THE woman’s expression showed that she understood all he had said. “Well — what do you expect me to do?” she asked.
Agent “X” drew himself up with the exaggerated dignity of a drunken man. He stared at her solemnly, accusingly. “You got me into this! You — wished that bird on me! Now — you gotta make it right with the boss. You know him!”
She didn’t deny it. She gave a scornful laugh. “It’s your own funeral. If you hadn’t got drunk—”
The telephone sounded suddenly, and Vivian de Graf turned. The first flare-up of her anger had passed. She was poised now, coldly scornful. “X” watched her lift the receiver. Saw her listen and glance his way. He couldn’t hear the voice that spoke at the other end of the wire; but the meaning of her answer was plain.
“He’s here now. You’d better have them come — at once!”
There was a note of cruelty in her speech. She clicked up the receiver and faced him, smiling thinly with red lips.
“It’s too bad, Lorenzo! You might have gone far — if you hadn’t been a fool!”
The Agent let panic come into his voice. “You told him I was here! You — They’ll kill me!”
Vivian de Graf threw back her head and laughed, white teeth gleaming, supple body relaxed. The thought of his death seemed to amuse her.
“You will get only what you deserve,” she said.
The Agent’s manner changed as though fear had cleared the fumes from his befuddled brain. He drew his face into a scowl; clenched his fist. “No — I won’t wait to be murdered. And — you’ll be sorry for this!”
She did just what he expected then. Her white hand streaked to a drawer in the table at her side. It came out clutching a gun which she centered on his vest.
“Stand still, Lorenzo, or I shall save them the trouble of killing you — by doing it myself.”
Her steady hand, her merciless eyes showed that she meant it. A cruel smile still curved her red lips.
She was standing on a rug. The other end of it was close to the Agent’s feet. There was polished flooring beneath. Suddenly his heel moved forward and jerked back on the fabric. It was done so quickly, so deftly, that Vivian de Graf made a clutch at the table to save herself from falling. In that instant, before she could swing the gun muzzle toward him again. Agent “X” leaped forward and disarmed her.
Furious, white-faced, she stood before him as the Agent centered the weapon on her heart. He was still playing the part of Lorenzo Courtney, but in another, more masterful role.
“Now,” he said, “call the boss! Tell him that if he sends anyone to get me — you’ll die first.”
Tense seconds went by while the woman weighed his words. He had no intention of making good his threat; but she didn’t know it. It was made only to force her to reveal the mysterious Chairman’s telephone number. Vivian de Graf shrugged and said in a flat voice:
“You win, Lorenzo. You are smarter than I thought.”
She turned toward the phone, reached out resignedly to pick it up, and as she did so Agent “X” caught his breath. For a change was suddenly apparent in the room. The walls were growing darker, the electric bulbs overhead dimmer, and there was a buzzing sound in the Agent’s brain, while streaks of light danced before his eyes.
Vivian de Graf’s white face was becoming blurred. He saw her drop her hand from the phone, saw her turn toward him, but he couldn’t see her features clearly enough to get her expression. Yet he knew what was happening, knew that the weird, blinding blackness of the devil-dark gang was descending in the room.
Chapter XVI
THE Secret Agent stood frozen. He wasn’t afraid. He was amazed. This upset all his plans. It baffled him utterly. He crouched and moved crabwise toward the wall. He fumbled along it toward the door, listened for steps in the street outside. The room was completely black now. There was no sound from Vivian de Graf. He couldn’t even hear her breathing. He put his hand on the doorknob to turn it, knowing there might be men with guns waiting outside. But he was ready to take a chance.
Then he heard a noise which came from directly opposite across the big room. There were French windows there. His roving eyes had noticed them earlier. The noise sounded like one of the windows being pushed open by a stealthy hand. The killers were evidently coming to get him that way. They had the front guarded, the place surrounded, and all ways of escape cut off.
But his reasoning was upset the next instant. For Vivian de Graf spoke in the darkness, mortal terror seeming to constrict her throat.
“Who’s there? Who is it? Oh, my God—”
The person by the window didn’t answer with words. His reply was more abrupt, more terrible than any speech could have been. It was a shot in the utter gloom of the room, a shot that seemed to find a mark, for Vivian de Graf gave a piercing, pain-racked cry.
The Secret Agent waited aghast, trying to make sense out of this seemingly senseless thing. He heard the woman’s cry repeated, heard it choke in her throat as though Death’s fingers were already pressing there, heard the table go over as though she had clutched at it. Then came the unmistakable thud of a falling body. Even the rug could not muffle it entirely. It only made the sound more gruesome — like rock being thrown on a coffin lid.
The thud was followed by a moment’s silence. Agent “X” thought the unseen assassin was taking aim at him. But instead there came a frenzied curse in the darkness and the crash of a falling vase. It was not accidental, for swift footsteps moved across the floor, then another vase was shattered, and still another.
A madman seemed to have entered the chamber under cover of that blinding dark. He appeared to be preoccupied in some inexplicable work of destruction all his own. For “X” could hear him crushing the pieces of broken pottery underfoot, stamping among them, breathing in great gasps.
Every muscle tense, the Agent suddenly leaped forward. He could learn nothing by crouching in the dark. His curiosity was aroused to the point of risking death.
A man snarled. “X’s” plunging body struck yielding flesh. Something crashed against his shoulder, and a second shot sounded deafeningly in his ear. But no bullet struck him, and his fingers closed over a human arm.
He dug in, swung his left arm around the man he had gripped, and knocked the mysterious visitor off his feet. In a tumbling, crashing heap, they went down together among the pieces of splintered vase.
Deliberately then the Agent reached forward to feel the man’s head, expecting to encounter one of the round helmets such as he had touched in the bank. But this man, though he could obviously see in the dark, was not wearing the same sort of helmet. His was softer, more wrinkled, fitted with a cord around his thin neck. The Agent tried to tear it loose, and the man seemed to go insane.
He was bony, lean almost to the point of emaciation, but possessed with the superhuman strength that some inward fire of emotion gave him. He fought like a madman, biting, clawing, kicking.
The Agent drove a knuckled fist against his jaw; but the pliable helmet deadened the blow. The other’s head snapped back, but he did not pass out. And, able to see, when “X” couldn’t, he succeeded in bringing the muzzle of his gun down on the Agent’s wrist with paralyzing force. “X” felt his fingers loosening, felt the muscles of his arm where the blow had fallen going limp. He levered his other arm forward, grabbed the gun, and jerked it free. But as he did so, the lean man rolled away across the floor.