The Agent leaped across the room, knocking into a frightened man as he did so. He groped for the flashlight he always carried in a secret pocket. But before he could get it out the house lights came on again.
After the darkness their glow seemed blinding. There was a breathless silence as taut faces stared at one another. A woman’s voice cut through it—the voice of Carlotta Rand.
“My necklace!” she said hoarsely. “It—my beautiful diamond is gone!”
A detective had found, and pressed a button, turning the lights on. Agent “X” was the first to reach Carlotta’s side. She was standing alone in the center of the dancing floor. All her poise had momentarily vanished. One shoulder strap of her gown was torn. She was clutching it tensely, while she fingered her bare throat where the sparkling diamond had so recently lain.
A window at the far end of the room was broken. Two detectives leaped toward it at once, guns in their hands. Carlotta Rand cried out again.
“Mr. Breerton—he—was dancing with me!”
GUESTS joined excitedly in the cry of “Thief! Thief!” The colonel came striding into the room aghast. He faced Carlotta Rand with angry, accusing eyes.
“Miss Rand—if you’d only listened to me—” He hesitated, turned to face his staring guests.
“Every one stand still! This is a shocking thing—but—let’s make sure we’re blaming the right party. Where is Mr. Breerton?”
There was no answer. Agent “X” watched tensely. Carlotta Rand had played with fire, and had been burned. The man she’d invited as her guest had apparently robbed her. For there was no doubt that Breerton had vanished. He was nowhere in sight, and detectives had leaped through the window, and were searching outside vainly.
“His address!” snapped Colonel Borden. “You know it, Miss Rand. It was you who invited him.”
One of Foster’s men went to her side quickly. She said:
“The Venetian Hotel. But—it doesn’t seem possible!”
Colonel Borden held up his hand. “Don’t let this spoil our evening, friends. It’s a regrettable happening—but the thief is gone. Miss Rand has lost her diamond—and learned a lesson. Let the dance go on!”
Carlotta Rand flashed him an angry look, and hurried out of the room still clutching her dress. The orchestra struck up again thinly. But chill night air was coming in through the broken window. The guests were nervous, panicky, and in no mood to dance. They moved instead toward the bar in the next room.
As they lifted liquor glasses, the Agent touched the arm of Colonel Borden. “I’d like a word with you, colonel.”
The colonel pulled himself together, peered at “X.” “You’re the young man who came with Miss Dale of the Herald. Sullivan, I believe?”
“Yes, I’m helping her with her interview. I thought perhaps, before something else happened, we could discuss this criminal, Doctor Marko.”
A grim smile crossed the colonel’s face. He gestured toward his study. “Right! In there, sir, we can be alone.”
He rang for whiskey and soda. The Agent settled into a big arm chair facing his host.
“As a reporter, colonel, I’d like to hear a few more details of Marko. Anything you can recall about the man’s mannerisms would be of interest to me.”
The Secret Agent was eager, and showed it. There was a chance that Borden might let fall something that would help him spot a hideous criminal. King had been killed before “X” could speak to him personally. Here was a man who had actually met Marko, and was still alive. How long he might remain alive there was no way of knowing.
The colonel began to reminisce.
“I was in the consular service, then. Andreas Morland was an American by birth, as you are aware. But he’d left the United States after escaping from prison. He got mixed up with the law in England, and thought he might skin through by asking the consul for help. That was before he’d made himself notorious, but he had a shady record. He was just another crook to me. I told him he was a disgrace to his country, and paid no attention to his appeal.”
“Exactly how did he appear?”
“He was tall—about your build, young man. He had a persuasive way with him. He talked quickly, I remember. There was a small scar on the left side of his face. His skin was pale, and he was rather handsome. They said he was an accomplished linguist. Like most crooks he was conceited, and he wore his clothes extremely well. I think he could have passed anywhere as a gentleman.”
The Agent nodded, tapped his chair. He was about to ask for still further details when a sudden noise sounded. Feet scuffed outside. The door of the room flew open. A group of men came pushing into the colonel’s study. Borden leaped to his feet with an angry exclamation.
“What—what’s this?”
THE men did not answer at once. They were staring not at the colonel, but at “X.” Two were detectives who had joined in the search for Breerton outside. The others seemed to be detectives also, but had apparently just arrived. In the hands of all of them were gleaming automatics, pointing straight at Agent “X.”
The colonel spoke hoarsely again. “Are you crazy—all of you? What’s the meaning of this?”
One of the men who was covering “X” flipped back his coat lapel exposing a gleaming detective’s badge. He spoke harshly from the side of his thin-lipped mouth.
“Take it easy, colonel! Don’t get fussed! You want to thank us. We’ve put the finger on one of the worst criminals in the city! Frisk him, boys. Take everything out of his pockets—everything, I say!”
“You mean this—this man here!” the colonel spluttered. “Why, he’s Sullivan—a reporter. He came with Miss Dale of the Herald.”
“Reporter hell! He’s a crook, colonel—one of the trickiest there is. He’s the guy they call Secret Agent ‘X’.”
Borden’s jaw fell open. The Agent was momentarily stunned himself. The exposure had come with the suddenness of a thunderclap—come when he’d least expected it. Betty Dale had obtained his entree here. As a qualified reporter on the Herald she had vouched for him. His disguise, he knew, was perfect. No slip-up had been made. No one had even seemed suspicious.
“I don’t—I can’t believe it!” the colonel gasped. “Secret Agent ‘X’.”
“Right! We’ve got a dame who’ll swear it’s ‘X’ in court. Send the skirt in here, Bill.”
The Agent turned his head in wide-eyed wonder. He saw one of the men go out, saw a familiar shadow fall across the door. It seemed then as though some one had struck him a paralyzing blow.
For a girl in a blue dress stood on the threshold, a girl with a lovely face and sun-gold hair. Betty Dale!
Her lips were bloodless now. She looked white and strained and shaken. But to the detective’s question: “Is this the man you think is Agent ‘X’?” she slowly nodded her head.
Chapter XVI
MARKO MAKES AN OFFER
A SECOND of silence passed. The Secret Agent almost doubted his senses. Blood pounded in his temples. His hands felt cold. He’d never dreamed that such a thing could happen—never thought that Betty Dale, who’d been his helper, who’d walked bravely with him into the very shadow of death, would ever betray him. Betty Dale—who’d professed fear for his safety that very day.
Yet there she stood—nodding at the detective’s accusation. There she stood, refusing to meet his eyes, staring straight before her with a fixed and pallid face, giving him into the hands of his enemies.
And her strange action was a double betrayal: for the Secret Agent was stricken with dumbfoundment. His usual wariness was gone. He made no desperate move for freedom in the few moments he might have had. Detectives’ hands were on his arms and shoulders, but he might have flung them loose. Guns pointed straight at his heart, but he had risked leaden death many times before. Yet, as he sat for the moment stunned, bright steel flashed downward. Serpentlike rings of steel pressed cold against his wrists. Steel clicked viciously as handcuffs closed. The Agent was a prisoner.
The
thin-lipped sleuth who had first accused him marshalled his men gloatingly. Their fingers delved in the Secret Agent’s clothes. They brought forth things that stamped him as the person they thought he was. His gas gun. His small sound amplifier. His case of make-up materials. His set of master keys that would fit any lock.
The big detective swore in grim triumph. He waved the gadgets under the colonel’s nose. He applauded Betty.
“Mister Sullivan, eh? Just a reporter out for news! Listen, fellah! You ain’t the first crook that got put on the spot by a smart dame! But you’re the biggest one I ever seen a lady give the ha-ha to! Why, every police chief in the country’s been after you! The G men want you down at Washington! You’ve been mixed up in some of the biggest jobs that’s ever been pulled. I’ll hand it to you, guy, you’ve had ’em guessing! The chief at headquarters thinks you may be Marko. If that’s so—if you was behind the killing of them cops—” The detective waved a hamlike fist close to “X’s” face. Cords in his neck stood out. His speech got thick. “There ain’t no crook so big that a rubber hose can’t loosen his tongue! And we’ll make you spill everything you know—if we have to break you wide open.” He placed a huge hand on “X’s” collar. He jerked the Agent out of his chair. “X” stole another glance at Betty Dale; saw that she was still standing by the door, silent, white-faced, glassy eyed.
“Don’t look so scared, lady. He won’t get away. You don’t need to be afraid. You helped us grab him—but we’ll do the holding of him now. He’s wearing steel bracelets, and they fit him good!”
The detective again held up the Agent’s strange equipment. He tapped the bulky pieces sneeringly.
“Too smart, fellah—a little bit too smart! Tricky gadgets—but they sure got you in bad! The lady here thought there was something phony about you, anyway. Then when you danced with her, and she found you carried hardware—she knew there was. You should a checked it before you crashed this party.”
The Agent still was dumb with wonder. He hadn’t danced with Betty once. If that had been part of her betrayal, she had lied deliberately. Betty turned her face away as he was led past. Colonel Borden made no further comment. Guests crowded forward, and stared aghast at the handcuffed man. The news had spread like wildfire. Secret Agent “X” had been caught. Secret Agent “X” was on his way to be locked up. Not one of them but had heard his name mentioned. Not one but had seen stories about him in the press. Secret Agent “X”—who was supposed to be one of the country’s strangest criminals.
The crowd parted to let him by across the carpeted floor. Detectives flanked him right and left. Detectives walked ahead and behind with drawn guns. Men and women goggled at him with a mixture of curiosity and fear.
Outside, a big headquarters car was standing. Two motorcycle cops sat on their chugging metal steeds in front. Guns pressed against the Agent’s back as he was thrust inside the waiting vehicle. Doors slammed, gears ground, the car lurched forward. The sirens of the two cops cleared the way. A man thought to be a great criminal was riding toward imprisonment and possible death.
The Agent did not fear either for himself. Fear had no part in his desperate, daring work. Fear he had long ago cast out. But Doctor Marko was still active—and the Agent’s task was incomplete.
Yet all the odds were against him now. Even the Agent, super-man of escape, who had pulled a score of thrilling get-aways, knew he might be trapped. Fear of Doctor Marko had almost shattered police morale. Every cop and detective was nervous, jumpy. Fingers were twitching on triggers. These men would shoot, and shoot to kill. A prisoner dead was better than no prisoner at all. And they’d placed him in the center of the back seat, with guns centered on him from all sides.
But even with this, the Agent’s brain was active. While Marko lived and killed, he couldn’t allow himself to be passively railroaded to jail. He must gamble. And “X” had often thought of just such a contingency. Thought of himself handcuffed, all his pocket equipment gone, guns around him. He had thought—and had made special preparations. The sole and heel of his right shoe were hollow. Made of lightest metal with a leather coating, there was a space between. This space held liquid tear gas in most concentrated form. Liberated into the air it would vaporize almost at once, throw off dense clouds of blinding, pungent mist.
And the Agent had only to press back with his heel on a tiny secret lever to let it out. He could close his own eyes, take a deep breath, and spring his stratagem. He could fight through a gauntlet of death while the detectives couldn’t see, burst open a door and possibly escape to the street. But he knew that the Grim Reaper’s scythe was poised and ready; knew that his chance of dodging lead was slight.
He waited for a block where the shadows were deeper. He began to draw in what might be his last breath. He prepared his foot for the stealthy backward pressure—but he never made it. Instead he gripped the edge of the seat—and felt his body toppling forward as there came a hideous squeal of brakes.
Somewhere up front, ahead of the car, where the motorcycle policemen were, a man screamed fearfully. Somewhere a police pistol stabbed streaking flame. A window crashed beside “X.” Guns roared in his ears. Men cursed and shouted. The lights of the street seemed to blot out in a mysterious blinding blackness. The big car slewed to a shattering, jolting stop. He had a sense of running figures, of pandemonium, of death. He barged past the guns and straining bodies of the detectives. He felt lead burn once along his scalp. Then he stepped toward the place where the pavement should have been—and instead seemed to sink into utter nothingness.
SOMETIME later, he awoke with no sense of time elapsed, yet with an uncanny feeling that he was in another world. For there was stillness all around him. A stuffy, smothering stillness, accompanied by a creepy knowledge that he was somehow not alone.
The Agent opened his eyes and held his muscles rigid. Was he really awake—or delirious, dreaming? For a dim light showed the inside of some sort of chapel. Stained-glass windows reflecting colored gleams. Sweeping columns. Gothic arches high above. A carpet stretching toward a queer-shaped pulpit.
The Agent felt then that he was in a high-backed chair. His elbows were resting on the arms. His wrists were held to them with polished metal bracelets. His legs were fastened, too. He couldn’t move them.
Then a soft voice spoke out of the gloom ahead, up by the pulpit. Slowly the gloom melted. The Agent’s breath came in hissing gasps. He strained at the metallic bonds that held him. He thought for a moment he was mad.
For an apparition was appearing. A man who seemed to be made of eerie, flickering flame. The pulpit, he saw, was only a metal screen. The flame-man stood directly behind it. The outline of his body was distinct. Human features were there, distorted, ghostly, by the aura of flame that was never still a moment. They played over and across his face with the slow upcurling of many writhing serpents. They came from every fibre of his garments. They curled and streamed from the hand that he was raising.
“Doctor Marko greets you!”
The words were as clear as the face was indistinct. They seemed to stab through the Agent’s distorted faculties. They came again.
“Doctor Marko greets you!”
“X” held his breath and waited. He knew now that he wasn’t delirious or dreaming. He knew that the man behind those mysterious flames was a being of flesh and blood. He knew that he was looking at Doctor Marko.
Then “X” heard a restless, uneasy stirring in the gloom behind him, as of human bodies shifting. There were others in this room. It was some sort of secret meeting place. Marko was not talking to him alone.
He tried to turn, but his arms were pinioned, and the broad back of the high chair shut off his rearward view. A sinister laugh came from the man of flame.
“Never mind them, Agent ‘X!’ Your business is with me alone! There are others present, but you cannot see them. Keep your eyes on me.” There was a mocking challenge in the last command. Marko knew that the flames formed a distorting curtain, concealing hi
s identity from “X.”
The Agent, looking closer, believed he’d solved their secret, however. They were not heat flames at all—but the shimmering aura of a static electric field. They were like the flickering light that sometimes plays around a vessel’s masthead before a storm. St. Elmo’s fire, seamen called it. Marko had created a weirdly effective mask of light. And the strange criminal spoke in corroboration of “X’s” theory.
“If my appearance startles you—don’t be alarmed. Merely a little science put to practical use. Static electricity in a condensed field.”
Marko laughed gloatingly and spoke as though addressing a group of children.
“Crime, gentlemen, has advanced beyond the elementary stage. The law of recent years has gone scientific. Radio cars. A central broadcasting station. Tear gas, riot guns, fingerprinting systems. And we who live outside the law must use science, also. You have seen how easily men under my direction open vaults! You have noted the effects of my dehydrating gas!”
A CHUCKLE came from Marko’s flame-spouting lips that had in it depths of gloating sadism. He could watch men turn to dusty skeletons, and glory in his own satanic skill.
“These are only two of my inventions,” he continued. “I have others—little things that will aid us in our work. Look at your watch, for instance, Agent ‘X’.”
The Agent did so, glancing at the timepiece strapped around his wrist—the only personal belonging left him. The hands showed exactly ten o’clock—yet it had been ten, or thereabouts, when he had been arrested in the home of Colonel Borden.
“Not ten in the morning,” said Marko softly, “but ten at night. You have been unconscious exactly twenty-four hours, Agent ‘X.’ Yet I’m willing to vouch that you haven’t the slightest recollection of having been knocked out! I have a little drug—a subcutaneous injection of which produces temporary amnesia.”
The flame-man shrugged. He waved a glowing hand toward the unseen figures seated in the gloom behind the Agent. “I make no boast of having the versatility at disguise of our friend here, Agent ‘X.’ That, gentlemen, is why I’ve allowed him to live, and had him brought before you.”
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5 Page 10