John Oram
The Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair
Chapter One
Market Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, bears no resemblance to its namesake in San Francisco. It is around three hundred yards long, narrow, shabby, with an atmosphere redolent of gasoline, printer's ink, fish, vegetables and good Welsh beer.
It is bounded on one side by the gray stone outer wall of the old municipal covered market, and on the other by a conglomeration of premises which include a branch of a multiple tailoring firm, the truck bay and editorial entrance of the South Wales Argus, wholesale fruit, vegetable and fish merchants, and a store specializing in workmen's clothing.
There are two taverns in the street's three-hundred-yard length. The man in the shabby fawn trenchcoat visited each in turn.
He was a small, slim man about thirty years of age. His face was pasty, with high cheekbones accentuated by the sunken flesh below. His hair was a thick thatch that looked like bleached hay. His curiously pale green eyes, set close to a button nose, held an expression of abject fright.
He went into the cream-painted bar of the Black Swan and bought a glass of beer and a sandwich. The chicken sandwiches at the Black Swan are worth traveling a long way to sample, but the man in the trenchcoat gulped his down as if it were tasteless. His little green eyes roved over the back of the bar, resting briefly on the miner's lamp on the top shelf and the ship's bell over the door in to the landlord's private quarters. Then he drank his beer quickly and left without a word.
He hurried along the street and pushed open the door of the bar of the Cross Keys. Except for a pretty girl sitting alone by the counter, the big room was empty. Again the man's eyes searched the bottle-filled shelves. Perched perkily between two-thirds of Long John whiskey there was a little doll in Welsh national costume. Some of the tension went out of the man's face. He rapped on the counter for service.
The barmaid came from the table area in the back, where a juke box was playing an Andy Williams number. A big, handsome, black-haired woman in a black, close-fitting dress, she could have stepped straight out of a Manet painting. She smiled and said good morning as if she really meant it.
The man said, "A pint of bitter." Then, nodding toward the dolclass="underline" "You don't get many of those around here, I suppose?"
"No. A friend of the lady who owns the place brought it from Cardiff for a present. Pretty, isn't it?"
"Yes." The man seemed satisfied. He took the beer and went to sit at the far end of the room. He was careful to choose a seat from which he could watch both the door and the big window that looked out on to the street. After a token sip he did not touch the beer on the table in front of him.
The girl at the bar said quietly, "A sociable type."
"You get all kinds," the barmaid said. "I never saw him in here before."
"Oh, well!" She pushed her empty glass across the counter. "Fill it up again."
Mixing the gin and vermouth, the barmaid asked, "You staying long in Newport, love?" Her husky voice with its attractive Welsh lilt contrasted strongly with the girl's clipped London accent.
"A few days, maybe. It depends."
"Just on vacation, like?"
"You could call it that." The girl lifted her glass. "Cheers! You sure you won't have one?"
"No, thank you, love. Too early for me."
The bar door opened and two men walked in. Both were six-footers, dressed in discreet business suits. One wore a navy blue raincoat.
Their effect on the man in the trenchcoat was electrical. He jumped to his feet, overturning the table, and charged between them, his eyes wild and staring.
As the door swung behind him, one of the men asked, astonished, "What the hell was that all about?"
"Must of thought you were coppers," the barmaid said.
There came an agonized screech of brakes from the street outside. Women screamed. There was a confused babel of voices.
"My God! An accident." The barmaid whipped up the counter flap and ran across the room with the girl beside her. The two big men were already on the sidewalk.
A truck loaded with heavy crates was blocking the narrow street. Under its front wheels was all that remained of the man in the shabby trenchcoat. The driver, a gray-faced kid in patched blue overalls, was vomiting uncontrollably against the truck's fender. His partner, dazed but articulate, was protesting: "We 'adn't got no chance. 'E dashed right out of the pub straight under our wheels."
But few of the crowd were listening. They were to busy picking up the hundreds of brand-new currency notes which littered the street.
A boy in a white coat was incredulously counting a handful of fivers. The girl put her hand on his arm. "Where did all the money come from?"
"Gawd knows," he said. "Out of 'is pickets, I suppose. 'E must've been a walking Bank of England. You seen a copper, miss? I got to 'and this over quick or I'll be tempted."
The girl waited until the police, ambulance and tow-truck had arrived. She watched the broken body taken from beneath the wheels and put on a stretcher. Then she made her way up Market Street and across High Street to the General Post Office.
She went into a public telephone booth and dialed a number.
"From Blodwen, Newport, Mon, South Wales," she dictated. "To W., Section I (P)….
Chapter Two
When the telephone bell cut harshly into the Shostakovitch symphony, Illya Kuryakin was less than delighted. He had just showered and shaved after a profitless twelve-hour stake-out of a house in a crummier section of the Bronx, and he had been looking forward to a lazy morning in the small, untidy apartment he called home.
He switched off the heat under the coffee percolator, muted the volume of the record player and picked up the receiver. "Kuryakin."
The girl at the other end of the wire said brightly, "Good morning. I hope I didn't disturb anything."
"Only my dreams. In another ten minutes I would have been in bed."
"Too bad," she sympathized. "No beddy-byes for you, I'm afraid. The big white chief is waiting."
"That man!" he said bitterly. "He knows I've been up all night."
"So sue him," she advised. "In ten minutes, okay?"
"I'll be there."
He replaced the receiver, set the coffeepot boiling again, and began to dress.
Exactly ten minutes later he paid off his cab in front of Del Floria's tailoring shop in the middle of a brownstone block near the United Nations headquarters. He ran down the three steps into the shop, took off his jacket and handed it to the little gray-haired Italian. He said, "The usual."
Del nodded and pushed the button by the side of his pressing machine. Illya walked into the third "try-on" cubicle at the back of the shop, drew the curtain and turned a clothes-hook on the rear wall. The wall swung away silently and he walked through to the admissions desk.
The girl at the desk had watched his entry on her closed-circuit TV screen and was ready with the white badge which would admit him to the third floor — the domain of U.N.C.L.E.'s Policy and Operations Department. She pinned the badge to his lapel almost caressingly. The sober-faced little Russian had that effect on most women.
Illya stepped into the elevator and rode up to the third floor. He went to the armory, drew his favorite P38 automatic pistol, checked the mechanism and tucked it into the shoulder holster under his left arm. Then he walked along the corridor to Mr. Alexander Waverly's private office.
There were two men in the room. Mr. Waverly, the lean, dry chief of Section 1 (Policy and Operations), was standing by the big window which looked out on the East River and the United Nations building. Napoleon Solo, chief enforcement agent for U.N.C.L.E., sat at the huge O-shaped table which dominated the room. Before him were stacked neat piles of currency — kroner, Reichmarks, dollars and pounds.