Leslie Charteris - The Saint In England

The Saint moved like a cat touched with a high-voltage wire. In what seemed like one connected movement, he scooped the bundle of currency and bonds into his pocket, shoved the deed box back on its shelf, swung the door of the safe, and leapt behind the nearest set of curtains; and then Renway came into the room.

He walked straight across to the safe, fishing out the key from his waistcoat pocket; but the door opened as soon as he touched the handle, and he froze into an instant's dreadful immobility. Then he fell on his knees and dragged out the empty deed box…

Simon stepped quietly out from behind the curtains, so that he was between Renway and the door.

"Don't cry, Mother Hubbard," he said.

Renway got to his feet and looked down the barrel of the Saint's gun. His face was pasty, but the lipless gash of a mouth was almost inhumanly steady.

"Oh, it's you," he whispered.

"It is I," said the Saint, with impeccable grammar. "Come here, Hugo — I want to see what you've got on you."

He plunged his left hand swiftly and dexterously into the other's inner breast pocket and found the second thing he had been looking for. It was a cheap pocket diary, and he knew without examining it that it was the one on which his forged trade-marks had been drawn. Renway must have been insanely confident of his immunity from suspicion to keep it on him.

"What ho," drawled Simon contentedly. "Stand back again, Hugo, while I see if you've been compromising yourself."

He stepped back himself and barely had time to feel the foot of the man behind him under his heel before a brawny arm shot over his shoulder and grasped his gun wrist in a grip like a twisting Clamp of iron. Simon started to turn, but in the next split second another brawny arm whipped round his neck and pinned him.

The wrenching hand on his wrist forced him to drop his gun — it had begun to twist too long before he began resisting. Then he let himself go completely limp, while his left hand felt for the knees of the man behind him. His arm locked round them and he heaved himself backwards with a sudden jerk of his thighs. They fell heavily together, and the grips on his wrist and neck were broken. Simon squirmed over, put a knee in the man's stomach, and sprang up and away; and then he saw that Renway had snatched up the automatic and was covering him.

Simon Templar, who knew the difference between certain death and a sporting chance, put up his hands quickly.

"Okay, boys," he said. "Now you think of a game."

Renway's forefinger weighed on the trigger.

"You fool!" he said almost peevishly.

"Admitted," said the Saint. "Nobody ought to walk backwards without eyes in the back of his Head."

Renway had also picked up the diary, which Simon had dropped in the struggle. He put it back in his pocket.

The Saint's brain was turning over so fast that he could almost hear it hum. He still had Enrique's letter — and the bundle of cash. There was still no reason for Renway to suspect him of anything more than ordinary stealing: his taking of the diary was not necessarily suspicious. And Simon understood very clearly that if Renway suspected him of anything more than ordinary stealing, he could, barring outrageous luck, only leave March House in one position. Which would be depressingly and irrevocably horizontal.

Even then, there might be no alternative attitude; but it was worth trying. Simon had a stubborn desire to hang onto that incriminating letter as long as possible. He took out the sheaf of bonds and banknotes and threw them on the desk.

"There's the rest of it," he said cynically. "Shall we call it quits?"

Renway's squinting eyes wandered over him.

"Do you always expect to clear yourself so easily?" he asked, like a schoolmaster.

"Not always," said the Saint. "But you can't very well hand me over to the police this time, can you? I know too much about you."

In the next moment he knew he had made a mistake. Renway's convergent gaze turned Petrowitz, who was massaging his stomach tenderly.

"He knows too much," Renway repeated.

"I suppose there's no chance of letting bygones be bygones and still letting me fly that aeroplane?" Simon asked shrewdly.

The nervous twitch which he had seen before went over Renway's body, but the thin mouth only tightened with it.

"None at all, Mr. Tombs."

"I was afraid so," said the Saint.

"Let me take him," Petrowitz broke in with his thick gruff voice. "I will tie iron bars to his legs and fire him through one of the torpedo tubes. He will not talk after that."

Renway considered the suggestion and shook his head.

"None of the others must know. Any doubt or fear in their minds may be dangerous. He can go back into the cellar. Afterwards, he can take the same journey as Enrique."

Probably for much the same offense, Simon thought grimly; but he smiled.

"That's very sweet of you, Hugo," he remarked; and the other looked at him.

"I hope you will continue to be satisfied."

He might have been going to say more, but at that moment the telephone began to ring. Renway sat down at the desk.

"Hullo… Yes… Yes, speaking." He drew a memorandum block towards him and took up a pencil from a glass tray. With the gun close to his hand, he jotted down letters and figures. "Yes. G-EZQX. At seven… Yes… Thank you." He sat for a little while staring at the pad, as if memorizing his note and rearranging his plans. Then he pressed the switch of a microphone which stood on the desk beside the ordinary post-office instrument. "Kellard?" he said. "There is a change of time. Have the Hawker outside and warmed up by seven o'clock."

He picked up the automatic again and rose from the desk.

"They're leaving an hour earlier," he said, speaking to Petrowitz. "We haven't any time to waste."

The other man rubbed his beard. "You will be flying yourself?"

"Yes," said Renway, as if defying contradiction. He motioned with his gun towards the door. "Petrowitz will lead the way, Mr. Tombs."

Simon felt that he was getting quite familiar with the billiard room, and almost suggested that the three of them should put aside their differences and stop for a game; but Renway had the secret panel open as soon as the Saint reached it. With the two men watching him, Simon went down the shaky wooden stair and heard the spring door close behind him.

He sat down on the bottom step, took out his cigarette case, and computed that if all the cellars in which he had been imprisoned as an adjunct or preliminary to murder had been dug one underneath the other, they would have provided the shaft of a diametric subway between England and the Antipodes. But his jailers had not always been so generous as to push him into the intestines of the earth without searching him; and his blue eyes were thoughtful as he took out his portable burgling kit again. Renway must have been going to pieces rapidly, to have overlooked such an obvious precaution as that; but that meant, if anything, that for a few mad hours he would be more dangerous than before. The attack on the gold plane would still be made, Simon realized, unless he got out in time to stop it. It was not until some minutes after he had started work on the door that he discovered that the panel which concealed it was backed by a solid plate of case-hardened steel…

It was a quarter past six by his wrist watch when he started work; it was five minutes past seven when he got out. He had to dig his way through twelve inches of solid brick with a small screwdriver before he could get the claw of his telescopic jemmy behind the steel panel and break the lock inwards. Anyone who had come that way must have heard him; but in that respect his luck held flawlessly. Probably neither Renway nor Petrowitz had a doubt in their minds that the tempered steel plate would be enough to hold him.