.
tight lips. “But don’t try anything like that on me.” The hands that held two flat automatics were long-fingered, almost effeminate; their skin was oddly tinged, and the crescents at the base of their queerly pointed nails were deeply blue, strangely exotic.
“Odun!” Red Finger said quietly. “I might have guessed you’d be here!”
“Unfortunately—for you—I came to the same conclusion as he did, from the same premises. And Red Finger has put too many spokes into my wheels for me to miss this opportunity to dispose of him once and for all.” Except for an almost imperceptible odd hiss the man’s English was precise, even stilted. “I regret exceedingly the necessity of terminating the life of so gallant an adversary.”
Under the film of brown with which he had painted it Red Finger’s face was gray, drawn with defeat. “So you win at last, Odun! But I wonder if you would grant me a favor.”
The characteristic round eyes of his race in the saffron face were wary. But Odun’s tone was courteous, almost regretful. “If I can, but…” he shrugged, deprecatingly. “I shall not take any chances with you. You can hardly blame me.” He nodded to the quivering, jellylike mass that had once been the ace of the Nazi secret agents.
“All I want is a puff at one last cigarette—yours if you wish.”
Odun’s usually impassive countenance showed just a trace of puzzlement, but his racial code of courtesy forbade refusal, as Red Finger well knew. “I have none,” he said, “but you may take out and light your own, if you give me your word you will not draw a weapon instead.”
“Thank you,” the American responded gravely. “I do give my word.” Then, at Odun’s nod, his hand slipped into a pocket, came out with a package of cigarettes and a lighter. The white tube in his mouth, a little flame flared at the quick rasp of his thumb and he inhaled gratefully. “You know,” he said. “If America did nothing else for the world her gift of tobacco entitles Columbus to immortality.”
“But you must admit that it was the East that brought that gift to its perfection. Just so, when Asia conquers the world, we of the East will make it a far better place in which to live, even for you whites.”
Red Finger’s cigarette glowed redly. “That will be—”
With the last word a sudden puff sent the cigarette flying across space into Odun’s eyes. The arch-spy’s instinctive gesture to avoid it was uncontrollable, and Red Finger seized that split second to catapult upon him.
His fists flailed, so fast that they were a mere blur, the spats of their landing a single sound. Odun crashed against the bulkhead, Red Finger twisted, had the door open and was through it and over the rail before the startled seamen outside realized that the door was open. Someone shouted; muddy water geysered; and the fog and the night closed their impenetrable veil over the muddy water.
* * * *
A skulking figure found an alley between two houses on Thirteenth Street in the block between Third and Fourth Avenues, and vanished into its shadows. That same figure might have been seen, had there been anyone to look, wearily climbing a fire-escape ladder to a roof, flitting shadow-like over gravelled tin, vanishing into the square, dawn-cast shadow of a brick chimney. But when the sun’s beams filtered across that roof, minutes later, no human form marked its blank expanse.
Six stories below, the ceiling of Ford Duane’s secret cubicle opened like a trapdoor, and the bookseller’s weary form dropped through. The hook-lined wall open, shut again. And a perennially weary, young-old man touched flame to his breakfast gas-stove…
The web holding the Scythe of Death from its disastrous fall seemed a trifle stronger this morning. But the two grim sentinels still held their place at each doorpost of Ford Duane’s Second-hand Bookstore.
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