The Saint in London: Originally Entitled the Misfortunes of Mr. Teal (29 page)

Teal said nothing for several seconds. And then the most significant thing was, not what he said, but what he did.

He put his gun back in his pocket and looked at the Saint almost helplessly. No one will ever know what it cost him to be as natural as that. But whatever his other failings may have been, Chief Inspector Teal was a kind of sportsman. He could take it, even when it hurt.

“What else do you know?” he asked.

“That the submarine is out in the Channel now, waiting for the aeroplane to come down. That Renway’s up over here in that Hawker ship, with loaded machine guns to shoot down the gold transport, and a packet of bombs to drop on any boat that tries to go to the rescue. That all the telephone lines to Croydon Aerodrome, and between the coast and London, have been cut. That there’s a radio transmitter somewhere in this place—I haven’t found it yet—which is just waiting to carry on signalling when the transport plane stops. That there isn’t a hope in hell of getting a warning through to anywhere in time to stop the raid.”

Teal’s pink face had gone curiously pale.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” he said.

“There’s only one thing,” answered the Saint. “Down on the landing field you probably saw a Tiger Moth warming up. It’s mine. It’s the ship I came here in—but that’s another story. With your permission, I can go up in it and try to keep Renway off. Don’t tell me it’s suicide, because I know all that. But it’s murder for the crew of that transport plane if I don’t try.”

The detective did not answer for a moment. He stared at the floor, avoiding the Saint’s straight blue gaze.

“I can’t stop you,” he said at last; and Simon smiled.

“You can forget about Hoppy hitting that policeman, if you’re satisfied with the other evidence,” he said. He had a sudden absurd thought of what would shortly be happening to a certain George Wynnis, and a shaft of the old mockery touched his smile like sunlight. “And next time I tell you that some low criminal is putting his stuff onto me, Claud,” he said, “you mayn’t be so nasty and disbelieving.”

His forefinger prodded Mr. Teal’s stomach in the old maddening way; but his smile was only reminiscent. And without another word he went out of the billiard room, down the long dark corridor to the open air.

As he climbed into the cockpit of his ship he looked back towards the house and saw Mr. Teal standing on the terrace, watching him. He waved a gay arm, while the mechanic dragged away the chocks from under the wheels; and then he settled down and opened the throttle. The stick slid forward between his knees, the tail lifted, and he went roaring down the field to curve upwards in a steep climbing turn over the trees.

He had left it late enough; and if the wind had been in the north instead of in the south he might have been too late. Winding up the sky in smoothly controlled spirals, he saw the single wide span of a big monoplane coming up from the northern horizon, and knew that it must be the transport plane for which Renway was waiting—no other ship of that build would have been flying south at that hour. He looked for Renway and saw a shape like a big square-tipped seagull swinging round in a wide circle over the Channel, six thousand feet up in the cloudless blue… .

Renway! The Saint’s steady fingers moved on the stick, steepening the angle of climb by a fraction; and his lips settled in a grim reckless line at the remainder that those fingers had no Bowden trips under them, as Renway’s had. He looked ahead through the propeller between a double rank of dancing valve springs instead of between the foreshortened blued jackets of a pair of guns. He was taking on a duel in which nothing but his own skill of hand and eye could be matched against the spitting muzzles of Renway’s guns— and whatever skill Renway could bring to the handling of them. And suddenly the Saint laughed —a devilish buccaneering laugh that bared his teeth and edged the chilled steel in his eyes, and was drowned to soundlessness in the smashing howl of his engine and whipped away in the tearing sting of the wind.

Renway! The man who had taken his name in vain. The man who had murdered Enrique and put the Saint’s mark on him. The man who had stolen the very aeroplane which he was now going up to fight—and had put the Saint’s mark on the theft. The overfed, mincing, nerve-ridden, gas-choked, splay-footed, priggish, yellow-bellied, pompous great official sausage who had had the everlasting gall to say that he himself—he—was the Saint!

Simon Templar glanced at the altimeter and edged the stick forward again along his right thigh. Five thousand feet. … A gentle pressure of his right foot on the rudder, and the Tiger Moth swung round and levelled off. The country beneath him was flattened out like a painted map, the light green of fields, the darker green of woods, white ribbons of road, and a white ribbon of surf along the edge of the grey-green sea. The transport plane was slipping across the map half ‘a mile under him, cruising at ninety miles an hour air-speed—a lumbering slow-motion cargo boat of the skies. His eagle’s eyesight picked out the letters painted across the upper fabric of the wing: G-EZQX. His own air-speed indicator showed .1 hundred and eighty. It went through his mind that Renway must have watched him coming up. Renway must have seen the Tiger Moth warming up outside the barn and seen it take off. Renway must have guessed that something had gone wrong —must, even then, have been staring down with glazed eyes and twitching fingers, realizing that there was an obstacle in his path that must he blotted out.

Simon wondered when the attack would tonic.

And at that moment it came.

His machine quivered slightly, and he saw an irregular line of punctures sewing itself diagonally across his left wing. Even above the roar of his own engine he heard the Hawker’s guns cackling their fierce challenge down the sky. He kicked the rudder and hauled the stick back into his groin, and grinned mirthlessly at the downward drag of his bowels as the nose of the Moth surged upwards, skew-eyed, like the prow of a ship in a terrific sea, and whipped over in a flick roll that twisted into the downward half of a tight loop.

XI

Renway came about in a skidding turn and plunged after him. Screwed round to watch him over the tail, Simon led him down in a shallow dive, weaving deftly from side to side against the efforts of the Hawker’s nose to follow him. Little hiccoughs of orange flame danced on the muzzles of Renway’s guns; gleaming squirts of tracer went rocketing past the Moth, now wide on the right, now wide on the left. The Saint went on smiling. Aiming an aeroplane is a fine art, and Renway hadn’t had the practice—it was the only factor which Simon could count on his side.

A chance swerve of the Hawker sprayed another line of pockmarks across the fuselage; and Simon drew back on the stick and went over in a sudden loop. Renway shot past under his tail and began to pull round in a belated vertical bank. The Saint put a curve in the fall of his loop and went to meet him. They raced head-on for a collision. Simon held his course till the last split second, lifted his nose slightly for a hint, and zoomed over the Hawker’s prop on the upturn of a switchback that carried him clear of death by shaved inches.

He looked down on the swing-over of the stalling turn that ended his zoom, and saw Renway’s ship sloping down, wobbling erratically. And his fine-drawn hell-for-leather smile opened out wickedly as he opened out the throttle and went down on the Hawker again in a shrieking power dive.

Down … down … The engine howling and the wires moaning shriller and shriller as the air-speed indicator climbed over three hundred and twenty miles an hour. His whole body tensed and waiting fearfully for the first vibration, the first shiver of the wing tips, that would spell the break-up of the machine. The Tiger Moth wasn’t built for that sort of work. It was the latest, strongest, fastest thing of its kind in the air; but it wasn’t designed for fighting aerobatics. He saw the Hawker dodging in hesitant clumsy efforts to escape; saw Renway’s white goggled face staring back over the empennage, leaping up towards him at incredible speed. He set his teeth and pulled back the stick… . Now! The Moth seemed to squat down in the air, momentarily blinding him as the frightful centrifugal force sucked the blood down from his head; but the wings held. He peered over the side and saw the Hawker diving again, veering wildly in the trembling control of its pilot.

Simon looped off the top of his zoom and went down again.

That was the only thing he could do, the only hope he had of beating the Hawker’s guns. Dive and zoom, loop and dive again. Wipe the Moth’s undercarriage across the Hawker’s upper wing every time. Split-arch and dive again. Ride the Hawker down by sheer reckless flying. Wing-over and dive again, wires screaming and engine thundering. Smash down on Renway from every angle of the sky, pitting nerve against nerve, judgment against judgment; make him duck and push the stick forward a little more, every time, with the wheels practically rolling over his head with every hairbreadth miss. Beat him down five hundred feet, a thousand, fifteen hundred. Loop and dive again… .

The Saint flew as he had never flown before. He did things that couldn’t be done, took chances that could never come off, tore his machine through the air under strains that no ship of its class could possibly survive—and kept on flying. If Renway had been able to fly half as well, it couldn’t have gone on.

But Renway couldn’t fly half as well. For minutes at a time, his guns never had a target within forty-five degrees of them; and when he brought them round, the target had gone. And each time, a little more of his nerve went with it. He was losing height faster and faster, losing it foot by foot to that nerveless demon of the sky who seemed to have made up his mind to lock their machines together and send them crashing to earth in a single shroud of flame… . The Saint smiled with merciless blue eyes like chips of frozen sea water; and dived again… . He was going to win. He knew it. He could see the Hawker wobbling more wildly at every moment, plunging more panickily downwards at every effort to escape, sprawling more clumsily on every amateurish manoeuvre. He saw Renway’s white face looking round again, saw a gloved fist impotently shaken at him, saw the mouth open and heard in his imagination the scream of fury that was ripped to fragments in the wind; and he laughed. He could divine what was in Renway’s mind–divine the trembling twitching fear that was shuddering through his flabby limbs, the clammy sweat that must have been breaking out on the soft body— and he laughed through a mask of merciless bronze and swept the Moth screeching down again to whisk its wheels six inches over Renway’s helmet. Renway, the snivelling jelly who had called himself the Saint!

Then, for the first time in a long while, he looked down to see what else was happening, and saw that the dogfight had carried them about a mile out over the sea, and the transport plane was just passing over the cliffs.

Renway must have seen it, too. Suddenly, in a frantic vertical bank which almost went into a power spin, he turned and dived on it, his guns rattling.

Simon pushed the stick into the dash, flung the throttle wide, and went down like a plummet.

The sobbing growl of the motor wailed up to an eldritch shriek as the ship slashed through the air. Down and down; with a wind greater than anything in nature slapping his face and plucking at his goggles, while the transport plane curled away in a startled bank and Renway twisted after it. Down and down, in the maddest plunge of that fantastic combat. Fingers cool and steady on the stick, feet as gentle on the rudder bar as the hands of a horseman on the reins, every coordinated nerve and muscle holding the ship together like a living creature. Bleak eyes following every movement of his quarry. Lips parted and frozen in- a deadly smile. Down and down, till he saw the bulk of the Imperial Airways monoplane leap upwards past the tail of his eye, and realized that Renway had shot down past his mark without scoring a hit. Downwards still, while Renway flattened out in a slow turn and began to climb again.

Finish it now—before Renway got in another burst which might be lucky enough to score.

Down … But there wasn’t a civil aeroplane built which could squat down out of a dive like that without leaving its wings behind. It would have to be fairly gentle—and that would be bad enough. As coolly as if he had been driving a car at twenty miles an hour, the Saint judged his margin and felt the resistance on the stick. For one absurd instant he realized that Renway’s cockpit was coming stone-cold into the place where the sights would have been if the Moth had been armed… .

Crash!

The Moth shuddered under him in an impact like the explosion of a big gun. The painted map whirled across his vision while he fought to get the ship under control. He glanced out to right and left—both wings were still there, apparently intact. The nose of the machine began to lift again, steadily, across the flat blue water and the patchwork carpet, until at last it reached the horizon.

Simon looked down.

The Hawker was going down, five hundred feet below him, in a slow helpless spin. Its tail section was shattered as if a giant club had hit it, and tangled up with it were some splintered spars which looked as if they had belonged to his own landing gear. He had glimpses of Renway struggling wildly in the cockpit, wrestling with the useless controls, and felt a momentary twinge of pity which did not show in his face. After all, the man must have been mad… . And even if he had killed and tried to kill, he was not going to the most pleasant of all deaths.

Then Simon remembered the bombs which the Hawker was supposed to carry, and realized that the end might be quick.

He watched the Hawker with a stony fascination. If it fell in the sea, the bombs might not go off. But it was very near the cliffs, bobbing and fluttering like a broken grey leaf… . For several seconds he thought it would miss the land.

And then, in one of those queer freaks of aerodynamics which every airman knows, it steadied up. For an instant of time it seemed to hang poised in the air. And then, with the straight clean swoop of a paper dart it dived into the very rim of the surf which was creaming along the foot of the white cliffs. There was a split second of horrible suspense; and then the wreckage seemed to lift open under the thrust of a great tongue of orange-violent flame… .