Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint s-4 Page 8

  "And pray Heaven he doesn't pile that bus up on its front bumpers on the way," murmured Simon piously.

  As he slipped into the shadows of a clump of trees, his fingers strayed instinctively to his left sleeve, feeling for the hilt of Belle, the little throwing-knife that was his favorite weapon, which he could use with such a bewildering speed and skill. Once upon a time, Belle had been merely the twin sister of Anna, who was his darling; but he had lost Anna three months ago, in the course of his first fight with Marius. And, touching Belle, in her little leather sheath strapped to his forearm, the Saintly smile flickered over his lips, without reach­ing his eyes....

  Then, beyond the clump of trees, he stood be­side the wooden fence that walled off the estate. It was as tall as himself; he stretched up cautious fin­gers, and felt a thick entanglement of rusty barbed wire along the top. But a couple of feet over his head one of the trees in the clump through which he had just passed extended a long bare branch far over the fence. Simon limbered his muscles swift­ly, judged his distance, and jumped for it. His hands found their hold as smoothly and accurately as if he had been performing on a horizontal bar in a gymnasium; and he swung himself back to the fence hand over hand, pulled up with his arms, carried his legs over, and dropped lightly to the ground on the other side.

  Fastidiously settling his tie, which had worked a fraction of an inch out of place during the per­formance, he stepped through the narrow skirting of forestry in which he had landed, and inspected the view.

  In front of him, and away round to his right, spread an expanse of park land, broken by occa­sional trees, and surrounding the house on the two sides that he could see. Also surrounding the house, and farther in, lay the gardens, trellises and terraces, shrubberies and outbuildings, dimly visi­ble in the gloom. On his left, crowning a steady rise of ground, a kind of balustraded walk cut a clean black line against the sky, and he guessed that this marked the edge of the cliffs.

  In this direction he moved, keeping in the shel­tering obscurity of the border of trees for as long as he could, and then breaking off at right angles, parallel with the balustrade, before he had mount­ed enough of the gentle slope for his silhouette to be marked against the skyline. He felt certain that his entrance upon the estate was not yet public knowledge, and he was inclined to stay cagey about it: the number and personal habits of the household staff were very much of an unknown quantity so far, and the Saint was not tempted to run any risk of provoking them prematurely. Swiftly as he shifted through the faint starlight, his sensitive ears were alert for the slightest sound, his restless eyes scanned every shadow, and the fingers of his right hand were never far from the chased ivory hilt of Belle. He himself made no more sound than a prowling leopard, and that same leopard could not have constituted a more deadly menace to any member of the opposition gang who might have chanced to be roaming about the grounds on Simon Templar's route.

  Presently the house was again on his right, and much nearer to him, for he had travelled round two sides of a rough square. He began to move with an even greater caution. Then, in a moment, gravel grated under his feet. He glanced sharply to his left, to see where the path led, and observed a wide gap in the balustrade at the cliff edge. That would be the top of a flight of steps running down the cliff face to the shore, he figured; and beside the gap he saw a tree that would provide friendly cover for another peep at the developments on the water below.

  He turned off the path and melted into the blackness beneath the tree. This grew on the very edge of the scarp; and the break in the balustrade meant what he had thought it meant—a rough stairway that vanished downwards into the dark­ness.

  Looking out, Simon saw a thin paring of new moon slithering out of the rim of the sea. It wouldn't be much of a moon even when it was ful­ly risen, he reflected, with a voiceless thanksgiving to the little gods that had made the adventure this much easier. For all felonious purposes, the light was perfect—nothing but the soft luminance of a sky spangled with a thousand stars—light enough for a cat-eyed shikari like Simon Templar to work by, without being bright enough to be embarrass­ing.

  He switched his eyes downwards again, and saw, midway between the anchored ship and the thin white ribbon of sand at the foot of the cliff, a tiny black shape stealing over the waters. Motion­less, instinctively holding his breath and parting his lips—the Saint's faculties worked involuntari­ly, whether they were needed or not—he could catch shreds of the sound of grating rowlocks.

  And then he heard another sound, behind him, that was much easier to hear—the gritting of heavy boots on the gravel he had just quitted.

  2

  HE MERGED a little deeper into the blackness of his cover, and looked round. A lantern was bobbing down the path from the house, and three men tramped along by its light. In a moment their voices came to him quite plainly.

  "Himmel! I shall vant to go to bet. Last night— to-night—it iss never no sleep for der mans."

  "Aw—ya big skeezicks! What sorta tony outfit d'ya think ya've horned in on?"

  "Ah, 'e will-a always be sleeping, da Gerraman. He would-a make-a all his time, sleeping and-a drinking—but I t'ink 'e like-a best-a da drinking."

  "Maybe he's gotta toist like I got. Ya can't do nuth'n about dat kinda toist...."

  The Saint leaned elegantly against his tree, watching the advancing group, and there was a hint of genuine admiration in his eyes.

  "A Boche, a Wop, and a Bowery Boy," he mur­mured. "Gee—that man Marius ought to be run­ning the League of Nations!"

  The three men marched a few more yards in si­lence; and they were almost opposite the Saint when the Bowery Boy spoke again.

  "Who's bringin' down de goil?"

  "Hermann"—the Boche answered with guttural brevity.

  "She is-a da nice-a girl, no?" The Wop took up the running sentimentally. "She remind-a me of-a da girl in Sorrento, 'oo I knew—"

  "She sure is a classy skoit. But us poor fish ain't gotta break—it's de big cheese fer hers, sure...."

  They passed so close by the Saint that he could have reached out and knifed the nearest of them without an effort—and he did actually meditate that manoeuvre for a second, for he had a forth­right mind. But he knew that one minor assassina­tion more or less would not make much difference, and he stood to lose more than he could hope to gain. Besides, any disturbance at that juncture would wreck beyond redemption the plan which he had just formed.

  The League of Nations was descending the cliff stairway, the mutter of their voices growing fainter as they went. Simon took another look at the sea and saw that the ship's boat had halved its distance from the shore. And then, after one quick glance round to see if anyone was following on immedi­ately behind the three who had passed on, he slipped out of his shelter and flitted down the steps in the wake of the voices.

  He could have caught them up easily, but he hung well behind. That cliff path was trickier country to negotiate than the smooth turf above; and a single loose stone, at close range, might tell good-night to the story in a most inconvenient and disastrous fashion. Also, one of the three might for some reason take it into his head to return, and the Saint thought he would like warning of that tergiversation. So he saw to it that they kept their lead, and walked with a delicacy that would have made Agag look like a rheumatic rhinoceros.

  Then he found himself on the turn of the last zigzag, while the party below were debouching onto the sands. At the same moment, the ship's boat ran alongside a little jetty, which had been screened from his view when he looked down from the top of the cliff.

  He paused there, thinking rapidly, and survey­ing the scenery.

  The shore itself was destitute of cover for the twenty yards of sand that lay between the end of the path and the jetty; but the miscellaneous grasses and shrubs which grew thickly over the sloping cliff extended right down to the beginning of the sands, without any bare patches that he could see, and appeared to become even thicker before they stopped altogeth
er. This was certainly helpful, but ... He looked out towards the ship and stroked his chin thoughtfully. Then he gazed again at the jetty, where a man from the ship's boat was being helped up into the light of the lan­tern. Near that boat, alongside the wharf, but more inshore, something else rode gently on the water. ... The Saint stiffened slowly, straining his eyes, with a kind of delirious ecstasy stealing through him. He was not quite sure—not quite— and it seemed too good to be true. . . . But, while he stared, the man who had got out of the boat, and the man with the lantern, and one other of the three who had come down from the house began to walk slowly towards the cliff path; and the man with the lantern walked on the outside by the edge of the jetty, and the light of the lantern turned speculation into certainty in the matter of the sec­ond craft which was moored by the wharf. It was, by the beard of the Prophet, an indisputable and incontrovertible outboard motorboat....

  The Saint drew a long lung-easing breath. . . . Too good to be true, but—"Oh, Baby!" sighed the Saint.

  He was even able to ignore, for a short space, the disconcerting fact that this heaven-sent wind­fall coincided in the moment of its manifestation with a remarkably compensating disadvantage. For the third member of the reception committee was squatting on the wharf, talking to the boat's crew; and the other two were escorting the boat's passenger to the cliff stairway; and, at the same time as he perceived the movement of these events, Simon heard the sounds of a small party descend­ing that same cliff stairway towards him.

  Then he looked round and saw the lantern of the descending party bobbing down the second flight above him; he could distinguish two figures, one of them tall and the other one much shorter.

  Slightly annoying. But not desperate....

  Reviewing the ground, he stepped lightly off the path, rounded a shrub, caught the stem of a young sapling, and drew himself silently up into the shadows. And it so happened that the two parties met directly beneath him; and he saw, as he had guessed, that the two who had descended after him were the man Hermann and Sonia Delmar.

  The five checked their progress and gathered naturally into a little group, talking in an under­tone. Sonia Delmar was actually outside the group, temporarily ignored. There was no need for her custodian to fear that she might duck out; Simon could see the cords that bound her wrists to­gether behind her back, and the eighteen-inch hob­ble of rope between her ankles.

  He was crouching where he was, with one arm locked about the slender trunk of the sapling that supported him precariously on the steep slope. The fingers of his free hand stroked tenderly over the ground, and picked up a tiny pebble; aiming care­fully, he lobbed the stone down.

  It struck the girl's hands; but she did not move at once. Then the toe of one shoe kicked restlessly at the gravel under her feet—and if any of the men below had heard the stone fall he would have thought the sound was due to her own movements. The Saint raised his eyes momentarily to the stars above. It was classic. That girl, playing his own game for the first time in her life, so far as he knew, after she'd already walked in under the sha­dow of the axe as coolly as any qualified adventur­er—even with the axe in the act of falling she could watch the subtlest refinements of that game. When any other girl would have been shaking at the knees, thinking hysterically of escape and res­cue, she was calmly and methodically chalking her cue....

  And then, quite naturally and deliberately, she glanced round; and the Saint stood up out of the shadows so that he could be plainly seen.

  She saw him. Even in that dim light he could make out the eager question in her face, and he knew that she must have seen his smile. He nodded, waved his hand, and pointed out to the waiting ship. Then he smiled again; and he crowded into that smile all that he could bring to it of reckless confidence. And when she smiled back, and nodded in semi-comprehension and utter trust, he could have thrown everything to the winds and leaped down to take her in his arms. But he did not. His right hand and arm went out and upwards in a gay cavalier gesture that matched his smile; and then he sank down again into the dark­ness as Hermann curtly urged her on down the slope and the other three resumed their climb. ...

  3

  BUT SHE HAD SEEN HIM; she knew that he was there, that there had been no mistake yet, that he had not betrayed her faith, that he was waiting, ready. . . . And that was something to have shown her. ... And, as he dropped on his toes to the emp­ty path, Simon remembered her fine courage, and Roger Conway, and many things. "Oh, glory," thought the Saint, sinking onto a convenient boul­der, his hands on his knees. . . .

  He saw her marched along the jetty and lifted down into the boat. Hermann squatted down on his haunches beside the other man who was chat­ting with the crew; the flare of the match which he struck to light his pipe brought up in sharp relief the lean predatory face that the Saint could recall so easily. And Simon waited.

  Clearly the boat's crew were delaying for the re­turn of the man they had brought ashore—one of the ship's officers, probably, if not the captain himself. And much seemed now to depend on what had happened to Marius, which in its turn de­pended upon the crown prince's ablutionary pro­gramme. And to the answer to these dependent questions the Saint had still no clue. When Marius came slavering into Saltham with the tale of the desecrated royal toothpaste, no small excitement might have been expected. Therefore the Saint was sure that this had not happened before his own ar­rival on the scene; for, if it had, there would have been a seething cordon of the ungodly around the grounds of the house, and his own modest en­trance would have been a much livelier affair—un­less Marius had banked on what he knew of the Saint's former ignorance of the prince's language. And that was—well, a thin chance. ... Of course, Marius might have arrived while the Saint was do­ing his midnight mountaineering act; but even so, Simon would have expected to hear at least the echoes of some commotion. He estimated that, taken by and large, he and his record combined were an ingredient that might without conceit ex­pect to commotate any brew of blowed-in-the-glass ungodliness, and he would have been very distressed to find that the ungodly had failed to commote as per schedule. Therefore he was blush­ingly inclined to rule out the possibility. . . . But sooner or later the nocturnal tranquillity of that part of the county was bound to be rudely shat­tered, and there were more votes for sooner than later; and the quintessential part of the plot, so far as Simon Templar was concerned, was how soon— with a very wiggly mark after it to indicate impor­tunate interrogation.

  But presently, after an age of grim anxiety, he heard voices above him, and slipped discreetly off the path. Two men came down—one of them, ap­parently, the Boche whose dulcet tones had a little earlier been complaining about his enforced in­somnia, for they spoke in German. The Saint lis­tened interestedly for any reference to himself as they came nearer, but there was none. The Boche complained about the steepness of the path, about the darkness, about the food on which he was fed, and about his lack of sleep, and the ship's officer expressed perfunctory sympathy at intervals; they passed on. They, at all events, were unperturbed by anything they had heard up at the house.

  Simon watched them saunter down the jetty and shake hands. The officer reentered the boat. A man in the bows pushed it off with a boat-hook. The crew bent to their oars.

  In the light of the lanterns held by the men on the jetty Simon could see the girl looking back to­wards the cliff; but she could not have seen him even if he had stood out in the open. And then two of the men on the quay began to trudge back to­wards the cliff path.

  Two of them. . . . Simon saw them pass beneath him, and frowned. Then he looked down to the shore again, seeking the third man, and could not find him. The footsteps and voices of the two who climbed grew fainter and fainter, and presently were lost altogether. They had passed over the top of the scarp; and still the third man had not followed.

  Simon hesitated, shrugged, and descended again to the path. Whatever the third man was doing, he would have to take his chance. Time was getting short. T
he ship must have been ready to weigh an­chor as soon as its compulsory passenger was on board; and besides—well, how soon ...?

  And then, as he paused there, a very Saintly smile bared Simon's teeth in the darkness. For, if the third man was still lurking about on the shore —so much the better. His companions were gone, and the boat was some distance away . . . and the Saint was an efficient worker. The sounds of a slight scuffle need not be fatal. And the third man, whoever he was, could be used—very profitably and entertainingly used—in conjunction with that providential motorboat....

  Simon sped down the path like a flying shadow. As he rounded the last corner a stone dislodged by his foot went clinking over the side of the path and flurried into a bush. He heard a sharp movement at another point beneath him, and went on care­lessly. Then a stocky figure loomed out of the dark directly in front of him.

  "Chi va la?" rapped the startled challenge, in the man's own language; and Simon felt that the occasion warranted a demonstration of his own linguistic prowess.

  "L'uomo che ha la penna della tua zia," he an­swered solemnly.

  His feet grounded on the sand, a yard from the challenger; and, as the man opened his mouth to make some remark which was destined never to be given to the world, the Saint slashed a terrific up­percut into a jaw that was positively asking for it.

  "Exit Signor Boloni, the Italian delegate," murmured the Saint complacently; and, stooping swiftly, he hoisted the unconscious man onto his, shoulder and proceeded on his way thus laden.

  4

  IN A FEW MOMENTS he stood on the jetty beside the motorboat, and there he dumped his burden. Then, like lightning, he stripped himself to the skin.

  The Saint possessed a very elegant and extensive wardrobe when he was at home; but, on this occa­sion, its extensiveness was not at his disposal, and the elegance of the excerpt that he was wearing therefore became an important consideration. He was certainly going to get wet; but he saw no good reason why his clothes should get wet with him. Besides, he felt that it would be an advantage to preserve immaculate the outward adornments of his natural beauty: there was no knowing how much more that Gent's Very Natty was going to have to amble through before the dawn, and to have been forced to exchange any breezy badinage with Rayt Marius or Prince Rudolf while looking like a deep-sea diver whose umbrella had come un-gummed at twenty fathoms would have cramped the Saintly style more grievously than any other conceivable circumstance.