The stillness of the strange chapel room seemed to deepen. Every nerve in the Agent’s body grew tense. What was Marko coming to? The slow voice behind the mask of flame continued.
“You interest me, Agent ‘X.’ In your own restricted way you are quite clever—and I am building up an organization which needs clever men. Ace criminals, I believe you would call them—and I pay you the compliment of putting you in that class. You have a distorted sense of gallantry which sometimes makes you do strange things. I have heard that you like to pose at times as a benefactor. That, however, is merely a conceit. All your activities are outside the law. You are a criminal like ourselves.”
Marko did not wait for an answer. Much as he seemed to know the Agent’s career, he had not penetrated to the fact that “X” was an enemy of crime.
“You dogged my trail,” he went on sneeringly. “You thought you could snatch the profits of my labors out of my hands. You wanted to chisel in. Yet, because your actions won my respect, I let you live. Now, however, we face a showdown. Now I am going to make you a proposition.”
Marko waited as though for dramatic effect. There was restless movement in the space behind “X” again. The Agent himself was listening in fascination. The man of flame continued.
“You will throw in your lot with me, Agent ‘X.’ That is my proposal. You have a number of tricks which I can use. All these you will make known. You have, I believe, hideouts scattered through the city. These shall be made available to the men who work for me. Lastly, I have heard rumors that you have a secret organization of your own. This shall continue functioning under my direction.”
As Marko paused, a cold fury chilled the Agent’s body. The thought of Bates and Hobart and their staffs working for this human monster sickened him. The man was a blind egotist to think he’d ever agree to such a thing. But he demanded an answer now.
“What do you say, Agent ‘X?’ A share in my profits, a place in my organization, for all you have to give.”
“No!” said the Agent, coldly, tonelessly.
Marko laughed. There was something fiendish and chilling in it. “Don’t be a fool! I’ve outwitted you at every turn. Last night I made your own friend betray you. Yes, Betty Dale! She thought she was acting for your own best interest. She thought she was saving your life, by turning you over to the police. Information reached her that you and Borden together were to be wiped out by my dusty death. Borden’s rash statement to the press made it sound convincing. She knew what had happened to Robert King. She thought you were in imminent peril of death—and she betrayed you to the police to save you—but at the same time, unknowingly, confirming your identity for me. You see with what sort of man you are dealing! You must join my forces—or be crushed. What is your answer now?”
“No.”
Marko’s voice became gloating, sibilant, like the purring of a cat.
“I thought you might be stubborn! I thought that pressure might be needed—and I have it! The secret of your identity is your power. You guard it with your disguises—and with your life. But that identity is no longer secret, Agent ‘X.’ I know it! During the time you were unconscious I removed your clever facial disguise for a time, and studied your features. More than that, I photographed them. I have a detailed set of plates, Agent ‘X.’ If you do not join my group—these plates will find their way at once into the hands of the police. Your picture will be spread on the front page of every paper.”
The Agent sat frozen in his chair. Marko’s cunning act had made even escape seem futile. Unless he could get the plates, destroy them, his career would be forever ended. But Marko, gloating, driving home his point, went on:
“One more thing, my friend! I said awhile ago that you were gallant. Perhaps I should have added—sentimental! I know it was a shock when your pretty Miss Dale, as you thought, betrayed you. It will be more of a shock when I tell you she is now my prisoner. That was more than a precaution. It was a necessary step in case you proved obstinate. You have seen what my dehydrating gas can do! It enters the body through the lungs. It is tasteless, odorless at first—but it attacks at once the hemoid corpuscles, the phagocytes, then the body cells, vaporizing moisture, burning fat, and turning flesh to dust.
“Picture your friend, the blond Miss Dale, under its unesthetic influence. Picture those very red lips, those clear blue eyes, those attractive feminine curves crumbling into dust! Picture your consternation—and make up your mind!”
Chapter XVII
DEATH DECREED
A HOARSE, inarticulate cry came from the Agent’s throat. He realized, suddenly, that he was bathed in sweat. He realized that Marko’s brutal, mocking words were playing over his nerves like a file over steel. But he controlled himself with a mighty effort. He said in a voice that was harsh with his effort at restraint:
“In the light of what you say—I will consider.”
The shoulders of the flame man shook. “You will consider! Well spoken, Agent ‘X.’ And I shall give you till morning to do it in. You will be my prisoner, of course. I could hardly let you go. You shall have all night to think of your own identity, your photographs, in the hands of the police. And to think of Betty Dale, stripped of her comely flesh—as you saw those two fools, Relli and de Coba!”
Marko was silent a moment, looking down at what seemed to be a bit of paper in his hand. He spoke with a more abrupt, authoritative ring.
“And now be silent, Agent ‘X.’ We have other business to transact. First, I want to say that the successful raid last night was hardly more than a preliminary coup. I have other enterprises in mind, the details of which I shall acquaint you with at our next meeting. But, speaking of Relli and de Coba, gentlemen, their deaths may be a warning to certain rebels in our group. But I think you who are with me tonight are faithful. You know that your highest profits, your greatest security, lie in complete obedience to me.
“You know that unlimited wealth lies before us, that with the crime kings united under one head, we can control our destinies. But there must be one head—not two, or three, or four. I must have absolute power, gentlemen, for the best good of us all. And fools who rebel, at what they term my high-handed methods, must be destroyed. Destroyed—do you hear—no matter who they are?”
Eyes that held in them baleful cruelty and a lust for power seemed to burn through the mask of flame. Marko’s head slowly turned, staring at every silent figure in the room.
“I have kept myself aloof, hidden from you all, because in that way I can exert the utmost discipline. I can order death where death becomes necessary. There are a few among you, closer to me than the rank and file, who will carry out my orders to the letter. And tonight, gentlemen, I am compelled to order the death of one who was an original backer of our plan—one who helped to bring me across the sea. I am speaking of Bruno Sleeber.”
A hush fell over the sinister chapel. Marko’s decree of death brought a smothering blanket of fear. These men had imported Marko; but he had assumed supreme control.
“Sleeber will die at midnight, gentlemen. He has not cooperated as he should. He has been careless of my orders. He took upon himself to make promises to Relli and de Coba after they had landed. He let them contact him personally though they had not been admitted to the inner circle of our group. Tonight he is entertaining friends in a room above the Veronica Cafe. There will be talk and drinking, boasting and laughter. But it shall end, gentlemen—unpleasantly for all. One of our trusted members will carry out the mission. The dusty death shall take its toll again—as a warning to each and all—who do not obey.”
Once again Marko’s flame-masked eyes moved hypnotically around the room. Then slowly the flames began to dim, and his figure faded out of sight. There was a door, a hidden way of entrance and egress, “X” concluded, behind that pulpit screen. The meeting was over. Behind him, in the gloom, figures began to rise and shuffle out.
He could not see where they went. He could only hear them. But presently four ghostly, black-masked
men came and lifted him bodily in the chair. Without a word, like trained automata, they carried him to the center of the chapel chamber, lifted a trapdoor in the floor, took him down a flight of steps, and set him down. A small overhead light clicked on. The Agent saw a grilled steel door—a cell.
One of the masked men opened it. “X,” chair and all, was carried inside. He was placed in the middle of the cell. His wrists, which were getting stiff, were unlocked, while his legs were still left fastened. Then the silent slaves of Doctor Marko withdrew. One began slowly pacing the corridor outside like a prison warden, while the other three climbed the stairs and disappeared above.
IT had all been like some starkly hideous nightmare. Marko’s appearance and words, and the action of these men. Agent “X” felt through his clothing at once—and knew why his hands had been let loose. Anything that the police had failed to take from him, Marko had ferreted out. There were secret hidden linings in his suit. All these had been slit open, emptied. He looked down at his feet. Even the secret compartment of tear gas in his hollow sole had been discovered, and turned loose. Marko thought him utterly defenseless.
But the Agent stared with gleaming eyes at his watch. Marko’s vanity, his desire to prove to “X” the power of his amnesia-producing drug, had made him leave that on. It looked like an ordinary wristwatch on the surface, harmless, regular. It was practical and kept excellent time.
Yet “X” never lost an opportunity in his work. His active brain was ever on the go—devising means of extending his abilities.
With tense fingers he undid the strap of the watch. He opened the case at the back, pressed a catch at either side. The works slid out in his hand. He turned a tiny screw, drew the coiled mainspring from its pivot.
It was in a metal case, but the Agent snapped it out. It uncoiled with a silvery, musical note. Made of the finest tempered steel. The outer edge was smooth—but the inner had razor-sharp hacksaw teeth. Here was no magic, no super-human art. Here was only deep foresight on the Secret Agent’s part. He had been caught in many strange predicaments before.
Gauging his periods of work with the moving shadow of the guard outside, he stooped and began to cut through the metal rings that held his feet to the chair. They were not thick, yet too thick for any man to break. He sawed with quick, flexing movements of his powerful wrists, holding the spring blade at either end. Its tempered edge bit steadily inward.
Each time the guard came past “X” rose and waited. He drooped like a man in the depths of profound thought or despair. The instant the shadow passed he went to work again. In eight minutes time he had one side of the ring cut. In fifteen minutes he was able to break the other loose. He was free in the cell, his feet unfastened, and he snapped upright again as the watchful guard came past.
The Agent’s heart was beating like a hammer. He dared not think of what might depend on the next few minutes. Betty Dale! Other victims of Marko’s ruthlessness. His own career. They passed in a dizzy whirl through his mind as he tried to beat them down. He put his spring saw away, strapped his watch back on, sagged sidewise in his chair.
He made a sudden strange sound, blowing air through his teeth. It was bubbling, stertorous breathing, that whispered eerily in the cell. It seemed the breathing of a dying or swooning man. His arms hung loose and dangling. His neck was twisted.
He heard the guard’s quickly shuffling feet; heard the man come and stand by the grilled door. The man did not speak, but “X” could feel intent eyes upon him. The cell was dark, yet he had wedged the severed section of the metal ring back in the circle, held it in place with a minute crease of his trousers.
The guard turned on a light, played it over “X.” The Agent’s breathing came more faintly. He let his mouth hang open. The guard moved quickly then. A key grated in the lock, the door swung open. Footsteps moved cautiously across the floor. The guard was standing, peering down.
At that instant, like a steel spring uncoiled, the Agent straightened in his chair and leaped. The guard was poised out of reach of the chair, faintly suspicious of some ruse. He didn’t suspect that the Agent was a free man now.
The Agent’s body, pushed by a powerful kick of his straightening legs, catapulted through space. A gun in the guard’s right hand swung up, but never fired. The Agent’s fist, with all the hurtling force that he could muster to back it, struck the guard’s face at a point where the mask projected. Knuckles cracked against flesh and bone. The guard’s head snapped up. The Agent landed on top of him with flying momentum.
THE masked guard’s gun dropped with a clink from listless fingers. He plunged backward like an upset tenpin. The top of his head struck the bottom frame of the open cell door. There was a crunch as of a breaking egg. The guard lay still.
The Agent waited a breathless minute, wondering whether that faint sound of the falling gun had been heard above. There was no stirring anywhere. He lifted the mask and saw the brutal features of a criminal face. A grayish hue was coming over them. “X” knew that the man was dead, that he had shattered his skull without intending to.
He lifted the inert body, deposited it in the prison chair. He took the man’s gun, keys and flashlight, stepped out and locked the cell door. He moved to the foot of the stairs down which he had been carried. There were three other cells along the corridor, but they were empty. The fresh whiteness of the cement into which the steel bars were set showed that this strange prison had been built recently. It was a detention place for the private use of Doctor Marko. But where was Betty Dale?
The Agent felt a sense of dread that he struggled to throw off. He must work instead of worry. He must try to find her before his own escape was discovered.
He reached up to the ceiling, and unscrewed the single corridor light. Then he felt his way to the stairs down which he had been carried, groped up them in darkness, and listened for several minutes.
There was no slightest stir of sound above. He put his hands on the underside of the trapdoor, and pushed slowly, half expecting it would be locked. But it gave easily as some sort of balanced counterweight slipped down. It made no noise. “X” saw that the big chapel room above was dark.
There was no light anywhere. His head and shoulders emerged in Stygian gloom. Evidently the solitary guard had been left behind. The others had gone, or were sleeping close at hand. This thought made “X” doubly cautious.
He stepped from the trapdoor opening, lowered the cover softly, stood listening again with the darkness pressing all around him. He thought of the screened-in pulpit then. He must follow Marko if possible. He must see where the man of flame had gone.
He clicked on the guard’s flash, holding the gun in the tense fingers of his right hand. The Agent seldom carried lethal weapons. But tonight he had borrowed one, and he would shoot to kill. But there was no living thing in sight.
This was indeed a chapel. He’d been right in that. The vaulted roof arched above him. There were pewlike seats all about. But the floor space was limited. The Agent shuddered. It was more like an undertaker’s chapel than any in a church. That, he believed, was what it was—a private funeral parlor, which Marko had appropriated.
He stalked down the aisle toward the screened-in pulpit ahead. A weird place for a criminal to appear. Yet Doctor Marko was no ordinary crook. He tensed as he came to the screen behind which the man of flame had stood. It was made of fine-meshed, bullet-proof steel. There was a front and sides, but no back. It was a transparent shield for Marko to stand behind, a protection against a stray shot from some rebellious follower.
But though the Agent searched, got down on his hands and knees, turned his light in all directions over the floor, he could find no exit door. The floor seemed utterly solid. He had no tools. He dared not attempt to pound it, or rip it up. He looked for secret levers that might raise or lower the floor—found none.
And minutes were slipping, minutes when he was accomplishing nothing. He began making a tour of the chapel then, hoping he might find the quarters where
some of Marko’s men slept. His fingers opened and closed. If he could find one of those masked guards he’d get the truth, learn the secret of this place if he had to crush bones and throttle breath. Yet there were no hidden rooms to be found, and only one door which seemed to lead to the street.
At one side of the room, the Agent paused and shuddered. A long black shape cast eerie shadows under his light. A casket stood there, adding a funereal touch. It was on the floor, the black lid lowered. The Agent sprang toward it, raised the hinged lid hopefully. But there was only empty space inside.
He lowered the lid, stepped away, and moved to the one door to the street. Marko, and Marko’s men had gone. There must be a secret entrance somewhere. Marko surely did not come by the street. Yet he might spend hours and not find it. He’d seen examples of Marko’s diabolic cunning. Even if he located one of the black-masked guards, forced him to tell what he knew, he might still be far away from Marko. Yet what had the criminal said? “There are a few among you closer to me than the rank and file…. Sleeber will die at midnight…. One of our trusted members will carry out the mission.”
Sleeber! The Agent stood for a moment tremblingly still. The choking, rotting, murder gas that turned living men to crumbling bones would soon fill Sleeber’s lungs. Sleeber would die as others had died before him. And one close to Marko, a trusted member of the devilish syndicate, would carry out the mission. That man, the stealthy executioner, might know the truth.
The Agent’s white-knuckled hands clenched tight. His smoldering eyes pierced the chapel’s gloom. A desperate plan took slow shape in his mind.
Chapter XVIII
THE MASKED ASSASSIN
BEFORE the house of Bruno Sleeber a shadow moved. From the darkness of an areaway, a man edged forward. Agent “X” was putting the scheme he’d thought up into swift action.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5 Page 11