Sometimes they asked that strange facts be unearthed. Sometimes they asked him to investigate mysterious crimes. But never before, since his perilous career as Agent “X” had begun, had he been summoned to the capital. Something unusual was in the wind. Some case of greater import than any he had ever tackled impended.
Blood raced through the Agent’s pulses as the swift plane tore through the sky. Its whirling propeller sliced the sheets of rain. Lurid flashes of lightning began to show on the horizon. They shed a ghostly light on the wings; made the pilot ahead look like some crouching, helmeted monster.
And the Agent watched the ship’s course with the eye of an expert. If anything should happen to the army flyer up front, Agent “X” was capable of flying the ship himself.
They were following the shining ribbon of a straight double-tracked railroad. A fast passenger train showed beneath them. It was forging ahead at seventy miles an hour. But it seemed like a crawling, phosphorescent caterpillar as the army plane overtook it, and left it far behind.
In less than two hours a searchlight beacon showed on the horizon. It swung rhythmically across the heavens in conflict with the lightning. Peering over the plane’s cowling, minutes later, Agent “X” saw the flood lights of a Government field below. He saw the Washington Monument on his left, saw the gleaming surface of the Potomac River.
The plane began to descend. It banked, nosed into the wind, slid downward out of the night like a huge bird. Landing lights on its wings winked on and off. Other lights answered below.
The velvet-smooth surface of the field swept up. It was glistening with rain. The plane’s air wheels touched the ground. They lifted, touched again, settled. The plane taxied up to the hangars, fishtailed to a stop.
AGENT “X” leaped out. For a moment he looked around. A curious mechanic was moving forward. An officer, protected from the chill drizzle of the rain, stared at him from an open doorway. Then he saw a man in a glistening slicker running toward him.
“X,” who never forgot a face, stared intently. When light from the hangar’s open doorway fell on the man, “X” nodded to himself. The approaching figure was someone he knew — a trusted Department of Justice operative named Saunders; a man who had often been active in the dangerous field of counterespionage. On at least a half dozen occasions in the past, Agent “X” had talked to him.
But Saunders’ face was a blank when he came up. He didn’t recognize Agent “X.” The Agent’s masterly disguise fooled him. Saunders, thick-set, powerfully built and sandy-haired, peered under his wet hat brim.
“Are you Mr. Pond?” he asked.
The Agent nodded.
“I was told to meet you when you landed. I’ve got a car out in the street. But first, if you don’t mind—”
Again the Agent nodded. He knew what Saunders wanted. Caution was ingrained in the men who worked for the Federal bureaus. “X’s” hand dived into his pocket, came out grasping a wallet. From it he drew a card bearing the name of Elisha Pond. Saunders didn’t know that this was one of a dozen aliases. He didn’t know that the man called Pond carried other cards which he could have produced just as readily. He didn’t know that the man before him was Secret Agent “X.” He was merely obeying orders from a superior, as the pilot of the army plane had done.
“O.K.,” he said. “Step this way if you please, sir. It’s a nasty night, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the Agent grimly. He had an idea it was nastier than Saunders realized. He sensed strange, dark things in the air. He followed the stocky form of Saunders to the waiting car, a small, weather-beaten coupé.
“My own bus,” said Saunders proudly. “She doesn’t look so nice, but she’s a sweetheart on the road.”
Both men climbed in. Neither of them saw the shadow that moved along the hangar wall. Neither of them saw the dark, intent face that gleamed for a moment under the splashing drops of the rain.
There was a public telephone booth in a small cigar store opposite the field gate. As Saunders’ car splashed away, the shadow by the hangar wall ran over to the booth. In a moment he was speaking softly into the mouthpiece of a phone, using a foreign tongue. Another man, a half-mile away, was answering him, also in the same tongue. The second man hung up, slipped out into the dreary darkness.
Saunders tried to make conversation as he and Agent “X” sped along. “X” answered only in monosyllables. He was oppressed by a sense of impending trouble, wondering about the mysterious reason for his summons to Washington. He liked Saunders, but the man was only a small cog in some vast thing that was under way. The sandy-haired Federal operative lighted a cigarette. He sent the little car whizzing along, driving with careless ease.
It was Secret Agent “X” whose eyes roved the street ahead with the closest attention. It was “X” who first saw the dark car pointed at a crazy angle toward the curb. For a moment his fingers closed over Saunders’ arm.
“Someone’s skidded,” said Saunders. “And nearly smashed up.”
A man in a chauffeur’s uniform was bent over one wheel of the car ahead. He straightened, raised a hand in signal.
“They’re in trouble,” said Saunders. “Let’s see what’s the matter.”
He braked his little car, began to slow down. The Agent’s eyes had become burningly bright. But the chauffeur looked all right. He was dark-skinned. He seemed to be a mulatto. Saunders brought his car to a stop, cranked down a window.
“What’s the trouble, fellah?” he said.
The brown-skinned chauffeur came forward, holding something in his hand.
“Look,” he said. “Broken!”
He thrust his hand through the side window of Saunders’ coupé, opened the fingers. Then it was that Agent “X” hissed a sharp warning; but he was too late.
Something crackled in the brown-skinned man’s hand. It was like a dried puffball. A jet of brownish powder squirted from its collapsed sides. The powder filled the interior of the car. It went into the two men’s faces, blinded them as though hot needles had been thrust against their eyes. Saunders swore fiercely and lashed out with his fist.
“You double-crosser. I stopped to help you and—”
WORDS choked in his throat as the brownish powder passed between his lips. Agent “X” did not try to speak. He jerked at the car’s door, tried to get out, hoping that the night air and rain would clear his vision. He rubbed at his eyes with one hand, but it only seemed to drive the hot needles deeper into his nerves.
Dimly then he heard the sound of running feet around him.
He heard crisp orders shouted in a foreign tongue that made him start. A master linguist he had a basic knowledge of many languages. This was one he had heard before, but it seemed out of place, fantastic in his present surroundings. The brown-skinned chauffeur had been joined by others.
Hands caught hold of Secret Agent “X.” He lashed out with his fists, tried to fight free; then something was thrown over his head. A noose was jerked around his neck. He had a sense of enveloping cloth. A pungent, smothering smell was in his nostrils. It was like a strange, Oriental incense; but the sweetish odor of it was cloyingly oppressive.
He raised his hands, tried to pull away the hood that had been flung over his head. The dizzyingly sweet odor in his nostrils was filling his lungs now, choking off breath, making him reel on his feet.
Saunders beside him gave a hoarse, gurgling cry. He, too, had been attacked in the same way.
Blinded, smothering, Agent “X” was at a hopeless disadvantage. The onslaught had come before he had been on his guard, before he had conceived of the possibility of any enemy being present.