The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (16 page)

“Thank you, sir,” he said to the
Saint. “That was quick
thinking.”

They shook hands.

“I’m sorry about the method,” Simon
said. “I didn’t have
time to observe protocol.”

“I don’t think there is a really proper
way of telling a
Prime Minister to fall on his face,” Liskard replied
with a
grin. “I’m damned grateful.”

The secret service men were standing by ready to pounce.
Liskard waved them back.

“If you boys kept up on your work, you’d
know who this is,”
Liskard said to them. “Mr Simon Templar,
isn’t it, unless
I’m very mistaken?”

A slight raising of the Saint’s eyebrows was
all that betrayed his mild surprise.

“I have to admit I didn’t realize my
notoriety had spread
quite so far,” he said. “Or to such
high circles.”

“This is a small country, Mr
Templar,” Liskard said.
“There’s not much that happens that I
don’t hear about.
What with constant threats against me and this country in
general, we can’t afford to have guests dropping in without a
strict
screening process—and when the guest has your fame,
especially among
professional policemen, his name goes
straight to the top of the
bureaucratic pyramid as soon as he
crosses our border.” Liskard
smiled. “As a matter of fact, you
were within our ken
pretty well all the time. I have some
excellent snapshots of you taking
snapshots of leopards out at
the park.”

Then it was Simon’s turn to smile.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I have some
excellent
snapshots of your men taking
snapshots of me. Especially a
little
bald chap who almost got gored by a wart hog while he
was watching me watch baboons.”

Prime Minister Liskard laughed out loud.

“You deserve your reputation,” he
said. “I hope our at
tention didn’t offend you.”

“Not at all,” Simon said. “It made me feel right at
home.
I’d have felt a little lost without
knowing that somebody was
there
watching.”

“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 any
thing 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 con
tours 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 be
tween the
pilot’s area and the rest of the seating accommoda
tions. 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
attractive
ness. 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.”

A lesser man than Liskard might have been
gravely offended
by
the Saint’s bluntness, gently put though it was. But the
Prime Minister accepted the Saint’s comment without
a
trace of embarrassment or
irritation.

“Nonsense,” he said. “Please
sit down. I’m looking forward
to a chat with you on the flight. My wife is
just … over
excited. She’ll calm down when she gets a drink into
her.”

Simon sat down again with a shrug of thanks
for Liskard’s
understanding.

“Well, where
is
that drink?”
his wife demanded of Lockhart, who came through the curtains at just that
moment.

Lockhart gave the Prime Minister a
questioning but other
wise absolutely neutral look.

“Would you please ask the stewardess to
bring my wife a
gin and tonic?” Liskard said, with quiet dignity.

“Yes, sir,” said Lockhart, and turned back through the
curtain.

All four of the engines had been switched on
now, and
their noise hindered casual conversation. Simon took a
deep
breath of relief as he saw that Anne Liskard had decided to
sink into
sullen silence. A stewardess hurried in with a double
gin and tonic and
profuse apologies to Mrs Liskard. The
voice of another stewardess sounded
from a loudspeaker in
the cool blue upholstery of the ceiling in the standardized
litany to which today’s airline passengers have
become so
wearily immune that they
scarcely hear it.