Follow the Saint

Simon chatted genially and emptily, with faintly mocking calm. He had shown his claws once, and now it was up to the other side to take up the challenge in their own way. The one thing they could not possibly do was ignore it, and he was ready to wait with timeless patience for their lead. Under his pose of idle carelessness he was like an arrow on a drawn bow with ghostly fingers balancing the string.

Forrest excused himself as they left the dining-room. Quintus came as far as the drawing-room, but didn't sit down. He pulled out a large gold watch and consulted it with impressive deliberation.

'I'd better have another look at the patient,' he said. 'He may have settled down again by now.'

The door closed behind him.

Simon leaned himself against the mantelpiece. Except for the presence of Mr Uniatz, who in those circumstances was no more obtrusive than a piece of primitive furniture, he was alone with Rosemary Chase for the first time since so many things had begun to happen. And he knew that she was also aware of it.

She kept her face averted from his tranquil gaze, taking out a cigarette and lighting it for herself with impersonal un­approachability, while he waited. And then suddenly she turned on him as if her own restraint had defeated itself.

'Well?' she said, with self-consciously harsh defiance. 'What are you thinking, after all this time ?'

The Saint looked her in the eyes. His own voice was con­trastingly even and unaggressive.

'Thinking,' he said, 'that you're either a very dangerous crook or just a plain damn fool. But hoping you're just the plain damn fool. And hoping that if that's the answer, it won't be much longer before your brain starts working again.'

'You hate crooks, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'I've heard about you,' she said. 'You don't care what you do to anyone you think is a crook. You've even—killed them.'

'I've killed rats,' he said. 'And I'll probably do it again. It's the only treatment that's any good for what they've got.'

'Always ?'

Simon shrugged.

'Listen,' he said, not unkindly. 'If you want to talk theories we can have a lot of fun, but we shan't get very far. If you want me to admit that there are exceptions to my idea of justice, you can take it as admitted; but we can't go on from there without getting down to cases. I can tell you this, though. I've heard that there's something crooked being put over here; and from what's happened since, it seems to be true. I'm going to find out what the swindle is and break it up if it takes fifty years. Only it won't take me nearly as long as that. Now, if you know something that you're afraid to tell me because of what it might make me do to you or some­body else who matters to you, all I can say is that it'll prob­ably be a lot worse if I have to dig it out for myself. Is that any use ?'

She moved closer towards him, her brown eyes searching bis face.

'I wish——'

It was all she had time to say. The rush of sounds that cut her off hit both of them at the same time, muffled by distance and the closed door of the room, and yet horribly distinct, stiffening them both together as though they had been clutched by invisible clammy tentacles. A shrill incoherent yell, hysterical with terror but unmistakably masculine. A heavy thud. A wild shout of 'Help!' in the doctor's deep thundery voice. And then a ghostly inhuman wailing gurgle that choked off into deathly silence.

VII