And then, without a growl or another sound, the wolves turned as one and vanished into the forest. He stood a few more seconds, then slowly lowered his arms, and gathered his cloak about him before turning to face the U.N.C.L.E. agents again. He stepped back into the cave as he said, "My sincere apologies for this...incident. When you leave, take that path. It will lead you to your automobile. I suggest you return directly to the village."
He stepped aside to let them pass him. Napoleon looked doubtfully at Illya and murmured in English, "But the wolves might just be..."
"Let's go, Napoleon," said Illya in a fierce whisper, and started out. Napoleon followed him, noticing that his automatic was still in his hand, and slipped it back into its holster.
Just as he stepped through the entrance behind Illya, Napoleon thought of something and turned around. "Multumesc," he said. "Thank you for the..." He stopped as the glow from the pen-light swept around the barren rock walls of the sides and back of the empty cave.
* * *
They found their car as promised at the end of the path, waiting as if it had been there all along. The fog was thinner, and a few stars were visible to give them the direction to the village. It was only shortly after 10:00 P.M. when they pulled up behind Satul Contru.
Colonel Hanevitch was in his office as usual, and his voice answered their knock with a cheerful invitation to enter. When he saw them he put down his pen and stood up.
"Solo and Kuryakin! I suggest you telephone the inn at once. Domnisoara Eclary has been most concerned as to your whereabouts." He indicated a bulky telephone on his desk, and, as Illya placed the call with the sleepy operator, added, "I think you can understand her apprehension."
"Believe me," said Napoleon, "we were not entirely free of apprehension ourselves."
"Quite so," said Illya. "And this is the reason we came directly to you." He turned back to the telephone and spoke soothingly to Hilda, as Hanevitch raised an eyebrow or two at Napoleon.
"Well," he began, "we were digging the bullets out of the trees where Carl was found, when it got dark. We started back to the car to get the flash..."
Illya had hung up the telephone long before the story was finished, and added a few corroborative touches to the narrative.
Colonel Hanevitch listened politely all the way through, making no comment by word or expression. When they finished, he leaned slowly back in his swivel chair, which creaked sharply beneath him. He looked over his folded hands at them, and shook his head slowly.
"Your reputations are well known as honorable," he said. "You would have no imaginable reason for coming to me with so fantastic a story—and you would not create such a lie. If you were to lie, it would at least be a logical and believable lie. Therefore I have no choice but to believe that this is truly what you think happened. What actually happened, I must reserve judgment on. Perhaps you were drugged and hypnotized into remembering all these things. But wolves are very rare in this part of the mountains—and seeing twenty or thirty of them all together..." He shrugged, expressively. "As for the cave—do you think you could find it again?"
"I think so," said Illya. "I could find the path and follow it back from where we picked up the car."
"That might be worth doing," said the Colonel. "Perhaps footprints, or other clues, might avail themselves to a careful search—in full daylight, of course."
"Of course," said Illya automatically.
"Did you get a clear look at your rescuer?"
"Fairly clear," said Napoleon. "He walked close enough to us that his cloak brushed against me, and I had the pen-light on him at the time."
"Do you think you would recognize him?"
"Yes," said Napoleon definitely. "It was a...well, an unusual face. It was a very long oval shape, heavy-lidded eyes, high thin nose, thin dark lips, high cheek-bones, bushy eyebrows..."
"Did he look anything like your friend Zoltan?"
Napoleon thought. "Not as tall, and thinner. The face shape was similar, and the nose was the same."
The Colonel turned in his swivel chair and reached up to a small shelf for a dusty leatherbound book. Gold lettering was stamped deep into its cracked dark red spine. He opened it on the desk before him, and leafed through it, stopping at a double page of small oval portraits. He spun the book to face Illya and Napoleon. "Do you recognize any of these pictures?"
They studied the faces in the book for a while, and then Napoleon said, "Yes. I see one."
"Which?"
"Just a minute. I want to see if Illya picks the same one."
Illya looked very carefully at a few of the portraits, then nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, beyond a doubt. This one, Napoleon."
Solo nodded as his friend's finger touched a face in the book. It was the face they had seen in the cave, above a cloak the color of the night, apologizing for his pets.
Hanevitch rose slightly, and looked at the book as they turned back to him and pointed. He nodded slowly. "I was afraid of that," he said. "This is the Vlad Tsepesh Stobolzny, five-times-great-grandfather of Zoltan Dracula. He is believed to have died in 1704, but there were rumors he was a demon, and the village did not rest easy for many years. He left his men while on a hunt in the forest, and disappeared. His trail ended in a pool of blood, with other tracks leaving. Mr. Solo, they were the footprints of a gigantic wolf."
Chapter 7: "Oh-oh, Here Comes Zoltan."
Zoltan appeared beside the table the following morning as Napoleon, Illya and Hilda were addressing themselves to breakfast, and offered his condolences on their nerve-shattering experience of the night before. He seemed concerned, and Hilda invited him to join them.
"I told him last night," she explained, "as soon as Illya called from Satul Contru. And I told him this morning whose picture you recognized."
Zoltan frowned and nodded. "Yes," he said. "My five-times-great-grandfather, the Vlad Tsepesh. He was the grandson of Petru, on whom the name of Dracula devolved in 1658. According to family tradition, it was he who was responsible for the loss of the documentation of our title. He was a cruel and wicked man, and met a death fitting to his manner of life."
"Look," said Napoleon after a pause. "Illya, you're going to be looking for that cave today, and Hilda will be helping you. I'd like to run down to Brasov, to check through the records on the castle of Zoltan's. See if there's anything odd about its present ownership."
"I had intended to start my queries here in Pokol," said Zoltan, "but if you would like to have a companion in your researches, I would be most happy to accompany you."
"As a matter of fact, that's what I had in mind. You know the language better than I do, and you can go places I can't and get questions answered. As long as you don't tell people your real name..."
Zoltan's eyebrows drew together slightly, and his lips thinned. "I bear my name proudly," he said. "I do not give it to those who do not need it, but I would never deny it. Besides, this is..."
"... a rational country?" asked Napoleon. "You aren't even fooling yourself on that one. This country is no more rational than anyplace else on Earth that has people in it. And if you want to go around looking for trouble, I'm going to start letting you get yourself out of it, too."