“Tricked,” said the Fury softly. “Tricked? Not yet, quite.” He whipped a small automatic from his pocket and centered it on the Agent’s chest. “Raise your hands,” he commanded.
X put up his hands. The Fury was backing slowly away from him. In the chill eyes within the slots of the mask, there was no indication of what he planned to do. “My compliments. You have played the game well. Not quite, I am happy to state, well enough.” And all the time he talked, he moved backward.
Then X fathomed the Fury’s plan. At the right-hand side of the door, a small switch board was revealed by a sliding panel. One switch was open—undoubtedly the switch controlling the current in the torture room. All within the room had moved. The four women stood in a group near the steel grating. For all X knew, Betty might be standing at that moment on a deadly spot that would shoot a charge of electricity through her body as soon as the switch was pressed.
X took a step forward. The Fury cried: “Stand where you are.” X took another step, but the Fury backed at the same time. “One more step, Agent X, and I will shoot,” he warned.
Instead of one step, X took two strides and a leap. The Fury fired twice. The slugs from the automatic thudded into the Agent’s bullet-proof vest. But at such close range, the double impact brought him to his knees. He was certain, at that moment of agony, that the Fury’s eyes were smiling. The Fury’s hand shot to the switch lever, but stopped an inch away. X’s fingers were locked on the Fury’s coat sleeve at the biceps. All the weight of his tortured body hung on that arm.
The Fury’s gun barked again, the muzzle but inches from the Agent’s chest. In the torture room, Betty screamed. Vina Trumaine cried: “Soulless beast!”
The Agent’s teeth ground together. He clung doggedly to that sleeve in spite of pain that felt as though his lungs were being torn out of his chest.
“Iron guts, eh?” the Fury said between clenched teeth. And the muzzle of his gun bobbed up, centered on X’s forehead.
It was move now or never. X goaded fagged muscles into action. His right hand came up, seized the Fury’s gun wrist, and deflected the gun barrel. At the same time sheer will brought him to his feet. He lurched forward unexpectedly, his head bent low. His head struck the Fury in the midsection, toppled him off balance. The Fury made one more effort to reach the switch as he went over backwards. His fingernails must have broken off against the switch handle, but the copper throws never reached their contacts.
FLAT on his back on the ground, the Fury fought. His legs worked like pistons, kicking at X in an effort to prevent the Agent from gaining an advantage. X gouged up with his thumb, caught the Fury in a particularly sensitive nerve center behind the right knee. The Fury’s right leg went limp. X threw himself forward, completely smothering the Fury’s body beneath his own. He seized the killer’s gun wrist, forced it back. Then he risked a single blow with his left fist that had all the strength of his fagging muscles behind it. The blow landed, directly on the chin of the Fury’s celluloid mask.
A long, sobbing sigh passed the Fury’s lips. He lay perfectly still. For at least thirty seconds, X lay across the unconscious form of his enemy, breathing heavily. Then he sat up, turned his head, smiled at Betty.
A quick search of the Fury’s pockets revealed the key to the grating. In another moment, he had the four women out of the torture room. Then he went to the switch board. One of the switches was marked: “Fence circuit.” X opened it. They were free to leave the island where terror reigned no more.
X went over to the unconscious Fury and removed the white celluloid mask. Beneath, the handsome features of Alan Moss were slightly marred by a blackening lump on his jaw where X’s blow had landed.
“Moss!” exclaimed Betty as the Agent lifted the unconscious man in his arms. “But you said that you saw the Fury when you were with Moss in Bastion’s yard.”
X nodded. “The clever part of their deception. There were two men known as the Fury—two partners in crime. To divert suspicion from themselves, they each took their turns appearing before us as the Fury. Moss, of course, held up the scientific end of their standard of crime and terror. It was he who rigged up the Bastion ray after he had stolen it from Vina Trumaine who took it from Bastion’s laboratory that night.” X looked at the adventuress. She made no effort to deny the accusation.
“I guessed this second Fury was Moss when I saw that he was left-handed—or rather left-footed. As you know a left-handed person is always left-footed, too. It was Moss who developed the powerful acid weapon which the Fury’s slaves used.”
X carried Alan Moss into the torture room. He placed the killer in the chair that Doris Foster had occupied. Then he went out, closed the grating, and turned on the current. X could think of no better prison for Moss than the hell of his own designing.
“That should keep him out of mischief until the police arrive,” he told the women. His next job was to contact the police. A few minutes in the Fury’s tower room and he was talking with Bates, by means of the Fury’s own radio. The Fury had turned off the radio silencing beam as soon as he had fulfilled his promise of silencing radio between the hours of eight and nine. Bates would get in touch with the police through Timothy Scallot.
While they awaited the coming of the police boat, Betty asked: “But the other Fury—the dead one. Who was he? You said you knew.”
X smiled. “Did you guess. Remember the ledger we looked into? Remember the entry concerning the profits made from threatening the Uthskin Cosmetic program? An extortion fee of fifty thousand dollars had been asked. Lowery had been able to pay only thirty thousand. You would naturally suppose the two villains netted thirty thousand from the deal. But there was an added factor—a cost of ten thousand to be subtracted, which was difficult to interpret until you saw that there was another sum to be added to the total—an amount to be added in the future.”
“I remember,” Betty said. “Fifteen thousand was to be added to that.”
X NODDED. “Fifteen thousand yet to be collected—not from Lowery, surely. Only one man could have collected that fifteen thousand from a program that had not gone on the air. That was the man who had insured the air time. Insured it, evidently, for fifteen thousand dollars to be paid to him if the program didn’t go on the air. Kopsak counted his money before he collected it. Kopsak had the air time insured at my suggestion. He later told me he had taken out the policy.”
“You mean,” Vina Trumaine interrupted, “that Kopsak and Moss tried to extort money by threatening to silence the program that Kopsak was paying for?”
X smiled. “And there you will see is the reason for the ten thousand dollars cost entered on the deal. That was the amount Kopsak paid Lowery for the first program of a prospective series. The series, incidentally, would have been canceled right after the first program, even though Lowery had paid the full fifty thousand dollars asked for. I am certain that Kopsak’s cosmetic concern was a mere blind. He didn’t need the cosmetic plant. He and his partner were already tapping a large portion of radio broadcasting’s seventy-five million a year business.”
Out across the Sound came the scream of a siren on a police launch. Vina Trumaine drew a long breath. Her green eyes met those of Agent X.
X smiled slightly. “What will you do now?”
“I was about to ask what you would do with me.”
X shook his head. “I don’t arrest people. I’ve nothing against you. As a matter of fact, I think you saved my life that night in Arden’s laboratory. You have played a dangerous game. I suppose you always will.”
“A dangerous game,” the woman whispered. “And this time I have been badly beaten. And in so many ways.” She extended her hand to the Agent, stooped quickly, and kissed Betty’s forehead. “But no one,” she added as she went through the door, “can say I am a poor loser.”
Doris Foster was seated on a couch, comforting the sobbing daughter of Dr. Arden. She looked up as X started to leave the house. “You’re not going?” she asked quickly.
X nodded. “But,” Doris insisted, “you can’t. Uncle must know how wonderful you’ve been.”
X smiled, patted Doris Foster’s head. “I am very much afraid Commissioner Foster knows too much about me already.” He looked at Betty, and left the room. He would, no doubt, return to New York on the police boat, impersonating one of Inspector Burks’s best men.
City of Madness
Secret Agent X knew that the destiny of millions of honest people rested in his judgment of a beautiful but crafty woman. And all the Agent’s plans fell to pieces when his most important confederate, Harvey Bates, rebelled against orders. For Bates insisted that Charlotte, the glamorous and powerful spy of old, was incapable of any evil.
CHAPTER I
Staggering Death
THE brown dirt road writhed and squirmed around hills, down hills and up hills. The man in the open roadster crowded his body against the wheel, leaned forward like a trained jockey urging his horse toward the finish line. The flaring headlights now and then shot out across some dark, abysmal ravine as the car swung around hairpin curves and missed eternity by the merest measurable fraction of an inch.
This was a short cut to Brownsboro. And John Morris of the United States Secret Service was tempting the Grim Reaper with every lurch of the hurtling car.
John Morris’s gray temples were shaved close; his ears flat against his head. His thin nose flared surprisingly at the nostrils, giving him an appearance of alertness that his ever darting, hazel-colored eyes did not belie. He was sensitive to danger that threatened the country he so loyally served. He knew to a certainty that no country in the world held so many foreign spies as the United States. And no one knew better than he that such men were a dangerous menace.
People had called John Morris a crank and a crape hanger. “Spies? Well, what if there were a few spies in the United States? Aren’t we at peace with the world?” Such was the usual reply, even from government officials, when John Morris uttered his warnings. Yet Morris knew that one by one the nation’s newest and best defensive weapons were being stolen. Who knew but what some day they might be turned against the very men who had developed them.
It was not until Washington had received an urgent message from Lorin Garvey, formerly of the Chemical Warfare Corps of the United States Army, that officials began to take John Morris seriously. That message had been short, giving scant information but leaving no room for even the most ardent optimist to doubt that trouble’s cauldron boiled and bubbled in the hills of Pennsylvania. John Morris had seen it and he had nodded his head as he read:
My safety be damned, but as you love the safely of all America, send some one to help me guard my secret.
(signed) Lorin Garvey.
Morris knew what the officials had said: “John Morris is the man to send. He’s a little cracked on the subject, but he’s a man of action and has had wide experience in the Secret Service.”
Cracked, was he! John Morris’s jaw shot out as he angrily yanked the car that seemed a part of him around a curve and let it plunge recklessly down a hill with the clutch out. The car thundered over the loose planks of a bridge and started on the upgrade. When it had gained the top of a little acclivity, Morris could see the ragged horizon tinged with a gleam of lights from Brownsboro.
Only a few more miles. He jammed the accelerator to the floor-boards only to slow down a moment later and listen to a strange sound, entirely foreign to the sweet song of his perfectly tuned motor.
It was a knock of metal against metal, almost as noisy as a broken connecting-rod. But it came from the rear of the car. A flat tire, broken spring leaf or a riddled gear in the differential couldn’t have possibly been the cause of the noise, for when Morris gave the motor the gun the wheels responded immediately and the car remained on an even keel.
Morris threw the car out of gear, set the hand brake and sprang to the road. He hurried around to the car’s sleek rear deck and immediately knew the origin of the persistent knocking that continued even after the car stopped. The sound came from the closed rumble seat compartment.
Morris got up on the step plate. His right hand dropped into his coat pocket, clamped on his automatic. His left hand grasped the handle of the compartment opening. He gave the handle a sudden twist and jerked up on the panel. He stepped down quickly and drew his gun. A shadowy form emerged slowly from the rumble seat. A whimsical voice said:
“Hello, John.”
“A stowaway, eh?” Morris barked. “Get out.”
“With considerable pleasure. It was getting stuffy in there, John, not to mention cramped. And besides, it’s time I took over the driving anyway.”
A strange sensation stole upon John Morris. Not at all a pleasant sensation. This was something like a nightmare. It was more than hearing a voice come from the rumble seat of his own roadster. Had it been a strange voice, it would not have been half as alarming. But it was a voice thoroughly familiar to John Morris. It might have been an echo of his own voice. No, more than that. It was his own voice.
THE STOWAWAY threw long legs over the rear fender and slid down the polished surface of the car to the ground. With magnificent unconcern for John Morris’s gun, he proceeded to dust off his clothes, stretch out wrinkles and straighten his tie. Then he reached into his pocket, produced a package of cigarettes, and began peeling off the cellophane.
“Don’t do that,” said Morris.
“Don’t do what?” the echo came back mockingly. “You didn’t expect me to smoke in that stuffy hole, did you? I’ve been on board ever since you stopped at that filling station. You’re not an easy man to follow, John. No—no—” as Morris reached toward the door of the car—“don’t bother about a flashlight. I’ll show my face in just a moment. Will you have a cigarette?”
“No thank you,” said Morris levelly.
“Very well.” A cigarette lighter flicked into flame.
John Morris took a staggering, backward step, stopped, let his jaw hang. It was almost as if by some magic a mirror had been conjured up out of the darkness. Not only did the stowaway have a voice exactly like John Morris, but his features were identical. And the glint of this stranger’s eyes showed that he was getting considerable delight from Morris’s obvious discomposure.
The secret service man’s eyes narrowed. Something of the fires of hate burned in their depths. He leaned forward, his gun tilting slightly toward the face of his twin. “I know you,” he whispered. “Know you in spite of that diabolic craft of yours. I met you once during the Great War when you established an enviable reputation for yourself. And I have heard what became of that reputation and how you deliberately perverted it. Money, wasn’t it? You couldn’t use your skill to make a living honestly. The very nation you risked your life for, during the war, you betrayed by becoming one of her worst citizens.
“Clever? I’ll say you’re clever! The only mistake you’ve ever made is following me. You haven’t a chance now. You know there’s not a better shot in the country than John Morris. Anyway, a child couldn’t miss at this distance.”
“Going to kill me, John?” asked the other calmly. “It’s bad enough to be terribly misjudged by as worthy a man as you without being murdered in these dark hills.”
“I’ll kill you if you make a false move. Get back in that rumble seat. I’ve a key to that compartment and the lock doesn’t extend through to the other side. You’ll have to blast your way out if you escape, Mr. Secret Agent X!”
THE MAN who was the living image of John Morris raised his eyebrows. “Glad you reminded me of the key, John. I’ll make sure to use it.”
“Get back in that rumble seat, damn you!”
The Man of a Thousand Faces, known the world over as Secret Agent X, shook his head. “Sorry to do this, John. I was in hopes that we could work together amicably in this. But if you will have it this way—”
A sharp, hissing sound came without warning from the cigarette lighter in Secret Agent X’s hand. While the Agent had been talking with Morris,
his fingers had managed to press a secret button in the side of the lighter, releasing a small charge of anesthetizing vapor contained in a cartridge in the lighter. This anesthetizing vapor, while harmless, was extremely powerful. As the thin veil of gray vapor curled up around Morris’s face, the secret service operative gave a short, coughing sound and crumpled forward into the arms of Secret Agent X.
X sighed a little sadly as he lifted the unconscious man into the rumble seat compartment. He seemed destined always to go his way alone. Few understood his unorthodox methods of crime detection. Even the police of the nation’s big cities whom he had secretly aided for years, ranked him high on the list of public enemies. Yet he could not change his methods now. Let the regular city, state and national lawmen handle the usual crimes in the manner provided for by the law.
But Agent X preferred the thousands of risks his impersonations brought him, the life of high adventure when the balance of life and death was turned one way or another by some clever deception or some swift stroke of action.
No sooner had X dropped the panel of the compartment than he was under the wheel, driving as Morris would have driven. He looked like Morris, he acted like Morris, and for a brief span of his dynamic life he would actually be Morris. No actor on the stage ever lived his parts more realistically than did Agent X.
Oddly enough, the same assignment that had sent John Morris to Brownsboro also accounted for X’s movements. Like Morris’s, the Agent’s orders had come from Washington, from the office of that mysterious official who preferred to be known only as K9—the Secret Agent’s only official sponsor.
It was because of spies that might be surrounding Lorin Garvey that X had been summoned. But beneath the surface of the promised adventure, Agent X scented something that was far bigger and far more insidious than an ordinary spy plot to obtain secret formulas from the brilliant scientist, Lorin Garvey.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 22