Blood of the Vixen

Chapter Three Secret in Blood

When the door closed behind him she began to tremble so badly that she could hardly stand. It was pure horror to think that what she had said to Karl about Darron had resulted in— That couldn’t be true! It must have been some other enemy. Bad luck. Pure bad luck. With the police in on it, Karl Ehrlich would become cautious and refuse to deal with her. Darron was the only one who knew the method for quick communication with Sakna Kahn. If Sakna Kahn should hear that Darron was dead and that Karl Ehrlich had refused to deal with her—

She stood, still trembling, and tightened her hands until the finger nails bit into her palms. She suddenly realized that Karl would not call again, that Karl would probably never call again. She remembered his air of caution. The unreality of the situation was a constant nightmare. Because one power-mad man in Ceylon saw the British leave India, he wanted to hurry them out of Ceylon. The British garrison was small. It would succeed. For a time. There would be many deaths.

When you dealt in death, you had to deal with men like Ehrlich, Darron and Sakna Kahn. You had to wear a variety of names and when success was in your grasp, you ended up standing in your hotel room, shaking from head to foot. There was a bitter taste in your mouth. You stood and thought of the men who would be sent by Sakna Kahn to the plantation after your two sisters if Sakna Kahn ever suspected the least trace of disloyalty to his blood-stained cause.

She suddenly realized that her only way out would be to see Karl Ehrlich alone. In a place where he would be forced to talk to her. His room! She would have to find a way to get into the room. Finding out which room was easy. She merely phoned the desk and asked and they told her.

She paced back and forth, trying to think of some way to get into his room. Suddenly she grinned crookedly at her own stupidity. It would be easy to find out if he was in there. Room nine twenty-six. One floor above. She found the fire well and went quickly up the stairs. She knocked at his door. No answer. Again. He was not in.

A maid came down the hall, clean sheets over her arm, and went into the room across the hall from nine twenty-six. She used a pass key on the door.

Latmini dipped hurriedly into her purse, found a ten dollar bill, pushed the half-open door wide open and walked in.

“Yeah?” the maid said expectantly, eyeing the ten.

“I wonder if you’d let me in the room across the hall.”

“Against the rules. Can’t do it.”

“But I’m a guest in the hotel. You see, a friend of mine has that room. I want to play a joke on him. Really, I’m not a thief.”

“Ask the desk.”

“You know they’ll say no. Look, I’ll make it fifteen dollars.”

The maid scratched her thin blonde hair. “Well—”

The room wasn’t built for walking. Square and plain, with drab plaster walls, draperies fresh from the showroom of your cheap local dealer in furniture which makes your home look like “the home of the movie stars.”

And yet she walked. Ceaselessly. From the bed to the bathroom door. Back. The wide windows looked down on the heart of the city. She felt the deep pulse of the city and it was something that was part of the beat of her heart, something that took possession of nerve, vein, pulse...

There would be no point in calling the desk.

As soon as Karl came back from the meeting, or wherever he was, he would come to the room. There was nothing else he could do. It was his room. Karl seemed to be a creature of habit.

She paused, near the windows, held her hands outstretched, fingers spread, felt the excited surge of pulse that made her hands tremble, made a vein throb in her throat, made her feel once again the deep fear that had been with her ever since she had walked up the gangplank at Colombo.

On impulse, she hurried to the bureau, pulled open the drawers, riffling impatiently through the neatly folded underthings, the starched shirts. It was in the second drawer. A plain silver flask bearing the odd seal that she had learned to recognize. Just a plain silver flask, dull finish, inscribed with a warning that she could interpret.

She unscrewed the top, tilted it high and the sharp sting of the liquor tore at her throat. Of course it was good and expensive liquor. Karl would insist on nothing less. The deep rich glow warmed the chill of fear, made her strong again... and bold.

It was at the instant that she heard his key in the door. The knob turned. She stood waiting for him, his silver flask in her hand.

He was startled at the glow of light in the room. She saw him blink against the glare, pause, iron out the expression of dismay.

His tone was most casual. “Hello, Stella.” As though finding a woman in his room was a customary thing.

She heard, in her own voice, the thin fragile note of hysteria. “Karl!” she said. “How nice! Welcome home.”

Without taking his eyes from her, he closed the door behind him. The click of the brass latch was thin, metallic, final, somehow ominous. Karl had become a stranger. Without warning. Without plan.

He walked toward her, stopped three feet away and said, “It is nice, isn’t it?” His eyes were cold. “I saw Roger this evening. He told me — just enough.”

She backed away suddenly as he reached for her. She couldn’t evade the square tanned hand that reached for her throat, but tore the fabric of her dress.

Holding the dark green dress together, she backed against the bed, looking at him with wide eyes.

“I think we will talk this over,” he said. He walked slowly toward her.

The flask dropped to the floor. She shrank back.

He paused and smiled. “Or perhaps you would prefer to finish your drink?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, hysteria close to the surface. “Why are you like this?”

He stooped and picked up the flask. Some of the contents had seeped out onto the pale rug. He glanced down at the dark wet spot. She looked also, saw the threads in the rug twist and blacken, saw the tiny wisps of gray smoke that arose, smelled the pungent odor of acid. She put both hands to her throat.

Karl laughed at her. The sound was flat, metallic — somehow reminding her of the click of the door latch. “Don’t fret, Stella. This toy is a thing I have seen before. It is the impact which releases the capsule of acid into the liquor. A pretty seal etched into the silver, don’t you think? Don’t you remember seeing it before?”

She could make no sense of his words. She felt as though she had been pushed onto a stage in an unfamiliar part. The other actor was giving her the cues, but she couldn’t respond. “No, I—”

“Think, my clever little one: Think hard! Surely one like you who comes to Karl Ehrlich and pretends to be a customer must also be observant.”

“I did not pretend. I have—”

His voice softened. “My dear, a man does not lie when he looks into the eyes of death. Roger Darron labeled you an imposter when he said that you have nothing of value with you.”

His huge frame and the uncanny quickness of his movements made any thought of escape impossible. She lifted her chin, tried to make her voice firm and confident. “But surely Roger Darron told you more than that. He must have—”

“Stella, my sweet, he had no chance to say more.”

“Then you—”

The silence in the room was intense. Her mouth dry, she looked into his eyes and saw what Roger Daron had seen — and Wanda. She saw the way Wanda had walked back and forth, suddenly alive as she talked of Roger. She saw Roger’s vague blue eyes, his florid face, the red puffiness of his hands. A fragment of memory returned. There had been a ring on the third finger of his left hand. A heavy ring, the flesh bulging above and below it. An odd seal on that ring. The seal matched the design on the flask.

Inadvertently she said, “His ring.”

“I knew you were observant, Stella. Now you know far too much, don’t you? When he was blinded he fumbled for that flask. I thought it must be some sort of a key to his activities. I brought it back here with me and put it away in the drawer. You must be psychic, my dear. Something led you directly to it. Now, suppose you tell me, very quickly, who your represent, what you are after.”

He stepped closer to her, one of his big hands clamping on her wrist. He twisted slightly, and the pain shot through her arm.

“Who sent you to me?” he asked, accenting each word.

He had his right hand on her left wrist. She moved a bit closer to him, and smiled. She slipped her right hand through the tear in her dress, snatched the jade hilt of the knife, felt the tape pull away from her flesh. She snapped it down to fling off the sheath and then drove it up at him.

He twisted back. The keen blade slit the fabric of his suit and that was all.

“The kitten has claws,” he said softly. On his toes, like a boxer, he began to move cautiously toward her. “It will be better if it is your knife that is used,” he said.

The door broke open with a splintering crash and Harrigan bounded into the room, the light glinting on the steady muzzle of the revolver he held aimed at Ehrlich’s middle. “Break it off right here, kids,” he said softly.

Ehrlich snatched the knife by the blade, pulling the hilt out of Latmini’s lax hand. With the same sweeping motion, he threw it at Harrigan, bounding after it like a great cat.

The crash of the shot in the small room was like the crack of a thousand whips. Harrigan had fired as he jumped back. He stood, his back against the closet door, and the jade handle of the knife quivered close to his head. His rush carried Karl heavily into the wall near the door. Then Karl crashed to the floor and lay still.

Harrigan put one toe under Ehrlich’s shoulder and grunted as he kicked him over. “Oh, unhappy day!” Harrigan said. “Right smack in the face. And so many people wanted to have words with him.”

He kicked the shattered door shut in the face of a shaking man who stood there, his eyes bulging. He said to Latmini, “Sit down, honey. I got a call to make.”

She sat numbly on the bed. It was finished now. Sakna Kahn would believe that he had been betrayed. Anything he might do, he would consider as a lesson to others who would think of betrayal.

She heard the murmur of Harrigan’s voice as he spoke over the phone. He hung up.

“What made you come here?” she asked in a low voice.

“We’ve had this outfit covered like a tent, sweetness. Our man was on the switchboard when I was in your room. One of the Federal agencies has been fastened to Ehrlich like a leech for months. We coordinated a little. That reminds me.” He stepped out into the hall, pushed some people aside and picked up a stethoscope from the floor, came back into the room and kicked the door shut.

“A very old gag, honey, but a good one. He was too smart for the boys to plant wires on. So I got this in a hurry from a doc in the hotel. Flat against the door, you can hear pretty good.”

She stared over at the dead face of Karl Ehrlich and shuddered.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Harrison asked. “You’ve heard about these things. The boys will be along in a few minutes now to wrap up Ehrlich. You’ll have to answer our questions, then we turn you over to the Federal boys for a thorough going over.”

“It won’t do any good,” she said dully. “It has all gone wrong for me. Everything. Nothing will do any good now.”

He walked over to her, squatted on his heels in front of her and peered up into her face. “Maybe you should tell Harrigan,” he said softly. “You sound beat.”

“I’ll tell you, but it won’t do any good. I was sent here to contact this man and buy weapons for shipment to Ceylon. I have failed. The man who sent me here will take his revenge on my family.”

Harrigan frowned. “So that’s why Ehrlich here was such an interesting item to the boys from Washington! But have you got that kind of money on you?”

She silently shook her head.

He stood up. “Then Harrigan can’t do anything for you, honey. We need a little more than a fairy tale from a beautiful lady to swing us into action.”

She shrugged hopelessly. “What could you do?”

“Simple. Our British cousins are also interested in Ehrlich, even though he’s dead. I spent some time in CIC during the late fracas. I know how far they’ll play along. With proof of some kind from you, I’ll bet they’d send their people to your family, pick them up and hold them in protective custody.”

Slowly she lifted her head. “Do you mean it? Really?”

“Of course I mean it.”

She stood up and wavered weakly. He caught her by the elbows and said, “Steady as she goes, lass.” For a moment their eyes met. She felt that something had passed between them. A certain understanding. With an odd flash of prescience, she knew that this man would be mixed up in all the rest of her life.

She walked to the closet door and said, as she wrenched the knife out of the wood, “You said there is a doctor in the hotel. Call him immediately.”

He stared at the knife. “But what—”

“Call him!”

As he crossed to the phone she went over and sat on the bed. He replaced the phone on the cradle and said, “He’ll come running. Now what—”

She had pulled the skirt of the green dress up above her knees. She glanced at Harrigan. He licked dry lips and she saw the confusion in his eyes.

Her mouth twisted into a grimace of anticipated pain, and she placed the keen edge of the blade against the ridge of white scar tissue, pressed down and drew the blade quickly across the scar, biting deep. The dark blood flowed quickly. Faint with pain, she flexed her thigh to bunch the muscles, pressed hard with her thumbs on either side of the wound.

A dark object slipped from the wound and thudded against the rug. She tried to press again, but all strength had gone from her fingers. Weakly she said to Harrigan, “Emerald... nearly thirty karat... imbedded in tissue... sterile... two others still there... half-million dollars... they were stolen from Buddhist temple.”

She felt herself going over forward and tried to catch her balance, but it was too late. As the room darkened, she knew that Harrigan took a quick step and caught her. A strange voice asked something about a patient. She couldn’t hear it clearly because Harrigan’s arms were around her, and his voice, deep and gentle, was saying, “It will be all right. Don’t be afraid. It will be all right.”