The driver opened a door leading off the landing and announced laconically: “This is him.”
He went away, and the Saint saw that he had been shown into a short of anteroom. There was a door at the far end — leading, he guessed, to Rockham’s office — and there were two men seated in the room. They were dressed like the others except that their pullovers were grey.
The two faces that turned towards him belonged to the men he would shortly know as Lembick and Cawber; and if those faces were lit up with open-hearted friendliness it must have been by bulbs of micro-wattage.
“Good evening, boys,” the Saint rasped. He held up a restraining hand to stem the non-existent flow of conversation. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. That must be the Head’s office.” He pointed to the farther door. “And you” — he beamed at them — “you must be a couple of naughty boys waiting for six of the best. You really must stop this smoking in the lavatory, you know.”
He laughed in that hollow way; and the chunky transatlantic half of the welcoming party lumbered off his chair and looked at him aslant.
“So you’re Gascott, huh? And you said you was Simon Templar — the Saint! A comedian. You notice that, Lembick?” He kept his eyes fixed on the Saint while addressing the other man. “You notice that? He’s a funny-man.”
Simon put a hand to his mouth, yawned elaborately, and gazed idly around at the ceiling, while the other half of the welcoming party, which rapidly established itself as Caledonian, said:
“We’ll have some fun with him then — won’t we, Cawber?” There was a hard edge of sadistic anticipation in the crag-faced Lembick’s voice. To Simon he said fiercely: “Ye’ll train under us!”
“Och, laddie!” Simon exclaimed in an apalling parody of Lembick’s accent. “I cannae wait! But what d’ye have in mind tae teach me? Wuid it be tossing the caber? Or wuid ye prefairrr tae instrrruct me in the proper care and feeding of the domestic sporrran?”
Abruptly he strode to Rockham’s door; he knocked once and was on his way in even before the monosyllable “Come!” had snapped its way through the air, and before Lembick and Cawber had realised what was happening. They followed indignantly in his wake. “Boss — he just barged right past us...” Cawber trailed off, glaring malevolent fury at the Saint; and Rockham waved him down placatingly.
“Never mind, Cawber. Mister Gascott’s a very positive personality. That’s why I wanted him to join us.”
The pale blue eyes appraised the Saint in this new setting; and the Saint returned the compliment, looking at Rockham and Rockham’s office with a frank evaluative openness that betokened complete and calm self-confidence. Behind him, in contrast, Lembick and Cawber shifted awkwardly on their feet, exactly like the errant school-boys which he had twitted them for resembling.
Rockham’s office might have been — perhaps had been — designed to make men like Lembick and Cawber feel acutely ill at ease. A luxurious thick-piled carpet in a dark classical design blended perfectly with quietly decorous furniture — the Saint guessed eighteenth century. Against this restrained background, the effect of a huge shock-colour abstract on one wall was electrifying.
Without being too fanciful or pseudo-psychologically analytical, he mused, you could see that room as symbolising two poles of civilisation. On the one hand, culture; and on the other, violence, or naked power. And they met and clashed in that room just as they met and clashed in the man himself.
Rockham was clearly a very deliberate sophisticate. The cultivated exterior was like a hard but semi-transparent coat of varnish that did little to hide the man’s essential ruthlessness of purpose. Simon Templar had broken a lance with most of the available varieties of assorted villains in his time; and his highly attuned antennae for the type told him beyond doubt that Rockham was as formidable as any of the species.
“Take a seat,” Rockham said, ignoring his two standing subordinates. “A glass of port?”
“Very civil of you.”
Rockham got up from his leather-trimmed roll-top desk and strolled over to a corner cabinet. He was wearing a perfectly cut dove-grey lounge suit.
“Congratulations on the break-out,” he said as he poured the two drinks. “You certainly didn’t waste much time.”
“I didn’t much care for the diet. Or the view.”
Rockham’s big square jaw creased momentarily in a mirthless smile as he handed Simon a glass.
“You came straight here.”
It was a calm statement, containing neither surprise nor enquiry; yet somehow it demanded an answer.
“As soon as I could.” Simon decided that he could afford to temper Gascott’s unpleasanter style for the moment, and he consciously blunted the sharp edge of arrogance in his manner. “After all,” he said, “I have to hide out somewhere. And you were right — I need the spondulicks. Three thousand a month I think you said.”
“Two.” Rockham corrected him impassively; but even the lower figure had a discernible stiffening effect on Lembick and Cawber, and the Saint could practically hear their hostility crackling like static in the air.
He made a sour face, and then permitted himself a grin.
“A pity,” he said wistfully. “Still, I suppose one must try to put up with life’s small inconveniences. Man was born to suffer, so they say.” He held the glass up to the light and twirled it approvingly by its elegant spirated stem. “Unusual shape for Waterford.”
“Specially designed for De Valera,” Rockham confided, looking gratified at the appreciation. “What do you make of the port?”
Simon wafted the glass contemplatively back and forth beneath his nostrils for a moment, and then sipped and savoured it.
“Taylor twelve,” he pronounced. “Quite a favourite of mine, as it happens.”
There was a sudden hiss of pent-up exasperation from Lembick.
“Aye,” he scowled. “That’s all very fine. But d’ye know a weapon like you know that stuff?”
He dragged a pistol from his pocket and sent it spinning hard at the Saint, who caught it adroitly with his left hand, putting his drink down at the same moment with his right.
“Walther PPK, 7.65 millimetres,” he commented with professional detachment. “A good general-purpose weapon.”
He seemed hardly to look at the gun, yet in a few deft movements he had extracted the magazine and cleared the breech, and proceeded with further dismantling. As he stripped down the gun he sent the parts, beginning with the magazine, flying in quick succession at Lembick, who fielded them awkwardly.
“As I say, a nice little weapon,” the Saint rasped in conclusion, as he flipped the last piece — the heavy butt section — at Lembick’s midriff.
Rockham smiled broadly at the exhibition.
“Satisfied, Lembick?”
“We’ll see,” grunted the lowering Lembick. “we’ll see how he makes out in training.”
To Simon, Rockham said: “I’m impressed with you, Gascott. But don’t get any ideas above your present station. You’ll be watched closely. You won’t be permitted to leave the premises unaccompanied — not until I’m personally satisfied of your bona fides.”
“Confined to barracks?” Simon shrugged unconcernedly. “Suits me, for the time being. I’m not exactly anxious to go on public parade just at the moment.”
The other nodded, toying thoughtfully with his glass.
“I think there’s a future for you in The Squad. I hope you’ll think so too, when you’ve seen how we operate. Tomorrow you’ll be shown our facilities.”