His gas gun flashed up now, quick as a striking snake. The Agent fired full into the fat gangster’s face, cutting off the scream that bubbled to Sanzoni’s lips. Sanzoni tumbled side-wise against the side of the car, inert as a bag of meal.
Making sure he was not being pursued, Agent “X” drove quickly to the same garage where a few hours before he had taken Bugs Gary. The ex-convict, formerly a Sanzoni man, was still his prisoner, in the house behind the garage. Now “X” carried the unconscious form of the gangster chief into the same house.
HE got out a hypo needle, gave Sanzoni an injection of anesthetic drug, which would insure his remaining out for at least twenty-four hours, unless the Agent chose to wake him with a counteracting stimulant.
Then “X” left the hideout, got into his car again, and drove away as swiftly as he had come. Time was a precious thing. Time — that Death might be held at bay.
Agent “X” looked down at the gray bomb now lying on the seat beside him. He was carrying one of death’s very germs through the night. He would take it somewhere, examine it carefully, make it yield whatever secrets it held. It might hold some clue to the Terror’s identity. It was a bet that must not be overlooked.
But in any examination there was danger that it might explode. For this reason he must take it far from the city’s teeming population, far from all human habitation. And speed was imperative. The Terror might try to bring things to some swift and ghastly climax.
Hunched over the wheel, knuckles white on its black rim, Agent “X” sped through the night. He had a definite objective now, a definite line of action.
He stopped at another hideout farther up town to make a quick change of disguise. When he emerged, he was no longer a nondescript, unshaven night prowler. He was a sandy-haired, blunt-featured young man, dressed in an ordinary business suit. He was A. J. Martin, newspaper man, connected with a large syndicate. But the deadly bomb lay on the auto seat beside him. The look of strained intensity still showed in the Agent’s eyes.
He raced along a wide avenue in the suburbs, drew up at last before a high iron gate with a broad field and low buildings beyond it. With the bomb under his arm, wrapped now in an old cloth, Agent “X” strode to the gate.
A sleepy watchman was on duty. He peered, nodded. “H’yer, Mr. Martin, gettin’ an early start this mornin’?”
The Agent merely grunted as he walked toward one of the airplane hangars. Far across the field, lights showed. A truck had come to a standstill. A fast, sturdy mail plane was getting ready to take off for the west.
SETTING the bomb down, Agent “X” unlocked and rolled back the hangar doors. He slipped into a teddy-bear flying suit which he took from a locker, adjusted a suede helmet on his head, slipped goggles over his forehead, ready to be snapped down.
Then he rolled out the small, compact plane that squatted in the hangar like some caged bird. It was swift, powerful, with the staggered wings, low camber and sweepback of any Army ship. It was the Secret Agent’s famous Blue Comet.
A mechanic shuffled out from the operations office; but Agent “X” had the bomb stowed away, the plane on the deadline and the motor warming before the man arrived.
Five minutes later he took off, sweeping up into the still black sky, carrying in the cockpit with him the metal cylinder that was the concentrated essence of Doom.
He climbed in short, swift spirals till the airport was far below, then headed the cowled nose of his plane northward, toward a lonely mountain field he knew. A rough log building stood there, with tools in it, and some laboratory equipment. Agent “X” had used it before to examine bombs and deadly gases. If any accident should occur, only one life would be wiped out — his own.
He planned to make a swift, thorough examination of the bomb, then return to battle with the Terror, perhaps with knowledge that would aid him in the one-sided fight.
But, with suburban lights still streaking below, some airman’s instinct warned “X” to look up. His goggled and helmeted head turned. He stared back along the plane’s sleek fuselage, and suddenly his hand tensed on the control stick.
A tiny, ghostly flame had appeared in the blackness above and to the rear. It was not a star; not a signal light on another ship. It was the feather of flame from the exhaust stack of a plane that he could not see. He closed his own throttle a moment, heard the whine of a racing motor.
Then a cry came from the Agent’s lips. For, as though the night had drawn itself together, into a vicious, mailed fist, something lashed down out of the blackness. Another flame sprang into sight now. It was greenish, flickering — and above the whine of the unseen motor he heard the staccato reports of a machine gun in action.
He knew in that instant that death was close. The other ship was above and behind. The silhouette of his Blue Comet could be seen against the ground lights. His own exhaust plume was visible also. And, with the crackling abruptness of a lightning bolt, the murderous attack came. Only the Agent’s quick thrust of the stick saved him from instant annihilation under the first deadly burst.
Bullets crackled through the Blue Comet’s orange wings. The Agent sideslipped away — but the brief, erratic flutter of the control in his hand conveyed a message of sinister warning. One of his ailerons had been struck. He was already crippled — with a murderer striking for his life.
Chapter XV
AT the moment “X” sensed his ship had been hit, he thought of the bomb. The deadly cylinder was tucked under his seat. It was wedged so as not to fall out — but any instant now it might explode.
If one of those ripping slugs so much as struck it a glancing blow, swift destruction would blast the night. Hours spent over war-torn fields in France years ago had taught Agent “X” all the tactics of aerial battle. As a youthful officer in Allied military intelligence, he had seen service on land, on sea and in the air. For the secret mysterious work of espionage knew no limitations, no frontiers. Only the picked few were chosen. Only the incredibly resourceful and daring survived.
The Agent did not attempt to dive away from that probing stream of lead. To do so would have been to court instant death. He drew the stick back into his lap, shot up in a screaming, hurtling zoom, with the thunderous power of the radial lifting his ship at elevator speed. Then he thrust the control to the left side of the pit as the plane came on its back, attempting a quick wing-over. But that crippled, damaged aileron played him false.
As though a giant steel cable had jerked it, the plane twisted around. It remained on its back, then side-slipped sickeningly. The next instant, as the attacking ship flashed by overhead, it threatened to go into a deadly flat spin.
Agent “X” eased it out gently, adjusting himself to the unequal aileron surface. For a moment the bullets were forgotten. His fight was with the treacherous unstable medium of the air itself — and with a ship that would not obey her controls.
Dread clutched at his heart, dread that he might plunge down into those populous suburbs. Human beings were sleeping down there. Men and women, children and little babies. If his plane, freighted with that sinister egg of death struck, peaceful well-cared-for homes would be transformed into charnel houses.
The killer above him was not considering that. In his savage desire to slay the being who was drawing close to his secrets, he was willing that hundreds of others should die. The Terror had said that his spies were ever watchful. One of them must have reported the theft of the bomb from Sanzoni’s headquarters. Perhaps he had men planted among the fat mobster’s own gang.