“Drive on! At once!”
He crouched between the curb and the right-hand wheels of the Garwick limousine as it rolled away. His dark clothing, his collar drawn up about his face, made him indistinguishable in the deep shadows.
The man who applied the hypo needle got into his own car. Agent “X” crept across the roadway. Low to the ground, his body seemed to blend with the black asphalt of the boulevard. He was like a huge quick-moving spider. Just as the strange car began to roll, the Agent’s steely fingers grasped the spare tire on the rear. He swung up his legs, hugged his body close. He was an uninvited passenger as the car lurched ahead.
Those inside were utterly oblivious of what had happened. Once a face peered out the back window. But Agent “X” was crouched too low to be visible.
Seconds passed. The car rumbled on. Then the Secret Agent reached into his coat pocket and drew out a device that looked like a small portable camera.
HOLDING himself tightly with one arm hooked through the tire case, he opened the camera-like object. It wasn’t a camera, but one of the smallest, most delicate amplifying devices in existence. Often before it had served the Agent well. But never had it been put to more important use than now.
He drew from its center a small disc with a black cord attached. This was a tiny microphone. There were two cylindrical dry cells in the box of the amplifier, placed in a corresponding position to roll films. The inside of the cameralike thing itself was the earphone.
Agent “X” placed the whole instrument to the side of his head and, with the hand that was hooked through the tire, he pressed the disc microphone on its black cord against the metal back of the car.
At first only the crashing rumble of the vehicle, magnified to the thunder of a Niagara, reached his ear. But there were rheostats in the tiny instrument. In spite of his precarious clinging position and the bounce of the heavy car, Agent “X” managed to move them with sensitive fingers, electing sounds according to the wave-length of their vibrations. The rumble of machinery, coarse and long-waved, was easily excluded.
Presently the confused sound of men’s voices made the amplifier’s earphone buzz. Another turn of the rheostat and Agent “X” could hear the voices of those inside the car distinctly. Two men were talking together in the back seat. They were only a foot or two away. One seemed glum, harsh.
“I’m gettin’ fed up, Lefty. If I don’t get outa this damn thing soon I’ll go nuts. It’s the screwiest racket I was ever in — an’ with these bugs makin’ everybody sick it gives me the creeps.”
“You’re gettin’ paid, ain’t you?” snarled the other. “You get a cut on everything that comes in. Ten grand tonight fer squirtin’ a little juice into the son of a millionaire mug. It’s a good racket, if you ask me. I don’t blame the bosses for playin’ it to the limit.”
“They’ll go a couple of rounds too many, if they don’t look out. The whole town’s gettin’ sick. What if some of us comes down with sleeping sickness! I tell you it’s givin’ me the creeps.”
“You’ll stick with the rest of us,” the other replied ominously. “You can’t get out of Branford till the bosses are ready to let you go. Quit yer damn grouching.”
There was a few seconds of silence. Agent “X” had almost stopped breathing. His guess that these men were only underlings had been correct.
THE Agent eased his cramped position. It was no mean feat to cling with a single arm to the spare tire casing, where every irregularity in the road caused the maximum of jarring vibration. After a moment he resumed his grip and pressed the amplifier to his ear again. The grumbling voice of the complainer came gratingly.
“Some guy’s goin’ to get wise if we don’t quit, and quit soon. There’ll be dicks after us some night.”
“You can’t win without takin’ a chance. There’s a whole bunch of rich mugs that ain’t been shaken down yet. The Channing girl comes tonight, Dillon’s goin’ after her.”
The Agent’s heart leaped. He felt a coldness creeping over him. The Channing girl! That would be Paula Channing, Betty Dale’s cousin — the girl she said she was going to visit tonight. The hideous ring of microbe spreaders had marked her for their next victim. She, too, would be inoculated with encephalitis.
For an instant Agent “X” considered dropping off the car and giving the Channings warning. But he might never have a chance like this present one again. His warning might save Paula Channing from sleeping sickness — but it would mean that his desperate effort to trace the criminals would fail. The future destiny of a whole city lay almost within reach of his hand now.
All during the time he had clung to the car, “X” had been on the alert to note any symptoms which might appear in himself as a result of the hypo injection. So far there had been none. This relieved him. Receiving the serum had been an unavoidable part of his scheme, but he had been more worried than he had admitted to himself as to the possible effect on his own system — whether or not it would produce results which would make him unfit to carry his plan to its conclusion.
The car had left the boulevard now. It was threading a series of dark, winding streets, penetrating into the heart of Branford’s slums.
Abruptly the car slowed. Dark buildings shadowed the street ahead. Closed warehouses; a deserted factory; a huge gas tank rearing up into the night sky like some ungainly monster. A sluggish inlet of the river penetrated here. A few empty barges creaked on their moorings. The region was darkly sinister, the air dank.
The car swung sharply. Its headlights pointed toward the door of a low garage.
Instantly the Agent dropped to hands and knees on the street, backing off behind the car to the shadow of a fence.
One of the men got out and unlocked the door of the garage. The door slid back on smooth-running rollers, and “X” caught a glimpse of the interior. It was an ordinary one-car garage with a cement floor. The man who had opened the door backed against a wall as the car rolled in. The roller door slid shut
The Secret Agent’s eyes gleamed. He had trailed the members of the germ-spreading band to their lair, or at least within close range of it.
He let two minutes elapse before he crept forward. Then he took a set of chromium tools from his pocket. Opening the lock was child’s play to him. But he listened long and carefully with his amplifier before rolling the door back. No sound of voices issued from within.
Cautiously he slid the door back an inch at a time He stepped inside, every sense alert, and stopped to avoid running into the rear of the car. Still there was no sound. The Agent flashed on a small light.
He gasped in sheer astonishment then. The floor and three blank walls were all that showed up in the beam of the light. There wasn’t even a small door in the rear — no visible exit by which the men could have left. But that was not the mystery that baffled him most. It was the big car that he searched for in vain. That too, had vanished as though black magic had been used to dissolve it into thin air.
Chapter XIII
AGENT “X” stood dumfounded. With his small light he continued to search the interior of the garage. He hardly believed his own eyes. It was as though the drug he had taken to slow his pulse, or the serum injected into his veins, had affected his sight. Then he bent forward. A fresh drop of oil glistened in the center of the garage floor — proof that a car had recently stood there.