The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Katherine Brocklebank was unique in the history of Black Mask magazine, and a rara avis in the detective pulp fiction world in general. In the first place, she was a woman and, unless cloaked behind initials or a male pseudonym, the only one identified in the thirty-two-year history of Black Mask, even when it was under the control of a female editor, Fanny Ellsworth, from 1936 to 1940. Second, she created a female series character, Tex of the Border Patrol, who appeared in four stories late in the 1920s. Readers of Black Mask, as was true of all the detective pulps, demonstrated in their letters to the editor that they didn’t particularly care for either female protagonists or authors. While there were some exceptions in other popular magazines, fiction by or about women (except as sidekicks or girlfriends, or the occasional villain) represented a tiny fraction of the thousands of detective stories published annually in the golden age of the pulps (which was between the two World Wars).

“Bracelets,” the first story about Tex of the Border Patrol, was published in the December 1928 issue. The other three Black Mask stories in which she starred were “White Talons” (January 1929), “The Canine Tooth” (June 1929), and “The Silver Horseshoe” (July 1929).

A tale of Tia Juana after the closing hour of the Border and all the good folks have gone home.

Tex watched from the corners of her eyes, watched, with a tight little pucker around her heart.

The girl seemed so young, so incongruous in that blatantly obvious setting. She was like a flower from an old-fashioned garden and yet there she was in the ribald atmosphere of the Blue Fox — where Pancho, the shifty-eyed Mexican proprietor, rubbed his palms together and smiled his oily smile to his patrons; where Eddie swung his bamboo cane to the syncopated time of his moaning Hopa-Holi orchestra — Eddie who wore a chocolate brown suit to match his complexion, a screaming orange tie and a straw hat, who sang the latest popular ballads in a voice — untrained, crooning — as insidious as the ether-doped drinks that the silken-voiced bartenders slid across the bars of Old Town, that were now world-famous, polished to a dull red glow by the elbows of many nationalities.

Tex shifted her eyes to the long mirror back of the bar, noting her titian wig with an inward smile of satisfaction. Strangely enough her greenish gold eyes took on a copper glint. Her wide, good-humored mouth had turned to one of hard wisdom under the clever manipulation of a vivid lip-stick. The orange rouge, slapped carelessly on either cheekbone, gave the finishing touch to a Border percentage girl, calloused, eager — pathetic.

She eased away from the obese gentleman from Kansas City, who pawed her with maudlin intensity, and edged a little nearer to the girl. Her eyes traveled slowly over her, cognizant of the soft green silk dress; the skirt a bit longer than was smart, the floppy affair of black straw that shadowed her face. She seemed like a slender flower-stalk as she leaned against the bar, her arms draped across its stained surface, her fingers playing nervously with the string of bracelets she wore on her left wrist.

Tex noticed particularly the girl’s hands. Narrow and white with long, thin fingers that were never still — fingers that hovered constantly over the bracelets — bracelets that caught and held Tex’s attention. There were eight of them, Chinese, of intricate design, amber and gold, carved ivory, jade. They made a peculiar clanking sound whenever the girl moved her arm.

Tex let her gaze rove blearily along the string of heterogeneity that lined the bar: percentage girls, cheap, faded creatures with gold-filled teeth who wheedled unwilling male sightseers into buying them drinks; thrill-hunters; society matrons with a veneer of hauteur washed off by Border hooch; flappers; groggy daddies whose wives were abroad for the summer; doubtful ladies in shoddy evening clothes; crafty-eyed Mexicans; derelicts; law-dodgers.

Slowly Tex’s eyes came back to the girl and the vain little fish-faced man who stood beside her. They had come in together and Tex knew from things she had heard — never mind how or where — that this must be “The Eel.” A clever crook was The Eel, who had so far eluded the police, who was always under suspicion but had never been caught with the goods. He claimed to be Mexican, although his intimates knew that he was half Chinese. Under an assumption of intoxication Tex studied him closely. With his oily, mud-colored skin, slick black hair and opaque slanting eyes he resembled his pseudonym, and Tex imagined she’d want to wash her hands after touching him. He looked — slimy.

Tex lurched against the girl. “ ’Lo,” she gurgled in her slightly husky voice.

The girl looked up at her, startled. “ ’Lo,” she answered involuntarily, without smiling.

The Eel bent forward, giving Tex a sharp glance of mistrust, but when he saw her grinning at him vacantly he turned back to the girl and continued his low-toned conversation.

Tex edged a little nearer, endeavoring to hear his whispered words. He stopped short and Tex felt instinctively that he was regarding her with suspicion in the bar mirror. She hooked her arm in the girl’s in a sudden burst of alcoholic familiarity and felt the girl grow rigid — with fear? Tex wondered. “Have thish one on me, dearie,” said Tex.

The girl relaxed and smiled wanly. “Oh — thank you.” She pushed her empty glass across the bar.

“M’boyfren’ll buy fur the crowd — won’ yuh, honey?” Tex swayed toward the inebriated obesity from Kansas City, but he was slumped over the bar, oblivious to the percentage girls’ ever consuming thirst.

Tex shrugged. “Nev’ mind, dearie, Ah’s good sport. Ah’ll buy — mahshelf.” She opened her stringy bead bag a crack and peered blearily into its shabby depths.

“Aw, lay off, will yuh?” The Eel scowled darkly at her, flipped a coin to the bartender, grasped the girl by the arm, and pushed her through the crowd of black-bottom maniacs on the dance floor to the door.

Through the medium of the bar mirror Tex watched them vanish into the one main street, a street that was already growing dusk, a street that, after dark, was deserted, stealthy, dangerous — for those visitors who are foolish enough to loiter.

Tex loitered, loitered until the music stopped abruptly with harsh discordance; until the last stream of sightseers stampeded for the Border; until the gambling halls and open-fronted cantinas closed with mock modesty and a final sly wink of lights; until night shrouded the wicked little town with brooding silence and skulking shadows.

With a cold shiver of apprehension Tex lurched past Cæsar’s Bar and Paul’s. She felt as if eyes watched from yawning black doorways, darkened windows — eyes that were hostile, suspicious, sinister.

She hugged her beaded bag under her left arm, her right hand clasped over it, and felt the reassuring hardness of the small, snub-nosed pistol, with its Maxim silencer, as it snuggled securely within the torn lining.

She turned into the dimly lighted entrance of the San Francisco Cantina and stumbled up the cheaply carpeted stairs to her room. She closed the door with a bang and hiccoughed as she switched on the light. From under lowered lids she made a hasty survey of the small, bare room, then flung herself full-length on the bed, her purse held tightly across her breast.

One hour crawled by on furtive, dragging feet. Two. And still Tex lay on her springless wooden bed, feigning drunken slumber.

A slight breeze riffled in through the window stirring the sagging lace curtain to shake some of its dust in Tex’s nose. She suppressed a sneeze and turned it into a snore with a choked sort of snort on the end of it.

A little longer she listened to the swishing of the curtain as it flapped wearily in and out of the window. Then she thought she heard another sound. A shuffling sound, soft, guarded, muffled.

Slowly she sat up, swinging her feet quietly over the edge of the bed and eased them to the carpetless floor. Silently she crept across the room to the door and paused, tensing, listening, her bead bag clutched in her right hand.

At first there was nothing — just silence — then a faint hissing sound. Tex leaned nearer to the crack and a few whispered words drifted in to her.

“But, Señor Jefe, she ees wan of my percentage girls. Mucho good wan, too. You make wan beeg mistake. She ees not what you t’ink.” The voice was Pancho’s — Pancho of the Blue Fox.

“Well, I ain’t takin’ no chances. She talks like that Texan female dick... Anyway — we’ll leave him for her.”

In her startled surprise Tex lost the rest of the sentence. She gripped the bead bag more tightly. Damn that Texas drawl of hers! For a second she wished she had heeded her chief’s warning and brought Bobbie with her. Then she laughed softly, a shaky little laugh. She’d been in tight corners before since she’d entered the secret service four years ago, and through her quick wit and clear reasoning she had always managed to extricate herself — with honors — and part of the trapped underworld. That was why the chief had chosen her to unravel the skein of mystery that tangled around the strange death of Melville Hewett, a wealthy San Francisco merchant, and the disappearance of his son, Arthur. The Eel had been seen coming out of Hewett’s home the night before the murder.

Tex was suddenly aware of a curious absence of sound. She waited a moment, holding her breath, her left hand on the door-knob. Then with a swift, cat-like movement, she pulled the door toward her. It opened abruptly, as if someone were pushing against it. She flashed her hand inside her bag, her fingers closing around the pistol, but suddenly recoiled with a stifled cry as a man’s body plunged inward and fell forward on his face.

There was something peculiar about his swollen, twisted limbs. Something that vaguely reminded Tex of another man. Who was it? Then in a flash she knew. Melville Hewett had looked that same way.

With a revulsion of feeling toward touching anything lifeless, that she had never been able to overcome, she turned the man on his back.

Staring up at her with glassy eyes, with the contorted features of one who has died in agony, was Bobbie; Bobbie, who was the youngest member of the department and whom the chief had evidently sent to protect her.

Tex straightened, her eyes clouded with unexpected tears, and her heart felt sick. Bobbie was such a youngster. So straight and clean. Damn them! Her hot Texan blood began to boil. She’d get them for this!

She leaned over him again, examining him more closely, pondering. There were no marks of violence. No blood. Then the glint of a green circlet on his left wrist caught her eye. The bracelet was of jade, carved, Chinese. Attached to it by a slender gold chain was a small folded paper. Tex stiffened, for instinctively she knew it was a message for her. She spread the paper out and read the illiterate, scribbled words — Ull git yuse next if u dont lay off. At the end, instead of the signature, was a green seal. Tex scrutinized it intently, her eyes narrowing as she turned the paper around. The seal evolved into a bracelet as she examined it. A bracelet with the head of a snake and the tail of a fish. She smiled, a grim twisting of her painted lips. The Eel was an egomaniac. He couldn’t resist the temptation of becoming his own press agent.

A low, husky sound issued from the slim, round throat of Tex; a cry of comprehension, relentless rage, warning.

Through the crooked back streets of Old Town, Tex slid cautiously, like some stalking shadow, through streets that seemed to be winding, dirt-smeared menaces leading into oblivion.

She was following her hunch. A hunch that beckoned her to Pancho’s crumbling adobe that crouched, like some hunted animal in the treacherous sands of the desert, one mile south of Tia Juana.

From time to time she glanced nervously over her shoulder. Silence trailed back of her — heavy, oppressive. And before her? Nameless peril. A little demon of fear clutched at her heart, squeezing it until she could hardly breathe. A peculiar tingling sensation ran along her arms and twitched the ends of her fingers. She knew the symptoms. She had had the same feeling when she was about to take off for the five-foot hurdles back in Texas. A breathless sort of feeling. A feeling that a hunter must have just before the kill.

Pancho’s adobe loomed unexpectedly before her, a darker shadow in the surrounding gloom. It was long, low and narrow. A wide chimney of rotting stones in the back; two thick, weather-scarred doors of solid wood in front; a narrow, deep-set window near the slanting mud roof at either end. No sound came from the adobe and no light penetrated the thick wooden openings.

Tex crept up to the door nearer her and gently pushed against it. It gave silently under her weight. Quickly, quietly she stepped into the long, low-ceilinged room into which it directly opened, her bead bag hugged under her left arm. She blinked at the sudden light although it was only a feeble flicker from three tallow candles that hung in a rusty iron chandelier suspended from a single wooden beam that ran the length of the room.

Swiftly she took in her surroundings. In a shrouded corner was a cot with something moaning under a pair of soiled blankets. Near it drooped the girl with the bracelets, sobbing softly in a suppressed sort of hopelessness.

Tex closed the door quietly and advanced toward the cot.

At the slight sound of her steps the girl looked up, her eyes widening in terror, her narrow white hands flying to her mouth to stifle the cry that sprang to her lips, the bracelets crowding together, clicking, clanking. Then the fear slowly faded from the girl’s face. “Oh, it’s — you,” she said dully.

Tex nodded and grinned. “Sure.” She slid a little nearer and stared down at the white face on the pillow. “Arthur Hewett,” she whispered. “Doped and kept doped for days,” she added to herself.

At that the girl seemed to waken as from heavy stupor. “How did you know? Who are you?” She sprang up facing Tex.

Tex thought rapidly. She must move cautiously — and — quickly. The girl was suspicious, yet Tex felt that through her she would gain the key to the mystery.

“He looks like his pitcher, don’t he?” Tex answered the first question, ignoring the second. She lolled against the burnt brick wall, swinging her bag back and forth, searching furtively the other three corners of the room. “Gotter swig er hooch round this heah dump?” she finally asked, turning back to the girl.

The girl shook her head, slumping back into the chair, her long fingers playing nervously with her bracelets.

“Now, ain’t that too bad?” murmured Tex, watching her from under lowered lids. “My, ain’t them bracelets pretty?” She stretched an experimental hand toward the girl’s left wrist.

The girl drew back sharply, alarm in her shadowed eyes, her fingers curling protectively around the eight circlets.

Tex assumed a sullen tone. “Ah — what’d’yuh take me fur? A cheap dip?” She glanced toward the two doors. “Hell! Ah’d give mah best gold inlay fur a shot er hooch.”

A pale little smile hovered around the girl’s lips. “I’m sorry — but there isn’t any here — only—” She chopped her sentence off abruptly with a little gasp of fright.

“Only what?” prodded Tex quietly, successfully cloaking her eagerness. “If thar’s anything that’ll take the place — er hooch — hand it ovah, honey, ’cause Ah’m lower than a snake’s hips.”

“Snakes!” whispered the girl in deadly fear, and Tex leaned toward her suddenly.

“Gawd! Thar ain’t no snakes — heah?” Under the pretense of dismay she studied the girl intently. Snakes? The deaths of Hewett and Bobbie strangely resembled the deadly bites of rattlers. The swollen limbs; the discolored flesh; the almost invisible twin red marks on the left wrists. And yet there had been no snakes.

The girl recovered herself and regarded Tex a little doubtfully. “No... no... of course not.” She turned to soothe the moaning man with gently caressing hands, the bracelets huddling down toward her slender hand. She turned back to Tex. “How did you know of this place?” she demanded unexpectedly, a sharp note in her usually low tones.

Tex didn’t answer at once. Instead she hitched a little nearer to the bed, keeping her back to the wall, facing the two doors. “Listen, honey,” she murmured at last, “Ah come heah to help you.” A crooning note slid into her throaty voice and she glanced significantly toward the wasted form of Arthur Hewett.

The girl’s eyes followed hers and returned, poignant pain suffusing their shadowed depths. She gazed up at Tex, hesitating, seeming to consider.

And Tex waited, outwardly calm, in no hurry. Inwardly at a high-pitched, nervous tension, her ears cocked for any outside disturbance, her eyes darting to the doors, the windows, around the room, back to the girl and the moaning man. If, as she surmised, the girl was weak, guarding some secret, through love — or fear — she would break under Tex’s soft persuasion.

“Oh, I’m afraid — afraid.” The words were so low Tex had to stoop to catch them.

The girl clasped her hands tightly in her lap and swayed back and forth.

“Afraid of what — of — who?” prompted Tex. Lord, if the girl would only hurry! A cold feeling of playing for time shivered through her. She hugged her bag more closely under her left arm, the fingers of her right hand curling about the broken clasp. Seconds seemed to leap at her — crowding... crowding—

Presently the girl spoke, her words low, halting — as if being dragged through unwilling lips. “Oh, if you could take — Arthur away... away — where it’s safe... safe.” She stared up at Tex, repeating the last word in a sort of frenzied appeal.

Tex suddenly put out her hand and grasped the girl’s left wrist. The bracelets slid away from her fingers, slipping along the girl’s arm as if they were something animate — alive.

For an instant the very intensity of her gaze held the girl irresolute, tractable, willing. “Ah’ll take Arthur where it’s safe — but — first — you must tell me about — these.” She gave the girl’s arm a little shake before letting go and the bracelets rattled together.

“I... can’t. I’m... afraid—” Her voice trailed off into a sobbing whisper.

“For Arthur!” There was a breathless urgency to Tex’s guarded tones as her eyes glanced from the doors to the girl and back again.

“For Arthur!” echoed the girl, a curious little trill creeping into her voice. Her teeth bit into her lower lip and her long, thin fingers twined about the bracelets. She looked down at her restless hands while her words jerked out, automatically, as if some irresistible force were driving her. “I came from a little country town — two years ago. I couldn’t get work — and — Jefe found me — starving. He planted me in — Melville Hewett’s home — as a maid. Then Mr. Hewett made me his ward. I guess he felt sorry for me — and — he was so good to me — I... I... didn’t want to go on — but I was afraid — of... Jefe—”

“Go on with what?” interrupted Tex, every faculty strained for the slightest sound of movement from the stillness of the desert. The shadowy room, like herself, seemed to be holding its breath — waiting... waiting—

The girl sent her a lightning glance of doubt, then went on, a new note calming her voice. A note of fatality — resignation. “Go on with the plans to rob Mr. Hewett — then — I — met — Arthur—” She turned her attention to the man on the cot, seeming to forget everything else. “They have kept him under morphine — to try to make him sign—”

“Sign what?” Tex shifted her position a little, her eyes on the doors.

“The paper — that Jefe had drawn up in his own name—”

“Then Arthur inherited his father’s fortune?” Tex asked the question out of the side of her mouth. Her vigilance was directed toward an almost inaudible sound just beyond the doors.

“Yes.”

“And after he signs they intend to—”

“Yes... yes. Oh, God!” The girl’s voice rose to a high key of hysteria.

“Sh—” Tex wheeled on her suddenly, a cautioning finger to her lips. “Quick! Tell me what you’re hiding!” she whispered, her fingers pressing into the girl’s arm.

For one pulsating instant the girl hesitated, her eyes as she gazed up at Tex veiled, defiant; then her shadowy lids drooped over them and she slid her bracelets up and down with agitated fingers. “It’s... it’s — a paper Mr. Hewett made Jefe give him—”

“Where’s this paper now?”

“Arthur gave it to me — to hide—”

“Where did you hide it?”

The girl stretched her hands toward Tex in a gesture of desperate entreaty. “Oh, you will take Arthur where he’ll get well — and be — safe?”

Tex lapsed back into her soft drawl, successfully cloaking her impatience. “Sure, honey, Ah promised, but you didn’t tell me where you hid the paper.”

“I hid it in—” The girl’s eyes widened in terror as they shot past Tex to the doors.

Tex followed her gaze to the door nearest her. Slowly — quietly it was being pushed inward. Tex stiffened imperceptibly, her bead bag gripped tightly in both hands. Her mouth suddenly went dry and an icy finger seemed to trail along her spine.

Into the dim circle of light slid The Eel, his hands in his pockets, his crafty features set in an oily, unreadable mask.

Pancho followed him, an ugly grin pulling at his thick lips. A sharp-edged stiletto in his hand. “Better keel ’er now, eh, Jefe?” he flung at The Eel in a sort of gloating snarl.

“Naw, not that way, yuh’d get caught bang ter rights an’ take a fall to the big house.” The Eel stared at Tex, his deep, expressionless eyes glittering in the half-light like a snake’s.

“ ’Lo,” ventured Tex, her heart pounding against her side.

Pancho grunted, examining his knife.

The Eel glided toward Tex, a sinister smile stretching his narrow, fish-like mouth. “I got a more artistic way ter bump off them that gets in my way.”

Tex’s hand slid cautiously into her bag. She could shoot her way out if it was necessary but that would mean defeat. She wanted an explanation of the mystery; a confession if possible. And she felt that The Eel’s tremendous ego would be his downfall. He was so cocksure of himself. So confident that he could always squirm from under any police trap set to ensnare him.

Tex forced a laugh through stiff lips. “Say, fellah, who you goin’ to bump off — an’ if so — why — an’ — how?”

The Eel stopped a few feet from her and regarded her with a sly smirk. “Thought yuh’d like a bracelet.” He brought his hand out of his pocket, gingerly holding a jade circlet toward her.

A little gasp came from the girl but the two men were too engrossed in watching Tex to heed it.

The Eel came closer, almost touching her arm with the green bangle. She made no move to take it, although an involuntary shudder ran through her body.

“For God’s sake, Jefe, don’t... don’t!” The girl’s voice shivered upward into a thin shriek.

He wheeled toward her, a grin that was baleful in its significance twitching his lips. “Aw, don’t worry none, sister. I got one fer yuh, too.”

The girl shrank further into the shadows, her slim fingers clutching at each other in a frenzy of fear.

Then Tex spoke softly, in a sort of deadly calm, her Texan drawl more noticeable than ever, her greenish gold eyes flashing in the wavering half-light as she held The Eel with her steady stare. “Ah — don’t — want — your bracelet. Ah — never — did — like ’em. But— Ah’m kinda curious— What’s in ’em?” This last was a random shot but it had the desired effect. She heard the girl’s sharp intake of breath; noted the slight movement of startled surprise from Pancho. Her eyes, however, never left The Eel.

No change of expression came over his evil mask of a face. Only a trifle more expansion of his narrow chest. “I don’t mind tellin’ yuh because yuh ain’t goin’ ter live long enough ter spill it, see?” He paused dramatically to let this sink in.

Tex merely nodded and presently The Eel went on, wallowing in his own conceit. Tex smiled inwardly.

“I invented it, see? The hollow bracelets. First fer smugglin’ in dope, then out of my own head popped another idea. Poison, from my friend the rattler. A Chink learned me how ter take it out of the snake.” He stopped talking and grinned maliciously, fingering the jade bracelet.

Tex guessed that the “Chink” was himself. She stared at the bracelet, then at him, simulating awe, horror, admiration. “Lordy,” she whispered, “It sure takes a heap of brains to figure that out!”

He seemed to expand more than ever.

Tex waited, her hand grasping the pistol inside her bag.

The Eel was so absorbed in his own achievement that he didn’t notice, and Pancho’s mind was diverted, watching The Eel in fascinated horror, his stiletto in his belt.

There was no movement from the girl and Tex wondered what she was doing. She didn’t dare look, take her vigilant attention from Jefe. The green bangle made her feel creepy, as if a snake were actually crawling over her body. She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and forced herself a step nearer The Eel.

Instantly Pancho lunged toward her, his hand flashing to his dagger.

“Aw, lay off, will yuh,” Jefe snapped irritably. “Put up yuh jack-knife.” He again addressed himself to Tex. “Now I’ll show yuh how I put Hewett an’ yuh little dick friend out of the way.” He turned the bracelet around carefully and pointed to two sharpened gold points on the inside. “Them,” he explained, “represents the fangs, an’ when pushed onter the arm it releases this little spring, stabbin’ the flesh at the same time and the poison pours inter the holes, see?” A maniacal laugh fell from his twisting lips.

Tex shivered.

“An’ yuh don’t like bracelets?” He turned to the girl with a sinister grin. “But Mame here does. Don’t yuh, Mame?”

The girl gave a cry of terror.

Pancho laughed and at a signal from The Eel sprang in front of Tex, grasping the girl around the waist, pinioning her wildly fighting arms to her sides and propelling her toward the advancing Jefe.

“I’ll show yuh how it works,” bragged The Eel, looking at Tex over his shoulder. “Then yuh’ll know in advance just how yuh’ll act, see?” He gripped the girl’s wrist.

She wriggled and jerked in a panic of fear. “Don’t! Don’t!” She turned tragic, horror-stricken eyes to Tex. “For God’s sake, stop him!”

Tex stood motionless, her heart thumping against her chest, her eyes riveted on the green bracelet.

The Eel paused and thrust his evil face close to the girl’s. “Hand over that paper an’ I’ll let yuh off.”

“What paper?” the girl parried faintly.

“Yuh know what paper! The one Hewett took off of me.”

The girl hesitated, her apprehensive eyes darting about the room. When at last she spoke it seemed to Tex that the words were meant for her. “The... the... one where you admitted killing Hewett’s partner — and threatened to kill Hewett — in the same way — if he refused to give you one hundred thousand dollars? Well... I... I... destroyed it.”

“Yuh lyin’! Come clean or—” The Eel held the bracelet close to her face.

A little moan trembled from her lips and she tried to pull away; then suddenly she lifted her head and looked at The Eel squarely with a pathetic show of bravado. “Yes — I have — the — paper — but — I won’t give it to you! — I promised — Arthur.” The last word was a faint whisper, almost a prayer, and the thought flashed through Tex’s seething mind that this girl, weak, misguided, had somehow gained a noble strength through her love for Arthur Hewett.

With his thin lips stretched over his teeth in a half snarl, The Eel sprang at the girl, grasping her wrist while Pancho laughed and held her waist with his great hairy hands.

“Yuh last chance, yuh fool,” hissed Jefe. “Hand over that paper!”

The girl seemed to wilt, her head drooping forward as if too heavy to hold erect, although her words rang out clearly in the silently waiting room. “No! You — murderer!”

“Hold her arm out, Pancho,” ordered Jefe, and the green bangle touched her slender clenched hand.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” she murmured hopelessly, despairingly.

Tex eased a little to one side so that Pancho’s broad back was between her and the girl.

“She’s too good ter live,” continued The Eel, and laughed. A sound that reminded Tex of a hyena she had once heard in the zoo — mirthless, blood-chilling.

Then with his laugh another sound mingled — slyly apologetic. A sort of muffled plop.

An expression of wonder spread over Pancho’s crafty features as he loosened his hold on Mame and slumped grotesquely to the brick floor.

“What the hell?” muttered The Eel, staring at the inert body of Pancho; then he raised his eyes to a thin stream of smoke that was drifting from the mouth of a small pistol encased in Tex’s steady fingers. His gaze traveled on upward until it encountered the unflinching gold-green eyes of Tex.

“Ah’d — rather take you — alive,” she murmured with a faint smile.

For a moment he stared at her, expressionless, immovable; then without the slightest warning he sprang straight at her, knocking the pistol to the floor, curling his fingers about her wrist. Holding the jade bracelet lightly, gingerly, between the thumb and fingers of his right hand.

A little quiver of panic shivered through Tex, then her cold, sane reasoning came to her rescue. She held The Eel’s eyes with her own while she eased her left hand toward the green menace and with a swift movement of her strong fingers snatched the bracelet from him. He lunged for it. She met the darting hand with a movement as swift as his own. His slender fingers entered the circlet; the needle-like prongs cut and tore. He gave a cry of rage and terror, clawing frantically at the poisonous manacle, but the more he pulled at it the deeper sank the sharp gold points into his punctured flesh.

His writhing agony was horrible to see. It made Tex a little sick. She stooped to recover her pistol and regarded the girl who sagged against the cot and stared at her with a dazed look in her shadowy eyes.

“In which bracelet did you hide the paper?” asked Tex unexpectedly.

The girl fingered the bangles with fluttering fingers. “This one,” she answered automatically, caressing a beautifully carved circlet of mellowed ivory. “It’s — Arthur’s favorite.”

Tex caught the girl by her shoulders and gently shook her. “Gather yourself,” she admonished, not unkindly, “and go quickly to Tia Juana. Phone to my chief, J. C. Gilbert. Here’s his number. Tell him Tex has sent for him. To come to Pancho’s at once — and to bring a doctor.” She gave the girl a little push toward the door. “Hurry!”

Slowly Mame pulled the heavy door toward her, paused and looked back at Tex with a slight pleading gesture of her slim white hands. “You’ll take care of — Arthur?”

Tex nodded, still the girl lingered.

“When he wakes — you’ll tell him — that — my... my... love for him — was greater — than... than... my — fear?”

A lump rose in Tex’s throat and she had to swallow it before answering. “Ah’ll — tell him,” she said softly.

Mame left reluctantly, slipping quietly out into the darkness, closing Tex in the shrouded room.

The candles burned low, dripping over the edges of their rusty iron holders.

Tex allowed her eyes to wander around the dimly flickering room, to slide quickly over the lifeless body of Pancho, on to the twisted form of The Eel, that even in death seemed to coil, like a snake. She turned with a lightening spirit to Arthur Hewett. He was breathing evenly, calmly.

She dropped wearily into the chair near the cot and slipped her pistol back into the frayed depths of her bead bag. Her fingers touched the cool hardness of a pair of handcuffs. “Bracelets,” she murmured, and a little exultant cry trickled from her throat.