He passed officers on watch, and a group of sauntering passengers. None dreamed that he had just arrived on board, bent on a startling mission. He cast appraising glances into the luxurious saloons and cabins, saw the bright appointments, the sumptuous decorations, the gay groups of men and women.
He continued his reconnaissance till he had reached the hurricane deck, topmost of all. The long gray lifeboats swung in their davits here. The ship’s huge funnels rose awesomely against the sky. Glimmering masthead lanterns showed far above them. The only light was that which came from the frosted scuttles set in the roof of the great saloon beneath.
Then the Agent paused. He had meant to walk toward the bridge and wireless room up forward, completing his quick inspection of the outside decks, after which he would go down into the ship and interview King. But now he stepped behind a metal stanchion, and stood quietly in shadow.
Directly before him was a strolling, solitary girl dressed in a shimmering evening wrap of emerald green. She was humming a snatch of song. Her face was turned toward the dark sea and the cool night wind. The graceful curves of her pliant body were revealed by her wind-blown dress, etched in light by the glow of a scuttle close beside her. But it wasn’t her beauty that made the Agent stop. It was the glimpse he had got of another figure moving stealthily behind her.
He stared intently as the girl came opposite. She was dark, glamorous, with a touch of hauteur in her easy, graceful carriage. The song fell from her full lips in a rich contralto. Her eyes were still turned pensively toward the sea.
The Agent’s gaze shifted from her to the moving shadow behind. The stealthy figure was a man, and he had side-stepped the scuttle where the light had first fallen on the girl. His features were a ghostly blur, and the Agent’s pulses quickened. For it wasn’t the gloom alone that made the man’s face indistinguishable. He was wearing some sort of mask.
Motionless, hardly breathing now, the Agent waited. In the center of the ship, between the two great funnels, was a wide sweep of deck with not a soul in sight. Here the girl in green paused by the rail to stare off across the sea in silent meditation. Here, too, the stealthy-footed man moved up to her.
THE Secret Agent leaped forward with a tightness along his scalp as a single muffled cry swept down the wind. The figures of the two had merged, were struggling.
It was dark, but not too dark for the Agent’s keen eyes to see. The masked man had pressed a hand over the girl’s red mouth. He was trying to snatch a beaded bag to which she clung desperately. So intent was he that he didn’t see the Agent’s swift approach.
Silent and tigerish in his movements, the man suddenly lifted the girl bodily, swung her up over the rail. Her terrified fingers dropped the bag to the deck. Fighting, clawing, kicking with silk-clad legs, she struggled to save herself. But it was the Agent’s swift interference that kept her from being pitched headlong into the sea.
She was balanced perilously on the railing as he came up. He dared not strike the masked man for fear that the girl would drop. He flung an arm about her waist, drew her back, as the man gave a snarl of surprise, and made a desperate dive for the beaded bag on the deck. This the Agent checked with a quick thrust of his own foot, planting his shoe over it.
For a bare instant the man paused uncertainly. He glared at “X” above the top of his handkerchief mask, his fingers crooked as though he intended to reach for a gun. Then his nerve broke. He turned and fled, leaving “X” with a brief impression of a white scar across a bulging forehead, and a pair of close-set eyes. The Agent didn’t try to follow. The girl’s tense fingers were hooked into his clothes. Even if he shook her off, the man’s panicky flight had carried him swiftly across the deck into a wash of black shadows.
There was a moment’s strained silence while the girl in green fought for self-control. Then she relaxed, and drew a little away from “X.” She was breathing deeply. But the color that had drained from her face during the murderous attack was coming back. She spoke huskily.
“You came—just at the right time.”
Agent “X” was startled at her self-composure. He had half expected an aftermath of hysterics. He stooped, picked up her beaded bag, and handed it to her.
“I’m glad,” he said, “that I could be of service.”
She was breathing almost normally now. She stood staring at him, her dark eyes limpid in the gloom, questing over his face.
“To whom,” she said, “am I indebted?”
THE Agent had come to the ship prepared with credentials, papers, even a passport made out in the name of one of his many aliases which his strange activities forced him to assume.
He bowed formally, said with a deliberate touch of stiffness: “To Mr. Clifford Brown. But don’t regard it as a debt. It was a pleasure.”
The girl smiled faintly at that.
“You are very gallant, Mr. Brown.”
The Agent bowed again. “Not gallant—only fortunate in being able to aid so charming a person—whose name I have not yet learned.”
“Carlotta Rand,” she said at once. “And if you hadn’t come just when you did—I would have been—out there!” She gestured toward the dark sea, shuddered.
The Agent drew her toward the nearest lighted scuttle, and studied her face intently. She was the social type, he saw; used to keeping her emotions under control, capable of a calm front under almost any stress.
“Who was that man and why did he want to steal your bag?” the Agent asked.
“I couldn’t see his face. I don’t know who he was—but I think I know what he was after.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Europe is like an armed camp, as you know. I’ve just returned from there. Spies are everywhere, trying to steal secrets they can peddle. And it happens that the man for whom I work has documents that might be valuable.”
Her dark eyes probed the Agent’s searchingly. She hesitated, then added: “I’m the confidential secretary to Colonel Stanley Borden, of whom you’ve no doubt heard.”
The Secret Agent nodded. Borden was a national figure, frequently mentioned in the press. As a representative of Washington, he had spent thirty years in the diplomatic service, doing much in that time to smooth out embarrassing situations abroad by keeping the American government closely informed on recent happenings. “X” understood now the unruffled poise of Carlotta Rand. She had been trained in a most exacting school.
“But surely you’re not carrying the colonel’s papers with you?” he said.
“No, I’m not. That man wanted my stateroom key. I’m located next to the colonel, with a communicating door between. I carry a traveling filing case which must have been seen. The colonel is playing bridge at the moment, and this spy seized his chance. Yet, even if he’d killed me, stolen the key and entered the stateroom, he wouldn’t have found anything of value. The colonel’s important papers are locked in the Baronia’s vault.”
There was a hidden challenge in the glance she gave him. A thin smile twitched the Secret Agent’s lips. His arrival must have seemed to her more than coincidental. She half believed him to be in league with the man whose attack he had warded off. Her next words showed that she was observant.
“I don’t remember having seen you before,” she said. “It’s rather odd, too, because I’ve struck up an acquaintance with most of the attractive men on board. Where have you been keeping yourself, Mr. Brown?”
Again the challenge flashed in her eyes. The Agent answered guardedly. “It’s a big ship, Miss Rand and—the truth is that I sneaked up from the second-class cabins just to see how the other half of the world lives. The fact that we haven’t met is—well, just an unfortunate circumstance—for me.”
She accepted the veiled compliment unruffledly. The Agent, back of his suave front, was tense. It had occurred to him that Doctor Marko might be behind the attack upon her, in an attempt to gain possession of valuable government secrets.
“You’d better go below,” he warned. “Stay where there are
others around. And tell the colonel about this. These papers of his are in the ship’s vault, you say—but the spy doesn’t know it. He may attack again.”
She nodded, and “X” accompanied her down a stairway into the main saloon. Men turned to stare at her luscious beauty. Women looked enviously at her smart attire. “X” was running a risk being with her by attracting attention to himself. If Carlotta Rand had spotted him as a new face—others might, too.
He declined her suggestion that he come and meet the colonel, excused himself on the pretext of having packing to do, and saw the look of suspicion flash in her dark eyes again. He would have to work quickly, carefully. She might take it into her head to have him watched.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you’ll join me for a cocktail before the boat docks—if I can manage to get up here again.”
Her gaze met his for a moment, quizzical, combative. “Perhaps!”
With that she turned away, moving lithely, gracefully across the richly carpeted saloon. Agent “X” walked toward the purser’s office, planning to get the number of King’s stateroom, then slowed in his long-legged stride.
TWO men had come out of the ship’s bar. Spotlessly groomed and dressed, they might have been taken for prosperous business men, sportsmen or social lights. But their faces carried instant and sinister significance to the photographic mind of Agent “X.”
He knew this pair. “Blackie” de Coba and Arnold Relli, two of the country’s most vicious, expert trigger men. They were not common hoods or cheap torpedoes who could be bought for a century note or a deck of snow—but professional killers commanding the highest prices in the bloody game.
The Agent forgot for the moment about King, and wondered what were Relli and de Coba doing on the ship. As they strolled away, he followed, until they disappeared through a stateroom door on B deck. There were other doors to right and left. Agent “X” quickly drew a set of master keys from his pocket. There were a dozen goose-necked rods and slender lengths of metal with pivotal extensions—keys unlike any others in the world.
He thrust one into the lock of the stateroom next to that occupied by the two trigger men. A moment he experimented, and felt the door give, then stepped through the opening casually, ready to make profuse apologies if any passenger chanced to be inside. But, though grips and suitcases were piled on a bed, showing that the occupants might return any instant, the stateroom was deserted.
The Agent at once drew a small mechanism from his pocket. It resembled a miniature folding camera, but was one of the smallest sound amplifiers in the world. He snapped open the front, took out a disc microphone no larger than a half dollar, and attached to a flexible cord. He pressed this against the wall, and put the cameralike box to his ear. He turned a small screw on the instrument’s side which corresponded in appearance to a film wind, but was a rheostat dial using the current generated by two powerful midget electric cells.
The voices of Relli and de Coba reached him then. They were alone in the next stateroom talking irritably. “X” heard the clink of glasses, the slosh of liquor in a bottle. Evidently they had made a purchase of gin or whiskey in the Baronia’s bar. Relli spoke with a nasal twang of irony.
“Here’s to—failure, Blackie!”
De Coba answered with a cynical laugh.
“We did our best, pal—earned our two grand. But we can’t protect a gent who’s afraid to show himself. Here’s mud in his blasted eyes!”
Liquor gurgled down eager throats as the Agent listened. Glass clinked again. Relli said:
“Either he don’t like our mugs, Blackie, or he ain’t on board. And for all me, he can go slap bang to hell! I’ve got ways to spend the dough.”
They both snickered. Agent “X” moved away from the wall. He had heard enough. His eyes were bright. Relli and de Coba had been sent obviously by the criminal syndicate to see that Marko was given protection as the underworld conceived it. And Marko hadn’t even revealed himself to the trigger men who were supposed to be his guards. Was it the strange quirk of fancy of a great criminal? Or was Relli right? Was Marko not on board?
The Agent put his instrument away. He stepped out of the state-room and strode quickly to the purser’s office. King might be the only answer to the riddle. He got the number of King’s stateroom, 43 on A deck, hurried to it, and knocked.
But there was no answer. The Agent frowned in disappointment. Where was King? Out at the bar probably. “X” would have to wait, or have him paged. He was about to turn away when something caught and held his interest. The faint odor of some unfamiliar chemical was seeping around the edges of the door to stateroom No. 43. The Agent sniffed, frowned again. There was something unpleasant about it—something he did not like.
Looking along the corridor quickly, he saw that no one was in sight. He took out his master keys again, found one that fit, and opened the lock. He stepped inside. The odor was stronger now.
The place was dark. He reached for a switch, found it, and flooded the stateroom with light. He took a step forward—two—and stood frozen in his tracks. There was no human occupant in the room, but, lying in a contorted position on the floor was what appeared to be a human dummy.
There were clothes on the grotesque thing; a coat, trousers, socks and shoes. The Agent looked closer, and felt icy tremors of unutterable horror creep spiderlike along his scalp.
Inside the clothes, visible above the band of white collar, was a grayish, grinning human skull. Below the immaculate coat cuffs, were crooked lines of powdered bones. On one of them was a dull gleam of gold—a signet ring.
The Agent stooped in paralyzed amazement. He stared at the band of gold with shocked intensity, saw the initials “R. K.” He reached out a trembling finger, touched the grinning skull and felt it crumble strangely. Breath sucked between the Secret Agent’s teeth. His stunned mind registered the awful fact. The lifeless, grisly thing before him was the remains of Robert King—the man mentioned in the cable message—and he had been murdered in some unknown, terrible way.
Chapter III
DEATH STRIKES AGAIN
THE Agent’s smoldering eyes remained fixed in horror on the heap of dusty bones. Doctor Marko was obviously on board. No one else could have done this thing. The rumor of new and hideous murder weapons was no mere myth. Marko had struck, ruthlessly, fearfully—proving that he was a master of the black art of death.
The porthole was tightly clamped. The door had been locked. The Agent’s eyes swung to the ventilator intake. He stepped to it quickly, sniffed, and found that the strange chemical odor was stronger here. Marko had put some fiendish substance into the intake pipe.
The Agent began a quick examination of King’s stateroom for possible clues. The crumbling skull on the floor seemed to mock his efforts. He found only books and papers, showing that King had been the legal representative of an American export firm.
“X” turned out the lights then. He stepped cautiously into the corridor outside, and hurried away. It was not for him to spread the news of King’s murder. He couldn’t afford to attract attention to himself. He was in a delicate position already, an intruder on a ship, unlisted among the passengers or crew, liable to be spotted and suspected by curious eyes.
He traced the intake pipe from King’s stateroom, found that it could be reached from a ventilator on the hurricane deck above. Only he and the killer himself knew as yet that a hideous murder had been committed. Only a few guessed that the ship harbored a vicious criminal. These few were the detectives on board who had received word of Marko’s rumored presence. Men from the U. S. Department of Justice recalled from foreign service, Scotland Yard investigators and ship’s detectives. Their alert expectancy must have become dulled by this time. Marko hadn’t been sighted since the ship left port.
But “X’s” experienced gaze picked them out. Clothes and certain mannerisms proclaimed their profession in his sight. He was seldom wrong in such deductions. A lean-faced ship’s detective with a hard, pugnacious jaw, shot him a
suspicious glance. The man had probably been memorizing faces for a week. He might have familiarized himself with the entire passenger list. There was danger of interference which the Agent wanted to avoid.
He slipped out on deck, walked the length of the promenade, passed through an entrance door into the ship’s huge reception lounge, loud now with talk and laughter. His restless eyes moved over the entire room.
They did not know, these casual people, of the horror and mystery on board. They were exchanging their brief pleasantries, cracking jokes, making plans to follow up their arrival at port. But, as he stared, heads suddenly lifted, voices stilled, men and women leaped to their feet as a cry sounded at the far end of the lounge.
The Agent instantly strode forward, a dry catch at his throat. For he had a premonition of some catastrophe, remembering the ghastly corpse of Robert King.
A man in a blue uniform was swaying over the purser’s desk, his face twitching strangely, his eyes wide with horror, his features deathly white. The man was saying something, spilling hoarse, barely audible words from bloodless lips, as paroxysms of terror shook him.
“Dead—nothing but bones!” he muttered. “The vault!” he almost screeched.
THE man was an assistant purser, and, as “X” drew nearer, he drew a hand over his slobbering, fear-white mouth. He lifted it to his eyes, shuddered like a drug fiend, seeking to wipe some horrible, haunting image from his mind. “Nothing but bones!” he babbled again. “Dusty bones!”
There was a swing gate beside his desk. The Agent was the first to thrust through it, the first to catch the awful significance of the man’s words. His eyes were bleak, his hands clenched, and a sense of dread filled him. The glass-set door to the chief purser’s inner office was open, and the Agent leaped to it.
A trim desk stood at the side of the room beyond. Sprawled over the varnished top of it was another horrible, human dummy, a bundle of sagging clothes that had recently been a man.
Crumbling fingers stretched forth eerily. The head, powdering from the spinal column, had fallen loose and was turned at a grotesque angle, a horror mask of grinning mockery. The cocky visored cap was there with the words Chief Purser in gold lettering. The natty uniform with gilt braid and brass buttons. Death had come with such appalling quickness that the man hadn’t had time to rise from his desk.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5 Page 2