The Golden Serpent

Chapter 5 The Bitch

In the dead quiet that followed, Nick thought he heard a mocking laugh somewhere out in the gloom. He was not really sure — it might have been a trick of echo or the play of his imagination. In any case it did not come again. Nor was he shot at again. There was nothing but silence and the falling dark and the night cries of small birds. He lay unmoving, scarcely breathing in the shelter of his rocks, thinking furiously all the while. Since he was now on the highest point of land for miles around the shot had come from below, from one of the innumerable gullies and ravines and rock forts that covered the area. It was made-to-order ambush country.

And yet the gunner had missed! Granted that shooting uphill was tricky at any time, especially in crepuscular light, still he wondered. Had the gunner tried again, had he tried to hold Nick with a volley, the matter would have been clear. But there had been only one shot. That and the mocking laugh — had he really heard it?

The alternative was that someone was having fun and games with him; he had been warned, put on notice that he was being watched. By whom? The bandits mentioned by the CIA Director? Minions of The Bitch? Members of the Serpent Party? Friends of the ex-Nazi he had only just buried? Nick shrugged and with some effort extricated himself from the mental tangle. It would work itself out in time. Things always did.

For an hour he lay unmoving. A sidewinder twitched past without seeing him. Finally he made his way back to the barranca, his eyes a luminous amber now as he made his way easily through the dark along a trail he had only traveled once.

Nothing in or around the hut had been disturbed. There were no traces of visitors. Working in the dark, Nick cut some cedar branches and, with the musette bag, arranged them to look like a man sleeping on the bunk. He covered them with his only blanket.

The moon was pushing one golden horn above the blunted teeth of the sierra to the east when he snaked out of the hut and took up lodgings for the night in the low branches of a piñon pine and settled down for the vigil.

It proved a waste of time. His only visitor was a cougar. The big cat came softly out of the trees beyond the pond, on stealthy velvet paws, then paused as it caught the man-scent. With a flash of saffron in the moonlight it was gone.

As dawn seeped over the peaks in pale effulgence, Nick went to sleep, clinging to his branch. When he awoke the sun was three hours high. He climbed down, swearing at his stiffness and feeling just a bit the fool. Still it had been necessary to take the precaution. He bathed his face in the pool, then with the Webley in his belt and concealed by his shirt, he skirted the pond and climbed to the mesa. Descending on the far side he found a path that led toward the tiny village of Cosala. He followed it at an easy pace. He was gambling there would be no police in the village, and a visit for supplies would aid in establishing his role as a gold tramp. It might also, he thought rather grimly, provide some sort of reaction — other than shooting at him — from those who were watching him. N3’s frown, as he trudged along, had something of puzzlement in it. The CIA man had assured him that he did not have to worry about the bandidos. Nick wondered now how the CIA could be so sure. Did they have some sort of private deal cooked up with El Tigre and his band of cutthroats? Somewhere in the back of his mind Nick was beginning to feel the first prick of apprehension. Was this going to turn out to be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing? Another Bay of Pigs on a lesser scale? He knew damned well that the CIA hadn’t told him everything. They never did!

Still there was his own job to do, no matter what the obstacles; he was responsible to Hawk and AXE and had to get on with it. Yet, as he entered the village, the vague feeling of impending snafu would not go away.

It was a dismal little village, typical of the poverty and inertia the Serpent Party was trying to exploit. Nick Carter, rather an apolitical type, could see instantly that this could be made a fertile breeding ground for communism. It would, of course, be called by another name. The Chinese Reds were very far from being fools.

There was a single, mean street lined with tumble-down adobe houses. An open gutter, crammed with filth, ran down the center of the street. The smell and aspect of poverty was everywhere, hanging over the village like a miasma, attaching itself to the few peasants who shuffled past him without the usual friendly greeting that one receives in Mexico. Nick was aware of the furtive glances as he kept alert for any sign of a policeman. The villagers, of course, would know instantly what he was. A gold bum. As sullen and unfriendly as they were, he doubted any of them would turn him in to the Federal authorities; people like these were not usually on good terms with the police.

At the far end of the street he found a shabby cantina lit by candles and guttering oil lamp. No electricity in the village, of course. Nor any running water. That would have to be fetched from a single communal pump. As Nick rapped on the bar for service — there was no one in attendance — he could not help making the stark comparison between this village and Acapulco. They were two different worlds. Granted that this was one of the poorer provinces, and that the Mexican Government was doing everything in its power, yet these people were still living in ignorance, poverty and desperation. None of their country’s many bloody revolutions had availed for them. So it was here, and in the other places like it, that the Serpent Party was winning seats in the Chamber of Deputies and even in the Senate. It was weak as yet, the Party, but it was on the march. And financed, according to both the AXE and CIA experts, by the proceeds of the counterfeit that was playing hell with the American economy. Clever bastards, these Chinese!

Nick rapped on the bar again. The service was lousy, too. He studied a faded poster over the back bar, a garish advertisement for beer. A pariah dog the color of diluted mustard, skinny and trembling, slunk through the door to cower beneath a table. Somehow the sight of the miserable dog triggered the growing irritation in Nick. He slammed his fist down on the bar. “Goddamn it! Is anyone here?”

An old man, wrinkled and bent, the joints of his fingers grotesquely swollen, shuffled from a back room. “I am sorry, Señor. I did not hear you at first. My granddaughter, the little one, she died this morning and we must make ready the funeral. You wish, Señor?”

“Tequila, por favor. And I am sorry about your granddaughter. Of what did she die?”

The old man put a dirty glass and half a bottle of cheap tequila before Nick. He pushed forward salt, half a lemon and a plate of shriveled mango slices. Nick poured the tequila and drank, ignoring the lemon — it looked sick — but using the salt. The old man stared at him with apathy until Nick repeated his question, then he hunched his shoulders and spread his hands in the age-old gesture of defeat.

“Of the fever, Señor. Of the typhoid. There is much of it around here. Some say it is the well, from which all must drink.”

Nick poured himself another shot of tequila. “Don’t you have a doctor in the village?” Stupid question!

The old man shook his head. “No doctor, Señor. We are too poor. None will stay in our village. The Government has promised us a doctor, and serum, but it does not come. The doctor does not come. So our children die.”

There was a long silence broken only by the buzzing of flies. The cantina was full of them. Nick said: “Is there a policeman in the village?”

The old man gave him a shrewd look. “No police, Señor. They do not bother with us. Or we with them. We spit on the police!”

Nick was about to reply when he heard the sound of an expensive motor in the street. He went to the door and, keeping out of sight, peered out. It was the Rolls Royce he had seen last evening through the binoculars. There was no flash of silver hair this time. Whatever the purpose of the Rolls in this remote little village, evidently the lady was not involved.

The car was driven by a short, sturdy little man who looked like a mestizo or, to N3’s experienced eye, a Chinese trying to pass as a mestizo. In the circumstances, Nick thought, it could well be. He watched with interest as the Rolls stopped a little way past the cantina and the driver got out. He was wearing slacks and a garish sport shirt and a pair of blue sneakers. He walked with a bouncing spring in his step, giving the impression of squat muscularity, of a powerful coiled spring. Judo man, thought the AXE agent. Karate, too, probably. He filed the thought away.

The man was carrying a small hammer and a large, rolled-up sheet of paper. He went to the blank, windowless side of a deserted adobe house and nailed up a poster, taking the nails from his mouth and banging them in with rapid strokes. Nick could not make out the words but the emblem of the serpent was clear enough. The golden serpent with its tail in its mouth, the same as the bracelet he had been shown.

Another man put his head out of the rear window of the Rolls and said something to the mestizo. The man was wearing a white, snap-brim panama, but Nick caught a good look at the face. It was pink, well nourished, running a bit to jowl. A porcine face that he had seen not many hours ago in a glossy photo in San Diego. The man’s name was Maxwell Harper and he was head of a large public relations firm in Los Angeles. It was he who handled The Bitch’s cosmetic account.

Harper was also in charge of publicity for the Serpent Party, hence the CIA’s somewhat cursory interest in him. The man was doing nothing illegal, as the Director had taken pains to point out. He was properly registered with the Mexican Government and had been given a professional work permit. He was being paid openly by the Serpent Party to promote their campaign. Even so, an eye was to be kept on him. Nick had gathered, from what the Director had not said, that the CIA had a vague uneasiness about Maxwell Harper.

The mestizo finished hammering up the poster and went back to the car. Instead of sliding beneath the wheel he took another roll of paper from the front seat, said something to Harper, and started for the cantina.

Nick turned and headed for the back of the cantina. As he passed the bar he held up a twenty peso note and put his finger to his lips. The old man nodded. Nick slipped through the door into the back room. He closed the door but for the barest crack and stood listening. His eyes, roving the poor barren room, fell upon the tiny coffin on a pair of trestles. The child in it was dressed in a white frock. Her small hands were crossed on her breast. She looked like a brown rubber doll laid to rest for the moment.

A spate of Spanish, heavily laced with the dialect of the province, came from the bar. Nick put his eye to the crack. The mestizo was having a drink and haranguing the old man. He had spread the poster on the bar and weighted it with beer bottles. He jabbed a blunt finger at the lettering and kept talking. The old man listened in a sullen silence, nodding now and then. At last the mestizo shoved a small packet of peso notes at the old man, pointed to a wall of the cantina, and left. Nick waited until he heard the soft vanishing purr of the Rolls, then he went back to the bar. The old man was reading the poster, moving his lips.

“They promise much,” he told Nick. “The Serpents — but they will do nothing. Like all the others.”

Nick scanned the lettering. It wasn’t too bad, he admitted. Not exactly subtle, certainly not honest, but done with cunning. That would be Maxwell Harper’s hand. Public relations writing, American style. Every promise was qualified, but in such a way that the ignorant, the unlettered, would never notice it.

He had a last shot of tequila and shoved a five-thousand peso note at the old man. “For the muchacha,” Nick said. He nodded toward the back room. “For a stone, perhaps. And I am sorry, old man. Very sorry.”

At the door he halted and looked back. The old man was fingering the money. A single silver tear exuded from the rheumy eyes and crept down his dark cheek, tracing a light path in the dirt. “Muchas gracias, Señor. You are a good man.”

A thought struck Nick. “The child,” he said gently. “Why didn’t you take her up to the castle, to the place they call El Mirador? Surely they would have helped you? I hear the woman who owns it is very wealthy.”

The old man stared at him for a long moment. Then he spat. “We did take her, Señor. We begged for help. I myself, in person, wept. I got on my knees. We were turned away at the gate.” He spat again. “La Perra! The Bitch! She helps no one.”

Nick Carter found this hard to believe. Bitch she might be, still she was a woman. And a woman and a sick child — “Perhaps it was the fault of the guards,” he began, but the old man interrupted him. “They called the castle on their telephone, Señor. I myself heard them speaking to the woman. To La Perra. She would do nothing. She called us beggars and ordered the guards to drive us away.”

Nick went down the mean street to a small bodega to which the old man had directed him. It was a poor setup, with everything in scant supply, but he managed to buy some canned food, two blankets and a tiny mange-ridden burro, called Jake. He paid, loaded his supplies on Jake and headed back for the barranca. No one paid him the slightest attention as he left the village. There was no sign of the Rolls.

He spent the rest of the afternoon panning up and down the stream and accumulated a pinch or two of dust. He was not going to get rich.

It was hot and dry with a sky of glaring blue dotted here and there with miniature fleece. Around four he knocked off panning and took a dip in the pond. He left his clothes close to the water, with the big Webley on top of them. He dove deep and swam around as he had the day before, but found nothing of interest. He did not really expect to find another body.

This time he stayed down just a few seconds over four minutes. It was time enough for her to approach the pond without Nick’s hearing the hoof beats. When he surfaced, blowing and sputtering, she was sitting there on a magnificent palomino, staring at him. The Luger in her hand was rock-steady. Just behind the Palomino, flattened on their bellies, were two enormous Dobermans, their scarlet tongues lolling slant-wise from the wickedly fanged mouths.

The man and woman stared at each other for a moment. The woman spoke first, in German. “Der Tag kommt?”

Nick Carter’s brain raced like a computer. It was half of a recognition signal and he knew it, but he did not have the countersign. That this was The Bitch he knew instantly; he also guessed that her visit was somehow tied in with the dead man he had found, but he could not take advantage of his knowledge. There was nothing to do but play it cool and straight. He let just a hint of servility creep into his manner. He gave her a tentative smile.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t speak German. Just English. That was German, I guess?”

He saw a flicker of disappointment in the narrowed green eyes. She was a tall woman with enormous firm breasts and an incredibly small waist. Her hair was fine-spun silver, a Medusan mane flowing below her shoulders and caught with a golden brooch. Her magnificent skin had a tawny glow about it. Knowing what he did about her — which he must pretend not to know — Nick Carter was impressed, tremendously impressed. This woman, Bitch though she might be, was a legend in her own time.

The Luger moved in her hand as though it had a life of its own. He knew that if the whim took her she would murder him then and there.

She spoke again. “The word Siegfried means nothing to you?”

“No, ma’am. Should it?” Nick tried to look abashed and uneasy. At the moment it was not difficult, standing naked as he was in water to his waist.

The green eyes roved from Nick to his pile of clothing, taking in the Webley, then traversing on around the pond and the clearing and the hut. She was missing nothing. The eyes came back to Nick. “What do you do here?”

Nick shrugged and said, “Just trying to make a living, ma’am. Get a little stake, is all. I’m figuring on panning ’til I get me enough gold, then go back to the States.”

As though the thought had just struck him he added, “You own this land, ma’am? Am I trespassing? If I am I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll move right on, ma’am, if you say so.”

“I don’t actually own the land,” she said. She was carrying a crop in her left hand and she tapped a thigh, swelling round and voluptuous in pink jodhpurs. Tap — tap — tap — there was impatience and arrogance in the act. “I don’t own it,” she repeated, “but I run it. I say who pans gold around here and who does not. I could have you jailed, or hanged for that matter if I choose. Or I can shoot you now. I doubt anyone would miss you.”

Humbly, with the best hangdog look he could summon, Nick said, “I doubt they would, ma’am.”

The palomino began to fret, dancing on slender legs, switching its flaxen tail at the flies tormenting it. The woman jerked savagely at the bit, reining the animal in cruelly. “Be quiet, you bastard!” Her green eyes never left Nick, nor did the Luger take its cold black stare away from his belly.

“You are all alone?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You have seen no one else? Another man? He would be older than you, nearly bald, but a powerfully built man. You have seen such a man?”

I sure have, thought Nick. He’s buried about twenty feet away. He said: “No, ma’am. I ain’t seen anybody. But I only been here since yesterday. Please, ma’am, can I come out now? It’s cold in here.”

She ignored that and asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jamie McPherson, ma’am.”

“You are in Mexico legally? You have proper papers?”

Now Nick allowed himself to become more at ease. He was playing it strictly by ear, but he thought he could get away with acting as though the tension had eased a bit. After all she hadn’t shot him yet, and he must not overplay his hand. Not appear too stupid, too servile, or she would never give him an opportunity to take the place of the dead man. Which was precisely what N3 had in mind. He knew he was anticipating wildly, but sometimes these crazy gambles came off.

So he said, slyly, “Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t say I’m exactly legal. I got papers, all right, but they’re maybe a little out of date. Maybe a lot out of date.”

For the first time a hint of a smile touched the wide scarlet mouth. Her teeth were large and a dazzling white. Nick wondered, considering what he knew to be her true age, if they were her own. That would be another miracle.

The Luger moved curtly. “Get out,” she commanded. “Get dressed. I want to see your papers. Then perhaps we will talk.”

Nick Carter stared at this silver-haired Valkyrie with an astonishment that was not altogether feigned. “But, ma’am — I mean, well, I ain’t got any clothes on!”

The Luger stared at him. “Get out, I said. I have seen naked men before. Many of them. You are of tremendous build from the waist up — I wish to see the rest of you.” It was said with a natural air of command, with the perfect candor of one who is above the petty conventions.

Nick shrugged and climbed the slippery bank. The Old Man, Hawk, was never going to believe this. He hardly believed it himself.

As he left the water the two Dobermans bristled and showed their fangs. The woman leaned from her saddle to slash at them with the riding crop, but the pistol did not leave its target: Nick’s thick-muscled belly.

“Be quiet,” she ordered the dogs. “Damon, Pythias, down both of you!” The dogs sank back on their haunches, quivering, eyeing Nick meanly. Surely a misnamed pair of brutes, he thought, showing no recognition of the classical names. An uneducated bum like him wouldn’t know about Damon and Pythias.

He walked toward his clothes. “Do not pick up the gun,” she ordered. “Kick it over in my direction.”

Nick nudged the Webley toward her with his big toe. She swung easily from the saddle and picked it up. Her ease of movement reminded Nick of the cougar he had seen last night. He reached for his clothes.

“Do not dress yet. Stand up and turn around. Slowly.” There was a new note in her voice.

Slowly, with the sun hot on his naked flesh, Nick turned to face her. Slowly, very slowly, the green eyes began at his feet and crept upward. They lingered for a long time on his loins and Nick felt himself beginning to react. He tried to stop it, to fight back the surging tumescence, but to no avail. Slowly, inexorably, he continued to react to her avid stare. He saw her moisten her lips with a flick of her tongue. The green eyes were narrowed on him, on his flesh, and for a moment the golden mask of her face seemed to melt, to don and discard a series of new masks in rapid succession. The AXEman felt a growing excitement in himself, quite apart from the physical urge that was tinning him into a stud on display. He studied her face, with its arrogant slightly hooked nose over the wide slash of mouth, and in that face he read the permutations of passion — this was a woman who could slip from wild ferocity to dulcet murmurs of acquiescence; this woman was capable of — it was written plain on the features — of cruelty, perversion, erotic phantasmagoria beyond the wildest dreaming of sane people — he doubted she was sane in the ordinary sense — of phallic worship performed to the devil’s mass. At her age, he thought, she must have seen, had indeed experienced, everything that man and woman can do together, plus many things that were artificial and unnatural. Still she was not satiated. Her glance now bespoke the truth of that.

Gerda von Rothe shivered and made an audible sound in her throat. She broke the spell. “Get dressed,” she commanded harshly. “Hurry up. Then we must talk. I must be getting back to the castle.”

She watched him dress. Then she tossed him the Webley, still loaded, and put the Luger away in a holster. She was supremely confident now.

“Come,” she told him. “We will walk a little way. And talk. I think, Jamie, that I may be able to use you. It will be easy work” — the green eyes glinted at him — “and I will pay you well. You are badly in need of money, I think?”

“Yes, ma’am. I surely am.”

She frowned. “Do not call me ma’am — call me Gerda for now. But that does not mean you are to be too familiar, you understand? I am hiring you, Jamie. You and your body. No matter what happens, you are a servant. Nothing more. Is that understood?”

“Yes, m... I mean, yes, Gerda. I understand that. It’s okay by me. I ain’t much, I guess. Just a gold tramp that’s never had any luck.”

She frowned at him. A breeze got into the silver mane and tousled it around her face. She was nearly as tall as he, Nick saw, and would weigh about 150–160. All firmly packed woman. Even in the jodhpurs and plain blouse there was a hint of the Rubensian about her figure.

She was still frowning. “Don’t whine,” she said. “It sickens me. People are what they make themselves, Jamie. You don’t appear to have made much of yourself. I find that a little odd, a man with a body like yours. Why aren’t you a fighter, or a wrestler, something like that. In the old days you could have been a gladiator!”

Nick did not answer. They reached the shallows and she stooped to pick up a stone and toss it over the stream. By now the sun was low in the west.

Gerda von Rothe indicated a flat boulder. “We will sit here and talk, Jamie. Have you a cigarette?”

“Only Mex. They ain’t very good.”

“They’ll do. Give me one.” Imperious. Like a good slave, Nick gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. She blew smoke through the arrogant nose. “This is the place to talk. In the open where no one can get near you.”

Nick, who had a strong feeling that they were being watched at the moment, repressed his smile. If she only knew. He hoped the gunner wouldn’t decide to start sniping again, whether in fun or not. It would ruin everything.

Gerda stared at him through smoke. “You are not an educated man, are you?”

“No. Guess not. I only went to the fifth grade. Why? You need an educated man for the job you are talking about?”

Another frown. “I will ask all the questions, Jamie. You will not ask questions. You will obey orders. To the letter. And that is all you will do.”

“Sure. Of course. But the job — what you want me to do?”

She answered his question with another. “Have you ever killed a man, Jamie?”

Nick could answer that truthfully. “Yes. A couple of times. But always in fair fight.”

Gerda von Rothe nodded. She seemed satisfied. “I want a man killed, Jamie. Perhaps two men. Maybe even more. You will agree to do this? There will be some danger to yourself, I warn you.”

“I don’t mind the danger. I ain’t exactly a stranger to it. But the price will have to be right — I’m not taking a chance on a firing squad for peanuts.”

She leaned toward him, the green eyes as hard as glass on his, and for a moment Nick had the impression of a lioness. “Ten thousand dollars for the first man,” she said softly. “Ten thousand for each one after that. Is that not fair and generous?”

Nick pretended to consider for a moment, then said, “Yeah. That sounds all right. Who do I kill? How? And when?”

Gerda got up. She stretched her big lush body like a cat. She tapped the riding crop on her thigh. “I am not exactly sure yet. I must make a plan. And I will have to get you into the castle. The men I want you to kill are there. They are dangerous men, and very cautious. You will have one chance only. Nothing must go wrong.”

Nick looked down at his ragged clothes. “Your guards wouldn’t let me in the gate.”

“No need for that. You will not come in the front gate. And I have clothes at the castle, everything you will need. Once you are in I can introduce you as... as a transient friend. It will not surprise them. I have... entertained male friends before.”

Nick thought: I’ll just bet you have, baby!

Gerda von Rothe picked up Nick’s wrist with a big, well-manicured hand. She wore no nail polish. She glanced at the handsome wrist watch — he had hoped she would not notice it — and said, “My God, is it that late? I must be getting back.”

The touch of her dry, warm fingers sent an electric current tingling through Nick. He tried to withdraw his hand but she held it tightly. She was staring at the watch. Her eyes were a little narrowed when she looked at him again. “This is quite a watch for a bum.”

It was indeed a very special watch. Nick prayed that the hour hand would not start flickering now. It was in fact a combination watch and DF — directional finder — and the hour hand would flick around instantly to point out the source of any radio transmission within twenty-five miles. The watch, and the beeper in the hilt of his knife, were all the “gadgets” he had been permitted on this mission.

He met her eyes squarely. “It’s a beaut, huh? I stole it in Tampico about a year ago. I figured to hock it, but somehow I never did. Now I won’t have to — after I do this job for you.”

They walked back downstream. She appeared to have forgotten the watch. “You will come to the castle tonight,” she told him. “Come about midnight and stay away from the main gate. There is a smaller gate, a postern, about half a mile north of the gate, that will be to the right, where the fence turns west to the sea. Come to that gate. I will be waiting for you. Be very quiet, very careful. The guards patrol around the inside of the fence every hour and they will have dogs with them. I can do nothing to disrupt the routine. It would make them suspicious. Do you think you can do this? And make no mistakes?”

Nick thought it time to show a little spirit. “I ain’t exactly a moron,” he growled. “Just because I ain’t educated don’t mean I’m a dummy. You just leave it to me.”

Again the hard green stare. Then: “I think perhaps you will do, Jamie. So long as you obey orders and do not try to think for yourself, do not try to understand what is going on.” She laughed shortly. “That would be a mistake, I assure you. It is much too complicated for a man like you. You are a magnificent brute, Jamie, and I expect you to do a brute’s work. Nothing more.”

She let her thigh brush his. She wet her lips with a scarlet tongue. “And I shall reward you as a brute, Jamie. Other than the money, I mean. I can promise that you will not be disappointed.”

They reached the clearing and the pond. The palomino was grazing regally alone, ignoring Jamie as one of the lower classes. The two Dobermans lay panting exactly where they had been left. Well-trained brutes, Nick thought. They showed their fangs at him and snarled as he approached, but did not move.

Gerda von Rothe swung into the saddle, tall and imperious as some female Caesar. Nick, on sudden impulse, put one hand on her thigh, on the inside, between the knee and crotch. He squeezed gently and grinned up at her. “I’ll see you at midnight then, Gerda.”

For a second or two she suffered his touch. Her smile was hard, cold, cruel. Then she slashed him across the face with the riding crop, a hard and stinging blow.

“Never touch me again,” she said. “Until I tell you I want to be touched. Goodbye, Jamie. Midnight at the postern.”

Nick, his fingers tenderly exploring the weal on his face, watched her skirt the pond and head for the mesa. She put the palomino into a canter. Damon and Pythias loped along behind.

He stared after her until she was out of sight. When at last he turned toward the hut his face wore an expression of puzzlement, of near disbelief, that was most unusual for the AXE agent. In his line of work he had been in some weird situations, but this beat them all. He felt as though he were walk-in some dark dream.

Bitch she might be. Legend she certainly was. If the stories, the rumors, the wide-spread publicity by mouth and print, if all these were to be believed — Gerda von Rothe was seventy years old!