WHITNEY BLAKE was trembling with excitement now as he gloated over his distinguished victim. His voice came hoarsely.
“I will assist myself in administering the green death, Rivers. I have a hypo here already. But first I want to see our guest as he really is. First I want to peel that stuff from his face and look at features that ten thousand detectives and police would risk their lives to see.”
A surge of deep emotion swept through the Agent. He felt the cold steel touch his wrists. A slight shudder passed through his body — not from fear of his own safety; but because of what those irons symbolized. The shackling, sinister yoke of crime on a whole huge community. Men and women ruined, destroyed body and soul.
It was now or never — one daring, desperate play, or the loss of everything for which he had worked, and annihilation by the green death.
Before Rivers could snap on the cuffs, “X” seized his wrists in a vise-like grip.
Every fiber of the Agent’s muscular, powerful, highly trained body grew taut. He bent down, yanked forward like a steel spring suddenly uncoiling. As he did so, the unsuspecting Rivers rose and shot into the air.
The maneuver that “X” had used was amazing but simple. It was an age-old Jiu-jitsu trick of leverage. The Agent had hurled the secretary over his head by means of it. The thing was done with lightning, incredible speed. There was no fumbling, no lost motion. “X’s” full power was in the throw.
He hurled the servant straight toward Whitney Blake as though Rivers had been a piece of iron in some weight-throwing contest. The vicious old financier was transfixed with fear, unable to move, paralyzed in his chair.
Rivers catapulted through the air, arms and legs spinning like the vanes of a windmill.
Crack! His head rammed against Blake’s in a terrific collision. The chair tipped over backwards. The men struck the floor with a deadweight thud, together. “X” leaped forward instantly and knelt beside them. Expertly he felt their skulls. Possibly they sustained slight fractures. Concussions surely, but they would live to answer to the law for their crimes. Blake would go to the electric chair.
The Secret Agent cut the wires to the buttons under the chair arms. Then he hastened through the panel and down the ladder to Howe’s suite. Quickly he searched through the reformer’s clothes till he found the confession Blake had mentioned. He read it over tensely. The murdered man had taken the entire blame for the drug ring.
The Agent considered awhile. At the teakwood desk, he spread the confession out and studied the handwriting minutely for seconds. Then he took up another sheet of stationary and began writing with laborious care.
“I am doomed,” he wrote in Howe’s own hand. “I knew it would come. There is no chance of escape. I am resigned to my fate, but I write this hastily with the prayerful hope that it will get into the proper hands. I have finally discovered the instigator of the horrible drug plague. The human devil behind it is Whitney Blake. Whitney Blake, the financier. From a man named Twyning, Blake stole a formula and method for breaking down the molecular composition of coal-tar derivatives into a powerful synthetic narcotic. Blake killed Twyning. He killed Count de Ronfort, because he did not want de Ronfort to marry his ward. Now he means to kill me. But I will not give him the chance. I am taking my own life. Silas Howe.”
The Agent rose and laid the note under a paperweight. Then he propped the corpse of Silas Howe in the chair at the desk with the pen before him. Soon the federal men would come, and they would find the note. “X” was taking away Howe’s confession, and in its place was leaving one in what looked to be the dead man’s handwriting.
For the first time in his life Agent “X” had committed forgery. Yet it was not for gain, nor to rob anyone. It was to leave evidence that would doom a vicious criminal to the punishment he deserved.
Agent “X” had forged the truth.
He turned off the light, went noiselessly from the suite, and passed out into the corridor. From there he went down into the street.
Many police cars were there now, more coming. A cop stopped him, but the Agent’s press card under the name of A. J. Martin let him through.
Grim-faced detectives were constantly pouring into the building, following the lines of radium paint that “X” had left. General Mathers’ men were at work inside, making the greatest narcotic haul in the city’s history.
For a time the Secret Agent watched, eyes glowing. Then he turned away into the darkness, and moved off slowly. A minute passed and his figure vanished from sight — but suddenly a strange, eerie whistle came out of the shadows. It was weird, birdlike, yet pitched in a minor key.
It was the peculiar call of an amazing and enigmatic person — the person known as Secret Agent “X,” Man of a Thousand Faces, man of mystery and destiny. It signified that once more the master investigator had completed a relentless campaign against crime. The melodious note faded away as slowly as it had come. The work of Secret Agent “X” was done.
Curse of the Waiting Death
Satan’s signals! Those were the lights that gleamed above a bandit pack. Death’s own will-o’-the-wisps, with the power of an unseen curse behind them — a curse that made the police stand off, and made Secret Agent “X” pledge himself to battle on the volcano brink of destruction!
Chapter I
THE great plate-glass windows of Jules Pierrot’s Jewelry Shop cracked, split and snapped in a dozen places. Jagged, star-shaped holes appeared. Long slivers of shimmering glass broke away and fell to the sidewalk in a jangling cascade. Near the curb, six masked men, just emerging from a parked sedan, advanced slowly, laying a barrage of bullets before them.
Pedestrians in front of the fashionable store scattered and fled like frightened rabbits. They ducked for cover, sought shelter wherever they could find it.
A girl in expensive clothing, with silver fox furs draped over one shapely shoulder, ran like a mad thing close to the building’s facade. She passed near one of the masked bandits. Something gleamed at her white throat; something that caught the rays of the weak winter sun and sent out prismatic colors. It was a big diamond bar pin.
The bandit snarled in his throat like a hungry wolf. He grabbed the girl’s slim arm. His hooked fingers flashed forward, closing over the diamond. He ripped savagely, and the front of the girl’s dress tore open as the clasp of gold came loose. The bandit pushed her roughly away. She stumbled, fell to her silken knees, then leaped away again and dashed on, screaming fearfully, her high heels clicking over the pavement. The bandit pocketed the precious gem.
Others were already reaching through the shattered windows, scooping the glittering stones from the display racks. The leader of the vicious, marauding gang and one lieutenant, entered the store. Frightened customers, paralyzed with the sound of the din outside and the whining bullets that had glanced through the shop, huddled against counters. Clerks stood white-faced, trembling.
While the gunman guard crouched, with feet apart, the black snout of the sub-machine gun menacing all, the leader smashed a huge display counter with a single blow of a pistol butt. He gathered up piles of sparkling stones, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires — and dumped them into a canvas sack. His eyes behind the black mask held wolfish greed. His hands were tense as talons as he worked.