The Saint Plays with Fire (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  But the bitterness of surrender fought against letting him speak.

  He saw Luker watching him steadily, and knew that the other was following almost every step in his inevitable thoughts. Luker’s eyes were hardening with the cold certainty of triumph.

  “Perhaps you would like to discuss it with your fiancée, Mr Templar,” he said. “I shall arrange for you to be given five minutes alone. I’m sure that that will be sufficient for you to reach the only conclusion that two sensible people can come to.”

  4

  They were in a tiny box of a cell furnished with a small wooden table, a wooden chair, and a wooden cot with, a straw palliasse; all the articles of furniture were securely bolted to the floor. It smelt sour and musty. A faint dismal light came through an iron grille over the door which seemed to be the only means of ventilation.

  Valerie dropped limply on to the cot and leaned back against the wall in an attitude of supreme weariness.

  “Alone at last,” she said. And then, “My God, I’m tired.”

  “You must be,” said the Saint. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”

  She smiled weakly.

  “With a man in my room? What would the dear vicar say?”

  “Probably the same thing that the bishop said to the actress.”

  “What was that?”

  “ ‘It is a far bedder thing—’ ”

  “ ‘—I do now than I have ever done,’ ” she said, and then her voice broke.

  She said huskily, “Simon…will it hurt dreadfully?”

  The Saint’s mouth felt dry, but the palms of his hands were wet. He knew exactly how cruelly shrewd Luker had been in giving them those few minutes to think. If he had had any doubts before, he could not have kept them long.

  The only thing left to discover was what else might be done with the postponement.

  He went over and sat down on the end of the cot, beside her, and against the wall. The wall was of baked bricks, roughly laid, and age had moulded the mortar in many of the courses and neglect had let it crumble away. He felt the surface behind him with his numbed fingertips. It seemed to be harsh and abrasive…

  “Does dying frighten you very much?” he asked gently.

  Her head was tilted back against the wall and her eyes were half-closed.

  “I don’t know…Yes, I’d always be terrified. But I don’t think I’d mind so much just being shot. This…being flogged—to death—it makes me go sort of shuddery deep inside. I want to scream and howl and weep with terror, and…I can’t…I’m afraid I’d never have been any good to you, Simon. I suppose your girlfriend would go to it with a brave smile and her head held high and all that sort of thing, but I can’t. I’m afraid I’m going to disgrace you horribly before it’s over—”

  He was rubbing his bound wrists against the brickwork behind him, tentatively at first, then with a more determined concentration. He could feel the dragging resistance against each movement, could hear the slurred grating sounds that it produced…He bent his head towards her until his lips were almost touching her ear.

  “Listen,” he whispered. “You’re not going to be flogged. We can prevent that, at least. But you heard what Luker said. Whatever else happens, we’re booked for the firing squad within the next couple of days. So we have to be shot, anyway. Personally I’d rather be shot on the run, and at least give them a fight for their money. I’m going to try to make a getaway. I don’t suppose it’ll make a damn bit of difference, but I’m going to try it.”

  She looked at him quickly, as if all her muscles had stiffened. And then they relaxed again.

  “Of course—you couldn’t take me with you,” she said wistfully. “I’d only be in the way.”

  It was hard to keep the rope pressed firmly enough against the brick and at the same time keep his flesh away. There seemed to be more protruding bones in his hands and wrists than he had ever dreamed of, and his skin was much less tough than the rope. Fierce twinges of rasping agony stabbed up his arms, but he could not allow himself to heed them.

  He said, “If you feel the same way that I do, and you’d like to take a chance, we’ll have a shot at it together.”

  She had begun to stare at the curious rhythmic twitching of his shoulders.

  “What are you doing?”

  The sweat was standing out in beads on his forehead, although she could not see that, and his teeth were clamped together in stubborn endurance of the torture that he was inflicting on himself while he tore the flesh off his bones as he fought to fray off the strands of hemp that tied his hands. But his heart was blazing with a savage exaltation that partly deadened pain.

  He said, through his clenched teeth and rigid lips, “Never mind. We haven’t got much longer. When they fetch us out again, I’m going to try to break loose. You give way to all your impulses—scream your head off, and fight as hard as you can to break away. Anything to keep their attention occupied. Leave the rest to me. I expect all we’ll get will be two bellyfuls of bullets, but I may be able to kill Luker and Marteau first.”

  She was quite still for a moment, and then she said in a strange strained voice, “Okay. I’ll do everything I can.”

  He laid his face against hers as she leaned towards him, and went on sawing his wrists against the wall in a grim fury of torment. He only spoke once more.

  “I’m sorry about this, Valerie,” he said. “We might have had such a lot of fun.”

  Five minutes was no time at all. It seemed to be only a few moments before the big iron key rattled in the lock and the door opened again.

  Bravache bowed in the doorway, his teeth shining in the set sneering grin that sat so naturally on his cold haughty face.

  “You are ready?” he inquired.

  It was a second or two before Lady Valerie got up.

  The Saint rose to his feet after her. For all that he had suffered, the cords still held his wrists. But he had his strength, saved and stored up through all the hours when it had been useless to struggle: he had always had the strength of two or three ordinary men, and at this time when he had need of it all for one supreme effort his own will might make it greater. If only that was enough…Now that the last sands were trickling away he was conscious of a curious inward peace, a great stillness, an utter carelessness in which his nerves were like threads of ice.

  He let the girl go first, and followed her back into the big barren room from which they had been taken.

  Luker and Marteau still sat at the long table under the flag. Marteau was drawing nervous fingers on the bare wood with a stub of pencil, but Luker was outwardly untouched by anxiety. Simon and Valerie were marched up in front of the table, and the escort of Sons of France reformed around them, and Luker looked up at them with nothing but confidence on his square stony features.

  “Have you made up your minds?”

  “Yes,” answered the Saint.

  “Well?”

  “We have made up our minds,” said the Saint unhurriedly, “that besides the barrel organ you might do well with ice cream as a side line.”

  Luker’s expression did not change. It only became glassy and lifeless, as if it had been frozen into place. He moved one of his hands less than two inches.

  “Tie up the girl,” he ordered in French, and the two nearest Sons of France grabbed Valerie by the arms.

  Perhaps she was only acting. Or perhaps her nerve really broke then; perhaps her brain in the stupidity of terror had never quite grasped what the Saint had said while they were alone. But she fought wildly, crazily, even with her hands tied behind her back, bucking and staggering against them as they tried to drag her over to the iron rings in the wall, kicking out madly so that they cursed her until the third Son of France had to go over and help them. And that left only one on guard beside the Saint—the one who had slammed his fist into Simon’s face only a little while before.

  “You can’t do this to me!” she was shrieking deliriously. “You can’t…you filthy brutes…you can’t…!�
�

  Perhaps she was only acting. But the shrill shaky intensity of her voice stabbed through the Saint’s brain with a rending reminder of how real it might have been.

  He had half-turned to watch her, and as he stood still no one was paying much attention to him. But in that volcanic immobility his arms hardened like iron columns, strained across the fulcrum of his back like twisted bars of tempered steel. The muscles writhed and swelled over his back and shoulders, leapt up in knotted strands like leathery hawsers from his shoulders down to his raw and bleeding wrists; a convulsion of superhuman power swept over his torso like the shock of an earthquake. And the ropes that held his hands together, weakened by the loss of the few strands that he had been able to rub away in the few minutes that had been given him, were not strong enough to stand against it. There was a snap as the fibres parted, and his arms sprang apart with the jerk of unleashed tension. He was free.

  Free but unarmed—for the few instants in which an unarmed man might move.

  The guard beside him must have sensed the eruption that had taken place at his elbow; or perhaps his ears caught the thin crack of separating cords—too late. He began to turn, and that was his last conscious movement, the last flash of awareness in his little world.

  He started to reach for the revolver in its holster on his hip. But another hand was there before his, a hand of lean sinewy fingers that whipped the weapon away from under his belated groping. An ear-splitting detonation crashed out between the cellar walls, and a shattering blow tore through his chest and gave him only an instant’s anguish…

  Simon Templar turned square to the room as the man folded down to his feet with an odd slowness. The barrel of his revolver swerved over the others in a measured quadrant.

  “Any of you can have what your friend got,” he said generously. “You’ve only got to ask.”

  None of them asked. For that brief precarious spell they were incapable of any movement. But he knew that every passing second was against him. He spoke to the girl, his voice razor-edged and brittle.

  “Valerie, come over here—behind me. And keep well out of the line of fire.”

  She started towards him, staying close against the walls. He didn’t watch her. His eyes were darting like wasps over the six men that he had to deal with, probing with nerve-wracked alertness for the point where the fight would start. The three remaining members of the escort, grouped fairly close together where they had been struggling with the girl. Bravache, further away, with a skeletal grin pinned and forgotten on his face. Colonel Marteau, white-lipped and rigid. Luker, heavy and petrified, but with his brain still working behind unblinking eyes.

  And in his mind the Saint did ruthless arithmetic. Six men. And unless he was holding a five-chambered gun, he should have five shots left. Even if he could drop one man stone cold with every single shot, that would still leave one armed man against him at the end. Even if no other Son of France elsewhere in the building had heard his first shot and would be coming in at any moment to investigate…It couldn’t be much longer now before other heads made the same calculation. Whatever happened, if they called for a showdown, he couldn’t win. The only choice he had left was where he should place his shots—while he had time to choose.

  And yet he didn’t want to take that suicidal vengeance while there was still even a spider-thread of hope.

  He said to the room at large, “Which is the way out of here?”

  Nobody had time to answer, even if anyone had decided to.

  Colonel Marteau stood up.

  “Anyone who tells him,” he stated harshly, “is a coward and a traitor.”

  “Will you set the example?” asked the Saint silkily. “Or would you rather be a dead hero?”

  “I shall not tell you.”

  Simon knew that he had lost an infinitesimal point. But his face gave it no acknowledgement. The steel hardened in his eyes.

  “Maybe we can change your mind for you,” he said, without a flicker of apprehension in his voice. “Valerie, slip round behind these guys and bring me their guns.”

  He did not hear any movement.

  “Go on,” he rapped.

  “But how can I?”

  “If you try it, I think you’ll be able to twist your hands round enough.”

  But he had lost another point. Those few words between them must only make plainer the ultimate hopelessness of his position. And with every point lost the score was creeping up against him with frightful speed. He would fight every inch of the way with the stubbornness of despair, but he knew in his heart that the battle could only end one way. If he could have made one of the men tell him the way out at once, they might have made a dash for it with a faint sporting chance of shooting their way through, but that had always been a far-fetched hope. The enemy would never be made to talk so easily. And delay was on their side. Sooner or later their confidence would return. It could only be a matter of seconds now. It was already returning. Sooner or later, with the eye of his Commandant upon him and his brain swimming with dreams of glory, one Son of France would screw up his nerve to the crucial fatal heroism that would point the way to a swift inevitable ending…

  Valerie had moved round on the Saint’s left. She was beside the nearest Son of France, twisting her hands round to reach the revolver in his holster.

  Simon’s eyes raked the man’s face. Was this the one who would first find the courage to take his chance? If not, with two guns instead of one in the Saint’s hands, the odds might be altered again. Or would it be one of the other? Other faces loomed on the outskirts of the Saint’s vision. Which of them had the courage to call for a showdown?

  And then a door opened stealthily on the Saint’s right.

  He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye at the same time as the soft sound reached his ears, and irresistibly he turned partly towards it. The muzzle of his revolver turned with him. He saw a tall scrawny figure, a vacant idiot’s face lighted by pale maniacal eyes, and knew at once where he had seen it before. It was the face and figure of the killer in Kennet’s photograph, and it had an automatic clutched in one bony hand.

  And at that moment Lady Valerie cried out, and the Saint knew what must have happened in the fractional instant while his vigilance was drawn away.

  He fired before he turned.

  He knew that his shot scored, but he could not be certain where. A glimpse of the killer sagging in the middle flashed across his retina as he whirled to the left. Then he could see only the scene that was waiting for him there.

  The Son of France whose gun Lady Valerie was trying to take had seized his chance while he had it, and made a grab at her, trying to throw her in front of him to shield his body. But her backward start had momentarily marred the completion of his manoeuvre, and there was about twelve inches of space between them. Through those twelve inches the Saint sent a bullet smashing into the man’s breastbone, so that he staggered and let go and drooped back until the wall kept him from falling. But by that time, in the grace that they had been given, four other guns were out. Every gun except Luker’s—if Luker had a gun. And the Saint knew that he could never silence them all.

  Quite coolly and deliberately he levelled his sights between Luker’s eyes. Other gun muzzles were settling upon him, other eyes crisping behind the sights, other fingers tightening on triggers, but he seemed to have all the time in the world. Perhaps he had all the time in eternity…But whatever happened he must make no more mistakes. This was the last thing that he could do. His body was braced against the shock of lead that must soon be ploughing from four directions through his flesh and bone, but none of that must stir his aim by as much as a summer breeze. Not until he had placed exactly where he wanted them the two shots that had to stand as the last witness to everything to which he had given his tempestuous life…He did not feel any doubt or fear.

  He squeezed the trigger, and the revolver jumped in his hand. A round black mark appeared in Luker’s forehead, and while Simon looked at it th
e rim of it turned red.

  And then the room seemed to be full of thunder.

  The Saint felt nothing. He wondered, in a nightmarishly detached sort of way, whether he had actually been hit or not. But he was able to turn and align his sights without a quiver on their next target.

  And that was when he really felt that something must have snapped in his brain. For Colonel Marteau was not even looking at him. He was standing stiffly upright, his right arm down at his side and the muzzle of his gun resting laxly on the table, and a strangely drawn and bloodless expression on his face. And somewhere a little further off Bravache seemed to be sliding down the wall, like a lazy figure whose knee-joints have given way. And there was a blue-shirted figure squirming on the floor and making queer moaning noises. And another pair of blue-sleeved arms raised high in the air. And another door open, and grim-visaged armed men swarming in, men in plain clothes, men in the uniforms of gendarmes and agents de police and the black helmets of the Gardes Mobiles. And among them all two men who could only have been the ghosts of Peter Quentin and Hoppy Uniatz with automatics smoking in their hands. And another man, short and dapperly dressed with a blue chin and curled moustaches and bright black eyes, who seemed to be armed only with a cigarette in an amber holder, who strode up between them and bowed to the Saint with old-fashioned elegance.

  “Monsieur Templar,” he said, “I only regret that your message reached me too late to save you this inconvenience.”

  The Saint had no idea what he was talking about, but he could never have allowed the Prefect of Police of Paris to outdo him in courtesy.

  “My dear Monsieur Senappe,” he said, “really it’s been no trouble at all.”

  EPILOGUE

  “That’s a nice bit of chinchilla,” said the Saint.

  “It is, isn’t it,” said Lady Valerie Woodchester, rubbing her cheek luxuriously on her shoulder.

  They had met quite by chance in Piccadilly. Simon took her into the Berkeley and bought her a sherry.