"Mr. Solo, I personally would never rely on a hunch," Mr. Waverly said severely. "I must have something concrete and definite upon which to base my actions."

"Yes, sir," Solo replied.

"However, that is my personal feeling about my actions," Waverly went on. "I am also aware that on at least three notable occasions your hunches kept us from total defeat. So I am not going to stop you from following any hunch you may have, Mr. Solo."

"Thank you," Napoleon said. "I'll keep you informed, sir."

Traffic was partially stalled behind the stopped cab. Solo looked down the line for a likely car to commandeer. He hit on a hot rod driven by two teenagers as the most likely to give him cooperation. Although an international law enforcement group, he had no power to commandeer a vehicle as the New York City police could do. He could only request.

However, he found the two boys not only willing but absolutely eager to help when he flashed his U.N.C.L.E. identification.

"Gee!" one of the said. "Wait until I tell my girl I'm a genuine man from U.N.C.L.E.!"

"You won't be a man until you're twenty-one," his companion said.

"Just help me pull this off and I'll tell her for you that you're every inch a man and a big one at that!" Napoleon said.

"Hang on, Unk!" the boy cried. He must have been all of sixteen. "Awaaaaay we go!"

He took off with a spin of screeching rubber that almost threw Napoleon out of the topless car. They took the corner on two wheels.

"Where to now, Unk?" he yelled back over his shoulder at Napoleon.

"Take a left," Napoleon said, after the slightest hesitation.

"That's a dead end. It leads right down to the river," the other boy said.

"Then make a right," Solo replied. "Another hunch gone wrong. Just keep cruising up one street and down another. It's anybody's guess where the cab went. We—"

The open circuit on the pen communicator in his jacket pocket crackled into life.

"This is Waverly. We have a report. No cabs cross the bridge. They must be holed up somewhere in your neighborhood. We have another report that they did not go back toward the airport. I'm sending seven police cars out to ring in the area. I— Wait!"

Listening tensely to the micro-speaker hidden in the fake fountain pen, Napoleon motioned for the driver to stop. Both boys leaned back, fascinated by the tiny communications set.

"Waverly again!" the speaker crackled into life. "Evidently Mr. Kuryakin managed to get his pen-communicator into action for the briefest second!"

"Did we get sufficient reception to do any good?"

"They must have caught him just as he opened the circuit," Waverly said.

His voice still sounded calm to the unpracticed ear, but Solo knew his chief so well he could detect the thin note of anxiety under the outwardly steady voice. In a man with Waverly's self control this was about the same as sheer panic in another's voice.

It told Napoleon Solo how desperate their chief thought Illya's situation was.

"All we got was a gasp of pain from somebody, an angry shout from another, and the briefest snatch of voices in the background but blurred by the louder noises close to the microphone."

"Can the scrambler—" Napoleon began.

"We are working on it," Waverly said crisply. "Also we hope to get a tri-angular fix on the radio reception. There is a bare chance that the directional beam finder can work on so small a reception if we set up the microphone and keep repeating the reception signal. Stay where you are. I'll call you back as the scrambler starts feeding us data. I should have a preliminary report in three minutes."

"Yes, sir," Napoleon said crisply. "We'll stand by."

TWO

A car swung around the corner, its lights flashing on them. Napoleon Solo whispered an urgent order for the two boys to duck. He drew his gun from its shoulder holster.

Then he relaxed as he recognized the man leaning out the back window. It was one of the two U.N.C.L.E. agents who had joined them at the airport. Napoleon motioned for him to stop.

"Aw gee!" the younger of the two boys said in a disgusted voice. "No shooting!"

"Relax!" Napoleon said grimly. "You'll get shot at quicker than you need to be!"

He hurried over to the other car for quick conference. He sketched briefly for his co-agent what Waverly transmitted to them.

"That broken cry on the pen-communicator sounds like Illya got it," the other U.N.C.L.E. man said, his voice grim.

"Don't bet on it," Napoleon said, his voice growing harsh to hide his own grave concern. "Illya's lives can run any cat competition."

"Okay," the other man said. "I'll pull down to the intersection. That way, if we flush them out, we'll be set up where one or the other of us can take off instantly without having to turn around."

Napoleon nodded and went back to the boys in the hot rod.

"What's this scrambler thing?" they asked him, referring to the mysterious reference Mr. Waverly made in his transmission.

"The short reception U.N.C.L.E. headquarters got from Illya Kuryakin was recorded as all calls to headquarters are," Napoleon explained hurriedly. "The scrambler is an electronic means of separating the voices and rerecording each alone."

"Then you can tell what each said?"

"Yes," the man from U.N.C.L.E. replied, "but the big question here is how much was received. It might not be enough to do any good."

"Then—!"

"Wait! I'm getting a call from headquarters!"

Napoleon Solo pulled out his transmitter.

"Yes, Mr. Waverly?" he said.

"The first scrambler report is in," Waverly said crisply. "We converted the words unscrambled into oscillograph impulses and compared them with oscillograph voiceprints we have on record. The cry of pain came from Mr. Kuryakin. The curse of the man who evidently struck him is from a known THRUSH agent named Paul Wicker. We are working on the two voices in the background. That is all right now."

"Gee!" said the younger boy, his eyes big. "What's a voiceprint?"

"Everybody's voice has certain tones, just like your fingers have certain print marks," Napoleon explained. "When samples of voices are changed to lines on an electronic oscilloscope these tones show up as distinct marks which can be compared with records. It is as infallible as fingerprints for identification."

Before the boy could reply, Waverly called again. "The computers were successful in unscrambling the voices in the background. One of the voices is that of Lupe de Rosa. The other is Maxwell Martin. This man is a minor Wall Street stock broker, but we have good reason to suspect that he is an important THRUSH executive in New York."

"Was there enough of their conversation to give us any clue?" Napoleon asked.

"They were discussing the elimination of Mr. Kuryakin through a fake accident. That is all we could get.

The directional finders were unable to get a fix on Kuryakin's transmission."

"What does that mean?" one of the boys asked Napoleon after the Man from U.N.C.L.E. broke the connection with Waverly.

"It means these people are planning to murder their captive. We know they are somewhere in this area, but have no idea where to start looking. You boys know this neighborhood. Where would you go if you wanted a quick hideout?"