by Nick Carter
Nick held his breath and gave Pierre one final twist and tossed him lightly into the center of the writhing room.
The deadly gas pellet waited his usual thirty seconds before going silently to work. Pierre held a small but highly concentrated substance that sucked the air and gave back high-powered poison; Nick had seen strong men die of Pierre in seconds after the preliminary half-minute. But he had no experience with Pierre's effect on animals, insects and snakes.
While he waited, lungs full of musty air and his mind on creeping things and "Eyes… Dakar" he swung the flashlight beam slowly around the room and wondered how he'd let himself be caught. From his new height he could see the open cages and the empty tanks behind the herbalist's counter. Green-Face-Frog-Eyes must have had himself a nasty little ball before leaving for Dakar and killing a policeman on his way out. But why hadn't he, super-sleuth Nick Carter, been aware of these skittering, scuffling things before? He swore at himself as he asked the question, and realized at once that he had only looked for human occupants before going on his way up stairs. And Eyes must have left long enough before so that the creatures would have quieted down. Or shortly enough before so that they were not yet free…?
The flash beam licked the floor beneath his feet. A viper spat back at him. Its tiny body twitched as though readying itself to jump, and the vicious spitting mouth opened and closed against the thickening air.
A red devil appeared suddenly on the wooden seat beneath Nick's feet and tacked dazedly toward him. This time there was nothing to do but try to smash the creature. Nick raised his left foot and let death slither beneath it. The red devil sidled swiftly toward the standing right foot and Nick brought his free leg down in a lightning movement that would have befuddled any quick-thinking man. But the red spider was not a man. Some instinct made it dart free of the descending foot and scrabble up the outside of the right trouser leg. Nick's foot came down uselessly on the wooden seat and the thing clung to the fabric of his pants. He swung his leg suddenly and violently as if he were kicking off a football game, and still the thing clung to his right trouser leg. Nick brought his leg far back, past the side of the chair, so that the thing was clinging to cloth separated from Nick's vulnerable flesh by an inch of space. He felt it scuttle up to his knee, where the cloth was tighter and only its thickness separated him from death.
If he tried to strike it off, it would bite with deadly savageness. Wilhelmina would blow his knee to bits. Hugo could miss. The creeping bastard was still horribly alive and accurately swift. It was a wonder that it hadn't bitten yet. Feeling Pierre quite badly now, most likely. Any second now it could fall off and die.
It didn't. It tickled his knee and slithered up his thigh. Nick felt cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He held the lower part of his body still and relaxed, as his Yoga training had taught him, and reached slowly and carefully into his jacket pocket for the only other weapon he had.
He drew it out silently and brought it up against the slight but awful weight that settled on his upper leg. His left thumb flicked urgently against the tiny, corrugated wheel and the harsh flame of his cigarette lighter bit into his thigh. But first it bit the red-brown killer that clung to him like a demon lover, and the thing jerked hideously as the glossy back and furry legs caught fire. The killing flame showed the shriveling, convulsively kicking obscenity turning black, red sparks glinting at the base of its short hairs. It dropped onto the floor, a charred ball with eight bare, glowing legs. Its light went out.
Nick brushed out the small fire on his pants leg and willed himself not to feel the burning pain nor to breathe the acrid air. He stroked the flashlight beam across the floor. Ten little, nine little, eight little spider devils, seven little, six little, five little killer vipers, four little, three little, two little scorpions, one little green lizard dead. They drooped like dying leaves in the beam of his flashlight. At last the scuttling, fluttering, slithering noises stopped.
He waited another twenty seconds or so before stepping down from his perch into the sea of dead and crumpled things. Someone was walking slowly along the street outside. The footsteps stopped as he listened. Stopped and came back and stopped again, just outside the window. He could see the dimness of the room thickening slightly as the figure blocked out most of the little light that filtered through the junkpile window from the street. It was one of Abe's men, and he had his nose almost pressed against the pane. Looking for a flickering light, no doubt, thought Nick. Well, he isn't going to see it.
Nick bent into a low crouch and crept across the squishing floor beneath the level of the window. When he had cleared it and reached the shallow side of the room beyond the front door he straightened up and sidled to the back of the room, keeping one eye on the window and trying not to notice the repulsive sounds that came from underneath his feet. No one outside could possibly have heard them, but to him they sounded like bodies splattering on a sidewalk below the thirty-seventh floor.
He paused at the curtained door and watched Abe's man turn and walk on. By this time Nick's lungs were beginning to feel like overextended balloons and his ears were hearing the singing of a distant surf. He'd have to get outside — or to an open window — in a hurry. He chose the latter as he pushed aside the curtain and opened the inner door; there was no knowing what he might meet in the lane.
The stairboard creaked as usual as he raced up to the landing and threw himself into the old man's room. The dead eyes seemed to watch him with acute dislike and disapproval. Nick dropped to his knees at the partly open window and sucked in the cool night air. When his breathing became normal he raised the window as far as it would go, and then crossed into the other room to open the shutters and the shutter-type windows. To anyone watching it would seem a normal enough thing for a man to do in the middle of the night if he woke up in a stuffy room. A fresh draft swished across the upstairs landing. He wished he could open the back door to be sure that Pierre's lethal fumes would have dispersed by the time Abe's men decided to investigate the place, but that was much too chancy. Given the slightest break, Pierre would have enough time to leave quietly by the windows. He himself would probably have to do the same, and do it now.
Two of Abe's watchmen on the Avenida Independencia were standing together and conferring. Then one walked away and joined the third for another brief conference. Nick wondered if the men at the back were supposed to do the same. They must surely have periodic checks with each other.
The poor bloodsoaked bastard in the alley. First sight of him and they'd come crashing into the house. He'd have to stall them somehow, even if only for minutes.
Nick filled his lungs with air and ran down into the mustiness of the lower floor. He unlatched the back door carefully and looked out through a narrow crack before stepping outside. The night was silent. His eyes and his senses told him that he was the only living thing in the lane. Then he pulled the door wide open.
Abe's backdoor-man was lying where Nick had found him. His blood was drying rapidly now in the rising breeze. The second of the rearguard watchers was out of sight, but Nick could hear two sets of quiet footsteps meet and stop. That made it seem that watcher number one checked with watcher number two; number two turned to number three; number three walked to number four; number four would look for number five and wouldn't find him; number four would whistle to number three and together they'd find Carter with three bodies and a mouthful of explanations. That kind of predicament would be embarrassing for the special representative of a government already deep in dutch with the Nyangese and their Russian friends. Nick's eyes skimmed the rooftops while he hoisted the unwieldy body. Maybe. Yes, he could make it if he had to. And he would almost certainly have to — it wasn't likely he could get past two living men alert to danger.
He hauled the cumbersome shape down the lane and through the open doorway, setting it down gently just inside the door. As he closed the door he heard the footsteps start again. This time there was only one pair of them, and they were comin
g closer. Holding his breath against the lingering death-fumes of Pierre, Nick locked the door hastily and took the stairs in several light, loping bounds. From a vantage point in the old man's room, near the window but hidden from outside, he looked down into the lane and saw Abe's man saunter toward the back door and past it. In seconds he was out of sight, his soft footfalls fading, stopping, and then getting louder again. He paused somewhere near the window and Nick could hear him give a low whistle. Again he started to walk, this time hesitantly as though he were peering into the shadows. If he peered into the right shadow, he'd be sure to see the blood.
But he walked back past the door and repeated the low whistle. Nick risked a quick look to see him reach the end of the lane and just stand there, staring around like a lost sheep. Without waiting for him to come to his senses Nick pulled himself onto the high windowsill and chinned himself swiftly up to the outer lintel. From there it was only a foot or so to the roof, which looked flat from below and was probably — he hoped — cement-finished or asphalted. He propelled himself upward with his feet pushing against the window frame and his arms reaching from lintel to edge of roof. In a moment he was grasping the edge and hauling himself up on to it. It was asphalted. A herd of elephants could walk across it and not be heard. He crouched low on it and looked down over the edge. The lane was empty for a moment, but as he watched a second man joined Abe's inept alley-watcher and the two of them pussyfooted warily into the lane with the exaggerated care of men walking on dinosaur eggs. Nick left them to their gruesome search and took off from his roof to the one next door at a silent running crouch. From there he could see that one of Abe's watchers was still at the front but the second was moving around to take the place of the one who had joined the fourth in search of their buddy. And a useless bloody lot they were, too, Nick thought disgustedly.
But they probably weren't trained for this sort of thing. Abimako's crimes, until recent months, had never been much more than simple thefts and occasional brawls. Besides that, all of Abe's best men were busy hunting for bomb-throwers and assassins.
His progress across the roofs was as silent and unseen as a sleek black cat setting out at night across the tiles. He lowered himself just as quietly at the end of the block and crossed the street out of sight of the police-watcher on the Avenue. After that he made good time back to Liz' house, again approaching it slowly, cautiously.
He hoped Liz was still asleep.
Still as stealthy as a black cat, he let himself in through the window.
Liz was not in bed.
He found her in the living room sipping a cold beer and glancing at a magazine.
"You've been gone for simply hours," she said. "I woke up, I was thirsty, and I missed you. Have a bottle. You look thirsty, too."
Wordlessly, he took a beer bottle and flicked off the cap.
"What in the world have you been doing," Liz asked, managing to sound not so much nosy as politely interested, "to get a hole burned in your pants?"
"Getting ready for Dakar," he said. "Cheers."
The Silent Visitor
The Hotel Senegal in Dakar was all that Rufus Makombe had said it was, and more. So much more that as soon as Nick got to his room, after his swift morning flight from Abimako, he began to wonder if they weren't overdoing things a little. He also thought over the short list of people who had known he would be staying at the Senegal, and wondered if he shouldn't have obeyed his initial impulse to check in at the Majestic under one of his many imaginative pseudonyms.
He was thinking all these things in a series of simultaneous flashes as the bellhop, carrying his one bag, locked the door behind him, dropped the bag, and said almost as musically as Stonewall: "Put your hands up, white Yankee, and do not make a sound. You will die instantly if you call out."
Nick turned slowly with his hands half-raised and saw the muscular dark figure and the long-nosed gun with its cumbersome silencer. Cumbersome or not, it was a type he knew would stifle harsh reports sufficiently to let them pass unnoticed in this busy, chrome-plated palace on Dakar's noisiest street.
"You fool!" Nick hissed. "You treacherous blind fool!" His arms dropped to his sides. "Don't you even know who you're working for?" The gun faltered almost imperceptibly and Nick pressed his flickering advantage. "Tell me the words that were agreed upon or you will die like the creeping rat you are." The liquid eyes clouded with puzzlement but the gun steadied and pointed inexorably at Nick.
"There are no words…" the big man began. Nick cut him off with an exclamation that spat across the room.
"No words! You ignorant ape! Is that how much you know about our operations here? Pah! Put that foolish gun away at once or you will suffer for your idiocy. The Cause will not put up with such bunglers as you. Didn't you understand your orders, pig?"
The gun drooped hesitantly and Nick leapt. His sinewy hands caught hold and twisted agonizingly. The gun came free in his right hand and he slammed it lightly against the big man's temple. The fellow staggered and fell back. Nick drew back his leg and slammed his weighted heel, against one flailing limb. It caught the shin where he'd intended, and the big bellhop screamed and dropped.
"Now," said Carter menacingly. "Perhaps you will understand that you do not trifle with your superiors. Stop your whining and tell me instantly who caused you to make this unthinkable blunder. Weren't you told that the white Yankee made arrangements to check into the Majestic? And that I have come from headquarters to find out where he goes and who he sees? Sit up and talk to me as you have been taught. As I hope you have been taught."
The big man groaned and pulled himself painfully to a sitting position.
"I thought — they told me — who are you?" he stammered.
"I ask, you answer!" Nick snapped at him. "What were your orders, and who gave them to you, that you did not know my true identity?"
"Laszlo, Laszlo!" the man said earnestly. "He said the American Carter might come here and I was to…" he stumbled over his words and his eyes wandered over Nick's shoulder and pulled themselves away with visible effort. Nick twisted a swift look behind him and jumped simultaneously.
The flying figure that burst from the bathroom doorway missed Nick by inches and crashed into the big bellhop. Two big, muscular bodies sprawled on the floor and the first one cursed obscenely. The second extricated himself with a leaping turn and faced Nick in a crouch with his weird weapon raised. Nick flicked himself out of reach and pointed the bellhop's gun.
"Get back!" he ordered. "Get your hands up or I'll shoot."
The man lunged at him. Nick cursed softly and aimed for the bunched shoulder that was one great weapon in itself, starting from the straining neck and extending to the pointed tip of the odd weapon in the massive hand.
The gun clicked uselessly.
Nick cursed again and flung it viciously across the room as he wheeled sideways and let the man come at him. His body bent slightly forward, his steel-and-whipcord arms lashed out to push and pull in a series of swift moves so smoothly coordinated that they seemed like one. The wooden striking blade of the flat club — used like the hard edge of the hand in Karate — soared forward and down. Nick let it come toward him, then he pivoted and grasped the bulging arm that held the club and swung it downward like a pump handle. The left arm and foot flailed wildly in the air. Nick completed the twist and the man somersaulted floorward like a wheel ripped from its axle and rolling crazily. The man made a sound like a watermelon splitting open. Nick scooped up the sword-shaped club and tossed it after the gun. In this kind of fight he preferred to use his hands. And feet. He kicked viciously at the groin. The man gave a groan like a mighty belch and jerked convulsively, drawing up his legs and clutching himself like a caterpillar curling itself into an aching ball.
Nick saw the movement near the bedroom door from the corner of his eye. His first assailant was raising himself painfully to one knee and pulling a knife from inside the jacket of his loose uniform. Nick watched the arm go back and start forward b
efore he moved, and then he moved like greased lightning. The knife hissed past his ear and buried its thin blade in the hard wood of the closet door. Nick leapt up from his low crouch and flicked the knife straight out of the wood and snapped it back at its owner in one smooth motion. It caught the killer-busboy as he scrabbled painfully toward the door just as he reached upward for the doorknob. His upraised chin had made his thick neck an easy, irresistible target. He gargled horribly and fell to the floor clutching his throat and hiccuping.
The second man was slowly uncoiling at Nick's feet. Nick, avoiding the man's outstretched, grasping hands, slid Hugo out of his slender sheath.
Hugo was a deceptively small Italian stiletto that concealed its deadly ice-pick blade in a thin bone handle until released by the flick of a finger on a tiny switch. Then Hugo would spring into fighting position, and fighting for Hugo was killing. Unless, of course, Hugo succeeded by gentle persuasion instead of dealing instant death.
Nick flicked the small trigger and Hugo darted out of hiding like a snake flashing out its tongue.
"Now sit up with your hands behind your back. Come on! Move!"
The man sat up slowly, making little grunting noises and seeking a weapon with his eyes. When he saw the gun and his swordlike club at the far end of the room well out of his reach, he lost interest in them and stared hopefully at Nick's feet, his shoulders bunching reflexively as if his arms were itching to get at his captor.
Nick's gray eyes were cold, cruel steel as they gazed down at the captive.
"Now you're going to tell me where you get your orders," he said quietly in French. "You're not leaving here until you do. Understand?"
The dark head nodded, but there was a contemptuous smile on the fleshy lips.
"I don't think you do," Nick said. He strode to the bedroom door and locked it, keeping his eyes on the silent, cross-legged figure. "No one will be let in or out of this room until I have finished with you. And I will not finish with you until you have told me what I want to know." He moved back to his victim and looked down at him, thoughtfully fingering Hugo's tapering point. "It may hurt." He waited. The man said nothing. "Who sent you?" Nick said sharply. "Start with that and start now. Or I'll start."
