Bates took a quick stride and planted his heel on the wrist of the man on the floor. The man was suddenly very much alive. He uttered a sharp cry of pain.
“ ’Possum, eh?” Bates clipped. He stooped to pull the gun from the man’s helpless fingers, but he never touched the weapon. The chill nose of a revolver was jammed into the back of Bates’s neck. “Don’t try it!” a man’s voice threatened.
Bates stood up slowly. His eyes shifted slowly around the little room. Two men coming through the outer door held automatics in their hands. There was evidently another directly behind Bates. A fourth armed man and the woman stood in the inner doorway. Bates was completely rimmed by guns. And on Zerna’s lips was taunting laughter.
The decoy corpse on the floor got to his feet, picked up his gun, and prodded Bates with the muzzle. “Up the steps, big boy,” he growled.
Hands on hips, Zerna jeered: “Sap! How do you like the reception, Mr. Bates? The brains behind our gang think ten jumps ahead of X. They knew X would impersonate Starbuck. Right now, Mr. X is in as tight a fix as he’ll ever be. The telephone wires leading from Starbuck’s apartment were tapped. When your chief sent out his order for you to follow me, the boys were wise.”
Bates growled inwardly as the ring of gunmen closed, forcing him toward the steps and toward he knew not what fate. But greater than the anxiety over his own safety, was his fear that the gang had managed to trap Agent X. Zerna did not appear to be a woman who threatened idly.
ZERNA had not exaggerated when she had said X was in a tight spot. No one knew that better than X as he stepped into the dark where lurked the monster that killed with cold.
Quietly, he closed the door behind him. He listened without breathing for a moment, then took a step forward. Still no sound, no threat of danger. The Agent’s hand stole into his vest pocket, where his pen flashlight was clipped. But before he could pull out the flashlight, a shuffling sound put him instantly on his guard. His right hand dropped toward his gas pistol, but before he had a chance to grasp it, something lurched into him.
Instantly, X found himself caught in a typhoon of bestial fury. The unseen, hairy monster lashed out with arms and legs, kicking and striking, driving the Agent back against the door. Here was blind fighting, with many a wasted blow, when a false move from either man or monster might have decided the victory.
X lashed out with powerhouse blows. Twice his fist sank deep into fur and flesh, without doing any apparent damage. The big, hairy form again pressed him to the wall. Clumsy fingers sought his throat, but got him by the shoulder.
The black monster threw itself suddenly backwards to the floor, bringing X down on top of it. It was like wrestling with a bear that possessed the wit and agility of a man. Once, X was certain that his two hands were locked about the thing’s throat. Then, with an unexpected roll to the side, the monster broke that hold and was back on its shuffling feet.
The Secret Agent sprang up, ready for any trouble the black monster might cause—anything but the freezing death. X knew no defense against that. Then something came hurtling out of the darkness and struck X squarely in the chest.
The missile had weight and speed. It caught X off balance, beat the breath out of him, threw him to the floor. As his empty lungs sobbed for breath, a door opened on the other side of the room, and for a moment, X saw the fleeing form of the black monster against the gray light of the night.
X picked himself up, got his flashlight from his pocket, and turned it on the floor. The thing that had been thrown so effectively at him was a metal cylinder a little over a foot in length.
The Agent took the strange weapon and examined it closely. The metal casing seemed for protection. The walls were heavily insulated, and there was an empty glass container inside, not unlike the flask of a vacuum bottle. Some sort of a copper connection had been hastily removed from one end of the cylinder.
Agent X nodded slowly. It was then, as he thought, the weapon that killed with cold was probably gas in the liquid form, compressed until its temperature was something approaching absolute zero. Possibly the stuff was ordinary liquid oxygen, such as is prepared commercially.
Such was the weapon carried by the hairy monster. It accounted for the horrible deaths of Mrs. Colrich and Wyer. It accounted for the death of the unfortunate cat that had appeared in the alley the night before. X understood that, when he had shot at the escaping monster on the previous night, the slug from his gun had struck the tank of liquid gas the monster carried. The gas had been suddenly dissipated, freezing to death anything within its path.
But liquid gas required special equipment for its preparation. It was not cheap stuff. Morgan Rister manufactured commercial gases. He would have the necessary equipment. Definitely, Rister was connected with the gang in some way. The Agent’s next move would be to go to Rister and force him, in some manner, to speak.
X crossed the basement room, where he had sought sanctuary from the gunmen in the alley, and went out the same door through which the hairy monster had made his exit. A flight of steps led upward to the street level. X paused a moment to get his bearings.
He was approximately four blocks from one of his hideouts. He would go there at once and get rid of the Starbuck disguise. The disguise seemed actually to have marked him for murder. Some one was thinking ahead of Agent X, anticipating his every move.
As X was passing under a street lamp at the next corner, a crackling voice called: “Jimmy, old boy!”
X turned his head, saw a ragged figure stagger out of a doorway and come toward him with hand outstretched. Mechanically, X shook hands with the giggling, ragged man who seemed so delighted to see him. Then, as the light struck the man’s face, X became immediately interested in this apparent intimate of James Starbuck.
The man’s face was thin and waxy appearing. His eyes were unmistakably those of a dope addict.
THE MAN in rags slapped X on the back, linked arms with him, and started to walk him down the street. “How come you haven’t been around to any of Zerna’s parties, Jimmy?” the dopester asked.
Here was X’s chance to pick up information for which he was willing to play the game as far as his limited knowledge would permit. “Didn’t know where to go, that’s all,” he replied.
The ragged man laughed. “Why, don’t you go to the movies any more?”
Movies again. X was back to the original question: what had movies, and especially newsreels, to do with the workings of the dope syndicate?
“Tell you what I’ll do,” the hophead volunteered. “You just come along with me. Zerna’s putting on another brawl tonight.”
Agent X agreed instantly. Here was a chance to get in on one of Zerna’s orgies. As to his disguise, nothing could be more perfect for such a venture than the disguise he was wearing. It had once failed him so obviously that his opponents would never suppose he would try it again. And in the presence of this man, who had been an intimate of Starbuck’s, there was no reason in the world why anyone should suppose that X was not the man he appeared to be.
“Is the place very far from here?” X asked.
“Sure—quite a ways. Maybe you can find the price of a taxi, huh?”
“I can do better than a taxi,” X told him. “I’ve got a car up here in a garage.”
“Swell! Say, you’re a pal!” The hophead staggered up against X and instantly recoiled. “Say, Jimmy,” he said seriously, “you ain’t packing a rod?”
Evidently the man had felt the gas gun bulking in X’s pocket. “Sure,” X admitted. “Why not?”
“Why not? Don’t you remember, nobody with a weapon can get in? They got some sort of an electric-eye machine sitting at the side of the door. You better get rid of that gat before you try to crash Zerna’s joint.”
If he entered Zerna’s drug depot tonight, he must do so without weapons, or, at least, any metallic weapons that could be detected by an electronic beam. It was a long chance he was taking, he fully realized. But when he thought of the drug-si
ck man beside him and of the hundreds of other lives that had been ruined, that might yet be ruined, by the insidious syndicate of drug merchants and blackmailers, X decided that the chance he took would be worth it.
IT WAS shortly after eight o’clock that night when some one beat a rapid tattoo on the door of Betty Dale’s apartment. The girl got up from her typewriter where she had been working. Mindful of the warning that Agent X had given her, she opened the door a cautious crack and looked out.
“Oh, Gordon!” she laughed. “Come in. But what’s happened to your eye?”
Gordon Stien needed no second invitation. He popped into the room with: “I ran into a door. Have you a nice slice of beef steak?”
Stien went over to a mirror and examined a black and puffy right eye. In the glass, he could see Betty laughing at him. Stien made a face at her. “Cut it out. Get into your going-out rags. Where in hell do you think we’re going?”
“I don’t know where you’re going, but I’m staying here.”
Stien pleaded: “Ah, listen here. Betty, don’t let it be said that I got this shiner in vain.” He jumped to the door. “I brought the evidence with me. Take a squint into the hall.”
Betty went to the door and looked out into the hall. Her rapidly indrawn breath had the ghost of a scream in it. A man lay face down on the floor beside Betty’s door. He didn’t show any signs of life.
Stien pulled the girl back into the apartment. “I did it with my little hatchet. And what kind of a bird do you think that is out there? A snow bird, by gosh! I mauled all the stuff out of him, see. That’s how come the eye. But I got all the stuff out of him about the dope parties. There’s a female named Zerna who gives these parties. She moves after each party, as I get it, so the cops can’t catch up with her. It’s at these parties that the dope is given out.”
“Wait a minute,” Betty said. “Let me knock out some of this on the typewriter.”
Stien grabbed her arm. “Listen, you bit of mellow sweetness, if you think you’ve got a story now, wait until after tonight. I know where this dope party is being given. I know how we can get in. Everybody wears masks, so I got a couple of masks. I told you I really pulverized that snow bird in the hall. We’re set to get in on a real story, if you’re game.”
“If I’m game!” Betty mocked. “Wait till I change my clothes.” And she hurried into the bedroom.
A few minutes later, they were off in Stien’s car. At the end of a forty-five minute drive, they entered a shabby, narrow street and Stien slowed down, watching the house numbers carefully. “Here we are, Betty,” he said in a whisper. “It’s that house we just passed. Get into this mask.” He handed the girl a little roll of black silk.
THEY got out of the car and hurried back to a brick dwelling, the identical house to which Harvey Bates had followed Zerna. Stien rang the bell and produced a small card, which he informed Betty, was a pass he had obtained from the dope. The door was opened by a servant who looked like an ex-pug. He glanced at the card in Stien’s hand, nodded his head, and allowed them to enter.
They entered a long room that had been cleared for dancing.
A radio was going full blast. Men and women were dancing in a crazy, graceless, abandoned manner. It looked like a drunken brawl to Betty, one in which the cream of society was churned with the bluest of the milk. Hardly had she entered the room before she was seized in the arms of a masked man, who whirled her about the room in a mad, frenzied fashion.
Then a man, sedately clad in evening clothes, cut in, took Betty’s arm and led her to the other side of the room. “We want to speak to you, Miss Dale,” he said.
Betty saw that this man’s face was completely covered, distinguishing him from the others in the room who wore only domino masks. He held her arm in a grip she could not break, led her into a room apart from the noisy dance floor.
There were a number of dope-eyed thugs lounging about the room, the man in evening clothes motioned one of them out of a chair and offered the chair to Betty.
“There is nothing to be alarmed about, Miss Dale,” he said gently. “We are simply anxious that you know exactly where you stand. You have the peculiar honor of being a friend of Secret Agent X. This we know, because one of our operatives saw you making an effort, the other night, to aid Mr. X in the smoking room of the Paragon Theatre. Since that time, we have outguessed Mr. X on every occasion. We guessed, for instance, that after he had talked to Colrich, he would impersonate James Starbuck. So, earlier this evening, we arranged a trap for your Secret Agent.
The man in the mask paused, seeming to enjoy the fearful suspense his last statement was creating in the mind of Betty Dale. “Unfortunately,” he sighed, “the Agent gave us the slip. Our one fear is that he has managed to crash this party tonight, even as you did. You, who know him, shall point him out to us tonight.”
“I—I—” began Betty.
The man held up his hand. “Wait. Will you step this way?” He went to a door at the end of the room and opened it.
Betty glanced around. Two of the doped thugs stood beside her, ready to see that the masked man’s demands were carried out. She got somewhat unsteadily to her feet and walked to the door. There she stopped, a scream choking in her throat.
THE ROOM beyond was dimly lighted. Three hairy monsters with great, glassy eyes, sulked in the shadows. In the center of the room sat Harvey Bates. His legs and body were tied to a chair. His hands were held palms up on a wood table by means of straps and staples. Metal supports held curious metal cylinders above each hand.
“You know this man, Miss Dale?” the masked man asked. And when Betty did not reply, he nodded his head. “Of course you do. His name is Bates, and he is a friend of Agent X. Those cylinders above his hands contain liquid air, a fluid that, when dropped on human flesh, produces far worse burns than acid, and far more pain than hot coals.”
One of the black, furry monsters advanced, touched a stop-cock at the bottom of one of the cylinders. A tiny stream of blue-white liquid splashed into the palm of Bates’s right hand.
Bates turned deathly pale. He bit his lower lip until his large, square teeth were stained with blood. The liquid gas fumed into misty vapor and was gone, but the palm of Bates’s hand was black and stiff.
“Keep lips closed, Betty,” Bates said hoarsely.
Betty shook her head. Her blue eyes glistened with compassionate tears. She turned to the masked man. “Stop it. Oh, you can’t be so brutal!”
“I think we can,” said the masked man. “You can stop this torment—if you go into the dance room and point out Agent X.”
Betty thought a moment. Unless X so willed it, she had no more chance of pointing him out than the masked man himself. Yet somehow, she must stop this tormenting of Harvey Bates. Without the slightest idea what her next move would be Betty nodded her agreement.
“Betty,” said Bates hoarsely, “you couldn’t do a thing like that!”
Betty flashed Bates a quick smile. He was right. She couldn’t betray X, even if she wanted to. She did not know, even, that X was in the house.
CHAPTER VI
Mystery Women
BEFORE they entered the house where Zerna’s dope party was in full swing, Agent X removed all metallic weapons from his pocket and left them in the car. The same servant who had admitted Gordon Stien and Betty Dale, a few moments before, allowed Agent X and his companion to enter. The Agent’s keen eyes compassed the room where the strange dance was being held.
Mingling with the crowd, X saw the hostess, Zerna, in her bizarre and colorful gown. She would dance first into one man’s arms and then into another. X saw how deftly she slipped packets of dope into the hands of her partners. There was also a man in the crowd who was handing out dope to the women in the same manner.
It was all very cleverly done. There was nothing to excite police interference. Furthermore, it seemed that these parties were never held twice in the same building.
X was about to choose a partner from among th
e women, so that he might not appear too conspicuous, when a masked woman all but threw herself into his arms.
“Jimmee! Jimmee, darling!” She seized his arms and pulled them about her slender waist. “Where have you been keeping yourself, naughty boy?” The Agent searched the dope-dilated eyes revealed through the slots in the mask. This unknown woman was obviously acquainted with James Starbuck—intimately.
X smiled mechanically. “How did you recognize me?” he whispered.
The woman drew a long breath. “Oh, darling, what a question!” She looped the handle of her evening bag over her arm, grasped X’s hand, dropped her head upon his shoulder. “How good to feel your arms about me again! Hold me tight, Jimmee.” And as they began to dance, the woman was weeping softly.
Agent X had only pity for the woman in his arms. Already her vice had left its tracks upon that portion of her face visible beneath the mask. Whether her evident passion for James Starbuck was real or simply infatuation stimulated by dope, he did not know.
Their dance was not long. Another man seized the woman and dragged her from X’s arms to whirl her about the room in dizzy, drunken circles, while she hysterically called out: “Jimmee, dear!”
X was about to search for another partner when he noticed that the mystery woman who had insisted he was Starbuck, had dropped her bag at his feet when she had been dragged from his arms. X picked up the bag, slipped it into his pocket, and turned into a little room at the side of the dance hall.
He closed the door behind him. He hoped that examination of the bag would help him identify the woman, but he dared not risk being caught in the act. There was another door at the opposite side of the room. He crossed to it and opened it a little way. It led into a closet, entirely dark save for a shaft of light that passed through a rough hole in the plaster.
This hole looked out upon the dance hall. Beside it was a camera mounted on a tripod. It was evidently from such a secret place as this that the gang obtained pictures later used to blackmail the wealthy dope addicts.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 37