Quietly, calmly, he set to work, removing the bomb’s dust cap again, baring the intricate radio-impulse mechanism. A sudden horror filled him as he looked at it. What if the Terror should send out the fatal dots and dashes on a wave-length of nineteen meters just to blast him into eternity? This bomb would not explode, but eleven others might. He would be safe — but a whole city might be bathed in blood and death. For he had figured that all twelve of the hidden bombs must be sensitive to the same impulse.
His fingers trembled slightly as he began to disassemble the ghastly infernal machine. But soon they steadied. Here was work that called for the utmost care and caution. He located the bomb’s fuse and a tiny gunlike hammer which could be liberated by clockwork to descend on the detonating cap. He breathed easier when both had been removed.
He examined each piece that he took out, made brief but precise notes on a piece of paper. A micrometer gauge, accurate to the thousandth of an inch, gave him fractional measurements.
He viewed the inner casing of the bomb. It had been made to fit a thirty-seven millimeter shell, such as are used in the new aerial war cannon. The criminal genius who had devised the bomb had merely adapted it for a still more terrible use. And Agent “X” bent forward suddenly. For at the bottom of the case was a manufacturer’s mark, stamped into the metal.
The Agent focused a double-lensed magnifier upon it. It was the registered design of an American shell maker — the Schofield Arms Company, a small munitions concern which had prospered recently on orders for light arms and small caliber aerial cannon received from several Balkan States.
The mark itself did not excite “X.” He had seen it before during an investigation into the world munitions’ traffic, when he had collected data on the giant Skoda works, on the Vickers plants in England, and on a half dozen other European and United States concerns.
What did excite him was a fact stored away in his own memory. For he knew that the Schofield Arms Company was controlled by American interests, American investors, and foremost among them was a man the Agent had talked to only a few days before. This was Harrigan — member of the Bankers’ Club and close associate of Mayor Ballantine — who had gone out to interview Ballantine on Monte Sutton’s yacht, and had later been caught by “X” rifling the mayor’s safe.
Chapter XVII
EMOTION filled “X” as he continued his work. His startling discovery of the clue connecting Harrigan’s concern with the murder machine was like a whiplash spurring him on.
He removed the appalling explosive itself next. It was contained in a celluloid case. It was a greenish, greasy acid. The faint fumes coiling from it were like a miasma of death. He buried most of it under the barn floor where he could return for it later. He took out an infinitely small sample to be submitted to chemical analysis. And even these few grains, he knew, could reduce a man’s body to a bloody pulp.
He quickly reassembled the empty bomb, did it up again in his flying clothes, and left the deserted farm as he had come.
Grimly he drove through the darkness in the borrowed auto, headed back toward the city. There were still several hours of darkness left. There was much to be done in them.
In the next hour Agent “X” sent out commands to both of his undercover organizations. He commissioned Bates to investigate secretly the Schofield Arms Company and obtain all possible data as to their present activities in high-explosive manufacture. He asked Jim Hobart to locate Harrigan immediately.
Then Agent “X” went to the hideout where Bugs Gary and Gus Sanzoni were still unconscious prisoners. “X” had a move in mind more daring than any he had ordered Bates or Hobart to perform. It was a move that no other criminal investigator in the world would have thought of undertaking — a move that only Secret Agent “X,” Man of a Thousand Faces, was fitted to make, by talent and training.
He went to the couch at the side of the room where the gross, slumped figure of Gus Sanzoni lay. Every shade in the house had been drawn. Special, light-proof shutters of opaque boarding had been fitted by “X” on the inside of the windows in the chamber where he had deposited his prisoners. He switched on a small mercury vapor lamp now. Its beam made the room as bright as day. An achromatic globe over the lamp acted as a color-filter in bringing out the natural tints of Gus Sanzoni’s fat face.
Agent “X” studied the mobster intently. Sanzoni was breathing slowly and stertorously in his deep, drug-induced sleep. The Agent took a leatherette case of medicines and chemicals from a cabinet drawer. He tied a paper cone over Sanzoni’s face, let fall a trickle of blended ammonia spirits in a piece of cotton at the cone’s end. The fumes filled Sanzoni’s nostrils, entered his lungs.
Three minutes of involuntary inhaling, and Gus Sanzoni was breathing more quickly. His arms moved. His eyelids began to flutter. He had returned to the borderland of consciousness.
Agent “X” took a small bottle from the chemical case. It contained a colorless liquid — essence of sodium amythal. He poured a few drops of this into a whiskey glass of water, tipped back Sanzoni’s head, and made the man swallow.
Sanzoni’s movements and the fluttering of his eyelids soon ceased. He had come out of the influence of one anesthetic, only to be subjected to another. But this was of a different nature.
The Agent fired low-voiced questions at Sanzoni, and in a moment Sanzoni was giving reply. His answers were mere confused mutterings at first. But, as unconscious nerve centers took control, his voice grew stronger, became natural.
His answers were whining, suave, domineering — according to the questions “X” put to him. And these questions were seemingly unrelated to the criminal case in hand. They were questions concerning Sanzoni’s personal habits, his likes and dislikes in food and liquor, his attitude toward politics, his treatment of his men.
Other queries concerning Sanzoni’s communication with the Terror followed. “X” verified what Sanzoni had stated previously — that he alone was the one who dealt with the Terror’s representative, handing over the Terror’s share of the loot, after he had received a telephone call designating the place of delivery. “X” listened to Sanzoni’s voice as well as the words he uttered.
Several times he ordered Sanzoni to repeat a sentence. More than once Agent “X” spoke a phrase directly after the mobster. And the effect then was uncanny. For the Agent’s amazing power of mimicry made it appear as though two Gus Sanzonis had spoken. He mastered the gangster’s wheezing inflection, copied the involuntary gestures that Sanzoni made with his hands and arms as he talked.
And when he had gotten what he wanted, Agent “X” gave his prisoner still another administration of chemical — a hypo injection this time, of the same sort he had given Bugs Gary. Sanzoni returned to the realm of complete unconsciousness.
IT was then that Agent “X” began one of the most difficult disguises he had ever attempted. Sanzoni was the same height as himself. But there were those roils of fat on the gangster’s face and body to be coped with, the baggy flesh under his eyes, the flabby jowls.
These presented great difficulties. Yet Agent “X,” as a master impersonator, had anticipated that he would one day come up against such a problem. He had prepared.
In a locked, metal-bound chest in his hideout were sets of padding. Sets such as some great character actor might have possessed. These had been made for “X” by a famous Parisian stage costumer. He selected those which, fastened on, developed the rotundities of Sanzoni.