The Saint Closes the Case

'Don't be an old idiot, Roger!' he cried. 'You know me. I tell you this place was being watched. Police or Angel Face. We can't say which, but almost certainly Angel Face. Teal couldn't possibly have got as far as this in the time, I'll bet anything you like. But Angel Face could. And the two sleuths have beetled off with the news about us. So, to save trouble, we'll beetle off ourselves. Because, if I know anything about Angel Face yet, Brook Street is going to be rather less healthy than a hot spot in hell—inside an hour!'

'But Pat——'

The Saint looked at his watch.

'We've got two hours to fill up somehow. The Hirondel'll do it easy. Down to Maidenhead, park the luggage, and back to Paddington Station in time to meet the train.'

'And suppose we have a breakdown?'

'Breakdown hell! . . . But you're right. . . . Correction, then: I'll drop you at the station, and make the return trip to Maidenhead alone. You can amuse yourself in the bar, and I'll meet you there. . . . It's a good idea to get rid of the lug­gage, too. We don't know that the world won't have become rather sticky by half-past nine, and it'd be on the safe side to make the heavy journey while the going's good. If I leave now they won't have had time to make any preparations to follow me; and later we'd be able to slip them much more easily, if they happened to get after us, without all the impedi­menta to pull our speed down.'

Conway found himself being rushed down the stairs as he listened to the Saint's last speech. The speech seemed to begin in Brook Street and finish at Paddington. Much of this impression, of course, was solely the product of Conway's over­wrought imagination; but there was a certain foundation of fact in it, and the impression built thereon was truly symp­tomatic of Simon Templar's appalling velocity of transform­ing decision into action.

Roger Conway recovered coherent consciousness in the station buffet and a kind of daze; and by that time Simon Templar was hustling the Hirondel westwards.

The Saint's brain was in a ferment of questions. Would Marius arrange a raid on the flat in Brook Street? Or would he, finding that the loaded car which his spies had reported had gone, assume that the birds had flown? Either way, that didn't seem to matter; but the point it raised was what Marius would do next, after he had either discovered or decided that his birds had flown. . . . And, anyway, since Marius must have known that the Saint had attended the rough party at Esher, why hadn't Brook Street been raided before? . . . An­swer: Because (a) a show like that must take a bit of organis­ing, and (b) it would be easier, anyhow, to wait until dark. Which, at that time of year, was fairly late at night. Thereby making it possible to do the return journey to and from Maid­enhead on good time. . . . But Marius would certainly be doing something. Put yourself in the enemy's place. . . .

So the Saint reached Maidenhead in under an hour, and was on the road again five minutes later.

It was not his fault that he was stopped halfway back by a choked carburettor jet which it took him fifteen minutes to locate and remedy.

Even so, the time he made on the rest of the trip amazed even himself.

In the station entrance he actually cannoned into Roger Conway.

'Hullo,' said the Saint. 'Where are you off to? The train's just about due in.'

Conway stared at him.

Then he pointed dumbly at the clock in the booking-hall.

Simon looked at it, and went white.

'But my watch,' he began stupidly, 'my watch——'

'You must have forgotten to wind it up last night.'

'You met the train?'

Conway nodded.

'It's just possible that I may have missed her, but I'd swear she wasn't on it. Probably she didn't catch it ——'

'Then there's a telegram at Brook Street to say so. We'll go there—if all the armies of Europe are in the way!'

They went. Conway, afterwards, preferred not to remem­ber that drive.

And yet peace seemed to reign in Brook Street. The lamps were alight, and it was getting dark rapidly, for the sky had clouded over in the evening. As was to be expected on a Sun­day, there were few people about, and hardly any traffic. There was nothing at all like a crowd—no sign that there had been any disturbance at all. There was a man leaning negligently against a lamp-post, smoking a pipe as though he had nothing else to do in the world. It happened that, as the Hirondel stopped, another man came up and spoke to him. The Saint saw the incident, and ignored it.

He went through the front door and up the stairs like a whirlwind. Conway followed him.

Conway really believed that the Saint would have gone through a police garrison or a whole battalion of Angel Faces; but there were none there to go through. Nor had the flat been entered, as far as they could see. It was exactly as they had left it.

But there was no telegram.

'I might have missed her,' said Conway helplessly. 'She may be on her way now. The taxi may have broken down—or had a slight accident——'

He stopped abruptly at the blaze in the Saint's eyes.

'Look at the clock,' said the Saint, with a kind of curbed savagery.

Roger looked at the clock. The clock said that it was a quarter to ten.

And he saw the terrible look on the Saint's face, and it hypnotised him. The whole thing had come more suddenly than anything that had ever happened to Roger Conway be­fore, and it had swirled him to the loss of his bearings in the same way that a man in a small boat in tropical seas may be lost in a squall. The blow had fallen too fiercely for him. He could feel the shock, and yet he was unable to determine what manner of blow had been struck, or even if a blow had been struck at all, in any comprehensible sense.

He could only look at the clock and say helplessly: 'It's a quarter to ten.'

The Saint was saying: 'She'd have let me know if she'd missed the train——'

'Or waited for the next one.'

'Oh, for the love of Mike!' snarled the Saint. 'Didn't you hear me ring her up from Maidenhead? I looked out all the trains then, and the only next one gets in at three fifty-one to-morrow morning. D'you think she'd have waited for that one without sending me a wire?'

'But if I didn't see her at Paddington, and anything had happened to her taxi——'

But the Saint had taken a cigarette, and was lighting it with a hand that could never have been steadier; and the Saint's face was a frozen mask.

'More beer,' said the Saint.

Roger moved to obey.

'And talk to me,' said the Saint, 'talk to me quietly and sanely, will you? Because fool suggestions won't help me. I don't have to ring up Terry and ask if Pat caught that train, because I know she did. I don't have to ask if you're quite sure you couldn't have missed her at the station, because I know you didn't. ...'

The Saint was deliberately breaking a match-stick into tiny fragments and dropping them one by one into the ash-tray.

'And don't tell me I'm getting excited about nothing,' said the Saint, 'because I tell you I know. I know that Pat was coming on a slow train, which stops at other places before it gets to London. I know that Marius has got Pat, and I know that he's going to try to use her to force me to give up Vargan, and I know that I'm going to find Dr. Rayt Marius and kill him. So talk to me very quietly and sanely, Roger, because if you don't I think I shall go quite mad.'

6. How Roger Conway drove the Hirondel, and the Saint took a knife in his hand

Conway had a full tankard of beer in each hand. He looked at the tankards as a man might look at a couple of dragons that have strayed into his drawing-room. It seemed to Roger, for some reason, that it was unaccountably ridiculous for him to be standing in the middle of the Saint's room with a tankard of beer in each hand. He cleared his throat.