“I hate it,” Shortwave said.
“Then you won’t quibble about the seasoning, will you?” said the Saint. “Bring on the curry powder, Abdul. Bring on the red pepper. We’re going to give this prodigal son a welcome he’ll never forget.”
2
While the sauce bubbled on the stove, Abdul Haroon ladelled into it a number of tablespoons of chili powder and cayenne. Even he, with his cultural tolerance for culinary pyrotechnics, looked somewhat appalled at what he had wrought.
“Enough extra?” he asked.
“Let’s not be miserly,” Simon said. “Here.”
He took down a bottle of tabasco sauce from one of the shelves and dumped its entire remaining contents into the simmering stew. Haroon looked at the empty bottle and at the concoction in the pan and then said something which the Saint found charming in its hushed simplicity:
“That will be very hot.”
“Yes it will,” Simon agreed. “If you remember the recipe, it might make you a new reputation.”
He bent over Shortwave, caught some of the loops of rope which held him, and lifted him to a standing position. “Now come along, Marconi, and prepare to have your tongue loosened.”
“You’ll have to untie my feet,” Shortwave said.
He was still playing the defiant little tough guy, a role he would have had to be fairly good in to survive in the circles he frequented. The Saint had felt sure he was not the type to cave in and start squealing his head off at the first threat of pressure. He was no rock of Gibraltar, but he had probably taken enough punishment before in his life not to stand in awe of it, and his natural inclination to keep his trap shut would be reinforced by the fear of Kalki and Fowler that everybody who came into contact with the organisation developed very quickly.
The Saint hoped that some exotic and unexpected form of persuasion might have a more telling effect than conventional threats of death. Although Simon had always given wide latitude to his personal interpretation of the justification of means by ends, he was not an adherent of the thumbscrew and hot-iron school of winning friends.
The use of fists or more unpleasant implements on a man whose hands were tied was not in his repertoire.
“If you can’t walk, hop,” he told Shortwave, and pulled him towards the dining room.
Shortwave bounding along beside him like a one-legged kangaroo until they reached the first of the ghostly white tables in the semi-light of the public eating room.
“Sit,” Simon said.
He shoved Shortwave into a chair and arranged him in a more or less orthodox sitting position when he threatened to topple on to the floor.
“What are you gonna d-d-d-d-do?” Shortwave asked.
“It’s what you’re going to do that’s important,” the Saint replied. “You’re going to sing for your breakfast. I want to know how I can find Kalki and Fowler.”
“I d-d-d-dunno,” said Shortwave. “They d-d-d-d-on’t tell me nothing.”
He tried to sound unconcerned, as if such matters as the whereabouts of his bosses were so far from his ken that it had never even occurred to him to think of the question before. The Saint bent down, and the dangerous cobalt brightness of his eyes sliced through the other man’s forced bravado.
“Listen, you humanoid short circuit,” he said. “I know that you know where Fowler is operating his transport service tonight, and you’re going to tell me, and you’re going to get it right.”
Shortwave blinked rapidly.
“I told you I d-dunno,” he said with a little less conviction.
Simon straightened up to his full height and put his hands on his hips.
“Then you’d better get your antenna up and tune in fast,” he said, “because you’re going to tell me while I’ve still got time to drive there.”
Tammy came in from the kitchen.
“Mr. Haroon wants to know if you want rice too,” she said.
“How about it, Shortwave?” Simon asked considerately. “Would you like rice?”
“I wouldn’t like nothing.”
“Clear enough,” the Saint said. “A real purist. Coming up — one large order of Curry Vesuvius.”
Abdul Haroon appeared in the dining room with a steaming bowl on a tray. He set it down in front of Shortwave, whose face twitched as the corrosive fragrance of the rusty yellow-green substance rose to his defenceless nostrils.
“No rice?” Haroon asked. “Chutney?”
“Nothing to dilute the full impact,” Simon insisted. “You see, the customer is already starting to shed tears of joy at the mere prospect of sampling your cooking. Open wide, friend.”
Shortwave sat with his skinny jaws clamped shut.
“You’ll open up or we’ll pry your mouth open with a cleaver. I assure you I can think of a lot worse things than this to do to you... some of them inspired by you last night. So open up and either start talking or start chewing.”
He dipped a spoon into the bowl and held it in front of Shortwave’s mouth, which still did not budge.
“All right, Abdul,” the Saint said. “Go get those hot tongs.”
Shortwave opened his mouth and instantly Simon introduced the spoon and its contents. When he had withdrawn the empty spoon he held it threateningly just beyond Shortwave’s lips.
“Now swallow like a nice boy,” he said.
Abdul Haroon’s lamb curry, in the state it ordinarily reached his patrons, was of that not quite unbearable degree of spicy hotness which a curry must have if it is to to be a real curry and yet not irrevocably cauterise the taste buds. It brought happy moisture to the eyes, perspiration to the brow, and to the palate an addictive desire for more. Few were the European partakers of the dish who did not intersperse their bites with copious use of their handkerchiefs and with large profitable gulps of Haroon’s wine and beer. Gratified, satisfied, half-melted, they would complete the meal with a sense of victory and the appearance of one who has walked through a Turkish bath fully clothed.
That was the curry ordinaire of the Golden Crescent. Shortwave had just been presented with a sauce so loaded with ardent powders of seeds, pods, and leaves as to make the normal torrid dish seem as bland as a bowl of scrambled eggs.
First Shortwave’s skull-like face underwent a general horrified transformation, as a wax mask might change on sudden exposure to searing heat. His eyes opened wide. His crewcut brown hair, already on end, seemed to bristle like the protective armament of an aroused porcupine. Then tears flooded from his eyes and he crumbled into a violent fit of coughing.
“I’d say it’s a hit,” the Saint said, looking up at Haroon and Tammy.
Tammy was in a state of empathetic numbness; but Haroon, after his first intense observation of the phenomenon, broke into a delighted grin.
“Ha, ha,” he said, as precisely as if he were pronouncing the words from a grammar book. The laugh grew on him. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Suddenly he saw how Shortwave was glowering up at him, and the laugh caught in his throat and the grin was instantly withdrawn from his lips.
“Don’t worry, Abdul,” the Saint said. “Your days of being bullied by these rats are over. Right, Shortwave? Where are Fowler and Kalki?”
“I told you I dunno!” Shortwave said defiantly.
“You forgot to stutter — or maybe it’s the curry cure,” the Saint remarked. “Obviously what you need is more of the same.”
Shortwave protested violently against the next heaping spoonful of curry before giving in and taking it. There followed the immediate question whether he was consuming it or being consumed by it. His appreciation this time was even more spectacular than the first. His whole body seemed ready to glow, and after the initial paroxysms he continued to gasp for air like an overtaxed steam engine. The Saint already had another mouthful ready for him, and in the concluding phases of his reaction to that Shortwave shook his head in what appeared to be surrender.