Prelude for War (21 page)

“But we know,”
said Peter, carefully continuing to
refrain from looking
at the road. “Don’t we, Hoppy? If
we
ever get there alive, which is very unlikely, we jump
about
in the foreground and try to attract the bullets while
the
beauteous heroine swoons into Simon’s arms.”

Simon squeezed the car
through on the wrong side of
a crawling taxi which was
hogging the centre of the road,
and while he was doing it
he neatly swiped Peter’s cigarette
with his disengaged
hand.

“That’s something
like the idea; except that as usual
you’ll be in the
background. I’m just building on probabili
ties,
but I think I’ve got it pretty straight. Two or more
thugs
will be in possession. When I ring the bell, one of
them
will come to the door. They can’t all open it at once,
and
at least one of them will probably be busy keeping Valerie quiet, and in any
case they won’t want any noise
that they can avoid.
Besides, they’ll be expecting me to walk
in
like a blindfolded lamb. Now, I think it can only break
two ways. Either the warrior who opens the door will open
it straight on to a gun …”

He went on, sketching
possibilities in crisp, comprehen
sive lines, dictating move and
countermove in quick sinewy
sentences that
strung the strides of a supreme tactician
together into a connected chain on which even Hoppy
Uniatz could not lose his grip. It might all seem
very simple in the end, but in that panoramic grasp of detail
lay the genius that made amazing audacities seem
simple.

“Okay, skipper,”
Peter said soberly, as the car swooped
into
Marsham Street. “But don’t forget you’re responsible
to Hoppy’s widows and my orphans.”

Ever since the first few
hectic moments of the ride they
had been running with the
cutout closed, and the dying of
the engine was scarcely
perceptible as Simon turned the
switch.

After the last turn they
had slid up practically in silence
to their
destination, which was one of a row of modern apartment buildings that had not
long ago transformed the topography of that once sombre district. One or two
other
cars were parked within sight, but otherwise the
street
seemed quiet and lifeless. Simon glanced up at the
cross
word design of light and dark windows as he stepped
out of the car and crossed the pavement, with some attention
to the softness of his footsteps, for he knew well how sounds
could echo to the upper windows of a silent street at that
hour of the night. He said nothing to the others, for all
the ground had been covered in advance in his instructions.
He read off the apartment number from the indicator in
the empty lobby, and an automatic elevator carried
them
up to the top floor. The Saint was as cool as chromium, as
accurate and self-contained as a machine. He left
the ele
vator doors open and waited
until Peter and Hoppy had
taken up their positions flattened against the
wall on either
side of the door; then he put
his knuckle against the
bell.

There was an interval of
perhaps ten seconds, then the
door opened.

It opened, according to
the Saint’s first diagnosis, straight
on to an
awkward-looking silenced revolver in the hand of
the
stocky ape-faced man who unfastened the latch.

“Come in,” he
said.

Blank astonishment, anger
and incredulity chased them
selves over the Saint’s face—exactly as they
were expected
to chase themselves.

“What’s the idea of
this?” he demanded wrathfully.
“And who the
hell are you, anyway?”

“Come in,”
repeated the man coldly. “And put your
hands
up. And hurry up about it, before I give you some
thing.”

The Saint put his hands up
and went in. But he went in
with his shoulder blades
sliding along the door, so that the
other was
momentarily cut off from it. Then the man had
to
turn his back to the doorway when he started to close
the
door, so as to keep Simon covered at the same time.
And
that was part of the clockwork of the Saint’s preorganized plan. Simon gave
the signal with a gentle cough; and over the man’s shoulder appeared the intent
face of Peter
Quentin, soundlessly, with a stiff
rubber blackjack raised. There was a subdued
clunk,
and the man’s eyes
went com
ically glassy.

At that instant other
things happened with the smooth
timing of a well-rehearsed
conjuring trick. The Saint’s
hands dropped like
striking falcons on to the ape-faced man’s gun, bent the wrist inwards towards
the elbow,
whipped the revolver out of the
suddenly powerless fingers.
Simultaneously Peter
Quentin was moving aside, to be
replaced by Hoppy Uniatz,
whose massive paws closed on
the man’s throat in a
gorilla grip faster than Peter himself
could
have put away his blackjack and taken the same hold.
Meanwhile
Peter slid round the man’s side, received the
revolver
as Simon detached it and jammed the silencer into
the
man’s ribs. It was all done with a glossy perfection of
teamwork that would have dazed the eye of the beholder
if there had been any beholder present, all within the space
of a scant second; and then the Saint was talking into the
man’s ear.

“One whisper out of
you, and they’ll be able to thread
you on a
flagpole,” he said. Then he stepped back a few
inches.
“Okay, Hoppy—let him breathe.”

The crushing grasp of Mr
Uniatz fingers slackened just
sufficiently to allow a
saving infiltration of air. The deli
cately judged blow
of the rubber blackjack had deadened
the ape-faced man’s
brain for just long enough to allow
the subsequent
manoeuvres to take place without stunning
him
permanently. Now he stared at the Saint with squeezed-
out
eyes in which there was a pallor of voiceless fear.

“Talk very
quietly,” said the Saint, in that ghostly into
nation
which barely travelled a handbreadth beyond the
ears
of its intended audience. “What was supposed to hap
pen next?”

“I was to take you in
there—there’s two chaps want to
see you.”

Simon’s glance had already
covered the tiny hall. The
three doors that opened
off it were all closed; the ape-faced
man had indicated
the centre one.

“Good enough,”
said the Saint. “Let’s carry on as if
nothing
had happened.”

He passed his own
automatic to Peter, took away the
silenced revolver,
spilled the shells out into his palm and
dropped
them into Hoppy’s pocket, then thrust the empty
weapon
back into the hand of its owner.

“Cover me with it and
carry on,” he ordered. “When
we
go in there, leave the door open. And remember this:
my
friends will be watching you from outside. If you breathe
a word or bat an eyelid to let your reception committee
know that everything isn’t going according to plan, and any
bother starts—you’ll be the first dead hero of the evening.”
The Saint’s voice was as caressing as velvet, but it was as
cold and unsentimental as a polar sea. “Let’s go.”

He turned his back and
sauntered over to the middle
door; and the ape-faced
man, urged on by a last remembrancing
prod from the muzzle
of the murderous gun which
Mr Uniatz had by that time added to the
displayed collec
tion of artillery, lurched
helplessly after him.

Simon turned the handle
and entered the room with his arms raised. On one side Lady Valerie Woodchester
was roughly tied to a chair, and one of the two men there was bending over her
with a hand clamped over her mouth. The
other man stood on the
opposite side of the room with a
cigarette
loosely held in one hand and a small automatic
levelled in the other.

The Saint’s eyes rambled interestedly over the
scene.

“What ho, souls,” he drawled.
“And how are all the
illegitimate sons
of France tonight?” .

V

How
  
Simon
  
Templar
  
Obliged
  
Lady
Valerie,

and Chief Inspector Teal
Re
fused Breakfast

T
HE MAN
who had been bending over Lady Valerie straightened up. He was slim and
sallow, with black hair plastered
down over his head
until it looked as if it had been waxed.
He
had quick darting eyes and a sly slinking manner; his
movements
were abrupt and silent, like those of a lizard.
One
could imagine him lurking in dark corners for sinister
purposes.

The Saint smiled at Lady
Valerie as the lizardlike man
withdrew his hand and her
face became visible. The first
expression on her face was
a light of joy and relief; and
then when she saw that he
kept his hands up and saw the
ape-faced man follow him in
with the silenced revolver
screwed into his back, it
changed through stark unbelief
to hopeless dejection.

“Hullo,
darling,” he said. “You do have some nice
friends,
don’t you?”

She didn’t respond. She sat
there and stared at him
reproachfully: she seemed
to be deeply disappointed in him.
Simon realized that
there was some excuse for her, but she
would
have to endure.her unfounded disappointment for a little while longer.

He transferred his smile to
the automatic and the cigarette.

“Nice weather we’ve
been having, haven’t we?” he mur
mured, keeping the
conversational ball rolling single-
-handed.

This other man was bigger,
and there was an air of con
scious arrogance about
him. He had the cold, intolerant
eyes and haughty moustache
of a Prussian guardsman. He gazed back at Simon with fishlike incuriosity and
made a
gesture with his cigarette at the sallow man.

“Disarm and search
him, Dumaire.”

“So your name is
Dumaire, is it?” said the Saint politely.
“May
I compliment you on your coiffure? I’ve never seen
floor
polish used on the head before. And while this is
going
on, won’t you introduce me to your uncle?”

Dumaire said nothing; he
simply proceeded to do what
he was told and run
through the Saint’s pockets. Keys, ciga
rette
case, lighter, money, handkerchief, wallet, fountain
pen—he
took out the commonplace articles one by one and laid them on a small table in
front of the man who appeared
to be in charge. While he
was waiting for the collection
to be assembled the latter
answered Simon’s question.

“If it is of any
interest to you,” he said, “I am Major
Bravache,
a divisional commander of the Sons of France,
about
whom I think you said something just now.”

He spoke English
excellently, with only a trace of native
accent.

“How perfectly
splendid,” said the Saint slowly. “But
do you know what bad
company you’re in ? This bird behind
me, for
instance, with the peashooter boring into my back
bone, whatever he may have told you, I happen to
know
that his real name is Sam Pietri
and he has done three sentences for robbery with violence.”

He felt the harmless gun
quiver involuntarily against his
spine and chuckled
inwardly over the awful anguish that must
have been twinging
through the tissues of the ape-faced man, not only compelled to be an impotent
accomplice in snaring
fresh victims into the
net of his own downfall, but suffering
the
aftermath of a maltreated skull as well. Simon would
have given much for a glimpse of his guardian’s
face, but
he hoped that it was not
betraying anything to the opposi
tion.
Fortunately, no one was paying any attention to Pietri.
Dumaire, his job done, was leaning against the
wall and
watching Lady Valerie with
reptilian eyes in which the only
discernible
expression had a brazen lewdness that quite
plainly revealed his chief preoccupation; Bravache had simply ignored the
Saint’s last remarks as if he had not
heard
them. He was busily turning over the things on the
table before him. He gave his most detailed
attention to the
wallet, and he had
hardly started on it when a gleam of
triumph
flowed into his cold eyes. He held up a scrap of buff paper with a large number
printed on it.