The Thousand Coffins Affair

WHAT HAPPENED TO STEWART FROMES?

A corpse is always interesting.

Rich man, poor man, beggar man or king, who a man is and how he died is of far greater interest to mortal man than, say, the price of eggs in Istanbul. The corpse that comes into being for strange and exotic reasons, of course, is of paramount interest to the police and law enforcement agencies of the world. And while all of us are touched in some phantom way because another human being has been singled out by the Grim Reaper, the death of a special agent is naturally a vital matter to the body of men of which the corpse was a member.

Stewart Fromes was just such a man. Just such a corpse.

Fromes died in Oberteisendorf, Germany at approximately five-fifteen (German Central Time). He was 37, in excellent physical condition, a master field chemist for the organization known as U.N.C.L.E. In Korea, he had won a Silver Star for staying seven days on Heartbreak Ridge before a hand grenade put him out of action. In Oberteisendorf, there were no battles and no medals. There was only the long, unending far-into-the-night research which had brought him to the little town below the Bavarian Alps in the first place,

On the day he was to die, he did three interesting things.

At five o’clock that last afternoon, Stewart Fromes was taking a bath in the wooden tub placed at the rear of the tiny laboratory he had set up in Frau Morganstern’s home. He was thoughtfully soaping his lean, angular body when he experienced the odd dizziness which had become particularly chronic this past week.

Fromes waited no longer. He stepped naked from the tub, heedless of the soap and the chill of the drafty house. His bare feet sloshed across the wooden floor to the rear of the laboratory. There, a rickety wooden cage revealed a carrier pigeon nestling quietly. With quick, deliberate movements, Fromes affixed a tiny banded scroll to the pigeon’s right claw and set it free. He hardly waited to see it spring for the Eastern sky, its wings fluttering rapidly.

The second interesting thing that Stewart Fromes did was to suddenly fall flat on his face in the center of the room, kicking over a low table on which he had set his clothes. He began to thrash about violently, his arms and legs twitching uncontrollably. Had anyone been present, he would have been amazed and terribly frightened to hear Stewart Fromes, third in the ’47 Class of Cornell, begin to babble incoherently. The walls of the laboratory echoed with a string of moaning, gibbering sounds. The dampness of his naked body left small patches of moisture wherever his vibrating body touched.

And then Stewart Fromes did the third interesting thing before he died.

Through the haze of pain and the complete seizure of his limbs and muscles, he reached blindly for the clothing scattered on the floor — his coat, trousers and shirt, which had toppled from the low table.

Stewart Fromes was dying. Slowly. Terribly.

Yet even as he rolled around on the floor like a frenzied mad dog, he began to dress.

Alexander Waverly, fingering one of his many unsmoked pipes in the quiet office of the U.N.C.L.E. building in New York, was unhappy. As head of Policy and Operations, he was no alarmist. Yet the transatlantic message from Paris Headquarters had been upsetting. Stewart Fromes had been on to something; that had been most apparent from his reports of the last few hectic weeks. Now, suddenly, he was dead.

Five men, of various nationalities, guided the Policy operations of U.N.C.L.E. Waverly was one of that very select five. Yet a casual observer would be forgiven if he thought this elderly-looking man to be a gentle old college professor who tended toward crabbiness.

Waverly pocketed his cold briar pipe and walked to the wide, high window of his office — the only window in the entire fortress known as U.N.C.L.E. Before him spread a sunny panoramic view of the United Nations Building, poking like a modernistic glass finger from the depths of the East River.

“Napoleon Solo,” Waverly said aloud. “Of course.” The Fromes affair was obviously a matter which called for the special talents of the chief enforcement officer of U.N.C.L.E.

Clucking to himself as if chiding a personal error, he hurried back to his desk. A row of five enamel buttons lay at right angles to his fingertips:. one orange, one red, one gold, one blue, one yellow. Waverly thumbed the blue one.

There was a click as a connection was made somewhere in the office. A smooth, unworried voice abruptly filled the room, seeming to emerge from the four walls: “Section IV.”

“Cablegram,” Waverly said, putting his forefinger to his nose. “Napoleon Solo, Hotel Internationale, Paris.”

“Yes, Mr. Waverly.”

“Fromes Dead In Oberteisendorf, Germany. Claim Body Immediately. Your Uncle Greatly Upset.” Waverly paused. “Remember To Call His Mother. William Daprato Sends His Best.”

“Is there more to the message, sir?”

“No, that’s all. Do you want me to repeat any of it?”

“No, sir.”

Waverly thumbed the blue button again. He smiled, thinking about Solo. If past performances were any yardstick, Solo had already found Paris a most charming place to be on assignment. He’d much rather his top agent spend more time on enhancing his mind — at the Louvre, say, or even the Left Bank — but Solo was one of those young men eternally inclined to study the opposite sex.

Waverly snorted to himself, turning to the mystery of Stewart Fromes’ sudden, untimely demise.

That was something that demanded his immediate attention.

“Anything wrong, Napoleon? You look so worried. Is the cablegram bad news of some kind?”

“No. But I would like you to excuse me for a minute or so. A business matter, pet.”

“Napoleon, look at me. Is that from another woman?

Napoleon Solo studied the long-legged brunette raising herself from a languorous position on the gilded love seat. Denise Fairmount was worth more than one look. Her amber eyes looked beautiful even in anger. Her silver lame gown shimmered as she rose, emphasizing the almost feline beauty of her body. Solo reflected briefly that the Hotel Internationale’s plush, brocaded Suite Four One One was a completely appropriate setting for her. She was like some regal holdover from another century of French beauty — with just enough Americanizing to make her doubly interesting.

He smiled at her. “If the cablegram were from another woman, I’d simply tear it up and put on another long-playing record.”

She lifted her chin, eyes sparkling.

“Very well then. Go read your important cablegram in privacy. I’ll mix us another aperitif. We can get back to where we were soon enough, n’est-ce-pas?”

He winked. “Be back in a jiffy, Beautiful.”

She nodded, watching him move toward the bedroom. The yellowish lights of the suite seemed to cast a halation around Napoleon Solo’s form. Denise Fairmount sighed softly, and shook her head, bewildered by the unexpected sexual appeal of this man.

He had become far more than she had bargained for. Yesterday, on the Champs d’Elysee, she had picked him up as he sauntered on the sunny thoroughfare. He had been easy to pick out of the crowd of tourists on a spree. The foolishness she had invented about lost directions had not deceived him, she knew. She had not intended that they should. And so they had flirted, dined at Maxim’s that evening…and that was that. They had spent the night here in Suite Four One One.

She shivered in memory. An interesting man, Solo. An extraordinary charmer. It was a pity that he would have to die.

In the bedroom, Solo moved like a cat. His movements reflected tensile strength and an economy of effort that marked him for the trained athlete he was. His face, oddly boyish and pleasant, could become a cold mask of intellectual resolve when he was not smiling.

He was not smiling now.

Waverly’s cablegram, held under a bed lamp, was upsetting:

Stewart Fromes was dead. Solo scowled and the lines in his face hardened.

William Daprato sends his best.

It was quite unlike Waverly to be so cryptic in a straight, harmless telegram. The death of Fromes was a blow, of course — a very personal one which Solo, who had known and liked the man, felt deeply. But the reference to Bill Daprato was something else again. “Booby traps for booby troops,” Solo said, tasting each word as he said it. That was Bill Daprato’s best — the one GI line of advice to all combat rookies. Solo folded the cablegram and put it into his coat pocket. There was something damnably odd—

Before he could further explore the meaning of Waverly’s message, Denise Fairmount screamed shrilly from the living room.

A high, thin scream of mortal terror.