Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 6

by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

  “What!” The man who had first mentioned X’s name growled a savage curse behind his mask. “Are you mad? Do you mean that?”

  “Yes. He showed up the weakness of our method of collection. No one else would have dared attempt what he did, but the next time our contacting plane might easily be shot down. Suppose there had been a million waiting instead of two hundred thousand! We would have lost that, too. We’ve got to find some better method.”

  “I agree. But we can’t afford to trifle with X. What made you suggest in the first place that we study his habits instead of killing him outright? It was a mistake. He must die!”

  “He will die, when we’ve finished with him. But I’ve thought of him in connection with a certain plan from the beginning.”

  “I don’t get you!”

  “I’m going to ask you a question. What sets X apart from all other criminals? How has he managed to escape the police for so many months?”

  “You know as well as I. It’s his skill at disguise.”

  “Exactly. And we’ve had convincing proof of it. Even though we were familiar with his habits we didn’t suspect that he’d play the part of Norton King—not till the incident happened in the plane. He fooled us. Has it occurred to either of you that such a man, can go anywhere, appear as anybody he pleases through his ability at impersonation, would make the ideal collector for our own undertaking?”

  The bodies of the two other black-masked figures tensed. “You’re being absurd, theatrical!”

  “No, I’m in dead earnest. X spoiled our play tonight, prevented us from cashing in. Now I propose that we make him our collector.”

  “It can’t be done!” shouted the man at the speaker’s right. “You ought to know it. If that’s what you’ve had on your mind all along, you’re insane! X is a lone wolf, a crook who has no friends in the underworld and no allies. He plays for high stakes, but he always plays alone. We’ve nothing to offer that would make him join in with us. And if we had, we wouldn’t trust him.”

  The man who had proposed X as a collector laughed. There was harshness, wickedness in his mirth. “Everyone,” he said softly, “has a price.”

  “Not X. He has power, position, money. He’s independent. You’d be playing with fire.”

  The answer came in a tone that held arch cunning, gloating cruelty. “Fire is our specialty. I have in mind a very unusual method of bargaining.”

  Chapter IX

  MURDERERS’ TRAP

  TWILIGHT was the hour that Betty Dale loved best. It spread a lavender mantle across the bare branches of the trees outside her apartment window. It softened the outlines of the other buildings on the opposite side of the street, made the whole city seem magical, enchanted, like a setting for an Arabian Nights play. Twilight always made Betty Dale feel alive, vital, tender, no matter how hard a day she had at the Herald office.

  She sat at her window now, face dreamy, the soft glow of the fading sky touching her spun-gold hair, the salmon tint of the far-off sunset brightening and turning to turquoise the deep flawless blue of her eyes. She sat quietly, thinking of Secret Agent X. For this strange Man of a Thousand Faces, this man of mystery and destiny was often in her thought. They had passed through the valley of the shadow together. There was a bond between them, deep, unspoken, encompassing as life itself.

  The tinkle of the telephone startled her from her reverie. She got up, crossed the floor buoyantly in graceful, swinging strides, alert as always. For the sound of the phone often meant hot news. And, besides being a lovely, high-spirited girl, Betty Dale had built up a reputation for herself as a reporter. There were many gentlemen of the press who envied her her ability at piecing together a story from the most slender leads.

  A woman’s voice sounded in the receiver that Betty held to her ear. “I want Miss Dale of the Herald.”

  “This is Miss Dale speaking.”

  “Oh!” The voice sank lower, became huskily confidential. “Listen, dearie, you don’t know me, and I’ve never seen you. But they say you’re a fast worker. If so I’ve got a hot tip for you.”

  “What about?”

  “About the mugs that have been setting those fires! You know, the incendiaries, they call ’em.”

  “All right, I’m listening.”

  “I can’t talk good here, dearie! Get me? There may be some guys listening. I’m not taking any chances. This is dynamite, TNT, dearie.”

  “Then why do you want to tell me about it?”

  The husky voice at the other end of the wire became harshly sullen. “Did you ever hear of a guy throwing a girl down? I got a chip on my shoulder, dearie. I got a chip as big as a log of wood. I’m a nice, quiet girl, but when a mug gets tough I get tough, too. I’m going to spill something that will tear this town wide open. And when I get through there’s going to be a certain mug who’ll wish he’d been nicer to his sweetie. Now, I guess you get me?”

  “Yes!” said Betty breathlessly. “Yes, I think I do.” She was trembling with excitement. Half the tips that put crooks behind bars and sent them to the chair came from disgruntled molls. Underworld women were poison when they weren’t treated right. She’d learned that from long contact with the police. And if she could get a line-up on the arson ring that was terrorizing the city it would constitute the biggest scoop of her life. Outside of that, the thought occurred that she would be able to help the Secret Agent. If she got some valuable information she would turn it over to him first.

  She said tensely: “I’d like to hear what you have to say. Where can we get together?”

  The answer came back quickly. “I’ll take a jaunt down Avenue A in about fifteen minutes. I’ll begin at the top and walk downtown on the west side looking in the store windows. Nobody’ll get wise if I meet a frail like you. I’ll just make out you’re an old college pal, dearie. We can go somewheres and gab.”

  “How will I know you when I see you?”

  “Watch out for a nifty dresser in a green coat and a red hat. And I’ll be carrying a load of silver foxes. Just to make things sure I’ll pin a pink tulip up front. Come up and say, ‘hello, dearie,’ when you see me.”

  “All right,” said Betty. “I’m a blonde. I’ll be wearing a gray squirrel coat and a small gray hat.”

  She hung up and began dressing quickly, slipping out of her lounging pajamas, and into her tweed business suit. She got into her hat and coat and put a small notebook in her bag. As an after thought she went to a desk drawer and drew out a .32 automatic that the Secret Agent had given her. It was flat and easily carried. She tucked it under her notebook. It might come in handy. Anything connected with the arson ring spelled danger.

  In a moment she was on the street. Ten minutes later a taxi had whirled her to the vicinity of Avenue A. She walked to it, headed uptown on the west side, and kept her eyes open for the “nifty dresser.”

  So intent was she scanning the sidewalk ahead that she didn’t notice the brown sedan nosing slowly along beside her. The light was dim now. The men in it, and the car itself, were hardly more than confused shadows. Betty did not turn until the car pulled in to the curb directly beside her. Then the cry of amazement and terror that rose in her throat froze in silence on her lips.

  For death leered at her out of the brown car’s opened door. Death seemed poised for instant action on the end of the machine gun that was thrust toward her. “Don’t move, girlie!” a harsh voice said. “Don’t make a sound or you’ll get it! Just act natural and come here.”

  Betty did so, stilling the frantic thumping of her heart, moving her high-heeled slippers that seemed suddenly filled with lead. A hand caught her arm roughly, jerked her in. She was pulled down on the seat beside the gunman. The door slammed shut. The brown car sped away.

  The interior was dark. Betty got a glimpse of the ugly head of the driver. But when she turned fearfully to see the face of the man beside her, she saw only a pair of glaring eyes. Then she gave a scream and tried to shrink from him. For something, a descending shado
w in his hand, came down over her head.

  Betty struggled fiercely, desperately, with the stifling, sweetish fumes of chloroform in her nose. She kicked and writhed as the dizzying vapor invaded her straining lungs. But her struggles became steadily weaker. At the end of a minute she lay still.

  SECRET AGENT X was worried. For the first time in several hours his mind was not occupied with the arson-ring menace. He was thinking of his loyal friend and secret ally, blonde Betty Dale.

  He stood in the shadows across from her apartment, back braced against an iron fence. He was staring up at her windows. A moment before he had given his strange, identifying whistle.

  The echoes of the weird flute-like sound whispered along the dark street. Pedestrians paused, puzzled by it, unable to discover its source. But no light showed in the windows of Betty Dale’s apartment. The Agent knew that if Betty were there she would come to the sill and look down.

  He turned away. Then something, a strange uneasiness that he couldn’t shake off, made him cross the street and enter the apartment building. The telephone operator was bending over her switchboard. She didn’t see him. He slipped past her, silently as a shadow, and dodged into the cavern formed by the bottom of the stairs. The grilled door of the elevator was opening, but X avoided it. He ascended the stairs swiftly and turned down the corridor on the floor that Betty Dale’s apartment was on.

  There was no answer to his soft knock, and the Agent drew out his ring of skeleton keys. Few locks in the world could resist his expert fingers. Betty’s didn’t, and in a moment he had the door open and had stepped inside.

  He turned his flash around the familiar room, eyes alert for anything suspicious; but there was nothing. The attractive chamber with its cozy feminine touches was as neat as always. It seemed to reflect the sunny, straight-forward personality that was Betty Dale’s.

  The Agent crossed quickly to a small desk and opened a drawer. His pencil flash sprayed over its contents and abruptly he frowned. The automatic he had given her wasn’t there. His nerve fibers tensed. Among many secret understandings he had with Betty was one concerning this gun. She left it in the drawer except when danger threatened. Its disappearance now meant that Betty feared something. What?

  The Agent’s thoughts raced swiftly. Too often in the past the black cloud of crime had menaced her fearfully because of her association with him. He tried always to keep her from danger; but her courage, her loyalty made her an active worker for his cause. The Agent searched her apartment, hoping to find some message from her, some note or clue, and found none.

  He left with his sense of uneasiness heightened. Betty had gone and had taken her automatic with her. There might not be anything serious in it, but he wouldn’t rest until he knew where she was.

  He moved up to the girl switchboard operator in the vestibule. He had seen her often, talked to her many times, but she didn’t know him in his present disguise. He was made up as a black-haired, sharp-featured youngish man. He displayed a press card, said: “Where’s Miss Dale?”

  “She left about dusk after getting a telephone call. She didn’t say where she was going. She seemed in a hurry.”

  “A call. From whom?”

  “Some woman. She didn’t give her name.”

  “Did you hear what they said?”

  “No, mister! I plugged in and let ’em talk. I’m no eavesdropper.”

  The Agent tipped his hat and hurried out.

  He drifted around to various haunts that Betty frequented, made inquiries about her, and learned that she had not been seen all evening. He called her apartment six times in the next two hours, and was told each time that she hadn’t returned. He settled in one of his hideouts that had a phone, and gave an order to the girl at Betty’s apartment to call him as soon as Miss Dale returned.

  MIDNIGHT came. One o’clock, two—and there was no news of Betty. Abruptly the Agent’s finger dropped to the button key of his radio set. His face was bleak. All evening, routine reports had come in from Hobart and Bates; messages that they were still trying to locate the racketeer, Boss Santos. Operatives who worked for X without knowing it in a score of American cities had searched for Boss Santos in vain.

  Now X gave a new order to Harvey Bates; short and crisp and emphatic. “Betty Dale, Herald reporter missing. Spread men over entire city. Check up on her. Find her.” He rattled off a list of every possible place that Betty might have gone, knowing that Bates’ pigeon-hole memory would retain them. He started a vast undercover organization on the missing Betty’s trail. But still the Agent was unsatisfied, uneasy.

  Twenty-four hours later X was frantic. Betty had not returned to her apartment. She had not showed up at the Herald office. No one had seen her. Bates’ expert operatives had managed to unearth only one meager fact. A taxicab driver had picked her up at her apartment and driven her to the vicinity of Avenue A. There her trail ended in utter blackness, as though the earth itself had opened and swallowed her.

  The police knew nothing about Betty Dale’s disappearance. Neither did the public. Both knew, however, about another dramatic development of the day. The afternoon papers carried screaming headlines:

  ARSON RING THREATENS TO STRIKE AGAIN TONIGHT

  INSURANCE HEAD REFUSES TO PAY EXTORTIONISTS

  POLICE TO GUARD DOOMED PROPERTY

  Details of the sinister story followed:

  L.L. Slater, head of the Mercantile Bonding & Indemnity Corporation of this city, received an extortion threat from the criminal arson ring this afternoon. The telephone was used. The message came from a dial pay station which the police were unable to trace.

  Slater was told that if he did not pay five hundred thousand dollars for protection, the great department store of Jacoby & Sons, insured by his company, would be burned to the ground. Though Slater would not state the amount of the policy it is believed that the store is covered by a ten-million dollar premium.

  Slater bluntly refused to accede to the criminals’ demand and sought police protection. The threat was then made that the store would be destroyed this evening. Reserves have been called out, and the entire fire department is waiting. Commissioner Foster has issued a statement to the press that in this instance the criminals cannot possibly make good their threat.

  Agent X barely scanned the papers. He had known of the extortionists’ threat hours in advance of the public. Scallot, a secret member of the Bates’ organization, and also a police detective, had heard of Slater’s trouble at headquarters. He had told Bates, and Bates had faithfully relayed the message to the Agent.

  X knew something of L.L. Slater. He was a stiff-necked, high-principled executive. To anyone familiar with his character it was a foregone conclusion that he would not traffic with criminals. So from the first it seemed to X that the store of Jacoby & Sons was doomed.

  DISTURBED as he was about Betty Dale, he made it a point to be at the scene of the impending crime that evening. If her disappearance had anything to do with the criminal menace he was fighting, he must learn every fact he could.

  Face set beneath his disguise of A.J. Martin, he pushed through the police cordon that guarded the doomed building. Detectives tried to bar his way. His press card, his ready tongue, and sheer nerve got him by. He attached himself to Inspector John Burks’ party. The presence of the homicide squad head held gruesome significance. Men had died horribly at the last big fire. Burks was there seeking information about the killers, and to be on hand in case of other murders.

  A few of the city’s nerviest police reporters had wormed their way close to him along with Agent X. Their faces showed excitement. One of them touched the inspector’s arm. “Do you think there’ll be any more killings tonight, chief—those bombs I mean—”

  Inspector Burks’ gray face broke into a sour, humorless grin. He jerked his thumb toward the sky. The pressman blanched suddenly, and started. The sound of airplane motors droned down out of the darkness. Their mounting roar was getting steadily closer. Police and waiting fireme
n heard it. Bodies tautened with dread as faces lifted.

  “An idea of the commissioner’s,” explained Burks. “Those are government ships up there. There’s going to be an air patrol over this whole section tonight. Let those murdering devils try any airplane stunt and they’ll get their bellies filled with lead.”

  “What about the department store, inspector? Do you think it will be fired?”

  Burks only grunted and turned away. Doubt was in his eyes. He did not tell the reporters that Detective Scallot had suggested that they examine the sprinkler system. The tip had come secretly from Agent X. But, though firemen and police had inspected the sprinklers carefully, nothing wrong had been found. The criminals apparently did not use the same method twice.

  The tension increased as the evening deepened. It did not seem possible that danger threatened in that great lighted building. Every bulb in the Jacoby Department Store had been left on. That was another idea of Commissioner Foster’s. Prowling incendiaries would be seen if by any chance they slipped into the store.

  The group of reporters whom X had joined moved restlessly about. They kept making notes, diving into a corner telephone booth to report back to their papers. They asked endless questions of firemen and uniformed cops. They made themselves such a nuisance that Burks threatened to have the lot of them run out, behind the fire lines where a curious, tense crowd already waited. At this the reporters quieted. X went with them around to the north side of the menaced building.

  There was an annex here. A balcony ran the full width of this on the second floor with a white blank wall behind it. Two fire inspectors walked across it in plain view of the crowd and disappeared through a door. For a minute or two the balcony was deserted. Then suddenly one of the reporters close to X gave a strident cry. The Agent’s head jerked up. His whole body stiffened with amazement. He was more startled, more stunned with surprise, than he had ever been in his life.

  For a girl’s figure moved on the balcony. She had on a gray hat, a gray squirrel coat. She walked furtively, with something in her hand. Where she had come from no one knew. It was as though she had materialized like a ghostly apparition. But this was not what made the Agent’s heart stand still. It was the clear view he had of her face, of her yellow hair.