And the tiny magician gestured again with his hand. There was another flash of flame and smoke, and the sound of water. Fast, inrushing water. Illya and Solo stood up. Water was gushing around their feet, pouring into the room.
On the ledge the insane little magician choked with demonic laughter. "A swim, eh? A nice swim. You are quite free to swim, to fight, until—But you must have guessed, yes? Until the chains reach their limit!"
The water gushed up. It had reached their waists now. Illya bent, struggled with the chain on his leg. Solo watched the tiny magician laughing on his ledge.
"You can fight, you see? Ah, that is the pleasure! To watch you struggle, and you will struggle because you are alive! No simple drowning, not for you! You will swim, and thrash, and then the chain will hold you, the water will rise, and you will go under. When the water reaches my feet—your heads will go under and you will die! Die!"
The water rose higher and higher, and the two agents were swimming now. The chain on only one leg did not prevent them from swimming on the surface of the rising water.
Morlock roared with laughter on his ledge.
In the distance, suddenly, there was the sound of firing. Doors crashed. The voices of men reached their ears above the sound of inrushing water. On the ledge the monstrous little magician listened. He seemed to be estimating. His laughter was gone. He stared down at them from his glowing, satanic eyes.
"Your friends, but they will not be in time. My men will hold them until I escape, and by then you will be under the water."
The water rose swiftly. The two agents struggled to swim, to break the chains. Morlock leaned down toward them as they floated up toward his ledge.
"You destroyed my plans! You stopped me! I will win, but you have ruined it all for now! So you will die! You will all die and we outcast and spit-upon will inherit the Earth!"
Struggling, Solo and Illya looked at each other. Their heads were nearly up to the ledge. Each man could feel the chain reaching its end, dragging now on their thrashing legs. Another few minutes and the chains would be fully extended—and then—
On the ledge the water lapped at the feet of Morlock The Great. The grotesque magician laughed once more.
"We will rule the earth!" Morlock cried, and once again his hand described an arc in the air. "Farewell, dead men, Voila!"
The tiny hand made its magic gesture.
There was a puff of bright red smoke, and—
A sheet of flame shot to the ceiling of the stone pit.
Inside the flames, his clothes a holocaust, Morlock The Great screamed and screamed.
There was the puff of smoke, and where there should have been nothing an no one, where Morlock The Great should have vanished in his puff of smoke—there was a great sheet of flame and the tiny magician, his eyes a mask of terror, turned into a human torch before the eyes of Solo and Illya struggling in the water.
With a final scream of horror and pain, Morlock The Great leaped into the water.
It did not help. The flames did not go out, and, on the surface, Morlock The Great burned like a torch.
Solo and Illya stared, struggled, fought to keep their heads above water.
Then they felt it—the water was receding.
On the ledge where Morlock The Great had played his last trick, they saw the twisted body, and gentle face, of Paul Dabori. The morlock who had come to their aid smiled down as they floated down with the receding water.
* * *
IN THE long conference room of the Cult shelter deep beneath the city of London, Solo and Illya sat in dry clothes and listened to the dry voice of Alexander Waverly. The chief was having difficulty lighting his pipe.
"You see, your friend Paul Dabori decided to slip back after you went off in chase of Morlock. It seems he decided that with all that hair he would not be recognized, especially after you all escaped."
Dabori smiled. "They never suspected I had come back down here. When Morlock came running back, there was much confusion. I followed him to his private room. When he wasn't looking, I replaced some of his special smoke powder with some of your heatfoil. I tore up the foil, and mixed it with his smoke powder. I'm afraid it fixed him."
Waverly managed to get his pipe alight. "So, when you gentlemen were, shall we say, at the end of your—uh—rope, Morlock could not resist one last disappearance, and set off his smoke act. Unfortunately, this time Dabori had mixed him something a little stronger than smoke. You saw the result, I believe."
"And I knew where the walves were for that pit," Dabori said.
Solo raised an eyebrow. "If you need work, I think we could use you, Mr. Dabori."
The hunchback shook his head. "No, I will return to my own work, I think. I want to live quietly, usefully now. Of course, first I will get a haircut!"
Solo laughed. Illya looked seriously at his Chief. Waverly, his bloodhound face impassive, puffed quietly on his pipe. All around them the London police were herding morlocks away.
"Did you get them all?" Illya said.
"We did. They had a submarine. That was the motors you heard. But they were still waiting for Morlock himself when we broke in. When they saw his body, all fight went out of them. I don't think we will have any more trouble with them. I'm afraid many of them will need mental care, though," Waverly said.
"And the powder? The powder that induced the hallucinations?" Illya said.
"We do have it all. We will analyze it, of course, but then it will be destroyed," Waverly said.
Suddenly, Solo jumped up. The chief agent looked all around the room. He seemed to be looking for someone.
"Maxine!" Solo said. "We forgot Maxine!"
Alexander Waverly studied his pipe. "No, we picked her up where you had left her."
"I'll bet she was annoyed," Solo grinned. "We have her?"
Waverly coughed. "Ah, no, I'm afraid she's slipped us again. A very resourceful woman. It seems she had a hidden hypodermic and knocked out our guards. She escaped, and with some of the hallucination powder. She—"
Illya sat up. "Thrush has a sample of that powder?"
A smile spilt Waverly's impassive face. "Yes and no. The Trent woman did escape with a sample. But, fortunately, I had taken the precaution of removing the real powder. I hope Thrush will not be too disappointed with their sample of the simple smoke powder Morlock liked to use, poor man."
Solo and Illya grinned at each other. Solo, his boyish face smiling, wondered just what Thrush would say after their experts ran exhaustive tests on what would turn out to be simple smoke powder.
Solo decided that Maxine would have a few bad moments. But Maxine Trent had a charmed life. Solo knew that he would see her again.
Illya Kuryakin was busy studying the records of the late, and very unlamented Morlock The Great.
The grotesque magician himself was a charred corpse in a tiny coffin on its way to the London morgue.
THE END
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posted 2.14.2010, transcribed by Iris