He knew he could find again that chamber where he had first heard the voice of Professor Morvay. His mind had stored away directions for reaching it. To go there now seemed his only course.
In the darkness, picturing himself as still blindfolded, he began retracing his steps, going back along the way the deaf-mutes had led him. Up a flight of stairs, along another corridor, still on. He was in the warehouse proper now.
There was a feeling of solidity around him. A penetrating dampness in the air as of great, chill spaces. He was getting close to the secret council room, and every nerve in his body was taut.
Then he paused. It seemed to him that he heard a faint sound somewhere in the building. It was like an irrepressible whisper, coming through many thicknesses of walls.
He moved back quickly, half the length of the corridor. Then he listened again.
The sound came once more, and the hair on the Agent’s head seemed to rise. The sound he had heard was a girl’s scream of terror, faint, muffled, seemingly subterranean, but with such a note of agony in it that it was like a stifling, icy substance constricting his heart.
HE gave up any idea of going to the council chamber now. Betty was not there. Somewhere down in the dark sub-cellars of the warehouse she had been taken. He dared not think what they were doing to her, what had inspired that awful scream.
His ears were straining, his brain trying to locate the exact direction of the sound. He was desperately afraid that he might go the wrong way.
He reached a door along the corridor, opened it, turned on his flash, and saw that it led up. He ran on till he came to another. Dampness beat against his face as he swung the door back. There were stairs leading down.
He descended and found himself in a place that was like a series of catacombs. Each second seemed like a lost hour. He moved forward frantically, searching, groping, icy fear for the girl driving him on.
Ahead, nearer this time, the scream sounded again. There seemed to be only a few thicknesses of walls between it and himself. His ears had caught its exact location. He moved on with greater speed.
There was another door before him. He opened it with one of his master keys, melted through it, found himself in a dank corridor beyond. Running swiftly, he reached the corridor’s end and stopped short. Directly ahead was a faint crack of light, the light below the edge of a door.
Silently as a shadow, he crept up to it. A third frenzied scream came from behind it, so close that it was like a knife stab.
The Agent had to steady his hand as he tried the knob. It, too, was fastened. He had never moved so quickly in his life as he did thrusting the key into the lock aperture. His hand grew steady again. In this crisis, nerves and muscles were cooperating. The crack of the door widened.
Swift as a streak of light, the Secret Agent was in the room. Then horror widened his eyes.
Betty Dale sat in a metal chair that was somehow reminiscent of a prison death house. He saw the metal bands that held her in, saw her face, white as parchment, her eyes stark with terror. He saw the gray-faced deaf-mute who bent over her, the swab of acid-soaked cotton in his hand.
And in that instant the Agent leaped across the floor. There was no time for subtle action. A drop of the greenish, horrible fluid had already fallen off the swab. It had fallen on Betty’s dress close to her white neck. Fumes of it were curling up. Fumes from the swab itself were close to her nostrils, close to the satiny softness of her face, as the torturer brought it nearer.
Betty had come out of her faint only to find her tormenters waiting, ready to go ahead with their terrible deed. The Agent did not know this. He only knew that, mercifully, he had been in time.
So quickly that the mute in front of Betty did not see him until it was too late, he leaped forward. His hand struck the swab from the torturer’s fingers. His other hand, balled into a hard fist, struck the gray-clad man in the side of the head, sending him reeling away.
The other mute whirled and came toward Agent “X” with a tube of acid in his hand. He flung it. Reeking fumes filled the air. But the Agent sidestepped and rushed in.
He swung again and sent the man crashing back against a shelf filled with bottles. The bottles leaped and fell with a clatter of breaking glass. More fumes filled the room.
From the corner of his eye, Agent “X” saw the first man he had struck rise and scuttle from the chamber like a streaking gray rat.
BUT there was no time to follow. The air was suffocating, deadly. He turned to Betty Dale. She was sitting in the chair, her face almost corpselike with the fear that had filled her. She could barely speak.
She watched him dumbly as he stared at the cuffs that held her. Seconds were precious. Where had the deaf-mute gone? To warn his masters? To get reinforcements?
“X’s” hands were trembling—unusual for him. The steel bracelets presented difficulties. The keyholes in them were too small for any of his master keys.
Then he turned and leaped to the man who lay on the floor. The mute was breathing stertorously. He was unconscious. “X” fumbled in the man’s pockets, exclaiming with relief when he found a ring of keys. Two of them were small, fragile.
He thrust one into the locks of the cuffs on Betty’s wrists and ankles, and the cuffs snapped open. But it had taken time, and time was a precious thing.
He lifted her out of the chair, stood her on her feet, but she could not walk. Fear and the cramped position she had been in had stiffened her muscles.
He picked her up bodily; turned toward the door of the chamber. Somewhere in the vast building overhead, there was a faint noise. It was like a signal bell. Down a long corridor he saw a dim flicker of light. He didn’t like it. Deaf-mutes could not hear, but they could see. What if there were others? There was no way of knowing how many of his terrible subjects Professor Morvay had trained.
Running as swiftly as he could, he carried Betty back the way he had come. But he found that one door had snapped shut again. He had to put her down and work with his master key. That took time.
At the level of the ground floor, at a junction of corridors he paused. There was a whisper of sound behind—the sound of running feet. Pursuers were coming out of the darkness. He and Betty would shortly be overwhelmed. The girl must be gotten away at all costs. If she were injured, burned with acid, it would haunt him to the end of his days.
He stooped and whispered to her.
“Rats are coming out of the night. A terrier may have to hold them in check. Do as the terrier says.”
He carried Betty along a passage into the rear group of buildings. He set her down and found she could walk now. Then he spoke again, calmly, as though death were not close at their heels in the darkness behind.
“Go straight ahead and out the door. A car waits across the street. Drive away—as fast as you can. Go to the Hotel Graymont. Wait for the terrier there!”
He heard her breath come quickly, felt her fingers clutch him. She did not want to obey—did not want to desert him. But a steely touch of his hand on her arm gave accent to his order. He pushed her forward, heard her footsteps receding.
He was glad he had done it. The sounds in the corridor behind were close now. Betty Dale could not walk rapidly. Carrying her, he would have been overtaken surely. Her only chance of escape was for him to make himself a dyke against the human flood of evil and horror that was surging in upon him.
He waited tensely till the sounds of the running feet were close. Then he whipped out his gas pistol and fired. There were only six gas-filled shells in the gun. He discharged them all, laying a momentary barrage in the corridor.
There was the noise of a stumbling, falling body. Gasps of fear came out of the darkness and the footsteps receded. Then the gas cloud cleared and the fierce wave advanced again. The blackness vomited leaping, flying figures. There were a half-dozen of the gray-clad men.
Struggling fiercely, fighting against the human torrent that engulfed him, the Secret Agent went down in a flying welter of arms an
d legs and lashing fists.
Chapter XII
Trapped!
HE fought on blindly in the darkness, expecting momentarily to have scalding drops of acid dashed into his face, to feel his eyeballs, nostrils, and lips being seared into shapeless lumps of quivering, pain-prodded flesh. But none came.
The gray-clad men seemed for the moment to have discarded the liquid horror that they dealt in. They wanted evidently to take him alive, uninjured.
He crashed a balled fist into a man’s writhing face. He felt teeth snap, felt the skin of his knuckles rip. But the next instant two men were on his back and snake-like fingers were encircling his throat. He reached up, tried to break their hold, and someone butted him in the stomach, doubling him up in breathless agony. Then it seemed that a dozen vises had been clamped upon him. Hands pinioned him from all sides. The pressure on his throat increased till his breath was shut off, till he lay gasping.
With unconsciousness close at hand, he relaxed. The fingers on his throat were loosened slightly. He could breathe again feebly. A light was turned on and he saw a forest of legs around him.
The faces looking down at him were impassive, hideous as death masks in their reptilian immobility. One of the men lay moaning, nursing his bleeding gums, but there were five others.
They yanked the Secret Agent to his feet. A gun was pressed against his back so forcefully that it bruised the flesh. He was pushed along the corridor, back the way he had come.
He wondered dully why they didn’t shoot, why they didn’t kill him now, or throw acid in his face. Then he realized that these men were slaves, being disciplined in evil and committed to do the will of their masters. They were taking him upstairs again, to the council chambers.
Four of them held him outside the door while the fifth slipped inside. “X” had no doubt the man was telling in finger language to the hooded masters of death, the story of Betty Dale’s escape and his own entry.
The fifth mute came back, his face still impassive, and Agent “X” was thrust through the door into the presence of the black-robed men. But there were only two now. The third had not returned. That one, the Agent guessed, was Morvay.
The spotlight was turned on his face again. He trusted to his disguise, but wondered what their reaction to it would be. He was posing as H. J. Martin now, a sandy-haired, plump-faced business-man.
The two men behind the black hoods stared at him, their eyes glittering through the slits. At a gesture from one of them, the deaf-mutes withdrew to the side of the room. “X” stood alone like a prisoner before the bar.
The voice of one of the hooded men came slowly, tauntingly.
“So—a young Sir Galahad who has rescued a fair lady in distress!”
The other one, his voice gruffer, asked a question.
“Who are you?”
The Agent answered bluntly, quickly, playing his part as always.
“My name’s Martin. You devils can’t get away with what you tried to do to Miss Dale. I came just in time.”
A low, evil laugh sounded from behind the hood.
“She escaped—but nothing can save her now. She was only being frightened to make her talk. But she will be found now—wherever she is—and the beauty of her face will become a thing that men will turn their eyes from in loathing.”
The Secret Agent clenched his fist. His voice was tense, high-pitched, as he continued his pose.
“Whoever you are, you can’t get away with it, I say. You’ll all go to jail, or the electric chair. You’re devils, murderers.”
They ignored his passionate speech.
“Tell us one thing—Mr. Martin. How did you find your way here? How did you get in?” There was a sneer in the voice—a taunting note.
The Agent sensed what it meant; but he kept up his bluff.
“You’re not as clever as you think. Betty’s a girl friend of mine. I learned she’d gotten a phony call. I found she’d disappeared and I followed her.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
One of the hooded figures leaned forward. His hands were gripping the sides of his chair. His eyes were glittering points of light behind the eyeholes of his hood, and his voice was low, harsh and deadly.
“Don’t think you can fool us—Martin. We know who you are. We know there is only one man who could have found his way to this place and come through the locked doors. We know there is only one man who could have saved Betty Dale!”
THE room was still as death for an instant. Then a low, dry chuckle sounded.
“We compliment you—Secret Agent ‘X’! You have proved your cleverness. Your disguise is beyond reproach. So it was when you played the part of Jeffrey Carter—and when you impersonated Inspector Burks of the homicide squad. So, too, it was when you made us believe you were Jason Hertz. That was your master stroke, ‘X.’ But we had Hertz watched. When he so mysteriously disappeared from the refuge we had given him, we began to suspect we had been tricked.”
Agent “X’s” heart stood still. The voice of the hooded man droned on.
“What you did with Hertz we do not know. That is neither here nor there. We know that you helped him out of prison, impersonated him—so cleverly that you fooled us for a time. But you cannot go on fooling us as you can the police. Your methods are dashing, sensational, dramatic. You have annoyed us and will continue to do so if you are not curbed. But we have agents of our own. You have been watched, spied upon from the night you went to the Bellaire Club. Your impersonation of Inspector Burks was seen by the man you chased over the roof.”
The chuckle came again.
“I am being frank with you, because I expect you to be frank with us. Your history is intriguing. Just who is employing you? For what particular cause are you working?”
The voice had become almost matter-of-fact now. It was as though “X’s” answers were foregone conclusions. But he was silent. The voice behind the hood changed again. It had a steely, imperious note in it.
“You will give us all this information, Agent ‘X.’ It is necessary for us to know. There may be an effort made to replace you when—” The voice trailed off with sinister implication.
“Yes, death for you is inevitable. You are aware of that yourself. You are aware that you cannot leave this place alive. But we can give you a choice of two deaths—one quick, painless; the other so lingering, so horrible, so pregnant with agony that you will cease to be a man and will become a blind, babbling creature, a death so unthinkable that you would choose to die a thousand ordinary deaths.”
Still the Agent was silent, standing stiffly erect, staring straight before him. Momentarily his will seemed suspended. Momentarily he could only wait and listen. The voice droned on.
“You have seen the faces of men who have been dead many days. Your face will be like that while you are still alive; the flesh eaten away, the eye sockets empty, the teeth skull-like.”
Sweat broke out on the Secret Agent’s forehead. It was not so much fear as fury against these men—a fury so terrible that it left him white and shaking. Then he grew calm again.
“What would you ask me to do?” he said.
“A small thing. We will provide you with pen and paper and a place to write. You will give us a report of all your activities. You will name your hide-outs, your methods, tell us exactly who you are and who is behind you. We know you work alone. We know that no one shares your secrets; but you are supplied with money. That is evident. There have been whispers that the government is backing you.”
“Ask the police,” said the Agent coldly.
“The police hunt you, too. They regard you as an enemy, a criminal—that is part of your game. But you will tell us—everything.”
There was silence again, and the Agent could feel the eyes of the ravenlike pair before him boring into his own.
“What’s your answer?” came a voice at last.
The Agent held himself more erect. His lips remained closed. He stared calmly, silently at his questio
ners.
“You will not speak! We are not surprised. You are clever in your disguises. You are confident of your ability. But there are things which will penetrate and destroy any disguise. There are acids hungry for the flesh of men. We will give you a small taste of what hell is like—then we will leave you poised on the brink of hell, and—who knows—you may be willing to talk—to avoid the last terrible plunge!”
Chapter XIII
The Plunge
THE hooded man’s hands moved in the air before him. His fingers made quick motions, delivering imperious orders. Four of the gray-clad mutes stepped forward and grasped the Agent’s arms. The fifth man held the gun at his back. He was marched out of the room.
He had no plan of action. He saw at the moment no way of escape. He waited for that small, brief opportunity which might checkmate the awful fate ahead of him. He couldn’t do what had been asked of him—betray the secrets that he guarded so jealously. Yet to keep them guarded he would have to submit to more than human flesh could endure. Would it be better, he wondered, to make a break now and invite a bullet in his back?
But he pictured himself lying wounded, helpless, with flesh-eating acid being poured into his face. There was nothing that these men would stop at.
He walked quietly downstairs and through the corridors. They had not blindfolded him—a tribute to his cleverness, to the knowledge that no blindfolds could keep him from knowing where he was. And it was evidence of the certainty that he was to die.
They came at last to the door of the torture chamber. The four men holding him redoubled the force of their grip on his arms. The man with the gun stepped forward, unlocking the door. He pressed a switch and light came from inside.
For the moment this fifth man with the gun was dead ahead, silhouetted against the light behind him. There would never be another opportunity. Within the next minute Agent “X” would be in the chair with the steel cuffs snapped over his legs and ankles—cuffs that no human strength or will could break. It was now or never.
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