The Saint Closes the Case s-2 Page 6

  Conway was shaking Simon by the shoulder, babbling: "They're getting away! Saint, why don't you shoot?"

  Mechanically the Saint raised his automatic, though he knew that the chance of putting in an effective shot, in that light, was about a hundred to one against anybody—and the Saint, as a pistol shot, had never been in the championship class.

  Then he lowered the gun again, with something like a gasp, and his left hand closed on Conway's arm in a vice-like grip.

  "They'll never do it!" he cried. "I left the car slap op­posite the lane, and they haven't got room to turn!"

  And Roger Conway, watching, fascinated, saw the lean blue shape of the Furillac revealed in the blaze of the flying headlights, and heard, before the crash, the scream of tortured tyres tearing ineffectually at the road.

  Then the lights vanished in a splintering smash, and there was darkness and a moment's silence.

  "We've got 'em!" rapped the Saint exultantly.

  The bulky shadow had left the gate and was lumbering to­wards them up the lane. The Saint was over the hedge like a cat, landing lightly on his toes directly in Teal's path, and the detective saw him too late.

  "Sorry!" murmured the Saint, and really meant it; but he crowded every ounce of his one hundred and sixty pounds of , dynamic fighting weight into the blow he jerked at the pit of Teal's stomach.

  Ordinarily, the Saint entertained a sincere regard for the police force in general and Chief Inspector Teal in particular, but he had no time that night for more than the most laconic courtesies. Moreover, Inspector Teal had a gun, and, in the circumstances, would be liable to shoot first and ask ques­tions afterwards. Finally, the Saint had his own ideas and plans on the subject of the rescue of Vargan from the raiding party, and they did not include either the co-operation or in­terference of the law. These three cogent arguments he summed up in that one pile-driving jolt to Teal's third waist­coat button: and the detective dropped with a grunt of agony. Then the Saint turned and went flying up the lane after Roger Conway.

  He heard a shout behind him, and again a gun barked savagely in the night. The Saint felt the wind of the bullet ac­tually stroke his cheek. Clearly, then, there was at least one more police survivor of Marius's raid; but Simon judged that further disputes with the law could be momentarily post­poned. He swerved like a hare and raced on, knowing that only the luckiest—or unluckiest—of blind shots could have come so near him in such a light, and having no fear that a second would have the same fortune.

  As it happened, the detective who had come out of the garden behind Teal must have realised the same feeling, for he held his fire. But as the Saint stopped by the yellow sedan, now locked inextricably with the wreckage of the battered Furillac, he heard the man pounding on through the darkness towards him.

  Conway was opening the near-side door; and it was a miracle that his career was not cut short then and there by the shot from the interior of the car that went snarling past his ear. But there was no report—just the throaty plop! of an efficient silencer—and he understood that the only shooting they had heard had been done by the police guards. The raid­ers had not been so rowdy as the Saint had accused them of being.

  The next moment Simon Templar had opened a door on the other side of the sedan.

  "Naughty boy!" said Simon Templar reproachfully.

  His long arm shot over the gun artist's shoulder, and his sinewy hand closed and twisted on the automatic in time to send the next shot through the roof of the car instead of through Conway's brain.

  Then the Saint had the gun screwed round till it rammed into the man's own ribs.

  "Now shoot, honeybunch," encouraged the Saint; but the man sat quite still.

  He was in the back of the car, beside Vargan. There was no one in the driver's seat, and the door on that side was open. The Saint wondered who the chauffeur had been, and where he had got to, and whether it had been Angel Face himself; but he had little time to give to that speculation, and any pos­sibility of danger from the missing driver's quarter would have to be faced if and when it materialised.

  Conway yanked Vargan out into the road on one side; and the Saint, taking a grip on the gun artist's neck with his free hand, yanked him out into the road on the other side. One wrench disarmed the man, and then the Saint spun him smartly round by the neck.

  "Sleep, my pretty one," said the Saint, and uppercut him with a masterly blend of science and brute strength.

  He turned, to look down the muzzle of an automatic, and put up his hands at once. He had slipped his own gun into his pocket in order to deal more comfortably with the man from the car, and he knew it would be dangerous to try to reach it.

  "Lovely weather we've been having, haven't we?" drawled the Saint genially.

  This, he decided, must be the guard who had fired at him down the lane; the build, though hefty, was nothing like Angel Face's gigantic proportions. Besides, Angel Face, or any of his men, would have touched off the trigger ten seconds ago.

  The automatic nosed into the Saint's chest, and he felt his pocket deftly lightened of its gun. The man exhaled his satis­faction in a long breath.

  "That's one of you, anyway," he remarked grimly.

  "Pleased to meet you," said the Saint.

  And there it was.

  The Saint's voice was as unperturbed as if he had been conducting some trivial conversation in a smokeroom, instead of talking with his hands in the air and an unfriendly detec­tive focussing a Smith-Wesson on his diaphragm. And the corner was undoubtedly tight. If the circumstances had been slightly different, the Saint might have dealt with this obstacle in the same way as he had dealt with Marius on their first en­counter. Marius had had the drop on him just as effectively as this. But Marius had been expecting a walk-over, and had therefore been just the necessary fraction below concert pitch; whereas this man was obviously expecting trouble. In view of what he must have been through already that night, he would have been a born fool if he hadn't. And something told Simon that the man wasn't quite a born fool. Something in the busi­nesslike steadiness of that automatic . . .

  But the obstacle had to be surmounted, all the same.

  "Get Vargan away, Roger," sang the Saint cheerfully, coolly. "See you again some time. . . ."

  He took two paces sideways, keeping his hands well up.

  "Stop that!" cracked the detective, and the Saint promptly stopped it; but now he was in a position to see round the back of the sedan.

  The red tail-light of the Hirondel was moving—Norman Kent was backing the car up closer to save time.

  Conway bent and heaved the Professor up on to his shoulder like a bag of potatoes; then he looked back hesitantly at Simon.

  "Get him away while you've got the chance, you fool!" called the Saint impatiently.

  And even then he really believed that he was destined to sacrifice himself to cover the retreat. Not that he was going quietly. But . . .

  He saw Conway turn and break into a trot, and sighed his relief.

  Then, in a flash, he saw how a chance might be given, and tensed his muscles warily. And the chance was given him.

  It wasn't the detective's fault. He merely attempted the im­possible. He was torn between the desire to retain his prisoner and the impulse to find out what was happening to the man it was his duty to guard. He knew that that man was being taken away, and he knew that he ought to be trying to do something to prevent it; and yet his respect for the despera­tion of his captive stuck him up as effectively as if it had been the captive who held the gun. And, of course, the detective ought to have shot the captive and gone on with the rest of the job; but he tried, in a kind of panic, to find a less blood­thirsty solution, and the solution he found wasn't a solution at all. He tried to divide his mind and apply it to two things at once; and that, he ought to have known, was a fatal thing to do with a man like the Saint. But at that moment he didn't know the Saint very well.

  Simon Templar, in those two sideways steps that the de­tective
had allowed him to take, had shifted into such a posi­tion that the detective's lines of vision, if he had been able to look two ways at once, at Conway with one eye and at the Saint with the other, would have formed an obtuse angle. Therefore, since the detective's optic orbits were not capable of this feat, he could not see what Conway was doing without taking his eyes off Simon Templar.

  And the detective was foolish.

  For an instant his gaze left the Saint. How he imagined he would get away with it will remain a mystery. Certainly Simon did not inquire the answer then, nor discover it afterwards. For in that instant's grace, ignoring the menace of the auto­matic, the Saint shot out a long, raking left that gathered strength from every muscle in his body from the toes to the wrist

  And the Saint was on his way to the Hirondel before the man reached the ground.

  Conway had only just dumped his struggling burden into the back seat when the Saint sprang to the running-board and clapped Norman Kent on the shoulder.

  "Right away, sonny boy!" cried the Saint; and the Hiron­del was sliding away as he and Conway climbed into the back.

  He collected Vargan's flailing legs in an octopus embrace, and held the writhing scientist while Conway pinioned his ankles with the rope they had brought for the purpose. The expert hands of the first set of kidnappers had already dealt with the rest of him—his wrists were lashed together with a length of stout cord, and a professional gag stifled the screams which otherwise he would undoubtedly have been loosing.

  "What happened?" asked Norman Kent, over his shoul­der; and the Saint leaned over the front seat and explained.

  "In fact," he said, "we couldn't have done better if we'd thought it out. Angel Face certainly brought off that raid like no amateur. But can you beat it? No stealth or subtlety, as far as we know. Just banging in like a Chicago bandit, and hell to the consequences. That shows how much he means busi­ness."

  "How many men on the job?"

  "Don't know. We only met one, and that wasn't Angel Face. Angel Face himself may have been in the car with Vargan, but he'd certainly taken to the tall timber when Roger and I arrived. A man like that wouldn't tackle the job with one soli­tary car and a couple of pals. There must have been a spare bus, with load, somewhere—probably up the lane. There should be another way in, though I don't know where it is. . . . You'd better switch on the lights—we're out of sight now."

  He settled back and lighted a cigarette.

  In its way, it had been a most satisfactory effort, even if its success had been largely accidental; but the Saint was frown­ing rather thoughtfully. He wasn't worrying about the loss of his car—that was a minor detail. But that night he had lost something far more important.

  "This looks like my good-bye to England," he said; and Conway, whose brain moved a little less quickly, was sur­prised.

  "Why—are you going abroad after this?"

  The Saint laughed rather sadly.

  "Shall I have any choice?" he answered. "We couldn't have got the Furillac away, and Teal will trace me through that. He doesn't know I'm the Saint, but I guess they could make the Official Secrets Act heavy enough on me without that. Not to mention that any damage Angel Face's gang may have done to the police will be blamed on us as well. There's nothing in the world to show that we weren't part of the original raid, except the evidence of the gang themselves— and I shouldn't bet on their telling. . . . No, my Roger. We are indubitably swimming in a large pail of soup. By morning every policeman in London will be looking for me, and by to-morrow night my photograph will be hanging up in every police station in England. Isn't it going to be fun?—as the bishop said to the actress."

  But the Saint wasn't thinking it as funny as it might have been.

  "Is it safe to go to Maidenhead?" asked Conway.

  "That's our consolation. The deeds of the bungalow are in the name of Mrs. Patricia Windermere, who spends her spare time being Miss Patricia Holm. I've had that joke up my sleeve for the past year in case of accidents."

  "And Brook Street?"

  The Saint chuckled.

  "Brook Street," he said, "is held in your name, my sweet and respectable Roger. I thought that'd be safer. I merely installed myself as your tenant. No—we're temporarily cov­ered there, though I don't expect that to last long. A few days, perhaps. . . . And the address registered with my car is one I invented for the purpose. . . . But there's a snag. . . . Finding it's a dud address, they'll get on to the agents I bought it from. And I sent it back to them for decarbonising only a month ago, and gave Brook Street as my address. That was careless! . . . What's to-day?"

  "It's now Sunday morning."

  Simon sat up.

  "Saved again! They won't be able to find out much before Monday. That's all the time we want. I must get hold of Pat. . . ."

  He sank back again in the seat and fell silent, and remained very quiet for the rest of the journey; but there was little quietude in his mind. He was planning vaguely, scheming wildly, daydreaming, letting his imagination play as it would with this new state of affairs, hoping that something would emerge from the chaos; but all he found was a certain rueful resignation.

  "At least, one could do worse for a last adventure," he said.

  It was four o'clock when they drew up outside the bunga­low, and found a tireless Orace opening the front door before the car had stopped. The Saint saw Vargan carried into the house, and found beer and sandwiches set out in the dining-room against their arrival.

  "So far, so good," said Roger Conway, when the three of them reassembled over the refreshment.

  "So far," agreed the Saint—so significantly that the other two both looked sharply at him.

  "Do you mean more than that?" asked Norman Kent.

  Simon smiled.

  "I mean—what I mean. I've a feeling that something's hang­ing over us. It's not the police—as far as they're concerned I should say the odds are two to one on us. I don't know if it's Angel Face. I just don't know at all. It's a premonition, my cherubs."

  "Forget it," advised Roger Conway sanely.

  But the Saint looked out of the window at the bleak pallor that had bleached the eastern rim of the sky, and wondered.

  5. How Simon Templar went back to Brook Street, and what happened there

  Breakfast was served in the bungalow at an hour when all ordinary people, even on a Sunday, are finishing their midday meal. Conway and Kent sat down to it in their shirtsleeves and a stubby tousledness; but the Saint had been for a swim in the river, shaved with Orace's razor, and dressed himself with as much care as if he had been preparing to pose for a maga­zine cover, and the proverbial morning daisy would have looked positively haggard beside him.

  "No man," complained Roger, after inspecting the appari­tion, "has a right to look like this at this hour of the morn­ing"

  The Saint helped himself to three fried eggs and bacon to match, and sat down in his place.

  "If," he said, "you could open your bleary eyes enough to see the face of that clock, you'd see that it's after half-past two of the afternoon."

  "It's the principle of the thing," protested Conway feebly. "We didn't get to bed till nearly six. And three eggs . . ."

  The Saint grinned.

  "Appetite of the healthy open-air man. I was splashing mer­rily down the Thames while you two were snoring."

  Norman opened a newspaper.

  "Roger was snoring," he corrected. "His mouth stays open twenty-four hours a day. And now he's talking with his mouth full," he added offensively.

  "I wasn't eating," objected Conway.

  "You were," said the Saint crushingly. "I heard you."

  He reached for the coffee-pot and filled a cup for himself with a flourish.

  The premonition of danger that he had had earlier that morning was forgotten—so completely that it was as if a part of his memory had been blacked out. Indeed, he had rarely felt fitter and better primed to take on any amount of odds.

  Outside, over the garden and
the lawn running down to the river, the sun was shining; and through the open French windows of the morning-room came a breath of sweet, cool air fragrant with the scent of flowers.

  The fevered violence of the night before had vanished as utterly as its darkness, and with the vanishing of darkness and violence vanished also all moods of dark foreboding. Those things belonged to the night; in the clear daylight they seemed unreal, fantastic, incredible. There had been a battle —that was all. There would be more battles. And it was very good that it should be so—that a man should have such a cause to fight for, and such a heart and a body with which to fight it. ... As he walked back from his bathe an hour ago, the Saint had seemed to hear again the sound of the trum­pet. ...

  At the end of the meal he pushed back his chair and lighted a cigarette, and Conway looked at him expectantly.

  "When do we go?"

  "We?"

  "I'll come with you."

  "O.K.," said the Saint. "We'll leave when you're ready. We've got a lot to do. On Monday, Brook Street and all it contains will probably be in the hands of the police, but that can't be helped. I'd like to salvage my clothes, and one or two other trifles. The rest will have to go. Then there'll be bags to pack for you two, to last you out our stay here, and there'll be Pat's stuff as well. Finally, I must get some money. I think that's everything—and it'll keep us busy."

  "What train is Pat travelling on?" asked Norman.

  "That might be worth knowing," conceded the Saint. "I'll get through on the phone and find out while Roger's dress­ing."

  He got his connection in ten minutes, and then he was speaking to her.

  "Hullo, Pat, old darling. How's life?"

  She did not have to ask who was the owner of that lazy, laughing voice.

  "Hullo, Simon, boy!"

  "I rang up," said the Saint, "because it's two days since I told you that you're the loveliest and most adorable thing that ever happened, and I love you. And further to ours of even date, old girl, when are you coming home? . . . No, no particular engagement. . . . Well, that doesn't matter. To tell you the truth, we don't want you back too late, but also, to tell you the truth, we don't want you back too early, either. . . . I'll tell you when I see you. Telephones have been known to have ears. . . . Well, if you insist, the fact is that Roger and I are entertaining a brace of Birds, and if you came back too early you might find out. . . . Yes, they are very Game. . . . That's easily settled—I'll look you out a train now if you like. Hold on."