He saw the big billboard the Terror had mentioned rising on the far side of the lot. Its surface showed a ghostly white in the darkness where a faint wash of street light reflected.
Agent “X” picked his way across the lot, every sense alert. He knew it must be close to ten. The Terror’s man must be near at hand, somewhere in the darkness. His own figure must be silhouetted by the glow in the street beyond. This was part of the Terror’s plan, so that his representative could be sure Sanzoni had come alone.
When the billboard rose directly above him, Agent “X” paused. All around him the darkness was complete. The great bulk of an old factory building rose on his left now, shutting out all light from that direction. Beside him was the smoke-blackened framework of the billboard. A thin streamer of dank mist off the river raced by him in the gloom like a hurrying specter. He heard no sound of footsteps, no indication of human presence.
But, as a great clock in a square blocks away boomed the hour of ten, a voice spoke beside the Agent:
“Give us that satchel, mister.”
A SMALL, wiry man, sure-footed and quick as a rat, came out from the skeleton maze of the billboard supports. Without waiting for “X” to reply, his fingers closed over the satchel. He took it and whisked away as quickly as he had come. It was all over in an instant. The Agent had met the Terror’s man — and the Terror’s man had gone.
But there were grim lights in Agent “X’s” eyes. He had come here for a purpose. That purpose was not to be lost sight of.
He picked his way quickly back across the vacant lot. At Smith Street, he turned right toward the river. Suddenly he sped through the darkness like a silent, racing ghoul. His quick brain had been working. The rat-faced man had come from behind the billboard, come from the side facing the water. There was a dark street of deserted stores and few lights at that point, with old wharves to hide on, and innumerable doorways in which to crouch. It was there surely that the Terror’s man had gone.
Agent “X” stopped short when he reached it. His rubber-soled shoes had made no noise. His eyes had adjusted themselves to the dim light. There had been rumors that Agent “X” could see in the dark. This was not so; but he had trained himself to make use of any available light beam; of illumination so dim that the average person could have seen nothing.
He did not miss the faint movement a half block away which marked the passing of the rat-faced man. He even got the man’s direction — and he followed with the cautious footsteps of a master shadower.
From doorway to doorway he slunk. Crouching at times, creeping Indian fashion across open spaces that he must traverse, eyes never losing sight of the man ahead.
The Terror’s henchman looked back once. He could see nothing. His actions indicated that he felt himself safe. Often before he must have met Sanzoni, picked up the loot, and carried it to his master. He had no reason to believe tonight that the man who had come as Sanzoni was any other.
And the course he was taking was parallel with the waterfront.
Agent “X” crept closer, using the opposite side of the street. Dock entrances afforded shadowed shelter here, as did also the parked trucks, silent and still for the night. The Agent was almost opposite the small man now. He paused suddenly as the Terror’s representative left the sidewalk, crossed the street, and moved along the river’s edge. The man plunged between two covered docks, disappeared for a moment. But Agent “X” was soon at the mouth of the alleylike passage that led directly to the river.
He saw that the rat-faced man had snapped on a flashlight. He was bobbing along toward the black water, the satchel in his hand. The beam of the flash was lighting the ground ahead of him, and abruptly Agent “X” crouched forward, eyes narrowed.
For the thrusting beam of the electric flash had centered on a boat. It was a small boat, painted white. There was faint lettering on its bow.
As the man stooped intently, loosening a mooring rope and arranging his oars, Agent “X,” crouched to the ground, coming closer. He held his breath as he made out the name that the letters on the boat’s bow spelled. There were six of them, forming a single word. That word was familiar to Agent “X”—Osprey.
JIM HOBART’S message flashed through his mind at the same instant as he saw it. Harrigan had been located. Harrigan was on the Osprey. And now the Terror’s man, with a hundred thousand in stolen bills, was using the Osprey’s boat.
The Agent could have leaped out of the darkness and made a prisoner of the man. But, so close to his goal, he dared not take chances. There was no saying what the Terror might do if his messenger from Sanzoni did not arrive.
The Agent waited in the darkness, saw the rat-faced man shove off onto the black, sucking tide of the river, heard the faint rattle of the oarlocks as the boat drew away.
He was holding his breath, tense in every muscle. But he turned and sped back to the riverfront street. In a black patch of shadow he tore at his face, peeling off the awkward make-up of Gus Sanzoni. He substituted, from tubes of plastic material that he carried, one of his “stock disguises” that he could fashion by the sensitive touch of his fingers alone.
He drew the padding that had made him bulky as Sanzoni from beneath his clothes. The suit, many sizes too large for him now, hung slackly on his muscular frame. It was not comfortable, it even impeded his movements; but he could not help it.
“X” had prepared for different kinds of water travel from a variety of hidden bases. There was a spot at the river’s edge where an old barge had sprung a leak and sunk. The water was shallow. The forward part of the barge was still above the surface. The company owning it had not cared to go to the expense of salvaging it, or having it destroyed. It had been roped off, left to rot. There was a gaping hole in its side where ice cakes in winter storms had battered in the planking.
Agent “X” leaped to the barge’s deck from a near-by dock. In a moment he was above the jagged hole in its side. Hanging by his hands he lowered himself, angled his body beneath the deck, and disappeared from sight.
Two minutes passed, and the knife-sharp bow of a small, odd craft appeared. It was a featherweight, Eskimo type kayak — a slender boat made of canvas stretched over a wooden framework. Agent “X” sat in the middle, in a circular cockpit. A thin, double-bladed paddle propelled the craft. Outside of a racing shell, it was the fastest type of one-man boat in the world.
He pushed it from beneath the barge where he had kept it hidden, sent it skimming out onto the river. Swift and silent as a surface swimming seal, he drove it along with expert sweeps of the paddle, rocking from side to side as he dug the blade in.
He paused to listen. The faint squeak of oarlocks reached his keen ears. That would be the Terror’s man, rowing toward the Osprey. Cutting down his own speed, Agent “X” followed the sound. He could have overtaken the other, reached the Osprey ahead of him. They traveled parallel with the city, continued nearly a mile up the river, to the yacht club opposite which the Osprey was anchored.
Agent “X” saw the Osprey’s lighted portholes at last. He started, straining his eyes in the gloom as he came nearer. A feather of smoke showed above the Osprey’s single funnel. The boat was getting steam up, preparing for departure it seemed, and Harrigan, the man connected with the Schofield Arms Company, from which the inner casing of the radio bomb had come, planned to be among the guests on the contemplated southern cruise.