As he ducked back inside, the footsteps slowed down and stopped.
“Gascott!” he heard Cawber’s voice bellow. “Where in hell are you, Gascott?”
10
Cawber must have run on ahead of the others, probably to make sure that the Saint wasn’t taking any short cuts. And he must have seen the rucksack outside the pub.
So he knew that the Saint had stopped there.
And he knew that the Saint should be somewhere around.
Of course, there was a simple and obvious line that the Saint could take — that he’d got so bored with running out ahead on his own that he’d decided to refresh himself in this oasis, which had suddenly popped providentially into view, while he waited for all the sluggardly rest of them to catch up with him. But somehow he didn’t think Cawber would buy that one.
At the very least, a suspicious mind would have something to start working on. And Cawber might even be bright enough to have a word with the customers who were just then in the bar, and discover that his track-suited quarry hadn’t been in there at all...
These thoughts flashed through Simon Templar’s mind in no more time than it took for the echoes of Cawber’s aggressively querulous shout to die away, and it was only another instant before the one possible alternative solution occurred to him — the one other possible way out, in the most literal sense.
He gripped the girl’s arm urgently.
“Ruth — I noticed a gent’s lavatory sign on an outside door. Now, is there a way I can get into it from here?”
“Of course,” she said. “There’s just the one gents’ loo for the place — the outside door is locked at night. You won’t need to go through the bar, either. I’ll show you.”
It took him a mere twenty seconds from Ruth’s last words to the time when he emerged at the side of the building, to be sighted by Cawber, who was just coming out of the entrance to the public bar, beside which Simon had parked his rucksack.
That the Saint was still performing in the interests of verisimilitude an action of the kind euphemistically known as ‘adjusting the dress’ was a corroborative refinement which must have helped to make his alibi look convincing enough to Cawber.
Especially as Simon said blandly: “When you gotta go, you gotta go. What the hell are you squawking about? Where did you think I was — up a tree?”
Cawber glared at him sullenly.
“You ain’t supposed to take the pack off till you get back.” Then with a note of grudging approval he added “But I guess you’re runnin’ good enough. I ain’t got no real complaint. Even if I don’t like you, personal.”
The Saint sighed.
“Cawber,” he said pleasantly, as he heaved the weighty rucksack up onto his back. “If you did like me, personal, then I’d be worried.”
And he jogged off down the readjust as the first of the other runners came plodding into sight.
Thereafter he exerted himself only enough to finish a comfortable first, to have a waiting Lembick tick off his name on the list of runners.
“Get showered and into your civvies,” Lembick ordered, with venomous restraint. “You’ve still got a job to do. And God help you if you muff it.”
A job of a different kind.
When he shot Albert Nobbins that afternoon with so professional a detachment, the bullets were real. And Nobbin’s death looked horribly convincing, right down to the blood that seeped slowly through his coat in a widening stain as he lay face down by that lake.
All the Saint could do for Nobbins was to aim the shots as far from the most certainly lethal target points as he dared — and pray that no thousand-to-one combination of improbable circumstances had intervened to stop Pelton contacting the victim in time.
Because if they had, Albert Nobbins might be a goner for real.
Rockham, at any rate, was pleased with the effect, when he viewed the film that evening. The screen had been set up in his office and the curtains drawn, and Lembick and Cawber and the Saint were with him.
“You were a shade too far off when you fired,” he observed ruminatively after sitting through the entertainment for the second time. “But all the same, a very creditable performance. A good clean hit.”
The Saint said: “Then I’ve passed the final test, have I?”
“With flying colours. And I’ve decided to assign a leading role to you in a major job we’ll be doing on Friday — the day after tomorrow... What’s your trouble, Lembick?” Rockham inquired silkily, as the Scot’s features twisted themselves into a resentful scowl.
Lembick was bursting with it.
“It’s just that Cawber and me — we’ve been talking, and we both feel the same about this” — he seemed to have difficulty stifling a pejorative strong enough to convey their dislike and distrust — “this new man.”
“This new man who thrashed you in your own gym — yes, Lembick, what about him?”
“It’s not that — not the fight.” Lembick twisted his big hands together as if he wished he had them around the Saint’s neck. “But he’s — it’s his attitude.” Again he scowled and seemed to be groping for a word extreme enough to express his condemnation. “He’s too goddam flip!”
“He’s a good man,” said Rockham, suddenly hard and inflexible.
“Better than us?” demanded Lembick.
“A different type,” Rockham said flatly.
“We’ve been with you from the start,” Cawber said sulkily.
“And you’ll stay to the end.”
Lembick said: “We just don’t want him promoted over our heads.”
Rockham eyed them coldly.
“This is a military formation,” he snapped, “not a labour union.” Anger blazed for a moment in those near-transparent eyes. “Now get out, both of you. And take the cine gear.”
When the two truculent trainers had gone, Rockham poured port for himself and Simon from the crystal decanter in the corner cabinet.
He brought the drinks and said: “You have a taste for the good life, Gascott.”
“Who hasn’t?”
Rockham shrugged.
“Lembick, Cawber. They only work for the money. And the chance it gives them to boss and bully a number of subordinates that I supply.”
The Saint saw the likely drift of Rockham’s thought, and decided that his best course was to play up to him.
“Natural-born deputy Fuhrers” he said, nodding.
“Ah! You agree!”
The Saint raised an eyebrow that asked if disagreement were sanely possible.
“That the world’s divided?” he rasped. “Shepherds and sheep? Of course. It always has been and it always will be.”
Rockham beamed.
“You understand! But so few people do. And yet it’s so simple. Some men are born to lead, others to follow.”
“That’s for sure,” the Saint said, drawing him out.
“It’s always been the one sure thing. Once you’ve grasped that — once you’ve freed your thinking from all this democratic garbage — then you can act.”
“As long as you’re one of the lucky tribe of born leaders.”
“Luckily for us, we both are.” Rockham drank with evident enjoyment, studying the Saint for a while before he spoke again. He said: “It’s three years now since I made the break with society — with the law. But most of all with the unworkable idea that men are equal — in anything. Democracy!” He thumped a fist on the table. “Democracy is dedicated to the protection of the weak and the stupid.”
“Numbers against quality,” rasped the Saint sycophantically.
Rockham put down the glass and stroked his square jaw with that hand whose potent karate chop Simon had seen in action.