V
The head security guard's voice snapped out. The two men who had clubbed Solo into the ground now stepped back reluctantly and stood at attention. The security officer spoke in denunciatory tone:
"The orders were to stop him, not to kill him or to beat him. Which one of you wants to be responsible for a dead body on your hands now when the leader gets here? Would you like to explain it, Warner? You, Mer-ric?"
One of the guards found the temerity to speak in reply: "We only wanted to be sure he would know what to expect if he tried it again, sir."
While they spoke above him, Solo lay flat, staring in a puzzled way at the lighted field.
The lights were set in banks on a space three to five times the length of a football field. The grass was close clipped, the ground hard-packed. Enough for what? Nobody needed this kind of light to illumine a park in order to run down inmates on the loose.
Four guards carried Solo slowly back into the build-ing and down the elevator, returning him to his room. He read the time on the wrist watch of one of them. It was after six in the morning. His smile was wry. He had no idea what day. Doomsday, perhaps?
They tossed him into the suite like a sack of cheap coffee, and walked out. The door slid closed without a whisper.
Solo lay on the floor for a moment, unable to get two thoughts out of his mind. The first was the size and shape of that lighted area out there. The answer struck him suddenly with the fierce impact of a thunderclap. An air strip. It was a long plateau, flat and level on the hip of a mountain larger than Rhode Island. An air strip where even a fan jet could set down-He sat up suddenly, thinking about that lighted air strip and what the security officer had shouted at his men: Which one of you wants to be responsible for a dead body on your hands now when the leader gets here?
Solo got to his feet, the pain of the battering he'd taken on the field forgotten, his mind racing. The leader arriving? This had to be Tixe Ylno. And this meant his hunch had been right—Su Yan was a big wheel, but he wasn't Tixe Ylno. He hadn't dared to kill him and Bar-bry and leave their bodies in San Francisco. Su Yan was acting on orders, too.
Su Yan had boasted in that hotel room that everything was in readiness. The dying spy in Tokyo had revealed an awesome plot involving an atomic device.
Solo breathed out heavily. Perhaps it was doomsday, after all. Six a.m. the morning of doomsday.
He prowled the room, listening for the sound of an arriving plane, but knowing he could not hear it. These underground walls were soundproofed.
He stared helplessly at Illya. When he spoke to him, it seemed to him once that Kuryakin shook his head, but he could not get him to repeat it. There was a razor-sharp mind behind those eyes, but it was trapped, held incommunicado in a useless body.
Solo went to the table where the countless component parts of his attack gadgetry were sorted out. He glanced across his shoulder at Illya, then back at the wires, the batteries.
He sat down, gathering the batteries, wires, building a simple ground and a metal contact. He set the contraption up on a sideboard. Getting a damp cloth from the bathroom, he soaked Illya's hands and arms and then led him to the sideboard.
He placed Illya's hands on the metal contact pieces, made the connection between the positive and negative wires. Illya flinched, leaping back. He made a small whimpering sound, but then merely stood, staring, eyes empty.
"Come on, Illya," Solo said. "It's got to work."
He pushed Kuryakin's hands against the contacts a second time. Illya cried out, and his limbs jerked spasmodically for long seconds. Then he lay still, staring hopelessly at Solo. It was no use; whatever Su Yan had done to Illya could not be broken through by electric shock. Solo sighed, and returned Illya to the bed.
He shook Barbry. She opened her eyes, followed him blankly to the setup on the sideboard.
He closed her dampened hands on the contacts, crossed the wires and Barbry cried out, lunging away from it.
He caught her in his arms, watching her face. He saw the slow return of color, the way her eyes focused as though she were awakening from a deep sleep.
She straightened, looking about the beige-toned suite. She did not appear particularly astonished to be in this place.
"I was in your room—at the hotel," she said. "And
Sam Su Yan came to the door." When Solo nodded, she continued matter of factly: "I know this place. Broad-moor Rest. I was—here once before."
Solo didn't speak, watching her. Barbry drew a deep breath. "I had a nervous breakdown—they sent me here. I saw Su Yan here for the first time… I didn't want to tell you before, but that was the real reason why Su Yan refused to hire me to spy for Thrush when he hired Ursula. He knew I'd had a breakdown; he was afraid I'd break under tension. That's why they tried to watch me—they were afraid to trust me with the little I knew."
"What do you know about this place? Is it really a private sanitarium, or something else?"
She frowned. "It was a sanitarium once, yes. But then Su Yan got control of it, and it's changed. I'm not sure…"
"What was this threat Su Yan held over you?"
She sighed. "I knew that Ursula worked for him—for Thrush. He told me if I ever breathed a word about it to anyone, he'd see that I was committed to this place for life. It looks like he's done it."
Solo did not say anything, because he saw no reason for holding out empty hopes for her. Her nerves were fragile enough without being strained with the awesome facts of life in this place.
He was pleased when, frightened, she succumbed to a natural fatigue and sank down on the bed, soon deeply asleep.
He heard the inner hum of motors from the earth beneath him. Stacking chair upon table, he pressed his ear to the air conditioning duct grate, but the sounds through the building were like vague, confused whispers, always subordinated to the throb of the unexplained engines.
He jumped down from the chair, replaced it as it had been. It occurred to him that listening devices were one of the easiest gimmicks to assemble. He strode to his table of sorted parts. Using the small aluminum cones, he fashioned larger ones from all available aluminum which he then formed into a telescopic rod. With an amplifier from the dismantled sender-listening set, and the reassembled ear-plugs, he ljad himself a directional sound pickup.
Returning to the duct-grate, he aimed the cones, inserted the ear-plug which was connected to the sound amplifier.
He smiled in cold pleasure. While the sounds he was able to pick up through the elaborate air conditioning system were faint, he could by moving the cones locate the direction of each different sound.
He examined the duct-grate closely, but finally had to give up the idea of getting out that way. The grate was very solidly welded into the wall—a first-class piece of modern workmanship.
But that thought gave him a different idea. The air conditioning had been added to Broadmoor Rest comparatively recently, but the building itself was an old one, probably dating back to the last century. A staid, respectable site for a Thrush retreat… but perhaps with a few chinks in the armor.
Solo strode to the fireplace in the corner, knelt and looked again at the heavy metal plate which blocked off the chimney. He smiled slightly. It was as he'd hoped: the chimney itself was constructed of brick, so it had been impossible to secure the plate any more firmly than by the use of bolts. And bolts, unlike welding, could be removed comparatively easily.