Somewhere heavy doors clanged shut. A mammoth rattle of iron signaled the shooting of a bolt. Footsteps passed the chest. Solo peered out.

He saw the scar-eared guard reach up and give a tug to the handle of an ancient, rusty battle ax hanging on the wall. There was a whir. The wall at the end of a cul-de-sac swung out, revealing a metal partition. This slid out of the way. The guard stepped into what looked like an elevator. The door closed, but the stone partition remained swung out.

During the next fifteen minutes, booted feet passed the chest often. The guards going off duty all took the elevator. At last, when darkness and silence claimed the castle proper again, Solo risked lifting the chest lid.

Illya followed him out. Solo's knees popped like silenced pistols as he straightened up.

"The stone's back in place," he whispered. "Grab the ax handle, Illya."

The other U.N.C.L.E. agent craned up, gave the handle a tug. There was a grinding whine as the partition once more swung aside. Unfortunately there was no indicator beside the call button to show whether the elevator was in use. Solo thumbed the button.

He heard a whine inside the shaft, a sigh of power as the cage reached their floor. The metal door slid aside—

Revealing a pair of startled THRUSH guards just drawing their guns.

FOUR

ONE OF THE occupants of the elevator was the guard with the scar on his ear. An expression of suspicion satisfied flashed over his thick-featured face. With a flick of his thumb he snapped the setting of his pistol to rapid fire, and began to blaze away point blank.

The two U.N.C.L.E. agents had lunged back out of the way, one to either side of the open doors. The guard's pistol stuttered, tracer rounds penciling white dashes through the gloom. Solo slammed against the wall, righted himself. He ripped the camera loose from around his neck and flung it like a baseball.

The camera whizzed full speed into the forehead of the second guard, who was just aiming. The man yelped, sagged. Off balance, he fell against the elevator control panel. The doors started to shut.

Seeing that his potential victims were unarmed, the scar-eared guard stopped firing. Backs pressed to opposite walls of the cul-de-sac, Solo and Illya looked at each other. Both understood that if the guards retreated into the elevator and got away, alarms would surely be sounded. Solo watched the guard warily.

The man was toying with them. He sidled forward so that he stood with his backbone against one elevator door, his boot braced against the other to keep the doors from shutting.

"I had a feeling there was some thing wrong about you two," the guard said. "I told my section chief you hadn't left the castle. The fool wouldn't believe me."

Crouched against the wall, Solo shrugged. "Obviously we've under estimated THRUSH again."

The guard laughed. "As always. Now, if you will be so kind as to accompany me—"

Solo said to his companion across the narrow corridor, "We'd better do what the man says. Climb over that chest and come on. But be careful."

From the corner of his eye, Solo noted the distance to the weapon he hoped to use. He advanced into the center of the corridor. Illya shrugged as if to agree that the odds were indeed too heavily weighted against them. Illya had been crouching behind the chest in which they'd hidden. The shortest way out was to step up on the chest and down on the other side.

Illya performed the first half of this maneuver, a hangdog expression of defeat on his face. He poised to jump down on the other side. Suddenly his legs flew out from under him in a perfect pratfall that landed him with a thump on his gluteus maximus.

The moment Illya started this distraction routine, Solo moved.

He leaped to the nearest suit of armor on its pedestal, shouted, "One side, Illya," and at the same time got behind the pedestal, which was equipped with castors. A powerful shove, and Solo had the suit of armor rolling full speed at the elevator.

Illya dodged out of the way. The reactions of the guards were slow. Trying to do something useful for a change, the guard Solo had smacked with the camera lurched forward, jostling his companion. Both guards fired simultaneously. Their aims were off because of the accidental collision.

Ducked low, Solo was right behind the suit of armor as it rolled like a juggernaut into the opening of the elevator. The guards were knocked backward. The scar-eared one jammed his arm forward around the suit of armor wedged into the doorway. He was trying to get off a shot. Illya darted in, caught the out-thrust forearm and brought up his knee.

There was a splintery crack of bone. The guard shrieked, dropped his gun.

Solo gave a yank on the upraised mailed fist of the armor suit. Down it squeaked with surprising speed. The iron fingers hammered the top of the second guard's head. The man's jaw flopped open. His trigger finger jerked automatically. A spray of white tracer slugs screamed past Solo, as the agent reached around the armor and gut-punched his adversary with vicious accuracy.

The man staggered.

Solo's next neck-chop flattened the man cold. Solo looked back over his shoulder.

Illya's head appeared under the upraised arm of the suit of armor. Grinning with a humor he obviously didn't feel, Illya knocked his knuckles against the armored chest. It gave off a hollow ring like an empty oil drum being pounded.

"Stout fellow," Illya said. "We should recommend him to Waverly as a recruit."

"Some other time. Help me drag these birds behind that chest. The THRUSH people know we're still inside their gates. We've got to get moving." Quickly he outlined his plan.

The two U.N.C.L.E. operatives dumped the guards, plus their cameras and gadget bags, behind the heavy chest. First, however, Solo took a small, flat plastic box from under his collection of potato chip sacks.

Gingerly he laid the plastic box on the chest corner.

"If we find anything down below, there are enough explosive gelcaps in there to take it out of action," he said.

Illya was busy peeling off the uniform blouse of the scar-eared guard. "And us right along with it?"

Solo said nothing about that disturbing possibility. They were inside the THRUSH headquarters, and how they escaped was secondary.

Quickly Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin finished their job, leaving the dazed guards in their boxer shorts and singlets behind the chest. A quick jab of an ampoule with a self-contained needle into the right bicep of each Thrushman insured their slumber for the next four hours.

Clad in the regalia of members of the Castle Sykedon guard staff, Solo and Illya freed the wedged suit of armor from the elevator and let the doors slide shut.

For a tense quarter of a minute Solo watched the indicator board above the door. The car remained stationary.

"We might make it," he said softly. "No one's hanging on the button to call the car. Now, what floor do we want?"

He turned to the control board. At the top of the board were buttons labeled C-1, C-2 and C-3. An amber bulb glowed next to the C-1 legend, indicating the car's current position.

Illya ran a finger down the board. Below the three levels for the castle, six more floors were indicated by numerals in descending order. There were three more buttons at the board's bottom, marked P-3, 2 and 1. Solo indicated the lowermost button.

"P for submarine pen, do you suppose?" He gave a punch. The car whined and dropped.

Silence, interrupted only by the motorized murmur of the elevator cables. The amber lights glowed in sequence down the board.

Solo took a firmer grip on the gun which he'd lifted from the guard. Illya wiped his upper lip.