The Thousand Coffins Affair

“SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE SPIES”

Solo reached the door of the bedroom in something less than one second, and he paused there, his eyes taking in the scene in quick, darting glances.

At first, the tableau seemed just as it had been when he’d left. Denise was still half-reclining on the love seat — but now every line and angle of her body was taut, frozen, as if she dared not make the slightest movement. Her beautiful face was a pinched mask of horror. The amber eyes seemed fixed on a point before her, between the love seat and the carved oak coffee table. Her hands were clutching the golden bolsters of the chair.

Yet there was nothing in the room.

Solo eased toward her, his hand streaking reflexively for his shoulder holster. He restrained a low curse, realizing that the romantic tenor of the evening had made him injudicious enough to leave his gun somewhere other than on his person. Moving closer he held his breath, his eyes on the woman.

It was then that the noise came to him. Suddenly, unbearably, there was a tingling sensation in his eardrums — a light, almost feathery sound of some kind like the low hum of a generator. He stopped short. Denise Fairmount moaned.

“My ears — oh, my God…” It was a cry of agony.

Solo shook his head, trying to clear it. The tingling feeling had begun to expand so that his brain seemed alive with the concerted buzz of a horde of bees. He felt his body tremble violently.

Denise had begun to writhe in torment. And still the low, humming, throbbing sound continued — rising in volume so that it filled the entire room.

The lights danced before Solo’s straining vision. The details of the room — the furniture and the drapes and the paintings — tilted with alarming abruptness. The floor seemed to move beneath his feet. The maroon carpet twisted in Daliesque convolutions. The sound expanded, moving to the walls as though it were something solid that needed a vessel to contain it.

Solo staggered, fighting the waves of dizziness that rolled over him. It was difficult to breathe now. His hearing had magnified so that the slightest tremor of the sound made him want to scream, to run, to hide. Panic tried to hold him, arrest his mind.

The hum of sound grew louder.

Solo moved with fierce momentum. He hurled himself toward the wall near the door. Still the noise in his head rose with tremendous shrieking violence. He fell down, literally hammered to his knees by the force of the sound. Yet he crawled to the base of the wall, and his dazed eyes found the square metal frame that housed the wall plug. Thank God, it was not in use.

Working in a screaming, smothering blanket of pain, his hands shaking almost uncontrollably, he managed to find his key chain. With a last thrust of concentrated will, he rammed the first one he found into the exposed wall circuit.

There was a blinding, flashing crackle of blue flame, and he was flung back from the wall by the short-circuiting electrical currents. The room plunged into darkness. Sudden, inky midnight.

And the sound stopped.

Solo lay on the floor, his face ground into the carpeting. Waves of relief rolled over him. His body stilled as the humming, throbbing noise receded like the distant, fading sound of a jet engine. The abrupt silence was nearly as stupefying as the humming itself had been.

For awhile, there was only the racking, terrible sobbing of the girl on the love seat.

The blinding pain that had filled his head faded in the wake of the sound, leaving only a sense of utter weariness and near demoralization. Solo remained on the floor, breathing in great gulps of air. He could feel his heart beating furiously. And then, that slowed down too. The only thing that remained of the awesome sound was an amazing sensation of the noise of the sea battering a shoreline.

Later — he could not tell exactly how much later — he got to his feet. He reached into his pocket, drew out a pencil flash, and thumbed it on. It showed him Denise Fairmount lying exhausted on the lounge. He shook himself, moving unsteadily to the escritoire on the opposite wall. His gun was in the top drawer.

It was more Luger than anything else, bearing a slight resemblance to the P-38 of World War Two origin. Solo’s automatic was unique, however. There was an engraved letter “S” stamped on the heavy butt. He couldn’t remember when he had ever felt more relieved to have it in his hand. The persistent, piercing sound had rocked him as few things ever had.

He returned to the girl, after he had found one of the ornamental candelabra on the marble mantelpiece in the center of the room. Candlelight would have to do now that the electrical power in the suite was out.

In any other circumstances, Denise Fairmount would have looked enticing by candlelight. The spray of burning radiance washed over her curves, making her body gleam invitingly. Solo stared down at her.

“Wake up,” he said coldly, prodding her with his free hand. “The Steinmetz Exhibit is over.”

She groaned, her eyelashes fluttering.

“Rise and shine, Denise. We have to talk a bit.”

She opened her eyes. She swallowed hard, looking at him.

“Oh God — my ears ached so—”

‘My ears too. Where did you put it, pet?”

“Put what?” She blinked up at him.

His smile was icy. “The little gadget known more properly as a transistor. Probably no larger than a woman’s earring. You going to tell me or shall I start pulling your arms and legs off right now?”

“Napoleon, I—” She started to rise, almost angrily, and he pushed her back. “I don’t know what you mean,” she protested. “I was in this room, too.”

“Yes,” he agreed amiably. “That’s the way your playmates operate. Which means you can’t be very important, or else you goofed personally on this whole setup. Okay. I’ll play ABC with you. A. — my electronic friends tell me that electricity can be converted into sound with a fancy little thing called the maser, an incredibly sensitive amplifier. B. — if that sound had continued, there’s no telling what it would have done to your nervous system and mine, so I stopped the noise by cutting the electrical current in this room. C. — you have the transistor or you know where it is. Simple ABC, isn’t it?”

She shuddered, trying to smile.

“What do you think I am, Napoleon?”

“A spy, of course. But don’t let that bother you. Some of my best friends are spies.”

She nodded, hardly hearing him. “All right. But you’ll have to believe me when I tell you I have no idea about any transistor.” Her smile was wan. “As you say, they think little of me. Or else they think so highly of you that they’d sacrifice me too.”

His eyes narrowed. A decoy again. A lovely lure. Nothing new for him, surely. He knew that Denise Fairmount had maneuvered him into a defenseless position for the kill. He had known that was her purpose yesterday when he had allowed her to pick him up. But he had his own plans — like pumping her for information.

“Who do you work for, Denise? Thrush?”

She shook her head. “I will tell you nothing.”

“All right. We’ll skip the third degree. There are other things to occupy my time. Stand up.”

There was no use browbeating her, he had decided.

She was more than just a lovely woman — spying was no business for wilting geraniums. Before he could manage to make her talk, her “friends” would undoubtedly be moving in on him.

She raised herself, staring into his face. The deep cleft of her breasts rose as she breathed deeply. She kept her arms rigid at her sides.

“Well, what is the next move, Mr. Solo?”

He smiled — warmly, but yet faintly mocking. “I thought we might call Room Service for some wine to go with our candlelight.”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t insult me by not being serious.”

“The serious die young,” he said softly.

She frowned, biting her lip. “You must kill me, yes. But if you would delay it for awhile there is much I could do for you. In a personal way, of course.”

“I like you too, Denise. So much so that I’m going to make it easy for you.”

She misunderstood him, and let herself insinuate her body a bit closer. She moistened her lips, tilting her chin.

He hit her.

The blow was short, swift, economical — a precisely timed and aimed uppercut which collapsed Denise Fairmount neatly on the love seat. She fell without even a murmur of surprise. He arranged her carefully on the lounge, lowering her lamé gown chastely below her knees.

There was no more time for delays. He had risked enough already. Nor could he encumber himself with lovely lady agents, no matter who they might be. Waverly’s cablegram was burning a hole in his pocket. If the Fairmount woman had anything to do with that assignment, he would find out soon enough. Meanwhile, he was in a vicinity he should quit as soon as possible. Thrush, if Thrush it was, had a way of reinforcing its death traps in a hurry.

There had been no hue and cry from the rest of the hotel.

Perhaps a blessing. Perhaps not.

Soundlessly and swiftly, Solo packed his sky-blue traveling suitcase and checked the windows. The suite opened on a sheer ledge above the lighted boulevard. Time enough to call in and have somebody pick up the Fairmount woman. His first concern had to be getting out of the hotel with all of his skin — and, preferably, everything still inside it.

He glanced at Denise on the lounge. In the glow of the candles on the oaken coffee table, she was beautifully innocent and serene. Solo’s eyes hardened. He moved toward the door, putting her out of his mind. She was a regret better left unfelt.

He turned the door handle and — nothing happened. He tried it again, but it still wouldn’t open. Alarm bells began ringing in the back of his mind. Slowly, he set the suitcase down and studied the door. His eyes traveled around the seaming where the wood met the wall. A feeling that something wasn’t quite right or proper filled him. He bent closer to examine the tiny vertical and horizontal cracks which allowed the door barrier to fit perfectly into the design of the room.

The door was sealed! No air was coming in from the passageway. It was as if the frame of the portal had been sealed with putty or wax. But it had to be more than that—

He took an identification card from his wallet — it was one of several, this one certifying that he was one Arthur Connell, an authorized buyer for an expensive-sounding New York jeweler — and tried to thrust it between door and wall. The card did not pass through the slit. Something was preventing it from finding an entry; it was as if a sheet of metal had passed over the outer doorway. A sliding, scratching sound, as of something traveling with mechanical ease into a slotted groove, made his head swing toward the big windows.

Incredibly, he saw the bright lights of Paris wink out as a partition of metal moved quickly across his line of vision and snapped shut with a click of sound like the closing of a cigarette case.

A moment later, another sheet of metal closed off the window on the other side of the room, gliding smoothly into its metallic bed. Whirling, he saw the open doorway into the bedroom closed off and sealed by a final metal slab.

Suddenly the room was like a soundless vacuum. Denise lay unconscious on the lounge, and Solo stood frozen for the moment. The short hairs at the nape of his neck tingled. There was no mistaking this new threat now.

Unless he was badly mistaken, the room had suddenly become an air-tight vault. There could be no other reason for the complete sealing of both the doors and windows. Locks would have been enough to trap him inside — but Thrush didn’t want him simply as a prisoner. They wanted him dead.

He was trapped in a sealed room in which the supply of usable, life-giving oxygen would diminish into nothingness.

Then the silence of the room was broken by a subtle soughing sound — the sound of air whispering through an opening somewhere. Solo’s hand jerked around, following the sound, and then he saw it. A wave of relief flooded over him. Of course — the air-conditioning system! Even though they had sealed the immediately obvious sources of air, the members of Thrush had forgotten that all the rooms in the hotel had completely up-to-date air-conditioning.

He smiled as he stepped toward the vent. Such a simple mistake…but of course the simple things were the most easy to forget.

He put his hand up to the vent — and the smile disappeared from his face.

Thrush hadn’t forgotten the air-conditioning at all. Instead, they were using it themselves. For there was no air coming into the room — instead, it was steadily being sucked out.