Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

'That's a crude way of putting it. Let me explain. Overcome with the shock of discovering his mistake, he went slightly bughouse, and seemed to imagine that he was a seagull. Launching himself into the empyrean—oh, very hot, very hot!—he disappeared from view, and I have every reason to believe that he made a forced landing a few yards farther on. As I didn't know how to stop the ship ——'

'When was this?'

'Shortly after the ceremony. That was the amusing error. When I rolled into his cabin Sonia was there as well, and there was a generally festive air about the gathering. The next thing I knew was that I was married.' He saw Marius start, and laughed softly. 'Deuced awkward, wasn't it, Angel Face?'

He gazed at Marius benevolently; but, after that first unpurposed recoil, the giant stood quite still. The only one in the room who moved was Lessing, who came slowly to his feet, his eyes on the girl.

'Sonia—is that true?'

She nodded, without speaking; and the million­aire sank back again, white-faced.

The Saint slewed round on his perch, and it was at Roger that he looked.

'It was quite an unofficial affair,' said the Saint deliberately. 'I doubt if the Archbishop of Canterbury would have approved. But the net result ——'

'Saint!'

Roger Conway took a pace forward, and the name was cried so fiercely that Simon's muscles tensed again. And then the Saint's laugh broke the hush a second time, with a queer blend of sadness and mockery.

'That's all I wanted,' said the Saint; and Roger fell back, staring at him.

But the Saint said no more. He deposited an inch and a half of ash in an ashtray, flicked a min­ute flake of the same from his knee, adjusted the crease in his trousers, and returned his gaze again to Marius.

Marius had taken no notice of the interruption. For a while longer he continued to stare fixedly at the Saint; and then, with an abrupt movement, he turned away and began to pace the room with huge, smooth strides. And once again there was silence.

The Saint inhaled meditatively.

An interval of bright and breezy badinage, he realized distinctly, had just been neatly and un­obtrusively bedded down in its appointed niche in the ancient history of the world, and the action of the piece was preparing to resume. And the coming action, by all the portents, was likely to be even brighter and breezier than the badinage— in its own way.

Thus far Simon Templar had to admit that he had had all the breaks; but now Rayt Marius was definitely in play. And the Saint understood, quite quietly and dispassionately, as he had always un­derstood these things, that a succulent guinea pig in the jaws of a lion would have been considered a better risk for life insurance than he. For the milk of human kindness had never entered the reckon­ing—on either side—and now that Marius had the edge ... As the Saint watched the ruthless, delib­erate movements of that massive neolithic figure, there came back to him a vivid recollection of the house by the Thames where they had faced each other at the close of the last round, and of the passing of Norman Kent . . . and the Saint's jaw tightened a little grimly. For between them now there was infinitely more than there had been then. Once again the Saint had wrecked a cast-iron hand at the very moment when failure must have seemed impossible; and he had never thought of the giant as a pious martyr to persecution. He knew, in that quiet and dispassionate way, that Marius would kill him—would kill all of them—without a mo­ ment's compunction, once it was certain that they could not be more useful to him alive.

Yet the Saint pursued the pleasures of his cigar as if he had nothing else to think about. In his life he had never walked very far from sudden death; and it had been a good life.... It was Lessing who broke first under the strain of that silence. The millionaire started up with a kind of gasp.

'I'm damned if I'll stay here like this!' he babbled. 'It's an outrage! You can't do things like this in England.'

Simon looked at him coldly.

'You're being obvious, Ike,' he remarked, 'and also futile. Sit down.'

'I refuse ——'

Lessing swung violently away towards the door; and even the Saint could not repress a smile of entirely unalloyed amusement as the millionaire fetched up dead for the second time of asking be­fore the discourteous ugliness of Hermann's auto­matic.

'You'll pick up the rules of this game as we go along, Ike,' murmured the Saint consolingly; and then Marius, whose measured pacing had not swerved by a hair's breadth for Lessing's protest, stopped by the desk with his finger on the bell.

'I have decided,' he said; and the Saint turned with a seraphic smile.

'Loud and prolonged applause,' drawled the Saint.

He stood up; and Roger Conway, watching the two men as they stood there eye to eye, felt a queer cold shiver trickle down his spine like a drizzle of ghostly icicles.

3

JUST FOR A COUPLE of seconds it lasted, that clash of eyes—as crisp and cold as a clash of steel. Just long enough for Roger Conway to feel, as he had never felt before, the full primitive savagery of the volcanic hatreds that seethed beneath the stillness. He felt that he was a mere spectator at the climax of a duel to the death between two reincarnate paladins of legend; and for once he could not re­sent this sense of his own unimportance. There was something prodigious and terrifying about the cul­mination of that epic feud—something that made Roger pray blasphemously to awake and find it all a dream. . . . And then the Saint laughed; the Saint didn't give a damn; and the Saint said: 'You're a wonderful asset to the gayety of na­tions, Angel Face.'

With a faint shrug Marius turned away, and he was placidly lighting a fresh cigar when the door opened to admit three men in various stages of un­dress.

Simon inspected them interestedly. Evidently the household staff was not very large, for he recognized two of the three at once. The bullet-headed specimen in its shirt-sleeves, unashamedly rubbing the sleep out of its eyes with two flabby fists, was obviously the torpescent and bibulous Bavarian who had spoken so yearningly of his bed. Next to him, the blue-chinned exhibit without a tie, propping itself languidly against a bookcase, could be identified without hesitation as the Bow­ery Boy who was a suffering authority on thirsts. The third argument for a wider application of capital punishment was a broken-nosed and shifty-eyed individual whom the Saint did not know— nor, having surveyed it comprehensively, did Simon feel that his life had been a howling wilder­ness until the moment of that meeting.

It was to Broken Nose that Marius spoke.

'Fetch some rope, Prosser,' he ordered curtly, 'and tie up these puppies.'

'Spoken like a man, Angel Face,' murmured the Saint approvingly as Broken Nose departed.

'You think of everything, don't you? . . . And may one ask what you've decided?'

'You shall hear, 'he said.

The Saint bowed politely and returned to the serene enjoyment of his cigar. Outwardly he re­mained as unperturbed as he had been throughout the interview, but all his faculties were tightening up again into cool coordination and razor-edged alertness. Quietly and inconspicuously he flexed the muscles of his forearm—just to feel the reas­suring pressure of the straps that secured the little leather sheath of Belle. When Hermann had taken his gun he had not thought of Belle; nor, since then, had the thought seemed to occur to Marius; and with Belle literally up his sleeve the Saint felt confident of being able to escape from any system of roping that might be employed—provided he was left unobserved for a few minutes. But there were others to think of—particularly the girl. Simon stole a glance at her. Hermann still held her with her right arm twisted up behind her back— holding her like that, in the back seat, he had forced the Saint to drive the car back. 'And if you do not behave, English swine,' he had said, 'I will break the arm.' It had been the same on the walk up the long drive. 'If you escape, and I do not shoot you, English swine, she will scream until you return.' Hermann had the most sweet and en­dearing inspirations, thought the Saint, with his heart beating a little faster; and then his train of thought was interrupted by the return of Mr. Prosser in charge of a coil of rope.

As he placed his hands helpfully behind his back the Saint's thoughts switched off along another line. And that line ranged out in the shape of a series of question marks towards the decision of Marius which he had yet to hear. From the first he had intended to make certain that the giant's machinations should this time be ended for ever, not merely checked, and with this object he had been prepared to take almost any risk in order to discover what other cards Marius might have to play; and now he was surely going to get his wish. . . . Though what the