Leslie Charteris - Send for the Saint

All the Saint could do for Nobbins was to aim the shots as far from the most certainly lethal target points as he dared — and pray that no thousand-to-one combination of improbable circumstances had intervened to stop Pelton contacting the victim in time.

Because if they had, Albert Nobbins might be a goner for real.

Rockham, at any rate, was pleased with the effect, when he viewed the film that evening. The screen had been set up in his office and the curtains drawn, and Lembick and Cawber and the Saint were with him.

“You were a shade too far off when you fired,” he observed ruminatively after sitting through the entertainment for the second time. “But all the same, a very creditable performance. A good clean hit.”

The Saint said: “Then I’ve passed the final test, have I?”

“With flying colours. And I’ve decided to assign a leading role to you in a major job we’ll be doing on Friday — the day after tomorrow... What’s your trouble, Lembick?” Rockham inquired silkily, as the Scot’s features twisted themselves into a resentful scowl.

Lembick was bursting with it.

“It’s just that Cawber and me — we’ve been talking, and we both feel the same about this” — he seemed to have difficulty stifling a pejorative strong enough to convey their dislike and distrust — “this new man.”

“This new man who thrashed you in your own gym — yes, Lembick, what about him?”

“It’s not that — not the fight.” Lembick twisted his big hands together as if he wished he had them around the Saint’s neck. “But he’s — it’s his attitude.” Again he scowled and seemed to be groping for a word extreme enough to express his condemnation. “He’s too goddam flip! ”

“He’s a good man,” said Rockham, suddenly hard and inflexible.

“Better than us?” demanded Lembick.

“A different type,” Rockham said flatly.

“We’ve been with you from the start,” Cawber said sulkily.

“And you’ll stay to the end.”

Lembick said: “We just don’t want him promoted over our heads.”

Rockham eyed them coldly.

“This is a military formation,” he snapped, “not a labour union.” Anger blazed for a moment in those near-transparent eyes. “Now get out, both of you. And take the cine gear.”

When the two truculent trainers had gone, Rockham poured port for himself and Simon from the crystal decanter in the corner cabinet.

He brought the drinks and said: “You have a taste for the good life, Gascott.”

“Who hasn’t?”

Rockham shrugged.

“Lembick, Cawber. They only work for the money. And the chance it gives them to boss and bully a number of subordinates that I supply.”

The Saint saw the likely drift of Rockham’s thought, and decided that his best course was to play up to him.

“Natural-born deputy Fuhrers” he said, nodding.

“Ah! You agree!”

The Saint raised an eyebrow that asked if disagreement were sanely possible.

“That the world’s divided?” he rasped. “Shepherds and sheep? Of course. It always has been and it always will be.”

Rockham beamed.

“You understand! But so few people do. And yet it’s so simple. Some men are born to lead, others to follow.”

“That’s for sure,” the Saint said, drawing him out.

“It’s always been the one sure thing. Once you’ve grasped that — once you’ve freed your thinking from all this democratic garbage — then you can act.”

“As long as you’re one of the lucky tribe of born leaders.”

“Luckily for us, we both are.” Rockham drank with evident enjoyment, studying the Saint for a while before he spoke again. He said: “It’s three years now since I made the break with society — with the law. But most of all with the unworkable idea that men are equal — in anything. Democracy!” He thumped a fist on the table. “Democracy is dedicated to the protection of the weak and the stupid.”

“Numbers against quality,” rasped the Saint sycophantically.

Rockham put down the glass and stroked his square jaw with that hand whose potent karate chop Simon had seen in action.

“We speak the same language, you and I. I sensed it from the start. Most men — you said it yourself — are no better than sheep. They’re fit for nothing but to be herded about. Mindless obedient imbeciles! Or they’re like chess pieces — expendable, all but the king, in the larger interest of the game. Most men are only fit to be shuffled about like pawns — forces to be marshalled, pitted against one another... sacrificed.”

“ ‘And one by one, back in the closet lays’,” the Saint quoted.

“Exactly,” the other man agreed, evidently recognising the line. “But what the verse doesn’t say is that when Destiny moves men about on the chess board of life, it operates through other men. Through the leaders, Gascott. Through men like you and me.”

While he was talking, he had strolled over to a small square table that stood between two armchairs near the drinks cabinet.

“I believe you’re a chess player yourself,” he said; and he slid most of the tabletop aside to expose an inlaid board with a hollowed-out compartment at either end holding the pieces.

“I’ve occasionally done a bit of wood-pushing,” Simon admitted, as Rockham picked out a white and a black pawn.

Rockham said: “I’m interested to see what kind of a game you play.” And there was an odd, almost fanatical glint in his eye as he spoke.

He shuffled the two pawns about behind his back, according to the established schoolboyish convention of the game, and then brought his closed hands into view to offer Simon the choice.

He chose. Rockham opened the hand and showed the black pawn.

“I have the advantage of the move, I think,” he said after they had rapidly set out the pieces and sat down. And he pushed a white pawn two squares forward along one of the centre files.

The Saint made an exactly matching move, which left the two pawns head on to each other in the middle of the board.

“Pawn to King four, pawn to King four,” Rockham commented as he brought out his king’s knight on its devious lopsided course. “Let’s see what you do with knight to KB3.”

Again the Saint made a matching move; and then Rockham slid a bishop forward through the gap that his advancing pawn had left, and once more Simon made an exactly complementary move from his own side of the board.

Rockham eyed him shrewdly.

“Hmm. You join me in Giuoco Piano. Probably the way most games at amateur level begin — but also the classic of classic openings. The quiet game.”

“Mentioned in the Gottingen manuscript of fourteen ninety,” the Saint concurred.

“You do know your chess,” Rockham smiled. “But let’s see if we can’t do something to hot things up.” And the smile faded as he advanced another of his white pawns two squares, on a file nearer the queen’s side of the board, so that it threatened to capture, on the next move, the bishop Simon had advanced.

But there was nothing to prevent the bishop from taking the pawn in a pre-emptive strike right there and then.

The Saint sat back and eyed the board for a moment.

Then he commented encyclopaedically: “Evans Gambit. An interesting line. The aim is to prevent black’s pawn to queen four and to attack the weak spot at his KB2. White offers a free pawn, and in return he gets — possibly — a winning attack. This particular gambit was thought up a hundred and twenty years ago — appropriately enough by a soldier, Captain W.D. Evans. And it’s been used by a host of world-class players since. Bird, Blackman, Staunton, Anderssen—”

“Morphy, Steinity—” Rockham continued the list with enthusiasm. “But it’s the conception, man — the strategic conception of a gambit, any gambit — that’s so magnificent. Don’t you agree? To sacrifice a minor piece, early in the game, so as to give yourself time to manoeuvre, space to attack. The idea couldn’t be bolder or simpler. You put yourself at limited risk, to open up the battlefield or to make a quick strike. And then—” He made a rapid throat-cutting movement with his hand. “Of course, it’s a gamble. If you can’t capitalise on the sacrifice, if your attack collapses, all your forces are in danger. But if you can, if you can! Then what a magnificent strategic beginning the pawn gambit is!”