The Terrible Ones

by Nick Carter

  Again the shake of the head. “No. We have passed the point where we should meet them.”

  Nick nodded and turned away from her. With some difficulty he picked up the great, bloody shape of the dog and lugged it to the brook. He dropped it into the swiftly flowing waters beyond the quiet pool and went back to the girl.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “And this time, let’s walk together.”

  She nodded.

  They walked on, listening for sounds of pursuit that never came.

  It was an hour before they reached the little village of Bambara. The first cock crowed as they tapped on a window, and a pink glow tinged the mountaintop.

  A door opened and they went in. Exclamations, greetings, offers of food which they declined, and then they were together in a barn smelling of sweet straw.

  Nick reached for her almost reflexively. It was good to hold a woman in one’s arms after a long day.

  She pushed him away roughly and crawled into the farthest corner of the straw.

  “Stop that! If you were the posse of men I asked for I’d sleep with every one of them if I thought it would do any good. But you’re not, so leave me alone.”

  “All right, Paolo,” he said drowsily. “It was only a thought.”

  “The name is Paula”

  “Prove it some time,” he murmured, and drifted into sleep.

  Chinese Puzzle

  Dr. Tsing-fu Shu shivered in spite of himself. He felt nothing, but contempt for native superstition, and yet the low throbbing of the drums made his flesh creep. Usually they did not begin until nightfall on Saturday, but today they had started before noon. He wondered why. Not with much interest, but he wondered. He was annoyed by their effect on him, and he was annoyed by his own complete lack of progress. Two full weeks in this stone labyrinth and his work crew had found nothing. It was most unfortunate that he had to operate with so few men and that they had to be so very cautious. But the Citadelle was one of the wonders of the world, and its very prominence as a tourist mecca presented great advantages. Inspiration alone would suggest it as the hiding place of either materials or men. Then, too, it was deserted at night, so that while great care must be exercised during the daylight hours there was no need for excessive caution at night.

  He turned down a passage he had not explored before and played the bright beam of his flashlight along the walls. From somewhere beyond them he could hear the careful scraping sounds of his own men at work, searching the underground storehouses and dungeons for— He was not even quite sure what he and they were supposed to look for. Maybe it would be in packing cases left openly among the old garrison supplies, or maybe it would be in brass-bound trunks in some secret place.

  Tsing-fu Shu probed the walls with his narrow fingertips, and cursed. He had nothing to go on but one slender clue, and it wasn’t enough. The scraping, scratching noises of his work crew trying to find some hidden compartment in the thick stone walls sounded aimless, futile. Fortunately they could not be heard by the tourists who even now were tramping and gawking overhead, oohing and ahing at the spectacular view from the battlements. Strange, he thought, how the pulsation of the drums made itself felt even through the massive walls.

  The stone was slippery beneath his searching fingers, but it was as solid as mountain rock. It did not swing inward at his touch, as he daily—and nightly—prayed it would, nor were there any rings to pull or bolts to slide back and reveal a hidden chamber. He went on with his search, slowly and meticulously, letting his prying fingers wander over every flaw in the smoothness and investigating each protuberance and crack.

  Time wore on. The drums still pulsed and Tsing-fu Shu still searched. But now the monotonous rhythm was beginning to pound at his nerves. He began to think of the sound as coming from a great, bloody heart beating within the Walls, for he had read Poe as a student in the States, and it was becoming unbearable. His irritation and frustration rose. Two weeks of nothing! The fat one in Peking would be most displeased.

  He turned a corner into another corridor and cursed again, this time out loud. He was back again in a part of the dungeons he had searched only the day before, and he had not even realized where his steps were leading him. A thousand curses on this devil’s labyrinth.

  It was enough for this day, he decided. He had workmen for this sort of thing; let them work. His job was to use his brains, to get more information—somehow, from somewhere.

  Dr. Tsing-fu Shu, sub-chief of a very specialized branch of Chinese Intelligence, walked briskly toward a light glowing at the far end of the passage. It opened into a cavernous room piled high with ancient boxes. His men were at work among them, forcing open the crates and rummaging busily through them. Another man was emerging from what was apparently a hole in the floor.

  Ah! A trapdoor! Tsing-fu’s flagging interest flickered back to life and he strode toward the trap. His man climbed up and lowered the door with a savage crash.

  “Restrain yourself,” Tsing-fu reproved him. “I have said repeatedly that there must be no unnecessary noise.”

  “Bah! Those peasants up there will think they are hearing ghosts!” the man said contemptuously, and spat.

  “Nevertheless you will obey my orders whatever they may be,” said Tsing-fu Shu, and his voice was an icicle. “If you will not be quiet, as I ask, then you will be quietened. Do you understand?”

  He stared at the other man with slits of eyes whose heavy lids reminded his enemies of a hooded snake. The fellow lowered his gaze.

  “I understand, sir,” he said humbly.

  “Good!” The Doctor recovered something of his spirit. He liked to see fear in a man, and he saw it now. “The trapdoor was a disappointment, I assume?”

  The man nodded. “It is nothing but a cistern. Disused for many years.”

  “How many?” Tsing-fu asked sharply. “Five? Ten? More?” It was important to know, for the cache was said to have been hidden in 1958 or perhaps 1959.

  “More. Fifty years, a hundred. It is hard to say. But it is certain that no one has so much as been down there in at least a dozen years.” The man’s smooth, yellow-tinted face crinkled with distaste and his big hands brushed at his tunic. “The place is a nest of cobwebs and ratholes, but even the spiders and rats have long since left. It is foul down there, and it is dead. And there is no hiding place. Sir.”

  Tsing-fu nodded with satisfaction. The news was not pleasing to him but he knew he could trust Mao-Pei’s report. The man was a surly devil but he was expert at his task. And he was pleased that the fellow had remembered to call him, Sir. Tsing-fu was not the sort of sub-chief who enjoyed having his subordinates call him Comrade. Even his Work Group Captain.

  “I would have thought so,” he said. “I am sure that what we seek will be in a more subtle hiding place. When you and your men have finished with these boxes here—and I am sure you will find nothing in them—then you will start on the floors and walls of the east wing. Tonight we will go back to the cannon galleries and finish with them.”

  He left the work group then and went down yet another passage to the large room he had converted into a temporary office for himself. His mind picked at his problem as he walked. There were other dungeons in this vast building besides the ones he and his men were searching, but they were open to tourists during the day and heavily bolted at night. That had also been the case at the time the treasure was hidden. And the men who had hidden the cache would surely have chosen a place that they could easily return to without interruption. Therefore . . .

  Tom Kee was waiting for him in the makeshift office that had once been occupied by the keeper of the store house. He folded his newspaper as Tsing-fu entered and rose to his feet in a stretching, catlike movement.

  “Ah” Tsing-fu greeted him. “You are back. You have arranged for more supplies!? Good. You did not perhaps discover the reason for that incessant drumming I hear even down here?”

  Tom Kee’s lean face twisted into a sneering smile. “I did, sir. Those mi
sbegotten blacks down there are drumming to drive away the spirit of a djuba that appeared last night. There is a story about it in the paper that may interest you.”

  “So?” Tsing-fu took the proffered newspaper. “But you must not talk about them in that way, Tom Kee. Misbegotten blacks! Tch! We are all people of color, you must remember that. We are all friends.” He smiled gently and glanced at the headlines. “Think of them as our black brothers,” he added, “our allies against the world of Whites.”

  “Oh, I always do,” Tom Kee said, and grinned. His grin was no more pleasant than his smile.

  Dr. Tsing-fu read the newspaper account with growing interest. It was an incredible tale of the supernatural and of bravery far beyond the call of duty. An unspeakable monster, it seemed, had risen apparently from the sea and fought a hideous battle upon the cliff top of Cap St. Michel. In the darkness it had been impossible for Dog Patrol Squad Number Nine to examine the area with any great thoroughness, but while they were making their preliminary investigation the duty dog gave signs of detecting a scent. It then led Squad Nine toward a small mountain cave.

  “On arrival at the cave,” the story said, “the dog began to bristle as if in some strange presence. The patrolmen, ever mindful of their own safety, urged the dog to enter the cave. The noble beast attempted to do so. At that very moment the hideous cry of the djuba was heard and the dog ran from the cave as if pursued by demons. A moment later it was lured back again by unknown means and shortly afterwards the unearthly cries began once more. The guard dog screamed as if attacked by fiends. It emerged from the cave at great speed, yelping bitterly, and the men of the patrol group could see dreadful slash wounds upon its body that could only have been inflicted by some frightful beast. They then made every effort to enter the cave but were repelled by some inexplicable force. The dog, it was thought at the time, ran away. In spite of heroic attempts to make entry, and the use of all possible means to smoke out the presence within the cave . . .”

  Tsing-fu Shu read on to the end, his lips curling with contempt as he read of the men’s departure from the scene and the “exceptional bravery” with which they had returned in the morning light. They had flushed out the cave with gas-bombs, incantations and smoke, but they had found nothing—not the slightest trace of occupancy, human or inhuman. Later in the morning the body of the dog turned up many miles away downstream, clawed practically to ribbons. Clearly all this was the work of some supernatural agency. Thus, the drums, to guard against a recurrence of the horror.

  There was one final item in the STOP PRESS column. It said:

  “The body of a bearded man in army fatigues was found by fishermen this morning near the rocks of Cap St. Michel. It was half-submerged and had been severely battered, but it was obvious at once that the main cause of death was the slash wound or wounds in the abdomen. The nature of the weapon is undetermined, but according to accounts of Patrol Squad Number Nine the wounds are similar to those found upon the dog. The victim has not yet been identified.”

  Tsing-fu’s eyes narrowed. “So, Tom Kee. Mysterious howls in the night—a decoy, quite possibly—and today we find the body of a bearded man in army fatigues. But Haitian army men are seldom bearded, is that not so? Have you perhaps heard more of this than is in the paper?”

  “I have Doctor. That is why I thought you might be interested in that account.” Tom Kee snapped his knuckles reflectively. “It is said in town that the body was that of a Fidelista. A big man, well-built with rotten teeth.”

  “That sounds like Alonzo,” Tsing-fu said almost conversationally.

  Tom Kee nodded. “That is what I thought. I can assure you that I was even more than usually careful not to be seen coming back here today. I also tried to find out if other Fidelistas have been seen. But I am told that, right now, they are all across the border in the Dominican Republic.” He smiled faintly and snapped another knuckle.

  “Not all” Tsing-fu hissed. “What was he doing here? This is treachery of some kind, you can count upon it! Why did he not tell us he was coming? These people are supposed to be working with us, not against us. They must keep us informed as to their movements.” The smaller, catlike man shrugged his narrow shoulders. “We do not tell them,” he murmured. “That is not the point! When the time is ripe, we tell them what is needed. They work for us, not we for them.” Tsing-fu checked his angry stride. “But what is even more important is —who killed him? And why?”

  Tom Kee smiled his crooked smile. “The djuba—” he began, and stopped. Tsing-fu was in no jesting mood today.

  “The djuba!” Tsing-fu snarled. “That is good enough for primitive fools, but not for us. He was killed by some human agency, that is obvious. Obviously, also, we did not do it ourselves. Neither did the Haitians—they would have taken him in for questioning by the secret police. So who does that leave, do you suppose?”

  The small man shrugged again. “It was Alonzo himself who told us about The Terrible Ones. Perhaps they are more terrible than we thought.”

  Tsing-fu eyed him thoughtfully. “Perhaps they are,” he said softly, the sudden brushfire of his anger again under control. “Yes. You might be right. There may be much more to this than we know. I must take sterner measures. Later we will’ discuss more fully what we shall do about the Cubans. In the meantime you will go back into town and make further inquiries. When you are sure that this man was indeed Alonzo, or at least some other Fidelista, get in touch with their headquarters and tell them that their man is dead. You will assume that they sent him for a purpose and that he was unfortunately waylaid. Be sympathetic, be subtle, use no threats—but find out why they sent him. And come back after nightfall. We will be using the metal detector again and you must be here.”

  Tom Kee nodded and took his leave. This was no time to argue about the long and dreary climb up and down the steep trail to the Citadelle. Tsing-fu’s vicious bursts of rage were well known to all who worked for him. He made his way to the tunnel pointed out to Tsing-fu two weeks before by a Haitian guide, who had died very soon afterwards of apparently natural causes, and came out in a palm grove outside the Castle grounds. He took the horse that was tethered there and began the long way down the hill.

  Tsing-fu was striding down yet another passage in the maze beneath the Citadelle. His skin tingled pleasantly with anticipation. He had been patient with the prisoner for far too long. He walked past the storerooms with quickening step, jabbing his flashlight beam down the corridor toward the cells. The one he had chosen for the prisoner was perfect for interrogations. Unlike some of the others it had not even the smallest of barred windows, and it had an anteroom where Shang could sleep—or whatever it was that the creature did whenever he was alone—until he was needed.

  He entered the anteroom and a vast shape stirred in the corner.

  “Shang?” he murmured.

  “Master.”

  “You have obeyed my orders?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Good. Your patience will be rewarded. Very soon. Perhaps within the hour.”

  There was a low growl of satisfaction in the darkness.

  “You will wait here until I call,” Tsing-fu ordered, and smiled to himself as he slid back the heavy bolt of the inner, cell. He was going to enjoy this.

  He stepped into the pitch blackness of the tiny room and swung his flashlight beam over the stone cot and its occupant. Still there, of course. There was no way out. The lantern was hanging, untouched, from its peg high up on the wall, though he lit it only when he chose. Even that had only been in the bare cell for the past few days, after he had made sure the prisoner was too weak to reach for it. Tsing-fu lit it now and looked down at the girl with something like admiration. She stared back at him defiantly, her eyes bright and feverish in her gaunt face. Hunger, thirst, and almost perpetual darkness had done nothing to make her talk. Drugs to keep her awake, drugs to make her babble, drugs to sicken her and turn her body inside out—all these had done everything expected of them
except make her tell the truth. Some of her finger-nails were gone and there were cigarette burns upon her body. But he had soon seen that they were having no effect on her. Oh, sometimes she had screamed and spat out words at him, but every word had been a lie.

  And he no longer had time to check her lies out one by one.

  “Good afternoon, Evita,” he said pleasantly. “Did you know that it was afternoon?”

  “How could I know?” she whispered. Her voice was dry and hoarse.

  He smiled.

  “Perhaps you are thirsty?”

  She turned her face to the wall.

  “No, no, no,” Tsing-fu said gently. “Soon you will have water. We have had enough of this, I think. Today something has happened which somewhat changes things. An acquaintance of yours has given us much useful information. You recall Alonzo?”

  He saw the flickering of her eyelids and the slight twitch of a facial muscle.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “What a pity. Still, I think he might be persuaded to help you. It is now only a matter of your confirming his story.”

  “What story?”

  “Ah! But that would make it far too easy for you, would it not?” It would make it a lot easier for himself, he thought grimly, if he had the faintest idea what Alonzo’s story might have been. He reached for a pack of slim cigarillos and began to play with it. “No, you will tell me your story once more, and then we will discuss the little discrepancies. This time I must warn you that the consequences will be very terrible if I do not hear the truth. Tell me what I want, and you are free. But lie again, and I will know, for as I say I need no more than confirmation. And then . . .” His smile was very sweet and full of sympathy. “And then you will face something that even you, my dear, will be quite unable to bear. Now begin, please.”

  She lay where she was and spoke in a husky voice that was totally without expression.