The Saint And The Fiction Makers

1

“That’s a pretty name for a girl,” said the Saint with extraordinary restraint.

Amos Klein pushed strands of raven hair from her flushed forehead.

“My mother had a poetic soul. And now, if you’re dying to introduce yourself, don’t let me stop you.”

“Gladly. I’m Simon Templar.”

The girl’s face showed surprised recognition of the name, and she looked at him more closely.

“The Saint?” she asked.

He nodded.

“There was poetry in my background, too.”

“Or a pretty far-fetched imagination.” She indicated the shattered french windows. “For a Saint, you have a pretty violent way of coming to call.”

Simon closed the windows and drew the curtain back across them.

“I’ll treat you to a repair job,” he said.

“Would you mind? I’m tired of hopping about like a human pogo stick, and as long as I have a man around I might as well make use of him.”

She was talking about the rope which still bound her ankles together. Simon knelt down to release her.

“A very wise attitude,” he agreed. “As a matter of fact, I was encouraged to come here to be useful. Finlay Hugoson and I were together at the premiere of your latest epic, and when we dropped by his flat we ran into a couple of uninvited guests who hadn’t expected him to come home till after the party. They were looking for your address, and they got away with it. Hugoson thought it would be a good idea if I got right down here to protect you... or keep you from signing up with some competitor of his.”

“Why didn’t he come?” she asked.

“He would have, but he was indisposed after being conked on the head by your fans.”

“Fans?”

“The ones who’re so anxious to find you.” Simon had finished untying the ropes, and he stood up. “You tie a good knot,” he said.

“Summer sailor.” She looked apologetically down at the tight-fitting faded jeans and the sloppy sweat shirt she was wearing. “Excuse me if I’m dressed like one, but I wasn’t expecting company, friendly or otherwise.”

“I’d planned to announce myself in a more conventional way,” the Saint told her, “but your little charade completely took me in.”

He went over to look at the dummy with the knife in its back.

“That’s Warlock,” Amos Klein explained as she began to straighten up the room.

“Warlock?” Simon repeated. “He’s the top villain in your books, right?”

“Right. He and his cohorts were keeping me prisoner in a cellar. And Dunlap Brodie... he’s the nice boy whose mother was killed by S.W.O.R.D... slips me this knife. So I’m going to kill Warlock when he comes to torture me. He’s sitting down at the console to turn up the hypnotic knob when I let him have it in the back... from ten paces, with my hands tied. And just then you come along and let me have it, right in the back door.”

“Well,” said Simon, “at least you can write the damage off to research.”

“You’re right. I like to try things out to see if they’re just barely possible. Every little experience adds realism.”

She was picking the dummy up off the floor and sitting him in an armchair. Suddenly she stopped, listening.

“Did you hear something?” she whispered.

“No. What?”

She was still frozen in her leaning position over the dummy.

“In the hall.”

Simon had not heard anything in the hall, and he did not believe his hostess had heard anything either, but he decided to play along and let her get out of her system whatever it was she had in mind. The knife in the dummy’s back had looked very long and very sharp, but Simon turned anyway, like a matador defying a bull with the mockery of his undefended back, and looked towards the hall door. Only a man of supreme confidence in his own luck and skill could have made the move; the Saint was as sure of himself as if he had been going through a routine judo exercise.

“Now,” said the girl, “don’t move.”

At the same time Simon felt the cold point of the knife touch his neck.

“Is that any way for a damsel in distress to treat her knight errant?” he asked coolly. “I’m tempted just to leave you to the wolves... but I won’t.”

The Saint’s last three words were accompanied by a move so sudden and so swift that even an attentive observer would have been hard put to say just how the long knife ended up in his hand and exactly what caused the girl who had been holding it only an instant before to be sitting with the wind knocked out of her on the floor.

“You look so surprised,” he said amiably. “Wasn’t that according to the script?”

“How am I supposed to know you’re the Saint?” the girl demanded.

“How am I supposed to know you’re Amos Klein?” he retorted. “At least I’m the right sex.”

Almost without so much as a glance to his right at the dummy in its chair, Simon carelessly flicked the knife from his fingertips and sent the sharp-pointed blade flying deep into the painted head directly between the eyes.

“I think,” the girl gulped, “that for the moment, anyway, I’ll just have to trust you.”

Simon took her by one hand and hoisted her to her feet.

“In that case, I’ll have another try at trusting you.”

“Another try?”

“Well I just showed you my good faith by turning my back on you, and look what it got me. And would you blame me for doubting that anything quite as gorgeous as you could be named Amos Klein?”

She gazed at him with a special kind of melting glow which only flattery can produce in the eyes of the human female.

“I not only may learn to trust you — I may learn to love you.”

“All things in their seasons,” said the Saint agreeably. “And if it makes you feel any more comfortable, I really don’t doubt your identity. I know now why Finlay Hugoson made what seemed like a very naughty suggestion that I might fall for you if I came out here.”

“He’s not supposed to tell anybody I’m a girl. It’s in our contract.”

She went over to a cabinet in the corner which yielded two glasses and a bottle of Old Curio. Simon looked at the pages of mansucript which lay beside the typewriter.

“How do you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Write these tough, tough books.”

Amos Klein shrugged as she poured the whiskey.

“Something went wrong at the factory, I guess.”

“Factory?” the Saint asked.

“The people factory. They ran out of proper girlie ribbons.”

“Not from where I’m looking.”

She smiled with another glow of pure joy as she handed him his drink.

“You’re very sweet. Cheers... to trust.”

“To trust, Amos.” His mouth reacted to the pronunciation of the name as it would have reacted to a large bite of lemon peel. “I just can’t call you that, darling.”

“All right, call me darling.”

They both smiled and drank again.

“Now,” the girl said, “could you explain a little more about what’s going on — what brought you here? I mean, who’s behind all this?”

“First, I’d be much happier if you’d satisfy my curiosity,” Simon said. “What’s one of the most successful authors in the world doing hiding her light and gender under a bushel out here in the midst of the beech woods?”

“It was partly Finlay’s idea. He thought it would help sales — the mystery, you know. And he also thought that the public might not take my books so well if they knew they were written by a woman.”

“Maybe, but I doubt there would have been any problem. It didn’t hurt Agatha Christie. Hugoson seems very conservative, though.”

“He is, and I had personal reasons, too. My family’s even more conservative than Finlay, and if they dreamed I was ruining myself for marriage and a life among decent people by writing sex and sadism thrillers they’d cut me off without a penny.”

“Then Amos Klein isn’t your real name,” Simon deduced, with some relief.

“No... But when I began publishing these things I was completely dependent on them, and I may be adventurous in imagination but I wasn’t particularly willing to face starvation in person.”

“But I should think you’d have made a fortune by now, with royalties and movie rights and all that.”

“Amos Klein,” beamed.

“I have. But there’s no point in giving my father an excuse to cancel out an eighty-thousand-pound trust fund just a year before it’s released to me. So long as I’m going to be rich, I might as well be filthy rich.”

Simon laughed.

“I appreciate that laudable ambition. Where do Mama and Papa think you are now? In finishing school?”

“You are a flatterer,” the girl said, tossing her hair. “I’m twenty-four years old, and schools almost finished me a long time ago. My mother’s dead, and my father’s too preoccupied with his own business to think very deeply about my location as long as I’m not in his way. I keep him satisfied with various stories. I get friends to mail him my letters from highly respectable places. Of course the friends don’t know what I’m really doing either. I spent the last three months with a girl friend in Italy who forwarded my mail and thought I was in Spain with a bullfighter.”

“And all the time you were here,” Simon said.

She drained her glass.

“Working like a galley slave. The nearest thing I’ve seen to a bullfighter is the postman dodging dogs on his bicycle.”

“Which probably explains the frustrated look in your eyes, darling,” he remarked.

Darling met his mischievous grin with a determined frown.

“Sir, if you’re going to take advantage of a lady’s loneliness, I shall have to ask you to leave and never break down my door again.”

“You could look at it another way,” the Saint suggested. “Maybe I’m the hero who’s going to rescue the damsel from the dark castle.”

“Maybe so.”

Her face had softened, but it immediately became more businesslike.

“Now,” she continued, “this is all lots of fun, but shouldn’t we get down to work?”

“Fine,” Simon agreed. “First, are your other doors and windows locked?”

“Yes. But what a creepy thing to ask! Do you think somebody might try to kidnap me?”

“Maybe you can tell me that. Frankly, the amount I know about this situation is so limited that my guesses would be just that — guesses. If there had been only one man in Hugoson’s apartment we’d at least have the possibility of some crackpot autograph hound carrying his hobby to completely nutty extremes. But there were at least two people, so that’s out. The other guesses involve newspapermen or unethical publishers, if you can believe that.”

The Saint rested himself sidesaddle on the desk. The girl had shoved the dummy out of the armchair onto the floor and flopped down into the cushions herself.

“You’re right,” she said. “That’s pretty far out.”

“Any guess seems far out. Unless maybe this whole situation had nothing to do with you as an author at all. But if that were the case, why would the evil ones be tracking you down under the name of Amos Klein? If they were after ransom from your father, for instance, they’d have tried to trace you under your real name, whatever that is.”

The girl wrinkled her nose.

“You’re not going to tell me the real name?” Simon asked. “I give my word not to let the world in on the secret. ‘Darling’ is fine, but it could be slightly awkward if I had to introduce you.”

“It’s Amity,” she said, looking wretched. “Amity Little.”

“Aha. I see where you got Amos Klein.” Simon tried the sound of it, maintaining a strictly straight face. “Amity Little. Sounds like a missionary.”

“My father’s notion,” Amity said. “He’s a Quaker. You can see why I’m not terribly keen on telling people — nor on seeing it emblazoned on the jackets of thrillers.”

“I do see, darling,” said Simon. “Now, to get back to our theories before your mysterious admirers show up here, is it possible they could have started out with a plan to kidnap Amity Little for ransom from her loving father, and then accidentally discovered that Amity Little and Amos Klein were the same? That would seem to promise them even more profit — they could ask Hugoson for ransom as well. And of course one of the last stages in the game would be finding out just where to find Amos Klein.”

Amity shook her head. Her eyes narrowed.

“I don’t think so,” she said very thoughtfully. “I think the real answer might be much weirder than that.”

“Well?”

Amity bit her thumbnail, completely absorbed in her musing.

“I wonder...” she said.

The Saint shifted his weight impatiently.

“So do I. Button, button, who’s got the button?”

“Just a minute,” Amity said.

She broke off her introspection and suddenly got to her feet. Going to the desk, she threw open one of the drawers and began burrowing through a deep and disordered pile of papers.

“Bury a bone?” Simon said.

“A letter. There.”

Triumphantly, she drew a sheet of paper out of the chaos. Attached to the paper was a cheque. She handed it to Simon, who glanced at the amount of the cheque before reading the letter.

“Fifty thousand pounds,” he said in the appreciative tone of a connoisseur of currency in all its forms.

“Before you get excited, read the letter,” Amity Little told him.

“Dear Mr. Klein... enclosed is a cheque for fifty thousand pounds, being half payment for your writing services, which we are most anxious to acquire. Period of employment, two months. Balance of payment on completion. The work will be secret, most challenging, and is guaranteed to be to your taste. Your cashing this cheque will be regarded as full acceptance of the contract as stated above, whereupon you will be contacted and given further instructions.” The Saint’s reaction at the large black flourished signature showed only a moment’s beat before he read it aloud. “Warlock.”

He looked inquiringly and unbelievingly at Amity Little, who nodded confirmation.

“Warlock,” she repeated. “The arch villain in my Charles Lake books. And look underneath the name.” She looked over Simon’s shoulder and moved the tip of a slim finger along the word as she spelled out the block capitals in which it was printed. ‘S.W.O.R.D.’

“Your fictional organization for world evil.”

“Secret World Organization for Retribution and Destruction. And Warlock’s the boss.”

“You actually got this in the mail?” Simon asked.

“Yes. Forwarded by Finlay. He sends mail on addressed to Amos Klein unopened.”

Simon looked at the date of the letter.

“You got it a month ago?”

“Approximately.”

“What have you done about it?”

“Nothing.”

“How could you resist?”

“Cashing the cheque, you mean?”

“Not necessarily,” Simon said. “But at least trying to find out something about where it came from.”

“Well, for one thing it gave me the creeps,” Amity Little replied.

“Understandably. It must be a bit like seeing yourself walk in the door.”

“Yes. And I’m pretty tied down by the fact that I can’t let anybody know who I am. Of course I don’t have a bank account in the name of Amos Klein.”

“Didn’t you even call the bank this is drawn on?”

“Why?”

The Saint studied the cheque more closely as he answered.

“To see if anyone really has an account in the name of Warlock.”

Amity tossed the idea off with a sweeping gesture.

“Don’t be ridiculous! There isn’t any Warlock, except in my head. Obviously whoever sent this is some sort of nut!”

The Saint held up his hand for silence, and turned his head to listen.

“Who may be coming up your drive right now,” he said softly.

2

“I don’t hear anything,” Amity Little said.

“I have rather exceptional hearing,” the Saint said. “Let’s have a look out of the front windows.”

She led him through the house to one of the heavily draped windows in the dining room.

“You mean that car?” she whispered, listening. “I hear them turning around in my drive all the time. I’m at the end of the lane, so it’s the natural place.”

Simon had edged a curtain aside enough to peer out.

“Do they often have blue lights flashing?” he inquired.

“Oh!”

Amity looked as a man in uniform stepped from the car and came up the walk. A moment later he knocked at the front door.

“Somebody must have reported the shots,” Simon said.

A fat-faced stocky constable stood on the steps when Amity opened the door.

“Good evening, ma’am, sir,” he said pleasantly. “P.C. Jarvis, Burnham police.”

“Yes?”

“We’ve something peculiar come up,” said the man. “The Inspector asked me to request that you please come down to the station.”

“What for, at an hour like this?” Simon asked. “Does he want someone to sing him to sleep?”

“There’s reason to believe that some kind of attack might be made on this house.”

“What reason?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. I’m only following orders. It seems there’s some funny things going on, and I wouldn’t want to alarm you, but the Inspector says it’s for your own protection.”

Simon and Amity exchanged glances, and the Saint’s eyes darted back to a ring he had noticed on the officer’s left hand. It was a large golden ring ornately carved in Florentine style.

“That’s very kind of the Inspector,” he said to the policeman. “If we’re in danger, maybe you’d better come inside so we can shut the door.”

Constable Jarvis held back, protesting that he was not sure of any such great or immediate danger, but the Saint, with fingers very much like steel clamps not yet exerting a tenth of their potential pressure, took the man’s arm and urged him into the hall with firm friendliness. Amity closed the door and bolted it.

“Can we offer you a drink?” she asked.

“Not on duty, ma’am. Thanks just the same.” The policeman looked rather longingly over his shoulder at the locked door. “It’d be best if you could just come along now, so the Inspector can explain everything to you himself.”

“Is Charlie Huggins with you?” Simon asked. “No, sir.”

“Too bad. I’d like to see old Charlie. Will he be at the station if we come down?”

“Huggins?” the policeman asked.

The Saint became openly suspicious.

“Constable Huggins,” he said.

Constable Jarvis broke into a broad grin.

“Oh, Huggins! Of course. He’s not on duty this evening, but I’ll give him your regards tomorrow.”

“That’s very good of you. Please do it... as soon as you wake up.”

On the words ‘wake up’ the Saint’s fist blurred into the tender flab of the other’s jaw like an upswung sledgehammer. Without even a groan the man dropped to the floor.

Amity was aghast.

“What are you doing?” she squeaked.

“The ring’s suspicious enough on a country constable, but I know for a fact there’s no such person as Charlie Huggins here, because Charlie Huggins is a bartender friend of mine in Chelsea.”

“So who’s this?” Amity asked, pointing at the limp plump form on the floor.

“Warlock?” Simon asked.

“Oh, that’s really too much!”

“I agree. And there may have been somebody with him in that car, so let’s take the other way out and see what we can see. Our friend here will be happy to rest till we get back.”

They went back to the writing room, turned off the lights, and Simon parted the curtains to peek out of the french windows. A very tall, very brawny figure in a uniform and cap similar to the one worn by P.C. Jarvis appeared in the light of the quarter moon.

“It’s a little crowded out here,” he murmured. “Let’s take the front way after all.”

“What was it?” Amity asked as he towed her through the hall.

“He looked a bit like one of Dr. Frankenstein’s play toys. I’m afraid we may as well admit to ourselves that your ivory tower is under attack, and that we’re at least temporarily on the defensive. Here’s your gun back, but let’s not start killing people unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

Amity Little gave a low moan. “Killing people?”

Simon’s hand was on the front door lock preparatory to opening it.

“It shouldn’t bother you,” he said. “You killed at least thirty in your last book, and you came pretty close to bumping me off tonight, so let’s not get emotional. Show you’re a real man, Amos! Let’s make a dash for my car.”

He took the girl’s hand in his and ran silently across the grass. The police car, which appeared to be empty, was only partly blocking the driveway. His first concern was to get Amity to safety, to protect her from capture; with that accomplished, he could go to work on the group which was taking such an extraordinary interest in her literary career. The drastic measures to find her, the elaborate impersonation of police complete with official car, not to mention the offer of fifty thousand pounds, all postulated an organization and capital resources beyond the capacity of mere cranks. And that being the case, it was doubtful that shooting it out with a pair of bogus cops on the spot would be likely to settle anything, although it might rid the world of two of its less attractive inhabitants.

“Get in,” Simon whispered.

Amity obeyed as he opened the driver’s side of his car. She scrambled past the steering wheel to make room for him. As he turned the key in the ignition, the front door of Amity’s cottage opened and the bulk of the second imitation policeman was outlined against the dim light inside, having evidently discovered the broken french windows and taken advantage of them to enter and come through. Simon slammed the gear lever into reverse and stepped on the gas to send the car screeching into the road.

But then a curious thing happend. Even as the engine took hold and the car started back, he lost all interest in driving. He felt a sort of cool and queer-smelling breeze in his face, and had just enough ability for analytical thought left in his consciousness to tell him that some somnific gas must be coming through the heater vents.

“Simon...”

It was Amity mumbling his name groggily as she slumped down into her seat, her head flopping over against his arm. But the arm was as heavy as iron, and more debilitating even than that was the nonchalance with which his spirit insisted on treating the whole event, no matter how desperately a small and helpless part of his mind told him he ought to resist.

He could no more avoid losing consciousness than a stone could have floated on the sea whose surf hissed in his ears. As greater and greater depths of unawareness came between him and the surface world of light and sound, he caught a last rippling glimpse of forms — the faces of men looking down at him, like white grinning masks bobbing above the dark cloth of uniforms, cloth like night sky, where constellations of silver buttons bloomed like stars.

3

Simon Templar thought he had been dreaming about a play taking place in a setting as vast as a football stadium; on the stage more and more people entered, some actors and some not actors, until reality was so confused with make-believe that the whole scene was in milling chaos...

And then, as brighter light sifted into his eyes, the Saint saw the stage become smaller, like the plush little private theatre of some eighteenth-century nobleman, and its intimate red velvet curtains had parted, and there was a beautiful young woman waiting to greet the audience.

“Good morning, Mr. Klein.”

Simon focussed his eyes and realized that he was in a bed of proportions almost as extravagant as those of the stage in his dream. It was a canopied four-poster bed with curtains all around. The curtains at its foot were being held apart by the gorgeous creature who had spoken. She could not have been much over twenty, her face was classic perfection, and her long hair was like faintly tarnished silver.

“Good morning, blessed damosel,” Simon murmured.

His poetic greeting was not entirely due to romanticism or his admittedly muddled head. His mind, clicking rapidly back into action like a computer centre after a power failure, was recollecting the circumstances that had brought him here. He wanted to stall the girl while he woke up more thoroughly and took stock of the situation.

“I hope that’s nice,” she said.

“What?”

“What you said: blasted...”

“Blessed?” Simon offered.

“Blessed dam... what?”

“Blessed damosel. It’s a kind of angel, you might say. I never was completely clear on it myself. She looked out from the gold bar of heaven, it says in the poem. They must have some pretty fancy pubs there.”

The girl allowed herself to smile as she opened the curtains on either side of the bed, flooding it with morning sunlight.

“That does sound nice,” she said.

She wore a sleeveless white top and skin-tight stretch pants of a kind of pink iridescent silken material. Her figure was positively baroque in its voluptuousness, and her swinging movements around the bed did a great deal towards lifting the Saint’s metabolism back to normal.

“I suppose it would be too much to guess I’ve gone to heaven?” he said. “Not that I haven’t earned it, but I never thought heaven could be so... tactile.”

He was feeling the silk sheets of his bed, but he was looking at the girl.

“You’re not dead, Mr. Klein,” she replied, “but in a sense you might say you’ve gone to heaven.”

Simon looked past her out the open window of his spacious room at the wide lawn and brilliantly flowering garden beyond.

“Looks more like Sussex than heaven,” he said. “I hate to be so unoriginal, but where am I?”

“You’ll hear all about that in a minute. I’m not suposed to discuss anything except your comfort and pleasure with you.”

The Saint nodded.

“You’re a specialist, then, I take it.”

She gave him a dazzling smile.

“I hope so. Are you comfortable?”

“Supremely.”

“Do your pyjamas fit?” she asked. “I had to guess the size.”

“A perfect guess, Miss...”

“You can call me Galaxy.”

“Galaxy? As in Milky Way?”

“Of course. Galaxy Rose. From your novel, remember? Volcano Seven.”

She turned towards the closed door on Simon’s left as he sat in bed.

“Wait,” he said. “I’d like to...”

“Oh, I’m not leaving you, Mr. Klein. I’m here to serve you... with anything you want.”

She opened the door and drew in a wheeled table laid with white linen, crystal, and silver serving dishes. There was a single rose in a slender vase. Simon, at the sight of the breakfast, discovered that his appetite had not been hurt in the least by whatever had happened during the night. He got out of bed, Galaxy helped him into a robe, and he took a seat at the table.

“Comfy?” she asked, pouring his coffee.

“Absolutely.”

“The London papers,” she said.

Simon put the newspapers aside and applied himself to the coffee.

“Very thoughtful, but I don’t think the news I’m interested in would be in the papers.”

“What news? If you’re thinking of your... ah... friend, or secretary, or whatever she is, she’s in the room next door. She’s still asleep, and she’s fine.”

“I’m glad to hear that. And secondly, then, I’d like to know whether you’ve kidnapped us or rescued us. In either case I can’t say I’m terribly unhappy at the moment, but it might affect my long-range view of things.”

Galaxy Rose was serving him honeydew melon in its nest of ice.

“I hope you like melon,” she said. “From now on you can order anything, but this time I had to do it for you.”

“That’s great, but back to my question...”

“You’re in a private house, in the country,” the girl said evasively.

“Whose private house?”

She looked at her watch.

“For that information, you’ll have to wait thirty seconds. I already told you I can’t answer those kind of questions. Would you like a bath or shower before you get dressed?”

“Shower. What happens in thirty seconds?”

“Look up there.”

She pointed to a wooden panel on the wall to the right, on the opposite side of the room from the door through which she had brought Simon’s breakfast.

“Fascinating,” he said.

“You’ll see,” she told him. “I’ll go see that everything’s ready for your shower when you’ve finished.”

She left through a door next to the wooden panel. The instant she was out of sight, Simon started to get to his feet, but at the same time an almost imperceptible buzzing sound called his attention back to the panel. It was sliding up, revealing a television screen that flickered with featureless light. Then the face of a man appeared. He was a plump man, and he looked absolutely delighted with himself and the world. He was staring directly at Simon, smiling broadly.

“Good morning, Mr. Klein, and welcome!” he boomed.

His countenance produced inevitable thoughts of Mr. Pickwick, the Wizard of Oz, and Father Christmas. At the same time, there was something small and piggish and strange about the opaque darkness of his eyes. He was also capable of producing recollections of such mad and unsavoury gentlemen as certain Roman emperors who were given to killing their friends and relatives in moments of pique, and whose delusions knew no bounds.

He licked his thick lips and went on: “Firstly, I must apologize for my rather forceful method of bringing you here, but when it became obvious that you were not going to cash my cheque, I had to force the issue.” He paused for effect. “Yes, Mr. Klein... I am Warlock.”

Judging from the intensity with which the man who called himself Warlock seemed to be looking at him, Simon decided that he actually could be seen. There was undoubtedly a television camera — probably more than one — scanning the room in which he was being served such a well-prepared breakfast. He went back to enjoying it, waving a piece of toast at Warlock’s image in cheerful salutation.

“No doubt you are wondering what this is all about,” the speaker continued. “I shall explain only briefly now, for we shall have ample opportunity to discuss details in the days to come.”

Warlock clasped his hands, took a happy sigh, and looked very much like a man about to distribute toys to a roomful of orphans... or like Caligula, with a laurel crown of thinning hair rimming his bald head, about to set in motion some monstrous battle between Christians and crocodiles.

“This is your imagination brought to reality,” he said, extending an upturned palm on either side. “I’ve long admired your books. They’ve given me more pleasure and stimulated more dreams than you would ever have believed if you had never come here. Yes, I am Warlock, and you are in the headquarters of S.W.O.R.D. Everything is exactly as you described it in your books. Not one detail is missing... though I must flatter myself in telling you that in transforming an author’s fantasies into reality, however thorough and brilliant the author may be — as you most certainly are, Mr. Klein — one nevertheless discovers that some details have been overlooked in the books and must be supplied by the practical man.”

The Saint nodded understandingly towards the screen and went to work on his eggs and bacon. Warlock sat back in his chair and beamed.

“I know you’ll understand that no criticism is intended,” he went on. “I’m only pointing out an inevitable difference between literature and life. But far be it from me to pretend to be a literary critic. I am a simple and wholehearted admirer of the creative imagination, with only amateurish pretensions in that direction myself. A few poems here and there — childish things really, not worth your trouble, but of course if you should have time to glance at them and give me your honest...” Warlock, who obviously had a tendency to become hypnotized by the sound of his own voice, waved a disparaging hand. “But I’m wandering. You are the creative genius, and I am the practical man. One might compare our relationship to that of Voltaire and Frederick the Great, or Michelangelo and the Medici... But again I’m getting ahead of myself. You had a trying night, Mr. Klein. Please finish your breakfast at your leisure, bathe if you wish, and when you’re quite ready, please join us in the planning room. I’ll explain everything there. Galaxy — one of your more delightful creations, I must say — will show you the way. In the meantime, if there’s anything we’ve overlooked, or if there’s anything you want, you have only to ask her. Anything at all. Welcome again, Mr. Klein, and good-bye for now.”

The screen went dark, and the wooden panel slid quietly back across it.

“You hear that, Galaxy?” Simon called. “Anything I want, I’ve only to ask.”

“I heard,” said Galaxy.

She emerged eagerly from the bathroom and Simon met her hazel eyes with the magnetic power of his startling blue ones.

“Anything,” he repeated wickedly.

Galaxy came towards him.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked softly.

“A gun.”

Her lips were suddenly compressed with irritation.

“What a shame,” she said. “Some people don’t know when they have it good.”

Simon sipped his coffee.

“You realize that if you don’t give me a gun you’re making Mr. Warlock guilty of false advertising. And if this pleasure palace is all as dandy as you people seem to think it is, what harm could a little automatic do? I happen to like playing with guns, and if we’re all here to play I can’t see why we can’t play some games I like.”

Even Galaxy’s modest brain could distinguish between teasing and seriousness. She stopped pouting and smiled as quickly as the sun might pop out from behind a passing summer cloud.

“You’re sweet,” she said, “but I can’t give you a gun. I’ve already fetched your breakfast, tested your shower, and I’m about to lay out your clothes and anything else you want, so why can’t you just be co-operative?”

“I think I might like it if you called me master,” he said. “As long as I’ve got a slave, I might as well enjoy every last tingle.”

Galaxy laughed.

“All right, master.”

Simon got to his feet, touched his lips with his napkin, and dropped the cloth on the table. He put a strong hand on each of her shoulders.

“So now, lovely slave, how about getting me a gun? All I want it for is to defend us against the blokes who’ll be trying to shoot their way in here... to get at you.”

Her smile faded and her lips parted. Her eyes seemed to grow smoky with anticipation as he leaned near her.

“I can’t, she breathed.

Simon threw up his hands and turned towards the bathroom.

“Then put me out a clean shirt and a blue suit, would you?” he said matter-of-factly.

Galaxy clenched her fists.

“You—”

Simon lounged at the bathroom door, pointing up at the panel which covered the television screen.

“Naughty,” he said. “Remember, you’re my willing slave, and you’ll learn that as long as my every whim is satisfied instantly I’m absolutely super to get along with.”

Once more the cloud passed and she laughed.

“Very good, master. You run along and take your shower, and I’ll come scrub your back. My orders are to conserve your energy.”

“You’re too generous.”

“I’ve hardly even started.”

4

Forty-five minutes later, the Saint stood before a full-length mirror and studied the fit of his blue trousers and white shirt.

“You must give me the name of Mr. Warlock’s tailor,” he said, “so I can avoid him.”

“They fit quite well,” Galaxy said. “Not knowing what you were like, we had to get it all different sizes. And now you complain!”

“A fit is not just a matter of clothes falling somewhere between too large and too small. It’s a product of art. Mr. Warlock would understand that. He has an aesthetic soul.”

“Well,” Galaxy replied, giving his shirt a playful but vicious tug, “I didn’t choose the clothes. What else can I do for you?”

Simon thought.

“I feel mean this morning. How about a... a blue tie with purple spots?”

“Immediately, master,” said Galaxy.

A moment later she returned from the wardrobe with a blue tie infected with spots so gorgeously purple as to make a grape turn raisin with envy. Simon sighed and knotted it around his neck.

“Okay, Friday, you win. Let’s get on to the confrontation.”

Galaxy Rose held Simon’s jacket for him, and led him to the door of his room. Her hand caught his wrist as he started to turn the burnished steel knob.

“You should know better than that,” she said. “Or do you like the sound of loud bells?”

The Saint’s memory ranged back over the Charles Lake adventures he had read.

“Electronic locks,” he said, “controlled from a central station. But don’t tell me you have the fingerprint scanning device.”

“Of course we do.”

Simon was impressed.

“But it doesn’t really exist,” he argued. “I just made it up.”

“It exists now,” Galaxy told him. “Warlock says that one of the beauties of your imagination is that the things you come up with almost always really would work, if only somebody took the trouble to make them.”

She pointed to a small, faintly glowing translucent disc set into the wall beside the door handle. She pressed her thumb against it for two seconds, while supposedly (Simon was not entirely convinced that the system was genuine) a photo-electric cell scanned the thumbprint and transmitted its pattern to the memory bank of a central computer which made its recognition and signalled approval by electrically unlocking the door.

“Warlock is very thorough,” said the Saint.

There was a light ping as the lock was disengaged. He turned the handle without producing a fusillade of alarm bells, and Galaxy Rose preceded him into the hallway.

“This way to the stairs,” she said.

The hall, simply carpeted and devoid of furnishings, had none of the luxury-hotel quality that had characterized the Saint’s room. Except for the carpet, it reminded him of the spotlessly clean and purely utilitarian companionway of a ship. He could imagine the exotic gadgets which might reside behind some of the metal panels in the white walls. And the circular grids in the ceiling probably protected more interesting devices than mere electric light bulbs. There were numbered doors at intervals on either side of the corridor; all were closed.

Simon, still a little dazed by the sheer implausibility of everything that had happened to him, was somewhat like a man in a dream who is telling himself that he’s only dreaming and that he must wake up. He wanted to maintain his scepticism, to remind himself that the statements he had heard made about this building and its occupants were too far-fetched to believe. Yet he had been given evidence that the claims had at least some foundation to them. For the time being he could only go along with the gag, keep himself ready for anything, and hope that his future experiences with the Secret World Organization for Retribution and Destruction would be even a fraction as pleasant as his room, his breakfast, and Galaxy Rose.

The corridor opened on to the landing of a wide staircase which led down to a large living room furnished eighteenth-century style, enriched with armour, landscape paintings, and neo-classic sculpture. The room was in no way particularly different from the main reception room of any other English country mansion, except for one thing: he had the unsettling experience of deja vu, as if he knew the place intimately and yet at the same time knew that he had never been there. Then he realized the reason for the sensation: the room had been described in Amos Klein’s books, and the designer of the room in which Simon now stood had gone to great pains to duplicate every detail.

Galaxy was watching her charge’s reactions, half-smiling at his bemusement.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“No. It’s just that everything’s too right. It’s a little hard to believe.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Galaxy said cheerfully. For a split second the cloud shadow that Simon had noticed before crossed her face, but her voice betrayed nothing. “I had a hard time believing it myself for a while.”

As he followed her down the long room towards closed doors of heavy oak, he was more fascinated than ever by the operations of his own mind in these strange circumstances. His powers of recall had always been exceptional and had more than a few times brought him success or even saved his life because of the advantage they gave him. But when he had read the Charles Lake books he had done so entirely for entertainment, or even derision, and with no thought at all that there would be any point in remembering even details of the plots, much less the names of characters, the descriptions of rooms, or the mechanisms of the fantastic devices so prevalent in Charles Lake’s weird world.

But now Simon had new confirmation of something he had always believed — that nothing in one’s experience was ever really lost, though the calling up to consciousness of long ‘forgotten’ facts seemed more responsive to accidental association than to a deliberate effort of will. The stimulus of the Saint’s surroundings — the names, the gadgets, the furnishings — began to revive more and more details of the Amos Klein novels he had read. At first the trickle of recollections had been small, but now the revelations came like the rapid thawing of tributaries in the spring — streams flowing into larger brooks, brooks flowing into rivers. Now Simon’s mind was filling with a torrent of facts about the world of Charles Lake which was astonishing in its completeness.

As Amos Klein — a role that had been thrust upon him, and which he welcomed in the circumstances — he had to know those things about the novels he had supposedly written. He was grateful to the mental gift which renewed a knowledge that he might reasonably have expected to have lost for ever.

“Here we are,” Galaxy said.

They were standing in front of another pair of oaken doors, but before she could expose her thumb to the glowing yellow disc beside them, they swung open from within, revealing what Warlock called the planning room.

“Greetings, Mr. Klein, and welcome to your rightful place in the world.”

The speaker was Warlock himself. He stood just a few feet inside the doorway, and even in his immaculate grey suit he managed to look like a jovial Caligula. The room which provided the setting for his welcome was large, richly panelled with rosewood, and strikingly modern in contrast to the room Simon was leaving. Behind the expansive Warlock was a long mahogany table. Around the table stood four men, two of whom the Saint recognized immediately as the phoney policemen of the night before.

“Overwhelmed,” said the Saint, inclining slightly.

Warlock did not miss the mocking twist of Simon’s lips. He nodded approvingly.

“So far, Mr. Klein, you have lived up to my fondest expectations. I might have known you’d take all this with the same aplomb as Charles Lake... although of course I had no way of telling whether or not you’d resemble him in the slightest.”

Warlock spoke precisely, with a neutral British accent which told nothing about him except that he had probably artificially cultivated his present way of speaking — in the same way that a radio announcer or actor tends to lose the speech patterns of his native region. Warlock’s accent, as a matter of fact, resembled that of the actor who played the role of Warlock in the Charles Lake films.

“We’re always told,” he continued, “that one should never meet one’s favourite author. The man might be so much less impressive than his work that one could be terribly disappointed. But I must say, Mr. Klein, that I’m not disappointed at all. I’m delighted! You’re much more Charles Lake than the man who plays his part in the films.”

Simon bowed his thanks.

“I hope I’ll be half as delighted when I find out why you gassed and kidnapped me.”

Warlock looked hurt. His jowls sagged.

“I wish you wouldn’t look at it that way, Mr. Klein. It seemed to me that since you were understandably dubious about my original offer, I must use unorthodox methods... for the good of both of us. I trust you’ll soon forgive me when you hear my plan.”

“I don’t have much choice at the moment,” said the Saint.

Warlock gave a deprecating wave of his hand, as if pretending not even to hear such an unworthy remark.

“Now, Mr. Klein, please come in, won’t you? This is your planning room. You’ll recognize it, of course.”

Simon accompanied Warlock across the thick carpet, glancing at the beamed ceiling, the high windows which allowed a view only of the sky, and the walls lined with books, maps, and graphs.

“I do recognize it,” Simon said. He had decided to bring a little more of the overawed author into his characterization. “It’s hard to believe. A perfect replica of the S.W.O.R.D. planning room.”

Warlock rubbed his hands delightedly.

“Not a replica,” he said. “This is the S.W.O.R.D. planning room — the only one on earth. Not in your mind, not on paper, not on film, but here, in reality!”

“And you’ve done all this yourselves?” Simon asked.

“I have done it,” Warlock said. “These gentlemen by the table were chosen after the building was completed. It has been absolutely guaranteed that my interests are theirs. Their loyalty is beyond question. You’ll recognize them, I think? You created them.”

Warlock stood happily by while Simon inspected the troops, who stood in varying postures of respectful unease on either side of the table.

“Bishop,” Simon said to the one who had come to the cottage door as P.C. Jarvis.

Bishop, whose chin displayed a dark bruise where Simon had hit him, forced a smile. He was no longer in uniform but like the other men wore a conservatively tailored suit.

“Mr. Klein,” he said politely, by way of acknowledgement.

“Feeling chipper this morning, Bishop? That’s good.”

Simon moved on to the giant who had accompanied Bishop in the impersonation of police constables.

“Simeon Monk, as I live and breathe. Do you really bend railroad irons with your bare hands?”

“Yes,” said Simeon Monk succinctly.

“Better have that throat looked after, Sim. Sounds as if you’re talking from down in a barrel.”

Simeon rubbed his throat and looked confused.

“He always sounds that way,” Warlock explained unnecessarily. “Remember, in Volcano Seven, you described...”

“Right,” the Saint agreed. “He’s perfect. And this handsome fellow here will be... don’t tell me, let me guess... Frug!”

The word ‘handsome’ had probably never been applied to Frug before, even as a joke. He would have been more aptly described, by a speaker less sardonic and more brutally honest than the Saint chose to be at the moment, as an ugly little shrimp. Opposite the huge Neanderthal called Monk, he looked even shorter and more shrimpy than he was, the perfect caricature of the chain smoker who spends his afternoons at the racetrack and his evenings in a billiards hall.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Frug said deferentially.

“And who is this?” Simon asked. “As if I didn’t know.”

He was inspecting the last member of the quartet, a moderately tall man of almost albino colouration. His hair was white, he seemed to have no eyebrows, and his eyes themselves were the palest of milky grey. He seemed to have more difficulty looking either cordial or respectful than any of the others.

“Nero Jones,” he said.

The Saint turned back to Warlock.

“At least I can’t find fault with the casting,” he remarked.

“I am so pleased you think so,” Warlock replied. “I do think our group here is much more true to life—” he laughed and interrupted himself “—I should say, true to fiction, to your books, than the cast in the motion pictures. I want you to understand that from the very beginning I’ve tried to depend on your books entirely and to ignore the films, so as to be as faithful as possible to your own ideas. I can’t deny being influenced by the films, but I’ve tried not to be unduly influenced. It was your ideas I was interested in, and a lot of other writers messing about with them could easily spoil the whole thing.”

“What whole thing?” Simon asked impatiently.

“I don’t blame you for being puzzled,” Warlock answered. “Here. Please. Sit down at the head of the table, the place of honour, the place of the leader. I’ll explain everything.”

He ushered Simon to the high-backed chair. Galaxy remained decoratively in the doorway.

“You may go now, Galaxy,” Warlock said. “Mr. Klein won’t need you for a while, will you, Mr. Klein?”

“Not for the next minute or so, anyway,” Simon said fondly.

“Good,” Warlock continued. “Galaxy, go see that Mr. Klein’s, er, acquaintance is being well taken care of.”

Galaxy left, closing the double doors behind her, and Warlock looked at Simon.

“The lady is your...” He paused, questioningly.

“Associate,” Simon said, with a vagueness he thought should cover any story Amity Little might have come up with.

Warlock produced the knowing smile of a man who did not really know much about such things but wanted the world to think he did.

“Understood, Mr. Klein, understood. And now, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Fine,” the Saint said bluntly. “I’m a prisoner, is that the idea?”

Warlock looked mildly pained.

“Only in the most technical sense of the word,” he said. “You were brought here involuntarily, true, but I’m sure that when you hear my plan you’ll be very happy that you came. Remember, Mr. Klein, you are the leader. You are the father. We are your brain children.”

The Saint sat back in his chair and surveyed the other men — Warlock facing him from the other end of the table, the others seated along either side.

“And what do I do? Play cops and robbers with you children in this gigantic dollhouse? I feel as if it and all of us were cut off the back of a box of breakfast cereal.”

For the first time the man who called himself Warlock lost his composure. It was only a momentary loss, but it showed the ugly strength which lay behind the jovial surface. Veins bulged and pulsed at his temples, and his black eyes seemed distended in their sockets. But self-control was re-established in a few seconds. His face recovered its normal flaccid pallor as his blood subsided.

“Mr. Klein,” he said softly, “this is no child’s game. It is not a joke. All this has been done for a practical purpose — a most eminently practical purpose: the purpose of making money. What I have done here is build a business organization and a headquarters for that business. The business is called S.W.O.R.D. and it was conceived by you as well as christened by you. I have made it a reality for the simple reason that it works.”

Simon looked soberly at Warlock.

“You mean you’ve planned to put an organization like S.W.O.R.D. into actual operation?”

Warlock leaned forward.

“S.W.O.R.D. is in operation,” he said. “It was quite efficient in bringing you here. The Secret World Organization for Retribution and Destruction is no longer just a fiction. It exists.”

“And Warlock has come to life to be its boss,” Simon said.

Warlock sat back in his chair, looking pleased with himself once more.

“Oh, no, Mr. Klein. I’m not the boss. You are. The ingredient that makes S.W.O.R.D. unique is the unique brain of a creative genius — your own remarkable brain. Without that, S.W.O.R.D. would be only a body without life, a machine without fuel, a... a weapon without a finger to pull the trigger.”

“Before you drown us with metaphors, Mr. X, let me be sure I understand the facts; you’ve kidnapped me so that I can be the badly needed brain behind this organization. Together, I take it, we’re going to become multi-billionaires, put the Mafia out of business by beating it at its own game, and even manipulate governments from behind the scenes — small governments at first, and then work our way up to the really big ones until we control the world.”

Warlock’s eyes glowed like cinders under a bellows.

“You do understand, Mr. Klein! I knew you would. Nero! The attaché case.”

The near-albino rose from his chair and went to fetch the case from a table behind him.

“This will help convince you of our sincerity,” Warlock continued. “Once you come to trust me, I’m sure you’ll agree that a life of real action, a life in which one lives his art rather than merely dreaming it — I’m sure you’ll agree that such a life and its rewards are far preferable to fiction and fantasies.”

“But not necessarily more profitable,” Simon said.

“This should convince you even more. Nero, if you please.”

Nero set the attache case on the table in front of the Saint and unlocked it. Simon opened it himself. Inside were tightly bound stacks of ten-pound notes.

“That’s certainly quite an argument,” the Saint admitted.

He had decided that his best tactic was to play along, for the moment, until he found out just how far Warlock’s well-heeled madness would go. He tried to look like an author who, even though rich from his writing, was not above being impressed by such quantities of money.

“And that’s only half,” Warlock told him. “Fifty thousand pounds. Remember my offer in the post? Fifty thousand now and another fifty thousand after two months, at the successful conclusion of our first major project.”

Simon Templar tried to look as flattered, intrigued, and seriously tempted as an imaginary Amos Klein might have looked.

“What might that be?” he asked. “This major project.”

“We are going...” Warlock began, and then he paused for effect as he put his hand on the table and took a deep breath. “We are going to rob the largest storehouse of treasure on this side of the Atlantic. We are going to empty it of gold, platinum, and diamonds worth more millions of pounds than I can ever estimate.”

“We are?” Simon asked solemnly, building up his part.

“We are,” Warlock said. “And your brain is going to tell us how it can be done.”

“Do you think I could? Even if I...”

“I know you can,” Warlock said flatly. “I know you will.”

“All right,” said the Saint. “Where is this king-size piggy bank?”