“Yes,” he agreed amiably. “That’s the way your playmates operate. Which means you can’t be very important, or else you goofed personally on this whole setup. Okay. I’ll play ABC with you. A.—my electronic friends tell me that electricity can be converted into sound with a fancy little thing called the maser, an incredibly sensitive amplifier. B.—if that sound had continued, there’s no telling what it would have done to your nervous system and mine, so I stopped the noise by cutting the electrical current in this room. C.—you have the transistor or you know where it is. Simple ABC, isn’t it?”
She shuddered, trying to smile.
“What do you think I am, Napoleon?”
“A spy, of course. But don’t let that bother you. Some of my best friends are spies.”
She nodded, hardly hearing him. “All right. But you’ll have to believe me when I tell you I have no idea about any transistor.” Her smile was wan. “As you say, they think little of me. Or else they think so highly of you that they’d sacrifice me too.”
His eyes narrowed. A decoy again. A lovely lure. Nothing new for him, surely. He knew that Denise Fairmount had maneuvered him into a defenseless position for the kill. He had known that was her purpose yesterday when he had allowed her to pick him up. But he had his own plans—like pumping her for information.
“Who do you work for, Denise? Thrush?”
She shook her head. “I will tell you nothing.”
“All right. We’ll skip the third degree. There are other things to occupy my time. Stand up.”
There was no use browbeating her, he had decided.
She was more than just a lovely woman—spying was no business for wilting geraniums. Before he could manage to make her talk, her “friends” would undoubtedly be moving in on him.
She raised herself, staring into his face. The deep cleft of her breasts rose as she breathed deeply. She kept her arms rigid at her sides.
“Well, what is the next move, Mr. Solo?”
He smiled—warmly, but yet faintly mocking. “I thought we might call Room Service for some wine to go with our candlelight.”
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t insult me by not being serious.”
“The serious die young,” he said softly.
She frowned, biting her lip. “You must kill me, yes. But if you would delay it for awhile there is much I could do for you. In a personal way, of course.”
“I like you too, Denise. So much so that I’m going to make it easy for you.”
She misunderstood him, and let herself insinuate her body a bit closer. She moistened her lips, tilting her chin.
He hit her.
The blow was short, swift, economical—a precisely timed and aimed uppercut which collapsed Denise Fairmount neatly on the love seat. She fell without even a murmur of surprise. He arranged her carefully on the lounge, lowering her lamé gown chastely below her knees.
There was no more time for delays. He had risked enough already. Nor could he encumber himself with lovely lady agents, no matter who they might be. Waverly’s cablegram was burning a hole in his pocket. If the Fairmount woman had anything to do with that assignment, he would find out soon enough. Meanwhile, he was in a vicinity he should quit as soon as possible. Thrush, if Thrush it was, had a way of reinforcing its death traps in a hurry.
There had been no hue and cry from the rest of the hotel.
Perhaps a blessing. Perhaps not.
Soundlessly and swiftly, Solo packed his sky-blue traveling suitcase and checked the windows. The suite opened on a sheer ledge above the lighted boulevard. Time enough to call in and have somebody pick up the Fairmount woman. His first concern had to be getting out of the hotel with all of his skin—and, preferably, everything still inside it.
He glanced at Denise on the lounge. In the glow of the candles on the oaken coffee table, she was beautifully innocent and serene. Solo’s eyes hardened. He moved toward the door, putting her out of his mind. She was a regret better left unfelt.
He turned the door handle and—nothing happened. He tried it again, but it still wouldn’t open. Alarm bells began ringing in the back of his mind. Slowly, he set the suitcase down and studied the door. His eyes traveled around the seaming where the wood met the wall. A feeling that something wasn’t quite right or proper filled him. He bent closer to examine the tiny vertical and horizontal cracks which allowed the door barrier to fit perfectly into the design of the room.
The door was sealed! No air was coming in from the passageway. It was as if the frame of the portal had been sealed with putty or wax. But it had to be more than that—
He took an identification card from his wallet—it was one of several, this one certifying that he was one Arthur Connell, an authorized buyer for an expensive-sounding New York jeweler—and tried to thrust it between door and wall. The card did not pass through the slit. Something was preventing it from finding an entry; it was as if a sheet of metal had passed over the outer doorway. A sliding, scratching sound, as of something traveling with mechanical ease into a slotted groove, made his head swing toward the big windows.
Incredibly, he saw the bright lights of Paris wink out as a partition of metal moved quickly across his line of vision and snapped shut with a click of sound like the closing of a cigarette case.
A moment later, another sheet of metal closed off the window on the other side of the room, gliding smoothly into its metallic bed. Whirling, he saw the open doorway into the bedroom closed off and sealed by a final metal slab.
Suddenly the room was like a soundless vacuum. Denise lay unconscious on the lounge, and Solo stood frozen for the moment. The short hairs at the nape of his neck tingled. There was no mistaking this new threat now.
Unless he was badly mistaken, the room had suddenly become an air-tight vault. There could be no other reason for the complete sealing of both the doors and windows. Locks would have been enough to trap him inside—but Thrush didn’t want him simply as a prisoner. They wanted him dead.
He was trapped in a sealed room in which the supply of usable, life-giving oxygen would diminish into nothingness.
Then the silence of the room was broken by a subtle soughing sound—the sound of air whispering through an opening somewhere. Solo’s hand jerked around, following the sound, and then he saw it. A wave of relief flooded over him. Of course—the air-conditioning system! Even though they had sealed the immediately obvious sources of air, the members of Thrush had forgotten that all the rooms in the hotel had completely up-to-date air-conditioning.
He smiled as he stepped toward the vent. Such a simple mistake…but of course the simple things were the most easy to forget.
He put his hand up to the vent—and the smile disappeared from his face.
Thrush hadn’t forgotten the air-conditioning at all. Instead, they were using it themselves. For there was no air coming into the room—instead, it was steadily being sucked out.
THE DEATH ROOM
FOR ONE wild second, a sense of doom fought to dominate him. Thrush had bottled him up like a mouse in a Mason jar and no amount of banging away at the lid was going to help. There was no time to lose now. No reason to stop and wonder just how long a man can live without oxygen or how long it would take for the vent to pump out every bit of good air left in the room. Time enough for post-mortems later.
Getting out of the room was the first order of the day. He considered the possible means of escape. There was, of course, the telephone—but when he picked it up he found the line was dead. He wasn’t surprised. It would also be useless to use his machine pistol. No amount of bullets could blow that door—nor any of the windows. He silently cursed the lack of any explosive equipment in his suitcase. This was one time he had none of the jelly compounds that could blow a bank vault wall to smithereens. He hadn’t expected to have to enter any bank vaults this week—much less that he’d find himself trapped inside one.
There was only one chance.
The very one that Thrush itself had given him.
/>
Solo hurried to Denise Fairmount where she lay on the lounge. Her head lolled as he pulled her to a standing position. He brought his open hand sharply against her face, slapping her quickly on both sides of her nose. She moaned and he dragged her to the coffee table, scooping up the bottle of wine. He held it to her lips, forcing the contents into her mouth. The wine sloshed over her face, ran down the front of her gown. Solo paid little heed. He wanted this woman awake, sitting up and taking notice—
Already, he could sense the change in the atmosphere of the room. There was a sudden giddiness in his head—a light, airy feeling as though he had had too much of the same wine he was pouring over the woman. She stirred, and coughed as the wine went down her throat.
“Come on, Denise,” he snapped. “Wake up, wake up!”
“What—what—” She sputtered, her eyes opening wide, blanching when she saw him, trying to pull away.
He gripped her wrists tightly, keeping his voice steady.
“Listen. I’m not going to hurt you. Are you awake? Nod your head so that I know you understand me. Nod, I said!” He jerked her savagely to him. Her eyes popped but she nodded, her tongue licking at the droplets of wine on her mouth.
“Your playmates have walled us up in this room. With steel doors and windows and everything. You understand? There’ll be no air to speak of in here in a very little while they’re also sucking the air out through the air-conditioning vent. I know of a way we can get out—but you’ve got to help. Listen to me, Denise. We will slowly suffocate to death without oxygen. You won’t look pretty to the undertaker with your tongue sticking out. Now tell me—where is that transistor for the master device? I must know—or we’re both going to die.”
“You’re trying to trick me—” she gasped. “You hit me—”
“Nod, I said. Don’t waste air with talking. Breathe. Can’t you tell? Come on, Denise. Where is it?”
She read his eyes and she read the warning there. She nodded and her own gaze swung back to the coffee table. Not on top of it. Under it. The candles had already begun to gutter warningly. Solo released the woman and darted to the table. He explored its bottom quickly until his hands found a square metal box, no bigger than the motor of a tiny music box. Denise Fairmount had fallen to the lounge, breathing in short, shallow gasps. Solo ignored her and ripped open his traveling bag. He knew what he had to do. A risk he had to take. There was no estimating the effect of the maser device when let loose—but he knew what it could do.
He scooped his neatly piled clothes to one side and uncovered the short-wave radio set hidden there. He had short-circuited the suite’s electrical outlet, but the radio set had its own powerful batteries. He hoped they would be strong enough for what he had in mind.
He placed the maser device at the very center of the front door, between the sealed slit and the bottom of the barrier. Then he adjusted the short-wave set, turned it on and manipulated the frequency button. He pushed it to its fullest power. Then he yelled on last warning at Denise Fairmount: “Put your fingers in your ears! This is going to be rough!”
Almost immediately, the wildly throbbing humming sound of generated sound rose in the stuffy room. Solo held his ears tightly, his eyes never leaving the door. He remained by his suitcase. If it didn’t work, at least he could turn the sound off before that killed them first. A small difference in terrible ways to die—
But the maser device was trained directly on the door; the sound which buffeted him and Denise was only that which bounced off and spread around the room.
He watched the door. He felt the room tremble. He could see the objects of furniture in the room start that weird vibrating dance again as the sound waves reached them. He bit his lip, beads of perspiration popping on his brow. It was a million to one shot—could the heightening of electrical current into sound force open a steel barrier?
Denise Fairmount was again writhing in pain on the lounge, her eyes two beacons of shining terror. But she did not cry out or protest—she knew what was at stake.
Solo waited—
The furnishings danced. And then a slight tremor shook the door. The hinges seemed to want to move out of their iron hasps. Even with his hands pressed to his ears, the room-filling sound penetrated almost maddeningly.
Solo’s nostrils and throat ached with the pain of trying to breathe the thin air remaining now in the sealed room. He felt as though he were being strangled. Yet he could not take his eyes off that door—
It was like a magic act.
Suddenly the door was shaking and the panels warping before his very eyes. And then there was a mammoth thunderclap of sound, and the barrier had surged outward, crumpling like so much cheap tin and discarded metal. The door flew back, ripping off its hinges, shattering into splinters against the sheet of metal which was disintegrating before it.
Groping almost blindly, Solo found the frequency button and turned the short-wave radio set off. The influx of air from the corridor was a buffeting wind which threw over the candles from the table and flattened the drapes against the far wall. He didn’t waste any time looking for the maser device in the wreckage of the doorway. Chances were pretty good that it had shattered into bits once its maximum peak of effect had been reached. As for the woman—
She was gone.
In the decreasing flurry of noises from the blasted threshold of the room, he could hear her high heels running down the corridor. For a fleeting second he considered giving chase, but then he shook the notion off. There was only one thing for him to do now—get out of this damn hotel alive before Thrush came back to try again.
Shaking his head to clear it, breathing in long gasps of fresh air, he retrieved his traveling bag and stepped quickly from the room. The aftermath of the explosion was reaching that point when rudely disturbed guests would be ringing the desk to see what the hell was going on.
Solo took the back stairway out.
Twenty minutes later, he had compartmentalized the anger in his mind and found a late-cruising taxicab on short notice. The tinseled lights of the Eiffel Tower burst like a Fourth of July sparkler on the horizon. Solo had brushed his hair back, straightened his tie and assumed the demeanor of pure tourist. The French cabbie was a gray little man with a wise face and a gold tooth.
“Monsieur?”
“Le Bourget. Tout de suite.”
The cabbie looked dismayed.
“You are meeting a plane? None at this time.”
“I am taking a plane, my friend.”
The cabbie smiled triumphantly. “Mais non, Monsieur. There will be none at this hour.”
Solo frowned. He knew the Paris airport as well as he knew La Guardia. Flights nearly every hour. He plucked a crisp five hundred franc note from his billfold.
“Look, garçon. Just drive, will you?”
The driver turned around to show appreciation of the bill; yet there was a touch of sadness in his eyes.
“Possibly Monsieur has not heard.”
“Let me hear it.”
“Le Bourget had the big explosion a few hours ago. Five runways were destroyed. Such a fire! All flights have been canceled. You understand?”
“Yeah. Pay now. Fly later.”
“Comment?”
Solo nodded, keeping his face blank. “Yes, I understand, friend. But don’t you recognize a newspaperman when you see one? I’ll have you know I’m the Paris correspondent to The New York Times.”
“The New York Times?” The cabbie’s eyes rolled in appreciation of such lofty environs. “Forgive me, Monsieur. But of course. Immediatement!”
The cab leaped into gear, found the main artery of traffic and zoomed toward Le Bourget. Napoleon Solo drummed his fingers reflectively on the sky-blue Tourister sitting across his lap.
Now here was calamity piled atop coincidence.
A cablegram from Mr. Waverly and a concerted effort on his life.
Now, he needed an airplane and Le Bourget was incapacitated. Of course, there might be other, smal
ler fields in Paris, yet that was unlikely.
What had happened to Stewart Fromes out there in Oberteisendorf?
The telegram in his coat pocket was beginning to burn a hole there. Hot stuff, maybe. Real hot stuff. Hotter than even Mr. Waverly had let on, despite the William Daprato warning.
Beyond the cab’s window, the Paris night twinkled with warm, friendly stars.
At U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, Alexander Waverly had a visitor. A distinguished visitor whose presence would normally have occasioned the unified popping of assorted flashbulbs and trained questions by batteries of metropolitan reporters. No one in the building was even aware of the identity of this particular individual. He had entered U.N.C.L.E. in Waverly’s private elevator from the entranceway which no other man in the organization knew. Only Waverly could ever reveal the fifth unknown ingress of U.N.C.L.E.
Had Napoleon Solo been on hand, he would have been surprised at the difference in Waverly’s attitude. It was marked by a definite concern, a worried crease of the gray brows above the strong nose.
Waverly’s visitor was at the window, seemingly lost in contemplation of the United Nations Building shining in the night. The long, erratic conga of lights lighting up the Queens skyline hung like fireflies in the far off darkness.
The eternal pipe, in this instance a meerschaum, worked back and forth in Waverly’s fingers, revealing his agitation.
The man at the window, tall and statuesque, said without turning, “Well, Waverly. Is there one chance in ten million?”
Waverly did not turn around either.
“There’s always that chance, of course,” he said, regretfully.
“If even that chance is there, then we indeed have something to worry about.”
“I would say so, sir. Fromes was not explicit, of course. He couldn’t afford to be, under the circumstances. Security has its drawbacks. But—”
“Go on, Waverly. Say it. Say it all. This is no damn time for the niceties of protocol and diplomatic bushwah.”
Man From U.N.C.L.E. 01 - The Thousand Coffins Affair Page 2
