The car swerved to the gutter, bounced onto the sidewalk. Grabbing the wheel and swinging the machine into the street again, the Agent shoved the unconscious man across the shiny leather, and slid into the driver’s position. Shots winged above him. Mob leaders bellowed for him to stop. “X’s” answer was to jam the accelerator to the floor. The car plunged forward, and purred into top speed.
The mad pack was left behind. The Agent raced the car for a few blocks, then he slackened the speed to conform to traffic regulations, and headed into town. The car owner had received a mule’s-kick clout. “X” knew how to time a punch to get the full force of his power and weight into the impact. The fellow would be unconscious for an hour, groggy for a day. But he would be rewarded. The Agent never stinted when he paid off those who aided in his war against crime.
He drew up in front of a drug store. He knew an unconscious man would draw a crowd, but he had to risk further interruption. He rushed into the store to a telephone booth and called a number. In a few minutes he was talking to his operative, Jim Hobart.
“Get to the flying field as quickly as you can,” he ordered Hobart. “If you beat me there, charter a fast plane and follow me to Washington. Never mind the expense. Go to my apartment there, and wait for a call. I’ve got to travel six hundred miles in three hours, and it looks as if I’ll be bucking a headwind.”
The Agent hung up. Jim Hobart was reliable. He’d follow orders without question. Outside, “X” found a crowd gawking at the unconscious man in the car. The Agent’s punch had drawn blood from the mouth, and that was why passers-by knew the fellow wasn’t sleeping. “X” had expected the gawkers, but he had hoped the police wouldn’t interfere. A motorcycle cop was trying to arouse the Agent’s knockout victim.
“X” had to do some convincing bluffing.
“Say, you’re the man I want!” he exclaimed to the cop. “I’ve just called headquarters. Told them to detail a radio car to get a motorcycle escort for me. I’m from the governor’s office. Been investigating the strike. This man was hit by a brickbat. Don’t know the extent of the injury. Must get him to the hospital. Then I have to go to the flying field. Have to rush to the Capital for a conference with the governor. Clear the way, officer. Quick, now! Not a minute to lose!”
THE Agent fired his orders so quickly that the cop didn’t have time to think or question his right to give them. “X” was in the car and the engine was humming. The motorcycle cop leaped onto his machine, sounded the siren, and secured the right of way for the “governor’s representative.”
At the hospital, less than half a minute was lost, while stretcher bearers took the unconscious man inside. “X” left the information that the fellow’s car would be at the flying field. He stuffed three crisp twenties into the man’s pocket as payment for the blow on the chin and the trouble he had caused.
With the cop shrieking his siren and speeding in the lead, traffic lights meant nothing to the Agent. At the field, he shook hands with the officer, brushed the cop’s coat, deftly slipping a ten-dollar bill into the policeman’s pocket.
Leaving the car for the owner to pick up later, “X” rushed onto the field. Jim Hobart was there. A mechanic was climbing out of the Blue Comet’s cockpit. Another attendant stood by, ready to give the propeller a whirl.
“She’s waiting for the gun, boss,” said Hobart. “Everything’s been checked. But, say, I picked up something hot.” He drew the Agent aside. “A.J., the DOACs have an arsenal located somewhere in the east. I don’t know where, but it’s supposed to be a whopper — enough fireworks to outfit a dozen regiments and raze a city. The same rumor has it that smaller arsenals are located in strategic positions throughout the nation. You know what that means, A.J. The DOACs are planning a surprise revolution. When they’re ready, the whole country will be attacked at once. We’re liable to be under DOAC rule any time.”
Tenseness embossed ridges of muscle on the Agent’s jaw. He was heavy-hearted and tormented with worry over Betty Dale. Even now, it might be too late to save her. Suppose he had engine trouble? Suppose he hit a storm? Sleet, piling up, had cracked many a wing. There were a thousand possibilities of disaster. Any one would be fatal to the girl.
And now the press of duty weighed down on the Agent. An arsenal. It had potential destruction for thousands. His first duty-governed impulse was to change his plans, to remain and trace down the rumor. But the rumor might be nothing more than that, and then he would always be harassed with the knowledge that he had sacrificed Betty Dale to his own sense of duty.
“I ought to get more details on that arsenal,” he told Hobart, to whom he was A.J. Martin, newspaper man. “But, Jim, what would you do if a girl you knew, and liked, got into the hands of the DOACs, and they had threatened to silence her with molten lead?”
“Huh?” retored the gruff Hobart. “Do? Why, I’d go thirty-six thousand miles into hell for her!”
The Agent nodded and ran his tongue over his lip in a moment of meditative silence. Then he snapped into action, vaulting into the cockpit of the Blue Comet, and signaling to the mechanics to give the propeller a kick.
“You said it, Jim!” he exclaimed fervently. “Thirty-six thousand miles into hell is only a pleasant little stroll when you’re going after a girl like Betty Dale. See you in Washington.”
His last words were drowned by the roar of the motor, but Jim Hobart already had his instructions. The Agent was far from relieved of worry, but his heart was lightened, now that he was heading for Betty’s rescue. It was two o’clock when he took off. At five he had to be on the square in the Capitol rotunda. He had three hours to make six hundred miles.
ONCE before he had shot his Blue Comet through space as swiftly as that, but weather conditions had been favorable. Already, while the town of South Bolton was still in sight, his plane was laboring against an insidious headwind. He sought altitude, and the icy air informed him that he was facing a storm. Maybe he could get above it. The Blue Comet was a plucky little craft. It had got through heavy weather before, but not at the speed the Agent had to make.
“X” kept his eyes glued to the speedometer and the clock. The minute hand seemed to be tripping at double time, while the indicator on the mileage dial changed figures with heartbreaking slowness. Although time was more precious than his life now, he had too much time for thinking. His imagination tortured him. He tried to concentrate on the DOACs, tried to shut out worry by planning moves against that legion of fiends. But the horrible fate that hovered over Betty Dale was like a scalpel thrust into his harried consciousness.
The screeching wind rose in velocity. Tempest weather set in. For an agonizing hour the Agent didn’t fall below his schedule. If he maintained this speed, he would reach Washington in time. But ahead, glowering storm clouds were billowing in ugly masses. Already slivers of ice stabbed at his face. Valiant, defiant, the Blue Comet bumped along like a machine on a rocky road. What would happen, though, when it bucked the ferocity of the snarling, ripping, twisting upheaval of the storm ahead?
The Agent frantically nosed the plane upward, trying to get above that sullen black menace. But before he had climbed a thousand feet, the storm struck. A lashing gale shrieked around him. Whirling missiles of ice beat against the fabric of the wings. The stays sang against the racing wind, the uprights groaned and creaked, the fuselage shuddered. Yet higher and higher the Blue Comet soared, its roaring propeller slashing the knife-edged sheets of sleet.