The Saint Closes the Case (18 page)

He looked at Marius. The giant had sunk into
an inscru
table apathy; but he spoke.

“If you would allow it, I should like to
smoke a cigar.”

Roger deliberated.

“It might be arranged—if you don’t need
your hands free.”

“I can try. The case is in my breast
pocket.”

Conway found it, bit the end, and put it in
Marius’s mouth
and lighted it. Marius thanked him.

“Will you join me?”

Roger smiled.

“Try something newer,” he advised.
“I never take smokes
from strangers these days, on principle. Oh,
and by the way, if
I catch you trying to burn through your ropes with the
end, I
shall have much pleasure in grinding it into your face till it
goes
out.”

Marius shrugged and made no reply; and Roger
resumed his
cigarette.

Coming upon the telephone, he hesitated, and
then called a
number. He was through in a few minutes.

“Can I speak to Mr. Kent, Orace? . . ,
Oh, hullo, Nor
man!”

“Who’s that? Roger?”

“Yes. I rang up in case you were getting
worried about us. Heaven knows what time we shall get down… . No, the car’s
all right—as far as I know. Simon’s gone off in it.
…
Brook
Street…
. Well—Marius has got Pat… . Yes, I’m afraid so.
Got her on the train.
But we’ve got Marius… . Yes, he’s
here. I’m standing guard. We’ve found
out where Pat’s been
taken, and Simon’s gone after her… .
Somewhere in Suf
folk.”

“Shall I come up?”

“How? It’s too late for a train, and you
won’t be able to hire anything worth calling a car at this hour. I don’t see
what you
could do, anyway… . Look here, I can’t talk any more
now.
I’ve got to keep both eyes on Marius and Co… . I’ll leave it
to you…
. Right. So long, old boy.”

He hooked up the receiver.

It occurred to him afterwards that there was
something that
Norman could have done. He could have tied up the fat man
and the
lean man, both of whom were now conscious and free
to move as much as
they dared. That ought to have been done
before Simon left.
They ought to have thought of it—or
Simon ought to have thought of it. But
the Saint couldn’t, rea
sonably, have been expected to think of it, or
anything else
like it, at such a time. Roger knew both the Saint and Pat
too
well to be able to blame Simon for the omission. Simon had
been mad
when he left. The madness had been there all the time, since half-past nine,
boiling up in fiercer and fiercer
waves behind all the masks of calmness and flippancy and pa
tience that the Saint had assumed at intervals, and
it had been at its whitest heat behind that last gay smile and gesture from
the door.

Half an hour passed.

Roger was beginning to feel hungry. He had had
a snack in
the station buffet while he was waiting, but the
satisfaction of that was starting to wear off. If he had gone to the kitchen to
forage, that would have meant compelling his three prison
ers to
precede him at the point of his gun. And the kitchen was
small…
. Ruefully Roger resigned himself to a hungry vigil.
He looked unhappily
at the clock. Four and a half hours be
fore he could shoot
the prisoners and dash to the pantry, if he
obeyed the Saint’s
orders. But it would have to be endured.
The Saint might have
managed the cure, and got away with it;
but then, the Saint
was a fully qualified adventurer, and what
he didn’t know about
the game was not knowledge. Conway
was infinitely less experienced, and
knew it. In the cramped space of the kitchen, while he was trying to locate
food with one eye and one hand, he might easily be taken off his guard
and
overpowered. And, in the circumstances, the risk was too great to take.

If only Norman decided to come.
…

Roger Conway sat on the edge of the table,
swinging the
gun idly in his hand. Marius remained silent. His cigar
had
gone out, and he had not asked for it to be relighted. The fat man
slouched in another chair, watching Roger with venom
ous eyes. The lean
man stood awkwardly in one corner. He had
not spoken since he
recovered consciousness; but he also
watched. The clock ticked
monotonously… .

Roger started to whistle to himself. It was
extraordinary
how quickly the strain began to tell. He wished he were
like
the Saint. The Saint wouldn’t have gone hungry, for one
thing. The
Saint would have made the prisoners cook him a four-course dinner, lay the
table, and wait on him. The Saint would have kept them busy putting on the
gramophone and generally running his errands. The Saint would probably have
written a
letter and composed a few limericks into the bargain.
He certainly wouldn’t
have been oppressed by the silence and
the concentrated
malevolence of three pairs of eyes. He would
have dismissed the
silence and whiled away the time by in
dulging in airy
persiflage at their expense.

But it was the silence and the watchfulness of
the eyes.
Roger began to understand why he had never felt an
irresist
ible urge to become a lion-tamer. The feeling of being alone
in a cage
of wild beasts, he decided, must be very much like what he was experiencing at
that moment. The same fragile
dominance of the man, the same unresting
watchfulness of the beasts, the same tension, the same snarling submission of
the beasts, the same certainty that the beasts were only waiting,
waiting,
waiting. These human beasts were sizing him up,
searching his soul,
stripping him naked of all bluff, finding
out all his
weaknesses in silence, planning, scheming, consider
ing, alert to pounce.
It was getting on Roger’s nerves. Pres
ently, sooner or later, somehow, he
knew, there would be a
bid for liberty. But how would it happen?

And that uncertainty must go on for hours and
hours, per
haps. Move and counter-move, threat and counter-threat,
the
snarl and the lash, the silence and the watchfulness and the
eyes. How
long? …

Then from the fat man’s lips broke the first
rattle of words,
in his own language.

“Stop that!” rapped Conway, with his
nerves all on edge.
“If you’ve anything to say, say it in English. Any
more of that, and you’ll get a clip over the ear with the soft end of this
gun.”

And the man deliberately and defiantly spoke
again, still
in his own language.

Roger came off the table as though it had
been redhot. He
stood over the man with his hand raised, and the man
stared
back with
sullen insolence.

Then it happened.

The plan was beautifully simple.

Roger had forgotten for the moment that only
Marius’s
hands were tied. The giant’s feet were free. And, standing
over
the fat man’s chair, where he had been so easily lured by the
bait that
was also an explanation of the trap to the others,
Roger’s back was half
turned to Marius.

Conway heard the movement behind him, but he
had no
time to spin round to meet it. The giant’s foot crashed into the
small of
his back with a savage force that might well have
broken the spine—if
it had struck the spine. But it struck to
one side of the spine,
in a place almost as vulnerable, and
Roger went to the floor with a gasp of agony.

Then both the fat man and the lean man leapt
on him to
gether.

The gun was wrenched out of Roger’s hand. He
could not
have seen to shoot, anyway, for the pain had blinded him.
He could not cry out—his throat was constricted with a horrible
numbing
nausea, and his lungs seemed to be paralysed. The
lean man’s fist
smacked again and again into his defenceless
jaw.

“Untie me quickly, fool!” hissed
Marius, and the fat man obeyed, to the accompaniment of a babbling flood of
excuses.

Marius cut him short.

“I will consider your punishment later,
Otto. Perhaps this
will atone for a little of your imbecility. Tie him up now
with
this rope——
”

Roger lay still. Somehow—he did not know
how—he re
tained his consciousness. There was no strength in any of
his
limbs; he could see nothing; his battered head sang and ached
and
throbbed horribly; the whole of his body was in the grip
of a
crushing, cramping agony that centered on the point in
his back where he had
taken the kick, and from that point
spread iron tentacles of helplessness
into every muscle; yet his
mind hung aloof, high and clear above the
roaring blackness,
and he heard and remembered every word that was said.

“Look for more rope, Hermann,”
Marius was ordering.

The lean man went out and returned. Roger’s
feet were
bound as
his wrists had been.

Then Marius was at the telephone.

“A trunk call… . Bures… .”

An impatient pause. Then Marius cursed
gutturally.

“The line is out of order? Tell me when
it will be working
again. It is a matter of life and death… . To-morrow?
…
God in heaven! A telegram—would a telegram be delivered
in Bures
to-night?”

“I’ll put you through to——
”

Pause again.

“Yes. I wish to ask if a telegram would be delivered in Bures
to-night… . Bures, Suffolk… . You
think not? … You
are almost sure
not? … Very well. Thank you. No, I will
not send it now.”

He replaced the receiver, and lifted it again
immediately.

This time he spoke to Westminster 9999, and
gave staccato
instructions which Roger could not understand. They ap
peared to
be detailed instructions, and they took some time.
But at last Marius
was satisfied.

He rang off, and turned and kicked Roger
contemptuously.

“You stay here, pig. You are a security
for your friend’s behaviour.”

Then again he spoke to the lean man in the
language
which was double-Dutch to Roger: “Hermann, you remain
to
guard him. I will leave you the gun. Wait—I find out the telephone
number… .” He read it off the instrument. “If I have orders to
give, I will telephone. You will not leave here with
out my permission… . Otto, you come with me. We go after
Templar in my car. I
have agents on the road, and I have or
dered them to be
instructed. If they are not all as incapable
as you, he will never
reach Bures alive. But we follow to make
sure… . Wait
again. That pig on the floor spoke to a friend
at Maidenhead who may
be coming to join him. You will cap
ture him and tie him up also. Let there
be no mistake, Her
mann.”

“There shall be no mistake.”

“Good! Come, Otto.”

Roger heard them go; and then the roaring
blackness that
lay all about him welled up and engulfed that lonely
glitter of
clarity in his mind.

He might have been unconscious for five
minutes or five days; he had lost all idea of time. But the first thing he saw
when he opened his eyes was the clock, and he knew that it
must have
been about twenty minutes.

The man Hermann sat in a chair opposite him,
turning
the pages of a magazine. Presently he looked up and saw
that Roger
was awake; and he put down the magazine and
came over and spat in
his face.

“Soon, English swine, you will be dead.
And your coun
try——
”

Roger controlled his tongue with a tremendous
effort.

He found that he could breathe. The iron bands
about his chest had slackened, and the bodily anguish had lessened.
There was
still the throbbing pain in his back and the throb
bing pain in his
head; but he was better. And he wasn’t asking
for any unnecessary
aggravation of his troubles—not just then,
anyway.