The Deadly Drug Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  Footsteps approached and the knob turned as Rank tried the door. April stood with bated breath, Wondering if he had a key to the room, and if he would decide to use it if he had one.

  She got the answer to both questions a second later. A key rasped in the lock.

  April Dancer pressed her back against the wall on the hinged side of the door. The door opened and Boris Rank stepped half inside. He took one quick glance around the room, then backed out and pulled the door closed again. April heard his almost silent footsteps recede across the lab toward the experimental kitchen.

  A moment later she heard Rank's muffled voice say something from across the way, and knew from its distant sound that this time he had gone all the way into the experimental kitchen instead of pausing in the doorway. Drawing the spring bolt, she cracked open the door and peeked out.

  Through the open door across the way she could see John Quade, profile to her, stooped before an oven. Apparently Shelia and Rank were in the center of the room, because she couldn't see either of them.

  April took a chance that Quade wouldn't glance her way, slipped out into the main lab and clicked the door shut behind her. She was tiptoeing toward the door into the hall when she heard Boris Rank's footsteps head from the kitchen toward the main lab.

  April took two rapid steps, reached the hall door and had pulled it open when she realized Rank was going to reach the door from the experimental kitchen before she could get into the hall and close the door behind her.

  She spun her back to the door and shoved it closed behind her with an audible bang.

  When Rank reached the door into the main lab, he found April coming toward him, just as though she had just entered from the hallway.

  "Oh, there you are," he said. "I was looking for you."

  "Tit for tat," she told him. "I just peeked in your office, but you weren't there."

  "Oh? What did you want?"

  "What did you want?" she countered.

  "I feel in a celebrating mood," he said with a smile. "I was going to suggest we both take off early, have a couple of cocktails and then have dinner."

  "It's my first day," she protested. "How would it look if I took off early?"

  "I'm president of this company," he told her. "If it looks all right to me, why should you care how it looks to anyone else?"

  She summoned a smile. "All right, boss, if it's an order. What time?"

  "I'll run you over to the hotel at four, give you an hour to dress, and pick you up again at five."

  "Sounds nice," she said. "See you at four."

  When Rank had left again, April went into the experimental kitchen.

  "I have to run an errand," she said. "Will you need me for a while?"

  Shelia said, "The boss was looking for you."

  "He found me. That's why I have to run an errand."

  "Oh, sure," Shelia said. "Go ahead."

  April went back into the main lab, found a pill box and packed her rhinestone ring in it, surrounded by cotton. She found some wrapping paper, wrapped the box and sealed it with scotch tape. She addressed the package to the post office box in New York City used as a cover mailing address by U.N.C.L.E.

  Removing her lab smock, she left the building and hailed down a cruising taxicab.

  "The nearest post office branch," she told the driver.

  She had the taxi wait while she mailed the package and was back at the plant within fifteen minutes. After slipping her smock back on, she glanced into the experimental kitchen and found the two technicians engrossed in mixing a dough.

  Retreating to a far corner of the main lab, she took out her communicator and called U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.

  When Mr. Waverly answered, April said, "I managed to get into the special research lab, sir. I found notes of all the Elias woman's experiments with both the THRUSH drug which they can zero-seventeen, and Tehedrin zero fifty-five. I just mailed you a microfilm of them airmail."

  "Good," Waverly said. "Did you get samples of the two drugs?"

  "No, sir. Apparently she took the full supply of both to Pig Wallow with her."

  "Well, the notes should serve as well," Waverly said. "Good work, Miss Dancer."

  "Did you warn Mark that the Elias woman was en route there?" she asked.

  "We can't reach him. He doesn't answer his communicator. We're continuing to try every fifteen minutes, however."

  April asked anxiously, "Do you think he's in trouble, sir?"

  "Unlikely. He seemed to be getting along famously at last report. I suspect he's left his communicator in his suitcase again, and simply hasn't heard the signal. We'll keep trying."

  "Yes, sir," April said. "I hope you reach him before the Elias woman gets to Pig Wallow."

  "Miss Dancer," Waverly said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Something has been puzzling me. Why do you continuously refer to this Miss Elias as the Elias woman?"

  April was silent for a minute. Then she said, “Mark asked me that once too, sir. I guess it’s because I’m a cat.”

  It was Waverly’s turn to be silent. Finally he said, "I hope Mr. Slate understood that, Miss Dancer. I have to confess that I don't."

  THIRTEEN

  “TONIGHT YOU DIE!”

  Before retiring Tuesday night, Mark Slate told Ma Rooney he wouldn't require an early breakfast the next morning. Since he had managed to take his limit of trout in mid-morning that day, he saw no point in getting up at the crack of dawn.

  Wednesday he breakfasted with the four men. After breakfast Kurt Shill, Josef Donner and Rudolph Betz climbed the steep path up to the baking plant. Anton Radak announced that he was going fishing again with Slate.

  Today, although it remained as warm as the previous day, the sky was dull and overcast. As they drove into the cemetery, Anton Radak looked up at it appraisingly.

  “We may get wet," he said.

  Slate cast an experienced weather eye upward. "Not this morning, I don't think. It may start coming down this afternoon."

  But just in case his weather prediction proved inaccurate and they had to head for the jeep in a hurry, Slate put up the top of the jeep and put on the side curtains.

  Today Anton Radak decided he wanted to try the section of stream Slate had fished yesterday, so Slate agreeably changed with him and began working upstream from the point where they parted company. As during the previous morning, Slate had his limit before noon. This time Radak managed to take two trout also.

  As Slate had guessed, the rain held off all morning. It began to fall in large drops just as they got back to the boarding house. The three other men were already there, waiting for Ma Rooney to serve lunch.

  During lunch it began to pour heavily.

  "I guess this would settle things even if I hadn't already taken my limit," Slate said. "Looks like I spend another afternoon in bed."

  "In that case I may as well go up to the plant this afternoon," Radak said. "When are you leaving, Mr. Slate?"

  "After dinner, I think, providing this rain stops," Slate said. "With a nap, I won't mind driving all night."

  He caught a relieved expression in Radak's eyes.

  After lunch Slate watched from his bedroom window as the four men climbed up to the baking plant. They were all swathed in raincoats and hats and wore galoshes on their feet. The rain had already reduced the path to mire.

  As soon as the last of the four had disappeared into the building, Slate took a light raincoat from his suitcase and put it on. He used his fishing hat for a rain hat, not bothering to remove the trout flies from the band.

  Quietly he descended the stairs. Again Ma Rooney was in the kitchen doing dishes. He slipped out the front door.

  In the pouring rain he didn't think it was likely he could be seen clearly enough from the building on the mountainside to be identified, but since he could see the building clearly enough, he knew he could at least be seen from above. Since an observer might wonder why someone was going door-to-door in the village, he decided,
for the first foray, to take the side of the street on which the boarding house was.

  As the front doors of the houses on that side couldn't be seen from the baking plant, he would be under possible observation only when he went from one house to another.

  A thin woman in her thirties came to the door at the first place he knocked. Examining his dripping figure without curiosity, she said, "Yes, sir?"

  Slate looked her over carefully. She wore the same patient, uninterested expression the filling station attendant, the restaurant proprietor and the two old people in the combination drugstore ant general store had worn.

  "Pinch your nose," Slate said.

  The woman obediently pinched her nose, then merely stood waiting.

  "Anyone else at home?” Slate asked.

  "No, sir. My husband's out at the farm and the boy's in school.

  "Thanks," Slate said, and turned away.

  He found no one at all on that side of the street who wasn't under the influence of the drug. At the end of the street he looked into the one-room schoolhouse and found a young woman supervising the study of about two dozen youngsters of assorted ages. The teacher and the students all looked at him standing dripping in the doorway with the same blank, uninterested expressions he had become accustomed to.

  There was no point in testing group. Running his gaze over the room, he failed to detect the slightest sign of curiosity in any of the faces. He turned around and waded through ankle-deep mud the opposite side of the street.

  The church proved to be empty. He started checking the houses on that side of the street.

  Visiting the houses on side of the street involved more risk being observed the baking plant, because he was now in constant view. It was a necessary however, if he was going to make a thorough canvass of the village.

  Again he encountered no one who wasn't under the influence of the drug. By the time he reached the end of the street, he had come to the conclusion the two natives of Pig Wallow who weren't under the drug's influence were Ma Rooney and funeral director Myron Stoyle.

  Ma Rooney's case was understandable because she didn't eat any of the products from the plant on the mountainside. But the director's immunity remained a puzzle.

  He was contemplating returning to the parlor to question the man more closely about his dietary habits when he saw the door to the baking plant open. A rain-coated figure emerged into the driving rain. From that distance he couldn't tell who it was, but the thickness of his body made it a choice between Anton Radak and stout Josef Donner.

  The man wasn't looking his way, being intent on the slippery path before him. Slate slogged across the muddy street in order to place the houses on that side between himself and the man descending the path and sprinted for the boarding house.

  He was visible from above whenever he crossed the open spaces between houses, but each time he his gaze fixed on the descending figure, and the man didn't once his glance his way. The path was too precarious for him to risk letting attention drift from where he was placing his feet.

  Slate's shoes were coated an inch-thick with mud all over and his pant cuffs were dripping with it. On the porch he slipped out of his shoes and rolled up his cuffs a few inches.

  The landlady was cleaning the living room when he stepped inside with his muddy shoes in his hand. She looked at the shoes in astonishment.

  "Why, Mr. Slate," she said. "I thought you were in your room."

  Slate was somewhat out of breath from running, but by heroic effort he managed to conceal it and make his voice come out without strain.

  "Just walked up to the store for cigarettes," he said casually. "I won't get this mud on your carpets."

  "Why'd you get off of the boardwalk?" Mrs. Rooney asked. "The drugstore's on this side."

  "Slipped," Slate said briefly.

  He went on by and up the stairs. The man coming down the path would be at least another five minutes getting to the bottom, he estimated. He went into the bathroom and held his shoes under the cold water faucet until all the mud was washed away. Then he grabbed a dirty bath towel from the clothes hamper and went down the hall to his room.

  He stripped off his raincoat and hung it over the door of his closet to drip dry, and hung his equally wet hat on the closet doorknob. He changed to dry slacks and draped the wet ones over a chair. Then he dried his shoes inside and out with the towel and put them back on.

  By then the figure descending the path had reached the bottom and was starting across the back yard of the boarding house. Slate saw that it was Radak. Up above the door to the plant opened again and three more figures emerged.

  Glancing at his watch, Slate saw that it was a quarter after four. He was mildly surprised that it had taken him three hours to canvass the town, but it still seemed too early for the plant to close down for the day. He wondered what was up that everyone was returning to the boarding house.

  As Radak climbed up on the back porch, Slate slipped down the hall to the head of the stairs and listened. A minute or two passed, probably because Radak had pause on the back porch to removed his muddy galoshes, then he heard the man say, "Mr. Slate still in his room, Mrs. Rooney?"

  "Yes," the landlady said. To Slate's relief she made no mention of him having been out of it.

  "The others will be down in a few minutes," Radak's voice said.

  "You're closing the plant early today?" Ma Rooney asked.

  "We're expecting a visitor from our main plant. I got a phone call about it up above a while back. You won't mind if we use your front room for a business meeting, will you?"

  "No, of course not. I'll be doing my upstairs cleaning anyway."

  Anton Radak, carrying his raincoat, appeared at the foot of the stairs and started upward. Slate faded back down the hallway to his own room and had eased the door closed before Radak reached the top of the stairs.

  Inside his room Mark Slate mulled over the information that Radak expected a visitor from the main plant. Could it be Boris Rank or Dorcus Elias, or perhaps both? It would be disastrous if they found him here.

  Mark couldn't risk staying to find out who the expected visitor was. He decided to make a quick exit.

  There was an old newspaper on the writing table by the window. He wrapped his wet slacks in a piece of it, his soaked fishing hat in another piece and stuffed them into his suitcase. It took only moments to throw the rest of his stuff into the suitcase and latch it. Then he shook the remaining drops of water from his raincoat and put it on.

  As he carried the suitcase out into the hall, Anton Radak emerged from his room.

  "Leaving, Mr. Slate?" the thickset man asked in surprise.

  "I'm all rested up," Slate said easily, "I just decided to get an early start and catch my dinner in Barth."

  It would have been normal for Radak to make some mention of the continuing downpour and suggest that it might be safer to wait until it stopped. But he was so obviously relieved at the prospect of the unwelcome visitor getting out from underfoot, he made no comment.

  They went down the stairs together. Thin Kurt Shill, stout Josef Donner and young Rudolph Betz were just filing into the front room from the rear hall. All had left their galoshes on the back porch and were carrying their dripping raincoats.

  "Mr. Slate is leaving," Radak announced,

  This involved general good-bys and shaking hands all around. Slate paid Mrs. Rooney his board bill, told her good-by and was reaching for the front doorknob when the doorbell rang.

  He paused with his hand still outstretched. Then, because there was nothing else he could do, he finished the motion and pulled open the door.

  "Mark!" Dorcus Elias said in astonishment. "What are you doing here?"

  The woman was dressed in a transparent raincoat with a parka-type hood. Behind her the rain came down in sheets and there was another curtained jeep parked behind Slate's.

  "Dorcus!" Slate said with simulated enthusiasm. "How good to see you."

  Setting down his suitcase, he
took both her hands and drew her inside. She blushed flaming red when he tilted up her chin and kissed her solidly on the lips.

  "Mark!" she protested. "In front of people! What are you doing here?"

  "Little fishing vacation," he said.

  "But I was just leaving and I have to get to Barth in a hurry. Nice seeing you again. I have to run."

  Scooping up his suitcase, he went out and pulled the door closed behind him. But not before he heard Radak say, "How do you know that man?" and Dorcus reply, "He's a psychiatrist from Houston. We met---"

  The rest was cut off by the closing door.

  Slate was at the bottom of the porch steps when Anton Radak's cold voice said, "Mr. Slate."

  Slate halted and slowly looked over his shoulder into the muzzle of a thirty-eight pistol.

  "I think you had better rejoin us, Mr. Slate," Radak said frigidly. "We have some matters to discuss."

  Slate turned and went back up the steps. Radak had left the door standing open. Slate went in and set down his suitcase. His short time in the rain had left his hair dripping. He shook his head and sent a fine spray in all directions.

  Radak had followed Slate inside and had closed the door behind him. Ma Rooney was gazing at Radak's gun with her mouth open.

  "What is this?" the landlady inquired in a high voice.

  No one paid any attention to her. The four men were glowering at Slate. Dorcus' eyes were blazing at him.

  "So, Dr. Mark Slate," she hissed.

  "One day you are a psychiatrist from Houston, the next an auto salesman from Little Rock. What are you really? An U.N.C.L.E. agent?"

  "What's U.N.C.L.E.?" Slate asked innocently.

  Dorcus prowled toward him like a tigress. "You dare to mock me?" she shouted. "Do you think you had me fooled for a minute with your sweet talk? I knew what you were from the beginning. I merely played with you as a cat does with a mouse."

  Slate told her amiably, "You must be nutty, miss. I don't catch the picture."

  Dorcus turned pale with fury. "You are an U.N.C.L.E. agent! I should have known all along," she nearly squeaked. "You will die for this!"

  "What's going on here?" Ma Rooney inquired loudly.