Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

suggested capital letters in every context.

Of course, he was all wrong. He ought never to have been let loose upon this twentieth century. He was upsetting. Far too often, when he spoke, his voice struck disturbing chords in the mind. When you saw him, you looked, instinctively and exasperatedly, for a sword at his side, a feather in his hat, and spurs at his heels. There was a queer keenness in the chiselling of his tanned face, seen in profile—something that can only be described as a swiftness of line about the nose and lips and chin, a swiftness as well set off by the slick sweep of patent-leather hair as by the brim of a filibustering felt hat—a laughing dancing devil of mischief that was never far from the very clear blue eyes, a magnificently medieval flamboyance of manner, an extraordinary vividness and vital challenge about every movement he made, that too clearly had no place in the organization of the century that was afflicted with him. If he had been anyone else, you would have felt that the organization was likely to make life very difficult for him. But he was Simon Templar, the Saint, and so you could only feel that he was likely to make life very difficult for the organization. Wherefore, as a respectable member of the organization, you were liable to object....

And, in fact, objections had been made in due season—to such effect that, if anything were needed to complete the Saint's own private en­tertainment at that moment, it could have been provided by the reflection that he had no business to be in England at all that night. Or any other night. For the name of the Saint was not known only to his personal friends and enemies. It was something like a legend, a public institution; not many months ago, it had been headlined over every newspaper in Europe, and the Saint's trade­mark—a childish sketch of a little man with straight-line body and limbs, and a round blank head under an absurd halo—had been held in almost superstitious awe throughout the length and breadth of England. And there still reposed, in the desk of Chief Inspector Teal, at New Scotland Yard, warrants for the arrest of Simon Templar and the other two who had been with him in all his misdeeds—Roger Conway and Patricia Holm. Why the Saint had come back to England was nobody's business. He hadn't yet advertised his return; and, if he had advertised it, nothing is more certain than that Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal would have been combing London for him within the hour—with a gun behind each ear, and an official address of welcome accord­ing to the Indictable Offences Act, 1848, in his pocket....

Wherefore it was very good and amusing to be back in London, and very good and amusing to be on the trail of an invalid who was not ill, though sheltering in the house of a man with a name like Heinrich Dussel....

The Saint knew that the invalid was still there, because it was two o'clock on Sunday morning, and near the policeman a melancholy-looking individual was selling very early editions of the Sunday papers, apparently hoping to catch returning Saturday-night revellers on the rebound, and the melancholy-looking individual hadn't batted an eyelid as the Saint passed. If anything interesting had happened since the melancholy-looking individual had made his last report, Roger Conway would have batted one eyelid, and Simon would have bought a paper and found a note therein. And if the invalid who was not ill had left the house, Roger wouldn't have been there at all. Nor would the low-bodied long-nosed Hirondel parked close by. On the face of it, there was no connection between Roger Conway and the Hirondel; but that was part of the deception....

'Strange adventure that we're trolling:
Modest maid and gallant groom—
Gallant, gallant, gallant groom!
While the funeral bell is tolling,
Tolling, tolling—'

Gently the Saint embarked upon the second verse of his song. And through his manifest cheerfulness he felt a faint electric tingle of ex­pectation. ...

For he knew that it was true. He, of all men living, should have known that the age of strange adventures was not past. There were adventures all around, then, as there had been since the beginning of the world; it was a matter for the ad­venturer to go out and challenge them. And ad­venture had never yet failed Simon Templar— perhaps because he had never doubted it. It might have been luck, or it might have been his own uncanny genius; but at least he knew, whatever it was he had to thank, that whenever and wherever anything was happening, he was there. He had been born to it, the spoiled child of a wild tempes­tuous destiny—born for nothing else, it seemed, but to find all the fun in the world.

And he was on the old trail again.

But this time it was no fluke. His worst enemy couldn't have said that Simon Templar hadn't worked for all the trouble he was going to find that night. For weeks past he had been hunting two men across Europe—a slim and very elegant man, and a huge and very ugly man—and one of them at least he had sworn to kill. Neither of them went by the name of Heinrich Dussel, even in his spare time; but Heinrich Dussel had conferred with them the night before in the slim and very elegant man's suite at the Ritz, and accordingly the Saint had become interested in Heinrich Dussel. And then, less than two hours before the Saint's brief con­versation with the Law, had commenced the In­cident of the Invalid who was not ill.

'Modest maiden will not tarry;
Though but sixteen year she carry,
She must marry, she must marry,
Though the altar be a tomb—
Tower, Tower, Tower tomb!'

Thus the Saint brought both his psalm and his promenade to a triumphant conclusion; for the song stopped as the Saint stopped, which was at, the foot of a short flight of steps leading up to a door—the door of the house of Heinrich Dussel.

And then, as Simon Templar paused there, a window was smashed directly above his head, so that chips of splintered glass showered onto the pavement all around him. And there followed a man's sudden sharp yelp of agony, clear and shrill in the silence of the street.

' 'Ere,' said a familiar voice, 'is this the 'ouse you said you were going into?'

The Saint turned.

The Law stood beside him, its hands in its belt, having followed him all the way on noiseless rubber soles.

And Simon beamed beatifically upon the Law.

'That's so, Algernon,' he murmured, and mounted the steps.

The door opened almost as soon as he had touched the bell. And the Law was still beside him.

'What's wrong 'ere?' demanded the Law.

'It is nothing.'

Dussel himself had answered the bell, suave and self-possessed—exactly as the Saint would have expected him to be.

'We have a patient here who is—not right in the head. Sometimes he is violent. But he is being attended to.'

'That's right,' said the Saint calmly. 'I got your telephone message, and came right around.'

He turned to the Law with a smile.

'I am the doctor in charge of the case,' he said, 'so you may quite safely leave things in my hands.'

His manner would have disarmed the chief commissioner himself. And before either of the other two could say a word, the Saint had stepped over the threshold as if he owned the house.

'Good-night, officer,' he said sweetly, and closed the door.

3

NOW THE UNKIND CRITIC may say that the Saint had opened his break with something like the most fantastic fluke that ever fell out of the blue; but the unkind critic would be wrong, and his judgment would merely