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

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.