14 The Saint Goes On Page 22

  It was past ten o'clock when his captors returned. They wore the shabby trousers and drab shirts in which he had first met them; but the whiteness of their arms no longer puzzled him, for there is no sunshine underground.

  Jeffroll went over to the door of the big built-in safe and unlocked it. He turned a switch, and an electric bulb lit up inside. There were no shelves behind the door, but where the shelves should have been he saw a black emptiness and the first rung of a ladder. The Saint was not startled, for that was what he had more or less guessed last night. Even the electric light did not surprise him; he had been putting the final touches to his theory when he looked for the cable that tapped the cross-country grid, and he was sure that the stolen current provided heavier labour besides surreptitious lighting.

  The innkeeper turned back and inspected his wrists and ankles again to reassure himself that the Saint was still securely trussed.

  "For the last time, will you tell us the truth?" he asked, and there was a hoarseness in his voice that seemed to be resisting a temptation to turn the demand into an appeal.

  "I've told you the truth," said the Saint angrily, "and I can't alter it. I'm sorry for you, but you hurt my feelings and I hate being tied up. When I get out of here I'm afraid I shall have to charge you a lot of money for all the fun you've had out of being such a blithering fat-head."

  "If you get out," said Portmore unpleasantly.

  He was carrying a long coil of flex and a couple of sticks of dynamite, and these things answered yet another of the few remaining questions in the Saint's mind. To blow up the tunnel after its work was done would effectively solve the problem of delaying pursuit and hampering the tracing of the rescuers while they extended their flying start to really useful dimensions.

  The men passed through the steel door and went down the ladder, disappearing one by one. Presently they had all gone, but the safe door was left open and the electric light burned dimly at the top of the dark shaft.

  Simon twisted again at his bonds, gritting his teeth at the self-inflicted torture. After a while he felt his hands throbbing and going numb as the tightening metal cut off the circulation; but still he was no nearer to freedom. And no kindly accident had placed a pair of wire-cutters within his reach. He lay back at last breathlessly, and considered his fate as calmly as he could. Julia Trafford, who might have helped him, was kidnapped; Hoppy Uniatz had vanished on the trail of some crazy and incomprehensible inspiration. Nobody else knew where he was. Barring one of those miracles on which his career had already made so many arrogant demands, he could look ahead and see the doors opening for his last and most adventurous journey.

  How soon would it be time to go?

  Probably there would still be a little more work for the men who had gone into the tunnel to do, a few final preparations to make for the triumphal moment. By this time it was twenty minutes to eleven. Between then and midnight it would happen almost certainly. He watched the minute hand crawl maddeningly up the dial of the clock, begin to drop equally slowly down the other side. ...

  Somebody walked with distinctly audible caution down the passage and stopped outside the door, breathing loudly. The handle rattled faintly, but the door had been locked on the inside when Jeffroll and company came in. There was a brief pause; and then a strident whisper grated through the panels.

  "Is dat you, boss?"

  "Good old Hoppy!" gasped the Saint joyfully.

  X HE was not altogether without the power of movement: humping himself inelegantly across the floor like a sort of caterpillar he was able to reach the door, and then, on his knees in front of it, he managed to detach the key with his teeth and pushed it under the door with his feet. Hoppy unlocked the door and stood beaming down at him like a schoolboy who has come home with a prize.

  "Hi," said Mr. Uniatz, in comradely greeting.

  He stepped forward and untied the Saint as casually as he would have offered him a light for a cigarette; and it only needed this casualness to remind Simon that this complacently grinning bonehead was, after all, the cause of more than half the trouble.

  "Where the bloody hell have you been?" he demanded, with an ominous cooling off of his first grateful enthusiasm.

  Mr. Uniatz blinked at him reproachfully, like a dog who has proudly laid a fresh-killed rat at his master's feet, only to receive a clout over the ear. Something, Mr. Uniatz began to suspect, seemed to have come between him and the Boss. The perfect harmony which had hitherto bound them together, their zusammengehorigkeitsgef�hl, as the Germans so succinctly put it, seemed to have come unstuck.

  "Well, boss, I listen outside de door," he said, with a generous attempt to clear up the entire misunderstanding in a sentence.

  "Outside what door?" asked the Saint patiently.

  "Outside dis door here," said Mr. Uniatz, no less patiently -he felt that for the first time in their acquaintanceship his deity, the boss, was found wanting in rudimentary intelligence. "I hear de udder guys have got de snatch on Julia, an' you told me dis mornin' de attorney was in de racket. So when de guy comes out I bean de guy wit' my Betsy an' go after de guy," explained Mr. Uniatz, making everything translucently clear.

  Fortunately the Saint had inside information which enabled him to distinguish one guy from another; but this was about as much as he did understand.

  "Let me get this straight," he said. "When I came in here, you followed and listened outside the door?"

  "Yes, boss."

  "And nobody caught you at it."

  "I didn't t'ink about dat, boss," said Hoppy worriedly, as if he feared that he might yet be caught in that past act of eavesdropping.

  The Saint wiped his forehead. He could remember himself wishing that he could listen outside that door, and discarding the idea as hopelessly impracticable; but a fool had ambled in where a Saint had certainly feared to tread.

  "And you heard about Julia being kidnapped?"

  "Yes, boss."

  "You got steamed up about it, and pushed off to give somebody the works."

  "Well, boss"

  "And then the lawyer came out."

  "Yeah. He came t'ru de dinin'-room. I go after him, an' de udder guy tries to stop me; so I bean him wit' my Betsy."

  "And then what?"

  "De lawyer is gittin' into his heap, an' he don't know I beaned de udder guy. So I climb up in de rumble seat, an' we hit de grit."

  Simon nodded, chafing his hands to ease the pain of returning circulation.

  "Where did you go?"

  "I dunno, boss. Foist we go down to de harbour, an' dis guy gets in a boat an' blows off. I can't find anudder boat to follow him, an' I guess he'd of seen me comin' on de water anyhow, so I sit in de car an' wait. He goes off to a yacht outside an' goes on board. He stays on de yacht free-four hours, an' I begin t'inkin' he ain't comin' back my way. I gotta toist like nobody's business, an' de fishin' guys start lookin' at me an' one of 'em comes up an' asks if I want to rent a boat. After a bit de guy comes back from de yacht, an' I duck back in de rumble an' we screw. We go maybe six miles, an' he turns in de drive of a house dat's got a board outside For Sale. Maybe de house is for sale at dat, because I take a gander t'ru de windows an' it ain't got no foinitchure inside. De red-haired guy is inside wit' a coupla gophers; an' I go in t'ru de door, which is not locked, an' dey lamp my Betsy an' stick 'em up."

  "They didn't try to shoot it out with you?"

  "Say, when I get a hist on a guy he don't have no chance to shoot it out," said Hoppy indignantly. "So I pull deir teet'- lookit, I got de rods here." He fished about in his pockets and produced an assortment of weapons which explained the curious bulges that Simon had noticed on his person. "Well, I say: 'What youse guys done wit' Julia?' Dey don't say nut'n."

  "So what?"

  Mr. Uniatz scratched his head.

  "Well, boss, I give dem a massage."

  Simon's fingers had recovered sufficiently for him to be able to get out a cigarette. He lighted it without interrupting -it seemed be
tter not to inquire too closely into the methods of persuasion to which an old-timer like Hoppy Uniatz would naturally have turned to squeeze information out of reluctant mouths.

  "I have to work a long time," said Mr. Uniatz hesitantly. "But after a bit, when I get started on de lawyer, he squawks."

  The Saint's irritation had subsided again. He was hanging on Hoppy's narrative with a growing ecstasy of excitement.

  "You've found out where Julia is?"

  "Yes, boss," said Mr. Uniatz sheepishly. "She's upstairs in dis empty house all de time-all I gotta do is go an' look for her."

  Simon stared at him for a moment; and then he leaned back and went limp with silent laughter. There was something so climactically cosmic about the picture he saw that it was some time before he could trust his voice again.

  "What did you do then-apologise for troubling them?"

  "Well, boss, I put 'em all in de flivver an' we come back here. I send Julia up to her room when I come in, an" I look for you. De udder guys are still tied up outside."

  The Saint got up and walked silently about the room. The time was racing away now, but he expected to hear the warning explosion of Portmore's dynamite before the rescue party returned, and he wanted to get everything worked out before the final showdown.

  "Did you find out anything else while you were giving these guys your-er-massage?" he asked.

  "Yeah," said Mr. Uniatz, not without pride. "I finished de job."

  He told everything that he had learnt; and Simon listened to him and filled in all the gaps in his own knowledge. The last details of the most amazing plot he had ever stumbled upon fell into place, and he knew the extent of his own sublime good fortune.

  "Did you get hold of this cheque-book?" he asked; and Hoppy produced it.

  He also took over two of the automatics which Hoppy had brought back with him as trophies, and carefully checked the loading of both of them before he put them away, one in each side pocket of his coat. Then he lighted himself another cigarette; and he was smiling. He punched Hoppy thoughtfully in the stomach.

  "Next time I make any rude remarks about your brain, I hope you'll hang something on my chin," he said. "All the boodle in this party belongs to you, and I hope you won't spend it on riotous living. Now shove off and keep an eye on the birds outside while I'm busy. Recite some of your poetry to them and cheer them up."

  There was no need for him to go down into the tunnel, but he was curious to see the amazing work that Jeffroll and company had done, with his own eyes. The ladder inside the safe door took him down through a short shaft into a broad natural cave, and at once he saw how circumstances had helped the rescuers with their undertaking. Some subterranean river, long since dried up, had done half their work for them; but even so he had to admire the thoroughness with which they had carried on that prehistoric excavation.

  On the other side of the cavern, which was lighted at intervals by bulbs slung from the low roof, he saw a hydraulic lift at the foot of another shaft that disappeared vertically upwards into darkness; and he guessed that this was the route by which the excavated earth was removed. At the top of this shaft he knew, without looking for it, that he would have found the door cunningly concealed in the timberings and plaster of the outside wall of the inn through which the soil was tipped out into the lorry that stood in the garage close up to that very wall. Running away from the lift into the depths of the cave was a pair of rusty lines professionally laid on sleepers. A small mine truck stood on the rails close to the lift; that was how the earth was brought up from the head of the tunnel, and it would be the explanation of the strange rumblings underground which had troubled Julia Trafford and brought him on to the trail of the mystery.

  Following the guiding rails, he came at the end of the cavern to the beginning of the artificial tunnel. A mound of shining machinery abandoned close by he was able to identify as some kind of electric excavating drill which had made this terrific task possible to such a small number of workers: the heavily sheathed power cables, still left in place, beside the truck lines, confirmed all his guesses.

  After a moment's hesitation he started into the tunnel. It was barely six feet high, so that he had to stoop slightly to move along it. Throughout the length he saw, it was neatly and expertly buttressed; but all these things were possible with an experienced engineer, which he knew Jeffroll to be, in charge, and four intelligent confederates to help him, of whom two at least must be retired sapper officers. The same electric bulbs dangled at long intervals along the sap, so that in between them there were patches of deep gloom practically amounting to complete darkness. Even so, the technique that must have been required to bring out the far end of the tunnel exactly under a pre-determined cell in Larkstone Prison was one of those astounding exercises of scientific ingenuity at which the Saint, as an uninitiated layman, would always have to gape in speechless awe.

  As he moved deeper into the warren, he began to pick his steps more cautiously, until he was travelling almost noiselessly, a mere foot at a time. Then he heard a patter of scurrying feet somewhere ahead of him; and Portmore's voice boomed hollowly down the echoes with eerie distinctness.

  "Look out!"

  Instinctively the Saint spun off the track and pressed himself against the wall, freezing into immobility in the middle of the deepest patch of darkness he could find. The running men came nearer; and then there was a sudden crash of sound that thundered down the tunnel like the crack of doom. A blast of air like a tornado struck him down the whole side of his body, lifted him off his feet and hurled him a dozen yards down the passage as if he had been hit by an express train.

  He struggled up again, deafened and half-stunned, and listened to the patter of falling stones loosened from the roof by the detonation. All the lights had been shattered by the explosion, and when he felt around for the truck lines to get his bearings he found them half buried in the debris. But the buttressing had been good, and the thousands of tons of earth which might have sunk down from overhead had not fallen.

  He heard Jeffroll's voice now, startlingly near.

  "Are we all right?"

  "I am," said Voss; and one by one the others chimed in reassuringly.

  There was a sixth voice among the responses, a voice which the Saint had not heard before. A moment later somebody switched on an electric torch, and the owner of the voice was picked up by the beam, scarcely three yards away-a fleshy sallow-faced man who still wore the drab uniform of His Majesty's prisons.

  Simon felt in his pocket and drew out one of his guns; his other hand slipped out a tiny flashlight from his breast pocket-it looked very much like a cheap fountain pen, and it had escaped observation when he was searched.

  He drew a careful bead on the other torch, and at that range he was quite an accurate shot. The crisp smack of the report as he pressed the trigger synchronised with the sudden return of utter darkness; and then the beam of his own flashlight stabbed out and swept over the five men.

  "I hope you will all say your prayers before you ask to die," he murmured politely; and then he turned his light on the sixth stranger again. There might be a few minor gaps in his acquaintance with the underworld, but this man was not exactly of the underworld, and his photograph had appeared in every national newspaper in England for six consecutive days during a certain week eighteen months ago. "Mr. Bellamy Wage, I believe?" said the Saint.

  XI they were so stunned that he had the stage to himself; but the Saint had no complaint to make about this, for there were times when he liked talking.

  "You were sentenced at the old Bailey to fourteen years' penal servitude on one charge of forgery and two charges of conspiracy to defraud. The Neovision Radio Company went down the drain to the tune of nearly two million quid, and about a million and a half of that was never accounted for except on the general theory that you must have hidden it away somewhere. Altogether you seem to have been pretty smooth at collecting potatoes; and if somebody had given you the wire to pull your freigh
t a month earlier, I'm sure you'd have turned up later as the hell of a big shot somewhere in South America and had the whale of a time on your old-age pension."

  His torch-light panned warningly over the rescuers again, and nobody moved.

  "But even when you were caught, you weren't finished," he went on chattily. "You had Yestering, a smart crook lawyer; and when he couldn't find enough perjurers to lie you out of the dock you gave him another idea. Through him, you offered a reward of half a million pounds to anyone who could get you out of Larkstone; and you would pay all the expenses, signing the cheques he brought when he visited you. He got hold of these men-trained engineers, down on their luck, and willing to take a sporting risk for a fortune. They did this work; but Yestering was too greedy. He wanted more than his fee. When everything was nearly ready, he got hold of a gorilla named Garthwait to try and muscle the others out of here-the idea was that Garthwait should bring off the actual rescue, and claim to have done all the work from the start, and then the two of them would split the reward. Jeffroll and the others knew they were up against it, but Garthwait didn't quite succeed in scaring them off, so Jeffroll's niece was kidnapped last night and held for a hostage. She was to be returned in exchange for you, and Garthwait was still to go on and claim the beauty prize. Unfortunately for everybody except me, I butted in."

  Bellamy Wage clenched his fists. He was pale and trembling with fear.

  "Who are you?" he asked shakily.

  "I am Simon Templar, known as the Saint; and I expect it will be fun for you to meet an honest man after all these twisters you've had round you. I've done a lot of good work on this business myself," said the Saint modestly, "and put up with a good deal of rudery and discomfort, for which someone is going to have to console me. Jeffroll has misunderstood me from the beginning. I suppose there was some excuse for him, but I don't know." He turned the ray of his torch slightly. "By the way, brother, Julia is back."