“You really are going to help him,” the girl said incredulously.
“Yes, I am. Or would you prefer being served up on that rich man’s barbecue grill he’s got downstairs?”
Amity shuddered.
“By all means help him,” she answered.
“Right,” said the Saint, getting to his feet. “Most of the gold in Hermetico was probably accumulated through foreign aid usury or some other form of respectable theft, or by characters without half your personal charm, my brains, or Warlock’s boyish enthusiasm. Why shouldn’t we have it instead of them?”
“It’s all right with me,” Amity said. “How do we get it?”
Simon’s answer was interrupted by the arrival of Galaxy Rose with the lunch he had ordered on his way up from the car.
“Working hard?” she asked with mild sarcasm, looking at Amity as she rolled the serving cart to the dining table.
“Doing my best,” said Amity.
Galaxy turned to Simon, standing so close in front of him that he had to lean back slightly in order to avoid a more intimate contact than he thought appropriate at the time.
“Can I help?” she purred.
“May I help,” Amity corrected. “Yes, you may, by serving lunch. Mr. Klein and I are starving.”
Amity sat down at the table and waited with an ail-too pleasant expression on her face. Galaxy compressed her lips and glowered.
“I’m not your slave,” she crackled. “Do it yourself.”
“You’re Mr. Klein’s slave,” Amity said sweetly. “And Warlock’s, too. So please do as you’re told and don’t keep us waiting.”
Galaxy Rose clenched her fists against her thighs.
“Amos, make her stop it before I...”
Simon thought it wise to accept the invitation to mediate before he became ammunition in a feminine free-for-all.
“Calm down, girls. I hate being fought over at mealtimes. Anyway, I have to work.”
He sat down at the dining table and proceeded to open the wine. Galaxy obediently but huffily served his and Amity’s plates.
“I really could help you, Amos,” she said pleadingly. “I’m sure I could do more than she could.”
“I’m sure you have done more,” Amity said, “but for the work Amos is doing you need something you haven’t got.”
“And what’s that?” demanded Galaxy.
“An adult human brain.”
The Saint put his napkin to his mouth, stood up quickly, and ushered Galaxy to the door. He let his hand linger on her arm.
“I’ll see you about four,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I do have to work now.”
“On her,” she said bitterly.
“On Hermetico,” he replied. “Be glad you’re better at playing than working. People ask much pleasanter things of you that way.”
Galaxy softened perceptibly.
“We’ll play later, then. Bye-bye.”
Suddenly her lips touched his, and then she was gone. Amity rolled her eyes and groaned as he returned to the table.
“I wonder what school for delinquent girls Warlock dredged her out of?” she said, cracking down with unrestrained violence on a lobster claw.
Simon raised his eyebrows as he spooned some hollandaise sauce on to his asparagus.
“You and Galaxy aren’t getting along so well lately, I gather.”
“When did we get along? I’m just getting mightily sick of seeing her...” She interrupted herself suddenly and looked at him. “You’re implying that I’m jealous, aren’t you?”
“Not in the least,” said the Saint gravely.
“Well, I am!” Amity said. “I’m sick of seeing her rub up against you every time she happens to pass through the same wing of the building.”
Simon raised both his hands above his plate helplessly, very much aware of the omnipresent microphones and television cameras.
“I find myself in an awkward position,” he said. “Flattering but very awkward, and if we use our vaunted brains, we will understand just why.”
The pointed tone of his last sentence got through Amity’s emotions to her reason.
“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I am acting like a child.” Suddenly she sounded almost on the verge of tears. “Maybe it’s just the strain of... of not knowing...”
Simon touched her hand soothingly.
“The strain doesn’t need to go on indefinitely,” he said. “Let’s concentrate on making this Hermetico job a successful operation.”
Amity took a deep breath.
“You’re right. It’ll get my mind off myself. Tell me what you found out.”
2
The Saint continued eating at a leisurely rate as he talked.
“Hermetico has some of the defects of the Maginot Line,” he said. “It’s too confident and it’s too rigidly oriented in a single direction. The management is so sure of the power of automation that they don’t watch the outer fence carefully enough. The only real problem is getting across the infra-red beams that protect the grass strip.”
“The only real problem?” his companion asked dubiously.
The Saint speared another snowy chunk of lobster, coated it with sauce, and savoured it luxuriously before he answered.
“I mean it’s the only real problem involved in getting from outside the fence to the inner side of the mined strip.”
“And how do you propose to get from outside the building to the vault?” asked Amity.
“For that matter,” said Simon cheerfully, “how do we propose to get over or through a six-foot-high network of invisible beams, any one of which will set off a mine if you interrupt it?”
“You could go over, I guess,” Amity said.
She was beginning to take an interest.
“You can’t go over because where the infra-red beams leave off six feet above ground there’s a radar system scanning the air. Nothing larger than a bird can go above the fence without setting off alarms.”
“Is there some way to get at the radar system?”
Simon thought about it.
“Not from outside. If we tried jamming it all we’d do would be to arouse suspicion and bring guards out all over the place before Warlock and his boys could even start to get over the fence.”
The two of them went on eating in silence for a while. Amity pushed away the emptied shell of her lobster and stared at it thoughtfully.
“I wonder how many of those infra-red beams there are?” she mused.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” said the Saint. “I noticed that even though the beams are crisscrossed up to six feet, my hat didn’t hit one and set off a mine until it was just a foot or so above the ground. It was sailing in at a slight angle, too, so that must mean that there are some fairly good-sized gaps in the network. I’m sure there’s no place a man could walk straight across, or even zigzag across...”
“But maybe there’d be a channel somewhere, like a tunnel several feet above the ground, where no beams happened to cross,” Amity interrupted.
“It’s possible,” said Simon. “I’m glad to see you getting so excited.”
Amity tried to change her expression abruptly.
“I’m not excited.”
“Well, please get excited. Maybe you’ll come up with some brilliant ideas — like how to find out if there’s a channel through the beams, and how to get through it.”
Those words were the beginning of an afternoon of non-stop thought, talk, and study. Amity’s cigarette stubs filled an ashtray and her smoke filled the room. Plans and charts covered the floor. Notes and calculations covered the tables. The Hermetico model was all but taken apart completely and put back together again several times.