The Saint nodded understandingly towards the screen and went to work on his eggs and bacon. Warlock sat back in his chair and beamed.
“I know you’ll understand that no criticism is intended,” he went on. “I’m only pointing out an inevitable difference between literature and life. But far be it from me to pretend to be a literary critic. I am a simple and wholehearted admirer of the creative imagination, with only amateurish pretensions in that direction myself. A few poems here and there — childish things really, not worth your trouble, but of course if you should have time to glance at them and give me your honest...” Warlock, who obviously had a tendency to become hypnotized by the sound of his own voice, waved a disparaging hand. “But I’m wandering. You are the creative genius, and I am the practical man. One might compare our relationship to that of Voltaire and Frederick the Great, or Michelangelo and the Medici... But again I’m getting ahead of myself. You had a trying night, Mr. Klein. Please finish your breakfast at your leisure, bathe if you wish, and when you’re quite ready, please join us in the planning room. I’ll explain everything there. Galaxy — one of your more delightful creations, I must say — will show you the way. In the meantime, if there’s anything we’ve overlooked, or if there’s anything you want, you have only to ask her. Anything at all. Welcome again, Mr. Klein, and good-bye for now.”
The screen went dark, and the wooden panel slid quietly back across it.
“You hear that, Galaxy?” Simon called. “Anything I want, I’ve only to ask.”
“I heard,” said Galaxy.
She emerged eagerly from the bathroom and Simon met her hazel eyes with the magnetic power of his startling blue ones.
“Anything,” he repeated wickedly.
Galaxy came towards him.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked softly.
“A gun.”
Her lips were suddenly compressed with irritation.
“What a shame,” she said. “Some people don’t know when they have it good.”
Simon sipped his coffee.
“You realize that if you don’t give me a gun you’re making Mr. Warlock guilty of false advertising. And if this pleasure palace is all as dandy as you people seem to think it is, what harm could a little automatic do? I happen to like playing with guns, and if we’re all here to play I can’t see why we can’t play some games I like.”
Even Galaxy’s modest brain could distinguish between teasing and seriousness. She stopped pouting and smiled as quickly as the sun might pop out from behind a passing summer cloud.
“You’re sweet,” she said, “but I can’t give you a gun. I’ve already fetched your breakfast, tested your shower, and I’m about to lay out your clothes and anything else you want, so why can’t you just be co-operative?”
“I think I might like it if you called me master,” he said. “As long as I’ve got a slave, I might as well enjoy every last tingle.”
Galaxy laughed.
“All right, master.”
Simon got to his feet, touched his lips with his napkin, and dropped the cloth on the table. He put a strong hand on each of her shoulders.
“So now, lovely slave, how about getting me a gun? All I want it for is to defend us against the blokes who’ll be trying to shoot their way in here... to get at you.”
Her smile faded and her lips parted. Her eyes seemed to grow smoky with anticipation as he leaned near her.
“I can’t, she breathed.
Simon threw up his hands and turned towards the bathroom.
“Then put me out a clean shirt and a blue suit, would you?” he said matter-of-factly.
Galaxy clenched her fists.
“You—”
Simon lounged at the bathroom door, pointing up at the panel which covered the television screen.
“Naughty,” he said. “Remember, you’re my willing slave, and you’ll learn that as long as my every whim is satisfied instantly I’m absolutely super to get along with.”
Once more the cloud passed and she laughed.
“Very good, master. You run along and take your shower, and I’ll come scrub your back. My orders are to conserve your energy.”
“You’re too generous.”
“I’ve hardly even started.”
4
Forty-five minutes later, the Saint stood before a full-length mirror and studied the fit of his blue trousers and white shirt.
“You must give me the name of Mr. Warlock’s tailor,” he said, “so I can avoid him.”
“They fit quite well,” Galaxy said. “Not knowing what you were like, we had to get it all different sizes. And now you complain!”
“A fit is not just a matter of clothes falling somewhere between too large and too small. It’s a product of art. Mr. Warlock would understand that. He has an aesthetic soul.”
“Well,” Galaxy replied, giving his shirt a playful but vicious tug, “I didn’t choose the clothes. What else can I do for you?”
Simon thought.
“I feel mean this morning. How about a... a blue tie with purple spots?”
“Immediately, master,” said Galaxy.
A moment later she returned from the wardrobe with a blue tie infected with spots so gorgeously purple as to make a grape turn raisin with envy. Simon sighed and knotted it around his neck.
“Okay, Friday, you win. Let’s get on to the confrontation.”
Galaxy Rose held Simon’s jacket for him, and led him to the door of his room. Her hand caught his wrist as he started to turn the burnished steel knob.
“You should know better than that,” she said. “Or do you like the sound of loud bells?”
The Saint’s memory ranged back over the Charles Lake adventures he had read.
“Electronic locks,” he said, “controlled from a central station. But don’t tell me you have the fingerprint scanning device.”
“Of course we do.”
Simon was impressed.
“But it doesn’t really exist,” he argued. “I just made it up.”
“It exists now,” Galaxy told him. “Warlock says that one of the beauties of your imagination is that the things you come up with almost always really would work, if only somebody took the trouble to make them.”
She pointed to a small, faintly glowing translucent disc set into the wall beside the door handle. She pressed her thumb against it for two seconds, while supposedly (Simon was not entirely convinced that the system was genuine) a photo-electric cell scanned the thumbprint and transmitted its pattern to the memory bank of a central computer which made its recognition and signalled approval by electrically unlocking the door.
“Warlock is very thorough,” said the Saint.
There was a light ping as the lock was disengaged. He turned the handle without producing a fusillade of alarm bells, and Galaxy Rose preceded him into the hallway.
“This way to the stairs,” she said.
The hall, simply carpeted and devoid of furnishings, had none of the luxury-hotel quality that had characterized the Saint’s room. Except for the carpet, it reminded him of the spotlessly clean and purely utilitarian companionway of a ship. He could imagine the exotic gadgets which might reside behind some of the metal panels in the white walls. And the circular grids in the ceiling probably protected more interesting devices than mere electric light bulbs. There were numbered doors at intervals on either side of the corridor; all were closed.
Simon, still a little dazed by the sheer implausibility of everything that had happened to him, was somewhat like a man in a dream who is telling himself that he’s only dreaming and that he must wake up. He wanted to maintain his scepticism, to remind himself that the statements he had heard made about this building and its occupants were too far-fetched to believe. Yet he had been given evidence that the claims had at least some foundation to them. For the time being he could only go along with the gag, keep himself ready for anything, and hope that his future experiences with the Secret World Organization for Retribution and Destruction would be even a fraction as pleasant as his room, his breakfast, and Galaxy Rose.