Secret Agent X: Claws of the Corpse Cult. Brant House

this matter of which I speak.”

      “Of which you don’t speak,” cracked Holme. “At least, not so that anyone can understand you.” He puffed furiously on his cigar, wiped perspiration from his brow. In a softer tone he said: “Tell us about Jones’ death.”

      A slight shudder rippled visibly across Lane’s shoulders. “A horrible death,” he said. “Jones was found down on the waterfront, his right hand severed at the wrist. Apparently, he had bled to death.”

      “What does that have to do with this other matter about which you are so reticent?” asked Holme.

      “Something,” murmured Lane. “I don’t know exactly. I can’t even guess. It’s a hunch, that’s all, fortified by this.” He took from the pocket of his jacket a small pasteboard box. “Got it in the mail this morning,” he said as he opened the box. “Take a look at it.”

      The man called Regan stepped from his corner and leaned over Barry Lane’s chair. Holme reached out and took the open box from Lane’s hand. Holme muttered an oath.

      Inside the box was a shriveled, blackened, mummified human hand, pierced at the heel of the palm by a half-inch hole.

      “Jones’ hand?” gasped Holme. He shot a questioning glance at the man called Regan.

      Regan shook his head. “I hardly think so. The mummification process used on this hand must have taken quite some time.”

      Barry Lane took the box containing the gruesome hand and slipped it into his pocket. “You tell me what it means. I’ve thought about it so much today my mind is going around in circles.”

      The telephone rang. Lane got lazily from his chair and went over to the side of the room where the jingling instrument rested upon a side table. He picked it up, said hello in a guarded voice. He listened in silence a moment, then said: “All right. In a few minutes.” He hung up.

      Lane took off his glasses and polished them. “I’m sorry, but I’ll be forced to leave you for a little while. This concerns the matter we were discussing. I may have some information when I return.” He picked up his panama hat and abruptly left the room. The screen door on the front of the bungalow slammed.

      “Secret Agent X,” said Holme sharply.

      The man called Regan turned. His remarkably intelligent eyes brightened. “Yes—K9?”

      Holme’s smile came and immediately faded. “What do you think of this man, Barry Lane?”

      “A very good man,” the man called Regan answered. “But thoroughly normal. Too normal, perhaps.”

      “What do you mean?”

      A smile passed over the boyish face of Secret Agent X; rather, the smile illuminated a face that was not his own. For the face he wore was neatly counterfeited from a plastic, volatile material which contributed much to his unequaled ability to impersonate almost anyone. The alias of Regan was but one of many aliases; the face he wore, but one of a thousand faces.

      “I happened to note the critical glance Barry Lane gave himself as he passed the mirror in the hall. Barry Lane is going to meet a woman.”

      “Not his wife, eh?”

      “Definitely not his wife,” said Secret Agent X. “And, if I am not mistaken, the woman is Myra Silinski.”

      “Myra Silinski? Who’s she? Sounds like a Polish name.”

      Secret Agent X fingered a cigarette from a package. Lean, graceful fingers had the Agent, fingers that could be as gentle as a woman’s and again as hard and cruel as steel hooks.

      “Myra Silinski, regardless of her nationality, is what the Chinese might call a t’an fang-ti.”

      “I don’t speak Chinese,” snapped Holme.

      “A superior sort of spy, then,” the Secret Agent translated. “What government she represents we can only guess. What government would be highly delighted if America should side with the Chinese in the war?”

      Holme scratched a hairless chin. “Oh,” he said. “You mean—”

      Out of the night an unearthly cry that seemed neither animal nor human severed Holme’s sentence cleanly. It mounted to a wavering pinnacle, then drifted off in a horrific echo that must have sounded from Punch Bowl Hill to the waterfront...

      Holme, man of steel nerve that he was, was momentarily frozen by that weird cry that was neither of anguish nor of triumph. It seemed, indeed, a vocal offering to some barbaric deity. But scarcely had the sound begun than Agent X pivoted, dashed from the room, from the door of the bungalow, and onto the deep, artistically landscaped lawn. His keen eyes darted first one way and then another. Close to a bed of poinsettias, he saw a black blotch against the moonlit lawn. His lean legs carried him toward the shrubbery at a run. For the blotch on the lawn was the body of a man, and the flowery fragrance of the night was marred by the sickening odor of new-let blood.

      The man was Barry Lane. He lay stretched out on his back, eyes open, glazed. Across his rounded cheeks a sort of bluish shadow was spreading. He was talking, babbling incoherently. And as the Secret Agent bent over him he caught the words: “Above.... Golden Lotus ... King Street ... Sayonara ... Janet.” And then he was dead.

      The knee of the Agent’s trouser leg was warm and sticky with blood that oozed from Barry Lane’s right wrist. Several inches apart from the wrist lay Barry’s hand, cleanly severed.

      The Agent’s mind clicked like a telegraph sounder. Barry Lane dead. Lane, who possibly was on the track of something that threatened his country with war. One channel open to Agent X—to impersonate Barry Lane and carry on where the secret service man had been forced to leave off. But first, if his impersonation was to be successful, he must find the man who had killed Lane.