Down a dark side street, away from the business section of Cicero, he turned the nose of his hired, drive-yourself car. He went four blocks, parked, and got out. The night seemed peaceful. Stars winked overhead. A faint warm breeze stirred the branches of the few trees along the street. But somewhere not far ahead the masters of sudden death were meeting.
Secret Agent “X” went another two blocks on foot, following directions which he had wrung from Van Camp’s lips by means of the drug.
He came at last to a group of deserted buildings which sprawled across the space of a whole city block. A high barbed-wire fence encircled the property. It was a group of factory buildings formerly owned by an electrical company. Posted signs warned trespassers off and gave notice that the property was now in the hands of a real estate holding concern. When business conditions warranted it, these buildings would be salvaged or torn down and others erected. Now they were as still and bleak as huge mausoleums.
Agent “X,” eyes glowing bright, walked swiftly along the opposite side of the street parallel with this old factory site. He paused when he saw the dusty windows of a small cigar and stationery store ahead. A faded sign in gold lettering bore the words “Colosimo Rici.” The front of this store faced the main entrance of the closed factory. Agent “X” glanced at his watch, nodded to himself, strolled into the store.
A chair creaked in the rear. A greasy-faced proprietor came waddling out to the counter. The man had eyes as black as agate hidden in rolls of baggy flesh. His skin had a toadlike wartiness. He crouched over the counter, staring at Agent “X.”
With no change of expression the Agent made several purchases. He ordered three packages of cigarettes, all of different brands. Carefully, under the eyes of the watchful proprietor, he opened one of the packages, took out a cigarette and lit it. Three puffs and he broke the cigarette in half, dropped one half on the floor, tossed the other behind the counter.
The proprietor gave a barely perceptible nod.
“Wait,” he said gruffly.
He came around the counter, waddled to the door of the shop, looked up and down the street in both directions. Then he re-entered and tapped Agent “X” on the arm.
“You like a little drink, Mr. Van Camp?” he said.
“Make it two fingers straight, Piere.”
“Go in and help yourself.”
A simple but effective exchange of signals and passwords had been made, secrets learned from the lips of Van Camp.
Agent “X” walked to the rear of the dirty little store. He opened a door, walked straight along a short hallway, entered a small back room. There was a table and several chairs in the center of this. On the back wall was a shelf holding liquor bottles and glasses. It seemed a place where Piere, the fat proprietor, could receive a few intimate guests in private while waiting for customers in his small shop. Nothing more.
But Agent “X” walked directly to the shelf of bottles and glasses. He paused a moment, eyes questing. His hand reached beneath the shelf, fingers groping along its under surface. Concealed there, where no one would ever think of looking, was an electric button.
The Agent pressed it. A moment of silence, then a faint clicking sounded somewhere behind the shelf. He seized the edge of it, pushed to the left. It moved ponderously revealing itself as a heavy steel door on rollers.
Behind it was a landing, and a flight of dark stairs leading down with another door at their bottom.
NOT until the shelf had rolled back into place did an electric bulb over the door below light up. When Agent “X” reached the bottom of the stairway, the door swung open as though ghostly hands were upon it. It closed after him. He turned sharply to the right, then right again, till he was in a passage below street level. This led in the opposite direction from the one taken when he entered the store.
In semi-darkness, with only a faint light far ahead to guide him, he passed under the street and into the block occupied by the old factory site. Here another steel door loomed before him; a door set in thick concrete, reinforced with riveted steel cleats.
It was like the entrance to some fortress. In the very center of it was a small perforated disc resembling a telephone mouthpiece. The Agent stood erect, face pointed toward this disc. He spoke in clear precise tones, words and numbers that seemed to have no sense or order.
“Twenty-four. Colombia. Ninety-two. Ten.”
The consonant and vowel sounds made a series of vibrations in the diaphragm of the disc. Instantly there was a whir of geared machinery behind the steel door as an electric motor started. Then the door rose slowly, straight up on oiled bearings. It stopped, Agent “X” passed through, and the door began to descend automatically.
The skin along his scalp felt tight now. With the sliding down of that door his last contact with the outside world was gone. The elaborate maneuvers necessary to get into this place, the precautions taken, were further indications of the power and cunning of the brains behind it. As Van Camp he was about to join the secret board of directors. He was about to come into the presence of the mysterious chairman of that board — the Octopus himself.
He walked resolutely along another corridor, entered a wooden door. Grim steel and concrete now gave way to polished paneling and soft carpets. Ornamented lights lined this corridor. At the end of it was a gleaming mirror, running from floor to ceiling.
As he walked toward it Agent “X” saw his own reflection — the high cheek bones, the long face, the nose glasses of Van Camp. He moved with the same stoop-shouldered slouch. The sinister lawyer seemed to be approaching him.
But the mirror gave Agent “X” a momentary pang of uneasiness. Van Camp had said nothing about it. Why was it there? Was it purely for ornamentation, or did it serve some more subtle purpose? Perhaps it was Argus glass, he thought, opaque from one side, transparent from the other, so that unseen eyes could watch him. “X,” the perfect actor, betrayed no sign of his uneasiness.
THERE was one more door at the right of the mirror. He opened it and found himself suddenly in a magnificently furnished room. A long mahogany table ran down its center. Carved chairs stood alongside the table. Shaded lights, a thick rug, completed the furnishings. It was a typical board room such as one would expect in the offices of some great bank or business corporation.
Over a dozen men were seated in the chairs around the table. But several chairs were still empty.
Agent “X” walked forward, eyes focused on the edge of the table. Small numbers were inlaid in the mahogany. He took the chair before No. 14. He could feel eyes scrutinizing him. Not until he had seated himself did he look up. Then he laid Van Camp’s brief case on the table before him, adjusted his nose-glasses.
An amazing group of faces met his eye. Many were familiar to him. Here were famous gangsters, confidence men, gamblers. In this assembly were some of the cunningest, most ruthless czars of crime the underworld had ever produced. Big shots, each in his own line.
“Duke” Saragon, who had blasted his way to power in the beer-running days. The Belli brothers, last of a dynasty of Sicilian gunmen terrorists who had held sway in Chicago’s North Side. “Smiling” Dan Kilrain, the New York mobster. “Emperor” Lee Wong, head of a sinister West Coast dope ring, who had evaded the cleverest narcotic agents. And Benjamin Sullwell, suave, pink-faced stock promoter, operator of a chain of bucket shops, until income tax evasion had landed him for three years in the federal penitentiary.
These and others like them formed the Octopus’s “Board of Directors.” And what of the Octopus himself, the chairman? “X’s” eyes looked down the length of the table, narrowed slightly.