“I thought we might celebrate Thermopylae together, Kuros, old chum,” said the Saint. “We should have some good reminiscences to swap, of battles long ago. How did you get out of that last bind in the Bahamas?”
“Fortunately, I have influential friends there.”
“Whom you know how to influence in your own way?” Timonaides’ dark eyes were flat and humorless. “Everyone has a skeleton in his closet, and Bahamians are no exception. I make it a rule to find the skeleton in an important closet in any place where I am active, so that I can be sure that I have power to use if I should need it.”
“You do have some ingenious skeleton-hunting methods,” Simon conceded. “Like bribing Perry Loudon to bug the bits of sculpture he sold to Finlay Thorpe-Jones, even to the extent of building in a television eye.”
“You detected that, did you? Your reputation has not been exaggerated.” Timonaides compressed his fleshy lips in a momentary grimace of annoyance. “That makes it very necessary to ensure that you don’t have any opportunity to warn him about my devices. He is quite an exceptional man, and what he thinks are his private conversations are often invaluable. But like everyone else he has a chink in his armor — in his case, his passion for modern sculpture.”
“I’m surprised that you were so ready to get rid of such a useful fellow as Loudon.”
“It is a mistake to keep repeating a successful trick. Besides, Loudon was developing Inflated ideas of his own usefulness. And he knew too much already.”
“So by staging his murder so that I would take the rap, you could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”
“Exactly.”
The Greek had been regaining his assurance with every passing word and second, as if behind the screen of dialogue his keen intelligence had been sizing up the situation at full depth and considering the logical moves which could be based on it.
“And now that your clever little scheme has fizzled?”
“I must be grateful that you weren’t content just to escape from the frame-up, somehow, but your foolish attempt to retaliate has delivered you back into my hands.” Timonaides walked to the fireplace and gazed expressionlessly at the dying embers for a moment. “You have caused me great inconvenience for a second time, and probably destroyed some priceless evidence which it may be difficult to replace. I shall not waste time trying to get rid of you with any more elaborate plots.” He turned to his light-haired henchman. “Since Mr Templar has broken into my apartment and attacked me, you may shoot him. It will be quite legal.”
“Here?” said the blond man.
Timonaides shrugged.
“I don’t want a mess on the carpet. Take him out in the kitchen. If there is any blood, it will be easier to clean off the floor.”
The blond man made a beckoning sign with his gun.
“Come,” he said.
And at that instant the elevator doors slid open, disgorging about eight humans and a Russian wolfhound. They scattered and staggered about the hallway, opening doors and crying out for liquor and music; some of them found the living room from which Timonaides and his lieutenant had burst in on the Saint, and turned more lights on, while others came towards the study.
The invasion was so utterly unexpected, except by the Saint, that even such a professional as the light-haired thug was thrown off guard, and Simon took advantage of his stupefaction to numb his wrist with a karate chop and then to numb his brain with a follow-up of knuckles to the jaw, before anyone got hurt. The blond went down in a corner, still feebly grasping his pistoclass="underline" but Timonaides made no move to try to retrieve it. Simon suspected that the Greek was a purely cerebral type, a masterful planner and giver of orders, but one who would always leave the physical dirty work to others. In any case, like his gunman, he was temporarily too utterly dumbfounded to make a coordinated movement.
Cassie spotted the Saint, and ran to throw her arms around him.
“You’re all right?” she cried. “Is everything all right?”
“You couldn’t have timed it better,” said the Saint.
The noise in the living room had risen in pitch. Someone had found a hi-fi stereo installation and turned it on full blast. The wolfhound was barking. A guitar started to twang in opposition, and found some vocal support. Then there were shouts of triumph as a source of liquid refreshment was discovered. There were sounds of popping corks, clinking glass, and some breakage.
The darker of Timonaides’ two messenger goons came stumbling blearily out of a door at the end of the hall, clad in horribly striped pajamas and clutching a revolver, obviously still half befogged with the slumber from which the uproar must have aroused him. But before he could make his arrival tell more offensively, the lift doors opened again and the second carload of hilarious heathens swarmed out. Somewhere among them was a policeman, holding desperately on to his helmet. The desk clerk had also been somehow swept up in this wave, and now crept closely behind the constable, like infantry advancing behind a tank.
Timonaides had been standing all this time as if paralyzed, his main sign of animation being the purpling of his face, which made him look as if he was building up to burst, or to have a stroke, as perhaps he was. For what may well have been the first time in his life, he had been flabbergasted by something so unpredictably and catastrophically beyond his comprehension that he had been robbed even of his lesser reactions and reduced to something like the level of a concussed beetroot But at the sight of the police uniform, the dam broke, and he found his voice at last — even though it was not, perhaps, the commanding kind of voice that would have been desirable.
“This is the man you want!” he screeched, pointing to the Saint.
The wolfhound jumped up on its hind legs and tried to lick his face. Timonaides pushed the dog away and shook both hands towards the Saint in a thoroughly Mediterranean gesture.
“This is the man!” he shrieked. “Not just a housebreaker, but a murderer! Arrest him!”
Simon, assuming a relaxed and graceful stance, let his head move just slightly to one side.
“Did you ever hear that oldie about the pot and the kettle, Kuros?” he asked quietly.
“I have nothing to say to you,” yelled the Greek. “I want you out — all of you out, and under arrest.”
The policeman looked around helplessly. When he spoke his voice was hoarse.
“There’s nothing I can do alone,” he gulped. “They can’t even hear me. I’ve put in a call for help.”
The elevator doors opened yet again, but not to bring help. It was to emit another and even denser contingent of Cassie’s celebrants, who lost no time in adding their assorted forms of din to the pandemonium. Faced with what must have seemed like a combination of earthquake, cyclone, and global insanity, even Timonaides’ surviving arms-bearer was at a loss, for to start shooting in such a mob and before so many witnesses would have been merely lunatic. And Timonaides, to whom he looked for guidance, had lost all capability of giving him a lead.
“It’s a good thing you’re here,” Simon said to the policeman. “If you weren’t, this creep would be having all the rest of us mowed down by his bully boys. He’s had plenty of people killed before.”
“That’s libel, Templar!” Timonaides shouted. “You’re not only going to jail, but you’re getting sued, too!”
He looked around for his men, one of whom was still far from alertly responsive.
“Don’t let him out of here!” he bellowed, pointing to the Saint. “Call Scotland Yard!”