The Avenger 33 - The Blood Countess (8 page)

“Yeah, from what that Colonel Heberden guy told us when we first got down here, and what this McClurg had to say, it sure sounds like the Nazi bozos had a darn good source of info.”

“Aye, they knew Richard was coming here, and when. They knew all about our arrival.”

The giant scratched his head. “Wait a minute, though, Mac. Rodney got knocked off about a week ago. Nobody knew
we
were coming then.”

“Aye, ’tis true, but still the leak has to be somewhere pretty high up. Otherwise the kind of information that’s being passed around could nae be had.”

“Well, we checked out McClurg’s phones and gave his office a pretty good going over. Don’t think he much liked our moving all the furniture around,” said Smitty. “There ain’t no bugs or Dictaphones hidden there, that’s for darn sure. It could be that that Escabar bird, valet or whatever he is, has been snooping around. Somehow, though, he don’t look like a spy to me.”

“Nonetheless, Smitty, it would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on the lad. We mot do a wee bit of tailing of Escabar later tonight.”

“Yeah, I guess we could,” said the giant, without much enthusiasm.

“I believe the restaurant we’re seeking is around the corner and doon that lane,” said MacMurdie, pointing.

The day was rapidly fading. The whitewashed walls of the buildings were turning a silvery blue, and the tile roofs were growing darker red.

“Yeah, I could do with a little chow right about now.”

They turned down the lane side by side.

Smitty heard the very faint sound. And that was what saved them.

The leather sole of a shoe scraping on the rough tiles of the balcony above them.

“Look out, Mac!” warned the giant, pushing as he shouted.

MacMurdie hit the gutter and rolled.

The .45 automatic in the hand of the man on the balcony spoke. Two slugs tore through the gathering darkness.

One of the slugs hit Smitty in the back as he dived for the protection of a doorway beneath the second-floor balcony. He went slamming into the alcove, flattening against the oaken door, then pitched forward to his knees.

Mac got his pistol out now and sent a shot at the balcony The gunman threw himself back into the room from which he’d come. He was a lean man, with dark leathery skin. He ran across the room and into the hallway. He grabbed the newel post of the staircase, spun himself around and went galloping down the stairs. He was halfway down when a huge dark shape loomed up in his path.

“The fun’s just starting, buddy, you don’t want to rush off yet,” said Smitty.

“I . . . I shot you. I saw the bullet hit you.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. But what you didn’t see was the bullet-proof vest I’m wearing.”

“Too bad that bum didn’t know anything about where Dick is,” said Smitty.

“Aye, but perhaps the lad he’s working for will.”

Using the highly effective truth gas which MacMurdie had perfected, they had questioned the gunman Ferro—who’d attempted to kill them They now knew where the gunman was due to report after his mission of assassination.

“Geeze,” said Smitty, looking around him, “this ain’t no way for people to live.”

There was no pavement here; the streets were dirt. There was a wind, blowing dust, tatters of paper, bits of rag along the street. None of the houses could stand up straight. They were built from scrap wood, flattened-out tin cans, and swatches of sacking. The light that showed at a few of the jagged windows was produced by candles and kerosene lamps. Dogs, thin-ribbed, sprawled in doorways of some of the shacks, indifferent to the passage of Mac and Smitty.

Children hollow-eyed, none of them fat, watched, their faces showing nothing.

The giant stopped and fished several Panazuelan dollar bills out of his coat pocket. Approaching three of the silent children, he said, “Here, take this. Pass it around, give it to your folks. Buy yourselves something to eat.”

None of the children made any move to take the money.

“It’s real money,” Smitty assured them. “Here. No kidding.”

Finally a frail girl of ten came slowly forward. Then, snatching the money, she spun and ran, accompanied by the others. They ran behind the last of the shacks.

Smitty rubbed at his nose. “This ain’t right,” he said. “A place like this for kids to live in.”

“ ’Tis not a pretty world,” MacMurdie told him, “not in many places, lad.”

Smitty said nothing. Shoulders slightly hunched, he walked on in silence.

The scrubby fields were strewn with anonymous junk, bits and pieces of things which were of no use even to the people of the shacktown. And then trees, a small forest. Beyond that, a sharply slanting weedy hillside that led down to the railroad tracks.

“Yonder,” said Mac, “that building made of corrugated metal would seem to be the one the gunman told us aboot.”

Across the tracks stood a warehouse; on its rippled front were painted the now faded words American Produce.

“Looks like nobody’s used the joint since American Produce moved to a better neighborhood,” said Smitty.

“Nobody but these Nazi skurlies,” said the Scot.

Smitty rubbed his huge palms together. “Well, let’s give it the once-over.”

Bulcão sat in the pitch-black room which had once been the warehouse office, hands folded.

The wind brushed at the metal roof, rattling loose bolts. The walls creaked.

“Something’s gone wrong,” he said to himself. “Ferro should have reported to me by now. I knew we—”

At his feet a tiny blue lightbulb, the kind you use on Christmas trees, had flashed on for a few seconds.

Bulcão got to his feet, his right hand on the flap of his holster. A door had been opened, a door that wasn’t supposed to be opened. Ferro was stupid, but not that stupid. He knew which door he was supposed to use.

He slid his revolver into his hand and crossed to the open door of the office. It was a rectangle of not quite so intense black. The alarm system he’d rigged himself, powered with batteries; if Ferro’d entered by the right door, an orange light would have flashed.

Blue meant the small wooden door that led out to the old loading area. Bulcão, who knew his way around this warehouse even with no light, made his way toward that door. He moved slowly, making little sound.

He listened as he walked through the blackness.

“There must be someone in here, otherwise the light wouldn’t have warned me. But I don’t—”

“Hiya, Bulcão. We kind of hoped we’d run into you.” A flashlight blossomed in the black, looking like a hole suddenly burning through a dark fabric.

He fired his revolver.

The slug hit Smitty below the ribs. His celluglass vest prevented a serious injury, but the impact shoved him back against a worktable, and he stumbled.

Bulcão ran, then jumped up onto a loading platform that led to an exit door.

MacMurdie’s flashlight came on a few yards ahead of him. He was still down on the floor of the warehouse. Now he jumped up on the wooden plank platform.

Bulcão smiled to himself, then leaped over several planks.

Mac made a grab for him. His left hand got hold of the sleeve of the running man’s fatigue suit. But the planks Bulcão had avoided were rotten. MacMurdie fell through them.

Bulcão was outside. He ran, straining, up and away from the place. And he got away from them. It had been surprisingly easy.

Thunder rumbled through the forest. Rain, in fat, heavy drops, began pouring down out of the night sky.

“Very appropriate weather for a visit to a haunted castle,” observed Cole as he turned up his collar and ran across the courtyard to the front stairs of the Pedra Negra castle.

Safe from the rain, on the sheltered doorstep, he lifted the heavy brass knocker and announced his arrival with several loud thumps. “At least the knocker isn’t in the shape of a bat.”

A minute went by, more thunder boomed, rain splashed on the flagstones.

Then the door was opened by plump, gray-haired Mrs. Andrade. “What do you wish,
senhor?”

“My name is Cole Wilson. I’m a friend of Richard Benson’s, and I’d like to see Miss Bentin,” he explained. “Your phone is apparently out of order, or I’d have—”

“He is all right,” said the fat woman to someone down in the courtyard.

Cole turned and saw an American agent, right hand inside his slicker, watching them. The man eyed Cole, then turned and vanished in the heavy-falling rain.

“My open, honest face has won you over, I see,” he said to Mrs. Andrade.

She smiled, stepping back. “I have heard of you,
senhor
Wilson, and I saw your photograph once in a magazine.”

When he crossed into the vaulted hallway, Cole was met by the tall blond Erika Mowler. “Would you be Miss Mowler, the Florence Nightingale of Panazuela?”

Erika acknowledged the identification with a slight bow. “Elizabeth is resting, which she often does after dinner,” she said. “If you’d care to wait, I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you.”

“Waiting here will be more enjoyable than heading back to Mostarda in that downpour.”

With a nod at the housekeeper Erika said, “I’ll look after Mr. Wilson, Amelia.”

“Then I’ll wish you good-night,
boa noite.”

Erika brushed at her blond hair with her fingertips. “I wonder if I might impose on you . . . ?”

“It’s part of the well-known code of the Wilsons to do a good deed every day, Miss Mowler.”

“I’ve a couple of cartons of books stored down in the cellars, in what used to be the wine room,” the blond girl said. “It turns out the place leaks, and I really would like to move them.”

“You’ll find I’m nearly as good as Wonderman when it comes to heavy lifting.”

“As who?”

“Merely a chap I met on a case once,” said Cole. “Lead on.”

Brushing by him, Erika got a large flashlight from a hall closet. “There’s no electric lighting down there.”

“I’m used to roughing it.”

She took his arm and guided him along the hall to its very end. Opening a heavy wooden door, she said, “I’ll go first. You’ve got to be a little careful on the first two flights of stairs, since there’s no guardrail and a considerable drop down to a very hard stone floor.”

A smell of damp earth and ancient stones came drifting up out of the chill darkness. “Ah, that scent reminds me of my Aunt Cornelia’s root cellar.”

Erika clicked on the flash and sent the beam into the dark below. “We have to go single file.”

There was a winding stone stairway going down into the blackness. As the blond girl had said, there was nothing to keep you from falling what looked to be about two hundred feet onto a flagstone floor that was strewn with rusted farm implements.

“Has a real dungeon-like flavor.”

“I believe there were dungeons down here once, many years ago.” Lowering the torch to her side so it illuminated the steps, Erika began to descend. “We tend to believe dungeons and torture chambers are relics of a remote past. The Nazis have shown us such things are very much possible in our own time.”

Closing the door behind him, Cole proceeded to follow Erika down the narrow stone stairs. He had to duck every few steps because of the wrought-iron candle holders set into the stone wall at his left at regular intervals. “How’d you manage to haul the the books down here in the first place?”

“Oh, one of our guards lent a hand. I don’t like to ask for too many favors from them, since they work a long hard shift, each of them.”

“You believe Elizabeth is really in danger?”

“What she knows could seriously harm one of the Nazis’ best-planned escape routes,” said Erika, the flashlight swinging at her side. “In the event that they lose the war, a great many of them will want to get out of the country—SS men, concentration camp officials, even those at the very top of the regime.”

“That’s what Elizabeth knows about?”

“She was given the details by a key underground agent in Europe—accurate details, I believe.”

“But once she tells the stuff to somebody, she’ll be safe.”

“Liz went through a very difficult ordeal. I doubt she’ll ever fully get over some of the shocks she suffered. It’s had an effect on her memory. Right now, she can’t remember all the details of the plan.”