As Martel had said — dope was power. This man was born a cur and a weakling, but he feared gang reprisal. It took an hour before his tongue began to wag. But when he started, he chattered like a man in a delirium.
“I’m Louie Corbeau. Geez, fella, give me a sniff, just one little sniff! I’ve got to have it. I’ll kill a cop, do anything for you, for one of them decks. I’m dyin’, mister, dyin’! Your foot ever go to sleep? Well, that’s the way I am. Only a billion needles are stickin’ into me from head to foot. Let my hands loose so I can grab onto something. Geez, I can’t stand it! I’m goin’ nuts. You ain’t human, mister. Can’t you see I’m dyin’ for want of a shot?”
The Agent looked at the man with a coldness that was beyond pity or contempt. Just as this man was a dupe for the leaders of the dope ring, so he was a pawn for “X” in the Agent’s grim, relentless drive against that ring. “X” was aloof. Like a great surgeon, he employed his genius for the betterment of humanity, and for this killer and criminal in his power he felt only scorn.
“Corbeau, you can squirm until your nerves crawl out of your flesh,” said “X” grimly, “and this morphine will stay on the tray. This is barter and trade. Give me information and you’ll get the dope.”
“Geez, I’ll talk!” blurted Louie Corbeau. “I don’t know much. The mob is located in that condemned warehouse at Haswell and Riverfront. I’ve only been a snowbird three months, boss. Honest! I got hurt in an auto smash up. Went to the hospital. An orderly kept givin’ me cigarettes every day. After I was discharged, I nearly went goofy when I couldn’t get any. Then a fella told me I could get the stuff to quiet my nerves. I had to join the mob — an’ now I’m squealin’ on him!”
There was terror in the man’s voice. The Agent’s eyes blazed. A trace of pity showed in them now. This man was an instinctive criminal, but he had been lured into the clutches of the gang. Here was an insidious way in which the ring worked. When it wanted a recruit, it first made him a drug addict. Once under the ring’s control, a dope fiend would commit an atrocity to get a supply of narcotic. Each new addict became an ally of the gang.
“X” questioned and cross-questioned Corbeau. The hophead told the truth, for the Agent’s skillful, rapid-fire examination did not trip him. There was no countersign to use, nothing but the mobster’s face to admit him to the hideout. The leader of the local organization was a killer named Karloff, he said. “X” obtained also the names and descriptions of the other mobsters. And then he went to work. He gave Corbeau the drug his system craved, and a powerful hypnotic which induced sleep instantly.
The Agent needed the drug addict in a relaxed condition, because the man’s face had been so distorted by agony that “X” would not have been able to determine the exact features.
THE Agent brought out his triple mirrors, peeled off the disguise of Spats McGurn, and in a few minutes he molded his plastic, volatile make-up material until Corbeau would have thought he was gazing into a mirror if he had looked at “X.”
After changing to Corbeau’s clothes, the Agent gagged his prisoner again, manacled him with steel bracelets, and left the tenement. He ate breakfast at a cheap lunch counter, and went directly to the hideout at Haswell and Riverfront. There was no signal. A man entered. If he did not belong, he probably would never get out as he had gone in. “X” walked into the workman’s cottage.
It was a three-room shack, actually occupied by a machine operator in the big packing house opposite. The workman, of course, was a mob member, who acted as a blind. The factory man was cooking ham and eggs when “X” came in. He greeted the Agent casually, calling him Corbeau. “X” nodded.
He had learned the layout of the place from his captive, and he went immediately to a small, windowless storeroom, raising a trapdoor that led into a tunnel. In a crouch he ran along this passage to a flight of steps, which took him into the large cemented basement of the condemned warehouse. The place was apparently the temporary quarters of the drug ring, for it had none of the luxurious furnishings of Martel’s hideout.
A number of rooms had been partitioned in the big house. There were tables, chairs, and army cots. A few mobsters were in the main room. A man with the scar of a bullet wound on his right cheek addressed him as Corbeau. From his captive’s descriptive, “X” knew this was Gus Tansley.
Somewhere in the building a man was shrieking for help. That was Serenti, who had been caught by the police and questioned. He had talked too much, and Karloff was punishing him by cutting off his drug supply.
At “X’s” hideout, Louie Corbeau had gibbered out the story of Serenti, for the latter’s fate would be his if it were discovered that Corbeau had told any of the secrets of the ring.
A dark, evil-faced man suddenly appeared at the Agent’s side. His approach had been so stealthy that not even “X’s” keen ears had caught any sound. The man was Karloff. “X” recognized him by the description Corbeau had given.
“Did you dispose of the machine?” asked the mob leader, speaking with a slight lisp, his voice possessing at the same time a metallic ring.
“Sure, Karloff,” answered the Agent, imitating Louie Corbeau’s voice. “I always do what you say. Now do I get my shot?”
Corbeau and the others had risked their lives to bring in a supply of the drug that would not have been exhausted by them for years, but the suitcases had been sealed. It would have been worth their lives to have opened one. Karloff kept his men under the lash by doling out drugs only when their nerves began to rebel.
He was a long, somber man, dark and sinister. His wicked eyes were like points of fire. His upper teeth protruded a little, giving him a perpetual leer. Wearing a long black coat and a high stiff collar, he had a funereal look. His black hair was plastered down on his forehead, straight across, like a bang.
“Come!” he ordered, beckoning “X.” He repeated the command and the gesture to the others. Then he drifted away like a wraith, the men obediently following.
KARLOFF led them to a group of barred cells that had been strong rooms when the huge, tumbling warehouse was in use. From one of the cells came blood-curdling screams; pitiful, heart-rending wails.
“X” saw Serenti then, the man who had talked too much. He was hardly a man any longer, but a live thing in the throes of exquisite torture. The Agent glanced coldly at Karloff, but the leader’s face was a mask that revealed nothing that went on in the cunning killer’s brain. “X” marked him as a sadist who feasted on cruelty, who was governed by inhuman traits.
Serenti threw himself against the bars and reached through with a bloody, clawlike hand, pleading for relief: His arm was bare, showing the skin, hard and toughened by countless hypo punctures. Blood streamed down Serenti’s face from deep, self-inflicted scratches. In his agony he had clawed himself unmercifully. “X” saw ugly welts and lumps on his head. Mad frenzy had made Serenti pull his hair out by the handfuls. His hands were crimson talons of raw, lacerated flesh caused by clutching the rusted iron bars, and by pawing the rough cement walls.
Nature had made the sufferer fight pain with pain. Serenti had gnawed at his tongue until it was swollen and looked like a hunk of pounded beefsteak. Crimson drooled from his cracked lips. He had slashed his arms with long finger nails. He had torn his clothes to ribbons. The craving for drugs had made Serenti demented; a writhing, sweating, cawing, bundle of rasped and outraged nerves.
“They’re eatin’ me up!” he screamed madly. “Ants! Big red ants. Millions of them. They’re tearin’ me to pieces. But I can get rid of them. Pour gasoline over me, Corbeau! Then touch a match to me, Tansley! I’ll burn ’em off! I’ll burn them big red ants. They can’t eat me to pieces. I’ll fix ’em.”