Saint and the Fiction Makers (5 page)

She was picking the dummy up off the floor and sitting him in an armchair. Suddenly she stopped, listening.

‘Did you hear something?’ she whispered.

‘No. What?’

She was still frozen in her leaning position over the dummy.

‘In the hall.’

Simon had not heard anything in the hall, and he did not believe his hostess had heard anything either, but he decided to play along and let her get out of her system whatever it was she had in mind. The knife in the dummy’s back had looked very long and very sharp, but Simon turned anyway, like a matador defying a bull with the mockery of his undefended back, and looked towards the hall door. Only a man of supreme confidence in his own luck and skill could have made the move; the Saint was as sure of himself as if he had been going through a routine judo exercise.

‘Now,’ said the girl, ‘don’t move.’

At the same time Simon felt the cold point of the knife touch his neck.

‘Is that any way for a damsel in distress to treat her knight errant?’ he asked coolly. ‘I’m tempted just to leave you to the wolves … but I won’t.’

The Saint’s last three words were accompanied by a move so sudden and so swift that even an attentive observer would have been hard put to say just how the long knife ended up in his hand and exactly what caused the girl who had been holding it only an instant before to be sitting with the wind knocked out of her on the floor.

‘You look so surprised,’ he said amiably. ‘Wasn’t that according to the script?’

‘How am I supposed to know you’re the Saint?’ the girl demanded.

‘How am I supposed to know you’re Amos Klein?’ he retorted. ‘At least I’m the right sex.’

Almost without so much as a glance to his right at the dummy in its chair, Simon carelessly flicked the knife from his fingertips and sent the sharp-pointed blade flying deep into the painted head directly between the eyes.

‘I think,’ the girl gulped, ‘that for the moment, anyway, I’ll just have to trust you.’

Simon took her by one hand and hoisted her to her feet.

‘In that case, I’ll have another try at trusting you.’

‘Another try?’

‘Well I just showed you my good faith by turning my back on you, and look what it got me. And would you blame me for doubting that anything quite as gorgeous as you could be named Amos Klein?’

She gazed at him with a special kind of melting glow which only flattery can produce in the eyes of the human female.

‘I not only may learn to trust you—I may learn to love you.’

‘All things in their seasons,’ said the Saint agreeably. ‘And if it makes you feel any more comfortable, I really don’t doubt your identity. I know now why Finlay Hugoson made what seemed like a very naughty suggestion that I might fall for you if I came out here.’

‘He’s not supposed to tell anybody I’m a girl. It’s in our contract.’

She went over to a cabinet in the corner which yielded two glasses and a bottle of Old Curio. Simon looked at the pages of mansucript which lay beside the typewriter.

‘How do you do it?’ he asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Write these tough, tough books.’

Amos Klein shrugged as she poured the whiskey.

‘Something went wrong at the factory, I guess.’

‘Factory?’ the Saint asked.

‘The people factory. They ran out of proper girlie ribbons.’

‘Not from where I’m looking.’

She smiled with another glow of pure joy as she handed him his drink.

‘You’re very sweet. Cheers … to trust.’

‘To trust, Amos.’ His mouth reacted to the pronunciation of the name as it would have reacted to a large bite of lemon peel. ‘I just can’t call you that, darling.’

‘All right, call me darling.’

They both smiled and drank again.

‘Now,’ the girl said, ‘could you explain a little more about what’s going on—what brought you here? I mean, who’s behind all this?’

‘First, I’d be much happier if you’d satisfy my curiosity,’ Simon said. ‘What’s one of the most successful authors in the world doing hiding her light and gender under a bushel out here in the midst of the beech woods?’

‘It was partly Finlay’s idea. He thought it would help sales—the mystery, you know. And he also thought that the public might not take my books so well if they knew they were written by a woman.’

‘Maybe, but I doubt there would have been any problem. It didn’t hurt Agatha Christie. Hugoson seems very conservative, though.’

‘He is, and I had personal reasons, too. My family’s even more conservative than Finlay, and if they dreamed I was ruining myself for marriage and a life among decent people by writing sex and sadism thrillers they’d cut me off without a penny.’

‘Then Amos Klein isn’t your real name,’ Simon deduced, with some relief.

‘No … But when I began publishing these things I was completely dependent on them, and I may be adventurous in imagination but I wasn’t particularly willing to face starvation in person.’

‘But I should think you’d have made a fortune by now, with royalties and movie rights and all that.’

‘Amos Klein’ beamed.

‘I have. But there’s no point in giving my father an excuse to cancel out an eighty-thousand-pound trust fund just a year before it’s released to me. So long as I’m going to be rich, I might as well be filthy rich.’

Simon laughed.

‘I appreciate that laudable ambition. Where do Mama and Papa think you are now? In finishing school?’

‘You are a flatterer,’ the girl said, tossing her hair. ‘I’m twenty-four years old, and schools almost finished me a long time ago. My mother’s dead, and my father’s too preoccupied with his own business to think very deeply about my location as long as I’m not in his way. I keep him satisfied with various stories. I get friends to mail him my letters from highly respectable places. Of course the friends don’t know what I’m really doing either. I spent the last three months with a girl friend in Italy who forwarded my mail and thought I was in Spain with a bullfighter.’

‘And all the time you were here,’ Simon said.

She drained her glass.

‘Working like a galley slave. The nearest thing I’ve seen to a bullfighter is the postman dodging dogs on his bicycle.’

‘Which probably explains the frustrated look in your eyes, darling,’ he remarked.

Darling met his mischievous grin with a determined frown.

‘Sir, if you’re going to take advantage of a lady’s loneliness, I shall have to ask you to leave and never break down my door again.’

‘You could look at it another way,’ the Saint suggested. ‘Maybe I’m the hero who’s going to rescue the damsel from the dark castle.’

‘Maybe so.’

Her face had softened, but it immediately became more businesslike.

‘Now,’ she continued, ‘this is all lots of fun, but shouldn’t we get down to work?’

‘Fine,’ Simon agreed. ‘First, are your other doors and windows locked?’

‘Yes. But what a creepy thing to ask! Do you think somebody might try to kidnap me?’

‘Maybe you can tell me that. Frankly, the amount I know about this situation is so limited that my guesses would be just that—guesses. If there had been only one man in Hugoson’s apartment we’d at least have the possibility of some crackpot autograph hound carrying his hobby to completely nutty extremes. But there were at least two people, so that’s out. The other guesses involve newspapermen or unethical publishers, if you can believe that.’

The Saint rested himself sidesaddle on the desk. The girl had shoved the dummy out of the armchair onto the floor and flopped down into the cushions herself.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘That’s pretty far out.’

‘Any guess seems far out. Unless maybe this whole situation had nothing to do with you as an author at all. But if that were the case, why would the evil ones be tracking you down under the name of Amos Klein? If they were after ransom from your father, for instance, they’d have tried to trace you under your real name, whatever that is.’

The girl wrinkled her nose.

‘You’re not going to tell me the real name?’ Simon asked. ‘I give my word not to let the world in on the secret. “Darling” is fine, but it could be slightly awkward if I had to introduce you.’

‘It’s Amity,’ she said, looking wretched. ‘Amity Little.’

‘Aha. I see where you got Amos Klein.’ Simon tried the sound of it, maintaining a strictly straight face. ‘Amity Little. Sounds like a missionary.’

‘My father’s notion,’ Amity said. ‘He’s a Quaker. You can see why I’m not terribly keen on telling people—nor on seeing it emblazoned on the jackets of thrillers.’

‘I do see, darling,’ said Simon. ‘Now, to get back to our theories before your mysterious admirers show up here, is it possible they could have started out with a plan to kidnap Amity Little for ransom from her loving father, and then accidentally discovered that Amity Little and Amos Klein were the same? That would seem to promise them even more profit—they could ask Hugoson for ransom as well. And of course one of the last stages in the game would be finding out just where to find Amos Klein.’

Amity shook her head. Her eyes narrowed.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said very thoughtfully. ‘I think the real answer might be much weirder than that.’

‘Well?’

Amity bit her thumbnail, completely absorbed in her musing.

‘I wonder …’ she said.

The Saint shifted his weight impatiently.

‘So do I. Button, button, who’s got the button?’

‘Just a minute,’ Amity said.

She broke off her introspection and suddenly got to her feet. Going to the desk, she threw open one of the drawers and began burrowing through a deep and disordered pile of papers.

‘Bury a bone?’ Simon said.

‘A letter. There.’

Triumphantly, she drew a sheet of paper out of the chaos. Attached to the paper was a cheque. She handed it to Simon, who glanced at the amount of the cheque before reading the letter.

‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ he said in the appreciative tone of a connoisseur of currency in all its forms.

‘Before you get excited, read the letter,’ Amity Little told him.

‘Dear Mr. Klein … enclosed is a cheque for fifty thousand pounds, being half payment for your writing services, which we are most anxious to acquire. Period of employment, two months. Balance of payment on completion. The work will be secret, most challenging, and is guaranteed to be to your taste. Your cashing this cheque will be regarded as full acceptance of the contract as stated above, whereupon you will be contacted and given further instructions.’ The Saint’s reaction at the large black flourished signature showed only a moment’s beat before he read it aloud. ‘Warlock.’

He looked inquiringly and unbelievingly at Amity Little, who nodded confirmation.

‘Warlock,’ she repeated. ‘The arch villain in my Charles Lake books. And look underneath the name.’ She looked over Simon’s shoulder and moved the tip of a slim finger along the word as she spelled out the block capitals in which it was printed. ‘S.W.O.R.D.’

‘Your fictional organization for world evil.’

‘Secret World Organization for Retribution and Destruction. And Warlock’s the boss.’

‘You actually got this in the mail?’ Simon asked.

‘Yes. Forwarded by Finlay. He sends mail on addressed to Amos Klein unopened.’

Simon looked at the date of the letter.

‘You got it a month ago?’

‘Approximately.’

‘What have you done about it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘How could you resist?’

‘Cashing the cheque, you mean?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Simon said. ‘But at least trying to find out something about where it came from.’

‘Well, for one thing it gave me the creeps,’ Amity Little replied.

‘Understandably. It must be a bit like seeing yourself walk in the door.’

‘Yes. And I’m pretty tied down by the fact that I can’t let anybody know who I am. Of course I don’t have a bank account in the name of Amos Klein.’

‘Didn’t you even call the bank this is drawn on?’

‘Why?’

The Saint studied the cheque more closely as he answered.

‘To see if anyone really has an account in the name of Warlock.’

Amity tossed the idea off with a sweeping gesture.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! There isn’t any Warlock, except in my head. Obviously whoever sent this is some sort of nut!’

The Saint held up his hand for silence, and turned his head to listen.

‘Who may be coming up your drive right now,’ he said softly.

2

‘I don’t hear anything,’ Amity Little said.

‘I have rather exceptional hearing,’ the Saint said. ‘Let’s have a look out of the front windows.’

She led him through the house to one of the heavily draped windows in the dining room.

‘You mean that car?’ she whispered, listening. ‘I hear them turning around in my drive all the time. I’m at the end of the lane, so it’s the natural place.’

Simon had edged a curtain aside enough to peer out.

‘Do they often have blue lights flashing?’ he inquired.

‘Oh!’

Amity looked as a man in uniform stepped from the car and came up the walk. A moment later he knocked at the front door.

‘Somebody must have reported the shots,’ Simon said.

A fat-faced stocky constable stood on the steps when Amity opened the door.

‘Good evening, ma’am, sir,’ he said pleasantly. ‘P.C. Jarvis, Burnham police.’

‘Yes?’

‘We’ve something peculiar come up,’ said the man. ‘The Inspector asked me to request that you please come down to the station.’

‘What for, at an hour like this?’ Simon asked. ‘Does he want someone to sing him to sleep?’

‘There’s reason to believe that some kind of attack might be made on this house.’

‘What reason?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir. I’m only following orders. It seems there’s some funny things going on, and I wouldn’t want to alarm you, but the Inspector says it’s for your own protection.’

Simon and Amity exchanged glances, and the Saint’s eyes darted back to a ring he had noticed on the officer’s left hand. It was a large golden ring ornately carved in Florentine style.

‘That’s very kind of the Inspector,’ he said to the policeman. ‘If we’re in danger, maybe you’d better come inside so we can shut the door.’