The Saint Closes the Case

'A Lancia. He was stuck at Maidenhead without anything, so the only thing to do was to pinch something. He walked up to Skindle's, and took his pick.'

'Let's have this from the beginning,' said the Saint pa­tiently. 'What happened to you?'

'That was a bad show,' said Roger. 'Fatty distracted my attention, and Angel Face laid me out with a kick. Then Skinny finished the job, near enough. Marius got on the phone, but couldn't get Bures. He arranged other things with Westminster double-nine double-nine——'

'I met 'em. Four of 'em.'

'Then Marius went off with Fatty, leaving Hermann in charge. Before that, I'd been ringing up Norman, and Norman had said he might come up. When the bell rang, I shouted to warn him, and got laid out again. But it wasn't Norman—it was Teal. Teal collared Hermann. I told Teal part of the story. It was the only thing I could think of to do—partly to keep us in Brook Street for a bit in case Norman turned up, and partly to help you. I told Teal to get through to the police at Braintree. Did they miss you?'

'They tried to stop me, but I ran through.'

'Then Norman turned up. Took Teal in beautifully—and laid him out with a battle-axe or something off your wall. We left Teal and Hermann trussed up like chickens——'

The Saint interrupted.

'Half a minute,' he said quietly. 'Did you say you rang up Norman?'

Conway nodded.

'Yes. I thought——'

'While Marius was there?'

'Yes.'

'He heard you give the number?'

'Couldn't have helped hearing, I suppose. But——'

Simon leaned back.

'Don't tell me,' he said, 'don't tell me that we already know that the exchange is not allowed to give subscribers' names and addresses. Don't tell me that Hermann, who's with Teal, mayn't have remembered the number. But what fool wouldn't remem­ber the one word 'Maidenhead'?'

Roger clapped a hand to his mouth.

The murder was out—and he hadn't seen the murder until that moment. The sudden understanding of what he had done appalled him.

'Won't you kick me, Saint? Won't you——?'

Simon put a hand on his arm, and laughed.

'Never mind, old Roger,' he said. 'I know you didn't think. You weren't bred to this sort of game, and it isn't your fault if you trip up. Besides, you couldn't have known that it was going to make any difference. You couldn't have known Angel Face was going to get away, or Teal was going to arrive—'

'You're making excuses for me,' said Roger bitterly. 'And there aren't any. I know it. But it's just the sort of thing you would do.'

The hand on Roger's arm tightened.

'Ass,' said the Saint softly, 'why cry over spilt milk? We're safe for hours yet, and that's all that matters.'

Conway was silent; and the Hirondel sped on through the night without a check.

Simon leaned back and lighted a cigarette. He seemed to sleep, but he did not sleep. He just relaxed and stayed quiet, taking the rest which he so sorely needed. No one would ever know what a gigantic effort of will it had cost him to carry on as he had done. But he would say nothing of that to anyone but Roger, who had found him out. He would not have Patricia know. She would have insisted on delaying the jour­ney, and that he dared not allow.

He explored his wound cautiously, taking care that his movements should not be observed from the back. Fortu­nately, the bullet had passed cleanly through his shoulder, and there were not likely to be any complications. To-mor­row, with his matchless powers of recuperation and the splen­did health he had always enjoyed, he should be left with noth­ing more seriously disabling than a stiff and sore shoulder. The only real danger was the weakness after losing so much blood. But even that he felt he would be able to cope with now.

So he sat back with his eyes closed and the cigarette smoul­dering, almost forgotten, between his fingers, and thought over the brick that Roger had dropped.

And he saw one certain result of it staring him in the face, and that was that Maidenhead would not be safe  for his democracy for very long.

Marius, still at large, wouldn't be likely to lose much time in returning to the attack. And Maidenhead was not a large place, and the number of houses which could seriously be considered was strictly limited. By morning, Marius would be on the job, working with a desperation that would be doubled by the belief that in some way the police had been enleagued against him. In the morning, also, Teal would be rescued, and would start trying to obtain information from Hermann: and how long would Hermann hold out? Not indefinitely—that was certain. In the circumstances, the Powers Higher Up might turn a conveniently blind eye to methods of persuasion which the easy-going officialdom of England would never tolerate in ordinary times: for the affair might be called a national emer­gency. And once Teal had the telephone number . . .

Exactly. Say to-morrow evening. By which time Marius, with a good start to make up for his lack of official facilities, would also be getting hot on the trail.

The Saint was no fool. He knew that the Criminal Investi­gation Department, except in the kind of detective story in which some dude amateur with a violin and a taste for exotic philosophies made rings round their hardened highnesses, was not composed entirely of nitwits. Here and there, Simon did not hesitate to admit, among the men at New Scotland Yard, there was a brain not utterly cretinous. Claud Eustace Teal's, for instance. And Teal, though he might be something of a dim bulb at the spectacular stuff, was a hound for action when he had anything definite to act upon. And there might be more concrete things to act upon than a name and address in a chase of that sort; but, if there were, the Saint couldn't think of them.

Marius also. Well, Marius spoke for himself.

Taken by and large, it seemed as if Maidenhead was likely to become the centre of some considerable activity before the next nightfall.

'But we won't cry over spilt milk, my lads, we won't cry over spilt milk,' went Simon's thoughts in a kind of refrain that harmonised with the rush of the big car. 'We ought to have the best part of a day to play with, and that's the hell of a lot to me. So we won't cry over spilt milk, my lads—and so say all of us!'

But Roger Conway wasn't saying it.

He was saying: 'We shall have to clear out of Maidenhead to-morrow—with or without Vargan. Have you any ideas about that?'

'Dozens,' said the Saint cheerfully. 'As for Vargan, by to-morrow evening there'll either be no more need to keep him a prisoner, or—well, there'll still be no need to keep him a prisoner. ... As for ourselves, there's my Desoutter at Hanworth. Teal won't have had time to find out about that, and I don't think he'll allow anything to be published about us in the papers so long as he's got a chance of clearing up the trouble without any publicity. To the ordinary outside world we're still perfectly respectable citizens. No one at Hanworth will say anything if I announce that we're pushing off to Paris by air. I've done it before. And once we're off the deck we've got a big cruising range to choose our next landing out of.'

And he was silent again, revolving schemes further ahead.

In the back of the car, Patricia's head had sunk on to Norman's shoulder. She was asleep.

The first pale streaks of dawn were lightening the sky when they ran into the east of London. Roger put the Hirondel through the City as quickly as the almost deserted streets would allow.

He turned off on to the Embankment by New Bridge Street, and so they came to pass by Parliament Square on their way westwards. And it was there that Norman Kent had a strange experience.

For some while past, words had been running through his head, so softly that he had not consciously been aware of them—words with which he was as familiar as he was with his own name, and which, nevertheless, he knew he had not heard for many years. Words to a kind of chanting tune that was not a tune. . . . And at that moment, as the Hirondel was murmuring past the Houses of Parliament, he became con­sciously aware of the words that were running through his head, and they seemed to swell and become louder and clearer, as if a great choir took them up; and the illusion was so per­fect that he had looked curiously round towards the spires of