“X” stepped through a hedge of sparse evergreens. His form blended with the shadows along the wall for a moment. A key grated in an ancient lock. A rusty gate swung open, closed softly — and Agent “X” was in the mysterious, statue-strewn rear yard of the old Montgomery Mansion.
He crossed it quickly to the back of the house that had been closed for years because of the bitter litigation of heirs. Here he descended a flight of stairs to a basement entrance, went inside and climbed more stairs to a butler’s pantry.
Under his pressure on a secret lever, one of the big pantry shelves swung out. A door was revealed here, with a large room behind it, a chamber that no one except an architect going over the cubic space of the house would ever suspect. Agent “X” was in a hideout where none had ever been able to trace him.
He went at once to a series of metal cabinets. Here were perhaps the most complete criminological files in the country. Here was data on famous criminals and lesser-known ones that even the police did not possess. Here were odd facts and strange human sidelights which aided the Secret Agent in his amazing work. Fingerprints and Bertillon measurements were included. The files had a cross index system, the result of painstaking hours of labor on the Agent’s part. He quickly drew out a small envelope containing the life history of Gus Sanzoni, the man of whom Thaddeus Penny had spoken.
All the facts were given here, many of which “X” remembered. But he wanted to check up and make sure. The Gangster’s first steps in crime were recorded; his early thefts as a parcel snatcher. His leadership of a gang of hoodlums. His rise to power during the prohibition era when his business sharpness and brutal tactics made him the head of one of the city’s largest bootleg rings. Then the loss of his fortune and his decline into comparative obscurity as the owner of a night club when the repeal law was passed. Names of Sanzoni’s mobsters were included.
The Agent quickly found an item that interested him. Two of Sanzoni’s former lieutenants, Floyd Kittredge and “Bugs” Gary, were in prison. They had been held in connection with a cop shooting during a liquor raid. Bugs Gary’s time was almost up. He had only a month more to serve. His term had been shortened owing to good behavior in prison.
Agent “X” quickly memorized the data on Bugs Gary. It wasn’t quite as complete as he would have liked, yet it would serve his purpose. He left his hideout twenty minutes later, satisfied that he had a definite working plan.
THAT afternoon a long-distance call was received in Washington by a man who preferred to be known only as K9. He was an official of the government, so high that a mere suggestion from his lips became a command elsewhere.
For five minutes Secret Agent “X,” speaking in a low, guarded voice, and using a private wire straight to Capital Hill, talked to K9. K9 listened and agreed.
The governor of the state in which crime had so strangely broken out and was racing unchecked, received an official government message within the hour. It suggested immediate clemency for the ex-gangster, Bugs Gary.
This message was transmitted to the warden of the prison where Bugs was held. From then on, the wheels of the official machinery, which Secret Agent “X” had set in motion, moved speedily.
Bugs was called into the warden’s office. He was told that because of good behavior, the governor had seen fit to shorten his sentence. He was handed his pardon, told that he was now a free man. And, slightly dazed, hardly believing his good fortune, he walked out of the prison gates, with money in his pocket and a new suit of clothes provided by the state on his back.
He didn’t notice the inconspicuously featured man in brown, who at once trailed him. The stranger’s manner was so casual that even a criminal twice as clever as Bugs would not have suspected he was being followed.
Yet when Bugs went to the station and swung aboard an express bound for the city, the man in brown was on the car, too. He took a seat close to Bugs, keeping the ex-gangster under surveillance through a tiny hole torn in the newspaper which he held before his face.
There was more than mere curiosity in the stranger’s eyes. There was studied appraisal. He was watching hawk-eyed every gesture Bugs made. When the gangster asked the conductor a question about the train schedule, the man listened to each syllable of the criminal’s voice, storing it away carefully in his memory. At the big Union Depot where Bugs Gary alighted, the stranger strode behind him for some distance, noting the gangster’s walk.
Bugs paused for a moment before the windows of a station haberdashery shop to eye admiringly a checked suit of latest cut, and a collection of startlingly bright ties. It was then that the man in brown brushed against him.
Bugs felt a slight prick in his arm, hardly more than as though some tiny splinter of wood mixed with the cloth of his suit had been driven in. He heard the man in brown apologize for being clumsy, then move on — and Bugs thought nothing of it.
But a moment later his legs began to rock and sway under him. Details of the building and people around him began to blur. Bugs opened his mouth to give a frightened cry; but no sound came. His tongue, like his legs, seemed to be out of commission. With a grunt, Bugs Gary collapsed to the station floor and lay there with a surprised expression on his heavy ugly face.
THE man in brown came instantly to his side. He had whipped a black case from his pocket. He looked deeply concerned. A crowd began to gather. The man in brown spoke authoritatively.
“Stand back! Give this man some air, I’m a doctor. He appears to have had a heart attack. Some one help me get him to my car outside. We’ll take him to a hospital at once!”
A station attendant gave the required aid. Bugs Gary was carried limply to a small, compact coupé parked outside the station. A few slight dents in its sleek enamel which were carefully patched bullet holes didn’t attract the attendant’s attention. The man who had said he was a doctor drove swiftly away with the unconscious gangster at his side.
But he didn’t go to a hospital. Instead, he drove swiftly to a garage back of a small suburban house. Once inside, he closed the garage door, and carried Bugs through a passageway to the house itself. This was empty. It was another of the Agent’s hideouts, and he had accomplished the capture of Bugs Gary by a means he had often used before — the injection of a quick-acting, harmless anesthetic.
Bugs came to after awhile. Still in a dazed state, he found himself handcuffed in a chair and facing a man whose eyes had an uncanny, magnetic intentness. He was terrified at first, but the stranger soothed his fears. No harm would come to him if Bugs answered a few simple questions about his past. Because he couldn’t seem to help it under the steady stare of those burning eyes, Bugs Gary did so.
The stranger listened carefully, as much, it seemed, to the tones of his voice as to his words. He made minute examination of Bugs’ face and figure, asked him what sort of clothes he liked to wear, his eating preferences, and other odd, personal questions.
At the end of it, the stranger offered Bugs a drink of liquor which the gangster eagerly accepted. He finished it, licked his lips and once more dozed off into dreamless slumber. Though he didn’t know it, he was due this time not to wake up for at least thirty-six hours — unless Agent “X” chose to administer a reviving stimulant…
As dusk was again falling over the city, a man, who looked for all the world like Bugs Gary, stepped out of a taxi and swaggered toward the lighted doors of the Montmorency Club. This was the infamous underworld dive whose present proprietor was Gus Sanzoni.
Evening papers had mentioned the fact that Bugs Gary had been pardoned. Whispers had run through crookdom. Bugs would surely be coming back to his old haunts.