“Have you any idea,” Simon continued, “how difficult it is to be a writer? Surely a man of your aesthetic sensibilities must realize that it’s not a simple matter of ordering up a lot of pre-cut ideas and hammering them together like a man building a dog-house.”
Warlock watched, somewhat abashed, as Simon turned towards the window with a martyred sigh, closed his eyes, and pressed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand on either side of his nose just below the bridge.
“It’s a constant struggle,” he went on. “Or maybe struggle isn’t the best word, since inspiration is something that can’t be forced. It’s like... fishing. You settle yourself down, you drop in your hook, and you hope.” Simon confronted Warlock directly again. “Do you really think it’s as easy as saying after Monday comes Tuesday?”
Warlock contorted his little mouth in embarrassment.
“Well, I... I don’t think I have ever underestimated your genius,” he said hesitantly.
“Yet you expect me to work while I’m a prisoner?” The Saint changed his stance so that only Amity could see his face as he gave her an encouraging wink. “It’s like... expecting a plant to blossom without sunlight or water.”
Amity joined in.
“It’s like... locking up your goose without food or water and expecting it to lay golden eggs.”
Simon flinched only slightly at the simile as Warlock turned up his palms in flustered appeal.
“You have all the food you need,” he said helplessly. “You have everything a man could want.”
“Except freedom,” said Simon quickly.
Amity was shaking her head at Warlock.
“You really don’t understand the artist’s soul, do you?” she said. “Do you think you can stifle him... cage him up like an animal?”
“And expect me to create?” Simon joined in.
“Ridiculous!” snorted Amity.
Warlock made mute gestures which clearly were a plea for silence.
“Mr. Klein, you make me ashamed,” he said, when he was finally given a chance. “I had no intention, I assure you, of stifling you. On the other hand, under the circumstances, I couldn’t possibly allow you to leave these grounds at this point. And please don’t think I’m so naive as to believe you need the run of the entire British Isles before your inspiration can blossom.”
Warlock made an expressive motion of his plump hand which symbolized the flowering of Amos Klein’s orchid-like imagination.
“How about the grounds, then,” Amity suggested. “You could let us out of the house, at least. I’m sure that would help, wouldn’t it, Amos?”
“I suppose,” said the Saint, who was sulking near the wall.
“It’s better than nothing,” Amity insisted. “May we go out in the garden then?”
Warlock nodded reluctantly.
“Very well. Mr. Klein may go out. Galaxy will go along to keep you company.”
“What about me?” Amity asked.
“I’m sorry, Miss Little,” Warlock replied, looking more sly than sorry. “I can’t have you both out of the house at once. Just a simple precaution. And anyway, it’s not the health of your imagination that we’re concerned about, is it?”
Warlock smiled as Amity flung herself down furiously in a chair and glared at the rug. Simon patted her on the shoulder as he went by on his way to the open door.
“Don’t feel bad,” he said. “Creativity deserves a few privileges, after all.”
Ten minutes later the Saint was strolling across the lawn which until then he had seen only from the window of his room. Beside him strolled Galaxy Rose, instructed by Warlock to keep silent so as not to disturb Amos Klein’s priceless meditations. She dutifully kept the slow pace, staying a half step behind, glancing frequently at the Saint’s face as if she expected it to glow a brilliant green when some striking idea popped into his head.
As for Simon, his thoughts were at least as active as Galaxy was capable of imagining, but directed towards an entirely different object than cracking into Hermetico. The Saint’s particular interest at the moment was not breaking into anything, but breaking out of Warlock’s private fortress.
“Is that the only fence?” he asked.
He had stopped at the edge of the expanse of grass which sloped down from one side of the large stone house. Beyond the lawn was a hedge of rose bushes, and beyond them a border of evergreens which fringed the property all round. Through the needles of the trees Simon could see the tall chain-link steel fence topped with barbed wire. Beyond the steel fence, preventing it being seen from outside the property, was an antique and respectable stone wall of the sort that men used to surround their private patch of the planet with before such selfish impulses became an offence to the state and an invitation to annihilation by tax collectors — who unlike less subtle thieves are hindered neither by walls nor locks and doors.
“If you think I’m going to say anything that might help you get out of here, you’re wrong,” Galaxy said loudly.
The Saint glanced around him at the white and yellow roses, the trees, and the grass.
“So they’ve got microphones even out here,” he mused.
Galaxy snapped her eyes at him almost angrily.
“It wouldn’t matter whether they did or not,” she said. “I wouldn’t help you escape because I’m as anxious as everybody else for this to work out all right.”
His hands in his pockets, the Saint continued his leisurely circuit of the lawn.
“That’s right,” he said. “Warlock promised you half a million for this Hermetico caper, didn’t he?”
Galaxy stared at him with surprise and suspicion.
“How did you know?”
“You forget,” Simon replied. “I wrote the books. Warlock may be a brilliant organizer, but he’s no original thinker. Everything he’s done up to now has been based on what he’s read.”
“You’re not telling me anything.”
“Okay, tough girl, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“About what?” she asked.
“About what happens in the new book.”
“The one you’re supposedly writing?”
“Yes.”
Galaxy compressed her lips as if trying to control her voice.
“Well,” she said irritably, “what happens?”
“You never get the half million. Warlock double-crosses you.”
Galaxy looked lost for a moment, then exasperated.
“Don’t waste your breath,” she said. “I’ve seen that movie twenty times.”
“Which movie is that?” Simon asked guilelessly.
“The one where the hero turns the bad characters against one another by making them think they’re planning to double-cross one another. I’m not that dumb.”
“At least you’re smart enough to see who the hero is,” Simon rejoined.
He and the girl continued their walk. His probings had convinced him that however eager she was to please him, she had no discernible intention of risking her neck or her promised half million pounds by overstepping the limits which Warlock had imposed.
“Why can’t you be happy?” she asked in a softer and more persuasive voice than she had used for the past several minutes. “Why fight it? Write a happy ending for everybody.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Simon said, but he was not particularly listening.
His eye had just picked out the window of his room, whose location he had carefully pinpointed before he left it. There was nothing remarkable about it. It was just like all the other windows in the front of the house. But there was a much more humble feature of architecture near it which the Saint found completely fascinating: a fat black drainpipe running vertically from beneath the eaves above his window to the ground thirty feet below. That venerable relic of twentieth-century plumbing’s adolescence would ordinarily have been of no interest whatsoever to anybody, but to the Saint it was the closest thing he had yet seen to a flaw in Warlock’s comfortable prison.