The Big Book of Female Detectives

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

  “You could not expect me to tell you the names of those working with me,” she said gently. “Sufficient to say that I came here for the purpose of seeing Gonzales, of obtaining information from him that I did obtain, and that I cannot make any such agreement without first consulting the people who are in on this with me. But in view of the situation I think they will agree.”

  The man stood up.

  “Six o’clock is the deadline,” he said curtly. “Let me warn you—don’t try any tricks. An attempt at treachery would be fatal to the negotiations—and Mr. Wylie.”

  He turned with a sardonic smile and left the woman standing there beside the table in the center of the room, apparently defeated.

  He did not see, as the door closed behind him, that bowed figure straighten up like a steel spring uncoiling and dash swiftly into the next room. Neither did he see, as he stepped into the car in which he had arrived, her slender figure slip through the hotel entrance.

  But she did not make the mistake of letting the man she was following see her emerge. She remained just inside the arched colonnade for a moment, adjusting her hat, until his car swung into the traffic on the Prado.

  “Follow that car,” she said swiftly to the driver of a taxi at the curb. “Ten dollars if you do not lose him.”

  CHAPTER III

  The Headless Statue

  The great arched hall of the ruined monastery of San Fernando on the road to Gibara was a purple pool of shadow, although the afternoon sunlight still struck sharply across the landscape seen through the arched opening where the great iron barred doors had been flung open. A great flame tree that stood in the doorway was dropping its blossoms in the slight breeze like a blood-red rain. In the distance El Principe Castle, once one of Havana’s guardians and now a prison, stood on the top of the cliff overlooking the sea.

  Just inside the doorway lounged the figure of an armed man, obviously a guard.

  The great hall had, probably, at one time served as a place of worship for the monks. The ruined pile of rotted wood and carved stonework at one end might conceivably have been the altar. From narrow slitted windows, high up, three slanting beams of light fell sharply athwart the gloom, bringing into sharp relief the carved, life-sized figures that stood in niches all around the walls. Some of the figures were in an almost perfect state of preservation. Others were headless, battered, parts of their stone garments broken off. They were raised some ten feet above the floor, recessed into the enormously thick walls and each reached by three little flights of steps that led up to the pedestal upon which they stood.

  Seated on a low stool almost directly beneath one of these statues, Leon Ortega faced the man he had kidnaped.

  “I have just left Mrs. Legrand,” Ortega said. “She is a very sensible woman. Tonight at eight o’clock she delivers to me the secret of the hiding place of the gold that I seek. When I have verified her information you are free to go.”

  “You have her word?” Wylie questioned.

  Knowing the Lady from Hell as he did, he knew that if she did indeed have the key to the hiding place to a cache of gold she had no intention of yielding it tamely to Ortega. As a last resort, he knew that her loyalty to him would force her to yield to save his life. But he knew that she would make some effort to turn the game her way before she gave in. His mind would have been less easy, however, had he known that Vivian had nothing to barter for his safety and that the situation was causing the usually adroit Lady from Hell considerable concern.

  The two had first met in Manila, where Wylie was assistant to the ancient and incredibly evil Mandarin Hoang Ti Fu, and almost immediately their partnership had come into being. It had lasted for several years now, and he had sense enough to realize that he could not have continued to be a successful crook had it not been for his association with the Lady from Hell. Among other things he lacked the rare initiative and cold ruthlessness which distinguished her and had won for her the nickname of which she was known in the underworld of three continents. But, on the other hand, Wylie alone knew how heavily Vivian Legrand leaned upon him in certain phases of their work; how utterly she trusted him when she would not have dared trust another.

  “I have her word,” Ortega responded satisfied. “Tonight she yields it.” He looked at Wylie. “Meanwhile, you would prefer to remain here? It is cooler than in the room in there.” He nodded toward the narrow, iron-bound door at the rear of the great hall that opened into the cell-like room where Wylie had been confined until his return.

  “I would prefer it,” Wylie said, and his eyes flickered toward the open gateway.

  Ortega caught the glance and smiled sardonically.

  “There is only one guard at the gate,” he told Wylie, “but there are others on watch above the gateway. Through windows like those,” and he indicated the embrasures above their heads, “they command a view of the road and the approaches. You might overpower the guard, although I do not think it likely, but you would be shot down before you had gone ten feet.”

  Normally, Ortega would have kept his captive securely penned up until his objective had been reached. But, cleverer than most of his ilk, he was looking into the future. There was a chance, a bare chance, that the woman might be willing to sacrifice the life of her companion. In that case, there was a slim chance that the man himself had some clue to its whereabouts. If that were so, and Ortega had been able to gain his confidence by treating him more as a guest than a captive, he might secure that knowledge by a bargain. Providing, of course, that Wylie knew that the woman had been willing to sacrifice him.

  With this in mind he was perfectly content to let Wylie roam about the place, secure in the knowledge that he could not escape.

  * * *

  —

  Meanwhile, back in her sitting room in the hotel, Vivian was walking up and down, that keen brain of hers seeking a solution to the problem. She had found where Wylie was being kept prisoner—that great pile of ruined masonry on a hilltop outside Havana was an ideal place. It looked strong enough to withstand the battering of artillery. But now that she had trailed Ortega to his lair, what had she gained? She had no secret to barter to Ortega in return for Wylie’s safety, and Ortega would never believe her when she told him that the paper she had received from Gonzales had been blank. He would deem it but a trick on her part—and she had no doubt that Wylie’s life would answer for her failure to deliver the secret.

  She stopped in her stride and reached out to pick up the slip of paper again from the place where it had been on the table since Ortega’s visit, an hour or more before, and gasped in astonishment.

  Thin, fine lines of writing were apparent upon it now—thin lines in brown.

  And then she realized what had happened. Gonzales’s secret had been hidden in writing done with invisible ink. And it would have stayed truly invisible, forever lost to her, had it not been for her casual gesture in dropping it on the table. To lie in the full glare of the tropical sun! That intense heat had developed the writing upon it.

  Swiftly she snatched it up, eagerly reading the two brief lines which were perceptible.

  Monastery of San Fernando

  That was clear enough. But then, the second line, rather blurred…some sort of odd signature, perhaps?

  the Headless Saint

  Yes, that final word was “Saint.” A code term? Saints truly were to be associated with a monastery. The monastery of San Fernando? But, of course, here in Havana! Another gasp escaped her as the implication of what she had learned burst upon her shrewd mind.

  For a moment she stood in deep thought, and then, her green eyes glowing with exultation, ran for her bedroom. Here was a situation that could not have fitted her purpose more perfectly if she had planned it.

  * * *

  —

  Dusk was in the offing as a tall, black-haired woman pic
ked her way through the Chinese quarter of Havana. She was no longer young, this woman. There were lines about her mouth, lines on her forehead, and the black hair was streaked with gray here and there.

  She seemed frightened as she picked her way through a maze of dim, tunneled lanes and alleys of gloom where lived the Mother of Smells. Curious eyes followed her as she moved up to the door of a store and entered, for a white woman was a rarity in that section of Havana.

  Once inside the store she waved aside the clerk who came forward and asked in Spanish to see Chang Kai, the proprietor, at once. He came forward from behind the desk at the rear, his round, moonlike face wearing a look of polite inquiry.

  “I wish to talk to you—to see you alone,” she said with a furtive look around. “I have just come from Paris—and in Paris I was told that if I should need help that was—difficult to obtain—to come to you.”

  There was a look of speculation in the eyes of Chang Kai as he opened a door into his private apartment and motioned her to enter. It was not often that a white woman came to him seeking aid. Usually it was an alien who wished to be smuggled into the United States, a drug runner from Europe with a supply of cocaine or heroin to dispose of.

  Once inside the room the woman glanced about her nervously.

  “Can we be overheard?” she asked, in Spanish.

  “We are quite alone,” Chang Kai assured her. He pulled out a curved teakwood chair and she sank into it with a sigh, her fragile, worn hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  “I am Dolores Cordoza,” she said abruptly.

  Chang Kai’s eyes flickered slightly at the sound of the name, but otherwise he remained impassive, and she went on:

  “At one time my father was Minister of Finance of Venezuela. He foresaw that the revolution was coming, and when it came he fled with a large amount of gold and jewels.”

  “That is history, señorita,” Chang Kai informed her with a look of polite indifference. But a faint smile played around the corners of his mouth, making the lips the only living part of his features. It was almost as if he found the irony of the situation deeply amusing.

  “He reached Havana,” the woman told him, “and died here. But before he died he hid in a safe place the money he had brought away with him.”

  “And,” finished Chang Kai, “the money was never found. That I know, señorita. The hiding place of the treasure has never been found.”

  “But I have found it,” she declared earnestly, leaning forward. “That is why I have come to you. Looking through my father’s papers a short time ago I came across something that had been hidden before—a slip of paper that told where the treasure was hidden here in Havana. I hastened here. But when I arrived I found the house where the treasure was hidden occupied by a gang of cutthroats. I can do nothing alone. That is why I seek your aid.”

  “Where is the treasure hidden, señorita?” Chang demanded. Strong as the control over his emotion was, he could not quench the blaze that came into his beady black eyes. What a fool this woman was, those eyes seemed to say; a deer walking into the jaws of the tiger.

  The woman made a negative motion of her head.

  “That I will not tell you,” she said stubbornly, “unless you are willing to aid me. And if you are to aid me, it must be done tonight. There are others on the trail of my father’s money—a woman, a Mrs. Legrand, who has obtained the secret.”

  “Have heard of this woman,” Chang Kai admitted. “But how did she hear of the hiding place of your father’s money? She arrived in Havana only this morning.”

  “A man named Gonzales, who had stolen the knowledge from me in Paris, sent for her. When she learned that he knew the secret she slew him.”

  Chang Kai’s eyes flickered. Beneath the ice of his eyes fires were alive again, glowing as he stared unblinkingly at the woman.

  “So Mrs. Legrand has the secret,” he said, and if there was a curious note in his voice the woman did not seem to notice it.

  “Yes,” came the answer, “and tomorrow morning she strikes a bargain with the man who occupies the house where the treasure is hidden—and tomorrow it will be in their hands—lost to me.”

  “I will aid you—for a price,” Chang told her.

  “I will pay, of course,” the woman declared feverishly. “Twenty-five per cent of the treasure will be yours.”

  “I must have half,” Chang Kai declared firmly, and if the gleam in his eyes meant that he had no intention of giving this woman half of the treasure, once it was in his hands, she did not see it.

  “I cannot give you half,” the woman said firmly. “I must make a bargain with the leader of these men who occupy this house—one Ortega, a Cuban—for twenty-five per cent of the gold. Otherwise we could not obtain it. The house is strong, almost a fortress, and his men are armed. But I dare not go there alone and reveal to him the hiding place of the treasure—I am not a fool. I know that I would not live five minutes after this scoundrel got his hands on the secret of the hiding place. That is why I wish you to go with me tonight at eight thirty, with your men, to protect me.”

  * * *

  —

  The smile that flitted across the face of the Chinese was so nebulous that it might have been merely a shifting of the light and shadow effect upon his face. His voice was polite as he queried:

  “Where is the treasure, señorita?”

  “In the ruined Monastery of San Fernando, on the road to Gibara,” the woman told him. “My father had purchased it, with the intention of restoring it and making it into a residence. He hid the treasure there. And then he died. The sale was never recorded, and I do not know who owns it now.”

  Chang Kai rose to his feet, an alert look upon his face.

  “I shall make the necessary arrangements at once,” he declared with satisfaction.

  “But there is likely to be trouble! This man Ortega, whose headquarters it is, may not be satisfied with twenty-five per cent. He may try to seize it all,” she said anxiously.

  “There may be trouble,” Chang Kai admitted, “but I shall be prepared for it. You need have no further cause for worry. Leave this matter to me and by tomorrow morning your share of your father’s vanished treasure shall be in your hands.”

  He did not see the deep light, like the blaze in the heart of a fire opal, that leaped into the narrowed, greenish eyes of the woman facing him. Vivian Legrand, the Lady from Hell, had a great deal of doubt that the matter was going to turn out precisely as Chang Kai anticipated.

  CHAPTER IV

  Secret Orders

  For more than an hour Wylie had been sitting on the low stool, one of the few articles of furniture in the vast room, or wandering around the place on a tour of inspection. The guard at the door apparently paid no attention to him, but Wylie knew that he was under close scrutiny.

  A shout in Spanish drew his attention to the guard now—a shout that was taken up somewhere else in the great building and passed along. A moment later Ortega came into the place, buckling on a gun belt.

  The guard said, in rapid Spanish, that a Chinese was approaching up the road, and Wylie’s eyes flickered from the guard to Ortega. It was evident, from the thoughtful expression on the latter’s face, that the visitor, whoever he was, was unexpected. Ortega turned speculative eyes upon Wylie.

  “I hope,” he said softly, “that you are not raising false hopes about this being your opportunity to, shall I say, desert our hospitality? I should not, if I were you, make the attempt. You may remain here, and if I find that this visitor requires to talk with me privately I shall ask you to go inside for a little time.”

  Wylie had not, as a matter of fact, given much thought to the possibility of escape provided by the visitor. Ortega’s warning about the guards stationed above the doorway had not left his mind.

  Their visitor proved to be a yo
ung Chinese, his smooth yellow face wreathed in a bland smile beneath the wide, shadowing coolie hat of split bamboo. He might have passed for any one of the dozen market gardeners who trudge the road between their little vegetable fincas and the Havana markets every day in the week. Loose cotton trousers flapped above dirty feet in rope-soled sandals. The dingy cotton shirt was several sizes too large for him.

  The bland smile still wreathed his face, but the eyes beneath the shadowing hat were intent as he crossed the space between doorway and Ortega.

  “I bring you a message,” he announced abruptly in Spanish, stepping in front of Ortega.

  “From whom?” the Cuban asked.

  “From Chang Kai, chief of my tong,” came the answer. “Here is a paper that tells you that I speak truth when I say that I am his messenger,” and he extended a slip of rice paper on which was written a sentence in Spanish, the fine spider-like letters giving evidence that the man who had written them was an artist with ink and brush.

  Ortega read the sentence swiftly. Wylie’s eyes were fixed intently upon the young Chinese. He was tense, waiting for any emergency that might arise, his legs pressing the stone flooring like coiled steel springs ready to hurl him to his feet at an instant’s notice.

  “What is the message?” the Cuban asked.

  “You seek the hiding place of the gold of Cordoza,” came the sing-song answer. “So does the worthy Chang Kai.”

  “Madre de Dios!” ejaculated Ortega, sitting up in amazement. “Does all of Havana seek this gold?”

  “Of that I know nothing,” the Chinese said calmly. His eyes roved about the hall, seeming to be seeking, noting, verifying, flitting from one to another of the statues in their niches on the wall. “My message is this: Today you killed a man to obtain the secret of the hiding place of the gold. If by now you have read the paper on which the secret is written you know that you have but half of the secret. The other half is in the hands of the Worthy Chang Kai. Without his half you cannot find the gold. Without your half my master is helpless. I am instructed to say to you if you are willing to join forces my master is willing to share the treasure, half and half.”