So absorbed was he in the lurid flames and clouds of smoke drifting above the St. Clair mansion that he didn’t see the lone visitor who had come so silently into his office.
Not until “X” spoke did Johnson realize he was not alone. Then he turned and gave a violent start of amazement.
“Warden — don’t move,” said Agent “X” quietly.
JOHNSON’S eyes grew wide with alarm as he studied the man who had come into his office through a locked door. The man wasn’t dressed in prison clothes. His features were unfamiliar. His suit was dripping wet. It was this fact that seemed to hold Johnson’s interest as much as anything.
He opened his lips to speak at last, but the Agent silenced him with a wave of the gun he held in his hand.
“Pardon the intrusion, warden. It was necessary — as you will understand later. Now take off your clothes, if you please — I am going out and want to change with you. My own are wet and uncomfortable.”
The warden’s jaw dropped. He showed no inclination to obey. Amazement seemed to have robbed him of the power of movement. The Agent came closer, his finger tensed.
“I’m sorry, warden. I didn’t want to have to do this, but—”
He left the sentence unfinished. His finger pressed the trigger of the gas gun. A jet of vapor spurted into the prison warden’s nostrils and open mouth. He collapsed soundlessly, unhurt, but completely out.
The Agent worked quickly, stripping the man’s clothes off, substituting his own wet ones, and getting into the warden’s suit himself. He moved the warden’s inert body until the desk light, tilted over the edge of the desk, fell on his face. He studied that face for moments, then strode across the office and made sure the door was locked on the inside.
He set up the small, triple-glassed mirror that he had removed from his wet clothes, lifted a tube of his plastic, volatile material and a vial of pigment. Then he went to work on his face again, his skilled fingers moving with the deft touch of a magician. He was in a bad spot. If some one should come— But circumstances had forced his hand, making necessary the thing he was about to do. He did not want to be held and questioned by the police. It might interfere with the future of his dangerous, daring career.
With a fidelity that was uncanny he imitated every contour and line of Warden Johnson’s face. He molded his own features into an exact likeness, until it seemed that the warden’s twin brother stood in that room. When all was finished, and his material put away, he carefully thrust the warden’s unconscious body behind his desk where it would not be discovered for some time, perhaps not until the warden himself came to.
Then the Agent drew the warden’s small typewriter across the desk and sat down. He put a piece of blank paper in the roller. For five minutes his long fingers clattered over the keys with the staccato speed of a machine-gun fusillade.
The words that he left gave all details of DOAC activities in America, of the strange headquarters that had existed across the river, and of Mike Carney’s secret leadership of the murderous group. He told also of the exit in Carney’s cell and the torpedo which rode a wire under the river and was the connecting link. When he finished he leaned forward and made a brief pencil mark — the sign of an X.
The Agent rose and strode to the door then. In a moment he was moving along a hallway that led to the prison exit. He passed a guard who nodded and asked a question.
“What’s going on, sir, in that house across the river? It’s gone up in smoke, they say, and — it sounds like a munitions plant exploding.”
“Perhaps it was,” said “X” dryly. “I’m going out to see.”
He passed other guards as he left the prison. With them also he nodded and exchanged comments. Outside the prison wall, a grizzled officer in charge of a contingent of State troopers saluted respectfully. Agent “X” returned the salute, the gleam of sardonic amusement in his eyes. His work was done. He was passing back into the obscurity and mystery that surrounded his life and activities, under the very nose of the law.
He turned and strode away into the night as the Army officer watched him, slightly puzzled as to where the warden was going. The lurid light of the fire still raging in the house across the river silhouetted “X’s” figure for a moment. Then the velvet darkness swallowed him, and, out of the shadows where he had gone, only a strange, melodious whistle floated. But the note of it died slowly, and presently only the silence of the night was left.