[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Birds of a Feather Affair - Avallone Michael. Страница 21

"Perhaps I should go see, anyway. Play without me. I should be back soon."

He left the room without waiting for comments from his subordinates. Fried Rice and Pig Alley merely exchanged glances and returned to the game.

Fried Rice was winning, handily.

The corridor was illuminated by three globes of light placed at even distances along the ceiling. As Mr. Riddle had inspected, Arnolda Van Atta had restricted this phase of the operation to the entire floor. There was no danger of running into strangers. Still, one couldn't be too careful. Once out of the room, he paused to tug the Frankenstein mask free of his face.

Had anyone been watching they would have been amazed to see atop the thin body in ill-fitting suit the face of a beautiful woman. The hair had been cut so close to the scalp as to be no more than a peachlike fuzz of pelt. The face of the woman who had introduced herself as Mr. Riddle belonged on a statue in a museum. Her mouth, eyes, nose, ears and chin were so regular and even as to constitute nearly chiseled perfection.

The bogus Mr. Riddle started down the long corridor toward the room that held Mark Slate.

Suddenly, he-she paused, senses sharpened, faculties alerted. The tiniest click of sound had come from somewhere. The first indication that something was wrong was the sudden one-by-one extinction of the three lights overhead. It was magical. Like a winking eye. But long before the third bulb had died, Mr. Riddle had reversed the field, and sped backward toward the fire door at the other end of the corridor.

Mr. Riddle vanished through it in an instant, tugging the Frankenstein mask back into place.

The hotel's back staircase formed a central shaft in the very heart of the building.

April Dancer loomed in the darkness of the corridor. She held in her right hand a peculiarly box-shaped object from which no apparent light came. Yet, in actuality, it threw a ray of "black light" which lit up the hallway before her as well as daylight. She advanced down the corridor, the infrared rays of the box fluorescing the carpet before her. In her left hand, she held her specially designed service pistol. A compact weapon no larger than the palm of her hand.

The twin elevator cages whirred open. From each of them stepped a man. They too held the boxlike devices. They were also armed and on the ready. Walter Fleming and Pete Barnes now saw April Dancer and they all converged together in the center of the corridor.

There were only two doors on the floor.

One to the left of the elevators, one to the right

It had taken but a half hour to locate the blue-paneled truck. Parked outside in plain view on the sidewalk before one of the many apartment houses on the West Side in the mid-Fifties. April had lost no time commandeering a detail to hurry to the scene.

But not one of them, April or the two U.N.C.L.E. agents, had spied Mr. Riddle quitting the scene.

April motioned toward one of the doors, silently. Fleming and Barnes, moving like a trained unit, fanned out and made their approach. April selected the other door for herself.

There had been no trick deciding that this had to be the trouble floor. Every other floor in the building was deserted. The apartment house was one of those that was going down in the summer, to make way for a new, larger, co-op apartment building.

Another THRUSH blind.

April moved to the strange door and set the box-lamp down on the floor. She transferred her weapon to her right hand and placed her ear to the panel. No sound came from within.

She took the knob in her left hand and kicked the door in, gun held high. Light flooded from the room, filling the corridor. In the split second that the insane tableau presented itself to her, Mark Slate's cheery voice piped up from somewhere near the floor.

"April Dancer, upon my soul. What kept you?"

Mr. Waverly Calls the Tune

Fried Rice and Pig Alley went for their weapons as soon as Walter Fleming and Pete Barnes crashed into their room. For a moment, the light caught the flashing reflection of a long stiletto jumping into Pig Alley's right hand. Fried Rice produced a wicked looking .38 caliber pistol from one sleeve of the purple mandarin robes.

Fleming and Barnes hardly paused for a moment. From either side of the doorway, they opened up. The odd-appearing weapons in their hands made coughing noises of sound. Splat! Splat! Splat!

Fried Rice and Pig Alley were halted. Their eyeballs rolled, their hands stopped moving. The stiletto and the pistol clattered to the floor of the room. Both of Mr. Riddle's subordinates sprawled forward in their chairs, faces falling down to the card table.

The U.N.C.L.E. agents holstered their weapons and quickly checked the room closets and doors for hidden threats. There were none. They hardly spoke or favored the unconscious men with a second glance. For that was all that Fried Rice and Pig Alley were. Unconscious; rendered so by the special "mercy" bullets in the U.N.C.L.E. guns. Harmless pellets of a drug which acted instantly upon contact with the skin. Murder was never committed if it could be avoided. And the two THRUSH underlings were more valuable delivered alive than dead. These would be, at any rate.

They hurried down the corridor to the other room to see if April Dancer needed a hand.

She had untied Mark Slate, righted the table, and was covering Arnolda Van Atta with her palm gun. The injured redhead was alternately moaning in agony and hurling murderous glances at Mark Slate. The velvet dress had run up, exposing half her thighs.

Slate, that cool-headed character, was flexing and working his arms and legs to get the kinks out. Fleming and Barnes restrained grins and comments. Slate was a dandy when it came to clothes as it was and now the blue jeans and Basque shirt made him look more like a male model than ever.

"Nice going, chappies," Slate smiled. "You and April arrived like the U.S. Cavalry in a John Wayne movie."

April shook her head. "We'd better get the lady to a doctor. That ankle is swelling like a balloon." She eyed Fleming and Barnes. "Any luck in the other room?"

"One Chinaman and one Frenchman," Barnes said.

"That would be the Messrs. Fried Rice and Pig Alley," Slate said. "You didn't find a Mr. Riddle by any chance?"

"Negative," Fleming said.

Arnolda Van Atta, her classic features contorted with agony, shrilled: "Get me a doctor, for God's sakes—"

"Shut up," April said coldly. "We ought to get you a firing squad. But let's move out, boys. No sense hanging around here." She checked her watch. "Nine thirty eight. The Old Man ought to be home by now."

"Check," Slate said.

Walter Fleming and Pete Barnes, without being asked, fashioned a sling of their arms, and hoisted Arnolda Van Atta's shapely figure between them. April undid the brooch that pinned the collar of her dress. A beeping sound filled the room.

"Dancer here," she spoke into the brooch. A crisp voice answered and she quickly reported the news. Mark hurried down the hall to see about taking charge of Fried Rice and Pig Alley. They would have to be transferred to Headquarters. It was a big catch for one day's work. And U.N.C.L.E. still had Zorki. The Great Zorki—even if the mysterious Mr. Riddle had flown the coop.

When they had the whole menagerie rounded up, April closed out her report and repinned the brooch to her throat collar. Her brown eyes and long dark hair were, as usual, eminently out of place, in the wake of the murderous hullabaloo.

In the crowded elevator, Slate smiled at her warmly, shaking his handsome head.