“Let Doc Davies through!” cried a man. “He’s got the keys.”
“Yes, let Davies through. That’s the stuff, Doc!”
X got the key into the lock, but instead of turning it, he left it there and elbowed a little to one side. When the grating was opened, X knew that the man who opened it would be forced slightly back. This X dared not risk. The infuriated crowd could beat Morris to death in the cell before X could reach him. Other hands than X’s were ready and eager to turn the key. As the cell door opened slightly, Agent X was the first to enter.
Morris went into a fighting crouch. He feinted with his right and hooked with his left, but X turned the blow aside, literally smothering any other blows that Morris attempted by crowding the secret service man back to the wall. X’s left arm slipped around behind Morris. His hand came around so that thumb and forefinger could clip Morris’s nostrils tightly together while the palm of his hand was firmly planted over the secret service man’s mouth. At the same time, the tiny object palmed in his right hand dropped to the floor to be crushed beneath the feet of the mob.
X SIMPLY held Morris, protecting him with his own body while apparently struggling with him. And always, his left hand prevented Morris from breathing. The small round object that X had dropped was a glass vial containing a large quantity of X’s anesthetizing gas, sealed under pressure. As soon as the vial was broken, the gas began to spread rapidly throughout the cell and the outer hall.
Men and women of the mob went limp, keeled over one another without even so much as a groan. Those who saw what appeared to be sudden death, tried to run, but the tightly jammed hall prevented rapid movement. The gas caught up with them and dropped them in their tracks.
Only X and the half-strangled Morris remained standing. Long practice had taught X just how long it required for a charge of his famous gas to dissipate. Its concentration gave it tremendous power and the pressure within the little bombs gave it a wide range. To Morris, it must have looked like nothing less than mass murder, though actually the gas was perfectly harmless.
In another moment, X began maneuvering through the crowd of unconscious men and women. He dragged Morris along with him. When they had gained the hall, X thought it safe to breathe. He released his hold on Morris’s nose and mouth and hurried the breathless man toward the side door. But on opening the door, X stopped suddenly.
Parked in the street was a long, sleek, black sedan. Its motor was idling. And near the car a strange and horrible drama was being enacted. One man, who had been lounging beside a telephone post, was suddenly seized with a violent fit of coughing that doubled him over. In another moment, he was down on the sidewalk, fighting for breath and struggling for life itself.
A few bystanders who were near at hand started to go to his aid. But even before they reached him, a marked change came over their faces. Muscles contorted as though they had suddenly been seized by intense pain. Some cried aloud, others shrieked in maddened voices. Some flung themselves about as though fighting with an invisible monster.
It was the plague of madness. Able-bodied, mentally alert men and women were instantly converted into insane puppets that shrieked and danced disjointedly, that rushed headlong into buildings and passing cars, that gibbered and chattered like monkeys. Others in the street, as yet unaffected, took to their heels, screaming in terror so that it was difficult to distinguish the madmen from the sane.
A uniformed chauffeur came out of a building across the street. He took in the situation in a single, frightened glance. He raced across the street, sprang into the sleek sedan, and drove away at top speed.
Still clutching John Morris by the arm, X hurried down the steps and onto the sidewalk. White-faced, terrified police, determined to do their duty if it cost them their lives, darted this way and that, trying to corral the mad ones and keep the dead and injured from being tramped on by the crowd. With his free hand, X reached out and seized a running man by the arm. “That car,” he shouted, pointing down the street after the black sedan. “Know who owns it?”
“Reed Kennedy,” called the man, jerking his arm free and running.
The danger seemed to have passed when the sedan left the curb. The crowd was gathering around the dead and maddened victims, to look on and be fascinated by the horrible, grotesque antics of the captive maniacs in the hands of the police.
Suddenly, with a quick, deceptive twist of his arm, John Morris broke free from the Agent’s grasp. He took three backward steps, stood perfectly erect, and pointed at the Secret Agent. “I saw you do it,” his lips curled venomously around the words. “The mob back there in the jail. You killed them all. You did it with gas—the same gas used here in the street not a moment ago. The mad malady is caused by gas and you are the man who is doing it. Police!” He turned his head, looked at the bewildered officers of the law who surrounded them. “Police, it is up to us to stamp out this so-called plague. It is gas, I tell you. Gas! I saw him use it in the jail. He dropped a bomb from his hand.”
“That’s right,” a man spoke up. “They’re all dead back there in the jail.”
“But—but,” a policeman stammered, “you’ve made some mistake. This man is Dr. Davies.”
“That man is Secret Agent X!” a voice shrilled. And elbowing his way through the throng, came the real Dr. Davies.
The appearance of the head of the Board of Health put an end to all doubts. The crowd surged forward, eager to wipe out this man whom they supposed was menacing their very sanity. Foremost in the mob, were the police whose wealth of misinformation regarding Agent X had led them to believe that he was the most notorious criminal unhanged.
X’s glance compassed the ever narrowing circle of humanity. Not a single break in the line of accusing eyes and the clenched, threatening fists. Revolvers were springing into the hands of the police. The slightest resistance meant a volley of leaden death from police guns. Yet to argue with a panic-scourged crowd was in itself stark madness. Nothing he could have said would have convinced them at that moment that he was not the cause of all their trouble. The one way out would plunge him deeper and deeper into dangerous waters, but it might, for a minute or so, offer him security. What came after that was in the hands of the gods.
CHAPTER IV
Murder Racket
“ONE phony move, and let him have it!” one of the police chewed out of the corner of his mouth. “And get him through the head. He may be wearing a bullet-proof vest.”
Secret Agent X raised his hands slowly above his head. “I shall make no resistance,” he said quietly. “I am going to walk away from here and nobody will prevent me.” A cunning smile twisted his lips. The fingers of his right hand straightened. In the crotch of his thumb he held a round, glass sphere as fragile as a bubble. It contained anesthetizing gas which, in the open air, was capable of knocking out only a few of the many who surrounded him.
“The gas!” husked John Morris. “I saw him use it.” The secret service man stood his ground, but several in the crowd who heard his whispered words turned and fled.
X held his hand above his head, and yelled: “The gas of madness. You have seen its work. You cannot doubt but what I am able to kill you—or drive you all insane with it. Sorry I have to deprive you charming men and women of my company.” And he backed slowly toward the rim of the circle.
The crowd fell back, the circle parted. Even police who had had their courage tempered by years of service, turned pale and backed away from Agent X—Agent X, the man whose capture or death would have made them nationally famous and enriched them with a sizable reward. But a man couldn’t enjoy wealth if he was insane, and the terror of madness was far more potent than the fear of death.
“It—it’s a bluff!” shouted Dr. Davies. He sprang into the clearing, started to pursue X.
A policeman caught him by the arm. “You want to land us all in the asylum because of your foolishness?” he demanded.
“A bluff!” shouted Davies. “You can’t drive any one insane wit
h gas. It’s a disease, I say. A filterable virus.”
Smiling at the doctor, X said: “Which is an admission that you don’t know what causes the plague of madness. But John Morris knows and others know. Would you care for another demonstration, just for your benefit?” X poised the gas bomb as though to throw it. The crowd seemed to shout its terror from a single throat. Men and women ran pell-mell down the street. Only the police remained and they melted back before X’s advance.
X gained the entrance of a narrow alley. He backed into it still holding the bomb aloft. “I am going to place the bomb in the alley,” he told them. “Should any of you pursue me, you run the risk of stepping on it in the darkness. Good night to you all. We’ll meet again.” He stooped, seemed to be rolling something along the pavement, stood up and raced for the other end of the alley.
Not a man followed him, though actually X had returned the harmless gas bomb to his padded pocket from whence it had come. His plan had worked—but he had heaped a new price upon his head. Now every person in the city would believe that it was Secret Agent X who was the Master of Madness.
At the other end of the alley, X found himself on Elizabeth Street. A few blocks to the south was a temporary hideout which Bates had previously arranged for him. Uncertain as to his next step, X started for the hideout. There he could manage a complete change of clothes and makeup.
He had not walked more than half a block when a car purred up to the curb beside him and a hoarse voice said:
“Doc!”
X turned around. The car was a sedan. Its dome light was on and two men could be seen sitting in the back seat. One was a red-faced, bloated-looking person with lips that snarled back from immense, glistening gold teeth. A short, snub-nosed automatic was almost hidden in his fat fist. Beside him was a man with close-clipped hair and an exceedingly long upper lip. His right eyebrow was elevated far above its mate as though he was in the habit of wearing a monocle. His yellow-gloved hands were clasped on the head of a black walking-stick. He wore a black Van Dyke beard that, to X’s trained eye, appeared false.
X immediately recognized the man with the stick. His name was Peter Knore. It was because of Knore that both X and John Morris had come to Brownsboro. Washington had good reason to believe that Knore was a spy in the employment of a powerful European nation. X slowly approached the black sedan.
THE BLOATED MAN jerked his head. “You get in, Doc, and no grumpin’ about it. We got places to go and things to do.”
“I—I—” X began hesitantly, though he fully intended to comply with the red-faced man’s request. The impersonation of Dr. Davies seemed to lead from one adventure to another. It began to appear as though the head of the health department was scarcely the man his fellow citizens supposed him to be.
“I said no grumpin’, Doc. This thing in my hand is a gun.”
X shrugged, got into the car and sat down between Knore and the bloated man.
“You know where, Andy,” said the man with the gun, as the car got under way. And not another word was said as they rolled on through the town, avoiding the well-kept streets, taking dark alleys until finally they came to the edge of a railroad cut near the outskirts. There was a little village of disreputable shacks. The car came to a halt in the yard behind the largest of these.
“Get out, Doc,” said the man with the gun. “I got my pursuader on you all the time and I can plant a slug in your gizzard quicker than you can jerk out a man’s appendix.”
X was marched into the house at the end of the bloated man’s gun. There were three hard-looking characters seated around the kitchen table playing some sort of a card game. They stood up, nodded at Peter Knore, and said, “Hello, Jo,” to the florid man.
The man with the gun, X decided, was Jo Pyle, a local political grafter and racketeer mentioned in one of Bates’s reports. Pyle held Brownsboro’s small underworld in the palm of his hand.
Pyle slammed X down into a chair. “Now you listen for a change, Doc,” he grated. “You know damned well you aren’t giving us the front you should. How in hell can we make any money out of this insanity racket with you telling everybody there’s no cure for the disease?”
X’s mind worked rapidly. He spoke firmly in Dr. Davies’ voice. “I said we hadn’t found a cure as yet.”
“Same damned thing,” growled one of the men.
“We have found a cure,” Pyle corrected. “That’s the kind of hot air you’re supposed to hand out. You don’t know the cure, but a famous Venice doctor—”
“Viennese,” Peter Knore corrected.
“Well, yeah. A famous doctor has found it. Dr. Knore, here. He’s the guy. He’s got an antiseptic—”
“Antitoxin,” Knore corrected.
“Will you let me do the talking, Knore?” growled Pyle.
“Doctor Knore, is it?” X asked mockingly.
Knore coughed. “For the time being, yes.”
X laughed. “And you’re fleecing the public with a patent anti-toxin composed of sugar water or something? You expect me to front a scheme like that for you while one man after another dies or goes completely insane?”
Pyle screwed his face up into a knot. “We got to go all over that again? You know what I said you’d get—if you didn’t play our kind of cards?” Pyle seized X by the shoulder and dragged him to his feet. “Well, I’m handin’ out a sample right now!” His big fist buried itself in the Agent’s midsection.
Hard, trained abdominal muscles would have enabled X to take the blow without wincing. But he was playing the part of Dr. Davies. He doubled over, cursed, started to fall back in the chair.
Pyle caught him, held him up. “By hell, I’ll teach you to listen when Jo Pyle speaks!” His gold teeth locked over his lower lip and he launched another battering-ram blow that sent X down so violently that the chair was broken and the Agent rolled to the floor.
“What you say now, Doc?” Pyle was jubilant.
X PULLED groggily to his feet. “You think,” he choked out, “I’d disgrace my profession by subscribing to a crooked scheme like that? It’s not the racket so much as the fact that it’s tied up with murder. You think—”
Pyle charged across the room, hooked for X’s chin. X turned his head slightly and Pyle’s knuckles wiped across X’s temple.
“If I have to pull the hide off you a piece at a time, you’re going to kick in with us, Doc!” Pyle shouted. “Why, you cocksure—”
There was a knock at the door. Pyle ripped out his gun and turned it on X. “One funny move, one word, and I’ll let you have it…. Knore, see who that is.”
Peter Knore went to the door and opened it cautiously. “Charlotta,” he whispered. “Come in, but quickly.”
The woman spy came in, glanced haughtily around the room. Her eyes met X’s coldly and shifted to Pyle where they became twin gimlets of contempt. “You poor fool. Trying to gain the doctor’s co-operation by means of what you faintly imagine is torture, are you?” She turned to Peter Knore. “Peter, I want to—” Her eyes glinted, her small right foot stamped angrily. “Peter! Will you listen to me a moment?”
“Sure. What do you want?”
“Put a stop to this mauling of Dr. Davies. The doctor is a cultured man. He must be persuaded, not browbeaten.”
“Ah, listen, lady,” Pyle objected, “I offered the guy a cut on the profits. If that won’t do it, I ought to be able to beat him into it.”
“I didn’t say persuade him with money,” said Charlotta softly. “Fools’ methods. Had you been in Russia at the time of the revolt, you would have known the meaning of the word ‘persuasion.’ Lock him up down below.”
Pyle shrugged heavy shoulders. “Okeh, lady. Come on, you guys. Escort the doc to the basement and lock him up. But I ain’t quittin’ on him yet,” he added as the three toughs braced X up with automatics and hurried him down the basement steps.
They flung him into a filthy hole, slammed a heavy wooden door, and slid an iron bar across it. No sooner was he alone than t
he apparently half-dead Agent X was on his feet, exploring his prison with his flashlight. The floor was packed earth and the walls were of cement block. There were no windows. Evidently the place had been originally intended as a fruit cellar.
HIS IMPERSONATION of the doctor had been carried off so well that Pyle had not thought to search him. X had devices and small tools in his pockets, under the doctor’s smock, that would enable him to get out of the cell in a few moments’ time. He could have quite easily prevented his imprisonment and managed his escape when Pyle had been mauling him, had he wanted to. But an opportunity such as this was not to be neglected. Pyle, Knore, Charlotta and the gang were tied up in the mystery of the insane sickness.
X went over to the door. A modern lock would have given him less trouble than the old-fashioned iron bar, for X always carried a master-key system that enabled him to unlock almost any standard lock. He took from a pocket tool case a long, gimletlike instrument which fitted into an extension handle. Its keen, tempered-steel point, when pushed through the crack between door and door frame, imbedded itself far enough in the iron to enable him to move the bar ever so slightly in the direction away from the socket.
As he was on the point of setting the tool for another move, the bar slipped across the door, snapping off the point of X’s instrument. He stepped back, turned out his flash, and drew his gas pistol. The bar had moved because some one on the outside of the door had moved it.
The door opened very slowly, very quietly. There was a whisper of footsteps approaching him across the earthen floor. A low, musical voice whispered: “Where are you, Agent X?”
X took a quick breath. “Charlotta.” He turned his flashlight on. The woman’s face stood out of the dark background like a lovely cameo. She came nearer, smiling. She extended her hand, took his wrist in her white, fragile-looking fingers.
“Come,” she said quickly. “I have them all out of the house looking for a prowler who is not here. You must hurry. I was afraid you did not remember me, Secret Agent X.”
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 25