Instantly his improvised leather shield was dotted with fiery particles, but he got the door open, and flung himself from the roaring holocaust into the road. He hurled the blazing covering away, stepped gingerly to avoid phosphorus on the ground, and made for the ditch. A wild shout came from the other car. “X” gave a violent leap. He had been spotted.
While in mid-air a Tommy gun began streaming lead around him. Bullets seared across his back as he fell, but the mobster did not shift his aim soon enough to finish the Agent.
Some of the brush was afire, for the bomb had scattered the phosphorus. “X” managed to avoid the flames as he crawled through the brush toward the dope car. That direction saved his life, for the gangster was raking the ditch with machine-gun fire farther down, obviously thinking that the person, if he lived, was making his escape to the rear.
The firing from Martel’s men had dwindled with ominous significance. “X” detected only two guns in operation from the side. Then came a piercing outburst that rose shrilly above the savage rattle and roar of the Thompsons.
A man cursed madly. The Agent recognized the voice of Fat Hickman. The killer’s stream of oaths was suddenly cut off in a withering blast of gunfire. Another gang execution had taken place. That ended the battle. Possibly one Martel man still lived, but he was not staying to meet the same fate as his companions.
By now the Martel sedan was a mass of flames. Any moment the fire would reach the gas tank. “X” was close enough to be killed by an explosion. As swiftly as he could; he crawled through the bushes. The mobsters, triumphant but begrimed and bloody from the battle, returned to the dope car. The engine started, and the machine swung around to head back the way it came.
Climbing the bank of the ditch, “X” darted to the rear of the machine, and clutched onto the spare tire. It was a desperate risk.
About a quarter of a mile away there boomed a thunderous explosion as flames reached the gas tank of the Martel sedan. “X” clamped his jaws as he looked back at the flaming wreck. To him that demolished car was like a symbol of the destruction that was being wrought to fatten the bank accounts of vicious, greed-mastered men like Martel.
Yet Martel was insignificant compared to the drug menace that was breaking into this racket.
Chapter IV
THE dope car swung off onto another road, and headed in the direction of the city. Agent “X” quickly took something from an inner pocket of his coat. This was a small, flat object that looked like a pocket camera.
He snapped it open, pressed a black disc attached to a cord to the rear of the sedan, put the cameralike box to his ear and fingered a screw head on its side. At first only a confused blur of sound reached him. He tuned his amplifying device down, selecting the sounds he wanted. And in a moment he began to catch bits of conversation. He learned that a Martel spy had been caught and tortured into talking. That was why the mobsters were prepared for the hi-jackers.
“X” began to grow concerned about his next move when the car reached the city. If the driver took a route through the center of town, “X” would have to get off, for a man hanging onto a spare tire would get the instant attention of a night-patrolling cop. And the Agent didn’t like the idea of following in a taxi. The gangsters would surely be watching to see if they were trailed.
But the Agent’s worry on this score was dispelled when the car neared the city, for the driver headed toward the river. The auto sped along the dark, deserted waterfront between the columns of a ramp. “X” hoped that one of the men would say something that would give him an idea of their destination. He was riding with killers. If they found him, he would soon be floating in the river.
The driver traveled within the speed limit, for with their illegal freight, they could not afford to be stopped. “X” believed it was a hot car anyway, stolen for the trip, to be abandoned after it was unloaded.
Drawing near a tumbling down old condemned warehouse, the car swerved to a driveway alongside it, and next to the high brick wall surrounding a packing plant. As the car crossed the sidewalk, “X” dropped from his perch, and darted to the corner of the wall.
The machine stopped a short stretch down the alleyway in front of a small workman’s cottage. Four of the men leaped out, scanned the driveway in both directions, and then pulled eight large suitcases from the machine.
If those suitcases were filled with narcotics, the runners had made a very profitable trip, for, computed at current prices, that quantity would sell in the tens of thousands.
It was close to sunrise now. Trucks were rumbling over the cobblestones. Early gangs of dock workers were shuffling to the piers. “X” now knew one of the hideouts. But with dawn approaching, there was little he could do. He might visit the cottage later in the day, disguised as a peddler or a tramp hunting for a hand-out. Or he might wait until darkness. But, in his present disguise as Spats McGurn, his appearance would arouse suspicion. He started to turn away, when some one came out of the cottage.
“X” stepped into the shadows. The mobster started the car, and backed out. The Agent’s eyes blazed with excitement. That changed his plans, but suited him perfectly. When the machine neared the sidewalk, he again took his position on the rear tire. But he didn’t intend to stay there long.
At the first stop for traffic, “X” stepped to the pavement, walked to the side of the car, and thrust the muzzle of his gas gun through a lowered window. As the mobster turned, a jet of gas sprayed directly into his face. The man gasped, started to curse and go for his gun. Then he collapsed over his steering wheel.
By the time the traffic cleared, the Agent was in the driver’s seat, with the mobster slumped beside him, overcome by the gas. “X” drove to another of his hideouts, in the tenement section more than two miles from this spot. The dope runner was still unconscious when the Agent stopped. Putting one of the man’s arms over his shoulder and holding the wrist, “X” grabbed him around the waist, and dragged him across the sidewalk. An early pedestrian stopped and stared.
“Too much celebration,” explained the Agent, and hauled the mobster into the dim and dingy hallway. There “X” got the fireman’s grip on the man, and carried him up three flights of stairs.
“X’s” place was in the back, a typical tenement double room, shabbily furnished, but with cross-ventilation. It was not the ventilation that had interested the Agent, but the fact that one of the windows was close to the fire escape of the next building, offering a chance of escape in an emergency.
AFTER he locked the window and drew the blinds, the Agent bound and gagged his captive, then went back to the car, which he drove to another section of the city and abandoned. A hot car would draw a cop instantly. He didn’t want a blue-coat prowling around the tenement where his hideout was located.
By the time he returned it was daylight and the effects of the gas had worn off. The mobster was conscious and struggling with his bonds. “X” placed some white powders, neatly squared on white paper, on a tray and held them in front of the dope runner. The man was a drug addict, sweating and writhing in his need for easement. “X” removed the gag.
“If you yell,” he said, holding the gas gun menacingly, “it’ll only be once, understand? I’m not going to fool with you. What is your name? Whom do you work for? Your system is screaming for a shot. Here it is. Enough to make you do a toe dance. Talk — and I’ll give it to you.”