Illya had butted one man in the face—he sat in the roadway with blood from a smashed nose streaming through his fingers—and was now trading punches with the remaining pair, as Solo was left facing the half-caste. A knife with a wickedly curved blade had suddenly appeared in the man’s hand.

The agent backed warily away along the wall, his eyes fixed on the murderous face. With a tigerish bound, the half-caste was on him. Solo twisted aside as the knife blade scraped sparks from the wall. The assassin whirled and crouched for another spring, knife arm held wide. Sidling further along the wall, Solo found himself in front of a recessed doorway. As his antagonist attacked again, Solo backed momentarily into the entry, keeping one hand on each doorpost, and then—using his hands as levers—launched himself feet first, like a wrestler, at the half-caste.

Steel ripped through his jacket as his heels caught the man full in the chest, knocking him to the ground. It was no time for Queensberry Rules: the agent scrambled upright, stamped on the man’s knife hand and took a running fly-kick at his head. The metal-capped tip of his shoe connected just below the ear—and broken-nose was out for the count.

As Solo turned towards Illya, he saw the Russian suddenly go limp and collapse to the ground. He increased his pace—but Kuryakin had been feinting. He rolled out from under the legs of the two men who had been pinning him to the wall, and was on his feet twoyards behind them before they realized they had been tricked. As they turned, his hand dipped into his pocket and reappeared holding what looked like a pistol-grip cigarette lighter. There were two soft, flat explosions. The thugs halted, staggered, and subsided to the ground at his feet.

“Too bad they were only sleep darts,” Solo panted. “Come on, let’s get out of here—Oh! Wait a minute. My gun…”

As they searched the dark alleyway, they realized for the first time since they had left the coffee shop that it wasn’t raining any more. Throughout the fight, which had lasted perhaps two and a half minutes, not a light had come on, not a window had been opened, not an inquiring head had appeared—and now they were suddenly aware of the persistent trickling and splashing and dripping of water from eaves and broken guttering all around them. From somewhere over the rooftops, a motor horn blared momentarily.

But the gun was nowhere to be found.

“I kicked it hard,” Solo said. “It may have spun further than I thought. I wonder…”

“Perhaps one of the—er—casualties is lying on it, Napoleon. Shall I turn them over to have a look?”

Solo glanced back at the scene of combat. Broken-nose and the two sleep dart victims lay where they had fallen. The man with the smashed face still sat dazed and sobbing into his bloodstained hands. But the other two men Solo had felled were stirring and groaning.

“No,” he said decidedly. “Forget it. For all we know, there may be reinforcements on the way. Let sleeping dogs lie—in every sense of the term. Let’s get on our way while we can.”

Half running, half walking, they limped down the hill. Illya’s face was bruised and swollen. There was a jagged cut on his for head, his collar was torn open and one sleeve had been ripped from his raincoat. Solo was less obviously marked, but there was an ugly contusion at one side of his head, his body ached all over and his right arm was still useless. The half-caste’s knife had slashed clean through raincoat and jacket and the missing gun’s chamois holster—which had probably saved his life—was sliced in two. Both of them were covered in mud and filth from head to foot.

As they rounded the corner in the street, they halted abruptly. By the light from the intersection where the taxi had turned they could see three men in wide-brimmed hats and long raincoats advancing up the hill towards them.

Before they had time to think, there was the plop of a silenced revolver and a bullet struck the cobbles by Illya’s feet and screeched into the night.

“Quick!” Solo gasped. “Back around the corner!”

They scrambled around the bend into temporary shelter—only to hear, further up the hill, a hoarse shout. The two thugs Solo had knocked down were on their feet. Faint lamplight gleamed for a second on steel.

“Caught in the middle!” Solo exclaimed. He looked desperately around him at the blank-walled alley. “Up there! Quickly!”

He leaped for a low wrought-iron balcony projecting above a barred doorway and grasped the sill with his fingers. For a moment his numb right arm gave way and he hung by one hand. Then he managed to swing one leg up and replace the wrist of his damaged arm between the bars. From there, painfully, he levered himself to a position in which he could haul himself over the railings. A moment later Kuryakin dropped to the floor of the balcony beside him.

Light seeped through the slats of flimsy shutters across the French windows. Illya dropped to one knee and peered through. “It’s all right,” he whispered, “the glass doors behind are wide open.”

Solo nodded. Footsteps clattered on the cobbles as voices called in the dark alleyway below. He drew back his right foot and slammed his heel through the flimsy crosspieces about halfway up. The wood splintered and gave inwards. Illya thrust his arm through the jagged space and twisted the catch, jerking the door open towards him.

Inside the squalid bedroom behind the shutters, a fat woman with hennaed hair had been admiring herself in a fly-blown pier-glass. She jumped to her feet, flabby body quivering, as the two agents tumbled through the aperture. The face painted over her features cracked open in a smile.

“Not without an appointment, messieurs, if you please,” she croaked with mock severity.

“Don’t worry, we’re just passing through,” Solo said with an abstracted smile as they made for the door.

“Mind, I could make an exception…” the woman began.

But Solo and Illya were already halfway down the dingy passageway outside. Doors sealed it off along each side and at either end.

“There must be a way to the stairs somewhere,” Solo muttered. “Come on—we’ll try the end one.”

From somewhere on the floor below a persistent hammering started. Nearer, there was a faint echo of music. They flung open the door at the end of the corridor.

It led to another bedroom. A couple lay in bed listening to a transistor radio. In the far corner, a baby slept in a cot.

The man started up in terror, clutching the bedclothes across his splendid chest. “I don’t want no trouble, man,” he stammered. “I don’t want to get involved in no—”

“The stairs,” Solo rapped, interrupting him. “Where are the stairs?”

“Look, I don’t want no trouble. I don’t want to get involved.”

“The stairs?”

“If you want money, man, I ain’t got none. If you’re from the police, this here’s my wife and that’s our kid. I don’t want no—”

“In the name of God, where are the stairs?”

Suddenly realizing what a frightening sight they must be, Illya turned to the girl. “Look,” he said gently, “there’s a gang of men after us who want to murder us. All we want to know is—which door leads to the staircase?”

The girl stared at them through sleepy eyes. “Second on the right,” she murmured. “Turn left at the bottom for the back entrance.”

“Thanks. Sorry for the interruption.”

“Be my guest,” the girl said. “Edward, for God’s sake lie down.”

The hammering on the front door had stopped. Bullets splintered through the woodwork as they charged down the stone steps, turned left, and pelted along another passage. The rear entrance was an archway leading off a crude kitchen where an old Arab woman still slept upright in a chair by the stove. They crossed a small yard, climbed onto a wall from a row of refuse bins, and dropped ten feet to a sunken alley on the far side. The passage traced an irregular course between tall buildings for several hundred yards, finally terminating in a flight of steps which led down to a brightly lit street. Half an hour later they were safely back at their hotel.