Nick turned and stepped into the cold tunnel. He found a lever that closed the panel behind him. The Bitch would know where he had gone, of course, but he had a head start. And he had some ideas of his own.
Chapter 10
Bluebeard Was a Piker
The narrow tunnel led back to a flight of stone stairs that spiraled down into fetid gloom. Nick felt his way cautiously. When he had gone down some two hundred feet he saw a faint glow of light and heard the whirring zum-zum-zum— What?
Dynamos, of course. Gerda von Rothe would not depend on the vagaries of Mexican power. She would have her own generators, primary and auxiliary.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and halted. At the end of a short passage was a brilliantly lit room, from whence came the dynamo sounds. Nick could see the shadow of a man on the corridor floor. The shadow was sitting, just inside the door of the lighted room. As the AXEman listened he could hear a faint rustle of pages being turned. A bored guard, reading to pass the time.
Nick Carter’s grin was hard. Things are due to liven up a bit, bub! He went down the passage like a ghost. It would have to be fast. He had no way of knowing what was going on up in the castle — whether Harper and the Bitch had declared open war and fought it out, or had joined forces and were in full hue and cry after him. A lot depended on the woman’s reaction to Chung Hee’s death. She might try to take Harper. She might tell him about Nick. She might not. Nick shrugged it off — no matter to him. He was off and running and there was no stopping now.
Taking the guard was child’s play. He slipped around the door like a wraith and had the hunting knife at the man’s throat. “Not a sound,” Nick whispered. “Not a move or I’ll cut your throat. Got it?”
The guard nodded tensely. He had it. Nick zipped the Colt .45 from the man’s holster and stuck it into his own belt. “Good boy,” he whispered. “Just keep it up and you may live to tell about this.”
He took a half step back and brought the callused edge of his right hand down on the man’s neck in a vicious karate chop. Nick could break a hundred-pound chunk of ice with the blow.
“Beddy go, fella,” Nick breathed softly. He made a swift inspection of the room, found a roll of flex and bound the guard. He gagged the man with his own handkerchief. Then he ran swiftly down the passage to the foot of the stairs and listened. No pursuit yet. Of course, the Bitch knew her own castle. She might come another way.
Nick thought of the dogs then, of Damon and Pythias, the vicious Dobermans, and cursed under his breath. His old clothes! She wouldn’t have burnt all of them. Something would have been kept back to give the dogs his scent.
He ran back to the generator room. Now to wreck a little havoc, raise a lot of hell. He went swiftly around the room; it was lined with switchboards and metal boxes, a maze of electrical paraphernalia. Nick had taken a powerful five-celled flashlight from the guard. He threw every switch he could find into the OFF position, grinning as he worked. This was going to cause a little commotion upstairs and in the lab buildings. If the labs got their power from the same source. He could only hope so.
Nick threw another switch into OFF and the lights in the room went out. Good. He used the flashlight and finished with the switches, gave the bound guard a friendly nudge with his toe, and left the room.
He turned to his right, away from the stairs, and used the flashlight to follow a sheaf of cables that led away down another passage. Hopefully to the labs. The cables were attached to the dank stone walls by brackets, a veritable fascia of them — surely so many could only mean they serviced the labs. He was gambling on it. Otherwise he might wander for hours in the sub-basements and dungeons of this Gothic monstrosity.
Nick came hard up against a huge iron door. It was locked. The cables disappeared through a V slot cut into the top of the door.
The AXEman put his enormous strength to the door in vain. It did not budge. Realization of what he had done seeped into him then and he felt a little sick in his gut. He had made a mistake. A bad mistake!
He headed back for the generator room, running with all his might. He cursed himself with every step. He couldn’t afford, such slips — many more, even one more, might get him very dead.
He put the flashlight on the still unconscious guard and searched him, a thing he should have done before. There they were — a ring of keys. One was extra large, old fashioned. It would be the one to open the iron door. Nick slipped the keys into his pocket and was starting back when he saw the first shaft of light strike the bottom of the stairs. He heard voices. They were after him already.
He needed a few moments to get through the iron door and he would have to fight for them. He ran tiptoe down the short passage to the foot of the stairs, the guard’s .45 in his hand. A bright pool of light splashed at his feet. They had just come around the last turn in the spiral stairs. Nick leaned around the corner and let go with the .45.
The Colt sounded like heavy artillery in the narrow space. The light went out and they came bouncing down the stairs. A man screamed. There was the scurry of hastily retreating footsteps. The Bitch wasn’t paying them enough to make them face such a deadly ambush.
Nick waited a moment. He could hear muted sounds from above. He risked a glimpse with his own light and saw the body of a guard sprawled head down on the stairs. Blood, like a miniature waterfall, was dripping down the stairs.
Someone fired at the lance of Nick’s light on the walls. The slug whined around like a leaden bee gone mad. Nick emptied his pistol up the stairs, trying to bounce the bullets off the wall and around the turn in the stairs. He heard a yelp of pain. He turned and ran back down the passage. That should hold them for a few minutes.
The big key opened the iron door. The lock was well oiled. Nick slipped through and locked the door behind him. His back trail was safe now for a while — it would take them hours to get through that door, even with an acetylene torch — but the thought brought him little comfort. If his hunch was right and the cables led to the lab buildings, they would know where he was headed. They would try to beat him there. All he had really gained was a few minutes while they hesitated back at the stairs.
He saw immediately that he was now in the oldest part of the castle. The passage sloped continually downward and the walls were covered with slime and trickling water. This was not a basement but a dungeon, carved out of the living rock of the cliff on which El Mirador stood.
Rats scuttled ahead of him as he made his way always downward. He wondered if the rats had gone blind after generations, as some fish did who lived in caves and never saw the light.
He came to the first cell. The door was of iron with a narrow barred grille in it. Nick put the beam of the flashlight through the aperture — and caught his breath. Instant revulsion sparked through him like an electric current as he examined the grisly sight. He had seen worse, but not much, and not often.
The dead man chained to the rear wall of the cell was not yet quite a skeleton. He would, Nick told himself as he fought off nausea, have been the last to be put in here. Bones glinted white and blue through the badly decomposed flesh. The rats, disturbed for a moment at their feeding, glared into the light; then, seeing no danger, sensing that the stranger would not intrude, they turned again to their feeding.