The man exposed large yellow teeth in a smile.
"You want to get out of here?" The smile broadened into an eager grin. "You take Juan back to home, Mark?"
He said, "Sure, Juan. But we'll have to be very quiet. If they hear us, they'll lock both of us up again."
Juan nodded. "I be very quiet. I walk like mouse."
He pulled on a pair of heavy shoes lying next to his pallet, tied them, concentrating on the job like a six-year-old, then rose to his feet.
Slate led the man up the stone stairway to the heavy oaken door there. The door was closed but unlocked. The rasping of the un-oiled springs seemed to Slate to reverberate throughout the building when he pushed it open, but no one came to investigate.
Bulbs in several of the candelabra along the hallway were burning. Lights were still on in the huge banquet room at the end of the hall.
Slate moved quietly along the corridor. At its end he motioned Juan to stay back while he peeked around the corner. Apparently everyone but Moreno had gone to bed, because the room was empty.
An archway on the opposite side of the room led into a foyer beyond which was the only entrance to the building. This was an enormous double door, barred from inside by a four-by-four oaken beam resting in iron brackets bolted to either side of the door.
Slate had Juan get on one end of the beam. He took hold of the other. As quietly as possible they lifted it from its brackets and set it on the floor. The hinges of this main door were well-oiled, Slate discovered when he pushed one side of the great double door open. It moved easily and silently.
He looked out into the moonlit courtyard, started to step outside, then paused. A huge Irish wolfhound lay on the flagstones at the base of the short, flight of steps leading down to the courtyard. The beast raised its head, looked up at Slate and growled.
"Nice doggie," Slate whispered hopefully.
The animal heaved to its feet, placed its forepaws on the lowest step and exposed fangs in a snarl. The snarl brought three more hulking, hairy shapes from the shadows to investigate what was going on.
They all rested forepaws on the lowest step and stared up at Slate, their lips curling backward.
"Nice doggies," Slate whispered, and risked a step forward.
The dog who had been lying at the base of the steps, apparently the leader of the pack, instantly charged. The others followed his lead. Slate barely had time to step back inside and jerk the door closed when heavy bodies hit it from outside.
A series of low growls came from the other side of the door. At least the dogs didn't seem to have the habit of barking, Slate thought gratefully. If his sudden slamming of the door hadn't awakened anyone, it was unlikely the dogs' growling would.
Going over to the archway into the banquet hall, he looked toward the broad stairway leading to the second floor and listened. When there was no sound from above and no sign of anyone, he returned to the door and motioned Juan to lift his end of the oaken beam. Together they set it back in its brackets.
"There should be some way to get up on top of the wall from upstairs," Slate whispered. "We'll have to go that way."
He led the way across the banquet room and up the broad stairway to the second floor. Two bulbs were burning in candelabra in the upper corridor. There was no sound and no one was in sight.
Slate estimated by its location that the room immediately to their left, at the top of the stairs, would look out over the castle's front wall. There would still be the problem of getting down from the wall and across the alligator-infested moat, but he planned to tackle those problems as he reached them. At least this route would get them out of the tower and at the same time keep them beyond the reach of the wolfhounds.
The door was closed. Slate eased it open a crack, but could see nothing because the room was dark. Cautiously he pushed it farther open until light from the hall spilled inside.
The light fell on a huge, high-backed bed similar to the one in which he had awakened from his drugged sleep.
Unfortunately the occupant of the bed was a light sleeper. The instant the glow from the hall touched his face, he sat bolt upright, swept a pair of thick-lensed spectacles from a bedside stand and slipped them on his nose. Slate tensed to rush the man, then abruptly changed his mind when Barth made a second quick grab for the bedside table.
Instead he pulled the door closed with a bang just as the gun swung toward him.
TEN
LAST CALL.
Come on," Slate said to Juan, and headed down the corridor at a dead run.
There was no further point in stealth. When he reached the room overlooking the side wall of the castle, he slapped his palm down on the latch and hit it with his shoulder.
Luckily it was unlocked. The door crashed open and he stumbled into the room. Juan scurried through behind him an instant before a shot sounded from up the hall and a bullet smashed into the door frame.
Slate slammed the door, felt for the inside bolt and shoved it home.
The room was in darkness, but moonlight outlined the single high, narrow window. As Slate moved toward it, bedsprings creaked and Consuela Cortez's husky voice said, "Who is that? What is going on?"
Slate was at the window then.
Originally it no doubt had been glassless, but it had been fitted with a modern cantilever frame. It was wide open and there was no screen.
Three feet below he saw the welcome sight of the yard-wide top of the castle wall.
He had dropped to the wall and Juan was scrambling through the window after him when a lamp went on in the room behind them. Simultaneously a pounding came from the bedroom door and Barth's voice yelled, "Consuelo!"
Juan jumped down to the wall and they raced along it toward the rear tower.
The distance between the two towers was about a hundred and fifty feet. As the rear towers had been restored only externally, there was no window glass to impede them here. Slate scrambled through into a musty smelling room and helped Juan through the window behind him.
Slate looked back to see the skull-faced Barth, wearing pajamas and slippers and with a gun in his hand, climbing from Consuelo's window.
By the moonlight streaming through the window Slate could see there was no furniture in the room. The floor was heavy with dust. There was the sound of a rat scurrying into the corridor.
There were heavy oaken shutters which opened inward. Since the castle was some four hundred years old and these probably were the original shutters, Slate was a little dubious about them working effectively.
Half expecting them to fall from their rusted hinges the moment he attempted to move them, he reached out with both hands to pull them closed.
Although they moved stiffly and the hinges made a shriek of protest, he was pleasantly surprised to find that they still worked. At first the inside bolt refused to slide home, but when he struck it with the heel of his hand it moved slightly. By working it back and forth he managed to get it halfway home before it balked at moving any farther. This was enough to lock it, however.
With the shutters closed the room was pitch dark. Slate felt in his trouser pockets and was agreeably surprised to find that his captors had left him a packet of matches.
By match light he led the way into the corridor and up it to the room overlooking the castle's rear wall. By the flickering flame they could see countless animal tracks in the dust of the corridor, and could hear the rustling of rats in the various rooms they passed.
The shutters of the window over-looking the rear wall hadn't survived the centuries. One side was still in place, but the other had rusted from its hinges and had fallen to the floor.
Slate and Juan dropped down onto the rear wall and ran toward the next tower. Halfway there, a fusillade of shots sounded from the direction of the side wall. Slate assumed it was Barth firing at them, but the man must have been a poor shot, because not a single slug came close enough for him to hear its passage.
Then they had reached the next tower and had scramble
d inside through the window. Looking back, Slate saw Barth ineffectively pushing at the bolted shutters of the tower they had just left.
The ancient shutters were still in place here. Again Slate had some difficulty with them, but he managed to get them closed and bolted. Again he led the way by match light along a corridor to the room overlooking the second sidewall. This corridor showed rat tracks too, and they could hear the rodents scurrying about in the rooms they passed.
Sancho Moreno had mentioned that the servants occupied the other front tower. As they reached the window overlooking the wall running between the tower they were in and the one housing the servants, Slate saw that a number of lights had gone on. Either Barth's shooting had awakened them, or Consuelo had alerted them by phone, for a man with a shotgun appeared in the window at the opposite end of the wall.
As he dropped down to the wall and started to move their way, Slate recognized him as his and April's studio tour guide, Pedro Martinez.
Slate tested the shutters at this window, found them in even better shape than the other two operable pair, closed them and bolted them.
Lighting another match, he told Juan to follow him and led the way downstairs. The door into the court-yard was still intact and was barred by an oaken beam.
Exploration of the first floor disclosed that no windows overlooked the courtyard. The ones on the other side of the tower were directly over the moat, whose water was about fifteen feet below. In the moonlight a half dozen alligators could be seen lying on the far banks. Slate decided they didn't have to worry about invasion from that way.
"Well, I guess we can't get out, Juan," Slate said. "But they can't get in either, unless they come up with a battering ram. Let's go up to the third floor and see what's going on."
When the rented car reached the curve in the road just before the castle, Illya Kuryakin turned it around and parked it in the same spot the taxicab had parked earlier. April, Solo and Kuryakin all got out and walked up the road to the drawbridge.
All the windows on the first two floors of both front towers were ablaze with lights.
Napoleon Solo said, "Must be having a party."
"Something is going on," April said. "Only a few lights in the right tower were burning when I was here before."
One of the monstrous alligators, possibly the same one which had first tried to make a meal of April, since it was lying in wait in the same spot, came lumbering over the bank of the moat when he heard them approach.
Solo drew his U.N.C.L.E. gun, aimed at the gaping jaws from a distance of four feet and squeezed the trigger.
Following the low popping sound of the gun, the beast's jaws clapped shut and it slid tail first back down into the water, where it lay inert, half in and half out.
Kuryakin said in a low voice, "Keep your eye out for others. I'm going to have my attention directed upward."
He slipped his arm from the left sleeve of his jacket, removed the rope coiled around his shoulder and put the jacket back on. After forming one end of the rope into a large noose, he looked up at the drawbridge.
The U.N.C.L.E. gun popped again and a second monster slid back down the bank to lie still. Kuryakin didn't even glance down at it. Twirling the noose over his head several times, he cast it upward in a perfect, effortless throw. The noose settled over a corner of the raised drawbridge. A jerk on the rope tightened it into place.
"I didn't know you had ever been a cowboy," April whispered.
"I have a hundred small, unappreciated talents," Illya whispered back.
He tested the grip of the noose by giving the end of the rope several hard tugs, then handed the rope to Napoleon Solo.
"You're heavier than I am," he said. "So you be anchor man."
Solo gave a final glance both ways along the bank of the moat. When he spotted no more of the reptiles, he put away his gun. Winding the end of the rope about his right hand, he gripped it with his left also, drew it taut, then braced his feet and leaned backward until it was as tense as a violin string.
The rope slanted upward across the moat at about a thirty-degree angle.
Illya Kuryakin stepped to the edge of the bank, took hold of the rope with both hands and pulled himself along it hand over hand. When he reached the upraised edge of the drawbridge, he pulled himself up on it and straddled it.
"I guess you're next," Solo said to April.
April had caught a slight movement to her right. "Just a minute," she said, and drew from her purse the U.N.C.L.E. gun she had recovered from the hairy Dingo.
A twelve-foot alligator surged over the bank not three feet from her. When its enormous jaws spread, she fired a sleep dart down its throat. It reared up, fell heavily on its side, then rolled over and over down the bank into the water.
April carefully searched the bank in both directions before putting the gun away. Then she slipped the strap of her purse over her wrist, let it slide up to her shoulder and took hold of the rope with both hands. Swinging her feet out over the water, she worked her way across.
Illya reached down to grab both her wrists and effortlessly pulled her one hundred and eight pounds up alongside of him.
"How am I supposed to get across?" Napoleon Solo called softly.
"You don't," Illya called back in an equally soft voice. "We'll need you over there as anchor man in case we have to come back by the same route."
Because the drawbridge leaned outward from the base of the wall at an angle, Illya Kuryakin and April Dancer were perched about four feet out from the wall. The chains which raised and lowered the bridge slanted upward to giant pulleys on top of the wall, however. Illya scrambled up one with the agility of a monkey, then held down his hand to assist April up beside him on top of the wall.
They crouched side by side in the shadow of one of the giant pulleys and viewed the moonlit castle and courtyard.
Considerable activity was going on at the left hand rear tower.
Six figures stood on the side wall next to the tower. One, in a dressing robe, April recognized as Consuelo Cortez, even at that distance. A man, also in a robe, with pajama legs showing beneath it, she identified as the cadaverous Barth.
The other four, all men, were fully dressed. One, who was carrying a shotgun, turned his profile to them as he said something to Barth, and, April recognized him as their studio tour guide, Pedro Martinez.
"I don't see Sancho Moreno," she whispered to Illya. "But that woman is Consuelo Cortez. The man in robe and pajamas is Barth and the one with the shotgun is Pedro Martinez."
"You don't know any of the others?" he whispered back.
She shook her head. "Just some of Moreno's goons, I imagine."
Three of the men were raising a ladder from the top of the wall to the sill of the tower's third-story window. A series of low growls caused April and Illya to glance down into the courtyard. Immediately below them four huge Irish wolfhounds paced back and forth, glaring up at them.
Fortunately the backs of the entire group on the wall were to April and Kuryakin, and the dogs' growling was too low-toned to attract anyone's attention. Illya put his finger to his lips, rose from his crouched position and climbed over the giant pulley. After helping April over it, he moved silently toward the tower to their left. April tiptoed after him.
Below the pack of dogs followed along, growling up at them.
When they reached the tower, they found a long, narrow window about three feet above the wall. It was a cantilever window and was wide open. Illya Kuryakin cautiously peered into the room, then lightly vaulted up onto the sill. He held down one hand to assist April up.
A bedside lamp was burning in the room. The bedclothes were disarranged as though someone had been sleeping there, but the bed was empty. Through the open door they could see a lighted corridor.
Illya peered into the hall, then led the way along it, warily peering around the edge of each door they passed. The rooms were not occupied, although lights were on in several and there were empty beds with disarran
ged bed clothing.
Illya turned into the room at the end of the corridor after checking it. It too was a bedroom and an overhead light burned in it. Apparently this was an unoccupied room, though, for the bed was made up neatly.
The window of this room over-looked the side wall. When they peered out, only five people were now on the other end of the wall. A man was steadying the ladder from either side and a third leaned his weight against it.
Consuela and Barth were staring straight upward.
Pedro Martinez, still carrying his shotgun, was nearly to the top of the ladder.
Suddenly a figure appeared, standing in the third-story window. Gripping the frame on both sides, he put his foot against the upper rung of the ladder.
"That's Mark!" April exclaimed. "So it is," Illya said calmly.
"That blood on his vest must have been someone else's."
Barth aimed a pistol upward, but was unable to fire because the man at the top of the ladder was in the way. Mark Slate's foot shoved outward. The men at the base or the ladder made a desperate effort to hold it in place, but the weight of the man on top of it was too much for them. Slowly it toppled backward.
The man in front of the ladder suddenly realized it was going to topple over on him. Releasing his grip, he turned, slipped between Consuela and Barth and began to run toward April and Kuryakin. Losing his help, the other two men abandoned any further hope of holding it. Releasing their grips, they backed against the tower.
Consuela realized the danger next and began to flee after the man who had preceded her. It took Barth a moment longer to realize he was directly in line of the falling ladder, then he turned and began to run after Consuela.
The shotgun hit the top of the wall stock first, discharged harmlessly upward and bounced down into the courtyard. Pedro, still clinging to the ladder, hit an instant later.
Two of the figures fleeing from the falling ladder managed to make it. But the falling man crashed down right on top of Barth.
There were yells of pain; then both figures, plus the ladder, tumbled off the wall into the moat. A flurry of threshing sounds followed the splashes.
The Velvet Voice Affair Page 11
