Ник Картер - Butcher of Belgrade

Ursula was gone.

I had left her watching the door of the man we suspected of being Hans Richter, the Nazi war criminal called the Butcher. She was not at the end of the car where I had seen her last, and she was neither in her own compartment nor in mine.

A girl as single-minded as Ursula wouldn’t have left her post without good reason, I thought. She must have seen the man leave his compartment and decided to follow him.

Stopping before the man’s door, I knocked. I drew no response. I glanced along the corridor. A traveler had entered the car and was moving toward me with a smile on his face. Where had I seen him before? Then I remembered. Earlier in the journey, he had been seated in the same day car as Eva Schmidt and the man we believed to be Richter.

He greeted me cheerfully. “How is the trip going?” When I told him it was going fine, he nodded and clapped me on the shoulder in a comradely gesture, then moved on.

I lingered, waiting for him to get out of sight. I was going into the compartment while no one was there and conduct the search Ursula had wanted. The sooner she got her business settled, the sooner I would stop feeling responsible for her.

The cheerful stranger had stopped. He turned around. “May I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

He moved the hand that was in the pocket of his jacket. “Would you believe me if I said I was holding a revolver?”

“I don’t know why you’d lie to me about a thing like that.” I was impressed by his acting ability. He looked every inch a jovial tourist. He even wore a camera on a strap around his neck.

“I am going to take you to someone who wishes to talk to you. That is all we want, a little talk,” he said.

“Then the gun isn’t necessary.”

“Perhaps not, but I prefer to be careful. I’ll walk a short distance behind you. Close enough to shoot, but not close enough for you to jump me. If you behave yourself, we will get along splendidly.”

“I try to get along with everyone,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“Just turn and start walking. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

I behaved myself and followed orders. I was interested in learning who had sent him after me.

“All right. Stop,” he said after we had moved into the adjoining car.

I paused without looking back. We were alongside a row of private compartments. I heard the jovial man turn a key in a lock.

“Now you may turn around and step inside,” he said.

I followed orders until I got inside the compartment. Then I saw Ursula and I went a little crazy.

The girl was lying on top of the bunk. She was completely nude. Her clothing had been stripped from her and scattered about the compartment. She was breathing, but she was motionless.

Disregarding the gun, I wheeled on my captor. I leaped for him. My hands closed on his throat. I slammed him against the compartment wall, choking him. “What did you do to her?”

Then the door behind me opened. I heard it, but I didn’t turn in time. A leaded sap struck me behind the ear and floored me.

I tried to get up and couldn’t. I felt my hands being drawn behind me. Then someone was trussing my wrists with silken cord, yanking the bonds tight with smooth efficiency.

A hand slapped my shoulder. The man who had straddled me to do the tying job said, “Do not worry about the girl. She was only knocked out.”

I recognized the voice as that of the jovial tourist.

My hazed vision began to clear. I saw the feet of another man who was standing near the door. He wore expensive black leather shoes. Apparently he was the one who had sapped me. “Find out who he is,” he said to Mr. Cheerful.

Then he stepped out of the door before I had a chance to get a look at his face.

When the door closed behind the man with the black shoes, Mr. Cheerful turned me over. He was still beaming like the chairman of a welcoming committee. “As I said before, you won’t be killed if you behave yourself.”

“What about the girl?”

“I understand your concern. She is a pretty thing. But we had to find out who she is. So I knocked her out and took off her clothes and went through them.”

“How much did you find out?”

“Her organization issues identification cards to its agents. Naturally she was carrying one.”

That was the trouble with being connected with Ursula’s kind of undercover policy agency. They adhered to all the bureaucratic habits that could be dangerous to an operative out in the field.

“Do you, too, have an identification card?” asked the cheerful man.

“No,” I said.

I hoped that if I kept him talking long enough, I could get him within range of a skillfully placed kick. Then I could start a whole new ballgame, with me pitching.

“The two of you have been prowling the train together, trying doors, peeking into other people’s compartments. If you don’t work as partners, how do you explain that?”

“Hell,” I said, “Can’t you figure out anything for yourself?”

“No, I’m lazy.” He extracted another piece of cord from his pocket. “I’m going to make it hard for you to move around.” He deftly looped my ankles with the cord, taking pains to see that I didn’t catch him off guard. I had no chance for a well-placed kick.

In the corridor, the man had shown the same caution, undoubtedly born of experience. Whoever he was, he knew the rules of the game.

Mr. Cheerful’s accent was German, like Eva Schmidt’s. Like Ursula’s, for that matter. It was not much of a clue to his allegiance. In the spy business, sides get switched quite often, professionals of all nationalities were available for hire to any client, and what appeared obvious frequently turned out to be a false lead.

The assistant to Sheng Tze, for example, had been about as Chinese as Frank Sinatra.

As far as I knew, Mr. Cheerful could be working for anyone from Topcon to East German intelligence. He could also be a pal of Hans Richter, the man Ursula had been assigned to apprehend.

I could only be certain that he wasn’t working for AXE, for reasons that were perfectly clear, or for Peking. If he were employed by the Chinese Communists, Sheng Tze would be present and I would probably be dead already.

He dropped my feet, then gave them a little jerk to test the strength of his work. Satisfied, he straightened up. “Now that we’re comfortable, we can talk. Tell me all about yourself.”

“From the beginning? Well, I was born in the United States of America...”

“You joke too much,” he warned me.

He walked over to the bed and gazed down at the nude Ursula, who was bound hand and foot with the same kind of cord that held me. He glanced up to make sure I was watching his every move, then deliberately flicked one of the unconscious girl’s nipples with his fingernail.

“I am not going to try to beat answers out of you. It would be too difficult. If you don’t tell me who you are, I’ll work on the girl.”

I couldn’t see what I had to gain by withholding the information. “I take my orders from an organization called AXE. My name is Nick Carter.”

“Your name and that of your organization are familiar to me. But I do not understand why you and the girl are working together.”

“Maybe you won’t believe this, but we just happen to be old friends who were taking the same train.”

“The girl hunts down former Nazis. Are you hunting a former Nazi, too?”

“Not exactly. But if I run into one, I sure won’t kiss him on both cheeks.”

“I would imagine not, Mr. Carter. In any event, I have to be going.” He glanced at his watch, then walked quickly to the door. “Enjoy the rest of your trip.”

I watched the door close and heard the lock click. Then the compartment was silent. I glanced around. There was no luggage or clothing to indicate that the quarters were occupied by a passenger. Maybe Mr. Cheerful had a master key and had picked an empty sleeper in which to hold us prisoner.