Prelude for War (25 page)

“Here,” she
blurted. “What the
…
Where are we
going? This isn’t the way
to the Carlton!”

Obviously it wasn’t; they
were down at the Chelsea end
of the Embankment, heading
west.

“Have you noticed
that already?” said the Saint imperturbably
.
“How observant you are, darling. Now I suppose
I
can’t keep my secret any longer. The fact is, I’m not taking
you to the Carlton.”

She caught her breath.

“You—you’re not
taking me to the Carlton? But I want
to go to the
Carlton! Take me there at once! Tell the
chauffeur
to turn round——
”

She leaned forward and
tried to hammer on the glass par
tition. Quite effortlessly
the Saint pushed her back.

“Shut up,” he
said calmly. “You make me sick.”

“W-what?” she
said.

She stared at him with
solemn wide-open eyes as if he
were some strange monster
that she was seeing for the
first time.

“It’s no use both of
us being sick,” he pointed out reason
ably.
“It would be a deafening duet.”

“I don’t know what
good you think this is going to do
you,” she said
haughtily. “If you think you’re going to pro
tect
me, or anything like that——
”

“Protect you?”
he said, with bland incomprehension. “Who—me? Darling, that would never
enter my head. I
know you can look after yourself. But I
want to take care
of you for my own sake. You see, it
wouldn’t suit me at all
if you sold those papers
to Fairweather or Luker. I want
them too much myself. So I just want to keep an
eye on you
until I get them.”

“You—you mean you’re kidnapping me ?”
she got out in
credulously.

But somehow she did not
sound quite so indignant.

“That’s the
idea,” he said equably. “And it’s my duty to
tell
you that if you try to scream or kick up any sort of fuss
I shall have to take steps to stop you. Quite gentle steps, of
course. I shall just knock you cold.”

“Oh!” she said.

She was sitting up very
straight, one hand on the seat beside her, the other clutching the armrest at
her side. Simon lounged at ease in his own corner, but he was watching her
like a hawk and his hands were ready for instant action. He
had no wish
to use violence, but he would have had no com
punction
about it if it became necessary. He was fighting for
something bigger than stereotyped chivalry,
something big
ger than the incidental
hurt of any individual. He was the point of a million bayonets.

For a long moment she went
on staring at him, and there
was something in her face
that he could not understand.

Then her muscles relaxed
and she sank limply back.

“I think you’re an
unspeakable cad,” she said.

“I am,” said the
Saint cheerfully. “And I fairly wallow
in
it.”

Her mouth moved slightly,
so that by the dim light of passing street lamps it almost looked for one
fleeting mo
ment as though she were trying to
stifle a smile. He reached
over to crush his
cigarette in the ash tray so as to glance at
her
more closely, but she moved further away from him,
and
the expression on her face was surly and
disdainful.
He lay back and stretched out his legs and appeared to go to
sleep.

But he was awake and
vigilant for every minute of the
drive, while the car
whispered out of Putney and out on to
the Portsmouth Road
and down the long hill into Kingston.
They went on to
Hampton Court, and turned off over the
bridge
along the road by Hurst Park; in Walton they
turned
right again, and a few miles later they turned under
a
brick archway into what seemed like a dense wood. A few
more turns, and the car swung into a circular drive and
swept its headlights across the front of a big weather-tiled house set
in a grove of tall pines and silver birches.

They pulled up with a
crunch of gravel, and Simon
opened the door.

“Here we are,
darling,” he said. “This is my nearest country seat. Thirty minutes
from London if you don’t
worry about speed cops, and
you might as well be in the
middle of the New Forest.
You’ll like the air, too, it has
oxygen in it.”

He picked up her valise
and stepped out. As she got out
after him she saw Patricia
coming round the front of the
car, pulling off her
gloves, and her face went stony.

The Saint waved a casual
hand.

“You remember Pat,
don’t you?” he murmured. “The
girl
with the wardrobe you liked so much. She’ll chaperon
you
while you’re here and see that you have most of the
things
you want. Come along up and I’ll show you your
quarters.”

He led the way into the
house, handing over the valise
to Orace, who was standing
on the steps. Without saying
a word Lady Valerie
followed him up the broad oak stair
case.

Upstairs, at the end of
one wing, there was a self-con
tained suite consisting of
sitting room, bedroom and bath
room. Simon indicated it
all with a generous gesture.

“You couldn’t do
better at the Carlton,” he said. “The
windows
don’t open and they’re made of unbreakable glass,
but
it’s all air-conditioned, so you’ll be quite comfortable. And any time you get
tired of the view, you’ve only got to
tell me where that
cloakroom ticket is and I’ll take you
straight back to
London.”

Orace put down the valise and went out again
with his
peculiar strutting limp.

Lady Valerie turned round
in a quick circle and stood
in front of the Saint. Her
face was blazing.

“You,” she said
incoherently. “You …”

She took a swift step
forward and struck at him with her
open hand. His
cheek stung with the slap. Instinctively he
grasped
her wrist and held it, but she struggled in his arms like a wildcat, wriggling
and kicking at his shins.

“Oh!” she sobbed.
“I—I hate you!”

“You break my
heart,” said the Saint. “I thought it was
the
dawn of love.”

She took a lot of holding:
her slim body was strongly
built and her muscles were
in excellent condition. In the
struggle her hair had
become disordered, and her breath
came quickly between
parted lips that were too close to his
for
serenity.

The Saint smiled and
kissed her.

She stopped struggling. Her
breasts were tight against
him; her lips were moist and desirous under
his. One of her
arms slid behind his neck.

The kiss lasted for some
time. Then he put his hands
on her shoulders and moved
her gently away.

“I’m sorry about
that,” he said. “I didn’t really mean to
force
my vile attentions on you, but you asked for it.”

“Did I?” she
said.

She turned away from him
towards a mirror and began to
pat her hair into place.

“You are a cad, aren’t
you ?” she said.

Her eyes, seen in the mirror, held the same
baffling ex
pression that had puzzled him in
the car; but now there was
mockery
with it. Her lips were stirred by a little smile of
almost devilish satisfaction. She had a pleased
air of feeling
that she had done
something very clever.

“I think you’re a
dangerous woman,” he said with pro
found
conviction.

She yawned delicately and rubbed her eyes like
a sleepy
kitten.

“I don’t know what you
mean,” she said. “Anyway, I’m
too
tired to argue. But you’ll have to go on being nice to me
now, won’t you ? I mean, what would Patricia do if I told
her?”

“She’d write your name
on the wall,” said the Saint,
“where we keep
all the others. We’re making a mural of
them.”

“Would she? Well,
don’t forget that I know what you’ve
done with Bravache
and those other men. When they’ve
been bumped off, or
whatever you call it, I shan’t want you to get hanged for it if I go on liking
you.”

The Saint was grinning as
he went out and locked the
door. It was the first
piece of unalloyed fun that had en
riched the day.

At 4 A.M. that morning a
young policeman on his beat
noticed a suspicious
cluster of shapes in a doorway in
Grosvenor Square.
He flashed his light on them and saw
that they were the
bodies of three men, with adhesive tape
over
their mouths and their hands fastened somehow be
hind
them, sprawled against the door in grotesque atti
tudes.
They were stripped to the waist and horrid red stains were smeared across their
torsos.

Blood! … The young
policeman’s heart skipped a
beat. In a confused
vision he saw himself gaining fame and
promotion
for unravelling a sensational murder mystery,
becoming
in rapid succession an inspector, a superintendent, and a chief commissioner.

He ran up the steps, and as
he did so he became aware of a pungent odour that seemed oddly familiar. Then
one of the bodies moved painfully and he saw that they were
not dead. Their bulging eyes blinked at his light and
strange
nasal grunts came from them. And as he bent over
them he discovered the reason for the red stains that had taken his
breath away, and at the same time located the source of
that hauntingly familiar perfume. It was paint. From brow
to waist they were painted in zebra stripes of gaudy red
and blue,
with equal strips of their own white skins show
ing in between to complete the pattern. The decorative
scheme had even been carried over the tops of
their heads,
which had been shaved
for the purpose to the smoothness
of
billiard balls.

Hanging over them, on the
door handle, was a card in
scribed with hand-printed
letters:

THESE
ANIMALS ARE

THE
PROPERTY OF

MR
KANE LUKER

———————

PLEASE
DO NOT TOUCH

4

Simon Templar was having
breakfast in Cornwall House when a call on the telephone from the watchful Sam
Outrell
at his post in the lobby heralded the arrival of
Chief In
spector Claud Eustace Teal a few
seconds before the doorbell sounded under his pudgy finger.

Simon went to the door
himself. The visitation was no
surprise to him—as a
matter of fact, he had been fatalisti
cally expecting it
for some hours. But he allowed his eyebrows to go up in genial surprise when
the opening door re
vealed Teal’s freshly laundered face
like a harvest moon
under a squarely planted bowler hat.

“Hail to thee, blithe
spirit,” he greeted the detective
breezily.
“I was wondering where you’d been hiding all
these
days. Come in and tell me all the news.”

Teal came in like an
advancing tank. There was an aura
of portentous
somnolence about him, as if he found the whole world so boring that it was
hardly worth while to keep awake. Simon knew the signs like the geography of
his own home. When Chief Inspector Teal looked as if he
might easily fall asleep in a standing position at any mo
ment it meant that he had something more than usually
heavy weighing on his mind; and on this particular morning
it was not insuperably difficult for the Saint to guess what
that load was. But his manner was seraphically conscience
free as he steered the detective into the living room.

“Have some
breakfast,” he suggested convivially.

“I had my breakfast at
breakfast time,” Teal said with
dignity.