Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint s-4

by Leslie Charteris

  " 'Saint.'. .. Hasn't he any other name?"

  "Most people call him the Saint," said Roger.. "His real name is Simon Templar."

  " 'Simon'?" She made enchantment of the name, so that Roger wished she would change the subject. And, in a way, she did. She said: "I remembered a lot more after I left you last night. There were three of you who escaped, weren't there? There was a girl—"

  "Patricia Holm?"

  "That's right."

  Roger nodded, impaling another rasher of bacon.

  "She isn't here," he said. "As a matter of fact, she's somewhere in the Mediterranean. The Saint wouldn't let her come back with us. She's been with him in most things, but he put his foot down when it came to running the risk of a long term in prison—if not worse. He roped in an old friend who has a private yacht, and sent her off on a long cruise. And just we two came back."

  "Had she been with him a long time?"

  "About three years. He picked her up in another adventure, and they've stuck together ever since."

  "Were they—married?"

  "No."

  Even then, when Roger was reflecting miserably within him upon the ease with which conquests came to some men who didn't deserve them, he couldn't be guilty of even an implied disloyalty to his leader.

  He added, with simple sincerity: "You see, the question never really arose. We're outlaws. We've put ourselves outside the pale—and ordinary standards don't apply. One day, perhaps—"

  "You'll win back your place inside the pale?"

  "If we could, everything would be different."

  "Would you like to go back?"

  "For myself? I don't know."

  She smiled.

  "Somehow," she said, "I can't picture your friend handing round cakes at tea parties, and giving his duty dances to gushing hostesses."

  "The Saint?" Roger laughed. "He'd probably start throwing knives at the orchestra, just to wake things up.... And here he is."

  A car hummed down the mews and stopped outside. A moment later a bent old man, with gray beard, smoked glasses, and shabby hat, entered the sitting room. He leaned on a stick, with an untidy brown-paper parcel in his other hand.

  "Such a lovely morning," he wheezed, in a quavering voice. "And two such lovely young people having breakfast together. Well, well, well!" He straightened up. "Roger, have you left anything for me, you four-flushing son of a wall­eyed horse thief?"

  He heaved parcel and stick into a corner—sent beard, glasses, and hat to join them—and smoothed his coat. By some magic he shed all the illusion of shabbiness from his clothes without further movement; and it was the Saint himself who stood there, adjusting his tie with the aid of the mirror over the mantelpiece—trim, immaculate, debonair.

  "Getting younger and more beautiful every day," he murmured complacently; then he turned with a laugh. "Forgive the amateur theatricals, Sonia. I had an idea there might be several policemen out looking for me this morning—and I was right. I recognized three in Piccadilly alone, and I stopped to ask one of them the time. Anyway, I raised you an outfit. You needn't be shy about wearing it, because it belongs to a lady who married a real live lord—though I did my best to save him."

  He sank into a chair with a sigh, and surveyed the plate which Roger set before him.

  "What—only one egg? Have the hens gone on strike, or something?"

  "If you want another," said Roger offensively, "you'll have to lay it yourself. There were only four in the house and our guest had two."

  Simon turned to the girl with a smile.

  "Well," he said, "it's something to hear you were fit enough to cope with them."

  "I feel perfectly all right this morning," she said. "It must have been that drink you gave me last night."

  "Wonderful stuff," said the Saint. "I'll give you the prescription before you go, so that you can have some ready for the next time you're doped. It's also an infallible preventive of the morning after—if that's any use to you."

  He picked up his knife and fork.

  "Did I hear you say you saw some detectives?" asked Roger.

  "I saw several. All in very plain clothes, and all flat-footed. A most distressing sight for an old man on his way home from church. And they weren't just out for constitutionals—sniffing the balmy breezes and thinking about their dinners. They weren't keeping holy the Sabbath Day. They were doing all manner of work. Rarely have I run such a gauntlet of frosty stares. It was quite up­setting." The Saint grinned gently. "But what it most certainly means is that the cat has leaped from the portmanteau with some agility. Enough beans have been spilt to keep Heinz busy for a year. The gaff has been blown from here to Honolulu. You know, I had an idea Heinrich would rise to the occasion."

  2

  IT WAS THE GIRL who spoke first.

  "The police are after you?"

  "They've been after me for years," said the Saint cheerfully, "in a general sort of way. But just recently the hunt's been getting a bit fierce. Yes, I think I can claim that this morning I'm at the height of my unpopularity, so far as Scotland Yard's concerned."

  "After all," said Roger, "you can't go round kidnapping Steel Princesses without something happening."

  Simon helped himself to marmalade.

  "True, O King," he murmured. "Though that's hardly likely to be the charge. If Heinrich had sung a song about a stolen Steel Princess they'd have wanted to know what she was doing in his house. . . . Curse Sunday! On any other day I could have bought an evening paper and found out exactly what psalm he warbled. As it is, I shall have to go round and inquire in person."

  "You'll have to what?" spluttered Roger.

  "Make personal inquiries," said the Saint. "Disguised as a gentleman, I shall interview Prince Rudolf at the Ritz Hotel, and hear all the news."

  He pushed back his chair and reached for the cigarette box.

  "It may not have occurred to your mildewed intellect," he remarked pleasantly, "that the problems of international intrigue can usually be reduced to quite simple terms. Let's reduce Rudolf. A, wishing to look important, desires to smite B on the nose. But B, unfortunately, is a bigger man than A. C comes along and offers A a gun, wherewith B can be potted from a safe distance. But we destroyed that gun. C then suggests a means of wangling an alliance between A and D, whereby the disgusting superiority of B may be overcome. C, of course, is sitting on the fence, waiting to take them into his very expensive nursing-home when they've all half killed each other. Is that clear?"

  "Like mud," said Roger.

  "Well," said the Saint, unmoved, "if you wanted to find out exactly how the alliance was to be wangled, mightn't it be helpful to ask A?"

  "And, naturally, he'd tell you at once."

  Simon shook his head sadly.

  "There are subtleties in this game," he said, "which are lost upon you, Roger. But they may be explained to you later. Meanwhile..."

  The Saint leaned back, with a glance at his watch, and looked across the table at the girl. The bantering manner which he wore with such an ease slipped from his shoulders like a cloak; and he studied her face soberly, reading what he could in the deep brown eyes. She had been watching him ever since he came into the room; and he knew that the fate of his plan was already sealed—one way or the other.

  "Your parole has still more than four hours to run," he said, "but I give it back to you now."

  She could thank him coldly, and go. She could thank him nicely, rather puzzledly—and go. And if she had made the least move to do either of those things, he would not have said another word. It would be no use, unless she delayed of her own free will. And only one thing could so bend her will—a thing that he hardly dared to contem­plate. ...

  "Why do you do that? "she asked simply.

  3

  "Why do you do that?" . . . "I'll give you my parole." ... He turned over those forthright sentences in his mind. And the way in which they had been spoken. The way in which everything he had heard her say had been spoken. Her superb sim
plicity...

  "America's Loveliest Lady," the Bystander caption had called her; and the Saint reflected how little meaning was left in that last word. And yet it was the only word for her. There was something about her that one had to meet to understand. If he had had to describe it, he could only have done so in flowery phrases—and a flowery phrase would have robbed the thing of all its fresh naturalness, would have tarnished it, might even have made it seem pretentious. And it was the most unpretending thing he had ever known. It was so innocent that it awed him; and yet it made his heart leap with a fantastic hope.

  "I did my thinking last night, as I said I would," he answered her quietly.

  Still she did not move.

  She prompted him: "And you made your plan?"

  "Yes."

  "I wonder if it was the same as mine?"

  Simon raised his eyebrows.

  "'The same as yours?''

  She smiled.

  "I can think, too, Mr.—Saint," she said. "I've been taught to. And last night I thought a lot. I thought of everything you'd said, and everything I'd heard about you. And I believed what you'd told me. So—I knew there was only one thing to do."

  "Namely?"

  "Didn't you call me—Marius's battle-axe? I think you were right. And that's something for us to know. But there's so much else that we don't know—how the axe is to be used, and what other weapons there are to reinforce it. You've taken the axe away, but that's all. Marius still means to bring down the tree. Once before you've thought he was beaten; but you were wrong. This time, if you just take away his axe, you'll know he isn't beaten. He's already undermined the tree. Even now it may fall before the next natural storm. It may be hard enough to prop it up now, until the roots grow down again—without leaving Marius free to strike at it again. And to make sure that he won't strike again, you've got to break his arm."

  "Or his neck," said the Saint grimly.

  Again she smiled.

  "Haven't I read your thoughts?"

  "Perfectly."

  "And what was your plan?"

  Simon met her eyes.

  "I meant," he said deliberately, "to ask you to go back—to Heinrich Dussel."

  "That was what I meant to suggest."

  In that moment Roger Conway felt utterly off the map. The Saint had told him nothing. The Saint had merely sung continuously in his bath— which, with the Saint, was a sure sign of peace of mind. And, in the circumstances, Roger Conway had wondered. . . . But Simon had donned his disguise and departed in the car without a word in explanation of his high spirits; and Roger had been left to wonder. . . . And then—this. He saw the long, deliberate glance which the other two ex­changed, and felt that they were moving and speaking in another world—a world to which he could never aspire. And like a man in a dream he heard them discussing the impossible thing.

  He knew the Saint, and the thunderbolts of dazzling audacity which the Saint could launch, as no other man could have claimed to know them; and yet this detonation alone would have reeled him momentarily off his balance. But it didn't stand alone. It was matched—without a second's pause. They were of the same breed, those two. Though their feet were set on different roads, they walked in the same country—a country that or­dinary people could never reach. And it was then that Roger Conway, who had always believed that no one in all the world could walk shoulder to shoulder with the Saint in that country, began to understand many things.

  He heard them, in his dream—level question and answer, the quiet, crisp words. He would have been less at sea if either of them had said any of the things that he might have expected, in any way that he might have expected; but there was none of that. Those things did not exist in their language. Their calm, staccato utterances plunged into his brain like clear-cut gems falling through an infinite darkness.

  "You've considered the dangers?"

  "To myself?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm never safe—at any time."

  "The destinies we're playing with, then. I might fail you. That would mean we'd given Marius the game."

  "You might not fail."

  "Have we the right?" asked the Saint.

  And then Roger saw him again—the new Saint to whom he had still to grow accustomed. Simon Templar, with the old careless swashbuckling days behind him, more stern and sober, playing bigger games than he had ever touched before—yet with the light of all the old ideals in blue eyes that would never grow old, and all the old laughing hell-for-leather recklessness waiting for his need.

  "Have we the right to risk failure?" Simon asked.

  "Have you the right to turn back?" the girl answered him. "Have you the right to turn back and start all over again—when you might go forward?"

  The Saint nodded.

  "I just meant to ask you, Sonia. And you've given your answer. More—you've taken the words out of my mouth, and the objections I'm making are the ones you ought to have made."

  "I've thought of them all."

  "Then—we go forward."

  The Saint spoke evenly, quite softly; yet Roger seemed to hear a blast of bugles. And the Saint went on:

  "We've had enough of war. Fighting is for the strong—for those who know what they're fighting for, and love the fight for its own sake. We were like that, my friends and I—and yet we swore that it should not happen again. Not this new fighting—not this cold-blooded scientific maiming and slaughter of school-boys and poor grown-up fools herded to squalid death to make money for a bunch of slimy financiers. We saw it coming again. The flags flying, and the bands playing, and the politicians yaddering about a land fit for heroes to live in, and the poor fools cheering and being cheered, and another madness, worse than the last. Just another war to end war. . . . But we know that you can't end war by war. You can't end war by any means at all, thank God, while men believe in right and wrong, and some of them have the courage to fight for their belief. It has always been so. And it's my own creed. I hope I never live to see the day when the miserable quibbling hair-splitters have won the earth, and there's no more black and white, but everything's just a dreary relative gray, and everyone has a right to his own damned heresies, and it's more noble to be broadminded about your disgusting neighbours than to push their faces in as a preliminary to yanking them back into the straight and narrow way. . . . But this is different. There's no crusading about it. It's just mass murder — for the benefit of the men with the big bank balances. That's what we saw — and we were three blistered outlaws who'd made scrap-iron of every law in Europe, on one quixotic excuse or another, just to make life tolerable for ourselves in this half­hearted civilization. And when we saw that, we knew that we'd come to the end of our quest. We'd found the thing worth fighting for — really worth fighting for — so much more worth fighting for than any of the little things we'd fought for before. One of us has already died for it. But the work will go on. ..."

  And suddenly the Saint stood up.

  And all at once, in that swift movement, with the old gay devil-may-care smile awakening again on his lips, Simon Templar seemed to sweep the room clear of all doubts and shadows, leaving only the sunlight and the smile and the far cry of impos­sible fanfares.

  "Let's go!"

  "Where?" demanded Roger helplessly; and the Saint laughed.

  "On the job, sweetheart," he said—"on the job! Here—shunt yourself and let me get at that telephone."

  Roger shunted dazedly, and watched the Saint dial a number. The Saint's face was alight with a new laughter; and, as he waited, he began to hum a little tune. For the wondering and wavering was over, the speculating and the scheming, the space for physical inaction and sober counsel—those negative things at which the Saint's flaming vital­ity would always fret impatiently. And once again he was on the move—swift, smiling, cavalier, with a laugh and a flourish for battle and sudden death and all good things, playing the old game with all the magnificent zest that only he could bring to it.

  "Hullo. Can I speak to Dr. Marius
, please? . . . Templar—Simon Templar.. . .Thank you."

  Roger Conway said, suddenly, sharply: "Saint—you're crazy! You can't do it! The game's too big—"

  "Who wants to play for brickdust and bird­seed?" Simon required to know.

  And then, before Roger could think of an ade­quate retort to such an arrogance, he had lost any audience he might have had. For the Saint was speaking to the man he hated more than anyone else in the world.

  "Is that you, Marius, my little lamb?" Genially, almost caressingly, the Saint spoke. "And how's Heinrich? . . . Yes, I thought you'd have heard I was back. I'd have rung you up before, only I've been so busy. As a medical man, I can't call my time my own. Only last night I had an extraordi­nary case. Did Heinrich tell you? . . . Yes, I expected he would. I think he was very struck with my methods. Quiet—er—dazzled, in fact. . . . No, nothing in particular. It just occurred to me to soothe my ears with the sound of your sweet voice. It's such a long time since we had our last heart-to-heart talk. . . . The invalid? . . . Oh, getting on as well as can be expected. She ought to be fit to go back to the Embassy to-morrow. . . . No, not to­day. That dope you used on her seems to have a pretty potent follow-through, and I never send my patients home till they've got a bounce on them that's a free advertisement for the cure. . . . Well, you can remember me to Rudolf. I may drop in at the Ritz and have a cocktail with him before lunch. Bye-bye, Angel Face. ..."

  He hung up the receiver.

  "Beautiful," he murmured ecstatically. "Too, too beautiful! When it comes to low cunning, I guess that little cameo makes Machiavelli look like Little Red Riding Hood. Angel Face was great—he kept his end up right through the round—but I heard him take the bait. Distinctly. It fairly whis­tled through his epiglottis. . . . D'you get the idea, my Roger?"

  "I don't," Conway admitted.

  Simon looked at the girl.

  "Do you, Sonia?"

  She also shook her head; and the Saint laughed and helped himself to another cigarette.

  "Marius knows I've got you," he said. "He thinks he knows that you're still laid out by his dope. And he knows that I wouldn't tell the world I've got you—things being as they are. On that reckoning, then, he's got a new lease of life. He's got a day in which to find me and take you away.