small innocent-looking coupé they passed had been the cause of it all.
Agent “X” didn’t wait to observe the excitement and consternation his smoke screen had left in its wake. It had served its purpose.
He passed two patrolling policemen. They were far from the scene of the Pierrot robbery. Yet he noticed that their faces looked tense and uneasy. They did not stride along with the confident aplomb of their class. There was a furtive, almost apologetic manner about them. Something deeper than the fierce criticism with which the press of the city had been lashing the police department of late lay behind this. The law was falling down. The police seemed to be hiding their heads in the face of the worst crime wave the community had known for years. Murders, robberies, stick-ups, burglaries were occurring night and day. They had been increasing for the past week, and still the department appeared to be doing nothing to cope with the situation.
With a bleak, cold light in his eyes, Agent “X” went to a telephone booth and called a number not listed in any directory. He pitched his voice to a different key, spoke with a deceptive accent, and almost instantly an answer came over the wire.
“This is Bates talking. That you, boss?”
THE man at the other end of the wire had immediately recognized the voice Agent “X” had used. He was Harry Bates, head of an extraordinary detective organization Agent “X” had built up at great trouble and expense. Men and women of various types and from all walks of life were in it. All of them had been secretly investigated by Agent “X.” None of them knew that it was his influence and his money, acting through Bates, that held their staff together.
Bates himself had never to his knowledge seen the man he called “boss.” Instructions came by phone or radio, money for expenses by mail. The “boss” was only a voice to Bates, and he did not guess that the man he worked for was the mysterious, unknown Secret Agent “X.”
“X” talked quickly, hoarsely, now, with an edge of sharp command in his voice.
“Your report, Bates!”
“I’ve been the rounds, boss, like you asked me to. The mobs are lying low. My men are covering the phony spots, but they haven’t picked up anything. It looks like—”
“Are you watching Connie’s place and the Escabar over on Ninth Avenue?”
“No, boss, I didn’t know that they—”
“Post men there. Tell them to circulate and get friendly. Increase their expense accounts.”
“Yes, boss.”
“And if you learn anything, broadcast on the dot of every hour using wave-length M, code 26G. Be ready for possible radios from me.”
“Right, boss.”
Agent “X” hung up and called a second number. This was one listed as the Hobart Detective Agency. It was another of “X’s” subsidized organizations, working independently of Bates, having in fact no knowledge that Bates and his staff even existed. It was run by Jim Hobart, a former police detective, dismissed from the department on trumped-up graft charges, and befriended by “X”. The voice of the Agent changed again. It was more friendly now, yet still brisk, concise.
“Martin speaking. What news, Jim?”
“None yet, Mr. Martin. I can’t find out who is doing the dirty work. The big gangs are quiet. But there was a pay roll stick-up at Consolidated Wet Wash this noon. Eighteen grand grabbed! And this morning a gang of guys cleaned out the safe of the City Savings.”
“I know it,” snapped “X” impatiently. “What we must learn are facts—who’s behind the robberies, what crooks are operating, where the money’s going! How about the Shandley Hotel—are your men watching it?”
“Sorry, Mr. Martin. It’s one joint I didn’t think of keeping track of.”
“Why not? It’s a gamblers’ hangout. Somebody must be making money, and spending it—possibly at cards. The Shandley is a place you must watch. Send Bailey and his girl friend there with cash enough to crash a game if they get the chance.”
“Right, Mr. Martin, I’ll do that. You sure keep track of the hot spots.”
There was respect, admiration in Jim Hobart’s tone. Agent “X” chuckled softly as he hung up. Keeping track of the “hot spots” was part of his strange work. Yet Hobart knew him only as A. J. Martin, inquiring newspaper man. Hobart believed “Martin” worked for a large press syndicate; thought that Martin’s concern with crime was in the interest of inside stories for his sheets alone. And Hobart was a willing helper.
But without “X’s” supervision, without his vast knowledge of crime and criminals, without his awareness of the darkest, most secret dives of the underworld, neither Hobart nor Bates could get more than routine results. It was Agent “X,” Man of a Thousand Faces, uncanny genius of disguise, who moved them like pawns in his ceaseless game of death with the underworld.
He left the phone booth and stopped in passing at a branch post office where he had rented a box under the name of “F. Jones,” and where he occasionally received mail. He half expected a letter now, and he wasn’t disappointed. A blue envelope was waiting for him, addressed in small, clear writing and carrying a faint trace of feminine perfume. The Agent picked it up eagerly.
IN ALL the world there were only two people who knew the exact nature of his amazing, daring work. One was a man in Washington, D. C., a high official of the government, known to “X” as K9. The other was Betty Dale, blonde and lovely girl reporter on the Herald, whose father, a captain of police, had been slain by underworld bullets years ago.
Never had Betty seen the Agent’s real face; yet this strange, brilliant man of a thousand disguises had won a lasting place in her heart, and built up an emotion that was deeper than mere friendship.
The blue envelope was from Betty Dale. Yet it was no love letter. It was a report, brief and to the point, addressed simply to “Mr. Jones,” Box 29—a name and a number “X” had given to Betty if she ever wished to communicate with him.
“Dear Jones,” it said. “I have learned something that I can’t even reveal to the paper. Yet I thought you would want to know. I saw an old friend on the force last night. He says that orders have come from higher up telling the police to lay off a certain criminal group now operating and showing signal lights to identify themselves. It isn’t graft. It’s something very powerful. I don’t know what. Please be careful.”
That last sentence was the only personal touch. It brought a smile to the Secret Agent’s lips. It was proof that Betty was thinking of him not only as a grim investigator—but also as a man, and a beloved friend. Betty, because her father had been in the department, had always been a pet of the police. As a child she had played around the precinct stations. She knew half the cops and detectives in the city by name.
She had been granted interviews with police heads when all other representatives of the press had been excluded. And now she had hastened to inform “X” of the sinister information she had picked up.
Yet it was only more confirmation of what “X” already knew. The police were steering clear of the band that displayed the red-and-green lights. A powerful force for evil lay behind those signals. A sense of menace, almost of catastrophe was in the air. Yet both were shrouded in black mystery.
Agent “X” destroyed the note quickly. It was unsigned, but there was danger that even its handwriting might be traced. There had been times in the past when the black shadow of the underworld had fallen on Betty Dale in a hideous reality. This must not be one of them.
The Agent’s lips were unsmiling
now. He was troubled. His own operatives, working even under his directions, had failed to ferret out the identity of the signal-using gang. The city’s well-known mobs were apparently not active in the present crime wave. It was for him, then, to go straight to the heart of the matter himself.
Chapter III
ANGER IN HIGH PLACES
IN ONE of his secret hideouts, Agent “X” removed the disguise he had worn in his deathly conflict with the bandits. For a moment he appeared as he really was, as not even his closest associates had ever seen him. And the face exposed under the light above his triple-sided make-up mirror was almost as remarkable as the man himself. It expressed character, versatility, mature strength and youthfulness—according to the angle from which it was viewed.
The features were even, the lips firm, the forehead high and wide. From below, the fighting, stubborn chin was most prominent. Looked at from directly in front, the Agent’s uncannily intense eyes seemed to eclipse all else. At an oblique angle the faint lines and bunched muscles on his smooth face appeared to be the indelible records of all the strange, harrowing experiences through which he had passed.
He hunched forward now. His long strong fingers reached out. From his materials he selected those he needed, and, from a series of photographs spread out beside him, he proceeded to build up another personality.
The photographs were of himself. They did not depict his real face, but one that he had worn often before—one that was well known in many sections of the city. They were photos of a man called Elisha Pond, depositor in one of the city’s greatest banks, member and frequenter of the town’s most exclusive clubs, a man seemingly of age, dignity, and solid respectability. No one would have believed for an instant that he and the notorious Agent “X” were one. Pond was put down as a person of important affairs, a director in many companies.
Just how important his affairs were, his acquaintances did not guess. But it was under the name of Elisha Pond that Agent “X” drew out the money necessary to carry on his campaign against crime. It was under that name that he held a fund, subscribed for his especial use, and supervised by one man only, the mysterious K9 in Washington.
Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Page 48