Plain-clothes men were peering into the faces of every passer-by. The office buildings were being combed by a flood of officers that had been thrown into the district. They were apparently determined that the supposed murderer of Marcy should not escape.
But Mr. Vardis passed unquestioned, for he in no wise resembled the fugitive. He hailed a cab, gave directions to drive to the Coulter home. “If you hurry,” he said to the cabby, “you can make it in twelve minutes; I want you to do better than that — I want to get there in ten. And there’s ten dollars in it for you.”
The cabby grinned, and stepped on the gas.
So far, all of “X’s” genius had been futile in combatting this dreadful monster that terrorized the city. He had been forced to fight blindly, depending on chance, waiting for the monster to make a mistake. Even now, as he sped uptown, he realized that there was only one chance in a hundred that the truck in front of the Coulter home had anything to do with the monster. But that one chance had to be looked into. In a battle like this, nothing could be passed by lightly.
The cab made it in ten minutes.
It turned into Madison Avenue two blocks below the Coulter home, and the driver headed north.
TRAFFIC was light at this time of the afternoon, and “X” could see far ahead over the cabby’s shoulder. He saw the two sandwich men on the corner in front of the Coulter house, saw the large truck across the street. He consulted his watch, saw that he was well within the twenty-minute time limit and breathed a sigh of relief. He had outlined in his mind a tentative plan for investigating that truck without arousing the suspicions of its occupants, if there were any.
He leaned forward, said to the driver, “When you get up to that corner where the sandwich men are standing, pull up next to them.”
The driver nodded, began to slow up. They still had one street intersection between them and the Coulter house. The green traffic light on the avenue turned red, and the cabby braked to a halt at the corner. A block away the sandwich men paced lazily with all the appearance of a couple of down-and-outers working for a day’s pay. No one would have suspected them of carrying sub-machine guns concealed under those signs.
Somewhere in the immediate vicinity there would also be the two men assigned as bodyguards to Larrabie and Coulter.
But “X” had eyes only for the truck. At the distance of a whole block, his keen eyes examined it carefully. It was all white, with black lettering on its side, announcing that the “Snow-Cap Laundry Does Your Sheets Like New.” It was facing north, away from him, and he could not see the driver’s compartment. But he suddenly noted something that caused his whole body to grow tense.
Projecting from the roof of the truck was a short length of metal tube which was curved at the top, so that the opening faced toward the Coulter house. “X” had seen many of these in war times, knew that at the first sight of one of these rising upon the crest of a barren ocean, stark panic had been wont to tread the decks of the proudest ocean liners. It was a periscope such as is used on submarines! Somebody within that truck was watching the house across the street!
It took but a second for the Agent to note this, even while the cab was slowing up for the red light. Now he leaned forward, said tensely, “Don’t mind the red light — shoot ahead, quick. If there’s a fine, I’ll pay it!”
But the driver shook his head. “Nix, mister. It’d be my fourth ticket — I’d lose my license. They’re hard on us hackmen.”
And then things began to happen.
The Agent saw the door of the Coulter house open, saw Ranny Coulter and Jack Larrabie come out and start to descend the steps to the sidewalk. His eyes smouldered. They had deliberately broken their promise to him, had not waited the full twenty minutes.
And now, almost simultaneously with the appearance of the two young men, the rear doors of the waiting truck were flung open, and a swarm of the stiff-walking, robot-like men deployed into the street. They rushed toward Larrabie and Coulter, silently, purposefully intentful; each carried a silenced automatic.
Secret Agent “X” leaped from the cab. But he was too far away. Things happened too fast.
Coulter and Larrabie had stopped, transfixed, at the sudden eruption of attackers. It was the two sandwich men at the corner who stopped the rush of the robots. Even as “X” was leaping from the cab, they swung their sub-machine guns clear of the sandwich boards, and directed a hail of lead at the attackers. The sweep of their slugs bowled over the robot-like men as if they were nine-pins — but did not kill them; their bullet-proof clothing stopped the slugs, though they had the wind knocked out of them by the terrific impacts. Not one was left standing. They littered the gutter, started to crawl back toward the truck. The sandwich board trick had been successful so far.
BUT now there descended from the truck the huge, ungainly shape of the murder monster. Its robots had failed; it was swinging into action itself. It paid no attention at all to the two machine gunners, no attention to the squirming forms of the robots who were creeping back to the shelter of the truck, but lumbered with a dreadful singleness of purpose — straight toward the two stupefied young men on the steps of the house.
The Secret Agent had started to run toward the scene, but he was still almost a block away. A police whistle shrilled near by. Women passers-by screamed, others ran helter-skelter to places of safety.
The two sandwich men frantically shoved fresh clips in their Tommy guns, raised them to their shoulders, and almost as one man they pumped a rapid, steady stream of lead at that horrible figure — to no avail. The slugs buried themselves in the outer covering of the monster, staggering it a little, but not swerving it from its course.
It made a straight line toward its objective.
Larrabie and Coulter turned to run into the house. The monster raised its hand, pointed that deadly finger, and young Coulter, who had been a trifle in the lead, suddenly staggered, and became enveloped in a sheet of flame!
He screamed once, then rolled down the steps to the street, uttering choked cries which quickly changed to incoherent moans, and then died to nothingness as his scorched, crisp body jerked and twitched convulsively and lapsed into pitiful stillness.
Young Larrabie had stopped, aghast, beside his friend. The monster called out in a resonant voice that seemed to rise to the rooftops, “Come here, Larrabie. It’s you I want. Come here or die!”
As in a trance, Larrabie approached the monster.
By this time Secret Agent “X” had reached the corner beside the two sandwich men, who were reloading once more, holding their ground regardless of the danger that the monster might turn its dreadful finger of doom upon them too. “X” seized a loaded Tommy from the hands of the nearest, saying, “It’s all right. I’m from Jim Hobart!”
He swung the machine-gun toward the monster. His purpose was to wait till the monster got into motion once more, then direct the stream of lead at a spot just above its middle. The bullets could not pierce its protective coating, of course, but if they struck at a point just above the monster’s center of gravity, they might topple him over.
But he never pulled the trip of the gun. For the monster suddenly reached out, gripped young Larrabie about the middle, and lifted him off the ground. Then, carrying him under its arm, it returned to the car, not hurrying, turning its massive, hideous head from side to side to survey the situation. To fire the sub-machine gun now would only mean the death of young Larrabie who had slumped in his captor’s arms, apparently in a faint.