Saint and the Fiction Makers (11 page)

‘They can’t hear us now,’ he whispered. ‘You’re doing fine. That was a convincing display of jealousy you put on a minute ago. Nobody would ever guess we met for the first time last night.’

‘I’m glad you approve,’ she said acidly. ‘I must be a born actress.’ She tilted her head back so that her eyes could meet his. ‘Really, Simon, what are we going to do? Are you really planning to co-operate with this maniac?’

The conversation continued in undertones, Simon trying to move his lips as little as a ventriloquist.

‘He’s as mad as a hatter, of course. But that doesn’t make him a joke. Far from it. We’ve got to take him as seriously as he takes himself. Don’t argue. We may not be able to talk long. We’ll try to get out of here tonight. What are some of the things you invented to keep prisoners from escaping from headquarters?’

‘Do you think this idiot playing Warlock really built them?’

‘Very probably. There’s an electrified steel fence all around the grounds, right?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and guards with dogs. In fact, take a look right now.’

Simon led her past the open window. Across the green sweep of the lawn walked a hefty man in boots and jacket, a shotgun under his arm, a pair of Dobermanns snuffing at his heels.

‘Perfect to the last detail,’ Amity muttered.

‘This is the most eerie thing I’ve ever been through.’

‘Let’s concentrate on getting through it. What else besides the dogs? As I remember, the outer doors and windows are shuttered by a photo-electric device when it gets dark.’

‘Yes. And anyhow, unless we can find the television eyes and black them out, they can see anything we start to do as soon as we start it.’

‘You’ll think of something,’ Simon said confidently. ‘After all, you’re the genius they were really after. You invented S.W.O.R.D. and this house. Now invent a way to get out.’

‘I did, almost. For a character named Ansel Adams.’

‘I forget what happened,’ said the Saint.

Amity dropped her hand gloomily on to his shoulder.

‘He got electrocuted.’

4

After lunch with Amity Little in his room, the Saint put a new record on the phonograph and turned the volume up full blast.

‘Dance?’ he asked Amity, offering her his open arms.

‘Simon,’ she sighed, not moving from her chair, ‘it’s not that I don’t like dancing with you, or that I don’t think you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen—but we’ve been at it for an hour.’

Simon took both her hands and lifted her gently to her feet.

‘You’ll find it very beneficial,’ he said. ‘Stimulates circulation of the blood, helps digestion of pheasant, and infuriates Warlock.’

They were dancing again now, Amity sagging and Simon bearing most of the weight of both their bodies.

‘Infuriating Warlock isn’t my idea of the smartest thing in the world,’ she whispered. ‘But after all, I’m only the one he’ll torture to death, so why should I complain?’

‘Exactly,’ Simon said cheerfully. ‘I want him good and worried. He’s already invested more in Amos Klein than it costs to buy a winning football team. He could finish you off and it wouldn’t make much difference, but if I just sat through your gruesome demise without cracking, he’d be in a real pickle. He’ll do just about anything to appease me.’

‘You forget one minor point,’ Amity said. ‘I’m Amos Klein. If it comes to my gruesome demise, you can be sure Warlock’s going to hear about that, too!’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Simon assured her. ‘And he probably wouldn’t believe you anyway. My idea at the moment is just to get him all upset so he’ll come storming in here in a perfect mood for the line I want to toss him.’

‘How long do you expect that to take?’ Amity asked with heartfelt weariness.

‘Oh, Warlock has a low boiling point. Another hour or two, maybe.’

Amity groaned softly and rested her forehead against Simon’s bronzed lean cheek. He breathed the sweet scent of her hair and swayed with her slowly around the big, richly furnished room. There was a timelessness about the place, and it was not just the timelessness of imprisonment. It was almost as if the man who called himself Warlock had through the very power of his longing, actually succeeded in creating a world in which reality was frozen into the eternity of fiction—a world in a shimmering bubble exempt from the laws of time, the dreamy world of a boy reading away a summer’s afternoon.

The only change was the imperceptible shifting of sunlight on the green lawn, and the gradual lengthening of the shadows of oaks and pines. The intervals between the slow recurrent passing of the watchman with his gun and dogs, like a precise and silent constellation, might have been minutes and might have been years.

‘Amos,’ Amity whispered, ‘in Earthquake Four Charles Lake escaped from a castle.’

‘How?’

‘By balloon. He jumped off the tower and floated right away.’

‘Where did he get the balloon?’ Simon asked without any great enthusiasm.

‘It was rolled up inside his umbrella. He filled it with gas from his cigarette lighter.’

‘Filled it with gas from his cigarette lighter,’ Simon repeated, non-committally.

‘Yes. It was a special kind of gas.’

‘Otherwise known as hot air from the author.’

Amity accepted the comment with a sigh and snuggled closer to the Saint.

‘Who cares about escaping anyway?’ she said. ‘It’s nice here.’

‘Remember the converted plastic press in S.W.O.R.D.‘s basement?’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Turns a human being into something like a burnt waffle.’

Amity straightened up and looked at him disgustedly in the face.

‘Oh, Simon, did you have to remind me of that?’ she snapped.

‘The name is Amos,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh!’ With a horrified look, Amity buried her face between his shoulder and neck. ‘Do you think they heard?’

‘No. The music was loud. But …’

The Saint’s words were broken off by the sudden opening of the hall door and the violent entrance into the room of a lividly agitated Warlock. The propensity of the subsurface of his large face to coagulate into blotches of purple and white was in full sway, making him seem at the point of fracturing into small varicoloured pieces like a dropped jigsaw puzzle. His wattles quivered as he stalked heavily across the room and snatched the tone arm from the phonograph record.

‘I demand an explanation!’ he stormed.

As the Saint stood unflinchingly, Amity clinging aghast to his arm, Warlock lifted the record and went through the dramatic gesture of smashing it against the corner of the phonograph. Unfortunately for Warlock’s dignity, the record was made of unbreakable plastic and merely bounced unharmed from the impact. At last, after considerable strain, he managed to bend the disc with both hands until it broke. He flung the halves to the floor.

‘I think you owe us an explanation,’ the Saint said coolly. ‘Are we to take it you aren’t a music lover?’

Warlock pointed a trembling finger at him.

‘You should take me seriously, Mr. Klein! You’ve been dancing! Why?’

Simon shrugged.

‘I like dancing.’

Warlock clenched his teeth and clasped his fingers as if trying to hold himself together. He paced towards the window and took a deep breath. Glancing towards the open door, Simon saw that it was guarded by Monk and Nero Jones. When Warlock spoke again, it was in an unsteady but more subdued voice.

‘Mr. Klein, do you remember what S.W.O.R.D. did to the police sergeant in Sunburst Five?’

Amity clapped a hand to her mouth and burst out with a horrified, ‘Oh, no!’

Warlock, pleased to discover such a responsive member in his audience, turned to speak directly to her.

‘The equipment is fully operational in the cellar. The tubes can be filled with acid in one minute.’

‘You wouldn’t!’ Amity gasped.

‘Oh, but I would,’ replied Warlock. His voice had become almost a purr. He addressed Simon. ‘Your lovely young friend may live to regret your devilish imagination.’

Simon shook his head with mournful calm, regarding his chubby antagonist as a patient teacher might regard a disappointing pupil.

‘Warlock, I’m ashamed of you,’ he said quietly.

Warlock was startled.

‘Ashamed?’ he said.

The Saint’s lugubrious expression would have wilted a whole vase of freshly cut flowers.

‘You’re out of character,’ he lamented. ‘In my books you were evil, of course, but you were also intelligent and sensitive.’

‘So?’ Warlock asked.

‘So now you’re acting like a mentally deficient water buffalo.’

The purple splotches which disfigured Warlock’s face diffused into a uniform scarlet coating. His mouth opened and produced a questioning exhalation.

‘Have you any idea,’ Simon continued, ‘how difficult it is to be a writer? Surely a man of your aesthetic sensibilities must realize that it’s not a simple matter of ordering up a lot of pre-cut ideas and hammering them together like a man building a dog-house.’

Warlock watched, somewhat abashed, as Simon turned towards the window with a martyred sigh, closed his eyes, and pressed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand on either side of his nose just below the bridge.

‘It’s a constant struggle,’ he went on. ‘Or maybe struggle isn’t the best word, since inspiration is something that can’t be forced. It’s like … fishing. You settle yourself down, you drop in your hook, and you hope.’ Simon confronted Warlock directly again. ‘Do you really think it’s as easy as saying after Monday comes Tuesday?’

Warlock contorted his little mouth in embarrassment.

‘Well, I … I don’t think I have ever underestimated your genius,’ he said hesitantly.

‘Yet you expect me to work while I’m a prisoner?’ The Saint changed his stance so that only Amity could see his face as he gave her an encouraging wink. ‘It’s like … expecting a plant to blossom without sunlight or water.’

Amity joined in.

‘It’s like … locking up your goose without food or water and expecting it to lay golden eggs.’

Simon flinched only slightly at the simile as Warlock turned up his palms in flustered appeal.

‘You have all the food you need,’ he said helplessly. ‘You have everything a man could want.’

‘Except freedom,’ said Simon quickly.

Amity was shaking her head at Warlock.

‘You really don’t understand the artist’s soul, do you?’ she said. ‘Do you think you can stifle him … cage him up like an animal?’

‘And expect me to create?’ Simon joined in.

‘Ridiculous!’ snorted Amity.

Warlock made mute gestures which clearly were a plea for silence.

‘Mr. Klein, you make me ashamed,’ he said, when he was finally given a chance. ‘I had no intention, I assure you, of stifling you. On the other hand, under the circumstances, I couldn’t possibly allow you to leave these grounds at this point. And please don’t think I’m so naive as to believe you need the run of the entire British Isles before your inspiration can blossom.’

Warlock made an expressive motion of his plump hand which symbolized the flowering of Amos Klein’s orchid-like imagination.

‘How about the grounds, then,’ Amity suggested. ‘You could let us out of the house, at least. I’m sure that would help, wouldn’t it, Amos?’

‘I suppose,’ said the Saint, who was sulking near the wall.

‘It’s better than nothing,’ Amity insisted. ‘May we go out in the garden then?’

Warlock nodded reluctantly.

‘Very well. Mr. Klein may go out. Galaxy will go along to keep you company.’

‘What about me?’ Amity asked.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Little,’ Warlock replied, looking more sly than sorry. ‘I can’t have you both out of the house at once. Just a simple precaution. And anyway, it’s not the health of your imagination that we’re concerned about, is it?’

Warlock smiled as Amity flung herself down furiously in a chair and glared at the rug. Simon patted her on the shoulder as he went by on his way to the open door.

‘Don’t feel bad,’ he said. ‘Creativity deserves a few privileges, after all.’

Ten minutes later the Saint was strolling across the lawn which until then he had seen only from the window of his room. Beside him strolled Galaxy Rose, instructed by Warlock to keep silent so as not to disturb Amos Klein’s priceless meditations. She dutifully kept the slow pace, staying a half step behind, glancing frequently at the Saint’s face as if she expected it to glow a brilliant green when some striking idea popped into his head.

As for Simon, his thoughts were at least as active as Galaxy was capable of imagining, but directed towards an entirely different object than cracking into Hermetico. The Saint’s particular interest at the moment was not breaking into anything, but breaking out of Warlock’s private fortress.

‘Is that the only fence?’ he asked.

He had stopped at the edge of the expanse of grass which sloped down from one side of the large stone house. Beyond the lawn was a hedge of rose bushes, and beyond them a border of evergreens which fringed the property all round. Through the needles of the trees Simon could see the tall chain-link steel fence topped with barbed wire. Beyond the steel fence, preventing it being seen from outside the property, was an antique and respectable stone wall of the sort that men used to surround their private patch of the planet with before such selfish impulses became an offence to the state and an invitation to annihilation by tax collectors—who unlike less subtle thieves are hindered neither by walls nor locks and doors.

‘If you think I’m going to say anything that might help you get out of here, you’re wrong,’ Galaxy said loudly.

The Saint glanced around him at the white and yellow roses, the trees, and the grass.

‘So they’ve got microphones even out here,’ he mused.

Galaxy snapped her eyes at him almost angrily.

‘It wouldn’t matter whether they did or not,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t help you escape because I’m as anxious as everybody else for this to work out all right.’

His hands in his pockets, the Saint continued his leisurely circuit of the lawn.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Warlock promised you half a million for this Hermetico caper, didn’t he?’

Galaxy stared at him with surprise and suspicion.