by Nick Carter
One of the girls laughed and said, “You were a naughty boy, running away with Elsa. Did you really think you could escape the rest of us that easily? Now you’ll pay for that, because we won’t tell you which of us is which.”
“Since you’re all equally beautiful and charming,” I replied, “it doesn’t matter. My pleasure has increased three-fold.”
It was all good-humored and, of course, the kind of thing the Von Alders would delight in doing. But I couldn’t help wondering if it was only a prank that had brought them here to Berne, or if it was because I was so close to the spa and they either wanted to find a way to keep me away or a way to get me into the place. Time would tell.
The Von Alders decided that I had to take them to dinner in the diningroom of the chalet, which, they told me, was famous for its excellent cuisine. I agreed, and the four women disappeared through the door, bolting it behind them. I could hear them laughing. Was it because they had tricked me?
Later, when the five of us went down to the diningroom, I discovered what a popular place the chalet was. The diningroom was crowded with guests and the local citizens. Of course, the Von Alders were soon surrounded by men they knew, as almost always happened whenever they appeared in public. Our table of five quickly grew to a table of a dozen or more. I was introduced to each of the new arrivals, most of them members of foreign embassies or such. The Von Alders didn’t associate with the common folk.
About midway through the meal, there was a sudden, abrupt break in the chatter and laughter, and every male head in the room, including mine, turned to look at a most beautiful girl who entered and sat alone at a table by the window. She was a striking, willowy redhead in a low-cut gown that clung to her superbly shaped body as if it had been painted on with a brush.
One of the men at our table gave a discreet whistle. “Who is she?”
One of the triplets sniffed and said, “Oh, she’s just an employee at the health spa. I’ve seen her around when we’ve been there.”
The Von Alder women were too experienced to allow male attention to wander away from them for long, and soon I noticed that the men crowded around our table were ignoring the redhead, except for an occasional glance in her direction. I, however, glanced frequently. I thought she would be joined by an escort, but she continued her meal alone.
Just as we finished our dinner, one of the men at our table invited everyone to a large party being given at one of the embassies that evening. The Von Alders were delighted and accepted, and so did the others at die table. I excused myself, saying that I had some work to catch up on and that I would remain at the chalet. Actually, I wanted to do some more thinking about the spa, and I was even considering the possibility of trying to sneak up there. It would certainly be easier for me to work with the Von Alders otherwise occupied. The triplets and their mother were eager to go on to the party, so we said goodnight.
I ordered another cognac. When the waiter brought the liqueur, he handed me a note and pointed to the redhead still sitting alone. I was surprised. In the confusion of the departure of the other guests at our table, I had completely forgotten the girl who had earlier caught my eye.
I opened the note and read, WON’T YOU PLEASE JOIN ME? IT’S URGENT THAT I SPEAK WITH YOU. I wondered why the word URGENT was underlined. I looked over and saw that die girl was watching me gravely, and nodded.
“Mr. Dawes,” the girl said in a soft, throaty voice, offering me a slim, shapely hand, “I’m Suzanne Henley.” She had an accent that was hard to place—they call it mid-Atlantic, but I detected a very strong British tone. She paused until the waiter had gone and I was seated and then added in an undertone, “Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not used to picking up men. But there’s an important matter that I must discuss with you.” She looked around the diningroom searchingly and then back at me. “We can’t discuss it here. I don’t know who might be watching. Is there some place we can talk in private?”
“Well, there’s my room upstairs,” I suggested. “It should be private enough, if it won’t bother you.”
“I’m sure you’re a gentleman, Mr. Dawes,” she answered. “Yes, your room will be fine. You go up and after a few minutes I’ll follow you.”
I told her my room number and stood up to leave. As the waiter came toward the table again to pull my chair back, she offered me her hand and said, “So nice to see you again, and I will give you a call if I’m ever in the States.”
I went upstairs to my room, wondering what this latest turn of events could mean. Ten or fifteen minutes passed before there was a light tap on my door. I opened it, and Suzanne Henley stepped quickly inside. I closed and locked the door. She seemed nervous and ill at ease for the first few moments. She prowled the room restlessly, looked out the window, and saw the spa, its lights gleaming in the night.
“Oh, there’s where I work,” she exclaimed. She spotted the binoculars on the windowsill, picked them up, and focused on the complex of buildings. “You have a very good view of the spa from here,” she said as she put the binoculars down and turned toward me again.
“Miss Henley, what’s this all about? And won’t you please sit down.”
She sat in a chair opposite me and thought for a moment before she began. “I don’t know what all this means, Mr. Dawes, but I’ve heard rumors about you up at the spa. And I was worried. I really don’t know you, and I don’t know what your interest is in the place, but—well, I just didn’t feel right about things. I thought I’d tell you, that’s all.” She paused and shook her head helplessly.
I said as gently as possible, “You realize, Miss Henley, I really don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”
She took a deep breath and finally settled back in the chair. “I should have explained,” she said, “that I’ve been working at the spa for several years now. I’m a dietician there. But for a while I haven’t liked the atmosphere. It feels somehow—well—sinister.”
“How do you mean, sinister?” I prodded.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “Just that there’s a lot of whispering and secrecy. And I hear people coming and going in the dead of night. There are security guards all around the place, but the guests don’t know it. The guests think they’re just employees. But they’re very tough-looking men. Day and night I hear whispering, and I picked up your name, Dawes. I guessed there was trouble when five of the security men returned to the spa in a car this afternoon. I just happened to see them. A couple were injured. And I heard your name mentioned again. I phoned around until I located you here. That’s why I came here for dinner. I asked the waiter who Mr. Dawes was, and he pointed you out. I just wanted to warn you to stay away.”
When I questioned her further, her answers seemed straightforward enough, but I didn’t really learn anything that tied into the case, even though we talked for a long while. She could have been on the level, or she could have been a decoy sent to try to discourage me from snooping around.
It was quite late when we finished talking, and she suddenly glanced at her watch and gasped, “Oh, I’m in real trouble now. It’s after midnight. Long past curfew for the employees. I can’t go back there tonight. They’ll demand a detailed explanation of where I’ve been. I’ll have to find a place to stay and slip back in the morning.”
She was on her feet, quite agitated, and moving toward the door. She paused in mid-stride and shuddered. “If anyone from the spa should see me out on the streets, they would pick me up and question me.”
“That place sounds like a prison.”
She nodded her head. “Yes, exactly. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
She had the door open and had started to leave. I grabbed her arm, pulled her back, and shut and locked the door again.
“If it’s that dangerous for you,” I said, “perhaps you should spend the night here. You’ll be safe.”
She looked at me thoughtfully for a long moment, probably considering all the implications of my invitation. I really ha
d no ulterior motive in making the suggestion, except that I wanted to help. But if something else developed. . . .
“You’re sure it won’t inconvenience you?” she asked.
I shrugged. There were twin beds, as she could plainly see. “You can take one bed,” I said, “and I’ll just stretch out on the other until morning. You’ll be quite safe.” I meant it any way she chose to take it.
“All right,” she said slowly, nodding her head.
She went into the bathroom. I checked the locks on the doors and turned out die lights in the room. Then I took my shoes off and lay down on one of the beds. It was still bright in the room from the reflection of the moon on the snow outside. She came back in a few minutes, wearing only her slip. As she crossed from the bathroom to the bed, her body was outlined in the light from the window, and I could see that she had nothing else on underneath.
She got into bed and pulled the covers over her. “Good night, Mr. Dawes. And thank you.”
“Good night,” I said. “Go to sleep now.”
For a brief while, I’ll admit, the thought of that beautiful body lying so near distracted me from sleep. But she had offered no invitation. I soon drifted off to sleep. I don’t think I had slept for very long when I was awakened by soft cries from her bed.
I sat up and leaned toward the bed. “Suzanne? Miss Henley? Are you okay?”
She continued to cry quietly, and I thought that perhaps she was having a nightmare. I moved over and sat on the side of her bed and shook her lightly by the shoulders.
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “Wake up! It’s all right. You’re only having a bad dream.”
Her arms came up suddenly, encircled my neck, and pulled me to her urgently. Her eyes still shut, she began frantically to cover my face with kisses. “Hold me. Hold me! Love me!”
It was still hard to tell whether she was awake or dreaming, but her hand had moved to my body, fumbling with my pants while she continued to kiss me. I quickly shed my clothing and slid into bed with her.
“Suzanne,” I asked again, “are you awake?”
“Love me, please,” she repeated. I obliged her.
She responded as if she had prepared for the act of love all her life but had never before had an opportunity to actually practice it. Her hunger was enormous, driving her to one erotic stimulation after another until we were both exhausted by repeated climaxes. Never before had I known a woman who responded so fully with every sense, every nerve, of her being. Again and again, her body thrashing wildly on the bed, she turned her head to stifle her cries so that they wouldn’t echo through the whole chalet.
Afterwards, as we lay close, she finally opened her eyes and smiled at me. “At first,” she said softly, “I thought I was only dreaming. But it wasn’t a dream, and it was much nicer.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “It was.”
As I started to roll away from her, I felt her hand brush the inside of my left thigh. She was wearing a ring on her finger and I felt it scratch my flesh lightly. I barely felt die scratch, but almost immediately a warm, soothing sensation spread through my whole body. My first thought was that it was just the after-effect of our pro-longed love-making. The truth hit me a moment later when that feeling changed to one of overwhelming suffocation. It had happened again— I had been drugged. Suzanne Henley had injected some substance into my body from her ring.
I knew this time that it was a potent drug that I would be unable to resist. Darkness closed in rapidly. My brain fled headlong into a black, empty void.
Seventeen
My vision was blurred by a brilliant, blinding, white light that was shining directly into my eyes. I must have been unconscious a long time. I thought I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. Slowly, as my vision cleared, I saw that I was in a stark white room, like a hospital room, and that the blinding light was coming from a fixture set in the ceiling directly above me. I was lying on my back, and my arms and legs were strapped down securely by leather straps.
I opened my mouth and tried to yell at the top of my lungs, but I made only a hoarse croak. Even so, my sound brought four burly men, in white jackets that hospital orderlies wear, close around me. They raised the upper portion of my bed so that I was sitting upright.
From my new position, I could see two other people in the room besides the four “orderlies.” One was my companion of the previous night. Suzanne Henley, her red hair flaming, looked beautiful in a white nurses uniform and low-heeled white shoes. The other was a white-haired man, probably in his sixties, who was dressed in a white smock, white trousers, white shoes, and white gloves. He was sitting in a wheelchair. I knew instinctively that I was now inside the Rejuvenation Health Spa and that this man was Dr. Frederick Bosch.
The doctor rolled his wheelchair closer to my bed and gave me a thin-lipped, icy smile. Suzanne Henley gazed at me briefly without expression and turned away.
“Welcome to our spa,” the doctor said, his voice thick with a German accent, “although I’m afraid this visit may not improve your health.” He paused and then added, “Mr. Nick Carter.”
His recognition of me gave me a start, and I struggled futilely for a moment against the bonds that held me tightly.
The doctor gave a wave with his hand. “It’s quite, quite useless to struggle, Mr. Carter. You are powerless here. Besides, why should you be anxious to leave when you’ve wanted to come here so much?”
He spun around in his wheelchair and ordered the four white-coated attendants to take me upstairs.
The men quickly rolled me, still strapped to the bed, across the room to a large elevator that appeared immediately when one of them pressed a button. They pushed me into the elevator, and we were joined by Suzanne Henley and the doctor in his wheelchair. No one spoke as the elevator lifted soundlessly. We rode up what seemed to be several stories before the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and I was taken into a huge, open room.
As I looked around the room, I saw that it was as large as a square city-block and glassed in from floor to ceiling on all four sides. We were on top of the spa, and since that establishment sat on the peak of a towering mountain, there was a view through the glass wall on every side down into deep valleys. It was a breathtaking sight, especially in full daylight with the sun shining on the snow.
But there was an awesome sight within the room—an enormous humming, buzzing computer in the center that occupied most of the space. Lights from the computer flashed and blinked continuously, and the machine made a steady, quiet whirring sound. Otherwise, since the room was obviously soundproofed, it was eerily silent. The doctor made a motion with his hand, and the four men rolled my bed closer to the machine. When I was in place there, one of the men worked a crank at the foot of my bed and I was suddenly sitting upright, still strapped, with my back up and my legs down as if I were in a chair.
The four men returned to the elevator and left us when the doctor signalled with his hand again.
Suzanne Henley stood beside the computer and began to twist and turn dials while the doctor scooted over in his wheelchair so that he was directly in front of me.
“There it is, Mr. Carter,” he said with a flourish of his hand, indicating the computer, “the answer that you have been seeking. There is the power behind what you once called the ‘Assassination Brigade.’ There it is, and you still don’t know what it means, do you?”
He was right. I didn’t know the meaning of the computer, nor how it had created a world crisis.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What’s this all about?”
The doctor spun away from me, and I noticed for the first time that his wheelchair was fully mechanized, apparently operated by controls that he could manipulate without manual effort. He laughed gleefully as he whizzed once around the room. Then he returned to where I sat.
“Let me introduce myself,” he said, making a mock bow from the waist. “Introduce myself by my real name, not the one everyone else knows me by, Dr. Frederick Bosch. It
is a name that will be familiar to you—I am Dr. Felix Von Alder. I see the raised eyebrows, Mr. Carter. You know my wife and my three lovely daughters. But that is only a minor part of the story.”
He paused for a moment and regarded me quizzically. “Before I tell you my story, Mr. Carter, I want you to understand why I am telling you. You see, you’re now in my power—physically, and soon you will be in my power totally—physically and mentally. Nothing can stop that, I assure you, and you will soon see for yourself. But before that time I want you to hear what happened. You, with your past achievements, are a proper audience for the brilliant tale I have to tell. I wanted you here alive for this moment, because you are someone who can truly appreciate what I have succeeded in doing. Otherwise,” he spun once more in his chair, “otherwise, my work would be like creating a great masterpiece, like a symphony that no one who appreciated good music ever heard, or like a painting no one ever saw. You understand?”
I nodded. What was the explanation, I thought, of this apparent madness?
Dr. Felix Von Alder sat motionless in his wheelchair for a moment before he leaned toward me to talk.
He had been a brilliant scientist in Germany, working for Adolf Hitler on the control of human behavior. The experiments in the ‘30s and ‘40s had only involved animals and had been very crude, using chemical and surgical methods to alter and control the brain.
“I had some success,” Von Alder said proudly, “even then. Der Fuhrer decorated me repeatedly.
I was ready to move on to humans. Then it was too late—the war ended. There was an Allied raid on Berlin where I was working—” he paused in his story and slipped off his white smock. I saw that his arms, with his white gloves on the hands, were artificial. He moved his shoulders, and both arms fell to the floor. “I lost both arms in the raid.”
Soon after that, he continued, the war ended. When the Russians came to Berlin, they searched for him because they knew of his experiments. When they found him, they’d taken him to the U.S.S.R. In the confusion of the times, the Germans had thought he was dead. There was no record of the continuing existence of Dr. Felix Von Alder.
