The Saint Closes the Case

'You don't seem to have got the idea, beautiful,' he re­marked sweetly. 'This isn't a game—as you'll find out if you don't wake yourself up in rather less time than it takes me to get my hands on you again. I'm quite ready to resume the surgical operation as soon as you like. So go on talking, be­cause I just love your voice, and it helps me to forget all the unpleasant things I ought to be doing to your perfectly ap­palling face.'

The man shuddered and cowered back into the depths of the chair. His hands flew to his eyes; it may have been to shut out a ghastly vision, or it may have been to try to escape from Saint's merciless blue stare.

'I do not know!' he almost screamed. 'I swear it——'

'Then tell me what you do know, you rat,' said Simon, 'and then I'll make you remember some more.'

Words came to the fat man in an incoherent, pelting stream, lashed on by fear.

He was acting on the instructions of Dr. Marius. That was true. The house in Brook Street had been closely watched for the last twenty-four hours, he himself being one of the watchers. He had seen the departure the previous night, but they had not had the means to follow a car. Two other men had been sent to inspect the premises that afternoon, had seen the loaded car outside, and had rushed away together to report.

'Both of them?' interrupted the Saint.

'Both of them. It was a criminal mistake. But they will be punished.'

'How will you be rewarded, I wonder?' murmured Simon.

The fat man shivered, and went on.

'One was sent back immediately, but the car had gone. The Doctor then said that he had made other plans, and one man would be enough to keep the watch, in case you return. I was that man. Hermann'—he pointed to the inert figure on the floor—'had just come to relieve me when you came back. We were going to report it.'

'Both of you?'

'Both of us.'

'A criminal mistake,' drawled the Saint sardonically. 'But I expect you will be punished. Yes?'

The man winced.

Another of his comrades, he said, had been told off to follow the girl. It had been impressed upon the sleuths that no move­ment should be missed, and no habit overlooked, however trifling. Marius had not divulged the reason for this vigilance, but he had left them in no doubt of its importance. In that spirit Patricia had been followed to Devonshire.

'Your boss seems very unwilling to meet me again person­ally,' observed the Saint grimly. 'How wise of him!'

'We could afford to take no risks——'

' 'We'?'

Simon swooped on the pronoun like a hawk.

'I mean——'

'I know what you mean, sweetness,' said the Saint silkily. 'You mean that you didn't mean to let on that you knew more about this than you said. You're not just a hired crook, like the last specimen of your kind I had to tread on. You're a secret agent. We understand that. We understand also that, however much respect you may have for the continued wholeness of your own verminous hide, a most commendable patriotism for your misbegotten country will make you keep on fighting and lying as long as you can. Very good. I applaud. But I'm afraid my appreciation of your one solitary virtue will have to stop there—at just that one theoretical pat on the back. After which, we go back to our own private, practical quarrel. And what you've got to get jammed well into the misshapen lump of bone that keeps your unwashed ears apart, is that I'm a bit of a fighter myself, and I think—somehow, somehow, I think, dear one—I think I'm a better fighter than you are.'

'I did not mean——'

'Don't lie,' said the Saint, in a tone of mock reproach that held behind its superficial flippance a kind of glacial menace. 'Don't lie to me. I don't like it.'

Roger moved off the wall which he had been propping up.

'Put him back on the table, old boy,' he suggested.

'I'm going to,' said the Saint, 'unless he spills the beans in less than two flaps of a duck's rudder.'

He came a little closer to the fat man.

'Now, you loathsome monstrosity—listen to me. The game's up. You've put both feet in it with that little word 'we.' And I'm curious. Very, very curious and inquisitive. I want to know everything about you—the story of your life, and your favour­ite movie star, and your golf handicap, and whether you sleep with your pyjama trousers inside or outside the jacket. I want you to tell me all about yourself. For instance, when Marius told you that you could let up on the watch here, as he'd made other plans—didn't he say that there was a girl concerned in those plans?'

'No.'

'That's two lies,' said the Saint. 'Next time you lie, you will be badly hurt. Second question: I know that Marius arranged for the girl to be drugged on the train, and taken off it before it reached London—but where was she to be taken to?'

'I do not——A-a-a-a-ah!'

'I warned you,' said the Saint.

'Are you a devil?' sobbed the man, and the Saint showed his teeth.

'Not really. Just an ordinary man who objects to being molested. I thought I'd made that quite plain. Of course, I'm in a hurry this evening, so that may make me seem a little hasty. Now, are you going to remember things—truthful things—or shall we have some more unpleasantness?'

The man shrank back from him, quivering.

'I do not know any more,' he blubbered. 'I swear——'

'Where is Marius now?'

But the man did not answer immediately, for the sudden ringing of a bell sounded clearly through the apartment.

For a second the Saint was immobile.

Then he stepped round behind the prisoner's chair, and the little knife slid out of its sheath again. The prisoner saw the flash of it, and his eyes dilated with terror. A cry rose to his lips, and the Saint stifled it with a hand over his mouth. Then the point stung the man over the heart.

'Just one word,' said the Saint—'just one word, and you'll say the rest of the sentence to the Recording Angel. Who d'you think it is, Roger?'

'Teal?'

'Having traced that motor agent to his Sunday lair, and got on our trail?'

'If we don't answer—'

'They'll break in. There's the car outside to tell them we're here. No, they'll have to come in——'

'Just when we're finding out things?'

Simon Templar's eyes glittered.

'Give me that gun!'

Conway picked up the automatic that the fat man had dropped, which had lain neglected on the floor ever since, and handed it over obediently.

'I'll tell you,' said the Saint, 'that no man born of woman is going to interfere with me. I'm going to finish getting every­thing I want out of this lump of refuse, and then I'm going on to act on it—to find Pat—and I'll shoot my way through the whole of Scotland Yard to do it, if I have to. Now go and open that door.'

Conway nodded.

'I'm with you,' he said, and went out.

The Saint waited calmly.

His left hand still held the slim blade of Anna over the fat man's heart, ready to drive it home, and his ears were alert for the faintest sound of a deeply drawn breath that might be the prelude to a shout. His right hand held the automatic, concealed behind the back of the chair.

But when Roger came back, and the Saint saw the man who came with him, he remained exactly as he was; and no one could have remarked the slightest change in the desolate impassivity of his face. Only his heart leapt sickeningly, and slithered back anyhow into its place, leaving a strange feeling of throbbing emptiness spreading across the track of that thud­ding somersault. 'Pleased to meet you again, Marius,' said the Saint.