The Saint Closes the Case

we've got to find out. But if I find that he won't listen——'

'Quite.'

The Saint gave the same explanation to the third musketeer when Norman Kent arrived ten minutes later, and Nor­man's reply was only a little less terse than Roger Conway's had been.

'We may have to do it,' he said.

His dark face was even graver than usual, and he spoke very quietly, for although Norman Kent had once sent a bad man to his death, he was the only one of the three who had never seen a man die.

4. How Simon Templar lost an automobile, and won an argument

'The ancient art of generalship,' said the Saint, 'is to put yourself in the enemy's place. Now, how should I guard Var­gan if I were as fat as Chief Inspector Teal?'

They stood in a little group on the Portsmouth Road about a mile from Esher, where they had stopped the cars in which they had driven down from London. They had been separated for the journey, because the Saint had insisted on taking his own Furillac as well as Norman Kent's Hirondel, in case of accidents. And he had refused to admit that there was time to make plans before they started. That, he had said, he would attend to on the way, and thereby save half an hour.

'There were five men when we came down yesterday,' said Conway. 'If Teal hasn't got many more than that on the night shift I should say they'd be arranged much as we saw them—outposts in the lane, the front garden, and the back garden, and a garrison in the greenhouse and the house itself. Numbers uncertain, but probably only couples.'

The Saint's inevitable cigarette glowed like a fallen star in the darkness.

'That's the way I figured it out myself. I've roughed out a plan of attack on that basis.'

He outlined it briefly. That was not difficult, for it was hardly a plan at all—it was little more than an idea for des­perate and rapid action, a gamble on the element of surprise. The Saint had a pleasant habit of tackling some things in that mood, and getting away with it. And yet, on this occasion, as it happened, even that much planning was destined to be unnecessary.

A few minutes later they were on their way again.

The Saint led, with Conway beside him, in the Furillac. The Hirondel, with Norman Kent, followed about fifty yards be­hind. Norman, much to his disgust, was not considered as an active performer in the early stages of the enterprise. He was to stop his car a little way from the end of the lane, turn round, and wait with the engine ticking over until either Conway or the Saint arrived with Vargan. The simplicity of this arrangement was its great charm, but they were not able to make Norman see their point—which, they said, was the fault of his low and brawlsome mind.

And yet, if this reduction of their mobile forces had not been an incidental part of the Saint's sketchy plan of cam­paign, the outcome of the adventure might have been very different.

As Simon pulled up at the very mouth of the lane, he flung a lightning glance over his shoulder, and saw the Hirondel already swerving across the road for the turn.

Then he heard the shot.

'For the love of Pete!'

The invocation dropped from the Saint's lips in a breathless undertone. He was getting out of the car at that moment, and he completed the operation of placing his second foot on the road with a terrifically careful intentness. As he straightened up with the same frozen deliberation, he found Conway at his elbow.

'You heard it?' Conway's curt, half-incredulous query.

'And how. . . .'

'Angel Face——'

'Himself!'

Simon Templar was standing like a rock. He seemed, to Conway's impatience, to have been standing like that for an eternity, as though his mind had suddenly left him. And yet it had only been a matter of a few seconds, and in that time the Saint's brain had been whirling and wheeling with a wild pre­cision into the necessary readjustments.

So Angel Face had beaten them to the jump—it could have been by no more than a fraction. And, as they had asked for trouble, they were well and truly in the thick of it. They had come prepared for the law; now they had to deal with both law and lawlessness, and both parties united in at least one common cause—to keep K. B. Vargan to themselves. Even if both parties were at war on every other issue. . . .

'So we win this hands down,' said the Saint softly, amaz­ingly. 'We're in luck!'

'If you call this luck!'

'But I do! Could we have arrived at a better time? When both gangs have rattled each other—and probably damaged each other—and Tiny Tim's boy friends have done the dirty work for us——'

He was cut short by another shot . . . then another . . . then a muddled splutter of three or four. . . .

'Our cue!' snapped the Saint, and Roger Conway was at his side as he leapt down the lane.

There was no sign of the sentries, but a man came rush­ing towards them out of the gloom, heavy-footed and panting. The Saint pushed Conway aside and flung out a well-timed foot. As the man sprawled headlong, Simon pounced on him and banged his head with stunning force against the road. Then he yanked the dazed man to his feet and looked closely at him.

'If he's not a policeman, I'm a Patagonian Indian,' said the Saint. 'A slight error, Roger.'

The man answered with a wildly swinging fist, and the Saint hit him regretfully on the point of the jaw and saw him go down in a limp heap.

'What next?' asked Conway; and a second fusillade clat­tered out of the night to answer him.

'This is a very rowdy party,' said the Saint mournfully. 'Let's make it worse, shall we?'

He jerked an automatic from his pocket and fired a couple of shots into the air. The response was far more prompt than he had expected—two little tongues of flame that spat at them out of the further blackness, and two bullets that sang past their heads.

'Somebody loves us,' remarked Simon calmly. 'This way——'

He started to lead down the lane.

And then, out of the darkness, the headlights of a car came to life dazzlingly, like two monstrous eyes. For a second Con-way and the Saint stood struck to stillness in the glare that had carved a great trough of luminance out of the obscurity as if by the scoop of some gigantic dredge. So sudden and blinding was that unexpected light that an instant of time was almost fatally lost before either of them could see that it was not standing still but moving towards them and picking up speed like an express train.

'Glory!' spoke the Saint, and his voice overlapped the venomous rat-tat-tat! of another unseen automatic.

In the same instant he was whirling and stooping with the pace of a striking snake. He collared Conway at the knees and literally hurled him bodily over the low hedge at the side of the lane with an accuracy and expedition that the toughest and most seasoned footballer could hardly have bettered.

The startled Conway, getting shakily to his feet, found the Saint landing from a leap beside him, and was in time to see the dark shape of a closed car flash past in the wake of that eye-searing blaze of headlights—so close that its wings and running-board tore a flurry of crackling twigs from the hedge. And he realised that, but for the Saint's speed of reaction, they would have stood no chance at all in that narrow space.

He might have said something about it. By ordinary pro­cedure he should have given thanks to his saviour in a break­ing voice; they should have wrung each other's hands and wept gently on each other's shoulders for a while; but some­thing told Conway that it was no time for such trimmings. Besides, the Saint had taken the incident in his stride: by that time it had probably slithered through his memory into the dim limbo of distant reminiscence, and he would probably have been quite astonished to be reminded of it at that junc­ture. By some peaceful and lazy fireside, in his doddering old age, possibly . . . But in the immediate present he was con­cerned only with the immediate future.

He was looking back towards the house. There were lights showing still in some of the windows—it might