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

Vivian peered into the dark little room. He did not see the swift gesture with which she put her finger to her lips and if he noticed that an exclamation died in utterance on the lips of the bandit chief, he paid no attention.

“Poor fellow,” Vivian said pityingly. “How long must he remain in prison?”

“He dies tomorrow morning at dawn,” the Comandante said grimly.

Vivian gave a start of dismay. The green pools of her eyes seemed to stir as if a wind had passed over them, became veiled, as if their owner wished to shut out something that might betray her. She had not expected this. She would have to work fast. Then she looked at Don José with a little pathetic smile edging her lips.

“Poor fellow,” she breathed.

Before the Comandante could stop her she had ripped a cluster of flowers from where it was pinned to her shoulder and thrust them through the bars.

“Take them,” she breathed to Delgado, with a little catch in her voice. “Perhaps they will comfort you before you die.”

She turned away toward the staircase, followed by Don José.

“You are too soft,” he said. “Delgado is a dangerous rogue.”

The Lady from Hell smiled charmingly. “Alas, I cannot help it,” she said with a little sigh. “It is my nature.”

Behind them, Cruz Delgado’s fingers were swiftly tearing at the little cluster of flowers. In his eyes and upon his face was a light like that of a condemned man who has been granted a reprieve. The Lady from Hell shot a glance over her shoulder, just in time to see him snatching from the heart of one of the flowers a thin slip of paper covered with writing.

Wylie had worked for a long time that morning to secrete that slip of rice paper in the flower, and Delgado read the instructions it contained with glowing eyes. Then he rolled the paper into a tiny ball and swallowed it.

Dawn was hours away when the Lady from Hell and her companion left their Cadiz hotel and walked swiftly in the direction of the prison.

IV

The afternoon and evening had been a busy one... one of the busiest ones in the long career of the Lady from Hell. There had been so many loose ends to tie into their scheme, and so little time in which to accomplish it. Both were dressed in dark clothes and Wylie carried a large leather bag.

They did not take a taxi. Better, Vivian reasoned, to leave no trail that might point toward her. If the scheme she planned was successful, they would have a start on a new fortune to replace the one that had been lost to them. If anything went wrong... there was a vivid recollection in her mind of the gloomy cells of the prison she had visited that afternoon.

There was little conversation between them. They had gone over their plans in minute detail and little remained to be said. Vivian was keenly aware of the difficulty of the thing she had set out to do. Her brain was working coolly, methodically, judicially, and in her eyes as she walked along, was a light more hard and calculating than is usually found even in the eyes of a beast of prey.

The dark little side street with an uneven narrow sidewalk and cobbled street that was their destination had been four hundred years old when Rome was founded; it had echoed to the arrogant tread of Phoenician traders eleven hundred years before the Christian era, for Cadiz is the oldest city in Spain. In the shadowy alcove of a huddle of buildings she found the spot that she sought... a narrow, iron barred door in the towering brick wall.

“Keep out of sight, whatever you do,” she told Wylie. “Whatever happens don’t show yourself until I call you. With your shattered ribs, you haven’t strength enough to be of much help. Your gun is to be used only as a last resort.”

Wylie, resenting the minor role his injuries forced him to play, melted into the shadow of one of the houses and Vivian glanced at her watch. Five minutes to three. Five minutes to the time when the Arab had told her that Manuel, the guard she had been playing, would pass the gate on his rounds.

A footstep was audible on the flagstones inside and as it came opposite the gateway the Lady from Hell rapped sharply on the doorway. The sound was clear and distinct in the stillness of the night... too loud, Vivian feared for a moment. The footsteps halted, then resumed, and a tiny iron wicket in the thick gateway was shot back.

“Manuel,” she whispered.

The man stared out through the grating incredulously.

“You,” he whispered in Spanish. “But what are you doing here?”

“I must see you,” she whispered back. “That was why I persuaded the Comandante to show me through the prison today. I thought that I might see you then, but I could not talk while he was with me.” She was lying expertly, but the man did not know that. “Open the gate, and let me in.”

“No, no,” he said, “I cannot open the gate. It is forbidden.”

The keynote of her plan lay in her persuading him to open the gate. Without that, she was doomed to failure. “But I am going away. Would you have me leave without my farewell?”