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

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Sometime later there was an intermission. Under cover of the general clamor, Waverly told his two agents, "I shall fly back to New York tomorrow morning. There are a number of suggestions based on these results which warrant application at once. I would like the two of you to remain here." His gaze shifted. "You are extremely valuable to us, Dr. Fraser, and we would hate to have anything happen to you."

"So would I," said Lyn sincerely. "I think he's just fine."

Illya was paying only partial attention to the conversation. He was keeping at least one eye on Irene Baldwin most of the time, waiting for her to make some attempt to communicate with her husband. If they could get some idea of what the limping devil had in mind...

But Irene sat peacefully on the other side of the dance floor and never even made an attempt to catch Ward's eye. She watched the students milling about the floor and fiddled with her fan, opening and closing it, fluttering it up and down, occasionally touching her cheek or her lips with it, passing it idly from hand to hand.

From time to time Illya recognized one or two letters of the International Semaphore Code, but they seemed random and disconnected, and he berated himself mentally for seeing meaning where there was none.

Then the band struck up another number and both couples took to the floor. Baldwin and Waverly looked after them for some time before the Thrush said, over the racket, "My leg seems to be cooperating again, but the noise here is really more than I prefer to endure." Leaning heavily on his stick, he levered himself erect. "I shan't expect to see you for some time, but you might give additional thought to the other matter we were discussing. Tell Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin my residence at the Bomb Shop is quite adequately protected, but too small to accommodate anyone else. They had best stay at their hotel. I can call them if anything comes up." He bowed, turned, and stumped off to his electric cart.

Waverly checked across the room. Between the leaping forms of the dancers he could still identify Irene Baldwin, and when at last the music stopped and the rest of his party returned, he beckoned Napoleon and Illya to him.

"Baldwin has gone home to the Bomb Shop," he said. "He would prefer to have you on call—I would prefer to have you living in his hip pocket. Be outside his door at ten forty-five tomorrow morning—eight forty-five starting Monday—and stay with him. Mr. Kuryakin, were you able to interpret Irene's message to him?"

"Uh, message, sir?"

"Her signals with the fan. Surely you observed them."

"Well, I caught what looked like a few letters in International Semaphore, but nothing made any sense."

"International Semaphore is useful for filling vocabulary gaps, but the body of her communication was in the traditional flirting gestures with her fan. I recognize the maneuvers, but could not recall their meaning. The semaphore letters were initials, I believe; the flirting gestures were passing out of use when I was a lad, but I may be able to find something on them in our research files."

"Trust Baldwin to find something so old nobody else would know it," muttered Solo. "What else have you found out from him?"

"Several things," said Waverly musingly. "And not all of them have to do with the case in hand. Some of his implications will deserve intensive study at a later date. Until then, you will follow orders and keep your eyes and ears open." He dismissed them with a glance, and Solo looked around.

"Chandra and Lyn have disappeared again," he said, and Illya nodded.

"So has Irene," he said. "It's a disconcerting habit shared by Baldwin's friends."

Napoleon nodded. "Makes a fellow glad he's not a friend."

Chapter 8: "White Clover And Monkshood."

Monday they rose at the crack of dawn, and were on station when Baldwin stepped out of the Bomb Shop into the clear crisp morning. He greeted them without visible surprise and asked if they had had breakfast. They had, and in turn asked politely for permission to sit in on his lectures for the day.

Thus they began the academic round. Dr. Fraser handled only two lectures, Intermediate Organic and Advanced Inorganic. Within a few days, Napoleon somehow gravitated to the former and Illya to the latter—and both found themselves taking notes and discussing the lectures with Baldwin while they helped him around the lab.

The following Friday they were unconsciously beginning to relax after an uneventful week. Nobody had been following them, no attempts had been made on any of their lives, nothing suspicious had happened. And as far as the UNCLE agents could tell, Irene made no attempt to communicate with Ward Baldwin.

They followed him into his office precisely on the stroke of nine as they always did, and found Lyn already there as she usually was. The heat was on, the mail was stacked and ready, and a pot of water was balanced on the radiator. Not as usual, there was a bunch of flowers standing in a wide-mouthed 500-ml. erlenmeyer flask on her desk. Two tall blue flowers stood handsomely among a cluster of short white puffy blossoms.

Lyn looked up as they entered. "Oh, Illya!" she said. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Illya. "What for?"

"Why, the flowers, of course. They're lovely!"

"I'm glad you like them," said Illya, "but I didn't send them."

She looked surprised. "But—who else?"

He shrugged. "You must have a secret admirer."

Baldwin had taken his seat at the desk by this time, and said, "Miss Stier, have you run off the test for the Organic class?"

"A test?" said Napoleon. "When?"

Baldwin stared at him. "Mr. Solo, you are not enrolled in my class- you are merely auditing."

"Well, I know, sir—but could I take a look at it?"

Baldwin snorted and returned to his mail as Lyn placed a stack of dittoed and stapled sheets beside him. He studied each item carefully and sorted them into three piles and the wastebasket. One colorful piece of heavy folded paper was bound for the trash when he caught himself and looked consideringly at Napoleon Solo. He glanced down and tapped the thing in his palm, then spoke with sarcastic enthusiasm.

"Well! A weekend at a ski lodge! This is the nicest thing that's happened to me in the fifteen years I've been confined to this wheelchair! Mr. Solo..."

Napoleon looked up and reached forward as Baldwin extended what proved to be a gaudy brochure and a robotyped note, offering Dr. Fraser a free weekend at the Redwing Lodge. It included a veiled admission that there was no snow as yet, but emphasized the natural beauty and their own comforts and distractions.

"I can think," said Baldwin, "of a few things for which I have less desire or need than a weekend on a granite crag in the midst of the wilderness. However you, or Mr. Kuryakin, might want to take advantage of the offer; their unawareness of the most important fact about me would indicate that any reasonably competent-appearing male could stride up to their desk with this, identify himself confidently as Dr. Fraser, and move in. They will doubtless have a sleeping bag reserved in my name."

Napoleon leafed through the brochure, bearing in mind the axiom that an artistic rendering of a swimming pool meant they hoped to build one in the next few years. It looked like a nice enough place..."Illya?"

The Russian shrugged. "Why don't you take the weekend off—I'll plan to take next weekend."