Simon was ready for anything, though to an unastute observer he might have seemed as nonchalant as a bored spectator at a flower show.
“I’m asking for a little information,” he said. “Are you Perry Loudon?”
“Who the hell do you think I am — Michelangelo?”
“Not for a minute,” said the Saint candidly.
“Out!” yelled Loudon.
“I’ll be only too glad to leave,” Simon replied, “but I’d like to get a few things straight first.”
“They’re straight now. If you think you can run off with Janet and then wander back in here whenever you feel like it, you deserve the worst I can give you.”
Loudon picked up a heavy wooden mallet from a jumble of his tools.
“I’ve never heard of Janet,” Simon said, standing his ground. “And I’ve never heard of you either.”
The directness of those denials got through to Loudon and momentarily held him where he was.
“Are you telling me you aren’t Simon Templar?” he asked.
“I’m telling you I am Simon Templar, and that I’ve never seen you before in my life, unless somebody I used to know is hiding behind those goggles and a false name.”
Loudon clutched the mallet more tightly.
“You’re the only liar in this room, Templar. And the only cheat, too. You ran away with my girl two days ago, and now you’ve got the nerve to come back and joke about it. What kind of a fool do you think I am?”
He lunged at the Saint, who sidestepped and sent his attacker stumbling against one of the metal sculptures.
“A clumsy one,” Simon replied to the question.
As Loudon got ready to charge again, Simon looked for room to maneuver and put his back to the partly open door which led to the outside roof. When the sculptor came at him, the Saint broke the downward swing of the mallet with a karate chop to Loudon’s arm. The mallet flew through the air and bounced from the wall. Simon blended his defense into a whirling motion that caught Loudon off balance and brought his back up hard against the door jamb.
He was temporarily stunned, and the Saint used his advantage to jerk the goggles from the sculptor’s eyes.
“Before this goes any further,” he said, “take a good look.”
Loudon blinked and for a moment was so shaken by what he saw that he could not speak.
“You’re... not Simon Templar,” he finally said incredulously. “But you’re so much...”
Loudon’s expression changed. His words were choked off in a sudden constriction of his throat. His body arched and he dropped forward onto his knees. Then he sprawled heavily at Simon’s feet.
A long, slender chisel protruded from the center of his back.
The sculptor’s falling revealed two men on the flat roof just outside the door. They stepped toward the Saint, each pointing a pistol at him. They were large and solemn, and dressed in immaculate suits, like clerks at a men’s shop, or undertaker’s helpers. They both wore gloves. The only thing which really distinguished them from one another was the color of their hair: the head of the one on the left was light brown; the other was pitch black and wavy. The face of the black-haired one was oily and looked red in the setting sun.
“Not a sound,” he said. “Raise your hands.”
“Turn around,” said the other quietly.
The manner was professional. Neither man showed any trace of haste or nervousness, though they both kept wary eyes on possible points of danger — the roof behind them, the door from Perry Loudon’s studio to the hall and staircase.
Simon did not obey at once, not only because he was reluctant to expose his back to a couple of characters who had already demonstrated such a pronouncedly unpleasant way of treating that part of the human anatomy, but also because he wanted to memorize the faces as thoroughly as possible for future reference — if there was any future in store for him. He was defenseless against two guns in skilled hands, both held safely out of his reach.
“Turn around,” the brown-haired one repeated.
The Saint turned, facing into the studio, and the crimson-orange light that fell directly through the door over his shoulders made the metal statuary glow as if it were heated to the melting point.
He braced himself for the jolting stab just below his shoulder blades, which would mean that one man at least had come within reach, if he could still turn and get him. Then the glowing steel sculpture seemed to explode, the metal fracturing through the whole universe in a meteor shower of sparks which drifted down into total blackness.
But in that warped bit of time between the explosion and the darkness the Saint had time to know one thing; he had not been stabbed or shot; be had been struck on the head.
2
He woke up with a smell of blood in his nose and what felt like a painful throbbing split from the center of his forehead to the nape of his neck. The Saint had the invaluable gift of being able to adapt immediately to the most extreme circumstances, and in a situation which might leave another man groggy and confused for several minutes he would find his faculties operating at peak levels within a few seconds.
So Simon did not lie groaning uselessly, or wondering whether he was waking up in his own bed or not. With the first stirring of consciousness he recalled vividly what had happened at the roof doorway of Perry Loudon’s studio, and his first thought was to determine whether he had been tied up or not.
He was relieved to find that he was free, and that the tentative movement of his hands did not bring on a harsh warning from one of the men who had slugged him — or worse, another blow to his head. He was even more relieved to find, on gingerly examination, that his skull had not, in fact, been cracked down the center like a melon bounced onto the highway from the back of a truck, but that the sensation was illusory, and his cranium was as solid as ever.
His next move was to sit up and look around the studio. It was only then that he realized he was not lying where he had fallen, but that he had been moved directly alongside Perry Loudon, who now clutched in his fingers the mallet he had dropped earlier. The sculptor was definitely dead, but the blood which had stained the back of his shut was still wet and sticky. The chisel still jutted from a point near the junction of his ribs and his spine, expertly placed to penetrate the heart. There was no sign of the experts who had placed it there.
The Saint did not need to ponder at length to grasp the possible implications of what had happened. He had been brought here for some purpose, manifestly not by Perry Loudon, and manifestly not just so that somebody could enjoy the simple pleasure of bopping him in the head. It seemed to him that he was being treated to a close-up view of the biggest frame in London outside the Tate Gallery.
He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and carefully smeared any fingerprints which his assailants might have put on the chisel by wrapping his hand around it after he was knocked unconscious. Then he got to his feet, smoothed back his dark hair and brushed off his clothes, and went across the crowded studio — to one of the windows which looked out from the front of the house down on to the street.
Whether it was intuition or uncanny timing born of long experience, he somehow knew exactly what he would see when he looked out of the window. The accuracy of his prescience sent a brief chill down his spine. A police car was just pulling up in front of Loudon’s house.
The Saint turned quickly, checking to see that he had not inadvertently dropped anything, and hurried back across the room to the open door which led to the roof, from which the two mysterious attackers had come. It was at the back of the house, facing similar kitchen roofs across a narrow alleyway. To the left was the solid and unscalable brick wall of a taller building next door. To the right, however, the flat ground-floor roof adjoined with no more than a gutter break the identical roof of the house next door. A head-high picket fence had been constructed there to give a certain amount of privacy, since both Loudon and his neighbor — unlike the tenants of the houses across the alley — apparently used their kitchen roofs as sun decks. But the fence was not a real barrier, since it did not reach quite to the back of the roof. There was a space of several inches which would give a man easy footing as he swung around the end of the fence from one roof to the next. From there Simon imagined he could find some way to continue until he was far enough from the police to descend and walk inconspicuously away.