“Quiet — everybody, quiet! Don’t run — and you’ll be safer!”
Some few heeded. There was a momentary lull. The Agent shouted again, hoping to avert the horror that panic would cause. But even in that he was too late. Glass snapped and crashed in one of the big doors, giving way before the thrust of wedged, frantic humans. Then came a louder crash. A scream, piercing in its intensity, sounded from Banton’s own office.
“X” whirled, turned back and stumbled through the door. That scream had come from the lips of Vivian de Graf. The crash he could not identify at first. Then, as the odor of gasoline and hot oil reached his nostrils, he realized that some vehicle had crashed into the side of the bank, smashing the window of Banton’s office.
Vivian de Graf screamed hysterically. Obviously she was unhurt, but the sound of the accident had unnerved her.
“Better stay where you are,” said “X” harshly. “You’ll be safer — all of you.”
He couldn’t see, any more than they could. For once the Man of a Thousand Faces was helpless. But his nerve had not been shaken. He felt no fear — only dread of the horror that might lash out at the innocent people caught beneath this curtain of dark.
The sounds from the main floor outside had risen into a frenzied uproar. Men and women, crazed by fear, were shrieking, stampeding. Aghast at the possibilities of death and destruction in that mad bedlam, “X” started toward the door again, to make another desperate attempt to recall the mob to sanity.
But on the threshold he froze, listening. The milling of frenzied feet had abruptly stopped. The cries that rent the air had taken on an added shrillness. They rose in a piercing crescendo of sheer terror. Coldness clutched the Agent’s heart. For above the horrible confusion he detected another sound. The spiteful, vicious cracking of whips.
Like miniature gunfire the crackling of metal-tipped lashes echoed through the bank. In its wake came stark cries of pain, like those of wounded animals. The blackness, fearful enough in itself, had become a living, lurid hell.
In Banton’s office there was no sound now beyond the echo of horror and the scrape of hoarse breathing. All stood frozen, listening to the blood-curdling drama being enacted outside.
Driven by pain and fear, a man in the depositor’s corridor broke into a tirade of frenzied curses. The answer to that was a whip crack like a tongue of vicious lightning singling out a place to strike. The man’s curses rose to maniacal pitch, then diminished beneath a salvo of crackling torture, to die away in a whimpering, long-drawn moan.
Little by little the snapping of the whips died away. Agent “X,” in total darkness, could vision graphically what was taking place. He could see the depositors, their clothing torn, arms and faces lashed into bloody streaks of torment, cowering back, falling over each other to escape the metal-tipped whips. He pictured the raiders’ slow, methodical advance, as they plied their lashes till the floor was clear.
But how could they see, when the darkness was more complete than any night? Agent “X” was as baffled as he was appalled by the course of a crime more astounding than any he had ever known.
THE whip cracking was hardly audible at all now. That meant that the crowd of scourged men and women were huddled like dumb beasts in pain-racked passivity. It meant that the raiders had achieved their purpose — cleared the way for robbery.
A moment passed. Then came the faint clank and clatter of metal boxes. Compartments in the great vault were being opened and dumped out. Then, as Agent “X” stood desperate and helpless in the impenetrable darkness, his ear detected footsteps approaching Banton’s office. Ghostly and measured, they moved across the outer room. The girl at the reception desk gave one terrified cry. Her chair clattered as it overturned. The steps passed her, entered Banton’s inner sanctum.
Agent “X” stood frozen like the others. Not with fear, but with sheer amazement at the thing. It was uncanny, beyond belief, that any eyes could penetrate this darkness which seemed almost to have a substance of its own. But a voice spoke to them — low, harshly evil.
“Keep your seats — all of you. You who are standing, sit down!”
Agent “X” did not move.
The voice challenged him harshly, proving beyond doubt that the newcomer could see. “Sit down!”
Agent “X” stepped back slowly, found an empty chair and sank into it. His eyeballs ached, as he strained his eyes toward the spot whence the voice came — the voice of a man whom he could not see but who, somehow, was able to see him. A harsh chuckle sounded.
“It is fortunate, Banton, that the vault was open. Otherwise we would have had to blow it up — which would have been inconvenient for us and troublesome for you. As it is, everything is going nicely. We shall soon be away from here.”
The laugh was repeated. Then silence followed. Slowly the steps moved away. The faint noise of the raiders methodically at work filled the black hole of silence in the room.
A moment later Agent “X” lifted his head alertly. There had been an infinitesimal stir in the air. He had felt it — and his nostrils caught a faint whiff of perfume. The scent was exotic, cloyingly sweet. He crouched forward in his chair, every nerve taut. And in the silence he caught the sound of whispering. A very guarded whispering, as though two people were in secret conference, and anxious not to be overheard.
Who was it? Who in the room had moved?
Pulses racing, “X” slid cautiously from his chair. Though he could not see, his mind retained a photographic picture of the arrangement of the office. He knew where Banton’s desk was, where Banton sat, and where Vivian de Graf had been.
His fingers reached oat, groped lightly. He took a few steps forward. Banton was sitting in his chair, rigid. Then the Agent stepped to the right — and grew tense, for the chair where Vivian de Graf had reclined languidly was empty!
Either she had left in fright, to huddle in some other part of the room. Or it had been she who—
The Agent was given no time for speculation. A curse, sounding in the darkness at his left, cut it short. “X” could not see anyone approach, but his acutely alert senses warned him that the man who had cursed was striding in his direction. Instinctively he raised his arms over his face.
As he did so there was a hiss and a snap — and the serpentlike end of a whip snarled about his arm. Its metal-tipped end, fanglike, bit into the flesh of his wrist. He wrenched his body sidewise and pulled his arm clear. The whip came back at him. It struck his neck this time, coiled about it like a loathsome snake. A scalding brand, the metal tip licked up at his cheek.
AGENT “X” did not cower away. Taunt as steel, eyes blazing in the dark, he reached out and grabbed the leather lash. He pulled it toward him and plunged straight at the unseen figure wielding it.
The man with the whip gave a startled, angry cry. Furiously he tried to wrench free. Again the whip was a snake, coiling frenziedly in the Agent’s grasp to free itself, to strike at him again. But his hands moved tenaciously along its pliant length until they encountered human fingers.
His own hand closed over the whipman’s arm. He swung savagely with his clenched left fist. But he could not see. The other could, and eluded the blow, struck back. “X” closed with his unseen adversary, driving home body blows, and they fell to the floor together in a fighting, clawing heap.