The Saint Closes the Case

'The papers I promised you!'

He pushed them towards Marius, and the giant grabbed them with enormous, greedy hands.

And then Norman was holding out his gun, butt foremost, towards Harding. He spoke in tense, swift command.

'Through the window and down the garden, Harding! Take the Saint's motor-boat. It's moored at the end of the lawn. The two men on the river shouldn't stop you——'

'Highness!'

It was Marius's voice, shrill and savage. The giant's face was hideously contorted.

Norman thrust Harding behind him, covering his retreat to the window.

'Get out!' he snarled. 'There's nothing for you to wait for now. . . . Well, Marius?'

The Prince's voice slashed in with a deadly smoothness: 'Those are not Vargan's papers, Marius?'

'An absurd letter—to this man himself—from one of his  friends!'

'So!'

The word fell into the room with the sleek crispness of a drop of white-hot metal. Yet the Prince could never have been posed more gracefully, nor could his face have ever been more serene.

'You tricked me after all!'

'Those are the papers I promised you,' said Norman coolly.

'He must have the real papers still, Highness!' babbled Marius. 'I was watching him—he had no chance to give them to his friends——'

'That's where you're wrong!'

Norman spoke very, very quietly, almost in a whisper, but the whisper held a ring of triumph like a trumpet call. The glaze in his dark eyes was not of this world.

'When Harding grabbed Templar's gun—you remember, Marius?—I had the papers in my hands. I put them in Tem­plar's pocket. He never knew what I did. I hardly knew myself. I did it almost without thinking. It was a sheer blind inspira­tion—the only way to spoof the lot of you and get my friends away. And it worked! I beat you. . . .'

He heard a sound behind him, and looked round. Hard­ing had started—he was racing down the lawn, bent low to the ground like a greyhound. Perhaps there were silenced guns plopping at him from all round the house, but they could not be heard, and he must have been untouched, for he ran on without a false step, swerving and zigzagging like a snipe.

A smile touched Norman's lips. He didn't mind being left alone now that his work was done. And he knew that Harding could not have stayed. Harding also had work to do. He had to find help—to deal with Marius and intercept Simon Templar and the precious papers. But Norman smiled, because he was sure the Saint wouldn't be intercepted. Still, he liked the mettle of that fair-haired youngster. . . .

His leg hurt like blazes.

But the Saint had never guessed the impossible thing. That had been Norman Kent's one fear, that the Saint would sus­pect and refuse to leave him. But Norman's first success, when he had tricked Harding with the offer of the papers, had won the Saint's faith, as it had to win it. And Simon had gone, and Patricia with him. It was enough.

And in the fulness of time Simon would find the papers; and he would open the letter and read the one line that was written there. And that line Norman had already spoken, but no one had understood.

'Nothing is won without sacrifice.'

Norman turned again, and saw the automatic in Marius's hand. There was something in the way the gun was held, some­thing in the face behind it, that told him that this man did not miss. And the gun was not aimed at Norman, but beyond him, at the flying figure that was nearing the motor-boat at the end of the lawn.

That gentle far-away smile was still on Norman Kent's lips as he took two quick hops backwards and to one side, so that his body was between Marius and the window.

He knew that Marius, blind, raging mad with fury, would not relax his pressure on the trigger because Norman Kent was standing directly in his line of fire; but Norman didn't care. It made no difference to him. Marius, or the Prince, would certainly have shot him sooner or later. Probably he deserved it. He had deliberately cheated, knowing the price of the re­voke. He thought no more of himself. But an extra second or two ought to give Harding time to reach comparative safety in the motor-boat.

Norman Kent wasn't afraid. He was smiling.

It was a strange way to come to the end of everything, like that, in that quiet bungalow by the peaceful Thames, with the first mists of the evening coming up from the river like tired clouds drifted down from heaven, and the light softening over the cool, quiet garden. That place had seen so much of their enjoyment, so much comradeship and careless laughter. They had been lovely and pleasant in their lives. . . . He wished his leg wasn't giving him such hell. But that would be over soon. And there must be many worse ways of saying farewell to so full a life. It was something to have heard the sound of the trumpet. And the game would go on. It seemed as if the shadows of the peaceful evening outside were the foreshadow­ings of a great peace over all the world.