Only the last big stone, the last high stone of the outside layer, cut off the voice completely. It slid wetly into place like the last piece of a puzzle, and Kwan Too was a silently screaming dead man.

  The Mandarin heaved a rustling sigh of satisfaction.

  "Thus it is with cowards, misguided fools, and enemies of the people. You will be interested to know that there are one hundred corpses in the west wall alone. The inner wall, that is. The outer wall is very old… But you, my friends…" The sunken eyes stared down at Nick and Comrade. "You, if you do not choose to talk more sensibly, will repose in the western wall, where your bones will lie for centuries to come. Long centuries, while Red China rules the world." He waited. "No comments? I think you will speak, friends. You will tell me what government you serve, and then you will sign a paper stating that you have come to kill the friend of the people, to perpetrate the foulest murder…"

  Nick laughed scornfully. This man should talk of murder…!

  A Mongol belted him savagely across the mouth.

  "Ahhhh!" The sighing sound of pleasure came from Yasunara.

  "You vile animal!" snarled Comrade. "What people are you friend of?" A ready hand smashed his face, in turn. The Russian's lip trickled blood, but his eyes were stony cold and calm.

  "No, let him speak," Chou Chang interrupted softly. "I deplore his insults, but he interests me. He has, I think, a feeling for 'the people.' Could he be a Russian comrade, do you think? Tell us, friend. We have much admiration for your country." Benign eyes sparkled in the forgettable face. The Mandarin gazed at Comrade.

  Comrade was silent.

  "Speak!" The whip lashed out. Comrade rocked on his toes as the thong curled around his chest and pulled away. "Speak!" Again, the lash. "Speak!" The pitted skull looked murderously angry. "No? Then do not speak!" The whip coiled around his throat and tightened. Comrade gagged and clutched at it. His eyes bulged and his tongue started from his head. He swayed, tearing at the thong. Four times it had gone around his throat and tightened there. Nick leaped at him and his lightning fingers worked feverishly at the lash. Inevitably, a Mongol thundered after him and dragged him away, struggling.

  The Mandarin's chuckle sounded like a rat scampering into its hole.

  "Ah, loyalty! An admirable quality."

  Comrade gurgled in his throat and fell to his knees. Slowly, very slowly, the thong uncoiled from around his agonized throat. Comrade crouched like a supplicant in a temple. But his face was twisted with pain and he breathed in tortured, rattling gasps.

  Chou Chang clucked sympathetically.

  "Perhaps it is time for the other entertainment, while the gentlemen recover themselves." His gentle gaze roamed around the room and fell upon Taka.

  Nick tensed. He had to find a way to help her. He had to help her. God, how?

  "Lovely little Taka," the Mandarin rustled. "Yes, it is time for Taka. She came back to us, unasked, and we must be suitably grateful. Do you know these men, little Blossom of the Lotus? Look up when your Master speaks."

  She raised her eyes and looked steadfastly at the Mandarin.

  "No, I do not know these men."

  Yasunara laughed harshly in the background.

  "That is not the story Akitaro tells."

  Taka's eyes widened.

  "Yes, little Lotus Blossom," came the mocking voice. "Did you wonder why I had you questioned? I know you saw these men. One of them at least, and perhaps even both of them. Tell us what you know of them."

  "Akitaro is a liar and a failure," Taka answered scornfully, head high. "I told both him and Ka Tanaki that I saw the AXE man in the bathhouse. But both failed, the fools. I have never seen these men."

  "Look closely, little Taka," hissed the Mandarin. "Go to them, look into their faces, tell us what you see. It is hard to recognize the features, perhaps, through all the blood. Go to them, little Lotus Flower, and look. Now!"

  Taka moved slowly, her long, tightly-waisted gown sighing as she walked. She stopped beside Comrade and looked down at his mottled face. She turned and looked at Nick. Suddenly, her face twisted with anger. She shouted to the room in general: "Why do you torment me in this way? I have been faithful, always faithful. These are not the men! Neither of these bleeding creatures is the man I spoke about. Where is the little hatchet that is supposed to be upon the body? Tell me that, my lord and master!" She paused. The room was suddenly silent. Taka's lovely head darted angrily.

  "Akitaro!" she scoffed. "That lying fool! He knows no better. But it is you — you — you!" She spat the words down at Comrade, up at Nick. "If you murdering interlopers had not come to this place no one would dream of laying hands on me. I have never seen you swine, and I wish to Buddha I were not seeing you now!" A tiny foot lashed out and kicked Comrade sharply.

  Yasunara laughed unpleasantly. One of the Mongols allowed an appreciative rumble to escape his throat. Comrade looked up at Taka and swore thickly.

  "And you!" She turned on Nick, her eyes flashing with a strange light. It was love and death and pain, it was fire and resolve. "You are another. Why have you come here to ruin me? Why? Why? Why?" Little fists pummeled into his flat belly. Involuntarily, he clutched a tiny hand. It opened. Something fell into his. "For you, I have to suffer. For you, a stranger! A hated, hated stranger!" Her voice rose to a piercing shriek. The little hands raked at his shoulder. Her face came close to his and hissed: "For you I have to die! For you!" Her voice dropped menacingly. Her teeth bared in a snarl. Very quietly and very quickly, her voice dripping sheer loathing, she said something in English. "Do not try to help me let me die I love you." Then she sank her teeth into his shoulder and bit hard.

  Nick stared back with a gasp and clutched his shoulder with his free hand. The other dangled loosely at his waist, still hanging there as if to protect him from the pummeling. Taka flung herself away from him without another look.

  Chou Chang laughed melodiously. "Perhaps we have misunderstood the little Taka," he cooed. "Should we try the wall and see?"

  "Very well, let us do it and do it quickly," the Mandarin snapped rustily. "I tire of this." He clapped sharply. Four Mongols stepped forward and took hold of Taka. Calmly, proudly, she walked with them to the wall. Turning, at the recess, she spoke directly to the Mandarin.

  "Buddha will witness what you do this day. For you are evil, and I am innocent."

  "She is innocent, friends," sang the Mandarin. "Would you have her sealed up in the wall? Tell us who you are and from whence you came."

  Nick looked at Taka. He felt the welcome object in his hand. He could not let her die. Taka looked back at him. It was a piercing look that told him volumes and yet told him nothing.

  Comrade staggered to his feet. "She is a beautiful minx," he rumbled, "but she is innocent. You will gain nothing by sealing her in the wall."

  "So. You would not have her die?" The parchment voice was amused. "Then speak now, and speak carefully."

  "We have nothing to say," Nick answered for him. "But spare her from the wall." His heart ached, and he was shivering inside.

  "Then speak."

  There was a deathly silence.

  The Mandarin clapped again.

  Taka stepped, unassisted, into the second waiting cavity.

  Nick lunged forward, shouting something incomprehensible. Two huge shapes landed on him and held him down.

  He could not move. But neither could he allow himself to talk.

  Voices swirled around his head. "Tell us who you are. Tell us where you came from. Tell us who sent you. Tell us… tell us…" And all the while he struggled feverishly, knowing that he could not help — or answer.

  It was the same awful procedure all over again — except that Taka was silent. The great stones rose. Cement slap-slapped. Someone sat on his back and twisted his arms. He clenched his fist. Use it now? Get one Mongol. Maybe two. Lose Taka anyway. He had to calculate, when he felt least like calculating. Get the Mandarin? How many Mongol bodyguards? Four… six… seven… eight… ten. Chou Chang. Yasunara. Mandarin. Versus Comrade and Nick Carter. Wong Fat. Where was he? What did it matter… it was hopeless.

  And yet he struggled and swore, demanding Taka's release, but refusing, still, to bargain.

  The wall rose higher. He saw Taka's face above it, serene and calm. A hand rose to her mouth.

  "I die," she said calmly. "And I die happy in my innocence."

  She swallowed and was silent.

  The last pieces of the wall slid into place.

  Nick put his face down on the still warm floor. It was one of the tragic ironies of the situation that he had given Taka the one thing he never dreamed she would use — a deadly capsule, just in case of dire need.

  Dire need. He felt like crying.

  The trowel clinked one last time. And then the room was absolutely silent.

  At last, the Mandarin spoke. His tone was oddly hesitant.

  "Will you speak now, enemies of Buddha, defilers of the city that honors him?"

  Silence. The Mandarin stroked his cadaverous cheek thoughtfully.

  "So be it. We have more for you. The wall will wait. You will call upon your God for mercy for what you are about to endure."

  Yasunara's eyes lit up her ivory face.

  "The Death of a Thousand Cuts," she breathed.

  The Mandarin shook his head.

  "The Gloves?" Chou Chang suggested cheerfully.

  "No."

  "The water torture?" whispered Yasunara hopefully.

  Again, the Mandarin's head wagged in the negative. He clapped his hands. "Up, dogs. Stand." The Mongols rose swiftly. Nick dragged himself to his feet. Comrade was already up, looking at him in a manner far more comradely than he had shown before.

  Yasunara was gasping with excitement. Her hands were tightly clenched and something very ugly shone out of her eyes.

  The true darkness of her soul, thought Nick, his heart half-dead within him.

  "Oh, my Lord, my Emperor, pray tell me what you have devised to punish them? I cannot endure the waiting!"

  She was evil incarnate. But her evil passions were fired by her more-evil master.

  "For them," the Mandarin intoned musically, "a connoisseur's delight."

  "The specialty of the house?" Chou Chang murmured smilingly.

  The brown stumps in the death mask stood out like cannibal's teeth. The skull head nodded.

  Yasunara's cold eyes snapped with incredulous delight.

  "Oh, most Illustrious, Inspired Master!" she cried shrilly. "At last, the Turtles?"

  "The Turtles," the Mandarin agreed, clapping his hands sharply.

  Four Mongols came forward and fastened their viselike hands on Nick and Comrade. Two more stepped up to form the head and tail of the procession. The others stationed themselves near the infamous wall, as if they were an honor guard humbly standing by the dead.

  Yasunara's gay laughter spread through the room.

  The Specialty of the House

  The great beauty of Oriental torture, from the torturer's point of view, is the mental anguish inflicted upon the sufferer even while his body bears affliction. Many brave men successfully endure physical atrocities so awful and so final that their bodies die even while their determination to resist still burns strong. But others of the same brave breed have been known to crack even before the pain makes inroads on the flesh. Their spirit is broken by fear of the unknown; fear, even, of their own capacity to be afraid. They are victims of a highly specialized form of persuasion.

  The tortures listed so enthusiastically in the Mandarin's "convincing room" were fair samples of the method. The Thousand Cuts were small, superficial slits made at random all over a victim's body at irregular intervals. By the time the blade-expert was finished, a great many more than one thousand cuts crisscrossed each other, oozing little beads of blood. The performance took considerable time. In the course of it the victim would be continually wondering when the next stinging little cut would come, how much more painful an increasingly raw body could get, and how long it would be before he bled to death. The Gloves was a very simple process. It consisted of immersing the limbs of the victim one at a time into a cauldron of boiling water, then removing the scalding member and peeling the skin off like gloves. Eventually, not only limbs but entire body would be stripped of its outer surface, and then the immersions would begin again, until the flesh started pulling away from the bones. The well-known Water Cure, with its metronome inexorability, caused only imagined pain and had been known to drive men mad. It was no more than a steady, slow and gentle drip-drop of water on the sufferer's head while he writhed in his chains, but it was the ultimate in bloodless, mind-destroying torment.

  These were the standard elements of Chinese torture. Nick Carter had encountered them before, but had never undergone them. The Turtles were an innovation even to him.

  The procession led through the inner door and into a nearby stone chamber. The Mandarin led, accompanied by an amiably chatting Chou Chang. Yasunara followed, her head obediently low but her eyes alight. A wobbling, mumbling Wong Fat brought up the rear.

  Chou Chang stepped aside at the doorway and waited for them all to enter.

  "This is the noble Mandarin's Aquarium," he said conversationally.

  There was no furniture of any kind, no barred windows or inner doors. It looked like the end of the line. There were familiar looking recesses in the walls, but that was all that looked familiar. It was a fairly large chamber, but there was room in it for hardly anything but the enormous tank of greenish water occupying the center. Nick's heart shrank in his chest. He did not have to look at Comrade. He could feel him stiffen.

  The tank was thick-glassed and solid, firmly planted on four steel uprights at the corners and braced by heavy struts. A steel ladder was propped against the side of the tank to permit feeding and cleaning. The ladder ended in a platform enclosed by a thick, curving metal wall.

  Nick soon saw why. The monsters swimming about in the murky water were horrifying. It was impossible that any turtle could be so prodigiously big! But they were big: four of them, all as large as half-grown crocodiles, shells as indestructible as manhole covers, great snapping, horny jaws as formidable as the mouth of hell. Their eyes bulged obscenely from their lumpy green heads as they waggled around behind the glass, hungrily searching for morsels. But there were none to be found in the cloudy, discolored water.

  But surely turtles are not carnivorous. They don't have teeth. Nick peered into the mouth of one as it passed. Its huge, horny bill, and the edges of its traplike beak, were curiously sharp and shiny, as though they had been filed. Carnivorous? What if they had no choice?

  The Mandarin chuckled hollowly. "They are hungry. Good."

  Yasunara looked worried. "But they will eat quickly, and it will be over all too soon."

  "Do not be afraid, my Daughter. I am not ready for our guests to die. They will answer my questions yet. Then they will beg me to let them die. No, my turtles must have an appetizer first so that they may not gorge themselves too swiftly on the main dish. Sometimes I like to see them… toy with their food."

  "Oh, a nice touch, Excellency," chuckled Chou Chang.

  The Mandarin beckoned to one of his Mongols, who stood strung out around the tank, staring wide-eyed at the creatures.

  "Bring Wong Fat. He will serve as a preview for our tongue-tied guests."

  Wong Fat started babbling.

  Yasunara drew closer to the tank, as eagerly excited as a child at a circus.

  "Wong Fat will pay for his creeping foolishness on the roadway?"

  "Exactly. Come, all of you. Chou, westerners, my slaves. Draw nearer. You must watch. This is truly an experience. You will see what hungry jaws and eager beaks can do to a man's soft, vulnerable body."

  Wong Fat stood at the foot of the ladder, his immense body quivering. His Mongol escort held one firm hand over Wong Fat's mouth and expertly twisted a pudgy arm behind his back. The head was bobbing furiously, but only muffled sounds of terror and outrage came from it.

  Yasunara was drawing her nail along the heavy glass of the tank, deliberately trying to lure and vex the beady-eyed mankiller circling before her. The thing made a sudden pass at her behind the glass and she drew back, startled.

  "Careful!" the Mandarin called. "Do not distract my pets. It may disturb their feeding."

  Nick and Comrade exchanged looks. What had begun as a joint enterprise in a hotel room in Tokyo was about to end somewhere within the walls of the Forbidden City. But Nick had two aces in the hole. Small aces, chancy ones, but aces. He only needed opportunity.

  Wong Fat suddenly pushed away the hand that clamped his mouth. He yelled. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Froth bubbled on his lips. The scream became wordless, and he fainted.

  "In with him," the Mandarin commanded. "He will waken when he feels the water."

  Yasunara's mouth was parted in a smile of pure delight, but the devil was riding her soul. Her breasts rose and fell with her rapid breathing.

  The opportunity came. Nick knew Comrade was as ready as he to grasp it. He had been with the Russian long enough to know that here was a man who would go down fighting without asking for quarter or giving any.

  Wong Fat's unconscious body was a deadweight. Two of the Mongols, brutally strong as they were, were trying unsuccessfully to hoist the limp body up the short steel ladder. The Mandarin's dry lips curled.

  "Weaklings! Must you have assistance?" He snapped his fingers. Two more hastened to the ladder and heaved up from the rear. The turtles, accustomed to the Mandarin's peculiar feeding techniques, were already circling in the vicinity of the ladder. All eyes were on the frightful scene.

  The Mongol closest to the churning water stood on the steel parapet and pulled powerfully at a fat arm. The others heaved and strained beneath him. Nick's target was almost in the clear.

 

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