Текст книги "[Magazine 1968-012] - The Million Monsters Affair "

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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THE MILLION MONSTERS AFFAIR

by Robert Hart Davis

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. MAGAZINE, January 1968

Mindless, without souls and without pity, they looted and killed, as Solo and Illya fought against time and THRUSH to find the dread weapon which transformed happy children into ravening monsters.

ACT I – THE WARNING

NAPOLEON SOLO – whistled softly. His companion, Illya Kuryakin, turned to see what interested his friend.

He saw a girl. And from her becomingly tousled blonde hair down along curves designed for a bikini to splendidly lithe legs, she was a marvel to behold.

Kuryakin’s Slavic features lighted up. He echoed Napoleon Solo’s soft whistle.

“Now that is the kind of girl who could change my woman-hating ways!” he said.

“I’m not a woman-hater,” Solo said with a grin, “but if I were, she could change my mind.”

“I guess you know it is impolite to stare,” Illya said.

“I know,” Solo replied, “but when the girl is that pretty it is stupid not to! It will be a long, long time before we see something as lovely as that.”

The girl turned toward them. Napoleon looked hastily away, but when the blonde leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, he stared at her again. He wasn’t being rude. There was something about her that puzzled him.

The first time he looked at her he thought she was deathly afraid. The second time he thought she didn’t have a care in the world. Now, as she leaned back in the lobby chair in the Los Angeles International Airport waiting room of East-West Airlines, she seemed to take on a sudden pallor that made her look like a lovely corpse.

Solo bent his head over close to his companion.

“She looks familiar,” he said in a low voice. “Do you have any idea who she is?”

“She doesn’t look familiar to me,” Illya said.

“There’s something odd about her,” Napoleon insisted. “I can’t place it, Illya, but it bugs me.”

“It is not the odd things about her that is bugging you, friend. I -”

Kuryakin broke off, startled by an abrupt change in the girl’s face. Her pale skin suddenly flushed. Her madonna-like beauty receded. Her eyes snapped open and there was pure hell in them. Her face contorted in a mask that was viciously beautiful, but deadly as a murderess. Her lovely lips snarled back, exposing teeth that gleamed like a young Dracula.

Before the two startled men from U.N.C.L.E. could move, she jerked a tiny gun from her purse. She jumped up. Her face was now completely maniacal.

Both Kuryakin and Solo leaped for her as she insanely pointed the gun toward a group crowded about the ticket counter. Solo, who was a fraction of a second quicker, caught her arm just as she pulled the trigger.

The bullet flashed over the heads of the startled passengers. It struck the wall, glanced and smashed a huge plate glass window looking out on the mall.

She jerked back, pulling free of Solo’s grasp. She leveled the gun in his face. He lunged at her, but his knee hit the arm of the chair she had quitted.

Solo sprawled flat. The girl jumped back, leveling the gun at him again.

Kuryakin tried to grab her. She dodged, but the movement spoiled her aim. Her bullet slammed into the floor, inches from Napoleon Solo’s head.

Napoleon didn’t try to get up. He jerked his body around, throwing himself at her legs. He caught her and pulled her down. It was like throwing his arms about a tornado. She twisted violently. Her knee rammed up in his stomach. He doubled up in pain, but managed to keep his grip on her wrist.

Her strength was superhuman, astounding in one of her slender build. Solo could never have held her had not Kuryakin sprang to his assistance.

Together they forced her back in the seat, but even then they almost couldn’t hold her.

Two uniformed policemen came running across the lobby. With their help, she was brought under restraint. Solo touched a hidden catch on the side of his massive black star sapphire ring. A tiny needle protruded. He forced it into the girl’s arm.

She shuddered and closed her eyes but her face was still a contorted demon’s mask.

But still she kept struggling. Solo looked at her in amazement. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was half parted. She was breathing deeply, like one asleep.

Kuryakin noted her strange reaction to the knockout drug in the U.N.C.L.E. ring.

“She’s asleep!” he gasped, his own breath short from the exertion of trying to hold her down. “She’s asleep, but why is she still fighting us like mad?”

One of the policemen got his handcuffs about the girl’s ankles. Then they forced the struggling sleeper’s arms behind her back and put the other policeman’s bracelets on her.

She still tried to break away. It took both police to hold her after Kuryakin and Solo stepped back.

Kuryakin touched his own U.N.C.L.E. ring.

“Shall I give her another jolt?” he asked Solo.

Solo shook his head. A slight frown creased his handsome face.

“If that last didn’t put her out, nothing short of death will,” he said slowly. “There is something very strange going on here, Illya.”

The two police were kept busy controlling the girl’s wild motions despite the two sets of handcuffs on her ankles and wrists. This went on until the arrival of a police car. Even after the berserk girl was crushed into a strait jacket, she continued to struggle.

“That sort of strength just isn’t human,” Illya observed. “She should have exhausted herself a long time ago.”

Solo frowned.

“I keep thinking I know her,” he said.

He turned to one of the policemen, who had stepped back, breathing hard, after helping force the crazed girl into the police car.

“Who is she?” Solo asked curiously.

The policeman was one who arrived in the car. He had not seen Illya’s and Napoleon’s participation in preventing the girl from committing murder. He gave Napoleon a suspicious look.

“Who -” he began.

His companion broke in. “Durham, this is Napoleon Solo, from U.N.C.L.E. I worked on a case with him last year.”

“And this is my partner, Illya Kuryakin,” Napoleon said. “He is also a member of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.”

“Is Marsha involved in a case you’re working on?” the policeman asked.

“Marsha? Is that her name?” Solo asked.

“Yeah, Marsha Mallon. She’s the daughter of Fred B. Mallon, the movie producer.”

“That explains why she looked so familiar,” Kuryakin said. “Her mother was the famous star, Roberta Romaine.”

“Is this something she does all the time?” Napoleon asked.

Durham shook his head. “She always had a reputation of being a quiet person. She shunned the usual Hollywood hippie crowd and was supposed to be something of an intellectual.”

“According to one of the columnists,” his companion said, “she was trying to make a career for herself as a research scientist.”

“I wonder -” Napoleon began, but Illya interrupted him.

“Come on, Napoleon. They’re calling our plane.”

“We’ve got an urgent appointment in New York,” Solo told the policeman. “But if you need our testimony in any way, we can arrange to come back later.”

“I don’t think this will ever come to trial,” Durham said. “It is the first trouble she has been in. And her father has the money to hire that bigtime Hollywood lawyer all the stars get.”

After bidding good-by to the police crew, Illya and Napoleon hurried to board their plane. As they took their seats, Kuryakin said thoughtfully, “I’d like very much to know what kept that girl fighting like crazy after she obviously was put to sleep by your knockout drops.”

Napoleon nodded soberly. “Did you get the impression that her own mind wasn’t directing her body?”

“Yes,” Kuryakin said positively. “It was almost as if some evil spirit had moved into her unconscious body and was animating it.”

“That, of course, is impossible,” Solo said. “Everything has a natural explanation, but I’ll admit that it did look that way.”

“She was really a beautiful girl,” Illya said. “I feel guilty about running off without trying to help her. But when Mr. Waverly calls, damsels in distress must shift for themselves.”

“Somehow, Illya, I have a hunch that we have not seen the last of that girl,” Napoleon Solo said. “And it -”

“And what?” his partner asked.

“And it scares me,” Solo finished quietly.

TWO

IN NEW YORK the two men from U.N.C.L.E. took a taxi from Kennedy International Airport to a street in the lower Fifties. Here they dismissed the cab. They went on foot past several blocks of brownstone fronts. To their right the United Nations building loomed up, a checkerboard of lighted windows against the night sky.

After a short walk the two men turned into a small shop. Peeling gold leaf spelled out Del Floria’s Tailor Shop on the window.

Inside a little gnome of a man nodded absent-mindedly at them. They went behind the counter. A girl at the pressing machine smiled as they went by her. She touched a hidden button. Her eyes lingered a long moment on Solo’s broad back before she sighed slightly and went back to her work.

The two men entered a dressing room. Illya pulled the curtain shut while Solo turned one of the hooks on the wall. The back slid open. They stepped into a room that was totally dark when the door slid shut behind them.

They waited quietly while infrared sensors converted their bodily heat waves into a picture for a special TV surveillance scanner.

Once they were identified, the opposite wall opened. The two U.N.C.L.E. operatives stepped into a modernistic furnished office that gleamed with chrome and efficiency. A pretty girl at a desk smiled and handed each a triangular badge. It was their passport into the secret corridors of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement headquarters. Strategically placed scanners would pick up the badge’s transmissions.

“How are things coming along?” Solo asked her.

She looked up at him fondly.

“Wonderful,” she said. “I can never thank you and Mr. Kuryakin enough for getting U.N.C.L.E. to give me a job.”

She spoke with a strong Irish brogue.

“You earned it,” Napoleon said. “If it hadn’t been for you, Illya and I would probably be still floating in the Irish Sea!”

“You over-estimate what I did,” she replied.

“I see you are in an argumentative mood tonight,” he said brightly. “Mr. Waverly doesn’t take kindly to the hired help talking when they should be working. So what do you say to the two of us continuing the argument over a plate of Irish potatoes after we finish upstairs?”

“Just the two of us?” she said with mock concern. “What about Mr. Kuryakin? I can’t split up two old friends. Can he come too?”

“He can not!” Solo retorted. “It is obviously true, my lovely colleen, that you have never heard of the American adage that three is a crowd.”

The Irish smile turned a little wistful.

“Eight,” she said. “Or is it nine?”

“What?” Solo asked blankly.

“Is it the eighth or ninth time you two have invited me out to dinner as soon as you came from upstairs and then failed to come back.”

“Well, it isn’t my fault,” Solo said sadly. “It is that slave driver Waverly.”

“Well, speaking of that slave driver,” she said, “he has been calling down here for the last hour wanting to know if you had arrived. I’d suggest -”

“I know a brush-off when I get one,” Solo said. “Come on, Illya.”

The two went over to a bank of six elevators. Each was tagged with the name of one of the six sections of the United Network for Law and Enforcement: Section I – Policy and Operations; Section II – Operations and Enforcement; Section III – Enforcement and Intelligence; Section IV – Intelligence and Communications; Section V – Communications and Security; Section VI – Security and Personnel.

The two men took the Section I elevator and it sped them straight to the top floor. Here they stepped out into a wide corridor lined with steel doors cleverly laminated to look like oak. They walked to the far end, passing men and women of a dozen nations on the way. Organized as it was to combat international crime and aggression, U.N.C.L.E. was intentionally a multi-raced group. With headquarters subdivisions in all the large cities of the world, its operations were unhampered by international borders.

They paused in front of the last door. They did not knock or ring a bell. Neither was necessary. Electronic guards scanned them, checked their every detail with computerized memory banks, and then automatically opened the door.

Alexander Waverly looked up as his two top operatives entered. He rose to offer them his hand, a smile on his face.

The U.N.C.L.E. operations chief was a man past middle age. His hair was iron gray and his strong face was deeply lined. Yet he did not give the appearance of being aged as much as he did being ageless. He had a tweedy look and his voice had a clipped, slightly British accent.

After greeting Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo in a soft voice, Alexander Waverly turned, his attention caught by a red light that flashed on the console that served him for a desk.

“One moment, please,” he said to his visitors.

Waverly punched a button to complete a communications connection. A woman’s voice said, “Mr. Waverly, this is April Dancer in Paris. Mark and I are moving in on the assassins. It is only a matter of time now.”

“Good!” Waverly said. “Please keep me informed, Miss Dancer.”

He cut the trans-Atlantic connection and leaned back in his chair.

“Although Miss Dancer sounds most confident,” he said, “I think that I will send you gentlemen over to help wind up the mess. I -”

He paused, looking at Solo with disfavor. Napoleon had leaned back in his leather chair. He was staring at the floor. Obviously he had not heard a word his chief said.

“Don’t you think that is the wrong thing to do, Mr. Solo?” he said, raising his voice.

“Oh!” Solo jerked erect. “Oh, yes, sir!” he said hastily.

Illya Kuryakin grinned crookedly, obviously enjoying his partner’s confusion.

“Mr. Solo! What has engaged your thoughts more important than the pursuit of these THRUSH assassination groups in Europe?”

Napoleon looked sheepish. “Well sir, it was a rather odd girl. I can’t seem to get her out of my mind. Now before you say the obvious, let me explain.”

He quickly sketched for his chief the odd actions of the girl in Los Angeles.

“Very peculiar,” Waverly said. “I find her resistance to our knockout drug very interesting. I wish you would make a full report to our chemical laboratory about it. Now enough about this girl; we have an extremely important matter to consider.”

“Yes, sir,” Solo said. “If possible, sir, we’d like permission to look into this Marsha Mallon affair when we get back. There is something decidedly curious about her.”

Alexander Waverly’s head jerked up. He shot a hard, suspicious stare at Illya. Kuryakin wondered uneasily what he had done to have such an effect on his chief.

“Marsha – Mallon?” Waverly said, almost accusingly. “In Hollywood?”

“Yes, sir,” Illya said, showing his bewilderment. “She was the girl. Nothing personal, you understand. It’s just impossible for anyone to keep moving after they receive -”

“I am aware of the implication concerning the ineffectiveness of a very important tool in our U.N.C.L.E. protective devices, Mr. Kuryakin. That is of secondary importance now. Is this Marsha Mallon related in any manner to a Fred B. Mallon, who has been identified to me as a movie producer?”

“Yes, sir,” Solo put in. “The police claimed she was his daughter.”

“Is she an actress?”

“No, sir,” Illya said. “I remember the policeman saying that she was trying to make a career in scientific research.”

“So!” Waverly said, drawing the word out in a thoughtful manner. “In that case perhaps I will not send you to assist Miss Dancer and Mr. Slate in Paris. Perhaps -”

“Yes, sir?” Solo prompted.

“Perhaps I made an error, Mr. Solo.”

Thoughtfully the U.N.C.L.E. chief reached over and picked up a briar pipe. He leaned back in the leather upholstered chair and rubbed the bowl between his palms as he contemplated the ceiling.

“The very nature of our business brings us a great deal of peculiar information,” he said slowly. “Much of it is worthless, but occasionally it may be priceless.”

He leaned over and punched a button on the communications console in front of him. A young man’s voice said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Waverly?”

“Mr. Kovac, bring me that letter referring to Mr. Mallon, the movie producer.”

Randy Kovac, U.N.C.L.E.‘s first on-the-job trainee, brought in a folder and handed it to the chief. Waverly extracted a letter and handed it across to Solo.

The man from U.N.C.L.E. scanned it quickly, his eyes narrowing as he read: “There is a hideous threat building up because of a THRUSH offensive directed at American teenagers. Fred B. Mallon knows something about this. If he refuses to talk, force him! It is that important. You must work fast to prevent THRUSH from turning our youth into monsters!”

Wordlessly Solo passed the anonymous note to his partner. As Illya read it, Napoleon said, “After seeing the truly startling change in that young woman, I can believe that this note is telling the truth.”

“Possibly,” Waverly replied. “I had it investigated, naturally. There have been several teenage riots across the country lately. I thought there might be a connection. After all, we know THRUSH very well by now. This evil international organization is extremely clever and will take advantage of the most diabolical methods of advancing its dream of world domination.”

“What did you find out, sir?” Illya asked, passing the letter back to their chief.

Waverly laid the unlighted pipe down with an annoyed gesture.

“This handwriting was compared by electronic scanners with signatures on every income tax report filed last year. From the similarity of letters we were able to trace the writer.”

“Yes, sir?” Solo asked.

“It was Mallon himself!”

“You mean, he wrote an anonymous note asking U.N.C.L.E. to force information from himself?” Illya asked incredulously.

“It would seem so,” Waverly said.

“But why?” Napoleon asked.

“I had a complete report prepared on Mr. Mallon,” Waverly said. “I found that he specialized in horror movies designed for a teenage audience. He just completed a picture called The Million Monsters.”

“Sounds like he rigged up an elaborate publicity stunt at U.N.C.L.E.‘s expense,” Napoleon said.

“That is what I thought and dropped the matter,” Waverly said.

He reached over and picked up the pipe again. Using the stem for a handle, he rapped the bowl on the console to punctuate his words.

“Now I am not so sure,” he replied gloomily. “I did attempt to phone Mallon directly, but I was told that he was not receiving any calls from anyone. I forgot about the matter until you mentioned this curious reaction of his daughter. No matter how publicity crazy this producer may be, I am certain he would never permit his daughter to be arrested just for a plug for a cheap picture.”

“Also,” Napoleon put in, “her record shows that she is hardly the type to go along with such a crazy stunt.”

“The cincher is that you gave her a dose of knockout drops sufficient to render any human being unconscious. Yet she kept fighting. That is not normal and points to something sinister. THRUSH may be involved in this. If so, we face a grave danger.”

“But why did Mallon write an anonymous note urging you to investigate himself?” Illya asked. “Why didn’t he just tell you what he knows about this THRUSH thrust at America’s teenagers?”

“That is Mr. Mallon’s secret,” Waverly said. “However, I suspect that he wanted to protect himself in case his warning note fell into THRUSH hands before he could get it to me.”

“Probably so,” Napoleon said. “What do you want us to do?”

“Return to Hollywood. See Mallon. Also, if there are any teenage riots again anywhere in the United States, I want them carefully investigated and analyzed for possible THRUSH instigation.

“Yes, sir,” Napoleon said, getting up. “Shall we go monster hunting, Mr. Kuryakin?”

“Let’s, Mr. Solo,” Illya replied, getting up himself.

Alexander Waverly got up. “Gentlemen,” he said gravely, “I know it is unscientific to depend upon hunches. But I have an uneasy feeling that this may prove to be the most difficult case we have ever encountered.”

“If it does not prove to be a publicity stunt for the Million Monsters film after all,” Napoleon returned cautiously.

“Do you believe it is, Mr. Solo?”

“No, sir!” Napoleon replied. “I’m a hunch player too.”

“Good luck,” Waverly said. “You’re going to need it.”

THREE

WHEN THEY ARRIVED back at Los Angeles International Airport Napoleon went directly to a telephone. When the operator refused to give him the unlisted private telephone number of Producer Fred B. Mallon, Solo gave the chief operator a code. Instantly the objections vanished. He was switched immediately to the producer’s phone.

It rang and rang. Napoleon was on the verge of hanging up when someone picked up the phone.

“Yes?” It was a girl’s voice. It was strained and held an undertone of terror.

“This is Napoleon Solo,” the man from U.N.C.L.E. said. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Mallon for a moment. I -”

“He isn’t speaking to anyone,” she said hastily.

“This is an official government matter,” Solo went on. “We are interested in Mr. Mallon producing a propaganda film for showing -”

The phone went dead. The banging in his ear suggested that she threw the receiver in the cradle with a savage force.

“Yeah?” Illya asked.

“A girl,” Napoleon said. “At least her voice sounded young. And it sounded fearful and angry. According to her, Mr. Mallon isn’t talking to anybody.”

“And according to N. Solo?”

“He is going to talk whether she or he likes it!” the man from U.N.C.L.E. snapped.

“I – Look out, Napo -”

Napoleon tried to whirl, but Illya Kuryakin was faster. He grabbed his companion’s coat lapel and swung him around in a savage judo throw.

In the background there was a deafening blast of gunfire. A bullet just missed Napoleon’s head as Illya threw him back out of the line of fire.

The slug smashed into the glass door of the telephone booth. Illya dodged, falling flat on the airline terminal floor. He snaked his body around, pulling his U.N.C.L.E. Special from its shoulder holster under his coat.

As he jerked his head around, seeking a target, he glimpsed Solo, who was on his knees pulling his own Special.

“Wham!”

A steel-jacketed slug scraped the fleshy part of his thigh. He was knocked back flat. Oblivious of the pain, he spun his prone body around.

He saw Solo fire and heard a scream. A burly teenager who looked like a fugitive from Muscle Beach collapsed. Two companions behind him stumbled over his falling body. They all had long hair and were bare-footed. All three had guns.

Napoleon hurled himself at them. His frantically kicking shoe caught the gun wrist of one. The gun spun across the floor. The second gunman tried to blast the charging Kuryakin. Solo hit him with a football tackle.

The berserk hipster went down. His head cracked against the hard floor. Blood streamed from the cut. His eyes rolled back in his head. But like the girl the day before, the would-be killer’s body acted independently of its unconscious mind.

His gun was jarred from his hand when he fell, but he hurled himself on Solo. The other caught Illya, who was at a disadvantage because of his own bleeding wound.

He clubbed Illya to his knees, but as he fell Kuryakin threw his arms about his assailant’s knees and knocked the THRUSH zombie off balance.

Two airline employees came running to their assistance. The man Solo shot loomed up in their way. He was streaming blood, but it didn’t slow him. He grabbed one of the oncoming men, lifted him and smashed him into his companion. Then he whirled to throw himself at Kuryakin.

Solo slipped between the two men who rushed him. He whirled, shooting a frantic glance around to see how Illya was faring. Kuryakin was in the grasp of the wounded zombie.

“You can kill them and they still won’t lie down and die!” Solo thought frantically. “We got to get out of here. We’re no match for them!”

He ducked a clubbing blow that would have taken his head off his shoulders if it had landed. He grabbed the swinging arm and slammed his attacker into the other assailant. They collided with a bone-shaking crash and fell.

Napoleon turned, grabbed the long hair of the bleeding human monster throttling Kuryakin. The streaming blood was sapping the berserk hippie’s strength although his controlled mind kept driving him forward. His grip on Illya broke as Solo pushed him around and slammed him into the two other who were moving in again.

“Come on, Illya!” he yelled.

Kuryakin tried to follow, but his wounded leg buckled. Solo grabbed a heavy sand-filled basin used for cigarette stubs and hurled it. The man it hit collapsed with a broken leg, but still he tried to crawl.

Solo grabbed Illya’s arm and swung him up over his shoulder in the fireman’s carry. He started for the door in a lumbering run.

Two of their assailants started after them. The third had now lost so much blood he couldn’t stand, but he kept trying to crawl. The terrible force that drove him would not let him rest, even as he was dying.

There was a photographer in the doorway. He was holding up a camera shaped something like a press box.

“Never mind the pictures!” Solo yelled at him. “Give us a hand!”

The photographer ignored him. He stepped back hastily out of the way as the two crazed hippies charged down on Illya and Napoleon. Handicapped as he was by his wounded companion, Solo couldn’t move fast enough. The nearest hippie charged into him.

He tried to duck, but Kuryakin’s weight was too much for him. He stumbled and pitched into the photographer. The Hippie swung wildly, missed and lunged past, bowling over the photographer and Solo.

Napoleon twisted frantically, but as he jerked himself up he realized that the fight had gone out of their two assailants. The first lay across Kuryakin, unmoving. The second stopped in his forward charge. The berserk expression on his face faded, turning into bewilderment.

The photographer pulled back, clutching his camera box. The bellows hung down from the broken bed. He swung the box as if he intended to strike Solo, but thought better of it. He broke and ran.

Napoleon shot a quick glance at the two hippies. They seemed to be out, but from past experience he didn’t care to trust appearances. He kept a wary eye on them as he went over to Illya.

His companion’s trouser leg was soaked with blood.

“Bad?” he asked.

“No,” Illya said. “Painful as hell, but I can walk if I don’t push it too hard.” He pulled up his pants leg and pressed a wadded handkerchief down on the wound to staunch the blood flow. Solo kept an anxious eye on the two prone hippies.

Outside a screaming police car pulled up with red light flashing.

“Where have they been? On vacation?” Illya asked sarcastically.

Napoleon looked at his watch. “It does seem an age, but did you know it has been exactly three minutes since those hippies ran amok on us?”

“Three minutes!” Illya said wonderingly. “It seems like three weeks.”

Solo nodded soberly. “What made them attack us?”

“That’s easy to answer. They think we’re on their track. What isn’t so easy to answer is what gives them the power to keep going? It isn’t human.”

“I know,” Napoleon replied. “And just as baffling is why they ran out of steam there at the last. The girl didn’t, you remember. She was still fighting with the strength of ten when they crammed her in that car and drove away.”

“I know that,” Illya said, grimacing as he extended his wounded leg. “There is something very peculiar about all this. I’d feel better about it if I just knew what we are fighting.”

“If THRUSH is mixed up in this, as Mallon claimed, then we can be assured that it is something diabolical.”

Illya looked at the policemen hurrying across toward them. He nodded. “I know,” he said. “And it scares me. Somehow, the title of that Mallon movie, The Million Monsters, keeps bugging me. If THRUSH can turn a million people as crazy as these hippies and that girl were, then we really have something to worry about. They would have an army of rioters that could completely wreck the United States.”

“Not just the United States, Illya,” Solo said, giving his companion a dark, brooding look. “If they can monsterize a million youth here, they can do it anywhere in the world! THRUSH has been seeking to dominate the world for a long time. They just may have found the right gimmick at last – unless we can stop them!”

ACT II – THE MONSTERS!

ILLYA AND NAPOLEON accompanied the police back to the Los Angeles Police Headquarters. Interrogation of the prisoners produced nothing. Each seemed genuinely surprised at his actions and could remember nothing of the attack on the two men from U.N.C.L.E.

“It was the same with Marsha Mallon,” Sergeant Leffler of the riot squad told Solo. “We questioned her very closely. She indignantly denied trying to fire a gun in the airline terminal. She could remember nothing until her frenzy broke in the patrol car as she was being carried from the airport.”

“These two evidently were trying to murder Illya and me,” Solo said. “But Miss Mallon was not attacking us until we tried to stop her. Was she after somebody? Or was her attack spontaneous, directed at nothing or everything?”

“We don’t know,” Leffler said. “We do know that a well-known European film distributor was at the service counter she aimed at. He had been in Hollywood to see her father about foreign distribution of Mallon’s latest film. There might or might not be a connection.”

“Was the film called The Million Monsters?” Illya asked.

“I believe it was,” the riot squad man said. “Another of those cheap horror movies.”

“Did you talk to this man?”

“He must have been frightened by the commotion. He broke and ran. We traced him later. He took a rental car from the airport to Tijuana. From there he took a plane to Mexico City and then to Paris.”

“I see,” Illya said thoughtfully. “It would appear that there might be a connection.”

“Possibly,” the policeman said. “But we must have better evidence before we can ask INTERPOL to investigate.”

He paused and added in an offhand manner: “Of course, U.N.C.L.E. is not bound by international restrictions. If you -”