The Saint Closes the Case

'You gain nothing——'

'On the contrary, I gain everything,' said the Saint, in that dreamy sing-song. 'I gain everything, or lose more than everything. But I'm tired of haggling. I'm tired of playing your safety game. You're going to play my game now, Marius, my cherub. Wait a second while I rearrange the scene. . . .'

As Conway came back with a length of cord, the Saint took from his pocket a little shining cylinder and screwed it swiftly on to the muzzle of the gun he held.

'This will now make no noise worth mentioning,' he said. 'You know the gadget, don't you? So let me have your decision quickly, Marius, before I remember what I want to do more than anything else in the world.'

'It will not help you to kill me.'

'It will not help me to let you go. But we've had all that before. Besides, I mightn't kill you. I might just shoot you through the kidneys, and long before you died of the wound you'd be ready to give me anything to put you out of your agony. I grant you it wouldn't improve my chance of finding Miss Holm, but, on the other hand, it wouldn't make it any worse—and you'd be so dead that it wouldn't worry you, any­way. Think it over. I give you two minutes. Roger, time him by that clock!'

Marius put his hands behind him at once.

'Suppose I save you the time. I will be tied now—if you think that will help you.'

'Carry on, Roger,' said the Saint.

He knew that Marius still did not believe him—that the fat man's description of his ordeal had not made the impression it should have made. He knew that Marius's acquiescence was nothing but a bland calling of what the giant estimated to be a hopeless bluff. And he stood by, watching with a face of stone, while Conway tied the man's hands behind his back and thrust him into a chair.

'Take over the peashooter again, Roger.'

Then an idea struck the Saint.

He said: 'Before we begin, Roger, you might search him.'

A glimmer of fear, which nothing else in that interview had aroused, contorted the giant's face like a spasm, and the Saint could have shouted for joy. Marius struggled like a fiend, but he had been well bound, and his effort was wasted. The weak spot in the armour. . . .

Simon waited, almost trembling. Torture he had been grimly prepared to apply; but he recognised, at the same time, how futile it was likely to prove against a man like Marius. He might have resumed the torture of the fat man; but that also would have been less efficacious now that the moral support— or threat—of Marius was there to counteract it. He would obtain some sort of information, certainly—the limits of human endurance would inevitably see to that—but he would have no means of proving its truth. Something in writing, though . . .

And the colossal facility of the success made the Saint's heart pound like a triphammer, in a devastating terror lest the success should turn out to be no success at all. For, if success it was, the rightness of his riposte could not have been more shatteringly demonstrated. If it were true—if Marius had plunged so heavily on the rules of the game as he knew them—­if Marius had been so blindly certain that, under the menace which he knew he could hold over them, neither of the men in Brook Street would dare to lay a hand on him—if . . .

'English swine!'

'Naughty temper,' said Roger equably.

'Thank you,' said the Saint, taking the letter which Roger handed to him. 'Careless of you, Marius, to come here with that on you. Personally, I never commit anything to writing. It's dangerous. But perhaps you meant to post it on your way, and forgot it.'

He glanced at the address.

'Our old friend the Crown Prince,' he murmured. 'This should be interesting.'

He slit open the envelope with one swift flick of his thumb, and drew out the typewritten sheet.

It was in Marius's own language, but that was a small dif­ficulty. The Saint took it with him to the telephone; and in a few minutes he was through to a friend who held down a soft job at the Foreign Office by virtue of an almost incredible fa­miliarity with every language on the map of Europe.

'Glad to find you in,' said the Saint rapidly. 'Listen—I've got a letter here which I want translated. I don't know how to pronounce any of it, but I'll spell it out word by word. Ready?'

It took time; but the Saint had found an unwonted patience. He wrote between the lines as the receiver dictated; and pres­ently it was finished.

He came back smiling.

Roger prompted him: 'Which, being interpreted, means——'

'I'm leaving now.'

'Where for?'

'The house on the hill, Bures, Suffolk.'

'She's there?'

'According to the letter.'

The Saint passed it over, and Conway read the scribbled notes between the lines: '. . . the girl, and she is being taken to a quiet part of Suffolk . . . Bures... house on the hill far enough from the village to be safe . . . cannot fail this time. ...'

Conway handed it back.

'I'll come with you.'

The Saint shook his head.

'Sorry, son, but you've got to stay here and look after the menagerie. They're my hostages.'

'But suppose anything goes wrong, Simon?'

The Saint consulted his watch. It was still stopped. He wound it up and set it by the mantelpiece clock.

'I'll be back,' he said, 'before four o'clock tomorrow morn­ing. That allows for punctures, breakdowns, and everything eke. If I'm not here on the stroke, shoot these birds and come after me.'

Marius's voice rasped in on Conway's hesitation.

'You insist on being foolish, Templar? You realise that my men at Bures have orders to use Miss Holm as a hostage in an attack or any other emergency?'

Simon Templar went over and looked down at him.

'I could have guessed it,' he said. 'And it makes me weep for your bad generalship, Marius. I suppose you realise that if they sacrifice her, your first and last hold over me is gone? But that's only half the fundamental weakness in your bright scheme. The other half is that you've got to pray against your­ self. Pray that I win to-night, Marius—pray as you've never prayed before in your filthy life! Because, if I fail, I'm coming straight back here to kill you in the most hideous way I can in­vent. I mean that.'

He swung round, cool, cold, deliberate, and went to the door as if he were merely going for a stroll round the block before turning in. But at the door he turned to cast a slow, straight glance over Marius, and then to smile at Roger.

'All the best, old boy,' said Roger.

' 'Battle, murder, and sudden death,' ' quoted the Saint softly, with a gay, reckless gesture; and the Saintly smile could never have shone more superbly. 'Watch me,' said the Saint, and was gone.

9. How Roger Conway was careless, and Hermann also made a mistake

Roger Conway shifted vaguely across the room as the hum of Norman Kent's Hirondel faded and was lost in the noises of Regent Street. He came upon the side table where the de­canter lived, helped himself to a drink, and remembered that last cavalier wave of the Saint's hand and the pitiful torment in the Saint's eyes. Then he put down the drink and took a cigarette instead, suddenly aware that he might have to remain wide awake and alert all night.

He looked at Marius. The giant had sunk into an inscru­table apathy; but he spoke.

'If you would allow it, I should like to smoke a cigar.'

Roger deliberated.