The Saint Closes the Case (35 page)

Marius spread his huge hands.

“That is immaterial. I have obeyed. And
I await your
decision. You may have one minute to consider it.”

Simon sent his cigarette spinning through the
window with
a reckless flourish.

“You have our decision now,” he
said.

Marius bowed.

“If you will answer one question,”
said the Saint.

“What do you want to know?”

“When you kidnapped Vargan, you couldn’t
take his ap
paratus with you——
”

“I follow your thoughts,” said the
giant. “You are thinking
that even if you surrender Vargan the British
experts will still
possess the apparatus, which they can copy even if they do
not understand it. Let me disillusion you. While some of my
men were
taking Vargan, others were destroying his apparatus
—very effectively.
You may be sure that nothing was left which
even Sir Roland Hale
could make workable. I’m sorry to disappoint you—
”

“But you don’t disappoint me, Angel
Face,” said the Saint.
“On the contrary, you bring me the best
news I’ve had for a
long time. If you weren’t so unspeakably repulsive, I
believe
I’d—I’d fling my arms round your bull neck, Angel Face, dear
dewdrop! .
. . I’d guessed I could rely on your efficiency, but
it’s nice to know for
certain.
…”

Roger Conway interposed from the other side
of the room.

He said: “Look here, Saint, if the Crown
Prince is outside,
we’ve only got to tell him the truth about Marius——
”

Marius turned.

“What truth?” he inquired suavely.

“Why—the truth about your septic
patriotism! Tell him
what we know. Tell him how you’re just
leading him up the
garden
for your own poisonous ends——”

“And you think he would believe
you?” sneered Marius.
“You are too childish, Conway! Even you
cannot deny that I
am doing my best to place Vargan’s invention in His High-
ness’s hands.”

The Saint shook his head.

“Angel Face is right, Roger,” he
said. “The Crown Prince is
getting his caviar, and he isn’t going to
worry why the stur
geon died. No—I’ve got a much finer bead on the problem
than
that.”

And he faced Marius again.

“It’s really truly true, dear one, that
Vargan is the key to the
whole situation?” he asked softly,
persuasively.

“Exactly.”

“Vargan is the really truly cream in
your coffee?”

The giant twitched his shoulders.

“I do not understand all your idioms.
But I think I have
made myself plain.”

“I was wondering who did it,” said
Roger sympathetically.

But a new smile was coming to Simon Templar’s
lips—a
mocking, devil-may-care, swashbuckling, Saintly smile. He set
his hands
on his hips and smiled.

“Then this is our answer,” smiled
the Saint. “If you want
Vargan, you can either come and fetch him or
go home and
suck jujubes. Take your choice, Angel Face!”

Marius stood still.

“Then His Highness wishes to say that he
disclaims all re
sponsibility for the consequences of your foolishness——
”

“One minute!”

It was Norman Kent, trying painfully to
struggle up on to
his sound leg. The Saint was beside him in a moment, with
an arm about his shoulders.

“Easy, old Norman!”

Norman smiled faintly.

“I want to stand up, Simon.”

And he stood up, leaning on the Saint, and
looked across
at Marius. Very dark and stern and aloof he was.

And—

“Suppose,” said Norman
Kent—“suppose we said that we
hadn’t got Vargan?”

“I should not believe you.”

Roger Conway cut in: “Why should we keep
him? If we’d
only wanted to take him away from you, he’d have been re
turned to
the Government before now. You must know that
he hasn’t been sent
back. What use could we have for him?”

“You may have your own reasons. Ransom, perhaps. Your
Government should be prepared to pay well for his
safety——
”

Norman Kent broke in with a clear, short laugh
that shat
tered Marius’s theory more fatally than any of the words
that
followed could have done,

“Think again, Marius! You don’t
understand us yet! …
We took Vargan away for the sake of the peace
of the world and the sparing of millions of good lives. We hoped to per
suade him
to turn back from the thing he proposed to do.
But he was mad, and
he would not listen. So this evening, for
the peace of the world
…”

He paused, and passed a hand across his eyes.

Then he drew himself erect, and his dark eyes
gazed with
out fear into a great distance, and there was no flinching
in
the light in
his eyes.

His voice came again, clear and strong.

“I shot him like a mad dog,” he
said.

“You——
”

Harding started forward, but Roger Conway was
barring
his way in an instant.

“For the peace of the world,”
Norman Kent repeated.
“And—for the peace of my two dearest
friends. You’ll under
stand, Saint. I knew at once that you’d never
let Roger or me
risk what that shot meant. So I took the law into my own
hands.
Because Pat loves you, Simon, as I do. I couldn’t let
her spend the rest of
her life with you under the shadow
of the gallows. I love her, too, you
see. I’m sorry… .”

“You killed Vargan?” said Marius incredulously.

Norman nodded. He was quite calm.

And, outside the window, the shadows of the
trees were
lengthening over the quiet garden.

“I found him writing in a notebook. He’d
covered sheets
and sheets. I don’t know what it was about, or whether
there’s
enough for an expert to work on. I’m not a scientist. But I
brought
them away to make sure. I’d have burnt them before,
but I couldn’t find
any matches. But I’ll burn them now before
your eyes; and that’ll
be the end of it all. Your lighter,
Saint——
”

He was fumbling in his pocket.

Roger Conway saw Marius’s right hand leap to
his hip, and whirled round with his automatic levelled at the centre of the
giant’s
chest.

“Not just yet, Marius!” said Roger,
through his teeth.

The Saint, when he went to support Norman, had
dropped
one gun into his coat pocket. Now, with one arm holding
Norman, he
had had to put his other gun down on the
arm of the sofa while he searched for his
petrol-lighter.

He had not realised that the grouping of the
others had so
fallen that Conway could not now cover both Harding and
Marius.
Just two simple movements had been enough to
bring about that
cataclysmic rearrangement—when Norman
Kent stood up and Marius tried to
draw. And Simon hadn’t noticed it. He’d confessed that he was as slow as a
freight car
that day, which may or may not have been true; but the
fact
remained that for a fraction of a second he’d allowed the
razor-edge of his vigilance to
be taken off. And he saw his mis
take that
fraction of a second too late.

Harding reached the gun on the arm of the
sofa in two steps
and a lightning dive; and then he had his back to the
wall.

“Drop that gun, you! I give you three seconds.
One——
”

Conway, moving only his head to look round,
knew that
the youngster could drop him in his tracks before he had
time
to more than begin to move his automatic. And he had no
need to
wonder whether the other would carry out his threat.
Harding’s grim and
desperate determination was sufficiently
arrested by the mere
fact that he had dared to make the gamble that gave him the gun and the
strategic advantage at the
same time. And Harding’s eyes were as set and
stern as the eyes
of a young man can be.

“Two——
”

Suppose Roger chanced his arm? He’d be pipped,
for a mil
lion. But would it give Simon time to draw? But Marius
was
ready to draw, also… .

“Three!”

Roger Conway released his gun, even as Harding
had had to do not many minutes before; and he had all the sense of
bitter
humiliation that Harding must have had.

“Kick it over to me.”

Conway obeyed; and Harding picked up the gun,
and swung
two automatics in arcs that included everyone in the room.

“The honour of the British Secret
Service!” drawled the
Saint, with a mildness that only emphasised
the biting sting
of his contempt.

“The truce is over,” said Harding,
dourly. “You’d do the
same in my place. Bring me those
papers!”

The Saint lowered Norman Kent gently; and
Norman rested, half-standing, half-sitting, on the high arm of the settee. And
Simon
tensed himself to dice the last foolhardy throw.

Then a shadow fell on him; and he looked
round and saw
that the number of the congregation had been increased by
one.

A tall, soldierly figure in grey stood in the
opening of the
window. A figure utterly immaculate and utterly at ease.
… And-
it is, of course, absurd to say that any accident of
breeding makes a man
stand out among his fellows; but this
man could have been nothing but the man
he was.

“Marius,” spoke the man in grey, and
Marius turned.

“Back, Highness! For God’s sake——
”

The warning was rapped out in another
language, but the
man in grey answered in English.

“There is no danger,” he said.
“I came to see why you had
overstayed your time limit.”

He walked calmly into the room, with no more
than a careless glance and a lift of his fine eyebrows for Gerald Harding
and Gerald
Harding’s two circling guns.

And then the Saint heard a sound in the hall,
beyond the
door, which still stood ajar.

He reached the door in a reckless leap, and
slammed it. Then he laid hold of the heavy bookcase that stood by the
wall, and
with a single titanic heave toppled it crashing over
to fall like a great
bolt across the doorway. An instant later
the table from the
centre of the room had followed to reinforce
the bookcase.

And Simon Templar stood with his back to the
pile, breath
ing deeply, with his head thrown back defiantly. He
spoke.

“So you’re another man of
honour—Highness!”

The Prince stroked his moustache with a beautifully
mani
cured finger.

“I gave Marius a certain time in which
to make my offer,”
he said. “When that time was exceeded, I
could only presume
that you had broken the truce and detained him, and I or
dered my
men to enter the house. They were fortunate enough
to capture a lady——
”

The Saint went white.

“I say ‘fortunate’ because she was armed,
and might have
killed some of them, or at least raised an alarm, if they
had
not taken her by surprise. However, she has not been harmed.
I mention
the fact merely to let you see that my intrusion is
not so improvident as
you might otherwise think. Are you
Simon Templar?”

“I am.”

The Prince held out his hand.

“I believe I owe you my life. I had hoped
for an opportunity
of making your acquaintance, but I did not expect that our
meeting would be in such unpropitious circumstances. Never
theless,
Marius should have told you that I am not insensitive
to the debt I owe
you.”