The afternoon dragged by. Dusk came at last, stealing across the city like some shadowy, sinister portent. Sanzoni’s men came and went; came for orders; came to tell their supposed chief about their murderous, criminal activities. “X” could not tell them to cease their raids. A few innocent citizens must still suffer — that death might not come to thousands. He must appear in all ways to be Sanzoni.
Sitting behind his desk, he gave directions to Sanzoni’s evil horde — and waited for the call that would be a command for Sanzoni himself.
Yet the cigar-box radio on the desk before him was silent. Hobart had not succeeded in finding Harrigan. The Agent’s campaign against appalling, ruthless crime still hung in doubt.
He got up at last, paced the private office, looked at the lighted streets of the city. Men and women were hurrying by, unaware of the danger that threatened every instant. Others, laughing, elaborately dressed, would come here to the Montmorency Club, to dance and be gay, while doom crept close.
Goldie La Mar stuck her head in once. Meek, blonde and perfumed, clad in a clinging green evening gown, she spoke in sugary tones.
“Ain’t you gonna have no dinner, Gus? I had the chef fix up all the things you like. I wouldn’ta danced with Bugs last night — only he asked me to — an’ I wanted to find out what he had to say for himself.”
AGENT “X” waved the woman away. “Don’t bother me, Goldie. I’ll eat when I’m ready.”
He had his dinner brought into his office again. He nibbled at it, had the dishes taken away, and sat hunched over the desk, apparently in deep thought, but really listening for the insect note of the concealed radio.
Then at ten o’clock the telephone beside him rang abruptly. The Agent was conscious of a slight trembling of his hands as he lifted the receiver. It might be one of a score of people calling the gangster chief, some underworld acquaintance of Sanzoni. But a secret hunch told him that it was not. Personal calls had been few and far between all day. The club’s acting manager, a suave-faced young mobster, took care of the routine business.
“Gus Sanzoni, speaking,” he wheezed. And as soon as the voice sounded at the other end of the wire, the Agent’s body tensed. For the tones of the voice were flat, unemotional, and spoken in a peculiarly measured way. Agent “X,” a close student of phonetics, knew that the voice he was hearing now was disguised; knew that it was spoken by a man who did not want his identity revealed — the Terror.
“You were not at hand to receive my second call last night,” the voice said. “Why?”
“I–I had to leave!” the Agent wheezed. “I was taken away — by a guy who called himself Secret Agent ‘X.’”
There was an instant’s pause at the opposite end of the wire. Then the disguised voice came again. “And this man — Secret Agent ‘X’—where is he now? What did he want of you?”
Recalling the air battle over the bomb, “X” knew that he must not make the slightest inconsistent statement.
“I croaked him, chief,” he said. “I had to — he wanted to chisel in on our racket. He gave me a shot of dope — knocked me out for a couple of hours. I don’t know where he went then. When I came to I was in his apartment, but before I could get on my feet again, I heard him coming back. So I laid low. He thought I was still knocked out — then I jumped him. We had a fight — and I slugged him proper. Then I came back here. He had a bomb planted in the cellar. He’s a bad guy — but he won’t bother us no more. A coffin’s the only thing he’s got any use for now.”
The Agent’s knuckles were white on the black receiver of the phone. He was playing a bluff that brought sweat to his forehead — sweat, because he feared for the lives of those teeming thousands outside. His voice sank, became more of a wheeze.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here last night, chief, when you called. But I got some stuff — nearly a hundred and fifty grand. A hundred for you — all in cash.”
“Take a cab to the foot of Smith Street,” the order came. “Get out, walk across the vacant lot at the right. Stand in the shadow of the big billboard. My man will meet you at ten o’clock. That is all.”
The mention of the hundred thousand in cash had done the trick — diverted the Terror’s mind from Agent “X.” Not suspecting for an instant that any man would attempt such a thing as the impersonation of Gus Sanzoni, he had accepted the Agent’s story about his own death. It was now half past nine. In ten minutes Agent “X” would go forth to meet the henchman of the Terror.
Chapter XIX
HANDS clenched tightly, eyes bleak, Agent “X” started to rise from Gus Sanzoni’s desk. Then he stopped. Out of the wooden cigar box before him a faint, insect-like buzz was issuing.
“X” darted a glance toward the door, saw that it was closed and bent down. He recognized at once the dot-dash signals of the Z2 code. This was a special, syllabic code he had worked out with Jim Hobart, forcing the lanky redhead to learn it in many a tedious session with a telegraph key and a buzzer. Picked up by any amateur or commercial operator, its groupings would be unintelligible.
But the message was brief and plain, simple as day to the Secret Agent’s trained ears.
“Harrigan located. Visitor on Sutton’s yacht Osprey. Is expected to remain there as guest until yacht sails on cruise for southern waters.”
Patiently, in precise dots and dashes, Jim Hobart began the message again. But Agent “X” lifted the lid of the cigar box and clicked the current off. If any one came in and walked close to the desk, that insect buzz would be a betrayal — and he had heard all he needed to know. Harrigan was on the Osprey—probably with the mayor again. Previous reports had informed “X” that Mayor Ballantine was spending a great deal of his spare time on the yacht.
Agent “X” gathered up his cigar-box radio. He walked with it to the black safe in the corner. He again opened the safe, without listening to the lock now, for he had memorized the combination. He took out the black satchel, carefully counted out one hundred thousand dollars, and tucked them away in the satchel’s bottom. This left room at the top for his secret radio. He did not want to leave it behind him here.
He closed the safe, put on Sanzoni’s hat and coat, and, with the satchel in his hand, he left the Montmorency Club by the side exit again. Several of Sanzoni’s gangsters saw him. But he didn’t speak, and they made no attempt to follow as a bodyguard. This was proof to “X” that they were accustomed to Sanzoni’s nocturnal departures, with the Terror’s share of the loot. Perhaps they did not know what Sanzbni carried in that satchel. But he had evidently impressed them with the fact that he was to be left alone when he went out with it at night.
“X” followed the Terror’s instructions, took a cab to the foot of Smith Street, a dark commercial thoroughfare that led toward the black waters of the river. Its shops and warehouses were closed now. The cab jolted over rough cobblestones. The driver looked nervously about him when the vehicle stopped.
Agent “X” paid the man, struck off to the right, where he saw the dark expanse of a vacant lot. In the shadow beside a big warehouse loading platform, he drew the cigar-box radio from the satchel. He stooped for an instant, thrust the radio through a broken board under the platform itself. Later, if he chose, he could retrieve it.
There was not a soul in sight. The vacant lot seemed a place of desolation, of possible death. If this were a trap, the Terror could have found a no more likely spot. A thin, vicious cat rattled stones as it slunk out of “X’s” path. For a moment its green eyes glared back at “X.” This was the only indication of life.