Price Hughes was sitting at a Victorian oval table in the exact center of the room. He wore a rusty black coat, gray striped trousers, a stiff white collar with oversize wings that exposed his Adam's apple, and an old-fashioned black cravat. His feet were incased incongruously in tartan carpet slippers that had black metal fasteners like belt buckles. Apart from the slippers, he could have been an old-time marketplace medicine faker.
He sat huddled forward in the ladder-back chair with his hands on the table, gnarled fingers interlaced. His slate gray eyes were as full of human kindness as a horned toad's.
He said without preamble, "Who are you, and why do you persist in pestering me?" He spoke in a queer harsh whisper.
Blodwen laughed. "That's right," she said. "It seems to me the pestering has been all on your side. Here we are, out for a quiet morning ride, and suddenly your hoodlums set on us with enough artillery to finish a war. This we should enjoy?"
"Morning ride, my foot!" Rafferty interjected. "The bloke was carrying a Luger."
"A P38, my friend," Illya corrected mildly. "There's a difference."
The old man made an impatient gesture. "That's enough! Rafferty, hand your weapon to Mr. Morgan and get back to your duties. One guard is sufficient."
He waited until the door had closed behind the strong-arm man. Then he said to Illya, "Let us have no more prevarication. You have been making inquiries about Cwm Carrog ever since you arrived in Corwen. The girl was here early this morning with some trumped-up story of finding employment in the neighborhood. That, frankly, I find as incredible as your claim to be a Canadian tourist."
"Then what's your guess?" Blodwen asked.
"I will tell you." His knuckles cracked as he pushed himself to his feet. "You are two typically clumsy agents of the United Network Command of Law and Enforcement."
"In that case," said Illya, "you know exactly why we are here. U.N.C.L.E. doesn't approve of naughty people who make their own money."
"And you innocents were sent to stop us?" The old man emitted a graveyard sound that was probably intended to signify amusement. "You had the audacity to pit yourselves against Thrush? That was unfortunate — for you."
"That's the way it looks," Illya admitted. "But don't bank on it. You might be disappointed."
Price Hughes shook his head. "You have been a nuisance," he said. "No doubt you have sent a certain amount of information back to your headquarters. But it was useless. U.N.C.L.E. can do nothing to stop us now. We have worked here undisturbed for almost six years. Our mission is practically completed. Even without your intervention we should have left Cwm Carrog within the next week. Nothing remains but to dismantle the plant. You have merely made it necessary to expedite out departure."
Blodwen said, "That doesn't make sense. None of your phony notes appeared until your man turned up stone-cold dead in the market. What have you been doing for the past six years? Just practicing?"
He cackled again. "You see?" he said. "You don't think things through. We are not common forgers. It was never our intention to circulate the currency piecemeal. During our operation, paper to the face value of one hundred million pounds has been transported from Britain and lodged in secret depositories throughout Europe and the United States. Soon it will be released — not by degrees but in a sudden flood. And the result will be world-wide chaos."
He sank back into his chair, his eyes suddenly dull. "Take them away," he said to Morgan. "Lock them up."
Illya said, "One moment. Just to satisfy my professional curiosity, how did you achieve such perfect reproductions?" He put real regret into his voice. "That I should like to have seen."
Price Hughes drummed his fingers on the tabletop considering. Then he replied, "There is no reason why you shouldn't. It can make no difference now." He looked up at Morgan. "Show them your handiwork before you put them away."
Morgan said with the pride of an artist, "It will be a pleasure."
Chapter Seven
They went back into the hall. Morgan whistled and Rafferty came from the kitchen at the double. Morgan handed him the tommy-gun and said, "Keep them covered."
He walked across to the grandfather clock, opened the glass door over the clock face, set the hands to twelve o'clock and stepped back. The clock whirred and swung away from the wall on oiled hinges, revealing a short brick corridor that opened into a brilliantly lit room. There was an acrid odor of printing ink and acid. An electric motor crooned in a high register.
Morgan led the way through the corridor. Rafferty with the gun brought up the rear.
Batteries of neon tubes in the high ceiling flooded the room with an effect approximating natural light. The place looked more like an electricity generating station than a printing plant. At one end, covering almost the entire wall, there was an ebonite panel where red, green and yellow lamps glowed and winked like small circular eyes and needles quivered against white dials. The humming sound came from a single long, low-built machine which extended down the center of the room. It was entirely enclosed by gunmetal gray panels in some form of plastic, and at intervals along its length there were shielded observation peepholes. Toward the farther end there was a domed extrusion like the gun turret of a bomber.
Stacked high against one wall of the room were flat rectangular packages that Illya guessed contained bank-note paper. Along the other wall were ranged crates bound with thin metal strips.
There was only one man in the room. He was sitting at the desk near the machine, studying a set of graphs. He wore a white laboratory coat over an open green shirt and cavalry twill slacks. His hands bore the yellow stain of acid. He looked up, did a double-take when he saw the poodle in Blodwen's arms, then returned to his work without a word.
Illya said, "Well, well! So this is the instant-currency plant. How does it work?"
"It's simple, really." Hugh ap Morgan spoke deprecatingly, in the way inventors do. "It was just a matter of applying automation to the job. The old-time forger was too slow — and too uncertain. It is not easy to copy a note by hand. The best of craftsmen made mistakes. And photo-reproduction had its drawbacks. There was the matter of numbering, for instance." His voice took on the singsong intonation of the North Welshman as he warmed to his lecture.
"Now we have cut out all that. My press works on the continuous process, and it is completely automatic. There is no place for human error. The press does everything — and does it perfectly. Only the paper is not quite right — and that is not our fault. It is made elsewhere, unfortunately. The heart of the machine, and the first stage, is the computer.
He took a pound note from his trousers pocket and called to the man in the white coat. "Mr. Jones, if you please, will you come and demonstrate?"
Jones got up from the desk, went to the ebonite control panel and made adjustments. He returned, took the note from Morgan's hand and crossed to the head of the machine.
Morgan said, "Now watch."
Jones fitted the note into what looked like the dark-slide of an old-fashioned plate camera. He dropped the slide into a slot and turned a switch. The hum of the electric motor rose to a higher pitch. Lights on the control panel danced crazily.