THE SIGN OF THE VAMPIRE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 380, 22 July 1911, Page 2

THE SIGN OF THE VAMPIRE.

Being a Strange Chronicle from the Note-book of John Lyon, Elucidator, Known as the " Lion of the Law."

Bj S. H. Agnew, Author of "The Castle Mystery," etc.

PART 4. " I have just left her body in a cab on the corner of Bond Street, not ten minutes since," responded the elucidator moodily. His assistant's jaw dropped. " What game's this ?" he cried, his tone harsh and sharp. " I came straight from Mrs. Maddock's by motor, and our prisoner was safe then. I saw her before I left. She couldn't by any possibility have escaped and got to Bond Street in the time." " Then rush back to Mrs. Maddock's now," Lyon hissed. " Break every cursed steam regulation that was ever made, and then go on to the police station. I'm shadowing that dago, but I'll be with you as soon as I can." Chris never hesitated when there was rush work to be done.

Touching the peak of his cap he left his chief to follow Cellini, now thirty yards ahead, and dashed back to the " Saracen's Head," where the big racing automobile had been left standing. Honk-honk ! Away he went at a speed that fairly staggered the beholders. He obeyed Lyon's orders literally, sizzling through the town at such a rate that a streak of dust and an odour of petrol was about all the police could see of him. The mad drive was not without its excitements. In Briggate he narrowly escaped cannoning into a tram-car that stopped suddenly, amd before his excitement was over he shaved a brougham in front of the Grand Theatre by an absolute irriracle. Leaving a tide of curses and dust behind, him he swerved into North Street, and whirled round the corner into Melbourne Street, there to grind to a standstill in front of the Maddock abode. Mrs. Maddock met him on the threshold, her face putty-coloured with fear. She had viewed his extraordinary arrival from the front window, and had jumped to the worst conclusions. " Poor Mr. Lyon," she wailed. " 3 know he's been murdered at last'! 1 only hope the villains —" " Dash Mr. Lyon. The man who can harm him hasn't seen daylight yet," Chris roared, almost shaking her in his irritation. " It's the prisoner I'm anxious about. Is she safe ?" " The young lady ? Safe as a bee in a bottle." Lesage allowed a shout to escape him. The landlady retreated a step, evidently under the impression that his senses had succumbed to the long strain. Paying no further heed to her antics, the detective darted up to the door of the room where their mysterious visitor had been imprisoned Lifting his fist he beat an impatient tattoo on the panels. " Yes?" a soft voice-answered him —" Is that Mr. Lyon ?"' , " No, it's me—Lesasge," said thai worthy, without regard to the laws of Lindsay Murray. "-Are you quite j safe ?" I " Yes, thank you." Her voice helc | a tinge of surprise. " Has anything | happened ?" j " No—yes. I'll . tell . you after- j wards." | Lesage uttered a whoop of joy as he dashed down, to his car again Like his chief he had taken a strong liking to his self-constituted prisoner, and the news of her safety had lifted ft load from his mind.

CHAPTER VI. \ IN THE DEN OF INFAMY. Lyon's task presented no more difficulty at the end than it had done at the beginning. Seldom had he followed an easier trail. Cellini seemed entirely unconscious that he ■was being shadowed, and when he did glance behind it was only to avoid the traffic in crossing the roads. The trail led by way of Duncan Street and through Call Lane, thence to the network of lanes by the river. At length in a narrow, dingy thoroughfare that was a little better than an alley the Italian came to a halt. A quick glance up and down the road and he knocked on the paintless door of one of the bouses. The portal opened with a promptitude which suggested somebody on guard ; Cellini muttered something, and a second later the midnight blackness oi the passage beyond wiped him from the detective's view. From a corner of his eye Lyon submitted the building to a rapid but none the less thorough scrutiny. At some time it had been rented by a pickle manufacturer, as the signs still visible on the wails gave evidence. The windows were uncurtained and displayed that peculiar opaque quality of darkness only gain ed by years of dirt. On the door £ signboard gave notice in both English and Italian that beds could be obtained on paymerct of fourpence per night. " A cheap doss-house," the elucidator muttered as he moved away. "1 suppose this is a blind to conceal its real uses. Marvellous "how easy it h to blind the police. All the bettei for me, however, I shouldn't thinl< there will be much, difficulty in disguising myself as a dago and obtaining a bed. Lnckily I can speals Italian easily." The sight of a familiar figure jusi ahead put an effectual clieck to his reflections. There was no mistaking the tall, muscular form and the curls of crisp, oily. hair. It was th( big Italian who bad confessed to hire the murder of t&e ( girl cao.

There was no time to avoid an encounter, even had Lyon wished to do so. The Italian was upon him before he had determined upon a course of action, but that caused him little concern. He would let things take their own course. "Aha, comrade!" the swarthy man cried, his thick lips curling into a smile. " So we meet again. You are going into ze meeting, is it not so ?" " I don't expect as anybody'll miss it," the detective returned, altering his voice to suit his appearance. "I say, I haven't heard of the Town Hall—" An explosive oath cut him short. " Caramba ! Ze fool Cellini blundered. Ze Town Hall still stands, and nothing of the matter seems tc be known. It will go hard with the fool to-night, believe me."

" What's the business to-night ?" asked Lyon, casually, falling into step beside the other.

" Ze usual, my friend. We have tc draw lots to see who shall commit ze three murders to-night. My fate ! Our victims will pay up like lambs when they see how we keep our word, and ze League of ze Vampire will have money den to shock ze world ! Now that ccirl is out of ?.? wsv there is not a thing to be feared. It is a mistake to have women in any great movement ; their hearts turn to milk at ze first sign of bloodshed." He paused before "the doorway through which Cellini had disappeared as he uttered the final words and knocked in a peculiarly distinctive manner. Once again the door shot open as if actuated by a spring. Leaning forward he uttered the password : " Dead as the Black Prince."

Lyon, with the utmost coolness, repeated the rigmarole and followed hard on the heels of the unsuspecting Italian. Clash ! The portal closed with a force that sent a rush of air beating past his ears, and he found himself in a dark, evil-smelling passage. The prevailing odours were those of garlic and fried cabbage, and it seemed to Lyon as if every nauseous stink that he had ever heard of had contributed to the atmosphere. It suggested a place where bad smells went to when they died. He caught his breath with a gulp, and pushed after his leader with closed lips and compressed nostrils. " Pouf ! it is infernal dark here,' 1 the latter said, stumbling suddenly down the first steps of a steep flight. " Some day I shall pitch down here and breab my bones. I feel it in my very blood, every time I make ze descent." The detective grunted by way of answer. He did not care to use his voice too freely. He was in the enemy's stronghold, and it was not outside the bounds of possibility that some keen-eared spy might recognise it as belonging to a stranger. At the bottom of the stairs the big Italian halted, and Lyon, his eyes growing more accustomed to the gloom, saw that they were in a tiny box of a room. The wall was lined with hooks, above which appeared numbers inscribed on the whitewash in black chalk. Long cloaks of black depended from a few of the hooks, and the Italian proceeded to writhe his stout form into one of them, drawing the hood down so that nothing but his orbs gleaming through the eyelets could be seen. Taking advantage of a moment when he was looking another way, Lyon hastily unhooked another cloak and did likewise. In less than a minute both wore ready, and the leader tapped gently on the door at the further end, from beyond which penetrated the faint rumble of subdued voices.

It was a strange scene that the opening of the portal revealed. A barn-like room lay beyond, unfurnished save for a long oval table and a score or more of wooden ;hairs. The feeble illumination supplied by a single candle showed the Jim outlines of a dozen cloaked h•nires, <i ] l with their heads turned towards one who was standing at the 2xtremc end of the table. They did not move as the newcomers entered, and Lyon, following the Italian's sxample, slid quietly into a chair. The standing man was speaking passionately in Italian, a language which the elucidator understood perfectly. He thumped with his list upon the table at times, but never allowed his voice to rise above a whisper. Caution had become ho ingrained that it dominated even his excitable temperament. " Comrades !" he hissed, one arm uplifted above his head, " the hour is coming when the League of the Vampire will be a world terror, and the man who falters now must die. Are we to lose all our efforts at this final moment, when we have striven for weeks, because a miserable coward fails us ? No, and doubly no ! Our one stumbling-block has been removed, and the light of success shines on our path. Next week, comrades, we will have money from those we are terrorising, and with money all our schemes and plots can lie hatched." He paused, and his eyes, red and fierce in the shadow of the hood, roved round the table. " There must be no turning back, comrades. You know what awaits those who fall by the way and allow the law to clutch them. There is a rocky island well out in the sunny Bay of Naples, surrounded night and day by an armed patrol, with searchlights playing out and over the water, and a torpedo boat lurking in the shadows—that is the prison the Italian Government has prepared for us of the Black Hand, comrades.

" We must strike for world power. Our first aim to blackmail every cursed aristocrat in the world, gradually extending our operations until not a town has not trembled before

trie sign 01 t;}ie varr,;>:i •■, i t.-t- ,m'ch:io to wipe our monarchies ,■>.; you kill a. fly, and free the world';-, wor/.ers. that they may have what they earn, and not yield the half of it to the greed y paw sof — " " Hold !" With dramatic, suddenness a man hurst into the room, staggering as lie ran. Like a thunderclap his voice broke on the hushed air of the meeting. " A spy is here !" he roared. " A :loak has been taken, and the doorkeeper says an extra man has now Altered !" A bi-eath.less pause followed the words whilst the cloaked men glared suspiciously at one another. Lyon knew well that instant death awaited !iim if he. were discovered, and he imitated the others closely, even though his hands were clenchin:: upon the butt of his revolvers. A moment later the room was ail ■onfusion as the conspirators leapt to their feet. Taking advantage of the excitement the detective knocked over the candle as if by accident, plunging the cellar into total dark-

less. Then he slid to the doorway, ind passed through, leaving a turnoil of cries and screeches behind. Up the stairs ii 6 went, four at a time, slipping of! his cloak as he ran. A.t the end of the passage a dark iorm interposed, but Lyon was in no mood for diplomacies. His list rose ind fell with a savage lunge, and the doorkeeper went down with a :rash. Pitching him on one side, the letective fumbled at the lock, and a second afterwards felt the cool air fanning his face, while floods of sunlight nearly blinded him. Slamming the door behind him he glared round and met the astonished gaze of a costermonger who happened to be driving past. A quarter of a minute later the man was running to the nearest telephone with a message to the central police-station, while the detective kept watch and ward over the den where the Italians were snarling like an cry wolves. There was no back exit from the houses which meant that they were caught like rats in a trap. So it proved. Ten minutes afterwards two patrol waggons unloaded a big posse of constables and the League of the Vampire was captured

in its entirety, amid a scene of excitement such as has seldom been i witnessed in the city of Leeds. j * * * * One puzzle still awaited the elucidator's attention, and the solution was supplied by the lady who had foisted herself upon him in the char- i acter of a willing prisoner. It seem : ed that her twin sister had been en- ■■ gaged to the Italian who had eon- ' ceived the League of the Vampire—a man of education and of high social ■ standing in his native land. Accidentally discovering the conspiracy . of crime in which he was involved, \ the girl had sworn to reveal everything to the police and had in turn become the object of the Block Hand assassin. By an adroit impersona.- ■ tion her sister had led the would-be murderers off the scent, and, hurting herself hard pressed had conceived I the idea of taking refuge at John ; Lyon's, being well aware that the j terror of his name would prevent the Italians endeavouring to injure her j while she was there. It was she who J posted the warning to the detective, i which sent him in pursuit of the man > who had been detailed to destroy the ; Town Hall. That he did 'not succeed ; also in saving the life of the daring girl's unfortunate sister is considered by the Lion of the Law to be the ; only blemish on a most extraordin- ' ary case. I THE FAT). '