That sixth sense that is so highly developed among men who are confined alone for a long time seemed to have divined that death hovered near. Many cast glances backward toward the main building, where were confined the more recalcitrant prisoners—dangerous criminals, untamed by their imprisonment, who were denied the privilege of witnessing the game.
The closing whistle blew, interrupting the play at nothing to nothing. Rousing cheers came from the section set apart for the visiting college spectators. The convicts cheered half-heartedly. They were casting furtive glances around the field and toward the grandstand where the warden sat, entertaining the faculty of Ervinton. The keepers, who were stationed ten feet apart across the front of the prisoners’ seats, called out, “Everybody remain seated till the teams are off the field!”
The visiting team deployed from the field, trotted into the basement through the side entrance of the main building, where showers and a locker room had been set up for them. The convicts watched them gloomily, in marked contrast to the hilarity of the college boys. For they were not going home to well-cooked meals in comfortable dining rooms, to the fond glances of proud parents, to the arms of sweethearts. They were going in to a dreary supper and dismal cells, to their lonely thoughts and gnawing memories.
An inch of fiery red sun showed over the top of the wooded hills to the west, across the river. Dusk had come quickly. It was growing dark fast, and the guards now hurried the convicts into a double line and marched them toward the main entrance. The warden, with two of his deputies, stood in the grandstand talking to several of the faculty of Ervinton College who had come down to see the game.
The warden was a tall man, with a lined, wrinkled face topped by iron-gray hair. The weight of responsibility for all these prisoners sat heavily on his shoulders. Moodily, as he talked, his eyes rested on the leading ranks of convicts marching dispiritedly toward the building.
In a moment that front rank would step through the entrance, would be led to the mess hall. Another dreary day would be done, a dreary night would commence.
But that marching line never reached the entrance.
For there erupted, at that moment from the basement exit in the side of the building, a disorderly swarm of men. The Ervinton college players, the substitutes and the coaches, were being herded out, still in their football uniforms. Some stumbled, others ran, and it was evident that something terrible had happened inside.
The warden leaped from the grandstand to the field, started to run toward the basement exit, followed by his deputies. Several guards swung in after him. The long marching line of convicts had halted at a command from the head keeper, and stood silent, watching the strange exodus.
And suddenly the warden, who had been running across the field, stopped short in his tracks, his face white, his hands trembling. For right behind the college players, forcing the boys ahead at the point of submachine guns and rifles, there appeared other men—men who were dressed in the street clothes which the college boys had left in the lockers, but who did not look like college boys.
The warden exclaimed, “God! It’s the lifers! They’ve gotten loose somehow—and they must have broken into the armory; they’ve all got weapons! Look, there’s Gilly, and Furber, and—” he named others of them whom he knew by sight. “Quick, Turner,” he addressed the deputy immediately behind him, “signal the gatehouse guard to close the gate. Have the two tower guards enfilade them with machine gun fire!”
The deputy turned to obey. At the same moment, one of the armed convicts raised a Thompson gun to his shoulder and directed a stream of lead into the gatehouse. The guard there was flung against the wall of his little enclosure, his body riddled by a dozen slugs; the gate, which had been opened to permit the egress of the visitors, remained open.
And now was demonstrated the devilish ingenuity behind this well-planned escape. The convicts, their faces screwed into snarling masks of defiance and hatred, were herding the college players along in front of them, pushing them toward the open gate. No shots were fired at them from the wall towers; for the very good reason that the college boys, being in front, would be the first to be hit.
The warden could do nothing. He stood there helpless, his face bleak, and watched the most dangerous criminals in his charge march through that gate to freedom. He said hoarsely to the deputy, “Good God, Turner, they’re using the Ervinton boys as shields!” His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. “We can’t fire at them now. Those innocent boys would be the first to be hit!”
And Turner did not signal the tower guards.
A small group gathered about the warden, gazed spellbound at the vicious faces of the escaping convicts. Turner and the other deputy flanked their chief, hands hovering over the service revolvers holstered at their hips, not daring to draw them, lest such an overt act provoke the vicious lifers to let loose again with the machine guns and mow down innocent spectators as they had killed the gatehouse guard.
But after that one burst of fire from the Thompson, the escaping convicts rushed grimly across the yard toward the gate.
The long line of marching prisoners proceeding toward the main building had stopped without orders from the keepers who flanked them. The marching convicts cast envious glances at those who were escaping, but they made no move toward a break for freedom themselves. They had no living shields, like the others.
The warden raised his voice, calling hoarsely to some of the armed convicts. “Gilly! Renzor! You can’t get away with that. You’ll be caught before you get a mile from here. Drop those—”
He stopped as Gilly, one of the two he had addressed, swung snarling toward him, bringing the submachine gun around to bear on the little group. The warden and those with him dropped to the ground to avoid the threatened barrage. But Gilly did not fire, for a tall, heavyset convict who was running alongside him shouted, “Never mind that stuff, Gilly! Keep on goin’!”
Gilly grumbled, but obeyed. The convicts hustled the terrorized college boys along through the gate. Outside, there waited a huge closed truck, with motor running. The convicts piled into this, the motor roared, and the truck sped away, leaving the Ervinton boys with their hands in the air.
Now the guards in the towers directed a withering fire at the swiftly moving truck. But no damage was done; its sides were of sheet metal, and wheels were equipped with solid tires. In less than three minutes it had rounded a bend in the road to the south, and disappeared from view.
Inside the prison grounds, bedlam reigned. The hundreds of excited spectators were shouting and gesticulating, running aimlessly around the ball field. In the yard the keepers were herding the remaining prisoners into the main building, while the warden uttered crisp commands to his deputies.
“Shut the gates! March the men to the cell blocks—we’ll feed them later. Turner, go into my office and start the siren; then phone all the towns along the roads; get out the state police.” He addressed the other deputy, “You, Seely, see the men safely in their cells, then get out every available keeper and guard—organize a posse. I’ll lead it personally.”
One of the professors from Ervinton College, who had joined him at the first sign of the break, tapped him on the shoulder. “I am afraid, warden, that you will not be successful in catching those men. This was a well-planned escape.”
There was a look of desperation in the warden’s face. “We must get those men back, Professor Larrabie!” he exclaimed. “They are the most vicious criminals in the state. Gilly, the one that wanted to mow us down with the machine-gun, is a killer many times over. He was about to be transferred to the death house!” The warden went on, his words tumbling out with hysterical speed, “And the others—Dubrot, Renzor, Gerlan—the brainiest, most ruthless fiends we’ve ever had here! Can you imagine what it means—a gang like that at liberty?” He shuddered. “If I don’t bring them back I—” his voice broke, “There’d be nothing left for me. I c
ouldn’t face the governor!”
“Nonsense!” the professor retorted. Professor Larrabie was a tall, kindly man. He was extremely wealthy in his own right, but was also an enthusiastic scholar. Though he had no need for the income, he loved his scholastic work. He held the position of associate dean of Ervinton, and was far from a worldly man. But he showed that, for all his unworldliness, he had a well-developed sense of observation. For he said, “I believe this was done by one of the visitors, Warden. Just prior to the end of the game, I noted that someone from the visitors’ stand arose and entered the building. He came out immediately before the escape. I believe that person to be responsible. But the sun was in my eyes, and I could not see his features.”
Just then Turner, the deputy, came running out of the main building. He was breathless, and his face was ashen. He exclaimed, “The siren doesn’t work, sir—it’s been tampered with. And the phone is dead! I can’t get a connection to notify anybody!”
The warden turned a haggard face to Professor Larrabie. “Ten minutes ago, Professor, I’d have staked my life that a thing like this was impossible.” He seemed to have aged ten years in those ten minutes. “It’s a perfect jail break!”
Professor Larrabie nodded. “It would be. The deliverer of those men is very clever. He foresaw everything!” The professor’s gaze wandered over the field where the crowd of visiting spectators was milling around, shouting and gesticulating excitedly. He indicated a figure running toward them across the field. “Here comes Harry Pringle, the son of the deputy police commissioner of New York. Harry is a school chum of my own son, Jack. They are both alumni of Ervinton.” The professor stared nearsightedly at the running youth. “He seems to have something momentous on his mind!”
Harry Pringle reached them, breathless, greeted the professor, then swung to the warden. “Look here, sir!” His thin, ascetic face was burning with intense excitement. “I saw somebody leave the stand a little while ago and enter the building, then come out in about ten minutes. I’ve been searching through the crowd for him, but I can’t find him now. I thought you ought to know about it.”
The warden nodded. “Thanks, Pringle. Professor Larrabie has told me the same thing. But the sun was in his eyes, and he couldn’t tell who it was. Did you recognize him?”
Harry Pringle shook his head. “It was nobody I know. But,” he added eagerly, “I’d recognize him if I saw him again. I’ll never forget that face—now!”
The warden said, “Then I shall have the gates closed and give you an opportunity to examine every person on the grounds. But,” he put his hand on young Pringle’s shoulder, “I’d advise you to be careful. If the person who aided those criminals to escape should learn that you saw him, your life wouldn’t be worth two cents, my boy.”
An armed file of guards emerged from the building at this moment. The warden said to Turner, “I’m heading the posse. You take charge in my absence. Nobody is to leave the grounds until Mr. Pringle here has seen his face.”
The guards piled into three or four cars, the warden got into the first, and the posse started out. Professor Larrabie watched them go, and shook his head sadly. “He will never catch them,” he said to Turner. “They have too much of a start.”
The professor was right. Late that night the warden and his men returned. They had not been able to pick up a single trace of the truck. Nobody had seen it. He sighed deeply, tired and worn from the long, fruitless search. He asked Turner, “Did that young fellow Pringle have any luck?”
“No, sir. He looked everybody over, but not a face like the one he saw. The police are going to have him go through the rogues’ gallery in the morning on the chance that he may recognize one of the pictures.”
The warden looked hopelessly at his deputy. “He won’t, Turner, he won’t recognize it. Whoever that man was, he’s too smart to have his picture in the rogues’ gallery. This whole thing has been done too cleverly and ingeniously.”
He sank wearily into the chair behind his desk. He seemed to have shrunk within himself. His whole bearing was that of a beaten man.
“I am afraid, Turner,” he said, “that there are bad days ahead.”
CHAPTER II
Mr. VARDIS OF NOWHERE
On a night, some four weeks after the sensational escape of the twenty-five convicts from the State Prison, a quiet, strikingly handsome gentleman might have been seen seated alone at a table in the Diamond Club.
The Diamond Club was the swankiest resort of the New York City underworld. During prohibition it had been a carefully conducted speakeasy, so elaborately rigged up with safety devices and complicated alarm systems that, though it had been raided a dozen times by prohibition agents, not a drop of liquor had ever been found on the premises.
The proprietor of the club was “Duke” Marcy, former beer baron. Marcy had always been too clever to get into the toils of the law, and now he was able to secure a liquor license, and to operate the Diamond Club as a legitimate enterprise. He took particular pleasure in exhibiting the various devices by which he had frustrated raids in the old days, and these secret liquor caches, light signals and false doors were a never-ending source of attraction to the crowds which nightly thronged the place.
“Duke” Marcy’s floor show was the talk of the town, his prices were exorbitantly high, and he did a thriving business. With it all, people wondered why Marcy, who was said to have reaped a fortune out of his former illegal activities, should bother with comparatively small-time stuff like running a night club; they wondered if its purpose was not to cover up some darker, more insidious operations of the underworld czar.
The handsome gentleman who sat alone at the table near the dance floor watched with detached interest while Leane Manners, the star of the floor show, pirouetted expertly through the steps of a complicated and exquisitely delicate dance, with the spotlight following her every graceful movement.
At the end of the dance a thunder of applause filled the room, mingled with cries of “Encore, encore!”
The dancer’s eyes swept over the gay, flashily dressed audience, flickered for an instant as they met the gaze of the quiet gentleman, and then she swept into motion once more as the orchestra swung into the rhythm of the music for her encore.
When the encore was over, she was compelled to take three bows before retiring. She did not go back to the dressing room, but threw a cloak over her shoulders, stepped off the floor. Half a dozen unattached men rose enthusiastically, inviting her to their tables. But she favored the quiet gentleman who had also risen and was bowing to her with the innate courtesy of an old world aristocrat. She made her way toward his table.
“How do you do, Mr. Vardis?” she said. She knew this man only as Mr. Vardis, a quiet, unobtrusive gentleman of wealth, with powerful affiliations. It was he who had been instrumental in bringing her to the attention of influential booking agents, resulting in her engagement by “Duke” Marcy for the Diamond Club.
She was not aware—nor was anybody else in the world, for that matter—that the firm mouth, the aquiline, masterful nose, the high forehead and the coal-black hair of the mysterious Mr. Vardis were an elaborate disguise masking the features of a being even more mysterious. For the person behind that disguise was—Secret Agent “X.”1
Mr. Vardis courteously held a chair for her.
The orchestra struck into a waltz, the lights were dimmed, and couples left their tables to dance. As a waiter approached within hearing, Mr. Vardis invited Leane to dance, but the beautiful red-haired girl laughingly refused.
“I’d much rather sit and talk to you,” she smiled. Her voice was musical, cultured, bore out the impression one somehow got that she was a girl of refinement and education.
Mr. Vardis smiled depreciatingly. “That will be as great a pleasure for me.” He seated himself, and gave the hovering waiter an order for wine, selecting it from the wine list with the care of a connoisseu
r.
Leane maintained the attitude of a careless young dancer having a good time. She continued to smile at her host; but her voice took on a quick urgency. “I’m so glad you’ve come, Mr. Vardis. There are some things you’ll want to know.”
Leane Manners had not been introduced to the Diamond Club by accident—nor had Secret Agent “X” become interested in her by accident. She was the fiancée of another of the Agent’s lieutenants, a young man named Jim Hobart. Hobart did not know Mr. Vardis; he knew Secret Agent “X” by another name. The Agent never permitted his assistants to know more than one of the various identities he assumed in his operations.
When Jim Hobart had mentioned that Leane, who lived in a middle western town, wanted to come on to work in New York, “X” had concurred in the idea, had sent for her, referred her to “Mr. Vardis.” As Vardis, he had gotten her the introduction to the booking agents, had maneuvered so that she came to the Diamond Club. In addition to the salary she received here, the Agent maintained her on his own payroll. Her duty was to watch for information that would be useful to him. All over the country he had such representatives, received stray bits of information that often helped him to prevent crime before it was even committed.
Now he nodded somberly. “I expected that you would learn something of interest here.” Then casually lighting a cigarette, he threw a side glance at the occupants of the nearby tables who were regarding him and Leane with curiosity, and leaned over the table, his lips smiling as if he were whispering a soft compliment.
In reality he was saying, “So that you will be able to work intelligently for me, I will tell you what brought me here tonight. You have read, of course, about the jail break from State Prison last month?”
She nodded.
“Those escaped convicts,” the Agent told her, “have not been seen or heard of since the escape. They were not the average run of criminals. Among them were fiends like Dubrot, who has a giant mentality—perverted strangely toward evil; men like Gilly and Renzor, who take human life without blinking an eyelash.
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