He moved around the room, saw a cluttered table with bottles and syringes upon it. These he examined quickly, interest flaming in his eyes. But here was none of the finished product. That apparently was kept behind the steel wall, in the room from which the deep-voiced man had spoken.
The Agent left the apes, entered the corridor again, stopping before the next door. This was bolted also. His heart beat faster. He slid the bolt back softly. There was no telling what the room might contain.
He groped for and found a light switch beside the door; clicked it on. Under the glow of the ceiling bulb, he saw a skeleton-thin man lying on a narrow cot.
Wasted as his face was by disease. Agent “X” recognized the man. He had seen pictures of him in medical journals, and at Drexel Institute also, in the office of Doctor Gollomb. This was Hornaday, the worker who had so mysteriously disappeared.
Agent “X” leaped forward. Something on the man’s wrist gleamed in the light, catching his eye. Metal cuffs, the steel links of which were snapped to the bed. Here was mute evidence of what he had suspected. Hornaday was a slave of the criminal gang.
At first he thought the man was merely sleeping. Then he bent closer and horror crawled over his flesh. Hornaday was sleeping, but not with the normal sleep of fatigue. His skin was grayish, ghastly, showing traces of masklike rigidity. His pulse was weak. Hornaday was suffering from sleeping sickness.
Then the Secret Agent’s eyes lighted on a small syringe on a table. There was a bottle beside it containing a small amount of colorless liquid. The covering of one of Hornaday’s skinny arms was slit to the elbow.
Agent “X” rolled the cut garment up. On Hornaday’s skin several scars showed, one recent. Evidently the man had been given injections of the serum also. Yet they had not cured him.
Agent “X” picked up the syringe and bottle. He examined them, frowned. Intuition made him leap to a conclusion. He pressed the plunger of the syringe into the bottle until the reservoir was half filled. Then he leaned forward and gave the sleeping man a shot of the fluid.
A faint tremor passed over Hornaday’s blue-veined lids. A sound like a gasp came from his lips. But the jabbing pain of the needle was insufficient to arouse him from the coma. His gasping whisper stirred around the walls of the high-ceilinged room like the haunting voice of some being from another world.
Agent “X” waited tensely. The man did not move again. If anything he seemed to have sunk deeper into the strange coma. There were a couple of rickety chairs in the room. Agent “X” sat down on one.
SOMEWHERE in the big building he could hear confused sounds. The steel walls of the place distorted them. He knew the gangsters must be housed somewhere near — those who had not gone forth into the night on their deadly, hideous missions.
Agent “X” knew that before long he might be lying on a bed as this man was — among the living dead.
It was nearly half an hour before Hornaday stirred again. As the minutes passed, a slow change came over him. The Agent, alert to small details, noticed this. His eyes were tensely watchful.
The liquid in the bottle that “X” had injected was working slowly in Hornaday’s system. It had been necessary for the circulating blood to carry it around many times. Now its effect was evidenced in quickened breathing and a slow suffusion of blood to the deathly skin.
One of Hornaday’s thin hands moved. There was something ghastly, nightmarish, in the way his clawlike fingers stirred. They seemed to be groping, groping for some hope, some desired thing that was forever beyond his reach. A moan came at last from the man’s lips. He turned his head on the pillowless cot. Slowly his eyelids slid down from eyes that still held the glassiness of his long sleep.
Agent “X” arose, bent over the man. Second by second the glossiness faded from Hornaday’s eyes. They grew brighter; the man’s sickly face assumed harsh lines of hate and fear as he stared up into the hooded features of the Agent. His lips came back from his teeth. His hands clenched. He made a throaty cry like an animal in pain.
“Hush!” the sibilant warning of Agent “X” sounded strangely in that room, coming from behind the apelike mask. “I am a friend,” he said softly.
“Friend!” Hornaday echoed the word harshly. A cackling, fearful laugh came from his lips. Agent “X” silenced it with a quickly thrust hand encased in a hairy glove.
“Listen to me,” he said tensely. “You are a prisoner of these gangsters. You want to escape — go back to the world you belong in. What if I tell you I can help you?”
Agent “X” removed his hand. Hornaday lay quiet, staring up at him. Bright, feverish spots of color flamed in his gaunt cheeks. He reached forward to clutch the Agent’s arm, forgetting that his wrists were cuffed. The steel links brought him up quickly, and he cursed with savage bitterness.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? Take off that hood and let me see your face.”
The Agent shook his head.
“You don’t know me; but I know you. Doctor Gollomb has told me all about you. They are wondering where you’ve gone. An epidemic is raging. I came to Branford to investigate.”
“And how did you get in here? What are you wearing that costume for — like the others?”
“I knocked one of them out. He’s lying unconscious now. I’m wearing this so that they’ll not suspect.”
“One of them may come at any instant. They will suspect — if they find you here.”
“I know it. That is why you must talk quickly and tell me what I want to know. I gave you an injection of the liquid in that bottle. It was the liquid that brought you back to consciousness.”
HORNADAY nodded, his mouth bitter again. “It’s a weakened solution of my own serum,” he said. “It doesn’t cure, but it brings me back when they need me. I’d rather be left to die.”
“Where’s the real serum?”
“They have it. I never see them. They only wake me and ask me questions. The last time I would tell them nothing. Then they had me tortured. Look!”
Hornaday thrust a foot from the cot. Agent “X” saw that the soles of his feet had been burned.
“They don’t care now whether I die or not. The apes are dying, too. I warned them that they wouldn’t live in this place. I don’t know what it’s all about. It’s madness. They must all be insane.”
Agant “X” had let the sick man talk on. Now suddenly he asked a question, his voice vibrant.
“Who are ‘they’?”
Hornaday blinked at him.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen them. Several times I’ve been taken into the room at the end of the hall where they’ve talked to me through a slit in the wall, but I’ve never seen them. They seem to know a lot about medicine. But they must be insane!”
“No, not insane, in the ordinary sense of the word, Hornaday,” said “X” quietly. “They’re criminals. They’re racketeers, the worst I’ve ever come in contact with. They’ve injected dozens of Branford’s rich citizens with sleeping sickness, then sold your serum at exorbitant prices. Do you get it?”
Hornaday lay for a moment as though dazed. His forehead was furrowed in thought as he assimilated the details of the amazing plot. Then he spoke hoarsely.
“Good God — and you don’t know who they are, either?”
“I’m suspicious of one at least, but I’ve no proof to back my theory. Caution’s the only thing that will turn the trick now. A false move, and they’ll get wise and clear out — leaving the people of Branford to the ravages of this plague. Here’s what I want to know, Hornaday. Can you develop more of the serum if I get you out of here?”