The Saint Closes the Case

'When 'e wants me, 'e writes to me, an' I meet 'im in a pub somewhere, an' 'e tells me wot I've got to do. Then I let 'im know wot's 'appening by telephone. I got 'is number.'

'Which is?'

'Westminster double-nine double-nine.'

'Thanks,' said the Saint. 'Good-looking man, isn't he?'

'Not 'arf! Fair gives me the creeps, 'e does. Fust time I sore 'im——'

The Saint shouldered himself off the mantelpiece and reached for the cigarette-box.

'Go home while the goin's good, Rat Face,' he said. 'You don't interest us any more. Door, Roger.'

' 'Ere,' whined Pot Hat, 'I got a wife an' four children——'

'That,' said the Saint gently, 'must be frightfully bad luck on them. Give them my love, won't you?'

'I bin assaulted. Supposin' I went to a pleeceman——'

The Saint fixed him with a clear blue stare.

'You can either walk down the stairs,' he remarked dispassionately, 'or you can be kicked down by the gentleman who carried you up. Take your choice. But if you want any compensation for the grilling you've had, you'd better apply to your handsome friend for it. Tell him we tortured you with hot irons and couldn't make you open your mouth. He might believe you—though I shouldn't bet on it. And if you feel like calling a policeman, you'll find one just up the road. I know him quite well, and I'm sure he'd be interested to hear what you've got to say. Good- night.'

'Callin' yerselves gentlemen!' sneered the sleuth viciously.'You——'

'Get out,' said the Saint quietly.

He was lighting his cigarette, and he did not even look up, but the next thing he heard was the closing of the door.

From the window he watched the man slouching up the street. He was at the telephone when Conway returned from supervising the departure, and he smiled lazily at his favourite lieutenant's question.

'Yes, I'm just going to give Tiny Tim my love. . . . Hullo —are you Westminster double-nine double-nine? . . . Splendid. How's life, Angel Face?'

'Who is that?' demanded the other end of the line.

'Simon Templar,' said the Saint.  'You may have heard of me. I believe we—er—ran into each other recently.' He grinned at the stifled exclamation that came faintly over the wire. 'Yes, I suppose it is a pleasant surprise. Quite over­whelming. . . . The fact is, I've just had to give one of your amateur detectives a rough five minutes. He's walking home. . The next friend of yours I find walking on my shadow will be removed in an ambulance. That's a tip from the stable. Pleasant dreams, old dear!'

He hung up the receiver without waiting for a reply. Then he was speaking to Inquiry.

'Can you give me the name and address of Westminster double-nine double-nine? . . . what's that? . . . Well, is there no way of finding out? . . . Yes, I know that; but there are reasons why I can't ring up and ask. Fact is, my wife eloped yesterday with the plumber, and she said if I really wanted her back I could ring her up at that number; but one of the bathtaps is dripping, and . . . Oh, all right. Thanks very much. Love to the supervisors.'

He put down the instrument and turned to shrug at Conway's interrogatively raised eyebrows.

' 'I'm sorry—we are not permitted to give subscribers' names and addresses,' ' he mimicked. 'I knew it, but it was worth trying. Not that it matters much.'

'You might,' suggested Conway, 'have tried the directory.'

'Of course. Knowing that Marius doesn't live in England, and that therefore Westminster double-nine  double-nine is unlikely to be in his name——Oh, of course.'

Conway grimaced.

'Right. Then we sit down and try to think out what Tiny Tim'll do next.'

'Nope,' contradicted the Saint cheerfully. 'We know that one. It'll either be prussic acid in the milk to-morrow morn­ing, or a snap shot from a passing car next time I walk out of the front door. We can put our shirts on that, and sit tight and wait for the dividends. But suppose we didn't wait. . . .' The emphatic briskness of his first words had trailed away while he was speaking into the gentle dreamy intonation that Conway knew of old. It was the sign that the Saint's thoughts had raced miles ahead of his tongue, and he was only me­chanically completing a speech that had long since become unimportant.

Then for a little while he was silent, with his cigarette slanting up between his lips, and a kind of crouching immobility about his lean body, and a dancing blue light of recklessness kindling in his eyes. For a moment he was as still and taut as a leopard gathering itself for a spring. Then he relaxed, straightening, and smiled; and his right arm went out in one of those magnificently romantic gestures that only the Saint could make with such a superb lack of affectation.

'But why should we wait?' he challenged.

'Why, indeed?' echoed Conway vaguely. 'But——'

Simon Templar was not listening. He was already back at the telephone, calling up Norman Kent.

'Get out your car, fill her up with gas, and come right round to Brook Street. And pack a gun. This is going to be a wild night!'

A few minutes later he was through to his bungalow at Maidenhead—to which, by the grace of all the Saint's gods, he had sent his man down only that very day to prepare the place for a summer tenancy that was never to materialise as Simon Templar had planned it.

'That you, Orace? . . . Good. I just phoned up to let you know that Mr. Kent will be arriving in the small hours with a visitor, I want you to get the cellar ready for him—for the visitor, I mean. Got me?'

'Yessir,' said Orace unemotionally, and the Saint rang off.

There was only one Orace—late sergeant of Marines, and Simon Templar's most devoted servant. If Simon had said that the visitor would be a kidnapped President of the United States, Orace would still have answered no more than that gruff, unemotional 'Yessir!'—and carried on according to his orders.

Said Roger Conway, climbing out of his chair and squashing his cigarette end into an ash-tray: 'The idea being——'

'If we leave it any longer one of two things will happen. Either (a) Vargan will give his secret away to the Govern­ment experts, or (b) Marius will pinch it—or Vargan—or both. And then we'd be dished for ever. We've only got a chance for so long as Vargan is the one man in the wide world who carries that invention of the devil under his hat. And every hour we wait gives Tiny Tim a chance to get in before us!'

Conway frowned at a photograph of Patricia Holm on the mantelpiece. Then he nodded at it.

'Where is she?'

'Spending a couple of days in Devonshire with the Man­nerings. The coast's dead clear. I'm glad to have her out of it. She's due back to-morrow evening, which is just right for us. We take Vargan to Maidenhead to-night, sleep off our honest weariness to-morrow, and toddle back in time to meet her. Then we all go down to the bungalow—and we're sitting pretty. How's that?'

Conway nodded again slowly. He was still frowning, as if there was something troubling the back of his mind.

Presently it came out.

'I never was the bright boy of the class,' he said, 'but I'd like one thing plain. We agree that Vargan, on behalf of cer­tain financial interests, is out to start a war. If he brings it off we shall be in the thick of it. We always are. The poor blessed Britisher gets roped into everybody else's squabbles. . . . Well, we certainly don't want Vargan's bit of frightfulness used against us, but mightn't it save a lot of trouble if we could use it ourselves?'

The Saint shook his head.

'If Marius doesn't get Vargan,' he said, 'I don't think the war will come off. At least, we'll have said check to it—and a whole heap may happen before he can get the show started again. And as for using it ourselves—— No, Roger, I don't think so. We've argued that already. It wouldn't be kept to ourselves. And even if it could be—do you know, Roger?—I still think the world would be a little better and cleaner with­out it. There are foul things enough in the armoury without that. And I say that it shall not be. . . .'

Conway looked at him steadily for some seconds.

Then he said: 'So Vargan will take a trip to Maidenhead. You won't kill him to-night?'

'Not unless it's forced on me,' said the Saint quietly. 'I've thought it out. I don't know how much hope there is of appealing to his humanity, but as long as that hope exists, he's got a right to live. What the hope is, is what