A look of terror crept into Diaz' eyes.
"No!" he gasped, "You can't do that! I'll die! Horribly! I swear to you on my mother's grave, I know nothing of…"
"It's your choice, Diaz," I said grimly. "And you'd better make it now."
Diaz' ruined face had become coated with sweat. He began to tremble.
"But I know nothing!" he pleaded. "How can I help you if I…"
He paused. My nerves tensed. This could be what I was fishing for.
"Wait," he said slowly. "Wait. Perhaps…"
I waited.
"Several months ago," he said, "it happened several months ago. Some strangers were here. Not lepers. Not doctors. But they were hiding something, or maybe someone."
"Hiding it, or him, where?" I demanded.
"Where no one would look. In the infectious section."
"Go on," I said.
"They left, after about a month. Taking with them whatever they had been hiding. That is all I know, I swear to you on the honor of my mother."
"I need more information than that, Diaz," I said in a hard voice. "Where did they take what they had been hiding?"
"I don't know, I swear it If I knew I would tell you. But…"
He paused. An uneasy look came into his eyes.
"Go on," I demanded.
"Jorge. Jorge would know. He is a leper with an arrested case, who works as a male nurse in the contagious wing. He would have seen everything, perhaps overheard something of value to you. But…"
"But what?"
"In order to talk to him, we would have to go into the contagious wing. For me, it is nothing. But for you…"
He didn't have to finish the sentence. I knew the danger. But I also knew what I had to do.
"Can you get me a sterile smock, gloves, cap, the whole outfit?"
Diaz nodded.
"Do it," I said tersely. "And fast."
He disappeared inside the building, and reappeared a few minutes later carrying what I had asked for. When I had put on the smock, cap, surgeon's mask, and gloves, he pushed a pair of shoes at me.
"You must leave your own shoes outside the door. All these things will be sterilized when you have taken them off again."
I did as he said, then started across the courtyard, holding my own shoes in my hand.
"Can you get a key to the south wing?" I asked.
Diaz smiled slightly, his missing upper lip turning it into a horrible grimace.
"It is only locked from the outside, Señor," he said. "To keep the lepers in. There is no difficulty in keeping others out."
Diaz drew the bolt on another heavy wooden door, and stepped aside to allow me to go first. I brusquely motioned for him to go ahead. Again, the darkened room, but this time with a light at one end, where a man in white sat at a table, his head on his arms, sleeping. Again, the rows of cots, the sleep-awkward figures. But here, some were twisting in pain. Moans came brokenly from here and there. The odor was even worse than in the west wing. Diaz went down the aisle to the man in white, looked at him closely, then lifted his head by the hair.
"Jorge," he said roughly. "Jorge. Wake. The Señor wishes to speak with you."
Jorge's eyes opened slightly, he looked up at me in an out-of-focus way, then his head fell back on his arms. Part of his left cheek was gone, exposing the white bone.
"Aiee," he mumbled. "So pretty. And so brave, to come to work with lepers. So pretty."
Diaz looked at me and grimaced.
"Drunk," he said. "He uses his pay to get drunk every night."
He lifted Jorge's head again, and slapped him roughly across the rotted cheek. Jorge gasped in pain. His eyes flew open and focused.
"You must talk to the Senor, Jorge," said Diaz. "He is from the policia, the Customs police."
Jorge stared at me, keeping his head up with an obvious effort.
"Policia? What for?"
I moved beyond Diaz and flipped my I.D. at Jorge.
"For information," I said. "Information about who was being hidden here, by whom, and where they went when they left here."
In spite of his drunkenness, a crafty look crept into Jorge's eyes.
"Nobody hidden here. Just lepers here. Contagious. Very dangerous. You shouldn't be here."
I decided to handle Jorge a little differently than Diaz.
"There's a reward for the information," I said, slowly and clearly, pulling out my wallet. I saw Jorge's eyes widen slightly as 1 extracted five twenty-dollar bills. "One hundred dollars. Paid immediately."
"Aiee," Jorge said. "I would like to have so much money, but…"
"There is nothing to fear. No one will ever know you told me except Diaz. And Diaz knows better than to talk."
Jorge's eyes were fastened to the money in my hand. I slid it across the table. Jorge licked his lips, then suddenly snatched the money.
"I do not know who they were," he said rapidly, "but they were not Latinos. There were three of them. They came in one night and locked themselves into an empty room at the back of the wing. For more than two weeks they did not emerge. A leper with an arrested case brought them food twice a day. It was also this leper who had sterilized the room the night before they arrived. Then, one night, they left as suddenly as they had come. The leper disappeared also, but later we heard that his body was found a few blocks away. He had been strangled."
"Did you get any idea of where they went from here?" I demanded.
Jorge hesitated.
"I am not sure, but I think — twice, when the leper went into the room with food, I think I heard one of the men say something about Martinique."
Something clicked in my brain.
Martinique. The volcano.
Suddenly a door opened in the wall beyond Jorge. Through it stepped a figure clad as I was, in sterile gown, mask, cap, and all the rest. Jorge half-turned, looked, then grinned.
"Buenos noches, Senorita," he said. Then, to me, some of the drunkenness coming back into his voice. "So pretty, such a pretty little chinita, and she comes to help the lepers. Just arrived today."
Chinita. Chinese girl.
Over the surgical mask, double-lidded Oriental eyes looked straight at me.
All too familiar double-lidded Oriental eyes.
"Welcome to the party, Carter," she said.
I stared at her grimly.
"For you, Li Chin," I said, "the party is over."
I moved toward her. She held up one hand.
"Don't make a mistake you'll regret," she said. "We have…"
Her voice died in mid-sentence, and I saw her eyes widen suddenly in alarm.
"Carter!" she shouted. "Behind you!"
I spun. Jorge's bottle missed my skull by inches, shattering on the table in his hand. My karate chop slammed toward the base of his neck a split second later, and it didn't miss. He toppled to the floor like a felled log. Even as he was falling, I heard Li Chin's voice again. This time it was flat, hard, and deadly calm.
"The door," she said. "And to your left."
There were three of them at the door. In the dim, shadowy light, I could see grotesque, misshapen limbs, faces with features eaten away, empty eye-sockets, stumps of arms. I could also see the glint of two knives, and the deadly bulk of a length of lead pipe as they moved slowly toward me.
But it was the figures on the left that sent a cold chill down my spine. There were five, six, maybe more, and they had all arisen from beds, to slide warily in my direction.
They were lepers with contagious cases. And their half-naked bodies moved ever closer, scaled with white, ulcerous swellings protruding horribly from sick flesh.