There was a scrape outside. The first mate stuck his head in. His face was anxious. “Anything wrong, sir?”
Murray Ferguson pointed dramatically. “This man’s an imposter. He’s not the captain. He’s one of the worst criminals alive.”
“Not the captain!”
“No, he’s Agent ‘X’—a crook who can change his face into any shape. He’s killed my brother.”
“He’s mad!” said the Agent calmly. “Here, Murray, pull yourself together.”
He was edging toward the door; but he saw Lawyer Ferguson’s quick movement toward his coat. The grayish gleam of a small automatic showed. “X” leaped aside, and tipped the table over as the gun boomed twice. Ferguson was screaming, his long teeth showing, his lips drawn back.
The mate had slammed the door. “X” heard running feet. The officer had gone for help. But he had heard what Ferguson had said. He would repeat it. Detectives and police would gather. The Agent would be caught in a human net.
The air was acrid with the smell of exploded cordite. Murray Ferguson raised the gun to fire again. “X” dropped to his knee. Lead screamed above his head. He whipped out his gas gun. There was a fresh cylinder of concentrated vapor in the breech.
He lanced a deft spurt straight toward the lawyer’s face. Ferguson aimed wildly, screamed, and shot again. But his lips sucked in the pungent gas. He tottered, staggered back against the wall. The gun fell from his weakening fingers. He slumped to the floor, lay still.
“X” leaped to the cabin door. There were shouts now, footsteps along the deck. The mate had found reenforcements. The shots had attracted quick attention.
A cry went up as “X” appeared, a confused, excited babble of many voices. He turned, and ran in the other direction, plunged through a corridor across the ship, burst out on a deck on the other side. He had only a few moments to spare before the word would spread through the whole vessel that Captain Ferguson was suspected of being an imposter.
Chapter IX
DEATH TO THE AGENT
EXCITED groups of passengers eyed him in wonder. They didn’t know what the noise was about, or why the supposed captain of the Baronia was running. To offset suspicion, and to clear the way he shouted:
“The criminal’s loose—go to your cabins!”
They scattered in terror. The Agent plunged ahead. A high officer of the liner stepped before him.
“What is it, Captain Ferguson?”
“Back there!” the Agent shouted, pointing over his shoulder. “Go—help them!”
“X” headed toward the companion ladder again, running a gauntlet of swift destruction. Only some desperate play could save him. They would think surely that he was the robber, and murderer instead of Marko. When those behind caught up, they would shoot on sight.
He clattered down an iron stairway to the deck below, taking the steps three and four at a time. He turned right, lunged through an exit, and saw the companion opening ahead. Two plain-clothes men were stationed there as well as several officers. They eyed the Agent in amazement. The news, evidently, had not yet reached them. A police whistle was blowing somewhere in the main salon close behind. Feet were thudding forward.
The Agent brushed the officers aside. One of the detectives, staring sharply, barred his way.
“Wait, captain! We’ve had our orders—”
“Sorry! This is imperative!” The Agent thrust by the man, and moved swiftly down the narrow companion. He was gambling again—gambling that the plain-clothes man wouldn’t dare shoot at the captain. He could hear the man shouting angrily, and coming down the stairway after him.
Four bobbing boats were tied at the stairway’s bottom. The quarantine doctor’s craft, two belonging to the police, and the fast launch that Betty Dale, and the other reporters, had come in. The engine of that was idling as it backed water to keep from touching the Baronia’s plates.
Cops in the police craft stared at “X,” curious over the excitement. The reporters gazed in open-eyed amazement, scenting a story. They hadn’t been allowed on board. Now the captain was coming directly to them. For “X,” with flashingly quick decision, had stepped over the railing of the newspaper boat.
The reporters, gaping, made way for him. They saw his gold braid, saw the insignia of rank on his visored cap.
“Where to, captain? What’s all the noise? Give us the dope, and we’ll take you where you want to go!”
A red-faced, eager newshound came close to “X.” But shouts sounded from the liner’s railing. The Agent had only a few more seconds in which to work. He didn’t answer the reporters’ questions. He couldn’t accept the offer of transportation. There would be shooting, the risk of death. He planned to commandeer the boat.
He strode to the stern, paused by the man who was acting as pilot. He faced the puzzled reporters, suddenly crouched. In his hand, as if by magic, appeared the small, wicked-looking gas gun.
They couldn’t know that it wasn’t deadly. He doubted if any one of them were armed. Reporters do not usually carry guns.
He made his voice an angry, threatening snarl, glared at the circle of faces.
“Out of this boat—quick! Every one of you!”
He lifted the pilot from the controls, grabbing the back of his coat, hoisting him off his feet. He pushed him toward the others. There was a split-second of stunned silence, then stamping feet.
“He’s crazy!”
“It isn’t the captain! It’s—that murderer they’ve got on board.”
THE radiogram from the Baronia had been picked up by other stations. These men knew certain facts, had heard of the ghastly killing on the ship. They stampeded out of the launch, leaped across to the police boats adjoining, and hauled themselves up the companionway stairs.
“Unsnap that rope!”
The Agent’s brittle, biting words as well as the menace of his gun, made the former pilot of the launch reach out mechanically, and unfasten the anchor line.
The boat was already in reverse. “X” shoved the throttle forward, fed gas to the idling engine, and shot away from the Baronia’s side. He held the spoked steering wheel hard over, and the lashing propeller drew the launch’s stern around in a sweeping arc.
But as he headed toward shore, a volley of shots broke out from the rail of the liner. He wasn’t out of danger. He was only beginning his mad foray with death.
Bullets spattered the water all about him. One slapped into the framework of the launch. Some sharp-shooting cop was getting in his innings. Yet those were only small arms. On board the two police craft there must be rifles and machine guns; standard police equipment.
As though in answer, the derisive banshee wail of a siren on one of the two gray boats struck up. It rose higher and higher to a mounting frenzy of sound. Along with the clamoring voice of the siren came the staccato bark of a Thompson sub-machine gun.
The Agent looked back. He could see a cop at the stern with the gun braced against his blue-coated body. He could see the wicked, greenish flame at the gun’s muzzle winking as though in sardonic mirth. Cupronickel slugs, flying messengers of death, screamed by his head. They struck the water directly alongside, sent up white geysers, ricocheted along the surface ahead of him.
One made a splintered groove across the launch’s forward deck. “X” had been under fire before. It was no new experience. He was fatalistic as he crouched tensely over the wheel, the throttle pushed forward as far as it would go.
He knew the darkness made accuracy unlikely; knew that he presented a bobbing and difficult target. The bullets went wider as he drew away. Although another chattering gun had joined the first, no slug came as near as that one that had burned the deck.
But the gray boat with the siren wailing was swinging away from the Baronia’s side now. The powerful engine in its middle was making a coughing rumble. It broke into a full-throated thunder as the gray boat heeled around. White foam appeared under its pointed bow. The grim chase had begun.
“X” knew th
at the siren was not a mere challenge of the law hurled at a desperate criminal. It was echoing across the water, calling to other police craft. In that open strip between the point of quarantine and the shore the real test would come.
The Agent wished he had his own black craft beneath him. Then he would have known exactly where he stood.
But this launch, he saw, was nothing very exceptional. It had evidently been chartered in a hurry by the members of the press. It was fast; but so were the police boats. He stared over his shoulder again, and saw that the one with the siren blaring had gained. Not much, but it was slowly cutting down the distance.
Worse still, a searchlight had sprung up between him and the shore ahead. Far off, like a gray wolf giving tongue, another siren sounded. The Agent’s eyes were bleak, his knuckles white on the spoked rim of the wheel. Danger and death he could face; had faced a hundred times. But the thought of dying before his work was finished was something he could not bear.
THE boat with the searchlight ahead was directly in his path, cutting off his escape. The boat in the rear was creeping steadily closer. A light in its deckhouse also was stabbing out a blue-white, dazzling beam.
“X” veered to the right, and saw the boat ahead veer, also. His course, and the course of the other would meet in the next ten minutes—and the spot of that meeting would mark his death. For nothing could escape the withering fire that would be turned upon him. He pulled his boat still more to the right, eyes fastened on a point of land he saw far ahead.
He waited tensely as the seconds seemed to drag. The searchlight of the boat behind was like a devil’s leering eye. It was growing steadily larger.
Again he heard the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire. A cop standing high on the deckhouse was hammering away with a tripod-mounted gun. The smashing might of the law for use against smugglers was being turned against him. They had plenty of ammunition. They were hoping for a lucky shot. There was maddening, deliberate purpose in the way the bullets came. They hoped to destroy him as they might a vicious beast.
When one belt was used up, there would be a half minute’s silence. Then the gun would begin again. And the bullets, spread over a five-hundred-yard area, were slowly coming closer. According to the mere law of chance one might easily have his name upon it.
He tensed as a screaming slug struck the launch close to the water line. It tore through the thin planking on both sides as though the boat had been a pod. “X” left the wheel an instant, stepped forward across the cockpit, and saw that water was coming in. Water from two holes—and enemies bearing down from two different directions.
He had covered more than half the distance to shore; yet he seemed merely putting off the moment of defeat. For soon the boat ahead would cut loose, too. He would be in the center of an annihilating cross-fire.
Suddenly, he turned away from the shore. He headed the speed launch parallel to it. The bobbing searchlight on the boat behind lost him for a moment. In those seconds of darkness the Agent worked quickly.
He had noticed a tool closet under the seat. He opened it, saw wrenches, files, screws and coils of wire. He drew a length of the latter out, and swiftly wired the spokes of the wheel in its present position, bracing it fast to a throttle stud.
He peeled off Captain Ferguson’s trousers and coat. He lifted one of the moveable floorboards in the boat’s bottom. On the end of this, he set the captain’s visored cap, and tied it with another bit of wire. He broke off a piece of boathook, lashed it with wire across the board, and set the captain’s coat upon it.
He carried the dummy to the stern and propped it up where he had been standing. The coat flapped in the wind, the cap looked realistic. At the distance it would be seen, he hoped it would work. It was a long chance, but he must take it.
He ducked inside, below the cockpit rim just as the searchlight, swiveling on its bracket, focused on the launch again. He waited breathless seconds for the opportunity he sought, as whining slugs of death played a game of hide and seek.
A ground swell heaved the police boat’s bow upward. The searchlight beam lifted for a moment. In that brief wash of darkness Agent “X,” tall and athletic in his own well-fitting suit, slipped overboard.
He kicked away from the launch as it growled past in a flurry of foam. He had taken a deep breath and he swam under water. He stayed down till his powerful lungs were almost bursting, then came to the surface cautiously, breathed, and dived again.
The second time he emerged he was out of the searchlight’s immediate path. The launch was in one direction. The police boat in the other, coming toward him. He turned on his back, kept his nose barely above the surface, and swam shoreward steadily.
In darker water, he raised his head, stared at the bobbing launch, and saw that the flapping, scarecrow dummy, still looked like the captain’s figure. But the launch was shearing slightly, with a set wheel instead of a guiding-hand. Would they understand it was a ruse, or think it was caused by a damaged craft or a wounded man?
Turning on his face the Agent began his swiftest crawl stroke toward land. He breathed under his armpit, made his shoulders move like powerful pistons.
He began eating up the distance, as the gray police boats hunted the manless craft behind. Guns on both boats were chattering now. The bright searchlights were focused. The launch was being raked from stem to stern.
Only when he heard sirens rise again did “X” look behind. Then he saw that the gray craft was close to the launch, that the latter was still soggily afloat, and that his ruse had been discovered. The police boats veered sharply, turned toward shore again. “X” began the last lap of his race with death.
Chapter X
MURDER COVERED
HE churned the water into a white froth with the thrusts of his arms and legs. He kept up a stroke that would have broken most racing swimmers. As the gray boats veered and circled like hounds that have lost the quarry, he drew steadily toward land.
But the danger wasn’t over. It was a race with seconds now. The gray boats were coming nearer, guessing what he must have done. Their searchlights fanned the surface like monstrous antennae.
He could see the hulking shadow of a wharf ahead, small boats bobbing at their buoys, a pier with an old freighter snugged against it. He churned more frantically as one of the questing beams almost touched him. The next time around it would. He gulped in lungfuls of air, drove his aching muscles to the limit.
He passed two boats, came within seventy feet of the dock. Suddenly the searchlight centered on him, both sirens shrieked in a wild, maniacal clamor, guns cut loose.
Dimly he saw the froth of bullets all around him, heard the steady rivet-hammer beat. He dived once, came up in a different spot, forged steadily on. He put a small boat at anchor between him and the chattering guns. When he came from behind it, a single, screaming slug brushed through his hair.
Then he lunged in amongst the pilings of the dock. Behind him, bullets whined and tore at the wood like gnashing, bloody fangs. Men were running along the planks above him, attracted by the racket. They turned and fled in terror of the bullets. “X,” like a darting shadow, reached the head of the dock, sped across a narrow street, and found a factory alley. He was lost in a moment under the black wash of a loading platform. He reached the end of this, found safer refuge in a cluttered storage lot. He had won his brief battle with the law; but his fight against the criminal, Doctor Marko, had hardly started.
He put on his wet shoes, which he had taken off and tied around his middle. In the darkness he drew off his white toupee and fingered his face. There was no time for a complete change of disguise; but he took out his waterproof case of materials.
A few deft touches with the plastic substance, and his fingers, working by sense of feel alone, had changed his appearance, so that no one looking for the captain would know him now.
Yet, he knew that alarms were speeding across the city. Teletype machines must be chattering. Radios buzzing. The police everywhere would be o
n the watch. His wet clothes might give him away. He couldn’t go on foot to his nearest hideout. To charter a cab would be unsafe. And the Agent had no time to waste.
He came from the storage lot and saw a standard-make car parked across the street. Instantly he darted toward it. Its owner was not in sight. The Agent had master keys that would fit almost any lock or ignition.
He helped himself to the car, and drove away swiftly. This was only a borrowing, not a theft. The Agent always made restitution for any loss he caused.
He drove to within a block of a secret hideout, one of several such places he maintained in different parts of the city to aid him in his perilous work. He changed quickly to a new disguise, that of a young man named “A.J. Martin.”
He gave himself pleasant, blunted features, sandy hair. He put on a suit of a slightly sporty cut. He had credentials to back up this disguise, even an Associated Press Card.
He walked to another part of the block, and got a swift coupé from a private garage. This seemed to be a car of standard make. Its outward appearance was ordinary, just like A.J. Martin himself. But its tonneau and chassis housed many strange devices. Racks of flares and tear gas bombs. Armor plating along the back and sides. Sound-recording phones of amazing sensitivity under the edge of the roof. And one of the most complete auto radio sending and receiving sets in existence.
He parked in a quiet street, and now used the hidden radio sending set. In communicating with the organization run by Harvey Bates he had often found the radio convenient. He used a code system unknown to the police. In this code he sent Bates orders.
“Have your best men shadow Blackie Relli and Arnold de Coba as they come off the Baronia. Don’t lose sight of them. Keep Count Cariati, on same ship, under constant surveillance. Gather data concerning Murray Ferguson, criminal lawyer, brother of Baronia’s captain.”
BATES carried a small receiver on his person, or kept one within earshot day and night. He had never yet failed to get the Agent’s signal.
“X” drove on, stopped at a drug store, and called the detective agency of Jim Hobart. This was independent of Bates’ group. Only the Agent knew that both were working for him. They were the tools of routine investigation. He supplied the guiding, directing genius. Without his vast knowledge of people, things and underworld secrets, they would have been no more than conventional private detective agencies. With him behind them, they were formidable enemies of all crookdom.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5 Page 6