Nick Carter - Double Identity

Nick moved across a cement porch without sound. He found a French window open, the jalousie raised. A second censor clicked in his brain. This time he paid heed. How come the window so conveniently open, so beckoning? Sloppy police work when they had sealed the house? Could be. Or could not be. So — he was being paid danger money for this mission.

N3 checked his weapons. Pierre, the gas bomb, was safe in the metal cartridge between his legs. Surely he wouldn’t need Pierre tonight. Hugo, the stiletto, was cold against his forearm. Sam Shelton had been killed with a stiletto, remember!

N3 checked Wilhelmina, the Luger. He jacked a cartridge into the chamber, muffling the sound beneath his borrowed airman’s jacket, and flicked off the safety. He went into the dark room beyond with a single fluid motion that was without sound.

Nothing. A clock ticked dutifully away, though its owner had no more use for time. It was blacker than a dictator’s sins! Nick felt his way along a wall, his fingers detecting flocked wallpaper.

He reached a corner and halted, counting the seconds, listening. After two minutes he dared the pen light he always carried. The thin beam disclosed a big desk, files, a small safe in another corner. He was in Shelton’s office.

Cautiously he approached the desk. It was bare except for a blotter, a telephone, and some sort of an official form pad. Nick held the light close and scanned the pad. It was a new one with only a few sheets missing. Nick picked it up gingerly — he had no means of knowing how clever the Karachi police were with fingerprints — and read the small black lettering. It was in gobbledy-gook. Officialese! U.S. Lend Lease style. It was a pad of requisition slips.

The dead Sam Shelton had been special attache for APDP — Arms Procurement and Distribution Program. There was a huge transshipment depot on the Indus northeast of Karachi.

N3 scanned the pad again. He turned it in the air so the little beam of light played across the top sheet at an angle, bringing up indentations, the impression of what had been written on the preceding sheet. Even without special technique he could make out a long list, written in a small hand, and at the bottom the heavy swirl of a signature. Sam Shelton.

Excitement began to build in the AXE man now. He thought he was getting close — close to finding out what the fake Nick Carter was after. He twisted the pad this way and that, trying to make out more of the writing. He was positive that one of the faintly limned phrases was— Consigned to—

Damn! He needed a heavy pencil, a soft lead, to brush over the impressions and bring them up. The desk top was bare. Nick found a drawer, the top drawer, and slid it softly open. There should be—

For a micro-second the man and the snake stared at each other. It was a krait, eighteen inches of instant death! Cousin to the cobra, but much deadlier. Death in less than a minute and no serum could save you.

Both the man and the snake struck in the same instant. Nick was just a shade the faster. His action was spontaneous, without thought. Thought would have killed him. His nerves and muscles took over and the little stiletto flashed down to pin the krait to the bottom of the drawer, just below the obscene flat head.

The krait lashed in a furious death agony, still trying to strike its enemy. Nick Carter gave a long sigh and wiped sweat from his face, watching the fangs still flickering a half-inch from his wrist.

His nerves were back to normal before the krait stopped writhing. Careful to avoid the still feral mouth the man from AXE found a soft pencil and brushed it lightly over the pad. It was a trick every kid knew. As he stroked in the soft graphite, words began to appear. Soon he could read most of what was on the pad. N3 pursed his lips in silent speculation.

Sam Shelton, acting by the authority of his office, had turned over a lot of arms to the Pakistani Army. Evidently on orders from the fake Nick Carter. It didn’t have to be that way, but Nick had a sinking feeling that it was. His double had taken the top sheet from this pad. A requisition and consignment slip releasing arms to the Pakistanis. Dated day before yesterday.

Nick slanted his light on the pad and read a note scribbled on the bottom — the arms to be shipped up the Indus, by boat, to the Lahore front! That would look just great in the newspapers! Washington favoring Pakistan over India— breaking its own edict! It wasn’t true, of course, but that was how it would look. If it got out.

N3’s handsome, saturnine face crinkled in a wolfish grin. It wouldn’t get out — not if he had anything to say about it. It was just one more angle to this job — find that arms shipment and stop it! That must take priority even over killing his other self.

He scanned the paper again. Rifles — and Mis at that! Light and heavy machine guns. Grenades. Bazookas and light anti-tank guns!

Five million rounds of ammunition!

Nick Carter heard it then. A faint sliding sound somewhere in the house. In one rapid motion he flicked off the light, snatched the stiletto out of the dead krait, and ran on tiptoe to a wall near the study door. He liked something solid against his back.

The sound was not repeated. N3 waited, tensed and ready, breathing noiselessly through his open mouth. Not one of his superb muscles so much as quivered. He was an unseen statue — the perfect hunter doing what he was best at — the waiting stalk.

Five minutes passed in utter silence. The clock’s insistent voice was metronomic in the dark. Nick could count his pulse as it thudded in his temples. He began to realize what he was up against. A man who was supposed to be himself — and who was just as patient, as cunning, and as deadly! And that man, the impostor, was somewhere in the house now! Waiting, even as Nick was waiting. Waiting to see who made the first mistake!

N3 understood something else — his enemy had purposely made that noise. It had not been a slip, a mistake. His enemy had wanted Nick to know that he was in the house. That single small sound had been a challenge. Come and get me!

That, N3 admitted, was the hell of it! He had to go after the other man. The fake agent had all the time in the world— Nick had none to spare. The double had come back to this house because he had reasoned that Nick would come here! And he was — confident, sure of himself, else he would not have signaled his presence. He had an organization behind him, too. A clear escape route laid out. Help within the sound of his voice. N3 had none of these things. He stood alone but for the growing anger and determination in him. The confrontation had come sooner than he had expected.

One other thing was clear. The arms shipment must be on its way. The Chinese agent had attended to that first, then doubled back to ambush Nick as he followed the trail. What queer bravado could have prompted the man to make a sound, to give himself away? A kind of twisted pride — or stupidity? Over-confidence?

Most unprofessional, Nick thought as he went back out the French window in a silent gliding motion. Unprofessional and dangerous. It’s going to get him killed!

For a moment he lingered in the shadows of the porch, listening. Nothing stirred near the house or in it. The planes had gone and the searchlights vanished. A pi dog howled dismally from far off — it sounded nothing like a jackal. Nick thought of Mike Bannion and hoped the little man was obeying orders and wouldn’t come snooping. And wouldn’t get hurt if, indeed, the man inside had helpers about.

He left the porch and moved silently through grass on which droplets of dew were beginning to gather. He had replaced Hugo in the sheath and went with the Luger ready and eager. He would like to do this job silently, but that might not be possible.