He paused, his hand slipping from the model on the tabletop. Simon stood without moving. He wanted to do nothing that might discourage his captor from going on with his personal confessions.
“I remember a curious kind of incident,” Warlock continued. “It illustrates what I mean. One night I was playing on the carpet with some lead soldiers my father had brought me. I asked him — my father — to play with me, and actually I was very surprised when he did, but he got down on his knees and we spent a long time arranging the soldiers on opposing sides. We had cannon and cavalry and infantry, and we made hills of blankets and cushions, and walls of books, and rivers and trees of paper and such... and when it was all done it looked quite impressive, the two armies ready for attack, poised on the hills and in the woods, ready to fire, ready to charge. And my father said, ‘Well, now, that’s fine,’ and got up and began to read his paper again. And I began crying, and he looked down and said, ‘Now, good heavens, what’s the matter? Didn’t I play with you?’ And I went on blubbering and said, ‘But they don’t do anything. They don’t move.’ It was strange. Warlock shook his head. “I don’t even know why it upset me so much. I cried as if my heart was broken.”
Simon felt more embarrassed than enlightened by the story. He merely shrugged slightly and allowed Warlock a new span of encouraging silence.
“The point is, Mr. Klein, that it is very difficult and rare to find opportunities for heroism and grand actions these days. I went to work for the research branch of an electronics firm after I’d finished at the university. That, at least, seemed an opportunity to explore new fields, if only in the mind. But the whole endeavour was smothered under a great weight of bureaucracy and practical necessity and professional jealousy.” Warlock folded his hands behind him and began to pace again. “I decided to launch out on my own. Frankly, I stole. I falsified requisitions and forged signatures. I had very little money, but over months I managed to build up a quite respectable laboratory in my cottage outside town. And then, before I was even certain what direction I’d take, two wonderful things happened to me: I discovered your books and I inherited this estate and four hundred thousand pounds.”
Simon acknowledged Amos Klein’s admiration of the sum.
“I’m flattered that you’d even include my books in the same sentence,” he said.
Warlock was so engrossed in his own words that he did not even glance at the Saint.
“Your books,” he said, “and others like them, are the healthy dreams of a sick humanity. People are stifled by an age in which aggressive instincts are held up to shame and scorn, when the invisible powers of money rule everything, when machines and taxes and collectivist politics destroy initiative and offer no challenge to self-development! Only in books like yours can they find a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of a way of life in which men use themselves to the full.”
“Hear, hear!” Simon applauded. “And you’re going to solve the problem by robbing safe deposits?”
Even though the Saint’s tone was kept carefully free of heavy sarcasm, anger flared across Warlock’s face like a sudden bruise.
“I’m sorry you don’t understand me!” he snapped. “It isn’t often I would bare my feelings to anyone, but I thought that you, of all people, would...”
Warlock bogged down.
“Sympathize?” the Saint offered. This time he spoke in a more friendly way than before, projecting an Amos Klein who was intrigued and tempted but torn by distrust and fear which he desperately wanted to hide. “Maybe I do sympathize, more than you know, but with four hundred thousand quid in the bank, why do you want to steal?”
“I chose to regard that inheritance merely as starting capital. It is, as the Americans say, peanuts — compared with the wealth of men like Onassis, Hughes, or Getty. I intend to have as much as they have — and more. I don’t care what I invest in this first operation: it will be returned hundreds of times. And those millions in turn will finance still greater operations. I see no limit to what may be mine one day. And you can be my partner.”
“Fine,” said the Saint. “But can you blame me for being cautious? After all, I’ve been gassed, kidnapped, and now told I’m to devise a way of pulling off the most spectacular and dangerous robbery in history. Am I supposed to feel perfectly calm?”
Warlock began to exude hopefulness again as he and Simon faced one another over the model of Hermetico.
“But I’ve apologized for kidnapping you,” he said, as if he sincerely believed that ought to be enough for anybody. “And there’s the fifty thousand pounds — just as an advance on the Hermetico profits — and there’s fine food, and people to wait on you hand and foot, and every comfort, and Galaxy Rose, and—”
Simon held up his hand.
“Nobody could complain about the accommodations,” he said. “Especially not about Galaxy Rose. But no matter how pleasant it all is, I’m bothered by the nagging feeling that I’m a prisoner. When do I get to spend some of that fifty thousand? If I agreed to co-operate with you on this project, am I and my... associate free to come and go as we please?”
Warlock shook his head apologetically.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Klein, that that must wait until I can be quite sure of your loyalty — or until you are as deeply compromised as the rest of us.”
“Which is just a polite way of saying that I am a prisoner?”
“If you agree to stay here voluntarily, then you needn’t think of yourself as a prisoner.”
“And if I don’t agree?”
Warlock struggled not to lose his temper completely over this new relapse.
“If you insist on being difficult, on pushing me into that position, the answer is that you have no choice. You are going to work with me as I planned. You’ve supplied me, if it comes to the worst, with too many gruesome methods of torture to make refusal even thinkable, particularly since I’d let Nero and Monk practise on the girl before they started on you. I think they’d hardly be warmed up before you’d be begging them to let her go and give you a typewriter and paper.”
“You have quite an argument,” Simon admitted grimly.
Now he seemed to accept the fact that resistance was useless. With acceptance, he could show a renewal of his former ironical good humour.
“I think it would be a pity, though,” Warlock said, “if you made both of us feel you’d had to be forced into this. How much better if we could co-operate freely! Think it over, and as you begin work I’m sure you’ll feel more and more that I’ve done you a favour. The antagonisms will disappear as your enthusiasm for the project grows. I promise you.”
As he spoke, he attempted to put his arm around Simon’s shoulder and escort him to the door like an experienced businessman reassuring a nervous young subordinate. Since Warlock’s proximity gave him the creeps, Simon managed to elude the embrace and face Warlock between the long table and the oak door.
“Incidentally,” he said, “as long as we’re going to be brothers in burglary, what’s your real name?”
The other man looked at him strangely.
“Warlock,” he said, as if answering the obvious.
“I mean the name your mother gave you,” Simon said.
“A man’s identity is a precious thing,” Warlock said. “Don’t tamper with it.”
“No tampering intended,” the Saint said quickly. “Do you prefer Warlock or Mr. Warlock?”
Warlock raised his hand and pointed a trembling finger. His voice rose to a shrill pitch.
“Mr. Klein, I warn you! People must take me seriously! I insist that people take me seriously!”