“Well,” Liskard said, “it’s a good thing you were watching, Mr Templar, or I might be dead at this moment. Please do me the honor of sitting with my group on the plane.”
“I’d be delighted.”
An important-looking man in a dark suit came up and spoke to Liskard.
“His name was Benjamin Scott. You remember? The one who escaped from Awi Bluff a week ago.”
“A madman then?” Liskard asked. “Is that all there is to it?”
“Possibly. We’re putting in a call to the director at Awi Bluff. Maybe he can tell us just what sort of lunatic the fellow was.”
“Is he dead?” one of Liskard’s younger aides asked.
“Died instantly. Nothing on him. I think we can assume this was one insane man’s big blow-up. It shouldn’t have political overtones or affect your trip.”
“Thank you, Stewart. Please let me know if there’s anything more before we take off. I’d not like to be delayed any longer than necessary.”
Stewart spoke to some other men, and within ten minutes the plane was beginning to take on passengers. Liskard was swept away, after a word of apology to Simon, in a tide of last-minute business; but a moment after the loading of the plane began, a very officious-looking young man with a bulging briefcase in one hand came scurrying up to the Saint.
“I’m Lockhart, the Prime Minister’s secretary,” he said. “I’m to ask you to please come past the barrier with me and join our party on the plane.”
Simon turned to follow him, and almost bumped into someone else.
“And I’m the Prime Minister’s wife,” she said, not making the slightest move to increase the minute space between herself and Simon. “The Prime Minister didn’t bother to introduce us,” she went on. “I think sometimes he forgets he has a wife.”
“He’d have to be terribly forgetful, in that case,” replied the Saint. “But in the circumstances, I’m sure he has a lot on his mind.”
She was about thirty-five, very attractive, very blonde, and there was a neurotic tension in the carefully made-up contours of her face. Simon had a hunch that her apparent calm in the midst of the storm of the assassination attempt was the result of a good deal of alcoholic insulation.
“We’d better hurry, please,” Lockhart said in clipped, high cultured tones.
“Don’t worry, Jimmy,” Mrs Liskard said. “We won’t get you in trouble with the big man.”
“Shall we go on, then?” Simon suggested.
He was made considerably more uncomfortable by the boozily affectionate wives of other men than he was by wild-eyed assassins with high-powered rifles. Mrs Liskard smiled at him, took his arm before he could get it out of her reach, and walked with him around the crowd of people waiting to board the plane.
“Jimmy is a very ambitious boy,” she said loudly enough for Lockhart to hear. “He’s terribly afraid of upsetting the big man.”
Lockhart ignored the crack and Simon tried to. They boarded the big jet and entered a curtained-off section between the pilot’s area and the rest of the seating accommodations. From his window Simon could see Liskard giving solemnly confident waves to the photographers before he came up the ramp. Mrs Liskard asked Lockhart to see about getting her a gin and tonic. A steward and stewardess appeared to make certain all was in order in the private section. Mrs Liskard asked them to see about getting her a gin and tonic since Lockhart was taking so long.
Simon did not like Mrs Liskard in spite of her attractiveness. He had nothing against amiable alcoholics in general, but Mrs Liskard was too amiable to him and too unamiable to other people, toward whom she tended to take a coldly condescending attitude. And her amiability toward Simon took a curious and very irritating form of expression. When other people, such as Lockhart, were watching, she fell all over him, but when there was no one else paying any attention she dropped the whole passionate display almost entirely. Her eyes were always darting around her immediate vicinity, searching for an audience, sizing up the impression she was making.
“Here he comes,” whispered the steward to the stewardess.
There was a bustle as Liskard entered the plane. Mrs Liskard went for Simon’s nearest arm and hand, both her arms and hands wrapping around his like vines. She shot him a dazzling and absolutely artificial smile, which he returned as he removed his arm and hand firmly from her grasp. Her smile faded, then came back more false than ever as her husband came into the curtained compartment along with half a dozen other men. One of them was the man called Stewart, Nagawiland’s Foreign Minister, who had spoken to Liskard in the terminal building about the identity of the dead gunman. Another was immediately recognizable to any reader of newspapers as Nagawiland’s Deputy Prime Minister, James Todd. He was neither as dynamic as Liskard nor as vaguely aristocratic and important-looking as the fortyish Stewart. Todd was a head shorter than either Liskard or Stewart, and ten or more years older. His graying hair was thin, and he wore rimless bifocals whose thick lower crescents distorted the lower part of his eyes. He was reputed to be a professional government man of great ability, but he looked more like a village parson or almost-retired schoolteacher than second in command to Thomas Liskard.
Simon did riot recognize the other four men who entered with Liskard. He judged from their deferential behavior that they held nothing like the status of Liskard and his two top associates. They stood holding briefcases and bundles of papers, while Todd and Stewart took seats. Anne Liskard caught her husband’s hand as he passed her.
“Oh, Tom, we’ve been having the most wonderful time while you were posing out there! Except we can’t get a thing to drink. Mr Templar is so fascinating. I think you should make him your second deputy or something. I’m sure he could handle those socialists.”
Todd looked at her over his shoulder with open disgust. Liskard wore the expression of a man who had been through it all before and expected to keep on going through it. He leaned down and whispered in his wife’s ear. Simon just caught his words.
“You gave me your word, if I brought you along...”
Mrs Liskard giggled loudly and pushed him playfully away.
“Oh, Tom, don’t be so secretive!” she said with every effort to make her voice carry as far as possible. “Everybody knows you made me promise to behave myself before you’d let me come along.”
“Then try behaving yourself now,” Liskard said patiently.
He took a seat across the aisle.
“I have been,” his wife protested. She turned to the Saint. “Simon, haven’t I been behaving myself? Behaving means not drinking, of course.” She giggled again. “I’ve been trying to behave, but Lockhart’s gone off and won’t bring me that gin and tonic.”
She was speaking to her husband again, but he ignored her. She turned back to Simon.
“I’m really not so bad. I’m always perfectly dignified when any reporters are around, and they’re the only ones who count, after all, aren’t they?”
One of the jet’s engines coughed and whined to full life. Simon wished heartily that he had somehow been able to warn Thomas Liskard of the assassin in the ceiling and at the same time to see that Mrs Liskard was left as a tempting target on the sofa.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to let your husband judge those things,” he said.
Anne Liskard’s face contorted into a frowning sulkiness.
“I certainly should think a gentleman could defend me a little better than that!” she said.
Simon got to his feet as a second engine went into action.
“You’re not leaving us?” Thomas Liskard said.
“With all respect,” Simon answered, “I’m afraid I’m not quite enough of a diplomat to handle the problems you have here.”