X-1 The torture trust by Brant House

Author:Brant House
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A Cry in the Dark

THE Secret Agent, sensing the awful significance of Betty Dale’s disappearance, sprang into action. There were times when he could be patient, times when he could wait, catlike, hour after hour to achieve some end. This was not one of them.

He felt responsible for the fate that had overtaken Betty Dale. If she had not aided him, been seen with him, this would not have happened.

He left the apartment building in long, quick strides. At the corner taxi stand where all-night cabs were available, he spoke to the drivers.

One was the cabman who had taken Betty Dale to the Herald building. He was taciturn at first under the Agent’s sharp questioning, but a dollar bill loosened his tongue.

“Did Miss Dale go to the Herald office?” The Agent asked.

The cabman could not remember. He had gone on after collecting his fare, he said.

“Was there any one around—any other car near by?”

The taxi driver stroked his chin. Yes, he remembered now. There was a closed car parked down the block. It had made little impression on him. There were always cars around the Herald office.

The Agent nodded. There was the harsh glint of steel in his eyes. He jerked open the door of the cab, got in, and gave the driver a number.

Agent “X,” unknown to any one but himself, had invested some of the funds intrusted to him in several cars. In his perilous work he needed one always handy. Each car was registered under a different name. He kept one, a sleek, fast roadster, in a mid-town garage.

The number he had given the driver was two blocks away from the garage. When the cab stopped, he got out, paid the driver and disappeared into a shadowy areaway beside the street. There he affected another disguise. He was H. J. Martin now, the man in whose name the mid-town car was registered.

He strode quickly to the garage, and the night attendant got the car out for him. A minute more and he was speeding toward the West Side river front—toward the dark alleys and sinister dives around MacDonough Street.

The traffic lights had been turned off for the night. The streets were almost deserted. He drove with reckless abandon seemingly, but really with such skill as few men could duplicate. His face grim, his hands tense on the wheel, he rocketed around corners, plunged through side streets, raced against time. He passed through MacDonough Street and onward, a half dozen blocks to the vicinity of the warehouse.

There he slowed the car’s speed, creeping forward, lights out, the engine barely turning over, till the big car was close to the vast bulk of the warehouse that rose silent and sinister into the night.

He parked the car in the blackest spot he could find near the row of dilapidated buildings in the warehouse’s rear. Then, wraithlike, he slipped from it.

DEATH seemed to lurk in every hidden corner of the street. Death sounded in the soughing of the night wind, in the far-off whisper of the city.

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