She turned on her spike heels and tapped away, going up those stone steps and through the huge thick redwood door.

The orderlies reached for Illya. He struggled, fighting at them, but his arms only flailed wildly, and the noises he made were foolish, giggling sounds. He was in an agony of terror and outrage but he was unable to express anything except garbled idiocy.

VIII

SOLO PAUSED for a moment outside his room in the St. Francis Hotel. For no good reason, he felt the tightening inside that warned of danger. He shook the thought away and rapped three times, slowly. He listened for Barbry’s voice beyond the door. There was silence and Solo tensed, taking his key from his pocket.

The door was unlocked and opened as he reached for it. Solo scowled, saying, “I thought I told you—“

He stopped speaking, staring into the blandly smiling face of Samuel Su Yan.

“Come in; we’ve been waiting for you,” Su Yan said.

Solo’s hand moved toward the holster beneath his jacket, but stopped when he noted the small .25 caliber Spanish-made Astra pistol that Su Yan held.

“An experimental model, Solo,” Su Yan said, “but quite deadly.”

Solo sighed and stepped inside the room. Everything looked as it had when he had walked out of it, except that now Barbry Coast sat upon the foot of his bed, staring straight ahead of her, her features rigid, her gaze transfixed; she looked like a mannequin.

“Are you all right, Barbry?” Solo walked toward her, trying to ignore the snubbed nose of the Astra that was fixed on his spine.

Barbry turned her head slowly and stared at him blankly. It was as though she had never seen him before.

“Of course she’s all right,” Su Yan said from behind Solo. “Aren’t you all right, my dear?”

“I’m all right,” Barbry said in a flat, lifeless tone. Staring at her, Solo shivered involuntarily.

“We’ve been looking for Esther for a long time,” Su Yan said in a conversational tone. “I must thank you and your organization for locating her for us—and for leading us to her.”

“We have a pretty good organization for finding people who want to be lost,” Solo said. “Even those who have themselves declared officially dead.”

“Perhaps I no longer guarded my privacy so zealously,” Su Yan said. “You have a rich organization, underwritten as it is by so many nations with built-in missile age jitters. But it is not infallible. I proved this before—and I shall prove it again.”

“No. They’re on to you, Su Yan. They’ve got files on you, and pictures. You’re part of a regular briefing. I mention this only in case you think you can get away with murdering this girl—or both of us—and getting away with it. They have pictures tying you in with Ursula Baynes-Neefirth’s death in Honolulu. One more death will bring them down on you.”

Su Yan smiled mildly. “You fail to intimidate me, Solo. Your people know me. But my agents know you now, and your young associate Kuryakin. Perhaps the death in Honolulu attracted too much attention, just as a death here might—even one in no way involving me or my people. Besides, perhaps there is an angle you fail to consider. Perhaps we don’t need your death at the moment so much as we need you stopped. Our moment is at hand, Solo. Surely you must perceive this: I no longer remain among the ‘dead,’ all our operations are accelerated, we are making moves more openly, tucking in neatly all loose ends, such as this young woman. She’s not really important, merely a minor nuisance we’d rather not have running loose at this time. But in case you take some hope from this, let me tell you that your deaths—after our operation has been completed successfully—will in no way trouble us.”

Solo felt the tension all through his body, but he kept his voice unemotional. “We all die sometime. Perhaps Barbry and I feel some reassurance in the fact that we’re to be spared at all. Live one day at a time, eh, Barbry?” The girl continued staring straight ahead of her. She did not react when Solo spoke to her. Su Yan said, “I’m afraid if you want to speak to Esther, you’ll have to do it through me. She reacts only to my voice. Speaks only when I speak to her. Does only what I tell her.”

“Very neat hypnosis. But no better than I’ve seen done on night-club floors—and I don’t believe you worked it through that closed, locked door.”

Su Yan shrugged. “What you believe or disbelieve doesn’t interest me, Mr. Solo. I’m sure you’ve heard of post-hypnotic suggestion, and the fact that a subject once hypnotized can be easily put under a second, third or hundredth time—always with greater ease, if one makes maximum use of that post-hypnotic suggestion. Sometimes a word—one word.”

Solo glanced at the waxen-like face of the girl and exhaled heavily. “You simply told her to unlock the door to you, and she did it, just like that?”

“That’s correct, Solo. Just like that. As I told you. Everything is going my way now. Just like that. This girl won’t look at you, or react when you speak to her; she will do anything I tell her. She would shoot you, Solo, right now, if I told her to do it.”

Solo did not bother arguing that one with him.

“Would you like me to prove that she always obeys me?” He nodded toward the Scotch and bucket of ice on the dresser. “Esther. Mr. Solo and I are thirsty. The three of us have a long journey ahead of us tonight. Prepare the three of us Scotch on ice.”

“Yes.”

Barbry stood up slowly and walked woodenly to the dresser.

Su Yan’s voice clawed after her in its cat-like, tormenting way. “And by the way, Esther, when you speak to me, I’d like a little more respectful tone.”

“Yes, sir,” Barbry said.

Solo straightened and Su Yan heeled around, his instincts sharp, his reaction time extraordinary. Solo relaxed. He said, “This proves you’ve known Barbry for a long time.”

“Yes. I knew Esther for awhile even before Ursula started to work for my organization, didn’t I, Esther?”

Barbry paused, mixing drinks at the dresser. She tilted her head, facing them in the mirror, her violet eyes empty. “Yes, sir,” she said.

She returned to mixing the drinks. Su Yan smiled, pleased. He backed a couple of steps and sat down in a chair under a reading lamp. He reached up and snapped off its light.

Barbry turned from the dresser, carrying the iced drinks in hotel drinking glasses. She extended one to Solo, gazing at him but not even seeing him.

He took the drink from her and she turned mechanically, going to where Sam Su Yan reclined with the small gun resting on his lap.

Barbry then walked away from him and leaned against the dresser as if waiting for a new command from Su Yan.

Su Yan sipped at the Scotch, staring coldly at Barbry over the top of his glass. He said, “I saw you last at Cocoa Beach, didn’t I, Esther?’

“Yes, sir.” She trembled, reacting, even in her semiconscious state. Fear melted and ran through her body. She nodded.

“What did I tell you then, Esther?”

She didn’t speak for a moment. Then she said, “Not to try to run away again.”

“But you did it, didn’t you? First to Chicago, and then to San Francisco. Didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was like that of a terrorized child. Solo stared at her, so fascinated by the extreme cruelty being practiced upon her by Su Yan that he sipped at his drink, hardly aware of its taste or the chill of the glass in his hand. Barbry had not lied: she did fear this man more than she did the devil. Her whole body was quivering with fear.

“I warned you what I’d do if you ran away, didn’t I, Esther?” Su Yan persisted.

“Yes, sir.” She could barely speak. Her face was the white of chalk dust.

“I told you that I would take you back to that place you hate if you disobeyed me again, didn’t I?”

The girl cried out, a guttural protesting sound. She was incoherent with fear, unable to speak even in her trance.