He switched off his light, moved cautiously onward in utter darkness, keeping a hand on the monorail to guide him. Ten feet farther and his helmet burst out of water. The drip and splash, and the hiss of the flutter valve told him that. He cut off the oxygen supply, held his breath a moment, waited as still as death. His goggled face peered into the darkness. His hands were clenched, his shoulders hunched.
But there was no light anywhere, no single glow. He came farther out of the water till it rippled about his waist. He walked till only his knees were in, and on till it sloshed around his feet.
Standing with heavy shoes braced wide apart, he unfastened the clamps that held his helmet down. He lifted it cautiously and drew in grateful lungfuls of cold, damp air. With the helmet off, he continued to stare for seconds into the impenetrable black. Then he drew a tiny light from his pocket and clicked it on.
Its wan rays showed a ghostly form close to him. The seaplane was there—its wings folded back against its water-proof cabin, its engine airtight beneath a gleaming cowling—perched on the monorail like a roosting bird of death.
Chapter XV
HORDE OF THE DAMNED
THE Agent stared at the gray craft only an instant. His eyes turned toward the end of the cave beyond. The rock walls narrowed here. A black opening, visible in the rays of his light, showed the beginning of a passage.
He walked toward it, saw that it, too, had been hewn and chiseled from the rock. Here was complete verification of Crump’s story of an ancient fort. This was one of the tunnels he had mentioned as existing.
Reaching an abrupt decision, the Agent drew the diving suit from his body. The leaded shoes made it almost impossible to walk on land. He rolled the suit up, tucked it behind the gray plane’s pontoon. Feeling free and light after his submergence in the water, he entered the shadowed opening of the passage. He turned off his light, listened but heard no sound. There was a ghostly, tomblike stillness in this underground place. He believed that the island in the course of a hundred and fifty years had settled slightly, and that the passage he now was in was below water level. That would account for the sub-surface opening of the cave.
There was no light visible before him. The Agent risked another inspection with his flash, walked forward and came to a metal door fifty feet ahead. It reached from floor to ceiling and had recently been bolted into the solid sides of the rock, each bolt being set in place by melted lead.
The door had a heavy lock. “X” removed his set of master keys at once. This was familiar work to him. He took out the slender rods of polished chromium steel that in his expert hands did uncanny things. Some were goose-necked. Others had delicate pivotal extensions. They were fashioned to probe the tumblers of the most ingenious locks.
The door yielded before two minutes had elapsed. He put his tools away, stepped through it. There was another equally black passage beyond. It headed straight away from shore toward the center of the island. The floor of the rocky corridor was level still. It was so for nearly a hundred yards, then another door barred the Agent’s way. This one was different in shape and size. It was round and strongly built like the door of a giant vault, yet there was no lock on it, only a lever handle.
The Agent lifted it cautiously, heard air hiss, and stepped into a small square chamber. His eyes peered knowingly about him. His flash played over the walls. He understood the purpose of the place. It was an air lock—proving conclusively what he had already guessed. The passage he had traversed was below the surface of the sea. Air pressure was holding the water back.
He waited a moment, stepped through a second door of the chamber, and on the other side of this the passage began to ascend. It was above the sea, yet below the surface of the high ground of the island.
The Secret Agent became more cautious now. He stood for fully five minutes, listening, watching, then clicked on his light again—and instantly switched it out. He held his breath. It seemed to him that he had caught sight of a flitting shadow behind him.
It might have been a movement of his own body reflected on wet walls. It might have been a scuttling rat. He retraced his steps a hundred feet, waited, and heard nothing. Yet when he moved forward again he had the eerie sense of being followed. Some unseen, unknown thing seemed to be dogging his footsteps.
The Agent could not bring himself to retreat. He moved ahead till his straining eyes glimpsed a ghostly glow in the dark before him. He stopped when the glow became brighter and when there was borne to his ears a strange medley of sounds. They whispered along the cavern walls, made faint echoes stir in the rocks overhead. There was something terrible, scalp-prickling about them. These were not human sounds. They seemed the discordant snarling murmur of a pack of beasts.
The sounds grew louder as the Agent crept still closer. Noises detached themselves from the babbling undertone. A horrible, strangely chilling scream. A long wavering cry like a note of tuneless song. An explosive curse that was faintly human. A series of staccato gibbers that rose and fell.
Then “X” saw bars across the space from which the light was coming. Led on by horrible fascination, hardly knowing what he would see, the Agent moved wraithlike along the passage wall. His own danger was forgotten in his burning curiosity to explore this nightmare place.
HE stood frozen with horror when he had come near enough to peer through the barred grating. It was like a rock-hewn prison cell, damp, nauseous, emitting fetid air. There was an electric light caged in a metal basket burning high above. A half dozen hideous, toadlike monsters who once were men were sprawled and slouched and squatted around the floor. They were more distorted in face and figure than even the dwarfs “X” had seen. They were creatures glimpsed in the hell flames of some mad inferno.
Their heads were flattened, bulging at the sides. One moved like a crab sideways across the floor. His finger and toenails scraped. A pair of overalls hung slackly over his twisted, telescoped body. It was he who was lifting his voice in that mad note of song. The gibbering man had pressed himself in a corner, gaunt arms raised and twined about his flattened head, lips outthrust like an ape.
From one hideous shape to another, the Agent’s quick eyes roved, and the realization came that these men were utterly crazed. Whatever horrible force had distorted their bodies had robbed them of all human traits. The screaming man flung himself at the bars, climbing up with feet and hands, and sent a peal of hyena howls echoing along the cavern.
There came a shuffle of feet, and the Agent backed away. He retreated into the darkness again, found refuge behind a jutting projection of rock, and peered intently.
One of the more human dwarf men came into view. Something trailed like a dead snake from his hand. A rawhide whip. He paused before the barred grating, leered upward at the screaming man above, and sent the long lash of the whip curling at him. Its tip struck flesh with a snarling crack.
The howls of the man above were pierced with pain. But he clung to his hold till the whip had descended a score of times, till his face and shoulders were streaked with bloody welts. Then he dropped back and lay moaning on the floor.
The dwarf curled up his whip and shuffled arrogantly away. He was evidently a keeper, a trainer of these dehumanized men. It was his function to tame them like mad beasts in a cage.
The Agent stood behind his rocky shield a moment. He clutched the two end wires of his radio set, pressed the transmitter switch, sent dots and dashes flashing into space with the key.
Hobart would be back at the inn by now. In brief sentences, “X” told what he had found. He had a reason for this. Hobart must be given some inkling of these criminals’ astounding scope so that he could tell police in case anything should happen to Agent “X.”
The Agent stopped sending, clicked in his receiver and bent his head. Faintly, as though an insect were imprisoned there, Hobart’s answer came from the small, thin box.
“What can I do to help you, boss?”
The Agent switched in his transmitter again, tapped the one
word: “Wait!”
HE didn’t know himself what his campaign should be. He had learned only enough to tantalize and not to help. If the police were summoned now the heads of this extortionist ring would only escape. This chamber of horrors proved their brutal cunning and power. But these horrible men themselves were merely puppets. It was the extortionist heads that “X” must find; the men who flew the seaplane, collected ransom and engineered this ghastly business.
Grimly, he moved forward along the passage again. He passed the barred window, bending low and hurrying to get past the light. He heard the whipped man still moaning, saw the others peering at him with callous, brutish faces.
Ahead was another lighted opening. This seemed to be where the dwarf with the whip had gone. “X” saw that it was an open door leading into another rock-hewn chamber. He plastered himself against the wall, then approached it stealthily. His heart was beating fast. His eyes were coldly bright. He was challenging death and knew it.
Inside the room were rough tables made of stone and piles of leaves and branches. Dwarf-men lay on their backs and stomachs sleeping, mouths gaping, arms flung out, bubbling animal noises coming from their sagging lips. The man with the whip was there. As “X” watched he rolled and prodded a comrade off a choice bed of boughs and took it himself. The man he had dispossessed gave a sleepy snarl and dosed off on the floor.
“X” tiptoed by, on to where a curve in the passage shut off sight of both lighted openings behind. Far ahead was another glow. The island was honeycombed as Captain Crump had said. These were the old powder magazines, the storage rooms where rustic soldiers had lain in wait to blockade the British long ago. Patriotic zeal had been behind the building of them. The bones of the dead patriots would stir in their graves if they could know to what use the fort was being put.
Again “X” had the eerie sense that he was being followed. It was so strong now that he stopped and stood for ten long minutes. Other faint noises came from that glow so far ahead. These mingled confusedly with the cries of the demented men behind. The curving passage echoed and distorted. His ears for once seemed useless. The patter of bare feet if they should come would be almost indistinguishable now.
There was only blackness behind since the elbow in the passage had shut off light. His one chance seemed to be to watch for silhouettes against the glow in front. He stooped, looked along the rocky floor, saw nothing. Then he tensed and sniffed. His keen nostrils had detected a musky odor. His scalp prickled. He clenched his gas gun in one hand, held his flash in the other. He prepared to risk a quick beam to settle his haunting doubts.
His finger touched the button. Light stabbed outward. He gave a sudden gasp. Hideous faces ringed the corridor behind him. Dwarf-men had crept upon him through the dark. It was the odor of their unwashed bodies he had smelled. And, as he raised his gas gun to fire, a wavering ghostly something hissed in the air above him. It settled over his head and shoulders, tangled and tightened. The Agent went down under the folds of a giant net.
Chapter XVI
THE MAD MASTER
HE was jerked off his feet. He struck the rock floor fighting madly, trying to get out from under the clinging strands. But there was a hoop of steel six feet in diameter around the mouth-like opening of the net. Dwarf-men had leaped upon it, holding it down. The tough fibers of the net hampered his movements, tangled his fingers, took all the power out of his blows.
The dwarfs had set up a fearful howling. They leaped up and down, struck at him, gave voice to mocking apelike cries. A club descended on the Agent’s head with brutal force. Only the net itself and his sandy toupee prevented it from stunning him. Lights flashed before his eyes. He sagged back, suddenly conscious of the folly of struggling. No man, however strong, could fight such a thing.
He had been caught, netted, as the wildest jungle beasts are caught. His gas gun was knocked from his fingers. His arms were pinioned at his sides as the dwarfs twisted the metal hoop, winding the net about him.
They ceased to strike him when he did not resist. Still howling their triumph with savage yells that resounded through the passage, they lifted him bodily, bore him away on their shoulders toward the distant light.
The Agent lay quiet, face muscles set behind his disguise. The dwarfs, silent, hurrying now, carried him along the passage. He turned his face once, saw the light ahead becoming larger. The dwarfs carried him through the door of another chamber. They dropped him on hard-rock flooring with a jolt that brought a twinge of pain to the X-shaped wound in his side. They stared down in a hideous, leering circle and began to howl again. Their cries, which were not articulate sounds, echoed in the rocky room above.
A door opened somewhere with a scrape. Slow footsteps sounded. A long shadow, black as a portent of evil, fell beside Agent “X.” He twisted his head, stared up, and let breath rush between clamped teeth.
Professor Guldi was standing above him. Guldi in a long, stained smock, a half-eaten apple in his bony hand, an expression of anger on his wrinkled face. He uttered a sound in his throat that the dwarfs seemed to understand, a guttural rasp that made them cringe back in fear. They waited, crouching on their heels in a circle, staring at Guldi meekly as whipped dogs.
His black, dank hair curled about his head. His burning eyes ranged over the dwarf-men’s features imperiously as the witch doctor of some demon-worshiping group. He came close to the Agent, stared down at his face, and broke into a sudden peal of raucous laughter.
“The newspaper man again!” He stirred the Agent with a prodding foot, studying him out of glittering eyes that began to glow with the inner fire of some deeply evil emotion.
“I congratulate you!” he whispered softly. “However you got here—you have done well. We always welcome—new recruits!” Guldi licked thin lips and wrinkled his face into the harsh lines of a mocking smile. “You will have bed and board and interesting work—far more interesting than your newspaper job. And your companions will be—interesting!”
In Guldi’s words there was a sinister, horrible meaning that the Agent got. The man, he could see, was obviously unbalanced; a brilliant mind warped by bitterness and frustration into ghastly channels. Guldi was more cruel, more merciless, more devoid of any inner human trait than these apelike dwarfs about him.
“You stare at me strangely!” Guldi snarled. “Like the rest of the fools you thought I was burned alive in the fire that destroyed my laboratory. Probably you saw my corpse being, carted away.” Guldi lifted his head and laughed sardonically, displaying his hideous snags of teeth. “The body wasn’t mine, my friend! It was one I kept embalmed for just such a purpose—a faithful assistant who had outlived his usefulness.”
Guldi turned and snapped his fingers. The dwarfs slunk close and drew the net away. They pulled “X’s” body out, set him on his feet facing Guldi. One of them drew a knife and held it against his back while two others grabbed his arms.
“They are obedient slaves,” said Guldi, “and you, too, will soon be taught to obey. Try to escape—and you die. Be quiet and you’ll be allowed to join our little clan. I’ll show you another I’m preparing.”
He walked back toward the door through which he’d come, and the dwarf-men holding “X” followed. The Agent was pushed across the threshold of a chamber larger than he’d so far seen. A bubbling groan of agony stirred weird echoes in the place. The Agent peered around him.
THERE was a strange framework of metal close to one wall. A powerful reflector light shone down upon it. At first glance it seemed an operating table, but there were wheels and levers at its end, up-tilted plates and rodlike extensions. On this strange contrivance, a human form was stretched, pitilessly naked except for a loincloth, and staring with glassy eyes up at the light. It was from the twitching, haggard lips of this man the groan had come.
Plates that seemed to be pressing close were clamped to the soles of his feet. Another plate, round and buttressed with metal supports was at his head. Already the sides of his skull were bulgi
ng outward and there was a grotesque curvature apparent in his limbs. Guldi’s gloating voice sounded.
“At one stage my process of preparation is a trifle unpleasant.”
The Agent had studied the ways of many criminals. Never had he seen a thing so fearful as this. Even the human and understandable motive of greed seemed to be lacking in Guldi. His was a pathological interest in abnormal science, which spurred him on to experiment along new lines that would at the same time satisfy his innate sadism.
It occurred to “X” that Guldi himself must be only a tool, a man of hideously distorted talents being used by some cunning, normal brain. Guldi’s next words seemed to uphold this.
“This is my workroom,” he gloated. “There are no petty fools to question and deride. There is no press to laugh at my theories. There are no pompous boards to oust me at their whim. Here I can work in peace—and a time will come when the whole world will crawl to my feet.”
Guldi’s glittering eyes swung to the Agent’s face. The Agent spoke for the first time since his arrival in this place. He spoke softly, trying to keep all horror and tenseness out of his voice. “How do you get your funds, Professor Guldi?”
Guldi turned upon him harshly, fingers curving into claws. “That’s no concern of yours! I’ve a market for my product!” He gestured toward the hideous dwarfs who stood about, motioned toward the man on the table rack. He walked over then and made an adjustment of a lever, drawing the plates at the man’s head and feet still closer. A ghastly groan of quivering agony came from the man’s lips. His legs bowed still more. His skull bulged outward. His eyes seemed to start from his head.
“His bones are still soft,” said Guldi raptly. “He is as plastic as clay.” He tapped the man’s streaming forehead, added with bitterness, “That’s the only thing that gives me trouble. The brain is a delicate apparatus, easily put out of gear. I want docility, not dementia. Sometimes psychological demarcations are hard to figure. There are six outside who haven’t responded well.”
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5 Page 35