The storm’s savagery didn’t dimmish. Ice clung to the wings, ice that could cripple a plane. “X” gritted his teeth and kept on climbing. Numb and blue, he clutched the stick with raw, stiff hands. The bitter cold was splitting the skin. But the chill dread of losing time punished him more than the cruel weather. The plane was going up, but not ahead. Helplessly the Agent cursed. All nature seemed to be conspiring against him.
Although it was still daytime, the Agent couldn’t see ten feet ahead. On every side, black, maddening chaos closed in on the Blue Comet. Another thousand feet of altitude, and the panic. The fury of the whipping, thundering storm had redoubled. “X” was failing! The odds were so heavy that he wouldn’t reach Washington at all. He wouldn’t even be able to make a forced landing. The storm would crack him up.
The Agent muttered savagely. His frost-encircled eyes were burning slits. His mouth tightened to a scar of determination. His half-frozen face set grimly, the muscles bunching into fighting knots. If he had to take defeat, he was taking it snarling and battling to the last.
He couldn’t get above the storm. He couldn’t get under it. Maybe he could get around it. Recklessly he side-slipped and zoomed the Blue Comet directly south. The gale slugged the sturdy little craft with a shrieking broadside that almost flipped the plane over and sent it into a fatal spin.
“X” threw all his skill into the fight against the storm’s cyclonic force. The blasting hurricane toyed with the battered ship. A guy wire snapped. The Agent clenched his jaws and kept the plane riding athwart the wind. Any moment, he expected the wind to damage a wing or rip off the tail. Suddenly something crashed against an upright on the right wing.
THE Agent peered through the stinging curtain of sleet. Another object shot by the ship. “X” uttered a gasp of fright. A bird! That was what had struck his plane. Wild geese, probably victims like himself of the storm’s fury. If one of those creatures had hit the propeller, the steel blade would have been shattered like brittle glass.
A hysterical laugh escaped him. Then he muttered a curse. Was he losing his grip, going insane? This killing ordeal was enough to rob anyone of reason, but he had to master himself, had to keep himself in control. He held the plane on its new course. The Blue Comet roared through the heavy darkness. Was there no end to this storm? A sense of defeat deadened the Agent. Only his iron will kept him from lapsing into a coma. He wasn’t going to win. Betty Dale would be sacrificed. To “X,” this storm seemed like the end of the world.
Then he gave a choking cry. He saw a shaft of light piercing a rift in the storm clouds. The sun! He drew the stick back still farther, fed gas to the laboring motor, shot up through the hole in the clouds into dazzling, gleaming sunlight. Life seemed magically transformed. Below, the storm clouds still roiled and eddied. The Blue Comet was in high, thin air at an eight-thousand-foot altitude.
Ahead was a clear vista of blue. He sent the plane above the path of the wind. His heart was pounding with exultancy. He glanced at the clock, made a swift calculation. There was still time! Unless he struck another storm area or had motor trouble, he could reach the Capitol around five o’clock.
In comparison with his wretchedness of a short while before, he felt almost light-hearted. He had found a gap in an almost impenetrable barrier, and his mind refused to be shrouded with doubt. It was like awakening from a hideous nightmare to find sunlight pouring through the window.
Time was passing swiftly, but the Blue Comet was proving its worth. Once the air speed indicator showed that the plane was traveling two hundred miles an hour.
For the first time since Betty was kidnaped, the Agent relaxed. He lay back in the cushioned seat, almost dozed off. The mileage was mounting on the indicator. The sun was far on its western course when “X” saw the blue ribbon of the Potomac.
A few minutes later he was spiraling down to Boiling Field. The plane had scarcely taxied to a stop when he leaped out of the cockpit, motioned mechanics to take the Blue Comet to the hangar, raced toward a line of parked cars. He hired a machine, and baited the driver with a five-dollar bill to jam the accelerator to the floor.
But this time the car didn’t have a motorcycle cop clearing the way. The driver had to stop for traffic lights. Those delays ate up the precious seconds.
IT was five o’clock when the machine careened into Pennsylvania Avenue. The Agent was wild-eyed with suspense. Would the DOACs give him a few minutes’ grace? Or had his chance vanished with the tolling of the hour?
“X” was three minutes late when the car scraped to a stop in the Capitol grounds. The Agent paid the driver, and bounded to the gravel. He raced inside the rotunda. His keen eyes swept anxiously across the floor. Less than a dozen people were here. None had the searching, impatient look of a waiting person.
The Agent rushed to the designated square; it was four minutes after five now. He kept turning around, but no one approached him. “X” quelled an impulse to shout his identity. His eyes were feverish, his mouth parched. The pigments put on for the A.J. Martin disguise hid the hectic flush that panic had caused. For all he knew, Betty this minute was in the hands of those revolting old men. Maybe already her fresh beauty was denied by death!
He brushed a hand wearily across his face. There is a limit to any man’s resistance. “X” thought he was going to collapse. Then his eye singled out a man hurrying from a western exit. There was no mistaking that tall lean form, the leonine, stalking stride. The man was the DOAC representative who had met him before.
“X” stifled a cry. The emissary wouldn’t recognize him as A.J. Martin. Before, the Agent had posed as Danny Dugan, the race-track tout and cheap sport. The Agent pulled a badge from an inner pocket, thrust it into his outside coat pocket, hurried after the DOAC.
When he stepped alongside the man, he had his hand in his pocket, and a cold gleam in his eyes. He grasped the DOAC’s arm roughly, spun him. The man gave a startled jerk and shrank back from the Agent’s glare.
“Comin’ along nice, Harry, or do you want me to tap you?” rasped “X.” “I knew I’d nab you sooner or later. You’re losin’ your class, Harry. Those bank notes you turned out wouldn’t have fooled a child. No, Harry, you haven’t the knack any more! Why, fifteen years ago, you could turn out the prettiest line of green goods on the market. You know what it means this time, Harry. The judge will throw the book at you. Come along nice, Harry. I like to be gentle to has-beens.”
The DOAC representative uttered a gasp of amazement. “Who are you? What — what’s the meaning of this outrage? Harry? My name isn’t Harry. Green goods? I’m not in the grocery business. Let me go, or I’ll have you arrested.”
The Agent laughed, and made the DOAC swallow hard by flashing his badge, the insignia of a government Secret Service operative. He rushed the man along to a southern exit. “X” didn’t want to meet this man’s chauffeur — yet.
“Trying to pull the old stuff, are you, Harry?” sneered the Agent. “You’re not Harry Hagar, the counterfeiter, are you? You’re probably Sterling Wright Worthington, the philanthropist. You wouldn’t steal the bread out of the mouths of widows and orphans. Not you, Mr. Worthington. You’d get their money before they had a chance to spend it. Don’t kick up a fuss, Harry. I want to get you in the city’s ice box an’ knock off. Takin’ the missus to the movies tonight.”