The Saint Closes the Case

with a veritable storm of pursuing bullets humming about his ears and multi­plying the stars in the windscreen.

He was not hit again. The same power must have guarded him as with a shield.

As he straightened the car up he felt his injured shoulder tenderly. As far as he. could discover, no bone had been touched: it was simply a flesh wound through the trapezius muscle, not in itself fatally disabling, but liable to numb the arm and weaken him from loss of blood. He folded his hand­kerchief into a pad, and thrust it under his shirt to cover the wound.

It was all he could do whilst driving along; and he could not stop to examine the wound more carefully or improvise a better dressing. In ten minutes, at most, the chase would be resumed. Unless the pursuers were as unlucky with their spare as he had been. And that was tod much to bank on.

But how had that car come upon the scene? Had it been waiting up a side turning in support of the four men, and had it started on the warning of the first man's scream or the fourth man's cry? Impossible. He had been delayed too long with the mending of the puncture. The car would have ar­rived long before he had finished. Or had it been on its way to lay another ambush further along the road, in case the first one failed?

Simon turned the questions in his mind as a man might flick over the pages of a book he already knew by heart, and passed over them all, seeking another page more easily read.

None was right. He recognised each of them, grimly, as a subconscious attempt to evade the facing of the unpleasant truth; and grimly he choked them down. The solution he had found when that first shot pinged through the window-screen still fitted in. If Marius had somehow escaped, or been rescued, or contrived somehow to convey a warning to his gang, the obvious thing to do would be to get in touch with agents along the road. And warn the men in the house on the hill itself, at Bures. Then Marius would follow in person. Yes, it must have been Marius. . . .

Then the Saint remembered that the fat man and the lean man had not been tied up when he left Roger. And Roger Conway, incomparable lieutenant as he was, was a mere tyro at this game without the hand of his chief to guide him.

'Poor old Roger,' thought the Saint; and it was typical of him that he thought only of Roger in that spirit.

And he drove on.

He drove with death in his heart and murder in the clear, cold blue eyes that followed the road like twin hawks swerv­ing in the wake of their prey. And a mere wraith of the Saintly smile rested unawares on his lips.

For, figured out that way, it meant that he was on a fore­doomed errand.

The thought gave him no pause.

Rather, he drove on faster, with the throbbing of his wounded shoulder submerged and lost beneath the more savage and positive throbbing of every pulse in his body.

Under the relentless pressure of his foot on the accelerator, the figures on the speedometer cylinder, trembling past the hairline in the little window where they were visible, showed crazier and crazier speeds.

Seventy-eight.

Seventy-nine.

Eighty.

Eighty-one . . . two . . . three . . . four, . . .

Eighty-five.

'Not good enough for a race-track,' thought the Saint, 'but on an ordinary road—and at night ...'

The wind of the Hirondel's torrential passage buffeted him with almost animal blows, bellowing in his ears above the thunderous fanfare of the exhaust.

For a nerve-shattering minute he held the car at ninety.

'Patricia! ...'

And he seemed to hear her voice calling him: 'Simon!'

'Oh, my darling, my darling, I'm on my way!' cried the Saint, as if she could have heard him.

As he clamoured through Braintree, with thirteen miles still to go by the last signpost, two policemen stepped out from the side of the road and barred his way.

Their intention was plain, though he had no idea why they should wish to stop him. Surely his mere defiance of a London constable's order to stop would not have merited such a drastic and far-flung effort to bring him promptly to book! Or had Marius, to make the assurance of his own ambushes doubly sure, informed Scotland Yard against him with some ingenious and convincing story about his activities as the Saint? But how could Marius have known of those? And Teal, he was certain, couldn't. ... Or had Teal traced him from the Furillac more quickly than he had expected? And, if so, how could Teal have known that the Saint was on that road?

Whatever the answers to those questions might be, the Saint was not stopping for anyone on earth that night. He set his teeth, and kept his foot flat down on the accelerator.

The two policemen must have divined the ruthlessness of his defiance, for they jumped to safety in the nick of time.

And then the Saint was gone again, breaking out into the open country with a challenging blast of klaxon and a snarling stammer of unsilenced exhaust, blazing through the night like the shouting vanguard of a charge of forgotten valiants.

11. How Roger Conway told the truth, and Inspector Teal believed a lie

Inspector Teal set Hermann down in the sitting-room, and adroitly snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. Then he turned his slumbrous eyes on Roger.

'Hullo, unconscious!' he sighed.

'Not quite,' retorted Roger shortly. 'But darn near it. I got a good crack on the head giving you that shout.'

Teal shook his head. He was perpetually tired, and even that slight movement seemed to cost him a gargantuan effort.

'Not me,' he said heavily. 'My name isn't Norman. What are you doing there?'

'Pretending to be a sea-lion,' said Roger sarcastically. 'It's a jolly game. Wouldn't you like to join in? Hermann will throw us the fish to catch in our mouths.'

Mr. Teal sighed again, slumbrously.

'What's your name?' he demanded.

Roger did not answer for a few seconds.

In that time he had to make a decision that might alter the course of the Saint's whole life, and Roger's own with it—if not the course of all European history. It was a tough de­cision to take.

Should he give his name as Simon Templar? That was the desperate question that leapt into his head immediately. ... It so happened that he never carried much in his pockets, and so far as he could remember there was nothing in his wal­let that would give him away when he was searched. The fraud would certainly be discovered before very long, but he might be able to bluff it out for twenty-four hours. And in all that time the Saint would be free—free to save Pat, return to Maidenhead, deal with Vargan, complete the mission to which he had pledged himself.

To the possible, and even probable, consequences to himself of such a course, Roger never gave a thought. The sacrifice would be a small one compared with what it might achieve.

'I am Simon Templar,' said Roger. 'I believe you're look­ing for me.'

Hermann's eyes widened.

'It is a lie!' he burst out. 'He is not Templar!'

Teal turned his somnambulistic gaze upon the man.

'Who asked you to speak?' he demanded.

'Don't take any notice of him,' said Roger. 'He doesn't know anything about it. I'm Templar, all right. And I'll go quietly.'

'But he is not Templar!' persisted Hermann excitedly. 'Templar has been gone an hour! That man——'

'You shut your disgusting mouth!' snarled Roger. 'And if you don't, I'll shut it for you. You——'

Teal blinked.