“You are a fool, Saunders. I don’t like fools. And you would be a nuisance if you lived. Also your death will be a lesson — to Elisha Pond!”
Horror crawled along the spine of Agent “X.” He had feared something like this. A cry sprang to his lips.
“If you do, Green Mask — I’ll see that you die yourself.”
Green Mask bowed ironically. “Another fool,” he said. “Look — and profit by what you see!”
He gave a low signal. The man with the powder stepped forward. Another pinch of the hideous gray stuff landed on Saunders’ tortured flesh. A groan came from his bloodless lips. He writhed horribly, tried to speak, but only a discordant babble came from his quivering mouth.
Agent “X” strained until veins stood out on his forehead, until the handcuffs bit cruelly. He called harshly for this terrible thing to stop. Green Mask did not answer. The four others were silent, their glittering eyes turned upon their victim.
At the last, Agent “X” did not look. Horror, nausea, weighed him down. The hissing gasps that came from Saunders’ throat seemed to lash the still air of the room. The walls seemed to throw the sound back in whispers of hellish laughter. Then silence followed, and when Agent “X” looked again, Saunders’ powerful body hung slack in the steel cuffs that held him. Saunders was dead.
Weak himself from the ghastliness of what had taken place, Agent “X” sagged in his fetters. He had faced death and torture in his life, but he could not calmly see others suffer.
The green-masked man spoke a low order. The four who had performed his bidding disappeared as they had come. Green Mask arose calmly. He slipped into a hat and coat he had thrown over the back of the chair. His glittering, evil eyes became fixed on Agent “X.” Agent “X” answered the look with fierce, silent hatred. The green-masked man buttoned his coat leisurely, turned his hat brim down.
“Let this be a lesson,” he said. “I go now to receive the instructions meant for you. I go to learn exactly why you have been summoned by plane to Washington. And if the reason is what I think, I will have use for you later.”
With a mocking salute, the man turned and strode across the still room. An instant later a door opened, closed, and was locked. It was followed by the sound of receding footsteps.
Chapter IV
AGENT “X” stared at his surroundings. The room he was in was bare, except for the one chair and a small table. There were no sounds, no street noises. Apparently the green-masked man had taken the others with him, left no guards, trusting to the strength of those forged steel handcuffs.
The Agent tested them. They were locked so closely to the flesh that they made painful pressure against his skin. The metal rings behind him were bolted into beams in the wall. He was apparently a hopeless captive. He rolled his eyes toward the still form of Saunders, cursed silently under his breath. He had seen many men die, but few as horribly as this.
Then Agent “X” began to move. He arched his body backwards. He thrust his hands down and brought his heels up. He could touch his shoe with his finger tips now. The steel cuffs cut cruelly into his wrists. He ignored the pain, stretched down farther still.
The fingers of his right hand groped along his left shoe sole. They paused, pried the leather of the sole apart at a point just in front of the heel. Working laboredly in his cramped position, he slipped something out. It was a four-inch piece of metal — a file. One side of it was highly tempered steel. The other side had a crystalline black substance set into it, held by grooved edges and mineral cement. It was a sliver of black diamond, thin as isinglass, but with a finely toothed cutting edge that was fashioned to rend the hardest of metal.
Turning this file in his hand, holding it in tense fingers, Agent “X” pressed the diamond-set edge against the connecting links of his handcuffs. With a steady, rhythmical movement he drew it back and forth and felt the tiny crystalline teeth bite into the metal. Minute flakes of steel fell away. The groove that his diamond file made grew deeper and deeper.
At the end of ten minutes of patient effort, the links of the handcuffs parted. He breathed deeply, flexing his cramped arms. The metal bracelets were still on his wrists. There wasn’t time to sever them now. He bent and attacked the steel links that connected the fetters on his ankles.
He had more room to work now, more leverage. Muscles in his arms and shoulders stood out as he drew the diamond-studded file across the metal in short, powerful strokes. He freed himself of the ankle cuffs in half the time it had taken to do the others. He stood erect — free — and the burning light in his eyes became like a hot flame. He moved close to Saunders, felt the man’s pulse to see that he was surely dead. The glassy, staring eyes of the Government operative were proof enough. Standing erect, face muscles rigid, Agent “X” seemed to be making a silent pledge.
Then, with the steel bracelets unconnected, but still on his wrists and ankles, he strode across the room. The door was locked on the outside, but locks were no impediment to the Agent. He drew a set of slender chromium tools from the lining of his pocket. With the head of one, bent like a blunt fishhook, he picked the lock and opened the door.
There was a hallway outside. It was dark and still. The Agent picked up his suitcase which stood in a corner. The disordered state of its contents showed that the green-masked man had gone through it.
Agent “X” turned it upside down, pressed metal studs on the bottom, then breathed quickly.
The mysterious criminal had missed the narrow, cleverly hidden false bottom where many of Agent “X’s” elaborate make-up materials were hidden. Only careful measurement of the sides of the suitcase would have revealed that.
With his luggage in his hand, Agent “X” catted into the dark hallway. He passed along it cautiously, ears and eyes alert. He encountered no one. He was in an old, deserted house. The masked torturers had gone.
AT the end of the hall he came to a street door. Lightning showed a vivid purple streak across the bottom of the door. He heard the dull and distant rumble of thunder.
He opened the door cautiously, stared out. The house faced on a dark old street in a part of Washington he was not familiar with. But there was no one in sight. The Agent slipped down the steps, crossed the street, and moved quickly ahead. He hated to leave Saunders behind, but the man was beyond aid now — and there was strange and vital work to be done.
He walked five blocks, then plunged into a corner drug store. He found a telephone booth and made a quick call, dialing a number not listed in the public directory.
A masculine voice answered him. It was a deep voice, with a note of quiet power in it, a voice known to Agent “X” only as “K9.”
In clipped sentences Agent “X” told of their capture, Saunders’ brutal murder, and his own escape.
The deep voice of “K9” gasped out a hoarse curse. “Saunders killed!” A silence followed. “X” could hear the harsh breathing of the man at the other end. Then the voice resumed: “Your impersonator failed to pass the tests. I grew suspicious, gave him no information, but—”
“He escaped!”
“Yes!”
“And your orders for me?”
“Come immediately to the appointed place. There is no time to lose now — after what has happened. We don’t know who this man is — or what he’ll do next.”