Lili Damora flounced off and Ito laughed. The cruel bantering note was still in his voice.
“Choose,” he said. “How do you wish to die?”
The eyes of Agent “X” roved desperately — roved over the cold morning sea, over the faces of the men around him, along the deck of the vessel he was on. He was searching for a way out. And his mind told him there was none; his mind told him he was beaten.
How did he wish to die? This fiend was calmly asking him that. Death held little terror for Agent “X.” He had been schooled against it. But defeat in this, the greatest thing he had ever undertaken, was a bitter, ghastly pill to swallow. Worse even than the sting of the Kep-shak torture. His country, his chief in Washington relied on him — and he had failed. This masked criminal was sneering at him — this man who had the Browning plans. Revolt flared in the mind of Agent “X.” His eyes turned upward, and suddenly he tensed.
Thin, ghostly wires stretched across the sky between the vessel’s masts — wires that were his last link with the world he knew. Radio! This was a tramp steamer he was on. He’d seen the type before and knew them well. His eyes dropped. He was silent for a moment. Suddenly he raised his hand.
“Look! Over there!”
It was an old trick. He was pointing out across the sea. But he was counting on its very simplicity to fool the man who used elaborate tortures on his victims. He would not suspect “X” of using a ruse so crude. Moreover, Ito was swollen with the feel of victory — arrogantly sure of himself. Agent “X” had calculated well. At his sudden gesture, the tenseness in his voice, Ito and the Malays turned their heads.
IN that moment, Agent “X” leaped. He heard the shrill cry of anger that lifted behind him. A knife whistled through the air. He sprang aside. The knife hissed close beside him, landed with a thud against the deckhouse.
He sped forward along the vessel’s deck. A desperate plan had formed in his mind. He climbed an iron ladder, ran ahead. The bridge rose before him. He found the door he wanted, burst in. A man who was not a Malay crouched over his instruments in the ship’s radio room. A man who was a weak-eyed river rat. A white man, but a man enslaved by drugs. One of Ito’s craven slaves.
The Agent closed the door behind him. He barred it with a chair. His fist flashed out, crashed into the face of the wireless man. The man slumped to the floor, head lolling.
For a bare second the Secret Agent paused. He studied the dials along the wall, the complicated instrument board. He threw a switch, leaped to the small table where the man had sat. His fingers touched the radio key.
Quickly, expertly, he gave the signal of the Hampton Roads naval station. Seconds that seemed eternities went by. Then there came an answer to his call.
Shouts sounded outside now. Running feet. The Agent paid no attention to them. Bent over his key, eyes burning, he sent a message that might influence a nation’s destiny. For three minutes he used a secret naval code, then stopped. Men were beating on the door.
He switched the light off as evil faces were framed in the wireless room’s small window. The glass broke behind him with a crash.
The Agent leaped across the floor. There was another door beyond, an officer’s room. He ran through this, out to the deck again, doubling back along his tracks. A Malay saw him and gave a howl. “X” plunged into a doorway, down into the interior of the ship.
Death stalked on all sides of him now. But he must fight for time — time. Where was Ito now? “X” didn’t know. He ran forward to the cabin where Lili Damora had gone. A Malay appeared in his path, knife gleaming. The Malay hurled the knife. “X” dodged and fired his gas pistol into the man’s face.
Then he saw a door ahead of him and flung it open. A woman’s piercing scream sounded. Lili Damora stood before him.
“You!” she hissed. A gun appeared in her hand. The Agent sprang aside as it lanced flame. He leaped forward tigerishly, wrenched the weapon from her fingers. She cowered back.
The Agent’s lips curled. Here was the creature who had been playing with the green-masked criminal all the time. She had even used Karl Hummel, outwitted him, and slain him when he was of no further use. The Agent read the whole ghastly story now. Karl Hummel in her hands had been a mere tool.
“Go to the door and lock it quickly,” he ordered.
She obeyed, sliding a heavy bolt home. “X” knew the door had iron cleats across it. It and the room’s partitions formed a stout barrier.
As Lili stepped back a voice came through the wood — the voice of green-masked Ito.
“Clever again, Elisha Pond! You sent a wireless message. But even that is too late. This boat is fast. They will not catch us now. And if they should overtake us, we have a plane on board. Long before help can arrive we shall have broken in — and you will be dead.”
“Leave him alone,” cried Lili. “He will kill me if you don’t.”
The green-masked man laughed.
“You are a dear lady, Lili. But let me make it clear that a threat to your life cannot save Pond. High as I hold you in esteem my enemy comes first.”
As though to emphasize this, Green Mask fired through the door, and the bullet whistled between Lili and Agent “X.” Then there came a series of thuds as Malays battered axes on the door.
Lili hissed like a venomous snake, furious that Ito was willing to risk her life to get at “X.” She turned to the Agent and a torrent of angry words came from her lips.
“I’ll tell you who he is,” she cried. “You’ll understand the sort of animal you’re dealing with. He’s a half-caste — a mongrel — half Jap and half American. Because his father deserted his mother she taught him to hate America.”
A shower of ax blows drowned out her voice for a moment. The door shook and creaked. Lili screamed above the noise so that her words would reach Ito’s ears, too.
“I hate him as much as he hates Americans. I’d like to destroy him as he would destroy them. I tolerated him only because he promised me wealth when the stolen plans were sold.”
Lili Damora looked like a sinister harpy now. Fury distorted her face, drove her beauty from her, seemed to add years to her age. She screamed a curse.
“Ito with his high-society airs! Ito who calls himself—”
TWO more pistol shots rang out as Ito fired furiously through the door. Ax blows half deadened their reports. But Lili stopped speaking and gave a piercing shriek. She clutched her left side, crimson staining her fingers.
“You’ve hit me — you devil! You’ve—”
The words choked in her throat. She took a staggering step forward, then collapsed and lay still on the floor — a murderess slain by her own partner in crime.
Whether it was intentional or not “X” didn’t know. He stood aghast, tense and silent as the Malays hacked the door to pieces.
Five minutes — ten — went by. Death would come soon now — death—
Then a new sound came, filling the air, rising above the ax blows. It was a sound that pulsed through the Agent’s blood, thrilled him. The roar of airplane motors — the planes the Agent had summoned by radio. They circled the ship, signaling for it to stop — but the vessel forged ahead. Then suddenly the Agent started.
There was a noise out on deck. The staccato rattle of a machine gun. This sinister craft was armed. He stared from an open port.
One of the planes, sweeping low over the gray sea, suddenly tilted, thrusting its broad wing toward the sky. A column of black smoke trailed behind it. Its engine coughed, sputtered. There was a blinding, rending flash of flame. The gray plane was torn apart before his horrified eyes, its gas tank hit and exploding.