Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

The dagger came down behind him with no whisper of sound and he flung himself flat on the floor under it, rolled as he hit. It nailed down the loose overlapping width of the Russian’s coat, bit through it into the plank, skewered it there. His assailant, thrown off balance, came floundering down on him.

They both had sense enough not to try for the knife, which was jammed in the floor halfway up to the hilt.

Hollinger couldn’t have chosen a worse position if he’d spent a year beforehand working it out. He was flat on his stomach with what felt like the sacred mountain of Fujiyama on top of him. He couldn’t use either arm effectively; and he was pinned down by eight inches of steel through a coat he couldn’t work himself out of. He nearly broke his back trying to rear up high enough to swing his shoulders around and get his arms into play.

Apelike hands found his throat, closed in, got to work. Two or three backhand blows glanced harmlessly off a satiny jaw-line. Hollinger gave that up, brought his legs into play instead. He got a scissors-lock on the short thick neck of the Oriental, squeezed.

The throttling hands left his throat to try to pry his legs off. He let them be wrenched apart without much resistance; the hold had been just a stop-gap — too passive to get him anywhere. They broke, jockeyed to get into better positions, blowing like fish on land.

Hollinger rolled over on his back, the razor-edged dagger cut its way free through his coat, remained bedded in the floor. He scrambled to his feet, staying low, resting his knuckles on the floor for a counter-balance till he was ready.

The Japanese had planted his feet wide apart like a croquet-wicket. He crouched low so that his chest was nearly touching the floor. The coppery, rippling muscles of his chest peered through the opening of his flimsy kimono.

Hollinger straightened, came up at him swinging. The right he sent in should have taken care of anyone. But it went wide, streaked upward into the air. The Jap cupped a slapping hand to his elbow, gripped the thumb of that hand at the same time. Hollinger felt himself leaving the floor like a rocket, twisting through the empty frame. He landed with a brutal thud in the compartment behind them, where Mallory had been killed. The fall left Hollinger squirming, half-paralyzed. The Japanese whirled to face him, stamped both feet in a new position, crouched again.

Jiu-jitsu. Hollinger knew he was sunk, unless he got a lucky break. He stumbled up again, weaved around warily, arching all over and with his ears humming. What good were dukes against a system of invisible weights and balances?

The hands shot out at him again, open. His own dizziness saved him: he gave a lurch to one side, his reflexes still stunned. The Japanese wasn’t quick enough in shifting position: his legs and shoulders swung, but for a second his flank was exposed. Hollinger didn’t waste the opening. He sent in a quick short jab to the vital nerve-center under the ear. That rocked the Japanese for a second, held him long enough for Hollinger to wind up a real one. He sent home one of those once-in-a-lifetime blows. The yellow man’s face came around just in time to get it between the eyes. The squat figure went over like a ninepin, and Hollinger stood swaying, his bleary eyes watchful, waiting for the other to come at him again but the Japanese was finished. He lay there gasping, threads of blood leaking from his ear, nose and mouth. His eyes stared stonily, without sight in them, at nothing.

Hollinger let out a groan and then let himself slide to the floor.

A couple of minutes went by. No one else came in. That was all to the good because Hollinger felt that one whack with a flexible fly-swatter would finish him off.

The Japanese began to groan after awhile, twitching his shoulders, arms, legs. But there was a board-like stiffness about his middle that caught the sailor’s eye. It had cost the Japanese the fight whatever it was. A wedge of white showed, in the kimono-opening, below the rising and falling coppery chest. Underclothing maybe. Whatever it was had kept the yellow man from pivoting out of the range of Holllinger’s finishing blow.

The sailor bent over him, pulled the garment open. Paper. Layer after layer of stiff, board-like paper, rolled around him like a cuirass, extending from ribs to thighs. A sash held it in place.

Hollinger rolled him out of his queer cocoon by pushing him across the floor, like a man laying a carpet. The stuff was in two lengths, one under the other. The Japanese had evidently slashed the whole square out of the screen first, then quickly slit that into two strips to narrow it so that he could wind it around himself. The knife-gash itself showed up in the second section, as it peeled free. The edges driven inward by the knife. Any cop worth his salt ought to be able to figure out what really happened with this to go by.

He riffled it out of the way. Then he flung himself down on the still stunned Japanese and gripped him by the throat. “Who was it?” he said in a low voice. “Who was in there? Who killed American fella?”

“No!” was the only answer he could get. “No!” Again and again.

“Better open up! This is waiting for you!” He showed a fist.

“No see! Man go in, come out again. I no know!”

“After what I just took off your hide? All right, here she comes!”

“Denguchi do! Denguchi do! I no do, he do! He get money for to do, he hired for to do—”

“Who hired him, you—?”

The yellow man’s eyes glazed. Then closed. The head rolled over heavily. Hollinger swore. He got up and quickly rolled the paper into a long staff, tucked it under his arm, took it out with him. Nothing more he could do here tonight.

The Russian was snoring in his lighted wall-niche when Hollinger got downtown again. Hollinger chased up the stairs past him, wangled the knob of his door triumphantly. “Hey, lady. Evelyn! It’s me, open up and listen to the good news!”

There wasn’t a sound from within. She must be in a pretty deep sleep, after what she’d been through earlier. He begun to thump subduedly. “Miss Brainard,” he said. “Lemme in, will ya?” Finally he went at the door in a way no sleeper could have ignored. He crouched down, looked through the keyhole. The light was still on inside, and he could make out the pear-shape of the key on the inside of the door.

Frightened now, he threw his shoulder against the door. The cheap lock tore off at the fourth onslaught. The Russian, roused, had come up meanwhile and was having epileptic fits at the damage to his premises.

The girl had vanished, with the key still locked from inside. A corner of the bedding trailed off onto the floor. One of the cheap net-curtains inside the window was torn partly off its rod, as though somebody had clutched at it despairingly. The window was all the way open. There was a tin extension-roof just below it, which sloped to within easy reach of the alley.

It wasn’t the police. They would have come in by the door, gone out with her by the door. All he had to go on was a name — Denguchi.

“Didn’t you hear anything? Didn’t you hear her scream out up here?”

The Russian immediately turned professionally indignant. “Oh, so you got girl opstairs! For this is extra charge!”

“I haven’t now!” gritted Hollinger, and the lodging-house keeper drew back hastily at sight of the grim lines in his face.

“I no hear. I tzleep. How I know you got somebody op here?”

Hollinger tested the disturbed bed with the back of his hand. It still showed faint traces of warmth. “She hasn’t been gone very long—” he muttered. “But every minute I stand here—”

Where would they take her? What could they possibly want with her? Just to hold her as a hostage, shut her up about the first murder? He didn’t think so. It was she they’d meant to get the first time, and not the man. Now they’d come back to correct the mistake. Then why hadn’t they killed her right here, why had they gone to the trouble of smuggling her out the window? The only answer he could find for that was that somebody had sent out after her. Somebody who hadn’t come here had wanted to see it done, had wanted to gloat. Who could be that interested in killing a woman? Only another woman. There was another woman in this somewhere, he should have realized that from the beginning—