The Saint and the People Importers (17 page)

“I cannot!” Haroon was wailing. “I cannot have it! I cannot, cannot, cannot!”

“You can’t d-do this to me!” Shortwave yelped. “It’s murder! They know I’m here-I heard it! You can’t.”

The Saint restored order by sheer force of personality. His firm calm voice, fortified by his commanding height and the unruffled authority of his stance, soon had the effect which oil is reputed to exercise on troubled waters.

“Neither one of you characters is in any position to argue,” he said. “You’ll do exactly as I say because you’ve got no choice.” He looked down at Shortwave. “You’re the little hero who wanted to slice up our gizzards last night, don’t forget, and you’re lucky the worst we’re going to do to you for the moment is lock you up for the day.” He turned to Haroon. “Where can we stow him?”

“You can’t!” the owner cried. “There is no place!”

“What about his flat?” Tammy suggested.

“We can’t get Shortwave up there without carrying him through the street,” Simon told her, “Doesn’t this place have a cellar, Abdul?”

“You cannot!”

Simon spoke like a man who sees the end of his patience in plain view just ahead.

“You’ll do what I tell you or you’ll be in jail before you know what hit you!”

Haroon yielded.

“Back here,” he said. “The stairs are beyond the washroom.”

Shortwave kept up a steady stream of protest while he was being transferred down to a small windowless basement which apparently served only as a sort of limbo for an assortment of junk that Haroon could find no use for but could not quite bring himself to throw out. There was a table with three legs, a chair with a broken back, a couple of cases of empty dust-caked wine bottles, a stack of cardboard cartons and boxes, and a rolled-up mattress with its stuffing protruding through multiple hernias.

“A lot cosier than a drum of wet cement,” Simon said approvingly. “And if you’re reasonably unobnoxious, maybe Mr. Haroon will give you some more nice curry later in the day. You can put a gag on him before your hired hands come in for the evening, Abdul, and if he starts making a nuisance of himself pat him on the head with your biggest frying pan-and hope you don’t bend the frying pan. I’m going to put in an anonymous tip to Scotland Yard to be on the lookout for him, just in case he figures some way to get loose … But if he does get loose, Abdul, I shall hold you responsible, and I mean totally responsible. If you don’t want this admirable little eatery of yours to open under new management next week, while you settle down to lose a few pounds on good old British bread and water, you’ll be absolutely sure that Shortwave is sitting right here when I come back. Is that clear?”

Haroon nodded vigorously. Having double-checked Shortwave’s bonds and surroundings, the Saint came back up the steep stairs, closed the door at the top, and walked with Tammy and Haroon back to the rear of the restaurant.

“All right, Abdul, have a nice day, and good luck to you in finding some fresh staff. When Miss Rowan and I get finished you shouldn’t have as many worries about keeping the personnel alive as you’ve had up till now. And you’ll be able to breathe like a free man for the first time in- how long?”

Abdul Haroon grinned pallidly and used one of the English expressions on which he prided himself.

“In donkey’s years,” he said, and stood despondently waiting for the Saint and Tammy to drive away.

Tammy watched the pear-shaped restaurateur through the back window of the car until Simon had turned out of the alley into the street at the end.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?” she asked.

“You could get better odds on his health than ours today, I think. If he does what I told him he shouldn’t have any problems.”

Tammy sat back in her seat and tried to relax.

“So we’re headed for the sea?” she said.

“Right. After we’ve stopped by my place for breakfast, and your flat for a change of clothes.”

“What’ll we do when we get there? And I mean the sea-not your ‘place,’ wherever it is.”

“Have a lovely time, of course. The sky is clear; the air is crisp. The only thing we don’t know is how the water is. I should have asked Shortwave for the marine forecast.”

Tammy smiled, stretched her arms, and clasped her hands behind her head.

“I think that wretched little beast is cracking up. I hope he spends the rest of his life thinking he’s a television set with a burnt-out picture tube.” She shivered involuntarily. “I’m so glad to be away from him, I just can’t tell you! You know, I’m only just starting to realise how terrified I was last night.”

4

But while Tammy was in the processing of cleansing Shortwave from her mind, Abdul Haroon was finding him considerably less easy to ignore.

The owner of the Golden Crescent had no sooner seen the Saint and his flaxen-haired passenger away from the back door and returned to his kitchen than the prisoner in the cellar began to shout and thump on the subterranean floor. The noise was well-muffled and could not have been heard in the street, but the ears of Abdul Haroon were made hypersensitive by anxiety. He had never been an optimistic man, and now it seemed to him that any revelation of his unwilling involvements with either Kalki or Simon Templar would lead to certain and total ruin.

He listened in anguish for a few minutes to Shortwave’s uproar and then hurried out of the kitchen to the door at the top of the stairs. He rapped sharply on it.

“Stop it down there! Stop it!”

“Lemme out of here!” bawled Shortwave. “They’re gonna kill me!”

Haroon opened the door, and his reply was in the style of a schoolmaster addressing an unruly pupil.

“You are very bad!” he said. “You must be quiet. You have heard what was said here, and I can do nothing.”

The bumping below stopped. With his ear to the door, Haroon could hear the captive’s heavy breathing, and then his moderated vicious voice, which unpleasantly resembled the hiss of a snake.

“Listen, you fat double-crosser, you let me out of here before they come to get me or I’ll kill you!”

“You would try to kill me if I untied you,” Haroon wisely replied. “You are crazy. Nobody is coming to get you because nobody knows you are here.”

Shortwave’s voice betrayed nerves that were as taut as banjo strings.

“They do know!” he exploded. “They know!” He paused for a second. “I know a few things too,” he said in a new sly tone. “I’ve got enough on you to get you in twice as much trouble with the cops as Templar ever could. You hear me? If I do get out of here later I’ll see they send you up for good-unless I get my hands on you first.”

Haroon’s knees felt weaker the more he reflected on the realism of Shortwave’s threats. A little while before, as he was sincerely wishing the Saint well, he had felt that the burden which Kalki and Fowler had loaded on to his shoulders during the past months was at last really going to be lifted. Now all the hopelessness returned, and he began to see himself once more as a great soft brown rat trapped by cats in a maze.

“But if you help me I’ll just let you alone and get out of here,” Shortwave promised. “Come on, what’s it to you?”

“The Saint would get me,” Haroon mumbled.

“If he don’t, Kalki will.”

“No. Templar will take care of it all and come back.” The words alone gave the fat man courage. “You just wait. You will see.”

He left the cellar door and went back to the kitchen.

“Templar won’t be back!” Shortwave screamed after him. “If you don’t d-do something about me quick, it’s gonna be too late, and Kalki’s gonna get you!”

Haroon tried unsuccessfully to shut the words from his mind and turned to the one solace he had found in life of late: food. On the counter by the refrigerator he began assembling the ingredients for a culinary orgy whose very volume would be guaranteed to swamp his whole being and drive every worry from his heart.

But in the background Shortwave kept up his thumping and screaming at a more frenzied pitch than ever. Haroon’s hands were shaking. He almost dropped a bowl of eggs. At some fancied sound behind him his heart stopped thudding for a full two seconds. He sank his unsteady fingers into a cold baked chicken, tore it in half, and imagined the similar fate that awaited him if Kalki or Fowler should find that he was keeping one of their group a prisoner-and that he had collaborated in other ways to help their enemies.

Shortwave’s screeching suddenly became unbearable. Haroon snatched up just such a large iron frying pan as the Saint had suggested to him for maintaining peace in his own house and ran heavily back to the cellar door. He started down the stairs, clutching the banister, with the big skillet raised on high in his free hand. The instant Shortwave saw it he cringed and grew as quiet as a laryngitic giraffe. Haroon brandished the pan.

“Be quiet or I will kill you myself,” he threatened hoarsely.

Shortwave, still bound hand and foot, could only cower and attempt to wring out every last drop of his meagre dramatic ability in what he considered a final attempt to save himself. He had genuinely thought he had tuned in on Kalki and Fowler’s plans to kill him for betraying them. There were other moments when his cacophonous mentality reminded him of the logic of the Saint’s argument that Fowler could not possibly know what had happened over the curry bowl in the dining room of the Golden Crescent. The facts and fantasies were so jumbled in his steel-reinforced head by now that they rang like loose bolts in a metal bucket.

“Would you let this guy Templar cut my throat?” he asked Haroon almost tearfully.

“No!” said Haroon, and meant it.

Shortwave knew he meant it. In his nightmare imagination he saw Kalki flexing his giant hands and coming after him. The only hope was to make amends.

“Look, Abdul,” Shortwave argued. “If they show up here we’ve both had it. We gotta let them know I didn’t mean it. Now go call up Kalki in case he d-d-didn’t leave yet and tell him the Saint got loose last night and he’s on his way after Fowler and I said to warn them. You got that? We get off the hook that way, see? See how easy it is? Come on, Abdul-do me a favour and just call him, right now. Okay?”

Haroon had lowered the frying pan and was listening. The multiplying changes of pace, from menace to supplication, were starting to unhinge the precarious stability of whatever powers of discrimination he might once have possessed.

“Why should I call, you fool? They know nothing now.”

Shortwave decided to humour him.

“Okay, Abdul, so they don’t know. All the more reason to call. Let ‘em know how we’re both trying to help out. Just don’t tell Kalki anything, okay? I mean about what either one of us done. Just tell him I said to tell him the Saint knows.”

Abdul Haroon was tempted. His fear of the police was becoming distinctly remote from his reburgeoning fear of Kalki. But he said nothing. He was considering.

Shortwave got panicky again at the possibility of refusal.

“You got to,” he begged. “Think what they’ll do to us. Remember Ali? I mean, man, it won’t be nice! I’d rather do anything-I’d rather go to jail than let Kalki get his hands on me. What can the Saint do? Nothing! He’s just bluffing you. Let me loose, okay?”

“No.”

But Haroon was quivering. His chubby legs had all the sturdiness of wet rice paper.

“Then if you won’t let me loose call up Kalki, but quick! Tell him before it’s too late!”

The fat man’s resolution wilted. He began nodding assent, did not bother to close the cellar door, and trotted away across the dining room, and out on to the pavement. He was running for the telephone in his flat, one of his hands fluttering like a bird and the other still clutching his frying pan. He did not even realise that he was carrying the pan until he started feverishly to dial Kalki’s number.

A moment later the voice of the wrestler answered.

“Good, good!” Abdul Haroon began. “I was afraid you might have gone. This is Haroon. I-I must tell you that the Saint knows about you and Fowler.”

“The Saint is dead,” Kalki said tolerantly.

“No, he is not!” Haroon blurted. “He was here just half an hour ago! With Shortwave!”

Kalki roared like a typhoon. Interspersed in the general detonation were appropriate questions. Haroon melted on to his sofa like warm jelly, fairly blubbering into the mouthpiece.

“It was not my fault! Shortwave told them where Fowler would be tonight. They left him here tied up. I could do nothing but hurry to ring you. You see, I have warned you! I have done all I could!”

“And where is the Saint?”

“On his way to the fort.”

“And Shortwave?”

“Still here, still tied.”

“I will be there in five minutes! Open the door for me!”

The line clicked dead at Kalki’s end.

Haroon hauled himself to his feet, muttered incoherently to himself, turned around three times, started off in one direction and then in another, and finally ran to the chest of drawers in his bedroom. He took out his wallet, stuffed it with what cash he had hidden in the flat, looped a tie around his bulging neck, jerked a knot into it, grabbed up a jacket and topcoat, and set off down the stairs. Halfway down he remembered some negotiable cheques, heaved his bulk up the steps again, retrieved them, and waddled down again.

Kalki lived so close by that he might easily have been in front of the restaurant already. Haroon opened the door and started to step into the dining room, but then considered the possibilities of entrapment if Kalki should arrive and come in after him.

“D-d-did you call?” Shortwave shouted anxiously from the depths of the basement. “Did you get him?”

“Yes!” Haroon answered shrilly.

Then he wondered why he had answered. He wondered why he was there at all. He could have been running. But he was afraid that by running he might anger Kalki even more. Instead he left the door slightly ajar, and stood outside it in the brightening sunlight, revelling in the safety pf the public pavement, where taxies and lorries flew this way and that, and people were everywhere.

He was all but dancing on his toes in front of his place of business when Kalki the Conqueror loomed into view around the corner, his whiskers swept by the breeze of his striding speed. He wore a red waistcoat and a plaid jacket, and his black ball-bearing eyes were so close together as to seem fused and inseparable.