He grinned at her. “What better routine for a couple of swingers?” he said.
“Okay!” April said briskly. “Do we take him or leave him?”
“I think we had best take him,” Mark replied. “That way, if he has told us the truth, we can properly express our appreciation.”
“And if he hasn't?” April asked. “I also have a very fine technique for expressing my disapproval,” Mark said. The lightness of his tone was belied by the cold stare he gave the uncomfortable guard.
The man shifted uneasily. He wet his lips nervously.
“Get up,” Mark said.
April looked at him sharply, but Slate gave no indication that he noticed the prisoner's uncomfortable manner.
“Come along,” Mark said to the man. “You will of course step out of the elevator first. If we run into a trap you will get it first!”
“I---uh---” the prisoner began and stopped.
“Yes?' 'Mark said coldly.
“I sort of got mixed up,” the prisoner said hurriedly.
“And did you, now?” Mark said softly.
“I forgot, I guess, that there are two stops on the laboratory elevator. One is the guard room I mentioned. The second goes another floor up. There it empties out into the personnel office. It is empty this time of night.”
“Very interesting,” Mark said.
“But we'll stop at the guard room.”
The guard's mouth dropped open. “There are always five men in there,” he said.
“That,” Mark said in a curiously flat voice, “is their misfortune!”
He motioned for April to see if the corridor was clear. When she looked back and nodded, Mark prodded the reluctant guard in the back with the gun.
“Get moving,” he said. “We're going home ---the long way.”
They moved out into the hall. April went ahead to scout the way. The prisoner came along behind her with Mark at his heels. Slate kept the THRUSH gun trained on the man's back.
They made the short distance to the elevator without trouble, and a second later were winging their way up the tall office building. They flashed past floor after floor, where late shift workers made electronic assemblies, completely unaware that the world's most sinister organization had gathered their company into its net.
As the elevator started slowing, Mark looked across at April. The girl from U.N.C.L.E. nodded to show that she was ready.
“I think we'd better throw these guns over to that THRUSH-type tranquilizer pellets,” she said. “There won't be any explosions to attract attention.”
“I agree,” Mark said. “Have you enough ammunition?”
“Yes,” she said. “I dropped the gun I had and took the one from the dead guard. You have the prisoner's weapon.”
“Good!” Mark said. “Suppose we modify Kuryakin's law to bring it up to date and 'come out shooting!' “
“I'm with you,” April said. And then there was no more time to talk. The door slid open silently. Mark gave the guard a shove. He stumbled out into the room. A guard supervisor looked up from behind a desk place in front of a case of guns. To his right a clerk was typing a report. To the left was a status board showing the placement of guards throughout the entire building.
“What the---?” the guard chief began and stopped with his mouth open as a well placed pellet from Mark's gun went into his throat.
The clerk fell across his typewriter as April's pellet zipped into his cheek.
There was a commotion in the opposite side of the room. Three men who were waiting to go on shift sprang up, drawing their guns.
The prisoner Mark shoved out to create a distraction squalled loudly, “They've escaped. It's that infernal pair from U.N.C.L.E.!”
Mark's gun snapped off a pellet.
The yelling man spun around and toppled back into the elevator. Mark threw an arm about the rapidly numbing man and pulled the prisoner tight against him. With this feebly kicking shield he stepped into the open. He raised his gun for a quick shot.
But before he could shoot a .45 caliber slug from one of the guards smashed into the prisoner's chest. The force of the bullet striking spoiled Mark's aim. His pellet went high.
April Dancer was flat on the elevator floor. Her head peered around the side of the door. The three men were intent on the tall figure of Mark. They did not notice April until the man in the middle of the three pitched forward.
The other two whirled to face the new danger. That was a fatal mistake. Mark's gun ripped into one. April caught the other full in the face.
Mark let the dead guard drop. April darted across the room. She put her head against the door leading into the hall, listening. When she heard nothing, she peeked outside cautiously.
She turned back to Slate. “I don't hear anyone coming. There wasn't a lot of noise. Maybe we got away with it.”
“I thought we could,” he replied. “If we had gone on to the top we would still have had to come back this way to get on the elevator to the lobby. I thought it best to hit straight for the heart of the mess.”
April nodded her agreement.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“You recall that Hong Kong affair?”
“Of course!” she said. In spite of the gravity of their situation she managed a grin. “I distinctly recall that Chinese beauty who slapped your face just when you thought you were---”
“Please!” he said stiffly. “I was referring to the incident where we were caught in that fake exporter's office on Victoria Island. I believe it was your idea. That was when I first decided you were a good person to have around. In a fight, I mean.”
“You aren't so bad yourself,” she retorted. “In a fight, I mean.”
He grinned at her. “Then let's disband our mutual admiration society and do a little fighting. What?”
Working rapidly, they pushed the desk and two filing cabinets against the door. The elevator switch was turned to emergency stop so a press of the button in the basement would not take it away at the crucial moment.
While April overturned the couch, Mark stripped off his jacket. After removing the stunned guard's uniform coat, he put his garments on the THRUSH man. Then, pulling him into the elevator, he used the guard's belt to lash him to the inside handrail in an upright position.
April helped support the man while Mark worked.
The unconscious man sagged too much. Mark took off his own belt, but was still unable to get the body to stay in a completely upright position.
April stepped back into the room to survey the effect. Mark looked questioningly at her.
She nodded. “It will work. He looks like he's wounded and having difficulty standing up.”
“Great,” Mark said. “Are you ready, April?”
She nodded. They hurried over and slipped the catch lock on the hall door. April pulled the door open a few inches. Then she let out a piercing scream that echoed off the silent corridors like a soul in mortal torment. Mark began to shout in a thick, hoarse voice.
“She's getting away!” he bawled. “Shoot! Shoot, you fool! They're both from U.N.C.L.E.!”
From the opposite end of the corridor the floor guard shouted and a hidden bell started a wild alarm clamor. April whirled and dived back of the overturned couch. Mark slipped into the guard's jacket. He took a position at the elevator entrance with his hand inside on the down button.
Outside, in the corridor, guards were beating on the door. Mark watched intently as they pushed back the heavy furniture barricade. Just as the crack widened, he pushed the elevator button.
As the door swung open to the hall, he dropped to the floor, face down. He hoped that in the excitement the in-rushing guards would not notice that his trousers were tweed instead of the uniform blue serge of the other guards.
The elevator door was just moving shut as they broke in. Mark's timing had been perfect. They glimpsed a sagging body of a man in a sports jacket and loud waistcoat through the rapidly closing crack. Then the e
levator started to descend.
“Can't you stop the thing?” one of the men cried. “If they get away, it'll be our necks!”
“This is the express!” the hall guard said hurriedly. “It cannot stop anywhere except in the basement laboratory. They can't get away. I sounded the emergency alert. They'll be trapped below.”
“Come on!” one of the others said. “We'll take the service elevator down. Tim, you stay here and see if you can help any of the wounded. You other three come with me.”
They went out the door, leaving it open. April Dancer turned behind her barricade and brought her THRUSH gun to bear on the man left behind. He walked toward Mark, who was still lying on the floor by the closed elevator shaft, pretending to be unconscious.
She slowly squeezed off the trigger. The gun snapped, but a broken serum pellet jammed in the cylinder. The noise of the hammer falling, slight as it was, caused the guard to whirl around.
He jerked up his gun as April hastily thumbed the gun from pellets to bullets.
Since the man had to draw his holstered gun and she had but to flip a switch with her thumb, April could easily have beaten him to the shot. But she hesitated, not daring to fire for fear of bringing the other guards back. The bullet cylinder made a loud report while the pellets moved quietly with a hissing fire.
April had seen Mark move and was gambling her life that he could bring down the guard before the THRUSH man could shoot her.
Nine
“WHERE’S APRIL”
Mark lurched to his knees and hit the THRUSH man with a football dive just as the guard pulled the trigger of his gun. The bullet intended for April smashed into the wall behind her head.
Unable to shoot for fear of hitting her co-agent, she darted forward to help. But as she moved in, Slate landed a hard right that slammed the guard back into April. Both he and the girl fell.
The guard, deciding Mark was the greatest danger, snaked his body around to aim pointblank at the Englishman's chest.
April caught him with the sharp heel of her shoe. He doubled up and Mark moved in fast to finish him off.
“Come on!” April said breathlessly. “They will have heard the shot!”
She was off, racing down the hall with Mark in fast pursuit. They found an elevator marked street level, but as the door closed behind them, April saw two men running toward them.
“They'll call the lower level guards to head us off,” she said to Mark. She was breathing hard from the run.
Mark grinned at her. “That will be their misfortune,” he said.
April laughed. The old sparkle of excitement made her face glow. “That's just exactly the way I feel,” she said.
“They'll probably have fifty guards at the bottom to head us off,” he said.
“Just take care of your twenty-five and I'll handle the others,” April said in a positive-sounding voice.
“Let's not kid ourselves, April. This is the toughest spot we've ever been in. We can't let this elevator stop and them trap us in here. We can get some of them before they get us, but that isn't much consolation. “
He spoke of their possible death as calmly as another woman might speak of a shopping trip.
“Well, if you have a better idea, I'll be delighted to follow it---no matter how crazy,” she said. “It will certainly be better than what we probably face.”
“There is no way to reverse the elevator and go back up,” she said thoughtfully. “We can stop it, though.”
“It won't help one bit to get off at any floor above the bottom. We'd be trapped.”
“Let them think we got off at the second floor,” he suggested.
“Punch the button,” April said. “It's worth a try.”
The revolving gauge already showed they had dropped to the fourth floor when April punched the number two button on the automatic controls. A couple of seconds later the elevator stopped and the door swung open. The couple from U.N.C.L.E. pressed back against the wall, their guns ready to fight if THRUSH agents tried to rush them.
The floor was empty, however. April looked up at her companion.
“So far so good,” she said. “If the stop fooled them into thinking we got off, then there is just the barest chance we might get out of this mess alive after all.”
“If you're thinking of making book on it, save your money,” he said lightly. “But let's not worry about it. Just hope there is something to this reincarnation jazz.”
“You'll surely come back as a clown,” she said. “Oh! What is the matter?”
“I don't know!” Mark said. His grin had vanished.
The elevator, after starting again from the stop, passed the second floor and then ground to a stop between the first and the ground floor. The light inside the cage went out.
“They've cut the power!” Mark Slate said. “We're trapped, April!”
“Not yet!” she snapped. “This is a standard Handley-Page elevator. There's an escape door in the top. Can you boost me up, Mark?”
“Sure thing, old thing,” he said brightly.
“Stop that!” April Dancer snapped. “I've noticed that the worse the fix we're in, the gayer you become. You're demoralizing me! Now start groaning and complaining and I'll know things are going to be all right!”
“Let's quarrel when we retire to our rocking chairs. Here, I'm making a saddle with my hands. Can you feel it?”
It was pitch black in the elevator cage.
“Yes!” April said as her hands touched his. She placed one shoe in Slate's cupped hands and he lifted her. She stepped gingerly to his shoulders, swaying slightly, but his strong grip on her legs prevented her from falling.
She got her hands fiat against the small escape door and pushed it open. A faint light illuminated the cage.
“Can you pull yourself through?” Mark asked.
“Look out, Mark! Duck!” April's cry was punctuated by a blast of gunfire.
She jumped from Mark's shoulders, missed her footing and rolled against the wall.
Slate leaped to one side to escape presenting a target through the escape hatch.
“They've opened the shaft door on the floor above,” April said shakily. There's no chance of getting through the escape door and climbing the cables now.”
“Well, think of something else,” Mark said. “This is your day to be the knight in armor while I take the part of the damsel in distress.”
“I wish you would take this seriously!” April Dancer said soundly.
“And I, my dear, wish I didn't have to take it so seriously,” he said sadly. “They'll crank down the elevator to the ground floor with the manual controls. They'll have us covered from above and from outside.”
“I---” she began and what she was going to say was drowned in a burst of gunfire from above.
April pressed back against the wall, drawing her legs up to make herself as small as possible. The danger was not from a direct hit. The hole through which the enemy was firing was too small for his aim to cover the edges of the elevator cage. Their greatest worry was from a bullet glancing off the hard tile floor.
But there was no whine of slugs. Round pellets, somewhat larger than buckshot, hit in the center of the cage. They smashed against the tile. A peculiar purple vapor rose out of the shattered plastic coating.
“Get your face right against the floor, April!” Mark called urgently. “Get your lungs as full of fresh air as you can. Don't inhale again until you absolutely must! The open hatch above will take some of the stuff out. We have a chance if the air doesn't get too thick and we can keep from breathing any more of the gas than we must!”
“What is it?” April asked.
“I don't know,” Slate replied. “It's a new one to me.”
April put her cheek against the floor. She could see the sinister-looking purple mist spreading. It had a slight iridescent glow that made its unpleasant progress visible even in the dark. She kept breathing as deeply as she could while the air at the floor level was clean.
The mist was rising, as Mark Slate predicted. It was very thick at the top of the cage as the natural draft pulled it upward. But in the inches above the floor it was only beginning to cast a faint touch to the air.
April could feel a slight tingling to her skin. She pulled one final burst of air into her lungs and held her breath. Just a tinge of the peculiar purple air tainted the air. She could feel it prickle the mucous membrane in her nose. With the feeling came a slight feeling of nausea, a touch of giddiness.
Then as if the sound came from very far away, April heard the elevator door start to open. She tried to focus her mind on what was happening, but the slight whiff of the purple gas was sufficient to upset her mental faculties without actually rendering her unconscious.
Dimly she was conscious of Mark whispering across to her: “They will have to keep back to avoid exposure to the gas themselves. Keep still. Let them think we have been overcome. The gas will flow out of the open door. Then when they come in after us, we'll have the element of surprise on our side when we jump them.”
She wanted to acknowledge that she understood, but she was sinking deeper into a giddy lassitude. She tried to raise the THRUSH gun and in her condition it felt unnaturally heavy.
At the same time her lungs started to burn. The lack of oxygen from her held breath added to her dizziness. The cage started to spin. She was only vaguely conscious of Mark leaping to his feet. The crash of gunfire as he blasted at the enemy outside sounded to her like the roll of thunder far off in the distance.
Mark realized that the swirl of the air current in the cage had driven a stiffer cloud of the purple gas to April's side of the cage. There was nothing he could do to aid her at the moment. His primary aim was to attack before the enemy knew he was still conscious. He also hoped that the sound of gunfire here in the street-level lobby would bring police attention. At the same time, air flowing out the open door of the elevator would prevent April from getting a larger dose of the enervating gas.
He came out shooting, crouched low almost against the floor. He saw one THRUSH man across the corridor. He fired, striking the man in the stomach. He turned, looking for another target, but the effect of the gas was beginning to tell on him. His vision blurred. Mark Slate shook his head, making a desperate attempt to keep his senses. He snaked his body forward. A bullet crashed into the elevator frame just over his head.
The Burning Air Affair Page 7
