The Saint in Trouble (17 page)

His lighthearted description of Parton’s bodyguard as a gorilla suddenly seemed too accurate for comfort. The man filled the doorway, completely obscuring the interior of the room, and had to twist his body sideways to allow his shoulders through the opening. The Saint’s sinewy seventy-four inches seemed insignificant compared to the man he faced. Simon guessed he was nearer six feet nine than eight, and on the heavier side of three hundred pounds.

But he did not spare the time to enquire if his estimate was correct. When it came to giving away that kind of weight and reach, Simon Templar’s interpretation of sportsmanship and the Queensberry Rules was uninhibitedly elastic. Without an instant’s hesitation, his foot streaked upwards and buried itself in the other’s midriff.

The man grunted and sagged, his arms folded across his stomach, and as his head bowed forward the Saint moved in to hit him exactly as if he had been a punching bag with a lightning succession of blows-a left to one side of the jaw, a right to the other, and an uppereut to the chin to complete the symmetry.

Demonstrating the verity of the old adage that the bigger they are the harder they fall, the colossus stiffened and fell forward, with a kind of aggrieved expression on his face, hitting the floor with a force that seemed to shake the whole house.

Slowly the Saint came down off his toes, in no doubt that it would be many minutes before his opponent returned to an awareness of the world. He stepped over the body and joined Leila on the stairs.

She leant close to his ear and whispered: “Very efficient.”

“Thank you,” he murmured modestly.

is voice was almost at its normal level, and as they climbed the stairs he made little further effort to mask the sound of their progress, which he felt reasonably sure would now be attributed to movement of the immobilized bodyguard.

Three doors led from the landing above the hall, and the clanking of machinery indicated the one they required.

Sammy Parton turned around as he heard the door open, and froze in startlement as the Saint and Leila entered. Simon switched off the small printing press that had been making the noise and snapped his fingers in front of the forger’s face.

“Wake up, Sammy! Anybody would think you weren’t pleased to see us.”

Parton stepped back, still staring at his two uninvited guests. He was small and fat, with a pointed face and sparse grey hair that brought to mind an ageing, overfed rat.

” ‘Ow did you get in ‘ere?” he demanded stupidly.

“We came in through a window,” answered the Saint, as if to any normal question. “Your pet gorilla thought we shouldn’t disturb you, but we managed to persuade him not to interfere.”

Parton finally made a partial recovery.

“Orl right, Templar,” he growled. “Wot d’yer want?”

“So you do remember me,” said the Saint happily. “How very nice. And after all this time, too. How long has it been, Sammy? Three years? Four?”

Five. And I ain’t likely to forget, am I?”

“I suppose not. But you did get remission?”

Parton drew a packet of cigarets from the pocket of his ink-stained overalls and lit one.

“So wot do yer want?” he repeated. “I’m clean this time.”

Simon smiled as his gaze travelled around the dirty print room and even dirtier printer, but there was no cordiality in his eyes.

“I wouldn’t mind a couple of tickets for the cup final next year,” he replied. “But failing that, just the answer to a simple question.”

“Then you’ve come to the wrong bloke.”

“You can’t say that till you’ve seen the question,” argued the Saint. He turned to Leila. “Show him.”

Leila held up the picture of Yasmina and Hakim, and the forger was too slow to hide the recognition in his eyes.

“So thanks for the answer,” Simon remarked. “Now, where is it?”

Where’s what?”

The top drawer of the desk that Parton was standing next to was slightly open, and the little man’s hand was slowly edging towards it. The Saint affected not to notice the movement as he pressed on with his interrogation.

The passport that you are so artistically creating for the gent in the photo,” he said.

“I dunno wot yer talkin’ about,”

Parton insisted stubbornly. His fingers had reached the lip of the drawer. “You come in ‘ere… break in ‘ere…” Parton stepped forward, putting his body between the drawer and the Saint. It was a perfectly natural move, and it was almost a pity to spoil the performance.

The Saint’s hand landed squarely in Parton’s chest, and as the little man staggered backwards, Simon’s right foot kicked the drawer closed. Parton squealed as his fingers were trapped.

Simon eased the pressure sufficiently to allow the other to remove his hand but not to extract the gun he had been groping for. While Parton massaged his bruised fingers, the Saint retrieved the automatic, removed the magazine, ejected the cartridge in the firing chamber, and tossed the weapon into a wastepaper basket.

“Any more tricks like that, Sammy,” he warned, “and I shall get upset. Now, where’s the passport? Or do I have to tear this rat hole apart and you with it?”

The forger’s eyes burned with hate, but there was a lift of triumph in his voice.

“Go ahead,” he jeered. “Enjoy yourself. It won’t do you a bit of good. It ain’t under this roof.”

“I see,” Simon deduced. “So when a job’s finished, you put it in a safe place where the client can’t come and pick it up with a gun instead of cash.”

Parton puffed sullenly at his cigaret without replying.

“All right,” said the Saint. “The passport’s ready. You’ve said as much. Now I want the place and date of delivery.”

“Templar, some day you’ll get it through your head that I don’t grass on customers.”

Leila stepped forward, and Parton turned to give her his full attention for the first time.

“Suppose I buy this man’s passport from you for double what he would pay?” she asked.

Parton shook his head as if he was genuinely sorry to disappoint her.

“Lady, I do that and I’m a goner. This ain’t the usual run of client.”

The Saint’s voice came low and hard: “Yes, he’s a killer. But then you knew that, didn’t you?”

The little fat man was sweating, torn between fears of what the Saint might do if he refused to answer and what others would certainly do if he did.

“Templar, put yourself in my place. A bloke such as you describe orders a passport. I don’t talk about it. If anything goes wrong at the market tomorrow when I make the drop, I’ll be gettin’ measured for a coffin.”

“Which market, Sammy?” Simon pounced on the word remorselessly.

Parton wiped the sweat from his forehead and lit a new ciga-ret from the butt of the old one.

“Market? Did I say market? Just leave me alone, will you? Clear off and leave me alone!”

The Saint’s sensitive ears picked up sounds of movement in the hall below that could only have come from one source. Par-ton obviously heard them too, and his confidence began to return.

“You’d better get out of here, Templar, while yer still can,” he threatened.

The Saint smiled, and his hand reached across and patted the other’s cheek in a mockery of affection.

“Thanks for the help, Sammy,” he responded. “We’ll see you around.”

He turned towards the door, but Leila stood in the way without moving.

“Surely,” she protested. “You’re not…”

Simon shook his head.

“No, I’m not. Staying for Goliath, that is. Not until we can book Wembley Stadium and sell tickets. But here and now, there’s nothing more in it for us. Believe me.”

He took her by the arm and led her out of the room and down the stairs. The bodyguard was sitting with his back against a wall, gingerly feeling his jaw and shaking his head muzzily. He glared up at them vengefully, but was still in no condition to make any move to stop them as the Saint found the door to the shop, took Leila through it, unlocked the front door, and led them out into the street.

Leila sat in prickly silence as he headed the car back towards the West End. He could feel the anger building up inside her, and tried to dampen the fuse.

“Think it through a bit further before you blow your top, darling,” he said quietly. “The passport isn’t there, and short of tying up Goliath and sticking pins under Sammy’s fingernails we couldn’t have found out how it’s to be delivered. But if we could have made Sammy tell us, the delivery would have been off. As it is, we know he’ll be meeting Hakim tomorrow, and Hakim is the guy we really want. We’ll just have to make sure that we’re there when they get together.”

“You are the guide,” she retorted coldly. “I am forced to count on you to make certain that we are there.”

The suspicion remained in her voice, and confirmed him in a mildly malicious decision not to dispel it by going into details.

Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “I shall.”

They completed the drive without speaking again. The Saint was thinking about other things. He was quite satisfied with what they had achieved that night, and was perfectly content to let the morrow wait for itself. Hakim, Masrouf, and even Leila were far from uppermost in his thoughts when he turned the Hirondel into the mews.

The cul-de-sac was lit only by a solitary lamp at the far end, and he was into it before he saw the station wagon outside his house, facing towards him. Even so, its identity took a second to register, and by then it was too late.

He stamped on the brake as something shattered the glass of his sitting room window. The station wagon leapt forward and came swerving past them just as a terrific explosion blew out the rest of the front ground-floor windows.

7

As the station wagon careered past them he had barely a glimpse of two swarthy faces in it-Khaldun, probably, in the driver’s seat, his head stretched forward over the wheel, while the man beside him, looking back over his shoulder at the destruction he had caused, could have been Masrouf.

Leila Zabin moved with startling speed, reacting to the situation with reflexes sharpened by intensive training. While the Hirondel was still rocking to a standstill, her hand dived into her purse and a small automatic was in her grasp by the time it righted itself. Before the Saint could stop her, she was out of the car and taking two-handed aim. She fired as soon as her outstretched arms reached the level of her shoulders, but could only crack off two hasty rounds as the station wagon turned the corner.

The Saint threw himself out of the car and grabbed her around the waist as she began to sprint for the opening.

“Don’t be a fool,” he snapped. “You’ll never catch them now.”

She shook him off but made no move to continue her pursuit. Slowly she lowered the gun.

“For God’s sake put that thing away,” he said.

One or two windows overlooking the mews were opening, and Leila saw the sense of his advice. She pushed the automatic into the waistband of her skirt, where her coat would cover it. Nevertheless, whether from timidity or the apathy of the big city, there was as yet no rash of inquisitive neighbours to gawp at whatever the big bang might have produced to gawp at.

imon realised that as loud as the detonation had seemed to him, because he had been so close and seen its immediate effect, anyone a little farther away might have dismissed it, perhaps wishfully, as merely an especially loud backfire or a major collision of vehicles. But in retrospect he was now fairly sure that he could tell what it had been: an ordinary hand grenade.

y that time he was opening the door of the house, with Leila close behind him.

The bomb had gone off near the middle of the room, fortunately in an area where surrounding armchairs and a couch had absorbed the brunt of its havoc. This had not entirely saved the walls and ceiling from being pockmarked by fragments of flying metal, the shattering of some ornaments and picture frames, and the gouging in the carpet of a shallow, smouldering crater which no shampooing and weaving service was ever going to restore. All the same, the blast had not been severe enough to cause any radical structural damage.

The Saint stood completely still as he surveyed the debris through the dust and smoke that lingered in the air. There was a strange, unnatural calm about him that was somehow more frightening than a torrent of threats against those responsible could ever have been. As far as he was concerned, there could be no more standing on the sidelines. The conflict of tribes and ideologies about which he had previously felt only a biased neutrality was suddenly of secondary importance. Now his own home had been violated. Furniture could be quickly replaced, and surfaces patched up, but the savage invasion of his most private territory had created a personal debt that could only be personally repaid.

There was also another person to think of-such a recent and secondary addition to his concerns that the Saint had momentarily forgotten him.

Yakovitz!” Leila’s tensely anxious voice was his reminder.

“Yakovitz?” Simon echoed her mechanically.

There was certainly no trace of her subordinate in the shattered living room, which could have been a hopeful sign. And then a low moan, hardly above a whimper, came from the kitchen.

Yakovitz was lying face down on the kitchen floor in a litter of broken crockery and overturned utensils. As the Saint knelt down and felt for his pulse, he stirred and opened his eyes. He shook his head slowly and pulled himself up until he was half sitting, half kneeling.

“Take it easy,” said the Saint. “Keep still.”

His fingers gently probed the other’s body, but Yakovitz didn’t flinch. Satisfied that there was no serious injury, he soaked a towel and tried to wipe away the dust and stains from the man’s face, but Yakovitz took it away and did it himself.

“I am all right,” he growled. “I was only knocked-out.”

Apparently he had been brewing himself some coffee when the grenade smashed through the window, and enough of the blast had come through the open doorway to throw him across the kitchen, and he had hit his head as he fell. Aside from one or two scratches, he had suffered nothing worse than a mild concussion.

Simon helped him back to the living room and into one of the still serviceable armchairs.