Mahmud cut off the engine of the car and then the headlights. The light that came from the windows above was weak and yellow.
“Now,” he said. “Do what I tell you. Sit here and wait. I will go inside for a minute.”
“Let’s take ’em on in,” Shortwave said. “What the hell do we need to wait for?”
“Scared of the dark?” the Saint sympathised. “We’ll be here to keep you company.”
“I must ask,” Mahmud told his accomplice. He jerked his head towards the house. “He does not know we bring them here.”
Shortwave looked slightly apprehensive.
“Yeah. It’s your fault. I told you we oughta conk ’em and leave ’em there like it was an accident.”
“We couldn’t,” Mahmud said almost desperately. “There were cars coming. This was all we could do!”
“Tell it to him, not me,” Shortwave replied, indicating the house once again. “It’s your show. I’m just riding shotgun.”
“Loyalty to the end,” commented Simon. “Doesn’t it grab you, Tammy?”
Mahmud opened his door and got out. Shortwave was no longer slouching relaxed in his corner of the back seat as he had been during the ride. He sat up straight and alert, holding the pistol on Tammy with his right hand while he steadied his right forearm with the other.
“There’s just about one spider web between this dame and the Great Beyond,” he said to Simon, “so sit tight and don’t try nothing.”
“Why should I try anything?” the Saint asked languidly. “What more could I ask? Free transportation, fresh country air, brilliant conversation...”
Shortwave grunted, keeping on his guard, his eyes narrowed. Then he began to hum a nervous mournful gipsy tune.
“And thou beside me singing in the wilderness,” Simon added. “Our very own portable radio.”
Tammy Rowan, who was so busy trying to look brave that she could hardly move, glanced at Shortwave, who appeared to have sunk into a state of trance. His thin reedy humming went on. His eyelids drooped, but Simon could see that the dilated black pupils peered out of his skeletal face with undiminished watchfulness.
Tammy spoke very softly and hesitantly, as if she thought Shortwave were asleep and might not hear if she kept her voice down.
“What are we going to do?”
Shortwave, as motionless as a coiled snake, went on with his humming.
“We’ll do just as we’re told,” the Saint replied. “Don’t be fooled by Shortwave’s gentle manner and wholesome demeanour: I have a feeling he can be pretty nasty if he gets riled.”
Shortwave chuckled suddenly.
“You’re damn right.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt the programme,” Simon told him.
“I was gettin’ Radio Luxembourg,” Shortwave informed him in return. “It comes in real clear about this time.”
There had not been any sounds from inside the boat-house, but now a door apparently opened, letting out into the night a babble of at least two excited and irritated non-English voices. Feet crunched along the drive towards the car, and Mahmud opened the door beside Shortwave.
“Bring them into the house,” he ordered. “Hurry!”
“Okay,” Shortwave said. “You guys cool it now and do like I say. I’m gonna back out of here, and you follow me out this door, girlie. Saint, you hold it right where you are till I give you the word to move — unless you want her to get hurt.”
He kept his pistol in thoroughly professional readiness while he slipped out of the car and Mahmud retrieved his rifle from the vacated floor. The Saint had decided as soon as he was captured that unless a really good chance presented itself he would not try to escape or otherwise turn the tables until he had been taken to the group’s headquarters. Mahmud, in deciding to drive him straight to the boathouse, might have been saving him a good bit of work — while a minor slip could have cost Tammy Rowan’s life.
Now one objective seemed to have been reached, and the next few moments could very well give him the best chance to make his move. Mahmud, in his jittery state, had not even thought to search the Saint for weapons, but even if he had made the conventional search, he would quite likely have failed to find Anna, the slim beautifully balanced throwing knife in the sheath strapped to his left forearm. It was a card up the Saint’s sleeve that more professional friskers had overlooked before, and the fingertips of Simon’s right hand casually located the hilt of it while he considered how long he could most effectively wait before bringing it into play.
But then, as Mahmud took a step back and waited for the girl to follow as reluctantly as it would have been natural to expect, the Saint’s carefully cultivated restraint was nullified by another factor over which he had no control. Tammy Rowan, in some excess of reckless bravery, or some frantic irrational panic brought on by the prospect of rapidly approaching doom, hurled herself from her seat and dived for the rifle. The effort might have made more sense if the trigger end had not been in Mahmud’s hands, leaving Tammy in unpromising possession of the barrel.
Even in the first second of the grim tug-of-war Simon knew what the outcome would be, but he felt he had no choice but to go on the offensive himself. Mahmud was shouting, and Shortwave started around the car to try to cut off any escape attempt from the other side. Expecting at any moment to hear the crack of the rifle as it was fired point-blank in the scuffle, Simon shouted at Tammy to let go and give up. Then he vigorously opened his door just in time for it to catch Shortwave full in the face as he came scampering around the front of the car.
As Shortwave crashed to a standstill, Simon rolled out and grabbed him. Mahmud was screeching at Tammy in his native tongue, and a thudding of heavy footsteps from the boathouse hinted that reinforcements were on the way. Either Mahmud had orders to keep Tammy alive, or he did not want to put holes in his car, or his rifle had jammed: for some reason the shot Simon kept expecting still did not come. On his own battle-front he disarmed Shortwave by chopping his wrist with the edge of one hand and knocking the pistol to the ground. Shortwave yowled and kicked and flailed like a human buzzsaw, trying to counter the Saint’s superior strength and skill with sheer wild motion. The Saint calculated carefully for a split second and then sent his fist shooting into the human blur at just the proper instant to crack him hard on the point of his jaw.
Shortwave sagged against the side of the car. And then the Saint had a peculiar dreamlike sensation experienced, it is almost certain, by few people besides Elijah and a handful of other mortals thought worthy by the Higher Powers of being borne bodily away to heaven without suffering the usual preliminaries. He felt himself lifted straight into the air, where he dangled for a moment before the less inspiring portion of his journey began. Then whatever had elevated him put him down. Threw him down would be a more accurate way of saying what was done to him — and what followed was even more unpleasant. He had just been jarred to the earth flat on his back when he got his first glimpse of the human colossus to whom he owed his experience, and whose gallon-capacity left shoe which introduced itself by crunching into his side between his ribs and his pelvis. At the same instant he heard the rifle finally fire.
4
For a few seconds of blinding pain he was completely incapacitated, and when he began to suck in breath again his hands were already being tied behind him. In the process, Anna was discovered and snatched from her sheath.
His first full awareness was the sight of Mahmud hurling Tammy to the ground with a whip-jerk of her arm. He was not sure whether she had been shot or not. The waiter’s rifle lay in the dust, and for a second Simon thought the Pakistani was stooping to retrieve it. But when Mahmud pivoted and turned to Tammy again it was a supple green branch torn from a nearby shrub that he held in his hand. Apparently unwounded, she tried to scramble to her feet to get away but he slashed the three-foot switch down across her shoulders. She screamed and fell back to the ground.