Saint and the Fiction Makers Read Free Page A

would be delighted to hear your opinion of his work,’ Hugoson said.
    ‘I’d be delighted to tell him,’ the Saint replied. ‘Where is he?’
    ‘That’s what a lot of people would like to know,’ the publisher said, not with the morose air of an entrepreneur who has misplaced a valuable property but with the twinkling eyes of a man enjoying a secret.
    The Saint arched his brows in mild surprise.
    ‘Don’t you know where he is?’
    ‘Mr. Klein? Oh, yes. I know where he is, but nobody else does.’
    ‘Presumably Mr. Klein knows.’
    The publisher nodded.
    ‘Of course. But otherwise …’
    Hugoson spread out his hands. Simon paused and looked at the publisher in a lightning storm of popping flashbulbs. He felt that the man was deliberately trying to arouse his curiosity for some more than frivolous reason, and that fact rather than any real interest in the whereabouts of Mr. Amos Klein began to arouse his curiosity.
    ‘Shall I guess?’ he asked. ‘You have him locked in a hen coop at the bottom of your garden, where you exchange him bread and water for his priceless masterpieces?’
    Hugoson laughed.
    ‘No?’ mused the Saint. ‘Then maybe you have him chained in your attic, where you pass him off as your demented nephew and beat him with rods to keep him working. Or maybe he is your demented nephew?’
    ‘I’m afraid you haven’t a very high opinion of my professional ethics, Mr. Templar,’ the publisher said with a smile.
    ‘I apologize,’ the Saint said. ‘Of course the truth probably is that Amos Klein is the secret nom de plume of the heir of a dukedom whose father would promptly disinherit him if he knew his son had ever sunk so low as to set pen to any paper less dignified than a legal document. You’re merely protecting his good name and his inheritance … not that he’ll need either, considering the fortune he must have been stacking up over the past couple of years.’
    ‘Now you’re closer to the mark. But I’m afraid the truth’s not nearly as picturesque as you’ve imagined it.’ Hugoson’s face darkened. ‘As a matter of fact, the truth’s not nearly so bright, either. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to speak with you about the facts ever since I found out who you are.’
    ‘Well, when do I find out the facts—on my twenty-first birthday?’
    Hugoson leaned closer, though the precaution seemed scarcely necessary in the combined din of the cinema’s mob and the normal uproar of Piccadilly Circus.
    ‘I’ll have to speak with you alone. Maybe you’d be so kind as to …’
    While Hugoson was in mid-sentence, a trio of young men, all fashionably dressed and looking more or less alike, descended on him and proceeded to hustle him away towards a small canebrake of microphones. The essence of the young men’s babble was that he was to be favoured immediately with an interview. Hugoson, looking both appalled and flattered at such apparently unwonted attention, called to Simon over his shoulder:
    ‘Don’t go away, please! It’s urgent that I talk to you.’
    Simon himself was accosted by a gaggle of reporters and photographers who recognized him, but by stubbornly insisting that he had nothing relevant to say, he disposed of them quickly and sauntered towards the tape recorders whose reels were turning in readiness to preserve Mr. Finlay Hugoson’s words for posterity. But on the way to Mr. Hugoson’s vicinity he was distracted by the discovery that the stars of the evening’s film, Sunburst Five, were being questioned in front of cameras almost directly on the street. Rip Savage, as the craggily handsome portrayer of Charles Lake had purportedly been christened by a mother of great foresight and astonishing perception of infant character, was grinning determinedly alongside Carol Henley, whose matching smile looked as if it could not have been blasted off with twice the black powder expended in her last four very explosive films.
    ‘Mr. Savage,’ a tuxedoed interviewer