The Saint Closes the Case (33 page)

“What is it?” asked Harding.

He was staring at the Saint, and his back was
squarely turned
to the window behind him. Roger Conway, from the other
side of the
room, was also looking at the Saint in perplexed
surprise. Only the
Saint saw Norman Kent step through the window behind Harding.

But Harding felt and understood the iron grip
that fell
upon his gun wrist, and the hard bluntness that nosed into
the small of his
back.

“Don’t be foolish,” urged Norman
Kent.

“All right.”

The words dropped bitterly from the
youngster’s lips after
a second’s desperate hesitation. His fingers
opened grudgingly
to release his gun, and the
 
Saint caught it neatly off the
carpet.

“And our own peashooters,” said
Simon.

He took the other two automatics from
Harding’s pocket,
restored one to Roger, and stepped back to the table with
a
gun in each of his own hands.

“Just like the good old story-book
again,” he remarked. “And
here we are—all armed to the teeth.
Place looks like an
arsenal, and we all feel at home. Come over and be
sociable,
Archibald. There’s no ill-feeling… . Norman, will you
have
a dud cheque or a bag of nuts for that effort?”

“I was wondering how much longer it’d be
before you had
the sense to create a disturbance?”

“I’m as slow as a freight car
to-day,” said the Saint. “Don’t
know what’s the matter
with me. But all’s well that ends well,
as the actress used
to say, and——
”

“It is?” asked Norman soberly.

Simon lifted an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“I heard you talking about the
telephone. You were right.
I didn’t cut the line. Didn’t think of it. And
if the line
is dead——
”

The sentence was not finished.

No one heard the sound that interrupted it.
There must
have been a faint sound, but it would have been lost in
the
open air outside. But they all saw Norman Kent’s face sud
denly
twist and go white, and saw him stagger and fall on one k
nee.

“Keep away from that window!”

Norman had understood as quickly as anyone,
and he got
the warning out in an agonised gasp. But the Saint ignored
it. He sprang forward, and caught Norman Kent under the
arms; and
dragged him into shelter as a second bullet splin
tered the
window-frame a few inches from their heads.

“They’re here!”

Harding was standing recklessly in the open,
careless of
what his captors might be doing. The Saint rapped out a
com
mand to take cover, but Harding took no notice. Roger Con
way had to
haul him out of the danger zone almost by the
scruff of the neck.

Simon had jerked a settee from its place by
the wall and
run it across three-quarters of the width of the window
open
ing; and he lay behind it, looking towards the road, with his
guns in
his hands. He saw something move behind the hedge,
and fired twice at a
venture, but he could not tell how much damage he had done.

There was the old Saintly smile back on the
Saint’s lips, and
the old Saintly light back in his eyes. Against Harding,
he
hadn’t really enjoyed himself. Against Teal, if it had been Teal
outside, he
wouldn’t really have enjoyed himself. But it
definitely wasn’t Teal
outside. Neither Chief Inspector Teal nor any of his men would have started
blazing away like that with
silenced guns and no preliminary parley. There
was only one
man in the cast who could conceivably behave like that;
and
against that man the Saint could enjoy himself thoroughly.
He couldn’t
put his whole heart into the job of fighting men
like Harding and Teal,
men whom in any other circumstances he would have liked to have for his
friends. But Marius was
quite another matter. The feud with Marius
was over some
thing more than an outlook and a technical point of law.
It
was a personal and vital thing, like a blow in the face and a glove
thrown down.
…

So Simon watched, and presently fired again.
This time a
cry answered him. And one bullet in reply zipped past his
ear,
and another clipped into the upholstery of the settee an
inch from
his head; and the Saintly smile became positively
beatific.

“This is like war,” said the Saint
happily.

“It
is
war!” Harding shot
back. “Don’t you realise that?”

Roger Conway was kneeling beside Norman Kent,
cutting
away a trouser-leg stained with a spreading dark stain.

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

Harding stepped back.

“Didn’t you understand? You seemed to
know so much.
… But you hadn’t a chance to know that. Still, it
would have
been announced in the lunch editions, and plenty of
people
knew about it last night. Our ultimatum was delivered at noon
to-day,
and they’ve got till noon to-morrow to answer.”

“What country? And what’s the ultimatum
about?”

Harding answered. The Saint was not very
surprised. He
had not read between the lines of his newspapers so assidu
ously for
nothing.

“Of course, it’s all nonsense, like
anything else that any
country ever sent an ultimatum to another
about,” said Hard
ing. “We’ve put it off as long as you
can, but they’ve left us no
choice. They’re asking for trouble, and
they’re determined to
have it. Half the government still can’t
understand it—they
think our friends ought to know better. Just swollen head,
they
say. That’s why everything’s been kept so dark. The Govern
ment
thought the swelling was bound to pass off naturally.
Instead of which,
it’s been getting worse.”

The Saint remembered a phrase from the letter
which he
had taken from Marius:
“Cannot fail this time…
.”

And he understood that the simple word of a
man like
Marius, with all the power that he represented standing
in
support behind the word, might well be enough to sway the
decisions of kings and
councils.

He said, with his eyes still watching the
road: “How many
people have a theory to account for the
swelling?”

“My chief, and a handful of others,”
said Harding. “We
knew that Marius was in it, and Marius spells
big money. But
what’s the use of telling ordinary people that? They
couldn’t
see it. Besides, there was still a flaw in our theory, and
we couldn’t fill it up—until the show at Esher on Saturday. Then
we knew.”

“I figured it out the same way,”
said the Saint.

“Everything hangs on this,” said
Harding quietly. “If
Marius gets Vargan for them, it means
war.”

Simon raised one gun, and then lowered it
again as his
target ducked.

“Why have you told me all this?”
he asked.

“Because you ought to be on our
side,” Harding said stead
ily. “I don’t care what you are. I don’t
care what you’ve done.
I don’t care what you’re working for. But
Marius is here how,
and I know you can’t be with Marius. So——
”

“Somebody’s waving a white flag,” said the Saint.

He got to his feet, and Harding came up
beside him. Behind
the hedge, a man stood up and signalled with a hand
kerchief.

Then Simon saw that the road beyond the hedge
was alive
with men.

“What would you do here?” he asked.

“See them!” rapped Harding.
“Hear what they’ve got to
say. We can still fight afterwards. They
will
fight! Templar——”

The Saint beckoned, and saw a man rise from
his crouched position under the hedge and walk alone up the drive. A giant
of a man.
…

“Angel Face himself!” murmured Simon.

He swung round, hands on hips.

“I’ve heard your argument,
Harding,” he said. “It’s a good
one. But I prefer my
own. In the circumstances, I’m afraid
you’ll have to accept it. And I want
your answer quickly. The
offer I made you is still open. Do you join
us for the duration,
or have I got to send you out there to shift
for yourself? I’d
hate to do it, but if you’re not for us——
”

“That’s not the point,” said
Harding steadfastly. “I was sent
here to find Vargan, and I think I’ve
found him. As far as that’s
concerned, there can’t be peace between us.
You’ll understand
that. But for the rest of it
…
Beggars
can’t be choosers. We
agree that Marius must not have Vargan,
whatever else we dis
agree about. So, while we have to fight Marius——
”

“A truce?”

The youngster shrugged. Then he put out his
hand.

“And let’s give ‘em hell!” he said.

18. How Simon Templar received Marius,

and the Crown Prince remembered
a debt

A moment later the Saint was on his knees
beside Norman
Kent, examining Norman’s wound expertly. Norman tried to
delay him.

“Pat,” whispered Norman; “I
left her hiding in your room.”

Simon nodded.

“All right. She’ll be safe there for a
bit. And I’d just as soon
have her out of the way while Tiny Tim’s
beetling around.
Let’s
see what we can do for you first.”

He went on with the examination. The entrance
was three
inches above the knee, and it was much larger than the en
trance of
even a large-calibre automatic bullet should have
been. There was no
exit hole, and Norman let out an involun
tary cry of agony at
the Saint’s probing.

“That’s all, sonny boy,” said the
Saint; and Norman loos
ened his teeth from his lips.

“Smashed the bone, hasn’t it?”

Simon stripped off his coat, and tore off the
sleeve of his
shirt to improvise a bandage.

“Smashed to bits, Norman, old boy,”
he said. “The swine
are using dum-dums.
…
A large
whisky, Roger… . That’ll
be a consolation for you, Norman, old
warrior.”

“It’s something,” said Norman
huskily.

He said nothing else about it, but he
understood one thing
very clearly.

No man can run very far or very fast with a
thighbone splin
tered by an expanding bullet.

Strangely enough, Norman did not care. He
drank the
whisky they gave him gratefully, and submitted
indifferently
to the Saint’s ministrations. In the pallor of Norman
Kent’s
face was a strange calm.

Simon Templar also understood what that wound
meant;
but he did not think of it as Norman did.

He knew that Marius was standing in the
window, but he
did not look up until he had completed the rough dressing
with
practised hands that were as gentle as a woman’s. He
wanted to start some
hard thinking before he began to bait
Marius. Once well under way, the
thinking process could con
tinue by itself underneath the inevitable
froth of banter and backchat; but the Saint certainly wanted to get a
stranglehold
on the outstanding features of the situation first. And
they
were a pretty slimy set of features to have to pin down. What with
Patricia on the premises to cramp his style, and Norman
Kent
crippled, and the British Secret Service, as represented
by Captain
Gerald Harding, a prisoner inside the fort on a very
vague parole, and
Chief Inspector Teal combing the district and liable to roll up on the scene at
any moment, and Rayt
Marius surrounding the bungalow with a young
army corps that had already given proof enough that it wasn’t accumu
lated in
Maidenhead for a Sunday afternoon bun-fight—well,
even such an
optimistic man as the Saint had to admit that the
affair had begun to
look distinctly sticky. There had been a
time when the Saint
was amused to call himself a professional
trouble-hunter. He
remembered that pleasant bravado now, and wondered if he had ever guessed that
his prayers would
be so abundantly answered. Verily, he had cast his bread
upon
the waters and hauled up a chain of steam bakeries.
…