The Saint and the People Importers

1

Abdul Haroon preceded the Saint down the stairs to the street like an unwilling hippo.

“I’ve parked in back,” the Saint told him. “My friend is a bit shy.”

“I carry only the key to the front,” Haroon replied. “We can go through.”

He walked the few feet to the main door of his restaurant flinging quick glances into the street and over his shoulder as if he were a fat schoolboy sneaking into a forbidden pantry.

“What are you so worried about?” Simon asked. “None of the baddies knows I’m here — and anyway, I’ll protect you if you prove to deserve it.”

Haroon bent stiffly forward and unlocked the glass door so amply identified in gilt lettering as the portal of the Golden Crescent.

“You cannot know what a torment my life has been since these people began to interfere in things and threaten me,” he said in a low voice. “But what could I do? You have seen how they treat people who do not co-operate. Come in, come in...”

He held the door open and closed it quickly behind him as soon as the Saint had entered. The restaurant was dim because of the thick colourless curtains that had been drawn across the plate-glass windows. Haroon threw the bolt, and the shade which covered the door swayed a few times, sending a wing of sunlight fluttering across the wall before the room settled into a kind of undersea gloom again.

“But it’s only people who don’t co-operate who ever stop rats like Kalki and Fowler,” Simon said. “On the other hand, as I’m sure you must have said to yourself, who wants to be a dead hero? How much did they pay you?”

Abdul Haroon’s eyes grew extraordinarily round and whitely large.

“They paid me nothing! They paid me nothing! They threatened to frighten away my customers... to kill me! Ali tried to go against them and you know what happened to him!”

“All right, calm down,” the Saint said in a not especially soothing voice. “Let’s go on back.”

Haroon stalled when he reached the passageway which led through from the dining room to the kitchen.

“But you haven’t told me anything,” he protested. “Who is there? What do you want with me?”

“I’ve told you: I have an undernourished friend, and a good dose of your curry will do him worlds of good. Let’s go bring him in.”

Simon prodded Haroon’s overflowing waistline with a stiff finger, which set him in motion again through the kitchen and into the back room where Mahmud had writhed on the floor in mock agony the night before. It was dark because there were no windows, until Haroon switched on a light, and the place smelled as fragrant of spices as it had the first time Simon had entered it. The perfumes of exotic gastronomy had an ineradicable way of permeating the premises of their preparation around and beyond all human tumult.

“Open up,” Simon insisted, and Haroon finally fumbled a large key from a nail on the wall and unfastened the back door with it.

The Pakistani blinked at the morning sunlight, and then blinked again with shock as he seemingly recognised the car which was parked outside.

“Where did you get that?” he blurted.

“All things will be revealed to you in the day of their ripeness,” the Saint said poetically. “I suppose you could classify this little buggy as the spoils of war.”

He left Haroon gaping from the doorway and opened the car to greet a highly relieved Tammy Rowan. She caught his hands and let herself be helped out of the car.

“I’m so glad to see you!” she gasped. “He was starting to thump around back there something frightful...” She stared dubiously at the bulky form of Abdul Haroon for the first time. “Oh...”

“This is our ally, at least for the moment,” the Saint said. “Mr. Haroon meet Mademoiselle X.”

Haroon automatically half-formed a smile before abandoning the effort for a sickly droop.

“I have met the lady,” he said disconsolately. “She writes for a newspaper.”

“But she isn’t the special guest I was referring to,” the Saint went on with unflappable good cheer. “Would you mind lending your useful waistline to block the view from the end of the alley while I unload the guest of honour. Tammy, you could add your own svelte silhouette over there, just in case any early bird waddles by with his eyes open enough to notice anything.”

Tammy Rowan complied with the most pleasing competence, and herself shoved Haroon into quivering cooperation, while Simon opened the trunk of the car.

“What is it?” Haroon croaked, seeing the blanket-covered shape.

The Saint grabbed Shortwave’s feet and pulled him half out of the car. The ex-jockey’s scuffed brown shoes were all of him that showed from underneath the covering.

“You might ask who is it,” Simon said, “but on second thought what probably is more appropriate. How about lending me a hand.”

Haroon, feet attached by some invisible force to the threshold, tried to flap the whole situation away with both hands.

“A dead man?” he twittered. “A body? In heaven’s name, take it away!”

“It’s not dead yet,” Simon said. “Observe.”

He kicked one of Shortwave’s invisible shins, bringing forth a definitely animate squawk from the opposite end of the blanket.

“No, no!” Haroon cried. “I have nothing to do with this. I’m only a poor man trying to—”

“Trying to straddle the fence till he sees which side is safest to jump on.” The Saint’s arm suddenly shot out and his fingers encircled one of Haroon’s wrists like steel clamps and rearranged him in screening position. “So let’s get it straight, Humpty Dumpty,” he said, firing the words at point blank range into the fat man’s frightened face. “You’re going to jump on to my side or you’re going to have a great fall that’ll splash you halfway across Leicester Square. Now stand still while I lug in this new delicacy for your menu.”

Abdul Haroon stood back while Simon lifted the blanket-swaddled shape effortlessly under one arm and carted it through the back door, and then followed with an alacrity that would have made a gazelle stare with admiration. He grabbed Shortwave’s ankles, which happened to be colour ully adorned with bright purple socks, and took off in reverse while Tammy ran after them.

“Whoa!” Simon said when they were halfway through the kitchen, and ungently dropped his major share of the load. “Let’s stop and unwrap him. Lock that door, please, Tammy.”

While she was taking care of the outside door the Saint pulled the blanket off Shortwave, so that Haroon was able to identify him for the first time and gave a memorable imitation of a man discovering a scorpion in his cornflakes.

“Take him away!” he finally managed to gasp.

“I’m afraid he’s yours to have and to hold for the duration, Abdul,” the Saint said.

Shortwave’s venomous eyes darted from Simon’s to Haroon’s face, Haroon avoided meeting them with his own almost tearful orbs.

“The duration?” he quavered.

“The duration of this little caper — until I’ve got Shortwave’s friends bundled up as comfortably as he is.” Simon looked down at his robe-swathed captive. His tone changed to one of reasonable persuasion. “And now, Shortwave, I want you to cleanse your black little soul a bit by telling us exactly what your friends Kalki and Fowler will be up to this evening — and exactly where. I’m going to take the gag out of your mouth and let the truth flow unimpeded into our grateful ears.”

He stooped down and with one hand jerked the knot out of the necktie and whipped it and the handkerchief from between Shortwave’s teeth.

Shortwave then delivered himself of a single terse phrase which turned Tammy’s cheeks red and made coarsely clear his total disinterest in co-operating with the Saint.

“In that case,” Simon said, imperturbably, “we’ll have to try to win your heart through kindness.” He straightened up. “Do you like curry?”

“No,” snarled Shortwave.

“Good,” the Saint rejoined genially. “Abdul, how about warming up a nice mess of your native pottage for our guest?”

Haroon looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“I do not understand.”

“I want you to make some curry for Shortwave so hot that it will sear the soot off his insides, to borrow a figure of speech from his boss. I want you to concoct something so impeccably fiery that his tongue will thaw and babble like a mountain stream. I’m sure you have some leftovers we can fix up especially for the occasion?”

Haroon turned up his palms, turned down the corners of his mouth, and nodded. He was already on his way to the refrigerator when he thought again and stopped.

“Everything is made fresh every day,” he claimed.

“I’m sure you could violate your high standards as a special favour to our friend. There must be a few tidbits lying around from last night.”

Haroon turned expressionlessly to the refrigerator, opened it, and brought out a large metal pot which he set on the stove. He lifted the lid and looked inside.

“Lime-pickle sauce,” he said.

“But probably not curried enough for Shortwave’s taste,” Simon said. “He likes it absolutely molten.”

“I hate it,” Shortwave said.

“Then you won’t quibble about the seasoning, will you?” said the Saint. “Bring on the curry powder, Abdul. Bring on the red pepper. We’re going to give this prodigal son a welcome he’ll never forget.”

2

While the sauce bubbled on the stove, Abdul Haroon ladelled into it a number of tablespoons of chili powder and cayenne. Even he, with his cultural tolerance for culinary pyrotechnics, looked somewhat appalled at what he had wrought.

“Enough extra?” he asked.

“Let’s not be miserly,” Simon said. “Here.”

He took down a bottle of tabasco sauce from one of the shelves and dumped its entire remaining contents into the simmering stew. Haroon looked at the empty bottle and at the concoction in the pan and then said something which the Saint found charming in its hushed simplicity:

“That will be very hot.”

“Yes it will,” Simon agreed. “If you remember the recipe, it might make you a new reputation.”

He bent over Shortwave, caught some of the loops of rope which held him, and lifted him to a standing position. “Now come along, Marconi, and prepare to have your tongue loosened.”

“You’ll have to untie my feet,” Shortwave said.

He was still playing the defiant little tough guy, a role he would have had to be fairly good in to survive in the circles he frequented. The Saint had felt sure he was not the type to cave in and start squealing his head off at the first threat of pressure. He was no rock of Gibraltar, but he had probably taken enough punishment before in his life not to stand in awe of it, and his natural inclination to keep his trap shut would be reinforced by the fear of Kalki and Fowler that everybody who came into contact with the organisation developed very quickly.

The Saint hoped that some exotic and unexpected form of persuasion might have a more telling effect than conventional threats of death. Although Simon had always given wide latitude to his personal interpretation of the justification of means by ends, he was not an adherent of the thumbscrew and hot-iron school of winning friends.

The use of fists or more unpleasant implements on a man whose hands were tied was not in his repertoire.

“If you can’t walk, hop,” he told Shortwave, and pulled him towards the dining room.

Shortwave bounding along beside him like a one-legged kangaroo until they reached the first of the ghostly white tables in the semi-light of the public eating room.

“Sit,” Simon said.

He shoved Shortwave into a chair and arranged him in a more or less orthodox sitting position when he threatened to topple on to the floor.

“What are you gonna d-d-d-d-do?” Shortwave asked.

“It’s what you’re going to do that’s important,” the Saint replied. “You’re going to sing for your breakfast. I want to know how I can find Kalki and Fowler.”

“I d-d-d-dunno,” said Shortwave. “They d-d-d-d-on’t tell me nothing.”

He tried to sound unconcerned, as if such matters as the whereabouts of his bosses were so far from his ken that it had never even occurred to him to think of the question before. The Saint bent down, and the dangerous cobalt brightness of his eyes sliced through the other man’s forced bravado.

“Listen, you humanoid short circuit,” he said. “I know that you know where Fowler is operating his transport service tonight, and you’re going to tell me, and you’re going to get it right.”

Shortwave blinked rapidly.

“I told you I d-dunno,” he said with a little less conviction.

Simon straightened up to his full height and put his hands on his hips.

“Then you’d better get your antenna up and tune in fast,” he said, “because you’re going to tell me while I’ve still got time to drive there.”

Tammy came in from the kitchen.

“Mr. Haroon wants to know if you want rice too,” she said.

“How about it, Shortwave?” Simon asked considerately. “Would you like rice?”

“I wouldn’t like nothing.”

“Clear enough,” the Saint said. “A real purist. Coming up — one large order of Curry Vesuvius.”

Abdul Haroon appeared in the dining room with a steaming bowl on a tray. He set it down in front of Shortwave, whose face twitched as the corrosive fragrance of the rusty yellow-green substance rose to his defenceless nostrils.

“No rice?” Haroon asked. “Chutney?”

“Nothing to dilute the full impact,” Simon insisted. “You see, the customer is already starting to shed tears of joy at the mere prospect of sampling your cooking. Open wide, friend.”

Shortwave sat with his skinny jaws clamped shut.

“You’ll open up or we’ll pry your mouth open with a cleaver. I assure you I can think of a lot worse things than this to do to you... some of them inspired by you last night. So open up and either start talking or start chewing.”

He dipped a spoon into the bowl and held it in front of Shortwave’s mouth, which still did not budge.

“All right, Abdul,” the Saint said. “Go get those hot tongs.”

Shortwave opened his mouth and instantly Simon introduced the spoon and its contents. When he had withdrawn the empty spoon he held it threateningly just beyond Shortwave’s lips.

“Now swallow like a nice boy,” he said.

Abdul Haroon’s lamb curry, in the state it ordinarily reached his patrons, was of that not quite unbearable degree of spicy hotness which a curry must have if it is to to be a real curry and yet not irrevocably cauterise the taste buds. It brought happy moisture to the eyes, perspiration to the brow, and to the palate an addictive desire for more. Few were the European partakers of the dish who did not intersperse their bites with copious use of their handkerchiefs and with large profitable gulps of Haroon’s wine and beer. Gratified, satisfied, half-melted, they would complete the meal with a sense of victory and the appearance of one who has walked through a Turkish bath fully clothed.

That was the curry ordinaire of the Golden Crescent. Shortwave had just been presented with a sauce so loaded with ardent powders of seeds, pods, and leaves as to make the normal torrid dish seem as bland as a bowl of scrambled eggs.

First Shortwave’s skull-like face underwent a general horrified transformation, as a wax mask might change on sudden exposure to searing heat. His eyes opened wide. His crewcut brown hair, already on end, seemed to bristle like the protective armament of an aroused porcupine. Then tears flooded from his eyes and he crumbled into a violent fit of coughing.

“I’d say it’s a hit,” the Saint said, looking up at Haroon and Tammy.

Tammy was in a state of empathetic numbness; but Haroon, after his first intense observation of the phenomenon, broke into a delighted grin.

“Ha, ha,” he said, as precisely as if he were pronouncing the words from a grammar book. The laugh grew on him. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Suddenly he saw how Shortwave was glowering up at him, and the laugh caught in his throat and the grin was instantly withdrawn from his lips.

“Don’t worry, Abdul,” the Saint said. “Your days of being bullied by these rats are over. Right, Shortwave? Where are Fowler and Kalki?”

“I told you I dunno!” Shortwave said defiantly.

“You forgot to stutter — or maybe it’s the curry cure,” the Saint remarked. “Obviously what you need is more of the same.”

Shortwave protested violently against the next heaping spoonful of curry before giving in and taking it. There followed the immediate question whether he was consuming it or being consumed by it. His appreciation this time was even more spectacular than the first. His whole body seemed ready to glow, and after the initial paroxysms he continued to gasp for air like an overtaxed steam engine. The Saint already had another mouthful ready for him, and in the concluding phases of his reaction to that Shortwave shook his head in what appeared to be surrender.

“Okay, okay,” he finally rasped. “That’s enough.”

“If you have any doubts, there’s plenty more where that came from,” said Simon. His voice became deadly earnest. “And if this kind of treatment seems namby-pamby to you, I’m sure you do understand we can become a lot more inventive, especially since we don’t have all day to soften you up.”

Shortwave was looking genuinely defeated.

“They’ll kill me if I tell,” he said.

“We’ll do worse if you don’t.”

Shortwave could think of no answer to that.

“What’ll you do if I do tell?” he asked.

“If I were in your seat I’d concentrate on what’ll happen if you don’t start telling fast — but just to set things straight I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll keep you alive and in one piece, tucked away somewhere so we can really work you over if we find out you’ve given us the wrong information.”

“But sometimes Fowler makes a plan and changes it,” Shortwave said hastily. “What if I told you what I know and he changed his mind? Then you’d think...”

“Never mind what we’d think. What is the plan?”

Shortwave sat back in his chair, putting as much space as possible between his gullet and what was left of the curry. He took a deep breath.

“Fowler’s got this cabin cruiser that he runs these wogs in on, and he moves it up and d-down the coast between jobs so nobody gets wise. What he uses is one of these...” Shortwave stopped. “He’ll kill me if I tell you.”

“I think I’d better have a word with your personal chef,” the Saint said, looking around towards Abdul Haroon, who was watching from the other side of the room.

“I’d rather eat that stuff than what Fowler would do to me,” Shortwave averred hopelessly.

“I wasn’t thinking of fattening you up any more for the slaughter,” Simon told. “I was just considering how you might do in a curry yourself. Abdul, how about bringing in a butcher knife and a long fork?”

“Seriously?” Abdul asked.

“Very seriously,” said the Saint.

The glint in his eyes would have outdone the sharpness of the best-honed steel blade in Abdul’s culinary arsenal. Shortwave did not wait to find out just how serious the Saint was.

“Okay,” he said. “Just don’t tell him I told you. It’s one of them forts they sunk out in the water in the war. You know what I mean?”

“In the Thames estuary?” the Saint asked him.

“Right.”

“If they sunk it, how can Fowler use it?” Tammy asked.

“They were big things they floated out into the estuary and sank to use as anti-aircraft emplacements,” the Saint explained. “The top part sticks up above the water. I’ve never seen one, unfortunately.”

“Oh, I know,” Tammy said. “And people tried to use them as pirate radio stations because they were outside the three-mile limit.”

“And now they’re abandoned,” Simon said. “Or they were supposed to be. Which one does Fowler use — and what does he use it for?”

“The guys who bring the load over from the Continent stow them there and Fowler picks them up,” Shortwave said.

He tried to describe the location of the unused fort which Fowler used.

“Who brings them over to the fort?” Simon asked.

“I d-d-dunno. He never comes and stays. He’s just the one that runs loads over here for Fowler to pick up. These Indian guys wait on the fort for Fowler to run them in at night.”

“And where does he run them in?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Sometimes it’s one place and sometimes it’s another. There’s plenty of places where nobody could see them coming in at night.”

The Saint looked at Tammy.

“Does that sound like the truth to you?”

“What good’s it to me to make it up?” Shortwave said. “Like you said, if I lie you come back and mess me up good.”

“All right then,” Simon said. “Tell me exactly how to find this fort — and I mean exactly.”

For the next five minutes Shortwave gave instructions for locating the fort. It was less than five miles offshore, and it was lucky for the Saint that it was no farther, since Shortwave’s direct experience with it was limited to two trips, and since his talent for observation and navigation left quite a lot to be desired.

“I can’t help it,” he finally said wearily. “That’s all I know. You can find it. It ain’t that hard.”

“What time does he pick them up?” Simon asked. “Does he stay out there on the fort during the day?”

“I think he goes out in the afternoon and then comes in with the load after dark.”

“What sort of boat does he have?”

“Some kind of cabin cruiser. Not too big.” Obviously Shortwave was no boating buff. “Sometimes he keeps it at a yacht club down towards Southend.”

“What’s it called?”

“I dunno.”

“For somebody with his own private built-in communications system there sure is a lot you dunno,” the Saint said.

Shortwave’s eyes rolled briefly up as if to inspect the top of his own head.

“I think you broke it,” he said. “Since you kicked me I ain’t heard nothing.”

“That would be a pity,” the Saint commiserated. “However, if your directions turn out to be helpful, maybe I’ll reward you by having you wired for cassettes.”

He looked at his watch and stepped away from the table, touching Tammy’s arm to signal her to follow him. They walked alone back into the hall.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think it’s all we’ve got to go on. It’s even possible he is telling the truth. I think we threw a pretty good scare into him.”

“So we go to the fort?” she asked almost brightly.

“Didn’t last night dampen your enthusiasm?” he asked. “I’d rather you stayed in London and kept watch over Shortwave.”

“And I’d rather go with you,” she said staunchly. “You promised. And anyway, we can leave Shortwave here with Mr. Haroon.”

“Aren’t you awfully trusting?” the Saint said, pulling her into the kitchen to be certain that Haroon could not hear. “What if Abdul lets Shortwave go?”

“He wouldn’t dare,” she said. “For one thing. Shortwave would kill him for cooking up that curry.”

“That’s the sort of motive only a newspaper-woman could dream up,” the Saint said. “Let me just say it straight out: I don’t think you should come with me because it’s too dangerous and because we don’t need two people — especially one who’s inclined to dive for the barrels of rifles when they’re pointed right at her.”

“I’m going,” Tammy said.

“What about your car?” he suggested temptingly. “It’s probably still lying wounded out in that ditch near Wraysbury. Shouldn’t you take care of it?”

“I’ll call up my paper and tell them what happened and they can see about the car.”

“No, you won’t,” the Saint said firmly. “To Fowler and Kalki you’re supposed to be dead, remember? You’ll have to stay missing so that they don’t change their plans for tonight. And, as I said, it would be a lot safer for you to stay missing right here.”

“I won’t stay here!” she persisted. “You promised me!”

Simon looked hard at her and shook his head with angry admiration.

“For that I should have my head examined,” he said. “But if you’re determined to have a hole in yours like Shortwave—”

As if the Saint’s last word had been a stage cue, there was suddenly a horrendous uproar from the dining room.

Shortwave was yelling at the top of his voice: “Hey! Don’t leave me! I just heard — they’re gonna get me! D-d-d-don’t leave me! I heard...”

3

“Just what did you hear?” Simon asked.

Shortwave, wild-eyed and sweating, scarcely managed to bring his vocal dam-burst under control. Abdul Haroon was as he had been when the Saint and Tammy had hurried in, speechless and staggered by the whole affair, sagging weakly against a wall.

“I heard they’re gonna get me,” Shortwave babbled. “It started working again, and I heard it.”

“What started working again?” Tammy asked.

“My head,” Shortwave said impatiently. “Like, you know, I can hear stuff, and just then I’m sittin’ here and bang it starts up again and I hear a little bit of Tea for Two and some static and then I hear Fowler saying to Kalki he better get me because I squealed...”

The little man ended his sentence not so much because he seemed to have run out of things to say as because his lungs ran out of air. While he was reinflating, Tammy rolled her eyes and tapped her temple with a forefinger for Simon’s and Haroon’s benefit. Simon nodded.

“I can’t think why I should waste time soothing your psyche,” he said to his captive, “but I can think of two reasons why you couldn’t have heard that even if your circuits did warm up again. Number one, you’re wired for radio transmissions, and I should think Kalki and Fowler would talk to one another on the telephone or in person. Number two, and much more significant they couldn’t possibly know you squealed unless they’d been here five minutes ago... unless you’re going to tell me they’ve got antennae of their own, and a network hook-up.”

“I d-d-d-dunno, but I heard it. They know it, I’m telling you! It come through as clear as a bell. Wait a minute!” He stopped and listened intently staring at the table. “The princess wore a trendy silk and organdie cocktail dress with matching...” He looked up and shook his head with relief. “Naw, that ain’t Fowler.”

“Definitely not,” agreed the Saint.

“But it was before!” Shortwave insisted.

“It was your guilty conscience,” Tammy said sceptically. “It’s high time you developed one.”

“And leaving you with that edifying thought, we’ll be on our way.”

The most observant and objective judge would have had a hard time deciding whether it was Shortwave or Haroon who reacted more boisterously to that piece of news. They both began yawling at once, and out of the caterwauling came the general impression that neither of them wanted to be left anywhere — but above all else did they not want to be left there, especially not with one another.

“I cannot!” Haroon was wailing. “I cannot have it! I cannot, cannot, cannot!”

“You can’t d-do this to me!” Shortwave yelped. “It’s murder! They know I’m here — I heard it! You can’t.”

The Saint restored order by sheer force of personality. His firm calm voice, fortified by his commanding height and the unruffled authority of his stance, soon had the effect which oil is reputed to exercise on troubled waters.

“Neither one of you characters is in any position to argue,” he said. “You’ll do exactly as I say because you’ve got no choice.” He looked down at Shortwave. “You’re the little hero who wanted to slice up our gizzards last night, don’t forget, and you’re lucky the worst we’re going to do to you for the moment is lock you up for the day.” He turned to Haroon. “Where can we stow him?”

“You can’t!” the owner cried. “There is no place!”

“What about his flat?” Tammy suggested.

“We can’t get Shortwave up there without carrying him through the street,” Simon told her, “Doesn’t this place have a cellar, Abdul?”

“You cannot!”

Simon spoke like a man who sees the end of his patience in plain view just ahead.

“You’ll do what I tell you or you’ll be in jail before you know what hit you!”

Haroon yielded.

“Back here,” he said. “The stairs are beyond the washroom.”

Shortwave kept up a steady stream of protest while he was being transferred down to a small windowless basement which apparently served only as a sort of limbo for an assortment of junk that Haroon could find no use for but could not quite bring himself to throw out. There was a table with three legs, a chair with a broken back, a couple of cases of empty dust-caked wine bottles, a stack of cardboard cartons and boxes, and a rolled-up mattress with its stuffing protruding through multiple hernias.

“A lot cosier than a drum of wet cement,” Simon said approvingly. “And if you’re reasonably unobnoxious, maybe Mr. Haroon will give you some more nice curry later in the day. You can put a gag on him before your hired hands come in for the evening, Abdul, and if he starts making a nuisance of himself pat him on the head with your biggest frying pan — and hope you don’t bend the frying pan. I’m going to put in an anonymous tip to Scotland Yard to be on the lookout for him, just in case he figures some way to get loose... But if he does get loose, Abdul, I shall hold you responsible, and I mean totally responsible. If you don’t want this admirable little eatery of yours to open under new management next week, while you settle down to lose a few pounds on good old British bread and water, you’ll be absolutely sure that Shortwave is sitting right here when I come back. Is that clear?”

Haroon nodded vigorously. Having double-checked Shortwave’s bonds and surroundings, the Saint came back up the steep stairs, closed the door at the top, and walked with Tammy and Haroon back to the rear of the restaurant.

“All right, Abdul, have a nice day, and good luck to you in finding some fresh staff. When Miss Rowan and I get finished you shouldn’t have as many worries about keeping the personnel alive as you’ve had up till now. And you’ll be able to breathe like a free man for the first time in — how long?”

Abdul Haroon grinned pallidly and used one of the English expressions on which he prided himself.

“In donkey’s years,” he said, and stood despondently waiting for the Saint and Tammy to drive away.

Tammy watched the pear-shaped restaurateur through the back window of the car until Simon had turned out of the alley into the street at the end.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?” she asked.

“You could get better odds on his health than ours today, I think. If he does what I told him he shouldn’t have any problems.”

Tammy sat back in her seat and tried to relax.

“So we’re headed for the sea?” she said.

“Right. After we’ve stopped by my place for breakfast, and your flat for a change of clothes.”

“What’ll we do when we get there? And I mean the sea — not your ‘place,’ wherever it is.”

“Have a lovely time, of course. The sky is clear; the air is crisp. The only thing we don’t know is how the water is. I should have asked Shortwave for the marine forecast.”

Tammy smiled, stretched her arms, and clasped her hands behind her head.

“I think that wretched little beast is cracking up. I hope he spends the rest of his life thinking he’s a television set with a burnt-out picture tube.” She shivered involuntarily. “I’m so glad to be away from him, I just can’t tell you! You know, I’m only just starting to realise how terrified I was last night.”

4

But while Tammy was in the processing of cleansing Shortwave from her mind, Abdul Haroon was finding him considerably less easy to ignore.

The owner of the Golden Crescent had no sooner seen the Saint and his flaxen-haired passenger away from the back door and returned to his kitchen than the prisoner in the cellar began to shout and thump on the subterranean floor. The noise was well-muffled and could not have been heard in the street, but the ears of Abdul Haroon were made hypersensitive by anxiety. He had never been an optimistic man, and now it seemed to him that any revelation of his unwilling involvements with either Kalki or Simon Templar would lead to certain and total ruin.

He listened in anguish for a few minutes to Shortwave’s uproar and then hurried out of the kitchen to the door at the top of the stairs. He rapped sharply on it.

“Stop it down there! Stop it!”

“Lemme out of here!” bawled Shortwave. “They’re gonna kill me!”

Haroon opened the door, and his reply was in the style of a schoolmaster addressing an unruly pupil.

“You are very bad!” he said. “You must be quiet. You have heard what was said here, and I can do nothing.”

The bumping below stopped. With his ear to the door, Haroon could hear the captive’s heavy breathing, and then his moderated vicious voice, which unpleasantly resembled the hiss of a snake.

“Listen, you fat double-crosser, you let me out of here before they come to get me or I’ll kill you!”

“You would try to kill me if I untied you,” Haroon wisely replied. “You are crazy. Nobody is coming to get you because nobody knows you are here.”

Shortwave’s voice betrayed nerves that were as taut as banjo strings.

“They do know!” he exploded. “They know!” He paused for a second. “I know a few things too,” he said in a new sly tone. “I’ve got enough on you to get you in twice as much trouble with the cops as Templar ever could. You hear me? If I do get out of here later I’ll see they send you up for good — unless I get my hands on you first.”

Haroon’s knees felt weaker the more he reflected on the realism of Shortwave’s threats. A little while before, as he was sincerely wishing the Saint well, he had felt that the burden which Kalki and Fowler had loaded on to his shoulders during the past months was at last really going to be lifted. Now all the hopelessness returned, and he began to see himself once more as a great soft brown rat trapped by cats in a maze.

“But if you help me I’ll just let you alone and get out of here,” Shortwave promised. “Come on, what’s it to you?”

“The Saint would get me,” Haroon mumbled.

“If he don’t, Kalki will.”

“No. Templar will take care of it all and come back.” The words alone gave the fat man courage. “You just wait. You will see.”

He left the cellar door and went back to the kitchen.

“Templar won’t be back!” Shortwave screamed after him. “If you don’t d-do something about me quick, it’s gonna be too late, and Kalki’s gonna get you!”

Haroon tried unsuccessfully to shut the words from his mind and turned to the one solace he had found in life of late: food. On the counter by the refrigerator he began assembling the ingredients for a culinary orgy whose very volume would be guaranteed to swamp his whole being and drive every worry from his heart.

But in the background Shortwave kept up his thumping and screaming at a more frenzied pitch than ever. Haroon’s hands were shaking. He almost dropped a bowl of eggs. At some fancied sound behind him his heart stopped thudding for a full two seconds. He sank his unsteady fingers into a cold baked chicken, tore it in half, and imagined the similar fate that awaited him if Kalki or Fowler should find that he was keeping one of their group a prisoner — and that he had collaborated in other ways to help their enemies.

Shortwave’s screeching suddenly became unbearable. Haroon snatched up just such a large iron frying pan as the Saint had suggested to him for maintaining peace in his own house and ran heavily back to the cellar door. He started down the stairs, clutching the banister, with the big skillet raised on high in his free hand. The instant Shortwave saw it he cringed and grew as quiet as a laryngitic giraffe. Haroon brandished the pan.

“Be quiet or I will kill you myself,” he threatened hoarsely.

Shortwave, still bound hand and foot, could only cower and attempt to wring out every last drop of his meagre dramatic ability in what he considered a final attempt to save himself. He had genuinely thought he had tuned in on Kalki and Fowler’s plans to kill him for betraying them. There were other moments when his cacophonous mentality reminded him of the logic of the Saint’s argument that Fowler could not possibly know what had happened over the curry bowl in the dining room of the Golden Crescent. The facts and fantasies were so jumbled in his steel-reinforced head by now that they rang like loose bolts in a metal bucket.

“Would you let this guy Templar cut my throat?” he asked Haroon almost tearfully.

“No!” said Haroon, and meant it.

Shortwave knew he meant it. In his nightmare imagination he saw Kalki flexing his giant hands and coming after him. The only hope was to make amends.

“Look, Abdul,” Shortwave argued. “If they show up here we’ve both had it. We gotta let them know I didn’t mean it. Now go call up Kalki in case he d-d-didn’t leave yet and tell him the Saint got loose last night and he’s on his way after Fowler and I said to warn them. You got that? We get off the hook that way, see? See how easy it is? Come on, Abdul — do me a favour and just call him, right now. Okay?”

Haroon had lowered the frying pan and was listening. The multiplying changes of pace, from menace to supplication, were starting to unhinge the precarious stability of whatever powers of discrimination he might once have possessed.

“Why should I call, you fool? They know nothing now.”

Shortwave decided to humour him.

“Okay, Abdul, so they don’t know. All the more reason to call. Let ’em know how we’re both trying to help out. Just don’t tell Kalki anything, okay? I mean about what either one of us done. Just tell him I said to tell him the Saint knows.”

Abdul Haroon was tempted. His fear of the police was becoming distinctly remote from his reburgeoning fear of Kalki. But he said nothing. He was considering.

Shortwave got panicky again at the possibility of refusal.

“You got to,” he begged. “Think what they’ll do to us. Remember Ali? I mean, man, it won’t be nice! I’d rather do anything — I’d rather go to jail than let Kalki get his hands on me. What can the Saint do? Nothing! He’s just bluffing you. Let me loose, okay?”

“No.”

But Haroon was quivering. His chubby legs had all the sturdiness of wet rice paper.

“Then if you won’t let me loose call up Kalki, but quick! Tell him before it’s too late!”

The fat man’s resolution wilted. He began nodding assent, did not bother to close the cellar door, and trotted away across the dining room, and out on to the pavement. He was running for the telephone in his flat, one of his hands fluttering like a bird and the other still clutching his frying pan. He did not even realise that he was carrying the pan until he started feverishly to dial Kalki’s number.

A moment later the voice of the wrestler answered.

“Good, good!” Abdul Haroon began. “I was afraid you might have gone. This is Haroon. I–I must tell you that the Saint knows about you and Fowler.”

“The Saint is dead,” Kalki said tolerantly.

“No, he is not!” Haroon blurted. “He was here just half an hour ago! With Shortwave!”

Kalki roared like a typhoon. Interspersed in the general detonation were appropriate questions. Haroon melted on to his sofa like warm jelly, fairly blubbering into the mouthpiece.

“It was not my fault! Shortwave told them where Fowler would be tonight. They left him here tied up. I could do nothing but hurry to ring you. You see, I have warned you! I have done all I could!”

“And where is the Saint?”

“On his way to the fort.”

“And Shortwave?”

“Still here, still tied.”

“I will be there in five minutes! Open the door for me!”

The line clicked dead at Kalki’s end.

Haroon hauled himself to his feet, muttered incoherently to himself, turned around three times, started off in one direction and then in another, and finally ran to the chest of drawers in his bedroom. He took out his wallet, stuffed it with what cash he had hidden in the flat, looped a tie around his bulging neck, jerked a knot into it, grabbed up a jacket and topcoat, and set off down the stairs. Halfway down he remembered some negotiable cheques, heaved his bulk up the steps again, retrieved them, and waddled down again.

Kalki lived so close by that he might easily have been in front of the restaurant already. Haroon opened the door and started to step into the dining room, but then considered the possibilities of entrapment if Kalki should arrive and come in after him.

“D-d-did you call?” Shortwave shouted anxiously from the depths of the basement. “Did you get him?”

“Yes!” Haroon answered shrilly.

Then he wondered why he had answered. He wondered why he was there at all. He could have been running. But he was afraid that by running he might anger Kalki even more. Instead he left the door slightly ajar, and stood outside it in the brightening sunlight, revelling in the safety pf the public pavement, where taxies and lorries flew this way and that, and people were everywhere.

He was all but dancing on his toes in front of his place of business when Kalki the Conqueror loomed into view around the corner, his whiskers swept by the breeze of his striding speed. He wore a red waistcoat and a plaid jacket, and his black ball-bearing eyes were so close together as to seem fused and inseparable.

Haroon kept himself at least ten feet away, backing off as Kalki approached.

Kalki did not say anything but “Where?”

Haroon pointed to the open door. The passers-by hurried around him in the sunshine, seeing nothing strange. Only when Kalki had stalked into the restaurant did Haroon venture nearer. Still standing well back from the threshold he peered inside and ascertained that Kalki had gone on towards the rear of the premises. Then he edged into the doorway, leaving most of his mass outside in the sun while he extended his neck in order to hear what was happening.

The strange thing was that he heard nothing. He had expected screams and roars. He had to sidle halfway across the dining room before he detected the sounds of voices. Before he could make out the words the voices abruptly stopped. The silence was then stranger than ever. Straining his senses, Haroon heard a sound like a gasp of air escaping briefly from a balloon, and then a noise like the crushing of an eggshell.

Abdul Haroon turned and fled, his coattails flapping, and did not stop running until he was in a taxi bound for Victoria Station and the next train from London to anywhere else.