X shook his head. “But its perfectly okeh. We know about the October girl and Jonalden. Who is the woman in black?”
MORGAN shrugged. “Turney, maybe. Maybe its Lizio. I don’t know. Anyway, I wrote a letter to Secret Agent X—heard of him?—after they’d burned my feet nearly off. The woman in black told Fay to go out and find X. Said he was wandering around looking like Lizio—” Morgan’s jaw dropped. He sat up very straight then and goggled at Agent X. “Say, mister you—you’re—”
X stood up quickly. “Never mind who I am. The point is, you owe us your silence, at least. One thing more. Were any members of the Turney crowd in on the torturing?”
Morgan shook his head. “The girl held the gun. The woman in black did the dirty work. The woman in black slid out when I was about half shot. Fay October told the Turney bunch to sit around and watch for Agent X to turn up. The woman in black seems to be damned scared of showing her—or his—face around the Turney boys.”
X drew Bates to one side. “I thought it was something like that. The Turney crowd is working with the woman in black though they don’t know it. And, unless I’m miles wrong, the woman in black is going to destroy the Turney bunch. Why? Fear again. Bates, the woman in black is boss of the gang that kidnaped and killed Jonalden. And the woman in black is killing now because of fear of exposure. One person seems to be in the killer’s confidence—Fay October. Understand?”
Bates nodded. “Want me to look up Fay October?”
“Right. But first get a doctor for Morgan. I’m going up to Pat Turney’s apartment.”
If X wondered what had become of the police who had been heralded by the siren outside the Hoola Club, he knew when he tiptoed up the back stairway to the apartment above. As he slipped into the kitchenette at the rear of the apartment, the first thing that he saw was the broad, blue-clad back of a uniformed policeman.
With the stealth of a cat, X slipped into a bare pantry. Through the half-open door, he could see across the dining room and into the living room. A man was stretched on the floor and a police medical examiner was bending over him. The man was Pat Turney, and he had died the strangling death.
Burks was there, red in the face, hands on hips, eyes glaring at Attorney Dean Winton. Winton pulled his thin nose and looked embarrassed.
“It’s because we’ve got lawyers like you that we’ve got crime like this,” Burks lectured. “Just what do you think of your angel-faced Tony Lizio now? This is another of his jobs. And that’s the kind of a man you’ve got the nerve to defend in court!”
“I will have to admit,” said Winton slowly, “that it does look rather bad for Lizio. Rather bad indeed.”
“One thing I’ll have to admit,” said Burks, “that it does look as though Lizio was framed for the Jonalden job. Now, he’s out to get square with the men who framed him.” Burks turned to one of his men. “You look for fingerprints in the kitchen?”
“Getting at that now, chief.” And followed by several of his assistants, the print man went out into the kitchen.
Anyone could have seen Agent X in the tiny pantry with the door partly open. But as soon as X had heard Burks direct his men to the kitchen, he had pulled the door of the pantry shut—and the hinges of the pantry door had squeaked alarmingly.
“What was that noise?” asked one of the men.
“There wasn’t any noise. You always get the jitters when you work around a stiff. Get busy and powder up that window sill. What we want is prints. Burks will howl if we don’t find Lizio’s prints around here somewhere.”
“Let him howl. I still think that pantry door was moving when we came in here.”
“Well look, if it will do you any good.”
Inside the pantry, Agent X had drawn out and recharged his gas pistol. He held it in his hand when the man swung open the door.
The print man turned white, uttered an oath that didn’t get out of his mouth before the powerful gas wilted him to the floor. X hurdled the fallen man and fell upon another with both fists working like trip-hammers.
But the familiar voice of Inspector Burks rang out: “It’s Lizio! Shoot to kill!”
A ring of threatening steel surrounded Agent X. Grim-jawed police squinted over revolvers. X slowly raised his hands. “No need to shoot. I surrender,” he said quietly.
CHAPTER VII
Voices in the Dark
“JUST a moment, gentlemen.” It was Dean Winton who spoke. He came forward, elbowed through the circle of police, and confronted Agent X. Winton’s dark eyes were shrewd as they scrutinized X. “He does not look exactly like Tony Lizio,” he said slowly. “Nor does he talk like Tony Lizio. As a matter of fact, he isn’t Lizio.”
“I was thinking that,” Burks growled.
X knew there were good grounds for Burks’ and Winton’s suspicions. His makeup had been entirely ruined.
“Give him a frisk,” Burks ordered.
Two men stepped forward. Agent X looked over their heads. Leaning against the door of the next room, looking very rueful, was Harvey Bates. X looked away quickly. His right foot began tapping. Apparently, he was all impatience with his searchers. Actually, he was tapping out a code message: “Bates, get lights out and get out of here.”
The searchers brought out the Agent’s gas pistol. It aroused no particular interest because in pattern it was identical to an automatic. Next, they took out his medical kit. X saw Bates reach out for the switch that operated the lights in the next room. In his right hand Bates held a gun he was aiming deliberately at the globe suspended from the kitchen ceiling. The searchers took a box of small, glass bombs containing anesthetizing vapor from Agent X. These were passed to Burks. Next, his makeup kit changed hands. And a slow smile twisted Burks’ lips.
Lights in the next room went out. And simultaneously, Bates shot out the kitchen light. Total darkness. A door slammed. That would be Bates leaving, according to X’s orders.
“Steady!” growled Burks. “He can’t get away. We got him hemmed in!”
“But you can’t shoot him!” That was Winton’s voice. “You might hit some one else. You can’t take him. He may kill us all!” Winton’s voice but it had come from the lips of Agent X.
From across the room came Winton’s voice, but from Winton’s own tips this time: “I didn’t say anything. That sounded like me. It wasn’t me!”
A flashlight beam stabbed through the dark, found Burks’ face, grim and immobile.
“Steady,” said Burks. “This man is Secret Agent X.”
The flashlight jumped, crossed beams with another light. And Burks’ voice came again—but from another part of the room: “Quick! Make for the front room. He’s going out the front door.” Burks’ voice, but this time from the Agent’s lips.
“Stop, damn it!” roared Burks. “I didn’t say a damned thing.”
“What the hell you want us to do?” a voice demanded another of the Agent’s thousand voices, speaking from another part of the room. His order, in Burks’ voice, had had the desired effect. The ring of menacing guns was broken, and X was moving stealthily for the back door.
But if X was thinking fast, so was Burks. It was a battle of wits and Burks was a wily general. “Nobody move. Nobody speak,” came Burks’ tense voice. “Shoot the next man who moves or speaks. Watch the doors.”
“That wasn’t me! That was a trick! I didn’t speak!” And that was X speaking again in Burks’ voice. At the same time, he slid a little nearer the back door and felt instinctively the presence of a man in front of that door.
“Turn a light on the spot where that voice came from,” ordered Burks.
A beam flashed across the room, caught X in the act of reaching for the door. But if the light marked X it also marked the detective who stood in front of the door. X’s left fist came up in a short, fast punch to the detective’s jaw. He flung the man aside, yanked open the door. He was in the clear, but for a moment a perfect target for Burks. Burks shot, aimed straight for the Agent’s head, for he well knew
that X’s torso was completely protected by his bullet-proof vest. The bullet tore through the Agent’s toupee and creased the metal cap that was part of his makeup. Stunned, he pitched forward on the steps.
BUT HOURS of jiu-jitsu practice had taught X how to fall. He tumbled down the steps, head over heels, but with every muscle limp. By some miracle, he landed on his feet, and straightened up in time to meet two avid slugs that buried themselves simultaneously in his protecting vest. Pain-wracked, senses slipping, he ground his teeth and lurched across the backyard into the alley beyond.
Fagged muscles, leaden senses, demanded that he stop, drop where he was, give up. But his unconquerable will lashed his aching body into activity. He ran not seeming to know what he was doing. And suddenly he realized that the roar and crash of shots had ceased; that he was in a lonely and deserted street; that he was comparatively safe.
His first move was to make brief alterations in the makeup material that covered his face. When his fingers had completed that job, he returned to his hideout.
His investigation seemed to have reached a dead end. The two Turneys were dead, their henchmen were terrified ruffians—afraid of the police and afraid of Lizio. Was Lizio wreaking a horrible vengeance upon the Turney crowd because they had framed him for the Jonalden crime? It seemed impossible that Lizio could have directed the plane disaster from his cell in the death house. Yet Lizio had had outside associates who had helped him to escape.
In the solitude of his hideout, X shook his head wearily. He was back where he had started from. Lizio simply didn’t have the brains to conceive such a thing. X discarded the revenge motive. Fear was the other possibility—some one, who had directed the Jonalden crime, feared treachery from some of his associates. And there was good reason for such fear. “Lolly” Turney must have squealed to Hughes on board the plane. What other reason was there for the killer to have stripped Hughes of all his records and papers?
But X was getting nowhere. Inactivity was irksome to him. He took his radio transceiver from the closet and contacted the headquarters of the intelligence force directed by Harvey Bates. Bates was not in his office, but one of his assistants was always ready to take calls and receive messages.
X asked if Bates had learned anything about the ice cream delivered to Lizio’s cell. Bates’ report had just come in. The ice cream had been specially made and packed by Luigi’s Delicatessen. The driver of the truck, that delivered the cream, remembered distinctly seeing a man leave the truck when the truck had stopped to make a delivery. The driver had investigated, but nothing in the truck had been disturbed. No, the driver couldn’t give much of a description of the man.
X signed off. The perfection of Lizio’s prison escape indicated much pre-arrangement. Lizio couldn’t have just happened upon the gas bombs and known what to do with them. And there was still that unexplained visit to Lizio from Dr. Mills and Dora Winton. X suddenly decided to visit the Mills house again, and this time in the disguise of Sergeant Keegan, detective on the force. That, he hoped, would have some weight with the sophisticated Mrs. Winton.
In spite of the late hour, X left for the Mills house at once, arriving there shortly after midnight. The wing of the house occupied by Mrs. Winton was lighted up. X went around through the flower gardens at the side of the house, intending to knock on the French doors that opened off Dora Winton’s drawing room.
Suddenly, a thin, frightened cry knifed the silence of the night. It was followed instantly by a cry for help. Dora Winton’s voice, coming from the drawing room.
X SPRANG over the flower beds and leaped to the terrace. Through the French doors, he saw Mrs. Winton just picking up the telephone. X knocked furiously at the window. Mrs. Winton dropped the phone, stared for a moment in fright at the face of the man in the window. The features of Detective Keegan were pleasant and when worn by Agent X inspired confidence and trust. Dora Winton walked over and unlatched the French doors.
X flashed a neatly-counterfeited detective’s badge. “Thought I heard some one cry for help. You, Mrs. Winton?”
“Why—” she seemed to hesitate.
“I’m Sergeant Keegan,” X said with a smile. “Anything I can do for you?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Winton held the door wide and X entered the room with its many flowers, and its caged canaries kept awake by the electric lights. “I was just going to call the police,” Mrs. Winton explained. “Some one has been prowling around here. I’m all alone. Father received a call to go down to police headquarters early this evening and he hasn’t returned yet. All the servants have been given the night off.”
Mrs. Winton went to a chaise longue, sat down, and nervously picked at the embroidery of her negligée. “I am rather keyed up, I’m afraid.” She gestured to a chair. “Please sit down. I had an experience yesterday at Sing Sing that was a little too much for my nerves. But about this prowler—I was on the point of retiring and I had just decided I needed a drink if I was going to sleep at all. I prepared a highball, was just raising it to my lips, when I heard a strange noise which seemed to come from my bedroom. I went to the door, looked into the room, and saw no one. When I returned here, I saw a dark figure going into the outer hall.”
“A man?” asked X.
Mrs. Winton shuddered. “No. It was a large woman wearing mourning.”
“A woman in black?”
Dora Winton nodded. “I could not see her features because of the black veil she wore. I screamed then, but the woman disappeared. I was afraid to follow.”
X nodded. “And you were quite right not to. I’ll make a careful search.”
“Please do,” Dora Winton urged.
“I’ll only be gone a minute,” X assured her. He left the drawing room and went stealthily into the hall. Mrs. Winton’s scream had been genuine enough, but he wondered if perhaps she was not laughing at him.
From the hall, X worked himself into that part of the house generally occupied by Dr. Mills. That wing of the house was scarcely livable. There was hardly a chair in the doctor’s living room and library that was not eaten by acid or occupied by some bit of scientific apparatus. Only two rooms were intended for the laboratory, but the equipment had overflowed its dominion.
On a laboratory table was a typed manuscript, to which marginal notes had been added. The script dealt entirely with the unusual properties of a gas of Dr. Mills’ own compounding. Its possibilities in chemical warfare were immense, the notes explained. Thanatogen, he had named it. Its one freak property was its ability to be kept in a liquid state at a comparatively high temperature.
There was not the slightest doubt in X’s mind that the strangling death had been born in this laboratory. For the description of thanatogen tallied exactly with what X knew of the killer’s poison gas.
As for the woman in black, she or he seemed to have vanished. X returned to Dora Winton’s drawing room to find her nervously pacing the floor, a tall, clinking glass in her hand. She put the glass down on a coffee table and came to X. No doubt of it—terror lurked in her eyes.
“You—you found nothing?” she asked eagerly.
X shook his head. “The house is com—”
Clink. It was just a faint sound like a sliver of glass breaking. Or like ice popping. But to Agent X, it was a warning of lurking doom. His eyes darted about the room. One of the canaries dropped from its perch and lay there dead. Another bird dropped. Mrs. Winton walking back toward her drink, suddenly staggered forward, choked.
UNSEEN fingers seemed to close on the Agent’s windpipe. Across the room, Dora Winton’s highball was bubbling furiously.
“Hold your breath!” shouted X, a command that could scarcely be obeyed because of the choking sensation in the atmosphere. He sprang across the room, seized the woman in his arms, bore her the length of the room and rushed through the French doors.
Half strangled though he was, he went to work furiously upon Mrs. Winton. He knew then that the woman in black had visited the Mills house. Perhaps, it might even be her
permanent abode. One of those deadly, hollow ice cubes containing the powerful poisonous gas had been dropped into Dora Winton’s drink.
The Agent’s curative measures were simple. He knew that if she had inhaled one lungful of that gas in its concentrated form, his task was hopeless. Stretching her limp form on the ground, he bent over her, his powerful arms working tirelessly in artificial respiration.
Suddenly, he found that he was not working in darkness. Twin beams of light from a car fanned around the corner of the drive and came to a stop so that they spotted X and his patient. A man slammed the door of the car and came across the lawn with long, swinging strides. It was Dean Winton, sleek-haired, red-eyed, a handkerchief daubing at his nose.
“What the devil, Keegan!” he cried. “Who’s that? Dora?” He was surprised, shocked even, but not particularly pained. X could understand that. His life with Dora Winton had been no bed of roses.
X nodded grimly. “Got to get her to a doctor—if there’s anything left to doctor.” His fingers, forcing lazy, poisoned lungs to breathe, felt a lifelike quiver in the woman’s soft flesh. She choked spasmodically. Then came a sob. X straightened up a minute and then knelt beside her. He turned her over and gently raised her in his arms. The woman was alternately coughing and crying hysterically.
“Good Lord, if only we could get hold of her father. He’s an M.D. as well as a chemist. He might help her.”
X shook his head. He stood up with the woman in his arms. “Get to the car. We’ll take her next door. I believe that’s where Dr. Janes lives.”
Winton started to say something, sneezed violently, and blew his nose. He led off toward his car. “What I was trying to say—” Another sneeze threatened. He couldn’t get it out. “What I was trying to say is that Dr. Mills has disappeared. Inspector Burks sent for him early this evening. I just came from police headquarters. I’ve been trying to work with Burks on this Lizio affair. Feel responsible for Lizio’s actions. What I suggested was that we get Dr. Mills’ ideas on this strangling death. Poison gas is right along his line. But Dr. Mills has never showed up.”
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 7