“Who? What’s his disguise?”
“He’s disguised as a half-wit — a man by the name of Binks!” Betty’s voice from the lips of “X” seemed to utter the last word with hesitation, regret. It was a superb piece of acting. On the stage it would have brought down the house. Here it elicited an astounded exclamation from the Skull.
“Binks! Impossible! No one could make up like that halfwit, no matter how clever he is!”
Once more Betty seemed to cry, “That’s all I know. Now release me. Let me go!”
The Skull paid no attention to her. He mused, “Binks, eh? What do you think, Fannon? Could she be making it up? Binks is the last one here I would have suspected. To tell you the truth, it might have been anybody else but Binks — even you. I suspected you, too, frankly. But Binks!”
“X” stood erect, said, resuming the voice of Fannon, “Has she ever seen Binks?”
“By Jove!” the Skull exclaimed. “You’re right. She’s never seen him. She was unconscious when she was brought here, and Binks has been out on errands all this time.”
“So she couldn’t be making it up. Where could she have learned that there is such a person except from this Secret Agent himself?”
“I’ll send for him,” the Skull said suddenly. It’ll be easy to prove if he’s Secret Agent ‘X.’” He paused, then asked Betty, “First, Miss Dale, suppose you tell us when it was that Secret Agent ‘X’ informed you he was coming here disguised as Binks?”
Once more “X” bent over Betty Dale. Once more his lips pursed, his throat muscles contracted. “I—” he began in Betty’s voice. But that was as far as he got. For suddenly Betty stirred, opened her eyes, and cried, her voice clashing with the voice “X” was using, “I won’t talk, I tell you! I won’t!”
The effect was weird, as of twins talking at the same time.
From the niche above came an ominous purr, more deadly in portent than the rattle of a snake before striking.
“So-o, Mr. Frank Fannon alias Secret Agent ‘X’! You are a master of ventriloquism among your many other accomplishments! Let us see if you can avoid the slugs from my gun which will now break both your legs!”
THE heavy report of the Skull’s gun came as an echo of his last word, filling the room with cacophonous detonation. But the Secret Agent had jerked into motion with the first words of Betty Dale. For he realized at once that the game was lost unless he acted swiftly.
His long fingers flew as he unbuckled the straps from her wrists, while the Skull talked, sure of his prey.
As he worked, Betty looked at him, wide-eyed, happy laughter mingling with her tears. “You!” she exclaimed happily.
And even before the report of the Skull’s gun boomed through the room, “X” was on his knees beside the electric chair. His hand had gone to his pocket and come out again with a lightning-like motion, holding one of the gadgets which he had transferred from the black bag.
This gadget was an ingeniously constructed pair of nippers, attached to which was a needle capable of piercing a heavy electric wire.
At the spot where “X” knelt, the heavy cable which conducted the powerful current to the electric chair came out of the wall, and branched to each of the electrodes. Into this cable “X” plunged the needle, clamping the nippers around the cable. The short circuit thus effected caused a blinding flash, and plunged the room into darkness.
In the blackness “X” could hear Betty’s quick breathing between the resounding explosions of the Skull’s automatic. Shots ripped into the framework of the chair, crunched into the cement floor, filled the room with acrid powder stench.
“X” seized Betty by the wrist, dragged her to the corner of the room where he had seen the lever in the wall.
The Skull had stopped shooting, his clip evidently empty. He was not shouting; his silence was more ominous than any cries of rage he might have uttered.
“X” felt about in the darkness until he located the lever, and he pressed it downward quickly.
Somewhere in the place an alarm bell was jangling loudly. “X” heard hoarse shouts as the panel in the wall slid upward exposing a narrow passageway. He dragged Betty through it, pressed the lever on the other side. The panel slid down just as another hail of shots came from the Skull’s reloaded automatic. The panel, however, slid to, protecting “X” and the girl from the slugs.
The bell was still raucously clanging its alarm as “X” turned to lead Betty down the passageway. He heard a gasp from Betty, looked ahead, and stopped short. Rushing toward them from the other end where he had just come through a panel, was the gunman, Gilly, drawn gun in his hand.
Chapter XI
BEHIND Gilly came Nate Frisch and three or four others. Frisch and Gilly were the only ones armed.
Gilly shouted, “What’s up, Fannon?”
“There’s a stranger in the corridors!” the Secret Agent told him hurriedly. “We got to spread out and get him.”
“Hey,” demanded Nate Frisch. “What you doin’ with that girl? That’s the dame we brought here.”
“The Skull told me to take her out of there. Let me through here.”
Frisch had pushed past Gilly, was almost convinced by the Agent, when suddenly another demonstration was given of the Skull’s thoroughness. Through the corridor echoed the Skull’s voice, carried evidently by some hidden annunciator. He was broadcasting through the passages, just as the police did.
“Stop Fannon. Stop Fannon. He is Secret Agent ‘X’ in disguise! Kill Fannon! He is Secret Agent ‘X’ in disguise. All men into the corridors. Stop Fannon! Those who are armed will shoot him on sight. Others will grapple with him and call for help. It is impossible for him to escape, so continue the search until he is found.”
As the meaning of the Skull’s words became apparent to the group of men in the corridor, Frisch raised his gun, snarling.
“X’s” swift movements, however, took him by surprise. Long, crushing, irresistible fingers seized his gun wrist, twisted it sharply. Other long fingers gripped his shoulder, heaved with all the power of “X’s” supple body. Frisch went tumbling backward in the narrow corridor, backward into Gilly and the others, catapulting into them with a force that threw them off their balance, tumbling them to the floor in a tangled, confused heap.
And “X,” in that moment of respite, under the awe-struck gaze of Betty Dale, produced from a pocket the key that the Skull had given him, inserted it in a slot in the wall at his elbow. A panel slid open, and he thrust her through it, stopped but a second to deliver a straight-arm jab into the jaw of Gilly who was struggling up out of the mess of writhing men on the floor. Gilly was the only dangerous one at the moment, for he still had a gun; Frisch having dropped his under the cruel pressure of “X’s” fingers.
Gilly tumbled backward, groggy from the straight-arm jab, and “X” stepped through the opening, inserted his key on the other side, and watched the panel slide closed again.
Betty was waiting for him, white-faced. Her eyes were starry. “I might have known,” she said, “that you wouldn’t let him—”
He put one hand over her mouth, smiling as he did so. “Of course I wouldn’t, Betty. But we’ll talk about that later. Now, we must get out of here. Let’s see where we are.”
They were in another narrow passage branching off at right angles from the one they had just quit. It was, like the others, dimly lit by a single small bulb at the end.
He led her along it, silently.
“But how can we ever get out?” she asked. “That man said that no one—”