“Oh, I’m afraid there are, but not nearly as many as you might expect. They serve a caretaking purpose, primarily. The management of Hermetico apparently feel that their automatic mechanical devices are more than adequate to discourage any attempt at theft.”
“And so the battle was lost...” Simon murmured.
“What’s that?” Warlock asked.
“It’s that kind of feeling that loses battles,” Simon said.
Warlock cast jubilant glances at his staff.
“So you see a loophole already!” he exclaimed to the Saint. “You can do it!”
Simon managed to look blankly innocent.
“I?” he said. “I only meant that over-confidence can make the most perfect defences vulnerable.”
“Then you will find that weak point,” Warlock replied. “The basic idea came to me from your book, Volcano Seven, except there it was the Bank of England S.W.O.R.D. robbed.”
“Tried to rob,” Simon corrected him. “Charles Lake stopped them.”
“And of course that’s one of the beauties of having you on S.W.O.R.D.’s side, Mr. Klein!” Warlock crowed. “You’ll come up with an even better story this time, in which S.W.O.R.D. wins.”
Simon elaborated his blank innocence into confusion.
“Story?” he asked.
“Telling how S.W.O.R.D. ransacked Hermetico. How through brilliant thinking, they breached every defence, penetrated to the core of that invulnerable fortress, and left it bare!”
“I’m to do that,” Simon marvelled rather than asked. “That’s the literary project you sent me that fifty-thousand-pound retainer for.”
Warlock rubbed his hands gleefully. He was pacing up and down the rich carpet near the model of Hermetico. The pale faces of his henchmen followed his movements like the spectators of a tennis match.
“Of course,” he said. “But it’s much more than a literary project. Here’s your opportunity to live your art and bring your wildest dreams to reality.”
“Bring your wildest dreams to reality,” Simon said drily. “Mine were doing fine already.”
Warlock stopped his peregrinations.
“I think,” he said, “that we might continue this discussion in private. You’ve met your staff, so to speak, and I see no point in keeping them here, if you agree.”
“I see no point in it at all,” Simon said.
“Very well, gentlemen, you may go. Except, Frug, would you please leave us the Hermetico dossier?” Warlock turned to Simon. “This dossier Frug will give you contains complete details of Hermetico operations and layout, including blue-prints. Frug?”
Frug, who had been looking quite pleased with himself during most of the meeting, jerked slightly and demonstrated that the skin of a more or less living human being, however white it may be, can always turn a little whiter.
“I don’t have it,” he blurted. “I mean, it’s in my office. I’ll just be a minute.”
Frug sidled towards the doorway, but Warlock stopped him with a word. It was a softly spoken word, with all the gentle menace of an adder sliding towards its sleeping prey.
“Frug.”
“Yes,” Frug said. “Yes, sir?”
Warlock confronted him, the jowly face, blotched with anger, threatening the scrawny white one.
“I told you to bring it, Frug,” Warlock said quietly.
“I forgot. I...”
With an awkwardly prolonged movement whose implications Frug could clearly see, Warlock drew back his right arm and brought it across in a sweeping arc that smashed flat-handed on the side of Frug’s pointed face. The Saint, whose first reaction to Frug had been a strong but entirely impersonal impulse to pop him like an insect between the earth and the sole of his shoe, viewed the performance with gratification and interest. It interested him that Frug had not tried to avoid the blow he saw coming, and that after it knocked his head to one side with its force, Frug did not betray by so much of a glint in his narrow eyes the rage that he must feel. Warlock’s power, then, was built on a sound foundation. His organization was not going to fall apart just because it was new and based on a mad dream.
“S.W.O.R.D. cannot afford members who forget,” Warlock said. “Since this is your first error, we’ll overlook it. Take the dossier to Mr. Klein’s room after he has returned there.”
Warlock looked at his other men, who had not moved during Frug’s punishment.
“You gentlemen may go now. See that Mr. Klein has the typewriter and other materials.” Warlock, his face still mottled crimson as an aftermath of his outburst, turned to his captive author, and the corners of his small mouth curved smugly upwards in one of the most unsavoury smiles the Saint had ever seen on a human countenance. “Then be sure you don’t disturb him,” he concluded. “He’ll be a very busy fellow for the next few days.”
2
“And what if I refuse?” Simon asked when he and Warlock were alone in the oak-panelled planning room.
Warlock turned from the double doors which he had closed securely behind his departing staff. Simon was standing entirely at ease near the model of Hermetico. Warlock came towards him, stopped, raised his arms from his sides, and then dropped them with a heavy sigh.
“Why must you put me in an awkward position by asking such a question, Mr. Klein? Why must you be difficult when I’ve gone to such lengths to prove my competence and my real interest in your work?” He made a gesture that encompassed the whole building around him. “What greater compliment could an author have than that a man of science, a practical businessman—”
“A scholar and a gentleman?” queried the Saint.
Warlock ignored the interruption except to re-adjust his sentence. “—that I should want to bring your fiction to reality? What could be more exciting? The masses read your works and forget them. I want to bring your energies to bear on the material world, to make you the architect of great feats, conquests...”
Warlock had begun to pace the room, waving his arms and working himself into a literal lather. Simon interrupted him quietly.
“Yes, but what happens if I don’t want to do it?” he asked.
Warlock stopped and sighed more heavily than ever.
“Must you, Mr. Klein? Must we discuss such unpleasant possibilities? Can’t you feel yourself infected with the same excitement that moves me so profoundly?”
Simon put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly to the wall beneath one of the high windows.
“I can feel myself infected, all right, but I can also see myself locked up in one of Her Majesty’s free boarding houses if this scheme of yours falls through.”
Warlock, sensing a weakening of resistance, all but scampered to confront the Saint and eagerly grasped his arms.
“Not my scheme,” he said, his jowls aquiver, “your scheme! Don’t you see — I want you to want to do this. I have no desire to force you.”
“Then I’m free to go whenever I feel like it?”
Warlock loosened his grip and started to speak, then was silent. He paced away, then paced back, started to speak again, and ended up beside the Hermetico model. His hand touched the white-domed top of the surface building. He stared down at it as if it were a crystal ball in which he could see visions.
“Mr. Klein,” he said softly, “when I was a lad, I was a dreamer. I read more than most because at that time I suffered from an illness that kept me from taking part in outdoor games like the other boys. My mind was full of adventures, and explorations, and the lives of great men. I imagined myself with Alexander in Persia, with Drake on the Spanish Main, and with Livingstone in Africa, but I wasn’t content just to imagine. I wanted to live those adventures.”