Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7

by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

  “I hold each man responsible for every error,” the Fury chided. “I make no mistakes. Only slaves make mistakes. Next time, all shall be punished. As to the girl, leave her alone. I shall attend to her personally as soon as I am through. And—well, is she attractive?”

  The slave’s thin face twisted into a leer. He nodded his head eagerly. The Fury chuckled softly and closed the door of the laboratory.

  In the old cemetery, Betty struggled fruitlessly against the ropes that bound her. She was exhausted. Terror’s powerful stimulant raced her heart until she thought every beat must be the last. Finally she forced herself to relax. There was no use anticipating danger. So far, she was unharmed. Perhaps the boatman would become alarmed because of her long absence and would go for help.

  A rustling sound seemed to come from the grass-and-weed covered grave beneath her. She looked down, thought shudderingly of snakes, wondered if snakes came out at night. But she saw nothing. The breeze perhaps—but there was no breeze. Only that fearful, rustling sound.

  A full moon shed pale light through the branches of the old trees. She searched the ground about her as far as she could turn her head. The rustling sound continued.

  She looked over her left shoulder, near the edge of the grave mound. There dry weeds stirred. There something squirmed. Tiny yellow snakes! No, fingers! Gruesome, corpselike fingers. Then a wrist and arm—mere bones covered with parchment. The terrified girl shrank back against the tombstone. Her mouth was open, but her throat too dry to scream.

  The fingers were groping up through the grave, searching for her flesh. Dry, bony fingertips touched her bare arm. Skeleton fingers closed with the grip of steel.

  Betty’s head seemed to whirl. The earth became a hideous kaleidoscope where all was moonlight-silver and grave-mound green. And a thousand clutching hands, instead of one, grappled with her. Then, though she probably did not know it, she screamed—the agonized cry of a woman half mad with terror….

  AGENT X, in the plane piloted by Bates, flew northeast. Fort Schuyler’s light was far behind. In silken waters, City Island glittered like a jewel. The ferryboat to Hart Island looked like a tiny glowworm crawling through the darkness. They crossed the Blauzes. Somewhere below was treacherous Middle Reef and up from the black water came the purple ray of light, like an evil beacon.

  “Ghost Island,” X sang out into the telephone transmitter. “That purple light. Cut the motor and glide in. No use telling the Fury I’m on my way. I’ll take the jump at about seven hundred feet. As soon as I’m clear, head back to the airport. Get to headquarters and stick by the radio.”

  The roar of the motor cut and there was only the banshee wail of wind playing on taut struts. X loosened his safety belt, stood up, began climbing over the edge of the cockpit. Just before the plane sprang into the flickering beam of purple light, he jumped. He rocketed down, down, down, tumbling over and over, to pull up with a jerk a scant hundred and fifty feet from the ground. The dead air let him drift almost straight down.

  The chute cleared tree tops and settled in a small clearing. X ripped out his knife and began slashing at the cords that tangled about him. When he was almost free, he thought he detected the sound of footsteps behind him. He jerked his head around, snatched out his gas gun and at the same time felt the jab of a gun barrel between his shoulders.

  “A machine gun, man. Don’t take any chances,” the voice of Paul Vost sneered.

  A beam from a flashlight seared into X’s brain. He dropped his gas pistol into the tangle of weeds at his feet. When his eyes became used to the light, he saw Vost and another man. It was Vost who held the machine gun.

  X raised his hands slowly, allowing his knife to drop into his sleeve. Vost’s companion came in close, severed the last of the parachute cords, and dragged X free. Then, while the Agent was under the watchful steel eye of the gun, the man emptied the Agent’s pockets and loaded their contents into his own.

  “Must be a peddler,” the man joked, “with all this junk in his pockets.”

  “It doesn’t matter a lot what he is now.” Vost sneered. “It’s what he’ll be when the Fury gets through with him that he’s got to worry about. Think he’s a cop? The Foster girl gets it in the neck if he is.”

  “He’s got no badge on. What’ll we do with him?”

  “It doesn’t matter a lot what you do with me,” X said, his voice cold and mocking. “It’s what I’m going to do to you in a minute that you’ve got to worry about.”

  Vost sneered. “Yeah? Go on and start an argument. This Tommy can talk you out of damn’ near everything!”

  Out of the darkness, jabbed the shrill scream of a woman. A woman in pain or terror. Doris Foster, perhaps. And X had sworn that he would bring her back safely to the commissioner. The Agent’s right hand swept downward. Centrifugal force shot the knife down his sleeve and across his palm. He caught it by the thin blade and threw it by the same motion. In daylight, the trick could not have succeeded. But Vost caught only the glimmer of the keen blade as it coursed the short distance from X’s hand to Vost’s shoulder.

  Vost cried a curse. The knife was imbedded to the hilt in his shoulder. The machine gun clumped to the ground. X stooped quickly. His fingers darted out and recovered his gas pistol. Vost’s companion landed full weight upon the Agent’s back. A back-swing blow with the gas gun knocked the man off and X sprang toward Vost’s machine gun. He seized the Tommy, lifted it, called out to Vost to halt.

  But Vost was on the run and X dared not shoot for fear of alarming the Fury’s entire crew.

  A glance over his shoulder told him that the other man was fleeing in the opposite direction. The scream of the woman came again short and shrill. X plunged into the wood, following the direction of the cry. Branches whipped the machine gun from his hand, but he didn’t stop to retrieve it.

  Beyond the clump of trees, X saw another clearing where gray tombstones slanted from weed-grown graves. He saw, too, the frightened girl and the yellow arm reaching from the grave.

  Where another man might have stopped to ponder the strange, unreal scene before him, X acted at once. He had to act, for he saw veins on the emaciated arm swell suddenly. X dove straight toward the grave, his hands outstretched to seize the yellow arm.

  THAT yellow arm meant death, X knew. In its swollen veins flowed the poison, the mere touch of which would kill. X was not oblivious to his own danger. He knew that he might better be fighting with a rattlesnake. His one purpose at the moment was to save the girl.

  The yellow fingers released their grip on the girl’s arm, writhed and twisted in an effort to catch hold of the Agent. The strength in that withered arm was surprising. It required all X’s strength to keep those yellow fingers from coming in contact with his own flesh.

  Suddenly, strength went out of the yellow arm. For a split second, X relaxed his grip in an effort to gain a better hold. And in that moment, the arm darted free, darted back into an opening apparently in the crust of the earth.

  X jerked out his gas pistol, turned its muzzle into the hole, and pulled the trigger. From the opening, came a dull, sobbing sound. Then the night again belonged to the silence.

  “Oh, thank heaven!” sobbed the girl.

  “Betty!” X exclaimed, for it was not until she spoke that he recognized her. “What are you doing here?”

  She could not answer. Short, dry sobs prevented the utterance of words. Near the girl, X found her flashlight. His own had been taken when he had been searched. Aided by the light, he quickly loosened Betty’s bonds. He raised her to her feet and held her one tender moment.

  “Try to control yourself,” he said gently. “Did you come here in a boat?”

  Betty nodded. “But—but I can’t go back. There’s no way out. A fence charged with electricity surrounds this place. The gate was open when I came to investigate the purple light, but they—those horrible creatures—closed it.”

  X had no desire to leave the island until his work was completed, but he hated
to have to risk Betty’s life by taking her with him. He crouched by the grass-fringed opening in the grave and gingerly reached into it like a man exploring a serpent’s nest. His groping fingers met something cold, hard and smooth, a sort of handle. He pulled up on it. A square of sod at his feet neatly camouflaged a trapdoor set in the earth. He beamed the light down the opening.

  Behind X, Betty clutched his shoulder, shuddered.

  “He can’t hurt you now,” X whispered. “Knocked out by the gas. But he is obstructing our passage.” X went down three steps of a narrow, steep flight, hooked his hands beneath the arms of one of the Fury’s emaciated slaves and moved the man to one side. Then he went back and helped Betty enter the narrow chimney holes that reached down between old graves.

  X PAUSED to examine the right arm of the slave he had knocked out. It was covered by a long rubber glove that exactly matched the yellow color of the man’s natural skin. The glove contained “veins” that were evidently rubber tubes extending to the wrist and entering the palm. The palm of the glove was pierced with many holes through the outer section of the rubber. Through these the killer’s deadly acid passed when a large rubber bulb beneath the armpit was pressed.

  “You see,” explained to Betty, “the glove is the weapon. Because of its construction it looks almost as though these skinny devils had supernatural power. They have merely to touch their prospective victims with the palm of the glove, press on the bulb and the palm is flooded with that deadly stuff. The acid burns through the flesh and acts directly on the blood, producing death in a very few seconds. These devils don’t mind killing. There’s something wrong with their minds—enslaved some way by their master.”

  They went on. At the end of the flight of steps, they found themselves in what appeared to be an underground mausoleum. There were niches in the stone walls and in some of these crannies were coffins. New coffins that contrasted strangely with the inches of dust on the floor, and the mossy walls.

  X went to one of the coffins and looked in. Inside was another of the slaves, to all appearances dead.

  “But he isn’t dead,” X whispered in answer to Betty’s question. “It’s a cataleptic trance, induced by that new anesthetic that Dr. Arden makes. I had a taste of it. I believe that these slaves are down-and-outers that the Fury has picked up somewhere. He has given them anesthetic in some subtle manner. Then when he brings them from the period of catalepsy, he no doubt tells them that he has brought them back from the dead. Something that anyone who has tried the drug would readily believe.

  “In that way, no doubt, he has gained their eternal fealty. By inducing the cataleptic trance frequently, the Fury is no doubt able to carry his slaves around conveniently in coffins, to be awakened when he needs them. That accounts for the Fury having a mortuary as one of his offices.”

  “But what makes them so thin?” Betty asked. “And why are their minds affected?”

  “Undoubtedly, the habitual use of the cataleptic agent has something to do with their physical and mental condition.”

  “Then Dr. Arden—” the girl ventured.

  “I can’t say for certain,” X said. “The Fury undoubtedly is a man of science.”

  “What about Moss?” the girl suggested.

  “Hardly possible, for Moss was with me when I met the Fury for the first time. But we must hurry on. Doris Foster is here in this hell hole somewhere. She has been held a prisoner, her life as a pawn for Foster’s protection of the Fury’s activities.”

  Beyond Death’s dormitory, where the Fury’s slaves rested, was a narrow passage. Earth walls were held back by new lumber which attested the fact that the tunnel had been newly constructed.

  “We’re moving in the direction of the old house,” Betty whispered.

  X nodded. “No doubt this joins with the house somewhere.”

  The passage ended in a wooden door poorly fitted into a wall of stone. X swung back the door and they entered the basement of the old mansion. There was not a sound in the building, not even the squeak of a rat. Queer, that silence, and not especially conducive to peace of mind.

  They climbed rickety steps. The Agent’s left hand was behind him, clasping Betty’s hand. At the top of the steps, a door yielded to a mere touch. They found themselves in a tall, old kitchen, long ago fallen into disuse. The tile floor beneath them uttered no telltale creak. Still that foreboding silence as though only the dead dwelled within the ancient stone walls.

  THE NEXT ROOM showed some sign of habitation. A green-shaded light burned above a desk that was not particularly dusty. On the desk, beneath the lamp, was a leather-covered ledger. X and Betty approached on tiptoe.

  “An account book,” Betty whispered. “Look, it’s something about radio. There’s something about the Whisk-Away soap program.”

  X nodded. The entry read:

  $3,000 a week for nine weeks covering protection of Whisk-Away program. Obtained from American Broadcast Network.

  $27,000 Net.

  As his eyes skated down a column of similar figures, X could not suppress a gasp of astonishment, so great were the profits which the Fury had realized by his extortion scheme.

  “You see,” he explained, “the Fury would threaten a broadcaster, demanded money. If the money weren’t forthcoming, the star of the program that hadn’t paid for protection would be murdered. That was the first scheme, before the Fury learned how to silence radio entirely. But if you think those are sizable sums, look at what he gained from tonight’s work.” X pointed to another entry:

  $50,000 demanded to protect Uthskin Series.

  $30,000 received from Continental Broadcasters

  less—$10,000

  $20,000 net

  $15,000 to be added which will make a total of $35,000 profit.

  “You mean the Fury profited that much from silencing all radios tonight?” Betty asked incredulously.

  “Virtually,” X said quietly. “The queer part is that last entry—the $15,000 to be added.”

  “Could that be what Lowery charged for airing the show?” Betty asked.

  “Lowery?” X asked sharply, as though he had not heard the name before. Then slowly he shook his head. “Betty,” he whispered, “I think we’ve got it. I think we know who the Fury is. Only, it’s utterly impossible because no man can be two places at once.

  “But then again, it’s right in front of us in black and white. That account book tells exactly who the Fury is, just as though he had signed his full name to it.”

  X turned from the telltale ledger to the drawers of the desk. If he only had a weapon of some sort. Searching the drawers might reveal a revolver. He opened the top drawer and stared into the startling, bone-white features of the Fury’s mask.

  At that moment, Betty screamed a sharp “Look out!”

  Where another man might have turned around automatically to see what the danger was before acting, X thought for the merest fraction of a second. In front of him was the best weapon fate had dealt him—the white mask. He snatched it from the desk drawer and slipped it over his face before turning around.

  Through the door of the Fury’s office came a group of six emaciated slaves. And behind them was the Fury himself.

  X and Betty were trapped. Had it not been that the girl was with him, X might have made some desperate attempt to lay hands on the Fury whose face was an evil gleam of white mask, identical to the mask that X wore.

  There was only one possible way out. It depended entirely on quick thinking and psychological bluffing—an art in which Agent X was an adept. He must turn the slaves against their own master.

  CHAPTER XI

  Where Men Go Mad

  THE FURY seemed stunned into inactivity by this sudden meeting with his counterpart. As to the slaves, their dull faces took on a look of helpless bewilderment.

  X knew that everything depended upon acting during that moment of surprise. With a movement of his left arm, he hastily thrust Betty Dale behind him and strode straight toward the slaves
and their evil master.

  “Masquerader!” he cried, pointing an accusing finger at the Fury.

  The Fury gave the slave nearest him a push. “Get him!” he whispered. “Get the other man in the mask!”

  The slaves surged forward in a body, stopped and looked from X to the Fury.

  “Be careful,” X warned. “I am your master. Do I not look like your master? You shall be punished if you disobey. Turn around and take the other masked man prisoner. It is he who is responsible for all your misfortune. You might live like other men, be like other men, instead of sleeping in the filthy holes he has assigned you. Turn on him. Be men! He is your destroyer.”

  “Get that man!” shouted the Fury. “Damn your empty heads! Get him!”

  One of the slaves turned, snarled at the Fury. Then the Fury made his greatest mistake—he drew a gun. And X immediately took advantage of that mistake. “See,” he cried, “he would shoot you. I do not threaten to kill you as he does.”

  The snarling slave sprang straight at the Fury’s throat. The Fury shot. The man dropped back, wilted slowly to the floor. But that one shot was enough to send the other five slaves into a rage. They fell upon their chief, bore him to the floor. X strode as close as he dared and shouted: “Don’t hurt him! Take him alive!”

  But the snarling fiends had tasted battle and were not to be stopped. One of them wore one of those deadly rubber gloves on his right hand and arm. Too late X sprang to save the fallen criminal. That yellow, rubber-covered arm snaked out. Thin fingers locked around the Fury’s throat.

  There was a scream of agony from the Fury as the poisonous acid bit into his flesh.

  “Kill, kill, kill!” screamed the slaves. One of them seized the Fury’s gun, leaped over his fallen leader, ran through the door and shouted to the others to follow.

  “Betty, come on!” X called as he followed the slaves through the door. He was thinking of Doris Foster, locked up somewhere in the house. The mad slaves were running amuck. He dared not think of what might happen if they found the commissioner’s niece unprotected.