Binks subsided in the chair. Cunning eyes peered out at the Agent from the horribly distorted face. Panic had given way to scheming. “You couldn’t never reach the Skull. He’ll get you before you even see him. He knows this place like a book, an’ you don’t.” As he talked he cast a side glance up at the niche as if he were expecting his master to appear at any moment to rescue him.
“X” said impatiently, “You have one more chance before I strap you in. Talk up.”
Binks said triumphantly, “You can’t turn on the current. The switch is up in the niche, an’ you can’t reach it from here. I ain’t sayin’ nothin’, mister!”
“X” bent and opened the handcuffs, then swiftly strapped his ankles and wrists. Binks was now helpless in the chair, as Betty Dale had been a few hours before. The Agent turned and made for the door. “You forget,” he threw over his shoulder, “that I’ve been around in this place. I know how to get up to that niche from the outside.” He had the door half-opened. “It’s too bad you won’t talk, Binks.” He hoped fervently that the halfwit would weaken.
He was sure that he could never throw that switch, never submit even the vilest creature living to the inhuman punishment of that chair. But it was imperative that he find the Skull, and quickly. Even now the master of the leering death’s-head might be approaching along one of the tortuous corridors, planning to take him by surprise. The Skull must certainly know by this time that he had escaped from the cell.
Binks’ hoarse, pleading voice stopped him. Binks did not know that he was as safe in that chair as out of it. In the vicious world he lived in it was difficult to understand that anyone would hesitate at inflicting cruel and painful torture upon an enemy. He fully believed that “X” was going to pull that switch.
“Wait, wait!” he begged. “Come back. I’ll do what you want.”
With a surge of relief, “X” came back into the room and approached the chair. He stood over the other and asked, “All right. Where is the Skull?”
Binks peered up at him, cunning once more now that the immediate danger was over. “The boss is gone to his private room where I was supposed to bring you. Only him an’ me knows about that room. If I take you there, an’ you put it over on him—” he reminded “X” now of a rat that was deserting a sinking ship “—will you let me go free?”
“X” hesitated only a moment. Binks was small fry compared to his boss. The destruction of the Skull was worth the freedom of a hundred Binkses. “I will,” he promised.
Binks seemed almost eager now, to betray his master — too eager, the Agent thought. “Unstrap me!” he pleaded. “I’ll take you there. An’ you let me go. Remember, you promised!”
“X” bent and opened the straps. Binks hoped to outwit him on the way — that was evident. He was playing both sides; if he didn’t succeed in outwitting the Agent, he had his promise to go free. If he did succeed by some ruse in outwitting him, the halfwit would earn the commendation of the Skull.
“X” helped him up, clamped the handcuffs once more on his wrists, behind his back. “Now,” he ordered, “get going. And if you try any tricks—” he produced his gas gun and flourished it under Binks’ nose “—I’ll give you a dose of this.”
BINKS’ eyes widened. “I won’t try no tricks, mister. To tell you the truth, I’ll be glad to get rid of the Skull. All the time I been with him, I never know when he’s goin’ to put me in that chair, like the others. He’d kill his own brother if he took the notion. It ain’t been no pleasure, I’m tellin’ you!”
“X” did not relax his vigilance as they went through a new set of passages that he had never seen before. They met no one; and “X” reflected that the Skull’s system of locking his men in when they were not working was boomeranging against the boss now, for they proceeded unmolested. He wondered that the Skull had permitted Binks to come alone to get him, without assistance.
This might be explained by the fact that the Skull did not want any of the other men to learn of this section of his headquarters; and he might also have felt that “X,” handcuffed helplessly, would not be too much for Binks to handle.
The halfwit was strangely silent now, as he preceded the Agent. They passed from one dimly lit corridor to another, “X” keeping his gas gun in evidence. Binks was unaware that the gun was not a lethal instrument, and probably was in dread of doing anything that might cause his captor to use it on him.
At the end of one corridor, Binks used his key and they stepped into a narrow elevator, descended for what might have been two stories. “X” was keenly observing everything. He was curious as to the location of this headquarters. It was a tribute to the Skull’s ingenuity that the Agent had not yet been able to guess just where he had been able to build so complicated a series of passages and rooms in the heart of the city.
“X” was also curious as to the source of the power that fed the electric chair. The voltage used in that heavy cable would require a very large dynamo — and he had not heard any noise such as a dynamo is bound to make.
When the elevator came to rest, Binks stooped and raised the lever that opened the door. “X” asked him, “How far is it now?”
The halfwit said, “It’s right close. Better not make any noise now. It’s at the end of this here passage.” The panel of the elevator slid open revealing another passage that turned at right angles a few feet away. “X” kept his gas gun handy. He would give the Skull no opportunity to use any of the devious defenses that the master of crime had erected about himself. He would give him a quick dose of the gas at first sight.
Binks stepped out of the elevator, and the Agent made to follow him. “X” was carefully watching Binks, expecting that the halfwit might resort to some trick at the last moment. He did not expect what really took place. Binks touched nothing with his hands. He merely took a step forward, and as his foot pressed into one of the boards on the floor, the elevator door slid shut with a bang, closing “X” into the darkness of the small compartment.
“X” understood at once, though too late, that Binks had led him through all these passages merely to get him into this one elevator; he was trapped.
Swiftly he stooped to the lever, pressed it downward. The door did not open. Binks must have disconnected it from the outside. “X” tried the other lever that started the car, but that, too, failed to respond.
And from out in the corridor he heard the sardonic laughter of the Skull.
Chapter XIX
“X’S” lips clamped tight. He took out his pencil flash and inspected his narrow prison. The walls were of wood, expertly joined. With his implements, and given time, he could work his way out of here. But he knew that he would not be given time. The Skull had big things on his hands now, and would hasten the end.
From outside the Skull taunted him. “You aren’t the only great impersonator, Mister ‘X’! My own impersonation fooled you to the end; fooled you so that you let me out of that chair when you had me helpless!”
“Impersonation?” The Agent’s head snapped up. In that instant he understood what the Skull meant. He exclaimed, “Then — you are Binks?” talking at the blank walls of the little cubicle.
“Now you know, my friend. But you know too late to do you any good. You made a mistake when you spared the poor, half-witted Binks. It was those scars and mutilations on my face that led you astray. Merely a tight-fitting rubber mask, my friend. And now—”
“X’s” mind raced backward, from point to point of his contacts in this place. It was possible. He recalled that Binks had never appeared at the same time as the Skull. Always there had been a period of waiting between the time the halfwit left him and the appearance of the master. And no wonder that no one else in the place had ever been trusted with the secret of the entrances and exits. The Skull had never, in effect, trusted anybody but himself. He had been able to snoop around, to overhear the conversations of his men; always in dim light, so that the rubber mask on his face would not be discovered.
“And now—” the Skull had said.
And now there was a soft whirring of well-oiled machinery, and the elevator started to descend slowly, ominously.
And “X” heard the Skull say, “Do you know where you are going, my friend? You are descending to a chamber on the level of the river. And I am going to open certain valves—” He laughed. “Your body will be found in the river in a few days — bloated, rotted. And in just thirty minutes the poor halfwit, Binks, will go to the main room and let out two of my men who are to go and pick up the first payment of ransom money!” The voice rose to a paean of triumph. “Thirty minutes exactly! And my plan succeeds. Triumph! Triumph! And for you — your death, my friend, shall be unwept, unhonored and unsung!”
The cage descended for a long time. “X” wondered if Jim Hobart had succeeded in following him to the entrance in the garage; and if so, whether the police would believe his story that the car had disappeared into the apparently empty garage. He doubted that they could find their way in here, even if they did believe him; doubted that they could pierce the clever camouflages the Skull had placed in the way — the movable ramp in the interior of the garage, the long trip underground on some sort of moving vehicle while he was blindfolded.
“X” decided that there was little to hope for help from the police. The lives of those men in the cells upstairs depended on him alone. And he was caged here, with the prospect of death by drowning.
The elevator ceased its motion. For several minutes there was silence. “X” reflected bitterly that the Skull had quoted the ancient poet with great aptness: “Unwept, unhonored and unsung!” Truly that would be his fate. None would ever know that the Secret Agent had toiled here mightily to save men from a hideous fate. He would simply vanish from the earth, and the body of an unknown man would be fished out of the river. The papers would report it as the suicide of a derelict.
Elisha Pond and others whom the Agent had created would walk no more in their accustomed haunts, and some would wonder where they had gone. Betty Dale would awake in the old Montgomery Mansion, and make her way home. If she escaped the future attentions of the Skull, she would wonder at “X’s” nonappearance, await him, perhaps, for years. And then, at last, she would reluctantly yield to the conclusion that he must be dead. She alone might guess how he had perished. And he knew that her sorrow would be great. He visualized her, waiting from year to year, hoping against hope that he would some day present himself to her in another disguise.
Above everything Secret Agent “X” felt most poignantly the fact that the Skull would remain with a free hand to wreak his insidious will upon helpless men and women — to go on destroying the minds and bodies of intelligent men in his ruthless climb to power.
All these things flashed through his subconscious being with kaleidoscopic swiftness as the cage descended. His conscious intelligence, in the meanwhile, was coping with the problem in hand. For Secret Agent “X” was not one to bow his head and await what seemed to be inevitable. For more times than one the things that had appeared to be inevitable had turned out to be avoidable by the exercise of his keen brain.
Now he was swiftly examining the ceiling of his cage. There was a flat plate screwed into the center of the ceiling, probably the terminal of the cable that lifted the elevator. “X” took a small screwdriver out of the flat black case in his pocket, and raised himself so that he could reach the plate.
It was the only thing that offered itself to work on, and he was not one to remain idle under any circumstances. In order to raise himself, he pressed his knees outward against the sides of the cage, which was no more than two feet wide. Then he rested his back against one wall, pushed the soles of his shoes against the opposite wall. In this manner he managed to raise himself so that he could reach the plate with the screwdriver.
He was off the floor, and working on the first of the screws by the time the cage came to a stop. And it was to this that he owed his life. For he heard the Skull shout from above:
“All right, Mister ‘X’! This is a quicker end than I planned for you, but I am short of time. See how you like swimming down there. Good-by forever!” And the Skull’s laughter rose cruelly, mercilessly, while the floor of the cage dropped open with a sudden jerk.
Had “X” been standing on the floor he would have been hurled down the shaft that now yawned below!