Prelude For War

'I was afraid you wouldn't,' he admitted. 'Oh no, they're not brilliant. But very respectable. In fact, just about what you'd expect to find at a place like that at the week end. Lady Sangore, the typical army officer's wife, with her husband the typical army officer. Lady Valerie Wood-chester, the bright young society floozie, of the fearfully county huntin'-shootin'-an'-fishin' Woodchesters. Captain Whoosis of the Buffoon Guards, her dashing young male equivalent, probably a nephew or something like that of old Sangore's, invited down to make an eligible partner for Lady Valerie. Comrade Fairweather, the nebulous sort of modern country squire, probably Something in the City in his spare time, and one of the bedrocks of the Conservative party. A perfectly representative collection of English ladies and gentlemen of what we humorously call the Upper Classes. We can find out a bit more about them tomorrow —Peter's been living here long enough now to be able to dig up some extra dirt from the village if he doesn't know it already. But I don't think we'll get anything sensational. People like that live in an even deeper rut than the fellow who goes to an office every morning, although they'd have a stroke if you told them. If only they hadn't invited Com­rade Luker . . .'

'Who is he?'

Simon drew another cigarette to a bright glow from the stump of the last.

'If he's a financier, as the policeman said, and he's the bloke I'm thinking of, I've heard of him. Which is more than most people have done. He moves in a mysterious way.'

'Where does he move?'

'In the most distinguished international circles. He hob­nobs with foreign secretaries and ambassadors and prime ministers, and calls dictators by their first names. But you never read about him in the newspapers, and there are never any photographers around when he pays his calls. They must like him just because he's such a charming guy. Of course he's one of the biggest shareholders in the Stelling Steel Works in Germany, and the Siebel Arms Factory in France, and the Wolverhampton Ordnance Company in England; but you couldn't be so nasty as to think that that had anything to do with it. After all, he plays no favourites. In the last Spanish revolution, the rebels were mowing down Loyalists with Stelling machine guns just as busily as the government was bopping the rebels with Siebels. It was just about the same in the war between Bolivia and Para­guay, except that the Wolverhampton Ordnance Company was in on that as well—on both sides.'

The knot around Patricia's heart seemed to tighten.

'Just one of Nature's altruists,' she said mechanically.

'Oh yes,' said the Saint, with a kind of deadly and dis­tant cheerfulness. 'You couldn't say he was anything but impartial. For instance, he's one of the directors of the Voix Populaire, a French newspaper that spends most of its time howling about the menace of the Italo-German Fascist entente and at the same time he's part owner of the Deutscher Unterricht, which lets off periodical blasts about the French threat to German recovery. ... At home, of course, he's a staunch patriot. He's one of the most gener­ous subscribers to the Imperial Defence Society, which spends its time proclaiming that Britain must have bigger and better armaments to protect herself against all the European enemies of peace. In fact, the I.D.S. takes a lot of credit for the latest fifteen-hundred-million-pound rearmament programme which our taxes are now paying for. And naturally it's just an unavoidable coincidence that the Wolverhampton Ordnance Company is now working night and day to carry out its government contracts.'

'I see,' said Patricia; but it was only as if a fog had eddied and parted capriciously, giving her a glimpse of something huge and terrifyingly inhuman looming through shifting veils of mist.

Simon Templar's face was as dark and cold as graven copper.

'You know what I mean?' he said. 'Kane Luker is probably the only serious rival that our old friend Rayt Marius ever had. And now that Angel Face is no longer with us, Luker stands alone—the kingpin of what somebody once called the Merchants of Death. It's interesting to have met him, because I've often thought that we may have to liquidate him one day.'

The mists broke in Patricia's mind, so that for an instant she could see with a blinding clarity. It was as if the whole interruption of the fire had never happened, as if she was still sitting in the car as she had been before, listening to the sounds that came over the radio, without a break, just as she had been listening. Their primitive stridency beat in her brain again as if they had never ceased—the lusting clangour of trumpets, the machinelike prattle of the drums. Brass and