by Nick Carter
"Not so fast," Nick cautioned. "We want to make a dignified — and quiet — entrance. Now tell me this: How many people are in that house?"
"One only," Green Face panted. "Ten Wong himself."
"You're lying," Nick said coldly. "You want to take a nice long walk and tell me the truth? How many people are there in that house?" He prodded Laszlo to a stop and jabbed him with Wilhelmina.
"It is the truth!" gasped Laszlo, his face muscles twitching with his need and pain. "We must go on! I do not lie — there is only Ten himself. People come and go, but there is no one else there tonight nor all this week. The place is like a fortress — he needs no bodyguard, if that is what you're thinking of."
"A fortress, huh? But you'll get me in, won't you?" Laszlo nodded feverishly. "And who are all these people who come and go?"
"Buyers," Laszlo whined. "Clients. Customers."
"Buyers of what?" Nick insisted. "And don't tell me books."
"Yes, books!" Laszlo hissed. "The new Koran, textbooks, instruction books, all kinds of books!"
"Not so loud, you idiot. You still want to take that walk?"
Laszlo gibbered into silence.
"Now. What do the people want with Ten?"
But Green Face opened and shut his mouth wordlessly and stared wildly around for an avenue of escape. Nick realized that if he pushed the man any further he was likely to push him beyond all possible use.
"All right," he growled. "Move along. And be quiet about it."
They crept quietly through the night and stopped at Ten Wong's house. The door was a solid arch-form of oak and brass set into a whitewall archway.
"There is a signal," Laszlo muttered, jerking like a puppet.
"That's too bad," said Nick. "Get in without the signal or we'll walk around until you do."
Laszlo groaned and reached into his pocket.
"Be careful what you take out of there," Nick warned.
A bunch of keys came out. Laszlo moved one inside the lock until something clicked, and then another inside the same lock until there was another click. He pushed lightly with his twitching ringers and the door swung open. Nick shoved him through the open door and pushed it shut behind him, noting that they were in a square court yard with the dim sky above and thinking that Laszlo had served his purpose and now it was time to…
Laszlo pivoted with startling swiftness and raised his left arm to thrust it against the wall next to the door, muttering something indistinguishable about "the switch." Nick leapt at him and spun him sideways, bringing up Wilhelmina's butt even while he spun and slamming it down toward Laszlo's glistening temple. It was not his most effective blow; Laszlo squirmed with the agility of desperation and caught the gun butt on the shoulder Nick had wounded in Dakar, and he screamed piercingly into the night. Nick swore beneath his breath and hit him again. Laszlo crumpled and fell. And as he fell something long and snakelike caught him about the neck, dragged him for a foot or two into the courtyard, and whipped him high into the air. What the hell! Nick had time to think to himself, as he cast a swift, incredulous glance around the luxuriantly plant-filled courtyard, dimly beautiful under the soft starlight but mostly shadowed by the four high walls around it. Then a groping tendril of something that smelled like jungle undergrowth wrapped itself tightly around his gun arm and tugged.
Nick gasped and tugged back. A whiplash movement came from somewhere and a leathery thong shot around his waist, sweeping him off his feet and hoisting him aloft to dangle him high above the ground. The goddamn plants! Every hideous one of them — and they crammed the entire courtyard but for a narrow path from the garden doorway to another brass-bound door opposite — swayed and waved in an awful ballet of death, some of them little more than inches high and others ten, twelve, fourteen feet tall and ghastly with menace. Immense leaves, he saw, were folding over the unconscious — maybe dead — Laszlo, and the tendrils that had swept the twitching hophead into the frightful garden had released him and were waving free above his head as if in triumph.
Nick struggled frantically within the boa constrictorlike grasp. His right hand still held Wilhelmina though his arm was caught, but she was useless to him in a spot like this. He found Hugo with his left hand and jabbed feverishly at the tightening band around the waist. The things that held him in their strangle-grip reared like startled horses and writhed painfully but still held on. Hugo slashed and sliced. One of the tendrils fell away and another instantly took its place, tightening excruciatingly about his waist. Nick stabbed at it and it seemed to flinch but squeezed him even tighter. It was impossible to stab at all these reaching, twining, clinging things. The only advantage of the slashing knife was that it seemed to produce a sort of reflex action — that mane-tossing motion that swung him for moments as if on a trapeze.
And maybe he could use the motion. Laszlo had tried to say something about a signal and a switch, and then he had reached for the courtyard wall, beside the door. Something had to control these things. They were live, all right, but still they had to be controlled. Maybe there was a sound inaudible to him that made them writhe and sway this way, or maybe some kind of black light or invisible ray that kept them in this horribly agitated state as guardians of the courtyard door. Anyway, there had to be some way of deactivating the loathsome things; Laszlo had obviously known about this vile trap and had tried to save himself by reaching for… something… on… that wall. Nick stabbed again and forced a clutching tendril to let him turn his head. In the dim light, through the great pod-like leaves, the twisting tendrils and the weirdly writhing shadows, he could see a small switch on the wall — something like a bell-button, or an elevator switch. That could be it. Maybe the whole damn place would flood with light if he could reach that thing and push it, but that was a chance he'd have to take.
He stabbed with renewed determination and swung his body mightily as he felt the trapeze-like swaying motion begin. Stab and swing… stab and swing… stab and swing… It seemed to him that he was gathering momentum and gaining distance, like a child pushing himself higher and faster on a playground swing. He urged his body on to even greater efforts and thought he could feel the tendrils straining and sending out reinforcements to hold onto him. Laszlo was completely out of sight — as if he mattered any longer. Nick swung. Close. Closer, closer, damn you, Carter! His foot missed by inches. Stab, swing, kick. Stab, swing, kick.
The kick connected.
Nick felt rather than heard the slight click of the pushbutton as it snapped into the wall and snapped back out again. One-button dual switch, he thought, swinging back and stabbing still. Whatever it does, the one button can be switched both on and off.
It didn't seem to do anything. No lights came on; no sounds either stopped or started. But there was an indefinable change in the atmosphere. Almost imperceptibly, the constricting clutch around his arm and waist seemed to be loosening. And then the thing that had been trying to twine itself around his neck drooped like a dying fern and lost all interest in him. The thick tendril around his waist flinched as usual as he slashed at it but its tossing reflex was listless and without strength. Slowly, all the tendrils opened. Nick dropped lightly to the ground. His eyes raked the courtyard and the house as he struggled to catch his breath. One door at the opposite end of the narrow pathway, flanked by two heavily barred windows. One door behind him. Two completely blank walls — no, not completely blank; hard to spot at first beyond this mass of murderous jungle plant, but there it was — a stairway to the roof. A dim light went on behind one of the barred windows. Nick raced for the stairway and had reached the last step when a brilliant floodlight filled the courtyard.
He threw himself down and peered cautiously over the edge of the roof and gasped at what he saw under the bright white light. The tall, dreadful plants were swaying feebly and their great leaves were opening and closing like hands clapping very, very slowly. Then they stayed open, and the writhing stopped. Laszlo hung suspended for a moment, cupped in one of them like an ugly
baby in some nightmarish treetop cradle, his eyes wide and staring in a face that was even greener than ever. Then he slid very slowly from the unfolding leaf and thudded to the ground.
There was silence and stillness for a long moment. Then the great, brassbound door into the house opened slowly. Something moved very cautiously inside, and waited, and waited, and moved again.
A huge man stood in the doorway staring out into his floodlit horror garden; an immense, gargantuan obscenity, a mountain of bulging, rolling flesh that made Madame Sophia positively sylphlike by comparison. He held a long-barreled gun that Nick knew to be as powerful and lethal as they come, but it looked like a ridiculous matchstick toy against that vast bulk of wallowing fat.
The man stepped ponderously onto the path and looked across at the prone figure lying beneath the limp and listless plants.
"Laszlo!" he said, and his tone was all disgust and loathing. "You blundering fool!" The man-mountain moved closer to the fallen figure. "So you managed to turn it off, eh, you moron?" One shapeless leg swung at the body and landed with a thump. "Get up, you…" Suddenly the fat man became a monument in stone. Only his eyes moved. They stared down at Laszlo's dead face and at the broken bits of plants left lying there by the lashing Hugo, and then he turned very slowly back toward the open door of his house.
Nick knew that once the fat man had closed that great brass-and-oak door behind him, his own chances of ever getting into the heavily barred house were very slim indeed. He raised Wilhelmina. But, slowly and carefully as the fat man was moving and as huge a target as he was, the angle was awkward and the thick growth — which he seemed to be hugging for cover as closely as he could — obscured him. Nick fired. But not at the fat man.
He fired at the single switch with the dual purpose, and even AXE's F. B. I. Instructor would have grudgingly admitted that the shot was good. It slammed into the switch. Somewhere below him Nick heard a startled gasp and partly saw the immense body turn and search around for the marksman. He decided to be helpful, and sent two shots pounding into the open doorway. That should make him hesitate before he cuts and runs, Nick thought grimly. If he cart run.
This time he was aware of the plants beginning to react. There was still no change in light or sound, but the faintest of vibrations came to him from below. He still did not know what caused it, but it scarcely mattered. The tendrils started waving. Nick fired three slow-paced, well-placed shots at the front door to serve as a distraction, and saw the big leaves start to open and shut, again like vast hands slowly clapping. And then the fat man squealed: a rat caught in his own trap. The plants were suddenly very, very busy. There was no scream, but there was a series of grunts and strangled gargles and a vast threshing about. The strange garden went wild with darting, writhing, clasping, clapping movements, and the sounds grew more frantic — big sounds, heavy sounds, muted sounds, urgent sounds, like a couple of elephants copulating.
It seemed to take ages. But then the man was so obscenely huge. Slowly, the monstrous plants tugged and twined and choked… then the gurgling screams began. The sighing, rustling noises drowned them out.
At last, when it was all over, Nick crossed the roofs of the adjoining houses and lowered himself to the street. His part of the job was done. Now he just had to make sure that no innocent from the outside world wandered into that hell garden, and to have the place thoroughly searched. He locked the courtyard door from the outside with his own Lockpicker's Special, and then fled through the eerie night to make contact with Our Man in Morocco. Then he would call Liz.
Casablanca Airport on a day of farewells can be as miserable a place as any in the world. Today its roaring, humming sounds were blue notes of departure, half-tones speaking of business that only seemed unfinished because it was all over, except for the last goodbyes.
The fat man's frightful garden had succumbed — writhing horribly — to flame-throwers, and his house had yielded its secrets. Books, mostly; Laszlo had been almost right. Textbooks on the training of guerrillas and the use of superstitions; copies of the Koran, as rewritten by the Communists; plans for agricultural stations, to be staffed by Chinese instructors; manuals on the subversion of African teachers and leaders into Red Chinese propagandists; pamphlets on the use of drugs to blind the mind and buy support; and a wealth of leads that would keep AXE's Moroccan Man, plus his newly arrived assistants, enthusiastically busy for weeks to come.
Nick and Liz stood hand in hand, like teenagers, hearing the planes roar in and out and gazing at each other. In a few minutes she would board her plane for Abimako, via Dakar. He would fly to Lisbon and then change for New York. She thought: I'll never see him again. And a wave of quiet despair washed over her.
"It's time," Nick said gently. "Don't forget me. There is a future, and… who knows?"
She raised her hand and lightly brushed his cheek.
"I won't forget you," she whispered. "And please… remember, too." Then she turned quickly toward her plane.
Nick watched her go, his eyes full of her large-scale loveliness and his heart full of the nights they had spent together. Then he, too, walked toward his plane.
The touch of her fingers still tingled on his face.