LITMIR.BIZ

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bloodless lips. “Red Finger!”

      The mask head nodded, and it seemed almost as if the hidden mouth smiled humorlessly. “Red Finger,” it assented, savoring the dread that name inspired among all who moved in the murky underworld of international intrigue.

      A second’s silence intervened, accentuated by the greasy lap of water along the rowboat’s keel and the far-off melancholy hoot of a ferry. Then, “Who gave you the orders for—this?”

      “Capit—” Dominic began, his voice thinned by fear, but Angelo’s hard-driven elbow into his side choked off the words. “Try and find out!” the more virulent of the two said. “We have failed, and death is our reward, but we shall never talk. You will save time by turning us over to your police.”

      Red Finger’s black shoulders shrugged. “That, precisely, is what I shall not do. But you are small fry; I have no more time to waste on you.” The scarlet digit twitched, twice. No report shattered the river quiet, but two jets of fine spray spurted from the muzzle of his gun, to become a vaporous cloud about the saboteurs’ heads. The spies collapsed like two ripped meal-bags, thudded to the ground, lay motionless.

      At once the counter-spy leaped into furious action. His lithe figure sprang forward, in an instant he had heaved the unconscious saboteurs into their tiny craft, and shoved it off and whipped into it. He let it slide out into the Sound with the momentum of his initial shove, let the current take it. The fog closed around the boat. There was a dull plop into the water, then a second. Those particular bombs would lie at the bottom of the East River till Judgment Day. A tiny, hooded light flickered over a swarthy face; touched ascetic lips, a close-trimmed, black mustache; went out. A black cloak fluttered overside, a gray mask followed.…

      Minutes later a limp body, clad only in shirt and drawers, bulked along the rowboat’s gunwale. “God take your soul, Dominic Liscio. You did your duty as you saw it.”

      The river chuckled gruesomely as it clasped yet another flaccid bundle to its muddy bosom. Then muffled oars dipped softly into the stream and the boat’s bow turned toward the loom of the Santa Maria, until the rowboat reached and thudded against its rust-streaked hull.

      From the deck of the tramp steamer a cautious voice called, in Italian, “Who is it?”

      “Liscio,” the whispered reply came in perfect Piedmontese, and in the voice of the man whose corpse now bobbed somewhere on the Sound’s scummed flood. “Dominic Liscio. Get us on board quickly. Angelo has met with an accident, he’s unconscious. Help me with him.”

      An unintelligible exclamation came from above, feet thudded. The man in the boat heard an authoritative rumble, curiously guttural for an officer of an Italian vessel. Then a Jacob’s ladder coiled down, and he had fastened the boat to its end, had lifted Angelo to reaching hands, toward a flashlight’s glare above, and was himself stepping on to the dim deck.

      Shadowy forms were barely visible. One approached, broad-shouldered, paunchy, the shape of his head unmistakably Teutonic. Light flicked over the figure standing there in Dominic Liscio’s clothes, and fingering Dominic Liscio’s close-clipped black mustache so that his hand all but screened a swarthy face that might have been Liscio’s own. “Well, what happened?”

      Liscio’s reincarnation responded in English, taking the cue. “We got the bombs planted, all right. Hell will break loose in half an hour. We’d better get away from here. Someone—”

      “Wait. Tell me in the cabin. Come.” The other turned, waddled on thick legs to a companionway. Warm light irradiated the mist as a door opened, fanned out. The disguised Red Finger’s eyes slid to a face just revealed at the edge of the luminance; his lids narrowed. But he followed the German into the cabin and the door shut behind him.

      He stood just within that door, watching his bulky host, and his fingers hovered near the lapel of Liscio’s pea-jacket. The other heaved around, his flabby cheeks quivered. He was just beyond a table on which were a pitcher and a tall glass on the inside of which yellow foam still made dripping rings. His hamlike arms hung straight down and his hands were concealed by the edge of the table. “Now we can speak with more comfort. Tell me about it.”

      “First you tell me something, Herr Gans. Tell me how it happens that a Nazi spy is serving in the Italian Secret Service?”

      The vast expanse of Gans’ face was expressionless, but his piglike eyes glittered. “Ach! Once more! I told already that I was unjustly cashiered by von Goering when I reported that I had killed that dangerous American, Red Finger, and afterwards it was proved I was mistaken. Why must you ask that question again?”

      “Because it just occurred to me that if our little expedition had been tipped-off to the Americans and they had captured two obvious Italians sabotaging their gas-mask plant, this country would have been swept by a tempest of rage that would have forced its leaders to throw the power of the United States on the side of Hitler in the coming struggle.”

      The German’s red mouth twisted. “True. But what of it? They were not tipped-off.”

      The other’s voice dropped a note, was thick with menace. “But they were, Herr Gans. They were. And I think that fact will be of great interest to my compatriots aboard.” He half-twisted, got a hand on the doorknob, then froze, held for an instant by a sudden sound over his shoulder.

      “Stop!” Gans barked. “Stop—Red Finger!”

      The American’s eyes flicked back, saw the black tunnel-mouth of a forty-five automatic snouting at him. He came fully around to face that menace, his hands went above his head, and he smiled.

      “Good, Herr Gans! Very good! Suspecting my imposture you got me in here and you had that gun ready to flash on me at the proper time. But how did you know?”

      “Liscio was provided with a password to use when he returned, though I knew he would not return. When you did not use it, I knew you were not him. And who else could you be but—Red Finger? Only you, Red Finger, would have defeated the plan to wreck the gas-mask plant without the repercussion on which I counted, and then have the skill and the nerve to come here made up as the man you have killed.”

      “Thanks for the compliment.” The counter-spy, at the mercy of his archenemy, appeared as carefree as though the table between them were set for a luncheon instead of being spread for death. “But I must return it. Your whole scheme was clever, too clever, in fact for you to have evolved it.” The German’s smirk was suddenly replaced by a black scowl. “May I venture to guess that it was suggested to you by—a certain Baron Odun, that suave, brilliant chief-spy of—an Asiatic power.”

      The fury that leaped into the other’s pink face rendered verbal admission unnecessary. The American’s eyebrows arched, and he went smoothly on. “Perhaps it did not occur to you that he was making you a catspaw to pull his country’s chestnuts out of the fire?”

      “A catspaw,” the Nazi spluttered. “Ach! What nonsense. How a catspaw?”

      “Simply enough. With all Europe at each other’s throats, and the United States embroiled, how simple it would be for that Far Eastern empire to wait till the nations of the white race were bled white and then strike—surely, swiftly, with certainty of success. Our Pacific Coast stripped of its man-power, our fleet concentrated in the Atlantic… You see? In a week Odun’s country would be entrenched in North America, and then—world domination!”

      Fear flickered Gans’ pig-eyes. Then they glazed over with red hate. “You talk well, Red Finger. But it will not save you. I shall not miss this time.” His fat finger trembled on the trigger. “You die—now!”

      The American’s long leg darted out, thudded against the underside of the cabin table. It lifted, crashed against Gans’ rotund belly. The pistol crashed; the shot thudded into wood. Red Finger was a streak of black action as he hurtled across the room.

      A knife flashed in yellow light from beyond Red Finger’s shoulder, and its gleam was quenched in fat flesh. Blood spurted from a thick neck, but, uncannily, the crimson blood seemed to catch only one finger

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