The Saint And The Fiction Makers

1

Like a monstrous silver manta ray, the giant hovercraft moved over the marshy plain. Fleeing ahead of it across the treeless flat-land, Charles Lake’s jeep seemed in comparison no larger than a darting minnow.

The chase was as unequal in other factors as in size. Lake had no true road to follow, only a pair of pitted ruts which at intervals almost disappeared entirely or were submerged in mud and water. His only real chance of escape had been to drive out of sight of the hovercraft before its crew had noticed he was gone. Now that they were in pursuit, he could see no hope of outdistancing or evading them. His jeep’s speed was reduced by holes and bogs, while the hovercraft roared effortlessly along on its cushion of air two feet above the ground. Propelled at an unvarying seventy miles an hour, it would overtake Lake within a minute.

His jaw set, he glanced anxiously over his shoulder at the huge shape bearing down on him. If he could not escape the machine, he would have to fight it. He slowed a little, allowing the hovercraft to come within fifty yards. Having no braking mechanism, the craft begun to slow cautiously by reducing power. It was then that Charles Lake stamped his jeep’s accelerator to the floor and shot ahead in a fresh burst of speed.

Behind him he could hear the sudden change in tone of the hovercraft’s propellers as it once more put on full speed. It was almost on him, only sixty or seventy feet behind. At that moment Lake brought his foot down on his brake pedal in a move that brought the jeep to a sudden halt and took the pilot of the hovercraft completely by surprise. With no way of stopping quickly and no way of making a sharp turn at such speed, the machine hurtled helplessly towards the jeep like a flat stone on ice.

Lake, the instant his vehicle had stopped, had rolled from the driver’s seat and scrambled for safety. He heard the hovercraft’s metal front crash into the jeep, and looked in time to see the pursuing monster swing to one side, its rear jarred high into the air as its front came to an abrupt halt. The fans which held it off the ground, set out of sight within the base of the body, were not designed to make it fly, so the rear, which had been thrown into the air, came down with all the force of its tons of dead weight, overriding the cushioning fans and smashing into the ground. It bounced up again, helped by the still operating fans, while the pilot cut off the upper propellers.

Charles Lake dashed forward at the machine, tearing one of the metal buttons from his jacket. It was much heavier than an ordinary button, and as it was torn from the threads which had held it a pin was released which activated the fuse inside. Lake tossed the button with perfect aim under the hovercraft and himself to the ground with his hands over his head.

The fantastically powerful explosion which followed disabled at least two of the four supporting fans. The hovercraft crunched to the ground, helpless. Even before the shower of mud and stones thrown from beneath the machine had come to earth, Lake ran to the hovercraft and leaped up its sloping side. The thing was as large as an ordinary house. The pilot’s cabin was a plastic dome set among the propeller columns on top, and inside that transparent cover Lake could see one man collapsed forward on the control and another on his feet with pistol in hand.

Seeing Lake, who was carrying no weapon, the man threw open the sliding hatch of the plastic dome and fired wildly. Lake dodged, tore another button from his jacket, and sprawled flat on the metal skin of the machine as he threw the miniature bomb past the man with the pistol into the cabin. An instant later the cabin and its former occupants were an unrecognizable smoking wreckage.

Lake leaped inside, kicked open the door which led down into the main deck of the craft, and felled a startled crewman with a karate chop to the throat. Taking the man’s pistol, he ran on, sure of his way since he had been in the craft only minutes before, until he came to a door at the end of the deck. It was unlocked, and he flung it open, ready to fire.

“Welcome, Mr. Lake. Drop your gun or the girl dies.”

The man who spoke, the leader who called himself Warlock, stood with his hand on an electronic control panel. On a steel table, her wrists and ankles clamped firmly to the metal slab, lay Warlock’s hostage, beautiful, blonde, almost nude. She could only writhe futilely as a blinding ray of light from the ceiling moved along the slab towards her, melting the steel in a bubbling channel as it came.

Simon Templar’s profile was illuminated by the flickering Technicolor glare as he inclined his head to speak to the girl sitting beside him.

“Ten to one that gorgeous form of yours comes through unbarbecued,” he whispered.

She was the same girl who was clamped to the steel slab on the screen, and so she seemed eminently well qualified to appreciate his comment.

Carol Henley’s narcissistic engrossment with her own shadow had been almost embarrassingly intense throughout the film, but now she managed to tear her eyes away from her picture long enough to glance at the face of her companion. It was a keenly active, momentarily ironical face whose startlingly handsome swashbuckler’s features might have stretched credulity almost as far as the events in the film he had been watching for the past ninety minutes.

“You do look irritatingly relaxed about the whole thing, I must say,” the actress whispered back. “Aren’t you the least bit worried about what might happen to me?”

“Not in the least,” Simon answered with a shrug. “A clever producer like Starnmeck isn’t likely to let them kill his highest-paid sex symbol, especially when she’s been on the side of the angels since the beginning. That’s one of the rewards of virtue and top billing.”

When Simon Templar’s prediction was almost immediately fulfilled, Carol Henley turned up her lovely nose in feigned exasperation and concentrated on the scene of her rescue, which was effected when Charles Lake caused the chief villain’s body to short-circuit an electrical control panel in time to stall the sparkling death ray just before it took its first searing taste of Carol’s excitingly exposed flesh. The film ended in a geyser of sparks, a skull-quaking series of stereophonic explosions, and a close-up view of Carol Henley’s lips — eight hundred times life size — readying themselves for the attentions of her hero, that same Charles Lake who, as of tonight’s premiere, completed his fourth consecutive cinematic fouling-up of the machinations of S.W.O.R.D. — the Secret World Organization for Retribution and Destruction.

The screen dimmed, and the first-night London audience blinked its way back from fantasy as the cinema lights came on, applauding with a vehemence that Simon Templar could only think must reflect the hidden but deeply persistent yearning of modern man for the taste of violence and derring-do.

Of all the people in the cinema, he alone, Simon Templar, could be said to have lived a life which for excitement, danger, and impossible adventure equalled that of the fictional Charles Lake. And yet even the Saint — as Simon Templar was more widely known, feared, and uneasily admired by both the police and the criminal world in his role of modern buccaneer — felt amused and refreshed by his filmic voyage into a land of utter improbability. At the same time he felt, as the other members of the audience must have felt to a much greater extent, a certain let-down at being forced to return to the limitations of the everyday world.

As the Saint stood and moved along the row of seats towards the aisle, only that disturbing hint of piracy in his features would have separated him from the rest of the fashionable crowd. His soberly cut dark suit minimized the trained musculature beneath it, and the sapphire eyes that could sometimes blaze with blue fire or freeze into chips of ice were lazily relaxed. Only those who knew his fantastic history would have believed that in other moods he had been the source of more massive epidemics of insomnia in Scotland Yard and in the haunts of the Ungodly than could have been caused by all the coffee and traffic noise in London combined.

“Wasn’t I divine?” Carol Henley exclaimed, in what Simon thought was a commendable burst of candour.

“Magnificent,” he said solemnly. “Fortunately Sarah Bernhardt has already gone to her just reward, or you might have hastened her on the way.”

When Carol gave him a dubious look he went on:

“The divine Sarah had to at least recite the alphabet to thrill an audience — so they say — but all you have to do is lie there and wiggle without making a sound.”

Carol beamed and squeezed his hand as they joined the sluggish human river in the aisles.

“Well, thank you very much, Simon. That’s about the nicest thing anybody ever said to me.”

The Saint coughed and saw her torn from his grasp by a horde of congratulatory and self-congratulatory assistant directors, technicians, minor actors, and financial backers. Having only just met her that evening, Simon hoped he would be able to retrieve her before long. Meanwhile, being several inches taller than almost everyone else in the cinema, he looked around for other people he might know or recognize.

The producer of the film, Paul Starnmeck, whom Simon had first met at a dinner party several weeks before, and whose invitation was the reason for the Saint’s unwonted attendance at a motion-picture premiere, was accepting the homage of toadies in the lobby just outside the auditorium. He was a florid man of substantial bulk, most of it distributed along the horizontal, and it cost him some effort to thrust his way back against the current of the human flood to grasp Simon’s hand and peer up questioningly at his face.

Simon knew what the question was, because the producer had explained to him in extending the invitation that while he was primarily eager for the pleasure of the Saint’s company, though laughingly not unmindful of a certain extra fillip which would be added to the premiere’s publicity by the presence of an almost mythical real-life adventurer, he was also interested in having Simon Templar’s opinion of the film. The three previously released adventures of Charles Lake in his war against that apparently omniscient and virtually omnipotent organization S.W.O.R.D. had aroused a public enthusiasm almost unequalled since the introduction of the smoke of burning tobacco leaves into the lungs of European man. But there was always room for improvement, Starnmeck had admitted, and the success of the Charles Lake films had started a flash flood of imitations, each trying to out-exaggerate the other. Maybe the Saint’s spontaneous reactions would suggest how to keep the Starnmeck product ahead of the competition.

“Good evening, Mr. Starnmeck,” Simon said pleasantly but non-committally, in response to the questioning look.

The producer glanced around somewhat guiltily and made a skilful kind of blocking turn of his broad body to cut off his recent entourage and isolate himself with the Saint as much as was possible in the crush.

“It may not be great art,” he said tentatively, “but it moves.”

“To quote Galileo,” agreed the Saint amiably.

“I beg your pardon?”

“To quote Galileo after his trial: Nevertheless, it moves. Of course he was talking about the earth, wasn’t he?”

“Of course,” producer Starnmeck said blankly.

“But it amounts to the same thing,” Simon said, glancing about in hopes that he had not lost Carol Henley entirely. “They both move — the earth and your film. They move predictably, but they move.”

“I’m glad you think so,” the producer said with uncertain relief.

“Yes,” said the Saint. “That’s one of the advantages of life, and one of its disadvantages too: predictability. Most people are caught in a web of predictabilities that’s both comforting and stifling. People think they want security, but underneath they’d give almost anything to have the nerve to face the unpredictable, or at least the unlikely. So I think you can relax. You may only make a few millions, but it’s still money.”

“Maybe so,” Starnmeck said. “But this is a cut-throat business, Mr. Templar. Now, did anything occur to you that might make the next picture better still?”

“Well, have you thought about the Unities prescribed by Aristotle for all tragedy?” Simon suggested, warming to the torment of Starnmeck as he realized that he had indeed lost Carol Henley, possibly for ever. “How about them?”

“About what?” Starnmeck asked.

“Aristotle’s Unities,” repeated the Saint patiently.

Starnmeck had begun to perspire noticeably.

“Maybe we’d better discuss this at the party. It’s pretty noisy here.”

“Fine,” said Simon with a slight bow. “Until then.”

The cool mocking of his eyes was in marked contrast to Starnmeck’s intense humidity, as the producer turned to submerge himself again in the less confusing comments of his own kind.

Simon started towards the open doors which led to the street, anxious to be out of the press of bodies and the hub-bub of voices, but he was not yet destined to escape. In fact, Destiny, intruding itself again in the form of an insistent tug at his sleeve which stopped him before he could complete his escape, had plans for the Saint which were to seem almost as incredible as the film he had just watched.

2

Simon turned, looked down at the long saturnine face, the rapidly blinking black eyes, the perfectly oblong moustache like a strip of furry tape, the damp strands of suspiciously dark hair combed carefully forward over an otherwise vacant dome, and saw that the sleeve-tugger was Finlay Hugoson, the publisher of the Charles Lake books on which the Starnmeck films were based. They had first met that evening at the small and highly exclusive cocktail party, held in a suite at the Dorchester, before the premiere.

“Well, Mr. Templar, I suppose Charles Lake’s exploits are old hat to a man like yourself.”

The Saint shrugged. He found Hugoson likeable enough and admirably lacking the gaudy and blatantly artificial affectations that marred the personalities of so many of the other guests. But after his initial favourable impression, Simon had been put off by the publisher’s sudden almost frantic reaction when he realized that the Mr. Templar he had been speaking to so chattily was that Robin Hood of modern crime called the Saint. From that moment of realization, Hugoson had lost his casual poise and become nervously inhibited and overly attentive, like a man who had something urgent to say but was afraid to say it. Even when they had been separated to opposite ends of the room, he had felt Hugoson’s eyes continually switching back to him. Now, in the lobby of the cinema the publisher gave Simon a premonition that he was going to be much harder to shake off.

“They’re no more old hat to me than anybody else,” Simon said in response to Hugoson’s opening remark. “We all have fantastic dreams. I happen to have a knack for putting mine into practice. Your author has a knack for putting his on paper. It’s just that paper leaves quite a bit more freedom than real life.”

Hugoson stuck close beside him as the Saint strolled through the rapidly emptying lobby towards the doors which led to the open area under the marquee.

“You weren’t bored, then?”

“Not a bit. As a matter of fact, I’ve read all seven of the books by your Mr. Amos Klein, and he has an unabashed disregard for probability and the laws of nature that completely intrigues me. Reading him is the next best thing to floating free in space. And apparently several million other people think so too.”

They stepped out into the wide space between the front doors of the theatre and the street, where a milling throng was gathered in a chaos of blinding lights, cameras, microphones, and departing taxicabs and limousines.

“I’m sure Mr. Klein would be delighted to hear your opinion of his work,” Hugoson said.

“I’d be delighted to tell him,” the Saint replied. “Where is he?”

“That’s what a lot of people would like to know,” the publisher said, not with the morose air of an entrepreneur who has misplaced a valuable property but with the twinkling eyes of a man enjoying a secret.

The Saint arched his brows in mild surprise.

“Don’t you know where he is?”

“Mr. Klein? Oh, yes. I know where he is, but nobody else does.”

“Presumably Mr. Klein knows.”

The publisher nodded.

“Of course. But otherwise...”

Hugoson spread out his hands. Simon paused and looked at the publisher in a lightning storm of popping flashbulbs. He felt that the man was deliberately trying to arouse his curiosity for some more than frivolous reason, and that fact rather than any real interest in the whereabouts of Mr. Amos Klein began to arouse his curiosity.

“Shall I guess?” he asked. “You have him locked in a hen coop at the bottom of your garden, where you exchange him bread and water for his priceless masterpieces?”

Hugoson laughed.

“No?” mused the Saint. “Then maybe you have him chained in your attic, where you pass him off as your demented nephew and beat him with rods to keep him working. Or maybe he is your demented nephew?”

“I’m afraid you haven’t a very high opinion of my professional ethics, Mr. Templar,” the publisher said with a smile.

“I apologize,” the Saint said. “Of course the truth probably is that Amos Klein is the secret nom de plume of the heir of a dukedom whose father would promptly disinherit him if he knew his son had ever sunk so low as to set pen to any paper less dignified than a legal document. You’re merely protecting his good name and his inheritance... not that he’ll need either, considering the fortune he must have been stacking up over the past couple of years.”

“Now you’re closer to the mark. But I’m afraid the truth’s not nearly as picturesque as you’ve imagined it.” Hugoson’s face darkened. “As a matter of fact, the truth’s not nearly so bright, either. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to speak with you about the facts ever since I found out who you are.”

“Well, when do I find out the facts — on my twenty-first birthday?”

Hugoson leaned closer, though the precaution seemed scarcely necessary in the combined din of the cinema’s mob and the normal uproar of Piccadilly Circus.

“I’ll have to speak with you alone. Maybe you’d be so kind as to...”

While Hugoson was in mid-sentence, a trio of young men, all fashionably dressed and looking more or less alike, descended on him and proceeded to hustle him away towards a small canebrake of microphones. The essence of the young men’s babble was that he was to be favoured immediately with an interview. Hugoson, looking both appalled and flattered at such apparently unwonted attention, called to Simon over his shoulder:

“Don’t go away, please! It’s urgent that I talk to you.”

Simon himself was accosted by a gaggle of reporters and photographers who recognized him, but by stubbornly insisting that he had nothing relevant to say, he disposed of them quickly and sauntered towards the tape recorders whose reels were turning in readiness to preserve Mr. Finlay Hugoson’s words for posterity. But on the way to Mr. Hugoson’s vicinity he was distracted by the discovery that the stars of the evening’s film, Sunburst Five, were being questioned in front of cameras almost directly on the street. Rip Savage, as the craggily handsome portrayer of Charles Lake had purportedly been christened by a mother of great foresight and astonishing perception of infant character, was grinning determinedly alongside Carol Henley, whose matching smile looked as if it could not have been blasted off with twice the black powder expended in her last four very explosive films.

“Mr. Savage,” a tuxedoed interviewer was asking, “what do you like best about playing Charles Lake?”

“The money.”

The interviewer was taken aback by Savage’s brash honesty, which had been observed to increase after his payment for each successive film, and turned his attention to Carol Henley.

“Carol, it’s said that you’re being stereotyped in the Lake pictures. What comment do you have on that?”

Carol’s smile never faltered as she hesitated in order to puzzle over the question’s meaning.

“Well, goodness,” she finally wriggled with breathless rapture, “thank you very much!”

Simon smiled and went to see how his new acquaintance was doing. He gleaned from the rather bellicose tones of the interviewing reporters, even before he could hear their questions, that they were finding the publisher unco-operative.

“Well, Mr. Hugoson,” he found one saying, “will you at least tell us whether or not Mr. Klein has another Lake book on the drawing board.”

“On the writing table, more probably,” Hugoson replied, in what apparently was an effort to lighten the mood of the inquisition.

The effort failed, as the pettish tone of another reporter attested.

“Are we to take that as an answer, Mr. Hugoson, or just as a quip?”

Hugoson’s thinning smile withdrew beneath his rectangular moustache.

“Mr. Klein is working on a new Lake book,” he said precisely.

“Will it be made into a film?”

Hugoson’s smile poked its nose tentatively out of the brush.

“I fervently hope so.”

A new reporter leaned forward to make himself heard.

“How is it Amos Klein never attends these premieres?”

“I can’t comment on that.”

“But he does live in England, doesn’t he?”

“I can’t comment on Mr. Klein’s private life. I’m very sorry.”

There was a brief crescendo of protest from the men of the press, to whom the publisher’s reticence on the subject of his prize author was nothing new.

“Surely there’s no harm in telling us something about him, Mr. Hugoson!”

“You must have met Klein personally,” another said. “What’s he like?”

“Is he married?”

“Could you just give us some idea of his age?”

“And why all this mystery about him...”

Hugoson, looking badgered as well as badgerish, shook his head stubbornly.

“No comment.”

“Is the secrecy just a gimmick to arouse public interest?”

“No comment.”

As the reporters shouted more questions, all of which received the publisher’s ‘no comment’, the Saint noticed that Carol Henley was darting a helpless look at him over her beautiful bare shoulder as she was whisked away by a whole tribe of retainers towards a waiting limousine. She said something to Starnmeck, the producer, who gestured over the heads of the crowd for Simon to join them. It was at that point that Saintly dedication to the discovery and exploration of mysterious byways had to stand and do battle with the more purely human desire to see more of Carol Henley’s bare shoulders. But bare female shoulders of acceptable age are not terribly different one from another, particularly when one has enjoyed as many varied views of them as Simon Templar had; anyhow, Carol Henley’s were not likely to change radically in the next hour or two, whereas Finlay Hugoson’s apparently desperate need to communicate might.

Even so, Simon felt with some regret that he had very possibly chosen the drabber of the two alternatives as he waved good-bye to Carol and Starnmeck and saw the great gleaming black bubble of their car top lose itself in a swirl of other metallic bubbles. He had no logical reason to believe that his contact with Hugoson would expose him to anything more intriguing than some unoriginal recital of a businessman’s woes. But the Saint would never have survived and prospered so spectacularly if he had not possessed some of the qualities of gambler and clairvoyant, and tonight he was willing to chance the exceptional physique of Carol Henley against the possibility of what his sixth sense told him might come from Mr. Finlay Hugoson.

“Let’s take a cab to my flat and have something to drink,” Hugoson said.

He was breathless and bedraggled after his encounter with the now completely alienated reporters, a little like a dazed boxer stumbling out of the centre of the ring into the arms of his trainer.

“I appreciate the invitation,” Simon answered, “but there’s the party at the Savoy. It’d be rather rude for me to pass it up, don’t you think? You’re a part of this whole shindig, but I’m an invited guest.”

The publisher shook his head as he led the Saint towards the curb.

“Those post-premiere affairs are ghastly. Great masses of people showing off for one another like a lot of painted Hottentots. Frightfully depressing!”

“I know,” Simon said, “but at least I ought to put in an appearance. Starnmeck was good enough to invite me to the film; I suppose I should pay the price.”

Hugoson scratched his moustache nervously.

“As you wish. But I hope you’ll be satisfied with a brief appearance and have energy left for a talk with me. There’s... there’s a chance of considerable profit in it for you.”

The Saint looked at his small, badger like acquaintance with new interest.

“If there’s one thing I never lack, it’s energy,” he said, “and if there’s one commodity I never have enough of, it’s profit — as long, of course, as it’s dishonestly earned. I hope you don’t have any illusions about my taking up a literary career.”

“Not at all. I think I understand your interest.”

“Good. We can run over to the Savoy in my car, and then have our talk.”

He handed the doorman a ticket.

“Right away, Mr. Templar.”

The Saint’s car was brought promptly, and he took advantage of the short drive to the hotel to sound the publisher out.

“I assume your pal Amos Klein is uppermost in your mind at the moment,” he said.

Hugoson darted him a quick glance before answering, but apparently decided that even the Saint, whose private sources of information were popularly reputed to rival those of most national security agencies, could not know the facts of this matter.

“Of course,” he said, and then he paused.

“What’s all this ‘no comment’?” Simon asked.

Even while speeding through the post-theatre traffic of Trafalgar Square, he was as relaxed as most men would have been drowsing at home with the evening paper. Finlay Hugoson clutched the armrest and watched Simon’s impossibly near misses of other vehicles with strained admiration.

“I was merely being evasive with the reporters,” the publisher said.

“That was fairly obvious. The question is, why? If you want to tell me, that is.”

Hugoson’s mind seemed to be promptly taken off the rampaging armada of taxis by dour thoughts of his professional problems. He sat back and folded his arms.

“Can you guess what I made out of publishing The History of the 38th Regiment Hertfordshire Veteran Volunteer Infantry, morocco bound, with sixty glorious colour plates?”

Simon grinned.

“Obviously not one single family in the U.K. could afford to be without a copy,” he said with an appearance of mental calculation. “I should think you must have cleared at least, say, sixty thousand pounds.”

Finlay Hugoson showed no overt signs of amusement at the Saint’s whimsy.

“I took a net loss of almost four thousand,” he said. “And how much would you guess I was enriched by Birds of Western Australia, with thirty-five full-page photographic plates, each copy numbered and signed by the author — who incidentlaly was my wife’s brother?”

“Was it out in time for the Christmas gift trade?” Simon asked.

Hugoson grimly wrung his hands.

“Printers’ strike. We missed Christmas by two weeks.”

“Doesn’t sound good,” said the Saint.

“Net loss of two thousand. At least the libraries wanted that one.”

“Well, cheer up,” Simon said. “If you’d got it out in time for Christmas you might have broken even.”

“Wonderful,” groaned Hugoson. “What more could a publisher ask?”

“With your flair for picking winners, I’d say breaking even might call for a real celebration.”

“And then,” Hugoson said, “along came the first Charles Lake novel.”

“And?”

“They’re making me rich.”

“That’s nice.”

“They’re making me richer than I ever dreamed I’d be.”

“That’s even nicer.”

“But...”

“But what?” the Saint asked encouragingly. When the other hesitated, he continued. “And that still doesn’t explain all the ‘no comments’.”

There was no chance for explanation then, because the Saint’s skilful navigation had brought them to the Embankment entrance of the Savoy, where most of the horde of people in any way connected with Sunburst Five had already disembarked and made their way to the private rooms set aside for their jubilation. Simon and Hugoson found one or two hundred of them in the early phases of that intoxication which is never quite so swiftly induced or magnificently sustained as by the presence of an unlimited supply of free booze. The raiment of the females, as well as that of some of the males, would have made the finery of the best-dressed birds of western Australia seem pale in comparison, and the gushing and shameless politicking of both sexes would have made the first day of the mating season on Seal Island sound like the slumbrous murmurs of teatime at the old folks’ home.

Simon failed to spot Starnmeck or Carol Henley, and nodded wryly towards the impenetrable mob pressed along the bar.

“This visit may be even briefer than I’d planned.”

“The briefer the better,” Hugoson agreed. “This is one aspect of making a fortune I could very well do without.”

The melancholy prognosis was promptly justified, as he was swallowed up in the gilt and purple plumage of a woman of impressive stature who swooped down on him with shrill cries of delight.

“Why, Finlay, you naughty thing! We were sure you’d run out on us, probably off to see that author of yours! Come now! You simply must tell us where you’re hiding him!”

Simon, knowing full well that he himself would become the prey of similar predatory onslaughts as soon as he was recognized, pried Hugoson from his female assailant and steered him through a suffocating haze of cigarette smoke and other hot air towards the door.

“Had enough?” he asked.

“I never saw her before in my life,” Hugoson gasped.

“Public acclaim is the reward of guessing right,” Simon said. “If you’re enjoying it, don’t let me interrupt the fun.”

“Please! Let’s get out. Here comes another one.”

Hugoson lived in a town house just off Park Lane, in the kind of street notable for its large cars and small well-shampooed dogs. It was almost midnight, and some of the dogs were leading their masters and mistresses on pre-bedtime walks. Those of the large cars which were not garaged shone in the light of street lamps like brightly polished gemstones. The great stone facades of the buildings created a sense of solidity, dignity, and abiding success not so newly achieved as to be embarrassing to the kind of people who only respect success if it is not indecently recent.

“A very suitable location for England’s most prosperous publisher,” Simon said.

He and Hugoson had left the car and were climbing the steps towards one of the massive brass-trimmed doors.

“Publishing’s a gentleman’s game, you know,” said Hugoson wryly. “I’ve lived here for years. Only difference is, now I can afford the rent.”

He fitted his key into the lock, opened the door, and felt for a switch.

“Thought I left a light on,” he said. “Well, no wonder: the switch is on, but the bulb must have burnt out. Have you a match?”

“I don’t carry them since I quit smoking,” Simon apologized.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll just—”

Event the Saint’s superb reflexes, which rarely left him at a disadvantage, were of no use to him in the totally unexpected onslaught that followed. In the same instant that he heard Finlay Hugoson’s pained grunt, he felt a crushing blow on the back of his own head, and the darkness of the hall merged into a deeper black.

3

The Saint had never been fond of things on grounds of rarity alone. He had never been excited by eclipses of the moon nor had his pulse quickened at the sight of a six-legged calf. But of all the things which the Saint did not like because of their rarity, he liked least the rare experience of being bashed with some firm artifact on the back of his skull.

As he woke up on the floor of Mr. Finlay Hugoson’s house off Park Lane, his mind naturally turned to the subject of blows on the head (his own head in particular), to the alertness and skill which had made such blows a rarity in his life till then, and to the means by which he would make such blows an even greater rarity in the future.

But such meditations, however fruitful they might be in the long view, had to give way to more immediate considerations. The Saint knew only that he was lying on the floor of some dark silent place. Instinct and experience made him avoid making any sound or movement at first beyond the slow opening of his eyes: before revealing that he was conscious, he wanted to be certain that his attacker was not still present. Having made reasonably sure of that fact, he ventured to sit up. The dull throbbing in his head suddenly became a sharp ache, as if his whole brain had shifted position inside his cranium, but the moan that broke the silence did not come from his throat. It came, presumably, from Finlay Hugoson, somewhere else in the darkness.

“Are you awake?” Simon asked, unable to think of any question or remark which would not sound equally ridiculous in the circumstances.

The only response from Hugoson was an inarticulate groan. The Saint got to his feet, trying to force his pain and his anger at whoever had caused it out of his consciousness.

He recalled that they had just entered the house, and the hall light wouldn’t go on: Hugoson had been looking for another switch, and there had to be one, in some room opening off the hall. Simon found a wall, groped along it to a door frame, almost fell over something sprawled across the threshold, and finally found a switch on the inside which turned on the bulbs of a crystal chandelier in the centre of the ceiling of the room beyond.

The room was just as solidly elegant as he had expected it to be, and just as severely disordered. Drawers from an antique writing table were upside down on the floor. Sheets of paper and envelopes were strewn on the rug. The owner of the ransacked property was also still lying in the doorway, and Simon turned quickly back to him when he saw that the side of Hugoson’s face was covered with blood. Using his handkerchief, the Saint ascertained that the wound was not serious, but was no more than an abrasion caused by a glancing blow on the side of the head.

“Nice way your retainers have of welcoming you home,” Simon said as Hugoson’s eyes flickered open.

“What happened?” the publisher groaned.

“I’m hoping you can tell me... beyond the obvious fact that we were both swatted on the sconce.”

Hugoson’s eyes opened wider, as if in suddenly realized fear. He tried to raise his head and fell back.

“I feel as if my skull’s fractured,” he gasped.

“It very well could be. You may have a concussion, so lie still. There’s no chance of catching our playmates right now anyway. I never even got a look at them. Did you?”

“No,” answered Hugoson weakly. “I just know that something hit me. What... what have they done?”

“Just a little housekeeping,” said the Saint. “When you get well enough to sit up, you’ll be amazed at what a few thougthful changes have done for your decor.”

Hugoson tried again to move, but shut his eyes and winced.

“I’d better get you a doctor,” the Saint told him. “Any preference?”

“Later,” Hugoson mumbled. “First... I’ve got to know... what they took.”

“I’d be glad to tell you,” Simon replied, “but it’s a little difficult since I don’t have any idea what was here before they came to call. Where’d you keep the family treasures? I’ll check there first.”

“No,” said Hugoson. “I don’t keep any money or valuables in the house, except some rare books in glass cases in the library, just off to the right.”

Simon moved to take a look at the room which Hugoson indicated with a feeble motion of his hand.

“But there’s not much point even checking that,” the publisher continued. “I’m afraid... those weren’t the sort of things they were after.”

The remark brought the Saint up short, but not before he had seen that the books in their cases were undisturbed.

“You’re right,” he said. “You mean — these guests were expected?”

“In a way. Yes. Please, check my desk — in the library. Did they get into that?”

“They did,” Simon reported, after a moment. “It looks as if they took it apart with a crowbar.”

“They were probably looking everywhere for the key,” Hugoson called, “but I took the precaution of carrying it with me.”

“I’m afraid the power of locks and keys is greatly over-estimated,” the Saint called back.

He was fingering the splintered wood of several drawers in the library desk. Papers had been tossed aside at random until a certain file folder had been uncovered. The folder was open on the desk. Whatever it had once held was gone. On the tab of the folder were printed the words ‘Amos Klein.’

“That’s what they were after,” quavered Hugoson’s voice.

The Saint looked up and saw that the publisher had made his way to the library door, and was standing there, clinging feebly to the jamb.

“This?” Simon asked, holding up the folder.

“Yes. Personal correspondence with... with Amos Klein.”

“Just over-eager autograph collectors, or what?”

“They wanted his address primarily. I’m sure of it.”

“There must be easier ways of getting it than this,” hazarded the Saint.

“There aren’t. Only I know it.”

Hugoson’s voice trailed off, so Simon helped him into a chair.

“Your employees must have learned his address,” Simon said then. “Your secretary? And why all the secrecy anyway?”

“One thing at a time,” Hugoson said tiredly. “In the first place, I correspond from my office with Klein only to post office boxes, using fake names. Nobody could find him through information in my office files. The people who are looking for him already discovered that: they broke into my publishing house offices a couple of days ago. That, in fact, was my main reason for wanting to talk to you. I realized somebody was out to find Klein by any means necessary.”

The Saint, lounging against the wall, held up one hand and interrupted.

“Just one question, to put at least some perspective in this picture: why should Amos Klein be so difficult to find in the first place?”

“Because I don’t want him to be found,” Hugoson said.

“Why?”

“Because... because of several things, but primarily because I want to protect my investment.”

“He doesn’t sound like an investment — he sounds like a pure asset.”

“Whatever you want to call it...”

“The goose that lays the golden eggs?” Simon suggested. “You’ve hidden it away so nobody can steal it?”

“Right,” said Hugoson. “Exactly.” He noted Simon’s almost unbelieving and somehow accusing stare. “Well, you can’t blame me! I’m a capitalist. I was dangerously close to being bankrupt when Klein came along, and I’ve no intention of letting anybody take him away from me. I don’t want to publish literature any more. I just want to be a millionaire!”

“A laudable ambition,” the Saint said. “But you have a rather extreme way of protecting yourself. I’m beginning to think you may really have your boy Klein locked up in a hen coop somewhere. What does he think about this?”

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

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

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

“If they are publishers,” Hugoson said mysteriously.

Simon gave him a hard look.

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

“Yes.”

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

“I can’t think,” muttered Hugoson.

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

“I was going to try to hire you to protect Klein... and his identity.”

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

Hugoson brightened. “You mean you will help?”

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

“On your way where?”

“To get to Amos Klein before your competitors get there.”

4

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

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

As Simon had said to Hugoson as they parted:

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

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

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

“One of those, eh?” said the Saint. “Well, thanks for the warning.”

“Ring me up! I wish I felt up to going with you. And give... Amos my regards.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who are you?” the girl demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

The girl frowned.

“How do you know anything like that?”

“Hugoson told me.”

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

“Have you hurt him?”

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

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

“You’re very observant,” she said.

Simon nodded agreement.

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

This time she showed real amazement.

“How’d you know that?”

The Saint smiled.

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

The girl was rubbing her wrists.

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

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

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

“Didn’t Hugoson tell you?”

“Tell me what?” the Saint asked unguardedly.

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

“That I’m Amos Klein.”