As Corbeau, the drug-addict gunman, “X” had known them. They had watched Serenti die horribly of the loathsome green death. They had shot Gus Tansley so that he bled out his life in less than a minute. They were the drug-mastered fiends of the somber, sadistic Karloff, and they were after Count Remy de Ronfort.
Chapter XII
PUZZLED, the Agent moved close. De Ronfort was starting through the train gate, when one of Karloff’s rat-faced gunmen shoved in ahead of him, and pushed the Count back. The smuggler began a dignified protest, but he stopped abruptly when he found himself surrounded by three others. They pulled back their coat lapels and showed badges.
What was it all about? Karloff’s men posing as federal officers and nabbing de Ronfort. Apparently the Count was not one of the big dope ring. Yet possibly he had challenged Karloff’s authority, and the evil chief was striking in his usual brutal way.
The gunmen rushed the Count across the big waiting room. Trained to avoid scenes in public, de Ronfort went along without protest. But the moment they got him into a sedan, he began to struggle furiously. Physically he was probably more than a match for the four dope-ravaged thugs. Watching from the side of a pillar, “X” saw him slam one of them between the eyes and give another an uppercut that put the man out of the fight.
But the aristocrat’s polo-trained physique was helpless before the deadly threat of an automatic. He suddenly ceased his struggles. “X” knew a rod was probably jabbing the Count in the ribs.
De Ronfort still clung to his suitcase. The sedan started. “X” feared there would be gunplay this time, so he did not hire a taxi. Instead, he commandeered a car, turning on the ignition with a specially constructed key for that purpose. If the car was wrecked or bullet-riddled, the owner would get money for a new one from the inexhaustible funds of Elisha Pond.
“X” wanted that suitcase of dope that de Ronfort was carrying. Traffic was thin now, and the sedan sped to a back street where the driver would not have to stop for lights. In a short while they were out of the city and racing along a lonely suburban road. The Agent kept a quarter of a mile to the rear, so that it wouldn’t seem that he was following the mobsters. For a long while his attention was absorbed by the pursuit. Then he happened to glance in the reflector above him.
He muttered savagely, clutched the steering wheel until it seemed that the white skin over his knuckles would split. He clenched his teeth. Bunches of muscle stood out on his jaw. His narrowed eyes blazed with anger and excitement.
In the mirror he saw a hard and sinister face, a face that conjured up pictures of sudden and horrible death. Karloff. Karloff was in a car close behind, and that car was crowded with his dope-crazed slaves. Karloff’s men were ahead of him and behind him. And there were no roads or lanes branching off.
“X” was hemmed in!
Just then the car ahead stopped by a field. A short way beyond flowed the black waters of a river. De Ronfort was shoved from the car. He still clutched his suitcase. No effort was made to take it away from him. It was pathetic, the way he clung to that supply of narcotics. “X” plainly saw what was to take place. It was the end of the journey for de Ronfort. Surely the Count could not be blind to the significance of the stop.
Yet fear had mastered him. All the fight was drained from him. He was trembling and helpless, as helpless and wretched as Serenti had been before the horrible green death ended his tortures. Yet the count was not a drug addict. Instead, he was a rank, quivering coward. He stood there like an idiot, his eyes seeing nothing. Stupidly he held onto the suitcase, while the drug addicts piled from the car.
The Agent now was in as deadly peril as the Count. There was no escape on either side, sure death behind, and but a sliver of a chance of getting by those mobsters in front. But a desperate situation called for a desperate chance. And that was what the Agent took.
Suddenly he jammed down on the gas. The high-powered car leaped ahead as though impelled by rage and bent on annihilation. “X” held the wheel rigidly, steering straight for the mobsters. Panic froze the drug addicts, they stared pop-eyed at the charging car.
One of them screamed in terror. Frightened witless, they crouched in frenzied fear, directly in the path of the roaring machine. Grimly the Agent exerted more pressure on the accelerator. He was not bluffing. They had a chance to move. If they chose to stay there, he would run them down.
A SNARLING command burst from the rear. Karloff had poked his head from the other car and was lashing his men with vile oaths. The mobsters came to life. They sprang aside. Fear and hate twisted their faces repulsively. Guns went into action.
The Agent ducked low as the automatics thundered out whining destruction. Lead shrieked by the car. A bullet smashed into the windshield, showering razor-edged splinters over “X.” Flying glass cut him, pierced his clothes and lacerated his flesh. But he kept his foot on the accelerator.
The mobsters were at the side of the road, madly raking the car with lead. The Agent whizzed by. Suddenly he slammed on the brakes. The car jumped, skidded sidewise. Before it lost momentum, “X” swung it straight again. The car stopped close to de Ronfort. Men were shouting, cursing. Smoking, flame-spouting guns snarled wickedly. Karloff’s car came to a shrieking stop. The mob chief had lost his deadly calmness. He was cracking out orders like a top sergeant. But those orders were not carried out. Drug-starved to make them obedient, the hopheads were gripped by hysteria and no match for the wild, mad confusion.
To their frenzy “X” owed his life. They wasted plenty of lead. Bullets, aimlessly, blindly fired, came dangerously close. The Agent was crimson from glass cuts, but he kept down, protected by the body of the car. He opened the left-hand door.
De Ronfort was standing close by, like a man under the spell of catalepsy. Without speaking, “X” grabbed him roughly by the front of the coat, and yanked him into the car, hauling in the suitcase after him. De Ronfort was just a shivering, teeth-chattering hulk. The Agent shoved him down in the seat, and wasted no time in talking.
A quick shift of gears, and the car bounded forward again. De Ronfort cowered down, actually whimpering. Karloff’s car had started up again. It was close behind. Bullets ripped through the back of “X’s” machine. He felt a tug at his hat, and knew that if he had been in an upright position, his skull would have been shattered.
The river was directly ahead. A dock led from the road out into the stream. Sudden uneasiness gripped “X.” He glanced to the right and left. There was no turn. He was racing at a mile-a-minute clip along a dead-end road.
De Ronfort beside him, uttered a scream of agony. The Agent turned and saw blood streaming down the man’s neck. “X” did not know whether the count had been hit by a bullet or a piece of glass. De Ronfort was shaking like an addict deprived of his drug for a week. A rank, abject coward, he was overwhelmed, crazed by fear.
The Agent’s brain worked swiftly. He had never been so close to the finish. Life and death hung on his decision, and he had to make it in a few seconds. Karloff and his gang were no more than a hundred feet behind. Automatics and machine guns pounded away viciously. Bullets thudded against the back of “X’s” car, ripped through the fabric of the top.
Ahead flowed the river. Death hovered near in either direction. To pause, to slow down even, meant certain suicide. The Agent could not buck those mobsters in a counter-attack. He would not surrender. He had one other choice. The river. Beneath its surface lay safety — or death. His only chance was to drive straight ahead off the end of the dock.