Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 6

by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

  He looked at King’s watch, saw that it was seven fifteen, and strode to the hall. Steps sounded below as he descended the stairs. King’s wife, a pretty, gray-haired woman, came toward him worriedly.

  “I hate to have you take a plane, Norton, at night like this. Couldn’t you possibly wait until tomorrow?”

  Those few words told X that Mrs. King had no inkling of her husband’s mission. He patted her arm, spoke in the voice that he had carefully memorized from the dictograph cylinder he had picked up in Bates’ office. “Don’t you worry. There’s nothing to flying these days. I’ll be safer than I would in a taxi. This deal can’t be put off; but you’ll hear from me in the morning.”

  There was a vaguely troubled, uneasy look in the woman’s eyes. X kissed her on the cheek and strode to the door with a cheery: “Good bye.” He took a deep breath of relief when he was outside.

  A taxi bore him to the downtown bank where he had learned previously that the suitcase of cash was ready. The bank employees, waiting overtime for his arrival, accepted him as King. He took the suitcase and was driven in twenty minutes to the City Airport.

  His pulses stirred faster at sight of the trim monoplane drawn up on the cement apron before him. The engine was already ticking over, warming. The pilot was sitting ready at the controls. It was a swift, two-seater, open-cockpit job, with the pilot riding forward.

  A man from the operations office came toward X, holding a big coonskin coat, helmet and goggles.

  “I think you made a mistake chartering an open ship tonight, Mr. King. We’ve plenty of cabin planes. You’d have been warmer in one of them.”

  “I like fresh air,” X muttered grimly.

  “Take these then,” said the airport attendant. He helped the Agent into the big coat and handed him the helmet. “Good luck to you, Mr. King. Pleasant landing!” The man touched his cap, and the Agent strode away. It wasn’t the first time he had started on a perilous night flight; but seldom had he felt more strongly that he was heading into the unknown.

  The pilot jumped down from his cockpit to help X in. He grinned, said: “You’ve got your nerve with you, Mr. King. Most kiwis wouldn’t take an open ship at night.” He paused as X adjusted his goggles, added a little anxiously: “Due west was what you said, I think?”

  “Yes, and don’t forget to keep your wing lights on.”

  “Where will you be wanting to land?”

  “You’ve got your radio. You’ll get instructions later on. Follow them.”

  THE pilot still looked anxious. “It’s pretty indefinite, sir. What altitude would you like?”

  “Two thousand will do, and—” the Agent lowered his voice grimly—“don’t be surprised or lose your nerve whatever happens. If you handle the plane nicely there’ll be a hundred dollar bonus.”

  Again the pilot saluted, and the grin came back to his face. “Count on me, sir. You’ve got a good man at the stick. I grew my wings at Kelly.”

  The Secret Agent, experienced veteran of the air, saw at once that his pilot knew his job.

  The monoplane taxied down the field, turned gracefully into the wind and sped forward. It took off without the slightest jar of air-cushioned wheels, nosed upward with the smooth, swift motion of an elevator. The plane seemed still. The ground appeared to drop behind and fall backward. The pilot banked, leveled out and straightened, and the plane roared toward the west with the lights of the city glowing far below.

  Night wind, keen as a tonic, whipped at the Agent’s face. He thrilled as always to the swift, effortless pace of flying, but it did not distract him from the grim mission that lay ahead. The rhythmic hum of the big radial engine told that every cylinder was functioning. He only wished he could be as sure of his destiny as he was of the pilot and this plane.

  Miles fled behind. The city gave way to a long stretch of black country with faint lights showing here and there, as though the sky had been inverted and these were dim stars poking through the clouds. Up overhead gray mist lay in a solid, curtaining wall, with the moon shining somewhere far above it.

  The Agent looked at the radium figures of his wrist-watch. Eight thirty. An uneasy sense of waiting filled him. When would the sinister criminals send out their unseen instructions? X did not know. The plane droned steadily westward. In a half hour they had gone almost a hundred miles. He held the suitcase of cash gripped firmly between his knees.

  Then he started. His goggled eyes, with the true airman’s sense, roved over ground and sky alike in continuous restless scrutiny. And ahead of them, close to the ragged edge of the gray mist he saw dimly a drifting shadow. It was no more than that. But the pale light of the moon above, made it discernible to one who had studied endless miles of sky hours on end. The Agent’s fingers tautened. He watched with breathless interest, conscious of the dull beat of his own heart.

  The shadow of the other plane was moving crosswise to the course they were taking. But, as they passed under it, it straightened, followed. It was at least a thousand feet above. The young pilot up front, bent over his controls, waiting for a radio message, hadn’t seen it. That was evident, for he hadn’t turned.

  The plane came down like a gray specter of the clouds, its superior altitude giving it added speed as it dived.

  For a moment X thought its purpose was to crash them. He had a picture of a flaming, spinning wreck dropping toward earth. His hand reached out instinctively to take the controls. But there were none in his cockpit; and his quick brain told him that gold-greedy criminals would take no chances with two hundred thousand dollars in cash. They must have some other plan.

  He saw what it was in a moment. As the unlighted plane came directly above, speed synchronized with theirs, a black something dangled below it.

  The pilot of X’s plane heard the roar of the other motor and lifted his head. His sudden awareness of this ghostly sky presence was reflected in a lurch of the ship. He started to nose downward. But X tapped his shoulder, and, when the young pilot turned, he shook his head. The pilot leveled and held his course grimly.

  X waited grimly, too. The black object had resolved itself into a man. He was hanging on the end of a rope ladder as the gray plane settled lower. Already one arm was reaching out. Under the glow of the cockpit light something glinted in it. The man held a gun. This was how the criminals intended to make their contact. This was their foolproof scheme to pick up the cash. It was simple as well as daring, but the Secret Agent’s mouth set in a hard, straight line.

  The man on the rope ladder was only twelve feet above him now. He was making gestures with his gun, beckoning. X could dimly see the gleam of his goggled eyes like those of some huge crustacean.

  X raised the suitcase, shook it. The man above him nodded. The belly of the other ship slid farther down. X didn’t rise. He made the swinging, goggled figure drop to within a few feet. He waited till the man’s arm had almost touched the suitcase handle. Then he made a desperate upward lunge, dropping the suitcase back into the cockpit, locking his arms around the goggled figure. The man screamed and let his weapon fall. He struggled fiercely, struck at the Agent’s ribs with savage blows. Then, while they battled, the two ships drew apart. X was drawn bodily out of the cockpit, pulled across the padded coaming, lifted into black and dizzy space.

  Chapter VIII

  WEBS OF CRIME

  HE had made no attempt to save himself before it was too late by letting go. He knew his desperate danger. But the blazing light of battle was in his eyes. The Agent was a gambler, staking everything now.

  Wind clutched and tore at him with giant fingers. The man he grasped was a human pendulum swinging in a sickening arc, a plunging weight of dynamic fury, seeking to break his hold and send him hurtling into the black void below. The man’s fist beat a tattoo against his body. The man’s breath fanned against his face. The gleaming, goggled eyes glared deadly hate.

  In those first few seconds the Agent realized that one of them must die. Death yawned beneath them, waiting. Death howled a pa
ean of frenzy in the biting lash of the wind. Death could not be put off. And this man was a killer, one of a pack of killers, pledged to plunder and terrorize society. The Agent with his own eyes had seen the horror of the bloating death.

  The man’s leg was twisted firmly in the squares of the rope ladder. He was braced, secure, while the Agent still depended on his arms. All the demonic forces of destruction seemed to hold him at a disadvantage.

  The fingers of his left hand clutched a rope strand behind the man’s straining body. He risked freeing his right, clamped his legs around the other, and struck with piston blows. Under the force of them the man screamed again. Then his arms flew up, he crooked both hands around the Agent’s throat. He pressed with the merciless ferocity of a killer.

  Stars that had no existence streamed for a moment before the Agent’s eyes. Pain speared his windpipe. His spinal cord seemed breaking. He stiffened the hard muscles of his neck against those jabbing thumbs. He struck blindly, steadily, and the man’s grip did not weaken.

  The heavy leather flying coat that the other wore was padded like a quilt. Fists against his body had little effect.

  The Agent jerked back, risking a loosening of his hold, forcing the man before him to straighten his arms. The strangling thumbs still held, biting deep into the Agent’s glottis, shutting off his wind. The Agent struck up between them in a rocket-like jab that brought his knuckles against the man’s bony chin. The man quivered, and his thumb hold lessened slightly. He butted his head forward savagely against the Agent’s face. His helmeted skull pressed in the Agent’s goggles, almost broke them against his eyes. Pain racked his forehead.

  Again his fist flew up, striking at a more acute angle, meeting the hard flesh of the other’s jaw. The man sagged forward. The Agent twisted away. The hands at his throat broke loose, seeming to tear flesh with them.

  The man freed one leg from the ladder and lashed out with his doubled-up knee. It caught the Agent in the side. For an instant pain almost catapulted him to his death. The man’s knee struck close to an old scar on the Agent’s body; a scar made long ago by shrapnel, shaped like a crude X. It was a vulnerable spot. Under the weight of the blow the Agent’s heart seemed nearly to stop and blackness pressed at his brain.

  He twisted again, swinging sidewise out into space, sensing dimly that the man’s knee would strike again. It did, but this time glanced off the Agent’s coat. X put all his ebbing strength into his arm. His fist connected again with the man’s bony jaw. The man doubled up. His body jack-knifed forward. A shriek tore from his slobbering lips as he plunged downward. His trailing hands clutched desperately at the Agent’s coat, almost taking X with him. In a moment he was gone, swallowed by the night.

  Weakly, dizzily, the Agent gripped the dancing ladder. Then his eyes jerked up to the roaring ship above. He tried to climb toward it. For an instant, silhouetted against the moon-blanched clouds, he saw the monster-like fuselage of the plane, with wings outspread. He caught a glimpse of the helmeted head of the pilot.

  Then a light winked on. A dazzling, lancing beam fell on the Agent’s upturned face, blinding him utterly. He swung backwards with all his might, under the belly of the ship, avoiding the beam. Momentum brought him back in a moment, the light caught him again, and a sinister cough above the roar of the skycraft’s motor told X that the pilot was shooting. The leaden lash of a bullet brushed his arm.

  HE clawed at his heavy coat. His hand plunged down to a pocket beneath it. His fingers came back grasping the butt of an automatic. With deadly, desperate aim he fired upward. His first shot missed. His second sent the light spinning into space. He did not know whether he’d struck the pilot, or merely hit the flash. His eyes were still blinded by its beam.

  In a moment they cleared, and the winking flame above him told that the man overhead was still firing. The Agent pumped the trigger and the firing ceased.

  For a second his heart stood still. He started to climb desperately. What if he had killed the pilot?

  He had no time to think. Inhuman force seemed to strike him. The wind became a substance, rock-hard against his body. The rope ladder tautened like steel as the ship dived, jerking it back. The roaring of the motor above him became a piercing howl. The plane was plunging earthward.

  He waited, teeth clenched, hands like talons, his body straightening out like a fish drawn behind a speedboat. The plane, which had been above, was now almost ahead of him. Its speed mounted till the wind in its wings was a scream.

  At first he thought the pilot had been shot and had lost control, then he sensed that the man was alive and filled with deadly purpose. He was power diving deliberately, trying to whip the Agent off. Somewhere below the black ground was rushing up. The mad dive continued through seconds that were eternities. Only the Agent’s steely muscles prevented him from losing his hold. There could be no question of climbing now. If he hung on he would be lucky.

  Breath came from his mouth in a choking gasp. He had turned his head slightly, into the teeth of the wind. He was staring down. The black earth had taken form and shape. There were lights showing, the lights of a broad highway. The pilot was plunging toward this. The man above had devised a sure way of killing him. In a matter of seconds now his body would strike; either against the trees that lined the highway, or against the wires strung along it. The pilot was taking a chance to destroy him, counting that the frail rope would break, that X would be torn from his hold or battered into jelly.

  The plane began flattening slightly as the man above lifted its nose. He was pulling out of his dive, to save his own life as he neared the ground. The plane heeled over like a ship in a storm. It was almost level. The pilot brought it around in a screaming bank. He headed straight for the glistening telephone wires that edged the road. With lessening speed, the Agent’s body trailed lower.

  He saw the wires rushing toward him. They would cut him in two, shred his body like meat across a chopper. He saw wires—and in front of them he saw something else. There was a glint of reflected light on water—a pond or lake lay beside the highway!

  With teeth clenched, knowing that certain death awaited him if he held on an instant longer, the Agent let go his hold and dropped. His body turned over and over in the air under the thrust of his battering momentum. He could see nothing, hear nothing, save the roar of the wind in his ears. An instant, without his knowing it, his life hung by a slender thread. For the arc of his fall carried him almost beyond the pond, up to its very edge.

  He struck in six feet of icy water with a mighty splash. Half on his back, half on his shoulders, the air was knocked from his lungs. The pond’s surface seemed as unyielding as cement, so great was his speed. Only his thick coat saved him from broken bones. He ploughed through the water, choking, gasping, finally coming to a stop, feet jammed among slimy reeds.

  His coat weighted him like a mantle of lead. He lay for a minute too dazed to move, then pulled himself weakly upright.

  Something moved above the string of roadway lights. A gray shadow flattened, turned. The plane was coming back!

  X sensed what this would mean. He tried to move and his knees sank into thick black mud. He fell forward on his face and reached for the reed stems. A roaring monster swept down upon him.

  The plane’s landing lights and a spotlight mounted on the motor cowling were on. It skimmed down so low that its airwheels almost brushed the back of the Agent. The pilot had seen him, realized that X wasn’t dead. The man was shooting insanely.

  Bullets spattered in the mud close to X making miniature craters, sending black viscid jets against his face. One plucked at his shoulder, ripped the coat sleeve open. The plane swept on, and darkness closed in again. The Agent drew himself slowly into the reeds.

  LATER that night, three mysterious figures sat in a darkened room. Masks concealed their faces. The glint of their eyes through slitted holes in the thick material was sinister, covetous, determined. They crouched like grim vultures around a wide-topped table. There was tens
eness, a miasmal, unwholesome quality in the very air of the room as though the members of the strange trio were carrion creatures gathered there for some horrible, secret feast.

  They appeared to be hardly breathing. Their postures were frozen. Their glittering gazes were fixedly intent. No sound penetrated the chamber till one of them gave a short harsh laugh, coming almost as an explosion in the silence. The words which followed, low and muffled by the fabric across his mouth, were like whispering echoes in the hideous twilight of a tomb.

  “We’ve been fools!” he grated. “Fools to run the risk of letting this man live when we might have killed him. Fools!”

  Another of the masked figures nodded in bitter agreement. “Two hundred thousand gone! Our first payment snatched from under our noses just because—”

  The third masked figure held up his hand and broke angrily into the conversation. “Wait! You both know as well as I that collection is the stumbling block of all such schemes. We discussed that in the beginning. Look at the kidnaper that the G-men have jailed! Look at the number of extortionists who’ve been caught. It’s no game for children—or cowards.”

  He glared around imperiously for a moment. When no one answered he continued in an undertone of contempt. “Why get hysterical? Two hundred thousand is nothing to what we’ll make later on! Our plan has unlimited scope, unlimited possibilities. This setback tonight needn’t worry us. It’s proof that our idea is fundamentally sound. People are becoming frightened. Frightened people will pay.”

  “What good will it do if we can’t collect?”

  “We can collect! We will! The police didn’t bother us, did they? The interference came from one man only—a man we knew at the start we would have to look out for. Now we’ve had definite proof of his daring. Now we know where we stand.”

  “With Secret Agent X!”

  “Yes—with Secret Agent X. And I’m glad you didn’t succeed in killing him tonight after he’d taken the money.”