Death from Nowhere (15 page)

Alexander blinked, hesitated, then glanced at the uncleared luncheon dishes.

“I
am
getting the jitters,” he muttered.

He crossed the room, unlocked the door and then stepped aside so that he was behind the door as it opened. It was as well that he did so.

Mr. Alexander had never seen a waiter quite like the one that came in — not East of Suez at any rate. He was a man of medium height dressed in quite ordinary clothes — dark suit, brown shoes, a neat pin-striped tie. But on his head he wore a large white dress-turban, and his face was the dark chocolate brown of the Hindu.

This was all interesting enough, but the really important fact was that he, too, had a gun in his hand.

He had, however, no chance to use it. As he turned he found the round muzzle of Mr. Alexander's gun ready, and waiting, held by a steady, nerveless hand.

Alexander kicked the door shut with his foot, “Okay,” he said. “Drop it!” His voice was cold and hard and efficient.

The turbaned man hesitated a bare fraction of a second, then his fingers opened and his gun dropped to the floor.

Mr. Alexander said, “If it's Mr. Johnson you are still looking for, he's not in.”

“Johnson?” The other man frowned. There was no trace of accent in his voice. “I don't think I understand.”

“I don't understand so well myself,” his opponent replied. “Why did you pretend you were Room Service? And why the gun, if I'm not being too inquisitive?”

“I— Someone was following me. Your door was locked. I thought that was the quickest way in. I had to get out of that corridor.”

“Oh yeah?” Mr. Alexander was skeptical. “I doubt that like hell.” He moved to the door and turned the key in the lock. “But we won't take any chances. Let's hear more. Who are you?”

The other man hesitated. His eyes sought the gun on the floor, then shifted to the one Alexander held. Then he said, “My name is not important. Yours is. Alexander was a very appropriate choice. I want to talk about him.”

The man behind the gun spoke coldly. “I thought so. Okay. Go on and talk. I'm listening.” He watched his visitor intently and he thought that there was something very wrong about this, something so haywire that …

The gentleman in the turban bowed slightly. “India,” he said, “is a strange country. You know that. It hides many strange secrets. You know one of them. I know some others.

“I know for instance that a few weeks ago, on May 20th to be exact, you were in Derawar. I know that you spent a week in the desert along the east bank of the Indus near the border of Bahawalpur. You were alone. You had with you a certain radio-induction device which finally, on the evening of June 3rd, led you to.…”

Alexander interrupted. “If I was alone, how do you know what happened to me? If I did spend any time in a desert near wherever it was I wouldn't have talked about it.”

This was true enough. He hadn't talked. How this man could possibly know these dates — how anyone could possibly know …?

The dark-faced intruder spoke again. “It is not always necessary to depend on the eyes to see and the ears to hear. India is a strange land and there are more senses than five. I can tell you other things that you might suppose no one could possibly know. I might tell you about the very remarkable discovery you made before that in Lahore on ninth day of the month of Ramadan. I might tell you …”

What other secrets the man who knew too much had to offer Mr. Alexander never discovered.

His opponent, noting that these disclosures were having their effect, had edged gradually backward, until now his right hand behind him touched the water carafe on the table. His brown fingers took a firm hold.

Then, in mid-sentence, with a long and lightning quick under-arm swing, he sent it hurtling up at Alexander's face. The latter ducked automatically as the water, splashing from it, blinded him for half an instant.

His finger tightened on the trigger and he felt the kick of the gun as it spurted flame across the room.

As his vision cleared he saw the Hindu, who had already lunged forward toward him in a low horizontal dive, fall and come sliding across the floor toward his feet. The man lay there motionless.

Alexander bent down and pulled at his shoulder to turn him on his face. There was something about that face that—

One of the man's arms shot up, snakelike, hooked around Mr. Alexander's neck, and jerked him forward off his feet in a half somersault.

Then a brown hand rose swiftly and fell again. Light touched the cold bright steel of the knife it held and made a shining arc in the air.

The fingers that held the gun stiffened once and then relaxed. A slow red stain moved out across the carpet.

The brown-skinned man rolled over and got to his feet.

Don Diavolo

Woody

Mickey

Pat Collins (we think)

Inspector Church

Karl

C
HAPTER
II

Guillotine

A
SIGHTSEEING
bus filled with out-of-town visiting firemen rumbled through Greenwich Village. The guide, a human phonograph whose voice sounded as if the needle should be changed, lifted his megaphone as they crossed Sheridan Square. He pointed toward a narrow little cul-de-sac of a street, half as wide as it should be and not much longer.

“Number Seventy-seven Fox Street,” he rattled off automatically, “the third house from the corner. The famous House of Mystery, home of The Great Diavolo, the world's premier magician and escape artist. And on your left.…”

It was too bad that the guide couldn't have taken his passengers down into the basement of number Seventy-Seven Fox Street at that moment. He would have been able to show them a sight far more hair-raising than all the half forgotten tong wars and sham opium dens of Chinatown put together.

In that basement, surrounded by the intricate machine-shop of tools he loved so well, Karl Hartz was making some final adjustments on a strange and sinister apparatus. His blue eyes gleamed with interested concentration behind their thick-lensed glasses. His waving shock of white hair was rumpled, and there was a large round smudge of grease on the end of his nose.

He twisted his pipe wrench one final quarter of a turn, took a last careful measurement with a pair of steel calipers, and then stepped back.

“That should do it, Chan,” he said. “Give her another try…”

Chan Chandar Manchu, a slant-eyed, brown-skinned, perennially smiling young Eurasian had been hired originally as Don Diavolo's dresser, but had turned out to be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of most of them. He had long since given up trying to predict what he would be called on to do next.

This chore that Karl had asked him to help with was one of the queerer ones. But Chan, with the bland acceptance of his Chinese-Indian ancestry, only grinned and bent to turn the great iron wheel before which he stood.

As he moved it, a heavy ratchet accompanied his turning with a harsh metallic clicking. And, in the foot-wide space between the two tall vertical supports that served as tracks, a broad blade of brightly shining steel moved slowly upward. The blade was surmounted by a heavy weight and its slanted lower edge was razor sharp.

When the steel knife had reached the top the boy stopped his turning. Karl Hartz ran a careful mechanic's eye over the apparatus and then reached out and pulled a lever. The great blade dropped.

Its thin edge cut the air with a sharp whistling swish, and stopped short at the track's base with a dull and sinister clunk. The pleasant little toy these two were working over with such loving care was nothing less than an altogether too realistic guillotine!

Karl gave a pleased nod of approval. Chan suppressed a shiver.

Behind them a girl's voice asked, “Did you have to make it look so very much like the real McCoy?”

Karl and Chan turned to see Patricia Collins and Don Diavolo himself just stepping from the electric elevator that had brought them down from the floor above. Pat, along with her twin sister Mickey were the blondes who added beauty and a couple of dashes of sex to the modern sorcery of Don's innumerable conjuring acts.