He knocked, and entered, and Patricia Holm looked round from the dressing-table to see him.
“I’m ready, Norman. Is Simon getting impatient?”
“Not yet,” said Norman.
He came forward and set his hands on her shoulders. She turned, with a smile awakening on her lips, but the smile died at the sight of a queer light burning in his dark eyes.
“Dear Pat,” said Norman Kent, “I’ve always longed for a chance to serve you. And now it’s come. You knew I loved you, didn’t you?”
She touched his hand.
“Don’t, Norman dear…please!…Of course I knew. I couldn’t help knowing. I’m so sorry…”
He smiled.
“Why be sorry?” he answered gently. “I shall never bother you. I wouldn’t, even if you’d let me. Simon’s the whitest man in the world, and he’s my dearest friend. It will be my happiest thought, to know that you love him. And I know how he loves you. You two will go on together until the stars fall from the sky. See that you never lose the splendour of life.”
“What do you mean?” she pleaded.
The light in Norman Kent’s eyes had in it something like a magnificent laughter.
“We’re all fanatics,” he said. “And perhaps I’m the most fanatical of us all…Do you remember, Pat, how it was I who first said that Simon was a man born with the sound of trumpets in his ears?…That was the truest thing I ever said. And he’ll go on in the sound of the trumpet. I know, because today I heard the trumpet myself…God bless you, Pat.”
Before she knew what was happening, he had bent and kissed her lightly on the lips. Then he walked quickly to the door, and it was closing behind her when she found her voice. She had been left with no idea of what he meant by half the things he had said, and she could not let him go so mysteriously.
She called him—an imperative Patricia. “Norman!”
He was back in a moment, almost before she had spoken his name. Something had changed in his face. His finger signed her to silence. “What is it?” she whispered.
“The last battle,” said Norman Kent quietly. “Only a little sooner than we expected. Take this!”
He jerked back the jacket of a small automatic, and thrust it into her hands. An instant later he was rapidly loading a larger gun which he took from his hip pocket.
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 her 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 certainly neither Roger’s nor Simon’s. Now he stood still for a moment outside Patricia’s door, listening, and heard the inimitably 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 dull fire of his madness stirring in them like the pale flickering flame that simmers over the crust of an awakening volcano.
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 yet 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 steaming down, the reporters are sharpening 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. However…”
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 traditionally 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 himself, 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 sickening 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 admir
able 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 garden; 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 unpleasantness at our first few meetings, but that’s only natural between 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 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 mistake. Let’s change the subject. How’s dear old Teal? Still living 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 youngster 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 concluded.
“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 tiring 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—the languid affectation of indifference, and that genial flow of idle persiflage that smoked effortlessly off the mere surface of his mind without disturbing the concentrated 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 perfectly assumed that only an almost suicidally self-confident opponent could have been left untroubled by a lurking uneasiness. Only a fool or a genius would have failed to jump to the conclusion that such a tranquil unconcern must base itself on a high card somewhere up its frivolous sleeve. And very often the man who was neither a fool nor a genius was right.
But on this occasion the card up the sleeve was very ordinary. The Saint, inwardly revolving every aspect of the interruption with a furious attention, could still find nothing new to add to his first estimate of the deal. Norman Kent remained the only hidden card.
By now, Norman Kent must know what had happened. Otherwise he would have been in the boat with them long ago, reaching down the ceiling while a youngster in plus eights whizzed his Webley. And if Norman Kent knew, Patricia would know. The question was—what would they be most likely to do? And how could Simon Templar, out of touch with them and practically powerless under the menace of Harding’s automatic, divine their most probable plan of action and do something in collaboration?
That was the Saint’s problem—to reverse the normal processes of strategy and put himself in the place of the friend instead of in the place of the enemy. And, meanwhile, to keep Harding amused…
“You’re a clever child,” said the Saint. “May one inquire how you come to be doing Teal’s job?”
“We work in with the police on a case like this,” said Harding grimly, “but we don’t mind stealing a march on them if we can. Teal and I set out on an independent tour. He took the high road and I took the low road, and I seem to have got there before him. I saw your car outside on the drive, and came right in.”
“You should have a medal,” said Simon composedly. “I’m afraid I can’t give you anything but love, baby, but I’ll write to the War Office about you, if you think that might help.”
Harding grinned and smoothed his crisp hair.
“I like your nerve,” he said.
“I like yours,” reciprocated the Saint. “I can see you’re a good man gone wrong. You ought to have been one of us. There’s a place in the gang vacant for you, if you’d care to join. Perhaps you’d like to be my halo?”
“So you are the Saint!” crisped Harding alertly.
Simon lowered his eyelids, and his lips twitched.
“Touché!…Of course, you didn’t know that definitely, did you? But you tumbled to the allusion pretty smartly. You’re a bright spark, sonny boy—I’ll tell the cockeyed world.”
“It wasn’t so difficult. Teal’s told everyone that he’d eat his hat if Vargan didn’t turn out to be your show. He said he knew your work too well to make any mistake about it, even if it wasn’t signed as usual.”
Simon nodded.
“I wonder which hat Teal would have eaten?” he murmured. “The s
ilk one he wears when he goes to nightclubs disguised as a gentleman, or the bowler with the beer-stain? Or has he got a third hat? If he has, I’ve never seen it. It’s a fascinating thought…”
And the Saint turned his eyes to the ceiling as if he really were fascinated by the thought.
But the Saint thought, “If Bertie and Teal have been putting their heads together, Bertie must know that there’s likely to be a third man on the premises. A man already proved handy with the battle-axe, moreover…Now, why hasn’t Bertie said anything about him? Can it be that Bertie, our bright and bouncing Bertie, is having a moment of mental aberration and overlooking Norman?”
And the Saint said aloud, “However—about that halo job. How does it appeal to you?”
“Sorry, old man.”
“Oh, not at all,” sighed the Saint. “Don’t apologise…What else can we do for you? You seem to have everything your own way, so we’ll try to oblige. Name your horse.”
“Yes, I seem to have rounded you up fairly easily.”
So the cunningly hidden question was answered. It was true. Norman Kent, being for the moment out of sight, had fallen for the moment out of mind.
For a fleeting second the Saint met Roger Conway’s eyes.
Then—
“What do we do?” asked the Saint amiably. “Stand and deliver?”
The youngster retired to the window and glanced out. Simon took one step towards him, stealthily, but there was an awkward distance between them, and Harding’s eyes were only turned away for an instant. Then Harding turned round again, and the Saint was serenely selecting another cigarette.
“Have you got Vargan here?”
The Saint looked up.
“Ah!” said the Saint cautiously.
Harding set his lips.
In the few minutes of their encounter Simon Templar had had time to appreciate in the younger man a quiet efficiency that belied the first impression of youthfulness, combined with a pleasant sense of humour that was after the Saint’s own heart. And at that moment the sense of humour was not so evident, but all the efficiency was there, and with it went a certain grimness of resolution.
The Saint Closes the Case (The Saint Series) Page 19
