Then Simon understood the bluff.
It must have been years since the sedate and sober Norman Kent had played such irreverent slapstick with the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but the Saint could forgive the lapse.
Simon's arm was round Patricia's shoulders, and he had seen a light in the darkness. The miracle had happened, and the adventure went on.
And he found his voice.
"Oh, boy!" he cried; and dragged Patricia down into the temporary shelter of the barricade as the first shot from outside the smashed door smacked over their heads and sang away into the blackness beyond the open window.
14. How Roger Conway drove the Hirondel, and Norman Kent looked back
A second bullet snarled past the Saint's ear and flattened itself in a silvery scar on the wall behind him; but no more shots followed. From outside the house came the rattle of other guns. Simon heard Marius speaking crisply, and then he was listening to the sound of footsteps hurrying away down the corridor. He raised his head out of cover, and saw nothing through the hole in the door.
"They're going to try and make a dash through the cordon that isn't there," he divined; and so it was to prove.
He stood up, and began to tear away the barricade, the girl helping him.
They raced down the corridor together, and paused at the top of the stairs. But there was no one to be seen in the hall below.
Simon led the way downwards. Without considering where he went, he burst into the nearest room, and found that it was the room in which he had fought the opening skirmish. The window through which he had hurled himself was now open, and through it drifted the sounds of a scattered fusillade.
He caught up a gun from the floor without halting in his rush to the window.
Outside, on the lawn, with the light behind him, he could see a little knot of men piling into a car. The engine started up a second later.
A smile touched the Saint's lips—the first entirely carefree smile that had been there that night. There was something irresistibly entertaining about the spectacle of that death-or-glory sortie whose reckless daring was nothing but the saying of a loud "Boo" to a tame goose—if the men who made the sortie had only known. But they could not have known, and Marius was doing the only possible thing. He could not have hoped to survive a siege, but a sortie was a chance. Flimsy, but a chance. And certainly the effect of a posse shooting all round the house had been very convincingly obtained. Simon guessed that the rescue party had spared neither ammunition nor breath. They must have run themselves off their legs to maintain that impression of revolver fire coming from every quarter of the garden at once.
The car, with its frantic load, was sweeping down the drive in a moment. Simon levelled his gun and spat lead after it, but he could not tell whether he did any damage.
Then another gun poked into his ribs, and he turned.
"Put it up," said the Saint. "Put it up, Roger, old lad!"
"Well, you old horse-thief!"
"Well, you low-down stiff!"
They shook hands.
Then Norman Kent loomed up out of the darkness.
"Where's Pat?"
But Patricia was beside the Saint.
Norman swung her off her feet and kissed her shamelessly. Then he clapped Simon on the shoulder.
"Do we go after them?" he asked. The Saint shook his head.
"Not now. Is Orace with you?"
"No. Just Roger and I—the old firm."
"Even then—we've got to get back to Vargan. We can't risk throwing away the advantage, and getting the whole bunch of us tied up again. And in about ten seconds more this place is going to be infested with stampeding villagers thinking the next war's started already. We'll beat it while the tall timber looks easy!"
"What's that on your coat—blood?"
"Nothing."
He led the way to the Hirondel, walking rather slowly for him. Roger went beside him. At one step, the Saint swayed, and caught at Roger's arm.
"Sorry, son," he murmured. "Just came all over queer, I did. ..."
"Hadn't you better let us have a look——"
"We'll leave now," said the Saint, with more quietly incontestable iciness than he had ever used to Roger Conway in his life before.
The strength, the unnatural vigour which had carried him through until then, was leaving him as it ceased to be necessary. But he felt a deep and absurd contentment.
Roger Conway drove, for Norman had curtly surrendered the wheel of his own recovered car. Thus Roger could explain to the Saint, who sat beside him in the front.
"Norman brought us here. I always swore you were the last word in drivers, but there isn't much you could teach Norman."
"What was the car?"
"A Lancia. He was stuck at Maidenhead without anything, so the only thing to do was to pinch something. He walked up to Skindle's, and took his pick."
"Let's have this from the beginning," said the Saint patiently. "What happened to you?"
"That was a bad show," said Roger. "Fatty distracted my attention, and Angel Face laid me out with a kick. Then Skinny finished the job, near enough. Marius got on the phone, but couldn't get Bures. He arranged other things with Westminster double-nine double-nine——"
"I met 'em. Four of "em."
"Then Marius went off with Fatty, leaving Hermann in charge. Before that, I'd been ringing up Norman, and Norman had said he might come up. When the bell rang, I shouted to warn him, and got laid out again. But it wasn't Norman—it was Teal. Teal collared Hermann. I told Teal part of the story. It was the only thing I could think of to do—partly to keep us in Brook Street for a bit in case Norman turned up, and partly to help you. I told Teal to get through to the police at Braintree. Did they miss you?"
"They tried to stop me, but I ran through."
"Then Norman turned up. Took Teal in beautifully—and laid him out with a battle-axe or something off your wall. We left Teal and Hermann trussed up like chickens——"
The Saint interrupted.
"Half a minute," he said quietly. "Did you say you rang up Norman?"
Conway nodded.
"Yes. I thought——"
"While Marius was there?"
"Yes."
"He heard you give the number?"
"Couldn't have helped hearing, I suppose. But——"
Simon leaned back.
"Don't tell me," he said, "don't tell me that we already know that the exchange is not allowed to give subscribers' names and addresses. Don't tell me that Hermann, who's with Teal, mayn't have remembered the number. But what fool wouldn't remember the one word 'Maidenhead'?"
Roger clapped a hand to his mouth.
The murder was out—and he hadn't seen the murder until that moment. The sudden understanding of what he had done appalled him.
"Won't you kick me, Saint? Won't you——?"
Simon put a hand on his arm, and laughed.
"Never mind, old Roger," he said. "I know you didn't think. You weren't bred to this sort of game, and it isn't your fault if you trip up. Besides, you couldn't have known that it was going to make any difference. You couldn't have known Angel Face was going to get away, or Teal was going to arrive—"
"You're making excuses for me," said Roger bitterly. "And there aren't any. I know it. But it's just the sort of thing you would do."
The hand on Roger's arm tightened.
"Ass," said the Saint softly, "why cry over spilt milk? We're safe for hours yet, and that's all that matters."
Conway was silent; and the Hirondel sped on through the night without a check.
Simon leaned back and lighted a cigarette. He seemed to sleep, but he did not sleep. He just relaxed and stayed quiet, taking the rest which he so sorely needed. No one would ever know what a gigantic effort of will it had cost him to carry on as he had done. But he would say nothing of that to anyone but Roger, who had found him out. He would not have Patricia know. She would have insisted on delaying the journey, and that
he dared not allow.
He explored his wound cautiously, taking care that his movements should not be observed from the back. Fortunately, the bullet had passed cleanly through his shoulder, and there were not likely to be any complications. To-morrow, with his matchless powers of recuperation and the splendid health he had always enjoyed, he should be left with nothing more seriously disabling than a stiff and sore shoulder. The only real danger was the weakness after losing so much blood. But even that he felt he would be able to cope with now.
So he sat back with his eyes closed and the cigarette smouldering, almost forgotten, between his fingers, and thought over the brick that Roger had dropped.
And he saw one certain result of it staring him in the face, and that was that Maidenhead would not be safe for his democracy for very long.
Marius, still at large, wouldn't be likely to lose much time in returning to the attack. And Maidenhead was not a large place, and the number of houses which could seriously be considered was strictly limited. By morning, Marius would be on the job, working with a desperation that would be doubled by the belief that in some way the police had been enleagued against him. In the morning, also, Teal would be rescued, and would start trying to obtain information from Hermann: and how long would Hermann hold out? Not indefinitely—that was certain. In the circumstances, the Powers Higher Up might turn a conveniently blind eye to methods of persuasion which the easy-going officialdom of England would never tolerate in ordinary times: for the affair might be called a national emergency. And once Teal had the telephone number . . .
Exactly. Say to-morrow evening. By which time Marius, with a good start to make up for his lack of official facilities, would also be getting hot on the trail.
The Saint was no fool. He knew that the Criminal Investigation Department, except in the kind of detective story in which some dude amateur with a violin and a taste for exotic philosophies made rings round their hardened highnesses, was not composed entirely of nitwits. Here and there, Simon did not hesitate to admit, among the men at New Scotland Yard, there was a brain not utterly cretinous. Claud Eustace Teal's, for instance. And Teal, though he might be something of a dim bulb at the spectacular stuff, was a hound for action when he had anything definite to act upon. And there might be more concrete things to act upon than a name and address in a chase of that sort; but, if there were, the Saint couldn't think of them.
Marius also. Well, Marius spoke for himself.
Taken by and large, it seemed as if Maidenhead was likely to become the centre of some considerable activity before the next nightfall.
"But we won't cry over spilt milk, my lads, we won't cry over spilt milk," went Simon's thoughts in a kind of refrain that harmonised with the rush of the big car. "We ought to have the best part of a day to play with, and that's the hell of a lot to me. So we won't cry over spilt milk, my lads—and so say all of us!"
But Roger Conway wasn't saying it.
He was saying: "We shall have to clear out of Maidenhead to-morrow—with or without Vargan. Have you any ideas about that?"
"Dozens," said the Saint cheerfully. "As for Vargan, by to-morrow evening there'll either be no more need to keep him a prisoner, or—well, there'll still be no need to keep him a prisoner. ... As for ourselves, there's my Desoutter at Hanworth. Teal won't have had time to find out about that, and I don't think he'll allow anything to be published about us in the papers so long as he's got a chance of clearing up the trouble without any publicity. To the ordinary outside world we're still perfectly respectable citizens. No one at Hanworth will say anything if I announce that we're pushing off to Paris by air. I've done it before. And once we're off the deck we've got a big cruising range to choose our next landing out of."
And he was silent again, revolving schemes further ahead.
In the back of the car, Patricia's head had sunk on to Norman's shoulder. She was asleep.
The first pale streaks of dawn were lightening the sky when they ran into the east of London. Roger put the Hirondel through the City as quickly as the almost deserted streets would allow.
He turned off on to the Embankment by New Bridge Street, and so they came to pass by Parliament Square on their way westwards. And it was there that Norman Kent had a strange experience.
For some while past, words had been running through his head, so softly that he had not consciously been aware of them—words with which he was as familiar as he was with his own name, and which, nevertheless, he knew he had not heard for many years. Words to a kind of chanting tune that was not a tune. . . . And at that moment, as the Hirondel was murmuring past the Houses of Parliament, he became consciously aware of the words that were running through his head, and they seemed to swell and become louder and clearer, as if a great choir took them up; and the illusion was so perfect that he had looked curiously round towards the spires of Westminster Abbey before he realised that no service could be proceeding there at that hour.
"To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: and to guide our feet into the way of peace. . . ."
And, as Norman Kent turned his eyes, they fell upon the great statue of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, which stands outside the House. And all at once the voices died away. But Norman still looked back, and saw Richard Coeur-de-Lion riding there, the last of his breed, huge and heroic against the pale dawn sky, with his right hand and arm hurling up his great sword in a gesture. And for some reason Norman Kent suddenly felt himself utterly alone and aloof, and very cold. But that might have been the chill of the dawn.
15. How Vargan gave his answer, and Simon Templar wrote a letter
It was full daylight when they came to Maidenhead.
Orace was not in bed. Orace was never in bed when he could be useful, no matter at what unearthly hour that might be. But whether it was because he never went to bed at all, or whether it was because some strange clairvoyance always roused him in time to be ready for all emergencies, was his own mysterious secret.
He produced a great dish of sizzling bacon and eggs and a steaming pot of coffee as if by the waving of a magic wand.
Then the Saint gave orders.
"We will sleep till lunch-time," he said. "The difference it'll make to our strength will be worth the waste of time."
He himself was feeling ready to drop.
He took Orace with him to his room, and swore him to silence before he allowed him to see the wound. But Orace, seeing it, said: "Wot the thunderinell——"
Simon fluttered a tired hand.
"Don't swear, Orace," he rambled vaguely. "I didn't swear when it happened. And Miss Patricia doesn't know yet. . . . You'll look after Miss Patricia and the boys, Orace, if I conk out. Keep them out of mischief and so forth. . . . And if you see Angel Face, you'll shoot him through the middle of his ugly mug, with my compliments, Orace. . . ."
He slid sideways off the chair suddenly, but Orace's strong arms caught him as he fell.
Orace put him to bed as tenderly as if he had been a child.
And yet, next morning, the Saint was up and dressed before any of the others. He was rather pale under his tan, and his lean face seemed leaner than ever; but there was still a spring in his step. He had slept like a healthy schoolboy. His head was as clear as his eyes, and a cold shower had sent fresh life tingling through his veins.
"Learn a lesson from me," he said over his third egg. "If you had constitutions like mine, invigorated by my spiritual purity, and unimpaired, like mine, by the dissipation and riotous living that has brought you to the wrecks you are——"
And in this he was joking less than they thought. Sheer ruthless will-power had forced his splendid physique on to the road of an almost miraculously swift recovery. Simon Templar had no time to waste on picturesque convalescences.
He sent Orace out for newspapers, and read them all. Far too much that should have been said was still left unsaid. But he could glean a hint here, a warning there, a confirmation everywhere; until at th
e end of it he seemed to see Europe lying under the shadow of a dreadful darkness. But nothing was said in so many words. There were only the infuriating inadequate clues for a suspicious man to interpret according to his suspicions. It seemed as if the face of the shadow was waiting for something to happen, before which it would not unveil itself. The Saint knew what that something was, and doubted himself for the first time since he had gathered his friends together under him to serve the ends of a quixotic ideal.
But still nothing whatever was said in the newspapers about the affair at Esher; and the Saint knew that this silence could only mean one thing.
It was not until three o'clock that he had a chance to discuss Vargan again with Roger and Norman; for it had been agreed that, although Patricia had to know that Vargan was a prisoner, and why he was a prisoner, and although his possible fate had once been mentioned before her, the question should not be raised again in her presence.
"We can't keep him for ever," said Simon, when the chance came. "For one thing, we look like spending a large part of the rest of our lives on the run, and you can't run well with a load of unwilling luggage. Of course, we might get away with it if we found some lonely place and decided to live like hermits for the rest of our days. But, either way, there'd still always be the risk that he might escape. And that doesn't amuse me in the least."
"I spoke to Vargan last night," said Norman Kent soberly. "I think he's mad. A megalomaniac. His one idea is that his invention will bring him worldwide fame. His grievance against us is that we're holding up his negotiations with the Government, and thereby postponing the front-page headlines. I remember he told me he was naming a peerage as part of the price of his secret."
The Saint recalled his lunch with Barney Malone, of the Clarion, and the conversation which had reinforced his interest in Vargan, and found Norman's analysis easy to accept.
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