The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Page 23

  “If we could have caught Maris,” Olga was saying, out of that passionless and regretful resignation, “it would have meant as much as winning a battle at the front. I would have liked to do that very much. Then we could have been quite happy about this.”

  It was too good to be true; but it was true. He could feel the solid flat hardness of the haft and blade between the movements of his legs. And with that, he had a fantastic inspiration that might grow into a fantastic escape. But he had seen fantasy come real too often to discard it for nothing but its name.

  The glint in his eyes was like sunlight on cut sapphires.

  “Maybe we can still be happy, Olga,” he said; and there was a lilt of exultant vitality in his voice. “We’ll try to repeat a significant scrap of United Nations history. You, like some other Russians, were petting the wrong dog. Until you saw the error of your ways. And it bit you. Now I shall try to come through with the lend-lease matériel.”

  12

  Olga Ivanovitch stared at him as though she was certain now that he was out of his mind.

  “No, darling, I’m not,” he said before she could put her own words to it. “I was just remembering a movie serial that I saw as a boy, which starred the greatest of all escape artists – Harry Houdini.”

  “How interesting,” she said blankly.

  It was lucky, he thought, that he liked his shoes loose and comfortable. Otherwise, getting them off might have been quite a problem. As it was, he was able to tread on one heel with the opposite instep and force one shoe off with only a moderate amount of violence. The other shoe presented a little more difficulty, without a hard welt to scrape against, but he went on working at it.

  “Now don’t go all Russian on me and relapse into brooding despair,” he pleaded. “You ought to be interested in the late Mr. Houdini. He was a real maestro at getting out of situations like this. I was thinking of one installment in which he was tied to some sort of Oriental torture wheel, in very much the same way as we’re tied up now. He managed to worry his shoes and socks off, and neatly unfastened the knots on his wrists with his toes.”

  He had the other shoe off at last. The socks were easier. He only had to tread on a bit of slack at each toe in turn and pull his feet out.

  “So what?” Olga said skeptically. “Can you even reach your wrists with your toes?”

  “Now you’re coming to life,” Simon approved. “I used to be a fairly agile guy before I started drinking myself to death, and I think I can manage that.” He twisted his body and balanced himself on one foot, and swung his other leg lithely up to kick his hand. “There. I always knew all those years I spent in the Follies chorus would come in handy someday,” he said contentedly.

  “But the knots,” she said in the same tone as before; yet it was already being contradicted by the curiosity kindling in her eyes.

  “I’m afraid I’m not quite that good,” he confessed. “However, I have an alternative solution for them which Harry might not have considered entirely ethical.”

  He was already working up his right trouser leg with his naked left foot. Under the amazed eyes of the girl, the upper end of the sheath and the haft of his knife came into view. He grasped the haft with his toe and drew the blade gently out of the scabbard and laid it on the floor.

  “When I was swinging through the trees in my last incarnation,” he said, “this would have been duck soup for me. But I’m a bit out of practice these days.”

  He was concentrating singly on the knife, maneuvering it between his two feet, getting the firmest possible grip on the handle between his big toe and the one next to it, adjusting and testing it before he made a decisive move. There was no sound in the room but the faint scuff of his efforts. His wrists hurt like hell; but he had forgotten about them. The sweat was standing out on his forehead by the time he was satisfied.

  “Now we get to the really fancy part of the trick,” he said. “Like the man on the flying trapeze without a net, I won’t be able to go back and start over if I muff it.”

  He poised himself in the same way as he had done for his preliminary experiment, but much more carefully gauged his distances, and drew a deep breath and held it.

  Then he swung his leg, aiming the razor edge of the blade at the link of rope between his left wrist and the pipe. Once, twice, three times he repeated the same pendulum movement, trying to strike the same spot on the rope each time, feeling the keen blade bite the fibers at every stroke.

  Then the knife twisted between his toes; but he managed to keep a precarious hold on it. He brought it gingerly down to the floor and adjusted it again, with the aid of his left foot, in an intolerable hush of intense patience and concentration.

  He swung his leg again.

  Once more.

  Twice more.

  The knife spun out of his hold and clattered to the floor.

  It was beyond his reach, and beyond hers.

  He heard the girl’s pent-up breath break out of her lungs in a long throaty sob, and saw tears swimming in her eyes.

  He knew then, at last, without thinking about it anymore, that she had told him the truth. He had been unsure. He had taken a chance on it, because he was forced to, but wondering all the time if this would end up as the supreme sadism of tantalization – if after he had revealed his secret weapon, and freed himself, if he could free himself, she would only call out, and Maris would walk in with a gun, and all the hope and struggle would have been for nothing. Now he knew. She couldn’t have gasped and wept like that, otherwise; wouldn’t have needed to, no matter how well she was playing a part.

  It was worth something to be sure of that.

  The Saint smiled grimly as he inspected the section of rope that he had been working on. He had done a good job, in spite of everything. It wasn’t anything like the rope it had been before.

  “I forgot to mention,” he murmured, “that when I was in the circus I also used to break chains and tow tanks around with one hand.”

  Then with an abrupt and feral outburst of titanic effort he threw all his weight and strength together against the partly severed cords, dropping his weight on them with a plunging jerk, and simultaneously thrusting himself away from the wall with his feet and contracting his arms together with all the power of his torso. The veins swelled in his neck, and the muscles rippled over his body in quivering waves. For an instant it felt as if his wrists were being bitten off . . .

  And then, with a suddenness that was physically sickening, the frayed and slashed portion of rope parted with a snap that flung him whirling outward and around.

  He heard the girl sob again; but this time it was with a note of almost hysterical laughter.

  He retained his balance without a waste motion, and fell to attacking the knots that bound his right hand.

  “I must be slipping,” he said. “I used to do things like that just to warm up.”

  The knots weren’t so easy. His hands were numb, and he had to drive deliberate commands through for every movement of his fingers. He worked as fast as he could through that nightmarish impediment.

  At last he was free. His wrists were chafed and bleeding a little. But that was nothing. The sense of freedom, of triumph, was like an intoxicating wind blowing through the reviving spaces of his soul.

  He scooped up his knife, a little awkwardly because of the cramp in his hands, and cut Olga loose. She almost fell against him, and he had to hold her up for a moment. Until her clinging grew up from the weakness of reaction into something else.

  Then he steadied her on her feet and left her standing while he went back to put on his shoes and socks. The return of circulation was filling his hands with pins and needles; but gradually, with the relentless exertion, his fingers began to feel less like swollen frozen sausages.

  “There is a way out of here without going through the house,” she was saying breathlessly. “We can slip out without them ever knowing that we’ve gone.”

  “Slip out?”

  He glanced u
p at her. “Darling, that would be a hell of an anticlimax. I’m going upstairs now and get Matson’s notes and Vaschetti’s diary away from dear old Joe!”

  “But how can you?” she cried. “He’ll shoot you like a dog. They took your gun. I saw them. We can call the police – ”

  Simon straightened up, and looked down in silent reckless laughter at her desperate imploring face.

  “I’ve got my knife,” he said; “but I haven’t got any guarantee that the police would get here in time. And meanwhile Maris and Co. might find out that we’d got away, and decide to take the brakes off themselves. We don’t want to risk that now. And besides, we’ve got to deliver you as a certified heroine. Remember?” Her soft scarlet lips were only a few inches away, turned up to him below the liquid pools of her eyes; and once again he was aware of their distracting provocation. He said: “Thanks just the same for being so concerned about me. It ought to be worth at least . . .”

  Then she was in his arms, her breath warm against his cheek, and all of her asking for him; and it would never be like that again, but there was no time for that now and perhaps there never had been. It was like so many things in his life: they were always too late, and there was never any time.

  He disengaged himself very gently.

  “Now,” he said, “we will have the last word with Joe.”

  The door on the other side of the cellar was not locked. Simon went up the crude wooden stairs, very quietly, and was conscious of Olga Ivanovitch following him. But he didn’t look back. He came out through another unlatched door into the hall of the house. There was no guard there either. Obviously, Maris and his crew had great faith in the durability of manila hemp and the efficacy of their trussing system.

  Which was reasonable enough; just as the Saint’s faith in his knife was reasonable. He knew what it could do, and what he could do with it. He knew how it could transform itself into a streak of living quicksilver, swift as the flash of light from its polished blade, true as a rifle, deadly as any bullet that was ever launched by erupting chemicals.

  He held it delicately in his resensitized fingers, frail and strong as a bird, only waiting for him to release it into life.

  He was outside another door then, listening, when the voice came firmly through it to his ears. Just a voice: the voice of Siegfried Maris, generally known as Joe. But coming with a clear suddenness that was like traveling back in time and never having heard a talking picture, and suddenly hearing a screen speak.

  It said: “Keep your hands well up, Lieutenant. Please don’t try anything stupid. It wouldn’t do you any good.”

  And then Kinglake’s savage growl: “You son of a bitch – how did you get out of the Blue Goose?”

  The Saint’s mouth opened and closed again in a noiseless gasp, and a ripple of irresistible laughter rose up through him like a stream of bubbles to break soundlessly at his lips. Even at a moment like that he had to enjoy the perfection of that finishing touch.

  “We have our own way out,” Maris replied calmly. “It’s very useful, as you see. But if you didn’t know about it, how did you follow us here?”

  “I didn’t. When I didn’t find Templar at the Blue Goose, I thought he might have come here with Ivanovitch.”

  “An excellent deduction, Lieutenant. And quite correct. He did come here with Ivanovitch. But that wasn’t his choice . . . It’s very fortunate that you’re a detective and not a burglar, isn’t it? If you’d been a burglar you wouldn’t have made such a clumsy entrance, and it mightn’t have been half so easy to catch you.”

  Simon settled fingers on the door knob as if it had been a wafer-shelled egg. He began to turn it with micrometric gentleness.

  “You bastards,” Kinglake said. “What have you done with them?”

  “You’ll see for yourself, when you join them in just a few minutes.”

  “So you’re Maris, are you? I should have known it.”

  “A pardonable oversight, Lieutenant. But you may still call me Joe, if it will make you feel more comfortable.”

  Simon waited through an infinitesimal pause, with the door handle fully turned.

  Kinglake said: “I guess you can have oversights too. You aren’t getting away with anything, Joe. I’ve got men outside – ”

  The low hard chuckle of Maris came through the door.

  “An old bluff, Lieutenant, but always worth trying. I know that you came alone. Fritzie was watching you outside, and we made sure of that before we let you break in. Now if you’ll be very careful about holding your arms up while Blatt takes your gun – ”

  That was the pleasantly dramatic moment when it seemed right to the Saint to throw the door wide open.

  It was a nice composition that framed itself through the opening, a perfect instant of arrested motion, artistic and satisfactory. There was Lieutenant Kinglake standing with his hands up and his jaw tensed and a stubborn snarl around his eyes, with Johan Blatt advancing toward him. Fritzie Weinbach stood a little off to the right, with a big snub-nosed automatic leveled at the detective’s sternum. Simon could identify them both without ever having seen them before – the tall blond man and the fat red man with the cold bleached eyes.

  He saw Siegfried Maris too, for the first time as the man he was instead of the forgotten bartender called Joe. It was amazing what a difference there was. He sat behind a desk, without the disguise of the white coat and the quick obsequious serving movements, wearing an ordinary dark business suit, and obviously the dominant personality of the group. For ultimate proof, he even had a flat light tan case and a shabby pocket memorandum book among some papers on the blotter in front of him. Simon knew even from where he stood that they must be the notes of Henry Stephen Matson and the diary of Nick Vaschetti. It was all there.

  And Maris was there, with his square powerful face that hadn’t a natural smile in any line of it; and he was turning toward the interruption with his eyes widening and one of his strong swift hands already starting to move; and the Saint knew without any further study, without a second’s hesitation, that this was the one man he had to get and be sure of, no matter what else happened afterwards.

  The knife sped from his hand like a glitter of leaping silver, flying like a splinter of living light straight for the newly retired bartender’s throat.

  Then Lieutenant Kinglake had taken advantage of the diversion to make a grab for his gun, and the room was full of thunder and the dry stinging tang of cordite.

  13

  Simon Templar didn’t carve notches in the handle of his knife, because they would eventually have affected the balance, and he was used to it and he hoped it would last for a long time. He did worry about rust and the way it could dull a blade. He wiped the blade very carefully on Maris’s shirt before he put the knife back in its sheath.

  “Let’s face it,” he said; “he did pour some of the lousiest drinks I ever paid for.”

  Kinglake was reloading his Police Positive with the unconscious detachment of prehistorically rooted habit.

  He said, almost awkwardly for him: “I just wanted to be in at the death.”

  “You were,” Simon assured him somewhat unnecessarily.

  “Are there any more of ’em?”

  “Quite a lot – I hope. But not around here. And we don’t have to bother about them. Just turn that stuff on the desk over to the FBI. The rest will be their routine.”

  “I’d sure like to know what happened to you.”

  The Saint told him.

  Kinglake scratched his head.

  “I’ve seen plenty in my time, believe it or not,” he said. “But you’ve topped all of it.” He ended up with an admission. “I’ll have to think of a new story now, though; because I messed up the one you gave me.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the Saint. “Whatever you said, you can tell ’em you only said it for a stall, because you couldn’t give out with what you really knew. The true story is your story now. Only leaving me out. There’s plenty of evidence on that
desk. Go on and grab yourself some glory.”

  “But these are the three guys you named in the Times-Tribune.”

  “So what? So I happened to know too much, and I was too smart for anybody’s good. You knew just as much if not more, but you were playing a cagey game. You say that by shooting my mouth off like that I told Maris and Co. that they were hot, and nearly ruined all your well-laid plans. That’s why you were so hopping mad about me. In fact, you had to perform superhuman feats to salvage the situation after I balled it up. Say anything you like. I won’t contradict you. It suits me better that way. And there’s nobody else left who can call you a liar.”

  The Lieutenant’s steely eyes flickered over the room. The truth of that theorem was rather gruesomely irrefutable.

  Then his glance went to Olga Ivanovitch.

  She stood very quietly beside the Saint, her pale face composed and expressionless, her green eyes passing unemotionally over the raw stains and ungainly attitudes of violent death. You could tell nothing about what she thought or expected, if she expected anything. She waited, in an incurious calm that suddenly struck Simon as almost regal; she hadn’t asked anything or said anything.

  “What about her?” Kinglake asked.

  Simon’s pockets had been emptied completely. He bent over one of the bodies and relieved it of a packet of cigarettes that it wouldn’t be needing anymore.

  “I’m afraid I was holding out on you about her,” he answered deliberately. “She’s one of our people. Why the hell do you think she was tied up in the cellar with me? But I couldn’t tell you before.”

  He was so easy and matter-of-fact with it that the Lieutemt only tried to look unstartled.

  “But what story am I supposed to give out?”

  “Like me – the less you say about her the better,” Simon told him. “She was just one of the hostesses at the Blue Goose, and Maris was making use of her through his role of bartender. He set her up in this house, so he had a key. But she wasn’t here tonight. When the setup began to look too sticky, she scrammed. You don’t think she’s worth fussing about.”