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
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.”
Secret Agent “X” as he became known, fully justified the confidence that had been placed in him. He never betrayed that trust, no matter what personal sacrifice his duty entailed. To finance his activities ten wealthy men, who were unknown to him and to whom he was unknown, subscribed an unlimited fund which is on deposit to his credit in the name of Elisha Pond at the First National Bank. As this fund becomes depleted by his necessary expenditures in the battle against crime, it is replenished by these wealthy men, who never ask an accounting, never know how it is used. But they feel that it has been well spent when they read in their newspapers of the destruction of another criminal gang, or of the capture of some vicious master criminal whom the police have been unable to cope with. Always, in these cases, there remains at the end an element of mystery, for the police themselves do not know how the discomfiture of the criminals was brought about, except that some mysterious force entered the situation at the opportune moment. Reading these accounts, those wealthy men smile knowingly, and feel that their money has been put to good use.)
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 connoisseur.
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 near-by 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.
“And there were twenty-five of them — twenty-five vicious, depraved criminals who can no more rid themselves of the urge to evil than a leopard can change its spots. Those men are loose somewhere in the country, hiding out, planning death and destruction!”
THE Agent had spoken forcefully, eloquently, with a purpose. Now, Leane sat tensely, gripped by the picture of menace that his words had evoked. She listened raptly as he continued.