Leslie Charteris - The Saint In England

The Saint blew out a flick of smoke and kept his eyes on Renway's pale complacent face. It was dawning on him that if Renway was a lunatic, he was the victim of a very thorough and methodical kind of madness.

"There isn't only traffic in the air." he said.

"There's also shipping. Suppose a ship sees what happens?"

Renway made a gesture of impatience.

"My good fellow, you're going over ground that I covered two months ago. I could raise more objections than you know yourself. For instance, all the time the aeroplane is over the Channel, there will be special motorboats cruising off the French and English coasts. One or more of them may possibly reach the scene. It will be part of your job to keep them at a distance by machine-gun fire from the air until all the gold has been secured."

"How do you propose to do that?" persisted the Saint. "You can't lift ten tons of gold out of a wrecked aeroplane in five minutes."

A sudden sly look hooded Renway's eyes.

"That has also been arranged," he said.

He refilled his glass and drank again, sucking in his lips after the drink. As if wondering whether he had betrayed too much already, he said: "You need only be concerned with your own share in the proceedings. Do you feel like taking a part?"

Simon thought for a moment and nodded.

"I'm your man," he said.

Renway remained looking at him for a while longer, and the Saint fancied he could almost see the man's nerves relaxing in the sedative glow of conquest.

"In that case, I shall not need to send for my chauffeur."

"What about my machine?" asked the Saint.

"You can keep it here until you require it again. I have plenty of accommodation, and one of my mechanics can find out the cause of your trouble and put it right."

For a second the Saint's eyes chilled, for no mechanic would take long to discover that there was nothing whatever the matter with the machine in which he had landed. But he answered easily enough:

"That's very good of you."

Renway picked up his valise and took it to a big built-in safe at one end of the room, into which he locked it. He came back blandly, rubbing his hands.

"Your — er — samples will be quite safe there until you need them. Shall we go and attend to your aeroplane?"

They walked out again in the strengthening sunshine, down through the rose garden and across the small field where the Saint had made his landing. Simon felt the dead weight of the automatic in his pocket bumping his hip as he walked, and felt unexpectedly glad of its familiar comfort: the nervous twitching of Renway's hands had finished altogether now, and there was an uncanny inert calm about his sauntering bulk which was frightful to study — the unnatural porcine opaqueness of a man whose mind has ceased to work like other men's minds…

Renway went on talking, in the same simpering monotone, as if he had been describing the layout of an asparagus bed: "I shall know the number of the transport plane and the time it leaves Croydon five minutes after it takes off — you'll have plenty of time to be waiting for it in the air."

On the other side of the field there was a big tithe barn with the hedge laid up to one wall. Renway knocked on a small door, and it opened three inches to show a narrow strip of the grimy face and figure of a man in overalls. After the first pause of identification it opened wider, and they went in.

The interior was cool and spacious, dimly lit in contrast with the sunlight outside by a couple of naked bulbs hung from the high ridge. Simon's first glance round was arrested by the grey bull-nosed shape of the Hawker pursuit plane at the far end of the shed. In another two or three hours he would have found it less easy to recognize, except by the long gleaming spouts of the machine guns braced forward from the pilot's cockpit, for another overalled man mounted on a folding ladder was even then engaged in painting out the wing cocardes with a layer of neutral grey dope. But the national markings on the empennage were still untouched — if the Saint had ever been tempted to wonder whether he had lost himself in a fantastic dream, the sight of those shining strips of colour was the last thing that was needed to show him that he was in touch with nothing more fantastic than astounding reality.

He fished out his case and selected another cigarette while he surveyed the other details of his surroundings. While he was in the air he had guessed that the field adjoining the one in which he had landed was the one where he had watched the Hawker ship land some hours ago, and a glimpse of other and wider doors outlined in cracks of light on the opposite wall of the barn was his confirmation. There was a stack of petrol cans in one corner, and a workbench and lathe in another. He saw the spare drums of ammunition which Renway had referred to under the workbench, and some curious pear-shaped objects stacked in a wooden rack beside it — in another moment he realized that they were bombs.

He indicated them with a slight movement of his thumb.

"For use on the rescue boats?" he queried; and Renway nodded.

Simon left the cigarette between his lips, but thoughtfully refrained from lighting it.

"Isn't it a bit risky?" he suggested. "I mean, having everything here where anybody might get in and see it?"

Renway's mouth widened slightly. If another muscle of his face had moved it might have been a smile, but the effect of the surrounding deadness of flesh was curiously horrible.

"I have two kinds of servants — those who are in my confidence, and those who are merely menials. With the first kind, there is no risk — although it was a pity that Enrique met with an accident…" He paused for a moment, with his faded eyes wandering inharmoniously over the Saint; and then he pointed to a big humming engine bedded down in the concrete floor on his right. "To the second kind, this is simply the building which houses our private electric light plant. The doors are kept locked, and there is no reason for them to pry further. And all of them are having a special holiday tomorrow."

He continued to watch the Saint satirically, as if aware that there was another risk which might have been mentioned; but Simon knew the answer to that one. The case of "samples" which his host had locked up in the library safe, so long as they remained there, must have constituted a reasonably sound security for the adventitious aviator's faithful service — from Renway's point of view. The Saint was acquiring a wholesome respect for the Treasury Poohba's criminal efficiency; and his blue eyes were rather quiet and metallic as he watched the two mechanics wheel his machine through a gate in the hedge and bring it through the broad sliding doors into the barn.

As they strolled back to the house again, Renway pulled out his watch.

"I shall have to attend to some business now," he said. "You'll be able to spend your time making the acquaintance of the other men who are helping me."

They entered the house by another door and went down a long dark low-ceilinged corridor which led into a large panelled room lighted by small leaded windows. Simon ducked his head automatically, but found that he could just stand upright under the black oak beams which crossed the ceiling. There was a billiard table in the centre with a strip of carpet laid round it, and an open brick fireplace at one side; but the room had the musty dampness of disuse.

"March House is rather an architectural scrap-heap," Renway explained impersonally. "You're in the oldest part of it now, which goes back to the fifteenth century. I discovered this quite by accident—"

"This" was a section of panelling, about five and a half feet by three, which sprang open on invisible hinges — Simon could not see exactly what the other did to open it. Renway fumbled in the dark aperture and switched on a light.