Read Online Temple of Fear by Nick Carter - Free Book Online

smile. "I know. Poor Pete. But when you've been fired by the UP, the AP, the Hong Kong Times and the Singapore Times and by Asahi, Yomiuri and the Osaka, I guess you don't much care any more. Here. The hat."
    Nick regarded it with awe. It was a masterpiece. It had been new when the world was young. Filthy, dented, ragged, sweat-stained and shapeless, still it flaunted a bedraggled scarlet feather in the salt-rimed band. A last gesture of defiance, a final cocking the snook at Fate.
    "I'd like to meet this Pete Fremont when this thing is over," he told the girl. "He must be a walking example of the law of survival." Something Nick was pretty good at himself.
    "Maybe," she agreed curtly. "Stand over there and let me look at you. Hmmmmm — you'll pass for Pete at a distance. Not close, because you don't look anything alike. That's
not
really important. His papers are important, as your cover, and I doubt you'll meet anyone that knows Pete well. Father says you won't. This is all
his
plan, remember. I'm only carrying out my instructions."
    Nick narrowed his eyes at her. "You don't like your old man very much, do you?"
    Her face went as stiff as a kabuki mask. "I honor my father. I do not have to love him. Come now. There is something you must see. I have saved it until the last because — because I want you to leave this place in the proper frame of mind. And on your guard."
    "I know," said Nick as he followed her out the door. "You're a great little psychologist.".
    She led him down a corridor to a flight of narrow stairs. Somewhere over his head the go-go music was still dinning away. Imitation Beatles. Clyde-san and his Four Silk Worms. Nick Carter shook his head in silent disapproval as he followed Tonaka down the stairs. Mod music left him cold. He was by no means an old gent, but he wasnt
that
young. Nobody was that young!
    They went down and down. It grew colder and he heard the trickle of water. Tonaka was using a small flashlight now.
    "How many basements does this joint have?"
    "Many. This part of Tokyo is very old. We're directly under what used to be the old silver foundry.
Gin.
They- used these dungeons to store bullion and coins."
    They reached bottom, then went along a transverse corridor to a dark cubicle. The girl flicked a switch and a dim yellow bulb starred the ceiling. She pointed to the body on a plain deal table in the center of the room.
    "Father wanted you to see that. First. Before you committed yourself irrevocably." She handed him the flashlight. "Here. Take a good look. It's what will happen to us if we fail."
    Nick took the flashlight. "I thought I
was
committed."
    "Not totally. Father says not. If, at this point, you want to back out we are to put you on the next plane back to the States."
    The AXEman scowled, then grinned sourly. Old Kunizo knew what he was about. He knew that Carter might be a lot of things, but chicken wasn't one of them.
    He put the glow of the flashlight on the body and examined it with an expert eye. He was familiar enough with corpses and death to know at once that the man had died in exquisite agony.
    The body was that of a Japanese of middle age. Squat, powerful, graying at the temples. The eyes had been closed. Nick examined the many small wounds that covered the man from neck to ankles. There must be a thousand of them! Small, bloody, gaping little mouths in the flesh. None deep enough to kill of itself. None in a vital spot. But put them all together and a man would slowly bleed to death. It would take hours. And there would be the terror, the shock...
    Tonaka was standing well back in the shadows cast by the tiny yellow bulb. The waft of her cigarette came to him, acrid and harsh in the cold death smell of the room.
    She said: "You see the tattoo?"
    He was looking at it. It puzzled him. A small blue figure of Buddha — with knives sticking into it. It was on the left arm, inside, above the elbow.
    "I see it," Nick said. "What does it mean?"
    "The Society of the Bloody