The Saint Closes the Case

'It might be arranged—if you don't need your hands free.'

'I can try. The case is in my breast pocket.'

Conway found it, bit the end, and put it in Marius's mouth and lighted it. Marius thanked him.

'Will you join me?'

Roger smiled.

'Try something newer,' he advised. 'I never take smokes from strangers these days, on principle. Oh, and by the way, if I catch you trying to burn through your ropes with the end, I shall have much pleasure in grinding it into your face till it goes out.'

Marius shrugged and made no reply; and Roger resumed his cigarette.

Coming upon the telephone, he hesitated, and then called a number. He was through in a few minutes.

'Can I speak to Mr. Kent, Orace? . . , Oh, hullo, Nor­man!'

'Who's that? Roger?'

'Yes. I rang up in case you were getting worried about us. Heaven knows what time we shall get down. . . . No, the car's all right—as far as I know. Simon's gone off in it. ... Brook Street. . . . Well—Marius has got Pat. . . . Yes, I'm afraid so. Got her on the train. But we've got Marius. . . . Yes, he's here. I'm standing guard. We've found out where Pat's been taken, and Simon's gone after her. . . . Somewhere in Suf­folk.'

'Shall I come up?'

'How? It's too late for a train, and you won't be able to hire anything worth calling a car at this hour. I don't see what you could do, anyway. . . . Look here, I can't talk any more now. I've got to keep both eyes on Marius and Co. . . . I'll leave it to you. . . . Right. So long, old boy.'

He hooked up the receiver.

It occurred to him afterwards that there was something that Norman could have done. He could have tied up the fat man and the lean man, both of whom were now conscious and free to move as much as they dared. That ought to have been done before Simon left. They ought to have thought of it—or Simon ought to have thought of it. But the Saint couldn't, reasonably, have been expected to think of it, or anything else like it, at such a time. Roger knew both the Saint and Pat too well to be able to blame Simon for the omission. Simon had been mad when he left. The madness had been there all the time, since half-past nine, boiling up in fiercer and fiercer waves behind all the masks of calmness and flippancy and pa­tience that the Saint had assumed at intervals, and it had been at its whitest heat behind that last gay smile and gesture from the door.

Half an hour passed.

Roger was beginning to feel hungry. He had had a snack in the station buffet while he was waiting, but the satisfaction of that was starting to wear off. If he had gone to the kitchen to forage, that would have meant compelling his three prison­ers to precede him at the point of his gun. And the kitchen was small. . . . Ruefully Roger resigned himself to a hungry vigil. He looked unhappily at the clock. Four and a half hours be­fore he could shoot the prisoners and dash to the pantry, if he obeyed the Saint's orders. But it would have to be endured. The Saint might have managed the cure, and got away with it; but then, the Saint was a fully qualified adventurer, and what he didn't know about the game was not knowledge. Conway was infinitely less experienced, and knew it. In the cramped space of the kitchen, while he was trying to locate food with one eye and one hand, he might easily be taken off his guard and overpowered. And, in the circumstances, the risk was too great to take.

If only Norman decided to come. ...

Roger Conway sat on the edge of the table, swinging the gun idly in his hand. Marius remained silent. His cigar had gone out, and he had not asked for it to be relighted. The fat man slouched in another chair, watching Roger with venom­ous eyes. The lean man stood awkwardly in one corner. He had not spoken since he recovered consciousness; but he also watched. The clock ticked monotonously. . . .

Roger started to whistle to himself. It was extraordinary how quickly the strain began to tell. He wished he were like the Saint. The Saint wouldn't have gone hungry, for one thing. The Saint would have made the prisoners cook him a four-course dinner, lay the table, and wait on him. The Saint would have kept them busy putting on the gramophone and generally running his errands. The Saint would probably have written a letter and composed a few limericks into the bargain. He certainly wouldn't have been oppressed by the silence and the concentrated malevolence of three pairs of eyes. He would have dismissed the silence and whiled away the time by in­dulging in airy persiflage at their expense.

But it was the silence and the watchfulness of the eyes. Roger began to understand why he had never felt an irresistible urge to become a lion-tamer. The feeling of being alone in a cage of wild beasts, he decided, must be very much like what he was experiencing at that moment. The same fragile dominance of the man, the same unresting watchfulness of the beasts, the same tension, the same snarling submission of the beasts, the same certainty that the beasts were only waiting, waiting, waiting. These human beasts were sizing him up, searching his soul, stripping him naked of all bluff, finding out all his weaknesses in silence, planning, scheming, consider­ing, alert to pounce. It was getting on Roger's nerves. Presently, sooner or later, somehow, he knew, there would be a bid for liberty. But how would it happen?

And that uncertainty must go on for hours and hours, per­haps. Move and counter-move, threat and counter- threat, the snarl and the lash, the silence and the watchfulness and the eyes. How long? . . .

Then from the fat man's lips broke the first rattle of words, in his own language.

'Stop that!' rapped Conway, with his nerves all on edge. 'If you've anything to say, say it in English. Any more of that, and you'll get a clip over the ear with the soft end of this gun.'

And the man deliberately and defiantly spoke again, still in his own language.

Roger came off the table as though it had been redhot. He stood over the man with his hand raised, and the man stared back with sullen insolence.

Then it happened.

The plan was beautifully simple.

Roger had forgotten for the moment that only Marius's hands were tied. The giant's feet were free. And, standing over the fat man's chair, where he had been so easily lured by the bait that was also an explanation of the trap to the others, Roger's back was half turned to Marius.

Conway heard the movement behind him, but he had no time to spin round to meet it. The giant's foot crashed into the small of his back with a savage force that might well have broken the spine—if it had struck the spine. But it struck to one side of the spine, in a place almost as vulnerable, and Roger went to the floor with a gasp of agony.

Then both the fat man and the lean man leapt on him to­gether.

The gun was wrenched out of Roger's hand. He could not have seen to shoot, anyway, for the pain had blinded him. He could not cry out—his throat was constricted with a horrible numbing nausea, and his lungs seemed to be paralysed. The lean man's fist smacked again and again into his defenceless jaw.

'Untie me quickly, fool!' hissed Marius, and the fat man obeyed, to the accompaniment of a babbling flood of excuses.

Marius cut him short.

'I will consider your punishment later, Otto. Perhaps this will atone for a little of your imbecility. Tie him up now with this rope——'

Roger lay still. Somehow—he did not know how—he re­tained his consciousness. There was no strength in any of his limbs; he could see nothing; his battered head sang and ached and throbbed horribly; the whole of his body was in the grip of a crushing, cramping agony that centered on the point in his back where he had taken the kick, and from that point spread iron tentacles of helplessness into every muscle; yet his mind hung aloof, high and clear above the roaring blackness, and he heard and remembered every word that was said.

'Look for more rope, Hermann,' Marius was ordering.

The lean man went out and returned. Roger's feet were bound as his wrists had been.

Then Marius was at the telephone.

'A trunk call. . . . Bures. . . .'

An impatient pause. Then Marius cursed gutturally.

'The line is out of order? Tell me when it will be working again. It is a matter of life and death. . . . To- morrow? . . . God in heaven! A telegram—would a telegram be delivered in Bures to-night?'

'I'll put you through to——'

Pause again.