Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5

by Paul Chadwick

  A man standing alongside “X” gave a choking gasp. “X” looked and saw that it was the big man he had seen push up to the desk—Clifton Hines’ father. The man’s face was deathly white, his eyes were bulging. Slowly, as though drawn by some horrible fascination he could not check, he was moving closer to the dwarf.

  Lasher had snatched the paper from the creature’s coat. He read it, passed it along to Swope. Swope’s eyes seemed to glaze as he scanned the words written on it. He took two steps back, raised a shaking arm and pointed. “It’s—it’s Clifton Hines!”

  Chapter IX

  SINISTER AMBUSH

  A STRICKEN scream came from the lips of the big man standing close to “X”—a sound the Agent was never to forget. Its note of agonized horror cut him to the quick. The elder Hines, suddenly gone demented, was pawing the air in a frenzy, snapping his teeth. Even the dwarf was silent, turning his grotesque face toward the man before him.

  Hines gave a second fearful scream and plunged straight forward. The others in the room were deathly still, frozen with horror. No one guessed what Hines intended to do. Even “X” felt palsied with the fearful drama being enacted before his eyes.

  He saw Hines snatch a gun from one of the detective’s hands; saw him press the muzzle against the dwarfs flat-topped head. He leaped—but too late—for a muffled report had sounded. The dwarf sagged backwards, dragging the two detectives with him.

  Hines gave a ghastly peal of frenzied laughter. As “X” grabbed for his wrist, he turned the gun on himself. Thrusting the muzzle inside his coat, Hines pumped the trigger three times, crashing bullets into his body, bursting his heart. He fell dead at the Agent’s very feet, a victim of self-destruction. The sight of his son turned into this monster had unbalanced his reason.

  “X” stood stunned, hardly blaming him. Remembering Clifton Hines as he had seen him a little more than an hour ago, the sight of this hideous caricature was enough to unnerve any man. It was Clifton Hines beyond a doubt. Four men had seen the likeness. Swope, Lasher, Agent “X,” and the boy’s own father. “X,” used to the ways of desperate criminals, was horrified at the inhuman ruthlessness of this extortion group. They had turned a normal man into an imbecile dwarf.

  The thought came that the other dwarfs were once normal men, too; that they had suffered the same fate as young Hines.

  Swope had let the piece of paper fall. “X” stooped and lifted it from the floor, reading the message on it. It was another threat from the kidnapers, but longer this time, giving detailed instructions.

  Lasher, we are returning Clifton Hines! This is just a warning. Your own son will be treated the same way if you don’t come across. You must deliver a hundred thousand in cash at ten tomorrow night.

  This is how you’ll do it. Give Swope the money. Have him row out in a small boat to the middle of Goose Bay. He must be alone. He will blink a light four times in the center of the bay at ten sharp. The cash will be picked up.

  If any police or G-men attempt to watch or follow, your boy will get it—and he won’t look pretty. We’ll take more time than we did on Hines. We’ll do a first-class job. Don’t think you can fool us either. We’ll know if you try a double-cross.

  There was horrible cunning in the words. It seemed a fool-proof plan. The Agent’s photographic mind memorized the message. Swope was too dazed and shaken even to bawl him out for reading it. He snatched the paper from “X’s” hand and thrust it in his pocket. Ignoring the Agent, he turned to his own men, and mouthed a series of orders.

  “Clear the lobby! Get everyone out. Close the doors. Have Doctor Tyson come. Get outside some of you and find where this man came from.”

  “X” knew that Swope was utterly beyond his depth. The police were helpless in the face of such unknown horror. The ghastly return of Hines proved one thing to him. The extortionists had a hideout somewhere on the island. Only this could explain their ability to send back Hines so soon.

  The Agent left the lobby when the others were herded out. But he snatched an island telephone directory from a table.

  Up in his own room, he thumbed the pages. It was hardly more than a leaflet listing a few hundred names. But it gave a quick clue to most of the island’s residents. The names of several millionaires were there. Men who stood high in the world of business and finance. Others were listed also, successful actors, artists, literary lights. The Agent’s forefinger ran down the columns. His encyclopedic mind snatched at clear and vague memories. Mental images flashed across the brain. Faces of people he had met or seen somewhere pictured. In the section “G” a sudden name stood out. Maximilian Guldi.

  Science of some sort had been used to create these human monsters and bring about these inhuman deaths. Guldi was a scientist, “X” knew.

  The Agent had once read a paper of Guldi’s, a learned study of the little-known deuton, used to drive alpha particles out of the cores of atoms. Guldi had also measured the velocity of blood circulation by employing fluorescein. But the man had been laughed out of scientific bodies for advancing seemingly unsound theories. He had lost his university chair because of an evilly unstable temper. He was a brilliant, maladjusted man. Now apparently he lived in seclusion on Rock Island. Guldi, if anyone, might have some theory about the rubber-corpse deaths.

  THE AGENT flung out of the door into the hall, stopping by the elevator gate. His finger reached toward the signal button, but stopped as a thought possessed him. Instead of ringing he turned, strode along the corridor and descended a stairway to the hall below. There he knocked quickly on a door.

  Jim Hobart opened it for him. “Boss, I’ve been waiting! Has anything happened? I thought I heard shots.”

  “You did, Jim. There was a murder and a suicide. A father killed his own son. The boy downstairs who was shot was a dwarf—a monster. An hour ago I saw him as a normal man. He was taken somewhere not very far away and turned into this hardly human thing. I’ve got to find out how and where this was done.”

  Hobart’s big hand clenched. His blue eyes widened as he tried to picture the horror “X” had described.

  “I’ve got a job for you right now,” said “X.” “I want you to follow a lead for me and get all the dope you can. You’ll have to question a lot of people and be sly about it.”

  “What is it, boss?”

  “A lighthouse.”

  Hobart blinked and licked his lips. He could never tell what this strange man who employed him might order next. Experience had taught him to obey.

  “X” went on.

  “It’s the old light on the island’s northeast end. There’s a new light on the same location farther out. There was a fire in this old light tonight. See if you can find out who owns it now, whether the government or some private party. Find whether anyone’s been around it in the past few days.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “That’s all. Come back here when you finish.”

  The Agent descended to the main floor of the inn and slipped out a side door. He passed huddled groups of reporters discussing the horror that had taken place. He knew that Tyson and Swope were holding an inquiry behind locked doors, trying to learn what fearful thing had happened to Clifton Hines.

  The Agent got into his car and sped away. Guldi’s address in the directory had been listed as “Seacliff Road.” The Agent drew a small map of Rock Island from a door pocket of the coupé, studied it as he drove along. The section marked as Seacliff was on the island’s northern end. Blank spaces showed lack of habitation here. Depth markings proved the coast around it dangerous and uncertain. Guldi had secluded himself on Rock Island’s most deserted end.

  BIG ESTATES gave way to smaller cottages as the Secret Agent rolled through the night. Rock formations studded with gnarled scrub pines rose beside the road. The tortured trees made him think again of the hideous, gnome-like men.

  He passed other cars filled with G-men and police. He saw groups with guns and lanterns investigating houses, searching along fields and lanes. Twic
e he was stopped and questioned, but his A.P. card made out in the name of Martin let him through.

  He reached a forested area where greenbrier and scrub oaks clothed rugged ravines. Some vast upheaval of nature long ago had ribbed and ridged the ground. Night wind moaned through the peaks of upthrust rocks. The oak trees bent and whispered. Branches reached across the road like clutching arms.

  The headlights of the Agent’s car funneled into the utter blackness ahead. The road grew still more narrow, curving. He passed a battered sign which said Seacliff on it. Suddenly he thrust home his brakes, came to a skidding stop.

  A boulder had slid down a rocky bank, blocking the way. It lay in the middle of the right-hand rut. There wasn’t room at this point to pass around it. The Agent paused behind the wheel a moment and a look of grimness crossed his face. Even nature seemed trying to impede him. But had the rock dropped of its own accord? The howling gale and bending trees above appeared to give the answer. A miniature landslide could have caused the rock to fall.

  “X” stepped from his car and approached the barrier in the road ahead. The headlights threw his shadow. He bent over the boulder and began to heave. A brief sound made him straighten.

  It wasn’t the soughing of the wind he was sure. It might have been a falling branch. His eyes probed the gloom about him. Suddenly, he made a catlike spring away from the rock to the other side of the road. He whirled and crouched.

  For a half dozen gnome-like figures were tumbling down the opposite bank. They were leering, gibbering. The glow of the headlights made them visible. Never had he seen such a collection of nightmare faces. Crime and brutality were written there. The grisly distortion that had flattened their skulls and deformed their bodies had accentuated every bestial line.

  Swarming close in a savage horde, they lifted strange guns which flashed and hissed greenish fire.

  Chapter X

  MURDER HORDE

  AGENT “X” stood frozen for one stunned second. These were the guns that had flamed on the Lasher lawn when men had died so horribly under his very eyes.

  Two of the dwarfs held clubs instead of guns. The plunge down the bank had given them quick momentum.

  “X” crouched down, ducked under the arc of the swinging clubs, and lashed with savage fists at the simian bodies. One of the dwarfs went down. The other snarled in fury and surprise. They hadn’t expected this—fearless resistance. Their attack from ambush had been meant to inspire overpowering terror.

  But the advantage of number was on their side. The four with the strange guns had come up, too. Lifting their weapons, mouthing inarticulate sounds like curses, they flung themselves upon “X.”

  He staggered and fell under an avalanche of bodies. Horrible, twisted arms wrapped themselves about him. Flat heads butted him. Gun muzzles slashed down to batter at his skull. Instead of trying to rise he bent his head deeper into the writhing mass. Metal glanced across his scalp. His toupee saved him from being cut. The slantwise angle diverted the force of the blow. The Agent spread his arms and hammered at squirming bodies with piston jabs. He got one bent leg wedged against a rock. He straightened it, lunging forward, then rolled over.

  An animal scream tore from the throat of a man beneath him. The full weight of three of the dwarfs pressed him on top as he carried them with him. Fingers dug into his skin. A frenzied, clawlike hand reached for his eyes. It jabbed in and the Agent was blinded for a moment.

  Another hand locked itself around his neck. Nails pressed against his glottis. Savage teeth ripped at his sleeve. The hideous men, surprised in their first attack, were trying to tear him to pieces. He seemed to be fighting a pack of savagely worrying wolves.

  He sprang upright with a mighty heave of his shoulders, felt another gun muzzle glance across his head. Dimly through smarting lids he saw the lights of his car, and the nightmare men about him.

  He got his arms free and struck right and left, fighting as he had never fought before. There was no time now for any display of science, no time to use any of his odd defensive weapons. These men had obviously wanted to take him prisoner. Now they were seeking to kill.

  Blinking, he saw one of the dwarfs stoop and pick up a slice of rock from beside the road. He saw the man balance it, step mincingly like a boxer, sidling closer with baleful eyes. The dwarf hurled his stone. The Secret Agent ducked. It barely missed his head, brushing him with a wind of death. The dwarf snarled with rage and leaped through the air, arms and legs spread out like a giant spider.

  The Agent checked his flying tackle by catching him by the wrists. He swung the man in a hurtling arc, knocking over two others who were closing in. He let his body sail through space to strike a third. All three went down, but instantly leaped up.

  The dwarfs seemed tough as knots, immune to pain, inhuman in their reactions. Yet they still could feel the force of animal terror. Fear had begun to smolder in their eyes. They were becoming more cautious, more cunning—and more dangerous.

  “X” COULDN’T watch all sides at once. The dwarfs were spreading, circling. Another was lifting a piece of rock. In a matter of moments, if he stood in the open they would kill him. His mangled body would be left in this lonely road.

  The Agent turned and ran for his car, lashing out at the dwarf-man who barred his way, plunging sidewise to avoid the rock that whistled past his head. With bestial howls, they instantly followed.

  The Agent reached like lightning into a side pocket of his coupé. For an instant his fingers groped. He lifted out a sealed-glass container no larger than an egg. As four gnome-men reached to claw him back, he flung it to the road.

  The glass burst and a hundred tiny pellets rolled out. For a split second they gave off threads of vapor as phosphoric acid came in contact with the hydrogen of the air. Then one glowed.

  There was a report like a miniature torpedo.

  It scattered the rest, sowing them broadcast over the surface of the road. A dozen others in different spots let go. Flashes of flame, firecracker bursts of sound made a mad cacophony in the night. Glowing pellets sailed through the air, exploding in space. They battered against the car, scarring spots on the paint. They banged all around the dwarf-men’s feet.

  The nerve of one of the flat-headed monsters instantly broke. He gave a gurgling scream and plunged toward the bank. Madly he scrambled up it, clutching at rocks. Others followed with midget bombs still banging at their heels. In less than a minute the road was clear of men, and “X” could hear them, when the bombardment had ceased, plunging through underbrush in terrified flight.

  The Agent leaned against his car for one brief moment. He knew how close to death he’d been. He felt no fear for himself. Fear he had long ago cast out. It had no place in the desperate work he had voluntarily undertaken. But there was cold dread in the thought that he might have been snatched from life before this work was done.

  He turned and rolled aside the rock that had barred his way. He got back into his car. More than ever he wanted to see Professor Guldi. This road led to the man’s home.

  He sent his coupé leaping ahead along the winding way. He came to a cottage set among sparse apple trees with a potato field around it. There was a light burning in one window. The Agent stopped. A scared farmer answered his knock and directed him to Guldi’s.

  “Take the next road to the left. Go up the hill. It’s the big house in among the pines. Look out for the dogs, they’re bad. You’re a detective, ain’t you?”

  “No, a reporter.”

  The farmer looked skeptical, said: “Swope’s men came this way a half hour ago. They said there’d been some murders.”

  THE AGENT didn’t answer. He strode back to his car, sent it forging ahead once more. He took the left turn, whined up a short hill, and his headlights bored in among the thick gray trunks of pines. There was a faint glow in the window of an old house sheltered by the trees. He switched off his lights, leaped out, and heard the patter of animal feet in the darkness straight ahead. A dog growled gutturally.
Another answered.

  The Agent stopped, puckered his lips, and gave a thin, birdlike whistle. It was an odd ventriloquistic note, musical yet eerie. It seemed to fill the entire air around his head. The dogs ceased growling.

  The patter of their feet continued. In a moment a warm, moist muzzle was thrust against his hand. The whine that followed was one of friendliness.

  With an animal escort, the Agent strode forward to the tree-curtained house. He pressed the button of his flash for a bare instant, saw that the house was made of stone. A door with narrow Colonial windows on either side was set with a metal knocker. The brass of this was eaten and corroded. Tufts of gray lichen hung from the stones like hair.

  He lifted the knocker and let it fall back violently, sending a bellow of sound through the ancient rooms inside. The pines moaned above him as he waited. It seemed an age before shuffling footsteps came. They paused by the door. He had the feeling of being peered at through the leaded side panes by eyes so uncannily bright that they could pierce the darkness.

  The door opened and a gaunt man stood in the threshold.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  The man was big framed, ugly. A scowl wrinkled his leathery face. Snaglike teeth protruded from a mouth that seemed to have no lips. A towering forehead crowned with wisps of oily black hair rose above steel-bright eyes. In one bony hand the man held a half munched apple.

  “I want to see Professor Maximilian Guldi.”

  “I am he! What do you want?”

  “Just a few words. There are some questions I hope you can answer.”

  “I’ve answered questions enough tonight. Ask those other detectives—”

  “I’m not a detective,” said “X.” He took one of Martin’s cards from his wallet and thrust it forward.

  Guldi still barred the door. His eyes were hostile. Before reading the card, he bit off a piece of apple and chewed it angrily, glaring down at “X.” Then his head bent forward.