The man said nothing. He led the woman in furs across the room and through a small door which he closed after them. The woman in furs jerked off her mask and hat, and with trembling fingers pushed tangled hair back from her waxy brow. Her face was a ghastly mockery of former beauty. She threw herself into a chair, only to spring to her feet a moment later to welcome the exotically beautiful Zerna as the latter entered the room.
“Give it to me, Zerna,” she said.
Zerna took the woman coldly by one wrist and forced her back into the chair. “Your husband was here, Mrs. Colrich. That won’t do, you know.”
The dope-starved woman bit her quivering lower lip. “I couldn’t help it. You’ve got to put me somewhere where my husband can’t find me. But you’ve got to give me a shot first. I’m dying for a shot.”
Zerna’s green eyes regarded Mrs. Colrich dispassionately. “How does it happen you haven’t paid your club dues?”
Mrs. Colrich knotted her fingers. “I haven’t the money, I’ve told you again and again! Oh, why won’t you let me have a shot! I can buy that. I’ve enough in my purse. But I can’t get any more money from my husband.”
Mrs. Colrich seized Zerna’s hand in a tight, desperate fist. “Listen, Zerna,” she pleaded in whisper, “I’ll do anything. Give me a shot, and I’ll try once more to get money from Fred. And if I can’t do that, I’ll do something else. Isn’t there something else I could do? Some work, or something? All those people out there aren’t rich, yet they get their stuff regularly.” The distracted woman began to weep bitterly.
ZERNA looked incapable of helping anyone but herself. Her green eyes were unflickering. Suddenly she slapped her fingers briskly across Mrs. Colrich’s face. “Oh, come out of it!” she said sharply. Then she turned, and with hip-swaying steps, approached the door. She knocked twice.
The man in evening clothes entered the room and looked querulously into Zerna’s now stormy eyes. Zerna tossed a gesture toward the all but hysterical Mrs. Colrich. “She’s finished. Sell you the Brooklyn Bridge or her soul for a shot of hop. You’d better write finis on her page.”
The man in evening clothes had scarcely turned toward the unfortunate Mrs. Colrich before the latter sprang from her chair and threw her arms around the man. She spoke through locked teeth:
“Listen—I don’t know who you are. But you’ve got to give me a shot before I die. I’ve got money for the shot, but I haven’t got the two thousand dollars. I’ll—”
The phone on the desk jangled. The man put a hand across Mrs. Colrich’s mouth. “Pardon me,” he said mockingly. Then, still holding back Mrs. Colrich’s hasty words, he raised the phone with the other hand. “Shoot,” he said. Then he listened, eyes in his black mask flickering.
After a moment, he uttered a short, dry laugh. “Secret Agent X? Sure, I’ve heard of him. I heard of Santa Claus, too. Listen, you take a headache pill and quit worrying. One more man on our trail isn’t going to make any difference, even if his name is Secret Agent X. We got the whole police force guessing, haven’t we?… Then, ride on the breeze, buddy.” He hung up and released Mrs. Colrich.
“Sorry, Ruth Colrich,” he said, “but I can’t do a thing for you. You don’t pay club dues, you don’t get in on the club privileges.”
For a moment, some of her old strength of character returned to Ruth Colrich. Beneath the pitiful face that dope had made, there was a ghost of her old pride as she said: “I am going to turn myself over to the police. I’m going to tell them everything.”
The man in evening clothes lighted a cigarette. “Sure,” he said quietly.
Then he went to a door at the other side of the room, threw it wide open. “This way out, Mrs. Colrich.”
Ruth Colrich started for the door, only to stop three feet from it. A quivering extended on down through her body. “No,” she said tonelessly, “it isn’t true. You won’t—”
She stopped, locked a scream in her throat by cramming a fist against her lips. The thing that she had seen in the shadows stepped into the room. It was man-height. It was man-shaped. But long black hair covered it from head to foot. Weird, saucerlike eyes stared from its hairy head.
Ruth Colrich’s fingers peeled away from her lips. “Wh-what is this?” she stammered. “What does it mean?”
The man in evening clothes laughed. “It means that you or nobody else is going to do any blabbing.”
Two long, hairy arms reached out and seized Mrs. Colrich. The woman’s face was flattened against a mighty, fur-covered chest so that her screams were stifled. Then the monstrous thing carried the struggling woman into the darkness.
The man in evening clothes shrugged and rejoined the dancers. He sought out Zerna. “Whoop things up a little,” he said. “The more noise, the better.”
IN AN entirely different section of the city, a rather remarkable man paused near the front of the Paragon Theatre and knocked the ashes from the cubical bowl of his pipe. A black overcoat tented shoulders so immense and square that few would have supposed that this man topped six feet in height. The same right angles so much in evidence about his body also governed the shape of his head and face. Atop his square head he had no protection against the chill blast, except his thick, shaggy, black hair. His name was Harvey Bates, and he occupied a unique position among the men who fight the nation’s battle against crime. Harvey Bates was chief assistant to that mysterious man of many faces, Secret Agent X.
When he had reloaded his pipe with shag-cut tobacco and tamped it well with a square-ended thumb, he paced by the front of the theatre for perhaps the twentieth time that evening and came to a stop near the mouth of the alley just beyond. There he leaned against the corner of the building and listened to footsteps of some one coming up the alley.
“His footsteps?” Bates wondered. Even when he faced Agent X, Bates could not be certain of his identity—not until X spoke in a certain one of his thousand voices.
“Bates!” The voice. It was a mere whisper from the tall man whose face was hidden by the shadows of the alley.
Then from the same tall man who stood at Bates’s elbow came a second voice, entirely different from the one that just whispered Bates’s name: “I beg your pardon, but have you a match?”
Bates produced a box of matches. The man of mystery scratched one into flame and held it at the tip of his cigarette. There was nothing remarkable about his face, or rather the complex combination of plastic makeup material, clever pigments, and hidden face-plates that served him as a face. As he now appeared, Secret Agent X would have been lost in a crowd of three unless you happened to pay particular attention to his eyes. They were the cool gray of steel with a suggestion of compelling, hypnotic power flickering in their depths.
“Anything to report, Bates?” Secret Agent X asked softly as he returned the matches to his lieutenant.
“Yes, sir,” Bates clipped. “Certain that in the past ten minutes, five persons entering the theatre were drug addicts. They entered only a few minutes before the newsreel.” It was a long speech for Bates to make, and he paused a moment before asking: “Why do the hopheads have this unusual appetite for movies, sir? What’s the connection?”
Secret Agent X shook his head. “Maybe there is a connection, a dope connection. An usher could pass the stuff out in the dark.” The Agent flipped his cigarette toward the gutter. “You may go to the Princess Theatre and check on it in the same manner, Bates. I’m going in here. This begins to look like a rather nasty business.”
Agent X walked briskly to the ticket window, obtained a ticket and entered the theatre. His gray eyes darted right and left and centered upon a smartly uniformed usher. Agent X snapped his fingers and beckoned to the usher.
The usher crossed quickly to where X was standing and touched his round, red cap. “Help you, sir?”
A strange sort of smile curled one side of the Agent’s mouth. “Very much, I believe,” he said quietly. “Will you step into the lavatory just a moment? I really believe you’ll do nicely.”
And he nipped the elbow of the young man and steered him toward the lavatory.
As soon as they were alone, Agent X opened his wallet and produced a twenty-dollar bill. “Will this be sufficient pay for several hours in the arms of Morpheus, my friend?”
The eyes of the young man grew wide. “Beg pardon, sir?”
A chuckle from the Agent. He pressed the twenty dollars into the young man’s hand, and at the same time, his left hand removed a cigarette lighter from his vest pocket. “You see this, son?” He held the lighter very close to the young man’s nose.
“Yes, sir.”
The Agent touched a secret lever on the side of the cigarette lighter. There was a slight hiss. A jet of misty vapor darted from the lighter. The usher’s mouth was open, but his cry died in his throat as he pitched forward into the arms of Secret Agent X.
LESS THAN five minutes later, a miracle of transformation had taken place. Agent X emerged from the lavatory wearing the usher’s natty uniform. It fitted him to perfection, for he had purposely chosen an usher whose figure resembled his own. But what was more remarkable was the amazing change in the Agent’s face.
Beneath his deft fingertips, plastic volatile makeup material had been shaped into the exact contours of the usher’s face. Coloring had been exactly duplicated.
The agent crossed the foyer, opened the door leading to the center aisle, and glanced across the dark theatre. On the screen, the newsreel had just ended. His eyes as yet unused to the dark, X did not see the man who suddenly bobbed from his seat, near the back of the theatre, and all but knocked the Agent over in his haste to leave.
X turned and followed the man into the foyer. The man glanced anxiously over his shoulder, and X had an opportunity of glimpsing his face. The waxy skin, odd eyes, and twitching facial muscles told the tragic story at once. The man was a dope addict.
Agent X watched the man go on his staggering way, and hardly had the door closed behind him, then a man and woman hurried from the theatre. And there was not the slightest doubt that they too knew the evil pleasures of dope. X was on the point of following them, when a fourth drug disciple came hurrying from the theatre.
This was no mere coincidence. There was definite reason and planning behind the moves of these addicts. Agent X was on the point of stopping this last hophead, when he felt a tug at his elbow. He turned to look down into the face of a mild-eyed, anxious-faced man whose expensively tailored clothes had been badly soiled.
“Usher, you must find Dr. Daniel Wicker for me at once. But for the love of heaven, don’t make a fuss about it. He’s in the theatre, I know. And you must tell him that Mrs. Colrich needs him immediately.”
X regarded the worried man gravely. Only one sort of person ever urgently needed Dr. Daniel Wicker. Dr. Daniel Wicker was the owner of a sanitarium devoted solely to the cure of drug patients.
X bowed slightly. “Certainly, sir. And what name shall I give Dr. Wicker?”
“I am Mr. Fred Colrich. And you must get Dr. Wicker for Mrs. Colrich at once.”
All the hypnotic power of X’s eyes came into being as he held Colrich’s gaze.
“Come this way, please,” X said in quiet voice, and led Colrich across the foyer and into a small smoking room. Colrich dropped wearily into a chair.
“Now, Mr. Colrich, something seems to be troubling you. Your wife, eh?” X was speaking very quietly and gazing steadily into Colrich’s eyes. “What seems to be the matter?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Colrich confided. “I followed her tonight. She went to the Princess Theatre just across the street at about eight o’clock. I thought nothing of that. She seems so restless. She left the Princess not ten minutes after she had entered. Then she got into a taxi. I followed her to a particularly unpleasant quarter of the city and to a house, the address of which I have in my pocket.” Colrich slapped the breast pocket of his coat. “I can’t bring the police in on this, you understand.”
Colrich stood up. A bewildered frown furrowed his brow. “Who are you, sir? I seem— Why, you’re just an usher—and you’ve been trying to pry into my affairs.”
Colrich’s right fist shot unexpectedly to the Agent’s chin. It was a feather-weight blow, but it took X completely by surprise. He backed to the wall, leading Colrich in close before he sent a short, jolting left to a point directly above Colrich’s heart.
It was a blow that might have killed, had not the Agent’s superb muscular control reined it in at exactly the right moment. Colrich’s eyes rolled back, and he sagged to the floor.
X glanced quickly around the smoking room. That had been a desperate stroke, entered into with the lightning-like decision that characterized all of the Agent’s actions. Here was a rare opportunity to obtain inside information on a dope syndicate that was beginning to assume alarming proportions.
AGENT X had seen in Colrich a possible opening through which to strike at the insidious dope monster. If he could manage an impersonation of Colrich, to gain the confidence of Dr. Wicker, there was a chance that he might learn something about the distributing point of the drug syndicate. For Mrs. Colrich was a drug addict. There could be no other reason for Fred Colrich wanting Dr. Wicker to attend her.
His course decided upon, X hurriedly ripped off the usher’s uniform which he had put on over his own clothes. As he moved, he practiced imitating Colrich’s voice and characteristic facial expressions. It would be a rather difficult change, for Colrich was a decided blond and the Agent’s present makeup simulated a dark complexion.
From the inside pocket of his coat, X took out a compact makeup kit, containing his special plastic volatile compound and basic pigments. He knelt beside Colrich, was studying the man’s features intently, when he heard the sound of voices just outside the smoking room door.
“I tell you Dr. Wicker, this investigation will give the Paragon a bad name,” came a deep voice from the other side of the door. “I believe that your suspicions are entirely unfounded. Suppose that a few cocaine addicts have been seen in the Paragon. There is no possible way in which we can prevent them from entering. We are not medical men, to judge whether or not our patrons use narcotics.”
“Er—Mr. Nixon, we of the Anti-Vice League are not confining our investigation to any one theatre.”
Agent X recognized the slow, thoughtful manner of speaking that characterized Dr. Wicker. But there was absolutely no time for the Secret Agent to eavesdrop. There was no means of leaving the smoking room while Wicker and Nixon, owner of the Paragon Theatre, chose to stand directly outside the door. Nor did the little room offer any place of concealment save a small corner behind an overstuffed chair. Should the two men decide to enter the smoking room….
The rattle of the door knob galvanized Agent X into action. He grabbed his makeup kit and pocketed it. He lifted the unconscious Colrich in his arms, held him upright with one hand while his other hand snatched a scrap of paper from Colrich’s breast pocket. Then he lifted Colrich over the back of the large chair in the corner and let him fall to the floor.
X sprang away from the chair and snatched the jet-black toupee, which was part of his disguise as the usher, from his head. His features remained unaltered. Even as the door of the smoking room was opening, X picked up the usher’s uniform and threw it into the corner on top of Colrich. Agent X ran his fingers through his own wavy brown hair and turned around.
The first to enter, Dr. Wicker, was a man whose face ran heavily to jowls. His nose was flat and large-pored. His eyes twinkled from pockets of fat. With Dr. Wicker was white-haired, soft-spoken Samuel Arvin, beloved philanthropist and head of the Anti-Vice League. His soothing voice and benevolent words were directed at the somewhat ruffled Walter Nixon.
“My dear Mr. Nixon, I sincerely hope we have not given you the impression that your theatre, or its management, has anything to do with this ugly narcotic business.”
The teeth of Nixon’s undershot lower jaw sought to gnaw his black mustache. “That would be absurd. I am interested simpl
y in what the patrons of this theatre will say if—” Nixon’s dark eyes strayed to Agent X.
At that moment, a boisterous voice from the doorway called: “Hold it, gentlemen—and look like three conferees, if you can!”
THERE was the sudden lightning of a flashlight bulb. Nixon’s shoulders gave a startled twist. He cursed softly and turned toward the door, as a cherubic-faced young man, wearing a battered hat on the back of his head, walked triumphantly into the room with a camera under his arm. He was followed by a golden-haired, blue-eyed girl, who produced notebook and pencil and immediately attacked Samuel Arvin with a dazzling smile.
“Let’s have a story on the dope roundup, Mr. Arvin. Or is this a dope roundup?”
Dr. Wicker cleared his throat noisily. “I thought I told you reporters to stop following us around.” His puffy fingers were picking bits of imaginary lint from his vest.
“There isn’t any story, Miss Dale,” Nixon whipped out angrily. “And if Stien develops that picture he just took, there’ll be war.”
Stien, the newspaper photographer, chuckled while he mothered his battered camera. “Why not give us the story straight? Who is this gentleman?” He looked directly at Agent X. “Another dope chaser?”
“I could strangle you!” Nixon was muttering as he watched the photographer anxiously.
Agent X had eyes only for the golden-haired Betty Dale who had been so insistent upon getting a story from Samuel Arvin. She was standing in such a position that, with the slightest movement of her eyes to the right, she would be able to see the unconscious Fred Colrich where he lay in a heap behind the chair. If she saw Colrich, she would naturally cry out. And if she cried out, she would unthinkingly betray her best friend.
Agent X was in a most precarious position, caught in the very act of changing his disguise. He was crushing his black toupee into as small a compass as possible in his right fist. The discovery of the unconscious Fred Colrich would instantly precipitate trouble.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 33