Secret Agent "X" – The Complete Series Volume 1
The Torture Trust
The Spectral Strangler
The Death-Torch Terror
Ambassador of Doom
Written by
Paul Chadwick
Altus Press • 2012
Copyright Information
© 2012 Altus Press
Publication History:
“The Torture Trust“ originally appeared in Secret Agent “X” (February 1934)
“The Spectral Strangler“ originally appeared in Secret Agent “X” (March 1934)
“The Death-Torch Terror“ originally appeared in Secret Agent “X” (April 1934)
“Ambassador of Doom“ originally appeared in Secret Agent “X” (May 1934)
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press
Special Thanks to Brian Earl Brown, Matthew Higgins, Tom Johnson, Chris Kalb, Will Murray, Rick Ollerman, Don O’Malley & Bill Thom.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Tom Johnson
The Torture Trust by Paul Chadwick:
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
The Spectral Strangler by Paul Chadwick:
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
The Death-Torch Terror by Paul Chadwick:
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Ambassador of Doom by Paul Chadwick:
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Introduction
Tom Johnson
SECRET AGENT “X” was the ultimate spy! No one knew his name or face, and he only had one contact in government, a mysterious individual known as K-9. Only one woman was ever really close to him, Betty Dale, and she had seen his face just once. But she loved him, and often assisted him in dangerous investigations. “X” was the unknown factor, and criminals beware!
I first found Secret Agent “X” when my father was in the Dallas VA Hospital awaiting his death. I was stationed in California in 1972, and drove into Dallas to visit my father for the last time. I had been collecting Doc Savage and The Shadow for several years, and even picked up a number of pulps out in Los Angeles earlier. Leaving the hospital for a while, I visited an older used bookstore in downtown Dallas, and was surprised to see thousands of science fiction pulps stacked on the floor throughout the building. I mentioned to the owner that I was really looking for the hero stuff, like Doc and The Shadow. He said, “Oh, those are upstairs, but nothing under two dollars. And first issues are four bucks! But I don’t have any Shadows or Doc Savages.”
He took me upstairs, and left me alone in a single room the size of the whole downstairs, filled with pulps and comic books from the 1930s and ’40s. I swear, I thought I had died and gone to pulp heaven! Being in the military at the time, I didn’t have a lot of money, so I had to be careful how much I spent that day. The owner was wrong, though. I did find one Shadow. If I had had more time, I might have found more, maybe even a Doc or two. But time and money were both short.
I want you to use your imagination for a minute. Just think about going through stack after stack of pulp magazines, and finding so many beautiful gems that your heart skips a beat every few seconds. You find Operator #5, The Black Hood, G-8, Masked Detective, Black Book Detective (with the Black Bat), Captain Future, G-Men (with Dan Fowler), Public Enemy, and The Lone Eagle. And comic books that I hadn’t seen since the 1940s! Glorious covers, exciting titles, and I had to leave them all there!
I selected about fifty Phantom Detectives, all from the 1930s, many issues of The Ghost/Green Ghost (including a first issue), that one Shadow issue (“Isle of Death”), and a dozen Secret Agent “X” issues! This was my first real pulp collection. And it took me some time to read all those wonderful old stories, but I finally got through them. And I was fascinated with the character of Secret Agent “X”!
I had to return to California before my father died, but I returned to Dallas later and went back to that old store with money in my pocket. Unfortunately, this time the upstairs had been pretty well picked over. The comics and most of the pulps were gone. I picked up a few issues of G-Men Detective, and some other stuff, but was disappointed that I had missed the opportunity to go through those pulps one more time. The store later closed. I suspect the old gentleman had passed on. I can imagine some descendant tossing the books in a dumpster in the alley afterwards.
I began reading the “X” series and taking notes. Back then, there was very little known about any of the pulp heroes, except for Doc Savage and The Shadow. I also started looking through ads for missing issues for my collection. I paid four dollars for the second issue, coverless, from a book dealer somewhere. I was closing in on my set by the 1975 PulpCon, and I had asked Jack Irwin (I believe) to bring any “X” issues he had for sale, and let me look at them. He did, and I completed my set at that convention. However, those last few issues cost me something like $60.00 each! The prices had risen since interest for the lesser-known pulps were becoming greater.
It was prior to the convention that Will Murray contacted me. He had heard that I was researching the “X” series, and wanted to share data. I began sending him synopses of the stories, and my notes, and thoughts, and Will started adding two and two together, coming up with little known facts and data from his sources. After the convention, we put the history of the series
together and sent it to Robert Weinberg for his Pulp Classics series. It remained in Robert’s hands until 1980, when it was finally published—missing a number of pages. An updated version was finally published by Altus Press in 2007, The Secret Agent “X” Companion, complete with the previously-missing pages, and more professional binding.
Today, everyone is familiar with the character, and there’s not much that isn’t known about the series. But everything being said seems to stem from the research that Will and I did in the book so many years ago. And because of that early research, new writers are churning out new stories about the character that may not have ever read one of the original novels. Will originally identified the rewritten Captain Hazzard novel as one of the “X” stories as far back as the early 1970s, but lately I’ve seen mention of someone else identifying the novel. Sorry folks, credit belongs to Will Murray.
Secret Agent “X,” an enigma to the underworld, his face a mystery, ready to lay his life down for his country. This was the character I first encountered back in 1972. I have heard that this was one of the early influences of Ian Fleming when he created James Bond! Notorious gangster Al Capone loved the pulp crime fighters like Secret Agent “X” and Dan Fowler.
The stories that you will find in this first volume are the ones that set the pace for the rest of the series. Although the authors will change from time to time, the editorial control will keep the stories on a fairly even path, just alternating the theme from time to time. There is a possibility that Paul Chadwick, the originator of the series, may have brought in a few ghosts in the early stages, but if so, he certainly went over their work and gave the final stories his own touch. It is only later that the publisher begins to bring in their writers to supplement Chadwick’s stories, eventually replacing him completely. I think you will find the series as fascinating as I did back in 1972.
Happy reading!
Tom Johnson
Seymour, Texas
August 8, 2007
The Torture Trust
Men with skulls for faces—these were the victims of that terrible trio who met in a hidden room. And Secret Agent “X” went against them, daring the bottled torment of their deaf-mute slaves. In a desperate battle of wits at the gateway of destruction.
Chapter I
Night Get-Away
THE prison guard’s feet made ghostly echoes along the dimly-lighted corridor of the St-ate Penitentiary. The sound whispered weirdly through the barred chambers, dying away in the steel rafters overhead. The guard’s electric torch probed the cells as he passed, playing over the forms of the sleeping men.
It was after midnight. All seemed quiet within the great, gloomy building that was one of society’s bulwarks against a rising tide of crime.
The guard’s figure passed through a door at the end of a corridor, and the echoes at last ceased their eerie whisperings.
Seconds of silence passed. Then a new sound came. It issued from cell No. 17—the sound of furtive movement.
The man who had been lying as still as death when the guard passed threw his blankets aside. His hard, shrewd eyes gleamed eagerly. His narrow-boned face took on the alertness of a prowling weasel.
Jason Hertz, down on the prison books as convict No. 1088, had not been asleep at all.
His thin, clawlike hands, which had dabbled in every sort of crime from blackmail to murder, became suddenly active. He drew the blankets apart, wadded one into the shape of a sleeping man, and stuffed it under the other. Then he reached beneath his bunk and drew out a roundish object the size of a melon.
It was a ball made from stale bread mixed with water and kneaded together. The bread he had saved for the last three days. He set it on the end of the bunk nearest the door, covering the top of it with scraps of loose hair collected from the floor of the prison barber shop. It looked like the touseled head of a sleeping man and would serve to mislead the guard when he made his next tour of inspection.
Hertz pulled other articles from beneath his bunk—articles which had been smuggled to him under mysterious circumstances. And, as he looked at them, an uneasy expression crossed his face. He recalled the visitor who had come to him the day before and on other days during the past several weeks—the tall, gray-haired man whose card bore the name “Crawford Gibbons, Attorney-at-Law.”
He recalled the strangely compellent look in the lawyer’s eyes, the forcefulness of his manner, the abrupt persuasiveness of his voice.
Who was Crawford Gibbons, and who was employing him? Why was he aiding Hertz to escape?
These were the questions Hertz had asked himself, for, behind the guard’s back, Gibbons had quietly slipped him a chamois-skin bundle. In it were tools and instructions making his get-away possible.
The prison authorities regarded Hertz as a desperate criminal. Among his vicious associates in crime, he was rated as being hard-boiled and as dangerous as a snake. But the lawyer, Gibbons, had put fear into Jason Hertz’s heart. Gibbons had refused to answer questions, refused to reveal his motives. Yet, under the mysterious dominance of the man’s personality, Hertz had felt his own will crumbling. It was as though Gibbons had cast a spell over him.
Conflicting impulses stirred in Hertz’s mind; one, the desire to escape and go back to his underworld haunts; the other, the fear that he might be entering some sort of trap. He paused a moment fighting within himself. But it was useless. Something stronger than reason cried out that he must follow the lawyer’s instructions.
With a cleverly shaped skeleton key that Gibbons had given him, he opened the door and stepped into the corridor, every nerve alert. He listened, but no sound came except the snores of sleeping men.
Shoes off, as silent as a fox, he walked away from the cell, turning into a branch corridor. He climbed a flight of steel stairs and reached the empty cell block above used for overflow prisoners. It was as deserted as a tomb. Hertz entered one of the empty cells, grasped the bars, and climbed up toward the metal ceiling with the agility of an ape. There was a galvanized iron roof above him. For a moment he struck a match, feet braced on a crossbar below.
The tiny flickering flame showed that the metal, seemingly intact, had been cut through with a fine hack saw—his own handiwork of the night before.
He lifted his hand, pressed against the galvanized iron, and a circular piece of metal moved upward. A dark opening appeared, large enough for a man to crawl through.
Hertz thrust his fingers up, caught the strong edge of the thick metal, and lifted himself. He braced his elbows, rested a moment, then strained again. In a second he was in the narrow “attic” of the prison, between the ceiling and the roof.
A faint gleam of light made by the night sky showed ahead. Hertz crept toward it, across the top of the metal ceiling, careful to step on the steel rafters to which the sheet iron was fastened. He came to the light—the square opening of a barred window—and used his hands again.
Drawing a hack saw set in a metal frame from his blouse, he attacked the bars before him with the skill of a man accustomed to the use of tools. The hardened chromium bit through the bars one by one and Hertz wrenched them loose.
He fastened a loop of strong line, which he also took from his blouse, to the stub of one bar, threw the end out the window, and crawled through feet first. Hand over hand, he lowered himself to the ground below.
Clouds obscured the stars. Hertz moved forward in utter darkness, his bare feet soundless on the earth.
HE stopped a moment to get his bearings, then walked on toward the southwest wall of the prison. Trembling violently, his fingers groping, he felt along the stone surface till his hand encountered a rope. He had been expecting it, but fear made him recoil for an instant as though the rope had been the dangling body of a snake. Then he approached it gingerly again. The mysterious lawyer, Crawford Gibbons, had kept his word.
Hertz seized the rope and began the ascent of the wall. It was an easy matter for him to draw himself up its side. With a skill born of experience, he avoi
ded the two strands of electrically charged wire at its top. He balanced himself, stepped over them, and went down the rope on the other side.
His escape was an accomplished fact now. He was free, once again a potential menace turned loose upon an unsuspecting society. But fear still made his heart beat madly.
He had moved only a few yards ahead when he halted as abruptly as though a chain had been stretched across his path.
Somewhere close by in the darkness a whistle had sounded. It was a strange whistle, melodious yet unearthly, seeming to fill the whole air with a ventriloquistic note. It aroused in Hertz a stark, unreasoning terror.
His beady eyes sought to pierce the darkness. He almost cried out. Someone was standing directly ahead of him. He had caught sight of a vague silhouette.
“Follow me,” said a low voice.
The words came out of the black vault of the night like an inexorable command from Fate itself. They had in them that compellent quality that paralyzed Hertz’s will.
The clouds thinned a little, letting a ray of wan starlight through. He saw the quiet face and the silvery hair of the lawyer. He sensed again the unswerving fixity of the man’s eyes upon him. Then, like a sleepwalker, he followed as the other turned and led the way.
Where was he going? He did not know. What strange purpose did the lawyer have? It was veiled in black mystery.
Hertz stumbled on through the darkness for what seemed a quarter of a mile. He knew he must be somewhere close to the road leading to the prison. Then he heard the faint sound of an automobile engine idling. The man ahead clicked on a flashlight no larger than a pencil. Its thin beam disclosed for an instant the lines of a low, powerful roadster parked by the highway.
Crawford Gibbons motioned for him to get in.
Hertz rebelled. Fear of the strange man had been growing in him. He set his jaw and blurted a question.
“What’s the idea? Where you gonna take me?”
There was arrogance in his tone now. He was out of the prison. He might make a break for it and escape into the darkness, run away from this fear-inspiring man.
“Get in,” said Gibbons harshly.
“What if I won’t?” blustered Hertz.
The answer came so suddenly that he gasped. Powerful fingers clutched his arm. He was lifted off his feet, thrust into the car. Then the gray-haired man got in beside him, and the car moved ahead.
Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated) Page 1