Prelude for War (23 page)

She gazed vindictively at
Dumaire, who was then having
his hands efficiently
taped behind his back by Peter Quentin
,
and kicked him thoughtfully on the shins.

“Then they made you
ring me up?” Simon prompted her.

“Well, when they
couldn’t find the ticket they said they’d
do
horrible things to me unless I told them where it was.
So
I told them I’d given it to you to look after, and I was quite glad to be able
to ring you up by that time. I—I sort
of knew you’d catch
on at once, because you’re so fright
fully clever and
that’s how things always happen in stories.”

“It makes everything
so easy, doesn’t it?” said the Saint
satirically.
“We must talk some more about that, but I
think
we’ll talk alone.”

He watched while the
taping of the other prisoners’
wrists was completed; then
he started exploring doors. He
found one that
communicated with the bedroom—a place
of glass and
natural woods and pale blue sheets and pillows, with a pale blue bathroom
beyond it that gave an infinitesimally
humorous shift to the alignment of his eyebrows. He
left
the door open and signed to Peter.

“Bring the menagerie
in here,” he said.

Dumaire, Pietri and
Bravache lurched sullenly in, urged
on by the
unarguable prodding of gun muzzles.

On his way in after them,
Hoppy Uniatz stopped at the
door. It is true, as has
perhaps already been made superfluously clear, that there were situations in
which the light of
intelligence failed to coruscate on Mr
Uniatz’ ivorine
brow; it is no less true that in the
vasty oceans of philosophy and abstract Thought he wandered like a rudderless
barque at the mercy of unpredictable winds; but in his own
element he was immune to the distractions that might have
afflicted lesser men, and his mental processes became invested
with the simplicity of true greatness.

“Boss,” said Mr
Uniatz, with the placidity of a mahatma
approaching
the settlement of an overdue grocer’s bill, “I
t’ink
ya better gimme dem shells.”

“What shells?”
asked the Saint hazily.

“De shells,”
explained Mr Uniatz, who was now flour
ishing
Pietri’s silenced revolver in addition to his own
beloved
Betsy, “you take outa de dumb cannon.”

Simon blinked.

“What for?”

“Dey don’t make no
ners,” explained Mr Uniatz, with
a slight perplexity
for such slowness on the uptake, “when
we
are giving dese guys de woiks.”

The Saint swallowed.

“I’ll give them to
you when you need them,” he said
and closed the door
hastily on Mr Uniatz’ back.

He went back and sat on
the arm of a chair in front of
Lady Valerie. He wanted to
smile, but he had too many
other things on his mind
that were not smiling matters.
The recent episode which
had been absorbing all his nerv
ous and intellectual
energy was over, and his brain was
moving on again with
restless efficiency. It had not reached
an
end, but only a fresh beginning.

She had regained most of
her composure. Her face was
repaired, and she had
lighted a cigarette herself. He had
to admit that she
possessed amazing recuperative powers.
There
was a naughty gleam in her eyes that would have amused him at any other time.

“You always seem to
be catching me in these boudoir
moments, don’t you ?” she said, smoothing
her flimsy negli
gee. “I mean, first I
was in my nightie at the fire, and then
now. It must be fate, or something. The only trouble is,
there won’t be any thrills left when we get really
friendly.
…
Of course I suppose I ought to thank you for
rescuing
me,” she went on
hurriedly. “Thanks very much, darling.
It was sweet of you.”

“Don’t mention
it,” he said graciously. “It’s been a
pleasure.
You must call me again any time you want a
helping
hand.”

He got up restlessly,
poured himself out a drink and sat
down again.

“Don’t you think
you’d better tell me what it’s all about ?”
he
said abruptly. “I could live through an explanation of
this cloakroom-ticket gag.”

“Oh, that,” she
said. She trimmed the end of her ciga
rette. “Well,
you see, they thought I’d got a cloakroom
ticket
they wanted, so they came to look for it. That’s all.”

“It isn’t anything
like all,” he said bluntly. “Why go on
holding
out on me? You’ve got something they want—
probably
some papers that Kennet gave you. You parked
them
in a cloakroom somewhere, and these birds knew it and wanted the ticket. Or do
you want me to believe that
they went to all this
trouble simply to get a receipt for
Luker’s hat?”

She frowned at her knees,
and then she shrugged.

“I suppose there’s no
reason why you shouldn’t know,
since you’ve guessed
already,” she said. “As a matter of
fact,
I have got some papers. I thought Algy might like to
know,
so I just mentioned it to him casually on the telephone tonight.”

“Meaning what I was
talking to you about at the Berkeley
.”

“What was that?”

“Blackmail.”

“I don’t
understand.”

“Don’t make me tired.
You were trying to sell him those
papers.”

“After all,” she
said, “a girl has to live.”

“How long do you
think you’d have lived tonight if it
hadn’t been for
me?”

She hesitated.

“How was I to know
Algy would do anything like this ?”
she
said sulkily. “I told him I’d put the papers in a cloak
room and I wasn’t sure where they were. He rang me up
later on, just before the monkey-man got here, and offered
me ten thousand pounds if I’d bring them round to him
right away, but I thought they might be worth more than
that, so I pretended I still couldn’t remember what I’d done
with them. Of course I know where they are really.”

The Saint’s lips
tightened.

“You poor little
fly-brained moron,” he exploded uncon
trollably.
“What makes you think you can cut in on a game
like
this ? Haven’t you had your lesson yet ? You know what
happened
to Kennet and Windlay. You know what hap
pened
to you tonight. You heard what Bravache said. If
I
hadn’t had everything organized, you were booked to go
down
the drain with me—plus any specialized unpleasant
nesses
that your boy friend Dumaire could think of. Is that
your
idea of a good time?”

She shuddered almost
imperceptibly.

“I know, that wasn’t
very nice. I never was one of those
heroines who don’t
think life is worth living unless bullets are whizzing past their ears and
ships sinking under them
and houses crashing in
ruins about their heads and all that sort of thing. Personally I’m all for a
life of selfish self-
indulgence, and I don’t
care who knows it. If I could get
a decent offer for
those papers, I’d take it like a shot and
skip
off to Bermuda or somewhere and enjoy it. The trouble
is,
I don’t know what they’re worth. What do you think?”

She looked at him with
limpid brown eyes big with artlessness
.

“I’ll give you a
shilling for them,” he said.

“Oh, I wasn’t
thinking of selling them to you,” she said
innocently.
“What I was thinking was that if I went to a
fairly decent pub
tonight—the Carlton, for instance, where
I
should be perfectly safe—and then I rang up Algy and told him he could have the
papers for fifteen thousand pounds, he’d most likely do something about it. I
mean,
after what’s happened tonight,
he ought to consider himself
damned
lucky to get them for fifteen thousand. Don’t you
think so?”

“Very lucky,”
said the Saint, with fine-drawn patience.
“Where
are these papers at the moment?”

She smiled.

“They’re in a cloakroom all right. I’ve
got the ticket
somewhere, only I forget
exactly where. But I expect I’ll
remember
all right when I have to.”

“I expect you
will,” he said coldly. “Even if somebody
like
Dumaire has to help you.”

Suddenly he got up and went
over to her and took both
her hands. The coldness fell out of his voice.

“Valerie, why don’t
you stop being an idiot and let me
get into the firing
line?”

She looked at him
speculatively for a while, for quite a
long
while. Her hands were small and soft. He kept still,
and
heard a taxi rattle past the end of the street. But she
shook her
head.

“I’d like to,”
she said sadly. “Especially after what you’ve
done
for me tonight—although if it comes to that, I expect you simply love dashing
about rescuing people and doing
your little hero act, so
perhaps you ought to be a bit grate
ful to me for giving you such a good
chance to do your stuff.
And after all, if I
just handed over the papers to you, that
wouldn’t do much good, would it ? Of course, if you wanted
to buy them——
”

“To hell with buying
them! Haven’t you found out yet
thai there are some things
in life that you can’t measure
in money? Haven’t you
realized that this is one of them?
I don’t know what
there is in those papers—maybe you
don’t know either.
But you must know that things like you’ve seen tonight don’t get organized over
scraps of
paper with noughts and crosses on
them—that men like
Bravache and Fairweather and Luker
don’t take to systematic murder to stop anybody reading their old love
letters. These men are big. Anything that keeps them as
busy as this is big. Ana I know what kind of bigness they
deal in. The only way they can make what they call big
money, the only way they can touch the power and glory
that their perverted egos crave for, is in helping and school
ing nations to slaughter and destroy. What hellish graft
is at the back of this show called the Sons of France I
don’t know; but I can guess plenty of it. However it works,
the only object it can have is to turn one more country aside
from civilization so that the market can be kept right for
the men who sell guns and gas. Or else Luker wouldn’t be
in it. And he must know that there’s an odds-on chance of
bringing it off, or else he still wouldn’t be in it. This may be
the last cog in a machine that will wipe out twenty million
lives, and you might have the knowledge that would break it
up before it gets going. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

She stood up slowly. And
she freed her hands.
“I think I’ll be
getting along now,” she said, and her
voice
was quite steady in spite of the reluctance in it. “It’s
been a lovely party, but even the best of good times have to
come to an end, and I need some sleep. Do you think you
could move those men out of the bedroom while I put on
some clothes?”

Simon looked at her.

The fire that had gone
into his appeal was a glowing;
ingot within him. It was a
coiled spring that would drive
him until it ran down,
without regard for sentiment or
obstacles. It was a power
transformer for the ethereal
vibrations of destiny.
Earlier in the evening, the atmosphere
of
the Berkeley had defeated him; but this was not the
Berkeley.
He knew that there was only one solution, and
there
was too much at stake for him to hesitate. He was
amazed
at his own madness; and yet he was utterly calm,
utterly
resolute.

He nodded.

“Oh yes,” he
said. “I was going to move them anyway.
I
didn’t think you’d want to keep them for domestic pets.”