The brilliant tubes glowed and sputtered. The wan and feeble men, moving like automatons, spread thin coatings of a viscid brownish substance over glass plates with long, pliant spatulas.
Before “X’s” eyes a strange and amazing transformation came in that thick, tarlike paste. It turned white, although the mercury lamps gave it a purplish tinge. From a glutinous, semifluid material it changed to glistening, powdery crystals.
At last, “X” had the secret. The Big Boss made his synthetic dope by breaking down the molecular composition of some substance, probably a coal-tar derivative that cost no more than crude oil.
The horror of it stabbed through the Agent like an electric shock. Every coating of brown paste was soon changed into white crystals that meant misery, tragedy, death for scores. One coating yielded enough of the poisonous drug to enslave a hundred people. The terrifying sight made “X” clammy with dread.
The Agent had invaded the arsenals of crime kings, stored with bombs of destroying gases. He had been in the laboratories of madmen, where bacteria that wrought loathsome and fatal diseases were sealed in tubes ready to be spread over a defenseless land. But none of those frightful devices quite equaled the deviltry, the fiendishness of the Big Boss. He sent unsuspecting people into a life of the damned, made monsters, abhorrent and inhuman, out of creatures who once were men.
Below the Agent, those human gargoyles, those pitiful, cadaverous slaves, hideous from the ravages of dope, leprous under the rays of the mercury lamps, moved like rusted old machines. Guards stood over them, threatening with automatics and cracking blacksnakes across the thin, bent backs of the shuffling dope addicts.
Suddenly “X” swung around. He was not frightened, but the flesh felt cold along his spine. A sense of acute personal danger had broken through his concentration. His eyes burned with anger as he stared into the cold black bore of a revolver. The brutal, repulsive man behind it had stepped through a panel that had opened in the wall. Murder glittered in his piggish little eyes.
Chapter XVIII
THE killer advanced with his gun aimed at the Agent’s heart. “Get those mitts in the air and talk quick!” he rasped. “Who sent you in here?”
“X’s” mind raced. He was no farther from death than the pressure of a trigger finger. There was no chance of getting his gas gun. A step toward the guard, and a bullet would rip into his heart. The antechamber was dark, but a purple glow from the mercury lamps shone on the guard’s ugly face. The Agent smiled. His manner became apologetic. He started to raise his hands slowly.
“Why, I — er — don’t understand, sir,” he said in a meek voice. “I’m Dudley Smythe of the New England Welfare League. I’m in town for the United Brotherhood Conference that opens tomorrow. I happened to be passing by, and I saw Brother Howe come in the servant’s entrance. I hailed him, but my good friend did not hear. Not realizing that I might be trespassing, I followed him. I’m sorry, so sorry, if—”
A vaporizing liquid that turned to tear gas suddenly sprayed over the guard’s vicious face. He shrank back, pawing at his smarting, blinded eyes. He uttered an agonized howl that “X” cut short with a savage uppercut that lifted the man off his feet and dropped him in a heap, senseless.
The Agent’s talk had thrown the killer off guard, had distracted him, while “X’s” hands were slowly moving upwards. But the left hand had stopped at the breast pocket, had clutched at the fountain pen secured there. The pressure of a tiny button had opened a catch that released the tear-gas.
“X” stepped back until the gas dispelled and lost its potency. Then he pressed back into the shadows, and drew his gas gun.
“Help! Quick! He’ll kill me!” the Agent cried, imitating the voice of the unconscious guard.
The man’s three associates came running at once. And, as they got within range, “X” pressed the trigger of his gas gun and held it down. There was a moment of choking, gasping confusion, and then the gas took complete effect. The first man staggered, tried to retreat, and collided with his companions. The three dropped like sacks of grain.
The Agent went into the room where the drug fiends were working at the glass-topped tables. Against the wall stood boxes containing packets and bottles of dope. The piles extended to the ceiling, enough of the refined product to enslave the entire metropolis.
The wretched creatures under the lamps performed their tasks with slow, mechanical movements, as though they were under an hypnotic spell. They were repulsive, horrible automatons, with all the spirit lashed out of them, beings who lived solely for the dope that was doled out to them in niggardly quantities.
The Agent beckoned to one of the dopies, who shuffled toward him listlessly. The worker’s eyes were two feverish spots burning in a fleshless face. The skin had the slate-gray tinge of death. He sniffed constantly. The man was dying on his feet.
“Where is the elevator that your master uses?” the Agent demanded. His voice was harsh. This was no time for gentleness.
The hophead shrank back in fear. “No! No!” he cried. “I can’t tell. They’ll deprive me of my drug allowance for a week. A week! Do you understand? A week of torture!”
The man was probably not more than thirty, but he had the decreptitude of age, the feeble, piping voice of one in the last stages of senility.
“You won’t be deprived of your dope,” said the Agent sternly, “but you will get the green death if you don’t tell me. The green death, understand! Where is that elevator?”
The hophead all but collapsed from fear. A spasm of shivering, a nervous convulsion, made it impossible for him to speak for a while.
“The green death!” the man gasped, his eyes bulging with horror. “No! Anything — anything but the green death! I’ll tell! I’ll tell!”
The trembling, terror-stricken man motioned “X” to follow, and reeled into another room. There the Agent found an automatic, self-operating elevator such as is installed in most modern apartment houses. But the entrance to this one was hidden behind a high, green-metal storage cabinet, which the dopie slid back on rollers. The Agent might have wasted precious minutes in hunting for it.
“Are you sure this is the elevator the Big Boss uses?” demanded “X.” “If you’re tricking me, you’ll get the green death!”
The drug addict recoiled in fright. “I’m telling the truth!” He cried in his shrill, feeble voice. “I have seen the green death! I’d do anything to save myself from it.”
THE Agent eyed him narrowly. “How much of this drug are you manufacturing a day here?”
“More than a hundred and thirty pounds,” was the ready answer, “and what do we get? We who make it! One hundred and thirty pounds, and we get five grains a day! Five grains! Yet each of us makes more than thirty-five grains a day, yet our daily dole is five grains.”
The drug addict broke into tears, and his wizened frame, hardly more than a skeleton, retched with great sobs. The Agent looked at him a moment, and then he led the wretched man into the laboratory. He addressed the other slaves.
“You are free men now!” he announced. “The guards are unconscious. They’ll be that way for an hour, but you’ll never be molested again. Take all the drugs you want. You’ll not be harmed. Quiet your shattered nerves! End your torture! Help yourselves, men!”
They stared at him in bewilderment. Then one of them uttered an exultant howl like the savage cry of an animal and dived for the drugs. The laboratory changed into a madhouse, with each dopie scrambling to get his hands on a precious packet. The man at “X’s” side wrung his hand, gave him a look that expressed deep gratitude, and then plunged into the mass of frenzied hopheads.