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CHAPTER I

HELL ON WHEELS

It was an afternoon in late spring and from a cloudless sky, the sun beat shimmering rays on the stream of motor cars that flowed sluggishly along the narrow canyon between the rows of tall buildings. Along the sidewalks, men and women, many of the richly attired, hurried about their business and pleasure. It was a street of wealth, a main stem of American finance.

But the men and women in the street seemed oblivious to the criminal monster who preyed like a vampire upon this veritable artery of wealth. Had they noticed the faces of the men in the great black touring car that cruised along slowly with the traffic, they might have lost some of their sense of security. For these men were grim-faced police—one of many specially picked squad­rons that had been patrolling the streets day and night, waiting for the radio call to duty—and probably to their own destruction.

The man at the wheel of the squad car was young for a position that involved so much responsibility. His face told of many anxious moments, of the torment of trying to fathom the unfathomable. He steered the car without apparent effort, yet his every nerve was keyed to a high pitch. His brilliant eyes strained ahead; yet sometimes sought the rear vision mirror, watching for that with which human forces seemed powerless to cope.

Suddenly, from the radio speaker came the voice of the police announcer. At the first word, the driver of the squad car detected a different note in the man’s voice. The drab monotone was gone; rather the announcer’s voice was colored with a tremor of excitement and dread. He was exercising his duty in transmitting the message that had come to him, but he seemed to know that in doing so he was sending some of his companions to their doom.

“Special cruiser twenty-four . . . Calling special crui­ser twenty-four,” came from the loudspeaker. “Proceed at once to the Krausman store. Robbery going on. Robbery going on at Krausman store . . . Number one-three . . . Num­ber one-three.”

The last group of figures was simply a code which the department used to identify the activities of a mysterious criminal gang which had terrorized the city with daring thefts accompanied by what amounted to nothing short of wholesale butchery.

As the driver of the squad car set his siren going, another very human appeal came from the radio loudspeaker. For a moment, the vast police organization was forgotten. It was simply one anxious father speaking to his son: “For the love of God, watch your step, Jimmy!”

The jaw of the young man at the wheel of the squad car was thrust far forward, as his foot came down heavily upon the accelerator. The police announcer was an el­derly man who had been pronounced unfit for active service. It was his son who manned the wheel of Special Cruiser Twenty-four. Duty had made heavy demands upon father and son. The anxiety of the father could well be imagined. He might just as well have pronounced his own son’s death sentence.

A wide lane in the traffic appeared miraculously before the speeding, screaming squad car. The police sat on the edge of the cushions. Their knuckles whitened as they clenched the butts of heavy revolvers. Now and again one of the men would send a strained glance back through the rear window.

Suddenly, the man beside the young driver pinched his companion s arm.

“It’s coming!” His voice was hard and brittle, strained to the breaking point. The driver’s lower jaw protruded a bit more. He uttered a heartening oath through clenched teeth. His eyes flashed upward toward the rear vision mirror. The stretch of cleared street be­hind them was broken by a sinister blot of speeding destruction. A long-nosed streamlined roadster, black as midnight was rapidly overhauling them.

* * * *

The police car was still three blocks from the scene of the robbery and the car behind them seemed to have no speed limit. Nor did the driver of the black roadster have any compassion for human life. The police cruiser swerved sharply to avoid hitting a careless pedestrian. A split second later, the black roadster bore down upon the frightened man. The pedestrian became panic stricken, put out both arms in a ridiculously futile effort to halt the speeding car, and in the next moment was knocked flat—a piteous blot that lay deathly still on the pavement.

The roadster was within a few feet of the squad car. Through the rear window, the police could see the two men crouched low and motionless in the cockpit. With a dexterous yank on the wheel, the driver of the police car sent the cruiser far to the left, trying to block off the black speed demon. But the driver of the roadster was a match for any man. As the police car swerved to the left, the roadster swung to the right. With a sudden almost unbelievable burst of speed, the roadster pulled alongside. The ugly black snout of a machine gun protruded over the door of the racer.

“Let ’em have it!” shouted a policeman. He leaned out so far that he almost touched the black destroyer. His revolver blasted at the noxious face of the man at the wheel. At such short range he couldn’t have missed.

The staccato voice of the machine gun shattered the roar of the two overtaxed motors. Leaden hell raked the police cruiser from stem to stern. One policeman, who had been daringly balanced far out over the door of the car, pitched over the side and beneath the grinding wheels of the black juggernaut. The young driver jerked suddenly upright. A slug had drilled his chest. His teeth ground together with a nerve-shattering sound that he never heard.

The steering wheel spun in his hands, completely out of control. His pain-taut right leg crammed every ounce of gas into the powerful motor. The police car broke into a rubber-burning skid, careened across the street, caromed against a car, hurtled over the curb, to crush innocent bystanders beneath its bounding wheels. Screams from a hundred throats filled the street with terrific clamor. The police cruiser slammed broadside through the glass window of a department store and crumpled against a solid wall, a mass of wreckage.

But the roar of the black roadster dinned in the distance. Though the driver had received at least two shots that would have ordinarily proved fatal, the car sped unerringly onward in its mad flight of destruction, to disappear up an alley some blocks away.

Hysterical screams, frantic cries for help, drowned out the groans of the maimed that the killers’ car had left in its wake. The sidewalk was strewn with corpses. Hoarse-voiced traffic police battled their way through the panicky throng toward the wreckage in front of the department store. A policeman, who had been thrown from the wrecked car, struggled to his feet. Both of his hands clutched at his side, in an instinctive but hopeless effort to stanch the blood that flowed from a jagged wound. He tottered forward to fall at the feet of a traffic policeman.

The traffic cop knelt. His arms went about the shoulders of the fallen man. His fingers clenched tightly as if he hoped by some superh­uman effort to check the ebbing life. The wounded man opened his eyes and recognized the man who held him.

“Fergeson,” came his husky whisper, “that—that man in that roadster! The man with the machine gun. I shot him—shot right through him. He was Mack O’Brien’s big gunman. He was Slash Carmody in the flesh!”

The traffic policeman stared incredulously at the wounded man. For Slash Carmody, killer formally em­ployed by one of the underworld barons, had died in the electric chair in Sing Sing not more than forty-eight hours ago.

* * * *

Two blocks farther up the street from the point of the police car disaster was the famous Krausman Jewelry Store. A few minutes before the police cruiser had re­ceived its instructions to proceed to the jeweler’s, Mr. Peter Krausman was sitting in his office, placidly smok­ing a thick, mahogany-colored cigar. He was a large, swarthy-skinned man with an unpleasantly crooked nose. Replacing his somber Oxford-gray garments with something brighter, and adding the flash of gold rings bobbing at the lobes of his ears, an artist would have had a perfect model for a Gypsy king.

Yet while Krausman seemed to be basking in the security of his own wealth, his impassiveness was a mere pose. Every nerve fiber within his body tingled in anticipation of action. His heart throbbed with slow, steady strokes; his mighty brain dwelt upon but one problem—a problem only remotely related to the jewelry business.

Through the glass window of his office door, he watched a pleasant-faced, redheaded man who was try­ing, clumsily enough, to sell a fine jade bracelet to a strange, dark-complexioned man with a pinpoint moustache and a long, stringy goatee. The dark man was famous throughout the city. He was Dr. Jules Planchard, a skilled plastic surgeon. Other clerks, more experienced, looked askance at the redheaded man. Obviously, the snap judgment of Krausman had failed for once. The redhead was certainly no salesman. Would he allow so valuable a customer as Jules Planchard to go out empty handed?

Planchard, however, seemed to have made up his mind as to what he wanted. He glanced at his wristwatch, waved toward the jade bracelet and ordered the redhead to wrap it up. He paid for the bracelet, thrust it into his pocket and left the store.

The redheaded clerk turned his attention to a pretty young girl who had just asked to look at wristwatches. In the office, Peter Krausman chuckled grimly. The redhead was much less interested in his attractive customer than he was in keeping half an eye on the front door.

Suddenly, the humor vanished from the swarthy face of Peter Krausman. He was watching the right hand of the redheaded clerk. It had been resting on the glass top of the counter. Suddenly, it snapped upward, and drummed twice on the counter. Krausman sprang to his feet, started toward the door of the office. Beyond, he could see the flashing body of a beautifully appointed sedan that had come to a stop in front of the store. The redheaded clerk shot a glance at the office, seized the young woman who had been contemplating the purchase of a wristwatch. In spite of her vehement protestations, he pushed her back behind the counter, and through a small door in the wall.

A fellow clerk, inclined toward gallantry, stepped in front of the redhead. The redheaded man gave the in­truder a vigorous push.

“Watch your step, everybody!” his voice rang out imperatively. “It’s a stickup!”

At the same moment that Peter Krausman catapulted through the door of his office, four men barged through the front door. They were men whose right hands were thrust deeply into coat pockets that failed entirely to disguise the shape of the automatics that they held. They were men whose unmasked faces were sharp with ratlike cunning. Deathly pallid faces they were, faces out of the past, faces of men who had figured prominently in old police records until death had chalked them from the list of public enemies.

Even the alert mind of Krausman who had been prepared for something of the sort, was for a moment stunned by the appearance of these gunmen. He recognized them to a man. Every one a hardened criminal, but every face the face of a corpse.

“Everybody back against the wall,” the raucous voice of the foremost member of the gang commanded. By the livid welt on his left cheek, Krausman recognized him as “Scar” Fassler, a criminal who five years ago had been pronounced dead by the prison officials who had removed his body from the electric chair.

* * * *

Outside the store, a police whistle sounded. A stalwart, blue-coated figure sprang through the door. Scar Fassler wheeled about. His automatic nosed from his pocket. The policeman dared not fire, for the scar-faced gunman had taken a strategic position directly in front of the group of clerks which the gunman had herded back against the wall. He had the policeman entirely at his mercy, and for a moment he paused, enjoying his advantage.

Suddenly, Krausman, who had been covered by cri­mi­nal guns as soon as he entered the room, displayed remarkable courage and agility. He sprang straight to­ward the gunman who threatened him. The gun in the criminal’s pocket coughed, but Krausman was un­checked. His gnarled right fist drove straight into the face of the surprised criminal. The blow fairly lifted the man from his feet, but even before he had struck the floor, Krausman had hurled himself upon Scar Fassler. Fassler sent one hurried shot at the policeman in the doorway, turned, and fired point-blank at Krausman.

The shot struck Krausman, and for an instant he tottered. But it was only a ruse. In seeming to fall forward, Krausman’s legs shot out like two springs of steel, launch­ing him in a flying tackle. His broad shoulder struck Fassler’s knees. The corpse-faced gunman tried to spring backward out of the way of Krausman’s clawing fingers. But the jeweler seized Fassler by the ankle.

The gunman crashed to the floor, twisted over, and kicked Krausman in the head with his hard left shoe. For a moment the hold on the gunman’s ankle relaxed. Fass­ler sprang to his feet with an oath. His gun swung around, this time aimed at the jeweler’s head.

Though on the floor, groggy from Fassler’s cruel kick, Krausman must have realized the peril of his position. The two shots that had already stuck him had been rendered ineffectual by the bulletproof vest he wore. Fassler knew this. This time, he would shoot for the jeweler’s head.

A shot rang out. But it was not from Fassler’s gun. Krausman’s redheaded clerk, who had been engaged in a hand to hand conflict with one of the mobsters, had discovered his employer’s peril. The redhead had suddenly drawn a gun from his pocket, and tried a snap shot that struck the barrel of Fassler’s automatic. The gun was knocked from the mobster’s hand. Deprived of his wea­pon, Scar Fassler’s small piggish eyes filled with terror.

“It’s a trap, boys!” he shouted. He sprang toward the redhead whose well-placed shot had saved Krausman’s life. Fassler’s was the courage of a cornered rat. He ig­nored the sudden threatening forward thrust of the redhead’s gun.

“No, Jim! Don’t shoot!”

It was Mr. Krausman who had shouted this warning to the redheaded man. Krausman knew that panic possessed Fassler, that the mere sight of a gun would not halt him. But he must be taken alive, if a man who had died in the electric chair could ever again be called alive.

The redhead heard his employer’s warning, and held his fire. Fassler swung with his left, a long fast blow that the redhead failed to duck. The man called Jim staggered back against a counter. Krausman had pulled himself to his feet, and was coming toward Fassler with a gun in his hand. Fassler shot a glance toward the door. His companions had beat a hasty retreat as soon as he had uttered his warning. Instead of making toward the front door as Krausman evidently expected him to, the scar-faced gun­man sprang back toward the office.

Krausman had recovered his agility. He ran in the same direction that Fassler had taken. The criminal sprang through the door of the office, slammed it, and twisted the key in the lock. Krausman backstepped, hunched his shoulder, and drove like a battering-ram at the door. Tenons of the door squawled apart under the power behind Krausman’s heavy shoulder, but the door held. Krausman’s right shoe came up in a kick that shattered the door glass. Disregarding the cutting fragments of glass that still adhered to the frame, Krausman straddled the frame and in another moment was in the office.

But a second door had opened and closed behind Fassler—the door into Mr. Krausman’s shower and lavatory. Krausman believed that Fassler was trapped. A heave from his powerful shoulder burst open the bolt of the door. The door sprang open, and Krausman, gun in hand, stood in the room, looking bewilderedly about him.

Fassler, the scar-faced gunman, who for five years had been officially dead, had apparently vanished like a ghost.

His swarthy brow deeply furrowed, Krausman stared about the room. He walked over and opened the frosted glass door of the shower. Empty. He turned to a small linen-closet and opened it. Again he had drawn blank. But no—What was that square of blackness at one end of the closet? Krausman took a small fountain-pen flashlight from his pocket and switched on its needlelike ray. The light showed a large square hole that had been cut in the wall. It revealed the water pipes that led to the shower bath. Had this hole been left open in order to make the shower pipes accessible for repairs?

The alert mind behind the swarthy face of Peter Krausman had suggested a double purpose in this open­ing. He reached out his hand and touched the pipes with the tips of his fingers. His keen sense of touch had de­tected a slight vibration in those pipes. Then he knew how Fassler had engineered his surprising escape. The opening evidently extended down into the basement of the building. The pipes, had they been placed there ex­pressly for the purpose, could not have offered a better means of descent.

But how had Fassler known of this opening? Surely he had not stumbled upon it by chance. For a moment, Krausman debated whether to follow. He decided that he wouldn’t. Fassler had gone unerringly to the one rat-hole that had offered him a means of escape. He had evidently the advantage of knowing much more about the building than the swarthy-faced man who, to all appearances, owned it.

It was an odd situation. And for a moment amusement glinted the eyes of the man who until an hour ago had never entered the Krausman Building. But it was a situation that to some extent explained the courageous actions of the man who appeared to be a wealthy merchant, unused to violence and hand to hand encounters with criminals.

For the swarthy face of the man, who at that moment had discovered a secret exit from the building, was merely the result of clever disguise. Beneath dark-colored pigment, beneath plastic material and face plates which had counterfeited Peter Krausman’s features in every detail, was a face that no living person had seen—the face of Secret Agent “X.”

Acting upon a tip that had traveled the length of the underworld’s grapevine telegraph, Agent “X” had taken advantage of the real Peter Krausman’s absence from New York. He had deliberately impersonated the wealthy jeweler, knowing to a certainty that the most ruthless gang of robbers that he had ever encountered had planned to loot the Krausman Store.

He had staked much to frustrate the thieves’ scheme. But his chief desire was to capture one of the members of the gang and thus dispel the mystery that had baffled the police. For though the idea seemed too ridiculous to warrant its publication in newspapers, the entire gang of murderous thieves seemed to be made up of criminals who had long since died. Scar Fassler was only one of a legion of corpse criminals.

Had some master scientist actually discovered the long-sought secret for reviving the dead? Had some mad doctor taken criminals, fresh from the execution room, and brought them back to life, to recruit a vast underworld army of men who, knowing death once, would not fear it a second time?

This was the riddle that Secret Agent “X” sought to solve. Wise in the way of the perverted geniuses who directed major crime groups, “X” knew that the knowledge of life eternal could be a greater scourge than all the lethal weapons that man could produce. Fear of death, he knew, was the only thing that prevented thousands of men from forsaking the law for the lawless.