Saint and the Fiction Makers (9 page)

‘And so the battle was lost …’ Simon murmured.

‘What’s that?’ Warlock asked.

‘It’s that kind of feeling that loses battles,’ Simon said.

Warlock cast jubilant glances at his staff.

‘So you see a loophole already!’ he exclaimed to the Saint. ‘You can do it!’

Simon managed to look blankly innocent.

‘I?’ he said. ‘I only meant that over-confidence can make the most perfect defences vulnerable.’

‘Then you will find that weak point,’ Warlock replied. ‘The basic idea came to me from your book, Volcano Seven, except there it was the Bank of England S.W.O.R.D. robbed.’

‘Tried to rob,’ Simon corrected him. ‘Charles Lake stopped them.’

‘And of course that’s one of the beauties of having you on S.W.O.R.D.‘s side, Mr. Klein!’ Warlock crowed. ‘You’ll come up with an even better story this time, in which S.W.O.R.D. wins.’

Simon elaborated his blank innocence into confusion.

‘Story?’ he asked.

‘Telling how S.W.O.R.D. ransacked Hermetico. How through brilliant thinking, they breached every defence, penetrated to the core of that invulnerable fortress, and left it bare!’

‘I’m to do that,’ Simon marvelled rather than asked. ‘That’s the literary project you sent me that fifty-thousand-pound retainer for.’

Warlock rubbed his hands gleefully. He was pacing up and down the rich carpet near the model of Hermetico. The pale faces of his henchmen followed his movements like the spectators of a tennis match.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But it’s much more than a literary project. Here’s your opportunity to live your art and bring your wildest dreams to reality.’

‘Bring your wildest dreams to reality,’ Simon said drily. ‘Mine were doing fine already.’

Warlock stopped his peregrinations.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that we might continue this discussion in private. You’ve met your staff, so to speak, and I see no point in keeping them here, if you agree.’

‘I see no point in it at all,’ Simon said.

‘Very well, gentlemen, you may go. Except, Frug, would you please leave us the Hermetico dossier?’ Warlock turned to Simon. ‘This dossier Frug will give you contains complete details of Hermetico operations and layout, including blue-prints. Frug?’

Frug, who had been looking quite pleased with himself during most of the meeting, jerked slightly and demonstrated that the skin of a more or less living human being, however white it may be, can always turn a little whiter.

‘I don’t have it,’ he blurted. ‘I mean, it’s in my office. I’ll just be a minute.’

Frug sidled towards the doorway, but Warlock stopped him with a word. It was a softly spoken word, with all the gentle menace of an adder sliding towards its sleeping prey.

‘Frug.’

‘Yes,’ Frug said. ‘Yes, sir?’

Warlock confronted him, the jowly face, blotched with anger, threatening the scrawny white one.

‘I told you to bring it, Frug,’ Warlock said quietly.

‘I forgot. I …’

With an awkwardly prolonged movement whose implications Frug could clearly see, Warlock drew back his right arm and brought it across in a sweeping arc that smashed flat-handed on the side of Frug’s pointed face. The Saint, whose first reaction to Frug had been a strong but entirely impersonal impulse to pop him like an insect between the earth and the sole of his shoe, viewed the performance with gratification and interest. It interested him that Frug had not tried to avoid the blow he saw coming, and that after it knocked his head to one side with its force, Frug did not betray by so much of a glint in his narrow eyes the rage that he must feel. Warlock’s power, then, was built on a sound foundation. His organization was not going to fall apart just because it was new and based on a mad dream.

‘S.W.O.R.D. cannot afford members who forget,’ Warlock said. ‘Since this is your first error, we’ll overlook it. Take the dossier to Mr. Klein’s room after he has returned there.’

Warlock looked at his other men, who had not moved during Frug’s punishment.

‘You gentlemen may go now. See that Mr. Klein has the typewriter and other materials.’ Warlock, his face still mottled crimson as an aftermath of his outburst, turned to his captive author, and the corners of his small mouth curved smugly upwards in one of the most unsavoury smiles the Saint had ever seen on a human countenance. ‘Then be sure you don’t disturb him,’ he concluded. ‘He’ll be a very busy fellow for the next few days.’

2

‘And what if I refuse?’ Simon asked when he and Warlock were alone in the oak-panelled planning room.

Warlock turned from the double doors which he had closed securely behind his departing staff. Simon was standing entirely at ease near the model of Hermetico. Warlock came towards him, stopped, raised his arms from his sides, and then dropped them with a heavy sigh.

‘Why must you put me in an awkward position by asking such a question, Mr. Klein? Why must you be difficult when I’ve gone to such lengths to prove my competence and my real interest in your work?’ He made a gesture that encompassed the whole building around him. ‘What greater compliment could an author have than that a man of science, a practical businessman—’

‘A scholar and a gentleman?’ queried the Saint.

Warlock ignored the interruption except to re-adjust his sentence. ‘—that I should want to bring your fiction to reality? What could be more exciting? The masses read your works and forget them. I want to bring your energies to bear on the material world, to make you the architect of great feats, conquests …’

Warlock had begun to pace the room, waving his arms and working himself into a literal lather. Simon interrupted him quietly.

‘Yes, but what happens if I don’t want to do it?’ he asked.

Warlock stopped and sighed more heavily than ever.

‘Must you, Mr. Klein? Must we discuss such unpleasant possibilities? Can’t you feel yourself infected with the same excitement that moves me so profoundly?’

Simon put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly to the wall beneath one of the high windows.

‘I can feel myself infected, all right, but I can also see myself locked up in one of Her Majesty’s free boarding houses if this scheme of yours falls through.’

Warlock, sensing a weakening of resistance, all but scampered to confront the Saint and eagerly grasped his arms.

‘Not my scheme,’ he said, his jowls aquiver, ‘your scheme! Don’t you see—I want you to want to do this. I have no desire to force you.’

‘Then I’m free to go whenever I feel like it?’

Warlock loosened his grip and started to speak, then was silent. He paced away, then paced back, started to speak again, and ended up beside the Hermetico model. His hand touched the white-domed top of the surface building. He stared down at it as if it were a crystal ball in which he could see visions.

‘Mr. Klein,’ he said softly, ‘when I was a lad, I was a dreamer. I read more than most because at that time I suffered from an illness that kept me from taking part in outdoor games like the other boys. My mind was full of adventures, and explorations, and the lives of great men. I imagined myself with Alexander in Persia, with Drake on the Spanish Main, and with Livingstone in Africa, but I wasn’t content just to imagine. I wanted to live those adventures.’

He paused, his hand slipping from the model on the tabletop. Simon stood without moving. He wanted to do nothing that might discourage his captor from going on with his personal confessions.

‘I remember a curious kind of incident,’ Warlock continued. ‘It illustrates what I mean. One night I was playing on the carpet with some lead soldiers my father had brought me. I asked him—my father—to play with me, and actually I was very surprised when he did, but he got down on his knees and we spent a long time arranging the soldiers on opposing sides. We had cannon and cavalry and infantry, and we made hills of blankets and cushions, and walls of books, and rivers and trees of paper and such … and when it was all done it looked quite impressive, the two armies ready for attack, poised on the hills and in the woods, ready to fire, ready to charge. And my father said, “Well, now, that’s fine,” and got up and began to read his paper again. And I began crying, and he looked down and said, “Now, good heavens, what’s the matter? Didn’t I play with you?” And I went on blubbering and said, “But they don’t do anything. They don’t move.” It was strange.’ Warlock shook his head. ‘I don’t even know why it upset me so much. I cried as if my heart was broken.’

Simon felt more embarrassed than enlightened by the story. He merely shrugged slightly and allowed Warlock a new span of encouraging silence.

‘The point is, Mr. Klein, that it is very difficult and rare to find opportunities for heroism and grand actions these days. I went to work for the research branch of an electronics firm after I’d finished at the university. That, at least, seemed an opportunity to explore new fields, if only in the mind. But the whole endeavour was smothered under a great weight of bureaucracy and practical necessity and professional jealousy.’ Warlock folded his hands behind him and began to pace again. ‘I decided to launch out on my own. Frankly, I stole. I falsified requisitions and forged signatures. I had very little money, but over months I managed to build up a quite respectable laboratory in my cottage outside town. And then, before I was even certain what direction I’d take, two wonderful things happened to me: I discovered your books and I inherited this estate and four hundred thousand pounds.’

Simon acknowledged Amos Klein’s admiration of the sum.

‘I’m flattered that you’d even include my books in the same sentence,’ he said.

Warlock was so engrossed in his own words that he did not even glance at the Saint.

‘Your books,’ he said, ‘and others like them, are the healthy dreams of a sick humanity. People are stifled by an age in which aggressive instincts are held up to shame and scorn, when the invisible powers of money rule everything, when machines and taxes and collectivist politics destroy initiative and offer no challenge to self-development! Only in books like yours can they find a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of a way of life in which men use themselves to the full.’

‘Hear, hear!’ Simon applauded. ‘And you’re going to solve the problem by robbing safe deposits?’

Even though the Saint’s tone was kept carefully free of heavy sarcasm, anger flared across Warlock’s face like a sudden bruise.

‘I’m sorry you don’t understand me!’ he snapped. ‘It isn’t often I would bare my feelings to anyone, but I thought that you, of all people, would …’

Warlock bogged down.

‘Sympathize?’ the Saint offered. This time he spoke in a more friendly way than before, projecting an Amos Klein who was intrigued and tempted but torn by distrust and fear which he desperately wanted to hide. ‘Maybe I do sympathize, more than you know, but with four hundred thousand quid in the bank, why do you want to steal?’

‘I chose to regard that inheritance merely as starting capital. It is, as the Americans say, peanuts—compared with the wealth of men like Onassis, Hughes, or Getty. I intend to have as much as they have—and more. I don’t care what I invest in this first operation: it will be returned hundreds of times. And those millions in turn will finance still greater operations. I see no limit to what may be mine one day. And you can be my partner.’

‘Fine,’ said the Saint. ‘But can you blame me for being cautious? After all, I’ve been gassed, kidnapped, and now told I’m to devise a way of pulling off the most spectacular and dangerous robbery in history. Am I supposed to feel perfectly calm?’

Warlock began to exude hopefulness again as he and Simon faced one another over the model of Hermetico.

‘But I’ve apologized for kidnapping you,’ he said, as if he sincerely believed that ought to be enough for anybody. ‘And there’s the fifty thousand pounds—just as an advance on the Hermetico profits—and there’s fine food, and people to wait on you hand and foot, and every comfort, and Galaxy Rose, and—’

Simon held up his hand.

‘Nobody could complain about the accommodations,’ he said. ‘Especially not about Galaxy Rose. But no matter how pleasant it all is, I’m bothered by the nagging feeling that I’m a prisoner. When do I get to spend some of that fifty thousand? If I agreed to co-operate with you on this project, am I and my … associate free to come and go as we please?’

Warlock shook his head apologetically.

‘I’m afraid, Mr. Klein, that that must wait until I can be quite sure of your loyalty—or until you are as deeply compromised as the rest of us.’

‘Which is just a polite way of saying that I am a prisoner?’

‘If you agree to stay here voluntarily, then you needn’t think of yourself as a prisoner.’

‘And if I don’t agree?’

Warlock struggled not to lose his temper completely over this new relapse.

‘If you insist on being difficult, on pushing me into that position, the answer is that you have no choice. You are going to work with me as I planned. You’ve supplied me, if it comes to the worst, with too many gruesome methods of torture to make refusal even thinkable, particularly since I’d let Nero and Monk practise on the girl before they started on you. I think they’d hardly be warmed up before you’d be begging them to let her go and give you a typewriter and paper.’

‘You have quite an argument,’ Simon admitted grimly.

Now he seemed to accept the fact that resistance was useless. With acceptance, he could show a renewal of his former ironical good humour.

‘I think it would be a pity, though,’ Warlock said, ‘if you made both of us feel you’d had to be forced into this. How much better if we could co-operate freely! Think it over, and as you begin work I’m sure you’ll feel more and more that I’ve done you a favour. The antagonisms will disappear as your enthusiasm for the project grows. I promise you.’

As he spoke, he attempted to put his arm around Simon’s shoulder and escort him to the door like an experienced businessman reassuring a nervous young subordinate. Since Warlock’s proximity gave him the creeps, Simon managed to elude the embrace and face Warlock between the long table and the oak door.

‘Incidentally,’ he said, ‘as long as we’re going to be brothers in burglary, what’s your real name?’