X shouldered the furious Burks away from the door, so that the inspector came under the threatening sweep of the revolver. The Agent was standing, stooped slightly forward, his gray eyes promising certain hell for the man who so much as raised a finger. On his lips was smiling mockery. “It should be written in the police primer, my friends, that it is far more dangerous to park in front of a curtain than a fireplug!” And with that he sprang backwards through the door.
Burks’s whistle screamed. There was an instantaneous scuffle outside the front door. X knocked over the lamp in the office, sprang into the dance hall, and shot out the light that burned there—even as the front door opened and police in uniform streamed into the room.
X took to the stairs, ran noisily up half a flight and vaulted over the bannister to land soundlessly at the side of the stairway. Police flashlights pointed toward the steps. There were hoarse orders from Burks. Six coppers started pell-mell up the steps. Several more guarded the front door.
IN THE DARK, X crept around the stairway and started up the steps a second time, following the footsteps of police, who undoubtedly believed they were following him. X slipped into a closet a moment after a searching police light had explored that closet and found it empty. And when he heard the police thudding down the steps, he slipped out and went to the back of the hall, where a door led out onto an open stairway.
He opened the door cautiously and squeezed out on the stairway. Then he ran down into the backyard to cross it and enter the alley at about the time the police decided they should surround the house.
But there was further trouble in the alley. Three police were jamming one end of it, and there was a car at the other end. X considered the car the lesser of the two dangers.
When he had reached the nose of the car, the headlights suddenly came on and the motor whirred. X sprang just out of line of the searching light beams, leaped to the running board, and shoved the gun against the driver’s arm. Suddenly, his right arm went limp. “Well, Betty!” he breathed.
“Hurry!” Betty whispered. “I was going to get this car around in front to pick you up as you came out, but I guess you moved too fast for me. Get in back. I’ve a slumbering passenger.”
“So I see!” X opened the back door of the sedan and got in as Betty threw the car in reverse and backed out of the alley. There was a man in the front seat. His head was all but on Betty’s shoulder. X reached over, hooked his hands beneath the arms of the man in the front seat and hauled him into the back seat. He turned the beam of his small flashlight on the man’s face.
He was a man about forty years of age, a man with tan, thick-looking skin and faded hair that was graying about the temples. He had a mouth that looked as though it were made for keeping secrets. There was a bruise on his temple.
The Agent’s gray eyes twinkled. “Betty! You knocked him out with your slipper. What for?”
“I thought you needed a car. Besides, I don’t like him anyway. He’s on a rival paper, and he doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘ethics.’ His name is Steve Wyer. I asked to borrow his car, and he said nothing doing.”
“You say his name is Wyer,” X puzzled. “Queer. His face is familiar. How long has he been in newspaper work?”
Betty shrugged. “I’ve known him for at least a year. By the way, where can I drive you?”
“The Paragon Theatre. No, on second thought, I wouldn’t dare show up there looking like this. About three blocks north of the theatre would be better. I’ve a hideout there.”
The Agent turned so that he could see the girl’s delicate profile in flashes of passing light. His left arm dropped across her shoulders. “Betty,” he said very gravely, “you can’t go on like this. You mean far too much to me. I can’t have you getting yourself into danger.”
Beneath his arm, the Agent felt Betty’s shoulder muscles tense. A cry of terror screamed from her lips: “That face—”
THE STEERING wheel twisted from Betty’s grasp. The car careened across the street, struck the curb, and stopped with its radiator against a fireplug only because X had had presence of mind enough to drag back on the emergency brake. “Betty!” X’s anxious eyes sought the girl’s pale face.
“A—a thing, watching us through the rear window—a black, goggle-eyed monster!”
“Don’t move from the car!” he whispered tensely as he kicked open the door.
As he rounded the car, Inspector Burks’s gun in his hand, X saw a shadowy form running soundlessly up the street. He raised the revolver and held his fire as the weird shape twisted to the left and plunged into an alley.
The Agent’s long legs enabled him to gain yards on the fleeting shadow. He turned the corner of the alley and saw, in the light that passed from a window at the rear of a dwelling, a monstrous shape, a thing of long, thick fur.
X shouted a warning and again raised the gun. This time he shot and then instantly stopped, stood still, and stared, his gun hanging limply at his side.
In the alley, where the hairy monster had been, a swirling cloud of vapor, blue-white in the dim light, spread its ghostly fingers across the alley. The echo of the shot died. The night wind had suddenly become freezing cold, like a blast from the arctic ice fields.
Gradually, the blue-white mist cleared, and Agent X ventured forward toward a tiny black blot in the center of the alley. He turned his flashlight on the black object, and an exclamation whispered from his lips. The huddled, dead thing on the pavement was a black cat. It had been frozen instantly into a furry statue.
X hurried to rejoin Betty, but on gaining the street, he saw a police officer standing beside the all-but-wrecked car. The crash had evidently brought Wyer to his senses, for he was sitting on the running board, rubbing his head and trying to explain something that he didn’t know anything about.
Agent X heard a soft whistle from a dark doorway near at hand. He went toward the door and caught a glimpse of Betty’s white face. The girl was putting on the slipper she had used so effectively against Wyer and at the same time she was watching Wyer and the policeman.
X stepped into the doorway beside her. “I know that friend of yours. I can’t think of his name. Maybe it really is Wyer. But when I saw him last, he was mixed up in a particularly odorous blackmail racket in London.”
“I don’t like him, anyway,” Betty whispered. “I got out of the car when he started coming around. But that monster—what was it?”
Agent X put both hands on her shoulder. “I don’t know yet, Betty. But do you remember, back there in the Paragon Theatre, when I caught a Mr. Morgan Rister snooping at the smoking room door?”
“Yes. But that—that thing wasn’t Rister.”
“That ‘thing,’ as you call it, was what killed Mrs. Colrich. What I saw just now brought home to me the terrible gravity of your position. Rister could have easily seen your little act to try and conceal the unconscious Colrich. He didn’t leave the theatre when we did. He could quite easily have interpreted your actions as an effort to protect and assist me, as soon as Colrich was discovered. And I am absolutely certain of Rister’s connection with this criminal gang.”
And while Wyer and the cop were engaged in their argument, X took Betty by the arm and led her quickly from the doorway. “I’ve a car in a garage about six blocks up this way,” he told her. “Then I’m taking you to your apartment. Watch out for Mr. Wyer. He’s in a nice spot to make trouble for you.”
Betty shook her golden curls bewilderedly. “And what has the Paragon Theatre to do with this?”
“I wish I knew. Do you realize, Betty, that at least five dope fiends were among the audience at the Paragon tonight and that those dopesters spent their money for ten minutes of newsreel. That’s all they were interested in. They left as soon as the newsreel was over. It doesn’t make sense.”
IT WAS after eleven o’clock before the Agent had seen Betty safely in her apartment, obtained material for a new disguise, and arrived at the Paragon Theatre. Secret Agent X had become the rud
dy-faced, roaring Inspector John Burks himself.
In Burks’s characteristic manner, X stamped into the theatre just as the patrons were leaving. He went to the lounge off the balcony, and from there, to Mr. Nixon’s office. He drummed authoritatively on the door with his knuckles, and was immediately admitted by Nixon himself.
X poked a finger at the theatre owner. “Your name’s Nixon, isn’t it?”
Nixon gnawed at his upper lip and admitted the fact with a nod.
X growled: “What I want to know is if you’ve a Mr. Colrich here. We just got hold of this notorious Mr. X, who has now admitted knocking Mr. Colrich out and concealing him somewhere in your theatre. Have you found Colrich?”
Nixon smiled and brushed his mustache with a knuckle. “Mr. Colrich is in my private office at this moment, recovering from the attack of this criminal you mentioned. Do you want to see him?”
“Do I?” snorted X. And for an answer, he strode to the door of the office indicated by Nixon.
It was difficult for Agent X to look upon Fred Colrich with anything but sympathetic eyes. Colrich was lolling in one of Nixon’s leather chairs, still feeling the influence of the knockout blow X had handed him. Life hadn’t been kind to Fred Colrich. The discovery of his wife’s vice had probably driven him to desperation. But there was an even greater blow in store for him. As he regarded Colrich, Agent X regretted that he was to be the man to strike that blow.
Colrich blinked with bloodshot eyes at the man whom he doubtless supposed to be Inspector Burks. He sat up a little straighter.
A couple of strides brought X to Colrich’s chair. He helped himself from Nixon’s cigar humidor and sat down on Nixon’s desk.
“What do you want?” asked Colrich.
“Now don’t take that attitude,” X pleaded. “What I’m trying to do is save a lot of men and women from a hell that somebody’s fixing for them.” X leaned forward suddenly. “You know what I mean, Colrich,” he said hoarsely. “The hell that dope digs! I know you don’t want to talk about your wife—but you’ve got to help us, Colrich. If you’ve got the slightest idea where your wife has obtained dope, speak up, man. We’ve got to stop this thing—you and I together!”
Colrich’s lips tightened for a moment. Then he said: “I haven’t the remotest idea to what you refer. I further object to your mentioning my wife’s name in connection with narcotics. My wife has had a nervous breakdown—”
“My eye!” X exploded. “Listen, Colrich, if you don’t give a damn for the poor drug-chained devils, you’ll give a damn for your own skin. You’ll talk, or I’ll take you up on a charge of aiding and abetting your own wife’s murder!”
That was the blow X had hated to strike. But it was the only way he could get Colrich to talk.
AT FIRST, the man was completely floored. He seemed to shrink inches. He trembled from head to foot. Then suddenly the lion in him asserted itself. He sprang to his feet, color racing back into his face.
“Damn you!” Colrich shouted, his trembling fists menacing the Agent. “It’s the fault of every damned, bungling policeman. You get your murderers soon enough, but you don’t take up men like James Starbuck!”
James Starbuck. The name was familiar to X, as well as the character of the man it represented. Starbuck was a worthless, wealthy rounder; a man whose attraction for women had led to the crackup of many a home. In all probability it was Starbuck who had led Mrs. Colrich into dope’s dark alleys.
“Murderers, gunmen, you get them all!” Colrich raved. “But when some rotter introduces a man’s wife to dope, you sit still and do nothing. And that isn’t all; I’ve been paying out money to keep this thing quiet, and now it will all come out in the papers.”
“So you’ve been paying blackmail, have you?” X prompted.
“Yes. Every other day I would get little printed slips of paper. The whole ghastly mess would be set up in newspaper type and pasted to a letter headed: ‘This is how it will look in headlines.’ Of course, that was just a threat. The story didn’t break into the papers. But now it will.”
Little printed slips in newspaper type! X suppressed an exclamation of triumph. Betty Dale’s newspaper enemy, the man named Steve Wyer, fitted into the picture perfectly. That was the exact method Wyer had used in London several years ago.
“Listen, Colrich,” he said earnestly, “this isn’t going to get into the papers if I can prevent it. You help us, and we’ll help you. Do you know where your wife got her dope?”
“No, I don’t. I only know that she used every pretense to get large sums of money from me—four and five thousand dollars at a clip. Any excuse would do. Sometimes it would be charity of some sort, and then again it would be some sort of a trip which she never took.”
X wondered if it could be possible that Wyer had been blackmailing Mrs. Colrich as well as her husband.
The phone on Nixon’s desk rang. Agent X scooped it up and immediately a gruff, but carrying voice issued from the receiver: “Is Mr. Nixon there?”
Secret Agent X drew a long breath and put the phone down without saying a word. The voice at the other end of the telephone line was that of Inspector Burks himself. Had X answered in any other voice than that of Burks, he would have immediately given himself away to Colrich. And if he had answered in Burks’ voice, he would have simply told Burks that the latter was speaking to Agent X. It was a nerve-wracking situation.
“You tell me about this Starbuck, Colrich,” he said. “If he’s done anything, we’ll put him away where he can’t do any more damage.”
Colrich shook his head hopelessly. “You can’t do anything with Starbuck. He’s a slippery lizard. I knew that he had been taking my wife to lunch now and then. I didn’t think anything of it; I’m broad minded. I just didn’t know Starbuck. But I’ve learned since then that the man takes dope in one form or another.”
The phone rang again. X paid no attention, until the second ringing was suddenly interrupted. Then he knew that some one had answered that call. Some one, using an extension to the phone in Nixon’s office, was now listening to the voice of Inspector John Burks—Nixon, of course. Nixon was in the outer office.
X picked up the phone in time to hear Burks roar: “The hell I am, Nixon! I know where I am. And if there’s another man in your office who looks like me, you hold him until I get there. He’s Agent X, and he’s all tied up in the most ungodly murder I’ve run across in a lifetime!”
Agent dropped the phone as though it were hot. He had to move and think with something approaching the speed of light, to get out of this jam. The investigation was taking form. He could see his next move clearly—impersonate Starbuck and force his way in on the dope distribution. If Starbuck took dope, which he undoubtedly did, Starbuck would furnish the link between X and the criminal group. Then there was the blackmail angle. Whether dope and blackmail were connected in this crime, was a question that he might answer soon….
CHAPTER IV
Newsreel Nemesis
SECRET AGENT X lunged toward the door of the office and shouldered it open. “Don’t draw that gun, Nixon!” he cried, as he moved like a human projectile across the outer office.
But Nixon had drawn his gun. The phone in one hand, a little automatic in the other, he cried no warning to X, but shot twice in rapid succession. Both of the slugs thudded into X’s chest. He fell forward across the desk, to seize Nixon’s gun arm and bring it down swiftly against the edge of the desk.
The Agent’s bullet-proof vest had stopped the shots, yet their very impact had doubled him over with pain. Even after Nixon had dropped his gun, X clung to the manager’s arm. Then he straightened, dragged Nixon halfway across the desk, and slammed a knockout blow to the side of Nixon’s head.
X opened the door, slammed it behind him, and hurried from the theatre. Burks had undoubtedly heard most of the scuffle through the phone Nixon had dropped. The police signal system would have the Paragon surrounded in a few minutes—men with orders to arrest anyone who resembled John B
urks.
X hurried across the street toward the Princess Theatre, from which Harvey Bates had just emerged. He strode up to his big, square-cut operative. A touch on the arm, and Bates jerked his head around. There was a look of alarm in the big man’s black eyes. He never knew when the police were going to connect him with Agent X and take him up for questioning.
The eyes of Agent X were twinkling as he said in one of his voices which was familiar to Bates: “This isn’t a pinch, Bates.”
There was a long sigh of relief from Harvey Bates. “Fooled me again, sir,” he said crisply.
X chuckled. “Is your car around here somewhere? Inspector Burks objects strenuously to this sort of masquerading.”
“Just around the corner, sir. Learned something at the Princess.”
“Let’s have it,” said X as they strode along toward Bates’s car.
“Same thing. Hopheads go there, too. But just for a few minutes.”
“Yes. One of them left the Princess Theatre tonight, about ten minutes after eight,” X told Bates grimly. “It was a woman. She’ll never go again. She was murdered in a particularly horrible fashion.”
“Eight-ten,” Bates mused. He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and glanced at notes scrawled across it. “That was at the end of the newsreel.”
“Newsreels again. Bates, there’s something about these movies that we’re not getting next to. Did you notice anything that could be construed as a dope connection?”
Bates shook his dark, shaggy head.
THE FOLLOWING evening, Mr. James Starbuck lounged in his luxurious apartment overlooking the Hudson. His jaded eyes were on a stack of photographs in the lap of his satin lounging robe. They were photographs of women—women whose hearts beat faster at the sound of his voice or at a glimpse of his handsome face.
James Starbuck was alone, yet he was not startled when he heard the front door of his apartment open softly. Several of his feminine friends were free to come and go as they chose.
The living room door opened slowly. But Starbuck betrayed no sign of alarm, although his visitor was a tall man whose odd, steely eyes so completely dominated his face that Starbuck scarcely noticed his other features. Had Starbuck known them to be the eyes of Secret Agent X, he might have lost some of his composure.
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