Bad as had been the light when they had found themselves face to face with the original, that face could never have been mistaken anywhere—that hideous, rough-hewn nightmare, expressionless like the carved stone face of a heathen idol.
“It was Marius…”
Roger Conway came out of his chair.
“If you’re right, Saint—I’ll believe that you didn’t dream last night—”
“It’s true!”
“And we haven’t all suddenly got softening of the brain—to be listening to these howling, daft deductions of yours…”
“God knows I was never so sure of anything in my life.”
“Then…”
The Saint nodded.
“We have claimed to execute some sort of justice,” he said. “What is the just thing for us to do here?”
Conway did not answer, and the Saint turned to meet Norman Kent’s thoughtful eyes, and then he knew that they were both waiting for him to speak their own judgment.
They had never seen the Saint so stern.
“The invention must cease to be,” said Simon Templar.
“And the brain that conceived it, which could recreate it—that also must cease to be. It is expedient that one man should die for many people…”
3
HOW SIMON TEMPLAR RETURNED TO ESHER, AND DECIDED TO GO THERE AGAIN
This was on the 24th of June—about three weeks after the Saint’s reply to the offer of a free pardon.
On the 25th, not a single morning paper gave more than an inconspicuous paragraph to the news which had filled the afternoon editions of the day before, and thereafter nothing more at all was said by the Press about the uninvited guests at Vargan’s demonstration. Nor was there more than a passing reference to the special Cabinet meeting which followed.
The Saint, who now had only one thought day and night, saw in this unexpected reticence the hand of something dangerously like an official censorship, and Barney Malone, appealed to, was so uncommunicative as to confirm the Saint in his forebodings.
To the Saint it seemed as if a strange tension had crept into the atmosphere of the season in London. This feeling was purely subjective, he knew, and yet he was unable to laugh it away. On one day he had walked through the streets in careless enjoyment of an air fresh and mild with the promise of summer, among people quickened and happy and alert; on the next day the clear skies had become heavy with the fear of an awful thunder and a doomed generation went its way furtively and afraid.
“You ought to see Esher,” he told Roger Conway. “A day away from your favourite bar would do you good.”
They drove down in a hired car, and there the Saint found further omens.
They lunched at the Bear, and afterwards walked over the Portsmouth Road. There were two men standing at the end of the lane in which Professor Vargan lived, and the two men broke off their conversation abruptly as Conway and the Saint turned off the main road and strolled past them under the trees. Farther down, a third man hung over the garden gate sucking a pipe.
Simon Templar led the way past the house without glancing at it, and continued his discourse on the morrow’s probable runners, but a sixth sense told him that the eyes of the man at the gate followed them down the lane, as the eyes of the two men at the corner had done.
“Observe,” he murmured, “how careful they are not to make any fuss. The last thing they want to do is to attract attention. Just quietly on the premises, that’s what they are. But if we did anything suspicious we should find ourselves being very quietly and carefully bounced towards the nearest clink. That’s what we call Efficiency.”
A couple of hundred yards farther on, on the blind side of a convenient corner, the Saint stopped.
“Walk on for as long as it takes you to compose a limerick suitable for the kind of drawing-room to which you would never be admitted,” he ordered. “And then walk back. I’ll be here.”
Conway obediently passed on, carrying in the tail of his eye a glimpse of the Saint sidling through a gap in the hedge into the fields on the right. Mr Conway was no poet, but he accepted the Saint’s suggestion, and toyed lazily with the lyrical possibilities of a young lady of Kent who whistled wherever she went. After wrestling for some minutes with the problem of bringing this masterpiece to a satisfactory conclusion, he gave it up and turned back, and the Saint returned through the hedge, a startlingly immaculate sight to be seen coming through a hedge, with a punctuality that suggested that his estimate of Mr Conway’s poetical talent was dreadfully accurate.
“For the first five holes I couldn’t put down a single putt,” said the Saint sadly, and he continued to describe an entirely imaginary round of golf until they were back on the main road and the watchers at the end of the lane were out of sight.
Then he came back to the point.
“I wanted to do some scouting round at the back of the house to see how sound the defences were. There was a sixteen-stone seraph in his shirtsleeves pretending to garden, and another little bit of fluff sitting in a deck-chair under a tree reading a newspaper. Dear old Teal himself is probably sitting in the bathroom disguised as a clue. They aren’t taking any more chances!”
“Meaning,” said Conway, “that we shall either have to be very cunning or very violent.”
“Something like that,” said the Saint.
He was preoccupied and silent for the rest of the walk back to the Bear, turning over the proposition he had set himself to tackle.
He had cause to be—and yet the tackling of tough propositions was nothing new to him. The fact of the ton or so of official majesty which lay between him and his immediate objective was not what bothered him; the Saint, had he chosen to turn his professional attention to the job, might easily have been middleweight champion of the world, and he had a poor opinion both of the speed and fighting science of policemen. In any case, as far as that obstacle went, he had a vast confidence in his own craft and ingenuity for circumventing mere massive force. Nor did the fact that he was meddling with the destiny of nations give him pause: he had once, in his quixotic adventuring, run a highly successful one-man revolution in South America, and could have been a fully accredited Excellency in a comic-opera uniform if he had chosen. But this problem, the immensity of it, the colossal forces that were involved, the millions of tragedies that might follow one slip in his enterprise…Something in the thought tightened tiny muscles around the Saint’s jaw.
Fate was busy with him in those days.
They were running into Kingston at the modest pace which was all the hired car permitted, when a yellow sedan purred effortlessly past them. Before it cut into the line of traffic ahead, Conway had had indelibly imprinted upon his memory the bestial, ape-like face that stared back at them through the rear window with the fixity of a carved image.
“Ain’t he sweet?” murmured the Saint.
“A sheik,” agreed Conway.
A smile twitched at Simon Templar’s lips.
“Known to us,” he said, “as Angel Face or Tiny Tim—at the option of the orator. The world knows him as Rayt Marius. He recognised me, and he’s got the number of the car. He’ll trace us through the garage we hired it from, and in twenty-four hours he’ll have our names and addresses and YMCA records. I can’t help thinking that life’s going to be very crowded for us in the near future.”
And the next day the Saint was walking back to Brook Street towards midnight, in the company of Roger Conway, when he stopped suddenly and gazed up into the sky with a reflective air, as if he had thought of something that had eluded his concentration for some time.
“Argue with me, Beautiful,” he pleaded. “Argue violently, and wave your hands about, and look as fierce as your angelic dial will let you. But don’t raise your voice.”
They walked the few remaining yards to the door of the Saint’s apartment with every appearance of angry dissension. Mr Conway, keeping his voice low as directed, expatiated on the failings of the Ford car with impassione
d eloquence. The Saint answered, with aggressive gesticulations.
“A small disease in a pot hat has been following me half the day. He’s a dozen yards behind us now. I want to get hold of him, but if we chase him he’ll run away. He’s certain to be coming up now to try and overhear the quarrel and find out what it’s about. If we start a fight we should draw him within range. Then you’ll grab him while I get the front door open.”
“The back axle…” snarled Mr Conway.
They were now opposite the Saint’s house, and the Saint halted and turned abruptly, placed his hand in the middle of Conway’s chest, and pushed.
Conway recovered his balance and let fly. The Saint took the blow on his shoulder, and reeled back convincingly. Then he came whaling in and hit Mr Conway on the jaw with great gentleness. Mr Conway retaliated by banging the air two inches from the Saint’s nose.
In the uncertain light it looked a most furious battle, and the Saint was satisfied to see Pot Hat sneaking up along the area railings only a few paces away, an interested spectator.
“Right behind you,” said the Saint softly. “Stagger back four steps when I slosh you.”
He applied his fist caressingly to Conway’s solar plexus, and broke away without waiting to see the result, but he knew that his lieutenant was well trained. Simon had just time to find his key and open the front door. A second later he was closing the door again behind Conway and his burden.
“Neat work,” drawled the Saint approvingly. “Up the stairs with the little darling, Roger.”
As the Saint led the way into the sitting-room Conway put Pot Hat down and removed his hand from the little man’s mouth.
“Hush!” said Conway in a shocked voice, and covered his ears.
The Saint was peering down through the curtains.
“I don’t think anyone saw us,” he said. “We’re in luck. If we’d planned it we might have had to wait years before we found Brook Street bare of souls.”
He came back from the window and stood over their prisoner, who was still shaking his fist under Conway’s nose and burbling blasphemously.
“That’ll be all from you, sweetheart,” remarked the Saint frostily. “Run through his pockets, Roger.”
“When I find a pleeceman,” began Pot Hat quiveringly.
“Or when a policeman finds what’s left of you,” murmured Simon pleasantly. “Yes?”
But the search revealed nothing more interesting than three new five-pound notes—a fortune which such a seedy-looking little man would never have been suspected of possessing.
“So it will have to be the third degree,” said the Saint mildly, and carefully closed both windows.
He came back with his hands in his pockets and a very Saintly look in his eyes.
“Do you talk, Rat Face?” he asked.
“Wotcher mean—talk? Yer big bullies—”
“Talk,” repeated the Saint patiently. “Open your mouth, and emit sounds which you fondly believe to be English. You’ve been tailing me all day, and I don’t like it.”
“Wotcher mean?” demanded the little man again, indignantly. “Tailing yer?”
The Saint sighed, and took the lapels of the little man’s coat in his two hands. For half a hectic minute he bounced and shook the little man like a terrier shaking a rat.
“Talk,” said the Saint monotonously.
But Pot Hat opened his mouth for something that could only have been either a swear or a scream, and the Saint disapproved of both. He tapped the little man briskly in the stomach, and he never knew which of the two possibilities had been the little man’s intention, for whichever it was died in a choking gurgle. Then the Saint took hold of him again.
It was certainly very like bullying, but Simon Templar was not feeling sentimental. He had to do it, and he did it with cold efficiency. It lasted five minutes.
“Talk,” said the Saint again, at the end of the five minutes, and the blubbering sleuth said he would talk.
Simon took him by the scruff of his neck and dropped him into a chair like a sack of peanuts.
The story, however, was not very helpful.
“I dunno wot ’is name is. I met ’im six months ago in a pub off Oxford Street, an’ ’e gave me a job to do. I’ve worked for ’im on an’ off ever since—followin’ people an’ findin’ out things about ’em. ’E allus paid well, an’ there wasn’t no risk—”
“Not till you met me,” said the Saint. “How do you keep in touch with him if he hasn’t told you his name?”
“When ’e wants me, ’e writes to me an’ I meet ’im in a pub somewhere, an’ ’e tells me wot I’ve got to do. Then I let ’im know wots ’appening by telephone. I got ’is number.”
“Which is?”
“Westminster double-nine double-nine.”
“Thanks,” said the Saint. “Good-looking man, isn’t he?”
“Not ’arf! Fair gives me the creeps, ’e does. Fust time I sore ’im—”
The Saint shouldered himself off the mantelpiece and reached for the cigarette-box.
“Go home while the going’s good, Rat Face,” he said. “You don’t interest us any more. Door, Roger.”
“’Ere,” whined Pot Hat, “I got a wife an’ four children—”
“That,” said the Saint gently, “must be frightfully bad luck on them. Give them my love, won’t you?”
“I bin assaulted. Supposin’ I went to a pleeceman—”
The Saint fixed him with a clear blue stare.
“You can either walk down the stairs,” he remarked dispassionately, “or you can be kicked down by the gentleman who carried you up. Take your choice. But if you want any compensation for the grilling you’ve had, you’d better apply to your handsome friend for it. Tell him we tortured you with hot irons and couldn’t make you open your mouth. He might believe you—though I shouldn’t bet on it. And if you feel like calling a policeman, you’ll find one just up the road. I know him quite well, and I’m sure he’d be interested to hear what you’ve got to say. Good night.”
“Callin’ yerselves gentlemen!” sneered the sleuth viciously. “You—”
“Get out,” said the Saint quietly.
He was lighting his cigarette, and he did not even look up, but the next thing he heard was the closing of the door.
From the window he watched the man slouching up the street. He was at the telephone when Conway returned from supervising the departure, and he smiled lazily at his favourite lieutenant’s question.
“Yes, I’m just going to give Tiny Tim my love…Hullo—are you Westminster double-nine double-nine?…Splendid. How’s life, Angel Face?”
“Who is that?” demanded the other end of the line.
“Simon Templar,” said the Saint. “You may have heard of me. I believe we—er—ran into each other recently.” He grinned at the stifled exclamation that came faintly over the wire. “Yes, I suppose it is a pleasant surprise. Quite overwhelming…The fact is, I’ve just had to give one of your amateur detectives a rough five minutes. He’s walking home. The next friend of yours I find walking on my shadow will be removed in an ambulance. That’s a tip from the stable. Pleasant dreams, old dear!”
He hung up the receiver without waiting for a reply.
Then he was speaking to Inquiry.
“Can you give me the name and address of Westminster double-nine double-nine?…What’s that?…Well, is there no way of finding out?…Yes, I know that, but there are reasons why I can’t ring up and ask. Fact is, my wife eloped yesterday with the plumber, and she said if I really wanted her back I could ring her up at that number, but one of the bath-taps is dripping, and…Oh, all right. Thanks very much. Love to the supervisors.”
He put down the instrument and turned to shrug at Conway’s interrogatively raised eyebrows.
“‘I’m sorry—we are not permitted to give subscribers’ names and addresses,’” he mimicked. “I knew it, but it was worth trying. Not that it matters much.”
“You might,”
suggested Conway, “have tried the directory.”
“Of course. Knowing that Marius doesn’t live in England, and that therefore Westminster double-nine double-nine is unlikely to be in his name…Oh, of course.”
Conway grimaced.
“Right. Then we sit down and try to think out what Tiny Tim’ll do next.”
“Nope,” contradicted the Saint cheerfully. “We know that one. It’ll either be prussic acid in the milk tomorrow morning, or a snap shot from a passing car next time I walk out of the front door. We can put our shirts on that, and sit tight and wait for the dividends. But suppose we didn’t wait…”
The emphatic briskness of his first words had trailed away while he was speaking into the gentle dreamy intonation that Conway knew of old. It was the sign that the Saint’s thoughts had raced miles ahead of his tongue, and he was only mechanically completing a speech that had long since become unimportant.
Then for a little while he was silent, with his cigarette slanting between his lips, and a kind of crouching immobility about his lean body, and a dancing blue light of recklessness kindling in his eyes. For a moment he was as still and taut as a leopard gathering itself for a spring. Then he relaxed, straightening, and smiled, and his right arm went out in one of those magnificently romantic gestures that only the Saint could make with such a superb lack of affectation.
“But why should we wait?” he challenged.
“Why, indeed?” echoed Conway vaguely. “But—”
Simon Templar was not listening. He was already back at the telephone, calling up Norman Kent.
“Get out your car, fill her up with gas, and come right round to Brook Street. And pack a gun. This is going to be a wild night!”
A few minutes later he was through to his bungalow at Maidenhead—to which, by the grace of all the Saint’s gods, he had sent his man down only that very day to prepare the place for a summer tenancy that was never to materialise as Simon Templar had planned it.
“That you, Orace?…Good. I just phoned up to let you know that Mr Kent will be arriving in the small hours with a visitor. I want you to get the cellar ready for him—for the visitor, I mean. Got me?”
The Saint Closes the Case (The Saint Series) Page 5