That evening, kindly old Elisha Pond checked coat and umbrella at the club and mingled freely with the other members. None would have guessed that this wrinkled, white-haired gentleman of the old school was the feared and notorious Agent X. His eccentricities in the matter of dress would have made Elisha Pond the butt of many a joke, were it not for the fact that his wealth and generosity purchased a vast amount of respect.
Mr. Pond paid particular attention to Charles McAdam, with a definite purpose in mind. When the news broke that a new business partnership of McAdam and Pond had been formed, none of the club members would be greatly surprised. So it was that McAdam seated his pink-porkiness at a table opposite Elisha Pond in the club dining room. For an hour or so, Mr. Pond’s shaggy white head was seen close to McAdam’s pink scalp. The two were engaged in earnest conversation.
“Wonder what old Pond is up to now?” asked Major Hatfield of Dr. Ormand.
The doctor smoked his pipe and shook his head doubtfully. “If it’s a matter of business, Pond better keep his hand on his bank book. McAdam would skin his own brother.”
Thomas Ingram, who overheard the conversation, stepped up to say: “Don’t be too sure. McAdam met his match when he met Elisha Pond.”
Earnest and confidential as their conversation seemed, Mr. Pond and McAdam discussed nothing more important than a theoretical law problem. X’s first task, in forming the fake partnership of McAdam and Pond was to remove McAdam to some safe spot and keep him prisoner. Then, disguised at one time as McAdam and at another as Pond, he would manage an apparent business deal between the two.
But before he could successfully impersonate McAdam, it was necessary for him to make sure that he was familiar with McAdam’s characteristic actions, and especially with McAdam’s handwriting, so that he would be able to sign McAdam’s name to a partnership agreement without exciting suspicion.
Not all of the Agent’s attention was on McAdam, however. At a table, not far distant, one of the members dined quietly alone. That man was Nelson Birr. And X watched him closely, though covertly.
Nelson Birr concluded his meal at approximately the same time that X and McAdam finished theirs. He opened his wallet and carelessly tossed a bill down as a tip for the waiter. As he closed the wallet, a scrap of paper, hardly an inch square, slipped out and fluttered to the floor. Birr did not notice this, but Agent X did.
As he sauntered from the dining room, still chatting with McAdam, X picked up the paper and thrust it into his pocket.
Later, in the card room, X and McAdam were joined by Dr. Ormand and Thomas Ingram. Dr. Ormand suggested bridge. X declined. “Never play anything but solitaire,” he told them. “Ah, there is a young man after my own heart!” He nodded across the room to where Nelson Birr was idly toying with cards at a lonely table.
“A new member,” explained Dr. Ormand. “Doesn’t seem to make friends or want to. Perhaps you can pull him out of his shell, Pond.”
“Perhaps; I’ll try,” X said. But he walked away from, rather than toward, Nelson Birr’s table. In a small reading room off the card room, X took out the slip of paper Birr had dropped and looked at it. It had obviously been torn from the lower right-hand corner of a much folded letter. On the paper were the words… “as my worthy successor.”
Beneath this, where a signature should have been, was a small circle of ink centered by a cross. It was the sign of sudden death.
Nelson Birr—silent, friendless Nelson Birr—had dropped the paper bearing the fatal sign. Agent X recalled the man’s peculiar actions that night at Malthus’s house. He again saw Nelson Birr, mysterious, cagey, armed and ready to shoot. Nelson was not marked by the sign of sudden death; he carried it in his pocket. It was imperative that he question Birr at once. It would be no mere catechism, X resolved. Birr would be taken to the Agent’s own crime laboratory and there submit his soul to the closest scrutiny that science and the keenest pair of eyes in the city could produce.
X opened his medical kit, which he always carried, and took out a small vial. Then he slipped it into his pocket. It contained chloral hydrate, familiar, quick-acting knockout drops which X employed. Dropped into a highball, the stuff could produce a coma not unlike a drunken sleep. Once Birr had taken the drug, it would be an easy matter for X to get him to his crime laboratory.
THE AGENT entered the card room and proceeded at once to the table where Nelson Birr sat. Birr looked up quizzically, his handsome, blond face flushing slightly. Agent X thrust out his hand. “I believe I have not had the pleasure.”
Birr smiled slightly, introduced himself, and shook hands. “And you, of course, are Mr. Pond. I am a secret admirer of yours, sir. Your philanthropies are most commendable.”
“Thank you so much.” Agent X sat down, waved Birr into the chair opposite and sighed. “Stuffy place, isn’t it?”
Birr raised his eyebrows. “I find it much to my liking.”
X chuckled. “Odd, isn’t it? I mean, we’re all rather old codgers here, with the exception of Ormand. Being a doctor, he finds it to his advantage to cultivate the acquaintance of gentlemen who have one foot in the grave, no doubt…. Ever play double solitaire, Mr. Birr?”
Birr shook his head. “Quite a game, isn’t it?”
“Oh, quite. Learn it by all means. Suppose you and I go into that small room over there where we can concentrate. I’ll teach you in no time.”
“Delighted.” Birr stood up. X hooked his arm through the secretary’s arm and steered him toward a small, private room.
X uttered Pond’s crackling chuckle again. “We’ll have a game to ourselves with something to drink on the side, eh, my boy?”
Birr smiled. “I’d like nothing better.”
The small room where X had suggested that Birr learn the game, was actually an alcove near a small stage which the club sometimes used for entertainment purposes. There was no door to the place, but it offered sufficient privacy for X’s purpose.
They consumed three, rather potent, highballs before X had managed to cover the simple rules of double solitaire. It was no difficult task for a man of X’s skill in sleight-of-hand to doctor Birr’s fourth highball with the drug. So it was that shortly after the game itself, Birr began to nod.
“Damned stuffy in here,” he commented, playing the wrong card.
“So glad you agree with me,” X said pleasantly. “And, if you’ll pardon me, you can not play a queen on an eight spot, my boy.”
Birr corrected his error. “Feel queer,” he mumbled. He tried to stand up, but flapped limply across the table. X got up, stepped quickly to Birr’s side.
“Hullo, what’s happened to the youngster?” a thin voice behind X said.
The Agent turned, saw nervous Thomas Ingram looking into the alcove.
“Too many drinks, I’m afraid,” X said.
Ingram turned his head slightly and called: “Dr. Ormand!”
“Oh, it’s nothing to be alarmed about,” X said hastily. “I noticed Birr was becoming a bit foggy. Couldn’t keep his mind on the game.”
Ormand came up. His eyes glistened brightly behind his rimless glasses as he pushed in front of Ingram. “What’s the trouble, Birr?” he demanded. Birr, of course, did not answer. Ormand stooped over, sniffed, though how he could have smelled anything above the reek of his under-slung pipe was a mystery. Then he picked up Birr’s glass and sniffed it. Then he sniffed at Birr’s slightly parted lips.
Agent X inwardly cursed Ingram’s nosiness while cleverly feigning anxiety. Dr. Ormand turned quickly to X. “Who was your waiter, Mr. Pond?”
“Number six, I believe,” said X. “What’s the trouble? Nothing serious, I hope?”
Ormand grunted. “Nothing except that the waiter has evidently tried to poison Birr. His glass contained chloral hydrate. I hardly think a lethal dose was given. However, we must not delay a moment. Ingram, have some one get strong coffee. Be quick about it, man!”
Major Hatfield and other club members came up. X knew that if he was
to spirit Birr out of the club now, he would have to be a magician.
“Poison, you say?” Hatfield cried. “This is serious!”
“Not necessarily,” Dr. Ormand contradicted as he coolly caressed his pipe. “Not if Ingram hurries with that coffee. I believe some one has merely given Birr a sleeping potion.”
INGRAM came bustling up with Waiter Number Six in tow. The waiter was pale. His hand shook so that had not Ormand seized the coffee cup the waiter surely would have spilled the liquid. Ormand, with X assisting him, got a cup of the hot, black liquid into Birr.
“I think he’ll be all right,” Ormand said.
“But,” Hatfield insisted, “this matter needs looking into. Though I am an investigator by profession, I should like to have the police here at once. Suppose you call the police, Ormand, while I arrange to have all exits guarded.”
“Oh, really,” said Ingram, “is such formality needed?”
Dr. Ormand’s eyes rooted the waiter to the floor. “I believe so,” he said, quietly. He turned on his heel, and with Hatfield at his side, left the room.
Ingram wrung his hands and danced worriedly around X. “I don’t like the publicity this may mean, do you, Mr. Pond? What will our wives say?”
“I’ve no idea,” declared X. “I haven’t met mine yet.”
Ingram groaned. “Lucky man! I propose that we get this thing over as soon as possible. Suppose we were all to submit to a search. Wouldn’t that satisfy justice? I mean, the man with the poison bottle—it does come in bottles, doesn’t it? I’m frightfully ignorant on the subject of murder. Ha, naturally, eh?”
“Naturally,” X said, without enthusiasm.
“And inasmuch as this isn’t really murder,” Ingram sputtered on, “and poor Birr will suffer nothing more than a headache, why the devil can’t we find the culprit ourselves and shut the matter up? A search would reveal the bottle.”
“Ingram,” said one of the club members, “you’re making a colossal ass of yourself. Inspector Burks of the Homicide Department, seeing you act like a jumping jack, will be apt to clap the cuffs on you.”
“Cuffs—homicide.” Ingram held his head, and he was holding his head when the lights went out.
“What the hell?” some one cried.
Agent X leaped into the card room. “Probably a blown-out fuse,” he said soothingly.
“It’s the murderer!” cried Ingram. “I know it. He’s going to escape!”
“Keep calm, you fool!” some one yelled at Ingram. “Look! There’s a light now—that spot light in the balcony—the light we used at the last show.”
The keen beam of light cut across the room, finding white, taut faces of the club members in the room.
“What the devil’s happened to the lights?” demanded Dr. Ormand, who had just run up.
“Fuse gone, no doubt,” X said.
“Or the murderer trying to escape!” cried Ingram. “Who’s missing? Watch that waiter!”
“Nobody’s missing,” boomed Major Hatfield, as he joined the others. “I’ve guards posted at every exit. As soon as the police arrive, we’ll search everybody.”
A search was something that X dared not risk. He had all of his special devices with him, as well as the incriminating bottle of chloral hydrate. The Elisha Pond alias was too valuable to him, as it was his means of obtaining necessary funds, to have it discovered that Elisha Pond was Agent X. No, before he would allow that, he would declare himself Agent X and tell every one in the club that he was impersonating Elisha Pond.
A man clutched Agent X’s arm. It was Dr. Ormand. “Damn it! We’ve very nearly forgot our patient. Birr should show some signs of improv—”
Ormand’s sentence hung in mid-air. His keen eyes were staring in the direction of the alcove. No one had noted it before, but the spotlight, the only illumination in the room, was directed at the table where X and Birr had been seated.
Birr lay exactly as they had left him; there was nothing alarming about that. What was stranger than anything else was the spot of light itself. Its yellow circle was centered by Birr’s form and also a shadow—a shadow that was a perfect cross.
The circle and the cross—the sign of sudden death….
Ormand and Agent X leaped toward the alcove at one and the same time. They crowded shoulder to shoulder as they stooped over the man on the table.
“Not a mark,” Ormand muttered. “Nothing but that damned shadow of a cross. Yet the man is dead, do you hear? Nelson Birr has been murdered!”
CHAPTER IX
“Meet Mr. X.”
MURDER. The word was breathed around the room. Horrified eyes were anchored on that motionless body, on the cross and circle sign that seemed to have stamped out life.
Agent X was momentarily stunned by this revelation. He had picked a spot in the murder puzzle where Nelson Birr seemed to fit perfectly. Yet Birr was dead, and Agent X was at a loss as to how that death could be explained. It could not have come from the drug X had placed in Birr’s drink, for the dose had been only enough to produce a coma. Plainly it was the work of the same person who directed the white-cross killings.
“Don’t suppose Pond had anything to do with it?” Ingram was heard to whisper.
“Absurd!” snapped Ormand.
“But wasn’t he drinking with Birr?” Ingram insisted.
“Pond, where the devil are you?” demanded Major Hatfield.
“Here,” said X in Pond’s mild voice. He stepped nearer the ray of light, and Hatfield came up to him.
“You’ve no objection to my searching you, have you, Pond?” the major asked. “It would stop some ugly insinuations.”
X’s muscles tensed as he answered: “I have every objection,” he said acidly. “The mere suggestion of a search is the gravest insinuation I have to face, Major.”
Hatfield’s bronzed brow furrowed. He took a step nearer. “If it wasn’t for your unimpeachable reputation, Pond, I’d say you were trying to conceal something.”
Some one pressed against the Agent’s right side. X turned to see Ingram darting back into the shadows. Ingram exclaimed: “He’s got a gun! I felt a gun in Pond’s pocket!”
Major Hatfield’s teeth clenched. “I’m going to search you, Mr. Pond!”
Hatfield put his hand out toward X. But he had scarcely touched the Agent before X’s left fist shot out and up, straight to the point of Hatfield’s chin. The major had traveled the world over and had seen much of war, but never in his life had he encountered such a blow as that. His long body struck the floor.
“Mr. Pond, Mr. Pond!” a clubman shouted excitedly.
But Mr. Pond was running toward the door of the room to stop suddenly as a spotlight pierced the gloom and centered upon him. More lights were gleaming through the doorway, and Inspector Burks could be heard bellowing: “Why the black-out here? What’s the trouble?”
“Stop him!” shouted Ingram. “Stop Pond. He killed Nelson Birr. He’s just killed Major Hatfield. He’ll kill us all!”
“Pond killed some one?” Burks roared. “You’re crazy. I—”
“Look at him!” yelled Ingram. “He—he’s growing!”
Police flashlights focused on a figure in the center of the floor—a figure that had been Elisha Pond’s. Age was dropping from the man’s shoulders. As X straightened up, Elisha Pond seemed actually to grow. It was as if a magnificent character actor were showing them how his miracles were wrought. There was Elisha Pond’s wrinkled face above a tall, sinewy, youthful body. And on Pond’s lips was almost boyish laughter.
“You’re quite right, Inspector Burks,” came a voice that was not Pond’s, yet came from Pond’s lips. “Elisha Pond did not kill Nelson Birr. You will find that Elisha Pond is quietly sleeping somewhere in this club. Gentlemen, I want you to meet an old friend of Inspector Burks. Gentlemen, meet Mr. X!”
And with that, X’s right hand raked across his face, instantly altering the plastic features that had identified him as Pond. At the same time, he tossed a m
ysterious cylinder to the floor directly in front of him. As police guns barked, a cloud of dense black smoke broke from the cylinder to form a screen which effectively masked X’s movements.
“Watch the doors!” shouted Burks. “He’ll not get away this time. Send somebody to fix the lights. Damn that smoke!”
To follow Agent X as he moved about the club in the darkness, would have required bloodhounds. Even when they found him, they did not know him; for he was on the floor of the washroom, apparently asleep. It was Inspector Burks, himself, who came very near to falling over him.
Burks turned his flashlight on the recumbent form of an old, white-haired man whose features were unmistakably those of Elisha Pond. There was an empty drinking glass close by which Burks’s detective sense told him had contained chloral hydrate in solution.
THE INSPECTOR fell to shaking Pond by the shoulders, little suspecting that he actually had Agent X in his hands. As Hatfield and Dr. Ormand came into the room, the lights came on. Agent X’s eyelids fluttered.
“Coming to,” murmured Burks. “That devil drugged him.”
“That devil” opened his eyes and muttered feebly: “Where am I?”
“You’re okeh, Mr. Pond,” Burks said kindly. “Mr. X handed you some knockout drops and has been impersonating you all evening. Disguised as you, he’s murdered a man, that’s what!”
“I—I remember now,” X said. “I was having a little indigestion. A man came up to me here. I thought he was a fellow club member. He gave me something for my indigestion.”
“What’d he look like?” demanded Burks. Then: “Oh, hell, don’t answer that question. He never looks the same way twice.” Then Burks did something that, knowingly, he never would have done: he helped Agent X to his feet.
Not only had X cleared all suspicion from the name of Elisha Pond, but he now had further opportunity of investigating the mysterious murder of Nelson Birr. The shadow of the cross-and-circle sign was readily explained. Some one, undoubtedly the murderer, had simply and quickly cut out a silhouette, representing the cross and circle, from a magazine cover. This had been placed over the spot light which had been turned on the body. Consequently the silhouette had been projected on the corpse.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 48