“X” spoke tautly, quickly now. He wanted to follow up his advantage.
“I can send you back to the death house, Gilly — or I can let you escape, give you enough money to go to another country and change your name. All you have to do is give me the name of your master, tell me where your headquarters are. Which do you choose?”
Gilly’s eyes lost their glare of hatred. They seemed to be imbued now with a sort of dumb terror. They looked up at “X” with a note of helpless appeal. He opened his mouth, tried to talk, but nothing resulted — only those horrid animal grunts.
The Agent suddenly knelt beside him again. “I wonder—” he muttered. “It can’t be possible. It’s too fiendish even for the murder monster.” Once more he examined Gilly’s shaven skull, his fingers passing over the short scar.
Gilly did not draw away from him now. On the contrary, he bent his head, as if anxious for “X” to see that scar.
The Agent drew in his breath sharply as he suddenly understood its significance. Gilly had had more than his face and fingertips changed — some one had operated on his brain, as well. An incision had been made into the brain cells controlling his power of speech. He had been rendered mute!
Chapter XIII
SECRET AGENT “X” never allowed emotion to play a part in his life. But now, as he studied his captive, he felt a surge of bitter repugnance against the unholy being that had conceived this diabolical jest of making veritable robots of his men.
The Agent had sought by every means possible to locate those twenty-five convicts who had escaped from the State Prison. And if he had succeeded in finding them, he would not have hesitated at turning them over to the law, for they constituted a menace to the society he devoted his life to protecting. But nothing the law could have done to them even approached in horror and in pure cruelty the things that this murder monster had done.
“X” should have been elated at discovering this important link between the escaped convicts and the murder monster — for he knew now what the police did not as yet suspect — that the so-called robots were in reality the convicts whom every agency of the law was seeking throughout the country.
But he was far from elated. For he realized now what a stupendous task still faced him. No matter how dangerous those convicts might have been while they were free, the Agent now saw the shadow of a menace infinitely greater. What an inhuman monster this must be, that had freed these men only to chain them by a series of hideous operations in a more horrid slavery than any they had ever known in State Prison!
His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden ominous sound from the hallway outside the apartment. Boards creaked under a heavy, ponderous tread, and a resonant, metallic voice called out, “Number Eight! Where are you? Number Eight! Where are you?
Gilly twisted violently out of the Agent’s hands and started to drag himself toward the door in spite of his bound hands. He opened his mouth and uttered a weird, inhuman sound, for all the world like some obscene animal calling to its master.
That sound was heard, for from outside came the mechanical sounding voice of the monster. “Get away from the door, Number Eight. It’s going to be smashed in!”
Gilly stopped crawling toward the door. He rested on his back, his face twisted into a grimacing leer of triumph as he stared up at “X.” It was difficult to understand how this little gunman of the underworld should be so loyal to a master that had done such inhuman things to him. “X” had offered Gilly freedom, immunity from prosecution, for information. Gilly could not feel that he was in any danger from the Agent. Yet he welcomed the approach of the murder monster, welcomed the prospect of being brought once more under that fiendish domination!
There must be some powerful hold — some powerful attraction — that the monster exerted over these men. “X” wondered if it was possible that the operation on the brains of Gilly and the others — almost certain now that they had all been subjected to the knife — accomplished more than merely depriving them of speech; if it was possible that it had, in fact, converted them all into veritable robots without personal initiative or will of their own.
There came a smashing impact against the door; the monster must have hurled its huge form against it. But the panels were strong, the door was solid, for the Agent always made it a point to provide his retreat with reinforced doors for just such a contingency. Yet, strong as it was, it yielded a little under the impact of that heavy body. “X” saw that it would not stand up long under the attack. If he remained in the room he would become a target for that finger of death. He would go up in flames, leaving his task unfinished, taking with him the secret of the identity of the robots, leaving the city at the mercy of these cohorts of hell.
He never left himself, however, without some means of retreat. Now, he sprang to the window, slid it open while the handcuffed Gilly watched him with narrowed, mad eyes. The Agent counted for escape on the drain pipe which ran up to the roof, close to the window. But the monster had taken care of that, too. For, no sooner had “X” showed himself at the window than there was a wicked spat, and a bullet imbedded itself in the woodwork close to his head. Somewhere outside, a rifleman was stationed with a silenced rifle. Nobody was going to be able to leave that building, by window or otherwise, till the monster had got his man. “X” did not stop to wonder how the monster had learned of the apartment. He immediately set to work.
From a cabinet in the corner, he produced a pot-bellied jar to which was attached a metal hose. This jar was made of dull, burnished metal, and had a sort of stand beneath it, into which was fitted a Bunsen burner.
While the heavy oak door bent under the repeated charges of the monster outside, “X” methodically lit the Bunsen burner and ran the hose close to the window. Then he donned a pair of goggles, and took a hypodermic syringe from the cabinet.
Gilly watched him with a puzzled gaze as he filled the container of the hypodermic with a light-colored liquid. Gilly shrank away from him as he approached, tried to wriggle from his grip. But the Agent held him tight, thrust the needle into his arm, and drove the plunger home.
The whites of Gilly’s eyes showed, his lids drooped, he wheezed, and was unconscious within half a minute. The hypodermic had been loaded with a highly potent, quick-acting anaesthetic. The dose was sufficient to keep a man unconscious for at least forty-eight hours. Since the Agent could not take Gilly out of that apartment, he had made sure that the monster would not be able to make use of him for the next two days.
THE blows on the door were telling. Splinters were flying. In a moment there would be a large enough opening for the monster to aim his finger through. “X” turned to the window, observed with satisfaction that the hose from the potbellied jar was now giving off a vapor that thickened as it rose out of the window into heavy clouds of smoke. As the smoke grew in volume, it became impossible to see through it. To the riflemen stationed outside the house, the window would be invisible. This was the latest development in smoke screens — a chemical which the Agent had developed himself and was using now for the first time.
Under the protection of the smoke screen, the Agent swung himself out of the window, clinging to the drain pipe. But instead of descending as he might have been expected to do, he drew himself up, inch by inch, slowly, painfully. The smoke swirled around him, but his eyes were protected by the goggles. Gripping the pipe with taut fingers and tight knees, he worked himself up toward the roof. It was several minutes before he heard a crash from within the apartment he had just left. He heard heavy, lumbering steps, the crash of furniture. That would be the monster feeling his way around in the room, probably unable to see through the smoke which must be filling the place by this time.