For a moment the Saint hesitated, standing in a field on the wrong side of the blackthorn hedge. Then he bent and searched the ground for some small stones. He wanted very small stones, for they must not make too much noise. He found three that satisfied his requirements.
Then he wrote, by the light of a match cupped cautiously in one hand, on a scrap of paper he found in his pocket:
I'm here, Pat darling. Throw Anna back over the hedge and then start a disturbance to divide their attention. I'll be right in.—SIMON.
He tied the scrap to the handle of Anna with a strip of silk ripped from his shirt, and straightened up.
Gently and accurately he lobbed up two stones, and heard each of them tap the lighted pane. Then he waited.
Now, if there were no response—suppose Pat had been tied up, or was doped, or anything like that. . . . The thought made his muscles tighten up so that he felt them quivering all over his body like a mass of braced steel hawsers. . . . He'd have to wade in without the help of the distracting disturbance, of course. . . . But that wasn't the thought that made his pulse beat quicker and his mouth narrow down into a line that hardly smiled at all. It was the thought of Patricia herself— the thought of all that might have happened to her, that might be happening. . . .
"By God!" thought the Saint, with an ache in his heart, "if any of their filthy hands . . ."
But he wanted to see her once more before he went into the fight that he was sure was jeopardised against him. In case of accidents. Just to see her blessed face once more, to take the memory of it as a banner with him in to the battle. . . .
Then he held his breath.
Slowly the sash of the window was being raised, with infinite precautions against noise. And the Saint saw, at the same time, that what he had taken, in silhouette, to be leaded panes, were, in fact, the shadows of network of closely set bars.
Then he saw her.
She looked out, down into the garden below, and along the side of the house, puzzledly. He saw the faltered parting of the red lips, the disordered gold of her hair, the brave light in the blue eyes. ...
Then he balanced Anna in his hand and sent her flickering through the dark. The knife fell point home, quivering in the wooden sill beside the girl's hand.
He saw Patricia start, and stare at it with a wild surmise. Then she snatched it out of the wood and disappeared into the room.
Half a minute ticked away whilst the Saint waited with a tingling impatience, fearing at any moment to hear a car, which could only belong to one man, come purring up the hill. But, fearfully as he strained his ears, he found the stillness of the night unbroken.
And at last he saw the girl again. Saw her hand come through the bars, and watched Anna swooping back towards him like a scrap stripped from a moonbeam. . . .
He found the little knife, after some difficulty, in a clump of long grass. His slip of paper was still tied to the handle, but when he unrolled it he found fresh words pencilled on the other side.
Eight men here. God bless you, darling.—PAT.
The Saint stuffed the paper into his pocket and slid Anna back into her sheath.
"God bless us both, Pat, you wonderful, wonderful child!" he whispered to the stillness of the night; and, looking up again, he saw her still at the window, straining her eyes to find him.
He waved his handkerchief for her to see, and she waved back. Then the window closed again. But she had smiled. He had seen her. And the ache in his heart became a song. . . .
He was wasting no more time looking for a way through the hedge. His first survey had already shown that it was planted and trained as an effective palisade. But there was always the gate.
On the road. A perfectly ordinary gate.
That, of course, was the way they would expect him to come.
Pity to disappoint them!
He hardly spared the gate a glance. It was probably electrified. It was almost certainly wired with alarms. And it was covered by a rifleman somewhere, for a fiver. But it remained the only visible way in.
The Saint took a short run and leapt it cleanly.
Beyond was the gravel of the drive, but he only touched that with one foot. As he landed on that one foot, he squirmed aside and leapt again—to the silent footing of the lawn and the covering shadow of a convenient shrub. He stooped there, thumbing back the safety-catch of the automatic he had drawn, and wondering why no one had fired at him.
Then wondering went by the board; for he heard, through the silence, faintly, very far off, but unmistakable, the rising and falling drone of a powerful car. And he had barely attuned his hearing to that sound when another sound slashed through it like a sabrecut—the scream of a girl in terror.
He knew it wasn't the real thing. Hadn't he directed it himself? Didn't he know that Patricia Holm wasn't the kind that screamed? Of course. . . . But that made no difference to the effect that the sound had upon him. It struck deep-rooted chords of fierce protectiveness, violently reminding him that the cause for the scream might still be there, even if Pat would never have released it without his prompting. It froze something in him as a drench of icy water might have done; and, again as a drench of icy water might have done, it braced and stung and savaged something else into a fury of reaction, something primitive and homicidal and ruthless, something out of an age that had nothing to do with such clothes as he wore, or such weapons as he carried, or such a fortress as lay before , his storming.
The Saint went mad.
There was neither sanity nor laughter in the way he covered the stretch of lawn that separated him from the house and the lighted ground-floor window which he had marked down as his objective directly he had cleared the gate. He was even unable to feel astonished that no shots spat at him out of the darkness, or to feel that the silence might forebode a trap. For Simon Templar had seen red.
Eight men, Patricia's note had told him, were waiting to oppose his entrance. . . . Well, let 'em all come. The more the bloodier. . . .
He who had always been the laughing cavalier, the man who would always exchange a joke as he exchanged a blow, who never fought but he smiled, nor greeted peril without a song in his heart, was certainly not laughing at all.
He went through that window as surely no man ever went through a window before, except in a film studio. He went through it in one flying leap, with his right shoulder braced to smash through the flimsy obstacle of the glass, and his left arm raised to shield his face from the splinters.
That mad rush took him into the room without a pause, to land on the floor inside with a jolt, stumbling for an instant, which gave the six men who were playing cards around the table time to scramble to their feet.
Six of them—meaning that the other two were probably dealing with the scream. It ought to have been possible to distract more of their attention than that; but since it had so fallen out. . . .
And where, anyway, were the defences that he should have to break through? As far as that window, he had an easy course to cover. And these men had none of the air of men prepared to be attacked.
These thoughts flashed through the Saint's mind in the split second it took him to recover his balance; and then he was concerned with further questions.
The gun was ready in his hand; and two who were swift to draw against him were not swift enough, and died in their tracks before the captured automatic jammed and gave the other four their chance.
Never before had the Saint attacked with such a fire of murderous hatred; for the cry from the upper room had not been repeated, and that could only mean that it had been forcibly stifled—somehow. And the thought of Patricia fighting her fight alone upstairs, as she would have to go on fighting alone unless Simon Templar won his own fight against all the odds. . . . The first hint of a smile came to his lips when the first man fell; and when the gun froze useless in his hand he looked at it and heard someone laugh, and recognised the voice as his own.
Then Anna flicked from her sheath and w
histled across half the room like a streak of living light, to bite deep of the third man's throat.
If the Saint had thought, perhaps he would never have let Anna go, since she could only have been thrown once against the many times she could have stabbed. But he had not thought. He had only one idea, clear and bright above the swirl of red, murderous mist that rimmed his vision, and that was to work the most deadly havoc he could in the shortest possible space of time.
And the first man he met with his bare hands was catapulted back against the wall by a straight left that packed all the fiendish power of a sledge-hammer gone mad, a blow that shattered teeth in their sockets and smithereened a jawbone as if it had been made of glass.
And then the Saint laughed again—but this time he knew that he did it The first outlet of his blind fury, the first taste of blood, that first primevally ferocious satisfaction in the battering contact of flesh- and bone, - had cleared his eyes and steadied down his nerves to their old fighting coolness.
"Come again, my beautifuls," he drawled breathlessly, and there was something more Saintly in the laugh in his voice, but his eyes were still as cold and bleak as two chips of blue ice. . . . "Come again!"
The remaining two came at him together.
Simon Templar would not have cared if they had been twenty-two. He was warmed up now, and through the glacial implacability of his purpose was creeping back some of the heroic mirth and magnificence that rarely forsook him for long.
"Come again!"
They came abreast; but Simon, with one lightning spring sideways, made the formation tandem. The man who was left nearest swung round and lashed out a mule-kick of a punch at the Saint's mocking smile; but the Saint swerved a matter of a mere three inches, and the blow whipped harmlessly past his ear. Then, with another low laugh of triumph, Simon pivoted on his toes, his whole body seeming to uncoil in one smooth spasm of effort, and flashed in an uppercut that snapped the man's head back as if it had been struck by a pneumatic riveter, and dropped him like a poleaxed steer.
Then the Saint turned to meet the second man's attack; and at the same moment the door burst open and flopped the odds back again from evens to two to one against.
In theory. But actually this new arrival was fresh life to the Saint. For this man must have been one of those who had been busy suppressing the scream, who had laid his hands on Patricia. . . . And against him and his fellow the Saint had a personal feud. . . .
As Simon saw him come, the chips of blue ice under Simon's straight-lined brows glinted with an unholy light.
"Where have you been all my life, sonny boy?" breathed the Saint's caressing undertone. "Why haven't you come down before—so that I could knock your miscarriage of a face through the back of your monstrosity of a neck?"
He wove in towards the two in a slight crouch, on his toes, his fists stirring gently. And from the limit of his reach he snaked in a long, swerving left that only a champion could have guarded; and it split the man's nose neatly, for the Saint was only aiding to hurt—sufficiently—before he finished off the job.
And he should have won the fight on his head, according to plan, from that point onwards. Lithe, strong as a horse, swift as a rapier, schooled in the toughest schools of the fighting game ever since the day when he first learned to put up his hands, and always in perfect training, the Saint would never have hesitated to take on any two ordinary men. And in the mood in which they found him that night he was superman.
But he had forgotten his wound.
The nearest man was swinging a wild right at him—the kind of blow for which any trained, cool-headed boxer has a supreme contempt. And contemptuously, almost lazily, and certainly without thinking at all about a guard which approximated to a habit, Simon put up his shoulder.
The impact should have been nothing to a bunched pad of healthy muscle; but the Saint had forgotten. And it shot a tearing twinge of agony through him which seemed to find out every nerve in his system.
Suddenly he felt very sick; and for a second he could see nothing through the haze which whirled over his eyes.
In that second's blindness he took a high-explosive left cross to the side of the jaw from the man with the split nose.
Simon reeled, crumpling, against the wall.
For some reason, perhaps because they could not both conveniently reach him at once, the two men held back for a moment instead of charging in at once to finish him off. And for that moment's grace the Saint sagged where he leaned, titanically scourging numbed and tortured muscles to obey his will, wrestling with a brain that seemed to have gone to sleep.
And through the singing of a thousand thrumming dynamos in his head, he heard again the song of the Hirondel: "Patricia! . . . Patricia! ..."
Suddenly he realised how much he had been exhausted by loss of blood. The first excitement, the first thrill and rapture of the fight, had masked his own weakness from him; but now he felt it all at once, in the dreadful slowness of his recovery from a punch on the jaw. And the blow he had taken on the shoulder had re-opened his wound. He could feel the blood coursing down his back in a warm stream. Only his will seemed left to him, bright and clear and aloof in the paralysing darkness, a thing with the terrible power of a cornered giant, fighting as it had never fought before.
And then, through the mists that doped his senses, he heard what all the time he had dreaded to hear—the sound of a car slowing up outside.
Marius.
Through the Saint's mind flashed again, like a long, shining spear, the brave, reckless, vain-glorious words that he had spoken, oh, infinite ages ago: "Let 'em all come. . . ."
And perhaps that recollection, perhaps anything else, perhaps the indomitable struggle of his fighting will, snapped the slender fetters of weary dizziness that bound him, so that he felt a little life stealing back into his limbs.
As the two men stepped in to end it, the Saint held up one hand in a gesture that could not be denied.
"Your master is here," he said. "Perhaps you'd better wait till he's seen me."
They stopped, listening, for their hearing would have had to be keen indeed to match the Saint's; and for Simon that extra second's breadier was the difference between life and death.
He gathered himself, with a silent prayer, for the mad gamble. Then he launched himself off the wall like a stone from a sling, and in one desperate rush he had passed between them.
They awoke too late; and he was at the door.
On the stairs he doubled his lead.
At the top of the stairs a corridor faced him, with doors on either side; but he would have had no excuse for hesitation, for, as he set foot in the corridor, the eighth man looked out of a door halfway along it.
The eighth man, seeing the Saint, tried to close the door again in his face; but he was too slow, or the Saint was too fast. The Saint fell on the door like a tiger, and it was the man inside who had it slammed in his face—literally slammed in his face, so that he was flung back across the room as helplessly as a scrap of thistledown might have been flung before a cyclone. And the Saint followed him in and turned the key in the lock.
One glance round the room the Saint took, and it showed him the eighth man coming off the floor with a mixture of rage and fear in his eyes, and Patricia bound to the bed by wrists and ankles.
Then, as the leader of the pursuit crashed against the door the Saint whipped round again like a whirlwind, and, with one terrific heave, hurled a huge chest of drawers across the room from its place on the wall.
It stopped short of the door by a couple of feet; and, as Simon sprang to send it the rest of the way, the eighth man intercepted him with a knife.
The Saint caught his wrist, Wrenched . . . and the man cried out with pain and dropped the knife.
He was strong above the average, but he could not stand for a moment against the Saint's desperation. Simon took him about the waist and threw him bodily against the door, knocking most of the breath out of him. And before the man co
uld move again, the Saint had pinned him where he stood with the whole unwieldy bulk of the chest of drawers. A moment later the massive wardrobe followed, toppled over to reinforce the barricade, and the man was held there, fluttering feebly, like an insect nailed to a board.
The Saint heard the cursing and thundering beyond the door, and laughed softly, blessing the age of the house. That door was of solid oak, four inches thick, and set like a rock; and the furniture matched it. It would be a long time before the men outside would be able to force the barrier. Though that might only be postponing the inevitable end. ...
But the Saint wasn't thinking of that. He could still laugh, in that soft and Saintly way, for all his pain and weariness. For he was beside Patricia again, and no harm could come to her while he still lived with strength in his right arm. And he wanted her to hear him laugh.
With that laugh, and a flourish with it, he swept up the fallen knife from the floor. It was not Anna, but for one purpose, at least, it would serve him every whit as well. And with it, in swift, clean strokes, he slashed away the ropes that held Patricia.
"Oh, Simon, my darling. ..."
Her voice again, and the faith and unfaltering courage in it that he loved! . . . And the last rope fell away before the last slash of the knife, and she was free, and he gathered her up into his arms as if she had been a child. ,
"Oh, Pat, my sweet, they haven't hurt you, have they?"
She shook her head.
"But if you hadn't come . . ."
"If I'd come too late," he said, "there'd have been more dead men downstairs than there are even now. And they wouldn't have cleared a penny off the score. But I'm here!"
"But you're hurt, Simon!"
He knew it. He knew that in that hour of need he was a sorry champion. But she must not know it—not while there remained the least glimmer of hope—not while he could still keep on keeping on. . . . And he laughed again, as gay and as devil-may-care a laugh as had ever passed his lips.
"It's nothing," he said cheerfully. "Considering the damage I've done to them, I should say it works out at about two thousand per cent clear profit. And it's going to be two hundred thousand per cent before I go to bed to-night!"
The Saint Closes the Case s-2 Page 14
