The Ugly Man Affair Read online

  THE UGLY MAN AFFAIR

  By Robert Hart Davis

  Some called it treachery. Some called it madness. But all agreed on one thing---it ended in a death beyond belief! While the entire Far East reeled on the brink of war, Solo and Illya sought the ugly madman who stole the blood of humans---and changed them into insensate living dead men!

  PROLOGUE

  THE CORPSE WITH TIRED BLOOD

  The fog rolled and billowed. Somewhere the bells in the church tower rang half after midnight.

  The tallow bonnet lamps of the specially converted taxi penetrated the murk for barely a dozen feet ahead. The driver, an operative on loan from the London station of the United Command for Law and Enforcement, had rolled the window down an inch on his side.

  Fog came drifting through the crack. It carried the smells of dampness, fish, rotting garbage. A squeal of laughter split the night. Two girls in mini-skirts appeared in the headlight beams. The driver hit his brakes. The taxi ground to a halt a foot away from them.

  Laughing and pointing, the girls in their Carnaby Street apparel went on, arm in arm.

  The driver tugged the bill of his greasy cap and let out a sigh. “Near thing. Sorry if I shook yer up, guvs.”

  In the gloom of the rear seat, Napoleon Solo put a finger to his lips and scowled. Sitting forward in a posture of tension beside him, Illya Kuryakin framed words silently: “Anything wrong?”

  Solo squinted his eyes, shrugged to indicate his uncertainty. He held a small plastic wafer with an earplug insert to his right ear. A double strand of wire ran from the wafer across the back of the front seat to a jack in the dashboard.

  Except for a conventional instrument cluster crowded in at the left of the dash, all of the other dials, gauges and softly glowing lights on the board were unmarked and obviously had nothing to do with the taxi’s operation.

  “The signal’s weak,” Solo said at last. “Can you get any more volume, Parkleigh?”

  The U.N.C.L.E. operative masquerading as a taxi driver, Cockney accent and all, fiddled with a switch. “That’s as high as she’ll go, guv. Is the signal still goin’ away from yer?”

  Solo shook his head. An uneasy tension began to build inside of him. He and Illya Kuryakin had been watching Doctor Ffolkes-Pryce for nearly a week. The doctor had made no suspicious moves, no contacts with persons who conceivably could be associated with the supra-nation, THRUSH.

  Then, tonight, as the two agents sat eight rows behind Ffolkes-Pryce at Convent Garden, the break came.

  An usherette summoned the doctor from his seat just before intermission. Illya followed Ffolkes-Pryce to the lobby and observed him enter a telephone cubicle.

  The doctor emerged a few minutes later looking pale, nervous, and in a hurry. He left the theatre at once. Solo and Kuryakin were right behind him.

  Parkleigh’s special car was parked in front. As Solo jumped in, Illya pretended to feel ill. He staggered against the rear fender of the cab which Ffolkes-Pryce occupied. In a second he planted the homing signal on the bumper.

  Ffolkes-Pryce’s cab shot away into the lowering fog. Solo kept Parkleigh at the curb for five minutes, the earpiece already hooked up and the signal tracking loud and clear. That way, Ffolkes-Pryce wouldn’t have his suspicions roused by the sight of a strange vehicle following.

  Now, however, the signal no longer seemed to be receding. It went beepa-beepa-beepa on a sustained level that was lower than before.

  Suddenly Solo understood. He unplugged the ear instrument. “I think we’ve got him. The signal is softer because he’s no longer in the taxi. He’s gone indoors.”

  Illya indicated the turgidly rolling grayness outside their car. “He could be anywhere within six blocks. Does anyone have a bloodhound handy?”

  The driver chuckled. “Next bes’ thing, guv. You blokes who hang out in America may think you got the corner on the scientific stuff, but our lads in the lab here don’t do so bad. ‘Arf a mo.”

  Parkleigh’s thin hands touched a stud on the dash. A panel chunked aside, revealing a small square screen of frosted glass. Parkleigh touched a switch. The screen lit up pearl white, with a grid of red lines overlaid.

  At the touch of another switch, an amplifier brought the beepa-beepa signal through a speaker alongside the display glass. A tiny brilliantly white blip appeared on the screen inside one of the gridded squares.

  “There he is, guv. Somewhere in the block just up ahead. We can’t miss him.”

  Solo’s mouth tightened into a relieved smile. “Your boys aren’t half bad at all. Thanks.”

  “All we have to do is search one complete block,” said Illya, somewhat glumly.

  Parkleigh looked miffed. “It’s better’n searching eight or ten, ain’t it?”

  “Definitely.” Solo levered open the right hand door, prepared to jump out.

  “Listen, I don’t want to violate security,” Parkleigh said, but I been driving you blokes around for a week and struggling with this silly-ass accent in the bargain.”

  Parkleigh’s speech had now become the clipped, elegant diction of Oxford and the nobility, “Mind telling me what all the wind’s up about? Who is the chap you fellows are after?”

  Illya explained, “A Doctor Ffolkes-Pryce. An authority on research and development of small nuclear powered hand weapons. Highly theoretical stuff, but potentially very valuable.”

  “Is that a fact?” said Parkleigh. “Who does this chap work for? The War Office?”

  “U.N.C.L.E.,” Solo explained. “And you wouldn’t have heard of him because his work’s so highly secret. The Beirut station picked up a tip the first of the month that Ffolkes-Pryce was going to defect to our friends at THRUSH.

  “Illya and I were sent over here to pick him up, follow him, see whether it happened and more important, how it could happen. Ffolkes-Pryce’s loyalty was never in question before. He has the highest security clearance you can get in U.N.C.L.E. But now it looks like it is happening, so we’d better move.”

  TWO

  The fog pressed clammy and unpleasant against Solo’s cheeks as they walked along. They passed the entrance to a mews. From its darkness they heard sounds which distinctly resembled one man throttling another. A drunken costermonger reeled at them from the left, whining for a handout. Illya thrust him away. The man promptly collapsed in the gutter, snoring.

  As they reached the cross street, a lorry passed at high speed. Solo had the uncomfortable feeling that they were traveling through a nether world. Little or nothing of their surroundings could be seen. The murky buildings barely put forth any light at all.

  Moving to the right out of range of a feeble street lamp, Illya drew the sections of his long-muzzled U.N.C.L.E. pistol from inner pockets of his own dark raincoat. He snapped them together, checked the firing controls and slid the entire weapon back into the specially cut long outer pocket.

  “That’s the block over there, Napoleon. Can you make out how many buildings?”

  “Looks like just one. A big one,” Solo answered. “Let’s get a little closer.”

  They crossed cautiously. A high, spike-topped iron fence ran off to the right and left. An immense, sagging Edwardian building loomed beyond it. Solo bent to peer at a small brass plate affixed to two of the black iron spikes alongside the iron gate. The plate read: The Fordyce Undertaking Establishment, Ltd.

  Illya sniffed the fog. “Morticians. How cheerful.”

  A quick tour on foot told the two U.N.C.L.E. agents that the premises of Mr. Fordyce and his fellow death specialists occupied the entire block. The iron fence encircled the whole property. The place had a rear gate, for delivery vans and hearses no doubt, but it was closed with a heavy padlock and chain.

  In minutes
the two agents returned to the main gate. Solo rubbed the fingertips of his right hand together like a cracksman warming up.

  “Stand by for alarm bells, poison gas and trap doors in the sidewalk,” he said, and gave the lever handle of the gate a tug.

  With a squeak of rusty hinges the gate opened. Solo looked startled. Illya laughed low.

  “You don’t give us enough credit Napoleon. No one’s expecting us because we did such a splendidly anonymous job of shadowing Ffolkes-Pryce.

  Solo wasn’t convinced. He closed his hand around the pistol muzzle in his pocket and eased through the gate. “Or maybe the booby traps are a little further inside.” Cautiously he moved up the shortwalk, climbed the ornate marble staircase which led to tall double doors.

  A placard hung from one of the handles. Illya crowded up to read it: Closed until further notice.

  Gently, Solo tested both the door handles. Each one gave a short way, then resisted. “Locked up tight.” He reached beneath his coat to pull out a small metallic-finish box. “But I’d rather not try this on the main door. Let’s see if there’s another.”

  Illya Kuryakin indicated something to their left. “Looks like a walk way there. What are we going to do once we get inside? Make funeral arrangements for some fictitious nephew?”

  “Just see what’s happening. If Ffolkes-Pryce is in this place, and in the claws of our bird friends after all, we’ll get him out as best we can. Well take him back to London HQ and see what we can do to wring some kind of answer from him as to why one of the top researchers in the organization decided to play games with the enemy.”

  By now they had reached the corner of the building. They crept all the way around to the rear. There Solo applied the metallic box to a locked wooded door alongside the shadow-clotted delivery bay. He inserted small prongs on the box into the wood of the door right next to the lock. Then he twisted a dial on the box’s face.

  A low, continuous clicking came from the box for around one minute. At the end of that time, Solo pried the box loose. He slipped it in his pocket and cautiously turned the doorknob.

  The door swung inward. Ahead stretched a dim, low-ceilinged hallway. Paint peeled from its walls. A feeble light burned far down, near a staircase. The agents slipped inside. Illya shut the door without making a sound. The air smelled of formaldehyde.

  Napoleon Solo led the way down the corridor, testing the floor with the tip of his shoe each time he took a step. Evidently Illya had been correct in his judgment of a few minutes ago. If this were indeed a THRUSH nest, it was lightly guarded at its perimeters. Maybe Solo and Illya had done their tedious, time-consuming job of shadowing Ffolkes-Pryce to perfection. On the other hand, the apparent disregard of security measures by THRUSH could indicate some other condition entirely.

  A slipshod operation, perhaps? Solo doubted it. THRUSH was never slipshod. Then confidence? Complete confidence that Doctor Ffolkes-Pryce belonged to them? The thought confounded and upset Solo.

  Defection by a man of Ffolkes-Pryce’s status was almost unthinkable. The specter of a gaping weakness in U.N.C.L.E.’s internal intelligence procedures loomed as a real shocker, a very dangerous one.

  Had a THRUSH agent in Beirut not become involved with a woman on the outside, and taken the reprimand of his superiors in less than good humor, and then gone over to U.N.C.L.E. for revenge, taking with him all the little rumors and snippets of hearsay he possessed, U.N.C.L.E. would never had heard of Ffolkes-Pryce’s impending defection in the first place.

  At least Mr. Alexander Waverly had not given them any additional information when he issued the assignment. Solo could only assume something was drastically wrong with internal intelligence.

  At Solo’s side, Illya stiffened in mid-stride. Solo cocked his head. Sure enough, voices drifted down the dim staircase ahead. The agents moved closer. By kneeling, Solo managed to look up the stairs into a large room with a cracked, buff-colored ceiling. Vague lighting up there showed him musty old velveteen drapes hung to either side of the entrance at the head of the stairs. An uncertain voice, words indistinguishable, was saying something. Then someone else spoke in much stronger, forceful tones:

  “---of course, Doctor, we are under no obligation to explain anything to you. You are here. You belong to us now. You will work for us in whatever capacity we say. And you had better understand that.”

  Again the mumbling voice. Then the second speaker laughed: “Yes, yes, naturally we’ll take care of your---ah---condition.” The laugh carried a malicious note in it. “But only as long as you remain loyal to THRUSH. You are quite important to us, you and quite a few others like you. Not long from now, you see, it is men just like you who shall tip the scales finally and for all time in our favor. Ah, I see by your expression that you understand. Splendid. The craving does get hold of one after a bit, doesn’t it?”

  Napoleon Solo bobbed his head again. Illya understood the signal instantly. Side by side, long-muzzle pistols drawn out, the men inched toward the bottom of the stairs for the charge upward.

  Solo had no idea how many THRUSH agents might be in the room above. But he’d heard no other voices besides the two. He was willing to gamble. Down came Solo’s foot on the lowest stair tread. Bells clanged.

  With a curse, Solo launched his charge upward anyway. THRUSH booby traps this far inside the perimeter of one of their stations was unusual, but he kicked himself for not having learned the unexpected from the supra-nation.

  Illya raced after him up the stairs. The heavy voice in the room above shouted: “Gregor! The emergency stairs! Timon, you and Markos stop whoever is coming up. This way, please, Doctor! Hurry!”

  Sounds of a struggle blended with the heavy feet of men running toward the top of the stairs. The curtains hanging at the stair-top billowed aside on wired tracks. The curtains had hidden two banks of vertical metal cones, six cones to a bank, mounted on the wall on either side of the stairs.

  Just as Solo reached the level of the lowest cone, all twelve cones discharged a thin. Grayish gas which struck his face, blinded his eyes and brought nausea to his throat.

  A THRUSH agent in a business suit loomed at the head of the stairs. The man fired. Solo dodged. Illya flattened against the other wall, shielding his mouth with one hand as he shot back with the other.

  The Thrushman pitched forward with blood streaking his shirt bosom. Coughing violently, Solo kicked the man on down the stairs.

  From the room above came more sounds of struggle, the heavy voice exclaiming: “Doctor---a little faster!”

  The second THRUSH agent appeared. Solo charged up past the last of the spewing cones and hit the agent a smashing body block with his shoulder. Solo and the Thrushman spilled backward into the room. It was a huge, poorly-lit parlor filled with overstuffed furniture and Tiffany-style lamps hanging on tarnished green chains from the ceiling.

  As Solo rolled and thrashed across the Oriental carpet, avoiding the kicks and the gun hand of the man he’d tumbled, he glimpsed a fat, bald-headed man, another agent, and thin, goggle-eyed Ffolkes-Pryce struggling on the room’s far side. Ffolkes-Pryce seemed dazed, confused, reluctant to follow the other two---

  Solo had no more time to evaluate the situation. His THRUSH enemy twisted over on his belly and aimed his gun directly at Solo’s head. Desperately Solo whipped his own gun hand up and over.

  Too late. He knew he wouldn’t make it in time---

  A low, flat pop in back of Solo announced Illya’s arrival. The Thrushman took the bullet in his ribs, yelling with pain. He struggled to one knee, eyes glazed. The knee collapsed under him. As he fell, the gun in his flailing hand exploded.

  On the other side of the parlor, Doctor Ffolkes-Pryce screamed.

  The fat man cursed fluently in a foreign tongue. He shoved Ffolkes-Pryce away and disappeared down a stairway which had opened in the floor near the baseboard of the parlor’s outside wall. Dr. Ffolkes-Pryce was sprawled on the Oriental carpet. The fat Thrushman had evidently judged him to be fatall
y shot and decided to save his own neck. Solo and Illya charged in pursuit---

  Only to drop to their knees, doubled with intestinal cramps and unmerciful pain. The delayed effects of the blast of gas from the stair cones left the two agents lying helpless for the better part of fifteen minutes.

  Finally Solo felt a measure of control return to his twitching limbs. He fought down the sour taste in his throat, weaved to his feet. Ffolkes-Pryce lay on his back. The secret escape stair gaped.

  Illya stumbled toward it, went down it. He returned in two minutes. His head appeared above floor level as he said: “It goes all the way to the basement. A tunnel leads to a false manhole in the street. They are gone, the two who were---“

  Suddenly Illya stopped. He saw the expression of horror on Solo’s face. He climbed the rest of the way into the room.

  “The shot got him in the neck,” Solo said, kneeling beside Ffolkes-Pryce. “He’s dead but---Illya, look at what’s coming out of the wound.”

  Face wrenching into a mask of disbelief, Illya stared. The bullet had torn a sizeable wound in Ffolkes-Pryce scrawny throat. But instead of deep red blood fountaining out, a thin fluid poured down the scientist’s neck and soaked his collar. The fluid was almost transparent. It bore only the faintest of pink tinges.

  “Napoleon---“ Illya clutched his friend’s shoulder. “That doesn’t look like blood or run like blood, it---“

  “But that’s what he’s bleeding,” said Solo, pointing. “Whatever it is.”

  The pinkish-clear fluid poured from the wound in the dead man’s neck. Then Napoleon Solo noticed something else, and the nightmare began in earnest. Solo’s shaking index finger moved near the wound, to indicate a pair of tiny red puncture marks in the neck of Doctor Ffolkes-Pryce.

  And the word that leaped into Solo’s dazed mind unbidden was---vampire.

  PART I

  UGLY IS MORE THAN SKIN DEEP

  “Mr. Solo---Mr. Kuryakin,” said Mr. Alexander Waverly, “I have a confession to make.”

  Illya’s right eyebrow lifted. “Sir?”

  Waverly gestured with the stem of the perpetually empty pipe.