Back at Su Kung’s laundry, “X” carried the body in the rear room, and locked the door. There he took careful measurements of the corpse, and spent a long period of intense concentration studying the Count’s face. The Agent’s amazing photographic memory would enable him to reconstruct the face, without any inaccuracies in the features.
Before he left the laundry, he gave Su Kung a large sum of money. In aiding him, the Chinaman had shown bravery almost to the point of foolhardiness, for dealing with a corpse without the sanction of the law was risky business. So Su Kung was enriched by more than he could make otherwise in six months. Beside that, “X” left money to have the body embalmed by another tong member, sealed in a casket, and kept hidden until the Agent was ready to have de Ronfort’s death made public.
“X” hurried into the city now, went first to one of his hideouts to perfect his disguise as A. J. Martin, and then to the laboratory of Fenwick, the brilliant research chemist, who was working on the analysis of the doped cigarettes.
The chemist shook his head after he had greeted the Agent. “Still no results, Mr. Martin,” he said. “We’ve been working night and day on those cigarettes, keeping up our tests. Nearly five hundred precipitations already, and we’ve determined nothing except that the drug has some sort of nitrogenous base.”
“I’ve brought along some more,” said “X,” opening the suitcase and handing Fenwick two of the packages. “You’ll have better success this time. I want a careful comparison made with the result of this analysis and what little you’ve learned of the doped cigarettes.”
Fenwick opened a package and examined the contents.
“Ah! No difficulty here, Mr. Martin! You’ve got the straight stuff now! Off-hand, I’d say this was morphine or heroin. However, I’ll put it through the test.”
They entered an elaborately equipped laboratory where several men were busy with test-tubes and Bunsen burners. Fenwick went to work, and it was not long before he got results.
“Just as I thought, Mr. Martin,” he said. “One package contains morphine, the other heroin.”
“That doesn’t help much,” said the Agent disconcertedly.
“No,” replied Fenwick. “We’re still as much in the dark as ever with the cigarettes. Whatever is in them reacts on the human system very much like morphia, though far more potently. But we are certain it is neither cocaine, hashish, nor the active principle of opium. It doesn’t respond to any tests for the vegetable alkaloids.” Startling information. The narcotics that de Ronfort had smuggled in were common opium derivatives, whereas the dope distributed by the sinister drug ring completely baffled Fenwick, one of the foremost laboratory technicians in the country.
Chapter XIV
WHAT part had de Ronfort played in the dope menace? The dissimilarity in the drugs certainly was evidence that the Count had not been connected with Karloff’s mob. Yet why had Karloff taken such pains to get rid of him? Not because he was a rival in the distribution of dope. There were bigger men in this illicit traffic who were unmolested. “X” believed there was a deeper reason, a motive that had nothing to do with gang rivalry.
The Agent returned to one of his hideouts. First, he took a much-needed rest. Trained to fall asleep the instant his head hit the pillow, “X” slept so soundly that a few hours of repose were sufficient. Awakening in mid-afternoon, he set to work molding an elaborate disguise, taking infinite pains with small details.
This time he was a long while before the triple mirrors, laying on a new pigmentation with the painstaking thoroughness of a great artist. When he finished with his vials and tubes, he donned a wig of shiny, curly black hair, and surveyed himself critically.
The new countenance brought a cold smile to the Agent’s lips. He had done well. An aristocratic face was reflected in the mirror, clean-cut in profile but with a suggestion of weakness about the month. The face that “X” saw had a slight look of dissipation that sun-bronze had not eliminated. The Agent believed that no one would doubt that he was Remy de Ronfort.
He had taken special care because he was going to see Paula Rockwell, to find out what she knew of the Count’s activities, and a woman would be quick to notice any irregularity in the appearance of her fiancé.
“X’s” plan was one of extreme daring. Karloff wanted de Ronfort out of the way. The Agent wanted to find Karloff; so, by disguising himself as the Count, pretending that the man had not been killed, “X” hoped to draw another attack from Karloff, and thus track him down.
It was literally courting death, posing as the slain de Ronfort. Karloff or his mobsters would likely shoot on sight. Yet it was a sure and swift way of meeting the sinister Karloff.
The Agent put a bandage on his left arm, which he placed in a sling. He added a few touches to his face to give him a haggard look, and stuck a piece of court plaster over his forehead. Karloff would know something was amiss if he saw de Ronfort without any wounds or signs of emotional stress.
At a public telephone booth, “X” called up Paula Rockwell. A servant answered the ring, but the girl apparently had been close by, for she was talking eagerly over the wire a moment after the servant repeated the Count’s name.
“Darling!” the girl cried. “You’re all right then? Where are you, Remy? I’m worried sick! Come here to the apartment at once! I won’t rest a minute till I see you!”
“No, Paula,” the Agent answered. “I must see you alone first. Meet me at the Green Lantern on Oswego Street. Hurry!”
The girl agreed and “X” hung up. His eyes were flashing. Paula perhaps would be able to clear up the mystery of the Count’s connection with the dope smuggling ring that was handing the stuff out free. It was possible that de Ronfort had tried to doublecross them and they had retaliated for that reason.
The Green Lantern was the same sort of dingy bar and restaurant as the Genoa Café, and Oswego Street ran through one of the poorest sections of the city. The Agent reached the place shortly before the girl. When the heiress arrived, “X” was sitting at a table, staring into a whiskey glass. He got up, slump-shouldered and dejected, the picture of defeat. But beneath the pose he was tense and concerned.
Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. She grabbed his right hand and clung to it. Then she gently touched the arm resting in the sling.
“You — you are wounded,” she said tremulously.
THE Agent nodded. She was a flighty, shallow, empty-headed girl. “X” believed her incapable of any real depth of feeling. Her affection was more for the title than the man. The Agent was relieved to see that she was completely fooled by the disguise. There was a slight shade of difference in his eyes and de Ronfort’s, but the girl, beside herself with fear, did not notice the change.
“We must flee!” she said. “We must get you away from those terrorists and revolutionists! Why must we suffer so from those horrible men? I’m frightened to death, Remy.”
So that was it. Terrorists. Revolutionists. That was how Remy de Ronfoft had explained his harassment — the reason for going away, the reason for borrowing money — to Paula Rockwell at the Genoa Café. He had posed as the persecuted one, the hounded, hunted noble, the victim of his aristocratic birth, preyed upon by treacherous, conspiring terrorists. “X” immediately took the cue. He was disappointed. Paula Rockwell could tell him nothing about de Ronfort’s real activities, because she was ignorant of them herself. But “X” must keep up his role.