“I will communicate with an intermediary of the Master at once,” he continued. “The Master will be glad to know that Agent ‘X’ has fled. He will clinch our victory over this man who tried at every turn to thwart us. This girl of the Secret Agent’s will be destroyed — as others have been destroyed. The Agent will know the full meaning of DOAC vengeance after tonight. The meeting is adjourned, comrades.”
A surge of fierce rage went through the Agent. He wanted to lunge at the DOAC leader, wanted to tear words from his lips. Where was Betty Dale? Before anything else now “X” had to find her.
The members of the council filed from the chamber. The leader remained. The Agent followed the others, but in the darkness of the tunnel, he fell behind, lingering till the group had passed through the first door. Then he returned.
A telephone receiver clicked softly on its hook. “X” stood in the gloom outside the chamber while the leader used the phone. The Agent listened intently, muscles taut, nails pressed against the palms of his hands. Then he heard the leader give a number.
“X” did not wait for the DOAC to speak the words that would condemn Betty Dale to horrible death. He moved forward into the room, crept up behind the leader. The light from the ceiling threw his shadow ahead of him. The DOAC saw it, uttered a cry of alarm, dropped the receiver and whirled. He whirled directly into a terrific right uppercut that landed somewhere along his jaw. “X” couldn’t get an accurate aim, because of the man’s hood. The blow was high, yet it staggered the leader.
He reeled back and shouted at the top of his lungs. The three old men dashed from behind the curtain. They were formidable only when they had a prisoner ready for the molten lead. While he forged into the DOAC council chief, “X” flipped a backhand slap at one of the creaky executioners. The blow was light, yet it sent the hideous ancient spinning against the wall. The other two fled.
The DOAC pulled a blackjack from his pocket and flailed it at the Agent. The shot-loaded weapon struck “X” on the shoulder. The numbing smash halted his attack for a moment. A stinging pain shot through his arm. The blackjack, swung up, and swished down for his head. “X” saved himself from disaster by knocking the DOAC’s arm sidewise. Then he launched a deadly attack that drove the leader against the wall.
FOOTSTEPS sounded in the tunnel. His legs wobbly from a bruising-blow to the head, the DOAC staggered to the side, got a chair between him and his enemy and shouted for help. “X” reached him with another flesh-splitting clout that sent him crashing into the chairs. He had to finish this man before the others came. He had to get to the telephone and speak to the party at the other end.
The DOAC lost his blackjack, but he produced a snub-nosed automatic from an armpit bolster. Before he could fire, “X” knocked the gun to the floor. Then he connected with a one-two punch that found the DOAC leader’s jaw. The DOAC jackknifed to the floor, out of the fight completely.
Snatching up the ugly automatic, the Agent blasted three shots at the oncoming DOACs. He didn’t shoot to kill or even to disable, but to drive fear into the murderous group. Three men had catapulted through the door. The two ancients had not returned. This sort of business was out of their depth. They were insane, but they still possessed the will to live, and “X” knew they had hidden themselves.
“Quiet!” the Agent snarled at the three hooded men. “One more step and I shoot to kill. Line up against the wall. Raise your hands. That’s it. You’ll slaughter others, but you won’t take chances with your own precious lives, will you?”
The Agent was the master of the council chamber.
Keeping the DOACs covered, he rushed to the telephone. The party had hung up. He clicked down the hook, and called central, demanding that the connection just broken with this number be traced.
“Don’t ask questions!” snapped “X.” “I’m a government agent. And if you don’t rush my order through, you’re going to be among the unemployed.”
He gave the number of the DOAC phone, printed on the number plate, and ordered the operator to call him back the instant she obtained the desired information. The Agent’s voice was incisive, authoritative. He jammed the receiver on the hook, and went to work on his prisoners, yanking off their hoods and staring at them.
The men were strangers to him. The leader was a smooth looking fellow, but the other council members were obviously persons of the criminal class. “X” quietly slipped his gas gun out and fired quick shots in their faces, knocking them out.
He found a winding passageway that branched off from the main tunnel, and he dragged his inert prisoners there. By the time he got back to the council room, the telephone was jangling. Central was on the wire. The call had been traced. “X” was given an address two miles across town.
The Agent went upstairs cautiously, stopping often and straining to catch the slightest sound. He didn’t relish the prospect of getting a knife in his back.
He got out of the embassy building without being challenged. The fact that he did caused him grave concern. The DOACs had left the mansion, had gone after Betty Dale probably, or to warn the intermediary of the “Master.” They might get there before him. He was racing against time. Before he opened the door, he removed his hood.
A block from the DOAC headquarters, the Agent hailed a cab, and ordered the driver to stop at the first cigar store. The cab stopped at the beginning of the business section, and “X” rushed into a store to telephone. He was impatient, restless, apprehensive. Maybe there would be no answer to his call.
But there was. And the man at the other end was Jim Hobart, gruff, slangy, loyal Jim Hobart. “X” had called his apartment. Jim had arrived by plane.
“No time for gab, Jim,” barked the Agent. “Grab my car at the Apex Garage down the block, and meet me at the corner of Wyndham and Georgia Streets as soon as possible. Make your deadline five minutes. Speed, boy!”
In the phone booth, “X” laid out his make-up material on the stand, spread his small three-sided mirror, and quickly molded the features of one A.J. Martin, newspaper man. He waved a dollar bill at the cab driver to prod him into getting to his destination in the least possible time. He reached Wyndham and Georgia about a minute before Jim Hobart arrived.
Jim was at the wheel of another one of the Agent’s cars, a high-powered little coupé, geared to make ninety miles an hour.
“You made speed from South Bolton, Jim,” said the Agent. “Now let’s see you make speed to Hastings Avenue. I’ll make out I’ve been hurt. Keep the siren going. To hell with traffic lights. When a cop whistles, point to me. I’ll act like a dying man, and he’ll let you through.”
JIM HOBART immediately proceeded to violate traffic laws. The siren shrieked and the motor raced. Part of the route spread through the thick of business traffic. Cops shrilled on their whistles, shouted, cursed, fumed. But always Jim pointed at the Agent, whose head and arms were dangling over the side of the car. Crimson was dripping onto the running board. “X” looked like an injured man desperately in need of hospital care. The scarlet liquid wasn’t blood, but a beet-juice preparation, which he carried in a small vial, just to stage such an effect as this. The theatrics used by “X” on many occasions had saved lives. He knew the value of realism.
Jim sent pedestrians scurrying for safety. He was a skilled driver and he wove the car through the heavy press of traffic like a huge shuttlecock. Soon he was out of the congested area, speeding unhampered through the broad avenues of the residential sections.
On Hastings Avenue, the Agent called a halt about a block from the address he meant to visit.