“You!” Sally breathed. “You—”
“Yes,” said the man slowly. “I have been following you, and I am delighted to learn of your treachery.”
“You—your voice—” Sally gasped. “Like Wolf Hollis’s. No—no, it can’t be. He’s dead.”
“And I tell you that Wolf Hollis still lives!”
CHAPTER XI
Behind the Mask
THE steel net was drawn down tight and secured to X’s ankles by means of ropes tied to the four corners of the net. The mesh looked so tight that it seemed it must bite through clothing and into his flesh. Actually, this was because every muscle in his body was distended to its fullest. A second of relaxation, and he would be able to move his hands and arms to a limited degree.
“So this is the famous Secret Agent X!” one of the gunmen sneered. He swaggered up to the net and shoved his gun into his belt. “And he’s caught in a net just like any other sucker. Don’t worry, fella, soon as I frisk you we’ll get you out of there and into a nice coffin.”
The gunman, his hands working through the opening in the net, emptied X’s coat and trouser pockets of their useful miscellany. But as the gunman moved to search X’s vest pockets, something happened. Agent X suddenly relaxed. The steel net hung a little loosely about him. His right hand darted to his lower right vest pocket, slipped in beneath the gunman’s clumsy fingers, and pulled out something which dropped to the floor beneath the gunman’s feet.
“What the hell!” the searcher gasped. He stepped back, yanked out his gun. But his heel came down directly on top of the fragile glass vial which X had dropped. This vial was filled with the Agent’s anesthetizing gas, forced in under pressure.
The man who had searched Agent X was the first to go down under the powerful gas. As it spread about the room, men staggered crazily and flopped to the floor. Agent X alone remained standing, his locked lips smiling slightly. If he could hold his breath long enough, until he could work his way over to the door, he believed that a few minutes alone would enable him to free himself from the net.
Though he was hobbled by the rope that tied the net to his ankles, he could move his feet inches at a time. He shuffled slowly across the room. Sixty seconds, counted by the hammer strokes of his over-burdened heart were required before he could reach the door. His vest pockets, as yet unexplored by the searcher, contained, among other things, his master keys. If the door was locked, he would have little trouble.
He tried the knob. The door was locked. He got out his master keys, selected one which was most likely to fit the lock, and thrust it out between the strands of the net. The key went partway into the lock and stuck there. He pulled it out and tried another. It failed to enter the keyhole at all. Another and another key refused to open the lock.
He dropped to his knees in front of the door and tried to see through the keyhole. Something obstructed his vision. The key, of course—the key to the lock was inserted from the opposite side of the door. Again he tried the master key that he knew would open the door. He jammed at the key in the lock, but still it refused to move. Whoever had locked the door from the other side had turned the key so that it could not be pushed out.
That meant tool work. And his tools had been removed by the searcher. Desperately, he turned and shuffled back to the man who had searched him. He procured his case of tiny, tempered tools and started back toward the door.
It is impossible for a man to kill himself simply by holding his breath, yet Agent X came very near doing that very thing. His vision was blurred with red. He could hear nothing in the world but the pounding of his own pulse, rapping in the arteries at his temples. It was coming and coming fast—that moment when he should be forced to gasp in a great lungful of that sleep-producing atmosphere.
He shook his tools out on the floor. It was chiefly by means of his sense of touch that he found the needle-nosed pliers. Something snapped in the Agent’s brain. His lips sprang apart. His aching lungs rebelled against the control of their master. He drank deeply of his own poison, coughed once, dropped flat on his face in front of the door.
IN another room at the rear of the building, Squid Murphy paced the floor. Five of his best men were in the room with him, two of them occupied in guarding Betty Dale who was seated in one of the two chairs in the room.
Squid Murphy felt edgy. He didn’t know why. It just seemed to him that he had a seat on top of a volcano.
“It’s the dame and the X-guy!” Murphy growled, flashing Betty Dale a glance. “I can handle the cops and the G-men, and not twiddle a finger, but these nosey dames and the X-guy—they make my head itch. Tell you, guys, if the Brain don’t show up pretty quick, you knocks the dame and the X-guy. What’s eatin’ the boys anyway? I told ’em to bring X back here. Go see what’s eatin’ ’em, Pike.”
A lean, sallow-faced youth, who looked hop-fed, complied eagerly with Murphy’s order. Pike left Murphy’s sanctum and went through door after door until he came to the front part of the building where X had been trapped.
He found the door locked, twisted the key, and pulled the door open. Six men, like six corpses, lay on the floor of the room. A seventh, confined in a steel net, lay at Pike’s feet. It was like stumbling into a morgue.
Pike took a step backward, tripped and fell flat. Something was hooked around his ankle. It was the hand of the man in the net.
Pike tried to scramble to his feet. But the man in the net, despite the tangle of steel mesh surrounding him, rolled and squirmed, grappled with Pike. Pike tried to cry out, but fingers that had the same steely strength as the net itself, pinched on his throat and slowly, surely, choked him into unconsciousness.
When the first effects of the gas had reached X’s lungs, he had fallen purposely so that his face was near the bottom edge of the door. Enough pure air from the outer room had reached him, in that position, so that his recovery had been much more rapid than that of the others in the room.
He had come to, just in time to hear Pike’s footsteps outside the door and had simply played dead until Pike had the door unlocked. The anesthetizing vapor had dissipated sufficiently, so that the air was no longer dangerous. Agent X hastily gathered his tools, selected the sharpest, hardest blade among them, and began work on the steel wires of the net. Five minutes later, he was a free man. He quickly gathered up his weapons and equipment which had been taken from him, and quietly left the room.
SQUID MURPHY’S patience lasted about six minutes. Then he swore he’d find Pike and bring him back dead.
“He’s had time enough,” Murphy declared. “You guys watch that dame. I’m goin’ after Pike.”
Murphy left the room and went to the front of the building where he found Pike, still unconscious, an empty steel net, and the Agent’s six guards still under the influence of the gas.
Murphy paled. He got cold all over as he realized fully just what kind of an opponent he had met in Agent X. He stumbled on unsteady feet from one exit to another of the building, checking up on the men who guarded the outer doors. No, no one had left the building. Murphy passed a trembling hand over his face.
“Cripes, the X-guy is loose, in here with us somewhere!” Then he snapped his fingers. “We got him. We’ll put a slug in his brain, if he don’t get us all first!”
Squid Murphy hurried back to where he had left Betty Dale. More members of the gang had drifted into the room and were lounging about, leering at Betty. Murphy slammed the door of the room and flattened himself against the panel. His fishy eyes skated from one face to another. A crafty smile smeared across his lips.
“Gotcha, Mr. X,” he said. “Gotcha this time.”
Murphy’s men looked queerly at their leader. “Who in hell you talkin’ to?” one of them asked.
“Mr. X,” laughed Murphy. “He’s in here, damn him. He would be here, tryin’ to rescue the dame.”
“Are you nuts, Squid?” one of the crooks jerked. “I ain’t X. None of the boys is X.”
Murphy’s fingers danced
on his chest. “Sure—crazy smart. You don’t know who X is. He’s never the same guy twice. I got a feelin’ he’s right here in this room.”
Betty Dale’s pulses quickened. She knew that Murphy’s way of learning X’s identity depended upon some terrible ordeal for her. If X was in the room, at the slightest threat against her, he would reveal himself. That meant death for Agent X. If he wasn’t in the room, she could look forward only to agonizing pain.
She drew a long breath and fixed Squid Murphy with a blue-eyed stare. “Don’t be absurd,” she said scornfully. “I know Agent X. If he were in this room right now, you’d know it the worst way.”
Squid Murphy’s lips twisted. “So you know him, do you, baby? That’s fine and dandy, that is.” He walked across the room, opened a steel box, and rummaged among tools. Finally, he picked up one that suited his purpose and turned to Betty.
Betty’s fingers clenched until it seemed that her fingernails would penetrate the palms of her hands. There was an electric soldering iron in Murphy’s fist.
Absolutely ignorant of the fact that Betty Dale was in the same building with him, Agent X was concentrating every effort to outwitting the Brain. He had no idea how much time had elapsed since the Brain had trapped him in the building. Perhaps by now the elusive killer was miles away. But there was only one way to make certain—search the building.
Three doors opened on the hall in which he found himself. He decided to try the one to the right of the door he had just closed behind him. He found it locked, all the more reason why the room beyond would bear close investigating. Again his master keys were brought into play. He opened the door softly and found the room beyond dark.
X listened and detected the faint sound of some one breathing. He stepped into the room. The Brain always moved in darkness. Perhaps the other occupant of the room was the man he was hunting. X drew his gas pistol and moved quietly in the direction of the breathing sound.
“Brain,” he said quietly, “I’ve come.”
LOW LAUGHTER sounded within the room. X’s body tensed. He waited. Nothing more came out of the blackness. X unclipped his penlight from his pocket. Had the Brain given him the slip again? He ventured a beam of light that stabbed across the room. Instantly he ducked and chopped off his light. Nothing happened. Yet his light had centered upon a man who sat in a chair and wore a black hood and mask over his head.
X took another step toward where he had seen the man. “Brain,” he whispered again, “don’t move. I’ll shoot at the slightest sound.”
Again came soft laughter. X scowled at the darkness. He turned his flashlight on again and stepped boldly up to the man in the chair. The muzzle of the gas gun pointed at the man’s masked face. Queer, glittering eyes watched him from slits in the mask.
“You disappoint me, Brain,” X said. “After all, I expected a little more resistance at the finish.”
The man moved stiffly in his chair, but said nothing and simply stared in fascination at X’s gun. In the masked man’s right hand was a rusty nail. He was scratching on the arm of the chair with it—making queer designs that consisted chiefly of a cross surrounded by a circle.
X drew a quick startled breath. Was it possible?… His left hand shot out and tore the mask from the man’s face. For a long moment, X was silent. The face of the man in the chair was a distorted mask of lifeless looking flesh. The mouth was set in an open-lipped snarl. His head was twisted on his shoulders at an odd angle. As he stared at Agent X, he laughed that soft, idiotic laughter.
Agent X nodded. He understood now why the man in the chair continually scratched the sign of the cross and the circle. The cross and circle was his signature—all, perhaps, that his crazed brain remembered of the life he had lived before. For the man in the chair was Wolf Hollis, the feared and hunted, reduced to a crippled imbecile.
Somehow Wolf Hollis had escaped the G-men. The burned body that had been found among the ashes of the house that had been his last stand, must have belonged to one of Wolf’s henchmen. Perhaps one of the federal men’s bullets had lodged in Wolf’s brain, resulting in his paralysis and feeble-mindedness.
Wolf Hollis was not the Brain. He hadn’t brains enough to plot the killing of an ant. But somehow, some way, the Brain planned to use Wolf Hollis. The Brain had marked every murder with the cross-and-circle signature of the illiterate Hollis. Clearly, he intended that when the showdown came, Wolf Hollis should bear the blame for all the crimes.
But if Hollis were to be the fall guy for the Brain, Hollis would have to be found dead; for no one would ever believe that this imbecile was the man behind the white-cross murders. That meant that in all probability, the Brain would return to kill Hollis….
CHAPTER XII
Frame for a Dead Man
A QUICK rap on the front door of Murphy’s loft-building hideout brought two guards to their feet. With guns drawn, they approached the door. One of them peeked through a hidden slot.
“That was the Brain’s signal,” the guard said to his companion. “It’s him, all right, and he’s got a dame with him.”
The guard unlocked the door and admitted the Brain and Sally Vergane, still in the guise of Pamela Dean.
The Brain and Sally crossed to the room beyond. The Brain turned on a light. His face was covered from forehead to chin by a black silk mask. He carried a silenced pistol in each hand.
The girl looked pleadingly at the masked man. “Wolf,” she began in a choked voice.
“Please refrain from calling me Wolf Hollis,” said the Brain. “The similarity between my voice and his is due chiefly to your imagination.”
“Then—then—”
“Keep still, Sally. I told you that Wolf Hollis is alive. I’m taking you to him. He’s been with me a long time. I’ve been running this for him. He’s slightly—shall we say, he has retired?” He nudged the woman into a dark hall, unlocked another door, and thrust her into another room.
“Wh-where’s Wolf,” Sally whispered. “That’s all I want. I gotta know if I’m all right with Wolf.”
The Brain pocketed one of his guns and took out a flashlight. The searching beam bored the gloom and centered upon the figure in the chair, the crooked body of Wolf Hollis.
Sally Vergane stared, wild-eyed, at the man in the chair, at his hideously distorted face and madman’s eyes. “Wolf!” she screamed. “Wolf, what’s the matter? It’s Sally.” A sob choked her off. She ran across the room to fall on her knees before the man in the chair. She seized his hands. “Wolf, say something. Wolf!”
The man in the chair stared dully down at her and laughed his soft, mellow-witted laughter.
Somewhere in that room was a shuffling sound. The Brain’s flashlight darted toward the corner, picked out the upright form of a man whose commonplace features were unmistakable. The Brain had seen that face once that evening under circumstances he was not likely to forget. It was the man he feared, his mind telegraphed. It was the man he had trapped. How that man had escaped from that trap, the Brain didn’t know. He knew only that that man must die, for he was Secret Agent X.
Even before the man he feared could take a step toward him, the Brain fired. His shot was surprisingly accurate for such hasty aiming. Without a groan, the man pitched forward to the floor.
A triumphant oath spilled from the Brain’s lips. He crossed quickly to the man on the floor and dropped beside him. His shot had penetrated the center of his victim’s forehead. He was stone dead.
The Brain heaved a long sigh. “Dead,” he whispered. “Secret Agent X is dead. I can sleep again! The whole underworld can rest. I’ve killed Agent X.”
Somewhere, outside the building, came the rattle of machine gun fire. The Brain’s moment of relaxation was gone. His body stiffened. G-men were outside the building, acting on the tip Sally Vergane had given them. G-men—what in hell did he care for G-men? Hadn’t he just killed Agent X, greatest of them all? Wasn’t everything set for a safe walkout, leaving Murphy and crazy Wolf Hollis holding the ba
g? Wolf Hollis—the man ought to be dead when the G-men found him; or better still, the G-men ought to kill Wolf.
The Brain sprang across the room to where Sally was sobbing beside the laughing man in the chair. The Brain clubbed one of his guns and brought it down on Sally’s head. The girl slumped to the floor. The Brain chuckled, leaned over, and took one of the madman’s hands in his.
“Wolf,” he said, “you hang on to this, understand? Just like I give it to you, you keep holding it.”
He pressed one of his pistols into the man’s hand. When the G-men came in and saw Wolf Hollis with a gun in his hand, they’d shoot to kill.
The Brain hurried across the room. “Now, for the getaway,” he mused. “Down into the basement, through that manhole, and into the sewer. As simple as that. Only, coming out of a sewer with a mask on—” He shook his head. “Not so good. And a man in my position can’t be seen popping out of manholes at any time. I have to do better than that. Now, if I came out with some one—” He chuckled and glanced at the dead man on the floor.
“Agent X,” he said to the corpse, “the idea is almost worthy of you!”
BETTY DALE had been endowed with more than her share of courage. Though there was a terrified trembling going on inside of her, her face was a rigid, fearless mask as she watched the electric soldering iron begin to glow in Squid Murphy’s hand.
Murphy planted a knee on the chair where Betty sat, then bent over her. “You got one more chance. If Mr. X is in this room, you’d better point him out. If you don’t, I’ll force him into the open. He ain’t the kind to sit around and hear a dame’s eyes sizzle.”
“How many more times must I tell you that he is not in this room?” Betty cried.
Squid Murphy sneered. “Ain’t that tough! Well, baby, here it comes!”
Murphy moved the soldering iron slowly toward Betty’s face. Its pyramid tip pointed directly at her right eye. She felt the terrific heat of the glowing metal, shrank back as far as possible into the depths of the chair. There was a scream in her throat, locked there, choking her until she could hardly breathe.
Secret Agent X - The Complete Series Volume 7 Page 50