The Saint looked at her, and saw again that coolness in her eyes which was almost like the coldness that had stared out of Rockham’s.
“No,” he said. “I’m not sorry for him. He killed a lot of people — or caused a lot of people’s deaths, it comes to the same thing. He deserved to die like this. But he had a kind of integrity.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, somehow I didn’t imagine you would. Maybe it’s the people you’ve been mixing with.”
She looked puzzled for a second, and then she said: “I know you don’t like Pel ton’s methods. But they work.”
Simon assessed her dispassionately.
“Ruth,” he said gently. “Maybe it’s not too late for you. You’ve been in this game long enough to see how dirty it can be, but maybe not quite long enough to accept the dirtiness as a way of life.” He gripped her by the shoulders and looked searchingly into her face. “It’s too late for Pelton; it’s part of his existence. But not for you — I hope. Why not get out now, while you still can?”
She stared at him in amazement.
“But the service is my career. I enjoy it. And I’m ambitious, I want to get on. I’m still only on a low grade, but I’m going to move up.”
“And all this blood-letting — the unnecessary along with the necessary — doesn’t bother you?”
“Frankly, no. Not much. You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. You may not like Pelton’s methods — our methods — but as I’ve said, they work.”
“Oh yes — they work, all right.” The Saint’s manner held no trace of his usual banter, and for once his eyes were not mocking at all but shadowed with a fury of slow-burning disgust. “A few people may incidentally get trampled on, in the course of Pelton’s grand strategy, but what the hell? So two or three of Yates’s men die needlessly. So what? You won’t be the one to scrape their guts up off the grass or break the news to their families, and neither will Pelton!”
She shrugged.
“Whatever forces we’d had lined up, there’d probably have been a battle in which some men got killed or wounded.”
“That may be so,” Simon agreed. “But Pelton holds other people cheaper than just about anybody else I’ve met — and I’ve met some real stinkers. And I’m sorry to think of you studying under such a master.”
She had never seen the Saint in such a mood of grim anger, and for a moment she seemed taken aback.
Then he asked: “What about the guards — upstairs?”
“Both unconscious,” she said. “They’ve been clouted hard on the head. But I think they’re OK, apart from the lumps.”
“And Instrood?”
“I couldn’t find him at all. He seems to have gone.”
Simon Templar nodded slowly.
“I was afraid of that,” he said. “And Nobbins, I guess, will have gone with him.”
15
Colonel David Pelton inspected his fingernails, made a minute and unnecessary adjustment to the alignment of a folder on his desk, and smiled with thin-lipped satisfaction.
“All in all,” he said briskly to Simon Templar and Ruth Barnaby, “a highly successful operation.”
“I’m glad you think so,” said the Saint curtly.
“Rockham’s men at Kyleham didn’t put up much of a fight against the Paras we sent in there,” Pelton went on. “For the time being, they’ve taken the place over and they’re holding the Squad men there, rather than overcrowd the police cells for miles around.”
The Saint eyed him coldly.
“You’ve no real worries then — about the whole affair?”
Pelton shook his head.
“No. It’s a rough game we’re in. I knew that when I started in this line. My only real concern at the moment is the expense of the whole affair. Our budgeting is — well, Civil Service. And apart from all the other costs, Rockham insisted on having a very substantial down payment for the Instrood job, and incidentally in a highly unorthodox form of currency. The Ministry treasurers weren’t at all amused at having to put that sort of stake on the table. I near enough had to swear my life away to get them to play along. There’ll be hell to pay if they don’t get it back. That’s why I shall be going down to Kyleham tomorrow with a man from Chubb’s — to get into Rockham’s safe.”
There was no hint of a smile on the Saint’s dark and now clean-shaven face, and his eyes were hard chips of blue ice.
“Never mind the funding arrangements,” he said tersely. “What about Nobbins? My guess is that instead of breaking or turning Instrood, Instrood turned him.”
Pelton sighed, and went through the unnecessary straightening motions with the folder again.
“Poor old Nobbins. I’m afraid he rather went to pieces when he discovered the truth about Instrood. We picked the pair of them up near Hounslow. Nobbins thought he was on his way to the Chinese embassy. There’s no doubt Instrood did a good job.”
“That’s what you call it?
Pelton spread his well-manicured hands half-apologetically.
“Simon — it had to be done.” He glanced at Ruth for support, and she nodded vigorously. “We can’t afford sentimentality in the service. The fact is, Nobbins had been showing certain signs of instability for some months. The weakness, if it was there, had to be brought out in the open.”
Simon laughed ironically.
“And if it wasn’t there — it had to be created.”
“Not exactly. But I agree that the technique used with him was calculated to expose — to precipitate even — a lack of dedication that may have been only latent.”
“So you started by softening him up, putting him under maximum stress. You packed him off to The Squad, and with a cover so ramshackle it was pretty well bound to have holes blown through it within weeks if not days of his arrival there.”
Pelton canted his head over at that birdlike angle, and his small dark eyes glittered.
“Nobbins was useful in the role. And it was, shall we say, not inconvenient that the job put him under a certain amount of pressure.”
“You used him as a pawn in your game with Rockham — callously and with infinite calculation,” said the Saint. He stabbed the air with an accusing forefinger. “You used him in a cold-blooded gambit. And it didn’t matter to you whether your opponent accepted it or not, because you were into a winning line of play either way. Whether he shaped up or not — you’d come out with something to the good. Rockham and his Squad were your main objective, but you could combine settling your doubts about Nobbins in the same operation.”
The Saint was warming to his subject, in so far as it was the sort of subject he could think about in terms of warming to.
“If they tumbled to Nobbins — well, in that case you were rid of a job, and the sacrifice would probably strengthen your hand, like all the best gambits, for the rest of the game. For instance, another of your pieces might well be able to operate more freely. This one.” Simon pointed to himself. “Having rooted out one infiltrator, Rockham wouldn’t be expecting a second one to be already installed. But if on the other hand they didn’t tumble to him — then he’d be collecting some mildly useful information while he was there. And all the time he was obligingly reducing himself to a jelly, to a state of full susceptibility to the next trial he had to go through — the next phase of your plan.”
“As I’ve said, he had to be tested.” Pelton shrugged.
“Or was it tempted? You know as well as I do that there’s a sensible ordinance in this country that prohibits the police from inciting a man to commit a crime in order to charge him with it. I’ve no doubt there are a hundred and one more or less subtle ways of acting the agent provocateur in that sense without technically breaking that law, but at least it helps prevent official incitement of the more blatant kinds. I’m only sorry — for Nobbins’s sake — that a similar bridle doesn’t apply here.”