“You’re right,” he said. “You mean — these guests were expected?”
“In a way. Yes. Please, check my desk — in the library. Did they get into that?”
“They did,” Simon reported, after a moment. “It looks as if they took it apart with a crowbar.”
“They were probably looking everywhere for the key,” Hugoson called, “but I took the precaution of carrying it with me.”
“I’m afraid the power of locks and keys is greatly over-estimated,” the Saint called back.
He was fingering the splintered wood of several drawers in the library desk. Papers had been tossed aside at random until a certain file folder had been uncovered. The folder was open on the desk. Whatever it had once held was gone. On the tab of the folder were printed the words ‘Amos Klein.’
“That’s what they were after,” quavered Hugoson’s voice.
The Saint looked up and saw that the publisher had made his way to the library door, and was standing there, clinging feebly to the jamb.
“This?” Simon asked, holding up the folder.
“Yes. Personal correspondence with... with Amos Klein.”
“Just over-eager autograph collectors, or what?”
“They wanted his address primarily. I’m sure of it.”
“There must be easier ways of getting it than this,” hazarded the Saint.
“There aren’t. Only I know it.”
Hugoson’s voice trailed off, so Simon helped him into a chair.
“Your employees must have learned his address,” Simon said then. “Your secretary? And why all the secrecy anyway?”
“One thing at a time,” Hugoson said tiredly. “In the first place, I correspond from my office with Klein only to post office boxes, using fake names. Nobody could find him through information in my office files. The people who are looking for him already discovered that: they broke into my publishing house offices a couple of days ago. That, in fact, was my main reason for wanting to talk to you. I realized somebody was out to find Klein by any means necessary.”
The Saint, lounging against the wall, held up one hand and interrupted.
“Just one question, to put at least some perspective in this picture: why should Amos Klein be so difficult to find in the first place?”
“Because I don’t want him to be found,” Hugoson said.
“Why?”
“Because... because of several things, but primarily because I want to protect my investment.”
“He doesn’t sound like an investment — he sounds like a pure asset.”
“Whatever you want to call it...”
“The goose that lays the golden eggs?” Simon suggested. “You’ve hidden it away so nobody can steal it?”
“Right,” said Hugoson. “Exactly.” He noted Simon’s almost unbelieving and somehow accusing stare. “Well, you can’t blame me! I’m a capitalist. I was dangerously close to being bankrupt when Klein came along, and I’ve no intention of letting anybody take him away from me. I don’t want to publish literature any more. I just want to be a millionaire!”
“A laudable ambition,” the Saint said. “But you have a rather extreme way of protecting yourself. I’m beginning to think you may really have your boy Klein locked up in a hen coop somewhere. What does he think about this?”
“The arrangement suits him fine. He has no desire for publicity. I couldn’t keep him away from the world if he wanted to be known, obviously.”
The Saint surveyed the wreckage of the desk and shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he mused. “If this is the way publishers are competing with one another these days, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to hear they were holding writers prisoner.”
“If they are publishers,” Hugoson said mysteriously.
Simon gave him a hard look.
“You mean the competition? The ones who’re so anxious to find Klein?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if it’s not a publisher, who is it?”
“I can’t think,” muttered Hugoson.
“Now listen,” the Saint said a little irritably, “apparently you had some notion of getting me to help you, so what’s the point of playing ring around the rosy?”
“I was going to try to hire you to protect Klein... and his identity.”
“You’d have failed,” Simon replied. “I don’t hire myself out. As a matter of fact, if I didn’t have a personal interest in this situation, in the form of an aching skull, I’d walk out in indignation.”
Hugoson brightened. “You mean you will help?”
“I’ve no intention of letting anybody cosh me and get away with it. If in the process of my personal vendetta I incidentally happen to help keep your coffers full, that’s all right with me. So tell me everything you know, and I’ll call your doctor and be on my way.”
“On your way where?”
“To get to Amos Klein before your competitors get there.”
4
It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Amos Klein worked and did a good deal of his living in a cottage at Burnham, only about forty-five minutes’ drive from the centre of London. Simon had envisioned himself pursuing adventure and vengeance into the jungles of Borneo or up the peaks of the Andes. The chimerical Mr. Klein’s residence in England was a convenience which the Saint not only appreciated but took immediate advantage of. With only as much delay as it took to accept Hugoson’s offer of a restorative drink, he got back in his car and was soon driving along the M4 motorway in the direction of Slough.
But while he was grateful for Klein’s proximity, he could not see much more in the affair to his advantage. Aside from the astonishing revelation of the length to which modern publishing competition seemed prepared to go, with burglary and mayhem a merely routine step towards finding and propositioning a popular but elusive author, it did not promise any of the exhilarating twists of a typical Saintly crusade against some particularly vile species of injustice. Of course, there had now been created an obligation to find the perpetrator of the clout he had received and repay the blow with interest; but that was hardly an electrifying inspiration.
As Simon had said to Hugoson as they parted:
“To think that I gave up Carol Henley’s company for some slope-shouldered little twerp with ink on his nose.”
Hugoson, who had seemed about to say something else, smiled wanly through the drawn grimace of his headache.
“You’ll live to eat that description, anyway,” the publisher said. “And who knows? You might even fall for him.”
“One of those, eh?” said the Saint. “Well, thanks for the warning.”
“Ring me up! I wish I felt up to going with you. And give... Amos my regards.”
Disappointingly, when the Saint had left the M4 and found his way through dark country roads to the proper cottage, according to Hugoson’s directions, it seemed as if he might not be able to give Amos Klein regards or anything else that night. The cottage, set alone in a densely wooded patch at the end of a lane, was completely dark.
Simon’s first thought was that the group who had been showing such an extraordinary interest in making the acquaintance of Finlay Hugoson’s gold-ovulating goose might have beaten him to the place and already roared away with the author in a cloud of advance royalty offers. On the other hand, it was just as possible that Klein had gone to bed quite peacefully. Simon’s apprehension about the eventuality of a kidnapping was eased when he quietly tested the front door and found it locked. He rapped and waited. Then he heard an irregular bumping sound coming faintly from the rear of the place. It was not any sort of sound that one would expect to be made by a man alone in the middle of the night, and it did not last long.