The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (25 page)

“We don’t need him!” Rogers said.
“Let’s drown the
blasted nosey …”

Mary Bannerman broke in. Her voice was full of
panic.

“What’s the point?” she asked.
“I mean, what’s the point
to any of this? Haven’t we done enough?”

Simon rolled over on his side so that he could see the speakers
without twisting his neck.

“Not as long as Liskard’s still on his
throne!” Peterson
said.

“Or until your father is on it?”
Simon asked.

Peterson turned on him.

“What do you know about my father?”

“Quite a lot. I think you could find a
better cause than trying to avenge him. He may have been an able man, but
he was sick.”

“No sicker than Liskard’s own wife,”
said Peterson.

“Liskard’s wife isn’t helping run a
government,” Simon
said. “Even if your father got a rough
deal, it’s no reason to
try to wreck your own country.”

“Getting rid of Liskard would be a
favor to my country,”
Peterson said.

“Amen,” said Benson.

Simon nodded with new and somewhat sad
understanding.

“I see. You people are the sturdy band
of young patriots
who are going to cast out the tyrant and make your
country
free,
et cetera, et cetera.”

“Tom Liskard is a tyrant!” Mary said
to the Saint.

“I don’t agree,” Simon answered.
“I’ve been there, you
know, and I’ve seen Nagawiland. Without
Liskard, the place
would
fall apart
…
at least, right at
this moment. I’m not
saying he’s
indispensable forever.”

“You’re damned right he’s not,”
Jeff Peterson put in. “The
sooner we get rid of him the better it’ll
be.”

Mary Bannerman looked at him with worried
eyes.

“I wish you wouldn’t put it that
way,” she said. “You promised me there wouldn’t be any getting
rid
of anybody.
I mean, discrediting Tom is one thing, and I agreed.
That’s
why I gave you the letters. But …”

“If you think he’s got dangerous ideas
about Liskard,”
Simon said, “wait till you see what he
does to me.”

“What will you do, Jeff?” she
asked.

“Let him go when we’ve finished.”

Peterson did not sound very convincing.

“And what’ll I do?” the Saint
gibed. “Recommend you for
a knighthood? If you let me go you’ll get ten
years in
jail.” He looked at the girl. “Don’t you see
where this is
leading?
If you’re really just after revenge, haven’t you had
it? If you quit the whole thing now it won’t be …”

Suddenly Peterson’s hand lashed out and struck Simon’s
face so hard that he was knocked back against the
wall of
the boat.

“Jeff!” the girl screamed.
“Stop it!”

“I’m going,” Peterson said,
avoiding the Saint’s steady, burning eyes. “The letters will have gotten
to Liskard’s wife
by
now.”

“You sent them?” Mary Bannerman
asked in astonish
ment. “You said he’d have two days, and it’s not…”

“That’s not the point, is it?”
Peterson asked crisply. “The
point is to bring him down, and there’s
timing involved.”

“What kind of timing?” the girl
asked, puzzled.

The three men—Benson, Rogers, and
Peterson—looked at
one another. None of them answered Mary Bannerman’s
question.

“Keep her here,” Peterson said,
jerking his head toward
her. “I want to be in town when this
breaks. I’ll take her
car and I’ll be at her flat. Even if anybody
thinks I’m involved I should be safe enough there, and I’ll be near a
phone.”

“Involved in
what?”
the girl
asked desperately.

“Involved in the revolution,” he
said coldly.

She stared.

“Revolution?
What
…”

“Call it what you like,” Peterson
said. “You don’t think
we could bring down Liskard without
replacing him, do you?”

“But that’s no revolution. There are
men who’ll take over
automatically …”

“And be no better than Liskard.”

“If you turn this into a racial thing,
Peterson—stirring up
the people down there, playing on the
Africans’ grievances—
you’ll have another Congo blood bath.”

Peterson was halfway up the companionway. He
smiled.

“Well, as Lenin said, you can’t make an
omelet without
breaking some eggs.”

He disappeared on to the deck. Simon looked at
Mary.

“We who are about to be cracked salute
you.”

“Jeff wouldn’t!” she said foolishly.

Simon settled back on the bunk with weary
resignation.

“Oh, I think he would. In fact, I think
he will. If he’s
going to cause the deaths of several thousand people,
what’s
one egg more or less? As a matter of fact, you’re quite a
dish
yourself. Omelet?”

Mary turned to run up to the deck, calling
out Peterson’s
name. Rogers, the most muscular of Peterson’s fellow
patriots,
stopped her on the companionway.

“Sorry,” he said. “Jeff wants
you here.”

“I don’t care what he wants! He doesn’t
own me. I’m
not his prisoner.”

“Look again,” Simon murmured.

The girl tried once more to shake off
Rogers, who thor
oughly enjoyed holding her. She yanked herself away and
sat
down furiously on the land-side bunk on the other side of
the boat
from Simon.

“What’ll we do?” she said angrily.

Obviously she was not the type to fall apart
under pressure,
and she did not take kindly to being pushed around—both
qualities
being in Simon’s favor.

“Why don’t we try escaping?” he
suggested.

Rogers laughed, but the thin man, Benson,
took offense.

“Shut up!” he barked. “Both of
you!”

Rogers chuckled again.

“Well, Bill, which of us guards these
tigers and which
stands watch out there in the fog?”

“Who’d come here now?” Benson
asked.

“Never mind what you
think
might
happen. One of us
has got to keep posted where we can keep an eye on the
road, and get Templar’s car out of sight while we’re at it.”

Benson heaved a grudging sigh.

“All right, then. We’ll toss for
it.”

They flipped a coin, and Rogers was chosen
to stand first
watch ashore. He took Simon’s car key, put on a slicker,
and left
the boat

“Better keep on your toes, Benson,”
the Saint said.

Benson looked around uneasily.

“What are you talking about?

“Miss Mary might bash you in the head
when your back’s
turned.”

“My back won’t be turned,” Benson
said.

He sat down on the steps of the companionway
facing
into the cabin. At that point the Saint sat up and swung
his legs,
which were not tied, to the floor. Benson was alarmed
and instantly on his
own feet.

“Lie down,” he ordered.

Simon stood up. Time was too short to allow
for planning and caution. It was better to do something brash than nothing
at all.
He could only hope that Mary Bannerman would get
the idea and go into
action.

“Make me,” said the Saint with a
look of mystifying and
total confidence.

The look threw Benson off balance. For
anybody trapped
in a tiny bit of space with his hands tied behind him to
look
confident was completely unnerving.

“I told you to lie back down,”
Benson said nervously.

“Going to call your mate to help?”
Simon taunted him.

That did it. Benson’s spidery frame marked
him as a man
without much physical strength, which increased his
hesita
tion to get involved with a man of the Saint’s reputation—
even if
his hands were tied—but at the same time made him
all the more
sensitive to aspersions on his courage. He moved
toward the Saint,
whose back was now to the door which
led to the forward compartment of the
boat.

“You asked for it, Templar,”
Benson said with forced
toughness.

That was when Mary Bannerman picked up the
heaviest
thing she could lay hands on—a large metal Thermos jug—
and slammed
him on the back of the head. He fell to his
knees without so
much as a grunt, and Simon finished lulling
him to sleep with a
charitably restrained toe of his shoe.

“You’re a bright girl, Mary. Now please
untie me before
that other creep decides to drop back in.”

“I don’t know,” she said
hesitantly. “You’ll turn Jeff in,
and …”

“Mary, do you realize what’s going on?
This scheme you
got yourself involved in is no righteous crusade to force
a bad leader out of office. It’s a power play, and it means
upsetting
a very delicate equilibrium if it goes through. And
when equilibrium is
upset in a place like Nagawiland it means more than new elections. It means
disemboweled women and
men skinned alive …”

Mary flinched.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen
pictures.”

“Well, you’ll be seeing a lot more
pictures like that if we
don’t manage to stop your friend Jeff.
Liskard may be a
rat
in your book, and he may not be the best leader in the
world, but he’s a lot better than most.”

Mary came to him and began tugging at the
knots which
held
his wrists.

“I feel like a traitor,” she said
bitterly.

“If it makes you feel any better,
Liskard never had any
thought of using you—which I’m afraid is more than I can say for
Jeff Peterson.”

“Tom told you that?”

“Yes. Whatever he did, there was nothing coldblooded
about it.”

She stopped untying Simon’s wrists.

“Still, I can’t just … turn Jeff in
like this. Isn’t there
some way we could stop him without having him
… put in jail or anything like that? Especially since I might get
put in
jail too, for helping him.”

“We’ll see,” Simon said. “In
the meantime …”

He had been testing the bonds which still
held his arms together. Mary had loosened them enough that he was able,
with a
sudden twisting movement and some quick work with
his fingers, to tear
them away. As he did it, he spun to
face her.

“In the meantime,” he concluded,
“you don’t have to feel
guilty. I got away all by myself.”

She was frozen for a moment, and then she
made a dive for the chart book, which she had dropped on one of the bunks.
Simon knocked it aside and caught her squirming
body up against his.

“See?” he said. “No guilt. You
even fought back and tried
to stop me.”

“I could scream,” she said
tentatively.

She was squirming less. Simon smiled.

“Well, don’t. We need one another. Try using your head
for a change. Can you do anything except pose for
pictures?”

“Such as what?”

“Such as cast off those lines while I
get this scow’s engine
set to go. We’ll drift out quietly, then turn
on the power
and take off full speed.”

Mary did not offer any more arguments or
resistance.

“I’ll handle the engine,” she said.
“I’ve done it before.”

They both went on deck as soon as Simon had
used the
rope that had been taken from his own wrists to tie up,
Benson.
The fog was thickening, and he could scarcely see
beyond the fence
which ran along the shore, which con
veniently meant that Rogers would not
be able to see the
boat either. Within a few seconds the Saint had cast off
both lines and sent the boat
drifting toward midstream with
a shove of
his foot against the bank. He joined Mary Bannerman
at the wheel. The bow had been headed upstream.
Now,
as the current caught it it
began to turn downstream toward London and the sea. The shore was five feet
away, then ten,
but the boat had still
not entered the main current in the
center
of the river. The eddies it formed near the shore began
to move the boat back toward land.