Salamander Four

The long twilight came at three in the afternoon, laying its soft purple mantle over pine and spruce forests which the first snows of winter had already dressed in a thin white undershift. The house stood in a wide clearing between a narrow dirt road and a small lake dotted with tiny green and white skerries. Beside the house stood a sauna bath-house, set closer to the lake for the ritual icy plunge of the steam-broiled body.
The timber-built house was on one level, most of the space within was taken up by one very large room. It was warm in the room. An open log-fire in a big stone fireplace at one end supplemented the central heating. In the cellar below the thick pine floor, a small diesel generator supplied power for the boiler-pump and for the well-planned fluorescent lighting which produced a daylight effect over the solid bench where a man stood working.
He held a mallet and a half-inch gouge of shallow sweep, but he had not set blade to wood for thirty minutes now. He was working only with his rather deep-set eyes, looking from the clay model on his right to the mahogany statue in front of him, twenty-four inches high, and then to the living original from which the preliminary clay sketch had been modelled three weeks earlier.
Modesty Blaise said, 'Can we take a break, Alex? Coffee and a cigarette?'
The man did not answer, seemed unaware that she had spoken. He was of medium build, dark, with big clumsy-looking hands. Usually his manner was slow and patient. Now he was a little tense, chewing his lower lip as he stared at the statue, assessing the values of the planes and hollows in the
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rich dark wobd, feeling in his mind the sweep of the grain, the curve of limb and breast, the soft subtle column of the neck.
Modesty Blaise sat on a round, blanket-covered table with a revolving top. Her legs and feet were drawn up together on one side, a hand resting loosely just below the knee. She was leaning sideways, a little, supporting herself on one straight arm. Highlights gleamed on her naked body. Her hair was drawn back and tied at the nape of her neck. It was an easy, natural pose. Alex Hemmer had caught it exactly in the clay model; and now, after three weeks of work, the pose had been captured in wood. But both on the model and on the carving, the face was still undefined.
Modesty closed her mind to the ache that had crept into her supporting arm, and watched as Alex Hemmer put down his tools neatly beside the long row of chisels and gouges, moved to the clay model and began once again to work on the face. He had modelled and destroyed a dozen faces in the clay during the past two days, but this was nothing compared with the agonies and frustrations she had watched him suffer in the beginning.
She wondered if John Dall would be pleased with the final result - if Alex ever made it.
The thing had all begun with John Dall. As one of the richest men in America he could afford to indulge an expensive whim. And so, on a day three months ago now, one of his minions had escorted Alex Hemmer from his remote house in northern Finland to Ball's ranch near Amarillo, Texas, where Modesty Blaise was ending a six-week visit.
Hemmer was not a world-famous sculptor, though he might yet become one. But he was a first-class representational sculptor whose technique was admired even by the abstract school.
'I don't want a Moore or a Hepworth,' Dall said. He was a lean, fit man nearing forty, with thick black hair cropped short and a face that betrayed a touch of Redskin ancestry. 'I want a statue that looks like her, Mr Hemmer. Not life-size. About this high.' He held a hand at about table height. 'And I'd like this sort of pose, it's the way she often sits.' He sat down on the great Persian carpet and leaned sideways on one arm.
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Modesty laughed and said, 'You look cute, Johnnie.' Dall got to his feet, grinning a little. 'That's more than you ever will, honey. If the statue looks cute, our friend here will have failed pretty badly.' He turned to the sculptor. 'How about it, Mr Hemmer?'
Alex Hemmer put down his untouched drink and stared at Modesty. She sat at one end of a big couch, looking back at him without embarrassment. The silence went on, and Alex Hemmer's patient gaze was so concentrated that it was as if he had fallen into a trance. Once Dall started to speak, but Modesty stopped him with a little movement of her hand.
At last Hemmer said, 'Marble or bronze?' He spoke good English and with care.
'Neither,' Dall said tersely. 'Wood. I know wood tends to hide itself, but good lighting can fix that. My choice would be mahogany - I'll listen to argument about that, but not about wood. It's warmer than marble or stone or bronze, and it's a living thing.' He looked at Modesty. 'It's right for you.'
Hemmer nodded slowly. 'Thank you. If you had said marble or bronze, I would go away. The material must be in harmony with the subject. As you say, wood is warm and alive. Also,, with wood a sculptor can be more adventurous. It is the only material for a statue of this lady.'
'You have a pretty good instinct,' Dall said, and smiled. 'Mahogany?'
'Yes. The colour grows better with time. But it must be unpolished.
'Fine. When can you start?'
Hemmer would work only in his own workshop, and before all else there was the matter of finding the right block of wood. It must not be green wood; kiln-dried might do, but best of all would be seasoned wood.
Dall could arrange that. He owned a number of mills and two hundred thousand acres of timber, including forests in Central America where mahogany was cut.
Next day Dall flew with Hemmer down into the timber country. Modesty went home. Some weeks later she received a polite cable from Hemmer, in Finland, saying that the selected block of mahogany had arrived and he was ready to begin.
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For the first week she stayed in a small hotel near Tepasto, Daily she drove her hired Volvo 144S fifteen miles out into the pine forest where Hemmer's lonely house stood. He began the clay model with quiet enthusiasm, but by the third day she saw that he was close to despair. There were no dramatics about it. He began to pull chunks of clay off the armature on which it was built and said, 'I am very sorry. I think I am not able to do this. It will not come right.'
She had little creative ability herself, but deep intuition, and this allowed her to sense how shattering it must be for the artist who strikes a creative block. She made him stop work, then got dressed and busied herself making fresh coffee and a good meal.
For the next three days she would not let him work. They talked, took long walks in the forest, sawed logs for the fire with a big double-handed saw, and when dusk came they played bezique until it was time for her to go. She had to teach him the game, and he had no card sense, but though he played badly he seemed to enjoy it.
There was a telephone in the house, because by good fortune the cable between Muonio and Ivalo ran close by. She had never heard it ring, and had seen him use it only once to order supplies, but he always called the hotel an hour after she left him, to make sure she had got home safely.
During this time she came to know him well, and developed a gentle affection for him. To her surprise she learned that he was not Finnish, but Hungarian. As a young man he had taken part in the abortive revolution of '56. In those days he had seen horrors which had destroyed all the romantic fires of youth in him. The girl he was to marry had been crushed under a tank, and in the dying hours of the fighting he had fled across the Austrian border.
He had settled in Finland, partly because there was a strange similarity of language but mainly because it was remote, a land of quietness. Alex Hemmer had opted out. He would never again allow himself to be involved in the clash of nations or ideologies or commerce or even personalities. He did the work he loved and had learned to do well, and he was content.
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But now his contentment was undermined and she knew he was beginning to feel afraid. She believed she knew the cause of his creative power drying up. After three full days of idle leisure they agreed that he should start work again the following morning.
That day she checked out of the hotel and arrived at his house with her luggage in the boot of the car. He was waiting nervously, gazing at the shapeless mass of clay on the armature, bracing himself, his face a little drawn. But when she had undressed and put on the wrap she wore between sessions, she did not take up her pose on the table. She went to him and took his anxious face between her hands and kissed him long and hard on the lips. She knew it was only then he realized that desire for her had been sleeping within him.
Throughout that day they made love. He was not deeply versed in the art, but neither was he completely without experience, and it was made joyful for her by his total absorption in her, an absorption that sprang from the feeling of a sculptor for his material. When they lay together in the small warm bedroom he would feed upon her with the senses of sight and touch, dwelling upon every plane and muscle and subtly differing texture of her body.
He was slow and gentle, sometimes lost in wonderment at the sight or touch of some quality in a curve of flesh, sometimes studying her face with an intent, slightly baffled smile. Then would come the warm joining and the long smooth ascent, growing swifter to the final happening and the great sigh.
That day, as the early twilight came, they broiled themselves in the steam of the sauna bath-house and afterwards broke the mushy skin of ice at the lake's edge for the breathless plunge. They dried, glowing, in front of the fire, and she made a meal.
At last, when they had eaten, she posed for him once again. He began to shape the clay on the armature, working with easy confidence. By midnight the model was finished - all but the face, which he intended to leave until after the carving of the body in wood had been completed.
That night he had taken her into his arms and fallen
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instantly into a deep sleep of utter contentment. Now, three weeks later, the mahogany sculpture was almost finished. He was having difficulty with the face, but there was no return of anxiety. He was enjoying the challenge, as a man might enjoy the challenge of a high mountain. |
He put down the wooden spatula he had been using and       f said, 'Yes, of course.' ;
'Of course what, Alex?'
'You said you would like coffee and a cigarette.'
'That was fifteen minutes ago.'
He stared. 'Truly?'
'Truly. But that's not a record.' She picked up the wrap that lay behind her and drew it on as she got down from the table. 'Last night I asked you to stop working and come to bed. Forty minutes later you said, "Yes, by God!"'
He rubbed a hand ruefully across his brow, leaving an oily smear. 'It is your own fault, Modesty. You have a maddening face.' f
'Thank you.' She lifted the coffee pot which stood on a hob by the fire, and poured coffee into two big china mugs. He gave her a cigarette and lit it for her, then took her chin in one hand and turned her head first one way and then the other.
'At one moment it is a very young face, the face of a rather wicked child. The next moment it is older than the face of Eve.'
She smiled. 'You'd better capture the old one, Alex. I missed out on being a child.' !
'No. You are sometimes that now.' He looked at the sculpture. 'I must capture both in the wood. And many other things also. I know I can do it.'
'Good.' She sat down, sipping the hot, sweet coffee. There was a comfortable silence. Alex Hemmer gazed absently at the statue. After a while he said, 'You have no vanity. You do not particularly want to have this sculpture made. Why did you      ', agree?'
'John Dall asked me, and I owe him a debt.'
'What kind of debt?'
'He once came halfway across the world to help me when I       i needed it.'
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Alex Hemmer nodded thoughtfully. 'He told me a little about you. I know that you have known much danger. And that you saved Dall's life, you and a strange man called Willie Garvin.'
'There's nothing strange about Willie. Rare, perhaps. Not strange. And preventing John Dall being murdered was just a spin-off that came about because he helped us.'
'Will you tell me the story?'
'No, Alex. It's past. And anyway, it would offend your principles. You don't believe in people getting involved.'
'That is only for me. I do not try to persuade anybody else.'
She smiled. 'Good. But you haven't much chance, living like a hermit.'
After a moment or two, still gazing at the statue, he said, 'Will you tell John Dall that we made love?'
'I'd tell him if he asked me, Alex, but he'll never ask.'
'He will know, though,' Alex Hemmer said quietly. 'When he sees that statue, he will know.'
She looked at the carving, then at Hemmer, and grinned suddenly. It was a sparkling grin, full of wicked humour, that lit up her face as if by a bright light from within. 'I expect he will,' she said.
'And so?'
'So it doesn't matter. He's not under the impression that he owns me or has any exclusive rights.'
Hemmer said, a little wryly, 'I do not think any man would have that impression.' He paused. 'I am curious about Willie Garvin. Tell me something of him.'
'No. You'll only get confused, Alex. Everybody does. But I expect you'll be seeing him.'
Hemmer looked surprised. 'He is coming to Finland?'
'He's already here. We travelled over together. He's spending a month working in a lumber camp near Rytinki.'
'Working? I understood he was a rich man.'
'He is. But he likes a change and he likes logging.'
'Logging is a very tough change.'
'That's probably the point. You see? You're getting confused already. Anyway, I expect he's finished his stint by now
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and moved up to that little hotel where I was staying. I left a message there to tell him I'd moved in with you. I expect he'll call, if he doesn't get too tangled up with that lovely Finnish girl who runs the bakery.'
Hemmer pushed a hand slowly through his hair and shook his head. Vaguely he could think of a number of questions he wanted to ask, but he had a suspicion that they would only lead to still more questions and that in the end his curiosity would remain unsatisfied.
As he put down his empty mug there came a faint sound from the heavy door between the big main room and the outer porch. It was an odd sound, as if someone were slapping at the timber with an open hand.
Modesty said, 'A visitor?' She threw her cigarette in the fire and belted the wrap more firmly about her.
Alex Hemmer said, 'I did not hear a car, and who would come on foot?' He moved to the door and opened it. A man who had been kneeling slumped against the door fell across the threshold. He wore heavy cord trousers tucked into stout boots, and a windcheater that had once been white but was now wet and caked with dirt. The hood had fallen back from his head. His ungloved hands and his face were very white with cold.
Modesty came past Hemmer, bent down and put her hands under the man's shoulders. She said, 'Take his feet and help me get him in front of the fire, Alex. Then close the door, bring some brandy, and put hot-water-bottles in the bed.'
Hemmer opened his mouth to voice a useless question, then closed it again. Together they lifted the unconscious man on to the rug in front of the fire. Hemmer brought a bottle of brandy and a glass from the cupboard, then went into the kitchen to fill hot-water-bottles.
When he returned he saw that Modesty had dragged off the man's boots and icy wet trousers. She had also partly taken off the windcheater, but his right arm was still in the stained and blackened sleeve.
The man had thinning brown hair and was perhaps in his middle forties, not a big man, but wiry. He had a lean face with a long jaw that bore a day's stubble of beard. His eyes were closed and he was muttering in a foreign language.
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Hemmer said, 'It sounds like German.'
'Yes.' Modesty looked up. 'Pass me the scissors, Alex.'
He gave them to her wonderingly, and watched as she began to cut away the sleeve of the windcheater and the thick sweater beneath. Then he realized that the black stains were dried blood.
'He is hurt?'
'Yes. Will you get your first-aid box from the bedroom, Alex? And a bowl of hot water, please.'
He brought them for her, knelt down and began to massage one of the frozen hands, watching Modesty. She worked quickly and competently, as if no stranger to this kind of thing. The man still muttered occasionally, a rather desperate note in his voice.
'What is he saying?' Hemmer asked.
'He's saying, "Don't let them find me, please. They're not far behind."'
She had soaked the clothing away from the wound and was washing the long deep gouge torn in the flesh of his upper arm. It was an ugly wound, raw and oozing. Hemmer had seen far worse during the bad days in Budapest, but even so he had to swallow a wave of nausea as he said, 'What do you think he means, Modesty?'
'I think he means that the men who shot him are close behind.'
'Shot him?'
'It's a bullet wound. You can see the two holes in the arm of his windcheater. In and out. It missed the bone, but it's taken a lot of flesh.' She laid a strip of lint over the wound, spread a pad of cottonwool on top and began to bandage the arm. 'We'll make a better dressing of it later. And we'll save the brandy for then, too. The main thing now is to get him out of sight in the bedroom before his friends arrive.'
Hemmer stood up, his big hands opening and shutting nervously. 'If we hide him, we are involved,' he said.
She finished the bandage before she answered. Her face was quiet and without anger. She said, 'All right. I know how you feel. But he's a hurt man. Just help me get him to the bedroom.'
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I
'I will not help to hide him,' Hemmer said stubbornly. 'For God's sake, he may be a criminal! The people he fears may be the police. We do not know anything yet.'
'That's right, Alex. We don't know yet. So let's find out before we throw him to the wolves.' !
He paced away across the room, pounding one fist gently       ! into the palm of the other hand, dismayed and uncertain. As he swung round he saw that she had managed to lift the limp figure into a hunched kneeling position. Suddenly, with astonishing strength, she heaved the man upright, ducked so that he       } folded forward across   her shoulder, then straightened up       j slowly.
Hemmer swore in Hungarian and started towards her. 'All right! I'll carry him!' ;
She looked at him, slightly bent under her burden. The wrap had fallen open and he could see the flat plane of her taut stomach-muscles. She said, 'Alex, we were involved from the moment he fell into this room, whether you like it or not. Leaving him on the floor here for his enemies to find, whoever they are, is just as much an act of involvement as hiding him from them. I'm not asking you to make a choice, I'm just telling you that I've made my own for the moment. Either I hide him now or I take him to the car and start driving. I'm ; not pressing you one way or the other, but just say which.'
Hemmer swore again and said, 'The bedroom! Don't just stand there with that weight on your back!'
She turned and moved slowly through the doorway. Hem-      ; mer followed, and helped her lower him to the bed. She stripped off his damp underclothes, put the hot-water-bottle      i around him, and piled on blankets and eiderdown.
The man stopped muttering. It seemed that the warmth had induced a sleep of exhaustion. Hemmer stood looking down at him, feeling a muddled blend of compassion and anger. Modesty was bending over her open suitcase. She straightened up, went to the door, beckoned Hemmer out and switched off the light. t
'Get his clothes and all that first-aid stuff out of sight, Alex,' she said softly, closing the door. Hemmer obeyed with      ) dull resignation. He had to admit to himself that she had not
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used any wiles to secure his help. Her alternative of driving the wounded man away in her car had not been a threat, simply a statement of intent.
She had brought out a mop and was drying the floor, working with her head cocked slightly, listening. 'Soon now,' she said, and put the mop away. Hemmer held his breath to listen, and after a moment could just make out the faint drone of a car moving in low gear down the slight slope of the dirt road.
Modesty ran her eye over the area in front of the fire where the wounded man had lain. Satisfied, she sat on the edge of the big round table, swung her legs up to take the familiar pose, then slipped the wrap off and let it fall behind her. She said, 'Start modelling, Alex. And don't answer when they knock. I've left the door on the latch so they can walk in.'
'But you can't--' he began incredulously.
'It couldn't be better,' she said with a touch of impatience. 'Could anything look less likely than that we have something to hide? Oh, come on, Alex. Forget about our new guest and just be yourself. If you can go into one of your creative trances, so much the better.'
With sudden angry energy he snatched up the mallet and a fishtail gouge, swivelled the table an inch or two, then moved to the statue and began to carve the line of the brow, ignoring the clay model, carving direct. His lips were tight and he was breathing hard through his nose.
Three minutes later, when a hand knocked sharply on the door, he merely glanced at her briefly from under lowered brows and went on with his work. The knock was repeated. After a long pause there came the sound of die heavy iron latch lifting. The door opened tentatively. A voice said, 'Excuse me, please.'
Modesty did not move. Her back was half turned to the door and she could see it only from the corner of her eye. Hemmer put down die mallet and began to use the palm of his hand on die handle of die gouge, tapping delicately.
Three men moved uncertainly over the threshold, then stopped short, staring. One said, 'Please. I am sorry we intrude but it is urgent.' He did not speak in Finnish, but in the widely understood Swedish tongue, and with an accent. An icy
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wind stirred in the room, and one of the men closed the door. The first man spoke again. 'I am sorry. It seems very bad to intrude, but--'
Modesty said without moving, very-coldly. 'Alex, there are people here.' She spoke in Swedish. Hemmer might not have heard. His face was feverishly intent as he changed to a skew chisel and picked up the mallet again. The men shuffled uneasily, perplexed. Modesty lifted her voice and said, 'Do you know whose house this is?'
'No. I regret, Froken. A friend of ours is lost. He was hurt in an accident. We thought he might have found his way here.' Modesty said, 'This is the house of Alex Hemmer, the most famous sculptor of this country. He is engaged in important work. It is bad enough that you enter unasked and stare when I am posing in this way. But to disturb Herr Hemmer at work is an outrage. Have you understood me?' On the last words she turned her head suddenly to glare with angry indignation.
Three men. Well dressed in expensive winter clothing and boots, with fur hats. Different faces but the same eyes. No, the same gaze. The familiar cold flat gaze, usually empty and incurious but now hazed by confusion and unease.
She had barely turned her head and sighted them when Hemmer let out an explosive oath. 'Keep still!' he cried. 'Dear God, you sit still for weeks and at this moment you move! This moment!' He flung down the chisel and pressed his hands to his eyes as if trying to retain an inner vision.
Modesty said in a low, furious voice, 'Get out, you fools -see what you have done!'
'But... our friend,' the spokesman persisted doggedly. 'You think Herr Hemmer entertains lost strangers tonight?' she said with fierce contempt. 'Get out I'
She turned her head back into position. There came a muttered apology, a scuffling of feet. The door opened and closed. She listened for the sound of the car starting up, then for the fading sound as it moved away.
Hemmer dropped his hands from his eyes and drew in a deep breath. 'Do not move again!' he said urgently. 'What the devil got into you? Now hold it just like that. Hold it!' He picked up the chisel.
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Dumbfounded, trying to keep her eyes from widening in astonishment, trying to suppress a sudden huge urge to laugh, Modesty Blaise said dazedly to herself, 'My God! ...' And held it.
Hah an hour later Hemmer put down a spoon gouge, stepped back from the bench and eased his cramped fingers. 'I have got you,' he said with quiet but intense triumph. 'Not finished. Barely sketched in. But it is there, Modesty. I can see it there in the wood.'
'I'm very glad for you.' She got down from the table and put on the wrap. He was rubbing his eyes, but suddenly he snatched his hands away, stared at the bedroom door and then at Modesty. 'That man!' he exclaimed.
'Yes.' She tied the belt. 'I don't think you noticed much about his friends when they came for him. They weren't policeman. And they weren't at all nice.'
He sank down on a heavy teak chair and gestured vaguely towards the statue. 'I suddenly found what I wanted...'
She smiled. 'So I gathered. And very convincing it made you.'
He drew in a long breath, frowning, reaching back into memory. 'Yes. I remember now. But suppose they had searched? Suppose the man had called out in his sleep?'
She took a small automatic from the pocket of her wrap, drew the magazine out and worked the slide to eject the cartridge in the breech. 'Then there would have been an argument, Alex. We might well have disturbed even your concentration.'
'A gun,' he said with weary distaste. 'I hate guns.'
'Guns are neutral. It's more logical to hate me.' She looked at the big clock on the mantelpiece. 'Time we had something to eat. Do you mind if I make a phone-call first? I want to see if Willie Garvin's at the hotel.'
He gripped his big hands between his knees and said slowly, 'I will not be involved any further, Modesty.'
'I know.'
He got up. 'I will start preparing the meal while you make the call.' He went into the kitchen and closed the door.
It was ten minutes later when she joined him. He saw that
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she had dressed now, in a shirt and dark slacks, with calf-length leather boots. She said, 'Thanks, Alex. I got through. Willie arrived this morning. And our guest is still sleeping. I sat him up and got a little brandy down him. He said, "Danke," and went to sleep again without even opening his eyes. But I'll have to rouse him later. I've got to find out what it's all about.'
Hemmer looked at the automatic which now rested in a little holster on her belt. He said, 'Why are you wearing that?'
'Those men may come back. We convinced them just now, but they could have second thoughts. I'd rather be safe than sorry.'
The meal was a silent one. Hemmer brooded, a little sulky. Modesty was not unfriendly but seemed busy with her own thoughts. When they had cleared away she carried a big bowl of hot water into the bedroom. The man in the bed had thawed out now, and there was colour in his face and hands.
Hemmer sat watching as she gave him a blanket bath, washing the sweat and grime from his body. When she had dried him she drew the covers over him again and took the rough dressing from his arm. She examined the wound closely, nodded her satisfaction, then brought a little bottle of clear liquid from her suitcase. It was after she had swabbed the wound and was re-bandaging the arm that the man's breathing changed.
He stirred, opened his eyes, went rigid for a moment, then slowly relaxed. The eyes were blue and wary. They focused on Modesty as she bent over him. He gave a feeble laugh of disbelief and murmured, 'Lieber Gott...' A pause, and the next words were in English, the voice stronger. 'You have changed very little, Mam'selle ... except that your hair was up when I last saw you.'
One of Modesty's eyebrows lifted sharply. 'You know me?'
'We have not met. But I saw you in Vienna, five years ago. You are Modesty Blaise. Your people called you Mam'selle, I remember. You were there on business ... and I was on the same business.' Humour touched the intelligent blue eyes. 'To your cost, I now regret. I am Waldo.'
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Modesty said, 'My God.' She sat down on the edge of the bed and began to laugh. 'Fifty thousand you cost me, wasn't it?'
'A little more, I am sorry to say.'
'Thank you for the flowers you sent afterwards. I'd have liked to meet you at the time.'
'I have always been a very retiring man.' 'Yours is that kind of business, Waldo.' 'It was. And perhaps even a gentlemanly business. But no longer.' He looked down at his bandaged arm. 'The game has changed, Mam'selle. You did well to retire. I am taking the same road myself.'
Alex Hemmer stood up and moved to the bedside. Modesty said, 'Waldo, this is Alex Hemmer, your host.' 'I am in your debt, Herr Hemmer.'
'Not mine.' Hemmer looked at Modesty. 'Will you explain to me what you have been speaking of?'
She nodded and took out a packet of cigarettes. Hemmer shook his head. She lit two, and placed one between Waldo's lips.
'For the last fifteen years,' she said, 'Waldo has been the top industrial spy in the business. The top solo man, anyway, and a founder-member of the profession. Quite a lot of what he does is legal. Some of it isn't. And the whole business works only because some of the biggest corporations in the world are ready to hand out a lot of money for details of new processes and inventions their rivals are developing.'
'This I know,' Hemmer said with a shade of impatience. 'I have read of it.'
'No doubt,' Modesty said. 'But you won't have read of Waldo. He's known only in special circles. Quite a big section of my own organization was devoted to industrial espionage, and very rewarding it was. In Vienna, five years ago, Waldo and I were both after something the Farbstein Corporation had come up with, and he snatched it from under my nose.' She smiled. 'Afterwards Waldo sent me a beautiful bouquet with a very witty and charming note of apology.'
'I hoped you would know it was an act of courtesy and not of vanity,' Waldo said.
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'I knew.' She studied his tired, ageing face. 'It showed style, Waldo. I've always liked style.'
Somehow Waldo contrived to bow while lying in bed. 'Your own great quality, Mam'selle. But a dying thing. The game has changed.'
'So you said. Your three friends called and went away satisfied, but I don't know whether they'll remain so. Who are they?'
'Salamander Four.'
She stared. Hemmer said, 'What is Salamander Four?'
Still looking at Waldo she answered, 'International group based in Amsterdam. The big boys of industrial espionage. Very businesslike. Very high-powered men at the top. There are names in Salamander Four that you can read in the city and society and even political columns of newspapers in a dozen different countries. But they've always worked clean. I've never known them to hire killers.'
Waldo gave a little shrug, and winced. 'That also has changed. Mam'selle. I did not believe it myself until now.'
'What happened?'
'The Kellgren Laboratories in Sweden have developed a new colour film. Salamander Four were after the process. So was I, for a client of my own in West Germany. Well ... I won, and Salamander Four lost. That should be the end of it. But they do not have your appreciation of style, Mam'selle. They want me dead, and I have been running hard for two weeks now.'
He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray she held for him, and smiled resignedly. 'But Europe has become too small. They caught up with me about seven kilometres from here, I think. They rammed my car. I went into a ditch, but was able to get out and run into the forest. They followed, shooting at me. I was hit in the arm, but in the end I lost them.' He grimaced. 'I lost myself, also. I don't remember very well how I came to this house.'
Modesty got up and paced the little room, holding her elbows. After a while she said, 'What were your plans, Waldo?'
'Australia.' His gaze was rueful. 'I can afford to retire, and
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the work has no pleasure for me now. Salamander Four will not reach out to Australia for me. It will be enough for them that I have been driven from the scene.'
'What route?'
'By air. Each night for the next three nights there will be a private aircraft waiting at Ivalo to fly me across the border and down to Leningrad.'
'Will you be safe in transit across Russia?'
'By air, yes. I have industrial contacts there. They are very different from the politicians. All arrangements have been expensively made. It is only the journey between here and Ivalo that is dangerous for me.' He hesitated, then went on apologetically. 'Is it possible to borrow or to hire a car, Mam'selle?'
Hemmer grunted. Modesty said, 'You can't drive with that arm. I'll take you to Ivalo myself.' She looked at Hemmer. 'Tomorrow morning, if that's all right with you, Alex. Otherwise we'll leave tonight.'
Hemmer got to his feet. 'You must do what you think best,' he said, and went out of the room.
After a moment Waldo said, 'I have caused trouble. I am sorry.'
'It's nothing. Artists are difficult people. They dream up a nice world to live in, and it makes the real world very hard for them to cope with.' She smiled at him. 'I've got some hot soup ready. You're going to eat, Waldo, then sleep until I wake you tomorrow.'
He sighed. 'I wish I had the words to thank you. In a way I am like your friend. All these years I have evaded physical conflict, and now that it comes upon me I am lost. I have never swum in these waters.' He thought for a moment. 'It is possible Salamander Four will keep watch on this house, I think.'
'They may do. I'll wake you early, so you can be tucked down out of sight in the back of the car before first light. An hour later they can watch me come out and drive off on my own, if they're interested.'
He nodded, and looked about him. 'This is the only bed. Where will you sleep?'
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'Alex can sleep in the other room, on the rug in front of the fire.'
'And you?'
She touched the gun at her wrist. Til be sitting up, Waldo. Just in case our Salamander Four friends come back tonight. You can sleep soundly. I've swum in these waters quite a lot.'
An hour before dawn, heavy smoke began to belch from the chimney, rolling and billowing around the house. Under cover of the smoke and the darkness, Modesty took Waldo out to the Volvo. He lay down on the back seat with a thick rug over him and three hot water bottles. He wore a sweater and a warm jacket provided by Hemmer. The rest of his clothes had been dried overnight. He had eaten and slept well, and his hurt arm was strapped comfortably in a sling under the jacket.
Modesty went back into the house and raked aside the oily rags she had put on the fire to make smoke. Hemmer stood gazing absently at the statue, running a hand over the chiselled curves of the close-grained wood.
She said, 'Will you be able to finish it without me, Alex? You said you could see what you wanted in the wood now.'
He shook his head. 'I can see it. But I cannot carve it without also being able to see your face.'
'Would you like me to fix breakfast for you? I've got an hour, and it won't take me long to pack.'
'Thank you.'
There was little conversation, but she seemed to feel no sense of strain, and her manner was amiably relaxed. Hemmer felt confused. Once he said, 'Do you think I am a coward because I will not let myself be involved?'
She said, 'No, I don't think that, Alex. I've no criticism at all. Will you have some more coffee?'
Later, after the sun had risen, she came out of the bedroom wearing a tartan lumberjacket and black slacks tucked into her boots, a little white fur cap on her head, suitcase in her hand. She put a hand to his cheek, kissed him lightly on the lips and said, 'Goodbye, Alex. Take care of yourself.'
He took the case and walked with her to the car to put it in
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the boot. The cold made her tanned cheeks glow, and he found her heart-achingly lovely.
He said, 'Will you come back?'
'What do you think, Alex?'
'I don't know.' He managed to smile. 'I just hope that if you come back it will not be simply for Ball's sake.'
She said nothing, and he could read nothing in her eyes. After a moment she turned and got into the car. He closed the door and stepped back. The engine fired and revved. She waved, and eased the car smoothly away over the rutted snow, its studded tyres biting firmly.
The dirt road curved gently up through the forest to join a road which led on to Highway Four, the arctic highway running north to Ivalo. But she had decided to branch off and take the lesser road, through Pokka and Inari, since it was more direct. With winter only just begun, the road would still be clear of heavy snow.
She said, 'Are you comfortable, Waldo?'
His voice behind her answered. 'So comfortable I could sleep, Mam'selle. It was beginning to grow cold, but now the car-heater has taken effect.'
'Sleep if you can. There's a long drive ahead. And there may be a lot of hanging around at Ivalo if the weather isn't clear for take-off. We could wait all night.'
'But there is no need for you to wait with me, Mam'selle.'
'Don't argue. With Salamander Four in the field, I'm going to see you off. You can thank the flowers for that.'
She heard his soft, pleasant laugh, and said, 'Whether you sleep or not, stay tucked down. If Salamander Four didn't take careful note of this car last night, they're not the men they ought to be. And if they know you were heading north, they'll be watching out. I hope they'll watch Highway Four, but I won't bank on it. If they see me alone at the wheel it's one thing, but seeing me with a passenger is something else.'
It was an hour later, after they had passed a small village north of Hanhimaa, that the grey Mercedes came on their tail. Here the road wound round a long low hill, with tall spruce on one side and a shallow drop on the other. All along the edge of the drop were set big stones to mark the limit of the road. A
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thin layer of unfrozen snow covered the surface.
Modesty roused Waldo, who was dozing. 'I think they picked us up going through the last village,' she said. 'Don't quite know what they'll try, but nothing drastic to begin with, I imagine. They're only working on suspicion so far.'
'Can you leave them behind?' Waldo asked quietly.
'I don't fancy trying to run away from a Merc, and I don't want to drive rally-style for the next few hours.' She studied the mirror. 'Only one man in the car, I think. We'll aim at settling things as soon as he shows his hand.'
She took the automatic, a MAB .25, from her pocket and passed it back to him between the bucket seats. 'I don't want any shooting, Waldo, but if things go wrong you can look after yourself with this. Stay down when we stop, and don't show yourself. If anyone opens the back door to look in, you can take it something's gone wrong and I'm out of action. Then it's up to you.'
He hesitated, and she knew he wanted to protest, but after a moment he said, 'Understood.' She allowed herself a brief smile. Waldo was a professional, not the man to jog your arm when you were calling the shots.
Behind her the Mercedes drew closer, flashed its lights and peeped its horn. She slowed a little, turned and looked over her shoulder. There was only one man in the car. Evidently he was intending to make a soft approach ... anxiety about a slight rear-wheel wobble on the Volvo, or a suspect tyre. Any excuse to stop her and take a look in the car.
She had switched the heater to 'screen' two minutes ago. Already the side windows were heavily misted, and only die electrically heated section of the rear window was clear.
Flash of headlights from behind, and a more urgent peep of the horn. Ahead the road swelled to form a short lay-by. Here, by some freak of trapped warmth from the sun, the thin snow had melted. The surface was smooth dry tarmac, in contrast to the dirt and gravel surface of the road.
She drew into the lay-by and halted. The Mercedes cut in ahead and stopped sharply. The man who emerged was the spokesman of the night before. She was out in the road, had closed the door and was moving to meet him as he came to-
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wards her. He smiled, but his eyes remained very cold.
'Excuse me, Froken. There is somediing hanging loose under your car--' He stppped short with assumed surprise. 'Surely it is the lady we met last night?'
'Did you find your friend?' Modesty said. His right hand was in the pocket of the thick thigh-length jacket he wore. He stopped rnree paces from her.
'No, we did not find him, Froken,' he said, watching her. 'Did you? The smile had vanished. She knew that her quick exit from the car and the closing of the door had sharpened his suspicions. When she made no reply he said, 'I wish to look in your car, please.'
She said, 'No. Go back to Salamander Four and tell diem--' That was as far as she got. The use of the name was calculated to freeze him for an instant, long enough for her to take one stride and strike with the kongo, the little double mushroom of hard, polished sandalwood that was gripped in her right hand, the two knobs protruding from her fist as it rested in die slanting pocket of her lumberjacket.
But her calculation was wrong. Almost as the words 'Salamander Four' left her lips, he jerked a revolver from his pocket and fired at her head.
It was her own speed of reaction, far faster than thought, which saved her; and perhaps also the long experience which had taught her diat to duck or dodge away from a gun at short range is foolish. A bullet kills as readily at ten feet as at two feet, and moving back allows a gunman more shots.
She had ducked sideways and was lunging towards die gun. The bullet cracked past her head, missing by a finger's width. Then her left hand closed over the cylinder and breech, squeezing with all her strength, holding die hammer back and forcing a pinch of her flesh between hammer and cartridge.
She made no attempt to force the gun sideways or to wrench it from him, but went with die movement of his arm as he jerked back hard, and in the same moment struck with die kongo in her right hand, aiming for the temple.
As he staggered back across die front of the Volvo the gun came free of his grasp and was left reversed in her hand. The blow with the kongo had been awkwardly struck and was
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slightly off target. He did not fall, but recovered his balance and thrust towards her again, his face twisted with shock and fury. She went to meet him, and took him with a drop-kick, her booted feet smashing home just over the heart.
As she landed in a crouch he went back three tottering paces and fell. She heard the soft thump as his head struck one of the big stones bordering the edge of the road. His legs twitched, and he lay still.
Carefully she detached the gun from her left hand. It was a Smith & Wesson Chief's Special .38. She eased the hammer down, grimly thankful that it had not been the Centennial Model with the enclosed hammer, and sucked her hand where the pinched flesh oozed a bead of blood. As she put on the safety she walked to the Volvo and called, 'Relax on that trigger, Waldo. It's me.' Her voice was taut with fury.
When she opened the rear door his pale face stared up at her and she saw the MAB in his hand. He sat up slowly and said, 'When I heard the shot, I thought...'
'You very nearly thought right.' He saw her lips compress in a thin hard line, saw that her blue-black eyes were stormy. She was breathing hard, not from exertion but from anger.
'The bastard!' she said, seething. 'If he'd known who I was, if he'd even known you were in the car, I wouldn't mind. But he didn't know a damn thing. As far as he knew I was just a girl who stood here and said "Salamander Four". So he tried to blow my brains out.' She reached over to put the Special on the front seat, and picked up her gloves. 'No questions. Just out with the gun, and bang!'
Waldo made a sympathetic noise, then watched as she walked to the unconscious man and knelt over him. He felt an inward chill, knowing that if he had been in her place he would have been dead by now. He saw her take off a glove and rest her fingers on the man's neck. Ten seconds later she stood up and walked back to the car.
'How is he?' Waldo asked.
She shrugged, frowning a little with annoyance. 'He hit his head on that stone, and he's what might best be described as dead.'
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Waldo laughed shortly. 'I shall try to remember him as he was when he was alive. It will help to ease my sorrow.' He looked past her at the body. 'But it makes a bad situation. Will you arrange a car accident?'
'No.' She looked up and down the empty road, pulling on her glove. 'It would take too long to make it convincing. Better to keep things simple and just bend the truth a little. Stay there.'
She walked to the Mercedes, backed it to within a few feet of the body, then switched off and got out. He saw her unlock the boot, take out the jack, toolbox and spare wheel. She spread them around on the ground, returned to the Volvo, and took a quart can of oil from the boot.
Unscrewing the cap of the can, she poured a little oil on the dry tarmac close to the dead man's feet, then smeared some on the soles of his boots. She scraped her foot through the puddle of oil once or twice, put the cap on, but did not screw it up tightly. When she laid the can down on its side, oil dripped from it very slowly.
Crouching by the offside rear wheel, she took a thin screwdriver from the toolbox and jabbed it between the treads of the tyre, pressing hard. The tyre deflated. She returned the screwdriver and used her gloved hands to brush a little dirt from the breast of the man's jacket, where her drop-kick had landed.
After a final study of the scene she walked back to the Volvo and got in behind the wheel.
Waldo said, 'He was preparing to change the wheel. The oil leaked a little from the can. He stepped on the oil-patch and his feet went from under him. His head hit the stone when he fell. A matter of simple deduction.'
'It's better than anything fancy,' Modesty said, and started the engine. 'Next village or garage we come to I'll report it, to account for our tracks. I'll be very upset and rather shaky, not quite sure that he's dead, but I think so, and anyway I was too scared to move him. You stay under the rug, Waldo.'
As she drove out of the lay-by Waldo leaned back in his seat. 'I wonder where his two colleagues are?' he said thoughtfully.
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Modesty changed up and the car gathered speed, 'I think we could both make a good guess,' she said.
They came on foot, two hours after sunrise. When the door opened and they walked in, Alex Hemmer was sitting staring into the fire, as he had been sitting ever since Modesty Blaise drove away.
He recognized them from the night before, though he had not been consciously aware of them then. One had a gingery growth of beard. The other, a little taller, had a pasty face and a thin nose. Hemmer got to his feet, feeling sudden unease as the door closed behind them.
The thin-nosed one walked forward and said, 'You lied last night. He was here. There is a trail in the snow, and spots of blood. Impossible to see in the dark, but clear enough now.'
He hit Hemmer across the face with sudden ferocity. It was a back-handed blow, and the shock of it seemed to scramble Hemmer's brains. He reeled back and toppled over a chair. The man with the beard kicked him and said, 'Where is he?'
'Gone...' Hemmer wheezed, fighting down the sickness that threatened to overwhelm him. Through the sound of his own harsh breathing he heard footsteps move across the room, heard the bedroom door thrown open, then the kitchen door.
'The woman took him when she left in the car?' said a voice. Hemmer's vision cleared a little. The two men were standing over him. He shook his head.
'Gone where?' said the thin-nosed man.
'I ... don't know.' Hemmer felt completely helpless before the casual ruthlessness of these two men, but fear had not touched him yet, only a slow and impotent anger. Stolidly he began to get to his feet. A knee hit him under the chin and he sprawled again.
Vaguely he was aware of being hauled to a kneeling position, of rough hands doing something to his right arm, forcing it into a gap with smooth wood on each side. When his head cleared a little he found that he was crouched against the back of the heavy fireside chair. His arm had been thrust between the vertical wooden rails and his hand rested on the broad seat.
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The thin-nosed man stood on one side of the chair, bending a little to grip the imprisoned forearm. The man with the beard had picked up the beechwood mallet that lay on the table by the statue.
'Where did they go?' the thin-nosed man said with cold anger.
Hemmer shook his head again. 'I don't know.'
The man nodded to his companion. 'All right. Break his hand.'
It was then that fear struck into Hemmer, piercing and incredulous fear. He tried to rise, but his legs had lost their strength. The bearded man moved forward and lifted the mallet high. Staring up at him through the wooden rails, Hemmer screamed soundlessly within himself.
He felt a gust of cold air on his back, and saw something glitter as it flashed three feet over his head from behind. The bearded man jumped as if stung. The mallet jerked in his grasp. In the moment before it fell, Hemmer saw that the five-inch blade of a small throwing-knife with a dimpled bone haft had driven through the handle of the mallet just above the point of grip, so that the edge of the blade had nicked the bearded man's fingers. Spots of blood fell as the mallet clattered to the floor.
The thin-nosed man jerked upright, a hand streaking to the pocket of his fur jacket.
A voice said, 'Garvin'. It was a deep, relaxed voice, and its eifect was astonishing. As if the single word held some potent magic, both men froze instantly in mid-action, their postures slightly grotesque. Into Hemmer's dazed mind flickered the memory of the ancient Nordic legend which held that a troll overtaken by sunrise is turned instantly to stone.
He twisted his head round slowly. A man stood in the open doorway, a man in his middle thirties perhaps, with thick fair hair and a brown face that was pleasantly unhandsome and a little rough-hewn. He was hatless, and wore a lumberjacket of dull green and brown, with dark trousers tucked into leather boots. In his left hand was a knife, a twin of the other, held by the blade between two fingers and a thumb.
Hemmer's first impression was one of hugeness. Then he
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realized that though the man was big, well over six feet, it was the impact of his personality that made the room seem to shrink. It extended beyond his physical body like an aura. In it there was an immense vitality combined with a quiet, vast assurance that contained no element of conceit.
'Willie Garvin,' said the man, though clearly the knife and the single word had been sufficient introduction for the two intruders. Then, as Hemmer drew his arm free and made to rise - 'Stay down a minute, Mr 'emmer. You might get in the way.'
Hemmer stayed down. The two men were still frozen and there was a glaze of fear in their eyes. Willie Garvin pushed the door shut behind him and moved forward unhurriedly, the knife-hilt resting lightly on his shoulder now.
'Better get to know each other,' he said as he passed the thin-nosed man. 'Who're you?' On the last word his right arm lifted and swung in a backward jab, so fast that to Hemmer it was a blur. The elbow struck just under the man's ear. His knees folded and he melted to the floor without a sound.
Now Hemmer saw that the knife had been reversed and was held by the hilt. Willie Garvin made a quick jab towards the stomach of the bearded man. It was a feint that compelled instinctive reaction. The man's hands dropped to ward off the thrust, and as they did so Willie Garvin took another half-pace forward and struck upwards under the side of the jaw, hitting with the inside edge of his empty right hand.
The bearded man seemed to grow taller for a moment, then crumpled in a heap.
'I wonder if you could find me a bit of cord, Mr 'emmer?' Willie Garvin said politely. 'We'll get 'em tied up, and then p'raps we could 'ave a nice cup of coffee.'
Hemmer got slowly to his feet. He tried to frame a question, but his mind was too confused. 'Cord,' he repeated at last, and nodded. 'Yes.' He went through into the kitchen.
When he returned with a length of picture cord, Willie Garvin's knives had disappeared and the mallet with the split handle lay on the table. 'Sorry about the damage,' said WiUie. 'The Princess told me not to play rougher than I 'ad to, so I figured a nice fancy dirow might keep 'em quiet.'
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'And your name, also, I think.'
'It rings a bell with some people,' Willie acknowledged.
Hemmer rubbed his brow. 'You said ... the Princess?'
'Modesty.' Willie took the cord from Hemmer and knelt over the thin-nosed man. 'She rang me again last night, after you'd gone to sleep. I left the Land-Rover the other side of the lake an' came the rest of the way on foot. Been waiting in the bath-'ouse since a couple of hours before dawn.'
'But... that was before she left!'
'Well, we 'ad to overlap, and she didn't want me on show. These two might 'ave been watching, and she reckoned you might get upset and start a lot of argument. Any chance of that coffee, Mr 'emmer?'
Hemmer went into the kitchen and began to make coffee. He found that his hands were shaking with the reaction from that moment of piercing terror. When he returned five minutes later the two men had come to their senses. They lay with their hands bound behind them, and their faces were pallid with fear. Willie Garvin was smoking a cigarette, studying the statue with great concentration.
'You've really got something 'ere,' he said slowly. 'John Ball's going to love it. The body's perfect. It lives. You can pretty well see the 'eart beating. Only got the face to finish now, eh?'
Hemmer put down the coffee pot and the mugs. He said, 'She brought you here to guard me. How did she know what would happen?'
'It stuck out a mile that Waldo must've left quite a trail,' Willie said gently. 'And it was an odds-on chance that Salamander Four would double-check and pick it up in daylight. This is die only 'ouse for miles. So Modesty fixed for me to cover you.'
'I did not realize they would come back,' Hemmer said simply. 'It just did not occur to me.'
'She said it wouldn't.' Willie took the mug of coffee offered him, and stirred in several spoonfuls of sugar. 'She told me about you not liking to get involved, and all that. It's a nice idea, but it makes things rough when you run up against a couple of villains like we got 'ere.'
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Hemmer gave a little start and put down his coffee. 'There were three of them,' he said. 'There is another!'
'That's right. We figured they'd split, so that one or two could cover the road while the other one or two checked this 'ouse.'
'Then ... the third one will be waiting for Modesty on the road.' Hemmer's big hands worked anxiously.
Willie nodded. 'That's 'is bad luck,' he said cheerfully, and drained the mug. 'I'll go an' fetch the Land-Rover. Be back in about twenty minutes.' He went out, whistling a Chopin mazurka with remarkable accuracy.
In the time of waiting, Alex Hemmer found much to occupy his thoughts. The two men made no move, and spoke only once, when the thin-nosed one lifted his head and said listlessly, 'The woman, she is Modesty Blaise?' Hemmer nodded, and the man slumped down again, dull-eyed.
When Willie Garvin returned Hemmer said, 'What will you do with them?'
'I was thinking about that, Mr 'emmer. Just dropping 'em in the lake would suit me all right, but the Princess wouldn't like it. She'd say it was the lazy way out. So I'm taking 'em down to that lumber camp where I've been working. I can make it in six hours.'
"The lumber camp?'
'That's right.' Willie looked at Hemmer. 'I like working with Finns. You got the most literate country in the world 'ere. Even the jacks, now, they're 'ard as nails but they've got a bit of culture. So they're quite proud of people like you, Mr 'emmer. And when I tell 'em these two were going to smash your 'ands with a mallet, they won't like it much.'
Willie turned and squatted in front of the bound men, staring at them with frosty blue eyes. 'It's going to be the longest winter you ever lived through,' he said slowly. 'Those jacks'll keep you 'auling on ropes and 'caving on saws till you feel like one big raw blister.'
The bearded man said with a flash of defiance, 'Salamander Four will get you.'
Willie Garvin smiled. Not a warm smile. 'It'll be a long time before you can tell them anything.' He held up a hand
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with the finger and thumb half an inch apart. 'There's a dossier that thick, a blue-print of Salamander Four, pretty well the whole structure, with names an' facts an' figures. Especially names. It's a souvenir from when Modesty Blaise ran The Network. We spent three years compiling it.'
He stood up. 'In a couple of days that dossier will be with a man called Tarrant. He'll open it if anything nasty 'appens to Modesty Blaise or me. Then the roof falls in on Salamander Four. So when you get back, tell 'em that. I don't know who your immediate boss is, but at a guess I'd say it's Walburn or Geiss or Sarmiento. Maybe de Chardin, going further up the scale. Whoever it is, just tell 'im.'
For a moment the two men were startled out of their apathy by the list of names. They exchanged a shaken look. Willie Garvin turned and said, 'Excuse me while I get 'em in the truck, Mr 'emmer.'
He herded the bound men out of the house and spent several minutes securing them in the back of the Land-Rover to his satisfaction. Hemmer watched from the doorway. Everything had happened so quickly that his mind seemed to have seized up. He felt drained.
Willie Garvin came back into the house. 'Just wanted another look at that statue before I go, if it's all right with you.'
For long minutes he studied the work, absorbed, moving round to gaze from all sides. 'It's great,' he said at last, very softly, and touched a big hand to the column of the neck. 'That's what always gets me, Mr 'emmer. I could look at 'er throat for hours.'
Hemmer stared. That this rough, dangerous man with the strange Cockney accent should have reflected Hemmer's own inmost visual pleasure so exactly was astounding.
'That is my feeling also, Mr Garvin,' he said. 'Yet the throat, the neck, came easily. It is the face that is difficult.'
Willie Garvin laughed. 'I can imagine. You 'ave to choose one look, and you want 'em all.'
'I can get them,' Hemmer said. 'I can do it, if she comes back. But I think she despises me now, Mr Garvin, because I would not be involved. Or tried not to be.'
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'That's your privilege,' Willie Garvin said simply. 'She wouldn't think any less of you for it.'
'You think she may come back, then?'
Willie Garvin shrugged, and when he spoke his face was as neutral as Modesty's had been when she spoke the same words. 'What do you think?' He did not wait for a reply, but held out his hand. 'Well, so long, Mr 'emmer. Been nice meeting you.'
It was not until five minutes after the Land-Rover had moved off that Hemmer realized he had not spoken a word of thanks to the man who had saved him from a maimed hand.
Five days passed before he finally gave up hope that she would return. It was only then that he went to the clay model and began patiently, stubbornly, to seek the face that he wanted.
Throughout the day he worked without success. At nightfall he took up his chisel and turned to the wood, deciding that he must take the final gamble. By working direct on the carving, some miracle of imagination might guide his hands to find what he wanted.
It was then that he heard a car turn off the dirt road and stop outside the house. He stood watching the door, telling himself it was foolish to hope. If she had intended to return she would have done so days ago.
He had left the door on the latch. It opened and she came in, taking off her gloves, saying, 'Hallo, Alex.' She looked at the statue, then sat down in the chair by the fire and pulled off her boots and socks.
Hemmer said, 'I thought you would not come back.'
Tve been over to London.' She stood up and took off her jacket and. sweater. 'I had to see about some papers there.'
'A dossier? For a man called Tarrant?'
'That's right.' She walked across the room and kissed him. 'How have you been, Alex?'
'I have been thinking a lot.' He gave a little sigh. 'It has not changed what I believe, Modesty.'
She smiled, and said gently, 'Alex, I don't care a damn about what you believe.'
He put down the chisel and rubbed his brow. 'Tell me something. You did not just hide Waldo from the men who
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wanted to kill him. You went to much trouble to help him, to get him safely out of danger. It seemed that you liked him, wanted to help him. Why was that?'
She took off her shirt and slacks, and stood up, reaching behind to unclip her bra. 'I haven't thought about it. But... I suppose because Waldo has style. Yes. Maybe I'll start a society for the Preservation of Style.'
He nodded soberly. 'It is something hard to define. How does a man acquire style, Modesty?'
Naked now, she sat on the edge of the table and swung her legs up on to it. 'God knows, Alex. You could start by learning to laugh a little. At yourself, at me if you like, or at a situation. Waldo laughed when he first opened his eyes and saw me, remember?'
'Do you think you can teach me to laugh a little?'
'I can try. A good time to start is when we're making love.' She took up the familiar pose. Her eyes held a smile, natural and unforced, a smile both young and old, innocent and experienced, candid yet concealing.
Hemmer gazed for a full two minutes before he said, 'Making love is something to laugh about?'
'It ought to be all things, Alex. Even hilarious sometimes. How long have I got for teaching you? I mean, how long before you finish the statue?'
'I could finish it in a day and a half.' A little glint of amusement came into his eyes, and he gave a slow smile. 'But I am a slow learner, so I will make it last at least two weeks.'
Her face lit up. 'There! That had a touch of style.'
He was still smiling as he turned to the statue and took up his chisel and mallet. He could see the contours of the face clearly beneath the surface of the wood now. The image filled his mind, and his hands almost stung widi the sudden tingling of blood in them.
The grain ... so. The curve ... so. A small slanting plane here, and the imperceptible rounding to give the highlight there...
With a long inhalation of pleasure he set the blade to the wood and began to tap.
157

The Soo Girl Charity

Even at eighty yards, the legs were worth looking at. Willie Garvin looked at them with pleasure, and found it refreshing on this hot summer day as he sat at the wheel of the Jensen waiting for the London traffic to bestir itself.
The owner of the legs wore a navy and white polka-dot dress that moulded itself to her figure in the slight breeze. Her hair was black, shoulder length, and drawn back at the nape of the neck. She carried a collecting box in one hand, and although her back was towards Willie he could see that she carried a tray hung about her neck.
He had noticed one or two other flag-sellers as he drove. What the charity was he did not know, but decided he would stop and cross the road to buy a flag from this girl. She had chosen a good pitch, on the wide pavement outside the huge new concrete ant-hill which housed Leybourn Enterprises.
As he lit a cigarette, still watching her, she moved a few paces, and Willie Garvin's eyes widened in surprise. Though her back was still towards him he recognized her beyond all doubt by the way she moved.
His pleasure increased, and he wondered what in the world had persuaded Modesty Blaise to volunteer as a flag-seller. She was not, he knew, uncharitable; but this was outside her usual line of charity.
When the traffic moved he cruised on past the Leybourn building, pulled into a parking space, bought half an hour on the meter, then sat behind the wheel again, moving the mirror slightly so that he could watch her. She was busy with two or three customers, all male, and had not noticed his Jensen.
A cautious man, Willie Garvin did not yet know for sure
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whether she would want him to recognize her openly. The nag-selling might be a cover. Her hair was down instead of being piled in a chignon, and the dress she wore was off-the-peg, but that hardly rated as a disguise. He could see her face now, and it was the face of Modesty Blaise, unaltered by pads in the cheeks or special make-up.
It seemed likely that she was just selling flags. The different hair-style and the simple dress made sense for that. Too much sophistication would have been wrong for the part.
He saw her turn. Her gaze moved idly past the car, then jerked back. Willie put his hand out of the window and flicked ash from his cigarette. In the mirror he saw her wave. Satisfied, he got out of the car and went across the road. ' 'Allo, Princess.'
'Hallo, Willie love.' She nodded down at the tray. 'It's all right. This is for real.' 'I'd better buy one then.'
He reached for his wallet, vaguely puzzled. Though her smile of greeting was warm, he sensed a thread of underlying tautness in her, a thread that probably he alone knew her well enough to detect. He said, 'Tell you what. Make me a price for what you've got left, then come and 'ave some lunch.'
'I can't, Willie. I'd buy the lot myself, but I promised Madge I wouldn't.' 'Madge Baker?'
Modesty pulled a face. 'Who else?'
Madge Baker was a woman a few years older than Modesty and of infinite energy, most of which she devoted to good works of various kinds. The rest she devoted to men, a subject in which her immense endiusiasm and cheerful inventiveness had made her highly qualified. Willie had once spent a stimulating month with her in Greece, an experience he recalled with pleasure as he folded a pound note and put it in the collecting box.
'She burst in on me with this yesterday,' Modesty said. 'And you know what Madge is like when she's made up her mind. You can't refuse her.'
'I never tried,' Willie said reminiscently. Modesty laughed, and pinned a flag to the lapel of his jacket. He noticed that it
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was in aid of Mental Health, and that there were only about twenty flags left on her tray.
'Won't take you long to sell out, Princess. What about lunch then?'
'I've asked Tarrant to lunch at the penthouse. You come back with me, and we can have ten minutes in the pool first.'
'Lovely. I'll wait in the car.'
A man had stopped, fumbling in his pocket. Willie turned away. As he waited for a break in the traffic he heard Modesty say with wintry politeness: 'For twopence, you stick it in your lapel yourself, sir.'
She was stroppy, Willie thought, very stroppy. Something must have happened to cause that. Odd for her not to say anything. Perhaps it was just that selling flags turned out to be quite an eye-opener when a girl came to try it.
As he stepped off the kerb he heard her voice again: 'Thank you. Now, for sixpence you keep your chin up while I pin it on. Looking down my dress comes out at half-a-crown minimum.'
Willie grinned to himself. No, he decided, this definitely wasn't her line of country for charity.
Sir Gerald Tarrant sat at a table by the residents' pool below the luxury block of flats overlooking Hyde Park, a Campari soda at his elbow. He felt relaxed and content. The Foreign Office Intelligence section he controlled had several grim and intractable problems on its plate, but for ninety minutes these would cease to exist for him.
At the moment there was nothing that even looked like becoming the off-beat, specialized sort of job which might arouse the interest of Modesty Blaise. This, for Tarrant, was a very pleasant thought. He had been responsible for sending more than a few people out to die in his time. It was an inevitable part of his work, and those who died were paid agents. Modesty Blaise was not.
Even so, he had used her, and Willie Garvin of course, several times. They both carried scars to remind them of those occasions. Tarrant had promised himself that he would not be
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responsible for any more scars, and hoped that he would keep that promise.
It was some minutes since Modesty and Willie had swum past him along the length of the pool. He leaned forward, and saw that the surface was clear. They were lying face down on the bottom at the deep end, a few feet apart and perfectly still.
To keep down like that they must have exhaled all possible air from their lungs, Tarrant thought. He wondered what the object was. It would probably be obscure, and seemingly pointless to other people. But then, these two pursued their own curious interests and amusements without worrying about how anyone else might regard them.
A minute passed. At last they came up together and swam to the side of the pool where Tarrant sat.
'I bet it's proportionate,' said Willie, panting a little.
'Yes.' Modesty shook the water from her face. 'Up to a point, anyway. The more you oxygenate the blood by deep breathing before you go down, the longer you can stay down with only residual air in your lungs. And you don't need weights.'
'Might come in 'andy sometime. I reckon with ten minutes deep breathing you could stay down three or four minutes ex'aled, with a bit of practice.'
Willie drew himself out, reached a hand down to Modesty and lifted her on to the side of the pool. As she pulled off her cap Tarrant said, 'Have you two been having one of those murderous work-outs in Willie's combat room?'
Modesty shook her head. 'Not for about a month now. Why?'
'Your - ah - upper leg is bruised.' Tarrant pointed. On her thigh, towards the back and just below the line of her swim-suit, the firm flesh was discoloured by an ugly purple bruise. She twisted to look down, and Willie stared.
'Blimey, I didn't do that, did I, Princess?'
'Not that one, Willie love.' She slipped her arm into the robe he held for her. 'I got that this morning, flag-selling. Come on, let's go up to the penthouse. Weng should just about be ready to serve lunch.'
As she moved away, Tarrant looked at Willie with raised
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eyebrows. 'Pinching bottoms is one thing. But that looked rather severe, surely?'
Willie nodded, his eyes following Modesty speculatively. 'I wonder what she did to 'im?' he said.
An hour later, over coffee served on the penthouse terrace by her houseboy, Weng, Modesty Blaise said, 'It was this man Charles Leybourn.' Willie said, 'Well that's one for the book.'
Tarrant looked puzzled, and said, 'I'm sorry. You have to fill in the gaps for me, my dear. I'm not Willie. What was this man Charles Leybourn?'
'The bottom-pincher.' Modesty gazed out over the park, frowning. 'I've had it pinched in Paris, Rome and Lisbon. It's just part of the atmosphere there, a friendly gesture. In London it's usually furtive and a bit pathetic. But this was different.'
'Charles Leybourn?' Tarrant said incredulously. 'Leybourn Enterprises?'
'He got out of his Rolls,' said Modesty. 'I stood in front of him, smiled, and shook the collecting box. He took a flag, and put in a penny. So I asked him if he wanted any change. He didn't answer, but just walked past into that big bay entrance of the office block. He's about forty, with a thin, good-looking face and nasty eyes, and he walks as if he's smearing insects with every step.'
Tarrant nodded. 'I know what you mean. I've met him a couple of times.'
'Then he called to me,' said Modesty. 'He was just outside the swing doors with his wallet in his hand. I went up to him. He put the wallet away and threw another penny on die tray. I turned my back on him. And then he pinched me. He's strong. I thought his finger and thumb were going to meet.'
'He must be out of his mind,' Tarrant said wonderingly. 'Good God, it's an assault.'
'He took a risk.' Modesty inhaled on her cigarette and looked at Tarrant. 'But I don't think he could help himself. And he built up Leybourn Enterprises on taking risks, didn't he?'
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'There's a difference.'
'Not that much difference. The way we were placed, what he did couldn't be seen. One in three women might bring a charge, maybe. The odds were with him.'
Willie said with interest, 'What did you do to 'im, Princess?'
'Nothing.' She smiled briefly. It was hard not to react. I think the collecting box helped. I damn near crushed it when he pinched. I was all set mentally to break his arm, but I didn't. I just froze, and took it. Then it was all over and he was through the swing doors.'
Willie Garvin looked unhappy. Then his face cleared and a sparkle touched his blue eyes. 'A contribution?' he said.
'Yes.' Modesty stubbed out her cigarette. 'That's what I had in mind. Twopence isn't much. I think a man like Charles Leybourn can afford at least five thousand for the - what is it?'
Willie looked at the flag on his lapel. 'Mental Health.'
'Very suitable. He could do with a little of that himself.'
'I knew you were mad about something.' Willie leaned back in his chair. 'How we going to work it, Princess?'
'I don't know about we. It's my bottom, Willie.'
'Oh, sure.' He looked a little hurt. 'But I'm entitled to declare an interest.'
She smiled. 'All right. I just didn't want to push you. We'll need a few days to size things up. Will you take the house and domestic side while I take the business background?'
'Fine.'
Tarrant's cigar had gone out. He relit it, trying to absorb the fact that Modesty Blaise was serious. 'You really intend to get five thousand pounds from Leybourn?' he said.
'Yes.' Her tone was absent. 'Have some more coffee. Sir Gerald.'
'Thank you, no. How do you imagine you might be able to put the screws on him?'
'No screws. It won't be blackmail, even if we find a lever.' She shrugged. 'We'll just have to see. Maybe he gambles. Maybe he keeps a lot of cash at home - tightrope walkers like Leybourn usually do. I hope we won't have to build a con
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situation. It's interesting but it takes a long time. What I'd prefer would be a straight steal.'
Willie said, 'What d'you know about Leybourn, Sir G?'
'Are you inviting me to subscribe to the commission of a theft.'
'Why not? If you wanted us to do a safe in some Foreign Trade Mission you wouldn't think twice, you bloody old hyena,' Willie said amiably.
And that was true, Tarrant reflected. When he considered the matter it was self-evident that Modesty's bottom was of far greater intrinsic importance than a packet of secret papers. And there was also the benefit that would accrue to the Mental Health organization, of course. He saw the amusement in Modesty's gaze as she watched him, and made up his mind.
'I don't know a great deal,' he said regretfully. 'Leybourn doesn't socialize much. His one passion outside business is playing bridge. He plays at Crockfords most nights, but for small stakes only. And he's extremely good. He lives in Surrey, somewhere in the stockbroker belt. His wife comes from Java, a girl of Chinese stock and very beautiful, so I'm told. He's made a lot of money in comparatively few years. His methods of finance are legal but chancy, they're certainly not liked in the City. His social personality is pretty colourless, but that must be misleading. He's tough, wary, and a difficult man to steal from, I would think. As for his prospects, I can't imagine he'll stand still; either he'll grow a lot richer and stabilize his empire, or the whole thing will crash.'
'Thank you.' Modesty stretched her legs and rubbed her thigh. 'We'd better get his contribution while the going's good, Willie. I'm sure we can make it a straight steal.'
'That'd be nice.' Willie gazed out over the balcony musingly. 'It's a long time since we stole anything.'
Three days later a man from the Electricity Board called at Charles Leybourn's house in Surrey. The house was Georgian and stood in five acres of ground. The man from the Electricity Board had made an appointment by phone earlier that day, explaining that the meter reading for the last quarter was
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abnormally high and the Board therefore wished to fit a check meter.
He arrived in his small van promptly at the appointed time and spent an hour in the large cupboard under the stairs, where the meter and switches were housed. He was a big man with rather shaggy brown hair and rough-hewn features, his accent pure Birmingham. Bridget, the Irish maid, found him attractive and rejoiced that it was the housekeeper's afternoon off.
She gave him tea and showed him from room to room so that he could test the various power-points for earth leaks. He did not see Mrs Leybourn, who was resting in the sun-room beside the pool.
He made a date with Bridget for that evening in the village. Since she was rather plain and distinctly plump, Bridget had often been stood up on dates, despite her warm nature, so it was to her surprise and pleasure that the man from the Electricity Board met her as arranged.
What happened later, in his big old car after a fish-and-chip supper, came as an even greater surprise and pleasure to her.
'I didn't 'ave to pump her,' Willie said the following night as he stood with Modesty in the darkness of the trees, watching the house. 'She kept on talking all the time. Well, nearly all the time.' He pondered, then added with vague surprise, 'First time I've tumbled a girl wearing a wig.'
'You may have done without knowing,' Modesty said. 'It's hard to spot them these days.'
'No, I mean me wearing a wig. The brown shaggy one.'
She smothered her laughter and punched his arm gently. This was a good caper they were on tonight. Not the kind Tarrant usually pitched them into, a bloody dog-fight against professional killers, but a nice stimulating exercise in ingenuity.
She carried no gun. Willie had left his own throwing-knives at home. They were dressed alike, in black slacks and long-sleeved shirts, plimsolls and nylon gloves. The car they had travelled in was parked two miles away in a wood. They had made the last lap of the journey on foot and across country.
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Willie took her arm and drew her down a little, pointing away to the left of the house through a gap in the foliage. 'That's the lodge, Princess.'
She nodded, and straightened up. Willie had done remarkably well. This was not a fact that surprised her, but it was one diat she never failed to appreciate. Having Willie Garvin on your right was something too far beyond price to be taken for granted.
Leybourn's domestic set-up was clear now. A married couple, cook-housekeeper and chauffeur-handyman, lived in die lodge which stood eighty yards from the house. Bridget had a room in the lodge. She was always clear of the house by nine, unless the master and his wife were entertaining, which was a regular once-monthly affair. They did not entertain casually.
The Leybourns had been married two years. She was Ley-bourn's second wife. He had met and married her in Java, where he had rubber interests. Nobody seemed to know anything about her background. Charles Leybourn called her Soo. She was, in Bridget's opinion, almost young enough to be his daughter. Nobody saw much of her, except when the master entertained and she was on show. She did not run the house or give any orders. This was done by the housekeeper, assisted by Bridget, whose proud task it was to supervise the daily help from the village.
Charles Leybourn was frequently home late from Crock-fords. He would be home late tonight, about twelve-thirty. It was now ten minutes to midnight. Willie had been given a guided tour of the house. He knew that it was fully protected by burglar alarms and that there was a small modern safe built into the wall of what Bridget called the study. He did not know, but thought it highly likely, that Leybourn kept a substantial amount of cash in the safe. Modesty thought so, too. The lines of inquiry she had pursued suggested it. Leybourn was precisely the sort of man to have a lot of folding money instantly available.
'This Soo girl, his wife,' Modesty said. 'She doesn't seem to have any real function, Willie. Did Bridget manage to give you anything on her between rounds?'
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Willie shook his head. 'The way Bridget put it, she's quite nice-looking for a Chink. You got to be dumb as a tombstone to talk like that. I couldn't get a picture of 'er at all. Bridget rolled 'er eyes a bit and kept oohing and ahhing as if there was lots she could tell. Maybe there is, but if she'd known it she'd 'ave told.'
'A mystery girl. Leybourn seems to keep her tucked well away.'
'Bridget said he was like a feller with a big doll that he kept in a box but took out and wound up sometimes. I don't know for what.' Willie paused, then added, 'My little Irish 'eart-throb tags Leybourn for a right bastard, but she didn't 'ave any special reason, so I don't reckon he's tried any bottom-pinching in that direction.'
'Maybe he specializes in flag-sellers.'
'It's a thought. I expect the 'ead-shrinkers have got a word for it.'
There was silence for five minutes. It was not a tense or restless silence. They had infinite patience and could wait with relaxed vigilance, untouched by time or discomfort or weariness.
They were going in by an upper window, because the security locks on the ground-floor windows were key-operated. The front door was too tricky to offer a quick way in. Two keys were needed for it once die alarms had been switched on for the night. One key cut out the system briefly while the other turned a heavy mortice deadlock. The alarm would be no problem now, but the deadlock was a time-waster.
There was light in one upper room of the house, die Leybourns' bedroom. Presumably Soo Leybourn was still awake. Willie Garvin had seen the bedroom suite. It was furnished in oriental style, with silk drapes, rich carpets, and a huge low divan.
Modesty looked at her watch again. It was a minute after midnight. With Charles Leybourn due home at twelve-thirty or soon after, time was running out.
'It doesn't look as if she's going to sleep, Willie. We can't wait any longer."
He nodded agreement.  'Shouldn't make any difference.
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She's at the other end of the 'ouse.' Crouching over a black rucksack he took out something that looked like a transistor radio, about the size of a cigar box. Two switches were mounted on the thin metal chassis. He tested the battery connexions at the side, then flicked the first switch and drew out a thin collapsible antenna. Moving away from under the trees, he threw the second switch.
Inside the house, in the big cupboard where the fuses and switch-boxes were mounted, a relay clicked open, operated by the radio beam from the transmitter in Willie's hand. The opening of the relay disconnected the burglar-alarm system at its source. If the system had been tested since Willie fixed the relay in the circuit, it would have worked perfectly - until this moment.
He switched off the transmitter, put it away and picked up the rucksack. Together they moved soundlessly over the grass to the east side of the house.
No word was spoken. When they halted Modesty took a drawstring pouch from the rucksack and looped it over her shoulder. Willie handed her a short alloy tube, tapered slightly and with a double-pronged steel hook at the tip. She clipped it on her belt. They gripped hands, Willie crouched, she stepped on his bent knee and then swung round and up on to his shoulders. Facing the wall of the house, she stepped on to the palms of his hands. He straightened his arms. Now she was thirteen feet tall, leaning in and turning slightly so that one shoulder rested against the wall.
She drew out the sliding sections of the alloy tube, extending it to its full eight feet in length, then reached up. The sharp tines of the hook caught on the stone sill above. She climbed, using her arms only so that the pull on the hook was directly downwards. Five seconds later she was sitting sideways on the sill.
It was a leaded window with diamond panes. From the pouch she took a broad paint-scraper and eased up the flange of lead round one of the panes. Carefully she removed the diamond of glass, reached through the hole and unfastened the security lock.
Before climbing into the room she brushed the soles of her
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plimsolls and pulled on two over-slippers made from dusters, with elastic tops to grip the ankles.
Willie saw her vanish into the dark room. A few moments later a black nylon rope-ladder dropped down the wall. With the rucksack on his back, he went up the ladder, paused on the sill to pull on over-slippers, then went through the window and closed it after him. This was a spare bedroom used as a sewing-room. He had seen several superb pieces of embroidery on frames during his tour as the man from the Electricity Board.
Modesty stood waiting for him to lead the way. He switched on a pencil torch with a filter lens, and eased the door open. Together they moved along the passage and down a broad staircase to the hall below. Leybourn's study lay beyond one of the doors opening from the square hall.
Inside, the heavy curtains were drawn. Willie closed the door, switched on a table lamp, and nodded towards the safe set in the wall beneath shelves of box-files. Modesty moved across the room to examine it.
The safe was a 1967 Eschenbach with a combination lock, a magnificent piece of skilled engineering. It would not yield to gelignite unless the area round the lock could be drilled, and the toughened steel would resist this for many long, noisy hours.
It could be cut open with a thermic lance, but the apparatus was cumbersome and the heat would destroy all non-fireproof contents. There remained the lock. This was a six-figure combination which could be broken, given enough time, skill, patience, and a miniature computer.
Willie put his rucksack down on the floor and said quietly, Til only be a couple of minutes 'ere, Princess. But I'll need about ten in the dining-room for the main job.'
'All right. I'll go and keep an eye open for the Soo girl.'
In a set-up like this, with somebody in the house, it was better to keep tabs on them than to risk being surprised by a sudden appearance. Modesty paused at the top of the stairs and pulled a stocking with eye-holes over her head, then went on down the long passage to the main bedroom.
When she pressed her ear to the door she could hear a faint sound of movement from within; a chair being pushed back,
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perhaps, and the slight clatter of something being put down on a glass-topped dressing-table.
Light shone through a transom over the door. Modesty brought a chair from an adjoining room, stood on it, and inched her head up cautiously until she could look down into the bedroom. It was as Willie had described it, with a door leading off to a dressing-room and bathroom.
The Soo girl was beautiful. Young, ivory-skinned, and with great dark eyes set above the symmetry of her high cheekbones, she sat at the dressing-table in a vivid silk dressing-gown of golden dragons sporting against a crimson ground. Modesty could see her face obliquely in the mirror, and at this moment it was a face of quiet and utter tragedy.
All the tragedy lay in the eyes as she looked blindly through her own image. The features were calm, smooth, expressionless, but the eyes were wells of sorrow.
Slowly, as if sleep-walking, the girl rose to her feet and crossed the room. She took a cushion from one of the chairs and set it on the green-carpeted floor at the foot of the bed. For a moment she moved out of Modesty's line of sight, then she returned, her hands hidden in the wide sleeves of the dressing-gown, and sat down cross-legged on the cushion.
Modesty felt a sudden touch of unease. The girl's back was angled towards her and she was sitting with head bowed, perfectly still. Then she extended her arms and lifted them.
The sleeves fell back. Gripped in both hands was an oriental knife with an ornate hilt and a golden cross-guard. The blade was pointed at the girl's chest. She began to sway back and forth, lowering the dagger slightly but still keeping the point aimed at her heart. Through the glass transom Modesty could hear a soft, sad wailing in a language strange to her.
She got down from the chair. Soo Leybourn was about to kill herself, and she was doing it in oriental fashion. The swaying would increase, then suddenly she would topple forward over her crossed legs and fall on the knife, driving it into her heart.
Modesty pressed the kongo from the squeeze-pocket on her thigh. Her fingers gripped the stem joining the two rounded
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knobs of polished sandalwood which protruded from the sides of her fist. As she opened the door the wordless, keening chant of sorrow sounded more clearly. The girl was rocking back and forth in a wider arc now, and the hilt of the knife as she held it was almost touching the floor, the blade angled up towards her.
The lament ceased on a thin haunting note. The red and gold figure swayed back. Before it could swing forward for the death-stroke, Modesty Blaise had crossed the room in three long strides and struck with the kongo, a sharp tapping blow to the nerve centre below the base of the skull. The knife fell to the carpet in front of the girl's crossed legs, and Modesty knelt with the unconscious form slumped back against her.
She pursed her lips and gave a curious two-note whistle in a minor key, like a bird-call, soft yet penetrating. Thirty seconds later Willie Garvin appeared in the open doorway, a stocking pulled over his head. When he saw that Modesty had taken her own mask off he followed suit, then moved forward, looking with narrowed eyes from the slumped figure of the girl to the knife on the floor.
'She was just going to kill herself,' Modesty said quietly. 'We picked a bad night.' She looked down at the girl. 'Or a good one. Put her on the bed, Willie.'
He lifted her easily and moved round the bed. As he laid her down on her side, the loose dressing gown fell away from her shoulder. He moved a hand to straighten it, then stopped and drew in a sharp breath. Gently he pulled the gold and crimson silk lower.
Modesty was beside him, staring. There were small scars on Soo Leybourn's back, many of them. Some were thin lines, some were small round spots; some were old, and had healed to white lines or dots, others were new and angry. There were fresh dark bruises, and old yellowing ones.
Modesty pulled the gown down and away. From some inches below the shoulders, the scars and bruises on the beautifully moulded body spread down the back and over the buttocks.
Willie Garvin whispered, 'Jesus!'
Modesty eased the girl over on to her back. The front of her
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body was similarly marked, from beneath the fine breasts to the top of the thighs.
'He doesn't stop at pinching bottoms,' Modesty said, thin-lipped. 'The small ones are cigarette burns I suppose. And the weals - well, we'd probably find a little whip here if we looked.'
There was sick anger in Willie's eyes. 'So Leybourn's a fullblown kink,' he said. 'And that's his kick. Poor little bitch.' He bent and drew the robe up over her again. 'What d'you want to do, Princess?'
Modesty did not answer at once. When at last she spoke her eyes were still on the girl's smooth, empty face. Now that the eyes were closed diere was no expression. The wells of sadness were hidden.
'Short of breaking Leybourn's neck there's nothing we can do for her,' she said slowly. 'We stopped her killing herself tonight, but there's always another night.'
'I don't mind breaking 'is neck,' Willie said simply. 'It's either her or him by die look of it.'
'She has to work it out her own way,' Modesty said a little wearily. 'She could leave him. But she's an oriental, and maybe it involves too much loss of face. Anyway, you can't go around killing women's husbands for them.' She looked at her watch. 'Have you nearly finished downstairs?'
Til need another few minutes.' Willie looked at her. 'We go ahead, then?'
'Why not? It'll give Leybourn something else to diink about for a few days.' Modesty took out a small phial of anaesthetic nose-plugs and shook one on to the palm of her hand. Til give her a whiff to keep her under, then put the light out and join you downstairs.'
Willie nodded and went out of the room. He knew that for Modesty, as for himself, the exploit had gone cold now. They would finish it because there was no reason not to, but all pleasure in the caper had vanished with the knowledge that a girl in a strange land was being driven to die by her own hand, and diere was nothing they could do about it.
Charles Leybourn put his car in the garage and let himself in
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by the front door, using two keys. He stopped, frowning, as he saw that the study door was slighdy ajar and that a light had been left on.
His lips compressed. Soo was not supposed to go into his study. Also, he had warned her several times about being careful to test the alarms, put out all lights and close all doors before going to bed. His face relaxed in a curious smile. She would have to be punished for this.
He went into the study to switch off die table lamp, and shock hit him. A rug was rucked up where an armchair near the safe had been moved aside. On the floor in front of the safe stood a square black box about a foot high.
Warily he moved to look at it more closely. There were three dials on the machine and two vernier controls. Earphones were plugged into one side. From the odier side, thin insulated wires ran up to three small suction discs which were stuck to die steel door of the safe round the dial of the combination lock.
Sweat gathered on Leybourn's brow. The safe door was closed, but...
He turned and snatched up the phone on his desk. His hand shook as he dialled. The bloody operator would be asleep of course.
She answered even before he heard the ringing tone.
'Emergency switchboard. Which service do you require?'
'Get me the police!' snapped Leybourn.
'Your name, please? And the number you're ringing from?'
He gave diem impatiendy.
'One moment, sir. I'm connecting you to County Headquarters.'
In the dining-room, sitting on the floor in darkness, Modesty Blaise pressed down the cradle of the telephone handset as she stopped speaking. The hand-set was connected to the GPO junction box mounted under the window-ledge, where die exchange line came in. Leybourn was cut off from the exchange. He was connected only to Modesty's telephone handset, two rooms away from where he stood.
She passed the phone to Willie, then released the cradle. Willie spoke in a brisk voice, widi no trace of his usual
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Cockney accent. 'County Headquarters Information Room.'
Leybourn's voice was almost a snarl. 'My name is Charles Leybourn. I'm speaking from The Old Spinney. That's off the London Road between Faring and Limpton Green, about a mile from Faring. My house has been broken into. I want somebody here right away.'
Willie said, 'One moment, sir.' He pressed the cradle down, allowed ten seconds, then relaxed it and spoke again. 'We're sending out a radio call to the patrol car nearest you, sir. Would you hold, please? The Inspector would like a word with you.' Willie clicked the cradle twice. When he spoke again his voice was pitched lower and held a slight West Country accent.
'Inspector Tregarth here, sir. I'm sorry about this business. Do you happen to have a safe in the house?'
'I bloody well do, and it's supposed to be burglar-proof,' Leybourn said viciously. 'So's the house for that matter. But they got in. And there's some kind of gadget here--'
'A gadget?' The calm voice took on a tinge of regret. 'I was afraid of that. A control box with wires running up to the combination lock?'
'Yes. Do you know what it is?'
'Well, it's something pretty new, sir. A stethostrobic pulse detector. This is the third case we've had in a month. It's the first time they've left one behind, though.'
Leybourn wiped his brow. 'The safe's still shut. I may have scared them off when I arrived.'
'Let's hope so, sir.' The voice sounded doubtful. 'Leaving the SPD behind doesn't signifiy much. They're dirt cheap to make if you know how to do it. Only the diaphragms are expensive, and they're burnt out after one operation. Would you mind checking the safe, Mr Leybourn?'
'You mean open it? What about fingerprints?'
Tm afraid these people are professionals, sir. They don't leave any prints. But wait till our men arrive if you like, and they can check with you.'
'No. I'll do it now. Hang on.'
Leybourn laid down the phone and moved to the safe, suddenly glad that the Inspector had suggested checking. Much
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better to open it now, before the police arrived. If the thieves had failed, there would be an embarrassing amount of money stacked inside; illegal dollars, which, as a citizen of the United Kingdom, he was not supposed to hold.
Touching the dial very gingerly he turned it through the six-figure sequence. He had left the study door open, and he did not hear Willie Garvin enter behind him. The combination completed, he gripped the handle of the three-inch steel door and pulled. As it swung open, Willie Garvin chopped Leybourn down with a hand like a spade.
'There was a touch of temper about that,' Modesty said from the doorway. She moved forward, put down the rucksack, turned Leybourn on his back and slipped an anaesthetic plug up one nostril.
Willie said reasonably, 'I thought a really solid stiff neck might keep 'is mind off whips and cigarettes for a couple of weeks.'
The safe was divided in two compartments. One held bundles of paper money in five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills. 'It's the way we figured,' Modesty said, and began to flick through each bundle before dropping it into the rucksack. 'But now we've met his wife we'll raise the ante. Let's say thirty thousand dollars. That still leaves him about half of what's here.'
Willie detached the stethostrobic pulse detector, folded it flat and slid it into the rucksack. It was no more than a mock-up of dials and knobs, with no components inside the chassis, but it had served very effectively in getting the safe open. The idea had been Modesty's. Willie thought it was a rave. He felt rather sad that circumstances had taken all sparkle out of the caper. With an inward sigh he went through to the dining-room to disconnect the telephone hand-set and restore the exchange line to the junction box.
Modesty finished packing the money, then went upstairs to replace the pane from the leaded window and fasten the security lock. When she had finished they would make a final check on their tidying up, then leave by the front door, using Leybourn's keys and taking him with them. He would wake up to find himself sitting at the wheel of his car in the garage, the
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keys in his pocket as usual, and he would be driven to wonder if he had suffered a seizure combined with a bad dream. The confusion and misunderstandings when he finally called the police promised to be of epic proportions.
Modesty had almost finished replacing the window pane when Willie came upstairs. He looked at her a little uneasily and said with a casual air, 'About that radio relay I fixed in the cupboard, Princess. D'you want me to take it out or leave it? I reckon it could stay there for years without anyone spotting it.'
She said gently, not looking up from her work. 'Look. If that girl kills herself, we're not going to come sneaking back here one night to string Leybourn up or something. I'm sorry for her too, Willie love. But we're not The Four Just Men.'
'No.' He rubbed his chin. 'OK, I'll whip it out. Won't take five minutes.'
The thin flange of lead was folded back into place now. She closed the window and locked it. Together they went out into the passage and down the stairs. It was as they reached the hall that there came from the study the sound of a soft impact, a small and curious thud. They froze. There came another sound, a chair-leg scraping momentarily on the polished strip of flooring of the study.
They moved forward, pulling their masks into position. At a nod from Modesty, Willie kicked the door wide and they went in very fast. Three paces into the room they stopped dead. Soo Leybourn sat on an upright chair by the wall, her hands resting limply on her lap. She wore the gold and crimson dressing-gown. Her feet were bare. The smooth, beautiful face held no emotion. The dark eyes were unfocused, staring blankly ahead of her.
Leybourn lay on his back on the floor beneath the still open safe, as they had left him. There was only one difference. The oriental knife from Soo Leybourn's bedroom was driven deep into his chest. There was hardly any blood, just an irregular stain on his white shirt around the cross-guard of the knife. With the blade through his heart he had died instantly.
Willie Garvin dragged his gaze from the dead man to stare again at the unmoving girl. She was a thousand miles
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away and had no awareness of them
'Christ,' he said hoarsely. 'It's all 'appening tonight!' He saw that Modesty had pulled her mask off, and thankfully pulled off his own, then wiped the sleeve of his shirt across a damp brow. 'I wonder what she does for an encore?'
'I suppose this is the encore,' Modesty said slowly, looking at Leybourn. It was a full two minutes before she spoke again. Willie waited without impatience, glad to leave all decisions to her. There was plenty for her to think about.
He did not regret that Leybourn was dead, or blame Soo Leybourn for killing him. But he wished she had chosen another night to be impulsive. It complicated matters enormously.
Modesty Blaise said, 'Let's keep this simple. I'm damned if I'm going to let her be put away for years if I can help it. And they'll put her away all right, even with all the scars to show. If a husband does that to you, you leave him. You don't kill him.'
'She's an oriental, Princess.'
'I know. But she killed him here.' Modesty stepped forward and slapped the girl's face hard. Soo Leybourn barely flinched, but a vague awareness crept into her dark eyes.
Modesty said, 'Look at me,' and hit her again. The girl shook her head as if to clear it, then a sudden kaleidoscope of emotions nickered in her face; fear and horror, bewilderment and sorrow, and finally a weary fatalism.
Modesty said, 'You know you've killed your husband?'
'Yes.' The voice was a submissive whisper.
'You know the police will come and put you in prison?'
The dark head nodded.
'Do you want to get away? To escape?'
A tired, hopeless shrug. 'I have nowhere to go.' The whispered words were carefully enunciated.
'You have no family?'
Tears welled suddenly from eyes that stared without hope across an immeasurable distance. 'My family is too far. They are in Kalimbua.'
'Is that a big town?'
'No. Small. A village.' The beautiful hands moved in a
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gesture and fell limp again. 'By walking and the bus, three days from Surabaja.'
'Are you in touch with your family? Do you write letters?'
'Charles did not let me write. He said I did not belong to my family now, because he had paid my father much money to buy me. More than a hundred dollars.'
Modesty looked at Willie, then back at the girl. 'Do you ever get any letters from your family?'
'Twice there was a letter from my father that someone had written for him. Charles showed them to me, but not to read. Then he burnt them.' She spoke without bitterness.
Modesty drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. The essentials of the picture were clear now. Soo Leybourn was from a peasant family which by chance had thrown up a child of rare beauty. How Charles Leybourn had met her with unimportant. He had rubber interests in Java, and could have met the girl in a dozen different ways during one of his trips to the Far East.
Something in her had seized his twisted imagination with compelling force. Her submissiveness, perhaps. He had bought her, married her, brought her to England. She was the ideal creature to serve his peculiar pleasures.
'Would you like to go back to your family?' Modesty asked.
The flash of hope in Soo Leybourn's eyes was swallowed instantly by passive fatalism. 'They are too far. It is not permitted. Charles has told me.'
'Charles was wrong. You can go back. Will your family take you? And do you want to go?'
The girl lifted her head and stared wonderingly for long seconds. Then she tried to speak, began to sob, and nodded her head again and again as if unable to stop. Modesty held her by the shoulders until she was quiet, then said, 'Can you write in English?'
'A little. Yes.'
'Then write what I tell you. Find some paper, Willie.'
Five minutes later a note written in a laboured, childish hand lay under a paperweight on the desk: / have gone away. I cannot be happy here because I am afraid to be hurt so much. Please do not try to find me.
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Modesty took a thin metal box from the pocket of her shirt. Inside lay a small hypodermic and three ampoules. 'She must have snorted that nose-plug out, Willie. It's a pity I didn't do this to begin with.' She pulled the girl's dressing-gown down from one shoulder to bare her arm, saw again the fine network of scars, and added bleakly, 'Or maybe not.'
Willie looked at the dead man and said, 'What about Charles?'
'He'll have to go.' Modesty made the injection, settled Soo Leybourn back in the armchair, and straightened up. 'We'll take the rest of the dollars and make everything tidy. I'll pack a bag for the Soo girl. While I'm doing that, you get Ley-bourn's car out of the garage and put him in the passenger seat. Don't use lights or engine, we'll push the car down the drive. And leave the knife in him for now, there won't be any mess as long as he's corked.'
She moved to the safe and took out the remaining bundles of money. There were little crow's-feet of concentration at the corners of her eyes as she went on: 'When you've dropped us by the hired car, head back this way with Charles. After a quarter-mile there's that tight bend in the secondary road. Wrap the car round a tree there, put Charles behind the wheel, take the knife out of him, and make sure the car really burns out.'
Willie nodded. 'Ashes to ashes.'
'As near as you can make it without benefit of a crematorium.'
'They're doing road repairs there, Princess. If I was to 'it a tar barrel first, bust it open and knock it in the ditch with the car perched on top, and then start the fire?...'
'Better still.' Modesty was sorting through a number of documents in the safe. She put them back and said, 'I was hoping she might have a passport here, but she's probably on Charles' passport. Never mind. You join us again when you've seen Charles off. We'll drop you at Dimple Haigh's place. Rake him out of bed and get him busy on a passport for her. Can he do an Indonesian one?'
Til be surprised if 'e can't.'
'All right. Pick a good enough photograph from his oriental
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section, and use her maiden name. We'll find out what that is before we get there. I'll take her on to the cottage at Benildon. You come on down with the passport when it's ready. She can sleep the night at Benildon, and by morning I'll have Dave Craythorpe laid on for a quick hop across to Dublin in his Beagle.'
Willie rubbed his chin doubtfully. "That's still a long way from Java.'
'It's only thirteen hours to Panama City. I'll go with her to Dublin myself and see her on the plane there. Miguel Sagasta can meet her at the airport and fix the rest of the journey. I'll ring him tonight.' Sagasta was a police captain in Panama City and a trusted friend.
'You think she'll be OK on 'er own?' Willie said, and looked at the sleeping girl. 'She's not all that bright, I reckon.' Modesty shut the safe door and spun the dial. 'She's going home, Willie. She'll keep going till she gets there. All she needs is plenty of money to smooth her way and she can't go wrong.'
Willie Garvin held open the rucksack while Modesty wedged in the remaining bundles of currency. He said hopefully, 'We let the Soo girl 'ave this, then?'
'We must. It's all she'll get. If we leave her to face a murder rap she won't get any of the estate. They don't let you inherit from a husband you've murdered. Even a husband like Ley-bourn.'
'Ought to be a reward for it.' Willie knelt to buckle the straps. 'Still, she'll be well set up with this lot. I'm glad we've been able to 'elp the kid a little.'
'She'll be rich back home.' Modesty paused, frowned, and gave a little shrug of annoyance. 'Pity about Madge and her mental health thing, but that's out of the question now.'
Willie suppressed a snort of laughter. Her concern over that point, which he had entirely forgotten, struck him as slightly hilarious. 'You'll 'ave to go back to selling flags,' he said, then stood up, looked about him and shook his head wonderingly. 'It's been a funny old night, Princess.'
The girl slept. Charles Leybourn lay dead. The hilt of the knife jutted from his chest like some beautiful but evil growth.
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Modesty picked up the rucksack that now bulged with dollars. 'It's been a bit unusual, Willie love,' she agreed.
It took the police twenty-four hours to be reasonably certain that the charred and crumbling bones in the burnt-out car were the remains of Charles Leybourn. The announcement caused a considerable flurry on the Stock Exchange.
The fact that Leybourn's wife had run away on the night of his death roused a natural suspicion which did not last very long. Inquiries soon showed that the oriental Mrs Leybourn would have been totally unable to cope with the technicalities of faking a car accident for her husband. She was not even able to drive, and she had certainly been in the house at the time her husband left Crockfords in his car to drive home.
That she had run away on this particular night was simply a puzzling coincidence. It remained a coincidence, but ceased to be puzzling, when the whips and canes, the shackles and other curious impedimenta, were found in Leybourn's exotic bedroom.
So the man was a kink, a vicious one, and she had run away. It was hardly to be wondered at. The police put out routine inquiries to trace her, and Leybourn's solicitors issued an appeal asking her to come forward in the urgent matter of her husband's estate. Their appeal remained unanswered.
But long before this, even before the police decided that the crash victim must be Leybourn, Modesty Blaise stood in the lounge at Dublin Airport as the first call went out for the night flight to New York.
'You're on your way home, Soo,' she said. 'Don't worry about anything. Just remember you have your old name again now. And when you need money, there's plenty in your bag.' She tapped the little overnight case. 'Hang on to that all the time.'
Soo Leybourn nodded obediently. She wore a blue off-the-peg coat and a grey headscarf. In the past twenty-four hours she had asked no questions, expressed no surprise, shown no apprehension, and offered no thanks. Her eyes were faraway, fixed on the goal ahead.
'This is as far as I can go with you,' Modesty said. 'Just
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follow the stewardess and the rest of the passengers to the aircraft. Tomorrow you'll be in Panama, and soon after that you'll be home with your family.'
Soo Leybourn gazed distantly past Modesty's shoulder and said, 'When I am with my family again I will be happy.'
'I'm sure you will. But don't speak to anybody about what happened last night. Forget you ever knew Charles Leybourn.'
The girl closed her splendid dark eyes for a moment, then opened them again. 'I cannot forget. But I will never speak.' She paused, her eyes focused, and for the first time she looked at Modesty Blaise as if aware of her as a person rather than as a voice which guided and directed her. She said in a low, sad whisper, 'The thing I did was very bad, very wicked.'
Modesty shrugged. Her own word for it would have been stupid. But Soo Leybourn came from a different world, and there was no point now in arguing that you didn't have to kill a sadistic husband to be free of him. 'Try not to feel guilty about it,' she said. 'He used to hurt you badly. I saw.'
A slow, puzzled lift of the long eyebrows. 'Excuse me?'
Modesty felt a flash of irritation. She had felt the same thing many times in the past twelve hours or so with Soo Leybourn. 'I saw your body,' she said patiently. 'I saw the things he'd done to you. So I can understand what you did.'
'Oh.' The girl nodded gravely but still without comprehension. Then understanding dawned in her face, followed by surprise. Slowly she shook her head.
'It was not for that. Not because Charles hurt me.' There was a hint of shock in her placid voice.
'Not?' Modesty stared, shaken.
'No.' A shadow of pride came into Soo Leybourn's face. 'Charles was my husband. It was for me to make him happy, and I did.' The pride was engulfed by grief, and she closed her eyes. 'But then he found another girl to make him happy. He told me four days ago, and he told me all the things he had done to her. He was very pleased with her.' The eyes opened, brimming. 'I could not bear such hurt.'
The final call for the flight sounded on the Tannoy. Soo Leybourn collected herself, tried to smile, and said, 'You have been very kind.' She turned away, joining the handful of other
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passengers moving through the door, walking with quiet grace and holding the little case packed with dollar currency tightly in her hand.
Modesty Blaise sat down on a bench seat and stared blankly out through the dark, rain-specked window. She found that she had taken out a cigarette and lit it, but did not recall going through the motions.
For five minutes she sat smoking quietly, alone in the lounge now, looking at her blurred reflection in the big window and trying to decide what she was feeling. Deflated certainly, angry perhaps. And she knew that mentally her mouth was hanging open. But above all there was a rising indignation which she knew to be quite ludicrous.
She thought of Willie Garvin, imagined the look on his face when she told him, tried to imagine what he would say. And it was then that she choked on her cigarette as all other emotion was swept away in a wave of helpless laughter.