Secret Agent "X": The Complete Series Volume 5
by
Paul Chadwick & G.T. Fleming-Roberts
Introduction by
Tom Johnson
Altus Press • 2013
Copyright Information
© 2013 Altus Press
Publication History:
“Introduction” appears here for the first time. Copyright © 2013 Tom Johnson. All Rights Reserved.
“Monarch of Murder” originally appeared in the August 1935 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
“Legion of the Living Dead” originally appeared in the September 1935 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
“Horde of the Damned” originally appeared in the October 1935 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
“Ringmaster of Doom” originally appeared in the November 1935 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
“Kingdom of Blue Corpses” originally appeared in the December 1935 issue of Secret Agent “X”.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press
Special Thanks to Brian Earl Brown, Tom Johnson, Ray Riethmeier & Bill Thom
Introduction by Tom Johnson
A WELL-ROUNDED volume this time, with Paul Chadwick and G.T. Fleming-Roberts at the helm. Chadwick continues with his particular brand of horror in “Monarch of Murder” and “Horde of the Damned,” but gives us a nice surprise with “Kingdom of Blue Corpses,” a novel that even gave Will Murray some fits trying to pin him down because of the Dent-esque writing style.
However, the real gem is one of the two novels by Fleming-Roberts. Although he penned both “Legion of the Living Dead” and “Ringmaster of Doom”, it is “Legion of the Living Dead” that is of particular note. Fleming-Roberts wasn’t above borrowing plots or characters from previous stories—or other series, for that matter. But I imagine all pulp authors borrowed an occasional plot or character once in a while. To his credit, Fleming-Roberts usually did a better job with them, so all is forgiven.
Case in point is a character named Tasha Merlo from the September 1934 issue, “Octopus of Crime”… An odd story from the onset. The Agent even uses a retired policeman named Thomas McGrath in the story, which reminded me of Thomas Gregg from the Phantom Detective, and Captain McGrath of the Black Bat. But it’s Tasha Merlo that’s important to the present discussion. She is:
A redhead, beautifully molded in face and figure. And heavy-lidded violet eyes. The lines of her face showed little outward character and were deceptively mild, almost babyish. Her laughter was a silvery tinkle. She was a jewel fence of international fame and had two fierce leopards, Satan and Nero, as pets.
Fleming-Roberts’ first short story in Secret Agent “X” appeared in the September 1934 issue, titled “The Murder Masterpiece.” It’s not surprising, then, that he read the lead story, “Octopus of Crime,” and liked the character of Tasha Merlo, whom he must have found fascinating. When he wrote “Legion of the Living Dead”, he brought her back, somewhat changed of course. She is:
Felice Vincart—The Leopard Lady. Her face was small, nearly round, and dark complexioned. Her lips slightly voluptuous, were rouged a striking shade of red that was almost like Chinese lacquer. Her nose was slightly tip-tilted and her eyes were actually arresting: true emerald green they were beneath long, penciled brows that curved upwards at the outer extremities. Her every movement was feline grace. And at her side are two fierce leopards!
Her youth remains a mystery, though it is believed she grew up in a circus atmosphere. Her parents were probably circus performers. She found that she possessed a power over animals, especially the big jungle cats. She became an animal trainer, and left the circus to perform on stage in New York. Her stage act consisted of a wild barbaric dance with two great leopards, and she was dubbed “The Leopard Lady.”
While performing on stage, she met and fell in love with a young millionaire named Phelps. He swept her off her feet in a swirling courtship, and took her away from the stage. On a honeymoon voyage around the world, he died somewhere in the Orient, and when she returned to the States, his family would not accept her, claiming she had murdered her husband, but could not prove it. Assuming her maiden name, she ended up on the wrong side of the law.
Although she was secondary to the mastermind in the story, Felice Vincart is the center attraction in “Legion of the Living Dead,” and has the distinction of being the only major villain to oppose the Secret Agent more than once. She escapes at the end of the story, and I’m sure the readers at the time figured that was the last they would ever see of her. But she would return in February 1936 for “Dividends of Doom.”
I think what separated Paul Chadwick and G.T. Fleming-Roberts was in the latter’s ability at characterization. Chadwick’s stories are steeped in horror, and you remember that about them. But with Fleming-Roberts, you remember his characters first. And he was especially good when creating the many vamps that dominated his stories. Whether minor characters, or leading villains, the females always took center stage.
Although she had turned to crime, Felice Vincart will always be remembered in the annals of Secret Agent X!
I would like to think that, in some way, this volume is a tribute to her.
Monarch of Murder
Chapter I
EYES IN THE DARK
A JET-BLACK speedboat, ghostly and sinister, streaked over the ocean fifty miles from shore. Darker than the night-darkened sea around it, its torpedo-shaped hull had been made invisible by a coating of ebony paint.
It shot into the troughs, lifted on the oily swells, sped forward like a strange and fearful spectre bent on an unholy quest.
There were red and green running lights on its flat deck, but they were unlighted. There was an engine of several hundred horsepower beneath its hood, but the blasting beat of the multiple cylinders had been muffled in an under-water expansion chamber to a mere whisper of sound. And the passenger who stood in the small cockpit amidships was as still and silent as some granite-graven image.
One of his gloved hands was on the control wheel. The other held a pair of powerful night glasses to his eyes. Through the achromatic lenses and crystal prisms of these, he studied the horizon, looking alertly out across miles of heaving water.
He was steering directly in the trans-Atlantic shipping lanes. The frail craft beneath him, running without lights, seemed a challenge to the knifelike bow of some great liner, inward bound.
Even now a sparkle showed in the distance where sea and sky met. The towering super-structure of an ocean greyhound was approaching. It came on swiftly, rising to blot out the wan, cloud-flecked stars.
The man in the speedboat watched it closely. At the last he lowered his glasses and veered his jet-black boat a quarter mile to the left. He stared inactively as the incoming liner drew abreast, a behemoth of the seas, with a myriad twinkling lights set between glittering decks. Hundreds of happy, homeward-bound people were on board. None of them knew of the lonely watcher on the dark sea outside.
A faint glow from the passing vessel’s ports fell on his face. The features of that face were nondescript, inconspicuous. Yet the eyes themselves, under a turned-down hat, blazed with a strangely intent, strangely compelling light. They were the only clue to the fact that the face of the silent watcher was part of an elaborate disguise; that he, like the black craft in which he rode, was cloaked in mystery.
For the man in the speedboat was Secret Agent “X,” master investigator, detecti
ve extraordinary, whose identity was such a living enigma that even the police bureaus of the land misunderstood his motives. A man who was hunted by the law and the lawless alike, moving always between two fires, with the hatred of the criminal underworld on one side, and the vengeance of the police on the other.
He circled now, and continued his strange patrol, letting the great liner sweep by. This was not the boat for which he waited.
The ship he was seeking was the S.S. Baronia, of the Blue Star Line. The Secret Agent stooped, and fingered a dial beneath the speedboat’s instrument panel. He listened intently as the insect buzz of a small radio sounded. The dots and dashes flashed off with lightning rapidity were intelligible to him. Messages were reaching the shore from the Baronia now. The vessel was keeping closely to her schedule. She was due off Ambrose light in two hours. Agent “X” swung the nose of his speed craft toward the horizon once more. He adjusted his night glasses again.
Five minutes passed—ten—and a second cluster of lights appeared low down against the water. They blossomed quickly, took on size and form. The Baronia, one of the newest ships of the line, was making excellent time. Her three squat funnels became visible presently. Her rakish, modernistic lines made her identity unquestionable. This was her maiden Atlantic run, and many of Europe’s and America’s notables were on board. Financiers, statesmen, society belles, actresses, and wealthy business men. All had been glad to book passage on this newest of luxury liners. But none of them were responsible for the Secret Agent’s interest in the boat.
It was another of the Baronia’s passengers, traveling incognito, whose rumored presence on the ship had brought Agent “X” miles from shore to take up his lonely vigil. Andreas Morland was the man’s name—better known as “Doctor Marko”—one of the world’s most sinister geniuses of crime.
ALONG the grapevine telegraphs of the underworld, Agent “X” had heard startling whispers. From the same source he had become aware of amazing facts which spelled unimagined menace.
He himself was a pledged hunter of criminals; one whose life was dedicated to a ceaseless battle with the forces menacing quiet, law-abiding citizens. Now it seemed that the Fates were conspiring to bring about a strange meeting. A meeting between Agent “X” and a criminal whose audacity and cunning put him at the head of his sinister profession.
For Doctor Marko was not only a brilliant linguist, scientist and inventor. He was a human fiend as well, who had baffled the combined forces of Scotland Yard, the Paris Sûreté and the International World Police in Vienna. He had terrorized half of Europe in a series of brutal crimes, had then escaped from an English jail where he was serving a life sentence in a specially constructed cell.
Details of these exploits were in the Secret Agent’s files. Pictures of Doctor Marko were contained in his own private rogues gallery. He had also helped himself to the information which the police possessed.
And he knew what the police did not. Even the great Marko hadn’t escaped from his triple-walled, electrically locked cell unaided. Reenforcements had come from the outside—reaching across the ocean from the shores of the United States. The ace criminals of America had banded together, raised a hundred thousand dollar pool, and set in motion a scheme to import Marko as their leader.
The reason was obvious to “X.” Men of the D.C.I., and the new anti-crime laws had made it tough for American crooks. Kidnapers had been rounded up. Murderers sent to the chair. Dope and policy rings had been smashed. Former racketeers jailed for non-payment of taxes. Dozens of public enemies had been laid low.
But some of the most wily criminals were still at large. Now these ace men in their respective fields had formed a startling combine and chosen a logical leader.
It was the threat of this sinister alliance that had sent Agent “X,” Man of a Thousand Faces, into battle. He sensed its dread significance, knew that once the combine began to function, with Marko heading it, no police power in the land would be adequate to cope with it.
For Marko was rumored to have devised novel and terrible weapons. New methods of killing and new ways of committing crime. He must not be allowed to land, and Agent “X” was going to try to stop him—even if he had to investigate every one of the Baronia’s passengers.
It would be a difficult task he knew. Shortly before Marko’s departure from England a famous plastic surgeon had been murdered. The Agent believed that Marko had changed his face beyond recognition. He knew that the American police would be watching for Marko, tipped off by an incomplete cable from a murdered Scotland Yard man that he had seen himself. It said simply:
“Marko believed to have boarded Baronia at Liverpool. See King, American lawyer on ship, he may—”
There the message had ended, its sender silenced forever. And Agent “X” wanted to question King ahead of the police. If the man had some clue to Doctor Marko’s identity, “X” must learn it. He must stop Marko before the secret threat of his strange combine became an actuality.
THE Agent’s muscles tensed as the Baronia drew nearer. His eyes grew steely bright, his lips grim. He stayed directly in the vessel’s path till the high brow rose above him like a giant’s knife threatening to sever sea and sky. Then he swerved to the left, rode a smothering mountain of white water, and came back.
With the thunder of the sea monster’s passage in his ears, he moved in toward the towering, steel-plated hull. He throttled the black speedboat till its pace was synchronized with the other craft. He drew closer still. He braced the wheel, reached into a small cuddy and drew a strange apparatus out.
It was a short length of rope with a suction device as large as a platter on its end—a vacuum anchor of his own devising. He snapped the end of the anchor rope into a metal ring, then came so near the Baronia’s side that the hissing waves threatened to dash the speedboat against it any instant.
He reached out a taut arm, and pressed the vacuum disc against the Baronia’s plates. They were wet, smooth. The suction cup of rubber instantly held. He cut his motor to idling speed, let the giant liner tow the speedboat like a tiny leech attached to the belly of a whale.
While the captive boat bobbed and lurched the Secret Agent pulled other suction devices from the cuddy; lightweight duralumin frames set with small, powerful rubber cups. There were leather straps provided. He fastened these under his knees and elbows. Automatic spring clamps opened valves in the tops of the suction cups, loosening them when they were tipped beyond a certain point, sealing the cups tightly when the clamps were at right angles.
When all was ready, the Agent turned to his speedboat instrument board again. He worked in darkness. His fingers turned a lever that set in motion a radio control device. He was going to leave the craft, but not lose it. Abandoned by him, a slender radio beam from a hidden generating set on shore, acting on a robot pilot, would guide it back to a secret dock. The Agent smiled thinly at this boat of his that could find its way home.
He waited an instant, getting his balance, then thrust his knee forward till the suction clamp strapped to it clutched and clung to the Baronia’s side. He clamped his elbow next, then his other knee. With his free right hand he reached down and loosened the speedboat’s suction anchor by opening a spring valve.
The black craft disappeared into the darkness along the Baronia’s hull. Agent “X,” like a human octopus risen from the waves, began the slow, laborious climb up the throbbing cliff of steel.
Chapter II
A MURDERER STRIKES
THE clamps on his suction-cup device worked smoothly, silently. The vacuum grips held him close to the vessel’s side. His very life was dependent on the automatic movement of the valves. Their slightest slip could send him hurtling into the black abyss of the sea.
But his own finely conditioned muscles were doing their part as well. For it took the precise poise and balance of an athlete to shift from knee to elbow to knee again in the awkward vertical ascent.
Once he stopped to breathe deeply as an old wound in his
left side gave him a twinge of pain. The scar of it, oddly enough, had puckered the flesh just below his heart into the lines of a crude X. It seemed the sign and symbol of the Agent’s indomitable will. For he had received it years ago on a battlefield in France, and eminent surgeons at the time had said that he couldn’t live. Yet his strange vitality had pulled him through, made it possible for him to face death many times afterward.
He was far above the ocean now, at a dizzy height on the Baronia’s steel-plated side. He reached the first row of ports, and moved by them cautiously, a weirdly clinging figure in the windy night. He held his body close to the metal surface, moved more slowly while the beating of his heart grew labored and the muscles beneath his clothing bulged.
He came to a deck, and for a moment he seemed like a fixture of the ship itself, crouching just below the railing, listening tensely.
There was no one in sight in either direction when he raised his head. He swung himself quickly over the rail, and stood upright on the Baronia’s third-class deck. Unstrapping the suction mechanism at elbow and knee, he saw that the apparatus was too bulky to conceal, and tossed it into the dark water.
His eyes roved along the deck. In only two hours the Baronia would arrive off quarantine. Two hours in which to search for a cunning, vicious criminal among hundreds of passengers and crew. Two hours to find Doctor Marko, the man whose sinister combine threatened to spread a leprous blight of crime over the map of America.
Pulling his hat low, the Secret Agent strode forward. He must be thorough, systematic. He had already familiarized himself with a printed plan of the ship. He needed now only to crystalize the precise details of that plan in his mind. He made a complete circuit of the third-class quarters, slipped under a rope and up a forbidden companionway to the deck above. A tour of this followed, and once again the Agent worked higher, climbing furtively to the level reserved for the wealthier class of travelers.
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