Agent “X” got out, raised the hood of his motor, and pretended to be absorbed in engine trouble until the pedestrian passed.
Then he closed the engine hood and raised the cover of the car’s rumble seat. He turned, darted into the shadows. When he came out he was carrying a limp burden — the inert body of the gangster.
The Agent now drove to one of his most accessible hideouts. Each was chosen with great care to give as much privacy as possible in regard to entrances and exits. This was a deserted house, like the one he had used when he had disguised himself as Police Commissioner Foster. He had possessed himself of it without asking anyone’s leave.
He carried Tony Garino into it, deposited the gangster in a ventilated closet, locked the door, and changed to the disguise of Andrew Balfour.
By kidnapping Garino he had gained for himself a method of entering Banton’s mysterious gang. In Garino’s pocket he had found the slip of paper that Banton’s man had given the gangster, telling where the gang was to be assembled. It was a water-front address. Time was precious. Garino was due there any time. But first Agent “X” wanted to find out what Banton was doing. Was he still in his office?
Completing the disguise of Andrew Balfour, he went out into the street again. He drove to the vicinity of the bank, parked his roadster, and strode forward, headed for the side entrance that he and Banton usually used. Then he paused, prickles of horror traversing his spine. A man staggered past the corner of the building into range of the Secret Agent’s vision. He wore the light-blue uniform of a special bank guard.
A light was playing in the air behind him, a wavering spectral light, like a pursuing will-o’-the-wisp. It became a jet of hissing flame that descended on the guard’s back and sent him writhing to the pavement where he lay, a charred and inert heap.
With a hoarse cry on his lips Secret Agent “X” leaped forward. He dashed around the corner of the bank building, risking the flaming death himself, and a scene of terror and disaster met his eyes.
The flaming torch bandits had returned. The Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Bank had been raided, and the goggled, helmeted figures were escaping in their long, low roadster after a grisly carnival of robbery and death.
Chapter XIX
IT was a second before Secret Agent “X” understood the full horror of what had happened.
The front doors of the bank were open. Every window was smashed. Special detectives, driven back by the raiders, began running forward again as the murderers’ roadster shot away. But the terrible work had been done thoroughly.
A bank guard, shouting like a madman, was dashing toward the doors.
“They’re in there,” he screamed. “Marsh and von Blund! They must have got it, too! Those devils burned them like they did the others.”
The man’s face was twitching. His eyes were red-rimmed, staring. Other guards and detectives came slinking out of the shadows across the street, trembling, sheepish.
Agent “X” saw another blackened corpse lying up the block. A big guard, his face dripping with sweat, spoke hoarsely, close to the Agent’s ear, as though answering an unspoken accusation.
“We couldn’t help it — we had to scram. They drove us off with that flame gun of theirs. That poor fella tried to stick — and look what they did to him!”
Discipline had broken down. The demoralizing force of fear lay upon the survivors of the raid. Inside the bank, the icy hand of terror had fallen like a blight. Agent “X” entered with the first group of detectives. He heard the cursing cry of one of them.
“Look — they got them!”
The man was pointing through the open door of the bank’s business office. A sprawled, unsightly figure lay just inside the threshold. Beyond, close to a big desk, was another.
A detective bent down, fumbled with trembling fingers, and lifted the heat-corroded wreck of what had once been a handsome gold watch. Its crystal had melted under the blast of the death-torch, making the figures on its face as unrecognizable as the grisly horror from which the detective had taken it. But the monogram on its back was still visible: “F.M.”
“It’s him — Francis Marsh,” said the detective in an awed voice. “The killers got them both. That other’s von Blund.”
So thoroughly had the terrible death-torch done its work, that the blackened pieces of jewelry were the only means of identification. But they established the grim fact that the partners who had survived the first unsuccessful raid had met death in this second one.
“The safe was blown wide open,” said another detective. “They used enough nitro to sink a battleship. You could hear it ten blocks away.”
Agent “X” saw that the great vault of the bank had been cleaned out. Its door had fallen outward, the quadruple hinges ripped, the lock bolts cracked as though they had been brittle clay. Every bit of the cash was gone.
“Marsh asked for a special guard tonight, too,” said one of the surviving guards brokenly. “A big lot of cash had come in. They were getting their books straightened.”
Inside the office, with the remains of the two bankers, was a third corpse, identified as the body of an elderly bookkeeper.
Police sirens sounded outside. Agent “X,” in the guise of Andrew Balfour, was there when Burks of the homicide squad arrived with a battery of detectives. The face of the homicide squad head was bleak. His voice was bitter.
“I warned them the killers would be back,” he said. “I warned them to keep away from here at night.”
THE Agent’s eyes held steely brightness. He stood, his body rigid, staring down at the ghastly remains of this biggest of raids. Then he turned and slipped quietly out. If he stayed, there would be questions. It was only because of the confusion, the demoralization of the police, that his presence hadn’t been noticed. As a tenant of the building, he might be held as a material witness. And he had other reasons for going.
The lightning of the death torch had struck twice in the same spot. The significance of this filled Agent “X” with grim purpose, spurred him on to action. It was as though Banton had had secret warning of what was to happen tonight. Where was Banton?
Swiftly and silently Agent “X” slipped away from the police, away from the excited, tense crowds that were coming, attracted by the explosion. He found his parked car, drove furiously back to the hideout where he had left Tony Garino.
The gangster was still unconscious, and, removing him from the closet where he was breathing in peaceful unawareness, Agent “X” studied the man’s features.
He studied them with the close, detailed intentness of an artist and craftsman, even opening the mobster’s thick lips and staring at his teeth.
Two gleaming gold bicuspids characterized Garino’s smile. The Agent had not forgotten these.
As he began his deft, ingenious impersonation of the unconscious gangster, working under the brilliant glow of his portable acetylene lamp in front of his triple mirrors, he imitated Garino’s mouth first of all.
This was a simple matter. He opened a box filled with shells of thin, resilient gold alloy, shells that corresponded to each of his teeth. He snapped two of these over his own bicuspids and flashed a gold-toothed smile at himself. Then he began the quick impersonation of Garino’s features. His own face changed like magic under the deft touch of his fingers. When the face was finished, when Tony Garino seemed to be sitting there before the mirror in that hidden room, he slipped a toupee over his own brown hair, and smoothed it down to shiny sleekness with Vaseline.
Then he undressed Garino and assembled the man’s clothing. Before putting it on he got out another suit of special, thin material and attached it with spring clamps to the lining of Garino’s coat. When he had put on the mobster’s flash suit, the other beneath it did not show. Its bulk seemed only the stockiness of the gangster. He pushed Garino back in the closet, locked the door, and filled his pockets with an assortment of the mysterious objects that he was in the habit of carrying.