The Saint Closes the Case

with the lyrical possibilities of a young lady of Kent who whistled wherever she went. After wrestling for some minutes with the problem of bringing this masterpiece to a satisfactory conclusion, he gave it up and turned back; and the Saint returned through the hedge, a startlingly immaculate sight to be seen coming through a hedge, with a punctuality that suggested that his estimate of Mr. Conway's poetical talent was dreadfully accurate.

'For the first five holes I couldn't put down a single putt,' said the Saint sadly, and he continued to describe an entirely imaginary round of golf until they were back on the main road and the watchers at the end of the lane were out of sight.

Then he came back to the point.

'I wanted to do some scouting round at the back of the house to see how sound the defences were. There was a sixteen-stone seraph in his shirtsleeves pretending to garden, and an­other little bit of fluff sitting in a deck chair under a tree read­ing a newspaper. Dear old Teal himself is probably sitting in the bathroom disguised as a clue. They aren't taking any more chances!'

'Meaning,' said Conway, 'that we shall either have to be very cunning or very violent.'

'Something like that,' said the Saint.

He was preoccupied and silent for the rest of the walk back to the Bear, turning over the proposition he had set himself to tackle.

He had cause to be—and yet the tackling of tough proposi­tions was nothing new to him. The fact of the ton or so of official majesty which lay between him and his immediate objective was not what bothered him; the Saint, had he chosen to turn his professional attention to the job, might easily have been middleweight champion of the world, and he had a poor opinion both of the speed and fighting science of police­men. In any case, as far as that obstacle went, he had a vast confidence in his own craft and ingenuity for circumventing mere massive force. Nor did the fact that he was meddling with the destiny of nations give him pause: he had once, in his quixotic adventuring, run a highly successful one-man revolution in South America, and could have been a fully ac­credited Excellency in a comic-opera uniform if he had chosen. But this problem, the immensity of it, the colossal forces that were involved, the millions of tragedies that might follow one slip in his enterprise . . . Something in the thought tightened tiny muscles around the Saint's jaw.

Fate was busy with him in those days.

They were running into Kingston at the modest pace which was all the hired car permitted, when a yellow sedan purred effortlessly past them. Before it cut into the line of traffic ahead, Conway had had indelibly imprinted upon his mem­ory the bestial, ape-like face that stared back at them through the rear window with the fixity of a carved image.

'Ain't he sweet?' murmured the Saint.

'A sheik,' agreed Conway.

A smile twitched at Simon Templar's lips.

'Known to us,' he said, 'as Angel Face or Tiny Tim—at the option of the orator. The world knows him as Rayt Marius. He recognised me, and he's got the number of the car. He'll trace us through the garage we hired it from, and in twenty-four hours he'll have our names and addresses and Y.M.C.A. records. I can't help thinking that life's going to be very crowded for us in the near future.'

And the next day the Saint was walking back to Brook Street towards midnight, in the company of Roger Conway, when he stopped suddenly and gazed up into the sky with a reflective air, as if he had thought of something that had eluded his concentration for some time.

'Argue with me, Beautiful,' he pleaded. 'Argue violently, and wave your hands about, and look as fierce as your angelic dial will let you. But don't raise your voice.'

They walked the few remaining yards to the door of the Saint's apartment with every appearance of angry dissension. Mr. Conway, keeping his voice low as directed, expatiated on the failings of the Ford car with impassioned eloquence. The Saint answered, with aggressive gesticulations:

'A small disease in a pot hat has been following me half the day. He's a dozen yards behind us now. I want to get hold of him, but if we chase him he'll run away. He's certain to be coming up now to try and overhear the quarrel and find out what it's about. If we start a fight we should draw him within range. Then you'll grab him while I get the front door open.'

'The back axle——' snarled Mr.Conway.

They were now opposite the Saint's house; and the Saint halted and turned abruptly, placed his hand in the middle of Conway's chest, and pushed.

Conway recovered his balance and let fly. The Saint took the blow on his shoulder, and reeled back convincingly. Then he came whaling in and hit Mr. Conway on the jaw with great gentleness. Mr. Conway retaliated by banging the air two inches from the Saint's nose.

In the uncertain light it looked a most furious battle; and the Saint was satisfied to see Pot Hat sneaking up along the area railings only a few paces away, an interested spectator.

'Right behind you,' said the Saint softly. 'Stagger back four steps when I slosh you.'

He applied his fist caressingly to Conway's solar plexus, and broke away without waiting to see the result; but he knew that his lieutenant was well trained. Simon had just time to find his key and open the front door. A second later he was closing the door again behind Conway and his burden.

'Neat work,' drawled the Saint approvingly. 'Up the stairs with the little darling, Roger.'

As the Saint led the way into the sitting-room, Conway put Pot Hat down and removed his hand from the little man's mouth.

'Hush!' said Conway in a shocked voice, and covered his ears.

The Saint was peering down through the curtains.

'I don't think anyone saw us,' he said. 'We're in luck. If we'd planned it we might have had to wait years before we found Brook Street bare of souls.'

He came back from the window and stood over their pri­soner, who was still shaking his fist under Conway's nose and burbling blasphemously.

'That'll be all for you, sweetheart,' remarked the Saint frostily. 'Run through his pockets, Roger.'

'When I find a pleeceman,' began Pot Hat quiveringly.

'Or when a policeman finds what's left of you,' murmured Simon pleasantly. 'Yes?'

But the search revealed nothing more interesting than three new five-pound notes—a fortune which such a seedy-looking little man would never have been suspected of possessing.

'So it will have to be the third degree,' said the Saint mildly, and carefully closed both windows.

He came back with his hands in his pockets and a very Saintly look in his eyes.

'Do you talk, Rat Face?' he asked.

'Wotcher mean—talk? Yer big bullies——'

'Talk,' repeated the Saint patiently. 'Open your mouth, and emit sounds which you fondly believe to be English. You've been tailing me all day, and I don't like it.'

'Wotcher mean?' demanded the little man again, indig­nantly. 'Tailing yer?'

The Saint signed, and took the lapels of the little man's coat in his two hands. For half a hectic minute he bounced and shook the little man like a terrier shaking a rat.

'Talk,' said the Saint monotonously.

But Pot Hat opened his mouth for something that could only have been either a swear or a scream; and the Saint dis­approved of both. He tapped the little man briskly in the stomach, and he never knew which of the two possibilities had been the little man's intention, for whichever it was died in a choking gurgle. Then the Saint took hold of him again.

It was certainly very like bullying, but Simon Templar was not feeling sentimental. He had to do it, and he did it with cold efficiency. It lasted five minutes.

'Talk,' said the Saint again, at the end of the five minutes; and the blubbering sleuth said he would talk.

Simon took him by the scruff of his neck and dropped him into a chair like a sack of peanuts.

The story, however, was not very helpful.

'I dunno wot 'is name is. I met 'im six months ago in a pub off Oxford Street, an' 'e gave me a job to do. I've worked for 'im on an' off ever since—followin' people an' findin' out things about 'em. 'E allus paid well, an' there wasn't no risk——'

'Not till you met me,' said the Saint. 'How do you keep in touch with him if he hasn't told you his name?'