“You bet you can!” said Martel emphatically. “I don’t know who’s running this other mob. But, damn them, they’re not underbidding me. No, sir! The dirty heels are giving the stuff away! I’ve been gathering cannon. That’s why you’re here. I’ve had spies out. A tip just came in. This other mob is bringing an auto load of dope down from up-state. I’m hi-jacking the stuff tonight, and by the holy cow, I’ll give the junk away under the Martel banner.”
The Agent hid a smile of elation. The mob chief didn’t know who was behind this other ring, but he’d said enough so that “X” was no longer working at loose ends.
“I’m sending you out tonight, Spats,” Martel said. “You’re in the pick of my six best rodmen. On this job tonight depends your future standing with me. I want that load of junk! I’m going to blast that gang off the face of the earth. If they show fight, give ’em the works, see? And remember, a guy with rigor mortis don’t talk.”
That was the interview. A few minutes later the Agent was in a high-powered sedan with five of the hardest-faced men seen outside of a penitentiary. “X” was made to ride in the front seat with the driver. That was a measure of precaution. He was not entirely accepted. The others didn’t relish having their backs to him.
The driver was “Fat” Hickman, a homicide expert, who actually had spent six months in the Sing Sing death house, and had finally been acquitted on a technicality. He was dangerous as a rattlesnake, and actually eligible for the electric chair on a dozen counts.
“Them babies are going to give us a picnic, sure enough, Spats,” he said. “They enjoy puttin’ the heat on a guy to see him fall. When we welcome them to our fair city, put your whole heart into your work. Give the undertaker a decent break.”
The talk as they rode along was light and bantering, on the surface. Four of them were so hopped up with cocaine that they could have laughed at a firing squad. Hickman had a natural killer’s nerve. He didn’t need a narcotic to deaden his mind against peril. The Agent’s self-mastery always served him faithfully when danger threatened.
They traveled out of the city about ten miles along the highway north. Then Hickman swerved off onto a macadamized country road. It was a lonely section, a sharp contrast to the congestion and clangor of the city.
“X” looked at his watch. It lacked a few minutes of two. Suddenly headlights pierced the gloom ahead like two gigantic serpent’s eyes. The mobsters ducked down. Machine guns were thrust through holes in the re-enforced body of the sedan.
Hickman slowed the car, then stopped it crosswise on the road, so that the other machine would not be able to pass unless it ran into a brush-choked ditch. The car ahead stopped about fifty yards away. The occupant waited. Then he began to back up.
“Picked a blank that time,” commented Hickman, starting the machine. “That fella figured we’re stick up artists.”
When the gunman swung the car to the right side of the road, the other machine gathered speed, and whizzed by at sixty miles an hour. Three times Hickman blocked the road for the wrong car. Then they heard the purr of a high-powered auto traveling at great speed.
“That sounds like business,” said the former death-house resident with an evil leer.
He brought the car to a skidding, rubber-screeching stop. A large sedan hummed over the knob of a hill. There was a mad grinding of brakes. Blinding headlights glared on the blue-steel barrels of Tommy guns protruding from the side of the Martel car. Deathly silence prevailed for a few tense moments. Then the lonely, quiet country road became a thunderous battlefield.
Hickman had stopped the right car at last.
THOSE in the other sedan needed no explanation of gun-barrels projecting from an automobile parked across the road. The gunmen in the dope car started hostilities without challenge or interrogation. They knew they were facing hi-jackers. Martel’s men had the advantage, however, for their machine was crosswise, and they could blast their foes with a fierce broadside. A Thompson sub-machine gun was thrust into “X’s” hands. Grim of face, his eyes gleaming as coldly as the unwinking stars above, the Secret Agent put the weapon into operation. Its roar was savage and intense, but his aim was deliberately wide. The bullets whirred harmlessly into the night.
A thunderous attack from the dope car smashed against the bullet-proof windows of the sedan and ricocheted from the re-enforced body. In time the glass would be drilled through, but before that happened an alarm would go through the countryside, and the clashing mobsters would have the law surrounding them.
Some one in the dope car let out a shriek of agony. Fat Hickman cackled like a madman. His eyes glittered with murderous light, his thick, drooling lips were drawn back in a wolfish leer. Flushed and sweating, he was on his knees, a hulk of viciousness, the stock of his hot and smoking Tommy gun bucking against his fat-padded shoulder.
“We’ve got ’em!” he yelled exultantly. “That ain’t bullet-proof glass. We’ll pour so much lead into them babies that the undertaker will have to melt ’em to get ’em into their caskets. Give ’em the works, Spats! This is our night. We’ll collect a bonus fer this job!”
Agent “X” muttered savagely to himself. He had hoped that Martel’s men would capture the rival mobsters, or trail their car. But here he was in the thick of what would probably be a massacre. The car would become a shambles, a bullet-wrecked hearse. His five gunmen companions wanted no survivors of the dope car. The thunder of gunfire sounded like an attack on a front-line trench. When the smoke cleared, the road would be strewn with corpses.
The opposing gangsters were hidden. Suddenly a big barrel, thicker than that of a shotgun, was thrust over the bottom part of the shattered windshield’s frame. That puzzled “X.” Machine gun bullets had been ineffective on the Martel sedan. Certainly buckshot against the car would be like trying to smash a stone wall with a sling-shot.
A terrific, deafening explosion jolted the sedan. The car rocked as though it had been rammed by a truck. Violently thrown against the side of the machine, the Agent struck his temple against the metal crank used to lower the window. He slumped to the floor, unconscious. Luckily his great strength threw off the effects of the blow quickly, or he would have been burned alive.
HE regained tortured senses to find himself alone, deserted in the sedan that had become like a furnace, stifling and searing. The top of the car was a flaming mass, and fire was licking up around the machine. The mobsters were to the left, concealed in the heavy brush and pouring destruction at the dope car.
His vision blurred and his brain hazy from pain, “X” puzzled foggily to determine the cause of the fire. There was a peculiar glow to the flame that was unlike ordinary combustions. He recalled the terrific explosion that had knocked him out. Again he studied the flame — like opals on fire. Then he understood. The rival mobsters had fired a phosphorus bomb.
Already the burning chemical was eating through the top, dripping fire onto the rear cushions. If those flaming globules dropped on “X” they would cling and eat like acid. The poisonous fumes were pouring into the car. “X” was but a few seconds from unconsciousness. He knew it.
Some of the phosphorus had got into the engine, and there was danger of an explosion. Even if “X” did get free, he would be exposed to the menace of Tommy guns. The left forward door was jammed, and the one next to the driver’s seat would open onto sure death. Peril cleared his brain. He contemplated the left rear door. That was his one chance, yet near it phosphorus was dripping from the burning top. He had to risk that vicious chemical, or be broiled to death.
The Secret Agent took a knife from his pocket and ripped the leather covering from the front seat. Using this as a shield over his head and body, he climbed to the rear, careful not to step on the phosphorus.