Saint and the Fiction Makers (14 page)

‘We’ve made it,’ she said. ‘We’ve done the impossible, do you realize that? We’ve escaped from S.W.O.R.D.!’

Simon glanced into the dark rectangle of the rearview mirror.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘Maybe?’ whimpered Amity.

‘I’d feel a lot better if the impossible had been a little more difficult.’

‘Well, for heaven’s sake don’t worry about it! We’re out now. What can they do about it?’

Almost simultaneously with her last word, several things happened at once. The window she had lowered shot up with the force of a guillotine. The car engine died completely without so much as a splutter. There was a rapid series of clicks as the door locks automatically popped into closed positions.

‘I wish you hadn’t asked that question,’ Simon said to Amity.

The car was rolling to a standstill on the unlighted road as its own lights were extinguished by whatever force had shut off the engine. Simon pumped the accelerator without result. Working the auxiliary ignition button which had originally started the car produced not even a click.

‘What happened?’ Amity gasped.

‘You tell me,’ said Simon. ‘You wrote the script.’

Amity, frowning, shook her head.

‘There was never anything like this. Let’s get out of here. It looks like a crossroads up ahead …’

‘I’m afraid you’ll find that impossible,’ Simon said. ‘My door is sealed shut.’

‘Oh, no! So is mine.’

Suddenly a red light began to glow in the centre of the instrument panel and a voice issued from the radio grille.

‘This is Warlock speaking. This recording of my voice was activated by the same device which automatically trapped you and cut off the electrical system of the car. Your location will be easily traced by a tracking device which picks up a continuous signal broadcast from the car you have so foolishly stolen. I suggest that you make yourself comfortable. There is no way to escape, and very shortly several persons will arrive to take you in custody.’

‘So Warlock isn’t completely unoriginal,’ the Saint said when the recording fell silent.

‘Oh, dear,’ Amity said sheepishly.

‘Oh, dear, what?’ Simon asked.

‘In a short story I wrote—before the first book—there was something … like this.’

‘My compliments to your memory. What’s the trick for getting out?’

‘No trick. It wasn’t important. It didn’t happen to important characters.’

‘Well, we’re important characters, and I’ve no intention of sitting around here like a chicken in a box waiting for the butcher. Get your head out of the way, please. Maybe that shotgun weakened the glass.’

Simon swung his legs above the girl’s lap, braced his hands behind him, and gave the damaged window a double-footed kick which would have taken most car doors completely off their hinges. The thick window was completely unchanged.

‘As I said, good glass,’ he remarked ruefully. ‘I’ll try the back way.’

He climbed quickly over into the back seat and proceeded, in effect, to pull it apart.

‘What are you doing?’ Amity asked.

‘Trying to get these cushions loose so we can get back into the boot.’

‘Isn’t there anything between the seat and the boot?’

‘Generally just some cloth, at least in places.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Amity said.

‘Good. If you had you’d have figured a way to keep us from getting out.’

Simon had pulled loose the back cushion, revealing a strip of black leatherette material. He ripped it aside. There was nothing else between him and the boot.

‘Your lighter, please,’ he said.

Amity leaned over from the front seat to hand it to him.

‘Don’t blow us up.’

‘That might be the fastest way out.’

He put his head and shoulders through the hole he had created and flicked on the lighter to illuminate the stark interior of the boot.

‘Can you get through that little space?’ Amity called after him.

‘Yes. You follow. I’m going to pry open the lock with a screwdriver.’

The Saint snaked his way into the boot, took a screwdriver from the kit he had discovered beside the spare tyre, and with the lighter beside him commenced his attack on the lock of the boot lid. He had trouble making out Amity’s words.

‘Simon …’

The Saint, having more important things to do than indulge in conversation, grunted and continued his work.

‘Simon …’

He twisted his head so that he could speak over his shoulder.

‘What is it?’

His answer came not from Amity Little but from the lock on which he had been working. Magically it moved, the boot lid swung upwards, and there, with pistols in their hands, stood Nero Jones and Simeon Monk.

‘Come out, Mr. Klein, wherever you are …’

The singsong, triumphantly jolly voice belonged to Warlock, whose unmistakable silhouette came into view behind his cohorts.

‘Get out,’ said Nero Jones with less cordiality.

The Saint was no advocate of suicide disguised as daring. Had he been, his career would have ended not many weeks after it began. It is quite simple to get killed making rash attacks on armed criminals, and the Saint could see nothing heroic, much less very bright, in obviously foredoomed gestures. On the other hand, the precise calculation of risks was his speciality, and in this particular situation the odds favoured his survival in reasonably good health no matter what he did. As Amos Klein, he was simply too valuable to kill, or even to injure, so he could afford to take greater chances than if he had been up against a pair of trigger-happy gorillas with orders to shoot to kill.

‘Give me a hand, would you?’ he said resignedly. ‘I’m jammed in here.’

He was flat on his stomach in the boot of the car. He held out his left hand as his right hand, hidden by his body, closed around the cold solidity of an iron jack handle. Jones and Monk glanced back towards Warlock, who nodded. Monk stepped forward to help, while his comrade increased his vigilance.

‘Thanks, dear old ape,’ said the Saint, and as soon as Monk grasped his hand he yanked the huge man forward with all his strength.

Simeon Monk was only graceless but top-heavy. His great weight was off balance in the Saint’s favour to begin with, and he sprawled like a crashing tree head-first into the boot. With the same sudden movement that toppled Monk, Simon jerked himself forward and rolled from the boot to his feet on the ground. The jack handle simultaneously became a short range weapon of deadly efficiency. Before Nero Jones could so much as stagger back in the first eye-blink of surprise, Simon had hurled the metal bar at his midsection with a force that made the air whistle. Then came Jones’s explosive groan as he jack-knifed forward and stumbled writhing to the earth.

The whole manoeuvre had taken not much more time than the striking of a snake, even including the slammming of the boot lid down on the backs of Simeon Monk’s thighs. Above his howl came Warlock’s shrill voice.

‘Stop, Mr. Klein!’

Simon had planned to improvise his dealings with Warlock. The man, no fighter, and deprived by his own ambitions of the freedom to use a weapon, should have been no match. So it was with a certain appalled shock that the Saint spun around to face his enemy and found himself looking into the barrel of a steadily outstretched pistol which Warlock aimed at his chest and, with what seemed an interminable movement of his trigger finger, fired.

But there was no sound of exploding gunpowder, and the stinging sensation Simon felt in the muscle between chest and left shoulder was not the burning, bone-shattering impact of a lead slug. He looked in surprise and saw an inch-long shaft of shiny metal protruding from his pyjama shirt where the pistol’s projectile had hit him. He groped for it, testing as he touched it for barbs that might tear his flesh if he tried to pull it out, and then numbing sleep seemed to shoot through his veins like a flood of icy ether deluging his whole body. The last thing he knew was impotent fury at this second triumph of Warlock’s drugs over his own body and will.

3

‘Mr. Klein,’ Warlock said quietly, ‘I see no reason to lecture you or waste time on elaborate threats. We understood one another before you attempted to escape. Everything will go forward just as we planned then, except that since I can no longer hope to trust you or depend on your willing co-operation, you will have to forfeit the position of leader and I will have to take command. Follow me, please.’

Simon and Amity Little, immediately after their return to S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, had been brought to confront Warlock in the planning room where Simon had first met Warlock and his captains. The drug which had been used to subdue the Saint had been mild: he had awakened as he was being carried, his hands tied behind him, from the garage to the main building. Now he stood, his hands still tied, with Amity beside him, and listened to a grim Warlock flanked by a much grimmer Simeon Monk and Nero Jones.

‘Go on,’ Jones growled, pointing to a side door.

Warlock had already turned and was leading the way. Beyond the elegantly panelled conference room was a grey concrete stairwell leading down into the cellar. Simon and Amity followed Warlock past an open door of heavy metal, while their guards brought up the rear.

‘It’s the S.W.O.R.D. laboratory!’ Amity gasped. ‘It really is!’

Confronted suddenly with a huge underground chamber gleaming with electronic equipment, she sounded more amazed than frightened. Warlock’s pride began to get the upper hand over his chagrin at the attempted escape.

‘Reproduced exactly,’ he said. ‘It’s all just as you described it, Mr. Klein … all the marvellous devices created in your fertile brain.’

Simon bowed slightly.

‘My fertile brain is flattered.’

‘I’m sorry my reason for bringing you down here has to be what it is,’ Warlock continued. ‘If we had managed through mutual co-operation to keep our relationship on a more friendly basis, the purpose of this little tour would have been much happier for all of us.’ He shrugged. ‘As it is, I hope it will be—what shall we call it?—educational.’

Warlock left the group at the doorway and walked across the room. Along the walls were panels thick with switches, dials, and vari-coloured lights. One section seemed to involve a radar screen; another resembled a chemical laboratory, with retorts, tubes, and bottles. There were a number of fancifully shaped devices which resembled nothing Simon had ever seen before, and there were, unfortunately, several others which he recognized only too easily. Those latter, which would have been recalled shudderingly by any Charles Lake fan, were specifically intended for the torment and eventual destruction of human beings. One was basically electrical, one used acids in gruesomely imaginative ways, while the third, which promised a particularly messy result, operated on plain old-fashioned mechanical principles.

‘How does it feel to see your brain children right here in front of you, Mr. Klein?’ Warlock asked.

Simon looked at Amity Little before answering.

‘It makes me feel like a depraved bloodthirsty maniac,’ he said. ‘Anybody who could think up things like that deserves the acid needles.’

Warlock smiled.

‘I’m glad you can still laugh at yourself, Mr. Klein. Luckily for you, our organization can’t get along without your mind. Miss Little, come over here, please.’

Amity didn’t move. Warlock was standing beside a table supported by a single thick ceramic pedestal. Its surface was formed of a massive steel slab larger than an ordinary door. There was a pair of metal clasps anchored by short chains at either end of the slab.

‘Come on, Miss Little.’

Amity stared in wide-eyed panic at Simon. Aside from his natural desire not to see her hurt, the Saint knew that under threat of torture she couldn’t be expected to keep her identity as the real and indispensable Amos Klein a secret.

‘Wait a minute, Warlock,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for any rough stuff. I’ll work with you. I don’t have any choice.’

‘No, you don’t have any choice,’ Warlock replied. ‘And here are my conditions: that you come up with a detailed and workable plan for robbing Hermetico within forty-eight hours. Naturally, that time limit doesn’t allow for any more escape attempts.’

‘Naturally,’ Simon said. ‘But it’s still not long enough. I can’t do it.’

‘You can, and you will. Otherwise Miss Little goes on this table—and your own future won’t be any brighter.’

The Saint became thoughtful.

‘If I could see Hermetico, it might be possible.’

‘See it in person?’ Warlock asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Considering your behaviour tonight, that’s an almost laughable proposition. Besides, you have the model.’

‘And the plans,’ put in Nero Jones.

‘It’s not enough,’ Simon argued. ‘I wouldn’t even write a book based on that kind of secondhand information, much less plan a real job. I always visit any place I’m writing about, and if you’ll remember the Bank of England scheme you’ve based this Hermetico thing on, there were several visits necessary.’

Warlock rubbed his jowls meditatively.

‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘there were visits in the book. I believe in sticking to the book, but …’

‘It’s necessary,’ Simon insisted. ‘I’d have told you that this afternoon if I hadn’t been planning to escape tonight.’

‘So now you’ll just try to escape if we take you to look at Hermetico.’

‘You want your prisoner’s word of honour?’ asked the Saint.

Warlock returned his slightly mocking look with a cynical smile.

‘I’m afraid in this day and age most of us have learned not to put much faith in honour. I put much more faith in the fact that if you are at Hermetico, Miss Little will be a hostage here. And how would you propose we get into the place for our tour of inspection?’

‘The same way it was done in the book: impersonating foreign diplomats who are considering making some large and mysterious deposit in the vaults. We’ll show up pretending our secretary had made all the arrangements in advance … or better still you could actually make the arrangements. Then we’d be sure of getting in.’

‘I’m impatient,’ Warlock said. ‘We’ll just go there and act confused and indignant when they’re not expecting us—just as it happened in your book.’