Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

settled himself on the edge of the big desk, with a scrupulous regard for the crease in his trousers. His eye fell on the box of cigars, and he helped himself absent-mindedly.

Then Lessing was facing Marius.

'What have you to say now?' he demanded; and the last atom of emotion drained out of Marius's features as he looked down at the mil­lionaire.

'Nothing at all, Sir Isaac.' Once again that thin, soft voice was barren of all expression, the accents cold and precise and unimpassioned. 'You were, after all, correctly informed—in every par­ticular.'

'But—my God, Marius! That war—everything —— Do you realize what this means?'

'I am perfectly well aware of all the implica­tions, my dear Sir Isaac.'

'You were going to make me your tool in that ——'

'It   was   an   idea   of  mine.   Perhaps   even now ——'

'You devil!'

The words bit the air like hot acid; and Marius waved protesting and impatient hands.

'My dear Sir Isaac, this is not a Sunday school. Please sit down and be quiet for a moment, while I attend to this interruption.''

'Sit down?' Lessing laughed mirthlessly. The stunned incredulity in his eyes had vanished, to be replaced by something utterly different. 'I'll see you damned first! What's more, I'm going to put you in an English prison for a start—and when you come out of that I'll have you hounded out of every capital in Europe. That's my answer!'

He turned on his heel.

Between him and the door Hermann still held the girl. And Roger Conway stood beside her.

'One moment.'

Marius's voice—or something else—brought Lessing up with a snap, and the millionaire faced slowly round again. And, as he turned, he met a stare of such pitiless malevolence that the flush of fury petrified in his face, leaving him paler than before.

'I am afraid you cannot be allowed to leave im­mediately, my dear Sir Isaac,' said the giant silk­ily; and there was no mistaking the meaning of the slight movement of the automatic in his hand. 'A series of accidents has placed you in possession of certain information which it would not suit my purpose to permit you to employ in the way which you have just outlined. In fact, I have not yet de­cided whether you will ever be allowed to leave.'

2

THE SAINT cleared his throat.

'The time has come,' he remarked diffidently, 'for me to tell you all the story of my life.'

He smiled across at Lessing; and that smile and the voice with it, slashed like a blast of sunshine through the tenuous miasma of evil that had spawned into the room as Marius spoke.

'Just do what Angel Face told you, Sir Isaac,' said the Saint winningly. 'Park yourself in a pew and concentrate on Big Business. Just think what a half-nelson you'll have on the Banana Oil market when Angel Face has unloaded his stock. And he won't hurt you, really. He's a plain, blunt man, and I grant you his face is against him, but he's a simple soul at heart. Why, many's the time we've sat down to a quiet game of dominoes—haven't we, Angel Face?—and all at once, after playing his third double-six, he's said, in just the same dear dreamy way: 'Templar, my friend, have you never thought that there is something embolismal about Life?' And I've said, brokenly: 'It's all so—so um­bilical. ' Just like that. 'It's all so umbilical. . . .' Doesn't it all come back to you, Angel Face?'

Marius turned to him.

'I have never been amused by your humour, Templar' he said. 'But I should be genuinely in­terested to know how you have spent the evening.'

All the giant's composure had come back, save for the vindictive hatred that burned on in his eyes like a lambent fire. He had been secure in the thought that the Saint was dead, and then for a space the shock of seeing the Saint alive had bat­tered and reeled and ravaged his security into a racketing chaos of raging unbelief; and at the ut­termost nadir of that havoc had come the cataclys­mic apparition of Sonia Delmar herself, entering that very room, to overwhelm his last tattered hope of bluff and smash down the ripening harvest of weeks of brilliant scheming and intrigue into one catastrophic devastation; and he had certainly been annoyed. . . . Yet not for an instant could his mind have contained the shred of an idea of de­feat. He stood there by the desk where the Saint sat, a poised and terrible colossus; and behind that unnatural calm the brain of a warped genius was fighting back with brute ferocity to retrieve the ir­retrievable disaster. And Simon looked at him, and laughed gently.

'To-night's jaunt,' said the Saint, 'is definite­ly part of the story of my life.'

'And of how many more of your friends?'

Simon shook his head.

'You never seem to be able to get away from the distressing delusion that I am.some sort of gang,' he murmured. 'I believe we've had words about that before. Saint Roger Conway you've met. That in the middle is a new recruit—Saint Isaac Lessing, Regius Professor of Phlebology at the University of Medicine Hat and Consulting Scolecophagist to the Gotherington Gasworks, recently canonized for his article in The Suffragette advocating more clubs for women. 'Clubs, tomahawks, flat-irons, anything you like,' he said. . . . And here we all are.'

'And how many more?' repeated Marius.

'Isn't that quite clear?' sighed the Saint. 'There are no more. Let me put it in words of one syllable. The unadulterated quintessence of nihility ——'

Savagely Marius caught his arm in one gigantic hand, and the Saint involuntarily tensed his mus­cles.

'Not that way, Angel Face,' he said softly. 'Or there might be a vulgar brawl. ...'

Yet perhaps it was that involuntary tensing of an arm of leather and iron, rather than the change in the Saint's voice, that made Marius loose his grip. With a tremendous effort the giant controlled him self again, and his lips relaxed from the animal snarl that had distorted them; only the embers of his fury still glittered in his eyes.

'Very good. There are no more of you. And what happened on the ship?'

'Well, we went for a short booze—cruise.'

'And the man who was shot in the motorboat— was he another of your friends?'

Simon surveyed the ash on his cigar approving­ly.

'One hates to cast aspersions on the dead,' he answered, 'but I can't say that we ever became what you might call bosom pals. Not,' said the Saint conscientiously, 'that I had anything against the man. We just didn't have the chance to get properly acquainted. In fact, I'd hardly given him the first friendly punch on the jaw, and dumped him in that motorboat to draw the fire, when some of the sharpshooting talent pulled the voix celeste stop on him for ever. I don't even know his name; but he addressed me in Grand Opera, so if your ice-cream plant is a bit diminuendo ——'

Hermann spoke sharply.

'It was Antonio, mein Herr! He stayed on the beach after we took the girl down ——'

'So!' Marius turned again. 'It was one of my own men!'

'Er—apparently,' said the Saint with sorrow.

'And you were already on the ship?'

'Indeed to goodness. But only just.' The Saint grinned thoughtfully. 'And then I met Comrade Vassiloff—a charming lad, with a beautiful set of hairbrushes. We exchanged a little backchat, and then I tied him up and passed on. Then came the amusing error.'

'What was that?'

'You see, it was a warm evening, so I'd bor­rowed Comrade Vassiloff's coat to keep the heat out. The next cabin I got into was the captain's and he promptly jumped to the conclusion that Comrade Vassiloff was still inhabiting the coat.'

Marius stiffened.

'Moeller! The man always was a fool! When I meet him again ——'

The Saint shook his head.

'What a touching scene it would have been!' he murmured. 'I almost wish it could come true. . . . But it cannot be. I'm afraid, Angel Face, that Cap­tain Moeller has also been translated.'

'You killed him?'