The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  The Lady from Hell could see no evidence that she was being followed, but there was a queer intuitive feeling deep within her that eyes were watching her as she lifted the great iron knocker and let it drop three times against the knocking plate.

  * * *

  —

  An old Spaniard opened the door, only an inch or so, and peered out. Vivian could see that the door was on a short chain.

  “I want to see Antonio Gonzales. My name is Mrs. Legrand,” she said.

  There was a surprising ease and richness about that voice. It rose resonant and bell-like, as if it came effortlessly.

  The door was opened wider as an invitation for her to enter. She ran her eye expertly over the man’s figure for a sign of concealed weapons, but she could detect no suspicious bulge.

  The shadowed hall into which she stepped was a typical entrance to a Havana home of the old days. Running the full length of the building, it opened in the rear into the patio, now overgrown with weeds. At one side a staircase with a wrought iron balustrade ran to an upper floor.

  “Señor Gonzales is upstairs,” the ancient Spaniard said, in his native tongue, “and is expecting you. The open door at the head of the stairs is his.”

  Vivian went on up the stairs and stepped through the doorway he had indicated.

  Gonzales lay in a bed drawn up close to the narrow slit of a window. He passed as a white man, yet his nose was a trifle too flat, his lips a bit thickish, his skin a shade too dark. But in countries where people do not attach too much importance to these things, and to the telltale half moon at the base of the nails, he was classed as a white Spaniard.

  He peered at Vivian through eyes that were still keen and crafty, despite the glaze of fever which covered them.

  “I’m glad you’re here. I thought you weren’t coming,” he said. “You’re late.”

  “I had other things to do,” she answered curtly. Then she plunged directly to the point. “What do you want to see me about?”

  He did not answer directly. Instead he studied her a moment.

  “I asked you to come here,” he said slowly, “because you’ve got the reputation of never double-crossing anybody that plays square with you.”

  “So what?” she asked calmly, but the light that gleamed for a moment in her narrowed eyes belied the calmness of her words.

  “I’ve got something on tap,” he went on slowly, “but I’m sick…fever…I can’t shake it off, and unless I hurry I’ll lose my chance.”

  “So you want me to pull your chestnuts out of the fire for you,” she shot at him. “I’m not interested.”

  He raised a protesting hand.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I want to offer you a partnership in it, because you’re the only person I know who’s got guts enough to pull it off and not double-cross me while I’m lying here unable to do anything myself.”

  “Well?” she said. Just the single clipped word. The Lady from Hell was playing poker and her face had slipped into an expressionless mask.

  “It’s big,” Gonzales went on. He passed a hand across his hot brow. “Would you mind handing me a drink of water from the jug there? Thanks.” He took a deep drink of the water and then lay back. “It’s the biggest thing I ever tackled…got a million in it…two million, maybe…and I’m holed up here, unable to do a damn thing.” He swore deeply.

  “Come to the point,” Vivian said crisply.

  “Ever hear of Juan Cordoza?”

  She pondered a moment, then shook her head.

  “He was Ciprano Castro’s minister of finance,” Gonzales said slowly. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  Enlightment flooded Vivian. She remembered now. Cordoza, chief confidante of the dictator of Venezuela, had seen the downfall of his master coming long before the Iron Man himself had read the portents aright. He had skipped out of the country, reaching the Dutch island of Curaçao before Castro was aware of the fact that he had gone, taking a large part of the contents of the treasury with him. After leaving Curaçao his trail had vanished, and before Castro could turn his army of spies and secret agents loose on the trail of his missing treasurer the dictator himself had been compelled to follow in his treasurer’s footsteps and take refuge himself in Curaçao.

  “Cordoza is in Paris, isn’t he?” she asked, remembering rumors now and then that, even though it had happened years before, still floated through the underworld of Europe’s capitals.

  Gonzales shook his head. “He never reached Paris. He chartered a boat to take him to Havana from Curaçao. He got here all right, landed secretly without anyone learning of his presence. But he never left Cuba—and neither did the stuff he looted from the treasury of Venezuela.”

  * * *

  —

  Vivian leaned forward. There was excitement in those green eyes of hers now.

  “You know where the stuff is?” she queried.

  “I know,” he said with triumph. “If I could get out of here long enough to strike a bargain with Chang Kai I could have my hands on it in two hours. But this cursed fever won’t let me. I couldn’t walk a dozen feet without collapsing. And I’m not fool enough to think that if I struck a bargain with Chang Kai and wasn’t there to watch after my interests that he’d play square. Oh, no. I’d whistle for my share, after he got his hands on it. One of his hatchetmen would kill me.”

  “Who is Chang Kai and what has he got to do with it?” the Lady from Hell asked.

  Gonzales feebly raised himself on one elbow.

  “Chang Kai’s the head Chino in Havana. Runs a curio store in the Chinese quarter as a blind for his real activities—slipping through aliens across to the Florida Keys at a thousand a head—dope smuggling—anything that’s crooked and that’s got money in it. He’s known about the Cordoza loot for a long time—knows it’s hidden in a house here in Havana—could put his hands right on it—if he knew the house. But that’s where he’s stymied. It might be any house in the city, so far as he knows. And I know where the house is, but not where it is hidden in that house.”

  “I don’t see why you need to bother with Chang Kai if you have the address,” Vivian said doubtfully. “Surely a million in loot cannot be hidden away like a pin, and even if it were I could find a pin, knowing it was hidden in a certain house and worth a million.”

  “But this is different,” Gonzales told her. “I cannot gain access to the house. It is impossible. I know. I will explain it all to you later.”

  “Then you’re stymied yourself, to a certain extent,” Vivian said.

  “Right,” Gonzales answered. Then he looked at her keenly with his fever-bright eyes. “Do you want a cut of the stuff—if you can find it?”

  There was no hesitation in Vivian’s eyes as she faced the man in the bed.

  “Done,” she said.

  “Your word,” he insisted. “No double-crossing.”

  “My word,” she told him, and the man sank back satisfied. He knew that the Lady from Hell was as ruthless as a striking snake; that she would no more hesitate to take human life than she would to step upon an insect, if that life stood in the path of one of her schemes—but he also knew that she would not double-cross a confederate who had played squarely with her.

  “Here’s the address,” Gonzales said, reaching under his pillow and handing her a folded slip of paper. “Use your own judgment about how you go about it. Strike a bargain with Chang Kai if there’s no other way, or tear the house to pieces until you find it. That’s up to you.”

  Then he stiffened suddenly. “What’s that?” he whispered.

  The sound that had disturbed him could only have been heard by a man whose senses were almost abnormally developed by years of dependence upon them. It was not so much, perhaps a matter of hearing as an ability to select what was of importance in the symphon
y of sound that Havana is always playing. Vivian had caught the sound also a moment after he had called it to her attention. It might have been a stealthy footstep in the hall outside…it was so elusive that it defied identification.

  She listened intently, wondering if her ears had not tricked her.

  But all that she could hear was the strident cry of a mango seller and the faint squawk of a parrot somewhere in the distance.

  “Could that man of yours be listening?” she asked, struck by a sudden thought.

  “No,” Gonzales said positively. “And if he were, it wouldn’t do him any good. He understands no English.”

  “It sounded like a footstep,” Vivian said, “the footstep of someone trying to walk without noise.”

  She got to her feet and, crossing the room, flung the door open. The corridor was deserted.

  “I’m going to look on the stairs,” she said.

  “Want a gun?” Gonzales asked, and his hand went under the pillow.

  Vivian shook her head in a negative gesture. There was a gun in the little hand bag she carried. A gun that she was seldom without—small but deadly. She went out into the corridor and descended the stairs cautiously. A faint sound of a song came from the rear of the house. She made her way in that direction. A partly opened door gave her a view of the kitchen, where the man who had admitted her stood before a table peeling potatoes. The sound she had heard had not come from him.

  She made her way quickly back up the stairs toward the room on the second floor. Her suspicions had not been dispelled, but there seemed to be no one in the place save the three of them.

  She reached the threshold of Gonzales’s room and stopped short in amazement.

  Gonzales was lying partially off the bed, face up, one arm dangling toward the floor, and a great pool of blood staining the bed covering from the gaping knife wound in his throat.

  In the brief instant that Vivian had been absent from the room an assassin had struck, hoping, evidently, to silence Gonzales before he betrayed to her the hiding place of the dictator’s treasure.

  She smiled grimly at the thought. The assassin had been too late. In her hand bag was the slip of paper that Gonzales had given her, the slip that would lead her to a million or more in loot.

  She opened it and consternation flooded her green eyes.

  The slip of paper was blank.

  CHAPTER II

  Book and Dagger

  Vivian’s face was thoughtful as she reached her hotel. She tapped on the door of Wylie’s bedroom. There was no answer. He evidently had not returned from the steamship office, where he had gone to secure passage to Haiti, and she turned back toward her own bedroom. And then stopped short, her green eyes narrowed.

  Brilliant sunlight poured through the high arched window and splashed in a great pool on the polished table in the center of the room. And in that pool of light a book lay open, a silver pen-knife fashioned in the shape of a Malay creese lying across the open page—a beautifully engraved five-inch snaky blade.

  That open book with the paper knife across it was a signal from Wylie—evidence that something had happened during her absence that menaced their safety. It was a prearranged signal, something that could be done with the utmost casualness without exciting suspicion.

  Hurriedly she searched the room, ran through both bedrooms, but nothing had been disarranged.

  She was stumped. Wylie was not there—danger threatening from an unknown quarter—and now, when she thought she had her hands on the secret of what was likely to be their greatest haul, she drew a blank. That Gonzales had been sincere enough, she had no doubt. The man undoubtedly thought that he was delivering to her the hiding place of Cordoza’s loot. The only explanation was that someone had reached him first, substituting the blank piece of paper for the one with the address. But who?

  The Spaniard who had admitted her to the house? She gave the thought serious consideration and then dismissed it. If the man had attempted to double-cross Gonzales, he would not have remained at the house, when, at any moment, his duplicity might be discovered. And, equally, he could not have murdered Gonzales. He had been in the kitchen, and it would have been an impossibility for him to have killed his master, and then reached the kitchen ahead of her.

  Chang Kai, the Chinese Gonzales had mentioned? Her mind toyed with the thought. But if Chang Kai had stolen the slip of paper before her arrival, and substituted a blank, why return to kill Gonzales? Unless, of course, there had been delay in reaching the hiding place of the paper, and Chang Kai or his emissary had seen her entering the house and had returned and killed Gonzales to prevent his revealing the secret to her.

  She took out the slip of paper and studied it carefully again, as she had done a dozen times before. There it was, mocking her impotence with its blankness.

  She looked up sharply at the sound of a light tap upon the door of the sitting room. She laid the slip on the table and opened the door.

  The man who stood upon the threshold was tall and dark and slim—a Cuban undoubtedly, for he had the aquiline nose of the pure bred Spaniard and the feline grace that characterizes certain Latin types. But his face was unhealthily pale.

  “May I come in, Mrs. Legrand?” he asked. “I have a message for you.”

  Vivian opened the door wider and indicated a chair for her guest. She crossed to the table and stood there, the brilliant sunlight streaming in from outside catching her hair and turning it into a halo of flame above her exquisitely lovely profile.

  Her eyes were hard as the glitter of emeralds as she studied the man before her. Something was wrong here. In her profession no one was above suspicion; no incident, however trivial, below notice. Her life had more than once depended upon being prepared for any eventuality that might arise, and her movement had brought her hand in close proximity to the little revolver that lay on the table, screened by a book.

  “What do you want?” she asked after a moment.

  “May I introduce myself?” inquired the man ingratiatingly. “I am Leon Ortega.”

  He crossed his legs comfortably and lighted a cigarette.

  “What do you want?” Vivian shot at him again, her drooping lashes screening the cold calculation of her eyes.

  “It’s purely a matter of business, Mrs. Legrand,” he said. “But before we start let me advise you that if you do anything rash you will most certainly regret it.”

  “What do you want?” Vivian asked.

  The man leaned forward.

  “Just a matter of striking a bargain with you.”

  “A bargain?”

  The man nodded. “We’ve got something that you want. You’ve got something that we want. But we’re not hoggish. We’re willing to give up what we’ve got for half of what you’ve got.”

  Vivian’s greenish eyes were narrowed and the tiny flame in them might have warned the man, had he been observant, that danger was gathering about him like a thunderstorm.

  “What have you got that I want?” she queried softly.

  “A certain Mr. Adrian Wylie,” the man said comfortably.

  * * *

  —

  “Ah!” Vivian said. She knew then that this was what the sign of the open book and paper knife meant. “So Mr. Wylie is, shall we say, your guest?”

  “That will do as well as any other,” the man admitted. “We—er—persuaded him that it would be advisable to accompany us until such time as we could have a talk with you.”

  “And what have I got that you want?” Vivian queried.

  “Half of the stuff that Cordoza left when he died,” the man came back at her swiftly. Then, as Vivian started to speak, he went on: “I might say that it will be useless to attempt to persuade us that you do not know where it is. We know that you do. We know that you got the directions for finding it from Gonzale
s less than an hour ago. We saw you leave. So we immediately took what precautions we considered necessary to protect our interests.”

  “And why not obtain the same information from Gonzales that I obtained?” she asked. There was in her voice no intimation of her anxiety—of how much hung on the answer to that question of hers.

  The man regarded her with a smile.

  “My dear Mrs. Legrand, you really do not do us justice. It was only this morning that we learned of Gonzales’s whereabouts. We hurried there. We saw you leave. And when we entered the house we found him murdered. The answer is obvious.”

  Vivian’s eyes, hard as bits of emeralds, betrayed nothing of the consternation his words aroused in her. These men, then, had not killed Gonzales, and did not know that a third party had beaten them—did not know that the slip of paper Gonzales had given her was a blank piece of paper.

  “Your offer then,” she said slowly, “is to trade Adrian Wylie for half of the Cordoza loot?”

  “Exactly,” the man said. “And I might call to your attention, Mrs. Legrand, that his life depends on your agreeing. He obviously knows nothing that will be of value to us. He is worthless to us except as a hostage. So, whether he lives or dies depends entirely upon your acceptance or refusal.”

  For a moment hell fires flared in Vivian’s eyes. She had a strong desire to snatch the little gun from her hand bag on the table. But reason came to her rescue. She would gain nothing by violence. If this man did not return, undoubtedly Wylie would die. Strategy was called for.

  “I shall have to think it over,” she said slowly. “I am not alone in this, of course, and there are others that I must consult.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  There was suspicion in his voice, but the next instant he was aware of the anxiety that lingered in the husky tones of her voice and flickered in the green depths of her eyes. The ability to dispel suspicion in a man by turning on the full force of her personality as one turns water on in a tap was always one of the greatest assets of the Lady from Hell.