Nick Carter - Istanbul

Noiselessly he approached the corner. Halted, fell to his knees as gracefully as a cat and peered around at thigh level. The little corridor was empty. To his left a crack of light glowed beneath a door.

To his right a door stood half open. As N3 watched the door moved, swaying, then banged suddenly. Nick let the tension drain from him and went swiftly to the door. It banged again in the wind as he reached it. This would be the door leading into the courtyard, with the high wall and the slough and the sewer beyond. Nick glanced back at the light glowing beneath the office door, then decided — let her wait a minute or so. He liked to check his back holes!

But without silhouetting himself against light! In the space of a heart beat he was out of the door and into the whimpering wind and rain and darkness. He flattened himself against a rough brick wall and blinked rapidly to help his eyes adjust. As he stood there, waiting, just one more shadow, Nick realized that he had underestimated the vagaries of Turkish weather. It had been fair when he and Mousy had entered Le Cinema Bleu — now rain was falling in thick gray ropes, twisted and snarled by a steadily rising wind. N3 shrugged his big shoulders. Weather meant little to him except as it affected the success or failure of a mission. But his mouth quirked — he could feel the cheap suit shrinking already!

Automatically, without conscious thought, he checked the Luger. Wilhelmina baby might just have work to do tonight! N3 found himself wishing it were so! This whole goddamned setup was beginning to get on his nerves — nothing had gone right so far and he had an uneasy sensation that things would get worse before they got better. Nick Carter had been on jobs like this before and he knew the feeling. The fact that, by average standards, he had no nerves at all did not matter. Things were going badly!

Nick checked Hugo, the vicious little stiletto lying snug along his forearm. Pierre, the gas pellet, was back at the Hole.

He could see clearly now and one glance told him that matters were as Mousy had described them. The high wall, the littered courtyard — nothing else. No way out…

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.