Dorcus put the notebook in her purse.
"I'll look it over after lunch," she told Rank.
Boris Rank changed the subject by saying to April, "The convention banquet is tonight. Again it is supposed to be only for delegates, but I am sure I could arrange it if you would like to attend."
“I would love it," April said.
Slate looked at Dorcus and said, “And, of course we're going together, aren't we?"
"Of course," she said. "It will be our last night."
Slate raised his eyebrows. "The convention isn't over until Sunday night."
“I know but Boris and I have to get back to St. Louis. There aren't any more sessions on psychiatric drugs, and we both have work to do at the plant."
Slate said to Rank, "I know Dorcus is doing research on her doctorate, Boris, but what's your interest in this subject?"
Rank blinked, then forced a smile and said, "I'm just assisting Dorcus, really. I had to be in Axton on some other business, so I arranged to make my trip coincide with hers!”
This was such a clumsy excuse that Dorcus frowned at him. Even Rank seemed to know he had blundered, because he flushed. Mark Slate saved an awkward moment by pretending to let Rank's answer in one ear and out the other.
He turned to Dorcus almost before Rank had finished speaking and said, "Be sure to wear your dancing shoes tonight. There's going to be a sensational band after the banquet."
After lunch, in keeping with his pose as a clinical psychoanalysist, Slate announced that he had another meeting to attend. Dorcus said that she wanted to retire to her room to study the notes Rank had made.
Seeing a chance to let Dorcus and her employer get together, and perhaps eavesdrop on their talk, April said, "We all got up awfully early. I think I'll take a nap so that I'll be fresh tonight."
"Good idea," Rank said. "I think I will do the same."
The moment she reached her room, April took out her compact, opened it and made an adjustment. Dorcus' image appeared on the tiny screen. The woman sat with pillows propped behind her back on the bed, her shoes off and the notebook Boris Rank had given her open in her lap.
After watching her for a moment, April made an adjustment to the tiny dial on the side of the com pact and Boris Rank's room jumped into view. The room was empty.
At a knock on the door April closed the compact, put it back in her purse and went to the door. It was Mark Slate.
"I thought you had another meeting, Doctor," she said as she let him in and closed the door behind him.
"I decided to psychoanalyze you instead," he said lightly. "Just lie down and make your mind a blank."
Making a face at him, she took out her compact again and adjusted it for a view of Dorcus' room. The woman was still studying the notebook.
Slate, standing alongside of April, said, "Good looking witch, isn't she?"
"If you like them a little heavy," April said primly.
Slate looked at her in amazement. While Dorcus was somewhat more substantially proportioned than April, there wasn't an excess pound on her and her waist was nearly as trim as April's.
Seeing his expression, April laughed. "I'm a cat," she confessed cheerfully.
She switched the screen for a view of Boris Rank's room. Rank entered just as she switched over. They watched him hang his suit coat in the closet, take off his tie and light a cigarette. April switched back to Dorcus' room again.
The woman was no longer on the bed. She had closed the notebook and was in the act of putting on her shoes. She picked up the notebook and left the room.
April switched back to Rank's room and laid the compact on her dressing table.
"She must be going to visit Boris," she said. "Time for audio too."
She extended the antenna of her transistor radio, switched it on and made an adjustment
The sound of a knock came from the radio speaker. On the small screen of the compact they saw Boris Rank go over to the door and open it. Dorcus swept in imperiously and turned to face him.
As Rank closed the door, Dorcus said, "You idiot! Your notes are all but incomprehensible. You can't even spell!"
Instead of resenting such a tone from an employee, Boris Rank cringed.
"That psychiatric jargon is unfamiliar to me, Dorcus," he said apologetically. "I had to spell phonetically when they used some word I didn't know."
Dorcus began pacing up and down, tapping the notebook with her knuckles.
"A clue to our problem is right in here," she said savagely. "And you muffed it by taking incomplete notes. Can you remember anything else at all that was said about this Tehedrin zero fifty-five?"
"I wrote everything down," he insisted. "Everything said about the drug is in those notes. Why is this Tehedrin zero fifty-five so important anyway? It is merely a tranquilizer, from what I gathered. It bears no resemblance whatever to the drug we're concerned with."
"You fool!" Dorcus said. "It was right there before you, and you lacked the brains to see it. I'm not concerned with the use of Tehedrin zero fifty-five. It's that one unique property it has. If we can find out why the body refuses to absorb more than a certain amount Tehedrin zero fifty-five, no matter how much is administered, perhaps we can build the same property into our drug."
An enlightened expression grew on Rank's face.
"Of course," he said. "That would solve our problem, wouldn't it?"
"You see things when they are put in words of one syllable, don't you?" she said with irony. "Of course it would solve our problem. In its present form our drug is useless. What good will it do THRUSH to have an obedient population if most of the population is dead? And so far the experiment at Pig Wallow indicates that is going to be the final result."
April said to Slate, "Pig Wallow? Where's that?"
Slate shook his head indication that he didn't know either, and held up a hand for silence.
Boris Rank was saying, “Why don't we approach the problem devising some different way to distribute the drug, so that dosage can be controlled?"
"A brilliant thought," Dorcus said scornfully. "What method do you suggest?"
"Well---" Rank let it trail off.
"Exactly," Dorcus said. "There is no way to control dosage when distribution is on a mass basis. Intake has to vary tremendously from individual to individual. Our only hope is to build the same property into our drug that Tehedrin zero fifty-five possesses."
"Would it help to get hold of a sample of Tehedrin zero fifty-five?" Rank ventured.
Dorcus examined him for a moment, then said grudgingly, "That's the first intelligent observation you've made. Who delivered this paper?"
“A Dr. Felix Bromberger. He has a clinic in Houston."
"Go look him up," she said. "Find out from him where the drug is available. If it isn't available anywhere, find out how much he has stocked, and if it's all in his Houston clinic. As a last resort we can break in and steal a sufficient supply for analysis and experiment."
"All right," Rank agreed. "I'll run down to registration right now and find out where he is."
'''Try to be a little subtle," she said scathingly. "It isn't necessary to let him know you're pumping him."
Boris Rank gave her a wounded look. Dorcus swept from the room like a queen leaving the presence of a peasant.
April closed the compact and put it away, picked up the radio and made an adjustment.
"Section two," she said. "April Dancer calling."
After a moment Alexander Waverly's voice said, "Yes, Miss Dancer?"
"We've learned why Boris Rank and the Elias woman attended the convention, sir. They were interested in learning about a new experimental psychiatric drug called Tehedrin zero fifty-five. It seems the drug has an unusual property they hope to build into another drug they are experimenting with."
April Dancer reported in detail the conversation she and Slate had just overheard.
When she finished, Waverly said, "You have no idea what this drug of THRUSH'S is?"
"Hmm. But Miss Elias did mention that the experiment was being conducted at some place called Pig Wallow?"
"Yes, sir."
"Hold on, Miss Dancer, while I look that up in the directory."
April knew that he meant U.N.C.L.E.'s alphabetic directory of cities, towns, villages and hamlets, which listed every corporate and unincorporated community on the North American Continent, along with its location and brief information about it.
Several minutes passed before Waverly came back on. He said, "Only one Pig Wallow is listed, a mountain village deep in the Missouri Ozarks. It has a population of only one hundred and fifty and is fifty miles from any main road. It can be reached only by a narrow mountain road so poor, a jeep is the recommended transportation. There is a small airport at Barth, Missouri, however, fifty miles from Pig Wallow, and jeeps are available there on a rental basis."
"You want us to go there?" April asked.
"I haven't been reciting this information just to hear my own voice, Miss Dancer," Waverly said patiently. "Of course I want you to go there and find out what this experiment is all about. Naturally you will have to wait until the convention is over, because leaving sooner might excite suspicion."
"Boris Rank and the Elias woman are leaving Saturday morning, sir. They aren't staying until the convention ends."
"Oh? Then you and Mr. Slate can catch the next plane out. You can't very well leave at the same time, because your plane will go to St. Louis too."
"Yes, sir," April said.
FIVE
DEATH LIVES HERE
When April Dancer broke the connection Slate said, "Why do you always refer to Dorcus as the Elias woman?"
April thought for a moment, then grinned. "I told you I was a cat," she said.
April found the banquet that evening rather dull. They had to endure several lengthy speeches following dinner. However, afterwards there was dancing, which salvaged something from the evening for her. She loved to dance, even when she knew her partner was a THRUSH agent.
This time it was Dorcus who broke up the evening at midnight, on the plea that she and her employer had to catch a seven o'clock plane. April suspected desire for sleep wasn't Dorcus sole motive, however. The woman wanted a chance to be alone with Mark for a time.
Again Boris Rank escorted April to her room and Slate escorted Dorcus to hers.
April accepted a good night kiss and said good-by to Rank in the hall, without opening her door. He left a card with her, giving both his business and home addresses and phone numbers in case she ever got to St. Louis. She parried his request for her home address by telling him he could reach her through the Gruenwald Pet Food Company if he ever got to New York.
Ostensibly April's vacation lasted until Monday. Just in case Rank decided to call her long-distance at the hotel after he got back to St. Louis, and might think it odd to learn she had checked out, she told him that since he was leaving in the morning, she had decided to return to New York also. He seemed flattered by the implication that without him she could no longer enjoy her vacation.
When Rank had left, April entered her room, undressed for bed, put on her robe and slippers and waited for Slate to appear. A little later she took out her compact, started to switch it on, then changed her mind, closed it and put it back in her purse. It was one thing to eavesdrop on a THRUSH agent, quite another to eavesdrop on her own partner.
At one she gave up waiting and climbed into bed. Five minutes later Slate's code knock came at the door.
Switching on her bed lamp, April got up and slipped into her robe. She cracked open the door far enough to let him see one cold eye.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked. "Let me in."
"If you want into a woman's hotel room in the middle of the night, why don't you go back to the one you just left?" she suggested. "I'm sure you'd be welcome."
Slate looked, pained. "I had to tell her good-by. We don't want to arouse suspicion now."
"Of course not. Did you learn anything new during your lengthy good-by session?"
"Well, no," Slate admitted. "Except that she plans to vacation in Miami next winter."
"How delightful," April said. "You'll have to run down and rent a beach cottage."
She closed the door in his face. The next morning the phone awakened her at seven.
"Yes?" she said sleepily.
"Rank and Dorcus are gone," Slate's voice said. "We catch a plane for St. Louis in two hours. We change there to a local line that hops to Barth. Would you like breakfast?"
"Are you buying?" she asked.
"I wouldn't want to spoil your record," he said sarcastically.
April's penuriousness, even when on an expense account, was notorious throughout U.N.C.L.E. Mark Slate was always having to explain to Central Accounting why his expense voucher was twice as large as April's when they had been on the same assignment.
"I'll be ready in twenty minutes," April said.
With the time difference of an hour, it was only ten-thirty when their jet landed at Lambert Field in St. Louis. There they changed to a single-engine plane of the Ozark Line to fly to Barth. It was a trim little plane and had stewardess service, but it seemed to April that it landed in every cow pasture between St. Louis and Barth. The constant takeoffs and landings gave April a headache, and during the last hop she asked the stewardess for two aspirin.
Lunch had been served on the plane, so when they finally arrived at Barth at two-thirty, they rented a jeep and immediately took off for Pig Wallow. As usual Mark Slate drove. He always insisted on driving when they were together. It wasn't that he distrusted her driving, he frequently told April. It was merely that he trusted his more.
Mr. Waverly had understated the condition of the road. As Slate commented, the recommended form of transportation should have been mountain goat.
"How's your headache?" he asked after they had jounced over a particularly bad stretch of bumps and potholes.
"Fine," April said. "The aspirin on the plane did it."
Just outside of Pig Wallow they passed a small cemetery where a graveside service was taking place. Then, no more than fifty yards farther on, Slate had to pull over on the shoulder to let a funeral procession pass which presumably was heading for the same cemetery.
"Looks like the mortuary business in Pig Wallow is booming," Slate said.
When they reached the village, they found its single street in better condition than the road from Barth, but it still wasn't paved. It was merely hard-packed clay which probably became hub-deep mire when it rained. A boardwalk lined both sides of the street.
The business district consisted of a single filling station, a combination drugstore and general store with a sign in its window proclaiming that it also served as the post office, a tavern-restaurant, an undertaking parlor and a large two story frame house with a sign out in front reading: ROOM AND BOARD. A few weather-beaten frame houses clustered either side of the business district on both sides of the street. At the far end of town, just before the street came to an abrupt end at the base of a mountain, there was a one-room schoolhouse on one side of the street and a church on the other.
The village was situated in a cul-de-sac between two moderate-sized mountains which climbed steeply either side of it, plus the mountain at the far end of the only street. Perched on the mountainside to their right, about fifty yards from the backs of the buildings on that side of the street, was a long, flat-topped one-story building, apparently relatively new, which looked like some kind of factory. There was no sign on it to indicate what it was. The rear base of the building touched the mountainside, but the front was elevated on stilts. A steep path climbed up to the building from behind the boarding house.
There wasn't a person or a vehicle in sight.
Slate pulled into the filling station and parked next to the regular pump. A lanky, middle-aged man in overalls with a blank face came from the corrugated iron shack w
hich served as an office.
"Fill it up," Slate said.
Both he and April got out of the jeep to stretch. The attendant silently inserted the hose nozzle in the tank vent, then raised the hood to check the oil.
Slate said, "Any points of interest in town?"
The attendant mulled this over so long, April thought he was ignoring the question. But finally he said, "Can't think of any, sir."
The sir surprised April. It had been her experience that mountain people tended to be an independent lot, usually polite, but rather belligerently un-subservient.
"What's that building up there?" she asked, pointing to the flat-topped building on the mountain side across the street.
The attendant squinted that way. Baking Company, ma'am."
Slate and April looked at each other. Slate said, "What's it's name?"
The attendant mused again. He had closed the hood, had hung up the gas hose and was now cleaning the windshield.
"Don't rightly know that it has a name, sir," he said presently. "We just call it the baking company. Feller named Radak runs it. Stays over to Ma Rooney's."
April and Slate exchanged glances again. Anton Radak was the name of the THRUSH agent whom Mr. Waverly had told them was introduced to Boris Rank by Dorcus Elias.
"What's Ma Rooney's?" April asked.
The man pointed across the street at the house with the BOARD AND ROOMS sign in front of it. "Boarding house, ma'am. Whole crew from the baking company stays there."
"Oh?" April said. "How many is that?"
"Just three aside from Radak, ma'am. It's just a small company, only been open about a month. Been a boon to Ma Rooney, though. She only had two other roomers, and they both died a couple of weeks back."
All this time the attendant had been answering April's and Slate's questions quite willingly, but in a totally uninterested tone. He moved and spoke in a strangely subdued manner which April assumed was due to mountaineer shyness in the presence of well dressed city folk.
The Deadly Drug Affair Page 3