Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated)

by Paul Chadwick

  “Certainly, countess, I’ll have the jewels brought down. All of you can see them then.”

  Agent “X” edged close. He heard the police commissioner object.

  “What about the threat of that crook?” the commissioner asked. “Isn’t it going in the face of Providence to bring them out tonight?”

  Crandal made a gesture with his hand.

  “That’s what your men are here for—to give protection. And a lady has requested that they be shown.”

  The commissioner flushed and nodded.

  “Very well,” he said.

  Crandal whispered the combination of the safe into the ear of an old and trusted butler who had been with the family forty years.

  “Go get them, Wilmot,” he said. “But be careful.”

  The butler protested.

  “I wish, sir, that you would come with me. If anything should happen—”

  Crandal gave the man a push.

  “Do as you’re told,” he said.

  Three detectives followed the butler, after a low-voiced conversation with the commissioner.

  In ten minutes the butler returned carrying a square leather box in his hands. His fingers were trembling as he set it down.

  “There, sir,” he said, and there was a note of vast relief in his voice.

  The guests crowded around tensely. Crandal opened the box, exposing the glittering collection of gems that reposed on a cushion of black velvet.

  There were rubies that gleamed like drops of freshly fallen blood, emeralds as green as polar seas, sapphires blue as the sky, diamonds that reflected sparkling prismatic lights and gave off rainbow colors. Many of them had come from the crowns of former kings and queens.

  Crandal held them lovingly in his hand, then passed them about.

  Nina took a diamond necklace and held it in trembling fingers. She placed it against her neck, let the cold stones touch her skin. Her eyes were dark with greed. She seemed reluctant to give it back.

  But the other guests were nervous, holding the jewels gingerly, or refusing to take them at all. They appeared to breathe easier when the gems had been exhibited and put safely back in their box. The old butler picked the box up and solemnly bore it away with his escort of detectives. The police commissioner wiped a perspiring face, and Secret Agent “X,” watching Nina’s every movement, wondered what was going on in her mind.

  The butler had taken the jewels up a flight of broad stairs to a second-floor room. Several detectives hung around this stairway for minutes after he had disappeared. The others remained with him on the floor above.

  The dancing began again. Liquor flowed freely. The guests and even the police commissioner appeared to relax. But Agent “X” stood tensely staring around. At the moment he could not see Nina, Piere DuBrong, or the pudgy-faced Nick Baroni. He pushed his way through the crowd watching the dancers until the blonde head of the Countess Rocazy came in view. She was in the arms of the politician. He looked about for the others; then suddenly whirled.

  A stumbling, horrible figure had appeared at the head of the stairs. It was Agent “X’s” hoarse exclamation that stilled the music and attracted the attention of the other guests.

  A ripple of tense excitement passed through the assemblage. It increased with the speed of a spreading grass fire. Talk ceased. Laughter died away. All eyes were turned toward the stairway.

  The man at the top of them was one of the police detectives. He seemed to be trying to say something. He was waving his arms, staring toward them. Then his hands, clawlike, went to his throat.

  He reeled, staggered, clutched at himself. One choking, terrible cry came from his lips. It was silenced as though by the jerk of an unseen noose. The man appeared to be fighting invisible fingers that were wrapped around his neck.

  He twisted, swayed, lurched forward. His feet slipped on the top step.

  Then, while women screamed and men shouted hoarsely, he plunged headfirst down the slippery hardwood stairs. His body landed with a thud on the rug below. But the man had ceased his struggles now. His face became purple, the terrible livid purple of an overripe plum, the hue which had mottled the dying face of Bill Scanlon. His lips were drawn back in a mirthless, hideous grin. From between them his swollen tongue protruded, mocking, horrible.

  While men and women in the room stood frozen with fear, too scared to speak or move, too weighted with horror to do more than breathe, there came a fearful explosion somewhere on the floor above. It rocked the house, rattled the windows.

  A cloisonné vase dropped off a shelf and rang against the floor. Another of porcelain shattered to fragments as it fell. In the crowd, close to the Secret Agent’s side, a woman screamed and fainted. Then pandemonium broke loose.

  Chapter XI

  The Dead Are Silent

  SO terrific was the explosion on the floor above that it seemed as though a bomb must have gone off. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Crystal pendants from the old chandelier followed it in a clattering, tinkling cascade.

  Men and women made a wild dash for the doors, jostling each other, crowding, shouting in a mad stampede. Their fear made them forget that they were ladies and gentlemen.

  A paunchy man in a dress suit with glittering diamond studs brushed Betty Dale aside with a sweep of his fat arm and charged ahead like a frightened bull.

  Agent “X” saw the man’s action from the corner of his eye. His lip curled in contempt. The man lurched by him and the Agent thrust a quick foot into his path tripping him, disregarding the fact that the man was the president of one of the city’s leading banks. The bank official skidded along the floor carrying a rug with him.

  The police commissioner was shouting, too, trying to stem the tide of panic. His voice boomed out. The frenzy began to subside.

  Secret Agent “X” leaped up the broad stairway, his eyes burning with excitement. Three detectives, freeing themselves from the milling crowd, followed him.

  At the top of the stairs there was a long hallway. Agent “X” looked down it. Another figure lurched into sight. It was the old butler, the man who had carried the jewels down for the guests to see. The butler’s fingers were clawing at his throat. He collapsed on the floor as the Agent neared him. His face, too, had the ghastly livid hue of strangulation.

  Debris, and the broken panels of a door showed the location of the explosion. Secret Agent “X” needed no one to tell him it was the entrance to the jewel room.

  The door was hanging loosely on its hinges. He thrust it open, stepped inside. The force of the explosion had shattered every light bulb. In the gloom he almost fell over another form—another detective.

  One of the plain-clothes men behind him flashed on a light. “X” saw then that the man at his feet was dead, too. He had evidently fallen before the explosion had taken place. His body was twisted grotesquely, his features mutilated beyond recognition. Death and horror had struck here.

  “The safe’s been blown,” said the detective behind “X” harshly.

  The beam of the man’s flash light was focused on the heavy iron box across the room. It was twisted out of line now, its sides bulging, its doors blown off.

  “Soup!” said another detective. “A bungling job, too. They used enough nitro to wreck a house.”

  With drawn guns, both men leaped across the room, running to a window which was open. It gave on a balcony. They turned their lights down on the lawn beneath. Secret Agent “X” heard them cry out. Peering over their shoulders, he saw a fourth huddled form on the icy turf. The detective stationed to patrol the grounds had been killed along with the two others.

  Guests, taking courage, now that the police were going to the scene of the explosion, were coming up the stairs, crowding into the hall.

  Crandal came into the room, two friends with him. The millionaire’s face no longer wore its look of easy assurance. He was tense and pale.

  “The jewels are gone,” he said hoarsely.

  He seemed to forget the dead man lying at his f
eet, the other men outside. He was staring wide-eyed at the safe.

  In front of it was the black leather case that had contained the jewels. It was empty, battered and broken by the terrible force of the explosion. There wasn’t a jewel in sight.

  Colonel Crandal leaped to the window. He stood speechless, staring out.

  The police commissioner appeared in the doorway, a group of guests, including Piere DuBrong and Nick Baroni, with him. The commissioner’s collar was torn. His hair was on end. He had been fighting to stop the panic downstairs. He said:

  “You’d better go down, Colonel. You’d better go and quiet your guests. Tell them it’s over now. That criminal made good his threat.”

  There was bitterness, defeat, in the commissioner’s voice.

  “This has been a terrible night, Colonel,” he continued. “Three of my men gone. They tell me MacCarthy outside was killed, too.”

  THE Secret Agent was listening. His burning eyes were swiveling around the room, staring at the safe and the window. The killer had wiped out clues, wiped out any possibility of identification by leaving a trail of death behind him.

  The Agent’s gaze came to rest on the faces of DuBrong and Nick Baroni. They both appeared shaken and terrified. But were they? The Agent was baffled. It was as though the Black Master was a being as intangible as the murder weapon he used. Agent “X” stared out the window off across the ice-coated lawn. The commissioner issued a harsh order to those of his men who were left.

  “Go out and hunt around. Get some clews that will help Burks.”

  Hatless and coatless, the Agent dashed out on the lawn. The glow from the lighted windows on the first floor shed ghostly radiance. He supplemented their glow by lighting matches. The detectives came with their flash lights.

  But Agent “X” had discovered in his first brief examination of the lawn how hopeless it was to look for clews here. The ground was frozen as solidly as rock. The short turf was matted with ice. Its glass-smooth surface showed no tracks. A hundred men might have walked over it.

  He moved up to the dead detective. The man’s distorted features showed that the Spectral Strangler had struck him down also. What horror had he seen out there in the semi-darkness? His bloodless lips would never tell now.

  Down on his hands and knees. Agent “X” examined the ground around the form of the slain detective. For a moment he bent close, then flattened his palm, rubbed it over the icy coating. Something sharper than ice pricked his skin. He drew his hand up, looked at it. Tiny particles of glass were clinging to it. They were even more fragile than the shell-thin globes of electric light bulbs. A detective came up to his side.

  “What’s the matter? What the hell are you looking for, mister?”

  The Agent held his hand out.

  “Glass,” he said quietly.

  The detective swore harshly, took an empty envelope from his pocket.

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  The Agent passed the glass slivers over. He had forced the police to share a clew with him. It was only fair that he share this one now with them. He believed he understood its significance, but he doubted that it would lead anywhere.

  A police siren rose into a moaning wail out in the street. A car turned into the driveway of the Crandal home and drew up before the big entrance-way.

  Secret Agent “X” went back into the house. He was there when Inspector Burks of the homicide squad met the police commissioner. The two went into a whispered consultation for a moment; then the commissioner held up his hand, addressing the frightened guests.

  “There’s a criminal you’ve all heard of—a criminal I’ve reason to believe struck tonight, stole Crandal’s jewels, and killed these men. I’m referring to the man who masks behind the name of Secret Agent ‘X.’ It is my belief that he and the Black Master are one.”

  Betty Dale came close to Agent “X.” Her eyes were dark with anxiety.

  “We’d better leave,” she said. She wasn’t thinking of her newspaper work; she was thinking only of the Agent’s safety.

  His smile reassured her.

  “There is work for the lady scribe,” he said. “She must stay. But far places call an explorer. He has a rendezvous at midnight.”

  He looked at the great clock against the wall. It was after ten now.

  Some of the guests began to leave. An air of gloom and horror had fallen over the house. The atmosphere of festivity was gone.

  Other police cars joined the first one in the drive. Fingerprint experts, Bertillon men, official photographers, the medical examiner and his assistant, and a detail of men from the bomb squad arrived. It seemed that every detective in the city was pouring into the Crandal home.

  SECRET AGENT “X,” under the guise of Clark Manning, explorer, slipped quietly away. There were deep suspicions in his mind. He intended to investigate Piere DuBrong and the gangster, Nick Baroni. Was it only coincidence that they were there when the robbery took place? But he had a rendezvous at midnight. It could not be postponed. And a question burned in his mind. After such a fiendish and daring crime, would the Black Master still meet him in that silent, empty house that faced Bradley Square? If so, he had a plan worked out. He was ready tonight to take a desperate chance.

  He drove quickly to his apartment on Jefferson Avenue, disguised himself as Greenford again. The spy was still unconscious, breathing peacefully in the closet.

  The streets were deserted when “X” reached the square. It seemed a place of ghost houses. There was only one light burning. That was across the square in the beer saloon, dimly seen through the jumble of playground equipment. The rusty chain of a swing creaked in the night wind as the Agent passed it. It made a sound like a body swinging on gallows.

  With the faces of the three slain detectives and the butler still before his mind’s eye, the horror of the empty house seemed to have deepened.

  There was not only the chill of mystery as he climbed the steps now. There was a living threat. The brooding, towering menace of death.

  He pulled the ancient bell handle, half expecting that this time there would be no result. How could the man who called himself the Black Master be everywhere at once, unless he was the very spirit of evil itself?

  Echoes clattered inside the house. A minute passed. Then again the lock of the door clicked and the old door swung open, moved by unseen hands. The Agent entered quickly. As he moved along the black hallways, he struck a match and noticed something that seemed to add to the ghostliness. His own tracks still showed in the dust. They had not been disturbed. There were no others beside them. It was as though he had entered a house peopled only with sinister spirits.

  He was slightly ahead of time. He waited in the still top-floor room, waited till a clock somewhere outside boomed twelve strokes. Then suddenly there was a dry rattling in the room. For an instant it was horribly reminiscent of a snake or of some huge reptile uncoiling. Then the voice he had heard before spoke.

  “The Black Master salutes you, Greenford. What is your answer? Speak loudly.”

  Imitating Greenford’s foreign accent, the Secret Agent spoke. It seemed as though he were talking to the blank walls of an empty room. It was uncanny, spine-chilling. His own voice reechoed in his ears.

  “My government is prepared to pay a large sum for what you have. It is prepared to pay a hundred thousand dollars.”

  There was an instant of silence, then a harsh laugh broke out. There was bitterness, mockery, contempt in the laugh.

  “A hundred thousand dollars! A hundred thousand! You come here and offer me a hundred thousand—for something that will affect the destiny of nations? For something that holds in it the secret of death itself?”

  The Agent injected excitement into his answer.

  “Give me time then. Perhaps I can make them understand—make them pay more. Perhaps I can raise it to two hundred thousand!”

  Again the mocking laughter filled the room.

  “Two hundred thousand! The thing that you se
ek to buy has already snuffed out the lives of eight people. A nation could fall before it as well.”

  “Eight people!” The Agent gasped the two words, baiting the hidden voice on.

  “Yes, eight people. When you read the papers tomorrow, you will understand.”

  “What is your price then? What shall I tell my government? There must be some reason in this.”

  “A million dollars,” the voice said. “That is my price today. If I am goaded too far, it might rise. Those who do not pay my price will regret it. Tell your government that.”

  “It is too much—it is impossible,” said the Agent. “With governments bankrupt, with revenues lessening, how can you expect so much?”

  “Fool!” said the voice. “I ask less than the price of one submarine, the cost of one dirigible. You have seen how I can strike. Beware.”

  “Give me one more chance,” the Agent said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Tomorrow then—at the same time. It is your last chance. I cannot deal with fools and bankrupts. There are other countries that will pay.”

  The voice ceased speaking. The room was still. The Agent asked another question; but the walls echoed his own voice back. He went into action suddenly, took a short-bladed, gleaming tool from his pocket.

  He moved sidewise, ran the sharp tool down the wall, ripping at the paper. It was from there he decided that the voice had come. Was there a secret room beyond, or—

  He gave a harsh exclamation. The thick paper had come free. Behind it, sunk in the wall, was the bell-shaped outline of a radio loud-speaker. There was the small circle of a microphone below it. He ripped at the plaster feverishly, saw the compact radio mechanism behind it, and uncovered antenna wires leading to the roof.

  The mystery of the voice in the room was solved. But the Black Master was as much a mystery as ever. The trail of the horror killer led on—into a fog bank of terror, eeriness—and doubt.

  Chapter XII

  The Ninth Victim

  AS he left the house he stopped for an instant to examine the door in the lower hallway. The mechanism that operated it was concealed. But he found a wire attached to the old bell cord, leading upward. He pulled this wire and waited. Seconds passed and the door opened. He understood then that the radio impulse sent out from the same station as that of the voice which had addressed him was responsible for its mysterious movements. Battleships and airplanes had been operated by radio control. The Black Master had installed radio controls on a door.