The Saint Abroad

by Leslie Charteris

  “Let’s not blow this up out of proportion,” he said firmly. “These demonstrators are of no real importance. Keep that in mind. British public opinion is entirely on our side, and that’s what counts. The people in most civilized countries can still tell sanity from insanity even if a lot of their politicians can’t. Those howling monkeys with the placards can sound pretty bloodcurdling, but when the government gets down to business they’ll think of votes.”

  “But these monkeys will get top play in the headlines,” one of the aides put in. “When you see the papers tomorrow you’ll hardly know we were here.”

  The Deputy Prime Minister, Todd, made an uncomplimentary and fairly obscene remark about newspapermen and the bias of the international press, which almost invariably took a dim view of self-assertive activities on the part of Europeans anywhere in the world.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Liskard insisted. “I don’t want anybody in this delegation to show any sign of disturbance, no matter what kind of demonstration they have in store for us. Is that understood? Look pleasant. Keep your dignity. It’s the best way to turn one of these situations into a defeat for the other side. Remember—if out of a hundred photographs the editors can find one that makes us look bad, that’s the one they’ll print on the front page.”

  “Right,” Foreign Minister Stewart said. “And the same goes for statements. I don’t need to remind you that an unwise word to some interviewer could ham up the negotiations completely.”

  He was speaking not to Liskard, of course, but to the younger aides, and, surprisingly, to Todd, who looked grim suddenly and avoided the eyes of the other men. Apparently the Deputy Prime Minister had indiscreetly overstepped the bounds of his authority at some time in the past while dealing with the press.

  “Excuse me, please,” Anne Liskard said. “I must go put on a face to meet the faces that I’ll meet.”

  “It’ll be a little easier after the plane stops,” said the Saint

  She gave him a crisply cool smile as she stood up. She had by no means forgiven him for refusing to respond to her public displays of affection at the beginning of the trip, and then for devoting himself almost entirely to conversation with her husband during the middle hours of the flight.

  “Thank you for the warning,” she said in clipped tones. “I’m quite capable of lurching down the aisle to the ladies’ room without any advice from Robin Hood.”

  Simon let her lurch and sat back down to have a look out the drizzle-beaded window. It was late in the day, and the brightness of the sky far above the earth had been abruptly exchanged, when the plane descended below the sea of clouds that had been like a solid surface beneath it, for the fading gray light of a rainy winter afternoon. The pavement glistened clammily, and east was merged with west, and north with south, in the congested sky that seemed to press down and smother the whole country as night came on.

  A hundred yards away, beside one of the wings of the terminal building, he saw the wheeled stairway which would be put up to the jet’s door. Near it was a black limousine and a handful of men. It was not a very spectacular reception, considering Liskard’s status, and Simon regretted it. Whatever reservations he had felt about being with the Prime Minister’s party at the beginning of the flight, when he had realized what sort of woman Mrs Liskard was, he had grown much more pleased with the situation during his long chat with Thomas Liskard. His intuition about the man—based only on reading—had proved right. The Prime Minister was a straight, honest, and intelligent man who shared nothing of the barren lust for power or the dependence on cloudy and utterly impractical social theories with which so many of his counterparts in other countries were leading their people in the direction of hypothetical Utopias which in reality prove to be nothing more, at their noisiest, than maelstroms of disorder, or, at their dullest, stagnant backwaters of living death. More than ever, the Saint saw Liskard as a bulwark—even if not a very powerful one—against the denial of truths about human instinct and the strange guilty deference to mediocrity, indolence, and weakness which sometimes seemed to be threatening to emasculate the whole western world.

  One of the stewardesses who had been serving the party throughout the flight came into the curtained compartment as the plane stopped and cut its engines.

  “We’ll hold the other passengers in their places until your party is off, Mr Prime Minister,” she said.

  Liskard turned in his seat and shook his head. “I think it would be best if the others left first,” he told her. “We might delay things at the foot of the gangway for quite a while.”

  The stewardess leaned down and peered out of one of the windows.

  “I don’t see any band or anything,” she said.

  Liskard laughed.

  “You’re probably remembering the reception you got when you flew some murderous little tribal dictator through here on his way to bawl out the United Nations. There’ll be no brass band for the likes of us. We can count ourselves lucky that they haven’t laid on a firing squad.”

  “Assuming they haven’t,” said Stewart with a wry grin.

  Lockhart stood up as the plane’s personnel set about opening the door and shepherding the ordinary passengers out. He pointed suddenly toward the open deck on the upper floor of the terminal building.

  “Look at that!”

  On the terrace, where friends of passengers were able to stand and wave to arriving and departing passengers, there was a violent commotion. Apparently a dozen or so anti-Liskard demonstrators had gone up there individually without attracting any special attention from the police. Now the demonstrators—who were of the shorn and shod variety, and were able to avoid arousing suspicion until they were ready to act—pulled rolls of paper from under their coats and unfurled them into banners with brief but clearly legible messages printed in large red letters.

  “DEATH TO FASCIST LISKARD!”

  “FREEDOM TODAY—NOT TOMORROW!”

  “ONE MAN—ONE VOTE!”

  The police obviously had been instructed to allow no demonstrations in the terminal building, an instruction with which the demonstrators disagreed with open vehemence when they were informed of it. The policemen tried to take their signs away, and there was a scuffle. One of the demonstrators sat down. Another clung to the pedestal of a coin-slot telescope with arms and legs. All began to chant so loudly that their words could be heard inside the plane as the passengers disembarked.

  “Liskard out! Freedom in! Liskard out! Freedom in!”

  Lockhart shook his head.

  “Ugly-looking lot, aren’t they?”

  Liskard pretended he was referring to the very correctly dressed gentlemen grouped to meet him by the rolling stairway.

  “You’re speaking of the flower of the lower branches of the diplomatic corps,” he said.

  Lockhart’s youthful face turned crimson.

  “I mean the demonstrators, sir,” he said stiffly.

  Liskard, who was standing next to his secretary, clapped him on the shoulder.

  “You take things much too seriously, Lockhart. You’ve got to laugh sometimes or you’ll go loony. That’s especially true when you look at types like that out there with the signs. They screech for peace, but they’d as soon kill you for disagreeing with them as not.”

  Todd grunted.

  “I suppose you’re planning to say that when you speak to the press?” he said.

  Anne Liskard, who was returning down the aisle, produced a sarcastic chuckle.

  “Don’t be silly. Tom knows as well as anybody that honesty has its own season.”

  “At least I know when I’m lying and when I’m not—though we call it being diplomatic, not lying. At least when you know a man’s self-interest is clearly tied with his own survival and his possessions and his people, you know where you stand with him. To me, the most potentially destructive man of all is the one who really believes his motives are based on universal ideals instead of what he’d call more selfish loyalties. Show me a man who cla
ims he bases his actions on the principle that all power is evil, and that human want and inequality can be done away with, and that the world can be persuaded and legislated into eternal peace and brotherhood, and I’ll show you a man who’s either a liar or a fool…and most likely a very unstable and dangerous fool at that.”

  Anne Liskard sighed.

  “The philosopher king,” she muttered.

  Simon, who had found it more interesting to listen than to intrude his own thoughts, extended his hand to Liskard.

  “I’ll just say thank you,” he said. “I’d better get off with the rest of the common people. But I’d like to wish you luck.”

  “You aren’t leaving us to that mob, are you?” Anne Liskard asked tauntingly.

  “Mr Templar has already saved my life once today,” the Prime Minister said. “I can’t ask him to do it again. But I can ask him to dinner with us. Tomorrow night, Mr Templar? It won’t be terribly elaborate, which means it may be a little more bearable than most of these diplomatic things.”

  “Please do!” Anne Liskard begged, with more sincerity than show. “You have no idea what a relief it would be to have a real person at the table along with all those marionettes.”

  “We might even be able to furnish you with some of that excitement you’re so famous for enjoying. There could be other attempts against my life here in London.”

  At that moment, the last thing that Simon wanted was any further exciting involvement in international politics, and he might have refused the Prime Minister’s invitation if he had had time to give it thought, but the last of the non-political passengers were descending the ramp from the door of the plane, and he hoped to make his exit as an anonymous member of the herd. Newspapers would be hawking the story of the Nagawiland assassination attempt all over the city by now, and reporters would be baying like a pack of hounds after any detail of the story and any personality involved—and particularly any personality already as fabled as the Saint. His chance of avoiding recognition was slim now, but it would be totally nil within another minute.

  “Thank you very much,” he said hastily. “I’d be honored to come, even without any gunfire to liven up the evening. But now I’d better get out of here.”

  “Come with us if you like,” the Prime Minister said. “I’d certainly be delighted to introduce you to the press and publicly thank you for saving my life.”

  “I’m afraid that being blinded by flashbulbs and answering silly questions in a freezing rain isn’t my idea of a rewarding experience,” the Saint said. “I’d be much more grateful for dinner tomorrow.”

  Liskard grinned.

  “Entirely understandable. We’ll see you at Nagawi House tomorrow evening. Eight o’clock.”

  “Fine.”

  Simon shook hands with Anne Liskard, who apparently had forgiven him for not prostrating himself in helpless worship after her first attentions and was showing signs of becoming hot-eyed and clinging again.

  “It was very exciting to meet you,” she said.

  “I haven’t been bored for a minute myself,” Simon told her. “Good night, and thank you.”

  As he hurried through the curtains toward the plane’s exit, he heard Thomas Liskard’s deep voice behind him.

  “And now…out into the arena and the lions.”

  4

  The violent night of the Prime Minister of Nagawiland’s arrival at London Airport is a matter of history. The Saint learned the full story of Liskard’s unofficial welcome to London by the forces of righteousness the next morning in the newspapers.

  Apparently the demonstrators blocking traffic outside the terminal had been more than mildly chagrined that a would-be assassin had failed to kill Prime Minister Liskard in Nagawiland and had resolved to set things right by killing him themselves. They had not succeeded, although a window of the limousine carrying him had been cracked by a thrown brick and spattered with broken eggs. Foreign Minister Stewart had been spat upon, and Deputy Prime Minister Todd had been struck by a placard bearing the vague but undeniably optimistic sentiment, “FREEDOM AND EQUALITY FOR ALL PEOPLE!”

  The Saint was surprised and gratified to read that Liskard’s secretary, young Lockhart, had pushed a demonstrator to the ground who had been trying to kick the Prime Minister as he left the terminal building, and had also torn in half a colorfully if obscenely illustrated poster which read, “AFRICAN PEOPLE’S UNION WILL TIE KILLER LISKARD’S HANDS WITH HIS OWN ENTRAILS!”

  Lockhart’s exploit of course received top billing in the newspapers, which featured photographs of him in action along with such captions as, “Police state Gestapo in London? Liskard’s burly bodyguard attacks demonstrator.” Other photographs highlighted injuries suffered by the pickets, and showed policemen engaged in the sadistic activity of dragging them out of the public thoroughfare. “Spokesmen” seriously questioned whether representatives of a regime like Liskard’s, which deliberately stirred up such commotions, should be allowed to set foot on English soil or not.

  The afternoon papers headlined the news that Lockhart—who was no more burly than he was a bodyguard—had been “disciplined” by Prime Minister Liskard and sent back to Nagawiland. Simon, as sorry as he was to hear about that, understood the political necessity of Liskard’s action. Without the support of the English majority, Liskard’s mission would be doomed. The vicious demonstrations against him had certainly increased his popularity, while Lockhart’s behavior—especially as it was reported in distorted form by the left-wing press—was just the kind of thing that could ruin Liskard completely. His position was so precarious that he and his associates would have to be a dozen times more virtuous, more polite, more modest, more unblemished in general than ordinary men to stand even a small chance of being judged the moral superiors of the most debased inmates of Her Majesty’s prisons. If Liskard could pull that somewhat superhuman feat off successfully, the stability of his country might be preserved.

  And that, Simon thought, was exactly what Liskard’s political enemies would be most anxious to prevent. If Liskard managed to get through his stay in England without something more deeply damaging to his cause than riots or rifle bullets aimed in his direction, it would be a miracle of such magnitude that the Saint would not thereafter have been at all surprised to see the monumental stone lions of Trafalgar Square get up off their perches, yawn, and stroll away toward Piccadilly Circus.

  Simon enjoyed his whimsical thought about lions as he was leaving Upper Berkeley Mews and setting out by taxi for the Prime Minister’s dinner in Hampstead. He had spent the day doing those necessary and temporarily novel-seeming ordinary things which people do just after returning from a long trip.

  Now he was ready to relax, and attending a formal dinner with a lot of stuffed tuxedoes was not his idea of relaxation. There was only one compensating factor. As dull as the dinner might be, it would bring him in close contact with the most important political situation developing in London at that time. There was some interest and a little excitement in that. But more to the Saint’s taste was the prospect of keeping up a contact with a worthy man whose very continued existence from hour to hour was something of a marvel, and who was bound to become the target of the most advanced forms of defamation and general nastiness that his enemies could contrive.

  The Saint did not like plotters against worthy men. He had devoted considerable energy in his lifetime to bringing the activities of such plotters to abrupt and often violent ends. The fact that their ends often coincided with a transfer of material assets from their coffers to the Saint’s numerous bank accounts was no denial of the fact that he gained great spiritual satisfaction just from doing them in. And if he could help Thomas Liskard, if only by appearing at a dinner, he was delighted to do it.

  Nagawi House was a fairly modest establishment, as residences maintained by governments on foreign soil go, but it was set back on spacious grounds, and its restrained brick lines were a tribute to neo-classicism. Fortunately its generations-dead
architect had thought not only of beauty but also of practicality, having included a high brick wall which helped keep out the thieves of his own time and the picket lines of the twentieth century.

  They were there, a hundred shaggy-bearded worshippers of dirt, despisers of achievement and work, fearers of all things strong and superior, proclaimers of an opiate called universal love. They were the bacteria of anarchy, and they were gathered in motley force outside the gates of Nagawi House.

  “Hold your nose, sir, we’re going through,” the taxi driver said over his shoulder.

  The cab pushed through the lane held open by hard-pressed police, and several dozen voices on either side screeched obscenities. Inside the gates, along the crescent drive, the lawn was free of wild-eyed humanity. Hoarfrost glittered on the grass in the light of lamps which stood on either side of the doorway. The doorman greeted Simon and ushered him into the entrance hall, where his identity was checked before he was admitted to the main reception room. There he took his place in the line-up of dignitaries shuffling toward Thomas Liskard and his wife.

  “Simon, I’m so glad you came,” Anne Liskard said smoothly.

  For the first time the Saint understood why—aside from the woman’s silvery beauty, which was dazzlingly set off by diamonds and a pure white shoulderless evening dress—Thomas Liskard had been able to fit her in with his political career. If she was drunk, she was concealing it gracefully. Her smile was warm and dignified, and her handshake completely decorous. Apparently she was ambitious enough or decent enough to control her weaknesses in public. If Simon had not seen her in more intimate action the day before he would never have guessed that such shattering drives were fighting beneath her entirely attractive surface.

  “It’s nice to see you again,” the Saint answered, no less suavely. “I’m sorry you had that trouble with the pickets yesterday.”