Alias the Saint (14 page)

They set off in a simmering silence, Teal and the Saint walking side by side, and the chauffeur bringing up the rear. As they went, the Saint began to sing, under his breath, some ancient ballad about “Oh, How a Fat Girl Can Love”; and Teal’s breathing seemed to become even more laboured than was warranted by the steepness of the hill. The driver, astern, also sounded as if he were having difficulty with his respiratory effects.

They plodded upwards without speaking for some time, preoccupied with their respective interests; and at last it was Teal who stopped and S broke the silence.

“Isn’t that a car up there?” he said.

He pointed along the beam of his torch, and the Saint looked.

“It surely is something like a car,” admitted the Saint thoughtfully. “That’s queer!”

He quickened his pace and went into the lead. Then the other two caught him up again; he was standing still, a few yards from the car, with -his flashlight focused on the number plate.

“One of Hallin’s cars,” said the Saint.

He moved quickly round it, turning his light on the tires: they were all perfectly sound. The petrol gauge showed plenty of fuel. He put his hand on the radiator: it was hot.

“Well, well, well!” said the Saint.

Teal, standing beside him, began to flash his torch around the side of the road.

“What’s that tin doing there?” he said.

“I do not know, my chubby cherub,” said the Saint,

But he reached the tin first and lifted it up. It was an empty petrol can. He turned it upside down over his palm, and shook it.

“Did he fill up here?” said Teal, and the Saint shook his head.

“The can’s as dry as a successful bootlegger’s politics. It’s an old one. And I should say—Teal, I should say it was put here to make a place. Look at the mark in the grass!”

He left Teal to it, and moved along the road, searching the turf at the side. Then he came back on the other side. His low exclamation brought Teal trotting.

“Someone’s doing a midnight cross-country,” said the Saint.

He pointed.

“I can’t see anything,” said Teal.

“You wouldn’t,” said the Saint disparagingly. “Now, if they’d only thought to leave some cigarette ash for you to put under a microscope, or a few exciting bloodstains–”

Teal choked.

“Look here, Templar—”

“Teal,” said the Saint, elegantly, “you drip.”

He sprang lightly over the ditch and headed into the darkness, ignoring the other two; and after a moment’s hesitation, they followed.

The assurance with which the Saint moved over a his trail was uncanny. Neither of the others could see the signs which he was able to pick up as rapidly as he could have picked up a plain path; but they were townsmen both, trained for a different kind of tracking.

Perhaps they travelled for fifty yards. And then the Saint stopped dead, and the other two came up on either side of him. His lighted torch aimed downwards, and they followed it with their own; but again neither of them could see anything remarkable.

“What is it this time?” asked Teal.

“I saw an arm,” said the Saint, “An arm and a gun. And it went into the ground. Put your lights out!”

Without understanding, they obeyed.

And, in the darkness, the Saint leaped.

His foot turned on a loose stone, throwing him to %his knees; and at the same time he heard a metallic click that meant only one thing to him: an automatic had been fired—and had failed to fire.

He spun round. Holding his torch at arm’s length away from him, he switched it on again. And he gasped.

“Nigel!”

The boy was wrestling with the sliding jacket of the gun. It seemed to have jammed. And he bared his teeth into the light.

“You swine!” he said.

The Saint stared.

“Nigel! It’s me—Simon Templar—”

“I know,”

The automatic reloaded with a snap, and Perry aimed it deliberately. And then Teal’s hand and arm flashed into the beam of light, caught Perry’s wrist, and twisted sharply upwards. Another hand snatched the gun away.

“You devils!”

Perry got his wrist free with a savage wrench, and rolled out of the hole where he had been lying. He gathered himself, crouched, and leaped at the light. Simon put out one foot, and brought him down adroitly.

“Nigel, don’t be a big boob!”

For answer the youngster squirmed to his feet again, with something like a sob, and made a second reckless rush.

The Saint began to feel bored.

He switched out his torch and ducked. His arms fastened about Ferry’s waist, his shoulder nestled into Perry’s chest; he tightened his grip decisively.

“If you don’t stop it, Nigel,” he said, “I’ll break your back.”

Perry went limp suddenly. Perhaps he had never dreamed of being held with such a strength. The Saint’s arms locked about him like steel bands.

“What’s the matter with him?” inquired Teal lethargically, and Simon grunted.

“Seems to have gone loco,” he murmured.

Perry’s ribs creaked as he tried to breathe.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I know all about you. You—”

“I’ve got him,” said Teal unemotionally; and the Saint loosened his hold and straightened up.

He had dropped his torch in the scuffle. Now he stooped to grope around for it; and it was while he was stooping that another light came. It came with a sort of hissing crackle—something like blue lightning.

“What the kippered herring was that?” ejaculated Teal.

The Saint found his torch and turned its rays into the hollow where Perry had been lying. And the blue lightning came again. They all saw it.

And then the Saint laughed softly.

“Good old Miles,” he drawled.

“Electric,” Teal said dazedly.

“Electrocution,” said the Saint, mildly.

There was a long silence. Then;

“Electrocution?”

Perry spoke huskily, staring at the hole in the ground, where the beams of three flashlights concentrated brilliantly.

“Good old Miles,” said the Saint again.

He pointed to the blackened and twisted telephone, and a dark scar on the rock. And there was another silence,

Teal broke it, sleepily.

“Some fools are born lucky,” he said. “Perry, what yarn did Hallin tell you to get you there?” “Miles didn’t do that—”

“I suppose I did.” Teal tilted his torch over so that it illumined his own face. “You know me, Per-‘ ry—you met me yesterday. I’m a police officer. Don’t talk nonsense.”

It was an incisive speech for Teal.

Perry said, in his throat: “Then—where’s Moyna?”

“That’s what I want to know,” remarked the Saint. “We’ll ask Miles. He’ll be coming back to inspect the body. Shut your faces, and douse those glims!”

The lights went but one by one, and darkness and silence settled upon the group. Without a sound the Saint stepped to one side. He rested his torch on a high boulder and kept his finger on the switch.

Then he heard Hallin.

At least, he heard the faint soft crunch of stones, a tiny rustle of leaves… He could see nothing. It was an eerie business, listening to that stealthy approach, But the Saint’s nerves were like ice.

A match flared suddenly, only a few yards away. Hallin was searching the ground.

Then the Saint switched on his light. He caught Hallin in the beam, and left the light lying on the rock. The Saint himself stepped carefully away from it.

“Hullo,” said the Saint unctuously.

Hallin stood rooted to the ground. The match burned down to his fingers and he dropped it.

Then his hand jerked round through his pocket. …

“Rotten,” said the Saint calmly; and his voice merged in the rattle of another shot.

From a little distance away two more lights sprang up from the darkness and centred upon Hallin. The man twisted round in the blaze, and fired again—three times. One of the lights went out. The other fell, and went out on the ground as the bulb broke. Hallin whipped round again. He sighted rapidly, and his bullet smashed the Saint’s torch where it lay.

“Teal, did he get you?”

The Saint stepped swiftly across the blackness and Teal’s voice answered at his shoulder, “No, but he got Mason.”

The Saint’s fingers touched Teal’s coat, so lightly that the detective could have felt nothing. They crept down Teal’s steeve, jumped the hand, and closed upon the torch….

“Thanks,” said the Saint. “See you later.”

He jerked at the torch as he spoke, and got it away. The detective made a grab at him; but Simon slipped away with a laugh. He could hear Hallin blundering through the darkness, and he followed the noise as best he could. Behind him was another blundering noise, and a shout from Teal; but the Saint was not waiting.

Simon went on in the dark. He had eyes like a cat, anyway; and, in the circumstances, there might be peculiar dangers about a light. … Then it occurred to him that there might be other live wires about, and he had no urge to die that way. He stopped abruptly.

At the same time he found that he could no longer hear Hallin. On his right he heard a muffled purl-? ing of water; behind him Teal was still stumbling sulphurously through the gloom, hopelessly lost. The detective must have been striking matches, but Simon could not see them. A rise of ground must have cut them off.

Warily the Saint felt around for another boulder, and switched on his torch as he had done before. The result startled him. Hallin’s face showed up instantly in the glare, pale and twisted, scarcely a yard away; then Hallin’s hand with the gun; beyond Hallin, the ground simply ceased….

“Precious,” said the Saint, “I have been looking forward to this.”

He hurled himself full length, in a magnificent standing tackle; his arms twined around Hallin’s knees. Over his head, the automatic banged once, but the light did not go out. Then they crashed down together.

The Saint let go, and writhed up like an eel. He caught Hallin’s right wrist, and smashed the hand against a stone. The gun dropped.

Simon snatched it up, scrambling to his feet as he did so; and one sweep of his arm sent the weapon spinning far out into the gulf.

The Saint laughed, standing up in the light.

“In the name of Teddy Everest,” he said, “this is our party. Get up, Miles Hallin, you dog!”

8

Hallin got up. He was shorter than the Saint by three or four inches, but twice as heavy in the bone, with tremendous arms and shoulders. And he came in like a charging buffalo.

Simon sidestepped the first rush with cool precision, and shot in a crisp left that caught Hallin between the eyes with a smack like a snapped stick;

but Hallin simply turned, blinking, and came again.

The Saint whistled softly through his teeth.

He really wasn’t used to people taking those punches quite so stoically. When he hit a man like that, it was usually the beginning of the end of the fight; but Hallin was pushing up his plate tor a second helping as if he liked the diet. Well, maybe the light was bad, thought the Saint; and accurate timing made a lot of difference… . And again he sidestepped, exactly as before, and felt the blow which he landed jolt right up his arm; but this time he collected a smashing drive to the ribs in return. It hurt him; but Hallin didn’t seem to be hurt… .

The Saint whistled even more softly.

So there was something in Hallin, after all. The man fought in a crouch that made scoring difficult. His arms covered his body, and he kept his chin well down in his chest; he wasn’t easy… .

The Saint circled round to get his back to the-light, and for the third time Hallin rushed at him. Simon went in to meet him. His left swung over in a kind of vertical hook that stroked down Hallin’s nose, and Hallin raised his arms involuntarily. Lashing into the opening, the Saint went for the body—right, left, right. He heard Hallin grunt to the thud of each blow, and he smiled.

They closed.

Simon knew what would come next. He was old in the game. He wrenched his body round, and took the upward kick of Hallin’s knee on the muscles under his thigh. At the same moment he jerked Hallin’s other leg from under him, and they went down together.

Hallin fought like a fiend. His strength was terrific. They rolled over and over, away out of the light of the torch, into the darkness, with Hallin’s hands fumbling for the Saint’s eyes… . The Saint knew that one also. He grabbed one of Hallin’s fingers, and twisted; it broke with a sharp crack, and Hallin screamed….

The Saint tore himself away. He was rising to one knee when his other foot seemed to slip into space. He clutched wildly, and found a hold on the roots of a bush; then Hallin caught him again. With a superhuman heave the Saint dragged himself another foot from the edge of the precipice; and then his handhold came clean out of the ground, bringing a lump of turf with it. He dashed it into Hallin’s face.

They fought on the very brink of (he precipice. Simon lost count of the number of blows he took, and the number he gave. In the darkness it was impossible to aim, and just as impossible to guard. One of them would get a hand free, and hit out savagely at the dark; then the other would do the same; sometimes they scored, sometimes they missed. The rocks bruised them at every movement; once they crashed through a bush, and the twigs tore the Saint’s face.

Then he landed again, a pile-driving half-arm jolt that went home, and Hallin lay still.

Gasping, the Saint relaxed….

And at once Hallin heaved up titanically under him, and something more than a fist struck the side of the Saint’s head.

If it had struck a direct blow Simon’s skull would have been cracked like an eggshell; but Hallin had misjudged his mark by a fraction. The stone glanced from the Saint’s temple; even so, it was like being kicked by a mule. It shook the Saint more than anything else in the whole of that mad struggle, and sent him toppling sideways with a welter of tangled lights zipping before his eyes. He felt Hallin slip from his grasp, and slithered desperately away to his left. Something went past his cheek, so close that he felt it pass, and hit the ground beyond him with a crunching thud….

He touched another bush, and crawled dizzily round it. On the other side he dragged himself up— first to his knees, then, shakily, to his feet. He could hear Hallin stumbling about in the blackness, searching for him; but he had to rest. Every muscle of his body ached; his head was playing a complete symphony….