Лесли Чартерис - The Saint in Trouble

Simon studied the other man. Cartwright’s gun hand was steady, but his other trembled slightly as he took a cigaret from the box on the table and lit it. He inhaled deeply. Simon was unsure whether it was an affected gesture or simply an act of habit finally opting in favour of Cartwright’s need for a smokescreen. The exit of Curdon and the professor had created a vacuum, and the agent was uncertain how to fill it. A new tension began to edge the silence of the room.

The Saint knew that Emma’s presence was the sole reason he was still alive. Curdon’s promise concerning his safety had been a straight lie, and everyone but the professor had recognised it as such. He had as long to live as the time that needed to elapse before Emma could safely be taken back to town. To figure just how long that might be, he had to know Curdon’s plans.

His gaze drifted over Cartwright’s sartorial affectations with the same mocking insolence as he had given them at the hotel twenty-four hours before.

“The party’s flat now that the grown-ups have left. What do we do next, junior? Play charades?”

Cartwright affected indifference to the Saint’s taunt.

“Sit down, Templar.”

He indicated the seat next to Emma. The Saint sat, and Cartwright backed to the window and looked out, careful to keep him covered all the time.

They sat in silence. Emma seemed sunk in shock. The Saint considered a score of ways in which the tables could be turned, and dismissed them one by one. Cartwright looked at his watch ten times in five minutes.

Suddenly the Saint guessed at the cause of his nervousness. From the moment he had entered the room he had felt that something, or someone, was missing from the scene.

“If you’re waiting for that driver of yours,” he said, “you’re going to have a very long wait.”

It was a random cast, but the way Cartwright started at his words told the Saint that it had hooked home.

“What do you mean?”

Simon began to reel in the line.

“Well, you don’t suppose I walked in here alone armed only with a knife, do you?” The Saint’s lazy drawl was condescending.

Cartwright, who had been perched on the window shelf, suddenly became aware of the target he offered to anyone in the grounds. He stood up and crossed over to the Saint.

“Explain.”

Simon sighed as if summoning up the patience to spell out a simple fact to a backward child.

“I didn’t come on this jaunt singlehanded. There are two of my pals outside.”

Cartwright’s eyes searched the Saint’s face, trying to detect the lie but meeting only a smiling mask.

“I don’t believe you. From what I’ve heard about you, it would be part of your style to charge in on your own.”

“Then where is your driver?”

It was a good question and one to which the Saint would have liked an answer himself.

“You’re bluffing.”

Simon consulted his watch.

“I’ve been here for twenty-five minutes. I left instructions that if I wasn’t back in half an hour they were to come and collect me. So you don’t have long to wait to find out whether or not I’m bluffing.”

Emma looked up as the Saint’s words penetrated her despair, and Simon turned to her.

“Where was Curdon planning to take your father?”

“To the aero club. He has a private plane waiting to fly them to East Germany. They originally intended to rendezvous with a Russian freighter in the Med, but you stepped in and made that too dangerous.”

Simon’s mind ran over the route they would take. Driving fast, it would be a full half-hour’s journey, and they already had a fifteen-minute lead. Every second lost now reduced his chances of catching them.

Cartwright was back at the window, peering out cautiously and using the curtains to screen his body. There was a fifteen foot gap between him and the Saint and not a chance of covering half that distance without collecting a bullet.

Emma was looking at the Saint, her eyes holding his, imploring him to do something. Simon knew that with her help there was an outside chance. Had she been Samantha he would not have hesitated to take it, but there was a giant question mark over her probable reactions to the plan he was formulating. If it went wrong, if she did not grasp his idea and act quickly, she would be in as great a danger as he was. But however hard he tried, he could see no other way.

The Saint’s gaze travelled to the cigaret box on the table and on to the chair beside Cartwright before returning to Emma. Twice more he repeated the message. Emma inclined her head a fraction to show she understood. Slowly she rose and crossed towards the table.

“Sit down!” Cartwright was no longer able to hide the nervousness in his voice.

Emma ignored him. She picked out a cigaret and took her time lighting it, coughing as the smoke hit her lungs. She walked over to the chair next to the window and sat down.

The Saint’s eyes indicated a heavy silver statuette that stood on the side table at her elbow. He admired the cool way she had played her part, and his hopes of success began to rise. He looked at his watch again and smiled at Cartwright.

“I don’t think he’s coming, sonny boy. I really don’t. Two minutes to the half hour, Cartwright.”

The agent tried to maintain his mask of indifference but the cracks were beginning to show. He left the window and walked back to the centre of the room, ignoring the girl behind him. He looked down at the Saint with a half sneer twisting his lips.

“If anything does happen, Templar, you won’t be around to watch it.”

Simon seemed to consider the threat and dismiss it from his mind.

“It takes a special kind of toughness to shoot a helpless man, Cartwright, to look in his face as you pull the trigger, especially when you know that by doing it you’re signing your own death warrant.”

Cartwright’s response was a short scornful laugh, almost a snort, but the Saint’s keen ear detected a hollow ring to it, and he kept on jabbing at the signs of weakness.

“You’re on your own now. Curdon’s run off with the first prize and left you with the wooden spoon. How do you think you’re going to get out of this, even if you stay alive long enough to try? You’re already a dead man and you’ll find that however much they paid you, it won’t be enough. The Reds won’t want you, and D16 isn’t exactly a friendly society. The moment your bosses in Whitehall hear about Curdon and the professor there’ll be a contract out on you and nowhere in the world you can run to. Your time’s up, Cartwright — now or later, it doesn’t matter.”

The Saint could see bis words hitting home as he spoke them, tearing at the last shreds of the other’s self-control. He looked past Cartwright to Emma. She seemed almost hypnotised by his speech, and he thought that his final gamble had failed.

Cartwright moved nearer, using the motion to try to mask the trembling of his muscles. Simon looked into the blackness of the gun muzzle and waited for the crash that heralds oblivion.

It had to happen sometime. There had been too many gambles, too many risks and half chances, and the Saint had always been prepared to die as he had lived, defiant and with a smile on his lips. But now there was a sour taste in his mouth. The scene was wrong, there was something sordid in calmly waiting to die at the hands of a man for whom he felt only contempt.

The Saint tensed himself for the final leap that could have only one outcome, and Cartwright’s knuckle whitened on the trigger.

Cartwright was standing directly in front of the Saint, and neither of them saw Emma move. The statuette slammed into the agent’s shoulder, jerking his arm wide as the shot went off.

The Saint sprang in the same instant, catapulting himself forward as the bullet smacked into the wall behind him. His arms closed around Cartwright’s legs as the automatic coughed again, harmlessly. As Cartwright fell, the Saint released his hold and turned the dive into a somersault, his palms touching the floor just long enough to send him rolling forward.