He knew there was no quick exit from this floor; knew also that his gas gun, strapped in a flat holster to his leg would not stop a crowd of armed men. As feet pounded up from below, “X” leaped to the stairs behind him, leading to the rooms above. He whipped out his gas gun, expecting to be challenged by more of the band upstairs.
But no challenge came. The rooms on the second floor were empty, their windows barred and shuttered. He knew this type of house. Sixty or seventy-five years old, it was a relic of the brownstone era. There should be an attic, with a wooden scuttle giving on the roof. He climbed quickly, leaped up a short, steep flight of stairs and found himself in the attic. Then he paused.
Sudden silence had descended on the house. No sound of footsteps was audible now. The whole place was as quiet as though the gang of torturers had vanished. “X” considered this unexpected development uneasily. Then, as he peered down over the railing of the stairs, he found a gruesome explanation. A faint draft of musty air came up. And it was tinged with something beside the odor of old walls and dusty furniture. Smoke, acridly pungent, drifted to his nostrils!
He leaned far over the deep stairwell and stared down. At the bottom, four stories below, there was a flickering gleam. Fire! As he watched, it fanned out, turning from red to orange, then to hot yellow flame. Mixed with the smoke funneling up was the scent of gasoline!
The Secret Agent’s jaws clamped shut. He knew the first floor of the building would already be an impassable inferno. He could not go down. The attic had two rooms separated by a short hall. In this a wide-stepped ladder rose toward the roof. He climbed quickly, searched with tense fingers for the hooks in the wooden scuttle.
But he grew suddenly rigid, and felt a coldness at his heart. Not hooks, but huge padlocks held the scuttle down. Two of them, products of some locksmith of long ago, with thick rings stuck through strong hasps bolted to the beams.
It was an obstacle he hadn’t anticipated. He carried tools—the gleaming chromium rods with slender ends and tiny pivotal extensions that had often been used to unravel the mysteries of modern locks. With these no door was barred to him. But these rusty, ancient padlocks—would he be able to open them in time?
Chapter VII
RED DEATH
THE sound of the fire was mounting every instant into a fearful, smothered roar. The attic was insufferably hot. Sweat trickled down the Agent’s neck and bathed his body.
The mechanism inside the old lock seemed rusted in a solid mass upon which his delicate tools made no impression. He tried another and another length of metal. He needed oil to free the rust-corroded pivots.
Desperately he thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out a small cigarette lighter. It was of silver, with pebbled leather sides, and had been a present from Betty Dale—the only girl in the world who knew the nature of his dangerous work. With feverish concentration, making every motion of his deft fingers count, “X” drew the woolen wick from the lighter, squeezed drops of the fluid into the old lock. Before taking up his tools again, he treated the second lock in the same way.
Then he adjusted his rod with pivotal extensions, one of his most ingenious chromium pieces. In response to its probing, he felt something give inside the old lock. One piece of metal moved, another.
Somewhere below, a falling balustrade blasted up heat and sparks. Clouds of soot swirled about “X’s” head. The air was scorching. His eyes smarted painfully as he worked.
Slowly the rusted lock worked free. Pivots that had not moved for years creaked protestingly as he got the hang of the pins and slots inside. He found a spot that gave, pressed at an angle—and the curved hasp of the padlock opened.
He drew it out of the staple, dropped it to the floor, and began on the second lock. This should be easier, now that he knew its secret.
But his race with death was getting close. A tongue of flame licked up the attic stairs. Far below in the fiery maw of the old building there was a thundering, like the rumble of an earthquake. The ladder squeaked under his feet as the floor beneath it slanted. In another few seconds he would drop into that inferno of raging flames.
Hardly able to see because of the smoke pouring into the room, “X” opened the second lock. He flung it from him like some poisonous thing, climbed a step higher and heaved up on the scuttle above. Paint broke loose, the scuttle rose, seemed to lift out of his hands as heat exploded it outward. The fire below gave a deep-throated, warning roar. Imprisoned heat shot skyward. Sparks and burning embers whirled past Agent “X” as he sprang onto the roof.
He could feel the tar covered roofing sag under him where supports had given way. It was blistering hot, the tar boiling up in black, sticky, smoking masses.
He leaped to the top of an adjacent house. As he did so the roof over which he had come sagged crazily, one corner fell in with a rumbling crash, and flames volcanoed upward.
The Agent was safe, safe from the death his captors had planned. For he sensed their double motive in firing the house. They wanted to destroy all clues; and they wanted his life as well.
He ran across two adjoining rooftops, found a fire escape snaking down an empty building, and made his way along it to a back yard. The street was cluttered with the hurtling red forms of fire engines. The air was lurid with the wail of sirens and the shrill clang of bells.
But Agent “X” did not linger. He knew the bandits might have a watcher posted. And he wanted them to believe he had been consumed in the flames as they had planned. Let them think Hearndon was gone forever.
In a taxi, he hurried to one of his hideouts. Here he changed his disguise to that of Martin, replaced his sooty clothing with a fresh gray suit, and went directly to the raided bank.
Traffic was moving through the streets again, but there was a police line around the bank itself. Throngs surged about it, jostled and kept back by police. The Agent’s eyes darted on all sides. He saw many excited newspaper men, men from the newsreel syndicates and press photographers, then his gaze wandered to a building opposite the bank.
THERE were small shops along the street floor of this, apartments above. Behind a “vacant” sign in one of the apartment windows Agent “X” glimpsed a familiar face. Instantly he crossed the street and entered the building. Tenants stood in the open door. He brushed by them unnoticed, climbed the stairs.
In an empty third-floor front apartment Jim Hobart was waiting, his movie camera with him. He had used a set of skeleton keys with which “X” had long ago provided him, and had come here before the falling of the fearful dark. But he shook his head when he saw the man he knew as Martin. His face was pale, his voice husky.
“I did what you said, boss—cranked away. But it got dark, so dark I couldn’t see my own hand. And I’m afraid—”
“Let’s have the films.” There was tense excitement in the Agent’s tone. He took the metal drum of celluloid that Jim Hobart handed him, thrust it under his coat, said: “Take care of the camera, Jim,” and was off.
He slipped through the excited crowd around the bank, went to his coupé again. In fifteen minutes he was closeted in a dark room in one of his hideouts. There was elaborate equipment before him. Reels for winding movie film. Trays of chemicals, developer, fixative. The precious drum that Hobart had given him was being slowly unwound, run through its acid baths, for “X” in this small compact chamber could turn out work as finished as that of the laboratories of any movie studio.
For nearly three hours he worked. Then he took, from the reel of a special dryer, a printed, transposed celluloid of the film Hobart had made. He went to a larger room outside the dark chamber, removed a small movie projector from a box and put the film in it. A six-foot screen was on the opposite wall. With tense fingers, knowing already that Hobart’s film, taken in utter darkness had picture impressions on it, he focused his projector on the screen and switched on the electric motor that turned it.
Then the Agent leaned forward in enthralled interest. For Hobart had begun to crank his camera
just as the darkness had started to descend. And there on the silver screen before “X’s” fascinated eyes, tiny, weirdly helmeted figures were visible. He stopped the projector once to look at a shot which plainly showed a helmeted head.
Mad crowds of terrified people showed in the street. “X” saw the black car that the raiders came in, saw something else that made his eyes widen. This was a small electric truck that looked like one from the city’s lighting company, and which had parked along the curb not far from the bank. The tiny line of a black cable led from the truck’s end to an open manhole. Then, as the amazing scenes of the raid unwound on the screen, “X” saw the bandits’ black car drive off, after small helmeted figures had carried sacks of loot to it.
More interesting still, he saw the figures of two men in workman’s clothes descend unhurriedly into the manhole; remove the black cable and coil it into the truck. While the whole block was held in icy terror, while a sinister raid was in progress, these men, tapping the city’s electric current, could work calmly. There was only one explanation of that. They were part of the raiding gang, and that light truck housed the strange mechanism which had made the darkness.
But what of the darkness itself? Here on the screen was proof of Thaddeus Penny’s amazing statement, proof that the sun had been shining, did shine, while that darkness fell. The movie camera’s lens had not been hampered by it. The sensitive film, impressionable to light, had functioned normally. Only human eyes had been affected, blinded. Only they could not see. And Agent “X” had uncovered a riddle that seemed too deep to explain.
Chapter VIII
THE HOUSE OF MENACE
HOURS later, Agent “X” was moving stealthily across the velvet smoothness of a wide lawn. Ahead of him loomed an ornate, old-fashioned mansion set amid thick clumps of shrubbery and tall, leafless trees. Behind him was the high brick wall which he had scaled a moment before.
It was night, starless and black. He was on the property of Roswell Sully, famous utilities man and admirer of Vivian de Graf. For over an hour he had followed her, and she had finally led him here.
There was grim purpose in the Agent’s eyes. Even this clever, provocative woman could not escape justice if she were in league with the criminals. Innocent Ellen Dowe had met an unthinkable fate. Pain had stolen her young life away by inches as she lay helpless and writhing under the sadistic lash of a human fiend. Her death and the deaths of those children must be avenged.
Agent “X,” in his daring battles against crime, had met other women, as beautiful as Vivian de Graf, whose charm had been only a cloak for untold evil; women who used their wit and beauty as bait to gain some unholy end. Vivian might be such a woman. He didn’t know, but he was going to find out. And besides his own direct suspicion, based on the episode in the bank, there were certain facts against her.
She was the wife of brilliant Emil de Graf, professor of science at the university. But she preferred the company of other men. For years Roswell Sully had danced attendance upon her. Unescorted by her husband, she had often been a guest at the unwholesomely gay parties for which Sully was notorious. Her wit and beauty had made her a sought-after favorite with the set of careless ne’er-do-wells who were Sully’s intimates.
Then, with the stock crash of ’29, Sully’s utilities empire had collapsed in chaos, dragging thousands of investors down with it. And Vivian de Graf had aided the former wizard of high finance in the secluded life forced upon him by the debacle. She had acted for him as go-between in financial matters—and “X” knew for a fact that she received handsome commissions on every deal he managed to put through with her help.
Possibly some business of Sully’s explained her presence at the Guardian Bank at the moment when it was raided. Possibly Sully was responsible for the presence of Norman Coe, too. For Coe had helped expose Sully after the big crash, and had worked tirelessly to have him prosecuted for the ruin he had caused. These things the Agent knew. But the woman herself was still an enigma—an exotic, mysterious personality.
The car she had come in, a luxurious phaeton, was parked outside the gates. Sully would allow no vehicle within his grounds. The old carriage entrance was kept closed and locked. Rain or shine, visitors were forced to walk up the long drive. Coal and provisions came the same way. Frequent harsh threats made against Roswell Sully by the investors he had mulcted had made him wary. His past haunted him always like a grim specter, even though he had salvaged enough for himself to live on in luxury. He had been called the most hated man in America.
Agent “X” climbed the wall and dropped silently into the forbidden grounds. With the bleak winter wind stirring the branches of the trees overhead, he crept forward. His senses were alert. It was rumored that Sully kept guards.
“X” was disguised as a young, nattily dressed man; not Martin, but another personality for which he had chosen the cognomen of “Sid Granville.” Under one arm he carried a newspaperman’s camera with focal plane shutter and high-speed lens. If caught, he was prepared to play his bluff to the limit. Vivian de Graf must not be made suspicious—and she would only be amused at the predicament of a young reporter, eager for a scoop. He would admit that he had followed her in the hope of getting a good news story, and a flashlight picture for his sheet. The news value of her presence at the raided bank would be his excuse.
But suddenly the Agent paused and listened. He had heard an ominous sound in the darkness ahead—a dog’s soft growl. He tensed, standing close to the fragrant blackness of an ornamental spruce.
ACROSS the lawn an electric lantern flashed, and sent its sharp white beam straight toward “X” as its bearer came forward through the trees. The Agent darted to the left, moving with swift strides. He watched with relief as the light continued in the direction of the wall. But an instant later he heard a rustle in the dry grass behind him, and whirled to see phosphorescent eyes gleaming.
He crouched and waited as the dogs came toward him. There were at least four. They did not bark again. Trained watchdogs, they had been taught not to yelp at everything they saw. They would ring their quarry first, then give warning.
He heard the pad of feet, then saw their silhouettes against a street light shining over the wall. They were huge police dogs, ears alertly pricked, hackles stiff. Soon they would give tongue, or attack with flashing fangs.
But the Agent didn’t even feel for the only weapon he carried—his gas gun. Instead, he sent a low whistle into the night. It was the strange, weirdly melodious whistle of Secret Agent “X,” as eerie as the note of some wild thing.
The dogs stood still as though frozen. Then they approached him slowly, and he spoke to them with low, soothing words, holding out his hand. For a tense moment they held back, fangs bared and legs stiff. Then with a low whine the leader went forward. Agent “X” stroked the animal’s muzzle and at that sign of friendship, the others came close, too. The watchdogs set to guard Sully had become “X’s” friends.
An ironic smile twitched the Agent’s lips as he moved on toward the house. He was approaching with an escort, now. He could hear the man by the wall whistling, baffled by the disappearance of his dogs. But the great beasts preferred the company of their new-found friend to that of their master.
“X” SENT them away with a low-whispered command when he came close to the mansion. He could risk no sound from them, to interfere with the daring entrée he had planned.
As he stepped near the house, his fingers felt for the ingenious chromium tools and master keys hidden cunningly in secret pockets of his suit. Choosing an unlighted sun-porch at the building’s side, he had the door open in less than a minute and was tiptoeing across the porch in his rubber-soled shoes.
Before entering the door into the house itself, he drew a case strapped close against his thigh an instrument no larger than the smallest vest pocket camera. It looked so much like a camera that it would deceive anyone. But when he opened it, no lens or bellows showed. There was a small rubber disc and a coil of flexible ca
ble inside instead.
He pressed the disc to the outside of the door, put the body of the instrument to his ear, and fingered what appeared to be a film wind. This was a delicate rheostat control. There was no film inside the thing, but small round batteries which seemed to correspond. In the Agent’s hand was the most compact and powerful sound amplifier in existence, a mechanism which he had worked out himself.
Carefully adjusting the rheostat control, he listened to various noises far in the interior of the big house. Somewhere footsteps sounded, but they were several rooms away. Voices came to him—but the thicknesses of intervening walls made the words too indistinct even for the instrument in his hands to clarify.
Convinced that no one was behind the door, he opened it quickly, entered, and found himself in a large music room. A grand piano stood against one wall. The Agent tiptoed toward it, blinked on his small light. Faint dust on the keys showed that the piano had not been used for months. This room, eloquent of the big parties Sully had indulged in in bygone days, was empty now. He had made a wise choice in entering it.
The Agent crossed it swiftly. Beyond, through heavy portieres, he came to a small reception room with a thick, soft carpet underfoot. There was a door at the end of this and a faint spot of light gleamed through the keyhole. Another door led to a wide hall, where he saw the faint glow of a shaded light. He moved toward this, then stopped abruptly. A board somewhere under the heavy carpet had squeaked under his stealthy tread.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 4 Page 5