THE flashlight was growing weaker fast. He snapped it off to save the battery, and felt his way along in the dark, hand on the moist wall. The ground here was soft, and the sides had been shored up with timber. The passage was not high enough for him to stand up in; he had to walk in a semi-crouching attitude.
Suddenly his foot struck something on the ground, and he almost tripped, but recovered his balance by clinging to the boards at the sides. As he did so, there was a scurrying of small bodies away from the spot.
He knelt and put out his hand, touched the body.
It was the body of a man, and it had been dead several days, for it was cold and stiff. The clothing was of a fine texture, expensive.
The body lay in about an inch of water.
Here, then, was the answer to the secret that the Princess Ar-Lassi had offered to sell to the four conspirators. Perhaps a sight of the features of this dead man would solve the enigma in a flash.
“X” took out his flashlight, snapped it on.
And then, before he got a chance to see that face, there was a soft plop and a flash of fire from ahead of him in the tunnel. Even with a silencer, the explosion reverberated dully in the narrow confines of the passageway.
A single shot, and it had come from farther on in the passage. And the aim had been that of a marksman. For the flashlight was shot out of “X’s” hand, leaving him in utter darkness, and his whole arm tingling with a sudden paralyzing numbness.
“X” sprang back from the body, crouched low, his knees in the water. He hugged the wall, keeping himself rigid and silent. The blackness ahead was thick, impenetrable. It was impossible to see even a shadow. Whoever it was that lurked beyond in the tunnel, it was evident that he was an expert marksman. “X’s” mind reverted to the remark he had heard Judge Farrell make to Thane. Thane was a crack shot.
The Secret Agent had no gun, not even the gas gun; he had hurled that at the trooper in the hall. The man at the other end didn’t know this; didn’t know that “X” was unarmed. Which probably explained why he didn’t use a flashlight himself.
There was a slight sound of splashing from up ahead, stealthy movement. The unknown was advancing. He didn’t know whether he had wounded “X” or not.
“X” rubbed his numb arm to restore circulation. It tingled warmly, and after a moment he could move it without feeling that prickling sensation of numbness.
He put his hand into the water, felt around until he located a loose, moist clod of earth. He picked this up, and hurled it in the direction of the advancing man.
He heard a soft thud, an exclamation, and the quick, muted staccato reports of an automatic. He counted the shots — five. The man must have held his finger down on the gun when the clod of earth struck him, and the automatic had emptied itself. If this was the man who had shot Gates, then he had had only six shots left, and he had used them all.
“X” started to advance toward him, started to step over the body in his path. And then he stopped.
HE had heard a sound he recognized. It was just a little sound, but it was a sound that precedes death. It was the sound of a pin being pulled from a grenade.
“X” turned and ran back toward the house; ran as fast as he could in the dark without tripping. His shoes splashed loudly in the water. And that saved him. For just in back of him there was a terrific explosion.
“X,” though a good distance from the explosion, was knocked off his feet, hurled to the ground. The wooden boards of the tunnel crashed about him. Swirling smoke filled the tunnel, accompanied by the acrid fumes of cordite.
He was slightly dazed, and lay in the water for a while, then slowly raised himself to his feet. The force of the explosion had not been great, but, concentrated in the narrow tunnel, it had done plenty of damage. “X” knew that the passage was closed to him now, with that unidentified body still on the other side of the debris.
The man who had thrown the grenade had accomplished a double purpose; he had blocked “X” in, and had given himself the opportunity to get that body out undisturbed.
“X” was groggy from the fumes. There was a rent in the right shoulder of his coat, and a long gash in his forehead where a flying piece of wood had cut him.
He stumbled away from the gases that began to fill the tunnel. He got back to the four steps, and put his hand up to the trapdoor. The steel sheet was still in place. No egress there. The air was getting thin. He had difficulty in breathing. If he remained here for a little white longer, he would be overcome.
He turned and worked his way back to the spot where the explosion had occurred. The water was deeper now than it had been before — at least an inch, for he could feel it sloshing about his ankles. Either the explosion had forced the water up, or else a water line running somewhere in the tunnel had burst.
The fumes here were thicker. He pawed at the debris in front of him, with the faint hope that it could be moved away. The damp, wet earth lay thick across the passage, piled in tight. The explosion had torn the boards away, and the earth had caved in from all sides. There was no telling how thick it was here, how much digging would be necessary to get to the other side of it. He started to claw at it with his hands; then, suddenly, he stopped.
From somewhere, a faint breath of air had come to him. Fresh air.
He looked up, sniffed. Above him he saw a trickle of light, coming through the top of the tunnel.
He brought his face up close, and breathed fresh air. Then he put out his hand, and felt an opening in the earth above him. He realized what that meant — safety. For it seemed that the tunnel was not far below the surface, and the top had caved in here, affording an opening into the air above.
Chapter XXII
THE actual opening was no larger than a man’s hand, but the ground around it had weakened, and when “X” set to work on it, he was suddenly showered by an avalanche of loosened earth that cascaded down upon him.
It bore him down to the bottom of the passage, half buried him in a wet, clayey mixture of dirt and muddy water. He struggled up out of it, his clothes caked with mud, his face and hands black and grimy. He used the fallen earth to climb on, hoisted himself out through the now wide opening, and breathed deeply of the fresh night air.
He looked around to get his bearings. Behind him, about a hundred and fifty feet, the house was brilliantly lighted, and figures moved back and forth past the windows. Several guards patrolled close to the house. The garage door was wide open, and he could see a trooper on guard beside the hearse.
He wondered that no one in the house had heard the explosion, but that was explained by the fact that it had taken place underground, and at a considerable distance. If they had heard it at all they might have taken it for the distant rumbling of thunder. This was especially likely in view of the overcast condition of the sky.
The Secret Agent glanced at his wrist watch. The glass was shattered, and the hands had stopped at two o’clock. He judged that he had been in the tunnel for at least a half hour after the explosion, which would make it roughly two-thirty.
He hugged the ground, and crawled away in the direction of the mausoleum. There, if anywhere, would lie the end of this adventure, he felt. Whoever had perpetrated these crimes had made use of the mausoleum and the tunnel from which to launch his attacks.
He had covered perhaps twenty feet in his awkward position, never moving fast lest he attract the attention of the guards at the house, when he suddenly stopped, hardly breathing. Directly ahead of him, a man was crouching in the shrubbery. His back was to “X,” and he was raising a gun to fire at some one or something ahead of him. “X” could distinguish that the man’s gun had a silencer attachment.