[Magazine 1966-­06] - The Vanishing Act Affair - Lynds Dennis. Страница 10

A spurt of reddish gas burst from the capsule hidden in Solo's heel. The gas quickly expanded flush into their faces. They gasped once each.

Solo hurled himself over backward and as far as he could go. Even then he got a faint whiff of the gas before it dispersed in the air of the barge cabin.

The whiff made his head reel, made him fight for consciousness. Everything went black and green and red and he felt himself slipping away; then it was gone. He lay in a sharp draft of wind from under the door.

Quickly he crawled himself around on the floor, the chair still firmly tied to him. Walter and Bruno had taken the full dose straight into their faces before they had time to jump away. They both lay flat, eyes staring at nothing, barely breathing.

Solo had two hours.

In two hours they would revive—with headaches, but otherwise as good as ever. Before then, Solo had to be free. Where he lay, his eyes searched the barge cabin. What he wanted was on the leg of that very table where Walter and Bruno had prepared their instruments of torture—a small blowtorch with a thin jet of blue flame.

Painfully, Solo gathered his muscles and heaved himself to his knees. He swayed to his feet with another lunge upward, staggered, crouched over with the chair against his back and legs, knees bent where they were tied to the chair. But he did not fall, the training and balance of the trained athlete coming to his aid now.

Earlier, while they were overpowering him, he had cursed as his hand, rasping against a corner of the table, had grated on a rough, abrasive edge of the wood, which had in fact tore some skin from his hand. Solo stared down at the ragged fused bit of wood and metal. Solo grinned, the sweat running into his eyes. Then he lay down and went to work.

They had made one mistake in binding him. After looping the rope firmly around his legs, they had tied it off to the rear rung of the chair—as far from his hands and feet as they could get. Now that was going to free him. He extended his legs until the chair, where he lay on his side, rubbed against the roughened table leg, just under where it joined the upper surface of the table itself.

It was hard, back-breaking work, scraping the rope against the table. He was lying at an awkwardly cramped angle, so that the labor of rubbing his legs against the abrasive spot put a terrific strain on his lumbar muscles. Every ten minutes he had to rest, panting. After what seemed like an eternity, he strained, almost without hope, and felt the torn rope part.

For a precious moment he fell back on the floor, hoarding and restoring his strength which had been so sorely spent. Then, not daring to rest longer, he went to work again.

Quickly now, his legs free, he stood up straight, the chair still tied only to his arms behind him. They had not been stupid enough to use only one rope. He looked at Walter and Bruno. The two Thrush men had not moved. Grinning to himself again, Solo repeated the operation, but much more easily this time.

With his legs free, he was able to maneuver his body to where the ropes on his hands and arms crossed the upper part of the table leg.

Three minutes later he was free, with nothing worse than two ugly scrapes on his hand.

He threw the chair away, and quickly felt the lining of his jacket. He found, and drew out, a tiny flat needlelike object. Then he found a flat, capsule-like object inside the thick cuff of his trousers. The capsule-like, flat cylinder was wrapped in a tiny net of cotton. He fitted the capsule into the miniature syringe, bent over Walter, and inserted the needle into the Thrush man's arm.

He squeezed the fat capsule.

Walter jerked, shuddered, his limbs moving in spasms. Then the Thrush man's eyes began to flutter. Suddenly they came open. But Walter was not awake, not really.

Solo bent close to the ear of the Thrush man. "Where did Maxine go? Agent Trent, where did she go and why? Answer!"

Walter's eyes blinked, his body jerked, his lips began to move. "Uh—No—I will not—" The Thrush man shuddered convulsively. "I—she went to—Morlock. The country house; Salisbury—you must capture him and make him—tell—"

Solo let the man fall back and threw away his now useless miniature syringe of powerful truthserum and stimulant. Moments later he was swimming in the icy water of the Thames. He reached the shore, a wide flat of mud at low tide, and climbed up the embankment. It took him five minutes to locate a telephone, and five more minutes to get the exact location of Morlock The Great's house near Salisbury.

"Can I help now, Solo?" Inspector Taylor asked from the far end of the line.

"Stay where you are," Solo said. "If Illya can't get to me, he'll probably contact you. Tell him where I've gone!"

Ten minutes after that a black car, delivered to the bank of the Thames by a silent man in a business suit, raced away toward the south and west toward Salisbury.

The silent man was an U.N.C.L.E. agent in London. Section I (Communications and Security). The man driving the car was Napoleon Solo—re-armed and anxious to find Maxine Trent and her men.

FIVE

FIVE MILES from the ancient cathedral town of Salisbury, the magnificent spire of the cathedral itself out of sight to the north, the black car slowed to ha halt five hundred yards down a country lane from a big, gothic house. Behind the wheel, Solo looked at the silent house through his infra-red binoculars.

What he saw made him slide silently from his car and fade quickly into the thick hedgerow that bordered the country land. They were there. Two black cars and at least seven Thrush men, wearing their black uniforms and carrying ugly rifles with heavy, round infrared night scopes.

Cautiously Solo moved closer. They, the Thrush men, were deployed around the old house. The house itself was dark and silent. Solo looked for Maxine Trent. He finally located her standing with two Thrush chief guards near one of the two cars. They appeared to be planning their attack.

Solo edged closer, his U.N.C.L.E. Special ready, but cautious because there were too many of them. They seemed ready to move. One of the two chief guards of Thrush stepped forward from the shelter of the car toward where his men waited. He took two steps—and stopped.

High on the third floor of the gothic house, on a small balcony, there was sudden flash and a great red glow seemed to bathe the facade of the house in eerie red light. The Thrush attackers stared upward.

The night was as bright as day with the red glow.

On the small balcony there was a puff of blue smoke.

A man stood on the balcony.

Solo recognized the satanic face of Morlock The Great.

The midget-like figure with the oversized head stood high on the balcony and laughed down at the gaping Thrush men.

The Thrush leader stared upward.

For a long minute nothing moved, nothing happened but the weird laughter of the midget bathed in the red glow. Then Maxine Trent shouted.

"There he is! Take him alive!"

As if galvanized by an electric shock, the Thrush men leaped up and ran toward the house. They did not hesitate a second the command of their superior far more powerful to them than any fear. They ran up the steps of the old house—and fell in a hail of withering fire.

The Thrush men screamed. The red glow went out on the balcony above. In the dark the Thrush men stumbled across the porch and into the house. Inside there was more fire and more screaming in pain.

Solo watched as a Thrush man ran back out onto the steps of the old house.

"Empty! The place is empty!"

"Someone fired at us!" a Thrush leader cried.

"No one! Automatic fire. Booby trap!"

Solo saw the flash of blue light to the left. The light flashed at a spot fifty yards from the house. A blue light bright on a small hillock. Another puff of smoke, white this time, and Morlock The Great stood on the hillock, laughing Maxine Trent cursed and shouted to her surviving men.