The drive cut straight to the front door of the house, and Roger travelled as straight as the drive, his automatic swinging in his hand. He did not pause until he had reached the top of the steps, and there he waited an impatient moment to give Lessing a chance. Then, as the millionaire set the first toiling foot on the wide stone stair, Roger pressed the bell.
He braced himself, listening to the approach of heavy footsteps down the hall, as Lessing came panting up beside him. There was the sound of two bolts socketing back; then the rattle of the latch; then, as the door opened the first cautious inch, Roger hurled his weight forward. . . .
The man who had opened the door looked down the snout of the gun; and his hands voyaged slowly upwards.
"Turn round," said Roger monotonously. . .
As he brought the gun butt back into his hand he found the millionaire at his elbow, and surprised a certain dazed admiration in Lessing's crag-like face.
"I wish I had you in my office," Lessing was saying helplessly. "You're such a very efficient young man, Mr.—er—Conway —"
"I'm all of that," agreed an unsmiling Roger.
And then he heard a sound in the far corner of the hall, and whipped round to see an open door and a giant blocking the doorway. And Roger laughed.
"Angel Face!" he breathed blissfully. "The very man. . . . We've just dropped in to see you, Angel Face!"
2
MARIUS STOOD perfectly still—the automatic that was focussed on him saw to that. And Roger Conway walked slowly across the hall, Lessing behind him.
"Back into that room, Angel Face!" The giant turned with a faint shrug, and led the way into a richly furnished library. In the centre of the room he turned again, and it was then that he first saw Lessing in the full light. Yet the wide, hideous face remained utterly impassive—only the giant's hands expressed a puzzled and faintly cynical surprise.
"You, too, Sir Isaac? What have you done to incur our friend's displeasure?"
"Nothing," said Roger sweetly. "He's just come along for a chat with you, as I have. Keep your hands away from that desk, Angel Face—I'll let you know when we want to be shown the door."
Lessing took a step forward. For all his bulk, he was a square-shouldered man, and his cleanshaven jaw was as square as his shoulders.
"I'm told," he said, "that you have, or have had, my fiancée—Miss Delmar—here."
Marius's eyebrows went up.
"And who told you that, Sir Isaac?"
"I did," said Roger comfortably. "And I know it's true, because I saw her brought here—in the ambulance you sent to take her from Upper Berkeley Mews, as we arranged you should.''
Marius still looked straight across at Lessing.
"And you believed this story, Sir Isaac?" he inquired suavely; and the thin, soft voice carried the merest shadow of pained reproach.
"I came to investigate it. There were other circumstances ——"
"Naturally there are, Sir Isaac. Our friend is a highly competent young man. But surely—even if his present attitude and behavior are not sufficient to demonstrate his eccentric character—surely you know who he is?"
"He was good enough to tell me."
The giant's slitted gaze did not waver by one millimetre.
"And you still believed him, Sir Isaac?"
"His gang has a certain reputation."
"Yes, yes, yes!" Marius fluttered one vast hand. "The sensational newspapers and their romantic nonsense! I have read them myself. But our friend is still wanted by the police. The charge is—murder."
"I know that."
"And yet you came here with him—voluntarily?"
"I did."
"You did not even inform the police?"
"Mr. Conway himself offered to do that. But he also pointed out that that would mean prison for himself and his friend. Since they'd been good enough to find my fiancée for me, I could hardly offer them that reward for their services."
"So you came here absolutely unprotected?"
"Well, not exactly. I told my butler that unless I telephoned him within three hours he was to go to the police."
Marius nodded tolerantly.
"And may I ask what were the circumstances in which our friend was so ready to go to prison if you refused to comply with his wishes?"
"A war—which I was to be tricked into financing."
"My dear Sir Isaac!"
The giant's remonstrance was the most perfect thing of its kind that Roger had ever seen or heard; the gesture that accompanied it would have been expressive enough in itself. And it shook Lessing's confidence. His next words were a shade less assertive; and the answer to them was a foregone conclusion.
"You still haven't denied anything, Marius."
"But I leave it to your own judgment!"
"And still you haven't denied anything, Angel Face," said Roger gently.
Marius spread out eloquent hands.
"If Sir Isaac is still unconvinced," he answered smoothly, "I beg that he will search my house. I will summon a servant —"
"You'll keep your hands away from that bell!"
"But if you will not allow me to assist you —"
"I'll let you know when I want any help."
The giant's huge shoulders lifted in deprecating acquiescence. He turned again to Lessing.
"In that case, Sir Isaac," he remarked, "I am unfortunately deprived of my proof that Miss Delmar is not in this house."
"So you got her away on that ship, did you?" said Roger very quietly.
"What ship?"
"I see. . . . And did you meet the Saint?"
"I have seen none of your gang."
Slowly Roger sank down to the arm of a chair, and the hand that held the gun was as cold and steady as an Arctic rock. The knuckle of the trigger finger was white and tense; and for a moment Rayt Marius looked at death with expressionless eyes.. . .
And then the giant addressed Lessing again without a change of tone.
"You will observe, Sir Isaac, that our impetuous young friend is preparing to shoot me. After that, he will probably shoot you. So neither of us will ever know his motive. It is a pity—I should have been interested to know it. Why, after his gang have abducted your fiancee for some mysterious reason, they should have elected to make such a crude and desperate attempt to make you believe that I was responsible—unless it was nothing but an elaborate subterfuge to trap us both simultaneously in this house, in which case I cannot understand why he should continue with the accusation now that he has achieved his end.. . . Well, we are never likely to know, my dear Sir Isaac. Let us endeavour to extract some consolation from the reflection that your butler will shortly be informing the police of our fate."
3
ROGER'S FACE was a mask of stone; but behind that frozen calm two thoughts in concentric circles were spinning down through his brain, and nothing but those thoughts sapped from his trigger finger the last essential milligram of pressure that would have sent Rayt Marius to his death.
He had to know definitely what had happened to the Saint; and perhaps Marius was the only man who could tell him.
Nothing else was in doubt. Marius's brilliantly urbane cross-examination of Lessing had been turned to its double purpose with consummate skill. In a few minutes, a few lines of dialogue, innocently and unobtrusively, Marius had gained all the information that he needed—about their numbers, about the police, about everything. . . . And at the same time, in the turning of those same questions, he had attacked the charge against him with the most cunning weapon in his armoury— derision. Inch by inch he had gone over it with a distorting lens, throwing all its enormities into high relief, flooding its garish colours with the cold, merciless light of common, conventional sense; and then, scorning even to deny, he had simply stepped back and sardonically invited Lessing to form his own conclusions.. . .
It was superb—worthy in every way of the strategic genius that Roger remembered so well. And it had had
its inevitable effect. The points that Marius had scored, with those subtly mocking rhetorical question marks in their tails, had struck home one after another with deadly aim. And Lessing was wavering. He was looking at Roger steadily, not yet in downright suspicion but with a kind of grim challenge.
And there was the impasse. Roger faced it. For Lessing, there was a charge to be proven: and if Marius was not bluffing, and Sonia Delmar had really left the house, how could there be any proof? For Roger himself, there was an unconscious man down by the gates who would not remain permanently unconscious, and another in the hall who might be discovered even sooner; and before either of them revived Roger had got to learn things—even as Marius had had to learn things. Only Roger was not Rayt Marius.. . .
But the tables were turned—precisely. In that last speech, with murder staring him in the face, the giant had made a counter-attack of dazzling audacity. And Sir Isaac Lessing waited. . . .
It was Roger's cue.
A queer feeling of impotence slithered into the pit of his stomach. And he fought it down—fought and lashed his brains to match themselves against a man beside whom he was a newborn babe.
"Still the same old Angel Face!"
Roger found his voice somehow, and levelled it with all the dispassionate confidence at his command, striving to speak as the Saint would have spoken—to bluff out his weakness as the Saint would have bluffed. And he caught a sudden glitter in the giant's eyes at the sound of that very creditably Saintly drawl, and gathered a new surge of strength.
He turned to Lessing.
"Perhaps," he said, "I didn't make it quite plain enough that in the matter of slipperiness you could wrap Angel Face in sandpaper and still have him giving points to an eel. But I'll put it to you in his very own words. If I only wanted to trap you both here, why should I keep up the deception?"
"I believe I discarded that theory as soon as I had propounded it," said Marius imperturbably.
Roger ignored him.
"On the other hand, Sir Isaac, if I wanted to bring any charge against Marius—well, he generous enough to say that I was competent. Don't you think I might have invented something a little more plausible? And when I had invented something, wouldn't you have thought I'd have taken steps to see that I had some evidence— faked, if necessary? But I haven't any, except my own word. D'you think a really intelligent crook would try to put over anything like that?"
"I said our young friend was competent," murmured the giant; and Lessing looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
"Merely that he is even more competent than I thought. Consider it, Sir Isaac. To—er—fake evidence is not so easy as it sounds. But boldly to admit that there is no evidence, and then brazenly to adduce that confession as evidence in itself—that is a masterpiece of competence which can rarely have been equalled."
Roger laughed shortly.
"Very neat, Angel Face," he remarked. "But that line is wearing a little thin. Now, I've just had a brain wave. You know a lot of things which I certainly don't know, and which I very much want to know—where Sonia Delmar has gone, and what's happened to the Saint, for instance. And you won't tell me—yet. But there are ways of making people talk, Angel Face. You may remember that the Saint nearly had to demonstrate one of those ways on you a few months ago. I've always been sorry that something turned up to stop him, but it mayn't be too late to put that right now."
"My dear young friend ——"
"I'm talking," said Roger curtly. "As I said, there are ways of making people talk. In the general circumstances I'm not in a position to apply any of those methods single-handed, and Sir Isaac won't help me unless he's convinced. But you're going to talk, Angel Face—in your proper turn— you've got to be made to. And therefore Sir Isaac has got to be convinced, and that's where my brain wave comes in."
Marius shrugged.
"So far," he said, "you have not been conspicuously successful, but I suppose we cannot prevent your making further efforts."
Roger nodded.
"You don't mind, do you?" he said. "You're quite ready to let me go on until somebody comes in to rescue you. But this will be over very quickly. I'm going to give you a chance to prove your innocence—smashingly. Sir Isaac will remember that in my very competent story I mentioned other names besides yours—among them, one Heinrich Dussel and a certain Prince Rudolf."
"Well?"
" Do you deny that you know them?''
"That would be absurd."
"But you say they know absolutely nothing of this affair?"
"The suggestion is ridiculous. They would be as astonished as I am myself."
"Right." Roger drew a deep breath. "Then here's your chance. Over in that corner there's a telephone—with a spare receiver. We'll ring up Heinrich or the Prince—whichever you like—and as soon as they answer you'll give your name, and you'll say: 'The girl has got away again'—and let Sir Isaac hear them ask you what you're talking about!"
4
THERE HAD BEEN silence before; but now for an instant there was a silence that seemed to Roger's overwrought nerves like the utter dreadful stillness before the unleashing of a hurricane, that left his throat parched and his head singing. He could hear the beating of his own heart, and the creak of the chair as he moved shrieked in his ears. Once before he had known the same feeling—had waited in the same electric hush, his nerves raw and strained with the premonition of peril, quiveringly alert and yet helpless to guess how the blow would fall. . . .
And yet the tension existed only in himself. The silence was for a mere five seconds—just such a silence as might reasonably greet the. proposition he had put forward. And not a flicker of expression passed across the face he watched—that rough-hewn nightmare face like the face of some abominable heathen idol. Only, for one sheer scintilla of time, a ferine, fiendish malignance seared into the gaze of those inhuman eyes.
And Lessing was speaking quite naturally.
"That seems a sensible way of settling the matter, Marius."
Marius turned slowly.
"It is an admirable idea," he said. "If that will satisfy you—although it is a grotesque hour at which to disturb my friends."
"I shall be perfectly satisfied—if the answer is satisfactory," returning Lessing bluntly. "If I've been misled I'm ready to apologize. But Mr. Conway persists with the charge, and I'd be glad to have it answered."
"Then I should be delighted to oblige you."
In another silence, deeper even than the last, Roger watched Marius cross to the telephone.
He knew—he was certain—that the giant was cornered. Exactly as Marius had swung the scale over in his own favour during the first innings, so Roger had swung it back again, with the inspired challenge that had blazed into his brain at the moment of his need. And Lessing had swung back with the scale. The millionaire was looking at Roger, curiously studying the stern young profile; and the grimness was gone again from the set of his jaw.
"A trunk call to London, please. . . . Hanover eight five six five.. . . Yes.. . . Thank you."
Marius's voice was perfectly self-possessed.
He put down the instrument and turned again blandly.
"The call will be through in a few minutes," he said. "Meanwhile, since I am not yet convicted, perhaps you will accept a cigar, Sir Isaac?"
"He might if you kept well away from that desk," said Roger relentlessly. "Let him help himself; and he can pass you one if you want it."
Lessing shook his head.
"I won't smoke," he said briefly
Marius glanced at Roger.
"Then, with your permission, perhaps Mr.—er—Conway ——''
Roger stepped forward, took a cigar from the box on the desk, and tossed it over. Marius caught it, and bowed his thanks.
Roger had to admire the man's self-control. The giant was frankly playing for time, gambling the whole game on the hope of an interruption before the call came through that would inevita
bly damn him beyond all redemption; his brain, behind that graven mask, must have been a seething ball-race of whirling schemes; yet not by the most infinitesimal twitch of a muscle did he betray one scantling of concern. And before that supernatural impassivity Roger's glacial vigilance keyed up to aching pitch.. . .
Deliberately Marius bit off the tip of the cigar and removed the band; his right hand moved to his pocket in the most natural way in the world, and Roger's voice rang out like the crack of a whip.
"Stop that!"
Marius's eyebrows went up.
"But surely, my dear young friend," he protested mildly, "you will permit me to light my cigar!"
"I'll give you a light."
Roger fished a match out of his pocket, struck it on the sole of his shoe, and crossed the room.
As he held it out, at arm's length, and Marius carefully put his cigar to the flame, their eyes met.. . .
In the stillness, the shout from the hall outside came plainly to their ears.. . .
"Lessing—we'll see this through!" Roger Conway stood taut and still; only his lips moved. "Come over here.. . .! Marius, get back ——"
And then, even as he spoke, the door behind him burst open, and instinctively he looked round. And the explosion of his own gun came to him through a bitter numbness of despair, for the hand that held it was crushed and twisted in such a grip as he had never dreamed of; and he heard the giant's low chuckle of triumph too late.
He was flung reeling back, disarmed—Marius hurled him away as if he had been a wisp of thistledown. And as he lurched against the wall he saw, through a daze of agony, the Saint himself standing within the room, cool and debonair; and behind the Saint was Sonia Delmar, with her right arm twisted up behind her back; and behind Sonia was Hermann, with an automatic in his hand. "Good-evening, everybody," said the Saint.
Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint s-4 Page 14
