A half-mad smile, ghastly in its untimely glee, twisted the lips of Anthony Bernard. “Now, Gage, where’s your courage?”
Gage passed a quivering hand over his high, pale forehead. But his jaw was set with deadly determination. His right hand plunged into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a large hypodermic needle.
“Stop him!” shouted “X.” With a celerity that belied the aged appearance of Mr. Pond, “X” sprang across the room. He caught Gage by the wrist — too late. Gage had emptied the entire contents of the syringe in the flesh of his neck. His fixed eyes stared at Pond. “All over now,” he panted out “Doesn’t take much nerve. Painless—”
A scream of pain retched from Gage’s throat. He fell to the floor writhing in agony. His hands clenched and unclenched. Facial muscles contracted in a hideous grimace. And very, very slowly, a tinge of yellow crept upwards across his face.
“Look! His face. It’s the Amber death!” shouted Cass.
“So that’s the painless poison!”
“Didn’t Luigi give it to him?”
Like an enraged panther, Bernard sprang toward Luigi. “Traitor! You’re the Ghoul!”
THE Italian suddenly paled, sidestepped to escape the lunging Bernard.
“Kill Luigi! Kill the Ghoul!”
And suddenly the room was drowned in darkness. Every light in the house seemed to have gone out at once. Men uttered high-pitched, feminine-like screams of terror. The glass roof of the conservatory was smashed to bits. Pieces of broken glass fell in tinkling rain upon the tiled floor. And through the opening in the roof, dark, agile shadows dropped.
Hoarse blasphemies cascaded from the mouth of Daniel Calvert, and mingled with a hideous, pain-ridden shriek.
“Dio Mio!” Luigi’s voice. “The Amber Death!”
And above the noise of bedlam, the Ghoul’s voice whispered orders.
Across the room, “X” saw a gleam of phosphorescent light — a death’s head drawn in luminous paint. The death’s head danced around the room. That luminous face — perhaps it marked the Ghoul himself. “X” sprang across the room toward the face of fire, encountered a writhing tangle of arms and legs.
The blade of a knife raked his arm. Thin, clawlike hands dug at his throat. “X” let go with his right at a shadowy foeman. He twisted free. Not ten feet from him gleamed the death’s head. He leaped toward it, saw the dark form of a man who bore the ghostly emblem. “X” tripped over a sprawling body, caught his balance and raced on, hard on the heels of the illusive wisp of phosphorescent light.
In front of him, his quarry crashed through French doors, stopped, encountering the wall of the next room. “X’s” fingers crooked like the talons of a striking hawk as he seized the creature by the throat. But his man was possessed with the strength of desperation. He twisted and turned in the Agent’s grasp. He drove hard, short blows to the Agent’s chest. Yet “X” clung to the man with the tenacity of a bulldog.
A faint, gurgling cry from the man he was slowly inevitably choking into insensibility. “Ghoul! I’ll — pay—”
That agonized cry knifed through the Agent’s heart. He had made some mistake. He released his grip, snapped a flashlight from his pocket and played the brilliant ray upon the face of the man he had tried to throttle. It was the terrified face of Anthony Bernard. Even in the light of the flash, he could make out the tracing of the death’s head on Bernard’s shirt front.
“You. Pond!” gasped Bernard. “You the Ghoul?”
“No — no, Bernard! Where did that mark on your shirt come from?”
“You’re crazy! Nothing on my shirt!”
“Look,” the Agent commanded. He snapped off the light for a moment.
Bernard gasped. “Why — why how did it get there?”
“Some one marked you so that the Ghoul could find you in the dark,” the Agent explained. “Could your valet have marked that shirt?”
“Incredible!” Bernard exploded. “Why, I’ve had Ho-Yang for years.”
“A Chinese! Undoubtedly, Bernard, your valet is in the Ghoul’s gang. Had I not chased you out here, you would have been in the Ghoul’s power.”
“But I was to be given two days to raise the money,” Bernard objected.
“X” nodded. “Merely to put you off your guard, I think. The Ghoul has a different method. He does not work as most extortionists do. The Amber Death first. Later, you pay — under the torment of the living death. That is his method.”
Though “X” had not noticed it before, the entire house was shrouded in an awful silence. “X” took Bernard by the arm, and dragged him through the French doors and into the conservatory. “X” played his light about the room. The place looked as though it had been struck by a small hurricane. Broken glass covered up-ended furniture and was strewn over the floor. But, as “X” had expected, there were a number of canvas, shot-filled bags lying around the floor. But there was not a single human being in sight. The Ghoul’s work had progressed in its usual efficient manner. The master criminal seemed to be everywhere. His nefarious schemes seemed infallible.
Suddenly “X” snapped out his light. A little gasp from Bernard. “What’s the matter.”
“Hush,” the Agent cautioned. “The door on the right. It’s opening. Quiet, now.’”
The door creaked. Cautious footsteps padded across the floor. Bernard, his hand on the Agent’s arm, was shaking like a leaf. “X” waited until the footsteps came closer. Then the beam of his light sliced through the gloom to center on the frightened face of Robert Cass.
“Cass!” Bernard exploded.
Relief passed over the little man’s face. “You there, Bernard! Thought the Ghoul took you along with the others.” He hurried over to where “X” and Bernard were standing. “I managed to hide in that closet. Couldn’t see much of what went on. Some of the mob climbed back up the ropes to the roof. Others just seemed to disappear.”
“X” nodded his head. The bags of shot accounted for those sudden and mysterious disappearances. And he knew from the cries he had heard that Calvert and Luigi had both fallen victims of the Amber Death. Probably, they had been removed to the Ghoul’s headquarters. What had been the fate of the others, he did not know.
“Hadn’t we better inform the police?” asked Bernard.
“Definitely, no!” the Secret Agent replied. “We must all go to our respective homes at once. I do not trust the police. They have been so successfully defeated in every attempt made against the Ghoul, that I suspect some man, some one high in the police force, is the Ghoul himself!”
This statement was obviously false. While “X” had a theory concerning the identity of the Ghoul, this theory included no one on the police force. But he knew of no other way of convincing Bernard that he should not go to the police. Already a desperate plan was forming in “X’s” mind. It was a plan that would endanger Bernard, perhaps, but it was one that might enable “X” to come face to face with the Ghoul.
In his car a few moments later, “X” watched Cass and Bernard drive off in their own cars.
Chapter VI
THE Agent’s car followed that of Bernard unerringly through the streets. Steering with his left hand, his right worked miracles with the plastic material that covered his face. Wrinkles disappeared under his skilled fingers. Features took on an entirely different shape. A black toupee replaced the one which had been a part of his disguise as Elisha Pond.