For there were three black figures in the room. They sat on chairs like three ravens of death facing him. There were black hoods over their heads, trailing black cloth over their bodies. Through holes in the hoods he saw the evil glitter of eyes.
There was not one criminal, then, but three behind the murders that had taken place. He was in the presence of the “Torture Trust,” the men whose inhuman brains had plotted hideous villainy.
A voice came out of the gloom, cold and precise and dangerous as the buzz of a rattler’s tail.
“What have you got to say for yourself, Jason Hertz?”
The Agent gulped, stirred, and imitated Hertz’s tone as he had learned it from the phonographic record.
“I–I lammed out of stir. I figured maybe you’d have something fer me to do. That’s how come I dropped the note. A guy’s gotta eat.”
“We know you got out of the penitentiary. We have eyes. We read the papers. But we know your limitations, Hertz. It seems remarkable that you could have escaped without outside help. Will you please tell us exactly how you did it?”
The Agent knew at that moment how perilous was the ground upon which he stood. There were brains of diabolical cunning behind those sinister black hoods. His life hung upon the answer he made.
Chapter VIII
SLOWLY he drew his lips into a smile. He straightened his body, threw out his chest, facing the spectral trio with the arrogance of a criminal proud of his handiwork.
He was a student of human psychology, and he acted now as he believed Jason Hertz would do in his shoes.
“You gotta hand it to me,” he said. “You’re king-pins an’ you’re smarter than me. But I pulled a fast one when I slipped outta the big house. There ain’t many guys could ’a done it.”
“You haven’t answered our question, Hertz!” There was a relentless note in that cultured, measured voice.
These men, “X” sensed, were not ordinary criminals. They bore no relation to the underworld of thugs, gunmen, racketeers, and gamblers — except that they lived by death and the fear of it that their deeds inspired.
He smiled again. “You wanta hear about it right from the start?”
“That’s what we want.”
“Well, I bought a hack saw from a snowbird named Cooper. His brudder smuggled it to him, see? An’ he was too shaky to use it. I give him money to buy coke instead. I snitched a key from a guard when he had his back turned talkin’ to another guy. The key was on a chain. I stuck a piece of soap on it, see, and made a nifty pattern.”
Agent “X,” alias the convict, Hertz, chuckled again as though at his own cleverness.
“There was tools in the machine shop,” he continued. “I was a good guy. They made me a trusty. I made me a key from the pattern in the piece of soap. When I got the chance I slipped out and went to the empty cell block up top. I cut a hole through the ceiling and got amongst the rafters. That’s the way a guy they told about in the papers did it.”
“Then,” came a voice in the gloom, “you cut the bars of an end window — and climbed down to the yard. We read all that, Hertz. But how about the wall?”
“X” laughed again.
“You must ’a seen about the rope, too,” he said. “I left it there. They’s lots of things a trusty can do. I snitched that rope in the cellar, the one they used to haul ash cans out on a pulley. I tied a bolt to it an’ slung it over the wall. There was a loop on it. I caught the loop on a brace that the wires on top of the wall was fastened to. I did a pretty slick job.”
There was silence as he finished his tale. He knew that evil brains were debating, weighing the story he had told. He believed it rang true. Hertz had been a trusty. Convicts in the past had used exactly the methods he had described to escape.
But there was a slow constriction around his heart and he could feel his pulses pounding. What if he had aroused their suspicions?
Then another of the black-hooded trio spoke. His voice was lower, hoarser, but it, too, had a cultured note.
“You’ve done well, Jason Hertz. You are cleverer than we thought. We may be able to use you again. But for a time you will have to lie low. We will call you when we need you.”
There was finality in the voice. The Agent’s heart sank. He must find out something definite. He couldn’t wait around for weeks while the hideous murders went on.
His disguise had worked. He was not suspected, but he had learned little. Who were these men? What faces lay behind those black hoods? Where did they live?
He stared again beyond the range of the searchlight, looked at the black-hooded figures with quick penetration. His eyes came to a focus on one.
The right foot of the middle man was thrust slightly forward. The toe of a shoe projected from under the black robe that dropped to the floor. On that shoe the sharp eyes of the Agent detected streaks of mud — mud that had caked recently, mud that formed an irregular pattern. And, in that brief glimpse, his astute brain registered an impression that was photographic.
The hooded men, so far as he could see, made no signal; but one of the mask-faced deaf-mutes returned. The Agent was familiar with the regular deaf-and-dumb language, but he could not follow the strange finger conversation that ensued between the trio and the mute. It must, he concluded, be in code.
The blindfold was slipped over his eyes again; the light in the room went out. He was led through darkness. The sinister trio obviously believed him to be Jason Hertz. But they were taking no chances. Besides themselves only the deaf-mutes were allowed to know the secrets of this hidden place.
Agent “X” was storing impressions again. He was being led out by a different route. The stairs were different, so were the corridors. The acoustic properties of the latter, responding to his footfalls, gave out different echoes.
WHEN they reached the street, he was pushed into a car and the blindfold wasn’t removed until they had driven many blocks. But the Agent had been marking the intersections in his mind by the different sounds that the street openings made. They had passed four. The rumbling note of the wheels changed each time. They rounded a corner, went two more blocks, then another corner. The blindfold was taken off. The car slid into MacDonough Street.
He was motioned up the steps of No. 44 again, and a deaf-mute rang the bell, two longs and a short. Then the mute wrote on his pad: “Stay here,” and thrust it under “X’s” nose.
The witchlike landlady led “X” to a second-floor room. She lighted a gas jet and left him alone. He heard the deaf-mute descend the stoop and the car drive away.
He crossed the room quickly, thrusting his head out the door. He could hear the faint, shuffling steps of the landlady somewhere below. Taking off his shoes, he tiptoed out, walked down the hall and reached the front door. He made no sound. He kept close to the walls. In a moment he had opened the door and slipped out.
Thinking he was Jason Hertz, escaped convict, they would expect him to stay in the house, glad of a refuge. But the real Jason Hertz was far away, and the man impersonating him had a perilous task to perform.
He moved along the block like a wraith, ducked into a deserted alley, listened a moment, then set to work.
Under the quick movements of his skilled fingers, the brilliant disguise came away. It would take long minutes of patient labor to build it up again; but only a few seconds were required to remove it. And in his coat lining, he had another quick disguise ready.