The Saint Closes the Case (27 page)

Then Simon understood the bluff.

It must have been years since the sedate and
sober Norman
Kent had played such irreverent slapstick with the tongue
that
Shakespeare spake, but the Saint could forgive the lapse.

Simon’s arm was round Patricia’s shoulders,
and he had
seen a light in the darkness. The miracle had happened,
and
the adventure went on.

And he found his voice.

“Oh,
boy!”
he cried; and
dragged Patricia down into the
temporary shelter of the barricade as the
first shot from out
side the smashed door smacked over their heads and sang
away
into the blackness beyond the open window.

14. How Roger Conway drove the Hirondel,

and Norman Kent looked back

A second bullet snarled past the Saint’s ear
and flattened itself in a silvery scar on the wall behind him; but no more
shots
followed. From outside the house came the rattle of other
guns.
Simon heard Marius speaking crisply, and then he was
listening to the
sound of footsteps hurrying away down the
corridor. He raised
his head out of cover, and saw nothing
through the hole in
the door.

“They’re going to try and make a dash
through the cordon
that isn’t there,” he divined; and so it was to
prove.

He stood up, and began to tear away the
barricade, the girl
helping him.

They raced down the corridor together, and
paused at the
top of the stairs. But there was no one to be seen in the
hall
below.

Simon led the way downwards. Without
considering where he went, he burst into the nearest room, and found that it
was
the room in which he had fought the opening skirmish. The
window
through which he had hurled himself was now open,
and through it drifted
the sounds of a scattered fusillade.

He caught up a gun from the floor without
halting in his
rush to the window.

Outside, on the lawn, with the light behind
him, he could see a little knot of men piling into a car. The engine started
up a second
later.

A smile touched the Saint’s lips—the first
entirely carefree smile that had been there that night. There was something ir
resistibly
entertaining about the spectacle of that death-or-
glory sortie whose
reckless daring was nothing but the saying
of a loud
“Boo” to a tame goose—if the men who made the
sortie had
only known. But they could not have known, and Marius was doing the only
possible thing. He could not have hoped to survive a siege, but a sortie was a
chance. Flimsy, but
a chance. And certainly the effect of a posse shooting
all round the house had been very convincingly obtained. Simon guessed
that the
rescue party had spared neither ammunition nor
breath. They must have
run themselves off their legs to main
tain that impression of revolver fire
coming from every quar
ter of the garden at once.

The car, with its frantic load, was sweeping
down the drive
in a moment. Simon levelled his gun and spat lead after
it,
but he could not tell whether he did any damage.

Then another gun poked into his ribs, and he
turned.

“Put it up,” said the Saint.
“Put it up, Roger, old lad!”

“Well, you old horse-thief!”

“Well, you low-down stiff!”

They shook hands.

Then Norman Kent loomed up out of the
darkness.

“Where’s Pat?”

But Patricia was beside the Saint.

Norman swung her off her feet and kissed her
shamelessly.
Then he clapped Simon on the shoulder.

“Do we go after them?” he asked.
The Saint shook his head.

“Not now. Is Orace with you?”

“No. Just Roger and I—the old firm.”

“Even then—we’ve got to get back to
Vargan. We can’t risk
throwing away the advantage, and getting the
whole bunch of
us tied up again. And in about ten seconds more this place
is
going to be infested with stampeding villagers thinking the
next war’s
started already. We’ll beat it while the tall timber
looks easy!”

“What’s that on your coat—blood?”

“Nothing.”

He led the way to the Hirondel, walking rather
slowly for
him. Roger went beside him. At one step, the Saint
swayed,
and caught at Roger’s arm.

“Sorry, son,” he murmured.
“Just came all over queer, I
did.
…”

“Hadn’t you better let us have a look——
”

“We’ll leave now,” said the Saint,
with more quietly incon
testable iciness than he had ever used to
Roger Conway in his
life
before.

The strength, the unnatural vigour which had
carried him through until then, was leaving him as it ceased to be neces
sary. But
he felt a deep and absurd contentment.

Roger Conway drove, for Norman had curtly
surrendered
the wheel of his own recovered car. Thus Roger could
explain
to the Saint, who sat beside him in the front.

“Norman brought us here. I always swore
you were the last
word in drivers, but there isn’t much you could teach Nor
man.”

“What was the car?”

“A Lancia. He was stuck at Maidenhead
without anything,
so the only thing to do was to pinch something. He walked
up
to Skindle’s, and took his pick.”

“Let’s have this from the
beginning,” said the Saint pa
tiently. “What happened to
you?”

“That was a bad show,” said Roger.
“Fatty distracted my at
tention, and Angel Face laid me out with a
kick. Then Skinny finished the job, near enough. Marius got on the phone, but
couldn’t
get Bures. He arranged other things with Westminster
double-nine
double-nine——
”

“I met ‘em. Four of “em.”

“Then Marius went off with Fatty, leaving
Hermann in
charge. Before that, I’d been ringing up Norman, and
Norman had said he might come up. When the bell rang, I shouted to
warn him,
and got laid out again. But it wasn’t Norman—it
was Teal. Teal
collared Hermann. I told Teal part of the story. It was the only thing I could
think of to do—partly to keep us in Brook Street for a bit in case Norman
turned up, and partly
to help you. I told Teal to get through to the
police at Brain
tree. Did they miss you?”

“They tried to stop me, but I ran
through.”

“Then Norman turned up. Took Teal in
beautifully—
and laid him out with a battle-axe or something off your
wall.
We left Teal and Hermann trussed up like chickens——
”

The Saint interrupted.

“Half a minute,” he said quietly.
“Did you say you rang up
Norman?”

Conway nodded.

“Yes. I thought——”

“While Marius was there?”

“Yes.”

“He heard you give the number?”

“Couldn’t have helped hearing, I
suppose. But——
”

Simon leaned back.

“Don’t tell me,” he said,
“don’t tell me that we already know
that the exchange is
not allowed to give subscribers’ names and addresses. Don’t tell me that
Hermann, who’s with Teal, mayn’t
have remembered the number.
But what fool
wouldn’t remem
ber the one word ‘Maidenhead’?”

Roger clapped a hand to his mouth.

The murder was out—and he hadn’t seen the
murder until
that moment. The sudden understanding of what he had done
appalled
him.

“Won’t you kick me, Saint? Won’t you——
?”

Simon put a hand on his arm, and laughed.

“Never mind, old Roger,” he said.
“I know you didn’t think. You weren’t bred to this sort of game, and it
isn’t your fault if you trip up. Besides, you couldn’t have known that it was
going to make any difference. You couldn’t have known Angel
Face was
going to get away, or Teal was going to arrive—”

“You’re making excuses for me,” said
Roger bitterly. “And
there aren’t any. I know it. But it’s just the
sort of thing you
would do.”

The hand on Roger’s arm tightened.

“Ass,” said the Saint softly,
“why cry over spilt milk? We’re
safe for hours yet, and that’s all that
matters.”

Conway was silent; and the Hirondel sped on
through the
night without a check.

Simon leaned back and lighted a cigarette. He
seemed to
sleep, but he did not sleep. He just relaxed and stayed
quiet,
taking the rest which he so sorely needed. No one would ever
know what
a gigantic effort of will it had cost him to carry on
as he had done. But
he would say nothing of that to anyone
but Roger, who had
found him out. He would not have
Patricia know. She would have insisted on
delaying the jour
ney, and that he dared not allow.

He explored his wound cautiously, taking care
that his
movements should not be observed from the back. Fortu
nately,
the bullet had passed cleanly through his shoulder,
and there were not
likely to be any complications. To-mor
row, with his
matchless powers of recuperation and the splendid health he had always
enjoyed, he should be left with noth
ing more seriously disabling than a
stiff and sore shoulder.
The only real danger was the weakness after
losing so much
blood. But even that he felt he would be able to cope
with
now.

So he sat back with his eyes closed and the
cigarette smoul
dering, almost forgotten, between his fingers, and thought
over the brick that Roger had dropped.

And he saw one certain result of it staring
him in the face,
and that was that Maidenhead would not be safe
 
for his
democracy for very long.

Marius, still at large, wouldn’t be likely to
lose much time
in returning to the attack. And Maidenhead was not a
large
place, and the number of houses which could seriously be con
sidered
was strictly limited. By morning, Marius would be on the job, working with a
desperation that would be doubled by
the belief that in some way the police
had been enleagued
against him. In the morning, also, Teal would be rescued,
and
would start trying to obtain information from Hermann: and
how long
would Hermann hold out? Not indefinitely—that
was certain. In the
circumstances, the Powers Higher Up might
turn a conveniently
blind eye to methods of persuasion which
the easy-going officialdom of England
would never tolerate in
ordinary times: for
the affair might be called a national emer
gency. And once Teal had the telephone number …

Exactly. Say to-morrow evening. By which time
Marius, with a good start to make up for his lack of official facilities, would
also be getting hot on the trail.

The Saint was no fool. He knew that the
Criminal Investi
gation Department, except in the kind of detective story
in
which some dude amateur with a violin and a taste for exotic
philosophies
made rings round their hardened highnesses, was
not composed entirely
of nitwits. Here and there, Simon did not hesitate to admit, among the men at
New Scotland Yard, there was a brain not utterly cretinous. Claud Eustace
Teal’s,
for instance. And Teal, though he might be something of a
dim
bulb at
the spectacular stuff, was a hound for action when he had anything definite to
act upon. And there might be more
concrete things to act upon than a name
and address in a
chase of that sort; but, if there were, the Saint
couldn’t think
of them.

Marius also. Well, Marius spoke for himself.

Taken by and large, it seemed as if Maidenhead
was likely
to become the centre of some considerable activity before
the
next nightfall.