Leslie Charteris - The Saint Steps In

The door closed again.

Simon Templar's face was like stone.

"You can't do anything," he said.

It was a moment of interminable stillness.

Then with a fierce irresistible movement, she tore herself away from him and flung herself down on the nearest divan, face downwards, her face clutched and buried between her hands. He could see her right hand, the small fingers clenched to whiteness as the knuckles gripped at her temples.

After a while he lighted another cigarette and took to strolling slowly and silently up and down the room.

It must have been about ten minutes before she turned over on her back and lay with one fist at her mouth, staring blankly up at the ceiling. And only then he thought it might be safe to speak. And even then, he stood over her and kept his voice so low that it was only just enough to brush her ears.

He said softly: "Madeline."

"He didn't have to do it," she said tonelessly. "He didn't."

He said: "Madeline, this is very probably curtains for all of us, but we don't have to go alone. I gave him a note."

"It didn't make any difference."

"I hope it did. I believe it did. I told him what to do."

She sat up with a sudden start.

"You told him — what?"

"I told him we could still do something on our way. I told him to get Quennel over to the laboratory. And then I said I was sure that while he was pretending to demonstrate his process he could put some things together that would go off all at once with a loud noise. And it wouldn't do any of us any good, but it would take Quennel along too, and probably Devan with him. And in the end that may be just as important." The Saint's voice was very light, no more than a breath between iron lips that scarcely moved. "I sent him to die, Madeline, but in the best way that any of us could do it."

She was on her feet somehow. She was holding his arms by the sleeves, making little aimless tugging movements, rocking a little in a kind of anguish of inarticulacy. Her eyes were flooding and yet her lips were parted in an unearthly sort of smile.

"You did that?" she repeated again and again; and it was as if something sang through the break in her voice. "You did that?"

He nodded.

Then the door opened, and he turned sharply.

Andrea Quennel came in.

She said: "Hullo."

He looked into her pale empty, eyes that still gave him nothing back, and put one hand negligently in his pocket, and said affably: "Hullo to you."

"What are you doing?"

"Rehearsing a play," he said.

"Why are you locked in here?"

He still didn't know how to take her.

"We heard that Selznick was looking for us," he said, "so we were going to be very inaccessible and make him double his offer."

"I thought there was something wrong," she said. "I've seen silly things happen to people who crossed Daddy before. I don't usually worry, because I'm not superstitious, but I was worried about you. So I watched. I saw them carry you out here. And that was even after I tried to warn you to be careful when I left the dining room."

"So you did," said the Saint slowly.

"And then later on Mr. Devan came out of here with a man I'd never seen before. Then I thought I'd have to find out what was going on; but there was still the other man at the door—"

"What other man?"

"A sort of short thick-set man. He's been here before, with another tall man. Mr. Devan said they were salesmen. But he didn't want me to come in."

"So what did you do?" The Saint found himself curiously tense.

"Well, I didn't see why I shouldn't go into our own air-raid shelter if I wanted to. So I pretended I'd lost an earring." She had been holding her right hand a little behind her, but now she let it slip into sight. It held an ordinary household hammer. "I didn't know what I might be running into, so I brought this with me. So when he was bending down hunting around, I hit him on the head with it and came in."

The Saint couldn't laugh. That would come later… perhaps.

If there were any laughing afterwards.

He couldn't think of that at the instant. The simple fact and its connections backwards and forwards, and the thin incredible wisp of hope that came with them, struck into his mind with the complete breadth of a single chord. He found that he was gripping Andrea almost brutally by the shoulders.

"Where is your father now?"

"He went out with Mr. Devan and that other man. That's why I was worried, because they'd said you'd had a phone call and had to go out, but you were hoping to get back so you hadn't stopped to say goodbye to me; but I thought if you'd just passed out why should they bring you out here, and then why should they go away and leave you—"

"How long ago was this?"

She winced under the steel of his fingers, and he hardly noticed it.

"About fifteen minutes ago "

"Show me where to find a car."

He thrust her towards the door, and flung it open, and was outside before her. He found himself in a narrow concrete corridor. At one end of it there was a flight of steps running upwards. He raced up them, and came out through an open iron door at the top, and almost tripped over the figure that lay outside.

Simon turned him over as he saved himself with one hand on the ground; and enough light came through the opening for him to recognise the chunky individual who had been Karl Morgen's companion in Washington.

He showed no signs of activity, and it seemed very possible that he had a fractured skull; but just to be on the safe side Simon gave his head another vigorous thump on the ground as he straightened himself up.

Then he was feeling his way along the paved walk that led away from the shelter, accustoming his eyes to the light of the stars and half a moon, while he heard the two girls stumbling up behind him.

Suddenly ahead of him there was a quickened heavy movement, and he had a fleeting glimpse of a tall angular silhouette against the infinitesimally lighter tint of the sky, only a scrap of a second before the beam of a flashlight stabbed at him like a spear and barely missed him as he reeled off into the shrubbery that bordered the path. The tall man came running down the wedge of his own light, not making much sound, and switched it off a moment before he came level with the Saint; and at that point Simon moved in on him without any sound at all, his left arm sliding around the man's neck from behind and locking his larynx in the crook of his elbow, cutting off voice and breath together while he spoke in the man's ear.

"You can save this for me too, bud," he said; and then he turned the man deftly around and hit him with the blade of his hand just at the base of the septum, and threw him aside into the bushes as the girls reached him.

They threaded through winding walks, down into a sunken garden and across it and out again, and then they came around a clump of trees and the house was there, looming large and sedate in the dark and seeming aloof and asleep with the heavy blackout curtains drawn. They ran around it; and on the drive in front, gleaming faintly in the dim moonlight, Simon saw Madeline Gray's car where he had parked it when he arrived.

He opened the door and she almost fell in; and then Andrea Quennel was beside him.

Her face was a pale blur in the darkness close to him.

"You must tell me," she said with a kind of blank desperation. "What is this all about?"

He was glad that she couldn't see the involuntary mask that hardened over his face. There were so many things that perhaps ought to have been said, so many things that it was impossible to say.

"I'm going to try like hell to let your father tell you himself," he said.

Then he slid in behind the wheel and slammed the door before she could ask any more, and touched the starter and whipped the car away like a racehorse from the gate, leaving her where she stood.