Leslie Charteris - The Saint And The Fiction Makers

Warlock was standing beside one of his lab tables painting a small square of glass with a greenish metallic liquid. On the table was something like a sun lamp with a focussing lens in front of it. Frug stood nearby watching.

“Ah, Klein!” Warlock said. “Just in time. Frug, plug that cord in, would you?”

Frug plugged the lamp-like device into a wall outlet. Warlock flicked a switch.

“There,” he said with satisfaction.

“Is it on?” Bishop asked. “I can’t see anything.”

“Of course you can’t,” Warlock said impatiently. “Infra-red radiation is like light, except that it’s beyond the range the human eye is designed to pick up. If we could see it, do you think we’d be going to all this trouble?”

Bishop looked uncomfortable, and his head seemed to sink lower than usual between his shoulders. Simon raised the piece of coated glass to his eye and turned to the table on which the infra-red device sat. Where a second before he had seen nothing, he now saw a distinct beam of pale light. He nodded, and Warlock took the glass with such excitement that he almost dropped it on the floor.

“It works!” he exulted. “We’ve done it. Klein, you’re a genius.”

“I know,” Simon said humbly.

“Now we can get in Hermetico?” Frug asked.

“Not necessarily,” Simon told him. “But you’ll at least be able to see the beams that may blow you to bits.”

Warlock compressed his lips and gave Simon a stern look.

“I’ve asked you to stop your discouraging talk,” he said. “Tell us the rest of your plan.”

“There isn’t any rest yet,” the Saint said. “I’d suggest you send somebody over to Hermetico right away with a piece of this glass — or better still with several pairs of glasses coated with this stuff — and give it a test.”

“But we already know it works,” Frug interrupted.

Warlock turned to him in nervous exasperation.

“Will you go back to your ridiculous magazines?” he snapped. “It’s better than having you interfering at every turn!”

“I have another reason for sending somebody over there,” Simon put in. “We need to know how thickly those beams are interlaced. It won’t do you any good to see them if there’s not enough space between them anywhere for you to work your way through.”

“Is that clear to you, Bishop?” Warlock asked. “As soon as I’ve coated some glasses, you and Nero get over there and do as Mr. Klein said. I’ll give you some ideas on estimating the distance between beams. There’s a wooded patch that comes near the fence at the back of the Hermetico building. It’s the only place where you can get quite near without being seen. For heaven’s sake don’t let anyone spot you.”

“Just one other thing,” Simon said. “If it’s possible to make a circuit of the whole fence without getting caught, try to see if there’s a channel through the beams.”

“Right,” Warlock agreed. “But since the pattern of beams will probably be the same all the way around, don’t take any risks. Now go get Nero and explain everything to him. I’ll give you the glasses on your way out.”

“And shall I go back to my palatial cell?” Simon asked.

Frug was still hovering near the door as Bishop left.

“You’re not gone yet!” Warlock snapped at him. “Take Mr. Klein to his room.” The next words were directed to Simon. “You’re doing a fine job. If there’s space among the beams, we can either walk through or make an aluminium extension bridge to put through any channel. Have you worked out the details of getting to the vault through the ventilation system?”

“Not completely. I won’t have it finished before tomorrow sometime.”

“Good. We’ll plan to enter Hermetico after midnight tomorrow. Shall I tell you what Bishop and Nero have found out when they come back tonight?”

“I’d rather get some sleep,” Simon said. “I think I can control my excitement.”

“Understandable. You were a busy fellow last night. Which reminds me, Mr. Klein...”

Simon had started to walk out into the corridor. He turned in the doorway.

“What?”

“If you have any intention of building some trap for us into your Hermetico scheme — don’t be foolish enough to think I won’t detect it. After all, I’ve plenty of time to study the plans too, and I’m as familiar with the place as you are — probably more so.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Simon said.

“Good. If you forget, the consequences could be most painful... for you, not for us.”

Remembering Warlock’s words early the next afternoon, the Saint silently pondered the fact that the consequences of a slip-up in the Hermetico raid could be most painful for everybody concerned — Warlock included. And it was a slip-up he counted on to end the career of S.W.O.R.D. and its leader. But at the same time he was vividly aware, without Warlock’s needing to warn him, of the folly of trying to include a trap for the raiders in his and Amity’s plan for the theft. Warlock was no stupid man by any standards. He would undoubtedly spot the weak point in the scheme, keep the main part of the plan for immediate use, and simply eliminate the weakness and the two people who had conceived it.

Simon had no intention of being eliminated, but he had every expectation that Warlock would fall into a trap. Hermetico itself, even with no help from the Saint, was a trap. The chances of a party of men entering the place and leaving it without being detected — even with the best laid of plans — were approximately those of a party of arthritic rabbits making their way undisturbed through a kennel of greyhounds.

There were too many unpredictable elements. Merely getting the van (which would be necessary for transporting men and equipment, and later for removing the stolen metals) near the fence and leaving it there during the raid involved a tremendous risk of detection, even if Hermetico did not feel the need for human guards around the periphery. More importantly, Bishop’s and Jones’s check on the infra-red beams had revealed that while there were gaps through which men might enter, they were several feet in the air and so small that the slightest error would break a beam and set off an explosion.

Those problems were just the beginning. At any step a dozen different and deadly things could go wrong. The Saint felt sure that S.W.O.R.D.’s expedition would fail quite easily enough on its own, without any special help from him. If Warlock was too much of a nut to see that, all the better.

“I suppose that’s it,” Simon said to Amity. “We’ve finished.”

He turned from the window of his room, from which he had been watching Monk complete the repair to the front gate Simon had wrecked two nights before. Amity was sitting at the worktable with a small dormant volcano of cigarette remains at her elbow and a pencil behind one ear. She was chewing a thumbnail and staring at one of the maps of Hermetico’s innards.

“We still don’t know if there’s some kind of detection device inside the ventilation duct,” she said.

“We’ve done the best we can,” Simon answered. “We can’t be expected to know more than we could possibly know. What happens now is up to Warlock.”

Amity tilted her head to listen.

“What’s that?” she asked.

She and Simon went to the window and watched a van move from behind the garage, where it had been parked since its arrival in the morning (Bishop had apparently gone out and bought or rented it), into the drive. A few hours before it had been a big bright thing of shiny aluminium. Now it was painted a dull, non-reflective black. Frug and Bishop opened its back doors, manipulated something inside, and an aluminium ladder-like projection moved horizontally straight out behind the van until it extended over twenty feet. Warlock came out of the front door of the building to watch as a pair of legs were automatically lowered from the extended end of the projection, forming a kind of bridge supported at one end by the truck and at the other by the legs.