Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5

by Paul Chadwick

  “X” touched a button beneath the picture and watched a stream of harmless anesthetizing gas jet from a concealed valve in the arm of the chair. Toby Moore tensed, then settled back in the chair unconscious.

  She was still unconscious when “X” again stepped into the room. Private Detective Grebb’s face had given place to the young, reckless features of A.J. Martin, Associated Press. “X” took the girl in his arms and quickly quit the hideout. He drove to the deserted side street where he had left Inspector Burks’ special police flyer. The car was there, still undiscovered by the police. The Agent lifted Toby Moore into it, and knowing she would regain consciousness in a few moments, he drove off in his own car.

  Fifteen minutes later he parked two blocks from the Alessandro Apartments. And, as he sauntered toward the apartment house, he saw that the place was under heavy guard. Two cars were stationed across the street from it. And a man loitered near the entrance. “X” walked right up to the iron-grilled doors, reached for the handle.

  The man loitering about stepped up to him, asking: “Got a match, buddy?”

  “X’s” left hand brought out a folder of safety matches, passed them to the man. Then “X” grinned in a friendly way, said: “Nice night.”

  “Yeah,” muttered the man, peering into “X’s” face. “Say—haven’t I seen you someplace?”

  “X” pocketed the matches, shrugged. “Likely. I get around.”

  A muffled revolver shot came from the direction of the basement.

  The man scowled at “X.” “Better keep on gettin’ around, buddy.”

  THE Agent heard the snick of automobile doors from across the street; the clack of hard heels on the street. The men in the cars had heard the shot and were coming over. “X” acted quickly. His hands flicked out, pinioning the man’s arms to his sides. One of those arms was crossing to a shoulder gun when “X’s” viselike grip clamped down on him.

  “X” lifted him, swung him around so that he was between himself and the men rapidly crossing the street. Then “X” moved sideways in a strange, spidery walk toward the basement entrance. The man struggled to free himself. And his struggles were not just the efforts of a man trying to get loose to fight. They were frenzied, fear-shot jerks. “X” looked at the man’s strained face—saw an unnamed terror convulsing the features.

  And that told Secret Agent “X” that his little trick was not going to work. That those men crossing the street were not going to let a comrade’s body stand between them and their prey. The struggling man in “X’s” grip realized that. His lips writhed in a screech that abject terror throttled in his throat.

  “X,” right at the basement steps, pushed the man from him in the hope of saving his life. Too late. A sickening thuck—and the man arched his shoulder back, twisted his head as if listening. Then, stiff as a poker, he toppled, one shoulder crunching on the pavement. “X” saw the knife hilt sprouting from his back. And he saw the knifeman’s arm drawn back for another throw. Street-light glinted on steel. “X” flung himself down the basement steps.

  There was an open door on his left. Never slackening his pace, he pushed his right arm against the alley wall hurling himself into the cellar. The damp air of cold cement and whitewashed walls swept to his nostrils. He spun around, closed and bolted the metal door.

  Ahead of him were sounds of a scuffle. He darted around a bank of bins and ran under an arbor of asbestos-covered pipes. His rubber-soled shoes made not a whit of sound. Turning a sharp corner, he came upon three struggling men.

  “X” recognized one of them. That one was redheaded Jim Hobart of the Hobart Detective Agency. The other two were unknown to the Agent. But in a glance he saw that they were bigger, heavier men than Jim Hobart. And that it was only Jim Hobart’s bulldog fighting spirit that kept him on his feet. One of the men angled behind Hobart, whipped out a blackjack.

  The Agent sprang forward, caught the man’s descending arm with his left hand. His right balled into a knotty fist, clipped the man on the jaw. The blow seemed merely a tap, but it tapped the nerve center just to one side of the pointed chin. The man dropped to the cement floor. That right hand of “X’s” flashed to his pocket, came out holding a gleaming, blue-black automatic.

  Jim Hobart let out a whoop. “Boss! Just watch me sink this monkey!” He squared off, measuring his attacker.

  “Hold it!” barked the Agent. His swung the gun to cover the apish man.

  The man wiped blood from his mouth, snarled: “Go ahead—plug me. The boys outside have this brick-topped punk spotted. He’ll never leave the building in one piece. And you’ll go with him!”

  “X” said: “Hold your breath, Hobart.” Then he deliberately squeezed the trigger of his gun. There was no report. But the gun did a strange thing. From its muzzle jetted a lance of whitish vapor. The apelike man had seen the Agent’s finger tighten on the trigger. And his mouth opened to screech the fear that turned his blood to water. That screech never came, for the plume of anesthetizing gas billowed into his mouth and nostrils. He was unconscious before he started his fall to the floor. “X” caught him, let him sag to the cement.

  Jim Hobart said nothing, just stared at “X.” This man whom he knew as A.J. Martin had astounded him so many times that he had grown used to expect anything to happen when the “Boss” was around, Hobart put it all down to the fact that Martin was a super-newshawk hunting unusual scoops, and let it go at that.

  The Agent still gripped his gun. He motioned toward another bank of storage bins. Hobart followed him. “X” worked on the padlock on one of the bins. He heard the men from the street trying to force the metal door he had bolted. Then “X” pretended to have trouble with the padlock. He brought up his right hand, managed to point the muzzle at Hobart’s face, and pressed the trigger.

  They were in a dark corner, and Hobart’s head was turned toward the noise at the metal door. He never knew what happened. “X” opened the bin door, carried Jim Hobart inside and laid him on two trunks standing together. He rigged up a small mirror, then pointed his fountain-pen flashlight at his own face.

  IN scant seconds, that face underwent a miraculous change. Plastic paste was dabbed here and there, fresh pigments to heighten the color to a ruddy complexion. Then “X” slipped a red wig from a secret pocket, trimmed it with a tiny scissors and drew it over his own hair.

  There were two Jim Hobarts in that storage bin. One unconscious on the trunks; the other smiling strangely as he looked down at him. For Secret Agent “X” had no alternative. Jim Hobart had been marked by the men in the street. “X” had had a sample of their ruthlessness in getting the man they wanted. And, as the Agent had sent Jim Hobart here, it was his job to get him out of danger.

  “X” slipped into Hobart’s overcoat and hat. Then he gently lowered his loyal assistant down behind the two trunks. That done, he stepped out of the bin and locked it behind him. His first move was to locate the dumb waiter. He found it, climbed in and hoisted himself quickly to the sixth floor. He had noticed on the dumbwaiter push-button board that the sixth-floor apartment had no name card beside it, and he had also seen that a Miss Moore occupied the apartment on the fifth floor.

  It was a moment’s work for the Agent to jimmy the lock on the dumbwaiter door. He went through the vacant apartment to the door and slipped into the corridor. “X” had other plans than let himself be used as a target. He descended to the fifth floor, walked softly along the corridor to Toby Moore’s apartment. The girl had had plenty of time to arrive here.

  “X” paused before the door and knocked on the panel. Almost instantly came the voice he recognized as Toby Moore’s.

  “Who is there?”

  The Agent cleared his throat, hesitated a fraction of a second, then spoke his line with the finesse of a seasoned actor. He muttered:

  “Er—telegram.”

  The door opened. Red-headed Toby Moore looked out. Her face, pretty in a theatrical way, showed surprise. But she made no move to close the door.
r />   “Telegram?” she asked.

  “X” cleared his throat again. “Sorry I had to fool you, Miss Moore, but I’m a reporter—”

  The girl’s eyes hardened though her red mouth flashed a dazzling smile. She laughed gaily. “Oh, a reporter! Well, the press must not be disappointed.” She stepped back, swung the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”

  “X” did go in. From the tail of his eye, he caught two men hiding behind the door. And to carry out his part, he made a stab to his shoulder holster.

  Toby flung herself against him, calling softly: “No rough stuff, boys.”

  The two men leaped at “X,” jabbing guns into his side. One kicked the door shut. Toby Moore stepped back, coolly looked “X” up and down. One of the gunmen said:

  “This is the snooper, all right.” The girl nodded slowly. “And I can give a good guess who he is working for.” Toby faced “X.” “The Blue Spark will be glad to welcome you to his kingdom.”

  “X” clamped his lips as he knew the loyal Jim Hobart would have done.

  The girl went on in her bantering tone. “Oh, you’ll talk all right, my friend.”

  “Sure,” said one of the gunners. “He’ll talk.” Suddenly the gunner guffawed. “He’ll talk himself blue in the face!”

  Chapter III

  THE STEEL BRAIN

  SECRET AGENT “X” found himself in a room with blue walls and a darker blue ceiling. He had no recollection of walking into this room, yet he was here. He had no recollection of leaving Toby Moore’s apartment, yet this was certainly not her apartment. The long blue room was larger than any two apartments at the Alessandro.

  “X” clearly remembered the gunner saying: “He will talk himself blue in the face.” But he remembered nothing after that. Nothing seemed to have happened after that. There was an empty void from that moment until this. The Agent knew he had not been drugged. His perfectly tuned system told him that. And he had not been blackjacked. His head was clear from any pain or throbbing.

  It was as if some magic carpet with a speed greater than the registration of the senses had swept him from Toby Moore’s apartment to this blue room. The Secret Agent was puzzled. Suddenly his hands swept to his pockets. Everything had been taken from them, and his gas gun was missing. Then he quickly explored the secret pockets in the lining of his coat. His telegraphic transmission set was still there. And his sound amplifier, and make-up case were still intact. But his tool kit of the finest chromium tools was missing.

  “X” had no time to think of the handicap their loss would give him. For a door opened at one end of the blue room. A phalanx of five glistening black figures trooped silently toward him. They all stood above six feet in stature. And the one in the point position of the wedgelike formation was biggest of all. His shimmering black head was bent slightly forward; his long arms brushed the greased rubber of his thighs with a slithering, swishing sound.

  The other six ebon figures forged on behind the leader. Secret Agent “X” set himself to meet the shock of bodies. He’d try no grappling stunts this time. He’d give them a good exhibition of two-fisted Jim Hobart’s slugging. His feet shifted easily to a ground-gripping stance. His muscles flexed.

  But that impact of bodies never came. Ten feet from him, the phalanx came to an abrupt stop. The leader stepped to one side, leaving his point position. It was then that “X” saw the eighth figure of the phalanx. This eighth figure was in the center of the human wedge. He was hooded and masked in a greased rubber suit. But that glistening suit was not black. It was a deep blue—and emblazoned across the chest was a lightning-streak device.

  The Blue Spark.

  “X” stared at the weird head of the Blue Spark. It was unlike the others, for under the hood he wore square-cut goggles. The lenses were criss-crossed, making identification of the eyes behind them impossible. And the goggles gave those eyes a protruding, froglike appearance. But it was the mouth that was strangest of all. The lips seemed to have been drawn out a full two inches in a long rectangle.

  Then the Blue Spark spoke in a vibrant, metallic voice. “We welcome you, Mr. Hobart.”

  The Agent never took his eyes from that flat, rectangular mouth. The lips had not moved. And that vibrant, metallic voice told “X” that the Blue Spark had rigged up a sounding disk in that box over his mouth. It made the voice harsh, tinny with a mechanical resonance; completely disguising the tone.

  “X” made no reply, just stood there, every sense alert.

  The Blue Spark’s voice came again. “We will come directly to the point, Mr. Hobart. Where is this man you work for—this Secret Agent ‘X’?”

  “X,” carefully weighing Jim Hobart’s knowledge, said quickly: “I don’t work for that crook.”

  The Blue Spark seemed to consider this. Then asked: “For whom do you work, Mr. Hobart?”

  The very gentleness of the question flashed a warning to “X.” Those seven ebon figures, massive and glistening in the soft lights of the chamber were like leashed black panthers straining at their bonds. And that leash, “X” knew, was a single word from the Blue Spark. “X” hunched his shoulders, saying:

  “What’s the idea of bringing me here for these fool questions?”

  “You weren’t discomforted on the way here, were you, Mr. Hobart?”

  The Agent sensed the mockery underlying that question. He hadn’t the vaguest idea how he had reached this blue room. So he adopted the Blue Spark’s bantering tone. “No kick—except I lost some things in transportation.”

  “And that,” the Blue Spark’s voice took on a harsher metallic note, “brings us back to the question of your employer.”

  “I run the Hobart Detective Agency,” said “X.” “I work for any level guy who can meet my fees.”

  Blue Spark turned his hooded head to the point man of his phalanx. “Our language seems strange to Mr. Hobart. He needs an interpreter.”

  Like a gleaming black lance, the man hurled himself at “X.” His black head down, he leaped to butt the Agent in the pit of the stomach. “X” slid back a step, brought his knee crashing up into the man’s lowered face.

  An inhuman cry tore through the black hood. A rush of blood from a squashed nose choked it off. The point man tumbled on his back. Burbling noises came from the rubber mask. The man struggled to one elbow, clawed at the hood that was now smothering him. But his hands slid futilely over the greased surface.

  A metallic chuckle came from the Blue Spark. “Number Ten will gauge his distances better the next time—if there is a next time…. Take Hobart!”

  Two more rubber-clad men detached themselves from the wedgelike formation and sprang at the Agent. This time, “X” stepped in to meet them. His fist scorched across greased rubber, pounded on a jutting chin. The ebon figure went down.

  The other came in from the side, head lowered and butted “X” off his feet. The Secret Agent lay still, while a numbing fear swept over his brain. Not fear for himself, but fear that his work for humanity might now forever end. For that butting head had crashed into an old wound in the Agent’s side. An old war wound it was. Then the doctors had ordered another grave to be dug,—yet the Agent had lived—lived to carry an “X”-shaped scar on his body.

  Should that wound reopen, Secret Agent “X” would pass over into the Great Guess. His side ached with the dull prodding of awakened devils. He concentrated his senses on that side of his body. But he had no feeling of flowing blood.

  Perhaps it was thankfulness that he was not bleeding that turned Agent “X” toward the Number Ten man of the ebon phalanx. The rubber hood had twisted to one side and had shut out air. Blood bubbled from the eye slits. The man was choking on his own blood. His thrashing about was less violent now. He was dying.

  “X” quickly thrust a finger into one of the blood-welling eye slits and gave the hood a vicious jerk. The soggy rubber peeled back from the red-smeared face. The man’s gaping mouth sucked air into his starved lungs. And his eyes turned to the Secret Agent. Th
ose eyes were grateful; mute like the eyes of a stricken animal that for the first time has learned of human kindness.

  Blue Spark’s vibrant voice filled the chamber. “We have learned something! Mr. Hobart is squeamish about seeing a man die. That is interesting—interesting.”

  “X” CLIMBED slowly to his feet. At a nod from the Blue Spark, two of the ebon figures lifted the man whose life “X” had saved and carried him from the room. Then the Blue Spark crossed the chamber with a noticeable swagger. He seated himself in a blue upholstered chair, turned toward “X” and gave a metallic mutter:

  “Interesting.”

  Two ebon figures seized “X” and forced him into a chair. The Agent showed just enough fight to make it realistic. He didn’t tire himself. For he had a hunch that the Blue Spark was going to put on some sort of a show for his benefit. Two glistening black men locked “X” into a chair. The chair was specially designed and fitted with some rubber-covered steel clamps.

  The Blue Spark lifted his hand in some prearranged signal. A heavy drape covering one wall slowly drew back like a theatre curtain, revealing a large dimly lighted stage. On that stage, “X” saw a big black coffin resting on a contrivance that looked like an operating table. Directly across from this was a rubber-covered chair.

  The coffin recalled the sleek black hearse to “X’s” mind. He studied the stage thoughtfully. A door opened on one wing of the stage. A red headed girl came out. Her spiked patent-leather heels twinkled across the stage. Her body swayed sinuously as she moved around the big coffin.

  Toby Moore. Of her own accord, she seated herself in the rubber-covered chair—and looked calmly toward the coffin.

  The Blue Spark turned his goggle-eyed head toward the Secret Agent. And to “X,” the Blue Spark even seemed to swagger when sitting down. Then the Blue Spark spoke.