X dropped to his knees and peered through the keyhole to see what effect the gas had had upon Arden. But evidently the doctor had anticipated Vost’s action and held his breath long enough to get clear of the room. The laboratory was empty and the rear door standing open.
X turned to the young man he had saved, the young man whose intervention at the critical moment had gone a long way toward helping X out of his predicament. The young man was sitting on the floor, head bent, chest heaving with sobs. Tears trickled down the surface of the silk mask he wore.
A smile flicked across the Agent’s lips. He hooked his hands under the young man’s arms and helped him to his feet. “Come now, Secret Agent X, don’t cry,” he said in a gentle, mocking voice.
The young man who was beginning to show very feminine weakness, stamped a small foot and cried: “Don’t you call me Agent X. Don’t you dare!” And with an angry jerk of white fingers, the silk mask came off to reveal the dangerously beautiful face of Vina Trumaine.
AGENT X took the woman’s arm. In spite of the danger of the last few minutes, he could not suppress a chuckle. And the more he laughed, the more furious Vina Trumaine became. She struggled to get away, she kicked at his shins, she even drew one of her automatics and made an angry effort to blow out X’s brains. Failing that, she apparently tried to commit suicide.
X, serious at once, disarmed her. She blinked back tears, turned a pout into a smile, and once more had control of herself. “Forgive me, please,” she said huskily. “It’s really my first offense as a hysterical woman.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” X told her. He guided her from the house and out to his car. She watched him remove his police badge and put it in his pocket.
“Am I under arrest?” she asked, as the motor roared.
X nodded. “In a way. Answer my questions truthfully, if that’s possible, and we may get along together. Why the masquerade?”
Vina Trumaine shrugged as though the answer was obvious. “What chance would a woman have against those men?”
X said: “I don’t know, but you managed pretty well. But why try to impersonate Agent X, of all people?”
“I shouldn’t have,” she said thoughtfully. “He’s really inimitable. But I thought his name would lend greater weight to my threat. I really couldn’t kill anyone.”
“You tried very hard to kill me,” X reminded her.
“I know. But I wouldn’t have. I felt so very helpless when you had hold of me. Trying to shoot you was just a threat like pretending to be Secret Agent X. I am a great admirer of Agent X. I’ve tried to imitate him in my work.”
“Even by signing his name to registers and painting his trademark on laboratory walls? That was to help create the confusion in which you stole the Bastion Ray.”
“I didn’t steal it!” she denied fiercely. Then more mildly: “How did you know about the ‘X’ mark on the wall?”
X smiled. “After all, I am a detective. What did you expect to do with the ray if you had kept it—for you did steal it right from under Bastion’s nose, just as the lights went out.”
“I—I wanted to destroy it,” she told him. “Such a weapon has no right to exist. I am a militant pacifist. I wanted to destroy the ray because it makes war too easy.”
Agent X had to admit that Vina Trumaine spoke convincingly and developed her alibi swiftly. A story that was good, but necessarily sheer fiction. Militant pacifists of the female variety didn’t file their fingernails to the quick as a professional safe cracker would. The woman was a spy, perhaps, working for some European power. X knew there were hundreds of spies in the United States, attracted by the ingenuity of American inventors in creating new instruments of war.
Or perhaps she was a free-lance adventuress, wanting the ray to sell for her own personal profit. Still he could not tell her this without admitting that he was A.J. Martin. From such information she would quickly deduce that he was Agent X. It was possible that she already guessed his identity.
He could not deny that during that brief drive to her apartment she had used all her feminine wiles on him. He found himself alarmingly conscious of her intoxicating perfume and the alluring glances she turned upon him—glances that would have made another man giddy. Perhaps her only purpose was to try and gain his confidence so that she might profit from information he might drop while drugged by her lovely presence. Or again, it might be that by some strange quirk of emotion she was genuinely infatuated with him.
At any rate, he saw her to the door of her apartment. After he had unlocked the door for her, he coolly said good night and left her. But he was conscious of her green-eyed, burning glance that followed him all the way to the elevator.
X was not immune to the charms of Vina Trumaine. He would have never denied admiration for her beauty. But the chances of her winning his affection were slim. Two things prevented that: the love he bore for Betty Dale and which she returned, and the fact that X held his duty toward mankind above everything else.
In a very short while, X had reason to believe that doom would come for kindly, mild-eyed Donald Lowery. Though X had no idea what criminal scheme revolved in the Fury’s brain, X intended to be with Lowery when the Fury struck. If possible, he even hoped to shift Lowery’s danger to his shoulders.
CHAPTER VIII
Million Dollar Crime
DONALD J. LOWERY was at home on his Long Island estate the following afternoon. He was expecting his doctor. Unfortunately Lowery’s nervous condition was not to be alleviated by a visit from his family physician. The worthy doctor was at the moment quietly sleeping on the couch in his own office. Much to the alarm of his own patients who entered to consult him, the doctor could not be awakened. Such was the effect of a single shot from the Secret Agent’s gas pistol.
X’s operatives had learned of the doctor being called by Lowery. This gave X an unlooked-for opportunity of getting into Lowery’s confidence. Shortly after noon, X had accosted Dr. Hykeman in his office, prescribed rest, and provided for it by giving him a shot of anesthetizing gas.
With a living model to work from, X had no trouble in molding his own features so that they were identical to those of Hykeman. All the doctor’s mannerisms that X’s keen mind could record in a few minutes with Hykeman were perfectly imitated by X as he entered the presence of Donald Lowery, some time later.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what the trouble is, doctor,” Lowery complained. “You know I have generally enjoyed perfect health.”
“Now, now, don’t trouble yourself about what’s ailing you,” X said, in the voice of Dr. Hykeman. “Your business is radio. Mind it. Let me find out your trouble.” And as he looked Lowery over, X had not the slightest trouble in diagnosing the case. Lowery was overwrought, tired and worried.
After a brief examination, X said: “You work too much, worry too much. Why, I do not know. Surely a man in your financial condition, with everything in the world at your fingertips, has no right to worry. Just what’s troubling you?”
“I—I can’t say,” Lowery whispered. “I—I don’t know.”
X opened a satchel that contained some of his own drugs, and took out a white powder. This he dissolved in a glass of water. “Just a little sedative,” he told Lowery. But it was something more than that. It was a powerful opiate that would stimulate Lowery’s imagination and weaken his will power. After the drug had had time to take effect, X took hold of Lowery’s hand and gazed steadily into his eyes.
“Now, Lowery, you will tell me what is troubling you.”
“I—I can’t. I dare not!”
“Come, come. I am your doctor. You know that what you tell me will go no farther. Money troubles?”
“Yes,” Lowery said sharply. “With the radio broadcasting business amounting to something like seventy-five million a year, I am none the less in hard straits.”
“Because of the Fury?” X suggested gently.
“How did you know?” demanded Lowery, instantly on his guard.
/> “Relax,” X whispered. “I have heard of the Fury. It was he who murdered Dot Dejong. Why?”
“It is death to tell! I don’t want to die!”
“You’re not going to. What has the Fury asked of you? Don’t you see there’s only one way out? You can’t carry this burden alone.”
“I’m not alone,” replied Lowery. “Every broadcaster in this city is threatened.” He paused a moment, took a long breath. Then he blurted it all out:
“The Fury is taking the broadcasting business. At first he threatened our star performers. Remember when Dick Coleman, the orchestra leader, was shot down? Scandal murder, the papers called it, because it occurred in a woman’s apartment. But I knew better. The Fury told me that if I did not pay money for ‘protection,’ Coleman would not be able to fulfill his contract. After Coleman’s death, I paid—sometimes as much as a thousand dollars a week.
“Others were threatened. Michial Norwich was a tenor under contract to the American Network. He disappeared. I know where he is. I was shown his body before it was thrown into the river. There was a brand, like the imprint of a human hand, across his chest. He died as Dot Dejong did, when I again refused to pay the radio ‘tax’ that had suddenly been raised. Now the Fury wants even more—fifty per cent of all the profits taken in by all the broadcasters of the city. If we do not pay, he threatens to strangle radio broadcasting.”
“Is that possible?” X asked.
“Certainly. Think: tonight Uthskin Cosmetics is sponsoring a great new radio show over our network. If that program is successful, there will be a long-series contract signed. The show will be successful, undoubtedly, and on a thirteen week contract our profits should approach two hundred thousand. But the Fury has demanded a flat fifty thousand dollars to ‘protect’ the program tonight—more than the show is costing the sponsor. I can’t afford to pay the Fury’s demands. Nor can I afford to let this opportunity of netting a long-term contract slip by. I have raised thirty thousand dollars and paid that much to the Fury. But I can raise no more. And the Fury is still unrelenting.”
“Rest assured,” X told him, “there is no way your programs could be jammed by an interfering station. The Federal Radio Commission is too eager to catch some one trying to do that. Directional receivers could easily trace the origin of the interference. Besides, the Fury could hardly hope to jam all the stations in your network at once. He may, however, make an attempt to kill off the entire cast of this new show.”
“You may be right. He made a good start. Dot Dejong was to sing on the Uthskin program. Fortunately, I found some one to take her place. But what am I to do?”
X RETURNED to his satchel, removed a hypodermic syringe, and a small vial. He loaded the syringe and approached Lowery. “I am going to see that you get some much-needed rest.” He rolled up Lowery’s sleeve and made the injection. The narcotic he used was harmless and would not conflict with the action of the opiate he had used before. A moment later, Lowery was unconscious. He would not awake for some time to come unless he received medical aid.
He carried Lowery to the bedroom and once again set about changing his features. This time, he took a great deal of care. He was going to impersonate Donald Lowery. He was not only going to attempt to deceive Lowery’s associates, but also he must deceive Death when Death came stalking Lowery.
When he had completed his disguise, he left the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He returned to the library where he and Lowery had been talking. As he entered the room, his disguise was put to its first test, for Wilbur Kopsak was waiting for him, or rather for Lowery.
Kopsak’s prominent jaw was outthrust belligerently. His short, black brows were crowded by a tight frown. He helped himself to one of Lowery’s cigars and bit off the end angrily.
“Look here, Lowery, I couldn’t help it,” he began, shaking the cigar at X. “Couldn’t help overhearing what you were telling the doctor. Your servant told me to wait in the room just outside. You mean to say there’s actually some one trying to stop my program? This devil who calls himself the Fury?”
Evidently it was Kopsak’s cosmetic firm that was sponsoring the new radio show. X nodded his head in answer to Kopsak’s question. “I am afraid that what you overheard is all too true. I’ve paid all I can to try to buy him off. Time only will tell whether he is capable of carrying out his threat.”
“But, Lowery—he can’t do that. I’ve sunk ten thousand hard dollars into that single show. I’m expecting it to pull, and pull hard for my new firm. Why, I want at least twenty thousand return in new business from that single show. It’s got to go on!”
“It will go on,” X reassured him. “Whether it will go out through our transmitters I don’t know. The wisest thing for you to do is to see some special insurance underwriter and have the air time insured if it means so much to you.”
Kopsak was silent for a moment. X watched his big hands nervously peeling wrapper leaves from his unlighted cigar. Then Kopsak looked up. “Is it really that serious?”
“I am afraid it is.”
“Then I’ll take out insurance. I’ll see about it this afternoon. Leeds and Son will take it up, I’m sure. They’ve insured weather for me when I owned a ball club. If you don’t mind—”
Lowery’s servant entered. “A lady to see you, sir. She would not give her name.”
“What did she look like?” X asked.
“A foreign sort, sir. Yellow of deeply tanned skin. Attractive, I should say, but not exactly—” the servant coughed discreetly.
X smiled. “Not exactly my type. Nevertheless, show her in.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but are you quite well? Has the doctor left?”
X nodded. “Quite well, thank you. Dr. Hykeman has left.”
The servant turned, and in another moment ushered Madame Susu into the room. The medium wore the same simple suit that X had seen on her in the undertaker’s establishment. A dark veil dropped from the brim of her hat to halfway down her nose, concealing, to some extent, her exotic eyes.
X’s pulse quickened. Perhaps now, the Fury would strike. Perhaps the mystic was the emissary of sudden death.
“Madame Susu!” exclaimed Kopsak. “The murderess! You’re wanted by the police, my fine woman!”
MADAME SUSU dropped on her knee, brushed back her veil with one hand. She seized X’s hand imploringly. Her dark eyes glistened with tears.
“Protect me. Oh, please don’t let them take me! You owe me that, at least, for the risks I have taken for you. The Fury will kill me. He will have me die slowly, because of what I am going to tell you. But I must tell. I can go on no longer, hating myself for helping him. He compelled me to—frightened me into obeying his orders.”
“Be careful,” Kopsak warned. “The woman’s a fox.”
X shook his head slightly. If he had ever read sincerity in human eyes he read it now. “Go on, please, madame,” he said quietly.
“Then you believe me! You will protect me. The Fury compelled me to allow him to use my séance chamber for his secret communications. I tried to warn you all that night something terrible would befall. I tried to warn you with the spirits. The Fury was there that night, though I know not who he is. He was there to watch one of his slaves kill poor little Miss Dejong. And he is not through. Listen, please!”
Madame Susu grasped the Agent’s hand the tighter. “Your radio stations,” she whispered earnestly, “are in danger. I do not know how he will do it, but I have heard him say that tomorrow night he will strike. You must pay money to stop the Fury. Much money.”
She stood up. “There!” she was triumphant. “I have warned you. I have risked my life.”
Agent X reached for the phone on Lowery’s table. “You shall have your protection. I am very grateful for what you have done.” He called the number of the Hobart Private Detective Agency.
When Hobart answered the phone, X spoke to him not in the voice of A.J. Martin to which Hobart was accustomed, but in the voice of Lowery. He a
sked that two men be sent out immediately to escort a woman to her apartment and watch over her day and night.
“And now, Madame Susu,” X said assuringly, “if you will just step into the hall and wait until these detectives arrive, I am sure you will have nothing to fear.” He took the medium by the arm and led her into the hall. There he stopped. Madame Susu screamed.
On the floor at their feet was a man, just barely recognizable as Lowery’s servant. His mouth and chin were a livid scar, like the imprint of a human hand, burned deep into the flesh.
“What the devil?” It was Kopsak who, alarmed by the woman’s scream, had rushed to the door.
THE AGENT’S pulse hammered. His nerves grew taut. He thrust his hand into his pocket and gripped his gas pistol. “Back in the library, Kopsak. The Fury or some of his men are in this house. That man died from the death-touch!”
Kopsak rushed back into the library. X was on the point of forcing Madame Susu to follow, when a hideous, emaciated hand reached out from the heavy drapes that flanked the living room door, and snatched at Madame Susu.
X’s movements were adroit. His left hand came up, slammed across Madame Susu’s mouth and nose, jerked her back and at the same time prevented her from breathing. For the Agent’s gas pistol was out, spitting its mist of sleep straight into the curtain. The curtain wavered, parted. The starved-looking killer fell forward on his face. Only a quick back-step prevented his deadly right hand from touching Agent X.
Kopsak could evidently withstand the suspense no longer. He yanked open the door, stuck out his head and demanded: “What’s happened?” Then his mouth opened, remained so, silently shouting. His right hand pointed along the hall.
X’s glance followed that pointing finger. Fifteen feet from him stood a tall figure clothed in a dark rain coat in spite of the fact that the afternoon was warm and fair. His face was the white of bleached bone—a mask of celluloid, the forehead of which was centered by the Fury’s golden seal. Agent X wished that he had had time to reload his gas pistol. Or better still, he wished for an automatic. For if ever a man needed killing, it was the Fury.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 18