Far off, suddenly, there was a sound of gongs. Loud, frantic ringing of gongs. Illya stood alert in the dark of the hidden storeroom. Paul Dabori nodded. The hunchback seemed disturbed.
"They have discovered your escape. I killed the other guard, but they are not all fools. They will guess that I have helped you. We will not be safe here much longer."
"Why must they be stopped?" Illya said.
"I will tell you, but first we must escape." Dabori said.
"How?"
"I have a way. This was an ancient cellar. It connects to the sewers. That is our only way out, the sewers down to the river."
"All right. Let's go now," Illya said.
Dabori shook his head. "No, I know how they will search. We must wait until they are almost here; then we can pass them and reach the sewers. You see, we must go through some of the new corridors to reach the old sewers."
In the dark Illya sat with the hunchback. The two men listened to the incessant clangor of the gongs, the distant sounds of voices and running feet. Illya stood up to inspect the room. He saw that the cans were filled with basic foods: meats, vegetables, butter, sugar. All in cans.
And there were large cans of plain water. Puzzled, Illya continued his search.
There was medicine, and surgical supplies, and some large cylindrical objects that Illya recognized as air filters. Then he touched the walls. The walls were not stone on the inside.
The walls were lead!
"Yes," Dabori said behind him. "The walls are lead-lined. The new concrete is twelve feet thick. There is food and water for a hundred men for six months. The new parts are all sealed into a unit; the air is filtered through many filters. There is even oxygen in case the vents must be closed for a time."
Illya touched the lead walls again. Then he slowly turned to look at Dabori.
The hunchback, even in the dim interior of the hidden storeroom, was grim.
"An atom bomb shelter," Illya said. "A secret, and very bell built atom bomb shelter!"
"Yes," Dabori said. It is part of the plan. There are many such shelters in the world now, all the plan of Morlock The Great. That is why I had to tell—"
Dabori stopped, held up his small hand. Illya froze. Just outside the room he heard voices and footsteps. Someone tried the door. Outside men stood around the door. Illya took hold of his small, cuff-link gas bombs, and waited.
* * *
WALTER and Bruno bent to take off Solo's shoes. They both bent down, eager to get to work. Solo waited until their faces were both close to him near his feet. Then, with a powerful effort, he lifted his entire body, and the chair itself, a few inches off the floor in a jump, and came down on the heel of his left shoe.
The two Thrush men, intent on the anticipation of torturing Solo, failed to react for a split second. It was enough. As Solo made is jump and came down, they reacted and hurled themselves backwards. They were too late.
A spurt of reddish gas burst from the capsule hidden in Solo's heel. The gas quickly expanded flush into their faces. They gasped once each.
Solo hurled himself over backward and as far as he could go. Even then he got a faint whiff of the gas before it dispersed in the air of the barge cabin.
The whiff made his head reel, made him fight for consciousness. Everything went black and green and red and he felt himself slipping away; then it was gone. He lay in a sharp draft of wind from under the door.
Quickly he crawled himself around on the floor, the chair still firmly tied to him. Walter and Bruno had taken the full dose straight into their faces before they had time to jump away. They both lay flat, eyes staring at nothing, barely breathing.
Solo had two hours.
In two hours they would revive—with headaches, but otherwise as good as ever. Before then, Solo had to be free. Where he lay, his eyes searched the barge cabin. What he wanted was on the leg of that very table where Walter and Bruno had prepared their instruments of torture—a small blowtorch with a thin jet of blue flame.
Painfully, Solo gathered his muscles and heaved himself to his knees. He swayed to his feet with another lunge upward, staggered, crouched over with the chair against his back and legs, knees bent where they were tied to the chair. But he did not fall, the training and balance of the trained athlete coming to his aid now.
Earlier, while they were overpowering him, he had cursed as his hand, rasping against a corner of the table, had grated on a rough, abrasive edge of the wood, which had in fact tore some skin from his hand. Solo stared down at the ragged fused bit of wood and metal. Solo grinned, the sweat running into his eyes. Then he lay down and went to work.
They had made one mistake in binding him. After looping the rope firmly around his legs, they had tied it off to the rear rung of the chair—as far from his hands and feet as they could get. Now that was going to free him. He extended his legs until the chair, where he lay on his side, rubbed against the roughened table leg, just under where it joined the upper surface of the table itself.
It was hard, back-breaking work, scraping the rope against the table. He was lying at an awkwardly cramped angle, so that the labor of rubbing his legs against the abrasive spot put a terrific strain on his lumbar muscles. Every ten minutes he had to rest, panting. After what seemed like an eternity, he strained, almost without hope, and felt the torn rope part.
For a precious moment he fell back on the floor, hoarding and restoring his strength which had been so sorely spent. Then, not daring to rest longer, he went to work again.
Quickly now, his legs free, he stood up straight, the chair still tied only to his arms behind him. They had not been stupid enough to use only one rope. He looked at Walter and Bruno. The two Thrush men had not moved. Grinning to himself again, Solo repeated the operation, but much more easily this time.
With his legs free, he was able to maneuver his body to where the ropes on his hands and arms crossed the upper part of the table leg.
Three minutes later he was free, with nothing worse than two ugly scrapes on his hand.
He threw the chair away, and quickly felt the lining of his jacket. He found, and drew out, a tiny flat needlelike object. Then he found a flat, capsule-like object inside the thick cuff of his trousers. The capsule-like, flat cylinder was wrapped in a tiny net of cotton. He fitted the capsule into the miniature syringe, bent over Walter, and inserted the needle into the Thrush man's arm.
He squeezed the fat capsule.
Walter jerked, shuddered, his limbs moving in spasms. Then the Thrush man's eyes began to flutter. Suddenly they came open. But Walter was not awake, not really.
Solo bent close to the ear of the Thrush man. "Where did Maxine go? Agent Trent, where did she go and why? Answer!"
Walter's eyes blinked, his body jerked, his lips began to move. "Uh—No—I will not—" The Thrush man shuddered convulsively. "I—she went to—Morlock. The country house; Salisbury—you must capture him and make him—tell—"
Solo let the man fall back and threw away his now useless miniature syringe of powerful truthserum and stimulant. Moments later he was swimming in the icy water of the Thames. He reached the shore, a wide flat of mud at low tide, and climbed up the embankment. It took him five minutes to locate a telephone, and five more minutes to get the exact location of Morlock The Great's house near Salisbury.