"THE HAND WHICH WIELDS THE SCYTHE I"
7/12-7/13/1982
I.
"Why are you so interested in these deaths?" questioned Jeremy Bane, shifting uncomfortably in that spindly chair.
His companion lit a cigarette and Bane observed that her slender hand was none too steady. Rook was widely acknowledged as the most beautiful bad girl in the Midnight War with a tall, supple figure, with long straight black hair down past her shoulder blades and a finely carved face with golden peach skin. Those large dark eyes held a shadow of fear that had never been there before. Anything which could make the shrewd and self-assured Rook afraid had to be taken seriously.
"Murders like these are inexplicable," she said. "And your business is challenging the unknown."
"Tell me more. I'm not convinced."
"It is later than you think," she answered cryptically. "If you do not listen to me, you'll never solve these killings and there will be many more."
The Dire Wolf felt ill at ease in Rook's apartment, with its delicate furniture and dainty aesthetics. He worried about breaking something with every move. "I'm listening."
"But you won't believe. You'll say I'm hysterical, seeing faces in shadows and jumping at harmless noises."
"Look here, Rook," he exclaimed impatiently. "Come to the point. You called me to your apartment and I came because you said you were in deadly danger. But now you're talking riddles about three men who were killed last week. Get right to the point, why don't you?"
"Do you remember Temur Kasten?" she asked abruptly.
"As if anyone is likely to forget him," he said. "Alchemist. Leader of the Gelengi cult. Would-be warlord of Azfahan. I'm glad he's gone."
"No. Kasten has returned," she said.
"What are you talking about?" His grey eyes flared up incredulously. "We saw him take a full magazine of .44s and fall off the Mid-Hudson Bridge."
"Nevertheless, he's come back. After all, Temur Kasten has been reported dead many times in the past hundred years."
Bane did not reply, but sat waiting for further disclosures, certain they would come in an indirect way. It irritated his direct nature that Rook often spoke as obliquely as if giving clues.
"How did those three men die?" she asked, though he was aware that she knew as well as he.
"Kim Park Lee, the Korean herbal merchant, fell from his own roof," he grunted. "The people on the street heard him scream and then saw him come diving down. Might have been an accident but respectable middle-aged merchants don't go climbing around on roofs at midnight.
"Then William Sorenson, the Danish curio dealer, was stung by a yellowjacket and suffered a severe allergic reaction. That happens.
"Jacob Kahane, the real estate developer, was simply knifed in a parking lot. Everything on him was stolen, including his watch and wedding ring. His car hasn't been found."
"And these names suggest nothing to you?" exclaimed the girl, tense with suppressed excitement. "You don't make the connection? Listen, all these men were formerly associated in one way or another with Temur Kasten!"
"Well?" he demanded. "That doesn't necessarily mean that Kasten has killed them. There were members of his gang in other parts of the city. His gigantic organization went to pieces after his death, for lack of a leader, but the survivors were never uncovered. Some of them might be paying off old grudges."
"Then why did they wait so long to strike? It's been a year since we saw Kasten die. I tell you, the Lord of the Gelengi himself, alive or dead, has returned and is striking down these men for one reason or another. Perhaps they refuse to do his bidding once more. Five people were marked for death. Three have fallen."
"How do you know that?" said Bane.
"Look!" From beneath the cushions of the divan on which she sat she drew something, and rising, came and bent beside him while she unfolded it.
It was a square piece of parchment-like substance, black and glossy. On it were written five names, one below the other, in a bold flowing hand and in crimson, like spilled blood. Through the first three names a line had been drawn. They were the names of the three men who had died. The Dire Wolf scowled more than was usual for him. The last two names, as yet unmarred, were those of Rook and his own.
"Where did you get this?" he demanded with a new interest in his voice.
"It was slid under my door last night, while I slept. If all the doors and windows had not been doubly locked, the police would have found it pinned to my corpse this morning."
"I've heard of this Azfahan custom," Bane admitted grudgingly.
"It is the Dead Man List!" she cried. "The list of those about to die! I have seen it, when I was worked for him a year ago. It is a trick to strike mortal terror in his enemies. They see their names and they give up on living."
If Bane was impressed he failed to show it. "That stuff only works if you believe it wholeheartedly and not always then. Like Voodoo."
"No, it's an Alchemical curse. This is for our benefit. And I know we are hopelessly doomed. Kasten never warned his victims unless he was sure of killing them."
"Still might be one of his subordinates pulling a forgery," said the Dire Wolf , but with less conviction.
"No! No man could imitate that spidery hand. He wrote those names himself. He has come back from the dead!" Normally so glib and self-assured, Rook was losing some of her poise in her agitation. She ground out the half-consumed cigarette and broke the cover of a fresh carton. She drew forth a fresh cig and tossed the package on the table. Bane took it up and absently inspected it, not recognizing the brand.
"Our names are on the Doom List! It is a sentence of death from which there is no appeal!" She struck a match and was lifting it, when Bane's lightning swat struck the cigarette from her hand. She fell back on the divan, bewildered at the violence of his action, as he caught up the package and began gingerly to remove the contents.
"Where'd you get these things?" he demanded.
"Why, down at the corner drug store yesterday, I guess," she stammered. "That's where I usually—"
"Then they were tampered with after you bought them," he said. "These have been specially treated. I don't know what it is, but I've seen one puff of the stuff knock a man dead. Some kind of a esoteric Alchemical drug mixed with the tobacco. Were you out of your apartment while you were phoning me?"
"I was afraid my phone was tapped," she answered. "I went to a public booth in the same drug store."
"And it's my guess somebody entered your apartment while you were gone and tampered with the cigarettes. There! Look closely. You can barely see them but there are pin point holes all over the bottom of the package. Someone injected the serum."
Rook had dropped her usual self-assured mocking attitude. It was shocking to see someone so confident fall into terror. "How... How did you know?"
"I only got a faint whiff of the stuff when you started to light that cigarette. It's unmistakable. Smell it yourself. Don't be afraid. It's deadly only when ignited."
She obeyed, and turned pale. "Don't turn me down, Jeremy. Help me. Temur Kasten intends to kill me!"
The Dire Wolf's voice was colder than ever. "He'll have to get through me first."
II.
Rook had always been so confident, even when dealing with crimelords. It was unsettling to hear her voice sound fearful. "I told you! We were the direct cause of his overthrow! If you hadn't smelt that drug, we'd both be dead now, as he intended!"
"Well," he admitted, "it's a cinch somebody's after you, anyway. I still doubt it can be Temur Kasten, but there's no reason he couldn't have left a son or disciple with his secrets. But you've got to be protected until I run down whoever is being so free with his poisoned cigarettes."
"What about yourself? Your name's on his list, too."
"Don't worry about me," Bane dismissed the thought. "This wing's practically isolated from the rest of the building," he said, "and you've got the third floor to yourself?"
"Not only the third floor of the wing," she answered. "There's no one else on the third floor anywhere in the building at present. The economy, you know. These apartments aren't exactly flourishing right now."
The Dire Wolf had begun pacing, hands clasped behind him. "Rook, we already know the Gelengi can get in here without trouble. They may have left other poisoned traps for you. In the food, maybe. Don't touch anything. You'd better move to a random hotel."
"That wouldn't make any difference," she answered, trembling. Her nerves obviously were reaching their limit. "Kasten would find me, anywhere. In a hotel, with people coming and going all the time, and the simple locks they have on the doors, with transoms and fire escapes and everything, it would just be that much easier for him."
"Then, I'll call my police liaison and get up a couple of cops stationed around here."
"That wouldn't do any good, either. Kasten has killed again and again in spite of the police. They do not understand Alchemy."
"That's all too true," he muttered uncomfortably aware of a conviction that to summon men from headquarters would surely be signing those men's death warrants, without accomplishing anything else. It was absurd to suppose that the dead Gelengi fiend was behind these murderous attacks, and yet....
"Stay with me!" Rook's eyes were desperate, and she caught Bane's arm with hands that shook violently. "We can defend these rooms! While one sleeps the other can watch! Don't call the police, their blunders would doom us. You have worked in the Midnight War for years, and you alone are worth more than the whole police force."
"But I can't stay here," he scowled. "We can't barricade ourselves and wait for them to starve us out. I've got to hit back and find out who's behind all this. My KDF is split up in other realms right now, Okali and Chujir, so I can't call any of them for back-up either.
"There is one man in the city besides yourself I could trust," she said suddenly. "One fighter worth more than all the police. With him guarding me I could sleep safely."
"Yeah? And who would that be?"
"You know him. Shiro Mitsuru."
The Dire Wolf perked up at the name. "He's good all right. We've met a few times. I thought he had joined Andrew Steel's squad."
"No, I ran into him up by Central Park. He's at liberty for this week. We've known each other a year or two and he's my friend. He'd fight for me."
"I hope you're not manipulating him for some planned heist," said Bane with a searching glance which she did not seek to evade. "You do have a puppet master way of operating."
Rook looked away. "It's the game my kind play, Jeremy. But I've been straight with Shiro, he's as blunt as a battering ram. I know where he can be reached."
"Alright. Call him and tell him to hurry up here. You both speak Japanese. Even if your phone is tapped, Kasten won't understand what you're saying. I'll go downstairs and use the booth in the lobby. Lock the door, and don't open it to anybody until I get back."
When the bolts clicked behind him, Bane turned down the corridor toward the stairs. The old apartment house boasted no elevator. He watched all sides warily as he went. A peculiarity of architecture had, indeed, practically isolated that wing. The wall opposite Rook's doors was blank. The only way to reach the other suites on that floor was to descend the stair and ascend another on the other side of the building.
As he reached the stair he swore softly; his heel had crunched something tiny on the first step. With immediate suspicion of a planted poison trap he stooped and gingerly investigated but found only a small bit of glass. He could neither smell nor see any liquid. Reluctantly, he dismissed the incident. He descended the twisting stair without further delay and was presently in the booth in the office which opened on the street; a sleepy clerk dozed behind the desk.
Bane made a call but not to the police. There sounded at the other end of the wire a squeaky whine, "Yeah, hello?"
"Listen, Tommy," said Bane with his customary abruptness, "you told me you thought you had a lead on the Kossova murder. What about it?"
"It wasn't no lie, boss!" The voice at the other end trembled with excitement. "I got a tip, and it's big! Big! I can't spill it over the phone, and I don't dare stir out. But if you'll meet me at Big Stanislaus', I'll give you the dope. It'll knock you loose from your props, believe me it will!"
"I'll be there in an hour," promised the Dire Wolf. He left the booth and glanced briefly out into the street. He could have made an untraceable call using the Trom device called a Link but he had wanted any possible listener to know where he was going. Setting up a trap for himself seemed suicidal, but Bane had learned that it brought lurking enemies out into the open.
He went to the front of the lobby and gazed outside. It was a warm misty night. Traffic was only a dim echo from some distant, busier section. Drifting fog dimmed the street lamps, shrouding the forms of occasional passers-by. Bane felt anything could happen. Rook was right. The Midnight War was flaring up again.
III.
Bane hurried up the stairs again. They wound up out of the office and up into the third story wing without opening upon the second floor at all. The architecture, like much of it in or near the older parts of Manhattan, was eccentric. So many buildings had been modified repeatedly rather than being torn down and replaced. His feet made no sound on the thickly carpeted stairs, though a slight crunching at the top step reminded him of the broken glass again momentarily. Bane stopped once again to examine the spot but couldn't find anything suspicious. The carpet had not been cleaned in so long that it held many bits of debris.
He knocked at the locked door, answered Rook's tense challenge and was admitted. He found her more self-possessed, more like the confident former model and master jewel thief who gotten Europe in an uproar.
"I talked with Shiro. He's on his way here now. I warned him that the phone might be tapped and that our enemies might know as soon as I called him. He only laughed and said, let them try to stop him on his way here."
"That's Shiro all right," admitted the Dire Wolf. "While we're waiting for him I'd better have a look at your suite."
There were four rooms, drawing room in front, with a large bedroom behind it, and behind that a smaller furnished room and the bathroom.. The corridor ran parallel with the suite, and the drawing room, large bedroom and bathroom opened upon it. That made three doors to consider. The drawing room had one big east window, overlooking the street, and one on the south. The big bedroom had one south window, and the spare room one south and one west window. The bathroom had only one window, a small one in the west wall, overlooking a small court bounded by a tangle of alleys and board-fenced backyards.
"Three outside doors and six windows to be watched, and this the top story," muttered the Dire Wolf. "I still think I should get some cops here." But he spoke without conviction. He was investigating the bathroom when Rook called him cautiously from the drawing room, telling him that she thought she had heard a faint scratching outside the door.
From behind his left hip, he drew the long-barreled Smith & Wesson 38 that had never let him down. He opened the drawing room door and peered out into the corridor. It was empty. Nothing unexpected in sight. Bane closed the door, gave reassurances to Rook, and completed his inspection, grunting approval.
Rook had not been in the game for more than a few years but she was already a veteran of the badlands between criminal life and the Midnight War. The windows were held shut by hard rubber wedges she had jammed into place. The doors had deadbolts. There was no trapdoor, dumb waiter nor skylight anywhere in the suite.
In the spare room, he found a cardboard box filled with canned food, as well as a dozen gallon jugs of water. "Looks like you're ready for a siege," he commented.
"I'm taking this seriously. With Shiro to protect me, I could hold this fort indefinitely. If things get too hot for you, you'd better come back here yourself. It's safe unless they burn the house down."
A soft rap on the door brought them both around.
"Who is it?" called Rook in a voice which had regained its assurance.
"Soreha watashi da, Shiro," came the answer in a low-pitched, but strong and resonant voice. Rook sighed with relief and unlocked the door. A tall figure bowed and entered.
Shiro was tall for an Asian, the same six feet as Bane and though he lacked the Dire Wolf's gaunt leanness, his shoulders were equally broad, and his garments could not conceal the hard lines of his limbs. The Tiger Fury was wearing baggy black pants, a plain white T-shirt with an open denim vest and soft slippers.
In any costume it would have been evident that there was something wild and untamable about the man. The dark eyes were bright behind the single eyelid fold, and he moved with the ease of great strength under perfect control. Bane felt much the same reaction he would have felt if a real tiger had padded into the room.
"I thought you'd left the country," he said.
The Tiger Fury smiled, a flash of white in a bronzed face. "Not yet. The man in grey is finishing an investigation into some strange disappearances. Then we are supposed to fly to Brazil in a few days."
"Well, it's good to have a fellow Tel Shai knight on hand."
The Tiger Fury lifted one hand toward Rook in an informal salute. "Hello again. Don't look so worried. Right now you have the two most dangerous men alive at your side."
In fact, both men had discovered they had more in common than they had realized at first meeting a few years earlier. Jeremy Bane had grown up an orphan of the streets with no family or guardians, while Toshiro Mitsuru had been raised by parents on the run from the White Web. They had both been fighting to survive since childhood. And both were students of Kumundu under Teacher Chael of Tel Shai.
"All right, Shiro. Do you know anything about these murders?"
"Just what's in the papers. Our lovely friend here called me and I came from rooftop to rooftop in case of an ambush. I didn't see anyone. Oh, but wait... here is a little surprise I found outside the door."
He opened his hand and exhibited a white silk handkerchief. On it lay a crushed insect that Bane did not recognize. But Rook recoiled with a low cry.
"A red scorpion of Azfahan!"
"You bet," Shiro replied. "Their sting means death in a minute, maybe less. I saw it running up and down in front of the door, trying to get in. Another man might have stepped upon it without seeing it, but I was on my guard, for I smelled the Red Flower of Death as I came up the stairs. I saw the thing at the door and crushed it with a flower pot before it could sting me."
"What do you mean by the Red Flower of Death?" demanded Bane.
"It grows in the deserts where these vermin abide. Its scent attracts them as wine draws a drunkard. A trail of the juice had somehow been laid to this door. Had the door been opened before I killed it, it would have darted in and struck whoever happened to be in its way."
Bane's eyebrows lowered as he remembered the faint scratching noise Rook had heard outside the door.
"It's my fault!" he admitted. "They put a tiny flat vial of that juice on the stairs. I did step on it, broke it, and got the liquid on my shoe. Then I tracked down the stairs, leaving the scent wherever I stepped. I came back upstairs, stepped in the stuff again and tracked it on through the door. Then somebody downstairs turned that scorpion loose! That means they've been in this house since I was downstairs. They could be hiding somewhere here now! But somebody had to come into the office to put the scorpion on the trail. Wait here, I'll ask the clerk at the front desk."
"He sleeps like one who works two full-time jobs," said Shiro. "He did not wake when I entered. Burglars would love him. But what does it matter if the house is full of assassins? You and I are both here!"
"Unfortunately," admitted Bane. "I've got to start questioning sources. I'm not happy walking out and leaving you two to fight these killers alone. But there'll be no safety for us until we've smashed this gang at its root, and that's what I'm determined to do."
"They'll kill you as you leave the building," said Rook with conviction.
"They can try," he snapped. "I'll come back here some time before dawn. But I'm hoping the tip I expect to get will enable me to hit straight at whoever's after us."
He went down the hallway with an eerie feeling of being watched and scanned the stairs as if he expected to see it swarming with red scorpions, and he shied wide of the broken glass on the step. He had an uncomfortable guilt of leaving Rook in danger, in spite of knowing how capable Shiro was.
The clerk still sagged behind his desk. Bane shook him without avail. The man was not asleep but drunk. Two empty gin bottles under the counter matched the smell on the man's breath. But his heartbeat was regular and his breathing clear, so the Dire Wolf believed he was in no danger. Anyway, there was had no more time to waste. If he kept Tommy Ciro waiting too long, the fellow might become panicky and bolt, to hide in some rat-run where he couldn't be found.
The Dire Wolf stalked the streets as he had done all his life, moving on concrete battlegrounds beneath widely spaced streetlamps. He half expected a knife to be thrown at him, or to find a cobra coiled on the hood of his Mustang. On the driver's visor, four green and blue lights blinked steadily, the Trom security sensors installed by Megan Salenger. Satisfying himself at last, he climbed in and the mysterious woman watching him through the slits of a third-story shutter sighed relievedly to see him roar away unmolested. Rook was not as hard-boiled as she pretended. She was not a completely lost soul.
Shiro had gone through the rooms examining the locks, and having extinguished the lights in the other chambers he returned to the drawing room, where he turned out all lights there except one small desk lamp. It shed a pool of light in the center of the room, leaving the rest in shadowy vagueness.
"Darkness baffles rogues as well as honest men," he said blithely, "and I see like a cat in the dark."
He sat cross-legged near the door that let into the bedroom, which he left partly open. He merged with the shadows so that all of him Rook could make out with any distinctness was his the glimmer of his eyes as he turned his head.
"We will remain in this room, Rook," he said. "Having failed with poison and arachnid, it is certain that men will next be sent. Lie down on that divan and sleep, if you can. I will keep watch."
"Thank you for coming, Shiro. I'm not at my best right now, I wouldn't make good company."
"There will be happier times for all of us," he replied lightly.
Rook went to lie down, but she did not sleep. Her nerves seemed painfully taut. The silence of the house oppressed her, and the few noises of the street made her start.
Shiro sat motionless as a statue, imbued with the patience and immobility of all his training. His parents had taken him as a newborn to escape killers of the White Web from whom they had looted the treasury. Most of that fortune had been spent teaching young Shiro every martial art and fighting secret possible, His senses were at the upper limits of Human sharpness. Shiro could still smell the faint aroma of the Red Flower of Death, mingled with the acrid odor of the crushed scorpion. He heard and identified every sound in or outside the house. He knew which were natural, and which were not.
He heard the sounds on the roof long before his warning hiss brought Rook upright on the divan. Rook looked over at him inquiringly. Her untrained senses heard nothing. But he followed the sounds accurately and located the place where they halted. Rook caught something then, a faint scratching somewhere in the building, but she did not identify it, as Shiro did, as the forcing of the shutters on the bathroom window.
With a quick reassuring gesture to her, Shiro rose and melted like a slinking cat into the darkness of the bedroom. She took up a blunt-nosed automatic from under a pillow on the divan, with no great conviction of reliance upon it. Rook groped on the table for a bottle of wine, feeling an intense need of stimulants. She was shaking in every limb and felt cold. She remembered the cigarettes, but the unbroken seal on the bottle reassured her. Even the wisest have their thoughtless moments. It was not until she had begun to drink that the faintest sour flavor made her realize that the man who had injected the cigarettes with poison might just as easily have done the same to the bottle of wine. Gagging, she fell back on the divan and struggled for breath.
Shiro had wasted no time, because he heard other sounds out in the hall. As he crouched by the bathroom door, he knew that the shutters had been forced almost in silence, a job that an untrained man would have made sound like an explosion in an iron foundry. Now the window was being jimmied. He heard something stealthy and bulky drop into the room. Then it was that he threw open the door and charged in with deadly fists tight.
IV.
Enough light filtered into the room from outside to reveal a powerful, crouching figure with snarling features. The intruder yelped explosively as four stiffened fingers close together drove into his chest to burst his heart open.
Shiro seldom hesitated, his body acted out his mind's decisions with instantaneous response. He knew there was only one man in the room, but through the open window he saw a thick rope dangling from above. The Tiger Fury sprang forward, grasped that rope with both hands and heaved backward. The men on the roof released it to keep from being jerked headlong over the edge, and Shiro stumbled backward a step, sprawling over the corpse, the loose rope in his hands. Grinning in triumph, Shiro glided to the door that opened into the corridor. Unless they had another rope, which was unlikely, the men on the roof were temporarily out of the fight.
Shiro flung open the door and ducked deeply in the same motion. A hatchet hacked a great chip out the jamb where the Tiger Fury's head would have been and he jabbed upward once with a punch that cracked apart the man's sternum, then sprang over the writhing body into the corridor. As he vaulted over the dying man, Shiro's hand flashed down to snatch a big .44 revolver from its place in the killer's waistband. He didn't care for guns but against these odds, he thought it best to be practical.
The bright light of the corridor did not blind him. There was a second Gelengi crouching by the bedroom door, and another working at the lock of the drawing room door. Shiro was between them and the stairs. As they whirled around at his entrance, he casually shot the assassin in the belly. In the same instant, a small automatic spat flame from the hand of the second man, and Shiro felt the wind of the bullet zip past his ear. His own gun roared again and the Azfahani staggered, pistol flying from a hand that was suddenly a shattered red pulp. The man whipped a long knife from his robes with his left hand and lurched along the corridor toward his enemy.
Shiro shot him directly through the forehead and the Gelengi fell so near his feet that the long knife stuck into the floor and quivered a bare inch from the Tiger Fury's slipper.
But Shiro paused only long enough to snap the neck of the man he had shot in the belly, which he considered a sort of mercy, then turned and ran back into the bathroom. He fired a shot through the window just in case, though the men on the roof were making further demonstration, and then flung the pistol angrily away. It was annoying him. Guns made fighting too easy, he was a Tiger Fury and not some Wild West cowboy. Back in the bedroom he raced, snapping on lights as he went.
"I've cleared away some of the riff-raff!" he exclaimed to Rook. "They don't know what's worse, my fists or some bullets. There are others on the roof but we can ignore them for the moment. But cops will come to investigate the shot, so we had been decide what lies we're going to tell."
Rook stood bolt upright, clutching the back of the divan. Her face had paled to the color of marble, and the expression was rigid too, like a mask of horror carved in stone.
"Don't tell me you of all people are giving in to nerves!" Shiro scoffed. He moved toward her, to be met by a scream that sent him cowering back with an extremely puzzled expression.
"Keep back!" she cried in a voice he did not recognize. "You demon! You are all demons!" Foam flecked her lips as she screamed a long quavering cry that made Shiro wince at the madness of it.
"Rook, get a hold of yourself!" he begged. "It's me! I'm Shiro, you know me..." His outstretched hand touched her, and with an awful shriek she turned and darted for the door. He sprang to stop her, but in her frenzy she was even quicker than he. Rook whipped the door open, eluded his grasping hand and flew down the corridor, The Tiger Fury hesitated for once, stunned at her behavior. He called after her but she was deaf to his yell. By the time he started in pursuit, she was on the street and lost from sight.
V.
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