Nick Carter - Double Identity

There was a low garage attached to the house by a latticed breezeway. Nick waited patiently for the dying moon to show, then saw that he could get to the upper floor, to the single wing of the house, by means of the latticework. He studied the layout intently in the brief light. He would have to do it by touch in the dark.

The moon sailed behind a dark cloud. Nick pushed cautiously through a low hedge of Indian cactus and tested the lattice. It held his weight. He went up like a monkey, using only one hand, the Luger alert in the other. The lattice was new and strong and did not creak, though it bent and swayed alarmingly.

There was a narrow strip of gutter and roof between the top of the lattice and the window which was his target. N3 stepped forward lightly and ducked below the window level. This was the only upstairs room in the house — he had figured it to be the Hindu maid’s bedroom — and whether he was right or not didn’t matter. What did matter was that it was the obvious way into the house. For that reason he had chosen it — his enemy might not be expecting the obvious.

Or again he might. Nick Carter swore gently to himself. The bastard had the advantage for the moment — he was in there somewhere and he could afford to wait. He knew that Nick had to come to him.

And so Nick did! But N3 had a healthy sense of fear, or what Hawk called intelligent caution, which had kept him alive for a long time in a very precarious profession. Now he huddled beneath the sill of the window and considered if he should take the gamble the window represented. It was another of the moments of truth he must continually face.

Nick peered up at the window. It was closed but the jalousies inside were slitted open. Nick flexed the stiletto into his hand and reached up, using the weapon as a pry-bar. The window moved a fraction. Not locked on the inside. Nick pondered that for a moment, then pried again with Hugo. The window shifted upward a half-inch. Nick re-sheathed the stiletto and got his big fingers into the crack and lifted. The window went up with a faint grating noise.

Sweat glistened on Nick Carter’s face and stung his eyes. He had been half expecting a blast of gunfire in his face, or a knife between the eyes. He breathed out a sigh of relief and kept going. The window had made enough noise to be heard anywhere in the silent house — his man would know at once what it was. And where Nick was! It might draw him, but Nick doubted it. The bastard could afford to wait.

He held the faintly rattling jalousies aside and legged over the sill. The room was dark but he caught the smell immediately. Blood! Fresh blood! The moon flashed for an instant and he saw something on a bed — it looked like a crumpled pile of dark rags through which something light glimmered. The moon went out.

Nick scuttled on his hands and knees for the door. His fingers told him it was locked. On the inside. His enemy was in the room with him!

Nick held his breath. Absolute dead silence pervaded the room. When at last he had to breathe — yoga exercises had built his lungs to where he could do without air for four minutes — nothing had changed. Still the deadly, frightening silence and the smell of fresh blood. Whose blood? Who, or what, was the thing on the bed?

N3 breathed soundlessly by mouth and did not move. He began to doubt his senses. He had not thought there was another man in the world who could go as quietly, as stealthily, as himself. Then he remembered — this enemy was himself in a sense! The Chinese had trained this impostor well.

There is a time to wait and a time to act. Nobody knew the adage better than Nick. So far he was behind. He was losing. The enemy knew he was in the room — but Nick did not know where the enemy was. Force his hand. Put on the pressure. began to crawl around the wall, thinking hard, trying to see the ultimate trick if there was one, expecting any moment the blinding flash of a light in his eyes. The smash of a bullet.

His brain worked furiously as he moved. Had he somehow been swindled, tricked? Or tricked himself? Had the door somehow been fiddled with so that it only appeared to have been locked from the inside? Sweat chilled on him at that thought — if it were true and his double had men with him then Nick was in a trap! They could guard the window and door and kill him at their leisure — or merely hold him prisoner until the police came. That didn’t bear thinking about. The cops would think they had the real killer again! It would take weeks to disentangle the mistaken identity mess and Nick would be ruined as an agent for a long time to come.

His hand touched cold metal. The bed. He raked under it with the stiletto, the Luger ready, his own nerves beginning to fray ever so slightly now. Damn the waiting, lurking sonofabitch! He wanted it that way. He was playing it that way.

There was nothing under the bed. The smell of blood was thick and sour-sweet in his nose now. He went beneath the bed and emerged on the far side, his fingers tracing up. It was a box spring and the mattress was thick. His hands touched something on the floor which he could not understand — bits of soft, fluffy stuff like waste or cotton. What the hell? The stuff lay thick on the carpet.

His fingers came away damp and sticky. Blood. Blood all over his fingers now. Nick put them to his nose and sniffed. Fresh, all right. Not yet fully congealed. Whoever it was that was dead on the bed had just been killed.

He moved away from the bed, wiping his fingers silently on a dry stretch of carpet. There were two danger spots. A closet — there must be one — and the bathroom if it opened off the bedroom. His man could be lurking in either spot.

By this time N3 was having to use his will power to keep his nerves under control. Seldom had they been so tested! He felt a sudden overwhelming urge to find the light switch and flood the room with brilliance — shoot it out with the bastard face to face! He killed the urge with a grim inward chuckle. That would be playing the other man’s game. He was doing too much of that now.

Yet he had to relieve his tension somehow. He found the bathroom and went into it like a tornado, not caring for poise, ripping and flinging about with the stiletto and the Luger. He tore down the shower curtain and demolished the medicine cabinet. Nothing!

He found the closet and gutted it. Nothing!

No sound. No movement. Only darkness and a strange corpse on the bed and the growing awareness that he was being completely outsmarted. Being made a fool of! And time leaking away relentlessly. There was not even time for a halt, for a cool and logical reappraisal of what was beginning to look like an impossibly insane situation. Either he was all wrong — or he was losing his marbles!

The bed now began to draw him like a magnet. There was something about the bed — something that glimmered in his brain and tried to fight through to him and couldn’t quite make it. N3 scuttled back to the bed like a big crab and stabbed beneath it again with the stiletto. Still nothing. And then something very peculiar happened to Nick Carter, to Killmaster. For the first time in his career he found himself verging on real panic. This whole thing was crazy. He must be losing his mind. The guy had to be in this room and yet he wasn’t! No man could go so long without breathing — and sooner or later breathing was bound to give you away in dead silence.

Wait a minute! The body on the bed! The blood was real enough, warm and sticky, but blood could be brought into a room and splashed about.

Cautiously, very slowly, conscious that his hand was shaking a bit, Nick began to explore the surface of the bed. His fingers touched soft flesh. Cool velvet beneath his fingers. Nearly cold now. He touched a tiny button of flesh, nipple! He was touching a woman’s breast.