“X,” who had been tensely alert, had not heard the approach of Karloff. The chief came out of the gloom as softly as a cloud. There was no anger in his voice, but just a faint reproach that was deadly in its gentleness.
“Corbeau,” said Karloff somberly, “you are too inquisitive. Tansley, you are too willing to answer questions. I have listened and I am not pleased. I was not pleased with the way Serenti regaled the police with secrets. You know what happened to Serenti!”
Tansley instantly sank to his knees and clutched at Karloff’s legs. He began sobbing, pleading. In a flash all the arrogance had left him. He was a quivering craven, blubbering for mercy, from a man who bad no mercy in his soul.
Agent “X” stood up, aloof, a certain grim majesty in his bearing, his eyes cold with deadly challenge.
“Karloff!” shrieked Tansley. “You — you’re not going to give it to us? Not the — green death!”
“Yes, Tansley,” said Karloff with his faint lisp. “I’m going to give it to you and Corbeau both. You’re gabbing, gossiping fools who have no place in this organization. You’ll be squealing next, telling secrets to the police — the way Serenti did. You have earned the green death!”
Chapter V
THE Agent looked quickly about the big room. Karloff had forestalled a dash for an exit. There were five doorways, though only one led to the tunnel. Framed in each opening was a vicious mobster, gripping an automatic. They were shaking, drug-famished men, eager for the favor of their chief. They had been companions of Tansley and Corbeau, had laughed and joked and eaten with them, and had risked their lives side by side. But now they would riddle the two with lead, if Karloff gave the word.
The reason was plainly apparent. Mastered by drugs, they had seen the horrible torture that deprivation had inflicted on Serenti. And they were sick, suffering men. No doubt Karloff had promised a bonus of white powder for this job. Karloff had but to nod, and their guns would crash. They were his slaves, for their drug supply depended upon him.
“X” had only a few seconds to save himself from Serenti’s fate. If he were not shot at once, the green death would be meted out to him, either in capsule form or by means of a hypodermic. Tansley’s end would be the same, too. The mobster knew it and groveled like a cur at Karloff’s feet
The Agent hesitated. Even to raise his hand would bring a hurricane of lead. And Karloff was about four feet away. Not much chance of delivering a knock-out punch, either. These mobsters would press triggers before he took a step.
Realizing their advantage they were closing in. Insanity glittered in their eyes. They were palsied, shaking like victims of St. Vitus’ dance. Along with the deathly peril which these hopheads symbolized, the sight of them in their loathsome wretchedness was sickening.
The Agent’s eyes were magnetic, impelling, hypnotic, as they fixed on the chief with a withering stare.
Karloff felt the power behind those eyes. One shoulder raised in a defensive attitude. He made an apologetic gesture with his hand. Yet there was irony in Karloff’s manner. He held the winning card and was gloating in that fact.
Looking straight at him, “X” spoke, still in the role of Corbeau.
“You’re a sap, Karloff,” he said in a contemptuous voice. “You’ve got so few brains you have to get tough all the time. A weak sister, Karloff, that’s you. Without dope, and a lot of dopies to manhandle guys for you you’d be hanging out in the municipal lodging house.”
“X” had deliberately stung Karloff’s pride, yet the man was too well-schooled in poker-faced inscrutability to show anger.
“Quite a speech, Corbeau,” he said softly. “But I am not a free agent. I must answer to my superiors for the mistakes of my men. So I strike hard and swiftly.”
“Yeah — that’s what you say — and who are these guys that make you jump when they snap their fingers?”
Agent “X” hardly hoped to get information; and Karloff shook his head.
“I do not give away secrets like Tansley here — and like our friend Serenti. Perhaps that is why I keep my job, whereas you—”
That was as far as Karloff got in his explanation. The drug-craved mobsters were close. The Agent suddenly dived in a football tackle, his hard-muscled shoulder striking Karloff at the knees and knocking him to the cement floor. The chief shouted for his mobsters to shoot, but they could not, without hitting Karloff, for he was on top of “X.”
The Agent got his gun from his shoulder holster and shot out the lights, utilizing his lightninglike draw. The gunmen rushed toward the fallen pair. Gus Tansley scrambled to his feet and started for an exit. One of the other mobsters took a chance and shot wildly then, and Gus Tansley uttered a scream of agony.
“They got me, Corbeau!” he shrieked. “Right in the guts. Come on, you rats! I’m finished, but I’ll take some of you with me!”
Wounded, Tansley acquired the sudden courage that hysteria gives a coward whose doom is sealed. His automatic snarled fiercely. Someone screamed. Karloff was bellowing orders, but they only added to the wild confusion. The Agent was the single person with self-possession. He crawled toward Tansley, guided by the dope fiend’s frenzied voice.
“Quiet — and keep down!” “X” said in a low, tense voice. “There’s a chance of getting out of here. Shut up — or we’ll never make it!”
THE firing had ceased now, for the basement was as dark as a vat of tar, and the gunmen feared shooting one another. Crawling toward the door, “X” half dragged Tansley. The hophead wouldn’t have been in this mess except for his talk with the Agent. He was twisted, warped, less than half a man, but possibly there was something still to reclaim, something to justify his life. “X” would get him out of here and to an institution.
The gunmen were clustering around Karloff, who was threatening them with the green death. But their bravado was gone. Darkness and the chance of stopping a bullet took the fight out of them. So the Agent made the door and got Gus Tansley through the tunnel to the workman’s cottage. There the drug addict collapsed.
He was bleeding heavily, and “X” realized he was through. So did Tansley.
“I’m a goner, Corbeau,” he moaned. “Any of them rats would double-cross a brother or shoot his dad for a deck of coke. Croakin’ doesn’t seem so hard, but the pain, Corbeau — the pain! Geez! Give me a shot, just one little shot before I go!”
Tansley’s body relaxed. A fixed stare came to his glazed eyes. His mouth was half open. Another tragedy had been marked up to the evil of dope? Tansley was through, and his last words had been startlingly significant of the terrible power of narcotics. With death reaching out, Tansley had still been under dope’s insidious spell. His only request, before he passed into eternity was the plea of all dope slaves—“just one little shot—”
The gunmen were in the tunnel now. Tansley lay beyond help, so “X” dashed on through the door and down the alley. Shortly he had blended into the surge of the healthy, work-a-day world.
In a fever of excitement he took a devious route to one of his hideouts and began changing his disguise. A desperate plan had come to his mind — one of those strange schemes that made Secret Agent “X’s” method of work unpredictable and astounding. He had located one of the strongholds of the gang dispensing the free dope. There were dozens of vicious gunmen there, and a man who was more a fiend than a human being. “X” could not hope to round them up single-handed. And, so great was the peril of the spreading menace, that he could not leave these men to carry on with their devilish work. Something must be done and done quickly, and Agent “X” had made up his mind.