“Why, what are you doing here?” she breathed. “Did you know I was around? Did you get my letter?” There was eagerness, happiness in her voice. Her eyes were aglow with a light brighter than mere friendship. There was a flush on her cheeks, not caused by the crispness of the December wind.
“Yes, Betty,” the Agent said. “I got your letter, but I didn’t know you were on the island till I saw you just now. Why are you here?”
BETTY DALE tapped her brief case with slim fingers. “These squatters,” she said, “have been treated miserably. I’m collecting facts for a feature article in next Sunday’s Herald. I can’t understand why the city, yelling about relief to the poor, should hound these people who are hurting no one. The editor of the Herald feels just the same. My article will burn the mayor and his friends up. It ought to arouse public opinion. I had to come at night so the police wouldn’t see me. Steve, over there, a chap who built one of those shacks, brought me out in his boat. I’m just leaving.”
Agent “X” listened to the simple explanation of why she had come voluntarily into the shadow of destruction. It was one of those strange, ironic twists of Fate which no one could anticipate. He spoke quickly, laying his hand on her arm.
“I see, Betty, but you won’t need those notes. The city will understand soon why those poor devils were ordered away. The island is going to be blown up!”
Betty Dale started, paled, and stood very still. Her voice, sounded faint. “Blown up—why? I thought—”
“It’s part of a criminal plot, Betty. Part of the thing you spoke of in your letter. I won’t explain it all now, but the mayor himself is a victim of it. His hand was forced.”
“When—when will this happen?” Betty asked.
“At midnight!”
“Midnight—that’s only a half hour off!”
“Exactly. And that’s why we must hurry.”
Betty came closer, spoke quickly. “There’s a young fellow in that shack back there—a friend of Steve’s. He refuses to leave. I got most of my notes from him. He’s told me how hard things have been. We must warn him, too!”
The Agent nodded. “Wait here a minute, Betty. Steve has a boat, you say. I’ll get him to take his friend off at once. Then you can come with me. We’ll stand off the island, and watch for the explosion together.”
Agent “X” swiftly approached Steve. The tattered young squatter peered at him sharply.
“Say, are you a friend of Miss Dale’s? I didn’t know she knew any mugs over in this dump! She’s a swell kid all right. She’s gonna write up in the paper how they treated us!”
“X” repeated briefly what he had told Betty, explained why Steve must leave and take his friend with him at once. The boy’s face went white. He pocketed the money “X” gave him dazedly, turned and ran to the shack of his friend, and Agent “X” returned to Betty’s side.
“Come,” he said. “I’d planned to look around, but there isn’t time now. We’d better leave right away.”
Betty Dale took his arm. Together they hurried across the ash heaps and piles of dirt toward the spot where he had drawn up his boat. But before they reached it, Betty suddenly stopped and pointed.
“Who are those men?” she asked.
“X” saw them at the same instant—two furtive, swift-moving figures, just appearing from behind an ash pile. He paused, drew Betty back, and abruptly tensed in his tracks. For a harsh voice sounded directly behind him, a voice that gave menacing command.
“Don’t move—either of you!” it said. “I got you covered—and I’d just as leave shoot as not.”
“X” OBEYED instantly. He heard shuffling footsteps close behind him, felt a gun against his back. Then the speaker raised his voice and spoke again. “Here’s the bird, boys, and a jane with him. Come on over.”
The two that Betty Dale had seen came up quickly. They had twisted, brutal faces. Guns were in their hands. The Agent’s pulses hammered. His skin felt cold. Left to himself he would have made some swift attack. But the guns were aimed at Betty Dale, also. He couldn’t risk a bullet that might snuff out her life.
“Listen,” he said harshly, “this is no time for a stick-up. There’s a bomb out here somewhere. This island’s going up at midnight.”
One of the men broke into a cackle of derisive mirth. “Wise guy, eh! You’re telling us! Bomb is right—and you and the dame will find out more about it in a minute.”
The cords in the Agent’s neck stood out. He crouched, made ready to leap. But the quick, brutal voice of the gangster stopped him.
“I don’t know who this jane is, but it looks like you like her. Any rough stuff and she gets rubbed out, see? Come on, boys! Put ’em where I told you.”
With a single frightened scream, Betty Date tried to break away, crying for “X” to follow. But one of the men caught her instantly. A second man pressed a gun against her back. “X” saw his trigger finger tense. He spoke quickly, hoarsely:
“Betty—don’t! They’ll kill you!”
Feeling a crushing weight of horror upon him, Agent “X” allowed himself to be led along. These men were spies of the Terror. He realized that, now. Their faces were grim. They, too, were hurrying, anxious to get away from this place. Their actions supported his belief that the Terror’s threat was no mere boast. A gun was against “X’s” back, also. He didn’t fear that, but he was handicapped, made utterly helpless by the knowledge that Betty would be shot down callously if he made a move to save her or himself.
The gangsters veered to the left suddenly, took a narrow, ash-strewn path, and led their prisoners with them. One of them flashed a light. A squat brick building showed ahead. It was part of an old incinerating plant, discarded by the city since the new one had been built. It was windowless, merely a brick storage shed, but it had a strong, metal-bound door. This was open.
The gangsters thrust Betty inside, then “X.” They gave the girl a shove which made “X” clench his teeth in fury. The next moment he, too, was forcibly hurled into the shed’s interior. The gangster with the guns menaced them an instant. One of them spoke.
“We don’t know who you are, guy, but we can make a guess! You seem to know too much. One of the hobos out here told us you’d warned him and the bunch to beat it—on account of a bomb. I guess you’d like to know where the bomb is—and I’m gonna tell you. It’s right here in this shed, see? And you and the jane are gonna have a chance to watch how it works. So long, sweethearts! We’ll be seein’ you in hell!”
Harsh laughter followed this sally. The door slammed shut. A padlock clicked in a staple outside. Then came the sound of footsteps receding.
Betty Dale and the Agent were prisoners, close to the bomb of death—scheduled to explode at the end of a mere twenty minutes.
Chapter VII
SECONDS OF DOOM
RIGID horror gripped the Agent for a second. He leaped to the spot where Betty Dale had been hurled to the floor and flashed on his light.
She was just getting up. Her voice sounded clear and steady beside him. “I’m afraid I got you in a jam,” she said.
The Agent gave a harsh laugh. “It’s the other way round, Betty! If I had gone on and left you alone—this wouldn’t have happened.”
He moved away, flashing his light quickly in all directions. Horror still held him, made his neck and hands feel cold. He wasn’t thinking of his own life, or of Betty Dale’s alone. He was thinking of those other thousands, millions perhaps, whose existences were threatened as long as this man, the Terror, was active—as long as the dozen bombs remained unfound.
His light paused abruptly, making a round spot at one end of the window-less chamber. A cluster of bricks had tumbled out here. A few broken pieces lay on the floor. Others had evidently been carted away. But what held “X’s” interest was a spot above the bricks, on the wall itself, which had apparently been cemented over. The work had been done cleverly, with dirt and soot rubbed in, blackened like the rest of the building’s interior. But the sha
rp eyes of Agent “X,” trained to observe minute details, saw instantly that it was only camouflage.
He strode forward, touched the sooty surface with a finger tip, and found hard, new cement beneath the grime. This job had been done within a few weeks. No other part of the building showed repairs. The significance of the thing was obvious. Betty Dale, watching him, understood too. She had followed, was close at his side, staring at the wall in uneasy fascination.
“They said the bomb was in here. That must be it—behind that plaster! Is there any way we can get it out—stop it?”
For answer “X” reached down and picked up a piece of brick. He tapped the cement gently; knew immediately by the sound that it was at least a foot thick, shook his head.
“If we had time, Betty, I could do it. But, there isn’t time!”
His light left the wall, returned to the heavy door. No lock showed on the inside. Its oak beams were reinforced with bolted strips-of metal. It would withstand at least an hour’s battering—and it was now nineteen minutes of twelve.
Every second counted. Death and time seemed to be working hand in hand against them. The girl sensed the hopelessness of their position, sensed that Agent “X” and she were doomed to die, yet the smile was still on her lips.
The Agent’s fingers gripped hers for a moment. He smiled into her eyes, then moved up to that door which seemed an impenetrable barrier. Looking at it now, briefly, speculatively, it was still the time element which baffled him. Given forty minutes, a half hour even, he was certain he could escape from here. The men who had shut Betty and himself inside this room of death did not know evidently with whom they were dealing. They had no knowledge of the strange, ingenious devices carried by Agent “X.” They did not guess the full extent of his resourcefulness.
“Hold the light, Betty,” he said suddenly. “Keep it on the door.”
Feverishly he took out his kit of tools. He scanned them for a moment, shook his head, laid them down. These bits of metal with their goose necks and queer pivotal extensions had served him well for a score of times. With them he had opened bank doors, picked locks that were considered invulnerable in his ceaseless quest for evidence of crime. But they would not serve him now—with only blank boarding to face.
He lifted one foot instead, reached inside his shot sole, and drew out a small implement concealed there. This, too, had performed seeming miracles in its time. At one side of it was a tiny, paper-thin hacksaw, on the back a file, made of a thin strip of black diamond, set in steel-hard cement.
The hinges of the door were fastened laterally, screwed inside the frame. Only their ends showed, and hinged joints themselves, with the metal pivots that held them together. These were welded in, with rounded heads top and bottom. Rust was flaked on them in mantling cakes.
Quickly, energetically, Agent “X” drew his diamond file across them. Under its keen teeth the rust came off. In a moment he had bared the bright metal of the pivot ends. But filing would be a long process. There wasn’t time for that.
Time—with that dreaded thing sealed in the wall close by. Time—with every second bringing them closer to eternity. Once the Agent glanced at Betty. A smile of hope, faith, was still on her lips. It clutched at his heart. The girl, who had seen him do the seemingly impossible before, trusted him now, thought that he had found a certain way out. Her hand was steady on the flash. Its beam gave “X” ample light to work by.
WITH tense fingers, he turned the file over, thrust the hacksaw blade against the line where the pivot head and hinge were joined. But rust still clogged the crack, hampered him. He ran and got a piece of brick, came back and knocked violently against the hinge.
Some of the rust came out. He struck the pivot up to give more room. Then, while the slow minute hand of his watch moved upward toward the spot which spelled destruction, he drew the hacksaw blade back and forth.
The sound of its teeth mounted. It snarled, bit into the metal. It rose to a thin wail, like the moan of a frightened animal there in that room of death. The Agent’s arm worked like a piston. His breath came in short, quick jerks.
The blade was halfway through now. Rust clogged it further as it bit in. Sweat stood out on the Agent’s forehead, though the chill of the December night lay like a pall within that room.
The hacksaw screamed more slowly. It rasped, lurched forward. One of the pivot heads dropped off. He did not attack the head at the other end. He stood erect, moved to the door’s top hinge now, thumping it first with the brick, then using the saw again. Once he stopped, asked a question.
“What time is it, Betty?” He tried to make his voice sound casual; tried to hide the eager, fearful note it held.
Betty glanced at her wristwatch. Words seemed to come from her throat with difficulty.
“Ten minutes to twelve,” she said. “Do you think—”
She didn’t finish. He didn’t answer. He went to work again, more quickly, more furiously than ever; drawing the saw across the pivot in thrusts that threatened to snap the blade; risking all in snarling, lashing strokes. Seconds seemed to be racing. His own pulse-beat seemed to mock him. Then the saw’s teeth slid through. The other pivot head came off.
He dropped the saw into his pocket, snatched up one of his small tools. It was a straight bit of steel like a nail set. In his other hand was a piece of brick.
Swiftly, surely, he hammered down on the tool’s top, struck the hinge pivot out of the joint. The tiny pieces of metal, which had held them prisoners like iron bars, dropped to the floor.
Agent “X” attacked the door. It fitted snugly. The padlock outside held one end. The wedged sections of the hinges held the other. He dropped to hands and knees, felt along the door’s bottom, and thrust his fingers in. Muscles along his back and shoulders rippled as he heaved. Betty had turned the flashlight down. There was no sound in the room, save the Agent’s labored breathing. Then the big door squeaked, stirred.
He drew the bottom toward him with a jerk that made the cords on his neck stand out. The wedged hinges came loose. The door broke away from its frame. The padlock staple prevented it from coming entirely free. But he cried out to Betty to step back. He caught the door’s edge, drew it inward—and a breath of chill night air came through the opening.
He seized Betty’s arm, pulled her from the building. “Quick, Betty! We must run! It’s our only chance. The boat!”
He didn’t know in which direction the nearest water lay. The prison shed seemed to be in the center of the island. It had no doubt been selected for that reason by the bomb planters, so that the Terror could make good his boast and destroy all. But “X” knew where he had left his speeding boat. His unerring sense of direction told him that.
He led the way, holding Betty’s arm. They raced across the ash-strewn ground under the bobbing beam of his flash. He knew it was a race with death, knew that now it must be five of twelve; knew that any instant, if there was a slip in time, a tiny discrepancy, the bomb might explode—and all his efforts would be futile.
Breathless, gasping, Agent “X” drew Betty along, till he saw the gleam of water ahead. Beyond it, far away, the twinkling lights of shore showed, and the lights of boats along the water’s surface. He turned a little to the left. There, by that mound of dirt hidden in the shadows, was where he had drawn up his own craft, the boat that would speed them away from this place of waiting death.
He almost lifted Betty from her feet as he guided her. Her breath was coming in quick gasps. Her fingers were clutching him, and suddenly “X” cried out.
“The boat—there it is!”
The slender shadow of the craft had caught his eyes. It lay where he had left it, drawn up on the sand. But even as he saw it and came close, a harsh, bitter exclamation was wrenched from his throat.
Betty stopping beside him, exclaimed, too. For the boat at her feet was not as he had left it. Some one, the men, no doubt, who had imprisoned them in the shed, had been at work.
Rocks lay in the padded
interior. Skeleton ribs showed. The boat was useless, shattered beyond repair even if there were time—and, in the blackness behind them, in that prison shed, Death was crouched on its haunches like a black beast waiting to spring.
Chapter VIII
THUNDERING HORROR
THE Agent turned on Betty Dale and uttered quick, hoarse words. “We must swim, Betty—swim at once!” Even as he spoke, he reached down, ripped open his shoe laces, drew off his shoes. Betty, following suit, kicked off her pumps and stood in stockinged feet.
The Agent’s eyes were bleak. He hadn’t told her the nature of that bomb; hadn’t said that if the Terror’s boast were true the very soil under their feet would disintegrate. There was distance between the shed and themselves now. Betty appeared confident. She was sure they were all right. But Agent “X” knew differently.
The girl was running like a slim nymph toward the cold December water. She flung her wool coat off, tossed her blonde hair back. The rigors of the chill water didn’t terrify her. Her young, strong muscles could cope with that. She waded in knee-deep, flung herself down. With long, clean strokes she swam ahead. And the Agent followed. He came close, whispered hoarsely in her ear.
“As fast as you can, Betty! Swim as you never have before! If you get tired—I’ll help you.”
Her expression showed that she didn’t understand his worry. She had proved her swimming ability often before.
“X” didn’t try to explain. No time for that now, and no use frightening Betty. The cold water leaped about their bodies. It clung with a chill that almost made their muscles numb. But their long, sweeping strokes held the cold at bay.
Betty turned her spray-wet face. “X” could see the dim oval of it in the starlight, see the clustering blonde curls low on her white neck. He knew that she was good for miles, using her even, racer’s stroke that had won her cups in women’s championship meets. His own muscles had been trained to endure endlessly. He could stay in the water for hours, swimming on his back if he became tired, floating if necessary. He was as much at home as a seal.
Secret Agent X : The Complete Series Volume 3 Page 51