[Magazine 1966-­07] - The Ghost Riders Affair - Whittington Harry (электронная книга txt) 📗

The Ghost Riders Affair

By Harry Whittington

July 1966

Volume 1, Issue 6

Two men alone must divert THRUSH's ruthless plan at using the Prehistoric past to master mankind. Can they do it?

Baffled, U.N.C.L.E. faces the deadly riddle of the sleek luxury liner which sped off into the dark on schedule—and vanished from the face of the earth! Follow Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin in this, their most danger-packed adventure of all. It's a story you'll never forget.

Deep inside the Earth a blind, gasping madman had marshaled a monstrous army of Evil, as Solo and Illya race against time and cruel odds to face THRUSH's most incredible death plot of all.

Act I: Incident of the Stolen Train

Act II: Incident of the Missing Castle

Act III: Incident of the Prehistoric Rivers

Act IV: Incident of the Incredible Earthquake

ACT I: INCIDENT OF THE STOLEN TRAIN

Protected by every safety device know, the Central Chieftain flashed through the night, racing against time between Pittsburgh and Chicago.

"Care to sign these letters now, Mr. Howell? They're urgent."

Harrison Howell glanced up from the plush luxury of his custom-built sleeping car. Accompanied by two male secretaries, a French chef, and a guard supplied by Protection, Inc., Howell waved the secretary aside. "I'll get to them before we reach Chicago."

Stout, in his fifties, accustomed to being obeyed unquestionably, Howell smiled. "Got involved in this geology book written by Dr. Leonard Finnish before he disappeared. A man I'd liked to have known, since geology was my first interest—"

"But your letters, sir—"

"Later."

At this instant all train lights flared out, throwing the entire streamliner into total darkness.

In the Chicago dispatch office bored operators checked the progress of the Chieftain on the brightly illumined computer, a complex of multi-colored lights, each bulb a vital message in itself.

An operator shouted, "The computer's flipped! Get a technician in here!"

Other operators crowded around the suddenly dark, silent computer.

The awed operator stammered, "Lights out on the Pittsburgh-Chicago run. Three hundred miles southeast of Chicago. The computer clicked off as if the trip was completed."

"Try to contact the Chieftain by phone."

And it wasn't too many hours later when the nation's afternoon newspapers carried the incredible story: The impossible had happened. A streamliner disappeared off its tracks, vanishing from the face of the earth, with all passengers and crew.

TWO

Hundreds of miles west, in the Sawtooth Mountain ranges of Wyoming, a rail-thin cowpuncher in battered Stetson, dusty levis and boots rode dazedly downslope toward the ranch yard of the Maynard Cattle company.

At the ranch house people spilled into the yard. They'd spent two days searching for him. They shouted at him as he approached.

He sat straight in his saddle, but when he came near they saw he was dazed. He almost fell. Three men grabbed him

"Take him inside," Carlos Maynard said. A heavy-set man in his forties, his florid face was troubled. "Get a doctor."

Ranch hands carried the rider into the house and laid him down on a bed.

Four hours later, a doctor from Cripple Bend settlement shook his head over the rider. "Can't find anything physically wrong with Pete. Looks like exhaustion and exposure."

Carlos Maynard stared at the doctor. "That all you can tell me?"

"What else do you want me to say?"

Maynard scowled. "This is the second man I've sent out looking for my cattle. They come back like this—dazed. Out of their heads. Don't know where they've been. You find nothing wrong. Only they can't tell me where they were, or what's happened to more than one thousand head of Santa Gertrudis cattle."

The doctor shook his head. "Let Pete sleep. Maybe when he wakes up he can remember what happened."

Awaking after ten hours of sleep, Pete Wasson found Maynard sitting beside the bed. "What happened up there, Pete?"

Pete stared around the roughly furnished room. "How did I get here?"

"Come on, Pete! Three days ago I sent you looking for Marty Nichelson and my cattle—"

"Three days?" Pete's eyes clouded. "I been gone three days?"

Maynard managed to control his indignation and puzzlement. "Right. My cattle have been missing a week now. Did you find even a trace?"

Pete drew his hand across his eyes. "Nothing, boss. They just vanished like clouds, not leaving a track! I remember I kept thinking it was like that song about the ghost riders—"

"That's enough senseless talk, Pete! I want to know where my cattle are!"

"That's all I can tell you. There was a clear trail just like Marty said, up into the Sawtooth ranges. Then the trail just stopped."

"You loco? A thousand head of cattle have got to leave some kind of trail!"

"These didn't, boss. That's all I know."

"All right. What happened to you?"

Pete Wasson stirred on the bed, face gray, almost afraid to answer. "I must have fallen, boss—"

"Don't you know?"

"No sir, I don't. It's all cloudy. Seems to me a rain came up, and I was looking for trail. Got this kind of funny feeling—a headache like, dizzy, sick at my stomach. I must have fallen, hit my head on a rock. I remember riding down here toward the ranch, and then I woke up in here. That's all I know, Mr. Maynard."

Maynard walked to the door. He stared at the dudes sitting around the huge front room, waiting to hear the verdict on Pete. A pall had shrouded the ranch for more than a week.

Not only was Maynard losing cattle but the tourists were getting edgy, leaving, as though the ranch were haunted. Well, that didn't make sense. But then neither did the loss of a thousand head of cattle!

"Maybe somebody's trying to put you out of business, Mr. Maynard." Marty Nichelson said. The young cowboy sat beside Pete's bed. "I can't tell you any more than Pete has. Not even as much. Like he said, I got this headache, too, but I know how sore you were going to be, losing all those cattle and no trace, so I kept riding. This headache got worse, and I got so sick I headed into Cripple Bend."

"And spent three days on a drunk!" Maynard accused him.

Marty winced and nodded. "I don't know what happened, boss. It was like I was sick—"

"Drunk!"

"But first I was sick. And fouled up. Them cattle just walking off the face of the earth didn't make sense. I decided a couple of drinks might help.

Next thing I knew, you said I'd been gone three days. I wish I could help you, but I can't tell you any more than Pete did."

Maynard growled. "Pete hasn't told me anything! But somebody's going to!"

Newspaper headlines, television cameras and radio newsmen sped the story around the world: 1000 CATTLE MISSING WITHOUT TRACE.

* * *

Illya Kuryakin walked silently down the gleaming length of the long streamliner.

Behind Illya five Central trainmen and special detectives watched him, but Illya ignored them.

He paused at the special car which had been added to the regular Chieftain run, making this an exact replica of the train which had vanished.

The small sender-receiver crackled in his hand. Alexander Waverly's voice spoke as if the United Network Command officer were at Illya's shoulder. "Did you find something, Mr. Kuryakin?"