The Saint Closes the Case

mistaken that high-pitched, arrogant tone of command.

'Hullo, Marius, my little lamb!' he sang out breezily. 'How's life?'

Then Marius spoke in English.

'I should stand well away from the door, Templar,' he re-marked suavely. 'I am about to shoot out the lock.'

The Saint chuckled.

'It's all the same to me, honeybunch,' he answered, 'but I think you ought to know that one of your bright boys is stuck against the door, right over the lock, and I'm afraid he can't move—and I can't get him away without busting the works.'

'That will be unlucky for him,' said Marius callously; and the man pinned against the door shrieked once, horribly.

The Saint had Patricia away in a corner, covering her with his own body, when Marius fired. But, looking over his shoul­der, he saw the man at the door bare his teeth dreadfully before he slopped limply forwards over the chest of drawers and lay still. The Saint's nerves were of pure tungsten, but the inhuman deliberateness of that murder made his blood run cold for an instant.

'Poor devil,' he muttered.

But, outside, Marius had barked an order, and the assault was being renewed.

Simon went to the window; but one look at the bars told him that they had been too well laid for any unaided human effort to dislodge them. And there was nothing in the room that might have been used as a lever, except, perhaps, one of the bedposts—to obtain which would have meant disorganising the whole of the barricade.

The trap was complete.

And no help could be expected from outside, unless Roger . . . But the mere fact that Marius was there ruled Roger Conway out.

'How did you get here?' the girl was asking.

Simon told her the whole story, with his mind on other things. Perhaps because his attention was so divided, he forgot that her quick intelligence would not take long to seize upon the salient deduction; and he was almost startled when she interrupted him.

'But if you left Roger with Marius——'

The Saint looked at her and nodded ruefully.

'Let's face it,' he said. 'Old Roger's dropped a stitch. But he may still be knitting away somewhere. Roger isn't our star pupil, but he has a useful knack of tumbling out of trouble. Unless Teal's chipped in——'

'Why Teal?'

Simon came back to earth. So much had happened since he last saw her that he had overlooked her ignorance of it.

He told her what she had missed of the story—the adventure at Esher and the flight to Maidenhead. For the first time he fully understood all that was involved, and understood also why she had been taken to the house on the hill.

Quietly and casually, with flippancy and jest, in his own vivid way, he told the story as if it were nothing but a trivial incident. And a trivial incident it had become for him, in fact: he could no longer see the trees for the wood.

'So,' he said, 'you'll see that Angel Face means business, and you'll see why there's so much excitement in Bures to­night.'

And, as he spoke, he glanced involuntarily at the lifeless figure sprawled over the chest of drawers, a silent testimony to the truth of his words; and the girl followed his gaze.

Then Simon met her eyes, and shrugged.

He made her sit down on the bed, and sat down himself beside her; he took a cigarette from his case and made her take one also.

'It won't help us to get worked up about it,' he said lightly. 'It's unfortunate about Sam Stick-my-gizzard over there; but the cheerful way to look at it is to think that he makes one less of the ungodly. Let's be cheerful. . . . And while we're being cheerful, tell me how you came into this mess from which I'm rescuing you at such great peril.'

'That was easy. I wasn't expecting anything of the sort, you see. If you'd said more when you rang me up. . . . But I fell for it like a child. There was hardly anyone on the train, and I had a compartment to myself. We must have been near Read­ing when a man came along the corridor and asked if I had a match. I gave him one, and he gave me a cigarette. ... I know I was a fool to take it; but he looked a perfectly ordinary man, and I had no reason to be suspicious——'

Simon nodded.

'Until you woke up in a motor-car somewhere?'

'Yes. . . . Tied hand and foot, with a bag over my head. . . . We drove for a long time, and then I was brought in here. That was only about an hour before you threw the stones at my window. . . . Oh, Simon, I'm so glad you came!'

The Saint's arm tightened about her shoulders.

'So am I,' he said.

He was looking at the door. Clearly, the efficiency of his barricade had been proved, for the attack had paused. Then Marius gave another order.

For a while there was only the murmur of conversation; and then that stopped with the sound of someone coming heavily down the corridor. And Simon Templar caught his breath, guessing that his worst forebodings were to be realised.

An instant later he was justified by a rendering crash on the door that was different from all the other thundering that had smashed upon it before.

'What is it?' asked Patricia.

'They've brought up the meat-axe,' said the Saint carelessly; but he did not feel careless at heart, for the noise on the door and the crack that had appeared in one panel told him that an axe was being employed that would not take very long to damage even four inches of seasoned oak.

The blow was repeated.

And again.

The edge of a blade showed through the door like a thin strip of silver at the fourth blow.

A matter of minutes, now, before a hole was cut large enough for the besiegers to fire into the room—with an aim. And when that was done ...

The Saint knew that the girl's eyes were upon him, and tried desperately to postpone the question he knew she was fram­ing.

'Marius, little pal!'

There was a lull; and then Marius answered.

'Are you going to say,' sneered the giant, 'that you will save us the trouble of breaking in the door?'

'Oh no. I just wanted to know how you were.'

'I have nothing to complain of, Templar. And you?'   .

'When there are grey skies,' said the Saint, after the man­ner of Al Jolson, 'I don't mind the grey skies. You make them blue, sonny boy. ... By the way, how did you leave my friend?'

Marius's sneering chuckle curdled through the door.

'He is still at Brook Street, in charge of Hermann. You re­member Hermann, the man you knocked out? . . . But I am sure Hermann will be very kind to him. ... Is there any­thing else you wish to know?'

'Nothing at the moment,' said the Saint.

Marius spoke in his own language, and the axe struck again.

Then Patricia would no longer be denied. The Saint met her eyes, and saw that she understood. But she showed no fear.

Quite quietly they looked at each other; and their hands came together quite gently and steadily.

'I'm sorry,' said Simon in a low voice. 'I can never tell you how sorry I am.'

'But I understand, Simon,' she said; and her voice was still the firm, clear, unfaltering voice that he loved. 'The gods haven't forgotten you, after all. Isn't this the sort of end you've always prayed for?'