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

Never one to haggle over a favor, Napoleon said, "Now, where is this place?"

* * *

They were alone briefly over lunch, and Illya took the opportunity to ask Napoleon if he'd noticed anything odd in Baldwin's reaction to Lyn's bouquet.

"Anything odd?" said Solo. "I don't think he reacted at all."

"When his secretary receives a bouquet centered around a couple of the most poisonous flowers in the pharmacopea? He's a chemist, and knows poisons—he would have made some remark."

"Those blue ones?"

"They're monkshood—chock full of aconite, which is a very neat, reasonably powerful and untraceable poison."

"What were the white ones? Poison ivy?"

"I think they were clover. But I think, all in all, it warrants being mentioned to Mr. Waverly. We're supposed to be taking note of everything around Baldwin, and anything odd is worth noticing."

Napoleon drew out his silver pen, opened it and extended the antenna. "Open Channel D," he said.

In a matter of seconds Alexander Waverly's gruff, familiar voice answered. Somewhat diffidently Solo described the bouquet and Illya's reason for noticing it, and found Waverly's reaction surprising.

"Excellent," he said. "I had been expecting something similar. I don't suppose you noticed any letters arriving with the postage stamp placed inconveniently? Or any re-mailed magazines or newspapers?"

"There have been several magazines, sir," said Solo, "but they were all in the wrappings of the publishers. Bearing in mind Baldwin's taste for traditional methods of covert communication, I was quite prepared to hold them up to the light and look for pinholes marking letters."

"Don't be so smug, Napoleon," muttered Illya. "I thought of that too."

"Very good, Mr. Solo," said Waverly. "Section Four has had no results from their search for data on the fan gestures, and I'm no longer confident of remembering them all in sequence."

"Sir," said Illya, "you think the monkshood and clover may mean something?"

"I am sure of it. I know the flower symbolism is in the file; we should have it shortly."

"While they're looking," Napoleon said, "sir, I'd like permission to take the weekend off. Illya is agreeable if he can have next weekend."

Waverly mumbled the question around for a moment before answering, "Baldwin doesn't seem to expect any overt action for at least six days—you may go, with the understanding that you will be on call constantly."

"Of course, sir. I'll only be an hour or two away."

Illya elbowed him. "Here comes Baldwin," he muttered. "Wrap it up."

"Baldwin's coming," Napoleon said. "Call us about the flowers." And with a flick of his fingers the slim silver pen was back in his pocket, his body turned to conceal the action.

* * *

Napoleon Solo had based his estimate of two hours on the map distance of fifty miles, and left Burlington after an early dinner with Illya and Lyn. He had not allowed for a sudden severe rainstorm and stone roadbeds. At two-thirty in the morning, eyes and arms aching from squinting through his rain-blinded windshield and fighting the steering wheel over progressively deteriorating roads, he turned the car into a parking lot with a few feeble lights, and dragged his suitcase out of the rear. He staggered exhausted and bleary-eyed into a lobby, roused a clerk by banging on a bell, dropped Dr. Fraser's invitation on the desk, scrawled something in a register, stumbled up one flight of stairs, thanked somebody, drank a glass of water, stripped and collapsed.

And awakened at ten o'clock, flexed the kinks out of his muscles, and bounded from bed to face the glad day. He flung wide his window—the sky was incredibly clear and he could smell the woods.

After a shave and other social necessities were taken care of, the first item on the day's agenda must certainly be breakfast. Casually but impeccably outfitted, he descended the main stairs into the lounge at ten forty-five. It looked like a set for a ski lodge but that there were neither skis nor crutches in evidence this early in the season. Heavy beamed ceilings and tall windows surrounded half a dozen bright-looking young people displayed against a background of fur-and-leather furniture. One wall was fieldstone, and from it bulged a vast smouldering fireplace.

Above the fireplace, perhaps five feet by four, was a flattened, rounded, inverted triangle containing the stylized silhouette of a fierce bird in fighting posture, black on white, with the lifted wings in red.

Napoleon Solo closed his eyes and thought about what he'd seen for several seconds. But for the red wings it was a Thrush. When he opened his eyes again it was still there.

He sighed as breakfast vanished from the imminent present and receded to an indefinite future, turned neatly around at the foot of the stairs as if he'd just remembered something, and went quietly back up to his room. There he collected his thoughts and pulled out his transceiver. His voice was not quite one of desperation as he called, "Open Channel D!"

* * *

Downstairs the night clerk said, "That was him—that guy that came down the stairs, flashed on the bird and split back to his room."

"You're crazy! That was whatshisname from New York—we saw him in the last briefing. Remember? Besides, I heard Fraser was an old goat with a beard."

"Yeah? Well, he signed Fraser in the book. See?"

"Jeez, what a scrawl...Ha! I'll say he signed! Look at that. What does it say?"

"Uh...Napoleon Fraser..."

"You goop! That's Napoleon Solo—the name just clicked in. He's only about the biggest gun in UNCLE."

"Oh, UNCLE! That briefing. Yeah, I remember. Look, you better call Boston. All they've been saying has been 'Get Fraser'. If this isn't Fraser, I don't think we ought to do anything without checking. You're pretty sure about that identification?"

"Sure enough to call for an Emergency Override. Keep an eye on things while I get the satellite warmed up."

Three minutes passed, and the day manager came out of his office.

"What did they say?"

"They yelled a little bit about autonomy and taking responsibility for decisions—my father-in-law probably told them to tighten up on the operation here."

"And then they told you what to do?"

"Yeah. They said, 'Get Solo'."

"Y'wanna put the Twins on him?"

"Why not? If he doesn't let the sign spook him, he'll go out this afternoon. He's probably checking through Diners Club and everybody now, and when we test clean he'll believe it."

"Yeah..."

Section III: "Let's Choose Executors..."

Chapter 9: "What's A Bozo Bill?"

Two hours before Napoleon Solo made his startling discovery, a pigeon fluttered through a small hatchway into a cage some fifty miles south-southwest. Her passage tripped a microswitch, causing a bell to chime and a flag to drop in the next room where Ward Baldwin, concealed from the world, sat most informally clad in a blue wool dressing gown and worn slippers over a bowl of steaming oatmeal, studying a chemical journal.

He looked up as the bell sounded in the back of the most private apartments behind the Bomb Shop, then rose painfully and reached for his stick. With its help he made his way back to the small corner where three pigeons were stalking about and murmuring to each other. One was pecking up grain in the end of a wire runway. Baldwin dropped a gate behind her, opened another gate and reached through.