“For the... cultivation of physical efficiency?” The Saint’s infinitesimal lift of one interrogative eyebrow was only faintly mocking. Rockham chuckled.
“A neat cover, don’t you think?”
“Good enough to explain anything a visiting meter-reader might see, I guess.”
“Exactly. We have to let a few outsiders in. Deliveries, phone repairs, and so forth. The physical efficiency idea covers the lot: the fit men, the gunshots — we’ve got a pistol and a rifle range — the exercises, of one kind and another.”
Simon looked into the blue eyes that were almost transparently pale; and he saw that those eyes burned with a kind of cold fire of pride, and he knew then that John Rockham was separated by only a hair’s breadth from madness.
“What about passers-by who see your sign,” he inquired, “and feel an overpowering urge to get themselves physically efficient?”
“I simply turn them away,” Rockham said, smiling and spreading his hands in a gesture that conveys how effortlessly he was able to put prospective customers off. “We’re always full. We’re a very exclusive establishment.”
And Rockham laughed, and the Saint knew that there was no more mirth in that laugh than in the hollow one he himself had perfected for his role.
The laugh, the smile, faded. Rockham’s manner became instantly brisk and businesslike.
“We’re flexibly organised here,” he said. “No fixed ranks — except mine as C-in-C. I assign authority for the duration of each individual mission. Lembick and Cawber here, as you’ll have gathered, have special duties in training and generally keeping an eye on new recruits. They have my authority to drive you, and drive you hard.” Rockham stood up. “I’ll admit there have been one or two unfortunate errors of recruitment — men who couldn’t make the grade. It’s a pity about them. We’ve no room for slackers or failures in The Squad.” He shook Simon by the hand. “But somehow I don’t expect you to be among them. I expect great things of you, Gascott.” To Lembick and Cawber he said: “Show him his room.” And as they followed the Saint through the door, he added quietly: “You’ve got a week to bring him up to scratch.”
7
The Saint woke up from his light doze at one o’clock in the morning with that infallible cat-like faculty for instant alertness which had served him so well in his hazardous career.
But this time it was not that his ever-vigilant hearing had roused him in response to some faint intrusion of real sound. It was simply that his mental alarm clock, a wholly inaudible and discreet device which he had set a couple of hours earlier, had gone off exactly as intended. He had told it to wake him at one; and it had done so.
Timing was of some importance if he was to avoid risking an encounter with the guard patrols. Their concern was chiefly with any unauthorised visitors, but his own position if he were intercepted would be no more healthy.
The estate was roughly rectangular, with the conglomeration of buildings somewhat west of centre and with the main gate set in the middle of the long south wall. From the window of his room he could see the two man inner patrol during part of their continuous circuit around the buildings, and he knew that there was a similar patrol throughout the night on the much wider circuit just inside the wall. Pelton had mentioned guard dogs, but he had not yet seen any sign of them — perhaps they were kept in reserve, to be unleashed only in extreme emergency.
The three-storey block he was in stood a little apart from the monstrosity of a central building. It was a comparatively recent structure, built in the days of the college to house the privileged senior pupils in study-bedrooms. Simon’s was one of some fifty such rooms, identically small and opening identically off L-shaped corridors on each floor, along with the “usual offices”.
He was one floor up, and counted it a minor advantage that his room was next door to a “usual office”.
He got out of the narrow bed and arranged the clothing he had arrived with, and one of the two pillows, to make it look as though he might still be in it. He didn’t know how far Lembick and Cawber’s brief to keep an eye on him went, or whether it included making close checks in the middle of the night, but that was another chance he just had to take.
He put on the regulation denims, plimsolls, and black pullover he had been issued with earlier after his own things had been thoroughly searched, and went noiselessly into the corridor and into the bathroom on the other side, which overlooked the direction he wanted to take through the grounds. Outside its window was a convenient drainpipe, of obviously solid vintage, which combined with more ancient ivy to give him an easy ladder to the neglected flower bed below.
Approximately as a leopard glides through tangled jungle undergrowth with both speed and uncanny silence, so Simon Templar transferred himself from there to his chosen spot near the south-east corner of the wall. The analogy is only approximate, because admittedly he had no creeping lianas or other dense vegetative hindrances to contend with. Most of the estate was open land; though there were a few sparsely wooded areas and he had to pass through one of these in the course of his 250-yard sortie.
Near the far edge of this spinney, he waited for two or three minutes till he heard the footsteps of the outer patrol as they turned to skirt the wall. They were on time to the minute; and if they kept to schedule it would be three-quarters of an hour before they came around again.
He emerged from the tenebrous dark just short of the section of fence, which thanks to his earlier preparatory work would hardly detain him at all. But first, after removing the piece of string with which he had replaced the bottom wire, he reached through and brought out the haversack from under the bush where had had hidden it, and took out a one-piece oversuit, which had been packed into a remarkably small space. He put it on. It was dark grey and made of a thin but tough canvas-like material, and it covered and protected every square inch of his clothing — and the leggings even terminated in overshoes, made out of extra thicknesses of the same tough material.
Then he crawled safely through the space he had previously created, under what had now become the lowest of the live wires.
Extracting his rope ladder from under his clothing, he succeeded this time in hooking it over the top of the wall at the first attempt. In a few seconds more, he landed lightly outside the wall and looked around. A few yards away, an unlit parked car faced him. He glided like a wraith towards it, keeping close in under the shadow of the wall until he was sure the car was Ruth Barnaby’s, and that it was Ruth Barnaby who was sitting behind the wheel.
He drummed a spirited tattoo on the roof and got in beside her.
“Doesn’t the romper suit make me look fetching?” he said. “I feel a bit like a truant from the nursery. Except that this playpen has twelve-foot walls, and nannies about as kindly and maternal and lovable as any rattlesnake with a sore tail.”
Faithful readers who have come to expect that the female lead will invariably be captivated by Simon Templar’s bantering charm and piratical good looks will now need to come to terms with harsh reality, which is that, incredible as it may seem, not every woman found the Saint irresistible. Just occasionally he encountered one who seemed peculiarly blind to his dazzling virtues, and almost deaf to his brilliant persiflage.
This might have been because of the mysterious chemistry of personality whereby two people, when mixed and shaken, sometimes precipitate an immediate curd of mutual antipathy. The Saint preferred to like people if he possibly could, but he had to admit that the psychic factor was real enough. Or it might be because the female in question was so besotted at the time with some other male that she was temporarily in a condition indistinguishable from imbecility. Simon Templar didn’t present the problem to himself in so many words, but he did notice.