“You mean he can’t really make the cures?”
“That is not what I mean. I mean that he has deliberately spread the disease so that we will be forced to buy his cure. It explains a good deal of the mysteries that have puzzled us all during the past few weeks. It explains why the gorillas have never appeared in the daytime. Some man is keeping them under cover. The same man who stole them — the man who wrote that letter!”
The mayor nodded somberly.
“I have come to the same conclusion, commissioner. The proof lies in the fact that the families of Branford’s officials have now been victimized. This is a holdup, gentlemen!”
The room broke into a frenzy of excitement. Aldermen talked furiously. The commissioners crowded close to the mayor’s desk. Two seized the arm of the police chief and demanded that the law take steps to catch the criminals. The mayor rose to his feet, held up his hand for silence. His voice was trembling now.
“The fact remains,” he said brokenly, “that our own children are sufferers. Our doctors have found no cure for the disease — isn’t that true, Commissioner Traub?”
The head of the health department nodded. His fat face was twitching with emotion.
“It Is true,” he said huskily.
“Then,” said the mayor, “this quack or criminal — whatever you choose to call him — has the upper hand. He has the only cure that has been found. Are we going to let our children get worse and die slowly? Or are we going to vote that the payment be made from the city treasury?”
A moment of tense silence followed the mayor’s speech. Then an alderman spoke impassionedly.
“The treasury is depleted already. Red Cross work, visiting nurses, special guards, and additions to the police have taxed the city heavily. We won’t even consider payment. We won’t pander to this criminal. As a member of the city council, I demand that the police do their duty.”
Two other members of the aldermanic council turned on him harshly.
“Are you a married man, Harrison?”
“No.”
“Is any member of your family ill with sleeping sickness?”
“No, but—”
The others shouted him down jeeringly. But he shouldered his way forward, shook a finger under Chief Baxter’s nose.
“What do we pay you for, chief? What is the law doing while this criminal is at work?”
Baxter’s face turned red with embarrassment.
“The law’s hands are tied,” he answered huskily. “We don’t know who this man is — don’t know where the gorillas are being kept—”
“Can’t that special delivery letter be traced?”
“It was dropped in a corner mail box. It is typewritten. There are no fingerprints on it — I have already looked. If we accept his offer by radio broadcast, there is no way of telling where he is listening in.”
“But if payment should be made, can’t he be traced and caught then?”
“Perhaps — but if he is as clever as he has shown himself to be so far, he will devise a foolproof arrangement. I suggest that we get the serum first, then hunt him down. I’ll gladly contribute a year’s salary. My little girl is ill with sleeping sickness.”
The alderman who had objected to raiding the city treasury, the man with no victim in his family, was shoved aside and shouted down. A quick ballot was taken. It was voted by the city council to raise the necessary appropriation at once and send a broadcast to “Doctor Blank” accepting his offer.
Chapter XVIII
IN the dense shrubbery outside Commissioner Traub’s house two silent figures waited. Their hairy costumes and the masks that covered their heads made them appear as monstrous, sinister apes.
Beneath the hood he wore, Secret Agent “X” was fighting a silent, terrible battle. He was fighting with the first symptoms of sleeping sickness, now even more apparent. He was fighting to retain the alert faculties that would be needed tonight. For already he had a plan and a secret hunch. He did not know yet how many gangsters were in the secret hideout he had discovered. He knew that the police could not succeed in entering it without his help. And, before he acted, he wanted to verify a theory and arrange a course that would accomplish results. Hornaday must be gotten out; the gorillas that were left must be saved; some of the serum must be procured. He had not forgotten Betty Dale, could not forget her. Her face with its sunny frame of golden hair seemed to hover before his mind’s eye. Yet what he had to do single-handed seemed hopeless.
Nearly an hour passed before they saw a car approaching along the dark street. Then Agent “X” touched the arm of the man beside him.
“There are three others with the commissioner — we can’t get him now.”
Some of Traub’s friends at city hall had brought him home. He left them at the curb, walked into his house alone, but their presence prevented the possibility of any attack outside. Agent “X” was glad. He fingered the horrible injection device in his hand, stared at Traub’s house. The man beside him had no inkling as to his secret thoughts. But by quiet will power that the other was hardly conscious of, Agent “X” assumed the leadership.
They crept to the rear of Traub’s house. A light had appeared in a room there. Commissioner Traub was not going to bed at once. The events of the past few hours had set his nerves on edge. Agent “X” could see his restless shadow on the drawn shade. “X” spoke softly to his companion.
“I’ll go in and do the job. You stay out here. Whistle if anybody comes.”
The other grunted, glad enough to let “X” take on the dangerous work of entering the house.
The Secret Agent crept forward. Behind the hideous ape mask his eyes were glowing. Even the microbes of the encroaching disease could not dim the fire in their depths. And the serum injection he had received, coupled with his great will power, was still holding the bacilli at bay.
HERE was the sort of job he had had years of experience in. Entering a house noiselessly was no new task for him. He did not go to the lighted window. There was a door to the left of it — the door to a dark kitchen. This was locked; but the Agent still had his pen-shaped tool kit. He removed one of the hairy gloves, slid a section of the zipper fastening in the front of his suit open. The lock before him was a simple affair. A minute, and he had the door open and was creeping silently into the house.
His heart had increased its beat. His whole body was tense, every sense alert. More than his companion outside realized depended on the success of what he planned to do.
He moved down a short hall, came to the door of the room where Commissioner Traub was pacing. The door was slightly ajar. “X” caught sight of the commissioner’s flabby, worried face. Traub looked older. Tonight’s development, the letter from the mysterious “Doctor Blank,” had apparently shaken him terribly.
Agent “X” held the tooth-shaped injector in his right hand. In his left he held his own hypo needle — the needle containing the same anesthetizing drug that had knocked the gangster out earlier that night.
He opened the door quickly, crossed the threshold. Traub turned and saw him.
A look of utter astoundment made the commissioner’s jaw drop. He did not cry out. He stood there, staring at this hairy apparition that confronted him.
Agent “X,” through the eyeholes in the gorilla mask, was staring also. He was staring with the fixed, analytical intensity of a man who was a brilliant student of human nature. He was watching every faint, flickering expression on Traub’s fat face.
He advanced, holding the toothed injector in his right hand. Traub looked at that stupidly for a moment. His face grew ashen.