"You're staring at me, young man," the slender man said to Solo.
Illya positioned himself to cover the doors and drew his gun. Solo covered the grey-haired man with his pistol. The man looked at them both with an incredulous expression on his face.
"I gather you think you know me," the man said evenly, "and that you don't like me very much."
"Who are you?" Solo said.
"Who? Why, I assumed you had come to see me. I mean, my name is on the door."
"You are Kevin Rand?" Illya said.
"I certainly am, young man. What do you plan to do with those ridiculous pistols?"
The slender, grey-haired man stood firm and imperious in the office, but with a faint line of amusement around his mouth. Illya glanced at Solo. Solo stared hard at the slender Kevin Rand.
"And you don't know me?" Solo said.
"From your appearance perhaps I should, but I really don't," Rand said.
"You didn't see me in the health club?"
"What health club, Mr.—What are your names? I gather that you are not two gentlemen from the defense department named Jones and Ivanov."
"Do you have a twin, Mr. Rand?" Illya said.
"Not that I know of," Rand napped. "Exactly what is this all about?"
Solo stepped closer. "You claim that you were never in a New York health club. That you didn't get some top-secret data from a Colonel Forsyte by using a machine on him? That you didn't knock me out in the health club?"
Rand stared. "A machine that—what? Is this some kind of joke? Do I look like a man who could knock you out? Really, gentlemen, are you sure you feel quite all right?"
Solo spoke carefully as he watched Rand. Illya still covered all the doors.
"I saw you, Rand. I saw the machine and you operating it. I heard you talk about Forsyte."
Rand blinked, and then he nodded. "Did you now? Well, that puts a different look on it all, doesn't it?"
"I'd say it does," Solo said. "Now—"
Rand smiled. "Yes, well I had to be sure what you did know, didn't I? Get them!!"
Solo and Illya both whirled to the windows behind them. There was nothing there. Instantly they turned back.
Rand was gone.
"We fell for the oldest—" Illya began.
There was a sudden hissing sound.
Clouds of vapor, gas, poured into the office from vents in the ceiling.
"The windows!" Solo shouted.
They ran for the windows and tore down shades.
There were no windows. Where the windows should have been, where the shades covered, was nothing but blank wall with window sills nailed on!
"A trap," Solo cried.
"And we—" Illya began. Neither of them spoke again as they suddenly collapsed. The only sound in the room was the hiss of the gas.
FOUR
THEY REVIVED side by side in a large bare room with bright hanging lights. Faces stared down at them. In the center of the ring of faces they saw the smiling face of the slender, grey-haired man— Rand.
"So, gentlemen, you're awake. I was afraid for a moment that our little sleeping potion had been too much. That would have been too bad."
They blinked and looked around. They were seated on a couch along the wall of the large bare room. They were not tied, but men in white smocks held guns and stood all around. The room itself looked like a warehouse. Boxes of electronic parts were stacked everywhere.
"Yes," Rand said, "you are in our warehouse. It is quite safe and remote. You are my guests. The men with guns are only a precaution in case you preferred not to be my guests. Now, perhaps we can get down to business. Who are you, and who do you represent?"
"Represent?" Illya Kuryakin said. The small Russian moved his arms and legs to be sure that he was all right and not held by some device such as THRUSH'S special chair.
"Of course," Rand said. "And never mind telling me, that is a childish tactic on my part. You are Mr. Illya Kuryakin and Mr. Napoleon Solo of an organization called, I believe, U.N.C.L.E. And you are interested in my little brain child here, eh?"
They looked toward where Rand pointed. The macabre machine stood there in the shadows of the vast room. A row of tables and desks stood in front of it. Which was why the two agents had not noticed it at once. Rand watched their faces.
"I see you are interested," the slender man said.
"We're interested," Solo said. "Are you interested in destroying the machine?"
"Destroy?" Rand cried. "My brain child? Really, Mr. Solo, that is a poor joke. You have seen it work, you said? Surely you would not want to destroy such a marvel of the electronic art? Do you have any idea what it can really do, gentlemen?"
The eyes of the grey-haired man seemed to blaze for a moment at the thought of the marvels of his machine. "Beautiful! Sheer magic to think about. Imagine, gentlemen, to read the mind at any time in any place. Ah, who would dare destroy such a wonder?!"
"If it can do what you say," Illya said quietly.
Rand bridled. "If? You say if? Mr. Solo has seen what the Mind-Sweeper can do! That's what we call it, by the way. A rather clever name, I think. Our little mental vacuum cleaner, you might say. The Mind-Sweeper! It will revolutionize the world! Do you hear? And it is mine!"
"I took you for more of a businessman," Solo said.
Rand cocked an e "You did, eh? Very shrewd. Yes, I am a businessman. But I am also an electronics expert. I quite admit that the Sweeper is not precisely my development, but it is my creation. And you wonder if it can do what I say it can do?"
Rand looked at Napoleon Solo. "Mr. Solo has seen. You know that Forsyte came to the health club, and you know that he left his secrets there. A man above reproach. A man no pressure could have forced to reveal a word of what he knew—stripped of all his secrets within minutes!"
The grey-haired electronics man smiled at them. "I think you know much more, also. You know of my tests with the machine in London and in Ottawa. Successful tests. Naturally, we have moved the machine, to be certain we would not be caught while we were perfecting it. But you know of its successes in London, Ottawa, and now New York. We have now finished testing, and will soon market our little Sweeper, eh?"
Illya blinked. "You plan to sell the machine?"
"Why not? As you have said, I am a businessman. Think of the potential! Not a single nation could afford to be without a Mind-Sweeper. Not only does it sweep the secrets from the brain of any one, but it does so without them knowing it at all. Provided it is properly operated. Imagine—it takes the most secret data, and the subject never knows the machine has been working on his brain."
"Not always," Solo said.
"What?"
Solo grinned. "You used it on a man this morning, and he knew it."
Rand waved an angry hand. "A mistake. The idiots I left with to work it on the outer-space defense data made a small error. The man could have known no more than that he was a trifle dizzier than normal."
"It was enough," Illya said. "It will probably finish you."
Rand laughed. "I doubt it, Mr. Kuryakin. It is, however, one of the reasons we decided to end our tests and move now. No, I doubt if we will be found now."
"If it can make one mistake, it can make more," Solo said.
There was a silence in the vast room. Illya and Solo looked at Rand, but they were also studying the warehouse for possible escape. In addition to the armed men around them, there seemed to be another group in a far distant corner. Doors opened off the warehouse at the loading end, and other doors were in the inner wall that joined the production building. All the doors were closed and locked as far as they could see