The colonel did not answer him, but sat silently while Jim Hobart increased their speed until they were doing seventy-five. After another minute or two, Jim glanced in the rear vision mirror, said over his shoulder, “They’re following us, sir.”
The colonel smiled in satisfaction. “That’s fine.” He holstered his revolver and took from a hip pocket a peculiarly shaped gun.
Fannon’s eyes widened in sudden apprehension as the colonel raised the gun and fired it full in his face. He had no time to utter the frantic protest that rose to his lips, for the gas took immediate effect, and he slumped in the seat, unconscious.
The colonel immediately opened the windows to allow the fumes to escape.
“Now,” he said crisply to Jim, “raise your rear vision mirror so you can’t look in back here. And don’t turn around!”
Jim did as directed. “I won’t look, sir,” he said. “Those are the orders that Mr. Martin gave me when he sent me on this job.” He drove at the same swift pace as before, with his eyes straight ahead.
And then the colonel began to work with a smooth efficiency that would have astonished any one who beheld him. At frequent intervals he glanced through the rear window at the pursuing car. The speed with which they were traveling made it impossible for the black car to close up the distance between them.
In no time at all the colonel had removed his own uniform and donned the clothing of the unconscious Fannon. Then he opened a box that had lain in the bottom of the sedan, and set up on the seat a collapsible mirror. The box contained pigments, paints, plastic material, mouth and nose plates; in fact everything that was needed for a consummate artist to create a perfect disguise.
THE colonel removed his own wig of gray hair and substituted for it one which he had previously prepared and which exactly matched Fannon’s hair. Then he removed the make-up from his own face, revealing for an instant the firm, masterful, though almost boyish, features that no one in the world could boast of having seen — the features of that man of mystery, that man of a thousand faces, Secret Agent “X.”
Then his fingers went to work, building up ridges, contours of cheek bones, changing the shape and length of teeth by means of caps, not passing over the slightest detail of Fannon’s physiognomy.
If Jim Hobart had disobeyed orders and cast his eyes behind him for one second as he drove, he would have been amazed at the miraculous transformation that was taking place in the back of the sedan.
Within twelve minutes of the time he had begun, Secret Agent “X” sat up in the rear seat beside the body of Fannon, after putting away the make-up box and mirror.
He tested his throat muscles for a moment, then said, “All right, Jim, you can lower the rear vision mirror.”
Jim Hobart started perceptibly, and gasped. For the voice that had just uttered those words had been the voice of the ex-convict, Frank Fannon. Every inflection, every modulation of tone, had been faithfully duplicated.
Quickly, Jim lowered the mirror, looked into it. And he clawed for the emergency brake even as his other hand deserted the wheel to reach his gun. For he was startled to see Frank Fannon sitting there behind him, smiling.
But “X” quieted him by speaking once more in Colonel Delevan’s old voice. “It’s all right, Hobart. Fannon is right here — still unconscious.”
Jim breathed a sigh of relief that was mingled with wonder.
“I–I didn’t know a thing like that could be done,” he stammered. “I–I’ve heard of such impersonations, but I never believed them.”
“Never mind about that now,” the Secret Agent said crisply. “Listen carefully to what you must do now.” He glanced back at the black car ploughing on behind them. “In a couple of minutes you will slow up to give our friends a chance to come closer to us. When you are down to about fifteen miles, I will open the door and leap out to the side of the road, taking my revolver. You will then stop, and fire at me — but be sure to miss.” He chuckled. “You think you can shoot well enough to miss me?”
Jim grinned. “I think so, sir.”
“All right. I will fire back at you, and you will act as if you were wounded. According to my plans, the next thing that should happen is that our friends in the black car will storm up and attack you. When they do, you must give your car all the gas she can take, and drive away from here. Is everything plain?”
“I’ve got it, sir,” said Jim,
“Fine. You will drive to the abandoned farmhouse that I showed you on the way up, take Fannon in, and hide the car in the barn. You will keep Fannon a prisoner there, not letting him out, and not letting him be seen by a soul! Remember that. If he should be seen, my life might be placed in deadly danger. Do you understand?”
“I do, sir, and you can depend on me.”
“Very well then. Let’s go!”
The thing could not have gone off more smoothly if it had been rehearsed. When “X” leaped from the car, sprawling in the road and firing in Jim Hobart’s direction, the pursuing sedan, with the letter “S” monogrammed on the door speeded up; and from it there came a fusillade that would have blasted the pretended army car into a burning wreck if it had not been built of bullet-proof steel and glass.
Jim Hobart, after sending a couple of shots backward, stepped on the accelerator and left the scene in a spurt of speed.
The Skull’s car did not pursue him farther, but stopped to pick up the man they thought was Fannon. So well did “X” act that the four men in that car were completely taken in. They congratulated him on his daring escape, and looked on him with new respect when he told them that he had killed the colonel who was arresting him.
They took him to the headquarters of their master, the Skull, where we saw him conducted, blindfolded, into the main room by Binks, then later, interviewed by the Skull; and subsequently, after making a daring attempt to reach Tyler, trapped in the corridor by Rufe Linson, the Skull’s second in command.
Now, as he stood with his hands in the air under the menacing muzzle of Rufe’s gun, it seemed as if all the trouble he had taken to work his way in here had gone for nothing.
RUFE licked his lips in triumph. “The Skull will be here in a minute. And then you’ll wish you was dead — the way Tyler does!”
“X” said nothing. His hands were in the air, his ears keenly attuned for any sounds coming from the corridor behind him where he knew the Skull’s room was located. And suddenly he smiled grimly. For his fingers, high in the air, had transmitted a message to his brain — a message of hope and escape!
His hands, raised high above his head, had come in contact with the dim electric light bulb on his side of the doorway. Rufe could not see the bulb, for he was standing on the other side.
Slowly, “X” began to turn the bulb in its socket, listening for sound. And then it came — a door opening down the end of the passage, behind him.
Rufe said, “Here comes some one. That’ll be Binks.”
At the same time “X” gave the last turn to the bulb, tore it out of the socket. The corridor was plunged in darkness.
Rufe shouted angrily, but his voice was drowned by the crash of the bulb, which “X” had dashed on the floor. From behind the Agent came a muttered oath in the voice of Binks.
“X” reached out, met Rufe’s gun arm. Rufe’s fingers were just contracting on the trigger when “X” seized his hand, jerked it up. The gun exploded into the ceiling. Behind them came the sound of running feet.
Rufe clinched with “X,” at the same time shouting, “Don’t shoot, Binks! I got him!”