The bartender asked huskily, “What’ll they do with that guy in the sack — after they’re through asking him questions?”
Linky Teagle shrugged. “Maybe there won’t be anything left of him by that time.” He moved toward the door. “I wonder what’s keeping them so long.”
The man with the walrus moustache came around to the front of the bar. He said, uneasily, “I’m wonderin’—whoever their boss is, how come he trusts us to see all this? Suppose—” his voice dropped to a whisper “—suppose he give them orders to knock us off after they finish this job?”
Linky Teagle said, “I was thinking of the same thing. We better take a look in there.”
His hand snaked inside his coat, produced a gun. He reached out, opened the door wide. The inner room was empty.
The bartender gasped. “They musta gone out the back way!”
And just then there was the sound of heavy steps in the short hall that led from the front door. There had been no sound of anyone entering, but there was the distinct noise of a ponderous tread in the hall now.
The bartender’s face went pale. “They left the outside door unlocked — so they could go around from in back!”
Teagle swung his gun toward the hallway, just as a strange, monstrous figure came into view. It was the same horrid being that had struck terror into the crowds at the bazaar, that had launched invisible death at Harry Pringle and the policeman. Its barrel-like body waddled as it walked, and its ghastly gas-masked head peered through the gloom.
It stopped in the doorway, slowly and ponderously raised its hand, with the finger pointing at the bartender.
The bartender screamed, started to duck behind the bar. Linky Teagle had his gun poised. His finger now contracted on the trigger, and seven slugs — seven livid streams of death streaked from the muzzle straight at the monster. But the heavy figure was unmoved by the hail of lead. It was as if those death-dealing bullets that would have been fatal to any man were no more than pellets from a boy’s toy sling.
With a sure, inexorable motion, its pointing finger sought the bartender, and a flash of flame sprang from the screaming man’s clothing. In an instant he had become his own fiery funeral pyre. His screams tore through the small room; horrible, hideous screams that mingled with the echoes of Teagle’s gun. He swept his arms in a desperate, flail-like motion over the bar, and the whisky bottle was hurled to the floor, shattered. The alcoholic liquid spread, and the dying man rolled across the floor, right into it. Flames spread, fed by the alcohol, and the place became an inferno.
In the meantime, the hellish monster had turned its death-finger toward Teagle. But Teagle, acting with desperate speed, had slipped through the inner door that led to the back room and kicked the door shut.
The room became bright as the flames spread. For a moment the huge, ungainly monster stood there, watching its handiwork. If it entertained any emotion of anger at being balked of its other prey, any disappointment at missing Linky Teagle, there was no way of telling. It turned ponderously and made its way out of the short hall, into the night, where it stepped into the rear of a closed truck that sped away.
Chapter VIII
A SQUARE room, poorly lit. Chairs arranged in a semicircle before a raised platform with curtains at the rear.
Walls of whitewashed brick, with small windows high up near the ceiling — a typical cellar room, converted to its present use.
In the chairs were seated beings that resembled men — rather, shells of men, lacking a human spark. They were awaiting something or someone. They smoked, but did not talk. Their startlingly youthful features bore an uncanny resemblance to each other — as if they were all members of a single family. And in their eyes there was a ruthlessness, a cold-blooded killer lust that it was hard to credit. It was as if they had made a bargain with the devil — raiding their immortal souls for a quality of merciless viciousness beyond human conception.
There were four chairs vacant in the semicircle. None of those strange beings paid any attention to the empty chairs. They did not even stir when four of their fellows entered through a side door, carrying a sack in which something squirmed.
They deposited the sack on the floor, and one of them stooped, cut open the rope that tied it at the top. They helped out the half-conscious man who was within it, stood him on his feet. The doped drink had not yet worn off entirely, and the man was still groggy, wobbling, dazed.
The face of John Harder stared about the room with swollen, uncomprehending eyes. He was no longer the desperate fugitive from justice; he was a man with half his senses deadened by dope, unable to familiarize himself with his surroundings.
No words were spoken by the robot killers who held his arms. There was utter silence in the room for a space of minutes. And then the curtains parted at the back of the narrow platform, and the murder monster stepped out — huge, ungainly, terrifying.
At sight of that monster, the captive wrenched wildly at the hands that held him; but his strength had been sapped by the dope, and he was as a child in the grip of his grinning captors.
The monstrous figure on the platform paid him no attention at first. It stood there, planted solidly, its hideous head moving from side to side as it took stock of those present.
Finally, from somewhere in its bowels there emanated the same sonorous metallic voice that had struck terror into the hearts of the people at the bazaar.
“I have no fault to find with the way you all acted tonight at the bazaar. You were true sons of the monster! Always remember that you must be ruthless, merciless! Do not hesitate to kill — a dead enemy is a harmless enemy; and we have no friends! By striking terror into the hearts of everybody, we eliminate resistance.”
The voice paused for a moment, then went on, “In future, however, you must be more careful. Tonight we lost one of you — Number Eight is reported missing, captured by the police. If he had come at once in answer to my order, he would not have been caught. It is imperative now that we release him. My plans are all set for tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock, when he is to be arraigned in court. You will all participate; your instructions will be issued later. Now we must attend to another matter.”
The ungainly monster half turned toward the captive, ordered those holding him, “Bring the prisoner forward!” Then it once more addressed the seated audience of killers, “There is one enemy whom I knew all along I would have to eliminate in this campaign, for he was sure to interfere with our progress. That enemy is the man known as Secret Agent ‘X.’ You have all heard how impossible it is to find him, how dangerous he is. Well, gentlemen, I have the honor to show you — Secret Agent ‘X’! He was caught by a simple trick; he practically walked into our hands.”
The four men led their struggling captive down to the foot of the platform.
The monster continued, “I am sure that this is Secret Agent ‘X’ because nobody else in the world could have disguised himself as John Harder. He tried to crash into this organization in that role; gentlemen, John Harder is dead. But this man didn’t know it. And there he stands. Look at that disguise. Perfect! It shall now be our pleasure to scrape that putty off his face, and see for the first time the real features of — Secret Agent ‘X’! And after we are through asking him a few questions, I will treat him to a bath of fire!”
There was no trace of pity in the eyes of the smooth-faced killers who watched the captive struggle ineffectually with those who held him. He tried to talk, but the powerful drug had paralyzed the muscles of his throat temporarily. It was wearing off slowly, and confused syllables issued from his mouth, syllables that had no coherence or meaning.