Mahmud cowered before his massive accuser, and Shortwave, blinking rapidly, attempted to blend with the naked walls.
“I did as well as I could,” Mahmud protested. He looked ready to burst into tears. “I told them where to come — the only road they could use, so there would be no mistake. Then we waited behind the hedge, and I hit the tyre with the first shot! How can you blame me if the car did not crash in a way to kill them?”
That part of Kalki’s face visible above his home-grown Black Forest had turned dark purple.
“But why did you not kill them there?”
“I told him, I told him!” Shortwave blurted. “I said bash ’em in the head and make it look like they was killed in the wreck, but he wouldn’t d-d-d-d-do it!”
“Lights were coming,” Mahmud cried. “There was no chance!”
“Lights?” Kalki keened unreasonably. “Lights?”
He seemed about to reach down and break Mahmud in half, but when that happy prospect failed to materialise Simon entered the conversation.
“I must say you boys have all bungled this thing beautifully,” he said, in a tone of great good cheer. “You should have stuck to beating up kids for pennies, because as it is you’re getting in way out of your depth. You obviously aren’t up to handling the situation, and the next thing you know you’ll be permanently enjoying England’s hospitality in a granite guesthouse. But let me insert a note of optimism: it’s not too late. If you repent now you can still save your skins.”
“Big deal!” was Shortwave’s scornful response.
“Shut up!” Kalki said to Shortwave, and Shortwave shut up.
The giant turned to Simon.
“You can talk all you want to but it will be no use,” he said to his prisoner. “I do not want to listen to you.” He spoke to Mahmud and Shortwave. “We will put them in the back room — there.”
He opened the door in the new partition wall. Since the Saint’s ankles as well as his wrists were now tied he had to be carried by Mahmud and Shortwave. One took his arms and the other his legs, and together they staggered with their burden into an unfurnished, unlighted room that may have been intended to serve as a dormitory. Kalki, who might more logically have shared the load, escorted Tammy — whose legs were still free — along the same route. When he came with her into the room he turned on the light, saw Simon deposited on his back by the wall, and ordered Mahmud to bring the lady a chair.
“You will not have to wait long,” he said ominously, “but you may as well be comfortable.”
Simon inch-wormed himself into a sitting position. He had already tested the efficiency of the knots and windings Shortwave had put around his wrists and had found them unfortunately beyond reproach.
“When is Abdul Haroon joining the party?” he asked as Mahmud brought in a chair from the kitchen.
Kalki’s jutting brow contracted above the deep hollows of his eye sockets.
“Haroon?” he asked, obviously puzzled.
“When I was at the woman’s flat I told them Haroon was one of your chiefs,” Mahmud explained. “It helped make them not suspicious about me.”
The Saint had doubted that part of Mahmud’s story as soon as he had heard it, but had wanted to check and be sure.
“Haroon!” Kalki said contemptuously. “That ball of pig fat! The only things he wants are more customers and cheaper meat. The day he has the courage to break a fly’s wing I will jump over the Thames.”
“It might do the world more good if you jumped in,” Simon opined.
Kalki pointed a cudgel-sized finger at him — a theatrical gesture of warning accompanied by tilted head which the Saint had seen him use against his opponent in the televised wrestling match.
“And you might enjoy your short time of life more if you kept your mouth shut,” the giant said.
He bent down and with a deliberate, almost stiffly performed movement, struck Simon a stinging blow across the face with the back of his hand. The Saint knew how to soften the effect with a subtly timed yielding of his head, but Kalki’s hand was as big as an encyclopedia and the walnut-sized knuckles which adorned the back of it were a face-full to be reckoned with. As the Saint sat, steadily meeting the Pakistani’s eyes and refusing to show the slightest sign of discomfort, he tasted the salty blood that oozed from the corner of his mouth where the blow had smashed the inner tissue against his teeth.
“Be sure there is nothing more in his pockets,” Kalki told Mahmud. “Then leave them here until I have talked to Captain Fowler.”
He stalked haughtily from the room, followed by Shortwave, while Mahmud carried out a perfunctory and ungentle search. Then Simon and Tammy were left alone.
“He’s hurt you!” Tammy said, staring aghast at the Saint’s face. “Why do you insist on making them angry? You scared me half to death.”
The Saint looked around at the bare room, the stained plaster of three of its walls, the one window so thick with ancient grime and cobwebs that a curtain would have made it no more opaque. He looked at it as a stranded traveller accustomed to comfort might have looked at the last available room in some remote shanty town. Tammy’s face, as she followed the direction of his eyes, reflected a more appalled sense of the awful novelty of the situation.
“I just thought I’d have a little fun with them,” Simon said casually.
“A little fun?” his companion exclaimed. “They might have killed you.”
“They intend to kill me anyway.” He looked at her sharply. “And what about you, Miss Prudence? Jumping for that rifle in the car wasn’t exactly the most discreet move I’ve ever seen. In fact it was downright stupid. How is it you aren’t sporting a powder-lined perforation in your pinafore right now?”
“I thought maybe it wasn’t loaded,” she said, “and I kept away from the hole in the front while I was pulling on it...”
“The hole in the front?” the Saint repeated incredulously.
“The hole in the front of the gun,” Tammy explained. “You know.”
“Sometimes known as the barrel?” Simon said.
“Right. Where the shell comes out. And when he did shoot he didn’t hit me, but it scared me so much I lost my grip.”
“I’m thinking you lost your grip a little earlier, about the time you decided you were a crime reporter. But let’s not worry about the past when we’ve got so little of the future ahead of us. Here we are, all bundled up, waiting for Fowler to view us before the coup de grâce. Thus endeth verse, page, chapter, and book, unless we can think of something to do.”
“Who is this Captain Fowler?” Tammy asked.
“I don’t know,” said Simon. “Next question?”
“We could start yelling and screaming,” Tammy suggested thoughtfully. “There might be a constable in the neighbourhood.”
“Which vocal performance would last about five seconds, till our hosts got back and gagged us. Besides, I’m pretty sure there’s nobody around these parts to hear us.”
The girl lowered her voice almost to the point of inaudibility.
“I’ve still got my tear gas ring, and I reloaded it before we left my flat.”
“That’s good news,” the Saint said. “Let the hostile legions tremble.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” she retorted. “It might work this time.”
“It might be better than nothing,” Simon admitted, without conviction, “and nothing is just about what we have to work with now...” He paused thoughtfully. “Unless it’s that big ladykiller’s swelled head.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think Goliath may have an Achilles’ heel, if you’ll pardon the mixed mythology.”
He did not go on. Tammy stared at him suddenly. A car was pulling into the drive and stopping outside the boathouse.