The Mad Scientist Affair - Philifrent John T - Страница 15

“That’s my odd-job man, honey. Illya Kuryakin—Sarah O’Rourke.”

“I hope you’re not as bloody-minded as your cousin Bridget,” Illya murmured, inclining his head a fraction. “Is she, Napoleon?”

“Not this one. King Mike was saving the pair of us for a few of his gruesome experiments. She’s on our side. How’d you get in here?”

“Up through the laboratory floor. It seemed the easiest way. Do you have anything to linger for?”

“Not a thing, and this place is stuffed tight with Irish shotgunners. Let’s get out of here, fast!”

“What about the Mafia here?”

“He can snore in our place. It won’t hurt him any.” Solo slid the tray inside with a foot, swung the door shut and shoved the bar across. “That’s that. Lead on!”

They hurried into the laboratory, where Illya showed them the hole under the bench. “Goes down into the drain and then along for half a mile. You go ahead; I want to leave a farewell gift. I’ll be right after you.”

He watched them go down, then began fumbling out more gear. A small but heavy box went up against the door. The rest of the plastic explosive was packed around it. Wires. A tiny timing mechanism which he set by his watch. He moved now, on an afterthought picking up one of the cans of beer. Then he slid swiftly down into the hole and flashed his light ahead. Solo and Sarah were well away, and they all scrambled faster with the aid of the light. He caught up to them just as they stumbled out into the cool night under the small bridge. The stream gurgled quietly. The air was pleasant on their warm faces.

“Just a minute,” Illya estimated, holding his watch steady, seeing the seconds tick away. There came a sullen rumble and a great drumming blast of air along the pipe, a shock through the ground, and a distant roar in the air. “It was only a small bomb,” he said regretfully. “Not enough to blow up a whole castle; But it will ruin the laboratory, and puzzle them a bit.”

“I feel a lot better just for that,” Solo said. “Better still when I see that yon Italian lunkhead had at least the good sense to bring back my own gun. We’d better travel, Illya. How are we fixed for mobility?”

“I’ve a small pickup about five minutes’ walk down this road. Come on. Anybody got an opener, by the way?” He flourished the beer-can, and Solo snatched it from him with a stifled curse, tossed it into the stream and took aim on it. The pistol coughed in his hand, and there came a plunk from the can.

“Not for you, old man,” he said. “I’ll explain in a minute. First—can you locate the brewery from here?”

“I think so. Urgent?”

“Very much. Six thousand dozen cans of 3-B are due to ship out any time now, overland. We have to stop that shipment, somehow.”

“You haven’t suddenly gone Prohibitionist, have you, Napoleon? I can’t blame you for not feeling affectionate towards King Mike, but that’s no reason to knock his beer, is it?”

“You don’t know what’s in the stuff,” Solo growled. “All the beer in those cans is doped with Mike’s molecules.” He went on to fill in the background and his own reasoning as they scrambled up the bankside and across the road. Kuryakin listened intently, and nodded.

“Sounds logical,” he agreed. “Have you any idea just what the stuff does? I had word from U.N.C.L.E. One, but just the hint that it could be a hallucinogen. That’s vague enough. Do you know anything more?”

“Plenty!” Solo retorted, with feeling. “This is one of the best. It’s nothing more or less than canned courage exaggerated out of all reason. King Mike tried one on me without warning. It’s dynamite!” He went on to describe and catalogue his “symptoms” as clearly as he could be objective about them, but stressed that he had felt perfectly normal at the time.

“You’re quite sure you weren’t drunk?”

“On one can of beer? Slightly less than half a pint? What do you think? But I felt like a regiment of giants eager and willing to take on the Chinese menace all by myself. I could have walked through walls. In actual fact”—he grinned ruefully—“I was slowed up so much that Foden was hitting me whenever and however he wanted to.”

They reached the truck and Kuryakin slid into the driving seat, Sarah scrambled in beside him, and Solo got in last of all, slamming the door shut. And then he snorted in a way that made Kuryakin look at him critically and ask, “Something on your mind, Napoleon?”

“Yeah. The dope is finally wearing off, and the pattern has sprung a few stitches. Try this for size, Illya. King Mike is no fool, but a crafty old planner. He is about to ship six thousand dozen cans of doped beer to be transported to England. We know what that stuff can do. We can imagine what the result will be. I will even allow that this is a mass demonstration put on by the old man to show Thrush his muscles. But—”

“But what?”

“Think what’s going to happen next. Death and disaster on a large and shocking scale, right? Then the law starts to check back. What’s their first question in an auto accident, say, or any kind of accident that seems to be caused by recklessness? ‘Was he drinking?’ And sooner or later, they’re going to tie in the coincidences, and pin the blame right on 3-B. Which means Mike is in trouble. At the least, financial ruin. At worst, multiple manslaughter. Of course, most of the damage will be done by then, but all the same, it’s sloppy thinking on his part. Or is it?”

“On the contrary.” Kuryakin smiled slightly as he stared out into the dark. “It’s actually very crafty psychology on the old man’s part. I was on a job in England just recently. They are currently very concerned about drunken driving, and working on some efficient way of telling whether a man is drunk or not. You’d never convince them that one can of beer would have any effect on a man. They just wouldn’t believe it.”

“And Uncle Mike did say,” Sarah offered, “that no chemist would ever be able to detect anything amiss, either in the man or the beer!”

“That I can believe,” Kuryakin nodded. “Fractional traces are hard to find, even when you know what to look for. Interesting stuff.” He glanced at Solo. “I wonder how it would affect someone who’s not naturally conceited?”

“What’s in the back of the truck?” Solo asked, ignoring the gibe.

“Portable generator and assorted items of mayhem.” They moved off and gathered speed. “You never know what you might need, to get into a castle.” They rolled on a while in amicable silence, these two who were so unlike in temperament yet so close in spirit. Sarah sat shivering between them, even now hardly able to believe the nightmare was over for a while.

“Do you think,” she asked quietly, “that Uncle Mike actually had it in mind to kill me?”

“We’ll never know that,” Napoleon said. “And, for my part, I’d just as soon leave it that way. One thing’s certain. He intends to kill a whole lot of people with that beer shipment unless we can figure out some way to stop it.” They came to a low crest and he called gently, “Hold it, Illya. Isn’t that the brewery down there, Sarah?” They were looking down over a great square space filled with orderly blocks of buildings, all neat and functional. Most of it lay in darkness, but there was one comer where lights burned and people moved about their business. She stared down.

“That’s it,” she declared. “And there’s something going on. That’s the loading gate, there. And the lorries, see?”

“Get going!” Solo snapped, and the little truck roared into speed down the gentle slope. Those black masses down there triggered an instant and ghastly suspicion in his mind. The beer was loading up right now. Headlights stabbed at them from a bend, and Kuryakin hauled the truck over to hug the roadside as a small van went roaring past in the other direction.

“What will you bet,” he offered mildly, “that they’re on their way to help out at the castle?”

“Rescue operations? It could be. We might be able to use that idea.” The truck hit the flat now and roared around a bend to pull into a long straight road that lay alongside a high wire and steel fence. On ahead they saw the red warning of tail-lights, and those lights were moving.