“X” threw open the door and stepped into a lighted room. Evidently this part of the catacombs was on a different lighting circuit than the other part. A ghostly wisp of yellow-green gas followed him into the room. He wanted to cough but dared not. He stepped into the next room. It appeared empty until “X” saw, beneath the yellow silk curtains that draped a doorway, the shoes and trousered legs of a man. Cautiously, he approached. He lifted the yellow curtains. The face of the man on the floor was covered with a yellow silk veil.
Revolver in hand, “X” knelt beside the still form. With the tips of his fingers, he lifted the yellow veil. Beneath was the chubby, red face of unconscious Mayor Grauman.
“Neatly trapped, Agent ‘X’,” came the Ghoul’s cold whisper.
“X” looked up quickly. Standing directly in front of a screen of Oriental design, was the Ghoul—the Ghoul without his silk mask, with only the hideous death-mask of Ah-Fang covering his real features. The automatic held in his unflinching fingers was directed at the Agent’s heart.
“I knew,” the Ghoul whispered, “that curiosity concerning my identity would prompt you to took beneath the veil that covered the mayor’s face. That is why I placed him there as a decoy when I heard you had managed to gain entrance here in spite of my poison gas. In fact, now that the game is over, I think you must admit that I have outplayed you in every hand.”
“True,” the Secret Agent admitted. “Much as I hate to spoil your good opinion of yourself, I can’t resist telling you that I’ve known your identity for several hours. I was sure of my deduction when, in the guise of Morgan, I fell into your hands in the laboratory. Though your voice came from a reproducer in the ceiling, you were there in person with Vardson and the others. In fact, I might go so far as to say you took an active part in most of the crimes.
“In the laboratory, you were one of those living-dead men ranged along the wall. It is not difficult to fake the Amber Death when you have stained your skin the proper hue. A little lapel-button microphone enabled you to speak through the reproducer in the ceiling, though you were actually in the room. When I attacked your men, you took advantage of the confusion, stepped from the wall and dropped the yellow veil over your face.
“Your actual presence spurred the men to action, just as it did tonight at the mayor’s place. Phonograph records of your voice were used for all the Ghoul radio warnings in order that you might be busy elsewhere—busy shifting suspicion from your own shoulders, busy planning new murders in the very presence of the men you intended to murder.”
A chuckle sounded behind the Ghoul’s mask of mummified flesh. “No one will ever know the truth. Yu’an and Vardson alone knew my true identity. Vardson is beyond sane speech. You say that your knife found Yu’an’s throat. Not five minutes ago, I pressed an igniter that fired a charge which will result in the destruction of both laboratories and the Amber Death victims. The formula for the Amber Death will be destroyed. Only Vardson knew it. I have over a million dollars in cash and securities—the reward of my efforts. I have only to step through the rear door of this room, climb steps, and enter a garage where my car is waiting.”
Carried away with praise of himself, the Ghoul did not notice that “X” had shifted his empty revolver into the palm of his hand. With a sudden movement, he flung the weapon at the Ghoul’s head. The Ghoul ducked to one side, fired a shot that took “X” in the chest. But again the bullet-proof vest saved him. As he leaped, hands extended for the killer’s throat, the Ghoul fired again—this time, at the Agent’s head.
“X” ducked too late to avoid the shot entirely. It grazed the side of his head, dashed blinking red and yellow lights before his eyes, sent blood trickling into his eyes to blind him. Yet he had reached the Ghoul’s gun-hand and clung to it desperately, keeping the automatic turned away from himself.
For a moment, they were locked together, the Ghoul striving to break away from the Agent’s hold, and “X” battling to save himself from oblivion. With an unexpected twist of the wrist, “X” disarmed the Ghoul. The automatic clattered to the floor. But in making that desperate attempt, “X” had thrown himself slightly off balance. The Ghoul lunged forward, throwing “X” to the ground.
The shock of the fall seemed to clear “X’s” vision. He seized the Ghoul’s throat in his right hand. His left came up instinctively to lock over the Ghoul’s wrist. For in the Ghoul’s hand was something sharp and shiny. Not a knife, but a large hypodermic needle.
“The Amber Death,” the Ghoul gasped out. “One more charge of the Amber Death .... All yours.” And slowly but surely his hand bent forward, the needle seeking the flesh of the Agent’s wrist.
Suddenly, “X’s” knees came up, lifting his assailant. Then he straightened, all the strength of his body behind a kick that sent the Ghoul’s heels over head across the room. “X” was up in a second. His right hand swept up the Ghoul’s automatic from the floor. The Ghoul, completely winded by his fall, attempted to get up, couldn’t, and fell back to the floor.
Covering the man with the automatic, “X” seized him by the collar, picked him up, and threw him into a chair. As he did so, he noticed that the chair was one of those peculiar metal chairs similar to the one in which he had sat in China Bobby’s office. He saw that a covered cable led from the chair to a generator at the side of the room. Evidently, the Ghoul had used this contraption to torture the truth out of some one. It was a very good idea, the Agent decided.
“X” sprang to the generator and threw over the starting switch. The hum of the generator was drowned out by a shriek of pain and terror from the Ghoul. “X” cut the current slightly. For a moment, he watched the Ghoul writhing in an effort to drag himself from the chair. Then he said softly:
“Let me know when you are ready to sign a full confession. For every moment you delay, I shall step up the current another notch!”
Chapter XIII
DEATH-MASK OF AH-FANG
EARLY morning sunbeams slanted through the mist rising from the streets of Chinatown when the wail of police-car sirens died in front of the gilt and lacquered front of China Bobby’s restaurant
“Looks like a phony tip, Inspector,” said a plainclothes man to Inspector Burks as they swung from one of the cars.
Burks glowered at the gleaming front of the restaurant. “If it is, I’ll hang the man who gave it by the ears,” he growled. Then sighting the lovely form of a young girl who had just stepped from a small roadster parked behind one of the squad cars, he called: “Say, Miss Dale, you’re sure that mysterious telephone call that tipped you off said this was the joint?”
“Certain of it, Inspector Burks,” replied Betty Dale in her crisp, businesslike voice. She approached the plate-glass front of the restaurant and looked in. Walking beside her was a cheerful, redheaded youth with note book and pencil poised as though he could hardly wait for a big news story to break.
“You two step back, now,” ordered Burks. “We’re going to break in here if we can’t raise the proprietor. Say, Reardon!” he called to one of his subordinates, “you know Chinatown from the sewers on up. Isn’t this about where that dope joint used to be back in tong-war days?”
The elderly Reardon nodded. “Used to be known as Hong-Po’s catacombs. Cellars and tunnels extended for about a block. But in the last big raid, we sealed up all the catacombs.”
“Wouldn’t take much to open ’em again,” said Burks. He shouted brisk orders to his men, and five minutes later the police were pouring into the restaurant.
“Everything looks on the up-an’-up,” one of the detectives was heard to whisper, “and will Burks’ ears be red when he gets climbed for raidin’ a legitimate joint!”
“Look here, Inspector Burks!” Betty Dale called excitedly. As if entirely by accident, she had located the door at the rear of the restaurant that led down into the opium den.
“Thunderation!” roared Detective Reardon. “I remember that circular staircase! Went down there in a raid once. This is Hong-Po�
�s old place. Somethin’ in that tip after all, Inspector. I can smell the stinkin’ black stuff clear up here!”
“Watch things up, men!” Burks warned. “Maybe this is just a bootleg dope joint. And maybe the tip was okeh when this guy told Miss Dale we’d find the Ghoul here!”
Down the winding staircase, and the squad trooped through the passage that opened on still a larger room. Police searchlights cleaved the tar blackness and gleamed on green and gilt. Light reflected from the baleful eyes of the dragon twining the huge artificial tree; it found here and there, in curtained bunks, the opium sleepers.
“Dope de luxe!” exclaimed Reardon. “This outdoes anything Hong-Po ever put across. Now if the rest of the place was open, there’d be a door over here—” He approached the panel decorated with the lacquered dragon. His keen eyes found the switch-button that centered the eye of the monster. He gave it a push. Nothing happened.
“Looks like somebody put the machinery on the fritz,” said Burks. “Malvern, get the acetylene torch and cut through this steel panel.”
Reardon’s ear was pressed to the door. “Take it easy, inspector,” he cautioned. “I can hear people moving around in there. Maybe they won’t be in such a sweet temper as the smoky lads in the bunks.”
“Be in a damn sight worse temper when we get hold of them,” Burks growled. He watched the hissing torch as it knifed through the steel. “That’s got it!” The heated panel fell back with a dismal clang. “Let’s go, boys!”
AGAIN through smoky blackness, the searchlights cut—this time to find blear-eyed gunmen huddling in the corners of what had been China Bobby’s office. A few nervous shots rattled out, but a police Tommy-gun, by way of warning, raked one of the walls high above the heads of the hoods.
“Round them up!” ordered Burks. “We want that girl, too.” He kicked through a black charred film that had once been a silk curtain. On the floor of a little closet, he found the yellow-skinned man whom he recognized as China Bobby. He knelt beside the man. “Not dead,” he muttered. “Seems to be taking a quiet snooze. Looks like the work of some guy I’ve met before. Suppose this half-breed’s the Ghoul, Reardon?”
The old detective shook his head. “Can’t say. We haven’t gone halfway through this joint yet. There used to be a sort of dungeon down below that Hong-Po used. Better get that acetylene torch busy again. This room was a sort of center to a spider-web formation of rooms and passages.”
But it was only after two hours of arduous labor that the secrets of the catacombs were completely revealed. What had been the Ghoul’s laboratories was a mass of wreckage. The explosion had buckled the walls. A yellow, amber-like hand jutting out from a pile of debris told Burks that beneath were bodies made hideous by the Amber Death.
It was the inquisitiveness of the redheaded reporter who accompanied Betty Dale that led the police to find the secret passage that led to the scene of the Ghoul’s last stand. And to all appearances, the redheaded youth came very near being asphyxiated by the chlorine fumes that lingered in the passage. Burks, Malvern, and six others ventured up the passage after gas masks had been put on. Though Burks did not notice it at the time, he might have seen that one of his masked followers was the ever-curious redheaded reporter.
“Who’s that over in the corner?” shouted Burks. He pointed to a fleshy form in the corner—a man who exhibited signs of life in an effort to wriggle from his bonds and talk through his gag. “The mayor, by all that’s holy! Give Mayor Grauman a hand, one of you fellows. I’m going—”
As Burks stepped through the door of the next room, words failed him. Seated in a metal chair in the center of the room was the figure of a man. His contorted yellow face resembled nothing so much as the carved visage of an ugly Chinese joss. He sat perfectly still.
“A Chink!” gasped one of the detectives. “Looks like that Ah-Fang you’ve been sendin’ Keegan lookin’ all over town for!”
“Yes, Burks,” said the redheaded reporter, “looks as though for once you were right.”
“What’d you mean, ‘for once’?” Burks sprang across to the chair and snatched up a piece of paper that lay in the lap of the unconscious man. As his eyes skated down the paper, he read:
I am the Ghoul. I freely confess to all the crimes of murder and extortion in which the Amber Death played so important a part.
Burks mumbled an oath. “And it’s signed—good Lord!” Burks wiped a hand over his forehead. “And it was reported that he committed suicide in his own home after receiving a warning from the Ghoul!”
THE redheaded reporter had been looking over Burks’ shoulder at the note. “I suppose a fellow could easily fake the Amber Death by injecting some harmless yellow dye beneath the flesh of his face. Probably, he switched needles, and used one containing dye instead of the one containing poison that Luigi gave him. Then under cover of dark, he got away with his men and their captives, knowing that if he was reported dead, no suspicion—”
Burks brushed the reporter to one side and snatched the mask of yellow, mummified flesh away from the real face of the Ghoul—a virile face with an impressively high forehead surmounted by gray hair. It was the face of Lionel Gage. He seemed to have been plunged into a doped sleep.
“We should have known,” said the reporter softly. “There wasn’t any sense to the Ghoul kidnaping Lionel Gage because Gage was broke. Gage admitted as much—told Warnow so in the presence of Malvern. He said Wall Street had stripped him. Yet he continued to live pretty much as he did before. Where did he get the money? Why, from this extortion scheme! And when everybody else could talk only of the Ghoul’s fiendishness, Gage kept emphasizing the Ghoul’s power. He carried vanity, which was the keynote of his character as the Ghoul, into his respectable side of life. He wanted everyone to realize what a master-mind the Ghoul was. Why? Because he was the Ghoul.”
“Yeah,” Burks agreed. “And Gage kidnaped himself; even gave himself a fake shot of the Amber Death to avoid suspicion. Why, he spent years in China. Knew the ropes.” Burks paused. “Say, for a reporter you know a—”
He was interrupted by a faint click. The room was plunged into complete darkness.
“Who turned out those lights!” Burks wheeled around and stood motionless, staring into the darkness. On the wall, directly in front of him, was a steady glow of weird light—a letter “X” drawn in phosphorescent paint on the wall.
Burks’ flashlight cut through the darkness and wheeled from one startled face to another. With an oath, he was gone, racing up the passage through which they had come. He burst into what had been China Bobby’s office. His eyes were fairly popping from his head as he looked about the room where the police were busily at work.
“Where’s that redheaded guy? Miss Dale, who was that reporter who came with you?”
Betty stared innocently at the inspector. “Why, that was Jim Collins of the Herald.”
“Collins, my eye! That was Secret Agent ‘X.’ And this time, I’ve got him. He couldn’t get through here without some of my boys seeing him!” And Burks bounded toward the door that led back through the opium den.
But he might have saved his energy. For the redheaded reporter had availed himself of the emergency-exit prepared by the Ghoul. He had hurried in the opposite direction from that taken by Burks and was, at that moment, driving somewhat recklessly down the narrow streets of Chinatown in the Ghoul’s own car.
Table of Contents
Secret Agent "X": The Complete Series Volume 4
Copyright Information
Introduction by Will Murray
Devils of Darkness
Talons of Terror
The Corpse Cavalcade
The Golden Ghoul
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Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 4 Page 49