Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

"It is a fire," he decided, with profound satisfaction.

It was. The whole lawn was lit up by it like a stage set, and a curtain of black smoke hung over it like a billowing curtain. The house was one of those old historic mansions whose lining of massive beams and mellowed panelling could be diagnosed at a glance, and it was going up like a pile of tinder. The fire seemed to have started on the ground floor, for huge gusts of flame were spouting from the open windows along the terrace and climbing like wind-ripped banners towards the roof, roaring with a boisterous glee that could be clearly heard even above the reduced splutter of the Hirondel's exhaust. The Saint drew at his cigarette and settled more firmly into his conviction that, judged by any pyrotechnical standards, it was a beaut.

Figures in a grotesque assortment of deshabille were running across the lawn with the erratic scurrying wildness of flushed rabbits.

"At least they all seem to have got out," said the Saint.

He switched off the engine and hitched his legs over the side of the car. Some of the scurrying figures, attracted perhaps like moths by the new blaze of the headlights, had started to run towards them. The first to arrive was a young man who carried a girl over his shoulder. He was large and blond and impressively moustached, and he wore blue-and-green striped pajamas. He dumped the girl on the ground at the Saint's feet, rather like a retriever bringing in a bird, and stood over her for a moment breathing heavily.

"By Jove," he said. "Oh, by Jove!… Steady on, Val, old thing. It's all right now. You're quite safe."

He put out a hand to restrain her as she tried to get up, but with a quick movement she wriggled away from him and found her feet. She was dark and slender, but not so slender that the transparent nightgown which was her only covering lacked fascinating contours to cling to. The chiffon had slipped aside to bare one white shoulder and her curly hair was in a wild disarray, but even the thoroughly petulant spoiled-child expression that pouted her face could not disguise its amazing beauty.

"All right, all right," she said impatiently. "You've rescued me now, and I'm very much obliged. But for heaven's sake stop pawing me and find me something to wear."

She seemed to regard the fire as an event arranged by a malicious fate solely for her own inconvenience. The young man looked somewhat startled.

"Damn it, Valerie," he said in an injured tone, "do you realize—"

"Of course she does," said the Saint soothingly. "She knows you're a little hero. She's just being practical. And while we're being practical, do you happen to know whether anybody else is left in the house?"

The young man turned. He looked at Simon rather blankly, as if taken aback at being interrupted so unceremoniously.

"Eh? What?" he said. "I dunno. I fetched Valerie out."

From the way he said it, one gathered that nobody mattered except Valerie.

Simon patted him on the back.

"Yes, we know," he said kindly. "We saw you. You're a hero. We'll give you a diploma. But just the same, wouldn't it be a good idea to round up the others and make sure that nobody's missing?"

Again the young man looked blank and rather resentful. His expression indicated that having done his good deed for the day by rescuing Valerie, he expected to be set apart on a pedestal instead of being ordered about. But there was something about the Saint's cool assumption of command that eliminated argument.

"Oh, certainly. I see what you mean."

He moved reluctantly away, and presently people came straggling in from different parts of the lawn and gathered together near Simon's car. There was a tall red-faced man with a white moustache and the stereotyped chutney-and-scotch complexion of a professional soldier, a dour large-bosomed woman in a flannel dressing gown who could have belonged to nobody else, an excited little fat man who came chattering pompously, the guardsmanly youth who had herded them together, and a fourth man who strolled up in the background. The reflection of the fire shone redly in their faces as they assembled in a group with an air of. studied calm which proclaimed their consciousness of behaving like British aristocrats in an emergency.

Simon looked them over without reverence. He knew none of them by sight, and it was none of his business, but he was the only one present who seemed to have any coherent ideas. His voice stilled their chatter.

"Well," he said, "you ought to know. Are you all here?"

They glanced at each other in an awed and scared sort of way and then turned and looked frightenedly at the blazing house and back again, as though it were the first time that any of their thoughts had gone beyond their own personal safety.

Suddenly the voice of the girl in the nightgown sounded shrilly behind Simon.

"No! They aren't all here! John isn't here! Where's Johnny?"

There was an awful stillness, in which realization crawled horribly over chalky faces.

"B-but where can he be?" asked the short fat man in a quavering voice. "He — he must have heard the alarm—"

The military-looking man turned round and raised his voice in a barrack-square bawl.

"Kennet!" he shouted. "Kennet!"

He sounded as if he were bellowing at a slovenly recruit who was late on parade.

The only answer was the derisive cackle of the leaping flames.

The large-bosomed woman shrieked. She opened her mouth wide and yelled at the top of her voice, her face contorted with an awful terror.

"No! No! It's too dreadful. He can't be still in there! You can't have—"

Her words broke off in a kind of gulp. For a couple of seconds her mouth went on opening and shutting like that of a fish out of water; then, without another sound, she collapsed like an empty sack.

"She's fainted," somebody said stupidly.

"So she has," said the Saint witheringly. "Now we all ought to gather round and hold her hands."

The military man, bending over her, turned up his purple face.

"By Gad, sir!" he burst out cholerically. "Haven't you—" He stopped. Another thought, overwhelming in its enormity, seemed to have erupted under his nose. He straightened up, glaring at the Saint as if he had just really become aware of his presence for the first time. "Anyway," he said, "what the devil are you doing here?"

The idea percolated into the brains of the others and brought them back to gaping stillness. And while they were staring in vacuous indignation, the man who had stayed in the background moved to the front. He was short and very broad shouldered, with a square and rather flat face and very sunken shrewd dark eyes. Unlike the others, he was fully dressed. There was no sign of flurry or alarm about him; with his powerful chin and thin straight mouth he looked as solid and impassive as a chunk of granite.

"Yes," he said, "who are you?"

Simon met his gaze with cold insouciance. The antagonism was instant and intuitive. Perhaps it was that that touched the Saint's swift mind with the queer itch of dissatisfaction that was to lead to so many things. Perhaps it was then that the first wraith of suspicion took nebulous shape in his mind. But there was no time to dwell on the point just then. He only knew that something like a fine thread of steel wove through the plastic outlines of his attitude.

"At the moment," he said evenly, "I seem to be the only person who isn't behaving like a stuffed owl. Where does this man Kennet sleep?"

"I don't know," answered the square-built man. "Someone else will be able to tell you."

His face was expressionless; his tone was so expressionless as to sound almost ironical. There seemed to be a stony sort of amusement lurking at the back of his deep-set eyes. But that might have been an illusion created by the flickering firelight.