Instantly the whole building was resounding with the snarl of mounting flames. The crackling above them was savage and intense. A shower of liquid fire had been sprayed over the top of the partition of the basement room, coming dangerously close to the federal men. Some sort of incendiary time bombs had exploded.
The Agent’s jaw clamped viciously. He recognized those flaming opalescent globules. Burning phosphorus. Karloff had placed his infernal machines around the building. Undoubtedly some one had been sent to watch federal headquarters, in anticipation of a raid. Corbeau had been suspected of being a spy. That was why Karloff had fled — and left these engines of destruction behind him.
“Come on, men,” said the Agent, lifting his voice above the crackle of the flames. “This place isn’t going to be healthy in a minute.”
Veterans though they were, the sudden explosion of the bombs and the sight of the flames on all sides had had a demoralizing effect on the men. They obeyed the Agent like sheep, and he led them into the tunnel. But halfway through he realized that escape was cut off in that direction. Harsh crackling sounds came from the cottage, too. He rushed forward and raised the trapdoor. A billow of smoke puffed into the tunnel instantly. Fiery tongues licked at him.
He turned, and with the others sped back to the basement. There was no escape above, the old warehouse was a blazing inferno. They were surrounded by fire. Karloff’s bombs had been placed with fiendish cunning and thoroughness. They were trapped.
Chapter VI
THE building, long condemned, was as dry as tinder. Its rotten old beams and worm-eaten walls burned like kindling wood. The temperature in the basement was mounting to withering furnace heat. Already it was so hot that the sweat dried the instant it oozed from their pores. Every breath of stifling air was like fire drawn into the lungs. Thick, poisonous, suffocating smoke poured into the basement.
None of the detectives thought he would get out of the roaring holocaust except as a sack of charred bones. They were brave men, used to seeing death at close range and steeled to the prospect of going out violently.
“We’ll save the folks funeral expenses anyway, boys,” yelled Creager. “I’m sorry for you gents who have wives and kids. I’ve helped send a dozen men to the chair, but I never thought I’d fry, too.”
From the street came the shriek and clangor of fire engines. But rescue from outside was impossible. Yet Agent “X” had not given up. He wasn’t ready to die. His work was not finished. Too much depended on his living. Cut off from above, cut off from the tunnel, there still must be a way out. One direction remained. That was toward the street in the forward part of the basement.
“Come,” he shouted to the detectives. “Grab my hand, Wells. You, Creager, grab hold of Wells. Are you all here? Sing out! That’s it! Come on!”
With the federal men close behind, “X” ran to the forward wall. He felt along it until he found the door of a coal bin. He had a flash, but the light wouldn’t penetrate the heavy smoke. He got the door open and the men inside. It was comparatively cool here. The air was clear enough to use his light. He flashed it on, directing a beam across the ceiling. Then he gave a shout. About ten feet above was the iron disc of a manhole plate.
“Climb on my shoulders, Wells,” he cried. “Shove that cover off.”
The Agent crouched. Wells grabbed his hands, stepped on his thigh, and swung around to his shoulders. Supported by the Agent, who clamped powerful hands on the man’s calves, Wells experienced little difficulty in removing the manhole cover. It opened onto the sidewalk.
Firemen rushed to help them, and in a few moments the detectives were getting clean air into their lungs. A throng had gathered. The street was strewn with hose. A half dozen companies had been called out. Firemen were playing streams on the blazing building, but their efforts were directed entirely to keeping the fire in the confines of the condemned warehouse.
Reporters, officials, curiosity seekers, began pushing toward the Federal men. “X” had to get away. For all he knew, Mathews had been discovered. Maybe at this moment cops were scouring the city for the impostor who had taken five federal men on a raid.
“Wells,” the Agent addressed one of the detectives, “stall off this mob for me. Tell the reporters I’ll have a statement prepared at my office. I want to follow down another lead — alone. So long!”
“X” ran along inside the police line. A cop got in his path, and the Agent flashed the federal badge belonging to Mathews. That cleared the way. Around the next corner, he hailed a cab, and rode to the railroad station. He barged through to it, went out a side exit and hurried to one of his hideouts.
Here he changed quickly to the disguise of A. J. Martin, newspaper man. Out in the street again he sped in a second cab to an office he maintained under this name.
The Agent was bitterly disappointed at the outcome of the raid. The fire had consumed whatever evidence the building might have contained. Karloff and his sinister crew had fled, taking the dope with them. Their whereabouts was unknown even to “X.” This troubled him.
HE paced the floor of his office for a moment, then reached for the phone. Posing as a press man connected with a big syndicate, he had a staff of operatives working for him, running down minor leads and obtaining information that was vital to his activities. There was shadowing to be done, routine investigations to be made, and other tasks that any competent man could perform. The dangerous, uncertain missions he reserved for himself.
The man he phoned now was Jim Hobart, an ex-detective, and one of the Agent’s most skilled and trusted operatives. He was a bluff, red-headed, rawboned young man. Framed by an underworld czar he had been dismissed from the force on graft charges. Now having got back into the good graces of the police by rendering them service in one of the Agent’s cases, he had been allowed to take out a license and open up a private detective agency.
It was known as the Hobart Agency, and no one except Jim knew that A. J. Martin was the real proprietor. Even he did not guess that the man who had helped him and employed him was the mysterious, ever alert Secret Agent “X,” whose real identity was an eternal enigma. In his eyes “X” was just what he seemed, a high-pressure newspaperman out to get inside stories of crime.
Under the Secret Agent’s direction Hobart had organized a staff of a dozen skilled operatives, men and women in all classes of life and of all ages. By giving a brief order to Jim, “X” could send any one of these men or women out on a shadowing or investigating job. This left his own time free for the really important tasks that no one save himself would have the skill and daring to undertake.
Hobart had been working on details of the drug menace, tracing down the rumor that even the police were being reached by the sinister gang. He answered “X’s” call now, his voice crackling with excitement.
“Plenty of things are happening, boss. You sure had the right tip. This dope wave has hit the department. It’s hard to believe, but you remember Eddie Broderick? A damn good guy. Rough and tough, but a credit to the force. Well, he’s done for, washed up. They found a hypo in his locker, and his arm looks like it was used for a pincushion. He can’t explain how he took to snow, except that the thing came to him, and he almost went crazy until some cokey introduced him to the needle.”
Jim Hobart was full of news, bad news, showing how the sinister ring was spreading. The police department had been hit by the drug evil. The commissioner had managed to stifle publicity, but he couldn’t prevent the facts from getting to a tireless investigator like Hobart. The Agent’s operative went on to tell what else he had learned.