* * *
ILLYA opened his eyes. There was no light. He moved and found that he was lying on a damp stone floor. He flexed his arms and his hands. He was not tied up. He felt his face—his disguise was gone.
He sat up and looked around. His eyes, as they grew accustomed to the dark, saw the confines of his prison. Four stone walls, no windows, perhaps ten square feet of floor space. A table and a chair. Nothing else.
And not a sound. He listened. The stone room was quieter than a tomb. No sound at all.
He looked at his watch. Strangely, they had left him all his clothes, his jewelry and hidden weapons. His U.N.C.L.E. Special, and his knife, were gone. Also his eye patch and false mustache. His watch showed that no more than half an hour had passed since he had left The End of the World. Then he had to be still somewhere in London.
But there was no sound at all. The entire life of the great city gave no hint of existing somewhere beyond the stone walls. He felt no drafts, no current of air. Nothing on the surface could be this silent. He was underground—in a stone room far under the earth.
Somewhere deep under the heart of London the morlocks must have headquarters, their real headquarters. The shaggy, limping creatures lurking in hidden passages under the earth and—. And Illya stopped. If there had been any light his eyes would have brightened.
He had it! Morlocks! The Things To Come Brotherhood! What had Taylor, the CID Inspector, said? They believe they will survive! Of course, H. G. Wells and his Time Machine! They had mixed two of H. G. Wells's stories. The morlocks appeared in The Time Machine. Things To Come was another book. And yet, both books were much the same—they presented what Wells thought the future would be like!
A world destroyed—and the morlocks survived! More than that, the morlocks ruled the future! A mutant race of shaggy-haired, half-crippled men who lived on, and controlled, their more fortunate-looking fellow humans. This Cult had merely taken the deformed and cast-out, the survivors of mental wards, and told them they would, indeed, survive and inherit the earth!
Ridiculous, half-insane; yet what else was any Cult? Cults grew because some people, some groups, had to have a dream to believe, no matter how crazy it was. What better dream than to believe that you will inherit the earth, and are, therefore, really better than all the normal, healthy, handsome people?
But what were they up to now? Harmless, Taylor had said. Perhaps they may have been once, but now—
Illya jerked from his reverie. There had been a sound, a noise. Even as he watched, a section of the wall opened and a figure entered.
Two figures.
A shaft of light from outside fell on Illya, revealing him, but also revealing the two figures.
They were more grotesque than any he had seen before.
One was a heavy, ape-like figure with its face barely visible beneath the shaggy shock of white-dyed hair.
The second was a thin, hunchbacked figure that shuffled behind the first, its face also invisible under the shaggy hair. This second figure carried a long club. Both morlocks moved to stand over Illya. The agent tensed to attack. There were only two. But he never moved.
Even as he prepared, the hunchback raised his club and smashed it down on the head of his companion.
* * *
NAPOLEON SOLO heard the water and felt the motion of the barge under him. He was pinioned securely to the chair. The two Thrush agents were preparing their instruments. Maxine grinned at Solo
"Come now, Napoleon dear. Don't make me resort to such old fashioned methods."
"Believe me, all I want to know what you in U.N.C.L.E. have learned about Morlock The Great, the Cult, and how they make people fight when there is nothing to fight."
"I'll bet you would," Solo said.
"I have orders to let you go if you co-operate. You know how unprecedented that would be. Really, Napoleon, all we want this time is some information."
"That's all? You ask so little, Maxine," Solo said.
"Please, Napoleon, I have a few scores to settle, but I'm willing to forget if you would just—"
Maxine stopped. Solo, tied securely, could not see what she was looking at, but she was looking at something o someone over his shoulder. She nodded quickly, and stepped past Solo out of his sight. The agent was not worried about Maxine; he was still watching the two Thrush men preparing their tortures for him.
He saw that they had their backs to him. He listened. He could hear no one behind him. He began to work on his bonds. They were secure. And the thorough Thrush people had taken all the secret weapons they could find. But they had not taken everything.
At that moment Maxine Trent returned. The beautiful Thrush agent smiled down at him.
"I have to go, Napoleon. I will leave you in the capable hands of Walter and Bruno there. Remember, they have instructions to let you go once you have talked fully."
With that, Maxine turned on her heel, spoke low and sharp to the two torturers, Walter and Bruno, and walked quickly from the cabin of the barge. Moments later, Solo heard a motor boat roar away.
Silence descended on the barge. He listened, but he could hear no other sound of life but the lapping water. He heard the water and the metallic sounds of Walter and Bruno preparing for his torture. Then all sound stopped but the water.
Walter and Bruno turned to look at him. Both of them smiled. Solo did not have to ask. He could see that Walter and Bruno were going to enjoy their work on him.
FOUR
ILLYA FOLLOWED the limping hunchback down dark corridors and through many narrow stone rooms. His keen eyes studied the walls and corridors. The corridors were no longer of damp stone, they were concrete—thick new concrete. He saw air vents high in the walls.
At last they reached a small room far from the stone prison he had been kept in. This room had no entrance and was piled to the ceiling with cans of food. Or, to be exact, the room had an entrance, a door, but that was not the way the hunchback led Illya into the room. They entered through a large hole left when the hunchback removed a loose stone in the corridor.
The hunchback replaced the stone and turned to smile at Illya.
"We will be safe here for a time. That door is locked on the outside. Only the inner council members have keys."
"That loose stone?" Illya said.
"Only I know about that. I had repaired it for myself in case I was discovered."
Illya looked at the crippled man. Now, smiling, and with the thick hair pulled back from his face, Illya could see that the hunchback was relatively young, not at all bad looking.
Under the hair was a gentle, intelligent face.
"You wrote that note to Interpol?" Illya said. "About the firing at shadows?"
The morlock nodded."Yes, I wrote it. My name is Paul, Paul Dabori. I joined them when I felt I must have some friends, but now I know there is something wrong. They must be stopped. You are from Interpol?"
"No, from U.N.C.L.E.," Illya said.
"Ah, I have heard of U.N.C.L.E.," Dabori said. "That is better."