Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

"Goin' out on business again, sir?" he queried, with the imperturbation of many years of experience of the Saint's unlawful occasions.

"I hope so, Sam." The Saint cocked his legs over the side while Peter and Hoppy climbed into their own seats. "I don't want to stage a big demonstration, but you might just do a quiet job of obstructing if anyone's waiting for us. Take your own heap and follow me up the ramp, and see that you stick tight on my tail. When I wave my hand, swing across the road and stall your engine. I'll only want two or three minutes."

The exhaust purred as he touched the starter. He pulled the Hirondel out to the foot of the ramp and held it there, warming the engine, until he saw Outrell's car behind him. Then he let in the clutch and roared up the slope, with the other car following as if it were nailed to his rear fenders.

At the top he whipped round in a screaming turn out into the narrow street that ran by the back of Cornwall House. There was a taxi parked close by the garage entrance and a small sports car with a man reading a newspaper in it standing just behind; both of them might have been innocent, but if they were it would do them no harm to be obstructed for a few minutes.

The Saint raised one hand just above his head and made a slight movement.

He heard the squeal of Sam Outrell's brakes behind him, and grinned gently to himself as he locked the wheel for another split-arch turn into Half Moon Street. The snarl of the engine rose briefly, lulled, and then settled into a steady drone as they nosed into Piccadilly, shot across the front of a belated bus and went humming down the west-ward slope towards Hyde Park Corner.

Peter Quentin settled deep into his seat and turned to Hoppy.

"I hope your insurance policies are all paid up, Hoppy," he said.

"I ain't never had none," said Mr Uniatz seriously. "I seen guys what try to sell me insurance, but I t'ought dey was all chisellers." He brooded anxiously over the idea. "Do ya t'ink I oughta get me some, boss?"

"I'm afraid it's too late now," said Peter encouragingly. "But perhaps it doesn't matter. You haven't got a lot of wives and things lying around, have you?"

Mr Uniatz scratched his head with a row of worried fingers.

"I dunno, boss," he said shyly. "Every time I get married I am not t'inking about it very much. So I never know if I have got married or not," he said, summarizing his problem with a conciseness that could scarcely have been improved upon.

Peter pondered over the exposition until he felt himself getting slightly giddy, when he decided that it would probably be safer to leave it alone. And the Saint spun the wheel again and sent the Hirondel thundering down Grosvenor Place.

"When you two trollops have finished gloating over your sex life," he said, "you'd better try to remember what happens when we get to Marsham Street."

"But we know," said Peter, carefully continuing to refrain from looking at the road. "Don't we, Hoppy? If we ever get there alive, which is very unlikely, we jump about in the foreground and try to attract the bullets while the beauteous heroine swoons into Simon's arms."

Simon squeezed the car through on the wrong side of a crawling taxi which was hogging the centre of the road, and while he was doing it he neatly swiped Peter's cigarette with his disengaged hand.

"That's something like the idea; except that as usual you'll be in the background. I'm just building on probabilities, but I think I've got it pretty straight. Two or more thugs will be in possession. When I ring the bell, one of them will come to the door. They can't all open it at once, and at least one of them will probably be busy keeping Valerie quiet, and in any case they won't want any noise that they can avoid. Besides, they'll be expecting me to walk in like a blindfolded lamb. Now, I think it can only break two ways. Either the warrior who opens the door will open it straight on to a gun…"

He went on, sketching possibilities in crisp, comprehensive lines, dictating move and counter-move in quick sinewy sentences that strung the strides of a supreme tactician together into a connected chain on which even Hoppy Uniatz could not lose his grip. It might all seem very simple in the end, but in that panoramic grasp of detail lay the genius that made amazing audacities seem simple.

"Okay, skipper," Peter said soberly, as the car swooped into Marsham Street. "But don't forget you're responsible to Hoppy's widows and my orphans."

Ever since the first few hectic moments of the ride they had been running with the cutout closed, and the dying of the engine was scarcely perceptible as Simon turned the switch.

After the last turn they had slid up practically in silence to their destination, which was one of a row of modern apartment buildings that had not long ago transformed the topography of that once sombre district. One or two other cars were parked within sight, but otherwise the street seemed quiet and lifeless. Simon glanced up at the crossword design of light and dark windows as he stepped out of the car and crossed the pavement, with some attention to the softness of his footsteps, for he knew well how sounds could echo to the upper windows of a silent street at that hour of the night. He said nothing to the others, for all the ground had been covered in advance in his instructions. He read off the apartment number from the indicator in the empty lobby, and an automatic elevator carried them up to the top floor. The Saint was as cool as chromium, as accurate and self-contained as a machine. He left the elevator doors open and waited until Peter and Hoppy had taken up their positions flattened against the wall on either side of the door; then he put his knuckle against the bell.

There was an interval of perhaps ten seconds, then the door opened.

It opened, according to the Saint's first diagnosis, straight on to an awkward-looking silenced revolver in the hand of the stocky ape-faced man who unfastened the latch.

"Come in," he said.

Blank astonishment, anger and incredulity chased themselves over the Saint's face — exactly as they were expected to chase themselves.

"What's the idea of this?" he demanded wrathfully. "And who the hell are you, anyway?"

"Come in," repeated the man coldly. "And put your hands up. And hurry up about it, before I give you something."

The Saint put his hands up and went in. But he went in with his shoulder blades sliding along the door, so that the other was momentarily cut off from it. Then the man had to turn his back to the doorway when he started to close the door, so as to keep Simon covered at the same time. And that was part of the clockwork of the Saint's preorganized plan. Simon gave the signal with a gentle cough; and over the man's shoulder appeared the intent face of Peter Quentin, soundlessly, with a stiff rubber blackjack raised. There was a subdued clunk, and the man's eyes went comically glassy.

At that instant other things happened with the smooth timing of a well-rehearsed conjuring trick. The Saint's hands dropped like striking falcons on to the ape-faced man's gun, bent the wrist inwards towards the elbow, whipped the revolver out of the suddenly powerless fingers. Simultaneously Peter Quentin was moving aside, to be replaced by Hoppy Uniatz, whose massive paws closed on the man's throat in a gorilla grip faster than Peter himself could have put away his blackjack and taken the same hold. Meanwhile Peter slid round the man's side, received the revolver as Simon detached it and jammed the silencer into the man's ribs. It was all done with a glossy perfection of teamwork that would have dazed the eye of the beholder if there had been any beholder present, all within the space of a scant second; and then the Saint was talking into the man's ear.

"One whisper out of you, and they'll be able to thread you on a flagpole," he said. Then he stepped back a few inches. "Okay, Hoppy — let him breathe."