The leader spoke sharply to one of his men. “Go up and get the big boss,” he said. “Ask him to come down here. Tell him there’s a crazy guy threatening to blow the place up.”
They had backed out into the main part of the cellar now. They faced Agent “X” as he emerged from the wine room.
He saw that these men had no inkling of the truth. They didn’t know the nature of the protection that a master criminal had given their boss, Gus Sanzoni.
A moment later there was a creaking on the stairs, then a wheezing sound as the fat criminal, Gus Sanzoni, came down into the cellar. His small, piggish eyes were bright as he spoke in an unctuous, oily tone, thinking evidently that “X” was some half-mad criminal with a new sort of racket.
“Come on now, fella,” he said smoothly. “I’ll pay you big to take that thing outta here. You’re a smart fella, and I like smart guys. You’ve got a good racket, and I’m willing to come across. Just take that thing out easy, I got guests upstairs.” “X” intercepted a flashing signal from fat Sanzoni’s eyes. He saw two of the gangsters edging slowly nearer, ready to make a sudden lunge while Sanzoni talked. They thought “X” was some kind of a crazy terrorist. They planned to take the bomb away from him by guile.
“X” spoke again quickly, staring Sanzoni straight in the face. “No tricks,” he said harshly, “or none of you will live. This thing can’t be fooled with — and I didn’t bring it in. It was here already — and has been here for days. Look in your wine cellar. It was sealed in the wall there. I just took it out.”
More jeers came, but Gus Sanzoni looked startled.
“Go and see,” he wheezed. “You, José, find out if the guy’s telling the truth.”
A swarthy gangster detached himself from the group and disappeared into the wine cellar that “X” had so lately left. He came back big eyed, and nodded.
“It’s God’s truth, boss! There’s a hole in the wall — a place for that thing to roost in. The cement’s been cut away. That bomb must have been there — and this guy took it out.”
Sudden pastiness spread over Sanzoni’s fat face. His breath seemed to choke him, wheeze in his throat.
“Some one,” he gasped, “planted it there — to kill me!” he clenched his big hands, screamed sudden orders. “Search — you fools! There may be others!” His eyes glinted with cunning as he stared at “X.”
“You must be a detective,” he went on. “You must have got wind of the fact that that thing was there.”
There was a moment of silence, then the Agent answered slowly, each syllable falling dramatically from his lips.
“I am Secret Agent ‘X,’” he said.
He had reason for letting Gus Sanzoni and his men know who he was. He was gambling with death — staking his wits against the Grim Reaper, not to preserve his own life — but hoping to save the lives of others.
For he recalled vividly the words of the document found in Ballantine’s safe. “Any undercover attempt to thwart my plans will only result in catastrophe.” The Secret Agent had to think of those thousands who would be brought close to the brink of eternity when the Terror learned that some one was after him. If the Terror suspected the law was on his trail, he might make good his threat — send out the impulse that would plunge the city into the vortex of bloody horror.
But if he understood it wasn’t the law, but Secret Agent “X,” a man supposedly a desperate criminal like himself, and whom the police had many times tried to capture and imprison, he would take other means. He would try assuredly to kill the Agent as a dangerous rival. But he would see the uselessness of destroying the city’s thousands.
THAT was the Secret Agent’s mad gamble. Fear for once lay cold against his heart. Fear for the citizens who did not know their danger. Fear that he was playing too reckless a game. What if the Terror should suspect? But he could not think of that— He turned almost fiercely on Sanzoni.
The fat gangster’s jaw had dropped at mention of the dread name of Agent “X.” The eyes of his men had grown wide. Rumors, whispered along the byways of the underworld, had reached their ears. The pall of impenetrable mystery that lay over the Secret Agent’s activities made his character fearsome, awe-inspiring. That fear whitened the face of Sanzoni now. He obviously believed himself in the presence of an arch-criminal, pitiless, enigmatic, inhuman. He tried to speak, but only a wheeze came from his bloodless lips. One fat hand ineffectually pawed the air.
Agent “X” took advantage of the momentary sensation his disclosure had made. He made an abrupt movement, so quick that none in that room could follow it. His right hand, clutching the deadly bomb, swung down under his arm. His left snapped forward, the gas gun appearing as though by magic in his fingers — its muzzle pressed against the fat belly of Sanzoni.
“Now,” he snapped, “you will come with me! I want to talk to you — and if any of your men shoot or try to interfere, two things will happen. First, I’ll pull the trigger of this gun. Second, this bomb will drop — and blow you to pieces.”
Gus Sanzoni was quaking now. Prosperity had made him soft. Fear had a leechlike hold upon him. He found his voice at last.
“Keep away, boys,” he said weakly. “I’ll see what — what this man wants. Stand clear of the stairs.”
With Sanzoni mounting ahead of him, “X’s” gun at his back, the Agent guided the gangster from the cellar and took the bomb with him.
“Out that door,” he commanded. “Quick!”
With gangsters trailing them at a respectful distance, Agent “X” prodded Sanzoni along the dark street to his parked car. He took a roundabout route, away from the lighted entrance of the building.
“Get in,” he ordered when they reached the car.
For a moment Sanzoni hesitated. A jab of the gun made him jump. “X” threw the car into gear and shot away from the curb, the gun still in his hand. Driving swiftly through the night-shrouded streets, he turned and stared at the fat criminal. There was a look of flashing magnetic power in the Agent’s eyes now that evil-doers found hard to meet. Backed by the steady pressure of the gun, it menaced Gus Sanzoni, while the Agent asked a question.
“Who is the man who gives you protection, Sanzoni?”
The gangster’s lower jaw dropped. He swayed a little in the seat.
“I—” his breath came to a wheezing end. He began again. “I — can’t — tell — you!”
“No!” There was harsh derision in the Agent’s tone. “I’ll answer that question myself then. The mayor of this city hands it out. Isn’t that right?”
Another jab of the gun followed “X’s” words. The fat gangster’s silence and widening eyes gave mute confirmation to what “X” had said.
“And you’ve been pulling a lot of fast ones lately, Sanzoni,” went on the Agent. “Your men have been having it all their own way, without police interference. Who’s the fellow you divvy up with — that’s what I want to know? Come on, tell me, or I’ll pull the trigger of this gat — and dump you out in a ditch.”
This was the kind of talk Sanzoni understood. He had left riddled sodden corpses lying in ditches himself in his time. He saw violent death staring him in the face, and a trembling seized his body. He clenched and unclenched his fat hands.
“I–I don’t know,” he wheezed. “Honest, I never seen the guy. I just get orders — by telephone — where to leave the stuff. I leave it where he says. He’s got the mayor sewed up somehow. The bulls have been laying off my men like you say.”
The Agent’s face was masklike for a moment. An uncanny judge of human nature, he knew that Sanzoni was telling the truth. This was what he had half expected. This was what the document in Ballantine’s safe had led him to believe. Sanzoni himself didn’t know who the Terror was. “X” didn’t speak again. His purpose in forcing Sanzoni to come along with him had not been merely to question the man.