Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 6

by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

  “Time lady,” said Burks gruffly. “I’ve got an idea that when we find him, we’ll have Agent X.”

  “Precisely my opinion, too,” put in Mulkin. He smoothed his gray temples with the palms of his hands. His eyes went to the door of Room Sixteen. Burks followed his glance and nodded.

  “We’re going to look into that room right now.”

  “Sir—” Dr. Leonard interposed himself between Burks and the door of Room Sixteen— “I give you my word of honor that the man in that room is dangerously ill. He has a fractured leg and he is suffering from amnesia. I am not accustomed to having my word doubted. A man in my station—”

  “A man in my station is going to book you as an accomplice to murder, Dr. Leonard!” Burks bellowed. Seizing the flashlight from Theodore Mulkin’s hands, he brushed Dr. Leonard to one side, and strode to the door of Room Sixteen. He twisted the knob noisily and speared the darkness with the beam. He stared for a moment, then crooked his finger at Dr. Leonard.

  The doctor came unhesitatingly forward and stepped into the room. On the bed was an old suit of clothes rigged up as a dummy with a head of newspaper and bandages. Leonard seized Burks’ arm.

  “Why—why—why it’s a d-dummy!” he stuttered.

  “I’m the dummy!” Burks exploded. “But it will take a tall story for you to trip me up again, Dr. Leonard.”

  Leonard turned. His pompousness was gone. His voice was so earnest it trembled. “I swear to you that this is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you.”

  “Yeah? Well who was the man who was in there before some one put the dummy there, then?”

  “I—I don’t know, so help me!”

  “You see, inspector,” explained Mulkin, “the man had been hurt in an auto accident. He had forgot his name—”

  Burks’ eyes flashed. “Yes, and the next person who says ‘amnesia’ to me, I’ll make him one of them permanently!”

  “Inspector Burks, sir.”

  Burks turned around to glare at a young man who had a craggy jaw and bleak, blue eyes and who wore an indescribable hat that had once been bottle-green.

  “Tim Scallot, what’re you doing here?” Burks demanded.

  Detective Timothy Scallot, who had established an enviable reputation at police headquarters in a short time, replied: “Why, I’ve been looking for you and Keegan, sir. A hellish thing has happened, sir, at Warwick Mansion across the way. A man’s been murdered. The man on the beat says he thinks the victim is Warwick himself.”

  “Thinks! Doesn’t he know?”

  “That’s hard to say, sir. The face of the poor devil seems to have been entirely eaten away. Happened half an hour or more ago. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”

  Burks scowled. “It’s another killing of the same kind. And take it from me, the center of all this devilment is right here in this sanitarium. That’s why I’m staying here. We’re going to sweat the truth out of Dr. Leonard if it takes till next week. Scallot, you get over to Warwick’s place. You’re in charge until you hear from me.”

  Scallot saluted and would have left at once had not Mimi Clarice detained him. The woman was the color of wood ashes. Scallot took off his hat. “Yes, miss?”

  “You—you really think that Tom Warwick is—dead?” she whispered.

  “It looks that way, miss. Of course, we can’t be—”

  Mimi Clarice recoiled. She muffled a scream with the back of her hand, turned, and fled the length of the hall. Her high heels could be heard clattering down the steps.

  ON regaining consciousness, Harvey Bates’ first sensation was that of motion. At first he attributed this to dizziness which must certainly have resulted from the blow dealt him by the Unknown. Then as his vision gradually cleared, he saw that he was in a sedan that was bounding over every conceivable chuck-hole in a street that threaded a narrow way through a dismal quarter of the city.

  Beside him was a stiff, upright figure. Bates glanced up where the man’s face should have been. There was no face, only a vacant area of crossed and recrossed bandages. Except for the fact that the bandaged face of the man beside him had no eyes, he might have been the person who had so effectively knocked Bates into oblivion.

  Bates hunched forward in his seat. From the other side of him, a raucous voice said: “Sit tight buddy. Don’t get no ideas.”

  On the other side of Bates was a stubby little man, with mean, close-set eyes. He pressed the vicious snout of an automatic up into Bates’ armpit. Bates settled back uneasily to listen to the roaring within his own head and try to think things through. The motionless, white-swathed figure beside him, he noticed, had arms that were roped down to its sides.

  It occurred to him that this might well be the man that X had wanted to kidnap—the real amnesia patient from the Leonard Sanitarium. In his mind he tried to contrive a means by which he might not only liberate himself but take the amnesia patient with him.

  He had little time to dwell upon the subject when the sedan turned into a filthy alley and came to a stop at the rear door of a deserted-looking building. The two men in the front seat got out, drew automatics, and turned on Bates.

  The little man at Bates’ side prodded him with his gun. “This is where you get yours.”

  Bates stretched a leg gingerly to take the cramps out of it. He got from the car deliberately and yawned at the two automatics that covered him. He was seized roughly and hurried into a black hall. He was shoved, dragged, and rolled down a flight of steps into a room of filmy light cast by a dangling, yellow, light bulb. Two men got up from a card table, looked at each other and winked. They loosened guns in shoulder holsters and sat down to wait until the other returned with the stiff, bandaged form of the patient from Room Sixteen.

  Three of the men stood guard over Bates while the other two approached with ropes.

  “What’s the idea?” asked Bates contemptuously. “Think I look like the kind of a suicide who’d try to jump five guns at once?”

  The stubby man grinned. “Yeah,” he said shrilly. “Just that sort of a nut. The boss has an idea the kind of a guy you are. He said you’d try anything.”

  The pair with the rope dropped behind Bates and tied him hand and foot.

  “Now,” said the stubby man, “you got nothing on your mind but minute counting. We gotta wait till the boss gets here before there’s any fun.”

  And Bates waited. He had no way of measuring time, but it seemed ages before the door of the dirty basement room opened to admit a man whose head and face were completely covered with bandages. A pair of strange black glasses were mounted on the featureless face and through narrow slots, his eyes glinted like metal points. He looked at Bates and then at the motionless figure of the kidnaped patient. He walked over to the latter and prodded him with his foot. Not a sound escaped the bandaged head of the amnesia patient.

  “What’d you want to snatch that stiff for, boss?” asked one of the men.

  THE Faceless Man turned his eyes on the speaker. “This one is not dead,” he said, his voice muffled behind bandages. “He has been injured. I tried to kill him when I saw him walking across the street. I thought he was dead. Now, I know different. I owe him more than pain and torment will ever repay.”

  The Faceless Man turned abruptly to Bates. “And I know who you are. You’re the man who impersonated Dr. Wall at the sanitarium tonight.”

  “That so?” Bates asked mildly.

  “Yes. You’re Secret Agent X. And if you’re the man who has been trying to blackmail me, you’ll be hours dying, Agent X.”

  Bates had not the slightest idea what the Faceless Man was talking about, but he was determined to keep his mouth shut. If the Faceless Man talked on, it was possible that he would entangle himself with his own tongue. Of one thing Bates was certain: The Faceless Man was afraid. He was afraid of Agent X and he was afraid of some one who had blackmailed him. In Bates’ mind, “blackmailer” and “Agent X” could never be synonymous. X was manhunter extraordinary, and his route to j
ustice was frequently outside the boundaries of the law. But never would X have stooped to blackmail.

  But the Faceless Man was being blackmailed. That was the important point, and Bates meant to live until he was able to get this information to his chief.

  “I am going to begin with your eyes, Mr. X,” said the Faceless Man without emotion. “When I have destroyed them little by little, the chances are that you will be ready to talk. You’re rather clever, but I can’t believe you to be the superman about which so many tales are told. You’ll talk, all right.” He turned to the stubby man. “Get the acid, a pair of burettes, ring stand, and a pair of clamps.”

  Stubby left the room. The Faceless Man, his rubber-gloved hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat, walked over to the mysterious patient from Room Sixteen. “We’ll get at your face a bit later, my friend.”

  Stubby brought in the acid and apparatus. Two of the men stretched Bates on the floor, while a third mounted the burettes on the two ring stands. The burettes were fitted with little glass faucets which would enable their liquid contents to pass out, a drop at a time.

  A paraffin bottle of acid was then opened. The Faceless Man handled it cautiously and poured some of the fuming liquid into a flask of water. “To prevent this stuff from eating through the eyes and killing you outright, Mr. X, it is necessary to dilute it considerably. Pain is what we want at present, not death.”

  He then poured the diluted acid into the tops of the burettes. Bates watched him calmly, though blood was bounding in his arteries. Would he be able to stand the torture designed for him? His greatest fear was that in agony he might reveal some of the great secrets that X had entrusted him with.

  When he had mounted the burettes on the ring stands, the Faceless Man turned the entire apparatus over to Stubby. He motioned to one of the toughs. “You may open our surprise package—the patient from Room Sixteen. I will watch.” He went over to lean against a wooden partition, while a man drew a knife and went over to the amnesia patient.

  The man with the knife lifted the stiff form of the amnesia patient into a chair. In the meantime, Stubby arranged the two burettes so that their glass faucets were directly over the eyes of Harvey Bates. Bates closed his eyes.

  “That will avail you nothing, Mr. X,” said the Faceless Man. “Though diluted, the acid will nevertheless penetrate your eyelids. You may allay pain considerably by telling me just how much you know about me. Surely you have important information or you would not have hoped to blackmail me.”

  “Nothing to say,” gritted Bates.

  The man with the knife had slit the bandages about the face of the amnesia patient and was quickly unraveling them. He paused a moment as two motionless eyes were revealed, staring vacantly at him. “A livin’ stiff!” he whispered nervously. Then he continued to unwrap bandages.

  “Turn on the acid,” commanded the Faceless Man coldly.

  Stubby’s dirty fingers went to the glass faucets at the ends of the burettes. In his mean, little eyes was a fiendish light. “You’re goin’ to get it now, big guy,” he whispered gloatingly.

  A hoarse, frightened oath from across the room. All eyes were turned in the direction of the amnesia patient. The man was on his feet. Ripped bandages were a drift of white across his broad shoulders. His eyes were anything but vacant now. For everyone in the room was acutely conscious of their dynamic force. White teeth gleamed brightly from a close-clipped, black spade beard. The ropes that had held his arms had dropped to the ground. In one firm hand, he held a deadly-looking pistol.

  “It’s the doc from the sanitarium!” whispered Stubby.

  “Reach for the ceiling!” rapped the bearded man.

  But although the “amnesia patient” looked exactly like Dr. Leonard, Harvey Bates wanted to shout, exultantly: “That’s Secret Agent X!”

  Chapter IV

  LETTERS OF DEATH

  THE five toughs raised their hands unhesitatingly, but beyond them the Faceless Man moved swiftly to the right. Then, X would have traded his gas pistol for a regulation automatic. He sprang at Stubby, brushed him to the ground with an effortless blow in an attempt to check the Faceless Man. But the Faceless Man pressed his powerful body against the wall. He fired from the gun in his coat-pocket, a lucky shot that struck the barrel of the Agent’s gas pistol and sent it flying across the room.

  At the same time, a section of the wall behind the Faceless Man opened and closed with a speed approaching that of the shutter of a camera.

  The killer had vanished. Not so his criminal aids. Two of them leaped at the Agent’s back. He bent double, throwing one of his attackers over his shoulders. An automatic barked twice, and the fearful impact of the flying lead striking his bullet-proof vest sent X down on his knees. He was close beside Bates. He snatched up ring stand and burettes and hurled them at an on-coming foe.

  The burettes broke. Acid sent the man stumbling across the room, pawing at his face. Once again, X braved streaming lead, this time to regain his gas pistol. He reached for the gun. A heel stamped down on his wrist. He seized the man’s ankle with his other hand and pulled him to the floor. His right hand gripped the butt of the gas pistol.

  “Hold your breath, Bates!” he shouted. He was counting on Bates’ superior intelligence to take this warning literally before the criminals had a chance to know what was going on. A man had a gun centered on the Agent’s head. X sprang to his feet, took the shot on his protected chest, and at the same time jerked the trigger of the gas pistol. A criminal staggered into the Agent and fell unconscious at his feet.

  X backed swiftly. The criminals were wilting one by one as the gas spread across the room. Automatics roared harmlessly at the ceilings or discharged on the floor as they dropped from limp fingers. X glanced at Bates. The big man was conscious, evidently holding his breath. X dropped beside him, ripped out his pocketknife and cut the ropes.

  He dragged Bates to his feet, seized his arm, and dragged him through the door. Bates’ muscles were stiff after his long confinement, but with X tugging on his arm the pair quickly gained the top of the stairs, and the dismal alley.

  X gulped air gratefully. “Into the street, Bates,” he ordered. “Two blocks to the left.” And he led off at a pace that Bates had considerable difficulty in keeping up with.

  X came to a stop in front of the sagging door of a frame garage. “This isn’t a bad part of town to have a car in case of emergency,” he explained to the puffing Bates. “It’s not a flashy looking job. Anything but a wreck would attract attention in this neighborhood. But the motor is good.” X took out keys and unlocked the garage door. “You drive,” he directed, opening the door of the old touring car.

  BATES slid in under the wheel and gave the motor a whirl. It responded instantly. “Still all balled up about how you happened to appear where and when you did,” he said when he had backed the car into the street.

  X said quietly: “It was an idea to get within striking distance of the Faceless Man. But it didn’t work out.”

  “Back at the sanitarium,” muttered Bates, “there was a dummy in the bed. Sort of took me off guard for a moment.”

  X nodded understandingly. “I hunted the grounds over for you and bumped into a sedan that some one had obviously tried to hide behind a tangle of shrubbery. Inside, I found the real amnesia patient. There’s a little pergola for the purpose of masking the trash heap out behind the main building. I took the unconscious amnesia patient there.

  “Then I dug in the ash heap for a few minutes. I was pretty well convinced that you had not hidden the patient in the car. Therefore, some one else must have—the real murderer of George Jerrico, I thought. And since the mystery patient was in a car that was evidently to be used for some criminal purpose, judging by the fact that it had been hidden, I could think of no better way of running across the killer than getting into the car myself.

  “You can generally find old bandages and dried up adhesive plaster in the trash heap of a hospital. I did, and fixed myself
up with bandages. The rope about my arms may have looked as though it was knotted. It wasn’t. I got in the car and waited. I heard everything that went on when you were brought unconscious to the car. Those men know just about as much about the identity of their employer as we do. He pays them plenty, judging by the conversation. From what they said, I’ve a pretty good idea that he gets his money by forgery.”

  “Then you know that the Faceless Man is being blackmailed?” asked Bates a little disappointedly.

  X nodded. “That’s what I’ve got to work on now. There’s not a particle of sense in going back to comb that neighborhood for our murderer. And your job is the same—get the amnesia patient. You’ll find him in that pergola back of the sanitarium. Take him to Number Twenty-four, Columbine Apartments and await orders. Keep in touch with your headquarters, but watch your sick charge carefully. I’ve got an idea who he is.”

  “Connected with the Jerrico killing?” asked Bates.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve just a hunch that he is a certain Dr. Pontius who’s been among the missing for several days. Just wait and see what happens. If we can bring back his memory, we may get the inside track on what happened tonight. If the Faceless Man is afraid that the amnesia patient will regain his memory and talk, he’ll try to get hold of him. Understand?”

  Bates nodded. “Bates,” he said laconically, “this Dr. Pontius any relation to Oliver Pontius?”

  “A brother, I believe.” X put his hand on the latch of the car door. “Stop here,” he ordered. “I’m leaving you for a while.” And before the squeaking brakes could stop the car, X was out and running down the street.

  BY eleven o’clock the next morning, a sandy-complexioned man with exceedingly commonplace features might have been seen pacing a room in a down town office building. He was known to his neighbors as A.J. Martin, special newspaper correspondent and quite the most irregular tenant the building had. Actually, the face of A.J. Martin was but one of the thousand faces of Secret Agent X. It was one of his favorite aliases.

  The past few hours had brought some alarming developments in what the newspapers liked to call the “Faceless Murders.” Through the zealous Timothy Scallot, the central office of the Bates organization had been informed of the details of the murder of Tom Warwick.