Solo stood unmoving. "Vengeance is a big thing with you, isn't it, Kuryakin?"

Illya stared at him groggily. "Where were you?"

The pilot said, "All right, you two. Grab that pilot. Help him up."

Solo shrugged. He and Illya hefted the gagging pilot to his feet and they crossed the lawn toward the side of the stone chateau. Frivolous music blared out from the windows, somehow like a desecration.

"Hold it," the pilot with the gun said when they reached what appeared to be a solid wall in the base of a high-rising turret.

Holding the automatic on them, the pilot edged warily to the wall, shoved a lever concealed in the stone. A door-sized opening was made as the stones slid into themselves silently.

The pilot jerked his head, ordering them inside.

When they were on the landing at the head of wide stone steps leading to the depth of a silent dungeon, the pilot pressed an inside lever and the wall closed.

"Down the steps," he said.

They came off the stairs into a vaguely lighted foyer, devoid of furniture. A man armed with a rifle stood at each of the four walls. A door opened and Marie, Albert and Gizelle emerged, none looking too healthy.

"Here they are, Marie," the pilot

Marie reached out and grasped a gun from the nearest guard.

"I'll kill them now!" she said.

Solo and Illya released the pilot and he struck the floor hard. Marie jerked the rifle up to her shoulder.

A voice crackled from a concealed speaker. It was Oriental in its inflections and quality, cultured in tone: "Until I order it, Marie, you will kill no one."

Marie lowered the rifle, but her face was livid.

"I want them!" she answered defiantly. "Especially this Solo. I will deliver his skin to you—in strips!"

The Oriental voice remained at a conversational pitch, but chilled with its authority. "Perhaps you will. In good time. Don't let hatred suspend your reason. We do not need the notoriety of murder just now, my girl. Why else do you think we brought them here, in stead of leaving their corpses at the hotel? In order to indulge your violent whims? I need not remind you—I had better not have to remind you again—that we walk on eggs until our plan is in operation. I'll tell you when, my dear. Until then— remember—I see everything that goes on."

Marie exhaled heavily, and thrust the gun out to the guard, who retrieved it silently.

The three prisoners were prodded across the empty foyer to an empty dungeon.

A door creaked open.

"Inside," the guards said.

Yvonne pressed close to Solo.

"What kind of a place is this?" she whispered in terror.

"I know what it looks like," Illya said. "It looks like something from an old Errol Flynn movie."

PART THREE:

INTERLUDE AT A FRENCH CHATEAU

SILENCE DRIPPED oppressively in the thick-walled dungeon. There were no chairs, stools, cots—not even straw upon the stone flooring.

A deeply inset window, eight feet above the floor, shone with remote light. Making a stirrup of his clasped hands. Illya boosted Solo, who then chinned himself up to the sill and hung there, staring through the bars at a limited square of lawn and drive.

Illya sank against a wall, crossed his legs and closed his eyes.

Yvonne prowled the room. She shook the door, struck the rough walls with her small fists.

She stared down at Illya. Her voice quivered with outrage. "Why would M'sieur Caillou treat me in this brutal manner? Why would he do this to you, his friends?"

Illya spoke gently. "Don't fret about him."

"I've always revered him. Now I hate him."

"Don't hate M'sieur Caillou."

"Don't you?"

Illya gazed up at her. "I think, Yvonne, no matter where Lester Caillou is right now, it's a worse spot than we're in."

Solo spoke from the window, where he had supported himself on his elbows. His voice was strained with effort. "The party's over—the guests are leaving."

Yvonne said worriedly, "Is that good?"

Solo glanced down at her. "It means that the Caillou on duty up there got away with it. It means the good doctor, whoever he is, will have time for us now."

Sudden screaming of sirens replaced the wail of inane music. Solo pulled himself closer to the bars, clinging to them.

"Les flics!" Yvonne cried. "The police! It is the police, isn't it?"

Solo stared through the bars a moment, then let himself drop within the dungeon.

"Something's fouled them up!" he said in triumph.

"Maybe it was this," Illya said in mock casualness. He touched at an inch-long cylinder pinned at his lapel.

Solo put his head back, laughing in pleasure.

"You've been broadcasting distress bleeps!"

Illya nodded. "As fast as my little transistors would work." He smiled faintly. "I don't like to sit around idle."

The thick dungeon door was hurled open. Its brass knob gouged into the stone wall.

Albert, Marie and three guards charged into the room like a task force.

Albert carried a small machine pistol.

"All right," Albert snapped the order. "You two. Solo, Kuryakin. Let's go!"

Yvonne cried out. "Don't leave me alone down here!"

Illya bounced to his feet without touching his hands to the floor. Gently, he touched at her cheek with the backs of his fingers. He smiled at her. "Don't worry. I've a feeling we'll be back. Soon."

Albert laughed. "Don't count on it."

Marie smiled, too. "This time your cleverness has carried you too far."

TWO

A GUARD OPENED the double doors of a room on the third floor of the chateau.

Solo and Illya stepped into a room of incredible elegance. It left them for the moment speechless.

The large, high-ceilinged room was part of a suite done in an early Eastern dynasty decor, featuring blood reds and ebony blacks.

In the center of this luxury reclined a man of Siamese ancestry. Before him was a low, bone white table.

He sat with his long legs crossed. He wore a silk suit of deep black, a white shirt and white cravat. His face was like ancient writing paper made of rice. It looked as if it would tear or crack if touched. His cheek bones stood prominently and his nose, hooked above a taut, small mouth. From deep sockets burned eyes black and fiery. He was almost bald, his forehead high and protruding.

Across from him a far wall was banked with large closed circuit television screens monitoring the chateau. Upon one tube Yvonne huddled against the dungeon wall, shoulders sagging, face pressed into her hands. Lights flickered gray when there was movement in any area.

The Siamese slapped his fragile hands. Albert and Marie withdrew reluctantly, but not daring to protest aloud. They were followed by the guards.

The man waved his slender fingers. Solo and Illya followed the direction of his gesture. They saw the dark mouths of guns trained on them from every wall.

They returned their gazes to the smile of the man at the bone-white table.

Illya glanced at Solo, found his fellow agent peering incredulously at the seated man.

For one long moment Solo's hazel eyes struck against the ebony black ones of the man before him. The room was charged with the static tension generated between them in the silence.

"Dr. Lee Maunchaun," Solo whispered at last.

"Ah, yes. I am the doctor you were anxious to meet."

"But—"

"I'm dead?" Dr. Maunchaun inquired, smiling enigmatically. "A violent death, wasn't it? The last time we met—"