Double Identity

by Nick Carter

  There was a low garage attached to the house by a latticed breezeway. Nick waited patiently for the dying moon to show, then saw that he could get to the upper floor, to the single wing of the house, by means of the latticework. He studied the layout intently in the brief light. He would have to do it by touch in the dark.

  The moon sailed behind a dark cloud. Nick pushed cautiously through a low hedge of Indian cactus and tested the lattice. It held his weight. He went up like a monkey, using only one hand, the Luger alert in the other. The lattice was new and strong and did not creak, though it bent and swayed alarmingly.

  There was a narrow strip of gutter and roof between the top of the lattice and the window which was his target. N3 stepped forward lightly and ducked below the window level. This was the only upstairs room in the house—he had figured it to be the Hindu maid’s bedroom—and whether he was right or not didn’t matter. What did matter was that it was the obvious way into the house. For that reason he had chosen it—his enemy might not be expecting the obvious.

  Or again he might. Nick Carter swore gently to himself. The bastard had the advantage for the moment—he was in there somewhere and he could afford to wait. He knew that Nick had to come to him.

  And so Nick did! But N3 had a healthy sense of fear, or what Hawk called intelligent caution, which had kept him alive for a long time in a very precarious profession. Now he huddled beneath the sill of the window and considered if he should take the gamble the window represented. It was another of the moments of truth he must continually face.

  Nick peered up at the window. It was closed but the jalousies inside were slitted open. Nick flexed the stiletto into his hand and reached up, using the weapon as a pry-bar. The window moved a fraction. Not locked on the inside. Nick pondered that for a moment, then pried again with Hugo. The window shifted upward a half-inch. Nick re-sheathed the stiletto and got his big fingers into the crack and lifted. The window went up with a faint grating noise.

  Sweat glistened on Nick Carter’s face and stung his eyes. He had been half expecting a blast of gunfire in his face, or a knife between the eyes. He breathed out a sigh of relief and kept going. The window had made enough noise to be heard anywhere in the silent house—his man would know at once what it was. And where Nick was! It might draw him, but Nick doubted it. The bastard could afford to wait.

  He held the faintly rattling jalousies aside and legged over the sill. The room was dark but he caught the smell immediately. Blood! Fresh blood! The moon flashed for an instant and he saw something on a bed—it looked like a crumpled pile of dark rags through which something light glimmered. The moon went out.

  Nick scuttled on his hands and knees for the door. His fingers told him it was locked. On the inside. His enemy was in the room with him!

  Nick held his breath. Absolute dead silence pervaded the room. When at last he had to breathe—yoga exercises had built his lungs to where he could do without air for four minutes—nothing had changed. Still the deadly, frightening silence and the smell of fresh blood. Whose blood? Who, or what, was the thing on the bed?

  N3 breathed soundlessly by mouth and did not move. He began to doubt his senses. He had not thought there was another man in the world who could go as quietly, as stealthily, as himself. Then he remembered—this enemy was himself in a sense! The Chinese had trained this impostor well.

  There is a time to wait and a time to act. Nobody knew the adage better than Nick. So far he was behind. He was losing. The enemy knew he was in the room—but Nick did not know where the enemy was. Force his hand. Put on the pressure. began to crawl around the wall, thinking hard, trying to see the ultimate trick if there was one, expecting any moment the blinding flash of a light in his eyes. The smash of a bullet.

  His brain worked furiously as he moved. Had he somehow been swindled, tricked? Or tricked himself? Had the door somehow been fiddled with so that it only appeared to have been locked from the inside? Sweat chilled on him at that thought—if it were true and his double had men with him then Nick was in a trap! They could guard the window and door and kill him at their leisure—or merely hold him prisoner until the police came. That didn’t bear thinking about. The cops would think they had the real killer again! It would take weeks to disentangle the mistaken identity mess and Nick would be ruined as an agent for a long time to come.

  His hand touched cold metal. The bed. He raked under it with the stiletto, the Luger ready, his own nerves beginning to fray ever so slightly now. Damn the waiting, lurking sonofabitch! He wanted it that way. He was playing it that way.

  There was nothing under the bed. The smell of blood was thick and sour-sweet in his nose now. He went beneath the bed and emerged on the far side, his fingers tracing up. It was a box spring and the mattress was thick. His hands touched something on the floor which he could not understand—bits of soft, fluffy stuff like waste or cotton. What the hell? The stuff lay thick on the carpet.

  His fingers came away damp and sticky. Blood. Blood all over his fingers now. Nick put them to his nose and sniffed. Fresh, all right. Not yet fully congealed. Whoever it was that was dead on the bed had just been killed.

  He moved away from the bed, wiping his fingers silently on a dry stretch of carpet. There were two danger spots. A closet—there must be one—and the bathroom if it opened off the bedroom. His man could be lurking in either spot.

  By this time N3 was having to use his will power to keep his nerves under control. Seldom had they been so tested! He felt a sudden overwhelming urge to find the light switch and flood the room with brilliance—shoot it out with the bastard face to face! He killed the urge with a grim inward chuckle. That would be playing the other man’s game. He was doing too much of that now.

  Yet he had to relieve his tension somehow. He found the bathroom and went into it like a tornado, not caring for poise, ripping and flinging about with the stiletto and the Luger. He tore down the shower curtain and demolished the medicine cabinet. Nothing!

  He found the closet and gutted it. Nothing!

  No sound. No movement. Only darkness and a strange corpse on the bed and the growing awareness that he was being completely outsmarted. Being made a fool of! And time leaking away relentlessly. There was not even time for a halt, for a cool and logical reappraisal of what was beginning to look like an impossibly insane situation. Either he was all wrong—or he was losing his marbles!

  The bed now began to draw him like a magnet. There was something about the bed—something that glimmered in his brain and tried to fight through to him and couldn’t quite make it. N3 scuttled back to the bed like a big crab and stabbed beneath it again with the stiletto. Still nothing. And then something very peculiar happened to Nick Carter, to Killmaster. For the first time in his career he found himself verging on real panic. This whole thing was crazy. He must be losing his mind. The guy had to be in this room and yet he wasn’t! No man could go so long without breathing—and sooner or later breathing was bound to give you away in dead silence.

  Wait a minute! The body on the bed! The blood was real enough, warm and sticky, but blood could be brought into a room and splashed about.

  Cautiously, very slowly, conscious that his hand was shaking a bit, Nick began to explore the surface of the bed. His fingers touched soft flesh. Cool velvet beneath his fingers. Nearly cold now. He touched a tiny button of flesh, nipple! He was touching a woman’s breast.

  So much for that idea. The corpse was real enough. A woman’s body. His still roaming fingers plunged into a deep wound squarely between her breasts. No weapon, but Nick could guess at what had killed her. Stiletto!

  The phony agent had taken his revenge on the Hindu maid. What a fool she had been, what fools the Karachi police, to let her stay on in the house. Probably she had figured she would be safer here than elsewhere in this angry Moslem city. Sad irony!

  Her single filmy garment had been pulled up over her head and tied, so his sensitive fingers told him. Nick scowled in the blackness. It was easy to imag
ine what else the man had done to her. He had spiced his revenge, his waiting, with a little rape. Cold, clever, heartless devil! The krait in the drawer was proof of that, if more was needed. He had known that Nick would prowl that desk. Only that hadn’t worked and—

  The moon came out again and sent a glancing bright beam through the slats of the jalousies. It saved Nick Carter’s life.

  He saw the flash of the stiletto just in time. A .savage silver glint in the bad light, aimed at his leg just above the knee. A hamstringing stroke! The crippling stroke came from the bed, beneath the dead girl! In the same instant Nick heard the pock-pock of a silenced gun. Two shots. One of the slugs nipped at his thigh, but by that time he was in action, a cyclone attacking the figure still struggling out from under the dead girl.

  The phony Nick Carter was just a trifle awkward at the wrong moment or the real Nick would have died then! As it was he felt flesh sear over his left ear as the gun pocked again. He dove at the bed, stabbing with his own stiletto, saving the Luger for a target he could see clearly. He was met by the flung body of the dead girl. The limp and bloody arms and legs cloyed about him like a net of flesh. The moonlight was fainter now, cloud shadowed, and Nick saw his man roll out of the bed on the far side. He was wearing something on his face, something ugly and snoutlike. A respirator! That was how he could breathe under the girl in the nest he had cut in the mattress!

  The gun in the man’s hand pocked at him again. Miss. Nick went over the bed in a long sprawling dive, still not using the Luger. He wanted it to be the stiletto—or his hands on the bastard’s throat!

  He cleared the bed but slipped to his knees. The man kicked him in the face and tried to aim with his gun at close range, trying to shoot Nick in the head. Nick came up roaring, his desire for silence forgotten. He smashed the gun aside with one arm and ripped his stiletto around in a vicious circle. His enemy skipped nimbly back, yet gasped in pain. Nick went boring in, the stiletto in front of him like a lance. The moon blacked out.

  N3 leaped forward and was met by his enemy coming at him. The collision was great, both men shaken and gasping, grunting and sweating, as they locked and swayed. Both forgot the stilettos now and tried to bring their hand guns to bear. For a full minute they stood locked in a deadly embrace, each clutching the right wrist of the other, each trying to bring his weapon to bear an«‘ I keep the other’s at bay.

  The enemy was a perfect match for Nick in everything but strength. He was as tall, as wide, as lean and ferocious, but he lacked Nick’s rock-ribbed muscles. Slowly, painfully, Nick began to bend the other’s arm down. His. finger tensed on the trigger of the Luger. He had no silencer and it was going to make a hell of a noise and that would bring the man’s companions and he just didn’t give a damn. He was going to kill this sonofabitch as quickly as he could. He was going to spread his nasty guts all over the room. A belly shot—the whole damned clip right through the big gut!

  Slowly, inexorably, hating and sweating and yearning, he brought the Luger down. His other hand held the man’s gun wrist in a vise of steel. There could be no tricks now— he had him this time. He had him now! Vaguely, through his red daze of rage and frenzy, Nick Carter knew that he was doing this wrong. He should try to take the man alive, to take him prisoner and try, somehow try, to get him back to Washington. He would talk, this one, and he could tell them many things.

  To hell with it! Kill!

  The fake agent broke. His wrist and forearm collapsed. He squealed and tried to pull away from the Luger now digging into his belly. Nick pulled the trigger.

  Nothing! Nick pulled the trigger again as the man fought like a maniac to break away. Nothing. Nick swore and got it then—somehow the safety had gotten knocked on again! He had done it—the phony! His sly fingers had found the safety and fiddled it as they struggled. Slimy clever bastard! But it wouldn’t do him any good.

  But it did! As Nick flipped the safety off again his concentration wavered. His enemy slashed down with his freed hand at Nick’s left which was holding him prisoner. The savage blow broke Nick’s grip at last. The man dove for the open window and went through it in a crashing welter of torn jalousies. Nick cursed and forgot all caution and let the Luger spit through the window, the reports thunderous in the little bedroom. He leaped to the window in time to see a shadow roll off the roof and crash through the breezeway. Nick let the whole clip go with a lousy feeling that he was hitting nothing. He felt sick with failure. He had had the bastard—and let him get away! It was more than professional failure—it was personal failure! And, worse, the man had damned near killed him!

  Time to go, he told himself. Go fast Nothing more to do here. I bungled it good!

  A jackal howled nearby. The sound had a strange note of urgency, one that is not commonly associated with jackals. Nick grinned without a hint of mirth. Mike Bannion was getting nervous—and maybe was in trouble. Better go see.

  He started to leave by the window, then thought better of it. They might still be about, though he doubted it. That phony had had enough for one night. As he went down the stairs in the dark house Nick had to admit, although grudgingly, that the fellow was tough. Good. But then why not— was not imitation the sincerest form of flattery?

  Mike Bannion was already at the wheel of the jeep. He was nervous and with cause.

  “There’s a patrol snooping around down the street,” he said as they swung away. “We’re lucky they aren’t on our necks now. Maybe they think all that shooting was Indian commandos or something—probably they’re mapping a battle plan. I hope they don’t hear this heap.”

  “They can hear this heap in Chicago,” Nick said sourly.

  Bannion patted the battered dashboard. “Maybe—but she’ll get us home if they give her a chance.”

  Nick Carter yawned. He hurt all over. His feet were killing him and the flesh wounds were smarting, but the worst was the hurt to his pride. He had failed. That there would be another time, must be, was of no consolation now. He forced himself to think of it as a professional must —some you won and some you lost! It was a mark of his caliber that never once did he think of how near he had been to losing everything.

  Wearily he lit a cigarette and gave the pack to Bannion.

  They were well away from the Mauripur district now, running down black and smelly alleys, and the danger seemed to be over. For the moment.

  Bannion said: “What in hell was going on in there? It sounded like a shooting gallery.”

  Nick was curt. “Part of the deal is that you ask no questions. You see anybody come out? See anyone at all?”

  “Not a soul.”

  N3 nodded. Maybe the man hadn’t had friends after all. Maybe he was a loner, like Nick himself. That would be in character.

  “It was a tie game,” he said savagely, almost to himself. “I’ll get the bastard the next round!”

  Chapter 8

  The Long Bloody Trail

  In late afternoon of the same day N3 lay in a rope bed —no thick mattress here to conceal an assassin—and pondered the immediate future. One thing was certain— he must get out of Karachi that night. The police had found the Hindu girl’s body and a new hue and cry was on. The afternoon papers had it, along with another picture of the phony Nick. There had also been a flash on the radio. The murdered girl was a Hindu, and of no importance, but the Karachi police were nettled. They had been made to look bad!

  Only one thing about the entire situation really pleased Nick Carter—his double would have to leave Karachi too. He wouldn’t dare hang around with all the heat on. The man had made one try at killing Nick and had failed—he would try again—but Nick was sure it would not be in Karachi. He wouldn’t be in Karachi if his luck held. If it didn’t he would be in jail—charged with two murders!

  He finished the last of his tea—cold now—and gnawed at a slab of nan, the flat circular bread of the country. Bannion’s wife, Neva, had fed him well since his arrival. There had been birayni, rice, and a blistering mutton curry calle
d keema, and all the goat’s milk he could drink.

  Nick lit a cigarette and lolled back in the uncomfortable rope bed, more like an oversize hammock than a true bed. His feet were high and wrapped in dirty bandages on which Mrs. Bannion had smeared some vile smelling salve. It did seem to help. His feet were a mess, still chafed and peeling from frostbite, but he would just have to make do on them. The Air Force in Ladakh had issued him socks and a pair of shoes two sizes too big, and that helped. His feet still hurt like hell!

  The minor wounds he had gotten in the scuffle last night were nothing! Mere bullet burns which Bannion had patched up with iodine and plaster. He hoped his double was feeling worse than he was—he had gotten the man once with the stiletto for sure—and maybe again with that flurry from the Luger. He could hope! Anyway the fellow had gotten away—the police had found only the butchered corpse of the maid.

  Thinking of his feet, of pain, made Nick think again of his journey through the Karakoram Pass after Hafed had been killed. That had been a narrow thing. Close. After the pony, Kaswa, died of exhaustion Nick had been in one of the tightest binds of his fantastic career. He was very close to the end of that career when the Carter luck returned and he stumbled into the camel caravan. Normally the caravan—it was the last from Sinkiang Province into Kashmir that year—would have been on its way the day before, after sheltering from the blizzard, but a camel had taken sick and they had lingered to treat it.

  Nick had made it to the camel camp, but he could have gone no farther. The caravan had taken him with them, on the back of a shaggy bactrian, into Leh where they had turned him over to the U.S. Air Force.

  It was strange, Nick thought now, to owe your life to a sick camel!

  He snapped a piece of bread at a gecko which was staring at him with beady eyes from a rafter. He felt himself getting restless again. Mike Bannion should be back soon. He had been gone all day, following Nick’s orders and spending AXE’s money. True the man had a million things to do, but he should be back. Nick damned his own impatience and hobbled to the single window to peer out, keeping well back out of sight. It would be dark soon and he and Mike Bannion could leave. He mustn’t be spotted now. The backyard on which he gazed was a slum in the midst of even worse slums. There was a mango tree full of monkeys and kids and the incessant chitter-chatter of both. There must be a million kids, he thought, all dirty and ragged and some nearly naked. N3 lit another cigarette and grimaced. Even with all his own problems, with the sour taste of failure in his mouth, he could feel for the kids. Poor little bastards! Not much future for them. Mike Bannion should have his drunken ass kicked for bringing more of them into the world—with no means of caring for them.