The Dagger Affair - McDaniel David - Страница 24

Two hours later they had checked the fragments for fingerprints, ashes of fiber or hair, and subjected the charring to a mass-spectrum analyzer. The bottle itself was easily seen, from the remains of a label, to have originally contained Oak Barrel Muscatel, and this was verified by the analysis of the remaining material coating the glass.

But of fingerprints, fibers, or any other type of more specific identification of the last user, none could be found.

When Illya returned to the office level, Davis' secretary signaled him. "Mr. Solo and Mr. Waverly are here. Go right on in, please."

Inside, he found a layout similar to that in Los Angeles. Three heads turned as he entered the room, and he found himself being introduced.

"Welcome to San Francisco," said Jerry Davis, as he rose to shake hands. "I was just going over the situation with your fellow New Yorkers here, and touching on the subject of our relations with the local law enforcement people."

"Or you were about to," said Waverly.

"The point I was about to make," said Davis, resuming his seat, "is that things are somewhat different in San Francisco. Perhaps you can get away with a lot as far as New York's Finest are concerned, but the police here take a dim view of running gun battles up and down Market Street, bombs going off in public places, and bodies left on the City Hall steps at dawn." He shook his head disapprovingly. "Do you ever work in cooperation with the New York police on problems?"

Waverly frowned. "Our interests seldom overlap."

"We work with ours quite often. Perhaps the New York police are more tolerant in view of your admittedly unusual position, but the San Francisco police do not find us at all amusing."

He leaned forward. "Now, I'm not trying to tell you how your operation should be handled. But I feel you should know the situation. The police can be very helpful if you work with them, and they can also make things very awkward if you..." He shrugged. "You know."

"Do we?" Napoleon asked innocently. "You seem to be cautioning us against breaking any local ordinances. We're really not such desperate criminals as that, you know. In fact, we'll try to keep our gun battles on back streets, and we'll only shoot people who really deserve it. And more than that — we'll make every effort to inform the police of our intentions in advance."

"The problem is that our opponents may not abide by such civilized rules," Illya added. "In this battle — in all defensive battles — you must fight when and where your enemy wants to fight. It's a bad way to run a war, but it is required by convention. The sheriff must always let the bad man draw first."

Waverly leaned forward. "That's enough. Mr. Davis, let us drop the subject. Reports of our behavior in New York are somewhat exaggerated."

"Have you had any luck with the material Los Angeles sent up on DAGGER?" Napoleon asked, eager to change the subject.

"Garnet Keldur's list of contributors? We've checked out the local ones — with the help of the police — and as far as we can tell they all think they're supporting a charitable organization. About two-thirds of them think he's a harmless crackpot, just want some interesting donations to take off their income tax. The other third think he may actually have a line on some way of stopping atomic war — and most of them are harmless crackpots, but crackpots with money."

"He doesn't have a large following, then?"

"No idea. He could have a small army. We just haven't found any of them yet. All the funds contributed go through a lot of devious channels to get to wherever they are going." He tossed a few stapled sheets of paper on the table. "A few bits of identifiable money have turned up — here's the data."

Illya picked up the pages and leaned over to Napoleon so that they could both see them. Davis continued. "These are some stores where donation checks were cashed. Electronics supply stores — big ones. Never the same one twice."

Waverly asked, "And have you checked out the stores, their clientele, and the cashers of these checks? Have you sent men to talk with the donors?"

"Since the list here was only completed last night, we have scarcely had time. I was thinking your men might do some of the legwork .. ." He broke off as though he had been about to end the sentence with "...for a change," and then had thought better of it at the last instant.

All right, thought Napoleon. The glamour boys from the Head Office are being given a hard time. So we'll play along. He looked at Illya and raised his eyebrows. Illya gave a little shrug in answer and nodded. They both looked at Waverly.

Their superior also nodded, though without a great deal of enthusiasm; he turned to Davis and said, "Of course. Do them good."

* * *

"Yeah, I remember that. Ordinarily we don't cash checks, y'know, especially that big. But it was written locally, and we called the bank to see if it was okay. And the guy was real nice. Sharp, too. Knew just what he wanted, and got it. And he needed most all of that check for the stuff, too."

"Do you remember what it was he bought?" Illya asked.

The man pursed his lips, and stared at the ceiling while he blew out a long sigh, thinking hard. "Gosh, no. Not after all this time. There was a lot of heavy-duty stuff, I remember — I asked him if he was building his own power station or a 50-kilowatt transmitter. And what was it he said? Something about...Oh, yeah. He said, 'I have a big hi-fi rig.' Got a kick out of that."

"Anything besides simple components? Anything that wouldn't go into a hi-fi rig?"

"No...not that I can...Wait a minute. He wanted half a dozen GX 40 B9 tubes, and we didn't have any. That's a kind of unusual tube — it's a multi-stage internal resonator with a real high inductive reactance field. Not much call for it from our customers. I told him he might try Charmolian Electronics over in Oakland — they have a good stock of special-order items."

"And did he?"

"Gee, I wouldn't know. You would have to check with them. He probably did, though — he was pretty bugged 'cause we didn't have those tubes, and he sure wanted 'em. Here, I'll give you their address. Charmolian'd remember — something funny like that."

* * *

Meanwhile, Napoleon Solo was more pleasurably engaged. A mansion sat amid the trees in the mountains above Oakland, looking over the city to the shining sheet of water that was the Bay, and the rising mound of San Francisco far away through the haze. And out on the sun deck a girl lay basking, with plastic eye-cups protecting her vision from the beautiful view.

Napoleon crouched beside her, talking intently. It had taken a good bit of intent talking already to get this far. She didn't want visitors, and she didn't care who they were. She had never heard of U.N.C.L.E., and didn't want to. She didn't know who can Keldur was, and she never gave to charities. But at least she was now lying still again and listening. Napoleon gave silent thanks for that correspondence course in salesmanship, and kept talking.

* * *

"GX 40 B9?" The man behind the counter frowned. "I don't know anything about that. Let me get Mr. Charmolian for you. He takes care of all our special items — knows the whole stock by heart." He disappeared, and a fraction of a minute later was replaced by a man about four feet tall and four feet wide. He bounced like a rubber ball.

"What do you know about those GX 40 B9s?" he squeaked. "Are you from the police?"