The Thousand Coffin Affair - Avallone Michael (читать книги без регистрации полные .txt) 📗

“When Solo returns with his body, we can run another test. If it turns out the same way, there can be no mistake.”

“Yes, yes. That’s true.”

Waverly worried his corncob pipe. It was a damnable business all around. If Thrush had succeeded with the nasty business as he well suspected, there would indeed be hell to pay. But he had to respect Kuryakin’s results. If the blood specimens of the corpses from Utangaville, Africa and Spayerwood, Scotland, showed the same X factor, why then, the proof was there. Of what, he did not know—save that his research laboratory experts had found one exact, unknown similarity between both blood specimens. Something they vouched could not happen in one hundred million attempts.

“Have you heard from Solo yet, Mr. Waverly?”

“No. But I intend to phone him transatlantic, twelve o’clock Germany time. Tomorrow. He should be where he’s supposed to be by then.”

“If anyone can make an appointment at the right time, he can.”

“Hmm. Indeed. Well, Kuryakin. We’ll discuss this at another time.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Back at his quiet desk, with the row of enamel buttons, the head of Section I, U.N.C.L.E. found a neatly stacked mass of reports awaiting him. The teletype and recorder machines had issued forth a harvest of data. It was Waverly’s daily duty to keep abreast of all that happened in the world as it affected the organization.

Waverly put away his corncob and attacked the pile. Yet even as his mind flew over the data, absorbing the material therein, he couldn’t shake a gloomy feeling of impending doom in the pit of his ancient stomach.

The reports on the Le Bourget fire and the hullabaloo at the Hotel Internationale had had a demoralizing effect on him.

He seemed to have sent Napoleon Solo on an assignment which did nothing but raise a swarm of hornets.

Damnation, he thought.

It only went to prove that Stewart Fromes’ corpse was of the utmost importance to someone. Yet, why consent to turn a man’s body over to his friends if you meant to do nothing but keep the friends from obtaining that body?

A puzzler, indeed. And for a man whose lifelong passion was a good game of chess, a dazzling problem. Waverly’s eyes suddenly glowed and the reports fell away beneath him. His dour face almost broke into a full smile.

Of course. The very thing! The only reason, the single possible motive for such a play. Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner?

Swiftly, his thumb reached for the row of buttons. He poked the yellow buzzer this time.

The metallic voice clicked on: “Yes, Mr. Waverly?”

“Get me the War Room in the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff. I wish to talk to the head of the Army Air Force.”

“Hold on, sir.”

Waverly, in his eagerness to explore his new-found theory and impatient to put his plan into operation, explored the center drawer of his desk until he produced a regulation briar pipe. He sucked on it briefly, tapped the bowl with a stiff finger and waited.

His eyes still held the look of a man who had stumbled on a great truth.

When the call went through and the voice of the head of the Army Air Force came over the wire, Waverly plunged into his request.

U.N.C.L.E., it seemed, had immediate top priority use for a jet bomber flight to Paris, without payload, to connect Waverly with an Air-Sea Rescue helicopter for a pickup in Oberteisendorf, Germany.

Meanwhile, over four thousand miles away, Napoleon Solo’s Beechcraft Debonair was setting down in the very early morning darkness that closed like a shroud over the sleeping town of Oberteisendorf, Germany.

A COFFIN FOR U.N.C.L.E.

THE FUNERAL parlor which contained Stewart Fromes body was a living mockery. It was hard to believe that Oberteisendorf was even a town of any size. In the darkness of landing at night, which Solo had done expertly and with fine command of the patch of ground left for the job, the town had seemed little more than several rows of houses divided by a running stream of water which flowed steadily under a joke of a bridge. Once they had quit the vicinity of the plane, Napoleon Solo had known where to go.

Every German town or village has a Burgomeister, or Mayor. They found Herr Burgomeister’s dwelling on the main street of the town, with a hanging oaken sign suspended from cast-iron moorings which proclaimed the information: BURGOMEISTER.

Napoleon Solo had roused that irate individual from a sound sleep, banging loudly on the front door. A frightened hausfrau had peeked down owlishly from a shuttered window, then hurried to fetch her husband. While they waited on the rutted road below, Solo had taken stock of a few things. He was worn to the bone, and starved—and Geraldine Terry had a splendid figure. She was nearly as tall as he but her chest measurements were far more satisfactory and in shapelier evidence. The leather flying jacket now could not conceal the surge of a ripe, womanly body.

The Burgomeister, thin and scrawny and old, gawked in relief when Solo flashed his impressive U.N.C.L.E. credentials, which to the world at large was some kind of charitable organization for the needy and underprivileged. It was so easy for the casual observer to assume from Solo’s outer appearance that he was some wealthy young man who had decided to be a philanthropist as his life’s work.

Herr Muller was impressed, too.

“Ja. I glad you come. ’Bout time you take your friend.”

“I’ve made good time, all things considered.”

“Ja, ja. Is true. But one day too long and we have to bury your friend.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Do not misunderstand. He was fine man. But law here, body must be claimed by two days or we must bury body. You understand—he rot and smell if we don’t. No how do you call it—facilities for refrigeration.”

“Please take us to him now, Herr Muller.”

The undertaker’s parlor was no more than a squat, ugly brown building of stone and wood. Inside, a dim bulb burned feebly. Solo reflected bitterly that the undertaker’s calling was the same the world over. Keep a light burning in the window all day long to remind the living that someday they must die so now was the time to make plans—

Stewart Fromes’ corpse lay on a flat wooden table, a long sheet of gray muslin draped over his entire length. There was a faint yet already palpable odor of decay in the room. Solo frowned, motioning Jerry Terry to stay back as he came forward. He moved toward the sheet. Upstairs, he could hear the mortician, who had remained out of sight, exchanging guttural German insults with the Burgomeister.

Solo, face expressionless, removed the sheet from Stewart Fromes’ body.

It was not easy to look at. Stewart Fromes’ corpse was a scene from Hell.

His exposed face had already begun to rot, the first signs of visible decay baring the cartilage of his nose and laying back the gums of his mouth. Flesh lay thin and decomposing on the lean face that Solo had known so well. Solo’s insides revolted; his logic reeled.

Stewart Fromes looked like he had been dead for a month. There was no denying the utter gauntness and yellowing, rotting dead tissues of his face. The features had all withdrawn to resemble the wrinkled, leathery-dry rot of decay.

Yet, with all the horror of the situation and the revelation, there was one more staggering blow to sanity.

Stewart Fromes’ clothes were all reversed.

It was as unmistakable as the condition of the dead man’s face.

His jacket was on backwards, straitjacket style. His shirt was the same peculiar way, showing the rear of the collar as if he were a minister. There was no tie, naturally. Solo, still revolted, bent to examine the corpse. Stewart Fromes’ trousers were on backwards too.