The Saint Closes the Case (15 page)

Roger Conway felt cold beads of perspiration
breaking out
on his forehead, but he could not find his voice. He knew
that the Saint would do exactly what he had threatened to do, if he
were forced
to it. He knew the Saint. He had seen the Saint in
a hundred strange
situations and a hundred moods, but he had
never seen the Saint’s
face chiselled into such an inexorable
grimness as it wore
then. It was like granite.

And Roger Conway knew then, in the blazing
light of experi
ence, what before then he had only understood mistily, in
the twilight of theory—that the wrath of saints can be a far more
dreadful
thing than the wrath of sinners.

The man on the table must have understood it
also—the
fantastic fact that a man of Simon Templar’s calibre, in
such
an icy rage, even in civilised England, would stop for nothing.
And the
breath that the Saint let him take came in a kind of
shuddering groan.

“Do you talk, beautiful?” asked the
Saint again, ever so
gently.

“I talk.”

It was not a voice—it was a whimper.

“I talk,” whimpered the man.
“I will do anything. Only take
away that knife——”

For a moment the Saint did not move.

Then, very slowly, like a man in a trance, he
took the knife away and looked at it as if he had never seen it before. And a
queer little laugh trickled through his lips.

“Very dramatic,” he remarked.
“And almost horrible. I
didn’t know I had it in me.”

And he gazed at the man curiously, as he might
have gazed
at a fly on a window-pane in an idle moment and
remembered
stories of schoolboys who were amused to pull off their
wings.

Then he climbed slowly down from the table
and took out
his cigarette-case.

The man he had left did not so much raise
himself off the
table as roll off it; and, when his feet touched the
floor, it was
seen
that he could scarcely stand.

Roger pushed him roughly into a chair, from
which, fin
gering his throat, he could see the man who still lay
where he had fallen.

“Don’t look so surprised,” said
Roger. “The last man the
Saint hit like that was out for half an hour,
and your pal’s only been out twenty minutes.”

Simon flicked a match into the fireplace and
returned to face the prisoner.

“Let’s hear your little song,
honeybunch,” he said briefly.

“What do you want to know?”

“First thing of all, I want to know
what’s been done with
the girl who was taken to-night.”

“That I do not know.”

The Saint’s cigarette tilted up to a
dangerous angle between
his lips, and his hands went deep into his
trousers pockets.

“You don’t seem to have got the idea,
beautiful,” he re
marked sweetly. “This isn’t a game—as
you’ll find out if you
don’t wake yourself up in rather less time
than it takes me to
get my hands on you again. I’m quite ready to resume the
surgical
operation as
soon as you like. So go on talking, be
cause I
just love your voice, and it helps me to forget all the
unpleasant
things I ought to be doing to your perfectly ap
palling face.”

The man shuddered and cowered back into the
depths of the
chair. His hands flew to his eyes; it may have been to
shut out a ghastly vision, or it may have been to try to escape from Saint’s
merciless blue stare.

“I do not know!” he almost
screamed. “I swear it——
”

“Then tell me what you do know, you
rat,” said Simon, “and then I’ll make you remember some more.”

Words came to the fat man in an incoherent,
pelting stream,
lashed on by fear.

He was acting on the instructions of Dr.
Marius. That was true. The house in Brook Street had been closely watched for
the last
twenty-four hours, he himself being one of the watch
ers. He had seen the
departure the previous night, but they had not had the means to follow a car.
Two other men had
been sent to inspect the premises that afternoon, had
seen the
loaded car outside, and had rushed away together to
report.

“Both of them?” interrupted the
Saint.

“Both of them. It was a criminal mistake.
But they will be
punished.”

“How will you be rewarded, I
wonder?” murmured Simon.

The fat man shivered, and went on.

“One was sent back immediately, but the
car had gone. The
Doctor then said that he had made other plans, and one man
would be enough to keep the watch, in case you return. I was
that man.
Hermann”—he pointed to the inert figure on the
floor—“had just
come to relieve me when you came back. We
were going to report
it.”

“Both of you?”

“Both of us.”

“A criminal mistake,” drawled the
Saint sardonically. “But
I expect you will be punished. Yes?”

The man winced.

Another of his comrades, he said, had been
told off to follow
the girl. It had been impressed upon the sleuths that no
move
ment should be missed, and no habit overlooked, however
trifling.
Marius had not divulged the reason for this vigilance,
but he had left them
in no doubt of its importance. In that
spirit Patricia had
been followed to Devonshire.

“Your boss seems very unwilling to meet
me again person
ally,”
observed the Saint grimly. “How wise of him!”

“We could afford to take no risks——”

”
‘We’?”

Simon swooped on the pronoun like a hawk.

“I mean——
”

“I know what you mean, sweetness,”
said the Saint silkily. “You mean that you didn’t mean to let on that you
knew more
about this than you said. You’re not just a hired crook,
like the
last specimen of your kind I had to tread on. You’re a
secret agent. We understand that. We understand also that, however
much
respect you may have for the continued wholeness of
your own verminous
hide, a most commendable patriotism for your misbegotten country will make you
keep on fighting and
lying as long as you can. Very good. I
applaud. But I’m afraid
my appreciation of your one solitary virtue
will have to stop
there—at just that one theoretical pat on the back. After
which, we go back to our own private, practical quarrel. And
what
you’ve got to get jammed well into the misshapen lump of bone that keeps your
unwashed ears apart, is that I’m a bit
of a fighter myself,
and I think—somehow, somehow, I think,
dear one—I think I’m
a better fighter than you are.”

“I did not mean——
”

“Don’t lie,” said the Saint, in a
tone of mock reproach that
held behind its superficial flippance a kind
of glacial menace.
“Don’t lie to me. I don’t like it.”

Roger moved off the wall which he had been
propping up.

“Put him back on the table, old
boy,” he suggested.

“I’m going to,” said the Saint,
“unless he spills the beans in
less than two flaps of a duck’s
rudder.”

He came a little closer to the fat man.

“Now, you loathsome monstrosity—listen
to me. The game’s
up. You’ve put both feet in it with that little word ‘we.’
And
I’m curious. Very, very curious and inquisitive. I want to know
everything
about you—the story of your life, and your favourite movie star, and your golf
handicap, and whether you sleep
with your pyjama trousers inside or outside
the jacket. I want
you to tell me all about yourself. For instance, when
Marius
told you that you could let up on the watch here, as he’d made
other
plans—didn’t he say that there was a girl concerned in
those plans?”

“No.”

“That’s two lies,” said the Saint.
“Next time you lie, you will
be badly hurt. Second question: I know
that Marius arranged
for the girl to be drugged on the train, and
taken off it before
it reached London—but where was she to be taken to?”

“I do not——
A-a-a-a-ah!”

“I
warned you,” said the
Saint.

“Are you a devil?” sobbed the man,
and the Saint showed
his teeth.

“Not really. Just an ordinary man who
objects to being
molested. I thought I’d made that quite plain. Of course,
I’m
in a hurry this evening, so that may make me seem a little
hasty.
Now, are you going to remember things—truthful
things—or shall we have some more
unpleasantness?”

The man shrank back from him, quivering.

“I do not know any more,” he
blubbered. “I swear——
”

“Where is Marius now?”

But the man did not answer immediately, for
the sudden
ringing of a bell sounded clearly through the apartment.

For a second the Saint was immobile.

Then he stepped round behind the prisoner’s
chair, and the
little knife slid out of its sheath again. The prisoner
saw the
flash of
it, and his eyes dilated with terror. A cry rose to his lips,
and the Saint stifled it with a hand over his
mouth. Then the
point stung the man
over the heart.

“Just one word,” said the
Saint—“just one word, and you’ll
say the rest of the sentence to the
Recording Angel. Who d’you think it is, Roger?”

“Teal?”

“Having traced that motor agent to his
Sunday lair, and got on our trail?”

“If we don’t answer—”

“They’ll break in. There’s the car
outside to tell them we’re
here. No, they’ll have to come in——”

“Just when we’re finding out
things?”

Simon Templar’s eyes glittered.

“Give me that gun!”

Conway picked up the automatic that the fat
man had
dropped, which had lain neglected on the floor ever since, and handed it
over obediently.

“I’ll tell you,” said the Saint,
“that no man born of woman
is going to interfere with me. I’m going to
finish getting every
thing I want out of this lump of refuse, and
then I’m going on to act on it—to find Pat—and I’ll shoot my way through the
whole of
Scotland Yard to do it, if I have to. Now go and open
that door.”

Conway nodded.

“I’m with you,” he said, and went
out.

The Saint waited calmly.

His left hand still held the slim blade of
Anna over the fat
man’s heart, ready to drive it home, and his ears were
alert
for the faintest sound of a deeply drawn breath that might be the prelude
to a shout. His right hand held the automatic,
concealed behind the
back of the chair.

But when Roger came back, and the Saint saw
the man who
came with him, he remained exactly as he was; and no one
could have remarked the slightest change in the desolate im
passivity
of his face. Only his heart leapt sickeningly, and
slithered back anyhow
into its place, leaving a strange feeling
of throbbing
emptiness spreading across the track of that thud
ding somersault.
“Pleased
to meet you again, Marius,” said the Saint.

and broke up the party

Then, slowly, the Saint straightened up.

No one would ever know what an effort his
calm and smil
ing imperturbability cost him; and yet, as a matter of
fact, it
was easier than the calm he had previously maintained
before
Roger Conway when there was really nothing to be calm
about.

For this was something that the Saint
understood. He had
not the temperament to remain patient in periods of
enforced
inaction; he could never bring his best to bear against
an
enemy whom he could not see; subtleties were either above
or beneath
him, whichever way you like to look at it.