Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

"I flew in," said the Saint, "with my little wings."

Kaskin drew back his fist.

"Wait a minute," said the girl impatiently. "He had another man with him."

Kaskin almost failed to hear her. His face was contorted with the blind rage into which men of his type are fatally easy to tease. His fist had travelled two inches before he stopped it. The girl's meaning worked itself into his intelligence by visibly slow degrees, as if it had to penetrate layers of gum. He turned his head stiffly.

"What's that?"

"There were two of them. I saw them."

"Then where's the other one?" Kaskin said stupidly.

Simon was asking himself the same question; but he had more data to go on. He had left the kitchen door open, and also left the living-room door open behind him when he came in. The girl had come in through the door without touching it; and she must have entered the house at the front, or she would have met Hoppy before. The chances were, therefore, that Hoppy had heard most of the conversation since the music stopped. But with the living-room door still open, and three of the ungodly in the room facing in different directions, it would be difficult for him to show himself and go into action without increasing the Saint's danger. He must have been standing in the hall by that time, just out of sight around the edge of the doorway, waiting for Simon to make him an opening. At least, Simon hoped he was. He had to gamble on it, for he was never likely to get a better break.

Kaskin swung back on him to repeat the question in a lower key.

"Where's your pal, smart guy?"

"You haven't looked at the window lately, have you?" said the Saint blandly.

At any other time it might not have worked; but this time the ungodly were at a disadvantage because one of their own number had brought up the subject. They had another disadvantage, because they didn't realize until a second later that the room contained more than one window. And their third misfortune was that they all gave way simultaneously to a natural instinct of self-preservation that the Saint's indescribably effortless serenity did everything in its power to encourage. All of them looked different ways at once, while all of them must have assumed that somebody else was continuing to watch the Saint. Which provided a beautiful example of one of those occasions when unanimity is not strength.

Kaskin was nearly between Simon and the girl, and the Saint's swift sidestep perfected the alignment. The Saint's right foot drove at the big man's belt buckle, sent Kaskin staggering back against her. She was caught flat-footed, and started moving too late to dodge him. They collided with a thump; but Kaskin's momentum was too great to be completely absorbed by the impact. They reeled back together, Kaskin's flailing arms nullifying the girl's desperate effort to regain her balance. The small nickelled automatic waved wildly in her hand.

Simon didn't wait to see how the waltz worked out. He had only a matter of split seconds to play with, and they had to be crowded ones. He was pivoting on his left foot, with his right leg still in the air, even as Kaskin started caroming backwards from the kick; and Morris Dolf was a fraction of an instant slow in sorting out the situation. The Saint's left hand grabbed his automatic around the barrel before the trigger could tighten, twisting it sideways out of line; it exploded once, harmlessly, and then the Saint's right fist slammed squarely on the weasel-faced man's thin nose. Morris Dolf's eyes bleared with agony, and his fingers went limp with the stunning pain. Simon wrenched the gun away and reversed the butt swiftly into his right hand.

The Saint spun around. Hoppy's chunky outline loomed in the doorway, his massive automatic questing for a target, a pleased warrior smile splitting the lower half of his face. But Kaskin was finding solid ground under his feet again, and his right hand was struggling with his hip pocket. The girl's nickel-plated toy was coming back to aim. And behind him, the Saint knew that Morris Dolf was getting out another gun. Simon had only taken back the automatic he had lost a short while earlier. Morris Dolf still had his own gun. The Saint felt goose-pimples rising all over him.

"The lights, Hoppy!" he yelled. "And scram out the front!"

He dived sideways as he spoke; and darkness engulfed the room mercifully as he did it. Cordite barked malignantly out of the blackness, licking hot orange tongues at him from two directions: he heard the hiss and smack of lead, but it did not touch him. And then his dive cannoned him into the man called Verdean.

It was Verdean that he had meant to reach. His instinct had mapped the campaign with a speed and sureness that deliberate logic still had to catch up with. But all the steps were there. The atmosphere of the moment showed no probability of simmering down into that mellow tranquillity in which heart-to-heart talks are exchanged. The Saint very much wanted a heart-to-heart talk with somebody, if only to satisfy a perfectly normal inquisitiveness concerning what all the commotion was about. But since Messrs Dolf and Kaskin had been asking the questions when he arrived, it appeared that Mr Verdean might know more of the answers than they did. Therefore Mr Verdean looked like the prize catch of the evening. Therefore Mr Verdean had to be transported to an atmosphere where heart-to-heart talking might take place. It was as simple as that.

The Saint gripped Verdean by the arm, and said: "Let's go somewhere else, brother. Your friends are getting rough."

Verdean took one step the way the Saint steered him, and then he turned into a convincing impersonation of a hysterical eel. He squirmed against the Saint's grasp with the strength of panic, and his free arm whirled frantically in the air. His knuckles hit the Saint's cheekbone near the eye, sending a shower of sparks across Simon's vision.

Simon might have stopped to reason with him, to persuasively point out the manifest arguments in favour of adjourning to a less hectic neighbourhood; but he had no time. No more shots had been fired, doubtless because it had been borne in upon the ungodly that they stood a two to one chance of doing more damage to each other than to him, but he could hear them blundering in search of him. The Saint raised his gun and brought the barrel down vigorously where he thought Verdean's head ought to be. Mr Verdean's head proved to be in the desired spot; and Simon ducked a shoulder under him and lifted him up as he collapsed.

The actual delay amounted to less than three seconds. The ungodly were still blinded by the dark, but Simon launched himself at the window with the accuracy of a homing pigeon.

He wasted no time fumbling with catches. He hit the centre of it with his shoulder — the shoulder over which Verdean was draped. Verdean, in turn, hit it with his hams; and the fastening was not equal to the combined load. It splintered away with a sharp crack, and the twin casements flew open crashingly. Verdean passed through them into the night, landing in soft earth with a soggy thud; and the Saint went on after him as if he were plunging into a pool. He struck ground with his hands, and rolled over in a fairly graceful somersault as a fourth shot banged out of the room he had just left.

A gorilla paw caught him under the arm and helped him up, and Mr Uniatz's voice croaked anxiously in his ear.

"Ya ain't stopped anyt'ing, boss?"

"No." Simon grinned in the dark. "They aren't that good. Grab hold of this bird and see if the car'll start. They probably left the keys in it."

He had located Mr Verdean lying where he had fallen. Simon raised him by the slack of his coat and slung him into Hoppy's bearlike clutch, and turned back towards the window just as the lights of the living-room went on again behind the disordered curtains.