Then — swish! The torpedo reared its nose upward, came to a jolting stop. “X’s” grip was broken. But his head bobbed above the surface, and gratefully he gulped air into his aching lungs. The torpedo was completely out of water, secured to a spring which had caught the tube when it shot above the surface. In the darkness the Agent silently trod water.
The hatch in the long cylinder opened, and the hooded Master climbed out. “X” couldn’t see him, but he could hear the metallic sounds and shuffling footsteps on damp stones.
The Master was cursing now, and “X” heard him moving away. He waited until the sounds dwindled, then muscled himself out of the water onto the rocky ledge, and stealthily followed the man.
The footsteps receded still farther. “X” suddenly clicked on his torch, flooding the chamber with light. The Master whirled, saw the Agent, and shoved his hand in his pocket for his gun. “X” let him draw it, and then a vicious crack on the arm knocked it out of the hooded man’s hand. The Master snarled, and whipped out a ham-like fist.
He had amazing speed for one so large. He dealt “X” a malleting blow over the heart. The Agent countered with a terrific hook that knocked his foe against the damp wall of the old underground cell in which they were fighting.
The Master didn’t recover before “X” followed up. A brain-fogging smash between the eyes dropped the man to his knees. He lunged for “X’s” legs, but the Agent was expecting that move. He leaped lightly out of the way.
Springing to his feet, the master charged in. That was suicide. “X” sidestepped, and hurled a devastating punch to the center of the Master’s hood. The man’s knees buckled. The Agent slashed with a deadly volley of lefts and rights. The Master flailed madly, but he had taken all that his system could absorb.
He made one last frantic lunge, missed with a clumsy, slow-freight heave, and received a wicked clout to the nerve center behind his ear. He sprawled on the stone floor, and Agent “X” pounced on him.
The Agent’s light sprayed over the face of the man he had pinned down. It was still covered by the livid blue hood. The Agent removed this, and then nodded to himself as though in corroboration of something he already suspected.
“Michael Carney!” he rasped. “Carney — who pretended to stay in prison because he was afraid of the DOACs!”
A harsh laugh came from the Agent’s lips. It was a tribute to one of the cleverest, boldest and most ruthless criminals with whom he had ever come in contact. For a while he had suspected Summerville. Carney himself had thrown suspicion on Di Lauro. Now “X” knew the truth.
Carney’s cold black eyes stared up at the man who had conquered him. Carney’s lips moved.
“Agent ‘X,’” he said. “So — they didn’t kill you after all! You get the last hand! You win! The game is yours — and I don’t even know who you are! But I’ll make you an offer. There’s no man living who can’t use dough. I’ll give you ten million dollars, make you rich for life, if you’ll keep your mouth shut! What do you say?”
The Agent didn’t answer for a moment. He tensed instead. Something — a sound that was like a distant peal of thunder, reaching even to the damp chamber where they were, vibrated through the stone walls, making tremors as though the earth itself were shaking.
A slow, grim smile spread across the lips of the Agent.
“Listen!” he said. “It’s too late, Carney — even if I could be bribed by a devil like you. That noise! It’s your joint across the river blowing up — with all the poison gas and germs and rats in it going up with it. It’s the end of the DOACs, Carney — the end of the maddest, biggest racket that you or any other mobster ever thought of.”
The Agent lifted the man to his feet then. Something had gone out of Carney as that sullen rumble sounded. His body sagged. His face was dough white.
The Agent’s flash was still on. He held Carney’s own pistol against the man’s back.
“One bad play and I shoot, Carney. You’ll follow those devils of yours, and cheat the electric chair. Maybe you’d prefer that. If you do — just try to get away now.”
BUT Carney didn’t. With his organization smashed, his trick discovered, and Agent “X” the victor, Carney showed the abject cowardice of his kind. He shuffled toward the center of the chamber, pointed up.
“That’s the trapdoor,” he said tonelessly. “These used to be the old dark cells. Nobody uses them now. My pen’s just overhead. I cut in under my cot.”
“Pretty clever, Carney,” said the Agent. “You were able to leave your cell at night any time you wanted to — and become the DOAC emperor over in the headquarters you had established. You go up first. I’ll have the gun on you. Don’t make a sound when you get up. Quiet — understand.”
Carney’s face showed that he did not understand; but he obeyed meekly. There was a small stepladder nearby. He drew this up. It reached to within a foot of the low, damp ceiling. Carney climbed with “X” directly behind him. The ex-DOAC leader thrust up the concrete and metal flooring. It had been cleverly hinged and went up noiselessly.
The racketeer stepped through the door and Agent “X” followed, closing it after him. They were in Carney’s cell now, in the prison’s bottom tier, in the row where the “gentlemen” prisoners were kept. Carney, able to pay for small luxuries, was in good company. Bankers, swindlers, wealthy confidence-men, fitted these cells. Carney stood dumbly, wondering what was coming next. Agent “X” acted at once. Climbing up the ladder behind Carney he had changed guns, discarding the deadly automatic for his own gas pistol. He raised this and fired full into the racketeer’s face. When Carney had collapsed he laid the man on the prison bunk.
Then Agent “X” pocketed his pistol and took out his small, elaborate kit of tools.
Listening for the first warning of the night guard’s footsteps, he went to work systematically on the cell lock. There were needle-thin pieces of steel in his tool kit, others with goose necks and still others with small pivotal extensions. He reached out through the bars experimenting with first one steel and then another.
At the end of five minutes the lock clicked open. The Agent crouched back abruptly among the shadows. He heard the slow footsteps of the guard now. He waited until the man had passed, turning a corner to another row of cells. Only the snores of sleeping men sounded.
The Agent left Carney’s cell, shutting and locking the barred door after him. Then he cat-footed along the dark, still corridor toward the passage that he knew led to the warden’s office. He looked up once and saw a lurid flickering light coming through a window high overhead. He knew what that must be, and his eyes shone grimly. Another jarring, thunderous explosion came then from across the river.
Here and there in the prison now he heard sleepy voices calling, men who had been waked from their slumber and were wondering what these explosions meant.
Agent “X” stole on, opening the door to the passage he sought, stealing along it to a door that gave into the warden’s office. A light showed a threadlike streak just above its sill. “X” guessed it was locked.
For a few minute his fingers roved over his face, skillfully changing the disguise of A.J. Martin. That was too valuable to him to throw away now by allowing it to be seen under suspicious circumstances. His features had a thin, nondescript look as he took out one of his master keys and went to work cautiously on the lock, flashlight in hand.
He swung the door open silently, stepped into the room.
A man was standing by a big window which gave a view over the prison wall and out across the river. He was staring intently, his face cleft into deep lines of worry. The man was Warden Johnson, on night duty since the first DOAC raid.