Burks said grimly, “He’s not dead — just unconscious. Looks like someone gave him a shot of some sort of anesthetic.
Laurens, the little jeweler, exclaimed, “Think of it! He was our friend, and he turned out to be such a devil! He was broke, and losing the subway job, so he figured he’d recoup this way!”
Burks said, “I wonder who laid him out here; and who left those arrows for us to follow. It looks like—”
He paused, for just then, from the corridor outside there came a series of incoherent cries, and the sound of wildly stumbling feet. There reeled into the room a young patrolman, one of those who had been assigned to guard the corridors. He staggered in, his hands to his eyes, rubbing them madly.
Burks jumped up, seized him by the shoulder. “What’s the matter, O’Brien? You hurt?”
O’Brien rubbed knuckles at his tortured eyes. It was several minutes before he could speak, and then he said, “Some one was in the corridor, inspector. He came through a panel — looked like some sort of a halfwit, with a face that was full of scars. I called to him to stop, but he started to run away, so I pulled my gun. An’ then, what does he do but turn around an’ throw some sort of a little pellet at me. It burst on the floor — tear gas! I couldn’t see a thing, an’ he escaped!”
Just then there came an eerie whistle from somewhere out in the maze of passages — a whistle strangely musical in its quality, that seemed to pierce to the very marrow of the bones of the men in that room.
Inspector Burks raised his head, and there was a peculiar light in his eyes. “Now I understand,” he said. “I’ve heard that whistle before. I — think — I know who it is!”
The Murder Monster
A panic-stricken cities shrank in horror from these death-dealing robots who were immune to bullets. Only Secret Agent “X” dared meet the challenge of these inhuman fiends and their master, The Murder Monster, whose pointed finger turned men and women into flaming agony.
Chapter I
THE setting sun cast a cold, hard glint across the waters of the Hudson. Brittle spearheads of light flashed athwart the waves that rippled at the bank of the river below the somber walls of the State Prison.
The chill of early November dusk was in the air; almost it seemed to reflect a spirit of dreadful foreboding, to presage the approach of calamity. Somehow, the air seemed charged with thunderbolts of doom, poised and waiting to be hurled at the grim walls of the gloomy pile that loomed above the river, imprisoning fifteen hundred bitter men.
It was Sunday afternoon, and the inmates were being given a glimpse of life in the world beyond their cells. They were being treated to a football game between their own team and the team of Ervinton College, an institution that played the State Prison once a year.
The players on the field, convicts and college boys alike, were lost in the excitement of the game.
But the convict spectators displayed only a listless half-interest. Behind the high wire screen that separated their section from that of the visitors, they sat tensely, eyeing each other furtively, shifting nervously in their seats. Over the whole prison there seemed to be an air of tension, of taut expectancy.
That sixth sense that is so highly developed among men who are confined alone for a long time seemed to have divined that death hovered near. Many cast glances backward toward the main building, where were confined the more recalcitrant prisoners — dangerous criminals, untamed by their imprisonment, who were denied the privilege of witnessing the game.
The closing whistle blew, interrupting the play at nothing to nothing. Rousing cheers came from the section set apart for the visiting college spectators. The convicts cheered half-heartedly. They were casting furtive glances around the field and toward the grandstand where the warden sat, entertaining the faculty of Ervinton. The keepers, who were stationed ten feet apart across the front of the prisoners’ seats, called out, “Everybody remain seated till the teams are off the field!”
The visiting team deployed from the field, trotted into the basement through the side entrance of the main building, where showers and a locker room had been set up for them. The convicts watched them gloomily, in marked contrast to the hilarity of the college boys. For they were not going home to well-cooked meals in comfortable dining rooms, to the fond glances of proud parents, to the arms of sweethearts. They were going in to a dreary supper and dismal cells, to their lonely thoughts and gnawing memories.
AN inch of fiery red sun showed over the top of the wooded hills to the west, across the river. Dusk had come quickly. It was growing dark fast, and the guards now hurried the convicts into a double line and marched them toward the main entrance. The warden, with two of his deputies, stood in the grandstand talking to several of the faculty of Ervinton College who had come down to see the game.
The warden was a tall man, with a lined, wrinkled face topped by iron-gray hair. The weight of responsibility for all these prisoners sat heavily on his shoulders. Moodily, as he talked, his eyes rested on the leading ranks of convicts marching dispiritedly toward the building.
In a moment that front rank would step through the entrance, would be led to the mess hall. Another dreary day would be done, a dreary night would commence.
But that marching line never reached the entrance.
For there erupted, at that moment from the basement exit in the side of the building, a disorderly swarm of men. The Ervinton college players, the substitutes and the coaches, were being herded out, still in their football uniforms. Some stumbled, others ran, and it was evident that something terrible had happened inside.
The warden leaped from the grandstand to the field, started to run toward the basement exit, followed by his deputies. Several guards swung in after him. The long marching line of convicts had halted at a command from the head keeper, and stood silent, watching the strange exodus.
And suddenly the warden, who had been running across the field, stopped short in his tracks, his face white, his hands trembling. For right behind the college players, forcing the boys ahead at the point of submachine guns and rifles, there appeared other men — men who were dressed in the street clothes which the college boys had left in the lockers, but who did not look like college boys.
The warden exclaimed, “God! It’s the lifers! They’ve gotten loose somehow — and they must have broken into the armory; they’ve all got weapons! Look, there’s Gilly, and Furber, and—” he named others of them whom he knew by sight. “Quick, Turner,” he addressed the deputy immediately behind him, “signal the gatehouse guard to close the gate. Have the two tower guards enfilade them with machine gun fire!”
The deputy turned to obey. At the same moment, one of the armed convicts raised a Thompson gun to his shoulder and directed a stream of lead into the gatehouse. The guard there was flung against the wall of his little enclosure, his body riddled by a dozen slugs; the gate, which had been opened to permit the egress of the visitors, remained open.
And now was demonstrated the devilish ingenuity behind this well-planned escape. The convicts, their faces screwed into snarling masks of defiance and hatred, were herding the college players along front of them, pushing them toward the open gate. No shots were fired at them from the wall towers; for the very good reason that the college boys, being in front, would be the first to be hit.
The warden could do nothing. He stood there helpless, his face bleak, and watched the most dangerous criminals in his charge march through that gate to freedom. He said hoarsely to the deputy, “Good God, Turner, they’re using the Ervinton boys as shields!” His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. “We can’t fire at them now. Those innocent boys would be the first to be hit!”