Agent X closed the living room door behind him. He had entered the apartment, without invitation, by means of one of his master keys. As he faced Starbuck, his right hand was thrust suggestively into his trouser pocket where his powerful gas pistol rested.
“You know why I’ve come, Starbuck?” he asked in a husky voice that was not his own.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” replied Starbuck without raising his head. “A holdup, what?”
X shook his head slowly. “I know that you use narcotics, Starbuck. Never mind how I know, it’s my business to find out such things. But I haven’t found out quite enough; do you understand?”
“Won’t do you a particle of good,” said Starbuck easily. “I’ve paid my last bit of blackmail money to your stinkin’ organization.”
“You’re grossly mistaken, Starbuck. I am not here to blackmail you.”
“Well, of course not. Call it ‘club dues’ if you want. It’s still blackmail. I’m through, understand?”
“Not with me,” said X. “I’ve come here with one purpose in mind—to get information. Where do you get your dope?”
Starbuck smiled. “Don’t use any. If you’re trying to under-sell some one, you’d better go elsewhere.”
X dropped a hand on Starbuck’s satin-covered shoulder. The ends of his fingers bit deep into Starbuck’s flesh. But the man in the chair scarcely winced.
“Listen,” said X sternly, “I’m going to find out where you get your dope; where you got your dope, since you insist you don’t use it now. I’m after the higher-ups who sell the stuff.”
Starbuck smiled insolently. “Go to it. I still think you’re one of the gang. If you can get me to talk, then—according to your code—you’ll have enough evidence to have me murdered. Go on with your blackmail, if that’s what you’re up to, but spare me your third degree. I won’t talk, because I’m not a fool.”
The apartment buzzer sounded. Starbuck slid out of his chair. “Excuse me. Some of the people who come here have enough manners to ring before coming through the door.”
X followed Starbuck over to where the speaking tube was set in the wall and listened closely while Starbuck lazily answered.
“This is Zerna, Jim,” came a strident, feminine voice from the tube. From his position, X could hear every word.
Starbuck glanced at X. “So you’re coming in pairs, are you?”
And that gave X his cue for action. If Starbuck believed that X was a member of the gang, then, from what Starbuck had just said, it was a certainty that the woman at the other end of the tube was associated with the dope gang.
THE AGENT’S fingers were like hooks of steel as they reached out to clamp over Starbuck’s throat. He pulled Starbuck back and put his own lips near the tube. And from those lips came, in perfect impersonation of Starbuck’s languid drawl: “Come up in ten minutes, Zerna. Just finished a tub; I’m not quite decent, you know.”
He closed the tube, and still gripping Starbuck’s throat, forced the man back into the bedroom and threw him on the bed. Starbuck lay flat on his back, fingering his throat. Even Starbuck’s icy nerves were shaken by the deadly earnestness of the Agent. For the first time in his life, Starbuck had met a man who was fighting desperately and entirely without a selfish motive.
X slipped a hypodermic needle from a leather case. While his hands were busy with it, his eyes harnessed the man on the bed. But when Starbuck saw the glint of that needle, he uttered an oath and flung himself from the bed.
“I’ve had enough dope!” Starbuck shouted. At the same time, he tried to knock the syringe from X’s hand. His left thumped twice over X’s heart, but he might as well have battered at a stone wall.
Once again, X had him by the throat and was forcing his squirming body back to the bed. The point of the hypodermic needle pricked Starbuck’s throat. The clubman’s struggles stopped almost at once. He sighed, and his whole body relaxed in a harmless, drugged sleep.
X turned to a mirror and opened his pocket makeup kit. He quickly removed plastic material and pigments from his face, and fastened metal plates over his cheek bones before applying new makeup. Thus he simulated Starbuck’s prominent cheek bones.
The rest of the work on his face was the sheerest artistry. His slender, graceful fingers pinched and patted the plastic material, while his eyes darted from Starbuck’s face to the mirror and back again.
When he was satisfied with the effect, he traded a red toupee for a sleek, black one which, when correctly combed, looked very much like Starbuck’s glossy hair. A few drops of a liquid in each eye gave him a darker appearance. Agent X had only to change his coat for Starbuck’s dressing gown to be ready to receive the woman to whom he had talked over the speaking tube.
A final glance in the mirror, then he left the bedroom for the living room. Just on the other side of the door, he paused.
A LONG, ivory hand with tapering fingers hung over the arm of one of Starbuck’s huge chairs. Those ivory fingers held a slender black cigarette from which a gray wisp of smoke eddied into the air.
“I found the door unlocked and walked in, Jim,” said the same strident voice X had heard over the speaking tube. “You don’t mind?”
“Not in the least, Zerna,” said X, adopting Starbuck’s honeyed tone. He sauntered around the chair and looked down at the striking, beautiful ivory-hued face of Zerna. “I am highly delighted.”
“Yeah?” Zerna elevated her eyebrows. “Save that honey for some one not so hard to get, Jim. Why haven’t you been coming to my parties?”
X smiled Starbuck’s half-smile. “Perhaps I haven’t been coming because you are so ‘hard to get,’ as you say.”
Zerna laughed harshly. “I am more interested in the fact that you haven’t been paying your club dues. Those dues are used in a good cause, you know. They keep certain unpleasant pictures of James Starbuck out of the newspapers. A person does such strange things when he’s a little bit hopped, you know.”
Zerna stood up, flashing her cold smile. “That’s all, Jim.” She started toward the door.
“Just a minute.” X caught the woman’s hand and found it cold and firm. “I don’t want those pictures to get in the papers. What’s the price? Do I bring the money to you?”
X knew in asking those questions he was taking a desperate chance. If Starbuck had been paying “club dues,” as the blackmail money was evidently called, Starbuck would have known the particulars. But Zerna did not act in the least surprised at X’s ignorance.
“You can pay the two thousand dollars tonight and save yourself a penalty charge,” she told him. “If you were to step out from the front of the Princess Theatre, in about an hour, and get into a Blue Streak Cab bearing Number Twenty-six on the door, you could drop the money in behind the back seat.” And with that she left the apartment.
No sooner had the door closed, than X sprang to the phone and dialed a number. The phone was answered immediately by Harvey Bates, whom X had stationed in a hideout less than a block away.
“Bates, there’s a woman coming out of the Crestview—an exotic beauty. Dark hair and eyes, ivory skin, lips you can’t miss. She wears a scarlet dress and black furs. Get on her trail, and stick!”
He hung up and hurried into the bedroom to select evening clothes from Starbuck’s extensive wardrobe. He was steadily nosing into the fog of mystery. The sale of dope was of secondary importance to the criminals. Once they had introduced a wealthy person into the ways of vice, pictures were evidently taken which could be used for blackmail.
As soon as he had dressed, X left the apartment, walked around the block to the point where he had parked his car. With no minutes to waste, he drove rapidly in the direction of the Princess and Paragon theatres.
THE SECRET AGENT parked his car about six blocks from the theatre and proceeded on foot the rest of the way, arriving at the Princess about five minutes before the appointed time. In his pocket was a neat package of bills amounting to two thousand dollars, money that he had picked
up at the hideout near Starbuck’s apartment.
A moment later, a blue taxicab pulled up in front of the theatre, and X saw Number 26 lettered in gold on the door. He noticed also the lone face and close-set eyes of the driver. The man behind the wheel was Hank Esler, who had driven Mrs. Colrich to her rendezvous with the cold that killed.
X got into the cab and settled back on the right-hand side of the rear seat. Esler turned around and eyed X from beneath the shiny bill of his cap. “Where to, sir?”
“Go to the corner, turn east and go six blocks,” X told him, for it was there that he had parked his own car. If Esler was connected with the dope crowd, and there seemed little doubt of that, X intended to follow Esler and see what became of the blackmail money.
As soon as the cab had pulled away from beneath the lights of the theatre, X reached into his coat pocket, produced the pack of twenty hundred-dollar bills, and pushed it down the back seat cushions. A few minutes later, he alighted from the cab, paid his fare, and went across the street to where his own supercharged car was parked.
X waited only long enough for the taxi to swing around the corner. Then he sprang into his car. Esler had started out fast, and might have slipped completely out of sight. But as X swung his car around the corner on two wheels, he had to brake quickly; for Esler’s cab was directly ahead of him, rolling along at a moderate rate of speed.
Two blocks farther on, Esler’s cab pulled to the curb. X turned his into a driveway and watched the cab driver get out and raise the engine hood. X got out of his car and approached quietly on foot to a point where he could watch Esler from behind a clump of evergreens planted at the corner of some one’s front yard.
The taxi driver tinkered with something beneath the hood, cursing aloud. Then he went to the back door of the cab, and X could see him taking the back cushion out. All this motor trouble was pretense, then, on Esler’s part.
“Well I’ll be damned!” X heard Esler explode. The taxi driver sprang from the back of the cab. In his hand was the paper-wrapped package of bills that X had put behind the seat. Esler held the package beneath the front lamps of his cab and ripped off a portion of the paper.
X watched Esler tuck the package of bills under his arm and strike out on foot. X stepped from his hiding place and followed at a discreet distance. Esler rounded the corner and continued briskly along. Directly ahead, X saw the lights of a precinct police station. And then the Secret Agent saw the whole scheme….
STANDING out in front of the precinct station, no doubt trying to look the part of a police reporter was Betty Dale’s newspaper rival, Steve Wyer, who was no doubt directing the blackmail scheme. Esler would secretly pass the bills to Wyer. That seemed to be the idea, for Esler was walking toward where Wyer was standing.
But no; Esler passed within five feet of Wyer, ran up the steps, and entered the station. X lengthened his stride, reached the steps, and followed Esler. At the door of the station, he stopped. Inside, he could hear Esler whistling tunelessly. Then he heard Esler say:
“Howdy, Sarge. Honest Ham Esler, that’s me. Last night a lady tried to lose her pocketbook in my cab, and I give it back to her. Tonight, some swell gent, who looked like he’d put perfume behind his ears, gets into my cab—and what do you think happens? Well, I’d been havin’ trouble with my carburetor. When I got out, after takin’ this swell to where he wants to go, and went to get pliers to fix that carburetor jet, I finds this under the back seat. It’s dough, Sarge!”
For once in his life, Agent X was utterly bewildered. Why had Zerna told him to put the money in Esler’s cab, if Esler wasn’t the man to collect it? And who could have collected it if not Esler?
X turned and looked back toward the street. Steve Wyer was no longer lounging near the steps. Well, if the ex-blackmailer had anything to do with the crime, now was as good a time as any to find out just what his connection was.
The Agent ran down the steps and looked up and down the street. He saw Wyer walking rapidly. X broke into a run, only to slow down at the corner as Wyer entered the door of a small apartment building. X followed, paused in the vestibule to note Wyer’s name on a card above the mailbox assigned to a second floor apartment.
A shrill, unearthly cry knifed the silence. It rose to a quivering pinnacle and died in a short, choked gasp.
But even before it had been silenced, Agent X was legging it up the steps. As he sprang into the upper hall, something lurched out of a door—a white, ghostly thing that seemed to crackle in its joints. The thing fell into the Agent’s arms. The very touch of it against his flesh brought burning agony.
X sidestepped and allowed the thing to fall stiffly to the floor. White vapor was condensing in a cloud about the body of a man. That stiff, lifeless, frozen form had been Steve Wyer, not more than five minutes ago. The flesh about Wyer’s face looked as though it had been burned, it was that black and crackled. And burned it had been, by a cold so intense as to be actually corrosive to human flesh. Even had a man’s body been able to withstand such a temperature, his nervous system could have never stood the shock.
X dragged his eyes from the frozen horror. At the other end of the hall, something was moving, swiftly and quietly. The Agent gripped his gas pistol, wondering what chance it would have against the cold that could kill. He tiptoed down the hall and peered around a right-angle turn. A chill draught waved the curtains in front of an open window. X stepped to the window and looked out on a fire escape. A black and monstrous shape was padding swiftly down the iron steps.
X got out on the fire escape. The black monster was a perfect target, but entirely out of range of the Agent’s anesthetizing gas.
The thing gained the alley pavement. X vaulted over the iron railing of the fire escape, and dropped. Instantly, he was aware that he was followed. He turned his head. Six men were moving swiftly down the alley in his direction.
In the uncertain light from the apartment house windows, X detected the glint of gun steel. Ahead of him, the black monster was hurrying along on soft, animal-like feet. X ignored the men who were closing in behind him. He sprinted after the black, hairy form.
Then, at the opposite end of the alley, the Agent saw another group of men coming toward him. They, too, were armed. Suddenly, X realized why Zerna had showed no surprise at his not knowing the usual method of paying the blackmail money. Somehow, some way, she had known all along that she was addressing Secret Agent X, rather than James Starbuck. Yet his disguise had been perfection itself.
The Agent had been completely outwitted. These men were closing in upon him, were the hopheaded gunmen who served the master brain of the dope gang. They were not out to kill Starbuck, for Starbuck was still blackmail material. They were out to get Secret Agent X.
X understood now why Wyer had been killed. Wyer had been blackmailing Colrich, for the method used was unmistakably Wyer’s. The dope gang had resented this muscling in on their prospective victim. So Wyer’s death had been scheduled and executed with brilliant daring. And the same master brain that had planned Wyer’s death was now out to remove his chief opponent, Secret Agent X.
Not twenty feet ahead of him, X saw the black, hairy monster disappear into a dense pool of darkness. X gripped his gas pistol and stepped into that same shadowy corner, fully expecting to encounter the monster. But the hairy thing was gone.
X’s groping fingers encountered a doorknob. Here was a way out of an alley that cleverness had converted into a death trap. But what a choice he must make—beyond the door lurked the thing that killed with cold: out in the alley were slot-eyed, dope-keyed gunmen, ready to riddle him with shot.
Agent X hesitated only a moment. Then he opened the hidden door in front of him.
CHAPTER V
House of the Damned
AS soon as he had received the telephone message from Agent X, Harvey Bates had hurried from the apartment where he had been awaiting his chief’s orders. He was only about half a block away from the stylish Crestview where James Starbuck l
ived.
When he had reached the street door, Bates saw the woman in red, who was undoubtedly Zerna, coming toward him and not more than a rod from the door. He proceeded with deliberation, pausing to stuff the square bowl of his pipe and get it glowing before he left the building. He saw Zerna walking rapidly ahead of him. The woman gained the corner, looked both ways, and stopped. She stood at the curb, tapping her foot impatiently.
Bates got into his car, which he had parked in front of the apartment. It was obvious that the woman was waiting for a private auto to come and pick her up, for she completely ignored a taxi that rolled slowly by.
Perhaps two minutes passed before a big green car stopped at the corner. The woman got in beside the driver, and the green car rolled on down Amsterdam Avenue. Bates kicked his motor into life and followed.
Bates kept about a block behind the green car, which continued for a distance of about twelve blocks before it cut to the left and angled for a mile or more deep into the east side of town. The green auto came to a stop in the middle of a rather shabby block. Bates jerked his car around the corner and stopped.
The green conveyance was parked in front of a once-grand brick dwelling. From the corner, Bates watched the woman alight and hurry into the house. The green car rolled on into the night.
Bates proceeded on foot until he was opposite the building Zerna had entered. It was one of those old houses that had been worked over into an apartment building. Without a moment’s hesitation, Bates walked slowly up the six stone steps to the door, took hold of the knob, and looked into the shadowy vestibule. His heavy black brows drew together in a scowl.
Just beyond the door, a man lay flat on his face, one arm extended above his head, an automatic loose in his motionless fingers.
Cautiously, Bates opened the door. Had the woman simply stepped over this body? Hardly. It was some sort of a trick.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 36