The Hollow Crown Affair - McDaniel David (читать книги онлайн без .txt) 📗

"No I wouldn't, silly," she said affectionately. "Ward made me promise not to give you any more hints after you got here. But I'd promised myself if you hadn't found him in five days I would have given you a little clue. That was why Ed invited you to come to the campus—you had a better chance of running into him accidentally. And he wasn't really mad at you any more, he was just used to the idea that he was. See? If you'd spent more time relaxing and less time working, you would have found him a lot sooner."

There was another pause—a longer one, broken at last by Waverly. "Would you care to come with us to his office, Mrs. Reynolds?"

"Oh, he's not at his office—he's out at the Bomb Shop. He asked me last night to meet you here and direct you to it."

"Hm. He seems to know my plans before I do." Waverly released a rare chuckle. "Let's go see him and find out when I am expected."

* * *

"Actually, Mr. Solo, I had expected you two days earlier. Irene told me she saw Mr. Kuryakin on Monday, and I gave you Tuesday to interpret her communication."

"I arrived Tuesday, sir, but out cryptanalysis section wouldn't get more specific than Vermont."

"You needn't have searched the entire state. This is the University, after all—you would hardly have expected to find me grubbing about back in the woods."

"Well, since your life was in danger, we weren't sure..."

"Nonsense. My life has been in danger ever since it began. I have simply learned to take reasonable precautions."

"I'd be interested to know what you consider 'reasonable precautions'," Illya said.

Baldwin pointed at the open door of the Bomb Shop, where a signboard the height of the doorway and eighteen inches wide hung. In red on white, it was headed ATTENTA! PERICOLO! Beneath this, the English read DANGER—KEEP OUT. In only slightly smaller letters, the rest of the sign started with Peligro, Gefahr, Fare, Perigo, Veszely and Primejdie; worked its way through Cyrillic and Green characters, ran down past Opasnost, Niebezpieczenstwo, Bahaja and Tehlike; included samples of the more popular Oriental scripts and trailed off into three alphabets even Illya didn't recognize.

The five of them sat around a small but comfortably furnished room which filled the front quarter of the converted Quonset hut that housed one of the best-planned chemical research labs of its size the UNCLE visitors had seen; they'd spent the better part of an hour being shown around by its proprietor, designer and chief occupant before he would consent to talk business. It had been Chandra, finally, who had insisted on a cup of tea and refused to drink it standing up.

With the tea had come the long-awaited conversation. The clear Vermont sun streamed in the door to ease the slight chill, and eventually Illya brought up Topic A. "Well," he said casually, "how are things with Thrush?"

"Not well, I fear," said Baldwin. "There are twelve other candidates besides myself and King. Since your ill-timed intrusion in Philadelphia, attempts have been made on the lives of eight. For valid reasons every attack has failed, but each has left some indication that either your forces were or I personally was responsible." He paused. "I'm also stung by the assumption that I would repeatedly fail in such a simple task as an assassination."

"King wouldn't be likely to fail if he didn't want to," Chandra observed. "I think you ought to get right to work with whatever Mr. Waverly can tell you about what they've been doing and figure out what they're likely to do if they find you. After all, if UNCLE knows, the rest of the world soon will."

Baldwin nodded. "I'd planned to, Chandra." He levered himself up from his chair. "Would you be a good girl and clean up the tea things? We must get over to my office for the case. Perhaps we could make a test run this afternoon. I take it, Mr. Waverly, that you could spare us a few hours—I may be able to offer you some detailed advice later." He took his mortarboard from the end table, balancing himself on an ebony-and-staghorn cane Napoleon thought he recognized. "For that matter, if you could spare us the evening, there will be a dance in connection with the opening of the football season."

Chandra sparkled at Napoleon and Illya. "Oh, do come! We just got a new shipment from Cape May, and Ed will be cataloguing it until midnight. And I'm just no help at something like that. I'll need someone to be with until he gets there. Napoleon, you will escort me, won't you?"

Illya gave him a look. "How about me?" he said.

"Oh, Mr. Kuryakin, I'm sure we'll be able to find someone for you. So many young men are away in the war."

Illya looked her right in the eye. "Some of us are at war right here," he said.

Napoleon caught the edge in his tone and said, "As a matter of fact, Dr. Fraser's secretary is cute. Dark hair, good figure..."

"Miss Stier? You may see her at my office. Good afternoon, Chandra—and thank you."

Baldwin led the way from the Bomb Shop across stubbly grass to the street. There was a light breeze, and the air was clean enough to flush the last city air from their lungs. Baldwin's black overcoat with the Astrakhan collar stumped along in contrast to Waverly's slightly shorter camelshair as Napoleon and Illya took up a fifty-yard lead after a moment spent saying goodbye to Chandra.

"What precisely do you have to show us?" Alexander Waverly asked.

Baldwin's voice was made harsher and less even by the strain of walking, but he answered. "When I left San Francisco, Waverly, I was fleeing for my life. I was able to bring very little with me, so I chose the most valuable items I could lay my hands on at once. They are valueless to you and could never be sold, but they may yet defeat King, even with Central and the Ultimate Computer itself behind him."

Waverly nodded and pondered Baldwin's words like a riddle. "You carried these with you, I assume."

"In an attache case. Program tapes copied from limited access areas through my Satrap Satellite, containing data on Strategic Programming, Operational Coding, Basic Field Directives and other topics of practical interest. With the help of the campus computer facility..."

"... You have a good probability of predicting what direction their future actions will take. Unless they are aware of your possession of the copies."

"They aren't," said Baldwin simply.

Napoleon and Illya hurried up beside them, and Napoleon said, "Chandra asked if you'll want your electric cart driven over to Williams or if you'll walk back here. She said if you want it, call her—she's going to stay there and tidy up for a while."

"Thank you, Mr. Solo. I shall probably want it sent over. The width of the campus is quite a fair walk in one direction."

"It's nice to see you well, sir," said Illya.

"I'm feeling refreshed by my return to the academic world, Mr. Kuryakin—and the climate here seems to agree with me."

Napoleon started to say something almost involuntarily, but caught a fierce look from Illya and bit his tongue.

They wound along concrete walks past the gray-stone fortress of Converse Hall and came into a newer, larger Quad. Williams Hall, along with its neighbors, backed on its west side facing the older square where stately old trees shed their motley leaves on the deep green grass. Here, in contrast, patches of earth were still bare. The young saplings were scarcely free of their supports, and seemed hardly to know what to do with their foliage now that the weather was turning chill.