Dr. Death Read Online Free Page A

referred them. Once in the courtyard, they were subjected to a further perusal by Akhmed's keen eyes. If unwelcome, they found themselves on the street in record time. When the bar closed, toward morning, both the courtyard door and the bar door itself were double-locked.
    The bar was closed now. But the courtyard door was open, standing a few inches ajar.
    I hadn't seen it like that in the six years that Akhmed had owned the place.
    "What's wrong?" the girl whispered, when she saw me hesitate before the door.
    "I don't know," I replied. "Maybe nothing. Maybe Akhmed's just getting sloppy and careless with success. But this door shouldn't be open."
    I peered cautiously through the crack in the door into the courtyard. The bar itself was dark. There was no sign of movement.
    "Should we go in?" the girl asked uncertainly.
    "We'll go in," I said. "But not through the courtyard. Not where we make perfect targets for anybody who might be in the bar, hidden in the dark, while we're in bright moonlight."
    "Then how?"
    Without speaking, I guided her by the shoulder, down the street. Akhmed had an emergency exit too, even if I didn't intend to use it as an exit. At least it didn't involve squirming through an unused sewer. We went to the corner, I held the girl back for a moment while I made sure the street was empty, then we turned right and walked silently to the third building on the street. The words
Mohammed Franzi, Spices and Incense
were written in Arabic script on a faded, peeling sign over the door. The door itself, of heavy, rusting metal, was locked. But I had the key. I'd had it for the past six years. It was Akhmed's opening-night gift to me: The guarantee I'd always have a safe house when I was in Tangier. I used the key, pushed open the door on it's well-oiled, silent hinges, and closed it behind us. Beside me, the girl paused, and sniffed.
    "That smell," she said. "What is that strange smell?"
    "Spices," I said. "Arabic spices. Myrrh, frankincense, alloes, all the ones you read about in the Bible. And speaking of bibles…"
    I groped my way past barrels of finely powdered spices and burlap sacks full of incense, to a niche in the wall. There, on an elaborately decorated cloth, lay a copy of the
Koran,
the sacred book of Islam. A Moslem intruder might rob everything in the place, but he wouldn't touch that I touched it. I opened it to a certain page, changing the balance of weight on the niche. Below and in front of it, a section of the floor slid back.
    "As secret passages go," I said to the girl, taking her by her hand, "this is a lot more first-class than the one we just left."
    "I apologize," said the girl. "God forbid Nick Carter should encounter a tourist-class secret passage."
    I smiled inwardly. Whether she was Fernand Duroche's daughter or not, this girl had guts. She was already half-recovered from an experience that would have sent a lot of people into a state of shock for months.
    "Where are we going?" she whispered behind me.
    "The passageway leads under two houses and an alley," I said, lighting our way along the narrow stone shaft with a pencil flashlight. "It comes up…"
    We both halted abruptly. There was a scurrying sound ahead, then a confusion of squealing noises.
    "What is it?" the girl whispered urgently, again pressing her warm body against me.
    I listened another moment, then urged her on.
    "Nothing to worry about," I said. "Just rats."
    "Rats!" She pulled me to a halt. "I can't…"
    I pulled her forward.
    "We don't have time for delicacy now," I said. "Anyway, they're more afraid of us than we are of them."
    "That I doubt."
    I didn't answer. The passage had ended. We climbed a short, steep flight of stone steps. Ahead, in the wall, was one end of a wine barrel, five feet in diameter. I aimed the beam of the pencil light at it, moved the slender beam in a counter-clockwise direction around the barrel, and found the fourth stave from the top. I pushed it in. The exposed end swung open. The barrel