“The man I talked to demanded a first payment in cash. I’m sure you haven’t this amount on hand. Give it to the man who injects the serum into me.”
“Very well,” said Garwick. “But I shall insist on reimbursing you later for this. I want it to be my donation to the cause.” He pocketed the bills, and “X” spoke again.
“It is now twenty minutes to twelve. Does your chauffeur know which room David is in?”
“No.”
“Good. I shall go into a vacant room on this floor and lie on the bed. You and he will have to carry me down to the car. There will probably be a spy watching outside the house. Everything must appear right — and let your chauffeur think I am really David. Call him now. Tell him to dim the headlights, and to take out the bulb in the left parking light. The other must be on.
“We are to drive slowly along River Boulevard until a car approaches and flashes its lights three times. If we don’t pass it the first time, we are to turn and retrace our course. Is that clear?”
“Clear. And what will you do after we have been stopped?”
“That,” said “X” softly, “will depend on the circumstances.”
Victor Garwick descended the stairs after showing the Agent to an empty guest room down the hall from David’s room. In a few moments there was the sound of a car coming up from the garage. It turned into the driveway and stopped with running motor before the front steps of the mansion.
Agent “X” lay down on the bed and pulled the covers over him. When Garwick and the chauffeur came into the room, he lay still, his eyes almost closed. The drug he had taken made him feel slightly dizzy, but he was acutely aware of all that was happening.
He saw the scared look on the chauffeur’s face. “X” had already wrapped himself up in blankets to conceal his street clothes. Garwick and the man added others, swathing him securely. Then they lifted him and the Agent made his body rigid. They carried him down to the waiting car and deposited him in the tonneau. “Go to River Boulevard. Drive slowly up it,” said Victor Garwick to the mystified chauffeur. “Stop when I tell you to, and obey any direction I may give you instantly.”
The car turned slowly out of the drive into the road, its one parking light goggling lopsidedly. Apparently unconscious in the back of the car, the Secret Agent’s heart was beating with elation and excitement. At last he was getting somewhere. At last he felt he was on a trail that would lead definitely to the man he sought.
Chapter XII
GARWICK and the chauffeur were silent as the car rolled into River Boulevard. Secret Agent “X” leaned back in the seat, his eyes still half closed. The drug he had taken had cut his pulse down so low that if a doctor had been there to take it, he would have pronounced the Agent a very sick man. But all his faculties were alert, both mental and physical!
From time to time, Victor Garwick’s gaze swivelled toward Agent “X.” The look of awe was still there. Garwick seemed to find it hard to credit his own senses, even now — this man looked so exactly like his dead son.
The car rolled on at a steady pace. On their left flowed the river, gleaming blackly in the faint light of the stars. “X” saw the lights of the state troopers’ camp on the opposite bank. A grim, faint smile twitched at his lips. He pictured the consternation that would fill the camp with turmoil if they could know of the drama taking place on the dark boulevard almost within range of their vision.
His eyes probed ahead between narrowed lids, watching for the first glimpse of the criminal’s car. A police patrol cruiser came around a bend in the road, shot by and out of sight without slackening speed. A half-mile farther along a large closed car passed. It held three men — a driver up front, and two in the seat behind.
The Secret Agent’s keen eyes had caught the intent stare of the men in that car. Without doubt, these were the emissaries of the master mind.
They passed no other vehicle as they traveled the length of the Boulevard. At the end, they turned and came back. In another fifteen minutes Agent “X” saw the closed car approaching them from the opposite direction.
Almost as he spotted it, its headlights winked three times.
“Stop!” Garwick’s voice rang out sharply to his chauffeur. “Draw up beside the road.”
The millionaire’s whole body was taut. His arm, resting against the Agent’s, trembled perceptibly. “X” grasped the man’s wrist firmly to steady him, and to show Garwick that he was still alert and master of himself.
The muffled engine of the car throbbed softly in the stillness as it stopped at the roadside. It was a spot between the widely strung lights on the Boulevard, and darkly deserted. The other car drew up opposite among the shadows. Its door opened. A figure jumped out.
Agent “X” watched tensely through eyes that seemed closed in the stupor of sleeping sickness. He saw a man in a long overcoat approaching. There was a small black case in the man’s hand. The faint glow of the car’s tail-light revealed that he wore a mask. It was a ghostly white mask of the kind used by surgeons to cover the lower part of the face when in the operating room.
The stranger came close and laid a hand on the door of Garwick’s car, wrenched it suddenly open. His voice came low and gruff through the folds of the white mask.
“Your name?”
“Victor Garwick.”
“You have the fee?”
“Yes.”
The man held out his hand. For an instant, Garwick hesitated. “X” realized that he was recalling the instructions he had given him to hand over the fee after the hypodermic injection had been made. He nudged the millionaire with a slight pressure of his arm. Garwick at once placed the roll of high denomination bank notes in the palm of the stranger.
The masked man pocketed the money after a swift inspection of it. This callous member of the extortionist band was evidently taking no chances on not getting his money. Only after he had stowed the bills safely away did he open the small black case he carried.
He withdrew a small hypodermic syringe and unscrewed the cap. Agent “X,” watching with hawklike attention, noted at once that the man’s movements were clumsy. Here was no expert surgeon or doctor trained in the use of scientific instruments. This was an uneducated layman carrying out an order that had been given him.
The man reached forward and lifted Agent “X’s” arm.
“Roll up the patient’s sleeve,” he ordered gruffly.
VICTOR GARWICK complied, while the chauffeur, half turning in his seat, looked on in amazement. When the Agent’s arm had been bared from wrist to elbow the man holding the syringe flashed on a tiny light. He felt awkwardly for the Agent’s pulse, held it a moment, and seemed satisfied. He then inserted the point of the hypo needle close to a large vein and pressed the plunger home.
It was not done very dexterously. The most unskilled nurse could have done better. But the serum contained in the reservoir of the needle entered the Agent’s blood stream.
And now for the first time he asked himself what its effect might be. He was not a sleeping sickness victim. Was it possible that the serum would bring on a mild attack of the dread disease?
The sharp jab of the needle made a stabbing pain in his arm. He didn’t wonder that the little Vorse girl had complained and been frightened.
The man turned away and without another word strode back to the waiting car, slamming the door of Garwick’s car behind him.
At that instant Agent “X” moved with an abruptness that made Victor Garwick gasp. As the door on the left of the car closed — the door toward the other motionless vehicle from which the masked man had come — Agent “X” wrenched open the right-hand door. He kicked off the blankets that swathed him and sprang out into the darkness. He hissed a low, sharp order to the astonished chauffeur.