Saint and the Fiction Makers (4 page)

‘The arrangement suits him fine. He has no desire for publicity. I couldn’t keep him away from the world if he wanted to be known, obviously.’

The Saint surveyed the wreckage of the desk and shook his head.

‘I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘If this is the way publishers are competing with one another these days, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to hear they were holding writers prisoner.’

‘If they are publishers,’ Hugoson said mysteriously.

Simon gave him a hard look.

‘You mean the competition? The ones who’re so anxious to find Klein?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, if it’s not a publisher, who is it?’

‘I can’t think,’ muttered Hugoson.

‘Now listen,’ the Saint said a little irritably, ‘apparently you had some notion of getting me to help you, so what’s the point of playing ring around the rosy?’

‘I was going to try to hire you to protect Klein … and his identity.’

‘You’d have failed,’ Simon replied. ‘I don’t hire myself out. As a matter of fact, if I didn’t have a personal interest in this situation, in the form of an aching skull, I’d walk out in indignation.’

Hugoson brightened. ‘You mean you will help?’

‘I’ve no intention of letting anybody cosh me and get away with it. If in the process of my personal vendetta I incidentally happen to help keep your coffers full, that’s all right with me. So tell me everything you know, and I’ll call your doctor and be on my way.’

‘On your way where?’

‘To get to Amos Klein before your competitors get there.’

4

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Amos Klein worked and did a good deal of his living in a cottage at Burnham, only about forty-five minutes’ drive from the centre of London. Simon had envisioned himself pursuing adventure and vengeance into the jungles of Borneo or up the peaks of the Andes. The chimerical Mr. Klein’s residence in England was a convenience which the Saint not only appreciated but took immediate advantage of. With only as much delay as it took to accept Hugoson’s offer of a restorative drink, he got back in his car and was soon driving along the M4 motorway in the direction of Slough.

But while he was grateful for Klein’s proximity, he could not see much more in the affair to his advantage. Aside from the astonishing revelation of the length to which modern publishing competition seemed prepared to go, with burglary and mayhem a merely routine step towards finding and propositioning a popular but elusive author, it did not promise any of the exhilarating twists of a typical Saintly crusade against some particularly vile species of injustice. Of course, there had now been created an obligation to find the perpetrator of the clout he had received and repay the blow with interest; but that was hardly an electrifying inspiration.

As Simon had said to Hugoson as they parted:

‘To think that I gave up Carol Henley’s company for some slope-shouldered little twerp with ink on his nose.’

Hugoson, who had seemed about to say something else, smiled wanly through the drawn grimace of his headache.

‘You’ll live to eat that description, anyway,’ the publisher said. ‘And who knows? You might even fall for him.’

‘One of those, eh?’ said the Saint. ‘Well, thanks for the warning.’

‘Ring me up! I wish I felt up to going with you. And give … Amos my regards.’

Disappointingly, when the Saint had left the M4 and found his way through dark country roads to the proper cottage, according to Hugoson’s directions, it seemed as if he might not be able to give Amos Klein regards or anything else that night. The cottage, set alone in a densely wooded patch at the end of a lane, was completely dark.

Simon’s first thought was that the group who had been showing such an extraordinary interest in making the acquaintance of Finlay Hugoson’s gold-ovulating goose might have beaten him to the place and already roared away with the author in a cloud of advance royalty offers. On the other hand, it was just as possible that Klein had gone to bed quite peacefully. Simon’s apprehension about the eventuality of a kidnapping was eased when he quietly tested the front door and found it locked. He rapped and waited. Then he heard an irregular bumping sound coming faintly from the rear of the place. It was not any sort of sound that one would expect to be made by a man alone in the middle of the night, and it did not last long.

Instantly, the Saint was balanced like an alerted leopard, ready for anything. He moved with the silent stealth of a cat around the sides of the cottage, until he had satisfied himself that there was no one else in the garden. Then the bumping sounds, which clearly came from within the house, began again. Simon started to knock on the back door, near which he was now poised, but something caught his eye which he had not seen before: a razor edge of light at french windows to his left. The apparent darkness of the cottage, then, was due at least in part to thick hangings inside the windows. Simon moved quickly to take a look through the curtains just in time to see what appeared to be the demise of the object of his trip.

A dark-suited man, seated in front of a typewriter, was slipping slowly forward and to the floor, a long knife projecting from between his shoulder blades.

The Saint’s automatic was already in his hand. Almost simultaneously with blasting away the lock on the french windows with a single shot, he kicked the windows open and, without making a target of himself, prepared to incapacitate anything hostile. But all he saw was a most unhostile and terrified-looking girl leaning back against the opposite wall. She was standing, her ankles lashed together, her wrists apparently in the same condition behind her. A white towel was tied around her head, restricting her powers of communication to a series of mouselike squeaks.

The room had only one exit into the rest of the cottage, and Simon dashed to that open door. A glance down the central hall told him that the front entrance was closed and bolted from inside. He had heard no sound of the nearby kitchen door being opened, which could only mean that the wielder of the knife was in all probability still in the house. He did not, however, have time to plan at his own pace what he would do about the situation because suddenly a bullet slammed into the lintel above his head, accompanied by the loud report of a pistol which would have sent a man with nerves of anything less than pure platinum jumping at least five feet.

Simon whirled, ducking, and saw the captive girl, her back to him, holding a revolver upside down in her roped hands. She was hopping towards the open french windows, the nose of her weapon waving like the nozzle of a garden hose as she fired it again—this time into a picture on the wall at a quite comfortable distance from the Saint.

‘Hold it!’ he shouted at her. ‘I’m a friend.’

Her third shot, remarkably near his feet considering that both he and she were moving and that she was not even looking in his direction, said more about her scepticism than any number of words.

‘Cut that out so I can catch the people who did this,’ he yelled at her.

In his lunge to catch her arm, while at the same time he tried to keep his eye on the hall door for a possible flanking attack, he almost fell over the body of the man who had been seated at the typewriter. Simon’s foot, instead of meeting the solid resistance of bone and flesh, sent the man’s form skidding across the floor as if it had been a mere bag of straw.

And that was more or less what it was. It was no man. It was a well-dressed dummy.

The Saint had no time to inspect the oddity for the moment. His attention was drawn irresistibly to the pistol which could at any moment, if only by sheer accident, put a hole in his head. One of his hands closed on the girl’s arm while the other, after shoving his own gun into the band of his trousers, snatched the weapon out of her hands.

‘I think we can put things on a more friendly basis without that,’ he said.

The girl could still only squeak. Simon, keeping a wary eye on the doorway, loosened the gag and tore it from her mouth with no great attempt at gentleness. Now that she was free to speak, she suddenly seemed to have lost her desire even to make incoherent noises. She merely stared at him, breathing hard, with a mixture of uncertain fear and defiance that he found most attractive. She would have been attractive even without the display of courage—her face beautiful and proud, her jade eyes looking out at the world from under a cap of short black hair.

‘Now,’ said the Saint, ‘how many of us are there, not counting Pinocchio on the floor?’

‘Who are you?’ the girl demanded.

‘I asked the first question, and I’ll add another: who are you? I’d like an answer to both—fast!’

He encouraged her with a waggle of the gun he had taken over.

‘There’s nobody else here,’ she said, shrinking back. Then she added quickly: ‘But I’ve called the police. They’ll be here any minute.’

Simon, who had been critically studying the girl’s bonds from various angles, relaxed against the wall.

‘I’m afraid that doesn’t frighten me,’ he said. ‘In the first place, I’m crazy about the police. In the second place, I happen to know this cottage doesn’t have a phone.’

The girl frowned.

‘How do you know anything like that?’

‘Hugoson told me.’

The girl looked momentarily relieved, and then she tensed again.

‘Have you hurt him?’

‘Hugoson? Of course not. We’re practically blood brothers. Or bruise brothers, anyway. Incidentally, I know you’ve worked your hands out of those ropes, so you might as well put them in front of you where I can admire them.’

She stared at him for an instant with surprise, before she screwed her face up petulantly and let the ropes slip to the floor.

‘You’re very observant,’ she said.

Simon nodded agreement.

‘And you’re quite an escape artist,’ he told her. ‘Except I’m not sure you should get full credit for escaping from ropes you put on yourself.’

This time she showed real amazement.

‘How’d you know that?’

The Saint smiled.

‘I’m very observant. Unfortunately, though, I’m not always observant enough, otherwise I’d never have burst in here to rescue a dummy and a girl who for some obscure reason likes to spend her evenings tying herself up with sash cord.’

The girl was rubbing her wrists.

‘The knot got stuck,’ she said, ‘luckily for you. If the loop had come loose I’d have had my gun right side up and potted you between the eyes.’ She nodded towards her revolver, which he still held almost absentmindedly in his hand. ‘Are you going to shoot me?’

‘Not in any vital organs, anyway.’ He put the pistol in his jacket and folded his arms, noting the heap of lipstick-marked cigarette stubs in the ashtray beside the typewriter. ‘Now, Annie Oakley, what are your other talents besides fancy marksmanship and rope tricks?’

The girl looked at the typewriter, and then at Simon.

‘Didn’t Hugoson tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’ the Saint asked unguardedly.

The girl hesitated, and then, with an exasperated explosion of breath, put her hands on her lips.

‘That I’m Amos Klein.’

CHAPTER TWO

HOW AMOS KLEIN WAS

PROPOSITIONED AND GALAXY ROSE

WAS BRUSHED OFF

1

‘That’s a pretty name for a girl,’ said the Saint with extraordinary restraint.

Amos Klein pushed strands of raven hair from her flushed forehead.

‘My mother had a poetic soul. And now, if you’re dying to introduce yourself, don’t let me stop you.’

‘Gladly. I’m Simon Templar.’

The girl’s face showed surprised recognition of the name, and she looked at him more closely.

‘The Saint?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘There was poetry in my background, too.’

‘Or a pretty far-fetched imagination.’ She indicated the shattered french windows. ‘For a Saint, you have a pretty violent way of coming to call.’

Simon closed the windows and drew the curtain back across them.

‘I’ll treat you to a repair job,’ he said.

‘Would you mind? I’m tired of hopping about like a human pogo stick, and as long as I have a man around I might as well make use of him.’

She was talking about the rope which still bound her ankles together. Simon knelt down to release her.

‘A very wise attitude,’ he agreed. ‘As a matter of fact, I was encouraged to come here to be useful. Finlay Hugoson and I were together at the premiere of your latest epic, and when we dropped by his flat we ran into a couple of uninvited guests who hadn’t expected him to come home till after the party. They were looking for your address, and they got away with it. Hugoson thought it would be a good idea if I got right down here to protect you … or keep you from signing up with some competitor of his.’

‘Why didn’t he come?’ she asked.

‘He would have, but he was indisposed after being conked on the head by your fans.’

‘Fans?’

‘The ones who’re so anxious to find you.’ Simon had finished untying the ropes, and he stood up. ‘You tie a good knot,’ he said.

‘Summer sailor.’ She looked apologetically down at the tight-fitting faded jeans and the sloppy sweat shirt she was wearing. ‘Excuse me if I’m dressed like one, but I wasn’t expecting company, friendly or otherwise.’

‘I’d planned to announce myself in a more conventional way,’ the Saint told her, ‘but your little charade completely took me in.’

He went over to look at the dummy with the knife in its back.

‘That’s Warlock,’ Amos Klein explained as she began to straighten up the room.

‘Warlock?’ Simon repeated. ‘He’s the top villain in your books, right?’

‘Right. He and his cohorts were keeping me prisoner in a cellar. And Dunlap Brodie … he’s the nice boy whose mother was killed by S.W.O.R.D … slips me this knife. So I’m going to kill Warlock when he comes to torture me. He’s sitting down at the console to turn up the hypnotic knob when I let him have it in the back … from ten paces, with my hands tied. And just then you come along and let me have it, right in the back door.’

‘Well,’ said Simon, ‘at least you can write the damage off to research.’

‘You’re right. I like to try things out to see if they’re just barely possible. Every little experience adds realism.’