Gates turned viciously on Rice. “Well, what are you going to do now? You’ve been handling this whole thing in your own way. Do something. Don’t you realize that Kyle will be out for revenge? Who wouldn’t — after you were going to bury him alive. Do something, man!”
Outside the window, the Secret Agent hugged the shadows. As soon as these men recovered from their panic they would hunt him like a dog throughout the grounds. Should he stay? He decided to remain.
Thane was walking up and down in great perturbation. “After all,” he suddenly said, “Kyle has nothing against us. It’s Rice he’ll be after. Let Rice take care of himself!”
Rice’s face grew a mottled purple. “Sure,” he shouted. “Let me do all the dirty work. Then let me take all the chances! It would suit you fine, Mr. Senator, wouldn’t it, if I passed out of the picture. Then you’d be next in line for the acting governorship!” He had temporarily forgotten the princess. He waved his gun wildly at Thane.
Hanscom flung his cigar into a far corner. “Stop!” he thundered. “We can’t afford to have fighting among ourselves.” He shook a finger at Rice. “Remember that I’m still the boss of the party. I’ll take charge—”
“You’ll take charge of nothing!” Rice snarled at him. “I’ve done all the dirty work, and I’m serving notice that from now on I’ll give the orders. Things are going to be done my way!”
Hanscom restrained himself with an effort. “Is that so?” he inquired sweetly. “Well, Mister Rice, we’ll see about that. Others have tried that little game in the past. But,” he thrust his chin up at Rice, “John Hanscom is still the boss! And they are either dead or in jail who—”
He stopped as Rice picked up the phone. “What are you doing now?”
Rice spoke a number into the phone. “Rave on,” he said to Hanscom over his shoulder. “Me, I’m phoning the state troopers. Kyle is on the grounds. We can’t let him get away. I’m going to give the troopers orders to shoot on sight! There’ll be no chance for Kyle to talk this time!”
He got his connection, and spoke swiftly into the phone, hung up.
Hanscom settled back in his chair. “All right. We’ll arrange our own differences — more conveniently.”
Chapter XV
THE Secret Agent had watched the scene with great interest, hoping to gain information from the dissension of the others.
Now he gave thought to his own predicament. The troopers would be here in a short time. He would have to take cover, his usefulness might be ended. There was only one thing to do — precipitate matters. He had to find out where Farrell was, before something happened to him.
Rice had put down the phone and was pointing to the balcony in the far corner of the room. This balcony was in shadow. He said to Fleer, “Take the princess up there. You’ll find rope in the pantry in the rear of the hall. Tie her up and put her on the balcony. It may be better for the troopers not to find her here.”
The princess started to protest, when “X” opened the French window wide and stepped into the room.
They all stopped as if turned to stone when they saw him.
“X” had Jurgen’s gun, with which he covered them. “Put your gun down,” he ordered Rice.
Rice had half turned from the desk at the sound of his entrance. Now he let the gun drop from shaking fingers, and exclaimed. “Kyle! Don’t shoot! Let’s talk this over!” His face had become ashen.
Fleer crouched back in the shadows, his hand stealing toward his armpit. “X” snapped, “As you were, Fleer!”
The little gunman straightened, let his empty hand drop to his side. His mouth was twitching, he was bracing himself as if expecting a bullet in his chest.
“X” let his eyes rove over the others. Hanscom had his cigar half way to his mouth, seemed carved in that position. Gates was cowering in his chair, clutching the arms. Thane was cooler than the rest. There was a half-smile on his face, as if he were enjoying some secret joke.
Suddenly the princess burst into laughter. “My rescuer!” she cried. “Mister Kyle, you couldn’t have come at a better moment. Do you know what they were going to do to me?” “X” acted the part of Kyle with consummate art. “Lay off!” he growled. He swung his gun so that it was pointing at Gates. He had picked the utility man as the weakest one in the room. “Where,” he demanded, “is Farrell? Talk fast, or—”
Gates’s eyes widened in terror. “God! Don’t shoot! I don’t know. I tell you, I don’t know!”
Hanscom started to rise. “Look here, Kyle, none of us were in favor of Rice’s program. You shouldn’t hold anything against—”
And suddenly, in the middle of his sentence, he stopped talking.
For, without warning, the room was plunged into darkness.
“X” swung away from the spot where he had stood, in case any one should fire at him under cover of the darkness. But there was no shot; only a terrified cry from Gates, and then silence, as each one in the room realized that to make a noise might mean death.
There was the sound of feet moving swiftly over the rug.
“X” heard a strangled cry from the direction of the desk. “Aar-gh!” And after it the noise of a falling body, then of some one threshing on the floor.
Then some one swished through the room, the door opened and closed swiftly, and there was silence once more in the room — silence except for the labored breathing of the occupants, and except for the agonized threshing of a body on the floor.
The Secret Agent took out his pocket flashlight, and clicked it on. Its ray found first the face of Gates, who was still sitting in the chair, his face mirroring dreadful terror.
It traveled then to Senator Thane, who stood, tense, with a gun in his hand. Thane blinked, and jerked his head away from the light.
“X” swung his flash upward to the old-fashioned mantelpiece, on which stood a pair of ornate candelabra. He stepped toward it, took out a book of matches, and lit the three candles. The flame threw an eerie light over the room, and “X” turned to see the group of men eyeing him queerly.
Thane looked around, exclaimed, “Where’s Rice? Where’s the princess!”
Neither was there.
Hanscom said, “Some one went out through that door. Maybe—”
But Gates, who had been sitting where he had a view of the rear of the desk, suddenly raised his voice in a high-pitched scream, and pointed a shaking finger. “Rice — there’s Rice!”
FLEER and Hanscom, who were nearest, dashed around, looked, and raised horror-struck eyes. Thane came more slowly, an eye still on “X.” The Secret Agent reached the desk at the same time as Thane, and they both looked at the twisted, bloated body of the man on the floor who had been Lieutenant Governor Alvin Rice not ten minutes ago.
“God!” exclaimed Hanscom. “He died right under our eyes — in the dark. And that’s the way Mike Crome’s body looked when they found it — swollen up just like that!”
“X” stooped, touched the body. Rice was dead. Dead of strangulation due to the swelling of his throat. The sight was repulsive. His throat, his chin, the upper part of his chest, were swollen to twice their normal size. His collar had burst open, the tie had been forced loose by the pressure of swelling flesh. The agony of the death must have been excruciating. It was he they had heard threshing about on the floor.
The Secret Agent stood up. He still held his gun. The others had not yet recovered from the horror of the thing they had just seen.
Gates had gone altogether to pieces. He was whimpering, unstrung, shocked. “X” eyed him carefully, suspicious that his condition was a pose. Of course, everything pointed to the princess, since she was the only one who had fled. But it was just as possible that one of the men in the room had committed the murder.