The Weapon of Night Read online

  NICK CARTER

  The Weapon of Night

  Copyright Notice

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  The Weapon of Night

  Under any other circumstances it would have been cause for celebration when Nick Carter’s three friends showed up in the States—

  • the cross-eyed Egyptian criminologist Hakim Sadek, who had so often used his devious talents and hideous appearance to such devastating effect.

  • the jolly peasant woman Valentina Sichikova, the Russian agent who was built like a tank but had a heart as big and warm as the sun

  • and the beautiful Julia Baron with whom Nick Carter is as much in love as his dangerous profession permits . . .

  —but their reunion is not to celebrate mutual admiration, friendship or love—it is a “nightmare party’, an assignment so perilous that the foundations of the free world will crumble into radioactive dust if they do not succeed. Already the whole of the United States has been gripped with panic under the terrifying rumours of drugs added to drinking water, poisons in the air—an invasion from outer space!

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Notice

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  CHAPTER ONE

  Strange Things Happen When The Lights Are Low

  If there was one thing that could be said for Heinrich Stroebling, it was that he had not permitted twenty-odd years of stolen freedom to soften his ex-gauleiter’s body. Even as Henry Steele, Argentinian businessman with a branch office in Chicago, he had kept himself in trim at the better country clubs and gymnasiums of various nations. He had been obsessed with physical fitness, bodily perfection and muscular exercise, since his days with the Hitler Youth organization back in Nazi Germany.

  He was exercising now.

  Every ounce of his finely tuned strength was straining savagely against a male body as strong and agile as his own — a younger body than his, magnificent at its best, but now bruised and pulsing with pain from a beating at the hands of Stroebling’s sidekick.

  The sidekick lay dead in the room where Nick had been held captive, and there was only Stroebling left between Nick and the end of a long, bloody trail. The trail began with the death of hundreds of innocents when Stroebling had worn a uniform and cracked a whip. The end of it was to be here and now, on this rooftop in Chicago on this sultry, overcast evening in late fall.

  But it would only be the end if Nick could finish him off before his own strength gave out.

  Nick grunted with the pain of an armlock and rolled over, kicking. He had nothing to help him, nothing but his abused and aching muscles. His usual arsenal of weapons lay hidden somewhere in that torture room. No one else knew where he was. No one knew that he had, at last, caught up with Stroebling, that with one final blow in the right place he might snuff out one of Nazi Germany’s arch war criminals.

  At the moment it looked as though Nick would be the one to be snuffed out.

  He kneed Stroebling’s groin and twisted free to swing a razor chop at the big German’s neck. Now it was Stroebling who grunted — twice in rapid succession — but he kept coming at him, closing in with two steely arms and his own jabbing knee.

  There was silence around them but for the scuffling and grunting. Neither of them was aware of the sounds of city traffic twenty-three floors below this old building where Stroebling kept his office. Neither of them gave a thought to the density of the air, to the dark overcast that lay like a smoke-drenched blanket between city and sky. Neither of them thought of anything but the absolute necessity of killing the other.

  Now they were apart and on their feet, panting heavily. The old tarred roofing — the building was one of Chicago’s oldest skyscrapers — crackled beneath them as they shuffled their feet in the dance of death. Stroebling’s hand shot out like the whip he had once carried. Nick dodged, tired almost to death, and swung his right leg high in the savate kick that glanced off the underside of Stroebling’s rock-hard chin.

  Stroebling leaped, and they went down together.

  Rough hands clawed at Nick’s throat.

  Nick’s thumbs ground into Stroebling’s eyes.

  Break and stalemate.

  This time it was Nick who leaped; this time it was his feet which slammed the full weight of his body sideways against the other man and sent him sprawling. A gasping bellow of rage burst from Stroebling’s throat, and again they writhed together in a tangled, undulating heap.

  The hard blade of Stroebling’s hand slammed against Nick’s face. Nick’s head jerked suddenly, painfully, but his own hands shot out to grasp at Stroebling’s throat. They tightened, squeezed.

  Stroebling arched his body like a fighting tiger and thrust upward with all his strength — turning, twisting, convulsing his body to shake off the thing at his throat. Nick held on, squeezed harder.

  For a moment Stroebling lay still. Nick thought he had him, hoped he had him, prayed that he had him, because his own strength seemed to be flickering out like a dying candle.

  Then the man underneath him moved abruptly and the granite hardness of the heels of both hands ramrodded up into Nick’s face with piledriver force, and the big German squirmed mightily in that same moment and tore himself free. He rose to a crouch and staggered backwards, his face a twisted mask of hatred in the dim light that glowed from the higher buildings nearby, and the street lights that shone far below.

  Nick snaked out both arms, locked his hands around the murderer’s ankle, and tugged. Stroebling fell heavily — but rolled and landed even more heavily to straddle Nick’s body. His legs went out in a scissors grip and his hands clamped around Nick’s throat.

  This time Stroebling was the one who squeezed — savagely, inexorably, desperately. He was breathing harshly now and spitting out sibilant German words, guttural sounds of loath-ing and bloodlust — and his grip on Nick’s throat was tightening.

  There was a singing in Nick’s ears and an agony in his throat, and it seemed to him that the red haze in which his eyes were swimming was flickering into darkness. He was through; he was finished; everything was going black.

  But then the sensation passed, and he was still alive and Stroebling was still clamping his throat with those steely, killing, death-camp commandant’s hands — the hands that had killed so often and so horribly.

  Nick could not let him get away.

  He could not let him live!

  Nick fought for breath and summoned up his last reserves of strength.

  But it was his indomitable will rather than his strength that drove him to gouge ruthlessly into the other man’s rib cage — gouge deep and hard, to twist his clawing hand in the muscled flesh, to fasten on rib bone and to pull with a savagery born of the knowledge that this was his last chance. Then he rolled, with Stroebling’s hands still at his throat; rolled over hard, still gouging and pulling, drawing back his hands one after the other and punching them deep into the gut and gouging and twisting again and again until he could hear bone snapping.

  Stroebling screamed and loosed his hold and threw himself away from Nick to roll, moaning, on the tar roof.

 
Nick shook his head to clear it, exulting at the promise of victory. Odds were even again, more than even; now they were on his side. Stroebling was hurt now, too; he was close to exhaustion and writhing in agony.

  Now he did have him!

  He gave himself a moment to gather breath.

  It was the wrong moment.

  Stroebling was getting slowly to his feet, backing away on his haunches and moaning. He, too, was gathering breath. Maybe for one last spring. But Nick was going to beat him to it, and it did not matter to him that Stroebling was still backing and snarling and putting distance between them. Maybe he was trying to get away. So what if he was? Where could he go? Down the inner stairs they had come up, Stroebling ahead with Nick after him? Down the rattle-trap, death trap of a fire escape, to the sidewalk twenty-three floors below?

  No — Stroebling must know that Nick could still pace him, would not hesitate to jump him even at the risk of his own life. The German seemed to realize it; he had stopped backing now. He was crouching, staring at Nick, his hands curled into claws ready for the pounce and kill.

  Nick’s body tensed, relaxed, then tautened for the spring. He watched Stroebling and ordered his own weary body to go in for the attack.

  His feet left the roof and a sudden blackness hit him in the face like a hammerblow.

  Where there had been a dim haze of light, now there was nothing.

  Stroebling vanished from sight. Everything vanished. There was nothing but intense darkness, a thick and overwhelming darkness as black as a coal pit in hell. And then there was the feel of cloth as Nick landed in the black nothingness and touched Stroebling. Just touched him. And lost him in a little rustle of sound.

  He was slow with the agony of his exhaustion, and when he lunged after the rustle of sound there was nothing there.

  He cursed softly and groped about. Only the tarred roof met his searching fingers.

  Then he heard a little crackle of sound from several feet away.

  Stroebling, stealing away from him across the ancient dried-out tar, gliding off into the hell-sent inexplicable darkness.

  The roof creaked as Nick moved. He pulled off his shoes and crept silently over the time-worn tar.

  There was no longer any sound from Stroebling.

  Only absolute silence. Absolute blackness.

  No, not absolute silence. On the roof with him, yes; but not down on the street below. Automobile horns, plenty of them; a police whistle blowing; people shouting. But nothing up here.

  His gliding feet kicked against something. He bent to touch it. Two somethings. Stroebling’s shoes.

  So he, too, was stalking in deliberate silence. Creeping about the roof to lay ambush for Nick. Or maybe find the open doorway to the inner stairs.

  Nick sent his mind through the darkness, remembering. The door had been about fifteen feet to his right and six feet behind him when all the lights went out. So now it would be about twelve feet behind him and ten feet to the right.

  Or would Stroebling try the fire escape? Or was he waiting for a sound from Nick?

  Nick froze . . . waited . . . listened — and thought.

  The lights could come on again at any minute, any second. Stroebling would think that, too. So now he was probably trying to figure out his best bet — make for the stairs and a getaway, or find cover on the roof from which he could leap out and attack as soon as the lights came back.

  What cover? There was the housing for the upper stairway landing, the housing for the elevators, and the water tank. And that was about it. But it was enough.

  Nick’s own best bet, he figured, was to head for the stairway door and wait there.

  He moved silently through the darkness, probing it with his senses, listening for Stroebling, counting paces.

  It was incredibly dark. There was little room in his mind for idle thought but he could not help wondering what had caused the blackout and why it was so oppressive. Power failure, sure, but— He sniffed the air. Dampness in it. And fumes. Smog. He had been occupied to take conscious note of it before. But the pollution in the air was almost tangible. It was like Los Angeles at its worst, like Pittsburgh before the clean-up, like London during that one lethal season when four thousand people had died of the filth in the air.

  His eyes were smarting from it and his lungs were clogged with it. Strange, he thought.

  But where the hell was Stroebling?

  Nick’s fingers touched a wall and slid along it. The doorway to the stairwell should be about here . . .

  The sound came from yards away. A latch was clicking, softly at first, and then louder as if it were resisting. He pivoted.

  What the devil! Could he have been so wrong about the door?

  He moved quickly toward the sound, lightly on the balls of his feet, cautiously in case of a trap.

  The sound got louder and a door wrenched open.

  He was swearing as he reached it. Stroebling was through the door and on his way and in the darkness he would get away . . . . But one corner of his mind nagged Nick with a question.

  How come Stroebling had had to wrestle with the door? It had been open.

  His answer came with the sound of something splintering and a breath of warm, greasy air and a scream, that began on a high, piercing note that crescendoed, echoing, lowering, thinning out like a wailing siren fast fading into the distance — and then ending.

  He could not be sure, but he thought he heard a thud from very far below.

  The warm, greasy air of the open elevator shaft blew gently into his face and he was suddenly damp with sweat.

  He closed the door and turned away, shaken. So the blackout that had so nearly offered escape to Stroebling had taken him instead.

  One blackout, one old building, one ancient and ill-guarded elevator housing, and the trail was ended.

  There was a faint suggestion of light rising from the sky to the east. He made for it, treading carefully through the blackness until he came to a wall and looked over it to the city below.

  Tiny threads of light flickered in several windows. Two low buildings — hospital and firehouse, he thought — were brightly lit. Headlights shone in the streets. Here and there, a flashlight poked its beam into the gloom.

  That was all. The Loop was black. The shores of Lake Michigan lay under a dark shroud. To the south, west, north, east, all was darkness but for a rare pin point of light or small glowworm sparks that made the darkness even darker.

  Another one, he thought. Another one of those blackouts that they said could never happen again.

  But at the moment all it meant to him was the need to drag his tired body down twenty-three flights of stairs in search of a telephone, a drink, a bed and sleep. Ami it marked the close of the case of Heinrich Stroebling.

  He did not know it at the time, but it marked the opening of another.

  Jimmy Jones was too young to read the newspapers, not too young to understand the words, but too young to care. Batman was his speed. And Batman had not been in Chicago the night before last, so Jimmy didn’t know that all of Chicago and its suburbs and much of the state of Illinois and some parts of the neighboring states had been blacked out for five long hours before the lights had suddenly, inexplicably, come on again. Nor did he know that, a year ago almost to the day, a boy a little older than himself had walked along a road in New Hampshire doing exactly what Jimmy was doing now on this chilly night in Maine.

  Jimmy was on his way home to supper and he was swinging a stick. The sun was down and he was cold and there were some funny flashing lights in the sky that made him feel a little bit scared. So he swung his stick to make himself feel tough, and he whacked it against the trees alongside the road, and he whacked it against the light poles.

  He hit two light poles and nothing happened except for the satisfying sound of the stick going thwack against the poles.

  When he hit the third pole the light went out.

  “Oh, Kee-rist!” he said guiltily, and stared down the dark road
leading home.

  All the lights had gone out. All the lights along the road and all the lights in the town ahead.

  “Jeeze!” he breathed. “Oh, Jeeze, I really done it now!”

  He started to run in the darkness.

  He forgot all about the weird flashing lights in the sky.

  But the people in his darkened home town saw them when their own lights went out and some of those people were a little uneasy. And some of them were unashamedly afraid.

  Three days later in the Rocky Mountains, Ranger Horace Smith got out of his jeep to stretch his legs and admire his second favorite piece of scenery. The first was Alice, and she was home in Boulder; the second was Elkhorn Reservoir, usually crusted over with ice at this time of year but so far still rippling and blue under the near-winter sky.

  Kind of warm for this time of year, he told himself as he tramped between the tall trees and around the natural rock wall that cut the dam off from the sight of passing tourists. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if there wasn’t something in that idea that the Russians are interfering with our weather. Next thing you know, they’ll be melting the Arctic ice cap to turn Siberia into a blooming desert and flood the eastern seaboard.

  Well, anyway, they couldn’t touch the Rockies and the cool blue stretch of water that he loved so much.

  He climbed over a pile of rock and rounded the last big boulder. His dam lay ahead, calm and beautiful under the midday sun. He gazed at it lovingly.

  And felt a sudden, awful sensation as though his mind had snapped.

  He blinked, shook his head, looked again.

  At sunset, sometimes, yes, but not at high noon, never at high noon.

  For some reason he fell on his knees and crawled toward the water.

  Nothing had changed by the time he reached it.

  It was still blood-red.

  And down below, in the valley, in the little town that had once been a mining camp, Mrs. Myrtle Houston turned on a kitchen faucet and a stream of reddish fluid poured out.

  She was not the only housewife in Gold Gap who was late with lunch that day.