The Thousand Coffins Affair

SEND HIM TO THE CEMETERY

London fog settled like a blanket over the city. The “ruddy pea-soups” of legend and fact had closed lovingly over buildings, cobbled streets and historic landmarks. The Cumberland Hotel sat squarely in the center of the heaviest concentration of the vapors. The fog did not swirl or dance or filter. It hung curtain-like over London town.

Waverly, ensconced behind a glass-topped desk in a suite of rooms on the fourth floor, was holding court. He was dressed once more in his familiar tweeds, yet there was something jaunty about his manner. The red carnation adorning his lapel lent a touch of joviality seldom seen by his colleagues, to his appearance.

Seated at various points of the modernistically furnished room were Napoleon Solo, Jerry Terry and Illya Kuryakin. Solo wore a dark suit of conservative cut and a sober powder blue tie. His face was as unlined and freshly handsome as ever. Jerry Terry, her long copper hair neatly bound with a red headband, looked beautiful and invulnerable in a beige woolen sheath dress. The contrasting white sling in which her right arm was cradled somehow seemed an afterthought rather than a necessity.

Kuryakin’s attire was less unkempt than usual. He had managed to appear in a pressed, clean suit of indeterminate gray. The atmosphere was cordial and friendly. Smoke from Solo’s cigarette filled the air.

“So Partridge got you out, Solo,” Waverly concluded.

“Partridge got us out,” Solo amended, winding his account of the adventure into a neat summarization of the facts. Waverly had evinced keen interest when Golgotha had entered the narration. Even Kuryakin had never seen Waverly so drawn out before.

“Golgotha. We’ve been waiting for his hand in this. High time, too. Thrush had to enlist a man of his stripe sooner or later.”

“He’s a new one on me, sir,” Solo remarked, smiling at Jerry Terry. Memory of that flight in the MIG made him wince — wrestling with unfamiliar controls and fighting to stanch the flow of blood from her shoulder with his free hand to keep her from bleeding to death. It was all over — for the time being. They could breathe free for a bit. “I’ve never heard of Golgotha.”

“Kuryakin,” Waverly murmured.

The young Russian smiled at Solo and the girl.

“Napoleon, Golgotha is Fromes’ opposite number. An absolutely brilliant chemist. Security has had him on file for years, at least up until there was a fire-explosion in his laboratory in Budapest in ’54. He’s been out of sight since then. Everyone assumed he was alive but had somehow been disfigured in the blast. We’ve been waiting for him to show up with Thrush. He’s exactly the sort of man they would find use for — brilliant, embittered, and hungry for some sort of fame in his own field.”

“You think he’s come up with some super-drug that scored so heavily in Utangaville and Spayerwood?”

“It’s a safe guess at this writing, Napoleon. The man’s a wizard and our lab results check out to something frightening. In fact, if we don’t find the stockpile of this unknown element, the world is in for a jarring time.”

Solo frowned at Waverly. “Fromes’ pellet?”

“Yes, Solo,” his chief said heavily. “Our worst fears are realized now. Thrush has found a blood catalyst which causes a man to literally lose his mind and all sense of mental coordination. Lord knows what a sight those two towns must have been with the entire populace running amuck. And they’ve been improving their methods since then — decomposition of the body is now speeded up to less than twenty-four hours of full cyclic effect. Fromes is no more than a skeleton now.’

Solo restrained a visible shudder. “What was in the pellet?”

Kuryakin laughed harshly.

“What good would the chemical composition do you, Napoleon? It’s enough to say that it is a never-before-known agent. The lab is trying to break it down now. We only know what it can do. After Fromes’ odd case, I tried it on guinea pigs and white mice. They lasted only three hours. If Thrush has it, were in for it, as I said.”

“Stockpile, you said,” Solo mused.

“Yes,” Waverly agreed. “It’s their pattern. Build up enough of a supply to cover the universe. I would say so.”

“That makes a lot of sense to me,” Jerry Terry said. “There’d be no end of places to hide something that small. So innocuous looking too.”

Waverly pyramided his lean fingers, his eyes sweeping over the three of them. He looked almost kindly for a change. They would never know how much he appreciated all three of them, at that precise moment. It was a comfort to talk with one’s own kind. The experience of the jet bomber was still too fresh in Waverly’s mind.

“That cemetery, Mr. Waverly,” Solo suggested. “They were awfully determined about our not taking a look.”

“True enough, Solo. But that cemetery checks out. Orangeberg. Built in 1922. Spared by the Allies in World War Two. If it were a blind of some kind, we’d have to have proofs. You don’t go poking about cemeteries, Solo. It just isn’t done. The Queen Mother herself couldn’t order such a thing.”

“Queen?” There was a startled expression on Napoleon Solo’s face. Waverly leaned forward, catching the odd look. He half-smiled.

“I was only being amusing, Solo. Or did you think of something—?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Napoleon, what is it?” Kuryakin prodded, knowing the makeup of the man who was his fellow agent. Jerry Terry sat enthralled. The rapport between the three men was suddenly electrifying.

Mr. Waverly said gently, “You’ve thought of something.”

“Yes, yes, wait. The word Queen did it. Queen, Queen, Queen. By Judas, that’s got to be it!” Solo sprang to his feet. “Mysteries. Stew was a mystery fan. Read them by the car-load, and now I remember — his favorite was Ellery Queen!”

“Go on, Solo, go on.”

The hotel suite was silent save for Solo’s energetic pacing back and forth. “Wait — I haven’t got it all yet. But hear me out. It helps the wheels to turn. What did we have? Stew’s body with the clothes on backwards, right? They let him stay that way for us to find, right? So it had to be okay with them; otherwise they would have guessed he was trying to leave some kind of message after death. By God, it all falls neatly into place. They let him stay with his clothes reversed because they thought it was one of the after-effects of their damned mind-killing drug. Yes, yes. That’s got to be it or they would have switched his clothing back to normal as sure as God made rotten little agents. Don’t you see? Stewart must have been naked, maybe in the tub or something when the effects of the stuff hit him. They had to know that. And he dressed backwards and all the time they thought he wasn’t coordinating — yet actually he was thinking more clearly than any man I’ve ever known!”

His enthusiasm and logic were contagious. His three listeners dared not interrupt lest they break the chain of his magic.

“Now, Stew knew that I knew he was a fanatical mystery fan. Above all an Ellery Queen fan. So he did the one thing to point the finger at what he had discovered. He had found the drug, stuck a pellet between his toes, but in case that was discovered, he had told us as surely as if he had written it in black letters a foot high exactly where to look. It was a long shot, a long, long shot but I feel sure it’s paid off.”

Waverly coughed. Napoleon Solo smiled.

“I’ll keep you waiting no longer. In case you don’t know, the most famous Ellery Queen mystery of them all begins with the corpse of a man found — on which all the clothing has been reversed. The killer did this to conceal the fact that the man had been a priest. Therefore the absence of the tie was not immediately apparent as it normally would have been—”

“Solo,” Waverly demurred. “Priest, tie — I fail to see—”

“Let me finish. As I say, that book is Ellery Queen’s most famous. Been reprinted a thousand times and people all over the world who go in for mysteries remember it. That’s the important point that Stew didn’t want me to miss. The title of that very famous book.”

Jerry Terry suddenly said in a very clear voice, “Well, I’ll be damned. The Chinese Orange Mystery.”

“Exactly. The Chinese Orange Mystery. Pointing to one stockpile that has to be destroyed at all costs.” There was a new silence in the room.

“Orange,” Kuryakin said, almost ruefully. “What a gamble.”

“Orangeberg Cemetery,” Waverly said with grim finality.

Oberteisendorf.

Darkness in the village. A few scattered lights. The livestock lowing in the sheds. A rural solitude dominated the hamlet at five o’clock in the morning. The sky was moody black, pierced only by an occasional star.

There was a light gleaming in Herr Burgomeister’s house — a lone bulb shining steadily through the drab, linen curtains. Herr Muller was busy with a visitor: the awesome, terrifying man he knew only as Herr.

“Bitte, what you want of me now?”

“A friend of mine has passed away,” Golgotha said. “He must be buried immediately.”

Herr Muller’s face in the harsh light of the bulb, reflected fear.

“Ach. Another?”

“Yes. The poor fellow died of a tumor. Brain tumor. There was no chance. It is better this way.”

“Ja, ja.” Herr Muller sipped his glass of Rhine wine. He did not like these conferences with this strange, cloaked man. The money was fine, one hundred thousand of the new marks, but Gott in Himmel! — was it worth it to have to talk with this man from hell each time?

“The coffin will be at your friend’s mortuary in the morning. You will see to it that all the arrangements are satisfactory. You must arrive at Orangeberg Cemetery no later than twelve o’clock noon. It has been agreed on that way.”

“Ja, I do. Same as ever.”

Golgotha chuckled dryly.

“You are sweating, Herr Muller. Are you warm?”

“Ein bischen,” muttered the Burgomeister. “A little. I feel — tired. Makes me sweat.”

“Certainly.”

“You must not misunderstand, mein Herr,” the scrawny mayor cried. “My devotion is — strong.”

“It had best remain so.”

The unspoken threat lingered in the. closeness of the room.

“I do the job.”

“You must. We have other coffins. Many, many coffins. Sometimes we actually do use them as they were intended to be used. Remember that, Herr Muller.”

The Burgomeister paled. “Ja, I remember.”

Golgotha stood up, a towering, dark shadow which cast a ghostly silhouette across the floor. He seemed all of seven feet high and as palpable as a nightmare.

“Oberteisendorf will become famous, Herr Muller. People will point to it one day and say ‘There. There is the place and there is where it happened.’ Greatness will come to Oberteisendorf, Herr Muller. And fame. And exalted memory. Remember that.”

“I will remember,” Herr Muller whispered, wishing his frightening visitor would go as silently as he always came. The man completely destroyed whatever soul he had left.

“Good. Twelve o’clock then. One coffin. Orangeberg. Gute Nacht, Herr Muller.”

“Gute Nacht, mein Herr.”

With his cloak wrapped about him like a shroud Golgotha left. Herr Muller crossed himself again, as he always did, and then reached once more for the bottle of Rhine wine.

The ghastly business would begin all over again on the morrow and there was not a thing he could do to stop it.

Verdammt! What in God’s name were they burying in that lovely cemetery just beyond the rimrock?

Herr Muller did not know. He was only certain of one thing. The coffins he had delivered for the Herr had never contained dead bodies. He did not care what the Death Certificate claimed nor how many headstones they put up with all the lying inscriptions.

Orangeberg was not a place where dead men slept.