16 - The Splintered Sunglasses Affair Read online

  He had managed to convey two slices of duck and half a quenelle to his pocket during dinner. And, after he had returned to his room at eleven thirty, the first thing he did was to shake these from his handkerchief and treat them with the tablets.

  He unscrewed the crown, shook out the miniature pills and, having ground them to a fine powder with the shaft of his razor, smeared the white dust liberally over the surface of the food. Then, dressing himself in the travel-creased clothes in which he had been kidnapped, he settled down to wait.

  Carlsen and Lala Eriksson slept at opposite ends of the big landing. The manservant had a small suite of rooms off the kitchens. It was after twelve before the sounds of activity ceased from these three points, but Solo waited another full hour before he even got up off his bed.

  At two-fifteen, water ran for half a minute or so somewhere downstairs. At two-fifty, one of the dogs in the grounds barked and then was silent. Solo eased open his door as three o'clock struck from the clock tower above the stables. When he heard the single note of the half hour, he began tiptoeing silently along the passage towards the landing.

  It was a clear, moonlit night and the staircase and most of the space beyond it was barred with pale swathes of light falling in through the deep windows above the front door.

  The trapdoor was clearly visible in the gloom. But first the agent had to make a trip downstairs. Placing his weight with infinite care on the extreme outside of the treads, he stole down to the hallway and trod softly through the drawing room and on into the gunroom. He had memorized the position of the furniture but the curtains were still drawn and the journey was difficult. Once he came within an inch of stumbling over a coffee table laden with cups and saucers that must have been moved after he had gone to bed. But at last he was standing in pitch darkness by the billiard table in the gunroom, listening to the silence. He removed the long-handled cue-rest, with its x-shaped brass end, from the rack and began the return journey.

  He had just left the coffee-and-cigar-smelling closeness of the drawing room when he froze back into the shadows beneath the stairs. Through the French windows leading to the terrace, he saw the shadow of a man fall across the flagstones as one of the guards crossed the corner of the moonlit lawn. In a way it was nice to have his suspicions confirmed—but it gave him quite a shock and made him realize afresh the difficulty of his task.

  Upstairs again he picked up his shoes from the landing and slung them around his neck by the laces. Outside Carlsen's door he could hear a steady and even snoring. The girl's was ajar, and it was more than ten minutes before he was satisfied that the faint sounds of breathing were deep and regular enough to mean that she slept. But at last he was ready. It was time to act. Climbing on to the newel post at the head of the stairs, he supported himself against the wall with one hand and pushed at the trapdoor with the brass head of the cue-rest.

  He had seen that the door was of the counterbalanced kind that would stay open as soon as it had been pushed past the vertical instead of falling over with a slam on to the floor of the loft. But it remained to be seen in practice whether the mechanism was working properly! He pushed a little harder. With the tiniest of creaks, the trapdoor freed itself from its frame and swung upwards into darkness.

  Straining, Solo fed up the long wooden handle of the cue-rest. The opening yawned wider and wider still; the door rose higher and higher. When it was almost vertical, presenting the minimum face to his thrust, the metal "x" of the rest slipped on the painted wood with a slight scraping sound. Solo froze; Carlsen gave an extra loud snore and turned over in his sleep; and a moment later the door fell away from the cue-rest and homed in the open position against the pressure of its spring-loading.

  The agent realized that he had been holding his breath, and released a lungful of air in a long sigh. He lowered the cue-rest carefully to the floor and leaned it against the wall. And then he prepared to jump....

  Balanced awkwardly on the newel post with one stockinged foot on either side of the wooden ball decorating it, he was in a poor position for a spring. But it had to be done. The trapdoor was about two feet above the tips of his fingers as he stood there with outstretched arms. Tensing the muscles of his toes, he flexed his knees, drew a deep breath... and leaped upwards!

  The sole of one foot slipped slightly on the polished wood as he took off, so that it was the fingers of his left hand only which hit the frame of the trapdoor, clenched, and frenziedly hung on.

  For a timeless moment, he swung over the stairwell, his whole weight on the fingers of his left hand. If the shrieking muscles and sinews and bones of his five fingers couldn't hold him, he would drop to the hall below, and such a fall—even if it didn't break his back—would bring the household around him before he could drag enough breath into his lungs to cry out!

  With the sweat pouring down his temples into his eyes, he scrabbled for a hold with his right hand, found it, and then began the nerve-wracking task of hauling his body up on to a level with his hands.

  By the time he had managed to drag himself up out of the moonlit dusk of the landing and flop down in the musty darkness of the loft, the muscles of his forearms and biceps were trembling uncontrollably. For two minutes he lay there panting. Then he rose cautiously to his knees and lowered the trapdoor into place again.

  Twenty minutes later, after what had seemed an eternity of groping and fumbling in the dark, always fearing that he would step on a joist that creaked or put a foot through the plaster of a ceiling, he was letting himself out on to a slope of tiled roof through a tiny attic dormer.

  The moon, riding high in a gap between banks of cloud, was two or three days past the full, its milky light streaming down to throw stables and wall and garage and trees into sharp relief, like the cardboard cutouts of a toy farm. Between them, the ground was dense with shadow.

  And somewhere in that shadow, probably, at least one of the torpedoes patrolled with his machine pistol....

  Up on his roof, Napoleon Solo shrugged. Guards or no guards, he had to move fast. If they had been going to drug him, whatever it was might have been in the dinner he had eaten some hours ago. What was more likely—if in fact his guess that tonight was the night was correct—was that they would surprise him while he was asleep... at the traditional hour when resistance was at its lowest ebb. Which could mean any-time after the next half hour. Carlsen could have an alarm set to waken him at four. He could be awake already. And in either case Solo had to get clear before he was found missing—just in case!

  Edging his way to the shadowed side of the roof, he found a stackpipe, tested it, and lowered himself silently over the guttering.

  The descent was surprisingly easy. The pipe was of some rough composition, quite thick, and firmly anchored to the wall. Taking advantage of the excellent grip it offered. Solo swarmed down and rounded the corner of the terrace on stockinged feet. Beyond a shallow flight of steps bordered by classical urns, a stretch of moonlit lawn separated him from the shadowed side of the garage.

  He had no time to reconnoiter. The shadow he had seen from the hallway had been moving in the same direction as himself. He must just hope that the man's tour of duty was hourly or half-hourly, in which case he would still have a couple of minutes before the guard was due again. He would have to risk it.

  Taking a deep breath, he sprang down the steps and padded across the lawn. The brightness of the moonlight was like a blow in the face. He felt as spotlit and as vulnerable as a high-wire walker until he had gained the comparative safety of the trough of shadow which lay along the side of the old brick building. But none of the blank windows of the house was raised in protest; no call to halt split the silence; no flame from a revolver seared the dark. Releasing his breath in a long sigh, Solo slid around the corner and tried the garage doors.

  As he had hoped, they were not locked. Let into the big outer doors was a small inner one that swung noiselessly open as he turned the handle. He slipped through and pulled it close after him.
r />   He could make out the dim shapes of four cars in the reflected light filtering through the windows—a station wagon, a Cadillac, and two small foreign vehicles, one a sedan and the other a convertible. Although the Caddy's vast trunk yawned obediently open as soon as he touched the button, he drew blank when he rummaged around in its interior. It was completely empty. With the station wagon, however, he had more luck. Lifting the wide back door, he found in the space behind the third row of seats exactly what he was looking for; a coil of towing rope, about twelve feet long, with a small iron grappling hook spliced into one end.

  With an exclamation of satisfaction, Solo eased the rope out from underneath a heavy tower jack and a roll of tools, and coiled it around his own waist beneath his jacket. Then, having untied the shoes from their position round his neck and slipped them on, he was ready to go.

  For a moment he toyed with the idea of trying to find out what State he was in from the license plates of the cars. But it wasn't light enough to read them and he was by no means sure he could decipher them adequately by touch. Besides which, it was late... the stable clock had chimed four times several minutes ago.

  Tiptoeing back to the garage door, he pried it open. And froze.

  A man was standing four yards away, his back to the garage, staring up at the roof of the house. Holding his breath, Solo followed his gaze. All along the mellow facade, dark windows shinily reflected the light of the moon. All except one.

  Of the four attic dormers piercing the tiled roof, one—the left-hand one—gaped open upon a black interior. In the silver light which poured down from the sky and etched in sharp relief every imperfection in the bricks, the window which Solo in his haste had left open stood wide to the night.

  For a moment longer, the guard stood there. And then, dropping his machine pistol to the full extent of his arm, he turned slowly around to scrutinize the moonlit garden.

  Luckily for Solo, the moon had shifted enough since he had entered the garage for the shadow of the gable to fall across the partly opened door. He would have to trust to the contrast between light and shade to hide this fact, for he dare not try to close it now.

  The guard's eyes swept past the garage and on towards the corner of the house. And then, apparently making up his mind, the man strode off towards the front of the house.

  As soon as he was out of sight, Solo was through the door and away in the opposite direction as hard as he could go. Treading silently on rubber soles, he flitted past the stables and skirted the wall enclosing the kitchen garden. A sweep of gravel drive separated him from the lawns. Pausing impatiently until the moon had sailed behind one of the banks of cloud that had been spreading across the sky from the east, he sped over it.

  Twice, the fine stones crunched loudly under his feet; but he was past caring now whether people heard him. Cursing the carelessness which had led him to leave the dormer window open, he reached the grass... and began running like the wind towards the boundary of the estate.

  He had decided to make his attempt at the spot where the electrified wire came nearest to the house, reasoning that most of the guards would probably be on the far side, where it was farthest away.

  Once, on his way, he had to drop to the ground when he saw a guard crossing an open patch on the far side of a shrubbery. Otherwise he encountered nobody, and soon he was standing, a little out of breath, under a tall cedar tree just inside the wire fence. He withdrew the pieces of doctored food from inside his pocket.

  Behind him, across a dark reach of lawn, lights had come on behind the front door of the house.

  Solo uncoiled the rope from around his waist. Freeing about six feet of the end with the hook on it, he looped the rest over his left wrist and began to whirl the hook around his head. He was staring up at the tree as he tried to choose a suitable branch at which to aim, when a slight noise to his left drew his attention.

  One of the guards was standing among the bushes with his FN raised to fire.

  The agent acted almost by reflex. Like lightning, he fed more rope to his right hand, increased the thrust of his arm, and dropped his wrist a shade. The heavy iron hook altered its trajectory, whistling through the air in a flat arc, to thud wickedly into the side of the gunman's head. The man stiffened, dropped his weapon, and then crashed backwards among the branches, pole-axed.

  Solo stole a glance over his shoulder. Windows blazed with light all along the upper floor of the house. At any moment, they would discover that his room was empty.

  He whirled the rope again and cast upwards for a tangle of boughs about sixteen feet from the ground. At the third try, the hook caught firmly enough for the rope to take his weight. Then he turned to the fence and lobbed the pieces of drugged food over into the space between the wire and the outer wall.

  He didn't see the dogs come, neither had he seen or heard them before—but they were on the stuff in an instant, a blur of heavy bodies snarling and snuffing in the dark as they wrestled for the tasty morsels.

  Solo was half way up the rope, swinging like a pendulum, before the great beasts had swallowed the food. As they staggered and sank to the ground, he rocked the rope, Tarzan-like, to its zenith and released his grasp as he rose towards the electrified fence.

  There was a rush of air against his face, a confused impression of lights, and a jarring impact that shook every bone in his body.

  But he was over! He had fallen half way across the bare strip which lay between the wall and the fence, not far from the supine bodies of the drugged hounds. As he rose groggily to his feet, the moon swam out from behind the cloudbank, flooding the area with light.

  Into the high, thin, singing silence, a clamor of voices burst distantly from the house. They must have discovered that he was missing....

  He glanced desperately around. An alarm bell was ringing in the gatehouse fifty yards to his left, where the wire fence crossed the main drive by means of a steel grid gate. The outer gates themselves were housed in an arch piercing the building. So there would be no hope of escape that way.

  He turned to his right just as a low and menacing growl throbbed into the air. A third Doberman was regarding him balefully from above the fallen bodies of its mates.

  Solo took one look at the murderous blaze of its eyes and whirled into action.

  Tearing off his jacket he advanced towards the dog with a suppressed snarl of rage. For an instant the beast, taken by surprise, backed away, its hackles raised. And in that moment the agent swerved aside and hared for the wall.

  Pelting up, he swung the jacket round his head and dashed it at the top of the brickwork, where a flinty sierra of broken glass glittered in the moonlight.

  By a miracle, the cloth caught and held. Gasping, Solo swung his feet forward and up as the killer dog bounded in, snapping at his heels. Seconds later, he had hauled himself up and dropped soundlessly to the grass verge on the far side.

  Silently, he ran off down a white ribbon of road traversing a dream landscape under the moon.

  Behind the demesne wall, floodlights were glaring on all over the grounds; voices shouted, dogs bayed and a car engine roared into action. He must get out of sight, and quickly! And since the only advantage he had was that Carlsen and his men would not yet know that he had only just escaped and might think he had got away hours ago, he might as well go to ground as near the house as possible, leaving them to search the roads for miles around....

  He was now passing a gate which led into a large field. A little way down the road, the long, low outbuildings of a farm bulked against the night sky. And here, between the roadway and the gate, was a cattle grid, one of those iron grilles placed over a depression in the ground to deter livestock from straying off their owners' property.

  Without pausing to think. Solo pried up the heavy grid, dropped into the space below it, and lowered it cautiously down over him.

  For what seemed like many hours, he lay there with his face pressed to the cold, musty moisture of the earth. Cars, several of them it se
emed, swept past two or three times. Once a spotlight moved slowly along the verge as some vehicle ground past in low gear. Bars of light fingered the dark in Solo's self-chosen prison, fanning out over the mud revealing a tuft of blanched leaves, a spider scurrying, the gluey end of a worm. Later the footsteps of several people clattered by. And finally it was quiet.

  Groaning with cramp. Solo got his shoulders to the grille and levered it up. To his astonishment, he saw that he had been lying in the shallow trench for a little less than seventy minutes. He stood upright and surveyed the terrain. The moon had sunk below the horizon and the meadows lay spread out beneath the dark sky as far as he could see. However far the motorized hue and cry had ranged, though, he was sure that Carlsen would have left several sentries in the immediate neighborhood of the house. To take to the road would be suicidal; he would do better to strike across the fields until he came across another, and then walk until he could get a lift to the nearest township from an early driver.

  Swiftly he clambered over the gate and hurried along the boundary of the field in the shelter of a tall hedge.

  A half mile further on, he reached a line of trees stretching away diagonally towards the east, where a faint lightening of the sky confirmed the crowing of a nearby cock. Ten minutes later, he was standing on top of a bank bordering a narrow country lane.

  Solo glanced up and down the ghostly white ribbon of the road. There was nothing to be seen—no light, no headlamp, no guards.

  He plunged down the bank and set off at a jogtrot in the direction which seemed to lie farthest from Carlsen's house. Judging from the sky, it would be roughly south.

  Presently he saw lights come on in a cottage on the far side of a field. The cock crowed again and a distant dog barked. Far away across the dark countryside a long, low structure was silhouetted against the sky. It looked like a flyover carrying a State Highway above the flat land; and indeed when he stopped he could hear the hum of traffic and make out the moving blurs of far-off trucks and cars above the concrete balustrade.