Carter Nick : другие произведения.

Checkmate in Rio

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  Axe's man in Rio wasn't there anymore. In fact, the whole intelligence apparatus that had been built with such care and operated with such cunning had just winked out like a series of shorted TV tubes. National security, violence and a mysterious woman… The assignment had to be Nick Carter.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Assignment: Rio
  
  City of the Missing
  
  Opening Gambit
  
  Mrs. Carla Langley
  
  The Enquiring Reporter
  
  Hugo Asks the Questions
  
  A Siege, a Chase, and a Golden Key
  
  Disappearance of a Snoop
  
  The Man with the Black Armband
  
  Night Life of a Spy
  
  Encounter at the Club
  
  Will You Walk into My Parlor
  
  The Wayward Widower
  
  The Venus Spy Trap
  
  Music to Die By
  
  And the Little Old Lady Screamed
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Killmaster
  
  Checkmate in Rio
  
  
  
  
  Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Assignment: Rio
  
  
  
  
  "And that makes six. Six little pockets of nothing."
  
  The cold wind of a Washington January howled around the building on Dupont Circle and insinuated itself into the sixth floor offices of the Amalgamated Press and Wire Service. The leathery old man with the rustic appearance and gimlet eyes kept his eyes riveted to the pin-studded map.
  
  Nick Carter's eyes wandered from the map to a pair of legs. They were nylon-clad, gracefully crossed, and almost unbelievably shapely. Hawk's office did not usually come equipped with such attractions. As a rule it was equipped only with Hawk, ordinary office furniture, and less ordinary communications devices. Nick's gaze traveled up to the knees. Nice. Gently rounded, but not by any means plump. Firm thighs, almost like a dancer's. A provocative curve of hip. A tightly belted waist that somehow managed to avoid that manacled look. A more than interesting swell of generous, well-contained femininity; twin mounds of pleasure, softly alluring. Or were they so soft? There was a determined thrust to them.
  
  Nick jerked his eyes and his mind back to the map.
  
  "One by one, they've turned off like radios," the head of AXE was saying. "And that leaves us with nothing from Rio — but silence. Look."
  
  Hawk's two listeners looked. Not covertly at each other, as they had been, but at Hawk and the wall map beside him. It looked strangely blemished, with its cheerful red studs splashed east to west, north to south, and only an occasional black-headed pin to mark some point of mystery or disaster in Asia or Africa… and a cluster of six black pins on the coast of Brazil.
  
  "Five million people in Rio de Janeiro," said Hawk. "Six of them — until recently — working for U.S. Intelligence. All of them reporting regularly, thoroughly, and to good purpose. And then, one after the other, they stopped."
  
  Hawk glared at Nick, as if holding him personally responsible. Nick was used to this look. It was as much a part of Hawk as the malodorous cigars and the pedantic manner he assumed when introducing the latest weapon in the well-equipped spy's arsenal.
  
  Nick's dark eyebrows drew together thoughtfully.
  
  "Was there anything particularly significant in any of their recent reports?"
  
  Hawk shook his head. "I wouldn't say so. They're hero — and you can take a look at them along with the dossiers — but they don't seem to me to be any more than routine. Brazil's never been one of our major trouble spots. Only reason that CIA's had that many agents in Rio is the size of the country, the population. Big city, big country, good friends of ours. A plum for the Reds, if they could pick it. And of course the government's not notoriously stable. No, the reports have been fairly standard." His long, springy stride took him to his desk. He opened a side drawer and took out a cigar. Nick sucked in a preparatory lungful of fresh air.
  
  "Essentially," Hawk went on, "they've dealt with personalities, political leanings, promotions and power struggles — the usual sort of thing. The only off-beat item was a report of gun-running. Two of the agents mentioned this. Miguel de Freitas and Maria Cabral. I don't have to give you a geography lesson to point out how ideally situated Brazil is for something like that. Long coast line, immensely busy port with all manner of goods flowing in and out, and land borders on ten countries. And elements in some of those countries itching for arms, for one reason or another. But you'll see by the reports that no one had what you might call a hot lead. No names, places, dates, quantities. Little more than rumors. Mentioned only because a good agent mentions everything." He puffed.
  
  Pungent smoke curled around Hawk's head. The girl's nostrils twitched delicately. Nick caught her eye, grinned, and saw the ghost of an answering smile. He wondered why Hawk had included her in this meeting. The head of AXE, a lifelong bachelor, had never fully accepted woman's role in anything but the home. But when he was obliged to use women agents, he used them with the courteous manner of a true gentleman and the conscience of a con man.
  
  "Now. You'll be wondering why I asked the two of you to come here. The answer is that you'll be working together. Working. Together." Hawk eyed Nick accusingly. Nick preferred to work alone, to call his own shots. But he did — oh, how he did! — enjoy feminine companionship.
  
  "Working, of course," agreed Nick. "But working how?"
  
  "CIA's asked for a trouble-shooter," said Hawk. "Before they send down any more of their own people, they want to know what's going on down there. They can't take a chance on official enquiries, so we're it. Specifically, you're it. You'll have to find out what's happened to those silent agents, why it happened, who made it happen. These, you understand, were six people who ostensibly didn't know each other. Why do they all stop reporting within a few days of each other? Who discovered that there was a link between six people, named Cabral, de Freitas, Langley, Brenha, de Santos, and Appelbaum?"
  
  "Appelbaum?" Nick murmured his surprise. Hawk ignored him.
  
  "And what did he do about his discovery? Are all these people dead, kidnapped, or are they — or what are they? You two are going down to Rio to find out. You, Carter, are going to have to assume a role that I'm sure will delight you. Unfortunately I am not well enough acquainted with Miss Adler to predict what her reactions might be." He smiled a trifle coldly at the second of his two visitors. "Nevertheless I'm quite sure you'll find her cooperative."
  
  Rosalind Adler smiled back warmly. She liked this stringy, tough old man, no matter what he thought of women. And she also liked the looks of Carter. Tall, hard-jawed, steely-eyed, almost vibrating with controlled energy; laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, thick, slightly unruly dark hair; an almost perfect profile; broad shoulders, and a sinewy, tapering body.
  
  "You can count on me," she said.
  
  "I should hope so," Hawk said shortly. "Here's your new passport, Carter, and a brief background just to begin with. Yours, Miss Adler. Details will follow, and of course you'll have to consult with Editing before you go. Your history, you can leave to us. But you'll have to develop your own plans, based on that outline."
  
  Rosalind, eyes wide with interest, was already scanning Hawk's brief. Nick skimmed through his copy, and whistled.
  
  "You don't mean to tell me that for once I'm going to have an unlimited expense account? What is AXE coming to?"
  
  "Bankruptcy," Hawk answered drily, "if you overplay your hand. I expect you to get the job done as quickly as possible. But it's going to be necessary for you to have access to the underworld as well as high society, and I can't think of a better way. I wish I could."
  
  "I'm sure you do," Nick said sympathetically. "Uh… Miss Adler, though. Don't think for a moment that I'm objecting to her company — I'm looking forward to working with her. But it isn't like AXE to send women out on jobs like this."
  
  It was true that the very few and very special women who belonged to AXE usually worked quietly in the background — in the home, so to speak — contributing their talents without the reward of the frequent excitement and occasional glamor of what Hawk called "field work."
  
  "There's never been a job quite like this before," Hawk said, through the blue-black haze of smoke that formed about his head. "One of the missing people is a woman. Some of the others have wives. You may find a woman essential to the distaff side of the investigation. But even if that part of it doesn't work out — and it may not — a female companion whom you can trust is a very important part of this job. I want you to get known. I want you to be seen in public. But not always alone, sticking out like a sore thumb. Miss Adler will accompany you whenever she can be useful. She can cover for you, whenever that may be necessary. Basically, she's to be a decoy, a blind. Besides that, it's in character for someone like you to have a woman along, flaunting her like a possession."
  
  "Someone like me?" Nick contrived a hurt look.
  
  "Someone like Robert Milbank," Hawk amended. "Now. Any more questions before you plough through these dossiers?"
  
  "Uh-huh. Is there any way of telling, according to the due dates of the reports, the order in which these six agents disappeared?"
  
  Hawk peered at him approvingly.
  
  "Not a bad question, if only there were a good answer. No, there isn't. I said the reports used to be regular, but I don't mean they were filed like clockwork. Three of the reports arrived within a couple of days of each other early in December. Two others came a week later. The sixth hasn't come at all. Presumably it would have been from de Santos — although any one or more of the others could have reported again in the meantime — who sent his previous report late November, before going off on vacation. He's supposed to be back in Rio by now, and he hasn't reported again. What I'm getting at is that the first person to file during the latest batch of reports isn't necessarily the first person to have disappeared. They could have all reported — as they did — during that period of ten days or so, and then vanished at the same instant before any one of them had a chance to report again."
  
  Nick raised an enquiring eyebrow. "At the same instant? I don't suppose you mean that literally, but is it at all likely that they could have been together? Surely they wouldn't take a chance on that kind of meeting?"
  
  Hawk shook his head slowly. "No, I wouldn't think it likely. CIA doesn't think so, either. They were supposed to work independently, though each of them knew at least one of the others, and let's see, three of them knew all the others. The old-timers in the group naturally had the most information. You'll have it too, when you've completed your reading. Anything else, before you go?"
  
  AXE's top secret operative recognized his chief's sudden restiveness. Hawk had done with talking and wanted action.
  
  "No, that's it," said Nick, "except for our homework." He rose. From now on it would be up to the Editing Department, to Documents, to Records, and Operations, and the whole tightly knit machinery that made up the highly specialized intelligence agency called AXE — the troubleshooting arm of the U.S. secret services. And to special agent Carter, the man Hawk always called upon for the most delicate and dangerous assignments.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The little old lady toddled cheerfully along the shaded path in the Botanical Gardens. It was a hot day, almost sultry and on days like these she always sought the cooling comfort of the Gardens. She particularly liked the great twisted jungle trees transplanted from the wild heart of Brazil, and the immense bright butterflies that skimmed across the path and sometimes lightly touched her face as she took her favorite walk. But most of all, she loved the pond; loved its soothing blue-greenness, the pleasing croak of frogs and the swift darting of small golden arrows beneath the lily pads.
  
  With faltering yet determined steps she navigated the turn from the quiet path to the curving walk around the pond. As was usual on a weekday, it was peaceful here; only the birds sang softly to her, and a gusty little breeze hissed over the water sending splashing ripples to lap the upturned edges of the marvelous lily pads.
  
  She stood for a moment, just looking at them and thinking. They were like table tops. Except, of course, for the edges, that rose into low sides as if to prevent anything from sliding off. Well, then, they were like the brass table tops she had sometimes seen in other people's houses, the kind with the hammered edges like big round trays. They were sturdy, these leaves. They floated lightly, but they were strong. She had even heard it said that they would hold a baby's weight. And she wondered if that could possibly be true.
  
  There was nothing on any of them now but water beetles and little puff-clouds of flies. And one frog, quite big but sitting thoughtful and quiet. As she watched, he jumped, and sped away on underwater business of his own. The swiftness of his passage — or perhaps it was a sudden breezy gust — caused a gentle disturbance among the lily pads. They bobbed and swayed, and for a moment she glimpsed a narrow passage through them.
  
  There was something under them, a dark shape, and quite big. It looked as though it might be some kind of huge fish, or perhaps a — well, no. The thought that it might be some stray animal dissolved as quickly as it came. Perhaps the people of the Jardim Botanico were trying something new in the pond. They did that sort of thing sometimes. Poke the big leaves, find out what's beneath them.
  
  The old lady looked around. Yes, there was a rake. One of the gardeners must have left it when he went off for a quick cafézinho. Her shaky fingers reached for it and her slow steps took her to the water's edge. Gently, so as not to hurt the pretty leaves, she dipped the rake in among the lily pads. Nothing. She jabbed more briskly. The great pads parted. Now she saw the shape. A little sense of excitement grew within her. Her arms were getting a little tired, but the thrusting rake was agitating the long stems of the pads, and something was moving underneath.
  
  Slowly, reluctantly, it rose to the surface. It did look like an animal.
  
  It lay face down between the parted lily pads, bobbing quietly in the small waves of its own making. The rake fell from her fingers and her lips moved frantically. A bloated, half-clad obscenity of a human being floated lazily on the water.
  
  Dimly, she heard voices. "Old mother, please! Senhora, come away!"
  
  But the little old lady went on screaming.
  
  
  
  
  
  City of the Missing
  
  
  
  
  "Unhappy rich! My heart bleeds for them. Just look at them, lying around on that scratchy old grass, nibbling those awful caviar canapés and choking down nasty iced drinks, hot sun beating down on their poor exposed bodies… worry, worry all the time. Where to dine tonight. What to wear. How to spend the second million…"
  
  "Hush," Nick murmured. "I'm thinking."
  
  "You are not! You're asleep."
  
  Rosalind propped herself up on one exquisite elbow and surveyed him. Reclining comfortably on a soft terry towel and a pile of pillows, he looked like a sultan at die seaside. The sea was actually some distance beyond the swimming pool, but that did nothing to spoil the illusion. What did tend to spoil it was Nick's un-sultanlike body: Streamlined, muscular, vigorous even in repose, it had more in common with the frame of an Olympic athlete than that of an oriental playboy.
  
  "Nick Carter, you're a fraud. Ever since I was a tiny little spy I've been hearing about your exploits. Your daring, your cunning, your alertness, your super-strength, your lightning speed…"
  
  "You haven't been hearing about me, you've been reading Mighty Mouse comic books." But his eyes fluttered open, and this time they stayed open. He had been wasting time. The two little scraps of expensive cloth that adorned her were enough to keep any man on the alert and wondering how they stayed in place. Maybe they wouldn't. He eyed her with interest.
  
  "But we won't get anything done if we just keep lazing around like the idle rich!"
  
  "We are the idle rich, honey." Nick propped himself up and reached for a cigarette. "And you'd better get used to it. I know it's a terrific wrench after all these years of honest sweat, but until you relax and enjoy it we won't be able to do our stuff. To begin with, you can't go shouting my name all over the lot. Someone like Judas may be lurking under the hydrangeas, leering with evil triumph as he overhears All. I'm Robert, you're Rosita. In lighthearted moments — and because I'm a crude American — I may call you Roz. And if you behave, I'll let you call me Bob."
  
  She glowered at him. "I'll call you — oh, all right. But I wasn't shouting. Though it seems I have to, to keep you awake. Robert, sweetie." She fixed a saccharine smile upon her lovely face. "Why don't we get off our backsides and go make like working spies? Do you always conduct your investigations in a horizontal position?"
  
  "Not always. Depends on their nature." His eyes glinted with amusement. "But there's nothing wrong with a little swim and a little think before plunging into business. It's all part of the act. Besides, I was just working up to talking things over with you. When I was sufficiently rested."
  
  Rosalind raised perfectly arched eyebrows and gazed at him worshipfully. "Oh, joy unbounded! Honor undeserved and unbelievable! You were really going to talk to me?" She lowered her voice and hissed conspiratorially. "But you don't think we might be overheard? You don't think that someone might have slipped into my bedroom and cleverly concealed a microphone in my bathing suit?"
  
  Nick gave her bathing suit his closest attention. It concealed very little of anything.
  
  "No, I don't really think so," he concluded after thorough inspection. "Come closer, though, so I can be sure." He grinned suddenly, showing enviably white teeth. "Sure that no one can overhear."
  
  For a moment she just looked at him, trying to decide whether she found him insufferable or irresistible. Then, still undecided but with a reluctant smile, she inched closer to him.
  
  "Tell me all," she said.
  
  Nick took her hand and held it lightly.
  
  "I don't know any more than you do. But we should go over what we know and see what we can make of it. Six trusted agents mysteriously missing, we know that. Reported as expected, and then stopped. CIA investisates as best it can, but can't do too much without calling undue attention to the whole affair. And they can't take a chance on sending down any more of their own people until they know what's happened. Right now, one or more of those six might be spilling everything they know."
  
  "Trusted agents?" Rosalind frowned. "They'd rather die."
  
  Nick's face was serious. "It's rarely that simple. When you're not engaged in hit-and-run cloak and dagger work, you don't go around with L-pills tucked beneath your tongue. Spill first, die later. There are lots of ways of making people talk."
  
  Rosalind shivered. The ugly mental picture of dedicated people being made to talk contrasted horribly with the blazing sunlight and clean sea smell that enveloped them, and even more shockingly with the carefree lavishness of Rio's Copacabana Beach. The hotel they had chosen was the city's most luxurious and extravagant. Nouveau millionaire Milbank and his decorative companion were not without appreciation for genuine elegance, nor for the cruel irony that led them to such splendor in search of six vanished colleagues who could be dead or dying of torture unthinkable and hideous.
  
  Nick's hand tightened over hers.
  
  "You're not exactly a case-hardened old bag, are you? You know, there's no need for you to get involved in the seamier side of this. If you'll just cover me…"
  
  She pulled her hand away. For some reason it tingled, and she wasn't sure that this was an appropriate time for her to tingle.
  
  "If you're suggesting that I can't take it, don't. I can and I will. But I don't have to pretend to enjoy the thought of death by torture. Or the fact of it. I think it's possible to get a bit too case-hardened."
  
  He took her hand back. "And you think it's possible that I am. Well, you may be right. But that's something we can take up later, after hours. In the meantime, what've we got? A mass disappearance. Every single one of our agents goes out like a blown light bulb. Question: Could they all have been together? Or was it first one, and then the others? If that's the way it was, we have a couple of grim possibilities to consider. One of them could have been a traitor, and given the others away. Or one of them could have been found out and forced to give the others away. Because unless they were all together when whatever happened did happen, one of them must have given the others away. They didn't work together; there was no apparent link between them all that could have been observed by some common enemy. So, either somebody provided the information that somebody else wanted, or they did break precedent and get together for some special reason."
  
  "But according to their last batch of reports," Rosalind put in, "there wasn't anything out of the way going on at all, nothing that would suggest a special meeting. Besides, surely it wasn't up to any one of them to call meetings? Especially without consulting their home office first? I just can't believe that they would."
  
  "No, I can't either," Nick agreed. "I can only think that if there was such a meeting it was forced on them, and that brings us back to the question of a traitor — or someone who was discovered and made to talk. It would help if we knew who was first and who was last. At least I think it would. But that's one of the things I'll only find out by asking, I guess."
  
  They were silent for a moment. Glad cries and cool-sounding splashes came from the swimming pool.
  
  "Who will you ask?" the girl enquired eventually.
  
  "The survivors." And his tone was grim.
  
  "Oh… How?"
  
  "One way or another." He released her hand and looked about him, scanning the cool sweep of grass and the huge blue pool. Nothing had changed; no one seemed to have moved except the trim, silent waiters who glided back and forth between the poolside tables. No one walked or strolled or lounged anywhere near Rosalind and Nick. They might have been on a desert island, so isolated were they by a few yards of lawn and the nature of their profession.
  
  "By tomorrow, I think we can start being a little more gregarious," said Nick, satisfied with their privacy. "The more people we meet, the more we can find out."
  
  Rosalind stirred restlessly. "You mean we just go around asking questions and the answers fall into our laps?"
  
  "Not exactly." He sat up and stared at the pool. "We're obvious when we can afford to be, and subtle when we have to be. Think over the list, and see what suggests itself. We have six lines of enquiry to follow. One: João de Santos, news reporter for the Rio Journal, an English-language daily. Youngish fellow — twenty-seven — but one of the old-timers, relatively. Working for the U.S. since he was a cub six years ago. Married, one child, simple but comfortable home life. Good nose for news, crack photographer. Expert at microfilm work. One of the three who knew all the others. Even though he was the first one to stop sending reports, there's a good chance he was the last one to go."
  
  Rosalind raised an enquiring eyebrow. Once again he took her hand, and once again she felt that tantalizing tingle.
  
  "Why?" he answered. "Because the whole family went on vacation together, and we know that the wife and child are back. And recently. We think they all came back together. We have a little more than that to go on, but not much. But he did know all the others, and he was a fine newsman. Maybe he still is.
  
  "Then we have Miguel de Freitas. Unmarried, thirty-five years old, owner of a small club called the Moondust. Been working for us for a little over three years. Not one of those who knew all the others, but one of the two who reported gun-running. The other was Maria Cabral. Thirty-nine, married to financier Perez Cabral. One daughter by a previous marriage. She did know the identities of the other five — she joined the ranks almost eight years ago. In fact, she was just about our best source of information in these parts. Apparently a very lovely woman. Beautiful home, a great many social contacts, and a finger in several business concerns. Her report, incidentally, was the first of the December batch. And as a rule she was more regular than the others. Her chief competitor in the report-sending business was Carlos Brenha…"
  
  "Forty-seven, unmarried, something of a pedant, assistant curator of the National Indian Museum," said Rosalind. "Give me a cigarette and let me die a little. Light it for me, please. I intend to become accustomed to these small courtesies by my wealthy lover… Thank you. Cloistered life, few friends, but with a lonely man's penchant for picking up gossip that could sometimes be translated into hard fact. Often reported in by radio, although he was warned that it could be dangerous. So perhaps he was the first to be picked up."
  
  "He may well have been," Nick agreed. "Although he always claimed to be extremely careful. But he could have made just one mistake. Who's next on the list? Oh, yes — let's not forget that Brenha's only known contact with the others was the bookstore man. We'll get to him in a minute. First, let's do Pierce Langley."
  
  "Wait a minute!" Rosalind sat up suddenly. "We may have been making a mistake. Oh, sorry, lover — I shouldn't get so agitated in public. One moment while I kiss you. I've had a sudden urge."
  
  One lovely arm encircled his neck; one soft, sweet pair of lips lightly touched his cheek. Nick ruffled her dark hair and kissed the tip of her nose.
  
  "I hope you often have this kind of urge," he murmured, holding her just a little longer than was absolutely necessary.
  
  "Part of the act," she reminded him between her teeth. "All right. Urge over. I've had a thought, and I don't want to let it get away." Nick released her, keeping his eyes on her piquant face. "You know, it's possible that more than one of them gave away the others. Look. Brenha could have been first. He only knew one man. But that man knew another. And the one he knew, knew someone else. It could have been some awful chain, one after the other being forced to give away another name! So we're not limited to the three who knew them all."
  
  Nick stifled a groan. "Christ," he said quietly. "You're right." He thought for a moment, noting her heightened color and the glow that lit her eyes. "But still, that's not going to make any difference to the way we go about this thing. It's a nasty thought to bear in mind, but with or without it we'd still have had six jobs to do. Nevertheless… if that's the way it happened, this business is going to be even trickier than I'd thought. Okay. Pierce Langley. He did know all the others, for whatever it's worth. American businessman, dealer in jewelry, exporter of gem stones. Forty-five, married, wife considerably younger. Some difficulties there, it seems. But a good operative with useful contacts in business and government. Odd, in a way, that he didn't know about the gun-running. Still, who knows, he might have gotten on to it later, if he'd had the chance. Maybe that's a bigger factor than we'd thought. Could be the key to the whole thing. And then we have…"
  
  "John Silas Appelbaum," Rosalind said, with the hint of a smile. "I love that name. I hope he's all right." The faint smile faded. "American by birth, lived in Rio nearly all his life. Owns the Unicorn Bookstore, downtown. Another of the quiet men. Fifty-three, unmarried, lives alone in a small, book-lined apartment. Likes to sit at a sidewalk café at lunchtime and after working hours to watch the world go by. Also takes frequent walks in the Botanical Gardens. Had occasional discreet contact with de Santos and Brenha. Can't think of any reason why he should be first or last. Seems to be very sort of neutral and inoffensive. And rather a nice old man, I should think."
  
  She blew out an unladylike cloud of smoke and stared at a bronzed, sag-bellied man on the diving board. The man gazed down at the water, thought about it, and backed cautiously away.
  
  "Rich fat useless ass!" Rosalind said suddenly.
  
  Nick clucked reprovingly.
  
  "That's no way to talk about us rich. Come on, let's get some clothes on and then go do the town. Or would you like another dip first?"
  
  She shook her head and pulled on a diminutive terry cloth robe. "Uh-uh. Next time, let's go to the beach. With our own bucket of champagne."
  
  He drew on his own splendid beach jacket and helped her to her feet. His arm lightly about her waist, they walked slowly toward the bathers' entrance to the hotel.
  
  Something — probably the sixth sense that pricked him into alertness in time of danger or when something lovely passed nearby — made him glance up at the terrace that overlooked the pool area. His eye leapt at an image, caught it, and held it even as his swift gaze flickered away. He had been tempted to raise his arm in a cheerful wave, but had instantly thought better of it. That would surely have been a step outside the Milbank character.
  
  Nevertheless, the moon-faced man with the genial eyes had been looking down at them with more than casual interest, and the waiter beside him had undeniably been pointing down and mentioning their names.
  
  "What is it?" Rosalind murmured.
  
  "I think the game is on," said Nick, and steered her beneath the terrace. "We're being admired."
  
  •'We are?"
  
  He shook his head slightly. "Montez and Milbank, I should say. Why not? That's what we're here for."
  
  In fact, it was not at all surprising that they should be stared at. If all went well, the days to come would be full of stares and whispers, pointing fingers, amused smiles and envious sighs.
  
  The boys in Documents had done their work well. They had created a character and given him a life history which included a genius for manipulation and several million illicitly earned dollars. They had arranged the difficult transfer of huge sums of cash from New York to Brazil and provided for an almost unnoticed getaway, and they had planted the story of stock embezzler Robert Milbank and his "exotic paramour" Rosita Montez in every major newspaper in the U.S.A. It was not long before the story was followed by rumors of Milbank's reappearance in Rio, and by confirmation in Brazilian newspapers. There was even a hint that Milbank, safe in Rio from the long arm of extradition, might be looking for something to invest in.
  
  "The whole story is a tissue of lies," Milbank had declared on his arrival at Galeao Airport (via Caracas) with Miss Montez on his arm. "When it is checked into by disinterested authorities, it will be seen at once that no actual shortage exists. There has been no juggling of any sort. Such funds as I have — and I see no reason to deny that I do have certain resources — came to me through legitimate business operations. I am not ashamed of success, nor with enjoying the proceeds in any way I see fit." Then a captivating smile had flashed across the handsome Milbank features (which by some strange and subtle alchemy bore scant resemblance to Nick Carter's), and the lady reporters present had sighed to themselves and felt weak in the knees.
  
  Nor was Nick surprised, later that evening, when half the diners in the exorbitant Skytop Restaurant turned to stare at him and his expensive, delectable lady and exchange speculative whispers. It was quite understandable that the maître d' had stage-whispered, by request, a list of all the places where illegal gambling was to be found, and expected to be well paid for his information. And the unusually big tabs at Sacha's and the Nova York did not come as much of a jolt to Nick.
  
  He was not even particularly surprised, when they got home early the next morning, to find that their magnificent ten-room suite had been neatly and thoroughly searched. They had been careful not to leave anything around that could incriminate or be spent. But it did seem that the game was on.
  
  Rosalind stared at the spatulate fingerprint in the thin film of powder on a bureau top.
  
  "Who do you think it could have been? We haven't been found out — already?"
  
  Nick shook his head. "Nosy bellhop, chambermaid, cat thief, maybe even the management. I'll scream in the morning. In the meantime, come here. Let me help you unhook."
  
  She looked at him coldly. "Thank you, I'll help myself."
  
  "No, really, I'm good at that sort of thing."
  
  Fingers lightly touched her back. She swung around.
  
  "I'll bet you are. Look, we have ten rooms in this place." Strange, she thought, how she shivered inside. "Five for you, five for me. Therefore, goodnight Mister Car — Milbank!"
  
  Gently, he. reached for her. Softly, he touched her bare shoulders. Lightly, he drew her toward him so that her high, firm breasts were pressed against his chest. Tenderly, he kissed her eyelids. Regretfully, he straightened up.
  
  "All right, Roz. I'll go do my Yoga exercises."
  
  He pulled himself away from her and made for an adjoining doorway.
  
  "You'll do your what?" She stared in astonishment at his retreating back.
  
  He turned at the doorway.
  
  "Exercises," he said sadly. "Goodnight, sweetheart."
  
  
  
  
  
  Opening Gambit
  
  
  
  
  He spent a good part of the next day cursing their brief stopover in Caracas. That, too, had been part of the act. But it had been an expensive bit of dressing: two unidentified bodies had been discovered in Rio while Carter was living it up in Venezuela. But, as one would have noted if one had bothered to read yesterday's paper instead of making furtive little call-box enquiries between swims and martinis, they had now been identified.
  
  One, found in the bay somewhere near the base of Sugar Loaf, had once been João de Santos, well-known and talented journalist. It had taken some time to recover the body and then to identify it. Almost certainly, his fall had been the result of an accident.
  
  The other had been John Silas Appelbaum, genial bookstore owner and friend of the young intellectuals who used to gather in his store and at the nearby cafe to solve the world's literary problems and borrow money from each other. Appelbaum had been the victim of a vicious murderer. His skull had been cracked and the body bore several knife wounds. He had been found under the lily pads of the beautiful pond in the Botanical Gardens he had loved so well. Apparently he had been under water for many days, perhaps three weeks. It was impossible to tell exactly.
  
  De Santos had been found three days ago, one day after he had fallen.
  
  Then why in the world hadn't he reported for so long?
  
  Mrs. de Santos was grief-stricken and speaking to no one.
  
  Mr. Appelbaum's landlady was overcome and spoke volubly to everyone, which put her high on the list of those to be interrogated. And the police were already doing that.
  
  Nick scoured the newspapers — current and recent — for any mention of the names de Preitas, Langley, Brenha and Cabral. The only thing he came up with was a line about Mrs. Carla Langley's attendance at some social event unaccompanied by her husband, who was away on business.
  
  "On business." Nick's mouth was a grim line. With two of Langley's colleagues already found dead, it was unlikely that Pierce Langley would have lived through his last business deal. As for the others, he had nothing at all to go on. AXE's Records Department had long since checked the newspapers, magazines and newscasts of the preceding weeks, and had found no significant reference to any of the missing six. De Santos' last, pre-vacation byline had been dated November 30. A singing act at the Moondust Club had been extended by owner Miguel de Freitas by popular request. And that was it.
  
  Nick resolved to spend one day more, and one day only, in establishing himself as a well-heeled playboy with a flair for chicanery and lavish living and an eye for beautiful women. After that he'd have to start spreading himself a little thinner.
  
  But by this time he was virtually convinced of several things: That de Santos had been the last to be taken and the last to die, that they were all dead, not hidden and in the process of being tortured, that they had been disposed of singly and not as a group. All this was based on the little he knew of de Santos. Unless luck and his cover threw something else his way, he'd start with the reporter. His heart dropped a few notches at the thought of questioning the newsman's widow. But as it happened he didn't have a chance to, right away.
  
  Nick left the papers on their private veranda and went in search of Rosalind. It was getting close to lunchtime and he was hungry. Splashing sounds came from the bathroom. He put his head around the door. A wet sponge sailed past his ear.
  
  "Get out of here!"
  
  Nick grinned. "Take it easy, Roz. I just want to check signals with you and make a lunch date. Keep on doing what you're doing; it's all right with me."
  
  "It's not all right with me." She glared at him and retreated under the bubbles, her slightly olive tinted skin and jet-black hair standing out vividly against the sudsy whiteness.
  
  He laughed outright. "Aphrodite lurking coyly beneath the foam. I'll leave you in a minute, then I want you to hurry up. We're going out to spend some money, and I may not have a chance to talk to you again for a while. So listen." He had his own well-founded reasons for being sure they could not be overheard, and that their rooms would not be searched again. His own ingenuity, a chat with the management and the outlay of a small sum of cash had seen to that.
  
  Rosalind tucked suds up under her chin and looked attentive, although allowing herself a small, rebellious murmur.
  
  "You picked the right time for it, didn't you?"
  
  "Yup. Okay, now. I've hired a car, and when you're ready we'll have lunch at the Mesbla and then go on to the Jockey Club. With any luck, we'll make some contacts. After that, we may find ourselves acting independently of each other. But let's first establish some sort of pattern. Like this: we'll be together nearly all the time. But when we're apart — in public — you're having your hair done and I'm doing some sidewalk drinking. Or you're shopping and I'm on the beach ogling the girls. If I pick up a date, or some — let's say, business contact, then you do your best to stick with a group of people. All right?"
  
  "Dandy," Rosalind agreed. "I wouldn't mind a chance to spread my wings a little. But what is all this supposed to achieve?" One hand reached for the soap, stopped in mid-air, and hastily rearranged the bubble-bath tent.
  
  "Togetherness," Nick said, eyeing her hopefully. "Presumably when we're apart we're each doing something that can be accounted for, something we supposedly came down here for. And when neither of us is seen doing any of these carefree type things, it may very well be assumed that we're together in our love-nest doing something else."
  
  "Oh. I see. That all for now? Because I'm getting hungry too."
  
  "That's all," said Nick. He inhaled a mighty breath and blew it expertly at the pyramid of bubbles, baring a small circle of delectable pink-and-white softness.
  
  "Damn you!"
  
  He closed the door, chuckling. Too bad he always had to close the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  He was right. It was almost too easy, picking up interested strangers. And such friendly strangers.
  
  Both he and Rosalind had an extraordinary run of luck at the races. Exuberant with success, they sat in the bar-lounge and let Rio come to meet them. Rio did, with open arms and inquisitive faces.
  
  "You are lucky, Senhor Milbank! Lucky with horses, lucky in love! Yours is a wonderful country, but they do not understand luck! What a pity that you had to leave. But we are the fortunate ones! Welcome to our shores. Welcome to our city. May you like it so well that you will always stay!"
  
  "Thank you, my friend. But you are right — I am a lucky man!" Nick said exuberantly. "Have a drink with us. Please, all of you, drink with us!" He waved an all-embracing hand and grinned cheerfully until he thought his face would split.
  
  "But the lady…?"
  
  "The lady would adore It," Rosalind said. She turned a melting gaze on the speaker, a bright-eyed paunchy man who reminded her of the man in her neighborhood delicatessen. "And your friends. You will all join us, won't you? Please!"
  
  "How could I resist?" the man said gallantly.
  
  The group grew rapidly. Glad-hander Milbank drew them in, filled their glasses, talked about his luck, and congratulated himself out loud for having found such wonderful new friends in this great and hospitable country.
  
  "Antonio Teixeira, Senhor Milbank… and your lovely lady. This time you will drink with us?"
  
  "Miss Montez, you are Spanish, yes? Mexican? But you speak some Portuguese? Ah, good! But the Senhor does not? No? But he will learn!"
  
  "My wife, Maria…" Nick's eyes flickered. Maria was a dumpy little woman wearing jewelry that should never be worn anywhere near a race track. Pushing fifty, he thought unkindly. "You will perhaps honor us with a visit? My card. Dias, you will remember the name. Like the famous explorer."
  
  "Icarahy has everything. So, the casino is closed, but one can always find amusement if one knows where to look for it. You need only ask…"
  
  Voices roared and whispered, hinted and invited. Somehow, a hard core formed, and that core swept Nick and Rosalind back into the city and settled around them in the Night and Day. The club throbbed with Saturday night life. The Milbank group, again, drew others like a magnet.
  
  Champagne and highballs flowed.
  
  "Here's to the man who won the big Wall Street lottery in the United States and won again today!"
  
  Nick danced once with Rosalind and lost her to a tall young man with black hair and a dazzling smile. He picked his way back to their table and sat down. Miraculously, he was almost alone. As he pulled up his chair the remaining couple at his big ringside table excused themselves with smiles and drifted onto the dance floor. That left him alone with a woman he had scarcely noticed before. Looking at her attentively for the first time, he wondered how he could have been so remiss. She was looking at him as though she intended to memorize his face and put the image underneath her pillow. As he appraised her he saw the reddish lights in her thick dark hair and the slow curve of a smile on her sensuous lips. He almost fell into the deep wells of her eyes.
  
  "Hello," he said, swallowing like a schoolboy. "Forgive me for staring. I'm afraid you come as a bit of a surprise to me. I know we met a few moments ago, but in all the confusion I didn't catch your name. I'm Robert Milbank."
  
  "I know," she said, her smile widening. "And now my Rodrigo has swept off with your… Rosa, is it?"
  
  "Rosita."
  
  "Yes, Rosita. And so we are thrown together. I hope you don't mind that we have gate-crashed your party? Rodrigo was so anxious to meet you."
  
  "Oh Rodrigo, huh?" So this pale-vivid creature was in company with gigolo-face. They hardly seemed to go together. "What made him so anxious?"
  
  The woman shrugged. She was younger than he'd thought at first, perhaps twenty-six or -seven. "He thinks rich Americans are glamorous. And he seems to think some of it will rub off on him."
  
  "Hmm." Nick's eyes sought through the couples on the dance floor and found Rosalind and her partner. "He certainly seems to be trying hard enough."
  
  She laughed outright. "Rodrigo always dances like that. You are not jealous, are you?"
  
  "Lord, no. How could I be, in your company? Why don't we dance, and make everybody jealous?"
  
  "I was hoping you'd ask."
  
  She rose with fluid grace. Her touch upon his arms was light but electric and her body movement was subtle, rhythmic. Voluptuous music enveloped them and swept them away. So perfectly matched were their bodies and their movements that neither was conscious of the mechanics of dancing. Her legs moved with his, and whatever she was feeling or thinking translated itself into harmonious, almost liquid motion.
  
  "Wow!" thought Nick, and gave himself up temporarily to the pleasure of his senses. The dance moved them apart and drew them together, made them feel each other's warmth and the pulsations that flowed from one to the other — flowed so smoothly that the two of them were almost one.
  
  Nick felt his pulse quicken as a moment of music brought her thighs against his. Watch yourself, fella, he told himself, and willed his blood to cool. His pulse slowed and the soft-focus sensation left him, but the feeling of perfect physical harmony remained.
  
  The beat changed. His partner smiled up at him.
  
  "You dance superbly," she said, her voice a sigh of something very like fulfillment and her eyes two luminous pools.
  
  "So do you," said Nick sincerely. "It's an experience I very seldom have."
  
  "Not even with… Rosita?"
  
  "Rosita is a professional dancer," said Nick, not quite answering the question. The woman's supple, responsive body swayed with his. "You know, I still don't know your name."
  
  "Carla," she murmured.
  
  "Carla." A chord of memory twanged distantly. "And Rodrigo is your…?"
  
  She gave a little laugh and drew away very, very slightly.
  
  "Rodrigo is my nothing. I'm Carla Langley. Mrs. Pierce Langley. Mr. Langley it not with us tonight. In fact, Mr. Pierce Langley is very seldom with us."
  
  Nick's senses jolted back to normal.
  
  "He doesn't like going out?"
  
  "He doesn't," she agreed. "He doesn't like much of anything. Anything… He's kind of a tired man." Her nose did something disdainful — not obvious, but unmistakable.
  
  "That's too bad," he said sympathetically. "But you mean he actually stays home and encourages you to go out with — well, with people like Rodrigo?"
  
  "Encourages me! Oh, dear no. He hates Rodrigo. And he'd rather I stayed home with him. But now he isn't home. It gives me a chance to let my hair down a little." She stiffened slightly and a shadow of remorse flickered across her face. "Please don't misunderstand me, Robert. Pierce has never been a social butterfly but he's never really denied me anything. I shouldn't be talking to you like this."
  
  "Why not?" said Nick, letting a hand wander in a suggestive little caress. "Why shouldn't you say what you mean? People should always be themselves — even at the risk of being misunderstood. And I don't think I misunderstand you." Calculatingly, he gazed into her eyes, then lightly brushed his lips against her hair.
  
  Her fingers tightened on his shoulder and her hips pulsated with the music.
  
  "Ask me, then," she whispered. "Ask me."
  
  "On your own terms," he whispered back, not absolutely certain what she meant. "You tell me."
  
  Her eyelids fluttered. "What about… her?"
  
  "I hold the strings," said Nick arrogantly. "I do as I please."
  
  "Tomorrow, then? Just a — brief encounter?" He was astonished by the longing look that came into her eyes. "Perhaps the Country Club? It would be quite natural for a member to introduce you there."
  
  The music ended and they stood on the floor, still holding each other. Rosalind and her borrowed Rodrigo wafted by, glancing at them curiously.
  
  "Late lunch, then, to begin with. And after that — the beach, a sail, whatever you like." Her eyes implored him.
  
  "It sounds wonderful," he said. "You'll let me pick you up?"
  
  She shook her head. "I'll meet you there. Come, let's sit down. I'm beginning to feel watched."
  
  They were almost the last to leave the dance floor. Slowly, they made their way back and joined the others. Nick refused to meet Rosalind's eye. He saw a shuttered look come over Carla's face. She left a few minutes later, holding Rodrigo's arm.
  
  "Now there goes a nice attentive young man," Rosalind murmured.
  
  "There goes a greasy spiv," said Nick unkindly. "I think it's time for us to leave. C'mon."
  
  They left in a chorus of bibulous farewells and invitations.
  
  "Do you remember where you put the car?" said Rosalind doubtfully. Even nightbird Rio had doused its lights now and the abandoned sidewalks looked dark and unfamiliar.
  
  "Of course I do. Anyway, a Jaguar isn't easy to mislay. Turn right here. By the way, did you glean anything useful from your constant dance partner of the evening, Clammy Hands, who was crawling down your bosom every time I looked your way?"
  
  "You should talk," she said indignantly. "I thought you and that pale thing were going to do it right there on the dance floor."
  
  "Do what? Never mind — don't spell it out. That pale thing, sweetheart — your boyfriend's girlfriend — is one of our targets. Mrs. Carla Langley."
  
  "Oh. Oh!"
  
  They were so busy thinking this over in their various ways that they didn't see the two hulking shadows that waited in a doorway near the Jaguar.
  
  "So that," said Rosalind, "was Carla Langley."
  
  
  
  
  
  Mrs. Carla Langley
  
  
  
  
  "…Two months short of twenty-six. Married four years last September. No children. Education, Rio, New York, Lisbon, of the finishing school variety. Both parents part American. Expensive but not unduly demanding taste in clothes and household furnishings; apparently well satisfied with material circumstances of life. Marital relationship less satisfactory, seemingly due to disparity in age…"
  
  Sentences from Carla's dossier filed across Nick's mind and blended with his personal observations. The bones of the black and white words were already being filled Out with flesh and colored by opinion.
  
  A street lamp shone down on his borrowed car. Habit made him study the highly-polished surfaces in search of new fingerprints and locks that might show signs of tampering. He opened the door for Rosalind. She got into the Jag gracefully but carefully.
  
  Nick walked around to his side of the car. He opened the door and suddenly pivoted on the balls of his feet, the short hairs on the back of his neck prickling uncomfortably.
  
  Two masked men had materialized from the darkness and were almost on him. One had a gun and the other seemed to be unarmed. Nick's arm swung even as his body turned. It sliced through the air in a swift and deadly arc that exploded against the gunman's neck. The man gasped and staggered back. Nick's leg shot out in a swift upward kick while the hard edge of his right hand slammed into the cartilage of an already pulpy nose. The gun clattered somewhere on the sidewalk and the man moaned and sank to his knees. Nick raised his foot again, one eye on the crouching figure of the second man, and brought his heel down on the gunman's neck. The man's knees melted, and he dropped.
  
  The street lamp glinted off two disparate objects. One was a knife on the upward plunge toward Nick's midriff. The other seemed to be a silver spike coming down on the second attacker's head.
  
  Rosalind's spiked evening shoe slammed the side of the second man's head. He grunted in pained surprise and the updriving knife lost aim and momentum. Nick twisted at the same time and let the darting blade flash past him. He clamped a vise-like grip on the knife hand as the attacker lost balance. He twisted again, bringing the arm down under his own and his knee up. He snapped. The man made a choking sound and fell. Nick, ignoring the Marquis of Queensberry but not the rules of unarmed combat, hit him when he was down. He kicked him, in fact, accurately and painfully. The groan this time was a voice from hell.
  
  Nick retrieved both knife and gun and tossed them into his car.
  
  "Well done, Roz. Thanks," he said, and knelt for a quick search of his two assailants.
  
  "That was dumb of them," she said matter-of-factly. "They should have forced you into protecting me."
  
  "Perhaps they thought I wouldn't," he said absently. "Take a look around, make sure nobody's coming."
  
  She sighted into the night.
  
  "Not even a mouse. Want any help?"
  
  "No. Just keep watching. I don't want to explain anything or get involved with cops."
  
  His fingers raced expertly through two sets of clothing.
  
  To his surprise he found identification cards, keys, small sums of cash, ticket stubs and laundry marks. He ripped off the dark handkerchief-masks and saw stubbled faces that were twisted more with pain than menace. Their wallets and the tattered cards they held meant nothing to him. He took them anyway, taking out the money and leaving it in the pockets. His eyebrows came together in a thoughtful frown.
  
  "Shall we take 'em with us?" Rosalind asked, a hint of nervous strain in her voice.
  
  "Dragging them by the hair through the lobby of the Copa International? No, thanks. We'll leave them where we found them." As he spoke he rolled the gunman into the shadow and propped him against the wall in a doorway recess. "More or less." He turned back for the other one. "They've been thoughtful enough to supply me with name, address, telephone numbers, even baby pictures."
  
  "What?"
  
  "Yes, unusual, isn't it?" he agreed, and dragged the knifer into the square of darkness away from the street light. The man groaned pitifully. Nick dumped him onto the tiles and saw that his eyes were fluttering open.
  
  "So you're with us again, are you, Mac?" On impulse, Nick stifled the urge to say Who sent you? and said instead: "What the hell's the idea? You looking for a jail sentence — or shall I beat you up again?"
  
  "Sonofabitch American," the man said distinctly. "Goddamn rich thief." He spat upwards. Nick turned his head abruptly but felt spray settle on his cheek. The back of his hand struck the other man's face.
  
  "Thief? Isn't that what you are?"
  
  The man made an obscene, wordless sound. "You, you are dirt. Everything in the world you got. You stole it. Car, woman, everything." He groaned, and clutched his agonized arm. "Come here, make a big show with your lousy money. To hell with you, swine. Get the police if you want to. Bastard crook!"
  
  "Robert!" Rosalind's voice was urgent. "Leave them, for God's sake. They're not worth worrying about. They didn't get anything. And I don't want to go through any nonsense with the police. Please, honey…"
  
  "I'll bet you don't!" The agonized voice was a sneer. "How much did she cost you from the stolen money? I read the papers, I know what you…"
  
  Nick's hand slammed into the sneering face and shut its mouth.
  
  "You know what I'd do if I were you?" he said, exuding icy hatred. "I'd lie there and pray the cops don't come. And then when I felt a little better, I'd get out of town. Because maybe I'll go to the police and maybe I won't. But I know where to find you — you and your friend." He tapped his coat pocket significantly. "And your sweet little wife and your sniveling baby. You picked the wrong guy to tangle with, mister. But you didn't get anything, so maybe I'll let you go. Maybe."
  
  The man said something filthy. The gunman stirred and moaned. Out of the quiet night came the sound of a man's voice raised in cheerful, early morning song.
  
  "Rob, come on!" Rosalind's voice was impatient as she got into the car.
  
  A hand and foot struck out again, viciously. There were two more pained sounds. Nick climbed into the driver's seat and soon had the Jaguar sliding into a trickle of traffic heading for Copacabana Beach.
  
  Rosalind spoke eventually.
  
  "You really think they were on the level? I mean… kosher crooks?"
  
  "Just about positive." Nick nodded, letting the Jag pick up speed. "I'll check them at the first opportunity, but I can feel in my bones that they're honest-to-god thugs. Occupational hazard of being filthy rich. And obvious. And shady. By the way, why 'Rob'?"
  
  "Oh, I don't know," Rosalind said uncertainly. "You don't seem like a Bob, somehow."
  
  "Hmm." For some reason, that reminded him of Carla. "Look, I have a hot date with that Langley woman tomorrow. Do you think you can…?"
  
  "Oh, I'll manage," she interrupted. "Didn't waste any time, did you? Don't you think it's a little soon for you to start playing around with other women?" For some reason she looked annoyed.
  
  "It is a bit," he admitted. "But I'll always come back to my one true love — who keeps me locked out of the bedroom."
  
  "Huh!" Rosalind curled her lip, but her eyes were thoughtful.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The deep orange rays of the late afternoon sun fell across the bay and slowly became absorbed in the darkening water. Nick and Carla, sunsoaked and flecked with salt, lay on the vast beach towel that she had brought. Lunch at the club had been brief; the afternoon on the incredibly secluded beach was lazy and long. Every once in a while they enjoyed a small libation from the flask she had provided.
  
  Once Nick asked: "What is it, an aphrodisiac?"
  
  She smiled at him under lowered lids and answered: "Only if you find it so."
  
  Now he lay back, looking out through the palm leaves. It was the most secluded beach he'd ever seen. They had swum and laughed and drunk, and only a few times had they seen any people anywhere near. They had talked about almost everything except the thing that mattered to each of them. Carla's eyes were alive and her face Was flushed with the sun, and perhaps with something else.
  
  "Come on, Robert. One more quick swim before the sun goes down!"
  
  Laughing happily, he pulled her to her feet. Together, they ran down to the water. Nick swam ahead and ducked below, holding his breath and waiting for her. Strong arms reached for her as she glided by, and the two of them laughed until they gasped for breath. Then they ran back across the strip of beach to their sheltered place between the trees.
  
  "Let's take off these wet things and towel ourselves dry," said Carla gaily. "And then let's lie here and watch the colors go out of the sky."
  
  Nick stared at her. "You mean…?"
  
  She laughed at his surprise. "Why not? We're adults, aren't we? Don't you sometimes like to feel that your whole body's free to breathe the sea air, to soak it in?" She was pulling down her straps as she spoke. "You needn't worry — no one will see us. Of course, if you don't want to…"
  
  "Of course I want to," said Nick. "It's just that I'm one of those inhibited Americans one hears so much about." A little awkwardly and under cover of a towel, he stripped off his trunks, staring fixedly at a low-hanging palm frond, knowing with certainty what was going to happen next.
  
  She lay waiting on the towel, beautiful and bare.
  
  He lay down beside her. For a moment she watched the clouds in the evening sky. Then she turned to him and put one cool hand on his face.
  
  "Robert… don't you like me a little?"
  
  "Of course I do, Carla. More than a little," he made himself murmur. "You're beautiful, you're exciting. And you're married. If there's anything I don't like, it's a husband lurking in the background." But his gently stroking hand took the sting from his words.
  
  "It's not a marriage! It's not a marriage at all!" she said furiously. "And why should you care that I'm married, if I don't?"
  
  That was a hard one to answer. He made time by pulling her down to him and kissing her eloquently.
  
  "Carla… it's nothing to do with being prudish. But I'm cautious. For your sake and mine, I don't want angry husbands baying at our heels. Do you know where is he right now, for instance? He may have had you followed."
  
  "Ha!" She made a scornful sound. "He wouldn't dare. He knows he'd lose me for good if he tried that. Anyway, he's out of town."
  
  "But you don't know where, do you? At least, that's what you said. Surely you must know…"
  
  She made an abrupt move away from him with an expression so angered that he knew he had to change his tune or he would lose whatever small thread he now held in his hands.
  
  "Carla! Don't you see how much I'm attracted to you? I can't help asking you these things. Carla… please." He propped himself up on one tanned elbow and bent over her. "God — you're so lovely." He sighed and let his eyes half close. His hand traced the soft lines of her neck and chin… slid down to feel the contours of one high, pointed breast… slid lower and felt silky softness. He wondered when she'd stop him.
  
  Her body writhed beneath him.
  
  The colors went from the sky and a soft darkness took their place.
  
  His lips retraced the course plotted by his fingers.
  
  "Bite me. Bite me!" she begged, teeth clenched.
  
  He bit her. Several times, in various places.
  
  Then she pulled his head down and kissed him hungrily, expertly. Her fingers wandered over his body. Her half-closed eyes gleamed in the half-light, her breath came quickly. Despite himself, he felt his own pulse quicken. She seemed to be transformed by her growing passion into a vibrant and lovely being. The back of his mind reminded him of Pierce Langley, the man. Another corner told him coldly that this woman was unfaithful by her own choice, and this might be his first, best step toward the missing agent. The front of his mind was an unthinking blur.
  
  Nick felt her legs part beneath him, felt the tautness of his own body sliding as if into a dark, unknown well that became a rippling pond and then a swirling whirlpool. He let himself go, all of himself but that one segment that was always an agent on the alert for the dangerous and unexpected. Its crude voice told him now that he must hurry, that this would be a helluva spot to get caught in.
  
  She gasped and bit. Her body shook and twisted with its need. Her legs scissored around him and her muscles strained to draw from him all the strength that he could give. There was no need for him to pretend a tenderness he did not feel; she gave herself violently and without restraint, demanding from him the same violence and animal intensity. In her own way she was magnificent — utterly abandoned, inordinately accomplished, ferociously physical.
  
  It seemed to him that he was drowning beneath the waves of her desire, even though he knew he was causing the turbulence himself. Dimly, he thought of Roz, and for some reason he felt a sort of hatred for himself and for the woman who convulsed beneath him.
  
  At last he surfaced, gasping; and at last she drew a long deep breath and released it — clutching him fiercely as though she herself were drowning — in a series of short, tortured groans of ecstasy.
  
  Then she lay almost quiet, sighing and quivering.
  
  He forced himself to murmur soft, meaningless things, although his impulse was to grab his clothes and run. But a moment later she opened her eyes and they were alive with happiness and content. And then he felt like cursing himself and begging her forgiveness.
  
  "Oh, God…" she said, and sighed again. "So strong. So sudden. Next time…" She caught her breath, and her eyes stared into his. "There will be a next time, won't there?"
  
  Finally, he forced himself to act. This was his cue.
  
  He slowly moved away from her, knowing that her appetite was not satisfied but whetted, that her desire for his body would grow and keep on growing. He knew as surely as if she'd spent the afternoon telling him.
  
  "There will be, won't there, Robert?"
  
  He sighed gustily. Shame — either for Robert Milbank or Nick Carter, he wasn't sure which — made him get to his feet and pull a towel around his waist.
  
  "Carla. Carla, listen to me." He dropped to his knees near her. His voice was firm and reasonable, gently pleading. "You've got to tell me about your husband. Not because I want to pry. Not because I don't trust you. But because I simply don't like the idea of not knowing where he is. I don't like the idea of Rodrigo, either. Don't you understand?"
  
  She had stiffened slightly and opened her mouth to speak.
  
  "No, wait!" he said urgently. "Don't get angry. Don't spoil it all. We could have something wonderful together, you and I." His voice hardened suddenly. "But I don't like complications. I don't like mysteries — and I don't like competition. I just want to know how you can afford to be so casual about him. Where is he, and when is he coming back? Is that really so much to ask of you?"
  
  It was her turn to reach for something to cover her naked body.
  
  "Do you always take such an interest in husbands?" she asked icily.
  
  "Oh, God," he said, very quietly. He got to his feet, and stared at her for a moment.
  
  "Doesn't it occur to you," he said evenly, "that you're the one I'm interested in?" He turned away and began to dress.
  
  She stared at him through the gathering darkness.
  
  "I don't know where he is," she said at last. "I haven't seen him for weeks. He called me from his office and said he had to go away on business. He didn't say where and I didn't ask. And he didn't say how long he'd be away. I gave up caring long ago."
  
  She started pulling on her clothes.
  
  "He called you from the office and he's been away for weeks') And he hasn't been in touch with you? Does he often do this sort of thing?" Nick threw the questions over his shoulder.
  
  "No, I suppose not," she admitted. "He doesn't usually stay away so long. And he calls."
  
  Nick's mind was full of questions, but he dared not take the risk of asking them. He buttoned his shirt and thought busily. It was remotely possible that Pierce Langley was genuinely away on business. But he doubted it. And his doubts were increasing by the minute. Two found dead already, having died weeks apart. And Langley?
  
  "It's been almost a month this time," she said thoughtfully, as if sharing some of his thoughts.
  
  "Hmm. Then he could be back any day. And when he comes back, I give you up, is that it? No, Carla. That's not the way I play. I don't want to share you. And I don't want to be made a fool of. What would have happened if he'd suddenly come home today and started looking for you here?"
  
  She laughed scornfully. "He never looks here."
  
  Nick swung to face her. "Never? How often should he have?"
  
  "Damn you!" Carla cried. "Damn you! Are you better than I am? What do you want of me? What do you want me to do?" She was on her feet, half-dressed, eyes flashing with anger and torment.
  
  "Nothing much," Nick said reasonably, almost as if he'd lost interest. "Just find out where he is and when he's coming back. And get rid of that Rodrigo, too. I don't care to be just one of a pack." His eyes dominated hers, and she bit back the retort that rose to her lips. "I'm used to getting what I want." Suddenly, he smiled his most charming smile. "Of course, in this case it doesn't mean a thing unless you want me, too."
  
  They finished dressing in silence. Carla spoke at last.
  
  "How can I find out?"
  
  "Oh," said Nick, fishing for a cigarette, "you must know some of his business acquaintances. Find out who he talked to last, what he said, if he's contacted his office. I don't have to tell you how."
  
  "What if I can't? What if I don't find out?"
  
  He shrugged. "I must say I'll think that's rather strange." He gathered up the towels. "Let's go back to the club for your car. Unless you want me to take you straight home?"
  
  She stared at him. "You mean — we don't see each other tonight?"
  
  "Well, I think that's best, don't you?" Nick said amiably. "We'll have a drink first…"
  
  "And then you don't want to see me again, is that it?"
  
  Nick dropped the towels. "Oh sweetheart, no! Oh, Carla that's not the way it is." He took her urgently in his arms. "Please don't think that." His tongue found hers in a passionate kiss. Her eyes were half-closed and her lips were glistening.
  
  "Let's go now," said gently. "Just call when you're ready to see me."
  
  He knew she knew exactly what he meant. And he knew that she would call.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Enquiring Reporter
  
  
  
  
  It was after midnight when the man who was neither Nick Carter nor Robert Milbank left the luxury suite in the Copacabana International. He was youngish but stoop-shouldered. The strong lines of his face were obscured by the kind of beard usually associated with absent-minded professors or the inhabitants of Greenwich Village. His steel gray eyes were distorted behind thick glasses and his suit, though well cut, hung loosely from his frame. But he moved quickly, eyes alert.
  
  He first made sure that the corridor was empty. He found the stairway, walked down three flights, and then took the elevator to the street floor. From there, he walked to the Excelsior Copacabana, spent a few minutes at the bar, and then hailed a cab for the downtown Hotel Serrador.
  
  Before leaving the International he had gone over the day's events and the next day's plans with Rosalind.
  
  "I'm not sure it was the same man," she said. "I only caught a glimpse of him after you'd noticed we were being watched. But that round face looked familiar. He was with a group, but it was hard to tell if he belonged with them or if they'd just sort of drifted together. Anyway, he'd said he'd be in touch. I know what he's got in mind for me — he said something about bargains in alligator bags and amethysts — but for you I think it's girlie shows and gambling."
  
  "Silveiro, huh?" said Nick, tugging at his beard. "I wonder if that's his real name. "He didn't say when he'd call, I suppose."
  
  "No," she said, inspecting his new face. "He just sort of leered and said he'd take a chance on finding us in some time. And then he gave that fat smile and drifted away."
  
  "Okay, we'll wait for him," said Nick. "Now, look. I left word that we're not to be disturbed until late morning. When you leave, take the sign from the door and melt out of here as unobtrusively as possible. I'll meet you at the museum between three and three-thirty. Please try to look a little less gorgeous than usual so that you won't attract a crowd of admirers."
  
  "At the museum?" she said scornfully. "It'll probably be just me and the mice."
  
  "Yeah, well watch out for those mice. And make like a mouse yourself. Do you want the Colt, just in case?"
  
  "No, thank you. I don't want to be caught with anything like that. By the way, how did you make out with Madame Langley?"
  
  Nick's face tightened under the beard. "If you can bear not knowing, I'd just as soon you didn't ask. But if she does call while you're here, just… uh… take a message. Or if she leaves a note read it and get rid of it." As he spoke he distributed several articles about his person. A Luger, a stiletto, and a small round ball that could have been plastic, metal or some alloy.
  
  "Why, that's Wilhelmina!" said Rosalind, eyes wide open and lovely eyebrows raised. "And Hugo, isn't it? I thought you'd lost them."
  
  The bearded face split into a grin.
  
  "So did I. But — it's a funny old world, this is. I got them back. I'll tell you how, one of these days. It's quite a story. In the meantime — de Santos and Brenha. If you need me urgently, call Room 1107, Serrador, and ask for Nolan. I'll hear the phone even if I'm in the other room. Are you all set. for tomorrow?"
  
  She nodded. "Yes, it'll be easy. But who'll you be when I see you?"
  
  "Hmm." He thought for a moment. "I guess this'll do. No need to switch too often just yet. Look for Michael Nolan, bearded boy reporter. And look after yourself, will you?" Nick turned to her and took her face between his hands. "I don't want anything to happen to you. Check the locks and windows when I've gone, and don't do anything rash tomorrow. We're just beginning, and I need to have you around."
  
  "Well, it doesn't look much like it," she began, but he silenced her with a beardy kiss on the lips.
  
  "Don't open the door to any strangers," he said lightly. "Just check to see if the coast is clear, and I'm on my way."
  
  The corridor was empty.
  
  It was shortly after one o'clock on a Monday morning that he opened the door to Room 1107, Hotel Serrador, for the second time. The first time had been a few hours after their arrival toward the end of the previous week. At the same time Mrs. Marlene Webster of Dallas, Texas, had checked into Room 1109 and requested complete privacy through the weekend. Michael Nolan, roving correspondent for the Washington Herald, had made it clear to the management that he intended to use his room only as a headquarters for trips from the city to the hinterland. He would seldom be there.
  
  There was nothing to suggest any connection between Michael Nolan and Mrs. Marlene Webster, in spite of the locked connecting door. Documents had arranged the reservations very nicely. The management was not to know that both the lady and the gentleman could open almost any door with the ease of the most accomplished lockpicker.
  
  Nick locked the door of Room 1107 behind him. Habit made him check closet doors, bureau drawers, windows, dusty surfaces and bathroom fixtures. The bed that he had left rumpled on his first visit had been straightened out, but nothing else had been changed. Nolan's battered baggage and few clothes were untouched.
  
  He took a small kit from his pocket and swiftly worked on the locking mechanism he had attached to the connecting door on his first visit. Seconds later he stepped into Room 1109 and inspected Mrs. Webster's luggage.
  
  Mrs. Webster's luggage was a marvel of ingenuity. Besides the usual complement of feminine frippery, it included some devices known only to AXE and similar specialized services. Mrs. Webster's cosmetic case was particularly well fitted. When stripped of its top shelves, it revealed a shortwave radio known to AXEmen as Oscar Johnson.
  
  Nick's message to Hawk was short and cryptic:
  
  PRESS TOUR TOMORROW SUPPORT CREDENTIALS IF NECESSARY. NOLAN ON NEWS BEAT ASSISTANT ON ANTHROPOLOGY STORY. NO MAJOR BREAKS YET.
  
  
  
  Hawk's reply was even shorter. CHECK. CREDENTIALS SUPPORTED.
  
  It wasn't much, but it did mean that AXE headquarters would know where agents Carter and Adler were heading when last heard from. Carter, with full press credentials, would be checking the Rio Journal. And Rosalind Adler would be at the National Indian Museum.
  
  Nick used Marlene Webster's bathtub and scattered some of her perfumed powder on the shelf and floor. Making for the bed, he pulled the blankets awry and dented the pillow. Then, opening a drawer a trifle here and dropping a feminine slipper there, he locked Oscar Johnson away for the night and went back to Room 1107.
  
  For fifteen minutes he practiced the Yoga exercises that enabled him to squeeze out of tight corners and hold his breath for long, precious minutes, then he got into Michael Nolan's bed and slept like a baby.
  
  In the morning he adjusted his beard slightly and went on his way.
  
  The managing editor of Rio's English-language newspaper greeted him cordially. It interested him greatly that the roving reporter for the Washington Herald and stringer for the Amalgamated Press and Wire Service — yes, yes, of course, he had already received their cabled notification — should concern himself with a local crime story.
  
  Nick's tone was grave and he tugged at his beard.
  
  "Of course, you understand, Senhor," he said, in perfectly acceptable Portuguese, "that at the moment my enquiry is confidential. Later, the police. But now — you understand how it is with anyone tracking down a story — one prefers to talk directly with the principals." He smiled deprecatingly. "At least, it has always been my preference to work independently of authority as long as possible."
  
  The editor smiled knowingly.
  
  "But naturally. Newsmen are the same everywhere. But why should you have this interest in a nonentity such as Appelbaum? A curious story, yes, but surely not of importance?"
  
  "Not by itself, perhaps," said Nick. "But I wonder if it has come to your attention that another American, the gem dealer Pierce Langley, has been missing for weeks? And that your own reporter, João de Santos, was acquainted with both of them? It may mean nothing, of course, but there is something a little curious about it, wouldn't you say?" He hoped his own questions didn't sound too curious.
  
  "Our own de Santos? But…" The Editor's eyes narrowed. "How do you know he knew the others?"
  
  Nick sighed sadly. "Appelbaum has family in the States, you see. Quite distant relatives, but he used to write to them. He didn't get around much, apparently, and didn't have much to write about. So he mentioned his friends and the books he enjoyed most, and things like that. Now when he didn't write for some time — well, that's how it all started, you see. And then when his body was discovered, and right after that de Santos was found dead, and Langley turned up missing, well, my office cabled me to look into it."
  
  It was a pretty garbled story, but he did have cables and credentials to back him up. He also had the managing editor's natural interest in João de Santos.
  
  "But Langley! What do you mean, he is missing?"
  
  Nick shrugged. "Neither his home nor his office have the faintest idea where he is, and he's been away for weeks. It may be a purely personal thing, or some highly secret business — who can tell? But I'd like to find out. And I was hoping you could help me. My office seems to think there might be something bigger behind this than meets the eye. Is it possible to check whether any other Americans may be missing? Or mysteriously found dead?"
  
  "But why de Santos?"
  
  "I don't know. I don't know at all. But it might just be that he had stumbled onto a story he wasn't supposed to stumble on."
  
  Nick gave the Editor a shrewd, newshawk-type look.
  
  "What kind of story could that possibly be?"
  
  Nick drew on his imagination and suggested a story that included gun-running and wholesale gem robbery. Of course, he could only guess, being a relative stranger here, but wasn't it possible…? By the time he was finished he almost believed it himself. So did the Editor, at least enough to give him some grudging assistance. He promised to have his staff do a check on missing persons, and he gave Nick the details of the finding of the bodies of Appelbaum and de Santos. Finally, he promised to call Carmen de Santos and suggest that she allow the bearded American reporter to interview her.
  
  "But I can't promise that she will see you," he said, rising to steer Nick to the door of his office. "She is taking this hard, as you can imagine."
  
  "I can understand that," Nick said sympathetically. "But you can assure her that I will take very little of her time and that I have the utmost respect for her feelings. But in the light of what you've just told me, she may not be averse to any effort to clear this thing up. Anyway, I won't call her myself until I've heard from you. She could even call me herself, if she likes. Michael Nolan, Room 1107, Hotel Serrador."
  
  He went back to the hotel, making one brief stop along the way. The Unicorn Bookstore had a sign on the door: closed.
  
  Rooms 1107 and 1109 had been dusted and made up.
  
  He fastened the connecting door and sat down to wait and think things over. Perhaps he should call Carla.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Rosalind stepped through the wide doors of the National Indian Museum and gave a sigh of relief for the welcome coolness. She stopped near the entrance and looked at the floor plan.
  
  "Indian civilizations of Central and South America… tribes of Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico and etc. etc. Pueblos… Zunis… Aztecs… Incas… Jivaros… and so on. Habitats, costumes, languages, customs… burial places… sacrificial wells… temples… treasures… conquistadores… well, that did it. Offices? Ground floor, right. But first she'd look around for anything that matched her cram course of the morning. She walked through the marbled foyer and through open double doors into a room lined with glass cabinets of tremendous size.
  
  Anyone looking at her would have seen a nondescript woman of middle height wearing low, sensible shoes and a somewhat unbecoming straight cotton dress. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, and it was curiously lifeless, as though it had never felt the sun. Tiny lines pinched the corners of her eyes and mouth. And her name for the day was Mary Louise Baker. It even made her feel drab.
  
  She looked for company among the glass-encased Indians. There was one bored tourist, male, with flowered shirt; one earnest, youngish couple with notebooks and hoarse voices; one silent youth in urgent need of a haircut; one old lady occupying the only sitting place in sight. It seemed to be the guard's chair, though she did not seem to be the guard.
  
  Rosalind ventured on. It really was rather interesting. The dioramas were marvelously well done and the very eyes of these people of a time long past were curiously alive. Ancient writings and their translations, as well as certain artifacts of particular shape and design, formed the basis for one of Carlos Brenha's obscure monographs on the subject of a lost continent and its survivors. He had written several such papers in his dry, scholarly style, backing up his thesis with comparisons of hieratic writing and careful drawings of exquisitely wrought utensils symbolically inscribed. She had one of these monographs in her capacious pocketbook right now, along with a letter of introduction that had taken her a substantial part of the morning to prepare. The signature alone was a minor masterpiece. Anyone could see at a glance that it was the work of an ageing scholar with a precise mind and a trembling hand.
  
  The corridors seemed to stretch out indefinitely. Each main room led to others, and each of the secondary rooms had offshoots. Above the main floor was a mezzanine, and above that several more floors of open exhibits and glass cases. Museum guards seemed few and far between.
  
  At last, feeling saturated with Indian lore and oppressed by the age-filled silence, she made her way to the ground floor offices.
  
  A nameplate on a door read: OFFICE. PRIVATE. Dr. Eduardo Soares. Dr. Carlos Brenha.
  
  She tapped lightly on the door. No answer. She tapped again. Finally a reedy voice called out impatiently: "Come in! Come in!"
  
  She did. A gaunt, bespectacled man peered from behind a desk piled high with papers, books, ceremonial masks and odd pieces of pottery. The second desk was even more disordered, but it was unoccupied.
  
  "Dr. Brenha?" she asked uncertainly. "Or are you…?"
  
  "Ah! No! Sorry. Very sorry." The man rose clumsily and waved her to a chair. "Dr. Brenha — unaccountable, the whole thing. Can't understand it! Delighted to see you. You know him? Please sit down. Soares is my name. Curator. Brenha, yes. Strange affair — good man, fine mind. You say you know him? Oh no, of course not. I am Dr. Soares. And you?"
  
  "Mary Louise Baker," she said hesitantly. "Colorado Institute of Indian Studies. I have a letter of introduction to him." Rosalind fumbled inside her pocketbook. "I am here on vacation, but I thought I would take this opportunity…"
  
  "Ah! Too bad." Dr. Soares peered at her intently over his glasses. "I have not seen Brenha for weeks. He is not home, he does not come to work, he did not have an accident, no one knows where he can be. Suddenly one day he did not come in. I am flabbergasted."
  
  "You mean…" Rosalind stared at him. "You mean he just vanished? Surely he's on a trip, a vacation, a visit?"
  
  Soares shook his head energetically.
  
  "Never a trip without elaborate plans. No trip. No visit. Gone!"
  
  "But surely you have checked with the police?"
  
  "But of course! Hospitals, police — morgue. No trace. Terrible! Ill somewhere, perhaps, lost his memory. Absent-minded as we all are, sometimes. But not like that. Bad, bad."
  
  "But that's absolutely incredible! When did you say you last saw him?" Mary Louise Baker's face was pale with sympathy and alarm. "The Institute will be…"
  
  "Here, here it is," said Soares, riffling through papers on his desk and coming up with a calendar. "December 6th. It was a Friday. We are not here for the weekends, of course. Oh! I almost forgot." He peered at her with added interest. "There was someone else asking after Carlos. Anthropologist from Lisbon. Yes. Dr. Tomaz. Nilo Tomaz. Ever hear of him?"
  
  "I'm afraid not," said Rosalind, thinking: Someone else, was there now? Aloud, she said: "Is he still in the city? And is he someone I should have heard of?"
  
  Soares shrugged and flapped a hand. "No, no! I had never heard of him myself. But yes, he is in the city. As a matter of fact he comes here almost every day to work on the inscriptions. He is most interested in the hieratic alphabet and the picture symbols. I take it that this is your interest too?"
  
  Rosalind nodded enthusiastically. "If I could meet this Dr. Tomaz — set up an appointment…"
  
  "No problem. No problem. Funny thing — he first came here just after Brenha wandered off and was very disappointed, like you. He said at the time that he would like to meet anyone else connected with this field. Yes, I do believe he even said that if anyone else came to see Carlos, he would very much like to meet that person!" Soares beamed happily. "And here you are!"
  
  "Yes," murmured Rosalind. "Here I am. Could you tell me where I could locate Dr. Tomaz? Or what time he usually comes here?"
  
  "As a matter of fact," bubbled Soares, flapping enthusiastically, "he's here right now. I saw him come in about twenty minutes ago and set up his things in that little alcove in the back. We can go and meet him right away. Come, let us go!"
  
  He reached out a chivalrous hand to help her to her feet.
  
  "Oh but really," she protested. "Don't you think it's a bit of an imposition while he's working? Wouldn't it be better if you perhaps mentioned me to him, and told me how to get in…"
  
  "Of course not, of course not. I told you he is anxious to meet with colleagues. Come now!"
  
  He almost dragged her down the long passage that led into one of the main halls and off again into another corridor. He must be getting bored with me, she thought, foisting me off on a passing stranger at the first opportunity. She couldn't help wishing that Nick were somewhere near at hand to give her moral support.
  
  "There, now!" said Soares exuberantly.
  
  The last of a series of labyrinthine passages led them into a small alcove almost filled with glass cases containing stone tablets and broken pieces of pottery bearing symbolic inscriptions. A large man sat on a folding stool and looked up with interest as they came in.
  
  He had extremely broad shoulders, and little round eyes that swept over her body as if looking for concealed curves — or weapons.
  
  "Miss Baker, allow me to present Dr. Nilo Tomaz. Dr. Tomaz, Miss Mary… er… Mary Baker of the Colorado Institute. I understand that you two have a mutual interest in my friend Dr. Carlos Brenha."
  
  Unfortunate way of putting it, thought Rosalind.
  
  "Actually, it's just that I have a letter of introduction," she said, smiling tentatively. "I had no intention of disturbing you."
  
  The big man reached out a strong hand and clasped hers.
  
  "Disturbing me? Never! My pleasure!" He smiled broadly.
  
  "There now, there now," said Soares happily. "Just as I said. Now I know you two will have a lot to talk about, so I shall leave you to it." Bobbing and nodding his head, he bustled away between the rows of Indian figures. Under cover of his departure Rosalind sneaked a look at her watch. Please God let Nick come soon and find me. It was a quarter to three.
  
  She looked at Nilo Tomaz and his pile of notebooks. The big man's small eyes bored into hers. Her heart missed a beat. Something was very badly out of place. Of course, everyone has some unexpected weak points, but… At least, she thought, she wouldn't have to worry about her own ignorance of hieratic writing.
  
  The cover of a paperback showed under one of the notebooks. She couldn't read the complete tide, but she had seen the book among others of its kind on a downtown newsstand and she remembered the tide and the cover picture both vividly and clearly.
  
  The book was called Hellhouse of Passion.
  
  Doctor Tomaz, yet.
  
  The man with the lurid taste in leisure reading said:
  
  "Quite right, Miss Baker. We have a great deal to talk about." Something had made his breath quicken.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Nick looked at his watch. A quarter to three. He'd wait five more minutes, then go to meet Rosalind.
  
  The Journal's managing editor had called him some time ago in Room 1107, Hotel Serrador, to say several interesting things: One, a nightclub owner and a museum curator had also turned up missing. Two, it was quite true that no one seemed to know the whereabouts of gem dealer Pierce Langley. Three, the police had revealed that de Santos' battered camera, found on the hillside in the path of his fall, had proved not to be a camera at all but an ingenious device that fired .22 caliber bullets. None, however, had been fired. Four, he — the editor — had called Carmen de Santos and told her about enquiring reporter Michael Nolan. She had expressed a certain interest, so he had suggested that she contact him at Room 1107, Hotel Serrador.
  
  So far, nothing.
  
  Nick turned over in his mind the little he knew. What the managing editor had told him earlier was that the police were almost certain that de Santos had been murdered. Also, that de Santos had asked for an extension on his vacation and the very day he returned he died. He was not due to contact his office until the following Monday, and he hadn't.
  
  He had come back and fallen right into something, Nick thought. And now it was almost certain that he had been the last to die. Nick was convinced that the order of disappearance was vitally important — but deceptive. De Santos, for instance, could have given away the lot of them and then gone off on vacation enjoying a false sense of security, only to return and fall victim to his own treachery.
  
  But, somehow, Nick didn't think it likely.
  
  Five of the six were now beginning to emerge as individuals, and a list was starting to shape up: Langley and Appelbaum, missing/dead early in the game, about the same time. De Freitas and Brenha, he had just learned, both reported to be missing a few days after Langley's sudden departure for God knows where. João de Santos, recently dead. No report on Maria Cabral at all. He'd have to get into the house somehow.
  
  Funny. He was sure that the de Santos line would have been tapped, the house watched. Maybe he wouldn't have that visitor, after all. Or maybe the visitor would wait until Nick had left.
  
  Ten to three. Better be on his way. Maybe Roz was having better luck.
  
  He was on his feet in one fluid movement and reaching for the doorknob when he heard a tiny sound. Someone had stopped outside his door.
  
  Someone knocked. Knocked again.
  
  Nick glided silently across the carpet and into a closet. His hand closed around Wilhelmina's comfortable butt.
  
  The front doorknob turned. Something scraped in the lock or past it. The knob rattled again. Nick stepped back in the closet, leaving himself a half-inch crack to see through.
  
  A stranger with a ferrety face and big hands let himself cautiously into Nick's room. One hand closed the front door; the other slid into a side pocket. Sharp eyes peered around and pointed ears twitched with the effort to hear the smallest sound.
  
  
  
  
  
  Hugo Asks the Questions
  
  
  
  
  Nick waited. Wilhelmina, Hugo and Pierre waited with him, patient and prepared.
  
  Pierre the gas pellet, small but lethal, was not designed for use in confined quarters or public places. He was much too deadly. Hugo, the snap-blade stiletto fashioned with exquisite ingenuity by a disciple of Cellini, was at his best as a swiftly-flung, decisive argument. Wilhelmina the Luger, stripped down to the bare essentials like the hot rod she was, functioned both as a silent persuader and a vicious killer with a bite even worse than her bark.
  
  Wilhelmina was ready.
  
  Ferret-face stepped into the bathroom and came out again immediately. Nick watched him move toward the closet, his eyes darting from closet door to bed to dresser to desk as he walked. Something on the desk made him stop. The page in the portable typewriter was covered with print — an attempt to link the deaths of Appelbaum and de Santos. At the bottom of the page Nick had typed LANGLEY???
  
  The newcomer read the page with interest and then took it out of the typewriter. He put it into an inside pocket and opened the top desk drawer. The big hands were sorting through notebooks and papers bearing the name of Michael Nolan when Nick decided that Ferret had had enough time to prowl.
  
  He stepped silently from his hiding place.
  
  "Up with the hands!" he rapped. "Get over to the wall!"
  
  Ferret swung around, his eyes blazing surprise and fury, his hand reaching for the lump in his pocket.
  
  "None of that!" said Nick. "Get those hands up or I shoot!"
  
  Nick twisted his body aside as Ferret fired low from his pocket. Wilhelmina spoke sharply in return. Ferret gave a small, animal scream and clutched his gun arm with his free hand.
  
  "Next time," said Nick, "listen."
  
  His quick, light stride took him over to the stranger. A swift hand dug at the oozing pocket and came out with a snout-nosed automatic. Ferret cursed and lunged at him. Nick slammed the man's own gun down agonizingly hard on the bridge of the ferrety nose and stepped back swiftly, thrusting the gun into his own pocket.
  
  "Now let me see those hands in the air," he said in fluent Portuguese, "or I'll blow both of them off."
  
  Ferret swore but raised both hands. Blood trickled over his right cuff.
  
  "You wouldn't dare," snarled the man with the predatory face. "Think of the noise. You'd have everybody in this hotel…"
  
  "You think of it," said Nick. "This is my room, remember? And that brings up an interesting point — just why are you in it?"
  
  "Why do you think?" the man said, and spat on the carpet. "Friendly visit? You make a living your way; I got mine. Why don't you just call the police?"
  
  His eyes darted about like the tongue of a venomous snake. Windows, door, desk drawers, floor lamp, sofa… exits, weapons, assistance…?
  
  Covering him with Wilhelmina, Nick double-locked the door.
  
  "Now," he said softly, "you're going to tell me exactly why you're here and what fascinates you so much about those notes and papers. And don't try to tell me it's just money you're after. What do you want with the paper in the typewriter? Want to show it to someone?"
  
  Ferret made a snickering sound that was almost a laugh.
  
  "I collect souvenirs from all my clients," he tittered. "What's so special about the thing in the typewriter, anyway?"
  
  "I'll ask the questions," said Nick. "Get away from that desk."
  
  "Well, you won't get any answers," sneered Ferret. "What's the matter, you afraid of the law? Why don't you…"
  
  "Move! Put your hands up against the wall."
  
  Nick walked toward the ferret-faced man, Wilhelmina held lightly but surely in his grasp. His face was a hard mask of determination. Ferret turned and pressed his hands high up against the wall.
  
  Hugo came out of his hiding place. His vicious, icepick blade clicked open. Nick slashed at Ferret's jacket. The two halves separated and revealed the back of a soiled but expensive shirt. Ferret's cursing became loud and fluent.
  
  Hugo attacked the shirt next, ripping it neatly down the back without being too careful of the pitted flesh beneath. Ferret flinched and used a word Nick hadn't heard in years. Hugo found a place at the base of Ferret's bare neck and stroked it lightly.
  
  "Now," said Nick, very quietly, "your name. Who sent you. What for. Why are you so interested in two dead men? Better talk fast." Hugo bit suddenly into the knotted neck. "Like it?"
  
  "Ugh!" The sound forced itself out of the man's throat and the muscular shoulders bunched. "You swine!"
  
  "I thought you would," Nick said amiably. "More?" Hugo jabbed again, a little deeper. "Start, friend. I haven't got all day. But I've got enough time to hurt you very badly."
  
  "You sure of that?" Ferret said unexpectedly. "You so goddamn sure?"
  
  "I'm sure," said Nick. Hugo bit and twisted, withdrew, and briskly pierced the lower back. "Why shouldn't I be sure? Hurts already, doesn't it? What's worse, you don't know where I'm going to prick you next. How about somewhere up here? We haven't done that yet." The stiletto traced a surface pattern on the bared right shoulder which flinched in expectation of the blow. Hugo leapt back and nipped hungrily at the lower spine. "What's your interest in my business, ratface? What brought you here? Perhaps you killed de Santos, is that it?" Hugo described a slow, neat zigzag just below the left shoulder blade. The tiny slits and pinpricks were starting to ooze blood. Sweat bubbled up at the back of Ferret's neck. He was making noises that were not quite human.
  
  "I wonder how long it takes for a man to bleed to death," Nick said conversationally, "if the blood comes out one drop at a time? We may soon find out. Talk!"
  
  Hugo bit again, a neat half-circle in the flesh, and paused.
  
  "Bastard!" Ferret snarled. "You wouldn't think you had so much goddamn time if you knew what is going to happen to Carmen de Santos if you don't let me out of here. And then, by God, when I get back…"
  
  He half-turned his head as he spat out the words, so that his malevolent profile was turned toward Nick. Wilhelmina's long hard barrel whipped against the battered nose and Ferret's head jerked back into position.
  
  "So you do know something about de Santos?" Nick purred, but his thoughts were racing. Was this some kind of bluff? Maybe. But it was also some kind of breakthrough. "What do you know? And when you get back where?"
  
  Hugo made a nice figure eight on Ferret's colorful back. Little trickles of blood soon spoiled the cleancut outlines.
  
  Ferret made an obscene sound. "Just a streetcorner. They'll be watching to see if I get back. If they don't see me they'll start working on that de Santos woman, so you better get going if you want to be any use…"
  
  "What streetcorner? Who's they?"
  
  Christ, what were They doing to Carmen de Santos? And to the baby? This had to be a bluff.
  
  The figure of eight started to dribble into Ferret's waistband.
  
  Hugo edged his way beneath a skin flap and started exploring.
  
  "Where? Who are they?"
  
  Ferret's tortured body writhed.
  
  "Corner of Branco and Vargas. Stop that, damn you, stop!" His breath came in short, agonized gasps. "Just a corner. They'll be watching for me. If I'm not there in half an hour they'll kill her and they'll come here, and then you'll see by Jesus what they'll do to you!"
  
  "Who are they?" Nick's voice lashed at him like a whip. Hugo dug deeper.
  
  "Álvares and Martín! Álvares and Martín! I don't know any more, I tell you! I do jobs for them, I don't ask why! If you don't let me alone, I tell you they'll get at her!"
  
  "You don't know any more!" Nick's voice mocked him, while the voice at the back of his mind urged him to get going and find out what was happening to Carmen de Santos. And Rosalind, for the love of Christ! If she'd run into, anything similar to this, God knows how she'd be making out. "You know that they're trying to get at her, but you don't know any more?" Hugo probed around in the raw flesh. "Where do they hang out? What do they want with her?" He made Hugo do a little jig inside the wound.
  
  Ferret screamed and flung back his arm at Nick. Hugo landed on the floor and Nick stepped back swiftly as the man, his eyes mad with pain, drew himself into a leaping crouch.
  
  Nick's mind worked like lightning. Prolong this and take a chance that the Carmen de Santos bit was a bluff? Come back later?
  
  Wilhelmina bashed Ferret's temple. There was a hideous scrunching sound, and the man with the furtive face dropped like a sack of cement. Nick caught him as he fell and hit him once more under the chin. He bent over the body in a rapid search, finding nothing to identify the man. He did find a pack of strong Brazilian cigarettes, his own alias and part-time address scribbled on a matchbook taken from the Carioca Club, and a small bunch of keys. One of the "keys" was a device well-known to Nick: a versatile little object designed to open a great many doors. There was also a small quantity of a silvery powder in one of the pockets. No time to wonder about that now. He transferred all but the powder and his own typewritten notes into his own pockets. The notes he tossed into a desk drawer. As he transferred the keys he saw that another of them was slightly different from the others: it was smaller, pale gold in color, and heavy. On the back, in a circle, it bore the number 12.
  
  Nick worked swiftly. He unlocked the connecting door to Mrs. Marlene Webster's room. By the time he cautiously opened his own front door, Ferret-face was securely bound and gagged and quietly bleeding onto his torn jacket in Mrs. Marlene Webster's locked closet. Michael Nolan's own room had been restored to an order that would deceive all but the trained eyes of the police.
  
  An elderly couple was waiting for the elevator. Nick joined them, and stepped with them into a half-filled downward car.
  
  The second and less obtrusive of his hired cars was parked a block away.
  
  Less than ten minutes were left of Ferret's half-hour. If it was a bluff, he was making a fool of himself. But a phone call to check on Mrs. de Santos would be useless — obviously her wire was tapped. God. If Rosalind was in trouble, she'd just have to fend for herself.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Three-thirty. Nick wasn't going to come at all.
  
  There was a knot of pain in the pit of Rosalind's stomach as her false face nodded at the big man beside her.
  
  "I really don't know, Dr. Tomaz," she said, for about the fifteenth time. "I don't understand it either, but it must be some sort of amnesia. I'm sure he'll turn up again soon. And now, you know, I really must be going. I think my friend must be waiting for me somewhere else."
  
  Somehow, she had made him leave that small, claustrophobia-inducing alcove, bubbling over with enthusiasm at meeting someone in a related field. Having energetically waved her letter of introduction and Brenha's monograph in front of his face, she saw the gleam vanish from his small eyes and change to something closer to bafflement. He had followed her — too closely for comfort — to the main hall and the passageways lined with great glass cases. Then he had questioned her, and she had countered his questions with her own. Her main difficulty was to conceal from him her knowledge that he was completely ignorant of ancient signs and writings. Perhaps she should throw it in his face and see how he reacted. No. He was too big and vicious looking. They were deadlocked.
  
  "Where do you think your friend might be waiting?" asked Tomaz, his voice echoing through the glass-lined passages.
  
  Rosalind glanced at him in some surprise "Why, we have a favorite little café where we've been meeting lately. Why do you ask?"
  
  "I just thought it was a little strange," rumbled Tomaz, "that a gentleman friend would forget where he was meeting such a lovely lady." He smiled insincerely. "I certainly wouldn't. Who is this absent-minded friend?"
  
  "Why, Doctor," she giggled coyly. "Just a friend. Mustn't get too personal!" Damn and goddamn, she said to herself. Now I've got him on my hands and I don't know what to do with him. "But I must be going. If he's waiting he may leave before I get there."
  
  "You'll let me take you," said Tomaz, and it was not a question. "My car is in the driveway."
  
  There were several cars in the driveway. Rosalind thought rapidly. There was no one in sight. The Indian Museum seemed to be the City's least popular place of entertainment, at least on Mondays. It was very quiet. Ominously quiet, she thought. At least outside there would be daylight and surely a few people.
  
  "That's very kind of you," she said.
  
  He took her arm a little too firmly and led her through the main door. Sunlight blazed at them. Strips of garden lined the curving driveway, with here and there a bench nestled in the grass. Rosalind made her decision. She was not going to get driven off to some unknown destination or sit endlessly at some café with this hulking, sinister man. And she was not going to let him get away without one final effort.
  
  "It's a lovely day," she said, surveying the scenery. "Perhaps we could sit in the sun for a few minutes and then go on."
  
  Tomaz smiled unpleasantly. "What about your friend?"
  
  "I've changed my mind," she said airily. "Woman's privilege. He can call me later and explain where he's been all afternoon, the idiot."
  
  She made purposefully for a bench midway down the driveway. Tomaz strode along beside her, a faint look of satisfaction on his unscholarly looking face.
  
  Rosalind sat down and drew cigarettes and a rather bulky lighter from her capacious purse. Tomaz sat down beside her as she lit a cigarette, keeping the big lighter in her hand.
  
  "Dr. Tomaz," she began. "Do you mind if I ask you a very blunt question?"
  
  The big head cocked to one side and the eyes again became narrow slits.
  
  "How do I know until you ask?" His lips twisted into a half smile.
  
  "Well," she said, with a nervous puff, "I couldn't help noticing that you're not really very expert in Dr. Brenha's field, are you? But you do want to know all about the people who seem to be interested in him, and you've asked me an awful lot of questions this afternoon. You're not a scientist, are you? You're investigating his case? Police?"
  
  The little eyes glinted.
  
  "That's very clever of you, Miss Baker. I wondered why you didn't ask me why I knew so little. Yes, I am trying to find out what's happened to Brenha. And so are you, I take it?"
  
  "Why, no," said Rosalind, eyebrows raised in surprise. "I was interested in meeting him, and naturally I'm concerned about what's happened to him. Why didn't you mention that you were investigating? I would have answered your questions much more freely, instead of just thinking you were being rather nosy."
  
  He stared at her.
  
  "Which questions, Miss Baker? What do you know about all this?"
  
  Rosalind made herself look flustered.
  
  "Why, nothing. I just meant that then I wouldn't have thought there was anything funny about you…"
  
  "And now you do. Well, perhaps we'll make more headway if we look for this friend of yours and see what he's got to say. Or perhaps you'd prefer to come with me to headquarters. We'll just do a routine check on your identity." He leered down at her and reached for her arm. Her cigarette dropped to the grass as she drew away from him.
  
  "Just a minute, Tomaz, or whatever your name is," she said crisply. "I've had all kinds of pickups tried on me before and yours isn't any better than most. First you're a scientist who doesn't know his subject and now you're a cop with the feelies. No, keep your hands away from me. Headquarters, indeed! Where's your identification?"
  
  From the corner of her eye she saw a gardener stroking lazily at the grass some fifty feet away. A youngish couple was walking down the steps of the museum.
  
  "Identification?" said Tomaz thoughtfully. He reached into his jacket.
  
  It was identification, all right — a blue-nosed Beretta pointing directly at that tense spot in the pit of her stomach.
  
  "So that's the way it is," she said softly. "Why? Who are you?"
  
  He laughed unpleasantly. "Come on, Miss Baker — or whoever you are. My little persuader can make a very ugly hole if you don't do as you're told."
  
  "Yes," she agreed, rising from the bench with her lighter pointed toward him. "And it makes a very ugly noise, too. Which is more than you can say of my small friend. I'll leave you now, Tomaz, and I'll find my own way to headquarters. You won't shoot — but I will."
  
  He leapt to his feet and reached for her, snarling. She backed away hurriedly, her voice rising with indignation.
  
  "Doctor Tomaz, please! Will you kindly let me go! Take your hands off me! Don't you dare bother me any more!"
  
  The young couple stopped in their tracks and stared at the tableau. The gardener stopped his raking.
  
  "Why, you stupid bitch!" Tomaz hissed. "If you think you can get away…"
  
  "That's enough!" she screamed hysterically. "I won't have you threatening me. You dirty old man!" Her hand with the fighter drew back and slammed against his face. "And if you try to follow me I'll go straight to the police."
  
  She turned her back to him and stalked away down the driveway.
  
  The young couple glared. Somewhere, a window opened.
  
  Tomaz stood there, swaying with the impact of her small hand and the heavy fighter, hiding his own gun with his big hands. Slowly, his head down, he started walking.
  
  Rosalind ran down the driveway and into the street.
  
  It was some time before she heard the footsteps, before she realized that they were getting faster — and closer.
  
  
  
  
  
  A Siege, a Chase, and a Golden Key
  
  
  
  
  Little Joe gurgled happily in his playpen. The house on Vasco da Gama Drive was a haven of peace and sanity, except for the shadow of inexplicable death that hung over it.
  
  But Carmen de Santos and little João were safe. So far.
  
  The purring of a smooth motor sounded from the road outside and then faded away.
  
  A sense of urgency crept up on Nick like a rising tide. Either Ferret's gambit had been a bluff, or he was still one jump ahead of the faceless enemy. He looked into the pain-dulled eyes of Carmen de Santos and wondered how much she understood of what he'd said. To her he was still the enquiring reporter, like João.
  
  She stared back at the slouching, bearded man in her comfortable living room and sighed.
  
  "Diga me que jazer," she said hopelessly. "Tell me what I should do. I have told the police everything, but so far they have told me nothing. I do not understand why I should be in danger. But if you can help me find out about João…" Her voice trailed off and her appealing eyes wandered over his face.
  
  "I'll do everything I can," Nick said seriously. "And what I'd like you to do is leave the worrying to the police and to me. I think what you've told me is going to be a big help. And now I'd like you to do one more thing. You may not like it, but it's important and I think you should do it right away. You and little Joe."
  
  "Little Joe?" The dull eyes took on a gleam of life. "What is it that he can do?"
  
  "You can move out of here, both of you, and either go to relatives or to some hotel. You needn't worry about money. I'll help you. But for the next few days I think you'll be more comfortable somewhere else." His tone was crisp and decisive.
  
  "That is not a suggestion, is it, Senhor?" She gazed at him thoughtfully. "It is a command, I think. Why do you command?"
  
  Nick forced patience into his tone. He liked the woman; he sympathized with her. But he wished she would recognize the urgency.
  
  "Because I believe your husband was on the point of finding out something very important, and that you may be in the same danger as he was. I do not like to be so blunt, but you must leave this house. Tell only someone very close to you, and the police. It is most urgent that we leave here now. Take what you need for tonight, and I will arrange to pick up the rest later. But as you honor your husband, please do as I ask."
  
  She looked at him for another long moment. "I will get ready," she said.
  
  João Junior wailed.
  
  "I feel a bit like that myself," said Nick. "Maybe we should do a duet, kid."
  
  The baby stopped wailing and watched him with solemn eyes as he crossed to the window and looked out from behind the curtains.
  
  A compact car with small, high windows was idling on the corner of Da Gama Drive and the cross-street. Nick watched it for a moment. It was occupied by two men who seemed, from that distance, to be waiting, looking for someone. He turned and strode through a narrow passageway into the kitchen. Through a window over the sink he saw that the back of the house let out onto an alleyway lined with fences. The back of another house faced the alley. His view of the outlet onto the street was blocked. He opened the back door very quietly and looked out.
  
  A man was lounging against the fence at the end of the alley. An ordinary enough looking man, but one with no apparent reason for being there. Business suit, hat, cigarette, lounging against the fence. Not right for this time of day. Maybe not for any time of day. Experimentally, Nick rattled the knob of the door.
  
  The lounger came to attention and swung toward the sound. Nick closed the door quietly.
  
  He went back into the living room and the window The compact car was moving slowly past the house. And stopping. A man got out. He looked so much like an old-time Chicago gangster that it was almost laughable. But there was nothing laughable about the hard, expressionless face or the resolute, flat-footed walk.
  
  The situation had all the makings of a siege. And a gun battle was the last thing Nick needed at the moment.
  
  He scooped up Joe Junior and whisked him into the bedroom where Carmen de Santos was swiftly packing a small bag. Even before she could straighten up in surprise, he said calmly: "Mrs. de Santos, we have visitors. Stay in here with the baby and keep away from the door and window. Don't come out until I come and get you." As he talked he put Joe Junior gently in her arms and moved to the bedroom window. It looked out on a strip of garden that led into the back alley. From his vantage point he was unable to see the watcher at the end of the alley or the car that idled on the road in front. Good. Chances were that their view of the bedroom window was no better.
  
  The front doorbell shrilled.
  
  Nick grinned reassuringly at the young woman and her baby, gave them a helpful shove toward the open closet, and ran into the kitchen where he bolted the door and jammed a sturdy wooden chair under the knob. From the kitchen window he could see a fraction of the end of the alley. The watcher strolled across his line of vision and out of sight. He seemed to be digging at his fingernails with a knife.
  
  The doorbell rang again.
  
  Nick went back to the living room with a quick, light stride. Whoever was outside was rattling the doorknob with little result. It was a sturdy door and the lock was unusually effective. De Santos had evidently thought it worthwhile to take some precautions.
  
  The knob rattled and the bell screamed several times in succession while Nick stationed himself against the wall away from the window and nearest to the door hinges. This way he might be able to perform two useful actions at once.
  
  The familiar sounds of lock-picking began.
  
  Then… there were two sharp reports and the lock shattered.
  
  Nick's body waited like a coiled spring ready for release.
  
  The door opened suddenly, but not so suddenly that it slammed against the wall. That might look too suspicious from outside. A beat of time. Nick made a noiseless move that took him away from the crack between door and jamb but not so far that he lost the cover of the door.
  
  The flat-footed man stepped into the room and the trap closed.
  
  Nick gave him just half of the time he needed to step to the far side of the doorway and kick the door shut to reveal whoever might be hiding behind it. It was Nick who slammed the door shut and the stranger who fell sprawling and cursing, his gun-arm twisted beneath him in a grip of tempered steel. Something like a mailed fist hit him twice on the lower neck, with such blinding force that he did not even feel Nick's scientifically brutal kick. Nick slammed him on the head with his own gun just once for good measure, then moved to the window.
  
  The driver was waiting at the wheel, unaware that it was not his colleague who had shut the door.
  
  Nick pocketed Flatfoot's gun and dragged the prone figure against the door. There was not much time for a search, but he did not need much time. Again, he found no papers, only a small quantity of cash and a keychain. The keychain was much like Ferret's. But this time the little golden key bore the number 9. He took the keys and loped quickly into the bedroom.
  
  "One down," he said cheerfully to the closet door. "Don't worry — we'll be out of here soon."
  
  "What is it?" came an anxious voice. "Do you not think we should call the police?"
  
  "Not on this phone, Senhora," said Nick, sidling along the wall to the window. He heard a horn tooting somewhere in front of the house. As if on cue the watcher in the alley strolled into view and disappeared again behind the rear walls. Nick tugged at the window, discovered there was a lock on it, and unlatched it. It slid up easily. He could hear footsteps coming to a stop at what he judged to be the back door.
  
  "Just hold everything now," he said quietly. "I'll be coming back through the window, so don't be afraid."
  
  "What if it isn't you?" she whispered. Young João was whimpering.
  
  "It'll be me," Nick said, and stepped over the sill.
  
  Except for the idling motor there was no sound from the car in front. Nick's senses were so finely tuned that he could hear a sort of fumbling at the back door, the rattle of pans in the. kitchen next door, and a bicycle whirring down a slope. But there was nothing coming from the front.
  
  He lowered himself silently into the garden and cat-footed his way to the back alley.
  
  The backdoor man relinquished his grip on the doorknob and, his back to Nick, stood on tiptoe to peer into the de Santos' kitchen window. It wasn't easy. He was short and the window was high. But it made things much easier for Nick.
  
  It didn't matter that gravel crunched beneath Nick's feet as he neared the window. It was too late for any sound to warn the man. His upraised arms made him the perfect victim for the commando tactics Nick employed. A steel trap caught at the straining neck and bore down on it until something snapped, and a blow like a flatiron falling from a height more than finished the job. There had been one wheezing grunt. The man crumpled like a slaughtered ox.
  
  The car horn sounded again — three short, sharp blasts.
  
  Nick left the man where he was and ran back along the alley and into the garden.
  
  Everything seemed as before.
  
  Nick pulled himself up through the bedroom window and landed lightly, still moving. He heard a gasp as he opened the closet door. Carmen de Santos cowered in the corner under her dead husband's suits, clutching her crying child.
  
  "It's all right," said Nick. "You'll be okay. We'll have to hurry. Go out through the kitchen. Never mind what you see outside. My car's up the slope."
  
  She came out of the closet, half sobbing.
  
  "But… but… I am not ready! How can we just leave…?"
  
  "We have to," Nick said crisply, snapping the suitcase shut. "Head for the kitchen. I'll be with you in a couple of seconds."
  
  Suitcase in hand, he made one final check from the window. And he heard a car door open. He slid the window shut, locked it, and hurried after the woman and the baby.
  
  She stood at the back door, looking beaten and baffled.
  
  "Take the suitcase," Nick ordered. "And give me the baby."
  
  He pulled the chair away from the door as he spoke and slid back the bolt. Little Joe wailed lustily.
  
  "No!" she said. "No! Nobody touches…!"
  
  "Yes," said Nick, flinging the door open. "Or you'll lose him altogether." He took the child roughly from her grasp and thrust the suitcase at her. "I'll apologize later but now you'll have to do as I tell you."
  
  He pushed her out of the back door and closed it behind them. The baby's cries subsided to muffled yelps behind Nick's hand.
  
  Carmen de Santos gave one quick gasp at what she law in the alley and then stumbled along beside Nick, reaching up to clutch Little Joe's tiny fist.
  
  "Be careful how you hold him!" she whispered fiercely.
  
  "Sshhh! Stop here a minute."
  
  They were at the corner of the house where the alley met the small garden. Nick listened. At first he could hear nothing but passing cars, for the afternoon traffic was beginning to build up. Then there was a lull, and he heard footsteps on the sidewalk.
  
  Nick risked a careful look around the corner.
  
  Through the gap between the houses he could see the figure of a man pacing back and forth. As Nick watched the man stopped, stared at his watch, then made up his mind to act. He walked rapidly past the gap toward the de Santos house and out of view.
  
  "Let's go," whispered Nick. "To the end of the alley and turn right."
  
  "Give me the baby," the woman said.
  
  "Come on! Hurry!"
  
  He could hear the footsteps walking up the short pathway to the front door.
  
  "Please," she said. "I will keep him quiet. Believe me, I trust you. But perhaps you will need your hands."
  
  The footsteps stopped.
  
  Nick looked at her for one split second. She was in control, now, and he knew instinctively that she would not let him down. Wordlessly, he handed her the baby and took the case. Little Joe's one small whimper quickly trailed away. Nick took Carmen by the arm and steered her across the gap and down the alley.
  
  Behind him he could hear a thudding on the door.
  
  Half running, they reached the end of the alley and looked out into the sloping cross-street. As far as it was possible to tell, all cars and pedestrians were going about their legitimate business. They hurried up the slope. Nick's car was waiting.
  
  A woman's voice suddenly split the afternoon.
  
  "Luiz! Luiz! Come and see! I told you I heard something!"
  
  Carmen caught her breath.
  
  "Not us," said Nick. "The alley. It can only help us if your neighbor's seen it. Third man'll have other things to think of besides us. Here we are. Get in."
  
  As Nick got into the driver's seat and started up he could hear excited shouts coming from the direction of the alley. Luiz and friends had apparently joined the neighborhood body-finding club. He put the car in gear.
  
  "Keep your head down 'til we get away from here," he ordered, slowing to a brief stop at Vasco da Gama Drive.
  
  She nodded and pulled herself lower in the seat, rocking Little Joe on her lap.
  
  Nick let a couple of cars go past and then coasted across the Drive. The compact car was still standing on the corner. He made a mental note of the license number, and repeated it to Carmen de Santos.
  
  "Remember it, will you?"
  
  She nodded again. "I will."
  
  He accelerated. Another car on the Drive burst into life and made a left turn onto a busy road toward Rio. All traffic sounds blended into one comfortable, throbbing noise.
  
  No one followed them.
  
  "Mrs. de Santos," he began. Young João sat quietly. His mother turned solemn eyes toward Nick. "It's time for my apologies," Nick said, "and I'll owe you more before we're through. I'm going to check you in at the San Francisco, make sure that all your expenses are taken care of, and then leave you to call the police and tell them all about it. I'll be in contact with them myself very soon. But there's a lead that I simply must track down, and right away. If I get involved with them it'll take all night, and I'll lose it."
  
  She smiled faintly. "I understand that. João would have been the same. But they will be very angry."
  
  "I'm sure they will," he agreed. "But they can easily track me down through the Serrador if they get really anxious."
  
  They talked as they drove downtown, discussing what she should say to the police and how careful she must be with herself and little João. Then they fell silent until he checked her into the hotel under an assumed name and insisted on paying a week's advance.
  
  "Don't worry about it," he said cheerfully, handing her some extra cash, "I'll get it all back. Expenses."
  
  He saw Carmen and the baby to their small suite and left.
  
  Michael Nolan alias Robert Milbank alias Nick Carter was in one helluva complicated mess. But at least he knew that he wasn't being followed.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Rosalind knew that she was.
  
  "Damn him, anyway," she muttered to herself, almost believing — for a fleeting moment — her own act with the man her Aunt Ada would have called a "masher."
  
  Then reality caught up with her — and Tomaz was close behind.
  
  She quickened her step along the broad, tree-lined street running past the museum. People strolling in the bright afternoon and the flow of traffic offered some cover. But not enough. Tomaz had time to think things over and possibly make a plan. He might realize that under the cover of the trees and the sound of passing cars he could just possibly get away with a shot. And he might be very anxious to try, since she had seen his face and would know it anywhere. So had Dr. Soares! But then so had any number of people, no doubt, who'd wandered through the museum. Only she had a reason for pointing a finger at Tomaz.
  
  There were several pairs of feet walking along the sidewalk near her. Her ears singled out one pair and heard them coming after her. She rounded a bend. The trees were thicker here. Her pace quickened. So did his. She broke into a run. So did he. She could almost hear his breath.
  
  Suddenly the trees opened up and formed the entrance to a park of statuary and fountains. She was almost past it when she saw the knot of tourists admiring an immensely muscular torso near the gate. Reaching with a speed that surprised even her, Rosalind made a sharp turn and ran into the park. She heard Tomaz making a clumsy turn after her. Several of the tourists had turned to watch the chase. With an embarrassed smile, she joined the group. Thank God a few of them were a familiar type of American. Her eyes flickered over them. Schoolteacher or librarian. Elderly couple, possibly Middle West. The balding, self-appointed Cheerleader with the loud shirt. The bright-eyed old lady, doubtless the most sprightly of the bunch. Her heart warmed to them. Tomaz, she noted, with a deliberately flustered look, had come to a hesitant halt just inside the gate.
  
  "Please forgive me," she said tremulously to the nearest bald head and flat chest, "but that man! He's been following me and saying the craziest things! Do you mind if I join you? I… I know it's silly, but I just don't know how to shake him off. I'm trying to get back to town but he won't get off my heels!"
  
  An old lady tut-tutted. "How dreadful, my dear. You must stay with us." Schoolteacher said, knowingly: "My God, the men in these hot countries!" A baldhead with a noble stomach growled ferociously, "Why, the swine!" And the tour conductor, a cheerful young man with a smiling brown face and reassuringly broad shoulders, raised his hands in generous welcome.
  
  "Join us, Senhorina! We will look after you. You will ride back with us on the bus, yes?"
  
  "Yes!" said Rosalind fervently. The group enveloped her.
  
  Tomaz backtracked uncertainly as the group swept past him. Several uncomplimentary remarks were passed. But he stopped outside the gate and held his ground as they left the park, his eyes burning a hole in Rosalind's back.
  
  When they were safely on the bus and pulling away from the curb Rosalind saw him trying frantically to hail a cab. As far as she could see, he failed. But when they got safely into town a few minutes later and she had thanked her escort, she slipped into the powder room of a café and made drastic changes in her appearance — just in case.
  
  
  
  
  
  Disappearance of a Snoop
  
  
  
  
  Ten to five.
  
  Nick stopped at the desk of the Serrador.
  
  "Any messages for Nolan?"
  
  The clerk raised an amused eyebrow at him. "One, Senhor. You will forgive me if I did not inscribe it exactly as the telephone operator gave it to me." He reached into a slot and handed the message to Nick. It read: "4:30 p.m. A young lady. Message… Where have you been? Call me at home! No name."
  
  Nick grunted. "What did the young lady say, according to the operator?"
  
  The clerk grinned openly. The manager would have been ashamed of him.
  
  "Forgive me, Senhor. She said: 'Leave this message… Where the hell have you been, you louse? Call me at home the minute you get in.' Sorry, Senhor. She said that."
  
  "Humpph," said Nick. A smile of amusement and relief crossed his bearded face. "I suppose I know who it is, but did she speak English or Portuguese?"
  
  The clerk's grin got even broader. Ah yes — he seemed to be thinking — it was very hard to keep track of all the women in one's life.
  
  "English, Senhor. But with an accent much like my own."
  
  Clever girl, thought Nick, even more relieved.
  
  "Well, thank you. No visitors?"
  
  The clerk remembered his position and wiped off his smile.
  
  "Two gentlemen were asking for you, Senhor. They were together. When I said you were not in, they went away."
  
  So. They asked. Smarter than Ferret. But did they go away?
  
  Nick looked thoughtful. "Izzat so. And no message? Happen to notice what they looked like? I was sort of expecting somebody."
  
  The clerk shook his head regretfully.
  
  "There are many such enquiries every day. They were of medium height, perhaps. Possibly a little older than the Senhor…" He shrugged. "It is really impossible to remember."
  
  Nick nodded sympathetically. "I know. Thanks."
  
  Nick stopped at the stand to buy cigarettes and look over the lobby. There were no suspiciously raised newspapers or watchers behind the graceful pillars. But the elegant lobby was so full of people that it was impossible to tell for sure. He made his way to the phone booths and selected the middle one of three that were unoccupied. After waiting cautiously for a few moments, he dialed the International and asked for Miss Montez. While the connection was being made he reflected on whether anyone would be waiting for him upstairs — especially since Ferret's "disappearance."
  
  Rosalind answered in her dulcet Montez tones.
  
  "Hi, baby," he said sweetly. "Have a nice afternoon? Now don't be mad — I got hung up, and I'm sorry."
  
  "Oh, it's you," she said sourly. "I damn near got hung up myself, thanks to you. Where are you, if that isn't too much to ask?"
  
  "Downtown with our friends," he said. "I think they'll be checking out quite soon and I wanted to say goodbye. Perhaps you'd care to come down and help?"
  
  "Oh. Why, yes, if they need me." The sour note went out of her voice. "Right away?"
  
  "Not just yet. I just wanted to make sure that you're available. I'll check back with you. In the meantime, maybe you'll get ready."
  
  "I'll do that," she said earnestly. "Apart from that, is everything all right?"
  
  "Just dandy," he said, and it was his turn to be sour. "See you." He hung up and decided to make the stairway climb to his room rather than take the chance of stepping out of the elevator into someone's — anyone's — waiting arms.
  
  He waited just above the second landing. When he was sure that no one was coming, up after him he uncoiled his long legs and sprinted up the long flights to his own landing with knees and lungs as unimpaired as if he'd been strolling on a promenade. His mind had been working busily along the way, and he was furious with himself. That he had missed meeting Rosalind and been unable to check on the corner of Branco and Vargas was annoying but apparently not drastic. What was really unforgivable was the way he had exposed Michael Nolan to the police. They would question him, watch him, fingerprint him — tie him down to the point where neither Milbank nor Carter would be able to take over as needed. Even his collection of hardware was proving to be a nuisance. Michael Nolan, as a foreign reporter, obviously did not have a Brazilian gun permit, nor was he supposed to be a man in the habit of using handguns. That was one reason why he had avoided shooting it out with the besiegers. He had turned Flatfoot's gun over to Carmen so the police could trace it. But of course Nick's own prints were on the barrel, not to mention all over Nolan's room. Well, that was unavoidable. But Nolan was becoming a nuisance, long before he'd finished his work. He hadn't even found a way to check on the two thugs who had attacked Milbank without calling attention to Milbank himself. Well, the hell with it. That would just have to go by the board. One thing he did know about them, and that was that they didn't fit into the pattern of his other encounters.
  
  A knot of people stepped into the elevator as he waited at the end of the corridor. He walked to his own room and listened at the door before opening it. Then, very quietly and swinging in, he opened the door. Current problems flashed through his mind: Work on Ferret, then dispose of him. Figure some way out for Nolan. Depending on that, what to do about the room next door.
  
  The silence in his room was absolute.
  
  So was the chaos.
  
  His sixth sense told him that no one was there. His ears agreed. But it took only the most casual glance to see that someone other than the chambermaid, someone very untidy, had been there. There would be no need for him to refine his clean-up of a couple of hours before. It wouldn't even show.
  
  He locked the door behind him and stared at the mess.
  
  The closet door stood open and his few clothes lay ripped on the floor. The desk drawers had been emptied of papers, most of which were scattered on the floor and some of which appeared to be missing. The typewritten sheet he had retrieved from Ferret was gone. The bureau drawers looked as though they had been attacked by a hurricane. Every single item that bore on the personality and profession of Michael Nolan was gone. Letters (faked), credentials, other than those Nick carried with him (faked), story notes (partly faked), money (real) — all were gone. And whoever had been here had been in a hurry. More than that: savage. Why — to scare him off? His two small suitcases had been literally torn apart, the bed linen was in a hopeless jumble, and the mattress was ripped. The bathroom cabinet and fixtures had also received their share of attention; even the toothpaste tube had been squeezed, and a glass lay shattered on the floor.
  
  It was all very interesting.
  
  It looked as though the searcher had gone through the effects of someone they thought might not be a newspaperman at all. Even the most news-jealous of reporters wouldn't carry his secrets around in a toothpaste tube. Hardly anybody would be expected to, except possibly a smuggler… or a spy.
  
  He checked the telephone. Wires still intact, and no little mike in the box or added frill to indicate that his conversations would be anything but private.
  
  If the police saw this, he'd be in even worse…
  
  It came to him, then, what he could do about Michael Nolan and Ferret. But he didn't have much time to do it in.
  
  Hanging a Do Not Disturb sign on the outside knob, he began to feel a bit sorry for a number of people concerned. He locked the door and began his preparations. Whoever came in first was going to get a nasty shock. The police would be confronted with an added mystery, and Michael Nolan might well be remembered as a murderer rather than a hero. Maybe he would manage to wave another little red herring in that direction. And Carmen de Santos…
  
  Perhaps she would understand some day.
  
  He unlocked the connecting door in case he was forced to make a fast move, made a swift check on the adjoining room without looking in on Ferret, and came back to his own telephone.
  
  In another minute or two he was talking to Managing Editor Pereira of the Rio Journal.
  
  "Ah! Glad to find you're still there," he said cheerfully. "Look, I've got something for you if you haven't picked it up already. First, though, have you anything for me?"
  
  "Not much," came back the voice regretfully. "Nothing at all about João. About Appelbaum, though — the police are still questioning the people who used to come into his bookstore and they're not giving anything away about that just yet. But they do admit that they found evidence that Appelbaum's apartment had been searched before they got there and they say they've found a number of unexplained prints. There still doesn't seem to be any official interest in Langley, though I've picked up a little of what you might call dirt. Madame Langley played around, it seems, and the word is that husband Pierce suddenly got tired of it all and left her. It does not seem impossible, somehow. I have seen the woman several times at the Country Club, and I would think that life with her — let us say, after the first few weeks — would be unbearable."
  
  "Huh!" said Nick, unconvinced. "You may be right. But would he leave a flourishing business behind? I wonder what his books and his bank balance look like."
  
  The editor chuckled. "I wonder, too. And you may have something there. There is a junior partner, yes, but if Langley is not back soon he is bound to ask for an audit and an investigation. Perhaps something may come up then about your big gem scandal." He laughed a little maliciously and then added: "Oh, yes. That reminds me. You remember that nightclub owner I mentioned? The one who ran the Moondust Club — crazy little place where they shower some sort of silver powder down from the ceiling during one of their big numbers. Went there once myself, and it was weeks before — well, never mind that. De Freitas' woman friend — a singer who calls herself Lolita! — has been making a nuisance of herself with the police, claiming that he was murdered by those gunrunners he had talked about. It turns out that he mentioned gunrunning to her only once after a few drinks one night and then told her to forget about it, it was nothing. But she insists that they 'bumped him off,' as she calls it. She has no idea who they are. The police, incidentally, have asked me not to publish this."
  
  "Interesting," said Nick casually, far more enthralled than he cared to admit. "Although what possible connection he had with the others, I couldn't imagine. By the way, what about that little museum fellow? Who knows, he may have been smuggling ancient Indian muskets!"
  
  "Maybe he was! But I do not think it likely. Apparently he was very devoted to his work and he kept much too regular hours to be engaged in anything… er… undercover. He had an old car that he drove to work at the same time every day. Sometimes on a nice evening he would take a little longer drive for the fresh air, and once in a great while he would go out of the city over the weekend. There was absolutely nothing interesting about that Utile man," the editor said ironically, "except that he disappeared."
  
  "Still no idea how, hmm?" said Nick. All this was fascinating, but suddenly he felt the need to move on.
  
  "Well, something of an idea. One day he left the museum in his car, apparently heading for home, and he simply didn't get there. The police have been checking the movements of the car but they are not prepared to say just how far they have traced it. They have not found it, though. As far as they can see, nothing was taken from his home."
  
  "Hmm. Well, all that's very interesting. But somehow I can't see it tying in, can you? The nightclub bit sounds like a pretty good lead. And now I'm on another one that I think is really hot."
  
  "Oh, so?" The editor's voice sharpened with interest.
  
  "I found myself a little underworld character — just how I found him, I'll tell you later. He's a seedy character with a ferrety face and you wouldn't think you could trust him, but we get along like a house on fire. For small sums of money, I get small bits of information. And he told me this afternoon that he'd heard in a roundabout why that Mrs. de Santos was in danger."
  
  "Indeed? What sort of…?"
  
  "So I went galloping off like a knight on a white charger," said Nick, and swung briskly into a censored version of the afternoon's events. "So that's your scoop," he ended. "You can check it out later — and I mean later — with the police regarding use of the story. I couldn't hang around and wait for them because now I'm on the trail of something else my little ferret friend put me on to."
  
  "Dios! Nolan, you get around! That's quite a story. But what's your new lead?"
  
  Nick laughed. "I promise you, you'll be the first to know — after I've followed it. But now I'll have to be on my way to meet Ferret-face. I don't want to miss out on anything else he might have to tell me. Thanks again, and I'll be in touch."
  
  He hung up quickly and went about his work.
  
  His first move was to look in on Ferret. He lay there in the dimness of the closet, his face pale and pained, his eyes full of hatred. But his bonds were still firm and his mouth firmly shut. The blood was drying on his lacerated back and discolored clothes. The bed was still made up in Mrs. Webster's room. Nick bundled a few feminine effects into the deceptive bags, making sure that his own equipment was securely hidden beneath hers. He left out only what he would be needing within the next few minutes. Then he turned his attention to Ferret.
  
  Ferret had bled quite neatly, spilling nothing at all on the closet floor. Nick loosened his gag and lied to him.
  
  "You have a choice now, friend. And realize that your comrades are after you. You help me, tell me all you know, and I'll help you. You don't — and you're through."
  
  Ferret managed a sneering laugh. "You have to let me go. How'll you get rid of me otherwise — carry me out? Hah! Or leave me here? You can't leave me lying around 'til someone comes to find me. You gotta let me go."
  
  "Don't be too sure," Nick said coldly. "It's no problem for me to leave you behind. No problem at all. What's the gold key for, Ferret? What's the gold key?" He reached for Hugo.
  
  Ferret's eyes showed sudden fear.
  
  "My front door, damn you, that's all!"
  
  Nick looked at him for one silent moment.
  
  "Last chance, Ferret," he said at last.
  
  Ferret closed his eyes. "I got time to hold out," he said softly.
  
  "I haven't," said Nick, feeling a swift pang of admiration for his victim and a sense of revulsion for himself. Then he drove both feelings away as his brain told him coldly: You're called Killmaster, Carter, the master killer. That's your business, that's why you're here.
  
  He made very sure to drive Hugo into so vital a spot that Ferret died almost instantly and without seeing the blade.
  
  Nick replaced the gag and lifted Ferret into his own room, dumping him unceremoniously on the floor. Then he knocked over a lamp and a chair to add to the general confusion and checked to see what else he could do to Michael Nolan's room. There was nothing that could lead back to anything but a vanished newsman. If queries got too persistent, Hawk could easily handle them.
  
  Removing his ingenious lock attachment from the connecting door, Nick wiped his fingerprints from both knobs, and used the conventional lock to divide the rooms as before. Then he used one of Editing's most successful techniques to remove the beard from his face, and changed his jacket. When he left Room 1109, Mrs. Webster's bags were packed and Nick looked like an athletic young man heading for a not particularly important engagement. The phone rang in his abandoned room as he walked down the corridor to the stairway.
  
  Downstairs, he went at once to a phone booth and called Rosalind at the International.
  
  "Right away, honey," he said. "Not a minute to waste. Bags and everything ready, so you can just drop in to check out." He completed the call with swift instructions which she accepted without time-killing questions.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  She made good time. They met not much more than half an hour later at Santos Dumont Airport. Before ditching Michael Nolan's car, Nick drove around while Rosalind wrapped Mrs. Webster's effects in paper and cord and removed certain padding and make-up to say goodbye to Mrs. Webster for the last time. It took three changes of taxi and two cafe stops before Rosita Montez and Robert Milbank rolled up in front of the Copacabana International. Rosita was flushed with success and delighted with her shopping day; Robert was laughing and grumbling about women, extravagance, and the nuisance of lugging packages around. They whispered and laughed in the elevator like newlyweds on a honeymoon shopping spree.
  
  When Nick closed the door behind them his face was serious and he made a toothcomb inspection of their huge suite as though he had never seen it before.
  
  "What happened?" Rosalind asked at last.
  
  He brushed away the frown and grinned at her.
  
  "Ladies get to talk first and longest. I guess you've had quite a day, too. But do you mind if I soak myself in the tub first and try to remember who I am?"
  
  "You do that," she said with unaccustomed gentleness. "I'll get out the ice and glasses."
  
  "You are a dreamboat," he said, and touched her forehead with his lips.
  
  He disappeared into the bathroom she called "his" and splashed around briskly. Then there was a long silence — so long that she thought he must have fallen asleep in the huge bathtub. She took a quick shower herself and emerged smelling like gardenias and spice.
  
  Nick was still not ready.
  
  She slipped into what the movie stars call "something comfortable" and wondered why he was taking such a long time. When she heard a dull crash coming from "his" bedroom, she realized that her nerves were as taut as piano wires. Her bare feet took her silently over the thick carpeting to the doorway of his room. Her heart was pounding almost painfully when she peered in.
  
  "Damn you!" she said. "Damn you, anyway. I thought something had happened to you. What was that noise? And why are you standing on your head?"
  
  Nick lowered himself neatly and jackknifed into a crouch. Despite herself, Rosalind stared at the beauty of his body. A thin sheen of perspiration coated the metal-smooth skin making it glow tawny-gold in the room's late afternoon light. All the muscular grace of a panther was packed into that magnificent frame.
  
  The steel-gray eyes that could smolder somberly or turn icy bright with cruelty were lit with laughter.
  
  "I'm sorry, Roz," he apologized. "I knocked over a chair." He leapt up and pulled on a soft, rich-man's bathrobe, tying it loosely at his waist. "I was just doing the Yoga exercises I was telling you about. They help to clear the brain and put the world back in perspective. Now how about that drink you promised me?"
  
  He took her by the waist and propelled her down the hall to "their" room, feeling her firm, feminine beauty beneath the flimsy robe. They sat down on the soft pillowy couch and toasted each other with Scotch on the rocks.
  
  "What about this afternoon?" she asked. Short, dark curls clung to her temples and she smelled delectable. The robe fell away from her knees. Her legs looked good enough to eat.
  
  "Not just yet," Nick murmured. "Right now there's something else I want very much to do." He put down his glass hopefully.
  
  "What is it?" She turned slightly to face him and the valley between her breasts provocatively changed shape.
  
  "This," said Nick, taking her into his arms. His kiss was gentle, tentative. But when he felt it being returned, when her arms crept behind his back, he gave it all he had. At last he drew away and sighed.
  
  "Roz… If you want to chase me out, you'd better do it quickly. If I stay I'll be under that little robe in a minute. So…"
  
  "Stay," she murmured, nestling against him. "Kiss me again."
  
  
  
  
  
  The Man with the Black Armband
  
  
  
  
  If Carla was a hungry whirlpool, then Rosalind was a gently flowing river with sudden little bends and twists that revealed new delights at every turn. Her touch was light, delicate, her movements by turns languid and buoyant. She whispered as she lay beside him, feeling his resilient strength against her flexible dancer's body, and the sound was like a singing breeze on a summer's day.
  
  Their lovemaking was slow and tender, not a sudden cannibalistic devouring of each other but a gradually swelling need that was a satisfaction in itself. He touched her where he knew she wanted to be touched, and she trembled with controlled excitement. Her breasts yielded to his kiss and wanted more. For moments she lay quiet, luxuriating in the sensual pleasure that tingled through her body, then with a quick thrilling movement she was above him, giving him the same sweet pleasure.
  
  "Closer… closer… closer… I want you even closer…" he murmured huskily, feeling all his unwanted memories fading away.
  
  She came to him completely, giving herself with a grace and simplicity he had forgotten could exist. Even what she said so softly in his ear reminded him of a river: "Let it last forever… let it last forever… Darling, let it last…"
  
  He let it last as long as he could bear the exquisite pain of so much mounting pleasure, as long as she was content with their slow, voluptuous movements. They floated dreamily together on a current that picked up tempo as they rode it, until they hit the rapids and were forced to cling more fiercely to each other. Her hands caressed and fondled him with a growing urgency, until at last her fingernails bit into his back and her mouth melted against his in final supplication and sudden hot desire. Then he was lost — beautifully, wonderfully, ex-hilaratingly lost. Their bodies tensed and arched and flowed together, thighs straining deliciously and mouths blending. Then — over the waterfall, and down, and down, and down, and down… and down…
  
  She sighed a long, shuddering happy sigh and let her head fall back against the billowing pillows. Nick lay beside her, marvelously relaxed and dreamily content, and let her pull his head against her warm soft breasts. This time there was no compulsion to get up and run. It was right to lie there with her, glowing and refreshed.
  
  "Sweet baby," he murmured drowsily.
  
  She looked into his eyes and smiled, and made a little purring sound like a sleepy kitten.
  
  For a while, they slept.
  
  He got up when daylight left the room and the warm glow began to seep from his body. Rosalind stirred then, too, and after a while he poured them both a drink and they began to talk long and seriously, sharing the day's experiences. Rosalind started with her encounter at the museum and wound up with a description of her escape that made Nick frown and smile in turn.
  
  "But I didn't accomplish a thing," she concluded. "All I got out of it was a good look at his face."
  
  "At least you could have sneaked a look at his book. Hellhouse of Passion!" Nick laughed and rattled his ice cubes. "No, you did well. As usual with this sort of thing, we start out having very little to go on. Our best bet is to stir things up and keep stirring until something comes to the surface. We've got to make them show themselves. And I think we're getting there. I stirred up a regular hornet's nest this afternoon myself — that's why Michael Nolan had to come to an unexpectedly early end." And he told her of his day's work, starting with his dealings with Pereira and lightly sketching in the events that led up to the swift departures from the Serrador.
  
  She listened intently, interposing an occasional perceptive question and comment.
  
  "The main trouble with all this," he finished, "is that the police are now going to be so interested in Nolan's enquiries to the editor of the Journal that they're going to intensify their own efforts and start getting in our way. On the other hand, they may turn up a whole lot of information that we wouldn't be able to get at ourselves — even to the point of discovering the killers and whoever's behind them. And then again, that might leave us just as much in the dark as we were before."
  
  "What exactly did Carmen de Santos tell you?" she asked. "Did she have any idea that her husband was anything but a newspaperman?"
  
  He shook his head. "Not according to our own reports, nor from what I gathered from her. She just thought he went out on a hot news break. It's possible that she was covering for him, but I doubt it. She said that a few hours after they got back from their trip that Saturday morning, he settled down with a newspaper. Suddenly he said, in what she described as a sort of choking voice, 'My God! That little bookstore man, Appelbaum, has been found dead. Murdered!'"
  
  Carmen had been a little surprised by her husband's reaction. As far as she knew João's only contact with Appelbaum was an occasional visit to his bookstore.
  
  Shortly afterwards he had made a phone call, but failed to reach his party. It was a local call, and he had said: "I'm calling from the Rio Journal. Is your husband there, please? There's a story I'd like to — oh? Oh, thank you. No, no point in leaving a message."
  
  And a few minutes after that, he had received a phone call.
  
  He had listened for a moment and then said: "Amethysts, no, but if it's emeralds, of course I'm interested. But what's the story? He's left town, too? But what about the one who — who didn't? I see. You think it might break that soon…"
  
  Try as she would, Mrs. de Santos could remember little more of the conversation. She had made no attempt to listen, and anyway she had been occupied with the baby.
  
  But before he had hung up he'd said: Álvares, is it? All right, I'll be there. Admiring the view."
  
  After he hung up he had waited then lifted the receiver and listened to the silence for a long moment before dialing first one number and then another without success.
  
  Then he had told Carmen that he had to go out on the trail of a story and that he would be back as soon as he possibly could. He had kissed her, tickled the baby, and left with his camera slung over his shoulder. And he had not come back.
  
  " 'Amethysts and emeralds,'" said Roz, frowning thoughtfully. "A jewel story?"
  
  Nick shook his head. "It sounds more like a code, a sort of password. Perhaps one that he'd used with Langley. And Langley had passed on to someone else — named Álvares."
  
  "Of the well-known team, Álvares and Martín? Good God. What made him go out like that without getting in touch with his home office first?"
  
  "I guess that's something we'll never know. But Álvares must have had a very compelling and convincing story for him. It seems he'd had some weeks to work it… Hmm. If de Santos was trying to call his cohorts, it must have been Carla he talked to. Oh, by the way — no message from the lady?"
  
  Rosalind shook her head. "None. Tough luck, Casanova"
  
  Nick saw her sudden change of expression and squeezed her hand.
  
  "She's part of the business — you're not. At least not in the same sense. You're special. I like you, I want you, I enjoy you, and you're adorable. I can't say any of the same things about her. She's a pathetic, neurotic woman."
  
  "Come now, you're protesting too much!"
  
  He stopped both of them by kissing her until she was breathless.
  
  "Now let's get ready to hit the hot spots. I'm hungry!"
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  They ate a sumptuous late dinner at A Cobaça Grande, where other diners eyed them curiously but left them alone. If anyone passing their table lingered long enough to catch a snatch of conversation, all he could hear was Rosita on the subject of hiring domestic staff — including a hairdresser — to serve them in their huge suite, and Robert talking about yachts, cars, the races and his lawyers.
  
  After dispensing an enormous tip they headed for the Carioca Club, in memory of Ferret.
  
  The hall porter had told them it was one of the town's most lavish and expensive, and it was. Genuinely fine murals of Rio and its beaches looked down upon a huge dance floor, at one end of which grew clumps of real palm trees, their heads almost touching the ceiling and their roots growing down through unseen holes in the floor. A six-piece band accompanied a sensually athletic team of acrobats in abbreviated beach wear. As Nick and Rosalind were shown to their ringside table the act finished to appreciative applause and the band led into a tango that throbbed with primitive excitement. They ordered quickly and joined the dancers, losing themselves in the superb music and the pleasure of each other's company, recapturing the slow, sweet thrill of the late afternoon.
  
  When the set ended they returned to their table and saw themselves being watched.
  
  "Cheers, my love," said Rosalind. "He's coming over here. You saw him first, but me — I've spoken to him. That's Silveiro."
  
  Nick took in the setup at a glance. A little round man with a half-solemn, half-jovial expression was threading his way to them from a table at the far side of the floor where another man was seated — a man wearing an air of sadness and a black armband.
  
  The little man stopped at their table and waved a proprietary arm at a passing waiter. "The same all 'round, Pedro," he said. "Forgive me, Senhorina, Senhor, if I intrude. The lady I have had the pleasure of speaking to." He bobbed his head graciously. "Luiz Silveiro at your service, Senhor Milbank. May I join you for a moment?"
  
  "By all means," Nick said grandly. "As long as you do not ask like so many others do, the secret of my success!" He laughed knowingly, and Silveiro chuckled with him.
  
  "Strange that you should say that, Senhor," he said, sitting down. "I had planned to do exactly that!" The merry face quickly settled back into its solemn lines. "But actually I do have a little business to discuss, and I can do it very quickly. No, do not alarm yourself…" noting the expression of distaste on Nick's face. "It is just that as co-owner of this club I might perhaps make your stay here more enjoyable. Perhaps you are even planning to settle? I must confess that I noted your arrival with some interest and have been hoping to meet you. In fact, I have mentioned this to your lady."
  
  He beamed at Rosalind, who nodded in return.
  
  "Well, that's very good of you," said Nick vaguely, and waited.
  
  "You do not mind?" Silveiro hurried on. "Of course one has heard something about you through the newspapers — though one cannot always take some of their nonsense at face value. I would very much like to help make you feel at home here. To be my guest in the club," and he waved an encompassing hand, "at any time you choose. Perhaps to introduce you to some of our sporting figures — possibly assist you in real estate transactions and the hiring of staff. I know how difficult it is to get fair treatment in a new city, especially… Well, my services are at your disposal. Huh. It is about time, Pedro. Do not keep our guests waiting from now on." He frowned at the waiter.
  
  "Why, I think the service is excellent," Rosalind said sweetly.
  
  "Yes, indeed," said Nick. The waiter hurried off, looking grateful. "Your health, Mr. Silveiro."
  
  "Yours, my friends," returned Silveiro. "Well, I will not keep you any longer," he said. "Except to say one more thing. Naturally I have also heard of your desire to find something profitable to invest in. My partner and I have a number of flourishing concerns. At a later date, perhaps you would care to meet him. He is something of a financial wizard, as you will find out if you remain in Rio for long." He chuckled and shook his head ruefully. "Forgive me if I sound intrusive, but… I know that it is not always easy to get one's money out of the States into Brazil. If you are having any such difficulty, I am sure that Perez can be of help. I only offer these suggestions."
  
  Nick allowed his interest to sharpen visibly.
  
  "Currency restrictions, especially under the circumstances, are a bit of a problem. Perhaps there is a way of doing business with you and your partner…? Who is he, by the way?"
  
  Silveiro leaned across the table and spoke in lowered tones. Something a little servile crept into his attitude "His name is Cabral. Perez Cabral. He is sitting alone at that large table across the dance floor. Wearing the black armband. He has unfortunately just suffered a very great loss. His wife, you know." He sighed. "But life goes on. Ordinarily he would not even be out in public so soon, but the club has only just been redecorated and renamed and he wanted to see for himself how things are going. Perhaps you would like to meet him now?"
  
  "Oh, we wouldn't think of it," said Rosalind quickly. "The poor man! I'm sure he doesn't want to be bothered with strangers just now."
  
  "Senhorina, you are most thoughtful," Silveiro said gently, a sad little smile upon his lips. "But you see, he is my good friend, and I think the distraction will do him good. Just a quick meeting, perhaps, to take his mind for a moment off his troubles?" He looked pleadingly at Rosalind and Nick.
  
  "Well, if you're sure it's all right," Nick said hesitantly. "But I do think we can wait. It is not urgent."
  
  "I will ask him first," said Silveiro, rising.
  
  "Fine," said Nick. "But don't press him."
  
  "Of course not," said Silveiro understandingly, and bustled away.
  
  They watched him as he spoke to Cabral. The man with the black armband frowned, listened, nodded, and rose. He followed Silveiro to their table with the slow, easy stride of a man who owns the ground he is walking on. His manner on greeting them was suave and assured, but there was pain and desolation beneath his polished surface.
  
  "Miss Montez, Mr. Milbank… so honored to meet you." A waiter hurried to their table with a fourth chair and they all sat down.
  
  "Luiz is so precipitate," he said after a while, smiling slightly. "Of course I know that he has seen you at your hotel, and we have both wanted to meet you. But you must forgive him if all he thinks of is business." Silveiro smiled. "He is quite right, though, to say that we would like to be of service to you. And you know, Miss Montez, you can help me, too." Perez Cabral looked deep into Rosalind's eyes and seemed to like what he saw.
  
  Rosalind studied him, seeing a handsome man with graying temples and sad eyes.
  
  "I can? In what way, Senhor Cabral?"
  
  "My daughter," said Cabral, turning his gaze away from her and to the table top. "She has no friends in town, you see, since she has spent nearly all her life away at school. And she is so lonely and miserable that sometimes I am afraid for her. Perhaps you would be good enough to — well, perhaps I could prevail upon you to visit her?"
  
  "Of course," said Rosalind, with a rush of sympathy. "Of course I will. I should like to, very much. I suppose she is not… uh… going out?"
  
  "Afraid not." Cabral shook his head. "The mourning period, you know. So it will be boring for you."
  
  "Please don't think that for a minute," Rosalind interrupted. "When may I call on her?"
  
  Silveiro, thought Nick, was tuned in to the conversation with an intentness that scarcely seemed warranted. Nick himself was taking it in with growing interest.
  
  "Tomorrow? In the afternoon?" Cabral suggested. "Then perhaps Mr. Milbank will call for you and at that time we might discuss these import difficulties. Luiz and I, you know, do a certain amount of importing and we know these currency problems. So, if that is convenient to you, Mr. Milbank…?" He raised an enquiring eyebrow at Nick.
  
  "Perfect," said Nick enthusiastically, noticing the rapid approach of a waiter toward their table. "I'll appreciate your help."
  
  The waiter bent over Silveiro and whispered something to him. Silveiro excused himself.
  
  "Forgive me, but — a small matter of business."
  
  He left them quickly and crossed the temporarily deserted dance floor to join a man waiting near a rear door apparently leading to the club offices.
  
  A sharp heel ground suddenly into Nick's ankle. It could only have been Rosalind, and yet she was smiling her social smile and talking to Cabral. Cabral seemed to be responding perfectly normally. So…? Nick's glance flickered back to Silveiro and his companion, who appeared to be discussing something of considerable interest. The other man was big, broad-shouldered, with rather ugly eyes set close together in his small head. Nick took a mental picture of him while sipping his drink. Little Silveiro was staring at a newspaper thrust under his nose by his sudden visitor.
  
  Nick returned his attention to Cabral, who was telling Rosalind that he was sure that his stepdaughter Luisa, at some later date, would enjoy shopping and sightseeing with the kind Miss Montez. Nick slid smoothly into the conversation, of sightseeing attractions and the delights of swift airplane travel, noticing that the man talked elegantly — in clichés.
  
  At last he rose with a sigh and thanked them rather fulsomely for their friendship.
  
  "I see there are some people that I will have to greet," he said regretfully. "And I have imposed upon you long enough. Until tomorrow, then." His tall, slim body bent in a bow, and he left them to pick his way through the tables and smile sadly upon the newcomers among his guests.
  
  "Did you see that man?" hissed Rosalind. "Talking to Silveiro?"
  
  Nick nodded. "Know him?"
  
  "Almost too well. That's Tomaz!"
  
  "So. I thought it might be," murmured Nick. "Drink up, sweetheart. We have work to do."
  
  They talked quietly while they finished their drinks. A Brazilian comedian had the floor. They could hardly be expected to give him their full attention.
  
  "If Silveiro is so close to Cabral," Rosalind said quietly, "and so obviously connected with Tomaz, then doesn't it seem likely that he found out about Maria Cabral being one of our agents? And — and somehow dragged the other names out of her?" She shivered slightly.
  
  "I gathered from Cabral," said Nick thoughtfully, "that his wife died only a few days ago. Didn't you?"
  
  Rosalind looked at him. "Yes, I did."
  
  He could almost feel her mind working, and was sure that her thoughts were the same as his. Why hadn't Maria Cabral reported for so long? When did she die? How? And wasn't Perez Cabral even closer to her than Silveiro could have been?
  
  "But it was Silveiro that Tomaz wanted to see," said Rosalind. "Not Cabral… Is it possible that there's no connection at all? That neither of them knew what Tomaz was up to in his spare time?"
  
  Nick shook his head. "I can't buy that. It's remotely possible. But too remotely. Look. I'm going to skip Appelbaum and de Freitas for now and concentrate on this end. Let's go."
  
  They had paid off their waiter and were threading their way among the tables when they saw Tomaz ahead of them stopping briefly to exchange a word of greeting with Perez Cabral. Cabral seemed to answer coldly — almost with distaste. Silveiro hurried after Tomaz, jangling something in his right hand.
  
  A bunch of keys.
  
  Nick hurried after him, guiding Rosalind along possessively and praying that his maneuver would not be too obvious.
  
  His luck of the day held out.
  
  At the wide doorway to the club Tomaz halted in front of a jovial young man who seemed to be more than slightly drunk. Tomaz was acting as the bouncer. Silveiro, behind him, tried to sidestep. Nick pushed Rosalind in front of him, presumably out of the way of the nailing arms of the jovial young man. But something went wrong with his chivalry. The man somehow tripped over Nick's outstretched foot and plunged straight at Silveiro. In the brief confusion that followed, no one could possibly have noticed the little extra shove that forced Silveiro to drop his keys and hastily scramble after them. And no one could have thought that Mr. Robert Milbank was being anything other than helpful when he steadied Luiz Silveiro and gave him back the fallen keys.
  
  Luiz Silveiro held gold key number two.
  
  Who, Nick wondered, held gold key number one?
  
  As he turned to Rosalind with a deprecating little smile, he saw Perez Cabral coming toward the group at the door. There was smooth authority in his step and cold venom in his eyes.
  
  Nick shook his head at the young drunk and guided Rosalind out of the club.
  
  
  
  
  
  Night Life of a Spy
  
  
  
  
  There was a message waiting for Nick in his mail slot at the Copacabana International. It was from Carla.
  
  The evening newspapers were also waiting. They blazoned out the story of Carmen de Santos and Michael Nolan, and their details of Nolan's activities and suspicions were amazingly complete. One of the subheads read: No One Knows Where Langley Is. Another said: Body in Nolan's Room Not Nolan's.
  
  Nick skimmed the stories with a sort of grim satisfaction. Buried near the end of the most informative of them was one line he was especially glad to read: 'Innocencia Andrade, singer at the Moondust Club (known to patrons as Lolita) demands — and gets — police protection.'
  
  Rosalind listened with a cynical smile as he read her Carla's message.
  
  Afraid to call, the message said. Made number of calls today and suspect someone listening in. Am frightened and need you. Don't call. Please come — come as soon as you read this, no matter what time it is. Don't tell R. What's ours is ours, and I am yours… Carla.
  
  "Will you go?" asked Roz. "She seems to have a lot of faith that you'll hop to it when she calls. Or whistles."
  
  "That's a sneaky smile you have, my love," Nick said reproachfully. "Yes, I'll go. It may be my last chance to butter her up. And after that — an early morning visit to the club, to see if I can find a keyhole for a golden key."
  
  Rosalind's eyes widened. "Tonight? But we'll both be seeing Cabral tomorrow."
  
  "Tonight," he said firmly. "Can you handle the radio as well as I think you can?"
  
  She nodded. "Yes, but…"
  
  "Then get on to Hawk. Tell him where we stand now."
  
  He left a few minutes later, leaving her with that tingling feeling that came with his touch and his kiss, and a new feeling — jealousy.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  It was well after two o'clock on a moonless night. He left the Jag parked on a side street and made his way to Pierce Langley's house. It was in darkness but for a dim glow that came from deep in the interior. He melded with the darkness and walked quietly around the place, then waited in silence for a few minutes at the front door before pressing the bell. A small barred window opened in the door and Carla looked out. The door opened with a scraping of locks.
  
  "Robert!" she said breathily. "Robert. I have been so frightened. Close the door. There." She bolted it behind him. Nick noticed that the lock was, if anything, even sturdier than the one on João de Santos' front door.
  
  "What about Pierce?" he said bluntly. "What do you hear about him?"
  
  She took him by the arm, guiding him into the dark living room.
  
  "Nothing," she said, standing before him in the dark. "Nothing. I think he will not come back. I am frightened, and I am also glad."
  
  "What frightened you?" he asked, feeling her brush against him. In the darkness he could feel the diaphanous softness of what she was wearing.
  
  "Later," she said softly. "Let me tell you later. When you have made me less frightened." Her hands probed at his dinner jacket. He felt her warm breath on his face.
  
  "What about me?" he said sharply. "Maybe I'm scared, too. Oh, I want you, Carla. I told you that. But how do I know this isn't the old rabbit game? Husband away, all dark in the house, and suddenly — poof! flashbulbs in all directions, and trouble from here to hell. No, I want to be sure you're alone in the house. Show me."
  
  "For God's sake," she said angrily. "Is that the kind of man you are?"
  
  "Yes, that's the kind of man I am," he said evenly. "Or so I've found, since I started making money. Show me.
  
  "God damn you," she said softly. "All right. I'll show you."
  
  She led him through the house. He checked everything — windows, doors, closets, dark corners. By chance, or by something, they stopped in a bedroom equipped with an enormous oval bed and a number of mirrors. Nick looked at the bed.
  
  "Mr. and Mrs.?" he asked nastily.
  
  "Mine and mine only," she said. "Now are you satisfied that no one will leap out at you?"
  
  "I am satisfied," he said, looking at her in the dim light. "I hope you understand, Carla. I play for keeps. I must be sure. I was taken once — only once — before. Now what was it that you were going to tell me?"
  
  "That I was going to tell you later," she amended. "Or would you rather leave at once?" Her wandering hands fumbled at his clothes. "You can leave and I will never see you again. Or you can stay." The soft, long fingers prowled along his shirt buttons. "Do you want to leave?" A hand stroked him somewhere below the belt. "Do you really want to leave me now? Do you?" The hands went beneath his shirt and roamed his back and chest. Her mouth touched his, and he felt her trembling. Their tongues met, and her hands went on moving. Now they were swift and urgent. Partly uncovered, he stood against her and felt that the sheer robe had parted. Her thighs swiveled rhythmically against him. Her soft tongue parted from his and she whispered: "There now, there. Would you leave me? Would you?"
  
  For answer he drew her even closer to him and found her lips again.
  
  "I wouldn't leave you now," he said, and lowered his tall body to meet hers.
  
  She backed against the bed, pulling him with her.
  
  "Take them off. Take them off," she breathed. "Hurry."
  
  He never did undress completely. He did not want to; and she was much too ready. Something of her pulsing excitement began to affect him and she knew it almost as soon as he did. She laughed softly and spread-eagled herself beneath him.
  
  "You do want me, don't you?" she sighed. It was a breath of triumph and anticipation. Her arms went about his shoulders and her tongue flickered over his lips.
  
  "Be strong with me," Carla whispered. "Be strong, but not too sudden."
  
  But she was the sudden one. Her legs knotted themselves around his and joined him to her, and her smooth, firm hips pumped with controlled energy. She moved much as they had moved together on the dance floor, with incredible grace and intoxicating rhythm. It was an erotic dance and a horizontal one, but it had a wild sort of beauty. He, too, performed with gracefully controlled strength, with the almost superhuman stamina and fluidity of an expert in the art of Yoga. She moaned and sighed, and her body rolled and strained.
  
  "Oh, more… more… more…" she groaned. "Give me everything…"
  
  He marveled at her plastic strength and insatiable hunger. She twisted, and made him twist with her; she exerted her full strength to provoke yet more of his and make their joint excitement rise; he gave her back his own electric energy and his muscular power — leashed, or else she might be broken beneath him, but not subdued. She took it all and wanted more and more and more…
  
  "You animal!" she almost spat. "God, you beautiful animal!"
  
  And he was not being gentle. There was nothing sweet and subtle about their lovemaking; it was like a mating to the background of jungle drums that beat slowly and compellingly at first and then built in tempo and volume to such a point that a wild crescendo had to come.
  
  Her muscles tightened where they touched his. He could feel the dampness of her skin, so close to his as their bodies moved in intimate accord. She started gasping in a sort of frenzy and the lovely, leggy body became wildly agitated.
  
  His mind told him coldly that the passion was hers alone, but his body told him otherwise.
  
  It was an explosion, a volcanic eruption, a wild upheaval of chunks of world flying about; it was a blazing holocaust, searing, fading, dying… leaving its victims with nothing but a whimper and a twitch.
  
  There was release from everything except the everlasting message imprinted on Nick's brain: You Are Still A Spy. Get Up and Get Your Clothes On.
  
  They lay beside each other for a while, not touching. At last she shivered and drew her frivolous robe about her. Then he kissed her lightly on the ears and eyes and began to put himself back together again.
  
  "Carla… Carla the magnificent," he said. "And what could possibly frighten anyone like you?"
  
  "Hmmmm?" She stretched delicately purring like a jungle cat.
  
  "You said that you were frightened," he reminded her. "What was it that frightened you?"
  
  "Oh." She sat up suddenly and moved to sit alongside him at the edge of the tremendous oval bed. The dim light found a worried frown between her eyes.
  
  "Perhaps it is nothing, but — have you seen the papers?"
  
  Nick squinted at her. "Only briefly. Why?"
  
  "There's a great mess about some nosy reporter claiming that Pierce is only one of several people who've disappeared lately, and one or two of the others have been found dead. It is a crazy story and of course I don't believe in it, but…"
  
  "But what?" Nick asked sharply, withdrawing from her by the slightest fraction of an inch.
  
  "But there is something strange going on. I — I — just before you came, maybe twenty minutes before, I thought I heard someone trying to get in at the front door and then the windows."
  
  "What in the world!" he said irritably. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
  
  She turned and stared directly into his eyes. "Perhaps because I thought you wouldn't care to stay." He made an angry sound and turned his eyes away. "But it wasn't only that," Carla continued. "I made some calls today to find out what had become of Pierce. And after a while I was almost sure that my line was being tapped. There was a sort of beep-beep sound every now and then that I never noticed before. I know I'd never heard it before…"
  
  "Where's your phone?" said Nick, pulling on his clothes.
  
  "There's one in the living room and one in Pierce's study. Wait, though. There is something else. When I got through to Pierce's office they were surprised when I said he had called me from there to say he was going away. They were sure that he had called from here."
  
  Nick frowned. "That's very strange. When exactly was he supposed to have called them, and when did you last talk to him?"
  
  "When I talked to him," she recalled, "it was late on a Monday afternoon. Now that I think of it, it was probably just after office hours, so perhaps no one else was there at the time. And they say he called them early the next morning, shortly after the time he used to come in. And that was December 3. And now it's the middle of January."
  
  "I do think that's very odd," said Nick slowly. "Do you mean to say that during all that time you didn't even try to find him, and no one even called you to find out where he was?"
  
  Carla sighed wearily. "Oh, Robert… Robert. Do we have to go through that again? I told you. I felt nothing about him. I can't help it. Of course, now I… now I am worried. Now I'm sure that something's wrong. Just about everybody knew how things were between us. They weren't very likely to call me to find out where he was. Except for the office. They say they did try to call me several times, but never found me at home. The police asked me a lot of questions this evening," she said with a sudden change of tone. "They wanted to know if anyone else had been asking for him lately."
  
  Nick drew in a sharp breath. "My God! I hope you didn't mention my name! You know I can't afford to be dragged into anything like this. I have enough trouble waiting for me in New York."
  
  "No, I didn't mention your name," she said with a touch of scorn. "And I won't, unless…"
  
  "Unless what?" His voice was hard.
  
  Her eyes flickered over his face. "Unless you try to — to stay away from me."
  
  He stared down at her, his expression cruel and menacing.
  
  "No, Carla. I don't make deals like that. You don't blackmail me." His hands reached down to touch her throat and his thumbs caressed the soft flesh meaningfully. "Nobody threatens me. Understand? Nobody. You can only be the loser if you try. Don't try." He squeezed less gently and then let his hands fall to his sides. She clutched her throat protectively, fear shining in her eyes.
  
  "You wouldn't do that," she whispered. "You wouldn't. I was only trying to…"
  
  "Sure, Carla." He smiled unpleasantly. "You were only trying to make a monkey out of me." He turned his smile into a rueful grin. "I'm sorry, baby. I don't want to hurt you. Especially not after such a wonderful night. But you've got to get it through your head that I won't be played around with." He straightened his tie and dusted off his jacket. "I think I'd better leave you now."
  
  "Yes, you'd better," she said in a low voice. "You can find your own way out."
  
  "All right." He turned toward the bedroom door and stopped. "Oh. Listen. You'd better lock up carefully after me and then call the police to say you've had prowlers, because if someone was trying to…"
  
  "Get out!" she screamed suddenly. "Get out! First you threaten me and then you offer me your damned advice! What kind of a swine are you!" Her voice broke and became a sob. "Go," she said dully. "Just go."
  
  He stared at her for a moment, then turned away wondering what had made her what she was and feeling a sense of shame much the same as before.
  
  Picking his way through the dim hall and living room he wondered if he should try to check the telephone but decided that he'd already overstayed his welcome. He risked a cautious look through the Judas window, feeling sure that Milbank would have done exactly that, then let himself out into the cool night air when he was reasonably sure that no one was around. Once outside he glided swiftly to the side of the house and waited in the shadows, looking out into the night. After a moment he heard the front door rattle decisively without opening, and he knew that Carla had locked it after him.
  
  He watched and waited for some minutes before moving on. The houses were nearly all in darkness, but the street lights were bright. He felt as conspicuous as a bright red pimple on a nose. But Robert Milbank would only look mildly furtive instead of melting through the concealing darkness of back yards. He could only hope that his instinct would help him to spot trouble before it spotted him.
  
  What he did see was a pair of policemen strolling the block toward the Langley house on the opposite side of the street. He made himself stagger slightly as he passed them. He knew that they had noticed him swaying happily toward his car as though he had no thought of anything but home and bed.
  
  They went their way.
  
  Nick swiftly covered the remaining block to his car. Habit made him circle it cautiously and peer under the hood before getting in and driving off.
  
  The next time he parked the car he left it several blocks from the Copa International and braced himself for a fairly long walk to the Carioca Club. His first move was to redistribute Wilhelmina, Hugo and Pierre to their favorite positions — which he had felt they could not tactfully occupy during his visit to Carla. Then he headed for the Club in long, loping strides that ate up the blocks.
  
  The Carioca Club was dark and silent when he reached it and the nearby streets were almost deserted. He waited, watching the front entrance of the Club for any late-working employees to depart. Then he walked around the block looking for the back entrance and anyone who might be guarding it.
  
  Someone was. A streetlamp threw a shadow on a blank rear wall.
  
  Careless idiot, thought Nick dispassionately, and walked once more around the block to make sure that no one else was waiting around. This time he came around behind the shadow with Wilhelmina's willing butt ready for the assault. The man was leaning against the wall of a brick passageway lined with garbage cans and assorted trash, and he was yawning. Wilhelmina came from the side and slammed into his temple. The man managed one surprised, dazed look before Wilhelmina came down again with savage force, and then he dropped. Nick dragged him into the passageway and lifted from him one snub-nosed gun, one slim blackjack, and an ordinary bunch of keys. That was all except for a large roll of money, which he decided to keep to give Sleepy something to think about when he came around. If he did.
  
  The keys were useful. They opened a back door with a remarkably intricate lock and let Nick step into a stale-smelling back hallway without having to resort to his Lockpickers' Helper. But there wasn't a golden key in the bunch. There could only be one reason why: whatever door the golden keys fit wasn't planned to be opened tonight. Nick closed the back door but left it on the latch. His pencil flashlight played along the hall. One open door led to a vast kitchen. A short passageway led to a group of tiny dressing rooms smelling of old powder and older perspiration. Another led into the vast recesses of the Club proper. The dim shape of a seated man was barely visible at a table near the door. Nick closed it as silently as he had opened it and cat-footed his way back to the rear hallway. Nothing stirred. There was one more door to investigate. It was locked, and Sleepy's keys didn't fit. Nick hesitated. One in front, one temporarily immobilized in back, and — what behind the door?
  
  Come on, Carter. You're here — you might as well.
  
  His left hand worked at the lock and his right was ready with Wilhelmina.
  
  It seemed like an eternity before the lock gave and he pulled the door open. And still there was silence.
  
  He stepped onto a small landing and looked down a flight of stairs. The pencil beam stroked light over a storage basement. The stairs were wide and sturdy and made no creak of complaint as he went down. Most of the stuff below was junk: spare chairs, broken tables, covered props for the floor shows. But part of the area was apparently used as a machine shop for in-the-house repairs, for well-equipped work benches lined one of the walls. Two doors led off the main area. One yielded to the Lockpickers' Helper and revealed a room piled high with crates. The crates were addressed to Cabral Carioca Club, and marked Club Furnishings.
  
  But the one that was open contained carbines and automatic rifles. And it didn't take an eye even as expert as Nick's to realize that they were made in China.
  
  
  
  
  
  Encounter at the Club
  
  
  
  
  Red China.
  
  He had seen these things before in Viet Nam — Chinese copies of U.S. and Russian weapons, used by the Vietcong in their guerilla raids against Vietnamese forces and American installations. Nick's mind raced. Maria Cabral must have found out about these shipments and tried to pass the information on. In itself, it was nothing — illegal imports, gun-running — but the implications were enormous. Why from Red China, and where to? Neighboring Latin American countries? And had she tried to tell any of the others?
  
  There was one more locked room to go. He closed the gun room carefully and moved across the floor to the other. It was not only locked but padlocked: there were two identical keyholes in the padlock.
  
  It was while he was working on the strange locks that he heard the light footfalls upstairs. He cursed softly and doused his pencil flashlight, hoping against hope that whoever walked upstairs was beading for the men's room and not the door that Sleepy guarded when he was awake.
  
  But Hope was a grinning liar, and the footfalls ended with a sharp exclamation followed by a silence. Nick picked his way silently through the discarded chairs and tables and headed toward the stairway. Something like an alarm clock went off in the heights above him and the door to the cellar swung open. He ducked back behind the stairs and waited. Lights blazed in the junk-filled room, and he could sense that someone was standing at the top of the stairway, probably just out of range of the door. He drew himself back against a cobwebby wall and waited for whatever was going to come down. In a moment, something did.
  
  The man was tall and magnificently built. He walked with a step much like Nick's, light and springy, and he carried his body with the confidence of a man who knows his strength and what it can do for him. But he was foolhardy. He looked everywhere but under the stairs. Nick waited until he was well into the room before he made his move. It was a flying tackle that could have earned him the title of Ail-American any day of the week. The man fell with a hideous grunt, with Nick instantly on his back twisting up the arm that held the gun.
  
  "Aaahhhh!" the man moaned. Nick slammed the complaining face down into the floor several times in rapid succession, applying an excruciating pressure hold on the back of the neck at the same time until there was no more sound from the handsome man. He kicked the gun far back into a corner, and raced for the stairs with Wilhelmina at the ready.
  
  The back door was partly open and Sleepy still lay in an uncomfortable slump. But he was not alone. A man stood looking down at him, and as Nick came to the back door the man said: "Martín? Martín!" and his head swung up suddenly in vast surprise.
  
  Wilhelmina spat once, with noisy spite, and the caller's face twisted with the unbelievable pain. He swayed for a long moment, then dropped. Nick leapt over his body and ran, crouching low and twisting as though he were running across a battlefield.
  
  Which, in fact, he was.
  
  Footsteps pounded along behind him, two sets. One set paused briefly when a pained, moaning voice whispered: "Álvares! Help… help me…" and the other followed decisively. A shot slammed past his ear.
  
  But this he had to see. He had missed seeing Álvares once before and he wasn't going to again.
  
  He made a sudden leaping turn sideways and fired twice as he jumped. The first of his pursuers dropped in his tracks with a choked scream, and his last wild shot caromed against a far wall. At almost the same time a voice hissed, in the silence between shots, "You blind fool! What happened? How many are there?" And then a sharp sound of disgust, followed by something like a foot striking a fallen body, and a groan.
  
  The man who straightened up so swiftly from the pathetic remains in the passageway came up firing, and firing with accuracy. But in the moment of turning and firing a return shot, Nick saw that the man who had answered to the name of Álvares wore the face of Luiz Silveiro.
  
  Which was scarcely a surprise to Nick, but it made things so much neater.
  
  And then, suddenly, there was another man coming at him with a blazing gun, and from such an angle that Nick could only race toward the main street in search of an escape route.
  
  His swift, zigzagging course took him to a corner building with an ideally sheltered doorway, and he threw himself behind the cover and waited seconds for company to arrive.
  
  A tall gangling man careened clumsily past him, looked wildly about for a moment, saw Nick and tried to fire. But Nick was ready for him and squeezing Wilhelmina's willing trigger before the man had even caught his balance. One bullet would have to do it. Wilhelmina — no matter how willing — was running dry.
  
  One did it. It skimmed the skinny arm that held the gun and slammed into the bony chest. Nick, again, was moving even as he fired, darting away from the corner along the light-splashed sidewalk, hearing the running footsteps too close behind him and feeling something whizzing past his cheek. He had reached the next corner and had flung himself past it to cross the street at an oblique angle when he realized that the running feet had stopped. But something else had started — a feeling, more than a sound — of wakefulness, of people behind the darkened windows stirring, of muted wonderings about the noises in the night. He went on running with his light, loping stride until he had once again crossed the street that ran behind the club and covered a good three blocks more. Then he made a sharp right turn into a back street and padded on until he could no longer sense the chaos he had left behind him. At last he slowed into a comfortable walk and took a devious route toward his car and the Copa International, wondering if Silveiro could have recognized him. He decided that Silveiro could not have seen his face, but probably had a pretty clear picture of a tall man in a dark evening suit and might just possibly put two and two together.
  
  'Two and two…' Gold keys with numbers on them. A padlocked door with two identical keyholes. Number One? Perez Cabral was shaping up nicely for the Number One position. I may not have gotten the big man himself, Nick thought grimly, but at least I seem to be decimating the ranks of the enemy.
  
  He thought with some pleasure of what Silveiro must be going through right now, either to tidy up the bodies or explain them away, and of what the suave Cabral with the lingering air of sadness would be able to come up with by way of explanation.
  
  A faint glow was already beginning to touch the sky when he reached the Jaguar and made his customary check. He drove around slowly for the next few minutes before deciding on his next move. If Silveiro or his Number One man had any reason to connect Robert Milbank with tonight's proceedings, they would have had time by now to send a man to wait for him at his hotel — not to take pot shots at him, but to report on when and how he came in.
  
  Nick was driving toward the downtown area when he consciously decided what to do. Leaving his obtrusive car in an unobtrusive place, he rolled into a small second-rate hotel with a sheepish grin and a babbled story of what his wife would do to him if he stumbled home at that hour. Shamelessly pulling bills off the roll he'd filched from Sleepy, he paid in advance for his room and signed in with one of his favorite indecipherable signatures — Nikita Khrushchev, to anyone in the know — and then went upstairs to sleep the sleep of the completely blameless for a couple of hours before calling the Copa International and asking for himself.
  
  Rosalind answered sleepily.
  
  "G'morning, lazy," he said cheerfully. "I thought you'd be up sharpening the Axe for me."
  
  "I did that before I went to bed," she said, instantly awake. "I hope you're not calling me from Madame Whatsit's boudoir; if you are, I might just use that axe."
  
  "Shame on you," he said reproachfully. "Do you think I'd want to interrupt her sleep?"
  
  "I think you probably have already," she said acidly. "Or at least delayed it."
  
  "It's a lovely morning," he said briskly. "I think we ought to take advantage of it and make an early trip to the beach. Why don't you…"
  
  "Are you trying to change the subject? Where are you, anyway?"
  
  "Yes, I am, and I'm at the Hotel Dom Pedro, just back of the main downtown shopping district. You see, I got in late from a binge, and I didn't think it was tactful to go home. I want you to leave there as soon as you can — don't answer the phone again or the doorbell — and come here without bathing suits and a change of clothes for me. I don't want you to be seen when you leave."
  
  "I'll join you as dowdy little Maggie Jones," she said demurely, "and leave, with or without you, as my usual scintillating self."
  
  "Fine. Better leave a little ahead of me, though — but we'll discuss that when you get here. And bring the kind of bag that'll have plenty of room for everything but won't be too recognizable…"
  
  She was there by the time he had breakfasted and showered and left a few minutes ahead of him to do some window shopping on the Rua Ouvidor. Nick's evening clothes were folded at the bottom of her capacious beach bag. He joined her, looking cheerful and refreshed, and admired her choice of costume jewelry before leading her to the Jag and driving off to a smooth section of beach at Ipanema-Leblon.
  
  They plunged far out beyond the surf and played like dolphins in the morning sun. Nick swam with great, strong strokes, exerting himself until he could feel the pull of his muscles, then enjoying the restfulness of lying on his back on the low swell, feeling his body relax, inch by inch, until he seemed to become part of the salt air and the spray. Then he raced her, taking pleasure in her graceful strokes and unforced speed, luxuriating in the unquestioning companionship and sense of glorious freedom that she offered him.
  
  Later they lay beside each other on the soft sand, talking idly, noticing but not caring that the beach was filling up and that children were playing almost at their feet.
  
  But when the children wandered off, their talk was far from idle. He told her most of what had happened the night before — hedging only on the more explicit details of his visit to Carla — and voiced the queries that had crept into his mind. She listened to him gravely, offering him her comments. She looked so clean and lovely, so newly touched with ripening tan that he wished their life together was real and that he could spend his days and nights touching that soft gold-velvet skin and making love to her. And there were moments on that sunlit beach when he was sure her feelings were in harmony with his. As Robert Milbank he caressed her carelessly, not caring what the world might think of her. As Nick Carter he leaned over her and said: "Sweet baby, Rosalind… my love… When this is over…" and touched the damp hair that curled around her ears.
  
  When the sun was high they left the beach and drove along the shore before turning and heading back to the Copa International. Nick left the Jag with an attendant and they strolled into the ornate lobby past the flower shop and the fountain, swinging the beach bag and touching each other possessively.
  
  "Want to say hello to your friend?" he murmured, stopping at the newsstand and buying a copy of the Rio Journal. "Note the lurking figure of Tomaz, surveying us so casually from behind the pineapple palms."
  
  "Banana," she corrected him. "He doesn't look at all well this morning. What did you do to him last night?"
  
  "Nothing, as far as I know," he said, and scanned the headlines. They were full of riots in another sector of the Latin world. A second-lead story had something to do with mysterious shots heard in the general vicinity of the Carioca Club last night. All was quiet when the police arrived, although certain bloodstains and drag marks had been discerned and the authorities were investigating reports of an attempted robbery at the Club.
  
  There were no messages in Robert Milbank's mail slot. But the presence of Tomaz was a message in itself… an ambiguous one. Who was he supposed to be able to recognize? Only Mary Louise Baker of the Colorado Institute of Indian Studies, and she certainly wasn't staying at the Copa International. It could only mean that someone was here with him, or that someone had pointed them out to him or otherwise identified them. But there was no doubt that he had been on the lookout for them. Nick saw him watch them to the elevators and then dart into a phone booth. Well, tough luck, he thought. He can't have much to report.
  
  The first thing he did when they got upstairs was to order up a lavish early lunch. The second was to scan the apartment for signs of intruders — negative — and the third was to take Roz in his arms and kiss away all thoughts of Carla. The fourth was to disengage himself reluctantly and let Roz call Perez Cabral.
  
  Their lunch had arrived before she got through to him. A housekeeper explained that he was at the Club, but if the Senhorina would wait for a moment she could put her through on a direct line… When Cabral at last answered his suave voice sounded slightly distraught, but he was most appreciative of Miss Montez' call, and Luisa would hope to see her that afternoon around four o'clock. He himself, unfortunately, would not be home until after six, but perhaps Mr. Milbank would call at about six-thirty and they could all meet…? Rosalind assured him that they could.
  
  The cold lunch got even colder. Nick stood over her while she talked, his strong fingers stroking her hair, his lips tickling the base of her neck. When she hung up she said: "Now, look, you…"
  
  "Show me," he said, and smiled disarmingly. He reached for her and she came to him, pretending a small frown but smiling with her eyes. His arms drew her close to him and their lips met.
  
  "I want you," he said, so quietly that she could barely hear him. "On a soft bed, in a room just light enough so I can see your face and your wonderful body. Let me love you, sweetheart… slow and sweet and right. The way I wanted to love you on the beach, in the sand… the way I wanted you, even in the water. Forget everything except that I want you…" And somehow he was carrying her to "his" room; and somehow he was taking off her clothes with very careful fingers that would not allow themselves to be anything other than softly probing and very, very gentle.
  
  "I want you, too," she said, as quietly as he. "I do want you. I want you in bed with me."
  
  Much more quickly he undressed himself and for the first time since they had come to share the suite they were beneath the soft, cool sheets together. His hands explored the firm, smooth shape of her and felt its softness where it should be soft and its hardness where it should be hard. The twin peaks of her breasts and the trembling of her legs showed him that her need was as strong as his. He kissed her breasts until they softened and stroked her legs until the trembling stopped and a new pulsating began. They lay together whispering and exploring until the fires glowed too brightly to be played with any more, then their bodies joined and clung together. Each exulted in the other's obvious pleasure and made it grow with such intensity that at last the very perfection of their mutual rapture became too much to bear. They floated over the summit together and hung suspended for an impossibly long, burning moment on a soft cloud of absolute happiness. Then they glided down to earth, glowing with dreamy contentment.
  
  After a while it began all over again.
  
  Lunch was very late that day.
  
  When at last they turned their minds to other things they were both satisfied yet starving.
  
  All softness fell away from them when they made themselves start thinking about the six who disappeared, but the sense of close companionship remained.
  
  "Try to find out," said Nick, spearing a succulent piece of lobster, "how and when Maria Cabral is supposed to have died. If the girl is taking it so hard she may be grateful for a chance to talk about it. Of course, she may not want to talk at all, in which case you'll have to rely on your native cunning."
  
  "Shouldn't be too hard to get it out of her," said Rosalind. "No, don't give me any more of that — I want to be wide awake this afternoon. She can't very well refuse to answer a civil, sympathetic question. But what I wonder is, why is Cabral so anxious for me to meet her? Or is the answer so obvious that I should be ashamed to ask?"
  
  "I don't think it's obvious at all," he answered. "But on the other hand I don't think we have a very wide range of possibilities. A, he really is fond of his daughter…"
  
  "Stepdaughter," she corrected him.
  
  "Stepdaughter, if it makes any difference — and it may. He is fond of her and he wants company for her. Or, B, Luisa be damned, he just wants you inside his house. But don't forget that he asked you to visit even before my shenanigans at the Club. Could we have given ourselves away already? I don't see how. No, I can't believe that anyone caught on."
  
  "Maybe he just suspects any newcomer in town of being a potential enemy and makes a habit of looking them over," she suggested.
  
  "In a city this size? With tourists swarming in from all directions every day? He'd have a full house all the time. True, we have made ourselves a little more conspicuous than the average visitor, and we did wind up sitting right under his nose at the Club, but I don't think that's enough to pinpoint us. Perhaps it's instinct, or your big brown eyes. Anyway, play it cool. I'd better lend you Pepito."
  
  "Who dat?" she enquired, eyebrows raised.
  
  "A variation on Pierre, designed especially for the no-kill spy."
  
  
  
  
  
  Will You Walk into My Parlor
  
  
  
  
  The Cabral home was an elaborate stone house with a beautifully landscaped garden set high on a hillside blazing with summer flowers. Nick dropped Rosalind off in the driveway and drove briskly back to Copacabana Beach feeling the old restlessness burning inside him. He knew that it was time for things to come to a head, and he sensed that Rosalind's meeting was going to be crucial.
  
  He picked up the afternoon papers and clipped them in the privacy of the luxury suite. Flatfoot had recovered sufficiently to refuse to talk, and the driver of the fleeing car had been found. Michael Nolan's disappearance was the subject of a great deal of wild speculation, and one of the Carioca Club's "night watchmen" had been hospitalized with seemingly serious wounds. There was no mention of the two men he had killed, nor of the fourth who must, Nick thought, be feeling sick and sore today.
  
  Nick attached a short, cryptic note to the clippings and addressed the envelope containing them to Milbank's New York lawyers, knowing that Hawk would be apprised of the contents as soon as Axe's New York branch received them. Then, activating Oscar Johnson, he sent off a radio message — also ostensibly to his lawyers — which said:
  
  URGENTLY REQUEST CHECK BACKGROUND HISTORY CARIOCA CLUB OWNERS IMPORTERS LUIZ SILVEIRO AND PEREZ CABRAL. AM CONSIDERING CLOSING BUSINESS DEAL PENDING YOUR INFORMATION AND SUBSEQUENT TO DISCUSSION R AND SELF WITH CABRAL THIS EVENING. ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT INVESTIGATE CABRAL SINCE HAVE REASON TO BE SURE OF SILVEIRO. HAVE ALREADY INSPECTED CLUB AND FIND IT GOING CONCERN WITH AFFILIATIONS OLD FRIENDS OF OURS. URGE SWIFT ACTION CUT RED TAPE IF NO FURTHER WORD SOONEST.
  
  
  
  The answer came back: EXPECT DEFINITIVE REPORT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. FOLLOWUP READY IF REQUIRED.
  
  
  
  Twenty-four hours! He certainly demanded swift action, that old dynamo in Washington. It meant that whatever Nick might be doing twenty-four hours from now, he'd have to drop it and get on the radio to Hawk or someone else would be on the way to take over… perhaps to look for the pieces of Nick Carter and Rosalind Adler as well.
  
  At least they'd know where to start looking.
  
  Almost five o'clock.
  
  He drove downtown and left his registered letter at the Post Office, then sat down at a sidewalk café to sample an agua de côco con ouiski and wonder if he should not take this opportunity to make some sort of check on Appelbaum and de Freitas. He decided that it would be far better to follow the Cabral-Carioca Club lead before doing any outside digging, and that he preferred his ouiski with ordinary agua or preferably soda.
  
  Nick looked at his watch and grinned suddenly. There was something he wanted to do before the stores closed. Hawk would be furious, but naturally a man like Robert Milbank could be expected to buy a few souvenirs for his lady friend or friends… Aquamarine, now, or amethyst, or golden topaz. Any of these would go well with Rosalind. He paid for his drink and went off on a shopping tour.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "I didn't even see her," she said tonelessly. "I didn't even say goodbye."
  
  Luisa Continho Cabral sat with her hands folded on her lap, her eyes fixed on the richly carpeted floor.
  
  "I don't quite understand," said Rosalind gently. "You mean that you weren't here when your mother… when your mother died?"
  
  "No, I wasn't home. And neither was she."
  
  Congealed misery stared out of the nineteen-year-old eyes, the small, piquant face was drawn and pale. But her small bones were finely formed and the dark, sad eyes were enormous and curtained with long, soft lashes; her thick jet-black hair curled about her tiny ears. If she looks at all like her mother, Rosalind thought, Maria must have been very beautiful. She had seen her picture in Washington, but it had had the lifeless quality of a passport photo and conveyed little of the essential woman. If this kid could ever smile with happiness, she would be radiantly beautiful.
  
  "I understand that you've been studying in Lisbon," said Roz, feeling it was time for a minor change of tack.
  
  "Studying!" The girl laughed bitterly. "As if I could study when I knew something was wrong and no one ever wrote to me! He said she was away from home! He said that, but mother never wrote to tell me. How could I know where she was?"
  
  "There are always times in people's lives," Rosalind ventured, feeling her way carefully, "when they find it difficult to sit down and write a letter. Perhaps it was because she was ill, and didn't want you to worry. I take it that she used to write you frequently?"
  
  There was a brief pause.
  
  "No," Luisa said reluctantly. "Neither of us wrote very often. I know she was busy with many things, and at school you…" she shrugged hopelessly. "We used to make a joke about the annual letter. But it was as if there was no need to write; we knew how much we thought about each other. Especially since my father…" Her words trailed off. Rosalind saw tears gleaming on her lashes.
  
  "Perhaps we've talked enough about it for the time being," Rosalind said quietly. "I was really hoping that we might be able to…"
  
  "Why do we talk about it at all?" the younger girl burst out suddenly. "Why did he send you here? Was it to question me? Does he want to know what I think? I'll tell him what I think, if that is what he wants! There is no need for you!"
  
  "I'm sure there is no need for me at all." Rosalind made her voice calm and dispassionate, but little lights were beginning to flash inside her mind. "But I wonder why you think he sent me here to question you? He asked me to come, yes. But why in the world would he pick a perfect stranger, and not even supply me with the questions to ask? And I can assure you that he didn't."
  
  Luisa looked her full in the face.
  
  "Then why did he ask you?" And the small mouth stopped its trembling.
  
  "I have no more idea than you have," Rosalind said coolly. She waited for a moment, noting the reaction of guarded curiosity, and added off-handedly: "He did say that he felt you were too much on your own."
  
  Luisa almost spat. "He said that! Since when has he ever given a… a…" She tried to say damn, but her convent training held her back. "He has never cared before," she finished lamely.
  
  "I'm not sure that he does now," said Rosalind, hoping that it was not too bold a stroke.
  
  Luisa stared. "Just — exactly — who — are — you?" she asked, in a small, baffled voice.
  
  "Just someone who would like to have met your mother," Rosalind said quietly, pulling on her gloves. "And who didn't — I must confess — take much of a shine to your stepfather. Of course you don't need to mention that to him unless you want to."
  
  "I never talk to him anymore," Luisa said distinctly.
  
  I hope you're being honest, little girl, thought Rosalind, or the chances are I may just fall right on my face. But at least Nick knows where I am. Just as he did yesterday when I was at the museum, she thought in flash of resentment.
  
  "Then perhaps you will not mention to him that I had a message for your mother from someone in the States, someone who wanted very much to know why your mother was no longer writing to them, either."
  
  Luisa looked at her. "Someone in the United States? I did not know my mother knew anyone there. But then I did not know she knew anyone in Salvador."
  
  "In Salvador?" It was Rosalind's turn to stare. "Why Salvador?"
  
  "Because that is where my stepfather Cabral said that my mother died."
  
  "Oh," said Rosalind, and ran completely out of conversation. She fumbled with her bag and gloves. "You mean that…? I'm sorry, Luisa, dear. I've pounced on you like the Thing from Outer Space, and I can see that it was wrong of me. It's the sort of intrusion I would have resented very much myself. But perhaps you won't mind too much if I call you within the next few days and…?"
  
  "Who was it?" Luisa asked crisply. "Who was it in the States who wanted to know about my mother?"
  
  Rosalind felt an almost overwhelming surge of pity as she looked at the small, lovely figure of Maria Cabral's only child.
  
  "An old man," she said gently. "Someone she had known for many years, and who was worried about her. He wanted something from her — a message, a picture, a Christmas greeting — anything. But now I'll have to… now I'll have to take the message." She was rising as she spoke. "From what he told me, I know I've missed meeting someone very wonderful. But I know that he'll be glad that I met you. By the way, I wonder if I might use the telephone? A friend of mine was going to pick me up here…"
  
  "Don't go," Luisa said suddenly. "Please. I want to talk to you. I want to hear about the old man." She put her hand on Rosalind's arm. "Something's wrong here. Something's very wrong. I have to talk to someone. Even if you tell my stepfather. I have to talk to you."
  
  "Let's talk, then," Rosalind said gently, "if you're sure that's what you want. But surely you must have friends that you can talk to?"
  
  Luisa made a small sound of disgust.
  
  "They are children, all of them, who go nowhere without a chaperone. My friends, they are in Lisbon. And the few people I know here — pah! they have lived such sheltered lives. I think that you are different."
  
  Rosalind grinned suddenly, unaware that her face lit up like a happy street urchin's.
  
  "A sheltered life I have not led," she said, and laughed out loud. "That's the last thing in the world anyone could ever accuse me of. Someday I must tell you about the one chaperone I had — poor old gibbering thing… But that'll keep. Isn't there some place a little… uh… a little less like an auditorium, where we can talk?"
  
  The Cabral living room was an immensity of rich carpeting and tapestry, much too vast for any pretense of intimacy.
  
  "There is my mother's sitting room," Luisa said hesitantly. "I think I would like you to see that."
  
  "I should like that, too," said Rosalind.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Nick climbed into the Jaguar laden with packages. There was an alligator bag for Rosalind and a couple of striking shirts for himself; a topaz ring for Rosalind, and a butterfly-wing pipe tray for Hawk, who would hate it; an unset amethyst for Rosalind, and an old-fashioned tourmaline brooch for someone else in New York; some filmy underwear for Rosalind, and a wild beach hat for himself; an aquamarine choker for Rosalind, and a spray of flowers for Luisa Cabral. Luisa Continho Cabral, he corrected himself, wondering how she felt about her stepfather. Wondering how he himself felt about Luisa's stepfather.
  
  Not quite six o'clock. It wouldn't hurt to be a little early.
  
  Which was why he was parked half a block away from the Cabral homestead shortly after six and watching Perez Cabral enter by a side door, having approached on foot with a caution that seemed somewhat unnecessary for someone going into his own home after a long, hard day of interviewing inquisitive police officers.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "I was at school," Luisa said, "and with Christmas coming, I did write. But he wrote back and said that mother was not well, and because she was not well she was going to Salvador to stay with relatives of his. I did not even know, before that, that he had relatives in Salvador. He also said that she would not be away for very long, so I could write here and he would forward my letters. But she never answered. Then he wrote to say that I should not come home for Christmas, because nobody would be here. At last I could not stand it any longer, and I wrote to say that I was coming home. And when I got home…" her voice broke. "When I got home there was no one but the old housekeeper. She said that my stepfather had flown to Salvador to my mother's funeral. He did not want me to be there, because — because someone had been driving my mother in an automobile and there had been a dreadful accident. A dreadful accident." Her voice broke completely.
  
  Rosalind was silent. There must be something to say, something right, but she did not know what it could be. So she asked what she wanted to know.
  
  "When did she go to Salvador? As far as you know, that is."
  
  "Early in December."
  
  "And when did you come home?"
  
  "Last week! It was just last week! If I had only come home sooner…!"
  
  "It would not have made the slightest bit of difference," Rosalind said gently. "Nothing, nothing, would be changed. Except that you yourself would have had so much more misery."
  
  "I don't believe that," Luisa said with sudden intensity. "I know my mother would have written to me that she was ill if she'd had the slightest chance. If she was well enough to go riding around in an automobile, she was well enough to write to me. She must have known he'd write and tell me that she'd gone away. Mustn't she? Surely she would have written before she went away?"
  
  "Perhaps she did," said Rosalind carefully. "But it's possible that, in the flurry of going away, she forgot to mail the letter. Have you looked to see if there might be any note for you in her desk drawer, or anywhere else?"
  
  "I've looked through everything," Luisa said slowly. "Not for a note, but just for something… anything. But she's all gone."
  
  "Is there a picture of her anywhere? A favorite book, perhaps? Something that was really close to her?"
  
  "I don't know; I don't think so," Luisa said indifferently. "I suppose you'd like something for that old man in the States?"
  
  Rosalind nodded. "If possible. Something that you can spare, yourself. But I do think you may have missed a message from her."
  
  Luisa looked at her intently. "Why do you think that?"
  
  "Because I know that your mother was a very remarkable woman," Rosalind said ambiguously.
  
  "All right," Luisa said thoughtfully. "Let's look again."
  
  She started pulling open the desk drawers.
  
  "It doesn't seem right for me to go into your mother's personal things," said Rosalind, itching to get her practiced hands into the drawers.
  
  "Nothing seems right," said Luisa. "You might as well."
  
  "If you really want me to," Rosalind said, feigning reluctance.
  
  There was absolutely nothing to indicate that Maria Cabral had been anything other than a civic-minded wife and mother with a number of social responsibilities.
  
  But there was a message — an imprint, on the blotter — of something Maria Cabral had been writing… when? Perhaps when someone had stopped her from writing anymore, because the message was brief and incomplete. Or perhaps its incompleteness was due to nothing more than the way she had placed her writing paper on the blotter.
  
  "Pierce, I must see you," Rosalind could just manage to decipher. "It is… indiscretion… no way out of it. Silveiro… watching… since he saw me… heart is sick… discovery… husband Perez… Club as a front for…" And that was all.
  
  "What is it?" Luisa was staring at her. "What are you looking at like that? There is nothing there but the blotter — I see."
  
  She did.
  
  " 'Heart is sick… discovery… husband Perez…' " Luisa murmured, incredulous. " 'Club as a front for…' For what?" She turned her puzzled gaze on Rosalind. "And why should Silveiro be watching her? She found out something about Perez, that's it! Something terrible!" Luisa clutched at Rosalind's arm and squeezed so hard that it hurt. "Something so terrible that he killed her! That's what happened — he killed her! He killed her! He killed her!" Her voice was a passionate scream of rage and hatred and the lovely eyes were wild with growing hysteria.
  
  "Luisa! Stop that at once!" Rosalind's voice was low but crisply commanding. "You can't jump to conclusions like that. And even if you do, you don't have to scream them all over the house. Use your head. What it he did?"
  
  Luisa subsided suddenly. For one fleeting moment she seemed to be thinking it over. Then an expression of absolute terror stamped itself across her face.
  
  "That's right, Luisa. What if he did?" The voice was smooth as velvet, friendly as the rustle of a rattlesnake's tail. Rosalind turned slowly, feeling her heart miss a beat.
  
  Perez Cabral stood at the open door his face a twisted mask, his pale eyes shooting splinters of ice.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wayward Widower
  
  
  
  
  "So, Luisa. Miss Montez. While the cat is away the mice are scampering through the house and into the drawers, is that it? And coming up with a murderer! How very clever of them. And how very foolish."
  
  His menacing eyes raked over them, lighted on the desk, and came back to bore into Rosalind. Luisa shrank against her.
  
  "And you, Senhorina Montez. Is this the reason you accepted my invitation with such alacrity? To meddle and search, to worm things out of my daughter?"
  
  "Your daughter!" Luisa cried, stung into reply. "You are not my father! You are a hateful, horrible…"
  
  "Hush, Luisa," Rosalind said calmly. "It is scarcely prying, Senhor Cabral, for a girl to open a drawer in her own mother's room. And if you object to my presence here, you should not have asked me. What did you think we were going to do — sit and stare at each other in silence?"
  
  "Hardly that, dear lady." Cabral's voice was almost a purr. "But I would not have expected you to go so far as to read something strange and sinister into a few innocent dents on the blotting paper. Nor would I expect you to encourage the poor child in this sudden wild idea about me… killing my wife!"
  
  Luisa made a little moaning sound. "My mother," she whispered.
  
  "Mr. Cabral, I think this has gone far enough," Rosalind said levelly. "Oh, I'll admit that the 'wild idea' flashed across my mind for a moment. But for all your talk of wanting to help Luisa, I don't think you've been fair to her. Why didn't you tell her exactly what happened? Why couldn't you have at least let her go to the funeral with you? Can't you see that it's only natural to wonder why you didn't? If there's anything 'strange and sinister' about this, you can easily set things straight by being a little more open with Luisa."
  
  "And with you, I suppose, Miss Montez?" Cabral smiled thinly. "No, I think it is you who owe the explanation. I must congratulate you on your righteous indignation, but I am afraid I am not completely convinced of your good intentions. Sit down, both of you. I will listen. And you, Miss Montez, will do the talking. Sit down, I said!" His cold eyes sparked angrily.
  
  "I'll do nothing of the sort," said Rosalind firmly. "There is absolutely no excuse for your rudeness and your insults. And if you expected to do business with Robert, you can forget about it. I'm leaving." She heard Luisa catch her breath beside her. "Luisa, I'm sorry about all this. Perhaps you'd like to come out with me for a while, until — until the temperature cools down a little."
  
  "Oh, yes, please!" Luisa whispered fervently.
  
  "Oh, no," said Perez Cabral. "I am very sorry, but I cannot let you leave." He was smiling, but the velvety voice had turned to sandpaper. "Least of all while you think so badly of me, and certainly not with Luisa."
  
  "Please let us by," said Rosalind coolly. "Come, Luisa." Then she stopped. Cabral barred the door with his body, holding an automatic in his hand.
  
  "You will not leave this room," Cabral said slowly and distinctly. "Either of you. Until you, Miss Montez, tell me why you have chosen to meddle in my life. And do not worry about your friend. I will take care of him." The twisted smile became an ugly grimace. "He is not due here for several minutes. I will meet him outside and say regretfully that you left early, since Luisa was in no mood for company. I will, of course, have locked you in. And then I will come back, and you will talk."
  
  "Carpeted stairs are a mixed blessing, aren't they?" another voice said understandingly. Cabral's head swung around.
  
  It was all Nick needed.
  
  His arms shot out to pinion Cabral's to his sides and one long leg struck out sharply. Cabral staggered, snarling, held only by Nick's crushing grip. The grip shifted, took one arm, and twisted viciously. The automatic dropped. Rosalind bent swiftly to retrieve it.
  
  Luisa's flowers lay forgotten on the landing where Nick had dropped them after gliding silently up the stairs and hearing Cabral's threat. Luisa herself cowered behind the desk saying: "Oh! Oh. Oh. Oh not"
  
  Cabral fought like a man possessed but unaccustomed to hand-to-hand fighting. He clawed and kicked with all the finesse of a child in a playground scuffle, but his long arms were surprisingly strong and he moved with the slippery speed of a cat. Nick pulled away from the sinewy hands that tore at his throat and chopped at the distorted face so close to his, at the same time drawing one hard knee up and planting it brutally into its target. Cabral grunted and dropped to his knees.
  
  "Rosita! Get Luisa out of here," Nick ordered.
  
  "Don't touch her!" Cabral's voice was a scream of anguish. In spite of his agony, he moved — moved like a bolt of forked lightning — and flung himself at Luisa. Rosalind's swiftly outflung leg was barely enough to make him stumble; in one flashing moment he was over the desk and holding Luisa against him like a shield.
  
  "If we are to go anywhere," he panted, "you will have to take us together. Or at least you will have to take me first. And I will kill her myself, before you get her!"
  
  "Let me go! Let me go!" Luisa's fingers dug into his face. She was fighting, hard, no longer cringing like a child but fighting like a wildcat. Cabral struck her hands away from his face and she spat at him. Nick leapt for him, snaking his arms under Cabral's and pulling the sleek head back by the throat. Cabral tore at Luisa, dragging her back with him. Rosalind struck at him and grasped his flailing hand. Without mercy she jerked the fingers back until he screamed with pain. For one frozen moment the three of them stood tangled together, Luisa free by inches and standing like a statue of a soul in hell.
  
  "Run, Luisa! Run! Don't let that woman stop you!" Cabral lashed out furiously, his voice a strangled gargle beneath the pressure of Nick's hands and his arms working like a windmill in a hurricane.
  
  Rosalind took Luisa by the hand and tugged at her. "Come on, now! You can't stay here." Luisa moved slowly, like someone in an awful dream.
  
  "Luisa! Don't!" The cry tore out from Cabral's aching throat. "They'll hurt you! You don't understand!"
  
  "No, I don't, I don't, I don't!" It was the wail of a lost soul.
  
  Luisa had stopped in the center of the room, one small hand raised and clenched into a fist, her face a picture of torment and bewilderment. "Why should everybody want to hurt me?"
  
  "Just a minute!" Nick's voice rapped out sharply. With a jerking movement he whipped Cabral's feet out from under him and reached for Wilhelmina. "Nobody leaves here until I say so. Nobody. Get up, Cabral. Hands first and in the air. Roz — the door." Cabral stumbled to his feet, hands brushing against the desk. "Keep them up. That's better." Cabral backed away from him with his arms in the air. Nick reached over and made a quick surface search for another weapon. "Hang on to his gun, Roz. And Luisa — don't be frightened. No one's going to hurt you. All right, Cabral." His cold eyes bore into the tall man. Cabral stared back at him venomously, his lips twitching.
  
  "Let's backtrack a minute," Nick said, almost conversationally. "You deliberately created a situation that made it possible for you to spy on Miss Montez…"
  
  "I spied!" Cabral spat out. "In my house I am the spy, when she is going through the desk?"
  
  "And engaging in a little feminine nonsense," Nick said equably. "Any normal man would have been outraged, as you were. But to the point of pulling a gun? I think not. The message in itself said nothing. It could have been interpreted in any number of ways. But you have made it look as though the worst interpretation was the right one. I wonder why you gave yourself away like that?"
  
  Cabral was silent. A strange, indecipherable look came over his face.
  
  "You should know, if anyone knows," he said at last. "I have nothing to give away. But I have one thing to save, and that is Luisa."
  
  "And you think that you can save her by killing her, is that it?" Nick said coldly. "And then telling her to run? From what, Cabral? From you — or me? And why do you think I would know anything about you?"
  
  "Why else would you be here, so ready with your own gun, so silent up the stairs — eh?" Cabral laughed humorlessly. "It is obvious that you want something with me. Will money buy you off, perhaps? Ah, no. You are the millionaire Milbank, are you not?" A sneer crept into the oily voice and slid out again as he turned his head to gaze at his stepdaughter. "But whoever you are, you must see that there is nothing to be gained by hurting her. I have done my part. If something has gone wrong, it is no fault of mine. I know nothing, nothing, nothing, I tell you, and I will be able to tell you nothing no matter how much you hurt either of us. Why do you not kill me outright, to make sure I do no talking in the wrong places? Why must you threaten me with harm to her?"
  
  "If I killed you outright I'd never find out anything, would I?" Nick said reasonably. But he felt surprise spreading through him like a rising tide. And he could see that Rosalind was looking at Cabral as though she had never really seen his face before. Luisa just stood and stared, her mouth partly open, her eyes utterly bewildered. "Just what wrong places would you talk in?" Nick went on. "And what exactly would you say?"
  
  "You already know the answers," Cabral snarled back at him. "I told you — you can kill me and be done with it."
  
  "But I don't want to be done with it," Nick said pleasantly. "Let us assume that there are things you know that I would like to know: What the Club was fronting for, who are all the holders of the little gold keys, what happened to half a dozen missing people… a number of small things like that. And don't forget, there is still Luisa, if you don't want to talk…" His eyes narrowed meaningfully.
  
  "No!" Rosalind's eyes flashed. She stepped in front of Luisa, as if Nick were going to put his threat into immediate action. "She's had enough. Threaten him some other way. I'm not going to allow anyone to touch her, do you understand?"
  
  "You idiot," Nick said cheerfully, and grinned. "You blew that one, didn't you?"
  
  "Gold keys?" Cabral said slowly. "What missing people? You mean you're trying to tie my wife's death in with all those others that the newspapers are talking about?"
  
  "If they tie together, I'm not doing the tying," said Nick. "That's one of the things I'm counting on you to explain, quickly, because I don't intend to hang around here much longer. Roz, you'd better get Luisa out of sight. She may not like what I think I'm going to have to do."
  
  "Who are you?" Perez asked in a baffled voice. "Did not Silveiro send you?"
  
  He was full of surprises, this man.
  
  "That won't do," said Nick, shaking his head. "I ask; you answer. Why would Silveiro send me? Please, Roz. Downstairs."
  
  "If you will just think for a moment of the possibility that I really do not know what you are talking about," Cabral said intensely. "You must see that you could be making a terrible mistake."
  
  "I know that," Nick said quietly. "And I'm counting on you to set me straight. Starting right now."
  
  "Wait, please, wait. Be reasonable. You must tell me who you are, at least what you are. Can you guarantee that you are not working with Silveiro?" There was a strange light in Cabral's eyes and his voice was pleading. Rosalind waited, watching from the door.
  
  Nick could afford to offer some kind of answer; there were two guns trained on Cabral.
  
  "I can guarantee nothing. But I will tell you that I am not working with Silveiro — or anyone else that you might happen to know. You can just regard me as a cleancut American boy who is working for himself."
  
  "On Wall Street," Cabral said ironically.
  
  "Quite. And now I'm tired of waiting. Take your jacket off, Cabral. Slow and easy, so I can see exactly what you're doing."
  
  "No." Cabral shook his head. "No, there is no need for that. I will tell you everything I know. But please, not here. Silveiro will be here any minute. And I do not know if he will come alone. Take us somewhere else — both Luisa and me. I don't care where, but let us go. I swear I will answer everything you ask."
  
  Now that is not a bad idea, Nick thought to himself. If he tries anything along the way, he can be handled. Almost as if on cue, a car drew up outside.
  
  "Ah, God!" Cabral cried despairingly. Luisa sucked in her breath. "Oh, please!" she whispered. "Please…"
  
  Nick looked at her. She was trembling. It would be much easier to stage this scene in the hotel.
  
  "All right. No tricks, Cabral. I'll shoot, but not to kill — just enough to hurt you very badly. Back door?"
  
  Cabral shook his head. "No — the housekeeper may tell him. Side door."
  
  They hurried, Cabral in the lead with Nick hot on his heels and the women bringing up the rear.
  
  A bell rang as they stopped at a door leading onto a small patio.
  
  "This way," Nick ordered, prodding Cabral.
  
  The distance between the house and his parked car seemed endless. They made it without incident. Cabral seemed genuinely anxious to put his house behind them.
  
  They were already in the car and moving off when they heard the running footsteps. Nick slipped the car into gear and made a swift right turn away from the sound. They had only a few seconds' start, but that ought to be enough for a man who had spent half his life being pursued and the other half pursuing.
  
  It was.
  
  A few minutes later they were walking in through the ornate doors of the Copa International.
  
  "Remember, Cabral," Nick said pleasantly, "no tricks. This is just a friendly visit."
  
  "A pleasure to be here with you, Mr. Milbank," Cabral said, just as pleasantly. "An unexpected honor."
  
  Once inside their immense suite Rosalind took Luisa into a small sitting room and went in search of refreshment, which she herself felt very much in need of. That poor child, she thought compassionately, adding just a touch of ninety-proof to Luisa's soft drink and making something considerably more potent for herself. Poor baby. What a miserable time she's had.
  
  She heard the murmur of voices from Nick's part of the palace and wondered what was going on.
  
  CHIEF PROSPECT CLAIMS REGRETTABLE LACK OF KNOWLEDGE REGARDING PARENT COMPANY'S OVERALL PLANNING AND FINANCING. NEVERTHELESS AM MAKING ONE FINAL INSPECTION OF BUSINESS PROPERTY TONIGHT AT EXPRESS REQUEST OF AFORESAID PROSPECT. IF NO WORD FROM ME BY TEN TOMORROW YOU CAN ASSUME DEAL CLOSED AND PROMPTLY SEND LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE.
  
  
  
  The answer came back: STANDING BY. HOPE YOU MAKE A KILLING. GOOD LUCK.
  
  
  
  "You didn't let him get away!"
  
  Rosalind was wide-eyed with dismay. Cabral had left.
  
  Nick nodded. "His story holds up, and he left us Luisa. He claims that Silveiro killed Maria because she found out about some undercover operations at the Club — Silveiro's, not Cabral's. Since then he's been threatening harm to both Luisa and Cabral if Cabral doesn't keep his trap shut."
  
  "You didn't buy that crap!" Rosalind said scornfully. "That phony business about caring for Luisa…"
  
  "I didn't buy anything," said Nick. "I'm going to meet him at the Club tonight — at a cosy little window entrance he claims no one else ever uses or even watches. Yes, I know it's a dubious story — but we have to play it the way it comes. If we wait any longer we might blow everything. Now look. There's one thing I must do first, then I'm leaving. If I'm not back, or if I don't call you exactly two hours from the time I leave, I want you to come after me."
  
  "But naturally," Rosalind's eyes widened. "I am the forgiving type, and I have already forgotten how you failed to come charging to my rescue at the museum."
  
  Nick grinned. "Well, I did redeem myself this afternoon. Oh, by the way — you didn't open the packages. You can do that while I'm gone. Now this is how I think we'll swing it, in case anything happens to me tonight…" She listened attentively. "Jeans, I think, or stretch pants," he finished.
  
  "I have everything," she said loftily. "Big Daddy has provided…"
  
  "You have everything, all right," Nick agreed, and took her in his arms. "Please try to keep it safe." He kissed her lingeringly.
  
  "And you," she whispered. "Don't take too many chances — as if I didn't know you will."
  
  He left her for a few minutes and came back with two keys — not golden, but accurate in every other respect.
  
  "Sorry I don't have time to try them out," he said. "I'll have to leave that up to you."
  
  "They'd better fit, or I'll lodge a complaint with the Housebreakers' Union. Nick — Robert — what about Luisa if anything happens to us?"
  
  Nick's face was grave. "We'd just better be sure that nothing does happen to us. She's sleeping now? Well, if you don't hear from me, I think the only thing to do is explain to her as much as you safely can. She may want to barricade herself in; she may want to go somewhere else. I'll have to leave that up to the two of you. And make damn sure that we come out of this all right."
  
  He kissed her once again, and went out into the hostile night.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Venus Spy Trap
  
  
  
  
  The window opened easily. It seemed to have been freshly oiled.
  
  It was just as well, for the watchman at the Carioca Club's back door was far from sleepy tonight. A genuine uniformed policeman had turned into the back street and stopped to talk to the watchman at the door. Evidently the events of the night before were still of interest to the police. During the few brief moments that their heads were turned away from him Nick slid open the high window and lightly hoisted himself to the sill. He stayed poised there for another moment, listening, until he heard a faint movement from below. Then he pulled the window down, not quite all the way, and dropped down into the unknown darkness.
  
  "Milbank?" The voice was an echoing whisper. Nick's hand tightened on Wilhelmina and he moved as he spoke: "Show yourself."
  
  A small circle of light appeared in the darkness and Cabral's face loomed grotesquely through it.
  
  "Douse it. Anyone see you?"
  
  "No. This way."
  
  Nick's pencil flashlight flicked out once and showed him a disused storeroom. Cabral was crouching on the floor, pulling at a metal ring. "It has not been used for years. Help me. So."
  
  The trapdoor lid creaked upwards.
  
  "There are no stairs," Cabral whispered. "You will have to swing yourself."
  
  "Don't worry about me. Go ahead." Nick watched Cabral move, then land lightly somewhere below him. He eased the trapdoor shut and then followed, landing soundlessly on a concrete floor.
  
  "You were right," whispered Cabral. "There is a locked room. How did you know?"
  
  "Guessed." The back of Nick's neck was prickling. He knew that what he was doing was foolhardy, but he knew that he had to do it. "Where is it?"
  
  Cabral's light flicked on and off.
  
  "The left of those two doors. See it? The other is a supply room."
  
  "Yeah," said Nick. "What supplies?"
  
  "For the restaurant, of course," said Cabral. "Here." His light flicked on again. "I have never seen such a lock. You realize I have no occasion to come down here. I used to use the storerooms, but since I started my own importing business I have used an outside warehouse."
  
  "What do you import?"
  
  "Anything that people will buy — but surely this is no time to talk of that. Do you have any way of opening this door?"
  
  "You're going to open it, Cabral," Nick said softly. "It takes two keys. Here's one of them."
  
  He flashed the light over Cabral's face, dropping a key into the man's hand.
  
  Cabral stared. "But where's the other? How did you get that? How do you know so much?"
  
  "Just dig out your key, Cabral, and get moving. And I may as well tell you that Luisa and Miss Montez have left the hotel. They are probably at the airport right now."
  
  Cabral's face twisted in the pencil-point light.
  
  "You devil! You…"
  
  "Your key, Cabral. Open the door." Wilhelmina nudged him.
  
  "I don't know what you're talking about! I have no key!"
  
  "All right, then. I have another."
  
  The second golden key dropped into Cabral's hand.
  
  "Now open it."
  
  "You lied, you swine!"
  
  "Open it. And keep quiet. You'll have the whole place down on top of us."
  
  Cabral muttered an obscenity and started scrabbling with the lock.
  
  The building seemed to pulsate with the thudding from above. Upstairs, the band was throbbing out an exuberant samba, people were dancing and waiters were moving quietly among the tables. Downstairs, Perez Cabral fumbled with a twin lock in a dark cellar and cursed while Nick Carter pointed his tiny light on the lock and Wilhelmina at Cabral.
  
  The two keys, numbers nine and twelve, worked in unison.
  
  "Take the padlock off, Cabral. Open the door."
  
  Cabral snarled wordlessly. The padlock came off in his hands. He pushed; the door swung open. Nick turned off the pencil flash and stepped back swiftly.
  
  There was a swish of sound and something flung itself at him. And not from behind that door, you fool, you blind, you brainless fool…! he swore at himself, even as he felt his head exploding and saw the coruscating lights dance through his consciousness… and die.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  For a moment there was nothing but the absolute blackness. And then, dimly, he knew he was in another room, and faint lights were flickering. He felt his jacket being torn from him, and then his shoes. Something tightened around his wrists, and then his ankles. He made his muscles work; he forced them to a tautness his tired brain told him was impossible, and then the fumbling at his wrists and ankles stopped. Something fastened over his waist. He fought against it with his muscles, pushed it as far from him as he could with his straining body, and then that movement also stopped. Murmuring voices faded away. He had an almost overwhelming impulse to throw up. By the time he had conquered it the voices had stopped and the light had flickered out. He heard himself sigh, and then he heard no more.
  
  He had no way of telling how long it was before the door opened again. It must have been some time, because he felt oddly refreshed, as though he had slept. But his head ached furiously, and he was stretched out on something hard with his legs and arms outspread as if he were some kind of hide drying in the sun.
  
  The room was suddenly flooded with light. Silveiro stood beside him, smiling down benignly, his white teeth gleaming.
  
  "Well! The little man has had a busy few days," he said kindly. "How nice to see you resting." The friendly wrinkles suddenly vanished from the corners of his eyes. "Make the best of it. You don't have long."
  
  "Why, Mr. Álvares!" Nick said warmly. "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you." The jovial face near him turned to a stony mask. "I'm so pleased I thought to cable my office in the States that I would probably be meeting you tonight." He knew he should not be talking, but he could not help himself. "They get so angry, when I don't let them know these things."
  
  "What office?" Silveiro snapped at him.
  
  "Embezzlers Incorporated, of course — what else?"
  
  Silveiro's closed fist came down on Nick Carter's flat stomach. Nick braced himself and caught the blow with Yoga-trained muscles. Shut up, he told himself. Shut up.
  
  Silveiro stroked the stubble on his chin and stared down at Nick.
  
  "Where is the reporter?" he asked at last, his voice sounding like a knife blade scraping against stone. "Gone back to that same office?"
  
  Nick looked up at him innocently. "What reporter? The one that someone — maybe you — pushed off a cliff?"
  
  "The other reporter," Silveiro said through closed teeth. "The one who got just as nosy as you've been lately, and then disappeared. Leaving a dead man in his room."
  
  "Oh, one of your men, perhaps?" Nick asked interestedly, willing the pain in his head to dissipate. His arms and legs were slowly relaxing, and the cords seemed less tight around his wrists. "What did he die of? Something horrible, I hope."
  
  "The reporter!" hissed Silveiro. "Where is he?"
  
  "I haven't an idea in the world," said Nick, conducting a quick mental search of his own person to see what was there and what wasn't. Wilhelmina — gone. Hugo — gone. Pierre — hard to say. Loose change and some odds and ends in his pants pockets. Shoes and jacket out of sight. Belt still on. "I've never even met the fellow. My contacts with the press have never been too cordial. Now suppose you tell me what in hell you think you're doing…"
  
  Silveiro's fist slammed across his face.
  
  "Don't play games with me. You had to be working together. Who has he gone to report to? How did he get away?"
  
  Nick shook his head, partly to glance around the basement room and partly to get his nostrils clear of Silveiro's unpleasant-smelling breath. It seemed to him he could hear a phone ringing somewhere.
  
  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "I don't know why you've got me here. I had a simple business date with Perez Cabral."
  
  Silveiro's laugh sounded like a jackal's bark.
  
  "Yes, you did, didn't you?" he chuckled. "But it didn't turn out quite the way you expected, did it? Did it?" His fist punctuated his words. "What were you looking for? How many of you are there? Where is Nolan? Where is the Baker woman?"
  
  "You're crazy," said Nick calmly. Unless there was someone right behind his head — and he could sense no presence there — he was alone in this room with Luiz Silveiro. "I tell you, I don't know what you're talking about."
  
  "Then why did you call me Álvares?" Silveiro's expression became one of genial cunning. "Who has been telling you about me?"
  
  "No one. I just thought it suited you better." The ready fist slammed down just below his belt.
  
  Silveiro smiled. "With each foolish answer, I will hit you just a little harder. When I start on your ribs and they begin to crack, I think you will stop trying to be funny." The hard edge of his hand slashed down on Nick's rib cage. "You will tell me all about yourself." The next blow came down like a sledgehammer on his chest. "Starting with the girl." The hand moved down and chopped viciously at his knee cap. "You think this is a gentle form of persuasion? I am a gentle man." Slam. "But determined. And when I tire, someone else will take over for me." Slash. "And if you prove to be too stubborn…" Crunch. "…You will find that this is only the beginning. You may also be interested to know that we already have the girl." Whack!
  
  "What girl?" Nick forced his mind away from the rain of blows and concentrated on a stealthy maneuvering of his bound wrists.
  
  "The Montez woman, of course. Who else? What other girl is there?" Thud. "That schoolteacher?"
  
  Nick laughed. His magnificently conditioned body was absorbing punches that would have had a less carefully trained man gasping with pain. He could feel them. They were too brutally sudden to be easily willed away. And Roz…? No, surely not.
  
  "What schoolteacher? I haven't known one since I was a kid. And Rosita! You make me laugh. She is a little, trivial plaything who knows nothing about anything, and cares less." He was annoyed to feel another grunt escaping him. "Even if I had anything to tell you, you can't get it out of me by threatening her. Do what you like with her. I don't give a damn."
  
  "How callous you are," Silveiro said reprovingly. "But we shall see how truthful." He hit Nick once again in the midriff.
  
  Beyond him Nick could see the twin-locked door open. A tall man stood in the entrance and watched in silence for a moment. Nick had been close enough to him for long enough to know immediately who he was. Or rather, what he was.
  
  Silveiro went on working diligently. Nick spoke no more. He knew that if Silveiro kept up with this much longer he would be badly hurt — too badly hurt to snatch at a lucky break if it should ever come. So when the one blow came that was just a little too hard he took advantage of.it.
  
  Silveiro's bunched hand thudded savagely into his temple. Nick let his head jerk sharply to one side, and he gave a long, shuddering groan. His eyes closed and his whole body slumped limply on its uncomfortable support. Silveiro snorted, and slapped him several times across the face.
  
  "Enough, Silveiro," said the deep-toned voice from the door. "You don't want to damage his pretty face too soon. Save something for me. Come out here. You're wanted."
  
  Silveiro grumbled and left the room. The other man was already out of sight.
  
  Nick's body was pounding and aching. You have not been hurt, he told himself severely. There is no pain. You are resting. Rest, damn you. Gradually he made himself relax. For a few moments he actually did rest.
  
  He raised his head to look around. He was alone in the room. There were no windows, and only the one door. The room was surprisingly large; the basement must be immense — but then, so was the Club. The thing he was lying on appeared to be a shelf of some kind, with a tow rung at each end to which his hands and feet were tied. The pressure at his waist was a leather band which he knew he could wriggle out of if he could free either his arms or leg's. The surface of the shelf was cold metal, solid in some areas and a series of narrow bars in others. A shelf… or a rack? He twisted his body to try to locate some sort of driving mechanism. He gave up. There was nothing to be seen from his confining viewpoint.
  
  One wrist seemed to have a fraction more play than the other. He squeezed his hand, narrowed it, pulled, clutched at the cord with his fingers, working carefully until he could be sure that he was loosening rather than tightening it. While he worked he scanned the contents of the room. His rack. A table and six chairs. Other chairs, six more. Several standing ashtrays. A file cabinet. Another big cabinet with a heavy lock on it. That was it.
  
  Six chairs and six more made twelve… Congratulations, he told himself ironically. But could it possibly mean anything? He had seen keys numbered two, nine and twelve. Ferret had certainly looked as though he might be at the bottom of the heap, if the numbers on the keys referred to status. And he was positive they did. Could there be an even dozen of them? If so, he'd thinned their ranks considerably. Perhaps they weren't all keyholders. Too bad he hadn't had time to search them all. But if they were… He counted quickly, feeling the rope loosen very slightly at his right wrist. Four dead, starting with Ferret and ending with the stranger on the corner near the Club. Sleepy-at-the-back-door, hurt, perhaps badly. The handsome one, hurt, but back on his feet with a sore head and a very stiff neck — and a hideously bruised face. Flatfoot and his driver in custody, according to the papers. That left Number One, Silveiro, Tomaz and one other — probably the one at the back door tonight — in good condition, with assists from Handsome and Sleepy.
  
  And that was far too many.
  
  Then he heard the voices filtering through the door. One of them was a woman's. It was raised in — fear? anger? — pain? It rose almost to a shriek and then fell to a low mumble.
  
  His blood turned to ice water.
  
  But the rope around his right wrist was almost pulling free.
  
  The doorknob turned.
  
  He closed his eyes and let his head roll to one side. His right hand stopped its tugging.
  
  The door opened and someone stood at the entrance. There was a murmur in the background, then a high-pitched yelp of agony. Man or woman? It was impossible to tell.
  
  "So that is all it takes before you pass out like a woman?" a voice said contemptuously.
  
  Nick's heart turned over at the sound.
  
  "You, Robert Milbank. I'm talking to you. Open your eyes."
  
  Nick opened them slowly.
  
  Carla Langley stood in the doorway.
  
  She was beautiful in a shimmering evening gown. There was a vividness about her that was not the woman he had first met but the woman who had made such ecstatic love to him. The brilliant light brought out her subtle beauty instead of destroying it; her eyes were deep, glinting pools and her lips were red velvet — curled into a look of scorn.
  
  "You, Carla," said Nick. "I almost knew."
  
  "I almost knew you, too, Robert." She made the name a mockery. "What a pity, that such a wonderful body should belong to a man like you." She closed the door behind her.
  
  "What kind of a man do you think I am, Carla?"
  
  She walked slowly towards him, looking down at his outstretched body.
  
  "A man who is hard when it is easy to be hard, and soft when he becomes afraid. And Silveiro frightened you, did he not?"
  
  Nick laughed. "Did he say that? Then believe it, if it pleases you."
  
  Carla's eyes narrowed. " 'If it pleases me.' You've said that once before. And you did please me, for a while."
  
  "For a while? I'm sorry. I usually manage to do better than that. If you'd given me the chance, I might have."
  
  "You might still have the chance," she murmured, "if you can give me what I want."
  
  Her hand shot out suddenly and raked his face, first one cheek and then the other.
  
  "So you thought you'd make a fool of me!" she hissed. "Mr. Robert Milbank didn't want to be mixed up with the police! And you walked out on me! You walked out on me!" The long fingernails lashed out again. He felt a trickle of blood beneath his eyes.
  
  He laughed again. "Nice, Carla. Nice. I like a wildcat. Tell me something — are you the Boss Lady, or are you just Silveiro's whore?"
  
  "Silveiro!" she spat, and the flat of her hand smarted against his face. "That slug!"
  
  "Then you like me better than him," murmured Nick. "I can see why. Maybe we can be useful to each other… What is that chance you offered me?" His voice was calculating.
  
  She stared down at him. Slowly, her hand reached out and touched his face, gently wiped the blood that oozed out from the scratch marks. It moved down, caressed his swollen lips, his chin, his throat… loosened the neck of his shirt, softly stroked his chest.
  
  "The chance?" she murmured. "The chance to live. To be with me — without the thought of Pierce Langley hovering in the background."
  
  Nick closed his eyes as if enjoying her caresses.
  
  She fondled him provocatively. "He's dead. He's been dead since a few days after that last call to his office."
  
  "So he did call from home," he murmured, and a jarring note explained itself away.
  
  "Of course he did," she said, and both hands caressed him now. "He lived a day or two, or three, I don't remember how long, really. And then he died. Just after Maria Cabral, I believe it was."
  
  "She died too, then."
  
  "Naturally. Died hard." A dreamy look came into her eyes. "I wish you could have seen it. Pierce in one room, she in another. Down here, just like you. And each of them thinking that the other was giving everything away." She shook her head and chuckled at the remembered fun. "He was the one that broke, poor fool. He begged Silveiro not to lay a hand on me. On me! Can you imagine!" The thought was one she savored. Her probing hands moved lightly, her deep eyes blazed. "And then, of course, we didn't need them anymore. He gave us all the names, all the American spies. I didn't see them go. It wasn't practical for me to be on hand for all the… executions."
  
  "I see your point," Nick said agreeably. The revulsion rising in him was almost choking.
  
  "De Freitas, now. He fought so hard that poor Martín was forced to shoot him, or he would have given us all away. Brenha was driven away, with his little radio right there in his car. They worked on him for quite a while, but then his heart gave out. Appelbaum was even worse. They simply had to dump him. And then that fool de Santos, actually calling me, on the telephone, mind you, when he got back from his bourgeois vacation. A vacation, for a spy!" She smiled.
  
  De Santos had called Langley's home. A second question had been answered.
  
  "But how did it all begin?" he asked. "And why?"
  
  She looked into his face as though she had forgotten that the body she was fondling had anything to do with the man who inhabited it.
  
  "How? Why, Maria Cabral, the stupid fool, thought she had found out something about her miserable husband, and it shocked her so much that she tried to pass it on to Pierce. Of course, I read the letter. I have read his mail for years."
  
  "Did you know what Langley was?"
  
  Her face hardened. "I didn't know. I wondered. But when I found out, I let him know about it. Through Silveiro, until just before the end. I think he went mad, then." Her face was happy.
  
  Her hands began to feel like maggots crawling over him.
  
  "Who are you doing this for?" he asked. "Who would I be working for, if I joined you?"
  
  She smiled at him with the sweetness of something that was horribly overripe.
  
  "Does it matter very much? But I thought you knew. Our orders will be coming from Peking. And the money."
  
  And the money. For the sex kicks and the sadism.
  
  "But why did you kill them all? Wouldn't it have been better to keep them alive and have them watched? You would have found out so much more that way."
  
  She looked at him fondly. "That's my spy. But you see, that wasn't the plan. The plan was to find out who they were and then to kill so swiftly and mysteriously that someone very special would have to come down and investigate. And, in that way, we would trap a Master Spy."
  
  
  
  
  
  Music to Die By
  
  
  
  
  It was almost unbelievable that any organization would go to such lengths, would kill so ruthlessly just to lure a big fish into a baited trap. But he knew the Red Chinese and the creatures who sold their souls to them. He should have realized from the start that someone with Carla Langley's insatiable appetites was typical of them.
  
  She leaned over him and kissed him lightly on his bruised lips.
  
  "Now it is your turn to talk," she said. "I can make it very pleasant for you." She was licking him, the bitch, licking at the scratches and the streaks of blood.
  
  "Tell me one thing more," he begged. "No, two things. Then I'll do the talking."
  
  "Will you, lover?" she breathed. "I think you'd better. I think you will be glad."
  
  "I think so too," he lied. "Just tell me first — is this something that's just going on in Rio, this fishing for a so-called Master Spy? Or is it happening in other places too?"
  
  Her eyes narrowed and he could see that she was calculating.
  
  "Why shouldn't I tell you?" she asked, with a little laugh. "There's no one you can tell — unless I want you to. It's happening everywhere. And it's working like a charm. It takes a while, but eventually it works. Oh, yes, it's happening everywhere." Her face was bright with remembering.
  
  "And that sob sister Cabral?" Nick asked her harshly. "How did you manage to make such a patsy out of him? He seemed to be so excited about that stepdaughter who hates him…"
  
  "Of course he was excited, poor lamb," Carla said gently. "He's afraid for his beloved baby. Ever since we threatened to do the same thing to her that we did to Maria. It was easy enough to persuade him that we could get at her any time we wanted to. Silveiro explained all that to him. Oh, that poor fool is almost as crazy about Luisa as he was about her mother… And that wispy, stupid child doesn't even know it. But now it's time for you to talk, Robert my darling." The hands were wandering again. "Tell me first — where is Luisa? And your lady friend, Rosita? It will be awkward for us, if we cannot find them quickly."
  
  "I'm sure it will," he said coldly. "But I understand from Silveiro that they've already been picked up."
  
  "Supposing they have not been," she said carefully. "Where would they be?"
  
  "On an airplane, flying to the States."
  
  The hands, mercifully, stopped their probing.
  
  "That's a lie," she said flatly. "Where are they?"
  
  "If you don't know, I don't know," he said easily. "They told me they were going."
  
  "No! Tomaz has checked the airports. They have not left tonight."
  
  "Too bad," he said disinterestedly.
  
  "Robert, I don't think you get the point. You will tell me all you know in exchange for what I can do for you. Believe me, believe me, I will make it worth your while." Carla leaned over him. Her breath seemed to singe his raw skin. "I can give you so much…"
  
  Those goddamn probing fingers started feeling around again. They almost felt good, for a moment. Inside himself, Nick pulled himself together.
  
  "You can start by getting these damn cords loose." His voice was irritable. "I can't talk lying down."
  
  "Can't you? You've managed it before. I can't do that, Robert, you know that. Tell me just one thing, tell me who sent you, and then I'll know that I can trust you. Who are you?"
  
  "My name is Robert Milbank," he said distinctly. "I had a little luck on Wall Street and I picked up a girl so I could have some fun in Rio…"
  
  "Stop that! Stop that!" Carla slapped his bleeding face. His thoughts flew. Tell her that she didn't have much time, that someone else would follow him in a matter of hours? No… why die until it was absolutely necessary… why warn her… maybe get her yet… be sure that Rosalind was safe… a woman on a job was always a lousy added problem… Goddamn it, where was Rosalind? It was past the time for her to be here. Please God let her be all right.
  
  "You don't have much choice," Carla was saying. "You can turn me down once more, and only once. Or you can accept everything I have to offer. Money, love, excitement…"
  
  "Money!" He barked with laughter. "I have that, and with it I can buy all the rest. Make it better, Carla."
  
  She swayed beside him, trembling with suppressed passion.
  
  "I'll make it better," she said very softly. "Life with me or death with nothing."
  
  "I'll think about it," he said reasonably.
  
  "Do that," she answered quietly. "It's this…" and her predatory hands roamed casually up and down his thighs. "Or this!" And her hand darted down suddenly and did a very painful thing to him. He gasped. "There now… that was good, wasn't it?" Carla murmured seductively. Her lips were twisted into a parody of a smile. "I'll leave you now — but with something to remember me by."
  
  Her hand reached for something at the foot of Nick's rack — and a low humming sound filled the basement room.
  
  "It usually takes about twenty minutes," she said conversationally, "before they start to scream. It's a little exercise machine, you see, that Luiz and I adapted. But I can slow it down for you." And now her smile was like the Death's Head he had seen in Red China's Forbidden City. "I want you to take it slow and easy… and call when you want Carla. And do be sure to call in time. Or you'll stretch and stretch like a rubber band… and finally you'll snap. Arms first, usually, and then the legs. It'll hurt, lover. And you won't be able to do any loving any more. That would be an awful pity."
  
  For an eternity she stood there watching him. He could feel the loose cord at his right wrist begin to tighten slowly. Tighter… tighter… tighter…
  
  At long last she sauntered over to the door, the form-fitting shimmer of her evening gown revealing every nuance of her languid walk and every beautifully molded line of her exquisite frame. Reddish highlights glimmered in her hair and the eyes now seemed to be glowing with green fire. Nick wondered how he could ever have thought her colorless. But she took on color with excitement, and a curiously compelling kind of beauty. The green eyes wanted something very badly.
  
  His ankles began to feel the pull.
  
  "There's something so restful about the dark, isn't there?" she crooned mellifluously. "Think well, Robert. I'll be waiting for you."
  
  The light switch snapped off and Nick's right hand went into instant, silent action.
  
  Carla stepped out and closed the door. Nick could hear the padlock click. Then there was nothing but the absolute, pressing darkness and a silence that was not absolute. Someone in another room was groaning.
  
  Nick maneuvered feverishly.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  It was just as well that Rosalind had Luisa up and ready long before Nick's call, because Nick's call never came. Instead, visitors showed up at the Milbank-Montez suite.
  
  If she had not gone into their main living room Rosalind might not have heard the sound until it was too late to do anything about it. But as it was, she heard the old familiar sounds of someone trying to pick a lock just as she was leaving the room and stepping back into the inside hallway. She paused only long enough to be sure of what she was hearing and then darted down the hallway locking every door she came to. By the time she had bundled a startled Luisa into a back passage leading to another exit to the landing, there were two firmly locked doors between them and whoever might be looking for them. Not to mention a number of other temptingly locked doors along the way.
  
  "Here, hold this," she whispered to Luisa. "But for God's sake keep it pointed away from me."
  
  Luisa smiled faintly and watched Roz swiftly place a chair under the transomed door.
  
  "Don't worry about me," she said. "When I was a little girl we had a ranch and my father taught me something about rifles and handguns. This is a pistol I am familiar with."
  
  Roz stood on the chair and peered out of the transom, feeling a flood of relief that Luisa not only had herself so well in hand but might possibly even prove to be a help. She'd better, since she'd insisted on coming along.
  
  A man was pacing up and down the corridor outside the Milbank suite. He looked very pale and ill, and the hat that he wore pulled down low over his eyes did not completely conceal the bandages that swathed his neck and one side of his face. Rosalind grinned to herself. Nick's trademark, she thought appreciatively.
  
  Somewhere inside the apartment, doors were opening and closing. Rosalind chose the simplest way of getting rid of the intruders: She called the management and begged them tremulously to send up the house detective and one or two strong men to help. Mr. Milbank was out, and there were people prowling through the apartment, and she was so frightened. Would they please hurry…?
  
  They were very prompt. Robert Milbank would be more than generous when it came to expressing his appreciation. Rosalind was watching through the transom when she saw the bandaged man cock his head at the sound of the elevator. A moment passed, then he let out a low, fluting whistle. Two extremely brawny men passed him in the passage. And then one of them suddenly turned on his heel and rapped a question at the bandaged man.
  
  The pale face was startled and the lips stammered out an unconvincing explanation of why he was there. Then he made his mistake. He ran.
  
  One of the brawny men caught him easily. The other raced for the door of the suite and pounded on it. Doorknobs rattled all over the apartment and Rosalind heard someone cursing. A chair fell over. There was a shout. Something stumbling heavily. A shot. Another shot. A cry and a thud. A second pounding on the front door of the suite.
  
  After that, it was surprisingly easy to persuade the hastily summoned assistant manager not to get the Milbank ménage involved with the police.
  
  "I shall say that we intercepted them as they were attempting to enter the apartment," he said unctuously. "That way, you will not be bothered at all, and we… well, we… uh…"
  
  "Won't be accused of falling down on the job," said Rosalind bluntly.
  
  "Uh… quite."
  
  "Well, you can say whatever you like," Rosalind said generously, "as long as you can assure me I'm not going to be bothered any more tonight. By anyone," she added threateningly.
  
  "Oh, heavens, no. Oh, absolutely, no!" He raised his hands in horror at the thought. "But just let me ask you if you have ever seen these men before. It is a question of identification, of motive…"
  
  "Of simple stealing," Rosalind cut him off. Nick had still not called. She had to get to him. She cast a cold eye over the two handcuffed and disheveled captives. "No, I've never seen them before," she said. "Although the big one with the piggy eyes does look rather like an acquaintance of mine, Dr. Nilo Tomaz of Lisbon." She laughed liltingly. "But it couldn't very well be him, could it?"
  
  The assistant manager laughed companionably. "One wouldn't think so," he agreed. He was relieved that this Montez woman was taking it all so well. She could have raised the most awful fuss.
  
  The man with the piggy eyes nursed his bleeding arm and scowled at Rosalind. All at once the light of recognition flashed across his face and he started forward with the beginnings of a snarl.
  
  "Come on, get us outa here," whined the bandaged man. "What's to wait around? I'm sick."
  
  Tomaz was looking rather ill himself.
  
  The convention left the room.
  
  The two slight figures that quietly slipped out of the Copa International a few minutes later were much too casually dressed for an evening on the town, and yet they were headed for the Carioca Club.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  His spine seemed to be expanding. The rough cord bit viciously into his extended limbs as the cruel stress grew noticeably stronger. From somewhere above him he could hear the rhythmic rumble of drums and sporadic clashing of cymbals. If he were to scream his heart out no one would hear him except those who waited in the next room.
  
  The surface beneath him was curving slowly upward, forcing his back into an arch of agony. He put every ounce of energy and concentration into that one cord that he had almost loosened and that now was even tighter than ever. But the tightness, now, was different. It was tight because his arms were stretched out to their limit… and there was something faulty about the knot. The very strain was beginning to work for him. He stiffened his fingers and tugged. The cord dragged like rough, hot coals against his hand. The darkness turned from black to swirling red. His body screamed for mercy. As the rack extended he could feel each single savage blow of Silveiro's like a separate knot of pain, and then the knots merged into one great blob of agony. And he, Nick Carter, was that blob. But pain was an illusion. It did not exist. The only thing that did exist in that red-black world of thumps and thuds and drums and cymbals and roaring in the ears was one mightily straining hand and the rough cord that tore at it… forced its way, too slowly, much too slowly, past his wrist… caught at the heel of his thumb… dragged over it like a noose trying to tear off a man's head… and suddenly whipped free. His hand dropped like a dead thing.
  
  He worked his fingers frantically, forcing the life back into them. His body was making little snapping sounds — of something beginning to give. A louder sound came from the room beyond the twin-locked door.
  
  "I don't know and if I did I wouldn't tell you — aagghh!"
  
  Cabral's groaning voice.
  
  Nick's tortured fingers fumbled at his belt buckle. Goddamn you useless fingers work you bastards move open it open it open it!
  
  His left arm took all the aching strain of his upper body and pulled relentlessly away from its companion leg. For a wild, blurred moment, while his fingers groped stiffly with the buckle, he thought the arm had come off altogether and was dangling, stump down, from the rail behind him. Then his brain cleared and the thick metal buckle clicked open. The trembling fingers removed a fine-honed blade. His mind a scream of agony and his hand a barely controllable lump, he brought up his free right arm and slashed away at the cord that strangled his left wrist. He wondered irrelevantly why they had not used leather straps instead. Rope hurts more, he decided, slicing into his hand. The bite of clean steel was like a loving kiss compared with the wrenching and tearing of his body.
  
  He brought his left arm down and let it drop beside him to let the blood flow back into his paralyzed fingers. He lay there gasping. He found the strap across his waist and slashed at it with the blade. It snapped away. The body that had felt like a dried-out starfish seconds before seemed to contract and flow back into something like its normal shape. His back crackled sharply as he made himself first sit up and then lean over to attack the cords that bound his feet. He wiggled them even as he worked, commanding them to live again.
  
  One foot was still caught in its vise of rough rope when he heard the movements at the door. A trumpet thinly wailed the blues from the lavishly decorated room upstairs. He attacked his left foot frantically. The padlock clicked as the last thread parted and he leapt clumsily off the rack, taking in deep gulps of the musty air and willing his pulled muscles to do their work.
  
  Two of them, he thought suddenly. There will be two of them. He flung himself against the wall beside the door and scrambled feverishly for anything he could use as a weapon. Nothing. Nothing but the blade that dripped with his own blood.
  
  The door opened. The light from the outside room shone down upon — three people! His befuddled brain moved as clumsily as his uncertain feet. Three? One big, with a handsome battered face. One in a clinging, shimmering gown. And one a small slight figure…?
  
  What happened next seemed to happen in slow motion, though reason tried to tell him that he was the only one who moved too slowly.
  
  
  
  
  
  And the Little Old Lady Screamed
  
  
  
  
  "The light, Martín. You will enjoy the sight of his face. It is even worse than yours!" Carla gave a throaty chuckle.
  
  The big man stepped into the room and reached for the light switch. Nick swung away from the wall and leapt, the deadly little blade outstretched. He struck more swiftly than he knew — not at the groping hand, but at the firm-muscled throat. The heel of one torn hand jolted up beneath the rugged chin. His left hand slashed the blade deep into the side of the neck — once, twice, three times, in swift succession, before Martín could do more than gasp with surprise. Then he gave a scream of animal anguish and struck out wildly. Nick slashed once more, giving it all the desperate energy he had. He sidewheeled clumsily to escape the hands that came at him with surprising strength, lashing as he dodged, praying desperately that the power would flow back into his own mangled muscles. Martín's wild, dying blow struck the small blade from Nick's thrusting hand. It clattered to the floor somewhere in the dark.
  
  He drove the hard edge of his palm into the bleeding neck with all his strength and Martín crumpled for the last time. Nick crouched beside him and hunted feverishly for a weapon. None. The confident swine must have left it in the other room.
  
  He was aware, as the moment plodded by, of the hideous bubbling sound in Martín's throat. He saw the two figures swaying at the door, and he knew that someone was shouting. And then his dazed brain clicked sharply into focus.
  
  It had bad news for him.
  
  He leapt over the body of the once-handsome man and threw himself into the outer room at the two struggling figures. One was Carla, as he knew. The other was Luisa. Carla s hands were at her throat and Carla's mouth was spitting filth and hatred.
  
  "Let her go!" Silveiro shouted hysterically "Get out of the way!" Another voice screamed: "No, Carla, no Carla, no!" A chair fell over with a crash. Cabral was in it, trussed up like a turkey but still kicking.
  
  "You loud-mouthed, useless fools, all of you!" Carla shouted. "I'll break her neck, Milbank, right in front of your eyes!"
  
  Nick slammed his fist into the side of her face and tore the clutching hands away from Luisa. He snaked his arm around Carla's own lovely neck and pulled back. Then the blinding lights flashed through his head again and he sank down into a new darkness. Someone kicked him brutally as he went down.
  
  He could hear a dozen sounds with separate clarity. Heavy breathing. Groans. A string of gutter words. The thumping of the not-so-distant drums. A heated discussion in two growling voices, Silveiro's and another man's. The creaking of a door. What door…? He drew in several long, deep breaths and opened his eyes.
  
  He did not know the fourth man in the room, but he counted up to twelve and felt oddly happy. What was even better, the blood was flowing through his veins and his arms and legs seemed to have recovered something of their flexibility.
  
  Carla was slumped into a canvas-covered chair holding her head and cursing. Luisa was on the floor beside the fallen figure of Cabral. She was clutching his hand and crying softly.
  
  Women, women! Nick thought to himself. And what happened to the other one?
  
  "For God's sake, how should I know?" the stranger said. "I told you, she came up to the door when I was doing my turn down to the corner. I haven't got eyes in the back of my head. She was trying to sneak in when I came back and caught her. She was alone, I tell you. What was I supposed to do, let her get away while I hunted for another one? For God's sake, the way you handle things…"
  
  "For God's sake! For God's sake! Is that all you know how to say, Mendes?" Carla rose suddenly from her chair. "Get out of here and find her. I'll tear your filthy heart out if you come back without her. You, Luiz, you stupid pig. Tie that creature up again. I haven't finished talking to him." She turned and spat in Nick's direction. He watched her from beneath shuttered lids and rested quietly. This was it, the grand finale, one way or another.
  
  "Watch it, Carla," Silveiro snarled. "What makes you think you have a right to talk to me that way? You were so busy leaping in and out of bed with him, it was only accident we found out who he was. You think your boss…?"
  
  "You stop that!" she hissed. She was a blaze of color — green eyes, red fingernails, red lips, red cheeks, shimmering gown that clung seductively to her voluptuous body. "Do as I tell you. Mendes, go and find that woman."
  
  "Carla! Use your head." Silveiro spoke urgently. "How is he going to find her? And what if we need an extra man around here? With Martín gone…"
  
  "An extra man!" she spat. "Who is the other?"
  
  Silveiro chose to ignore the question. "Vicente and Tomaz are looking for her already. And don't you think it's likely that she may come here, too?"
  
  Carla's back was to Nick, but he could see a rigidity come into her body.
  
  "You are not always completely stupid, Luiz," she murmured. "You're right, she may still come. Perhaps she will walk right in and pleasantly say hello. Is that what you think? Mendes! Go back up to that door. And let her in politely, if she should come."
  
  "Wait a minute, Mendes," said Silveiro. "Help me first to tie up these two. I've had enough of that one's trickery."
  
  Carla laughed scornfully.
  
  "Now it takes two to tie. What a man you are." But she appeared to accept it, for she turned and looked speculatively down at Nick. "Tie him, then, and do it properly. I will have a word with the little Luisa. Perhaps she will explain why she came alone. And where her new friend is."
  
  Luisa sat still and silent, the tears drying on her cheeks and her hands awkwardly holding Cabral's as he lay sideways on the floor trapped inside his fallen chair. Cabral groaned, gradually awakening.
  
  Both Silveiro and Mendes had their guns drawn. They approached Nick's prone figure as if he were some kind of strange animal that might suddenly leap up and turn upon them. Which was just about what he was forced to do.
  
  The creaking sound began.
  
  Silveiro looked around uncertainly. Carla went on unheedingly to grab Luisa by the hair and throw her roughly to the floor.
  
  Nick rolled over slowly and staggered to his feet with his hands half-raised, as if he had the strength to do no more.
  
  The creaking went on. He could not look. But it seemed to him he felt the faintest breath of a draught.
  
  "Enough," he said tiredly. "Enough." Two guns pointed inexorably at him. "Carla, leave the girl alone. She has nothing to do with this." He swayed on his heels and almost toppled. "I asked her to come because Rosita would not. I thought perhaps… some kind of a distraction. Her stepfather, you see…" He trailed off incoherently and let his eyes half-close.
  
  Carla smiled at him. "So you think you can still bargain," she said softly. "Well, perhaps you can." She slapped Luisa hard across the face. "Who will take this? You or she?" Luisa's small jaw tightened.
  
  "Carla, don't," Nick moaned. "Do anything you like to me. Don't do that to her."
  
  "Anything I like?" said Carla gently.
  
  Nick paused for effect.
  
  "Yes," he said humbly, and let his chin sag to his chest.
  
  Carla walked slowly across the junk-filled room toward him.
  
  "Be careful, Carla!" Silveiro warned her sharply. "Don't get in front of the guns. Mendes, get over there and watch him."
  
  On the pretense of watching Mendes move Nick sneaked a swift look up at the ceiling. A square hole showed where there had been no square hole before. His heart soared. Of course, it was barely possible that it was someone other than Roz…
  
  "I'll be careful," murmured Carla. She stopped a few feet away from Nick and slightly to one side. "So you'll do anything I say? Tell me all I want to know?"
  
  "What else is there for me to do?" he asked abjectly. "I have to."
  
  He heard one sharp tap from up above him.
  
  "What was that?" Silveiro swung about, his eyes searching.
  
  Carla was oblivious.
  
  "I don't believe you," she said softly. And her fingers shot out across the gap between them to rake across his eyes.
  
  "Now ain't that too damn bad!" he roared exuberantly, and leapt. "Pepito!"
  
  It was a strange word for a battlecry, but that's what it was.
  
  He caught Carla by the arm, twisted it, and slammed her into Mendes. The man staggered back and lost his balance — but he still held the gun. He fired a wild shot that slammed into the wall behind Nick. Nick took a deep breath and held it while he pulled Carla to him, trapping her arms in a painful twist behind her back. He backed against the wall, maneuvering her from side to side to use her against both Mendes and Silveiro.
  
  "Shoot the girl!" screamed Carla. "Let me go, you…" she called him a name that was so awful it was almost funny. "Luiz! Get her! Shoot Luisa!"
  
  Nick swung her briskly in a horrible parody of a dance.
  
  The percussion instruments were at it again in the night club somewhere over their heads. Must have come in very handy for them on a number of occasions, Nick thought grimly as he waltzed.
  
  God, it took a long time. He hadn't even heard it drop.
  
  "The trapdoor!" Silveiro shouted suddenly, and darted away from Nick and Carla and their strange embrace. "It's open!" He raised his gun and fired rapidly into the opening. Mendes swung toward him.
  
  "Mendes!" Carla screamed hysterically. "Shoot Luisa, I tell you! Get me out of this!"
  
  Damn. Mendes was alert again. Still, he'd try. Got to get that gun.
  
  Using Carla as a battering ram he charged at Mendes. But Carla's legs got in his way. Also, she bit him savagely at the base of his throat. His head jerked back and Mendes dodged around him. Silveiro fired again. And then, strangely, sighed and dropped his gun. He tottered for a moment, hung like a falling tree, and fell. Carla struggled frantically, cursing and spitting. Mendes stopped dodging and stood there watching them, like a man watching a wrestling match he knows is rigged. Then he too crumpled to the floor. Carla sagged suddenly in Nick's arms. He dropped her like a sack of potatoes and cast a swift look at Luisa and Cabral. Both were still and silent. But their eyes were open.
  
  His lungs were bursting. He stumbled over Carla and made his way to the open trapdoor. Gathering his strained muscles together, he leapt. And missed. Jesus Christ, he thought. You're getting old, Carter. Spots danced before his eyes as he grabbed a chair and thrust it beneath the opening.
  
  He whistled once and pulled himself painfully up to the dark room with the window. His fingers were slipping and he felt himself falling back when the small strong hands reached him and helped him up.
  
  "Oh, Nick…" a low voice whispered. "Quickly, to the window. There's no one outside now."
  
  "Close the trap," he mumbled. "Got to… keep them… under."
  
  He stumbled to the window and sank down to his knees. The trapdoor closed behind him. He heard the window open quietly and felt her hands slide under his arms and drag him up. His head rested on the sill as he looked out into the dark, cool night. He breathed deeply. Drafts of sweet, clean air flooded into his lungs.
  
  "Roz…" he murmured. "Roz. Good girl. Sweet baby."
  
  She crouched beside him anxiously, slim but not at all like a boy in the close-fitting pants she had chosen for climbing in through windows and tossing a small nerve-gas pellet called Pepito. He kissed the soft, slightly parted lips, and felt tremendously refreshed.
  
  "They've hurt you terribly," she whispered.
  
  "You should see the other fellas," he said cheerfully. "Come on, now. We still have work to do."
  
  They opened up the trapdoor and went back into the basement rooms that had so much horror in them. Holding his breath, Nick scouted for Wilhelmina and Hugo, and found them only when he battered open the big cabinet in the torture room. He went up again for air. Rosalind was already there.
  
  "How long?" she whispered.
  
  "Several minutes yet. Untied Cabral?"
  
  She nodded. "Looks bad. But he should make it."
  
  "He'd better," Nick said grimly. "Poor bastard. Let's try to get them up here first."
  
  Working with frantic speed and with every ounce of their strength, they moved a table beneath the trapdoor and hoisted the dead weights of Luisa and Cabral into the upper room and propped them near the window.
  
  "Stay here," he ordered. "It's almost time. I'll finish this myself."
  
  He went below once more.
  
  The strangest thing about it was the eyes. They were staring at him now, watching his every move. But that was the way the gas worked, and that was the way it started to wear off. None of them would be moving yet for quite a while. But they could watch him, and they did.
  
  He went back into the torture room and went through the cabinets, swiftly selecting several documents and microfilms. Someone else would have to find the rest, even if it was the police. They would be fascinated, he knew, at the evidence of a Chinese Communist headquarters in the basement of the lavish Carioca Club.
  
  Someone in the next room moaned. It seemed only fitting.
  
  Nick left the torture room and looked down at his victims. They stared back at him.
  
  He steeled himself. They could not be allowed to live.
  
  Silveiro's lips trembled as Hugo flashed down toward his heart. Mendes tried to move. And died.
  
  Carla…
  
  Carla started babbling wordlessly as Nick approached her. There was one thing more he wanted to be absolutely sure of. His hand went down between the soft, firm breasts he'd touched before under conditions very different… and he found the key. A golden key that bore the number One.
  
  The sounds she was making formed into words. But the words were meaningless. They were the chattering of a very small child, the garbled wanderings of an old… old… old… unthinkably old woman.
  
  Her face was drawn and colorless. The eyes were dim and murky. She started writhing on the floor and the strange words grew wilder. She screamed.
  
  He stood over her and stared at what was left of the woman who had writhed beneath him on the beach. And he had seen enough in his lifetime to know that the dim eyes would never clear, that the rocking, wrenching movements would never again be anything but convulsive contortions, that the wild babble of words would never form an intelligible, human pattern. He looked at her and thought of many things, of the men who had died by his hand and of the men and women who had died by hers, and of the ones who were left.
  
  Hugo snapped shut.
  
  Nick turned away and left her. He vaulted up through the trapdoor and closed it against the awful sound in that room of death.
  
  Carla Langley went on screaming.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Nick groaned in his sleep and woke himself. For a moment he felt a chill, as of something vital left undone, but then he remembered that whatever was left of them was safely accounted for. He remembered the sound of drums, the trumpet, and the scream; the swift departure from the window down the back street; Luisa stroking Perez Cabral's hand as they sat slumped, afterwards, in the luxurious living room of their suite, and saying: "Forgive me… please forgive me…" And Cabral murmuring, "She would be proud of you. I loved her too. You don't know how I loved her."
  
  There were a hundred loose ends to be tied up. There always were. But they had the makings of a story for Cabral to tell the police, and enough time left to polish it. Tomaz and Sleepy were the only ones left who knew enough to be a nuisance to Milbank and Montez, and they would lie their heads off to save their necks and incidentally cover Nick and Rosalind for what they were.
  
  Rosalind turned over in her sleep. He touched her gently with his aching fingers and he felt her stir into wakefulness.
  
  "Nick… darling. Oh, Nick, I dreamed…"
  
  "So did I," he murmured. "Let me hold you. Let me hold you close and love you."
  
  "Just hold me close and let me sleep," she whispered drowsily.
  
  His arms enfolded her. His body ached and his face was bruised and swollen, but apart from that there was nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all.
  
  Nor with her.
  
  "I thought you said you wanted to sleep," he said a few moments later.
  
  "Not yet. Do you?"
  
  "No."
  
  It was a long, wonderful while before they did.
  
  
  
  
  
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