The Saint Steps In

still might come at any instant, but so far it hadn't, and the only light was the faint untroubled silver of the moon.

He only took her so far because he wanted to be sure that he found the right path; and then they found it, and he knew exactly where he was, and he stopped for a second to halt her. 'You wait here. Lie down, and be quiet.'

'I want to go with you.'

'You couldn't do anything. And you'd make more noise than I will. And if anything happens, somebody has to tell the story.'

His lips touched her face, and he was gone, and he had scarcelv paused at all.

And so perhaps this was the end of all stories; and if it was, there could have been worse ones.

He came like a shadow to the door of the laboratory build­ing, and turned the handle without a sound with his left hand while his right slid the borrowed revolver out of his pocket. His nerves were spidery threads of ice, and time stood still around him like a universe that had run down.

He thought then, in a crazy disassociation, that it would be strange to die that way, because you would never even know you died. You wouldn't even have time to hear or feel anything. There would be some sort of silent and insensate shock that would take the inside of your mind and blot it out, like the putting out of a light and a great hand that picked you up and wiped you away. One instant you would be there, and the next instant you wouldn't be there, but it wouldn't mean anything, because you wouldn't be there to know.

Through the tiny hall, as he went in, he could see all of them by the long bench where the rubber apparatus was set up. He could see Hobart Quennel, balanced and absorbed in watching, and Walter Devan standing a little back with one hand in the side pocket of his coat, and Calvin Gray's thin hands adjusting themselves around a large glass flask of straw-colored liquid to pick it up.

The Saint stood in the doorway with his gun leveled, and tried to launch his voice on the air like a feather, mostly so that it would steal into the ears of Calvin Gray without any shock that might precipitate disaster.

'I'm sorry, boys,' he said, 'but this is the end of the line. Please keep still and put your hands up very slowly.'

He saw Quennel and Devan start to turn towards him. and then begin to obey when they saw what he held in his hand. But he was really hardly noticing them at all. His eyes were on Calvin Gray; and he felt as though he had stopped breathing a long time ago.   

It was a slightly cosmic thing that he had reckoned without the scientific temperament and the contempt of familiarity.

Calvin Gray settled the flask back on the table as if it had been a soft-shelled egg, and dusted off his hands.

'I'm glad you didn't startle me,' he said. 'That thing is full of nitroglycerin, and I was just going to drop it'

7. How Simon Templar went on his Way.

Jetterick, the FBI man, tried to straighten a limp cigarette and said: 'One thing that puzzles me is how Gray could put a bowl of soup like that together with Quennel watching him. If Quennel was a chemist himself once———'

'So far as I know,' said the Saint, 'he only worked in a drug store. He got out of that racket very soon to be a business man. And there were a lot of unlabeled bottles in the labora­tory—I'd noticed that before. Gray, and his daughter knew what they were, but nobody else did. And one solution looks like a lot of others, at a glance. And Quennel was just inter­ested in what he was being told . . . Anyhow, it doesn't mat­ter a lot now. It didn't quite come to that.'

'What about Quennel's daughter?' Jetterick asked.

Simon Templar looked out of the window into the dark.

'See what her story is, and I'll confirm it where I can.' His voice was scrupulously commonplace— perhaps too scrupu­lously. 'You can say that she must have been in a tough spot, trying to be loyal to her father and at the same time trying to follow . . . some other influences. But she did try in her way to keep me out of that Imberline setup. I don't think you can make her an accessory to that. I don't think she ever knew that Imberline was booked for the big voyage. Probably Quen­nel arid Devan didn't even know it then. But she overheard just enough, and she'd assimilated enough general back­ground, to be sure that the Savoy Plaza could be an unhealthy joint for me to go home to ... And she did let us out tonight —otherwise none of us would be talking now . . . You'll do what the book tells you; but I'd like to see her come out as well as she can.'

And he remembered her lips and her eyes and her white shoulders, and all of her asking impossible things.

Jetterick's taciturn stare took its time over him.

'If your evidence holds up, it'll be quite a case.'

'It'll hold up. And it will be quite a case. Quennel got to be a damn brilliant lawyer in his day, but he'll have to be more than brilliant to laugh this one off ... I'm glad it was this way instead of the other, for more reasons than one. A little fresh air on the subject won't do any harm at all.' The Saint stood up. 'I'll go back to New Haven with you and help you fill in the picture. And somewhere along the line I've got to call a guy named Hamilton, who's going to be sore as a hangnail if he has to get this story out of his morning paper.'

'Come over any time tomorrow,' said Jetterick accommo­datingly. 'You've been through a hell of a lot, and I guess you could do with a rest.'

'Let's do it tonight,' said the Saint quietly.

He emptied an ashtray into the fireplace, and settled his coat; and it was as if everything began again.

He said: 'There's still a war going on, and I don't know enough about tomorrow.'

He went out and found Calvin Gray, and said goodnight to him; but Madeline followed him out to the car.

'You will be coming back, won't you?' she said.

'Very soon, I hope.'

He had so many meanings in his mind that he couldn't help which one she chose from his voice. He sat beside the FBI man and gazed steadily ahead as the lane swam tortuously at them and swallowed them again. He wanted to believe that he might be going back there some day. There was no harm in hoping.