“We speak the same language, you and I. I sensed it from the start. Most men — you said it yourself — are no better than sheep. They’re fit for nothing but to be herded about. Mindless obedient imbeciles! Or they’re like chess pieces — expendable, all but the king, in the larger interest of the game. Most men are only fit to be shuffled about like pawns — forces to be marshalled, pitted against one another... sacrificed.”
“ ‘And one by one, back in the closet lays’,” the Saint quoted.
“Exactly,” the other man agreed, evidently recognising the line. “But what the verse doesn’t say is that when Destiny moves men about on the chess board of life, it operates through other men. Through the leaders, Gascott. Through men like you and me.”
While he was talking, he had strolled over to a small square table that stood between two armchairs near the drinks cabinet.
“I believe you’re a chess player yourself,” he said; and he slid most of the tabletop aside to expose an inlaid board with a hollowed-out compartment at either end holding the pieces.
“I’ve occasionally done a bit of wood-pushing,” Simon admitted, as Rockham picked out a white and a black pawn.
Rockham said: “I’m interested to see what kind of a game you play.” And there was an odd, almost fanatical glint in his eye as he spoke.
He shuffled the two pawns about behind his back, according to the established schoolboyish convention of the game, and then brought his closed hands into view to offer Simon the choice.
He chose. Rockham opened the hand and showed the black pawn.
“I have the advantage of the move, I think,” he said after they had rapidly set out the pieces and sat down. And he pushed a white pawn two squares forward along one of the centre files.
The Saint made an exactly matching move, which left the two pawns head on to each other in the middle of the board.
“Pawn to King four, pawn to King four,” Rockham commented as he brought out his king’s knight on its devious lopsided course. “Let’s see what you do with knight to KB3.”
Again the Saint made a matching move; and then Rockham slid a bishop forward through the gap that his advancing pawn had left, and once more Simon made an exactly complementary move from his own side of the board.
Rockham eyed him shrewdly.
“Hmm. You join me in Giuoco Piano. Probably the way most games at amateur level begin — but also the classic of classic openings. The quiet game.”
“Mentioned in the Gottingen manuscript of fourteen ninety,” the Saint concurred.
“You do know your chess,” Rockham smiled. “But let’s see if we can’t do something to hot things up.” And the smile faded as he advanced another of his white pawns two squares, on a file nearer the queen’s side of the board, so that it threatened to capture, on the next move, the bishop Simon had advanced.
But there was nothing to prevent the bishop from taking the pawn in a pre-emptive strike right there and then.
The Saint sat back and eyed the board for a moment.
Then he commented encyclopaedically: “Evans Gambit. An interesting line. The aim is to prevent black’s pawn to queen four and to attack the weak spot at his KB2. White offers a free pawn, and in return he gets — possibly — a winning attack. This particular gambit was thought up a hundred and twenty years ago — appropriately enough by a soldier, Captain W.D. Evans. And it’s been used by a host of world-class players since. Bird, Blackman, Staunton, Anderssen—”
“Morphy, Steinity—” Rockham continued the list with enthusiasm. “But it’s the conception, man — the strategic conception of a gambit, any gambit — that’s so magnificent. Don’t you agree? To sacrifice a minor piece, early in the game, so as to give yourself time to manoeuvre, space to attack. The idea couldn’t be bolder or simpler. You put yourself at limited risk, to open up the battlefield or to make a quick strike. And then—” He made a rapid throat-cutting movement with his hand. “Of course, it’s a gamble. If you can’t capitalise on the sacrifice, if your attack collapses, all your forces are in danger. But if you can, if you can! Then what a magnificent strategic beginning the pawn gambit is!”
The Saint inclined his head, acknowledging the point but with reservations.
“Still,” he said. “Gambits can be refuted, and often are. This one included. And the best way to refute a gambit is to accept it.” With one swift pass of his hand the presumptuous white pawn was gone and the black bishop was in its place. “Do your worst.”
He dropped the pawn into one of the recesses in the table; Rockham blinked at the prestidigitatory feat, and then moved up another pawn to threaten the black bishop again.
“The second pawn,” he said, eyeing the Saint keenly, “is properly protected. Now you’re going to have to withdraw that episcopal venturer in one direction or another, I’m afraid.”
“True enough,” admitted the Saint, imperturbably making just such a strategic retreat.
They played on for a while, without any serious edge of competition to the game; until Rockham suggested they abandon it as a draw.
“The position’s more or less equal,” he said. “I can see you’re a worthy opponent. Sometime we’ll have a marathon. Soon. But there’s something I want to show you, now.”
The Saint watched as he crossed to the wall safe and twiddled the combination dial. He brought out a small leather bag and spilled the contents out on the table.
The contents consisted of a large handful of irregularly shaped glassy beads with a semi-opaque sheen to them.
“Uncut diamonds,” Rockham said. “One hundred thousand pounds in negotiable, transportable pebbles!” And Simon Templar knew at a glance that those pebbles were exactly what Rockham said they were, and were worth every penny of the figure he had named.
“Nice,” said the Saint, and meant it.
“A down payment on Friday’s job,” Rockham crowed. “It’s a form of currency I much prefer to large cheques.” He picked up a half-handful of the diamonds and let them trickle in a miniature waterfall into the other hand. “Beautiful, aren’t they? Concentrated wealth.”
“Friday’s job must be a big one,” Simon observed casually, “if that little lot’s just the down payment.”
Rockham eyed him speculatively.
“You’ll be briefed in the morning,” he said. “But you’ll have a starring role, all right. And I can tell you one thing: the prize you’ll be after, the prize that my — clients put such a high value on, is a man!”
Rockham gathered up the diamonds carefully and poured them back into the little leather bag. His eyes had never left them for one instant the whole time they had been on the table.
Simon Templar too had his moments of concentrated attention from which it would have been difficult to deflect him. For example, he watched now with expert interest as Rockham locked the little bag of diamonds away in the safe; and he had watched with even greater interest a little earlier, when that same safe was being opened.
11
When he kept a prearranged rendezvous at Ruth’s car that night, outside the wall, she drove him just a few miles towards Petersfield for a conference with Pelton — and an Albert Nobbins who was somewhat the worse for wear.
“I’m glad you managed to keep all the bullets in the area of the bullet-proofing,” Nobbins told him.
“I’m only sorry you had to go through the experience at all,” Simon sympathised, looking hard at Pelton. “A Wilkinson vest is a lot better than nothing, but you must be feeling pretty sore all the same.”
“Badly bruised, all right.” Nobbins put a brave face on it, but he looked pale and shaken.