He climbed out, pulled Lorenzo’s body from under the wheel, shoved it where his own had been, and took the wheel himself.
Agent “X” was now in complete command of the situation, and with his unconscious burden, in a confiscated car, he drove swiftly away into the night.
Chapter XI
THE Agent drove down a wide avenue, twisted through a maze of streets, turned into the driveway of an old suburban house. The houses on both sides were shuttered and vacant. Under an assumed name Agent “X” had rented this place as a convenient hideout. It had certain special qualifications.
He got out, opened the garage door, and drove in, closing the door after him. At the side of the garage was a doorway leading directly to the house. This was what made it useful to the Agent. Several times in the past he had carried unconscious bodies through that passageway, as he now carried Lorenzo.
Depositing the man on a couch in a room with drawn shutters, Agent “X” clicked on an overhead light. He went quickly through the man’s pockets, found a wallet with an identification card, and nodded to himself. His own encyclopedic memory supplied the details the card lacked.
The man before him was Lorenzo Courtney, black sheep son of a once wealthy family. There had been a time when a Courtney had sat on the board of every bank in the city. The family had died off gradually, leaving only Lorenzo, the spoiled and pampered darling of a doting widowed mother. He had joined a banking firm like the other members of his family before him; but the bank had been one of the first to collapse in the depression. Courtney, like old Roswell Sully, had been disgraced in the public eye.
Leaving his captive on the couch, Agent “X” drew elaborate equipment from a cabinet. This included special lights, photographic apparatus, a sound-recording mechanism and a fingerprint set. He set the articles up one by one, ranged around Courtney, prepared to make a more complete study of the man than he would undergo even at police headquarters. He was going to force Courtney to talk. The private third degree through which he was about to put him would bring out whatever the man knew about the criminal band. Ruthless, unconventional measures were justified in the face of such horror as had occurred outside the looted banks.
He forced liquid stimulant between Courtney’s lips to offset the effects of the gas. When Courtney stirred, the Agent propped him in a chair, facing the battery of lights. Then he turned on the silent mechanism of his phonographic device. A stylus would make a permanent record of Lorenzo Courtney’s voice.
Courtney opened his eyes at length. He was confused for a full minute. Then his gaze focused on the stern face before him, and he gave a visible start. A curse came from his lips. He tensed as though to leap from the chair, but the Agent stopped him with a sentence.
“Stay where you are, Courtney!”
The voice of the Agent had a compelling ring, and Courtney seemed to freeze. Then his eyes became combative. But he didn’t move, not with the odd, magnetic gaze of the Secret Agent fixed upon him, not in this room which seemed to speak of mystery and power.
“Who are you?” he asked harshly. “Why did you bring me here? What do you want of me?”
A laugh devoid of humor sounded in the room — the harsh laugh of Secret Agent “X”. Then he said: “A half hour of your time, Courtney, and the answers to the questions I shall ask.”
Courtney’s eyelids narrowed. He was fully awake now. “So,” he said. “Vivian de Graf had a right to be suspicious of you. You are a detective?”
Agent “X’s” reply was stern. “I’m the one who will ask questions. You are to do the answering.”
Courtney’s glance flashed around the room. He saw that the Agent held no gun on him, yet he appeared to realize that he couldn’t escape. His voice was hoarse when he spoke again.
“This isn’t police headquarters,” he said. “You are not—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He let his voice trail off. His belligerence slowly vanished. And his face became mottled with the pallor of fear, while into his eyes crept a look of awe. “You—” he stammered. “You—”
The Agent smiled with thin lips. “Quiet, Courtney! Listen to what I have to say.”
A cry burst abruptly from Courtney’s lips; a cry of despair and terror. “I understand,” he cried. “I understand! You are the man they call — Secret Agent ‘X’!”
THERE was tense silence in the room. The Agent didn’t reply, and Courtney took his silence for assent. The banker’s hand darted abruptly to his breast pocket. Two fingers disappeared, and came out clutching a white capsule no larger than a bean.
“X” leaped forward, but not quite soon enough. For Courtney had thrust the white object into his mouth. He had clenched his teeth over it, swallowed — and he broke suddenly into a peal of wild laughter.
For an instant Agent “X” stared at the man. Then he sprang toward a small medicine cabinet containing antidotal drugs. He knew what Lorenzo Courtney had done, knew that the capsule must have contained poison. But when he turned with a bottle in his hand, he saw he was too late.
For there were beads of perspiration on Courtney’s forehead already, and his skin was turning gray. From his open lips came the pungent smell of bitter almonds, an odor Agent “X” had sniffed before. Courtney had swallowed deadly cyanide, had taken his own life, and nothing any man could do now could stop the inroad of that terrible poison, already saturating his system.
His breath came in labored gasps, his hideous laughter rang out again, and there was an expression of malicious triumph in his eyes as he stared at “X.”
“You’ll never — know!” he suddenly screamed. “You’ll never — know — now—”
His head fell sidewise. He jerked off the couch, twitched on the floor in racking spasms, then lay still. When Agent “X” stooped over him to feel his pulse, there was no flutter beneath his fingers. The man was dead.
Bitter disappointment made the Agent’s eyes bleakly grim. He had felt certain this man was a member of the bandit gang. Now Courtney’s lips were sealed forever. Now no third degree could sweat secrets from them.
Yet the Agent did not give up hope. Something of value might be salvaged from the wreck of his plans. He went quickly to work. Time — that was the big factor now. Time — before the makers of darkness had worked still more havoc in the city, before others met such a fate as Ellen Dowe.
Already Lorenzo Courtney’s features were changing perceptibly, showing the first masklike aspects of death. The Agent, moving tensely, propped the dead man up with pillows, focused the powerful mercury vapor light upon him. He set up his camera, thrust in a holder of achromatic plates, took pictures of Courtney’s features from many angles. Then he made a series of careful measurements and fingerprints, piled them and the plates away to be developed as soon as he had time. He thrust Courtney out of sight in a coffinlike compartment under the couch, changed his disguise to that of A. J. Martin, and quickly left the hideout.
Back in Martin’s office, “X” sent grim orders over the telephone to Hobart. Other orders clicked over the air in the special code signal that would reach Harry Bates.
“Drop present work. Rush through secret investigation of Lorenzo Courtney, ex-banker. Get information concerning friends, clubs, personal habits. Rush this to me!”
He sat for a moment in intense concentration, then with a decisive motion picked up a volume of “Who’s Who” from his desk. He flipped it open, turned to the “D’s,” scanned the columns, and stopped at “De Graf, Emil.” The paragraph beneath this name read: