When he entered that cell for the first time, on the following day, the real George Gascott remained in relatively comfortable lodgings at the safe house, well guarded but consoled by the promise that in return for his cooperation, when he was eventually transferred to an ordinary prison, his very first application for parole would be granted.
It had been no sweat for Pelton, talking Gascott into it. Once he had got over an understandable initial suspicion, Gascott had agreed at once. It meant that his aborted escape would not be held against him, and complete freedom would be brought very close; and in return all he had to do was agree to the loan of his identity for an undisclosed purpose. That was the bargain. And Gascott was more than content with it.
Simon Templar, on the other hand, was soon feeling every bit as restless and discontented as he had known he would. Prison life did not agree with him. He hated the routine, he hated the meals, and most of all he hated being cooped up.
True, he was rather a special prisoner. The needs of his mission dictated a semi-solitary confinement. Though he ate with the others, he took his exercise sessions alone in the concrete prison quadrangle — or alone except for the four armed warders — and was otherwise kept very much to his small single cell. Gascott’s record, fortunately, made these arrangements seem plausible enough to avoid raising suspicion among any of the fellow inmates.
The move of the supposed “Gascott” to Brixton from the unnamed hospital where he had recovered from his bout of malaria had not gone unreported; and even though at that period no system of morning deliveries of the newspapers to those detained at His Majesty’s pleasure had yet been implemented, still the word sped around, and there was scarcely a man in the prison on the day after his arrival who didn’t know that the tall newcomer with something of the look of a pirate or gypsy about him was George Gascott.
Only he wasn’t.
Simon Templar had to admit that the physical discomfort he was enduring in Gascott’s stead was less than extreme. The food was an affront to his educated palate, but doubtless it supplied an adequate minimum of sustenance and was a whole lot better than bread-and-water rations would have been. And the cell was hardly a dank dark dungeon reminiscent of the Bastille; it was a light painted room, simple and functional, with a narrow bed, a table, and a chair — all solidly made and bolted firmly to the floor. And there was a washbasin, with cold water. The conditions were plain and spartan rather than punitive in themselves.
But the loss of liberty: that was real enough to the Saint, and there were times when he paced back and forth in his cell like a caged panther, and times when he found himself gazing up through the high barred window for long minutes at the rectangular patch of sky beyond, now blue, now grey, now star-scattered. And then he thought of the men in prisons the world over, the generations of the incarcerated, many of them with little or no prospect of ever being released, for whom that tantalising rectangle of barred sky must have stood as the ever-present symbol of both despair and hope through seemingly interminable years. Educationally, it was quite an experience.
And as he remembered how well off he was in comparison, to be committed to spending only about three weeks there before the escape which he would be allowed to make, he said severe words to himself and went on with the preparatory work which would occupy him for that period.
In his seclusion it was easy for him to be given discreet privileges in the form of books, and, as Pelton had promised, anything else within reason and practicality that he needed towards those preparations. One of the things he asked for was a chess set; and with this and some esoteric tomes on the subject, he spent hour after hour in engrossed intellectual contemplation. It was years since he had played the game, but chess was one of Gascott’s passions — and reputedly one of Rockham’s.
In his first week he had two visitors.
One was the “girl friend” Pelton had organised after discovering that there were no genuine friends or relatives of Gascott’s on the scene who were on good enough terms to want to see him. In that all-male stronghold the idea of a visiting “girl friend”, even one of Pelton’s choosing, was something Simon was happy enough to go along with, and he was glad he had done so when he saw her.
Her name was Ruth Barnaby, and she was a member of Pelton’s department. She had dark-brown chestnutty hair immaculately coiffured in an upswept style, and the kind of good looks no woman can get out of a bottle or tube or jar, because they depend on the right bone structure. Either you have it or you haven’t; and Ruth Barnaby decidedly had it. She had been well primed. She greeted him through the wire-mesh grille for the benefit of the warders and fellow inmates present, with exactly the blend of familiarity and restraint that might have been expected of her part; and then she gradually dropped her voice to a level at which it became submerged in the general babble of conversation going on between each of the other men and his visitor and rapidly introduced herself.
“If you manage to get into this group,” she told him, “I’ll be your local contact down at Kyleham. That’s where they’re based. We’ll need to set up a communication system. You’ll be confined to camp for a while, till Rockham thinks you’re trustworthy enough to be let off the leash. I suppose you know about all that?”
Simon nodded, aware of the cool grey depths of her eyes.
“David did mention it,” he said, keeping his voice well down and maintaining the rasping Gascott tones.
Even though nobody could possibly have picked out what they were saying, it was conceivable that a sharp pair of ears would have registered a complete change in his voice quality and intonation.
The girl gave him a few details about the estate at Kyleham and then left, promising to come back the following week.
The second visitor arrived a couple of days later. Simon had never seen him before. He was a big well-groomed man with a strong square face.
“Mr Gascott?” he said in a quiet cultured voice. “We haven’t met, but I’ve been reading about you in the newspapers. My name is Rockham — John Rockham.”
4
The Saint was completely and utterly taken aback. He simply hadn’t considered the possibility that Rockham might grab at the bait quite as early as that. Yet for all the reaction he showed, the name might have meant absolutely nothing to him.
Which, of course, was no less than Rockham would have expected it to mean to George Gascott.
That the Saint was able to slip naturally and without perceptible delay into the sort of response the real Gascott would have made, even though he had to conceal his excitement at such swift success for the stratagem that Pelton had arranged for him, was entirely to the credit of his acting abilities and to the hard work he had added to them.
“Who the hell are you?” he heard himself rasp at restrained volume, just as he had done with the girl. “I told them very distinctly that I could do without any blasted do-gooder namby-pamby professional visitors poking their sanctimonious snouts in.”
It gave him an eerie feeling to realise that already, at least as far as outward appearances went, he had all but shrugged himself into Gascott’s skin. But that feeling came as a mere fleeting background to the whirling of his brain. Neither he nor Pelton had given any close attention to the problem of how, after his escape, he was going to arrange to be “available” to Rockham. If necessary, in the end, he would simply have presented himself at The Squad’s base and played it by ear from then on. Rockham’s taking the initiative at this stage — before “Gascott” was actually in a position to be of any use to him — was something that needed thought, and for the moment his mind was racing like a motor out of gear as he tried to fit the new development into some kind of schema he could deal with.