The Saint was on his feet in an instant while Salvadore, disoriented as much from the chemicals in his system as from his sudden burst of stressful exercise, had difficulty scrambling as far as all fours. It took only a micro-second for Simon to realize that this room was also without guests. The Saint, as much as he hated admitting it, had been momentarily outwitted by a consummate scoundrel. Simon quickly delineated his immediate options and listed them as limited. A headfirst dive through the second floor window was the next best thing to suicide, and the Saint did not come here to die. There was no advantage in escape without the boys, nor was there success to his visit unless he could exercise significant influence over Alisdare. If the recipients of Salvadore’s summons were no better blessed in physique and agility than their master, it was still possible for Simon to gain the upper hand. An immediate assault upon Alisdare’s arriving reinforcements was a risky venture, but the Saint’s colorful career could be characterized as a succession of such ventures, each proportionately speculative and uniformly hazardous.
The Saint swiftly sidestepped Alisdare, moving back out into the hall, and saw the first human obstacle to his situational ascendency — a scrawny, hollow-cheeked individual, less than five foot ten inches tall, with a total estimated weight of one hundred fifty seven pounds — taking the stairs two at a time in manifest earnestness. When the Saint burst into view, the gangly thug stumbled to a mid-stair stop and spun his right hand up to fire the sleek, silver television remote control clutched in his grip. The aforementioned spin came to an abrupt halt when he realized the impotence of his armament and blurted out an embarrassing caveat.
“I forgot my gun!”
“Tough noodles, Toodles,” commented the Saint dispassionately.
Toodles was not the stringy fellow’s given name, but as he and Simon were alone on the stairs, he knew it was to him that the Saint spoke. In a reflex action as absurd as it was ineffectual, Toodles’ thumb desperately depressed one of the remote’s buttons. The Saint did not pause, rather he pounced with the power of a compressed steel spring suddenly released.
Had a photograph been taken at the earliest moment of this eventful encounter, it would reveal only an absurdly handsome modern-day pirate conversing with a wide-eyed, slack-jawed imbecile. Even the most advanced techniques would fail to capture the emotional impact on the gunless gunsel who noticed neither the precision tailoring of the Saint’s wardrobe nor the finer aspects of Simon Templar’s personal grooming. Either because he was scared as hell, or perhaps because he nurtured the mistaken assumption that the personification of danger at the top of the stairs would wait for him while he went back for his revolver, the ungodly’s vanguard turned his back. It was this same back, neither wide nor muscular, which immediately experienced an unpleasant impact mid-center, propelling him in a flailing arc of descent interrupted only by a momentarily painful collision with the wall. The Saint’s own descent was equally rapid, and Simon was already in Alisdare’s living room while his proposed opponent, a tangle of limbs on the landing, cried shamelessly over a sprained ankle.
Alisdare, having regained his two-footed stance if not his composure, began issuing abrasive orders from the second floor hall.
“Capture the Saint!” yelped Salvadore, but his disheveled accomplice was both unenthusiastic concerning the concept and decidedly unworthy of the task.
As for the Saint, he knew the henchman could only have arrived so quickly if he had been somewhere in the house to begin with. As he had not appeared during Simon’s earlier boisterous conversation with Alisdare, he must have been completely distracted one floor below.
Simon’s immediate survey of his surroundings revealed nothing surprising about the architecture or layout of Alisdare’s home. Traditionally, American domiciles of that era featured daylight basements accessible by stairwell located near the back door and adjacent to the kitchen. Already sprinting in that direction, Simon could see through the kitchen towards the back door and predict with a fair approximation of accuracy the exact location of the aforementioned stairwell.
Three sets of keys gleamed on the kitchen counter and another rested atop a hall table. The math was easy — three cars in back, one in front. It was quite possible that Dan and Ian had been hustled in via the back door and promptly ensconced underground. Alisdare, Simon noted to himself, violated the conventional thriller protocol which requires villains to hold prisoners above the first floor unless the house is situated atop a seething whirlpool, cavernous labyrinth, or boiling pit of molten lava.
The Saint scooped up the keys from the hall table, grabbed the other sets as he crossed into the kitchen, and stuffed them into his pockets. The door to the basement was ajar and Simon propelled himself down with one agile leap, landing with uninterrupted strides upon gold shag carpet in Alisdare’s subterranean party room while his affronted host continued berating his semi-crippled lackey into limping, lukewarm pursuit.
Simon immediately discovered Dan and Ian gagged with duct tape and amateurishly secured by bungy cords to two black metal chairs set several feet apart in front of a console television. On screen was an inventive escape of interpersonal cross-gender indulgence never previewed by any legitimate ratings board; resting atop the TV was the object forgotten by the injured henchman in his hurried response to Alisdare’s summons — a snub-nose .38 revolver.
Thrilled at seeing their knightly hero drop into the midst of their dilemma as if descending from heaven, Dan and Ian began straining furiously against their bonds, grunting out muffled cries behind taut tape.
“So much for being a captive audience,” remarked the Saint, his voice resonating with victorious promise, “you’re watching too much television and not getting enough exercise.”
Simon grabbed the .38 in one deft move and swiftly unsnapped the absurd restraints. Dan and Ian sprung from their chairs, ripping away the tape from their lips.
Thundering footsteps and husky voices signaled that reinforcements from the shed were soon to be upon them, and the quietude of Duvall’s pastoral serenity was already pierced by Alisdare’s shrill commands and anguished expletives.
“Lock ’em in,” ordered Salvadore breathlessly from above, “slam that damn door!”
If the Saint harbored any concerns regarding his young fans’ response to the reality of being engulfed in a maelstrom of life-threatening mayhem, they were discarded with the same rapidity with which Daniel and Ian sent their chairs crashing through the basement’s windows.
“They’ll trap us down here!” exclaimed Daniel. His remark was more explanation and instruction than observation, but the Saint was already several mental steps ahead of him. Simon tossed a handful of keys to the wide-eyed Ian as the young men scrambled atop a teetering video cabinet to kick out the chards blocking their potential egress, grabbed a bungy cord, and headed back up the stairs.
The first human shadow cast on the stairwell wall jumped back in panic when the Saint’s purloined .38 spat flame and a high-velocity slug slammed into the kitchen wall. Simon heard swearing and cries of warning echoing in the reverberation of his gunfire. He took the stairs in two leaps, slid the metal hook of the bungee cord around the thin stem of the old-fashioned brass door knob, and jumped back down to fasten the opposite end of the tightly stretched high-tension cord to the metal bracket at the bottom of the stair’s railing. Keeping the basement door from closing provided more opportunity than danger. He knew Alisdare would send thugs back outside the moment he realized his captives were scrambling out into the dark, but no one in his right mind would dare risk the impact of hot lead by descending the stairs or lingering in the doorway long enough to discover the reason for the door’s inexplicable reluctance to achieve closure.