Prelude for War (41 page)

Then Bravache turned and
flicked his fingers at the British
Nazi and Dumaire,
and at Pietri who had followed him to the door.

“Bring them out,”
he ordered briefly. “We must be
going.”

He went back to the hall,
and as he arrived there he saw;
a door move. He went over
to it and pushed it wide, and
found General Sangore
standing just inside the library be
yond it, like an
eavesdropper caught at the keyhole, with a large glass of whiskey clutched in
one hand.

“My apologies for
troubling you, General,” Bravache
said
with staccato geniality in which there was the faint echo
of a sneer. “But I’m afraid we shall need you to guide us
to the place
where our aeroplane is to meet us. I was told to ask for ‘the long meadow’—Mr
Luker said you would know it. He also said that you wished to avoid being seen
by the
prisoners. That will be easily
arranged. They will be in the
back of
the Packard, and if you put on a hat and turn up
your coat collar they will not recognize you in the darkness.
Personally I should call it a needless precaution.
By this
time tomorrow the Saint and
all his associates will be be
yond
causing you any anxiety.”

“All ?” Sangore
repeated stupidly.

He gulped at his drink. He still seemed to be
in the same
daze that he had been in when he
left Luker’s house. For perhaps the first time in twenty years the rich cerise and
magenta tints of his complexion looked
gray and faded.

Bravache nodded, drawing
his gloves up tighter on his
hands. His swaggering
erectness, the cold confident glitter
of his eyes, the
cruel curl of his lips, were personal charac
teristics
which he wore like the accoutrements of a uniform, the insignia of a new breed
of soldier compared with whom
Sir Robert Sangore even at
his most militaristic was a puffing anachronism.

“Yes. We have been able to find out from
Scotland Yard
that the Suret
é
have traced Mr Quentin, Miss Holm and
two others of his gang to the Hotel Raphael, in
Paris. Un
fortunately Scotland Yard
now have no charges on which
to ask
for their arrest. But the delay is only temporary.
Within a few hours the Sons of France will be giving
their
own orders to the S
û
rete.”

Simon Templar heard most of
the speech as Pietri and the British Nazi were dragging him roughly through the
hall
and out to the waiting car; and it rang in his ears like a
jeering refrain through the short drive and the
longer wait
which followed. As he was dragged out of the car again and
thrown into the big cabin monoplane which swooped
out of
the dark to land by the light
of the Packard’s headlamps he
could
still hear it. It was the bitterest torment that he had
to bear. He had
not only lost his fight and condemned Lady Valerie to the penalties of his own
defeat, but Patricia and
Peter and Hoppy and
Orace were included in the price of
his
failure.

3

Simon could not guess
exactly how long they flew, but
since he knew approximately where they were
going the time
was of no great importance. He
lay awkwardly in the space,
behind
the two bucket seats in which Bravache and Dumaire
were sitting behind the pilot, where they had
dumped him
with no regard for his
comfort, and Lady Valerie was hud
dled
partly beside him and partly on his legs. They seemed
to be sprawled all over each other, and it was
impossible for
them to move. The girl
did not try to speak any more, but
at
intervals he felt the violent shudders that ran through
her.

At last the roar of the
engine ceased and there was only
the soft whirr of their
wings gliding through the wind. After a while the engine snarled again in a
couple of short bursts;
then they hit the ground
with a slight bump, settled, and trundled joltingly along with a creaking of
undercarriage
springs and the throaty drone of the
engine turning at low
speed. Then even that
stopped. They were in France.

Men in a uniform of black
riding breeches and shirts of
horizon blue swarmed round
the machine. Bravache and
Dumaire got out; Simon and
Lady Valerie were dragged
out ungently after them.
They felt the cool night air on their
faces and had a
brief glimpse of stars and a dim line of pop
lars
somewhere in the distance; there was no sign of the
lights
or buildings of a regular airport. Then bandages were
tied
over their eyes and hands fumbled with the ropes on
their
ankles. With their legs freed, they were hustled away
and
pushed into another waiting car.

The drive that followed
lasted about half an hour before
the car stopped again.
There was the sound of other foot
steps round it, a brief
mutter of voices. Then the Saint
and Lady Valerie were
hauled out again. Two men seized
the Saint, one of them
holding each of his arms. A voice
said:
“Allez!”
Simon
was shoved on. He tripped over a step, marched
for
some distance in devious directions over a stone or tiled
floor, then he was halted. There was a pause, and he heard
a faint click. They went on.

From the manner in which
his guides huddled close to him, and from the dank cold smell of the air, they
seemed
to pass into a fairly narrow underground passage.
Several
footsteps rang and reverberated hollowly in the
confined
space.

The passage led steeply
downwards then levelled off.
Simon counted his steps.
After twenty paces they turned
sharply, and the passage
seemed to widen. Thirty paces beyond the turn they stopped again, and there was
a pe
culiar knocking and a brief delay while another door
was
opened. Simon was led through it, marched a few more
paces, turned round a number of times and halted once
more. The men who were holding his arms released him.
He heard the same manoeuvres being repeated after him,
and guessed that Valerie’s steps were among them. There
were other movements, and the almost inaudible swish of
a heavy door being silently closed. The air seemed warmer,
but there was the same damp tang in it. Then the blindfold was taken
off his eyes, and he could look about him.

He seemed to be in a spacious
underground cellar. It
must have been part of a
very old building, for even the
warmth of an electric fire
built into one wall could not alto
gether dissipate the
damp chill which pervaded it. A large
tricolour hung on
the wall facing him, above a long table
behind
which stood three plain wooden chairs, the only
furniture
there was. There were various doors in all four
walls,
with nothing about them by which he could identify
the
one through which he had been brought in. He had been turned round enough while
he was blindfolded to lose his bearings completely.

Valerie was beside him,
and the four uniformed Sons of
France who had formed
their escort were drawn up on
either side of them and
behind them.

Bravache was there also. He emphasized his own
im
portance by stopping to very deliberately
draw off his gloves
before he
strolled across to one of the doors that opened off
the room where they
were. He knocked, turned the handle,
and
clicked his heels in the doorway as he raised his arm in salute.

“Les prisonniers, mon
commandant.”

“Tr
è
s bien,”
answered
a voice from the room beyond;
and even in those two
words the Saint recognized the harsh
strident tones that
he had heard on the radio in his car— at least a hundred and fifty years ago.

Bravache turned away from
the door and clicked his
heels again.

“Garde
à
vous!”
he
barked.

The escort sprang to
attention, but without taking their
hands from the
butts of their revolvers.

Out of the room, striding past the stiffly
drawn up figure
of Bravache, came a tall
gray-haired man of about fifty-five.
He
wore the same uniform as the escort, except that there
was a double row
of coloured ribbons on his breast and his
blue
shirt had six gold bars on each shoulder. No French
man would have
needed any introduction to him. That long
narrow
face with the low forehead and the black piercing eyes and the chin that stuck
out like the toe of a boot had been caricatured by a score of artists who
tomorrow might
be wishing that their
talents had been otherwise employed.
It
was Colonel Raoul Marteau, prospective dictator of
France.

And after him came Kane
Luker.

Luker glanced at the
prisoners without expression, as if he had never seen them before, while
Marteau ceremoniously
returned the escort’s
salute. He followed the commandant as he went on to take one of- the chairs
behind the long
table; and the Saint’s old dauntlessly
irreverent smile
touched his bruised lips.

“You know,” he
remarked to Valerie, “if Luker only
had
a barrel organ he’d still be a bloated capitalist. An
ordinary
organ-grinder thinks himself lucky if he’s just got one monkey.”

Marteau glanced at Luker
inquiringly. Apparently he did
not speak English.
Translating for him, Luker looked al
most amused. And
Simon realized that to try and bait Kane
Luker
was not even worth the waste of breath. He was that
uncommon type of man
for whom abuse or insolence simply
had no
meaning: they were inane puerilities, incapable of making the slightest
difference to any material issue, there
fore not worth the loss of an atom of composure.

Marteau was different. His
eyes burned darker, and he
rasped an order through
thin tense lips; and the escort on
Simon’s right turned
and struck him brutally in the face,
and returned
woodenly to attention.

The force of the blow
staggered the Saint back a pace
before he recovered his
balance; and the girl gasped and
whimpered: “You
bloody swine!” The blood boiled in
Simon’s
veins, and his cords cut into his wrists against the
fierce
strain that tautened his muscles; but it was not the
blow
that hurt him so much as the humiliation of knowing
that
any courage he could show would only whet the sadistic
contempt
of these shining crusaders who made a fetish of
their
own courage. Yet he kept his face set in its mask of indomitable derision,
while his mind said pitilessly: “Presently it ‘ll be over, but they’ll
never be able to say that they
made me crawl.”

Ignoring him after that
swift and callous retaliation,
Marteau had turned to
Bravache.

“They have been
searched?” he was asking in French.

“Oui, mon
commandant.”

“Did you find the
photograph?”

“Only a print,
mon
commandant.”

Marteau nodded and sat back
with a rudimentary but
sufficient gesture towards
Luker; and Luker sat forward.

He clasped his hands on
the table in front of him and
said quietly, with his eyes
fixed passionlessly on the Saint:
“Mr Templar,
among the papers which you secured from
Lady
Valerie there was a photograph and the negative of
that
photograph. Where is the negative?”

There was a short silence.

“Go on,” said the
Saint encouragingly.

“That is all I want
you to tell me.”

“But you haven’t
finished yet. Don’t you know the
formula ? You have to describe all the hideous
things that ‘ll
happen if I don’t tell you,
and make my blood run cold. The audience expects the thrill.”

Luker’s expressionlessness
did not change. He answered
in the same passionless
voice.