The Diving Dames Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 24

"What do you mean, you don't believe it?" the voice was asking.

"I told you," Solo said. "You can't have got any information from me when I was drugged. We are conditioned. You could have found out I belonged to the Command, and about Waverly, from many sources."

"We could have, perhaps. But we didn't. You told us everything. Absolutely everything."

"Ridiculous!" Solo said contemptuously. "I simply do not believe you."

"I tell you, you came across with the whole works." There was a definite edge to the voice now. "You're not imbecilic, Mr. Solo. There is no need to bandy words. You can believe me when I tell you -"

"And I tell you I don't believe you. It's just a trick - and a very old and shabby trick, too, like telling a man his confederate has confessed all - to make him talk."

"You have talked, Solo. Plenty. So much so that there's no point - no need, for God's sake! - to ask you any thing more. We have it."

"Rubbish," Solo said shortly. He turned away from the grille and sat down on the bed. The pretty nurse flashed him a knowing smile as she went out with the doctor and her colleague.

"Do you want me to prove it to you, for Heaven's sake?" the voice cried.

"Prove it? You couldn't. Not in a million years," Solo gibed.

"No?... Not if I told you we knew you came to Brazil because of the fingerprints of those D.A.M.E.S. women in the car crash? Not if I told you everything about your conversations with Garcia, your visit to the hospital and the discovery of the old man Oliveira? Not if I detailed the things the boy at the rental company said - the one with the old-fashioned slang?... Not even if I listed your findings so far in the hunt to discover the places where these false D.A.M.E.S. are distributing the cocaine and heroin?" There was a hint of laughter in the voice.

Napoleon Solo mentally heaved a sigh of relief. The built-in censor had worked. Under the drugs, he had told them every mechanical step he had taken in the investigation - but the subliminal suggestions had taken over when it had come to the reasons for the inquiry.

He had said that U.N.C.L.E. thought the girls we connected with some drug ring. His captors would believe that; the Command did interest itself in illegal drug traffic and the facts as known to Solo could believably be interpreted as leading to that erroneous conclusion.

The man who had been interrogating him would be laughing at the thought of Solo's gullibility, thinking he had wrested from the agent all he knew - which would leave him free to go on wondering exactly what was afoot.

And about this, Solo reflected ruefully, he knew very little.

"You look crestfallen, my friend," the voice was saying jubilantly. "I told you I could prove it!... Oh well, never mind. There has to be a loser in every game doesn't there?... For the moment, until we decide what is to be done with you, you can take a little rest – on our laurels!" There was a dry chuckle and the sound a switch snapping off.

The agent threw himself on the bed and gazed moodily at the ceiling. After a while, he turned over lay face downwards, with his chin pillowed on crossed arms. If they were really leaving him alone for a while, there was a chance the television camera above him might be switched off as well as the two-way speak grille. Especially if he appeared as despondent as possible.

It was while he was lying perfectly still like that hoping his negative mime might have some positive effect, that he felt something under the tightly drawn mattress covering that had certainly not been there before… a foreign body that was irregular in shape, sharp at the edges, and extremely hard.

And suddenly he remembered that last glance the prettier of the nurses had thrown him. Hadn't she been swiveling her eyes in a meaningful sort of way at this corner of the room? And, now that he came to think of it, hadn't that parting gaze been the last of several? Had she not been continually staring over at the bed today?

Carefully, slowly, in case he was still being watched by the camera, he slid one hand beneath the cover. In a few moments, he had it back under his chin with some thing small and metal grasped in it. There were several separate objects under the cover - and not until he had withdrawn all of them did he drop his eyes and look at what lay beneath the protective wall of his cupped palm.

Four small stainless steel instruments lay on the bed: a nail file, a scalpel, an implement like a crochet hook with a sharp point, and a thin, flexible spatula.

Solo stared at them unbelievingly. Why had the girl left them there?

With a combination of two of them, he could probably pick the lock of the cell door. If the spatula was strong enough and flexible enough, he might even be able to slip the tongues without picking it.

Could the girl possibly have known this?

If not, what a curious coincidence that she should leave just the particular tools that could be used successfully to master this particular lock. On the other hand, even if she had known it, why leave him the means to escape from the cell?

He would puzzle it out later, he thought: the thing now was to find out if he was still watched - and therefore whether or not he could safely make use of this gift from Heaven. After a few moments, he decided that the best thing was simply to sit up on the bed holding the tools in full view of the camera. If it was switched on, someone would come through the door soon enough to take them away from him; if it was off, nothing would happen and he could get to work on the lock. In either case, he lost nothing - for he could never use the implements if the TV circuit was still on...

After sitting for some time with the shining steel things in his hand, he decided that at last his luck had changed. No sound came through the grille; no footsteps clattered in the passage outside; nobody burst into the cell.

In three strides, he was at the steel door, his fingers busy twisting, probing, manipulating. He slid the spatula between the edge of the door and the jamb, testing the tongues and the resilience of their springs. It couldn't be opened with the spatula alone, that was for sure - perhaps the slender point of the scalpel, aided with a little extra leverage from the file here… Ah! There was the slight rolling movement of a tumbler beginning to fall.

He paused with the two instruments inserted, one supporting the other, into the keyhole. No matter how he turned, the wretched thing would not quite overcome its nul-point and drop.

But of course - that was what the crochet hook was for! He fed the shaft in, questing delicately with the curved point. It was extremely tricky feeling about blind with this while keeping up the complementary pressure on the other two instruments with his left hand. But eventually he sensed the satisfying chuck! of the wards falling home. The door should now be unlocked and ready to open.

He pulled with his fingertips at the edge. The door would not move.

Puzzled, he squinted into the crack by the lock... Of course! This was the Mark III. He had moved back the retaining bars, but the tongues were still groove into their steel nests in the jamb. It needed a gentle pressure to push them aside - and that, naturally, was what the spatula was for!

He cased the flat blade into the crack and worked at it with his wrist. One after the other, the greased metal bars slid silently back into the body of the lock. The door swung slowly open.

Outside, a dimly lit passage stretched away in each direction. There were closed doors like the one he had just opened on either side, and flush fitting lamps in the ceiling every few yards. From somewhere beyond the right-hand branch of the corridor, machinery hummed quietly. Feeling faintly ridiculous in singlet and under pants, Solo tiptoed on stockinged feet towards the sound.