The Thousand Coffins Affair

THE DEATH ROOM

For one wild second, a sense of doom fought to dominate him. Thrush had bottled him up like a mouse in a Mason jar and no amount of banging away at the lid was going to help. There was no time to lose now. No reason to stop and wonder just how long a man can live without oxygen or how long it would take for the vent to pump out every bit of good air left in the room. Time enough for post-mortems later.

Getting out of the room was the first order of the day. He considered the possible means of escape. There was, of course, the telephone — but when he picked it up he found the line was dead. He wasn’t surprised. It would also be useless to use his machine pistol. No amount of bullets could blow that door — nor any of the windows. He silently cursed the lack of any explosive equipment in his suitcase. This was one time he had none of the jelly compounds that could blow a bank vault wall to smithereens. He hadn’t expected to have to enter any bank vaults this week — much less that he’d find himself trapped inside one.

There was only one chance.

The very one that Thrush itself had given him.

Solo hurried to Denise Fairmount where she lay on the lounge. Her head lolled as he pulled her to a standing position. He brought his open hand sharply against her face, slapping her quickly on both sides of her nose. She moaned and he dragged her to the coffee table, scooping up the bottle of wine. He held it to her lips, forcing the contents into her mouth. The wine sloshed over her face, ran down the front of her gown. Solo paid little heed. He wanted this woman awake, sitting up and taking notice—

Already, he could sense the change in the atmosphere of the room. There was a sudden giddiness in his head — a light, airy feeling as though he had had too much of the same wine he was pouring over the woman. She stirred, and coughed as the wine went down her throat.

“Come on, Denise,” he snapped. “Wake up, wake up!”

“What — what—” She sputtered, her eyes opening wide, blanching when she saw him, trying to pull away.

He gripped her wrists tightly, keeping his voice steady.

“Listen. I’m not going to hurt you. Are you awake? Nod your head so that I know you understand me. Nod, I said!” He jerked her savagely to him. Her eyes popped but she nodded, her tongue licking at the droplets of wine on her mouth.

“Your playmates have walled us up in this room. With steel doors and windows and everything. You understand? There’ll be no air to speak of in here in a very little while they’re also sucking the air out through the air-conditioning vent. I know of a way we can get out — but you’ve got to help. Listen to me, Denise. We will slowly suffocate to death without oxygen. You won’t look pretty to the undertaker with your tongue sticking out. Now tell me — where is that transistor for the master device? I must know — or we’re both going to die.”

“You’re trying to trick me—” she gasped. “You hit me—”

“Nod, I said. Don’t waste air with talking. Breathe. Can’t you tell? Come on, Denise. Where is it?”

She read his eyes and she read the warning there. She nodded and her own gaze swung back to the coffee table. Not on top of it. Under it. The candles had already begun to gutter warningly. Solo released the woman and darted to the table. He explored its bottom quickly until his hands found a square metal box, no bigger than the motor of a tiny music box. Denise Fairmount had fallen to the lounge, breathing in short, shallow gasps. Solo ignored her and ripped open his traveling bag. He knew what he had to do. A risk he had to take. There was no estimating the effect of the maser device when let loose—but he knew what it could do.

He scooped his neatly piled clothes to one side and uncovered the short-wave radio set hidden there. He had short-circuited the suite’s electrical outlet, but the radio set had its own powerful batteries. He hoped they would be strong enough for what he had in mind.

He placed the maser device at the very center of the front door, between the sealed slit and the bottom of the barrier. Then he adjusted the short-wave set, turned it on and manipulated the frequency button. He pushed it to its fullest power. Then he yelled on last warning at Denise Fairmount: “Put your fingers in your ears! This is going to be rough!”

Almost immediately, the wildly throbbing humming sound of generated sound rose in the stuffy room. Solo held his ears tightly, his eyes never leaving the door. He remained by his suitcase. If it didn’t work, at least he could turn the sound off before that killed them first. A small difference in terrible ways to die—

But the maser device was trained directly on the door; the sound which buffeted him and Denise was only that which bounced off and spread around the room.

He watched the door. He felt the room tremble. He could see the objects of furniture in the room start that weird vibrating dance again as the sound waves reached them. He bit his lip, beads of perspiration popping on his brow. It was a million to one shot — could the heightening of electrical current into sound force open a steel barrier?

Denise Fairmount was again writhing in pain on the lounge, her eyes two beacons of shining terror. But she did not cry out or protest — she knew what was at stake.

Solo waited—

The furnishings danced. And then a slight tremor shook the door. The hinges seemed to want to move out of their iron hasps. Even with his hands pressed to his ears, the room-filling sound penetrated almost maddeningly.

Solo’s nostrils and throat ached with the pain of trying to breathe the thin air remaining now in the sealed room. He felt as though he were being strangled. Yet he could not take his eyes off that door—

It was like a magic act.

Suddenly the door was shaking and the panels warping before his very eyes. And then there was a mammoth thunderclap of sound, and the barrier had surged outward, crumpling like so much cheap tin and discarded metal. The door flew back, ripping off its hinges, shattering into splinters against the sheet of metal which was disintegrating before it.

Groping almost blindly, Solo found the frequency button and turned the short-wave radio set off. The influx of air from the corridor was a buffeting wind which threw over the candles from the table and flattened the drapes against the far wall. He didn’t waste any time looking for the maser device in the wreckage of the doorway. Chances were pretty good that it had shattered into bits once its maximum peak of effect had been reached. As for the woman—

She was gone.

In the decreasing flurry of noises from the blasted threshold of the room, he could hear her high heels running down the corridor. For a fleeting second he considered giving chase, but then he shook the notion off. There was only one thing for him to do now — get out of this damn hotel alive before Thrush came back to try again.

Shaking his head to clear it, breathing in long gasps of fresh air, he retrieved his traveling bag and stepped quickly from the room. The aftermath of the explosion was reaching that point when rudely disturbed guests would be ringing the desk to see what the hell was going on.

Solo took the back stairway out.

Twenty minutes later, he had compartmentalized the anger in his mind and found a late-cruising taxicab on short notice. The tinseled lights of the Eiffel Tower burst like a Fourth of July sparkler on the horizon. Solo had brushed his hair back, straightened his tie and assumed the demeanor of pure tourist. The French cabbie was a gray little man with a wise face and a gold tooth.

“Monsieur?”

“Le Bourget. Tout de suite.”

The cabbie looked dismayed.

“You are meeting a plane? None at this time.”

“I am taking a plane, my friend.”

The cabbie smiled triumphantly. “Mais non, Monsieur. There will be none at this hour.”

Solo frowned. He knew the Paris airport as well as he knew La Guardia. Flights nearly every hour. He plucked a crisp five hundred franc note from his billfold.

“Look, garçon. Just drive, will you?”

The driver turned around to show appreciation of the bill; yet there was a touch of sadness in his eyes.

“Possibly Monsieur has not heard.”

“Let me hear it.”

“Le Bourget had the big explosion a few hours ago. Five runways were destroyed. Such a fire! All flights have been canceled. You understand?”

“Yeah. Pay now. Fly later.”

“Comment?”

Solo nodded, keeping his face blank. “Yes, I understand, friend. But don’t you recognize a newspaperman when you see one? I’ll have you know I’m the Paris correspondent to The New York Times.”

“The New York Times?” The cabbie’s eyes rolled in appreciation of such lofty environs. “Forgive me, Monsieur. But of course. Immediatement!”

The cab leaped into gear, found the main artery of traffic and zoomed toward Le Bourget. Napoleon Solo drummed his fingers reflectively on the sky-blue Tourister sitting across his lap.

Now here was calamity piled atop coincidence.

A cablegram from Mr. Waverly and a concerted effort on his life.

Now, he needed an airplane and Le Bourget was incapacitated. Of course, there might be other, smaller fields in Paris, yet that was unlikely.

What had happened to Stewart Fromes out there in Oberteisendorf?

The telegram in his coat pocket was beginning to burn a hole there. Hot stuff, maybe. Real hot stuff. Hotter than even Mr. Waverly had let on, despite the William Daprato warning.

Beyond the cab’s window, the Paris night twinkled with warm, friendly stars.

At U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, Alexander Waverly had a visitor. A distinguished visitor whose presence would normally have occasioned the unified popping of assorted flashbulbs and trained questions by batteries of metropolitan reporters. No one in the building was even aware of the identity of this particular individual. He had entered U.N.C.L.E. in Waverly’s private elevator from the entranceway which no other man in the organization knew. Only Waverly could ever reveal the fifth unknown ingress of U.N.C.L.E.

Had Napoleon Solo been on hand, he would have been surprised at the difference in Waverly’s attitude. It was marked by a definite concern, a worried crease of the gray brows above the strong nose.

Waverly’s visitor was at the window, seemingly lost in contemplation of the United Nations Building shining in the night. The long, erratic conga of lights lighting up the Queens skyline hung like fireflies in the far off darkness.

The eternal pipe, in this instance a meerschaum, worked back and forth in Waverly’s fingers, revealing his agitation.

The man at the window, tall and statuesque, said without turning, “Well, Waverly. Is there one chance in ten million?”

Waverly did not turn around either.

“There’s always that chance, of course,” he said, regretfully.

“If even that chance is there, then we indeed have something to worry about.”

“I would say so, sir. Fromes was not explicit, of course. He couldn’t afford to be, under the circumstances. Security has its drawbacks. But—”

“Go on, Waverly. Say it. Say it all. This is no damn time for the niceties of protocol and diplomatic bushwah.”

Waverly swiveled in his armchair and pointed the meerschaum for emphasis. “Fromes gave me enough data to suspect the worst. If Thrush has come up with such a weapon — and there is evidence to support their participation in this business — then we have something far worse to worry about than missiles and nuclear war.” The man at the window faced Waverly. His face was hidden in the half-light of the room.

“You mean that obscure African village — Utangaville, was it? And Spayetville in the highlands of Scotland.”

“Yes, yes,” Waverly said, almost impatiently. “If they can destroy towns like that with a mere thimbleful of the stuff, there’s no estimating the consequences. Test towns, pure and simple. Places that would not attract the notice of the world. What else? Typical Thrush tactics, sir. We have to be prepared for the worst.”

The visitor shook himself. His voice rose, almost sadly.

“I have a large illumined globe of the world in my office. A gift of the people who pay the taxes. Now, there is a nation named Thrush in the world. You know it and I know it. Yet if we were to examine that globe as carefully as possible, we wouldn’t find the name engraved anywhere. And time and again, I’ve passed my fingers over that globe, on country after country, never really knowing which one has become a territory under the domination of Thrush. Satraps, my political advisors call them — satraps for the supra-nation we call Thrush. And they intend to dominate the earth. By degrees, they can turn a country into a satrap — or do the same with a school or a hospital. Or an industrial plant. Who knows? And all we can do is sit, wonder and play international chess while they work underground. Waverly, Waverly — what can we do this time?”

Waverly rubbed his pipe.

“The recovery of Fromes’ body is all we can do at this point, sir.”

“No ideas at all what killed him?”

“The laboratory will have to answer that. The acquisition of his body is our first and only step.”

The distinguished visitor shook his head. “I wish I could share your enthusiasm, Waverly. Were the corpse that important, they wouldn’t have been so cooperative about returning it, don’t you think?”

“Hard to say. Blocking our efforts to do so might have proved more dangerous.”

“I’m sure you know what you’re talking about. I tend to high pessimism these days.” The man straightened. “Who is claiming Fromes’ body?”

Waverly’s gloomy face brightened a trifle.

“Solo. My best man.”

“Odd name. Well, Waverly, I’d best be going. You’ll keep me up-to-the-minute on this, I trust? I have my own VIP’s to keep alerted.”

“Of course, sir.”

Both men shook hands warmly. “Waverly.”

“Yes?”

“It is a comfort that U.N.C.L.E. exists. A far greater comfort than I can ever publicly laud or acknowledge. Do you understand?”

“I think so, sir. Thank you.”

Waverly was still fingering his pipe in happy memory of what the man had said long after the secret elevator had whisked its important passenger down to the underground garage where the Secret Service agents waited. Fromes’ body was the key to the whole Thrush matter. And Napoleon Solo was the man to turn that key.