Leslie Charteris - The Saint Steps In

It was a help that he had driven himself there, and that he had a memory for landmarks and a sense of direction that a homing pigeon could have envied. In a matter of seconds he was on to the coastal road, past Compo Beach and winding along the edge of the marshes at the estuary of the Saugatuck. Then inland a little way, and then wrenching the car around to the left to speed over the bridge across the wider part of the inlet; then to the right again, northwards, to slow down a little, reluctantly, as they skimmed the edge of the town of Westport, and catch a green light and speed up again on the road that follows the west bank of the river and comes in a mile and a half to the Merritt Parkway.

They were nearly at the Parkway when Madeline said: "Wouldn't it have been better to have phoned?"

"They'd have been standing right over him when he answered the phone — if they let him answer at all. And they may be only just arriving now."

"But the police—"

He shook his head.

"With all the things I'd have to explain and convince them of, and then to get them moving fast enough? No. It's the same as our trip from Washington. Only worse. But this time perhaps we won't be too late."

She sat tense and still, leaning forward a little, as if by that she could help the car to make more speed.

"Have we any chance?"

"We're trying."

And they were on the Parkway, the speedometer needle climbing to eighty and eight-five and creeping on, yet with the Saint's fingers effortless and almost caressing on the wheel, driving with one hand only while the other pressed the electric lighter and shook a cigarette out of Devan's pack and set it between his lips.

Presently she said, as if because any kind of conversation was better than listening to the same ceaseless clock-tick of terror: "How much does Andrea know?"

"I think she's fairly dumb," he said in the same way. "Devan said she was dumb. They just used her. And so did I. As I told you, in Washington I eventually tried to let her think she'd taken me in, because she might be a useful contact. And she was."

"But now you know why she asked you over there tonight."

"I know why she asked me in the first place. They had a story for her, and they must have known from past experience that she shouldn't be hard to sell. Maybe she never has been quite so monumentally dumb, but she knew how to leave her brain alone. It was the easiest defence of her own kind of Social Stability… Only, as it worked out this evening, I invited myself."

"And she let you walk into it."

"She knew that I knew what I was walking into. She tried to stop me last night, when I didn't know. She may have figured that I had all the right cards up my sleeve, or else I wouldn't want to walk in. She may have changed sides again, and been glad to see me sticking my neck out. It might have been vengeance, or it might have been her kind of help; or she might have just put her brain to sleep again. I wouldn't know. She must have done a lot of odd things in her life that you couldn't explain in ten-year-old language."

"Only she fell in love with you," Madeline said. "I've heard all your story, and I've seen her."

The Saint let cigarette smoke trail away from his lips, and kept his eyes on the unfolding road.

"I didn't make her do that." He was cold and apart in a way that she had never felt from him before. "She saved our lives tonight, whether she knew it or not, and whatever she meant to do. Don't ever forget that." There were some things that it was almost impossible to put together in words. "I'm afraid nothing is going to be easy for her now."

And they were past Talmadge Hill, swooping down and up long easy switchbacks, the engine humming to the perfection of its power, the tires hissing on the roadbed and the wind ruffling at the windows, almost as if they were flying, the sense of speed lulled by the smoothness of his driving and the isolation of the darkness around them, with only the road to see ahead and the tail lights of other cars being overtaken like crawling glowworms and fluttering angrily for an instant as they were passed and then being lost in silence behind.

He thought, this was one time when he didn't give a damn if the whole Highway Patrol was out after him, and just because of that there wouldn't be a single one of them in the country. And there wasn't.

And then they were near the turning he had to take, and suddenly he recognised it, and crammed on the brakes and spun the wheel and spurred the engine, and they were screaming around and bucking through a break in the highway division, right under the lights of some inoffensive voyager in the other lane who probably lost two pounds of weight and a year's growth on the spot, while the Saint balanced the car against its own rolling momentum like a tightrope walker and dived it into the twisting lane that led towards Calvin Gray's home.

It was only then that she said: "Have you got a gun or anything?"

"I borrowed one from Karl. He owed me something," he said, and didn't bother to explain about Karl.

And then they were nearing the entrance of Gray's estate, and he killed the engine and cut the lights and coasted the car to a stop a few yards short of the stone gateway.

He got out and said "This way," and drew her out through the same door, and closed it again without a sound, and they went quickly in up the drive and past the house, as softly as he could lead her. There was a great silence all around them now, with even the undertones of their own traveling wiped out; and he realised that for miles his ears had been keyed for the sound that he dreaded and that he must have heard, the concussion of unnatural thunder and the blaze of unnatural lightning that would have said finally that they were too late. And it still might come at any instant, but so far it hadn't, and the only light was the faint untroubled silver of the moon.

He only took her so far because he wanted to be sure that he found the right path; and then they found it, and he knew exactly where he was, and he stopped for a second to halt her. "You wait here. Lie down, and be quiet."

"I want to go with you."

"You couldn't do anything. And you'd make more noise than I will. And if anything happens, somebody has to tell the story."

His lips touched her face, and he was gone, and he had scarcely paused at all.

And so perhaps this was the end of all stories; and if it was, there could have been worse ones.

He came like a shadow to the door of the laboratory building, and turned the handle without a sound with his left hand while his right slid the borrowed revolver out of his pocket. His nerves were spidery threads of ice, and time stood still around him like a universe that had run down.

He thought then, in a crazy disassociation, that it would be strange to die that way, because you would never even know you died. You wouldn't even have time to hear or feel anything. There would be some sort of silent and insensate shock that would take the inside of your mind and blot it out, like the putting out of a light and a great hand that picked you up and wiped you away. One instant you would be there, and the next instant you wouldn't be there, but it wouldn't mean anything, because you wouldn't be there to know.

Through the tiny hall, as he went in, he could see all of them by the long bench where the rubber apparatus was set up. He could see Hobart Quennel, balanced and absorbed in watching, and Walter Devan standing a little back with one hand in the side pocket of his coat, and Calvin Gray's thin hands adjusting themselves around a large glass flask of straw-colored liquid to pick it up.

The Saint stood in the doorway with his gun leveled, and tried to launch his voice on the air like a feather, mostly so that it would steal into the ears of Calvin Gray without any shock that might precipitate disaster.