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 stopped, 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.
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 was slumped 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, trapped — 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 fagged 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 fagged. 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 sleeve of his own shirt. When they pulled him to his foot 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 Spectral Strangler
Silent, horrible as the crushing coils of a serpent were those unseen fingers that blotted out men’s lives. A criminal of satanic proportions had risen — the “Black Master,” whose victims fell with livid, hideous faces and protruding tongues that seemed a ghastly mockery of the fate they had suffered. Along this terrible murder trail Secret Agent “X” gambled with the Dice of Death.
Chapter I
WARNING prickles raced along Federal Detective Bill Scanlon’s spine. A hunch told him he was being followed. He was a little man grown gray in the service — gray hair, gray mustache, and thin, grayish features. He looked slight — almost weak. Yet, in the long years he’d worked for Uncle Sam, he’d built up a reputation for courage and ability that few men in the D.C.L. could equal.
He turned his head alertly, stared back, and something seemed to move behind him in the long shadow cast by the trunk of a leafless maple.
For a moment he stood uncertainly, then retraced his steps.
There was no fear on his face, but his eyes were watchful. He slid the flat bulk of an automatic out of his side pocket and held it against his thigh, moving forward cautiously like a man walking on eggshells.