Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 6

by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

  Now X understood how Benson had been killed. Some one had released the insects near the window of Benson’s library. Attracted by the light from the room, the insects had probably hovered near the window. At the critical moment, that window had been broken. Shutting Benson in the closet had not prevented the insects from crawling beneath the closet door.

  Agent X raised his eyes to meet those of the killer. “Let’s get started.”

  The man in white nodded. “I’ll go after Hyde.” He left the room.

  X GLANCED about. The Dope had left the laboratory, and as far as X could see, there would be no one to watch what he was about to do. X hurried to the desk, opened drawers, and searched them quickly. His hunt produced a blank checkbook and a sheet of carbon paper. He pulled out his fountain pen and hastily filled in the check, making it payable to Carlos Carasco and omitting the signature at the bottom. Then he flushed all the ink from his pen, cleaned the nib, and returned it to his pocket.

  Next he made a fold on the piece of carbon paper and tore off a narrow strip. He slipped this piece of carbon paper into the checkbook. He had just time to return the checkbook to his pocket before the man in white entered, pushing Marcus Hyde in front of him.

  The Agent approached the thin old man. “Sit down, Hyde,” he ordered harshly. Then he knelt in front of Hyde’s chair. The killer, in the meantime, had retired to the end of the laboratory. X spread the confession on Hyde’s knee and put his pen between Hyde’s fingers. “Watch my eyes, Hyde,” he ordered. He knew that Hyde made an excellent hypnotic subject, and no one was more skilled in the art of hypnosis than Secret Agent X.

  “Do you see the paper on your knee?” X asked.

  “Yes,” Hyde whispered. “I see the paper on my knee.”

  “Then you will sign your name on the bottom line.”

  “I will sign my name on the bottom line,” Hyde echoed. And with infinite care, Hyde traced his signature with a pen that contained no ink and consequently left no mark.

  A snap of the fingers brought Hyde from his trance. X turned to the man in white. “It’s done.” He folded the confession and put it in his pocket.

  “Good!” exclaimed the man in white. “That’s a load off my mind.”

  Suddenly, the door of the laboratory was thrown open and the Dope shuffled into the room. “Boss—” he began.

  The man in white pointed to Hyde. “Take him back to the cell with the other prisoners.”

  “But, boss—”

  “Did you hear me!” roared the man in white. “Obey!”

  The Dope shrugged, seized Hyde roughly by the arm, and led him from the room.

  X approached the man in white. “Before we go any further, I’d like to ask a favor. I’ve got to have some cash. Could you advance me something from your personal account until we’ve had time to split the spoils? I’ve made out a check for five hundred.”

  The man in white chuckled. “Only five hundred? Of course.” He took the checkbook from X’s hand, picked up a desk pen, and signed with a flourish.

  Again, the door of the laboratory opened, and the Dope appeared. “Boss, one of the boys was loafing around the morgue when they took in the body of Agent X—a while ago. Inspector Burks came rushing from the morgue. He was plenty sore.” The Dope edged around toward the desk.

  He pointed at X. “Who do you suppose this guy is, if the Agent X who was shot was really Carlos Carasco?”

  Agent X moved with lightning speed. He sprang to the desk, snatched the checkbook from the criminal boss’ hand, then sprang back to draw his gas pistol. “Put them up!” he ordered. “This is the finish.”

  The man in white recovered from surprise in a moment. “So you’ve cheated death again, Agent X,” he said calmly.

  X nodded. “Something that you will not be able to do. The electric chair is very sure of its victims. Too bad that you and Carasco could not have applied your scientific talents to something that would benefit society. Carasco has paid. Now, it is your turn.”

  “You think I have not been prepared for this visit from you, Agent X? I have always been two jumps ahead of you, even tricking Betty Dale into helping me. Carasco impersonated the great impersonator. Carasco impersonated you, as I instructed him to do.”

  X nodded. “And that was your undoing. I knew that you and you alone could have seen me make that signal to Betty Dale.”

  “Tonight,” said the killer slowly, “I thought you dead. I shall make sure of it, now!”

  The man in white made a scarcely perceptible movement with his knee. There was a sharp click. X’s finger tightened upon the gas pistol, but before he could shoot, a plate of saw-toothed steel that extended from one wall to the other, dropped like the blade of a guillotine. The jagged edges of the plate locked into slots in the floor. X was cut off from the killer.

  “You’ll be devoured alive, Agent X,” roared the killer. “You may not have been sensitized to the insect venom, but in three seconds, there will be millions of the hungry devils swarming into this room. They’ll drive you mad before they kill you!”

  X swung around. The door behind him was closed. He sprang to it. It was apparently without a knob and of solid steel. He was completely cut off from the rest of the catacomb. Metal covered slots, high in the wall, suddenly opened. Billions of tiny insects swarmed into the room, a solid-gray cloud of them that darkened the room and settled lower and lower over Agent X.

  Such was the trap that the killer had prepared for his mortal enemy.

  IN another portion of the ancient vault, in a stone room with a door of iron bars, was a little group of helpless prisoners. Harvey Bates was there, leaning against the wall, watching his four companions—Betty Dale, David Coombs, Ned Sangar, and Marcus Hyde.

  “What will they do to us?” Betty asked, breathlessly.

  Sangar shrugged. “They’ll ask me for ransom money.”

  “My own chauffeur brought me here,” Coombs said. “And I have trusted him for over a year. Imagine the shock—”

  Somewhere, a door opened. There was a murmur of excited voices outside the cell. Bates went to the door and looked out. The man in white was coming down the stone-walled passage. Behind him was a group of six underworld characters.

  “You say the bulls are comin’, boss?” one of the criminals asked.

  The man in white nodded. “They’ve cut off the only entrance. There’s only one chance for you. I’ll have to lock you in one of these cells. You can tell the police that you were kidnaped. I’ll try to worm out of this some way.” He unlocked the door of a cell next to the one occupied by Bates and the others. He swung back the barred door and herded his criminal aides inside. He slammed and locked the door after them.

  The man in white backed away, reached under his outer garment, and took out a black steel box.

  “What you goin’ to do, boss?” whimpered the Dope from inside the cell.

  “Blow you all to hell,” the man answered coolly. “In three minutes, this entire place will be a ruin. Agent X is dead or dying. You will be dead. The only way I can be traced is through the records of Agent X, if he left any. By that time, I shall be out of the country, living very nicely on my fortune in gems.”

  A choked sob burst from Betty Dale’s throat at the mention of Agent X. Bates’ dark eyes became filmy. He seized the bars of the cell and shook them in his powerful hands. If only he could have laid hands on the man who was quietly setting his infernal machine.

  The man in white glanced at Bates. “Don’t worry. You’ll get out soon enough—through the roof.” He put his bomb down a few feet from the cells and strode down the hall to disappear through a small door….

  But the killer had neglected one small detail—Agent X was neither dead nor dying. The heavy layer of make-up material protected his face from the stings of the insects, though they swarmed over his hands and made working exceedingly difficult. Except for his face, he was covered with the maddening, stinging things.

  He ripped off his coat, tore at the
lining with his teeth. From the lining, he took out two cloth envelopes which contained the chemical compounds for producing his thermitelike material. With it, he hoped to fuse his way through the steel plate that stood between him and the killer.

  He dropped to his knees in front of the plate and sprinkled the contents of one envelope along the edge. Then he opened the second envelope and added its contents to the ridge formed by the first chemical. He stepped quickly to the opposite end of the room.

  With a hiss like the sudden erupting of a volcano, the two chemicals ignited, combining in a solid sheet of white-hot flame that sputtered and sparked with a dazzling light. Steel dripped like water. Then the entire panel gave way, crashed to the floor, and converted the room into a flaming-hell. Millions of insects sizzled in the smoking rivulet of steel.

  BACK in the prison cells, the Dope’s mind had broken down completely beneath the relentless ticking of the time bomb. He screamed and gnashed his teeth on the bars of the cell. In the next cell, Betty Dale glanced at Bates. Her pale lips formed the words:

  “How much more time?”

  Bates shook his head. “Don’t know,” He did know. No use telling the girl they were but ten seconds from eternity.

  Suddenly, the figure of a man appeared in the corridor. His clothes were nothing more than scorched rags. He looked like Carlos Carasco, but beneath his black brows the eyes of Agent X burned with their odd, compelling light. He sprang to the door of the cell containing Bates, Betty and the others. In his hands were cleverly designed master-keys that would open any lock.

  “Bombs!” shouted Bates. “The bomb!”

  X’s eyes darted to the innocent looking box.

  “Too late!” shouted Bates. “Run for it!”

  X sprang like a cat upon the ticking, black box. He lifted it above his head and hurled it with all his strength back up the long passage.

  A thunderous roar. Earth trembled. The heaven seemed to collapse. A wall buckled, sagged, and heaped. Stone was ground to powder, X was knocked flat by the explosion, but he was on his feet in a moment. The stone ceiling still held, though the passage was filled with wreckage. X sprang to the door of the cell and snapped it open.

  “Up to you, Bates. Try to get back through the mausoleum. There’s a passage that leads around the laboratory. You can’t get through the laboratory at all.”

  “Then—then it’s you, sir. He—he said—”

  But X was gone, running up the passage in the direction taken by the killer. He had no intention of freeing the criminals in the cells. They could take their chances with the police….

  In another part of the catacomb, far from the source of the explosion, the man in white entered a tiny room, scratched a match, and lighted an oil lantern. The room had been tunneled out beneath old graves, and the earth was retained by heavy planks. Rude steps led up to a stone slab set in the ceiling—actually a granite grave marker. In one corner of the room stood a small trunk.

  The man went over to the trunk, opened it, and looked gloatingly at its dazzling contents—over four hundred thousand dollars in gold and jewels. He closed the trunk, hurried up the steps, and pushed back the stone slab.

  Out into the open air, he picked his way among the graves to the tool-house. There a big car was waiting for him. He got in. The motor responded instantly. He shifted gears and backed up the drive until he came to his secret opening in the earth. He jumped from the car.

  But as he was about to enter the dugout, a shadow flitted across the floor of the room below. The killer crouched, drew his gun. The shadow was gone, but some one was in that room. The killer straightened, poised for a moment with his toes on the edge of the opening. Then he leaped, clearing the stairs and landing in the center of the room.

  His automatic barked once—twice. A tall figure lurched across the room, rocked, and went down on his knees. It was Agent X. Blood from a painful scalp wound trickled down into his eyes. Pain knifed through his chest, for the killer’s second slug had imbedded itself in X’s bullet-proof vest directly above an old wound that frequently bothered him. He fell forward, limply at the killer’s feet.

  “This time, you’re dead, damn you!” shouted the killer.

  BUT the Agent’s extended right arm swept along the floor. Confident, the murderer had approached too close. X’s steely fingers closed like a trap on one ankle and gave a quick jerk. Once again, the automatic barked, but the bullet plowed into the ceiling as the killer collapsed on the floor.

  Though he hovered on the brink of oblivion, X moved instinctively. He rolled over, seized the killer’s gun wrist, and gave it a wrench. The gun dropped, X tried to pick it up, but the man in white kicked it across the floor. The killer seized X by the throat and dragged himself to a sitting position. But in doing so, he had unknowingly given X a slight advantage.

  X retained the grip on the man’s right wrist, shoved the killer’s arm backwards, and brought it up behind almost to the killer’s left shoulder. And the hammerlock, with the strength of Agent X behind it, was a hold that could not be broken.

  Sweat beaded the killer’s brow. Arm ligaments tore loose. His grip on the Agent’s throat relaxed. His body writhed in agony.

  In his other hand, X held a small hypodermic needle, fully charged with a powerful narcotic. “This needle,” he whispered tensely, “then prison. And the chair is the next stop.”

  “There’s nothing against me!” groaned the man. “You are the only one who knows who I am, and you wouldn’t dare turn up in court.”

  “You have forgot the confession you signed?” X asked in mock surprise.

  “Confession I signed?”

  “Yes. Or was it a check? You didn’t know that carbon paper and the confession you typed for Hyde to sign were folded in under that check, did you? Dream about that for a while, murderer!” And the hypodermic needle plunged into the flesh of the killer’s throat.

  The effect of the narcotic was immediate. The body of the murderer went suddenly limp. X picked himself up. From the inside pocket of his coat, he produced the checkbook. He slipped the confession from its folds. Then he found a fountain pen in the killer’s pocket, and quickly traced over the carbon copy of the signature on the confession. Then he placed the confession under the murderer’s hand.

  X went to the door and looked back along the passage through which he had come. In the distance, he saw a little group headed by Harvey Bates coming toward him. Evidently, Bates had found the way back through the mausoleum cut off. X nodded his head in silent satisfaction. They would be free in a moment. Then he turned, ascended the steps, and was once again in open air.

  He had not even bothered to remove the killer’s mask. Only two persons could have seen X make his signal to Betty Dale, back there in the hall of the Hyde house. One of them had been Inspector Burks.

  On entering the room at the end of the passage, Bates stopped. “The killer!” he whispered to Betty Dale. “On the floor.”

  “Is—is he dead?” Betty peered anxiously around the big man’s shoulder.

  Sangar, Coombs, and Hyde crowded in behind them, and warily encircled the man in white.

  “He’s not dead,” Sangar said. “I can see him breathing. Apparently asleep. What’s that under his hand?”

  Bates knelt beside the still form. His glance hurried over the typewritten paper. “Why, it’s a confession to the whole thing. And it’s signed by—” His big hand seized the mask that covered the killer’s face. He tore it off. “Signed by Herman Tetwilder!” he concluded.

  Tetwilder, it was who lay on the floor, his features contorted, his gray mustache bristling. Perhaps in his drugged sleep, he saw the frightening, angular silhouette of the electric chair.

  “Who do you suppose could have knocked him out?” asked Sangar.

  “And who got him to write a confession?” demanded Coombs.

  An eerie whistle, seeming to come from empty air, sounded. Betty Dale smiled slightly. In that weird musical note was the ultimate answer to all
mysteries. For it was the musical signature of Secret Agent X.

  Table of Contents

  Secret Agent “X” – The Complete Series Volume 6

  Copyright Information

  Introduction by Tom Johnson

  Brand of the Metal Maiden

  Dividends of Doom

  The Fear Merchants

  Faceless Fury

  Subterranean Scourge