The Saint Closes the Case

'Help!'

'You fool!' snarled the Saint bitterly. 'Do you want them to have the last satisfaction of hearing us whine?'

He forgot everything but that—that stern point of pride —and left his place at the door. He reached her in a few lurch­ing strides, and his hands fell roughly on her shoulders to drag her away.

She shouted again: 'Help!'

'Be quiet!' snarled the Saint bitterly.

But when he turned her round he saw that her face was calm and serene, and not at all the face that should have gone with those cries.

'You asked God to help you, old boy,' she said. 'Why shouldn't I ask the men who have come?'

And she pointed out of the window.

He -looked; and he saw that the gate at the end of the garden, and the drive within, were lighted up as with the light of day by the headlights of a car that had stopped in the road beyond. But for the din of the axe at the door he would have heard its approach.

And then into that pathway of light stepped a man, tall and dark and trim; and the man cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted:

'Coming, Pat! . . . Hullo, Simon!'

'Norman!' yelled the Saint. 'Norman—my seraph—my sweet angel!'

Then he remembered the odds, and called again:

'Look out for yourself! They're armed——'

'So are we,' said Norman Kent happily. 'Inspector Teal and his merry men are all round the house. We've got 'em cold.'

For a moment the Saint could not speak.

Then:

'Did you say Inspector Teal?'

'Yes,' shouted Norman. And he added something. He added it brilliantly. He knew that the men in the house were for­eigners—that even Marius, with his too-perfect English, was a foreigner—and that no one but the Saint and Patricia could be expected to be familiar with the more abstruse perversions and defilements possible to the well of native English. And he made the addition without a change of tone that might have hinted at his meaning. He added: 'All breadcrumbs and breambait. Don't bite!'

Then Simon understood the bluff.

It must have been years since the sedate and sober Norman Kent had played such irreverent slapstick with the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but the Saint could forgive the lapse.

Simon's arm was round Patricia's shoulders, and he had seen a light in the darkness. The miracle had happened, and the adventure went on.

And he found his voice.

'Oh, boy!' he cried; and dragged Patricia down into the temporary shelter of the barricade as the first shot from out­side the smashed door smacked over their heads and sang away into the blackness beyond the open window.

14. How Roger Conway drove the Hirondel, and Norman Kent looked back

A second bullet snarled past the Saint's ear and flattened itself in a silvery scar on the wall behind him; but no more shots followed. From outside the house came the rattle of other guns. Simon heard Marius speaking crisply, and then he was listening to the sound of footsteps hurrying away down the corridor. He raised his head out of cover, and saw nothing through the hole in the door.

'They're going to try and make a dash through the cordon that isn't there,' he divined; and so it was to prove.

He stood up, and began to tear away the barricade, the girl helping him.

They raced down the corridor together, and paused at the top of the stairs. But there was no one to be seen in the hall below.

Simon led the way downwards. Without considering where he went, he burst into the nearest room, and found that it was the room in which he had fought the opening skirmish. The window through which he had hurled himself was now open, and through it drifted the sounds of a scattered fusillade.

He caught up a gun from the floor without halting in his rush to the window.

Outside, on the lawn, with the light behind him, he could see a little knot of men piling into a car. The engine started up a second later.

A smile touched the Saint's lips—the first entirely carefree smile that had been there that night. There was something ir­resistibly entertaining about the spectacle of that death-or-glory sortie whose reckless daring was nothing but the saying of a loud 'Boo' to a tame goose—if the men who made the sortie had only known. But they could not have known, and Marius was doing the only possible thing. He could not have hoped to survive a siege, but a sortie was a chance. Flimsy, but a chance. And certainly the effect of a posse shooting all round the house had been very convincingly obtained. Simon guessed that the rescue party had spared neither ammunition nor breath. They must have run themselves off their legs to main­tain that impression of revolver fire coming from every quar­ter of the garden at once.

The car, with its frantic load, was sweeping down the drive in a moment. Simon levelled his gun and spat lead after it, but he could not tell whether he did any damage.

Then another gun poked into his ribs, and he turned.

'Put it up,' said the Saint. 'Put it up, Roger, old lad!'

'Well, you old horse-thief!'

'Well, you low-down stiff!'

They shook hands.

Then Norman Kent loomed up out of the darkness.

'Where's Pat?'

But Patricia was beside the Saint.

Norman swung her off her feet and kissed her shamelessly. Then he clapped Simon on the shoulder.

'Do we go after them?' he asked. The Saint shook his head.

'Not now. Is Orace with you?'

'No. Just Roger and I—the old firm.'

'Even then—we've got to get back to Vargan. We can't risk throwing away the advantage, and getting the whole bunch of us tied up again. And in about ten seconds more this place is going to be infested with stampeding villagers thinking the next war's started already. We'll beat it while the tall timber looks easy!'

'What's that on your coat—blood?'

'Nothing.'

He led the way to the Hirondel, walking rather slowly for him. Roger went beside him. At one step, the Saint swayed, and caught at Roger's arm.

'Sorry, son,' he murmured. 'Just came all over queer, I did. ...'

'Hadn't you better let us have a look——'

'We'll leave now,' said the Saint, with more quietly incon­testable iciness than he had ever used to Roger Conway in his life before.

The strength, the unnatural vigour which had carried him through until then, was leaving him as it ceased to be neces­sary. But he felt a deep and absurd contentment.

Roger Conway drove, for Norman had curtly surrendered the wheel of his own recovered car. Thus Roger could explain to the Saint, who sat beside him in the front.

'Norman brought us here. I always swore you were the last word in drivers, but there isn't much you could teach Nor­man.'

'What was the car?'