The Saint Closes the Case (38 page)

“The time is nearly up,” he
murmured gently.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” groaned
Harding. “Think, Kent, you
worm! You miserable;—abject—crawling—coward! Give me a
gun and let me fight——
”

“There’s no need to fight,” said
Norman Kent.

He put one hand to his pockety and for a
second he thought
that Harding would chance the automatic and leap at his
throat. He
held up the crumpled sheets, and both the Prince
and Marius rose—the
Prince with polished and unhurried elegance, and Marius like an unleashed
fiend.

Somehow Norman Kent was struggling to his
feet again.
He was very pale, and the fire in his eyes burned with a
fever
ish fierceness. His wounded leg was simply the deadened
source of a
thousand twinges of torment that shot up the whole
of his side at the
least movement, like long, jagged needles.
But he had a detached
determination to face the end on his
feet.

“The papers I promised you!”

He pushed them towards Marius, and the giant
grabbed
them with enormous, greedy hands.

And then Norman was holding out his gun, butt
foremost,
towards Harding. He spoke in tense, swift command.

“Through the window and down the garden,
Harding!
Take the Saint’s motor-boat. It’s moored at the end of the
lawn. The two men on the river shouldn’t stop you——
”

“Highness!”

It was Marius’s voice, shrill and savage. The giant’s face was
hideously contorted.

Norman thrust Harding behind him, covering
his retreat
to the
window.

“Get out!” he snarled. “There’s
nothing for you to wait for
now… . Well, Marius?”

The Prince’s voice slashed in with a deadly
smoothness:
“Those are not Vargan’s papers, Marius?”

“An absurd letter—to this man
himself—from one of his
 
friends!”

“So!”

The word fell into the room with the sleek
crispness of a
drop of white-hot metal. Yet the Prince could never have
been posed
more gracefully, nor could his face have ever been
more serene.

“You tricked me after all!”

“Those are the papers I promised
you,” said Norman coolly.

“He must have the real papers still,
Highness!” babbled
Marius. “I was watching him—he had no
chance to give them
to
his friends——”

“That’s where you’re wrong!”

Norman spoke very, very quietly, almost in a
whisper, but
the whisper held a ring of triumph like a trumpet call.
The
glaze in his
dark eyes was not of this world.

“When Harding grabbed Templar’s gun—you
remember,
Marius?—I had the papers in my hands. I put them in Tem
plar’s
pocket. He never knew what I did. I hardly knew myself.
I did it
almost without thinking. It was a sheer blind inspira
tion—the only way to
spoof the lot of you and get my friends
away. And it worked! I
beat you… .”

He heard a sound behind him, and looked round.
Hard
ing had started—he was racing down the lawn, bent low to the
ground
like a greyhound. Perhaps there were silenced guns
plopping at him from
all round the house, but they could not be heard, and he must have been
untouched, for he ran on
without a false step, swerving and zigzagging like a snipe.

A smile touched Norman’s lips. He didn’t mind
being left
alone now that his work was done. And he knew that
Harding
could not have stayed. Harding also had work to do. He had
to find
help—to deal with Marius and intercept Simon
Templar and the
precious papers. But Norman smiled, because
he was sure the Saint
wouldn’t be intercepted. Still, he liked
the mettle of that
fair-haired youngster… .

His leg hurt like blazes.

But the Saint had never guessed the
impossible thing. That
had been Norman Kent’s one fear, that the Saint
would sus
pect and refuse to leave him. But Norman’s first success,
when
he had tricked Harding with the offer of the papers, had won
the
Saint’s faith, as it had to win it. And Simon had gone, and
Patricia
with him. It was enough.

And in the fulness of time Simon would find
the papers;
and he would open the letter and read the one line that
was written there. And that line Norman had already spoken, but
no one had
understood.

“Nothing is won without sacrifice.”

Norman turned again, and saw the automatic in
Marius’s
hand. There was something in the way the gun was held,
some
thing in the face behind it, that told him that this man did not miss.
And the gun was not aimed at Norman, but beyond him,
at the flying figure
that was nearing the motor-boat at the end
of the lawn.

That gentle far-away smile was still on
Norman Kent’s lips
as he took two quick hops backwards and to one side, so
that
his body was between Marius and the window.

He knew that Marius, blind, raging mad with
fury, would
not
relax his pressure on the trigger because Norman Kent was
standing directly in his line of fire; but Norman
didn’t care.
It made no difference to
him. Marius, or the Prince, would
certainly
have shot him sooner or later. Probably he deserved
it. He had deliberately cheated, knowing the price
of the revoke. He thought no more of himself. But an extra second or
two ought to give Harding time to reach comparative
safety
in the motor-boat.

Norman Kent wasn’t afraid. He was smiling.

It was a strange way to come to the end of
everything, like that, in that quiet bungalow by the peaceful Thames, with the
first mists of the evening coming up from the river like tired clouds drifted
down from heaven, and the light softening over
the cool, quiet
garden. That place had seen so much of their
enjoyment, so much
comradeship and careless laughter. They
had been lovely and
pleasant in their lives… . He wished
his leg wasn’t giving
him such hell. But that would be over
soon. And there must be many worse ways
of saying farewell
to so full a life. It was something to have heard the
sound of
the trumpet. And the game would go on. It seemed as if the
shadows of the peaceful evening outside were the foreshadowings of a
great peace over all the world.