Chief Swope growled in annoyance: “History doesn’t interest me right now. It’s criminals I’m after—kidnapers who’ve just pulled off a snatch. Murderers who’ve rubbed out some of my men!”
“Exactly! And you know what I mean when I say this place was a fort. There are catacombs beneath the island, sir. I’ve mentioned these before, and you’ve only laughed!”
Swope shook the captain’s fingers from his arm. He swore wrathfully again. “Why has nobody ever found them, Crump? I’ve been a resident of Rock Island all my life. I’ve been over every foot of this place man and boy. If there were tunnels, as you say, I’d know about them. I haven’t time to listen to your tales. There’s a murder investigation going on.”
Crump backed off in indignation. Swope spoke to the doctor who had bandaged Lasher’s head.
“Come outside now if you can. I want your opinion on those murdered men. We’ve got to learn what killed them!”
There was a husky note of awe and fear in Swope’s voice. Here was a line of inquiry that the Agent, too, was interested in. How had that greenish fire from the dwarf’s strange weapons caused such horrible deaths as he had witnessed? Risking criticism of himself, and even suspicion, “X” followed Swope and the doctor out. Lasher, talking to Crump again, did not notice. Fear still bred confusion. There was a knot of G-men and detectives close to the bodies.
THEY made way for Swope and the island doctor, who was evidently a coroner. The Agent edged in close. But rigor mortis was setting in. It wrought horrible distortions on those boneless bodies. The staring faces about were tense and strained.
The coroner shook his head. “How can you expect me to give any opinion without an autopsy? I’ve never heard of such a thing—except in Plaget’s disease. The calcium oxide itself must have been destroyed. It’s mad, I tell you—utterly mad!”
The coroner rose, mopping his damp face and hands. “Help me get one of these bodies to my office, Swope. Maybe I can learn something there. But I’m not making any promises. I’m only a medical man. This—this is beyond me. We’ll have to get experts in. I’ll phone the Institute of Forensic Medicine to send someone out.”
The Agent himself, trained in many sciences, did not dare to hazard a guess. Some new and horrible murder weapon had been used tonight. Yet a strange doubt was seeping into his mind. He turned as a sudden hubbub sounded near one of the Lasher gates. An auto horn honked. Voices were raised in anger. A detective came running across the lawn toward Swope.
“There’s a car full of reporters outside, chief. They’ve just come up from the city. They’re bound to get in. We’re holding them at the gate.”
“Keep on holding them!” barked Swope, his face contorted in fury. “Don’t let a single one of ’em get inside. I won’t have the press sticking its damned nose into this. I won’t be hampered by having ’em underfoot. Captain Crump is enough!”
A sudden angry cry from the gate topped off his words.
“Here! Stay back! You can’t go in! You—”
Swope turned with a snarl. “X” saw a running figure speeding across the lawn toward the house. A light dress and flying coat showed that it was a girl. A detective was close behind her, trying to grab her arm. The girl’s agile feet were keeping her out of range.
“Stop her!” howled Swope. “Chuck her out!”
The Agent’s gaze was riveted. Something about that flying figure was familiar. He held his breath, darted toward the house along with Swope. The girl was struggling with a detective at the door.
“I’ve got to get in! It isn’t just the paper. There’s a friend of mine inside! I want to see her!” She gave the detective a sudden kick in the shin with her pointed slipper. With a yell, he dropped his arms. She lunged through the door.
The Agent was tense-faced now. The voice of the girl had clinched his recognition. Her daring action had fitted in with his knowledge of her character.
When he entered the house with Swope, she had run up to Holly Babette. She was small, blonde-haired, vividly pretty, with eyes that were a lapis-lazuli blue. She stood defiantly, red lips scornful, staring at the approaching Swope. She was Betty Dale of the Herald, ally of Agent “X,” and one of the few people in all the world who knew that he was not a criminal; knew that he was a secret investigator, pledged to battle crime.
After the first instant he wasn’t surprised. Betty Dale, resourceful, independent, filled with a fighting courage that equaled his own, had won her way as a newspaper woman because of her daring and charm. She wasn’t afraid to get into trouble. Her life had trained her to accept hard knocks. She detested criminals as much as “X” himself.
Swope bawled commands to two of his men. “Get this girl out of here! Chuck her over the hedge!” He thrust his jaw close to Betty’s face, snapped: “Who do you think you are? I gave orders to keep all reporters out!”
HOLLY BABETTE spoke with sudden hauteur. “Really, Swope. Miss Dale’s a friend of mine. She learned at the inn I was here. She came because she was worried. You can’t put her out.”
“Can’t I? We’ll see about that! She needn’t have barged in like this. I’m going to throw—”
He got no farther for Betty Dale had drawn herself to her full height. Her blue eyes were dangerously bright. The two men reaching to grab her arms held back.
“Touch me,” she snapped, “and I’ll make a laughing stock of you in the papers from one end of the country to the other, Mr. Swope! You bungled by not taking adequate precautions against those criminals tonight. You’d better treat the reporters outside right, and give them straight facts, if you want any reputation left.”
Swope hesitated, coughed, and backed away. “I haven’t got time to waste,” he growled, “on trouble-making dames like you.”
The Agent hardly noticed Betty’s victory. He was held by what Holly Babette had said. Betty Dale and she were friends. Betty might be able to reveal facts that would throw light on Holly’s mysterious actions.
He edged forward, waiting for some pretext to draw Betty Dale aside. But Vernon Lasher saw him and called out sharply:
“Strickland, get back to the inn! Why are you hanging around? You may be needed on the job. More messages may come. Get back, I say.”
There was anger in Lasher’s voice. “X” couldn’t risk staying longer here. He would question Betty later. He’d learned all that the police knew. “X” turned toward the door, took two steps and stopped. A detective had just put down a telephone in the hall. His voice cracked with hoarse excitement as he yelled to Swope.
“Chief! Chief—that was the inn that phoned! A lot of reporters and newsreel men are checking in. The rooms are filling up. Jones says they’ve just found Strickland knocked out in an upstairs closet. If it’s Strickland—then who the devil is this?”
Chapter VIII
HORROR’S VICTIM
ALL EYES swung to Agent “X.” Abruptly, a threatening silence settled over the room. It was broken by the voice of Police Chief Swope.
“Jones must be crazy! I’ve got eyes in my head! This is Strickland here.”
“X” nodded, maintaining a stolid front.
The detective’s voice was nervous. “O.K., chief, talk to Jones yourself! Don’t blame me. I told him Strickland was here. He got mad. Said he’d know Strickland anywhere. There’s even a birthmark on his wrist—”
“He’s right, sir!” Captain Crump had butted in. “Strickland and I went fishing once. I remember—it’s on his left—”
“Keep out of this, Crump! Mind your business! I’m in charge here.” Fixing “X” with a glittering eye, Police Chief Swope came nearer. “Look here, Strickland, everybody seems to be cracked tonight. Who’s this man at the inn they think is you?”
The Agent shrugged, spoke with easy calmness. “He hadn’t been discovered when I left. I can’t say who he is. But Mr. Jones was excited—nearly out of his head—when the news of the crime reached him and that message was found. I don’t like to say it, but I think he’s imagi
ning things.”
Swope wiped his face with a trembling hand, pausing in indecision. “That’s my theory, too. Yet I can’t take any chances. A lot of funny things have been happening tonight. I don’t know where I’m at. You’ve got your badge, of course, Strickland. Let’s see it.”
The Agent flipped back his coat lapel, exposing gleaming metal. He reached toward his pocket, saying: “I’ve got my card here, too, that ought to prove—”
“Nonsense!” cried Crump. “Anyone could steal a badge or a card. Just consider, Swope, that this man might be an impostor. He may look like Strickland—may have robbed him. He may be one of the criminals for all we know. He brought the message, didn’t he? The birthmark will tell.”
Crump, in spite of the police chief’s snubs, spoke self-importantly. He came nearer, eyeing “X” with a coldly-suspicious stare, waving his old army revolver. “We’ve got to find out, sir!” he added. “If this man isn’t an impostor—then the one at the inn is.”
The logic of his words cooled Swope’s mounting fury. Detectives began edging up. The tenseness in the room was deepening. A ring of men was slowly circling “X.” He was in a hornets’ nest of armed detectives who would shoot to kill if he did not prove himself Strickland. Horror of what had happened tonight had made their trigger fingers eager. They would feel sure that he was in with the murderous kidnap band. And the lack of the birthmark on his wrist would betray him.
Still no slightest trace of apprehension showed in his manner. He grinned, shrugged—while his quick brain sought desperately for some way out.
“All right, Strickland, show us your birthmark then,” said Swope. “It’s damn foolishness, but let’s get it over with.”
Blood pumped into the Agent’s temples, beat against his skull with a hammering throb. Detectives stood between him and the door. Others blocked the window. They would go for their guns at an instant’s notice, send bullets smashing at him. The only weapon he carried was his special pistol loaded with gas shells. That was not adequate now. Lead would reach him before the gas could take effect. Any overt act of his would bring deadly response. This nonchalance alone was holding suspicion at bay.
He kept up the pose, said: “O.K., chief—and you, too, captain. Come and take a look.”
He stiffened his left arm, clutched the sleeve of his coat, began to draw it up. Swope and Captain Crump came close and peered directly down. Quick as a flash, timing himself to unified action, the Agent moved both hands at once.
His left came up, palm flattened, and shoved Chief Swope in the chest, sending him staggering backwards. His right snatched the army revolver from the captain’s fingers. As Swope’s hurtling body struck two of his men who went down in a tangled heap, “X” lifted the gun’s muzzle and fired.
He blasted four shots in quick succession, straight at the chandelier bowl light suspended overhead. The bowl cracked in a hundred places as .45 caliber slugs tore through. The bulbs inside were smashed to slivers. Glass came down in a tinkling shower. Darkness enveloped the room.
A shrieking pandemonium followed as Holly Babette screamed and detectives cried out harshly. “X” had not given them time to fire. They dared not shoot in the sudden inky darkness of the room. They surged toward the spot where “X” had pulled his hairbreadth stunt.
THE AGENT flung his gun among them and leaped up and forward toward the chain of the chandelier. Its exact location had not left his mind. It held his only hope of winning through. He lifted his legs, contracted his arms, as his fingers gripped the chain. His body swooped through the air above the frenzied men’s heads. Blackness prevented them from seeing it.
While detectives in a cursing, clawing group plunged against the wall, seeking to trap him, the Agent landed lightly on his feet. He turned and felt for the door, leaped aside as another detective came through, then passed across the sill into a dimly lighted hall. A man running in from outside saw him and opened his mouth to yell. The Agent knocked him flat with a lightning blow of his fist.
He did not try to escape through the front vestibule. Other feet were pounding up. He crossed the hall, plunged into the unlighted dining room beyond, reached a window in four quick strides. He raised the sash and opened the shutters outward. The sounds in the house blanketed their squeak.
The Agent flung himself over the sill and landed on the lawn. Crouching, he ran for the black bulk of the hedge once more. Men on all sides of him were tearing toward the house, fearful and curious because of the noises that had come and the sudden darkening of the room. He reached the hedge in safety, forced his body through and over the thick-growing stems.
It was dangerous, he knew, to use “Martin’s” car. Someone might have seen it and noted the license number. But it would be investigated surely if he left it here. He reached it quickly, got behind the wheel and glided away. Without lights, following the dim white ribbon of the crushed-shell road, he crept through the gloom. His nerves were tingling still. Not until a bend cut off all view of the Lasher house did he switch his headlights on.
He pressed the accelerator to the floorboards then, raced madly through the night. A spreading glow in the trees behind told that another car had already left the scene of his escape. Swope and others would speed to the inn to investigate the man Jones said was Strickland.
“X” twisted the wheel and drove down a side road toward the sea. He shut off his lights again, backed into a grove of pines. In darkness, his fingers moved with desperate agility over his face. He removed the disguise of Strickland, built up the one of A.J. Martin he knew so well. He slipped on a sandy-haired toupee. For a moment he clicked on the instrument-board bulb, risking its glow to snatch a glimpse of himself in a mirror and see that all was well.
Then he stepped from the car and stripped off Strickland’s clothing. Its presence on him was something he dared not risk. He transferred his pocket equipment into another suit which he got from beneath the coupé’s seat, leaving the wallet and badge in Strickland’s clothes. These he rolled up and tossed to the center of the road. They would soon be found.
The Agent, as Martin, headed back toward the inn.
Swope’s car was parked before the steps of the inn when the Agent entered the drive. Another car pulled up behind him, filled with island police, and also bearing Captain Crump. The faces of all of them were strained. The inn itself was a madhouse of newly arrived guests. Men from the nation-wide newsreel syndicates. Men from the press. Feature writers and city police. Crime had brought a sudden boom to the Rock Island Inn. The rooms were almost gone. A score of cars had crossed the two bridges from the mainland.
“X” PRESSED into the resplendent lobby. Reporters were clamoring for news. Some wanted to know what the mystery of Strickland was and why he had been knocked out. Others were asking about the burned lighthouse. The flames in the tower, the mysterious man who had leaped from it, had caused a furor of excitement. The police had been unable to give an explanation.
Jones, the inn’s manager, trembling beneath his dapper clothes, was waving the questioning newspapermen away.
A big man shoved up to the desk, said in a strickened voice: “Has no message come through about Clifton Hines? Has nothing been heard from those fiends who took him away? Please—I’m his father. I’ve got to know!”
Jones shook his head distractedly. Reporters began besieging the elder Hines to get a human-interest story. The Agent moved on, sickened by the tragic horror the extortionists had left behind. He scanned the room about him, eyes bleakly bright.
A young man hurried through the marquee door. He was tall, redheaded, with an honest, open face. He carried a suitcase in his hand and looked excited. He, too, went to the desk and engaged a room. As he turned to follow the bellhop who took his grip, the Agent slipped up quietly and spoke.
“Good work, Jim, getting here so soon!”
The young man turned. A grin spread his mouth. Respect shone in his eyes as he saw the Agent. “Mr. Martin! I burned rubber driving up.” Doglike devo
tion, loyalty, beamed on the redhead’s face.
The Secret Agent’s grim lips relaxed for an instant. Jim Hobart and he had walked in the shadow of death together often. Hobart was one he could depend on in any crisis.
“Go to your room, Jim,” “X” whispered. “I’ll drop up in a minute.”
“Yes, boss. I’ll be waiting.”
The Agent moved through the crowded lobby, listening, watching. He tensed and turned as a sudden commotion sounded. Excited cries came from the vicinity of the door. People surged forward. Two detectives came shoving in, leading a third figure between them.
The Agent stared in open-eyed amazement. The man the detectives held was a hideous dwarf, a distorted, flat-headed, hardly human creature. One shoulder was higher than the other. His arms dangled almost to the floor. His features were deformed into a horrible mimicry of a man. He was making bestial noises in his throat, snarling, growling, trying to break away. There was a light froth on his twitching lips, a redness in his eyes.
People backed away in gaping terror. Hard-boiled reporters grew silent and afraid. The two detectives were ashen-faced. They had slipped handcuffs over the creature’s arms. Their guns were drawn, pointing at his sides.
“Swope! Swope!” bawled one. “Get Swope—and Lasher, too, if he’s here!”
The cry was relayed through the lobby. A frightened bellhop dashed to the elevator door. Two minutes later Swope and Lasher appeared. They approached the gnome-man almost speechless. The detective spoke again.
“We found him right outside the inn, hiding in the gardens. He’s one of ’em all right. He acts like a crazy guy. There’s a note pinned to his coat. It’s addressed to you, Mr. Lasher.”
“X” saw the slip of paper on the dwarf’s sagging coat. His clothes seemed much too big and were ill-fitting. They were draped around his twisted body, giving him a scarecrow appearance.
Something clutched at the Secret Agent’s throat—a nameless horror he hardly dared put into words. For there was something faintly familiar about this hideous monster’s face. It brought back haunting recollection like a nightmare memory.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5 Page 30