“I’m afraid that being blinded by flashbulbs and answering silly questions in a freezing rain isn’t my idea of a rewarding experience,” the Saint said. “I’d be much more grateful for dinner tomorrow.”
Liskard grinned.
“Entirely understandable. We’ll see you at Nagawi House tomorrow evening. Eight o’clock.”
“Fine.”
Simon shook hands with Anne Liskard, who apparently had forgiven him for not prostrating himself in helpless worship after her first attentions and was showing signs of becoming hot-eyed and clinging again.
“It was very exciting to meet you,” she said.
“I haven’t been bored for a minute myself,” Simon told her. “Good night, and thank you.”
As he hurried through the curtains toward the plane’s exit, he heard Thomas Liskard’s deep voice behind him.
“And now... out into the arena and the lions.”
4
The violent night of the Prime Minister of Nagawiland’s arrival at London Airport is a matter of history. The Saint learned the full story of Liskard’s unofficial welcome to London by the forces of righteousness the next morning in the newspapers.
Apparently the demonstrators blocking traffic outside the terminal had been more than mildly chagrined that a would-be assassin had failed to kill Prime Minister Liskard in Nagawiland and had resolved to set things right by killing him themselves. They had not succeeded, although a window of the limousine carrying him had been cracked by a thrown brick and spattered with broken eggs. Foreign Minister Stewart had been spat upon, and Deputy Prime Minister Todd had been struck by a placard bearing the vague but undeniably optimistic sentiment, “FREEDOM AND EQUALITY FOR ALL PEOPLE!”
The Saint was surprised and gratified to read that Liskard’s secretary, young Lockhart, had pushed a demonstrator to the ground who had been trying to kick the Prime Minister as he left the terminal building, and had also torn in half a colorfully if obscenely illustrated poster which read “AFRICAN PEOPLE’S UNION WILL TIE KILLER LISKARD’S HANDS WITH HIS OWN ENTRAILS!”
Lockhart’s exploit of course received top billing in the newspapers, which featured photographs of him in action along with such captions as, “Police state Gestapo in London? Liskard’s burly bodyguard attacks demonstrator.” Other photographs highlighted injuries suffered by the pickets, and showed policemen engaged in the sadistic activity of dragging them out of the public thoroughfare. “Spokesmen” seriously questioned whether representatives of a regime like Liskard’s, which deliberately stirred up such commotions, should be allowed to set foot on English soil or not.
The afternoon papers headlined the news that Lockhart — who was no more burly than he was a bodyguard — had been “disciplined” by Prime Minister Liskard and sent back to Nagawiland. Simon, as sorry as he was to hear about that, understood the political necessity of Liskard’s action. Without the support of the English majority, Liskard’s mission would be doomed. The vicious demonstrations against him had certainly increased his popularity, while Lockhart’s behavior — especially as it was reported in distorted form by the left-wing press — was just the kind of thing that could ruin Liskard completely. His position was so precarious that he and his associates would have to be a dozen times more virtuous, more polite, more modest, more unblemished in general than ordinary men to stand even a small chance of being judged the moral superiors of the most debased inmates of Her Majesty’s prisons. If Liskard could pull that somewhat superhuman feat off successfully, the stability of his country might be preserved.
And that, Simon thought, was exactly what Liskard’s political enemies would be most anxious to prevent. If Liskard managed to get through his stay in England without something more deeply damaging to his cause than riots or rifle bullets aimed in his direction, it would be a miracle of such magnitude that the Saint would not thereafter have been at all surprised to see the monumental stone lions of Trafalgar Square get up off their perches, yawn, and stroll away toward Piccadilly Circus.
Simon enjoyed his whimsical thought about lions as he was leaving Upper Berkeley Mews and setting out by taxi for the Prime Minister’s dinner in Hampstead. He had spent the day doing those necessary and temporarily novel-seeming ordinary things which people do just after returning from a long trip.
Now he was ready to relax, and attending a formal dinner with a lot of stuffed tuxedoes was not his idea of relaxation. There was only one compensating factor. As dull as the dinner might be, it would bring him in close contact with the most important political situation developing in London at that time. There was some interest and a little excitement in that. But more to the Saint’s taste was the prospect of keeping up a contact with a worthy man whose very continued existence from hour to hour was something of a marvel, and who was bound to become the target of the most advanced forms of defamation and general nastiness that his enemies could contrive.
The Saint did not like plotters against worthy men. He had devoted considerable energy in his lifetime to bringing the activities of such plotters to abrupt and often violent ends. The fact that their ends often coincided with a transfer of material assets from their coffers to the Saint’s numerous bank accounts was no denial of the fact that he gained great spiritual satisfaction just from doing them in. And if he could help Thomas Liskard, if only by appearing at a dinner, he was delighted to do it.
Nagawi House was a fairly modest establishment, as residences maintained by governments on foreign soil go, but it was set back on spacious grounds, and its restrained brick lines were a tribute to neo-classicism. Fortunately its generations-dead architect had thought not only of beauty but also of practicality, having included a high brick wall which helped keep out the thieves of his own time and the picket lines of the twentieth century.
They were there, a hundred shaggy-bearded worshippers of dirt, despisers of achievement and work, fearers of all things strong and superior, proclaimers of an opiate called universal love. They were the bacteria of anarchy, and they were gathered in motley force outside the gates of Nagawi House.
“Hold your nose, sir, we’re going through,” the taxi driver said over his shoulder.
The cab pushed through the lane held open by hard-pressed police, and several dozen voices on either side screeched obscenities. Inside the gates, along the crescent drive, the lawn was free of wild-eyed humanity. Hoarfrost glittered on the grass in the light of lamps which stood on either side of the doorway. The doorman greeted Simon and ushered him into the entrance hall, where his identity was checked before he was admitted to the main reception room. There he took his place in the line-up of dignitaries shuffling toward Thomas Liskard and his wife.
“Simon, I’m so glad you came,” Anne Liskard said smoothly.
For the first time the Saint understood why — aside from the woman’s silvery beauty, which was dazzlingly set off by diamonds and a pure white shoulderless evening dress-Thomas Liskard had been able to fit her in with his political career. If she was drunk, she was concealing it gracefully. Her smile was warm and dignified, and her handshake completely decorous. Apparently she was ambitious enough or decent enough to control her weaknesses in public. If Simon had not seen her in more intimate action the day before he would never have guessed that such shattering drives were fighting beneath her entirely attractive surface.
“It’s nice to see you again,” the Saint answered, no less suavely. “I’m sorry you had that trouble with the pickets yesterday.”