“It would be impossible to forget you, my lady,” X said. “But how does it happen that you have penetrated my disguise?”
“It was in the crowd outside the jail,” she told him. “There were two Dr. Davies. The one who was in trouble was bound to be Agent X. I think that none but you and I, in the whole world, has a genuine penchant for getting into trouble.”
“And I’m not getting out of it so easily,” X told her. “I must know more.”
She dropped his wrist, faced him, her eyes steadily upon his. “You’ve never quite trusted me, Agent X. You need not now. But do not think too badly of me. I want only to find my mortal enemy.”
“So?” said X skeptically. “And who is that?”
Charlotta’s lips curled in an expression of intense hatred. “Shaitan!”
“Shaitan?” X echoed. “Is he here?”
She looked slightly puzzled. “You mean to say you didn’t know that? I supposed that was why you were here. Why are you here, Agent X?”
“To guard Lorin Garvey against spies,” he replied, regarding her narrowly.
Her red lips were tightly compressed for a moment. “I see. And you suppose that that is the reason that I am in Garvey’s house?”
“What else would I suppose?”
Her eyes flashed. “You’re wrong. The infallible Mr. X is wrong for once! I have but one objective—to see Shaitan in the hands of the authorities. Or see him dead. Better dead!” She seized both of the Agent’s arms. “This nation is alive with spies. But spies are not as dangerous as Shaitan. He is the devil incarnate. He is here because the East is impoverished and war-ridden.”
“You have seen him? What does he look like?”
SHE SHOOK her head. “I have not seen him any more than I have really seen you. He may be any one about us. Once, in Mongolia, he was pointed out to me by peasants who were afraid to even turn their eyes in his direction. He wears a green veil hiding all of his face except his eyes. His head is totally bald, his forehead a ponderous thing to hold all the evil behind it.”
“And now, why are you in Garvey’s house?”
“Because Garvey has some momentous, deadly discovery in his possession. Don’t you see? Shaitan never stoops to ordinary crime. To establish himself in America, he must have a powerful weapon. What other reason would he have for coming here, than to steal Garvey’s secret?”
“Are you certain he is here?”
Charlotta glanced hurriedly about her as though Shaitan himself lurked in some of the gloomy corners. “He is here,” she whispered. “Once, in the night, I was awakened by a nightmare. I lay there in my bed, staring out at the darkness, and I saw two luminous eyes looking at me through the window. Then they were gone. I nearly screamed. Can you imagine Charlotta screaming?”
“I can’t,” said X. “But the eyes might have been part of your dream.”
She shook her head slowly. “No. Once you have seen Shaitan, you will never forget those eyes. He is in this town and the citizens have good reason to tremble. He is a master of disguise, though hardly as great a master as you. He may be any one in this city.”
“And why do you hate him?” X asked mildly.
“Because I have seen the scores of helpless men and women lying dead in the fields where he had them shot during the revolt. He killed them not for political reasons but because they refused to pay him tribute.”
“Five hundred men,” said X slowly, “died at the village of Spada during the late war. Five hundred Germans. If my memory is not fickle, a woman named Charlotta was the cause. Why this sudden hatred of murder?”
“Because that was not murder. That was war. Those Germans were not helpless. They could have saved themselves if they had been willing to surrender. Besides, you have no reason to criticize, Agent X. You were more active in the Intelligence Service than I. The difference between our methods of operation is that you stole plans of fortification and the like. I stole men’s affections.”
“I was not criticizing,” said X quietly. “I was simply trying to fathom you.”
She laughed. “When a woman loses her mystery, she is no longer a woman.” Then: “But forget the past. I am not a spy, though I seem unable to convince you. The war is over. No war really matters but the war of right against wrong. I am on your side, if you will have me. But I am against Shaitan, whether you will have me or not.”
“And this little murder racket you are mixed up in—this business of driving men insane and then selling a fake cure—I suppose it pays the room and board while you’re hunting this demon from Asia?”
“You refuse to take this matter seriously, Secret Agent X.”
X SHOOK his head. “No, Charlotta. You are perfectly right about Shaitan being here. He wrecked my car tonight. The point I am making is this: Shaitan must be connected in some way with this malady of madness that is sweeping the town. And when I find you—”
“You didn’t find me!” she interrupted sharply. “Have you never lied and deceived and acted to worm your way into a band of criminals for the sole purpose of gaining information? Of course you have! And that is why you found me with that fat fool, Jo Pyle, and that self-satisfied Peter Knore. I don’t know but what they are connected with Shaitan. Either one of them might be Shaitan, for that matter. But if they are causing this disease of insanity, I do not know how they do it. You see—”
She stopped, listened a moment. “Some one coming into the house. Quickly, Agent X!” She seized X by the arm and led him through the door and toward the steps.
“Wait,” X whispered. “They’re coming in the front door. We can just make it through the back.”
They tiptoed up the steps, X taking the lead, his gas pistol in his hand. He opened the back door and stepped out into the yard. Charlotta followed him a little way, then stopped him by catching his arm.
“You do trust me a little?” she whispered. Her small, lovely face was very close to his and moonlight lent intoxication to her beauty. “The old Charlotta was never very bad. A foolish girl who loved adventure even as you loved it. The new Charlotta is a better, wiser woman.”
“And more beautiful.”
“And a Charlotta with a very different objective. You’ll try to trust her?”
“After what you have done tonight—I will try.”
Charlotta pressed the Agent’s hand. “I must go now.”
“They are sure to know you released me,” warned X.
She tossed her head. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle men.”
X thought of Harvey Bates, and heartily agreed with her. He hurried across the back lot, climbed into the car that had brought him to the house, and found the ignition key in place. He started the car, turned it into the lane, and sped back toward the center of the town.
He drove at once to the hideout Bates had pre-arranged for him. It was a large frame house, the owners of which were vacationing. They had been glad to rent it for a week or two.
There were a number of folded newspapers on the porch where the carrier had evidently left them by mistake. X gathered these up, unlocked the front door, and went in to inspect his headquarters.
As soon as he found that his elaborate wardrobe, necessary for his masterful impersonations, was in order, he sat down under a lamp and opened the newspapers. He was particularly anxious to learn all that he could concerning the history of the malady of madness in Brownsboro.
Reed Kennedy’s Brownsboro Bugle seemed quite a complete little sheet and boasted a surprising circulation. After X had looked the paper over, he turned to the front page and let his eyes skate down one column after another. Suddenly, he stopped, his brow furrowing. In one column he read the following:
SPECIAL POLICE ARE RECRUITED
Kirn, Sweden:—Signs of new wealth in Latvia led Duke Ivan, Europe’s incapacitated nabob, to willingly occupy Dorelle André’s yacht sailing directly on North Tyrol. Dorelle expects creditors in event Viceroy employs yacht orderlies under restricted service. Enemy less victoriou
s enters Strausburg. Ivan met ensign André navigating Baltic under seas in new Empire submarine service.
(Which may not mean a thing to you. But a want ad in the BROWNSBORO BUGLE will mean money in your pocket.)
Here, apparently, was an attempt on the part of the newspaper publisher to attract attention, by means of absurdities, to his appeal to patronize his want-ad section. If that had been the sole purpose of this squib, it was wholly successful. Yet something attracted Agent X beside the fact that the city mentioned, Kirn, was not in Sweden, and that geography would have to be altered considerably if anyone was going to sail a yacht on mountainous Tyrol. It was the fact that glaring out of the type, like a death’s-head, were those three capital letters, D-I-E.
The more he looked at this bit of nonsense, the more certain he was that while the paragraph might not, as the parenthetical advertisement beneath stated, “mean anything to you,” it was definitely intended to mean something to somebody. In another moment, he had out pencil and paper and was jotting down the first letters of every word in the paragraph in the order in which they came. When he had finished he had something that, to an expert cryptographer such as X was, was a little less puzzling:
SpARKSSonwillDIEintwoDAysdoNTDecieVeyoursElveSImeanBusiness
This, when properly divided and spaced read:
Sparks’s son will die in two days. Don’t deceive yourselves. I mean business.
AGENT X glanced up at the top of the paper. It had been published just two days before. Today there had been murder, exactly as predicted in what was obviously a code message to some one. And among the murdered men should be some one who had been the son of a man named Sparks.
X reached for the phone and called the office of the Bugle. “Was some one by the name of Sparks killed today?” he asked as soon as the phone had been answered.
“Yes,” came the reply. “Or perhaps we shouldn’t say killed. Glen Sparks, son of one of our most prominent citizens, died as result of a sudden attack of the plague of madness. It occurred right out in front of the jail. Police are looking for Secret Agent X in connection with this trouble. There seems to be some difference of opinion as to the origin of this terrible disease that has come to our city. Read all about it in tomorrow’s Bugle.”
“Don’t worry about that,” X replied. “The Bugle is going to receive considerable attention from me from now on.” He hung up, seized the paper issued on the day before, and hurriedly scanned the front sheet. If he could find any more predicted deaths, he might be able to prevent them, though what weapon he could use against this unseen menace of death and madness, he had not the slightest idea.
There they were, the three glaring, death’s-head letters staring out of the column of one of yesterday’s papers. He read:
DEAN OF RACING ACADEMY BATTLES EXTRADITION
Defense fought orders releasing Dean with illegal lottery letters. Dean Isaac Edwards today opened merciless oration regarding Robert Oliver’s wild midnight indiscretions. Demanding new independence grants, he told Greensburg every thing that indicated new graft. Court lost order suspending entire reprieve.
(Which is nonsense simply to emphasize the horse-sense of selling through Bugle want-ads.)
X decoded the simple cipher as he read, using the first letter of each word as he had done before:
Dora Bedford will die tomorrow midnight. Getting closer.
Once again X called the office of the Bugle. This time he disguised his voice so that the inquiries might seem to come from different persons, “Who’s Dora Bedford?” he asked. “Know her?”
The man at the night desk informed him that Dora Bedford was the daughter of Hale Bedford, one of the five millionaires who controlled most of the manufacturing in the city.
Agent X hung up, glanced at his wrist watch. He had exactly half an hour to change his disguise and drive over to the Bedford home before the scheduled time of Dora Bedford’s death. And if death struck as it had in the case of Sparks’s son, more than one would die.
X took a large makeup kit from the closet where Bates had stored it, opened a triple-folded mirror, and began to hastily alter his appearance. When he arose ten minutes later, he was a far younger man than he had appeared as Dr. Davies. A black, slicked-back toupee covered his own hair. His features were finely formed. A small black mustache put in place with spirit gum completed the facial alterations. He then changed to a tweed suit, taking care to transfer all his special equipment to its pockets.
Then he went to a garage behind the house where he found one of his own cars waiting for him. He backed it out and headed west. The Bedford mansion looked down on its less exalted neighbors from the top of Newton Hill near the edge of town. It was a longer trip across the city than X had supposed, and though he pushed the car to the limit, it was just striking midnight when X stopped in the drive in front of the house. He sprang from the car, started for the house, stopped suddenly, his heart jumping up against the roof of his mouth.
Parked beneath the porte-cochère was a second car—a small coupé carrying a New York license plate. The numbers on that plate were familiar to X and what they signified caused icy sweat to exude from every pore.
The coupé belonged to Betty Dale, lovely girl reporter and the Agent’s best friend, who at the moment should have been safely at home in her cozy New York apartment. But instead, she was somewhere within a house where unseen, unknown menace stalked with outstretched hands ready to kill.
CHAPTER V
Three Eyes of Shaitan
HAD she permitted herself to admit it, Betty Dale’s visit to Dora Bedford was but an excuse for her to be near Agent X. Her relation with the Agent had always been that of a dear friend, but as each new adventure brought her closer to the mysterious character of the real man behind the makeup, she found her regard growing into something more than friendship.
She had tried bravely to stifle this love for the man whose face she had never seen, even though she knew he returned her love. For she realized that sentiment could not be mixed with duty in the Herculean battle X waged against crime.
She had spent many hours lying awake in her bed, wondering where X could be, wondering if Death, whom he continually taunted, had caught up with him. When he had confided to her that he was going to Brownsboro she had immediately decided that she would somehow manage to be there, too, if her newspaper could spare her a few days.
“Better,” she thought, “to lie awake at night in Brownsboro and at least have the consolation of being in the same city with him than to lie awake in New York, hundreds of miles away.”
Though she had retired early, after her long drive, she was scarcely dozing by the time the first stroke of twelve boomed from a nearby steeple. She had just turned over with the firm resolve to stop worrying and get to sleep, when the sound of soft, whispering footsteps caused her eyelids to spring open. A white, ethereal form was moving stealthily from the door of the adjoining bedroom.
“Betty,” a soft voice whispered tremulously, “are you asleep?” Betty sighed: “No, darling.” She sat up, turned on the bed lamp to reveal in soft, rosy light the petite figure of Dora Bedford in négligée. The girl’s oval face was white. Even her lips were pale. Her soft, brown eyes were very wide. She toyed nervously with one glossy, brown curl that hung down across her creamy shoulder.
“I’m a-afraid, Betty,” she stammered.
“Afraid?” Betty laughed. “Of what?”
“A—mouse. I think there’s a mouse in my room. Aren’t you afraid of mice?”
“I’ve certainly no love for them,” Betty replied. She got out of bed, thrust feet into slippers, and pulled a crêpe négligée over her shoulders.
Dora clutched her arm. “Listen!” she whispered.
In the next room there was the sound of tiny feet scampering across the floor. Hardly the sound that a mouse might make. Betty reached beneath her pillow and took out a small flashlight and a little automatic that Agent X had given her some time ago. She started into Dor
a’s room, Dora behind her, hugging her closely around the waist.
Betty swung the flashlight beam around the room. The light glistened on two tiny, close-set eyes peering out at them from under the bed. Betty’s heart jumped. Then she uttered a strained laugh as a comical little figure scarcely ten inches over all scampered across the room. “Why, it’s just a little monkey!”
Dora’s fingers clenched. “Oh, I’m going to scream! Who wants monkeys climbing in windows in the middle of the night? Even little ones. And look, there’s a string tied to one of his legs. And—” Then Dora did scream shrilly. She pointed a white, quivering finger at the window.
Coiling down from the top of the sash was a glossy, serpentlike shape that dropped full length then raised its snakelike head toward the two girls.
THE DOOR of the bedroom was flung open. Betty’s flashlight darted to the door, outlined the figure of a tall, square-shouldered man who wore a hat pulled down over his eyes. Betty fired a single shot. The man leaped forward, straight toward the window. “Stop that, Betty,” he said in a crisp voice that was familiar to her.
“You!” Betty cried. “I shot—I shot at you!”
“And missed!” Secret Agent X called over his shoulder. He was at the window. The coils of the black snake were in his hands. He was twisting the serpentine form, kinking it, tying it in knots.
“Look out!” Dora cautioned shrilly. “It might bite you!”
“A rubber hose doesn’t bite, Miss Rexford,” X told her. “This one would be less dangerous if it did. The monkey threaded it into the room by means of the string fastened to the little beast’s leg.”
“But why?” Betty asked.
“Because some one is trying to kill Dora Bedford with gas—the gas that’s been causing all the madness around town. It’s a gas, and not a disease. This hose, dropped from the roof, was to direct that gas into this room. It would have killed Miss Bedford and probably driven everyone else in the house insane.”
“And on the other end of that hose?” Betty ventured.
“The gas cylinders and the man behind it all. Step back from the window and keep back. I’m going up.”
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 26