Running as swiftly as he could, he carried Betty back the way he had come. But he found that one door had snapped shut again. He had to put her down and work with his master key. That took time.
At the level of the ground floor, at a junction of corridors he paused. There was a whisper of sound behind — the sound of running feet. Pursuers were coming out of the darkness. He and Betty would shortly be overwhelmed. The girl must be gotten away at all costs. If she were injured, burned with acid, it would haunt him to the end of his days.
He stooped and whispered to her.
“Rats are coming out of the night. A terrier may have to hold them in check. Do as the terrier says.”
He carried Betty along a passage into the rear group of buildings. He set her down and found she could walk now. Then he spoke again, calmly, as though death were not close at their heels in the darkness behind.
“Go straight ahead and out the door. A car waits across the street. Drive away — as fast as you can. Go to the Hotel Graymont. Wait for the terrier there!”
He heard her breath come quickly, felt her fingers clutch him. She did not want to obey — did not want to desert him. But a steely touch of his hand on her arm gave accent to his order. He pushed her forward, heard her footsteps receding.
He was glad he had done it. The sounds in the corridor behind were close now. Betty Dale could not walk rapidly. Carrying her, he would have been overtaken surely. Her only chance of escape was for him to make himself a dyke against the human flood of evil and horror that was surging in upon him.
He waited tensely till the sounds of the running feet were close. Then he whipped out his gas pistol and fired. There were only six gas-filled shells in the gun. He discharged them all, laying a momentary barrage in the corridor.
There was the noise of a stumbling, falling body. Gasps of fear came out of the darkness and the footsteps receded. Then the gas cloud cleared and the fierce wave advanced again. The blackness vomited leaping, flying figures. There were a half-dozen of the gray-clad men.
Struggling fiercely, fighting against the human torrent that engulfed him, the Secret Agent went down in a flying welter of arms and legs and lashing fists.
Chapter XII
HE fought on blindly in the darkness, expecting momentarily to have scalding drops of acid dashed into his face, to feel his eyeballs, nostrils, and lips being seared into shapeless lumps of quivering, pain-prodded flesh. But none came.
The gray-clad men seemed for the moment to have discarded the liquid horror that they dealt in. They wanted evidently to take him alive, uninjured.
He crashed a balled fist into a man’s writhing face. He felt teeth snap, felt the skin of his knuckles rip. But the next instant two men were on his back and snake-like fingers were encircling his throat. He reached up, tried to break their hold, and someone butted him in the stomach, doubling him up in breathless agony. Then it seemed that a dozen vises had been clamped upon him. Hands pinioned him from all sides. The pressure on his throat increased till his breath was shut off, till he lay gasping.
With unconsciousness close at hand, he relaxed. The fingers on his throat were loosened slightly. He could breathe again feebly. A light was turned on and he saw a forest of legs around him.
The faces looking down at him were impassive, hideous as death masks in their reptilian immobility. One of the men lay moaning, nursing his bleeding gums, but there were five others.
They yanked the Secret Agent to his feet. A gun was pressed against his back so forcefully that it bruised the flesh. He was pushed along the corridor, back the way he had come.
He wondered dully why they didn’t shoot, why they didn’t kill him now, or throw acid in his face. Then he realized that these men were slaves, being disciplined in evil and committed to do the will of their masters. They were taking him upstairs again, to the council chambers.
Four of them held him outside the door while the fifth slipped inside. “X” had no doubt the man was telling in finger language to the hooded masters of death, the story of Betty Dale’s escape and his own entry.
The fifth mute came back, his face still impassive, and Agent “X” was thrust through the door into the presence of the black-robed men. But there were only two now. The third had not returned. That one, the Agent guessed, was Morvay.
The spotlight was turned on his face again. He trusted to his disguise, but wondered what their reaction to it would be. He was posing as H. J. Martin now, a sandy-haired, plump-faced business-man.
The two men behind the black hoods stared at him, their eyes glittering through the slits. At a gesture from one of them, the deaf-mutes withdrew to the side of the room. “X” stood alone like a prisoner before the bar.
The voice of one of the hooded men came slowly, tauntingly.
“So — a young Sir Galahad who has rescued a fair lady in distress!”
The other one, his voice gruffer, asked a question.
“Who are you?”
The Agent answered bluntly, quickly, playing his part as always.
“My name’s Martin. You devils can’t get away with what you tried to do to Miss Dale. I came just in time.”
A low, evil laugh sounded from behind the hood.
“She escaped — but nothing can save her now. She was only being frightened to make her talk. But she will be found now — wherever she is — and the beauty of her face will become a thing that men will turn their eyes from in loathing.”
The Secret Agent clenched his fist. His voice was tense, high-pitched, as he continued his pose.
“Whoever you are, you can’t get away with it, I say. You’ll all go to jail, or the electric chair. You’re devils, murderers.”
They ignored his passionate speech.
“Tell us one thing — Mr. Martin. How did you find your way here? How did you get in?” There was a sneer in the voice — a taunting note.
The Agent sensed what it meant; but he kept up his bluff.
“You’re not as clever as you think. Betty’s a girl friend of mine. I learned she’d gotten a phony call. I found she’d disappeared and I followed her.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
One of the hooded figures leaned forward. His hands were gripping the sides of his chair. His eyes were glittering points of light behind the eyeholes of his hood, and his voice was low, harsh and deadly.
“Don’t think you can fool us — Martin. We know who you are. We know there is only one man who could have found his way to this place and come through the locked doors. We know there is only one man who could have saved Betty Dale!”
THE room was still as death for an instant. Then a low, dry chuckle sounded.
“We compliment you — Secret Agent ‘X’! You have proved your cleverness. Your disguise is beyond reproach. So it was when you played the part of Jeffrey Carter — and when you impersonated Inspector Burks of the homicide squad. So, too, it was when you made us believe you were Jason Hertz. That was your master stroke, ‘X.’ But we had Hertz watched. When he so mysteriously disappeared from the refuge we had given him, we began to suspect we had been tricked.”
Agent “X’s” heart stood still. The voice of the hooded man droned on.
“What you did with Hertz we do not know. That is neither here nor there. We know that you helped him out of prison, impersonated him — so cleverly that you fooled us for a time. But you cannot go on fooling us as you can the police. Your methods are dashing, sensational, dramatic. You have annoyed us and will continue to do so if you are not curbed. But we have agents of our own. You have been watched, spied upon from the night you went to the Bellaire Club. Your impersonation of Inspector Burks was seen by the man you chased over the roof.”