Saint and the Fiction Makers (2 page)

‘Good evening, Mr. Starnmeck,’ Simon said pleasantly but non-committally, in response to the questioning look.

The producer glanced around somewhat guiltily and made a skilful kind of blocking turn of his broad body to cut off his recent entourage and isolate himself with the Saint as much as was possible in the crush.

‘It may not be great art,’ he said tentatively, ‘but it moves.’

‘To quote Galileo,’ agreed the Saint amiably.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘To quote Galileo after his trial: Nevertheless, it moves. Of course he was talking about the earth, wasn’t he?’

‘Of course,’ producer Starnmeck said blankly.

‘But it amounts to the same thing,’ Simon said, glancing about in hopes that he had not lost Carol Henley entirely. ‘They both move—the earth and your film. They move predictably, but they move.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ the producer said with uncertain relief.

‘Yes,’ said the Saint. ‘That’s one of the advantages of life, and one of its disadvantages too: predictability. Most people are caught in a web of predictabilities that’s both comforting and stifling. People think they want security, but underneath they’d give almost anything to have the nerve to face the unpredictable, or at least the unlikely. So I think you can relax. You may only make a few millions, but it’s still money.’

‘Maybe so,’ Starnmeck said. ‘But this is a cut-throat business, Mr. Templar. Now, did anything occur to you that might make the next picture better still?’

‘Well, have you thought about the Unities prescribed by Aristotle for all tragedy?’ Simon suggested, warming to the torment of Starnmeck as he realized that he had indeed lost Carol Henley, possibly for ever. ‘How about them?’

‘About what?’ Sternmeck asked.

‘Aristotle’s Unities,’ repeated the Saint patiently.

Starnmeck had begun to perspire noticeably.

‘Maybe we’d better discuss this at the party. It’s pretty noisy here.’

‘Fine,’ said Simon with a slight bow. ‘Until then.’

The cool mocking of his eyes was in marked contrast to Starnmeck’s intense humidity, as the producer turned to submerge himself again in the less confusing comments of his own kind.

Simon started towards the open doors which led to the street, anxious to be out of the press of bodies and the hub-bub of voices, but he was not yet destined to escape. In fact, Destiny, intruding itself again in the form of an insistent tug at his sleeve which stopped him before he could complete his escape, had plans for the Saint which were to seem almost as incredible as the film he had just watched.

2

Simon turned, looked down at the long saturnine face, the rapidly blinking black eyes, the perfectly oblong moustache like a strip of furry tape, the damp strands of suspiciously dark hair combed carefully forward over an otherwise vacant dome, and saw that the sleeve-tugger was Finlay Hugoson, the publisher of the Charles Lake books on which the Starnmeck films were based. They had first met that evening at the small and highly exclusive cocktail party, held in a suite at the Dorchester, before the premiere.

‘Well, Mr. Templar, I suppose Charles Lake’s exploits are old hat to a man like yourself.’

The Saint shrugged. He found Hugoson likeable enough and admirably lacking the gaudy and blatantly artificial affectations that marred the personalities of so many of the other guests. But after his initial favourable impression, Simon had been put off by the publisher’s sudden almost frantic reaction when he realized that the Mr. Templar he had been speaking to so chattily was that Robin Hood of modern crime called the Saint. From that moment of realization, Hugoson had lost his casual poise and become nervously inhibited and overly attentive, like a man who had something urgent to say but was afraid to say it. Even when they had been separated to opposite ends of the room, he had felt Hugoson’s eyes continually switching back to him. Now, in the lobby of the cinema the publisher gave Simon a premonition that he was going to be much harder to shake off.

‘They’re no more old hat to me than anybody else,’ Simon said in response to Hugoson’s opening remark. ‘We all have fantastic dreams. I happen to have a knack for putting mine into practice. Your author has a knack for putting his on paper. It’s just that paper leaves quite a bit more freedom than real life.’

Hugoson stuck close beside him as the Saint strolled through the rapidly emptying lobby towards the doors which led to the open area under the marquee.

‘You weren’t bored, then?’

‘Not a bit. As a matter of fact, I’ve read all seven of the books by your Mr. Amos Klein, and he has an unabashed disregard for probability and the laws of nature that completely intrigues me. Reading him is the next best thing to floating free in space. And apparently several million other people think so too.’

They stepped out into the wide space between the front doors of the theatre and the street, where a milling throng was gathered in a chaos of blinding lights, cameras, microphones, and departing taxicabs and limousines.

‘I’m sure Mr. Klein would be delighted to hear your opinion of his work,’ Hugoson said.

‘I’d be delighted to tell him,’ the Saint replied. ‘Where is he?’

‘That’s what a lot of people would like to know,’ the publisher said, not with the morose air of an entrepreneur who has misplaced a valuable property but with the twinkling eyes of a man enjoying a secret.

The Saint arched his brows in mild surprise.

‘Don’t you know where he is?’

‘Mr. Klein? Oh, yes. I know where he is, but nobody else does.’

‘Presumably Mr. Klein knows.’

The publisher nodded.

‘Of course. But otherwise …’

Hugoson spread out his hands. Simon paused and looked at the publisher in a lightning storm of popping flashbulbs. He felt that the man was deliberately trying to arouse his curiosity for some more than frivolous reason, and that fact rather than any real interest in the whereabouts of Mr. Amos Klein began to arouse his curiosity.

‘Shall I guess?’ he asked. ‘You have him locked in a hen coop at the bottom of your garden, where you exchange him bread and water for his priceless masterpieces?’

Hugoson laughed.

‘No?’ mused the Saint. ‘Then maybe you have him chained in your attic, where you pass him off as your demented nephew and beat him with rods to keep him working. Or maybe he is your demented nephew?’

‘I’m afraid you haven’t a very high opinion of my professional ethics, Mr. Templar,’ the publisher said with a smile.

‘I apologize,’ the Saint said. ‘Of course the truth probably is that Amos Klein is the secret nom de plume of the heir of a dukedom whose father would promptly disinherit him if he knew his son had ever sunk so low as to set pen to any paper less dignified than a legal document. You’re merely protecting his good name and his inheritance … not that he’ll need either, considering the fortune he must have been stacking up over the past couple of years.’

‘Now you’re closer to the mark. But I’m afraid the truth’s not nearly as picturesque as you’ve imagined it.’ Hugoson’s face darkened. ‘As a matter of fact, the truth’s not nearly so bright, either. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to speak with you about the facts ever since I found out who you are.’

‘Well, when do I find out the facts—on my twenty-first birthday?’

Hugoson leaned closer, though the precaution seemed scarcely necessary in the combined din of the cinema’s mob and the normal uproar of Piccadilly Circus.

‘I’ll have to speak with you alone. Maybe you’d be so kind as to …’

While Hugoson was in mid-sentence, a trio of young men, all fashionably dressed and looking more or less alike, descended on him and proceeded to hustle him away towards a small canebrake of microphones. The essence of the young men’s babble was that he was to be favoured immediately with an interview. Hugoson, looking both appalled and flattered at such apparently unwonted attention, called to Simon over his shoulder:

‘Don’t go away, please! It’s urgent that I talk to you.’

Simon himself was accosted by a gaggle of reporters and photographers who recognized him, but by stubbornly insisting that he had nothing relevant to say, he disposed of them quickly and sauntered towards the tape recorders whose reels were turning in readiness to preserve Mr. Finlay Hugoson’s words for posterity. But on the way to Mr. Hugoson’s vicinity he was distracted by the discovery that the stars of the evening’s film, Sunburst Five, were being questioned in front of cameras almost directly on the street. Rip Savage, as the craggily handsome portrayer of Charles Lake had purportedly been christened by a mother of great foresight and astonishing perception of infant character, was grinning determinedly alongside Carol Henley, whose matching smile looked as if it could not have been blasted off with twice the black powder expended in her last four very explosive films.

‘Mr. Savage,’ a tuxedoed interviewer was asking, ‘what do you like best about playing Charles Lake?’

‘The money.’

The interviewer was taken aback by Savage’s brash honesty, which had been observed to increase after his payment for each successive film, and turned his attention to Carol Henley.

‘Carol, it’s said that you’re being stereotyped in the Lake pictures. What comment do you have on that?’

Carol’s smile never faltered as she hesitated in order to puzzle over the question’s meaning.

‘Well, goodness,’ she finally wriggled with breathless rapture, ‘thank you very much!’

Simon smiled and went to see how his new acquaintance was doing. He gleaned from the rather bellicose tones of the interviewing reporters, even before he could hear their questions, that they were finding the publisher unco-operative.

‘Well, Mr. Hugoson,’ he found one saying, ‘will you at least tell us whether or not Mr. Klein has another Lake book on the drawing board.’

‘On the writing table, more probably,’ Hugoson replied, in what apparently was an effort to lighten the mood of the inquisition.

The effort failed, as the pettish tone of another reporter attested.

‘Are we to take that as an answer, Mr. Hugoson, or just as a quip?’

Hugoson’s thinning smile withdrew beneath his rectangular moustache.

‘Mr. Klein is working on a new Lake book,’ he said precisely.

‘Will it be made into a film?’

Hugoson’s smile poked its nose tentatively out of the brush.

‘I fervently hope so.’

A new reporter leaned forward to make himself heard.

‘How is it Amos Klein never attends these premieres?’

‘I can’t comment on that.’

‘But he does live in England, doesn’t he?’

‘I can’t comment on Mr. Klein’s private life. I’m very sorry.’

There was a brief crescendo of protest from the men of the press, to whom the publisher’s reticence on the subject of his prize author was nothing new.

‘Surely there’s no harm in telling us something about him, Mr. Hugoson!’

‘You must have met Klein personally,’ another said. ‘What’s he like?’

Is he married?’

‘Could you just give us some idea of his age?’

‘And why all this mystery about him …’

Hugoson, looking badgered as well as badgerish, shook his head stubbornly.

‘No comment.’

‘Is the secrecy just a gimmick to arouse public interest?’

‘No comment.’

As the reporters shouted more questions, all of which received the publisher’s ‘no comment’, the Saint noticed that Carol Henley was darting a helpless look at him over her beautiful bare shoulder as she was whisked away by a whole tribe of retainers towards a waiting limousine. She said something to Starnmeck, the producer, who gestured over the heads of the crowd for Simon to join them. It was at that point that Saintly dedication to the discovery and exploration of mysterious byways had to stand and do battle with the more purely human desire to see more of Carol Henley’s bare shoulders. But bare female shoulders of acceptable age are not terribly different one from another, particularly when one has enjoyed as many varied views of them as Simon Templar had; anyhow, Carol Henley’s were not likely to change radically in the next hour or two, whereas Finlay Hugoson’s apparently desperate need to communicate might.

Even so, Simon felt with some regret that he had very possibly chosen the drabber of the two alternatives as he waved good-bye to Carol and Starnmeck and saw the great gleaming black bubble of their car top lose itself in a swirl of other metallic bubbles. He had no logical reason to believe that his contact with Hugoson would expose him to anything more intriguing than some unoriginal recital of a businessman’s woes. But the Saint would never have survived and prospered so spectacularly if he had not possessed some of the qualities of gambler and clairvoyant, and tonight he was willing to chance the exceptional physique of Carol Henley against the possibility of what his sixth sense told him might come from Mr. Finlay Hugoson.

‘Let’s take a cab to my flat and have something to drink,’ Hugoson said.

He was breathless and bedraggled after his encounter with the now completely alienated reporters, a little like a dazed boxer stumbling out of the centre of the ring into the arms of his trainer.

‘I appreciate the invitation,’ Simon answered, ‘but there’s the party at the Savoy. It’d be rather rude for me to pass it up, don’t you think? You’re a part of this whole shindig, but I’m an invited guest.’

The publisher shook his head as he led the Saint towards the curb.

‘Those post-premiere affairs are ghastly. Great masses of people showing off for one another like a lot of painted Hottentots. Frightfully depressing!’

‘I know,’ Simon said, ‘but at least I ought to put in an appearance. Starnmeck was good enough to invite me to the film; I suppose I should pay the price.’

Hugoson scratched his moustache nervously.

‘As you wish. But I hope you’ll be satisfied with a brief appearance and have energy left for a talk with me. There’s … there’s a chance of considerable profit in it for you.’

The Saint looked at his small, badger like acquaintance with new interest.

‘If there’s one thing I never lack, it’s energy,’ he said, ‘and if there’s one commodity I never have enough of, it’s profit—as long, of course, as it’s dishonestly earned. I hope you don’t have any illusions about my taking up a literary career.’