At that moment, the information from Bates came through. Dr. Luigi had been born and educated in Bologna, Italy. He was a specialist in dermatology and had a large practice among wealthy people of the city. Bates further informed “X” that all efforts to locate the Ghoul’s headquarters had been fruitless. The extortionist’s sinister whisper had passed out into the ether through an ultra-short waved transmitter which permitted great range with a minimum power. All attempts to find out what substance the hypodermic needles, taken from Warnow’s room, had contained were also failures.
“X” RETURNED the radio equipment to its hiding place and proceeded at once to assume the disguise of Elisha Pond.
Half an hour later, he alighted at the porte-cochere of the palatial home of Lionel Gage. It was Gage himself who admitted “X”; for, as Gage explained, he had deemed it wise to dismiss the entire staff of servants for the night. In the magnificent glassed-in conservatory “X” greeted the six men present — among them the swarthy Daniel Calvert, the suave Dr. Luigi, and the timid Robert Cass. The others were all men whom “X,” as Pond, had frequently come in contact with.
When cigars were well lighted, a tall, blond man, hardly out of his forties, stood up. He was Anthony Bernard, whose family had for generations found a fortune in the iron and steel industry. He paced the floor nervously for a few moments, chewing his cigar ragged. “Well,” he snapped at last, “what’s this wonderful proposition of yours, Gage?”
Lionel Gage’s dark eyes turned from Daniel Calvert to Dr. Luigi.
With a vigorous jerk of his shaggy head, Dan Calvert rapped out: “Tell ’em, damnit!” He leaned far forward on the edge of his chair, and glared about the circle of anxious faces.
Gage, nervous and ill at ease, ran a finger around the inside of his collar. “You gentlemen understand that we are all marked men,” he said huskily. “We’ve either been threatened by the Ghoul, or have bank accounts that would prompt one to expect to hear the Ghoul’s voice at any time.”
Bernard’s jaw sagged. The chewed cigar dropped from his mouth unnoticed. He glanced apprehensively into the shadowy corners of the room as though he half expected to hear the Ghoul call him by name.
“We’ve all been threatened,” Daniel Calvert’s unpleasant voice croaked. “Or haven’t we?” he demanded crossly. “I have. Paid, too, like a damned ass! But—” his voice dropped to a crackling whisper—“a man likes to live!”
“I haven’t,” Bernard muttered.
“Haven’t what?” Calvert glared at the younger man. “Sit down, Bernard! Enough to give a man the shakes just watching you pace up and down, and mutter like one in a trance.”
Bernard flushed. “I said I haven’t been warned by the Ghoul.”
Robert Cass jerked a nervous glance at his watch. “This won’t get us anywhere, gentlemen — sitting here bawling at each other. Let’s have the plan. Anything that will trick the Ghoul.”
Calvert snorted. “This plan is anything—the last resort. The police are stumped. They can’t swear out a warrant against a voice.”
Gage explained his plan:
“The Ghoul will continue his damnable practices just as long as they net him anything. If we don’t pay, we become living corpses — live brains within dead bodies.” He repressed a shudder. “The Ghoul is an infallible power. There is only one escape. Only one way to check the Ghoul’s nefarious scheme before he confiscates most of the wealth of the city, perhaps the wealth of the country. That is not to pay the Ghoul a single farthing from here on!”
Anthony Bernard wheeled on Gage. Color had completely drained from his face. “Not pay!” he muttered hoarsely. “Man, are yon in your right mind? Cass, Pond, Luigi, all of you — is there a man among you who has not dreamed of the Amber Death? Good Lord, gentlemen, in my sleep I’ve seen this face—” and his trembling bands raked across his cheeks—“this face reduced to a contorted yellow thing, the face of a living mummy!”
Dr. Luigi got up, laid a restraining hand on Bernard’s shoulder. “Get a grip on yourself, Bernard,” he said sternly. “No time to play the coward.”
Bernard’s right hand came up flatly against Luigi’s cheek. The sound of the slap cracked throughout the room. The mark of Bernard’s fingers flamed Luigi’s smooth, dark skin. Daniel Calvert catapulted from his chair. His thick, outthrust arms shoved Bernard back to a chair.
“Sit down, you fool!” he roared.
Panting, pale with anger and shame, Bernard sat down. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Please, gentlemen,” said Dr. Luigi, straining to control his voice, “let us hear the rest of the plan.”
“Yes, the plan! Go on.”
GAGE continued: “It is a plan that requires courage, but for the common good, we must be the ones to defeat the Golden Ghoul. As Bernard has said, the police are helpless to fight this thing they cannot see. This person called Secret Agent “X,” who I am inclined to regard as a myth, has evidently had no better luck than the police.
“Here is my proposition. Tonight, each of us will sign an agreement not to pay one cent of tribute to the Ghoul. This agreement will be published in every paper in the country. Furthermore, to show that we are in earnest, and to deprive the Ghoul of the pleasure of torturing us with his Amber Death, each of us must agree to commit suicide when the Ghoul next makes a demand upon us!”
“You’re crazy!” Bernard leaped to his feet. It was only with considerable effort that he restrained another nervous burst of temper.
“And you believe,” Elisha Pond asked mildly, “that meeting defeat from a handful of men will cause the Ghoul to give up extortion entirely?”
“That is my belief, Mr. Pond,” Gage spread out a sheet of paper on his carved walnut desk. “I have the agreement which I have just outlined. May I have the honor of being the first to sign this declaration of our independence?”
“You may — and be damned!” cried Anthony Bernard. “I’ll pay if it lands me in the bread line whenever the Ghoul speaks to me.”
“If it would avail us anything to sign,” Robert Cass said as if he were giving the question considerable thought. “But death, whether by the Amber Death or by putting a bullet through my own head—” He was seized with a fit of shaking that prevented him from continuing.
“I didn’t say anything about a bullet,” said Gage as he signed the suicide pact with a flourish. “I have a poison that Dr. Luigi tells me is perfectly painless — even pleasant. One gradually dozes—”
“Anthony Bernard.” A cold dispassionate voice echoed throughout the room.
Cass’s thin hand seized the sleeve of the Agent’s coat. “Look!” He pointed at a heavy radio console at the end of the room. This time, whoever had attached the short-wave converter to Gage’s set had made no attempt to conceal the fact that the Ghoul’s voice came from the radio. The pilot lamps made a ghostly eye of the airplane dial on the radio.
“Anthony Bernard,” repeated the voice, “this is my first warning. It shall be my last. I will give you two days in which to raise seventy-five thousand dollars. If you succeed, I will permit you to live. Fail, and your life is mine.”
“Good Lord!” gasped Bernard. “The Ghoul! Two days to live—”
Again came the voice. “Two others are marked for the Amber Death. Elisha Pond, what have you done toward raising the money I demanded? You defied me. You shall be punished. And to him who opposed my strength with his puny will, I give certain death. Lionel Gage, I have spoken to you.” The voice sighed into silence.