~~~ Project Gutenberg Australia ~~~

Title: The Torture Trust
Author: Brant House
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eBook No.: 0608191.txt
Language: English
Date first posted: November 2006
Date most recently updated: November 2007

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The Torture Trust
Brant House



Chapter I NIGHT GETAWAY



THE PRISON GUARD'S feet made ghostly echoes along the dimly
lighted corridor of the State Penitentiary. The sound whispered
weirdly through the barred chambers, dying away in the steel rafters
overhead. The guard's electric torch probed the cells as he passed,
playing over the forms of the sleeping men.

It was after midnight. All seemed quiet within the great, gloomy
building that was one of society's bulwarks against a rising tide of
crime.

The guard passed through a door at the end of a corridor, and the
echoes at last ceased their eerie whisperings.

Seconds of silence passed. Then a new sound came. It issued from
cell No. 17--the sound of furtive movement.

The man who had been lying as still as death when the guard passed
threw his blankets aside. His hard, shrewd eyes gleamed eagerly. His
narrow-boned face took on the alertness of a prowling weasel.

Jason Hertz, down on the prison books as convict No. 1088, had not
been asleep at all.

His thin, clawlike hands, which had dabbled in every sort of crime
from blackmail to murder, became suddenly active. He drew the blankets
apart, wadded one into the shape of a sleeping man, and stuffed it
under the other. Then he reached beneath his bunk and drew out a
roundish object the size of a melon.

It was a ball made from stale bread mixed with water and kneaded
together. The bread he had saved for the last three days. He set it on
the end of the bunk nearest the door, covering the top of it with
scraps of loose hair collected from the floor of the prison barber
shop. It looked like the tousled head of a sleeping man, and it would
serve to mislead the guard when he made his next tour of inspection.

Hertz pulled other articles from beneath his bunk--articles which
had been smuggled to him under mysterious circumstances. And, as he
looked at them, an uneasy expression crossed his face. He recalled the
visitor who had come to him the day before and on other days during
the past several weeks--the tall, gray-haired man whose card bore the
name: "Crawford Gibbons, Attorney-at-Law."

He recalled the strangely compelling look in the lawyer's eyes,
the forcefulness of his manner, the abrupt persuasiveness of his
voice.

Who was Crawford Gibbons, and who was employing him? Why was he
aiding Hertz to escape?

These were the questions Hertz had asked himself, for, behind the
guard's back, Gibbons had quietly slipped him a chamois-skin bundle.
In it were tools and instructions making his getaway possible.

The prison authorities regarded Hertz as a desperate criminal.
Among his vicious associates in crime, he was rated as being hard-
boiled and as dangerous as a snake. But the lawyer, Gibbons, had put
fear into Jason Hertz's heart. Gibbons had refused to answer
questions, refused to reveal his motives. Yet, under the mysterious
dominance of the man's personality, Hertz had felt his own will
crumbling. It was as though Gibbons had cast a spell over him.

Conflicting impulses stirred in Hertz's mind; one, the desire to
escape and go back to his underworld haunts; the other, the fear that
he might be entering some sort of trap. He paused a moment, fighting
within himself. But it was useless. Something stronger than reason
cried out that he must follow the lawyer's instructions.

With a cleverly-shaped skeleton key that Gibbons had given him, he
opened the door and stepped into the corridor, every nerve alert. He
listened, but no sound came except the snores of sleeping men.

Shoes off, as silent as a fox, he walked away from the cell,
turning into a branch corridor. He climbed a flight of steel stairs
and reached the empty cell block above, which was used for overflow
prisoners. It was as deserted as a tomb. Hertz entered one of the
empty cells, grasped the bars, and climbed up toward the metal ceiling
with the agility of an ape. There was a galvanized iron roof above
him. For a moment he struck a match, feet braced on a crossbar below.

The tiny flickering flame showed that the metal, seemingly intact,
had been cut through with a fine hacksaw--his own handiwork of the
night before.

He lifted his hand, pressed against the galvanized iron, and a
circular piece of metal moved upward. A dark opening appeared, large
enough for a man to crawl through.

Hertz thrust his fingers up, caught the strong edge of the thick
metal, and lifted himself. He braced his elbows, rested a moment, then
strained again. In a second he was in the narrow "attic" of the
prison, between the ceiling and the roof.

A faint gleam of light made by the night sky showed ahead. Hertz
crept toward it, across the top of the metal ceiling, careful to step
on the steel rafters to which the sheet iron was fastened. He came to
the light--the square opening of a barred window--and used his hands
again.

Drawing a hacksaw set in a metal frame from his blouse, he
attacked the bars before him with the skill of a man accustomed to the
use of tools. The hardened chromium bit through the bars one by one
and Hertz wrenched them loose.

He fastened a loop of strong line, which he also took from his
blouse, to the stub of one bar, threw the end out the window, and
crawled through feet first. Hand over hand, he lowered himself to the
ground below.

Clouds obscured the stars. Hertz moved forward in utter darkness,
his bare feet soundless on the earth.

He stopped a moment to get his bearings, then walked on toward the
southwest wall of the prison. Trembling violently, his fingers
groping, he felt along the stone surface till his hand encountered a
rope. He had been expecting it, but fear made him recoil for an
instant as though the rope had been the dangling body of a snake. Then
he approached it gingerly again.

The mysterious lawyer, Crawford Gibbons, had kept his word.

Hertz seized the rope and began the ascent of the wall. It was an
easy matter for him to draw himself up its side. With a skill born of
experience, he avoided the two strands of electrically charged wire at
its top. He balanced himself, stepped over them, and went down the
rope on the other side.

His escape was an accomplished fact now. He was free, once again a
potential menace turned loose upon an unsuspecting society. But fear
still made his heart beat madly.

He had moved only a few yards ahead when he halted as abruptly as
though a chain had been stretched across his path.

Somewhere close by in the darkness a whistle had sounded. It was a
strange whistle, melodious yet unearthly, seeming to fill the whole
air with a ventriloquistic note. It aroused in Hertz a stark,
unreasoning terror.

His beady eyes sought to pierce the darkness. He almost cried out.
Someone was standing directly ahead of him. He had caught sight of a
vague silhouette.

"Follow me," said a low voice.

The words came out of the black vault of the night like an
inexorable command from Fate itself. They had in them that compelling
quality that paralyzed Hertz's will.

The clouds thinned a little, letting a ray of wan starlight
through. He saw the quiet face and the silvery hair of the lawyer. He
sensed again the unswerving fixity of the man's eyes upon him. Then,
like a sleepwalker, he followed as the other turned and led the way.

Where was he going? He did not know. What strange purpose did the
lawyer have? It was veiled in black mystery.

Hertz stumbled on through the darkness for what seemed a quarter
of a mile. He knew he must be somewhere close to the road leading to
the prison. Then he heard the faint sound of an automobile engine
idling. The man ahead clicked on a flashlight no larger than a pencil
Its thin beam disclosed for an instant the lines of a low, powerful
roadster parked by the highway.

Crawford Gibbons motioned for him to get in.

Hertz rebelled. Fear of the strange man had been growing in him.
He set his jaw and blurted a question.

"What's the idea? Where you gonna take me?"

There was arrogance in his tone now. He was out of the prison. He
might make a break for it and escape into the darkness, run away from
this fear-inspiring man.

"Get in," said Gibbons harshly.

"What if I won't?" blustered Hertz.

The answer came so suddenly that he gasped. Powerful fingers
clutched his arm. He was lifted off his feet, thrust into the car.
Then the gray-haired man got in beside him, and the car moved ahead.

Fury and fear welled up in Jason Hertz's mind. His lips opened and
he gave a loud, involuntary cry.

"Fool!" hissed the man beside him.

Hertz shrank back in his seat, afraid of what he had done. For his
cry had echoed startlingly through the night. A light flashed
somewhere on the wall of the prison--another and another. A siren rose
like the voice of some monster, beginning with a throaty gurgle and
lifting into a furious, spine-chilling wail. The purple shaft of a
searchlight on one of the prison towers winked on. Its shimmering beam
moved, swung downward, centering on the car. An instant later Hertz
cried out again in a frenzy of fear.

For a flickering pinpoint of light leaped out on the wall of the
prison. There was a staccato rattle like the drum-taps of doom. And,
in the air around the speeding car, there came the deathly whine of
steel-jacketed bullets.



Chapter II FORCED TESTIMONY



UNDER THE LAWYER'S HANDS, the roadster leaped ahead in the
darkness like a live thing. A machine-gun bullet struck against the
metal back of the car. Another passed screamingly between the two
men's heads, slapped against the shatterproof windshield, and sent
spiderweb lines radiating in all directions.

Hertz, his face white and ghastly, crouched whimpering in his
seat. He stole a sidewise glance at the lawyer's features, saw the
hawklike nose, the jutting chin, and deep-set eyes. The man was
driving as calmly as though death were not riding the wind behind him.

They passed at last beyond the searchlight's range, and the
bullets ceased to come. There would be pursuit; but it seemed nothing
outside of a bullet could catch that speeding car. Under its long, low
hood the smoothly running motor rose into a mighty paean of power. The
speedometer needle swung to sixty, seventy, eighty as the car leaped
ahead along the dark road. Hertz spoke again.

"You gotta tell me where I'm going. I won't stand for this."

"No?" The single word was ironic, mocking.

"Where you taking me--that's what I wants know."

It seemed that a grim smile spread over the lawyer's face. He was
silent, and leaden fear gnawed at Hertz's heart again. He only knew
that they were leaving the city behind; that they had reached a
country road. Then the car swung sidewise, turning off the smooth
macadam. It passed along a dirt lane between rows of pines that moaned
and whispered in the night wind. They came to a jarring stop.

"Get out!" said Gibbons.

The mystery of the night seemed to deepen. Hertz's nerves were
almost at the breaking point. He crouched back, showing his teeth, his
hands hooked like talons.

"I won't!" he shrieked. "I'll--I'll--"

Under the instrument-board light, he found himself looking into the
sinister muzzle of an automatic. His craven spirit weakened.

"All right, I'll go. Take that gat away. Don't shoot!"

But the gun was not withdrawn. Hertz walked ahead, trembling, with
the gun in his back, and the outlines of a house suddenly rose out of
the blackness before him. It looked like a farmhouse, low and
ramshackle.

A key grated in the lock. He was pushed inside and the door closed
after him. There was the stuffy smell of deserted rooms and musty
carpets. Gibbons appeared to know what he was about. He pushed Hertz
into a rear chamber, struck a match and lighted an oil lamp. The
windows of the room were tightly boarded up. Gibbons thrust a chair
forward and motioned Hertz to sit down.

Alone with the mysterious lawyer, Hertz had a deeper sense of
dread. The compelling eyes of Gibbons were upon him again. He sensed
mystery behind them, and power. It was as though they were boring into
his very soul. The voice of the lawyer sounded harshly.

"You are free of prison, Jason Hertz. In return you are going to
give me information!"

So, that was it! A snarl rose on Hertz's lips. His eyes gleamed
wickedly.

"I won't tell you nothing. I don't know nothing!"

The gray-haired man before him smiled again and drew a clipping
from his pocket. He held it in front of Hertz's face. It had been cut
from a newspaper--

 CATRELLA KILLED AT SCENE OF TORTURE MURDER.

"He was one of your pals, Hertz. You've seen the papers in prison.
You know that murders are being committed--men tortured to death. Joe
Catrella was in on it in some way. Give me the names of his friends."

The question came relentlessly; but Jason Hertz shook his head.

"I don't know nothing--I won't talk," he cried.

He'd heard rumors of the series of hideous killings that were
baffling the police. Prominent people found dead--tortured. "The
Torture Trust," the papers called it. Fear sealed his lips. He knew
little; but he dared not tell even that. Death was the penalty meted
out to a squealer in the underworld, and there was mystery and horror
behind this murder-wave that eclipsed anything he had ever heard of
before. There was an uncanniness to it that made his spine crawl He
wished he had stayed in jail.

"I don't know nothing," he repeated wildly.

His voice died in a gasp. He found himself looking into the eyes
of the lawyer, found himself unable to turn away. Like a bird staring
at a snake; he was held fascinated.

The lawyer's face was coming closer to his--closer, closer. The
lawyer's eyes were pools of blazing light.

Hertz cowered in his seat, pressing till the rungs of the chair
cut into his back. Terror of the man before him rose in his throat and
seemed to choke him. He sensed again that he was in the presence of a
person who had powers beyond his knowledge--vast depths of strength
and magnetism. It seemed that his own brain was being battered into
submission.

"Think back, Jason Hertz. It is March 1933. You have not been
caught by the police as yet. You are not in jail. You are with Joe
Catrella, plotting evil. What is your understanding with him? Who are
his friends?"

The eyes of the lawyer were relentless. His voice went on
droningly. Jason Hertz felt himself slipping--slipping into the
mysterious depths of hypnosis.

From drowsiness, Hertz went into laxity of posture, slumping in
his chair, staring with glassy eyes into the face of the man who
called himself Crawford Gibbons. Then slowly his body became rigid;
his fingers tightened around the arms of the chair; his legs pressed
stiffly against the floor. He was in the third stage of the hypnotic
state, the stage known as catalepsy, his will completely under the
dominance of the strange man before him.

"You will speak, Jason Hertz. You will answer my questions."

Sweat broke out on the forehead of the escaped convict. Fear still
fought for control of his subconscious mind. But the man in front of
him substituted another fear, deeper, more imminent.

Gibbons reached around the side of Hertz, his forefinger extended.
He pressed the tip of it against Hertz's spine.

"There's a machine gun at your back, ready to blow you to pieces,
Hertz! You can feel it there, pressing, pressing. You must speak. Who
were Catrella's friends? Who gave you your orders when you were with
him?"

A gurgle came from Hertz's lips. They moved slowly. The cords in
his neck stood out.

"I--don't--know!" he gasped. "The Bellaire Club. We hung around
there. Panagakos, the manager, may have been--I got notes in the blue
vase--telling me what to do--the vase on the dance floor. So did
Catrella. We never knew--who the big shot was--the guy we was working
for. We sent notes to him the same way. Don't kill me--for God's sake!
That's all I know; I swear it. They got me--in that spaghetti-joint
holdup--when I tried to make a little dough for myself on the side. I
had a moll and she--"

His voice trailed off. For the lawyer, Gibbons, had stopped
listening and had taken his eyes away. A man in the hypnotic state
tells the truth because he must. Jason Hertz had told all of interest
that he knew!

Gibbons moved back and Hertz sat staring straight ahead of him.
His labored breathing told that he was in the hypnotic trance. He
might stay thus for hours.

Gibbons drew a pencil and notebook from his pocket. He placed the
pencil in Hertz's fingers, put the notebook under his hand.

"Write, Jason Hertz! Write one of those notes to your boss--
telling him you are out of prison, ready to serve him again."

The fingers of Jason Hertz moved mechanically. The pencil
whispered across the paper like the pencil of a spiritualistic medium
doing automatic writing. When the note was finished, Gibbons tore the
page loose, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

Then he began a series of quick, mysterious movements.

He brought the light nearer Hertz, studied his face, and, after a
few seconds, walked to a cabinet standing against the wall. He opened
the front and drew from it a collection of odd-shaped apparatus.

There was a magnesium flare set in the center of a silvered,
parabolic reflector. There was a small movie camera, a Dictaphone
machine driven by a spring motor, and a set of elaborate measuring
instruments based on the formulae of the Bertillon System. He placed
them in front of Jason Hertz.

Lighting the flare, he focused it on Hertz's face and body.

"Get up!" he ordered. "Walk around, Hertz."

The escaped convict obeyed, rising from his seat and moving about
the room in the manner of a sleepwalker. But his muscles made
characteristic movements that the lens of the movie camera in
Gibbons's hands began to record.

"Sit down," said Gibbons after a time.

Again Hertz obeyed, and Gibbons brought the camera closer.

"Smile," he commanded, and Hertz did so. Then in quick succession
Gibbons ordered the felon to scowl, laugh, register fear, surprise,
and arrogance.

He set the camera down with a snap, turned off the magnesium
light, and started the motor of the Dictaphone machine.

"Now, Hertz--follow me. Repeat first the vowel sounds--aaa--ah-
oh--ooo--ee! Now the consonants. Ker--ter--bur--mer--"

The needle of the Dictaphone recorded the vibrations of Hertz's
voice on the hard-rubber cylinder. Gibbons was using the science of
phonetics, setting down every inflection of the convict's lips,
throat, and tongue for future use. When he was satisfied that he had
missed nothing, he closed the Dictaphone and set to work with his
measuring instruments, going over the planes of Hertz's face. He
jotted down the widths of Hertz's eyes, mouth, and nostrils, the angle
of his jaw, the slope of his forehead, the height of his cheekbones.

Satisfied at last, he put his apparatus away, keeping only the
movie film, the cylinder from the Dictaphone, and the figures he had
set down.

He took up the notebook and pencil and began scribbling a brief
note.

"You have betrayed your friends, Hertz," he wrote. "You know the
penalty of betrayal in the underworld. There is murder abroad,
torture, horror. Your only chance to live is to escape from the
country. I am giving you that chance. To catch a wolf I am freeing a
rat. In the enclosed envelope you will find a passport already filled
out and a boat ticket to South America. Take them, go, and never come
back."

The lawyer took a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket, put it in
the note he had written, placed it in the envelope with the ticket and
passport, and pinned it to the front of Hertz's coat. Then he paused a
moment, holding the pencil in his hand.

With a strange, grim smile on his face, he reached forward and
made a mark on the envelope--a mysterious "X" that seemed to have no
purpose or meaning.

But if Jason Hertz could have seen it, he would have understood
more about the strange adventure he had been through. For the man
whose symbol and trade-mark that X was had built up a reputation
which had reached even behind prison walls. It was a reputation for
swift movement, startling courage, masterly disguises that no man
could penetrate--and mysterious motives that no man could fathom.

It was a reputation that baffled the police as well as the
underworld. For the man who hid behind "X," symbol of the unknown
quantity, seemed to be working against crime, even while classed as a
criminal.

Gibbons turned then and strode through the door into the night,
and behind him floated an eerie yet melodious whistle that had in it
an unearthly quality like a voice from some other world.



Chapter III THE AGENT'S HIDE-OUT



IT WAS AN HOUR LATER that Gibbons, the lawyer, parked his roadster
and walked along a quiet street at the outskirts of the city. His
movements were quick, eager. There was a strange, restless brightness
in his eyes.

The silence of the night was punctured by the shrill cry of a
newsboy, peddling an early morning edition. Gibbons bought a paper and
the restlessness in his eyes deepened as he stared at the front page.
Black headlines were spread across it. They told of another mysterious
torture murder--a millionaire's son found dead in his penthouse
apartment, his face eaten away by acid.

Somewhere down the block a police siren sounded and a green
roadster whirled by. Gibbons, watching from the shadows, recognized
the man in it--a detective from the homicide squad. Murder seemed to
whisper through the darkness of the night. Menace lay like a pall over
the city.

The lawyer's pace increased. Once he paused in his swift stride to
press a hand to the left side of his chest. An old wound, received on
a battlefield in the World War, had given him a momentary twinge of
pain.

A harsh laugh fell from his lips. Years ago doctors had predicted
that he had only a few months to live; but he had gone on living,
defying death. Perhaps it was this closeness to death that made him so
restless--or perhaps it was something else.

He reached a wealthy residential section at length. The river
flowed beside him; millionaires' homes and expensive apartment
buildings rose at his right. At the corner of the block he stopped. A
high wall followed the line of the side street. A huge pile of
masonry, bleak and austere, towered above the sidewalk, the windows of
it boarded up. It was the old Montgomery mansion, facing the river,
the house that the litigation of heirs, quarreling about the estate,
had kept empty for years. Its luxurious rooms were gathering dust now.
Mice moved unmolested across its polished floors. Moths were nibbling
at the expensive rugs.

The man who called himself Gibbons turned and walked down the side
street. There was no one in sight. He followed the wall as silently as
a shadow. A few gaunt shrubs that had not been properly tended for
years made a sparse fringe along the wall.

Suddenly the man stopped. He parted two shrubs and stepped behind
them. His hands moved in the darkness for an instant. An old door
leading into the ancient garden swung open. The door closed softly
behind him.

He was in a place of ruin, decay, and desolation with the teeming
life of the city shut away. Under the glow of the sky overhead, he
picked his way through the garden, passed statues fallen from their
pedestals, passed a tumble-down summer house, passed a fountain that
had long since ceased to spray moisture.

He appeared to be at home, appeared to know where he was going,
appeared to belong there. He came to the rear of the house, lifted the
cover of the cellar door, and descended a flight of stone steps.

A key grated in the lock. In a moment he was inside. Then he
paused by another door in a rear room of the old cellar. Flashing a
tiny electric light, he pried loose a piece of paneling and stared
intently at a hidden dial.

A clocklike mechanism behind the dial moved a cylinder of paper
slowly like the drum of a seismograph. There was a stylus poised over
the paper. It recorded blows and footfalls. The paper drum was blank,
showing that for the last twenty-four hours no one had passed through
the hidden passageway behind the door that led down to the black
waters of the river. The man nodded in satisfaction.

He moved up into the house, to a room that was hidden beneath the
huge front staircase. It was in reality the false back of the old
butler's pantry. The partition had been expertly moved forward and a
door into the secret chamber was concealed by shelves that swung
outward.

Here the man who had made the house his home could be as much shut
away from the world as though he were in the black depths of a vault.

There were strange things in that secret room: a small chemical
and photographic laboratory, jars, bottles, and mysterious boxes; a
miniature arsenal, containing humane but efficient weapons; gas
pistols that could knock a man unconscious within a radius of twenty
feet; tiny, stupefying darts concealed in cigarette lighters; a
concentrated tear-bomb in the stem of a watch that would momentarily
blind a man when he stooped to look at the time. There was also a
mirror at the side of the wall under strong lights. It had three
movable sides that would show every angle of a man's face, head, and
body.

Gibbons walked up to it and stood regarding himself. Then he moved
away and seated himself at shelf before another mirror. His long,
restless fingers began to stray across his face. Beneath their tips a
mysterious transformation took place. He plucked tiny plates of
tissue-thin metal from his nostrils--plates that had made his nose
hawklike; peeled a transparent covering of fibrous, fleshlike material
from his chin and cheeks; lifted the clever, mesh-thin toupee of gray
hair from his head. His whole appearance had changed.

The mirror reflected him as he really was--as he was never seen by
any living soul--as he never appeared except in the silence and
secrecy of this one room. The face that stared back at him from the
mirror was even-featured and boyish-looking. Gray eyes that held a
hint of humor in them. Brown hair and a smooth-shaven skin.

It was only when he turned his head and the light fell on his face
in a certain way that new lines were brought out--lines that made him
look suddenly older, mature, poised--with the record of countless
experiences written in them, and indications of restless energy and
driving will-power that would not let him be quiet.

A grim smile came as he looked at himself. Secret Agent X. The Man
of a Thousand Faces--a thousand disguises--a thousand surprises! The
man of whom it was whispered that he had the unofficial sanction of a
great government in his fight on the criminal hordes preying upon
society. The man said to be officially dead in the records of the
Department of Justice--his supposed death arranged that he might
disappear and fight crime in a new and startling way.

His real name and background were mysteries known, if at all, only
to a chosen few. Who was Secret Agent X?

Suddenly a frown crossed his face.

He glanced at the telegram that lay open on a table in the strange
room.

It was in code and it had been sent from Washington, D.C., to a
certain Elisha Pond, care of the First National Bank. Its seemingly
meaningless words were burned into his mind like a brand.

"Six victims claimed in Torture Trust," the code words of the
telegram stated. "Why aren't you on the job?"

He picked the yellow sheet up and walked toward a metal strongbox
that rested on a shelf. For a moment he hesitated.

Holding the telegram in his left hand, he ran the fingers of his
right delicately along the lid of the strongbox till he reached a
certain raised rivet head. He pressed this, and there was heard a
faintly audible "click."

The rivet head corresponded to the safety catch on an automatic.
But the forces that it held in leash were a thousand times more
destructive. There were two pounds of TNT concealed in a false bottom
of the box which, unless the safety catch was pressed, would explode
when the lid was raised. The terrible explosive guarded Agent X's
secrets from anyone who might penetrate his hideout during his
absence.

He laid the telegram for safe keeping on top of a special document
that the box contained.

The document bore a governmental coat of arms. It was couched in
brief and simple terms, but its words carried a strange portent.

In recognition of brilliant work performed and faithful service
rendered, we confer upon you the title of Secret Agent X. Your way
will be a lonely one. You will combat crime, fight ceaselessly against
those who seek to destroy law, order, and the decencies of
civilization.

You will stand ready to risk your life in the cause of humanity as
you did while serving your country in the Intelligence Division during
the World War. For reasons, which you will comprehend, there can be no
official acknowledgment of your work or sanction of your methods.

Your funds, however, will be unlimited. Ten public-spirited men of
great wealth, unknown to you and unacquainted with your name, have
subscribed a fund for your use. A fraction of this fund is on deposit
in the First National Bank. It can be drawn by you under the cognomen
of Elisha Pond. This account will be replenished whenever it becomes
low. Utilize it as you see fit.

With a quick movement, the Secret Agent closed the box and
released the safety catch again. There were those who knew of his
existence and had absolute faith in his methods. He would endeavor to
live up to that faith.

He began going over his face again with quick, deft fingers. The
boyish lines disappeared under the magic touch of his hands. Gray
hairs appeared at the temples. The flabby contours and dignity of
middle age came into being. He leaned forward and stared intently at
his own reflection. The Man of a Thousand Faces had again achieved a
master disguise.

Jeffrey Carter, clubman and gentleman of leisure!

That was his role for the rest of the evening. It was after one
o'clock, but he had no intention of going to bed. Sleep was a thing he
seldom indulged in. Restless, dynamic forces seemed always driving him
on. And tonight there was work to be done--a series of hideous murders
to investigate.

He had taken the photographs, the sound record, and the
measurements of Jason Hertz for a purpose. No pains were too great, no
efforts too laborious in creating a new disguise. When the time came
to impersonate Hertz, he would do it with the skill of an artist and a
scientist. But the time for the impersonation had not come.

He rose, removed the clothes he had been wearing, and, from a
closet containing a vast wardrobe, selected a trim tuxedo. It fitted
perfectly his lithe, muscular figure; but, as he slipped into the
coat, he winced again at the twinge of pain near his heart.

That and the scar on his chest, drawn into the lines of a crude X
where a piece of shrapnel had ploughed, might sometime give him away.
It was a risk he was prepared to take.

THE SECRET AGENT, alias Jeffrey Carter, took a taxi downtown. He
told the driver to swing left at Twenty-third Street, and he gave a
number in a block of medium-priced apartment houses. Through the
agent's mind a series of sentences were moving, repeating themselves
again and again. Bellaire Club! Panagakos! A blue vase on the dance
floor!

He paid the driver, dismissed the cab, and walked forward. This
was not a night-club section, but Agent X had special business.
Halfway down the long, silent block he stepped back into an angle
formed by the intersection of two walls. Here the deep shadows lay as
black as ink.

For a moment the Agent's eyes narrowed. He was staring upward,
along the brick facing of an apartment building opposite. There was a
light showing behind the drawn shade in a window on the sixth floor.

The Agent fingered the black batwing tie above his immaculate
shirt front, gave his silk muffler a deft twitch, then moved briskly
out of the shadows and crossed the street.

He entered the building, passed through a small foyer where a
switchboard operator was sitting, and ascended by an elevator. Walking
left along a corridor, he pressed the button of apartment No. 63.

There came a sound of high heels clicking over the parquet
flooring inside. A moment later the door opened and a girl with blond
hair and a petite figure stood on the threshold.

She raised an uneasy hand, patted her gleaming coiffure nervously,
and stared closely at Agent X, her blue eyes narrowing in worried
speculation.

"Miss Betty Dale, I believe," the Agent said. "May I come in?"

His voice now was cultured, softly modulated. The masterly
disguise he had affected tonight hid his real identity. He was playing
a part for a purpose.

"My name is Jeffrey Carter," he continued. "I'd like to talk to
you a few moments if you can spare the time."

As he spoke, he watched the girl's face narrowly. It expressed
uneasiness, doubt, perplexity. Obviously she did not know who he was.
Obviously, to her he was a perfect stranger and a suspicious one at
that.

"Come in," she said at last, a note of reluctance in her tone.

She turned, her small pretty face screwed up in worry, and led the
way into the sitting room.

The long, powerful hands of Jeffrey Carter moved then. One of them
flickered out, the fingers holding something that was like a thin
stick of pomade.

He made a quick movement close to the wall as he passed by, then
slipped the mysterious stick back into his pocket. There was a faint
smile on his face. His disguise had proven adequate under the gaze of
a girl whose intelligence and cleverness he rated as high as her
beauty.

He reached out and snapped off the electric light switch, plunging
the room into darkness.

The girl gave a little gasp of surprise and fear; but the
stranger's voice reassured her.

"A beacon shines for all good mariners," he said.

She turned. On the wall at her back was a glowing X, shimmering
there with a strange eerie light. It was the mark of the Secret
Agent--written in the purest radium paint--paint made by a secret
formula and containing thousands of dollars' worth of the world's most
expensive metal.

"It is you then?" she said, relief in her voice.

The Secret Agent had given her many moments of worry in his desire
to use her as a test. He had come to her in dozens of different
disguises. She never felt sure of her ground until he gave her some
characteristic, identifying sign.

His manner changed now. He was no longer the suave clubman. There
was a tenseness in his attitude that the girl sensed. When they were
seated in the next room, Jeffrey Carter talked quickly, moving his
long-fingered hands restlessly.

"Blue vases are the devil's choice," he said suddenly.

The words were incomprehensible to the girl; but she relaxed in
her chair, all uneasiness gone. The Agent generally spoke in metaphors
and parables, the significance of which she learned in due time.
Almost everything he said had some double meaning.

Respect and intense loyalty mingled in her blue eyes as she
regarded the man who tonight called himself Jeffrey Carter. Whoever
the Secret Agent really was, she knew that he had been a friend of her
dead father's--the father who had been a police captain, slain by
underworld bullets.

She had been brought up to feel an intense hatred of criminals.
The death of her father had crystallized this feeling.

This man, her father's friend, was working against the underworld.
She trusted him, relied upon him, knew that he was kindly and brave.
There had been times when he had placed sums of money collected from
criminals in her hands--to give to charity, to help the poor and those
who had been victimized by underworld plots.

She knew that he kept nothing for himself, asked nothing but to
live dangerously, recklessly, gambling with Fate. There were moments
when wonder filled her as to what sort of face lay behind those
brilliant disguises. Would she ever know? Or would death claim him
before she had penetrated the secrets of his life?

The Agent spoke mysteriously again, his eyes gleaming with some
hidden emotion.

"You are an accomplished dancer, Miss Dale, and to dance
beautifully is an art. Tonight I ask you to dance with me."

She gave a start of surprise and flushed slightly. "What do you
mean?"

"The Bellaire Club is calling us, Betty. There is music to be
danced to and a blue vase to be looked at. Put on your best frock."

She shrugged, nodded, and flashed him a smile. Something deeper
than caprice and a love of dancing, she knew, lay behind his words.
And when, at the end of ten minutes, she emerged from her boudoir, she
was a vision of loveliness.

Betty Dale was a girl who knew how to wear clothes. Poise and
refinement were instinctive with her and that good taste which is
something inborn and can never be taught. Because of these things, she
had gotten ahead in the world. She had won a career for herself as a
star reporter on the _Herald._ When she was covering society stuff,
she could meet and hob-nob with fashionable people on their own plane.
This made her invaluable both to the paper and the Agent.

More than once she had helped him by going places with him when he
needed a feminine companion, by carrying out his orders, and by
getting information that he required.

Tonight she was clad in a white evening dress with a fur wrap
draped over her shoulders. Together they went to the street and
signaled a taxi.

They were whirled through the brightly lighted thoroughfares of
the great city to the doors of the Bellaire Club, which, for all its
gaudy ostentation, was a place of ill repute, a place where sinister
things had happened.

It was frequented by the fast, wealthy set, and by gangsters and
gamblers who had made big money. There were gambling tables in the
rear, a dance floor, and a large orchestra in front, with tables for
couples to sit at and drink.

The Secret Agent had asked Betty Dale to accompany him tonight
because a lone man or woman coming to the Bellaire Club was at once an
object of curiosity to Mike Panagakos, the flabby-jowled, sloe-eyed
manager. The Agent did not want that.

He whirled Betty Dale around the room once, and his eyes gleamed
as he saw a blue vase on a low settee by one wall. It was a fine piece
of Turkish pottery that somehow fitted in with the gaudy, exotic
atmosphere of the club. It seemed to have been placed there as a
receptacle for flowers, but it was empty now.

As they whirled past it, the Secret Agent's hand flicked out. The
note he had made Jason Hertz write fell into the vase.

By that act he believed he was opening a trail that might lead him
into the shadow of hideous murder and mysterious death.

When the dance had ended, they seated themselves at a table to
watch the moving crowds about them; the sinuous, overpainted women,
and the immaculately dressed men.

Then Betty Dale suddenly caught her breath, and the Secret Agent's
head turned quickly.

Across the room a group of people had scattered. A woman gave a
hoarse cry of fear.

From the center of the group, a man ran forward into the circular
spot cast by an overhead light. He was holding his hands to his face,
staggering drunkenly--and, as Agent X watched, he let forth a scream
of agony that shivered through the air with the keenness of a knife
thrust. Then he collapsed and lay writhing on the polished floor.



Chapter IV POLICE NET



GASPS OF HORROR went up from those in the room. The orchestra,
playing a languorous concert number, came to a discordant stop. Men
and women crowded forward, craning their necks.

Agent X arose. There was a steely brightness in his eyes,
tenseness in the low whisper of his voice.

"Satan has struck," he said.

Leaving the girl at the table, he moved across the floor to mingle
with the crowd around the fallen man. Silently, swiftly, he pushed his
way close. Looking over the shoulder of an elaborately dressed woman,
he got a glimpse of the man on the floor.

The man's hands were still covering his face. Between the
quivering fingers Agent X saw inflamed, mottled flesh, pockmarked and
drawn together. Faint fumes curled up. The man's skin had been
hideously burned. Someone had thrown acid at him.

Agent X turned. He ran to the nearest table, grabbed a bottle of
olive oil and shouldered his way back, kneeling by the fallen man.
With quick, deft fingers, he poured the sweet oil over the man's
tortured face.

It was a simple remedy, but, quickly applied, it might save the
man from death or life disfigurement. The man moaned and twitched. One
side of his coat fell away. The edge of a gleaming badge showed. He
was a headquarters detective. He writhed again, pawing at his injured
face, then went limp. Merciful unconsciousness had come.

The Secret Agent got up quickly. Mike Panagakos, the fat, sleek-
haired manager, was pushing his way forward.

"Call an ambulance," said Agent X harshly. But another voice cut
in on him.

"It's already been done. Everybody keep quiet. Don't try to leave
the room. There are men stationed at the doors with orders to shoot."

The man who had spoken was heavy-set, stern-eyed. He looked out of
character in the tuxedo that wrinkled baggily around his lumpy body.
He was Detective-Sergeant Mathers of the Homicide Squad.

"It's a raid!" cried a woman, the quavers of hysteria in her
voice.

"Raid is right! There's been a murder attempted. There's a killer
in this room. Every man and woman of you is gonna get searched."

In Sergeant Mathers's words was a savage note. He glared at the
people around him with a ferocity that was mixed with bafflement and
fear.

"The Torture Trust!" whispered somebody hoarsely. And a sudden
quiet descended on the room, broken only by the tense breathing of
fear-stricken people. Horror seemed to seep out of the corners. The
fat face of Mike Panagakos turned a sickly dough color. The whites of
his eyes mowed.

Agent X's quick brain grappled with the situation. Detectives, he
realized, must have been posted in the room all evening. The police,
too, must know that Joe Catrella had hung out at the Bellaire Club.
They were leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to solve the
hideous torture murders. And the "Torture Trust" in its campaign of
terror had turned brutally on the police force itself.

Agent X looked around the big room. At the main entrance, a man
with a police automatic in his hand was standing alertly. There was
another close to the door of Panagakos's private office in the rear. A
third guarded the window by the fire escape. Sergeant Mathers had
worked quickly, efficiently.

"Squad cars are on the way," he barked. "There'll be policewomen
to search the ladies. Inspector Burks himself is coming."

The imperious clanging of an ambulance bell sounded in the street
outside. It stopped at the door of the Bellaire Club. A moment later,
the detective at the main entrance stepped back as two white-coated
interns entered, a stretcher in the hands of one.

Sergeant Mathers spoke again, pointing to the figure on the floor.

"Get that man to the hospital as fast as you can."

The medics moved like automata. Opening the collapsible stretcher,
they lifted the unconscious detective, placed him on it, and carried
him out of the room. The gong of the ambulance sounded again, growing
fainter as it wound its way through traffic that had stopped as if
frozen. The bell seemed to leave behind it a black pall of mystery and
terror.

In staccato sentences, harsh as the crack of a whip, Sergeant
Mathers began questioning Panagakos.

"Donelly was a good man. He's the third who's had stuff thrown in
his face. The first one cashed in. Where was Donelly when he got his?"

Panagakos shook his head. He drew the back of his hand across lips
that were moist and quivering.

"I--I didn't see nothing," he said. "I was in my office. When I
heard the racket I came out."

A foreign-looking waiter in a short-tailed jacket came close to
Sergeant Mathers. He made movements in the air with his hands.

"It was from the kitchen that he came, senyor. It was there that I
first saw him--the policeman. But I saw no one else."

Mathers pressed forward, the crowd following, led on by morbid
curiosity, and Agent X followed, too.

HE SAW MATHERS round up and question the kitchen staff. Saw them
shake their heads. They had seen no one. A hallway led to a big pantry
and storeroom beside the kitchen. Agent X knew the angles of the
building. He made it a business to learn such things. There was likely
to be an air shaft in the storeroom. Why didn't Mathers search there?
But he couldn't suggest it. It would attract attention to himself. The
detectives would have to work their way. He would work his. But there
was worry in his eyes.

Any moment cars filled with policemen and policewomen might arrive
at the Bellaire Club. Every person in the room would be searched. It
was something that Agent X did not care to risk. There were strange
articles concealed in his clothing--articles that it would be
embarrassing to have the police find. Sometimes quick changes of
disguise were necessary. Painstaking care had gone into the creation
of featherweight, portable make-up. Odd kinds of material were
cleverly concealed in the linings of his coat and vest.'

To make matters worse, Inspector Burks of the Homicide Squad was a
bitter enemy of the Agent's. Discrediting rumors that X was working
against the underworld, the formal, routine-loving police inspector
regarded the Agent as a particularly vicious criminal.

More than once their ways had crossed. More than once Agent X had
led the inspector along the right path to apprehend some evil-doer.
But he had done it so subtly, so deviously, that Burks never realized
he had been aided. He had only redoubled his efforts to trap the man
whose trademark was a gleaming X. His suspicions would be aroused if he
found hidden disguises on the man who tonight called himself Jeffrey
Carter.

With a grim smile on his face, Agent X made his way back toward
the table where he had left Betty Dale. He must get away and take the
girl with him before Inspector Burks arrived. With armed men at every
door and window, this seemed impossible. Only brilliant strategy could
accomplish it.

There were fear shadows in Betty Dale's eyes as he approached her.
One slim hand was pressed against her breast.

"We're trapped," she said. "They'll search you! What will you do?"

"Sometimes a leopard can change his spots," he said enigmatically.

Her eyes grew wide with wonder as she stared at him. Sergeant
Mathers had said that no one was to be allowed to leave the room. No
matter what disguise he wore, it would be the same, she thought. Even
the Agent couldn't accomplish the impossible.

Close to their table was a heavy drapery across the front of the
private booth for diners who wanted to be alone. The booth was empty
tonight. The drapery was partially drawn back.

With the light of purpose in his eyes, the Agent stepped quietly
into the booth. Inch by inch he edged the drapery across till the
booth was covered--till he was out of sight.

The girl looked quickly about. The men and women in the room were
staring at Sergeant Mathers, following his every word and gesture as
he cross-examined Mike Panagakos and the kitchen staff. No one had
seen the Agent go behind the drapery. She looked toward the booth for
an instant.

A faint light showed under the drapery's edge. The Agent was
mysteriously at work. But fear and perplexity still mingled in her
expression. Her ears were strained to catch the wailing of police
sirens outside announcing the arrival of the headquarters' cars.

Then she gave a sudden gasp. The drapery in the front of the booth
moved. A man stepped out--but not Jeffrey Carter, the clubman who had
brought her to the Bellaire Club.

The man who emerged had a hard, pale face. His mouth was a thin
line.

There was a frown between his eyes. His eyebrows, in contrast to
his white hair, jutted blackly. He carried himself with erect,
military bearing. She had seen that man before. He was Inspector Burks
of the Homicide Squad.

Betty Dale drew in her breath.

She could not be mistaken. One man had gone into the booth;
another had stepped out--but she knew they were one and the same man--
Secret Agent X. She knew that his uncanny mastery of disguise had
accomplished the impossible.

He didn't try to test his make-up this time. He looked at her,
smiled an instant, and nodded. Then his face set again into grim
lines. He gestured toward the front entrance and handed her wrap to
her. She understood.

With wildly beating heart, but covering her agitation, she walked
toward the door.

The burly detective guarding it barred her way. "You heard the
sergeant's orders, lady--nobody goes out!"

Then the detective gave a visible start. His eyes widened. He drew
himself up respectfully and lowered the gun.

"It's all right," said a cold voice. "I'll show her to the street.
See that nobody else leaves."

"Certainly, inspector!"

The detective's puzzled frown indicated that he couldn't quite
piece things together. He could only go by what he saw. Inspector
Burks was at the girl's elbow. The Homicide Squad head must, it
seemed, have come in the back way. He must have a good reason for
making an exception in the girl's favor. The detective stood back, and
Betty Dale and the Secret Agent moved unmolested down the carpeted
stairs.

They did not hurry. The man at Betty Dale's side maintained his
stiffly erect bearing.

But, at the downstairs entrance, his grip on her arm tightened. He
gave a swift look right and left and suddenly drew her across the
street. Up the block, headlights flared piercingly; a swift car shot
around the corner; squealing rubber; and a siren rose into a
screaming, pulsating wail.

"The police!" gasped Betty Dale, the words like a sob of fear in
her throat.



Chapter V THE ACID THROWER



THERE WASN'T TIME to do more than draw the girl into a dark area
beside a stoop. Agent X did so, crouching beside her. To be seen now
disguised as Inspector Burks would put an end to his plans.

He waited tensely as the car with the screaming siren came to a
halt opposite. The real inspector was the first to get out, his erect,
military bearing and pale face making him easy to identify. After him
tumbled three plainclothes men and two grim-faced policewomen. They
crossed the sidewalk and disappeared in the entranceway of the
Bellaire Club.

A second squad car rounded the corner and came roaring down the
block, sliding to a screeching halt behind the first. All the
detectives in the city seemed to be concentrating on this one point.
The sirens had attracted attention. Heads were peering out windows. A
small crowd was collecting. Any moment sharp eyes might spy out Agent
X and the girl beside him. But she was safe now. He motioned toward
the street and she understood.

"You?" she said. "What will you do?"

"The spots of the leopard will change again," he replied.

Her face was pale and uneasy as she left him and mingled with the
crowd on the street. A moment later she signaled a taxi, stepped into
it and was whisked away.

The Agent turned his back. Head down amongst the shadows of the
areaway, his long fingers began to move. They were working in the
darkness now, working by instinct and the uncanny skill that past
experience had developed.

He left the white hair on, but drew the jutting black eyebrows off
and peeled away the plastic material from his face. He slipped rubber
cheek plates against his gums to broaden his features, smoothed the
frown of Inspector Burks from his forehead, then turned.

As he sauntered out into the light of the street, no one would
have known him for either of the two men he had impersonated earlier
in the evening. He looked older now, fatter--and the glittering nose
glasses with a black cord attached that he slipped on heightened the
effect of dignity and age.

The voices in the crowd around him were tense, electrified with
fear. Rumors were running like wildfire. The "Torture Trust" had
claimed another victim. A newspaper man with a flash-light camera was
taking pictures of the front of the Bellaire Club. Soon the presses of
the tabloids would be grinding out another story of mystery and horror
for a thrill-loving public to devour at their leisure.

But the game that X was playing was a game of life and death.

He slipped through the crowd, moving along the side of the
building to the mouth of an alley that tradesmen used. He stared down
it, glanced back along the street, then plunged out of sight.

The dignity of his movements fell from him suddenly. He snapped
the eyeglasses off, placed them in his pocket. His eyes were bright
and piercing as bits of polished steel.

Above him were the lighted windows of the Bellaire Club. He
followed the alley on up to the corner of the building. Ahead was a
courtyard filled with boxes and barrels. A fire escape snaked up the
side of the club, passing the windows of the kitchen, going on up to
the roof.

X stood a moment, trying to locate the position of the air shaft
he had figured was there. It was either by that or the fire escape
that the acid thrower had entered and gone.

Then he drew in his breath. Far above him, silhouetted a moment
against the starlit sky, he saw faint movement. It might have been a
man's head or hand. He couldn't be certain which; but he crouched back
in the black shadows of the courtyard.

Then, swiftly as a cat, he crossed the flagstones and leaped up.
His fingers caught the end of the weighted fire escape ladder. The
ladder came down slowly, its rusty hinges squeaking.

Agent X paused and listened. No sound came from the darkness
above. He mounted the ladder swiftly, up past the kitchen windows,
reaching the darkness beyond just as one opened. Inspector Burks was
on the job now and would be more thorough than Sergeant Mathers had
been.

X took the iron steps two at a time. Speedily, silently, he
reached the roof, while behind him a cop stepped out on the second-
floor landing. The police, too, were going to search the roof. The
Agent had escaped from one difficult situation only to be involved in
another. His blood raced madly. Once again he was pitting his wits and
courage against the forces of Fate. What if there were no other way
down from the roof? What if the police trapped him?

But he didn't dwell on the dangers of the situation.

Lightly as a cat, he leaped to the coping of the roof and balanced
there on the balls of his feet.

The top of the Bellaire Club stretched before him. Beyond was
another building, higher still--a sheer cliff of offices closed for
the day. But against its brick walls he saw vague movement again. A
giant spider seemed to be creeping up its bare side.

The Agent's eyes had been trained to work in semi-darkness--to see
things that other men missed. There was an iron ladder up the side of
the building beyond. Someone was climbing it swiftly--a figure which,
even at that distance, had something macabre and sinister about it.

Agent X started in pursuit. He was ahead of the police, one jump
in advance on the trail of a would-be murderer. As he reached the
higher building, he looked behind him across the roof of the Bellaire
Club and saw the head and shoulders of the cop. Then his hands were on
the ladder and his feet had found the rungs.

It ran straight up, a sheer hundred feet, to the roof above. It
passed by unlighted windows, and, as he mounted, it was as though he
were hanging in space.

Then, far behind him, he heard a cry. A pinpoint of flame
blossomed in the darkness. There was a sharp, whiplike report.
Something struck the bricks beside him and screamed away into the
night like a frightened banshee.

The Secret Agent smiled. It wasn't the first time he had been
under fire. The cop on the roof below had glimpsed him just as he had
glimpsed the man ahead. But there could be no accurate shooting. The
policeman's second bullet went wider of its mark than the first. The
cop was being blinded by the flash of his own gun.

Agent X continued to climb. The cop below turned on a flashlight,
but its beam wouldn't reach. Agent X was too high up. A moment later,
however, the iron ladder gave out faint vibrations, warning the Agent
that the man below had reached it and was mounting, too.

X traversed the last rungs at dangerous speed. He vaulted over the
edge of the roof and stood there like a man on top of the world. The
twinkling lights of the city lay below him, peaceful as though murder
were not stalking through the night.

He turned and looked along the roof. All seemed quiet. He could
see no movement now; but with quick, silent strides, he skirted the
edge of the roof, then leaped forward.

At a point opposite where he had come up, another ladder went
down. It had become a mad game of hide-and-seek on the rooftops of the
city. There was no place up here for a man to hide. X tried the one
skylight window and found that it was locked on the inside. The man
ahead, whoever he might be, was showing that he knew his ground. His
fiendish act tonight had been as deliberate as it was diabolical,
planned with the cunning that characterized every movement of the
"Torture Trust."

Agent X grasped the top of the second ladder and began the descent
as quickly as he had climbed. Six stories below, his feet touched
another, lower roof. He crossed it, reached a fire escape mounted on
the next building. He was moving along the block on the rooftops.

He looked back again, and, far above, outlined against the high
office building, he saw movement. The cop was close on his trail.

A sense of menace seemed to descend on him out of the night. He
could outwit the police, but he was pitting himself against criminals
as fiendish as they were cunning. He reached under his coat, drew out
a pistol. It was one of the weapons he sometimes used in moments of
emergency--not an ordinary gun. The Agent did not kill. To slaughter a
man was a crude way of dealing with a situation. The Agent operated
with finesse, ingenuity, and impetuous daring. The chambers of this
gun contained concentrated anesthetizing gas of a high specific
gravity. Even in the open, fired into a man's face, it could cause
unconsciousness.

He gripped the pistol, climbed still faster. He was on the last
flight of the fire escape now, with the roof of the third building
ahead. He stared up twelve feet. And, as he did so, a black shape
suddenly blotted out the stars. So quickly that the Agent didn't have
time to raise his gun, a man's arm flashed out.

With that instinctive response which had more than once saved his
life, the Secret Agent twisted his body sidewise. He hung by one hand
and foot, swaying perilously away from the iron ladder, out over dizzy
space.

Something hissed by in the air close to his face. The stench and
reek of chemicals made his nostrils quiver. Burning, acrid fumes made
his eyes blink and smart. Then the flesh of his left wrist felt as if
a red-hot brand had suddenly been pressed upon it. The pain was so
excruciating that his muscles contracted and he almost let go his
hold. The silhouette above disappeared.

Biting his lips with pain, the Secret Agent continued to climb. By
a few inches only he had missed the liquid torture from the roof
above. A few drops of the acid-thrower's torment had struck his wrist,
showing what terrible thing he had escaped.

His eyes glowing like points of steel, he went on up, peering
cautiously over the roof, the gas gun in his fingers. But the roof was
deserted now.

The Agent saw why. With a bound he crossed the tarred space to a
heavy trapdoor cover. He tugged at it with tense fingers, but it was
bolted inside. Then, stooping down, he placed his ear against the
sheet metal. From below came the faint stir of descending footsteps.
The acid-thrower had made good his escape.

Philosophical always in defeat, biding his time, the Secret Agent
stood up. He couldn't go back the way he had come. He walked across
the building to the fire escape at the rear and quickly began the
descent.

This one seemed to end in a vacant courtyard below. He paused a
moment listening. All was quiet.

He reached the bottom, dropped to the flagstones and started
toward a fence in the rear, then suddenly crouched back. A bright beam
pierced the darkness close ahead. The ray of a flashlight made his
eyelids narrow.

"Stand still, guy," a harsh voice said.

Against the glow of a street light beyond the court, Agent X got a
sudden glimpse of the visored cap of a city cop.



Chapter VI SINISTER SUMMONS



IT WAS A SITUATION that he hadn't anticipated--a dangerous turn of
events. The cop's voice held deadly purpose. The Agent knew that a gun
was trained on him. He knew also that the police were nervous,
fearful, and ready to shoot at the drop of a hat. Calmness would be
necessary and brilliant strategy.

A slow smile spread over the Agent's face. He made his voice
drawling.

"Don't be hasty, old man. Nothing to get excited about, you know."

With aggravating deliberation, he dusted his palms together, wiped
a speck of dust from the front of his tuxedo and reached toward his
vest pocket.

"Keep yer hands in sight," snarled the cop. "Go for a gat and I'll
drill yer."

"Really!" said the Agent, poised and unruffled. "I don't think you
fully grasp the situation."

With the tips of his fingers, he delicately drew his eyeglasses
from his vest. He breathed upon them, wiped the gleaming lenses on his
sleeve, and placed them carefully on his nose. Then he raised his
head. Looking straight at the cop he spoke arrogantly.

"Now, my good man, I'd appreciate it if you'd take that light of
yours out of my eyes. It's quite annoying."

The cop came closer, still tautly alert.

"What were yer doing on that roof? Who the hell are yer?"

"Name's Claude Fellingsfort," said the Agent. "Thought I saw a
fellow running around up top. Went up for a bit of a look. Heard that
the police were having a manhunt. Thought I'd aid them."

"Yeah?"

"Quite--and now, if you'll just step aside, I'll be on my way."

"You'll be on your way right enough. You're gonna have a talk with
the inspector. He's up the block. I've got my orders and I'm gonna
follow 'em."

"The devil you say! You'd better give me your number. I intend to
register a complaint about this."

The cop's gun thrust against his side. "Move along where I tell
yer! Keep your hands away from your pockets."

"You'll hear from me, my good man."

The Agent's voice was outraged now. His pose was that of the
injured man-about-town; a citizen furious at the ingratitude of
blundering officials. But he moved in the direction the cop indicated.
He might learn something from a chat with the inspector.

The crowd in front of the Bellaire Club made way for the cop and
his prisoner. They climbed the carpeted stairs to where Inspector
Burks was standing just inside the door of the main room. The search
of the fifty or more guests of the club was still in progress. The cop
spoke harshly.

"I found this guy stepping off a fire escape down the block,
chief. He handed me a line. I thought maybe you'd want to talk to
him."

Inspector Burks focused the full glare of his black eyes on Agent
X. They were face to face--the official head of the world's greatest
homicide squad and the man who worked outside the law for the cause of
law and order. But the Agent was protected by his masterly disguise.

The inspector's pale, aquiline face registered no recognition. He
was in a dangerous mood, though, ready to grasp at any straw that came
his way. The press was clamoring that the "Torture Trust" be smashed.
The police were being criticized.

"Who the devil are you!" he snapped.

The Secret Agent adjusted his glasses again, stroking the black
cord.

"I told this fellow here," he drawled, gesturing toward the cop.
"My name's Fellingsfort, in case you want to know."

"What do you do for a living?"

"A bit of financial work. Bond selling and that sort of thing."

"What have you got to prove it?"

The Agent reached into his coat pocket, drew out a wallet and
opened it. He carried a dozen or more cards with him always, different
names upon them. His disguises went more than skin deep. He avoided
trouble by checkmating it in advance.

From a deep inner pocket in the wallet, he drew a card bearing the
name Claude Fellingsfort, with the legend "High Grade Bonds" directly
after it. With an elaborate flourish he presented it to the inspector.
Burks glared at it suspiciously.

"What were you doing climbing down off the fire escape,
Fellingsfort?"

"One couldn't stay on it forever," said Agent X suavely. "Since I
went up, I had to come down."

"Why did you go up in the first place?"

"I thought I saw a fellow sneaking around up there as it were. It
turned out I was right."

The inspector's eyes narrowed into aggressive pinpoints of light.

"What the hell do you mean?"

Deftly the Secret Agent stretched out his arm, pulled up his coat,
and drew back his cuff. An inflamed spot showed on his wrist where the
skin had been burned.

"The bally idiot threw acid down on me, you know. Sort of an
unfriendly devil. I didn't linger to pursue our acquaintance."

"Acid!" Burks's voice had the sharpness of a whiplash.

"Quite. There's the spot--burned rather painfully if I do say so."

"Where did the man who threw it go?"

"Down the block--fifth house from the end. It might pay you,
inspector, to send a couple of men to search the place."

For an instant the tone of the man who called himself Claude
Fellingsfort changed. Then he resumed his irritating drawl.

"And now, if you've no objections, I'll be on my way."

Burks reply was icy.

"You'll go down to the station house, Fellingsfort. I'm going to
hold you for investigation--check up on your credentials."

He gestured toward two husky cops.

"Take this man down to the station--keep him there till I come."

"I say!" protested Fellingsfort. "That's what I call gratitude!
I'm late for an appointment now. I really can't sanction this!"

He drew a gold watch from his pocket and looked at it with a
frown.

"Take him away, boys," was the inspector's answer.

The two cops stepped forward, one on each side of the Secret
Agent.

The watch was still in the Agent's hand, and suddenly a strange
thing happened. His thumb moved delicately. There was a faint “click”
inside the timepiece. Then the Agent's arm described a quick arc in
the air before the two cops' faces and a thin jet of vapor spurted
from the watch's stem.

With gasps the two policemen fell back, wiping their eyes,
momentarily blinded by harmless tear gas. And, quick as a fleeing
wraith, the Agent leaped to the door and ran down the stairs.

Inspector Burks cried out harshly and another cop at the entrance
attempted to stop X, but a second jet of gas sent the patrolman
back. An instant later and the Secret Agent, alias Claude
Fellingsfort, had run into the street and disappeared, lost in the
crowd.

Inspector Burks stared again at the card Fellingsfort had given
him, then gave a sudden gasp of amazement.

The card had turned black in his hands, the name disappearing. In
the center of the card a glaring white figure stood out. It was a
mysterious letter "X," come there as though by magic.

IT WASN'T UNTIL twenty-four hours later that Agent X returned to
the Bellaire Club--and this time he went alone. In the meantime he had
followed reports in the papers, questioned numerous people, and done
all he could to trace down the hidden members of the "Torture Trust."
But in each instance he had drawn a blank.

There was one lead still open, however--the most significant of
all, the one upon which Agent X depended for success--or death.

As a news item, the escape of Jason Hertz from the state
penitentiary had not been important. The story had been tucked away on
the second and third pages of the metropolitan papers. The police
hadn't linked up his break for liberty with the sinister activities of
the "Torture Trust." But Agent X knew that somewhere in the city
knowing eyes had read of Hertz's escape.

He returned therefore to the Bellaire Club disguised as a young
man-about-town. But into his disguise he injected a sleekness of
appearance, a sharp, hungry look, that anyone acute enough would
sense. He had the appearance of a man possessed with the gambling
fever.

And only after he had lost two hundred dollars at cards, allaying
the suspicions of Mike Panagakos and the detectives stationed around
the room, did he seat himself at a table by the dance floor. He
ordered a drink and sat hunched over it, smoking a cigarette morosely,
like a man despondent at the loss he has suffered.

The table wasn't ten feet from the blue vase on its polished
settee.

Minutes passed, and the Agent's hand moved to the cord of the
table-light running below the cloth. No one noticed, but in his
fingers was a pair of singularly shaped pliers. They bit down on the
cord and did not sever it; but a needle point thrust itself through
the outer silk covering into the two copper cables inside.

There was a small spark, a hiss, the odor of burned insulation,
and every light in the room went out as the main fuses blew. X had
deliberately caused a short circuit.

In the hubbub that followed he moved quickly. He crossed in the
darkness to the blue vase, slipped his hand inside and withdrew it. In
his fingers was a piece of paper.

He pulled the pliers from the light cord, stopping the short
circuit. When the blown fuses had been replaced by someone in the
kitchen, Agent X was again sitting quietly at his table. A half hour
later, attracting little attention, he gathered up his coat and left.

It wasn't till he reached a secluded avenue that he opened the
note in the hollow of his hand. Then his heart leaped with excitement.

"Come to Forty-four MacDonough Street, J.H., and ring the bell
seven times," the note said. And Agent X knew that in those brief
words lay the seeds of success--or hideous death--depending on his own
wits and the cards that Fate dealt him.



Chapter VII MASTERS OF DEATH



FOR HOURS THAT NIGHT, the Agent worked in his secret room in the
old Montgomery mansion. Rats scuttled across the deserted floors. Mice
squeaked in the walls of the ancient house. From outside came the
occasional noises of the city. The rumble of a heavy truck. The faint
blare of a taxi horn. But the Agent's chamber was like a little world
in itself shut away from the lives of ordinary men.

He had been extraordinarily careful tonight. He had studied
closely the faithful recording apparatus in the cellar, making sure
that no one had disturbed the privacy of the house. He had taken
special pains to throw any possible shadower off the track.

Now, feeling secure, he set to work methodically to achieve the
most masterly disguise of his career. On its perfection his very life
depended, and perhaps the lives of others, innocent victims of the
"Torture Trust."

He took out the movie films, the sound record, and the
measurements made during his interview with Jason Hertz. The film he
had already developed in his small photographic laboratory.

He set a projector on a tripod, focused it on a silver screen, and
switched off the lights in the room.

Then he snapped on the bulb behind the projector and started the
machine in motion.

Hertz's image appeared on the screen. Agent X studied it again and
again, noting each movement and facial expression. He had made a
series of still enlargements from the movie film, and these he studied
also.

He placed the hard-rubber record on a phonographic machine and
listened to Hertz's voice.

For twenty minutes he practised the vowel and consonant sounds,
perfecting tongue and lip movements, until he had mastered the timbre
and pitch--until it seemed that Hertz himself was speaking in the
small room. Then he seated himself before his triple mirror, and, with
the measurement chart at his side, began the elaborate make-up.

He used his finest pigments, built up his plastic material,
working in thin layers with constant reference to the notes he had
made. He reconstructed each plane and line of the ex-convict's
features; then practised characteristic expressions. He laughed,
frowned, registered fear, surprise, and arrogance as he had seen Jason
Hertz do.

Even then he wasn't satisfied--not until he had risen and moved
about the room, imitating Hertz's walk and arm movements. When at last
he put his equipment away, Hertz's own mother wouldn't have known that
the man in the room was not her son.

X dressed himself as a criminal and gunman: a cheap, flashy suit,
a striped silk shirt, a tie that shouted to the world.

But, in the linings of the suit, he hid other articles. There was
no telling what desperate emergencies might arise. He took one keen
look at the little chamber before leaving. It might, for all he knew,
be the last he would ever get.

A taxi sped him to within a few blocks of MacDonough Street. He
got out and paid the driver, doubting that the cabman would recognize
him as Hertz. The police heads would know him. The detective force
would be tipped off. He must avoid representatives of the law. But he
didn't fear citizens or ordinary cops except in the region that Jason
Hertz had frequented.

MacDonough Street was in a dark, cluttered section near the
riverfront. Number forty-four was in a block of ancient, unpainted
houses that seemed like a stagnant backwater left by the city's swift
progress northward. The Secret Agent's heart beat faster as he climbed
the stoop and pressed the bell of number forty-four seven times.

It was at least two minutes before the door opened. Then a
slatternly old woman stood before him. Her beady, ratlike eyes were
set in a face as evil as a witch's. She licked thin, toothless gums
and stared at him out of the black pit of the hall. Then she jerked
her head.

"Come in," she said harshly.

She hadn't asked him his name. He knew she had recognized him as
Jason Hertz. He followed her along a dusty smelling corridor into a
rear room. Here she switched the light on, closed the door after her,
and left him alone.

But he had the uncanny sense that eyes somewhere were studying
him. He waited breathlessly, and seconds later a closet door opened
and a man stepped out.

The man was small, dressed in gray, and his face had the dead,
listless color of putty. His eyes, too, were listless, reptilelike;
but they focused on X's with cold, calculating intelligence.

For seconds the man studied X at close range, then took a pad from
his pocket and the stub of a pencil. He scribbled a sentence on the
pad and handed it to the Agent.

"Come with me," the sentence read.

And X realized with a start that the gray-clad man before him was
a deaf-mute. Looking closer, he saw that the masklike face of the man
seemed to conceal some horrible inner maladjustment. Was he insane, or
a drug addict? There was something chillingly sinister about him, as
though he were the very emissary of death.

HE LED THE AGENT out a rear door of the house, through a back yard
into another street as evil-looking as the one in front. A car was
waiting at the curb. It was a dark-colored, closed vehicle, and at the
wheel of it sat another man of the same type as X's guide. His
features were not the same, but there was a weird similarity of
coloring and manner that puzzled the Agent.

He got into the car at a gesture from the guide. The auto moved
away. It glided through deserted streets, passed narrow, one-way
alleys, then, in a particularly black spot, the gray-clad man at X's
side leaned forward. In his hand was a strip of dark cloth. He raised
it, slid it across X's face and blindfolded him.

The act made the Secret Agent's nerves tingle with excitement.
There was no fear in his heart--except the fear of possible failure.
The precautions taken by the deaf-mute warned the Agent that he was
coming in contact with some supercriminal who left nothing undone.

The car stopped at last. Agent X, blindfolded, unable to see a
step he took, was nevertheless making precise inner records. His
uncanny memory was at work, his supersensitive faculties registering
impressions.

He was drawn out of the car, guided by one of the evil gray men.
He heard a door open, and marked in his mind the position of it. He
was led along a passageway, and he kept track of each individual step.
He turned to the right, went down a flight of stairs, up another,
walked straight ahead through a second corridor.

His ears even registered the acoustic properties of the hall.
Another flight of stairs and his guide stopped him. The Agent's eyes
behind the cloth were bright. Brief as the time had been, he felt
certain he could retrace his steps. The blindfold had failed of its
purpose.

Then Agent X had a sense of chill, a sense of quiet, a sense that
he was in some old, dark building where gloomy shadows lay. Slowly he
was pushed to the center of a room. The blindfold was taken from his
face; footsteps withdrew; he was left in absolute darkness.

For seconds that seemed endless, he stood there, wondering what
was to come next. There was no movement in the room, no sound. Then
suddenly a light flashed on. It was a bulb set in a reflector, a small
searchlight, and it was focused directly on his face.

He waited, staring toward the light, certain that other eyes
behind it were upon him, certain that he was being observed, analyzed,
picked to pieces. Would his disguise stand the test?

Gradually his gaze adjusted itself to the brightness of the light.
He could see the faint illumination it shed in other parts of the
room. He could see the walls, the furniture. Then he gave an inner
start. Perfectly coordinated nerves held it in abeyance. But he let
his face muscles sag as Jason Hertz would have done. He registered an
uneasiness he didn't feel.

For there were three black figures in the room. They sat on chairs
like three ravens of death facing him. There were black hoods over
their heads, trailing black cloth over their bodies. Through holes in
the hoods he saw the evil glitter of eyes.

There was not one criminal, then, but three behind the murders
that had taken place. He was in the presence of the "Torture Trust,"
the men whose inhuman brains had plotted hideous villainy.

A voice came out of the gloom, cold and precise and dangerous as
the buzz of a rattler's tail.

"What have you got to say for yourself, Jason Hertz?"

The Agent gulped, stirred, and imitated Hertz's tone as he had
learned it from the phonographic record.

"I--I lammed out of stir. I figured maybe you'd have something fer
me to do. That's how come I dropped the note. A guy's gotta eat."

"We know you got out of the penitentiary. We have eyes. We read
the papers. But we know your limitations, Hertz. It seems remarkable
that you could have escaped without outside help. Will you please tell
us exactly how you did it?"

The Agent knew at that moment how perilous was the ground upon
which he stood. There were brains of diabolical cunning behind those
sinister black hoods. His life hung upon the answer he made.



Chapter VIII TERRIBLE SECONDS



SLOWLY HE DREW HIS LIPS into a smile. He straightened his body,
threw out his chest, facing the spectral trio with the arrogance of a
criminal proud of his handiwork.

He was a student of human psychology, and he acted now as he
believed Jason Hertz would do in his shoes.

"You gotta hand it to me," he said. "You're king-pins an' you're
smarter than me. But I pulled a fast one when I slipped outta the big
house. There ain't many guys could 'a done it."

"You haven't answered our question, Hertz!" There was a relentless
note in that cultured, measured voice.

These men, X sensed, were not ordinary criminals. They bore no
relation to the underworld of thugs, gunmen, racketeers, and
gamblers--except that they lived by death and the fear of it that
their deeds inspired.

He smiled again. "You wants hear about it right from the start?"

"That's what we want."

"Well, I bought a hacksaw from a snowbird named Cooper. His
brudder smuggled it to him, see? An' he was too shaky to use it. I
give him money to buy coke instead. I snitched a key from a guard when
he had his back turned talkin' to another guy. The key was on a chain.
I stuck a piece of soap on it, see, and made a nifty pattern."

Agent X, alias the convict. Hertz, chuckled again as though at his
own cleverness.

"There was tools in the machine shop," he continued. "I was a good
guy. They made me a trusty. I made me a key from the pattern in the
piece of soap. When I got the chance I slipped out and went to the
empty cell block up top. I cut a hole through the ceiling and got
amongst the rafters. That's the way a guy they told about in the
papers did it."

"Then," came a voice in the gloom, "you cut the bars of an end
window--and climbed down to the yard. We read all that, Hertz. But how
about the wall?"

X laughed again.

"You must'a seen about the rope, too," he said. "I left it there.
There's lots of things a trusty can do. I snitched that rope in the
cellar, the one they used to haul ash cans out on a pulley. I tied a
bolt to it an' slung it over the wall. There was a loop on it. I
caught the loop on a brace that the wires on top of the wall was
fastened to. I did a pretty slick job."

There was silence as he finished his tale. He knew that evil
brains were debating, weighing the story he had told. He believed it
rang true. Hertz _had_ been a trusty. Convicts in the past had used
exactly the methods he had described to escape.

But there was a slow constriction around his heart and he could
feel his pulses pounding. What if he had aroused their suspicions?

Then another of the black-hooded trio spoke. His voice was lower,
hoarser, but it, too, had a cultured note.

"You've done well, Jason Hertz. You are cleverer than we thought.
We may be able to use you again. But for a time you will have to lie
low. We will call you when we need you."

There was finality in the voice. The Agent's heart sank. He must
find out something definite. He couldn't wait around for weeks while
the hideous murders went on.

His disguise had worked. He was not suspected, but he had learned
little. Who were these men? What faces lay behind those black hoods?
Where did they live?

He stared again beyond the range of the searchlight, looked at the
black-hooded figures with quick penetration. His eyes came to a focus
on one.

The right foot of the middle man was thrust slightly forward. The
toe of a shoe projected from under the black robe that dropped to the
floor. On that shoe the sharp eyes of the Agent detected streaks of
mud--mud that had caked recently, mud that formed an irregular
pattern. And, in that brief glimpse, his astute brain registered an
impression that was photographic.

The hooded men, so far as he could see, made no signal; but one of
the mask-faced deaf-mutes returned. The Agent was familiar with the
regular deaf-and-dumb language, but he could not follow the strange
finger conversation that ensued between the trio and the mute. It
must, he concluded, be in code.

The blindfold was slipped over his eyes again; the light in the
room went out. He was led through darkness. The sinister trio
obviously believed him to be Jason Hertz. But they were taking no
chances. Besides themselves only the deaf-mutes were allowed to know
the secrets of this hidden place.

Agent X was storing impressions again. He was being led out by a
different route. The stairs were different, so were the corridors. The
acoustic properties of the latter, responding to his footfalls, gave
out different echoes.

When they reached the street, he was pushed into a car and the
blindfold wasn't removed until they had driven many blocks. But the
Agent had been marking the intersections in his mind by the different
sounds that the street openings made. They had passed four. The
rumbling note of the wheels changed each time. They rounded a corner,
went two more blocks, then another corner. The blindfold was taken
off. The car slid into MacDonough Street.

He was motioned up the steps of number forty-four again, and a deaf-mute rang
the bell, two longs and a short. Then the mute wrote on his pad: "Stay
here," and thrust it under X's nose.

The witchlike landlady led X to a second-floor room. She lighted a
gas jet and left him alone. He heard the deaf-mute descend the stoop
and the car drive away.

He crossed the room quickly, thrusting his head out the door. He
could hear the faint, shuffling steps of the landlady somewhere below.
Taking off his shoes, he tiptoed out, walked down the hall and reached
the front door. He made no sound. He kept close to the walls. In a
moment he had opened the door and slipped out.

Thinking he was Jason Hertz, escaped convict, they would expect
him to stay in the house, glad of a refuge. But the real Jason Hertz
was far away, and the man impersonating him had a perilous task to
perform.

He moved along the block like a wraith, ducked into a deserted
alley, listened a moment, then set to work.

Under the quick movements of his skilled fingers, the brilliant
disguise came away. It would take long minutes of patient labor to
build it up again; but only a few seconds were required to remove it.
And in his coat lining, he had another quick disguise ready.

When he emerged from the alley, he appeared as a young, redheaded
street loafer. The silk shirt was gone.

The sweater he had worn under it, surreptitiously, was in
evidence, drawn up around his neck. His coat and trousers, specially
tailored to be turned inside out, had completed the change. He no
longer remotely resembled Jason Hertz.

Keeping close to the shadows, he walked back along the way he had
come. He thought out each step, turned the right corners as he came to
them, pausing at last by a huge empty warehouse.

His pulses were tingling now. It was into this building that the
deaf-mute had led him. It was out of it that the sinister trio must
come.

Carefully, casually, he skirted the big warehouse. It occupied
nearly the whole of a small block. Three sides of it were on streets.
But there was a clutter of empty houses in the rear. Agent X moved by
these. Then his heart beat faster.

In the street outside he saw the glint of moisture. A puddle,
barely dried, reflected the light from a distant street lamp. The mud
around the puddle was a light yellow. Dried, it would probably appear
white. It formed a precious clue.

He took up his position in the shadows across the street. There
was no telling how many secret entrances the chamber in the warehouse
had. The most subtle precautions had been taken to guard them. Yet the
Agent felt certain that at least one of the trio had passed in through
these old buildings in the rear. Might he not be expected to come out
the same way?

Night wind moaned along the street. The stars glittered coldly.
Somewhere far up on the warehouse a piece of loose tin flapped and
groaned like a wounded vampire. The street was cold, bleak, and
deserted. But the Secret Agent waited.

IT WAS NEARLY AN HOUR later that he crouched back in his hiding
place. A door in one of the deserted buildings had at last opened. A
man in a long ulster stepped quietly out, closing the door after him.
His movements were not furtive. They were calm, assured. The man's
face was even-featured and calm, too, and he was well dressed.

But the Agent leaned forward tensely. On the man's shoes were pale
streaks of mud. He picked his way past the puddle as though a recent
unpleasant experience had taught him to be careful.

Shadowing was one of X's specialties. He had done much of it in
his life. He knew all the tricks. Yet it took every resource at his
command to keep sight of the man in the gray ulster.

The man walked four blocks up the street at a rapid pace. He
turned left, walked four blocks more to a main thoroughfare and waited
for a taxi.

At a fast clip, hands in pockets, head bent low, the Agent walked
on by him. His heart was beating rapidly with the excitement of the
chase. What if another taxi did not come? What if he lost sight of the
man in a traffic jam? These were risks a shadower must always take.

Then he saw a cab approaching from the other direction. He stepped
into the street, signaled it. The driver seemed loath to stop because
of X's unpresentable appearance. But X waved a bill in his face.

"Make a U turn," he said. "Then drive ahead slowly."

The driver did so and the Agent looked back. He saw another cab
glide in to the curb and pick up the man behind. It came on up the
street and passed.

"Follow that car," said the Agent.

The driver of the cab obeyed. But the man ahead, as though it were
part of a customary routine, changed cabs three times, walked many
extra blocks, and used other tricks to throw off possible pursuit.

The trail led at last to a house in the suburbs--a house on a
quiet, respectable street. There were no lights in it when the man in
the gray ulster entered. But they flashed on soon after. He was
evidently staying alone.

The Agent waited outside till long after midnight, till the lights
finally went out for good. Then he slipped a handkerchief over his
face crossed the street, and moved to the rear of the house. If he
should be caught, he wanted to be thought a common burglar.

He took from his pocket a kit of tiny chromium steel tools. There
was a glass cutter with a full diamond point among them. He selected
the windows of the library, placed a rubber suction disc against a
pane, cut the glass noiselessly, and, holding the disc, drew the glass
toward him with a faint snap.

In a moment he was in the library, playing the beam of a tiny
flashlight over the walls and furniture. There were books, many of
them, and a desk with papers on it.

From these he learned the name of the man who lived in the house.
Professor Ronald Morvay, psychologist.

That was something. The Agent stored it in his memory. He rotated
the beam of his flash, then stopped. It was focused on the wall, on
the circular front of a small sunken safe.

The Agent walked to it quickly. House- and safe-breaking were
included in his activities--when it was the house of a murderer he
broke into and the safe of a murderer he opened.

But there were no clues as yet that would help unravel the plot
behind the mysterious "Torture Trust." He knew it was an extortion
racket. The police knew that, too. But what diabolical minds were back
of it, and how could they be caught?

He knelt before the safe, touched the dial with his long fingers,
put his ear to the metal. In the pursuit of criminals he had studied
their methods, and he was familiar with the mechanics of safe-
breaking. There were few that he could not open by listening to the
faint movement of the lock tumblers.

At the end of a minute he had the door of the wall safe in
Professor Morvay's library swinging outward on its hinges. Then his
hand reached inside.

A common burglar would have been disappointed, but the Agent felt
rewarded. There were in the safe several small books filled with a
fine, close script. And as the Agent turned the beam of his flash on
them and studied them, his eyes gleamed eagerly. He began to read--and
read on, devouring the lines, page after page.

He was held in the grip of such appalling horror that his skin
felt cold. Here was a record of human ingenuity and fiendishness
beyond anything he had ever run into. No wonder the books had been
placed in the safe!

They told of a series of experiments by a scientist--a
psychologist--who used his knowledge for criminal purposes. They told
of the experiments of Professor Morvay on that part of the human brain
which harbors the sadistic tendencies--the lust to torture and kill.
They told how men with a trace of sadism in their makeup could be
trained into inhuman monsters. And Agent X, grim-faced, thought of the
gray-clad deaf-mutes with their sinister features. These were
Professor Morvay's subjects, the men he had experimented on. These
were the sadistic fiends who were only too glad to carry out the
orders of their masters. These were the acid throwers!

But the other two members of the murder trio were unknown to him.
And there would have to be proof beyond this to convince any jury that
the respectable Professor Morvay was a hideous criminal.

X began searching through the second book. Then he stopped. A
faint noise had come. He put the books back in the safe, closed the
door swiftly and started to turn toward the window. But instead, he
held himself as though every muscle were frozen.

For the lights in the room suddenly flashed on, and standing in
the door which he had silently opened stood Professor Morvay. There
was an automatic in his hand, and its black, deadly muzzle was
pointing straight at the Secret Agent's heart.



Chapter IX THE MURDERERS STRIKE



IN THE SPACE of a second, the Agent knew what he faced. The menace
of death hung heavy in the room. There was death in Professor Morvay's
green-gray eyes and in the thin, cruel line of his lips. Legally he
could find justification for shooting the Agent who appeared now as a
common thief. Morvay would say to the police that he had shot in self-
defense. Any instant the Agent expected to feel the impact of a bullet
above his heart.

But the fear that gripped him was not for himself. It was for the
success of his plans. Death would bring an end to them all.

But Morvay did not shoot. Instead, he came forward slowly, the gun
held in fingers that were as tense as a bird's talons. His eyes were
fixed upon the Agent, boring in, trying to penetrate behind the
handkerchief.

X understood. Morvay was taking no chances. Curiosity was
restraining the quick pressure of his trigger finger. The Agent
appeared as a common burglar. But there was a chance that he might be
someone else--a detective, for instance.

This doubt was the slender thread upon which the Agent's life
hung. He would live until Morvay's curiosity was satisfied.

In those brief moments while the psychologist approached, X
studied him. He saw the high, peaked forehead, the aquiline nose, the
ruthless intelligence of the eyes. Morvay, he suspected, was an
intellectual giant who had gone wrong, a man with erudition and a vast
store of knowledge at his command. If the other members of the
"Torture Trust" were like him, no wonder the police had been baffled.
The professor and his colleagues were masters of death, cunning,
pitiless, diabolical, laying the threads of their extortion racket
like a sinister tarantula's web.

Morvay spoke then, and X's keenly attuned ears recognized his
voice as one of those he had heard in that mystery room where the
deaf-mute had taken him.

"Stand still--lift your hands--or you die!"

Slowly the Secret Agent raised his arms. The acceleration of his
pulses had stopped. They were normal now. An icy calm possessed him.
His brain was working with the silent, faultless precision of some
finely adjusted mechanism. He was matching his wits against death.

Holding the automatic in his right hand, standing only three feet
from the Agent, Morvay reached out with his left. He drew the
handkerchief down over the Agent's face. Whom he expected to see, X
did not know. The Agent's disguise was that of a common thug--a street
loafer lured into the byways of crime.

And, as Morvay studied him, the Agent saw curiosity give way to
another emotion. A sinister message was flashing from the professor's
eyes. The pupils had contracted. The whites glinted evilly. He had the
look of a crouched jungle beast ready to spring. Morvay was planning
to kill, planning it deliberately, ruthlessly, satisfied now that his
nocturnal visitor had nothing to do with the police.

In X's right shoe was a weapon he might have used--a tiny air gun
in the front of the sole, firing a stupefying dart, and discharged by
pressing back in a certain way on his heel. It was one of many
masterly defensive weapons he had devised. But he dismissed the idea
of employing it now.

There was a greater issue than his own life at stake. There was
the work to which he had dedicated that life. To use the dart now
would give away to Professor Morvay that he wasn't what he appeared--a
common burglar. Morvay, when he recovered from the dart's stupefying
effect, would be suspicious, on his guard ever after--and he would
warn the other members of the "Torture Trust." They might disappear
and carry on their fearful operations in some other community. X must
stick to the role he had elected for himself.

With the quickness of a striking snake, he lashed outward and
upward with his foot. He bent his body back, threw his whole weight
forward, and the toe of his shoe struck Morvay's gun arm.

The gun exploded with a deafening report as Morvay's tense fingers
jerked the trigger. The bullet went over the Agent's head, so close
that he felt it flick the cloth of the cap he wore. His toe broke
Morvay's hold on the weapon. It spun in the air, clattered to the
floor, and Morvay staggered back with a cry of pain.

In an instant Agent X had swept up the gun and had reversed the
direction of its muzzle. He snarled in his throat like a vicious thug.

"Stick 'em up, guy. Make any play and I'll burn yer guts. Thought
yer was smart didn't yer?"

His eyes glittering like those of a snake, the professor obeyed.
Those eyes were upon X now, watching, calculating. And X knew that
Morvay's suspicions were not entirely quieted. The Agent spoke again.

"Open that safe."

To emphasize his words, he thrust the gun closer, skinning his
lips back from his teeth, making his face hideous.

"Open it, or I'll drill yer."

With a shrug Morvay turned. He knelt before the safe. His long
fingers turned the dial. The safe's door swung outward.

"Stand back!"

With his gun, Agent X motioned Morvay against the wall. Then, his
face greedy, he stepped forward and thrust his left hand into the
safe. He withdrew it, fingers clutching the books. He thumbed them,
stared at them closely, then flung them to the floor with a harsh
curse.

"Where's the dough? What are yer tryin' to hand me?"

The professor was silent, and X pressed the gun savagely against
his body.

"I'll give yer two minutes to come across."

Morvay nodded toward the desk. "You'll find money in there. The
bottom left drawer."

Agent X backed away, crouched, fingers curled over the butt of the
gun--the picture of a cash-crazed crook.

He jerked open the drawer of the desk with his left hand, pulled
out an envelope. His fingers slipped it open, drew forth a sheaf of
bills. There were many of them--tens, twenties, several hundred in
cash, he estimated. Growling exultantly, he wadded the bills up,
stuffed them in his pocket. There was a telephone on the desk. He
yanked the cord loose, breaking it away from the box on the wall.

Then slowly, still holding the gun trained on Morvay, he backed
toward the window. He thrust his feet out, eased his body backward,
and in a moment the darkness had swallowed him.

HE WAS CERTAIN NOW that his acting had convinced Professor
Morvay--certain that Morvay believed him to be a mere thief. He
crossed through several back yards, gliding between night-darkened
houses. In the glow of a street lamp, he examined the roll of bills he
had taken. There were more than he had thought--nearly four hundred
dollars. It was money that he would turn over immediately to Betty
Dale.

That was his practice when he took cash from criminals. There were
worthy people upon whom the shadow of crime had fallen heavily. There
was, for instance, the mother of a lad he knew, a boy who had
foolishly taken part in a crap game that the police had raided. He had
been sent to the workhouse for six months. The mother was destitute.
This cash, taken from the murderer Morvay, would give her food and a
roof over her head while her son was in jail. Betty Dale would see to
that.

The Agent placed the sweater under his silk shirt again, making
himself more presentable. He took a taxi to the block Betty lived on.

Walking along the block, he puckered up his lips and his strange,
melodious whistle filled the air. It awoke echoes along the quiet
street, piped eerily among the rooftops and whispered to silence in
the dark areaways.

He came to a stop opposite her apartment building, then stepped
back into the shadows formed by an angle where two walls met. Looking
upward, he saw that her windows were dark. Betty Dale was out or had
gone to bed. He stood for a moment irresolutely.

Then something on the ground caught his eye. A whitish spot lay at
his feet. He stooped down.

Close to one toe of his shoe was a cigarette stub. A little
farther away was another. He had trained himself to observe small
things, to miss nothing. What were these cigarette stubs doing here?
Here in the spot where he always stood watching Betty's windows after
whistling for her? He stared more closely. There was a third stub just
behind him. They told a story to the Agent. Someone else had stood
here, waiting, watching--long enough to finish three cigarettes.

He struck a match and stooped down. Then he drew in his breath
with a hiss. His fingers, suddenly tense, reached down and picked one
of the stubs up. His eyes narrowed to steel-like pinpoints as he
examined it.

On the cigarette butt were yellowish, uneven stains--the marks of
the fingers that had grasped it. And the Agent's spine began to crawl
with horror, with a slow, deepening dread.

His mind leaped back to those other hands he had seen--the hands
of the gray-faced deaf-mutes--the acid throwers. Their fingers, he
remembered, had been stained with the fumes of the liquid horror they
carried. One of them must have been standing out here, watching Betty
Dale's window. He crossed the street at a run, entered the building.
The night switchboard operator was lolling before his plugs, half
asleep. The Agent asked a question in a tone that brought the man up
with a jerk.

"Miss Dale," X said. "Is she in?"

The switchboard operator shook his head.

"She got a call from her paper a half hour ago."

Dread deepened in the Agent's heart. The _Herald_ seldom called
Betty Dale at night.

"Get the paper at once," he said. "Let me speak to the night
editor."

He went to the booth in the apartment's lobby, picked up the
instrument. The operator at the switchboard plugged in a number. The
crackling voice of the _Herald's_ night editor came to the Agent's
ears.

"Hello. Who is it?"

"Let me speak to Miss Betty Dale, please."

"Miss Dale? She's not here."

"Didn't you call her a half hour ago?"

"No--she works here in the day."

"You don't know where she is then?"

"Home, I guess--why? Who's calling?"

The Agent didn't answer. His hands trembled for a moment as he
hung up. Fear possessed him--an icy fear that crept along his spine
like the touch of some loathsome reptile--not fear for himself but for
small, courageous Betty Dale, who had aided him so often.

Someone other than the _Herald_'s editor had called her from the
outside, lured her away. Someone had spied upon her movements, left
cigarette butts with acid stains upon them--the badge of a hideous
profession. Betty Dale had fallen under the black and awful shadow of
the "Torture Trust"!



Chapter X TORTURE!



WITH NO INKLING of the menace creeping upon her, Betty Dale had
settled herself for a quiet evening at home. She had slipped into a
comfortable and becoming pair of lounging pajamas, propped pillows on
a sofa, and drawn the bookmark from an interesting new novel.

The reading light sprayed radiance on her gleaming blonde hair,
touched her long lashes, caressed the soft contours of her face and
figure. She lay back relaxing after a hard day at the office.

When at midnight the call from the _Herald_ office came, it
surprised her. She was seldom called at night.

"The editor wants you," said a voice. "A big story's broke. He
thinks you can help--an' wants you to come right down."

With a sigh and a philosophical shrug, Betty Dale rose and
dressed. Her career had been won by a lot of hard work and self-
discipline. When the paper wanted her, she made it a point to be
ready.

She powdered her face, gave her hat a smart tilt, dabbed lipstick
on, and descended to the street. A proportion of her success had been
gained by always appearing chic and alert.

She took a cab at the corner and told the driver to make it
snappy. The paper had called. The presses were waiting. There was no
time to lose.

The cab rolled swiftly through the deserted streets down to the
block where the _Herald_ building rose with the lights in its many
windows gleaming cheerfully. Men in the linotype and composing rooms
were hard at work.

She paid the driver and stepped smartly toward the building's
entrance.

Then someone moved from the shadows beside the door. He held up
his hand, signaled to her. He was a small man dressed in gray. She
could not see his features, for he had a cap pulled down. They
appeared to be strangely gray, masklike. She had never to her
knowledge seen him before. Nevertheless she stopped.

And, in that instant, the man glided up to her. His movements were
so quick, so purposeful, that she thought he was going to hand her
something--thought that he must be an employee of the paper.

Instead, his fingers reached out, clutching her arm. With a quick
movement that unbalanced her, he drew her back into the shadows. She
started to scream, but he clapped a hand over her mouth. She tried to
break away and something jabbed into her arm.

It was a sharp, keen pain like the prick of a needle. It was
followed by a cool sensation in the surrounding flesh.

Betty Dale gasped and struggled, and a wave of icy terror filled
her. She felt a sudden roaring in her head, felt her knees giving way
under her, felt as though the night were pressing in upon her from all
sides. The lighted windows of the _Herald_ building seemed to move in
all directions. They seemed to explode, gyrate, whirl round and round
like a galaxy of comets sweeping across an infinite sky.

Then the roaring ceased. The comets grew dim. Betty Dale slipped
into unconsciousness.

WHEN SHE AWOKE, feeling faint and dizzy, she sensed a jouncing
motion. She tried to see, but something was over her eyes. She tried
to speak and felt something else constricting her lips. She knew then
that she was on the seat of a car, and she leaned back fighting the
icy terror that possessed her. Her body still felt numb, paralyzed
beyond the point of movement.

She realized that the sharp pain in her arm had been a hypodermic
needle, an injection of some sort of drug. But who had pressed it in?
Who was the strange, gray-faced man she had seen, and where was she
being taken?

Fear rose in her mind. She had heard of unspeakable things, of the
white slave traffic, of dark, slimy alleys of vice. Fear lay over her
mind like a leaden pall.

She lost track of time. It might have been hours and it might have
ten minutes later that the car stopped. Then a door opened. She was
propelled forward for a seemingly endless distance, through an
infinite duration of time. She was in some building, somewhere, but
she couldn't see or cry out.

She was pushed into a chair. The covering was taken from her eyes,
and a gag was removed from her mouth. But she was in utter darkness
and could still see nothing. She drew in great gasps of air, but she
did not cry out. She wasn't the sort of girl who screams or faints
easily. She waited and listened in a frozen attitude of dread.

Then a light flashed on directly in her eyes. For minutes she
could see nothing and no one spoke. More seconds passed and the light
was suddenly dimmed. She could see around it now, behind it, and she
caught her breath fearfully.

Two black-robed figures were sitting, regarding her. She saw the
glitter of their eyes through slits in the black hoods that covered
their faces. Somehow she sensed that she was in the presence of beings
so evil that no human appeal would register. She did not speak. She
waited to see what was to come.

A voice came out of the semi-gloom, out from behind a black hood.
It was measured, impersonal. The tones were cultured.

"Miss Betty Dale! You are here to answer certain questions. A few
nights ago you were seen at the Bellaire Club with a man who called
himself Jeffrey Carter. There was a police raid. You left the club
with a man who looked like Inspector Burks of the homicide squad. You
were seen crossing the street with him into the shadows of a building.
Shortly afterwards the real Inspector Burks arrived from headquarters.
Who was the man who led you out? Who was Jeffrey Carter?"

Betty Dale sat still, her keen brain grappling with the situation.
Were these men detectives? Was this a new kind of third degree?

"I don't know," she said at last. "I don't know who Jeffrey Carter
really is."

The voice spoke again.

"Are he and the man who calls himself Secret Agent X one and the
same?"

Betty Dale gasped. Whoever these men were they seemed close to the
truth. The facts dawned on her. Horror crept through her veins like a
flow of icy water. These men were the heads of the hideous "Torture
Trust." They had learned, or guessed, that the Agent was after them.
But what could she tell them even if she cared to speak? She knew
little about the Agent, and that little was a sedulously guarded
secret. Courage and stubbornness overshadowed fear.

"I will tell you nothing," she said.

One of the hooded figures spoke again, his tone as dry and
sinister as the scrape of a serpent's scales across stone.

"Others have said that. But there are things that will make any
man or woman talk. There are things so terrible that human flesh
crawls in the face of them. Things that make the human will crumble.
Do you think that you, a mere girl, can endure such things?"

Betty Dale kept silent. She sat in her chair, frozen. They might
ring the truth out of her, make her admit that Jeffrey Carter was the
Secret Agent. She was not a superwoman. She might babble that if they
forced her. But she knew it wouldn't satisfy them. They would want
more, and she couldn't tell more. It was better to say nothing and let
them think she knew all. It was better to stall for time.

She did not see either of the hooded men signal, but suddenly two
men slipped into the room--two men dressed in gray, with faces as gray
as their clothes. They were men with masklike expressions and
reptilian cruelty in their lusterless eyes.

One of the hooded figures lifted his hands, making a series of
motions in the air with his fingers--motions that the gray-faced men
seemed to understand.

They drew Betty Dale from her seat and led her out of the room.
The blindfold was slipped on again. She was led along corridors, down
stairs, her numbed feet moving as though in a dream. She felt the damp
coldness of a basement at last. She felt stone under her feet. Then
she saw a light around the edges of the blindfold.

Suddenly she was tipped backward, forced into what appeared to be
a big chair. A scream of terror, her first, came from her lips as she
felt cold bands of steel snapped over her wrists and ankles. The
blindfold was removed and, glassy eyed, she stared about her.

The room she was in had a stone floor like a laboratory. The white
shelves along the walls were loaded with bottles and tubes which
heightened the effect. But the chair into which she had been thrust
had no place in a laboratory. It was massive, heavy, made of steel and
brass like a chair in a barber shop. The metal that encircled her arms
and ankles was bolted to the sides of the chair. She was held as
tightly as a prisoner in chains.

And a second look revealed that the room was not a laboratory. A
laboratory would be devoted to science, research, human enlightenment.
This room was dedicated to the opposite--to agony, fear, unspeakable
horror. The room was a torture chamber.

One of the deaf-mutes was working at a shelf now. He had taken the
stopper from a tall flask. He poured the contents into another flask,
adding a few drops from still another.

Betty saw greenish, slow-moving fumes curling up like steam from a
hideous witches' cauldron. They rose around the deaf-mute's face, but
he didn't seem to mind. It was as though close proximity to evil had
made him immune to the terrible things in which he dealt.

Betty screamed again, straining at the metal cuffs. But it was
useless, hopeless, and the two men in the room could not even hear her
cries. Their faces were impassive, devilish.

The man with the flask turned and came toward her. He held the
flask in one hand and in the other was a stick with a swab on the end
of it. He dipped the swab into the flask, brought it out, and she saw
that it was wet with a green, sinister liquid.

Slow fumes wreathed up, curling lazily into the air, hideous and
terrible as the quiet uncoiling of a serpent. The man moved the swab
toward the fresh beauty of her face, toward her skin that was as
smooth as the velvety petal of a rose. On his face for the first time
was a definite expression. It was a terrible smile--a smile that
seemed to take some of the lackluster from his eyes. It was a smile of
fiendish pleasure, as though the thing he was about to do would give
him exquisite delight.

Betty Dale screamed again. She screamed because she could not help
it, because her eyes were fixed upon those lazy, terrible fumes,
because terror seemed to writhe through her body like a living thing.

Then the wave of terror deepened. It engulfed her in a black flood
that pressed against her heart. With a piercing, agonized scream on
her lips, she fainted.



Chapter XI A CRY IN THE DARK



THE SECRET AGENT, sensing the awful significance of Betty Dale's
disappearance, sprang into action. There were times when he could be
patient, times when he could wait, catlike, hour after hour to achieve
some end. This was not one of them.

He felt responsible for the fate that had overtaken Betty Dale. If
she had not aided him, been seen with him, this would not have
happened.

He left the apartment building in long, quick strides. At the
corner taxi stand where all-night cabs were available, he spoke to the
drivers.

One was the cabman who had taken Betty Dale to the _Herald_
building. He was taciturn at first under the Agent's sharp
questioning, but a dollar bill loosened his tongue.

"Did Miss Dale go to the _Herald_ office?" The Agent asked.

The cabman could not remember. He had gone on after collecting his
fare, he said.

"Was there anyone around--any other car near by?"

The taxi driver stroked his chin. Yes, he remembered now. There
was a closed car parked down the block. It had made little impression
on him. There were always cars around the _Herald_ office.

The Agent nodded. There was the harsh glint of steel in his eyes.
He jerked open the door of the cab, got in, and gave the driver a
number.

Agent X, unknown to anyone but himself, had invested some of the
funds entrusted to him in several cars. In his perilous work he needed
one always handy. Each car was registered under a different name. He
kept one, a sleek, fast roadster, in a mid-town garage.

The number he had given the driver was two blocks away from the
garage. When the cab stopped, he got out, paid the driver and
disappeared into a shadowy areaway beside the street. There he
affected another disguise. He was H.J. Martin now, the man in whose
name the mid-town car was registered.

He strode quickly to the garage, and the night attendant got the
car out for him. A minute more and he was speeding toward the West
Side riverfront--toward the dark alleys and sinister dives around
MacDonough Street.

The traffic lights had been turned off for the night. The streets
were almost deserted. He drove with reckless abandon seemingly, but
really with such skill as few men could duplicate. His face grim, his
hands tense on the wheel, he rocketed around corners, plunged through
side streets, raced against time. He passed through MacDonough Street
and onward, a half dozen blocks to the vicinity of the warehouse.

There he slowed the car's speed, creeping forward, lights out, the
engine barely turning over, till the big car was close to the vast
bulk of the warehouse that rose silent and sinister into the night.

He parked the car in the blackest spot he could find near the row
of dilapidated buildings in the warehouse's rear. Then, wraithlike, he
slipped from it.

DEATH SEEMED TO LURK in every hidden corner of the street. Death
sounded in the soughing of the night wind, in the far-off whisper of
the city. He was in a street of death and evil.

Once again he took the kit of steel tools from his pocket. There
were delicate skeleton keys hung on a metal ring. There were
instruments that could open any door. These, combined with the Agent's
uncanny skill, made every lock pregnable.

Moving close to the wall, he approached the door out of which he
had seen Professor Morvay come. He kept so near to the building that
the dim arc light at the street's corner did not even cast a shadow.
He was no more than a darker blotch in the darkness of the night.

One of the small, gleaming tools was in his hand. His touch on the
lock was as delicate as the touch of some skilled musician playing a
beloved instrument. He moved the steel tool softly, turned it, probed.
The knob of the door twisted in his hand. The door opened.

A moment more and he was inside the building. And the instant he
entered it, he knew that it constituted a section of one of the routes
along which he had been led. The faint acoustics of the walls were
familiar.

But the darkness was like a black, evil pall, and, at the end of
the first corridor was another door. It, too, was locked, and the
Agent paused to open it. He passed through it as easily as some
disembodied spirit.

He stood listening, heard nothing, and winked on the beam of his
pencil-thin flashlight. By twisting the end he could cut down its
light as water is cut at the end of a garden hose by turning the
nozzle. It cast a spot of radiance no bigger than a dime. He probed
with it along the walls.

But he had to admit that he was at a loss. Where was Betty Dale?
There was a chance, a terrible possibility, that she had not been
brought here at all. There was another chance that she was being
interviewed by one or more of the mysterious heads of the "Torture
Trust."

He knew he could find again that chamber where he had first heard
the voice of Professor Morvay. His mind had stored away directions for
reaching it. To go there now seemed his only course.

In the darkness, picturing himself as still blindfolded, he began
retracing his steps, going back along the way the deaf-mutes had led
him. Up a flight of stairs, along another corridor, still on. He was
in the warehouse proper now.

There was a feeling of solidity around him. A penetrating dampness
in the air as of great, chill spaces. He was getting close to the
secret council room, and every nerve in his body was taut.

Then he paused. It seemed to him that he heard a faint sound
somewhere in the building. It was like an irrepressible whisper,
coming through many thicknesses of walls.

He moved back quickly, half the length of the corridor. Then he
listened again.

The sound came once more, and the hair on the Agent's head seemed
to rise. The sound he had heard was a girl's scream of terror, faint,
muffled, seemingly subterranean, but with such a note of agony in it
that it was like a stifling, icy substance constricting his heart.

He gave up any idea of going to the council chamber now. Betty was
not there. Somewhere down in the dark sub-cellars of the warehouse she
had been taken. He dared not think what they were doing to her, what
had inspired that awful scream.

His ears were straining, his brain trying to locate the exact
direction of the sound. He was desperately afraid that he might go the
wrong way.

He reached a door along the corridor, opened it, turned on his
flash, and saw that it led up. He ran on till he came to another.
Dampness beat against his face as he swung the door back. There were
stairs leading down.

He descended and found himself in a place that was like a series
of catacombs. Each second seemed like a lost hour. He moved forward
frantically, searching, groping, icy fear for the girl driving him on.

Ahead, nearer this time, the scream sounded again. There seemed to
be only a few thicknesses of walls between it and himself. His ears
had caught its exact location. He moved on with greater speed.

There was another door before him. He opened it with one of his
master keys, melted through it, found himself in a dank corridor
beyond. Running swiftly, he reached the corridor's end and stopped
short. Directly ahead was a faint crack of light shining below the
edge of a door.

Silently as a shadow, he crept up to it. A third frenzied scream
came from behind it, so close that it was like a knife stab.

The Agent had to steady his hand as he tried the knob. It, too,
was fastened. He had never moved so quickly in his life as he did
thrusting the key into the lock aperture. His hand grew steady again.
In this crisis, nerves and muscles were cooperating. The crack of the
door widened.

Swift as a streak of light, the Secret Agent was in the room. Then
horror widened his eyes.

Betty Dale sat in a metal chair that was somehow reminiscent of a
prison death house. He saw the metal bands that held her, saw her
face, white as parchment, her eyes stark with terror. He saw the gray-
faced deaf-mute who bent over her, the swab of acid-soaked cotton in
his hand.

And in that instant the Agent leaped across the floor. There was
no time for subtle action. A drop of the greenish, horrible fluid had
already fallen off the swab. It had fallen on Betty's dress close to
her white neck. Fumes of it were curling up. Fumes from the swab
itself were close to her nostrils, close to the satiny softness of her
face, as the torturer brought it nearer.

Betty had come out of her faint only to find her tormentors
waiting, ready to go ahead with their terrible deed. The Agent did not
know this. He only knew that, mercifully, he had been in time.

So quickly that the mute in front of Betty did not see him until
it was too late, he leaped forward. His hand struck the swab from the
torturer's fingers. His other hand, balled into a hard fist, struck
the gray-clad man in the side of the head, sending him reeling away.

The other mute whirled and came toward Agent X with a tube of acid
in his hand. He flung it. Reeking fumes filled the air. But the Agent
sidestepped and rushed in.

He swung again and sent the man crashing back against a shelf
filled with bottles. The bottles leaped and fell with a clatter of
breaking glass. More fumes filled the room.

From the corner of his eye, Agent X saw the first man he had
struck rise and scuttle from the chamber like a streaking gray rat.

But there was no time to follow. The air was suffocating, deadly.
He turned to Betty Dale. She was sitting in the chair, her face almost
corpselike with the fear that had filled her. She could barely speak.

She watched him dumbly as he stared at the cuffs that held her.
Seconds were precious. Where had the deaf-mute gone? To warn his
masters? To get reinforcements?

X's hands were trembling--unusual for him. The steel bracelets
presented difficulties. The keyholes in them were too small for any of
his master keys.

Then he turned and leaped to the man who lay on the floor. The
mute was breathing stertorously. He was unconscious. X fumbled in the
man's pockets, exclaiming with relief when he found a ring of keys.
Two of them were small, fragile.

He thrust one into the locks of the cuffs on Betty's wrists and
ankles, and the cuffs snapped open. But it had taken time, and time
was a precious thing.

He lifted her out of the chair, stood her on her feet, but she
could not walk. Fear and the cramped position she had been in had
stiffened her muscles.

He picked her up bodily; turned toward the door of the chamber.
Somewhere in the vast building overhead, there was a faint noise. It
was like a signal bell. Down a long corridor he saw a dim flicker of
light. He didn't like it. Deaf-mutes could not hear, but they could
see. What if there were others? There was no way of knowing how many
of his terrible subjects Professor Morvay had trained.

Running as swiftly as he could, he carried Betty back the way he
had come. But he found that one door had snapped shut again. He had to
put her down and work with his master key. That took time.

At the level of the ground floor, at a junction of corridors he
paused. There was a whisper of sound behind--the sound of running
feet. Pursuers were coming out of the darkness. He and Betty would
shortly be overwhelmed. The girl must be gotten away at all costs. If
she were injured, burned with acid, it would haunt him to the end of
his days.

He stooped and whispered to her.

"Rats are coming out of the night. A terrier may have to hold them
in check. Do as the terrier says."

He carried Betty along a passage into the rear group of buildings.
He set her down and found she could walk now. Then he spoke again,
calmly, as though death were not close at their heels in the darkness.

"Go straight ahead and out the door. A car waits across the
street. Drive away--as fast as you can. Go to the Hotel Graymont. Wait
for the terrier there!"

He heard her breath come quickly, felt her fingers clutch him. She
did not want to obey--did not want to desert him. But a steely touch
of his hand on her arm gave accent to his order. He pushed her
forward, heard her footsteps receding.

He was glad he had done it. The sounds in the corridor behind were
close now. Betty Dale could not walk rapidly. Carrying her, he would
have been overtaken surely. Her only chance of escape was for him to
make himself a dike against the human flood of evil and horror that
was surging in upon him.

He waited tensely till the sounds of the running feet were close.
Then he whipped out his gas pistol and fired. There were only six gas-
filled shells in the gun. He discharged them all, laying a momentary
barrage in the corridor.

There was the noise of a stumbling, falling body. Gasps of fear
came out of the darkness and the footsteps receded. Then the gas cloud
cleared and the fierce wave advanced again. The blackness vomited
leaping, flying figures. There were a half-dozen of the gray-clad men.

Struggling fiercely, fighting against the human torrent that
engulfed him, the Secret Agent went down in a flying welter of arms
and legs and lashing fists.



Chapter XII TRAPPED!



HE FOUGHT ON blindly in the darkness, expecting momentarily to
have scalding drops of acid dashed into his face, to feel his
eyeballs, nostrils, and lips being seared into shapeless lumps of
quivering, pain-prodded flesh. But none came.

The gray-clad men seemed for the moment to have discarded the
liquid horror that they dealt in. They wanted evidently to take him
alive, uninjured.

He crashed a balled fist into a man's writhing face. He felt teeth
snap, felt the skin of his knuckles rip. But the next instant two men
were on his back and snakelike fingers were encircling his throat. He
reached up, tried to break their hold, and someone butted him in the
stomach, doubling him up in breathless agony. Then it seemed that a
dozen vises had been clamped upon him. Hands pinioned him from all
sides. The pressure on his throat increased till his breath was shut
off, till he lay gasping.

With unconsciousness close at hand, he relaxed. The fingers on his
throat were loosened slightly. He could breathe again feebly. A light
was turned on and he saw a forest of legs around him.

The faces looking down at him were impassive, hideous as death-
masks in their reptilian immobility. One of the men lay moaning,
nursing his bleeding gums, but there were five others.

They yanked the Secret Agent to his feet. A gun was pressed
against his back so forcefully that it bruised the flesh. He was
pushed along the corridor, back the way he had come.

He wondered dully why they didn't shoot, why they didn't kill him
now, or throw acid in his face. Then he realized that these men were
slaves, being disciplined in evil and committed to do the will of
their masters. They were taking him upstairs again, to the council
chambers.

Four of them held him outside the door while the fifth slipped
inside. X had no doubt the man was telling, his story in finger-
language to the hooded masters of death, the story of Betty Dale's
escape and his own entry.

The fifth mute came back, his face still impassive, and Agent X
was thrust through the door into the presence of the black-robed men.
But there were only two now. The third had not returned. That one, the
Agent guessed, was Morvay.

The spotlight was turned on his face again. He trusted to his
disguise, but wondered what their reaction to it would be. He was
posing as H.J. Martin now, a sandy-haired, plump-faced businessman.

The two men behind the black hoods stared at him, their eyes
glittering through the slits. At a gesture from one of them, the deaf-
mutes withdrew to the side of the room. X stood alone like a prisoner
before the bar.

The voice of one of the hooded men came slowly, tauntingly.

"So--a young Sir Galahad who has rescued a fair lady in distress!"

The other one, his voice gruffer, asked a question. "Who are you?"

The Agent answered bluntly, quickly, playing his part as always.
"My name's Martin. You devils can't get away with what you tried to do
to Miss Dale. I came just in time."

A low, evil laugh sounded from behind the hood.

"She escaped--but nothing can save her now. She was only being
frightened to make her talk. But she will be found now--wherever she
is--and the beauty of her face will become a thing that men will turn
their eyes from in loathing."

The Secret Agent clenched his fist. His voice was tense, high-
pitched, as he continued his pose.

"Whoever you are, you can't get away with it, I say. You'll all go
to jail, or the electric chair. You're devils, murderers."

They ignored his passionate speech.

"Tell us one thing--Mr. Martin. How did you find your way here?
How did you get in?" There was a sneer in the voice--a taunting note.

The Agent sensed what it meant; but he kept up his bluff.

"You're not as clever as you think. Betty's a girl friend of mine.
I learned she'd gotten a phony call. I found she'd disappeared and I
followed her."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

One of the hooded figures leaned forward. His hands were gripping
the sides of his chair. His eyes were glittering points of light
behind the eye-holes of his hood, and his voice was low, harsh and
deadly.

"Don't think you can fool us--Martin. We know who you are. We know
there is only one man who could have found his way to this place and
come through the locked doors. We know there is only one man who could
have saved Betty Dale!"

The room was still as death for an instant. Then a low, dry
chuckle sounded.

"We compliment you--Secret Agent X! You have proved your
cleverness. Your disguise is beyond reproach. So it was when you
played the part of Jeffrey Carter--and when you impersonated Inspector
Burks of the homicide squad. So, too, it was when you made us believe
you were Jason Hertz. That was your master stroke, X. But we had
Hertz watched. When he so mysteriously disappeared from the refuge we
had given him, we began to suspect we had been tricked."

Agent X's heart stood still. The voice of the hooded man droned
on.

"What you did with Hertz we do not know. That is neither here nor
there. We know that you helped him out of prison, impersonated him so
cleverly that you fooled us for a time. But you cannot go on fooling
us as you can the police. Your methods are dashing, sensational,
dramatic. You have annoyed us and will continue to do so if you are
not curbed. But we have agents of our own. You have been watched,
spied upon from the night you went to the Bellaire Club. Your
impersonation of Inspector Burks was seen by the man you chased over
the roof."

The chuckle came again.

"I am being frank with you, because I expect you to be frank with
us. Your history is intriguing. Just who is employing you? For what
particular cause are you working?"

The voice had become almost matter-of-fact now. It was as though
X's answers were foregone conclusions. But he was silent. The voice
behind the hood changed again. It had a steely, imperious note in it.

"You will give us all this information, Agent X. It is necessary
for us to know. There may be an effort made to replace you when..."

The voice trailed off with sinister implication.

"Yes, death for you is inevitable. You are aware of that yourself.
You are aware that you cannot leave this place alive. But we can give
you a choice of two deaths--one quick, painless; the other so
lingering, so horrible, so pregnant with agony that you will cease to
be a man and will become a blind, babbling creature, a death so
unthinkable that you would choose to die a thousand ordinary deaths."

Still the Agent was silent, standing stiffly erect, staring
straight before him. Momentarily his will seemed suspended.
Momentarily he could only wait and listen. The voice droned on.

"You have seen the faces of men who have been dead many days. Your
face will be like that while you are still alive, the flesh eaten
away, the eye sockets empty, the teeth skull-like."

Sweat broke out on the Secret Agent's forehead. It was not so much
fear as fury against these men--a fury so terrible that it left him
white and shaking. Then he grew calm again.

"What would you ask me to do?" he said.

"A small thing. We will provide you with pen and paper and a place
to write. You will give us a report of all your activities. You will
name your hideouts, your methods, tell us exactly who you are and who
is behind you. We know you work alone. We know that no one shares your
secrets; but you are supplied with money. That is evident. There have
been whispers that the government is backing you."

"Ask the police," said the Agent coldly.

"The police hunt you, too. They regard you as an enemy, a
criminal--that is part of your game. But you will tell us--
everything."

There was silence again, and the Agent could feel the eyes of the
ravenlike pair before him boring into his own.

"What's your answer?" came a voice at last.

The Agent held himself more erect. His lips remained closed. He
stared calmly, silently at his questioners.

"You will not speak! We are not surprised. You are clever in your
disguises. You are confident of your ability. But there are things
which will penetrate and destroy any disguise. There are acids hungry
for the flesh of men. We will give you a small taste of what hell is
like--then we will leave you poised on the brink of hell, and--who
knows--you may be willing to talk--to avoid the last terrible plunge!"



Chapter XIII THE PLUNGE



THE HOODED MAN'S HANDS moved in the air before him. His fingers
made quick motions, delivering imperious orders. Four of the gray-clad
mutes stepped forward and grasped the Agent's arms. The fifth man held
the gun at his back. He was marched out of the room.

He had no plan of action. He saw at the moment no way of escape.
He waited for that small, brief opportunity which might checkmate the
awful fate ahead of him. He couldn't do what had been asked of him--
betray the secrets that he guarded so jealously. Yet to keep them
guarded he would have to submit to more than human flesh could endure.
Would it be better, he wondered, to make a break now and invite a
bullet in his back?

But he pictured himself lying wounded, helpless, with flesh-eating
acid being poured into his face. There was nothing that these men
would stop at.

He walked quietly downstairs and through the corridors. They had
not blindfolded him--a tribute to his cleverness, to the knowledge
that no blindfolds could keep him from knowing where he was. And it
was evidence of the certainty that he was to die.

They came at last to the door of the torture chamber. The four men
holding him redoubled the force of their grip on his arms. The man
with the gun stepped forward, unlocking the door. He pressed a switch
and light came from inside.

For the moment this fifth man with the gun was dead ahead,
silhouetted against the light behind him. There would never be another
opportunity. Within the next minute Agent X would be in the chair with
the steel cuffs snapped over his legs and ankles--cuffs that no human
strength or will could break. It was now or never.

His four captors didn't notice the motion of his foot, or if they
did they mistook it for a shrinking back in fear. He lifted his toe,
swayed his body sideways, bringing his full weight down on the right
heel, pressing the rubber and flattening it so that the metal stud
inside that was the trigger of the tiny air gun was pushed home.

They did not hear the faint hiss that came from the end of the
minute tube concealed in the thick sole of his shoe.

The man in the door of the torture chamber, the man with the gun,
gave a throaty, inarticulate cry. His face registered intense
surprise. He turned slowly, stood swaying on his feet, and, just as
slowly, his face changed. The masklike look came again. The face
muscles sagged, knotted, and sagged again. The man's gun fell from his
inert fingers and clattered to the stone floor. The man's knees
buckled under him, and he collapsed.

The four mutes holding Agent X stiffened with amazement. Their
lusterless eyes showed utter incomprehension. Their grip on his arms
relaxed for a fraction of a second. And, in that fraction of time, he
put all the strength of his muscles into one mighty heave. He wrenched
himself loose and leaped backward.

He heard the pounding of feet behind him, saw lights flash again
as a secret signal system was put into operation. The gray-clad men
were swift runners, too. They sensed now that the collapse of the man
with the gun had been a trick of the Agent's. Their fury was
animallike. He could hear their babbling, incoherent cries--the cries
of mutes trying to give expression to inhuman rage.

He passed an open passageway and saw two more figures running
toward him. He flashed past; but something streaked out, burning his
leg so that for a moment the pain almost paralyzed him and forced him
to slow down. A splash of acid hurled by one of the men in the
corridor had struck his ankle. He ran on, his face contorted.

He had the feeling now that flitting gray shapes were everywhere,
that another spray of acid might come out of any dark corner. But he
could not see his way. He turned on the pencil-thin beam of his flash
for an instant. Directly ahead was the corridor leading through the
jumble of buildings in the warehouse's rear. Beyond it was the street.

He reached the street with flying figures close behind him. He
burst out the door into the cold night air. But Betty had taken his
car as he had told her to. Death was close at his heels.

Wincing with pain, limping, he plunged along the street. Looking
back, he saw gray shapes moving behind him like wolves in the night.
The "Torture Trust's" horrible horde was close behind. The street
seemed to harbor death.

He put on a burst of speed that pumped blood into the burned spot
on his ankle, increasing the pain until it was as though a hot rivet
had been driven into his flesh.

He turned a corner, ran on with the pursuers gaining. It was late,
the streets were deserted. Even if there were a cop in sight he would
be of no aid. He would only meet a hideous death, too.

Two more blocks and the Agent saw something that made him increase
his efforts. There was an all-night lunchroom at the next corner. A
taxi stood before it, its engine idling to keep warm. The driver was
inside.

Even as he leaped into the cab's front seat, he heard the sound of
another auto starting up behind, backing out of a garage. He
remembered the car that had taken Betty Dale away from the _Herald_
office, the car in which he had ridden to MacDonough Street.

He raced the taxi's engine, drew the shift lever back, released
the clutch, and plunged forward. He heard the hoarse shout of a man
behind him--the taxi driver running from the lunchroom. But he had to
take the cab. If anything happened to it, he'd see that the taxi
company was reimbursed.

The taxi was an old one. Its valves needed grinding. The motor had
poor pickup. The car was already shooting down the street, gaining. He
shifted frantically, and pressed the accelerator down till the engine
coughed. The taxi began to gain speed. It rumbled and jounced over the
rough pavement. He spun the wheel, made a skidding turn around a
corner, and roared on.

At the end of the block, he heard the pursuing car duplicate his
maneuver. The sound of the taxi's engine was rising in pitch now. The
big cab was rolling ahead at ever mounting speed. The needle on the
speedometer showed forty, fifty, fifty-five. He took another corner,
heading toward the river to get out of the rough cross-town streets.
Then he found himself on a long, wide avenue running parallel with the
water. It too, was deserted, until a cop's whistle blew frantically.

But the taxi lurched and roared past.

Agent X glanced over his shoulder through the rear window. The
goggling lights of the car behind were increasing steadily in size. He
pressed the accelerator down as far as it would go--and got up to
fifty-five again. But the needle of the speedometer hung there,
sliding forward a degree when the street slanted down, going back when
there was a slight incline. The pursuing car was only a half block
behind.

Then the warehouses and pier sheds to right and left echoed to the
sudden staccato clatter of a sub-machine gun. Something whined by in
the night. An explosive tinkle of breaking glass came from the rear
window. He looked back and saw that it had disappeared. It was an old
model car. Even the windshield was not shatterproof. The glass
partition between the driver's seat and the passenger's compartment
was the next to go. Then the windshield flew into crystal slivers
before his face. Pieces of it whizzed by his head, pricked his skin.

The night wind beat against his eyes with a force that made them
blink and burn. The cab was being torn to pieces, raked by bullets as
the devilish chatter of the machine gun continued with a measured,
precise regularity that had the finality of doom. In a matter of
seconds only the law of averages would take effect; a steel-jacketed
bullet would pierce him, and he would slump forward in his seat. The
speeding cab would crash into a building, be demolished, burst into
flame. The car behind had demonstrated its supremacy in speed.

He shot a glance to the left toward the river, his eyes bright as
hot coals. Death by bullets was quick, painless. The old wound in his
side had brought him near death often. He was on familiar terms with
the Grim Reaper. But there was the cause for which he worked. There
was the "Torture Trust" to be smashed, and there was Betty Dale!
Unless he fought for her, saved her, she would be tracked down and
hideously mutilated, perhaps killed.

He spun the wheel of the plunging cab viciously. It rocked to the
left across the broad street. For an instant the raking stream of
bullets left it. Then they found it again. The car behind had swerved,
too. But Agent X pulled the wheel still farther. The fat tires
squealed in protest. The cab groaned in every bolt. It skidded
dangerously, then roared ahead. The yawning entrance to an open dock
was directly before it; farther still the oily, chill waters of the
river moved sluggishly. The cab lunged out across the clattering
boards of the dock.

The machine gun ceased its chattering, but the car behind still
followed. The Agent did not decrease his speed. He sat hunched low
over the wheel, staring ahead through the shattered windshield.

A low protecting bulkhead rose at the end of the dock. There were
capstans spaced at intervals for tugs and excursion boats to tie to.
He aimed the blunt nose of the cab between them and put on a last
burst of speed, holding the wheel steady.

The front tires of the cab struck the bulkhead and leaped up. The
cab plunged on like a madly bucking horse, rearing its yellow shape
over the end of the dock. An instant it seemed to hang in the air,
then it plunged to the black river below and struck with a terrific
splash. Steam hissed from the hot pipes of the engine. Yellow foam
seethed and slithered sidewise. A second passed--two--and the cab
filled and sank from sight.



Chapter XIV THE MARK OF THE AGENT



THE HEADS OF THE "Torture Trust" were assembled again in their
secret council chamber. All were there, including the sinister
Professor Morvay. There was tonight a question of singular importance
to be discussed. First, however, one of the gray-clad deaf-mutes
entered, stood before the black-robed trio, and began making motions
in the air--the motions of his strange finger-language.

He told for the benefit of Professor Morvay, who had not been
present the night before, just what had taken place. He told of the
escape of Betty Dale, of how they had pursued the Secret Agent,
riddled his car with bullets, and seen him plunge to his death in the
black waters of the river.

The fast-moving hand and fingers of the deaf-mute gave a graphic
account of that wild chase through the night-darkened streets.

Morvay leaned forward, his eyes glowing behind the black hood. His
long fingers answered in the same language, then asked a question.

"Are you certain he is dead? Did you wait to see whether he rose
to the surface?"

"Yes," came the answer. "We waited, watched--there was no chance
of his survival."

Morvay registered grim satisfaction. The deaf-mute was dismissed.
One of the hooded trio spoke.

"You have heard what our slave reports. Secret Agent X is dead.
The girl escaped, but she knows nothing. The agent has no close
confidante."

Morvay nodded.

"But to make sure," he said, "you are having the girl trailed? You
will have her punished as soon as she is found."

The man he had questioned nodded.

"The _Herald_ office and her apartment are being shadowed," he
said. "She will turn up at one place or the other. We will make an
example of her."

Again Morvay nodded. He hadn't seen Betty Dale, but he had been
told that she was beautiful, piquant. She had chosen to interfere with
the activities of the "Torture Trust." She was an ally of the Secret
Agent. Because of that, her beauty would be hideously destroyed. She
would spend the remainder of her life looking forward to death. The
secret strain of sadism that made Morvay the vicious criminal he was
took delight in this prospect. He ran his tongue over thin, cruel
lips.

"Let us forget the girl and the Agent now," he said. "One is
dead--the other will be disposed of shortly. What of the business in
hand?"

The other two men leaned forward. There was the glitter in their
eyes of men whose greed for money and power amounts to fanaticism.
Money--power! For these they had slaughtered, maimed, and spread
terror. They had extorted thousands from fear-crazed millionaires.
They began to picture themselves as czars of crime, masters of death,
invincible rulers of the underworld. And, scorning the citizens of the
underworld, they planned to organize its riffraff into a vast
disciplined legion. That would come later, however, when they had more
power. Tonight there was something concrete to go over--details of the
most daring crime they had ever conceived.

"Fear of our organization is spreading," said the man on Morvay's
right. "We are becoming famous. They call us the 'Torture Trust.'" A
low laugh followed. "It will make our next move easier. We are known
across the water."

They then began to discuss the plot they had in mind. It was
stupendously daring, yet absurdly simple; but they never acted without
long preliminary arguments, weighing each move with cold logic. They
had the training, the discipline, of men in high positions. Each could
have made a decent living in the world of honest men. But there was in
each a hidden strain of criminality coupled with a ruthless thirst for
power.

The plan under discussion tonight dealt with Sir Anthony Dunsmark,
British financier; one of the heads of the great Bank of England; a
man of international repute; a man whose opinions were taken as gospel
truth and whose statements had to be issued guardedly because they had
power to influence stock quotations in many countries. Dunsmark had
shouldered his share of the financial burdens of the World War. He was
on his way to America now to take part in a meeting of bankers, to do
his bit toward helping along world recovery. Traveling on the liner
_Victoria,_ accompanied by one secretary, he would arrive in three
days.

The hooded trio were like buzzards before a feast preparing for
his arrival. So far their extortion racket had fallen on rich men in
the city only. But here was an opportunity to extend operations.

What if Anthony Dunsmark disappeared upon arrival in America? What
if his government should receive a letter demanding a vast sum which,
if not paid over, would bring about the death of Dunsmark by the
lingering horrors of acid?

No government would permit such a thing to happen to one of its
best-known citizens. The sum asked would be paid, no matter how great
it might be. To have Sir Anthony Dunsmark meet his death at the hands
of American criminals would be a blot on the United States. America
would contribute to his ransom if necessary. Thus the black-robed trio
reasoned. But there were still details to be worked out. Dunsmark
would be met at the dock by a police escort. There would be secret
service operatives mingling in the crowd. To steal him away in spite
of this was a big order. But the trio had confidence in their ability.

"There are many methods," said the man on Morvay's right.
"Dunsmark will be lionized for days after his arrival. He will be
invited everywhere. We will watch him ceaselessly and wait for an
opportunity."

Morvay laughed softly.

"One of us," he said, "might even invite him to our own home. We
are not without social position ourselves."

The man on his left growled an objection.

"There must be no hint of suspicion directed at us."

"We will meet again tomorrow night," Morvay answered. "I have
feelers out. I will know then the names of some of the people who plan
to have Dunsmark as a guest."

The others nodded assent. Discussion ceased. One by one they arose
and left the council chamber, each leaving by a different route.
Morvay passed through the buildings in the rear of the warehouse. He
breathed easier now that the Secret Agent was gone. X was the only man
so far who had given them any worry. The police were still wandering
in confused circles and floundering in a bog of doubt.

It was raining as Morvay stepped into the dark street. He rolled
his collar up and strode quickly along, his ulster flapping about his
heels. He turned at the corner, heading toward the avenue four blocks
away where it was his custom to pick up a taxi.

Then, shortly before he reached it, he was pleased to see a
cruising cab coming his way. The rain had increased. This was a bit of
luck, he thought.

He held up a finger, signaled the cab, and climbed in. He gave the
name of a hotel, one of the points where he sometimes changed taxis,
in the routine they all followed to throw shadowers off the trail. He
lit a cigarette and leaned back against the seat, going over in his
mind the details of the daring crime planned.

The driver, sitting slumped behind the wheel, drove the cab on
through the chill winter rain. Drops of moisture splattered against
the glass in the door. Morvay was glad the windows were closed. He did
not see the hands of the driver creep down to a small hidden lever
beside his seat. He could not, for there was a front partition cutting
off his view.

But he began to feel a slow dizziness creeping over him. The air
in the cab seemed to be getting stale as though the exhaust had sprung
a leak and carbon monoxide were seeping into the car's interior.

Morvay leaned forward, reaching toward a window. But the dizziness
increased to such an extent that he swayed in his seat.

He tried to raise his hand and it seemed to weigh many pounds. His
cigarette dropped from shaking fingers. He tried to cry out to the
driver, but his voice sounded faint and far away.

He slumped sidewise in the seat, struggling frantically to
preserve his faculties. For a moment his face turned toward the
ceiling of the cab, and a sudden shudder of amazement passed through
his body. He made a desperate effort to rise, but succeeded only in
flopping to the floor where he lay, still staring toward the roof with
glassy, horrified eyes.

Over his head, in the center of the fabric covering the taxi's
roof, something glowed with an eerie, wavering light. It was a letter,
an "X," written in some kind of radiant paint. And, as Professor
Morvay slipped into unconsciousness, it seemed to hover before his
gaze like an accusing, all-seeing eye.



Chapter XV THE INSPECTOR ARRIVES



THE TAXI ROLLED ON through the dreary, rain-swept night. In the
rear compartment the inert body of Professor Morvay lurched
grotesquely with every jounce the car gave. His still face and glassy
eyes were like those of a corpse. But he was not dead.

The driver of the cab pressed the small lever beside his seat a
second time, cutting off the flow of odorless anesthetizing gas that
had swept Morvay into the dreamless depths of unconsciousness. The
driver's face was expressionless, but under his visored cap his eyes
glowed with piercing brightness.

Several times fares stepped to the curb, signaling him to stop,
supposing the cab empty. But the cabman drove by them briskly. He
avoided the lighted streets, turned west, and whirled into a long
avenue that led uptown. He bore steadily ahead through the rain with
the purposefulness of a man who has a definite objective.

Wheeling into the broad drive that skirted the river, he passed
millionaires' homes and block upon block of expensive apartment
houses, magnificent with their liveried doormen and glittering foyers.

Once he turned his head and glanced sidewise at a gloomy old house
that rose on a corner. Its windows were boarded up. There was an air
of decay and desolation about the place. It was the old Montgomery
mansion which the litigation of heirs had kept empty for years.

A faint, grim smile twisted the mouth of the cabman, alias Secret
Agent X. In a chamber of that house he had achieved his present
disguise. The past twenty-four hours had been exciting ones. A man
rated as dead had come to life. The members of the hideous "Torture
Trust" believed he had gone down with the speeding taxi that had
plunged off the dock. Their sadistic slaves had watched for him to
rise to the surface, and he had not risen. The crash of the cab had
been something he had planned deliberately.

They did not know that he could hold his breath a full two minutes
underwater and swim with the swift, powerful strokes of a diving
otter. They hadn't seen him when he reached the surface under the inky
shadows of the dock. And they didn't know that he had communicated
with Betty Dale, told her to keep under cover in her room at the
Graymont Hotel.

There was tonight a glint of ironic amusement in the Agent's eyes.
This was the second taxi he had driven within a space of twenty-four
hours. The first he had stolen and destroyed. This one he had bought.
But he preferred to consider the first a loan, for money from the
account of Elisha Pond would pay for them both eventually. He wasn't a
criminal, and when he found it necessary to destroy property, he took
pains to reimburse the owners. The present cab had been purchased for
the purpose of installing the hidden tank of compressed gas, the lever
control, and the outlet tube in the passenger's compartment. To aid in
capturing a man like Morvay, to break the hideous "Torture Trust," the
investment seemed legitimate.

But he was not taking Morvay to jail.

The cab passed on up the drive, turned east, then north, and
continued through the heart of the city. Agent X drove with the ease
of a man to whom all types of cars are familiar.

He came to the suburbs at last, but still forged on through the
rain-swept night. Miles beyond the city limits, he turned off on a
little dirt road. The cab jounced and pitched like a ship on a stormy
sea. The body of the Professor Morvay rolled with it, his glassy eyes
still directed toward the ceiling and the X that glowed there. But the
eyes were unseeing now.

Agent X stopped the cab. He opened the door and lifted Morvay out
as though he had been a sack of meal. He carried him, arms and legs
dangling, through the pelting rain, to the dim outlines of a house. It
was an old, ramshackle farmhouse--the same one to which he had taken
Jason Hertz on the night Hertz escaped from prison.

He held Morvay over his shoulder with one hand for a moment. A key
grated in the lock, the door opened, and Agent X and his prisoner were
inside.

The rain drummed steadily on the worn shingles of the roof. There
was the musty, stifling smell of old carpets and moldy walls. The
Agent took Morvay to a back room and struck a light.

There he set to work quickly, eagerly, for he had much to do. He
deposited Morvay in a chair, backed the chair to an upright supporting
the big beams in the center of the room and, after drawing Morvay's
inert arms about the upright, snapped handcuffs over his wrists,
Morvay was now a prisoner, held erect in the chair by the metal cuffs.

Agent X went to a shelf and drew out a bottle and a piece of
cotton. He dipped the cotton into the bottle and held it close to
Morvay's nose. The pungent smell of carbonate of ammonia filled the
room.

Slowly Morvay stirred and began to breathe more deeply as the
powerful stimulant overcame the effects of the gas. In three minutes
he lifted his head. His eyes opened, closed, and opened again. They
were no longer glassy, but were alive, intelligent. Morvay had
returned to consciousness.

But fear and horror overspread his features. He tugged at his
manacled hands, strained till the cords stood out in his neck, then
began cursing harshly. There was the look of an evil, predatory beast
on his features.

The Agent's face was bleak, unyielding. His eyes under his visored
cap glowed like coals of fire.

"Agent X! You are still alive then?" said Morvay. "They did not
kill you--the fools, the fools!" There was bitterness in his voice and
fury bordered on the insane. The blundering deaf-mutes were to be
pitied if he ever got free.

Agent X came closer. He hadn't spoken, but his eyes were boring
into those of the professor's. His voice was low, persuasive.

"You are a murderer, Professor Morvay--one of a trio of murderers.
The electric chair awaits you. But there is one road of escape. It is
a road which no man of decency or principle would think of following.
But you have proved that you are neither. Therefore, I am offering you
this road. Turn States' evidence, tell me the names of your two
friends, your fellow criminals and murderers, and you will escape the
death penalty."

Agent X knew it would be futile to employ the method he had used
so effectively with Jason Hertz--the method of hypnosis. A man of
Morvay's type, a psychologist and hard-headed intellectual, could
never be hypnotized.

Morvay blinked at the Agent for a moment, as though weighing the
proposition. Then his lips curled back in an ugly sneer and a mocking
laugh came from them.

"Fool! Fool! I will tell you nothing! You have no evidence against
me! No proof! You will never find out who my colleagues are, nor learn
our secrets!"

His harsh laugh sounded again, and seconds passed as their eyes
clashed. X might have resorted to torture to make Morvay talk. But
that was not his way. He knew that men are not always truthful under
torture--and the truth was what he wanted.

He stood frowning, irresolute, with Morvay's harsh laughter
ringing in his ears. He might turn Morvay over to the police, but the
evidence against him was still too weak. There were missing links in
the chain; and it wasn't the Agent's concern to have individuals
arrested. He wanted to smash the whole hideous pattern of the "Torture
Trust."

He turned then, brought his movie camera out, and focused the
calcium flare on Morvay's evil face. The professor cursed and
struggled in his chair as the camera clicked. Before he realized what
was being done, X had started the Dictaphone machine also, making a
record of his voice. Morvay grew wise suddenly, and ceased speaking.
There was a light of fury in his eyes, and he followed every movement
the Agent made like a tiger hoping for a chance to spring.

Agent X, silent and intent, filled a hypodermic needle from a
small vial in a rack. There were other vials beside it, each marked
with a different number of hours. He selected the one labeled,
"Thirty-six."

Morvay began cursing again as Agent X approached him with the hypo
needle. He bared his teeth like a cornered animal and the light in his
eyes was satanic. But calmly, deftly, the Agent thrust the point of
the needle into his arm and pressed the plunger home.

Morvay's curses became incoherent, babbling. His lips quivered,
his eyes closed again. In a few moments his head fell forward. For
thirty-six hours he would be dead to the world.

Agent X unsnapped the handcuffs from about the upright and carried
the professor to the attic. There he deposited him on a pile of straw
and carefully went through his pockets, taking Morvay's keys, watch,
and private papers. He descended to the first floor room, removed the
record from the Dictaphone machine, the film from the movie camera,
and left the farmhouse, driving back through the rain to the city. His
interview with Morvay had not been satisfactory. He had failed to
learn the identities of the other members of the "Torture Trust." He
was still working in a black pall of mystery.

For hours that night he labored in his hidden room in the old
Montgomery mansion. Sleep seemed unnecessary to the Agent. Vital,
nervous forces drove him on. He developed the movie film, wound it on
a drying reel, put the Dictaphone record under a phonograph needle,
and listened to Morvay's voice.

Once he thrust a hand into his pocket and brought out a box of
varicolored, transparent capsules. They were about an inch long,
filled with various essences and strange-looking substances. The Agent
selected several and swallowed them.

He continued his work until the slow, gray fingers of dawn crept
across the street outside and made steely glints on the surface of the
river.

BY THE NEXT EVENING Agent X had a disguise of Professor Morvay as
perfect as the one he had done of Jason Hertz. He left the Montgomery
mansion as twilight descended and took a taxi to Morvay's house in
that respectable street in the suburbs. There he once again opened the
safe and began a more comprehensive inspection of the books it
contained. He found something he had not had time to investigate
before--a lengthy paper written in code. It appeared meaningless,
unintelligible. Groups of five letters were spaced at intervals across
the page. Where did Morvay keep the code book which would make the
paper understandable? He searched the room for a half hour without
results.

Then, philosophically, with a box of cigarettes, a pencil and
sheets of paper handy, he settled himself in a big chair under the
light. Patience and perhaps hours of work lay ahead of him, but he
knew how to go about the task in hand.

In forty-five minutes, by use of word frequency tables, he had
mastered the code of Morvay's paper. His eyes gleamed with excitement.
Besides giving methods of work, countersigns, times of meeting, and
types of acids used by the "Torture Trust," there were two names
listed. The names were Albert Bartholdy and Eric Van Houten, M.D.
Names which had a ring to them--names which seemed to carry dignity
and prestige.

The Agent's face hardened. Crime in its most hideous form
sometimes blossomed in high places just as the deadliest fungi grew in
the richest soil. It was not always the spawn of the poor, the
downtrodden, and suffering who turned to the byways of evil. Nature
worked strange contrasts.

He put the paper away in his pocket and reached for the telephone
book, then paused. There had come a sudden strident ringing of the
front door bell. Supposing it were Van Houten or Bartholdy come to pay
a social visit to their colleague in crime? His disguise would fool
them, but could he play his part, knowing nothing of their relations
with Morvay?

With wildly beating heart he strode to the door, opened it, then
stepped back, for once finding it difficult to maintain his composure.
For the man who stood before him was Inspector John Burks of the city
Homicide Squad.



Chapter XVI THE TERRIBLE TRIO



TENSE AND ALERT, AGENT X stared at the man before him. Then he
noticed the expression on Burks's face. That expression was grave,
thoughtful--not the look of a man who has come to make an arrest or
cross-question a suspect. He waited for the inspector to speak first.

"You don't know me," the detective chief said, "I'm Inspector
Burks. They told me about you at City College. They said you might be
a good man to talk to."

Again the Agent found it difficult not to show amazement. A man of
a thousand faces should expect to create strange situations. But this
one was unbelievably fantastic.

"Come in, Inspector," he said, making an effort to keep his voice
casual.

The inspector entered stolidly, his pale, gaunt face composed.

"It's about these torture murders, Morvay," he said when they were
seated. "I've got a theory I want to talk over with an expert--someone
like you. These killings strike me as being the work of an abnormal
man."

"A sadist," said the Agent quietly.

Burks leaned forward in excitement.

"That's the word. But would a man like that--a sadist who likes to
hurt people--have enough brains to execute such a series of crimes?
Wouldn't he be deficient mentally?"

The Agent leaned back in his chair, a cigarette in his long
fingers, smoke curling lazily from his nostrils. He was enjoying the
situation now. What would Burks do if he knew his real identity? It
was grotesque, ironic, that the two men pursuing the same group of
criminals should meet under such circumstances.

"Have you ever thought," he said "that these acid throwers may be
only the tools of some greater criminal, or criminals? The money
extorted by the 'Torture Trust' has been gotten with the greatest
cleverness. There are cunning brains behind this."

The inspector leaned forward, his eyes snapping.

"By God, I know it! And if there's a master criminal back of this
racket, I know who it is!"

"You do?"

"Yes, a man who calls himself Secret Agent X. A man who's as
cunning as a fox."

For a moment there was silence so complete that the clock on the
mantel seemed to give out sledgehammer blows. Then the Agent spoke.

"Why not go after him?"

The inspector swore bitterly.

"I had him the other night. A cop caught him sneaking down a fire
escape after an acid throwing. But he got away--I won't say how. There
are twenty headquarters men out looking for him now."

"Tell them to keep at it," was the Agent's calm rejoinder.

Burks didn't catch the faintly mocking note, and if he had he
wouldn't have understood. He asked another question relating to
sadism. And Agent X, posing as the psychologist Morvay, began a
learned discussion of the subject.

When Inspector Burks left, he was impressed with the fact that
Morvay was a well-informed man.

THE INSTANT THE DOOR had closed, Agent X sprang out of his chair
and set to work again on Morvay's desk. All his casualness of manner
had left him. A fierce inward fire seemed to be driving him on. He
hadn't forgotten those terrible moments in the subterranean corridors
of the black-robed trio's hideout. He hadn't forgotten the haggard,
terror-stricken look on Betty Dale's face when he had come in time to
save her from awful mutilation. And at any moment the "Torture Trust"
might strike again. The threat of it was a black, ever present menace.
The inspector's words had brought home to him the utter bafflement of
the police.

He finished with the desk and took out Morvay's wallet. It
contained sixty dollars in bills, membership cards to several
exclusive clubs, a driver's license. Then, in an inside pocket, he
found a crumpled, newspaper clipping.

It was marked by pencil and announced the sailing to America on
board the steamship _Victoria_ of Sir Anthony Dunsmark, distinguished
official of the Bank of England.

For long seconds the Agent stared at the clipping, his eyes
glowing strangely.

He reached again for the telephone book. Albert Bartholdy and
Doctor Eric Van Houten were both listed, their addresses given. The
Agent paused in doubt. He was faced with one of the biggest problems
of his life.

If Bartholdy and Van Houten were the other members of the trio, he
would have to proceed with the greatest caution. A false step now
would put them on their guard. Yet he would have to act quickly before
the disappearance of Morvay was suspected. That tiny clipping
mentioning the coming of Dunsmark might be the key to the situation.
Why was Morvay interested in Dunsmark?

The Agent left Morvay's house and went first to the address of
Albert Bartholdy. He changed his disguise on the way to H.J. Martin.

Bartholdy lived in a fashionable apartment building. Posing as a
credit investigator, Agent X learned from the apartment manager that
Bartholdy was a lawyer employed as an assistant in the district
attorney's office. That explained the trio's uncanny knowledge of
police movements.

He got his car out of the mid-town garage, drove to Doctor Van
Houten's address, and his eyes brightened. It was a private home.

He parked his car far up the block, then, under cover of the
darkness, he slipped through a servant's alley, crossed a back yard,
and circled the house till he located the windows of what appeared to
be an office.

Using fingers and toe holds and risking a fall, he climbed
stealthily up the side of the building till he got a view into the
window under the narrow space below the shade.

A thin, gray-haired man inside was sitting at a desk interviewing
a lady. X could not hear what was being said, but the thin man's
manner was studied, professional, He drew a prescription pad from a
drawer of the desk, wrote something on it, and handed it to the lady
as X watched. The man was unquestionably Doctor Van Houten.

The Agent studied him carefully. Van Houten, too, had a face of
intelligence; but the nostrils were thin, the mouth small, and the
eyes narrow and close-set. High, flat cheekbones and a cleft chin gave
the features a look of power--but it was a face that might harbor
brutality and greed--the face of a possible criminal.

The Agent slid noiselessly to the ground and began a patient vigil
in the shadows across the street. If an immediate crime were being
plotted, the trio would surely meet again.

IT WAS CLOSE to ten-thirty when he saw the figure of Doctor Van
Houten emerge. Many patients had gone in and come out. The doctor's
office hours were over.

With the skill of long experience, the Agent shadowed his man. His
heart beat faster. Doctor Van Houten was getting into a cab.

At a safe distance the Agent followed. Where was Van Houten bound?
The doctor's next move convinced him. For Van Houten got out,
dismissed the cab and walked several blocks. Then, after a glance
around him, signaled another taxi.

The Agent overtook the cab, passed it, and went on out of sight.
He pressed the gas button down and drove his roadster like a demon. He
glanced at the clock on the instrument board. It was twenty minutes to
eleven. Could it be that a meeting was scheduled to take place in the
mysterious council chamber at that hour? Van Houten's furtive
movements seemed an affirmative answer.

He raced ahead of the doctor, reaching the deserted warehouse at
ten minutes of eleven. Somewhere inside the sinister deaf-mutes might
be lurking, but there was one route through which the Agent felt he
could go unmolested. Morvay always entered by the rear buildings, and
Morvay would not be present tonight.

Using his master keys, he let himself in through the now familiar
door. The place seemed silent and deserted. But X sensed the presence
of death and horror. He stopped a moment, his reasoning faculties
working.

The trio always wore black hoods and robes. Was it to hide their
identities from their victims? Or did they want to remain unknown to
their slaves, the deaf-mutes, as well? Morvay had not had the weird
garments with him when he had emerged. They must be stored close at
hand, for, if they were to protect Morvay from the gaze of the deaf-
mutes, he would not want to traverse the corridors without them.

Risking detection, Agent X probed carefully with the beam of his
flash. Then he stepped forward. Reason had led him aright. There was a
locked closet close to the first door. He groped, opened it, and drew
forth the hood and robe--symbols of darkness and death.

Standing in the blackness of the corridor, he adjusted them over
his body and walked forward. Twice he turned on the flashlight,
fearless now of being discovered by the mutes.

He was the first to reach the council chamber and he had a strange
sense of eeriness as he settled himself into the middle chair. He was
taking a terrible chance tonight, going into the very jaws of death. A
slip might betray him--some overt act that he couldn't anticipate.

A tiny bulb flashed on, throwing dim shadows around the room. He
stared at the floor, saw a slight bulge in the carpet close by his
foot and understood then how secret signals had been flashed to the
mutes.

The seconds seemed to pass with crawling slowness. He heard no
sound in the room or in the vastness of the building outside. Had he
been right about Van Houten? Was the man coming here tonight?

Slow footfalls approached. They sounded first as a ghostly
whisper, measured, precise. They made his scalp crawl.

Waiting tensely in the dimly lit room, he did not know what the
next few minutes would bring.

A faint noise came from the door. It opened slowly and another
hooded figure came in. Without sign or word of greeting, the figure
moved across the room to a chair at X's right and sat down. Eyes met
the Agent's from behind the black hood. Was this Van Houten or Albert
Bartholdy, he wondered?

The man did not move or speak, and when minutes had passed, a
third figure entered. It was only then that the first man opened his
lips.

"What news?" he said in a low, harsh voice. "Are there any new
plans to discuss? The _Victoria_ docks tomorrow night. When do we
move?"

Agent X wondered what answers would be given to this. Details, he
hoped, would be brought out that would make it possible for him to
reconstruct what was passing through their minds. But no one spoke.

Seconds passed. The silence in the room deepened. It grew
oppressive, deathly.

"Well?" said a voice at last.

The Agent started then. A slow prickle moved along his spine,
reaching to his scalp. He grew tense in his chair, flexing the muscles
that the black robe concealed.

For the hooded figures beside him were staring his way--the man
who had asked the questions and the other who had just spoken.

He could see a sharp, expectant glitter in the gaze that they
fastened on him. And all at once he understood. Professor Morvay had
been the mastermind of the trio. And, because he had taken the middle
seat, they thought he was Morvay. Now they looked to him for guidance
and strategy in the crime they planned. He was suddenly placed in a
terrible position, with death and defeat as the pitfalls into which he
would stumble if the answers he made should be wrong.



Chapter XVII ACROSS DARK WATERS



HE WAITED BREATHLESSLY while the hooded figures at his left and
right continued to stare at him with hard, penetrating glances. They,
too, were waiting, and Agent X cleared his throat.

"I have been thinking--" he said, then paused, his tongue feeling
dry against his teeth. It had taken an effort to make his voice sound
like Morvay's.

"You said you would investigate--discover where Dunsmark would
first be invited," said the man at his right who had first spoken.

"Yes," the Agent spoke slowly, stalling for time. "Many
invitations have been sent to him. It will depend upon his own plans.
We will not know till he lands."

Aggressiveness crept into the voice of the speaker at his right.

"It has been our method to strike swiftly and depend on surprise
and terror. We must not delay too long. We must act while the public
and press are still in a furor--while fear of us is rampant. Then
Dunsmark's government will pay."

Behind the black hood the eyes of Agent X gleamed like bits of
steel. He stared from one hooded figure to the other. There was
silence in the room again, silence that was pregnant, filled with the
greed of men who could not wait. He had learned enough. His voice was
low, hoarse when he spoke, but still the voice of Morvay. There was
confidence in his tone. They looked to him as the leader, and he would
give them leadership undreamed of.

"You are right," he said. "We must strike soon--why not
immediately, the moment he lands?"

The man on his right spoke sharply. "We discussed that last night.
A police escort will be there and Secret Service operatives will
undoubtedly be guarding him."

Agent X made an impatient, deprecatory gesture.

"There is a way. One man can sometimes accomplish what many cannot
do. I will capture him myself--bring him here. I have thought of a
method."

Exclamations of doubt and amazement followed his words.

"You can't accomplish the impossible. How do you propose to go
about it?"

"Trust me," said the Agent quietly.

"We have always gone over our plans together. Three minds are
better than one. There may be flaws."

The Agent was stubborn. "I will get Dunsmark alone. Our slaves
cannot act in this for us. I will meet him, introduce myself. I will
have forged papers from a bank. He will think--"

The man at his left interrupted harshly:

"It is not feasible. It is folly!"

The Agent saw he would have to fight opposition. His voice became
aggressive, hard as the rasp of a file on metal.

"I will gamble my share of what we intend to make," he said.

"That is nothing. We are all gambling. We will all lose."

"Have you a better plan to offer, then?"

"Yes." The man at his left spoke now. "The original one. Our
slaves will spy on Dunsmark--we will get him to come out alone on some
pretext--as we have done with others. We can use the needle and the
drug again."

The Agent sneered. "It may be days before that can happen. He may
grow suspicious. The police may insist on guarding him night and day.
There is agitation against us, my friends. The government is watchful.
Have you thought of that?"

The others were silent, and X continued, driving home his point.

"Fear of us is spreading. It is good in one way. Fear is powerful
and will separate men from their money. It has helped us before. But
it may work against us in the case of Dunsmark. There may be no chance
unless we act quickly."

There was silence again as cunning brains pondered behind black
hoods. The man who had objected spoke at last.

"Very well," he said. “But if you fail, it will end everything. It
will be every man for himself." There was a sinister threat behind his
words.

"I have as much to lose as any of you," said the Agent quietly.

"You mean then that you will take him as soon as the boat docks."

"Yes," said the Agent, "that is what I mean!"

"And you will bring him here."

"Yes--at once."

"Very well."

The session was over. The Secret Agent had committed himself to a
task that seemed impossible; to the task of snatching Sir Anthony
Dunsmark away under the very noses of the police and the Secret
Service operators who would be watching. It was a task so daring, so
unbelievable, that even the members of the hooded trio were skeptical.

One by one they left the council chamber. Agent X drove uptown to
the old Montgomery mansion, to his secret room, and all through the
night he was awake, alert, thinking, planning.

The next day he went to the photograph department of a big
metropolitan paper and purchased from their files all available photos
of a certain public official--the Commissioner of Police. He followed
it by going to a private photographer who specialized in such things
and buying others. He now had fourteen photos of the commissioner in
all poses--speaking before a crowd, in uniform, in private life, and
at public functions.

That evening he arranged these photos around the walls of his
secret room and studied them carefully. Then with pen and ink, legal-
looking paper, and a metal stamp with the seal of the city on it, he
proceeded to draw up a document.

THREE HOURS LATER, a speedboat left a secluded dock along the
waterfront and shot out across the harbor. It was a roomy boat, with
padded leather seats and a powerful engine that ran as smoothly as a
watch. A muffler reduced the thunderous reverberations of the motor to
a subdued musical hum. The boat left a white wake behind it as it
threaded its way among the tugs and gliding ferries plying between the
downtown docks and the towns and cities across the harbor.

The time was eleven-thirty. At the wheel of the speedboat was a
tall man in a black coat. He had a soft gray hat pulled low, a muffler
around his neck. He stared straight ahead across the water, guiding
the speedboat with a skilled hand.

Once wind whipped the muffler loose, and the man folded it again
over immaculate evening clothes that showed beneath his coat. He was
obviously a personage of dignity and importance, a handsome man, ruddy
faced, gray at the temples and with a close-clipped mustache lending
strength to his firm upper lip. It was the face that was known
everywhere--the face of the city's police commissioner.

Any cop would have pointed him out in a crowd. Almost any citizen
would have recognized him, for his picture had appeared in the
metropolitan papers often. And, in case there might be doubt as to his
identity, he carried documents to show who he was and to prove that
his tenure of office had the city's sanction.

Yet, miles away in the fashionable mansion of a wealthy political
boss, the real commissioner was engaged in an exciting game of poker
with several of his cronies. He would have been shocked, furious,
terrified if he could have seen the man at the wheel of the boat--the
man who would, during the next hour, impersonate himself.

The Secret Agent was gambling again on his mastery of disguise,
gambling on a scheme that was incredibly daring.

The speedboat slowed, began moving in wide easy circles across the
face of the dark waters. Once a harbor patrol craft hove into sight
and the Agent stilled the motor and extinguished the red-and-green
running lights on the speedboat's sides. The patrol passed by like a
gray shadow in the night.

Far down the narrows a blotch of radiance appeared. It came
nearer, increased in size. It was the high, many-windowed
superstructure of a great liner--the _Victoria._

With the majesty of vast bulk and great power under leash, the
greyhound of the seas came slowly on. Pygmy tugs nosed along beside
it. Soon the great turbines would be stilled, the tugs would warp the
huge vessel into the dock where hundreds of excited people waited,
friends and relatives of the thousand or more passengers on board. But
before that happened, there was official business to be gone through.
The _Victoria_ would be held at quarantine until doctors had made
certain there were no contagious diseases on board. This might take
one hour or several. The ship was one of the crack liners. The
passenger list held many distinguished names. The routine of
quarantine would be as brief as possible.

As the great ship weighed anchor in the narrows, the Secret Agent
circled it and watched. He saw the quarantine boat heave to beside the
towering sides of the liner, saw the official doctors board her by the
stairway that was lowered.

The Agent steered his speedboat close then, gliding silently
alongside the quarantine craft. He made fast a rope and stepped
lightly over the quarantine boat's deck.

A sailor stuck his head out of the small hatchway and stared at
him in wonder. But Agent X offered no explanation.

It wasn't until an officer at the top of the liner's companionway
tried to stop him that he drew out the document showing who he was.
The officer saluted and stepped back respectfully.

A minute more and he was in the presence of the _Victoria_'s
grizzled captain. One of the quarantine men and a customs official
were with the captain. They recognized the commissioner at once. His
papers this time were not necessary. As he drew the captain aside, his
handsome face was grave.

"Sir Anthony Dunsmark is on this ship, I believe, Captain," he
said.

"Yes."

Agent X cleared his throat and stared at the _Victoria_'s chief
officer, frowning. The quarantine man and the customs official looked
on in wonder. They could not hear what was being said, but it was
evident that something of vast import had brought the Police
Commissioner out across the harbor.

"There is a plot afoot," said the Agent, "a plot to kidnap Sir
Anthony Dunsmark and hold him for extortion money. He may be injured,
killed. The city can take no chances. It will be better to spirit him
away, keep him out of sight until the police have had a chance to
investigate. I will take him directly to my home, Captain."

The captain nodded instantly. It was not his business to question
the wisdom of a move advocated by one of the country's greatest police
heads. Agent X was led forward through the ship to the expensive suite
of cabins that was occupied by Sir Anthony Dunsmark and his secretary.
The captain introduced the commissioner.

Agent X saw a tall, ruddy-faced, slightly stout Britisher.
Dunsmark had on a baggy gray suit. A pair of eyeglasses hung by a cord
from his vest. He was vastly flustered at the news the commissioner
delivered in a low, terse voice.

His face had paled a trifle. He was a man unaccustomed to
violence. Most of his days had been spent in quiet, luxurious offices
where people spoke in subdued voices and where there was an air of
efficiency and stability.

"I am terribly sorry, Sir Anthony," said the Agent. "But we can
take no chances. You had better come with me at once to avoid danger
later when the boat docks."

Puffing with excitement, Dunsmark issued orders to his secretary.

"Your baggage can wait for the customs men," said the Agent. "Your
secretary can stay and take care of that. This is all very unusual.”

"Very," echoed Dunsmark.

"But it is made necessary by the pressure of circumstances. We
must combat crime as best we can."

"Quite!" said Dunsmark.

He was hustled off the boat so quickly and efficiently that he
hardly knew what was happening. Sailors from the _Victoria_ held the
slim speedboat while he climbed in. If they or the captain thought it
strange that the Police Commissioner should come out alone, they said
nothing. This was an extraordinary condition of affairs, met in an
extraordinary way.

Speeding back across the harbor Dunsmark recovered some of his
composure. He chatted with the man whom he thought was the
commissioner.

"You Americans," he said, "are independent fellows. Fancy an
English official being able and willing to pilot his own boat like
this!"

It was only after they had reached shore by means of an ill-
smelling dock and climbed into a parked roadster that Dunsmark began
to show signs of nervousness again. Several times he glanced uneasily
at the man beside him.

His uneasiness visibly increased as the car rolled into a maze of
streets that were dark, rough, and cluttered; streets that seemed to
have about them a sinister atmosphere of crime. He spoke at last.

"Look here, Commissioner. I don't quite understand this. I
thought--"

His words ceased in a startled, choking gasp. His eyes bulged from
his head. For the commissioner had drawn a gun. It gleamed wickedly
under the glow of the instrument-board light, and it was pointed
straight at his side.

"I'm sorry," said the commissioner softly. "You will have to come
with me and do what I say, Sir Anthony. Any attempt on your part to
cry out or escape will have very serious consequences."



Chapter XVIII THE RAID



AGENT X SENSED AT ONCE that Dunsmark was not a man to cause him
trouble. The Britisher was certainly no coward. His many courageous
acts and decisions in the world of finance had proved that. But he
wasn't used to physical action. And he was still overawed by reports
read of crime conditions in America. He sat slumped in his seat,
white-faced, silent, ready for the worst.

X drove the car on through the night into the shadow of the great
warehouse where hideous things had been done and where others would be
done again if he didn't prevent them; where the seeds of murder had
been planted and nourished.

He ordered Dunsmark out of the car, and told him to stand quietly
in the shadows for a moment.

"There are others about, Sir Anthony," he said. "Do as I tell you.
Take no chances. Vital issues are at stake." How vital he did not try
to explain. Dunsmark could think what he chose for the time being.

Agent X went to the back of the roadster, unlocked the cover of
the rumble seat, and lifted it. In the spacious compartment in front
of the seat was the body of a man doubled up. The man was not dead,
only unconscious, for he was breathing regularly. It was the body of
Professor Morvay.

The Agent reached in, grasped Morvay, and lifted him out. At sight
of his limp figure Sir Anthony Dunsmark gasped with fear. Death,
mystery, and horror had met him on his landing in America. He
regretted that he had come at all. But the sight of a man who appeared
to be dead paralyzed his will. He took pains to obey the Agent's
orders.

Carrying Morvay over his shoulder, the Agent motioned Dunsmark to
the side of one of the old buildings, and opened the door. He motioned
Dunsmark inside, then quietly closed and locked the door, and
deposited Morvay on the floor. Then, standing Dunsmark close to the
wall, he turned a flashlight on his face and studied him for long
moments.

"Sorry," he said again. "But you must do as I tell you." His calm
voice seemed at odds with his strange actions.

He took the black hood and robe from the closet by the door and
adjusted them on his body without even removing the disguise of the
Police Commissioner. He had to work quickly now, make every move count
in the desperate game he was playing.

With the hood over his head and his eyes glittering through the
slits, he looked far more terrible than he had as the well-dressed
Police Commissioner. Dunsmark's face went a shade paler. He moved
forward like a somnambulist as the Agent made motions with his gun.

Carrying the body of Morvay, and thrusting Dunsmark ahead, the
Agent went slowly down the corridor. It was fortunate that the deaf-
mutes could hear nothing. It was fortunate, too, that Van Houten and
Bartholdy entered and left by different ways. He would not encounter
them till he arrived at the council chamber.

Twenty feet from the door of the secret room, in a closet under a
stairway that he had previously noted, he thrust the still form of
Morvay. Then he flicked on his light for a moment and motioned
Dunsmark on.

In silence they at last entered the chamber where so much evil had
been plotted.

There was a dim light burning in the room; and two spectral black-
robed figures sitting on chairs. They gave harsh exclamations at sight
of the British financier. Their eyes gleamed with a fierce, avaricious
light.

"I kept my word," said Agent X quietly.

For a moment there was awed silence, then the man at the Agent's
left pressed his foot on a bulge in the carpet. The spotlight on the
ceiling above flashed on. It bathed Dunsmark's face in brilliant
radiance. The paleness of his features, the tenseness of his attitude,
the combative look in his eyes, testified to the fact that he had been
brought unwillingly. Agent X had relied on that. It was why he hadn't
dared take Dunsmark into his confidence. The unpleasant interlude had
been necessary if his plans were to succeed.

"Does he know the reason for his being here?" came a voice from
behind one of the hoods.

"No," said the Agent. "I have told him nothing. I have kept my
word--brought him. Inform him of what we have in mind."

The man at the Agent's right spoke in a harsh measured voice.

"You are an important man, Dunsmark--important to your country and
to the world. Neither your country nor the world can afford to lose
you. They will, for that reason, take pains to see that you are
returned to them uninjured."

The British banker slowly nodded his head. A sudden surge of blood
swept across his face. His cleft chin jutted.

"You don't understand--"

"I understand everything, Dunsmark. You realize, of course, that
ransom is expected for your safe return. A child could grasp that. You
can guess that the amount for such an important person as yourself
will be large, staggeringly large, but not too large--not more than
your country will gladly pay. But you don't understand just where you
are. You don't realize what will happen if you fail to meet our
demands."

Dunsmark's right fist tightened into a ball.

"By Gad, gentlemen--I don't care what your demands are. You've
picked the wrong victim. You can't intimidate me!"

A harsh, grating laugh came from behind the black hood.

"Have you followed the news, Dunsmark? Have you heard of that
mysterious organization called the 'Torture Trust'? Have you read
reports of what happens to men who refuse to meet its demands?"

Dunsmark's face paled again, and its expression showed that news
of the terrible series of crimes had reached England.

"I see you've heard of us," continued the voice. "You have heard
of dead men, rich men and their sons, being found with their faces
gone, eaten by acid. You are a man of imagination. You can picture to
yourself no doubt what the slow claws of acid can do. You can
understand why you will pay."

"Damn you!" cried the Englishman. "I still say you can't
intimidate me. I won't sell my country out to ransom my own carcass."

"No!" the persuasive voice went on. "That is noble of you. That is
loyal. You are a man of high ideals, of great principles. You will
sacrifice yourself. But have you ever had liquid drops of torture
poured on your skin, Dunsmark? Would you want to return to your
country marred beyond recognition? Would you want to spend the rest of
your life looking so hideous that your friends will turn away from you
in horror.”

"Damn you--damn you!" gasped the Englishman. "Let me out of here!"

"That will be easy," said the voice of his tormenter. "We can ask
the ransom money without your consent. But everything will be better,
more simple, if you will write a note yourself directing your country
to pay what we ask. We will make all arrangements for the note's
delivery, the delivery of the money, and your safe return. It will be
conducted in a businesslike way."

Dunsmark was quivering with fury now.

"All we ask," said the hooded figure, "is a sum proportionate to
your high position. A sum which your country, or you yourself perhaps,
can well afford to pay. All we ask is five hundred thousand pounds!"

The Secret Agent gasped. They were demanding over two million
dollars.

Dunsmark, still trembling violently, remained silent.

"What do you say," came the voice. "Will you cooperate--make
things easy for yourself and us? Or must we give you a taste of what
hell is like?"

"Go to the devil, all of you," the Englishman cried in a sudden
burst of fury. "There are police in America! There is law and order.
You'll go to prison and the gallows for this."

The Secret Agent spoke then. "He will not be convinced, my
friends. We will have to take him down below. Call our slaves."

The hooded figure at his right silently pressed the button
concealed under the carpet--the button that flashed lights in the
deaf-mutes' quarters. A moment later four of them glided in, and the
same hooded man flashed orders with his fingers.

The Agent spoke then.

"I am going with him," he said. "Let us all go. Let us see that
our slaves make no blunder in this."

Silently they rose and wound through the chill corridors to the
cellar below. The door of the torture chamber was unlocked. Struggling
and protesting fiercely, Dunsmark was thrust into the metal chair. In
a moment the metal cuffs had been clamped over his hands and ankles.

"We have come," said the Agent, "to give you a chance to change
your mind--before it is too late."

One of the mutes, precise as an automaton, had gone to a shelf and
taken the stopper from a bottle of acid.

"You see it," said the hooded figure standing by the Agent's side.
"You see the liquid that no human will can endure."

"God!" cried Dunsmark. "There are decent laws and police in
America, I say. You'll go to prison. They won't let this happen."

As though in answer to his words, a sudden sound reverberated
through the building. It was a clanging metallic note. Then somewhere
far above, faint and shrill, a whistle sounded. The noise of a blow
came again, repeated, taken up and echoed, till the whole warehouse
shook and trembled, as though a hundred axes were crashing through the
doors.

"The police," hissed the Agent, fiercely. "A raid. Every man for
himself!"



Chapter XIX MYSTERIOUS INSTRUCTIONS



IN HER ROOM at the Hotel Graymont, Betty Dale paced restlessly.
She lit innumerable cigarettes, took short quick puffs, ground them
out. Her eyes were dark with worry. Once she went to the window and
stared out across the rooftops. Lights showed on the river far away.
In the streets below, after-theater crowds surged and jostled, and the
faint blare of taxi horns rose in an uneasy murmur.

There was laughter and gaiety in the ceaseless stream of humanity
that flowed on the sidewalks around the hotel like a stream washing
the base of a great cliff. There were smiling faces and lightly moving
feet. But Betty Dale had a sense of uneasiness, a sense that strange,
sinister things portended.

That afternoon she had had a visit from the Agent. He had come to
her as H.J. Martin, a sallow-faced, sandy-haired man. His card had
read: "Credit Manager, Feeder & Wright Department Stores"! She had
been fooled as usual until his card had turned black in her hands,
leaving a glowing white X on its surface. Then she had known.

But this time his instructions had surprised her even more than
his disguise. He had discarded for the moment his habit of talking in
parables and innuendoes. He had issued short, crisp statements.

"I want you to do something for me, Betty. If I don't call back
before one o'clock tonight, I want you to phone police headquarters.
Ask for Inspector Burks and tell him that Sir Anthony Dunsmark has
been kidnaped. Tell him Dunsmark has fallen into the clutches of the
‘Torture Trust,‘ and tell him where Sir Anthony and the members of the
trust can be found."

He had given her explicit directions then--street numbers that
Betty recognized. The place he described was the old warehouse where
she had been held and threatened with torture. Her face paled at the
recollection.

"And you," she said. "If the police raid the place, where will you
be?"

The Agent had remained silent and Betty had noticed that in his
eyes was a strange, bright light. When he spoke again his words had
not been an answer to her worried query, but further instructions.

"Don't use the hotel telephone, Betty. Go at least four blocks
away. Use a store phone booth and leave as soon as you have made your
call."

He had gone then, leaving Betty Dale anxious, uneasy. The hours
had dragged by. All evening she had hoped he would call again; hoped
that he would countermand his strange orders. How could even the
Secret Agent know that Sir Anthony Dunsmark would be kidnaped? The
British banker, she knew, had not landed in America. Had Agent X
wormed his way into the innermost circle of the "Torture Trust," and
if so what desperate game was he playing?

Twelve o'clock came with no further word from him. She called the
steamship office then. They told her the liner _Victoria,_ on which
Dunsmark was arriving, was in the harbor, but that it would be held at
quarantine for an hour or more.

A quarter of one came and Betty put on her hat and coat. She took
an elevator to the lobby, walked through it, and passed out into the
street. Five blocks away she entered a cigar-store telephone booth and
dialed a number. The sleepy voice of a desk sergeant at police
headquarters answered her, and Betty said:

"I want to speak to Inspector Burks."

"You can't, lady," the sergeant said. "He ain't here. He's gone
home."

"I must speak to him anyway. This is very important."

"Who are you?"

"Never mind. Get the inspector. It's a matter of life and death."

The sergeant grumbled and complained, but at the end of a minute
he had made switchboard connections. Another voice sounded over the
wire.

"This is Inspector Burks. What's it all about? What do you want?"

In quick, breathless sentences Betty Dale relayed the message that
the Agent had asked her to deliver--the message announcing Sir Anthony
Dunsmark's abduction--and the inspector's voice rose into a harsh
irritable rasp.

"That's impossible! You're lying! The _Victoria,_ the boat he's
on, hasn't even docked. She's still at quarantine. I know because I've
got cops waiting to look out for him. Who the hell are you, lady?"

But Betty Dale didn't answer. She had done her duty, done what the
Secret Agent had asked. She hung up quickly and left the store before
the police tried to trace the call.

INSPECTOR BURKS AT THE OTHER end of the wire jangled the receiver
futilely. His pale face had turned a shade paler. There was an uneasy
look in his eyes. The girl who had called him up and refused to give
her name was obviously a nut. What she had told him couldn't be true.
Dunsmark couldn't be kidnapped before the _Victoria_ landed. But still
he was uneasy. And he wasn't a man to let anything pass.

Growling in his throat, still irritable from having been waked up,
he lifted the receiver again and demanded the ship-to-shore service.

"Get me the steamer _Victoria_--now in the harbor. Let me speak to
her captain."

In a moment the call had leaped through the air across the harbor
by wireless telephone. The voice of the captain buzzed in his ear.
Inspector Burks asked a blunt question.

"Is Anthony Dunsmark still on board? This is the head of the city
homicide squad."

The captain answered quickly.

"Sir Anthony left nearly an hour ago. The Police Commissioner came
and got him."

There was an instant of dead silence, then Burks spoke hoarsely.

"The commissioner--say--he wouldn't do that without letting me
know."

"It was the commissioner, I tell you--there's no doubt about it."

"What the hell!" exploded Burks.

He was beginning to tremble now. He was beginning to sense that
something somewhere was terribly wrong. It wasn't like the
commissioner to do such a thing without informing the heads of his
departments.

With shaking hands, Burks dialed the commissioner's house and got
the commissioner's red-haired wife.

"I want to speak to Charlie," said the inspector.

"He hasn't been home all evening. He's out with the boys again--
playing cards, I suppose. You'll probably find him at MacDorsey's."

Burks knew who MacDorsey was--one of the city's richest political
bosses. He made the telephone dial buzz like an angry bee, and when he
got MacDorsey on the wire his voice was a husky croak.

"Better not interrupt the Commish," said MacDorsey. "He's drawing
for a royal flush."

"I've got to speak to him. It's important."

Burks gulped for air when he heard the commissioner's polished
voice, a little chiding now at being disturbed during off hours.

"What is it, inspector? More grief I suppose?"

"Did you go out in a boat tonight, chief, and take that
Englishman, Anthony Dunsmark, off the _Victoria_?"

"Did I what? Say have you gone crazy, Burks? What are you talking
about?"

"You didn't get him off about an hour ago?"

"No. I've been here with the boys all evening. What the hell's the
matter with you!"

"Dunsmark's been kidnaped, chief. The 'Torture Trust' has got
him. The captain of the _Victoria_ says someone who looked like you
grabbed him off the boat. I've been tipped off to where he is. I'm
going to raid the place."

The commissioner's tone was apoplectic.

"For God's sake don't let this get into the papers! We'll all look
sweet. I'll sit in at the raid. Where is it?"

In brief sentences Burks told him. Then he made the wires hot. His
rasping voice started the various departments in action, got other
inspectors on the job. He asked that trucks of the emergency squad be
sent out, asked the boiler squad to cooperate, and ordered all
available men of the homicide squad rounded up.

Half dressed, with his shoes unlaced and his collar unbuttoned, he
sent his own car roaring down through the night-darkened streets.

THE BIGGEST RAID in the history of the city police was under way.
Telephone wires were humming. Captains and sergeants were bawling
orders.

A green, high-speed truck of the emergency squad, cops clinging to
the brass rails on its sides, came hurtling out of a side street and
roared downtown with its siren screaming. Two motorcycle cops joined
it, clearing the way, adding their horns to the din.

Private cars drew aside. Pedestrians scuttled to safety. Inspector
Burks, his face bleak, drove madly, holding his own horn down.

The tip-off, whoever had given it, had been complete. And he had
made his own instructions complete also. No one was to act until he
arrived on the scene to direct the raid.

He found grim-faced men waiting in the dark streets around the old
warehouse. There was the glint of dim light on riot guns and on the
black, wicked snouts of automatics held in steady hands.

Sergeant Mathers, roused from sleep, his eyes bloodshot, came up
for instructions.

"Throw a cordon around the whole building," said Burks. "Circle
the block. Don't let anyone get out."

Stealthy-footed men approached the building from all sides. "Those
houses in the rear," said Burks. "Watch them, too."

A sleek, official car with a uniformed chauffeur slid to a halt,
then crept through the lines of detectives. The commissioner himself
had arrived, his mouth under its mustache a hard, straight line.
Someone had put him in a bad spot. Someone had made him appear
ridiculous.

"Let's get going," he snapped.

The raid began then. Men with axes, sledgehammers, and crowbars
started battering in the doors. Powerful searchlights mounted on the
trucks of the emergency squad flashed on, sweeping the sides of the
big building, making the dark evil streets as bright as day. Patrolmen
and plainclothes detectives poured in, battering down doors and
racing along corridors.

It was Inspector Burks himself who first saw a spectral black-
robed form ahead of him. The man flashed into sight for a moment
around a corner, and Burks saw the evil glitter of eyes behind the
slitted hood.

"Halt!" he said. "Stand where you are or I'll shoot."

The hooded man ignored the warning. He tried to spring up a flight
of stairs.

There was the harsh crack of an automatic. Burks had been a dead
shot in his day. The man on the stairway screamed and spun around. He
tottered, clutched at the wall. Then his body slumped and rolled
backward. He collapsed on the floor of the passage and lay still.

Burks ran forward and snatched the hood loose. Then he gave a
swift gasp of surprise.

"God! Albert Bartholdy--one of the D.A.'s snooty assistants. No
wonder the cops didn't have a chance."

There was a blue hole in the side of Albert Bartholdy's head. One
member of the "Torture Trust" would never plot evil again.

But a patrolman with a riot gun down the corridor cursed in pain.
Two sinister gray-clad figures had appeared ahead of him as if by
magic. One of them had flung a glittering tube of liquid. It was only
by a miracle of good luck that the cop stepped aside in time.

The tube smashed against the wall close to his head. Reeking
chemical fumes filled his nostrils. Drops of searing acid struck his
cheek.

He cursed again, crouched low, and his finger pressed the trigger
of the riot gun. The automatic mechanism jumped and clattered. Flame
spurted from the black muzzle.

The two evil, gray forms wilted before it, plunged to the floor,
and lay still.

The raiders penetrated to the cellar then. Somewhere ahead a light
showed. The inspector ran forward, then stopped. Another black-robed
figure lay at his feet, He held his gun steady, but the figure did not
move. He stooped, pulled the hood aside, and his face muscles sagged
in amazement. For seconds he stared in utter bewilderment.

The man at his feet was not dead but only unconscious. He was
breathing harshly, regularly, in the manner of a man under the
influence of drugs. But his presence in that place and the black hood
he wore showed that he, too, was a member of the "Torture Trust."
Burks recognized the features.

"Morvay!" he gasped.

Two cops came forward holding another black-hooded form. He was
struggling, clawing, trying to break away. They drew the hood from his
head and Inspector Burks looked into the patrician, cruel features of
the murderous doctor, Eric Van Houten. The expression of bafflement,
rage, and fear in the man's eyes was evidence of guilt.

THE INSPECTOR TURNED and ran on toward the lighted room ahead. His
gun was in his hand, but he holstered it and breathed a sigh of deep
relief. They had not been too late.

A man in an English-cut tweed suit sat in a metal chair in the
center of the room. His arms and legs were manacled, holding him a
prisoner, but he was unhurt. His loud voice showed that.

"Bully for you!" he said. "I told those devils the police would
come. There were three of them--murderers, torturers. I told them
there was law and order in this bally country."

"Dunsmark," said Inspector Burks.

He recognized the famous banker from the many photos he had seen
in rotogravure sections of the papers. There was vast relief in his
voice. He and his men had saved the city and the country from
disgrace. And the "Torture Trust" had been smashed, its three
hypocritical members caught red-handed and exposed: Morvay, Bartholdy,
and Van Houten.

Then Burks saw a small key on a shelf near by. It looked like the
key to the manacles on Dunsmark's arms and legs. He tried it, found
that it worked, and freed the Englishman.

Sir Dunsmark stood up, stretched his limbs, and grinned.

"This isn't such a bad country after all," he said. "I had a scare
for a time. Things happened rather suddenly, you know."

"What about that man who came for you on the boat? They say he
looked like our Police Commissioner."

Sir Anthony was apologetic, courteous, but firm.

"I'll tell you all about it later--tomorrow--if you don't mind.
I'm a bit tired by all that's happened. Excitement isn't good for me,
you know, and I'm a bit late for a rather important appointment. You
gather what I mean?"

"Sure thing! Of course."

Burks knew when to be courteous and when to be hard-boiled. A man
like Dunsmark wasn't to be trifled with and told what to do. There
might be trouble involved. He personally escorted Dunsmark through the
building and turned him over to the commissioner. Cops and plain-
clothes men were still smashing doors, and rounding up the last of the
gray-clad men.

The commissioner was solicitous.

"You must take my car," he said. "I'll see that you have a police
escort."

"Really," said Dunsmark, waving his hand in the air. "No fuss or
publicity, if you don't mind. As I told the inspector, my nerves are a
bit jangled. I'll just borrow your car and slip out. Thanks awfully."

He got into the car and gave the chauffeur the name of a hotel.
The car rolled away on velvety springs.

A few blocks from the warehouse and Sir Anthony Dunsmark seemed
suddenly to change his mind.

"I'll get out here," he said. "A bit of walk will do me good."

The surprised chauffeur started to object, then closed his mouth.
It wasn't for him to quibble with a distinguished passenger. He
stopped the car, hopped out, and opened the door with a flourish.

"Give this to Inspector Burks at once," said Dunsmark.

He slipped a small envelope into the chauffeur's hand.

The chauffeur touched his cap, took the note, and got back into
the car. He watched Sir Anthony Dunsmark's tall figure disappear down
the street.

"That guy's nuts," he muttered.

Then a faint, melodious whistle reached his ears. It was a whistle
that stirred echoes high up in the rooftops and whispered eerily along
the faces of the buildings. With a prickle on his scalp that he could
not quite explain to himself, the chauffeur turned the car and drove
rapidly back to the warehouse. He made his way inside the building,
found Inspector Burks talking to the commissioner and gave him the
note.

"Sir Anthony Dunsmark handed it to me," he said.

Inspector Burks opened the note wonderingly, then stared in
amazement, his eyes narrowing. The sentences of the note were brief
and to the point.

Dear Inspector: Look in the closet at the extreme end of the
basement corridor. You will find a little surprise. Kindly offer my
sincere apologies to Sir Anthony Dunsmark. I regret the inconvenience
I caused him; but he is a good sport. I'm sure he will understand when
you explain the matter to him.

The note was unsigned. The inspector could make nothing of it. But
he ran downstairs again, with the commissioner following him.

There was a door at the end of the lower corridor--a door into a
small closet, so flush to the wall that they had overlooked it. They
yanked it open now and stood speechless with amazement.

A man clad only in his underclothes sat on the floor of the closet
bound with an old piece of rope and gagged with a piece of his own
undershirt. When they pulled him to his feet and drew the gag off, he
spoke in a cultured British accent.

"Great Scott! What's the meaning of this?" he said.

"Anthony Dunsmark!" gasped the inspector.

"Yes--and who are you--policemen, or more thugs and murderers?"

"Policemen," said Burks. "This is the commissioner himself!"

"The commissioner," said Dunsmark bitterly. "That's what he told
me before. If this is your idea of a bally joke, gentlemen--"

But Burks wasn't listening at the moment. He was staring at the
note that the commissioner's chauffeur had handed him. It had been
unsigned when he first read it. But now at the bottom of the white
page, the outlines of a letter were slowly appearing, turning black as
the light fell on it. The letter was an X--and it seemed to Burks
suddenly that the X was like an eye staring up at him and winking in
sly, sardonic amusement.



THE END

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