As he hurried through the door, a sharp clicking sound behind him, stopped him. He shot a glance over his shoulder, but saw no one in the office.
“X” ran down the steps. That clicking sound had worried him. It might be some sort of a signal that would send a troup of the Ghoul’s men hard on his heels.
As he entered the row of cells, the stale air was knifed by a giggling shriek of stark madness. From directly ahead of him the cry had come. He hurried forward, flashlight darting from one cell to another. Suddenly, he stopped. Yawning in the floor, in front of him, was a pit covered with an iron grating set in the floor. “X” sent his light beam down into the opening, revealing a scene of revolting horror.
In the pit, the mad scientist, Vardson, ripped his garments from his back; tore at his own flesh with his fingernails. The man was a raving maniac — a product of the Ghoul’s torture. The floor of the pit was like a single moving, red shadow. Stinging ants! Vardson’s body teemed with noxious, stinging little lives. A myriad of tiny legs scurried across his face, into his eyes.
THAT such might be the fate of Betty Dale spurred “X” into action. Vardson was beyond help. But Betty—
He stopped only long enough in the cell where he had left the unconscious Morgan, to regain his special equipment. Then he was out into the narrow passage again, the searching beam of his light darting from one cell to another.
As the passage branched abruptly to the right, “X” came upon a little cell apart from the others. Through the iron grating, he saw the form of a woman extended at full length on the wooden bench. It was Betty. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing heavily. She must have been drugged, for without the assistance of narcotics no one could have slept within the range of the tortured Vardson’s screaming voice.
With feverish haste, he unlocked the cell door with one of Morgan’s keys. Under the light of his flash, he searched his pockets and laid out strips of transparent adhesive, makeup material, yellow pigment, and the wig and pajamas he had taken from Drew Devon. He knelt beside the sleeping girl. His fingers worked quickly and skilfully.
With the transparent adhesive tape, he stretched the flesh around the girl’s eyelids so that her eyes attained the slanting appearance of a Chinese. Then he spread on plastic volatile material and yellow pigment over Betty’s face. And when he had completed his task, Betty looked the exact counterpart of Drew Devon when the latter was disguised for service in the opium den. He completed the disguise by putting the black wig over Betty’s blonde curls.
Then he gave her a stimulating hypodermic that brought her out of unconsciousness in a few seconds. The girl sat up, stared about her with terror-filled eyes. She met the strange face of the man who had worked miracles with her appearance. Her lips formed the unuttered question: “Who?”
“X” smiled reassuringly. “Don’t you know me, Betty?” He drew the letter “X” on the bench.
She gasped. “How did you get here?”
“Tell you later,” he said. Picking up his pocket mirror, he held it before her face. “While you’re getting used to being a pretty Chinese lass, you can tell me by what trick the Ghoul brought you here.”
She stared for a moment in astonishment at her new features. Then: “I received a call from a man whom I thought was the city editor. He told me to go over to China Bobby’s restaurant, that another reporter would meet me there. It was a woman I had never seen before who met me. It must have been one of the Ghoul’s gang, because she led me back through a door and into a room where there was a man with a golden veil over his face. He asked me all sorts of questions about you. I didn’t say anything. He said something about putting me with the ants or something like that. Some one carried me down here. I was drugged. I don’t remember anything else.”
The Agent’s eyes burned with fury as he thought of what might have happened to Betty. “Just the kind of a trick the Ghoul would try,” he said. “Do you remember Drew Devon? Think you can impersonate her? You’ve got to. You must get out of this rotten hole.”
“But you? What will happen to you?”
KNOWING the generous nature of the girl, “X” knew that she valued his safety above her own. If he was to persuade her to leave him in this moment of great danger, he knew that he would have to give her some responsibility outside the Ghoul’s headquarters. “My work is not yet completed here,” he told her. “Your task is to warn the mayor.”
“The mayor!” she exclaimed. “You mean the Ghoul might use his Amber Death on the mayor?”
“X” nodded. “And if the Ghoul succeeds in his plan, who knows but what he will next turn his eyes toward Washington! But you must hurry. You’ll have to put on these Oriental pajamas to make your disguise complete. Quickly, now. Everything depends upon the speed with which we act. If you stay here, the least the Ghoul will do is torture you in an attempt to gain some information.”
Betty needed no urging. She had already slipped out of her dress, and was putting on the pajamas. She had scarcely fastened the jacket of the garment when a whispering sound broke through the darkness. It was the voice of the Ghoul. It seemed to be coming from the hall right outside the cell.
“Spy, do you presume that at this very moment I am not watching you?”
Betty uttered a frightened little gasp. She clutched the Agent’s arm. “What was that?” she whispered.
“The Ghoul,” he replied softly, “has loudspeakers located everywhere in this place. He isn’t watching. He can see no better through this gloom than we can. It’s the colossal egoism of the man. He must have seen me enter this prison from that peephole he has in the wall of the office.”
“But if he knows you’re down here, why doesn’t he send some one after you?”
“X” did not answer that question. He knew that that was exactly what the Ghoul would do, or had already done. His mind was busy, trying to see a way out of their difficulty. He took Betty by the arm and led her through the door of the cell. He turned out his flashlight and handed it to her. “Don’t use it until you leave me,” he said. “We’ll work as far toward the steps as we can. Don’t trip over that grating in the floor.”
A low moaning sound came up from beneath their very feet. Then the stagnant air was rent by an hysterical laugh. Vardson, in the ant pit.
Betty clung closely to the Agent as he piloted her through the darkness. “Leave you? Do you think I could leave you — now?” came her tremulous whisper. But the element of concern for the Agent in her voice dominated any indication of personal fear.
“X’s” heart was pounding like a triphammer. For all he knew, the darkness shrouded some diabolical trick of the Ghoul. His arm encircled Betty’s shoulders. For a moment held her with fierce tenderness. Then reason mastered sentiment. He pressed Drew Devon’s automatic into her hand. “Shoot to kill, if you have to,” he told her as they moved slowly up the passage. “In this same direction, you’ll find a flight of steps leading out of here. If the door at the top isn’t open, you’ll find a little black button right at the bottom of the door. Press it. Once in China Bobby’s office, you’ll have to experiment with the switchboard to find the button that opens the front door leading into the opium den. Don’t worry. I’ll probably be right behind you.”