“Yes,” said Simeon Monk succinctly.
“Better have that throat looked after, Sim. Sounds as if you’re talking from down in a barrel.”
Simeon rubbed his throat and looked confused.
“He always sounds that way,” Warlock explained unnecessarily. “Remember, in Volcano Seven, you described...”
“Right,” the Saint agreed. “He’s perfect. And this handsome fellow here will be... don’t tell me, let me guess... Frug!”
The word ‘handsome’ had probably never been applied to Frug before, even as a joke. He would have been more aptly described, by a speaker less sardonic and more brutally honest than the Saint chose to be at the moment, as an ugly little shrimp. Opposite the huge Neanderthal called Monk, he looked even shorter and more shrimpy than he was, the perfect caricature of the chain smoker who spends his afternoons at the racetrack and his evenings in a billiards hall.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Frug said deferentially.
“And who is this?” Simon asked. “As if I didn’t know.”
He was inspecting the last member of the quartet, a moderately tall man of almost albino colouration. His hair was white, he seemed to have no eyebrows, and his eyes themselves were the palest of milky grey. He seemed to have more difficulty looking either cordial or respectful than any of the others.
“Nero Jones,” he said.
The Saint turned back to Warlock.
“At least I can’t find fault with the casting,” he remarked.
“I am so pleased you think so,” Warlock replied. “I do think our group here is much more true to life—” he laughed and interrupted himself “—I should say, true to fiction, to your books, than the cast in the motion pictures. I want you to understand that from the very beginning I’ve tried to depend on your books entirely and to ignore the films, so as to be as faithful as possible to your own ideas. I can’t deny being influenced by the films, but I’ve tried not to be unduly influenced. It was your ideas I was interested in, and a lot of other writers messing about with them could easily spoil the whole thing.”
“What whole thing?” Simon asked impatiently.
“I don’t blame you for being puzzled,” Warlock answered. “Here. Please. Sit down at the head of the table, the place of honour, the place of the leader. I’ll explain everything.”
He ushered Simon to the high-backed chair. Galaxy remained decoratively in the doorway.
“You may go now, Galaxy,” Warlock said. “Mr. Klein won’t need you for a while, will you, Mr. Klein?”
“Not for the next minute or so, anyway,” Simon said fondly.
“Good,” Warlock continued. “Galaxy, go see that Mr. Klein’s, er, acquaintance is being well taken care of.”
Galaxy left, closing the double doors behind her, and Warlock looked at Simon.
“The lady is your...” He paused, questioningly.
“Associate,” Simon said, with a vagueness he thought should cover any story Amity Little might have come up with.
Warlock produced the knowing smile of a man who did not really know much about such things but wanted the world to think he did.
“Understood, Mr. Klein, understood. And now, let’s get down to business, shall we?”
“Fine,” the Saint said bluntly. “I’m a prisoner, is that the idea?”
Warlock looked mildly pained.
“Only in the most technical sense of the word,” he said. “You were brought here involuntarily, true, but I’m sure that when you hear my plan you’ll be very happy that you came. Remember, Mr. Klein, you are the leader. You are the father. We are your brain children.”
The Saint sat back in his chair and surveyed the other men — Warlock facing him from the other end of the table, the others seated along either side.
“And what do I do? Play cops and robbers with you children in this gigantic dollhouse? I feel as if it and all of us were cut off the back of a box of breakfast cereal.”
For the first time the man who called himself Warlock lost his composure. It was only a momentary loss, but it showed the ugly strength which lay behind the jovial surface. Veins bulged and pulsed at his temples, and his black eyes seemed distended in their sockets. But self-control was re-established in a few seconds. His face recovered its normal flaccid pallor as his blood subsided.
“Mr. Klein,” he said softly, “this is no child’s game. It is not a joke. All this has been done for a practical purpose — a most eminently practical purpose: the purpose of making money. What I have done here is build a business organization and a headquarters for that business. The business is called S.W.O.R.D. and it was conceived by you as well as christened by you. I have made it a reality for the simple reason that it works.”
Simon looked soberly at Warlock.
“You mean you’ve planned to put an organization like S.W.O.R.D. into actual operation?”
Warlock leaned forward.
“S.W.O.R.D. is in operation,” he said. “It was quite efficient in bringing you here. The Secret World Organization for Retribution and Destruction is no longer just a fiction. It exists.”
“And Warlock has come to life to be its boss,” Simon said.
Warlock sat back in his chair, looking pleased with himself once more.
“Oh, no, Mr. Klein. I’m not the boss. You are. The ingredient that makes S.W.O.R.D. unique is the unique brain of a creative genius — your own remarkable brain. Without that, S.W.O.R.D. would be only a body without life, a machine without fuel, a... a weapon without a finger to pull the trigger.”
“Before you drown us with metaphors, Mr. X, let me be sure I understand the facts; you’ve kidnapped me so that I can be the badly needed brain behind this organization. Together, I take it, we’re going to become multi-billionaires, put the Mafia out of business by beating it at its own game, and even manipulate governments from behind the scenes — small governments at first, and then work our way up to the really big ones until we control the world.”
Warlock’s eyes glowed like cinders under a bellows.
“You do understand, Mr. Klein! I knew you would. Nero! The attaché case.”
The near-albino rose from his chair and went to fetch the case from a table behind him.
“This will help convince you of our sincerity,” Warlock continued. “Once you come to trust me, I’m sure you’ll agree that a life of real action, a life in which one lives his art rather than merely dreaming it — I’m sure you’ll agree that such a life and its rewards are far preferable to fiction and fantasies.”
“But not necessarily more profitable,” Simon said.
“This should convince you even more. Nero, if you please.”
Nero set the attache case on the table in front of the Saint and unlocked it. Simon opened it himself. Inside were tightly bound stacks of ten-pound notes.
“That’s certainly quite an argument,” the Saint admitted.
He had decided that his best tactic was to play along, for the moment, until he found out just how far Warlock’s well-heeled madness would go. He tried to look like an author who, even though rich from his writing, was not above being impressed by such quantities of money.
“And that’s only half,” Warlock told him. “Fifty thousand pounds. Remember my offer in the post? Fifty thousand now and another fifty thousand after two months, at the successful conclusion of our first major project.”
Simon Templar tried to look as flattered, intrigued, and seriously tempted as an imaginary Amos Klein might have looked.
“What might that be?” he asked. “This major project.”
“We are going...” Warlock began, and then he paused for effect as he put his hand on the table and took a deep breath. “We are going to rob the largest storehouse of treasure on this side of the Atlantic. We are going to empty it of gold, platinum, and diamonds worth more millions of pounds than I can ever estimate.”