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

by Paul Chadwick

  Just under the window of the third floor he paused. Raising his head he looked inside. He had come in good time.

  Tony Garino, the white-faced black-haired gangster, was in earnest confab with one of Detective Banton’s men. They were just finishing their deal apparently. A hundred-dollar bill changed hands. Banton’s man handed the gangster a slip of paper. Garino talked with much gesticulating of his hands.

  Ten minutes passed during which the Agent got hints through a lot of vivid pantomime. Then Banton’s man left. The actions of Garino showed that he was getting ready to leave at once, too.

  He went to a shabby bureau, took a big automatic from a drawer, examined the clip, and shoved the gun into his coat. He knelt before the rusty gas stove that heated the room, turned it out, and, after it had cooled a moment, ran his fingers over the blackened burner. With the soot he had collected he made smudges on his face.

  This clumsy attempt of Garino’s at disguise brought a sardonic gleam to the Agent’s eyes. The gangster was trying to guard against recognition by the police. But, to the Man of a Thousand Faces, it seemed rather ridiculous.

  THE Secret Agent descended the fire escape as silently as he had come up it, crossed fences, and turned into the street. Garino was just coming out the door of the rooming house as he did so. He set off at a brisk pace up the street keeping well into the shadows.

  Agent “X” followed, ducked through a side street, skirted ahead of Garino, and waited beside a porch stoop, as silent as the night itself. In the Agent’s hand now was the small, gleaming cylinder of a hypodermic needle. The reservoir of the instrument contained a highly concentrated, liquid anesthetizing narcotic of his own mixing.

  Tony Garino never knew what had happened to him. The arm that flashed out of the shadows, the point of the needle that pierced his skin, were synchronized like an act in some well-rehearsed play.

  Garino was drawn into the shadows and deposited with his back against the stoop just as the drug in his veins began to thrust him down into the depths of unconsciousness.

  Leaving him there, Agent “X,” as though nothing had happened, came out of the street and walked swiftly to the spot where he had parked his car. He drove ahead to a point opposite the place where he had left Garino and stopped close to the curb.

  A moment he scanned the street in both directions. A single pedestrian was hurrying along.

  Agent “X” got out, raised the hood of his motor, and pretended to be absorbed in engine trouble until the pedestrian passed.

  Then he closed the engine hood and raised the cover of the car’s rumble seat. He turned, darted into the shadows. When he came out he was carrying a limp burden—the inert body of the gangster.

  The Agent now drove to one of his most accessible hideouts. Each was chosen with great care to give as much privacy as possible in regard to entrances and exits. This was a deserted house, like the one he had used when he had disguised himself as Police Commissioner Foster. He had possessed himself of it without asking anyone’s leave.

  He carried Tony Garino into it, deposited the gangster in a ventilated closet, locked the door, and changed to the disguise of Andrew Balfour.

  By kidnapping Garino he had gained for himself a method of entering Banton’s mysterious gang. In Garino’s pocket he had found the slip of paper that Banton’s man had given the gangster, telling where the gang was to be assembled. It was a water-front address. Time was precious. Garino was due there any time. But first Agent “X” wanted to find out what Banton was doing. Was he still in his office?

  Completing the disguise of Andrew Balfour, he went out into the street again. He drove to the vicinity of the bank, parked his roadster, and strode forward, headed for the side entrance that he and Banton usually used. Then he paused, prickles of horror traversing his spine. A man staggered past the corner of the building into range of the Secret Agent’s vision. He wore the light-blue uniform of a special bank guard.

  A light was playing in the air behind him, a wavering spectral light, like a pursuing will-o’-the-wisp. It became a jet of hissing flame that descended on the guard’s back and sent him writhing to the pavement where he lay, a charred and inert heap.

  With a hoarse cry on his lips Secret Agent “X” leaped forward. He dashed around the corner of the bank building, risking the flaming death himself, and a scene of terror and disaster met his eyes.

  The flaming torch bandits had returned. The Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Bank had been raided, and the goggled, helmeted figures were escaping in their long, low roadster after a grisly carnival of robbery and death.

  Chapter XIX

  Murderers Amidships

  IT was a second before Secret Agent “X” understood the full horror of what had happened.

  The front doors of the bank were open. Every window was smashed. Special detectives, driven back by the raiders, began running forward again as the murderers’ roadster shot away. But the terrible work had been done thoroughly.

  A bank guard, shouting like a madman, was dashing toward the doors.

  “They’re in there,” he screamed. “Marsh and von Blund! They must have got it, too! Those devils burned them like they did the others.”

  The man’s face was twitching. His eyes were red-rimmed, staring. Other guards and detectives came slinking out of the shadows across the street, trembling, sheepish.

  Agent “X” saw another blackened corpse lying up the block. A big guard, his face dripping with sweat, spoke hoarsely, close to the Agent’s ear, as though answering an unspoken accusation.

  “We couldn’t help it—we had to scram. They drove us off with that flame gun of theirs. That poor fella tried to stick—and look what they did to him!”

  Discipline had broken down. The demoralizing force of fear lay upon the survivors of the raid. Inside the bank, the icy hand of terror had fallen like a blight. Agent “X” entered with the first group of detectives. He heard the cursing cry of one of them.

  “Look—they got them!”

  The man was pointing through the open door of the bank’s business office. A sprawled, unsightly figure lay just inside the threshold. Beyond, close to a big desk, was another.

  A detective bent down, fumbled with trembling fingers, and lifted the heat-corroded wreck of what had once been a handsome gold watch. Its crystal had melted under the blast of the death-torch, making the figures on its face as unrecognizable as the grisly horror from which the detective had taken it. But the monogram on its back was still visible: “F.M.”

  “It’s him—Francis Marsh,” said the detective in an awed voice. “The killers got them both. That other’s von Blund.”

  So thoroughly had the terrible death-torch done its work, that the blackened pieces of jewelry were the only means of identification. But they established the grim fact that the partners who had survived the first unsuccessful raid had met death in this second one.

  “The safe was blown wide open,” said another detective. “They used enough nitro to sink a battleship. You could hear it ten blocks away.”

  Agent “X” saw that the great vault of the bank had been cleaned out. Its door had fallen outward, the quadruple hinges ripped, the lock bolts cracked as though they had been brittle clay. Every bit of the cash was gone.

  “Marsh asked for a special guard tonight, too,” said one of the surviving guards brokenly. “A big lot of cash had come in. They were getting their books straightened.”

  Inside the office, with the remains of the two bankers, was a third corpse, identified as the body of an elderly bookkeeper.

  Police sirens sounded outside. Agent “X,” in the guise of Andrew Balfour, was there when Burks of the homicide squad arrived with a battery of detectives. The face of the homicide squad head was bleak. His voice was bitter.

  “I warned them the killers would be back,” he said. “I warned them to keep away from here at night.”

  THE Agent’s eyes held steely brightness. He stood, his body rigid, staring down at the g
hastly remains of this biggest of raids. Then he turned and slipped quietly out. If he stayed, there would be questions. It was only because of the confusion, the demoralization of the police, that his presence hadn’t been noticed. As a tenant of the building, he might be held as a material witness. And he had other reasons for going.

  The lightning of the death torch had struck twice in the same spot. The significance of this filled Agent “X” with grim purpose, spurred him on to action. It was as though Banton had had secret warning of what was to happen tonight. Where was Banton?

  Swiftly and silently Agent “X” slipped away from the police, away from the excited, tense crowds that were coming, attracted by the explosion. He found his parked car, drove furiously back to the hideout where he had left Tony Garino.

  The gangster was still unconscious, and, removing him from the closet where he was breathing in peaceful unawareness, Agent “X” studied the man’s features.

  He studied them with the close, detailed intentness of an artist and craftsman, even opening the mobster’s thick lips and staring at his teeth.

  Two gleaming gold bicuspids characterized Garino’s smile. The Agent had not forgotten these.

  As he began his deft, ingenious impersonation of the unconscious gangster, working under the brilliant glow of his portable acetylene lamp in front of his triple mirrors, he imitated Garino’s mouth first of all.

  This was a simple matter. He opened a box filled with shells of thin, resilient gold alloy, shells that corresponded to each of his teeth. He snapped two of these over his own bicuspids and flashed a gold-toothed smile at himself. Then he began the quick impersonation of Garino’s features. His own face changed like magic under the deft touch of his fingers. When the face was finished, when Tony Garino seemed to be sitting there before the mirror in that hidden room, he slipped a toupee over his own brown hair, and smoothed it down to shiny sleekness with Vaseline.

  Then he undressed Garino and assembled the man’s clothing. Before putting it on he got out another suit of special, thin material and attached it with spring clamps to the lining of Garino’s coat. When he had put on the mobster’s flash suit, the other beneath it did not show. Its bulk seemed only the stockiness of the gangster. He pushed Garino back in the closet, locked the door, and filled his pockets with an assortment of the mysterious objects that he was in the habit of carrying.

  Then he turned his collar up, pulled his hat down, and hurried to the street. The address on the slip of paper that Banton’s man had given Garino was within walking distance. It was in a westerly direction toward the river.

  As Agent “X” approached it, moving at a fast walk, the neighborhood grew steadily worse. He was in a street of junk shops and dark, dilapidated warehouses, busy places in the daytime but dark and sombre now.

  He came to the street that fronted the water, crossed it, and saw the oily gleam of the river ahead. He passed between two pier sheds, walked down a boarded alley, and came to the flat expanse of another smaller pier that was used as a base for tugs out of service.

  A group of dark-clothed men stood whispering in the gloom at the end of this dock. He saw them before they did him, watched them a moment intently, then retraced his steps and ran quickly to the nearest cigar store where there was a telephone. Closeted in the booth he made a mysterious telephone call to Betty Dale, asking her to relay a message from him to police headquarters.

  WHEN he returned to the dock the men were still there, and their low whispers hushed as he approached. He could see the stiffening, suspicious attitudes of their bodies,

  He walked as he had often seen Garino walk—for his disguises went further than merely assuming the features of the man he impersonated. He made each disguise a study in muscular co-ordination as well. A voice that he had heard before spoke hoarsely out of the darkness.

  “It’s that mug, Tony!”

  The Agent, peering intently, saw the pale face and slumped body of “Slats” Becker. The little gangster grinned wryly.

  “We thought yer’d got cold feet, Tony!”

  Another voice cut in, thick with anger, the voice of Banton’s man who had made the arrangements with Garino.

  “Where the hell you been? What’s the idea? Didn’t I tell you to come right away? We expect the boss any minute!”

  Agent “X” shrugged in Garino’s characteristic gesture.

  “Excusa me! Maybe I no come back. I hadda say gooda-by to the skirt.”

  Harsh laughter echoed his remark. Banton’s man hissed for silence. Looking around at the men who stood on the dock, Agent “X” saw the toughest bunch of gorillas he had ever found collected in one spot. Banton’s assistants were bad enough, but they were the sneaky stool-pigeon type. The men they had assembled were cutthroats, gunmen, the city’s most dangerous riffraff—rats who could be lured out of hiding only by the smell of blood or the glint of gold—beasts who prowled in the night. The pockets of each bulged. They were armed to the teeth.

  Suddenly, off across the black water, a light winked. Three times—a space of darkness—another flash.

  “That’s the boss now,” said Banton’s right-hand man. “Come on, you mugs—get ready to go aboard.”

  Out of the blackness that lay over the face of the water, something long and gray appeared. It nosed toward the dock, cutting the swells silently, showing no lights except that one signal which had been doused.

  It came nearer, showed like some monster of the deep. It was a huge, gray-painted motor cruiser. Its rakish lines, the sharp swell of its bows, proclaimed it a former rumrunner; one of the fastest, most sinister-looking boats that Agent “X” had ever seen. How Banton had acquired it, what black history lay behind it, he didn’t know. But, on the forward deck, cradled under a canvas tarpaulin, he saw the ominous shape of a mounted machine gun. The boat slid into the dock noiselessly, and the Agent’s expert ear knew by the faint, rumbling purr of the motors amidships that this craft was superpowered.

  It had been built to outdistance the fastest patrol boats of the coast guard fleet. It had the lines of a destroyer; it was a destroyer in the full sense of the term.

  Awed by the impressive craft, the cutthroat crew that Banton’s men had assembled swarmed silently down to the deck. The harsh, lumpy face of Banton himself looked out of the pilot house window. He and a single engineer had brought the boat from its former berth.

  “Keep your traps closed!” Banton warned. “Any mug who talks will get a crack over the head. This isn’t a picnic!”

  As silently as she had come, the long narrow boat nosed away from the dock, nosed out into the river, and slipped like a gray wraith across the water. The engines, Agent “X” knew, were only at idling speed. Banton was careful not to leave a wake. Once a man from the deck of a passing tug hailed them, staring in surprise at this craft that showed no lights.

  But Banton paid no attention. Two of his men on port and starboard sides were watching intently, alert, it seemed, for danger. But the boat slipped on unmolested, and the lights of the city fell away behind.

  IT was only then that Banton opened the motors to their mid-speed, and the gray craft seemed to lift out of the water and shoot ahead on throbbing wings. A white, hissing wake trailed behind it.

  Banton came down from the pilot house, turning the wheel over to his most trusted assistant. He went forward, peeled the canvas off the machine gun, fingered the synchronized mechanism. The black snout of the gun seemed to thrust ahead like a finger, warning of evil to come.

  It was then that a shrill cry sounded somewhere amidships. Agent “X,” in the group around the gun, turned. Banton turned, too, a fierce oath escaping him. A slim figure came running along the throbbing deck of the boat. Two other figures followed.

  Banton stood, legs wide apart, amazement written on his heavy features. Agent “X” saw a white, tense face; the curves of a lithe body. Rosa Carpita!

  The dancer came up to the group around the gun, up to Banton.

  “Call your gorillas o
ff,” she said scornfully. “They’re chasing me.”

  “You!” Banton hissed, amazement and anger in his voice. “How did you get here?”

  “You wouldn’t tell me your plans so I followed you. I don’t trust you, Banton. I’m sorry I let you in on—”

  “We found this skirt stowed on board,” said one of the men who had chased her, “She was hiding in a closet.”

  The girl, Rosa Carpita, drew herself to her full height. Her black eyes were snapping fiercely. Her face, lovely before, was contorted into harsh lines.

  “Don’t forget, Banton, that I am your client—and that I employed you!”

  Banton’s little eyes were gleaming. He took a step forward.

  “You’ve no business here,” he said. “You’ll hafta go ashore.”

  “I won’t,” the girl said. “I demand to know what your plans are.”

  Agent “X,” witnessing this strange drama, began to understand. Banton made a harsh gesture. He scowled at the men around him.

  “Keep still,” he warned. “Don’t talk in front of these rats. Come to the cabin!”

  He turned, lumbered off, and the girl followed. There was a mutter of low-voiced speculation behind him.

  Agent “X” followed softly, but Banton and the dancer went down to the cabin amidships. The door was locked. There were curtains over the ports. He could see or hear nothing of the strange conference that the two were having. His eyes gleamed, however. His alert brain was at work. When Banton came back alone ten minutes later, he wasn’t surprised.

  “What did you do with the skirt, boss?” asked one of Banton’s men.

  Agent “X” heard the harsh answer.

  “Locked her up like the cat she is.”

  It was plain to the Agent that Banton was in some way double-crossing his client, Rosa Carpita. The girl had followed him, come on board to find out what was going on. All this was consistent with Banton’s character as the Agent had sized it up.