Saint and the Fiction Makers (15 page)

‘But can you come up with some authentic-looking identification papers?’

‘Of course. S.W.O.R.D. can arrange anything. The papers will be ready in time for us to make the visit this morning before noon.’

‘This morning?’ Simon asked.

‘It’s 2 a.m. now, Mr. Klein. You’ve kept us up late.’

‘Then shall we get some sleep?’ suggested the Saint.

‘Not before I impress you with what will happen if you try to escape again. Miss Little, over here.’

‘Now, wait a minute,’ Simon began.

He stepped forward, but Monk caught his arm with all the gentle finesse of the pincers of a giant crane clamping down on a boulder.

‘I’m not going to hurt her,’ Warlock said. ‘This will only be an edifying demonstration.’

Nero Jones stepped up beside Amity and nodded towards the metal slab. Amity cast a pleading glance over her shoulder at the Saint.

‘It’s all right,’ he told her, hoping his words were true. ‘He’s got no reason to do anything to you.’

‘Right,’ Warlock oozed.

He welcomed Amity with the unpleasant smile of a charlatan coaxing a reluctant subject on to the stage for a demonstration of hypnotism.

‘Get on the table,’ Jones said bluntly.

‘You—you shouldn’t be doing this to me!’ she said.

Simon admired her for not already having told them she was the real Amos Klein. He was prepared to tell the truth himself at the first sign that she was in danger.

‘What are you up to, Warlock?’ he asked. ‘I’ve told you I’ll co-operate.’

‘Just a warning. Nobody gets hurt.’

Amity submitted then. At Warlock’s direction, she lay back on the steel table, keeping her frightened eyes on the Saint’s as if even that contact with him gave her comfort.

‘If you hurt her, Warlock …’

The Saint did not need to finish his threat. The cold, hard edge of his voice said enough. Warlock, however, did not react with any sign of uneasiness. He was like an infant fumbling eagerly with a new plaything as he pushed shut the metal rings around the girl’s wrists and ankles. Amity lay spread-eagled, the short chains giving her almost no room for movement. She raised her head and looked along the length of her body to be sure that Simon was still there. He gave her an encouraging nod, which was all the help he could manage under the circumstances.

Warlock went to a control panel which sloped down from the wall at waist level a few yards from the steel slab.

‘This invention of mine has several uses,’ he said. ‘Some wouldn’t be understood easily by anyone without scientific training. The particular use it will be put to if you double-cross us, Mr. Klein, can be understood by anybody.’

Warlock pushed several buttons, and from the ceiling above the steel table something resembling a giant X-ray apparatus lowered itself with a soft hum and came to a standstill five feet above Amity’s body. Its thick glass lens was like the huge protuberant eye of some Cyclopean monster from another world. The eye was surrounded by a cluster of dull black cones whose lower, smaller ends were open, pointing down at Amity.

‘Are you trying to scare her to death?’ Simon demanded.

‘I’m trying to scare you,’ Warlock said. ‘I want you to have a vivid idea of exactly what will happen if you do anything to cause us trouble.’

He moved a short lever on the sloping panel and the device which had been centred directly over Amity’s body moved horizontally down the length of the table towards her feet until it was aimed at the bare surface of the slab between her ankles.

‘I’ve combined multiple laser beams with ultra-sonic sound,’ Warlock went on. ‘The cones surrounding the laser produce the sound. In combination, focussed sound and light rays are capable of fantastic things. My friend here has great possibilities as a weapon.’ Warlock stroked the instrument panel as if it were a pet cat. ‘Of course the many ways it could incapacitate and destroy a human being are hypothetical … as yet. Nero, give me one of your shoes and start the accelerator.’

The pale-eyed man squinted at Warlock for an instant and then grudgingly took off one of his stylishly pointed black shoes and handed it to him. As Jones then went to a second central panel, Warlock placed the shoe on the steel table between Amity Little’s ankles.

‘This will only be a demonstration. Don’t be alarmed. Nero, please …’

There was a throbbing sound from the ceiling, and the device above Amity began to whine with rising pitch. Warlock fiddled with some control knobs.

‘First you’ll see an effect of the ultra-sonic beams, and then the laser,’ he said excitedly, raising his voice in order to be heard. ‘In real use, the table could be slowly raised in temperature until it reached a red glow. Now I’m directing all the energy only at Nero’s shoe.’

‘Couldn’t you let me up from here?’ Amity called to him over the increasing sound of the machine.

Warlock, his eyes gleaming, ignored her.

‘The accelerator, Nero.’

Jones manipulated a larger lever, and the sound from the ceiling rose to a high-pitched scream that made the Saint’s skull feel in danger of shattering.

‘Now!’ Warlock cried.

He plunged his finger down on a button, and there was a sound like lightning splitting the air before the deep roar of thunder. The shiny black shoe disintegrated into a heap of something like dark ash.

‘The molecular bonds have been destroyed by the sound waves,’ shouted Warlock. ‘Now the multi-laser beam!’

As the turbine-like whine associated with the ultra-sonic sound abruptly faded, there was a new, throbbing noise that surged rapidly to a climax. The lights in the cellar dimmed to a candle-glow as the power apparently was sapped by the laser apparatus.

‘The power of light!’ Warlock exulted as he bent to press a new button. ‘The death ray!’

A brilliant red beam materialized between the Cyclops eye above Amity and the remains of the shoe on the table between her legs. The leather flashed like magnesium and was gone.

Within a few seconds the cellar lights were normal and all sounds had stopped coming from the machinery. The Saint saw Amity’s body, which had been stiff with terror, relax as she heaved a great sigh. Warlock was laughing, all but bouncing up and down with glee. Simon looked at him with blue eyes that might have been taken from the heart of an iceberg.

‘I didn’t mind you so much when I could think of you as some kind of an overgrown child playing with his overgrown toys,’ he said in a low steady voice. ‘But it’s a different thing when you start playing with people I like.’

Warlock was still openly intoxicated with the power of his invention. His face was red and refulgent with perspiration. His jowls quivered with nervous excitement.

‘Luckily your likes and dislikes aren’t of much concern to me any more, Mr. Klein,’ he shrilled. He pulled a lever and the rings which had held Amity’s wrists and ankles flew open. ‘But your talents are very important. So go get some rest. You have two days to show us the way into Hermetico.’

4

The morning was crisp and clear. Frug, in dark jacket and shiny-brimmed cap, looked as if he might have been a chauffeur all his life. The big limousine, too, looked as if it never had done duty for anything less than a general or ambassador. Its marred window had been replaced, and it bore no trace of its use in the Saint’s abortive escape during the night. A small Swiss flag fluttered above one fender as Frug’s gloved hands steered the big machine into a drive marked PRIVATE— HERMETICO.

The Saint and Warlock sat in the spacious rear seat of the limousine. They were smartly dressed in dark suits. Warlock had gone so far as to affect pinstriped trousers and a white carnation in his lapel. Twin Homburgs lay on both men’s knees. They wore calfskin gloves.

‘You make a perfect gnome of Zurich, Mr. W,’ said Simon, ‘but I feel like a nitwit. Is this really the way you think diplomats dress when they go out on business before lunch?’

Warlock accepted the dig in silence. The private drive led uphill across a stony, treeless field. Ahead were fences and the low concrete dome of Hermetico’s surface structure.

‘You do need me,’ the Saint continued amiably. ‘Apparently your small persistent brain has been nourished on nothing but comic books and grade B movies. We’ll be lucky to get out of this escapade with our lives, much less with any information about this fortress.’

‘Don’t make any false moves and everything will be all right,’ Warlock said. ‘You know what’ll happen to Miss Little if you try anything smart.’

Simon looked at his companion with a despairing shake of his head.

‘Even your dialogue’s hopelessly corny,’ he said. ‘It’s not only out of date—it’s absolutely pre-war. James Cagney would feel completely at home with you.’

‘Be quiet,’ said Warlock.

Frug had pulled the limousine directly up to the main gate, ignoring instructions to park in a paved lot to the right where several dozen cars stood in rows.

‘Oh, well,’ Simon said, settling back against the luxurious upholstery, ‘if we fail, we can always become a music hall comedy team.’

‘We won’t fail,’ Warlock replied. ‘Frug, blow the horn.’

Frug blew the horn twice, and then the trio in the car waited. Immediately in front of the limousine’s nose was a triple-layer steel mesh gate reinforced with diagonal rods. On one side of the gate, like a guardhouse defending the smaller pedestrian entrance, which was also sealed with its own gate, was a windowless concrete kiosk about the height of a man. A sign on the larger gate said NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS. Several other signs bore smaller print.

‘The horn again, Frug.’

Simon was immediately impressed with the apparent absence of all life on the other side of the wire fence, but within half a minute Frug’s honking had brought a blue-uniformed guard out of the central building and along the cement walk to the gate. There was a pistol in a holster at his hip.

‘Go speak to him,’ Warlock told Frug. ‘Just as we planned—tell him we’re expected.’

Frug got out of the car and spoke to the guard through the gate. There was a good deal of gesturing and pointing. The guard pointed to the concrete kiosk. Frug pointed at the building. The guard pointed to the kiosk again. Frug pointed at the limousine. The guard gestured over his own shoulder at the building. Frug threw up his hands and strode back to the car. He put his head in the window.

‘The guard says we’ve got to have passes to put in a slot in that concrete thing.’

‘I know that, you idiot!’ Warlock said nervously. ‘Did you tell him we have an appointment?’

‘Right, but he says people with appointments get cards to put in the slot.’

‘Tell him we didn’t know about the cards,’ Simon suggested. ‘Tell him we’ve just flown into this country without publicity, and that we understood our intermediary would have made an appointment.’

‘Our what?’ asked Frug.

‘Intermediary,’ Simon repeated. ‘Tell him somebody was supposed to have made the appointment for us earlier this morning. Ask if we can speak to the manager.’

‘Whatever you say.’

Frug went back to the gate, and a moment later the guard nodded and took a telephone from a box on the pole at the edge of the cement walk.

‘He’s calling,’ Frug told the Saint and Warlock.

‘So that’s what he’s doing,’ said the Saint with bland sarcasm.

A moment later, a tall stoop-shouldered man in a grey business suit came hurriedly out of the central building and headed down the walk. Simon and Warlock stepped from the car, settled their Homburgs on their heads, and went to meet him at the gate.

‘My name is Thomas,’ the man in the grey suit said to them through the triple-layer wire mesh. ‘I’m the assistant manager.’

There followed a lengthy interchange full of urgency, apology, and explanation. Assistant manager Thomas did not seem to doubt the identity or truthfulness of his visitors, particularly when he was given to understand that they represented a group of potential customers. They had only half a day, they said, on their way from Zurich to New York, and it would indeed be a tragedy if the stickiness of some minor bureaucratic cog interfered with a deal which—if they found Hermetico suitable to their purposes—might involve the storage of millions of pounds. They showed their credentials with the explanation that their mission must remain, for the moment, entirely confidential. They wished only to see how Hermetico facilities compared with those of its competitors. If security was as foolproof as it was reputed to be, then there could scarcely be any danger in a pair of prospective customers having a look at the premises.

The word ‘competitors’ had a visibly stimulating effect on Mr. Thomas. As soon as Simon and Warlock, as Messrs. Dubray and Challons, had rested their case, he hastened to assure them that Hermetico had no competitors.

‘There’s no other place in the world like this one, gentlemen, as you’ll see for yourselves. Of course we’re delighted for prospective customers to look over the premises.’ Thomas reached inside his jacket and produced two red plastic cards the size of ordinary playing cards. ‘Each of you put one of these in the slot there on the gate control station, then come right in.’

The Saint and Warlock in turn inserted their cards in the thin mouth of the concrete kiosk, which flashed a pair of green eyes and whistled. The whistle, as printed instructions on the device explained, signalled the opening of the pedestrian gate for one person only. Automatic sensing devices would sound an alarm if two or more persons per whistle attempted to enter.

‘No human guards?’ Warlock asked when he and Simon had joined Thomas on the inner side of the gate. ‘Ezz eet poh-ssible?’

Warlock was attempting a kind of amateur play-actor’s stage French accent which affected the Saint’s sensitive ear like a chorus of laryngitic parrots singing in Japanese. He was amazed that Mr. Thomas did not immediately cry ‘fake’ and conjure up a troupe of police officers.

‘It’s quite possible,’ Thomas replied to Warlock’s question, once he had made out the words. ‘Automated electronic devices can’t be bribed, never sleep, never drink, and can’t make mistakes. We’re a thousand times safer here with our automated security system than we’d ever be surrounded by guards with machine guns. For example, I must warn you immediately not to leave this concrete path that runs from the gate to the building … Not that you’d very likely be tempted to hurdle the fence anyway.’