GFU04 - The Cornish Pixie Affair

by Peter Leslie

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Turn on the full charm" — her voice was low and hurried

  — "and see if I can persuade him to ask me in for a cup of tea. After that, I'll leave it to my intuition! I'll keep my eyes open, see what information I can get by playing the dumb brunette, and generally play it by ear."

  "Yes, April, that's all very well, but—"

  "Oh, hallo! Do please forgive me, but is this private property? I'm trying to get back to Porthallow without going along the cliff path — I do suffer from vertigo — and I'm afraid I must have lost my way." The voice was loud, a little brash, inexperience hiding behind a mask of over-confidence… but it was still unmistakably April's. Slate instantly switched off the "Send" button on his Communicator but left the aerial extended.

  "My dear young lady!" Sir Gerald Wright's voice was equally recognizable. "There are notices absolutely all over the place!... Still, as you're here, I suppose…"

  "I'm most frightfully sorry... so stupid of me. If you could kindly point out the right way to me..."

  "You might have been winged, you know. I've been shooting. Those notices are there for a reason... No, I'm afraid the cliff path is the only way back to Porthallow from here — but one can hardly allow a beautiful young lady... a very beautiful young lady, if you'll permit me... to suffer vertigo on account of that. I'm going into town later. You must let me run you there in the car. You're not in a hurry, I hope?... Anyway, we'd be there as quickly as you would walking all the way along the cliff."

  "Well, gosh, that's terribly kind of you... but, I mean, I hardly like to..." April's nicely judged blend of reluctance with the eagerness of a young woman flattered by an older man would have drawn appreciative smiles from the histrionics instructors back in the U.N.C.L.E. building in New York.

  "Not at all, not at all, not at all." Wright's smooth tones were overriding her. "I must positively insist, my dear young lady. While we're waiting... I have to — er — wait for a telephone call, you know... I shall show you over my little place we have a splendid view... and perhaps you'll join me in a rather early aperitif, eh? Splendid!"

  "Well, it's terribly kind of you..." April began again, and then — no doubt as they turned to walk up towards the house — there was a click and the Communicator went dead. Presumably she'd put it back in her handbag with the numerous other gadgets she carried there, Mark thought with an inward smile. Oh, well — good luck to her... In the meantime, he had some chores to attend to.

  Tucking the little transceiver into his breast pocket, so that he would run no risk of missing the signal if she should call again, he ran down the steps and off towards the sideshows and the gate. There was no sign of life from the converted pantechnicon next door: presumably Curnow had taken the locker of photos and gone.

  Back at the harbour-side inn, the receptionist told Slate that there had been a telephone message for him. Asking her to call back the number, he slipped into the below-stairs niche that served as public phone booth and waited for the connection to be made. Through a small window, he could see spray exploding over the sea wall like infrared shell bursts against the darkening sky. The tide was almost high and the craft riding at anchor there rose and fell uneasily as the unaccustomed swell flowed in between the breakwaters.

  The message had been from the laboratories in Truro to whom he had consigned the white powder they had scraped from the secret compartment in the lighthouse. The voice on the line was crisp and businesslike over the West Country burr. "Mr. Slate?... Sorry to trouble you to ring back, but I thought you might like to know — and a letter won't reach you until Monday. We have some information for you here... though I'm afraid it's negative rather than positive, if you see what I mean!" The voice chuckled. "Only you won't see what I mean until I've told you."

  "I'm sorry," Mark said patiently. "I'm afraid I'm not quite…"

  "Not quite with me? Not to worry. Happens all the time! The point is, that white powder you sent in for analysis is nothing whatever to do with any drug. Absolutely not."

  "Oh. All right then: what is it?"

  "Nothing more nor less than Serpentine dust, old boy! The fragmented residue of a veined igneous stone peculiar to these parts, I believe. Mixed with a very small quantity of carborundum dust — which leads me to suppose that your lighthouse gathered its dust either in the place where it was made or one very much like it. It was a Serpentine lighthouse?"

  "No. It was made from Porphyry, actually — but Serpentine dust could easily have blown into it if it was made in the same workshop, I suppose. You do mean to imply that this dust — and the carborundum — comes from the wheel they use to turn these souvenirs?"

  "Couldn't swear to it, laddie — but say I'd be very surprised if it wasn't, eh? The dust and chippings look much lighter than the original stone or the polished article, you know."

  "Understand. Let's take it, then, that it's a natural place to —"

  "There is one other thing, though," the technician was saying. "It turns out that there are also minute — and I mean really small — traces of film stock celluloid in amongst the powder."

  "Celluloid! Film stock!... What... what kind of film stock?"

  "Well, as it happens, I can tell you, chum. Probably because there is so much copying of documents to do down here, with all these secret stations all over the shop, we do happen to have made a qualitative study of film celluloids, photo-copying materials and similar stuff — in particular those used for micro film rolls, which are quite different from the others. They have to be far more flexible, you see, and the emulsion must —"

  "And the traces... ?" Mark interrupted, excitement quickening his voice.

  "Are of that kind. They're from a micro-roll."

  "Let me get this straight: there are microscopic traces of this celluloid mixed in with the white powder?"

  "Right. That's what I meant by a negative reply… negative, see!"

  "What kind of traces? If you can say, that is."

  "Well, they're more scrapings than anything else, really. But they are very small."

  "Would they be consistent...No, let me put it this way. The powder was found in a small cylindrical recess in this Porphyry lighthouse. Are your celluloid scrapings consistent with a roll of microfilm having been inserted... pushed perhaps... into that cavity?"

  "How wide is the cavity?"

  "Half to three-quarters of a centimetre, roughly, I should say."

  "Then they would, then. Yes. Porphyry's a rough stone with very large crystals. A recess for secreting microfilm wouldn't be polished like the outside, and the usual size roll would certainly get a trifle scraped along the edge when it was shoved in there."

  "Thus the scrapings, thus the minute traces of celluloid?"

  "Thus the scrapings."

  "Thank you," Mark said. "Thank you very much indeed."

  He walked slowly back into the bar — darkened now until the official opening time at half past five — and sat down.

  He was conscious that both he and April had been deliberately reserving judgment on one crucial aspect of the mystery: if illicit drugs were being supplied to those in the know through the medium of the lighthouses with the secret compartments, then had the late Sheila Duncan been in on the deal, or had she been an unknowing accomplice?

  Now, however, now that it had been conclusively established that there was no drug involved, a different question arose. For if it was proved — as it seemed to be — that the Porphyry lighthouses had been used simply as a means of secretly transporting microfilm, then it must also be asked: first, what could the microfilms depict; secondly, who could have taken them? And to each question, in view of the people known to be involved, there seemed to Slate to be only one answer...

  It would be too much of a coincidence to expect the films to be of anything else but the DEWS station and other secret NATO installations on Trewinnock Tor and the surrounding moors; and who was there more likely to have taken them than Sir Gerald Wright
— the rich man whose house overlooked the Tor, the popular local squire who was so frequent a guest in all the military messes of the area? Moreover, if it was Wright who was the secret spy passing out filmed information, then what arose at once was: who was receiving this information? And in view of the data passed on to April Dancer by Waverly, there could again only be one answer to this — the Council of THRUSH, who would be eager to exploit the information both for their own underground purposes and to sow discord among the great powers.

  Mark rose to his feet and strode to the window. It was getting dark and the ebbing tide was lowering the masts and rigging in the harbour, though the wind still howled above his head in the chimneys of the old inn. He passed one hand agitatedly through his short, fair hair. He was very worried.

  For if the squire was indeed working thus for THRUSH, and if his late girlfriend had been in charge of the booth from which the lighthouses containing the film had been collected, then it scarcely seemed likely that she had been unaware of what was going on. Had it been only drugs, and had they been unconnected with Wright, then it might just have been possible that Sheila was in ignorance of the deal. But since it was a matter of espionage — and directly connected with her boyfriend at that — then there seemed little doubt at all.

  But if Sheila Duncan had known that Wright was passing microfilmed information about the NATO installations to THRUSH, and more particularly if she had herself connived at this, then the possibility — the near certainty — arose that she had in fact been a double agent.

  And if the dead girl had been a double agent, then was it not likely that the squire, her boyfriend, had been aware of everything she herself knew about U.N.C.L.E.?

  In which case, the squire might very well know — in detail — all about April and Mark... the squire into whose head quarters April Dancer had just voluntarily delivered herself...

  Slate snapped a match he had picked up from an ashtray viciously in two and strode from the room. In the yard behind the pub, he hurled himself into the driving seat of the Matra-Bonnet, gunned the motor furiously for a few moments, and then rocketed out on to the quay and headed for the square and the road leading up to the Tor.

  If the girl from U.N.C.L.E. had delivered herself into the hands of the enemy, then it was up to him to get her out!

  CHAPTER TWELVE: APRIL'S BAG OF TRICKS

  "IT'S frightfully nice of you to bother to come and see me, Miss Dancer," Sir Gerald Wright had said abruptly, swinging round from the cocktail cabinet in his elegant drawing room and staring April in the eye, "though I do rather regret the stratagem — the duplicity, I might almost say — which led you to pretend you had missed your way on my property."

  "I'm afraid I don't quite…"

  "Oh, come, Miss Dancer! I had expected better of the stalwarts of U.N.C.L.E."

  "The stalwarts of what?" She had stared at him in a dismay she could barely conceal.

  "My dear young woman, pray do not trifle with me. You are a general assignment agent from the New York head quarters of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. You are a graduate of a New England college and a descendant of David Harum. You are here, I imagine, on account of that troublesome young woman at the circus who turned out to be a part-time agent for your organisation — and your colleague from Section Two on this assignment is a 31-year-old transfer from London Headquarters named Mark Slate. Do I make myself clear?"

  The girl had swallowed a mouthful of her sherry and set the glass carefully down on a Sheraton occasional table. "So," she had said with a coolness she was far from feeling, "the cards are on the table, are they? Then you, one assumes, must be from the organisation called THRUSH?"

  His tanned face had creased briefly into a smile totally with out humour. "I have that honour — not the Council... yet... but I am in charge of the particular Satrap which has been milking the secrets of Trewinnock Tor. A task which will be completed tonight, as it happens."

  "Then you won't mind telling me all about it?"

  "On the contrary, Miss Dancer. We of THRUSH are trained to take things for granted. The assignment is due to terminate tonight; you are most unlikely to leave this house alive — yet mistakes do happen, have happened. It profits me nothing to tell you how clever we are; I know how clever we are. In the books, the spy about to be liquidated is told all and then escapes to worst his adversaries. In real life the spy does not escape — and to tell him anything at all is a sheer waste of time."

  "May I ask what you propose to do as far as I am concerned, then?"

  "I shall probably simply eliminate you. I may decide to extract some information from you first, but there are other, more important things to be done before we bother with you. That is why we have not considered it worth while to try for a third time to kill Mr. Slate. There will be plenty of time for that this evening... If there were more time, however, I should find it... agreeable, shall we say?...to spend a little time persuading you to talk."

  "I thought your wife lived here with you?"

  "She is a tolerant woman — and with her, as with me, the success of the operation, loyalty to THRUSH, comes before any thing else."

  "Suppose I decide I don't wish to stay and be murdered?"

  "It is not a decision which rests with you, I am afraid. This pleasant rambling house, these leisured pieces of antique furniture, those lawns you see through the French windows — they are all rather deceptive. I have only two men under me here, but they are tough and well trained. With them and my wife, plus our electric fences and various other — ah — ingenious devices, we aim to succeed in keeping out those whom we do not wish to enter. And of course retain those whom we do not wish to leave."

  "Well, that's the most ridicul — the most ridic —" April had begun.. . and then suddenly she wasn't speaking clearly any more; suddenly she wasn't speaking at all. Suddenly she was on the floor.

  The sherry, of course, she had thought blearily. How silly of me! And after that there had been a blank. The next thing she had known was a sudden awareness of cold, a sensation of hardness beneath her back (she must have been dumped on the floor in a passageway), and a strange voice asking: "What about her handbag, then?"

  Wright's voice, as smooth as ever, had replied: "Handbag? Let me see...keys, money, licence, lipstick, lighter, comb, packet of sweets...that looks innocuous enough. Chuck it in there with her for the moment. We'll dispose of it later. Colonel Forsett and his wife are due at any moment and I don't want to run the risk of them seeing it..."

  She had heard a door open and felt the sensation of being lifted, and then once again there was a total blank.

  Now here she was, painfully reassembling these fragments of memory to work out how and why she came to be sitting hunched up on the floor of a damp, cold cellar.

  Shaking her head to clear it from the lingering effects of the knock-out drops she had unwittingly taken, she looked around her. The cellar was about twelve feet square, with walls of granite slabs and a flagged floor. Apart from a tea chest full of old boxes and papers which stood near the iron-bound door, it was completely empty. Judging from the quality of the light filtering through a high window opposite the door, it was almost dusk. Through the window she could see an outhouse wall topped by thatched eaves, and a triangle of sky. The cellar must be in the basement of the big house, she assumed.

  She listened. There was the kind of heavy silence that characterises Sunday afternoons in early spring. Not far away, a tap dripped monotonously into a bucket of water and, a long way above, something — a shutter perhaps? — continuously banged in the wind.

  Moving a little to see whether she could discern anything more through the window, she was startled to feel coldness, weight, restriction, and to hear the unmistakable rattle of iron on stone.

  She realized she was chained up like a dog!

  There was a heavy iron anklet clamped around the soft leather of her left boot, from each side of which a loop of metal projected. To one of these, a similar brac
elet encircling her right wrist was padlocked; and from the other, a short length of chain led to a ring concreted into the cellar wall.

  Experimentally, she tried to pull her foot out of the boot but found that the anklet was too tight.

  Next, with her free hand she turned the two iron circles around to see how they were locked on to her limbs. Like the padlock joining them, they were old, slightly rusty, but strong and they were closed by double catches of the type used on old-fashioned suitcases, which homed into a slit and then were locked in place. The chain — it was about three feet long — was of heavy one-inch links. It seemed to April to make a great deal of noise each time she moved.

  Struggling to her feet, she found that the iron ring was set into the wall at such a height that she had the minimum of lateral movement: she could hobble one pace to either side or one pace out towards the centre of the cellar, and that was that...

  From the doubled-up position imposed on her by the diagonal wrist-to-ankle attachment, she squinted again through the window. She could see a little more wall, a little more sky, but that was all. In the wedge of darkening blue, the shape of a seagull hung motionless with outspread wings. Distantly, she heard the bird uttering its mewing cry, and then it floated out of sight beyond the thatch.

  Sighing, April lowered herself to the floor again. She was still wearing her sheepskin coat, but there was nothing in the pockets that might help her to break free... and then, suddenly, she recalled that fragmentary scrap of dialogue about the handbag. Had she dreamed it, or was the handbag really in here with her...?

  Desperately, she looked once more around the cell. And there it was: It was lying on its side, the handles away from her, which was why she had not noticed it before.

  The only thing was — the handbag was on the far side of the cellar, over near the tea chest, and she couldn't reach it.

  She fell forward on to her knees and stretched out with her free hand. It was a good eighteen inches away from the bag.