If your son performs the work I shall order him to do, he will be allowed to live. The purpose of this letter is to request you, as you value your son’s life, not to do anything that might endanger it — do not attempt to trace him, or to communicate with the police!
Yours,
Old man Barton was fuming. “The insolence of him! To dare to write me anything like this! I’ll have every policeman in the city on the trail of this mountebank within an hour! Nobody can do this to me and get away with it!”
Jack Larrabie said drily, “If you’d been at the bazaar last night, Mr. Barton, you’d think differently. This monster is no mountebank — he’s a deadly murderer. The police can’t do any good — he kills them like flies!”
Barton strode up and down biting his upper lip. “What are we to do then?” he cried in desperation.
“We’ve hired the Hobart Agency,” Larrabie told him. “Just sit tight, Mr. Barton. The monster says in the letter that Fred isn’t going to be killed. I only hope,” he added fervently, “that Fred has the sense to play along with him. He’s so damn hot-headed, he’s liable to tell this murder monster to go to hell!”
“If he’s any son of mine,” the steel magnate barked, “that’s just what he’ll do!”
“X” had remained silent, studying the three of them, at the same time trying to analyze the contents of the letter Barton had received, trying to arrive at a mental picture of the man who had written it.
He nodded shortly to Barton when they left, following the two young men in silence, his mind still concentrating on the problem.
OUTSIDE, in front of Barton’s building, he seemed to return to realities again with a snap. He said firmly to the two young men, “I am convinced that there is a deeper motive behind your friend’s disappearance than merely a desire to use his scientific knowledge. Though he may be brilliant, there are still many men who are far more advanced in the intricacies of chemistry and physics than he is — men in the great industrial laboratories of the country, for instance. I feel that perhaps that letter was only written for the purpose of lulling your suspicions. It may be that there is some sort of plan to wipe out you four young men; perhaps you offended this murder master in some way — you may have, for you don’t know who he is in private life.”
“What do you think we ought to do?” asked Ranny Coulter, nervously.
“I think you each ought to have a bodyguard. I will arrange it with Mr. Hobart right now.” He made for a phone booth across the street, disregarding their protests.
“Damn it,” Larrabie growled, “we came to Hobart because we wanted him to work with us offensively. We didn’t come because we were afraid and wanted protection!”
“Nevertheless, you shall have protection. You have given us this case, and we are going to work it our way!”
The Agent’s dynamic personality, the assurance with which he overrode their objections, left them no alternative but to agree.
When he was through phoning, he turned to them. “Wait here. Hobart is sending down a man for each of you. There will be some one with you day and night. It is quite possible that an attempt will be made against one or both of you, and I advise you to keep to your homes. Let the agency work on it from now on.”
“All right,” Larrabie agreed. “We’ll stand for the bodyguards, but I’ll be damned if we stay home quietly while you have all the fun. Take it or leave it!”
The Agent sighed. “Well, I guess that’s the best I can do with you. But if you must expose yourselves, please be careful. If you don’t care about your own hides, remember that our operatives are valuable to us — don’t place them in unnecessary danger. Now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen, I have work to do.”
He left them before they could ask him where he was going, just as a car deposited two of Jim Hobart’s operatives on the sidewalk. As he walked up the street, he noted with satisfaction that Hobart had obeyed his instructions to the letter. For another car had pulled up behind the first; and from this second car there stepped two more operatives. These two were poorly dressed, and carried sandwich-board signs, back and front, advertising the virtues of some cafeteria.
The two sandwich men proceeded down the street behind the first two operatives, strolling along with an air of casual indifference which concealed their alertness. They were covering the first two men assigned to guarding Larrabie and Coulter. If the murder monster should attack the young physician and his friend, the monster would be due for a surprise. For those sandwich signs were constructed of bullet-proof, fire-proof steel; and underneath each, conveniently placed on a hook so that it could be brought into action at a moment’s notice, was a Thompson sub-machine gun!
The Agent was planning an interesting reception for the murder monster!
Chapter XVI
THE next twenty-four hours produced no new crimes, no new wave of terror. It was almost as if some evil prescience had warned the murder monster that traps were being laid, preparations being made for the reception of its cohorts of crime.
Secret Agent “X” kept unceasing vigil. He knew that this was only a lull before the storm. He spent the time in perfecting his arrangements, keeping in constant touch with Bates and Hobart. Under his orders their operatives flocked into the city from every part of the country and were immediately assigned to stations where it was likely that the monster would strike next. They were instructed not to offer resistance in the event of an attack, for that would have been suicide, but to call either Bates or Hobart at once.
Banks, jewelry establishments, even the subtreasury, had these unobtrusive watchers stationed nearby, on the alert every minute of the day.
Young Doctor Larrabie and Ranny Coulter remained together all day at “X’s” suggestion in order to make it easier for their bodyguards. And wherever those bodyguards were, there, not far off, could be seen the two sandwich men, shambling along with their innocuous looking signs hanging from their shoulders.
Larrabie and Coulter even slept together that night at the home of Ranny Coulter’s family. The two bodyguards prowled in and out of the house all night, while across the street the two sandwich men kept constant vigil from the shelter of a small private park.
In the morning, Secret Agent “X” paid a visit to the tailoring establishment of Corlear Son, where he had stopped in the day before. Mr. Corlear himself conducted him into the fitting room, and locked the door, arousing a good deal of speculation among the clerks as to the identity of the mysterious customer.
It was twenty minutes before the Agent left Corlear’s. He was wearing a gray sack suit that to all outward appearance differed in no way from the hundreds of other suits Corlear’s made and sold. The clerks in the store would have been immeasurably more curious had they known that the mysterious customer had paid two hundred and ten dollars for that ordinary appearing suit!
The Agent stopped in at one of his apartments and changed from the disguise of Mr. Vardis to that of Arvold Fearson, but continued to wear the gray suit. Upon leaving the apartment, he drove downtown, stopping on the way to phone Bates for a report.
Bates had been awaiting his call anxiously. “We’ve finally got something on Runkle!” he announced. “I put two men on him as you ordered. They picked him up a while ago and followed him to a house in Brooklyn. It’s a private house — Number Twenty-two Belvidere Road. Fowler and Grace, the two men who are shadowing him, just phoned in again. There’s an empty house next door to Number Twenty-two, and they got into it somehow. They can look into the room where Runkle is sitting. He’s there with another man, a gangster named Brinz. They seem to be waiting for someone.”