The Saint Closes the Case (31 page)

Then he opened the window noiselessly, and
looked out. He beckoned her over. The Hirondel stood waiting on the
drive,
less than a dozen yards away. He pointed.

“Hide behind the curtains,” he
ordered. “When you hear
three shots in quick succession, it’s your
cue to run for the
car. Shoot down anyone who tries to stop you.”

“But where are you going?”

“To collect the troops.” He laughed
soundlessly. “Good
bye, dear!”

He put his hand to his lips, and was gone,
closing the door
softly behind him.

It was when he had left the room for the first
time that
he had heard, through the open door of the sitting-room,
the
terse command,
“Put up your hands!”
in a voice that was
cer
tainly neither Roger’s nor Simon’s. Now he stood still for a moment
outside Patricia’s door, listening, and heard the in
imitably cheerful
accents of Simon Templar in a tight corner.

“You’re welcome—as the actress said to
the bishop on a particularly auspicious occasion. But why haven’t you brought
Angel Face with you,
sweetheart?”

Norman Kent heard the last sentence as he was
opening
the door of the kitchen.

He passed through the kitchen and opened
another door.
A flight of steps showed before him in the light which he
switched on. He went down, and a third door faced him—a
ponderous
door of three-inch oak, secured by two heavy bars
of iron. He lifted
the bars and went in, closing that third door
behind him as
carefully as he had closed the first two. The
three doors between
them should be enough to deaden any
sound… .

Vargan was sitting huddled up in a chair,
scribbling with a
stump of pencil in a tattered notebook.

He raised his head at the sound of Norman’s
entrance. His
white hair was dishevelled, and his stained and shabby
clothes
hung loosely on his bones. The eyes seemed the only vital
things in a
lined face like a creased old parchment, eyes with
the full fire of his
madness stirring in them like the pale flickering flame that simmers over the
crust of an awakening vol
cano.

Norman felt a stab of absurd pity for this
pitifully crazy figure. And yet he knew that his business was not with the
man, but
with the madness of the man—the madness that
could, and would, let
loose upon the world a greater horror
than anything that the murderous
madness of other men had
not conceived.

And the face of Norman Kent was like a face
graven in dark
stone.

“I have come for your answer, Professor Vargan,” he
said.

The scientist sat deep in his chair, peering
aslant at the
stern dark figure framed against the door. His face
twitched spasmodically, and his yellow hands clutched his notebook
clumsily
into his coat; he made no other movement. And he
did not speak.

“I am waiting,” said Norman Kent
presently.

Vargan passed a shaky hand through his hair.

“I’ve given you my answer,” he said harshly.

“Think,” said Norman.

Vargan looked down the muzzle of the
automatic, and his
lips curled back from his teeth in an animal snarl.

“You are a friend of my
persecutors,” he croaked, and his
voice rose to a
shrill sobbing scream as he saw Norman Kent’s knuckle whiten over the trigger.

17. How Simon Templar exchanged
back-chat,

and Gerald Harding
shook
hands

“We were expecting Angel Face,”
remarked the Saint. “But
not quite so soon. The brass band’s ordered,
the Movietone
cameramen are streaming down, the reporters are sharpen
ing their
pencils as they run, and we were just going out to unroll the red carpet. In
fact, if you hadn’t been so sudden,
there’d have been a full civic
reception waiting for you. All
except the mayor. The mayor was going to
present you with
an illuminated address, but he got lit up himself while
he was
preparing it, so I’m afraid he’s out of the frolic, anyway. How
ever…”

He stood beside Roger Conway, his hands
prudently held
high in the air.

He’d been caught on the bend—as neatly as
he’d ever been
caught in the whole of his perilous career. Well and truly
bending, he’d been. Bending in a bend which, if he could have
repeated it
regularly and with the necessary adornments of
showmanship, would
undoubtedly have made his fortune
in a Coney Island booth as The Man with
the Plasticene Spine.
In fact, when he reviewed that bend with a
skinned eye, he
could see that nothing short of the miracle which is tradi
tionally
supposed to save fools from the consequences of their
folly could have
saved him from hearing that imponderable
inward
ping!
which
informs a man supple on the uptake that
one of his
psychological suspender-buttons has come unstuck.

It struck the Saint that this last adventure
wasn’t altogether
his most brilliant effort. It didn’t occur to him to
blame anyone else for the various leaks it had sprung. He might, if he
had been
that sort of man, have put the blame on Roger Conway, for Roger’s two brilliant
contributions, in the shape of dropping the brick about Maidenhead and then
letting Marius
escape, could certainly be made out to have something to
do with the
present trouble; but the Saint just wasn’t that sort
of man. He could only
visualise the adventure, and those taking part in it, as one coherent whole,
including himself; and,
since he was the leader, he had to take an
equal share of blame
for the mistakes of his lieutenants, like any
other general. Except that, unlike any other general, he kept the blame to him
self, and
declined to pass on the kick to those under him. Any
bricks that were
dropped must, in the nature of things, flop
on everybody’s toes
simultaneously and with the same sicken
ing thud: therefore
the only intelligent and helpful thing to
do was to consider
the bricks as bricks, and deal with the bricks as bricks simple and absolute,
without wasting time over the
irrelevant question of who dropped the brick
and why.

And here, truly, was an admirable example of
the species
brick, a brick colossal and catastrophic, a very
apotheosis of
Brick, in the shape of this fresh-faced youngster in plus
eights,
who’d coolly walked in through the French window half a
minute
after Norman Kent had walked out of the door.

It had been done so calmly and impudently
that neither
Simon nor Roger had had a chance to do anything about it.
That was when they had been so blithely on the bend. At one
moment
they had been looking through the window at a gar
den; at the next
moment they had been looking through the
window at a gun. They
hadn’t been given a break.

And what had happened to Norman Kent? By
rights, he
should have been back by that time. He should have been
cantering
blindfold into the hold-up—and Patricia with him,
as like as not. Unless
one of them had heard the conversation.
Simon had noticed
that Norman hadn’t closed the door behind
him, and for that
reason deliberately raised his voice. Now,
if Norman and Patricia
received their cue before the hold-up
merchant heard them coming …

“You wouldn’t believe me,” Simon
went on affably, “if I
told you how much I’ve been looking forward to
renewing
my acquaintance with Angel Face. He’s so beautiful, and I
love
beautiful boys. Besides, I feel that a few more informal chats will make us
friends for life. I feel that there’s a kind of
soul affinity between
us. It’s true that there was some unpleas
antness at our first
few meetings; but that’s only natural be
tween men of such
strong and individual personalities as ours,
at a first
acquaintance. It ought not to last. Deep will call to
deep. I feel that we
shall not separate again before he’s wept on my shoulder and vowed again
eternal friendship and lent
me half a dollar… . But perhaps he’s just
waiting to come
in
when you give him the All Clear?”

A slight frown appeared on the face of the
young man with
the gun.

“Who is this friend of yours—Angel
Face—anyway?”

The Saint’s eyebrows went up.

“Don’t you know Angel Face,
honeybunch?” he murmured.
“I had an idea you’d turn out to be
bosom friends. My mis
take. Let’s change the subject. How’s dear
old Teal? Still liv
ing on spearmint and struggling with the overflow of that
boyish
figure? You know, I can’t help thinking he must have
thought it very
inhospitable of us to leave him lying about
Brook Street all last
night with only Hermann for company.
Did he think it was very rude of us?”

“I suppose you’re Templar?”

Simon bowed.

“Right in one, loveliness. What’s your
name—Ramon
Novarro? Or are you After Taking Wuggo? Or are you just
one of the
strong silent men from the musical comedy chorus?
You know: Gentlemen’s
clothes by Morris Angel and the
brothers Moss. Hair by Marcel. Faces by accident. What?”

“As a low comedian you’d be a
sensation,” said the young
ster calmly. “As a clairvoyant, you’d
probably make a most
successful coal-heaver. Since you’re
interested, I’m Captain
Gerald Harding, British Secret Service,
Agent 2238.”

“Pleased to meet you,” drawled the
Saint.

“And this is Conway?”

Simon nodded.

“Right again, son. You really are God’s
little gift to the
General Knowledge Class, aren’t you? … Speak your
piece,
Roger, and keep nothing back. You can’t bamboozle Bertie.
I shouldn’t
be surprised if he even knew where you hired your
evening clothes.”

“Same place where he had the pattern
tattooed on those
pants,” said Roger. “Very dashing, isn’t it?
D’you think it
reads from left to right, or up and down?”

Harding leaned one shoulder against the wall,
and regarded his captures with a certain reluctant admiration.

“You’re a tough pair of wags,” he
conceded.

“Professionally,” said the Saint,
“we play twice nightly to crowded houses, and never fail to bring them
down. Which
reminds me. May we do the same thing with our hands? I
don’t want
you to feel nervous, but this position is rather tir
ing and so bad for
the circulation. You can relieve us of
our artillery first,
if you like, in the approved style.”

“If you behave,” said Harding.
“Turn round.”

“With pleasure,” murmured the
Saint. “And thanks.”

Harding came up behind them and removed their
guns.
Then he backed away again.

“All right—but no funny business,
mind!”

“We never indulge in funny
business,” said Simon with
dignity.

He reached for a cigarette from the box on
the table and
prepared to light it unhurriedly.

To all outward appearances he was completely
unruffled, and had been so ever since Harding’s arrival. But that was
merely the
pose which he habitually adopted when the storm
was gathering most
thickly; the Saint reserved his excitements
for his spare time.
He could always maintain that air of
leisured nonchalance in any emergency,
and other men before
Harding had been perplexed and disconcerted
by it. It was
always the same—that languid affectation of indifference,
and
that genial flow of idle persiflage that smoked effortlessly off the
mere surface of his mind without disturbing the concen
trated thought which
it concealed.

The more serious anything was, the more extravagantly
the Saint refused to treat it seriously. And thereby he was never
without
some subtle advantage over the man who had the
drop on him; for
Simon’s bantering assurance was so per
fectly assumed that only an almost
suicidally -self-confident
opponent could
have been left untroubled by a lurking un
easiness. Only a fool or a genius would have failed to jump to
the conclusion that such a tranquil unconcern must
base it
self on a high card somewhere
up its frivolous sleeve. And
very
often the man who was neither a fool nor a genius was
right.