Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 6

by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

  As X hurried to his car he could hear Mace cursing and shouting for Kroger to stop the spy. But in another moment, the millionaire’s cries were lost in the roar of the powerful motor….

  Dr. Balmer lived in an old residential quarter of the city. And in spite of his lucrative practice, he still had an antiquated office in his residence. It was nearly eleven o’clock when X arrived at the doctor’s house and climbed the worn stone steps to twist the handle of the old-fashion bell.

  “The doctor in?” X inquired of a servant who looked as old as the house itself.

  “Dr. Balmer was expecting no one, sir. Are you a patient?”

  X still wore the Department of Justice emblem inside his coat. He displayed it, and was ushered into a small hall where he was invited to sit in the only chair—a hard, tall-backed thing.

  “Dr. Balmer just came in,” the servant explained, “and he will see you in a moment.”

  X nodded, dropping into the chair. Hardly had the servant left than the only light in the room dimmed to a dirty yellow then went out entirely. X did not move a muscle. His every sense was alert. But the light was back on again in another minute.

  The sound of heavy footsteps and Dr. Balmer appeared in the doorway. His Oxford glasses were balanced on his button nose. His wide mouth curved in an assumed smile. X, quick to notice anything out of the ordinary in a man’s facial expression, decided that there was something telling on Balmer’s nerves. The man’s wide experience should have developed poise if nothing else, but Balmer actually stuttered as he greeted X.

  “Just—just step this way, if you will, sir.” And Balmer lost his footing on a small, ill-behaved Oriental rug. He would have fallen had not the Agent caught him. But stranger than the doctor’s awkwardness, was his apparent effort to shrink from the Agent’s touch. He eventually managed to open a door, usher X into the next room, and close the door carefully behind him.

  With the same uneasy manner, he offered a chair to X and immediately seated himself behind his desk, facing the Agent. Suddenly the doctor’s hand moved.

  X FOUND himself staring into the barrel of an automatic that nosed above the doctor’s desk and was beaded on the very center of his forehead. When Doctor Balmer spoke his voice was very precise, very steady.

  “I have waited months for this opportunity. I know your real reason for coming here tonight, and I was prepared for it. A doctor is a student of character as well as medicine. I could not forget the talents and courage of a certain American Intelligence officer who was struck by a bit of shrapnel during the war.” Balmer paused, then went on:

  “He fought for life then as he fights now. Many years after that Intelligence officer recovered miraculously, another man stepped into the strange picture of human progress. He, too, was a fighter. He, too, possessed strange talents. The letter ‘X’, his mysterious symbol covers a multitude of his crimes recorded in police headquarters. And I know that this daring and unscrupulous criminal known as Agent X, is none other than the man with the shrapnel wound close to his heart—a wound that is like the letter ‘X’, the mark of the criminal himself!

  “And being the clever person he is,” Dr. Balmer went on with feverish haste, “I felt certain that Mr. X would realize that I am perhaps the only living man who can positively identify him.” Balmer’s eyes stared at the Agent. He said in a dry, rasping voice. “You are Secret Agent X! That is why you came here tonight—to kill me, the only man who stands in your path.”

  X SAID nothing for long minutes. It was evident that the knowledge that he could identify the supposedly criminal Agent had become an obsession with Dr. Balmer. He must have lived in daily fear of his life. Finally, Agent X spoke.

  “Extremely interesting bit of detection on your part, doctor. Might I, the condemned man, inquire how you arrived at your conclusion?”

  “The chair you sat in. The back of it was a little invention of mine. Every person who comes to this house—must sit in that chair before I will see him.”

  X nodded. “I thought the chair uncomfortable. You’ve a fluoroscope arrangement in the back of the thing. And you’ve spent your life looking for the mark of X—a shrapnel wound near the heart—”

  There came a knock at the door.

  “Don’t move!” cautioned the doctor. Then in a louder voice: “Come in.”

  The door opened. No other sound—just the opening of the door. The automatic dropped from Balmer’s hand. X sprang to his feet, kicking his chair completely across the room. He spun around on the balls of his feet to face five dark and silent figures who had stalked into the room—goggle-eyed, bat-winged minions of Emperor Zero.

  X snatched at his gas pistol, remembered that its anesthetizing charge would have no effect upon the mobsters’ gas masks. He threw the heavy weapon at the foremost figure and with almost the same speed as the flying gun, launched himself into the midst of them. His fists were twin pistons, driving with dynamite force against bodies and masked faces.

  For ten glorious seconds he fought as he had never fought before. He was everywhere at once—ducking blows, hurling chairs, pounding mercilessly. Then came the dull, sickening realization that he was beaten. Mass action, sheer man-power carried him to the floor.

  Something with the sting of a wasp penetrated his flesh. Fire flowed in his veins, and for a brief interval he had the exotic sensation of floating through nebulous infinity. Then blackness engulfed him.

  Chapter VII

  EMPEROR ZERO

  ON a raised stone dais in the center of a circular room which was closed at the top by a huge hemispherical dome, sat a monstrous thing of gleaming metal. It had the general outline of a man, yet it sat there motionless like some cubist artist’s statue that might well have been entitled “Power.” Beside the faceless, brutal figure was a second throne as yet unoccupied.

  Arranged about the room, at regular intervals on the circular floor, were six statues of women, identical and apparently cast from copper. They were slightly more than life size, identical in face and form, with the skirts of their drapery forming a sturdy base for the statues. The strange, domed chamber was weirdly lighted by concealed lamps. The motionless, metal statues on floors and walls. The room was absolutely silent.

  A door opened. Across the polished floor came a woman. Though she was not particularly small, she seemed tiny and impotent beside the metal monsters of that room. She wore a simple gown of blackest satin and a small domino mask partially concealed her features. She approached the dais and raised her eyes to the glittering thing of steel sitting upon the throne. She spoke in a clear, calm voice, addressing the man of steel:

  “Emperor, by a stroke of good fortune, we have captured Secret Agent X as he was in Balmer’s office. Also, I was to remind you that the traitor Rubens was to be punished.”

  A sigh throbbed around the chamber. Then the metal monster on the dais spoke. “Come sit beside me while judgment is pronounced upon the prisoners.” The voice was low-pitched and entirely without inflection.

  The woman stepped to the dais and took her place beside Emperor Zero. Through the door of the chamber came a guard of twelve men, each armed with an automatic. In their midst were two men. One was dressed in garments that, because of their ill fit, seemed to belong to someone else. This was Secret Agent X. He himself imprisoned in a small cell, completely stripped of every one of his special implements and devices, his make-up intact, but dressed in a suit, shirt and shoes that he had never seen before. The other prisoner was Samuel Rubens, whose nerves seemed to have entirely deserted him so that he had to be supported by two of the guards.

  Guard and prisoners formed a double file in front of Emperor Zero. The woman, whom X immediately recognized as Countess Savinna, turned toward the motionless, metal man beside her.

  “Here is Samuel Rubens, Emperor, charged with betraying our secrets in an effort to sell the formula for the compound discovered by Dr. Pascal and which has the power to neutralize Cartier-site gas when employed in an improved gas mask.
”

  The emotionless voice of Zero spoke softly. “Rubens, do you deny the charge?”

  “You’re damned right!” cried Rubens. “It’s all a dirty frame by that woman to get rid of me. She’s tired of me. She’s fallen for you. That is why she did that!”

  Countess Savinna drew herself up proudly. Eyes in her mask glinted blue fire. “Lies, every word. All lies!”

  “Lies,” echoed Zero softly. “Rubens, you are to be punished not so much for your treachery as for your insulting attitude toward my lady. You might have known that efforts to sell the formula would be futile. Is Dr. Nells here?”

  A man clad in the white smock of a surgeon but wearing an incongruous black mask stepped through the door and into the room. “I am here, Emperor Zero,” he said.

  “Dr. Nells, you are a man of science. There are doubtless a number of experiments which the laws of men have prevented you from performing on human subjects—something in the nature of vivisection, perhaps. You may have Rubens for that purpose. I simply request that your experiments result in pain and eventual death. Use Rubens as a guinea pig, for he is something less than a man.”

  Suddenly, with a movement of desperation, Rubens wrenched free from the hands that detained him. His right hand plunged deeply into the pocket of his coat. The pocket bulged suddenly, showing clearly the outline of a gun.

  SIX shots in rapid succession echoed throughout the room. But the shots had not come from Rubens’ pocket. His chest had been riddled by the guards’ guns before his agony-twisted legs deserted him and he flopped to the floor, a hideous grotesquery.

  The heart of Agent X boomed at his temples. The cold brutality of the guards, the inhuman monster of metal on the dais, and the insane gleam in the eyes of the countess formed a nightmare picture that he was never to forget.

  Dr. Nells came forward, glancing at the body on the floor. “He is dead,” he said regretfully. But X knew the evil doctor’s regret was occasioned by the loss of a subject for some damnable experiment.

  “Take him away,” ordered Zero. “He will receive the usual burial.”

  And as two of the guards left the room, carrying the limp and bleeding form of Rubens, the countess turned again to her lord of steel. There was considerable anticipation in her voice as she said: “You have yet to deal with Agent X.”

  “Ah, yes,” sighed Zero. “Agent X, you hear me perfectly?”

  X forced himself to a calm. “Sure,” he said insolently.

  “Agent X, I have genuine admiration for your talents,” said Zero. “I have decided to add you to my councilors. You could aid our cause considerably.”

  X laughed. “You’re rather presumptuous, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all,” came the soft reply. “Others have felt the same way that you do now—Pascal, Kruse, Zosimoff, Vonicky and Cartier. Yes, as you have doubtless deduced, neither Vonicky nor Cartier were murdered. A mere hoax to mislead the police. Headless bodies of men for whom I had no further use, were substituted in place of Vonicky and Cartier when we kidnaped them. I believe I succeeded in misleading the police, if not Secret Agent X.

  “I want you to understand my position. All the learning of the age is at my finger tips, Agent X. I am dominant, powerful, because as a person I am dominant and powerful. But my wisdom exists in the brains of others. I am but a nucleus of a monstrous amoeba that moves unalterably toward a definite goal, devouring the scum of humanity in its path; digesting only wisdom that those who are fit to live may enjoy life to its fullest. Agent X, I am the future of the human race.

  “Why have I, unlike the craven criminals with whom you have dealt, sought you instead of running from you? Not that you should be destroyed, rest assured, but that you might live for years to come. I care nothing for your body except as a medium for keeping your magnificent brain alive. That is what I want, Agent X—your magnificent brain.”

  The smile on the Agent’s face seemed indelibly etched. “What makes you think that my brain would serve you, Zero?” he asked.

  “Look about you, Agent X. In this room you see six copper maidens—an entirely new adaptation of the Iron Virgin of mediaeval times. Five of these contain living, breathing men who will live for many years under the skilled care of Dr. Nells. And though they, with the exception of Vonicky, all refused to do my will, they have all complied with my wishes when they realized their position. I needed Vonicky’s generalship in the underworld from which I select some of my men. Vonicky seemed willing enough to join forces with me, but I feared his treacherous cunning. So Vonicky occupies one of the hollow, copper shells you see in this room.

  “Then there is the Russian aeronautic expert, Zosimoff, whose fertile brain has given me several splendid devices, including the bat-like flying suits. Dr. Kruse, the German, has contributed much to my vast communication system and also the ignition paralysis ray which I used to bring down the government plane piloted by Kroger.

  “Cartier, the Frenchman, eventually relinquished the formula for the most powerful weapon in my possession, Cartier-site. Probably, you have seen the gas in action. Through an error on the part of one of my men, some of the gas was prematurely released in a New York tenement. And for the protection of my men, the British Dr. Pascal has given us a superb gas mask, proof against even Cartier-site.

  “Let me further explain why these captives give and give willingly. Each of these five hollow, Metal Maidens is supplied with an electrical heating element. Each is an oven, the temperature of which I can control to a degree. When a man finds himself on the point of being roasted alive, he talks!”

  “And the sixth Metal Maiden waits for me?” asked Agent X.

  “Yes,” replied Zero. “And in it you will spend many hours thinking up matchless schemes for me. Dr. Nells, you will take charge of the sixth member of my council.”

  X WAS seized roughly and rushed through the door and down a short hall to arrive at a small square room which was evidently one of Dr. Nells’ laboratories. There, undoubtedly, the first cylinder of Cartier-site for the Emperor’s purposes had been made. Had X been permitted a few minutes alone in the laboratory, his skill in combining chemicals would have enabled him to derive a powerful weapon of some sort.

  But six of the burly guards had accompanied him to the laboratory, and in a few minutes Dr. Nells and a seventh guard entered pushing before them the heavy copper statue that was intended to house the Agent and torture him with unendurable heat. He wondered how much his body and nerves would stand before he would die.

  X eyed the heavy, copper maiden. It required two men to push it. It was mounted on rollers….

  And suddenly the Agent’s eyes burned with an intense light. A perfectly simple but surprising plan suggested itself to him. Dr. Nells and one of the gang were engaged in unscrewing the front panel of the torture machine which would permit X to be placed inside. Four other guards lounged close to the closed and locked door. The remaining two held the Agent by the forearms.

  No sooner had the plan been conceived than X put it into effect. His knees flexed suddenly, his arms jerking out in front of him. Much depended upon the strength behind that movement, and X brought every muscle into play. The men holding him, taken completely off guard, did not release their hold on X’s arms. And that was exactly what X had expected.

  The Agent’s weight, dragging on their arms, brought them together until their heads crashed together with terrific force. They were stunned, off balance, incapable of longer detaining X. The Agent sprang straight at the heavy copper torture instrument, striking it with his shoulder.

  The copper statue moved, pushing Nells and his helper from their feet. Two of the guards at the door had their guns out, but their shots pumped ineffectively into the copper statue which not only shielded the Agent, but gained momentum every foot it moved.

  With a terrified shout, three of the men sprang away from the door. The fourth was too surprised to move. The rolling copper juggernaut with every ounce of the Agent’s strength behind it, struc
k man and door at the same time. An agonized shriek. Man and door were crushed. A bullet from behind burned across X’s shoulder but failed to check his agile movements.

  He sprang around to the other side of the rolling statue and gained the hall. Moving of its own momentum, the copper maiden wheeled across the hall to crash into a concrete wall. For a moment, it was the statue alone that drew fire. And in that moment, X had turned and raced down the corridor at top speed.

  Ahead of him, two of Zero’s men came into view. Their guns were drawn and began spitting leaden death. Without the aid of his bulletproof vest, X dared not face them. An open door was on his left. He sprang through it and closed it behind him. Ahead was another door—the other exit from the room. A long casket stretched across a pair of wooden horses. X would be expected to spring through the next door that led he knew not where. He must do the unexpected.

  He threw back the lid of the coffin, saw the small, bleeding corpse of Samuel Rubens within. X rolled the dead Rubens over, squeezed in beneath him, and let the cover of the casket drop softly into place just as men crashed into the room.

  “He’s gone through,” one man shouted.

  “He’ll get to the side entrance that way,” said another. “The guard will get him!”

  In the confines of the coffin. X heard something that sent icy splinters shooting down his spine.

  “Manders, you and the others go after X,” a voice was saying. “Joe and I will take care of the stiff.”

  There was a dull thud on top of the casket. Then a click that sounded like a rifle report in the hollow coffin. X knew that the lid of the casket had been closed—and for the last time. He was alone in impenetrable blackness in a locked casket with the limp weight of a dead man on top of him and the funereal drumming of his own heart in his ears. A cold sweat started out on his forehead. The most horrible of deaths conceived by man was to be the reward of his crime-crushing life—burial alive.

  THE coffin was roughly handled by the men and eventually shoved into some sort of a conveyance that rattled off over an uneven road. The Agent’s senses dulled. He seemed to have lost all conception of time and space. He concentrated every mental effort on breathing as little as possible. For miles and miles, the car that carried the coffin rushed along. Miles and minutes on and on until it seemed the journey would never end. Was it daylight? Midnight? Midnight, perhaps—eternal midnight.