To make matters worse, Inspector Burks of the Homicide Squad was a bitter enemy of the Agent’s. Discrediting rumors that “X” was working against the underworld, the formal, routine-loving police inspector regarded the Agent as a particularly vicious criminal.
More than once their ways had crossed. More than once Agent “X” had led the inspector along the right path to apprehend some evil-doer. But he had done it so subtly, so deviously, that Burks never realized he had been aided. He had only redoubled his efforts to trap the man whose trademark was a gleaming “X.” His suspicions would be aroused if he found hidden disguises on the man who tonight called himself Jeffrey Carter.
With a grim smile on his face, Agent “X” made his way back toward the table where he had left Betty Dale. He must get away and take the girl with him before Inspector Burks arrived. With armed men at every door and window, this seemed impossible. Only brilliant strategy could accomplish it.
There were fear shadows in Betty Dale’s eyes as he approached her. One slim hand was pressed against her breast.
“We’re trapped,” she said. “They’ll search you! What will you do?”
“Sometimes a leopard can change his spots,” he said enigmatically.
Her eyes grew wide with wonder as she stared at him. Sergeant Mathers had said that no one was to be allowed to leave the room. No matter what disguise he wore, it would be the same, she thought. Even the Agent couldn’t accomplish the impossible.
Close to their table was a heavy drapery across the front of the private booth for diners who wanted to be alone. The booth was empty tonight. The drapery was partially drawn back.
With the light of purpose in his eyes, the Agent stepped quietly into the booth. Inch by inch he edged the drapery across till the booth was covered—till he was out of sight.
The girl looked quickly about The men and women in the room were staring at Sergeant Mathers, following his every word and gesture as he cross-examined Mike Panagakos and the kitchen staff. No one had seen the Agent go behind the drapery. She looked toward the booth for an instant.
A faint light showed under the drapery’s edge. The Agent was mysteriously at work. But fear and perplexity still mingled in her expression. Her ears were strained to catch the wailing of police sirens outside announcing the arrival of the headquarters’ cars.
Then she gave a sudden gasp. The drapery in the front of the booth moved. A man stepped out—but not Jeffrey Carter, the clubman who had brought her to the Bellaire Club.
The man who emerged had a hard, pale face. His mouth was a thin line. There was a frown between his eyes. His eyebrows, in contrast to his white hair, jutted blackly. He carried himself with erect, military bearing. She had seen that man before. He was Inspector Burks of the Homicide Squad.
Betty Dale drew in her breath.
She could not be mistaken. One man had gone into the booth; another had stepped out—but she knew they were one and the same man—Secret Agent “X.” She knew that his uncanny mastery of disguise had accomplished the impossible.
He didn’t try to test his make-up this time. He looked at her, smiled an instant, and nodded. Then his face set again into grim lines. He gestured toward the front entrance and handed her her wrap. She understood.
With wildly beating heart, but covering her agitation, she walked toward the door.
The burly detective guarding it barred her way. “You heard the sergeant’s orders, lady—nobody goes out!”
Then the detective gave a visible start. His eyes widened. He drew himself up respectfully and lowered the gun.
“It’s all right,” said a cold voice. “I’ll show her to the street. See that nobody else leaves.”
“Certainly, Inspector!”
The detective’s puzzled frown indicated that he couldn’t quite piece things together. He could only go by what he saw. Inspector Burks was at the girl’s elbow. The Homicide Squad head must, it seemed, have come in the back way. He must have a good reason for making an exception in the girl’s favor. The detective stood back, and Betty Dale and the Secret Agent moved unmolested down the carpeted stairs.
They did not hurry. The man at Betty Dale’s side maintained his stiffly erect bearing.
But, at the downstairs entrance, his grip on her arm tightened. He gave a swift look right and left and suddenly drew her across the street. Up the block, headlights flared piercingly; a swift car shot around the corner; squealing rubber; and a siren rose into a screaming, pulsating wail.
“The police!” gasped Betty Dale, the words like a sob of fear in her throat.
Chapter V
The Acid Thrower
THERE wasn’t time to do more than draw the girl into a dark areaway beside a stoop. Agent “X” did so, crouching beside her. To be seen now disguised as Inspector Burks would put an end to his plans.
He waited tensely as the car with the screaming siren came to a halt opposite. The real inspector was the first to get out, his erect, military bearing and pale face making him easy to identify. After him tumbled three plain-clothes men and two grim-faced policewomen. They crossed the sidewalk and disappeared in the entranceway of the Bellaire Club.
A second squad car rounded the corner and came roaring down the block, sliding to a screeching halt behind the first. All the detectives in the city seemed to be concentrating on this one point. The sirens had attracted attention. Heads were peering out windows. A small crowd was collecting. Any moment sharp eyes might spy out Agent “X” and the girl beside him. But she was safe now. He motioned toward the street and she understood.
“You?” she said. “What will you do?”
“The spots of the leopard will change again,” he replied.
Her face was pale and uneasy as she left him and mingled with the crowd on the street. A moment later she signaled a taxi, stepped into it and was whisked away.
The Agent turned his back. Head down amongst the shadows of the areaway, his long fingers began to move. They were working in the darkness now, working by instinct and the uncanny skill that past experience had developed.
He left the white hair on, but drew the jutting black eyebrows off and peeled away the plastic material from his face. He slipped rubber cheek plates against his gums to broaden his features, smoothed the frown of Inspector Burks from his forehead, then turned.
As he sauntered out into the light of the street, no one would have known him for either of the two men he had impersonated earlier in the evening. He looked older now, fatter—and the glittering nose glasses with a black cord attached that he slipped on heightened the effect of dignity and age.
The voices in the crowd around him were tense, electrified with fear. Rumors were running like wildfire. The “Torture Trust” had claimed another victim. A newspaper man with a flash-light camera was taking pictures of the front of the Bellaire Club. Soon the presses of the tabloids would be grinding out another story of mystery and horror for a thrill-loving public to devour at their leisure.
But the game that “X” was playing was a game of life and death.
He slipped through the crowd, moving along the side of the building to the mouth of an alley that tradesmen used. He stared down it, glanced back along the street, then plunged out of sight.
The dignity of his movements fell from him suddenly. He snapped the eyeglasses off, placed them in his pocket. His eyes were bright and piercing as bits of polished steel.
Above him were the lighted windows of the Bellaire Club. He followed the alley on up to the corner of the building. Ahead was a courtyard filled with boxes and barrels. A fire escape snaked up the side of the club, passing the windows of the kitchen, going on up to the roof.
“X” stood a moment, trying to locate the position of the air shaft he had figured was there. It was either by that or the fire escape that the acid thrower had entered and gone.
Then he drew in his breath. Far above him, silhouetted a moment against the starlit sky he saw faint movement. It might have been a man’s hea
d or hand. He couldn’t be certain which; but he crouched back in the black shadows of the courtyard.
Then, swiftly as a cat, he crossed the flagstones and leaped up. His fingers caught the end of the weighted fire escape ladder. The ladder came down slowly, its rusty hinges squeaking.
Agent “X” paused and listened. No sound came from the darkness above. He mounted the ladder swiftly, up past the kitchen windows, reaching the darkness beyond just as one opened. Inspector Burks was on the job now and would be more thorough than Sergeant Mathers had been.
“X” took the iron steps two at a time. Speedily, silently, he reached the roof, while behind him a cop stepped out on the second-floor landing. The police, too, were going to search the roof. The Agent had escaped from one difficult situation only to be involved in another. His blood raced madly. Once again he was pitting his wits and courage against the forces of Fate. What if there was no other way down from the roof? What if the police trapped him?
But he didn’t dwell on the dangers of the situation.
Lightly as a cat, he leaped to the coping of the roof and balanced there on the balls of his feet.
The top of the Bellaire Club stretched before him. Beyond was another building, higher still—a sheer cliff of offices closed for the day. But against its brick walls he saw vague movement again. A giant spider seemed to be creeping up its bare side.
The Agent’s eyes had been trained to work in semi-darkness—to see things that other men missed. There was an iron ladder up the side of the building beyond. Someone was climbing it swiftly—a figure which, even at that distance, had something macabre and sinister about it.
Agent “X” started in pursuit. He was ahead of the police, one jump in advance on the trail of a would-be murderer. As he reached the higher building, he looked behind him across the roof of the Bellaire Club and saw the head and shoulders of the cop. Then his hands were on the ladder and his feet had found the rungs.
It ran straight up, a sheer hundred feet, to the roof above. It passed by unlighted windows, and, as he mounted, it was as though he were hanging in space.
THEN, far behind him, he heard a cry. A pinpoint of flame blossomed in the darkness. There was a sharp, whiplike report. Something struck the bricks beside him and screamed away into the night like a frightened banshee.
The Secret Agent smiled. It wasn’t the first time he had been under fire. The cop on the roof below had glimpsed him just as he had glimpsed the man ahead. But there could be no accurate shooting. The policeman’s second bullet went wider of its mark than the first. The cop was being blinded by the flash of his own gun.
Agent “X” continued to climb. The cop below turned on a flashlight, but its beam wouldn’t reach. Agent “X” was too high up. A moment later, however, the iron ladder gave out faint vibrations, warning the Agent that the man below had reached it and was mounting, too.
“X” traversed the last rungs at dangerous speed. He vaulted over the edge of the roof and stood there like a man on top of the world. The twinkling lights of the city lay below him, peaceful as though murder were not stalking through the night
He turned and looked along the roof. All seemed quiet. He could see no movement now; but with quick, silent strides, he skirted the edge of the roof, then leaped forward.
At a point opposite where he had come up, another ladder went down. It had become a mad game of hide-and-seek on the rooftops of the city. There was no place up here for a man to hide. “X” tried the one skylight window and found that it was locked on the inside. The man ahead, whoever he might be, was showing that he knew his ground. His fiendish act tonight had been as deliberate as it was diabolical, planned with the cunning that characterized every movement of the “Torture Trust.”
Agent “X” grasped the top of the second ladder and began the descent as quickly as he had climbed. Six stories below, his feet touched another, lower roof. He crossed it, reached the fire escape that mounted on the next building. He was moving along the block on the rooftops. He looked back again, and, far above, outlined against the high office building, he saw movement. The cop was close on his trail.
A sense of menace seemed to descend on him out of the night. He could outwit the police, but he was pitting himself against criminals as fiendish as they were cunning. He reached under his coat, drew out a pistol. It was one of the weapons he sometimes used in moments of emergency—not an ordinary gun. The Agent did not kill. To slaughter a man was a crude way of dealing with a situation. The Agent operated with finesse, ingenuity, and impetuous daring. The chambers of this gun contained concentrated anesthetizing gas of a high speciflc gravity. Even in the open, fired into a man’s face, it could cause unconsciousness.
He gripped the pistol, climbed still faster. He was on the last flight of the fire escape now, with the roof of the third building ahead. He stared up twelve feet. And, as he did so, a black shape suddenly blotted, out the stars. So quickly that the Agent didn’t have time to raise his gun, a man’s arm flashed out.
With that instinctive response which had more than once saved his life, the Secret Agent twisted his body sidewise. He hung by one hand and foot, swaying perilously away from the iron ladder, out over dizzy space.
Something hissed by in the air close to his face. The stench and reek of chemicals made his nostrils quiver. Burning, acrid fumes made his eyes blink and smart. Then the flesh of his left wrist felt as if a red-hot brand had suddenly been pressed upon it. The pain was so excruciating that his muscles contracted and he almost let go his hold. The silhouette above disappeared.
Biting his lips with pain, the Secret Agent continued to climb. By a few inches only he had missed the liquid torture from the roof above. A few drops of the acid thrower’s torment had struck his wrist, showing what terrible thing he had escaped.
His eyes glowing like points of steel, he went on up, peering cautiously over the roof, the gas gun in his fingers. But the roof was deserted now.
The Agent saw why. With a bound he crossed the tarred space to a heavy trapdoor cover. He tugged at it with tense fingers, but it was bolted inside. Then, stooping down, he placed his ear against the sheet metal. From below came the faint stir of descending footsteps. The acid thrower had made good his escape.
Philosophical always in defeat, biding his time, the Secret Agent stood up. He couldn’t go back the way he had come. He walked across the building to the fire escape at the rear, and quickly began the descent.
This one seemed to end in a vacant courtyard below. He paused a moment listening. All was quiet.
He reached the bottom, dropped to the flagstones and started toward a fence in the rear, then suddenly crouched back. A bright beam pierced the darkness close ahead. The ray of a flashlight made his eyelids narrow.
“Stand still, guy,” a harsh voice said.
Against the glow of a street light beyond the court Agent “X” got a sudden glimpse of the visored cap of a city cop.
Chapter VI
Sinister Summons
IT was a situation that he hadn’t anticipated—a dangerous turn of events. The cop’s voice held deadly purpose. The Agent knew that a gun was trained on him. He knew also that the police were nervous, fearful, and ready to shoot at the drop of a hat. Calmness would be necessary and brilliant strategy.
A slow smile spread over the Agent’s face. He made his voice drawling.
“Don’t be hasty, old man. Nothing to get excited about, you know.”
With aggravating deliberation, he dusted his palms together, wiped a speck of dust from the front of his tuxedo and reached toward his vest pocket.
“Keep yer hands in sight,” snarled the cop. “Go for a gat and I’ll drill yer.”
“Really!” said the Agent, poised and unruffled. “I don’t think you fully grasp the situation.”
With the tips of his fingers, he delicately drew his eyeglasses from his vest. He breathed upon them, wiped the gleaming lenses on his sleeve, and placed them carefully on his nose. Then he raised
his head. Looking straight at the cop he spoke arrogantly.
“Now, my good man, I’d appreciate it if you’d take that light of yours out of my eyes. It’s quite annoying.”
The cop came closer, still tautly alert.
“What were yer doing on that roof? Who the hell are yer?”
“Names Claude Fellingsfort,” said the Agent. “Thought I saw a fellow running around up top. Went up for a bit of a look. Heard that the police were having a man hunt. Thought I’d aid them.”
“Yeah?”
“Quite—and now, if you’ll just step aside, I’ll be on my way.”
“You’ll be on your way right enough. You’re gonna have a talk with the inspector. He’s up the block. I’ve got my orders and I’m gonna follow ’em.”
“The devil you say! You’d better give me your number. I intend to register a complaint about this.”
The cop’s gun thrust against his aide. “Move along where I tell yer! Keep your hands away from your pockets.”
“You’ll hear from me, my good man.”
The Agent’s voice was outraged now. His pose was that of the injured man-about-town; a citizen furious at the ingratitude of blundering officials. But he moved in the direction the cop indicated. He might learn something from a chat with the inspector.
The crowd in front of the Bellaire Club made way for the cop and his prisoner. They climbed the carpeted stairs to where Inspector Burks was standing just inside the door of the main room. The search of the fifty or more guests of the club was still in progress. The cop spoke harshly.
“I found this guy stepping off a fire escape down the block, chief. He handed me a line. I thought maybe you’d want to talk to him.”
Inspector Burks focused the full glare of his black eyes on Agent “X.” They were face to face—the official head of the world’s greatest homicide squad and the man who worked outside the law for the cause of law and order. But the Agent was protected by his masterly disguise.
Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated) Page 4