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

by Paul Chadwick

  A CRIME wave more terrible and sinister than any he remembered was facing the city. The whole police force was jumpy, fearful. The department heads were on the point of losing their morale.

  “Bring me all the records,” he snapped. “I want to go over them again.”

  An official police secretary went to a huge safe that contained case histories that the public had never seen. There were many volumes in the safe. A miniature rogue’s gallery. Letters of confession written by murderers who had long since paid the supreme penalty. Strange records of unusual crimes, and minutes from the latest police blotter.

  The burning light in the eyes of the man behind the commissioner’s desk intensified as the records were spread before him.

  Here was a factual story to make a person’s spine crawl. A series of bank and safe robberies unparalleled in the city’s history was being committed. Worse still, patrolmen, detectives, and special guards were being killed hideously whenever they got in the thieves’ way—killed by being burned alive. Six men had been murdered already. Their charred, hardly recognizable bodies had been found.

  “If it hadn’t been for their shields,” muttered Burks hoarsely, “we’d never have identified Sullivan and O’Reilly tonight. Even their teeth, chief—were gone. How the hell did you escape?”

  The commissioner waved the question aside as though it were unimportant. His eyes were fastened on the record books, the careful, unemotional details that had been put on the police blotter. Then he shook his head and looked up. These details told him little. Burks read the look in his eyes.

  “There are no clews, chief—no fingerprints—and dead men don’t talk.”

  The man behind the commissioner’s desk nodded, staring straight ahead. He seemed to be thinking, pondering. He dismissed the other inspectors and remained closeted for fifteen minutes with Burks of the homicide squad—the man closest to the ever-present specter of death.

  In that time Burks went over all that the police knew, verifying each item on the records. He was a little puzzled as to why the commissioner wanted to go over these things again.

  Then the door opened as a cop came in. The cop touched his cap, said: “Those news hounds! We can’t get rid of ’em. The desk phone rings every minute, and there’s a pack of ’em outside. They want to know if you were kidnapped and how you got away.”

  The commissioner nodded. His face hardened.

  “The less we tell them,” he said, “the more curious they’ll get. We’ll have to hand out something. Who’s in the mob?”

  “A guy from every sheet in town—and that skirt from the Herald—Miss Dale. She’s the worst of the lot.”

  “Betty Dale!” The commissioner uttered the name slowly. His face changed. A strange look came into his eyes. “Show her in,” he said. “I’ll talk to her alone.”

  IT was known that Betty Dale of the Herald had a drag at headquarters. Her father had been a police captain slain by underworld bullets. As a kid she had roller skated in the very shadow of the precinct houses, sharing her candy and apples with the cops. She had been a favorite and a pet. Now she had grown to young womanhood. The commissioner’s announcement that he would see her caused no comment. The other reporters made friendly jibes at her “wire-pulling” ability.

  The commissioner dismissed Burks, sat back behind his desk, watched the door. High heels clicked in the stone corridor outside. The girl who came into his office had the blue eyes and the golden hair of a stage beauty. But her manner was briskly efficient. There was a worried frown between her arched brows. A pencil was poised in her slim fingers. She spoke with professional abruptness.

  “Thanks, commissioner, for seeing me. People are wondering whether there’s anything in the rumor that you were kidnapped. My paper would like a story.”

  For a long moment the man behind the commissioner’s desk eyed Betty Dale. His gaze appraised her from her slim feet to the top of her head where her wealth of golden hair had the sheen of imprisoned sunshine. Smartly dressed as always, Betty Dale was a picture of loveliness. Far back in the eyes of the man who looked at her was something deeper and more personal than mere admiration. But his first words were startling, making the girl stare at him questioningly.

  “The stage is set,” he said. “The second act is about to begin.”

  The sentence seemed strange, meaningless. A slow pallor overspread Betty Dale’s face.

  The commissioner smiled, rose, and shut the door tightly.

  “Come closer,” he said. “There is a fox in the lion’s den.”

  Betty Dale began to tremble now. The man’s words seemed to have a strange effect on her. She was staring at him as though she were looking at a ghost. Quietly he tore a corner from a small pad. As quietly he wrote something on it—the single letter “X.” He held it up for Betty Dale to see, then dropped it in an ash tray and touched a match to it. As the smoke from it curled up, the girl spoke huskily.

  “You!” she said. “It can’t be!”

  The man behind the commissioner’s desk nodded somberly.

  “To gamble is to live,” he said. “And when death is close, men will gamble at long odds.”

  “But the real commissioner?” she asked. “Where is he?”

  “Safe and sound in the fox’s den.”

  Color began to come back to Betty Dale’s face. Slowly she got hold of herself, stopped trembling. They were old friends, these two, Betty Dale and Secret Agent “X.”

  A hundred times he had fooled her with his disguises, but never in so startling and daring a manner as this. To come and find him sitting behind the desk of the city’s police commissioner made Betty Dale feel that she could hardly trust her own senses. She gave one short, shaky laugh, relieving her nervous tenseness.

  Agent “X” thought she had never looked so lovely. In that moment, when she was off guard completely, it seemed that there was a light in her eyes answering that subtle something in his.

  There was a reason for the emotion that Betty Dale betrayed. This man, whatever his real identity might be, had been a friend of her father’s, the police captain slain by murderers’ bullets. The rest of the world might consider Agent “X” a desperate criminal, but she knew otherwise. She knew that even behind this daring thing he had done tonight lay some deeply hidden plan for combating crime.

  She admired his unshakable nerve, sensed the strange magnetism of the man, and felt drawn to him so strongly that she sometimes had to hide her own emotions. She had vowed that she would never let sentiment interfere with his strange, important work. Now, with a ghastly crisis threatening the city, she disciplined herself more strictly than ever. When he took her hand, she let him hold it only a minute, then drew it away.

  “What shall I tell the other reporters?” she asked.

  “Tell them you’ve seen the commissioner,” he said. “Tell them he looks all right, and that he speaks lightly of the report that he was kidnapped.”

  BETTY DALE bent her blonde head, made notes on her pad. Whatever Secret Agent “X” said she would do to the letter. She trusted him, respected him, as she did no other man alive.

  “Au revoir,” she said; then, raising her voice as someone moved in the corridor outside, she added, “Thank you for releasing a story, commissioner. I’ll quash any reports that you were kidnapped.”

  For a moment her eyes met the strange man’s behind the desk. Then she stepped back and her slim, shapely figure vanished through the door. No one could want a more loyal ally than Betty Dale.

  But Agent “X’s” eyes were harsh. She had helped him many times, but he would not ask her to take part in the sinister struggle now in hand. It was too dangerous, too terrible. A moment later his eyes grew harsher still. For Inspector Burks of the homicide squad reappeared suddenly in the doorway. A gray pallor had overspread Burks’s face. His voice shook with emotion.

  “A call has just come in,” he rasped. “There’s been another slaughter, chief, and the worst so far. An attempt was made to rob the
Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Bank. Four men have been killed! It’s the same gang that kidnapped you.”

  For a moment there was breathless silence. Then Secret Agent “X” stood up, his fist clenched on the desk. It was strangely, terribly ironic that Burks should be telling him this. The blackbrowed inspector who stood before him was one of the Agent’s most unrelenting enemies.

  Inspector Burks caught his breath, gulped, and spoke hoarsely.

  “I’m on my way now, commissioner. I’m going to look things over—and get those damned killers if it costs me my life.”

  Secret Agent “X” stepped from behind his desk, reaching for the commissioner’s coat and hat.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said, and his words were like the crack of a whip.

  In silence the two men descended to the street below. The desk sergeant nodded, stared wide-eyed. Two detectives watched their departure grimly.

  A closed headquarters car was already at the curb, the inspector’s chauffeur at the wheel. Both men stepped into it—the car sped away with a whine of smoothly meshed gears.

  Lolling back on the comfortable seat, Secret Agent “X” wondered if their investigation of the crime would bring results. His trip to headquarters, his kidnapping of the commissioner, had been futile. The police, though they had kept all details to themselves, were far from any solution of these terrible murders.

  Agent “X” straightened suddenly. His eye had caught sight of something in the chauffeur’s windshield mirror. He turned his head, looked out the rear window. Then his elbow nudged Inspector Burks’s side.

  “We’re being followed,” he said.

  “What!” Burks’s head turned, too. For seconds he stared back in amazed silence.

  They had turned a corner, left headquarters behind. Back of them, appearing as though by magic, a low-slung dark roadster built like a racing car was following. The sides of the car were high. A black hood swept down to the narrow windshield in front. Side curtains made its interior dark. But Secret Agent “X” caught sight of light glittering on goggles. For an instant he looked into an expressionless, masklike face—a face that was like a crustacean monstrosity, distorted and made inhuman by some sort of weird helmet.

  His fingers clenched over Inspector Burks’s wrist. He was about to say something, but his words died in his throat.

  One of the side curtains of the car behind bellied outward. The helmeted head appeared around the windshield’s side. And, in the hands of the man whose features were hidden, Agent “X” saw the gleaming muzzle of some sort of weapon.

  Inspector Burks shouted a hoarse warning, but his words were lost in the horror of what followed.

  No report came from the weapon in the man’s hand. But a blinding, white-hot jet of fire suddenly sprayed from it. It was like a ghastly will-o’-the-wisp, a torch of living, consuming flame suspended apparently in space. With a hiss of scorching enamel and burning fabric, the flame leaped forward and struck the back of Burks’s car.

  Agent “X” could feel the heat inside. A giant acetylene torch seemed to have been turned on them. He heard the snap of breaking glass, saw a tongue of flame leap over their heads.

  The driver of the police car, looking back, glimpsed the bright ball of fire, too. He gave a cry of fear, tried to wrench the car into a side street.

  The vehicle turned in its own length and the horrible jet of fire traveled along its side like water from the nozzle of a hose.

  The full force of it, sizzling, intensified, touched the window by the driver’s seat. The glass melted and ran down in a hissing liquid stream. The tongue of flame licked inward in a blasting wave of heat like breath from the mouth of an inferno.

  Before their horrified eyes the driver, with a shriek of fear dying on his lips, wilted in his seat. His head became a mass of ghastly, licking flames. His features disintegrated. His clothing caught fire, and, with a jarring crash, the car, with dead hands on the wheel, plunged across the curb toward a building.

  Chapter IV

  Murder Scene

  AGENT “X” felt sickened, paralyzed. The stench and reek of scorching flesh was in his nostrils. Horror pressed upon him like a black, smothering wave. Then something hissed beside him. The flame was probing for the rear of the car again.

  Like a coiled spring unsnapped, Agent “X” came to life. He reached forward, grasped the car’s wheel, gave it a twist, and slewed the front tires around just as the car struck. It saved them from the full, shattering concussion of a head-on crash.

  The big vehicle hit at an angle and scraped ahead to a shuddering stop with its radiator cap almost in a doorway.

  Secret Agent “X” was hurled against the front seat, almost on top of the dead chauffeur. Inspector Burks thudded against his back, fell to the car’s floor. The inspector was swearing fiercely, trying to pull himself up. The white-hot searing flame of the burning death behind them was seeking them out again.

  Agent “X” heard a shrill squeal of brakes as the murder car sought to check its speed. It stopped, began to back, and the snout of the mystery weapon swung around in a murderous arc. The flame hissed brightly, relentlessly, again.

  In one and the same movement then, Agent “X” thrust open the car’s door that was on the side facing the building and leaped out. Grabbing Burks by the arm he drew the man unceremoniously after him. A space of five feet separated the front of the car from the building’s door.

  The men in the murder roadster were playing the flame over that space, preventing any escape in that direction. Agent “X” with the inspector beside him crouched behind the big metal body of the car. The death flame licked against the car’s opposite side, played a hissing, horrible tune of doom. The wall of the car became red-hot. The fabric began to smoke. Another window gave way and the flames licked through toward them.

  The searing torch of destruction was searching them out. The inspector had drawn a police automatic from his pocket. Cursing like a maniac, he began firing back toward the murder car, his bullets going wild. One side of his coat was scorched. His eyes were bloodshot. As the flame ate through the window on their side, Agent “X” drew him down behind the protection of the car’s big engine. The tongue of searing death whistled above their heads now. The space between the car and the building’s side was getting as hot as a furnace. The horrible threat of being roasted alive faced them.

  There came a shriek like a thousand howling banshees. The flame’s heat had ignited the car’s gas tank. The screw cap had blown and a jet of burning gas was whistling through the vent, mingling with the flame of the death torch in the hands of the murderer.

  For a moment the night wind whisked a curtain of dense vapor along the car’s side. And in that moment Agent “X” pulled Inspector Burks toward the doorway. He literally hurled the man ahead, flinging himself after, running the awful gauntlet of flaming death.

  The murderers in the car couldn’t see them. Crouched back in the doorway Agent “X” glimpsed the goggled and helmeted killer leaning far out, playing the death flame on the smoking, crackling police car. Then the car’s gasoline tank let go, as the pressure became too great for its metal walls to stand.

  The whole rear of the car ripped open. The murder torch licked in and around it until the car became a flaming inferno, a funeral pyre for the dead driver.

  The hideous goggled head of the killer withdrew. With a scream of gears the roadster leaped ahead and tore up the street out of sight.

  Windows on all sides were opening now. Excited people were screaming. The flames of the burning car were threatening to fire the building against which it lay, as sprayed gasoline ignited.

  Burks, with the pallor of a man who has looked into the face of hideous death, drew a shaking hand across his face.

  The building in the doorway of which they had taken refuge was a cheap rooming house. Terrified people were opening the inner door: a fat woman in a bathrobe, a man with hair standing on end, two gangling youths. Agent “X” pushed them back.<
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  “A phone! Quick!” he cried.

  The fat man made ineffectual gestures. “X” ran on till he saw a coin box phone against the wall. In a moment he was dialing the operator, turning in an alarm. There would be fire engines here presently and cars from headquarters.

  He heard the first of the engines from a nearby station roaring up the street. The chassis of the burning police car was glowing red hot. All fabric and upholstery were gone. The driver in the front seat was hardly visible, but there was still the nauseating, horrible odor of burning flesh in the air. Agent “X” had seen many men die, but seldom with such sudden stark brutality as this.

  A POLICE cruiser whirled up the block. Hand extinguishers from the red fire truck were beginning to quench the blaze as the crowd gathered. Bedlam reigned in the street. But Agent “X,” in the role of the commissioner, spoke quietly.

  “We were on our way to look at a murder, inspector,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

  Inspector Burks nodded. There was nothing they could do here. The driver of the police car had long since been beyond their help. Other cruisers were arriving and a squad car full of detectives. Agent “X” commandeered it, leaving two cops in charge of the burned and wrecked sedan. Three radio cruisers followed them as escort. Inspector Burks, still trembling, sat back breathing heavily.

  “They almost got us,” he croaked. “If it hadn’t been for you, commissioner—”

  He did not finish, but a strange, harsh smile played over the lips of Secret Agent “X.” What would Burks say if he knew that the man whose cool-headedness had saved him from that hissing murder flame was the person he had hunted and tried to trap as a criminal?

  “We know now how the killers do it,” “X” said. “That was some sort of flame-thrower. Flammenwerfer. But not the kind the Germans used in the Bois d’Avocourt or those of the British on the Somme in ’18. This is something new. It is murder modernized, inspector!”