The Thousand Coffins Affair

THE BADLY DRESSED CORPSE

“What are you thinking about now, Solo?”

“The same thing you must be.”

“The corpse?”

“Yes. Any other time I would be thinking of you. But Stew’s corpse was enough to throw me into a tailspin. The fantastically quick decomposition…and the clothes. They were to mean something. He isn’t dressed that way because he was an eccentric.”

They were sitting quietly in the parlor of Herr Muller’s home, enjoying the solitude of each other’s company and a blissful cigarette. The smoke filled the air with lazy spirals of unbroken perfection until they collided with the beamed ceiling. Like most rural German homes, the Burgomeister’s house was mostly wooden.

Solo had had a frantic two hours upon their return from Stewart Fromes’ place. There had been the matter of the coffin. A cheap pine box, shaped nearly like a mummy case. With the mortician’s help and Jerry Terry’s aid, they had placed Steward Fromes in the coffin. Finally, they had secured enough ice to defer further decomposition for a few more hours. Solo had found some plastic bags in Fromes’ workshop which served. He had nothing more to do with the corpse other than to examine the reversed clothes. But there was nothing immediately apparent. No messages, no scraps of paper, no clues. Yet he knew for a fact that back in the U.N.C.L.E. laboratory something would be uncovered. Perhaps Stewart had treated his clothes with fluorescent materials or chemicals which would turn up under black light. It couldn’t end like this. Thrush hadn’t dressed him that way to be found by his friends. They weren’t in the business of leaving clues. No — the clothes had been Stew’s idea. Why?

Napoleon Solo didn’t know.

All he experienced now was a vast weariness of brain, limb and soul. He blinked across the room at Jerry Terry.

She was smiling at him. “If you want to talk, I’ll listen. We should both be tucked in our beds but you look like a man who can’t sleep — too much thinking to do.”

“Something like that,” he admitted.

“Any ideas?”

He puffed on the cigarette. “A few. The kind of things you have to drum up when you’re in the dark. I’m thinking about Stewart Fromes. What kind of a man he was — whatever I can remember about him. It’s screwy but I suddenly realize a lot of water has gone over the dam and we didn’t have much of a chance to get friendlier.”

“What was he like?” she asked softly.

“Brilliant. Won a medal in Korea. Majored in chemistry at Cornell, came out near the head of his class. He’d been with U.N.C.L.E. for nearly ten years. He was a bachelor, though he was almost hooked by a Hollywood actress once. That was his broken-heart period. He liked the Yankees, was a good golfer and—” Solo sat up, his eyes narrowing—“was an inveterate reader of mystery novels. Everything and anything. Fact is, we used to kid him about it.”

“You’ve thought of something?”

“Maybe.”

“Something constructive?”

It was odd, but the spurring softness of her voice filtering across the quiet room helped immensely. She was a sounding board for any and all ideas he might come up with — even crazy ones.

“I think so. But I’ll have to sleep on it.”

She, laughed lightly. “That’s a good one. Sleep where? The Burgomeister has no extra beds. I imagine these chairs are it for the rest of the night.”

He looked toward the windows. A dull glow of approaching dawn made the squared area ghostly

“German hospitality still has a Nazi flavor in some areas, I suppose. Just as well. You never know when you’re shaking hands with a man who stood by those ovens. It’s a creepy sensation. This chair will do me fine.”

“Napoleon—“

“I’m still here.”

She had left her chair to glide softly across the room. She was before him in an instant. A beautiful pixie with coppery hair and hauntingly lovely face. The crude lamps of the parlor made her face glow like some bronze goddess. She put her hands to his cheeks, bent and kissed him swiftly on the lips.

“We’re even now,” she whispered.

“New breed, huh?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Just what does that mean?”

“Well, you see what you want and you take it. I’m all for new breeds. Can’t tell. A little judicious mating and future generations may turn out not half bad—“

She was starting to get angry, color mounting in her cheeks. His bantering manner caused her to push away, averting her face. Solo laughed, reached out and pulled her back. He held her tightly so that her body was crushed against his own in the narrow confines of the chair. She squirmed, trying to get away from him, but he held her easily, almost as though she were a child.

He turned her around to face him, and said, “I really did mean that as a compliment, you know. If it didn’t sound completely serious, that’s only because of a peculiar quirk of mine — too many people I like have ended up dead, so I try not to take important things seriously anymore.”

“You’re a stinker,” she murmured, all the fight gone out of her.

“Takes one to know one, doesn’t it, Miss Terry?”

The chair was not the best place in the world to discover suddenly that they liked each other very much.

But they managed.

The utter stillness of the morning was staggering in its quietude. For a metropolitan man used to the throb and roar of big cities and thundering sidewalks, it proved a genuine soporific. Napoleon Solo had to be awakened.

He opened his eyes to see Jerry Terry’s lovely smile just inches from his eye.

“We have bacon and eggs,” she said happily. “Come on. Coffee’s on the boil and the good Mullers, both him and her, are off to City Hall to see about arrangements for getting us out of here.”

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and running fingers through his sleep-mussed hair.

Abruptly, the girl said, “Is Napoleon your real name?”

He pretended to be hurt. “Don’t you like it?”

“I love it. I simply noticed that you have the Bonaparte hairdo. That dark little forelock that dangles on your forehead.”

“I’ll cut it off,” he promised.

“You do and I’ll never talk to you again,” she vowed. “Come on. There’s a Civil War sink in the kitchen.”

The light, flippant talk was good. It helped drive away the worries, doubts and fears. The food was even better. Herr Burgomeister had a stocked larder that in another period of history would have made him suspected of black market affiliations.

Jerry Terry bustled around the kitchen, setting places and pouring coffee with all the animated enthusiasm of a new bride. Solo smiled in memory. The analogy would serve. The first time was always somehow, the best time. It had an aura of magic all its own.

“More coffee?”

“Please. Dare I hope there’s a wireless office in town? Strikes me I’d better get in touch with my people.”

“All you can do is ask Mr. Muller when he gets back.”

“Did you notice a railroad when we flew in last night?”

She shook her head. “It’s hard to tell from that altitude. Especially at night. But there has to be one around somewhere.”

He smiled grimly. “That ice won’t last forever. We have to do something, and quick. Unless our Mr. Waverly has a few rabbits up his sleeve.”

“Mr. Waverly?”

“My section chief. I’m sure he’s thought of something. What time do you have?” He checked his own wrist watch.

“Eleven fifteen.”

“Same here. Our watches are synchronized. Now, I’ll finish this coffee and we’ll shoot over to see about Fromes and that cablegram I have to send. Failing that, the phone is my next best bet.”

The coffin was secure on the wooden table where they had left it. Ignoring the cackling mortician who was asking in broken English what it was all about, Solo lifted the lid and re-examined Stewart Fromes.

The mixture was as before. The dead chemist looked as ghastly as before and his clothes still remained in their peculiar fixed reversal of the norm. It was uncanny. Fortunately, the ice seemed to have helped. The unpleasant odor of death was somewhat subdued.

“Jerry,” Solo said, without turning. “Would you ask the Herr Mortician to point out the direction of the cable office? Or someplace where we can use a phone?” She caught on quickly. Within seconds, she had charmed the old man from the room. Solo bent quickly over Stewart Fromes and made a closer survey than he had the night before.

The hands were hopelessly stiff. The decaying process was working fast. Fromes had worn no rings and his fingers were empty. His throat was free of pendants, lockets or identification disks of any kind. Solo worked quickly down the length of the body to the naked feet. It was there that he took his greatest effort. One by one, he pried the locked toes apart. It was gruesome work. Fromes’ flesh felt flaccid and loose, as if it would come apart at the touch of a finger.

Stewart Fromes had large feet but he had managed to keep them clean and fairly uncalloused. The toenails were in excellent condition. But between his fourth and little toe on the right foot, Napoleon Solo found the one item he was looking for. It was a repellant task but it had to be done.

A silver pellet, looking as innocuous as a B-B shot, fell into his palm. He held it up to the light, revolving it, his eyebrows knit in fierce concentration.

Here again was an intangible.

Had the pellet accidentally wedged itself between the corpse’s toes at some time prior to death? Had it been placed there to be found? By whom? Fromes…the enemy — or who?

There was no more time to guess. Jerry Terry was coming back, the mortician in tow, with Herr Muller bouncing excitedly behind them. The scrawny Burgomeister looked unhappy about something.

Napoleon Solo arched his eyebrows.

“Solo,” Jerry Terry said, there are merely three telephones in this thriving little town. Two are unavailable to us now because the people are away and Herr Burgomeister says his phone is on the blink. As for places where one can send telegrams—” She shook her head in sad negation.

That’s nice,” he said, pinning the Burgomeister with a look. “Where is the nearest place where we can contact civilization?”

Herr Muller forced an apologetic smile and held up his ten thin fingers.

“Ten kilometers. Bad Winzberg. I get car-truck. Drive you.”

“That’s good to know. Let me think a minute. There must be some better way—”

“The plane?” Jerry Terry asked.

He shook his head. “It wasn’t meant to ferry coffins. We can’t have Stew banging around like a load of apples. No, there has to be a better way. And I must contact my people—”

Herr Muller’s eyes took on a crafty gleam.

“You bury here. Why not? Fine cemetery. Later you dig up, re-bury in America, nicht yahr?”

Solo hesitated, visibly. “What cemetery?”

Herr Muller’s eyes widened in pride.

“You don’t know? Orangeberg. Biggest cemetery in all this part of country. Back in wartime was left by Allies. Three, maybe four hundred dead there. Not far. We reach there in half hour from here. Close to Black Forest.”

“You mean a cemetery for American soldiers. War memorial?” Solo had never heard of one in this part of the world, but then, he had not heard of everything.

“Nein, nein,” Herr Muller protested, with the mortician adding his gutturals to the chorus. “Our cemetery. For our people. Very nice there. You see. Like, like—” He searched for a proper word. “Like your Arlington in America!”

Jerry Terry looked at Napoleon Solo. Her face was faintly bemused but her eyes held refusal.

“Thanks for the offer, Herr Muller. But it’s no dice. I must take my friend back to the States. And right away. Now, if you’ll see about that truck, we’ll get him ready.”

Herr Muller was pained. “You will not reconsider—“

“Sorry. No.”

“But, but—”

The spluttering of Herr Muller was suddenly drowned out in the mammoth roar of a motor directly overhead — a thundering, blasting boom of sound which seemed to make the four walls of the mortuary rattle. A dish fell somewhere and a tin cup clattered. Jerry Terry shouted with pleasure as Solo raced to the doorway for a look.

High overhead, he could see the briskly clawing giant helicopter as it climbed quickly over the rooftops of the town. There was no mistaking the circling pattern of the flight. Solo stood and watched, smiling widely as he made out the American insignia and markings of the Air-Sea Rescue. By God, he would get Stewart Fromes home after all.

“Mr. Waverly,” he muttered feelingly, “thank you, very much.”