Peg began to dress. Nick enjoyed watching her dress, though as a rule it did not excite him as it was exciting him now. Perhaps, he thought as he became aware of the tumult in his groin, perhaps because it is the last night. Whatever it was, it was most effective. He was, to make no bones about it, falling into rut. Beginning to slaver.

  Peg stood up to adjust a black garter belt, then began to draw on long, dark-hued stockings. Nick watched with pleasure and did not tell his libido to be still. It was, after all, the last night.

  He wondered, just before he acted, if women were aware of the aphrodisiac effect of long black stockings on white legs. Were they innocent of intent to arouse, or did they use it just as a little whore’s trick?

  With growing desire he watched as she pulled each stocking up high and gartered it taut, extending each long slim leg before her as she did so. Finally he could stand no more.

  “Peg.”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Come here.”

  He thought he detected a feigned innocence in her blue eyes as she obeyed. “Why?”

  Nick closed his eyes in mock annoyance. “Why? The woman asks why!”

  Peg stood by the side of the bed, staring down at him. “My God! You insatiable beast! Not again so soon!”

  “Yes,” said Nick Carter. “Again so soon.” He stretched a brawny arm and swept her down.

  Peg resisted for a moment. “No, you fool! Later. You’ll get me all messed up, darling. And there’s dinner—it will be waiting and …”

  “Now!”

  She leaned forward to kiss him and the tips of her breasts brushed his lips. She let out a great sigh and reached beneath her to achieve adjustment and position. A moment later she let out a sobbing moan: “Ohhhh, darling! Darling—darling—darling—”

  Nick was so far gone into the sexual mists that he could not at first identify the sound that intruded on their private frenzy. Just as he did sort it out, and tag it—the sound of the cable car coming into the landing—they both exploded and he could think of nothing.

  They lay for a long time afterward, side by side, silent and tender. Peg was the first to rouse herself. She slipped off the bed and smiled at him. “Now, you lecherous brute, I’ve got to do my face over! Everything. So I might as well take another bath. I always perspire when I make love.”

  Nick kept his eyes closed. “Not me. I’m as cool as a cucumber—now!”

  He heard the bathroom door close. He lay for a moment, willing himself to cast off lethargy, to emerge from the tristesse of spent love. He felt like a man with rubber bones.

  At last he forced himself up and began to dress. He had brought along a dinner jacket, just in case, and as he was inserting a cuff link he dropped it. It rolled under the bed. Nick cursed mildly and went after it. The link was, as they always are, squarely in the middle of the bed space. He had to crawl in a little way.

  He saw it immediately. The rectangular black box, like a thin box camera, that was wedged into the bed springs. He stared at it. It was as if someone had struck him a terrible blow over the heart. A tape recorder! A battery operated tape recorder, probably with an automatic timer that would switch off and on at the most appropriate times. Like now. Like after dark, and say perhaps until midnight, the hours when people were most likely to be in their rooms. Talking.

  Killmaster stared at the thing as though it were a poisonous snake. In a way it was. The damned tape had just recorded very word, every sigh, every moan and scream, every spang of bedspring. But for whom? Why? How?

  Nick Carter felt a deep disgust with himself. He had been so damned cocky, so damned sure of himself. So sure that the Unicorn was a safe house! He had searched for bugs, but it had been cursory and more the product of habit than anything else. Nick lay there with his face against the carpet and cursed himself for a stupid amateur. And yet he was no amateur. He was one of the world’s top pros. He had double-checked his backtrack a dozen times. He couldn’t have been followed!

  Yet here was the tape recorder, the all recording ear. Where had he slipped up?

  Nick reached for the black box, then pulled his hand back. No! No more mistakes. Someone had planted the thing there and someone would have to pick it up. Nick planned to be there when they did.

  He went to the bathroom and entered without knocking. This was no time for niceties.

  Peg was just stepping out of the shower. She took one look at his face and asked, “What’s wrong, darling?”

  “Get packed,” said Nick. “You’re getting out of here. Right now. Don’t ask any questions because I can’t give you any answers. Just do as you’re told. And do it fast!”

  Peg nodded and began to obey, unspeaking. This was a new Nick, one she had never seen before. He frightened her. His face, especially around the eyes, reminded her of a death’s head.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SUITE was dark and quiet. From the stair landing Nick heard the tall clock bong twice. He had been under the bed now for two hours, waiting. The Luger was tucked into his belt and the stiletto nestled patiently in the chamois sheath on his right forearm.

  They would come. Nick was sure of it. He was all Nick Carter now, all Killmaster. No longer the careless, sex-drugged fool who had slipped up so badly. He was also baffled, utterly and completely baffled for one of the few times in his life.

  Who the hell was it? Or they? The elderly couple? That seemed impossible, laughable. The young German couple pretending to be married? Possible, though not likely. Killmaster had a sixth sense about such matters and he had given them clearance. Who was left? Mine host? That fat gut? Still possible. The man’s wife, the cook, the chambermaid, the stupid man of all work?

  The two men who had come up in the cable car—he had vaguely heard it come in while he and Peg were making love—who had checked in and then had immediately gone skiing in the moonlight? Killmaster frowned in the gloom. That was odd behavior, to be sure, but the two men, whoever they were, had just arrived. The host had never seen them before. They couldn’t have planted the recorder. They could, he thought, be pretty sinister—or they could be a couple of nuts who liked to ski in the moonlight. A lot of people did. The young German couple, for instance, had just been returning from a moonlight ski when he came back to the inn after putting Peg on the cable car. They had been a nuisance in the little bar, telling him about the glories of moonlight on the glacier, while all the time he had been trying to squeeze some information out of the host. They had insisted on buying Nick a drink and telling him in guttural English—of which they were very proud—of the joys they had just experienced.

  Pests, yes, but they had given him an idea.

  Having elicited as much as he could from the landlord, not much, simply that the two strangers had registered and immediately gone off skiing—they were, already wearing ski togs, and was that not strange, Herr Thomson?—Nick went back to the suite and changed into his own ski togs. A glance beneath the bed showed him that the tape recorder was still there. That was his one fear, the ghost that haunted him until he slid under the bed to wait, that someone would sneak in and get the recorder while he was absent. They hadn’t. The thing was there now, just over his head, waiting, as Nick was waiting, for someone to come and claim it.

  Before going back downstairs Nick had turned off all the lights in the suite. He went to a window and raised it cautiously, soundlessly. He peered down into a well of shadow. The moon was well past the zenith and this side of the inn was in darkness. Under the window was a coil of stout rope attached to a bracket in the wainscot. It was the fire escape, primitive even for the Unicorn, but very much to his purpose now. Nick tossed the rope over the sill and put down the window. If the person after the recorder made a preliminary scout, a survey without committing themselves, an open window was sure to raise suspicion. Frighten them off.

  Nick’s task had been to create an illusion. To convince someone—the watcher—that he had indeed gone skiing. Then the trick was to double back and get into the room without being seen. It was not going to be easy, Killmaster thought as he went downstairs to announce that he also was going for a moonlight ski. And that was the chief difficulty—moonlight. So damned much moonlight! Nick found himself cursing Lady Luna and her silvery rays with all his heart.

  There was no help for it. He just had to forge ahead and hope. Hope that his enemy was as much an amateur as he, Nick Carter, had proven himself to be this timeout. Dolt!

  By this time the host was in such a dither that nothing could surprise or bother him much. First the so-beautiful dinner—ruined. He would have to eat it himself and he was already much too fat. Then the sudden arrival of the strange-acting guests. Then the abrupt departure of the Mrs. Thomson! But Herr Thomson did not go with his lovely wife—he stayed and now he wished to ski in the moonlight. Alone. Sonderbar! All very sonderbar! And yet all very profitable, too. Ja. Everything paid for and no complaints about the extra ten per cent he added.

  So when Nick had announced his intention of skiing romantically over the shining glacier the host had just stared at him dully and muttered, “Ja! Enjoy yourself, mein Herr!”

  Nick went around to the ski rack in the rear of the inn. This was the really tricky part, and if the watcher was alert he wasn’t going to get away with it. Killmaster was a little frantic now, lest at that very moment the recorder was being removed. He took his skis out of the rack and hid them in a snowbank near the corner of the inn, deep in shadow. Then he raced for the dangling rope and swarmed up it like an agile monkey on a string, using only his arms.

  He hung by one hand as he pushed the window up. Then he was in and moving like a big cat in the dark. He was already carrying the Luger and stiletto. He held his breath as he rolled under the bed and felt around in the springs. It was still there.

  That had been two hours ago. Now Killmaster was worried that the enemy would not come. Savagely he thought: What in hell is wrong with him, or her, or them? If his trick had worked they should think that he was still out skiing. A little late, perhaps, but he was an American and therefore a little crazy.

  Maybe it hadn’t worked. Maybe his opponent was too cagey. Maybe he was sitting somewhere at that very moment, laughing himself to death. Nick might have been observed hiding his skis and climbing the rope. Killmaster swore under his breath. Maybe a lot of things. Goddamn the luck—

  Someone was fumbling at the door.

  Killmaster tensed for a microsecond, then relaxed completely. Here it was. A fierce joy filled his heart. Action at last. He was going to get his hands on the bastard that had made a fool of him.

  He heard the door swing slowly open. Then a long silence as someone stood peering into the dark room. Nervous, thought Nick. Very nervous. And cautious. He was glad he had closed the window. An open window, a breeze riffling the curtains, would have spooked the visitor.

  Slow, heavy footsteps coming toward the bed. Nick put his hand over the sheath to dull the click of the mechanism and snapped the stiletto down into his right hand.

  They were going to work in darkness. Good. He functioned as well in the dark as in fight, sometimes better.

  He felt, sensed rather than saw, someone kneeling by the side of the bed. A hand was groping toward him. Killmaster waited patiently for the hand to come to him. No killing yet. He wanted a prisoner. Someone was going to talk. Loud and long.

  The hand touched his. A fat hand, calloused by hard work. The chambermaid!

  Nick grabbed the hand and put the point of the stiletto into the flabby wrist.

  “Ahhhhh—Gott! Gott in Himmel! Who?”

  “Beruhigen!” Nick’s voice snapped like a wolf trap. He spoke rapidly in German, loading every word with menace. Terror was the weapon now.

  “Do not scream. Say nothing at all.” He drew the stiletto suggestively across the fat wrist. “If you make another sound I will slash your wrist and let you bleed to death. If you do not make trouble I may let you live. Now you can answer me, but whisper. Very quietly. Do you understand what I have just said?”

  The answer was faint and laden with terror. “Ja, Herr! I understand. Ja—J a—I make no trouble. I wish no trouble. They said there would be no trouble.” The hand was trembling.

  “Very well. Perhaps I will let you go. Sit on the bed. If you try to escape I will kill you. Understand that?”

  “Ja.”

  Nick let the hand go. At the same time he rolled from beneath the bed on the opposite side. He heard the scrunch of springs as the big woman sank down on the bed.

  “Stay there,” he warned. “Don’t move.” He went to an old-fashioned bridge lamp and switched it on.

  The fat chambermaid blinked at him, surprise mingling with the fear on her round, flaccid face. “Herr Thomson! But you—Herr Josef said that—”

  “That I was having a moonlight ski, yes?” Nick made his face as forbidding as he could. He didn’t want to have to hurt or kill this poor dumb bitch. But he had to know who was using her.

  He took a few steps toward the bed, let her see the stiletto. Her pudgy dumpling face, already the color of dough, turned a shade whiter.- She cowered away from him. “Please, Herr Thomson! Please—do not harm me! I have done nothing. I swear it! I—”

  “Be quiet!” Nick held out the tape recorder for her to see. “Who paid you to plant that beneath the bed?”

  “The men,” she whispered. “The men in Gstaad! I go there, you understand, once a week to see my sister who works also in a Gasthaus. The men were kind to me, they bought me drinks and dinner and said that I could help them catch a spy. All I had to do was put the little box under the bed and then give it to them. I—”

  Killmaster cut off the flow of words. “These men? What sort of men?”

  The chambermaid stared at him with dull cow eyes. She shrugged. “What sort, Herr? Just men—agents of the police, they told me. They said I would get in trouble if I did not help them. They said the lady was a most dangerous spy and—”

  The lady! Nick began to see it, then. Or not so much to see it as to sense it with his professional intuition.

  He indicated a large leather chair. “Go sit in that chair.”

  She waddled to the chair and slumped into it. Nick stood behind her. The dirty blonde hair, graying now, was done into a tight bun on the nape of her neck. He placed the point of the stiletto just beneath the bun and pressed it into the flesh. The woman began to moan.

  “Mein Gott! Mein Gott!”

  “He can’t help you,” rasped Nick. “Maybe I can.” Always leave them a little hope. “If you tell the truth I will not kill you. If I think you are lying I am going to cut your throat.”

  She nodded. The fat rippled on her as tremors shook the big flabby body. He put just a little more pressure on the stiletto.

  “When did this happen? When did these men first approach you?”

  “Last week, Herr. They said I was to see in which room the lady stayed, then to put the box beneath the bed. I was shown how to wind it, to set it, you understand. To catch a dangerous spy, they said. As soon as the lady—”

  It was beginning to clear now. Nick Carter could feel a monumental laugh coming on. Talk about bunglers!

  Peg had arrived a day early. They had planned it that way because they did not want to be seen traveling together.

  “They were only interested in the lady, these men? Not

  She nodded. “Ja, Herr. So it seemed. I—you will not be offended, Herr? You will not harm me if I tell you what one of the men said?”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “One of the men laughed and—this I was not supposed to hear, I think—and said that you were a paid lover, perhaps.”

  Nick wanted to laugh, but dared not. It would have shattered the mood of terror he had built up. But it was all coming clear now.

  “These men spoke German, of course?”

  “Ja.”

  “The local dialect? The way you speak German around here? Think hard now.” He pressed the stiletto in a little deeper. There was a moment of silence as she racked her dull wits, silence broken only by her heavy, panting breathing. Finally, with a note of faint triumph, she said: “Nein! I think not from around here. Not Switzerland. I think maybe from Osten.”

  East. East Germany! Nick smiled. They had a clumsy apparatus. The word was, among the professionals, that East German Intelligence were driving their Russian mentors, KGB and GRU, nearly out of their minds.

  To hurry matters up he began to guess. He couldn’t spend all night with this poor slut.

  “These two men—they came up on the cable car tonight?”

  “Ja.”

  “They went skiing. They’re out there now, waiting for you to bring them the box?”

  “Ja, Herr. They are impatient, you understand. I could not leave here for another week. I have many duties and der Gastgeber would not like it. He would not permit—”

  “Never mind. Where are you supposed to meet these men?”

  “In the shelter cabin on the glacier, Herr.”

  “When?”

  “As soon the moon goes down. I am to give them the box and receive my money.” “They are there now, then?”

  “I suppose so, Herr.”

  “All right. Now I am going to ask you more questions—most important of all. If you lie I will know it and I will most certainly slit your fat throat. You understand?”

  The woman began to tremble again. “Ja—ja.”

  Nick held the tape recorder around in front of her. “This is the only box? There is no other?”

  “Ja, Herr. Only one.”

  “And you have not seen these men since they gave you this box? You have not taken them anything yet? This box has not been reloaded?”

  “Reloaded, Herr? I do not understand.”

  Slow witted cow!

  “I mean that you have not yet given these men anything? Nothing? You have not seen them again?” He had to be sure there were no other tapes.