He heard her gargling as he found the case and zipped it open. This was the original, judging by the typing, and the creases and finger-marks. He scowled at it, wishing he had the necessary expertise to understand the finer points. Casting a calculating eye over the available light, he got out his tiny cigarette-lighter camera and was all set to photograph the sheets when she called from the bathroom, still husky but much louder:
“You can have the paper, and welcome. I’m not likely to be wanting it any more now.”
“Thank you very much.” He folded the paper slowly, slid it into an inside pocket and strolled back to where she was still gargling. “Are you taking part in anything else in this distinguished gathering?”
“No. I came only to deliver that talk and to hear some of the others. I’ll be catching a plane home in the morning.”
“Back to Cooraclare Castle,” he murmured, and she choked in the middle of a gargle, coughed; regained her breath and stared at him.
“You seem to know a lot about me!”
“And I’d like to know a lot more,” he said, smiling. “Look, there’s a farewell dance this evening, the usual thing. Why don’t I meet you there, and then you’ll be able to tell me all sorts of fascinating things about molecules and yeast and things? Would you?”
She hesitated a moment, then gave him that high-voltage smile again. “I’d love to, just so long as I can count on getting a dance or two into the bargain. Are you sure it’s the yeast you’re interested in?”
“That”—he smiled—“and other things.” He put the bottle down on the edge of the washbasin. “Here—keep this for one more treatment later on. See you tonight—in full voice, I hope!”
Back in his own room he unclipped the pencil transceiver from his breast pocket and spoke somberly into it: “Open channel D.” As Waverly’s voice came through he outlined the situation briefly. “If she was doped to stop her talking, and I think she was, then it’s possible the pertinent information is in her head and not on paper,” he concluded. “Something that would have emerged in the questions afterwards. However, I have her own copies of the lecture notes and I’ll send them over by messenger at once. Perhaps our experts can gather a clue or two from them.”
“With two hundred specialists right there on the spot I doubt if there is anything they’ve missed that we can find,” Waverly said dryly.
“The clues,” Solo explained, “are for me to go on. I’m meeting her at the dance this evening. She should be in voice by then, and it will be my last chance—she’s booked to fly home tomorrow. I can get her to talk, but how am I supposed to carry on an intelligent conversation unless I have some notion what she’s talking about?”
“Very well, Mr. Solo; get the papers to us and I’ll see what the laboratory can do in the way of a synopsis for you. In the meantime you’ll just have to use your imagination.”
“One more matter, sir.” Solo sighed. “It could be that Thrush won’t want Miss O’Rourke to fly out in the morning. If they’ve tried to silence her once already they may do it the hard way next time.”
“Quite so. You’ll have to watch out for that, Mr. Solo, won’t you?” Waverly switched off.
Solo returned his transceiver to his pocket, shaking his head grimly. The majority of commanders fall into the sin of being unable to delegate authority for actions and insist on supervising everything personally. Waverly would never do that, but Solo couldn’t help thinking he tended to go a bit too far in the opposite direction and assume that his men would somehow be successful at anything he told them to do. It was a very great compliment, of course, but Solo sighed as he contemplated just what was involved this time. He had to keep Sarah O’Rourke’s good will to the point where she would babble to him whatever secrets there might be about synthetic yeast—and then he had to try to understand whatever it was she told him. Meanwhile he had to make sure that Thrush didn’t come up with any more dirty tricks towards her—or himself, for that matter.
And in between times, have fun! he thought wryly, and decided to take a shave and shower and freshen up generally. It was futile to try and guess just what it was Thrush was after, so he didn’t bother, but he did find it hard to believe that anyone so utterly fresh and wholesome as Sarah O’Rourke could be involved in the kind of evil Thrush would seek.
He was still pondering that as he went to pick her up for the dance, but he forgot it as soon as he saw her. This time her dress was two shades darker than her eyes, and it revealed the interesting fact that she was roses-and-cream complexion all over. Almost all over, anyway. He stared in appreciation, and she went pink and timid.
“Is it all right?” she whispered. “I bought it on purpose, as soon as I got here. I would never have the nerve to wear anything as bold as this back home. Nor the opportunity either.”
“Ireland’s loss is my gain,” he said, “and it is very much all right.” He extended his arm gallantly to lead her to the elevator. “I had no idea biochemistry was such an interesting subject.”
She nodded gently as if confirming something to herself, and it wasn’t until they were actually on the dance floor that he remembered he was supposed to be a biochemist. In chagrin at his slip he searched urgently for some safe topic of conversation while they danced.
“I had expected a crowd,” he said. “The attendance figure was given as two hundred but there can’t be a quarter of that here.”
“All sorts of reasons for that. These are professional people, with not much time to spare, and not very good at frivolity anyway. A lot of them will be on their way home by this time. Just what are you, Mr. Solo?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I checked up on you in the professional register, and you’re not there at all.”
“That does it, then—I’m unmasked. I’m a spy, snooping around to find out all your professional secrets.”
She laughed, and he thought it a delightful sound. “You’d be wasting your time with me, then,” she said. “I’ve no secrets to hide at all. Uncle is the one with all the secrets.”
“Uncle?” Solo echoed, startled, then caught himself and grinned. “Oh, you mean your Uncle Michael?”
“Who else? If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be here. He’s the genius with all the secrets. I’m just a voice. And not even that, this afternoon.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, whirling her across the floor. “The voice is fine now.” She moved delightfully, and as he held her close there was just the suspicion of perfume about her. Just right. If only he didn’t have to concentrate on other, less agreeable, things.
“Suppose I were a scientist, a biochemist,” he murmured, “and suppose you’ve just read your learned paper. I’m in the audience. I want to ask a hot question. What might it be?”
She frowned prettily as they revolved in time to the music. “That’s a terrible question. It might be anything. Actually, my paper is only a description of two new and unusual molecules, with a general idea of the way to make them and some hints as to what their properties might be. If you wanted to know more about those, I couldn’t tell you. My uncle does that part, him and Bridget. I’m in the molecular engineering bit—the way to make them. And I’d not be free to tell too much about that, either, you see, because it’s the details of the process of manufacture that is the real secret. That’s what we’re trying to sell. And I don’t know it all anyway, only bits.”
Solo, trying to fit this into what he knew of the situation, caught sight of an elderly man, stout and red-faced, who was obviously struggling to attract his attention from the edge of the floor. His—or Sarah’s?
“I think,” he murmured, “that you have a fan. Someone trying to catch your eye. Over there, see?”
“I recognize him, from pictures,” she said. “That will be Professor Amazov. He’s one of the very few here who would really be in a position to understand and appreciate Uncle’s discoveries.”
“One of the few? But aren’t they all biochemists?”
She chuckled, the delicious sound tickling all his nerves at once. “You are the darling innocent, aren’t you now? Trying to pass yourself off as a real scientist. As anyone could tell you, biochemistry is a hodgepodge of specializations of all kinds—chemistry at one end, biology at the other, and all sorts in between: cytologists, serologists, immunologists, chemical engineers, specialists in X-rays and crystallography, virology, genetics, photosynthesis, energy-transfer systems—”
“Point taken,” he interrupted. “Perhaps you’d better talk to the real expert while I just listen and take notes?”
“I’d much rather just go on dancing with you,” she declared with such obvious sincerity that he was shaken for a moment. Such transparent honesty was rare in his experience. Regretfully he steered her in the general direction of a corner table. Then he tensed suddenly, as his roving gaze caught and held the cold stare of one of the Thrush men he had seen earlier. Revolving on, he saw the other, and a chill grew along his spine. So they weren’t through yet! And they had him spotted, too. He made a fast decision, spun her to a chair and sat her down. He saw Amazov puffing and thrusting through the thin crowd, almost at hand.
“I must go,” he said to Sarah. “Just for a moment. Very urgent. I’ll be right back.” He turned to bow to the professor, who dismissed him with a snort and spun on Miss O’Rourke abruptly.
“Young woman, I’ve been wanting to speak to you ever since I saw that ridiculous nonsense you’ve issued as a paper. It was utter rubbish—”
Solo slipped away smoothly, carrying with him a vivid memory of Sarah’s beautiful bewilderment. Quick steps got him through a door into quiet. He took out his pencil-speaker hastily, asked for the channel, and got Waverly’s reply.
“Anything on that paper yet? I’m in over my head here.”
“I was about to call you, Mr. Solo. The laboratory reports that the paper is some kind of joke or hoax—they say it’s meaningless, particularly the molecular diagrams.”
Solo pulled down his eyebrows in a frown. “There’s a Professor Amazov busy telling my fair lady that very same thing right now. Do you detect a smell, sir?”
“I do. I suspect Miss O’Rourke managed to lose her speaking voice at a very convenient moment.”
“A fraud, you mean? Why would she do that? There are only a few here who would know any different. No, wait—” Solo caught his breath. “You mean she’s trying to sell a phoney to Thrush? And they silenced her to stop her advertising it too much? Because if that’s the case then Amazov is in the process of tearing it up, and she’s in bad trouble.”
He shut off, hesitated a moment in a struggle between two alternatives. Believing the hard menace to be past, he had left his gun in his room. He itched to go and get it, fast. But it was even more urgent that he get back to her before Amazov spilled all the bad beans. He made his decision, whirled and headed back for the dance-floor. The music had struck a momentary pause as he entered and headed for the corner. He could see the professor, red-faced and dogmatic, laying down a stricture with hard gestures, and Sarah staring angrily back at him.
And then, from behind him and just to the right, he heard the very familiar I sound of a silenced pistol. He saw Amazov stiffen, straighten up, and then slump limply face down on the table. Sarah backed off and screamed, a big, full-throated, full-bodied scream that killed the hubbub in the room absolutely dead.
Solo hurried. For ten seconds he was the only person moving in the room. Reaching the table, he put out a hand to steady her and she clung to him like a child. He glanced at the ring of white faces, then at the slumped body.
“Get the police,” he said, crisp and cold. “And a doctor!”
The last was first. This room was full of doctors, of various kinds. Solo had time to learn that scientists are just as hysterically nervous as lay people when confronted with something outside their own field. He held Sarah tight, and insisted nobody touch anything until the law arrived. Nobody was to move, nobody to leave. Standard routine, because there was nothing else to do at this moment. And in the waiting he cudgeled his brain to fit this last item into an already confused picture. Why shoot Amazov? It didn’t make any kind of sense at all!
Then came the minions of the law, very prompt and efficient, and all his precariously held picture began to fall apart into nightmare. The lieutenant was brisk and competent, his men alert. It took only minutes to verify what had actually happened, where everybody had been sitting and standing when the shot had been fired. From where had the sound come? What had it sounded like? Sarah managed to give her testimony with reasonable accuracy. Half-a-dozen onlookers backed her up. It all fitted. Shot in the back. From that direction. Who had been in that direction at that time? Solo grimaced as one witness after another declared that he had been “right there” when the shot had sounded.
And he had been the only one in the room who hadn’t seemed stunned into immobility by the killing. Even Sarah had to agree with that.
“I’m not armed,” Solo protested, more irritated than anything by the ironic twist of events.
The lieutenant ignored him. “Now where,” he mused aloud, “would you be most likely to ditch the gun?” He wondered, and looked, and pointed, and one of his cohorts went and looked, and found a gun clumsily hidden in a potted-palm. He picked it up and carried it strictly according to the rule-book, with a pencil inserted in the barrel. Solo shook his head sadly as he saw it.
“Let me save you the trouble,” he said. “It’s mine.”
There was no room for doubt. That gun, which looked something like a Luger but wasn’t, bore his initial, an “S” engraved on the butt. And it was unique in other ways, as the lieutenant’s expression showed when he inspected it. He was still staring as the police surgeon straightened from his quick inspection of the body.
“Damndest gunshot wound I ever saw, lieutenant. The man’s alive. Very little hemorrhage. But he’s completely out cold. Anesthetized!”
“My gun,” Solo repeated wryly. “May I show you?” He reached and took the weapon from the lieutenant’s hand, and four police positives appeared like conjuring tricks, all looking right at him. He smiled thinly, broke the magazine, and showed one of the cartridges with its needle-pointed capsule. Leading all the intent eyes in that direction, he managed to slip another one unseen into his pocket. He composed his features into a tight smile.
“Sorry about this,” he said to Sarah, who looked stunned. “It’s all a mistake, of course. I’ll explain, sometime later.” Then he offered his wrists to the law and shrugged. “Shall we go, gentlemen?”
The cell was clean and not too uncomfortable, all things considered. As soon as he was alone, Solo drew out his transceiver and put out the call.
“Open channel D.” As Waverly came on he steeled himself to recite the details in cold words, sparing himself not at all. Only at the end did he give way to a personal comment. “It must have been manna from heaven for Thrush,” he growled. “They were dying to find some way to silence Amazov, and I was the goat. Obvious, now that it’s too late.”
“It isn’t obvious to me, Mr. Solo, not yet. Why should they want to silence Amazov?”
“Because he was about the only person there who knew enough to understand the finer points of her paper. The way I see it, in its original form it gave away a little too much information. Thrush didn’t want that, so they got at it, altered it enough to make it meaningless, let her go ahead and run off a stack of copies, then doctored her drink so that she lost her voice, thereby making sure she wouldn’t read it through herself. Make sense? After all, there was no reason for her to read her own paper, otherwise. Once she lost her voice, and her scheduled lecture time, she just didn’t bother any more, naturally.”
“That’s very ingenuous, Mr. Solo.”
“Isn’t it? And it’s the only thing that fits. There’s obviously something pretty potent about those molecules as originally described. I suggest the laboratory make some more tests on that script, thi
s time looking for erasures and alterations. They might even be able to restore the original version.”
“Yes. We’ll do that. Good thinking, Mr. Solo, if a trifle tardy. Now, I suppose, I shall have to pull strings to get you out of there!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t like it. I shall have to ask favors. I remind you that we are supposed to come to the assistance of the duly constituted authorities, not to ask them to help us!”
“No, sir.”
“Very well. I think I can manage to ‘spring’ you, if that’s the word, in time to have you catch Miss O’Rourke’s flight.”
“To Ireland?”
“It seems to be indicated.”
“You think Thrush is going to let her get away?”
“Not ‘get away,’ Mr. Solo. To return home. If your thinking is accurate it will be to Thrush’s interest to see her safely onto that plane and off home without suspecting anything. They will of course try to stop you from going with her, or learning anything from her. That’s why you’re in jail at the moment.”
Solo put away his instrument and spent a bitter moment in thought. It was nice to think that he would be seeing more of Sarah, but, that said, the rest was sour to his taste. A night in the cells! What a comedown for U.N.C.L.E.’s top field agent! He could vividly imagine the insufferable grins and smirks there would be once the information leaked out, as it certainly would once he was turned loose. He could almost hear the uniformed men passing the word, the plain-clothes squads spreading the tasty tidbit of scuttlebut.
“Yeah, sure! One of those fancy U.N.C.L.E. agents tripped right over his big flat feet, and we had to pick him up, dust him off and send him back home to Uncle, safe and sound!”
He writhed at the acid thought, rejecting it as insufferable. In sudden determination he cast an appraising eye around the bleak cell. It shouldn’t be so hard to get out of, at that. He was debating ways and means, not wanting to do too much damage to taxpayers’ property, when he heard the stolid tread of feet approaching, and saw the uniformed figure of his host for the night. He was a burly and overly jovial man, his crooked grin showing that he had already heard something of the inside story.
Man From U.N.C.L.E. 05 - The Mad Scientist Affair Page 2