Baroni stared blandly at the Secret Agent, seeming to see in him possibilities for a new type of clean-up—dope peddled to society people who could pay for it. The Agent hid the contempt he felt.
He was about to answer when the three men beside him stiffened. A police siren had suddenly sounded in the street outside. It was followed by the sound of a car sliding to the curb.
Baroni’s eyes darted to the windows in the rear of the room. But a thunderous knocking came at the outside door before he could move. Frenchy, trembling, went to the door. They heard him arguing for seconds. Gruff voices sounded outside. Then the Frenchman slid the bolts and stepped back, wringing his hands.
The Agent, looking over the shoulder of Nick Baroni, saw the foremost figure in the group that was entering. It was Inspector John Burks of the city homicide squad.
Chapter XV
Taken for a Ride
WITH a deep scowl on his face, Inspector Burks strode into the speak-easy’s back room. He eyed the group sitting at the table distastefully.
“Well, Baroni, I figured I’d find you here,” he said.
The big gangster spread his fat hands and shrugged.
“There ain’t no law against a guy having a little drink with a few pals.”
Slowly, sternly, Inspector Burks eyed the faces of the assembled group. He removed his hat, ran quick, tense fingers through his snow-white hair. His contrasting jet-black eyebrows drew together as he frowned.
“Haven’t I got enough trouble with the strangler killings without you gangster rats making more?”
“I don’t get you, chief,” said Baroni blandly. “Me and these mugs have been here all evening.”
“Don’t lie to me,” cried Burks. “Four of your men were picked up on the floor of the Mephistopheles Club—stiffs all of them. You and Dwyer have been fighting again.”
“Maybe we did have a little scrap,” said Baroni. “But I ain’t admitting it.”
“I’ve got fifty witnesses,” said Burks. “You were seen there.”
Baroni’s voice grew unctuous, smooth as syrup.
“Who started it, chief—did anybody tell you that? If I was there and if I fought, it was only in self-defense. The law says a guy’s got a right to—”
Burks silenced him with a wave of his hand.
“Murder is murder, Baroni. Three of Dwyer’s rats were killed, too. You were mixed up in murder tonight. It may land you in the pen, or maybe the hot seat. You’d better come clean.”
A sickly, pasty hue had come over Baroni’s face again. His tone grew whining.
“Listen, chief—maybe I did get mixed up in a little trouble tonight. Maybe there was some guys wiped out. But I didn’t start it, I tell you. It was that rat Dwyer. He’ll get a bellyful of lead for this. He’ll—”
Inspector Burks struck the table with his clenched fist until the whisky glasses leaped and the bottle tipped over, gurgling its amber fluid on the floor.
“I’m going to have a talk with Dwyer, too,” he shouted. “I’m going to tell him the same thing. You two mugs are going to make peace, or I’ll see that you both go to the hot seat. Prohibition’s over. This racket stuff’s got to stop. Both of you are going to break up your gangs and go out of business. If you don’t, I’ll get you on murder charges for what happened tonight.”
It was a threat. The Secret Agent knew that. Inspector Burks was taking what seemed the wisest course. There were few convictions for gang killings. It was hard to get witnesses who would testify in court, harder still to pin crimes on the mobsters. They hired the cunningest, most unscrupulous criminal lawyers to be had. Baroni could plead self-defense. He might get off. But by threatening him, Inspector Burks hoped to win his point.
Baroni’s face muscles sagged. He had visions of a golden stream from new rackets being diverted from his pockets.
“I’ll—I’ll think about it,” he said.
“You’ll do as I say. You’ll bury the hatchet with Dwyer—shake hands with him and go out of business. If I find you in any public place again with torpedoes around you—if there is one more killing, I’ll railroad you both to the pen on a first-degree murder charge. I’m going to talk to the D.A. about it.”
With this ultimatum, Burks turned on his heel and stalked out of the place.
Baroni wiped his face again.
“Let’s have another round of drinks, boys,” he said.
For minutes he sat brooding, his head sunk into the rolls of fat around his neck. He was lost in thought. Finally he spoke.
“You heard what the inspector said. There’s one way of putting it over on that bird. I hate to do it. Maybe I won’t. But it’s worth considering. If me and Dwyer went in together, stopped fighting, we could clean up on dope. Booze is out; but dope’s still good. Now that mugs can get all the liquor they want, they won’t want it so much. We’ll start ’em on dope and get ’em to like it.”
Baroni stopped, took another gulp of liquor. His piglike eyes were gleaming. His shrewdly acquisitive brain was active. He had forgotten the fight in the Mephistopheles Club. Forgotten the dead men on the floor. Forgotten his hatred of Dwyer. Gold took precedence over everything.
“Dwyer and I can open up a swell joint somewhere,” he said. “Together we can keep any other guy from chiseling in. If anybody wants snow or coke they’ll have to come to us.”
The Secret Agent rose.
“Where are you going?” Baroni snapped.
“Out,” said the Agent. “I’ve got some business to attend to.”
Baroni eyed him speculatively for a moment. Then he spoke slowly.
“What I said goes,” he remarked. “I can use a guy like you in more ways than one. You got class and brains. If I hitch in with Dwyer, there’ll be a place for you. Drop around here and Frenchy will tell you where to find me.”
“O.K.,” said the Agent. There was a mocking light in the depths of his eyes that Baroni didn’t get. He was satisfied with the way things were going. If Baroni and Dwyer joined forces, he would have a chance to learn the intimate secrets of both gang chiefs. As a side issue, he’d smash their evil dope racket. But he’d find out first whether either was the Black Master. Now that he thought of it, Dwyer, with his polished manners and suavity, was more the type who might plan such a colossal crime.
BUT, as he stepped into the street outside of Frenchy’s place, the Agent’s calmness left him. He tensed suddenly, whirled toward the curb. His momentary let-up of vigilance had brought new danger upon him.
A dark sedan with lights out was sliding to the curb beside him. The door was open. A voice addressed him from the interior.
“Come here, guy. Stick your hands up.”
The Agent knew the threat of death when he faced it. There was death in that voice. He could see no features; but, just inside the door where the glow of the street light fell on it, he saw the dull, gleaming muzzle of an automatic. He hesitated an instant only, then moved forward.
By the curb he came to a standstill.
“Closer,” said the deadly voice inside.
The Agent moved closer still, his scalp prickling.
Then rough hands seized him. He was dragged into the car’s interior. Almost instantly gears whined and the car shot away. There were three men in the rear of the car. He caught the silhouette of one and held his breath. He was staring at the sharp, wolfish features of Sam Dwyer, river-front mobster, the man who had butchered four of Baroni’s bodyguards.
He did not speak. The car sped on for six blocks. The men beside him were silent; but the hard, cold muzzle of an automatic pressed against his side.
Then the voice of Dwyer sounded again.
“You’re the guy,” he said, “who cribbed our show tonight. I’d have got that hog Baroni if it hadn’t been for those firecrackers of yours. You pulled a fast one—but one of my mugs saw you going out.”
Still the Agent was silent.
“What have you got to say about it?” snarled Dwyer. “Who are you, and since whe
n did you start working for Baroni?”
“Just now,” said the Agent. “My name’s Porter.”
“What do you mean—just now? You helped him make a get-away when I had him trapped.”
“I horned in just for fun,” said the Agent casually.
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
Dwyer was silent for seconds. He turned on a small flash light, studied the Secret Agent’s face. There was contempt in his voice when he spoke again.
“Just a dolled-up softy,” he said. He swore under his breath and continued. “You shouldn’t have done it, fella. Nick Baroni wasn’t worth it. He gave you a job, you say?”
“Yeah.”
Sam Dwyer laughed thinly, making a sound in his nose that was like a harsh whinny.
“I’m going to save you a lot of trouble, fella. You wouldn’t like to work for Baroni. He’d work you hard. He’s a bad man. You’d come to a lot of grief. I’m going to save you all that. I’m a good guy.”
Dwyer stopped speaking. He laughed again, and one of the others in the car with him laughed, too. Their laughter was harsh, mirthless; it was laughter that held a terrible threat. When Dwyer spoke again, he didn’t address the Agent. He spoke gruffly to the driver of the car.
“There’s a field at the end of Marigold Avenue,” he said. “They’re going to build on it when they get around to it. There ain’t nothing there now. That will be a good place.”
There was coldness, cruelty, in his tone. The driver nodded understandingly and stepped on the gas.
The Secret Agent stiffened. He knew to what use Dwyer planned to put the vacant lot. He knew that they were taking him on a ride of death for the part he had played in Nick Baroni’s get-away.
Chapter XVI
The Black Master’s Orders
THE pressure of the gun against his side increased. The Agent thought quickly. He had often been in the presence of death. It held no terrors for him. But death before his work was done was something he could not face calmly. The gangster killings he had witnessed had been evil, vicious. But they were as nothing compared to the horror of the Spectral Strangler murders. In his mind’s eye he saw again the swollen, purple face of Bill Scanlon—the tongue thrust grotesquely between lips silenced forever. He saw, too, the features of those others who had met death in the same terrible fashion.
His own face was calm, but his eyes burned with the deep, glowing light of determination.
Sam Dwyer spoke then, harshly, mockingly.
“Baroni can save the dough he was going to give you. You won’t need it; but he will—for funeral expenses. A big shot’s got to have a decent funeral—an’ Baroni comes next—after you.”
Dwyer’s hard, glittering gaze was fixed upon the Agent. The others were staring at him also. There was sadistic cruelty in these men that made them contemplate murder with fierce pleasure.
“Shall we give it to him now, chief, an’ chuck him out afterwards—or wait till we get there?”
The man who had spoken was fingering the cold butt of his automatic. He spoke again, his voice eager.
“It won’t make no noise if I put the muzzle close. The rat cheated us tonight. Let’s smoke him.”
Dwyer answered harshly.
“Pipe down, mug! You’re not giving orders—you’re taking ’em. There’s cops around. We’re not taking any chances—tonight.”
The car rolled on, nearing Marigold Avenue. The Agent knew that it was a long, bleak thoroughfare lined with warehouses and factory buildings. There would be no cops there.
Dwyer corroborated this.
“I’ll give the word when we turn the corner,” he said.
The Agent began to tremble as though in a palsy of fear. They did not know that the man they had captured was a superb actor. The quivering of his arms and body seemed real.
Dwyer’s lips curled back from his white teeth in a mirthless grin.
“Can’t take it—can you?” he said. “Don’t worry, fella—it won’t be long now.”
The others chuckled evilly. Then the Agent spoke, his voice hoarse, as though terror were constricting his vocal cords.
“How about a smoke?” he asked.
“Wait a minute!” Dwyer’s hands felt through the Agent’s pockets for a gun. He found none.
“O.K.,” he said, “but make it snappy. You ain’t got long. The parking ground for rats who don’t mind their own business is just ahead.”
With hands that shook, the Agent reached toward his vest pocket. He seemed to be fumbling, but his fingers were working purposefully. He drew out a silver cigarette case such as a playboy might carry. He thrust a cigarette between his lips, replacing the case, and drew a small lighter from another pocket.
In the dimness of the car’s interior, the gangsters watched his trembling, awkward movements with wolfish satisfaction.
“Soft,” said Dwyer. “You never could have taken what Baroni would have handed you. Better thank us for rubbing you out.”
Dwyer’s gun poked against the Agent’s ribs accentuating the remark. Dwyer laughed harshly.
The Agent was silent. With his left hand he snapped open the cap of the lighter. His thumb was on the tiny knurled wheel that made the flint spark. His right hand hung listlessly in his lap.
Then, so quickly that the men beside him could not catch the movements, he whirled the lighter in a swift arc and clamped the fingers of his right hand over Dwyer’s gun wrist, pushing the gun away.
No spark came from the lighter. There was a soft, quick hiss. A jet of concentrated tear gas, stored in the base of the lighter under pressure, lashed into the gangsters’ eyes.
The man at the Agent’s left clawed at his face. Dwyer at his right cursed furiously and pumped the trigger of his automatic. But the gun, deflected, sent bullets into the back of the front seat.
The driver turned a tense, frightened face. A second jet of gas caught him straight in the eyes. He bellowed with fear, took his hands off the wheel, instinctively jamming down on the brakes.
Agent “X” rose, leaped across Dwyer, and thrust open the car’s door. It was slowing down, wabbling. The front tire struck the curb. The car rocked and slewed around. Agent “X” leaped out, landing on his hands and knees. In an instant he was up, speeding into the darkness, with Dwyer and his men still cursing and clawing at their eyes.
The Secret Agent’s own eyes were glowing. He hoped to get back to the Mephistopheles Club in time to locate the hophead and see what his reaction to the gangster fight had been.
BUT while Agent “X” was still a block away from the club, the hophead was leaving it. He had witnessed the mobsters’ battle, but his small animallike face showed no expression. The police had questioned him among other employees. He had answered in adroit monosyllables, telling nothing. And now he was on his way to his sinister employer.
In killing Greenford, he had carried out instructions to the letter—the instructions of a man he had never seen and probably never would see—the Black Master, the man who supplied him with the soul-shattering morphine derivative that his nerves and body craved. His nerves were jumping now, crying out for a fresh shot of the drug.
The hophead had a report to make to his employer also. He feared no pursuit tonight. Greenford was out of the way. No one else, he felt certain, suspected him of being implicated with the Black Master. Nevertheless, he was careful. The Black Master was a man who tolerated no errors, no oversights. Fear of his unseen employer helped, besides his craving for the drug, to make the man a faithful employee. There was in his heart a dread that amounted almost to superstition for the criminal for whom he worked.
He changed cabs twice, walked along dark, unfrequented streets. On one of them he came at last to a small empty office building. Like the house on Bradley Square, this building was for sale. The neighborhood had run down. It was no longer a business section. The few remaining tenants in the building had been evicted six months before for non-payment of rent. It stood bleak and deserted now,
with the chill emptiness peculiar to office buildings that are no longer in use.
The hophead, with a key from his ring, let himself into the front of it. He climbed an old metal stairway to the second floor. Here he entered an office in the center of the building. He touched a switch, turning on overhead lights.
The office was hardly more than a cubbyhole, windowless and airless. The lights he had switched on could not be seen from the street. But, unlike the rest of the building, this office had been renovated. Small as it was, there were indications that someone had recently been at work here.
The place had been dusted, the ceiling and walls had been painted and the light fixtures were new. A huge mirror was set into the rear wall divided in two by a narrow metal panel that ran down its center. The mirror gleamed brightly, reflecting the glow of the lights and sending the dope fiend’s own image back to him. There seemed to be two thin-faced, rat-eyed men in the strange little room.
He studied himself for seconds in the mirror, then glanced at the small clock that was clicking on the table. This was a business office; but mysterious and sinister was the business transacted in it.
The clock showed one minute to twelve. The hophead fingered his collar, tried to control his twitching nerves. There were shadows of fear in his eyes. He waited tensely while the hands of the clock moved slowly round to midnight. Once his gaze darted upward to the elaborate, rose-petal design overhead into which the light fixture was set. Then he stiffened.
A voice suddenly spoke to him out of the quiet of the room.
“What have you to report, Taub? Speak and I will hear.”
The voice was dry, disguised. It was the voice of the Black Master. It seemed to come from overhead, perhaps from a speaker concealed somewhere around the light fixture. It continued:
“I am watching you, Taub. I see your face plainly. Tell the truth—about everything. Don’t lie to me. Never lie to the Black Master. It is not well. He sees all—knows all.”
The dope fiend’s face turned a shade paler. His lips moved. He spoke excitedly—in English that had a slight accent.
Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated) Page 22