THREE
IN THE silence of the slim room, Solo stood up and bent to use his fingernail razor on the ropes that bound his feet. Then he freed Illya and Dabori. He replaced the innocent seeming fingernail-razor in his pocket.
"They tied us up too fast. Usually they would see the razor, but I thought they might miss it this time," Solo said.
"I always said you can think very well at times," Illya said.
"Thank you," Solo said.
"My pleasure," Illya said. "But what do w do now?"
Solo looked around the dark room. "Well, I would say we find a way out."
Dabori limped slowly around the walls. "If we can escape from this room, I think I can get us out. But I do not know this particular room. I must find my bearings."
"Then we better get out of this room," Solo said.
"That seems reasonable," Illya said. "What do we have?"
"Well, they left me the heat foil," Solo said.
Illya shook his head. "There isn't a door, just a stone slab. This is an ancient room. What about explosives?"
"I've got my belt," Solo said. "But if we blow the door, we don't know who is outside. It won't do us any good to blow out and walk right into their hands."
"Then we better get them into the room," Illya said.
"Perhaps some smoke?" Solo suggested.
"That might work. They don't care about us, but it could make them curious, Napoleon," Illya agreed.
"Smoke then," Solo said, "and a small explosion. Let's have your cuff-link. You better keep the other, and I've got mine."
Illya removed one of his tiny cuff-link bombs and handed it to Solo. The agent took the bomb and set it as far away from the stone slab entrance as possible. Then he crossed the room to the slab and bent down. He felt in front of the crack beneath the slab.
"Draft blowing out," Solo said. "It should work. When I drop the smoke bomb everyone start yelling as loud as he can. Illya, you get ready to set off the bomb when they come in."
"Check," Illya said.
Illya went to the small cuff-link bomb. Solo stepped back from the stone entrance slab. He looked around once to be sure all was ready, then pulled off his tie clip and hurled it to the floor directly in front of the slab.
A thick cloud of smoke billowed up instantly in front of the stone slab. In the dark dungeon Solo, Illya and Dabori began to shout, yelling, as if in frantic panic.
For a moment nothing happened. The thick smoke choked them as they shouted, but the draft from the old dungeon was sucking the smoke under the slab.
Then there was noise outside, and the slab began to swing inward. Four armed guards ran through the opening into the slimy dungeon.
Illya set off the tiny cuff-link bomb.
The explosion rocked the ancient stone room. Two of the morlocks fell, blown down by the explosion as the limped in. Solo grappled with the third, and Dabori leaped on the fourth.
Solo chopped down his morlock with a single karate blow to the throat.
The hunchback wrestled his man to the floor. The morlock attempted to use his machine pistol. Dabori wrested it from him and smashed the morlock across the head. The morlock lay still. Dabori stood up.
"Quick!" Solo cried. "Get their weapons and let's go!"
Illya, Solo and Dabori scooped up the four pistols. Solo carried two weapons. The three men dashed for the open stone slab. Two more morlocks appeared in the opening. In complete silence, Solo and Illya leaped on them and clubbed them down with the machine pistols.
No more morlocks came.
"Which way?" Solo said.
Dabori peered out through the opening. The eyes of the hunchback glistened.
"Left! I recognize the corridor."
"Now," Illya said, "before more guards come."
The three men stepped into the opening. Behind them there was a loud swearing. Maxine Trent, where she was still tied like a bundle, swore at them.
"Cut me loose, damn you!" Maxine shouted.
Solo turned, grinned. "Sorry Maxine dear. You didn't turn out to be a very helpful partner. I think you'll be cosy right where you are."
Maxine squirmed in her bonds. "Napoleon! You wouldn't!"
"But I would," Solo grinned. "Have patience. We'll probably be back for you."
"Napoleon!" Maxine screamed. "Damn you! I'll kill you for this! I'll—"
The beautiful Thrush agent squirmed in her bonds, cursed, flopped on the floor like a furious seal. Solo laughed as he went out through the opening into the dim light of the corridor. He followed Illya and Dabori along the corridor at a slow trot, the hunchback limping valiantly to keep the pace.
Behind them Maxine's curses echoed like the wail of an outraged banshee.
FOUR
THE THREE men moved as fast as Dabori could trot. The hunchback led them down the new corridors with the softly purring air vents. Again they saw no guards, but this time they could hear noise and voices somewhere in the distance toward where the long dining room was.
"It is a conference," Dabori said. "That is where they meet. And that is why we have met no guards."
"How much farther before we can get out of the new part?" Solo said.
"Not far, but they will discover our escape at any—"
The sudden clanging of the alarms drowned the next words of the hunchback. Their escape had been discovered.
They began to run, Solo helping Dabori along the dim corridors. Two morlocks appeared from a side corridor. Solo and Illya fired at the same instant. The morlocks went down.
They jumped over the fallen enemy and ran on; no more need for care or silence.
But the search for them was at the other end of the secret shelter. Once they heard the boom of Morlock The Great's voice from the distance, urging his men to find them, but they saw no more guards before they reached another door that led into the old dungeons and the sewer.
Dabori had a key to this door, too.
"I think they will be watching the other way," Dabori said. "They do not know about this way."
The door led into a storeroom piled with food for the survival of the morlocks, and, across the room, behind giant cases of canned water, Dabori indicated a loose stone in the wall. Together they pulled it out, crawled through, and replaced the stone.
They were in another low room that had not been seen by human eyes for centuries. The dust lay a foot deep on the stone floor. Dabori pointed to the far end where there was a low archway. They went through the archway and down a circular stone staircase. At the bottom there was the last door.
Solo burned the door open and they emerged again in the sewers of London. Ten minutes later they came out into the mud at the edge of the river. The Thames stretched dark in the night. Together, the three climbed up the embankment to dry land.
"We must get the police!" Dabori said.
Illya shook his head. "No time now. With us loose, Morlock will move even faster. We don't know what he plans or where it will happen."
Dabori was desperate. "But what can we do then? We must do something. We are out, but.. ."
Solo smiled in the night. "We follow Morlock, right, Illya?"
Dabori blinked under his mop of shaggy morlock hair. "Follow? But how—"