The Secret Agent opened the paper and read through the letter quickly.
Dear Foster:
This is an open challenge. Dare you pick up the glove? For every man who has met death at the hands of the law, I shall take the lives of ten members of the police force. A vaster army than you can muster is behind me. It is the Legion of Corpses. The secret of life eternal is mine; yet to my enemies, I mete out certain death. Dare you take up the glove?
The paper jerked almost imperceptibly in the Agent’s hands. For this open challenge from the lawless to the law was signed, “Secret Agent ‘X’.”
“X” looked at Betty. A fear that his smile could not dispel was in her deep blue eyes. “You know what that means?” she asked. “Foster will demand your capture, alive or—or —”
The Agent laughed quietly. “There’s been a price on my head before. Go ahead and publish that note in your paper. If you don’t, some other paper will. It doesn’t matter, anyway.” He handed the piece of paper across the desk.
As Betty extended her hand for the note, her elbow knocked over the telephone. The girl uttered a startled: “Oh!” and started to recover the instrument.
Agent “X’s” hand shot out and closed over her wrist. A strange change had come over his face. His eyes were like bright points of gleaming steel. Gently, he disengaged Betty’s fingers from the phone, picked up the instrument, and stared at it a moment before setting it down. Then he slid from the desk, crossed the room on tiptoe, one finger on his lips. He beckoned to Betty. Wonderingly, the girl got up, and followed him. The Secret Agent put both hands on her shoulders, bent his head, and whispered into her ear:
“Go back to the desk, sit as you were sitting, and keep talking for about a minute. Then, newspaper or no newspaper, leave this office immediately. I don’t want to hide from you the fact that you are in deadly danger. Avoid all strangers. Take care of yourself, but don’t be afraid. Go back now.” He gave her a gentle push, and turned toward the door.
* * * *
Agent “X” unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped outside. Reporters were waiting for him, eager with questions. With his back to the door, “X” inserted the key in the lock, and turned it. Then he dropped the key to the floor, found it with his heel, and kicked it under the door.
“Where’s Miss Dale?” demanded one of the reporters.
“Inside,” the Agent explained. “She’s putting her notes in some order. Don’t worry; she’ll not hold out on you.” Then he pushed past the reporters, turned abruptly to the left, and entered another office. It was empty. He hurried over to the desk and bent over the telephone. A moment’s scrutiny told him what he wanted to know. Beneath the receiver hook of the instrument, was a small wooden wedge driven far enough in to open the telephone circuit. A similar wedge he had seen on the phone in the room in which he had talked to Betty.
It was safe to wager that every phone in the building had been similarly opened so that anyone listening at any of the extension phones on the circuit might have heard his conversation with Betty Dale.
As “X” hurried from the little office he was wondering if the robbery attempt that afternoon had been the failure he had thought it to be. Perhaps there was another motive—one that spelled danger for himself—and for Betty Dale. He wondered, too, if Krausman’s absence from the city that afternoon was as innocent as it appeared to be.
Avoiding Commissioner Foster and Major Derrick, who were busy with the police investigation, “X” hurried along the wall of the store, stopping at every door to look in the rooms beyond. All were empty. The police had herded all the store’s employees into one group, and were busy firing questions at them.
Agent “X” turned to the back of the store, glanced into Krausman’ s office, and hurried on to another room where were the vaults in which Krausman kept certain valuable jewels. The door was locked.
Taking from his pocket a bunch of master keys, without which he never ventured forth, he selected one that would fit the lock. In another moment, he was inside the room. It, too, was empty. But “X” immediately noticed the absence of the telephone which usually sat upon the desk. The phone wire itself passed beneath the slightly raised window and out into the alley.
“X” picked up a straight office chair and quietly tiptoed to the window. Raising the chair level with his chest, his arms shot out like two pistons. The chair crashed through the glass. “X” followed the chair, leaping over the sill to drop ten feet into the alley outside. Recovering his balance immediately, he glimpsed the phone swinging against the outer wall. A small window-washer’s ladder leaned against the wall. But these were minor details and the matter of only a moment’s observation. Near the window was a sleek, cream-colored roadster. The door was open and a woman was just stepping in. She sent one glance over her shoulder before dropping into the deep cushions.
For a moment, “X” saw her face, though partially concealed by the soft fur that trimmed the collar of her extravagantly beautiful dress. Her face was small, nearly round, and dark complexioned. Her lips slightly voluptuous, were rouged a striking shade of red that was almost like Chinese lacquer. Her nose was slightly uptilted and her eyes were actually arresting; true emerald green, they were beneath long, penciled brows that curved upwards at the outer extremities.
But what struck Agent “X” as being extremely important was the flash of green in the bracelet about her left wrist. He was certain that the woman wore the jade bracelet that he had watched Dr. Jules Planchard purchase.
The woman’s lips parted, emitting a husky, purring sort of laugh.
“X” saw that the motor of the car was running. He sprang toward it in an effort to catch hold of the spare-tire carrier, but even as he leaped, the clutch grabbed and the car scudded off down the alley.
“X” pivoted. A trim black sedan, one of the Agent’s own cars, was parked directly behind the jewelry store. He made for it, sprang into the front compartment, and plugged at the starter. The motor kicked over, thrummed smoothly. He shifted gears soundlessly and gave the great supercharged motor all the gas it would take. Like a black projectile, his car shot down the alley.
Ahead of him, the woman’s roadster nosed through a traffic lane, and turned to the right. “X” rounded the corner, his car whining in second gear. He cleared the broad bumper of a moving truck by a hair’s breadth, purposely threw the car into a skid that shied it across the track of a speeding sedan. Ahead, the cream-colored roadster wove through traffic, putting two more cars between its tail-lamp and the nose of the Agent’s car.
He accelerated, sounded his horn, and crowded the car in front of him to the curb. A comparatively clear lane ahead, the cream-colored car, with its exotic driver, pulled away. The tweet of a traffic officer’s whistle was wasted on unheeding ears. The green-eyed woman could drive, and her car was capable of taking all she gave it.
“X” had seen the green-eyed woman before. Felice Vincart was her real name, but it had given place to the alias she had made famous. Snatched from the variety stage by an ardent young millionaire who had fallen in love with her, Felice Vincart had found herself a widow after a few months. In spite of her wealth, she had not gained a position in the social register. She remained known not by her husband’s name but by the alias she had made famous. When the tabloids exploited her voluptuous beauty she was invariably called “The Leopard Lady.”
It was an appropriate appellation; for Felice Vincart had a grace and manner that was actually feline. Her act in the theater had consisted of a wild, barbaric dance, revolving about two great leopards which she herself had trained.
How had the Leopard Lady, with all the pleasures that money could buy at her disposal, become associated with the criminal who directed the activities of the sinister corpse legion? Perhaps a life of indolence