But there was a slow constriction around his heart and he could feel his pulses pounding. What if he had aroused their suspicions?
Then another of the black-hooded trio spoke. His voice was lower, hoarser, but it, too, had a cultured note.
“You’ve done well, Jason Hertz. You are cleverer than we thought. We may be able to use you again. But for a time you will have to lie low. We will call you when we need you.”
There was finality in the voice. The Agent’s heart sank. He must find out something definite. He couldn’t wait around for weeks while the hideous murders went on.
His disguise had worked. He was not suspected, but he had learned little. Who were these men? What faces lay behind those black hoods? Where did they live?
He stared again beyond the range of the searchlight, looked at the black-hooded figures with quick penetration. His eyes came to a focus on one.
The right foot of the middle man was thrust slightly forward. The toe of a shoe projected from under the black robe that dropped to the floor. On that shoe the sharp eyes of the Agent detected streaks of mud—mud that had caked recently, mud that formed an irregular pattern. And, in that brief glimpse, his astute brain registered an impression that was photographic.
The hooded men, so far as he could see, made no signal; but one of the mask-faced deaf-mutes returned. The Agent was familiar with the regular deaf-and-dumb language, but he could not follow the strange finger conversation that ensued between the trio and the mute. It must, he concluded, be in code.
The blindfold was slipped over his eyes again; the light in the room went out. He was led through darkness. The sinister trio obviously believed him to be Jason Hertz. But they were taking no chances. Besides themselves only the deaf-mutes were allowed to know the secrets of this hidden place.
Agent “X” was storing impressions again. He was being led out by a different route. The stairs were different, so were the corridors. The acoustic properties of the latter, responding to his footfalls, gave out different echoes.
WHEN they reached the street, he was pushed into a car and the blindfold wasn’t removed until they had driven many blocks. But the Agent had been marking the intersections in his mind by the different sounds that the street openings made. They had passed four. The rumbling note of the wheels changed each time. They rounded a corner, went two more blocks, then another corner. The blindfold was taken off. The car slid into MacDonough Street.
He was motioned up the steps of No. 44 again, and a deaf-mute rang the bell, two longs and a short. Then the mute wrote on his pad: “Stay here,” and thrust it under “X’s” nose.
The witchlike landlady led “X” to a second-floor room. She lighted a gas jet and left him alone. He heard the deaf-mute descend the stoop and the car drive away.
He crossed the room quickly, thrusting his head out the door. He could hear the faint, shuffling steps of the landlady somewhere below. Taking off his shoes, he tiptoed out, walked down the hall and reached the front door. He made no sound. He kept close to the walls. In a moment he had opened the door and slipped out.
Thinking he was Jason Hertz, escaped convict, they would expect him to stay in the house, glad of a refuge. But the real Jason Hertz was far away, and the man impersonating him had a perilous task to perform.
He moved along the block like a wraith, ducked into a deserted alley, listened a moment, then set to work.
Under the quick movements of his skilled fingers, the brilliant disguise came away. It would take long minutes of patient labor to build it up again; but only a few seconds were required to remove it. And in his coat lining, he had another quick disguise ready.
When he emerged from the alley, he appeared as a young, red-headed street loafer. The silk shirt was gone. The sweater he had worn under it, surreptitiously, was in evidence, drawn up around his neck. His coat and trousers, specially tailored to be turned inside out, had completed the change. He no longer remotely resembled Jason Hertz.
Keeping close to the shadows, he walked back along the way he had come. He thought out each step, turned the right corners as he came to them, pausing at last by a huge empty warehouse.
His pulses were tingling now. It was into this building that the deaf-mute had led him. It was out of it that the sinister trio must come.
Carefully, casually, he skirted the big warehouse. It occupied nearly the whole of a small block. Three sides of it were on streets. But there was a clutter of empty houses in the rear. Agent “X” moved by these. Then his heart beat faster.
In the street outside he saw the glint of moisture. A puddle, barely dried, reflected the light from a distant street lamp. The mud around the puddle was a light yellow. Dried, it would probably appear white. It formed a precious clew.
He took up his position in the shadows across the street. There was no telling how many secret entrances the chamber in the warehouse had. The most subtle precautions had been taken to guard them. Yet the Agent felt certain that at least one of the trio had passed in through these old buildings in the rear. Might he not be expected to come out the same way?
Night wind moaned along the street. The stars glittered coldly. Somewhere far up on the warehouse a piece of loose tin flapped and groaned like a wounded vampire. The street was cold, bleak, and deserted. But the Secret Agent waited.
It was nearly an hour later that he crouched back in his hiding place. A door in one of the deserted buildings had at last opened. A man in a long ulster stepped quietly out, closing the door after him. His movements were not furtive. They were calm, assured. The man’s face was even-featured and calm, too, and he was well dressed.
But the Agent leaned forward tensely. On the man’s shoes were pale streaks of mud. He picked his way past the puddle as though a recent unpleasant experience had taught him to be careful.
Shadowing was one of “X’s” specialties. He had done much of it in his life. He knew all the tricks. Yet it took every resource at his command to keep sight of the man in the gray ulster.
The man walked four blocks up the street at a rapid pace. He turned left, walked four blocks more to a main thoroughfare and waited for a taxi.
At a fast clip, hands in pockets, head bent low, the Agent walked on by him. His heart was beating rapidly with the excitement of the chase. What if another taxi did not come? What if he lost sight of the man in a traffic jam? These were risks a shadower must always take.
Then he saw a cab approaching from the other direction. He stepped into the street, signaled it. The driver seemed loath to stop because of “X’s” unpresentable appearance. But “X” waved a bill in his face.
“Make a U turn,” he said. “Then drive ahead slowly.”
The driver did so and the Agent looked back. He saw another cab glide in to the curb and pick up the man behind. It came on up the street and passed.
“Follow that car,” said the Agent.
THE driver of the cab obeyed. But the man ahead, as though it were part of a customary routine, changed cabs three times, walked many extra blocks, and used other tricks to throw off possible pursuit.
The trail led at last to a house in the suburbs—a house on a quiet, respectable street. There were no lights in it when the man in the gray ulster entered. But they flashed on soon after. He was evidently staying alone.
The Agent waited outside till long after midnight, till the lights finally went out for good. Then he slipped a handkerchief over his face crossed the street, and moved to the rear of the house. If he should be caught, he wanted to be thought a common burglar.
He took from his pocket a kit of tiny, chromium steel tools. There was a glass cutter with a full diamond point among them. He selected the windows of the library, placed a rubber suction disc against a pane, cut the glass noiselessly, and, holding the disc, drew the glass toward him with a faint snap.
In a moment he was in the library, playing the beam of a tiny flashlight over the walls and furniture. There were books, many of them, and a desk with papers on it
.
From these he learned the name of the man who lived in the house. Professor Ronald Morvay, psychologist.
That was something. The Agent stored it in his memory. He rotated the beam of his flash, then stopped. It was focused on the wall, on the circular front of a small sunken safe.
The Agent walked to it quickly. House- and safe-breaking were included in his activities—when it was the house of a murderer he broke into and the safe of a murderer he opened.
But there were no clews as yet that would help unravel the plot behind the mysterious “Torture Trust.” He knew it was an extortion racket. The police knew that, too. But what diabolical minds were back of it, and how could they be caught?
He knelt before the safe, touched the dial with his long fingers, put his ear to the metal. In the pursuit of criminals he had studied their methods, and he was familiar with the mechanics of safe-breaking. There were few that he could not open by listening to the faint movement of the lock tumblers.
At the end of a minute he had the door of the wall safe in Professor Morvay’s library swinging outward on its hinges. Then his hand reached inside.
A common burglar would have been disappointed, but the Agent felt rewarded. There were in the safe several small books, their pages filled with fine, close script. And as the Agent turned the beam of his flash on them and studied them, his eyes gleamed eagerly. He began to read—and read on, devouring the lines, page after page.
He was held in the grip of such appalling horror that his skin felt cold. Here was a record of human ingenuity and fiendishness beyond anything he had ever run into. No wonder the books had been placed in the safe!
They told of a series of experiments by a scientist—a psychologist—who used his knowledge for criminal purposes. They told of the experiments of Professor Morvay on that part of the human brain which harbors the sadistic tendencies—the lust to torture and kill. They told how men with a trace of sadism in their make-up could be trained into inhuman monsters. And Agent “X,” grim-faced, thought of the gray-clad deaf-mutes with their sinister features. These were Professor Morvay’s subjects, the men he had experimented on. These were the sadistic fiends who were only too glad to carry out the orders of their masters. These were the acid throwers!
But the other two members of the murder trio were unknown to him. And there would have to be proof beyond this to convince any jury that the respectable Professor Morvay was a hideous criminal.
“X” began searching through the second book. Then he stopped. A faint noise had come. He put the books back in the safe, closed the door swiftly and started to turn toward the window. But instead, he held himself as though every muscle were frozen.
For the lights in the room suddenly flashed on, and standing in the door which he had silently opened stood Professor Morvay. There was an automatic in his hand, and its black, deadly muzzle was pointing straight at the Secret Agent’s heart.
Chapter IX
The Murderers Strike
IN the space of a second, the Agent knew what he faced. The menace of death hung heavy in the room. There was death in Professor Morvay’s green-gray eyes and in the thin, cruel line of his lips. Legally he could find justification for shooting the Agent who appeared now as a common thief. Morvay would say to the police that he had shot in self-defense. Any instant the Agent expected to feel the impact of a bullet above his heart.
But the fear that gripped him was not for himself. It was for the success of his plans. Death would bring an end to them all.
But Morvay did not shoot. Instead, he came forward slowly, the gun held in fingers that were as tense as a bird’s talons. His eyes were fixed upon the Agent, boring in, trying to penetrate behind the handkerchief.
“X” understood. Morvay was taking no chances. Curiosity was restraining the quick pressure of his trigger finger. The Agent appeared as a common burglar. But there was a chance that he might be someone else—a detective, for instance.
This doubt was the slender thread upon which the Agent’s life hung. He would live until Morvay’s curiosity was satisfied.
In those brief moments while the psychologist approached, “X” studied him. He saw the high, peaked forehead, the aquiline nose, the ruthless intelligence of the eyes. Morvay, he suspected, was an intellectual giant who had gone wrong, a man with erudition and a vast store of knowledge at his command. If the other members of the “Torture Trust” were like him, no wonder the police had been baffled. The professor and his colleagues were masters of death, cunning, pitiless, diabolical, laying the threads of their extortion racket like a sinister tarantula’s web.
Morvay spoke then, and “X’s” keenly attuned ears recognized his voice as one of those he had heard in that mystery room where the deaf-mute had taken him.
“Stand still—lift your hands—or you die!”
Slowly the Secret Agent raised his arms. The acceleration of his pulses had stopped. They were normal now. An icy calm possessed him. His brain was working with the silent, faultless precision of some finely adjusted mechanism. He was matching his wits against death.
Holding the automatic in his right hand, standing only three feet from the Agent, Morvay reached out with his left. He drew the handkerchief down over the Agent’s face. Whom he expected to see, “X” did not know. The Agent’s disguise was that of a common thug—a street loafer lured into the byways of crime.
And, as Morvay studied him, the Agent saw curiosity give way to another emotion. A sinister message was flashing from the professor’s eyes. The pupils had contracted. The whites glinted evilly. He had the look of a crouched jungle beast ready to spring. Morvay was planning to kill, planning it deliberately, ruthlessly, satisfied now that his nocturnal visitor had nothing to do with the police.
In “X’s” right shoe was a weapon he might have used—a tiny air gun in the front of the sole, firing a stupefying dart, and discharged by pressing back in a certain way on his heel. It was one of many masterly defensive weapons he had devised. But he dismissed the idea of employing it now.
There was a greater issue than his own life at stake. There was the work to which he had dedicated that life. To use the dart now would give away to Professor Morvay that he wasn’t what he appeared—a common burglar. Morvay, when he recovered from the dart’s stupefying effect would be suspicious, on his guard ever after—and he would warn the other members of the “Torture Trust.” They might disappear and carry on their fearful operations in some other community. “X” must stick to the role he had elected for himself.
With the quickness of a striking snake, he lashed outward and upward with his foot. He bent his body back, threw his whole weight forward, and the toe of his shoe struck Horvay’s gun arm.
The gun exploded with a deafening report as Morvay’s tense fingers jerked the trigger. The bullet went over the Agent’s head, so close that he felt it nick the cloth of the cap he wore. His toe broke Morvay’s hold on the weapon. It spun in the air, clattered to the floor, and Morvay staggered back with a cry of pain.
In an instant Agent “X” had swept up the gun and had reversed the direction of its muzzle. He snarled in his throat like a vicious thug.
“Stick ’em up, guy. Make any play and I’ll burn yer guts. Thought yer was smart, didn’t yer?”
His eyes glittering like those of a snake, the professor obeyed. Those eyes were upon “X” now, watching, calculating. And “X” knew that Morvay’s suspicions were not entirely quieted. The Agent spoke again.
“Open that safe.”
To emphasize his words, he thrust the gun closer, skinning his lips back from his teeth, making his face hideous.
“Open it, or I’ll drill yer.”
With a shrug Morvay turned. He knelt before the safe. His long fingers turned the dial. The safe’s door swung outward.
“Stand back!”
With his gun, Agent “X” motioned Morvay against the wall. Then, his face greedy, he stepped forward and thrust his left hand into the safe. He withd
rew it, fingers clutching the books. He thumbed them, stared at them closely, then flung them to the floor with a harsh curse.
“Where’s the dough? What are yer tryin’ to hand me?”
The professor was silent, and “X” pressed the gun savagely against his body.
“I’ll give yer two minutes to come across.”
Morvay nodded toward the desk. “You’ll find money in there. The bottom left drawer.”
Agent “X” backed away, crouched, fingers curled over the butt of the gun—the picture of a cash-crazed crook.
He jerked open the drawer of the desk with his left hand, pulled out an envelope. His fingers ripped it open, drew forth a sheaf of bills. There were many in there—tens, twenties, several hundred in cash, he estimated. Growling exultantly, he wadded the bills up, stuffed them in his pocket. There was a telephone on the desk. He yanked the cord loose, breaking it away from the box on the wall.
Then slowly, still holding the gun trained on Morvay, he backed toward the window. He thrust his feet out, eased his body backward, and in a moment the darkness had swallowed him.
HE was certain now that his acting had convinced Professor Morvay—certain that Morvay believed him to be a mere thief.
He crossed through several back yards, gliding between night-darkened houses. In the glow of a street lamp, he examined the roll of bills he had taken. There were more than he had thought—nearly four hundred dollars. It was money that he would turn over immediately to Betty Dale.
That was his practice when he took cash from criminals. There were worthy people upon whom the shadow of crime had fallen heavily. There was, for instance, the mother of a lad he knew, a boy who had foolishly taken part in a crap game that the police had raided. He had been sent to the workhouse for six months. The mother was destitute. This cash, taken from the murderer Morvay, would give her food and a roof over her head while her son was in jail. Betty Dale would see to that.
Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated) Page 6