Chapter XV
THE gunman started crosstown afoot. He was extremely nervous, furtive. One hand thrust into his coat pocket ominously. When he passed cops, he turned his head. He walked at a pace much faster than other pedestrians.
“X” was tense, grim. The man ahead was tortured by nerves frayed from the lack of dope. He was wild-eyed, insane from his deprivation. It would not take much to make him draw his gun and start a massacre. Frequently he looked behind him. He paid no attention to “X” the first block. On the second he fixed him with a suspicious glare for a moment.
The Agent had to walk fast to keep at an even distance behind the mobster, and that was what caused the evil-faced man to single him out. To throw off suspicion “X” stepped into a grocery store and bought a loaf of bread and a few bunches of vegetables. He carried the bread wrapped in its waxed paper, without a bag, and he fixed the other bag so the leaves and stalks of the vegetables stuck out.
It was dark now. On the street he bought a newspaper. Now he looked like an office worker returning home. “X” walked briskly and got close to the gunman again. The gangster turned around, twisted his ugly face into a snarl. Then he noticed the bundles. His face relaxed to its ordinary viciousness, and he paid no more attention to “X.” The ruse was effective.
Soon the drug addict reached a factory section. A few blocks beyond was a district of middle-class apartment houses. So “X’s” deception still was plausible. The man stopped before a shut-down factory, and waited outside, nervously puffing on a cigarette, until “X” passed by. The gunman eyed him closely. The Agent whistled and walked with the jaunty step of a man whose day’s work is over. He ignored the hophead.
A block farther on, he turned the corner. He disposed of his packages, waited a few minutes, and then peered cautiously around the side of the building. The gunman had disappeared.
Stealthily “X” crept back to the shut-down factory. He was alert in every fiber. Suppose the mobster still was suspicious? He might be lurking in the tomblike gloom, waiting to see if the Agent returned. “X” glanced around carefully. A fog was rolling in off the river, curling its spectral tentacles around the old building. Traffic noise, rising from the avenues, seemed remote, almost ghostly. There was a graveyard silence about this district.
The Agent tried the front door. It was locked. He listened. No sound came from within. Possibly this bleak old building was not the one the gunman had entered. “X” would soon find out. He moved silently to the rear. The back door was locked, too.
“X” brought forth a small leather case that held his intricate tools of the highest grade chromium steel. He took out one that looked like a sail-maker’s needle, except that it had tiny pivotal extensions. This he inserted in the lock. He worked it around noiselessly, and then withdrew it to readjust the extensions. The next insertion brought a faint click. He opened the door.
The interior was cold and musty and as black as a cavern. He walked forward, feeling his way like a blind man. He picked a route through a maze of machinery. Frequently he stopped. His keen ears were tuned to catch the slightest sound. Suddenly he heard a muffled scream, one that sent a chill up his spine, for the outcry suggested the agony of fiendish torture. “X” knew he had the right lead.
The scream came again. “X” crept forward more rapidly. He dared not switch on a flashlight. Suddenly he tripped over a small box. His excellent sense of balance enabled him to prevent a fall, but he upset the box. A loud, metallic clangor rang out as iron washers spilled onto the floor.
“X” gritted his teeth. He fell into a tense crouch. A moment of deathly silence followed. Then a shaft of light shot ceilingward from the floor. A man emerged from a trapdoor. He gripped an automatic. The dazzling beam of a flash pierced through the heavy darkness.
The light played on the spot where “X” had tripped. But he had leaped behind a machine. The bright ray focused on the overturned box of washers. The gunman rasped out a savage oath.
The mobster crept forward. Evidently he had just been given a narcotic, else he would not have possessed this courage. The Agent began to circle noiselessly. His outthrust hands touched a board balanced precariously on top of a machine. It fell to the floor with a loud crack.
A savage snarl came from the gunman. He swung around, but before he could shoot, “X” discharged his gas gun. “X” had several gas guns cached at his hideouts. One of them still lay where he had hid it when the federal men had caught him. Instantly there was a thud as the gangster’s automatic struck the floor. The man collapsed slowly, soundlessly.
The Agent was at his side. He secured the man’s hands behind him, thrust a big gag into his mouth, and left the mobster hidden under a machine.
At the trapdoor, he peered down cautiously. Stairs led into a dimly lighted corridor. Moans and screams and hysterical sobs issued from below. “X” reached the bottom of the stairs. Some one was running along the corridor. The Agent darted to the wall and crouched behind a barrel.
Suddenly the mobster stopped. Every fiber of the Agent’s body tensed. Had the man seen him? “X” was too far away to use his gas gun.
“Ain’t no use hidin’, fella!” snarled the killer. “Stand up and get your mitts in the air, or I’ll blast the roof off your skull. If your hands ain’t empty, you’ll sure die sudden.”
SWIFTLY the Secret Agent stuck something in his mouth and closed his lips over it. He got up and walked toward his captor. A leer spread over the brutal face of the gunman. “X” approached him slowly, his hands stretched overhead.
“Now turn around, and march to the council chamber, pally,” snarled the mobster. “Karloff is always glad to welcome any uninvited visitors. Guess you’ve never heard of the green death, buddy? It sure is a picture, watchin’ a guy squirm and crawl, while his whole body is turnin’ green. You don’t live long once it starts workin’, but you sure know you’re alive and sufferin’ while it lasts. Get going—”
While the killer gloated, “X” had drawn in a deep breath. Now the end of a tiny rubber tube protruded from his lips. His cheek muscles contracted abruptly. A thin jet of colorless liquid spurted out of the tube’s mouth. The instant it contacted with the oxygen in the air, it vaporized. The mobster gave a startled gasp, clawed at space, and slumped to the floor.
Still holding his breath, so he would not be overcome by the gas, “X” dragged the mobster to a room near by. In this room “X” rapidly disguised himself as his would-be captor. He thrust the man in a steel locker, went out. He did not know the gangster’s name, nor his duties. Suppose he should betray himself by a slip-up? Karloff would act on the slightest suspicion. The dreadful green death was an ever-present menace.
Farther down the corridor he stopped before the cell from which the screams had come. He looked in, on a horrible sight. Karloff was dealing out more of his hideous discipline. Two raving hopheads were shackled in irons. In the center of the room stood a table. Chains secured the drug addicts so that they could get within a few inches of reaching a little glass case on the table. That case was filled with a white powder. Heroin. Enough to supply the most confirmed addict for a year. Yet these tortured men could not reach it.
They could not be more abject, more pitiable if they were being burned at the stake. Their mouths foamed up the froth of the insane. One of them gnawed on his wrist. So intense was his agony that he was actually attempting to gnaw it off.