One discomfiting result for the Saint was that he had been caught with half his boning up on the real Gascott’s military career still to be done. It was like being stopped in the middle of swotting for tomorrow’s exam and summoned to sit it at once; except that this particular test was a practical one that could all too easily, for him, come to resemble nothing so much as picking his way through a minefield...
Rockham said: “I’m no professional visitor” — for a moment the idea seemed to amuse him — “but I am a professional, and in a similar field to your own. I like what I’ve read about you. I think we’ve some interests in common.”
“I prefer women,” sneered the Saint — “sweetie!”
Rockham nodded.
“I’ve done some homework on you,” he said ambiguously. “But what I meant was that I want to offer you a job.”
Rockham had urbanely ignored the sneer and the facetious comment as though he simply hadn’t noticed them, but the Saint’s watchfulness hadn’t missed the tiny sparks of anger that flared up almost invisibly in Rockham’s pale blue eyes and then were snuffed out almost as soon as they had been ignited; and he knew then that there lay a temper to be reckoned with just beneath that calm and cultivated surface.
And the Saint laughed the cold metallic laugh he had copied with such uncanny accuracy from its original exponent.
“You’ve come to offer me a job, have you? Well, that’s wonderful news! I suppose you’ve brought the rocks with you, that you want broken up? Or is it some private mailbags you’d like me to sew?”
Abruptly he dropped the bantering tone and spat out his next words with a bitter savagery, which was no less contemptuous for being restrained like the rest of the conversation to a level of decibels that insured against deliberate or unwitting eavesdroppers:
“I’m in prison, man, prison! Stir. Jug. Porridge. Detained at His Majesty’s. And when it comes to considering offers of employment, Mister Rockham, I’m just a trifle handicapped.”
Rockham waited imperturbably for the outburst to subside.
“You’d be worth to me.” he said calmly, “two thousand a month. I pay well if I want a man enough. And regarding your present inconvenient predicament” — he paused and flicked his gaze significantly around the visiting-room — “these matters can always be arranged, as you know. I might well be prepared to take a risk to get a man of your calibre on the strength.”
The implication was obvious; and it now seemed hardly credible to Simon Templar that he hadn’t seen at once, right from the beginning, that there was only the one single postulate on which Rockham’s visit could have made any kind of sense. He was offering to spring Gascott from jail.
In the circumstances the Saint found no difficulty at all in achieving a modest levitation of his eyebrows to express a convincingly surprised-looking realisation.
“You’ve got the muscle for that, have you?” he said, and the question was halfway to being a statement, a thought spoken aloud by a man busily turning over a proposition in his mind.
“I’ve got a hundred and three men,” said Rockham.
“That’s a big outfit.”
“And still growing.” Rockham’s hitherto impassive square features became faintly animated with something Simon assumed to be pride. “We call ourselves The Squad, and operate on military lines,” he explained. “But we’re short of leaders — officer material, like yourself. That’s why I’m prepared to help you out of your difficulty. Besides which, the exercise’ll do the lads good.”
Simon appeared to reflect for a moment longer, and then he shook his head decisively.
“The answer’s no. I don’t want to take a job with anyone who’s got a debt to collect from me. It’d cramp my style in the wage negotiations. But how do you know I haven’t already made my own arrangements.”
Rockham’s cold blue eyes regarded him.
“You’ve friends on the outside?”
“That’s my business. I might have, or I might not. But either way, I’ve no intention of rotting in this hole for long.”
Rockham nodded thoughtfully.
“You did it before,” he mused. “Why not again?”
“I’m a clever boy,” agreed the Saint.
“I don’t doubt it. But you’re also a big spender, from what I hear. I’d bet there isn’t much left of the Hatton Garden haul, after your three years living it up in Rio. So... if and when you fly this coop, Gascott, you may be interested in earning some good money — with prospects of a lot more — for doing the kind of work you’d enjoy.”
Rockham stood up.
“You’ll find me at Petersfield nine-two-seven-four. But we’re in the phone book. The Physical Efficiency Centre, at Kyleham.”
Simon Templar breathed a deep sigh of relief when his visitor had gone. Or to be strictly accurate, what he did was to say “phew!” without actually enunciating the sound; but either an audible phew or a sigh of relief of the regulation depth would have done equally well as a means of expressing his feelings at having survived that unexpected test.
He had been given what amounted to an entrance ticket to The Squad. All he had to do now was to get back to the job of giving himself a chance of surviving once he got there.
In his week-long interlude while the moustachioed Gascott was enjoying the CId’s maritime hospitality, the Saint had not channelled his energies exclusively into nurturing the dark bushy appurtenance that now flourished imitatively on his own upper lip. He had spent much of that week at a certain discreet training centre which is conspicuously absent from the publicly available lists of such government establishments, working harder than he could remember having worked in a very long time.
Into that week, by some wizardry of frantic compression he marvelled at ever after, was packed course after crash course. He learnt what it meant, in the practical essentials, to be a commando officer; he learnt how to handle the latest military weapons, the layout of current assault courses, how to read and send Morse and semaphore signals, how to change a guard... He learnt military regulations, he learnt practical regimental etiquette, he learnt to drive a tank, he learnt to inspect a company of men... Practical was the watchword; the emphasis was on the essential skills of his supposed background with which books wouldn’t be able to help him.
He had had just the one week; and at the end of it the expert instructors who had dealt with him had confessed themselves astounded to a man. Nobody at less than Simon Templar’s magnificent level of physical and mental fitness could have kept up the pace he did or come out of that week having accomplished so much.
But he knew he still had a long way to go.
He had slightly less of a long way to go by the time Ruth Barnaby came for her second visit. He told her about Rockham’s surprise appearance.
“For a moment,” he confessed, “I was almost tempted by his offer to get me out.”
“You should have agreed,” she said at once. “There’d certainly have been no doubt about his finding your escape convincing if he’d engineered it himself.”
Simon looked at her soberly.
“There would have been just one little problem with that, though,” he pointed out. “What about the half dozen or so warders who might have been mown down as a by-product of Rocky-boy’s rescue swoop?”
Ruth made an impatient dismissive gesture.