The screen dimmed, and the first-night London audience blinked its way back from fantasy as the cinema lights came on, applauding with a vehemence that Simon Templar could only think must reflect the hidden but deeply persistent yearning of modern man for the taste of violence and derring-do.
Of all the people in the cinema, he alone, Simon Templar, could be said to have lived a life which for excitement, danger, and impossible adventure equalled that of the fictional Charles Lake. And yet even the Saint — as Simon Templar was more widely known, feared, and uneasily admired by both the police and the criminal world in his role of modern buccaneer — felt amused and refreshed by his filmic voyage into a land of utter improbability. At the same time he felt, as the other members of the audience must have felt to a much greater extent, a certain let-down at being forced to return to the limitations of the everyday world.
As the Saint stood and moved along the row of seats towards the aisle, only that disturbing hint of piracy in his features would have separated him from the rest of the fashionable crowd. His soberly cut dark suit minimized the trained musculature beneath it, and the sapphire eyes that could sometimes blaze with blue fire or freeze into chips of ice were lazily relaxed. Only those who knew his fantastic history would have believed that in other moods he had been the source of more massive epidemics of insomnia in Scotland Yard and in the haunts of the Ungodly than could have been caused by all the coffee and traffic noise in London combined.
“Wasn’t I divine?” Carol Henley exclaimed, in what Simon thought was a commendable burst of candour.
“Magnificent,” he said solemnly. “Fortunately Sarah Bernhardt has already gone to her just reward, or you might have hastened her on the way.”
When Carol gave him a dubious look he went on:
“The divine Sarah had to at least recite the alphabet to thrill an audience — so they say — but all you have to do is lie there and wiggle without making a sound.”
Carol beamed and squeezed his hand as they joined the sluggish human river in the aisles.
“Well, thank you very much, Simon. That’s about the nicest thing anybody ever said to me.”
The Saint coughed and saw her torn from his grasp by a horde of congratulatory and self-congratulatory assistant directors, technicians, minor actors, and financial backers. Having only just met her that evening, Simon hoped he would be able to retrieve her before long. Meanwhile, being several inches taller than almost everyone else in the cinema, he looked around for other people he might know or recognize.
The producer of the film, Paul Starnmeck, whom Simon had first met at a dinner party several weeks before, and whose invitation was the reason for the Saint’s unwonted attendance at a motion-picture premiere, was accepting the homage of toadies in the lobby just outside the auditorium. He was a florid man of substantial bulk, most of it distributed along the horizontal, and it cost him some effort to thrust his way back against the current of the human flood to grasp Simon’s hand and peer up questioningly at his face.
Simon knew what the question was, because the producer had explained to him in extending the invitation that while he was primarily eager for the pleasure of the Saint’s company, though laughingly not unmindful of a certain extra fillip which would be added to the premiere’s publicity by the presence of an almost mythical real-life adventurer, he was also interested in having Simon Templar’s opinion of the film. The three previously released adventures of Charles Lake in his war against that apparently omniscient and virtually omnipotent organization S.W.O.R.D. had aroused a public enthusiasm almost unequalled since the introduction of the smoke of burning tobacco leaves into the lungs of European man. But there was always room for improvement, Starnmeck had admitted, and the success of the Charles Lake films had started a flash flood of imitations, each trying to out-exaggerate the other. Maybe the Saint’s spontaneous reactions would suggest how to keep the Starnmeck product ahead of the competition.
“Good evening, Mr. Starnmeck,” Simon said pleasantly but non-committally, in response to the questioning look.
The producer glanced around somewhat guiltily and made a skilful kind of blocking turn of his broad body to cut off his recent entourage and isolate himself with the Saint as much as was possible in the crush.
“It may not be great art,” he said tentatively, “but it moves.”
“To quote Galileo,” agreed the Saint amiably.
“I beg your pardon?”
“To quote Galileo after his triaclass="underline" Nevertheless, it moves. Of course he was talking about the earth, wasn’t he?”
“Of course,” producer Starnmeck said blankly.
“But it amounts to the same thing,” Simon said, glancing about in hopes that he had not lost Carol Henley entirely. “They both move — the earth and your film. They move predictably, but they move.”
“I’m glad you think so,” the producer said with uncertain relief.
“Yes,” said the Saint. “That’s one of the advantages of life, and one of its disadvantages too: predictability. Most people are caught in a web of predictabilities that’s both comforting and stifling. People think they want security, but underneath they’d give almost anything to have the nerve to face the unpredictable, or at least the unlikely. So I think you can relax. You may only make a few millions, but it’s still money.”
“Maybe so,” Starnmeck said. “But this is a cut-throat business, Mr. Templar. Now, did anything occur to you that might make the next picture better still?”
“Well, have you thought about the Unities prescribed by Aristotle for all tragedy?” Simon suggested, warming to the torment of Starnmeck as he realized that he had indeed lost Carol Henley, possibly for ever. “How about them?”
“About what?” Starnmeck asked.
“Aristotle’s Unities,” repeated the Saint patiently.
Starnmeck had begun to perspire noticeably.
“Maybe we’d better discuss this at the party. It’s pretty noisy here.”
“Fine,” said Simon with a slight bow. “Until then.”
The cool mocking of his eyes was in marked contrast to Starnmeck’s intense humidity, as the producer turned to submerge himself again in the less confusing comments of his own kind.
Simon started towards the open doors which led to the street, anxious to be out of the press of bodies and the hub-bub of voices, but he was not yet destined to escape. In fact, Destiny, intruding itself again in the form of an insistent tug at his sleeve which stopped him before he could complete his escape, had plans for the Saint which were to seem almost as incredible as the film he had just watched.
2
Simon turned, looked down at the long saturnine face, the rapidly blinking black eyes, the perfectly oblong moustache like a strip of furry tape, the damp strands of suspiciously dark hair combed carefully forward over an otherwise vacant dome, and saw that the sleeve-tugger was Finlay Hugoson, the publisher of the Charles Lake books on which the Starnmeck films were based. They had first met that evening at the small and highly exclusive cocktail party, held in a suite at the Dorchester, before the premiere.