The gray-uniformed doorman touched his cap, gave his professional ingratiating smile and bowed “X” into the bank. Several pasty-faced tellers nearly banged their chins on the counter in bowing to “X.” And another bank guard clicked off a snappy salute.
The Agent didn’t know where the bank president’s office was, and he hadn’t time to make mistakes or arouse suspicion. He nodded to the guard, put on August Langton’s best condescending smile and said:
“Come to my office with me.”
“Yes, Mr. Langton.” He stepped back to let “X” lead the way.
The Agent waved him on ahead with an impatient gesture. “I’m in a hurry. Don’t let anyone interrupt my train of thought.”
Many times the guard had heard those words, and he well remembered the penalty for breaking that “train of thought.” With another salute, he quickly led the way around the cages to a door marked President. A guard on duty there straightened up and was about to speak when the first guard gave him the high sign about the “train of thought.”
A tight smile curved the Agent’s lips. It was little characteristics like this that had enabled him to carry on his work. “X” was an actor and a mimic.
Once in the sumptuous office of August Langton, “X” stared hard at the guard. “Get this clearly in your mind. I want no blunders. Remove the guard outside from my door. I will be coming and going this afternoon, and I want nothing to happen that may break my train of thought. Don’t even speak to me. And above all see that I am left entirely alone.”
The guard vanished from the office. “X” looked about, then sat down behind the desk. He rested his heels on the glass top and leaned back in the swivel chair. In this way he rested as much as an ordinary man rests in the deepest slumber. He relaxed every nerve and muscle in his body—and waited.
About fifteen minutes later, the door opened. The real August Langton stepped quickly into the office. His head was bowed in a train of thought. He removed his silk hat and mechanically placed it on a hook. Then he moved toward the desk. His head lifted; his jaw dropped enough to dislocate it. He licked his lips.
“Wh-a-a—”
“X” was toying with his blue automatic. He let it point in the general direction of the banker’s head. His voice, the exact tone and pitch of August Langton’s said:
“You wanted to see me, Langton.”
The banker could only stare. When he did find his voice, he could only mutter: “It can’t be. It’s not human. It can’t—”
“X” went on toying with the automatic. “When you make up your mind, Langton, we’ll talk business.”
August Langton slumped into a chair. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” said “X” quietly. “You wanted me.”
“I can’t believe it,” muttered the banker. “The man of a thousand faces—and right here in my own bank.”
“X” STOOD up, crossed over to the banker’s chair. “You know who I am, Langton, and you know that my time is valuable. Speak up, man.”
August Langton licked his dry lips, got a hold on himself. He tugged at his starched cuffs, ran a finger under his winged collar. “Yes, Secret Agent ‘X,’ I have a deal to offer you. It is the greatest opportunity you will ever get. Why, overnight you—”
“What is the deal?” butted in “X.”
The banker tweaked his sharp nose. “A man of business, eh? Good. We’ll get along. All right. Here it is…. I will pay you one million dollars the day you bring the Blue Spark to justice.”
Secret Agent “X” looked down thoughtfully at the banker. For some moments he stared at him in silence. Then, as Langton was about to speak, “X” held up his hand, saying:
“Don’t break my train of thought.” And smiling to himself at the banker’s start, he slowly went back to the desk. Behind it, he took out his grained-leather cigar case, and opened it on his knee. He glanced over at the banker, asked: “Can you sing, Langton?”
“Huh?” The banker half raised himself from his chair.
“Sing,” said “X.”
“No!”
“How about humming, Langton?”
The banker wiped perspiration from his face. “You’re not serious—”
“X” leaned forward across the desk and spoke in a dead level voice. “You will either hum a song—or go without my services.”
Langton crouched back into his chair, mopped his steaming face again. He looked at the blue-black gun in “X’s” hand, thought he was facing a lunatic—and started to hum.
The Agent went to work on his telegraphic transmission set. He tapped out his key call to Harvey Bates. Then:
“Was August Langton threatened by the Blue Spark? Standing by.”
He looked over at the banker. August Langton was humming in a flat, toneless monotone. It was so flat that “X” couldn’t distinguish the song. But it was loud enough to cover the humming sound of the telegraphic key. Suddenly “X” bent his head to catch Bates’ reply.
“August Langton has not been threatened by Blue Spark.”
“X” put away his telegraphic transmission set; looked long and hard at the humming banker. Then he said:
“All right, Langton. Stop that noise you’re making, get on the phone and bring me the hundred thousand you promised on meeting me.”
The banker quickly made the call, then settled back in a chair. Over and over again, he muttered: “It will be worth a million dollars.” Suddenly, he looked up, demanding: “How can I be positive that you are Secret Agent ‘X’?”
“Just step behind that screen when your teller comes in with the money.”
August Langton moved over to the screen. “But suppose I yelled out that you were Secret Agent ‘X?’ There is enough reward money on your head to make it—”
“X” lifted the automatic, said quietly: “You would never collect that reward money, Langton.”
There was a discreet knock on the door. “X” called out in Langton’s voice to come in. The teller entered, placed the money on the big desk and returned to the door. “X” said: “Do you know who I am?” The surprised teller turned. “Why—of course, sir. You are Mr. Langton.”
AGENT waved him out of the office, then he pocketed the money as August Langton approached the desk. “X” very coolly raised the blue-black automatic, pointed it directly at the banker.
Langton recoiled in horror. “You can’t—”
“X” squeezed the trigger. A jet of vapor hissed from the muzzle, struck Langton square in the face. The banker swayed, started to fall to the floor. “X” caught him, carried him behind the screen. Then he left the office, walked down the corridor swinging his cane. Not a guard or employee spoke to him. “X” sauntered to the bank doors. Suddenly he stopped, looked at the lithe, beautiful girl coming up the steps toward him.
She was Electra Barker. Her deep brown eyes were unreadable. She might have been looking through him. But her ripe, red lips were parted in a dazzling smile. Her gloved hand touched his arm, and she spoke in that low, rich voice of hers.
“I must see you tonight at the party, August—alone.”
“X” didn’t know how the banker greeted this girl. He smiled, swept off his silk hat.
The girl took her hand from his arm. “You are not very talkative today, August.”
“I will make up for it tonight,” said the Agent.
Electra Barker’s eyes seemed to turn a shade darker. “X” wondered if he had made some slip. The girl asked: “Will you put me in my car, August?”
The Agent offered his arm and started down the steps. There was a row of cars at the curb. He hadn’t the slightest idea which car was hers. He said lightly:
“Which car are you using today?”
Electra’s dark eyes peered steadily into his. She spoke very quietly. “You know, August—that I have only one car.”
“X” knew he was in a jam for fair. His keen eyes swept the car doors for monograms or initials, but found none.
The girl ask
ed: “Are you trying to be funny, August?”
Agent “X” again looked along the line of cars. Then his eyes raised, focused on a man standing across the street. That man was Detective Sergeant Mellor. And he was watching them like a hawk.
“Funny?” said “X.” “No. But I think that man across the street is acting—funny.”
Electra tensed. “What man?” she husked.
“Looks like he might be a detective,” said the Agent. “Young fellow.”
Without a word, the girl turned and walked quickly to a twelve-cylinder sport roadster. “X” puzzled over her actions. She had known that the man across the street was Mellor. And the fact that he was there startled her. “X” frowned. Not many hours ago they had been calling each other by first names.
While “X” puzzled, his eyes swept up and down the street. He suddenly turned to steel. For coming down the street toward the bank was a long, sleek black hearse.
Chapter VI
FIENDS’ FODDER
IT was the same black hearse that “X” had seen when Private Detective Grebb had been turned into a blue corpse. The same black hearse that had carried off the rubber-clad men after “X’s” fight on the South Shore sand dunes. And now it bore straight down on the bank.
The top of the hearse folded down into the interior. A long, cannonlike barrel rose on mechanical arms. It swiveled to point toward the bank. The gun was a bigger model of the lightning projector that the Agent had seen emerge from the coffin in the Blue Spark’s chamber.
“X” knew what was coming. Already, people had spotted the cannonlike barrel on the roof of the hearse. They stood in open-mouthed wonder. Others, on the sidewalk, had not seen it; were totally unaware of the disaster hurtling toward them. Men, women and children were there; strolling along the sidewalk.
And then it came. A blinding, dazzling streak of lightning leaped from the muzzle of the strange gun atop the hearse and splashed against the doors of the bank. Two men coming out of the bank at that moment were swallowed in the blaze of blue light.
The Secret Agent knew that the projected bolt of lightning was far more powerful than the charge directed at the South Shore bungalow when Detective Grebb was in hiding. And this charge was infinitely more concentrated than the bolt projected at Toby Moore in the Blue Spark’s chamber—or at Secret Agent “X.”
Hoarse screams came from the people trapped in the bank. The sleek black hearse moved swiftly on toward the bank. Its lethal gun was dark, ominous, yet pointed toward the bank as if ready for another life-blasting bolt.
Blue corpses dotted the sidewalk and street. The lurching of the black hearse and the uneven road-bed had caused that streak of dazzling death to spray the sidewalk. Shrieks of sheer terror rose from the maddened, shocked humanity in the streets.
“X” remembered his last encounter with the rubber-clad men of the black hearse. He quickly lifted an iron “No Parking” sign and hurled it straight at the oncoming hearse. The heavy missile sailed true to its mark—then suddenly stopped in midair. About three feet from the hearse it happened. It was as if an invisible giant’s hand had reached out and stopped the missile. The iron sign dropped to the street without even touching the car.
Hundreds had seen the Agent’s attempt to stop the murder machine—and hundreds now gasped in fresh dismay at this latest macabre miracle. But it was not a miracle to Secret Agent “X.” He knew that the hearse was surrounded by a repelling electrical field as invincible as a steel wall.
But his attempt had been seen by the black-garbed driver of the hearse. Slitted eyes in a greased-rubber hood singled out the Agent. And for a moment, the Secret Agent stood there in the open, alone to face the wrath of the black machine.
Men in the street screeched to him to run for his life. Yet none stood beside him. They fled from him, leaving him pitifully alone. But Secret Agent “X” knew that the driver and every man in that hearse was unarmed. In the sand-dune fight “X” had learned that. It would have been suicide for those rubber-clad men to have any metal about their person when working so close to the mighty lightning projector.
Amid the horror howls cascading up the canyon of concrete and steel there rose the shrill caterwauling cry of a brass throat.
“The police!” Those two words bleated from a thousand tongues.
But Secret Agent “X” felt no elation at the coming of the police. He knew they could not help. All they could accomplish would be to hurl themselves to certain destruction.
THE gun atop the black hearse again ran out its blue-white tongue of terror. An unearthly light filled the street: so brilliant that even in that scrambling horde of humanity not a single shadow was cast. The dazzling bolt cometed in through the charred doors of the bank.
The cries of lost souls plunging down the bottomless pit of eternity could not have rivaled the cacophony of death that welled from the gutted bank. The bank doors seemed like the mouth of some mythical monster. For from its maw there gushed flame-shot billows of black smoke.
Agent “X” tore his eyes from the awesome spectacle. His ears alone had not been closed to the approaching police siren. And with a defiant screech, the little police car swept around the corner. It had picked up patrolmen, who were standing on the runningboard.
Police Colts barked. And a submachine gun, fiery tongue licking its muzzle, chattered from the police car. But those coppers knew nothing of the electrical field that surrounded the hearse like the plates of a battleship.
The weird gun atop the hearse disappeared. To “X,” it seemed that those rubber-clad cacodemons had scorned to use it on the little police car. And that careening police machine was headed straight for the black hearse. “X” remembered the incredible speed that was leashed under that long black engine hood, and he instantly divined the trick of the Blue Spark’s minions.
They were going to spurt ahead, kill their electrical field to give them a yard’s advantage—and let the police car hurl itself into the blazing inferno of the bank.
“X,” nearest the police car, made up his mind with split-second determination. He leaped to the running board behind the shooting patrolman. His steel-muscled arm darted across under the machine gun’s barrel and grasped the bucking steering wheel.
He gave it a jerk—and sprang free. A driver’s first instinctive move when another grabs his wheel is to brake. And the police driver, keyed up to an almost hysterical pitch, plunged home the brake. The car skidded, nearly turned over, righted itself with a bounce. It was then that the driver saw the burning bank almost at his bumper. For the black hearse had miraculously slipped from in front of him.
Agent “X” had hurdled two livid blue corpses and climbed behind the wheel of his high-powered roadster. He shot it out from the curb, skimmed around the tail-light of the police car, and thundered in the wake of the black hearse.
The death car left a trail of crushed bodies behind it. In its first plunge through the packed street, it looked like a snow-plow whirling bodies from its path. The electrical field about it acted like a locomotive’s cowcatcher, brushing corpses from in front of its wheels.
“X” opened his super-charged engine and roared after the hearse. But he made no headway. The hearse easily kept its distance from him. Then, slowly it began to pull ahead. “X’s” accelerator was jammed against the floorboards, but the hearse was widening the distance between them.
The Agent locked his left hand on the wheel. His right whipped out the miniature telegraphic transmission set. He keyed Harvey Bates, got him, said:
“Contact all operatives’ cars, Sections Two and Three. Be on lookout for black hearse—learn destination. Signal cars Section Four to contact others sections for relay operations—Signing off.”
By now the black hearse was a speck hurtling through traffic. Suddenly it swerved around a corner. And “X” knew he had lost it. His eyes flicked to the rear-vision mirror—saw a powerful foreign car three blocks behind him. “X” slowed. The long-prowed foreign car slowed. And whe
n “X” swung into the curb, the foreign car followed him.
THE driver of the foreign car was the Baron von Huhn. He left his car and walked stiffly to the Agent’s roadster. “A most unusual machine you have, August,” he observed without change of expression.
“X” jerked his head back toward the foreign car. “And yours, Otto,” said “X” in perfect imitation of August Langton’s voice.
The baron snapped open a cigarette case, held it out to “X,” bowed. “X” took one, lighted the baron’s, then his own. Von Huhn blew smoke through his nose, said:
“I saw you, August. The things a man will do to safeguard his money are positively amazing. You will be called a hero, my friend.”
“X” straightened his wing collar and thought in the terms that Banker August Langton would think in. “Well—the vaults were not looted.”
The baron did a rare thing. He smiled. Then, tapping ashes from his cigarette, said calmly: “Many people were killed. Will not your depositors lose confidence?”
“Not for long,” said the Agent. “I have just employed one who may help us.”
Von Huhn stiffened. “You mean—”
“Yes. Secret Agent ‘X’ is to get one million dollars for catching the Blue Spark.”
“Good,” said the baron quietly. “I will raise the fee to two million dollars.” Then one of the baron’s dog-like eyes closed in a knowing wink. “Two million dollars, my dear August—which need never be paid.”
“X” thoughtfully studied the baron. Finally, he spoke. “I must get back to the bank, Otto. I’ll call for you when I leave for Barker’s party in Great Neck.”
The Agent drove back to the bank, got a heroic welcome from those who thought he was August Langton. He went through the police and fire lines, finally reached August Langton’s office. The banker was still behind the screen. “X” locked the door. The president’s office had been shielded from the electric bolts. “X” quickly revived Langton, told him what had happened—and to act like a hero. Also, that he was to call for the baron when starting for Barker’s place.
Langton was too dazed by the destruction about him to attach any particular significance to the fact that Secret Agent “X” had talked with the Baron von Huhn.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 5 Page 55