“But why?”
He shrugged.
“As far as the Sons of France are concerned, you could be pretty cynical if you wanted to. The present French socialist government is rather unpopular with some of our leading bloodsuckers because it’s introducing a new set of laws on the same lines that Roosevelt started in America, to take all the profit out of war by nationalising all major industries directly it starts. The whole idea, of course, is too utterly Communistic and disgusting for words. Hence the Sons of France. All this blood and fire business tonight was probably part of the graft to get the Socialists chucked out and leave honest businessmen safe to make their fortunes out of murder. It’s a lovely idea.”
“And are they going to get away with it?”
“Who is to stop it?” asked the Saint bitterly.
And when he asked the question he could imagine no answer. But afterwards he would remember it. This was, as has been said, one of his precarious interludes of peace. Twice already in his lawless career he had helped to snatch away the threat of war and destruction from over the heads of an unsuspecting world, but this time the chance that the history of Europe could be altered by anything he did seemed too remote to be given thought. But in the same mood of grim clairvoyance into which the interruption had thrown him he gazed sombrely down the track of the headlights, still busy with his thoughts, and seeing the fulfilment of his half-spoken prophecy. He saw the streets swarming with arrogant strangely uniformed militia, the applauding headlines of a disciplined press, the new breed of sycophantic spies, the beginnings of fear, men who had once been free learning to look over their shoulders before they spoke their thoughts, neighbour betraying neighbour, the midnight arrests, the third degree, the secret tribunals, the fantastic confessions, the farcical trials, the concentration camps, and firing squads. He saw the hysterical ranting of yet another neurotic megalomaniac adding itself to the rising clamour of the crazy discords of Europe, the coming generations reared to believe in terrorism at home and war abroad as the apotheosis of a heroic destiny, children marching with toy guns as soon as they could walk, merging easily into the long crawling lines of new legions more pitiless than Caesar’s. He saw the peaceful countryside before him gouged into swamps and craters where torn flesh rotted faster than the scavenging rats could eat; the long red tongues of the guns licking upwards into the dark as they thundered their dreadful litany; the first rose-pink glow of fire, deepening to crimson as it leaped up, flickering, spreading its red aura fanwise across the sky until the black silhouettes of trees could be seen clearly stamped against it…until with an odd sense of shock, as if he were coming out of another dream, the Saint realised that that at least was no vision—that his eyes really were seeing the scarlet reflection of swelling flame beyond the distant trees.
He pointed.
“Look.”
Patricia sat up.
“Anyone would say it was a fire,” she said interestedly.
Simon Templar grinned. His own reverie was swept away as quickly as it had begun—for that moment.
“I’ll bet it is a fire,” he said. “And in this neck of the woods the chances are that the nearest fire brigade is miles away. We’d better drift along and look it over.”
He would never forget that fire. It was the beginning of the adventure.
2
As his foot came down on the accelerator his hand found the lever that opened the cut-out, and the whisper of the great car turned into a deep-throated roar. They were dragged against the back of the seat as it surged forward with a sudden terrific access of power, and the susurration of the tyres on the roadway rose to a shrill whine. It was as if an idly roaming tiger had suddenly been stung to vicious life.
The Saint had begun to drive.
He had no gift of second sight to tell him what that fire was to mean, but just as a fire it was sufficient. It might be fun, and he was going there—in a hurry now. And in his mercurial philosophy that was enough. His eyes had narrowed and come to life with the zest of the moment, and a shadow of his last smile lingered half-remembered on his lips…Half a mile further on a side road opened sharply to the right, leading in the direction of the red glow. As he approached it, the Saint shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake and wrenched the wheel over: the rear wheels whipped round with a scream of skidding rubber, spun, bit the road again, took hold, and catapulted the car forward again at right angles to its previous course as the Saint’s toe returned to the accelerator.
“That’s how these racing blokes do it,” he explained.
Patricia lighted two cigarettes.
“What do they do when they want to turn quickly?” she inquired tranquilly.
The way Simon slanted one of the cigarettes between his lips was its own impudent answer. The vivid red stain in the sky was almost straight ahead of them now, growing so that it blotted out the stars, and they were rushing towards it down the narrow lane with the speed of a hurricane. They squealed round another bend, and once more the Saint jammed on the brakes. On their left was a half-timbered lodge beside broad iron gates that opened on to a curving drive.
“This should be it,” said the Saint, and again the great car seemed to pivot on its locked front wheels to make the turn.
In another moment they had the acrid smell of burning wood sharp in their nostrils. They swept round a semicircular channel of trees, and in an instant they were caught full in the red glare as if they had been picked up by quivering floodlights. Simon let the Hirondel coast to a breathless standstill beside a broad close-cropped lawn, and hitched himself up to sit on the back of the seat for a better view.
“It is a fire,” he decided, with profound satisfaction.
It was. The whole lawn was lit up by it like a stage set, and a pall of black smoke hung over it like a billowing curtain. The house was one of those old historic mansions whose lining of massive beams and mellowed panelling could be diagnosed at a glance, and it was going up like a pile of tinder. The fire seemed to have started on the ground floor, for huge gusts of flame were spouting from the open windows along the terrace and climbing like wind-ripped banners towards the roof, roaring with a boisterous glee that could be clearly heard even above the reduced splutter of the Hirondel’s exhaust. The Saint drew at his cigarette and settled more firmly into his conviction that, judged by any pyrotechnical standards, it was a beaut.
Across the lawn, figures in a grotesque assortment of deshabille were running with the erratic scurrying wildness of flushed rabbits.
“At least they all seem to have got out,” said the Saint.
He switched off the engine and hitched his legs over the side of the car. Some of the scurrying figures, attracted perhaps like moths by the new blaze of the headlights, had started to run towards them. The first to arrive was a young man who carried a girl over his shoulder. He was large and blond and impressively moustached, and he wore blue and green striped pyjamas. He dumped the girl on the ground at the Saint’s feet, rather like a retriever bringing in a bird, and stood over her for a moment breathing heavily.
“By Jove,” he said. “Oh, by Jove!…Steady on, Val, old thing. It’s all right now. You’re quite safe.”
He put out a hand to restrain her as she tried to get up, but with a quick movement she wriggled away from him and found her feet. She was dark and slender, but not so slender that the transparent nightgown which was her only covering lacked fascinating contours to cling to. The chiffon had slipped aside to bare one white shoulder and her curly hair was in wild disarray, but even the thoroughly petulant spoiled-child expression that pouted her face could not disguise its amazing beauty.
“All right, all right,” she said impatiently. “You’ve rescued me now, and I’m very much obliged. But for heaven’s sake stop pawing me and find me something to wear.”
She seemed to regard the fire as an event arranged by a malicious fate solely for her own inconvenience. The young man looked somewhat startled.
“Dammit, Val
erie,” he said in an injured tone, “do you realise—”
“Of course she does,” said the Saint soothingly. “She knows you’re a little hero. She’s just being practical. And while we’re being practical, do you happen to know whether anybody else is left in the house?”
The young man turned. He looked at Simon rather blankly, as if taken aback at being interrupted so unceremoniously.
“Eh? What?” he said. “I dunno. I fetched Valerie out.”
From the way he said it, one gathered that nobody mattered except Valerie.
Simon patted him on the back.
“Yes, we know,” he said kindly. “We saw you. You’re a hero. We’ll give you a diploma. But just the same, wouldn’t it be a good idea to round up the others and make sure that nobody’s missing?”
Again the young man looked blank, and rather resentful. His expression indicated that having done his good deed for the day by rescuing Valerie, he expected to be set apart on a pedestal instead of being ordered about. But there was something about the Saint’s cool assumption of command that eliminated argument.
“Oh, certainly. I see what you mean.”
He moved reluctantly away, and presently people came straggling in from different parts of the lawn and gathered near Simon’s car. There was a tall red-faced man with a white moustache and the stereotyped chutney-and-Scotch complexion of a professional soldier, a dour large-bosomed woman in a flannel dressing-gown who could have belonged to nobody else, an excited little fat man who came chattering pompously, the guardsmanly youth who had herded them together, and a fourth man who strolled up in the background. The reflection of the fire shone redly in their faces as they assembled in a group with an air of studied calm which proclaimed their consciousness of behaving like British aristocrats in an emergency.
Simon looked them over without reverence. He knew none of them by sight, and it was none of his business, but he was the only one present who seemed to have any coherent ideas. His voice stilled their chatter.
“Well,” he said, “you ought to know. Are you all here?”
They glanced at each other in an awed and scared sort of way, and then turned and looked frightenedly at the blazing house and back again, as though it were the first time that any of their thoughts had gone beyond their own personal safety.
Suddenly the voice of the girl in the nightgown sounded shrilly behind Simon.
“No! They aren’t all here! John isn’t here! Where’s Johnny?”
There was an awful stillness, in which realisation crawled horribly over chalky faces.
“B-but where can he be?” asked the short fat man, in a quavering voice. “He…he must have heard the alarm—”
The military-looking man turned round and raised his voice in a barrack-square bawl.
“Kennet!” he shouted. “Kennet!”
He sounded as if he was bellowing at a slovenly recruit who was late on parade.
The only answer was the derisive cackle of the leaping flames.
The large-bosomed woman shrieked. She opened her mouth wide and yelled at the top of her voice, her face contorted with an awful terror.
“No! No…it’s too dreadful. He can’t be still in there! You can’t have—”
Her words broke off in a kind of gulp. For a couple of seconds her mouth went on opening and shutting like that of a fish out of water; then, without another sound, she collapsed like an empty sack.
“She’s fainted,” somebody said stupidly.
“So she has,” said the Saint witheringly. “Now we all ought to gather round and hold her hands.”
The military man, bending over her, turned up his purple face.
“By Gad, sir!” he burst out cholerically. “Haven’t you—” He stopped. Another thought, overwhelming in its enormity, seemed to have erupted under his nose. He straightened up, glaring at the Saint as if he had just really become aware of his presence for the first time. “Anyway,” he said, “what the devil are you doing here?”
The idea percolated into the brains of the others and brought them back to gaping stillness. And while they were staring in vacuous indignation, the man who had stayed in the background moved to the front. He was short and very broad-shouldered, with a square and rather flat face and very sunken shrewd dark eyes. “Unlike the others, he was fully dressed. There was no sign of flurry or alarm about him: with his powerful chin and thin straight mouth he looked as solid and impassive as a chunk of granite.
“Yes,” he said, “who are you?”
Simon met his gaze with cold insouciance. The antagonism was instant and intuitive. Perhaps it was that that touched the Saint’s swift mind with the queer itch of dissatisfaction that led to so many things. Perhaps it was then that the first wraith of suspicion took nebulous shape in his mind. But there was no time to dwell on the point just then. He only knew that something like a fine thread of steel wove through the plastic outlines of his attitude.
“At the moment,” he said evenly, “I seem to be the only person who isn’t behaving like a stuffed owl. Where does this man Kennet sleep?”
“I don’t know,” answered the square-built man. “Someone else will be able to tell you.”
His face was expressionless; his tone was so expressionless as to sound almost ironical. There seemed to be a stony sort of amusement lurking at the back of his deep-set eyes. But that might have been an illusion created by the flickering firelight.
The girl Valerie supplied the information.
“He’s in the end room on the left—that window there.”
Simon looked.
The room was at the end of the house which was burning most fiercely—the end close to which the fire had probably started. Under it, the ground floor looked like an open furnace through which the draught from the open windows and the open front door was driving flames in long roaring streamers. The end upper window was about fifteen feet from the ground, but there was no way of reaching it from outside without a ladder.
The fat little man was wringing his hands.
“He can’t still be there,” he wailed. “He must have heard the alarm—”
“Suppose he got the wind up and fainted, or something?” suggested the large young man in the striped pyjamas helpfully.
Simon almost hit him.
“Do you know where there’s a ladder, you amazing oaf?” he demanded.
The young man blinked at him dumbly. Nobody else answered. They all seemed to be in a fog.
Simon swung round to Patricia.
“Do what you can, darling,” he said.
He turned away, and for a moment the others seemed to be held petrified.
“Stop him,” bleated the fat little man suddenly. “For God’s sake, stop him! It’s suicide—”
“Hey!” bellowed the puce-faced militarist commandingly. “Come back!”
The queenly woman screeched indistinguishably and collapsed again.
Simon Templar heard none of these things. He was half-way across the lawn by that time, racing grimly towards the house.
3
The heat from the hall struck him like a physical blow as he plunged through the front door; the air scorched his lungs like a gust from a red-hot oven. At the far end of the hall long sheets of flame were sweeping greedily up a huge pair of velvet curtains. Smaller flames were dancing over a rug, and leaping with fiercer eagerness up the blackening banisters of a wide staircase. The paint on the broad beams crossing the high ceiling was bubbling and boiling under the heat, and occasionally small drops of it fell in a scalding rain to take hold of new sections of the floor.
The Saint hardly checked for an instant before he went on. He dodged across the hall like a flitting shadow and leapt up the stairs four at a time. Fire from the banisters snatched at him as he went up, stung his nostrils with the smell of his own scorching clothes.
On the upper landing the smoke was thicker. It made his eyes smart and filled his throat with coughing; his heart was hammering with a dull force t
hat jarred his ribs; he felt an iron band tightening remorselessly around his temples. He stared blearily down the corridor which led in the direction he had to go. Half-way along it, great gouts of flame were starting up from the floorboards, waving like monstrous flowers swaying in a blistering wind. It could only be a matter of seconds before the whole passage would plunge down into the incandescent inferno below.
The Saint went on.
It was not so much a deliberate effort as a yielding to instinctive momentum. He had no time to think about being heroic—or about anything else, for that matter. In that broiling nightmare a second’s hesitation might have been fatal. But he had set out to do something, knowing what it might mean, and so long as there was any hope of doing it his only idea was to go on. He kept going with nothing to carry him on but the epic drive of a great heart that had never known what it was to turn back for the threat of danger.
He came out in a clear space on the other side of the flames, beating the sparks from his sleeves and trousers. Open doors and glimpses of disordered beds on either side of the passage showed where various rooms had been hastily vacated, but the door of the room at the very end was closed. He fell on the handle and turned it.
The door was locked.
He thundered on it with fists and feet.
“Kennet!” he shouted. “Kennet, wake up!”
His voice was a mere harsh croak that was lost in the hoarse roar of the fire. It brought no answer from behind the door.
He drew back across the corridor, braced himself momentarily, and flung himself forward again. Hurled by the muscles of a trained athlete, his shoulder crashed into the door with all the shattering-force of one hundred and seventy-five pounds of fighting weight behind it, in an impact that shook every bone in his body, but he might just as well have charged a steam roller. The floor might be cracking and crumbling under his feet, but that door was of tough old English oak, seasoned by two hundred years of history and still untouched by the fire. It would have taken an axe or a sledgehammer to break it down.
The Saint Plays with Fire (The Saint Series) Page 2