Free Temple of Fear by Nick Carter Page A

whisper, an imagined sound above the weeping of the rain? Nick tensed, put his hand on the cold butt of the .45 and looked around. Nothing. No one.
    "Carter-san?"
    The voice higher now, reedy, one with the wind. Nick spoke into the night. "Yes. I am Carter-san. Where are you?"
    "Over here, Carter-san, between the buildings. Come to the one with the lamp."
    Nick eased the Colt out of his belt and slipped it off safety. He walked to where the oil lamp guttered behind the paper sign.
    "Here, Carter-san. Look down. Below you."
    There was a narrow space between the buildings with three steps leading down. At the foot of the steps a man was crouching beneath a straw rain mat.
    Nick halted at the top of the steps. "Can I use a light?"
    "For one second only, Carter-san. It is dangerous."
    "How do you know I am Carter-san?" Nick whispered.
    He could not see the old shoulders shrug beneath the mat, but he guessed at it. "It is a chance I take — but she said you would come. And, if you
are
Carter-san, I am to direct you to Kunizo Matu. If you are not Carter-san, then you are one of them and you will kill me."
    "I am Carter-san. Where is Kunizo Matu?"
    He flashed the light down the stairs for an instant. Bright beady eyes reflected the gleam. A wisp of gray hairs, an ancient face seared by time and trouble. He squatted beneath his mat like Time itself. He did not have twenty yen for a bed. Yet he lived, he talked, he helped his people.
    Nick doused the light. "Where?"
    "Down the stairs, past me, and straight back along the passage. As far as it goes. Be careful of dogs. They sleep here and they are wild and hungry. At the end of this passage there is another passage. Take it to the right — go again as far as you can. It is a large house, larger than you would think, and a red light burns behind the door. Go, Carter-san."
    Nick fumbled a crisp bill from Pete Fremont's crummy wallet. He dropped it beneath the mat as he passed. "Thank you, Papa-san. Here is money. Your old bones will lie easier in a bed."
    "Arigato,
Carter-san."
    "Itashimashite!"
    Nick went cautiously along the passage, brushing his fingers against the ramshackle houses on either side. The smell was terrible and he stepped into sticky filth. He accidentally kicked a dog, but the creature only whined and crept away.
    He made the turn and kept going for what he reckoned was half a block. The shacks closed in on either side, jumbles of tin and paper and old packing crates — anything that could be salvaged or stolen and used to make a home. Now and then he saw a dim light or heard a baby crying. The rain wept for the inhabitants, the
batayu buraku,
the rag and bone pickers of life. A lean cat spat at Nick and fled into the night.
    He saw it then. A dim red glow behind a paper door. Visible only if you were looking for it. He smiled sourly and thought fleetingly of his youth in a midwestern town, where the girls around the Real Silk factory had actually kept red bulbs glowing in the windows.
    The rain, caught suddenly by wind, beat a tattoo on the paper door. Nick rapped lightly. He stepped back a pace, a pace to the right, the Colt alert to slam lead into the night. The odd sense of fantasy, of unreality, that had been dogging him since he had been drugged, had gone now. He was all AXEman now. He was Killmaster. And he was working.
    The paper door slid back with a little sigh, to be filled by a vast bulk in dim silhouette.
    "Nick?"
    It was the voice of Kunizo Matu and yet it was not. Not the voice as Nick remembered it from the years. It was an old voice, a sick voice, and it repeated: "Nick?"
    "Yes, Kunizo. Nick Carter. I understand that you wanted to see me."
    Everything considered, Nick thought, it was probably the understatement of the century.

Chapter 6
    The house was dimly lit by paper lanterns. "It is not so much that I follow the old customs," said Kunizo Matu as he led the AXEman into an inner room. "Bad lighting is an asset in this neighborhood. Especially now