From behind, Countess Savinna urged X to the chair. He sat down as nonchalantly as possible with two automatics trained on his head.
“Five minutes remain,” Zero went on, “before an electrical signal throws my vast network of power into life. Cartier-site will automatically be released at strategic points on the surface and below in the subways. The whole system is really a masterpiece. And you, Agent X, shall have the pleasure of setting my machine into motion. You observe; on the side of your chair arm, a double-throw knife switch. You will kindly move that switch to opposite pole.”
X shook his head slowly, said nothing.
Zero turned to the beautiful woman. “Countess, may I trouble you to show the Agent our ace in the hole?”
COUNTESS SAVINNA moved across to a green-cloth curtain that hung from a rafter. She snatched it aside to reveal one of the copper torture maidens such as Zero had used in his council room to force the unwilling to work for him.
“This metal maiden,” explained the masked man, “is identical to others you have seen. At this moment, it is beginning to warm up. Inside, is a very beautiful girl. And, if the countess is to be believed, a girl very dear to you. A pity that she should roast alive while it is within your power to stop it.”
The Agent’s indrawn breath hissed between clenched teeth.
“Ah, that makes you jump a little, doesn’t it, Mr. X? Yes, if you will be stubborn—I’m afraid Betty Dale will be burned alive! A pity, too, when only a touch of the switch on your chair will save the girl and, incidentally, destroy the city.”
X glanced at the switch on the arm of the chair. If it remained in its present position, Betty Dale would be slowly consumed to a cinder. Yet if he moved it to the other pole, Zero’s infernal machine would be set in motion. And the decision was left to him.
His left hand went to the switch. He looked across the room. The countess held her automatic in one hand and her gas mask in the other in anticipation of the release of the destructive gas. She was standing near the slowly heating sarcophagus, her face pale but her eyes gleaming cruelly.
“Countess! Look out! They’re coming through the door!” The words, in the voice of Emperor Zero, seemed to come from the masked man beside X. The countess turned around, the gas mask dropping from her hand. For the merest fraction of a second, the eyes of the masked man turned toward the countess. Her sudden, panic-stricken action had alarmed him no less than the warning had startled her. For Zero’s voice had not come from Zero’s lips, but from the slightly parted lips of Secret Agent X.
In that moment when Zero turned his eyes, the Agent’s right arm shot up, his hand seizing Zero’s wrist and deflecting the barrel of the automatic. Zero sprang back, actually assisting in getting X out of the chair. X led with his left, a powerful but wide blow that fanned the side of Zero’s ducking head. But the spent force of that blow carried the two men, locked together, to the floor.
A shot crashed from the gun in Zero’s hand. As they rolled over, each battling for a vantage point, Zero’s fingers found X’s throat and dug deeply into his windpipe. The Agent’s left fist battered Zero’s head, but the leather mask protected him.
Suddenly, Zero dropped his gun. Writhing like a snake, he broke from the Agent’s hold. His arm slid upward toward the chair; his fingers trembled on the fatal switch.
“Not, yet, Agent X!… This is Zero’s hour!”
The switch lever moved toward the pole of destruction, but as it moved, so did X. Hell hung in the balance of that blow as his right fist steamed into Zero’s biceps with such force that the nerves in the man’s arms were paralyzed. Zero’s finger straightened. X followed the telling blow with another straight to a point just below Zero’s heart. It was a blow, capable of killing, that X had mastered long ago. But he had reined it in just enough so that its effect was merely paralyzing.
The masked man became suddenly limp. X stood up slowly, looking down at his unconscious foe. He looked toward the copper torture oven. Beside it, the countess was stretched on the floor. There was a bullet wound in the center of her forehead. That single wild shot from Zero’s gun had found a mark.
X CROSSED the room to the torture oven. Quickly, he unscrewed the wing nuts that held the front plates of the torture oven in place.
“Are you all right, Betty?”
“All—all right,” came a muffled sob from inside the copper shell.
For several minutes, he held Betty in his arms. Then he slowly released her, asked: “How did you get here?”
“What I thought was a tip on a big story brought me here. It was a trap. I was forced down the basement and held a prisoner.”
X turned to Zero. “There’s very little more to do. Phone Burks. Have radios broadcast that there’s going to be no gas attack tonight.”
“You know who Zero really is?” asked Betty.
X smiled and nodded. “Don’t you? When I understood that Grover Mace was heading the committee that was to raise the funds to buy off Zero, that ruled one suspect off my list. Kroger was receiving money for aiding Grover Mace in a private investigation. That eliminated another. There remained only three others—the worried Smith, the nervous Dr. Balmer, and the dissolute Clyde Dewarren. Balmer was a capable physician—I could not forget that—and also a close friend and medical advisor to Dewarren. That being the case, I figured that Balmer must have known Dewarren’s secret.”
“And what was Dewarren’s secret?” Betty persisted.
“Hadn’t you noticed? He was very sensitive about his weakness. He could never understand anything anybody said to him unless the speaker faced him squarely? I first noticed this when Rubens tried to get Dewarren to buy the formula. Dewarren heard with his eyes. He was stone deaf, but an adept at lip reading. And Balmer knew this. Yet Zero admitted directing his organization by remote control, using telephone and radiophone.”
“I’m beginning to see,” said Betty thoughtfully. “Some one was using Dewarren as a fall guy. Evidence in the form of stolen plans was planted upon him. A mysterious tip caused him to be arrested by G-men. He was rescued by Zero’s bat-men. Everything pointed directly at Dewarren. Then, just in case Dewarren began to know too much, Zero’s bat-men kidnaped him to get him out of the way.”
“You know that?” X queried.
The girl nodded. “He’s down in the basement now all tied up. Held captive in his own house so that Zero could have full sway.”
X knelt beside the unconscious Zero and lifted the gas mask. Beneath was the worried, freckled face of Smith, Dewarren’s secretary. X lifted the lank, limp form and carried it to the torture oven. With Betty’s assistance, he propped Smith in the thing and screwed on the front plate.
“I understand it all now,” said Betty. “Dewarren being deaf all the time, sick part of the time, and drunk the remainder, was an easy dupe for Smith.”
X nodded. “I believe Dewarren depended on Smith to carry on most of his business for him. Probably, Smith bought with Dewarren’s own money and under the name of the Dewarren Munitions Company, the chemicals used in making the damnable gas. Smith made one slip in placing the guilt on Dewarren. He forgot that a deaf man can’t telephone.”
The Agent strode over to the telephone switchboard and put a plug in the jack marked “City.” He called the homicide office at police headquarters. “May I speak to Burks?” he asked. “Not there? Well take this message for him: Have Burks drop over to Clyde Dewarren’s house. Ex-Emperor Zero will be locked up in a hollow copper statue…. No, I’m not crazy. Zero will be in the statue in a room in the attic surrounded by all his paraphernalia. Clyde Dewarren, Zero’s prisoner, is tied up down in the basement…. No, there will be no gas attack tonight. But—and get this straight—do not enter the house without cutting all electrical mains. There are switches in here that can open up hell. Got all that?… Who am I? I imagine Burks will know. I wish him happy hunting.”
Agent X broke the connection and turned to Betty. He took her by the arm and led her from the room and
from the house. “After a discreet absence, you can come back here and get a scoop for your paper,” he said.
“And you? What are you going to do?” Betty asked softly.
“Nothing left for me to do but say goodnight.” He released her arm and was off across the lawn. Soon, shadows swallowed the man of mystery. Down the street, a siren wailed, coming ever nearer. And floating through the darkness came an eerie, vibrant whistle that Betty Dale knew for the musical mark of X.
Dividends of Doom
Chapter I
GREEN CHINA CAT
A LAZY FOG of blue incense smoke drifted about the room of Wong Fun. Its cloying odor mingled with the pungent perfume of pale sui-sin-fah lilies that clustered in exquisite Chinese vases about the room. It was night. The clatter of Chinatown traffic was muffled by heavy drapes that hung at the windows. Not even the blaring of a radio invaded the silence of the room that waited to minister to the comforts of the aged Wong Fun, wealthiest of Chinese merchants.
Somewhere within the rambling apartment that topped Wong Fun’s shop, a door scraped open. Ominous, that sound, since there were no other sounds to follow it. No footsteps.
The incense cloud was wafted ever so slightly by the motion of curtains of Hang-chiu silk suspended over a doorway. The curtains had parted slightly to admit a hand that was closed about a shapeless bundle of waste cotton. The hand was remarkably thin and hairless; the flesh that tightened over protruding knuckles was pale brownish yellow.
The hand hovered for a moment before descending to the elaborately inlaid top of a teakwood table. There the long fingers moved with skill and care to untangle the cotton waste from the fragile looking object it contained. The hand then vanished from whence it had come. After a moment the curtains regained their motionless drape and the fog of incense drifted leisurely once more in its endless course about the room.
But it wasn’t the same room. The atmosphere of luxury, indolence, and relaxation was eclipsed by something of a sinister portent. Now, the cat was there.
On gracefully curved haunches, forepaws placed with feline daintiness and forelegs stiffly straight, the cat sat there on the black table. It was scarcely more than four inches tall and beautifully executed in glazed, jade-colored china. Poised upon a neck somewhat exaggerated in length, was a head, that while catlike in contour, had an almost human mouth and nose. The eyes—it had no eyes except acutely slanting slits as inscrutable as the eyes of a Chinaman.
From the front of the room came the sound of footsteps placed somewhat heavily upon the thickly carpeted stairs that led down into the shop. A door opened and Wong Fun entered. Clad in a tailor-made suit of the white man’s navy serge, Wong Fun on entering this, his sanctum, drew about his portly figure a robe of green silk adorned with the motif of the Celestial Dragon. Upon his round head was a black skull cap that, had its owner not left China in his youth, might well have been distinguished by the coral bead of a mandarin.
He crossed the room, glanced at the little tea-table with its tempting rice cakes and rare old wine. All to his liking. Gathering his silken robe about him as best he could, he was on the point of seating himself in his short-backed teakwood chair when he noticed the green china cat. Wong Fun’s smile vanished.
His face became that of a fat little Buddha, thinking without exertion. The cat—Wong Fun had never seen it before. Nay, it seemed to him that he had never seen its like. It was not of China as was everything else in the room. Yet it was not of America. Certainly not of New York.
Wong Fun approached the cat cautiously. There was something about its odd womanish face and its evil slits of eyes that demanded attention, but cautious attention. He extended his plump yellow hand. His fingers closed about the figurine and he lifted it from its resting place. The forefinger of his left hand pressed against his flat nose as he regarded the cat unsmilingly. He was holding it so, standing near the Hang-chiu curtains, when there came a tap at his door.
“Who is it, if you please?” Wong Fun asked in perfect English. He did not take his eyes from the jade green head of the cat that protruded from between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
“It’s Lynn, dad,” came the reply.
A slight frown crossed the brow of Wong Fun. For a moment, he seemed to have forgot the green china cat. His lips moved slightly, his voice was chilly as he said, in Cantonese: “Enter, son of my luckless days.”
THE door opened to admit a slight young man, immaculately clad in evening clothes. Aside from velvety yellow skin, Wong Kee Lim—for so he had been christened, adopting the Americanised name of Lynn Wong when he had attained his majority in New York—might have been a debonair, young man-about-town, so completely had he departed from the customs and usages of his ancestors. But as he met the steadfast, inquiring eyes of his father, the young man’s poise deserted him. His sleek head drooped. “Dad,” he spoke humbly, “I’ve got to have some money.”
Wong Fun nodded slowly. He touched his forehead with the tips of the fingers of his left hand. “True it is indeed, that the intelligence is not proof against the unrelenting corrosion of time,” he continued in his native tongue. “This I might have known. Thine too frequent visits always must be occasioned by the gnawing of an empty purse.”
Lynn Wong’s lips tightened. He still avoided his father’s eyes, but in his own were cold, angry lights. He shrugged insolently. “You don’t understand, Dad. Times have changed. A fellow’s got to have money for clothes and entertainment and food.”
Wong Fun nodded wisely. “And so you come to me. This time I offer you the consolation of ancient wisdom. You go from this house tonight a wiser man, for is it not said that an empty belly is the father of a full mind?”
Lynn Wong gestured dejectedly with his hands. “You mean you won’t give me any money ?”
Wong Fun smiled slightly. “Ancient words have proved excellent truth. Already you grow wiser.”
“Then—then—” Lynn Wong took two quick steps toward his father and stopped in his tracks. His sloe-black eyes were riveted upon Wong Fun’s right hand, upon the head of the green china cat. The youth’s hand extended slightly. It was quivering like a yellow leaf. Then it dropped helplessly to his side. His lips parted as though he was about to speak, they closed again, tightly, determinedly. He pivoted and with head erect on lean shoulders, stalked to the door. There, he turned, seemed once more to be on the point of speaking.
“My son,” Wong Fun’s voice was suddenly compassionate.
“You—you’ll be sorry for this!” Lynn Wong cut in. Then he seized the doorknob angrily, wrenched it, and stepped into the hall.
But with the door closed, the young Chinese lost all his defiant, threatening attitude. His shoulders slumped, his head hung. And with slow steps of a man twice his age, he walked down the stairs. The door leading into the shop, he opened to slam noisily without going through. A thinning in the shadows of the dark staircase might have found a look of cunning on the face of Wong Kee Lim, alias Lynn Wong.
BACK in his luxurious sanctum, Wong Fun uttered a prodigious sigh. He turned from the door through which his son had passed. Once again his attention returned to the sinister little cat in his hand. Because he was of orderly habits, Wong Fun was about to return it to the table from whence he had got it when he noticed that the Hang-chiu curtains were waving almost imperceptibly. Had his old senses been playing him tricks or had he seen the glint of an eye through the curtains? With a stealthiness that came habitually when he faced a matter of doubt or danger, Wong Fun crossed the room to the curtains.
He parted them hesitatingly, then flung them back in order to enter the room. Beyond was a realm of shadow, scarcely penetrated by the dim light from his living room. He entered cautiously yet unafraid. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he saw, directly across the room in front of him, a man—a man whose shadowy figure was tall and broad shouldered, whose height was accented by a peculiar brimless, conical cap. Eyes with the hardness and glint of hematite showed betw
een slits in a black domino mask.
Wong Fun stood still. A surprised gasp escaped his lips. “You—”
The man in the conical tarboosh did not move. Motion, in fact, was confined to another part of the room. Wong Fun turned his head. His indrawn breath was audible. Out of the gloom two yellow-green eyes stared unblinking. Eyes of death. Then the eyes were in motion, hurtling like twin flaming meteors out of the abyss of night straight at the upright form of Wong Fun.
The silence of the apartment was fraught with a scream of terror and a snarl of killer’s lust. Two heavy bodies struck the floor. Then mingling with hideous, throaty growls and the scudding sound of the struggling flesh on soft carpet was the creak of a door opening. No footsteps.
The crunch of bone. A burbling exhalation. Then from outside the building came another sound. It was a soulless, inhuman wail that started in a low, vibrant note and mounted to a quivering crescendo. “Kwa-a-a-oo-wee.” A heart-chilling, blood-freezing, banshee cry audible throughout the streets of Chinatown.
Half a block from the shop of Wong Fun, a tall man had turned into the doorway of the headquarters of the Ming Tong, powerful secret Chinese society. But at the prolonged, weird cry, he turned and re-entered the street. Light from a yellow lamp above the Tong headquarters door illuminated the tall Chinaman’s yellow face, his broad nose with slightly distended nostrils, somnolent eyes and a drooping mustache over thin lips. He listened a moment.
“Kwa-a-a-oo-wee.” The cry again, And this time the Chinese had no doubt as to its direction. He cut diagonally across the street, moving with a swift, crouching pace. As he passed the shop of Wong Fun, the night was startled by the crash of a window glass. The tall Chinese stopped, looked up at the curtained windows of the Wong Fun apartment. Then his eyes darted up and down the street. He seemed to make a sudden decision, and flattened himself against the door of the shop. From the pocket of his jacket he produced a key, inserted it in the lock, and quickly opened the door.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 6 Page 10