His fingers tightened on the trigger of the Tommy gun again. Its muzzle bobbed and clattered.
There came a sudden scream from the spot on the yacht where the flamethrower had sprayed fiery death. The jet of flame lowered, went wild, hissed into the sea, sending up clouds of white steam.
In the light of it the men on the cruiser seemed like crouching demons. Banton, with his clattering submachine gun, was the high priest of hell.
Agent “X,” climbing up an iron ladder to the sleek cruiser’s top deck, saw a man pitch headlong from the bridge of the yacht. He saw the strange, horrible weapon in the man’s hand clatter down.
“I got him!” howled Banton exultantly. “Now, you rats, come on — we’ll board her.”
Like a pack of howling, bloodthirsty wolves the gunmen and murderers of Banton’s assembled gang followed their leader. Up over the sides of the yacht they swarmed, a living wave of death.
Chapter XXI
IN the mad tumult of the raid no one noticed the actions of Secret Agent “X,” the man they supposed was Tony Garino. He was on his hands and knees on the top of the cruiser’s cabin now. He was fastening two black cylinders to the gray-painted woodwork, thrusting them, into the hard pine boarding with needle-sharp spikes.
They pointed aloft like miniature gun muzzles, pointed toward the black night sky. He pulled a wire on the top of each, struck a hidden sparker, and, in the interior of the black cylinders, foot-length fuses sputtered and glowed.
Then he dropped back off the cabin roof, leaving the cylinders where they were, black, silent fingers lifting to the clouds.
He started for the deck of the yacht, then stopped. Banton and his gangsters had boarded her, but they had not won the battle.
Like a waiting, wounded beast, the yacht came to life again. One of the men on board had been killed, but others remained. A round porthole along the top deck snapped open. Another black snout projected.
Agent “X” saw the streak of light that hissed from it. He saw the light burst into flame, heard the gangsters howl with rage and fear. Like rats taking cover they fled to the yacht’s stern deck and crouched there behind metal life boats and capstans — behind any refuge they could find.
One, a burly gunman with the face of an ape, knelt behind a coil of rope, trying to level his Tommy gun. The man in the open porthole saw him. It was the gunman’s undoing and death.
The gushing flame from the hideous Flammenwerfer leaped across space to the coil of rope. The rope became a mass of seething flame. The man behind it, jumping to his feet, shrieking with fear, became a human torch. He stumbled across the deck, then dropped, an inert, horrible mass of smoking cloth and flesh. The flame played over him until he no longer resembled a man.
A gangster, losing his nerve, screaming with terror at what he had seen, jumped from his place of hiding and dived over the yacht’s rail. Banton cursed like a madman.
He was crouched behind a heavy capstan. The flaming torch killer sought him out. The Flammenwerfer splashed liquid flame on the rounded metal surface of the capstan. Flame hissed on both sides of Banton, hissed over his head. He crouched, cursing, palsied with fear, until one of his men turned a Tommy gun on the open port where the liquid death came from.
Then the head of the flame-thrower disappeared. The flaming jet dribbled off, ceased. The gangsters stole out of cover again. A man with a pineapple bomb hurled it, and the side of the superstructure where the flame-thrower had been became a twisted mass of iron.
Banton, jumping from behind his capstan, white and trembling snatched two of the hand bombs from his henchman’s fingers. He dropped his machine gun held the pineapples at his sides, and crept forward like an enraged gorilla.
But the jet of liquid flame appeared in another spot, farther astern, sending the gangsters running like scared rabbits. They fled along metal alleyways, fled beneath the canvas, while the flame sought to follow them, burning the canvas covering above their heads. Another went down, wrapped in flaming shrouds. But the rest reached the forward deck of the yacht.
Banton hurled his pineapples. They missed their mark, struck a lifeboat, bursting it apart like the pod of a pea. The other fell into the water, sending up a geyser of white spray. Then Banton cursed and leaped forward with a gloating light in his eyes.
A strange, squat weapon lay at his feet — a weapon with a blunt muzzle, a pressure tank behind it, another tank where concentrated, inflammable liquid was stored.
Agent “X,” on board the yacht now, saw Banton lift the thing up. Banton held one of the flame-throwers in his hands. He gave the curved lever that served as a trigger a tentative press. The thing spouted a clot of flame that hissed and splashed on the deck. The pressure tank roared like escaping steam.
“Come on,” bellowed Banton, “we got ’em now!”
As though in answer, a jet of liquid fire sprayed down from an open window. Banton leaped aside just in time. Where he had stood the deck boards seethed with flame.
Banton, crouching behind a steel stanchion, turned the muzzle of his own weapon upward. The jet of flame wavered, went true. The other flame-thrower ceased firing. The port where he had stood became a circle of hissing fire.
The fear-stricken gangsters took fresh courage. The staccato beat of the submachine guns sounded again. A gang of men, under the direction of Banton, who held his flame-thrower ready, began tearing at a battened-down hatchway. Others struck with axes on the steel doors of the nearest entrance.
A WINDOW smashed in. A gangster hurled a pineapple bomb into the gorgeously furnished interior of the yacht. The explosion lit up the inside of the boat so that its ports looked like the red eyes of a monster.
Then a man pointed.
“What the hell’s that!”
From close by in the darkness a sputtering crackle sounded. A gangster screamed in fear as something rushed upward as though an imprisoned ghost of the sea were escaping.
They could hear the thing screaming higher and higher up, into the dark sky. Then, far above their heads, almost in the clouds it seemed, the darkness was ripped apart. Balls of fire, brighter than the flame-throwers, made a dazzling glow over the whole face of the sea.
“A rocket!” gasped Banton. “It’s that girl — she’s sending ’em. She’s signaling.”
He started for the side of the cruiser, stopped. Another rocket went up. But it rose from the top of the cruiser’s cabin. It left a visible trail behind it. The girl was not there. No one was there. The coming of the rocket seemed uncanny. It howled upward like a banshee, burst at last into red balls of fire that the sea wind whipped into myriad sparks. The sparks fell seaward in a shower, dimmed, faded, went out.
“It’s some double-crosser,” hissed Banton. “We’ll get him later! Now—”
He turned his flame-thrower on again as a shadow moved behind another port. He squirted liquid death along the superstructure of the yacht, until an answering jet of flame sent him howling back.
Like a battle of demons in the mouth of hell the two Flammenwerfers competed with one another, while the gangsters cowered back. The hideous flaring glow of the gushing jets of flame lit up the whole deck of the yacht. Banton’s face was the face of a devil, a man driven on by hate and greed.
Agent “X” caught sight of a hideous goggled head. The men on the yacht were fighting to keep their ghastly secret intact — fighting to retain the mysterious cargo below decks. Agent “X” knew what that cargo was. He could guess the identity of these men who fought with liquid flame, these men who spread terror and death behind them, leaving a trail of charred and blackened corpses.