Through the glass window of his office door, he watched a pleasant-faced, redheaded man who was trying, clumsily enough, to sell a fine jade bracelet to a strange, dark complexioned man with a pin-point moustache and a long, stringy goatee. The dark man was famous throughout the city. He was Dr. Jules Planchard, a skilled plastic surgeon. Other clerks, more experienced, looked askance at the redheaded man. Obviously, the snap judgment of Krausman had failed for once. The redhead was certainly no salesman. Would he allow so valuable a customer as Jules Planchard to go out empty handed?
Planchard, however, seemed to have made up his mind as to what he wanted. He glanced at his wrist-watch, waved toward the jade bracelet and ordered the redhead to wrap it up. He paid for the bracelet, thrust it into his pocket and left the store.
The redheaded clerk turned his attention to a pretty young girl who had just asked to look at wrist-watches. In the office, Peter Krausman chuckled grimly. The redhead was much less interested in his attractive customer than he was in keeping half an eye on the front door.
Suddenly, the humor vanished from the swarthy face of Peter Krausman. He was watching the right hand of the redheaded clerk. It had been resting on the glass top of the counter. Suddenly, it snapped upward, and drummed twice on the counter. Krausman sprang to his feet, started toward the door of the office. Beyond, he could see the flashing body of a beautifully appointed sedan that had come to a stop in front of the store. The redheaded clerk shot a glance at the office, seized the young woman who had been contemplating the purchase of a wrist-watch. In spite of her vehement protestations, he pushed her back behind the counter, and through a small door in the wall.
A fellow clerk, inclined toward gallantry, stepped in front of the redhead. The redheaded man gave the intruder a vigorous push.
“Watch your step, everybody!” his voice rang out imperatively. “It’s a stick-up!”
At the same moment that Peter Krausman catapulted through the door of his office, four men barged through the front door. They were men whose right hands were thrust deeply into coat pockets that failed entirely to disguise the shape of the automatics that they held. They were men whose unmasked faces were sharp with ratlike cunning. Deathly pallid faces they were, faces out of the past, faces of men who had figured prominently in old police records until death had chalked them from the list of public enemies.
Even the alert mind of Krausman who had been prepared for something of the sort, was for a moment stunned by the appearance of these gunmen. He recognized them to a man. Every one a hardened criminal, but every face the face of a corpse.
“Everybody back against the wall,” the raucous voice of the foremost member of the gang commanded. By the livid welt on his left cheek, Krausman recognized him as “Scar” Fassler, a criminal who five years ago had been pronounced dead by the prison officials who had removed his body from the electric chair.
OUTSIDE the store, a police whistle sounded. A stalwart, blue-coated figure sprang through the door. Scar Fassler wheeled about. His automatic nosed from his pocket. The policeman dared not fire, for the scar-faced gunman had taken a strategic position directly in front of the group of clerks which the gunman had herded back against the wall. He had the policeman entirely at his mercy, and for a moment he paused, enjoying his advantage.
Suddenly, Krausman, who had been covered by criminal guns as soon as he entered the room, displayed remarkable courage and agility. He sprang straight toward the gunman who threatened him. The gun in the criminal’s pocket coughed, but Krausman was unchecked. His gnarled right fist drove straight into the face of the surprised criminal. The blow fairly lifted the man from his feet, but even before he had struck the floor, Krausman had hurled himself upon Scar Fassler. Fassler sent one hurried shot at the policeman in the doorway, turned, and fired point-blank at Krausman.
The shot struck Krausman, and for an instant he tottered. But it was only a ruse. In seeming to fall forward, Krausman’s legs shot out like two springs of steel, launching him in a flying tackle. His broad shoulder struck Fassler’s knees. The corpse-faced gunman tried to spring backward out of the way of Krausman’s clawing fingers. But the jeweler seized Fassler by the ankle.
The gunman crashed to the floor, twisted over, and kicked Krausman in the head with his hard left shoe. For a moment the hold on the gunman’s ankle relaxed. Fassler sprang to his feet with an oath. His gun swung around, this time aimed at the jeweler’s head.
Though on the floor, groggy from Fassler’s cruel kick, Krausman must have realized the peril of his position. The two shots that had already struck him had been rendered ineffectual by the bullet-proof vest he wore. Fassler knew this. This time, he would shoot for the jeweler’s head.
A shot rang out. But it was not from Fassler’s gun. Krausman’s redheaded clerk, who had been engaged in a hand to hand conflict with one of the mobsters, had discovered his employer’s peril. The redhead had suddenly drawn a gun from his pocket, and tried a snap shot that struck the barrel of Fassler’s automatic. The gun was knocked from the mobster’s hand. Deprived of his weapon, Scar Fassler’s small piggish eyes filled with terror.
“It’s a trap, boys,” he shouted. He sprang toward the redhead whose well placed shot had saved Krausman’s life. Fassler’s was the courage of a cornered rat. He ignored the sudden threatening forward thrust of the redhead’s gun.
“No, Jim! Don’t shoot!”
It was Mr. Krausman who had shouted this warning to the redheaded man. Krausman knew that panic possessed Fassler, that the mere sight of a gun would not halt him. But he must be taken alive, if a man who had died in the electric chair could ever again be called alive.
The redhead heard his employer’s warning, and held his fire. Fassler swung with his left, a long fast blow that the redhead failed to duck. The man called Jim staggered back against a counter. Krausman had pulled himself to his feet, and was coming toward Fassler with a gun in his hand. Fassler shot a glance toward the door. His companions had beat a hasty retreat as soon as he had uttered his warning. Instead of making toward the front door as Krausman evidently expected him to, the scar-faced gunman sprang back toward the office.
Krausman had recovered his agility. He ran in the same direction that Fassler had taken. The criminal sprang through the door of the office, slammed it, and twisted the key in the lock. Krausman back-stepped, hunched his shoulder, and drove like a battering-ram at the door. Tenons of the door squawled apart under the power behind Krausman’s heavy shoulder, but the door held. Krausman’s right shoe came up in a kick that shattered the door glass. Disregarding the cutting fragments of glass that still adhered to the frame, Krausman straddled the frame and in another moment was in the office.
But a second door had opened and closed behind Fassler—the door into Mr. Krausman’s shower and lavatory that still adhered to the frame. Krausman believed that Fassler was trapped. A heave from his powerful shoulder burst open the bolt of the door. The door sprang open, and Krausman, gun in hand, stood in the room, looking bewilderedly about him.
FASSLER, the scar-faced gunman, who for five years had been officially dead, had apparently vanished like a ghost.
His swarthy brow deeply furrowed, Krausman stared about the room. He walked over and opened the frosted glass door of the shower. Empty. He turned to a small linen-closet and opened it. Again he had drawn blank. But no—What was that square of blackness at one end of the closet? Krausman took a small fountain-pen flashlight from his pocket and switched on its needle-like ray. The light showed a large square hole that had been cut in the wall. It revealed the water pipes that led to the shower bath. Had this hole been left open in order to make the shower pipes accessible for repairs?
The alert mind behind the swarthy face of Peter Krausman had suggested a double purpose in this opening. He reached out his hand and touched the pipes with the tips of his fingers. His keen sense of touch had detected a slight vibration in those pipes. Then he knew how Fassler had engineered his surprising escape. T
he opening evidently extended down into the basement of the building. The pipes, had they been placed there expressly for the purpose, could not have offered a better means of descent.
But how had Fassler known of this opening? Surely he had not stumbled upon it by chance. For a moment, Krausman debated whether to follow. He decided that he wouldn’t. Fassler had gone unerringly to the one rat-hole that had offered him a means of escape. He had evidently the advantage of knowing much more about the building than the swarthy-faced man who, to all appearances, owned it.
It was an odd situation. And for a moment amusement glinted the eyes of the man who until an hour ago had never entered the Krausman Building. But it was a situation that to some extent explained the courageous actions of the man who appeared to be a wealthy merchant, unused to violence and hand to hand encounters with criminals.
For the swarthy face of the man, who at that moment had discovered a secret exit from the building, was merely the result of clever disguise. Beneath dark-colored pigment, beneath plastic material and face plates which had counterfeited Peter Krausman’s features in every detail, was a face that no living person had seen—the face of Secret Agent “X.”
Acting upon a tip that had traveled the length of the underworld’s grapevine telegraph, Agent “X” had taken advantage of the real Peter Krausman’s absence from New York. He had deliberately impersonated the wealthy jeweler, knowing to a certainty that the most ruthless gang of robbers that he had ever encountered had planned to loot the Krausman Store.
He had staked much to frustrate the thieves’ scheme. But his chief desire was to capture one of the members of the gang and thus dispel the mystery that had baffled the police. For though the idea seemed too ridiculous to warrant its publication in newspapers, the entire gang of murderous thieves seemed to be made up of criminals who had long since died. Scar Fassler was only one of a legion of corpse criminals.
Had some master scientist actually discovered the long-sought secret for reviving the dead? Had some mad doctor taken criminals fresh from the execution room and brought them back to life to recruit a vast underworld army of men who, knowing death once, would not fear it a second time?
This was the riddle that Secret Agent “X” sought to solve. Wise in the way of the perverted geniuses who directed major crime groups, “X” knew that the knowledge of life eternal could be a greater scourge than all the lethal weapons that man could produce. Fear of death, he knew, was the only thing that prevented thousands of men from forsaking the law for the lawless.
Chapter II
GREEN EYES
TURNING from the show room, Secret Agent “X” disguised as Krausman the jeweler, encountered the redheaded clerk who had conducted himself so courageously throughout the encounter with the criminals. His hair was a tangled mop, and his jaw was swollen.
“What happened to that scar-face?” he demanded excitedly. “I’ve seen that man before. He looked like a hood by the name of Fassler. But Fassler is supposed to be dead. You should have let me shoot him, Mr. Krausman.”
“No, Hobart. I wanted him alive,” declared Agent “X.” He conducted Jim Hobart to the closet in the shower room, and showed him the hole in the floor. “That will bear investigation, Jim. I hadn’t the slightest idea there was anything of that nature in here. It seems to be an avenue of escape well known to that criminal.”
Frowning, Jim Hobart looked from the opening in the floor to the swarthy face of the man who had employed him. Perhaps he was thinking that it was extremely odd that Peter Krausman did not know every detail of his own office.
“Did they get much loot?” Secret Agent “X” asked of his aide.
Hobart shook his head. “But that policeman was badly wounded. One of your customers, a Mr. Stinehope, was knocked out. That’s about all at this end of the line.”
“What do you mean by that?” inquired “X.”
“Why, Commissioner Foster is outside there now with a group of police and he told me that the officer who was shot got in an alarm before he entered the store. One of those special squad cars was on its way here when they encountered that mysterious black roadster with the mounted machine gun—the car that’s been made so much of in the papers.”
“X” seized Hobart by the arm. “Did it—”
Hobart’s nod interrupted him. “The police car was completely wrecked. Only one of the men is expected to recover. No clues at all as to the mystery car. In fact, the mystery has deepened. It seems that the sole survivor of the police car wreck insists that he got in several shots at the driver of the death car. Two of the shots went home, he is certain. Yet the car steered unerringly on its course, the machine gun spitting death.”
“Maybe the driver of the black roadster wore a bullet-proof vest,” the Agent suggested, “just as you and I did.”
Hobart nodded. “Possible, of course. But this cop, who’s expected to pull through, swears that he sent a bullet straight through the forehead of the driver of the mystery car. The driver didn’t so much as budge, he says. What is more, the cop recognized the man as Slash Carmody—who was executed in Sing Sing only a day or so ago.”
Frowning, Agent “X” turned toward the door of the office. On the other side of the broken glass, he saw a grave-faced man of medium height whom he recognized immediately as Police Commissioner Foster. Foster’s thin lips curved into a smile. He nodded at the man he supposed to be Krausman, opened the door and walked in. “One of your customers informs me that you managed to frustrate this attempt to rob your store, Mr. Krausman. You are to be congratulated.”
Agent “X” shrugged. “I am afraid that your praise has fallen in the wrong place, commissioner. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Hobart, here, I wouldn’t be talking to you at this moment.”
THE police commissioner nodded at Hobart just a bit reservedly. Though the Hobart Detective Agency was rapidly making a name for itself, Foster habitually regarded all private detectives with suspicion.
Another man appeared in the office door. He was small, gray-eyed, and thoughtful looking. “X” recognized the man as one who had entered the store only a few moments before the robbery. The little man stroked thin, blond hair nervously, and glanced from Foster to “X.”
“Commissioner,” he said hesitantly, “what is to be done? I declare, the police make no headway against this mob of killers! Mr. Krausman has done more to check them than the police.” The man opened the door of the office, and approached “X” with his thin right hand extended. “I would like to shake your hand, sir. Stinehope is my name.”
Agent “X” took Stinehope’s limp hand. Stinehope was a name that had been famous in the banking world. For the past year, however, the bank which Stinehope had directed had been closed. Nevertheless, little Mr. Stinehope seemed to retain an envied position in the realm of finance.
Commissioner Foster winced slightly. “I am sure we all commend Mr. Krausman most highly, Mr. Stinehope. However, we can all feel somewhat relieved. The police force is about to be firmly reenforced by one of the greatest criminologists this city has known. I had a long talk with my old friend and former superior, Major Derrick. Derrick, you will remember, was the police commissioner who retired in my favor some time ago. He has promised to give us every assistance. He should be here by now.”
Stinehope nodded thoughtfully. “Ah, yes. I remember Derrick. Splendid man, he was. A hard worker; a straight thinker. No offense intended, Foster.”
“X” said nothing, thoughtfully studied Stinehope.
“And now, Mr. Krausman,” said Foster, “can you give us a description of some of the men who took part in this attempted looting of your store?”
Agent “X” frowned. “Perhaps I can. I think there were four of them. That right, Hobart?”
The private detective nodded.
“The leader,” Agent “X” continued, “had a long scar down his left cheek—or perhaps it was his right.” He knew that it would not do for him to give too accurate a description. In the character
he was playing, he would not be expected to show as much accuracy in matters of detail as a trained criminologist would.
Commissioner Foster fumbled in his pocket and brought out a picture. “This the man?” he asked. He handed the picture to “X.”
The Secret Agent took the picture. It was indeed the photograph of the supposedly dead Scar Fassler. He nodded slowly. “Undoubtedly, that is the man.”
At that moment, the door of the office snapped open. A wiry, blond little man who seemed a bundle of nerves stepped into the room. He jerked a birdlike glance from first one to another of the men in the room. The nostrils of his little nose spread, and he inhaled quickly and noisily as if he were taking snuff.
“Foster!” he rapped.
The commissioner turned, a smile lighting his usually grave face. He seized the newcomer’s hand, began pumping it up and down. “Major Derrick! You’re just in time to help us out!”
“Glad to, glad to,” Derrick sputtered. He nodded at Stinehope. “Hello, hello.” He turned on “X,” looked him up and down. “Mr. Krausman, I suppose. Hello. Most unfortunate circumstances.” He sniffed sharply.
“Derrick,” said Foster, “Mr. Krausman has positively identified the man who led this mob as Scar Fassler!”
Turning abruptly to “X,” Derrick rapped out: “And what would Mr. Krausman say if I told him I saw Fassler executed in the electric chair five years ago?”
AGENT “X” regarded the blond Major Derrick for a moment. “I would be inclined to say that one of us had made a mistake.”
“Possible, possible,” Derrick whipped out. “But I don’t make mistakes of that sort, Mr. Krausman. And, I might add, you do not appear to me as a man who makes mistakes.”
“How does it happen that you were prepared for this holdup, Mr. Krausman?” asked Stinehope curiously.
Agent “X” laughed. “When you have half a million dollars tied up in rare gems, you don’t take chances, Mr. Stinehope. I always have some one in the store to watch things. Today, it just happened to be Jim Hobart.”
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5 Page 15