Chapter XVI
IT came even before he had reckoned. The seaplane was in a power dive. His airman’s ears told him that. The ship was hurtling down out of the night straight toward his opened chute. The white spread of it must be faintly visible even in the darkness — presenting a perfect target.
He waited till the engine’s roar was echoing almost in his ears — waited till something zipped close beside him in the darkness. It was a tracer he knew. The acrid smell of the phosphorous was in his nostrils.
Then his left hand tugged at the parachute’s shroud lines. He gathered them in expertly, spilled air out of the great, white umbrella — and the chute fell off on that side, rocked dizzily and plunged a good hundred feet lower.
The seaplane came around in a snarling bank. He was surprised at the quickness of the maneuver. Its guns were chattering again as his fingers dug into the shrouds. The ground was only six hundred feet down now. The flying killer was desperate to get him. He heard a sound that brought a coldness to his heart. It was the spat of a bullet against the top of his chute. He looked up. A dull glow showed. An incendiary tracer had gone through the fabric, left a burning ring. Here was death in a new guise!
With hands taut as talons the Secret Agent gathered in the shrouds away from the side where the burning spot appeared. He tugged fiercely; let the big envelope sag away, hoping to blow the fire out. But the wind blast was not great enough. It only fanned the slow flame — and Agent “X” knew that he was poised on the very brink of eternity. The small, cankerlike flame festered in his chute. The ground five hundred feet below. The bomb under his arm — and the bullets of the killer above seeking to do still more damage. He must not drop too fast — lest the shock of landing set off the death cylinder he carried. Yet he could not risk another bullet in the fabric of his chute. One more, and the wind that spilled from the holes would increase his velocity to such an extent that the bomb would surely explode when he hit.
Now, before the greedy flame had grown too great, he must stake everything — win or lose.
The plane was coming for him, its guns chattering madly. It had swooped lower, its pilot anticipating another hundred-foot drop on the part of “X”. But the Agent gathered in the shroud lines now and clutched them tightly, cutting the chute’s surface in half, falling away crazily — pitching downward to what seemed inevitable destruction. But “X” was watching the ground, figuring his odds as calmly as though this were some pleasant outdoor sport he were indulging in.
The pilot of the death ship, thinking evidently that the chute had been destroyed, not supposing that any man would take such chances purposely, held his fire.
Night wind was sweeping the chute toward a lighted avenue. The slender lines of telegraph wires showed. A vacant field was beyond them, with dark shrubbery at its farther edge. There were houses all around, and lights were appearing in them, as sleepers, wakened by the machine-gun fire, got up to see what it was.
Agent “X” held his breath. He was falling at a terrible speed. The telegraph wires were directly below now. Tangled in them, he would not be able to retain his hold on the bomb. It would fall to the hard ground — and that would be the end, for himself and a hundred others in the suburban houses around.
He released the shroud lines then — played his last card, let the chute billow out again. For a second his speed was unabated — and wind whistled through the rent where the sullen phosphorous flame still burned. But the spread of the fabric was still great enough to act as a partial cushion. His calculation had been uncanny. His earthward velocity decreased. The wind carried him over the gleaming wires. The dark turf of the field beyond swept up.
And now “X” got ready for the greatest ordeal of all — the shock when he struck with the added weight of the bomb. He drew his legs up under him, bent his knees to act as springs, pressed the metal cylinder against his middle and doubled up over it, both arms around it as though it had been a football. And the next instant he hit!
It was a moment when all existence seemed to hang suspended; a nightmarish second that he was never to forget. For the wind pulled him off his balance, dragged him over the hard, frozen ground, and the shocks were like some malicious fiend striking out deliberately for the bomb.
“X” ROLLED over on his back, took the full force of the blows against his body, protecting the bomb with his own flesh. And, when the chute caught and stopped at last in the shrubbery at the field’s end, he lay dazed for a moment.
Then in the blackness above him he heard the sinister drone of the seaplane again. And it brought him to his senses like the voice of doom. He set the bomb down, drew a knife from his pocket and slashed himself free of the chute harness.
The next instant, as a dark shape hurtled down out of the night, he was sprinting toward the grove of trees, plunging in amongst greenbriar and dwarf cedars as bullets sought to destroy him.
But he knew he could not be seen now. He held the bomb safely, raced deeper into the woods, and the slashing stream of lead that clipped branches and spatted against the ground, swung away. Agent “X” was safe.
But he did not think of that. His desperate, daring work had made him slur over such contrasts. Safety — danger, came in too swift rotation. He only knew there was work to be done, an unheard-of menace to be battled. More than ever speed was imperative. For the Terror, learning how “X” had struggled to preserve the bomb, might suspect that he had some deeper motive than desire to chisel in on Gus Sanzoni’s racket. And it was apparent, from the air attack on “X,” that the Terror’s spies were everywhere; that he had secret knowledge of the underworld.
The Agent got out of his flying suit, wrapped it around the deadly cylinder. He paused suddenly. From far off there came a jarring crash — then silence.
That would be his faithful Blue Comet, passing to destruction. It was nothing but a tangled piece of wreckage now. He only hoped that no house or building had been in its path. He could not fly to his mountain laboratory in it. There wasn’t time to charter another ship. He was far from an air field.
He emerged from the woods, saw a small, suburban village ahead. It was late, long after midnight. The narrow streets were empty, the houses dark. But a few parked cars stood about, their owners too poor or too niggardly to rent garage space.
The Secret Agent moved quickly toward one. He could not dally with convention. In his battles with crime he used whatever means came to hand, when emergency pressed close. He would borrow a vehicle now, settle with its owner later if there was any loss. Those who unknowingly aided the Secret Agent always received double the value of the service rendered.
One of the cars was a common standard make. A key on the Agent’s ring, adjustable to any lock tumblers of a certain size, opened the door and started the ignition. In a moment he was driving away into the open country, with the deadly bomb beside him.
He located what appeared to be a deserted farm, judging by the condition of the buildings, and drove his borrowed car into an old barn. Here he turned up a box and laid the bomb on it.
Using the car’s headlights as laboratory lamps he spread out the compact portable tools that had been hidden in his pockets and strapped to his body during the chute jump. There were others that he would have liked to have but with these he had often before accomplished seeming miracles. There were files, a pair of clippers, screwdrivers, a hacksaw, and the goose-necked and pivoted bits of metal with which he opened locks. These would have to do in the strange task before him.