He had seen a way out. The wraith of a chance, but—
“About three minutes now, I should say, Sleat. And you’ll never see your diamonds. I’ll tell you that, dear one!”
Sleat’s lips curled back in a dreadful grimace. “The diamonds—”
“I found them. I dug them up before I came here. Did you think I’d be such a fool as to forget that? They’re where you’ll never find them—not if you hunt for the rest of your days. And three minutes isn’t enough to make me talk—even if you dared stay to try—”
Sleat was at the hole in the floor. His hand was through it. He was trying to force in his arm, but the aperture was far too small. He was scrabbling at the boards with the nails of his other hand, but the boards were fast.
It was a gruesome sight. The man was blubbering and slavering at the mouth like an animal.
“It’s no good, Sleat,” the Saint mocked him. “You’ve left it too long. You can’t reach the fuse—you can’t stop the balloon going up—and you’ll go with it unless you’re quick! But you’ll never see those diamonds. Unless—”
Sleat writhed more madly, and then for a moment he lay still, huddled on the floor. Then he drew his hand out of the hole and crawled slowly up on his knees. His eyes seemed blank and sightless.
“Unless what?” he uttered.
Not for a second did the Saint pause, for he recognized the cunning of Sleat’s madness. The slightest faltering would have been fatal, but the Saint did not falter. He played his card—the card which had been sent to him out of the blue by whatever beneficent deity guarded him in all his ways—the wildest, most inspired bluff of his career—and played it without batting an eyelid, as casually as he might have gambled a bluff in a poker game with a quarter limit.
“Unless you cut us loose, and get us away from here, in two and a half minutes,” said the Saint steadily.
10
Roger heard the words, and his brain throbbed crazily. He understood—he understood at once—but…Surely the Saint couldn’t—the Saint couldn’t possibly be betting on such a bare-faced bluff! Even if it was their only chance, the Saint couldn’t imagine that Sleat would fall for a lie like that!
And an observer with a stopwatch would have noted that there was a silence of fifteen seconds, but to Roger Conway it seemed like fifteen minutes.
Roger thought, in his nightmare, “He might bring it off. He might bring it off. Only the Saint could do it, but he might bring it off. He’s got Sleat half-demented. That was done at the beginning, and the man must be almost insane, anyway. And since he lighted the fuse, the Saint’s never stopped baiting him, tantalizing him, making stinging rings round him like a wasp round a mad bull. He might have got Sleat hazed enough to fall. He might bring it off…”
And Sleat was getting up. And again the wasp stung.
“Seven years of your life!” it gibed. “And a lot of good it’s done you, beloved—when you’ve just arranged to kill the only man who could ever have taken you to your diamonds. Smoke! I’d give a pile for the rest of the boys to be able to hear that funny story. Another two minutes, pretty Sleating, and…Oh, isn’t it rich? I ask you—if you’ve got a sense of humour—isn’t it rich?”
And the Saint laughed, as if he hadn’t a care in the world—as if they were all a thousand miles away from a land mine that was timed to smithereen them out of life in one hundred and twenty seconds.
Roger thought, “He might have brought it off, but he’s left it too late now. He hasn’t a hope in hell—”
Then he saw Sleat’s face working, saw it with a startling clarity, as if through a powerful lens, saw the trembling eyelids and the thin trickle of saliva running down from the corner of his mouth, saw—
Saw Sleat jerk a clasp-knife from his pocket and fling himself at the Saint’s chair.
Sleat was mad. He must have been. The Saint’s barbed taunts, on top of the belief that the Saint had really taken the diamonds and alone knew where they were hidden, must have snapped the last withered shred of reason in his brain. Otherwise Sleat would never have bought the joke. Otherwise Sleat would never have dared take the risk.
If he had been in his senses, he would have known that he hadn’t a chance of cutting the Saint free and guarding himself at the same time—even with a gun in his other hand—when his guard had been sent out of hearing. Or did he, in his madness, which the Saint had played on with such a superb touch, think that he could achieve the impossible?
The girl, and Roger, and Simon himself, knew that they would never know.
But the Saint’s hands were free, and the Saint’s right hand was flying to his left sleeve, and Sleat was freeing the Saint’s right foot. And the Saint’s right foot was free. And Sleat, on his knees in front of the chair, was hacking wildly at the ropes that held the Saint’s left ankle. The Saint’s left foot was…
Simon jerked back his right foot, and sent it forward again. The girl gasped.
And Sleat, overbalanced and almost knocked out by the kick, was groping blindly for his gun, which he had dropped, when the Saint kicked it aside and snatched it up.
Roger’s breath came through his teeth in one long sigh.
The Saint’s knife was out, and he was beside Conway’s chair. Three swift slashes of the razor-keen blade, and Roger rose to his feet, free, as the dwarf came at them with clawing fingers.
“Yours, partner,” drawled the Saint, as if they were playing a friendly game of tennis, and reached the girl’s side in two steps.
The cords fell away in a moment, and, as she came stiffly to her feet, the Saint took her arm and hustled her out of the room. The outer door stood open, and the Saint pointed straight ahead across the dark moor.
“Carry on, old dear,” he said. “We’ll catch you up in the dip in about one and a half shakes.”
“But Roger—”
Simon showed his teeth.
“Roger’s killing a man,” he said, “and he never looks his best when he’s doing that sort of thing. You oughtn’t to see it, for the sake of the romance. But I’ll fetch him right along. See you in a minute, kid.”
Then she was gone.
The Saint went back, and went straight through the room they had left to the room that opened off it. There was a man on the bed, and he did not stir when the Saint came in. Simon folded him in a blanket, and carried him out.
Roger was climbing shakily to his feet.
“Who’s that?” he asked huskily.
“Uncle Sebastian.” Simon glanced at the thing in the corner. “Is he—”
Conway passed a hand across his eyes.
“Yes. I killed him.”
Simon looked into Roger’s face, and saw the grim reaction there. He spoke for commonplace comfort.
“Careless of you, now I come to think of it,” he remarked lightly. “It means we’ll have to look for the diamonds. Still—we can’t stop to weep here. Let’s go!”
They went quickly, stumbling over tufts and hummocks in the darkness. Even the Saint, with his instinctive sense of country, tripped once and fell to one knee, but he was up again almost without a check.
A shadow loomed up in the obscurity.
“Is that you?”
Betty’s voice.
This is we,” answered the Saint grammatically, and walked down into the hollow.
Roger was beside him no longer as he laid down his burden.
“If I may interrupt,” said the Saint apologetically, “I should advise you to lie down, cover your heads, shut your mouths, and stop your ears. If you can do all that in each other’s arms, so much the better, but there’s some disturbance about due—”
And as he finished speaking, the earth seemed to billow shudderingly under them, like a giant in torment, and with that the giant roared with pain, with a voice like a hundred thunders. And in front of them the darkness was split with a flash of amethyst fire, and it seemed as if a colossal black mushroom blotted out the cowering stars as the echoes of the detonation rang from end
to end of the sky.
Then the black mushroom became a cloud, and the cloud burst in a torrent of pelting black rain.
Some seconds later the Saint scrambled to his feet and tried to shake the earth off his clothes.
“Some balloon, you quiet fellow, some balloon,” he murmured appreciatively. “If we’d been in that, I reckon we should just about be on our way down.”
They went on with their own thoughts, the Saint with his load, and Roger’s arm about the girl’s waist.
After a while Simon stopped, and they stopped with him. He was peering into the blackness at something they could not see. Then, he bent slowly, and when he straightened up again there was nothing in his arms.
He touched Roger on the shoulder.
“Sorry to interrupt again,” he said softly, “but between us and the car there are some specimens I promised to take home for Chief Inspector Teal. If you’ll just wait here a sec, I’ll ripple over and complete the bag.”
He disappeared as silently and swiftly as a hunting panther.
The four men, with Mr Dyson, were standing in a little group by the car, talking in low voices, when the Saint came towards them in the starlight with Sleat’s automatic in his hand.
Simon hated firearms, as has been related, but in the circumstances…
“Good evening,” he remarked affably.
Silence fell on the group like a pall. Then, slowly and fearfully, they turned and saw him only a couple of yards away.
Shrilly, one man blasphemed. The others were mute, staring, dumb with a superstitious terror. And the Saint smiled like an angel through the dried blood on his face.
“I am the ghost of Julius Caesar,” he said sepulchrally, “and unless you all immediately put up your hands, I shall turn you into little frogs.”
He came a little nearer, so that they could see him more plainly. And slowly their hands went up. Whatever doubts they might have had of his reality, the gun he displayed was real enough. But the fear of death was in their faces.
Then the laughter faded from Simon’s eyes, leaving them bleak and merciless.
“You were accessories to torture,” he said, “and you might well have been accessories to murder. Therefore in due course you will go to prison according to the law. But when you come out—in about three years, I should say—you will remember this night, and you will tell your friends. Let it help to teach you that the Saint cannot be beaten. But if I meet you again—”
He paused for a moment.
“If I meet you again,” he said, and waved one hand towards the moor, “you may go to the place where your leader has already gone. I dislike your kind…
“Meanwhile,” said the Saint, “you may step forward one by one and take off your coats and braces, keeping up your trousers by faith and hope. Move!”
While his apparently eccentric commands were being carried out, he called Roger and directed him. One by one, the men’s braces were used to fasten their hands securely behind their backs, and their coats, knotted by the sleeves, hobbled to their legs.
“Not a bad day’s work,” said the Saint, when it was done, “but—”
Roger shot a quick glance of comprehension at him, and the girl’s hand went out.
“I’d forgotten, old boy—”
“A good day’s work, but tough,” said the Saint weakly, and leaned against the car.
Conway drove them back.
The prisoners were decanted at the police station in Torquay, there to await the morrow and the pleasure of Inspector Teal. There followed a call on a sympathetic physician on the road to St. Marychurch. Finally, they were at the Golden Eagle Hotel, with the Saint clamouring for beer.
The manageress was still waiting up.
“Mr Conway—”
“Miss Cocker.”
“I thought…Why, whatever—”
“No, indeed to goodness,” said Roger. “If I have to tell that story again tonight, I shall scream.”
“And I shall burst into tears and ask to be taken away,” said the Saint, sinking into the first chair he encountered. “The blithering idiots at the police station nearly sent me pots with their fool questions. I’m still wondering how we persuaded them not to lock us up as well. Fetch me some beer, somebody, for the love of Mike!”
It took some time to convince the manageress that the Saint had recovered sufficiently to be allowed a drink, but it was done. Simon made a quart look like a gill in hot weather, and then he rose to his feet with a yawn.
“Roger,” he said, “if you’ll hurry up and tuck Betty into bed, we’ll go.”
Roger stared.
Roger said, “Go?”
“Go,” said the Saint. “You know. The opposite of ‘come.’ There’s something I particularly want to do tonight.”
“As the bishop said to the actress,” murmured the girl.
Gravely the Saint regarded her. Then—
“Betty, old girl,” he said, “you’ll do. I shall allow Roger to fall in love with you if he wants to. Those seven words prove you One of Us. I may say that for a girl who’s been through all you’ve been through tonight—”
“But,” said Roger, “you don’t mean to go on to Newton Abbot now?”
Simon turned.
“When else?” he demanded. “Teal’s due tomorrow. Anyhow, we couldn’t assault that garden with spades in broad daylight, looking like retired coalminers on a busman’s holiday, when the place is supposed to be closed down. It’s tonight or never, son—and I feel we’ve earned those diamonds. Forty-five thousand to charity, and the odd ten per cent fee for collection—which is one thousand two hundred and fifty pounds apiece—to Dicky Tremayne, Norman Kent, you, and me. What price glory?”
Now, it should be recorded that at exactly 4:17 a.m. that morning, the Saint’s spade struck upon something hard yet yielding, and his hail brought Roger across the garden at a run. Together they opened the soft leather bag, and examined the stones in the light of a torch.
At exactly 4:19 a.m., their own light was eclipsed by another that leapt on them from out of the darkness, and a familiar voice said, “This is early for you to be up, Mr Templar.”
The Saint closed the bag and rose from the ground with a sigh.
“Late,” he said, “is what you mean. Teal, you have an admirable faculty for being on the spot.”
“I couldn’t wait,” said Chief Inspector Teal slumberously. “I was kept awake wondering what you boys were up to. So I got out my car and came right down. Let’s go into the house and have a chat.”
“Yes, let’s,” said the Saint, without enthusiasm.
They went into the house, and Simon had to fight his battle over again. Teal listened—he was a good listener—champing his favourite sweetmeat monotonously. He did not interrupt until the end of the story.
“And what happened to Sleat?”
Simon looked him in the eyes.
“When he saw Roger properly,” he said, “Sleat was so overcome by Roger’s beauty that he had a heart attack, and died all over the place. It was most distressing. However, we hadn’t time to remove him, so he went up with the balloon, and all you’re likely to find of him is his boots and his back stud. Sorry, I’m sure. It’ll be difficult for the coroner.”
Teal nodded like a mandarin.
“I believe you,” he said sleepily. “Thousands wouldn’t, but I will. There’s no evidence.”
“No,” said the Saint comfortably. “There’s no evidence.”
Teal got to his feet mountainously, and looked out of the window. The first wan silver of dawn was in the sky.
“I think,” he said, “we might go over to Mr Conway’s hotel and see if we can find some early breakfast.”
And further, as a matter of history, which the Press has had no opportunity to record, it should be noted that Teal himself, in the Saint’s company, deposited the bag of diamonds at the police station in Exeter, at the same time as he transferred the Saint’s prisoners there to await their trial at the n
ext assizes, the following afternoon.
“You’re not going back today?” asked the Saint solicitously.
“Not until tomorrow,” said Teal grimly. “That’s why it occurred to me to leave the diamonds here. If I kept them at the Golden Eagle, you boys might sleepwalk. I’m going to ask your Mr Conway if I can keep my room on for tonight—there’s the explosion to investigate, and one or two other details I must get. I hope it won’t inconvenience anyone.”
“We shall be delighted,” said the Saint truthfully.
At precisely 9 a.m. the following morning, a man in the uniform of the Metropolitan Police marched smartly into Exeter Police Station.
“Detective-Constable Hawkins, of Scotland Yard,” he reported to the Inspector. “I came down with Mr Teal the night before last on the Policeman case. He’s just sent me over to fetch the diamonds he left here and meet him at the railway station.”
“Have you an order?”
The policeman produced a paper. The Inspector read it, and then he opened his safe and handed over the bag.
“Better take care of it,” he advised. “It’s supposed to be worth fifty thousand pounds.”
“Blimey!” said the policeman, in understandable awe.
The following morning, Simon Templar was holding a breakfast party when Chief Inspector Teal was admitted.
“Have an egg,” invited the Saint hospitably. “In fact, have two eggs. Don’t go, Orace—we may want you.”
Teal sank into a chair and unwrapped a fresh wafer of gum.
“I’ll have some diamonds,” he said.
“Sorry,” said the Saint, “but Hatton Garden is still where it was, and Brook Street remains free of that sordid commerce. You must have got on the wrong bus.”
“Your friend Mr Conway—”
“Has temporarily left us. He’s met a girl. You know what these young men are. But if there’s any message I can give him—”
“You two are supposed to have come up to London on Friday night, aren’t you?” said Teal sluggishly.
Simon raised his eyebrows.
“Why ‘supposed’?” he demanded innocently. “Does anyone else know it except yourselves?”
Enter the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 17
