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 to 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 tomorrow 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 today?”
“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 i
n 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 in 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 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.”
He turned.
“Heave over the time-table, Norman—it’s in that corner, under the back numbers of La Vie Parisienne…”
He caught the volume dexterously.
“What time can you get away from this fête effect?…Sevenish?…No, that’ll do fine. Terry can drive you over to Exeter, and if you get there alive you’ll have heaps of time to catch a very jolly looking train at—Damn! I’m looking at the week-day trains…And the Sunday trains are as slow as a Scotchman saying good-bye to a bawbee…Look here, the only one you’ll have time to catch now is the 4:58. Gets in at 9:20. The only one after that doesn’t get to London till nearly four o’clock tomorrow morning. I suppose you were thinking of staying over till tomorrow…I’m afraid you mustn’t, really. That is important…Good enough, darling. Expect you at Brook Street about half past nine…So long, lass. God bless…”
He hung up the receiver with a smile as Roger Conway returned after a commendably quick toilet.
“And now, Roger, me bhoy, we make our dash!”
“All set, skipper.”
“Then let’s go.”
And the Saint laughed softly, hands on hips. His dark hair was at its sleekest perfection, his blue eyes danced, his brown face was alight with an absurdly boyish enthusiasm. He slipped an arm through Conway’s, and they went out together.
Roger approached the car with slower and slower steps. An idea seemed to have struck him.
“Are you going to drive?” he asked suspiciously.
“I am,” said the Saint.
Conway climbed in with an unhappy sigh. He knew, from bitter past experience, that the Saint had original and hair-raising notions of his own about the handling of high-powered automobiles.
They reached Brook Street at half past four.
“Are you going to drive back as well?” asked Roger.
“I am,” said the Saint.
Mr Conway covered his eyes.
“Put me on a nice slow train first, will you?” he said. “Oh, and make a will leaving everything to me. Then you can die with my blessing.”
Simon laughed, and took him by the arm.
“Upstairs,” he said, “there is beer. And then—work. Come on, sonny boy!”
For three hours they worked. Part of that time Conway gave to helping the Saint; then he went on to attend to his own packing and Norman Kent’s. He returned towards eight o’clock, and dumped the luggage he brought with him directly out of his taxi into the Hirondel. The Saint’s completed contribution—two steamer trunks on the carrier and a heavy valise inside—was already there. The Hirondel certainly had the air of assisting in a wholesale removal.
Conway found the Saint sinking a tankard of ale with phenomenal rapidity.
“Oi!” said Conway in alarm.
“Get yours down quickly,” advised the Saint, indicating a second mug, which stood, full and ready, on the table. “We’re off.”
“Off?” repeated Roger puzzledly.
Simon jerked his empty can in the direction of the window.
“Outside,” he said, “are a pair of prize beauties energetically doing nothing. I don’t suppose you noticed them as you came in. I didn’t myself, until a moment ago. I’ll swear they’ve only just come on duty—I couldn’t have missed them when I was loading up the car. But they’ve seen too much. Much too much.”
Conway went to the window and looked out.
Presently:
“I don’t see anyone suspicious.”
“That’s your innocent and guileless mind, my pet,” said the Saint, coming over to join him. “If you were as old in sin as I am, you’d…Well, I’ll be b-b-blowed!”
Conway regarded him gravely.
“It’s the beer,” he said. “Never mind. You’ll feel better in a minute.”
“Damned if I will!” crisped the Saint.
He slammed his tankard down on the window-sill and caught Roger by both shoulders.
“Don’t be an old idiot, Roger!” he cried. “You know me. I tell you this place was being watched. Police or Angel Face. We can’t say which, but almost certainly Angel Face. Teal couldn’t possibly have got as far as this in the time, I’ll bet anything you like. But Angel Face could. And the two sleuths have beetled off with the news about us. So, to save trouble, we’ll beetle off ourselves. Because, if I know anything about Angel Face yet, Brook Street is going to be rather less healthy than a hot spot in hell—inside an hour!”
“But Pat…”
The Saint looked at his watch.
“We’ve got two hours to fill up somehow. The Hirondel’ll do it easy. Down to Maidenhead, park the luggage, and back to Paddington Station in time to meet the train.”
“And suppose we have a breakdown?”
“Breakdown hell!…But you’re right…Correction, then:
“I’ll drop you at the station, and make the return trip to Maidenhead alone. You can amuse yourself in the bar, and I’ll meet you there…It’s a good idea to get rid of the luggage, too. We don’t know that the world won’t have become rather sticky by half past nine and it’d be on the safe side to make the heavy journey while the going’s good. If I leave now they won’t have had time to make any preparations to follow me, and later we’d be able to slip them much more easily, if they happened to get after us, without all the impedimenta to pull our speed down.”
Conway found himself being rushed down the stairs as he listened to the Saint’s last speech. The speech seemed to begin in Brook Street and finish at Paddington. Much of this impression, of course, was solely the product of Conway’s overwrought imagination: but there was a certain foundation of fact in it, and the impression built thereon was truly symptomatic of Simon Templar’s appalling velocity of transforming decision into action.
Roger Conway recovered coherent consciousness in the station buffet and a kind of daze, and by that time Simon Templar was hustling the Hirondel westwards.
The Saint’s brain was in a ferment of questions. Would Marius arrange a raid on the flat in Brook Street? Or would he, finding that the loaded car which his spies had reported had gone, assume that the birds had flown? Either way, that didn’t seem to matter, but the point it raised was what Marius would do next, after he had either discovered or decided that his birds had flown…And, anyway, since Marius must have known that the Saint had attended the rough party at Esher, why hadn’t Brook Street been raided before?…Answer: Because (a) a show like that must take a bit of organising, and (b) it would be easier, anyhow, to wait until dark. Which, at that time of year, was fairly late at night. Thereby making it possible to do the return journey to and from Maidenhead in good time…But Marius would certainly be doing something. Put yourself in the enemy’s place…
The Saint Closes the Case (The Saint Series) Page 7