The sergeant, red-faced, his eyes bulging with excitement, called Inspector John Burks, head of the homicide squad. He dared even to get Burks out of bed, refusing to listen when Mrs. Burks said her husband had a cold.
“Cold, hell!” said the sergeant. “I got a tip-off. The Black Master’s been caught. Mark Roemer’s been found!”
When the inspector came to the telephone, the tenseness in the sergeant’s voice, and the news that he had, electrified Burks into action.
In ten minutes he was speeding down town in an official car with two police cruisers and a squad of detectives trailing him. He went to the address that the mysterious party who had called the sergeant had given. This was an old and apparently deserted office building on a dark and run-down street.
The next half-hour was one of the most exciting in Burks’s whole career.
What the police found in that building Burks told a group of tense press reporters who had gathered like buzzards, following the wailing sirens of the homicide cars.
Burks was still mopping his face from the intense activity of the past few minutes. He knew that the newspaper men were waiting. He knew that he was the man of the hour. With trembling fingers, he lit a cigar and blew smoke from his nostrils before he spoke. They were standing in the Black Master’s small office. The double mirrors were broken now, smashed in by police axes. Burks waved his hand toward them.
“That gave us the biggest job, boys,” he said. “Those mirrors were eight inches thick.”
A tall red-headed reporter edged forward. No one seemed to know him, but he had a press card. There was a faintly malicious gleam in his eye.
“How was it the man behind those mirrors didn’t scram while you were breaking them down?” he asked.
“Wait—I’m coming to that,” said Burks a little irritably. “First I want you to know that we’ve got the Black Master and Mark Roemer, the man he kidnapped. Roemer has told us his story. He was being held to make the gas he’d invented when the supply on hand ran out. He didn’t want to do it. He would rather have bumped himself off—but Roemer’s got a young daughter in finishing school. The Black Master threatened to kill her if Roemer didn’t do as he was told.”
“And who’s the Black Master?’ shouted the reporters. “Come on, Inspector—don’t hold out on us!”
Burks grinned like a showman about to display a prize exhibit. He waved his hand, gave an order.
“Bring him out, boys!”
TWO perspiring cops came through the jagged opening broken in one of the big mirrors. They carried the limp body of a third man. This man had a black mask over his face. The reporters seethed forward.
“Take it easy,” said Burks. “You got a big surprise coming.”
With a sweep of his hand, he drew the black mask back.
The reporters tensed. One of them swore harshly.
“God! Colonel Gordon Crandal!”
“That’s the boy,” said Burks. “He won’t do any more murdering now. He’s headed for the hot seat or the bug house.”
“It can’t be! It sounds phoney,” said a rosy-cheeked reporter.
“I thought so, too,” answered Burks, “until Roemer spilled all the dope.”
“But Crandal’s own jewels were stolen!”
“I know it. He stole ’em himself to get the insurance. He’d lost all his money in the stock market. He didn’t have a cent left—and he was too proud to work. Too proud, too, to sell his house or the jewels. He wanted to keep on being a gentleman. He had to have a lot of money quick—so he figured out a way of doing it. He was in the chemical warfare division during the Big Fuss. He knew what the stuff that Roemer had, the gas, was worth. He must have been shell-shocked, I guess, to turn into the kind of crook he is.”
“He’s not dead then?”
“No—only knocked out. I wanted to get him alive—make him stand trial.”
The troublesome red-headed reporter asked another question.
“You were pretty clever to knock him out before you broke down the glass!” he said.
Burks glared at the speaker.
“The police have a lot of tricks up their sleeves,” he said.
“And this joint,” went on the reporter, “only a pretty smart bird would have thought of looking here. How did you get wise, chief?”
A slow red spread over Burks’s face.
“I’ve told you guys all I’m going to,” he said.
“One more question, chief,” persisted the redhead. “Didn’t you pass it out a few days back that the bird who committed these murders was a crook named Secret Agent ‘X’?”
“I was working on a bum steer,” said Burks defensively. “But I delivered the goods in the end, didn’t I?”
“All by yourself,” muttered the redheaded reporter innocently. His head was bent. He seemed to be writing on his notebook. When he straightened up, Burks was glaring at him. For the space of five seconds the two men’s eyes clashed. The reporter carelessly dropped a leaf from his notebook and mumbled:
“I’ve got to be getting back to the office.”
He turned and left while Burks stood staring, frowning and puzzled. His footsteps clattered down the stairway, and suddenly from the night outside an eerie yet melodious whistle sounded.
Burks swore and started for the door. But as he did so, his eye fell on the scrap of paper the red-headed reporter had dropped. On its white surface something had been written, a small penciled letter—the letter “X.”
Before any one else could see, biting the end of his cigar nervously, Inspector Burks moved sidewise and planted his foot over it. There he stood, the look of puzzlement in his eyes, while the strange musical whistle in the night outside grew fainter and fainter and finally died away.
The Death-Torch Terror
Death hurled a ghastly challenge at Secret Agent “X.” A torch of terror burned above Doom’s table where they played. And charred, unsightly corpses were the jackstraws dealt him by the grim gamester’s boney hand.
Chapter I
Plotters of Crime
TENSELY, nervously, the four men in the semi-gloom of the padlocked speak-easy waited. Their faces gleamed in the flame of the single candle that flickered and guttered on the dust-laden bar. Their whispers disturbed the stillness of walls that had once echoed to drunken laughter and the clink of liquor glasses.
One of them was pacing restlessly. His quick, jerky steps crossed and recrossed the spot where, months before, the speak-easy’s owner had dropped under the flaming snouts of gangster guns—the spot where he had gasped out his life in a hideous welter of blood.
Sinister stains showed on the floor. Ghosts of a harrowing past seemed to lurk in dark, chill corners of the room—ghosts of murder, intrigue, and violent death.
The pacing man was “Monk” Magurren, ex-mobster and beer runner. The three with him were underworld colleagues, banded together tonight in response to a single motive—greed.
Magurren paced on, his shadow moving across the bloodstained floor like a portent of evil to come.
The others were trying to conceal their impatience. “Slats” Becker sat slumped in a chair, a limp cigarette hanging from his lower lip. “Doc” Wiser, sleek and immaculately dressed, examined his nails with studied carelessness. Tony Garino, hair black as night, face as cold and white as marble, was hunched in brooding silence.
They were a sinister crew—human wolves who had followed the lawless caravan of prohibition in the years when King Alcohol ruled the underworld. Each had made and lost a fortune. Now, like wolves denied their accustomed prey, they were hungrily out for whatever fare they could get.
Monk Magurren jerked a jeweled watch from his vest—a relic of former grandeur. His voice rasped with impatience as he glanced at the dial.
“Ten-ten. Why the hell don’t he show up? He’s got a noive keeping guys like us waiting. He’s screwy, I tell you!”
Slats Becker drew a bundle of century notes from his pocket. He spread them on the table
in front of him, gestured and shrugged.
“He may be screwy—but these is real leaves he hands out. They look good to a bird who ain’t seen a greenback since your Uncle Sam put the skids under old man Volstead.”
Magurren stopped before the little gangster, stabbing a bony finger toward his face.
“Did you ever see a big shot like him?” he cracked. “Answer me that, mug!”
“So what?” said Becker carelessly. “So what?”
“He’s phony, I tell you. That’s what. He ain’t told us about the job he wants pulled.”
“It’s O.K. by me so long as there’s a little gun play,” said Becker. He patted his right-hand pocket fondly where a flat automatic rested. Those snaky, skillful hands of his had written a dozen grim pages in the black book of Death. They were ready to kill again.
“Gun play!” sneered Magurren. “You got that guy sized up wrong. He ain’t no big shot, I say. You never heard of him, did you? You never seen him before?”
The others shook their heads. Magurren, arrogant and talkative, was voicing their own secret thoughts. The man who had hired them, arranged for them to meet him here at ten, was a mystery to them. He had them guessing, worried.
Tony Garino spoke, spreading his soft, white hands.
“Maybe he’sa come in from Chi,” he said. “Or maybe he’sa just got outa stir.”
Monk Magurren snorted.
“I know all the good guys in jail this side of Frisco—an’ I don’t know this mug. He’s just a cheap crook tryin’ to get tough. He’s got his mitts on a little dough and he thinks he’s a big shot. Leave it to me to show him up, I’ll—”
The gangster stopped speaking as abruptly as he had begun. Neither he nor his cronies had heard a sound. There had been no creak of window or movement of door. The place had been deserted when they came in. But now a tall, arresting figure walked out of the gloom at the end of the bar and moved into their midst.
“Good evening, gentlemen!” The voice that spoke was low, mocking, ironic.
MONK MAGURREN crouched back, snarling in his throat like a startled animal. Slats Becker dropped his cigarette. Doc Wiser slid a tense hand into his right coat pocket, and Tony Garino made a serpent’s hiss between white teeth. All of them riveted their eyes on the man who had so suddenly and mysteriously appeared.
“Meester Jones,” said Garino, “we didn’t ’a’ hear you come in!”
The stranger surveyed them silently. His tall figure was clad in a simple, dark suit. His hair was sandy, his face ordinary looking. But there was something in his gaze that made the men in the room shift uneasily. His eyes had a burning, compelling light in them that seemed at odds with the mildness of his features. Force radiated from them. There was a glint of grim humor in their depths as though the stranger called Jones were laughing at the expense of the four gangsters.
It was Magurren who first recovered his swaggering poise.
“Well,” he said. “What is it you want us to do? Spill it!”
The stranger ignored this blunt question. He inclined his head toward the rear door of the speak-easy.
“Get going,” he snapped.
Magurren bristled.
“I don’t go blind on anything, boss. I used to be a big shot myself. I wanta know what’s up.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah. Don’t act like you was the king-pin.”
Magurren, sneering openly now, went on when the stranger who called himself Jones didn’t answer.
“We know you ain’t never had a mob before. We wanta see that you don’t get into trouble. Come on—give us the dope!”
The intense, burning light in Jones’s eyes silenced him suddenly. Jones motioned toward the door again, and somehow his mild features conveyed a note of inexorable command.
Grumblingly, the four men obeyed, filing toward the rear door of the speak-easy. Jones blew out the candle. In a moment he was ahead of them, guiding them. They crossed a courtyard of broken flags, turned through a door in a fence, and came into a side street. A big limousine was parked at the curb. It was long and low and black, with lines that suggested speed and power. There was something sinister about it, something that made the four men hesitate before getting in.
But Jones held the door open and motioned imperiously. Becker, Garino, and Wiser got into the back. Magurren climbed in front. Jones took the wheel himself.
AN uneasy silence followed as the big car slid smoothly into gear and rolled off. It gathered momentum with incredible swiftness, slipping through the dark streets almost soundlessly. The high-speed motor ran as quietly as a watch. The car was of some foreign make, and Monk Magurren noticed that, whoever Jones was, he could drive like a demon. With an ease that seemed unconscious, he wound his way through traffic, clipped corners, and sped across town.
“Where are we goin’, boss?” asked Magurren, his tone a little more respectful now.
Jones didn’t answer. He was staring straight ahead, a faint smile on his face, a smoldering light in his eyes. Magurren began to bluster again.
“We want action,” he said. “We ain’t had no excitement since all the punk grocers in town chiseled into the booze racket.”
“Action!” Jones echoed the word softly, and Magurren saw then that the big car was slowing down. They were on a familiar street—too familiar to suit Magurren. He glanced uneasily about as the car stopped. Ahead of them, down the block, was a big, gloomy building, a building with two green lights in front of it.
“Say, what’s the idea?” Magurren rasped.
Jones turned in his seat then, faced them. The light in his eyes had an almost uncanny brightness.
“Action!” he repeated. “You don’t want a soft job, do you? You want excitement. Well—you’re going to get it!”
“Whatta yer mean? Dat’s police headquarters down dere!”
“I know it. That’s where we’re going!”
The sentence was like a thunderbolt. Fury showed on the faces of the men in the car.
“Say, you double-crosser! You—”
Jones held up his hand. “Don’t get me wrong! You’re not going to have charges pressed against you. You’re going there to do a job.”
A breathless silence followed. Then Slats Becker croaked a question. “What kind of a job, boss?”
“Kidnap the commissioner!”
Disbelief, bewilderment and utter amazement showed on the faces of the four gangsters. As they saw that Jones was serious, the slow pallor of fear followed. They wanted action, but they hadn’t anticipated such an unheard-of, desperate act as this.
“You’re nuts!” said Magurren harshly. “You been feedin’ on hop if you think—”
The stranger called Jones cut him short. His mild face had suddenly assumed granite hardness. He crouched forward in his seat, seeming to tower over them.
“Four-flushers!” he barked. “Action you want, eh? Tough guys, eh?”
He laughed then, and the sound that came from his lips was like the taunting, insulting smack of fists lashing across their faces. Monk Magurren stiffened. His features became mottled with anger. The suave Doc Wiser trembled and the fingers of his right hand grew rigid as a hawk’s claw. Garino bared white teeth in a snarl. His eyes were black pools of fury.
“Listen, boss, you can’t talk like that. We’ll—”
Jones surveyed them again. His taunting laughter had accomplished its purpose, whipped their pride and conceit, made them ready to face death.
“O.K.,” he said shortly. For a moment he fumbled under his seat, and the gangsters started when they saw what was in his hands. Four black automatics. He thrust one toward each man.
“Take these,” snapped Jones. “Park the ones you’ve got in the car!”
He watched eagle-eyed to see that they obeyed. Then he issued swift instructions.
“Becker and Wiser stay outside. Magurren and Garino come with me!”
Wonderingly, tense with excitement, the gangsters followed their mysterious leader.
Two plain-clothes men were lolling outside headquarters. They grew alert as Jones approached with the others trailing him. Police automatics appeared in their hands. Headquarters was under heavy guard, and the four mobsters knew why. It made the job that Jones was trying to pull seem like utter madness.
“What’s your business?” said one of the detectives. “Stand back!”
JONES acted so quickly that it left the four gangsters breathless. His hand flashed into his coat, swift as the head of a striking snake. His fingers came out grasping a gun like the one he had given to them.
Before the detective could fire, there was a hiss, a jet of vapor, and without a sound the plain-clothes man collapsed.
Magurren, catching on, fired at the other man. The strange gas gun that Jones had given him worked perfectly. Unharmed, but completely out, both dicks lay on the sidewalk. And Jones passed inside.
He moved with lightning speed now. An alarm would soon be spread. He had to penetrate to the commissioner’s sanctum before this happened. The desperate thing he was doing depended for its success on strategy. The desk sergeant bellowed a question. Jones’s answer was another jet of vapor from the muzzle of his own gas gun. With a grunt the sergeant collapsed behind his desk.
Jones seemed to know the layout of headquarters. He bounded up the stairs to the second floor, leaving Becker and Magurren on guard below. He made his way along a corridor, burst open a door that was marked: “Commissioner’s Office.”
A big man with a cigar in his mouth rose abruptly from a chair behind his desk. In one and the same movement, his hand reached toward a signal panel with many buttons on it. But Jones stopped him with a wave of his gun.
“Don’t do that, commissioner!”
The commissioner’s jaw dropped, his hand hesitated. He had distinguished features, a well-formed face, a carefully trimmed black mustache. His mustache seemed to stand out now in sharp contrast to the whiteness of his skin. Fear of death showed suddenly in his eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Jones, ignoring the question, uttered an abrupt command.
Secret Agent X – The Complete Series Volume 1 (Annotated) Page 27