19 - The Power Cube Affair

THE POWER CUBE AFFAIR

Dear Reader:

Admiralty House stands where I have placed it, and it looks the way I have tried to describe it. So much is fact, but only on the outside. The interior details, and the events happening inside, as I have given them, are fiction. Nothing remotely resembling such things ever happen within the real Admiralty House. Those, and all villains herein described, are fictitious and bear no resemblance to anyone alive or dead.

ONE

NOT EVEN a hermit can turn his back on the world entirely. The air and sky, the elements, he must share with everyone. John Guard was content to do that much, but he wanted no part of anything else. As he stood now, with the sea growling at the pebbles on his left and the dark-hidden shore away to his tight, with only the sea breeze in his face and the constant beat and wash of the surf in his ears, he was content. If he had thought about it he would have agreed with the disillusioned poet who wrote—

"Where every prospect pleases, and only Man is vile."

But Guard had stopped thinking about such things long ago. He had learned not to think at all, but just to appreciate peace, quiet and the solitude of his home here on the coast. From the top timber of the groyne where he stood, he could see, on a clear day, one mile in either direction along the coast, the further distance cut off by small headlands reaching out into the sea. Here there was no one but himself, and that was exactly what he wanted.

On the point of leaping down from the groyne he caught the indistinct impression of movement in that snarling surf, and stiffened. Someone swimming in to shore? In instant anger he stared, then leaped down and ran, because the stare told him it was someone in trouble and instinct is stronger than cynicism. The gray-white shape grew more distinct. A girl, or a woman, in a brief two piece suit, and still conscious enough to make feeble struggle against the rough waves. Angry with himself and her, he hunched a shoulder against the spray, splashed into the surf, stooped to get an arm under and around, and in that instant folly became tragedy. Her shoulder had lumps in the wrong places, no working arm could dangle that way, and his grasp around her waist reported unnatural pulpiness.

Lifting strongly, he hoisted her and struggled until they were both free of the water, then laid her down as gently as possible on the stones. His wits creaked at the sudden need to think. His small bungalow lay two hundred yards to the south. To carry her that far, in her condition, would be murderous. The nearest telephone was all of a mile away, and to leave her that long, alone, was out of the question. She stirred. He bent close.

"Don't try to move. You need help. A doctor."

"No!" Her word was a feeble explosion, cut off with a cough. "No time. Too late!" She was right, although he hated to admit it. Her face, white in the starlight, was young, no more than twenty-three or -four, but the touch of death was on it.

"Just keep still," he repeated in futility.

"Who? Let me—see your face."

He took a penlight from the breast pocket of his shirt and put the light of it on his face for her benefit.

"My name is Guard. John Wilson Guard. Tell me who to go for and—"

"No time. Put out the light now. Dangerous. Trust you with message. Will you take it?"

"I'll try."

She coughed again, and for all it was a warm night he shivered, for he had heard a man, once before, cough like that. A man with his chest caved in and the blood bubbling in his lungs, he had coughed, and choked, and died. This girl—there were places out there in that sea where jagged rocks lay close to the surface of the restless sea—she tried again.

"Chantry," she said, chalk-white teeth vivid against black lips in the starlight. "Mary Chantry, Navy. Tape cassette in my swim-suit. Must get to Captain Barnett, Captain Roger Barnett, R.N. Urgently—" and her straining self-control slipped again into a spasm of coughing. Almost by intuition Guard interpreted her weak struggles to indicate the left breast of her scanty costume. He touched something flat, hard, with corners. He peeled hack the wet fabric and took the thing, a box of plastic.

"Get it—to Captain Barnett!"

"I've got it." He slid the thing into his shirt-pocket, bent close again to talk over the surf-roar. "Is there anything else?"

"Man called Green," she gasped, the white mound of her young breast trembling as she tried hard not to cough again. "Yacht
Oberon
, not his. Someone else over him. Pretended to be stewardess. Spied. Listened. Planted recorder in cabin, underside of table." For all her trying the cough caught her again, into racking spasms that brought a dark rope of blood from the corner of her mouth.

"Chief came," she whimpered. "Got his voice on there. But they caught me. Beat me. The black man. Green watching. Then they left me to die, but I climbed—out of cabin window. Fell into the sea. Message to Captain Barnett." She was rambling now, her eyes dulling. "Listened many times. They say it is always the seventh stone. The seventh stone!" Then she smiled, and sighed, and sagged, very quietly. And lay quite still.

Guard let her down gently on to the pebbles. She was dead. No more problems for her, but she had handed him one. Could he dismiss all this as being none of his business, just as he had turned his back on life some three years ago? Or should he listen to a newly awakened conscience that told him there were one or two people on this Earth who had lived longer than they deserved? A new sound cut short his deliberations.

From out there, hidden by the swirling gray scarves of mist, came the sound of a motorboat engine. As he turned to stare, a slim ghost finger of light cut the mist, stabbed a hole in it. Guard moved instantly, straight up the beach, over a hump of pebbles and into a hollow, face-down and then squirming around so he could see. A boat rode in on the waves to rush up on the pebbles and halt, the search light in the bows methodically traversing the shore.

"That's her!" a huge bull-chested voice roared. "Right thar!" Now a small, neat figure rose, perched on the gun-whale, leaped for dry footing and turned to say:

"Fortunately for you, Rambo. Saved your neck!"

"Like I told you, Mistah Green, all we hadda do was follow the tide. She couldn't swim none."

The owner of the big voice leaped ashore in his turn, tramped in the wake of the little man. Guard watched them both crouch.

"She's daid sure enough. Why don't we just leave her be?"

"Fool!" The precise voice was as sharp as a whip-lash. "You know the Chief has other plans. Get her back aboard."

"Hokay!" The big man straightened with his load carelessly over one shoulder, the portable searchlight in his other band. "All set?"

"No! Swing that light about a bit."

Guard flattened as the peering beam slid over his head, and knew he was in a tight corner. He had met men like Green before, men who live ruthlessly, who have to make instant judgments and who develop an instinct for danger amounting to second sight. "I'm not satisfied. There's a house over there, with a light showing. I'm going to check up, just in case someone has seen something. You carry her back aboard. You know where to pick me up, later."

The tone discouraged argument and he waited for none but marched up the slope within feet of where Guard lay. As his steps died away the boat's engine roared and Guard caught a glimpse of the name painted by the bows.
Oberon
. So Mary Chantry had not been babbling altogether. He got to a knee, thinking hard. Right ahead of Green ran a rough east concrete walkway that would take him up to the bungalow, to an empty house but with lights burning. That would really set fire to his suspicions. Guard went up the beach fast, paused long enough at the concrete strip to hear the rap of footsteps going away, then hoisted himself up, across, and ran as fast as he could.

His mind ran almost as fast. Like it or not, whether Mary Chantry had been delirious or not, he was involved in this affair and the only way to get out was to put Green off. And that was not going to be easy. By the time he reached the weatherbeaten front gate of his property he had a thin plan worked out. Through an unkempt garden, in at the front door, wheeling sharp left to the bathroom, on light, on hot tap and shower, off clothes to toss aside, grab towel to twist around his middle, then press close to bathroom door to listen. The hot shower spread a convincing halo of vapor. He listened.

There came the faint click of the beach-side door, a knock, then the sigh of the door opening.

"Hello! Anyone at home?" No mistaking that crisp voice. Guard waited one breath then pulled the door open and went through fast.

"Who the hell are you and what d'you want?"

The little man didn't scare easily. He moved from the table rapidly, but it was alertness rather than fear. The name Green fitted him badly, for he was neutral gray in everything, from his disciplined hair and cold eyes down over his shirt, suit and shoes.

"Good evening. Sorry to Intrude. Guard, isn't it? Your name on this fly-leaf."

"When you're done sneaking around—"

"Not sneaking, please." Green's voice grew icy edges. "I am quiet from habit, not stealth. My name is Absalom Green. May I use your phone?"

"Haven't got one. When a man rejects the world, Mr. Green, he'd be a fool to let it in through a stretch of wire."

"I see. Yet you have television, journals, newspapers?"

"Out of reach, not out of touch. Now, if you don't mind—?"

Guard gestured to the door but Green didn't move his feet, only his eyes. They had taken in a display on the window ledge.

"You're all alone here," he said. "Isolated. Isn't that rather hazardous with those valuables?"

"Valuables?" Guard stared, then grinned and said, "They aren't worth anything. Besides, I have a shotgun handy."

"I saw that." Green moved now to stand by the window ledge, with the shotgun within easy reach of his hand, but his attention on the carvings that stood along the tiles of the window's foot. "I deal in small semiprecious gems and art objects. Allow me to contradict you and say that these are remarkably good. I have no idea where they come from, which makes them unique. And of value. I could sell them for you at a very good figure."

"Not for sale," Guard told him. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm sorry I can't do anything for you—!"

"Sorry?" Green moved swiftly, reaching for the shotgun, swinging and aiming it all in one movement. "The regret is mine, Mr. Guard. You may have rejected the world, but if it jogged your elbow hard enough I imagine you'd take notice. And I can't risk that."

"I don't know what the devil you're talking about!"

"I think you do. I hear your shower running, Mr. Guard, and your feet and legs are wet, but not the rest of you. And there's blood—dried blood—on your arm!"

Guard looked down, and up again just in time to be deafened by the blast of the gun, to feel the instant agony in his chest as the hammer-blow slammed him backwards. And then the second barrel, which sounded much fainter than the first, and then he heard nothing at all.

Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin, slumped casually at the wheel as the car boomed steadily along at forty, flicked an eye at the dashboard clock.

"You're sure," he murmured, "that he won't mind us bursting in on him at this unearthly hour of the morning?"

"That's all right." Napoleon Solo sounded confident as he too snatched a glance at the time. It was just seven- thirty and the pair had been on the road since six. "It was John Guard himself who advised me, long ago, that if you want a pleasant journey and the roads to yourself, start early. The British are a law abiding people as a rule, but their road system was laid down in ancient times, when modern automobiles hadn't been thought of. These damned road markers, for instance. You're on top of them before you see them!" He was watching out for the finger post that would tell them where to turn off the A road and be on the way to Hythe, Sandgate and Folkestone. It came up now, and he talked Kuryakin into a left turn, then sat back.

"Just follow the road now," he said. "You have to admit it's been a comfortable ride. Kent, the Garden of England, they call it."

As the car wound its way through a twisting road Kuryakin reserved his opinion, came back to something else. "If Britain is such a law abiding land, why would a man like Guard want to retire from U.N.C.L.E.? I only know him from what I've heard, and he doesn't sound the type to let the job get on top of him."

"He's quite a character," Solo sighed. "I worked with him a time or two, got to know him well. About six-two, built like a wrestler, and faster off the mark than any man I ever met. Private means, a damned good education, and the kind that once he gets his teeth into anything he doesn't know how to let go. That's the way he was, and that was the real trouble. You see..." he groped for a smoke, frowning over memories, "... there are times, as you and I know, when we have to let go, when the higher ups decide to drop certain things, to turn a blind eye. Johnny couldn't take that. Once he knew who the crook was, he wanted to keep right on and get him, come hell or high water."