SLOWLY, carefully, “X” withdrew his hand from his pocket holding the two gems in his fingers. They glowed with deep, mysterious color under the spotlight. Anyone could see that they were pearls of immense value.
From the Skull there came the wheeze of a sudden, amazed intake of breath. A moment there was silence, then the spotlight clicked off. “X” blinked his eyes, peered through the sudden comparative darkness in which he could see once more.
The Skull said, “Fannon, I hardly believe my eyes. How did you do it?”
“X” explained coolly. “Dennett thought I put them back. But when he opens his safe, he will discover that the hand is quicker than the eye. There’s only a worthless key in the safe now.”
“Give them to me,” the Skull ordered eagerly.
“X” took a step forward, but the Skull exclaimed, “Wait. Do not come closer. Put them in the basket.”
The Skull pressed a button, and from the side of his desk there began to slide out a bamboo pole with a hook on the end of it. From this hook there hung suspended a small wicker basket. The basket came to rest about a foot from the Agent, and he deposited the two gems in it. Slowly the pole began to recede. It was operated by some sort of spring attached to the side of the desk.
“X” reflected that the Skull took plenty of precautions. He would not even allow his men to come close enough to the desk to put anything on it. It would be difficult to overcome him — especially when time pressed. Perhaps the best way would be a quick leap across the intervening space. He set himself, poised on the balls of his feet, his body taut. This was the moment. The Skull’s attention was away from him for the second, for he was leaning over the desk, reaching eager, vermilion-gloved hands for the pearls.
“X’s” knees bent. Three swift steps. Now!
And he stopped. For again there was that scraping sound in the corner of the room. The Skull raised his eyes irritably. The rat was scampering across the room now, directly toward the desk. “X” relaxed. The opportune moment was gone. He must wait for another.
And then his body grew rigid. For the rat, scurrying toward the desk, had reached the four-foot wide strip in the floor. There was a violent flash, the smell of scorching flesh, and the rat seemed to shrivel, curl up. It remained motionless on the edge of that four foot strip, scorched crisp.
“Damn those rats!” the Skull exclaimed. He looked up at “X.” “So you know now!” The horrible, flesh-less skull seemed to leer more wickedly than ever. “That is why I did not want you to come closer. Had you tried to attack me, tried to jump me, the same thing would have happened to you that just happened to the rat! That—” he laughed harshly—“is how I treat all rats! Good joke, eh, Fannon?”
“X” tried to imagine how the real Fannon would react to what he had just seen. Frightened? Awed? That was it. Even a hardened, worldly-wise ex-convict like Fannon would be awed at beholding such infernal cleverness.
“Gosh, boss,” he said. “I’d never rat on you! Look — I brought you the pearls. You didn’t know I had them. I could have taken a powder with them!”
“That is true, Fannon. I will remember it. I need an honest man as lieutenant here. You are intelligent, clever. You have just shown your loyalty. Perhaps you noted that the calibre of the men I have here is not high. You have a good chance to become second in command. Now,” he raised a hand and beckoned, “you may come closer to the desk while I talk to you.”
“X” looked surprised, hesitated. “You want me to cross the room?”
“Yes.”
It was asking much, with the body of the electrocuted rat still on the floor, but “X” squared his shoulders, and without further hesitation, he went toward the desk, stepping full on the strip in the floor. He was staking everything again on his confidence in his own uncanny intuition about human nature.
He had a momentary feeling of coldness along his spine as his foot came down close beside the dead rat, but nothing happened. He came close to the desk, noting that the Skull’s hand had come above the glass top now, holding an automatic trained on his stomach.
HE stood there quietly, looking into the cavernous physiognomy of evil that leered up at him.
“Bravo!” exclaimed the Skull. “I wondered if you had confidence in me. There is a switch under the desk here. I shut off the current with my foot. Not many men would have had the courage to cross that strip at my command. You see, I am testing you in many ways, Fannon. You may now step back.”
“X” said, “Thank you,” and stepped back to the door. He saw the Skull make a movement with his foot under the desk.
“The current is on again, Fannon.” The Skull put down the automatic. “The gun was merely a precaution in case you were tempted to attack me in spite of your professed loyalty. It is a habit of mine never to trust anyone fully. I don’t even trust Binks entirely, and he is harmless enough.”
The Skull seemed now to be in a mellow mood. But “X” waited tensely, silently. He felt there was something else coming, something behind the Skull’s new affability. And all the time his thoughts were darting back to that empty apartment of Betty Dale’s. When, when would he be able to get to that!
The Skull was talking again. “Frankly, Fannon, I had my doubts about you. Something happened in one of the corridors last night; something that I have not solved yet. One of my men was killed. Rufe — you met him. He had apparently discovered some one in the passage who had no business there. That some one killed Rufe. I entertained some suspicions of you!”
“Why should I want to kill Rufe?” the Secret Agent asked. “It was my first night here. How would I be able to find my way around in those passages?”
“I thought of all that, Fannon, and that is why you are still alive today. It couldn’t have been you, or any of my servants; for everybody is locked in at night. And that leads me to the only other logical conclusion — that there is an outsider prowling loose in the corridors. If there is, I have a good idea as to his name. Fannon,” the Skull leaned over the desk, emphasizing each word, “have you ever heard of Secret Agent ‘X’?”
IF the situation had not been so tense, the Agent could have enjoyed the sardonic humor of being asked whether he had ever heard of himself. As it was, he merely nodded, composing his voice to a casual tone. “I’ve heard of him. They say he’s poison to crooks, and poison to the police also. You think he’s the one who’s doing the prowling?”
“I believe so. It wouldn’t be strange if he interested himself in me. I am now the most powerful man engaged in criminal activities in America, perhaps the only one mentally worthy of the steel of such a man as this Secret Agent ‘X’.”
“From what I have seen,” said “X,” “I think you could give him cards and spades.”
“Perhaps, Fannon, perhaps.” There was a measure of pride to be detected in the Skull’s voice now. “It may be that I have him in a tight spot right now.”
“X” tensed. Had the Skull been playing with him all along? He told himself that it could not be. He was too keen a judge of people to have been deceived. He would have detected a false note in the Skull’s speech before now. Still, the Skull was clever. Every man, even “X” himself, was bound at some time to meet a man who was his mental superior.
The Skull’s next words set him at rest on that score. The Skull was not playing with him. But they brought to the Agent a new problem. For the master said, “You will recall, Fannon, that when I sent you to Dennett’s, I also sent Nate Frisch with some other men on another mission. Well, that mission has been accomplished successfully. Take this key.” He threw across the room a small flat key similar to the one Binks used. “Binks has gone out to meet some of the men, so you will have to guide yourself.”