The Mad Scientist Affair - Philifrent John T (электронная книга txt) 📗

Curiosity battled against irritation and won. “What do you mean, the cold plain truth?” She massaged her throat. “About what?”

“About why you should so suddenly and conveniently lose your voice just before you were going to deliver a paper on an obscure topic. No, let me talk a bit. Your paper deals with some discovery made by Dr. Michael O’Rourke, and somebody didn’t want you to give it, so they slipped you something to paralyze your vocal chords. The question is—why?”

To his surprise she suddenly turned on a glorious smile, enough to make him tingle all over. “You’re having me on,” she whispered. “I was carefully warned that you Americans are the crafty ones, with every trick in the book up your sleeves, but I never expected anything so wild as that!”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I do!” she protested. “I remember now—he was a long skinny Chinaman with a cigarette-holder and gilded fingernails. Very sinister!” And she used her glorious smile again to elevate his blood pressure. “Thank you, Dr. Solo. You’ve managed to take my mind off my disappointment, and I’m very grateful to you for that, anyway.”

“All right,” he said, deciding to follow up his advantage swiftly, “let me do one more little thing for you. I know quite a bit about the kind of drug one uses for this kind of thing.” That much was true enough. “It will be purely temporary in its effect. I can show you how to hasten your recovery from it.”

“You can? And how would that be?”

“Just sit still one moment; I’ll be right back.” He rose and went to the bar, to return promptly carrying a half-bottle of Smirnoff. Her blue eyes traveled from the vodka to his face and registered distaste.

“Ah, now you’ve spoiled it. Trying to get me drunk—that’s the oldest dodge in the world!”

“Not so fast!” he cautioned. “You aren’t going to drink this. Now, do we go to my room, or yours?” He put on his most frank smile, and saw her bewilderment. She reacted just as he had hoped, and rose to her feet.

“You’re a trier, I’ll say that for it. And I’ll feel a lot safer in my own room.” He bowed gravely and she took his arm like a princess. More than one pair of envious male eyes followed them as they left the bar. There was mild apprehension in her expression as she led him to her room and waited for him to close the door.

“And now what?” she demanded, in that husky scrape that was becoming very attractive to his ears.

“Bathroom,” he said, leading the way, “and a large glass.” He poured, saving just a couple of fingers in the bottle, then handed her the glass with the command, “Gargle! Be sure you spit it out, now, or my reputation will be mud!”

“Your reputation! I should be ashamed of myself for not thinking of it sooner. I ought to know about alcohol, seeing that I work with the stuff.”

“Good! All right, I’ll leave you alone now. I’d rather not stand by and watch good liquor going to waste, even if it is in a good cause. The thing about vodka is that it won’t make you smell like a distillery afterwards.”

She held the glass and looked at him with a lovely frown. “I think I owe you some kind of apology, don’t I?”

“Forget it. I’m always being misunderstood. What I would like from you, though, is a chance to look at your original paper.”

She noticed the stress on “original,” and frowned again. “I don’t see why. There’s hundreds of copies downstairs. Still, help yourself. It’s in my briefcase, in there on the dresser.”

He heard her gargling as he found the case and zipped it open. This was the original, judging by the typing, and the creases and finger-marks. He scowled at it, wishing he had the necessary expertise to understand the finer points. Casting a calculating eye over the available light, he got out his tiny cigarette-lighter camera and was all set to photograph the sheets when she called from the bathroom, still husky but much louder:

“You can have the paper, and welcome. I’m not likely to be wanting it any more now.”

“Thank you very much.” He folded the paper slowly, slid it into an inside pocket and strolled back to where she was still gargling. “Are you taking part in anything else in this distinguished gathering?”

“No. I came only to deliver that talk and to hear some of the others. I’ll be catching a plane home in the morning.”

“Back to Cooraclare Castle,” he murmured, and she choked in the middle of a gargle, coughed; regained her breath and stared at him.

“You seem to know a lot about me!”

“And I’d like to know a lot more,” he said, smiling. “Look, there’s a farewell dance this evening, the usual thing. Why don’t I meet you there, and then you’ll be able to tell me all sorts of fascinating things about molecules and yeast and things? Would you?”

She hesitated a moment, then gave him that high-voltage smile again. “I’d love to, just so long as I can count on getting a dance or two into the bargain. Are you sure it’s the yeast you’re interested in?”

“That”—he smiled—“and other things.” He put the bottle down on the edge of the washbasin. “Here—keep this for one more treatment later on. See you tonight—in full voice, I hope!”

Back in his own room he unclipped the pencil transceiver from his breast pocket and spoke somberly into it: “Open channel D.” As Waverly’s voice came through he outlined the situation briefly. “If she was doped to stop her talking, and I think she was, then it’s possible the pertinent information is in her head and not on paper,” he concluded. “Something that would have emerged in the questions afterwards. However, I have her own copies of the lecture notes and I’ll send them over by messenger at once. Perhaps our experts can gather a clue or two from them.”

“With two hundred specialists right there on the spot I doubt if there is anything they’ve missed that we can find,” Waverly said dryly.

“The clues,” Solo explained, “are for me to go on. I’m meeting her at the dance this evening. She should be in voice by then, and it will be my last chance—she’s booked to fly home tomorrow. I can get her to talk, but how am I supposed to carry on an intelligent conversation unless I have some notion what she’s talking about?”

“Very well, Mr. Solo; get the papers to us and I’ll see what the laboratory can do in the way of a synopsis for you. In the meantime you’ll just have to use your imagination.”

“One more matter, sir.” Solo sighed. “It could be that Thrush won’t want Miss O’Rourke to fly out in the morning. If they’ve tried to silence her once already they may do it the hard way next time.”

“Quite so. You’ll have to watch out for that, Mr. Solo, won’t you?” Waverly switched off.

Solo returned his transceiver to his pocket, shaking his head grimly. The majority of commanders fall into the sin of being unable to delegate authority for actions and insist on supervising everything personally. Waverly would never do that, but Solo couldn’t help thinking he tended to go a bit too far in the opposite direction and assume that his men would somehow be successful at anything he told them to do. It was a very great compliment, of course, but Solo sighed as he contemplated just what was involved this time. He had to keep Sarah O’Rourke’s good will to the point where she would babble to him whatever secrets there might be about synthetic yeast—and then he had to try to understand whatever it was she told him. Meanwhile he had to make sure that Thrush didn’t come up with any more dirty tricks towards her—or himself, for that matter.

And in between times, have fun! he thought wryly, and decided to take a shave and shower and freshen up generally. It was futile to try and guess just what it was Thrush was after, so he didn’t bother, but he did find it hard to believe that anyone so utterly fresh and wholesome as Sarah O’Rourke could be involved in the kind of evil Thrush would seek.