Boris Rank continued to hold his gun on April until the pilot had donned a raincoat and galoshes. Then Chance Mott covered her while Rank put on his.
Rank jumped down to the ground first and helped April down. When the pilot had switched out the cabin lights and had joined them, Rank handed April's purse to Dorcus. The woman opened it and examined its contents by the light of the flares.
"No obvious weapons," she said.
"But it's probably full of U.N.C.L.E. gadgets. We'll look them over later. Did you search her?"
"She couldn't conceal a weapon in the outfit she's wearing," Rank said.
Dorcus led them over to a curtained jeep parked on the graveled drive leading into the cemetery. April shuffled along in her oversized boots, her raincoat coming nearly to her ankles.
Dorcus told the two men to sit in back, slid under the wheel and ordered April to sit in front next to her. She tossed April's purse on the floor in back. Chance Mott continued to hold a gun on April.
"What about the flares?" Boris Rank asked.
"They'll burn out," Dorcus said. She started the engine and put the car in gear. The graveled drive gave good traction to the jeep's tires, but the moment they pulled off of it onto the dirt road, they were in six inches of fluid mud. No ordinary automobile could have gone a dozen feet without becoming hopelessly mired, but the jeep plowed right through it.
Their destination was the boarding house the natives referred to as "Ma Rooney's place." There was another curtained jeep parked in front of it.
Dorcus led the way up onto the front porch and Chance Mott prodded April after her with his gun. Rank brought up the rear.
Kurt Shill, the thin, brittle-looking man, sat in the front room. He looked at April curiously, nodded to Rank and the pilot and said, "Evening, Boris, Chance. Still raining?"
The pilot raised one hand in a lazy salute and said, "Hi, Kurt. Just drizzling. "
Boris Rank said, "Where's Anton and the others?"
The thin man said, "They are all down in the cellar watching the prisoners."
"Prisoners?" Rank said with a glance at Dorcus. "Is there more than one?"
"We had to tie up the landlady too," Dorcus said. "She's not under the influence of Z-seventeen. Those are her boots the Dancer woman is wearing."
Tit for tat, April thought. The Elias woman was a cat too.
Dorcus stripped off her raincoat, tossed it over the back of a mohair sofa before an empty fireplace, and stooped to unzip her rain boots. When the two men started to take off their raincoats and boots, April followed suit.
Dorcus examined April's black cocktail dress and feathered boa sourly, then sniffed.
"Follow me," Dorcus ordered, and led the way down a rear hall running alongside the staircase to the second floor.
Again the pilot followed April, keeping her covered with his gun, and Rank brought up the rear. The thin Kurt remained in the front room. Halfway down the hall Dorcus opened a door. They went down a flight of stairs into a lighted basement.
It was a full basement, one large room beneath the whole house. Centered against the side wall opposite the stairs was a furnace and a water heater. To one side of them was an electric water pump, presumably for a deep well, as the village had no centralized water supply system. Along the rear wall were two set tubs and an old-fashioned washing machine with a wringer.
Mark Slate and a plump blonde woman in her fifties were tied hand-and-foot to a couple of straight-back chairs. April assumed the woman was the landlady, Ma Rooney. Seated on the only other chair in the basement was a thickset, beetle-browed man April recognized from the mugg shots in his dossier as Anton Radak. A stout man of about thirty and a red-haired man in his twenties sat on overturned boxes.
Anton Radak looked at April and said, “You nabbed her, eh?”
No one replied to the obvious comment. April examined Mark Slate for signs of physical damage and got a reassuring smile.
Dorcus said curtly, “Tie her up.”
Anton Radak rose from his chair and moved it over next to Mark Slate’s. Without waiting to be told, April sat in it and glanced sidewise at Slate.
“How did you get caught? She asked.
“I ran smack into Dorcus just as I was taking a powder,” he said. “She guessed about you and made a phone call.”
April said, “Mr. Waverly has been trying to contact you since noon to warn you Dorcus was coming here. Why don’t you answer your communicator?”
“It’s broken.”
The young red-headed man had gone over to a bench against one wall. He returned with a roll of clothesline and proceeded to bind April to her chair. He did a thorough job, tying her wrists in front of her, her ankles, then binding her to the chair both at the ankles and with rope looped around her upper body.
When this was completed, Boris Rank said crisply to Dorcus, “What now?”
“Well have to revise our plans completely,” she said. “We can’t continue our experiment here, now that U.N.C.L.E. knows of it. We’ll have to find some other remote town to test the revised version of the drug.”
“What about the plant here?” Rank asked.
“We can’t leave all the baked goods for U.N.C.L.E. to get hold of and analyze. And we haven’t time to get trucks in here to pull everything out. We’ll have to destroy everything.”
Rank frowned. “You mean burn the place down?”
“What else can we do?” Dorcus said. “By tomorrow U.N.C.L.E. agents will probably be pouring into Pig Wallow. We can salvage the Z-seventeen which hasn’t already been mixed with dough and take it with us, but we'll have to write everything else off."
She turned to Anton Radak. "Anton, take Rudy with you up to the plant and bring down the whole supply of Z-seventeen."
Radak nodded, but the young redhead lodged a protest. "That path is knee-deep in mud," he said.
"Then you'll have to wade through knee-deep mud," Dorcus snapped at him. "Do as you're told!"
The young man's face assumed a sullen expression, but he made no further objection.
Dorcus turned back to Radak.
"I want you to bring down a couple of other things too. Some of that special Danish pastry, for one."
Radak glanced at April and Slate and an anticipatory smile curled his lips. "All right. What else?"
"That fire bomb in the lab." Radak frowned. "Why don't I just set it while I'm up there? Why lug it down here?"
"Because I told you to," Dorcus told him curtly.
The thickset man shrugged. "Come on, Rudy," he said, and started up the stairs.
The younger man followed sullenly.
Dorcus said to Boris Rank, "They will be some time. No point in staying down here." She turned to the stout man and said, "Keep, an eye on them, Josef. We'll be right upstairs and we'll leave the door open. If you need us, just yell."
"Sure," he said. "But I won't need you. If they try to wiggle loose, I'll get in some target practice."
His hand dipped into his pocket and came out with a spring-blade knife. There was a click and a seven-inch blade jumped into view. The stout man's hand made a blurred motion, there was a thunk and the point of the blade buried itself in the edge of the chair seat between Mark Slate's knees.
He went over to retrieve it, clicked the knife shut and dropped it back into his pocket.
Dorcus said coldly, "That's enough target practice unless they try to make a break. If you had missed and put that in his stomach, I would have your skin. I have other plans for those two."
"I never miss," the stout man said confidently. "I can skewer a fly at ten paces."
"Well, hold your demonstrations until they're needed," Dorcus said.
She turned and started up the stairs. Rank and Chance Matt followed. The stout man resumed his seat on his box, took out his knife, clicked it open and began tossing it into the air and catching it again.
Slate said to April, "Our fellow captive is Ma Rooney, April. She's one of the only two natives of Pig Wa
llow not under the influence of the drug."
April craned her neck to look past Slate at the landlady.
"How do you do?" she said politely.
"Not so hot, miss," Ma Rooney said. "Mr. Slate told me all about you while we've been sitting here tied up for hours. Also about the drug they've been feeding the villagers. I knew it wasn't no heat exhaustion."
April looked puzzled.
Slate, catching her expression" said, "They don't have any doctors in Pig Wallow. Only a vet, and I guess he's under the influence of the drug too. He has been diagnosing the cause of all these deaths as heat exhaustion."
"At this time of year?"
"Well, there has been a hot spell. Incidentally, fatty over there playing with the knife is Josef Donner."
Josef Donner ignored both of them. He resumed flipping the knife and catching it.
Slate said to April, "You recognized Anton Radak, I imagine. The young redhead is Rudolph Betz. There's another skinny guy around somewhere named Kurt Shill."
"I saw him upstairs," April said.
"That fellow in the coveralls is Boris' helicopter pilot. He's named Chance Matt."
Ma Rooney asked, "What do you think they'll do to us?"
Neither Slate nor April answered. Josef Donner emitted a little giggle.
"The same thing we're going to do to the bake plant," he said.
Ma Rooney turned pale.
SIXTEEN
PASSPORT TO PERIL
After a time Dorcus and Boris Rank came back down the stairs, with five of the other men following. Anton Radak was carrying a large, cellophane wrapped Danish pastry. The redheaded Rudolph Betz carried a small, box-like device.
Josef Donner put away his knife when he heard the group coming down the stairs, but Dorcus immediately had him take it out again.
Taking the pastry from Radak and handing it to the stout man, she said, "We have a practical use for that toy of yours, Josef. Cut this up into portions."
Donner emitted another giggle and threw a look at the three bound prisoners. "That's the really loaded stuff, isn't it?" he said. "Guaranteed quick action. Sure, I'll be glad to cut it."
Getting up from his box, he ripped away the cellophane and laid the pastry on the box. He took out his knife and sliced the confection evenly into a dozen slim wedges.
"Make them eat it," Dorcus ordered Anton Radak.
The thickset man picked up a wedge, went over to Mark Slate and held it to his lips.
"No thanks," Slate said politely.
"I never eat Danish."
Stout Josef Donner went over to April, flicked her long hair aside with his knife blade and rested the blade on top of her right ear. He said, "If it isn't down in ten seconds, your girl friend is going to lose an ear."
Slate grabbed at the pastry like a snapping turtle. Radak fed it to him as he chewed rapidly and swallowed.
Donner withdrew the knife and stepped aside as Radak carried a piece over to April. Donner changed places with him and rested his knife blade on top of Slate's right ear.
April glanced sidewise at the poised knife, gulped and opened her mouth. Radak fed the pastry to her until it was all gone.
Ma Rooney made no protest when it came her turn. When Donner stood to one side of her, flipping the knife and catching it, she resignedly chewed and swallowed the piece Radak fed her.
Radak picked up the fourth piece and approached Mark Slate.
"It's too dry," Slate protested. "Nobody eats that stuff without coffee."
Radak paused.
"That's reasonable," he said.
"But this is no restaurant. Rudy, go get some water."
Instead of going upstairs for it, the redhead went over to an open cabinet containing home canned goods and found an empty jelly glass. He filled it at one of the set tubs and brought it over to hold to Slate's lips. Slate took a swallow.
Betz held the glass to April's lips. She started to shake her head, then decided she was going to be forced to eat more of the pastry anyway, so she might as well ease the ordeal as much as possible. She drank about a quarter of the glass.
When Betz carried it over to Ma Rooney, she finished off the rest of the water.
"Want more?" he asked.
The landlady shook her head. Radak held Slate's second portion of pastry to his lips again. When Slate failed to open his mouth instantly, Josef Donner started toward April. With an expression of resignation on his face, Slate ate the pastry.
There were three pieces left, but Dorcus decided that would be enough. "It should take at least a half hour to get to them," she said. "What time is it?"
Boris Rank glanced at a watch and said, "Eleven-thirty."
"Then let's go upstairs and get our stuff ready to move out. I never unpacked, but you four have to pack, don't you?" She glanced around at Radak, Shill, Donner and Betz ..
They all admitted they had some packing to do.
"Run do it now and carry everything down into the front room so there will be no delay when we're ready to leave," Dorcus ordered. "Chance, you keep guard down here."
"Yes, ma'am," the pilot said.
The rest of them started upstairs. As they went up the stairs, April heard Dorcus say to Rank, "We'll take both my jeep and the one Slate brought. With all the luggage it will be crowded, but only as far as the cemetery. I'll ride back in the copter with you and Chance, so there will only be two to a jeep beyond there."
Chance Matt sat down on one of the boxes and gazed at the prisoners.
Ma Rooney said shakily, "Do you think they gave us fatal overdoses of that stuff?"
Slate looked at the helicopter pilot. "Did they?"
"Naw," he said. "You couldn't eat enough at one sitting. It's cumulative, see. It takes a steady diet for days or weeks to knock anybody off."
That was some slight consolation, April thought.
Matt added, "You got depth bombed, though. That's a special treat we foist off on people who don't respond on a regular diet. It's got three times the ordinary dose in it."
Conversation lapsed for some minutes. Finally April said, "How do you feel, Mark?"
"Odd," he said. "Just the way I did when it happened before."
"So do I," she said. "It's hard to explain the exact feeling. It's just odd."
Ma Rooney said, "It's like something bad is getting ready to happen to you, but you don't care an awful lot.”
"It's getting to you," Chance Matt said cheerfully. "Another few minutes and you won't give a damn about anything."
At midnight Dorcus and Rank came back downstairs. All three prisoners looked up at Dorcus when she stopped before them, but they didn't regard her with any particular interest. Their faces merely wore polite, waiting expressions.
Dorcus said, "Stick out your tongues."
Three tongues obediently shot out.
"Touch your noses with your tongues."
They all tried, but none could quite make it. Their expressions became worried at their failure.
"You may pull in your tongues," Dorcus told them.
The three tongues disappeared. Dorcus said to Rank, "Do you notice how it worries subjects when they receive an impossible order? It's the only sign of emotion they ever exhibit. It would be interesting to run some experiments to find out if we can drive patients crazy by giving them some impossible order, such as touching their ears with their tongues, then never rescinding the order."
"Why don't we try it with these three?" Rank suggested.
"Because I have other plans for them. Besides, we want to get out of here." She moved over to April and began untying her bonds. "Chance, you and Boris untie the other two. They can't give us any trouble now."
Rank untied Mark Slate while the pilot released Ma Rooney. When all three were free, Dorcus picked up the small boxlike device which young Rudolph Betz had brought from the plant.
"Let's go upstairs," she said.
The other men were all in the front room. A pile of suitcases lay near the front doo
r. Raincoats were piled on the sofa, ready to put on, and four pair of galoshes in addition to Dorcus' and Ma Rooney's lay on the floor. Two of the pairs, presumably those worn by Radak and Betz when they climbed the path up to the bakery plant earlier, were covered with drying mud.
Dorcus held the boxlike device in one hand, its front side tilted upward so that she could see the clock-like dial on its face. She adjusted the single hand so that it stood nearly straight up.
"What are you setting it for?" Rank asked.
"Two seconds." Dorcus showed the device to Slate, and said, "I want you to carry this up to the baking plant and set it beneath the building. The front end is raised on stilts, you know, So that you can walk right under it."
"Yes, ma'am," Mark Slate said dully.
"I want you to set it down right under the center of the building. Understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," Slate said in the same dull voice, reaching for the device.
Dorcus pulled it beyond his reach. "Not yet. I have more instructions. "
Slate's arms dropped to his sides. He waited patiently.
"Do you see this small plunger on top?" Dorcus said, touching it lightly.
"Yes, ma'am."
"After you set the box down, pull the plunger all the way up, then shove it down again. Understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Just to make sure, repeat all my instructions."
In a tone of complete uninterest Slate said. "I am to carry the box up to the bakery plant and set it down under the very center of the building. Then I am to pull out that plunger and shove it down again."
"You've got it," Dorcus said, handing him the box. She turned to April and Ma Rooney. "Did you both hear my instructions to Mark Slate?"
In identically dull voices they said, "Yes, ma'am."
"You two are to go up to the plant with him. You are to stand either side of him, quite close, when he pushes the plunger. Understand?"
Again they both said, "Yes, ma'am."
"Won't they need raincoats and boots?" Rank asked.
"What for?" Dorcus inquired callously. "If they get wet, the fire will dry them out."
"She will never be able to climb that slippery path in those high heels," Radak objected, jerking a thumb at April. "Rudy and I barely made it up there wearing boots."
The Deadly Drug Affair Page 10