The Saint Abroad

1

The tropical African coastal territory of Nagawiland had, for most of its humid eons of existence, been of little interest to anyone except monkeys, insects, snakes, crocodiles, wart hogs, and an occasional party of black hunters passing through its inhospitable coastal marshes toward the high country farther inland. The few humans who settled permanently in the small area seem to have been the remnants of a tribe of headhunters who were defeated and eaten by a more powerful neighboring tribe.

Having settled a sufficiently safe distance from the scene of their forefathers’ Armageddon, the Nagawi, as they called themselves (a word translated roughly as “the only real people”) showed no enthusiasm for headhunting or anything else. They lived on what they could get without much effort — their treats consisting of an occasional lame wild pig or senile baboon — and carved crude obscene figures out of tree roots. Their religious exercises consisted of flagellating one another with thorn bushes and cutting off the ear lobes of all boys who managed to survive for twelve years — which by Nagawi standards of life expectancy represented early middle age. Those who survived the religious exercises went on to reproduce languidly but steadily, until by 1870, when Livingstone discovered it, the tribe had grown from its original handful to a thousand or more.

Their first mild notoriety was passed on to the outer world by European missionaries who had come there to see what could be done about the Nagawi’s souls and the fact that the women wore no blouses. The missionaries reported that the Nagawi chieftains pre-chewed all food before it was passed around to honored guests. Perhaps for that reason the Christian sects never showed quite the same zeal for converting the Nagawi as they did for converting tribes with different sorts of table etiquette.

The Nagawi’s second wave of fame came during the 1920s when their obscene root carvings were declared by a group of Paris-centered artists (known as “Les Sept Emmerdants”) to be superior to anything produced in stone by Michelangelo or in wood by Riemenschneider. The Nagawi were delighted to find they could receive valuable salt and fine cloth in exchange for trinkets that anybody with ten fingers and a sharp knife could knock out in half an hour.

But the peak of Nagawiland’s popularity with the rest of the world came when the foothills of its western borders were found to be bursting with ores of minerals precious to industrialized societies. Englishmen, whose nation had controlled the area since the 1914 World War, poured into the territory. They cut a harbor into the coastline and built a city there. Other towns sprang up and grew into cities. Electrical power plants burgeoned along the Bawu River. The Nagawi tribesmen could grow relatively rich if they chose to abandon their former way of life. Other native Africans trooped across the borders seeking the wages paid by the British. Nagawiland flourished.

But things changed in Britain and elsewhere. Highly educated men declared that the British had stolen Nagawiland from the Nagawi and ought to give it back, not only with its cities and power plants, but with additional reparations to make up in some small way for the damage they had done to human rights. Politicians of a number of states claimed that what the English had done amounted not only to theft, but to exploitation of Nagawi labor. Missionaries had once praised the strides the Nagawi had made since the coming of European civilization. Now the European papers printed comparisons of the wages of Nagawi laborers with the wages of workers in Birmingham, Lille, and Milan. Pictures compared Nagawi shacks with residential areas of London and Stockholm. A Nagawi man who had been sent to Oxford to school went over to Hyde Park every Sunday morning and publicly cursed the English for sadistic brutes. The English audience applauded politely and took guilty note of the speaker’s scarred neck and missing ear lobes.

The political earthquakes which followed in due course were met with determination on the part of the white population of Nagawiland to maintain their own human rights.

In the move of the area from colonial status toward independence, only one man seemed able to keep the conflicting forces in fair balance and prevent his country’s becoming the slaughteryard into which so much of the rest of Africa had been turned. His name was Thomas Liskard, and he was the white Prime Minister of Nagawiland.

On a certain morning in January, Prime Minister Liskard prepared to fly to London for crucial talks with Her Majesty’s government which, it was hoped, would lead to some settlement of Nagawiland’s immediate problems. Nagawiland, being a small country, did not furnish its government officials with private transport planes, so the Prime Minister and his party were driven to the airport of Nagawiland’s capital city to meet a commercial jetliner coming up on a Capetown to London run.

It happened that on the same January morning Simon Templar was driven by taxi to the same airport in order to catch the same plane for London. The unlikely presence of that adventurer — who under his nickname of the Saint was perhaps better known throughout the world than Thomas Liskard himself — in Nagawiland is easily explained. The Saint was there as a tourist. Nagawiland is of course far from ordinary tourist routes, but then Simon Templar was far from an ordinary tourist. He was a man who lived on excitement and constant change. It was his penchant for the former which, diligently indulged from his earliest years, had enabled him to afford the latter. His buccaneering expeditions into the Never-Never Land of lawless men had earned him the fear and hatred of criminals, the grudging respect of police officials, and enough money to travel in the most elegant style anywhere in the world anytime he felt like it.

He had felt like going to Nagawiland for two primary reasons. In the first place, it was one of the few places left where one could see certain African animals in an almost completely natural state. Thanks to Liskard’s predecessors, a hugh preserve had been cordoned off and kept free from poachers. Simon had stayed in the guest house of the game park and thoroughly enjoyed himself for several days, luxuriating in the total absence of pressure. It was fascinating to be able to watch the animals in the park, whose lives were as direct, as cleanly instinctive and sometimes as deadly, as his own had always been.

The second reason for the Saint’s choice of Nagawiland as a place to spend those few days involved a more practical kind of interest. He wanted to see for himself one of those newly emergent countries whose teething troubles provided so much grist for the world’s press mills. Nagawiland had in recent months occupied considerably more space in newsprint than it did in geographical area, and much of the journalistic expanses dedicated to it were thronged with inky armies of reporters and editors marching forth in a sort of new Children’s Crusade against colonialism, restricted suffrage, and Thomas Liskard. Simon Templar, on the other hand, had developed a great admiration for Thomas Liskard, without of course having had any personal contact with him. It seemed to him that Liskard was one of the few politicians in the world who was more interested in the job he was doing for his country than in his own career. His whole life reflected his ability and integrity — and it was in fact his completely unblemished reputation among the British public as well as his own people which gave him his great personal power as a statesman, and which kept his land from catastrophe.

So Simon Templar had a chance, in going to Liskard’s country, not only to relax in the tropics while the world to the north shivered in wintry slush, but also to verify his positive opinions about Nagawiland’s good government. It seemed to him more than ever obvious that — contrary to the strictly liberal, rigidly democratic doctrines expressed in most of the newspapers — it was slightly better that a country be governed well by a few people than that it be governed poorly by a great many.

It was not one of the Saint’s intentions to take a look at Thomas Liskard himself, but the fact that he did see the Prime Minister was no great coincidence. There was only one direct flight to London each week from Nagawiland’s just created jet-sized airfield, so everybody going to London in any given seven-day period would naturally collect at the terminal on the same morning.

The Saint, tall and lean and tanned, in a middleweight blue suit that tried to take into account the fact what while it was 98 degrees Fahrenheit here it would be 42 degrees in London when he got off the plane, gratefully left the sweltering glare of the asphalt drive where his taxi had dropped him, and entered the air-conditioned coolness of the terminal building. The place was not large by European standards, but it was white and clean and new, and it possessed a small restaurant which supplied him a late breakfast

When he came out into the waiting room he immediately noticed an atmosphere of expectancy among the airport personnel and the two dozen or so waiting passengers and their friends. Simon, having read in the papers that the Prime Minister would be traveling on the same flight that he was taking, realized what the anticipation was all about. He stationed himself in a comfortable chair alongside a row of tropical flowers in colorful ceramic pots. There he could have a farewell view of the Nagawiland countryside, get a look at the Prime Minister when he arrived, and read the morning paper in detail.

The front page carried reports of threats against the Prime Minister’s life by “nationalist groups,” and the reassuring news that the jetliner and its passengers would be thoroughly searched for bombs and weapons before Liskard got aboard. The small but vociferous Popular Front party (which amounted to the disloyal opposition to Liskard’s United Reform party, and which took a much more “liberal” line) deplored such extremist excesses as assassination attempts, but sympathized with their motives and called for Liskard’s resignation and “return” of the government to the hands of “the people.”

There are certain species of birds which are said to detect the approach of a hurricane several days before its arrival, and to abandon the threatened area while the air is still mild and sunny. Simon Templar had the same facility for sensing with great precision when some explosive event was about to take place in his presence. Without that sixth sense he would never have survived and prospered as long as he had. In this case he had a distinct feeling that an attempt to kill the Prime Minister would actually be made, and that if it were not made in the capital, or on the road the Prime Minister would be traveling, it would very possibly be here at Nagawiland’s National Airport.

The Saint did not shrug such intuitions off lightly, but at the same time he did not regard himself as an infallible prophet. His premonition — which he was quite ready to laugh off when it proved to be wrong — took a practical form only in that it made him more alert and gave his nerves and muscles a pleasant ready tension.

“Here he comes,” one of the baggage clerks said.

The people in the waiting room watched as several automobiles pulled up in the asphalt circular drive and discharged their passengers. Simon saw the tall Prime Minister’s shaggy thatch of brown hair above the other heads. Policemen entered the waiting room. Some obvious secret service types already there began to look even more obvious. Then came half a dozen photographers walking backwards, and walking toward them came Thomas Liskard, his blonde wife, and his associates and aides.

A section of the waiting room had been roped off in advance, and now it was occupied by the government group. Simon, not standing and craning his neck as most of the others in the place had done, caught only glimpses of Liskard’s rather rumpled gray suit in the crowd. At the same time, he saw the jet which was to take them to London swooping smoothly down on to the runway.

The photographers had just about exhausted the possibilities for pictures in the waiting room. They drifted away from the official party, most of them going out to the loading area. Some of the police went in the same direction. The pack around the Prime Minister began to break up and disperse. Liskard, his wife, and several of their group took seats in the roped-off section. The whining roar of the jetliner grew louder as the plane taxied toward the terminal building. Just before it stopped, its engines generated so much noise, even in the more or less soundproofed waiting room, that conversation came to a virtual halt.

That was when Simon Templar suddenly seemed to go mad. One moment he was lounging peaceably in his chair. The next instant he sprang to his feet with a yell, snatched up a blue ceramic pot containing a crimson tropical blossom, and hurled it across the airport waiting room at the Prime Minister of Nagawiland.

2

Within two seconds, two more ceramic pots were flying through the air from Simon Templar’s side of the room toward the Prime Minister and his party. Liskard, his wife, and his associates were diving for cover, and the Saint was throwing himself down to avoid gunfire that might understandably be sent in his direction by the official party’s guards. But the only gunfire came from the ceiling, and it was directed at Thomas Liskard.

Along the ceiling were a series of grid-covered air-conditioning ducts, and it was through the grating of one of those two-foot-square holes that the Saint had seen — just before he jumped to his feet, and began to throw things — the head and shoulders of a man, and a rifle barrel. Merely shouting a warning at the Prime Minister would probably have resulted in nothing more, at least for the first precious few seconds, than startled stares — even if the shout were heard at all. So the Saint threw the pots, and even before the third had smashed against the floor beside the Prime Minister’s sofa, rifle shots thudded harmlessly into the sofa and shattered the plate glass window just behind it.

Before the police and the secret service men could so much as turn toward the Saint, their attention was caught by the crack of the rifle above their heads. The pistols which might have been directed at Simon were quickly aimed at the grating, and bullets clanged against the metal and plunked holes in the plaster around the hole.

There was no answering fire from the rifleman. Men dashed out of the doors of the waiting room to surround the building. Others crouched with drawn pistols behind chairs, gazing up at the row of gratings in the ceiling, waiting for more shots.

“Everybody stay down,” somebody was shouting.

“Is Tom all right?” one of Liskard’s aides called from the shelter of an alcove.

“I’m fine,” Liskard boomed back.

His rumbling resonant voice was suited to the size of his body. He was crouched behind the sofa. His wife had disappeared entirely behind it.

“Look there!”

Since the walls of the whole waiting room were almost entirely glass, the last phase of the attempted assassination was visible to everyone inside the building. A white man in a soiled tan suit appeared on the edge of the low roof which covered the unloading area of the driveway. He fired his rifle wildly without taking real aim at any of the security men around the terminal building, then jumped to the ground. He fell forward on his hands and knees when he hit the grass, and then snatched up his rifle and ran. The guards had no choice but to shoot him down. Their weapons crackled in a sudden fusillade. The would-be assassin leaped twisting into the air, throwing his rifle above his head. Then he crashed down on the earth and moved no more.

A civilian-dressed security man and a uniformed policeman were already standing over Simon, their guns drawn. It was by no means obvious to them whether he was an accomplice of the gunman or not. The Saint got to his feet with the utmost casualness and dusted his coat sleeves and the knees of his trousers. The secret service man looked around, not quite sure what to do with him.

“I believe this gentleman saved my life,” a deep voice said.

Thomas Liskard was walking across the room toward the Saint, much to the discomfort of his bodyguard, who thought he should stay under cover until the area was declared entirely safe. The other non-official persons in the waiting room were being gently herded into one small section of the place so that they could be easily watched over and questioned. The Saint, as a man long inured to life’s more spectacular possible crises, had only one really pressing thought: Now we’ll be hours late on the takeoff.

Prime Minister Liskard strode easily up to him and offered his huge hand. He was the kind of bulky bearish man whose very clumsiness had a politically valuable magnetism to it, and whose craggily handsome face had an obvious substratum of keen intelligence.

“Thank you, sir,” he said to the Saint. “That was quick thinking.”

They shook hands.

“I’m sorry about the method,” Simon said. “I didn’t have time to observe protocol.”

“I don’t think there is a really proper way of telling a Prime Minister to fall on his face,” Liskard replied with a grin. “I’m damned grateful.”

The secret service men were standing by ready to pounce. Liskard waved them back.

“If you boys kept up on your work, you’d know who this is,” Liskard said to them. “Mr Simon Templar, isn’t it, unless I’m very mistaken?”

A slight raising of the Saint’s eyebrows was all that betrayed his mild surprise.

“I have to admit I didn’t realize my notoriety had spread quite so far,” he said. “Or to such high circles.”

“This is a small country, Mr Templar,” Liskard said. “There’s not much that happens that I don’t hear about. What with constant threats against me and this country in general, we can’t afford to have guests dropping in without a strict screening process — and when the guest has your fame, especially among professional policemen, his name goes straight to the top of the bureaucratic pyramid as soon as he crosses our border.” Liskard smiled. “As a matter of fact, you were within our ken pretty well all the time. I have some excellent snapshots of you taking snapshots of leopards out at the park.”

Then it was Simon’s turn to smile.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I have some excellent snapshots of your men taking snapshots of me. Especially a little bald chap who almost got gored by a wart hog while he was watching me watch baboons.”

Prime Minister Liskard laughed out loud.

“You deserve your reputation,” he said. “I hope our attention didn’t offend you.”

“Not at all,” Simon said. “It made me feel right at home. I’d have felt a little lost without knowing that somebody was there watching.”

“Well,” Liskard said, “it’s a good thing you were watching, Mr Templar, or I might be dead at this moment. Please do me the honor of sitting with my group on the plane.”

“I’d be delighted.”

An important-looking man in a dark suit came up and spoke to Liskard.

“His name was Benjamin Scott. You remember? The one who escaped from Awi Bluff a week ago.”

“A madman then?” Liskard asked. “Is that all there is to it?”

“Possibly. We’re putting in a call to the director at Awi Bluff. Maybe he can tell us just what sort of lunatic the fellow was.”

“Is he dead?” one of Liskard’s younger aides asked.

“Died instantly. Nothing on him. I think we can assume this was one insane man’s big blow-up. It shouldn’t have political overtones or affect your trip.”

“Thank you, Stewart. Please let me know if there’s anything more before we take off. I’d not like to be delayed any longer than necessary.”

Stewart spoke to some other men, and within ten minutes the plane was beginning to take on passengers. Liskard was swept away, after a word of apology to Simon, in a tide of last-minute business; but a moment after the loading of the plane began, a very officious-looking young man with a bulging briefcase in one hand came scurrying up to the Saint.

“I’m Lockhart, the Prime Minister’s secretary,” he said. “I’m to ask you to please come past the barrier with me and join our party on the plane.”

Simon turned to follow him, and almost bumped into someone else.

“And I’m the Prime Minister’s wife,” she said, not making the slightest move to increase the minute space between herself and Simon. “The Prime Minister didn’t bother to introduce us,” she went on. “I think sometimes he forgets he has a wife.”

“He’d have to be terribly forgetful, in that case,” replied the Saint. “But in the circumstances, I’m sure he has a lot on his mind.”

She was about thirty-five, very attractive, very blonde, and there was a neurotic tension in the carefully made-up contours of her face. Simon had a hunch that her apparent calm in the midst of the storm of the assassination attempt was the result of a good deal of alcoholic insulation.

“We’d better hurry, please,” Lockhart said in clipped, high cultured tones.

“Don’t worry, Jimmy,” Mrs Liskard said. “We won’t get you in trouble with the big man.”

“Shall we go on, then?” Simon suggested.

He was made considerably more uncomfortable by the boozily affectionate wives of other men than he was by wild-eyed assassins with high-powered rifles. Mrs Liskard smiled at him, took his arm before he could get it out of her reach, and walked with him around the crowd of people waiting to board the plane.

“Jimmy is a very ambitious boy,” she said loudly enough for Lockhart to hear. “He’s terribly afraid of upsetting the big man.”

Lockhart ignored the crack and Simon tried to. They boarded the big jet and entered a curtained-off section between the pilot’s area and the rest of the seating accommodations. From his window Simon could see Liskard giving solemnly confident waves to the photographers before he came up the ramp. Mrs Liskard asked Lockhart to see about getting her a gin and tonic. A steward and stewardess appeared to make certain all was in order in the private section. Mrs Liskard asked them to see about getting her a gin and tonic since Lockhart was taking so long.

Simon did not like Mrs Liskard in spite of her attractiveness. He had nothing against amiable alcoholics in general, but Mrs Liskard was too amiable to him and too unamiable to other people, toward whom she tended to take a coldly condescending attitude. And her amiability toward Simon took a curious and very irritating form of expression. When other people, such as Lockhart, were watching, she fell all over him, but when there was no one else paying any attention she dropped the whole passionate display almost entirely. Her eyes were always darting around her immediate vicinity, searching for an audience, sizing up the impression she was making.

“Here he comes,” whispered the steward to the stewardess.

There was a bustle as Liskard entered the plane. Mrs Liskard went for Simon’s nearest arm and hand, both her arms and hands wrapping around his like vines. She shot him a dazzling and absolutely artificial smile, which he returned as he removed his arm and hand firmly from her grasp. Her smile faded, then came back more false than ever as her husband came into the curtained compartment along with half a dozen other men. One of them was the man called Stewart, Nagawiland’s Foreign Minister, who had spoken to Liskard in the terminal building about the identity of the dead gunman. Another was immediately recognizable to any reader of newspapers as Nagawiland’s Deputy Prime Minister, James Todd. He was neither as dynamic as Liskard nor as vaguely aristocratic and important-looking as the fortyish Stewart. Todd was a head shorter than either Liskard or Stewart, and ten or more years older. His graying hair was thin, and he wore rimless bifocals whose thick lower crescents distorted the lower part of his eyes. He was reputed to be a professional government man of great ability, but he looked more like a village parson or almost-retired schoolteacher than second in command to Thomas Liskard.

Simon did riot recognize the other four men who entered with Liskard. He judged from their deferential behavior that they held nothing like the status of Liskard and his two top associates. They stood holding briefcases and bundles of papers, while Todd and Stewart took seats. Anne Liskard caught her husband’s hand as he passed her.

“Oh, Tom, we’ve been having the most wonderful time while you were posing out there! Except we can’t get a thing to drink. Mr Templar is so fascinating. I think you should make him your second deputy or something. I’m sure he could handle those socialists.”

Todd looked at her over his shoulder with open disgust. Liskard wore the expression of a man who had been through it all before and expected to keep on going through it. He leaned down and whispered in his wife’s ear. Simon just caught his words.

“You gave me your word, if I brought you along...”

Mrs Liskard giggled loudly and pushed him playfully away.

“Oh, Tom, don’t be so secretive!” she said with every effort to make her voice carry as far as possible. “Everybody knows you made me promise to behave myself before you’d let me come along.”

“Then try behaving yourself now,” Liskard said patiently.

He took a seat across the aisle.

“I have been,” his wife protested. She turned to the Saint. “Simon, haven’t I been behaving myself? Behaving means not drinking, of course.” She giggled again. “I’ve been trying to behave, but Lockhart’s gone off and won’t bring me that gin and tonic.”

She was speaking to her husband again, but he ignored her. She turned back to Simon.

“I’m really not so bad. I’m always perfectly dignified when any reporters are around, and they’re the only ones who count, after all, aren’t they?”

One of the jet’s engines coughed and whined to full life. Simon wished heartily that he had somehow been able to warn Thomas Liskard of the assassin in the ceiling and at the same time to see that Mrs Liskard was left as a tempting target on the sofa.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to let your husband judge those things,” he said.

Anne Liskard’s face contorted into a frowning sulkiness.

“I certainly should think a gentleman could defend me a little better than that!” she said.

Simon got to his feet as a second engine went into action.

“You’re not leaving us?” Thomas Liskard said.

“With all respect,” Simon answered, “I’m afraid I’m not quite enough of a diplomat to handle the problems you have here.”

A lesser man than Liskard might have been gravely offended by the Saint’s bluntness, gently put though it was. But the Prime Minister accepted the Saint’s comment without a trace of embarrassment or irritation.

“Nonsense,” he said. “Please sit down. I’m looking forward to a chat with you on the flight. My wife is just... overexcited. She’ll calm down when she gets a drink into her.”

Simon sat down again with a shrug of thanks for Liskard’s understanding.

“Well, where is that drink?” his wife demanded of Lockhart, who came through the curtains at just that moment.

Lockhart gave the Prime Minister a questioning but otherwise absolutely neutral look.

“Would you please ask the stewardess to bring my wife a gin and tonic?” Liskard said, with quiet dignity.

“Yes, sir,” said Lockhart, and turned back through the curtain.

All four of the engines had been switched on now, and their noise hindered casual conversation. Simon took a deep breath of relief as he saw that Anne Liskard had decided to sink into sullen silence. A stewardess hurried in with a double gin and tonic and profuse apologies to Mrs Liskard. The voice of another stewardess sounded from a loudspeaker in the cool blue upholstery of the ceiling in the standardized litany to which today’s airline passengers have become so wearily immune that they scarcely hear it.

“... Please fasten your seat belts and refrain from smoking until after take-off.”

A moment later the tone of the jets changed, and the blinding white of the terminal building began to move slowly across the plane’s windows. Todd turned to speak to the Prime Minister.

“It’ll be good to get off the ground — and better still to get down again.”

“Let’s just hope it’s not a question of leaving the frying pan for the fire,” Liskard said good-humoredly. “From what our advance group tells me about the greeting we can expect in London, that little business in the waiting room may seem like a tea party in comparison.”

3

Prime Minister Liskard’s advance information about his English reception proved to be unpleasantly accurate. Even as the jet came down through the clouds to land at London Airport, one of Liskard’s aides pressed his cheek to the window beside his seat and exclaimed, “Do you see that? Must be five hundred of them!”

Simon leaned across Mrs Liskard, who had been sleeping off the effects of the first half of the flight during the second half with her head resting against the outer wall of the plane, and caught a glimpse of the dark herd of human figures congregated in an open space among the terminal’s complex of huge buildings. Then the momentary view was lost as the plane with strange slowness moved down an invisible incline of air toward contact with the runway.

“The welcoming committee?” Liskard asked with amused irony.

He was sitting across the aisle from the Saint, and had not been able to see.

“Your admirers seem to be out in force,” Simon confirmed.

“More likely a lynch mob,” Liskard responded dourly. “At least somebody cares.”

The wheels of the jet screeched suddenly against the pavement of the runway, and Mrs Liskard woke up.

“Who cares about what?” she asked blearily.

Half a dozen gin and tonics had not improved her perceptions nor her appearance. Her face was puffy and her lipstick smeared at one corner of her mouth. Even so, any man with reasonable tolerance for human frailty could have spotted her as potentially one of the most attractive women he was ever likely to meet. All the more pity, Simon thought, that she should be torn apart by whatever tensions drove her into a continual desire for semiconsciousness.

“We’re in London,” he told her. “We were just noticing the crowd that’s out to meet you.”

She tried to see. The plane was taxiing in toward the passenger terminal, but was still some distance away.

“Where?” she asked.

“On the other side of that building,” the Saint answered.

“Carrying roses, I suppose,” she said sarcastically.

Stewart turned from his place in front.

“Possibly,” he said, “but what they were carrying looked more like pitchforks.”

Anne Liskard’s eyes widened in a gullible expression which may or may not have been entirely put on.

“You couldn’t really see that well, could you?” she asked.

Stewart shook his head, sighed, and faced front again.

“Were there really so many?” Lockhart asked. “Five hundred? The opposition must be much worse than we thought.”

He was the only one of the party who seemed openly worried, but his statement sent a silent but somehow clearly perceptible wave of uneasiness through the rest of the group. The Prime Minister, who had spent the last two hours of the trip concentrating on paper work, snapped down the clasps of his briefcase.

“Let’s not blow this up out of proportion,” he said firmly. “These demonstrators are of no real importance. Keep that in mind. British public opinion is entirely on our side, and that’s what counts. The people in most civilized countries can still tell sanity from insanity even if a lot of their politicians can’t. Those howling monkeys with the placards can sound pretty bloodcurdling, but when the government gets down to business they’ll think of votes.”

“But these monkeys will get top play in the headlines,” one of the aides put in. “When you see the papers tomorrow you’ll hardly know we were here.”

The Deputy Prime Minister, Todd, made an uncomplimentary and fairly obscene remark about newspapermen and the bias of the international press, which almost invariably took a dim view of self-assertive activities on the part of Europeans anywhere in the world.

“It doesn’t matter,” Liskard insisted. “I don’t want anybody in this delegation to show any sign of disturbance, no matter what kind of demonstration they have in store for us. Is that understood? Look pleasant. Keep your dignity. It’s the best way to turn one of these situations into a defeat for the other side. Remember — if out of a hundred photographs the editors can find one that makes us look bad, that’s the one they’ll print on the front page.”

“Right,” Foreign Minister Stewart said. “And the same goes for statements. I don’t need to remind you that an unwise word to some interviewer could ham up the negotiations completely.”

He was speaking not to Liskard, of course, but to the younger aides, and surprisingly, to Todd, who looked grim suddenly and avoided the eyes of the other men. Apparently the Deputy Prime Minister had indiscreetly overstepped the bounds of his authority at some time in the past while dealing with the press.

“Excuse me, please,” Anne Liskard said. “I must go put on a face to meet the faces that I’ll meet.”

“It’ll be a little easier after the plane stops,” said the Saint

She gave him a crisply cool smile as she stood up. She had by no means forgiven him for refusing to respond to her public displays of affection at the beginning of the trip, and then for devoting himself almost entirely to conversation with her husband during the middle hours of the flight.

“Thank you for the warning,” she said in clipped tones.

“I’m quite capable of lurching down the aisle to the ladies’ room without any advice from Robin Hood.”

Simon let her lurch and sat back down to have a look out the drizzle-beaded window. It was late in the day, and the brightness of the sky far above the earth had been abruptly exchanged, when the plane descended below the sea of clouds that had been like a solid surface beneath it, for the fading gray light of a rainy winter afternoon. The pavement glistened clammily, and east was merged with west, and north with south, in the congested sky that seemed to press down and smother the whole country as night came on.

A hundred yards away, beside one of the wings of the terminal building, he saw the wheeled stairway which would be put up to the jet’s door. Near it was a black limousine and a handful of men. It was not a very spectacular reception, considering Liskard’s status, and Simon regretted it. Whatever reservations he had felt about being with the Prime Minister’s party at the beginning of the flight, when he had realized what sort of woman Mrs Liskard was, he had grown much more pleased with the situation during his long chat with Thomas Liskard. His intuition about the man — based only on reading — had proved right. The Prime Minister was a straight, honest, and intelligent man who shared nothing of the barren lust for power or the dependence on cloudy and utterly impractical social theories with which so many of his counterparts in other countries were leading their people in the direction of hypothetical Utopias which in reality prove to be nothing more, at their noisiest, than maelstroms of disorder, or, at their dullest, stagnant backwaters of living death. More than ever, the Saint saw Liskard as a bulwark — even if not a very powerful one — against the denial of truths about human instinct and the strange guilty deference to mediocrity, indolence and weakness which sometimes seemed to be threatening to emasculate the whole western world.

One of the stewardesses who had been serving the party throughout the flight came into the curtained compartment as the plane stopped and cut its engines.

“We’ll hold the other passengers in their places until your party is off, Mr Prime Minister,” she said.

Liskard turned in his seat and shook his head. “I think it would be best if the others left first,” he told her. “we might delay things at the foot of the gangway for quite a while.”

The stewardess leaned down and peered out of one of the windows.

“I don’t see any band or anything,” she said.

Liskard laughed.

“You’re probably remembering the reception you got when you flew some murderous little tribal dictator through here on his way to bawl out the United Nations. There’ll be no brass band for the likes of us. We can count ourselves lucky that they haven’t laid on a firing squad.”

“Assuming they haven’t,” said Stewart with a wry grin.

Lockhart stood up as the plane’s personnel set about opening the door and shepherding the ordinary passengers out. He pointed suddenly toward the open deck on the upper floor of the terminal building.

“Look at that!”

On the terrace, where friends of passengers were able to stand and wave to arriving and departing passengers, there was a violent commotion. Apparently a dozen or so anti-Liskard demonstrators had gone up there individually without attracting any special attention from the police. Now the demonstrators — who were of the shorn and shod variety, and were able to avoid arousing suspicion until they were ready to act — pulled rolls of paper from under their coats and unfurled them into banners with brief but clearly legible messages printed in large red letters.

The police obviously had been instructed to allow no demonstrations in the terminal building, an instruction with which the demonstrators disagreed with open vehemence when they were informed of it. The policemen tried to take their signs away, and there was a scuffle. One of the demonstrators sat down. Another clung to the pedestal of a coin-slot telescope with arms and legs. All began to chant so loudly that their words could be heard inside the plane as the passengers disembarked.

“Liskard out! Freedom in! Liskard out! Freedom in!”

Lockhart shook his head.

“Ugly-looking lot, aren’t they?”

Liskard pretended he was referring to the very correctly dressed gentlemen grouped to meet him by the rolling stairway.

“You’re speaking of the flower of the lower branches of the diplomatic corps,” he said.

Lockhart’s youthful face turned crimson.

“I mean the demonstrators, sir,” he said stiffly.

Liskard, who was standing next to his secretary, clapped him on the shoulder.

“You take things much too seriously, Lockhart. You’ve got to laugh sometimes or you’ll go loony. That’s especially true when you look at types like that out there with the signs. They screech for peace, but they’d as soon kill you for disagreeing with them as not.”

Todd grunted.

“I suppose you’re planning to say that when you speak to the press?” he said.

Anne Liskard, who was returning down the aisle, produced a sarcastic chuckle.

“Don’t be silly. Tom knows as well as anybody that honesty has its own season.”

“At least I know when I’m lying and when I’m not — though we call it being diplomatic, not lying. At least when you know a man’s self-interest is clearly tied with his own survival and his possessions and his people, you know where you stand with him. To me, the most potentially destructive man of all is the one who really believes his motives are based on universal ideals instead of what he’d call more selfish loyalties. Show me a man who claims he bases his actions on the principle that all power is evil, and that human want and inequality can be done away with, and that the world can be persuaded and legislated into eternal peace and brotherhood, and I’ll show you a man who’s either a liar or a fool... and most likely a very unstable and dangerous fool at that.”

Anne Liskard sighed.

“The philosopher king,” she muttered.

Simon, who had found it more interesting to listen than to intrude his own thoughts, extended his hand to Liskard.

“I’ll just say thank you,” he said. “I’d better get off with the rest of the common people. But I’d like to wish you luck.”

“You aren’t leaving us to that mob, are you?” Anne Liskard asked tauntingly.

“Mr Templar has already saved my life once today,” the Prime Minister said. “I can’t ask him to do it again. But I can ask him to dinner with us. Tomorrow night, Mr Templar? It won’t be terribly elaborate, which means it may be a little more bearable than most of these diplomatic things.”

“Please do!” Anne Liskard begged, with more sincerity than show. “You have no idea what a relief it would be to have a real person at the table along with all those marionettes.”

“We might even be able to furnish you with some of that excitement you’re so famous for enjoying. There could be other attempts against my life here in London.”

At that moment, the last thing that Simon wanted was any further exciting involvement in international politics, and he might have refused the Prime Minister’s invitation if he had had time to give it thought; but the last of the non-political passengers were descending the ramp from the door of the plane, and he hoped to make his exit as an anonymous member of the herd. Newspapers would be hawking the story of the Nagawiland assassination attempt all over the city by now, and reporters would be baying like a pack of hounds after any detail of the story and any personality involved — and particularly any personality already as fabled as the Saint. His chance of avoiding recognition was slim now, but it would be totally nil within another minute.

“Thank you very much,” he said hastily. “I’d be honored to come, even without any gunfire to liven up the evening. But now I’d better get out of here.”

“Come with us if you like,” the Prime Minister said. “I’d certainly be delighted to introduce you to the press and publicly thank you for saving my life.”

“I’m afraid that being blinded by flashbulbs and answering silly questions in a freezing rain isn’t my idea of a rewarding experience,” the Saint said. “I’d be much more grateful for dinner tomorrow.”

Liskard grinned.

“Entirely understandable. We’ll see you at Nagawi House tomorrow evening. Eight o’clock.”

“Fine.”

Simon shook hands with Anne Liskard, who apparently had forgiven him for not prostrating himself in helpless worship after her first attentions and was showing signs of becoming hot-eyed and clinging again.

“It was very exciting to meet you,” she said.

“I haven’t been bored for a minute myself,” Simon told her. “Good night, and thank you.”

As he hurried through the curtains toward the plane’s exit, he heard Thomas Liskard’s deep voice behind him.

“And now... out into the arena and the lions.”

4

The violent night of the Prime Minister of Nagawiland’s arrival at London Airport is a matter of history. The Saint learned the full story of Liskard’s unofficial welcome to London by the forces of righteousness the next morning in the newspapers.

Apparently the demonstrators blocking traffic outside the terminal had been more than mildly chagrined that a would-be assassin had failed to kill Prime Minister Liskard in Nagawiland and had resolved to set things right by killing him themselves. They had not succeeded, although a window of the limousine carrying him had been cracked by a thrown brick and spattered with broken eggs. Foreign Minister Stewart had been spat upon, and Deputy Prime Minister Todd had been struck by a placard bearing the vague but undeniably optimistic sentiment, “FREEDOM AND EQUALITY FOR ALL PEOPLE!”

The Saint was surprised and gratified to read that Liskard’s secretary, young Lockhart, had pushed a demonstrator to the ground who had been trying to kick the Prime Minister as he left the terminal building, and had also torn in half a colorfully if obscenely illustrated poster which read “AFRICAN PEOPLE’S UNION WILL TIE KILLER LISKARD’S HANDS WITH HIS OWN ENTRAILS!”

Lockhart’s exploit of course received top billing in the newspapers, which featured photographs of him in action along with such captions as, “Police state Gestapo in London? Liskard’s burly bodyguard attacks demonstrator.” Other photographs highlighted injuries suffered by the pickets, and showed policemen engaged in the sadistic activity of dragging them out of the public thoroughfare. “Spokesmen” seriously questioned whether representatives of a regime like Liskard’s, which deliberately stirred up such commotions, should be allowed to set foot on English soil or not.

The afternoon papers headlined the news that Lockhart — who was no more burly than he was a bodyguard — had been “disciplined” by Prime Minister Liskard and sent back to Nagawiland. Simon, as sorry as he was to hear about that, understood the political necessity of Liskard’s action. Without the support of the English majority, Liskard’s mission would be doomed. The vicious demonstrations against him had certainly increased his popularity, while Lockhart’s behavior — especially as it was reported in distorted form by the left-wing press — was just the kind of thing that could ruin Liskard completely. His position was so precarious that he and his associates would have to be a dozen times more virtuous, more polite, more modest, more unblemished in general than ordinary men to stand even a small chance of being judged the moral superiors of the most debased inmates of Her Majesty’s prisons. If Liskard could pull that somewhat superhuman feat off successfully, the stability of his country might be preserved.

And that, Simon thought, was exactly what Liskard’s political enemies would be most anxious to prevent. If Liskard managed to get through his stay in England without something more deeply damaging to his cause than riots or rifle bullets aimed in his direction, it would be a miracle of such magnitude that the Saint would not thereafter have been at all surprised to see the monumental stone lions of Trafalgar Square get up off their perches, yawn, and stroll away toward Piccadilly Circus.

Simon enjoyed his whimsical thought about lions as he was leaving Upper Berkeley Mews and setting out by taxi for the Prime Minister’s dinner in Hampstead. He had spent the day doing those necessary and temporarily novel-seeming ordinary things which people do just after returning from a long trip.

Now he was ready to relax, and attending a formal dinner with a lot of stuffed tuxedoes was not his idea of relaxation. There was only one compensating factor. As dull as the dinner might be, it would bring him in close contact with the most important political situation developing in London at that time. There was some interest and a little excitement in that. But more to the Saint’s taste was the prospect of keeping up a contact with a worthy man whose very continued existence from hour to hour was something of a marvel, and who was bound to become the target of the most advanced forms of defamation and general nastiness that his enemies could contrive.

The Saint did not like plotters against worthy men. He had devoted considerable energy in his lifetime to bringing the activities of such plotters to abrupt and often violent ends. The fact that their ends often coincided with a transfer of material assets from their coffers to the Saint’s numerous bank accounts was no denial of the fact that he gained great spiritual satisfaction just from doing them in. And if he could help Thomas Liskard, if only by appearing at a dinner, he was delighted to do it.

Nagawi House was a fairly modest establishment, as residences maintained by governments on foreign soil go, but it was set back on spacious grounds, and its restrained brick lines were a tribute to neo-classicism. Fortunately its generations-dead architect had thought not only of beauty but also of practicality, having included a high brick wall which helped keep out the thieves of his own time and the picket lines of the twentieth century.

They were there, a hundred shaggy-bearded worshippers of dirt, despisers of achievement and work, fearers of all things strong and superior, proclaimers of an opiate called universal love. They were the bacteria of anarchy, and they were gathered in motley force outside the gates of Nagawi House.

“Hold your nose, sir, we’re going through,” the taxi driver said over his shoulder.

The cab pushed through the lane held open by hard-pressed police, and several dozen voices on either side screeched obscenities. Inside the gates, along the crescent drive, the lawn was free of wild-eyed humanity. Hoarfrost glittered on the grass in the light of lamps which stood on either side of the doorway. The doorman greeted Simon and ushered him into the entrance hall, where his identity was checked before he was admitted to the main reception room. There he took his place in the line-up of dignitaries shuffling toward Thomas Liskard and his wife.

“Simon, I’m so glad you came,” Anne Liskard said smoothly.

For the first time the Saint understood why — aside from the woman’s silvery beauty, which was dazzlingly set off by diamonds and a pure white shoulderless evening dress-Thomas Liskard had been able to fit her in with his political career. If she was drunk, she was concealing it gracefully. Her smile was warm and dignified, and her handshake completely decorous. Apparently she was ambitious enough or decent enough to control her weaknesses in public. If Simon had not seen her in more intimate action the day before he would never have guessed that such shattering drives were fighting beneath her entirely attractive surface.

“It’s nice to see you again,” the Saint answered, no less suavely. “I’m sorry you had that trouble with the pickets yesterday.”

Now he could see that her smile was a little too fixed and imperturbable to be genuine.

“It was quite an adventure,” she said. “You came down to Africa to see the wild animals, but I was quite surprised to discover that you have more right here than we ever dreamed of having.”

“Not more,” Simon said. “Just more in evidence.”

He moved on to Thomas Liskard, who had just been vacated by a very large gentlemen with a white walrus mustache.

“Very happy to see you,” he said, shaking Simon’s hand warmly.

His smile was much more spontaneous and convincing than his wife’s had been, but there was a strain in his eyes which betrayed his worry.

“I hope things are going well for you,” the Saint said.

“Well enough. We don’t really get down to business until tomorrow.”

Liskard was obviously preoccupied with his duties as host and greeter, so Simon started to move away after a few more words. He was surprised when Liskard stopped him with a touch on his arm and leaned forward to speak to him confidentially.

“I must talk to you alone,” he said. “Please don’t leave after dinner before we can get together.”

“Certainly.”

The Saint felt that peculiar thrill which often ran through his nerves when he sensed that he was on to something out of the ordinary. Maybe he would have a chance to give Prime Minister Liskard more than moral support after all. The social chitchat and the prolonged not very good dinner became no more than a journey he had to endure until he could speak with Liskard in private.

At last the thirty guests had been sufficiently regaled with toasts, filets, and crisp conversation to warrant their exodus from the dining room back to the reception room for after-dinner drinks. It was at that point that Liskard caught Simon’s eye and moved toward a hallway in the opposite direction from the movement of the crowd. The Saint followed. A moment later he found himself in an oak-paneled study — a lush but impersonal setting of leather chairs, a massive desk and heavy tables, shelves of books arranged in untouched perfection, and several paintings of Nagawiland’s countryside and industrial plants.

Liskard locked the door behind Simon and thanked him for coming. The public smile had vanished from his face, which looked much older than it had the day before. He said nothing as he poured brandy from a decanter into a pair of snifters. The Saint took the wing-backed chair which the Prime Minister indicated. He warmed the brandy in its crystal sphere with his hands as he waited. Liskard unlocked a drawer of the desk with a key taken from his pocket and drew out a fat white envelope.

The Saint inhaled the scent of the cognac deeply and released his breath with profound satisfaction. It was a satisfaction produced by more than the aroma of Delamain. It was a combination of contained excitement and pleasure at the knowledge that his destiny was running on schedule. The white envelope was going to confirm his earlier thoughts about the calumnies which would be directed at Liskard. The lions would stay frozen on their pedestals in Trafalgar Square.

“This came in the mail today,” Liskard said.

He did not offer the envelope to Simon, but slapped it down on top of the desk with the air of a man dealing a possible fourth ace to a gambling opponent. Simon nodded and let some brandy touch his tongue. Liskard clasped his hands behind his back and paced to the outer wall. He drew back one of the heavy drawn curtains slightly and looked out toward the front gate. The chants of the mob there came faintly into the room and faded again as he let the curtain fall back into place.

“Those are photostats of letters I wrote to a woman — a girl — here three years ago. Whoever sent them says he’ll show them to my wife and to the press in two days from now.”

Simon put down his glass.

“That’s clear enough and to the point. What’s the price?”

Liskard paced back to the desk and sat down heavily in the swivel chair behind it.

“That’s the most peculiar part. There’s no mention of money specifically. Look.”

Liskard leaned forward and opened the white envelope. He handed the Saint a small square of note paper whose typed message Simon studied carefully.

Simon put the paper back on the desk.

“That’s a peculiar form of blackmail. It’s very possible you’ll hear more from this character before the time is up. Could he have some special interest in wanting you to squirm?”

“A lot of people would like to see me squirm in a vat of hot oil or worse.”

Liskard seemed to be holding something back. Rather than question the Prime Minister directly, however, Simon first mentioned another angle.

“If this is being done by political enemies — which are the most likely sort of enemies for a man in your position to have, I should think — then why didn’t they just turn the letters over to the press right away without warning you? Or if they want some political concession out of you, like quitting the conference here, why didn’t they hit you with that demand when they hit you with these photostats? It seems stupid to give you a chance to prepare some kind of counterattack.”

“It does,” agreed Liskard.

Again, he seemed reluctant to say what was on his mind, so Simon continued with the obvious conclusion.

“Whatever the ultimate point of this turns out to be, it seems right now that the motive is to make you suffer. That hints at a personal vendetta, and it may mean that whoever sent these to you has no real intention of showing them to anybody else. He just wants to give you a couple of sleepless nights.”

“I’d like to think it was that easy,” Liskard said.

He had slumped his big body far down in his chair and was staring at the oriental carpet with brooding eyes.

“I assume you didn’t ask me in here just so you could share the glad tidings with me,” the Saint said.

Liskard looked up at him.

“No. Of course not. I’m being presumptuous enough to ask for your help. By reputation, you particularly dislike blackmail. It’s the sort of thing you may be willing to fight against — and I’m willing to pay you enough to make it quite worth your while.”

“So far so good,” said the Saint. “But I can’t be much help if you don’t let me know your own theories. Do you have any idea who might be doing this to you?”

Liskard sighed.

“Not really, but obviously my first thought is the girl I wrote them to. And naturally I’m not anxious to accuse somebody I... once thought so much of.”

“If you want me to help, we can’t be too delicate. What’s her name and what’s the whole story about her?”

“Her name is Mary Bannerman,” Liskard replied after a moment’s pause. “I met her here in London when I was up with the High Commission for several months. As I said, that was three years ago. She was a secretary trying to break into modeling. We had an affair that went on during most of the time I was here.”

“Was your wife in London?”

“No. She stayed at home.”

Simon took up his brandy glass again and got to his feet for a stroll around the room.

“And you wrote the letters while you were here? The Commission traveled all around Britain, as I recall.”

“Right. She was in London, and during those times I was away I wrote the letters... except for a few I sent her in England after the Commission went back to Nagawiland.”

“Absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, I gather.”

Liskard shook his head.

“It wasn’t that.”

“Was it just a physical thing that didn’t affect either of you very deeply?”

“I’m afraid it wasn’t that either. I told her I loved her... as she told me. I told her I’d leave my wife and marry her...”

“You told her all this in writing?” Simon asked, indicating the envelope.

Liskard looked sheepishly miserable.

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t really mean it?”

“I meant it at the time. That’s what makes me feel guilty. I had every intention of doing just as I’d said, and then...”

“Then what?” Simon asked when the rest of the statement failed to materialize.

Liskard looked up with a gesture of self-disgust.

“Templar, there are some things a man is almost too ashamed of to talk about. I went back to Nagawiland. Suddenly, I was in line for Prime Minister. A divorce would have ruined my chances, especially since my wife’s family is very big in our politics down there. So... I didn’t leave Anne. I dropped Mary. And I became Prime Minister.”

“How did Mary Bannerman take that?” Simon asked.

“Badly, but you can’t blame her, especially since she was very young.”

“How young?”

“Twenty-three then.”

“And married by now?”

“I honestly don’t know anything about her, except that she did become a model. I’ve seen her picture in magazine advertisements.”

Simon studied the expression on Liskard’s rugged face.

“Apparently you still have some feeling for her, if you don’t mind my saying so. If she is behind this, you’re going to have to think of her as an enemy, and not as a poor seduced child you feel terribly guilty about.”

Liskard’s eyes flashed with momentary anger. Then reason took the upper hand again and he spoke with controlled emotion.

“I’d rather you hadn’t said that, but... you do have a point. Of course my reason for not telling the police — or anybody else except you — about this isn’t just because of the danger of the news leaking out. It’s also because I feel Mary’s partially justified in doing this, if she is doing it, and I don’t want to hurt her. I’m hoping that you can — if you will-find out what she wants and somehow stop this whole business before anybody gets hurt.”

“That’s a little like telling me to go out and stop a charging rhino tenderly. If she’s really out for revenge, what exactly do you expect me to do?”

“I’m sure you’re better at things like that than I am,” Liskard replied. “But my first thought of course is that we should find out what we can about Mary and what she’s done with my letters... You might think of a way to get them back.”

Simon compressed his lips thoughtfully.

“Are they really very compromising?”

“Compromising?” Liskard echoed. For the first time since they had entered the room his usual sense of humor showed signs of breaking through his gloom. “They’re lurid. They make Casanova sound like a Salvation Army sergeant.”

“May I see one?”

The Saint had no prurient interest nor any great curiosity about the intimate details of Thomas Liskard’s love life, which were undoubtedly very much like the intimate details of everyone else’s love life. But he had learned to be skeptical enough about guilty-conscience reactions to want to make his own impartial estimate of how much dynamite there really was in that white envelope.

Liskard hesitated, and then without saying anything opened the envelope and handed over one of the sheets of paper which it contained. Simon read it quickly and was satisfied that the Prime Minister had not exaggerated.

“I see what you mean,” he said simply.

He handed it back.

“Pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?” Liskard said uncomfortably.

“Pretty certain to ruin your political career if it gets out,” the Saint said. “That kind of thing may go a long way with the ladies, but it doesn’t go over very big with the voting public.”

“You may think this is just high-sounding talk,” Liskard responded with desperate earnestness, “but now it isn’t my own career in politics that I’m worried about. If these negotiations should fall through, it could lead to chaos in my country.”

“I agree,” said the Saint. “And there’s not much time. Let’s see if Mary Bannerman is in the phone book.”

5

Mary Bannerman’s Chelsea address said a good deal for her successful rise from secretary to model. The Saint drove directly to her apartment building from Prime Minister Liskard’s dinner party. Back in Hampstead the diplomatic set was still going strong on a fuel mixture of champagne and hot air, but Simon had decided to try to see Liskard’s ex-girlfriend that same night — and with a preliminary phone call which could have helped her to evade his visit.

It was 10.30, and Chatterton Close — the half-block cul-de-sac in which Mary Bannerman lived — was quiet at that hour. Some very large, shiny, expensive cars and some very small, shiny, expensive cars were parked along either side of the street. The only sound was the click of the high heels of a pair of fur-wrapped girls hurrying along the sidewalk. Simon went into the three-storeyed white building marked “109” and climbed carpeted stairs to the second floor. Like the halls of all very fine apartment buildings, its halls were silent and smelled of wax and lemon furniture polish, without the slightest taint of pork fat or cabbage. Simon was pleased with that. He had a distinct preference for evildoers (if Mary Bannerman should indeed turn out to be an evildoer) who lived in sanitary surroundings.

The brass nameplate beside one of the doors read BANNERMAN. Simon was about to ring the bell when he heard voices filtering from the other side of the door. Obviously, considering the quiet of the rest of the building, the dialogue had to be taking place at an impressive level of volume for him to be able to hear it at all. The first voice was a woman’s.

“Get away from here, you filthy swine!”

“Give them to me or I’ll wring your selfish little neck!”

“Just try it!”

“I will!”

On the next line the woman’s voice rose to a screech of operatic proportions.

“Put away that gun, you fool!”

Simon was a great believer in the time honored equation of homes — or even apartments — with medieval castles, and concomitant rights of privacy, but he was an even stronger believer in the rights of women not to be menaced with weapons unless he was satisfied that they deserved such treatment. He turned the handle of the unlocked door and threw it open, knowing that would be enough by itself to stall any murder which might be about to take place.

The sudden opening of the door brought an even louder screech from the female voice than had the threat of the gun, and Simon found himself looking at a scene quite different from what he had expected.

The aggressive male was in a chair with a piece of paper in his hands. He looked brawny enough to do plenty of damage even without a gun, but he was much more startled than threatening. The woman was on her feet and had thrown herself back against the nearest wall in fright. She was young, redheaded, and gorgeous. The evidence that she was gorgeous was especially plentiful, since she was wearing a gauzy white negligee that might have been woven of spider webs and spun sugar, but obviously wasn’t since it was standing up under a considerable strain as its wearer twisted her body to stare at the Saint.

“Madame Tussaud’s?” he inquired apologetically.

The young man who had been seated jumped to his feet. He wore expensive trousers and a gray cashmere turtle-neck sweater.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“Apparently somebody who’s in the process of making an ass of himself,” Simon admitted. “Maybe I should go out and come in again.”

“Maybe you should just go out, period!” said the girl inhospitably.

“Who is this?” the man asked her.

“How should I know?” she snapped. “Do something — don’t just stand there.”

Simon held his ground at the threshold and raised both hands in an appeal for understanding.

“I was about to knock,” he explained, “when I heard what seemed to be very peculiar things happening in here.” He looked at the man. “Were you or were you not about to shoot this beautiful young lady?”

The beautiful young lady burst out laughing.

“You heard us rehearsing?” she cried. “Oh, that’s super, isn’t it, Jeff?”

Jeff showed considerably less good humor than the girl.

“Very funny,” he said without smiling. “And what were you doing listening at the door?”

Simon chose to ignore the provocative slant of the question and spoke directly to the girl.

“I was about to knock,” he said easily. “My assumptions don’t seem to be in very good working order this evening, but I assume you are Mary Bannerman.”

“I am,” she said. “And I assume you are Sir Galahad... or at least Don Quixote.”

The Saint sidestepped the implied question.

“And I assume you two are rehearsing a play.”

“Were” said the man pointedly. “You’d...”

Mary Bannerman interrupted, coming from the opposite wall to interpose herself between Simon and her original guest. She showed absolutely no self-consciousness over her distractingly revealing costume.

“Not a play,” she said. “A television commercial... for Sweetomints.”

“Sweetomints?” said the Saint, as if doubtfully repeating an improper word.

Mary Bannerman pouted her lips and looked with melting green eyes into a non-existent camera.

“Don’t try taking candy from this baby. Buy your own Sweetomints.”

“Never mind,” said the man called Jeff.

But Mary Bannerman ignored him.

“Right after he pulls the gun, I grab him and throw him over my head, and the whole bit ends with my sucking a Sweetomint. Of course I don’t really throw him over my head, but it looks that way, and of course it’s not Jeff, it’s some actor. Jeff’s the director.”

“I see.”

“Well, I don’t see,” Jeff said impatiently to the girl. “Why are you standing around jabbering to this character when he won’t even tell you who he is?”

“Because this is my apartment,” she came back huffily. “And—”

“And maybe her taste in men is improving,” said the Saint.

There was every sign of an imminent explosion, but Mary Bannerman stopped it.

“Wait a minute, Jeff.” She looked at Simon seriously. “If you did come to see me, you’d better tell me who you are and why you’re here.”

“My name is Simon Templar,” he said, “and my reason for coming to see you is confidential.”

He glanced meaningfully at the other man.

“Good heavens,” Mary Bannerman said with a sophisticated lack of vehemence. “Simon Templar... the Saint. Are you kidding?”

Simon shook his head.

“Don’t you see the halo?” he asked.

“No, but now that you mention it, the face is familiar.”

“Saint?” the director asked blankly.

“You colonials,” Mary Bannerman said to him. “You’re really out of it. Haven’t you ever heard of Simon Templar?”

“No.”

“Fair enough,” said the Saint. “I’ve never heard of you, either.”

“This is Jeff Peterson,” the girl said.

There was no handshake, and Simon decided to get down to business.

“May I speak to you alone, Miss Bannerman? It is important.”

Mary Bannerman looked hesitantly at Peterson.

“Well, Jeff is...” she began, but Peterson interrupted her.

“If you’re going to talk to him you might as well get it over with,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got to get an early start in the morning.”

“Fine,” said the Saint. “Good night.”

He had taken as instant a dislike to Peterson as Peterson had clearly taken to him, and he had very little desire to hide it. It was one of those moods that seemed best given free rein, especially since Mary Bannerman appeared to be completely enjoying the conflict.

“I’ll see you, darling,” she said to Peterson.

“Right,” snapped the other. “Good night.”

She closed the door behind him and turned to the Saint.

“Won’t you have a seat, Mr Templar?” she asked. “Drink?”

“Neither, thank you,” he answered. “I’ve come here a little late for a social call — as pleasant as that would be.”

He preferred to stay on his feet for more reasons than one. If Mary Bannerman was in on the blackmail plot against Liskard, Simon wanted to be as mobile as possible in case of a sudden outbreak of hostilities. Standing, he could also get a more completely panoramic view of the room and the adjoining kitchen and sleeping sections — the latter of which consisted of an alcove separated from the main room by half-drawn gold curtains. On a rumpled double bed sat a teddy bear large enough to have frightened off a moderately muscled lion. The rest of the furniture was new and expensive. Most of the walnut shelf space was devoted to pop records, and the only reading matter seemed to be magazines with pictures of Mary Bannerman on the covers.

“I must say my heart’s going pitapat,” she said, perching on the edge of a chair. “If this isn’t a social call, what is it?”

“I’ve just come from Thomas Liskard.”

Mary Bannerman’s face — which until then had worn a provocative smile that apparently was the big gun in her public relations arsenal — went blank for an instant, and then hardened into a scowl. She stood up abruptly.

“No friend of Tom Liskard’s is a friend of mine.”

“We’re not friends, exactly,” Simon said without the slightest ripple in his own calm.

“He sent you here?”

Simon was deliberately holding back to see if she would betray anything.

“In a way,” he said noncommittally.

His cat-and-mouse game was having part of its intended effect, even if it was not producing any information. Mary Bannerman’s eyes were bright with impatient anger.

“Why?” she demanded sharply.

“I think you know.”

“I do not know! I haven’t even seen that — that two-faced rat for years. So come to the point, won’t you? Just hearing his name makes me want to fumigate the place.”

Simon leaned casually back against one of the shelves of records.

“If you’re so anxious to forget him, why did you keep his letters?”

Her angry face showed nothing new but a trace of puzzlement.

“How did you know anything about it in the first place... and in the second place, what business is it of yours or his?”

Simon’s lips wore a faint and he was sure very irritating smile.

“I think the Prime Minister was bound to develop a certain interest in his old correspondence with you when he got a letter from somebody threatening to show the whole lot to his wife and the newspapers.”

“That’s a lie, or a bluff, or something...”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, because I still have the letters.”

Simon gave her a slightly apologetic look as he answered: “That doesn’t prove the threat was a lie or a bluff, I’m afraid.”

She glared.

“I’ll prove it, then. He can have them back — right now! Just a second...”

She whirled and went to one of the wall shelves and slammed a whole stack of records on to the sofa. She hesitated a moment, and then snatched down another armful of discs. A white envelope — small and unlike the one Liskard had received — fell to the floor, but there was no sign of any secret nest of billets doux.

Mary Bannerman turned to face the Saint with an entirely transformed expression.

“They’re gone,” she said.

“That did seem likely,” Simon replied impassively.

He was leaning down to pick up the small envelope from the floor. It was heavy with metal. The girl took it from his hand and tossed it back on the shelf.

“Those are the keys to my wardrobes,” she said. “Do you believe me, or should I—”

“What about the letters?” Simon interrupted.

The girl was no longer defiant and outraged, but stunned and frightened.

“I know you’ll never believe me,” she said, “but I don’t have the slightest idea where they are. I put them down behind those records months ago when I first moved into this apartment. I remember seeing them there a few weeks back.”

“I suppose any number of people could have taken them.”

“But who’d want to? No one knew about them. I’ve never even discussed Tom with other people, even when I realized that he didn’t love me and had just been using me. He’s terribly selfish and ambitious, but I wouldn’t do a thing like blackmail him. After all, I was... very fond of him.”

Simon felt a growing sense of frustration. No amount of conversation with Mary Bannerman at the moment seemed likely to get him much nearer the truth.

“No theories, then?” he persisted.

“Wait a minute! Yes. I had a robbery here three weeks ago. They stole some jewelry and furs and cash. It never occurred to me that they might have taken the letters.”

“Maybe they were after the letters, and the rest was a blind. Did the thieves get caught?”

“No.”

“And you don’t know of anybody who could have wanted to get the letters?”

“Not a soul.”

“That covers the field of suspects pretty thoroughly. What are you doing for dinner tomorrow night?”

She was startled into truth.

“I... nothing,” she said flatly.

“I’ll pick you up at eight. Think this business over between now and then. Maybe you’ll come up with some ideas. If not, we’ll at least have fun.”

He turned to the door. She watched him step into the hall, and even though he would not have bet a tin cufflink on her honesty, he felt a little sorry for her. She looked sadly distressed and preoccupied, just as a woman might be expected to look when a tormenting part of her past was brought suddenly to the surface of her thoughts.

“Mr Templar... I know I’m labelled a sinner... God knows what Tom has told you about me. But it doesn’t follow that I am a pushover for Saints.”

Simon smiled.

“Message received. We’ll worry about these theological questions as they come up.”

6

The next morning the Saint reported his progress — or lack of it — to Liskard by telephone.

“Is it true about the robbery?” Liskard asked when Simon had finished. “Do you think the letters were really stolen?”

“I’ll have to check on it. I’ll say one thing: either your friend is a first-rate actress or she’s in the clear. But which it is I wouldn’t care to guess yet.”

“What about this man with her?” Liskard asked. “Who was that?”

“His name was Jeff Peterson,” Simon answered. “Does that ring a bell?”

Liskard hesitated, then became suddenly excited.

“Yes. Very likely. Is he from Nagawiland?”

“Mary Bannerman did refer to him as a colonial.”

“Then he must be the one. He’s a sort of black sheep of a good family back there.”

“You know him?” Simon asked.

“No. But I know his father. I sacked him from my cabinet six months ago.”

Simon seemed to feel horizons expanding around him.

“That’s a fascinating bit of news, to say the least. Why did you toss him out?”

“I’m allergic to alcoholics.” His voice became momentarily acid. “I seem to attract them.”

“And Jeff Peterson seems to attract Mary Bannerman.”

Liskard was silent for an abnormally long time.

“How... is she?” he asked.

“She seems well enough.”

“What is her attitude toward me?”

Simon, as much as he respected Liskard’s political position, felt no particular sympathy for his self-inflicted romantic complications.

“I get the impression that she hates your guts and would gladly put a knife between your ribs if you came within range.”

Liskard grunted.

“She’s not the only one,” he said half-humorously. “I think I’m the most popular man to hit England since the Luftwaffe.”

“That’s because you’re a political realist,” the Saint told him. “The world hates political realists. Everybody loves a liar if they love his lies. So buck up; the same fringe adores you, and you can always say you went down telling the truth.”

“An optimistic thought.”

“Well, you’re not going down,” Simon said. “Not if I can do anything about it. Time’s short, though. I’ll be in touch.”

Not long after talking to the Prime Minister, who that afternoon would begin his negotiations with the British government, Simon drove over to Chelsea and checked on Mary Bannerman’s theft story with the police there. Her tale was confirmed. The robbery had taken place one night about three weeks before, and several thousand pounds’ worth of female frippery — mostly heavy metals and animal pelts — had been carted off to parts unknown. Not surprisingly, the police had made no progress toward apprehending the thieves.

The Saint had affairs of his own to attend to during the rest of the day which have nothing to do with this story. He got back to Upper Berkeley Mews at about four, as the cold winter evening already was descending on wet misty streets. With fond recollections of the sunny expanses of Africa, he settled down at a desk overlooking the mews to catch up on some bills which had accumulated while he was away.

Not long afterward he noticed, there below, plowing slowly along through the murk, a small gaily decorated van with pictures of ice cream cones and the words Mister Snowball inscribed on its side panels. Odd as it was, Simon devoted very little thought to that specimen of unseasonal traffic on his almost untraveled backwater until it passed again a quarter of an hour later going in the opposite direction. By the time it had come back again, and again, and then once more while he was dressing for dinner, he had developed a fairly complete theory as to its origin and contents. Its orbit was so regular that he decided to intercept it on its next passage.

He was about to step out his front door when his telephone rang. The Mister Snowball van crept by right on schedule, but Simon was forced to watch it from a window.

“Mr Templar,” a man’s muffled voice said through the earpiece of the phone. “I understand that Mr Liskard is anxious to recover certain letters.”

“And where did you pick up that idea?” Simon asked coolly.

The caller was momentarily stymied.

“He’ll need those letters if he doesn’t want to be in very bad trouble. Go to Belfort Close. Park your car at the circle at the end. There is a gate into a small churchyard. You’ll be met there.”

“Sounds delightful,” said the Saint. “Who brings the Maypole?”

“If Liskard wants the letters, you’d better be there... in an hour.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler if you just dropped them by his headquarters? He might give you a reward.”

“We’ll discuss rewards when we see you.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me to whom I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“Be at Belfort Close in an hour.”

If a click can be dramatic, the click at the other end of the line had a certain well-timed theatrical abruptness to it.

Simon hung up and went to a mirror and straightened his tie as he thought over the situation.

The amateurishness of his opponents was laughable. But it was also dangerous. The Saint was one of the most adaptable of men, but he was accustomed to fighting a sword with a sword, or a pistol with a pistol. The present opposition was placing him in the position of a fencer with a rapier encountering a wild-eyed peasant flailing the air with a pitchfork. He had to adjust his tactics to the non-professional mentality, which meant, among other things, adjusting to an enemy who was going to be stupidly logical as long as he thought things were going his way, but stupidly and unpredictably erratic as soon as he got confused.

It was also true that the opposition, however obvious they were about laying an ambush, were devilishly subtle about their motives. There still seemed to be no point at all to the whole affair except a desire to torment Thomas Liskard with worry. Even now, in the telephone call, there had been no demand for money. Most blackmailers preferred to get their loot as rapidly as possible and clear out before they could be trapped.

The Saint glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to seven. In a few minutes Mister Snowball would be cruising by again. Simon put on his raincoat, and slipped a small flashlight into his pocket. He stepped out on to the street just in time to see the ice cream van turn the corner, heading toward him. Then, as he appeared on the sidewalk it stopped several doors away and turned off its lights. If he had not been watching for it he might never have noticed it. The sky was totally dark now, and the street lamps were muted by a light fog.

He turned not toward his garage door, but toward the van. He walked up to it and looked in at the white-capped, white-jacketed driver.

“I’ll have a pint of vanilla, please,” he said politely.

The driver gulped and looked sturdily straight ahead.

“Closed,” he muttered. “All out of everything.”

The wide opening behind the driver, which gave him easy access to the interior of the van, was covered by a heavy curtain.

“Surely you must have something,” Simon insisted, drawing closer. “A slab of tripe... or a fat cheese?”

“Nothing,” said the driver.

But by then the Saint had put his hand on the door opposite the driver. He jerked it open and stepped quickly in to fling aside the hanging curtain. There like a great rosy-jowled toad squatted Chief Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard.

“Well, ‘pon my soul, if it isn’t ol’ Mister Snowball himself!” cried the Saint. “As I live and breathe! Will wonders never cease? It’s a small world.”

“Would you at least shut the door?” growled Teal without moving.

“Gladly.”

There was no passenger seat in the van. Simon stepped inside, closed the door, and moved through the curtains into the cargo area, where he took a seat on a carton facing Teal. The detective regarded him with a baleful eye and kept his hands stuffed deep inside his overcoat pockets.

“On closer inspection,” Simon said cannily, “I believe you’re not really Mister Snowball at all, but that old overweight operative, Claud Eustace Teal, disguised as Mister Snowball!”

“What are you up to, Templar?” Teal asked coldly.

“I might ask you the same, Claud,” the Saint said reproachfully. Simon glanced around the frigid interior of the van, which in addition to Inspector Teal contained nothing more comfortably padded than a cardboard box. There was a two-way radio in one corner and a few notepads and maps in another. “It’s not much, I suppose,” Simon observed, “but I’m sure it’s an improvement over what you used to do — at least from a moral point of view.”

Chief Inspector Teal heaved a deep sigh and pulled a hand from his pocket. The hand contained a stick of chewing gum, which he proceeded to unwrap and fold into his mouth. “Are you through being funny?” he asked with exaggerated boredom.

“I’m not sure,” said the Saint honestly.

“You’ve gotten mixed up with the Prime Minister of Nagawiland,” Teal said.

“I’ve been to dinner with him, if that’s what you mean,” Simon admitted.

“And you went to the Chelsea Police Station today and asked a lot of questions.”

“It was entirely a mission of mercy,” the Saint said. “I took along a food parcel and said a few cheery words. It’s the least one can do. Don’t you...”

“You were asking questions about a burglary that was reported by Liskard’s old girlfriend.”

“She’s hardly old,” Simon inserted. “I doubt that she’s a day over twenty-five.”

“You won’t get me off the subject,” Teal said. “I know that Liskard got involved with this girl — romantically involved — when he was here before.”

Simon leaned back and rested his shoulders comfortably against the side of the van.

“Nosey old goat, aren’t you?”

“It’s our job to know things about the men we’re supposed to protect,” Teal went on. “Apparently something funny is going on and you’re involved in it.”

“Just what do you think is funny?” Simon enquired.

“That’s what I’m asking you,” said Teal.

“All over England,” said the Saint accusingly, “stately homes are being burgled, payrolls and bullion are being hijacked, safe deposits and bank vaults are being blown — and you want to sit here and swap funny stories. As a public-spirited citizen, I can’t help you to goof off like this.”

He started to get up.

“Wait,” Teal said. “You’ve got no reason to keep vital information to yourself. And if you’re thinking you can pull one of your tricks and get some money out of Liskard by teaming up against him with his old girlfriend, you’re out of your head. Pull any of your Robin Hood stuff with an important man like that, and you’ll—”

“Oh, I see, Claud,” said the Saint. “I see it all. You’ve got it figured out, have you?”

“I have,” Teal said proudly. “You may as well give up your little scheme right now.”

Simon leaned forward and placed a long finger firmly against Teal’s fat paunch.

“And you listen to me, old plum pudding,” he said affectionately, prodding with the finger. “You’re on the wrong track as usual. Yes, there is something going on, but no, I won’t tell you what it is. Because if I did, you’d jump in with all your three flat left feet and bungle it. Let’s just get this straight, though. We’re both on the same side. I’m no more anxious for Liskard to get in trouble than you are, and if you’ll lay off I may be able to keep him out of it. Lay off Mary Bannerman, too, unless you want to foul things up so badly that you’ll be knocked back down to giving breathalyser tests to nursemaids pushing baby buggies in the park. Is that clear?”

The Saint’s final emphasis with his finger was so forceful that Teal choked on his chewing gum.

“You haven’t done anything yet,” the detective said sullenly. “If you do, I’ll be waiting.”

“That will give you more sleepless nights than it will me,” Simon told him. “And now, if you’ll excuse me I have a date.”

He got out on to the cobblestones, and looked at the van and shook his head.

“I’m a little surprised,” he said. “This seems so crude, even for you.”

“You don’t think we’d have it repainted just for your benefit, do you?” Teal said, with injured indignation.

“I guess you’re right,” Simon said. “An ice cream truck in winter would scare off any crook with a better brain than yours. But in these days of government economy, think how much you could save on prison maintenance by never catching anyone.”

7

The Saint drove his car on an elusive route through side streets guaranteed to lose Mister Snowball, and then hurried on to Belfort Close, which was in the neighborhood of Maida Vale.

The short street, with the decrepit antiquity of its brick façades, was like a score of other streets in northwest London. Beyond the turning circle at the end of the cul-de-sac was a rusty iron fence with a gate sagging from the cumulative weight of generations of swinging children. The churchyard, an old one, was shadowed by trees and populated by a pygmy army of squat tombstones. Simon could see only dark outlines. The feeble lamps of Belfort Close behind him were made doubly ineffective by the misty night.

Someone with a rather unreal sense of melodrama had chosen the setting, if not the mists. The Saint, with his flashlight in hand, moved without particular stealth into the stoney darkness. If he had wanted to come on stage secretly he would not have chosen the entry planned for him by the telephone caller. But his object was not to surprise anybody, but to be surprised himself. Only in that way would he stand much chance of getting to the truth about Liskard’s enemy.

“Come into my parlor, said the fly to the spider,” he murmured to himself.

If he had tried to capture the blackmailer he might only have frightened him away. And if, as seemed more than likely, there was more than one person involved, the capturing of one might lead to the immediate release of Liskard’s letters to the papers.

The lights of an automobile swung through the trees of the churchyard. Simon turned. A taxi was pulling into the circle at the end of Belfort Close and a man was getting out. The Saint could see only that he was tall and quite thin, even frail. The taxi left, and the man came into the churchyard. Simon aimed the flashlight at the stranger’s face and turned it on when he was within twenty feet.

“Good evening,” Simon said.

The man held a hand in front of his face until the light was switched off. Even so the Saint got a look at him, and he was unfamiliar.

“You’re Simon Templar?” the man asked.

“What if I say I’m not?”

“I’ve come to talk business,” said the thin man irritably. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Yes, but I’ll have to put personal feelings aside for the moment. What’s your deal?”

“Twenty-five thousand pounds for the return of certain letters,” the man answered curtly.

“Very expensive,” the Saint said mildly.

“It should be worth it to Liskard.”

Most men would not have noticed the almost imperceptible change in the blackmailer’s carriage. He was scarcely more than a silhouette, but Simon sensed the sudden rise in tension.

“Do you have any proof that you have the letters?” Simon asked.

He moved closer to the man, until he was within striking distance.

“I’ll give you one,” the blackmailer said.

He reached into his pocket and produced an envelope. The Saint moved to take it, and then suddenly shifted his weight and jabbed his flashlight straight into the man’s ribs. In the same motion he whirled and confronted the man he knew would be just behind him. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness how, and he could see the second man’s heavy-featured face and the wadded white cloth he was holding forward in one hand.

The Saint reached a quick decision. Obviously if there were two men involved, it was unlikely that the plot against Liskard was based on a simple desire for revenge on Mary Bannerman’s part. Whether the demand for twenty-five thousand pounds had been genuine or a mere ruse to hold the Saint’s attention, there was very possibly a wider membership in the scheme than had gathered together in the churchyard.

Simon decided — since his assailant was not about to use a knife or gun — to let himself be captured. He lunged at the thug behind him, took a glancing blow on his shoulder, and slipped to his knees. Immediately the thin man and his hefty friend pounced, and Simon held his breath and went quickly limp as the chloroformed cloth was pressed against his face.

“Easy,” muttered the hefty one.

“These chaps live on their reputations,” the thin one concurred. “Let’s get him out to the car.”

The Saint held his breath again as he was given a precautionary second dose of the anesthetic. Then the men picked up his apparently unconscious body and hurried with it to the side of the churchyard opposite Belfort Close. Simon could not open his eyes more than a crack, but he saw that he was being taken to a very ordinary black car parked on a deserted lane. His porters put him into the back seat, and the thin one sat next to him.

“Get rid of that rag,” the thin one said.

“How long will it keep him under?” the other asked.

He tossed the cloth away and slipped into the driver’s seat.

“Long enough,” the thin one said. “If anybody asks, we just say he’s drunk.”

“Keep his head down until we’re out of town.”

The car jerked and moved away. Simon kept track of the turns, and presently recognized Harrow Road as they turned into and headed west in the bright lights and heavy traffic. Another amateurish move.

The thin man chuckled, looking at Simon slumped in the other corner.

“So much for the Saint. How to lose your halo in one easy lesson.”

The hefty one gave a hoarse laugh.

“Right. Jeff’s going to think it’s too good to be true.”

That name was all Simon needed and had been waiting for, but he had scarcely hoped to have his answer so soon.

“It is too good to be true,” he said quietly.

The thin man jumped as if the door handle had suddenly spoken to him. The driver jerked his head around and almost swerved into the opposite line of traffic. Simon’s right arm swept out and encircled the thin man’s neck, locking it in a crushing hold.

“Stop!” the thin man croaked. “Do something!”

They were coming to a red light. The driver was groping in his jacket pocket, probably for a cosh. At the same time he was looking desperately for some way to turn into a side street, but he was hemmed in by cars piling up at the traffic signal. Simon simply gave the thin man’s neck one last crack, which it would take a first-class osteopath to unstiffen, let him topple half conscious and gasping on to the floor, and stepped as casually out of the car as if he had been leaving a cab.

A policeman on the busy corner gave him a disapproving look as he strode across the inner line of traffic to the sidewalk and turned to wave goodbye to the driver.

“Sorry,” Simon said sincerely to the policeman, “but with traffic the way it is these days it’s almost quicker to walk.”

Simon caught a taxi back to his car at Belfort Close. The time was seven-fifty. He could still make it to Mary Bannerman’s apartment for his dinner date in less than a quarter of an hour.

As he drove, theories raced through his head. There was still no evidence that the girl was knowingly involved. Her boyfriend Jeff Peterson could easily have taken the Liskard letters without her knowing that he had the slightest interest in them. Maybe Peterson had engineered the robbery of her apartment in order to take her mind away from the possibility that the letters had had any special importance to the thieves. The motive could involve anything from politics to purely commercial considerations. Still, the oddity of the approach to Liskard, the somehow amateurish approach to monetary blackmail and the lack of demand for money or concessions of any other kind, left a great many questions still to be answered.

One was answered as Simon drove cautiously to the corner of Mary Bannerman’s block. As he was about to turn, almost on the stroke of eight, she came out of the front door with Jeff Peterson, holding his arm, wearing a cocktail dress. Peterson wore a suit instead of the turtle-necked sweater in which Simon had seen him before.

“Going out to celebrate?” the Saint asked silently.

He pushed down the accelerator of his car and sped past the intersection. He circled the block and parked. Judging from their clothes, the happy couple were going to be amusing themselves rather than indulging in nefarious activities which would make them worth following. Simon thought he could learn much more by a visit to Mary Bannerman’s apartment while she was out. He walked around to the building’s front door and climbed the stairs to her flat.

As he made short work of her lock — whose type he had noted when he was there before — he thought over her role in the situation. The fact that she had been leaving with Peterson did not prove conclusively that she was in on the entire plot, but it seemed to rule out any presumption of her total innocence. If she had only decided to stand the Saint up, she would surely have left earlier, so as not to risk running into him as she was leaving and he was arriving. It seemed irrefutable that she had known for some time that Simon Templar was not going to be able to keep his date with her, and that she could safely and openly go out with Peterson without any chance of complications.

The lock submitted easily, and Simon stepped into the flat. A table lamp had been left on. The bed was still rumpled, the teddy bear still in place. The rooms smelled of the last sweet flurry of female departure: bubble bath, talcum powder, perfume.

The Saint put Venus out of his mind and tried to concentrate on Mars. The sooner he brought this little war in which he had become involved to a conclusion, the sooner he could be enjoying himself — if not with Mary Bannerman, with someone like her in all the ways that really counted.

He walked straight to the shelf on which the girl had claimed she had left Liskard’s correspondence. There, where she had left it, was the white envelope which had fallen to the floor when Simon had visited her the previous evening. In it were keys, just as she had said, but one was not designed for her wardrobes or for any other domestic stronghold. It was attached to a metal circle with “Victoria 571” stamped into it. Simon recognized it immediately as the key to a baggage locker at Victoria Station.

Before he left Mary Bannerman’s flat he made a systematic search of her property and found that her teddy bear seemed to be stuffed with nothing more interesting than cotton, that she had a talent for eliciting torrid letters from men other than Thomas Liskard, and that she did, indeed, seem to be a bit short in the fur and jewel department for such a successful girl with so many rich friends.

Unfortunately, there was no evidence of any interest in Thomas Liskard on her part, or on that of her pen pals. The Saint was going to have to make another trip through the cold foggy night.

8

The trip to Victoria Station and back to Mary Bannerman’s flat could have taken considerably less time if the Saint had not decided to have a peaceful dinner on the way. At Victoria he went directly to the baggage lockers — banks of large metal doors along one wall of a corridor — and found number 571. The key he had brought with him opened it, and there inside was one large brown leather suitcase. Without hesitation he took the bag, closed the locker, and walked like any busy and purposeful citizen out into the street.

He doubted that any of Mary’s associates were keeping watch over the locker, but it was quite possible that one of Chief Inspector Teal’s minions had been assigned to keep watch over the Saint. For that reason he took a devious course away from the station area, making quite certain that nobody was following him. Then he parked three blocks from the apartment house where Mary Bannerman lived, left his car, and walked the rest of the way carrying the suitcase. As he had anticipated, the door of her flat was still unlocked, as he had left it, and she had not come home. He went inside, latched the door behind him, and put the suitcase on the bed.

The bag was not locked. Simon flipped the catches and opened the lid. There in a thick wrapping of mink and silver fox was a modest Ali Baba’s treasure of jeweled trinkets of all shapes and sizes. Whatever Mary Bannerman had done to deserve all that, she apparently had done very well. The Saint’s experienced eye told him that the quality of the whole lot was quite high, and a closer inspection confirmed. that all of it appeared to be her own. Her name was sewn on to the linings of the coats and her initials were engraved on much of the jewelry.

But much more interesting to Simon was the fact that what he had most hoped to find was not there. The suitcase contained only jewels and furs: there were no letters from Thomas Liskard.

Still, things were looking up. He had a lever and he had a place to apply its pressure — or would have, as soon as Mary Bannerman came home. Simon poured himself a glass of Benedictine from the well-stocked liquor cabinet, left the lights and furniture as they had been before he came, and went into the sleeping alcove and drew the concealing curtains tightly together. Then, with the suitcase opened beside him, and a selection of glossy magazines to pass the time, he propped himself up on the bed next to the teddy bear and sipped his Benedictine and waited.

About an hour later Mary Bannerman came home. To Simon’s surprise, Jeff Peterson did not come in with her. There were no voices to be heard through the closed curtains, and only one set of footsteps. She moved about her living room humming dance music to herself, completely unsuspecting of the surprise that waited in her bed. She ran some water in the kitchen, then, unzipping the back of her black cocktail dress with one hand she threw open the curtains that hid her sleeping alcove with the other.

Her reaction to the tableau of Saint, suitcase and teddy bear was worthy of a Mack Sennett classic. She froze, stopped unzipping, opened her mouth, and she seemed to have difficulty keeping her eyes in their sockets.

“Ho, ho, ho,” said the Saint. “Won’t you sit on Father Christmas’s knee? He’s brought you some lovely toys.”

Mary Bannerman at first seemed more likely to collapse than to sit on anybody’s knee, but the first shock wore off. She closed her mouth and removed a trembling hand from the zipper on her dress.

“Speechless?” Simon asked.

She tried not to see the suitcase of jewels and furs.

“What are you doing here?” she managed to say.

“Keeping our dinner date.” He looked at his watch. “You’re a little late. Three and a half hours, to be exact.”

“I... couldn’t make it.”

Simon swung his legs off the bed and stood up. His tone became more brittle.

“You thought I couldn’t make it, more likely.”

She shook her head feebly. Then she seemed to pull her thoughts together a little and realized she had a right to take the offensive.

“What are you doing here?”

Simon waved a hand at the suitcase.

“I not only steal from the rich and give to the poor, I return stolen property to lovely young girls... in return for small favors, of course.”

She could no longer keep herself from looking at the contents of the suitcase. Her brief spell of bravado was past. Her face looked frightened and young, and she seemed to be on the verge of tears. She sat on the edge of the bed as if her legs would no longer hold her up.

“What are you going to do?” she asked tremulously.

“First, I’ll listen.”

“To what?”

“To glamorous Mary Bannerman’s true life story... of how she lost her baubles and found them again.”

She sighed.

“All right. I ran into debt. I needed money, so I invented the robbery to collect insurance money.”

“Reasonable enough. And then?”

“I couldn’t keep the things here, of course, or tell anybody else, so I checked them at Victoria Station.”

“What about Liskard’s letters?”

“I don’t know. When you asked for them, and I found them gone, I... kind of lost my head. I was afraid of what you might think — because of the blackmail you were talking about and everything — so I just said they’d been stolen too. But I don’t know. I thought they were there.”

Simon let considerably more credence show on his face than he felt in his mind.

“Then you obviously had a real theft here which you didn’t know about,” he said. “Who could have taken those letters? More importantly, who would have wanted them?”

She got up and paced over to the record shelf and began pulling down all the records she had pulled down the evening before.

“Maybe they’re here,” she said a little feverishly. “I’ll find them if...”

“They’re not,” Simon assured her. “I’ve already looked.”

She turned back toward the bed and glared at him.

“You’re a regular sneak, aren’t you?” she snapped.

“No, I’m an extraordinary sneak. I see all and know all. So tell me — did Jeff Peterson take the letters?”

She looked indignant.

“Jeff? Of course not! Why on earth should he?”

“Maybe he’s gotten himself into debt too. Twenty-five thousand pounds is a nice amount of money for an hour or so of playing post office.”

Mary Bannerman looked at him with puzzled anger and began to lose control of her temper.

“Twenty-five thousand pounds? I absolutely do not know what you are talking about, and I’m not interested to know. I happen to be in love with Jeff Peterson, and I’m not going to have you breaking into my apartment and insulting him. Go find the letters yourself, if you’re so full of ideas. But whatever you do, just get out!”

Simon did not raise his voice.

“When and what did you tell Jeff Peterson about Liskard?”

The girl tightened her lips in rage, then shouted at him: “None of your damn business! Now get out before I...”

The Saint was smiling.

“Call the police?” he suggested. “Good. You can save me the trouble.”

Her spirit crumpled again, and she looked hopelessly at the suitcase.

“You’re not going to tell?” she asked. “Why?” She moved closer to him, and her voice was more pleading than angry. “Are you so perfect that you can’t let anybody else get away with anything? What do you care about some old insurance company’s money?”

The sweet scent of the room was concentrated in her clothes and hair and skin, and it was fairly obvious that she expected the effect of her proximity to be devastating.

“I don’t care about the insurance company,” Simon said. “What I care about is...”

She ran the tip of one of her fingers along his lapel.

“Wouldn’t it be more fun to help me spend it than to take it away from me?” she murmured.

“Much more... as soon as you give me those letters.”

She dropped her arms to her sides.

“I don’t have them, I told you!”

“Then the moment of truth has arrived for you, darling.”

Without turning his back on her, he began to repack the contents of the suitcase.

“What do you mean?” she asked,

“I mean you must find those letters and give them to me by ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” said the Saint. “Otherwise I’ll arrange a little tête-à-tête between you and the insurance people. And also with a friend of mine at Scotland Yard who’s starving for a pinch.”

She followed him to the door, ready to grab the suitcase, which he carefully kept just out of her reach.

“I’ve told you I don’t have those letters!”

“If you don’t, your boyfriend does. So get them... And if you release those letters to the papers I’ll do worse than I’ve already promised.” He stopped and looked at her just before he opened the door. “I’m just curious. If you’re after money, why didn’t you say so in the first place when you threatened Liskard? You might have gotten it instead of me.”

“I’m not after anything!” she moaned. “I don’t know anything!”

Simon stepped out into the hall.

“Then how is it you knew I was supposed to be fast asleep somewhere at eight o’clock this evening instead of picking you up here for dinner?”

It was a strictly rhetorical question, which was just as well, since Mary Bannerman was visibly incapable of answering it — at least in the brief interval before Simon closed the door between them and walked away down the hall swinging the suitcase and whistling to himself.

That was the last she saw of him for some time, but he saw her again very shortly. He almost ran to his car and then quickly drove it to a corner which gave him a view of the block where she lived. Within ten minutes her small sports car pulled out from the curb and headed for the Cromwell Road. Simon stayed within sight of her without making himself conspicuous in the moderate traffic. Within ten minutes they were on the M4 motorway heading west. When Mary Bannerman reached the Windsor exit she turned off and took minor winding roads for several more miles. Twice Simon turned off his lights briefly, so that she would be less likely to suspect that the same car was staying behind her on that unlikely route of twisting country lanes.

When the sports car turned off into one of the bordering fields in what could only be the direction of the river, Simon stopped his own car and got out. Along that part of its wandering course, about midway between its youth at Oxford and its maturity in London, the Thames flows quietly through small towns and woods and pastures. What buildings there are on its banks between the towns are private and well spaced, and there are many miles as rural and serene as they must have been at the time of William the Conqueror. Such stretches of the river’s banks are popular with the owners of small cabin cruisers, who simply make fast a couple of lines to the shore and spend the night.

Apparently such a mobile and secluded hideaway was being used by Jeff Peterson and his friends who had entertained Simon in the graveyard. The fact that the Saint had heard the mention of a boat would have been of no particular immediate help if Mary Bannerman had not been thoughtful enough to lead him straight to its current moorings.

The red lights on the rear of her car had faded and disappeared into mists. Now Simon could no longer hear the sound of its engine. The only interruption of the silence was the lowing of a cow in the pasture through which she had driven. Then the cow was quiet again, and Simon moved through the gate and across the uneven soggy ground toward the river. The water was so close that he could smell it, and he decided it was wisest to stick close beside the fence which ran that way so as to be camouflaged by the trees which grew along it on the edge of the meadow.

He moved as quietly as his own shadow, and even so he disliked the degree to which he had to expose himself. If Peterson and his boys were the least bit clever, they would have a man posted to watch all approaches to the boat. So far they had not shown much sign of all that intelligence, but if they had begun to develop some efficiency the Saint might find himself in trouble.

Ordinarily he would never have approached the boat so directly. Ideally, he might have come up to it in another boat, or crossed over from the other side of the river. But he fully expected that Peterson’s first move on hearing from Mary would be to take the boat to another spot on the river as a precautionary measure. The time Simon had in which to board the floating hideout — where he hoped to find not only the blackmailers but also Liskard’s letters — might be limited to the next three or four minutes.

He went on as fast as he dared. He could see Mary Bannerman’s small car, and a few feet beyond it, tied alongside the low bank, a grayish-looking, medium-sized cruiser with lights glowing behind the curtains of its portholes. There were no other cars. Apparently the boat had been moved there from another mooring up or down the river after its occupants had driven to it. Maybe the two from the churchyard were not there, although it seemed likely they should have hurried out to report their failure to Peterson.

There was not much to be gained by mere speculation. Between Simon and the boat, separating the pasture from the tow-path, was a ramshackle fence put together of wire and iron posts. The only inconspicuous way for him to get through was on his hands and knees. Holding his gun at ready, he dropped to the ground and started through an opening below the last strand of wire.

That was when a voice behind him said: “Stop there, Templar, or I’ll blow your head off!”

9

There was no room for argument. The Saint was not in a position to move quickly or even to see behind him. His main emotion was sheer rage at himself. He had been in a thousand more dangerous situations, but rarely in one which he could blame so completely on his own carelessness.

“Just hold it there,” the voice said. Then it rose to a shout. “Come on, Benson!”

The tall man from the churchyard appeared on the deck of the boat and jumped ashore.

“Drop the gun!” he ordered.

Simon obeyed, continued on through the fence, and stood up. Jeff Peterson came out of the trees carrying a rifle. The man called Benson picked up the Saint’s pistol.

“On to the boat,” Peterson said. “Tie him up.”

The hefty man from the churchyard came up from the boat’s cabin, and Mary was with him.

“You’re very observant,” Simon called to her cheerfully. “I thought I’d kept out of sight most of the way.”

“She didn’t need to be observant,” Peterson said. “Benson was watching the road.”

Benson’s rough-faced companion grabbed the Saint’s arm and shoved him toward the boat. Simon yielded, and then with a sudden shift of balance pushed the man with a splash into the narrow space between the side of the boat and the short perpendicular drop of the bank. Amid the general consternation and cursing, Simon continued obediently — mindful of the two guns pointed at him — down into the cabin.

“Lie down on your face in the bunk,” Peterson said.

Simon followed the order, and Benson tied his hands.

“Now I’ve got no clothes to put on and what am I going to do?” bellowed the man the Saint had shoved. “I’d like to bash...”

He was coming down the companionway, but the cabin, with a bunk on either side, was scarcely large enough for the four people who were already in it.

“Never mind, Rogers,” Peterson interrupted. “Go pace around up top until you’re dried out.”

“It’s foggy! It’s freezing! What’ll I do?”

“Try catching pneumonia,” suggested the Saint.

The man lunged at him, but Peterson pushed him back.

“Let’s keep our heads,” Peterson said. “There’s no point getting this far and then fouling things up.”

“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 astonishment. “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 thoroughly 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 hesitation 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 conveniently 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.

“Start it,” Simon whispered.

Mary Bannerman turned the ignition key. The engine turned over, coughed, and died.

“It’s tricky,” she said.

The boat had moved downstream only a few yards. It was turning and drifting back toward the bank. Mary tried the starter again. The engine seemed to catch, then stopped. In the abrupt silence Simon heard running footsteps on the murky shore.

“He’s heard us,” Mary said.

“Try it again before we run aground.”

The Saint hurried to the stern, which seemed the part of the boat most likely to strike land first. The starter was grinding loudly. Rogers was yelling as he ran through the fog.

“Benson! What’s happening? Is that you?”

Then suddenly he appeared among trees and mist on the bank as the engine at last grumbled into full rhythm. The propeller bit into the mud and then pushed free. The boat began to move back toward midstream. Rogers had already drawn his pistol, and he tossed off a wild shot in their general direction. The Saint ducked hastily behind the deckhouse.

“Get down!” he shouted to Mary Bannerman.

“Full speed ahead,” she cried, “and damn the torpedoes!”

Rogers fired out of the fog three more times in rapid succession. One of his bullets smashed a pane of glass a few inches from the girl’s head. She dropped to her knees, still holding the wheel. Simon heard her feeble exclamation.

“Oh, my...”

Rogers, who was just barely visible, started to run down the riverside parallel to the boat, but with the help of the current they were moving much faster than he could, and then he slipped and tripped over something and went sprawling.

“That’s one torpedo we won’t have to worry about any more for the present,” Simon said.

“He — he really was shooting at us,” Mary stammered shakily.

She got to her feet and Simon steadied her with an arm around her shoulders as he took the wheel.

“That’s revolution,” he said. “Remember, you can’t make an omelet without...”

“I know, I know,” Mary said.

Simon squinted into the misty dark.

“There’s just one thing. I wish you transformers of society had picked a more suitable time of year for your egg cracking. Like Easter, for instance.”

“What’ll we do now?”

“Get to a telephone, and then back to London as fast as possible.”

“In this?”

“No. We should be able to get a cab in Windsor even at this hour. In the meantime, tell me everything you know about this plot against Liskard.”

“You know it,” she said. “Jeff got the letters from me. We were going to send them to the papers and force Tom to resign.”

“Why all the pussyfooting around? Why didn’t you just publicize the letters right away without tipping Liskard off?”

Mary frowned and shook her head. Simon was piloting the boat, and she was standing close to him, hugging herself to keep warm.

“It seemed unnecessary to me. A bit extra sadistic. It was Jeff who insisted on it. I thought it would be safer and better all around if we just got it over with as fast as possible.”

“That would have been the reasonable way,” the Saint agreed. “So unless your boyfriend’s unreasonable he must have had something else in mind.”

“Don’t call him my boyfriend,” Mary said bitterly. “And what else could he have had in mind?”

“Something much worse than you did.”

“What?”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Simon said grimly. “I see lights up ahead.”

10

The cluster of lights the Saint had seen through the fog marked the site of a cottage on the right bank of the river. There was a sound of loud dance music even above the rumble of the boat’s engine.

“Maybe we can get a lift into London from there,” Simon said to Mary Bannerman.

Then came a muffled shout from below.

“Hallo! Who’s there?”

“I’ll have to take care of our patriot,” Simon said. “Cut the engine down and make a circle or something before we dock.”

He hurried below to the cabin, where Benson lay trussed on the floor. He stopped shouting and stared with open fear at the Saint.

“What are you going to do to me?” he whimpered. “Where are we?”

“You don’t happen to have any more chloroform among your stores, do you?” Simon asked him. “You used to be rather partial to it, I remember.”

Benson could only gape as Simon pulled out a knife and then did not use it on the thin man’s scrawny neck but on one of the bunk sheets.

“Open wide and take your medicine,” Simon said to him.

“What do you mean?” Benson quavered.

“Open your mouth,” Simon repeated harshly.

Benson opened, and the Saint shoved a generous wad of cloth into his mouth, then wrapped a long strip of the sheet around his head several times to cover his mouth.

“Now try to yell,” Simon said.

“Mmp!” grunted Benson unhappily.

The Saint tore a flyleaf out of a book from one of the shelves and wrote a brief message on it: “I am a bad man. Please hand me over to the police.”

He folded the note and tucked it into Benson’s shirt so that most of the paper would be plainly visible to anybody entering the cabin.

“I hope nobody will come and find you before Claud Eustace Teal can send somebody out to pick you up, but I can’t take you with me and I’m afraid Miss Mary wouldn’t approve of my throwing you overboard. You can wait for your pals in jail. Nighty-night.”

Simon left the cabin in darkness and rejoined Mary Bannerman at the helm.

“Now,” he said, “let’s bring her in.”

He steered the cruiser to the landing stage and skillfully brought her to rest without the slightest bump. Before the current could start to affect the craft he cut the power and made fast to shore. Three men — two with drinks in their hands — were already coming out of the cottage toward the river to see what was happening.

“Stay here, Mary, and just follow my lead,” he told her, and went to meet them.

“Come to join the party?” one of the men asked.

They were young, well-dressed, and obviously well along in the process of enjoying themselves. A girl came to the door of the cottage and looked out, sipping from a tall glass.

“We’re not party-crashing,” Simon said. “I’m afraid we have a bit of an emergency. My wife is ill and I must get her to our doctor in London. Could I use your phone to call a taxi?”

“Oh, the poor thing,” said the girl in the doorway. “We can’t let her just... pop off or something.”

“None of us here going to London,” mumbled one of the young men drunkenly.

“Would twenty pounds make the trip worth your trouble?” Simon asked.

The tipsy one who had spoken just before the girl was the first to answer.

“It jus’ happens I have to go London! It jus’ happens!”

“You’re not going anywhere,” one of his soberer companions said. Then he spoke to Simon. “Of course we’ll help. I’m the only one fit to drive. Is she really bad — your wife, I mean?”

“Not terribly, yet,” Simon answered. “It’s a sort of attack she gets sometimes, and only her own doctor knows what to do about it.”

He went back to get Mary, who made a face at him as he helped her out of the boat. She sagged against him as he walked with her toward the cottage.

“Now’s your chance to do some more acting,” he said under his breath. “Just moan in a spartan sort of way occasionally and don’t say anything. If anybody asks you questions just shake your head and close your eyes.”

The sober young man came to help.

“Shall we get right to the car or would she like to rest here first?” he asked.

“It’s best to go straight to town,” Simon answered. “If you have a telephone I’d like to make a call, though.”

“Go right ahead. It’s in the bedroom on the left. I’ll help your wife into the car.”

Simon made his way through the front door of the cottage and the girl who had come out to see him showed him to the telephone. He dialed Scotland Yard as soon as he was alone behind the closed door.

“Hullo,” he said when he received an answer. “This is Simon Templar... Yes... Exactly. I have a message for Inspector Teal... Yes... There’s a man named Jeff Peterson he’ll want to take into custody immediately because he’s a threat to the Prime Minister of Nagawiland — Prime Minister Liskard. Do you have that clear?”

The functionary at the other end of the line had it clearly enough, but he was skeptical.

“Just get the message to Teal and make sure he knows who sent it,” said the Saint. “Peterson should be at the flat of a Mary Bannerman in Chelsea. You can get her address from the directory. It’s very urgent. Secondly, I’ve another present for him out here — wait just a minute.”

He put down the phone and went to the door of the bedroom.

“Where are we, please?” he asked the girl in the adjoining living room.

“Forty-eight Meadow Road.”

Simon went back to the phone and gave the address.

“It’s somewhere between Bray and Windsor on the south bank of the Thames,” he said. “If you’ll have some men sent out you’ll find one of Peterson’s cronies tied up in the cabin of a boat just in front of the cottage.”

“And how did all this happen?” the Scotland Yard man asked.

“I don’t have time to talk now. I’ll tell Teal later.”

He left the phone and hurried out to the car.

“I’ll sit in back and let her stretch out with her head in my lap,” Simon said. “And if you don’t mind it would be best if we don’t talk. Here’s your twenty pounds.”

The young man protested, but took the money. Then, as Simon cradled Mary’s head and comforted her, the driver pulled his sports sedan into the road and aimed it toward London.

Less than an hour later they pulled up to the entrance of Nagawi House. The pickets had exhausted their zeal and gone home; the gate was closed, and a lone uniformed guard spoke through its bars when Simon got out of the car.

“Have you any sort of official pass?” he asked.

“We’re coming to the party,” Simon said.

The driver of the car, meanwhile, gaped as Mary Bannerman sat up, blinked her eyes brightly, and stepped out on to the sidewalk next to the Saint.

“The party’s over long since,” the guard said.

“As a matter of fact it’s urgent business,” Simon told him. “The Prime Minister knows me. I have information he’ll want immediately.”

“Have you telephoned for an appointment?” the guard asked.

Mary Bannerman began quietly explaining some of the true situation to the driver of the car.

“I have a very particular reason for not telephoning,” Simon said. “And I’m sure Prime Minister Liskard doesn’t make appointments in the middle of the night.”

“I know he doesn’t. You’d best come back tomorrow.”

“I’m telling you it’s urgent,” Simon said angrily. “The Prime Minister’s life literally may depend on it.”

Only then did the guard look particularly interested.

“I’ll call his secretary, then,” he said.

“No,” Simon insisted.

“Why not? I’ll do it now.”

Simon looked desperately toward the lighted windows on the ground floor of the big house. Behind him the driver of the car was saying a puzzled good night. He turned his car back in the direction from which he had come and drove away.

The sound of a shot cracked out through the night from one of the rooms of Nagawi House. The guard stiffened and then started running toward the front door. Lights flashed on inside the house. Simon grabbed Mary’s hand and hurried with her around the corner of the wall away from the gate.

“Where are we going?” she gasped. “They haven’t shot Tom, have they?”

“I’m going over the wall, and you should know whether they’ve shot Tom or not.”

“I don’t know! It was just...”

“I believe you. Listen. Get away from here. Catch a taxi and check in at the Hilton — you can say you missed your last train home, since you’ve got no luggage. Stay in your room until I contact you. All right?”

“All right.”

“Good girl. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

They were next to the wall at its nearest distance to the house, in a sort of alleyway between it and the next building. Simon stepped back, and then with a light leap he caught the top of the wall and swung his body up and over it.

On the inside, he set off at a run toward the rear of the house. That area was lighted only by a single diffuse floodlight, and no one seemed to be keeping watch. With the night guard to testify that he had been at the front gate when the shot was fired, he had no fear of being accused of having anything to do with that, and now he only wanted to get to the scene of shooting as fast as possible. He remembered the location of the Prime Minister’s study, which was near a corner of the building opposite the side on which he had entered the grounds.

When he reached the study windows he heard excited voices inside. One of the windows was open, its curtains stirring in the cold night air. Simon, in the light which came from the room, looked at the wet, soft earth along the side of the house. The only footprints were his own.

He hoisted himself up on the windowsill and vaulted into the study.

The effect on the people already there was dramatic in the extreme. Anne Liskard, who was in her nightgown, screamed. A half-dressed manservant fell back against the entrance door. Todd and Stewart, in pajamas and dressing gowns, froze and gaped. Another man, in a suit, had his hand on the telephone.

The only member of the tableau who did not react was Thomas Liskard. He was seated in his large chair with his head on the desk. In one of his hands was a pistol. Blood covered one side of his head and stained the blotter where it lay.

“What are you doing here?” Stewart demanded of the Saint in a shocked voice.

“I was at the gate when I heard the shot, so I got here as soon as I could — over the wall and around the house. I thought I might catch somebody trying to run away.”

“You’ll have some explaining to do yourself,” Todd said. “But he shot himself. There was nobody to run away.”

Anne Liskard had been sobbing as Simon entered, but now she broke in frantically. “Why doesn’t somebody do something?”

“We can’t do much, really,” Todd replied in a lower voice. “He’s dead.”

Simon was bending over Liskard. Below the hand which held the gun was a scrawled note.

“There’s no other way for me.”

The Saint touched Liskard’s wrist. The man who was dressed, who turned out to be the secretary, was dialing a number on the telephone.

“Get away from him,” Stewart snapped, coming toward the Saint.

Simon straightened up and addressed the secretary.

“Who are you calling?”

“The police, of course.”

“Make it an ambulance,” said the Saint. “The Prime Minister is still alive.”

11

The Saint’s words had almost as electric an effect as his entrance into the study had had. Anne Liskard gave a sharp cry and ran to her husband. The men stared.

“Better not touch him,” Simon said. “The sooner a doctor gets to him the better.”

The secretary called for an ambulance, and set about herding out the lesser members of the staff.

“Are you sure?” asked Todd, the Foreign Minister. “He doesn’t seem to be breathing.”

“Try his pulse,” Simon said.

The others, satisfied that Liskard was alive, broke into a babble of conversation.

“Call Chief Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard,” Simon said to the secretary. “He knows I’ve been working with Liskard on a problem of his. He’ll want to know about this, I’m sure. I’m surprised you haven’t heard from him already this evening.”

“We have,” the secretary said. “I took a call from him to Mr Liskard about twenty minutes ago. I’m to monitor calls, you know, and take notes. It seems the police had just picked up a man named Peterson, who was suspected of being in on some scheme about the Prime Minister.”

“Who else knew about the call?” Simon asked.

“Todd and I were saying good night to him in his room when the call was put through,” Stewart said. “But really — you’re taking a lot on yourself, questioning us as if we were...”

“The Prime Minister asked me yesterday evening to help him,” Simon replied. “He’ll confirm that if he’s able.”

“But why would he do this?” Stewart wanted to know.

“It’s my fault!” Anne Liskard blurted suddenly. “He and I had a scene tonight, when we were alone, and I wouldn’t listen to any explanations from him, or forgive him. I...”

“He’d hardly kill himself over a family quarrel,” Stewart said gently.

“It was more than that,” the woman said. “You’ll all know anyway. The newspapers know. There were letters... from Tom to... another woman.” Her voice broke, and then she went on. “Somebody sent some of them to me, with a note saying others were going to the newspapers. Tom asked me to keep it quiet, but I... I lost my temper, of course. I told him this was the end of his career.”

She began to cry, and sank down into a chair. The secretary, meanwhile, had completed his call to Scotland Yard. He went to the hall to speak to members of the delegation and staff who were being kept from the study by some senior member of the group.

“In any case,” Todd said heavily, “it does seem to be the end of his career.” He picked up a stack of papers near Liskard’s elbow. “These apparently are photostats of the letters. Just the first one’s enough to...”

He broke off, with a glance at the Prime Minister’s wife.

“But the papers would think twice about printing that kind of thing, unless they had absolute proof that it wasn’t forged,” Simon said. “And I don’t mind saying this next in front of Mrs Liskard, since it ought to make her feel better. When you think of it, honestly, what sort of shocking news is it when a man, even a man in politics, got himself involved in a personal entanglement of this kind?”

“It could ruin him politically,” Todd insisted. “Especially at this point.”

“I’ve heard those sorts of rumors about almost every head of state in the world,” Simon said, “and I’m sure I’m not the only citizen who hears them. Something like this actually might be good for a man in Liskard’s place. People are more sympathetic with the victim of a blackmail plot than they are disgusted with a man who shows some manly weaknesses.”

A siren was approaching, growing louder along the street in front of Nagawi House.

“Well what exactly is your point?” Stewart asked.

“That we keep all this quiet — about the letters?” Todd speculated dubiously.

“I’m suggesting that there’s much more to this supposed blackmail plot than we seem to be assuming,” the Saint answered. “It never made a lot of sense anyway. Now it’s coming clearer what’s really going on.”

“What?” Stewart asked.

A still partially unbuttoned butler let himself back into the room.

“The ambulance is here. They’re on their way in.”

The next ten minutes were taken up with the removal of Liskard on a stretcher to the ambulance. At the end of that time, as the ambulance was pulling out of the drive, its blue light spinning above the driver’s compartment, a police car with a similar spinning light pulled in the other side. Simon, who was standing on the steps of the house with the others, watched expectantly as the rotund form of Chief Inspector Teal evacuated itself from the car and puffed heavily up to the group. As he was about to speak, Teal’s eyes fell on the Saint and his preparatory air of self-importance collapsed to a semblance of mere controlled dignity.

“I’m sorry to hear about this,” he said to Liskard’s countrymen in general. “Where did it happen?”

They led the way through the house, and Teal spoke to Simon.

“I got your message, and we found Peterson at Mary Bannerman’s apartment. But now it looks as if he wasn’t any threat at all — and you’re going to have a lot to explain.” Teal’s pink face grew almost tomato colored as he strode along the hallway. “While we were wasting our time there—”

“Somebody else shot Liskard,” Simon supplied. “But Peterson is in on it. You weren’t wasting your time — for once.”

Teal faced him at the study door.

“Shot Liskard? He shot himself, didn’t he?”

“No,” Simon said. “He wasn’t the type. Much too levelheaded to be thrown this far by a lot of old love letters. And besides, he has a sense of duty. He wouldn’t just bow out and let his country fall into chaos.”

“This way,” Todd said.

Teal went into the, study, received a complete rundown on events, and looked over the evidence. When he had examined the gun, the blotter, the furniture, the suicide note, and the photostats, he pondered the situation as he stood in the center of the room with his thumbs hooked in the belt of his capacious dark blue coat.

“Pity he was moved,” he grumbled. “If there’s any doubt about the question of suicide...”

“That’s true,” Simon said thoughtfully. “We could have let him bleed to death so as to keep the evidence tidy.”

“What do you mean, doubt?” Anne Liskard asked.

She had regained control of herself and was showing more poise and energy than Simon had seen in her since their first meeting.

“Mr Templar here seems to believe your husband may have been shot,” Teal said.

Simon nodded. Teal’s assistants, Stewart, and Anne Liskard looked toward the desk as he spoke.

“If you’d seen the way he was lying, even you would have noticed it yourself, Claud. It was an amateurish job, done in a hurry. If you’re going to kill yourself you don’t go through the discomfort of twisting your arm around and shooting yourself from some odd angle behind the ear.”

“You might,” Teal said, instinctively rejecting anything the Saint proposed.

“You might,” Simon said to him, “but Liskard was never an idiot.”

Teal walked stolidly to the window.

“And there’s this,” he continued. “Was this window open when you found him? It’s a cold night. He wouldn’t have left it open, would he?”

“Not likely,” Stewart said. “In fact he was very sensitive to cold. Most of us are, raised in a tropical climate.”

“So,” said Teal, “someone may have come in, shot him, left the note, and escaped through the window.”

“Great Scot!” the Saint exclaimed admiringly. “I think he’s got it!”

The detective looked at Simon with the face of a soured persimmon.

“Is there any reason for Mr Templar to be here?” he enquired stiffly.

“He and my husband were working to catch these blackmailers,” Anne Liskard explained. “Mr Stewart and Mr Todd will tell you the rest. I must get dressed and go to the hospital. There may be something I can do for Tom.”

She went toward the door as Todd came back from the hall.

“I’ve phoned our P.R.O.,” he said to the group in general. “He’ll do what he can to squelch any stories in the papers about the letters.”

Simon turned to Teal after Anne Liskard had gone on before him into the hall.

“Could I speak to you alone for a minute, Claud?”

Teal followed him out to the driveway where they could speak without being overheard. Simon filled the detective in on what had taken place since they had met in the Mister Snowball van.

“Now listen, Claud,” he said firmly. “I know you’d like to devote yourself exclusively to proving me wrong, but there’s more at stake than your reputation and my self-interest.”

He lowered his voice. “You won’t find any footprints outside the window except mine, and the guard on the gate himself can testify that I was outside these grounds when the shot was fired.”

“So it was a suicide attempt?”

“No. It was attempted murder. By somebody in the building.”

“Who?” Teal retorted.

“I may be brilliant, but I’m not totally omniscient. It was undoubtedly somebody in on the plot with Jeff Peterson. I’m sure the scheme was something like this: use the letters to give Liskard a motive for suicide, and then commit the suicide for him since he wouldn’t do it himself — leaving the window open as a false clue to murder if the suicide setup wasn’t convincing enough. His death was to be the cue for a revolution of some sort in Nagawiland, probably in the name of equality and democracy, but in fact a power grab. Peterson and his father, who’s back in Nagawiland, were in on it, but Peterson’s father would never be accepted as head of state. He’s a notorious alcoholic down there. The top man still hasn’t blown his horn.”

“So you have it all figured out,” Teal said slowly. “Except the small matter of who did it.”

The Saint shrugged.

“I can’t do all your work for you, Claud — I’m only trying to do most of your thinking. Now if you’ll try to control your natural envy of superior intellects, I’ll let you in on a brilliant plan I’ve come up with for catching the leader of this conspiracy.”

Teal managed a rather theatrical sneer.

“What plan would that be?” he grumbled. “Torture the ones we’ve caught until they tell who the boss is?”

“No, Claud, I’m suggesting we not use standard police methods this time.” Simon looked warily around. “If you want to catch your man before breakfast, don’t waste any more of my time here — and don’t try to keep me out of that hospital. Whatever other ideas you have about me, you know me well enough by now to know that murdering a man like Liskard isn’t my kind of fun. But if you’ll cooperate with me this time, you can have all the glory.”

His tone was no longer mocking, and the detective had jousted with him for long years enough to recognize his sincerity.

Teal peered at him torpidly, chomping his gum like a shrewd and very thoughtful cow. A cartoonist depicting the scene might have drawn a small and almost wattless bulb glowing feebly above his head.

“You’re thinking of a trap,” he stated expressionlessly.

“Good for you, Claud, old tortoise,” Simon congratulated him. “And it needs you to help rig the cheese.”

12

Nearly three hours later, on the third floor of the Edgington Hospital, a doctor appeared at one end of a corridor as two other doctors came out of a room and walked away along the corridor in the other direction. Another door on the same corridor was flanked by a uniformed policeman and a plain-clothes detective. A student nurse carrying a covered metal tray came out of that room and followed the two doctors.

No one paid any particular attention to the doctor who then walked alone down the corridor. He wore a white smock which covered his body from his shoulders to his knees. Over his mouth and nose was a white mask, and a white cap closely covered the top of his head and his forehead. At the guarded door he merely nodded to the detective, opened the door, and stepped in. Beyond a small alcove was the patient’s bed. The patient lay still, his own head thoroughly bandaged. Only his eyes were not covered by gauze, and they were closed.

A nurse who was sitting near the bed stood up and looked at the doctor in surprise.

“I thought he was supposed to sleep,” she said.

“He is,” the doctor whispered. “But his reaction in the next hour may be critical. Please get everything prepared for a transfusion if necessary. And while you’re at it, you’d better also ask for an oxygen tent.”

The nurse peered at his eyes.

“I’m sorry, doctor, but I don’t recognize...”

“Bronson,” he said impatiently. “I’m on the Prime Minister’s personal staff — from Nagawiland. Now, if you please...”

The nurse, accustomed to obeying doctors without question, thinned her lips, nodded, and left the room.

Instantly the doctor hurried to the bed. The patient lay still, his breathing slow and shallow, only his closed eyes showing through the bands of gauze and adhesive that swathed his head. With a swift glance over his shoulder at the door, the doctor pulled something that looked like a thin pointed stick from beneath his white smock. He bent over the bed, bringing the long slender shaft down toward the throat of the man in the bed.

The patient suddenly came to life. He rolled violently toward the doctor, catching him low in the stomach with a foot that shot out from between the sheets and sent him tumbling back across the room. The doctor’s eyes were wide with surprise and panic. The patient flung back the covers and sprang out on his feet. The doctor reeled back toward the door, wildly swinging the stick to cover his retreat; but the patient now had an automatic in his hand, pointing accurately at the center of the doctor’s chest

“If I were in the movies,” came Simon Templar’s voice from behind the patient’s mask, “I’d say, Sorry to interrupt your operation, doctor, but this time I’m afraid you’re the one who gets stuck.”

The doctor froze, his back to the alcove which led into the main corridor.

“Now drop that Magic wand — which looks to me like a souvenir Nagawi arrow, probably dipped in some jolly native poison,” Simon said, pulling off his own bandages.

The other man seemed about to obey, but then he drew back his arm and flicked his wrist, and the arrow flashed through the air toward the Saint. Simon ducked aside, and the sharp stained point whipped past his ear and clattered against the wall beyond the bed in which he had been lying.

He could easily have shot his opponent dead in that single second, even while he was dodging the arrow, which might actually have been what the other was hoping for, if his last desperate throw failed to inflict a scratch which could likely have been lethal. But the Saint wanted him alive. So when the man followed the arrow with a wild suicidal lunge at him, Simon once more held his fire, but sidestepped and deflected the blow with a numbing karate cut into the forearm. His own right hand jabbed the gun muzzle cruelly into the “doctor’s” belly. His left caught him flat on the side of his head, and then snatched away the white mask.

“Foreign Minister Todd,” Simon said pleasantly. “I suppose this is a sample of how your followers would have gone back to nature if your little revolution had come off?”

Todd tried another futile swing even though he was dazed and against the wall. He succeeded only in knocking over a table lamp. Simon swung him around and locked him in a comparatively painless if undignified judo hold.

“One thing you’re not,” the Saint said regretfully, “and that’s a fighter. I suppose those diplomatic cocktail parties aren’t the best exercise in the world. All right, everybody — the show’s over.”

The door of the communicating lavatory burst open, and half a dozen people came through it in fairly rapid succession. Among them were two police officers and Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal.

Simon released Todd with a motion that swung him directly into Teal’s arms.

“Liskard’s dead?” Todd asked as he was put in handcuffs.

“Don’t sound so hopeful,” Simon answered. “You’re as bad a shot as you are a brawler. You fractured his jaw, but that should only increase any politician’s popularity.”

Anne Liskard had also come into the room. She stared at Todd with shock and horror.

“Why?” was all she could say.

“He’s a tyrant!” Todd screamed hysterically.

“And you wanted to take his place — which is both more truthful and to the point,” Simon put in. “Obviously you didn’t have any hope of getting all the way to the top on your own merits, so you thought it easily might be worth a couple of thousand lives to get there through a coup.”

“It’s a revolution!” Todd raved defiantly. “It can go on without me.”

“There is no revolution,” Anne Liskard said to him icily. “And I don’t know how even somebody as low as you could have the nerve to use that word for the bloody little game you’re playing.”

She and Todd glared at one another. Teal took the prisoner’s arm and pulled him toward the door.

“Coming, Templar?” he asked.

“No, thanks, Claud. I’ll let you bask in whatever limelight you can scrape together at this hour of the morning. The one thing I want in the world at this point is some sleep.”

Teal and his troops left with Todd. As Simon followed, Anne Liskard touched his arm. Her whole manner had changed since he had first met her.

“I don’t know what I can do to...”

“Thank me?” the Saint said. “Just one thing. Try to get the past in perspective, and be nice to your husband. Until anyone better comes along, Nagawiland really needs him. He’s a good man.”

She looked at him seriously, and then her tired face softened into a smile.

“I’m way ahead of you on that,” she said. “I’ve already made enough good resolutions to last me through a dozen New Years’.”

Simon looked back over his shoulder as he walked away.

“And take care of yourself,” he said. “That’s a worthy cause too.”

At ten in the morning of the same day the Saint settled down beside the telephone in his own home in Upper Berkeley Mews. It had begun to snow lightly, and his own personal view of London was beginning to look like sugared cake. The fog was already gone, and by nightfall the stars would probably be as sharp as crystals in a clear sky.

And there would be no Mr Snowball truck lurking in a gray street. Mr Snowball would be happily taking credit for his latest victory over evil, and the gray street would no longer be gray but pure and sparkling white in the pale sunlight.

“Good morning — London Hilton,” came the response to his dialing.

“Miss Bannerman, please,” Simon said.

A little later Mary Bannerman answered.

“Did you think I’d forgotten you?” Simon asked.

“Oh, thank goodness it’s you!” she exclaimed. “Are you all right? I’ve heard everything on the radio — about Jeff and the others being arrested, and Todd, and... and you were right. They were planning to take over in Nagawiland.”

“In fact, their buddies down there murdered two good men before word got there that Liskard was still alive — contrary to their expectations. But it could have been much worse. If the tribes had gone on a rampage...”

“I can imagine,” she said. “And Tom... how is he?”

“He’ll be all right. Todd must have panicked when he got word that Peterson had been picked up, and his hands were shaking when he tried to fake a Liskard suicide by himself. Then he had to make one last mad try at the hospital — but he blew that, too.”

“I’m glad.” The girl’s voice was subdued. “Tom’ll be able to carry on, then?”

“Yes. In fact this could make him a hero. And his wife shows signs of being something more than an anchor, for the first time in years.”

Mary was silent for some moments before she spoke again.

“I suppose the police will be around to get me soon.”

Simon deliberated.

“I’ve thought it over,” he said. “Until now I’ve never gone in much for psychologists’ theories about the treatment of criminals, but I’ll give even a bad idea a chance. You can consider yourself under suspended sentence. I’m taking personal responsibility for your rehabilitation. You’ll have to own up to your little insurance swindle, of course; but if you give the money back I’m sure the Company won’t prosecute you.”

“But Jeff will tell—”

“Tell what? That you gave him those letters? They were yours to do what you liked with — except use for blackmail. But nobody was ever asked for money, except me. And that was only a pretext for something else, so I’ve decided to forget it. You weren’t involved in any of the real violence.

Which seems to leave you in the clear. Aside from the usual requirement of keeping in close touch with your probation officer.”

“Oh, Simon!” she said with incredulous relief shaking in her voice. “Tell me when...”