Ahead was a door with glass in it and iron grille work. He pushed against it. It was locked. Behind him now he heard the sound of feet in the subwaylike passage, the hoarse shouts of men.
He reared up, looked through the iron grille, saw a lighted room. He got a confused impression of vats, bottles, metal tanks, jars. A man in a stained white apron was at work before a low table.
Agent “X” rapped on the door, and the man turned. He had aquiline features, a stringy beard, glasses. The Agent rapped again more impatiently, and the man gave an irritated shrug and strode toward the door. When he was close Agent “X” broke the glass of the door with the muzzle of the gun he had taken. He aimed the gun straight at the bearded man.
“Quick — open!” he hissed.
The man gave one gasp of terror, started to run, thought better of it. He came close, a lock clicked and the door swung open. Agent “X” pushed through.
“Who are you?” the man demanded.
Agent “X” clutched the man’s throat, and sent him reeling out into the corridor with a vicious shove. He closed the door, locked it, and turned back into this new room of mystery. One studied glance and he saw what it was.
Here was a completely stocked chemical laboratory. His eyes roved the shelves of bottles, jars and carboy containers. Here were deadly, explosive elements. Acids that would eat metal. Dies for counterfeiting purposes. Sinister poisons.
A huge safe stood against the wall, its door ajar. On a table were some record books — data to be used in this laboratory of the Octopus’s criminal corporation. The safe caught the Agent’s eye, held it.
HE leaped across to it, opened the door wider, then raised his head a moment and stared upward. Ventilators led toward the ceiling of this underground chamber. Motor-driven, fans were set in the ceiling to carry noxious gases away to some sort of airshaft above. A ladder snaked up to the fans to make oiling and repairs possible.
This ladder held “X’s” gaze an instant. His heart leaped. Then he saw that the metal ceiling and fans made an effectual barrier. There was not time to get through them — even supposing the airshaft offered a possible means of escape. Already the sounds of pursuit were plain. He could hear the shouting of men, the thud of swiftly running feet. The criminal “board,” frenzied at the Agent’s battle in room 13, were coming to hunt him down, reenforced with other employees of the place.
He turned from the ladder, flung open the only other door in the room. Another corridor showed; but signal lights were flashing along this. He saw dark figures racing toward him from its farthest end. He was trapped. Death was converging upon him from all sides.
He slammed the door shut, groped for a lock. There was none. And now the sound of feet was close to the grilled entrance through which he had come. This door was locked, but the glass in it was broken.
Even as he whirled the black snout of an automatic was shoved through. The Secret Agent flung himself aside as a gun spurted flame. The gun turned as a killer at the trigger tried to slaughter him.
“X” leaped to the wall of the room, pressed the light switch, plunging the place in darkness.
The gun in the killer’s hand continued to thunder. Bullets snapped and crackled around the laboratory. A glass jar broke with a jangle and a liquid of some sort gushed out. The Agent smelled the pungent odor of benzine. Then he heard a thud against the door. A battering device was being used. It was only a question of minutes before they broke in.
Eyes burning like coals in the darkness, Agent “X” stepped toward the shelf where the benzine had gushed from the bottle. He did a thing that seemed utter madness in that room of explosive chemicals. He struck a match, tossed it onto the shelf. Self-destruction to avoid torture seemed to be the Agent’s intention.
THE tiny flame of the match caught a benzine-soaked paper. A plume of flame whipped up. An exultant cry came from those behind the door. As the blinding flame of the benzine made wavering light in the room. Agent “X” stepped toward the big safe. Like a wraith he slipped into it, crouched back, holding the door.
Flame from the benzine licked upward. A bottle above popped. Something hissed like water from a hose. The contents of the bottle caught and a streak of livid flame shot up the full height of the shelf, a greedy, twisting snake of destruction.
As it reached the top of the shelf, a huge carboy of inflammable chemical burst open and sprayed the room with a drenching sheet of flame.
Agent “X” shut the safe door and crouched there in the darkness. A thundering explosion shook the room outside. He could feel the safe rock on its casters. It took him back to war days, this volleying and battering. Some one seemed to be striking the safe with a great hammer now.
It began to grow warm inside. Sweat trickled down the Agent’s face. In avoiding death in one form he had courted it in another. But the safe, with its thick steel walls offered the only protection anywhere in sight. His quick wits had saved him from the Octopus’s fury. And the men in the corridor outside would think he was being blown to pieces.
The thundering noises continued. The heat increased and the air became so stale and so infused with the reek of burning chemicals that it seemed no living thing could survive. The Agent soaked his handkerchief with a solution of ammonia salts which he carried in a small vial. He wrapped this around his nose and mouth, an improvised gas mask. But his lungs were beginning to ache with the bad air, his heart was laboring. An old wound in his side, a wound received long ago on a battlefield in France, ached, too. The scar of that wound was drawn into the outlines of a crude “X.” It seemed once again the symbol of the Secret Agent’s indomitable will. He was fighting a battle now, a battle against the smothering, reeking death that threatened to overwhelm him at any moment.
Chapter XIX
WHEN it seemed he could stand his steel prison no longer, the bombardment outside began to lessen. Even then he dared not open the door of the safe, fearing vapors of poisonous chemicals would rush in. The heat must have been terrific to make the safe as warm as it was. Only its fireproof qualities had saved him.
He waited seconds more, waited till it was a question of dying inside the safe or risking the air outside. Then he reached forward and pushed against the door.
Abruptly he was aware of new and terrible danger. The heat and the jarring explosions had made the door wedge. He brought his full weight against it. Still it would not move. It seemed almost as though the heat had welded it to the sides of the safe.
With blood pounding in his ears, with death coming closer every instant, Agent “X” began a new and fearful battle.
He thrust his feet against the back of the safe, pushed with all his might, struggling to keep his faculties from slipping into the black void which yawned. But only when unconsciousness was creeping over him did the door move a fraction of an inch. Another stupendous heave, bringing into play all the reserve strength of nerve and muscle — and the jammed door came free.
Blasting heat struck his face. But the air was relatively pure. The flames and explosions had consumed the chemicals in the room. Many of the poisons had counteracted each other.
The interior of the room was a complete wreck. The battering series of explosions from which the steel walls of the safe had saved him, had wrought havoc. He saw the sides and front of the safe were pitted.
Debris cluttered the floor at his feet. The unlocked door had been blown open. The glass in the other had let noxious fumes out, driven the killers back. But the steel and concrete walls of the room had withstood the shock of the explosions and had probably muffled the roar. The room was far underground. Agent “X” listened tensely for some human sound. There was none.