Octopus of Crime by Brant House

Book Details

Tentacles of terror reached over the country, spreading like a hideous blight through the cities of America. The underworld, welded together under the secret symbol of a monster of crime, was organized as never before. And Secret Agent “X,” master man-hunter went up against a genius of crime who stooped even to the ghastly horrors of medieval torture.

Octopus Of Crime – A monstrous octopus of evil gained slow power over the underworld. His identity as mysterious as that of Secret Agent “X” himself, this apostle of wickedness led the horror hordes of the nation into a bloody carnival of crime
Chapter I – Guns in the Night
Chapter II – The Law’s Net
Chapter III – Plunging Peril
Chapter IV – Wings of Destruction
Chapter V – The Mark of Horror
Chapter VI – Night Visitor
Chapter VII – Black Horrors
Chapter VIII – Crimson Fangs
Chapter IX – A Fresh Clue
Chapter X – The New Commissioner
Chapter XI – Trapped by Science
Chapter XII – Death in the Night
Chapter XIII – The Sky Attack
Chapter XIV – The Crash!
Chapter XV – The Way of the Octopus
Chapter XVI – Passwords to Hell
Chapter XVII – Death to the Agent
Chapter XVIII – Thundering Doom
Chapter XIX – Criminal Cunning
Chapter XX – The Mysterious Message
Chapter XXI – Tentacles of the Octopus
Chapter XXII – The Octopus Speaks Again
Chapter XXIII – Sky Monster
Chapter XXIV – Who is the Octopus?

The Secret Council – Behind the Scenes with Secret Agent “X”

Brant House was a “house name” of Periodical House, Inc., the publishers of the Secret Agent “X” magazine. The author of Octopus of Crime was Paul Chadwick (1902–1972), the originator of the character Secret Agent “X,” the man of a thousand faces.

Secret Agent “X” is a master of disguise and his true identity is never revealed. He adopts several different identities in each story. What we do know about “X” is that he served in the War (World War I) in intelligence and was wounded from which he got an X shaped scar. He is a dedicated crime-fighter working undercover for the U.S. government, although this is unknown to local police who consider him an outlaw. His true role is known only to newspaper reporter Betty Dale and his mysterious Washington controller, K-9.

Octopus of Crime has 6 illustrations.

Files:

1. House-OctopusOfCrime.epub

Excerpt: Octopus of Crime

Chapter I

Guns in the Night

A  FAST roadster came to a skidding stop at a spot where shadows lay like huge, ungainly serpents across the gray surface of the city streets. A tall man leaped out. He closed the car’s door quickly, moved along the sidewalk with swift, silent steps.

Walking the length of one block, he turned left down another, slowing when he reached a bright corner light that was holding at bay the night’s curtain of chill darkness.

Opposite this light, the big marble front of the Union Bank & Safe Deposit Company rose in glittering magnificence. A special guard in horizon blue was on patrol duty here. The guard turned once, glanced at the lone pedestrian, turned away.

There was nothing about the man’s appearance at that distance to stir suspicion. He was quietly dressed in a gray suit and topcoat. Neat, respectable, middle-aged, he looked like some late office employee, a bookkeeper perhaps, hurrying home from work.

But the instant the guard turned a corner of the building to patrol its north side, the gray-haired man crossed the street and approached the bank’s heavy doors.

He pressed his body into the vestibule, took something from an inner pocket of his coat. This was a small leather case containing an assortment of complicated, strangely shaped tools of the finest chromium steel. Some were straight and slender like darning needles. Some had elaborate goose necks. Others had tiny pivotal extensions.

The man used them with amazing speed and dexterity. Before the bank guard returned to his west side beat the man in gray had opened the building’s outer doors and slipped between them. Another set of inner doors faced him.

Now the man in gray drew a flashlight from his pocket, working with still greater care. By attaching a small steel tape to hidden terminals, to insure an unbroken circuit when the doors were opened, he disconnected the sensitive alarm system which protected the bank. Then he used the tools again, probing the secret of this inner lock as he had the first, and entered the bank.

The glow of a single overhead night light sprayed dim radiance on his face. The features of that face were blunted, inconspicuous. But the eyes blazed with a strangely intent, strangely compelling light. They flashed intelligence, magnetism, power, that seemed incongruous to those prosaic features. They suggested that this tall, gray-clad man who had so unceremoniously entered a great banking institution of the city was a figure of force and mystery. They gave the only clue to his identity as one of the most daringly ingenious criminal investigators in the world.

For the gray-clad man was Secret Agent “X,” master of a thousand faces, genius of disguise, pledged to ceaseless warfare against the destructive forces of the underworld.”

ONCE again this man whose real name and identity had never been revealed, was following what appeared to be the black shadow of vast, organized crime. Once again he had become an apparent outlaw in his efforts to track down the lawless.

Excerpt From: Brant House. “Octopus of Crime.”