The Saint on TV

1

“Hello, dahling,” the voice from the telephone said. “Zis is Zsa Zsa Gabor”

Simon Templar, his face freshly shaven, dark hair newly brushed, his clean shirt half buttoned, was not expecting a call from Zsa Zsa Gabor. He did not know Zsa Zsa Gabor, and he had no reason to believe that the actress with the often mimicked voice was any better acquainted with him.

“I’m sorry,” he said with hesitation. “I’m afraid you have the wrong number. This is Captain Kidd.”

While his formerly gushing caller hesitated, experiencing the disconcerting vertigo of rapidly turning tables, Simon admired his own psyche’s impromptu choice of a pseudonym: it was fairly appropriate for a man who had often been called — among more censorable things — the twentieth century’s brightest buccaneer. Most assuredly, had Simon Templar’s rakishly piratical face been exposed to the world three or four hundred years sooner, it would have been found on the poop of some white-winged marauder. As it was, his present day forays against the gold and jewel laden galleons of the Ungodly had brought him at least as much fame and perhaps even more fortune than in earlier tunes when heroism and daring were more common and less denigrated qualities on the face of the earth.

“You are kidding wiz me, dahling,” said the alleged embodiment of all things good in bed. “You are ze man zey call ze Saint.”

“That’s also a possibility,” said the Saint. “Now if you’ll tell me who you are we’ll be almost even.”

“I’ve told you, you funny man.” Her voice took on a sudden urgency. “But I have no time to argue any more. I am in trouble and I...”

“Perhaps,” Simon interrupted helpfully, “you’d better speak to your family doctor.”

It was impossible to tell definitely whether his caller snickered or suppressed a sigh of exasperation. At any rate she went on a moment later in the same desperate tone.

“I am told zat you are ze only one who can help me. Please, it is most important. I must see you. If you will meet me at...”

Simon, as she went on unnecessarily detailing a route by which he could arrive at a certain street corner not far from the British Museum, glanced at his watch and then out the window of his bedroom. Though it was only six in the evening, a heavy fog enveloped the autumn streets of London, and it was almost as dark as it would be at midnight.

“Listen,” he said, having no intention of refusing to accept the gauntlet which was being so charmingly flung at him, “I’m dressing for dinner now, and it just happens that I have no engagements for this evening. Why don’t you meet me at the White House at seven and...”

“White House?”

“It’s a restaurant, darling. No relation to the Birds’ Nest in Washington. Meet me there at seven and we can discuss your difficulties over the most delicious...”

“I couldn’t It... it must be later, and...”

“Then how about here at my house when it suits you? You know where I am, no doubt, since you have my number.”

“Yes, I think so. Upper Berkeley Mews. But...”

“And a charming spot it is, too,” Simon said nostalgically. “I lived here years ago and just found that the old place was available again. And I can’t think of a better partner for a housewarming than you.”

His Zsa Zsa or pseudo-Zsa Zsa was beginning to sound pressed.

“No,” she said. “It’s impossible. I beg you. Meet me where I said. At ten o’clock. Please.”

Whatever nefarious intentions she or someone she represented might have, her insistence on choosing her own ground assumed a naivete on Simon’s part which implied an almost unbelievable naivete on hers. Still, there was one inducement to go along with the proposal: if someone was out to ensnare him in some way, the Saint would not have chosen the venue but he would know where and when to be on guard — which advantage was several cuts above not being fore-warned at all.

“If you insist,” he said pleasantly. “But it’s only fair to tell you that I don’t believe for a moment that you are Zsa Zsa Gabor I’m just curious enough to want to know what the gag is — and it’d better be good, or you may find yourself getting spanked.”

“Oh, zank you for coming. It will be worth your while.”

“I’m sure it’s intended to be worth someone’s while — but just whose is the question that fascinates me.”

The fascination stayed with him as he finished dressing, cast a fond glance over the walls and refurbishings of his old haunt, and piloted his car off into the mist. It added a special piquancy to a meal which was as relaxed and fine as he had anticipated, but which without the earlier phone call would have turned his thoughts more toward relaxation and eventual sleep than toward the expectation of excitement. The voice, even if spurious, had had a timbre of genuine sexiness which he recognized in the same way that a connoisseur recognizes the scent of a good wine; and it was an article of his faith that adventure never came to those who sat at home in fear of making a mistake.

A little before ten he drove to the appointed area and circled through the almost deserted streets, always keeping a block’s distance between himself and the corner his Zsa Zsa had mentioned. He saw nothing to change his mind about keeping the date. Then he zigzagged deviously through several blocks to confuse any possible observers, and parked a full five minutes’ long-striding walk from his destination. He did not think, under the peculiar circumstances, that there was any taint of paranoia in his desire to arrive in as discreet a way as he could.

Of course it was possible — just barely possible — that the much photographed form of Miss Gabor would come drifting toward him out of the dampness like a Magyar mermaid. She had been reported in London, and only the day before he had read one of the usual idiotic newspaper interviews with her. That could also have inspired a joker whose calendar had stuck at the first of April to use her name for a stupid hoax, even more probably than that the real Zsa Zsa would have had any reason or inclination to call him. But stranger things than that had happened in his incredible life, and he could never have slept peacefully again if he had not given this one at least a sporting chance to surprise him. And yet at the same time, even while logical skepticism was resignedly prepared for a pointless jape, the conditioned reflexes of a lifetime still found themselves tautening to respond to anything more sinister than either of those simple alternatives. As he was about to emerge from an alley half a block from the trysting spot, he stopped and listened. The neighborhood, composed of small shops all closed in the evening, seemed absolutely deserted, and the more distant sounds of the city were muffled by mist. He looked along the street, both ways. Visibility was held down to barely a block, but it was obvious that within that area, at least, there was no one waiting for him.

He moved around the corner, out of the narrow passage, and went along the sidewalk. Then, almost like an echo of the sound of his own shoes on the dimly gleaming pavement, he heard the other steps. He went quickly around the comer of the block, where he was supposed to meet Zsa Zsa, and stood still to listen. The footsteps continued, drawing closer, from the direction of the alley he had just vacated.

As he heard them, swiftly analyzed their character, compared them with footsteps in general, the Saint felt the hairs prickle icily on the back of his neck. For the footsteps were not those of a woman — nor of a man either. Certainly of no animal. With mechanical steadiness they came on, accompanied now by a faint whining sound like that begun by a cuckoo clock just before the bird pops out to announce the hour.

Simon looked, and the unknown — which had aroused such aboriginal stirrings of his body fur — became the ridiculously familiar.

A metal toy soldier about twelve inches in height was marching along the sidewalk, its tin rifle on its shoulder, its wide painted eyes staring sightlessly straight ahead.

The Saint, feeling it safe to assume that the clockwork man has not happened along at just that moment by sheer accident, watched its progress as it passed him by and walked straight off the curb, falling on its face in the gutter. From that unmilitary position it continued its stiff movements, going nowhere, until finally, with some sporadic dying ticks, it lay still and totally silent.

Only after that did Simon venture a close approach to the thing. He rolled it over with his foot, then knelt to pick it up. For a second or two after he took it into his hands, searching it for a sign of its purpose — it seemed more the vehicle for a joke than for anything serious — nothing happened. Then it almost soundlessly emitted, from the barrel of its rifle, a single puff of black smoke.

The Saint flung it away from him and backed off, covering his mouth and nose with his handkerchief. But even though a little of the smoke had found its way into his nostrils he was suffering no ill effects beyond a mild and easily satisfied urge to sneeze.

The next event, however, was less harmless. There was a swift hiss over his head, and he turned to see an arrow, shaft fractured by its impact with the brick side of the building, clatter to the sidewalk at his feet.

The angle of the arrow’s flight told him the approximate place of its source and at the same time the location where he would be most safe. Out in the open, taking pot shots into the fog, he might very well receive, during the next few seconds, an unwelcome steel-tipped addition to his already quite adequately equipped anatomy.

In three strides he achieved the shelter of the nearest doorway and waited, automatic in hand, for some further charming manifestation from his rendezvous. It was not long in coming. A car barely poked its nose around the next corner, a red MG convertible with the top up, and from its blacked-out interior came a quick drum-roll of faint popping noises that matched the closer thudding of lead slugs pocking the brickwork on either side of the entranceway.

Flattening himself as deep into the alcove as possible while he was trying to decide where he could aim back most effectively against an invisible sniper with some kind of silenced automatic rifle who had to be in the rear part of the MG that was still mostly shielded by the corner building, Simon felt the door that he had his back to yield slackly to his pressure. His change of purpose was faster than thought; he was outgunned, and he knew it, and anything was better than his present exposed position. In a flash he was inside, slamming the door behind him.

The shooting stopped. There was no further sound.

The Saint took advantage of the lull and his new temporary security to survey what he could of his surroundings. His pocket flashlight, combined with the glow of streetlamps filtered through the transom from outside, showed that he was in the entrance hall of an obviously vacant building. Ahead of him was a staircase whose landing had been appropriated by spiders. The target shapes of their webs, stretching from bannister to wall, had an unpleasant association for him: he did not like being a target himself, a tin duck in somebody’s shooting gallery — especially a somebody who was probably insane as well as an incompetent marksman.

There was a closed door near the base of the stairs, facing the street entrance, and on the right was an open door, leading into a room which had to overlook the street. Since the Saint did not want to signal his position with the beam of his torch, he put it back into his pocket before leaving the hall.

The front room showed even more signs of decrepitude and neglect than had the staircase. Its only furnishings, aside from the marbleized bowl which covered its ceiling bulb, were a sagging table and a three-legged chair. The naked windows gave a full view of the street, but Simon could not see the MG, or any other assailant. The toy soldier lay dented where it had fallen in line of duty. Fog veiled everything else.

Then Simon’s fantastic reactions, in the blinding fragment of time which followed, sent him to his knees by the wall even before his conscious mind had been able to register what was happening. Only then did he realize that the overhead light in the center of the room had flashed on, though no one stood by the wall switch. Immediately afterward there had been a sound like that of a firecracker exploding.

Now, down from the light fixture drifted a long black rectangle of silk, attached at the top to the marbleized bowl, unfurling to its full length of a yard or more, so that its vivid scarlet lettering became perfectly legible.

BOOM, it said.

Simon, preferring invisibility to the continued opportunity of admiring the artful banner, shot out the light. He did not even care if the report of his gun brought Chief Inspector Claud Teal himself scurrying over from Scotland Yard. Indeed for once he might have welcomed Inspector Teal’s presence, if for no other reason than to have an independent witness corroborate the nightmarish ballet macabre in which he had been caught up.

A click and a humming noise came from the part of the room where the chair lay near the rickety table. Then a muffled voice began speaking.

“You have been gassed by a toy soldier, been shot through the head with an arrow, been mowed down with a submachine gun, and been blown up by a plastic bomb hidden in a light fixture. This is your killer speaking. You, the once famous Mr Simon Templar, are dead.”

Another click signaled the end of what was obviously a recording, and the Saint, feeling unamused but somewhat more at ease, decided that he was simply the victim of one of the most extreme practical jokes ever perpetrated. That realization, however, did not diminish by one erg his earnest desire to discover the identity of his persecutor. Using his pocket light again, he went to the table, opened the drawer, and looked in at a small battery-operated tape recorder which by means of some clever Japanese mechanism had turned itself on and then turned itself off again.

He closed the drawer. The recorder might carry fingerprints, or the comedian might come back to get it. And then Simon realized that there might be no need on his part for the tracing of identities or the setting of traps: a most faint sound had just reached his ears — a sound which, if noted at all by an ordinary man, would have been passed off as the inevitable creaking of antique lumber. But if the Saint had not possessed senses discriminating enough to prevent him from assuming such things, he would never have survived so long to enjoy the material rewards of his adventures.

What he was hearing, after the creak, was the stealthy approach of stockinged feet from behind him. Either his assailant had not been content with four types of mayhem and was about to attempt to add a fifth, or some new character was taking the stage.

The Saint waited for him, his back turned as bait, reasonably certain that any violent move would be presaged by a warning noise beyond that of foot-filled woolen material padding on old boards. Besides, any really serious killer would not have passed up his chance with a goodly proportion of the weapons in the human arsenal only to engage Simon Templar, of all people, in face-to-face combat.

So the Saint waited those few breathless seconds — breathless at least on the part of the stalking individual behind him. Simon’s lungs continued operating at the same easy pace they would have kept during the annual radio reading of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. And then, when the moment was exactly right, and he could somehow feel the presence of another body at just the proper position, he moved.

For the stalker turned victim, it must have been an astonishing sensation. At one moment his cautious feet were on the floor; an instant later he was in the air, experiencing the delightful but short-lived astronautical sensation of weightlessness without any effort at all on his part; and then he was forcibly reminded of the persistence of those natural laws which make apples fall and keep pigs out of the paths of soaring hawks. Then he knew nothing. He was flat on his back, unconscious.

Simon, using his pocket torch, found only one thing surprising about his sleeping adversary: the man was scarcely a man. He could not have been much over twenty — thin, brown-haired, neatly dressed in turtle-neck sweater and slacks, with a kind of intelligence in the molding of his face which one would not expect to find in the countenance of any ordinary young back-alley bandit.

He was carrying a single weapon: a string necktie, one of whose ends was still wrapped around his left hand. With that, in traditional commando fashion, he had apparently intended to throttle the Saint — or to pretend to throttle him, if his use of the strangling cord was to conform with the mock attacks that had already taken place.

Out in the hall, from the vicinity of the base of the stairs, a door opened. This time there was no attempt at silence. The door not only opened quite noisily, but was kicked back against the wall, and the footsteps which followed were completely uninhibited.

The hall bulb was flicked on, flooding the larger room with light, but by that time the Saint had already flattened himself against the wall just inside the door. He was ready for almost anything except what happened.

A very pretty young blonde walked in, carrying a tray on which were arranged a tea pot, three cups, a pitcher of milk, and a bowl of sugar. On the young lady herself were arranged, with much greater effectiveness, a very tight little sweater, a very short little skirt, and a pair of fashionable white boots. As she entered and saw the prone figure on the floor just beginning to groan and stir, she stopped and said to him in the mildly exasperated tone of a housewife whose husband has just failed to bring the swatter down directly on the fly, “Oh, Grey, you didn’t get him!”

2

Simon, who had planned a startling and entirely physical greeting for the newcomer before he got a look at her, decided that even without her hands full of tea things she would have posed about as much threat to him as a gladiola bulb.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t drop it,” he said softly.

The girl gasped, turned quickly, but did not drop the tray, even when she saw Simon’s automatic aimed at her middle.

“Oh, Mr. Templar, you frightened me.”

“And that’s only the beginning. Why don’t you set that stuff on the table over there and put your hands very high over your head until I can check over your few available hiding places for knives, bombs, and mustard gas grenades.”

The girl giggled as she freed her hands of the tray and raised them over her head.

“But I’m not even playing,” she said.

“Neither am I,” said Simon. “I hope you’re not going to be mad at us.”

“That’s the chance you have to take when you ambush people,” the Saint replied. “Now I shall shoot both of you and be on my way.”

The girl’s ingenuous green eyes became a little rounder.

“Wouldn’t it be awful,” she said, “if you took this seriously and really did kill us?”

“Oh, I am going to kill you,” Simon said casually. “The only thing that’s stopping me is a question of etiquette. Does the old business about ladies going first apply when one’s performing an execution?”

The girl blinked, and her high spirits were visibly lowered. Her accomplice was sitting up on the floor now, rubbing his face with both hands in an apparent effort to restore the clarity of his eyesight.

“Grey,” the girl said tentatively. “Grey? I think he’s angry at us. Why must you always overdo things?”

The young man managed to focus his eyes on the Saint.

“I’m Grey Wyler,” he said, pushing strands of hair out of his face, “and this is Jenny Turner.”

Simon nodded, and the little imps of humor which had beat a temporary retreat reappeared in the clear blue of his eyes.

“It’s safe to say the pleasure is all yours,” he remarked. “But curiosity may move me to spare your lives if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”

“We’re psychology students,” Grey Wyler began.

“At the bottom of the class, no doubt,” said Simon.

Wyler did not seem to share any of the light-heartedness of his female companion. His whole manner reflected an inner tension, and there was an unrelieved seriousness in the tone of every word he spoke which made the Saint feel an instinctive distrust and antagonism. The humorlessness showed the kind of lack of perspective which so easily verges over into insanity — and certainly nothing which had happened during the evening so far gave him any assurance as to the mental stability of his playmates.

“This is what’s called the Death Game,” Wyler went on. “It’s a hunters and victims kind of thing. Nobody really gets hurt, of course, but...”

“May I put my hands down?” Jenny interrupted.

“First step over this way and let’s see what sort of armaments you’re packing,” Simon said.

Jenny obeyed, keeping her arms up while the Saint checked over her from neck to knees with a gentle but not-entirely discreet hand.

“Oh, Mr Templar,” she murmured. “It’s such a thrill meeting you in person.”

“Same to you, Zsa Zsa. You can put your hands down now.”

The girl laughed.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“It took some very high class reasoning — the first step of which is that your boyfriend’s voice is about an octave and a half too low for the job.”

Jenny looked at him admiringly.

“You’re funny, too,” she said, “and better looking in person than your pictures. Don’t you think he’s better looking than his pictures, Grey?”

Wyler made a noncommittal noise and got to his feet.

“How about pouring us some tea before it gets cold?” he said. “Mr Templar?”

“No, thank you. My nine lives have just about been used up tonight, and I can’t afford the chance of drawing a tea bag with a skull and crossbones on it.”

“Game’s over,” Jenny said, serving. “No more killing tonight. Sorry you have to stand up, but this place belongs to my Dad and he’s trying to sell it. At least the kitchen was still in working order.”

Simon allowed himself to be talked into taking a cup.

“Now,” he said, “what is this Death Game?”

“It’s a bit kinky, but terribly in,” said Jenny. “Grey gets slightly carried away — he does with everything — but most people take it as a joke. Milk?”

“Please.”

Grey Wyler took over the explanation.

“The players are divided into hunters and victims.”

“They doing it in universities all over the place,” Jenny interrupted.

Wyler looked at her with cold irritation.

“If you’ll let me tell it.”

Jenny shrugged and moved to stand nearer Simon, watching him with an intensity that bordered on worshipfulness.

“Sometimes the hunters and victims are paired by lot,” Wyler said. “In our department at the college here we use a computer. There’s an instructor, Bill Bast, who works the game in as part of the educational process. Dr Manders, our department head, encourages it too.”

Wyler had pronounced the words “educational process” with a subtle sarcastic sneer which the Saint soon realized was one of his most persistent mannerisms. It was the boy’s way of making it clear that in his vast superiority he could not risk being identified with or associated with anything on the common earthly plane. Someday, Simon thought, he would fit in very well as a professor.

“At any rate,” Wyler continued, “the hunters are told who their victims are, and the victims are told only that they are on somebody’s death list. Whose, of course, they don’t know. Then the hunter proceeds to try to ‘kill’ his assigned victim in the most ingenious way possible.”

“And as many times as possible, apparently,” the Saint said. “Tonight’s the first I’ve ever seen mass murder performed on one man — assuming your attempts on me would have worked if you’d been serious.”

Wyler again demonstrated his lack of humor by narrowing his eyes and looking almost venomously indignant.

“You deny that I could have succeeded?”

Simon studied the boy for a few seconds and decided that an argument over hypothetical murder was not worth his own time.

“I’ll let you be the judge of that,” he said.

“It’s the scoring Grey’s worried about,” Jenny explained. “Just killing somebody won’t get you much. Like if you shoot him in the back or something while he’s getting out of his car it’s only worth a couple of points.”

“But something like the toy soldier with the poison gas,” Wyler put in, “would be worth four or five.”

“On the other hand,” Jenny said, “if you kill an innocent bystander you get docked three points.”

“The first person to accumulate ten points is named a decathlon winner,” said Wyler.

“And gets a prize,” added Jenny.

Simon gazed at her with fascination.

“It beats tiddlywinks,” he conceded finally.

“Groovy, isn’t it?” Jenny bubbled. “We’re all just absolutely wild about it.”

“Meaning that the whole student body is buzzing with homicidal ingenuity?” Simon asked.

“That’s about it,” Wyler answered.

“And just how did I get involved?” the Saint asked.

“My psychology advisor, Bill Bast, bet me ten pounds I couldn’t kill the great Simon Templar,” Grey said. “Frankly, I thought it would be much more difficult.”

It took some unusual adherence to the qualities implicit in his nickname for the Saint to avoid an overt demonstration of his feelings about Grey’s puppy haughtiness.

“Assuming, since it’s only a game, that you did kill me tonight,” he said, “I have to remind you that you weren’t playing fair.”

“In what way?”

“You didn’t notify me that I was a victim.”

Grey Wyler tensed.

“The circumstances were... It wasn’t practical. Bast knew I couldn’t let you know. It was part of the bet. We assumed that someone like you would always be on his guard.”

“They were afraid you wouldn’t go along with it,” Jenny said. “And besides, old Maunders would’ve hit the ceiling if he’d known they were going after somebody outside the university. I almost think he takes this more seriously than the students do.”

“Old Maunders being some recalcitrant bulwark of professorial tradition?” Simon asked.

“Exactly,” Wyler said. “But you’ll meet him in a few minutes. Now that I’ve won I don’t give a damn what he knows or thinks.”

“I’ll meet him?”

“At the party,” Jenny said. “End of the term — and the Death Game winners get prizes and everything.”

“Having passed the age for student pranks,” Simon said, “and having been killed several times over, I think I’ll just retire to my cozy den and try to summon up forgiveness for those who lured me out of it in the first place.”

His refusal instantly brought from Jenny some of the most ingenuous persuasion to which he’d ever had the pleasure of being subjected. First she gave a little squeal of dismay, and then she flung both her arms around one of his arms, pressing herself against him and fairly jumping up and down.

“Oh, you just can’t disappoint us! I told everybody you were coming — and you’re supposed to pass out the prizes, and everything, and if...”

“The Death Game prizes?” Simon asked, intrigued at the prospect of getting to know more about this college fad that was so much like the game he had played, for real life and death stakes, during most of his existence.

“Oh, yes,” Jenny exclaimed, seeing her opening. “And the winners tell about their kills. You’ll love it. You’ve been such a great sport so far. Just string along a little longer, won’t you, please?”

“Jenny,” he said, “you’re more than I can resist. I’m yours to command.”

Jenny’s car was parked a block from the building where Simon had met his imaginary doom. It was, of course, the red MG from which the shots had been fired. They all squeezed in, as far as the place where Simon had left his own car, and then he followed them out of the deserted neighborhood of shops to the university district half a mile away. The college, forced to expand in the heart of a crowded city, had done so by occupying already existent structures in the area surrounding its original core. The only things distinguishing the academic buildings from nearby apartment houses, book dealers, and purveyors of technical supplies were modest identifying plaques beside each entrance door.

The MG stopped in front of a building labeled PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY. It was dark except for a single row of lighted windows on the ground floor.

“Party’s not here,” Jenny called as Simon left his car and joined her and Wyler, “but Bill Bast is. We’ll run in and see him first, then go over to the club.”

“Looks practically deserted around here,” the Saint commented as they went through the door and entered a corridor smelling strongly of age and floor wax and mildly of unidentifiable chemicals.

“End of term,” Jenny explained. “Most people have left. In fact just the ones who really took an interest in the Death Game are still here. They aren’t all in psychology, of course. Here we are.”

She opened the door to the very large, long room whose windows had helped to illuminate the street outside. Two rectangular tables surrounded by chairs ran down the center. Along the walls were a number of smaller tables, some desks, built-in storage cabinets, and cages of drowsy mice. At the far end was a computer, and beside it a tall almost skinny man of thirty or so wearing a white laboratory smock over his street clothes. The care he did not lavish on the crease of his trousers or the shine of his shoes was apparently devoted to experimental work.

“We got him!” Jenny called as she took a proprietary grip on Simon’s arm and led him between the tables. “This is Bill Bast, our assistant lecturer in psychology. Of course he knows who you are.”

Bast turned from the computer, smiling, and offering the Saint his hand.

“It’s a privilege to meet you,” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to this very much.”

Wyler did not contribute to the general good-feeling.

“You owe me ten pounds,” he said in a flat tone that emphasized his arrogance. “It was at least a five point killing, and every step went just as I planned.”

Bast’s acknowledging glance at Grey was not marked by affection.

“Congratulations,” he said coolly, digging into his pocket for a pair of notes which Wyler took without thanks.

“It was nothing,” he said.

Bill Bast turned again to the Saint.

“I take it Grey and Jenny have filled you in on the Death Game?”

Simon nodded.

“It sounds like good clean fun.”

“We think it may have a real psychological value, too,” Bast said. “Just a second, I’ll cut off the computer and we can talk.”

“This machine is what pairs hunters and victims?” Simon asked.

“That’s only a sideline for it,” Bast replied. “It’s used primarily for much more important things — all kinds of data-comparing functions.”

“As a matter of fact,” Jenny said, “I’m surprised old Manders lets us use it for the game at all.”

“Dr. Manders is the head of the Psychology Department,” Bast explained, and it was immediately obvious that a subject had been broached which was disturbing to him.

“He’s a good man,” Jenny said. “Not many of these scholarly types would go along with something like this. I think he’d like to pitch right in himself if it wasn’t beneath his dignity.”

Bast seemed to feel increasingly uncomfortable as the discussion of his superior went on.

“Shouldn’t you kids be getting on over to the party?” he asked, looking at his watch.

“Right,” Jenny said. “I promised to help touch up the decorations. Will you bring Mr Templar? Don’t be late, though. Prize giving’s at midnight sharp.”

“What other time could it be?” Simon said.

“You’re absolutely groovy. It’s right around the corner — basement of the University Club, and...”

“I’ll see that he makes it,” Bast assured her, recovering enough of his former good mood to laugh and shake his head as she and Grey went out.

“Quite a girl,” Simon remarked. “Does she ever slow down?”

“Never. But Mr Templar, there’s something I must talk to you about,”

Simon did not miss Bast’s sudden reversion to an apprehensive tone.

“Yes?”

“In fact, I have to admit that wanting to involve you in this — to give myself an opportunity of talking with you — was one of my motives in making the bet with Grey Wyler.”

“It does seem a little touchy, attacking strangers on the streets, even in fun. They might fight back — with real bullets. Or lawsuits.”

“I know. You were the first one. Outside the college, I mean.”

The Saint was growing a little impatient with Bast’s reluctance to get to the point.

“Well,” he said, glancing at his watch, “just what is it that’s bothering you?”

Bill Bast hesitated once more and finally got it out.

“I’m afraid that the Death Game... is becoming something more than a game.”

3

But that was as much enlightenment as the Saint was to receive just then on the subject of Bill Bast’s worries. The unannounced entrance of a third party cut off his words as abruptly as if a guillotine had cut off his head. Simon himself was almost startled by the entrance, which was so entirely unheralded that there was something suspect about it. The sound of a walking man should have been audible for some distance through the almost deserted building, and yet there had been no sound at all until the door opened and a short, round-headed, balding man stepped in, his middle-aged portly frame invested with more dignity than it probably deserved by the black folds of an academic gown. He spoke with what might have been either ungraceful surprise or ill-concealed irritation.

“Ah, Bast... not at the party?”

“Dr. Maunders,” Bast said. “We weren’t expecting you here.”

“I trust not.”

“This is Mr Templar. Mr Templar, this is Dr Maunders, head of the Psychology Department.”

Dr Maunders gathered enough aplomb to grant Simon a soggy handshake and a limp rendition of a smile. Even those improvements, however, failed to put him anywhere near the category of people whom the Saint found charming at first sight. The only things intriguing about Dr Maunders — who otherwise seemed as spiritually weak as his handshake and as characterless as the bald expanse of his forehead — were his unhappy effect on Bill Bast and his peculiar ability to approach doors without making any noise.

“How do you do?” said Simon, realizing even as he spoke that certain groups of synapses were meshing beneath Dr Maunders’ hairless cranium, bringing cloudy recognition to the Grey lenses of his eyes.

“Could it be Simon Templar, the Saint, by any chance?” he asked.

Simon nodded.

“I confess. My halo’s in need of some repairs, though, after my contact with your students.” Maunders looked puzzled.

“I didn’t know you were acquainted with any of them.” He put down the book he had been carrying when he entered, at the same time trying to suppress the annoyance which had crept again into his face. “But of course there’s no reason for me to know the details of my students’ and associates’ private lives.”

“Mr Templar was brought into the Death Game,” Bast said, reminding Simon of a ludicrously overgrown George Washington confronting his father beside the cherry tree. “By Grey Wyler.”

Maunders’ irritation broke the surface entirely.

“Wyler? Brought in a non-student? There could be serious trouble from something like that. I really must say...”

“He had my permission,” Bast said.

Possibly it was a well-formed habit of coming to the rescue which prompted Simon to interpose himself.

“Not that he’d need anyone’s permission necessarily,” he put in. “I assume that what students do with their time outside the college is their own business. I can’t say I was delighted to have my hair parted by your prize pupil’s arrow, but I wouldn’t hold anyone responsible but Wyler himself.”

Whatever gratitude the Saint’s intervention earned from Bill Bast was more than balanced by the obvious hostility he seemed to provoke in Dr Maunders.

“I’m pleased that you take such a broadminded view,” said the professor acidly. “On the other side of the situation, however, is the fact that the Death Game is so closely associated with my department here at the university that any public unpleasantness that grew out of it would reflect very seriously on me.”

Bast was holding himself in a state of controlled rigidity. His tone was stiffly correct but not obsequious.

“I didn’t expect you’d be quite so upset. Now that it’s done there’s nothing I can say except that it won’t happen again, as far as I have any control over it.”

“There’s no harm done,” Simon said. “And the fad will probably pass after a few more weeks anyway. Why don’t we just forget it and go see how the new generation enjoys itself in between mock murders?”

Bast looked at his watch and began pulling off his laboratory smock.

“You’re right. We should be getting along.” He paused and then gave Dr Maunders’ sensitivity another inevitable tweak. “They’ve asked Mr Templar to give out the prizes.”

Manders turned away abruptly to busy himself with some charts on a nearby table.

“Oh, really?”

“You don’t mind, I hope?”

“I assumed... It doesn’t matter.”

“Dr Manders,” Simon said, “if I’m interfering with any plans of yours I’d be more than willing to withdraw.”

Manders looked up pettishly from his charts and performed another of his flaccid smiles, making only too clear the effort it cost him.

“Not at all, Mr Templar; the students will be thrilled to have such a... celebrity at their bash. Go right ahead, please. I’ll join you there in a few minutes.”

“Pleasant chap,” Simon remarked when he and Bast had left the laboratory. “Sort that makes you love the human race.”

Bast, his gangling stride emphasizing his eagerness to get away from the awkwardness they had just experienced, shook his head.

“He wasn’t always like that. A year ago he was a different man. Jolly almost. Then...”

“Hullo there, Mr Bast! They’re waiting.”

Two young men had appeared from around the corner as Bast and Simon came out onto the sidewalk, evidently a search party from the student assemblage, and any more private conversation was impossible.

A couple of blocks’ walk through the clammy mist brought them to a large brick building whose staid facade bore the modest legend, lettered on a small wooden plaque, THE UNIVERSITY CLUB.

The basement of the Club — or at least that one moderately sized room of it which had been commandeered for the night’s social affair — was anything but staid. Jammed with thirty or forty students from wall to wall, unlighted except for candles, it gave the immediate impression of a tin of anchovies viewed from the inside. On closer inspection, it became apparent that the students were sharing the confined space with a half dozen round tables covered with red and white checkered tablecloths, with a mercifully silent juke box, with a small dais near the door, and with a striking assortment of strange or macabre decorations: strings of onions with black ribbon bows on them, skull and crossbone pennants, ketchup-stained rubber daggers, and hangmen’s nooses.

Simon could not inventory much more in the general turmoil, before Jenny Turner came shoving through the crowd, waving and shouting to him.

“Oh, Simon, I’m so glad to see you. What about the old Death Game motif? Great, huh? I did almost all of it.”

Simon was amused to find that she had already put him on a first name basis, but of all the young women he’d seen for some time he could not think of any to whom he would have been more willing to permit such familiarity. In fact, what Jenny Turner’s lushly curved shape did for her short skirt and sweater would have guaranteed a desire for intimacy in any even semi-sentient male.

“It’s lovely,” said the Saint. “Are these spiders on the tables hors d’oeuvres or guests?”

She laughed.

“I made them out of dyed pipe cleaners.”

Bast was opening a pack of cigarettes preparatory to further enriching the already dense atmosphere of the cellar.

“A highly developed originality quotient has our Jenny.”

“Among other things,” Simon said appreciatively.

If he expected a maidenly blush and lowered eyelids he had for once miscalculated. The girl gave him a bold gaze, and the half-smile that lingered on her lips took on a tinge of expectancy and invitation. Far from turning shyly aside, she drew her shoulders further back as if to make it impudently clear that she knew quite well what he was referring to.

“It’s almost eleven,” Bill Bast said. “If we don’t want a riot on our hands we’d better get on with the prize giving.”

As the young lecturer led the way to the dais, Jenny leaned towards Simon.

“Where’s Dr Manders?”

“Sulking in his tent,” said the Saint in a low voice. “I’m afraid he’s not only upset about you people attacking strangers on the streets, but also because you’ve giving me the spot he should have had.”

“He’s acting like an old sourpuss. Who cares? Come on.”

She took his hand and led nun to Bill Bast’s side as the din of chattering and laughing died away.

“Tonight,” Bast said, “we’re very fortunate to have with us a gentleman who — if even half the legends about him are true — has been through much more in reality than we’ve ever dreamed of in our Death Game.”

The speaker went on in the same vein for several minutes, working in some humorous comments about the game in general. Dr Manders came into the basement, avoided meeting Simon’s eyes, and took up a station next to the wall on the other side of the room, sucking his cold pipe as if it were his thumb. Jenny, who had seen fit not to relinquish her warm grasp on Simon’s hand, squeezed his fingers and looked up at him with something uncomfortably close to adoration as Bast concluded his remarks.

“Now,” he said, “I’m very pleased to introduce Mr Simon Templar, who will give out the prizes for the three highest scores in the Death Game.”

Bast started to step aside as applause filled the low ceilinged room, but then he had an afterthought.

“And let’s hope this too shall pass, and in the next term we can stop dreaming up ways to kill one another and get back to our white mice and mazes.”

He said it without a smile, and Simon thought it doubtful that many of the students even heard him, since most had begun clapping enthusiastically to welcome the Saint. But it probably did not matter to Bast whether they heard him or not. He had addressed himself directly to the sullen Dr Manders.

Simon was given a piece of paper with the citations on it, and Bast briefly explained the procedure to him. Then it was his turn to take the stand.

“As one whose bones tend to creak with boredom at the mere thought of anyone lecturing me on any subject whatever for a period of more than three and a half minutes,” he said, “I’m going to spare you all the funny cracks and solemn thoughts and get on with the prizes. I’ll just say that it’s quite a novel experience to be here — even though my invitation did arrive on the nose of a bullet — and that I truly appreciate this unique opportunity to see how the world’s leaders of tomorrow are spending their time today.”

There was laughter and more applause. Simon looked at his script by the light of a candle which Jenny held for him.

“Now for the Death Game first prize. Will Alastair Davidson stand, please? He’s one of the dead ones.”

A tall, blond, sheepish-looking boy raised himself halfway from his chair, grinned, and sat back down.

“Mr Davidson’s hunter was the winner of the prize for the highest accumulated score. And I must say that after my experience with him this evening I can testify to his homicidal skills: Grey Wyler.”

As Wyler got to his feet with a lazy, contemptuous nod, it was apparent that the applause he was receiving was not really what he would have expected for a first-prize winner. And to anyone who had spent ten seconds in Grey’s arrogantly chilly presence the reason for the lack of popular enthusiasm would also have been predictable.

“We’ll ask the champion to describe his prize-winning murder for us,” Simon said.

“Rather simple, actually,” Wyler said, letting it be known with his expression and tone that he found the whole business of public acclaim slightly boring. “Alastair has ambitions to be a writer.”

Alastair squirmed as Wyler paused to let his unspoken but completely obvious evaluation of his victim’s literary potential impress itself on the group. Then Wyler continued.

“I knew he had an electric typewriter and that he spent a couple of hours every night writing his fictional productions. I wired the typewriter space bar to a pen light concealed under the machine. As soon as Alastair started to type the pen light turned on. But it wasn’t a pen light. It was a laser beam. In two seconds it had burned through his vital organs to his spine, rendering him quite dead... and depriving the world, I’m sure, of a quantity of artistic outpourings second only to the works of Tobias Smollett.”

Grey sat down amid grudging chuckles and a new round of applause.

“Congratulations,” the Saint said dryly. “It seems you won’t get your prize until the other announcements have been made.” He looked at his paper and then out over the crowd. “Would Eleanor Knight please stand?”

In the dim light Eleanor Knight was not much more than a plump ghost with long dark hair and an apologetic smile.

“She doesn’t look dead,” Simon said gallantly, “but according to these notes she is. And the one who killed her is certainly one of the most lovely murderesses I’ve ever met: Jenny Turner.”

Jenny, still holding the candle, told her story. Unlike Grey Wyler, she was more giggly than blase about her accomplishment.

“I gave Eleanor a can of hair spray for her birthday. When she pressed the button the first time, out came a blast of spray, the top popped off, and there was a note that said, ‘Congratulations. You have just been instantly killed by prussic acid gas. Many happy returns of the day. From your hunter, Jenny Turner.’ ”

The next victim introduced by the Saint was almost invisible at his crowded table in the darkest recesses of the room.

“Now David Green’s hunter, the third prize winner, Bill Bast.”

Bast, like Jenny, treated the whole thing as a joke — emphasizing even more Grey Wyler’s seriousness about the whole thing.

“I wrote David a letter commenting on his work,” Bast said. “On college stationery. All very official. But at the end I put something like this: ‘For the last minute you have been handling paper impregnated with a deadly contact poison, phenylhydrazine. This is spreading through your system. By the time you finish reading this, you will be dead.’ ”

As the applause subsided, Simon gratefully concluded his own part in the program.

“The nature of the prizes has been kept secret. I’m told that Dr Manders will make the announcement.”

Manders managed to suppress the more obvious signs of his peevishness as he mounted the dais. Simon supposed that all men who spent a great deal of time lecturing must develop some skill as actors. Manders, while hardly enchanting, at least arranged his face into a pleasant mask.

“The prizes have been kept secret because of their nature,” he said. “And I think the news of that nature will come as a surprise to all of you — who perhaps expected something on the order of a fountain pen or a cheap chess set. You will be very pleased, I think, to hear that a special grant has been made to me by the British Foundation for the Advancement of Psychological Research — five hundred pounds worth, to be exact.”

When the oos and ahs abated, Manders went on.

“This, along with certain anonymous private donations, will be used to send our three victorious young murderers to an international conclave of Death Game prize winners... for a week’s holiday on Grand Bahama Island.”

At that point, which might have set loose an uproar, the audience seemed too stunned to move.

“I have the air tickets, which I shall now distribute. Grey Wyler, Jenny Turner, and Bill Bast will be flying across the Atlantic to the Bahamas tomorrow.”

As Manders stepped down, pulling an envelope from his jacket pocket, the response delayed from the first moment of the announcement broke with full force. Simon kept to the relative safety of the wall as students milled among the tables talking excitedly and trying to shake the hands of the prize winners. Manders had opened his envelope and was holding the tickets over his head, making his way into the center of the tumult.

Bill Bast emerged from the melange of bodies like a particle compensatorily discharged because of the entry of Dr Manders’ greater mass. He wore anything but the expression one might expect to see on the face of a man who has just been awarded a free trip to a West Indian island.

“You don’t seem very pleased,” Simon volunteered, to give Bast another chance to resume his interrupted confidences.

“I... I’m not. This is even worse — or maybe I should say stranger than I expected.”

“I gather you want to tell me about it, so I don’t think I’m prying if I suggest that you speak up. The suspense is beginning to get me.”

“Not here,” Bast said, glancing into the crowd. “You leave now while they’re all worked up and not noticing anything. I’ll join you in a couple of minutes.”

The Saint nodded agreeably. He knew now that his instinct had not been at fault. The night was definitely not going to have been wasted.

4

In the space of a few welcome lungfuls of comparatively unpolluted smog, the Saint found his way back to the psychology building. He entered the main hallway without any difficulty, but found the door to the laboratory locked. He did not have to wait long, however, before Bast appeared, a lanky figure loping along the hall like a worried giraffe.

“They think I left something behind here,” Bast said, as he unlocked the door. “They don’t know you’re with me, so I’ll try to explain fast,”

When they were inside the big room he relocked the door behind them and looked furtively around as if expecting some spy to be hiding among the fragrant cages of drowsy mice which occupied the lower part of one wall.

“If you’re worried,” Simon said, “I’m fairly certain nobody followed me.”

Bast motioned Simon to one of the wooden chairs arranged around a central table.

“I feel like an idiot, carrying on like this,” he said. “But I know it’s not my imagination. Or at least I think I know. Maybe I’m manufacturing a big dramatic fantasy out of almost nothing.”

“The psychologist speaking,” Simon said. “Let’s not worry about the epistemology of it and get on with the facts. What’s on your mind?”

Bast took a deep breath and perched on a stool with all the relaxation of a praying mantis on the head of a pin.

“I don’t have a clue as to how this Death Game started,” he said, “but it wasn’t here in London. Six months ago nobody’d ever heard of it. All of a sudden students all over the world were playing it.”

Simon shrugged.

“Stranger things have happened. Hula hoops, marathon dancing, the frug. You think there was something ominous involved?”

“Not necessarily in the beginning. As I say, I don’t know. It’s what’s happened since — here — that bothers me and makes me wonder if the whole thing really did start merely as some kind of spontaneous student fad.”

“Well, what has happened?”

“To begin right now instead of at the beginning, the British Foundation for the Advancement of Psychological Research didn’t give Dr Manders any grant of five hundred pounds.”

“So you think Manders is lying?”

“I know he is.”

“You checked with the foundation, I suppose,” Simon said.

“I couldn’t,” Bast answered. “I couldn’t even find the foundation.”

“It doesn’t exist?”

Bast fulfilled the threat of his nervous posture and took off for a fast lap around the long table.

“Oh, it exists all right — on paper. But try to find out anything about it. They’ve got a post office box and somebody who sends out vague answers to queries, and that seems to be it. They claimed they were a branch of the International Foundation for the Advancement of Psychological Research, with headquarters in Vienna, but when I inquired at that address — by mail, of course — I got no answer at all.”

“Well,” the Saint said, “so long as they’re passing out funds for worthy causes — like holidays for you in the Bahamas — I wouldn’t rock the boat. Some of the few millionaires left in this drearily democratized world choose strange ways of arranging their tax deductions.”

“I don’t think the gift comes without strings attached,” Bast said earnestly. “And I think there’s something fishy at the bottom of it. All Manders’ talk about the value of the Death Game as a research device... nonsense! There aren’t enough controls. There aren’t enough opportunities for observation — under the present setup, I mean. And who the hell would choose to donate five hundred pounds for transatlantic vacations when the department’s crying for a... well, for a better computer, for instance.”

“Maybe some millionaires just aren’t mad about computers,” Simon hazarded. “But that isn’t positive evidence of skullduggery.”

“There’s more, and this is what really got me worked up about this thing in the first place. About a month ago I was at Manders’ house one evening. We used to be on quite good terms back... before he started changing. You might say we were getting together for old times’ sake — after a faculty meeting. Anyway, he went out to the kitchen to get a bottle of whiskey. I happened to notice a letter on the floor, and I picked it up. I think the breeze may have flipped it off a stack of other papers. It was very short, so even with a glance I got the idea. It told Manders — as if it were from somebody who had a perfect right to give him orders — to send a full report on Death Game activities. The whole thing was so strange that I took another look at the signature. It was typed in under an initial ‘T’ sploshed on with one of those splurgy felt-tipped pens: Kuros Timonaides.”

The expression that appeared on Simon’s face reflected the combined feelings of recognition and distaste of a man who, after being bothered for some time by mystifying noises in his home, has just discovered a rat under the bed.

“You’ve heard of him?” asked Bill Blast.

“Haven’t you?”

“Just vaguely before I saw that letter. Mostly because he entertains film stars and titled people quite a lot and gets his name in the papers because of them. Since I saw the letter I’ve tried to find out more about him, but nothing much has been written, as far as I can tell.”

“I’m sure he likes it that way,” Simon said. “He’s one of those characters who becomes less endearing in direct proportion to the amount you know about him.”

“I can tell I picked the right person when I helped to get you mixed up in this. I’ve heard you have more in your head about the underworld than Scotland Yard has in its files.”

Simon stretched out his long legs and gave Bast a deprecating smile.

“Possibly,” he said. “More that matters, anyway. But before I share my treasure trove of knowledge about the life and good times of Kuros Timonaides, let’s hear the rest of your side of the story.”

“Just one more thing — and this is all I’ve been able to find out. Twenty-four students are flying to the Bahamas tomorrow, from all over the world. Until the party, or whatever you want to call it, tonight, I didn’t know where they were going, but I managed to find out by contacting friends at different universities that something like this was coming up. And all financed by that phony-sounding International Foundation. The only trouble is, everybody has the same reaction you had at first .. .”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?”

“Exactly.”

The Saint stood up and paced across the room to the window, by completely automatic force of habit positioning himself so that he could see out without being easily seen.

“In Timonaides’ case I’d make an exception,” he said. “I’d have any gift horse of his inspected by the most highly qualified dentist I could get — and I expect I’d find I’d just been given the world’s first stallion with three-inch tiger fangs.”

Bast grinned.

“Quite a hybrid.”

“That’s Timonaides for you: a real hybrid. Traitor, patriot, philanthropist, thief. Friend one month and blackmailer the next. But the fact that he’s not in jail, or dead, shows how skillful he’s been at keeping his head above the legal waters. Unless you can prove something — for instance that Manders is breaking the law, or that fraud is involved, or somebody’s being bilked, you won’t get much but sympathetic shrugs.”

“I have something more concrete,” Bast said.

He stood there hesitating, and the Saint gave him an encouraging nod.

“Yes?”

“I hate to admit... that I stole it.”

Simon smiled.

“What fun would it be if the bad guys had a monopoly on such grand old methods? Where is it, whatever it is?”

“Here.”

Bast plunged his hand into his jacket, pocket and drew out, his fingers trembling with nervousness, a folded sheet of stationery. Simon took it and began to read. As he scanned the typed lines his expression changed from one of tolerant interest to intense concentration.

The letter was signed by brush-point pen with an ornate capital T.

Simon looked at Bast with his lips thoughtfully compressed.

“Well, B., I don’t blame you for feeling nervous. I don’t suppose I need to ask if Manders might have somebody else with the same initial in mind.”

Bast shook his head.

“No. He’s realized I was watching him for some time. I can tell, and I know I’m not a very subtle spy. But of course I can’t take seriously this business about eliminating anybody. Manders isn’t the sort to...”

“I wouldn’t be overconfident about that. Remember, Timonaides is today’s greatest living proof of the power of unscrupulous money. Blackmail and bribes can turn a worm into a snake. You...”

The telephone rang and Bast automatically turned to answer it.

“Bill Bast...”

He glanced at Simon, puzzled.

“Doesn’t seem to be anybody there,” he muttered. “Hullo? Hullo?”

He frowned, and held the earpiece just slightly away from his ear.

“Sounds like somebody’s whanging a bloody tuning fork...”

That was the last thing Bill Bast ever heard, except perhaps for one unearthly eternal instant of shattering thunder as the telephone receiver exploded with the noise of a shotgun shell and blasted away the side of his head.

When Simon reached him he had already stopped writhing. A final twitching spasm passed through the long body, and it lay as dead and meaningless as the slaughtered carcass of a cow or the car-smashed body of a rabbit.

5

The Saint had spent his life in the tangled jungles of violence, but he was not so inured to the spectacle of death that he could see a man destroyed directly in front of him, even one who could not yet have been called a friend, and not feel a powerful compulsion to guarantee personally that the same fate would be dealt to the murderer. He knew now that whatever plans he might have made for the next few days would have to wait until he had played out his own part in the Death Game that had not remained a game.

Within thirty seconds after the explosion, an old and half blind but obviously not entirely deaf night watchman had arrived and departed to spread the alarm, cautioning Simon not to leave the scene of the crime. The aged guardian of taxpayers’ property showed his trust of the stranger he had found in the psychology lab by locking the door behind him as he ran out and went off skidding and stumbling down the freshly waxed hall.

Simon chose not to depart by one of the easily available windows, and instead spent his time of confinement searching through Manders’ files for further clues as to his more than scholarly interest in the Death Game and his contact with Kuros Timonaides. But he had found nothing when there was a renewed sound of running footsteps in the hall and a rattle in the lock of the door.

Dr Manders hurried in, key in hand, with Jenny Turner and Grey Wyler following. Behind them were several other students.

“The watchman...” Manders gasped.

Simon pointed.

“Oh, no...” somebody whispered.

It was to Jenny’s credit that she did not scream as girls do in the movies when confronted with terrible sights. She simply gasped and turned away, supporting herself on the side of the nearest table with her eyes closed. Manders looked palely sick, and for a moment Simon thought the man was going to faint, but he held himself up, mouth trembling, and his eyes seemed to dart around the room as if looking for a place where they could hide from the sight of the mutilated body.

Grey Wyler was the first who was able to say anything.

After an initial moment of shock he had begun to study the scene with the intense fascination of a strong-stomached biology student peering into the bowels of his first dissected cat.

“It’s real,” he murmured to himself. “It happened.”

He looked at Simon, who appeared to be the only person with sturdy enough nerves to hold up the other side of a conversation.

“It really worked,” said Wyler.

“Am I to take that as a confession?” asked the Saint.

Wyler ignored the question and bent down to inspect the blasted end of the telephone receiver without touching it.

“I invented the idea,” he said. “I used it to get Peter Collins several months ago. My first decathlon.”

“Oh, Grey,” Jenny said. “This is no time to...”

Wyler interrupted her.

“The beauty of it is, you can control the timing. There was... I suppose you wouldn’t know... a tuning fork used at the other end of the line?”

“He mentioned the sound of one,” said Simon.

“There,” Wyler announced triumphantly. “Exactly as I planned it. If the wrong person answers when you call to set off the blast, you don’t twang the tuning fork.”

“Ingenious,” Simon said with dry abhorrence. “You deserve something for that.”

He had the distinct feeling, as he watched Wyler babble enthusiastically about his deadly inventiveness, that he was in the presence not merely of a neurotic, but of a mind that was dangerously unbalanced. Wyler was reacting to the whole thing as an immodest author might react to fondling a copy of his first published book. That, more than any display of shock and sorrow could have, dispelled any thoughts the Saint might have had about Wyler’s responsibility for the killing. It was highly unlikely that a murderer would choose a mood so grotesquely akin to enthralled delight for the purpose of covering his guilt. More bizarre dramatics had been tried, but in Wyler’s case the abnormal reaction seemed genuine.

Within three minutes the first policeman arrived, with the ancient watchman panting at his heels. Dr Manders, who after a long period of silence had managed to recover control of his breath and quavering lips, chose that moment to address the Saint.

“I wouldn’t be so ready to accuse Wyler, if I were you,” he said hoarsely. “You were the only one here when... when Bast was killed.”

Simon had to wait for a predictable but none the less flattering response on the part of the policeman, who recognized him immediately, came to a sudden halt, and seemed ready to back out of the laboratory and run for reinforcements.

“Simon Templar,” the officer said, as if he had to hear it himself to believe it.

“And the top of the evening to you,” said the seraphically innocent cause of his discomposure, with a slightly exaggerated bow. “How are the wife and kiddies?”

“Quite well, thank you How’d you know about them?”

“You just have the look of a nice family man.”

The policeman swallowed and tried to recover a stern and authoritative air.

“Inspector Teal is on his way.”

To one unacquainted — if there are any such still squandering their impoverished lives in the backwaters of this planet — with the history of the relationship of Simon Templar with the upper echelons of Scotland Yard, the officer’s latter statement might have seemed irrelevant, even eccentric or inexplicable. But to the more enlightened multitudes of the earth it will be perfectly apparent that the cognomen of his chieftain — Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, always bested and even more often outwitted by the Saint — was in spite of its connotations of defeat and frustration the nearest thing to a protective amulet or holy name which he could draw upon in these trying circumstances. He would let the gods and Titans fight their own battles. As for him, he would merely issue the customary warning against illicit departures from the scene of the crime and busy himself with writing down the names and addresses of those present in his official notebook.

Simon turned his attention back to Dr Manders.

“I believe you were accusing me of the murder when this efficient guardian of peace and tranquillity arrived on the scene.”

Much stronger men than Manders had quailed before the sharp blue penetration of the Saint’s eyes.

“No,” he said feebly, at the same time trying to insert a measure of defiance into his tone. “I merely stated that you were the only one with Bast when he was killed. Therefore if I were in your place I wouldn’t go around insinuating...”

“Dr Manders,” said the Saint coldly, “I am not in the habit of shooting people with telephones. And I defy anybody on earth — even Inspector Teal — to come up with an even remotely plausible reason why I should want to do away with a man I met only two hours ago and don’t know the first thing about.”

That last phrase, while slightly mendacious, might at least forestall any suspicions on Manders’ part that Bast had revealed his apprehensions before he was permanently silenced. It was no more than a hope, but there was no harm in trying.

Manders opened his mouth and thought better of it. He went over to one of the larger chairs at the end of one of the tables, sat down, and supported his elbow on the surface, morosely resting his cheek on his hand.

Wyler, having completed his inspection of the death scene and given his statement, turned superciliously back to the constable, who had begun to question one of the other students.

“I see no reason for our staying here,” he said. “The crime was done by remote control. Mr Templar couldn’t have done it, if he was here in this room when the shot went off, and the rest of us just happened to be the first to arrive after we got word about the explosion. You’ve got no more reason to suspect us than those people hanging around in the hall outside.”

“Nobody is allowed to leave,” said the policeman, as if quoting from some rule book, and he went back to writing his notes.

“We have to fly to the Bahamas tomorrow,” Wyler persisted, moving close to him, tilting back his head a little so he could look down his nose at a man approximately his own height. “We can’t stay up here all night when there’s no reason for it.”

“Nobody leaves,” said the constable grimly, taking a renewed stranglehold on his stub of a pencil.

“Surely we won’t be going,” Jenny said, finding her first words since she had entered the laboratory.

She looked questioningly at Dr Manders, but he had already made a slight but definite jerking movement of his head, as if her sentence carried a minor electrical charge.

“Of course you will,” he said. “We can’t let... this interfere with everything.”

Jenny glanced in the direction of Bast’s corpse and shuddered, looking quickly away again.

“I... I’m not sure I could. I mean, I don’t really feel like much of a...”

Simon’s mind had been working with a speed and efficiency that would have dazzled the computer at the end of the room and possibly made it blink its little rows of glowing red eyes with envy. His theories and plans were not fully formulated yet, but certain broad shapes were already emerging. He was enough ahead of the game to know that if Jenny pressed her point certain things he had in mind for the immediate future might be endangered.

“Dr Manders is right,” he said gently, but with a subtle undercurrent of pressure which he hoped the girl wouldn’t try to resist. “It’s all planned, and a trip is just what you could probably use right now.”

Manders looked approving, surprised, and vaguely suspicious. The Saint turned to him, still giving the impression that he was speaking to Jenny.

“And other people might be inconvenienced if you changed your plans. That wouldn’t be fair to them, would it?”

By the end of his words he had definitely focused his attention on Manders, who uncomfortably nodded agreement.

At that moment there was a bustling in the hall clearly attendant on the arrival of some important personage. An instant later the door was thrown open by a uniformed constable, and a plump pink-cheeked man in a belted overcoat marched ponderously in, his jaw working mercilessly on a wad of chewing gum entrapped somewhere in the vicinity of his left upper and lower second molars. When he saw the Saint — as he did almost immediately — the gum received a moment’s reprieve, for the man’s jaw promptly ceased its labors and fell slackly open. The massive self-confidence seeped out of him like water out of a muslin sack.

Simon affected a second or two of puzzlement, and then of delighted recollection. He rushed forward, his hands fraternally extended, his voice throbbing with emotion.

“Why, as I live and breathe, it’s Claud Eustace Teal! Claud, I thought you were dead.”

Claud did not look nearly as happy about the meeting as his enthusiastic friend. The pink of his cheeks coagulated into blotches of a deeper crimson.

“I’m not,” he said unoriginally.

“Then why do you look so bloated? It must be your diet. Are you still stuffing yourself with spaghetti and suet puddings? You don’t need to, really. When they want to put you in a museum, they’ll have a taxidermist do a professional job.”

Chief Inspector Teal conquered a wincing grimace with a steely new set to his facial muscles.

“What are you doing here?” he barked.

“Claud, you have the most delightful way of coming right to the point.”

“Yes. And what are you doing here?”

“You said that before.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I meant asked. Of course. Yes. Well, I happened to be wandering by outside when I ran into an elephant. It wasn’t one of those pink ones, either — it was green. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ it said, very politely, ‘but could you help me?’ This was in Hindi, of course, because it was an Indian elephant. I asked what the trouble was, and it said: ‘This is very embarrassing, but you know the saying that elephants never forget? Well, I just can’t remember who said it.’ I said I didn’t know either, but why didn’t he go into the University and look it up in the library? And he said ‘I was going to do that, but I can’t get through the door.’ So being a kind-hearted bloke—”

“That’s enough,” Teal said.

Simon looked hurt.

“Don’t you believe me? Didn’t you see an elephant waiting outside?”

The detective turned away and went to the body. He peered at the shattered telephone.

“Now,” he said stubbornly, hooking his thumbs in the belt of his coat. “Let’s hear all about this.”

The Saint knew when it was time to be serious.

“I was here when it happened,” he said. “But before I tell you, let me introduce my friends to the finest officially approved ferreter of misdeeds this side of Mayfair — Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard. This is Dr Manders, professor of psychology, Grey Wyler, student, and Jenny Turner, another student.”

Teal nodded and grunted the required number of times, brightening a little when it came Jenny’s turn.

“I’ll have to question you all,” he said.

“But it’s late,” Wyler protested. “And we weren’t involved.”

“I’ll make it as fast as possible. In the meantime...”

“Claud,” said the Saint, taking an urgent grip on the fat detective’s arm, “if you’d question me first I’d very much appreciate it.”

Teal also recognized when the Saint had stopped fooling, and having benefited before from Simon’s misappropriation of his duties, he had sense enough to give in without an argument.

“I’ll talk to you first down here,” he said.

He led the way to the far end of the room and planted himself at a workbench, in the center of which was a complex open-topped maze of the type used for the confusion and intellectual testing of mice. Simon relaxed gracefully into the place beside him.

“Now,” Teal said, “let’s hear the real story.”

The Saint was very sober now. He began, without elaboration, at the point of Jenny’s mimicked phone call and quickly brought the detective up to the time at which Bast had asked Simon to leave the prize-giving party so that the two of them could talk.

At that stage of the narrative, a little Saintly selectivity seemed advisable. A plan had already evolved in Simon’s mind, and if Teal learned too much too soon his unimaginative and congenitally uncooperative nature would surely lead him to become a hindrance. Simon wanted Manders out of the way until he could get his own plans moving, but he was not yet prepared to present Teal with the complete possible background of Manders’ misdeeds. Fortunately, the letter Bast had given him, while incriminating, was quite vague in most respects, and did not even mention the Death Game.

“If this Wyler invented that telephone-tuning fork trick,” Teal said, pocketing his gum chipmunk-fashion in one bulging cheek, “and you think he’s some kind of nut anyway, then...”

Simon shook his head patiently and inserted a long finger into the entrance of the maze, whence it began to move quickly along the convoluted paths, occasionally hesitating, avoiding a dead end, then hurrying on again with greater certainty.

“No,” he said, “it’s Manders. I feel completely sure of that.”

Teal watched with fascination the progress of the Saint’s finger through the maze.

“Can you prove it?”

“I think so. Aren’t you going to ask what Bast told me when we left the party?”

“Of course. I was just trying to think...”

“No need to overtax yourself, Claud. I have evidence.”

Simon’s forefinger slid victoriously around the last corners of the maze and emerged from the exit gate, ignoring the bit of dried cheese which waited there as a reward. Then it reached, in combination with his thumb, into his shirt pocket and pulled out the letter, which Teal eagerly read.

Almost before he finished the last line, the chief inspector was starting to gather his legs under him to stand up, but the Saint restrained him with a firm hand and a cautionary look.

“Don’t jump the gun, dear old bloodhound. One bit of advice first.”

“What?” Teal asked impatiently, partly settling back again.

“Since Manders seems to be tied in with other people in some nefarious scheme, get rid of the other witnesses first, then take him off quietly, and keep him under lock and key and away from any telephones, telegraph offices, or outside contacts for as long as you can. Don’t tell the newspapers about him. We don’t know what Manders was involved in, but it would seem wise to avoid changing the plans of anybody connected with him.”

“What kind of plans?” Teal asked.

He was eyeing the maze, its challenge distracting his thoughts from more important business. His right forefinger made a tentative move toward the entrance and then hopped back to his paunch like a cautious bird.

“Any kind of plans,” Simon answered impatiently. “You don’t want to tip off Manders’ buddies that he’s been pinched; otherwise they may just fold their tents and silently steal away before you can sweat their names and addresses out of him.”

“Bast didn’t tell you anything about thus ‘T’ who signed the letter, or what it was all about?”

“Sorry. He didn’t have a chance.”

“It could stand for Templar,” Teal said, with chronic dubiety.

“Or Teal?” responded the Saint goodhumoredly. “Shall we call it a stand-off?”

Teal did not answer immediately. He had just succumbed to temptation. His pudgy finger, a good inch shorter than the Saint’s, lunged at the entrance of the maze and barged down the first aisle.

“You may have the right idea,” he said grudgingly, running immediately afoul of a triple-pronged, interconnecting cul-de-sac which must have brought frustration to many a hungry mouse.

“I do,” said the Saint. “And isn’t it nice that the fun of investigation will be all yours — because for once I don’t know a thing about what’s going on.”

Teal’s finger had backtracked and was once more near the entrance. After a moment of desperate study it rushed off again in another direction, and rapidly reached another deadend. With a grunt of exasperation he snatched his hand away and hid it beneath the table.

“I just hope for once you’re telling the truth and will stay out of this,” he growled.

“Don’t feel bad about being beaten by a tricky little puzzle like that,” the Saint said sympathetically. “I’ll bet lots of mice never made it even half as far as you did.”

6

Teal’s simmering expression said that if he had had the power he would cheerfully have produced a razor-edged scimitar and with one careless flick disengaged the Saint’s impudent head from his body. But he was practical enough to know that the Saint’s position was logically irrefutable, galling as it was to have to concede it.

“Is there anything else you have to tell me?” he asked.

“No,” said the Saint with genuine sincerity, “except I wish you all the luck in the world with this case, and I’ll be looking forward to reading about it in the papers.”

He stood up, and the detective regarded him with lingering regret and habitual distrust.

“Saint — don’t think for a minute I believe you’ll stay out of this if you thought there was something in it for you.”

“But what could be in it for me? After you’ve done the spadework I may step in and reap the harvest, but for the time being I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to proceed.”

Teal glowered and called for Grey Wyler, who came sauntering over with a bored expression that plainly stated his feelings about having to waste his time talking to anyone with the low intellectual equipment of a policeman. Dr Manders had picked up some scientific bulletin and was pretending to show his detachment by reading it, but the drumming fingers of his other hand betrayed his nervousness.

Simon stopped beside Jenny on his way to the door and murmured in her ear.

“Don’t change any plans. Don’t speculate out loud about what’s going on.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Before Teal changes his mind about letting me go. Do you know Manders’ address?”

“Not offhand, but he’s in the phone book.”

“What’s the first name or initials?”

“G.F.... But listen, won’t I be seeing you again?”

“You seem to know my number,” he smiled, and went out to his car.

He drove off in the general direction of Tottenham Court Road, but came upon a street-corner phone booth before he got there, and quickly found the address he wanted in the directory. It turned out to be in Bloomsbury, right on the fringe of the University area, and he took the shortest way to it as automatically as if it had been his own home, calling on a knowledge of the complex streets of London that had once been as complete as that of any taxi driver although he had mastered it for less legitimate purposes. And in this case his most urgent purpose was to get there before Teal or some of his deputies got there with similar quests in mind.

Whenever they got around to it, they would be armed with proper search warrants. Simon Templar was perfectly happy to dispense with such luxuries, but his project might be complicated somewhat if the professor turned out to have a family snoozing at home while he was being questioned by Inspector Teal at two-thirty in the morning. Even a wife and possibly a tribe of juvenile Manderses would not, however, present insurmountable difficulties to an adept second-story man like the Saint. Besides, he did not think he had to worry; Bast, in telling about his visit to Manders’ place, had not mentioned the presence of any relatives, and Manders showed no signs in face or jewelry of the bonds of married life.

As he had expected, then, the Saint found Manders’ dwelling dark and to all appearances deserted. It was a very small house of dingy exterior, wedged between larger but even dingier former mansions which had probably been divided into flats or had decayed into student rooming houses. There were no traces of wakefulness in them either. Simon’s only potential problem, then, would be the possible untimely arrival of Dr Manders himself if Teal failed for some reason to detain him. But even a thorough questioning would take a while — and a while, even a short while, was all that Simon needed to carry out what amounted to a routine search for additional evidence.

The lock of Manders’ door offered no more resistance to the Saint’s skill than a stick of butter to a hot knife. Within a few seconds he was inside, carefully replacing the door in its original position, and in fact locking it behind him. Even Manders, if he did return, would not have to know he had a guest.

Simon’s eyes were already accustomed to darkness, and he did not need to add his pen flashlight to the general luminosity of the night in order to find his way through the house. The dining room and the kitchen held no interest for him, nor did the living room at the front of the house. A scholarly type such as Manders would surely possess a room devoted to books, files, records, and the other paraphernalia of his profession, even if the University furnished him with office space at the place of his work.

And if Manders, in addition to being a scholar, also was involved in dishonest or even questionable dealings, he would not be likely to leave incriminating documents lying around the college buildings for any charwoman or prying student to stumble on. The most logical spot for the beginning of a search, then, was his private study, and within two minutes of entering the house the Saint had found it.

It was not a large room, and its lack of space was exaggerated by the quantity of bookshelves and cabinets which lined the walls. Near the single window was a desk and chair. The Saint began his search in the unlocked drawers of the desk and soon decided he was on the wrong track. Even a man quite sure of the safety of his home from prying eyes would not leave damaging papers lying about in the most obvious and easily accessible places — particularly if he had murder on his mind. On the other hand, common sense indicated that Manders was no professional criminal, and it was unlikely that he would go to the extreme of having even minor alterations made in the architecture of his home, the solidity of his chair legs, or the stuffings of his mattress for the purpose of hiding things.

What would such a man do, then, with materials he didn’t wish to share with anybody? He would probably just lock them up in something — assuming he did not burn them — and indulge in the usual naive relaxation of people who think that any run-of-the-mill lock can cause more than three minutes’ discomfiture to a really dedicated searcher.

So Simon quite simply went around the study until he came to the first locked cabinet — a wooden one — and forced it with a letter opener from the top of the desk.

There he found a number of photographs which would ordinarily have held no interest except to a student of a rather specialized type of pornography. The nature of the pictures, however, implied that Dr Manders might be particularly susceptible to blackmail. Such peripheral facts were pleasantly enlightening, but not of much concrete use to the Saint. He was delighted to find, beneath the pictures, some other materials.

The most immediately striking was a letter, typed except for the nourished initial “T” at the bottom, whose text ran as follows:

Simon appreciatively noted the second mention of five thousand pounds in two letters, which seemed to imply a handsome private income for Dr Manders beyond his legitimate earnings as a certified enlightener of the nation’s youth. He wished that the professor had been thoughtful enough to leave whatever part of the earlier sum that remained after the purchase of airplane tickets and such, lying about in the cabinet with his dirty pictures, but unfortunately he had not, and the other treasures that the cabinet yielded had a less immediately obvious value than would a nice stiff stack of ten-pound notes. Besides another letter from Manders’ sponsor — the first one seen and mentioned by Bill Bast — there were two stapled typewritten manuscripts of nine or ten pages each.

A closer inspection with the thin beam of his pocket light showed Simon that they were some sort of statistical reports. Had they been lying among other reports and papers in plain view it is probable that he would never have noticed them unless in the last painstaking minutes of a thorough search. But since they were so carefully hidden, he carefully noted their titles.

The first was called VARIETIES OF EMOTIONAL RESPONSE IN PLAYERS OF THE DEATH GAME. The second: DISTRIBUTION OF HOMICIDAL OBSESSION IN AGE GROUPS 18 TO 25, WESTERN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA.

It was not exactly the ideal moment to take up those psychological studies, so the Saint folded the reports and stowed them in his pocket along with the letters. By taking them into custody he would at least have an opportunity to study, them before the police did, and if it seemed best that they be discovered eventually in Dr Manders’ house, that could be arranged, too — perhaps with another brief visit like tonight’s.

Satisfied that he had found as much as he could hope for without completely ransacking the house, Simon closed the cabinet, shut off his small light, and left as he had come. By now he was expecting that Teal would have Manders safely tucked away for the night; there was not a soul in the foggy streets, and he had every reason to think his expedition had gone completely unobserved.

So it was more than a small surprise to him when he opened his car door and saw Jenny Turner huddled down in the corner of the passenger seat. “Hullo, Simon.”

The Saint, with considerable restraint, continued his interrupted movement of getting in, but not without first assuring himself that no one else was hiding down in the space behind the front seats.

“Either there’s more than one of you or you sure get around a lot,” he said quietly.

“I followed you. Or I should say I thought you might come here, so I came myself. I left my car around the corner when .. I saw yours.”

“You’re quite the little private eye.” He started the engine and let in the clutch. “The next corner on the right,” Jenny said, pointing. “I suppose,” the Saint said as he drove slowly in the indicated direction, “my intentions were a bit obvious when I asked about Manders’ address. But what made you come after me?”

Jenny shrugged, slipping her arm through his. “I wanted to be quite sure I wouldn’t be left out of whatever you’re going to do next. It isn’t every night a girl has the chance to play a real death game with the Saint.”

Simon drove up behind the red MG and stopped again. They were far enough beyond the turning to be out of the ordinary purview of any police posse that might belatedly arrive at Manders’ house.

“We’re not playing any more,” he told her firmly. “This thing has stopped being a game, and I think the sooner you get home and curl up with a good textbook the better off you’ll be. But first can you tell me what happened to Manders?”

“After that fat detective questioned me he sent us all away except Manders. I drove off around the block and came back where I could watch. An ambulance arrived, and another car with men in plain clothes. One of them was lugging a lot of gear...”

“The police photographer, no doubt.”

“Then one of the plain-clothes men came out with one of the bobbies and they were holding Dr Manders between them, it looked as if he was handcuffed, and they put him in the car and drove away. When I realized they must have arrested him I almost dropped my teeth, but I thought if you really did think he did it you’d probably have come straight here.”

“And are you sure Inspector Teal didn’t enlist you as his own personal little spy?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me little,” Jenny said indignantly. “I’m not a child. I’m over twenty-one!”

“Well?”

“Of course he didn’t. I told you...”

“Well,” the Saint mused, “maybe I’ll never know, but if dear old Claud did hand you some kind of a line and ask you to report back anything interesting I might do, he’s come up a bit on the evolutionary scale. Those bumbling bipeds he usually employs to follow me around could lose track of an egg in a teacup.”

“He really didn’t.”

Simon touched her lips with one finger.

“Never mind. No point forcing you to betray any confidences or tell any fibs. All I want to be sure of is that you’re not a deep-dyed member of the Other Side. And I think I’m convinced of that.”

“Other side?” she repeated.

He had leaned very near her — which did not take much leaning.

“Yes,” he said, and then he kissed her, very lightly. “Other side. There’s always an other side, and you and I are going to the Bahamas tomorrow to meet them. What do you think of that?”

She just stared at him, so he kissed her again.

“Now, off to bed with you. We’re going to have a long trip ahead of ,us, and there’s a lot of packing to do.”

“Are you really going to the Bahamas?” she asked a little desperately, suddenly getting her voice back.

“Don’t you recall that Sebastian Tombs, part-time lecturer in Egyptology, won the Death Game fourth prize and was moved up to take Bill Bast’s place?”

“Oh,” Jenny said, with no easily definable nuance of expression.

“Of course, Claud Eustace isn’t supposed to know that, or he might try to stop me. I don’t think he’ll find out till it’s too late, if you don’t tell him. And just so that Grey Wyler can’t spill it, don’t say anything to him either. Later I’m counting on you to help persuade him to go along with the scheme wheeze.”

He got out, and opened the door on her side and walked her to the MG. He leaned in the window for a farewell warning.

“Aside from helping me to crash the party, I hope you’ll just play dumb about everything. I can’t protect you every minute, and I’d like to see you live to blossom into the fullness of womanhood — if it’s humanly possible to blossom any further than you already have.”

“But Simon!” she wailed, as if the realization had only just dawned on her. “You still haven’t told me what you were looking for at Dr Manders’ house, or if you found anything!”

He kissed her once more, lightly, and said: “I’m not sure yet. Sleep tight, Jenny. I’ll see you at the airport.”

7

There was one important detail which the Saint had neglected to specify: the airport at which he expected to see her was not London, as she assumed, but Freeport, Grand Bahama Island.

To Simon Templar, the subterfuge was only a normal avoidance of unnecessary risks. Just in case Teal should have second thoughts — or even if Jenny’s allegiance was not as complete as it seemed — they would naturally expect the Saint to travel on the same plane as the Death Game party, leaving late the next afternoon. Whereas he intended to be well on his way before they even missed him.

The fog was lifting, he was glad to observe as he drove back to Upper Berkeley Mews, so there should be no disorganization of plane departures. A quick search through the international air timetables which were one of the most vital sections of his library showed him the best connections to aim for, and a phone call to BOAC secured him a seat on the 11 A.M. VC-10 to New York and a promise to work on his onward reservations.

Simon packed a single capacious suitcase, and still had time for three hours refreshing sleep before he showered and shaved and set off for the airport. He noted that no Teal — sent bloodhounds had made their conspicuously inconspicuous appearance in the vicinity of his portals, and took it as a good omen, which presently vindicated either his good luck or his craftiness when he was able to board his flight without any complications.

With the additional unpremeditated good fortune of drawing a seat neighbor of the true bulldog breed, who buried himself sarcophagally in The Times and made it pointedly plain that he never opened conversations with strangers unless a wing fell off, and perhaps not even then, the Saint was finally able to settle down to an unhurried perusal of the statistical reports which he had removed from Manders’ cabinet, while he sipped on the first of the airline’s bountifully proffered Martinis.

The unspectacular conclusions of Distribution of Homicidal Obsession in Age Groups 18 to 25 were not so interesting as the mere fact that Manders had chosen such a subject for his private collection, and also — judging from his underlinings — that he was especially concerned with the section on characteristics of murder-obsessed young people who had gone beyond obsession to actual killing.

The second report, Varieties of Emotional Response in Players of the Death Game, included a few pages of general information which apparently had been furnished Manders by an outside source, since it covered a number of different colleges. In addition to the general section, however, were several more pages almost certainly written by Manders himself; they discussed in detail, and by name, students who had reacted in various ways to taking part in the game.

Jenny Turner, for instance, was considered “clever but frivolously casual, taking the whole thing as a joke.” The report predicted that she would probably outdo most competitors but would be “of no real use.”

Simon, while he begged to differ with that pessimistic conclusion, went on to read a much more enthusiastic evaluation of Grey Wyler. Not only was he “ingenious” and “highly intelligent” but his attitudes toward “society” and “wealth” gave him “additional motivation.” He also showed happy signs of “those characteristics typical of individuals who lack any strongly developed moral sense or appreciation of the feelings of others, and may under certain circumstances almost casually perform highly anti-social acts.”

As Simon sat back to digest that slab of jargon, he felt the pleasant sensation that comes with clearly discerning a pattern in an apparent confusion of events. The word “recruit” in what must have been Timonaides’ most recent letter was a fairly solid tipoff, but the statistical reports confirmed the reality of a fantastic idea.

Kuros Timonaides, the master of legal illegality, was harnessing a student craze — whose beginnings he had probably himself encouraged — as a means of discovering and testing potential recruits for his criminal organization. He obtained the cooperation of men such as Manders with well-practiced techniques of blackmail and bribery — and if that cooperation showed signs of flagging, a more passive and permanent form could be ensured by convenient suicides or accidents — a method Timonaides’ agents had been suspected of using in the past.

And now Simon Templar was flying right into the final heat of the Greek impresario’s giant talent contest. He had one particular advantage over the rest of the contestants, however: he knew that a contest was going on. If he played the stacked deck right, he might even end up a winner.

It was only 1:30 P.M. in New York when the plane landed at Kennedy airport, and a BOAC representative met him with confirmed seating on a National flight to West Palm Beach, and after the customs and immigration formalities he was able to make the transfer very comfortably, without leaving the airport.

The plane to West Palm Beach got in time for him to catch one of the evening excursion flights to Freeport that had lately been inaugurated to ferry Florida tourists across to the gambling facilities of the emancipated British island. There was still enough daylight to enjoy the 50-minute flight out over the smooth sea at what seemed a barely drifting speed in comparison with the jets of the earlier parts of the trip. The incredibly dark blue waters of the Gulf Stream were below for a while, and then the eastern boundary of the flow was delineated by an abrupt shift to translucent green. The ocean bottom was in many places as clearly visible as if there had been no water covering it at all, and Simon wished the plane flew low enough to allow a detailed view of the colorful coral reefs and the gliding forms of their finny inhabitants.

He checked in at the Lucayan Beach Hotel, had dinner, played away a handful of chips at the Casino, and went to bed to catch up on the five-hour time change with a full night’s tranquil slumber, secure in the knowledge that he was at last out of range of Scotland Yard’s interference, at least for a while. His timetable studies had told him that the direct plane from England via Bermuda to Nassau which was bringing the Death Game prizewinners from Europe would get there too late for them to catch a plane to Freeport that night, and they would have to come on the first flight the next day.

When he woke up it was a beautiful warm sunny morning, an almost unbelievable transition from the dank gray chill that he had looked out on when he last got out of bed, and only a swim in the balmy turquoise sea before breakfast could pay it the tribute it deserved. When he went back to the airport to meet the Nassau plane, now wearing only a gay sport shirt and featherweight slacks, he felt like a new man, with all the exhilaration that only summery climes could give him.

His last lingering fragment of anxiety evaporated when he saw Jenny’s blonde head and Grey’s brown coming down the boarding stairs. But he preferred not to cause a noisy and attention-attracting reunion, so he waited until they had come through the arrival barrier before he stepped forward and greeted his London friends as they started across the lobby.

Both were absorbed in interpreting the meaning of some message they had apparently received at the information desk, which absorption did not contribute to their composure when they suddenly saw the Saint materialize, like an exceptionally tall and healthy ghost, smiling down on them.

Grey just came to a complete halt and stared. Jenny gave a little cry of surprise, then exhaled and almost laughed with relief.

“Oh, Simon, I thought you weren’t coming. You couldn’t believe how worried I was. How on earth did you get here?”

She had extended both hands, which he accepted, and then he kissed her on the cheek.

“You must not have noticed me,” he said. “I was right there on the plane with you.”

Jenny gave him a bemused stare.

“No, you weren’t. You couldn’t have...”

Wyler interrupted, with condescending boredom in his tone.

“He means his alias was supposedly with us,” he explained.

Jenny flushed.

“Simon, I wouldn’t have told him anything you said to me, but after we were on the plane I told him you’d said you were coming.”

“It’s perfectly okay,” Simon assured her. “I was afraid the Ungodly might get curious about what I’d do next, and I didn’t want to take the chance of being held up by some obstruction or other — including Inspector Teal. And this way our hosts here wouldn’t have time to object to any changes in the guest list. So I came a more roundabout but faster way.” He looked Wyler in the eye. “Since we’re all in on this thing, I assume there’s no reason you won’t cooperate.”

“I’m a lone wolf,” Wyler said. “I don’t believe in involving myself in other people’s affairs. If you want to play a ridiculous game of cops and robbers, go right ahead. Just don’t expect me to do more than keep quiet — particularly since no one’s troubled himself to tell me what kind of paranoiac fantasies have been built up around this thing.”

The Saint’s brows arched slightly.

“Paranoiac? I suppose Bill Bast just imagines he’s been killed?”

Wyler shrugged and looked as if he’d prefer to end the dull discussion and get on with the journey.

“I don’t see any reason to look beyond Manders. I could have told you six months ago he was on the way to leaving the rails. It didn’t take gossip about his personal oddities to point that up. There were obvious signs of deterioration: nervousness, forgetfulness, bad temper, feelings of persecution.”

“So one day he just flipped his lid completely and killed somebody?” Simon asked.

“It seems that way. Apparently you think otherwise.”

“Yes,” Simon said flatly. “I won’t give you the arguments for it now, but I wouldn’t have come here if I’d just been taken with a sudden notion to go travelling.” He glanced at Jenny. “In spite of the charming company available. But unless you have a positive interest in not seeing justice done, there’s nothing to stop you going ahead and enjoying your holiday and pretending you’re not well acquainted with me at all.”

“And shall we say Bast was confined with a headache?” asked Wyler sarcastically.

“There’s no point in lying. The news might get here at any time. Tell the truth, maybe with a little emphasis on that theory of yours about Manders’ mental instability. Now, where to?”

Jenny glanced at the message she had been reading when the Saint’s sudden appearance had interrupted.

“It says there’s a car waiting for us outside,” she said nodding toward one of the exits.

Just beyond the door was a parked limousine — gigantic, shiny, and black — and its idly standing driver, though not quite so gigantic, had a face and bare arms of approximately the same color and sheen. On his head was an impressive item of haberdashery which resembled an Ethiopian field marshal’s cap done in maroon. His shirt was a kind of iridescent pink, his trousers yellow, his feet sockless, and his shoes two-toned in oxblood and white.

Jenny looked appropriately awed by this specimen of native exotica; Grey, as usual, refused to look anything but superiorly bored.

“Mistah Bast?” called the Negro vaguely, at the emerging passengers, referring to a bit of paper in the pink palm of his hand. “Mistah Willy and Miss Tuhnah?”

“That’s us,” the Saint said to him, explaining that Sebastian Tombs was substituting for Mr Bast.

A minute later they and their bags were in the limousine, and soon they were raising dust on a northeast course. The driver set a speed he apparently felt commensurate with his vehicle’s grandeur, but fortunately the limitations of Bahamian highway construction — which is not adapted to wide or swift machines — put a limit on his ambitions, and his passengers were able to relax on upholstering which would have been worthy of the bed of a rajah. Even the frequent trumpetings of the horn were muffled by the heavy construction of the car and the hiss of the air conditioner.

Wyler looked impressed in spite of himself, and stole admiring glances at the luxurious shiny chrome fittings of the interior, and ran his fingers over the velvety surface of the arm rests. Jenny showed herself to be more sophisticated and devoted most of her attention to the Saint, who had had a feeling almost from the beginning that Jenny had the easy assurance of a solidly entrenched member of the moneyed classes, while Wyler showed signs of the bitter pride and bellicosity of insecure brilliance on the make.

“What’ll we do when we get there?” Jenny asked.

“Go swimming?” suggested the Saint.

At the same time he made an almost imperceptible negative motion of his head, which he was pleased to see that Jenny was sharp enough to pick up. The glass partition between driver and passengers was open, but even if it had been closed — as Simon could have requested — he did not have much faith that any back seat conversations would remain private. There were too many other possibilities for eavesdropping: a hidden tape recorder, for instance.

“Oh, doesn’t that sound like fun?” Jenny bubbled, putting on an act for the driver. “It’s fantastic to think that places like this exist all the time — while we’ve been creeping around in the fog.”

“What’s even more amazing,” Simon said, “is that anybody would care enough about us academic types to fly us across the ocean and drive us around in a fancy rig like this.”

His line, too, was for the driver’s benefit. Now he leaned forward and spoke directly to him.

“Does this car belong to our host, or do you hire out to anybody?”

“Belongs to Mistah Timonaides, sah,” answered the driver in the lilting accent of the islands.

“Didn’t you have anybody else to pick up — any other people going to the same party?”

The Negro looked around for an instant, his eyes invisible behind the giant blue shields of his sunglasses.

“What party you mean, sah?”

Simon refused to believe that the man could be quite that dense entirely on his own initiative.

“There are other people besides ourselves, aren’t there?”

“Oh yas.”

“Well, that’s the party I mean.”

“Oh yas. Other people come yesterday.”

Simon realized that twenty-five more questions would not produce any more results than had the first few. He had hoped the man would be eager enough to show off whatever he did know to let slip some bit of interesting information. With that possibility out of the way there was nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the ride.

And the ride was enjoyable. Not only did he have the very pleasant presence of Jenny on his left (she was between him and Wyler in the center of the seat) but he also had the shimmering sunglazed intensity of the sea on his right. The road eastward from Freeport ran along the southern coast of the island, away from the resort areas and real estate developments of the western end, whose once pristine beaches had been infected with spores drifting over from Miami and now glittered in places with the same disease, slightly adapted to new conditions.

Though Simon had never been to the eastern end of Grand Bahama, he knew it was still fairly untouched, and it struck him as curious that anybody — even such an unusual figure as Mr Timonaides, who had a reputation for curious activities — should be able to provide accommodations for the entertainment of two dozen or so visitors at such a distance from the established centers.

The limousine had passed the area of the American missile tracking station about twenty-five miles from Freeport when Simon leaned forward and spoke to the driver again.

“Where is the place we’re going?”

True to form, the fount of non-information uttered two words.

“Not far.”

“Not far” turned out to be another twenty miles or so along the same shore. Simon tried to keep in mind a picture of their progress. Seen on a map, the eastern end of Grand Bahama Island is like the head of a pick-ax running north-south, mounted on the thick east-west shaft of the main body of the island. The southern point of the pick, hooking southward into the ocean, disintegrates into many small islands, so the Saint knew that their journey would have to end about the time they reached that sharp southerly curve of coast, or else unless they were to transfer to a boat — the limousine would leave the shore it had been following and take a more northward route.

The first possibility turned out to be the fact. Before a change of direction became necessary, there appeared on the right an augmentation of the somewhat barren aspect of the island which obviously had been achieved and maintained at considerable effort and expense. Coconut palms, twisted pines, and coarse-leaved sea-grape bushes formed the basic ingredients of the plantation, which stretched about three hundred yards along the water and was about half that in depth.

Beside a shell-rock road which turned off toward the landscaped oasis was a white sign, its red lettering clearly legible to the occupants of any passing car:

Above the letters was the black silhouette of a porpoise.

“Quite a little garden spot,” Simon commented as the limousine slowed to walking speed and crept along the narrow rutted drive into the shade of the trees and high shrubs.

“So it’s a resort that hasn’t opened yet,” Jenny said. “I wondered what kind of a place they were bringing us to.”

“I’m still wondering,” Simon said. “That’s one of the secrets of a long and happy life, my children: never stop wondering.”

They glimpsed a number of pastel-toned cottages scattered among the vegetation, and then they passed through a final dense grove of banana trees and emerged into a wide clearing directly on the water.

There was what seemed to be the central building of the complex, something like a plush American country club, with many windows, the typical low-pitched roof of hurricane resistant concrete slabs, with a little square, slatted tower in the center. Above the tower, moving with nervous response to the slightest changes in the direction of a gentle wind, was a weather vane in the form of the same black porpoise which had appeared on the entrance sign.

#Next to the white building was a large swimming pool, in or around which half a dozen young people were splashing or basking, and not far from that two tennis courts were still under construction. At the other end of the building was a protected marina with a large cruiser moored at its dock.

The driver parked the limousine at the main stairs of the building — which was wisely built high enough to prevent an abnormal tide from someday flooding the ground floor — and came around to open Simon’s side of the car.

“We take care of de bags. Step right inside here an’ de lady tell you all about everything.”

Simon doubted he would hear all about everything he wanted to know without considerably more effort than that, but he cheerfully complied with his guide’s instructions. Wyler and Jenny were beside him when they were met at the heavy glass doors by a gorgeous black-haired personage in shoulderless flowered dress and white sandals who surely could be none other than “the lady” mentioned by the chauffeur.

“I am Maria Corsina,” she said with the slightest trace of an accent, extending her slender hand to each of them in turn. “I’m so glad you could come.”

Her smile and cordiality were a little forced, as if she had been through the same routine so often that her muscles were tired, but nothing could mar the extraordinary beauty of her deeply tanned skin and the long obsidian flow of her hair.

As they returned her greeting, she ushered them into an air-conditioned lobby of red marble and gleaming burnished steel. Opposite the reception desk was the wide entrance to a big reading and game room with a full view of the sea on two sides. Several young people sat over cards or chess at various tables. Pleasantly bar-like sounds came from an unseen quarter.

“What a pretty place,” said Jenny.

“We hope it will be a success,” Maria Corsina replied. “All the villas will not be finished for several weeks.”

“In the meantime,” Simon put in, “I’m glad you found such a good use for it.”

“I am glad someone did,” she said a little mysteriously. “You will enjoy yourselves very much, I hope. Lunch will be served at one o’clock, and in the meantime, you can settle in and make yourselves at home. Dress is informal. I shall have one of the boys show you to your villas. Fortunately, there are only eighteen guests, so most of you will have a cabin to yourself. Now, Mr Bast... Which of you is Mr Bast and which Mr Wyler?”

Wyler out of naturally poor manners, and Simon deliberately, had not identified themselves. But now Wyler responded with more friendliness in his tone than Simon had ever heard him use before; apparently even be was not entirely impervious to such a triple concentrated dose of sexuality as that administered by the olive-tanned exterior of his hostess.

“I’m Grey Wyler,” he said with commendable honesty which Simon regretted he was not in a position to emulate.

“And I am not William Bast,” he said. “My name is Sebastian Tombs, and I’ve come as a substitute for Mr Bast.”

The lady’s disturbed surprise was obvious but quickly controlled.

“Substitute?”

Simon looked quite genuinely concerned and puzzled.

“Didn’t you know? I understood that a cable was sent...”

She shook her head.

“There was no cable... that I know of. Is Mr Bast ill?”

“Mr Bast is dead.”

This time Maria Corsina could afford to let her shock run its natural course.

“How terrible! I’m so sorry.”

Simon’s voice had a gloominess which suited his pseudonym.

“Yes. I think it would be better for everybody’s sake if we didn’t discuss it. Depressing, you know. Be a pity to put a cloud over people’s fun. These things happen — and what can we do now?”

“It’s true,” she sighed.

“I hope you don’t mind that I’ve come in his place, though,” Mr Tombs said modestly. “I was only one point behind him in our contest, actually, so we thought it would be all right if I took his place on the team.”

Maria Corsina’s smile flickered back to life.

“Of course.”

She touched his hand reassuringly, and Jenny’s eyes seethed.

“You’re more than welcome, Mr Tombs. Please don’t think of yourself as a substitute. But since we did not know about you before, I shall look forward to finding out all about you.”

8

Simon had just half an hour before lunch to take a look at his personal villa — which was elegantly and amply designed for the accommodation of at least two people — and to unpack his bag, which had been left off there by the time he walked over from the clubhouse.

An appetite encouraged by excitement and ocean air brought him back to the main building promptly at one o’clock, in time for him to see the majority of his fellow guests emerging by twos and threes after him from the jungle which hid their cottages. On the whole they were a decent looking lot, mostly in their twenties or thirties, and though they spoke a variety of tongues any marked differences in national costume which might have existed when they arrived had disappeared in favor of shorts or slacks and sport shirts.

Jenny joined him as he was proceeding through the central lobby to the dining room’s entrance, which was next to the yet inoperative reception desk. The restaurant was a large rectangular space with windows on the ocean side tinted blue against the glare. The interior decoration and furnishings had not been completed. A half finished mural on the inner wall dealt with Greek heroes and the Trojan horse. In place of the conventional smaller tables which undoubtedly would fill the room when the resort was opened to the public, there were three long ones arranged in a U formation, with the settings arranged for four on either side of each table.

Maria Corsina, along with a grey-haired man and six younger people, was sitting at the bottom of the U. Wyler was sitting at one of the other two tables, and Simon felt that Was as good a reason as any to choose the remaining one. He and Jenny found places in the center of one side, the other seats were soon taken, and as red-jacketed Negro waiters began serving the soup a young American with a broad face and a crew cut, who was sitting opposite Jenny, initiated introductions.

“I’m Joe Halston,” he said, stretching his hand across the table to Simon. “I guess you folks are from London — last ones to get here.”

“Right,” said Simon. “I’m Sebastian Tombs. This is Jenny Turner.”

A dark, hirsute Frenchman on one side of Halston introduced himself politely, then lowered his beard to the immediate vicinity of his soup and spent the rest of the meal eating. A belligerent Egyptian of uncertain age on the other side of Halston told them his incomprehensible name and spent the rest of the meal talking. The slender, timid, almost frightened-looking middle-aged man on Simon’s left seemed pleased to fulfill his social obligations with no more than a tepid handshake and the words, “Professor Santori,” and to let the Egyptian take over with a lecture on the basic inferiority of Western civilization to the enlightened Middle East.

Simon managed to pacify himself for some time with excellent Bahamian boiled fish and a cool and delicious dry white wine which perfectly balanced the red-peppery broth. When he was at last at the point of making some unkind pro-colonial remarks, Maria Corsina stood up and asked for attention.

“This is the first time all of you prizewinners have been together as a group,” she began, “so I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the management of East Island Villas, to welcome you to this lovely island. We would like to do everything possible to make your stay a pleasant one.”

She continued speaking for several minutes on matters such as the availability of sports equipment, outboard motor boats, and laundry services. Then she turned to the grey-haired, sharp-faced man seated beside her.

“And now,” she said, “I would like to introduce you to a gentleman who is associated with the organization which contributed so much to bringing you here — the International Foundation for the Advancement of Psychology. He is a psychiatrist, and appropriately enough he is Viennese. He will say a few words. Dr Paul Edelhof.”

Dr Edelhof was a wiry little man wearing a short-sleeved shirt stenciled with what seemed to be representations of rainbow-hued squid suffocating in a morass of salad. The only thing about his person which could in any way compete with that shirt was his nose, whose magnificent convexity would have been worthy of the imperial eagle of his homeland.

After the usual pleasantries, spoken in a nervous but strong voice, almost without accent, he got down to business.

“Now I must warn you,” he said amiably, cocking his head and giving a sly smile as he raised one finger, “that you have not been given this fine trip entirely for nothing. You extraordinary people, having proven your competitive abilities, represent a kind of elite. The high selectivity of the Death Game brings together here a group more talented in certain ways than any other similar number of people in the world. Therefore, to those who interest themselves in human ability and psychology, you represent a valuable sample for observation. And that is all we ask of you — that you do not object, as you enjoy your happy holiday here, if I and a few of my colleagues watch from the sidelines, so to speak.”

Edelhof took a sip of water from his glass and touched his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Also, if you will permit it, we will from time to time ask a few questions or administer a very brief test.”

He introduced two men as his assistants. One was the Professor Santori seated next to the Saint, and the other, a Dr. Phillips, was strategically located at the third table. It was clear that the observation of the guests mentioned by Edelhof was already well under way.

“A final word,” Edelhof continued. “Often people with unusual abilities find that in spite of their talents they have difficulty gaining the respect and financial rewards which are due them. Perhaps this is due to circumstances, to unfairness on the part of superiors, to shyness or uncertainty, or to a simple lack of knowledge as to how to proceed.”

The psychiatrist’s manner was more intense now, and his bony fingers pressed hard onto the tablecloth as he leaned forward and seemed to fix the whole audience collectively with penetrating black eyes.

“If you are such a person, if you would like to seek counsel on means of putting your powers to profitable use, I cannot urge you too strongly to see me or one of my colleagues for a private interview. I feel sure we can give you helpful guidance which may make a great deal of difference to your future. And with that I thank you for putting up with a boring speech and wish you a most pleasant holiday.”

He sat down amid applause, and any quizzical expressions which had appeared on faces in his audience during the last of his remarks disappeared as baked Alaska was served by the waiters in their resplendent red jackets.

The Egyptian managed to suppress — until he had finished his own serving — his outrage at a civilization which, surrounded by starving victims of its imperialism, could produce warm browned meringue on solidly frozen ice cream. And by that time the Saint was already excusing himself from the table. Jenny, who showed more and more signs of devotedly dogging his every step, left her dessert half finished in order to come with him. She was not overjoyed when Maria Corsina, smiling pleasantly, stopped them at the door.

“I hope you enjoyed your lunch,” she said.

“Very nice,” Simon replied. “If you keep up to that standard I may never want to leave.”

“As I said — if there’s anything I can do to make you happier, don’t hesitate to tell me.”

“We won’t,” Jenny said, managing to sound both sweet and murderous at the same time.

She took Simon’s arm, but before she could apply any guiding pressure Maria Corsina went on speaking.

“I hate very much to interfere with your plans, but Dr. Edelhof would like to see you if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.”

The eagle-beaked psychiatrist was already coming toward him through the departing groups of diners.

“Ah, Mr Tombs,” he said, shaking hands. “And Miss Turner, isn’t it? How do you do?”

“Very well, thank you,” said Simon.

Edelhof’s face became tinged with respectful sadness.

“I am glad you are here, but sorry about the tragic circumstances.”

“Such things happen,” Simon responded, as Maria left to speak with the headwaiter.

“True,” Edelhof responded, brightening up. “Very true. We must not weep over spilled milk.” He became abruptly more businesslike. “There is just one thing. Since your coming was unexpected, we have no information at all about you. In order for our observations to be effective, and simply for the records of the Foundation, we require a certain amount of background. The dossiers of the other guests were all forwarded in advance by their faculty sponsors. We’re especially interested in the results of certain tests which I’m sure were administered to you at the university. Also a small amount of personal information.”

“Of course,” Simon said.

“I hope you won’t mind then if I ask you to take a pair of tests here, even though you have already done them.”

“Not at all. I’d be delighted to do something to repay you for your lavish hospitality.”

“Not mine,” Edelhof said modestly. “You must thank...”

He stopped as if something had derailed his thoughts in mid-sentence.

“Whom?” asked the Saint.

“The Foundation,” Edelhof replied lamely.

“It would be a little easier to thank an individual.”

Edelhof, over the hump, gave a relieved laugh.

“Then I accept for the Foundation.”

“Good. And I accept the challenge of the tests.” He looked around. “Would you like me to...”

“Please. We can get it out of the way immediately. If the young lady will excuse us...”

Simon turned to Jenny...

“After that long trip, a little siesta would do you good,” he said. “I’ll meet you on the beach later and we can go skin diving.”

“The tests won’t take more than an hour and a half,” offered the psychiatrist.

“Then I’ll see you by the equipment locker around four,” Simon said. “All right?”

“All right,” Jenny agreed reluctantly, and she went on into the lobby as Simon followed Edelhof past the blue-tinted windows to a door at the opposite end of the dining room.

“You enjoy the Death Game, Mr Tombs?”

“It fascinates me. In fact, I found it so intriguing that when I was involved in it I lost interest in everything else.”

Had Edelhof been a dog, his ears would have perked up a good inch.

“Is that so?” he asked, opening the door toward which he had led Simon. “It’s good to have enthusiasm.”

They entered a hallway lined with closed doors on either side.

“In fact,” Simon said in a lower voice, with a mixture of diffidence and great seriousness, “I’d like to speak with you about... the guidance you mentioned.”

“Ah,” said Edelhof, bringing down the volume of his voice to match the Saint’s. “That is fine. The world has places for men of exceptional abilities, if only the proper contacts are made.” He opened one of the doors on the left. “But before we discuss that, it’s best that you complete these little formalities.” He stood in the doorway before letting Simon in. “I might say, however, before giving you any help we must request complete discretion on your part. We can be of no service to you unless we feel assured that all that passes between us will be kept in strictest confidence. Any discussion, even with your closest friends, would necessitate an abrupt end... to our negotiations.”

“I understand,” the Saint said very solemnly.

Edelhof stood aside to let him go through the door.

“I hope so. Now. This will eventually be an office for resort personnel, but for the moment I have managed to confiscate it. Have a seat at the desk, please, and I shall give you the tests.”

The paneled room offered a sparkling view of the sea across the marina, where the white forty-five foot cruiser Simon had seen from the limousine still rode at its moorings, fishing outriggers swaying like long antennae across the chain of smaller islands which stretched away toward the southeastern horizon. The room itself was furnished only with a desk and chair, a mirror built into one wall, a filing cabinet which Edelhof unlocked and relocked in the process of taking out the test booklets, and a ship-to-shore radio on a small table beside the window.

“Beautiful boat,” Simon said, sitting down in the swivel chair as Edelhof had indicated. “Yours?”

“Oh,” said the doctor with a smile, turning up his eyes and making a deprecating gesture with his hand. “Oh, no. It belongs to the owner. Now, if you will just...”

“Is he here?”

Edelhof was putting the two booklets on the desk, along with a pen.

“Who?” he asked.

“The owner. I wondered if he lived here — or on the boat.”

“No. Now, If you will please answer all the questions, I’ll come back when you’ve finished. The first is a standard aptitude test. The second is more specialized.”

“Specialized?” Simon asked innocently.

“You have seen it before, I’m sure. It’s the one especially fitted to players of the Death Game.”

Simon opened the booklet and glanced at the first questions.

“I remember this one. Very interesting.”

“I’m glad you found it so.”

A moment later Edelhof was gone, and Simon devoted himself to answering multiple choice questions concerning the relative heat of his interest in art galleries and boxing matches, talking to girls and walking alone, going to parties and reading books. And while he was at it, would he prefer a book about love or a book about war? Did he feel embarrassed or pleased when people asked him for advice? Would it irritate him to have to give up plans of his own to help a friend whose car had broken down — none, a little, some, considerably, very much?

It did not take a great deal of thought to determine which answers to which questions would make the most favorable impression on Timonaides’ consulting psychologists. On the other hand, Simon had to take into account the devious nature of the minds of the test’s creators, who would try to introduce subtle safeguards against deliberate slanting. But it was not very difficult to detect those safeguards either, and when he had finished the first test, the Saint felt certain that any psychiatrist worth even half his fees would discern in Mr Sebastian Tombs clear signs of the incipient killer.

Turning to view the bright sea through the window for a minute before going on to the second test, Simon noticed the cruiser which had been moored to the dock heading southeast about two hundred yards from shore. He remembered then having heard, on the periphery of his consciousness, an engine cough into life just a few minutes before, while he was engrossed in the final questions of the test. Almost idly, he drew a mental line from his location through the boat, and projected it straight on to the first of the islands, about a mile away. He noted, not so idly, that the boat continued directly on course, as if his imaginary line held it magnetized.

Finally the craft was an indistinct dot on the white feather of its wake, and it still showed no signs of deviating to port or starboard. The phenomenon seemed worth remembering, and Simon fixed in his mind the location of the island which seemed to be the boat’s destination. Naturally, there might be no significance at all in what he had seen, but just in case the boat was not out for a pleasure ride or a fishing expedition, the observation might prove worthwhile.

As he went to work on the second booklet, the Saint realized that it was not so much a test as a questionnaire. There were a few initial queries about personal statistics, hobbies, and ambitions. But the “test” questions which followed were designed to draw forth indirectly information which would probably have been refused if requested outright. The written responses to imaginary situations described in the quiz, when interpreted by a skilled analyst, could give deep insight into the subject’s attachments, loyalties, hostility toward authority, greed, respect for law and truth, and so on and on.

It was simple for Simon to form a clear mental picture of the kind of individual Timonaides would wish to recruit, and then to answer the questions accordingly. He was most impressed with the gall it took to design and administer such a test when he reached the final question — which was no more than an overt version of several asked in different forms already.

Would you play the Death Game with actual murder as the objective for a) 500 b) 1000 c) 5000 d) 10,000 or more e) no amount of money or other reward, however great? (In answering this question, try to pretend that it is not hypothetical, and take careful stock of your true reactions before giving a reply.)

With no hesitation, Simon answered “10,000 or more,” circled “more,” and signed the name of Sebastian Tombs at the bottom of that final sheet.

Almost as if by magic — or more likely by virtue of a two-way mirror — Dr Edelhof knocked at the door and stepped smiling into the office.

“Finished?” He looked at his wrist watch. “Just as we calculated. You have plenty of time to meet your young lady friend before she becomes impatient.”

Simon stretched in the chair and then got up and went to the door. He nodded toward the completed tests, which Edelhof was returning to the filing cabinet.

“Let me know if I passed, will you?”

“It is not a question of passing or failing, of course, but we shall speak about this as soon as I have evaluated the answers — which will take longer than you took to write them. In the meantime, enjoy yourself.”

9

It was ten minutes until four. Simon hurried to his villa, changed into a bathing suit, and walked back down to the beach side of the clubhouse. Near the door of the equipment room Jenny was waiting, wearing a yellow bikini which left bare ample portions of her already pink-tinged anatomy.

“I hope dinner will be half as well cooked as you are,” Simon said cheerfully.

Jenny had been idly watching water skiers skimming the glassy sea behind one of the outboards mentioned by Maria Corsina in her speech at lunch, and she jumped with surprise at the sound of Simon’s voice.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said concernedly, after a deep breath. “What happened?”

“Nothing much. I took the tests.”

“What were they? I thought I’d die when he said he was sure you’d taken them before.” Simon described the tests to her. “Sound familiar?” he asked. “Yes. Both of those. I had a lot of fun with them.”

“What do you mean, fun?”

“I never take that brain-picking stuff seriously. I just make up some personality and answer for it.”

“I wondered what a nice girl like you was doing in a place like this. You probably made up one that was just what Manders was looking for.”

“I don’t even remember.”

“What about that question on committing murder for different amounts of money?” She shook her head.

“I said I wouldn’t do it for anything. After all, I couldn’t be too obvious or Dr Manders would have known I was spoofing and asked me to take the silly thing over again. Doesn’t that disprove your theory about why they brought us here? I mean, I said no.”

“I imagine very few people said yes, but that doesn’t mean people like Manders and Edelhof couldn’t detect an almost unconscious willingness to cooperate under the right circumstances.”

“How creepy can you get?” Jenny kicked petulantly at the sand with her bare toes. “We could have such a lovely time here if we didn’t have to worry about all this nasty business.” He slapped her on the bottom.

“Very well, Jenny, my dear, let’s start with that lovely time right now.”

She flashed him a grateful smile and a minute later they were on their way down to the water, hand in hand, with snorkels, flippers, and masks.

“I can’t get over the way they leave stuff lying around here,” she said. “Even the boats. You just take them. No checking out. Nobody’s even watching.”

“Don’t bet on that last,” he said, “but I doubt if they’re watching to see you don’t make off with any of their sports gear. All that generosity gives you a taste of la dolce vita you’ll enjoy if you go over to that Other Side I was talking about in London. Makes you more amenable to reason when the recruiting officer comes round for his private chat. Right?”

They were at the water’s edge, putting on the flippers and masks. Jenny looked at him reproachfully.

“I thought we weren’t going to think about that nasty stuff.”

“That’s all. Besides, where could anybody go with these bulky things? There doesn’t seem to be another human habitation for miles around. Unless...”

“Unless what?”

Simon was looking out toward the islands.

“I noticed that cruiser heading out there,” he said.

“Oh! I meant to tell you. I saw it leaving, and guess who was on it?”

“Zsa Zsa Gabor?”

“Lady Dracula — Maria Concertina or whatever her name is. All by herself with a big purse and a couple of black boys to run the boat.”

“All sorts of possibilities there, wouldn’t you agree?” Simon said thoughtfully. “I even flatter myself that she may have been carrying a report about me, complete with photographs probably.”

“Carrying a report where?”

“To the big boss — Timonaides himself, maybe.” Simon nodded without pointing. “See that largest island there? As far as I could tell, that’s where the boat went — which may be an indication of something, but I promised not to discuss these problems any more.”

Without warning, he grabbed her hand and towed her into the water. For the next hour they glided like the fish they observed through a medium that seemed clearer than air. It was only when the sun was low on the western horizon that Simon’s attention was brought back to his real reason for coming to this part of the world. He and Jenny, following a school of parrot fish, were at least a hundred yards down the beach from the clubhouse when they heard the rumble of an engine in the water and looked up to see the white cruiser returning to the marina. As soon as its stern was made fast by the crewman, Maria Corsina jumped lightly onto the dock, greeted some watching guests, and hurried to the building.

“The return of the Bride of Dracula,” Jenny said. “I wonder what she was doing?”

“Gathering conchs for our chowder? Or maybe oysters for the stuffing when she tries to cook my goose.”

“Simon,” Jenny asked fearfully, “what if they have found out who you really are?”

He shrugged as he led the way back toward the beach, his mask and snorkel in hand.

“A man like Timonaides would have contacts in London who could easily find out I was around when Bast was murdered and Manders was arrested. With an organization like that involved, Sebastian Tombs couldn’t expect to last long.”

Jenny shuddered and looked at him imploringly.

“Let’s run away. Please. I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.”

He put a reassuring arm around her dripping shoulders as they trudged along the beach toward the clubhouse.

“I said Sebastian Tombs couldn’t expect to last long. Simon Templar expects to survive indefinitely.”

She nuzzled her face against his arm.

“He’d better,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. If there’s one thing I’d guarantee to give any man the will to live, it’s you in a bikini.”

When they were about halfway back to the area of the villas, Maria Corsina came out of the clubhouse, looked up and down the beach, spotted them, and waved an arm above her head.

“I think she wants me,” Simon said.

“Well, she’s not going to get you,” Jenny responded, with flattering determination.

“Mr Tombs,” the hostess called.

“We’re on our way.”

They made their way up the sand and a few moments later joined her near the pool, from which a last trio of swimmers emerged and walked through the twilight toward the cottages.

“It’s about dinner tonight, Mr Tombs.”

Maria Corsina paused and looked at Jenny, with the obvious implication that Jenny should politely excuse herself and leave. Jenny just looked back without moving, so the other woman continued.

“The owner of East Island Villas, Mr Timonaides, who very graciously donated the use of his. property for this group, would like to entertain the guests at his own home. He prefers small gatherings, so he plans to have three of you out each night. You happen to have been asked for tonight.” She looked at Jenny again. “Since there are not enough ladies to go around, there is not one invited every day.”

“I’m delighted to accept,” Simon said. “May I ask who else is going this time?”

“Your friend Mr Wyler and one of the Americans — Mr Halston.”

“Couldn’t you change it and let me go?” Jenny asked impulsively. “I’m sure Grey Wyler wouldn’t mind.”

“I am sorry, but once things are arranged, Mr Timonaides dislikes changes. I’m sure you’ll enjoy being with new people when your turn comes.”

“When does the car leave?” Simon asked with purposeful innocence.

There was always a possibility, he thought, that his real identity had not been confirmed, and the more unobservant and unconcerned he could seem, the better his chances of continuing the masquerade.

“You will go by boat,” Maria Corsina explained.

“Boat?”

“Mr. Timonaides lives on an island. The cruiser will leave at seven.”

“Fine. Thank you very much.”

He and Jenny started across the lawn, and Maria Corsina called after him.

“Oh, Mr Tombs, it might be good to wear a coat and tie. Mr Timonaides is a formal man.”

“He sounds interesting. I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

“I’m sure he’s looking forward to meeting you.”

When the Saint and Jenny entered the thick plantings around the villas she stopped and whispered to him.

“Simon, I think they know. It’s stupid to walk right into a trap.”

“Maybe it’s not a trap,” he said blandly. “Maybe they’re just impressed with Mr Tombs’ potential as a recruit. I’m sure Grey Wyler must have made that impression. Could be the first night’s guests of honor are the ones — or some of the ones — who answered ‘yes’ to that question about playing the Death Game for real.”

“But what if they do know?”

“If they do know, I can think of about a hundred ways they could arrange my demise without the trouble of hauling me out to Timonaides’ island. Or they could just think of some pretext to send me packing — like the suddenly discovered fact that uninvited substitutes are against the rules at Death Game conclaves.”

They walked toward Jenny’s cottage in the thickening darkness.

“But I can think of just as many reasons why they’d take you out there if they did plan to get rid of you,” Jenny said.

“Well don’t enumerate them, please. You’ll take the keen edge off my appetite. Besides, if it is a trap, it won’t be the first time some spider has invited me into his web expecting to eat me up, and ended up getting eaten himself.” They were at her door. Jenny sighed miserably... “I guess there’s nothing I can do, then.” Simon took her chin in the fingers of his right hand and kissed her softly on the lips.

“Just be a good girl,” he said, “and have a nice evening.”

“I won’t!” she said as he walked away. “And I won’t go to sleep until you’re back here safely.”

Although a night breeze was kicking the sea into a light chop by seven o’clock, the trip to the island was smooth and uneventful. The Negro captain set a course straight for the distant cluster of lights which were the only illumination in the darkness ahead, and his mate brought up a round of iced rum drinks from below. Simon and his fellow passengers settled into comfortable chairs on the after deck, and Halston said rather predictably, “This is the life, huh?”

“Sure is,” the Saint said, stretching his legs, swirling his drink in its glass, and taking a long swallow.

Wyler, also predictably, was silently contemptuous. He managed to look over the craft as if he would love to own it and at the same time hated it because it belonged to somebody else. Halston, looking thick-necked and uncomfortable in his suit and tie like an athlete dressed up to receive an award, was a more simple type. Almost everything impressed him and he was quick to admit it.

“Great drinks, too,” he said, blinking his small, close-set eyes. “Man, what I wouldn’t give to have an outfit like this.”

“Maybe you will someday,” the Saint said. “Maybe we all will.”

The comment was not made idly. Over the edge of his glass he watched the faces of his two companions and felt satisfied that their perceptible but suppressed reactions meant they had probably had individual heart-to-heart chats with Dr Edelhof about their futures. Just how much Edelhof would have told them was a matter of speculation, but he would have spoken to them more freely than he had to Simon because their identities would have been unquestionable and their past records on hand. But Edelhof also would have strongly cautioned each one — as he had Simon — not to tell anything to anybody. Halston looked inquiringly at the Saint and Wyler, licked his lips, and controlled his natural garrulousness with a big swallow of his drink.

A few minutes later the boat approached the island and circled to the eastern side, which, because of the proximity of smaller islands, undoubtedly offered the most shelter from rough seas. The inhabited island itself was more or less round, about a quarter of a mile in diameter, and seemed to be fenced and brightly lighted around its whole circumference.

The cruiser pulled slowly around a jetty and up to a dock protected by concrete supplements to a small natural indentation in the shore. A colored man who had been lounging outside the locked gate spoke into a metal box affixed to one of the light poles and then came to help dock the boat.

“Here dey come, gentlemens,” he said rather vaguely as the passengers stepped ashore.

A second later Simon saw that he was referring to a pair of electric golf carts which were being driven by Negroes down an asphalt-paved path to the other side of the gate. The watchman who had announced the arrival of the carts unlocked the gate and watched as the guests climbed on — Simon getting into one, Wyler and Halston sharing the other. Then the watchman locked the gate again, and the carts purred slowly in single file through a cultivated jungle even thicker and more fully developed than the recently planted one at East Island Villas.

After two minutes or so the path curved, revealing a large red brick house straight ahead. The carts maneuvered up to an open, flagstone terrace and stopped. Standing backlighted in the central doorway of the house was a man of moderate height and a silhouette which suggested a standoff between solid strength and corpulence.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a smooth low-pitched voice, stepping forward into the outdoor floodlights which made day of the area immediately surrounding the house. “Welcome to my home.”

The golf carts were driven quietly away around the building as Simon, Wyler, and Halston went to introduce themselves and shake hands with their host, who concluded the formalities with the simple statement. “And I, of course, am Timonaides.”

He spoke English with careful, almost overly precise pronunciation, explaining as he showed them into his huge living room that he spoke several languages but thought it best to make each evening’s entertainment monolingual if possible.

“You’ve got a point there,” Joe Halston said with hearty approval, taking in the room’s antique statuary, vases, and elegant furniture with the head-swivelling enthusiasm of a tourist just set loose on the Acropolis.

Simon was more interested for the moment in the appearance of Timonaides, whom he had seen only in photographs, usually in more glamorous company than a delegation of collegians. His face tended to heaviness, especially in the vicinity of his fleshy lips, but his dark eyes were alert and intelligent. Though he was at an age when most men have greying hair, the color was a healthy brown, and in spite of some thinning the oily waves were sufficient to give almost youthful coverage. Pink-cheeked, well-manicured, and wearing a dove-grey, perfectly tailored suit and blue silk tie, Kuros Timonaides exuded the aura of a wealthy man.

“Have seats,” he said, as a white-jacketed colored man came into the room. “Make yourselves comfortable and Charles will take your orders for drinks. I trust the trip over to my island was pleasant.”

“That’s a great boat you’ve got there,” Halston said. “Really great.”

That initial interchange set the tone for the early part of the evening. Nothing remotely like Death Game business was discussed during drinks or the meal which followed. For a while they talked about Timonaides’ island, problems of building in a remote area, and the difficulties of maintenance in a salty and humid atmosphere. Even Wyler proved that he could shed some of his arrogance when granted audience with a sufficiently eminent personage. He joined in the small talk, and when the group had moved into the adjacent dining room and were eating at the massive carved wooden table, he complimented Timonaides on the turtle pie.

Timonaides shook his head.

“I was about to apologize for this poor food. The fact that temporarily I am forced to depend on native help restricts the menu and lowers the quality. Ordinarily I could offer you much better. I have just come here, you see, and my chef is having his vacation before he flies to join me.”

“You don’t live here all the time?” Wyler asked.

“Oh, no. In general, I cruise around the Mediterranean in spring and summer, except for some time spent in places like London or Paris. In the hottest weather I move up into the Alps, and during the cold months I come here.”

That opened the way for a whole new line of admiring questions from both Wyler and Halston. Simon contributed a few comments and began to wonder if this was just a routine entertainment and inspection — the big man looking over the prospective employees in small groups until a final decision was made. Nothing happened to change the Saint’s impression until dessert and coffee were finished and the men had moved back into the living room for liqueur.

After a few more minutes of trivial conversation they were interrupted by the appearance of the Negro in the white jacket.

“All finish, sah,” he announced.

“Good, Charles. You may take everybody home then.”

Charles disappeared, and soon afterwards there was a sound of scuffing feet, chatter, and laughter receding down the asphalt walk in front of the house. Timonaides explained that in these islands it was customary for servants not to live in, but instead to be brought to work in the morning and delivered to their homes at night. For that purpose he provided an old fishing boat and had appointed Charles the captain.

The Saint knew Timonaides was telling the truth about island practices in the transportation of hired help. What put him on alert was the fact that the servants had left almost immediately after dinner — and it was not an island custom to leave dirty china lying around the kitchen overnight. But then maybe the Greek’s dishwashers were setting records for speed and efficiency: Simon could only wait and see whether or not Timonaides revealed some special reason for wanting privacy as soon as he could reasonably arrange it.

Simon did not have long to wait.

“Gentlemen,” Timonaides said quietly, settling back in his chair and bringing the tips of his fingers together. “I think you know, in a general way, why you are here. Dr Edelhof has assured me of your sincerity. If you have doubts — any of you — and if you do not wish to go any further in your cooperation with me, for the great rewards I can offer, then I must ask you to leave now and wait on the boat which brought you. When I have said what I have to say next, it will be too late for changes of heart.”

10

Timonaides’ abrupt statement seemed to catch Wyler and Halston by surprise. For a long moment no one spoke. Then Halston took a deep breath.

“I’m with you all the way.”

Wyler nodded agreement. Timonaides looked at Simon, who nodded also. The Greek got to his feet.

“Good,” he said briskly. “And now... to show my own sincerity...”

He reached beneath his jacket and drew out a thick packet of Bahamian currency.

“Mr Halston,” he said, handing over the money.

He drew out another packet.

“Mr Wyler.”

Wyler’s fingers trembled as he took the money, which the Saint estimated must amount to at least a thousand pounds.

“Mr Templar.”

At the sound of his real name, Simon could only settle back into his chair with an amused sigh and slight smile. Timonaides’ hand, on its third trip to his inner pocket, had produced not a wad of bills but a large automatic.

“Mr Halston,” Timonaides said quietly, “would you please hand these to Mr Templar?”

Halston, taking two photographs from Timonaides, looked at Simon with somewhat bovine confusion.

“Mr Templar?” he said.

“That is Mr Templar,” the Greek said impatiently, wiggling the nose of his pistol in the direction it was already pointing.

Simon calculated with a certain amount of satisfaction that Joe Halston’s stint with Poseidon Enterprises would be useful — for Poseidon Enterprises — but short-lived. He would be a good tool for work on simple problems, but on his first encounter with real complexities he would probably fail and be forced into early, absolute, and permanent retirement.

The Saint took the photographs, one of which was a copy of a passport photograph he had had taken three years before. The other was a Polaroid print of him sitting at Edelhof’s desk filling out one of the tests. He looked at the pictures admiringly.

“Fine looking chap,” he said. “Who is he?”

Admittedly, it was rather difficult for Timonaides to come back with a snappy answer to that, but he did as well as he could.

“It’s the former Sebastian Tombs,” he said. “Soon to be the former Simon Templar.”

“So it is,” the Saint said. He went on chattily. “I can’t say I wouldn’t have preferred getting money like the other fellows, but I do appreciate the pictures.” He was holding the photographs side by side for comparison. “Most people say I get handsomer every year, and I have to admit...”

Timonaides cut him off.

“If I were you, I would begin using the past tense, Mr Templar, because my new associates here are about to kill you.”

Wyler’s lips were compressed, his fingers tightly gripping the arms of his chair. Simon concluded that he had not been told of his assignment in advance, but that it came to him. as no tremendous surprise. Halston, on the other hand, was openly stunned.

“You mean... we really are?” he said.

“Yes, Mr Halston,” the Greek replied. “You are going to have a chance to prove your ability — in a real Death Game. Mr Templar here — possibly known to you as the Saint — is an imposter whose continued existence would present the greatest threat to my organization, which now includes you. First, search him.”

Halston’s search yielded nothing but a handkerchief and some pound notes. The Saint had foreseen possible complications in bringing a weapon to the Villas, and since he was using an assumed name he had left even his wallet, with all identifying cards and papers, in a locker at the Freeport air terminal.

“That’s all,” the student said, handing Timonaides the bills, which he inconspicuously pocketed.

“I’m curious. Kuros, to know where you got this,” Simon said, holding up the passport photograph.

“From my files,” the Greek answered with obvious satisfaction. “Originally, of course, from the passport photographer who took it. Can you think of a better source than passport photographers for clear pictures of almost everyone who counts — even those who shy from seeing themselves in newspapers and magazines? In this house I have such a quantity of photographs and other information that you would be amazed.”

“Nothing about you would amaze me,” the Saint said coolly. “Sicken me, yes, but not amaze me.”

Timonaides’ grip on his automatic tightened.

“That will be enough talk. Now. if Mr Wyler — who incidentally confirmed your real identity to Dr Edelhof late this afternoon as a sign of his good faith — and Mr Halston will...”

There was a buzz from an intercom box on a table beside the armchair where Timonaides had been sitting.

“The watchman at the gate,” he explained, keeping his automatic aimed at Simon as he spoke into the box. “I told you not to... Yes? Send her away immediately. Oh. Well. Very good, have the boys from the boat bring her up here then.”

Simon, whose instinct told him it would be best to display no interest in the watchman’s call, had already begun speaking to Wyler and Halston.

“Let me tell you about the man you’re working for — and especially about his extensive files. He got his start in Greece during the war, during the German occupation. Somehow he managed to be a member of the resistance and at the same time end up rich on Nazi money at the expense of a few dozen dead patriots. That must have been where he learned the saleable value of information — and that the potential victim might pay even more not to be turned in than the authorities would to get him. Then, after the war...”

“Shut up,” barked Timonaides.

“Ashamed of that part of your career?” Simon asked mildly. “I’ll admit that as much as I despise the kind of blackmail you’re engaging in now, I prefer it to...”

Timonaides’ first violent reaction had been controlled, and the natural pinkness, which for an instant had drained away, returned to his face.

“Do not talk any more, Mr Templar,” he said.

Simon sensed that until he was in a better position to defend himself he would be wise to obey the order. Timonaides turned to Wyler and Halston.

“Don’t worry yourselves about Mr Templar’s words. You will learn what you need to know of my operations. Rest assured that I am no common gangster, but a businessman. It is not my fault if the laws of the jungle still govern man’s competitive activities, no matter how much he tries to cover them up with pretty words. Only the stupid masses believe in such fairy tales... which suits the purposes of superior people very well.”

There were sounds of footsteps from the terrace, and Timonaides went to the door and opened it.

“Let her go,” he said to the men outside, not allowing them to see his gun, “and get back to the boat. You can sleep awhile if you like. We shall be doing a little hunting.”

Jenny Turner, her short yellow-flowered summer dress looking strangely inappropriate, stepped into the room.

“It suits my purposes,” Timonaides said precisely, in place of greeting her, “for the servants to know that I keep rabbits on the island in case I want a little sport. It explains the sounds of shots. This is the first time, however, that a rabbit has come to my island of its own free will.” He gestured with the gun. “If you will please go stand by your friend Mr Templar.” As Jenny moved; Timonaides looked at Simon. “She came to rescue you.”

“I had to come,” she said, “when I heard them saying they’d found out who you really were, and...”

“Heard who?” Simon asked, starting to stand up as she came over to his chair.

“Put up your hands, Mr Templar,” Timonaides said. “Maria Corsina and Edelhof were talking,” Jenny said. “They didn’t know I followed them down the hall toward their offices, and...”

“And so,” Timonaides took up the narrative, “your young friend here confiscated a boat and came to help you.”

“I never thought the whole island out here would have a fence around it,” she said. “I thought I could sneak in.”

Timonaides half smiled and shook his head. “And just what did you think you’d do when you got in?”

“I... I’m not sure. Lots of things. It depended on...”

“Well,” the Greek interrupted, “fortunately, you did not have to face that problem.” He turned to Simon again. “She tried to tell the watchman some ridiculous story about a message she was bringing. I communicate by radio with the shore, of course, and the watchman always knows about legitimate visitors in advance. So...” He shook his head again. “I’m afraid the sides in our Death Game are going to be equal. Two against two.”

Jenny, who had looked frightened already, turned pale. “Death Game?”

Timonaides nodded. “Mr Halston and Mr Wyler are going to be the hunters. You and Mr Templar will be the victims. The hunters will be armed and the victims will not. But for the sake of fairness, we will let our rabbits have a three minute head start.”

Halston licked his lips nervously. “A girl?” he asked.

“Girls die as easily as men,” Timonaides said. Jenny turned her stare on Wyler.

“Grey... you wouldn’t really...”

Wyler met her eyes for a minute, then nodded as he looked away.

“Easy there,” Simon said to her in a soothing voice. “I think it’s very sporting for Mr Timonaides to give us a start. Let’s save our breath for that.”

Timonaides pressed a button on his intercom set.

“I don’t want you getting hit by stray bullets,” he said into the box. “Be sure the gate is locked, and then go get in the boat with the other boys. All three of you stay below decks, and don’t come out until I personally come there and tell you to. Do you understand?”

A pause..

“And don’t get into the champagne. I hope you do understand. If you come out of the sleeping cabin before I tell you, you will be fired — and worse than that.”

Timonaides turned away from the intercom.

“That will take care of witnesses. Now, Mr Templar, you may go, and I suggest that you and your ally move as fast as you can while I am giving weapons to my friends here. I must admit I am anxious to see if they do as brilliantly in real life as they have done in games.”

“Let’s go, Jenny,” Simon said, taking her firmly by the hand and leading her toward the door.

“And Mr Templar,” Timonaides said, “if you have any ideas about climbing the fence, forget them. The upper strands are electrified.”

“Must take quite a generator to do that,” Simon said.

Timonaides smiled.

“It does — and you can forget any ideas you may have about that, too, because it is safely located in the cellar of this house. You can’t get at it from the outside.”

The Saint nodded.

“Thanks for saving us the trouble of looking for it.”

The Greek glanced at his watch.

“I’m afraid you will not have much time to look for anything. Half a minute is gone already.”

Simon sprinted across the terrace and along the asphalt path, with Jenny close behind him.

“What’ll we do?” she gasped.

I saw something like a tool shed along here on the way up. There. This way.”

They left the path, hurried around a clump of banana trees, and came on a small wooden shed. The door was held with only a sliding bolt. Simon yanked it open and began searching through the implements which were hung on the walls or were leaning in the corners. He handed out a two-pronged pitchfork with a long handle.

“Primitive, but a perfectly respectable weapon,” he said.

Within seconds he had tossed her a ball of strong twine and brought out a large metal tank with a hose attached.

“What’s that?” Jenny asked.

“Some kind of pressure-spray — for spraying trees. It feels good and full.”

Simon aimed the hose away from them and squeezed the lever on the nozzle. A concentrated blast of foul-smelling spray carried for a range of ten feet or more.

“They’ll be on their way now,” he said. “Follow me.”

Carrying the pitchfork and spray device, he led her quickly and quietly along a tiny, winding, unpaved path into the most densely overgrown area he could find in that part of the grounds. It was comfortably dark there; the bright lights of the fence line and the immediate vicinity of the house scarcely penetrated the tangle of shrubs, bamboo, fragrant-flowered oleander bushes, and larger trees. “Won’t they find us here?” Jenny asked hopelessly. “And we can’t just keep running.”

“I don’t intend to sit here and do nothing but wait,” the Saint said. “We’re going to take the initiative.”

“How?”

“By using the only advantage we have — aside from our superior brains and moral character: the fact that they don’t know where we are.”

He was already tying the free end of the twine to the base of a tree, about six inches off the ground.

“I can hear them on the main path,” Jenny whispered.

“When they leave it, they’ll probably split up. In any case, they’ll be following little narrow paths like the one that leads through this thicket. They’d be stupid to go crashing through the undergrowth in hopes of stumbling over us. They’ll be listening and looking, feeling confident because we’re supposedly unarmed and they’ve got means of blasting us out of the bushes without even getting their trousers wrinkled.”

Simon had finished stretching the twine across the path and tying the balled end to a second tree. Steps sounded on the asphalt path about fifty feet away, moving very slowly from the direction of the house toward the docks.

“That’s only one of them,” the Saint whispered. “Their first mistake. Shows what overconfidence can do.”

“They’ve a right to be overconfident,” Jenny murmured. “But I still just can’t believe they’d really kill us.”

“You’ll soon have a chance to find out I’ll go a little way up this path toward the paved one, then make some noise and run back like the devil. You stay here hiding on this side with the pitchfork. I’ll jump to the other side. If he falls over the string, we’ve got him. If he comes around either side, one of us will at least have a chance to get him.”

“What if he... shoots at you?”

“He will eventually anyhow. We may as well get it over with. His chances of hitting a running target in the dark are about one in a million.”

They listened. The hesitant footsteps on the asphalt were nearer.

“Now,” the Saint said, and he crept up the unpaved path, leaving Jenny behind.

When he had gone some twenty feet toward the asphalt path he rounded a curve and spoke in a very loud and theatrical whisper.

“Is that you, Jenny?”

In answer, he heard the blast of a gun, and a bullet sang through the twigs and leaves not far above his head. Whirling, he raced back down the small path as another shot barked out and footsteps pounded behind him. There was no tune even for him to pick up the spray apparatus. He was scarcely hidden opposite Jenny when Joe Halston, his bullish form easily identifiable, came thudding around the nearest turn.

Just when it seemed he would surely trip over the tightly stretched twine, he stopped, listening, aware that his prey was no longer fleeing ahead of him. Breathing hard, he pulled a flashlight from his trousers pocket and aimed it up the path.

“Did you see them?” called Wyler’s voice from far on the other side of that end of the grounds.

“One,” Halston shouted. “I think he’s hidden in here somewhere.”

The Saint’s muscles tensed as the flashlight beam swung toward his side of the path. But it stopped suddenly and moved to Halston’s feet. Obviously he had just discovered the string.

“Okay,” he said in a low voice. “I know you’re in there.”

And the beam moved back toward Simon’s hiding place.

The Saint’s impression of the next two or three seconds was confuse,. There was a sudden rushing sound, like wind in leaves, and the light dropped as Halston cried out and staggered back. Simon instinctively seized his opportunity, without waiting to ask what he owed it to. He dove from the bushes, catching his hunter behind the knees with the full weight and force of his movement. Halston sprawled on his face, but before the Saint could administer a conclusive karate chop to the back of the thick neck he heard a crack like a stick hitting a stone and looked up to see that Jenny had just caressed Halston’s skull with a downward sweep of her pitchfork handle. Wyler was getting closer, calling for Halston.

“I just couldn’t stick it in him,” Jenny whispered humbly.

“I think you’ve done enough,” Simon said, turning off the flashlight. “What was that first thing that happened?”

“I pulled back a branch while you were up the path — and when I saw he wasn’t going to fall over the string I let it go in his face.”

Wyler had come as far as the asphalt path now, calling fruitlessly.

“Hide,” Simon whispered to Jenny. “We’ll just wait here this time.” He was feeling among the leaves. “Where’s that gun he was carrying?”

“I can’t see,” Jenny whispered.

Simon pushed her quickly back into the bushes.

“I think he’s heard us,” he said, abandoning his search for Halston’s gun. He picked up the flashlight and moved into the undergrowth at the other side of the path.

As he went, he could hear Wyler approaching cautiously, following the same route Halston had taken. Simon threw the flashlight low along the path in the opposite direction so that it bounced and skidded and possibly sounded like someone taking flight.

Wyler, however, was not so impetuous as his fallen partner. His steps quickened, but he did not run headlong down the path. Knowing that his prey might be armed now, since Halston no longer answered his calls, he moved quietly and showed no light. Then he came around the turn which brought him into Simon’s and Jenny’s view, and after another few cautious steps saw the motionless body lying in the path ten feet ahead of him.

His first reaction was to crouch low and dart behind a tree at the side of the path. For a long time he stayed there, apparently listening.

Then, for some reason, Jenny moved slightly in her hiding place and caused a rustle of branches. Grey fired in that direction, waited, fired again. Getting no answering shot, he was bold enough to step back onto the path and come quickly forward.

That was when Simon pushed the lever of the spray tank hose and sent a whitish blast of spray directly into Wyler’s face. He cried out, stumbling, blinded, wincing and clawing at his eyes with one hand as the stream blasted him again. But the other hand still desperately held the gun, and he fired aimlessly into the ground or the tops of the trees.

The Saint heaved the spray tank, and it caught Wyler across the midsection, sending him sprawling backwards into the bushes. Simon was on him in a second, wrenching the pistol from his hand, and then with the greatest zest and satisfaction planting a fist several times in the center of his foam-drenched face. Wyler’s nose, undoubtedly, would be much less suitable for arrogant upturning in the future than it had been in the past, but for some time he would not be aware of that fact, nor of anything else.

“Jenny!” Simon called in a low voice. “Are you all right?”

“No,” came the weak reply.

She was sagging against a tree, holding one hand at her throat, and the Saint rushed to her.

“Did he hit you?” he asked, slipping his arms around her for support.

“No,” she whispered, clinging to him, “but I’m sure not all right. I just... don’t think I like this kind of game.”

Simon laughed, “Cheer up, girl. We made it. Now let’s go tell Timonaides how much fun we had and thank him for his hospitality,”

11

First they tied Wyler and Halston hand and foot. Both were still unconscious and had every appearance of intending to stay in that condition for a long while, but to be on the safe side the Saint carried Wyler — the less heavy of the two — about fifty feet along the way to Timonaides’ house and dumped him in the bushes where he and Halston could not conveniently collaborate in getting untied when they woke up.

“Do we have to go back to that house?” Jenny pled. “Couldn’t we just concentrate on getting out of this place?”

“Maybe you should stay here while I go to the house. It would be safer.”

“No,” she shivered, taking his arm as he walked on. “I’m too scared. What’ll we do? Just knock on the door and say ‘Too bad, Kuros old boy, you lose.’ ”

“Sounds like a pretty good plan,” Simon said. “And just about as specific as anything I’ve come up with.”

He took her stealthily along side paths toward the glaring lights of the house. When they were at the edge of the clearing, beyond which there was no more cover, they heard Timonaides’ voice.

“Wyler? Halston? Has anything happened?”

The Saint and Jenny could see him now, standing just outside the door, the room light behind him turned out. Simon got a firm grip on Wyler’s revolver, which he had reloaded with a clip taken from the previous user’s pocket, and then he moved boldly into the light, aiming the weapon at Timonaides.

At that range of fifty feet or more the pistol had little sure value except as a bluff, but Simon hoped that the Greek, taken by surprise, would crumble without too much thought about problems of ballistics.

“Put up your hands and come this way,” the Saint called, but as he had feared, Timonaides was not so easily intimidated.

With a crouching motion he was inside the door, and instantly the dull glint of a rifle barrel appeared.

“Drop the gun, Templar!” came Timonaides’ voice.

The Saint had prudently gone no more than two or three feet from the cover of trees and shrubs. He quickly sidestepped and heard the futile crack of the rifle as he dashed into the bushes.

“You might as well give up,” Timonaides called. “Well have you soon anyway.”

“Come out or well come after you,” the Saint replied with more taunting bravado than strict honesty.

“This place is a fortress,” Timonaides said. “You couldn’t get in with a cannon.”

With that, he slammed the door and there was no more sight or sound of him.

“What’ll we do now?” asked Jenny. “Make a battering ram?”

“I imagine he’s telling the truth,” Simon answered. “It would take more than a battering ram to get in there, and I’m sure that even our combined charm wouldn’t persuade him to come out voluntarily.”

“You mean we can go now?” she asked hopefully.

“We can try. Timonaides is probably on his radio to shore right now, telling Edelhof to send reinforcements. I have to admit I can visualize the general embarrassment with quite a bit of relish.”

They hurried through the trees, and then took the asphalt path down to the dock.

“Let’s hope the boys have obeyed orders and stayed below decks,” Simon said.

“I think they’d be frightened not to.”

“They seem to have been.”

There was no one in sight on the dock or the upper decks of the cruiser. Simon inspected the lock that held the gate.

“I think a shot or two should take care of that,” he said. “Now boys, just be good and keep your heads down, no matter how close that rabbit hunt comes.”

He pushed Jenny back, fired twice, and shoved the gate open. There was no response from the boat.

“Won’t he call them or something?” Jenny whispered as Simon moved out onto the dock.

“I don’t think he could, because there’s no reason why they should have the ship-to-shore on.” He paused as they reached the place where the boat was moored. “Now, you just stay out of the way, and when I’ve got things under control hop aboard and we’ll take off.”

Simon stepped quietly onto the deck and went to the open hatchway which led down to the sleeping quarters and galley. He detected the smell of strong tobacco smoke, the radio music of a steel band, and the murmur of voices — probably subdued by the proximity of gunfire.

The Saint deliberately made a sound with his foot.

“Mistah Timonaides?” said a voice in the cabin.

He stepped down another step.

“Mistah Timonaides? Dat you, sah?”

Simon stuck his head inside the cabin, and showed them a friendly smile and his pistol.

“No, it’s not Mr Timonaides, but I’ll do till he comes along. Just quietly put your hands on top of your heads, lock your fingers tightly, and don’t let go until I tell you to.”

Two of the men had been lounging on bunks, but were already sitting bolt upright when Simon gave his order. The third, the watchman, was on his feet. They obeyed, linking their hands on top of their heads and following him in single file as he backed onto the deck.

“We ain’ supposed to come up, sah. Mistah Timonaides, he say we...”

“I’m sure my pistol is just as worth paying attention to as Mr Timonaides, at least for the moment. Come on, now, and no fast moves.”

When they were neatly arranged in a row on the afterdeck, he called to Jenny.

“Look what I found: See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil, Speak-No-Evil.”

Jenny did not seem responsive to humor, so he turned back to the three colored men.

“Now, gatekeeper, go sit on the stern facing the water. Hang your feet over the edge and keep your hands back where I can see them.”

The watchman did as he was told.

“You gone hurt us?” he inquired meekly.

“Not a bit if you do as I tell you. Just stay there. Now, mate, get ready to cast off. Captain, start the engines. I can keep my gun on all of you from here, so be quick and efficient about it.”

Within a few seconds the engine was rumbling and exhaust smoke was bubbling from the stern. The mate cast off the lines as Jenny jumped aboard.

“Good,” Simon called to the captain. “Take her out.” He turned toward the mate. “You — go sit by the watchman, and dangle your toes over just the way he is.”

By the time the mate was perched on the stern, the boat was clear of the jetty and heading slowly into open water.

“Now, captain, go join your friends.”

The boat held its course more or less, as the captain left the wheel and went to the stern.

“Now, Jenny,” the Saint said, “you go be the pilot for a minute.”

“How?”

“Just steer — like a car.”

Jenny ran to take the wheel.

“Where do I go?” she begged nervously.

“We’ll head south — to Nassau.”

“Which way is that?”

“Never mind. Just don’t run into anything till I take over.”

Simon went to the three men arrayed with their backs to him along the stern.

“You boys know bow to swim?” he asked sociably.

“Yassuh,” the watchman said cautiously.

“That’s good.”

The Saint placed his foot gently in the small of the watchman’s back and launched him smoothly into space. Almost before his splash had reached the ears of the captain and mate, they had joined him in quick succession. Simon could see them swimming back toward the island. Then he went to take the wheel from Jenny, who sank down into one of the comfortable chairs with which the pilothouse was furnished and flopped back her head in a near faint.

“Are we really going to Nassau?” she breathed.

“No, but we’ll head that way with all our lights on, and the boys we just left behind will tell Timonaides what we said. Whether he’ll believe it or not is another thing, but it won’t hurt for him to hear about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s watching us right now from some rooftop eyrie. When we’re disappearing towards Nassau I’ll cut all the lights and we’ll circle back toward Freeport.”

The engines were at full power now, and Simon beaded south by the compass. If any ocean-borne pursuit from East Island Villas had been organized it was too late to catch up, particularly since the only boats available were too light and small for open seas.

“Freeport?” Jenny asked.

She was obviously still in a daze.

“You remember Freeport,” Simon said with an amused smile. “Where your plane landed on Grand Bahama. We’ll take a plane out of their first thing in the morning. There’s not much we can do back at the Villas, especially since we wouldn’t have any idea who — if anybody — we could trust. And by this time Timonaides has certainly roused them by radio. I think we’ll enjoy the remainder of our holiday much more someplace else.”

“We’re not going back to the Villas at all?” she asked stupidly.

“If you think I’m going back there and capture a gang of about twenty people with the aid of one hand gun and a kinky girl, you’ve got a mistaken idea of my heroism. I’m brave, but not crazy.”

Jenny’s eyes popped wider open.

“But my clothes are all back there!”

The Saint groaned.

“You almost tempt me to make trite comments about the female mind. Give it a little thought, and you’ll agree that your life is worth more than a closet full of dresses. I’ll take you on a shopping spree as soon as we get to the states.”

Jenny looked at him with exasperation.

“They took my money,” she said.

“They took mine too,” said the Saint, “but Grey Wyler and Halston had quite a bit.”

He showed it to her. Suddenly she laughed, a little hysterically, then got to her feet and hugged him as he stood at the wheel.

“I like you,” she said.

“I like you too,” he answered, “but there’s not much I can do about it for the moment. Why don’t you go down to the galley and get us some of that champagne the hired hands weren’t supposed to get into?”

“What a super idea! I’ll be back in a jiffy,”

She returned with a bottle of Bollinger on ice and told him there was lots of food below.

“Fine. Fix us a midnight snack.”

By the time she brought a platter of caviar, pate, boned pheasant, crackers, and cheeses, the lights of Timonaides’ personal island were only a starlike glimmer in the distance astern.

“We’ve gone far enough on our diversionary course,” Simon said. “He’ll never know where we’ve gone from here.”

He cut off all the running lights, brought the boat about in a wide turn, and set the controls on automatic for a course which would bring them back to the coast of Grand Bahama Island fifteen or twenty miles west of their earlier departure point. With no further immediate need to hold the wheel, he opened the champagne and filled the glasses. The glow of the compass light and the depth indicator, along with the bright moonlight outside provided illumination enough after their eyes had adjusted to it.

“Nothing like not getting killed to give you an appetite, is there?” commented the Saint, munching a caviar-covered cracker which Jenny had popped into his mouth.

“It’s a wonderful feeling,” she said. “Just being alive. I’m just sorry that...”

“What?”

“That we didn’t get Timonaides.”

Simon grinned and finished his first glass of champagne.

“You sound like a real pro,” he said. “You’re sorry we didn’t shoot him, I suppose, and it is regrettable, but I think we’re best off not getting involved with executing people.”

He poured another round of the icy wine.

“We’ve pretty well fouled up his operation,” he said. “Exposing this Death Game business to the light is equivalent to ending its usefulness for him. And also for Wyler and Halston. They probably wouldn’t dare show their faces where we might see them, so Timonaides will most likely shunt them off to some obscure place, possibly try to get some mileage out of them for his money, and then get rid of them. They’d be potentially embarrassing relics of a scheme that failed — and he can’t afford those kinds of living liabilities.”

“But he won’t even go to jail for what he’s done,” Jenny said.

“He’d done a lot worse before we ever met him. A man like that has a positive knack for staying out of jail — or else he never stays out of jail long enough to become a man like that.” Simon had some pate, keeping an eye out for other boats. He saw none. “Not that I wouldn’t like to see a final solution to the Timonaides problem. I think, in fact, that I’ll keep that possibility in the front of my mind till something’s been done about it. In the meanwhile, he’ll stew enough. There’s Manders, who’ll implicate him in a murder. And one of the first things I’ll do when we get to the mainland is put in a call to Inspector Teal and let him know about this end of Timonaides’ operation. Remember, Timonaides isn’t the kind of man who can drop discreetly out of sight very easily. He’s guaranteed that by being so fond of life among the Jet Set. He’ll have to fight these things in the open.”

“Tough,” said Jenny.

They spent most of the ride back to the coast of Grand Bahama rehashing the events of the evening. When they came within a mile or so of the lights of Freeport, Simon took the wheel again and headed east, parallel to the shore, turning on the running lights.

“I’ll pull in till the depth indicator shows we can anchor. In a couple of hours we can go nearer Freeport and head this thing out to sea on automatic pilot in case Timonaides has reported a stolen boat to the police, while we go ashore in the dinghy. The early plane for Miami leaves at five-thirty. I think it’s safer for us to take that than wait around till full daylight.”

Jenny had collected the glasses and scraps of their snack on the tray. She stopped and looked at Simon.

“That still leaves us quite a lot of time out here, doesn’t it?”

The Saint grinned.

“You’re so fond of games — would you like to play cribbage?”