The Saint and the People Importers (15 page)

“What are you talking about?” he gasped. “I don’t know anything about it!”

He started to close the door, but before he could do it the Saint pushed into the room.

“Then you’d better listen,” he said. “I know all about Kalki and Fowler and Shortwave now-and also about Mahmud’s fake broken arm. Incidentally, this wasn’t Mahmud’s lucky day. You’ll have to start looking for a new waiter.”

Haroon was shaking his head violently, as if to convince the world and the gods that he was not really there and not really hearing anything at all. He closed the door at the mention of Mahmud’s name, though, to shut himself and the Saint off from any prying ears outside the flat.

“Mahmud?” he mumbled. “What happened to him?”

“He’s booked for a long sea voyage,” said Simon. “But more to the point is your future, which is not going to be terribly rosy if you can’t explain to me and the police why you’ve been letting Kalki and Fowler use your beanery as a clubhouse.”

Haroon wrung his bejewelled hands, creating the clear impression that at any moment he might fall to his knees and dissolve in tears.

“I didn’t do anything!” he protested frantically. “They made me. They would have killed me if I’d told anybody or tried to stop them!”

“I’m inclined to believe you,” Simon admitted. “So do you propose to repent now and help me nail those creeps or shall we take a ride to Scotland Yard?”

Haroon looked less actively distraught and more despairing.

“You work for the police?” he asked.

“No, but I don’t mind giving them a helping hand when it suits me. Which way would you like it?”

Haroon’s hands dropped limply to his widely separated sides like a pair of discarded rubber toys.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked weakly.

Simon smiled and put a hand on the other man’s shoulder-a touch which became a firm grip as he steered Haroon out of the door and on to the stairs.

“I don’t want you to do anything that you’re not already good at. I have a very thin friend downstairs and I want you to help fatten him up. After that you can start preparing a feast to celebrate our final victory over Kalki the Conquered and Fowler the Foundered.”

5
HOW SHORTWAVE ENJOYED
HIS BREAKFAST, AND THE
SAINT USED A CONVENIENT
CELLAR

Abdul Haroon preceded the Saint down the stairs to the street like an unwilling hippo.

“I’ve parked in back,” the Saint told him. “My friend is a bit shy.”

“I carry only the key to the front,” Haroon replied. “We can go through.”

He walked the few feet to the main door of his restaurant flinging quick glances into the street and over his shoulder as if he were a fat schoolboy sneaking into a forbidden pantry.

“What are you so worried about?” Simon asked. “None of the baddies knows I’m here-and anyway, I’ll protect you if you prove to deserve it.”

Haroon bent stiffly forward and unlocked the glass door so amply identified in gilt lettering as the portal of the Golden Crescent.

“You cannot know what a torment my life has been since these people began to interfere in things and threaten me,” he said in a low voice. “But what could I do? You have seen how they treat people who do not co-operate. Come in, come in …”

He held the door open and closed it quickly behind him as soon as the Saint had entered. The restaurant was dim because of the thick colourless curtains that had been drawn across the plate-glass windows. Haroon threw the bolt, and the shade which covered the door swayed a few times, sending a wing of sunlight fluttering across the wall before the room settled into a kind of undersea gloom again.

“But it’s only people who don’t co-operate who ever stop rats like Kalki and Fowler,” Simon said. “On the other hand, as I’m sure you must have said to yourself, who wants to be a dead hero? How much did they pay you?”

Abdul Haroon’s eyes grew extraordinarily round and whitely large.

“They paid me nothing! They paid me nothing! They threatened to frighten away my customers … to kill me! Ali tried to go against them and you know what happened to him!”

“All right, calm down,” the Saint said in a not especially soothing voice. “Let’s go on back.”

Haroon stalled when he reached the passageway which led through from the dining room to the kitchen.

“But you haven’t told me anything,” he protested. “Who is there? What do you want with me?”

“I’ve told you: I have an undernourished friend, and a good dose of your curry will do him worlds of good. Let’s go bring him in.”

Simon prodded Haroon’s overflowing waistline with a stiff finger, which set him in motion again through the kitchen and into the back room where Mahmud had writhed on the floor in mock agony the night before. It was dark because there were no windows, until Haroon switched on a light, and the place smelled as fragrant of spices as it had the first time Simon had entered it. The perfumes of exotic gastronomy had an ineradicable way of permeating the premises of their preparation around and beyond all human tumult.

“Open up,” Simon insisted, and Haroon finally fumbled a large key from a nail on the wall and unfastened the back door with it.

The Pakistani blinked at the morning sunlight, and then blinked again with shock as he seemingly recognised the car which was parked outside.

“Where did you get that?” he blurted.

“All things will be revealed to you in the day of their ripeness,” the Saint said poetically. “I suppose you could classify this little buggy as the spoils of war.”

He left Haroon gaping from the doorway and opened the car to greet a highly relieved Tammy Rowan. She caught his hands and let herself be helped out of the car.

“I’m so glad to see you!” she gasped. “He was starting to thump around back there something frightful …” She stared dubiously at the bulky form of Abdul Haroon for the first time. “Oh …”

“This is our ally, at least for the moment,” the Saint said. “Mr. Haroon meet Mademoiselle X.”

Haroon automatically half-formed a smile before abandoning the effort for a sickly droop.

“I have met the lady,” he said disconsolately. “She writes for a newspaper.”

“But she isn’t the special guest I was referring to,” the Saint went on with unflappable good cheer. “Would you mind lending your useful waistline to block the view from the end of the alley while I unload the guest of honour. Tammy, you could add your own svelte silhouette over there, just in case any early bird waddles by with his eyes open enough to notice anything.”

Tammy Rowan complied with the most pleasing competence, and herself shoved Haroon into quivering cooperation, while Simon opened the trunk of the car.

“What is it?” Haroon croaked, seeing the blanket-covered shape.

The Saint grabbed Shortwave’s feet and pulled him half out of the car. The ex-jockey’s scuffed brown shoes were all of him that showed from underneath the covering.

“You might ask who is it,” Simon said, “but on second thought what probably is more appropriate. How about lending me a hand.”

Haroon, feet attached by some invisible force to the threshold, tried to flap the whole situation away with both hands.

“A dead man?” he twittered. “A body? In heaven’s name, take it away!”

“It’s not dead yet,” Simon said. “Observe.”

He kicked one of Shortwave’s invisible shins, bringing forth a definitely animate squawk from the opposite end of the blanket.

“No, no!” Haroon cried. “I have nothing to do with this. I’m only a poor man trying to-“

“Trying to straddle the fence till he sees which side is safest to jump on.” The Saint’s arm suddenly shot out and his fingers encircled one of Haroon’s wrists like steel clamps and rearranged him in screening position. “So let’s get it straight, Humpty Dumpty,” he said, firing the words at point blank range into the fat man’s frightened face. “You’re going to jump on to my side or you’re going to have a great fall that’ll splash you halfway across Leicester Square. Now stand still while I lug in this new delicacy for your menu.”

Abdul Haroon stood back while Simon lifted the blanket-swaddled shape effortlessly under one arm and carted it through the back door, and then followed with an alacrity that would have made a gazelle stare with admiration. He grabbed Shortwave’s ankles, which happened to be colour ully adorned with bright purple socks, and took off in reverse while Tammy ran after them.

“Whoa!” Simon said when they were halfway through the kitchen, and ungently dropped his major share of the load. “Let’s stop and unwrap him. Lock that door, please, Tammy.”

While she was taking care of the outside door the Saint pulled the blanket off Shortwave, so that Haroon was able to identify him for the first time and gave a memorable imitation of a man discovering a scorpion in his cornflakes.

“Take him away!” he finally managed to gasp.

“I’m afraid he’s yours to have and to hold for the duration, Abdul,” the Saint said.

Shortwave’s venomous eyes darted from Simon’s to Haroon’s face, Haroon avoided meeting them with his own almost tearful orbs.

“The duration?” he quavered.

“The duration of this little caper-until I’ve got Shortwave’s friends bundled up as comfortably as he is.” Simon looked down at his robe-swathed captive. His tone changed to one of reasonable persuasion. “And now, Shortwave, I want you to cleanse your black little soul a bit by telling us exactly what your friends Kalki and Fowler will be up to this evening-and exactly where. I’m going to take the gag out of your mouth and let the truth flow unimpeded into our grateful ears.”

He stooped down and with one hand jerked the knot out of the necktie and whipped it and the handkerchief from between Shortwave’s teeth.

Shortwave then delivered himself of a single terse phrase which turned Tammy’s cheeks red and made coarsely clear his total disinterest in co-operating with the Saint.

“In that case,” Simon said, imperturbably, “we’ll have to try to win your heart through kindness.” He straightened up. “Do you like curry?”

“No,” snarled Shortwave.

“Good,” the Saint rejoined genially. “Abdul, how about warming up a nice mess of your native pottage for our guest?”

Haroon looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“I do not understand.”

“I want you to make some curry for Shortwave so hot that it will sear the soot off his insides, to borrow a figure of speech from his boss. I want you to concoct something so impeccably fiery that his tongue will thaw and babble like a mountain stream. I’m sure you have some leftovers we can fix up especially for the occasion?”

Haroon turned up his palms, turned down the corners of his mouth, and nodded. He was already on his way to the refrigerator when he thought again and stopped.

“Everything is made fresh every day,” he claimed.

“I’m sure you could violate your high standards as a special favour to our friend. There must be a few tidbits lying around from last night.”

Haroon turned expressionlessly to the refrigerator, opened it, and brought out a large metal pot which he set on the stove. He lifted the lid and looked inside.

“Lime-pickle sauce,” he said.

“But probably not curried enough for Shortwave’s taste,” Simon said. “He likes it absolutely molten.”

“I hate it,” Shortwave said.

“Then you won’t quibble about the seasoning, will you?” said the Saint. “Bring on the curry powder, Abdul. Bring on the red pepper. We’re going to give this prodigal son a welcome he’ll never forget.”

2

While the sauce bubbled on the stove, Abdul Haroon ladelled into it a number of tablespoons of chili powder and cayenne. Even he, with his cultural tolerance for culinary pyrotechnics, looked somewhat appalled at what he had wrought.

“Enough extra?” he asked.

“Let’s not be miserly,” Simon said. “Here.”

He took down a bottle of tabasco sauce from one of the shelves and dumped its entire remaining contents into the simmering stew. Haroon looked at the empty bottle and at the concoction in the pan and then said something which the Saint found charming in its hushed simplicity:
“That will be very hot.”

“Yes it will,” Simon agreed. “If you remember the recipe, it might make you a new reputation.”

He bent over Shortwave, caught some of the loops of rope which held him, and lifted him to a standing position. “Now come along, Marconi, and prepare to have your tongue loosened.”

“You’ll have to untie my feet,” Shortwave said.

He was still playing the defiant little tough guy, a role he would have had to be fairly good in to survive in the circles he frequented. The Saint had felt sure he was not the type to cave in and start squealing his head off at the first threat of pressure. He was no rock of Gibraltar, but he had probably taken enough punishment before in his life not to stand in awe of it, and his natural inclination to keep his trap shut would be reinforced by the fear of Kalki and Fowler that everybody who came into contact with the organisation developed very quickly.

The Saint hoped that some exotic and unexpected form of persuasion might have a more telling effect than conventional threats of death. Although Simon had always given wide latitude to his personal interpretation of the justification of means by ends, he was not an adherent of the thumbscrew and hot-iron school of winning friends.

The use of fists or more unpleasant implements on a man whose hands were tied was not in his repertoire.

“If you can’t walk, hop,” he told Shortwave, and pulled him towards the dining room.

Shortwave bounding along beside him like a one-legged kangaroo until they reached the first of the ghostly white tables in the semi-light of the public eating room.

“Sit,” Simon said.

He shoved Shortwave into a chair and arranged him in a more or less orthodox sitting position when he threatened to topple on to the floor.

“What are you gonna d-d-d-d-do?” Shortwave asked.

“It’s what you’re going to do that’s important,” the Saint replied. “You’re going to sing for your breakfast. I want to know how I can find Kalki and Fowler.”

“I d-d-d-dunno,” said Shortwave. “They d-d-d-d-on’t tell me nothing.”

He tried to sound unconcerned, as if such matters as the whereabouts of his bosses were so far from his ken that it had never even occurred to him to think of the question before. The Saint bent down, and the dangerous cobalt brightness of his eyes sliced through the other man’s forced bravado.