He strode forward, touched the sooty surface with a finger tip, and found hard, new cement beneath the grime. This job had been done within a few weeks. No other part of the building showed repairs. The significance of the thing was obvious. Betty Dale, watching him, understood too. She had followed, was close at his side, staring at the wall in uneasy fascination.
“They said the bomb was in here. That must be it — behind that plaster! Is there any way we can get it out — stop it?”
For answer “X” reached down and picked up a piece of brick. He tapped the cement gently; knew immediately by the sound that it was at least a foot thick, shook his head.
“If we had time, Betty, I could do it. But, there isn’t time!”
His light left the wall, returned to the heavy door. No lock showed on the inside. Its oak beams were reinforced with bolted strips-of metal. It would withstand at least an hour’s battering — and it was now nineteen minutes of twelve.
Every second counted. Death and time seemed to be working hand in hand against them. The girl sensed the hopelessness of their position, sensed that Agent “X” and she were doomed to die, yet the smile was still on her lips.
The Agent’s fingers gripped hers for a moment. He smiled into her eyes, then moved up to that door which seemed an impenetrable barrier. Looking at it now, briefly, speculatively, it was still the time element which baffled him. Given forty minutes, a half hour even, he was certain he could escape from here. The men who had shut Betty and himself inside this room of death did not know evidently with whom they were dealing. They had no knowledge of the strange, ingenious devices carried by Agent “X.” They did not guess the full extent of his resourcefulness.
“Hold the light, Betty,” he said suddenly. “Keep it on the door.”
Feverishly he took out his kit of tools. He scanned them for a moment, shook his head, laid them down. These bits of metal with their goose necks and queer pivotal extensions had served him well for a score of times. With them he had opened bank doors, picked locks that were considered invulnerable in his ceaseless quest for evidence of crime. But they would not serve him now — with only blank boarding to face.
He lifted one foot instead, reached inside his shot sole, and drew out a small implement concealed there. This, too, had performed seeming miracles in its time. At one side of it was a tiny, paper-thin hacksaw, on the back a file, made of a thin strip of black diamond, set in steel-hard cement.
The hinges of the door were fastened laterally, screwed inside the frame. Only their ends showed, and hinged joints themselves, with the metal pivots that held them together. These were welded in, with rounded heads top and bottom. Rust was flaked on them in mantling cakes.
Quickly, energetically, Agent “X” drew his diamond file across them. Under its keen teeth the rust came off. In a moment he had bared the bright metal of the pivot ends. But filing would be a long process. There wasn’t time for that.
Time — with that dreaded thing sealed in the wall close by. Time — with every second bringing them closer to eternity. Once the Agent glanced at Betty. A smile of hope, faith, was still on her lips. It clutched at his heart. The girl, who had seen him do the seemingly impossible before, trusted him now, thought that he had found a certain way out. Her hand was steady on the flash. Its beam gave “X” ample light to work by.
WITH tense fingers, he turned the file over, thrust the hacksaw blade against the line where the pivot head and hinge were joined. But rust still clogged the crack, hampered him. He ran and got a piece of brick, came back and knocked violently against the hinge.
Some of the rust came out. He struck the pivot up to give more room. Then, while the slow minute hand of his watch moved upward toward the spot which spelled destruction, he drew the hacksaw blade back and forth.
The sound of its teeth mounted. It snarled, bit into the metal. It rose to a thin wail, like the moan of a frightened animal there in that room of death. The Agent’s arm worked like a piston. His breath came in short, quick jerks.
The blade was halfway through now. Rust clogged it further as it bit in. Sweat stood out on the Agent’s forehead, though the chill of the December night lay like a pall within that room.
The hacksaw screamed more slowly. It rasped, lurched forward. One of the pivot heads dropped off. He did not attack the head at the other end. He stood erect, moved to the door’s top hinge now, thumping it first with the brick, then using the saw again. Once he stopped, asked a question.
“What time is it, Betty?” He tried to make his voice sound casual; tried to hide the eager, fearful note it held.
Betty glanced at her wristwatch. Words seemed to come from her throat with difficulty.
“Ten minutes to twelve,” she said. “Do you think—”
She didn’t finish. He didn’t answer. He went to work again, more quickly, more furiously than ever; drawing the saw across the pivot in thrusts that threatened to snap the blade; risking all in snarling, lashing strokes. Seconds seemed to be racing. His own pulse-beat seemed to mock him. Then the saw’s teeth slid through. The other pivot head came off.
He dropped the saw into his pocket, snatched up one of his small tools. It was a straight bit of steel like a nail set. In his other hand was a piece of brick.
Swiftly, surely, he hammered down on the tool’s top, struck the hinge pivot out of the joint. The tiny pieces of metal, which had held them prisoners like iron bars, dropped to the floor.
Agent “X” attacked the door. It fitted snugly. The padlock outside held one end. The wedged sections of the hinges held the other. He dropped to hands and knees, felt along the door’s bottom, and thrust his fingers in. Muscles along his back and shoulders rippled as he heaved. Betty had turned the flashlight down. There was no sound in the room, save the Agent’s labored breathing. Then the big door squeaked, stirred.
He drew the bottom toward him with a jerk that made the cords on his neck stand out. The wedged hinges came loose. The door broke away from its frame. The padlock staple prevented it from coming entirely free. But he cried out to Betty to step back. He caught the door’s edge, drew it inward — and a breath of chill night air came through the opening.
He seized Betty’s arm, pulled her from the building. “Quick, Betty! We must run! It’s our only chance. The boat!”
He didn’t know in which direction the nearest water lay. The prison shed seemed to be in the center of the island. It had no doubt been selected for that reason by the bomb planters, so that the Terror could make good his boast and destroy all. But “X” knew where he had left his speeding boat. His unerring sense of direction told him that.
He led the way, holding Betty’s arm. They raced across the ash-strewn ground under the bobbing beam of his flash. He knew it was a race with death, knew that now it must be five of twelve; knew that any instant, if there was a slip in time, a tiny discrepancy, the bomb might explode — and all his efforts would be futile.
Breathless, gasping, Agent “X” drew Betty along, till he saw the gleam of water ahead. Beyond it, far away, the twinkling lights of shore showed, and the lights of boats along the water’s surface. He turned a little to the left. There, by that mound of dirt hidden in the shadows, was where he had drawn up his own craft, the boat that would speed them away from this place of waiting death.