The Deadly Drug Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  As Dorcus and April moved back into the main room, April noted that there was another door on the opposite side of the lab.

  "What's in there?" she asked. "Special research," Dorcus said briefly. "You'll have nothing to do with that."

  She didn't offer to show the room.

  April went up the hall to Boris Rank's office. Rank escorted her to the personnel section and waited while she filled out a brief employment application. Then he drove her back to the hotel.

  "You will need an apartment," he told her en route. "I'll phone a realtor friend of mine and see if I can line you up one."

  "That's kind of you," April said.

  "But I would rather just stay at the hotel for at least a few days, until we see how I work out."

  "Oh, you will work out fine," he said with confidence.

  Rank didn't go into the hotel with her, as he had to get back to the office. He made a date to take her to dinner, though.

  When she got up to her room, April called Mr. Waverly on her communicator.

  "I got the job, sir," she announced. "I start work in the lab tomorrow."

  "Good work," he said. "Have you seen the lab yet?"

  "Yes, sir. The Elias woman took me on a tour of it. There is a special research room she didn't offer to show me and which I suspect is kept locked, although I didn't get a chance to try the door."

  "Hmm," Waverly said. "Better get a look at that at the first opportunity."

  "Yes, sir," April said. "I plan to."

  When Mark Slate drove the jeep back into the village, three male figures were trudging up the steep path to the building on the mountainside. They all paused to peer down at him. From the shapes of their bodies he knew that the thickset Anton Radak was not among them.

  He parked before the combination drugstore and general store, cutting off their view of him, and went inside.

  The old man was again behind the soda fountain. The old woman was in the mail cage, in the act of handing a couple of letters through the window to a wide-shouldered, heavyset man whose back was to Slate.

  Going over to the soda fountain, Slate said, "Hi. Wonder if you could give me some information?"

  "Certainly, sir," the elderly druggist said.

  The man at the mail window turned and Slate saw that it was Anton Radak. The THRUSH agent had a broad, heavy-featured face with a hooked nose and hooded eyes. A frown drew beetling black brows together.

  Slate said, "They told me over at Barth that there is a good trout stream near here. Could you tell me how to get there?"

  "Yes, sir. You must be talking about Critter Crick. Did you notice that cemetery just outside of town?"

  "Uh-huh. On the right."

  "Yes, sir," the old man said. "Well, you drive right in there. There's a road goes all the way to the back. You can park there, then walk about a hundred yards back in the woods and you'll hit the stream."

  "Thanks," Slate said. "I plan to be here a couple of days. Any place to stay in town?"

  "Yes, sir. Ma Rooney's, just up the street that way." He pointed. "You can't miss it, because there's a sign out front."

  "Thanks again," Slate said. Anton Radak came over and gave Slate a smile which failed to reach his hooded eyes.

  "I am a fisherman too, mister," he said with a slight Balkan accent. "You were given false information at Barth. There has been so little rain here, Critter Crick is all but dried up. I know a much better place to fish."

  "Oh?" Slate said. "Where?"

  "At Clive Corners, about forty miles the other side of Barth. The trout are really hitting there."

  Slate said ruefuIIy, "It's too late for me to change plans. I only have two days, and I don't want to spend any more of it driving. By the time I drove another ninety miles over these roads, the best part of today would be shot. I’ll take my chances here."

  Radak accepted this with a shrug. "As you wish. In that case I will be glad to accompany you to Ma Rooney's and introduce you. I stay there myself." He held out his hand. "My name is Radak. Anton Radak."

  "Mark Slate," the U.N.C.L.E. agent said.

  "Did I see you driving out of town a short while ago?" Radak asked.

  "Probably," Slate said easily.

  "Nothing was open when I pulled into town. I took a crack at finding Critter Crick Without directions, but had to give up."

  Belatedly Slate wondered if Radak had asked the old couple about him. If he had, and knew Slate had purchased a sizeable supply of baked goods, Slate was in trouble. However, the man seemed to accept his explanation at face value.

  As the boarding house was only a few doors away, Slate left the jeep where it was. As the two of them walked along the boardwalk, Radak pointed out the flat-topped building on the mountainside.

  "That is where "I work, Mr. Slate.

  It is a baking company. I am the local manager."

  "I see," Slate said.

  "However, you will not taste our products while you are here. Ma Rooney does all her own baking. Even though we put out superior baked goods, I must confess that our mass production methods cannot match her home baking."

  The man was clever, Slate thought. He obviously had no intention of letting Slate get hold of any of his own product. He had no desire to have an outsider who would be in town only two days become drugged, perhaps die of an overdose and bring in outside investigation. Apparently he had decided to wait out the two days and hope that Slate noticed nothing unusual about the town.

  When they reached the boarding house, Anton Radak opened the door and led Slate into a large front room furnished in mid-Victorian style. There was a huge mohair sofa before an empty fireplace, several overstuffed chairs with doilies on them, a rocking chair, some intricately carved marble-topped end tables and a number of lamps with beaded shades.

  Across the room an open staircase led to the second floor and a narrow hallway next to the stairs led to the rear of the house. Through an archway to the left Slate could see a dining room with a long table capable of seating up to a dozen. A door at the rear of the dining room he assumed led into the kitchen.

  There was an odor of baking bread in the air.

  Radak called, "Mrs. Rooney!" A plump, matronly blond woman in her mid-fifties came from the kitchen. Slate could tell even before she spoke that she wasn't under the influence of the obedience drug. Her round face was too jolly and her eyes held too alert a twinkle.

  "This is Mr. Slate, Mrs. Rooney," Radak said. "He is here to do some fishing for a couple of days and needs a place to stay."

  The woman smiled at Slate and said, "How do you do?”

  Slate said, "It's nice to know you, Mrs. Rooney."

  "Everybody but Mr. Radak calls me Ma," she said. "Mr. Radak is the formal type." She said this in such a pleasant, bantering tone, the man couldn't possibly have been offended.

  "All right, Ma," Slate said, smiling back at her.

  "Room and board is five dollars a day on a short-term basis, Mr. Slate. Otherwise twenty dollars a week. Is that satisfactory?"

  "Just fine," Slate said.

  "I'll show you your room."

  She led the way up the stairs to the second floor. Radak stayed below.

  There were a half dozen rooms plus a bath off the long second-floor hallway. Ma Rooney led him to the last one at the end of the hall. The room was not very large and contained only a single bed. It too was furnished in mid-Victorian style, with a marble-topped dresser whose mirror frame was elaborately carved and with a heavy writing desk with carved legs before the window.

  The room was at the back of the house; and through the window Slate could see the building up on the mountainside.

  "Sorry I have to give you this small room," the landlady said apologetically. "But all the others are full now. Three of Mr. Radak's employees stay here too."

  "The room is fine," Slate said.

  TEN

  TIME FOR DYING

  Ma Rooney said, "I would be out of business now if Mr. Radak and his men hadn't mo
ved to town. I had two other rooms when they moved in, but they died a couple of weeks ago."

  "Oh? Of what?"

  "The epidemic."

  "Epidemic?"

  "Something's been going around for about a month. We really don't know what it is, but about a dozen so far have died of it."

  "What do the doctors say?” Slate asked.

  The landlady laughed. "What doctors? People have to drive clear to Barth to see a doctor. Mostly they just call in old Jed Harkins, the vet, when they have an ailment or expect a baby. Jed's all right for setting a broken bone or delivering a baby, but he don't know much about germs. He don't know what it is. He keeps saying heat exhaustion, but he don't really know."

  "Heat exhaustion in June?" Slate said.

  "Well, we did have a right smart hot spell. But we've had 'em before, and people didn't drop off like flies. "

  "What are the symptoms?"

  "First people lapse into a sort of trancelike state, then go into a coma and just pass away. My personal opinion is that it's some kind of food poisoning. All the meat around here comes from local farms, you know, and slaughtering methods ain't always too sanitary. There's a fatal disease you can get from pork, for instance."

  "Trichinosis," Slate said. "That's it. I cook everything thoroughly here since the epidemic started. You won't get no rare meat at my table, so you don't have to worry."

  Slate briefly wondered why no one had bothered to call in a health inspector, then immediately realized that with the whole town under the influence of the drug, no one possessed that much initiative.

  "Didn't your two boarders eat here?" he asked.

  "Weren't boarders, just roomers. Worked for one of the local farmers, and part of their pay was board. They just rented rooms from me at five dollars a week."

  That explained that, Slate thought. Their failure to stick to Ma Rooney's cooking had cost them their lives.

  "Well, I'll go get my stuff from the car," he said. "What is the meal schedule?"

  Breakfast was at seven, she told him, lunch at noon and dinner at six. She offered to make him early breakfast if he wanted to start fishing at dawn.

  "We'll see how the trout are hitting first," Slate told her.

  As they went back downstairs, Radak was just hanging up a phone on the wall next to the staircase.

  "I just phoned the plant that I will not be in," he said. "I have a couple of days coming, so I decided to go fishing too. Do you mind a partner?"

  The man had no intention of letting him out of his sight while he was in town, Slate realized. This was going to complicate matters.

  There was nothing he could do except say politely, "Of course not. Glad to have company."

  "Are you planning to go out this morning?" Radak asked.

  "After I unload my stuff and stow it in my room."

  "I have to pick up a few things at the general store," Radak said. "I will be ready to leave in about fifteen minutes, though."

  They walked back to the combination drugstore and general store together. While Radak was inside, Slate backed the jeep down to the boarding house and carried his suitcase inside. Alone in his room, he decided this would be a good time to report in.

  Removing his fountain pen from his pocket, he twisted the barrel and a small antenna of chrome steel shot up. "Section two," he said. "Mark Slate calling."

  After a moment Randy Kovac's cheerful voice said, "Hi, Mr. Slate."

  "What are you doing there?" Slate asked. "Why aren't you in school?"

  "It's only eight-fifteen," Randy said. "I don't have to be there until eight-thirty, and it only takes me ten minutes from here."

  "Put Mr. Waverly on and skedaddle," Slate said.

  "Yes, sir. Here he is now." Alexander Waverly's voice said, "Yes, Mr. Slate?"

  "Illya is en route back with a supply of baked goods, sir," Slate said. "I'm ensconced at Ma Rooney's boarding house, but I've run into a snag. Anton Radak has decided to take off work and go fishing with me for the next two days. So I guess I'm going to actually have to fish."

  "He's suspicious of you?" Waverly said sharply.

  "I don't think so," Slate said. "He just wants to keep me under constant observation. I suspect he wants to steer me clear of the natives so that I won't notice their odd behavior, but that he also wants to make sure I don't accidentally get drugged. It obviously wouldn't be wise to involve a stranger who only plans to be here two days in their experiment. Incidentally Ma Rooney does her own baking and isn't under the influence of the drug."

  Waverly said, "Hmm. This is going to handicap your effort to interview everyone in the village."

  "Yes, sir. Unless I can think up some way to shake him."

  "It would be helpful if you could escape him at least long enough to interview the local undertaker. And if your landlady is in full possession of her faculties, perhaps you can get some information about the general state of the populace from her."

  "Yes, sir. I've already learned from her that there have been about a dozen deaths in the past month."

  "Odd that so many deaths from unknown causes haven't brought in health inspectors."

  "Who would request them, sir? Everybody's in a drug-induced trance. At least everybody in authority. And there are no doctors here. The local vet, who is probably also under the influence of the drug, serves as the local doctor."

  Waverly said, "Well, learn what you can, Mr. Slate. And keep me informed."

  "Yes, sir," Slate said.

  As Slate had arrived in town wearing his fishing clothes, it wasn't necessary for him to change. All he had to do was clap on the battered old fedora with his favorite flies stuck in the band, and he was all ready.

  When he left his room, Radak was just emerging from a room up the hall. He had changed his business suit to slacks and a sport shirt and wore an old Panama hat.

  "I took the liberty of loading my fishing gear in your jeep, Mr. Slate," he said. "Are you all ready?"

  "Uh-huh," Slate said. "Let's get going."

  As they went down the stairs together, Radak said, "Shall I have Mrs. Rooney make us some sandwiches?"

  "We won't stay out past noon," Slate told him. "Trout won't hit when the sun gets high. I would as soon break off before noon and try again in the late afternoon, if we haven't got our limits by noon."

  "As you wish," Radak said agreeably.

  There was a brand new fly rod, a brand new creel and a brand new set of waders in the back seat of the jeep along with Slate's fishing gear. Obviously Radak had just purchased it all at the general store, which made a lie of his previous inference that he was familiar with the local trout stream.

  Slate made no comment about the new equipment, however.

  Following the elderly druggist's directions, they had no difficulty finding the stream. Slate had half expected to run into another funeral at the cemetery, but the place was deserted.

  Critter Crick turned out to be a narrow but swiftly moving mountain stream with many twists and turns.

  It was far from "all but dried up," as Radak had indicated. As a matter of fact it struck Slate as the kind of stream which should be loaded with trout.

  "You work upstream from here," Slate suggested. "I'll walk downstream a quarter mile or so and work back to this point."

  "Why don't we fish together?" Radak objected.

  Slate frowned at him. "Who ever heard of trout fishermen working in pairs?"

  "I guess your suggestion is best. When shall we meet?"

  "How about eleven-thirty? That will get us back to Ma Rooney's in time for lunch."

  "All right," Radak agreed. He seemed very relaxed, at ease.

  Slate turned and started along the bank downstream. Anton Radak sat on a log and began putting on his waders.

  A quarter mile downstream Slate stopped when he came to a promising looking pool, and put on his waders. He had contemplated circling around to the jeep, driving into the village to interview a few residents and getting back again in time to mee
t Radak, but had rejected the idea as too dangerous. He suspected the man wasn't very interested in fishing, and might merely take up a concealed position where he could keep the jeep under observation.

  Slate decided he might as well enjoy himself.

  He chose a fan winged Royal Coachman to try first. Making an expert cast from the bank, he dropped the fly into an eddy beneath overhanging boughs on the opposite side of the stream. There was a flash of silver, a sharp tug on the line, and then line was streaming off the reel as the fish headed downstream.

  Playing it carefully, it took Slate fifteen minutes to land the trout. He hadn't brought a net, so he had to wade into the water in order to get his hands on it. He carefully wet his left hand, then, at the proper moment, reached out, hooked a finger into one of the gills and flipped the fish up onto the bank.

  At the same moment he stepped on a slippery rock and his right foot slid out from under him.

  He was only in about a foot and a half of water, right next to the bank. Feeling himself falling backward, he flung his rod up on the bank and twisted around to catch himself on his hands on the side of the bank. He managed the maneuver so that he fell forward instead of backward, but his hands came down either side of a large boulder and the left side of his chest smashed painfully against the boulder.

  Getting his feet under him, he pushed himself erect and climbed out on the bank. The fish was a brown fully eighteen inches long. Slate looked down at it admiringly, while he probed at his chest to see if he had broken anything. He was going to have a painful bruise, he decided, but otherwise was un-damaged.

  He unhooked the fish, dropped it into his creel and picked up his fly rod.

  If there had been any other trout in the pool, his noisy fall had frightened them away, because no others rose to his fly. The water up-stream was full of trout, however. When he waded into the stream and began to work upstream, he had his limit within an hour.

  Just for the sport of it he continued fishing and throwing them back. By eleven-thirty, when he had worked back to his starting point, he had hooked and released six good sized browns over his limit.

  He found Anton Radak waiting, his waders folded and lying on the ground.