“Can you get through that little space?” Amity called after him.
“Yes. You follow. I’m going to pry open the lock with a screwdriver.”
The Saint snaked his way into the boot, took a screwdriver from the kit he had discovered beside the spare tyre, and with the lighter beside him commenced his attack on the lock of the boot lid. He had trouble making out Amity’s words.
“Simon...”
The Saint, having more important things to do than indulge in conversation, grunted and continued his work.
“Simon...”
He twisted his head so that he could speak over his shoulder.
“What is it?”
His answer came not from Amity Little but from the lock on which he had been working. Magically it moved, the boot lid swung upwards, and there, with pistols in their hands, stood Nero Jones and Simeon Monk.
“Come out, Mr. Klein, wherever you are...”
The singsong, triumphantly jolly voice belonged to Warlock, whose unmistakable silhouette came into view behind his cohorts.
“Get out,” said Nero Jones with less cordiality.
The Saint was no advocate of suicide disguised as daring. Had he been, his career would have ended not many weeks after it began. It is quite simple to get killed making rash attacks on armed criminals, and the Saint could see nothing heroic, much less very bright, in obviously foredoomed gestures. On the other hand, the precise calculation of risks was his speciality, and in this particular situation the odds favoured his survival in reasonably good health no matter what he did. As Amos Klein, he was simply too valuable to kill, or even to injure, so he could afford to take greater chances than if he had been up against a pair of trigger-happy gorillas with orders to shoot to kill.
“Give me a hand, would you?” he said resignedly. “I’m jammed in here.”
He was flat on his stomach in the boot of the car. He held out his left hand as his right hand, hidden by his body, closed around the cold solidity of an iron jack handle. Jones and Monk glanced back towards Warlock, who nodded. Monk stepped forward to help, while his comrade increased his vigilance.
“Thanks, dear old ape,” said the Saint, and as soon as Monk grasped his hand he yanked the huge man forward with all his strength.
Simeon Monk was only graceless but top-heavy. His great weight was off balance in the Saint’s favour to begin with, and he sprawled like a crashing tree head-first into the boot. With the same sudden movement that toppled Monk, Simon jerked himself forward and rolled from the boot to his feet on the ground. The jack handle simultaneously became a short range weapon of deadly efficiency. Before Nero Jones could so much as stagger back in the first eye-blink of surprise, Simon had hurled the metal bar at his midsection with a force that made the air whistle. Then came Jones’s explosive groan as he jack-knifed forward and stumbled writhing to the earth.
The whole manoeuvre had taken not much more time than the striking of a snake, even including the slamming of the boot lid down on the backs of Simeon Monk’s thighs. Above his howl came Warlock’s shrill voice.
“Stop, Mr. Klein!”
Simon had planned to improvise his dealings with Warlock. The man, no fighter, and deprived by his own ambitions of the freedom to use a weapon, should have been no match. So it was with a certain appalled shock that the Saint spun around to face his enemy and found himself looking into the barrel of a steadily outstretched pistol which Warlock aimed at his chest and, with what seemed an interminable movement of his trigger finger, fired.
But there was no sound of exploding gunpowder, and the stinging sensation Simon felt in the muscle between chest and left shoulder was not the burning, bone-shattering impact of a lead slug. He looked in surprise and saw an inch-long shaft of shiny metal protruding from his pyjama shirt where the pistol’s projectile had hit him. He groped for it, testing as he touched it for barbs that might tear his flesh if he tried to pull it out, and then numbing sleep seemed to shoot through his veins like a flood of icy ether deluging his whole body. The last thing he knew was impotent fury at this second triumph of Warlock’s drugs over his own body and will.
3
“Mr. Klein,” Warlock said quietly, “I see no reason to lecture you or waste time on elaborate threats. We understood one another before you attempted to escape. Everything will go forward just as we planned then, except that since I can no longer hope to trust you or depend on your willing co-operation, you will have to forfeit the position of leader and I will have to take command. Follow me, please.”
Simon and Amity Little, immediately after their return to S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, had been brought to confront Warlock in the planning room where Simon had first met Warlock and his captains. The drug which had been used to subdue the Saint had been mild: he had awakened as he was being carried, his hands tied behind him, from the garage to the main building. Now he stood, his hands still tied, with Amity beside him, and listened to a grim Warlock flanked by a much grimmer Simeon Monk and Nero Jones.
“Go on,” Jones growled, pointing to a side door.
Warlock had already turned and was leading the way. Beyond the elegantly panelled conference room was a grey concrete stairwell leading down into the cellar. Simon and Amity followed Warlock past an open door of heavy metal, while their guards brought up the rear.
“It’s the S.W.O.R.D. laboratory!” Amity gasped. “It really is!”
Confronted suddenly with a huge underground chamber gleaming with electronic equipment, she sounded more amazed than frightened. Warlock’s pride began to get the upper hand over his chagrin at the attempted escape.
“Reproduced exactly,” he said. “It’s all just as you described it, Mr. Klein... all the marvellous devices created in your fertile brain.”
Simon bowed slightly.
“My fertile brain is flattered.”
“I’m sorry my reason for bringing you down here has to be what it is,” Warlock continued. “If we had managed through mutual co-operation to keep our relationship on a more friendly basis, the purpose of this little tour would have been much happier for all of us.” He shrugged. “As it is, I hope it will be — what shall we call it? — educational.”
Warlock left the group at the doorway and walked across the room. Along the walls were panels thick with switches, dials, and vari-coloured lights. One section seemed to involve a radar screen; another resembled a chemical laboratory, with retorts, tubes, and bottles. There were a number of fancifully shaped devices which resembled nothing Simon had ever seen before, and there were, unfortunately, several others which he recognized only too easily. Those latter, which would have been recalled shudderingly by any Charles Lake fan, were specifically intended for the torment and eventual destruction of human beings. One was basically electrical, one used acids in gruesomely imaginative ways, while the third, which promised a particularly messy result, operated on plain old-fashioned mechanical principles.
“How does it feel to see your brain children right here in front of you, Mr. Klein?” Warlock asked.
Simon looked at Amity Little before answering.
“It makes me feel like a depraved bloodthirsty maniac,” he said. “Anybody who could think up things like that deserves the acid needles.”
Warlock smiled.
“I’m glad you can still laugh at yourself, Mr. Klein. Luckily for you, our organization can’t get along without your mind. Miss Little, come over here, please.”
Amity didn’t move. Warlock was standing beside a table supported by a single thick ceramic pedestal. Its surface was formed of a massive steel slab larger than an ordinary door. There was a pair of metal clasps anchored by short chains at either end of the slab.