“Here’s de water, boss. Whatcha gonna do wit’ it?”
“Just hold it for me a minute,” said the Saint. He began to cut several inches of insulation from the broken end of the lamp cord. “We are preparing a phylactery against zombies,” he explained.
Hoppy’s jaw sagged.
“We’re preparin’ a what against who?”
“An apotropaion, so to speak,” the Saint elucidated.
Hoppy moved nervously aside as the Saint went to the front door and taped one of the two strands of the lamp cord against the metal door-knob. He watched in silent wonder as the Saint unrolled a length of copper wire, wound the spool end a couple of times around the radiator pipe, and slipped the other end under the door until it projected a foot into the hall outside.
“All right, Hoppy, give me the bottle.”
Simon stepped outside and carefully poured the water on the tile floor in front of his door so that the protruding wire lay in a shallow puddle. He went a couple of paces down the corridor, turned, and studied the approach to the living-room door, then came back.
“Boss,” Hoppy sighed, voicing his perennial complaint. “I don’t get it.”
“You will,” said the Saint.
He fastened the other bared end of the drop cord to the radiator with another strip of adhesive and carefully closed the door. Finally he pushed the plug into a nearby baseboard outlet, and turned to Hoppy. “Well,” he said, “there it is.”
Hoppy stared at the closed door, and his lucubratory processes, oozing like a glutinous stream between narrow banks, at last achieved a spreading delta of cognition. A slow enchanted grin dissolved his facial fog like sunlight on a jungle swamp.
“Chees, boss,” he said in awesome incredulity, “I do get it.”
“Congratulations.”
“In case de zombies you’re expectin’ should touch de doorknob,” Hoppy deduced triumphantly. His eyes were worshipful. “Ya even got de water puddle grounded, huh?”
The Saint laid his hand on Hoppy’s shoulder in an accolade.
“Nothing escapes your eagle eye, does it?”
“Oh, I got experience in dis line, boss,” Mr Uniatz acknowledged deprecatingly. “Once I do a job on a mug’s car wit’ a stick of dynamite wired to de starter. De whole mob says it’s one of de biggest laughs I ever give dem.”
The Saint surveyed his work with an artist’s satisfaction.
“That water grounded to the radiator should lend some authority even to 110 volts — especially if he’s in his stockinged feet.” He turned, picking up the wire, knife, and tape, and headed back towards his bedroom. “Let’s grab some shut-eye while we can. It’ll be daybreak in a few hours.”
Chapter five
It was two hours later when he opened his eyes, instantly and completely awake, with every nerve alive and singing. He lay motionless save for the silent closing of his fingers on the gun at his side, every sense toned to razor keenness, straining to receive consciously whatever it was that had alerted him. From the next bed Hoppy’s snoring rose and fell in majestic rhythm, its pipe-organ vibrato accompanied by a piccolo phrase with every exhalation...
Then he heard it — a faint scratching of metal — and recognised it instantly.
A skeleton key was probing the front door lock.
He was out of bed and on his feet in one smooth soundless motion, and laying a hand on Hoppy’s mouth. The snoring ceased abruptly; Simon swiftly spoke in his ear, and Hoppy’s groggy eruption died aborning. He relaxed, and the Saint removed his hand.
“Listen.”
The faint scratching of metal was barely audible.
Hoppy nodded, one hand scratching for the gun under his pillow, his anticipatory grin almost as luminous as the moonlight that poured into the window.
“De zombies!” he hissed in a resounding whisper that brought Simon’s hand back upon his mouth again.
“Quiet!” the Saint breathed savagely.
There was a brief silence, and it seemed for a moment as if the man working on the door had indeed heard him. Then it came again — a scrape of metal — and suddenly the metallic click of tumblers falling into alignment, and the snick of an opening bolt.
“He’s coming in,” Simon whispered in Hoppy’s ear. “Don’t make a sound or I’ll brain you with this gun butt.”
He took his hand off Hoppy’s mouth and moved with the effortless ease of a cat through the living-room. He could hear the creak of the bed as Hoppy got out and padded after him. They paused by the archway to the entrance hall, staring into the almost darkness, intent on the pale rectangle of the front door.
As they waited there, the Saint couldn’t help feeling that somehow, despite his conviction that this visit rose from his recent conflict with Spangler, it didn’t quite add up. For he thought he knew Spangler’s character pretty thoroughly, and so primitive a motive as simple revenge simply didn’t agree with his knowledge of the man. Revenge for revenge’s sake was a luxury too expensive — and dangerous — to be compatible with Doc Spangler’s conservative nature. The worthy doctor might have better reason later on, but so far the Saint couldn’t imagine him going to so much trouble merely to assuage a sore belly.
There was another moment of silence... Then, without hearing it, but almost as if he sensed a momentary and fractional change in the air pressure, the Saint knew that the front door was starting to open.
Hoppy edged past Simon, as though straining on a leash.
Simultaneously, several things happened in such swift succession that they had the effect of happening almost all at once: a sizzling shower of golden sparks flamed from the door-knob, a wild howl split the silence, there was a mad scramble of slipping feet, the thud of a falling body, the blast of a gunshot, and the rattle of plaster cascading to the floor.
The Saint and Hoppy leaped forward almost on top of the gunman’s yell, with Hoppy ahead of Simon by virtue of his head start.
Simon’s warning cry came too late.
Hoppy’s joyous battle bellow leaped to a yell of consternation as he grabbed the door-knob amid another constellation of sparks bursting about his hand. He leaped backwards, skidding on a rug, and sat down with a cosmic crash in front of the doorway.
The Saint ripped the cord from the electric outlet with one hand, reached over with the other and tried to pull open the door against Hoppy’s obstructing weight.
“Okay, boss, okay!” Hoppy grunted protestingly as Simon rolled him over with a yank at the door.
He scrambled to his feet as the Saint disappeared into the hallway. But even as he snatched open the front door, Simon knew that the quarry had escaped. The “In Use” signal light of the automatic elevator gleamed at him in yellow derision. Hoppy charged past him and skidded to a halt. “Where’d he go, huh? Where’d he go?” he demanded feverishly.
Then he caught the glow of the elevator signal light and whirled for the stairs. The Saint grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Come back, Pluto,” he said disgustedly. “That elevator will be at the bottom before you’ve gone down three flights.”
He dragged Hoppy back into the apartment as a murmur of alarmed voices, with a few doors opening and closing, drifted faintly up the stairwell. Muttering to himself, Hoppy joined the Saint in the darkness before the living-room window and stared down at the moon-silvered street before the building entrance far below. Suddenly, as the realisation that the would-be raider would probably be leaving by that exit dawned upon him, a vast feral grin spread over his face. He raised his gun.
The Saint noted the car parked before the building, a little distance behind his — a dark sedan that hadn’t been there when he’d arrived there that night. He caught a glimpse of hands in the moonlight — hands that carried an odd sparkle — resting on the visible portion of the steering wheel.