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

by Paul Chadwick

  Just so the Black Master could look through this mirror at any visitors who came into his office. Was he behind it now? The thought that unseen, sinister eyes might be upon him was spine-chilling. But the Agent gambled all on logic. He felt the surface of the mirror. It was as cold as the rest of the room. It seemed unlikely that the Black Master would linger on in this cold, damp place. He had no doubt left at the conclusion of his interview with Mogellen.

  Working on this theory, risking all, the Agent boldly switched his flash light on and began examining the mirror. He soon discovered the round crack in the center of the panel and guessed that there was a secret opening here. It clarified many things in his mind. The hophead had probably never seen the face of his employer. No one, conscious of the fact, had ever looked at the features of the Black Master and lived.

  Agent “X” tested the opening in the panel. It was, he saw, fastened tightly on the inside.

  He went out into the hallway, investigated, and found that in the remodeling of this office the whole second floor plan had been changed. There was no visible entrance to that room behind the mirror. The way by which it was reached might be from almost any direction. There might be a secret stairway leading up or down, passageways leading even through empty buildings into some other street. To hunt for the hidden entrance would be a lengthy process. Worse still, it would scare the Black Master away.

  The Agent knew then that the man must be outwitted if he were to be caught at all. Quickly, quietly, he went away from the mysterious office, leaving it exactly as he had found it. A theory was building up in his mind—a theory that had slowly been dawning. To test that theory he began to construct a startling, fantastic plan.

  IT was twenty-four hours later, with darkness again spread over the city that Agent “X” climbed for a second time to the roof of the house occupied by the blonde woman, Nina, and Gustav Mogellen.

  Lights burned in the windows of the second floor. The hour was ten. Secret Agent “X” carried a leather suitcase in his hand. He knew that the two were again in the room. He had shadowed them there. He was prepared to risk everything on the plan he had devised.

  He took a box from his suitcase, opened it, and again lowered something on a wire down the chimney. But this time it was not a microphonic amplifier. This time it was a small metal cylinder capped at both ends.

  One of the caps was held in place by a strip of fusible metal. Electric wires were attached to this in such a way that when current passed through the wires the fusible metal would heat up and melt—releasing the cylinder’s cap and the cylinder’s contents.

  The Agent lowered it swiftly. At the instant that it appeared in the square opening of the fireplace below—the instant a faint shrill scream told him it had been seen, he touched a switch connected with a small but powerful storage battery in his suitcase. Nothing happened apparently. But the scream was not repeated. No sounds came up the chimney from the room below.

  The Secret Agent drew his cylinder back up. He rewound the wire and packed it in his suitcase. Then he took out a strong rope. One end of this he fastened to the base of the chimney. The other he lowered over the rear edge of tile roof and climbed down it agilely.

  He was not careful to be quiet now. He knew there was no one to hear him. He jimmied a window on the top floor and climbed in, pulling his suitcase after him.

  Down through the house he went to the room below. The lights were still on. The Agent held his breath and threw up a window. Then he waited outside a few moments. When he entered again, the night air had cleared the room of the anesthetizing gas it contained—the gas he had released so quietly from his metal cylinder.

  The forms of a man and a woman lay on the floor. One was Nina, the other, Gustav Mogellen. Both were breathing quietly, as though in a deep untroubled sleep. They would remain so for hours.

  The Agent deposited the woman on a couch, made her comfortable. She was a killer, a murderess at heart, a plotter of evil; but early training made him always more gallant to women than to men.

  Gustav Mogellen he propped up in a chair and tied there with a piece of rope.

  A small leather brief case was on a table. The Secret Agent went over, opened it, and examined the interior. The brief case contained fifty thousand dollars in United States currency. It was in bills of large denomination, done up in neat packages. The Secret Agent smiled to himself. Here was the “option” money to be paid to the Black Master tonight. He added a package of tens and one of twenties from his own pocket, then put the money back in the brief case, returned to the side of Mogellen. For long minutes he studied the man from every angle. There was no line of the face, no skin blemish, that he did not take note of. Tonight the Agent’s very life, the lives of perhaps untold others, depended on his skill.

  He set to work then on one of the most masterly disguises of his career. With his make-up materials spread on the small table, with his pigments, face plates and volatile plastic materials before him, his dexterous fingers began to accomplish the seemingly impossible.

  With clinging, quick-drying face putty, the Agent duplicated Mogellen’s hawklike nose. The planes of his face followed. At the end of half an hour it seemed that two Gustav Mogellens were in that small room. If the blonde Nina could have regained consciousness at that moment, she would have thought the gas that knocked her out had made her see double.

  WHEN all was ready, when the Agent had put on the last finishing touches, practiced Mogellen’s walk, imitated the sound of his voice as it had come to him over the amplifier, he took the keys from the spy’s pocket and picked up the brief case.

  He crossed the room, shut the window, slipped into Mogellen’s hat and overcoat. Turning out the lights, he descended to the street and locked the door after him. He was going to meet the Black Master tonight for the first time. Even if the Black Master’s dope-crazed slave were watching outside, he would not guess that the man he saw was not Gustav Mogellen.

  The Agent traveled swiftly through the night in a hired taxi. He left the cab behind him, walked along a block of silent, empty buildings. Whether the hophead was waiting to follow, to spy on him, he did not know or care. At the moment he was not Agent “X.” He was Gustav Mogellen, international spy, interested in making a down payment on a secret and horrible weapon that was for sale.

  He fitted Mogellen’s key into the lock of the deserted building, entered, and closed the door after him. He listened a moment. His sharp ears detected faint movement somewhere in the darkness. The murderous hophead was following close at his heels.

  He entered the small strange office on the floor above and turned on the lights. This time as he did so he heard some mechanism in the door click metallically and the lock snapped shut. He was trapped in the room.

  He looked at his watch. It showed one minute to midnight. He waited, fingering his tie, registering the uneasiness that a spy might be supposed to feel on such a strange mission.

  Then a voice spoke to him out of thin air. A strange, harshly disguised voice that he had heard before. The voice of the Black Master.

  “You are on time, Gustav Mogellen. You are anxious to clinch the bargain!”

  A second of silence followed, then the Agent answered.

  “One does not keep the Black Master waiting,” he said, imitating the voice of the man who now lay unconscious in the house a mile away. “I have the money I promised. I am ready to seal the contract. My government has kept its word.”

  A dry chuckle came from overhead.

  “Your government has done well. Yours will be a strong nation. Approach the panel between the mirrors. I am ready to accept the money—and remember! You are locked in this room—a prisoner until our negotiations are completed.”

  Agent “X,” posing as Mogellen, hesitated a second.

  “When,” he said, “can I hope to receive the secret weapon? I shall have to cable my government for details?”

  “When the last payment is delivered,” said the Black Master. “The quic
ker the payments, the sooner the thing that you seek will be given into your hands.”

  “And you will remain silent and hidden from now until all payments are completed?”

  “Yes. There shall be no more killings. The Black Master will appear to be dead. He will appear only in this room to transact his business with you.”

  The Secret Agent nodded. He came close to the panel between the mirrors. A small, six-inch opening in its center appeared as if by magic. The fingers of a hand reached out. They were black-gloved, almost invisible against the blackness of the opening. The Secret Agent thrust a package of his own ten-dollar bills into the hand. The hand withdrew.

  “For your own convenience,” the Agent said, “I am making payment in small bank notes. Big bills arouse suspicion and are more easily traced.”

  “You are thoughtful,” came the sneering voice of the murderer.

  A package of twenties followed the tens. The fingers of the Black Master’s hand seemed to express the inhuman greed that their owner felt. They curled avariciously, reaching for more bills.

  Then it was that the Agent’s left hand dipped into his pocket and drew something out. So swiftly that it was like a trick of legerdemain he transferred the object he had removed to the palm of his right hand, slipping a package of bills over it. Under cover of the bills, his finger pressed into it. It was a small thimblelike cap with a sharp needle point at its end.

  He passed the package of bills to the eager, black-gloved hand of the arch-murderer. Then, quick as the head of a striking snake, he jabbed the needle on the thimble cap into the Black Master’s hand.

  One faint, harsh cry came through the black hole in the panel

  The Secret Agent’s hand darted through it—clutched the arm of the man inside, drew it toward him, and turned the beam of a small flash light into the opening that was left.

  The light rays fell for a moment on a masked face.

  The Agent thrust the mask aside—and gave a harsh exclamation of surprise. For seconds he stared tensely; then he let the inert body of the man inside fall.

  As it did so, a signal bell sounded somewhere in the building. To his horror, Agent “X” heard stealthy, quick footsteps answering the bell. He guessed instantly that the hophead he had seen was only one of several vicious degenerates who were slaves of the Black Master.

  His scalp prickled as seconds passed. The threat of unseen death stalked through the empty spaces of the dark building. The seconds deepened into minutes—one—two—three. Then suddenly, the lights in the room went out. The Agent was alone in the strange, dark chamber with the knowledge that doom was creeping upon him.

  Chapter XXII

  The Man Behind the Mask

  HE waited tensely till a faint noise sounded over by one wall. There was a scrape of metal, the mouselike squeak of a hinge. A mysterious panel door was opening. He could not see it, but his sharp ears and tensely alert mind told him what was happening.

  Agent “X” moved then. He took three silent strides to the wall, flattened himself against it, and inched toward the spot where the noise had come from. His fingers crept ahead of him, feeling, exploring. They discovered a break in the wall surface, and he paused, as still as death.

  He could hear faint breathing now. A man was standing only a few feet away, crouched before the opening that the panel had left.

  Secret Agent “X” drew back on his toes. Then, using the flat of his hand and his arm like a battering ram, he gave the unseen man a violent shove. At the same instant, he leaped through the break in the wall. With a jarring, sickening thud he bumped into a human body. In one and the same motion he clutched the man, whirled him around, and threw him headlong. Then his swiftly groping fingers found the panel and drew it shut.

  As he did so, something crashed against the closed metal—something that had been thrown at him and missed. The tinkle of breaking glass came; then a horrible gurgling scream sounded. It was a scream of terror, of agony, of stark despair. It was followed by the thud of wavering, stumbling footsteps. Clawing fingers slid down the panel, beat against it, but the Agent held it shut. To open it meant death for himself as well as those others now beyond human aid. For faint, acrid fumes seeped around the edges of the oblong of metal. They were burning to the nostrils, constricting to the throat.

  The stumbling footsteps inside grew more disordered. Two bodies thudded to the floor. Then silence—the silence of death—filled the strange dark building.

  The Agent waited for minutes more, holding the panel shut, until the seeping fumes had thinned and vanished. Then he opened it cautiously. The air inside was still stuffy but breathable. The last of the fumes slipped out of the room into the passageway in which he stood and passed him like an evil spirit escaping.

  He turned his flash light into the chamber. Horror met his eye. Two huddled figures lay on the floor, their faces contorted by the strangling death. But the skins of both and the dilated pupils of their staring eyes indicated that they were drug addicts. The tongues of both were thrust from between blue lips as though mocking him. But the Agent had not killed them.

  They had died by the force of the evil thing they dealt in—died by the weapon with which they had tried to snuff out the Agent’s life. Small splinters of glass lay on the floor by the bottom of the panel. They told a hideous story.

  The Secret Agent stooped over the body of one of the dope fiends who would murder no more. He felt in the man’s pockets. Wrapped in a nest of cotton was a tiny crystal globe. It might have been a Christmas tree ornament—but it wasn’t. The Agent didn’t need to be told what it contained.

  It was a globe of imprisoned gas—corrosive gas so strange and deadly that it had the power to constrict a man’s throat until he choked to death. Gas, however, that would dissipate after a few moments of contact with the hydrogen in the air, losing its power, leaving no trace, its deathly work done. Gas that was Mark Roe-mer’s secret—a horrible weapon which he had discovered during the course of his researches and planned to discard—but which unprincipled governments desired as a weapon of war. It was more efficient than lewisite or mustard gas which left trenches uninhabitable for hours and prevented a conquering army from moving in. It could be used to attack civilian populations, to create a reign of terror worse than long-range guns or air bombs. The Secret Agent shuddered, glad that he had been in time.

  HE looked around the room for a moment. The whole story was here. The dead hopheads. The sinister crystal globe. Those glass splinters on the floor—and the unconscious man behind the barrier of mirrors. Who was he? Let the police find out. When they came there would be little to do—except batter through the mirrors and make the most sensational arrest in the city’s history—the arrest of the Black Master.

  But there was one question burning in the Secret Agent’s mind. Where was Mark Roemer—kidnapped chemist? He was a witness needed to complete the amazing denouement. The Agent turned his light into the opening of the wall panel again. The mouth of a passage showed.

  He entered this, closed the panel after him, and walked forward till he came to a flight of secret iron stairs leading up. He went cautiously. There might be more of the murderous hopheads. He probed with his flash light, listened every few seconds; but he encountered no one. The stairway led him to an attic of the building. Here were three rough bunks, a table, packs of well-thumbed cards, and a smoky oil lamp. Here were the quarters of the Black Master’s slaves. Then he saw a heavy door with a lock upon it at the end of the room. There seemed to be a closet-like room behind it. The lock had been newly placed there. The Agent’s eyes gleamed, and he took out his kit of chromium tools. The lock gave him some trouble, but he finally opened it.

  As his flash winked on, it illuminated the thin, haggard face of a middle-aged man. The man had evidently been waked from sleep by the Agent’s work upon the lock.

  He was crouched back on a small, rusty bed in this windowless room—crouched fearfully like a frightened animal. He did not cry out, but his b
ony hands lifted. There was the fear of death in his eyes. His feet were fastened to the foot of the bed by chains and the bed was bolted to the floor.

  “Roemer!” said the Agent tensely.

  “Who are you?” The man, who had been kidnapped and held a prisoner for days, spoke in a shaken, terrified voice.

  “Never mind! Listen to what I say and all will be well!”

  The Agent walked forward, his burning eyes commanding the gaze of the kidnapped chemist. A low-voiced conversation followed. At the end of it Secret Agent “X” left the room, descended by a series of iron stairways to the ground floor, and passed quietly out into the street.

  Before changing his disguise Agent “X” did two things. He stopped in an all-night drug store and bought a heavy manila envelope and stamps. Into this he put the packs of bills he had taken from the spy Gustav Mogellen. He placed cardboard around the bills, sealed the envelope up carefully and addressed it in disguised writing:

  “To Mrs. William Scanlon, care of U. S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.”

  Once again his lips moved as he whispered that sentence that had rung through his mind like a war cry in his battle with the Black Master.

  “A kid and a woman are waiting.”

  Fifty thousand dollars wouldn’t compensate for the death of a beloved husband and father. But it would make life easier for a woman who had a young son to bring up.

  “I hope he turns out as swell as his old man,” the Agent muttered huskily. Then he turned and moved into a telephone booth.

  A HALF-MINUTE later, a mysterious call came into police headquarters. It was a call that brought the sleepy desk sergeant up from his blotter with a jerk. The sergeant tensed as he listened. His hands gripped the telephone like claws.

  When the message was ended, the sergeant asked the name of the person who had given it. There was no answer. A low laugh sounded. Then the receiver at the other end clicked up.