The Mad Scientist Affair - Philifrent John T. Страница 12

“Uncle!” Sarah turned to O’Rourke in shrill fear. “What have you done to him?”

“‘Uncle!” Solo echoed, laughing. “That’s it. The man from U.N.C.L.E. That’s me. Have no fear!” He saw O’Rourke’s face undergo a subtle alteration, a quiet hardening. Sarah half-rose, and a chill voice came from behind.

“Sit still and keep quiet!” It was Bridget, and there was menace in her tone. “You too, Mr. Napoleon Solo. Just sit very still!” And he felt the cold muzzle of a weapon pressed against the side of his head. “The rest of you can put away your armament now—I’ll take care of this. Carry on talking, Uncle Mike.”

But Trilli wanted to put in an objection. “This is very interesting, but is still only talk. He sounds foolishly arrogant, true. But is this all? What about actions, other symptoms? Is he drunk? Does it show? Can it be detected?”

“All taken care of, Dr. Trilli. There are no symptoms other than a slow-down of reaction times. He is cold sober, by any test—on one glass of beer, what else would you expect. And there isn’t a chemist in the world would find anything suspicious, either in the beer or his blood-stream…not unless he knew exactly what to look for, and possibly not even then.”

Solo heard him, but his attention was on the vanishing guns, on weighing the odds. O’Rourke smiled at him. “You’re in the enemy camp, Mr. Solo. You must realize that by now. But it won’t worry you, of course!” Solo’s mind was as clear as crystal. He gathered himself, snapped a wink at Sarah, and exploded into furious action. One hand snaked up and back to snatch the gun from Bridget, the other dived into his coat to whip out his own. Sheer expert speed gave him the advantage—only, for some weird reason, it did not quite work out like that.

His arms seemed to be plowing through syrup, and while he was fighting the sluggishness, Bridget leaned over, twisted his own gun from his grasp, and thumped him savagely alongside the temple with the butt of the one she held. Stars flashed painfully in his skull.

“As you see,” O’Rourke pointed out with clinical calm, “his reaction times are depressed in inverse ratio to the enhancement of his confidence.”

Solo shook his head, furiously angry at this setback, regretting the loss of his gun, but unshaken in his determination. What was a gun, anyway? In the old days in Korea there hadn’t been one man in the whole outfit with the nerve to take him on at unarmed combat. He lurched to his feet, ducking away from Bridget, who stood back to let him go.

“All right, now!” he snarled. The game is over, folks—”

“Napoleon!” Sarah wailed, half-rising again to put out a hand to him as he backed up against the wall. “What’s come over you?”

Her uncle snarled at her in sudden sharp anger: “Keep quiet, woman! Can you not see this is a scientific experiment? Mr. Foden, perhaps you would be kind enough to give us a little bit more proof?”

“A pleasure!” Foden grinned, showing his teeth, and rose to move around the table. Watching him come, Solo fell into a tense crouch. He ached with rage and the eagerness to blow off some of it. This thick-headed Nazi type would serve that purpose admirably.

Solo smiled thinly. “I can lick any Thrush in the house,” he said mockingly.

Foden came close, hunched his shoulders to toss a punch—and again there was that deadly sluggishness getting in the way as Solo put up an arm to ward it. The punch got through, smashed him back against the all. He struggled in futility, and another roundhouse wallop rocked him, making bells clang in his head. It was like a bad dream, only the solidity of those flailing fists was painfully real and he could do nothing to stop them. Through a darkening haze he saw Foden reach out carelessly, setting him up with a left, murdering with the right to follow—and it hurt, and he couldn’t seem to get his arms to cooperate fast enough. His legs softened, only the hard wall at his back serving to hold him up. Out of the awful nightmare he heard O’Rourke’s old voice in sharp command:

“That’ll do for now, me bucko! Leave him be. We might have use for him later, maybe.” The punches stopped coming. Solo leaned gratefully on the wall and tried to shake the booming throb of agony out of his head.

“This man is an U.N.C.L.E. agent,” Trilli said. “I have heard much of him. He is dangerous. We should destroy him at once.”

“I’ve heard of U.N.C.L.E. too, Dr. Trilli. Ye have no need to tell me what to do. Let me remind you, I am still the king of this castle, and I am no more afraid of U.N.C.L.E. than I am of Thrush. He doesn’t look so dangerous at this moment, you will allow? And I’ve a dungeon downstairs that will hold our Mr. Solo until I want him again. Will you lend a hand there, Mr, Foden, and bring him along this way—?”

“Uncle Mike!” That was Sarah, frantic now. “You can’t do this. These men are criminals and murderers! I won’t let you do this!”

“Mr. Schichi, will you oblige me by keeping her quiet and bringing her along too. She’s a clever girl in her way, but was always a bit of a nuisance with her high and mighty notions. She’s served her purpose, I’m thinking. And we might be able to try other experiment with her, if you’re interested, Dr. Trilli? No? This way then, boys!”

Solo staggered helplessly in Foden’s harsh grip, his head spinning and his legs uncertain. He was dimly aware of walking, of a dark doorway and down-dropping spiral steps, the chill damp of stone walls, and noisy echoes.

“It was an extensive dungeon,” O’Rourke explained, “until I had most of it converted to a laboratory and workshop. I kept a couple of the old cells to serve as storerooms. In here, Mr. Foden, if you would be so kind. Ah, wait a moment now.” Solo lifted his head blearily, to see the old white-bearded face close to his. “I’m a man for doing things in style, Mr. Solo, although you might not think it. To all my distinguished guests, of whatever persuasion, I like to present my personal card. You just the same as the rest!” And he felt the old man stuff something into his breast pocket. It seemed the final touch of insanity. Then Foden sent him reeling with a powerful thrust, and he staggered helplessly against a cold stone wall. Sarah was shoved in after him.

And then a very heavy and solid door thudded shut, found an echo in Solo’s head, and there was silence. He leaned on the wall, pressed his brow against the cold stone, and tried to think. He heard Sarah sobbing helplessly. It was as if he were split right down the middle. Part of his mind told him he was in a desperate situation, that both of them were, but the other half still felt like a giant, a conquering hero, valiant and undeterred. There was a stranger in his skull, a crazy man full of instant schemes to break down the door and bust out, sweeping all the opposition grandly aside. Thinking sanely with that demon in charge was a heavy task. It must be the drug, he mused thickly. And the drug must have been in the beer can. But he had opened it himself! You couldn’t tamper with a thing like that, surely? He abandoned that problem for the moment, lifted his head from the cold stone and began sizing up the cell.

The available light was meager, and with a greenish tint. It came from a small window high up on the wall, a window with stout bars and not big enough to let a boy through even with the bars removed. It must be at ground level, up there, judging by the rank grass that half-covered it and produced the greenish hue. The idiot in his head urged him to leap up there, rip out the bars and force his way through. He made himself ignore the voice, but the devilish implications of the drug began to show themselves as he thought about it. The fine difference between confident courage and foolhardy recklessness is hard enough to judge in any case, and harder still to recognize in oneself. Given a drug to blur that line, the results could be terrifyingly lethal.