As he placed his hands helpfully behind his back the Saint's thoughts switched off along another line. And that line ranged out in the shape of a series of question marks towards the decision of Marius which he had yet to hear. From the first he had intended to make certain that the giant's machinations should this time be ended for ever, not merely checked, and with this object he had been prepared to take almost any risk in order to discover what other cards Marius might have to play; and now he was surely going to get his wish. . . . Though what the revelation could possibly be was more than Simon Templar could divine. That there could be any revelation at all, other than the obvious one of revenge, Simon would not have believed of anyone but Marius. The game was smashed—smithereened—blown to ten different kinds of Tophet. There couldn't be any way of evading the fact—unless Marius, with Lessing in his power, had conceived some crazy idea of achieving by torture what cunning had failed to achieve. But Marius couldn't be such a fool. . . .
The rope expert finished his task, tested the knots, and passed on to Roger Conway; and the Saint shifted over to the nearest wall and lounged there elegantly. Marius had seated himself at the desk, and nothing about him encouraged the theory that he was merely plotting an empty vengeance. After a brief search through a newspaper which he took from the wastebasket beside him, he had spread out a large-scale map on the desk in front of him and taken some careful measurements; and now, referring at intervals to an open time-table, he was making some rapid calculations on the blotter at his elbow. The Saint watched him thoughtfully; and then Marius looked up, and the sudden sneering glitter in his eyes showed that he had misconstrued the long silence and the furrows of concentration that had corrugated the Saint's forehead.
"So you are beginning to realize your foolishness, Templar?" said the giant sardonically. "Perhaps you are beginning to understand that there are times when your most amusing bluff is wasted? Perhaps you are even beginning to feel a little— shall we say—uneasy?"
The Saint beamed.
"To tell you the truth," he murmured, "I was composing one of my celebrated songs. This was in the form of an ode on the snags of life which Angel Face could overcome with ease and grace. The limpness of asparagus meant nothing to our Marius: not once did he, with hand austere, drip melted butter in his ear. And with what maestria did Rayt inhale spaghetti from the plate! Pursuing the elusive pea ——"
For a moment the giant's eyes blazed, and he half rose from his chair; and then, with a short laugh, he relaxed again and picked up the pencil that had slipped from his fingers.
"I will deal with you in a moment," he said. "And then we shall see how long your sense of humor will last."
"Just as you like, old dear," murmured the Saint affably. "But you must admit that Ella Wheeler Wilcox has nothing on me."
He leaned back once more against the wall and watched Broken Nose getting busy with the girl. Roger and Lessing had already been attended to. They stood side by side—Lessing with glazed eyes and an unsteady mouth, and Roger Conway pale and expressionless. Just once Roger looked at the girl, and then turned his stony gaze upon the Saint, and the bitter accusation in that glance cut Simon like a knife. But Sonia Delmar had said nothing at all since she entered the room, and even now she showed no fear. She winced, once, momentarily, when the rope expert hurt her; and once, when Roger was not looking at her, she looked at Roger for a long time; she gave no other sign of emotion. She was as calm and queenly in defeat as she had been in hope; and once again the Saint felt a strange stirring of wonder and admiration. . . .
But—that could wait. ... Or perhaps there would be nothing to wait for. ... The Saint became quietly aware that the others were waiting for him—that there was more than one reason for their silence. Even as two of them had followed him blindly into the picnic, so they were now looking to him to take them home. . . . The fingers of the Saint's right hand curled tentatively up towards his left sleeve. He could just reach the hilt of his little knife; but he released it again at once. The only chance there was lay in those six inches of slim steel, and if that were lost he might as well ask permission to sit down and make his will: he had to be sure of his time.. . .
At length the rope expert had finished, and at the same moment Marius came to the end of his calculations and leaned back in his chair. He looked across the room.
"Hermann!"
"Ja, mein Herr?"
"Give your gun to Lingrove and come here."
Without moving off the bookcase the Bowery Boy reached out a long arm and appropriated the automatic lethargically; and Hermann marched over to the desk and clicked his heels.
And Marius spoke.
He spoke in German; and, apart from Hermann and the somnolent Bavarian, Simon Templar was probably the only one in the room who could follow the scheme that Marius was setting forth in cold staccato detail. And that scheme was one of such a stupendous enormity, such a monstrous inhumanity, that even the Saint felt an icy thrill of horror as he listened.
4
HE STARED, FASCINATED, at the face of Hermann, taking in the shape of the long narrow jaw, the hollow cheeks, the peculiar slant of the small ears, the brightness of the sunken eyes. The man was a fanatic, of course—the Saint hadn't realized that before. But Marius knew it. The giant's first curt sentences had touched the chords of that fanaticism with an easy mastery; and now Hermann was watching the speaker raptly, with one high spot of colour burning over each cheek-bone, and the fanned flames of his madness flickering in his gaze. And the Saint could only stand there, spellbound, while Marius's gentle, unimpassioned voice repeated his simple instructions so that there could be no mistake. . . .
It could only have taken five minutes altogether; yet in those five minutes had been outlined the bare and sufficient essentials of an abomination that would set a torch to the powder magazine of Europe and kindle such a blaze as could only be quenched in smoking seas of blood. . . . And then Marius had finished, and had risen to unlock a safe that stood in one corner of the room; and the Saint woke up.
Yet there was nothing that he could do—not then. . . . Casually his eyes wandered round the room, weighing up the grouping and the odds; and he knew that he was jammed—jammed all to hell. He might have worked his knife out of its sheath and cut himself loose, and that knife would then have kissed somebody good night with unerring accuracy; but it wouldn't have helped. There were two guns against him, besides the three other hoodlums who were unarmed; and Belle could only be thrown once. If he had been alone, he might have tried it—might have tried to edge round until he could stick Marius in the back and take a lightning second shot at the Bowery Boy from behind the shelter of that huge body—but he was not alone. . . . And for a moment, with a deathly soberness, the Saint actually considered that idea in despite of the fact that he was not alone. He could have killed Marius, anyway—and that fiendish plot might have died with Marius— even if Lessing and Roger and Sonia Delmar and the Saint himself also died. . . .
And then Simon realized, grimly, that the plot would not have died. To Hermann alone, even without Marius, the plot would always have been a live thing. And again the Saint's fingers fell away from his little knife.. . .
Marius was returning from the safe. He carried two flat metal boxes, each about eight inches long, and Hermann took them from him eagerly.
"You had better leave at once." Marius spoke again in English, after a glance at the clock. "You will have plenty of time—if you do not have an accident."
"There will be no accident, mein Herr."
"And you will return here immediately."
"Jawohl!"
Hermann turned away, slipping the boxes into the side pockets of his coat. And, as he turned, a new light was added to the glimmering madness in his eyes; for his turn brought him face to face with the Saint.
"Once, English swine, you hit me."
"Yeah." Simon regarded the man steadily. "I'm only sorry, now, that it wasn't more than once."
"I have not forgotten, pig," said Hermann purringly; and then, suddenly, with a bestial snarl, he was lashing a rain of vicious blows at the Saint's face. "You also will remember," he screamed, "that I hit you—pig—like that—and that—and that. . . ."
It was Marius who caught and held the man's arms at last.
"Das ist genug, Hermann. I will attend to him myself. And he will not hit you again."
"Das ist gut." Panting, Hermann drew back. He turned slowly, and his eyes rested on the girl with a gloating leer. And then he marched to the door. "I shall return, werter Herr," he said thickly; and then he was gone.
Marius strolled back to the desk and picked up his cigar. He gazed impassively at the Saint.
"And now, Templar," he said, "we can dispose of you." He glanced at Roger and Lessing. "And your friends,'' he added.
There was the faintest tremor of triumph in his voice, and for an instant the Saint felt a qualm of desperate fear. It was not for himself, or for Roger. But Hermann had been promised a Reward. ...
And then Simon pulled himself together. His head was clear—Hermann's savage attack had been too unscientific to do more than superficial damage—and his brain had never seemed to function with more ruthless crystalline efficiency in all his life. Over the giant's shoulder he could see the clock; and that clock face, with the precise position of the hands, printed itself upon the forefront of the Saint's mind as if it had been branded there with red-hot irons. It was exactly twenty-eight minutes past two. Four hours clear, and a hundred and fifteen miles to go. Easy enough on a quiet night with a powerful car—easy enough for Hermann. But for the Saint. ... for the Saint, every lost minute sped the world nearer to a horror that he dared not contemplate. He saw every facet of the situation at once, with a blinding clarity, as he might have seen every facet of a pellucid jewel suspended in the focus of battery upon battery of thousand-kilowatt sun arcs—saw everything that the slightest psychological fluke might mean— heard, in imagination, the dry, sarcastic welcome of his fantastic story. . . . Figures blazed through his brain in an ordered spate—figures on the speedometer of the Hirondel, trembling past the hairline in the little window where they showed— seventy-five—eighty—eighty-five. . . . Driving as only he could drive, with the devil at his shoulder and a guardian angel's blessing on the road and on the tires, he might average a shade over fifty. Give it two hours and a quarter, then—at the forlorn minimum. . . .
And once again the Saint looked Marius in the eyes, while all these things were indelibly graven upon a brain that seemed to have been turned to ice, so clear and smooth and cold it was. And the Saint's smile was very Saintly.
"I hope," he drawled, "that you've invented a really picturesque way for me to die."
CHAPTER TWELVE
How Marius organized an accident and Mr. Prosser passed on
1
IT IS CERTAINLY necessary for you to die, Templar," said Marius dispassionately. "There is a score between us which cannot be settled in any other way."
The Saint nodded, and for a moment his eyes were two flakes of blue steel.
"You're right, Angel Face," he said softly. "You're dead right. . . . This planet isn't big enough to hold us both. And you know as surely as you're standing there that if you don't kill me I'm going to kill you, Rayt Marius!"
"I appreciate that," said the giant calmly.
And then the Saint laughed.
"But still we have to face the question of method, old dear," he murmured, with an easy return of all his old mocking banter. "You can't wander round England bumping people off quite so airily. I know you've done it before—on one particular occasion—but I haven't yet discovered how you got away with it. There are bodies to be got rid of, and things like that, you know—it isn't quite such a soft snap as it reads in story books. It's an awful bore, but there you are. Or were you just thinking of running us through the mincing machine and sluicing the pieces down the kitchen sink?"
Marius shook his head.
"I have noticed," he remarked, "that in the stories to which you refer, the method employed for the elimination of an undesirable busybody is usually so elaborate and complicated that the hero's escape is as inevitable as the reader expects it to be. But I have not that melodramatic mind. If you are expecting an underground cellar full of poisonous snakes, or a trap-door leading to a subterranean river, or a man-eating tiger imported for your benefit, or anything else so conventional—pray disillusion yourself. The end I have designed for you is very simple. You will simply meet with an unfortunate accident—that is all."
He was carefully trimming the end of his cigar as he spoke; and his tremendous hands moved to the operation with a ruthless deliberation that was more terrible than any violence.
The Saint had to twist his bound hands together until the cords bit into his wrists—to make sure that he was awake. Vengeful men he had faced often, angry men a thousand times; more than once he had listened to savage, triumphant men luxuriously describing, with a wealth of sadistic detail, the arrangements that they had made for his demise: but never had he heard his death discussed so quietly, with such an utterly pitiless coldbloodedness. Marius might have been engaged in nothing but an abstract philosophical debate on the subject—the ripple of vindictive satisfaction in his voice might have passed unnoticed by an inattentive ear. . . .
And as Marius paused, intent upon his cigar, the measured tick of the clock and Lessing's stertorous breathing seemed to assault the silence deafeningly, mauling and mangling the nerves like the tortured screech of a knife blade dragged across a plate. . . .
And then the sudden scream of the telephone bell jangled into the tenseness and the torture, a sound so abruptly prosaic as to seem weird and unnatural in that atmosphere; and Marius looked round.
"Ah—that will be Herr Dussel."
The Saint turned his head in puzzled surprise, and saw that Roger Conway's face was set and strained.
And then Marius was talking.
Again he spoke in German; and Simon listened, and understood. He understood everything— understood the grim helplessness of Roger's stillness—understood the quick compression of Roger's lips as Marius broke off to glance at the clock. For Roger Conway's German was restricted to such primitive necessities as Bahnhof, Speisewagen, and Bier; but Roger could have needed no German at all to interpret that renewed interest in the time.
The Saint's fingers stole up his sleeve, and Belle slid gently down from her sheath.
And Simon understood another reason why Roger had been so silent, and had played such an unusually statuesque part in the general exchange of genial persiflage. Roger must have been waiting, hoping, praying, with a paralyzing intentness of concentration, for Marius to overlook just the one desperate detail that Marius had not overlooked. ...
The Saint leaned very lazily against the wall. He tilted his head back against it, and gazed at the ceiling with dreamy eyes and a look of profound boredom on his face. And very carefully he turned the blade of Belle towards the ropes on his wrists.
"An unfortunate accident," Marius had said. And the Saint believed it. Thinking it over now, he didn't know why he should ever have imagined that a man like Marius would indulge in any of the theatrical trappings of murder. The Saint knew as well as anyone that the bloodcurdling inventions of the sensational novelist had a real foundation in the mentality of a certain type of crook, that there were men constitutionally incapable of putting the straightforward skates under an enemy whom they had in their power—men whose tortuous minds ran to electrically fired revolvers, or tame alligators in a private swimming bath, as inevitably as water runs downhill. The Saint had met that type of man. But to Rayt Marius such devices would not exist. Whatever was to be done would be done quickly. . . .
And the same applied to the Saint—consequently. Whatever he was going to do, by way of prophylaxis, he would have to do instantly. Whatever sort of gamble it might be, odds or no odds, handicaps or no handicaps, Bo
wery Boys and miscellaneous artillery notwithstanding, hell-fire and pink damnation inasmuch and hereinafter—be b-blowed. . . . Simon wondered why he hadn't grasped that elementary fact before.
"Gute Nacht, mein Freund. Schlafen Sie wohl ..."
Marius had finished. He hung up the receiver; and the Saint smiled at him.
"I trust," said Simon quietly, "that Heinrich will obey that last instruction—for his own sake. But I'm afraid he won't."
The giant smiled satirically.
"Herr Dussel is perfectly at liberty to go to sleep—after he has followed my other instructions." He turned to Roger. "And you, my dear young friend—did you also understand?"
Roger stood up straight.
"I guessed," he said; and again Marius smiled.
"So you realize—do you not—that there is no chance of a mistake? There is still, I should think, half an hour to go before Sir Isaac's servants will be communicating with the police—plenty of time for them also to meet with an unfortunate accident. And there will be no one to repeat your story."
"Quate," said the Saint, with his eyes still on the ceiling. "Oh, quate."
Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint s-4 Page 16