by John Creasey
He rang off.
He sat absolutely still, staring at the wall where there was nothing to see, until the telephone bell rang, and he was on to Budapest.
But he learned nothing new, except that Cornell was still alive and seemed to be quite well, except for his loss of voice. A doctor had reported symptoms rather like oedema of the glottis, with the swollen, constricted throat. He was taking swabs and specimens of saliva, which should help Mitchison later
That was at twelve fifteen.
At a quarter to one a report came in from New York; the Z5 man who had been checking Rondivallo’s movements there had just been stricken by paralysis.
At two-fifteen, swiftly upon each other, came the news that the agent in Cairo and the one in Pau had been stricken in exactly the same way.
“Now we’ve got to have each man examined at once, and each man’s movements checked. We’ve got to find out what they knew, how far they’d got,” Palfrey said in a tense voice. “Five of them, and the only two who still seem all right are Brown in Buenos Aires and Miller in Aden.”
At two twenty-nine Matthew Stone came into the office. As he was approaching Palfrey’s desk a telephone bell rang. Palfrey picked it up, said “Sorry” abruptly to the young American and then into the telephone: “Yes, Jim?” He set his jaw as he listened and Andromovitch, who had been waiting there with him to talk to Stone, saw exactly how this latest news hurt.
Palfrey said: “That makes it a nap hand,” and rang off. He sat still, pale, obviously on edge. He gave a slight nod to Andromovitch and added abruptly: “Brown’s down with it, too.” He looked broodingly at Stone, who returned his gaze quite calmly.
“All right Matt, come and sit down,” Palfrey said at last. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know we’re in for a hell of a time. The first thing I want to do is remind you that if you’d rather back out, now’s the chance. This could be much deadlier than the Arizona job.”
Chapter Seven
MATT STONE
Matthew Stone thought: “I’ve never seen him looking like this,” as he advanced towards Palfrey, then waited until Palfrey had finished with the telephone.
He had known Palfrey for over four years, and had accepted him without question as one of the world’s great men. He could never define or describe it, but he had felt the influence of Palfrey from their first meeting. Palfrey had a kind of natural authority and the gift of being able to command loyalty. Perhaps it was due mostly to his single-mindedness: nothing ever appeared to make him deviate from a chosen course.
Palfrey looked his age: forty-one or two.
He also looked angry; coldly angry. When he offered Matt the opportunity to withdraw from the job, he spoke with a kind of savage intentness which told a story of its own.
Matt said quietly: “I don’t want to withdraw, Sap. Ever since I had your message I’ve been looking forward to hearing all about the job.” He had something of the drawl of the far West in his voice; his crew cut, his bow tie, the cut of his silk suit of a pale biscuit colour, all marked him as an American. He had pale grey eyes, which hadn’t shown like that in the photographs. “So why don’t you go ahead and tell me?”
“Pull up a chair,” Palfrey said, and Andromovitch did so for Matt, who said “Thanks” and dropped into it. Andromovitch leaned back in the larger chair, as if this were a pleasant afternoon session. There was no hint of tension about him, and it was the absence of tension in Stone which made him an unusual agent. Palfrey had never seen him anything but completely relaxed.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Carry on,” said Palfrey. “I’ve been trying to cut the damned things down.” He pushed a box across the desk, and an ashtray after it. “Heard of Rondivallo?” he asked, out of the blue.
Matt didn’t blink.
“Sure,” he said, and into his mind there flashed a recollection of all that he had ever heard of Rondivallo; but he waited for Palfrey to speak again.
“What do you know about him?” Palfrey asked.
“One of the lesser known physicists,” Matthew said. “Maybe he wouldn’t have been known at all if it wasn’t for his name. If you want to know what’s in a name, think of Rondivallo. He’s Australian. He first came into prominence with a paper on the effects of radio-activity on animal life in the Australian outback, and he made that his special study. His purport, according to all he said himself, and he was a loudmouth, was to find means of curing illness caused by exposure to radioactive dust. He spent some time in Japan, working in the hospitals where some of the victims of the atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still living. As far as I can recall, he was never able to report any positive results, but every now and again he would get his name in the newspapers, over a dame I guess, and he was always asked how his research was progressing. He invariably gave the same answer: he figured he was on the verge of a great discovery. About a year ago he left Australia on a world tour and said he was aiming to consult with others who had been working on the same lines. He turned up in Buenos Aires, New York, Aden and Cairo, some place in Eastern Europe, either Bucharest or Budapest, and some place in France with a short name, I don’t recall it at the moment. Every time he had his photograph in the newspapers he had a blonde with him. A different blonde.” Matt paused for a moment, then gave a half-hearted kind of grin. “I may be wrong about that. Maybe one of them was a brunette.”
All the time he had been leaning back and talking in his quiet voice, with the up-and-down cadence which seemed to be held severely in check. He knew that this would most impress Palfrey and Andromovitch, and it was vitally important to impress them well. But when he stopped talking there was no hint on his face of the anxiety he felt.
Palfrey’s lips twitched in a smile.
“Did you tell him who the subject of Case 37 was?” Andromovitch asked dryly.
“No, no one told me,” said Matt unhurriedly. “I just happen to have that kind of mind.” He saw the Russian’s grin, and relaxed. “Okay, I fell for that. How much did I get wrong?”
“You didn’t get anything wrong, but there are some things you don’t know,” said Palfrey. “We sent a man to check on Rondivallo about three months ago, when he was due to arrive in London and didn’t turn up. All nuclear scientists are kept under surveillance, just to try to make sure they don’t vanish. The Special Branch chaps lost Rondivallo, who was a good all-round research man, not just a glamour boy. We’re only now beginning to discover the ramifications of radioactivity on animal life, much of what we read about is guesswork. We do know that it can have deadly results, and we also know that in two cases women have died in circumstances not unlike victims of radio-active poisoning. We don’t know any more than that. We do know that it kills. We also know that it could have to do with Rondivallo’s activities. Events in Conne make it urgent to find out what’s going on.”
Palfrey began to play with some strands of hair.
“We’re a kind of supra-national group, of course, and don’t take sides,” he went on. “But now and again we come across something like this which is being developed by a national interest. Whenever we do, we report it to a United Nations Secretariat and forget it. It’s possible that this is such a job. But no single nation showed the slightest unwillingness to let us search for Rondivallo, who has globe-trotted pretty widely. We half believed that he’d vanished with one of his lovelies, lying low until his money ran out. But in the past when he’s vanished it’s only been for three or four weeks. Since he vanished from the Forest Hotel, near Conne, we haven’t had a single line on him. If he’d found a love-nest somewhere and was just getting out of the public eye, we would have traced him. But his light o’ love down in Hampshire is missing, too— an Irish girl working at the Forest Hotel, where Rondivallo stayed. The hotel is a luxury place and extremely well run.”
“May I stay there?” Matt interpolated mildly.
“Yes. No one’s had any luck in looking for Rondivallo, remember,” Palfrey went on, “but among the places he often visited was the little village of Conne, near the forest of the same name. He spent a lot of time in an agricultural research station in the forest. The place wasn’t very elaborate, what we would have expected to interest Rondivallo. The research work was done in a cottage, one of several owned by the hotel proprietors. Rondivallo said that he had to study the results of his major experiments while at Conne. He had no laboratory, or at best a patchwork one. He did have his new lovely, Maureen O’Shea.”
Matt said: “A redhead, according to the newspapers,” then wished he hadn’t spoken; these two might soon begin to think that he was a blow-off.
“A redhead,” agreed Palfrey mildly. “They left about three months ago, and neither of them has been seen since. That was Rondivallo’s last public appearance.” He paused and Matt waited, believing that they would soon be at the crux of the matter. “We sent a man down there, a coloured general practitioner named—”
“Korven,” Matt intervened, and could have kicked himself. He was so annoyed that he actually sat up, and went on ruefully: “Sometimes I wish I could keep my big mouth shut. I was reading about Korven in this morning’s newspapers, and this pigeonhole I’ve got for a mind worked again.”
“I shouldn’t try to stop it from working,” Palfrey said dryly. “Yes, Korven. He attended a patient who had suffered from a mysterious stroke—the Conne woman named Hill. I’m going to give you a full report on the seizure and death, everything you need to know. For a start: five of our agents are suffering from a similar sickness, according to reports received today.”
“I can imagine why you’re interested in Rondivallo,” Matt said quietly.
He was still sitting bolt upright.
Something in the way Palfrey had told the story, as well as the facts themselves, had got into him. He was desperately anxious to say the right thing.
It came.
“You want me to start in at once, I imagine.”
“As soon as you’ve had time to think about what you’ll need,” Palfrey said.
“Sure,” said Matt. “I’ll think about it in the next half hour.
Will that be soon enough?”
“He isn’t over-confident, is he?” Palfrey asked Andromovitch.
“I think he was a little nervous in case he was creating that impression,” the Russian said. “I don’t think you will have any cause to complain about the way he goes about this Sap.”
“Well,” Matt Stone mused as he sat back in the rest room of the underground offices, still recumbent in an easy chair, “I’ve been warned, and they didn’t pull any punches. I wish I didn’t know as much as I do about the symptoms of radio-active dust poisoning.”
He lit a cigarette, then stretched out a hand and pressed a bell push. When the door opened and a middle-aged, grey- haired woman entered, he gave his attractive smile and said:
“Do you think you could rustle up some English tea for me?”
“Of course, Mr. Stone,” the woman said. “I won’t be many minutes. Would you like some cakes?”
“Cookies?”
“Shall we settle for French pastries?” She asked that with a smile.
Matt laughed, and was glad that he could laugh freely. But the thought soon faded. He pondered deeply over everything Palfrey had told him and everything he knew; then began to wonder what Palfrey expected him to need for the job.
The woman came in with a laden tray and far too many French pastries. She put the tray down on a table, and Matt noticed how well kept her hands were, how neatly she dressed; when she went out he noticed her slim legs. She wasn’t exactly a serving wench. He had not the faintest idea who she was, and knew that he often worked with Palfrey’s agents without realizing it; Spider Palfrey, with his web. S. A. Palfrey made Sap. What a misnomer!
Never mind dreaming; what did he need?
“I don’t know how many items I’ve forgotten,” he said to Palfrey a little later. “The way I see it, I don’t want to take too much with me, but I could do with a girl-friend, and I should imagine it would be better if she was American. Two Americans would seem more natural than one—or am I dreaming that up? If a job like this is too dangerous for a girl, then perhaps I ought to go alone. Whenever I see two men together on this kind of holiday, I wonder what they’re up to. Men don’t usually holiday in pairs, they only hunt in them.” Palfrey nodded, as if in general agreement. Palfrey was being very cagey. “Also I ought to have photographs of Rondivallo, full face and profile both sides, and a description including identifying marks on the body. And I ought to have a photograph of all these girls of his, including the Irish red-head. Also, a photograph of anyone known to have worked with Rondivallo in England. Any close research associate, for instance, anyone he might know. What do you say for it? The whole works.”
“We can arrange all these,” Palfrey said, nodding again.
“That’s swell. And I ought to have a quick refresher about the district of the Forest of Conne. Also, a refresher about the effects of radio-active dust, any means of identifying it on inanimate as well animate objects. And I ought to have a suit of chain mail,” Matt added. He grinned, then wished he hadn’t been facetious; but Palfrey seemed mildly amused. “I ought to know all I can about the Conne woman who died, where she’d been before the seizure, her neighbours, her husband. I ought to have access to the police files on the case, and get all the details I can about the car which followed Dr. Dimmock. And I ought to have a radio transmitter, the small kind you showed me three weeks ago, in case I want to get news through in a rush.”
Palfrey said: “It’ll all be ready by morning, Matt. We’ll arrange for you to spend a couple of hours with a research man who can tell you all you want to know. You’d better drive that Chrysler of yours, with the New York number plate. Then you’ll look like a genuine tourist.”
Matt stood up.
“I am a genuine tourist! Thanks. Sap …”
“Yes?”
“Who do I have for company?”
“I think you’ll have a girl,” Palfrey said. “She’s spoiling for work because—” he hesitated, and then added almost abruptly: “Her brother was killed in our last big job. She won’t be back to normal until she’s really worked herself to a standstill.”
Matt didn’t speak and didn’t move away, but raised one eyebrow slightly as he looked at Palfrey. He was aware of the giant Russian looking at him from the armchair, and could not guess what either was thinking. Then Palfrey said dryly:
“She’ll keep her eye on the ball, and she won’t do crazy things because she’s out for revenge.”
“American?”
“No, English,” said Palfrey. “She spent most of her childhood in the Lauriston and Conne districts, and knows them well. She’s also spent several years in the United States, and anyone who recognised her down at Conne won’t be surprised that she’s with an American.”
“Sounds just right,” Matt said. “Thanks.” He rubbed his chin. “When do I meet her?”
“Tomorrow, early,” Palfrey answered. “I’ll tell her to join you in your car at...” he gave precise details, and added: “I’ll have her bags sent to your car early in the morning. I don’t think either of you is being watched, but I’d like you to be as careful as you can. One other thing.”
“Yes?”
“You’ll probably dislike her intensely, but she has the best qualifications and a very good mind.”
“Suits me,” Matt sounded as he felt: mostly satisfied, just a little uneasy. He was going into the face of an unknown danger, but he had done that before. Danger didn’t scare him until it was past; then he had time to remember how terrified he had been. He had slight mental reservations about the girl companion, but Palfrey wasn’t the man t
o make an elementary mistake. “Am I to be told about what’s happened to the other chaps in various places?”
“From time to time,” Palfrey promised.
“Thanks,” said Matt.
Andromovitch had said practically nothing during either of the interviews, and Matt was now almost uneasily aware of him. It was as if the Russian was appraising him, assessing his weaknesses and his strengths; and he had an odd feeling that the giant was capable of doing that. About him there was a kind of aura, of goodness, of other worldliness. Crazy. And as crazy that he should be a Russian. Fantastic stories of his prodigious strength had reached Matt, but there were similar rumours about a lot of people.
“Do I get any more briefing?” Matt asked.
“No. There are one or two of our chaps on the job down there, and the one you might need is Peters—you’ll get a photograph of him and the others, for recognition’s sake. You’ll give them the usual sign, fingers of the hand spread out, palm towards them, three times in succession. We’ve one or two other agents you don’t know about, but I’ll tell you who they are in emergency. The sign will always be recognised, anyhow.”
“Sure,” Matt said.
“There’s only one job,” Palfrey added quietly. “Find out why Korven was killed, why Dimmock was killed, and—”
“Look after the dead woman’s husband, Larry Hill, and the Carters,” Andromovitch contributed at last. “They may be in equal danger.”
“You mean, everyone who saw the woman when she was ill might be in danger?”
“That’s it,” said Palfrey more briskly, and Andromovitch nodded. “Okay, Matt, I’ll be in touch.”
