He left the rest unfinished. Leffler nodded glumly.
“That is right,” he said. “She was definitely not the beatnik type. She was an intellectual and reputedly quite a brilliant research scientist. If they can grab her brain, they can grab anybody’s.”
“Including yours and mine,” Solo put in.
“I’m thinking the same thing,” Leffler replied.
“Have there been any police reports involving her father in the last year?” Solo asked.
“I’ll check it out for you, but I haven’t heard of any,” Leffler said.
“How do you feel?” Napoleon asked Illya.
“Great!” Kuryakin said hastily. His leg wound had been dressed by the police surgeon. He was told before that he could walk, but to take things as easy as possible.
Solo got up. “Well, it’s been a hard day. I think we’ll turn in. You can call us at the Wilshire Hilton if anything turns up.”
He and Kuryakin took the elevator to the ground floor of the high-rise police building. As the elevator door closed behind them, Solo opened his coat. A silver fountain pen was clipped to his shirt and a six inch antenna was extended from it.
He removed the pen. Holding it close to his mouth, he spoke into the super-miniaturized microphone inside the famed U.N.C.L.E. worldwide reception pen communicator.
“Were you able to pick up both sides of our conversation, Mr. Waverly?” he asked.
“Yes, Mr. Solo,” Alexander Waverly’s voice came in, low but distinct, from New York. “I fed your conversation directly into the probability computer.”
“Yes sir,” Solo asked, “and what was the result?”
“After weighing all the facts we have gathered so far, the computer lists an international THRUSH threat as the number one probability. The probability points to some type of mind control device. Also, our contacts within THRUSH itself report highly secret conferences in the upper levels and evidence of great excitement.”
“It sounds ominous, sir,” Napoleon said soberly.
“Yes, Mr. Solo,” Waverly replied. “We can no longer consider this affair as just something to investigate because of its strangeness. It has now become a matter of the utmost urgency.”
“We will give it top priority, sir,” Napoleon replied.
“Do that, Mr. Solo,” Waverly said to his chief enforcement officer. “This situation worries me more than any situation we have ever faced.”
“We are going out now to Mallon’s house,” Solo said. “I was not able to talk to him by telephone.”
“That seems to be the best course. Obviously he wants our help or he would not have sent that oddly worded note,” Waverly said. “I am certain he did it only to throw THRUSH off the scent.”
“That is why I think he will see us in person even though he refused to come to the telephone,” Napoleon said.
“Excellent, Mr. Solo,” Alexander Waverly said. “And in the morning, after you talk with Mallon, I think it wise for Mr. Kuryakin to go to Paris and interview this foreign film distributor.”
Mallon’s home was in Beverly Hills. A tremendous mansion of the old fashioned type, it sat behind a high ivyed wall in a landscaped private park. As they approached in a rented car, Solo thought that it looked like a museum piece. It belonged to the era of the silent film. Solo almost expected to see Douglas Fairbanks vault over the wall and Mary Pickford to swish her golden curls under the flowered arbor.
The huge wrought iron gates were open. The men from U.N.C.L.E. drove up the curving road. Suddenly the car lights picked up the running figure of a girl. She flashed across the driveway in front of them. Napoleon slammed on the brakes. The front fender missed her by inches.
She did not look back - indeed, she seemed unconscious of how narrowly she had missed death.
Kuryakin whistled softly.
“Did you see how she filled that bikini!” he said appreciatively.
“No!” Napoleon said shortly. “I was too busy trying to avoid seeing how well she would fill a coffin! Did you get a look at her face?”
“No,” Illya said regretfully. “But if it looked as good as the rest of her -”
“Probably a fugitive from some Hollywood party,” Solo said. He started the car. Kuryakin looked back, hoping to get another view of the bikini-clad fugitive.
Napoleon stopped the car in front of the mansion. The front door was open. Interior light streamed out into the night.
“The girl probably left it open when she fled,” Solo observed. “She must have gotten quite a shock to leave that fast.”
“Well, you know what they say about these Hollywood parties!” Illya said.
“What I’m wondering is whether she knew what she was doing,” Napoleon said. ‘She seemed not to see the car at all. Could she be caught in this same compulsive force that gripped Mallon’s daughter and those hippies?”
“Possibly,” Illya said. “If so -”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” Solo said grimly. “Come on!”
They went to the door. Illya looked inside as Solo punched the door bell. There was no answer. Napoleon waited impatiently and then rang again.
“You mean there isn’t even a servant in this monstrous pile?” he said irritably.
“Well, we can either go back to the hotel or invade the gentleman’s privacy,” Illya said with a sour grin. “I know you would never be so ungentlemanly as to enter a house without an invitation.”
He stepped inside, adding, “So it is fortunate you have me along. I have no such inhibitions.”
Solo grinned crookedly and followed his partner into the house. They stopped inside, looking around warily. The foyer opened into an old fashioned sunken drawing room. At the back, a movie-set staircase swept in a grand curve to a balcony on the second floor.
A table was overturned near the mirrored right wall. A vase and a dozen long-stemmed roses were spilled on the thick pile rug. The wall mirror directly behind it was cracked. Pieces of its glass were scattered on the rug below.
Just beyond the overturned table was a wet red spot. Solo knelt down and looked at it carefully.
“Blood!” he said tersely, looking up at his companion. “And very fresh.”
“It picks up over here,” Illya Kuryakin said. “It looks like whoever was bleeding crawled through that door yonder. Come on!”
This last he added back over his shoulder as he strode after the trail of blood.
They passed through the door into a small library of the old fashioned book-walled type. A man’s body was sprawled on the floor beside a littered library table.
The body lay on its face. The arms were outstretched. The right hand gripped a large one-sheet movie poster. Across the paper a myriad hideous faces leered out of the murky shadows at a frightened bikini-clad beauty. Across the top of the poster splashing red letters proclaimed: Fred B. Mallon presents The Million Monsters with Doris Taylor.
Smaller letters immodestly claimed this to be the most frightening film ever made.
Solo stooped and felt of the man’s wrist.
“Dead?” Illya asked.
Napoleon nodded, his face grim. “Do you know Mallon by sight?”
“No,” Illya said, “but I’ll bet my last cookie that this is he.”
“I think so too,” Solo said. “Then there was something to that cryptic note he sent Waverly. THRUSH is behind this thing.”
He pulled the pen communicator from his pocket and made an immediate contact with New York.
“Mr. Waverly,” he said when the transcontinental connection was complete. “We have found Fred Mallon dead - murdered!”
“I see,” Waverly said slowly. “Anything that might indicate a tie-in between his death and the action of his daughter?”
“Perhaps,” Solo, turning to stare at the corpse. “The indications are that he dragged himself from the drawing room to the library. He pulled a proof sheet of a poster for his latest film off the table and died with it clutched in his hand.”