“Why?” demanded the Ghoul. “I have never shown you any great kindness, have I?”
Keen judge of human nature that he was, “X” knew that the Ghoul was vain about his power and cruelty. He hung his head. “No,” he admitted. “I did not dare be false to you. I am afraid of you. That is why at the last moment, I decided to carry out your instructions.”
“And where is Yu’an?” asked the Ghoul.
“With his ancestors,” the Agent lied. “I put a knife in his throat.”
“You will be conducted back to headquarters,” said the Ghoul. “As I drive back to the city, I shall consider what you have done.” And the Ghoul stalked majestically toward the road. Two Chinese, who followed him, carried the unconscious mayor between them.
“X” was closely guarded by the gang and forced into a waiting car. Of that long drive back to the city, he remembered little. His companions were silent the entire distance, but the threatening eyes of their automatics never left him. “X” thought he had never worked harder to snare a criminal; yet time after time he had been outwitted by the Ghoul.
The car pulled up at what appeared to be the rear door of China Bobby’s restaurant. “X” was forced to get out of the car by goading guns. He was dragged through the door and down a flight of steps that ended in a passage leading to China Bobby’s office.
A few minutes later, the Ghoul appeared through a sliding door. Evidently, he had put the mayor in a place of safe keeping, and was determined to settle with the man he believed to be China Bobby.
“I have considered your story carefully,” said the Ghoul, addressing the Agent, “and it is a plausible one. However, before you are released, I would like to ask one—”
But the Ghoul’s sentence was interrupted by the opening of a sliding panel. Staggering through the door, her blonde hair disheveled, was Drew Devon. The Ghoul wheeled on her. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
She shook her head. “I was drugged by some one. Where’s Bill Morgan? Bill Morgan is Secret Agent ‘X’.”
The Ghoul laughed. “Then Secret Agent ‘X’ is dead! I killed Morgan with the Amber Death.”
DREW DEVON’S mouth was bitter. “Conceited beast!” she snapped at the Ghoul. “He isn’t dead. He escaped the Amber Death. For all your brilliance, he might be in the room right now!”
The man who was linked to “X” by means of handcuffs, said: “Master, it might be wise to ask the lady why, if she was drugged, she was yet able to leave this place and warn the mayor of an attempt to kidnap him.”
The Ghoul’s thin hand shot out and caught the girl by the wrist. “You did that?”
For a moment, scorn was displaced by terror in the girl’s eyes. “No — no. I swear I didn’t. I was unconscious in my room all the time.”
Another man spoke up. “That couldn’t be. The mayor’s chauffeur distinctly described the woman who warned the mayor. We all heard him. It could have only been one person — that woman.”
Drew Devon screamed her denial. “It isn’t true! It must have been some trick of Secret Agent ‘X’. If he could impersonate Bill Morgan so that I would risk everything to save—” She checked herself with lip-biting.
“So,” said the Ghoul softly, “you saved Morgan, or ‘X’, or whatever his name is. You saved him from the Amber Death after I commanded that he die. My dear lady, you shall know the maddening torment of the ant pit! When that beautiful body of yours is teeming with tiny, tormenting devils, you will understand the folly of trying to thwart my unalterable commands. Fun-Lo! Gordon! Chang! Take her away to the ant pit!”
Three men sprang forward to do the Ghoul’s bidding. In the mind of Secret Agent “X” a battle was raging. It was within his power to check this brutal act. But at what a price? It might mean exposing himself, jeopardizing the progress he had made. Was Drew Devon worth that much? She was a murderess. But no crime deserved the torment of the ant pit. And though she had saved him unknowingly, “X” knew that he would have now been a dead, amber husk had it not been for Drew Devon.
He had long ago resolved that it must never be said that the Man of a Thousand Faces was ungrateful. He had hit upon a plan for gaining time — a ruse that might prevent the Ghoul from carrying out his despicable plan of torturing Drew Devon. He held up his right hand in an arresting gesture. “Stop!” he cried. “Before you sentence this woman to the fate she justly deserves, it might be well to question her concerning Secret Agent ‘X’. Undoubtedly, if she warned the mayor she is one of his agents.”
A remarkable change came over the face of Drew Devon. A look of cunning crept into her eyes. Hate distorted her features until she was as hideous as a vampire. She pointed a trembling finger at the Agent. “Look at his hand!” she screamed. “He has all his fingers! That man isn’t China Bobby! He’s Secret Agent ‘X’!”
But hardly were the words out of her mouth before “X” had gone into action. A trick he had learned from a Hindu fakir, of compressing the joints of his hands, enabled him to slip free from the handcuffs that linked him with the Ghoul’s man. He sprang backward across the room.
Like magic, two guns appeared in his hands — one the revolver he had taken from the mayor, and the other the flare-pistol that Yu’an had given him to use as a signal when the mayor was captured. Those guns swept the company of men before him.
“The first man to move, dies!” he shouted.
Behind his group of menials, the Ghoul shouted: “Knife him! After him, all of you!”
TO a man, the killers moved, surging forward like a human tide of destruction. The arch-enemy of their kind stood before them; their knives were thirsty for his blood. Infrequently, did Agent “X” use lethal weapons, but no man knew better how to use a revolver than he did. Two of the foremost killers were dropped at the Agent’s feet by two well-placed shots. Another tripped over a fallen companion and fell upon his own knife. A fourth fired an automatic at close range, the slug landing squarely over the Agent’s heart.
“X” dropped to one knee. His bullet-proof vest of finest manganese steel, had stopped the lead. But the impact alone was enough to knock him down. “X” fired again, sprang to his feet and aside to avoid the thrust of a Chinese knife. The butt of the flare pistol in his hand, laid open the head of another man. Shooting carefully, and hacking with the gun in his left hand, he fought through the mob.
But behind the fury of the hand-to-hand encounter, “X” saw a flash of yellow silk. The Ghoul! The Ghoul was escaping through an open door at the rear of the room. The flare pistol in “X’s” left hand swung up, pointed at the silken draperies that curtained the door of the closet in which he had concealed the unconscious China Bobby. He pulled the trigger. A faint pop and a red ball of fire shot from the gun and burnt through the silk curtains. Instantly, flames licked upward.
“Fire!” shouted “X,” at the same moment sending his last revolver shot at his nearest opponent. To that moment of panic caused by the threat of fire, “X” owed much. Inasmuch as the room was virtually fireproof, no serious damage could be expected from the flaming curtains. But itcaused a moment’s confusion — one precious second when “X” sprang through the door through which the Ghoul had disappeared.
He ran into the passage, found the tiny button that operated the panel, and pressed it. The steel door slipped smoothly into place. Above the Agent’s head, an electric lamp glowed. Holding the flare pistol, which he had effectively used but a moment ago, by its hard rubber butt, he knocked out the lamp. As the metal barrel crossed the elements of the bulb, there was a flash of blue flame, then instantaneous blackness. “X” knew that in one stroke he had captured the Ghoul’s mob; for in shorting the electrical circuit he had thrown the electrical mechanism, that operated all the doors leading from the office, out of order. There was no way out for Drew Devon and the horde of killers.