Nick Carter - Istanbul

Mousy reached for the raki jug.

"No!" Nick's voice was sharp. "Lay off the popskull for now, Mousy. Let's get this over with and get some sleep. What about this Dr. Six — Joseph Six? Washington says he was a Nazi — worked as a doctor in a concentration camp! That right?"

Mousy reluctantly took his hand away from the jug. Old Bici, the Albanian, took the opportunity to seize it and put away a drink of terrifying proportions. Mousy stared at him in fascination while Bici wiped his moustachios on the back of a dirty hand. "My God," said Mousy in a reverent tone. "That would have killed me."

Nick was tolerant. "Mousy! Dr. Six?"

The little agent shrugged his thin shoulders. "Same old story. Can't prove a damned thing. He is a doctor, all right. Doktor. Arzt. Medicine, that is. At least I think it is — anyway I'd hate to know what he specialized in those concentration camps!"

N3's face was usually impassive. Never did it betray an emotion he did not wish it to. But someone who knew him intimately — and there were very few — would have noticed a slight hardening of his face now. He hated no one in the accepted sense of the word. In his job he could not afford to hate. It got you involved emotionally. Ruined your judgment. You made mistakes. No — N3 did not hate. But if he had a preference for killing it would be those who ran concentration camps — no matter when or where or for what dictatorship.

Nick said now, "Odd the Turks would let a character like that hang around."

"They need doctors," Mousy said. "How they need them! They're building a whole new country and every little bit helps. Anyway it's sort of like the opium — our problems aren't exactly their problems! They need us and they cooperate, but the viewpoints are different. And nothing can be proven against this Six. They had to let him go in Germany, after the war, and if they couldn't hang him…!"

Dr. Joseph Six. German. In Turkey on resident and valued worker's permit. Age — about sixty-five. Tall, thin, so called intellectual type. Runs sanitarium on the Bosphorus, European side, near Lido Hotel. Has wealthy clientele, but also runs large clinic for the poor. Later fact believed to influence attitude of Turkish police. Friend of Defarge, who several times has stayed at sanitarium for treatment of heart condition. If connected with Syndicate cannot guess in what capacity.

Nick stared at Mousy, but for the moment hardly saw the little man. Mousy had compiled the dossiers, but then Mousy was vastly inexperienced compared to Nick. N3 thought he saw how a man like Dr. Six could be useful. Sometimes the enforcers of the Syndicate wouldn't want to kill a man, at least not at first. They would want to question him! What better place than a sanitarium with its operating table and its truth serums and its sharp little knives?"

"I think I can guess the capacity," Nick said. For some reason Mousy found himself shivering at the chill in his chief's voice. Then the moment passed. Nick said, "And now we get to the last — but I've got an idea not least — Johnny Ruthless! From all I hear we don't know much about him?"

"You hear right," Mousy admitted. He took off his horn rims and polished them. Nick, without particular compassion, noted how pale and fatigued the little guy was, how the purple shadows beneath the weak eyes were rapidly becoming pouches. This was a nasty job and it had moved in suddenly and Mousy wasn't the man for it. After tonight he would be on his way back to the States and a nice long rest.

"We don't even know his name," Mousy said, replacing his glasses. He peered through the candle-guttering gloom at Nick. "Just that everybody clams up the minute you mention Johnny Ruthless! We know so little that I didn't even try to compile a dossier on him. I'll just give it to you first hand, shall I? What we think, what we know, what we suspect — anyway you look at it it's not much."

The Albanian had banished into his niche some time before. Now Mija Gialellis stood up with a graceful motion. She was wearing black stretch pants that moulded her long legs beautifully. She looked at Nick.

"A ffedersiniz?"

Nick nodded curtly. "Excused. I'll want to talk to you later, alone."

The girl nodded and went to her niche and disappeared. They heard cot springs squeak.

Nick looked at Mousy. "Now tell me about our Johnny."

"Okay. I hope you won't be disappointed. First — no pix of any sort. By the time we knew we needed pictures he wasn't around any more. That was about three months ago, when this thing started to get hot. But his description, from all we've been able to get since, is that he's young — about thirty, maybe. Slim. Good looking, with a little pencil moustache. Black hair slicked down close to his head. One thing — he seems to like to wear evening clothes. You know, a dinner jacket. A tux."

"Eyes?"

Mousy nodded. "Now that's one thing we got pretty universal agreement on — coal black. Sort of a staring look."

Nick rubbed his chin. "I thought you said you couldn't get people to talk about this guy? You seem to have done pretty well."

"Not really." Mousy lit a cigarette. "All that stuff is what we got from joints around town, mostly high class night clubs and so on, after we got interested in the guy. We got it from headwaiters, bartenders, people like that, who didn't really know him. Just vaguely remembered him. But every time we got a lead to someone who had actually known him — that was different! For one thing…" and Mousy sighed — "a lot of them just weren't around any more! Vanished. We did find one guy who admitted having known Johnny Ruthless — he had the nerve to tell us he thought it was the guy's right name — and I think maybe he slipped a little. He said he thought Ruthless was from Chicago…"

"Chicago?"

"Yeah — then the guy got so scared at what he'd said that he clammed up. Not even the Turkish police could make him talk — and if they can't, no one can. Later they found out he had a phony passport and deported him. Anyway he claimed mat he hadn't known Johnny very well, just around the gambling clubs and such. And didn't know where he lived. Nobody we talked to had the faintest idea where Johnny lived. It was like the guy didn't have a home!"

Nick was thoughtful. "It's hard to see how anyone could be so evasive. The Turkish police are supposed to be pretty good."

"They are. But this character was like a ghost."

"You make him sound like one, I'll admit. But even ghosts have to live somewhere."

Mousy shrugged. "I told you — it's a bastard!"

"Most cold trails are," Nick agreed. "Now, from Washington I got it that the first Narcotics man was murdered about six months ago?"

"Right. Fished out of the Bosphorus with his throat cut. All of his identification on him. They wanted us to know — of course it wasn't our job then!"

Nick nodded. "Of course. It was a warning. Three months ago another Narcotics man was killed. Right?"

"Yes. Same thing. Pulled out of the Bosphorus with his throat cut."

Nick fit a cigarette. "And it was then, after this second murder, that you started looking for Johnny Ruthless and he had vanished?"

Mousy looked at the raki bottle. Nick pushed it away. "Yes," said Mousy. "We — the Narcotics people — had one vague tip that the second murdered guy had been seen talking to someone who might have been Johnny Ruthless. Anyway when they started looking for him he had dropped out of sight. No report of him since."

Nick pondered, remembering his Washington briefing. "Then in recent weeks Narcotics lost two more men — one of them being Pete Todhunter, Jim's brother?"