Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

“The Spanish Prisoner” is the first of a group of three LADY FROM HELL short novelettes — each complete in itself — but forming a trio of continued and related episodes. These are presented in this and the two following issues of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY.

Readers will be interested to know that, although the LADY FROM HELL stories are fiction, they are based on fact. The glamorous adventuress of the series was the notorious blackmailer, “Babe” Carrington, who called herself “Vivian Legrand” in one or two instances, but never habitually. The famous Spanish bandit, Cruz Delgado, whom she meets early in this first episode, operated for a while in South America. His extradition from that continent to Spain is true, and it is at that time in his career that “The Spanish Prisoner” begins the amazing tale of his encounters with the red headed LADY FROM HELL

That impregnable Spanish prison could not stop the lady from hell from attempting the jail delivery of Cruz Delgado, Europe’s most notorious bandit Chieftain.

I

Sudden consternation flooded the Lady from Hell as she surveyed the interior of her cabin on the steamer San Stefano.

The cabin had been searched, searched thoroughly and carefully. The few dresses that had been given her had been ripped from their hangers in the little clothes closet and tossed on the floor. Swiftly, she stepped inside the cabin, locked the door, ran to the bathroom... and halted.

The long oblong mirror lay on the floor, and the space behind it was empty of the article she had hidden there... a money belt containing eight thousand dollars.

The Lady from Hell and her companion in crime, Adrian Wylie, had been passengers on the steamer Esteban, fleeing from the Republic of Monteverde. The steamer had gone up in flames, and the enormous treasure of jewels and bonds that the two had gathered in their criminal association had burned with the ship. The only thing that had been saved from the catastrophe was a money belt containing eight thousand dollars... a belt that had belonged to Miguel, the renegade captain of the Esteban. The Lady from Hell had taken it from the captain herself before he died.

And now that was gone. The two were penniless. The only clothes they had were articles that had been contributed by kind hearted passengers of the San Stefano, after the two had been picked up from the open boat in which they had drifted for days after the holocaust on the Esteban.

The screening lashes of The Lady from Hell lifted like a momentarily raised curtain, disclosing in the green orbs a leaping flame of fire, hot and wild as the flames in the heart of a driftwood fire, as she took in the significance of the situation.

Then her eyes lit on the door leading from the bathroom to the other cabin. The bath was so constructed that it could be utilized as a communicating bath between the two cabins... the one occupied by Vivian, and the other on the other side. Ordinarily the door to the other cabin was fastened with a bolt. She saw now that the bolt had been sawn through by a slim instrument inserted through the crack between the door and the jamb.

Fire blazed again under her brows, a flame of greenish scorching anger, sudden as the outburst of a smouldering volcano. She knew then what had happened. The cabin into which that door led had been occupied by a tall, slim man who claimed to be Portuguese. And Vivian knew that both the man and her money were no longer on the ship. The man had disembarked at Las Palmas — and the ship had sailed from there half an hour before. Already the mountains of the island were becoming purple shadows on the horizon.

She had been on deck with Wylie watching the ship draw away from the land, or she would have discovered her loss sooner. Undoubtedly the man had waited until the last moment! Come to think of it, she remembered now that he had hurried down the gangplank an instant before it was drawn in, and the ship pulled away.

And to think that she, the criminal scourge of three continents, had been robbed by a cheap sneak thief and robbed of the funds that Wylie and herself were counting on to give them a new start on their criminal career, was particularly galling and humiliating.

There was nothing that she could do. She could not return to Las Palmas. A radio message might bring the arrest of the man. But he would undoubtedly have prepared for that, and unless the money were found on him, there would be no proof that he was the thief.

With an eloquent lift of her shoulders she turned and went back on deck.

Adrian Wylie, recovered somewhat from the strain of exposure in the open boat in which they had drifted, and his broken ribs expertly bandaged, was lying in the cushioned deck chair where she had left him. The moment that Vivian Legrand appeared in sight he sensed that something was amiss and closed the book he was reading.

With a lithe catlike movement she dropped in the chair next to him and in a few swift sentences told him of their loss and her belief of the identity of the thief.

Wylie was silent a moment after the crushing news. Giving the impression of a scholarly and dignified gentleman of independent means, there was nothing about him to hint that for years he had been a consummate crook, any more than there was about the Lady from Hell to suggest that she was the world’s most glamorous criminal.

Tall, lean and impressive, Wylie gave far more the impression of a man of affairs, a banker perhaps, than the whimiscal, yet prudent and incalculably gifted criminal that he was when the Lady from Hell had first met him in the house of the Mandarin Hoang Fi Tu in Manila. He had been an opium addict then. Now, under the urging of that gifted brain of his, he had completely thrust the drug from his life. And he was never to touch it again during his association with the Lady from Hell.

He, no less than Vivian realized the seriousness of the position in which they found themselves.

“Napoleon said,” he murmured thoughtfully, “that an army moves on its stomach, and most certainly, two people in the business in which we are engaged move on the money they pay out — money in bribes, in paying helpers, in securing the information that they must have.”

He made a little gesture of helplessness.

“Of course,” Vivian said thoughtfully, “there are a few hundred scattered here and there in banks — in Paris — in London, but...”

“But,” Wylie cut in, “in order to get hold of those few hundred dollars we must first get to Paris and to London.”

“And,” Vivian went on thougntfully, “front is one of the most important weapons we have. Without money for clothes... Adrian, do you realize that we haven’t even enough money for a hotel when we reach Cadiz, or for...”

She halted, stiffened and broke off in the midst of the sentence. Her glance, with startled intensity struck on the face of a tall, swarthy man who swung past in the company of another man a smaller one. There was calculation mixed with speculation in the glance she turned back to Wylie.

“Who is that man?” she queried. “Last night I passed his cabin. The door was partly open and the light on. It was closed by someone almost immediately, but not before I had seen that this chap... the tail one... was handcuffed to the berth railing.”

Wylie nodded. “A rather silly precaution in the middle of the Atlantic, it seems to me,” he said, “but then I suppose the two detectives with him aren’t taking any changes. That is Cruz Delgado.”

“Oh, so that is Delgado,” Vivian said, and there was decided interest in the gaze she sent after the vanishing figures, her mind mulling over the amazing possibility that had leaped into her mind. The name of Delgado had been familiar to both of them during their criminal operations in Europe. It was a familiar name in the underworld, where the exploits of the Basque brigand were discussed. A year or so before he had fled to the Argentine after a crime that included the killing of a high government official. “So he’s being taken back to Spain.”

Wylie nodded. “Yes, to Cadiz... I don’t think his life will be worth much after he gets back.”

“Probably not,” the Lady from Hell mused, “and I suspect that he knows it.”

There was a curious quality in her voice that Wylie did not miss... a quality that had not been there before. Though she spoke musingly, her voice seemed to be pulled from the depths of something that was apt to be dynamite when it rose to the surface.

“Undoubtedly,” agreed Wylie drily. His eyes were very bright. He had worked hand in hand with the Lady from Hell far too long not to realize when she was hatching a particularly audacious scheme. “Being somewhat familiar with Spanish detectives, I have no doubt that they’ve explained to him in detail just what his fate will be.”

“And,” Vivian went on in that musing tone of voice, as her facile imagination poured like water into crevices to cement detail to detail in a slowly unfolding scheme, “if he found himself in a position to thumb his nose at the law again, I suspect that he might be inclined to be exceedingly grateful to the person... or persons... who made that possible.”

Wylie sat up suddenly. Through all her criminal career the Lady from Hell had been guided by what Wylie, in later years, described as a rare sense of intuition that had enabled her to carry through her numerous schemes. And he knew, without doubt, that she had recognized in the situation before her an opportunity to turn it to their advantage.

“What harebrained plot are you concocting now?” he demanded.

“Not a harebrained plot at all,” the Lady from Hell said coolly. “I simply intend to release Cruz Delgado from his detectives and make it possible for him to escape... for a price, of course.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Wylie said. “We’re in the middle of the Atlantic, we’re practically penniless, and when this ship arrives in Cadiz, Delgado will be met by a squad of the marine police who will take him in charge. What chance have you of getting him free?”

“I have an idea,” Vivian said slowly.

“Well?” Wylie demanded.

She shook her head. “It’s too vague to put into words. I’ve got to puzzle it out. But I think, Adrian, that well land in Cadiz with enough money to give us a start, anyhow.”

Wylie looked genuinely worried.

“I wish, Vivian, that you would wait until I am well enough to be of some help to you. Seeing you run headlong into danger when I am still so banged up isn’t improving my peace of mind.”

Vivian rose and patted him on the shoulder.

“Don’t you worry about me, Adrian. I can take care of myself.”

“All the same,” he insisted, “I wish you’d wait before you start anything.”

Vivian flared up in one of the rare bursts of anger ever displayed by her toward her companion in crime.

“Wait... wait... wait. That’s all I’ve been hearing from you lately. How soon do you suppose another opportunity like this will drop into our laps? How long shall I wait? Until we both starve?”

Wylie laid back with a little sigh and closed his eyes. He knew that the issue was closed.

II

Vivian’s first concern, in her campaign, was her clothes. The several kindly women on the ship had managed to get together a small but becoming wardrobe for the unfortunate survivor of the burned ship.

Then, perfectly garbed and groomed, she proceeded to ingratiate herself with one of the two Spanish detectives who were escorting Delgado back from the Argentine. This was an easy matter. The Latin is notoriously responsive to the flicker of a pretty woman’s eyes, whether he be a detective on duty, or a caballero at a sidewalk café table.

An inquiry of one of the detectives about a passing ship was the entering wedge to an acquaintanceship which within a few days had ripened into friendship. That in turn was followed by an introduction to the second detective and one night after dinner, under the very noses of his guards, Vivian’s opportunity came.

She slipped a note into the hands of Cruz Delgado. He read it when Vivian had attracted the attention of his two guards, and five minutes later he began to complain of a headache, requesting that he be permitted to go to his cabin.

Nothing loath to be free of him in order to continue their joint pursuit of this red haired woman with the eyes that promised sublime enchantment, the two detectives handcuffed Delgado to his berth, locked the door and rejoined Vivian. In turn the Lady from Hell requested them to wait for her on the upper deck for a few minutes while she saw to the comfort of her friend with the broken ribs.

The deck was deserted as she made her way down to the porthole that belonged to the fugitive’s cabin. It was in darkness, but a ray of light from the deck lamp fell across the face of the man in the berth.

Vivian leaned carelessly against the deck wall, the light from the overhead light catching her red hair and turning it into a flaming aureole above her exquisitely exotic face. To an observer she would have seemed a woman leaning casually against the wall with no thought of the open porthole beside her. Her call, low, guarded, had nevertheless sufficient carrying power to reach the man.

“I did as you said,” Delgado whispered, “but I do not understand why you wished it.”

“I thought that perhaps you might wish to escape,” Vivian answered swiftly.

The man strained upward against his handcuffs, his face working eagerly. He registered an impression of slightness, but in reality he was a big brute, with a face from which varied dissipations had wiped every trace of color and the strange eyes did nothing to lighten it. They were lusterless, burned out with a coldness in them that suggested the filmed eyes of a crocodile.

Those cold eyes of his now were fixed intently on Vivian’s face, seen through the window.

“Escape? But of course. Can you arrange it?”

“I can,” Vivian shot back at him. “For a price.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the man said eagerly. “How much of a price?”

“That depends,” Vivian told him coolly, “on how much money you have.”

“I have five hundred pesetas,” he said thoughtfully, but there was a curious note in his voice.

“Is that all your life is worth?”

“It is all I have.” He insisted.

“So,” Vivian said harshly. She did not miss the cunning which lifted a corner of the man’s lips. At the bottom of her eyes a light flashed and went out. “You would attempt to bargain, with your life as the stake. I know that Detective Sanchez has three thousand pesetas he is keeping for you. I want that three thousand... and more... as the price of your liberty.”

“I tell you I have no more,” the man snarled.

“A man is dead a long time,” Vivian said, and her voice crackled like the snap of a whip. The light from above touched her face... glinted on the cold iciness of her eyes. She turned away.

“Wait,” the man’s voice came to her shrilly. “I have more.”

His long fingers, that were like ivory claws, started to crawl back and forth on the edge of the bunk like one of the great white hunting spiders that natives of the tropics keep in the thatch of their huts to prey on the lizards and crockroaches. The resemblance was uncanny.

“How much?” Vivian queried harshly.

“Two thousand pesetas,” the man said. “It is sewn in the lining of my coat and the detectives did not find it. But that is all. I swear it by the Madonna and all the saints.”

Vivian leaned against the porthole again.

“That is better,” she said. “Did you think me a child to believe that Cruz Delgado would not have money hidden where he could put his hands upon it in an emergency? Now listen. We reach Cadiz the day after tomorrow, and I will arrange your escape there. But there is something that you must do also.”

For five minutes she talked swiftly, outlining to the bandit what he must do, and then, lest her two Spaniards on the deck above become restless, returned to them.

There was not a cloud in the sky as the ship moved slowly toward Cadiz, a city of white stone and marble, joined to the mainland by the slenderest strip of yellowed earth. Already the nearest of the miradores, towers originally built as lookouts from which the garrison could discern the approach of returning treasure-laden galleons, was looming abreast of the ship.

The driving energy that was behind Vivian never caused her to hurry or to stumble. She knew how to attack swiftly, but her plan of attack was always thorough to the last detail. Now, with the moment of action upon her, her restless mind went around and around her plans, shoring up guards against contingencies that had not arisen, might never arise.

For the plan that she had concocted for the escape of Cruz Delgado was a daring one... so daring and so simple that its very simplicity made for success. It was a scheme that not one woman in a million would have attempted... that not one man in a million would have dreamed a woman would attempt... and that also made for its success.

With a last glance out of her window the Lady from Hell slipped out of her stateroom and made her way down the corridor to Cabin 12, occupied by Delgado and his two guards. Delgado, she knew, would be in the cabin, handcuffed to his berth, and the two detectives would be smoking aft.

Keeping them there had been the duty assigned to Wylie, and detectives are detectives the world over. As long as a new found friend stood ready to pay for the bottle of liquor on the table before them, they would remain in the smoking room until it was finished.

The door of the cabin was not locked. The detectives had seen no need to lock it, since their prisoner was handcuffed to the rail of his berth. What they did not know was the fact that not ten minutes before the Lady from Hell had skillfully picked the pocket of one of the detectives of a ring of keys... among them the key to the handcuffs.

Delgado raised his head eagerly as the door swung open. He started to speak but Vivian raised a warning hand.

“Don’t talk,” she said. “Somebody passing might hear.”

Bending over she tried key after key until the right one clicked in the lock and the handcuffs opened.

Cautiously she peered out into the corridor. It was empty.

In a moment Vivian and the man she had released made their way along the corridor to Vivian’s cabin.

After a minute Wylie arrived. A look of profound astonishment flashed over his face as he saw who her companion was.

“Good God, Vivian,” he said in a tense voice, “I didn’t know, when you asked me to keep those detectives busy, that this was what you intended. Bringing this man to your cabin is madness. You’ll spend the balance of your life in a Spanish jail for this. Don’t you know they’ll search the ship... every inch of it... when they find him gone.”

Cruz Delgado took a step toward Wylie, his long slender fingers working as if they longed to get at Wylie’s throat.

“This is no business of yours,” he began ominously, when Vivian cut him short with an abrupt gesture.

“Keep quiet,” she snapped. Then she turned to Wylie. “I know what I’m doing, Adrian. Go to your cabin. Please. It would be fatal if the searchers found you here when they arrived. Stay in your cabin until I tap on the door.”

“But...” Wylie began.

She cut him short as a glance through the porthole showed her the scarlet sails of the pilot boat rounding alongside the steamer.

“Adrian, time is precious.”

Without another word he turned and left. She locked the door behind him.

“Now you,” Vivian snapped to Delgado. “Get in there...” She flung open the bathroom door... “And stay there. And if you want to live, don’t make a sound.”

She closed the door behind him and began swiftly throwing off her clothes.

Ten minutes later a ship’s officer, accompanied by a sailor and one of the detectives tapped on the door of Vivian’s cabin. There was no response. The ship’s officer tried the knob and, finding the door locked, opened it with his pass key.

The cabin was deserted. A gaily colored sports dress was laid neatly across the berth. A pair of filmy silk stockings hung from; the back of a chair. Intimate, lacy underthings lay in a little heap in front of the door, so close, in fact, that the men were compelled to step over them to enter. From the bathroom came the sound of splashing water and above it the sound of Vivian’s voice humming a gay little Spanish air.

The two men exchanged glances and then the detective tapped on the bathroom door. The singing and the splashing stopped abruptly.

“Who is there?” Vivian demanded.

“It is an officer of the ship, señorita,” came back the answer. “We are searching the ship for an escaped criminal. Will you open the door, please?”

“Certainly not,” she replied indignantly. “I am bathing.”

“I am sorry, señorita, but it^- is of the utmost importance that we search the ship. You must open the door.”

“This is most outrageous,” they heard her sputter, and then the door was opened a trifle, just far enough for the officer to see Vivian clothed in a thin silken dressing gown that failed utterly to conceal her lovely form. She was wet. Water dripped from her face, her shoulders, her arms. The silken dressing gown, rapidly becoming soaked, clung closely, about her, revealing the sensuous contours of her figure. It was obvious that she had just stepped from the brimming tub.

There was a strange little flicker, like fever, playing behind those slanting green eyes. Present in her was the knowledge, like the tension of muscles in, the presence of fear, that she must play these men with all the subtlety that; the years of her criminal life had given her.

“This is outrageous,” she repeated angrily, and the most skilled actress alive could not have thrown more sincerity behind those three words. It told of the outraged modesty of a woman... of many things. Then, as if aware for the first time of the revealing qualities of the thin silken covering, she closed the door except for the merest crack. “I shall complain to the captain.”

“I am truly sorry, señorita,” the ship’s officer said, “but we are searching the ship for an escaped criminal.”

“Am I then supposed to have him concealed in my bath,” she asked in withering scorn. She had long ago learned that anger mixed with scorn is... next to tears... a woman’s chief advantage against men... a citadel against the aggressive. “Can you think of no better place to look than a bathroom while a lady takes a bath?”

She closed the door with a bang, leaned against it listening. In that instant it was almost as if she were a tautened wire which vibrated to the least sound from, the cabin outside. The pounding of her pulses which had crept up imperceptibly to a roaring crescendo during those dragging seconds of nerve splitting suspense suddenly died down. Her blood ran cold and smooth as a river of ice.

Outside that door that had been slammed in their faces the ship’s officer looked at the detective with a grin.

“I think,” he said, “that we had better search elsewhere for our escaped prisoner.”

The outer door closed behind them. A dozen tense seconds passed before either the Lady from Hell or the man with her moved or spoke. Then she turned to Cruz Delgado crouching under a pile of rumpled bath towels in the angle formed by the wall and the bathroom door.

“You’re safe... so far,” she said with a grim smile. “Now to get you ashore under the noses of the police.”

III

Hardly had she finished when the clang of the engine room bell and the shuddering of the ship’s fabric from the propellers as the engines reversed and went astern told her that they were nearing the dock. A swift glance out of the bathroom window showed her that they were almost alongside. Five minutes, ten at the most and the Civil Guard would be aboard. And there would be no tricking them with the bathroom ruse. Every inch of the ship would be searched until the escaped bandit was found.

Racing against time and the inevitable search she dressed and then opened the bathroom door.

“The money,” she said tersely.

The man laughed. “You take me for a fool? When I am ashore, free, then you get your money. Until then, not one peseta.”

“And unless I get my money now,” the Lady from Hell told him dangerously, “you will never be free. I’ll call the detectives... tell them that I found you hiding in my cabin when I came from my bath.”

Her face was impassive. Only her eyes were alive... they were hard, deadly bits of emerald. There were men in Havana, in Haiti, in Monteverde who could have told Delgado that the shadow of death hung in the air when that cold light glowed in the eyes of the Lady from Hell.

“But suppose your plan fails?” the man queried. “Suppose I am captured. What then?”

“That is a chance you must take,” she told him flatly. “Give me the money — or I call the detectives.”

Delgado laughed, a sneer in his voice. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said. “I would say you helped me to escape and you would spend the rest of your life in a Spanish jail.”

“Oh, no,” Vivian said smoothly, and before Delgado had grasped the significance of her movement her hand had moved with the speed of a striking snake... the tiny but deadly revolver that she was never without covered him. “Dead men tell no tales... or betray women who aid them. I heard a noise... I turned... a man was in my cabin... he attacked me... and I killed him...”

She raised her gun slowly. The face of the man opposite her had turned the color of putty. Ruthless himself, he knew the quality of deadly ruthlessness in others when he met it, and he realized that this woman was as much of a killer as any one he had ever met.

He clawed at the seams of his coat frantically, his eyes fixed on the muzzle of that gun that covered him without a tremor. Pulling out the bank notes hidden there, he handed them to the Lady from Hell. She tucked them away. The gangplank was out now, and she saw a detail of uniformed Civil Guards swarming aboard.

“You know what you have to do,” she said. “If you slip...” she did not finish. There was no need. Delgado could visualize, without aid, what was in store for him if he failed.

There was no one in sight in the corridor as she opened the door and peered out. Then, moving with that tigerish gait, she made her way down the corridor and turned toward the staircase that led to the deck. At its foot a uniformed Civil Guard stood barring the way.

Vivian was panting for breath, as though she had been running and her eyes were wide with fright.

The guard halted her. “You cannot pass this way, señorita,” he said. “The passengers are to assemble in the dining saloon while the ship is being searched for a dangerous criminal.”

“But I must see the captain,” she said in evident distress. “The criminal... the man for whom they search... is in my cabin.”

“Your cabin!” the man cried, and raised his whistle to summon a comrade. Vivian halted him. “Do not call aid,” she whispered tensely, with a swift look of fear over her shoulder. “If you do, he will flee. He doesn’t know that I know he is in my cabin. He is in the open space beneath the berth. If you hurry, you can capture him without trouble.” Then she suggested cunningly, “It would please your officers if you captured him without aid, would it not?”

That was the clinching argument. Cruz Delgado was a dangerous criminal. To capture him single handed, with ease, and turn him over to the officer in command would mean official commendation... promotion.

Without another word the guard followed her down the corridor.

“It is Cabin 12,” she whispered. “I left the door slightly open. Go in, and call to him to come out.”

Drawn gun in hand, the man opened the cabin door, looked about, then stepped inside... and dropped to the floor without a sound as Delgado hit him viciously over the head with the short iron bar that Wylie had stolen for Vivian and Delgado.

Even as he struck the floor Vivian was inside the cabin, the door closed and locked and was twisting a strip of cloth about the man’s mouth as a gag. He was unconscious now, but no use taking chances.

“Get into his clothes,” she whispered. “Hurry,” and aided the bandit to strip off the guard’s uniform.

There was, luckily, not a great deal of difference between the guard and the escaped criminal. The uniform fitted sufficiently well to pass muster. Together they dressed the unconscious man on the floor in the garments Delgado had worn.

“From now on,” she whispered to Delgado, “you must act alone. I can do nothing. You know the habits of the Civil Guard better than I do. Remain here until the man recovers consciousness. Then, keeping him gagged, with his hands bound, make him march ashore as the escaped prisoner you have captured. The officer will be in the dining saloon with the passengers. There is a guard at the head of the gangplank. If he halts you, tell him that you are taking Delgado ashore by your officer’s orders. Good luck.”

She stepped out and closed the door... heard the key click in the lock behind her. A tap on Wylie’s door and her companion in crime joined her in the corridor.

“All set,” she whispered. “We’ve got to get up into the saloon, so that we’re in the clear if anything breaks.”

The Lady from Hell carefully chose a seat beside a window that looked down on the gangplank, and waited as the officer in charge questioned each passenger in turn.

The heat of the Spanish midday was on the gangplank like the white hot blade of a sword. Vivian kept her eyes fixed upon it, scarcely conscious of the conversation of the two men behind her, unrelating fragments lodging in her brain but making no impression... until... “Anxious to capture... not so much because he’s a brigand... what he knows... tremendous treasure... hid all his loot in mountains... left there when he fled to the Argentine... Cruz Delgado...”

The Lady from Hell sat up alertly, listening intently. The conversation went on.

“The officials estimate that he must have several hundred thousand pesetas hidden away. If it weren’t for that, they’d shoot him as soon as they got him ashore. But the government would like to get their hands on that money, and no one but Delgado himself knows where it is hidden.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a Civil Guard descending the gangplank holding tightly to the bound and gagged figure of a man in civilian clothes.

Delgado, posing as a member of the Civil Guard, was audaciously making his escape. Another moment he would be free, lost in the Cadiz underworld.

“Oh, look!” Vivian exclaimed in a loud voice. “They’ve captured the man who escaped. There’s a guard taking him ashore.”

The officer looked up alertly.

“What is that, señorita?”

Vivian repeated what she had said and pointed through the porthole. With an exclamation the officer ran out onto the deck and toward the gangplank shouting at the two figures on their way down the plank.

Delgado realized at once that success or failure hung in the balance with seconds tipping the scales between freedom and capture. With an oath he flung the bound figure of the guard aside and made a break for the end of the wharf. But he was too late. The shouts of the officer had reached the guards at the gate and, with only ten feet separating him from the sunlit street and freedom, Delgado saw the gates close in his face. He whirled, gun in hand, to make a last stand, and a guard sprang out at him from a pile of freight. A short struggle — and he was a prisoner again.

With a little contented sigh Vivian turned back from the scene she had been watching. She wasted no thoughts upon the man she had double crossed. That was like the Lady from Hell. If a thing... a man... had no further usefulness for her, it was tossed into the discard at once, without sentiment, without regret. Likewise, if a thing... or a person... could still be useful to her, she would cling to it with every bit of savagery she possessed. In all her long and glamorous career of crime she had fought viciously for any member of her gang in trouble. And once something was in the past, she wasted no thoughts over it.

She met Wylie’s puzzled eyes with a smile.

“Why did you do that, Vivian?” he whispered, under cover of the general excitement. “Why didn’t you let the poor devil escape? After all, he deserved getting away. He’d paid you what you asked.”

“Yes,” Vivian said thoughtfully. “He paid... but not all he is going to pay.”

The fact that Cadiz was a strange city and that she had no extensive underworld connections was no obstacle to the Lady from Hell. There was scarcely a city of major importance in Europe where she did not know the name and address of at least one of those shadowy figures of the underworld who kept his fingers on the pulse of crime for his own benefit. In one city it might be a fence who, unsuspected by the police, handled stolen works of art; in another, a man who made it his business to finance robberies, putting up a specific sum for a specific job.

Cadiz was no exception. There was an Arab rug merchant there, Es Sayed, and it was to him that Vivian sent word, on the third day after her arrival in the city. He came, bearing a huge bundle of rugs and primed with the knowledge, obtained for a price from the Hotel Portero, that the woman who had sent for him was a wealthy Englishwoman.

He knocked on the door of her room and at her command to enter, came slowly in and dropped his bundle of rugs on the floor. He was a tall Arab, thin almost to the point of emaciation, with bony fingers and deep sunken eyes that seemed like two bits of agate set in a coffee-brown mask.

“You wish to purchase rugs,” he inquired in French.

The Lady from Hell looked at him quietly, sizing him up. Her eyes, rather heavy lidded, and green as the precious tiles set in the roof of the Mosque in Mecca, were baffling.

“Not rugs,” she said quietly, “information—”

Their eyes met, and they exchanged one long, calculating glance. The Arab seemed to be appraising the woman who lounged in the comfortable Madeira chair. The face that the Lady from Hell turned to his gaze was an expressive one... only, something that few men discovered until it was too late... it expressed exactly what its owner wished it to express, never anything more.

Es Sayed shook his head, stooped over to pick up his rugs.

“I sell only rugs,” he returned courteously.

Vivian smiled. “To those who do now know you, perhaps. But to those who come well recommended there may be other things to be had... such things for instance, as a knife and the hand to wield it from behind on a dark street; poisons... the slower the poison the higher the price. And perhaps... and the Spaniards might be interested in this... deserters from the Spanish Foreign Legion aided in their escape to French or Italian soil.”

The Arab’s face darkened. He shot a swift, hooded glance from Vivian’s impassive face to that of Wylie. “Who are you to dare to suggest that an honest rug merchant would meddle in such things as these?”

Vivian smiled again. “I have been called,” she said gently, “the Lady from Hell.”

A swift smile broke the brown mask. “Allah,” the man ejaculated. The name was familiar to him, as it was to every criminal of importance in every European country. He looked at her closely and nodded. “Forgive me for not recognizing you. I have been stupid. Who is there that does not know the reputation of the Lady from Hell? What is it that you wish?”

“I wish to check certain information that I have obtained from a guard at the prison,” Vivian said thoughtfully. “One Manuel Vivian. I have made his acquaintance... no matter how... and for some strange reason he believes that I am attracted by him. Among the bits of information that he has given me is the statement that he is the guard in the execution courtyard of the prison. I want that statement checked, and also to find if he is the only guard on duty.”

The Arab nodded. “That will be difficult. I do not know this particular guard, but such information is easily checked.” He paused a moment. “It would not be difficult to bribe a prison guard to perform a little service for you... such as smuggling in a message... but you have no guarantees that he would not turn it over to the Comandante. As for anything greater... it cannot be done. Not that they are incorruptible, but they are kept honest by fear. A guard who betrayed his trust would find himself facing a firing squad.”

“I have no intention of bribing a guard,” Vivian told him, with a grim smile. She, better than most women knew that there were lures greater than money that might be dangled before the eyes of susceptible men, and she had already considered and dismissed the possibility of smuggling in a message. “Then,” she went on evenly, “I wish this purchased and brought to my room in a bundle of rugs.” She handed him a slip of paper. “There must be nothing to connect me with the purchase.”

The Arab glanced at the slip of paper and raised protesting hands.

“It cannot be done,” he expostulated. “It is impossible. Sale of it is forbidden. Possession of it, regardless of whom, means imprisonment and possible death. What do you wish it for?”

The Lady from Hell looked at him with the unreadable, faintly slant-eyed gaze that, had he known her better, would have told him that trouble was brewing. Her voice was suddenly harsh.

“That is my business. It is your business to give me what I want... unless, of course, you would like the Spanish authorities to know of the deserters who come to you in the night and are fitted out with new clothes and false passports...”

There was behind her words a suggestion of a blade that would slice and cut if its owner loosed it. The Arab quailed before the suggestion contained in her words.

“It is a difficult thing,” he said. “But I think that I can do it. I have connections...”

“I know,” Vivian cut him short. “Now, one other thing. I wish a large scale map of the prison and the surrounding streets, particularly with reference to the execution courtyard.”

“That will not be difficult,” the Arab said thoughtfully. “But...”

He was cut short by a knock on the door. Vivian opened it. It was the hotel porter.

“Don José Obarrio is below, señorita,” he said.

Vivian nodded and closed the door. The Arab’s eyes were wide. He had recognized the name.

“The Comandante of the prison,” he breathed.

“The Comandante,” Vivian agreed, drawing on her smart gloves. “I am making a tour of inspection of the prison with him.” She pulled on the chic little hat and then, picking up a little cluster of flowers on the table, pinned them on her shoulder.

Wylie smiled grimly at the flowers. There was more to those flowers than met the eye. Vivian directed a long hard look at the Arab. “In the event,” she said, “that you should surmise my reasons for asking these things and be tempted to betray me for a reward... there is a letter in the hotel office concerning you that the police would undoubtedly find if I should be arrested.”

She turned and swept out of the door, leaving Wylie to complete arrangements with the Arab.

Comandante Don José Obarrio might not have twirled the thin waxed spikes of his mustache as he waited in the hotel lobby if he had realized that he was being skillfully played by the Lady from Hell, as an expert angler plays a fish. Neither would it have been soothing to his vanity if he had known that the interest the woman with the flaming red hair and slanting green eyes was bestowing upon him was simply the interest bestowed upon an important pawn in a game.

It hadn’t been difficult for the Lady from Hell to make the acquaintance of Don José. The gentleman had a roving eye for the ladies, and she had employed the same means on the Comandante as she had on the prison guard. She had made discreet inquiries as to the Comandante’s favorite café. A tip to the waiter had secured her a table next to him. It had not been difficult to persuade him to speak to her... and her interest at subsequent meetings, at what went on behind the scenes in a prison had brought forth today’s invitation to make a tour of the prison over which Don José ruled.

The Comandante rose and tossed away his cigarette as Vivian came down the hotel stairs.

“I am sorry to be so late,” she said, “but a business matter detained me.”

It would not have added to the Comandante’s peace of mind, as they walked toward his official car parked outside the hotel, to have known that the “business” was a scheme to release his most prized prisoner.

There is only one building in Cadiz with thicker, more massive walls than the prison. That is the Capuchin convent which guards the Virgin of Cadiz, and the reason for those thick walls is the fact that the prison was once a church prison, used by the inquisition for heretics awaiting trail.

With a great deal of pride Don José showed the Lady from Hell his domain, and it was while passing the entrance to the quarters of the guards that catastrophe almost struck.

A guard, his uniform coat off, was lounging at the entrance. He looked up and a look of astonishment flashed over his sallow face as he saw Vivian. He started to speak, would have spoken, if the look of warning on her own face, the gesture with which she halted him, had not been unmistakable.

It was only for a moment that danger threatened. The realization came to the guard that it would not help him with the Comandante if that official knew that the woman he escorted through the prison with such ceremony was the woman of whom this guard had such high hopes.

Vivian breathed a sigh of relief and the tension was unlocked from her muscles as they moved on and Manuel, the guard, did not speak. A moment or two later the Lady from Hell and her companion halted at the end of a gloomy corridor.

“And now, Señorita Legrand,” the Comandante said, “that you have seen my prison, what do you think of it?”

“But I am disappointed,” Vivian cried. “You have shown me nothing but iron bars and stone walls. Where are the dark dungeons, the mysterious passages, the prisoners in chains?” She threw a world of scorn into her voice. “Is your prison then merely a jail for petty thieves and such people?”

“There are dungeons,” the Comandante admitted, “but you would not want to descend to them. They are dark and dirty.”

“Oh, but I do,” she insisted, catching his arm. “You must show them to me. Have you important prisoners there?”

“One very important one,” the Comandante said. “Cruz Delgado, the bandit.”

“A bandit! Oh, how romantic,” Vivian gushed, but in her eyes glinted that spearhead of fire, a danger signal that even the most formidable of her associates had come to know and respect. “I must see him.”

The Comandante stopped before the iron bars of a cell.

“He is there,” he said.

Vivian peered into the dark little room. He did not see the swift gesture with which she put her finger to her lips and if he noticed that an exclamation died in utterance on the lips of the bandit chief, he paid no attention.

“Poor fellow,” Vivian said pityingly. “How long must he remain in prison?”

“He dies tomorrow morning at dawn,” the Comandante said grimly.

Vivian gave a start of dismay. The green pools of her eyes seemed to stir as if a wind had passed over them, became veiled, as if their owner wished to shut out something that might betray her. She had not expected this. She would have to work fast. Then she looked at Don José with a little pathetic smile edging her lips.

“Poor fellow,” she breathed.

Before the Comandante could stop her she had ripped a cluster of flowers from where it was pinned to her shoulder and thrust them through the bars.

“Take them,” she breathed to Delgado, with a little catch in her voice. “Perhaps they will comfort you before you die.”

She turned away toward the staircase, followed by Don José.

“You are too soft,” he said. “Delgado is a dangerous rogue.”

The Lady from Hell smiled charmingly. “Alas, I cannot help it,” she said with a little sigh. “It is my nature.”

Behind them, Cruz Delgado’s fingers were swiftly tearing at the little cluster of flowers. In his eyes and upon his face was a light like that of a condemned man who has been granted a reprieve. The Lady from Hell shot a glance over her shoulder, just in time to see him snatching from the heart of one of the flowers a thin slip of paper covered with writing.

Wylie had worked for a long time that morning to secrete that slip of rice paper in the flower, and Delgado read the instructions it contained with glowing eyes. Then he rolled the paper into a tiny ball and swallowed it.

Dawn was hours away when the Lady from Hell and her companion left their Cadiz hotel and walked swiftly in the direction of the prison.

IV

The afternoon and evening had been a busy one... one of the busiest ones in the long career of the Lady from Hell. There had been so many loose ends to tie into their scheme, and so little time in which to accomplish it. Both were dressed in dark clothes and Wylie carried a large leather bag.

They did not take a taxi. Better, Vivian reasoned, to leave no trail that might point toward her. If the scheme she planned was successful, they would have a start on a new fortune to replace the one that had been lost to them. If anything went wrong... there was a vivid recollection in her mind of the gloomy cells of the prison she had visited that afternoon.

There was little conversation between them. They had gone over their plans in minute detail and little remained to be said. Vivian was keenly aware of the difficulty of the thing she had set out to do. Her brain was working coolly, methodically, judicially, and in her eyes as she walked along, was a light more hard and calculating than is usually found even in the eyes of a beast of prey.

The dark little side street with an uneven narrow sidewalk and cobbled street that was their destination had been four hundred years old when Rome was founded; it had echoed to the arrogant tread of Phoenician traders eleven hundred years before the Christian era, for Cadiz is the oldest city in Spain. In the shadowy alcove of a huddle of buildings she found the spot that she sought... a narrow, iron barred door in the towering brick wall.

“Keep out of sight, whatever you do,” she told Wylie. “Whatever happens don’t show yourself until I call you. With your shattered ribs, you haven’t strength enough to be of much help. Your gun is to be used only as a last resort.”

Wylie, resenting the minor role his injuries forced him to play, melted into the shadow of one of the houses and Vivian glanced at her watch. Five minutes to three. Five minutes to the time when the Arab had told her that Manuel, the guard she had been playing, would pass the gate on his rounds.

A footstep was audible on the flagstones inside and as it came opposite the gateway the Lady from Hell rapped sharply on the doorway. The sound was clear and distinct in the stillness of the night... too loud, Vivian feared for a moment. The footsteps halted, then resumed, and a tiny iron wicket in the thick gateway was shot back.

“Manuel,” she whispered.

The man stared out through the grating incredulously.

“You,” he whispered in Spanish. “But what are you doing here?”

“I must see you,” she whispered back. “That was why I persuaded the Comandante to show me through the prison today. I thought that I might see you then, but I could not talk while he was with me.” She was lying expertly, but the man did not know that. “Open the gate, and let me in.”

“No, no,” he said, “I cannot open the gate. It is forbidden.”

The keynote of her plan lay in her persuading him to open the gate. Without that, she was doomed to failure. “But I am going away. Would you have me leave without my farewell?”

There was an exclamation from the man and the sound of a key grating in a lock. The door swung open and Vivian slipped through it into the courtyard of the prison.

“But you did not tell me you were going away today,” Manuel told her as she slipped into his arms and nestled there.

“I did not know it until an hour ago, when I received a message,” she said. “I could not go without seeing you.”

“I will not let you go,” he man said. “You must stay.”

“I must go,” Vivian told him. She disengaged herself gently from his arms and lit a cigarette, shielding the tiny glow from chance observation of some other guard about the great stone building towering above them in the darkness. “I can stay only so long as this cigarette lasts. That is all the time we have.” She extended the case to him. “Smoke one with me.”

There was only one cigarette left in the case. The guard took it, lit it and then launched volubly into a torrent of reasons why she should not leave. Never a shadow quivered on the face of the Lady from Hell as she watched the cigarette smoke trickle from the guard’s nostrils, but in her eyes a flash came and went like unsuspected summer lighting, leaving no sign but only a memory of its passing.

She listened, interjecting a word now and then. The cigarette was half consumed when her keen ears caught the first faint hint of a hesitancy in the guard’s speech; a hesitancy that grew until it seemed that the man was fighting against an overpowering sleep... as indeed he was. The single cigarette left in the Lady from Hell’s case had been drugged and now, the man’s eyes closed and he leaned against the wall, crumpled toward the flagging. Vivian caught him, lowered him gently, so that his equipment would make no noise as he struck.

Satisfying herself that he was out and not likely to recover for some time, Vivian opened the gate. Wylie, watching from his shadowy corner saw her, saw the gesture with which she beckoned, and crossed stealthily to her side.

Together they searched along the brick wall until they found the spot they sought... a space where scarred and pitted bricks told their own story. This was the execution courtyard, and the spot they had found was the place where prisoners invariably stood to face a firing squad. The wall there was marked with the grooves of countless bullets.

Working in the purple darkness where each little distance isolated itself absolutely, like a man in a black cloak turning his back, Vivian carefully measured off the distance from the execution spot in the corner of the courtyard to the gateway in the wall, and then, in the narrow street outside, measured the distance again. With a piece of chalk she made a mark on the wall.

“Here,” she told Wylie, “I think one row of bricks will be sufficient. Take them out, and then the bricks behind them, and I think you will have sufficient space. When you are through replace the outer bricks. No need to be careful about the replacement. It will be too dark in this Street for anyone passing to notice anything out of the way.”

Nodding understanding, Wylie placed the large leather bag he carried on the pavement and began at the old bricks of the wall with a chisel, as Vivian turned back toward the courtyard again.

And then fate, which had been dogging their heels ever since they left Monteverde, threatened to wreck the whole elaborate structure she had created.

She stepped into the courtyard just in time to see a figure bending over the form of the guard on the flagstones. The newcomer raised his head, sprang to his feet as the sound of the opening gateway came to his ears.

“Who is it?” he demanded sharply. “Stand where you are, or I shall shoot.”

Vivian halted, under her quiet all her muscles and nerves gathered together like a cat, bunched for a spring. Her own gun was in readiness. She could have shot the man down, but that would have been fatal to her plans. A shot would bring the other prison guards swarming into the courtyard. Powerful lights would be turned on... and their plans would be shattered, ruined irrevocably.

She saw the man, an officer by the shining bits of metal on his uniform, raising a hand toward his mouth. In another moment, she knew, he would blow his whistle, giving the alarm.

She had scarcely a split second in which to act to prevent their whole scheme from being ruined. And in that split second she acted. Her right hand, which had crept stealthily toward the neckline of her dress, was flung up and forward. The starshine touched a streak of silver in the darkness, and the knife that the Lady from Hell had flung struck its target. Even in the darkness her aim had been true. The knife plunged into the base of the man’s throat, the keen blade slicing into the flesh like soft butter. The officer gurgled chokingly, his hand groped toward the deadly weapon in his throat, and he sank to the pavement.

Silence followed, silence so complete and abrupt as to give the uncanny sensation that the clatter of the man’s gun as he fell had been only a queer trick of the mind.

A sibilant whisper from the gateway brought Wylie to her side. Together they moved the body of the dead officer to a little tool shed in a remote corner of the courtyard. Then, after binding and gagging the drugged warder lest he awake before the hour set for the execution, they placed him beside his officer in the shed. The bloodstains on the flagstones would not be noticed, she knew, when Cruz Delgado was marched into the yard. Attention would be concentrated on the prisoner walking to his death.

Then, locking the gate behind them, they slipped out into the silver-blue darkness of the ancient Roman street. Twenty minutes later the two straightened up. Three bricks lay at the foot of the wall, but the outer row had been replaced, and to the casual eye the wall had not been disturbed.

“Now,” Vivian said softly. “Everything is in readiness. In an hour Cruz Delgado will be in our hands again... if there is no hitch. And once we have him I think that he will be glad to show us the hiding place of all his loot.”

Wylie nodded grimly. He had seen the Lady from Hell wring secrets from unwilling men before this, and her methods, unpleasant though they might be to her victims, were uncommonly effective.

The dawn was killing the stars, clear and cold in tint, beneath a sky shifting in color from smoke gray to aquamarine and icy blue, when the sound of a trumpet somewhere in the prison told them that the hour for execution was at hand. The Lady from Hell, crouching with Wylie behind the ruined façade of a house across the narrow street from the execution courtyard, stirred and peered out through a crack in the board nailed across one of the windows.

They waited tensely. The zero hour was approaching. Another few moments would either see the consummation of one of the most brazen and dangerous schemes that the Lady from Hell ever attempted — or find them inside a Spanish prison, locked in—

The clang of the iron door and the sound of marching feet!

The Lady from Hell stiffened, and for a moment Wylie’s eyes were caught by a glittering stare.

The showdown had come. Cruz Delgado, she knew, was being marched to his death. The sound of tramping feet, the officer’s crisp commands, came clearly to her ears through the still morning air.

There was a little silence... eerie... pregnant with meaning. The world seemed to be waiting for a vast event, imminently lurking. The Lady from Hell knew that the bandage was being adjusted over Delgado’s eyes, and on the moment that followed that tiny fragment of silence she knew hung the success or failure of her plot; the decision on whether they might have a chance to dip their fingers in Delgado’s hoarded treasures.

The silence was shattered, and she heard the sharp command of the officer in command of the firing squad.

“Ready... aim...”

It was the instant. A swift movement of her hand pressed the button on a small black box at her feet. The sound of a thunderous explosion filled the air.

Even as the sound of the explosion came, she could see a section of the wall toppling forward into the courtyard. And, the Lady from Hell knew, beneath that section of falling wall would be standing the firing squad. She had calculated it nicely — with ruthless certainty, dooming every man of that firing squad to either death or hideous injury.

Before the dust had settled, the two criminals saw a figure scrambling over the heaped-up bricks... the figure of Cruz Delgado, bandit leader. He had followed the instructions she had passed on to him, hidden in the duster of flowers, and the moment the wall had fallen, had darted for the breach in the wall before the remaining occupants of the courtyard had recovered from their astonishment.

The Lady from Hell opened the door of their hiding place and ran across the narrow street to meet him. There was a smile of grim triumph on her face as Delgado, Wylie and herself ran down the street to where a car was parked in readiness for their flight.

Cruz Delgado was the only man who knew the hiding place of the loot he had gathered during his desperate years of banditry. She had no doubt but there were methods she could utilize to persuade him to divulge that hiding place.