The Saint And The Fiction Makers

1

The expedition was ready to leave S.W.O.R.D. headquarters at one o’clock in the morning. Warlock was fuming over delays and shouting at his men as they gathered in the reception hall. Warlock and Bishop wore police uniforms, and the others — including Simon — wore black trousers and long-sleeved black sweaters. It was hoped that if the raid was interrupted, Bishop and Warlock might be able to pass themselves off as policemen who were in the process of apprehending and taking away the criminals.

“All of you except Monk go out to the truck,” Warlock commanded. “Go over the equipment checklist completely and test everything again. Mr. Simon Templar and I are going down to see that his lady love is comfortable. Monk, you come with us.”

As Simon followed Warlock to the cellar, with Monk guarding the rear of the little procession, the rest of the men trooped silently out the front door.

“I think you might need some last-minute inspiration, Mr. Templar,” Warlock said. “Go in, please.”

The Saint entered the cellar and saw Amity lying spread-eagled on the steel table, her ankles and wrists chained. Galaxy was lounging in a swivel chair eating chocolates and reading a vividly coloured paperback called Holiday Lust Spree. Amity raised her head and tried to smile at Simon as Warlock shot Galaxy an angry look.

“Must you read that trash? If you can’t pay attention to what you’re doing here, you could at least try improving your mind.”

“Assuming she has any mind to begin with,” Amity said.

Galaxy called her several names which even the author of Holiday Lust Spree would have been forced to delete from his manuscript.

“If we’re not back by three-thirty,” Warlock said, “you are to turn on this machine and eliminate Miss Little slowly but completely.”

“With pleasure!” Galaxy said.

“Isn’t that early?” Simon asked. “We could hardly be back by then anyway.”

“Of course we can,” Warlock said. “It’s five past one now. The trip to Hermetico takes twenty minutes. We’ll be there at one-thirty. I allow until two o’clock for us to have opened the building, and until three o’clock at the very latest to complete the loading. We’ll easily be here by three-thirty.” He smiled grimly at Amity’s helpless figure. “And besides I’m sure Galaxy won’t get the thing over with too fast. Even if we were five minutes late — which I guarantee we won’t be — there’d still be something left of Miss Little to save. Admittedly, the ultra-sonic waves would have destroyed that mind she seems to be so proud of, but her body would be quite intact.”

Amity lost her surface composure. She closed her eyes and lay back on the slab with a heavy shuddering sigh. Simon started to move towards her, but Monk intervened.

“No, Mr. Templar,” Warlock said. “No fond farewells. Concentrate instead on being sure of a reunion.”

“All right then,” the Saint replied icily. “Let’s not waste any more time. Try to relax, Amity.”

“Good luck,” she said.

“If you’ve got any ideas about starting to work on her before three-thirty, I promise to fix your face so that even dogs will run away from the sight of it.”

“Not very gallant of you, Mr. Templar,” Warlock said, as Galaxy merely gaped like a spoiled child whose hand has just been slapped for the first time. “Galaxy will obey her orders to the letter. And so will you. Let’s go.”

Five minutes later the van rolled out of the gates of Warlock’s grounds. Behind came the counterfeit police car; Bishop drove it, Simon sat next to him, and Warlock and Frug sat watchfully in the back seat. The pace was slow, and a winding route along back roads towards the rear of the Hermetico building necessitated considerable caution and flashing of brake lights on the part of Monk, who was driving the van. But at that hour of the night there was little traffic, and within the twenty minutes specified by Warlock they had reached the pasture they would have to cross in order to reach their goal, which was still half a mile away.

Nero Jones jumped from the van, clipped the wires of the low fence, and waved his arm to signal Monk to proceed. The van bounced slowly through the opening and rumbled off across the rocky field with Nero back inside. Ahead, as the police car followed, Simon could see the patch of forest which was their goal. There was no moon, but the sky was clear, and even though both the vehicles had turned off their lights the bright masses of stars gave a silvery illumination of the whole landscape which disposed of any problem about finding the way.

Warlock was leaning forward tensely, looking at the van.

“Why is the fool tearing along like that?” he fretted. “He’ll turn over.”

“He’s only going ten miles an hour,” Bishop said.

“Mind that rock!”

“I see it,” said Bishop.

A sulky cow plodded leisurely out of the way as the procession growled through its hitherto private territory. Warlock, taken by surprise, had yanked out his automatic before he realized the bovine nature of the lumbering shape.

“Good idea,” Simon said. “Work in a little big-game hunting and we’ll have steaks for breakfast.”

The cow gave a belligerent moo as it was left behind. Warlock snorted and shoved his pistol back under his coat.

“We’re coming up to the wood now,” he said. “Everybody be set to go.”

“I still don’t get why they don’t have lights all around the place,” Frug said.

“So if anybody decided to drop a bomb on it from a plane at night he wouldn’t have an easy time spotting it,” Simon answered.

“Oh, sure,” Frug sneered disdainfully. “Drop a bomb on it!”

“It could happen,” Warlock said. “This place is built to be completely safe even in war. Tend to your own business and don’t jabber so much.”

“At least none of us is nervous,” the Saint observed amiably.

“Shut up!” Warlock croaked. “Where are they? Where’s Monk off to?”

“In the trees,” Bishop replied.

The van had disappeared into the darkness of the forest, and the police car followed slowly. The shadows shut out most of the light of the sky, making it difficult to see anything.

“Keep up, then!” Warlock commanded. “Don’t lose them entirely!”

Suddenly the van loomed directly ahead of the police car, moving in reverse. Warlock waved his arms and fired off a broadside of orders.

“Stop! Watch out! Don’t run into him! Pull alongside!”

He rolled down his window and called harshly to Monk in the driver’s seat.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing? You’re going backwards!”

He was beginning to sound like an elderly schoolmarm in charge of her first picnic outing for juvenile delinquents, and yet that incongruity only lent an additional spine-chilling quality to the reality of what was happening.

“I know,” Monk said, not bothering to hold his voice down. “We’ve got to turn around here and back up to the fence!”

“Quiet!” Warlock ordered furiously. “You think you’re at a football match? Turn around, then. How far are we from the fence?”

“Not far. Fifty yards.”

“Back up and give them room, Bishop,” Warlock said.

The van grunted laboriously to and fro among the trees, and then moved very slowly in reverse in the direction it had originally been travelling.

“We’ll stop here,” Warlock said when the police car had followed another hundred feet. “Come along, Mr. Templar, and no tricks. I don’t need to remind you...”

“No,” Simon interrupted. “You don’t.”

“Bishop, hurry on up and help them,” Warlock ordered. “We’ll follow. Do you have your dart gun, Frug?”

“Check,” said Frug, crisply, slapping a bulge in his jacket.

“It is just like a movie, isn’t it?” Simon commented.

Bishop had already disappeared ahead. Warlock and Frug got out of the car and waited for the Saint to precede them.”

“Hurry it up,” Warlock said, “and no more comments.”

Monk and Nero Jones were already at work on Hermetico’s outer fence when Simon, Warlock and Frug came around the van to join them. Bishop was inside the van adjusting the exact height of the aluminiun bridge to match that of the hole his colleagues were making in the fence. For the first time since his involuntary joining of S.W.O.R.D., Simon was impressed with the professionalism of Warlock’s group. They went about their assigned tasks as quickly, quietly and efficiently as those automatic electrical devices of which Warlock was so fond. It was as if real ability lay coiled inside their unimpressive personalities, to be released only in the rare moments when it was needed for a specific job.

“Careful,” Warlock said unnecessarily to Jones. “One slip with those jumper leads and all hell will break loose.”

Monk grunted and went on clipping through the fence as Jones bridged the gaps with wires which would prevent circuits from being broken and setting off an alarm. Simon scanned the scene around them. The big pale dome of the building itself, like the upper third of a monstrous tennis ball, rose not thirty feet away. From this rear view it was unlighted and almost completely featureless. It might have been made of solid rock, a fallen moon dimly reflecting the light of the night sky. Around the outside of the fence were signs illuminated by hooded bulbs; they warned in unspecific but emphatic terms of the dreadful fate which awaited anyone attempting to transgress on Hermetico’s premises.

The hole in the fence was complete. It was over three feet in diameter and about three feet above the ground level at its lower edge. Frug was passing around spectacles coated with the chemical that Warlock had provided. Simon put on his pair. Instantly the dark area between fence and white building was alive with bars of light, crisscrossing one another from earth to the top of the fence.

“Good work,” said Warlock.

He was looking through the hole in the fence along the tunnel which his men had found in the network of rays. It was not a very spacious tunnel, and it was not of uniform dimensions all the way through, but it was big enough for a prone man.

“The bridge,” Warlock grunted.

He motioned to Monk, who went into the cab of the van and backed it up until the open rear doors were within a foot of the fence. The engine of the van, which had been muffled by every means Warlock could contrive, still seemed as loud as the racket of a sawmill.

“What if somebody looks out here?” Frug muttered.

“We’re all dead,” Simon assured him.

“Shut up!” Warlock hissed. “Nobody’s going to look out. There aren’t any windows.”

Simon glanced hopefully at the tiny apertures around the upper part of the dome — scarcely visible except to one who was looking for them — and said nothing.

“Now,” Jones whispered, and Bishop pushed the lever which moved the bridge out from the rear of the van.

“Easy,” Warlock said. “Slowly. Easy does it now.”

The metal projection crept from the cavity of the van and nosed through the hole in the fence. It inched its way down the tunnel, precariously close to the irregularly spaced bands of light which formed the channel. Simon, like the others, felt compelled to stand as close to the bridge as he could and sight along it as it moved out across the deadly mine field. No one breathed. The night wind rustled the trees behind them. The sound of the electric motor which moved the vibrating bridge was a low whine in the background.

“Stop!” Warlock barked suddenly.

The head of the bridge had almost touched one of the beams. There was an adjustment within the van. The bridge crept on. Simon was almost touching it. With a sudden shove he could have set off explosions all across the green strip, but his chances of standing up to or even just escaping Warlock and his men, single-handedly and without a weapon, were infinitesimal. He would have to wait until the group had split up inside Hermetico’s grounds before he could make his move.

As the far end of the bridge reached the other side of the ray field there was a general intake of breath. A switch was thrown inside the van, and the two legs which were to support the suspended end of the bridge eased towards the ground just next to the concrete walk which surrounded the outside of the dome.

“Are you sure it’s steady on those supports?” Warlock whispered.

The others were sighting along the aluminium frame.

“I can’t see a bloody thing,” Monk grumbled.

“What if it’s not steady?” Frug asked. “It’ll swing over or something and blow us all to pieces.”

“Not all of us,” Warlock said shrewdly. “Just one of us. Let’s see the famous Saint demonstrate his talents. You go across first, Mr. Templar, and make certain that the bridge is in good shape. And please notice that when you get to the other side there’s absolutely nowhere for you to run in case you should have any lingering ideas about causing trouble. Nero and Frug will both have guns trained on you the whole time. They could finish you in two seconds. Now, go ahead. If anything feels wrong to you, stop.”

“Everything feels wrong to me,” Simon replied. “Is that all the information you need?”

“Get on the bridge, Mr. Templar.”

The Saint mounted the rear of the van, looked down the narrow tunnel of darkness among the web of light rays, and lowered his body onto the track of metal rollers.

2

He felt the aluminium bridge shudder slightly, almost touching one of the light beams. But then there was a scraping creak as one of the legs on the far end adjusted its contact with the ground, and the whole frail structure steadied itself.

“Go on, Templar,” Warlock urged. “Remember what happens to your girl friend if we’re not finished here on time.”

Simon held his legs close together, extended his arms straight before him, and without further hesitation used the full strength of his fingers to pull himself quickly along the rollers. He slipped smoothly past the fence and out through the silent unwavering network of infra-red beams. A few seconds later his head and shoulders emerged from the wall of rays, and the rest of his body followed. He gratefully lowered himself back to solid support in the form of the cement walk which circled Hermetico’s dome.

Looking back, he saw that Bishop was ready to follow, making himself prone on the aluminium rollers at the edge of the truck bed. Down to the right about thirty feet was Nero Jones with a submachine gun strapped to his back and an automatic rifle aimed directly at the Saint. Frug, a few yards along the fence from the other side of the truck, covered Simon with a smaller automatic weapon. Even if he should make the bridge collapse by kicking away the supports with his feet, getting rid of a man or two with the resultant explosions, the Saint knew that he would be instantly cut down by Frug’s and Jones’s interlocking fire.

Such a move would accomplish nothing but the salvation of Hermetico’s treasures for Hermetico’s management and depositors — none of whom were uppermost in Simon’s mind at the moment. He was considerably more interested in squaring accounts with Warlock and his friends, and in the process saving himself and Amity Little. He would have to wait. In the meantime, he surreptitiously tried to weaken the stance of one of the bridge’s supporting legs by kicking it with his foot as he moved away from it. If the bridge should fall down while he was nowhere near it, who could blame him?

But unfortunately the support moved only a fraction of an inch. Bishop’s weight was already on the bridge. With a long canvas pack ahead of him on the rollers, he was inching out over the mine field.

“Elbows in,” Warlock said hoarsely. “Don’t raise your head.”

Whatever Bishop’s qualifications as an extra-legal professional man, he was obviously not very good at or very fond of crossing shaky aluminium bridges over highly explosive strips of earth. When he finally had both feet planted on the ground beside the Saint his face gleamed with sweat in the starlight and his hands were trembling visibly.

“Come on now,” he said condescendingly to the ones who still had the crossing to make, “there’s nothing to it.”

Across the bridge in slow procession came Monk, then Warlock, and finally Frug. With them they brought more canvas packs, the metal tanks which would fuel the acetylene torch, and a great coil of nylon rope.

“Legs together,” Warlock grated to Frug. “Easy does it, you idiot! Don’t drop the rope!”

Frug’s reaction to the crossing was more vehement than Bishop’s had been. He mopped his face with his sweater and swore.

“I wasn’t half an inch from one of those beams at the end! Will I be glad to see those bloody things shut off!”

“The sooner we get below, the sooner they’ll be shut off,” Warlock said. “Move out now — around to the ventilation ducts.”

There was a muffled clanking as Monk shouldered the metal tanks.

“Quiet, you fool!” Frug squeaked.

“Who d’you think you’re calling a fool!” Monk rumbled.

“Shut up, both of you!” Warlock said. “Do your jobs and don’t think about anything else.” He faced back towards the outer fence and whispered to Nero Jones as they passed his position. “Get to your post now. Don’t fire unless you’re absolutely sure something is wrong.”

Jones waved acknowledgement and headed off across the field, circling the outer fence parallel to the circle the rest of the group was making around the dome. He would post himself a hundred feet beyond the fence at a spot from which he could fire either on the side door or the front door of the Hermetico building. His pale face was an eerie circle of white when he glanced back over the shoulder of his black sweater. It had not occurred to anyone except the Saint that Jones should smear his face with blacking in order to camouflage it, and the Saint had somehow neglected to mention the idea.

“Get a move on,” Warlock said. “You can’t see anything with those glasses over your eyes now, Frug. All of you, get them off.”

Only Simon kept his glasses on. He pushed them down on his nose so that he could have a choice of seeing over them or through them. It was one of his more optimistic hopes that there were uncharted and unexpected infra-red beams within the confines of Hermetico itself. If that turned out to be the case, he would be the only one to see them. The S.W.O.R.D. group was so engrossed in its work that none of its members gave the least thought to the spectacles propped on the end of Simon’s nose.

Bishop and Frug led the way. Simon came next, with Monk and Warlock behind. They walked swiftly but quietly in single file around the featureless sloping wall of the building. The only sounds were the night breeze, the muffled clanking of the equipment the men carried, and the cautious scuff of their feet. Then there was a new noise which grew louder as they continued — a low buzzing roar.

“Those are the ducts up ahead,” Warlock said. “Easy does it.”

They had circled far enough around the building for the van to be out of sight. Then, as the roaring of the ventilation ducts grew louder, Simon discovered that his infra-red sensitive glasses served their purpose sooner than he had hoped. The S.W.O.R.D group was passing the side door of the Hermetico building, the only door beside the main entrance: it was made of riveted steel plate, undoubtedly bomb-proof, and it was recessed into the concrete wall of the dome. What interested the Saint about it was that he saw — and was the only one of the party who could see — a single beam of infra-red light crossing the threshold six inches above the ground. It was like a rope stretched across the entrance to trip an intruder who might step into the recess in an effort to open the door — except of course that instead of tripping anybody it would set off an explosion or an alarm or something equally inhospitable to an unsuspecting trespasser.

Unfortunately that door was not included in S.W.O.R.D.’s plans, but Simon decided he would find a way to see that it was included. He would have to act, though, before the men who were entering the vault through one of the ventilation ducts had managed to seize the control room and shut off all the electronic defence mechanisms.

A few yards past the doorway, like the roaring heads of subterranean monsters, were the ventilator ducts. The extractor duct was marked by the great bulge of the fan in its throat. The fan which drew in air through the other duct was below ground, incorporated into a filter system which prevented gas being used to knock out Hermetico’s human defences.

“Here,” Warlock said. “Gather around. Quickly! Get that torch going.”

Monk and Bishop assembled the acetylene apparatus with silent efficiency. Warlock knelt by the extractor duct and drew his finger across the metal a few inches above the concrete base.

“Cut here,” he said. “The wires run down just below that part of the fan. Be sure you leave them intact.”

“Huddle round now, would you?” Monk said. “Cut down the glare.”

He was referring to the light of the acetylene torch. The other men stood close by as the point of Monk’s flame cut into the duct at the place Warlock had indicated. The metal was thick, and the work went slowly. Simon relaxed his muscles by deliberate effort and thought the situation over. It would be two o’clock before the duct was open, and even if everything went well down below for the raiders it would be two-thirty before the loading of the van could get well under way. Warlock undoubtedly would see that the loading was completed as rapidly as possible, and that his patrol car got back to his headquarters in time to stop the killing of Amity... if he really intended to stop it.

The irony was that by disrupting S.W.O.R.D.’s operation Simon might cause such delays — to himself included — that Amity might die directly because of him. On the other hand, the Saint did not believe that his or Amity’s chances of a long and happy life would be particularly improved if they depended on Warlock’s mercy, which, he was now convinced, did not drop as the gentle rain from heaven. The Saint would have to act, and sooner than he had hoped. He had originally thought he would wait until the loading was under way, assuming the theft got that far; now he decided it would be more sensible to bring confusion to S.W.O.R.D.’s ranks while one was outside the fence, two were below ground with no way of getting out, and only two were with Simon on the surface.

Warlock was perspiring heavily as the cutting of the duct continued, even though he was involved in none of the labour.

“Can’t you hurry it up?” he snapped.

“The thing’s made of bloody armour plate,” Monk grunted. “I’ll be done in a minute.”

The last part of the cutting was the most delicate. A small part had to be untouched, so that the wiring which led up from below to the huge fan would not be severed. The instant Monk gave the go-ahead, the whole group joined in carefully lifting the head of the duct and laying it back on the concrete, where the fan continued to roar.

Frug had already strapped a leather harness around his waist and chest. One end of the nylon rope was attached to the harness. Bishop was clamping a frictionless roller to the jagged edge of raw metal on the lip of the duct.

“All right, Frug, over you go,” said Warlock. “Let him down gently, boys. Have those sleep-darts ready, Frug.”

Simon peered down into the duct as he took a hold on the rope. Three hundred feet below he could make out a smudge of light: the illumination of the vault coming through the outlet grille.

Frug disappeared down the great dark throat like a fly descending into a bassoon.

“Easy does it,” Warlock mumbled. “Don’t bounce him about down there. Mustn’t have any noise.”

After some time a section of the taut rope marked with red tape passed through Simon’s hands.

“There’s the warning,” whispered Bishop. “He’s almost there.”

“Steady now.”

Warlock let the other three men support the weight on the rope while he felt the strand like a doctor testing a patient’s pulse.

“Now, lower away a fraction of an inch at a time. Stop immediately when I feel the tug... A bit more... Now, stop!”

Frug had signalled that he was in position behind the grille, which gave his sight and his dart gun access to the vault. Motionless, the men at the surface waited. They could hear nothing but the roar of the fan beside them, and like fishermen they poured all their consciousness into their sense of touch to judge by slight pulls on the line what was happening far below.

At last there were three definite jerks on the rope, which meant that Frug had knocked out the vault guards and would be removing the grille while the rope and harness were drawn back up for use in Bishop’s descent. The line went slack and as Bishop and Monk hauled it up Simon took one last look around through his coated glasses and inconspicuously removed them. He was going to try to make use of the infra-red beam across the recessed doorway after all, and he did not want the glasses to arouse suspicion.

A moment later, Bishop was in harness and ready for his descent. Simon was ready too. The next few minutes would contain that precise instant in which he alone would take fate in his hand and twist it to his own will... or else find that fate was not so flexible, and that its revenge for such a challenge was death.

3

The Saint estimated the amount of rope being fed down into the duct with Bishop dangling at the end of it. This time there was less tense caution in the operation and more haste. Frug would not quite have taken the grille off the mouth of the duct by now. Bishop was about a hundred feet from the bottom.

“Wait!” Simon whispered suddenly.

He froze, looking towards the rear of the building. Monk and Warlock froze too, their eyes wide. Bishop was left temporarily suspended in the duct.

“What is it?” Warlock breathed.

“Somebody there?” asked Monk.

“I thought I saw somebody,” the Saint answered.

“If you’re trying to...” Warlock began.

“I’m not trying to do anything, but I don’t fancy getting shot standing here like a goat on a tether. Shall I go look?”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Warlock growled. “You and Monk hang on here.”

Simon smiled underneath the grim expression he had to keep like a mask on his face. He felt like a chess player who has just set up his unsuspecting opponent for an inescapable forking trap: in denying Simon the chance to leave the rope, a chance Simon would gladly have accepted, Warlock had opened himself to an equally catastrophic possibility.

“Stick close to the wall,” Simon cautioned.

Warlock had drawn his pistol. He edged along the side of the dome, keeping his back close against it. The recessed doorway was only a few feet ahead of him. He stopped and looked back, shaking his head as if ready to call off his search. Simon urged him on with desperate motions of his own head. Warlock moved further along the wall. When he was directly outside the recessed door, the Saint struck.

“Look out!” he shouted.

Warlock stumbled back into the doorway in a panic-stricken dive for cover. Instantly there was a tumultuous clamour of bells and sirens. Even Simon, who was expecting the uproar, and possibly worse, felt something like a galvanic shock from the tip of his tongue to his toes. Monk very nearly jumped straight in the air, though his fingers automatically clung to the rope.

Warlock was staggering from the doorway, coughing, rubbing his eyes wildly with one hand as he waved his pistol with the other. A thin mist was spraying from around the locked steel door, apparently a gas meant to blind and otherwise incapacitate a would-be intruder temporarily.

“Help me!” was the most Warlock could manage to cry as he stumbled against the railing, almost into the mine field, and then back towards the wall of the building.

Monk’s eyes were gigantic with surprise and fear, and he stood as if he had suddenly been frozen solid, his huge hands clinging numbly to the rope.

“What is it? What is it?” he croaked.

“Time you were left holding the bag,” Simon answered.

He released his own grip on the rope and threw himself towards Warlock. The fat man, still blinded and having lost all sense of direction, was standing with his broad back towards the ventilation ducts. The target was too tempting to resist, particularly when every second was vital. The Saint hurled himself like a wrestler catapulting the full weight of his body off the ropes at his opponent. His right shoulder smashed into the centre of Warlock’s back and sent him sprawling on his face. The pistol which was Simon’s main goal scooted from Warlock’s hand across the concrete walk and three feet out on to the grass at the edge of the mine field. Since it touched no infra-red beams it set off no explosion, but in order to get it Simon would have had to prostrate himself on the walkway and stretch his arm carefully under the low beams.

He did not have time even to consider that possibility, for within a second or two after Warlock hit the pavement a new and chilling sound joined the howl of sirens and clanging of bells. It was Bishop’s shriek of helpless horror as he plummeted down the duct like a stone.

Simon whirled from Warlock’s floundering form to see Monk, his hands free, lurch towards him from the beheaded extractor vent. The tail end of the rope was uncoiling rapidly from the ground and disappearing over the edge of the vent’s mouth. Bishop’s agonized cry, just before it was suddenly cut short, was joined by a brief and quickly truncated squawk from Frug, who had apparently been unable to get out into the vault in time to avoid breaking his comrade’s fall.

The Saint dodged and ducked as Monk’s arm swung at him with all the weight of an oak log. He chopped the huge man in the kidneys and sent him reeling against the wall of the building. But Monk, however much like a clumsy gorilla he might look at other times, proved surprisingly agile when fighting for his life. Without a second’s delay he rebounded from the wall and got off a left and a right jab at Simon, either of which could have taken off the head of a marble statue if it had landed squarely. But the Saint managed to counter the left and take the right on his shoulder. Now he was knocked back to the wall, and Monk dived at him. Simon rolled aside, yanked Monk’s wrist, and swung him heavily against the concrete dome.

Even that failed to slow down Monk, who lunged at Simon, withstood a tremendous smash to his jaw, and lifted the Saint completely from the ground with a crushing bear hug. Monk’s aim was clear: he intended using the momentum of his charge to carry the Saint to the mouth of the extractor vent and hurl him down the hole. The Saint, however, had no intention of being thrown down the hole. Monk’s dependence on his own brute strength made him forget to guard himself against more subtle forms of attack. Simon slashed out with his forearm, slicing so hard into Monk’s larynx that the grip of the huge arms was loosened immediately as Monk fell choking and gagging to his knees.

In the instant which passed as he drew back his foot to swing the toe of his shoe against Monk’s jaw, the Saint had time to realize consciously what the new sound was which had joined the general cacophony. Nero Jones’s machine gun had opened up out beyond the fences with a chattering blast. Simon assumed at first that Jones was firing at guards who were trying to make a foray out of Hermetico’s front door, but then he realized that the machine gun was aimed at him. The next staccato of explosions sent lead gnawing into the cement wall not six inches above his head.

He had to forego the pleasure of kicking Simeon Monk in the face, and instead drop to his own knees. Monk lunged at him, knocking him on to his back with the sheer force of his weight. But the impetus of Monk’s weight served another purpose: it enabled the Saint to catch the gigantic man in the pelvis with both feet and flip him completely over his own body. Monk landed with the small of his back on the rough metal edge of the open extractor vent down which he had dropped Bishop. His legs were in the three-hundred-foot-deep shaft before he could catch himself. For an instant the back of his sweater, snagged on the jagged metal, delayed his complete disappearance down the duct.

“Stop me!” he screamed.

But the sweater ripped free, Monk’s head dropped suddenly from sight, and the prolonged sound of his wild howl echoed from far down inside the earth.

Nero Jones’s machine gun ripped into the wall by Simon’s shoulder. Stony chips and dust shattered from the face of the dome, stinging his eyes and nostrils. The Saint had hoped the Hermetico guards would have opened the side door by now, but obviously their strategy did not involve exposing themselves to bullets when they could remain safely inside their fortress. There was a roar of gunfire from high up in the dome as they began to answer Jones’s fusillades.

There was absolutely no shelter along the side of the dome. Simon knew that his only chance to avoid being cut down was to get back across the aluminium bridge. He picked up his glasses, which had been knocked to the ground, and tensed himself low on his knees for the dash. In his path was Warlock, who had thrown himself on his stomach and was groping out over the edge of the mine field to recover his pistol. He obviously had regained most of his sight.

He screeched to the Saint, “You bloody fool! You’ve ruined everything! It was working! It was perfect!”

Simon ran, leaping over Warlock, racing for the bridge. Lead barked at his heels and whistled around his head. A glance over his shoulder told him that Warlock had retrieved his pistol and was staggering to his feet. He was crazed beyond all caution, screaming incoherent curses as he pitched forward into a stumbling, weaving pursuit of the Saint.

Simon reached the bridge. At least for the moment he was beyond Nero Jones’s angle of fire, but he knew the respite was only momentary. He had glimpsed Jones’s white face bobbing in the darkness of the field. The machine-gunner was on the run himself. He too was heading for the escape car, and in a few seconds he would again be in a position to fire at the Saint. Luckily, the guards in the dome were still concentrating on Jones, giving Simon at least some chance of getting across the bridge to shelter without being noticed immediately.

He shoved the coated glasses back on his nose as he ran and without a moment’s hesitation more or less dived on to the rollers of the bridge, launching himself like a torpedo so that he shot along the aluminium rails and was almost to the other side before even the most alert gunman could have reacted to his appearance and taken aim.

Simon was pulling himself the last feet of the way to the truck with powerful clutches of his fingers when he heard Warlock shouting hysterically behind him. The pistol cracked twice, undoubtedly aimed in the Saint’s general direction, but without any more effect than Warlock’s words. Then, incredibly, he felt a violent shaking of the bridge.

“Damn you!” Warlock was crying. “I’ll get you! Nobody beats Warlock! It has to be like the book! It’s real!”

Simon could not raise his head to see the man, who was trying to kick the supporting legs from under the inner end of the bridge. But Warlock had arrived too late. Simon was already rolling through the fence into the dark protection of the van.

It was only then that Warlock seemed to recover his reason enough to realize that he was kicking down his own means of escape. He clambered on to the bridge, his arms stretched in front of him along the rollers, his pistol aimed at the van. He fired even as he dragged himself along, and the bullet ripped up through the roof of the van.

Suddenly a voice more like the voice of a machine than a man resounded from a loudspeaker within the wall of the dome.

“Halt there or we’ll shoot! Give yourselves up. You have no way of escape.”

Warlock floundered along the rollers with greater urgency.

“Don’t shoot,” he screamed. “Don’t shoot me!”

“Halt!” bellowed the loudspeaker.

Warlock stopped midway across the bridge, clutching the rails desperately even as he took aim against Simon.

“I’ve stopped! Don’t shoot!”

That was when Simon moved his foot to push the lever which controlled the bridge. Slowly the electric motor began to draw in the rails. The supporting legs at the far end grated and creaked. Warlock, as he realized what was happening, squirmed and bellowed. His eyes rolled wildly as he clawed at the rails and tried to haul himself forward.

Then the already precarious support of the metal legs gave way, and the bridge tilted and sagged. Through his glasses Simon could see Warlock roll with flailing arms into the web of light beams — the last, almost immaterial wisps of reality with which Warlock would ever have to deal.

A series of explosions erupted across the mine field with a volcanic thunder that buried all other sound. Simon dived for the floor of the van as he saw the bridge blasted into flying, twisted shreds. Stone, turf, and metal rained down on the van’s roof and on to Simon’s back. Then, the instant the rain of debris ended, he rolled over and swung himself to the ground, taking advantage of the cloud of smoke and dust which enveloped the whole area to make a dash into the woods. He could only hope that Nero Jones had not managed to get to the car ahead of him.

4

As Simon raced around the van into the dense wood, an unworldly silence suddenly replaced the bedlam of bells, sirens, gunfire, and explosions. Hermetico’s alarm system had been shut off, and there was nothing left in sight for the guards to shoot at. The only sound the Saint heard behind him now were the distant muffled sounds of Hermetico personnel.

He hurried on stealthily into the darkness of the wood, straining his eyes to try to see whether or not the police car was still parked in the clearing where it had been left. It was, and there was no sign of Nero Jones, who easily could have made it back to the car before Simon. Either Jones had been shot by the guards from their posts in the dome, or he had come to the car, found that it had no key, and escaped on foot.

But there are ways of starting cars without keys, so it was most likely that Jones had been hit by the withering fire from Hermetico before he ever got to the trees. The Saint quickened his stride to a run. The luminous dial of his watch told him it was ten minutes before three. Every step of the operation had taken longer than anyone had foreseen. Still, if he could start the police car Simon knew he could get back to Warlock’s estate before the three-thirty deadline.

Then to his right he saw a smear of white weaving irregularly among the black tree trunks. Almost immediately there was a sputtering flash of pale fire from directly beneath the bobbing white smear, and the silence was blasted by the voice of Nero Jones’s tommy gun.

The Saint’s nearest protection was the police car itself, which was far from being the ideal sanctuary, since once he had reached it there was nowhere else to go, but at the moment he was delighted to put it between himself and Jones’s bullets. As he squatted by the rear wheel he heard the lead pellets shattering glass and ripping into metal on the other side.

Nero Jones obviously had been wounded as he crossed the open field on his way to the wood. During a break in the fire, Simon hazarded a glance around the rear of the car and saw his enemy standing slumped against a tree at the edge of the clearing, completely careless of the target he himself was presenting. Since he could not know that Simon was unarmed, it was apparent that Jones was in such a bad way that he scarcely knew what he was doing.

With that in mind, the Saint tried something he might otherwise have hesitated to risk. His peek around the back of the car had brought on another blast from the tommy gun. A few seconds later, hearing nothing more from Jones’s direction, he deliberately exposed his head and shoulders again. Jones was limping cautiously forward from the trees. He fired from the hip, seeming barely able to support the weight of the gun. Simon screamed in mock pain, stiffened to his full height with his hands clutching his head, and fell back out of Jones’s sight again behind the car.

Even as he went through his performance, he managed to get a glimpse of the wounded man coming forward at a staggering run. Simon rolled under the car and watched Jones’s feet approach until they were within a dozen inches of the door. The shoes were splattered with blood. Nero Jones could scarcely drag himself forward. Simon felt liquid spreading over his own lower leg and wondered fleetingly whether he had been hit without realizing it. But he had no time to wonder now. He thrust himself from under the car and grabbed both of Nero Jones’s ankles, jerking both his feet completely out from under him.

Jones crashed over backwards, his shoulders and head striking the ground first. Simon had already clutched the barrel of the tommy gun. He wrenched it from Nero Jones’s hands, raised himself on his knees, and without bothering to turn the weapon around to firing position, swung it as a club. The stock smashed against Jones’s skull. He shuddered and lay still.

Simon, still on his knees, caught a deep breath. Jones would never exercise his skill as a torturer of women again, and as much credit went to Hermetico’s guards as to the Saint. The albino’s chest had been torn open by rifle fire, one of his arms was drenched with blood, and the flesh of one of his legs had been hit by several bullets.

Jones’s wounds reminded Simon of the moisture he had felt on his own leg. He quickly checked, and what he found made his heart sink. He would almost have preferred finding his own blood. His trousers were soaked with gasoline. He lay flat again and confirmed that the police car’s gas tank had been shot through and by now was completely empty.

Simon got to his feet and looked closely at his watch. It was six minutes before three. He had no chance at all of getting back to S.W.O.R.D. headquarters in time to save Amity if he walked to some paved road and tried to get whatever transportation he could from there. There was only one way he might get to her in time, and that was by taking the van which was still parked next to the Hermetico fence. The odds were in favour of there being a key in the ignition switch, since the van’s electrical system had powered the aluminium bridge, and Simon knew that the rear of the van had not been seriously damaged in the explosion which had killed Warlock. The gas tank was safely forward near the engine.

Sirens were wailing in the distance, growing louder. The police were on the road to Hermetico — or maybe they were reinforcements for police who had already arrived. Whatever the situation, Simon had no intention of saving his own skin by running — which he easily could have done — and leaving Amity to be slowly broiled by Galaxy Rose. He grasped the tommy gun in firing position and ran back through the wood towards the van.

There were several things in his favour. The Hermetico guards’ primary responsibility was the defence of the vault. By coming out of the building and giving chase to intruders they might play into the hands of a clever enemy.

The sounds of gunfire continuing to come from the wood had probably given them additional reason for caution, otherwise they could easily have been swarming around Warlock’s police car before this. The Saint could assume that they were still inside Hermetico, waiting for the police to search the surrounding area and give an all clear.

Simon had decided that his best weapon under the circumstances was sheer audacity. He did not hesitate as he approached the nose of the van, but bore down on it at a dead run. Smoke still hung in the air, but he could see clearly. So could the guards, no doubt, but he hoped to take them completely by surprise. There was nobody near the van, though flashlights were approaching around the side of Hermetico’s dome. Someone called out.

“Look! Over there!”

The Saint was already at the door of the van. He flung it open and leaped into the driver’s seat as the shouting increased.

“There’s one of them!”

“Stop him! Shoot if he won’t stop!”

Simon’s fingers gratefully closed on the ignition key. The engine chugged unenthusiastically and failed to start. He tried again. The three or four seconds that passed seemed as large and heavy as the columns of Stonehenge. Simon braced the tommy gun against the seat and aimed it into the air through the window.

The men near the building were running towards him, shouting.

“Stop! Come out of there or we’ll shoot!”

With one hand he fired his gun harmlessly at the sky as the van’s engine at last rumbled to life. The men who had been racing towards him reversed direction and raced back for cover, and there was answering fire from up in the dome. But by then the van had jumped forward and was disappearing into the trees.

Simon kept his head low, and within seconds he was out of danger of being hit by the fire from behind. A large number of very solid trees were acting as his rearguard. He drove around Warlock’s police car. Shortly he bounced out into the open field and headed in the direction of the hole in the fence. It was just three o’clock when he finally reached it. He might still get to Amity in time.

He swung out on to the paved road and started back towards Warlock’s house by the same route the group had followed on the way to Hermetico. There were much faster roads in the vicinity, but they would be thick with police cars by now, and even on a perfectly normal night the sight of a black van riddled with bullet holes would have been enough to arouse a law officer’s interest and cause fatal delays.

So Simon had to go through the agonizing process of travelling winding country lanes at twenty miles an hour when he urgently wanted and needed to be travelling at seventy. Then the process became even more agonizing. About two miles from Hermetico he caught up with a creeping Fiat with a large ‘L’ on its rear bumper. The road was too narrow to allow Simon’s van to pass even that minute vehicle, whose driver was apparently not only learner, as his ‘L’ testified, but also an arthritic octogenarian trying very hard to disguise the fact that he was purblind drunk.

Simon tried leaning on his horn, which only stirred the aged pilot of the Fiat to greater excesses of caution. By now the car and the van were moving a scant ten miles an hour... and they continued at that pace for five minutes. At last the Saint saw an opening and pushed his way past to the sound of indignant beeps from the Fiat. He then had to steer the van through a series of bends so sharp that having passed the other car proved to have done him almost no good at all.

It was quarter past three and he was not halfway to Warlock’s estate. He came at last on to a straight stretch, gathered speed, and swept around a broad curve, only to come face to face with two hundred sheep. The sheep were on a nocturnal stroll of obscure motivation which required that they cross the road en masse in order to get from one identical field to another. Simon tried to push his way through them without killing any, and soon was awash in a sea of angry baas. It was like riding a wave of sheep. For a while it seemed there were sheep in every direction as far as the eye could see. To run over them would soon have either capsized the van or brought it to a halt. There was nothing to do but press on with grimly slow persistence.

When Simon finally broke out of the mass of sheep and got up to speed again it was twenty-five minutes after three. There were no more delays, but even so he was doomed to be late. The hands of his watch indicated three-thirty when he was still a mile from Warlock’s house. He swerved around the last bend in the road and tore through the newly repaired gate of Warlock’s grounds without slowing down. Ignoring the driveway, he steered a direct path across the lawn to the front door and all but drove up the steps. A short blast from the tommy gun opened the locked door. He kicked it open and ran across the big reception room to the planning room, and then down the stairs to the cellar. To his horror, he could smell something like electricity in the air, then a high-pitched whine and hiss. He burst into the laboratory with his gun ready.

Amity Little turned from the control panel by the wall, where she had been standing adjusting some knobs.

“Oh, Simon!” she beamed, as if she were welcoming him to a cocktail party. “I’m so glad to see you!”

The whine from the electronic equipment dwindled to silence. The Saint’s powers of speech dwindled into the same state. He could only stare. Amity came towards him.

“And I was so glad to hear you’d messed things up for Warlock. I knew you would, of course.” She looked at him, pretending to be puzzled. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Yes,” Simon managed. He pointed numbly to some ash on the metal slab to which Amity had been clamped when he left. “Is that...”

Amity frowned, then burst into laughter.

“Galaxy? Oh, no. I just used her sweater to try the thing out on. There she is.”

Simon looked. Galaxy Rose, looking as voluptuous as ever in spite of mussed hair, a gag in her mouth, and ropes binding her ankles and wrists, was sitting in the corner.

She said “Mump, mump,” and glared.

“I’ve been wanting to shut her up ever since we got here,” Amity said. “And I’ve been wanting to do this, too — right in front of her.” She had come up to Simon now, and she put her arms around his neck. “Well?” she murmured. “Aren’t you going to thank me for writing you into such lovely adventures?”

He kissed her somewhat hastily.

“And for all the loot we’re going to collect from Warlock’s safe before the police get here?” she persisted.

He kissed her again, thinking that to thank her properly just for being herself would take considerably more than that.

“But please,” said the Saint, with almost frantic restraint, “how did you get off that table?”

Her dazzlingly ingenuous smile would have been absolute justification for homicide.

“Oh, that,” she said carelessly. “Well, to find that out, I’m afraid you’ll just have to buy my next book.”