The injured robots had crawled into the truck, and the monster followed them, unmolested.
“X” watched, helpless to intercede, with bitterness in his heart, as the door swung shut, and the truck got into motion, sped away.
Above, the hum of an airplane motor became audible.
The Agent glanced upward, and his eyes glittered as he saw the huge flying machine circling in the air. It kept its altitude, did not dive, but the radius of its circle increased gradually. Bates had been on the job. Now, if those flyers only did their work well…. Secret Agent “X” nodded grimly to himself. He said to the two sandwich men, “Get rid of those signs — drop them right here with the machine guns — and disperse. Here comes the police.”
The two men obeyed quickly, disappearing around the corner, piling into a car which had been parked there. No one in the fast gathering crowd tried to stop them, or noticed them. Everybody was gathered around the still smouldering body of Ranny Coulter, commiserating with his hysterical parents who had rushed out of the house.
Secret Agent “X” effaced himself in the crowd just as the first police car appeared.
Chapter XIX
THAT afternoon the papers were devoted almost exclusively to the startling events of the day. The murders in Belvidere Road, the horrible killing of Ranny Coulter, and the abduction of young Larrabie were the subjects of excited comment throughout the city.
The police were still searching ineffectually for the truck in which the murder monster had escaped with Larrabie as his prisoner. A radio car had given it close chase for a while, until a small porthole in the rear of the truck had swung open. Through this porthole had appeared the pointing finger of the monster, and the police car had suddenly burst into flames; the two policemen in the car had been burned to death.
No one had seen the laundry truck after that. Examination of records revealed, of course, that there was no such firm as the “Snow-Cap Laundry.” It was not understood how the truck could have made its escape with every exit from the city guarded, with hundreds of plain-clothes and uniformed men searching the streets and garages.
With all this bustle and excitement Secret Agent “X” did not concern himself. He was ensconced in a darkened room in one of his retreats, engaged in doing a peculiar thing.
This room was exceedingly large, some thirty feet in length. At one end a white motion-picture screen was hung on the wall. At the other end, Secret Agent “X” was engaged in threading a reel of film into a motion-picture projection machine. This completed, the Agent threw a switch, and the machine began to hum as the reels turned, the arc-light of the projector throwing a beam of light across the room.
The Agent now stood tensely, watching the motion pictures which were flashed on the screen. There appeared a bird’s-eye view of a portion of the city, including that section of Madison Avenue where the Coulter home was located. The Agent saw the frantic, running specks which were men and women in panic, he saw a sheet of flame in the street, and his lips compressed grimly as he realized that this was the burning body of Ranny Coulter.
But his eyes followed the motions of the object that he knew was the murder truck leaving the scene of the crime.
The picture flickered often, darkened sometimes to an indistinguishable blur, but it always cleared, always kept that fleeing truck in view.
These pictures had been taken by an aerial camera built in under the cockpit of the plane which had circled over the scene of the crime. It was one of the two planes which “X” had kept in readiness for just such an emergency. Knowing that the monster used a truck for transportation, the Agent had provided this means of tracing its movements.
He waited tautly, watching the flickering film. The next few minutes would tell whether the camera had been able to follow that truck to its hidden destination — a thing the police had so far failed to do.
On the screen there appeared the vast network of streets that was New York City, with humans that resembled minute ants scurrying everywhere. And through it all the Agent followed the movements of that blob that was the murder monster’s truck, speeding northward, then east to the river front where it stopped at a deserted spot.
From the truck there swarmed a number of specks that were men. They were carrying two large flat objects which they fastened to the sides of the truck, and then they hurried around to back and front for a moment. Their work over, they climbed back inside, and the truck once more resumed its course, this time proceeding much more slowly, threading its way back into the heart of the city.
The Agent stirred at his spot beside the projector. He understood why that truck had not been traced. The license plates had been changed, and the truck itself had been disguised by fastening thin sheets of metal over the sides. These were probably of a different color, with another name. No wonder the police had lost it — they were still looking for a white laundry truck.
Now the disguised truck proceeded sedately through traffic, passing traffic officers, radio cars, driving boldly to its destination under the very eyes of the entire police force.
Its destination was a street on the west side of town, where genteel brownstone houses rubbed elbows with garages and tall apartment houses. The truck turned in to one of these garages, disappeared from view.
The film continued to wind through the projector, flashing further bird’s-eye pictures on the screen. But “X” had no more interest in it. He had turned away into a cubbyhole just off the projection room, where a large-scale map of the city hung on the wall. On this map he was engaged in tracing the movements of the truck, which his photographic memory had recorded faithfully from the film.
In a moment his pencil rested on the exact spot where the truck had disappeared. His face was alight with a strange glow. He had traced the monster to its hole!
Chapter XX
IT was close to dusk when a dignified gentleman in a gray suit drove a large and expensive looking sedan into the street on the west side of town where the monster’s truck had disappeared.
The gentleman noted, as he drove down the street, that there were several men loitering near the corner. Among them were two whom he knew as Stegman and Oliver.
On the corner was a large apartment house, and next to it was a row of old, three-story brownstones. On the other side of the street there were several garages. The Agent drove slowly, as if not certain of his destination. Finally he slowed up, swung the car into the driveway of a large garage in the middle of the block.
There were a dozen cars on the floor, here, though the space would have accommodated thirty or forty. Several of these were trucks, though none, of course, bore the name of the Snow Cap Laundry. A single attendant, who was built along the lines of a heavyweight prize-fighter, was in charge.
He approached the sedan, looking inquiringly at the driver.
“What is it, mister?”
The Agent descended leisurely from the car, said affably, “I’ve just moved into the neighborhood and I was looking for a good garage to store my car. What do you charge in here?”
The attendant cast an appraising glance at the visitor, and said surlily, “The boss ain’t in, mister.”
“Well, have you any idea what the rates are?”
The attendant had half turned away, as if to return to his duties. He stopped reluctantly. “They run around a hundred a month with service.”
“A hundred a month!” the Agent exclaimed. “Why, that’s almost twice the prevailing rates!”