'Oh, it's you,' he whispered.
'It is I,' said the Saint, with impeccable grammar. 'Come here, Hugo--I want to see what you've got on you.'
He plunged his left hand swiftly and dexterously into the other's inner breast pocket and found the second thing he had been looking for. It was a cheap pocket diary, and he knew without examining it that it was the one on which his forged trade-marks had been drawn. Renway must have been insanely confident of his immunity from suspicion to keep it on him.
'What ho,' drawled Simon contentedly. 'Stand back again, Hugo, while I see if you've been compromising yourself.'
He stepped back himself and barely had time
to feel the foot of the man behind him under his heel before a brawny arm shot over his shoulder and grasped his gun wrist in a grip like a twisting Clamp of iron. Simon started to turn, but in the next split second another brawny arm whipped round his neck and pinned him.
The wrenching hand on his wrist forced him to drop his gun--it had begun to twist too long before he began resisting. Then he let himself go completely limp, while his left hand felt for the knees of the man behind him. His arm locked round them and he heaved himself backwards with a sudden jerk of his thighs. They fell heavily together, and the grips on his wrist and neck were broken. Simon squirmed over, put a knee in the man's stomach, and sprang up and away; and then he saw that Renway had snatched up the automatic and was covering him.
Simon Templar, who knew the difference between certain death and a sporting chance, put up his hands quickly.
'Okay, boys,' he said. 'Now you think of a game.'
Renway's forefinger weighed on the trigger.
'You fool!' he said almost peevishly.
'Admitted,' said the Saint. 'Nobody ought to walk backwards without eyes in the back of his Head.'
Renway had also picked up the diary, which Simon had dropped in the struggle. He put it back in his pocket.
The Saint's brain was turning over so fast that he could almost hear it hum. He still had Enrique's letter--and the bundle of cash. There was still no reason for Renway to suspect him of anything more than ordinary stealing: his taking of the diary was not necessarily suspicious. And Simon understood very clearly that if Renway suspected him of anything more than ordinary stealing, he could, barring outrageous luck, only leave March House in one position. Which would be depressingly and irrevocably horizontal.
Even then, there might be no alternative attitude; but it was worth trying. Simon had a stubborn desire to hang onto that incriminating letter as long as possible. He took out the sheaf of bonds and banknotes and threw them on the desk.
'There's the rest of it,' he said cynically. 'Shall we call it quits?'
Renway's squinting eyes wandered over him.
'Do you always expect to clear yourself so easily?' he asked, like a schoolmaster.
'Not always,' said the Saint. 'But you can't very well hand me over to the police this time, can you? I know too much about you.'
In the next moment he knew he had made a mistake. Renway's convergent gaze turned Petrowitz, who was massaging his stomach tenderly.
'He knows too much,' Renway repeated.
'I suppose there's no chance of letting bygones be bygones and still letting me fly that aeroplane?' Simon asked shrewdly.
The nervous twitch which he had seen before went over Renway's body, but the thin mouth only tightened with it.
'None at all, Mr. Tombs.'
'I was afraid so,' said the Saint.
'Let me take him,' Petrowitz broke in with his thick gruff voice. 'I will tie iron bars to his legs and fire him through one of the torpedo tubes. He will not talk after that.'
Renway considered the suggestion and shook his head.
'None of the others must know. Any doubt or fear in their minds may be dangerous. He can go back into the cellar. Afterwards, he can take the same journey as Enrique.'
Probably for much the same offense, Simon thought grimly; but he smiled.
'That's very sweet of you, Hugo,' he remarked; and the other looked at him.
'I hope you will continue to be satisfied.'
He might have been going to say more, but at that moment the telephone began to ring. Renway sat down at the desk.
'Hullo. . . . Yes. . . . Yes, speaking.' He drew a memorandum block towards him and took up a pencil from a glass tray. With the gun close to his hand, he jotted down letters and figures. 'Yes. G-EZQX. At seven. . . . Yes. . . . Thank you.' He sat for a little while staring at the pad, as if memorizing his note and rearranging his plans. Then he pressed the switch of a microphone which stood on the desk beside the ordinary post-office instrument. 'Kellard?' he said. 'There is a change of time. Have the Hawker outside and warmed up by seven o'clock.'
He picked up the automatic again and rose from the desk.
