Sandra Phelps had sunk into a sullen silence. Gray actually effervesced. “What do you suppose the young woman could have been up to? Chinatown—tsk-tsk-tsk! No place for a girl. And decent looking! Say, Mr. Swenson, I feel right guilty having said anything about what Karahmud told me about the girl. After all, he’s a greasy foreigner and not addicted to truth telling. Why once—”
Sandra Phelps’ scream keened out again. Stuart Gray jerked upright. “Don’t do that, lady!” Then his eyes followed hers, to stare in jaw-sagging wonder at the rear window of the cab.
And Agent X saw them—two baleful eyes of greenish yellow fire glaring at them through the window of the speeding cab.
“Stop the car!” he shouted. And even before the car had come to a stop, he had opened the door and leaped to the street. As he rounded the car, gas pistol in his hand, something thudded to the pavement. A thickening in the gloom moved with tireless, effortless swiftness across the street. Across the old, soot-laden roofs of Chinatown echoed the weird, wailing: “Kaw-a-a-oo-wee.”
Swiftly, cautiously, X followed the slinking monster until a dark runway between two closely set houses swallowed the thing. Pursuit through such gloom, especially pursuit of a thing the black of midnight was impossible. He turned back toward the street….
Back in the taxi, the excited Stuart Gray felt something cold and hard jammed in beneath his ribs. He turned startled eyes on his fair, auburn-haired companion. “But my dear lady—”
“Tell the driver to go on.” Sandra Phelps said between clenched teeth. “You’re getting out at the next corner.
“But—”
“Do you want me to kill you?”
“No—no. Not at all.”
“Then drive on!”
Chapter III
SONG OF SUDDEN DEATH
FEW can boast of having passed beyond the reception room of the Colonial Research Foundation, that extensive suite of offices on the fifth floor of the Merwick Building. A courteous, but very determined, young woman has never been known to admit to the inner offices anyone without proper credentials. Exactly what type of research goes on within those secretive walls is a mystery. There is never any noise and little going and coming, though the front door is open twenty-four hours a day.
The central office of the suite is provided with a resilient rubber floor and heavy cork-insulated walls. In the middle of the room is what appears to be a large console of pipe organ. Actually, it is a combination desk and complicated switchboard, where telephone, radio-phone, or radio-telegraph messages may be sent and received. This complicated mechanism is actually the brain of a mammoth electrical octopus, the tentacles of which span the globe. The Colonial Research Foundation, for all its deceiving front, is the office of Harvey Bates, key man of Agent X’s most powerful investigation group.
The evening following the death of Wong Fun, Harvey Bates was seated at the console-like desk in the secret room. When seated, a caricature of Harvey Bates might have been worked out entirely with squares. His shoulders were so broad and his chest so deep that he appeared not above medium height. Actually, he topped six feet. His jaw was square. There was a sort of bulldog ferocity about it that was frequently tempered by a benignant smile.
His nose was large, but then so was the rest of his body. His eyes, beneath black hair that was always shaggy, no matter how frequently it had been barbered, were dark and serious with the grave responsibility that rested with him.
For a man in such an important position, Harvey Bates wore very commonplace clothes. When there was a crease in his dark, shiny trousers, that was news. And at that very moment he had removed his right shoe and was in the act of trying to pull out an annoying nail that protruded from a run-down rubber heel.
A soft buzzing sound came from the console. Harvey Bates dropped his shoe, swung around, and confronted a bewildering array of what appeared to be stops on the organlike console. One of these “stops” bearing the word “Outer” was illuminated. Harvey Bates plugged at the illuminated button with a broad, capable thumb. A feminine voice from a concealed reproducer within the console, said: “A Mr. Timothy Scallot.”
HARVEY BATES’ dark brow became stormy. Habit forced him to pick up a blackened pipe with a bowl as square as his jaw, and set its gnawed bit between large teeth. “Moment,” he clipped the word precisely and scowled and gnawed for several moments. Scallot! What the devil was Scallot doing here. His orders had been to report any unusual happenings at police headquarters by phone.
Speaking once more into a small microphone, Bates said: “Identify Scallot. Will see him.” And Bates thumbed another button marked, Identification. “Hello, Identification. Project prints of T.S. 962 on my desk.”
A moment later, a small glass screen on Bates’ desk was illuminated and projected upon its surface was a full set of fingerprints. Bates pressed the outer office switch again and said: “Go ahead.” Immediately, upon the same glass screen, appeared another picture, a complete set of fingerprints that compared perfectly with the specimen from file T.S. 962. Bates nodded his head at no one, pressed a button beneath his desk, and immediately a door in the cork panel was opened.
A young man with a scraggy jaw, bleak blue eyes, and an atrocious bottle green hat, stepped into the room. He saluted airily. “Lo, Mr. Bates. As hard to get in here as it is to get in prison.”
Bates was pulling on his shoe, annoying nail and all. “Not find it hard—” grunt—“to get in prison—” grunt—“if you keep coming here.” Bates straightened up, then stood up, and paced over to Timothy Scallot.
Scallot looked worried in spite of attempted nonchalance. “Couldn’t get near a phone that didn’t have one of my fellow dicks attached to it,” Scallot explained. “I’ve got a risky job. Always trouble.”
Harvey Bates groaned. “Lucky. Give a good deal for a little trouble once in a while. Going to seed.”
Timothy Scallot surveyed Bates’ powerful figure from heel to head. “You don’t look at it. But say, what I came here for was to ask who this Felice Vincart is everybody’s looking for.”
Harvey Bates jaw opened. His square pipe fell to the floor unheeded. “Who is—” He wheeled, with a swiftness that belied his elephantine build, to the console switchboard. He touched a button. When a male voice answered, he said: “Thumbnail of Felice Vincart.”
The “thumbnail” came from the loud speaker in a moment and loud enough to be heard throughout the room: “Felice Vincart, alias notorious Leopard Lady. Seeks crime for a thrill. Formerly associated with gang known as Corpse Legion. Booked at police headquarters for murder. Escaped capture mysteriously when that gang was wiped out. Whereabouts unknown at present.”
Bates flicked the switch, recovered his pipe, and smiled at Timothy Scallot. “Nice girl,” came his clipped sarcasm.
Timothy Scallot pulled off his bottle-green hat. “Take this down.”
Bates flung into his chair, picked up a stub of a pencil, and moistened its tip. “Shoot!”
Timothy Scallot “shot” like a trained reporter. “Felice Vincart, notorious Leopard Lady wanted by police believed to have been located by one Henry Farington, millionaire zoologist. Mr. Farington reserved all details until special conference at his estate at eight o’clock tonight. Inspector John Burks of the homicide squad will arrive at Farington’s at that time.”
“All?”
Scallot nodded. “And if I can get out of this place—”
Bates pressed a button. The door in the cork-paneled wall opened. Scallot eagerly left.
Bates sighed. He envied Scallot—the spice of danger in his position, the constant action and intrigue. Then he shrugged, muttering philosophically something about every man to his job. Cramming shaggy black tobacco into the scarred bowl of his pipe, he turned lackluster eyes on the complicated switchboard in front of him. As he fired his pipe with a match, the button marked “Outer” glowed again. Bates thumbed it and sat up suddenly as a voice—a clear, deep, masculine voice—came through the loud sp
eaker:
“Will you please convince this delightful young woman that I am not a cutthroat, that I have not come to rob and plunder, and that I really have a right in this office?”
Bates’ pipe dropped from his mouth, scattering glowing particles on his shiny trousers. The last man on earth to stammer, Harvey Bates had to wait a moment before he could get out a definite reply. “Certainly, chief. Come in!” Bates slouched to his feet and walked like a man in his sleep toward the secret door panel. The chief! The man who was known to Bates only as a voice or a mysterious telegraph code. The man who knew all the dangers that Harvey Bates longed to know.
BATES stared at the panel, suddenly remembered that he had not unlocked it, and returned to his desk. He pressed the hidden switch, turned around, and uttered a startled grunt. A slight expression of disappointment passed across his square face. The man who had entered the office was not an inch taller than Bates and by no means as broad. There was nothing at all remarkable about his features, and his clothes were a bit more disreputable than those of Harvey Bates. But his eyes—they slapped Bates across the face with tangible, driving force.
And suddenly Bates began to smile. It was the dynamic punch of those eyes of Agent X that had done the trick. Here was a man of power. “You—you’re—”
Agent X lithely crossed to the switchboard and made certain that all the switches were closed. Then he turned to Bates, a friendly smile on his lips. “It’s time we met,” he said quietly.
Harvey Bates came forward, his big right hand outstretched. “Little shock.” His old clipped manner of speaking had returned. “Never thought I’d see your face.”
The eyes of Agent X twinkled. He said nothing. For his commonplace features were part of the disguise he had assumed.
Their hands met in a firm, hard grasp. And Bates, powerful and rugged as he was, felt the steel in the handshake of Secret Agent X.
“Message for you from Scallot.” Bates picked up a scrap of paper from his desk and handed it to the Agent.
X glanced at it, muttered something under his breath. Then his intense eyes fastened on Bates. “We’ve a lot of work to do, my friend.”
“Always try to do my part,” said Bates.
“And this time, I’ll need more than that. Do you want to go into the field?”
Bates stared incredulously. “You mean—I get action?”
The Secret Agent’s eyes were deadly serious. “I see that it appeals, my friend.” Agent X nodded slowly, his admiration for Bates growing. “I’d like you to take over the Chinatown sector, personally. Your assignment is to get into Karahmud’s shop. Use your own judgment in all emergencies. Put a good man on this switchboard, and report at ten minute intervals by radio. Take a gun. But remember our job is to see criminals into the hands of justice, not to kill them. Keep your eyes open for little green china cats about four inches high. I don’t know what they are—but all who touch them are marked for death.”
X moved toward the door. Then turning abruptly, he left the office.
A black coupé was parked in front of the Merwick Building, and in it a girl whose rare charm and blonde beauty had long been an inspiration to Agent X. She was Betty Dale, star reporter on the Herald, who had many times proved her loyalty and affection for the mysterious Agent whose real face she had never seen. X had picked her up as she left the newspaper office that evening, and he joined her in the car a minute after he had left Harvey Bates’ office.
“And now, Betty, to get on with our conversation about this auburn-haired young lady who prowls around Chinatown. As I was saying, I left her and this Stuart Gray alone in the taxi. When I got back to the street, Gray, girl and taxi had vanished. The redheaded girl has a weakness for stealing taxicabs as well.”
“How do you know that Stuart Gray didn’t steal taxi and girl?” asked Betty.
X SHRUGGED. “I don’t. Only Gray doesn’t strike me as a kidnaper of girls.”
Betty sniffed contemptuously. “You should see him standing around stage doors! Quite a Johnny with his gold-plated smile.”
“You know him?”
“I’ve seen him once or twice. He’s all right, I guess. Want me to look him up?”
“Yes. You could go into his office to get a blurb for the beauty column or something.”
“I don’t write beauty columns.”
X looked at her lovely face, her merry blue eyes, her winsome mouth. “No one is better suited to write about beauty,” he said softly.
Betty flushed slightly. “Not even the auburn-haired thief of Chinatown?”
“Not even Sandra Phelps. That was the name she gave.”
“Sandra Phelps!” Betty started up straight and stared at X in surprise. “Why, Sandra Phelps is an heiress. It was her elder brother who married—” Betty placed her hand impulsively on X’s arm—“your old enemy, Felice Vincart. Don’t you remember? Young Phelps snatched Felice from the stage. He died during their wedding trip—was buried somewhere in the Orient. Oh, you must be careful! I am certain that Felice Vincart is alive. Woman’s intuition, if you like. She’d stop at nothing to square things with you.”
“I’ll be careful,” X promised, as he stopped the car in front of Betty’s apartment. “And take care of yourself—for me.”
Hard driving brought X to the gateway of the famous Farington Estate. It was a quarter to eight. Inspector Burks was not due until eight. That gave X fifteen minutes in which to contrive an entrance into Farington’s closely guarded home. The house, X knew, was situated in the center of an elaborate zoological garden. It was literally surrounded by cages and dens of wild animals. On week ends, the estate and its zoo were open to the public until nightfall, but tonight the locked gates and tall iron fence offered imposing barriers.
X parked his car well off the road and in the shadow, got out and walked up to the gate. It was then that he nearly fell over something that lay in the very center of the drive. He dropped to his knees, knowing instinctively that it was the body of a man.
Turning the tiny beam of his pen-light on the unconscious form, he saw that the man wore the blue and brocaded uniform of the head keeper of Farington’s zoo. The man had taken a nasty blow on the head. The fact that the keeper had been knocked out, told him that there was some one in the vicinity who considered the keeper either dangerous or in the way.
X lifted the unconscious man in his arms and carried him to a small gate-house. Working swiftly in the light of his flashlight, Agent X performed another miracle. His compact pocket make-up kit furnished plastic volatile material with which he duplicated the keeper’s features. A toupee simulated the man’s gray hair.
Next, he changed clothes with the unconscious man. A glance in the folding mirror in the top of his make-up kit told him that the likeness was sufficient to deceive anyone he might meet while prowling on the Farington grounds. His greatest danger lay in the fact that he knew nothing of the keeper’s voice and mannerisms. Having transferred his special equipment into the pockets of the uniform he wore, X went to the gate, unlocked it, and hurried toward the house.
As he neared the large white house, the sound of voices came to the Agent’s ears. He saw several persons seated on a lighted terrace stretching from narrow French windows on the south side of the house. Keeping well within the shadows, X approached the terrace to find a vantage point in a group of tall junipers that clustered against the white walls of the house.
There he could clearly see three men. Henry Farington was the one with long flowing white hair, and wandering, jet-black eyes. Farington sat in a deck chair and nervously crossed and uncrossed his legs. One of his companions, X recognized as Stuart Gray, the cosmetic manufacturer. Gray was genially boring his host with some sort of a story as X attained his listening post.
“This Swenson fellow, was quite the typical detective, Farington,” Gray was saying, “and I offered to take him and this thieving young woman to the police station. We were rolling along, Swenson doing most of the talking, when I hap
pened to look over my shoulder and see two green eyes staring at us through the window of the cab.”
HENRY FARINGTON made a sour mouth. “Entirely too much drinking, Stuart,” he said in a crackling voice.
The third man, a heavy-set person, painfully conscious of a mouthful of false teeth, popped out of his chair and skipped over to Farington. “How much longer do we have to listen to this drivel?
“How much longer, I say? I’ve made you a fair offer, Farington. Five thousand for the pair of cats, and no more. What do you say?”
“Oh, sit down, Mr. Bunn!” Farington growled irritatively. He put his hands to his gray hair and rocked his head slowly back and forth. “That policeman—will he ever come? Pay taxes for police protection, then when I want help—bah! Waiting, waiting, waiting!”
Smiling broadly, Stuart Gray tapped Farington on the shoulder. “Just relax, Farington, old man.”
“Don’t call me old man!”
“That’s exactly what you are!” piped Mr. Bunn. “A crabbed old dyspeptic.”
“Now, now, no offense,” said Gray hastily. “Let me tell you what happened next. When I saw those green eyes, I said to myself, ‘Stuart, your place is with the young lady. Even if she is a thief. Keep your eye on her.’ Then I called Swenson’s attention to the green eyes.”
Farington groaned.
But Stuart Gray was a hard man to squelch. He went on relating how Sandra Phelps had finally forced him at the point of a gun to leave the cab. “That’s adventure,” he concluded eventually.
At the moment, a servant appeared in the door to announce Inspector John Burks. Farington took a long breath. “Show him out here.”
But John Burks was a man who needed no showing. Hardly had Farington uttered the words than the inspector shouldered through the door. Behind him was his capable aide, Detective Keegan, whom X had met on several occasions. Burks greeted Farington and his two companions with brisk courtesy, settled his beefy form in a chair, and took out a notebook. “Now, just what’s your trouble?” he asked like a physician facing a new patient.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 6 Page 13