by Nick Carter
I was interested in the director and the croupier, who were now dismantling the roulette wheel—a common practice at the close of play when the house has suffered such enormous losses. The wheel would be carried to the casino basement where all the casino’s wheels, which are made of rosewood, are manufactured. Each wheel, I knew, was balanced to an exactitude of one thousandth of an inch and moved on jewels as precisely as a watch.
But a wheel could be fixed. That’s why I wanted a closer look at this particular one and why I followed the director and the croupier when they went through a nearby door. As I watched them disappear through the doorway, I instructed Elsa to go back to the hotel and to wait for me there.
It was dark on the stairs that led to the basement, but there was a light below. I’d gotten halfway down the stairs when the door above me slammed shut. At the same moment a blinding light snapped on. Then I heard a shrill scream. Turning quickly, I saw that Elsa, contrary to my instructions, had followed me. A man, probably the one who had slammed the door, had her in a tight grip and was pointing a gun at me.
I turned back toward the basement to see the casino director and the croupier climbing the stairs toward me. Both carried guns, and the croupier also carried a length of pipe in one hand. When the two men had reached the step below me, the director whipped off his dark glasses. His eyes were glazed as if he were hypnotized or drugged. “Take care of him,” he ordered. The croupier raised the iron pipe, and everything went black.
Consciousness returned slowly, and even when I was able to see and hear again, it was as if I were viewing my surroundings from a distance and through a hazy filter. My body and limbs felt heavy and sluggish. Although rough hands were shoving me, I hardly felt a thing. Gradually I recognized die symptoms of my lethargic condition. I had been heavily drugged while I had been unconscious. It must have been one of the powerful depressants that work on the central nervous system.
I was fighting hard to overcome the effect of the drugs, but even though I was in excellent physical shape, I was only partially succeeding. I could see all that was going on around me but could not move. The croupier and the director had placed me behind the steering wheel in the front seat of a car. I saw Elsa, drugged and unconscious, sprawled in the seat beside me, and there were men leaning inside both opened doors. The motor of the Mercedes was racing, but the car wasn’t moving.
Then I noticed that one of the men was adjusting something around the floorboards under my feet. Soon he slid out of the car, and I heard him say, “Okay, she’s ready to take off.”
The car doors were slammed shut. The engine was still racing. My drugged brain couldn’t determine die meaning of what was happening. Dimly, as if I were in the midst of a fog, I saw a hand reach in through the open window next to me and put the Mercedes in gear. The car shot forward.
Then I realized that Elsa and I had been placed in the Mercedes with the accelerator pressed to the floorboards. We were now streaking along the dark, deserted roads of Monaco at over a hundred miles an hour. At that accelerated speed, the Mercedes would crash before we had gone too far, and we’d both be killed. When our bodies were found, it would look like we had died in an accident after an overdose of drugs. There would be no indication of murder.
Desperately I tried to gain control of my body.
So far, we had been lucky and the car had stayed at the center of the road. But up ahead there would be hills and curves, and unless I could begin steering the car, we’d go off the side of the road soon. I tried to raise my hands, but they felt like heavy weights. I tried again. Both hands rose ponderously, -faltered, dropped, and rose again slowly. I could see the dark landscape sweeping past in a blinding blur from the car window. . Sweat was pouring from my body from the effort of lifting my hands a few inches to the steering wheel. Then I saw a sharp curve ahead. I could see my fingers closed around the steering wheel, but I couldn’t feel the wheel under them. Somehow I managed to turn it a few degrees to the right just as the car went into the S-curve. It was enough to keep us on the road. The car whipped around the curve at break-neck speed and catapulted over the top of a steep incline.
The road continued to climb. From the car window I saw that we were on the precipice of a cliff that fell almost straight down from the edge of the pavement to the sea. The car crested on the top of the precipice and then careened along the steep angle toward the road like a metal projectile shot from a cannon. The tires shrieked against the pavement. Still dulled by the drugs, I tried to concentrate on our one chance of survival: somehow I had to keep the car upright and on the road until it finally ran out of gas.
There seemed no end to the nightmare that followed. Mile after mile the Mercedes roared past darkened villas and cottages, up and down the winding, twisting roads of the Cote d’Azur. Monaco was far behind us. We sped along the corniches, the highways linking Monaco to Nice and then through Nice itself, silent and shuttered for the night.
The highway beyond Nice ran level with the sea—wet and slick and dangerous. The rear of the Mercedes slipped from one side to the other. If we skidded, we would land in the sea. But the Mercedes streaked on through Antibes. Finally, somewhere between Antibes and Cannes, it began to lose speed, and in another mile or so it was barely rolling. With a tremendous effort I twisted the steering wheel, and the car lunged to the side of the road and stopped. The engine went dead. Elsa, still on the seat next to me, hadn’t stirred once.
Nine
The sun was streaming into my eyes. I groaned and sat up, nibbing the back of my neck. The Mercedes was still by the side of the road. The first thing I saw was Elsa putting on her makeup. Then I saw a crowd of children outside the window on Elsa’s side pressed close to the glass, staring at her with wide eyes as she powdered her nose. She looked great—as if she had just awakened from a refreshing sleep. Trucks and cars were whizzing past on the highway, and I saw that most of the passengers inside them were craning their necks to get a better look at us.
Elsa noticed that I was sitting up, put her com-pact and lipstick away, and smiled.
“Did we have fun last night?” she asked brightly.
I didn’t know how much she knew or remembered of the previous evening when we had been roughed up on the basement stairs of the casino. The whole night had been a nightmare to me, but I had to give the Von Alder women credit for one thing—they were resilient.
“Come on,” I said as I leaned past her to open the door on her side. She climbed out of the car, and I followed. “We’ve got to get back to Monte Carlo. This car is out of gas.”
“But how are we going to get there?”
“Leave that to me,” I said, pulling her up beside me on the edge of the highway. The children were still flocking around us. I positioned Elsa in front of me where she could be easily seen by the passing traffic and elevated my thumb in the international hitchhikers’ sign. The first vehicle to come along braked to a stop, and the driver, rattling away in French, swung the door open.
“Monte Carlo,” I said.
“Oui,” he said. Elsa and I, riding up front beside the driver, returned to Monte Carlo in a produce truck filled with aubergine—eggplant. The doorman at the Hotel de Paris did not lift an eyebrow as we, still in our evening attire, alighted from the truck, waved and thanked the truck driver, and swept through the lobby.
I left Elsa at die door of her suite and told her to get some rest. As I entered my rooms, I heard the phone ringing. It was the local AXE agent, a man known to me as Chiclet. He said I was needed at the local AXE office immediately to receive a telephone call from overseas. Hawk was probably calling from the states on a scrambler phone. I changed clothes hurriedly—even in Monaco a dinner jacket in the daytime would call unwanted attention to me-and went to the AXE office, which was in a villa not far from the hotel Chiclet met me at the door and drew me to one side to talk. The place was swarming with die same agents I had seen at the casino, the men assigned to trail Tregor when he left with his winnings.
> Before I asked Chiclet about Tregor, I gave him a quick account of what had happened to me and Elsa and asked if we could have the casino director and the croupier picked up immediately.
Chiclet shook his head. Tm afraid that would be difficult,” he said sadly. “Both have vanished— along with Tregor.”
“Vanished?” I asked incredulously. “How could Tregor vanish with all those agents tailing him?”
“We are up against some very crafty intelligence,” Chiclet explained. “Last night when Tregor left the casino, he went back to his hotel. We had men there watching the place at the front and rear. Other agents were in position at the roads leading out of town and along the harbor. But Tregor, the casino director, and the croupier eluded all of them.”
“How did they do it?”
Chiclet shook his head, as if he still disbelieved it. “Tregors room had a balcony facing toward the sea. Sometime in the early hours of the morning a helicopter swooped in over the city.
It lifted Tregor from the balcony and apparently picked up the others somewhere else in town and flew away. An amazing occurrence.”
I agreed.
“We may not turn up anything,” Chiclet went on, “but we’re checking up and down the coast to see if anyone heard the helicopter. If so, they might be able to give us a lead on the direction that it took.”
“And if we don’t turn up anyone who heard the copter, we’re right back where we started,” I added. Then I reminded Chiclet that he had told me I’d be getting a call from overseas.
He nodded. “Hawk wants to talk to you on a scrambled wire. I’ll tell the operator to put the call through.” He led me to an upstairs office, and when Hawk came on the line, he left me alone.
“I hear your quarry slipped away,” Hawk said without preamble. “Any further developments?”
“None,” I told him before I gave him a full report on my own experiences of the previous night.
Hawk snorted. “Sounds like you had a close call.” He paused, and the wires between us hummed briefly. Then he said, “Something happened here that I wanted you to know about. Your hunch about autopsying Z1’s brain paid off. Dr. Tom did find something—a small microscopic disc embedded in the base of the brain. We don’t know what it is or what it means. The lab boys are trying to analyze it now. And Dr. Tom can’t figure out how it got there. There are no marks or signs of an operation on the skull.”
“Still it must mean something,” I said.
“Possibly,” Hawk answered vaguely. “When we find more, if we do, I’ll let you know. What are your plans now?”
“I want to try to pick up the trail of that helicopter and the money,” I told him. “Both are probably still somewhere in the area. The money could lead me to whoever’s at the source of all this. Anyway, it’s the only promising lead I’ve had so far.”
“Yes, well, good hunting,” Hawk said and hung up.
Chiclet was waiting for me in a room downstairs that was filled with men talking on telephones in rapid French and Italian. One wall was covered with a large map showing Monaco and the area surrounding it from the Gulf of Lyon on the French coast on the west to the Gulf of Genoa on the Italian coast on the east. Colored pins were stuck in the map at various points outside of Monaco.
“My agents are making some progress,” Chiclet said, nodding toward the men on the phones. “You see,” he pointed to the map on the wall, “we’ve been contacting authorities in towns along the coast in both directions to question local citizens if they heard a helicopter during the night. Now we’re beginning to get some calls back with the results.”
“Any positive answers?”
“Fortunately, yes,” Chiclet answered, guiding me over to the wall map. He pointed to the pins. “So far, we have had reports from St. Raphael and Frejus that a helicopter was heard. Reports from the east, from Italy, are negative. Apparently, our men headed westward. Now we’re concentrating on the coast beyond Frejus.” He smiled. “Soon we may be able to pinpoint exactly where they went.”
I looked at the map. West of Frejus, along the curving coastline, were St. Tropez, Hyeres, La Seyne, and, farther on, Marseille. But something else caught my eye on the map—a group of islands, lies d’Hyeres, off the coast halfway between Frejus and Marseille. I began to think.
“Look, Chiclet,” I said, “it’s important that I get a helicopter and pilot immediately. Can you arrange it?”
“Certainly. It will take a while, but let me put in a call.”
He used one of the phones and came back, nodding. “There will be a helicopter here within the hour. One of our agents from Nice will be flying it.” He looked at me quizzically. “You have a plan?”
“The way I figure it,” I said, “is that that helicopter didn’t go far—it had never planned to, never really could. My guess is that it landed somewhere near here where it could be hidden and that die money and the men will probably be transferred from it tonight.”
“Transferred?” Chiclet asked, puzzled. “To what?”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. But I would think they would use a fast boat.”
“A fast boat!” Chiclet exclaimed. “Of course. That would be the obvious thing to do.” v? Pointing to the map, I added, “And that makes me think that perhaps the whirlybird we’re looking for might be hidden somewhere around those islands, the lies d’Hyeres, or along the coast. Wherever it is, it’ll be easier to spot from another helicopter that is flying low than from the ground.”
Chiclet agreed with my reasoning. While we waited for the helicopter to arrive, I phoned Elsa at the Hotel de Paris and told her I was going to be tied up for a while on some business but that I wanted her to wait for me there.
“I was going to surprise you,” she said, pouting. “I slipped into your room, but you weren’t there. Are you sure you’re occupied with business?”
“Of course,” I assured her. “You just stay put until I get there. It may be later today, or tonight. Then well have plenty of time for surprises.”
Ten
Since it was inadvisable to attract too much attention in Monaco, Chiclet drove me out of town to a place in the hills where we waited for the helicopter. Before we left the office, more reports had come in that indicated that no helicopter had been heard during the night west of Frejus. It looked like I might have guessed right—that the helicopter had taken cover somewhere nearby.
“You will be careful now,” Chiclet advised anxiously. “You don’t know what kind of odds you’ll be up against.”
I nodded. I had my faithful Luger, Wilhelmina, fitted snugly in my shoulder holster, and my stiletto, Hugo, was in its own sheath under my coat sleeve, ready to spring into my hand with the slightest move of my arm. I didn’t worry much about the odds.
It wasn’t long before the helicopter that we had been waiting for arrived. It was a UH-1 Huey chopper. Chiclet introduced me to the pilot, a young Frenchman named Marcel Clement, a big, rangy, tousled-haired man who smiled easily.
Chiclet instructed him that he was to follow my orders and warned him that die job could be dangerous.
“Danger doesn’t bother me, Chiclet,” the pilot assured him. “You know that.”
I climbed into die chopper, but before we took off, Chiclet made a circular tour around the craft to be satisfied that it was in top working order. Then he waved us away. Marcel sat in die forward bubble-nose of the helicopter, and I sat behind with the doors slid back so that I had a clear view below with the pair of powerful binoculars that Chiclet had given me.
We headed west, following the shore line. After we had passed Frejus, Marcel flew low while both he and I scoured die ground for some sign of a place where the helicopter might be hidden. We passed a few spots where the foliage was dense and other places where there were recesses in the cliffs—places where the copter could be concealed—but I could spot nothing to indicate that any of them was the hiding place. By then we had traveled the whole length of the coast from Monaco to a poin
t far beyond Frejus where there had been reports of a helicopter during the night. The cluster of islands, lies d’Hyeres, was visible to die south.
“Let’s go out and make a swing over there,” I shouted to Marcel, pointing seaward.
He nodded and veered the helicopter. Soon we were over the islands and making another low-level sweep over the terrain. The binoculars gave me a close-up view of everything below, including some of the residents of the island who waved cheerily to us, but we saw no sign of the elusive helicopter.
“What now?” Marcel asked from the cockpit.
“Might as well take us back,” I said reluctantly.
Marcel put the copter into a turn to head back to shore. I was still studying the area with the binoculars when suddenly I spotted a small dark speck in the sea. When I focused on it, I saw another small island, rocky and barren, except for a few trees and some sparse undergrowth. It was so small that it hadn’t been recorded on the map in Chiclet’s office. Nevertheless, it was still large enough—a mile to a mile and a half square—for a helicopter to land, and it was also remote enough from the mainland to make a good hiding place.
I tapped Marcel on the shoulder and pointed to the island. “What’s that place there? Are you familiar with it?”
“It is called ‘Satane Roc,’ ” Marcel said, “ ‘Devil Rock,’ a name given to it by the French underworld, who used it years ago as a transfer point for guns and drugs flowing into the country. The authorities put an end to their operations a long time ago. Since then, it’s been deserted, except, I’ve heard, for a colony of rats that infests the place. They say the rats got there from some ship-wreck long ago and have multiplied in the years since.”
“I think we should take a closer look at it,” I said.
