When he emerged from the alley, he appeared as a young, red-headed street loafer. The silk shirt was gone. The sweater he had worn under it, surreptitiously, was in evidence, drawn up around his neck. His coat and trousers, specially tailored to be turned inside out, had completed the change. He no longer remotely resembled Jason Hertz.
Keeping close to the shadows, he walked back along the way he had come. He thought out each step, turned the right corners as he came to them, pausing at last by a huge empty warehouse.
His pulses were tingling now. It was into this building that the deaf-mute had led him. It was out of it that the sinister trio must come.
Carefully, casually, he skirted the big warehouse. It occupied nearly the whole of a small block. Three sides of it were on streets. But there was a clutter of empty houses in the rear. Agent “X” moved by these. Then his heart beat faster.
In the street outside he saw the glint of moisture. A puddle, barely dried, reflected the light from a distant street lamp. The mud around the puddle was a light yellow. Dried, it would probably appear white. It formed a precious clew.
He took up his position in the shadows across the street. There was no telling how many secret entrances the chamber in the warehouse had. The most subtle precautions had been taken to guard them. Yet the Agent felt certain that at least one of the trio had passed in through these old buildings in the rear. Might he not be expected to come out the same way?
Night wind moaned along the street. The stars glittered coldly. Somewhere far up on the warehouse a piece of loose tin flapped and groaned like a wounded vampire. The street was cold, bleak, and deserted. But the Secret Agent waited.
It was nearly an hour later that he crouched back in his hiding place. A door in one of the deserted buildings had at last opened. A man in a long ulster stepped quietly out, closing the door after him. His movements were not furtive. They were calm, assured. The man’s face was even-featured and calm, too, and he was well dressed.
But the Agent leaned forward tensely. On the man’s shoes were pale streaks of mud. He picked his way past the puddle as though a recent unpleasant experience had taught him to be careful.
Shadowing was one of “X’s” specialties. He had done much of it in his life. He knew all the tricks. Yet it took every resource at his command to keep sight of the man in the gray ulster.
The man walked four blocks up the street at a rapid pace. He turned left, walked four blocks more to a main thoroughfare and waited for a taxi.
At a fast clip, hands in pockets, head bent low, the Agent walked on by him. His heart was beating rapidly with the excitement of the chase. What if another taxi did not come? What if he lost sight of the man in a traffic jam? These were risks a shadower must always take.
Then he saw a cab approaching from the other direction. He stepped into the street, signaled it. The driver seemed loath to stop because of “X’s” unpresentable appearance. But “X” waved a bill in his face.
“Make a U turn,” he said. “Then drive ahead slowly.”
The driver did so and the Agent looked back. He saw another cab glide in to the curb and pick up the man behind. It came on up the street and passed.
“Follow that car,” said the Agent.
THE driver of the cab obeyed. But the man ahead, as though it were part of a customary routine, changed cabs three times, walked many extra blocks, and used other tricks to throw off possible pursuit.
The trail led at last to a house in the suburbs — a house on a quiet, respectable street. There were no lights in it when the man in the gray ulster entered. But they flashed on soon after. He was evidently staying alone.
The Agent waited outside till long after midnight, till the lights finally went out for good. Then he slipped a handkerchief over his face crossed the street, and moved to the rear of the house. If he should be caught, he wanted to be thought a common burglar.
He took from his pocket a kit of tiny, chromium steel tools. There was a glass cutter with a full diamond point among them. He selected the windows of the library, placed a rubber suction disc against a pane, cut the glass noiselessly, and, holding the disc, drew the glass toward him with a faint snap.
In a moment he was in the library, playing the beam of a tiny flashlight over the walls and furniture. There were books, many of them, and a desk with papers on it.
From these he learned the name of the man who lived in the house. Professor Ronald Morvay, psychologist.
That was something. The Agent stored it in his memory. He rotated the beam of his flash, then stopped. It was focused on the wall, on the circular front of a small sunken safe.
The Agent walked to it quickly. House- and safe-breaking were included in his activities — when it was the house of a murderer he broke into and the safe of a murderer he opened.
But there were no clews as yet that would help unravel the plot behind the mysterious “Torture Trust.” He knew it was an extortion racket. The police knew that, too. But what diabolical minds were back of it, and how could they be caught?
He knelt before the safe, touched the dial with his long fingers, put his ear to the metal. In the pursuit of criminals he had studied their methods, and he was familiar with the mechanics of safe-breaking. There were few that he could not open by listening to the faint movement of the lock tumblers.
At the end of a minute he had the door of the wall safe in Professor Morvay’s library swinging outward on its hinges. Then his hand reached inside.
A common burglar would have been disappointed, but the Agent felt rewarded. There were in the safe several small books, their pages filled with fine, close script. And as the Agent turned the beam of his flash on them and studied them, his eyes gleamed eagerly. He began to read — and read on, devouring the lines, page after page.
He was held in the grip of such appalling horror that his skin felt cold. Here was a record of human ingenuity and fiendishness beyond anything he had ever run into. No wonder the books had been placed in the safe!
They told of a series of experiments by a scientist — a psychologist — who used his knowledge for criminal purposes. They told of the experiments of Professor Morvay on that part of the human brain which harbors the sadistic tendencies — the lust to torture and kill. They told how men with a trace of sadism in their make-up could be trained into inhuman monsters. And Agent “X,” grim-faced, thought of the gray-clad deaf-mutes with their sinister features. These were Professor Morvay’s subjects, the men he had experimented on. These were the sadistic fiends who were only too glad to carry out the orders of their masters. These were the acid throwers!
But the other two members of the murder trio were unknown to him. And there would have to be proof beyond this to convince any jury that the respectable Professor Morvay was a hideous criminal.
“X” began searching through the second book. Then he stopped. A faint noise had come. He put the books back in the safe, closed the door swiftly and started to turn toward the window. But instead, he held himself as though every muscle were frozen.
For the lights in the room suddenly flashed on, and standing in the door which he had silently opened stood Professor Morvay. There was an automatic in his hand, and its black, deadly muzzle was pointing straight at the Secret Agent’s heart.
Chapter IX
IN the space of a second, the Agent knew what he faced. The menace of death hung heavy in the room. There was death in Professor Morvay’s green-gray eyes and in the thin, cruel line of his lips. Legally he could find justification for shooting the Agent who appeared now as a common thief. Morvay would say to the police that he had shot in self-defense. Any instant the Agent expected to feel the impact of a bullet above his heart.