Seated before a collapsible, triple-sided mirror, Agent “X” quickly built up a different personality. From a small bottle he washed on darkish pigment that dried almost instantly, owing to its highly rarefied benzine base. Over it he spread a volatile substance that quickly assumed the appearance of ruddy, living flesh. This he molded into the cast of a firm-jawed, stern-looking man of fifty.
He darkened and thickened his eyebrows, slipped a toupee shot with gray over his head—and the transformation was complete. He had aged at least twenty years.
From a small cabinet he took a card bearing the name of Frank Hearndon, agent of the U. S. Department of Justice. This he slipped into his wallet. When it suited his purpose, “X” never hesitated to act as a representative of the law, for, though neither the police nor the D. C. I. suspected it, he had the secret sanction of one of the highest government officials in the land. Messages had often flashed between Agent “X” and a man in Washington, D. C., who preferred to be known only as K9.
The change had taken Agent “X” exactly eight minutes. He slipped into another suit, hurried to the street again. But now he ignored his black coupé, which was registered under the name of Martin. He summoned a taxi instead, and, with a five-dollar bill, bribed the driver to law-breaking speed across town till the Guardian Bank hove into sight.
As he had feared, it was crowded. For this was the first of the month, and at least a hundred depositors jostled at the tellers’ windows, some drawing out cash, others depositing part of their salaries.
“X” strode toward the bank’s rear where a short flight of steps led to a balcony lined with the offices of the officials.
A big man in a blue uniform barred his way by placing a determined hand on the small gate across the steps.
“Sorry, sir,” he said. “We don’t allow—”
“I must see President Banton,” the Agent snapped. “It’s vitally important.”
“Sorry,” repeated the bank guard, “but you’ll have to wait. Mr. Banton is engaged. Take a seat over there. I’ll let you know when you can—”
There was pompous assurance in the guard’s tone, but it vanished in a surprised gasp, as Agent “X” impatiently brushed the man out of his way, snapped open the metal gate, and sprang up the steps.
“Hey—you can’t do that! Mr. Banton is—”
His words fell on unheeding ears. “X” was already half across the balcony. He swiftly passed a dozen doors lettered in gold. The bond department. The trust officers’ rooms. The chambers of the vice-presidents. He yanked open a door marked, “President,” entered a small, luxurious outer office.
An angry voice reached his ears, not Banton’s, but that of a man who stood before the desk of the girl receptionist. “X” paused an instant to stare. A dispute was obviously in progress and the two engaged in it were too excited to notice his entry.
THE man was firm-jawed, powerful, with a face that was familiar to Agent “X”—a face that had the stubborn cragginess of rough-hewn granite. He was Norman Coe, head of the Citizens Banking Committee, an organization representing the claims and complaints of depositors in a dozen closed banks, and a man who had made life unpleasant for more than one shady banker.
“I tell you,” he shouted, “that Craig Banton can’t treat me like this. I’ve waited for twenty minutes now, and I’m going in or—”
The girl at the desk was stubborn also, with the scared determination of one eager to make good on her job. She shook her head. “It can’t be helped. You’ve got to wait—like any one else. Please be patient.”
Norman Coe broke into another angry tirade, pointing a shaking finger at his watch.
“Twenty minutes, I say—twenty minutes. My time is worth—”
Agent “X” took the opportunity to cross the room swiftly. Coe heard him and whirled. The girl at the desk gave a startled shriek, putting her hand to her mouth. But Agent “X” had already flung open the door of the president’s office. It might serve as an adequate barrier even to such an important person as Norman Coe, but it couldn’t stop the Man of a Thousand Faces when the threat of crime spurred him on. He saw at once, however, that the girl at the desk hadn’t lied. Craig Banton was busy—very much so.
A fashionably-dressed woman was seated close to his side—a woman whose face was familiar to the Agent, just as Norman Coe’s had been. While Banton let Coe cool his heels in the outer office, he was having a tete-a-tete with Vivian de Graf, society beauty, whose sensational affairs had formed front-page gossip for the scandal sheets. Only recently her name had been connected with that of Roswell Sully, millionaire utility magnate, called the most hated man in America.
Arresting, exotic, Vivian de Graf was the type to attract men wherever she went. And she made a point of doing so. Her tailored clothes subtly accentuated the perfection of her statuesque figure. Her beauty was carried with poised arrogance. At the front of her gown, contrasting with the dazzling whiteness of her throat, were the spread petals of an orchid, yellow as saffron, spotted like a leopard’s coat. The flower was as exotic as its wearer—and had something poisonous in its loveliness that seemed symbolic of Vivian de Graf’s spotted career.
The caressing smile on her crimson lips, the coyly arched eyebrows, and the confiding closeness of her chair to Banton’s, indicated to “X” that he had broken in on a very intimate conversation.
Craig Banton, red-faced, bull-necked, looking a little foolish at the moment, raised glittering eyeglasses and made an angry sound in his fat throat at “X’s” informal entry.
“How the devil did you get in here?” he barked. “I thought I told—”
Secret Agent “X” strode forward sternly, plucking the card of Frank Hearndon from his wallet and thrusting it under Banton’s nose.
THE bank president’s beefy face got redder still. “Hearndon!” he spluttered. “Hearndon, eh! What in thunder do you want? Why do you come in like this? I don’t understand and—”
Agent “X” spoke a single swift sentence. “I want you to close this bank, Banton.”
At his blunt words, Craig Banton gasped; then gaped, thunderstruck.
“Get every depositor out of here as fast as you can,” the Secret Agent ordered. “Shut and lock the doors. Get the vault closed.”
“You’re mad!” Banton found his voice in a scornful exclamation. “Do you know what you’re saying? I’ve received no orders—”
“Never mind orders!” the Agent snapped. “This bank must be closed—at once! Do you understand?”
Vivian de Graf gave a silvery, rippling laugh. “It’s just too thrilling!” she drawled. “Like a motion picture!”
Watching Agent “X” amusedly, she opened her small handbag. Her slender fingers, conspicuously scarlet-tipped, reached for a cigarette. Stray sunlight from a high window danced and shimmered on a mirror on the inner edge of her bag as she snapped a small lighter into flame, touched it to her cigarette. She leaned back and blew smoke through her nostrils. Still smiling, she said:
“Go on with the show! I came here expecting to be bored with a lot of business details, but all this is vastly entertaining.”
Craig Banton made a gesture of annoyance. He cleared his throat harshly. “This may be amusing to you, Mrs. De Graf,” he said sourly, “but it hardly amuses me!” He stared at the Agent tense with irritation. “I say again you must be mad! What you ask is utterly impossible! Don’t you realize that closing the bank would be taken by the depositors as a sign of weakness, that—”
Agent “X” struck the desk. His eyes snapping, he glared into Banton’s face. “If you don’t get every depositor out of your bank,” he said slowly with, grim emphasis, “if you don’t close up at once without further quibbling, you may regret it to the end of your days!”
Speechless, impressed in spite of himself with the Agent’s words, Craig Banton stared uncertainly at the man who had come in like a human cyclone and made his astounding demand. He started to protest again. But the words died in his thro
at, and an expression of stark terror replaced the sneer on his face. Slowly, woodenly, he turned his head. And Vivian de Graf dropped her cigarette. The sunlight streaming through the window seemed suddenly to have grown dimmer.
Agent “X” felt a sudden, faint sense of giddiness. A humming sound buzzed in his head. Pinpoints of colored light danced abruptly before his eyes. Then they stopped—and he saw that dimness was filling the office as though twilight were swiftly falling.
Craig Banton spoke thickly, harshly, clutching the edge of his desk with shaking hands. “Good God! It—it’s getting dark!”
Vivian de Graf, close beside “X”, gave a small, stifled shriek. Her aplomb, her smiling amusement, had vanished. Agent “X” took one step toward the window and stopped. He could hardly see at all now. Uncanny, awe-inspiring darkness was descending like swift night, blotting out the sunlight, making the luxurious office of Craig Banton a sightless cavern.
And Agent “X” knew what it meant. He had come too late. The ruthless devils of darkness had arrived.
Chapter IV
BLACK HELL
A SMOTHERED exclamation burst from his lips. He had been prepared—but the stunning actuality of the thing was beyond all reason. The silhouette of the window had faded before his eyes. The last vestige of light had disappeared from the street outside. The glare of the sun, high overhead, shooting its bright beams straight down, had vanished as though a total eclipse had taken place.
Blood pounded in the Agent’s temples. His throat felt constricted. He whipped a small flash from his pocket, clicked it on. He couldn’t see it at all. He brought it to within an inch of his eyes. For an instant a faint, cherry-red glow was visible. Then that diminished, too—like a coal dying out. The terrible blackness was complete!
There was noise, mad confusion in the big bank. Girls screamed. Men were shouting. Agent “X” could hear the clatter of running feet. There would be another stampede, bringing horrible death in its wake, as when the first bank was robbed. He turned, groped his way toward the door of Banton’s office, flung it open. At the top of his voice he shouted a warning:
“Quiet—everybody, quiet! Don’t run—and you’ll be safer!”
Some few heeded. There was a momentary lull. The Agent shouted again, hoping to avert the horror that panic would cause. But even in that he was too late. Glass snapped and crashed in one of the big doors, giving way before the thrust of wedged, frantic humans. Then came a louder crash. A scream, piercing in its intensity, sounded from Banton’s own office.
“X” whirled, turned back and stumbled through the door. That scream had come from the lips of Vivian de Graf. The crash he could not identify at first. Then, as the odor of gasoline and hot oil reached his nostrils, he realized that some vehicle had crashed into the side of the bank, smashing the window of Banton’s office.
Vivian de Graf screamed hysterically. Obviously she was unhurt, but the sound of the accident had unnerved her.
“Better stay where you are,” said “X” harshly. “You’ll be safer—all of you.”
He couldn’t see, any more than they could. For once the Man of a Thousand Faces was helpless. But his nerve had not been shaken. He felt no fear—only dread of the horror that might lash out at the innocent people caught beneath this curtain of dark.
The sounds from the main floor outside had risen into a frenzied uproar. Men and women, crazed by fear, were shrieking, stampeding. Aghast at the possibilities of death and destruction in that mad bedlam, “X” started toward the door again, to make another desperate attempt to recall the mob to sanity.
But on the threshold he froze, listening. The milling of frenzied feet had abruptly stopped. The cries that rent the air had taken on an added shrillness. They rose in a piercing crescendo of sheer terror. Coldness clutched the Agent’s heart. For above the horrible confusion he detected another sound. The spiteful, vicious cracking of whips.
Like miniature gunfire the crackling of metal-tipped lashes echoed through the bank. In its wake came stark cries of pain, like those of wounded animals. The blackness, fearful enough in itself, had become a living, lurid hell.
In Banton’s office there was no sound now beyond the echo of horror and the scrape of hoarse breathing. All stood frozen, listening to the blood-curdling drama being enacted outside.
Driven by pain and fear, a man in the depositor’s corridor broke into a tirade of frenzied curses. The answer to that was a whip crack like a tongue of vicious lightning singling out a place to strike. The man’s curses rose to maniacal pitch, then diminished beneath a salvo of crackling torture, to die away in a whimpering, long-drawn moan.
Little by little the snapping of the whips died away. Agent “X,” in total darkness, could vision graphically what was taking place. He could see the depositors, their clothing torn, arms and faces lashed into bloody streaks of torment, cowering back, falling over each other to escape the metal-tipped whips. He pictured the raiders’ slow, methodical advance, as they plied their lashes till the floor was clear.
But how could they see, when the darkness was more complete than any night? Agent “X” was as baffled as he was appalled by the course of a crime more astounding than any he had ever known.
THE whip cracking was hardly audible at all now. That meant that the crowd of scourged men and women were huddled like dumb beasts in pain-racked passivity. It meant that the raiders had achieved their purpose—cleared the way for robbery.
A moment passed. Then came the faint clank and clatter of metal boxes. Compartments in the great vault were being opened and dumped out. Then, as Agent “X” stood desperate and helpless in the impenetrable darkness, his ear detected footsteps approaching Banton’s office. Ghostly and measured, they moved across the outer room. The girl at the reception desk gave one terrified cry. Her chair clattered as it overturned. The steps passed her, entered Banton’s inner sanctum.
Agent “X” stood frozen like the others. Not with fear, but with sheer amazement at the thing. It was uncanny, beyond belief, that any eyes could penetrate this darkness which seemed almost to have a substance of its own. But a voice spoke to them—low, harshly evil.
“Keep your seats—all of you. You who are standing, sit down!”
Agent “X” did not move.
The voice challenged him harshly, proving beyond doubt that the newcomer could see. “Sit down!”
Agent “X” stepped back slowly, found an empty chair and sank into it. His eyeballs ached, as he strained his eyes toward the spot whence the voice came—the voice of a man whom he could not see but who, somehow, was able to see him. A harsh chuckle sounded.
“It is fortunate, Banton, that the vault was open. Otherwise we would have had to blow it up—which would have been inconvenient for us and troublesome for you. As it is, everything is going nicely. We shall soon be away from here.”
The laugh was repeated. Then silence followed. Slowly the steps moved away. The faint noise of the raiders methodically at work filled the black hole of silence in the room.
A moment later Agent “X” lifted his head alertly. There had been an infinitesimal stir in the air. He had felt it—and his nostrils caught a faint whiff of perfume. The scent was exotic, cloyingly sweet. He crouched forward in his chair, every nerve taut. And in the silence he caught the sound of whispering. A very guarded whispering, as though two people were in secret conference, and anxious not to be overheard.
Who was it? Who in the room had moved?
Pulses racing, “X” slid cautiously from his chair. Though he could not see, his mind retained a photographic picture of the arrangement of the office. He knew where Banton’s desk was, where Banton sat, and where Vivian de Graf had been.
His fingers reached oat, groped lightly. He took a few steps forward. Banton was sitting in his chair, rigid. Then the Agent stepped to the right—and grew tense, for the chair where Vivian de Graf had reclined languidly was empty!
Either she had left in fright, to huddle in some other part o
f the room. Or it had been she who—
The Agent was given no time for speculation. A curse, sounding in the darkness at his left, cut it short. “X” could not see anyone approach, but his acutely alert senses warned him that the man who had cursed was striding in his direction. Instinctively he raised his arms over his face.
As he did so there was a hiss and a snap—and the serpentlike end of a whip snarled about his arm. Its metal-tipped end, fanglike, bit into the flesh of his wrist. He wrenched his body sidewise and pulled his arm clear. The whip came back at him. It struck his neck this time, coiled about it like a loathsome snake. A scalding brand, the metal tip licked up at his cheek.
AGENT “X” did not cower away. Taunt as steel, eyes blazing in the dark, he reached out and grabbed the leather lash. He pulled it toward him and plunged straight at the unseen figure wielding it.
The man with the whip gave a startled, angry cry. Furiously he tried to wrench free. Again the whip was a snake, coiling frenziedly in the Agent’s grasp to free itself, to strike at him again. But his hands moved tenaciously along its pliant length until they encountered human fingers.
His own hand closed over the whipman’s arm. He swung savagely with his clenched left fist. But he could not see. The other could, and eluded the blow, struck back. “X” closed with his unseen adversary, driving home body blows, and they fell to the floor together in a fighting, clawing heap.
He was conscious again of a scream from Vivian de Graf. He felt the breathing of the man he fought. His opponent had dropped the whip now, was trying to break loose from the Agent’s hold. But “X’s” hands, vicelike, did not yield.
This was no darkness he was fighting now. No whip that struck treacherously from behind a curtain his eyes could not penetrate. This was a living, vicious man—one of the raiding gang. And “X” fought with the bitter anger of one who remembered the pain-racked screams of those innocents outside. He fought with punishing blows, craft and science disregarded for the moment in the primitive joy of meting out justice to one who had caused the torment of others.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 4 Page 3