X smiled strangely. “I know that, Betty. And you can tell that to Inspector Burks. The police will find the heads of the arson ring here—and Slater’s money. Good-bye, Betty,”
One of the black-masked figures leaned forward pointing toward X. “And now, Mr. X, you have strapped the girl into the death chair.”
“That is merely your opinion, Matthew Monkford,” said X quietly. “You can take off your mask.”
The fingers of one masked figure plucked at his face. The mask came away revealing features that the Agent had seen before—the shrewd, austere features of Matthew Monkford. He stood like a statue, while his companion also unmasked. Joe Reiss glared at the Agent. X knew without looking that the third was Purcell, the man who was now a corpse.
The Agent said: “When you walk into the death house, Monkford, you can blame only yourself for going there. And it’s ironical that the thing that first trapped me is the one thing that started me thinking in your direction. Your phenomenal memory for figures and dates. You had policy figures of other companies than your own right at your fingertips.”
Monkford’s eyes did not flicker. They held the Agent’s with glittering contempt. “Let’s start at the very beginning, Mr. X. From the first you’ve been outwitted. You were fooled by the little drama in my office. Purcell knew you were an impostor when you toyed with a pencil—in your right hand. You ‘rescued’ us from our own men. Shima spoiled our plans by phoning for the police. We’re giving you credit for daring from the beginning. It’s only in the field of sheer intellect that you’ve failed. We let you live because we hoped to use you. If you’ve got Slater’s money hand it over and we’ll see what can be arranged. Purcell’s death is unfortunate, but will cause no stir in police circles, since it is known we are being victimized by criminals. You have gained nothing by setting Betty Dale free. She will die by the law.”
“You are forgetting the films, Monkford,” said X.
“What films?” demanded Monkford, and his voice showed the first tinge of fear.
“THE films of Betty Dale,” replied the Agent. “The ones you took when you first brought her here and drugged her—which took place before the fire at Jacoby’s store. Betty Dale was not at Jacoby’s store. Her image appeared on the blank wall of the balcony because you threw a colored telephoto picture from a movie projector. Possibly, one of your men was hidden about a block away to do the job. Double films made the image stereoscopic. With these films in my possession, Betty Dale will be cleared of starting the store fire…. Get them!”
Monkford tensed. Reiss gulped: “Better to take a chance on his bullets, Monk. Those films will—”
The Agent backed away suddenly and unbuttoned his coat. His left hand plunged inside. His voice came tonelessly like a prophecy of doom. “All right, Monkford! I see you’ve chosen death—but let me choose the way you’ll die.” His hand came into sight grasping a nutlike missile. “One of your bombs which didn’t explode at the fire! I’ve saved it carefully for just such use as this.”
Monkford’s face went rigid. Breath came like a sigh between his teeth. The Agent’s voice droned on. “You’ll go out knowing the bitter taste of your own medicine.” X raised his hand, poised to throw the object forward—and Matthew Monkford screamed. He went down on his knees suddenly, slobbering insanely.
“I’m wrong. I give up! You’ve outplayed us! I—don’t throw it in heaven’s name! I’ll get the films!”
Monkford walked stiffly to a desk against the wall. While X watched him eagle-eyed, ready for any treacherous move, Monkford lifted a round package.
“Put them there on the table,” said X, “Then go back and stand by the wall.”
Monkford obeyed, and the Agent backed toward the films. For a moment he put the round thing in his hand on the table, stripped the canvas pouches from around his waist.
“Five hundred thousand dollars,” he said coolly. “The police will find them here beside the films. The cops have the number of every bill, of course. Slater, as you said yourself, was stubborn. The district attorney will enjoy finding them for his case against you. And now, Monkford, I’m going to say good-bye.”
In the Agent’s hand was the round object that had made Monkford weak with fear. Monkford’s eyes widened. He screamed horribly as X suddenly hurled the thing at his feet. He staggered back, clutching at the wall. The Agent’s taunting voice cut through his panic. “Steady, my friend. Look at it carefully. See what it is!”
Monkford’s eyes rolled wildly to the thing at his feet. It had cracked open when it struck the floor. But, instead of shooting formic acid crystals that would cause the bloating death, only yellow kernels showed.
“Just a walnut!” said X softly. “I stopped at a store and bought some on my way here tonight. The size of your pet bombs gave me the idea. A bluff took the last trick against criminal master minds!”
The snarling cry of anger in Monkford’s throat was cut short by the spurt of vapor from a gun the Agent whipped into view. The gas that would keep him quiet till the police arrived sent Monkford to his knees, then to the floor. Another spurt made Joe Reiss follow.
The Agent slipped through the apartment like a shadow. A door opened and closed behind him. He walked leisurely down a hall. For a second time his strange, eerie whistle sounded. Its echo hovered like an all-knowing presence in the chamber with the three silent men. It grew more distant slowly, faded—and was gone.
Faceless Fury
Chapter I
THE SCREAMING SKULL
ROOM SIXTEEN. Except that it was closed, there really wasn’t anything about the door that was different from all the other mahogany doors opening from the second floor hall of the Leonard Sanitarium. Closed doors always gave Miss Vine, who was night nurse on floor two, a hint of a shudder as she sat at her desk in the hall throughout many a lonely vigil. A closed door was death’s door, for it was a rule that unless a patient was dying all doors should be left open.
The door of sixteen was closed and behind its somber length was the Unknown. Nurse Vine shuddered now as she looked at it. The Unknown was neither dead nor dying. He lay on his cot all day, seeing nothing and hearing nothing through the bandages that covered his head and face. He didn’t even know his own name. Perhaps only Dr. Leonard, himself, had seen the man’s face. Nameless, faceless, he lay there on his cot. He had been a powerful built man. Now his mind was gone, or at least his memory. A victim of amnesia, Nurse Vine knew.
Having made certain that all the patients were well cared for and that special nurses were on duty, Nurse Vine was on the point of returning to her desk when she heard a small sound within Room 16. She stopped, and for some unaccountable reason, held her breath.
The door of Room Sixteen was opening.
At first there was just a hand that looked mummylike in a yellow rubber glove. It stole around the edge of the door while Nurse Vine watched like one hypnotized. Then came the sleeve of a white pajama jacket and a wide, square shoulder. The Unknown stepped from his room. His head was a monstrous, white-swathed bundle—faceless, terrifying.
“Mister—mister—oh, you must get back to your room!” Nurse Vine forced her voice to a calm and stood steadfastly in front of the colossal figure as it came toward her. The Unknown looked at her. She saw now that he had eyes, or at least large, owlish spectacles of black glass centered by oval slots with jutting edges molded in the glass. Centering these oval slots were the irises of eyes that were utterly cold and reptilian.
Nurse Vine put a quivering hand on the amnesia patient’s arm. She hated herself for the tricks her nerves were playing, yet somehow this thing seemed scarcely human. The Unknown came unalterably forward. Nurse Vine knew the strength of his big body as he pressed her back in spite of her resistance.
Then he spoke in a muffled voice that came from somewhere inside that monstrous head of bandages. “George Jerrico is here?”
Nurse Vine would not trust herself to speak. She nodded her head.
“He has been ill
?” the muffled voice inquired.
“Yes. But he goes away tomorrow completely cured,” she replied.
“Where is his room?” persisted the Unknown, taking another step forward.
“Please!” fright shrieked in the nurse’s voice as the cold eyes in the slots of glass harnessed her gaze. “You must go back to your room! Mr. Jerrico is in Room Ten and he’s quite all right. Don’t alarm yourself.” And she gave ground steadily before the patient. She stamped her foot. “Go back to your room at once! I’ll call Dr. Leonard.” She raised her voice: “Doctor—”
The mummylike hands came up, swift-striking, hairless talons. Cruel finger tips gouged into Nurse Vine’s throat. Thumbs pressed against her windpipe, converting her cry into a pitiful burble. No trace of emotion showed in those relentless slits of eyes, as the Unknown calmly choked the woman beyond fright and beyond sensibility. Then he seized her shoulders and dragged her to the hall desk where he flung her limp form behind it.
THE Unknown straightened, seemed to listen for a moment, looking up and down the deserted hall. Then with swift, quiet footsteps, he moved along the hall, rounded the turn, and came to Number Ten, the door of Mr. George Jerrico’s room. He entered.
A magazine rustled from George Jerrico’s hands. The flabby muscles of his mouth sagged. Then his lower jaw dropped. A sickly, greenish hue spread across his features. His weak eyes bulged from beneath sacky lids. Fingers twisting on the arms of his chair, Jerrico pushed himself to his feet. He was nearly sixty, was Mr. Jerrico, and his long illness had thrown full weight of those years upon his shoulders.
The Unknown watched, eyes contemptuous. Jerrico’s indrawn breath squealed. He sprang toward the call bell on the nightstand beside his bed. But before he could reach it, the Unknown had moved. He had interposed his colossal figure between the call bell and Mr. Jerrico.
“Who are you?” whispered Jerrico. “What do you want?”
“Five thousand dollars,” came the muffled voice of the Unknown. “If you expect to leave this place alive, you must pay my fee. Understand that I, and I alone, shall say whether or not you shall leave this hospital alive tomorrow.”
“Five thousand dollars!” Jerrico gasped. “Why, you’re mad. You think I carry that much money with me?”
THE swathed head turned slowly back and forth in mute negation. “I will accept your check, Mr. Jerrico. You can well afford the price I ask.”
Jerrico’s face purpled. “I’ve never heard of a thing so outrageous! Extortion! And I’m damned if I’ll pay it. I’ll get Dr. Leonard—”
“You do not seem to realize your predicament,” the Unknown cut in. “How easily that frail life within you may be snuffed out—and without arousing the slightest suspicion. You are, at present, in one of the cradles of modern science. An overdose of medicine, a drug, or perhaps inoculation with some dread disease may put you forever beyond the help of your doctors. Tonight I am all powerful here. Do you understand why you must pay me what I ask?”
George Jerrico thrust a fat fist into the pocket of his dressing gown and groped. “I have no money with me,” he whimpered.
The Unknown took from the pocket of his pajama jacket a check book and a fountain pen. “Everything is ready for you. Five thousand. Do you agree that your life is worth that amount?”
Jerrico was beyond speech. He took the check book eagerly and dropped into his chair exhausted. “Five thousand dollars,” he muttered as he laboriously filled in the blank and signed his name. Then he looked up at the faceless, bandaged head. His eyes were shrewd. “And I shall make the check payable to whom?”
“To charity,” the voice behind the bandages mocked hollowly. “Make the check payable to the Foundation of Mercy.”
Jerrico’s protruding eyes stared at the white swathed head. “Foundation of—Come now. This is all some ghastly joke.”
Eyes in the glass slots fixed Jerrico’s brain. “The Foundation of Mercy,” the Unknown repeated, his rubber-gloved hand going once more into the pocket of his jacket.
Jerrico sighed and completed the check. “Who are you, damn you?” he whispered.
The mummylike hand of the Unknown took the check and carefully folded it. Then the yellow fingers pressed something into Jerrico’s palm. “You’ll know who I am. Just before you die, you will understand everything.” And slowly he backed toward the door.
Jerrico could not take his eyes from those of the Unknown, but his fingers fumbled the object in his hands. The tips of his fingers seemed uncommonly sensitive that night, for as they moved over the surface of the object the Unknown had given him, the color gradually left his face.
The Unknown touched the light-switch. The room was plunged into instantaneous darkness. Out of the blackness, a hoarse oath, an agonized scream.
Down the second floor hall of the Leonard Sanitarium, the white figure of the Unknown stalked. The door of Room Sixteen opened and the Unknown entered, like a shrouded corpse returning to the tomb.
A FEW minutes before, a hearse-like limousine had pulled up in front of the Leonard Sanitarium’s pillared portico. A man got out quickly, slammed the door and looked up and down the winding drive that led from the gates of the sanitarium grounds. He was a clumsy, powerfully built figure that seemed poorly adapted to the furtive movements that he made as he climbed the steps to the front door. His sharp-featured face had been hacked by continual worry and his were the eyes of the hunted.
The man removed his small derby hat to reveal a short, coarse brush of pale hair. He approached the office desk where the sanitarium secretary was busy at work. Ducking his head at the woman behind the desk he asked in a low voice that held some trace of guttural Teutonic accent: “Dr. Leonard busy?”
The woman smiled. “No, Mr. Haas. Dr. Leonard is in his private quarters. I think you may go right in.”
“Thank you.” And the man addressed as Haas backed away from the desk.
At the moment Mr. Haas left the desk, the front doors of the sanitarium fanned the cold night air violently. Mr. Haas jumped, sent a ducking glance at the figure of the man who had just entered, then turned up the hall, trying not to walk too rapidly.
The newcomer was a tall, exceedingly well-built man. His clean, open countenance seemed actually illuminated by a pair of compelling gray eyes that held a wisdom far beyond his apparent years. Slowly drawing off pigskin gloves, the young man watched Mr. Haas hurrying down the hall. He took no notice of the woman behind the desk until she asked: “You wished to see some one, sir?”
The young man turned, smiled a little one-sidedly. “A friend of mine, a Mr. George Jerrico. I understand he is confined here. He is fit to receive callers?”
The woman behind the desk shuffled through report sheets. “Jerrico,” she mused, “Let me think. It seems to me that Mr. Jerrico has completely recovered and is going home tomorrow.” She picked up a report and nodded gravely. “Yes, that’s right. Mr. Jerrico is in Room Ten on the second floor. Miss Vine will be at the hall desk. You may inquire after Mr. Jerrico there.”
The gray-eyed young man thanked the woman. But as soon as her attention returned to the reports, he left quietly. Instead of going toward the stairs or elevator, he followed Mr. Haas’ bobbing figure down the first-floor hall.
The speed with which Mr. Hans Haas gained Dr. Leonard’s private quarters indicated that he knew he was being followed. But it would have been utterly impossible for him to know the true identity of the man who followed him. And in this ignorance Mr. Haas was no exception to other people. The identity of his follower was perpetually shrouded in mystery. His true features were constantly masked by a plastic volatile substance of his own compounding and which could readily be adapted to any impersonation he chose to adopt. Haas’ gray-eyed follower was none other than Secret Agent X himself.
All day the Agent had been at Mr. Haas’ heels—sometimes in one character, sometimes in another. In the past few weeks police headquarters had been appalled by the number of cases of forgery which had been repo
rted. Thousands of dollars had passed the tellers’ windows in banks throughout New York in exchange for fraudulent checks. Signatures of important men had been perfectly forged by some master hand, and so far the police had found themselves powerless to cope with the crime which had suddenly become rampant.
Agent X, crime’s most tenacious foe, had taken a hand. Before a week had passed, he had located the hiding place of one of Central Europe’s most infamous characters now known as Hans Haas, a successful manufacturing chemist. But Agent X knew that Haas was in reality a master forger and that he had fled from Germany years ago to escape serving a long sentence for that crime.
Certain that Mr. Haas had entered Dr. Leonard’s private apartment, X hesitated no longer. He approached the door quickly but with a stealth born of years of experience in the most dangerous game in the world. Although the small hall in which he found himself was connected directly with the doctor’s living room by means of a wide, open doorway, not one of the three men in the next room were conscious of the Agent’s watchful presence.
Obviously aware of his own imposing appearance, Dr. Leonard, director of the sanitarium, sat stiffly in a luxurious chair and stroked his neatly trimmed spade beard. Near him, on a slightly lower chair, one knee slung in thin, interlocked fingers, was a man of remarkable gauntness, whose long, straight, black hair accented the starved hollows of his face.
A glance at him would have proclaimed him an artist. From his position behind the portieres that hung the wide doorway, Agent X recognized the man as A.H. Ghurst whose fame as a sculptor extended far beyond the narrow limits of his Greenwich Village apartment.
Standing not more than a yard from where X was hiding, was Hans Haas, his small derby clutched in his right hand and his furtive eyes searching futilely for a sign of welcome in Dr. Leonard’s majestic countenance. Then he sent a lukewarm glance at Mr. Ghurst. “You are going to execute a bust of my friend the doctor?” he asked timidly.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 6 Page 32