Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

might duck out; Simon could see the cords that bound her wrists to­gether behind her back, and the eighteen-inch hob­ble of rope between her ankles.

He was crouching where he was, with one arm locked about the slender trunk of the sapling that supported him precariously on the steep slope. The fingers of his free hand stroked tenderly over the ground, and picked up a tiny pebble; aiming care­fully, he lobbed the stone down.

It struck the girl's hands; but she did not move at once. Then the toe of one shoe kicked restlessly at the gravel under her feet—and if any of the men below had heard the stone fall he would have thought the sound was due to her own movements. The Saint raised his eyes momentarily to the stars above. It was classic. That girl, playing his own game for the first time in her life, so far as he knew, after she'd already walked in under the sha­ dow of the axe as coolly as any qualified adventur­er—even with the axe in the act of falling she could watch the subtlest refinements of that game. When any other girl would have been shaking at the knees, thinking hysterically of escape and res­cue, she was calmly and methodically chalking her cue....

And then, quite naturally and deliberately, she glanced round; and the Saint stood up out of the shadows so that he could be plainly seen.

She saw him. Even in that dim light he could make out the eager question in her face, and he knew that she must have seen his smile. He nodded, waved his hand, and pointed out to the waiting ship. Then he smiled again; and he crowded into that smile all that he could bring to it of reckless confidence. And when she smiled back, and nodded in semi-comprehension and utter trust, he could have thrown everything to the winds and leaped down to take her in his arms. But he did not. His right hand and arm went out and upwards in a gay cavalier gesture that matched his smile; and then he sank down again into the dark­ness as Hermann curtly urged her on down the slope and the other three resumed their climb. ...

3

BUT SHE HAD SEEN HIM; she knew that he was there, that there had been no mistake yet, that he had not betrayed her faith, that he was waiting, ready. . . . And that was something to have shown her. ... And, as he dropped on his toes to the emp­ty path, Simon remembered her fine courage, and Roger Conway, and many things. 'Oh, glory,' thought the Saint, sinking onto a convenient boul­der, his hands on his knees. . . .

He saw her marched along the jetty and lifted down into the boat. Hermann squatted down on his haunches beside the other man who was chat­ting with the crew; the flare of the match which he struck to light his pipe brought up in sharp relief the lean predatory face that the Saint could recall so easily. And Simon waited.

Clearly the boat's crew were delaying for the re­turn of the man they had brought ashore—one of the ship's officers, probably, if not the captain himself. And much seemed now to depend on what had happened to Marius, which in its turn de­pended upon the crown prince's ablutionary pro­gramme. And to the answer to these dependent questions the Saint had still no clue. When Marius came slavering into Saltham with the tale of the desecrated royal toothpaste, no small excitement might have been expected. Therefore the Saint was sure that this had not happened before his own ar­rival on the scene; for, if it had, there would have been a seething cordon of the ungodly around the grounds of the house, and his own modest en­trance would have been a much livelier affair—un­less Marius had banked on what he knew of the Saint's former ignorance of the prince's language. And that was—well, a thin chance. ... Of course, Marius might have arrived while the Saint was do­ing his midnight mountaineering act; but even so, Simon would have expected to hear at least the echoes of some commotion. He estimated that, taken by and large, he and his record combined were an ingredient that might without conceit ex­ pect to commotate any brew of blowed-in-the-glass ungodliness, and he would have been very distressed to find that the ungodly had failed to commote as per schedule. Therefore he was blush­ingly inclined to rule out the possibility. . . . But sooner or later the nocturnal tranquillity of that part of the county was bound to be rudely shat­ tered, and there were more votes for sooner than later; and the quintessential part of the plot, so far as Simon Templar was concerned, was how soon— with a very wiggly mark after it to indicate impor­tunate interrogation.

But presently, after an age of grim anxiety, he heard voices above him, and slipped discreetly off the path. Two men came down—one of them, ap­parently, the Boche whose dulcet tones had a little earlier been complaining about his enforced in­somnia, for they spoke in German. The Saint lis­tened interestedly for any reference to himself as they came nearer, but there was none. The Boche complained about the steepness of the path, about the darkness, about the food on which he was fed, and about his lack of sleep, and the ship's officer expressed perfunctory sympathy at intervals; they passed on. They, at all events, were unperturbed by anything they had heard up at the house.

Simon watched them saunter down the jetty and shake hands. The officer reentered the boat. A man in the bows pushed it off with a boat-hook. The crew bent to their oars.

In the light of the lanterns held by the men on the jetty Simon could see the girl looking back to­wards the cliff; but she could not have seen him even if he had stood out in the open. And then two of the men on the quay began to trudge back to­wards the cliff path.

Two of them. . . . Simon saw them pass beneath him, and frowned. Then he looked down to the shore again, seeking the third man, and could not find him. The footsteps and voices of the two who climbed grew fainter and fainter, and presently were lost altogether. They had passed over the top of the scarp; and still the third man had not followed.

Simon hesitated, shrugged, and descended again to the path. Whatever the third man was doing, he would have to take his chance. Time was getting short. The ship must have been ready to weigh an­chor as soon as its compulsory passenger was on board; and besides—well, how soon ...?

And then, as he paused there, a very Saintly smile bared Simon's teeth in the darkness. For, if the third man was still lurking about on the shore —so much the better. His companions were gone, and the boat was some distance away . . . and the Saint was an efficient worker. The sounds of a slight scuffle need not be fatal. And the third man, whoever he was, could be used—very profitably and entertainingly used—in conjunction with that providential motorboat....

Simon sped down the path like a flying shadow. As he rounded the last corner a stone dislodged by his foot went clinking over the side of the path and flurried into a bush. He heard a sharp movement at another point beneath him, and went on care­lessly. Then a stocky figure loomed out of the dark directly in front of him.

'Chi va la?' rapped the startled challenge, in the man's own language; and Simon felt that the occasion warranted a demonstration of his own linguistic prowess.

'L'uomo che ha la penna della tua zia,' he an­swered solemnly.

His feet grounded on the sand, a yard from the challenger; and, as the man opened his mouth to make some remark which was destined never to be given to the world, the Saint slashed a terrific up­percut into a jaw that was positively asking for it.

'Exit Signor Boloni, the Italian delegate,' murmured  the  Saint  complacently;  and,   stooping swiftly, he hoisted the unconscious man onto his, shoulder and proceeded on his way thus laden.

4

IN A FEW MOMENTS he stood on the jetty beside the motorboat, and there he dumped his burden. Then, like lightning, he stripped himself to the skin.

The Saint possessed a very elegant and extensive wardrobe when he was at home; but, on this occa­sion, its extensiveness was not at his disposal, and the elegance of the excerpt that he was wearing therefore became an important consideration. He was certainly going to get wet; but he saw no good reason why his clothes should get wet with him. Besides, he felt that it would be an advantage to preserve immaculate the outward adornments of his natural beauty: there was no knowing how much more that Gent's Very Natty was going to have to amble through before the dawn, and to have been forced to exchange any breezy badinage with Rayt Marius or Prince Rudolf while looking like a deep-sea diver whose umbrella had come un-gummed at twenty fathoms would have cramped the Saintly style more grievously than any other conceivable circumstance.

Therefore he Saint stripped. His clothes were of the lightest, and he was able to make them all into one compact bundle, which he wrapped in his shirt.

Then he returned his attention to the motorboat. It was moored by two painters; and these he de­tached. A loose narrow floorboard taken from the bottom of the boat he lashed at right angles across the tiller, using strips of the Italian delegate's trousers, carved out with Belle, for the purpose; then, to the ends of this board, he fixed the ropes he had obtained, leaving them trailing in the water behind the boat. Finally, he deposited the Italian delegate himself in the sternsheets, propping him up as best he could with another couple of duck-boards.