But, as he opened the door, he paused in sudden, breathless amazement. Fate had played a trick on him. The one man he didn’t want to meet was here! Any ordinary dick from the Homicide Squad he could have handled without exciting suspicion. But the man standing in the kitchen facing him was Inspector John Burks, head of the bureau — and his own double!
Chapter IV
IN that first instant it was evident that the inspector had seen him. Utter stupefaction made Burks’s face sag for a moment. His eyes bulged. His thin-lipped mouth opened. So exact was the impersonation that the door might have been a mirror and Agent “X” merely the reflection of himself.
The woman, Cora Stenstrom’s sister, was dumfounded, too. Her gaunt homely face assumed an expression of blank amazement.
In the flash of a second, Agent “X’s” eyes dropped from the inspector’s face to his hand. Burks was holding a slip of paper between tense fingers. On it were letters and figures. Here was the clue that the police had found.
The damage was done now. There was no drawing back. The Agent acted quickly, daringly.
So swiftly that the inspector and the woman could only gape, he crossed the room, gliding up to Burks’s side. He uttered an impersonal, coldly clipped sentence.
“Let me see what you have there, Inspector.”
It was not a request, but an order. Burks’s mouth closed with a snap. His pale, gaunt face flushed to a mottled, furious red.
“Secret Agent ‘X,’” he gasped. There was, he knew, only one man in the world who would attempt such a thing or dare such a disguise. His fingers dropped the paper. His hand dived toward his coat pocket The significant bulge there showed that a police automatic was cradled inside the cloth.
But, in that split second, Agent “X” made his decision. Burks would shoot him dead without question, thinking he had killed a notorious criminal. “X” didn’t give the inspector a chance to draw his gun.
His fist lashed outward and upward in a flashingly swift arc. A hundred and sixty-five pounds of bone and muscle were behind the fist. The Agent’s knuckles struck the point of Burks’s chin. It was a boxer’s blow, straight to the “button.” Without so much as a groan, Burks staggered backward and collapsed. He lay peacefully on the floor, like a man in a deep sleep.
Secret Agent “X” stooped and picked up the paper on the floor. It was only a slip. At first glance the numbers and letters on it seemed simple enough.
“A Green Ford 1920 D EHEC.”
While the woman stood frozen, too terrified to speak, Agent “X’s” eyes ran over it. He realized instantly that it was some sort of cipher. Burks had questioned the woman about it. She had given him no satisfaction. She evidently knew nothing about her sister’s private life. It seemed useless to question her further.
The woman, recovering a little, opened her mouth to scream, but Agent “X” silenced her with an abrupt, commanding gesture.
“Quiet!” he ordered.
With no other word to the amazed woman, he turned on his heel and left the house, striding swiftly through the front door. He walked boldly down the walk and stepped into Burks’s car at the curb. Instead of getting in back, he took a seat directly beside the driver.
“Get going!” he said.
The driver, half asleep, snapped into alertness.
“Yes, sir. Where to?”
Agent “X” didn’t answer. He was holding the slip of paper under the instrument-board light. His face, the face of Inspector Burks, was a blank, but his pulses were racing with excitement. What was this clue that had baffled the police?
“A Green Ford 1920 D EHEC.”
While the chauffeur slid the car into gear and shot away from the curb, Agent “X” studied it.
Those letters at the end of the sentence corresponded to no auto license number he had ever seen. The woman had told Burks that her murdered sister had not even known how to drive a car. Here was mystery. Here was a challenge to the Agent’s cunning. Here also was something that might lead him to the door of the murderer of Scanlon.
“A Green Ford 1920 D EHEC.”
The clue was now in the hands of no ordinary police official. It was in the hands of a man of brilliant insight, a man trained to look beneath the surface and thread his way through the devious, complex channels of cryptography, code systems, and ciphergrams.
He began in his mind to place letters and figures beneath the sentence. He didn’t need any pencil. He had the power of visualization. Seconds passed — and, under the keenness of his analytical brain, the words that had seemed so baffling became understandable.
“Where to, chief?” repeated the driver uneasily. But Agent “X” waved his hand impatiently.
“Anywhere,” he said.
As the car rolled on, a perplexed chauffeur at the wheel, the Agent translated the sentence to his own satisfaction.
THERE were five letters at the end of it — EHEC, preceded by a D. The numbers 1920 puzzled him a moment, then made his task easier. There was no letter in the alphabet corresponding to nought. The Agent therefore took 19 and 20, counted along the alphabet and substituted letters for them — the letters “S” and “T.” Next he substituted numbers for the letters. This gave him 4, corresponding: to D, and 5853, corresponding to EHEC.
To him it was child’s play. The thing was a simple substitution cipher. He now had a telephone number — Stuyvesant 4 5853. He guessed at once why such a simple cipher had been used. The maker of it had counted on the words “A Green Ford 1920” to confuse and throw any investigator off the track. They had so far; but the Agent combined the first words into a name, “A. Greenford.”
His eyes were snapping with excitement. Why had Cora Stenstrom, the murdered woman, carried this name and telephone with her? He remembered the laboratory window with its marks of a jimmy meant to deceive. Had Cora Stenstrom herself opened that window? Her dead lips could never tell, but Agent “X” hoped to fathom their secret.
For a moment he fingered the slip of paper tensely, forgetful of where he was. Then he felt Burks’s chauffeur’s eyes upon him. The man’s face was troubled, uneasy.
“You must ’a found out something, chief. That woman must ’a give you a tip. Where’d you like to go next — if it ain’t too much trouble?”
“That’s a good question,” said Agent “X” grimly. “I’m looking for a murderer.”
“Yeah, I know it, chief, bu—”
“A kid and a woman are waiting,” muttered “X” again softly, thinking of Bill Scanlon’s wife and young son, seeming to see once more the face of a man who would not come back. A sudden harsh look sprang into his eyes.
The chauffeur lifted a hand from the wheel and, in spite of the winter chill, wiped sweat from his forehead. His face was twisted nervously now. He seemed to sense that something was wrong. There was a look of fear and awe in his eyes as he glanced sidewise at his superior.
Secret Agent “X” laughed shortly, bitterly. They were crossing a brightly lighted avenue. Another dark street was ahead.
“Just keep going,” he said, “I’ll tell you when—”
He stopped speaking. Another sound had cut in upon his words. The short-wave police radio in the front of the car had suddenly come to life. There was a rattle, a buzz. The chauffeur touched the dial.
“Calling all cars!” came the voice of the headquarters’ announcer. “Calling all cars. Look out for—”