Three men stood grouped around it, and Solo could see that they were filling five gallon jars through a tap in the tubing. One man operated the tap, and when each jar had been filled with the colorless liquid one of the other men would take it from the revolving belt and put it onto another, short conveyor that disappeared through an opening behind him. The third man replaced the full jars with empty ones.
This was not only a laboratory, Solo realized; it was a manufacturing plant. The colorless liquid, he guessed. was the chemical which was capable of converting fresh water into crystallized salt. But why were they producing such great quantities of it?
One of the guards prodded Solo again, and they began to walk across the room, threading their way through the equipment. They passed men in white laboratory smocks, hunched over the benches, checking gauges, scurrying about in an appearance of general disorder. Like they were pressed for time, Solo thought. Like they were trying to meet a deadline. A chill touched his neck. There was only one reason why they would be moving at such pace.
The room was alive in a cacophony of sound...the liquid bubbling overhead and in the vats, the whirring of machinery, voices raised in an effort to be heard. Solo's head began to ache again; after the time he had spent in the total silence of the single room, the sudden exposure to such din was almost deafening.
They reached the far end of the room. There was a wide, Plexiglas window there, affording a view into another, much smaller laboratory. It was almost a miniature, scale model of the one in which they stood, replete with everything except the vats, the conveyor belts, and the oddly shaped machines.
Private lab, Solo thought. And inside there had to be the man who was behind all this, the head of the THRUSH project, the developer of the salt chemical. One of the guards opened a door set beside the Plexiglas window, and they stepped inside.
The private lab was soundproofed. As soon as the door was shut, the outside noises ceased. There was only the gentle bubbling of liquid in the spiraling tubing that connected two small glass jars at one end.
A man sat on a high stool before a group of test tubes on the long, single bench that covered the length of the room. He was writing furiously on a piece of yellow paper. He seemed not to have heard them enter. "Dr. Sagine?" one of the guards said.
The man made no response.
"Dr. Sagine?" the guard said, louder this time.
The man looked up irritably. "Yes, yes, what is it? Can't you see I'm busy?"
"You asked us to bring him down," the guard said, pushing Napoleon Solo forward with his free hand.
"Well, all right. You've brought him," the man said. "Wait outside."
"Hadn't we better..."
"Wait outside, I told you!"
"Yes, sir."
The two guards left the room.
Solo stood looking at the man on the high stool. He felt a faint revulsion.
The man was the ugliest individual he had ever seen. He was chinless, with a wetly protruding lower lip. He was very short, almost gnome-like, with a huge head and a bushy mop of shoulder length, jaundice-colored hair. His skin was pale, an unhealthy white color, and bushy yellow brows topped bright, gray eyes that reminded Solo of rodent's.
Sagine was bent over the yellow piece of paper once again. Solo waited. The man finished his writing, swiveled on the stool, and broke the pencil he had been using in half. He threw the two pieces over his shoulder, staring at Solo.
"MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent, is it?" the man said. "Got you, didn't we? Nerve gas. Breaks most men down. You're a strong one, you are, but we'll break you. Watched you in the cell, you know. Watched you the whole time in there. View plates in the walls. Thought you were going to drink the soup. Did you guess it was drugged? Of course you did. You're a smart man, MR: U.N.C.L.E. agent, but we'll break you. Oh yes, we'll break you."
Solo stared at the man. He was obviously quite mad. The short staccato speech had been clipped off in a reedy, high-pitched voice. If the man spoke that way, then he must think in the same manner, a thousand confused, whirling thoughts spinning in his mind. Solo shuddered involuntarily, remembering how his own thoughts had spun, how close he had come to madness himself.
Yes, this man was mad, all right. But he was also very dangerous. Solo would not make the mistake of underrating him.
He said, "Just who are you?"
"Who am I? Who am I? Dr. Sagine, that's who. Dr. Mordecai Sagine. The finest chemist in the world. They laughed at me; did you know that? I showed them. Oh, yes, I showed them. They won't laugh now, you know. I developed the Sagine formula. I did it. Took me ten years."
Solo tried to extract some logical sense from the man's diatribe. He had never heard of Dr. Mordecai Sagine, but the man doubtless was the inventor of the chemical. And as such, he would know what THRUSH was planning to do with it. All else was unimportant now.
Solo said, "I must admit, it took a brilliant mind to perfect such a process as you have here."
"You agree, do you?" Dr. Sagine said. "You're intelligent, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent. The rest of them weren't. Fools, all of them."
"There must be a great number of uses you can put your discovery to," Solo said.
"Uses, eh? Only one use, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent. The ultimate use. My name will be legend, did you know that? I will be immortalized. THRUSH has promised me. Oh, yes. Dr. Mordecai Sagine."
"What use will your chemical be put to, Dr. Sagine?" Solo asked softly. A crafty look crept into Dr. Sagine's fevered eyes. "Trying to get information out of me, are you? Well, no matter. Nothing you can do about it. We'll break you like a stick, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. agent."
Dr. Sagine hopped down off the stool and walked in a shuffling, crab-like step to where a door stood at the far end of the private lab. Solo followed him. Dr. Sagine opened the door, stepped through, turned to see if Napoleon Solo was behind him, and then went to a desk in the middle of the adjoining room and sat down in a chair behind it, folding his arms across his chest.
"Well?" he said. Solo frowned. "Your office."
"Look there," Dr. Sagine said, pointing to what appeared to be a blank wall. Then he pressed a button somewhere beneath the desk. The wall slid back, revealing a Plexiglas window much like the one in the laboratory.
The first thing Solo saw was blue sky. Blue sky, dotted with gently rolling clouds. In the distance, he could see snow-capped mountain peaks. He went to the window quickly, looking out.
Below him, and to the side, he saw sheer walls of granite. This fortress is hollowed out of solid rock, he thought. Near the top of a mountain. Below him was a precipitous drop of what he guessed must be in excess of a thousand feet. A canyon lay down there, and there was the tiny, winding line of a river that flowed through it. To his left, where the walls of granite curved, receding, he could see the edges of a road that had been carved in the mountainside.