Istanbul (8 page)

Wind swooped into the little court, a sudden vicious little gust, and blew it against Nick's hand. He had been standing within a foot of it in the dark, all this while, not suspecting its presence.

A rope ladder!

N3 cursed beneath his breath. He flattened himself against the wall again and examined the ladder, more by feel than sight. So much for the Turkish cops and their precautions!

It was just an ordinary rope ladder with wooden rungs. It came straight down from the flat roof three floors up. N3 cursed again and spun it away from him. God knows who had been up and down that ladder tonight!

He had a sickening feeling that the time for stealth was past. He slid through the door and headed for the sliver of light at the far end of the short cross corridor. As he crossed the main hall he glanced down it. Empty.

It was a plain brown door with OFFICE stenciled on it in faded gold letters. Nick tried the knob. Fingerprints didn't matter a damn now. The door swung open and he stepped into the office. He closed it softly behind him. A solitary lamp burned on a desk in one corner.

Nick smelled it before he saw it. Blood! A thick, sweetish odor. Nick had smelled it many times in his life. He reached behind him to latch the door, then took the Luger from his belt. Through a half open door set in one side of the small office he saw the glint of bathroom fixtures.

For the moment he did not so much as glance at the body of the woman by the desk. He went swiftly around the room, careful not to step in blood, and approached the bathroom. He kicked the door open and went in. Empty. A commode, a wash basin and medicine chest glinting pale in faint yellow light. Nothing else. Then N3 stopped to sniff again. There
was
something else. Another smell! This one sharp and biting to his nostrils. A dry tangy odor, contrasting with the wet stickiness of the blood smell. N3 stood in the bathroom for a moment, sniffing, puzzled. It was a familiar smell, damn it. One he had been around before — then he had it. Nail polish remover. Acetone! N3 smiled and went back into the office.

This time he cautiously approached the body of the woman. She lay on her back near the desk, her arms flung wide, her eyes staring at the ceiling. Around her head and shoulders the blood was already clotting and turning black. Her throat had been cut. Cut with a stroke so vicious that the grizzled head, with the short mannish haircut, was lying aslant at a weird angle. The throat had been cut clear through to the spine, very nearly severing the head.

Nick glanced at his watch, then thrust the Luger back in his belt. Very carefully, keeping away from the blood, he knelt and picked up one of the dead hands. He examined the nails. They were clean, blunt, free of any hint of polish.

Nick dropped the hand and stood up. For a moment he stood contemplating the body. Leslie Standish would not have used nail polish. Mija had given them the right steer on that, he was sure. Doubly sure now as he stood looking down at the dead woman, filing away facts for future reference. And the facts were plain enough. Probably not even very important now, at least from his viewpoint. Leslie Standish wasn't going to help the Turkish cops now, that was sure. And she wasn't going to talk to the stiletto, either. Someone — guess who? — had made sure of that!

N3 stood very quietly near the dead woman while his mind and eyes and subconscious did their work in unison. It was one of Nick Carter's methods of working. He let the essence of the little room and its macabre occupant soak into him.

The dead woman, Nick thought, would be in her fifties. Not important. She had been English, probably upper class, probably a sort of remittance woman. Not important. Just another upper-crust Lesbian. She had been pushing dope, for years more than likely, and only recently had the cops cracked down on her. At the insistence of U.S. Narcotics, no doubt. They had hoped to use her to get a lead on someone higher. No dice as of this date. Nick smiled grimly. Certainly no dice now! Probably she had been a double, or had tried to be — playing both sides and hoping to get the best of it for herself.

He stared down at the stout body in the brown tweed skirt and jacket, the man's shirt and tie, the butch haircut. No compassion stirred in him. She had sold the stuff to Mija Gialellis and a thousand kids like her. Leslie Standish had earned her slashed throat!

Nick went back into the tiny bathroom. The acetone smell still bothered him. Why? Damned if he knew. An old gal like Standish would be bound to have girls in and out. Nick shook his head and went through the medicine cabinet. He worked fast now. Time was running out for him. Any moment someone would be knocking on the door. Probably, as soon as the dirty pictures were over, the Turk plainclothes man would be checking. Nick whistled between his teeth. He didn't particularly want to knock out any Turkish cops — but if he had to he would. That didn't worry him.

He found the small bottle of nail polish remover. It was half empty. He scanned the label. FASTACT. When a girl was in a hurry to get the polish off, no doubt. Made in Chicago. Nick slipped the bottle into his pocket and went back into the office. Time to take off. He'd been pushing his luck as it was.

Nick went around the body to take a final look at the desk. No use trying to go through it, he thought. Standish wouldn't have any really important papers around. She would have been too smart for that. So would the other people — the people who had had her killed. Strictly small potatoes, Leslie Standish. Dead small potatoes now.

The desk top revealed nothing. It was nearly clean, but for a blotter, an ashtray, a telephone. A packet of matches — Nick picked up the shiny little black folder. Gold letters said:
Divan Annex.

Nick put the matches in his pocket and went toward the door. He thought — Maurice Defarge, offices and suite in Divan Annex. Entire top floor. Important? Maybe — maybe not. A lot of people would be carrying those matches around. We shall see. Time will tell.

N3 was not at all unhappy or displeased as he reached to unlock the door. He cared not a damn that Leslie Standish had been murdered. Even under torture she probably couldn't have told them much.

Nick whistled softly. A thing from the
Threepenny Opera
—
Mack the Knife.

And Mack
was
back in town. Or Johnny Ruthless was. This gladdened what the AXE man liked to think of as his heart. He liked to think, too, that his own presence in Istanbul had something to do with Johnny's emergence from retirement.

He was looking forward to meeting Johnny Ruthless!

Nick Carter opened the door and stepped into the dimly lit corridor — and got his wish. There, at the intersecting corner of the two corridors, stood Johnny Ruthless! In dinner jacket, black Homburg, glistening shirt front, a mocking little smile on the thin lips beneath the dark pencil moustache. He stared at Nick, silent, mocking, poised like a dancer.

Nick Carter let shock and surprise wait until later. With first rapid instinct he raised the Luger, then knew it was no good. Gun fire would bring every cop in town. And he didn't want to kill this man — not yet.

Neither spoke a word. Nick went down the hall in great lunging strides. The man in the dinner jacket did a graceful pirouette, a flowing, sinuous feline movement, and ran for the door at the far end of the hall. The door that led into the court. Nick, following, ran squarely into the trap.

It was the oldest and simplest trap in the world — you chase me and I'll catch you! It worked to perfection.

Both big men were waiting as Nick raced across the intersecting corridor in pursuit of the flitting, elusive figure in the dinner jacket. It was an amateur's mistake and N3 made it and never quite forgave himself for it — but at the time he had only one thought. To get his sinewy hands around the throat of Johnny Ruthless.

The man nearest the corner kicked at Nick's legs as he ran past. Nick went sprawling, knowing even in that racing desperate moment before he hit the floor that he had been tricked. As he fell he turned his head, watching, and saw the remaining man come fast with a short length of cord in his hands. That was it, then!
Thuggee!
They were going to strangle him. Quick and noiseless — and most painful!

Two big men against one big man! As Nick hit the hard splintery floor and rolled over on his back he knew that these men must consider the odds pretty good. So did he. Yet even then, just before the brawl, he knew this was going to be a tough one. Nick had never underestimated an enemy in his life — which was why he was still around.

As the first man leaped to pin him down Nick hooked a foot around the man's calf and kicked hard at the knee with his iron shod heel. A fast way to break a leg. This man slipped away from it, spun, and kicked Carter brutally in the ribs. It hurt. Nick rolled away from the second man, with the cord, who was trying to catch at Nick's ankles with it. Nick kicked him in the face. The man fell sideways, cursing. By now Nick guessed they had orders not to kill him unless they must — the cord was just to choke him into submission. Johnny Ruthless probably had a few questions in mind. With the amazing computer-like speed of the human brain — even locked in this sweating, grunting, cursing struggle — Nick thought of Dr. Six and the operating table that must be waiting!

Both men smelled of fish. Nick noted this as the largest man came at him in a long stretching dive with gnarled brown hands like talons. They were getting a little more than they had bargained for and Nick could sense their thoughts — they had somehow to tie down this wildcat in the crazy tight suit, use their weight, maul him and smother him.

All this time Nick had the Luger in his right hand. They were ignoring it. They knew he didn't want to use it.

As the diving man came in Nick whipped the Luger against his face, slashing and cutting with it. The thug grunted and instinctively flinched away. Nick whipped him again, back and forth, driving him off as he kept an eye on the fellow with the cord. That was the baby to watch!

The cord man was circling, trying to close, to toss the loop over Nick's head. Nick leaped about a foot in the air, twisted, and tried to get the man with a
savate
kick in the groin. He missed. And slipped as he came down. The man with the cord gave a little grunt of triumph and raised the looped cord, leaping in, at the same time hissing something to his companion.

Nick Carter did three things nearly at once. He was off balance and outnumbered and getting a little tired of the whole mess. Also he was, just a trifle, beginning to weary. The past twenty-four hours had been damned tough.

Nick dropped the Luger. He shifted his feet ever so slightly, like the champion heavyweight boxer he was, and crossed his right to the cordman's chin. The impact of knuckles on flesh and bone sent a flash of pain as high as his elbow. The cordman's knees sagged, he turned with an odd silly expression on his face and began falling.

N3 whirled to see the remaining thug diving for the Luger. He had expected that. It was bait, the Luger.

Nick had only to hold out his arm, straight, with the stiletto pointing like a sixth gleaming metal finger. The man impaled himself on the blade, running on it with a certain crazy eagerness, unable to stop, looking down and watching the sharp steel slide into his guts like a fork into butter. He ran right up against Nick, this nameless hoodlum already dying, and for a moment they stared into each other's eyes.

There was pain in the Turk's eyes. Pain and total misapprehension about what was happening to him. What could
not
be happening to
him!
His mouth opened and his tongue came out and blood gushed down over a black-stubbled chin. He began to fall slowly. Fall toward Nick, pressing heavier on the stiletto that was killing him, pushing it farther and farther into his stomach.

N3 stepped quickly back. He whipped out Hugo and let the man fall the rest of the way, crashing to the floor, whipping about like a gaffed fish. Nick took a moment to breathe. He looked down at the dying man, still writhing and bubbling blood. In a voice as cold as an Arctic wind Nick said: "See how you like floating around the Horn, you son of a bitch!"

Nick scooped up the Luger and put it away. He snapped the little stiletto back into the arm scabbard and moved for the main corridor. As he rounded it he saw Memet, the cop who was supposed to have been guarding Leslie Standish, coming through the curtains at the far end.

Memet spotted Nick and quickened his pace. Nick saw the wariness in the man as he came toward him. Memet's hand slipped under his jacket to his armpit. Damn it to hell! Couldn't the man have waited one more minute!

N3 knew he must look like Frankenstein after a hard night. This Turk cop was going to be suspicious as hell. Memet was going to ask questions, a lot of questions, and when Memet saw what was around the corner...

Nick went into his act. He staggered and fell against the wall, gesturing to the plainclothes-man, calling out in a croaky voice.

Memet ran toward Nick. In his hand now was a squat, black bulldog revolver.
"Ne? Ne? Nerede?"

Nick staggered into the cop, clutching at him, twisting between Memet and the bodies in the short corridor. He pointed to the office door.
"Suraya bakin!
I but came to deliver a message and this I find. Come! See!"

Nick grabbed Memet's arm and pulled him along toward the office door. He kicked it open and pointed with a trembling finger.
"Surada!"

Memet hissed in surprise. He pulled away from Nick' and took an instinctive step into the office, toward the body by the desk. The revolver in his hand dropped.

It was enough. Nick Carter gave the man a violent shove, sent him spinning crazily across the room. Nick slammed the door and turned the old-fashioned key, all in one faster than lightning motion. The key in the office door had been in his mind from the moment he saw the cop.