Follow the Saint

The Saint straightened up with a jerk. All at once he laughed. Half incredulous sunshine smashed through his despondency, lighted up his face. He extended his palm.

'You old son-of-a-gun! Give!'

The landlord brought his left hand from behind his back, holding an envelope. Simon grabbed it and ripped it open. He recognized the handwriting at a glance. The note was on a sheet of hotel paper.

Thank God you came. But I daren't be seen speaking to you after the barman recognized you.

Go down to the lock and walk up the towpath. Not very far along on the left there's a boathouse with green doors. I'll wait for you there. Hurry.

The Saint raised his eyes, and sapphires danced in them.

'Who gave you this, Giulio?'

'Nobody. It was lying on the floor outside when I came through. You saw the envelope—Deliver at once to Mr Templar in the bar. So that's what I do. Is it what you were waiting for?'

Simon stuffed the note into his pocket, and nodded. He drained his tankard.

'This is the romance you were talking about—maybe,' he said. 'I'll tell you about it later. Save some dinner for me. I'll be back.' He clapped Trapani on the shoulder and swung round newly awakened, joyously alive again. Perhaps, in spite of everything, there was still adventure to come. . . . 'Let's go, Hoppy!'

He took hold of Mr Uniatz's bottle and pulled it down. Hoppy came upright after it with a plaintive gasp.

'Chees, boss——'

'Have you no soul?' demanded the Saint sternly, as he herded him out of the door. 'We have a date with a damsel in distress. The moon will be mirrored in her beautiful eyes, and she will pant out a story while we fan the gnats away from her snowy brow. Sinister eggs are being hatched behind the scenes. There will be villains and mayhem and perhaps even moider ...'

He went on talking lyrical nonsense as he set a brisk pace down the lane towards the river; but when they reached the towpath even he had dried up. Mr Uniatz was an unrespon­sive audience, and Simon found that some of the things he was saying in jest were oddly close to the truth that he be­lieved. After all, such fantastic things had happened to him before. . . .

He didn't fully understand the change in himself as he turned off along the river bank beside the dark shimmering sleekness of the water. The ingrained flippancy was still with him—he could feel it like a translucent film over his mind— but underneath it he was all open and expectant, a receptive void in which anything might take shape. And something was beginning to take shape there—something still so nebu­lous and formless that it eluded any conscious survey, and yet something as inescapably real as a promise of thunder in the air. It was as if the hunch that had brought him out to the Bell in the first place had leapt up from a whisper to a great shout; and yet everything was silent. Far away, to his sensi­tive ears, there was the ghostly hum of cars on the Maiden­head road; close by, the sibilant lap of the river, the lisp of leaves, the stertorous breathing and elephantine footfalls of Mr Uniatz; but those things were only phases of the stillness that was everywhere. Everything in the world was quiet, even his own nerves, and they were almost too quiet. And ahead of him, presently, loomed the shape of a building like a boathouse. His pencil flashlight stabbed out for a second and caught the front of it. It had green doors.

Quietly, he said: 'Nora.'

There was no answer, no hint of movement anywhere. And he didn't know why, but in the same quiet way his right hand slid up to his shoulder rig and loosened the automatic in the spring clip under his arm.

He covered the last two yards in absolute silence, put bis hand to the knob of the door, and drew it back quickly as his fingers slid on a sticky dampness. It was queer, he thought even then, even as his left hand angled the flashlight down, that it should have happened just like that, when everything in him was tuned and waiting for it, without knowing what it