He pretended to have noticed nothing, and turned his attention to the front drive, which led from a double garage beside the house to a locked wire gate inside the older wooden one of the stone wall. One side of the garage was open, and outside it Frug was washing an immense black limousine of the kind sported by embassies and departments of foreign affairs. Frug self-consciously attended to his work and avoided watching the Saint and Galaxy.
“Is the gate electrified too?” Simon asked his companion.
“If you know so much, you must know that,” she said archly.
“It’s electrified,” said the Saint. He nodded towards the limousine. “And that hearse over there — it’s from Hurricane Eight, I assume.”
“Right. It’s got everything just the way you described it.”
“Amazing. I’d like a ride in it.”
Galaxy smiled.
“I’m sure you would — but you’d have a lot better chance of taking one if you’d get down to work instead of worrying about escaping.”
Simon shook his head and sighed as he turned towards the front entrance of the house.
“That’s a woman for you — always brimming with practical suggestions. Work brings freedom, does it? I’m afraid I’ve got to admit it: Warlock has me stymied. I can’t do much but play along and hope it all works out for the best.”
Galaxy hugged his arm and snuggled close to him.
“You’ll be glad,” she assured him. “It is best this way.”
Simon’s secret thoughts found expression only in another brief glance at the black drainpipe which ran from roof to ground. Then, behind the glass of one of the ground floor windows, he glimpsed the face of Warlock peering out at him, like a warning personified.
“You can be sure,” he murmured, “I’ll try to make everything work out for the best.”
“For me too?” Galaxy insisted.
“For you especially,” Simon said, as earnestly as he could.
Chapter four
How Amity came to bed, and Nero Jones lost a shoe
1
An observer looking in on the Saint’s bedroom that night — as one was — would have thought he had nothing in mind but sleep. He came out of his bathroom magnificently arrayed in one of the dozen pairs of pyjamas contributed by Warlock to his wardrobe — a composite of sunsets, peacocks’ tails, and fireworks displays which only a man of icy nerves and considerable humour could have worn without flinching — and made a circuit of the room turning out all the lights. When only the single reading lamp on the bed’s headboard was left, he stretched, yawned, and gave the room a last glance.
There was a half-filled sheet of paper in the typewriter, and a table nearby was littered with more sheets of paper covered with scrawl and figures the sight of which must have gladdened Warlock’s heart if he had looked in on them via television before his retirement. It was just as well, for the sake of his gladdened heart, that he did not look at the papers more closely, since the figures were meaningless and the scrawl was largely illegible.
Except for the papers and some minor disarrangements of the furniture which further attested to Amos Klein’s and Amity Little’s labours on the Hermetico project, the room was as it had been in the morning... with two important exceptions. At nine that evening, as sunset had faded from the sky, a steel shutter, its movement preceded by an alarm bell reminiscent of those sounded on ships during the testing of watertight doors, had slid down over Simon’s window and clanked firmly into place with the authoritative sound of something that had come to stay until it was ready to leave. At the same time, as the Saint knew without seeing, windows all over the building were undergoing the same sealing process, as were the outer doors.
The presence of the tight steel shutter over the bedroom window was one of the two changes which had taken place since morning. The second was the fact that the door between Simon’s and Amity Little’s room was open. That was the result of no oversight on S.W.O.R.D.’s part, but of a convincing and passionate argument on Simon’s. He could not work, he insisted, without the presence of his friend and secretary, and he often did his best work in the middle of the night. While other men slept away their drab little lives, his brain would suddenly explode in a sparkling shower of ideas which cried out for immediate transplantation to paper. Without Amity on constant call he could not guarantee that such nocturnal eruptions would not dissipate into outer darkness, lost forever — and with them Warlock’s dreams of wealth and power.
Warlock, convinced by house telephone, had seen the logic of the argument and could think of no special danger in granting Simon’s request. Since there was no chance of escape anyway, what could be the harm in allowing the eccentric artist whatever companion he desired?
So Amity, her room already darkened, waited until Simon’s would be the same.
He gave a last yawn for the benefit of the television monitor, then drew the heavy curtains all around his bed and climbed into the tentlike shelter. Although the reading lamp inside the canopy was still on, he knew that from the point of view of the television eye the room was in total darkness. He had satisfied himself already that there was no lens in his bed, but there was a microphone in what appeared to be a coin-sized decorative grille in the base of the reading lamp.
In Simon’s pyjama shirt pocket were several Band-aids he had taken from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom — which was thoughtfully equipped with everything from cologne to Milk of Magnesia. He tore the backing off one of them, coughing as he did so. He had already prepared a thick pad of facial tissue, also supplied in the bathroom. Coughing several more times, he then let his breathing become deep and regular. Then, very slowly, he placed the pad of tissue over the microphone aperture and taped it into place with the Band-aid. A second piece of adhesive completed the seal, and that particular microphone was deaf.
Next, the Saint turned out the reading lamp, putting the room in total darkness, and left his bed. Wary of other microphones still active, he crept across the rug to his desk and felt for the small tape recorder he had left in one corner. All he had to do then was to cough to cover the sound of depressing the playback switch. The tape began to move. He could feel the turning of the spool. Then he heard the sound of his own breathing coming from the loudspeaker. A moment later he heard a cough and a restless rustling of cloth. It was a production he had carried out carefully during the afternoon while he and Amity had worked on the Hermetico project. The tape contained nothing for forty-five minutes except sounds of breathing and occasional coughing. By the time it fell silent the Saint and Amity — hopefully — would be miles away.
Simon went back to his canopied bed and waited in absolute blackness until he heard a movement of the curtains and Amity crawled in beside him.
“It’s me,” she whispered directly into his ear. “Surprise. Now let’s see if I can guess who ‘me’ is.”
“Rat. Just concentrate on getting us out of this padded cell.”
Simon made certain the curtains were drawn tightly. He turned on the reading light. Amity, fully dressed in mini-skirt, sweater, and low-heeled shoes, sat up self-consciously.
“Literature makes strange bedfellows,” he remarked. “Do you have the fingernail scissors?”
“Yes.”
Simon stood up on the mattress with the small pair of sharply pointed scissors in one hand. With the other hand he grasped the velvet roof of the canopy.