Leslie Charteris - The Saint In England

He was tired and sweating when he got out, and his knuckles were raw in several places from accidental blows against the brickwork which they had suffered unnoticed in his desperate haste; but he could not stop. He raced down the long corridor and found his way through the house to the library. Nobody crossed his path. Renway had said that the regular servants would all be away, and the gang were probably busy at their appointed stations; but if anyone had attempted to hinder him, Simon with his bare hands would have had something fast and savage to say to the interference. He burst recklessly into the library and looked out of the French windows in time to see the grey shape of the Hawker pursuit plane skimming across the far field like a bullet and lofting airily over the trees at the end.

Simon lighted another cigarette very quietly and watched the grey ship climbing swiftly into the clear morning sky. If there was something cold clutching at his heart, if he was tasting the sourest narrowness of defeat, no sign of it could have been read on the tanned outline of his face.

After a second or two he sat down at the desk and picked up the telephone.

"Croydon 2720," he called, remembering the number of the aerodrome.

The reply came back very quickly:

"I'm sorry — the line is out of order."

"Then get me Croydon police station."

"I'm afraid we can't get through to Croydon at all. All the lines seem to have gone wrong."

Simon bit his lip.

"Can you get me Scotland Yard?"

He knew the answer to that inquiry also, even before he heard it, and realized that even at that stage of the proceedings he had underestimated Sir Hugo Renway. There would be no means of establishing rapid communication with any vital spot for some hours — that was because something might have gone wrong with the duplicate wireless arrangements, or one of the possible rescue ships might have managed to transmit a message.

The Saint blew perfect smoke rings at the ceiling and stared at the opposite wall. There was only one other wild solution. He had no time to try any other avenues. There would first be the business of establishing his bona fides, then of convincing an impenetrably skeptical audience, then of getting word through by personal messenger to a suitable headquarters — and the transport plane would be over the Channel long before that. But he remembered Renway's final decision — "None of the others must know" — and touched the switch of the table microphone.

"Kellard?" he said. "This is Tombs. Get my machine out and warmed up right away."

"Yessir," said the mechanic, without audible surprise; and Simon Templar felt as if a great load had been lifted from his shoulders.

Probably he still had no chance, probably he Was still taking a path to death as certain as that Which he would have trodden if he had stayed in the cellar; but it was something to attempt — something to do.

Of course, there was a radio station on the premises. Renway had said so. But undoubtedly it was well hidden. He might spend half an hour and more looking for it…

No — he had taken the only way. And if it was a form of spectacular suicide, it ought to have its diverting moments before the end.

It was only natural that in those last few moments he should think of Patricia. He took up the telephone again and called his own number at St. George's Hill. In ten seconds the voice of Orace, who never" seemed to sleep, answered him. "They've gorn," Orace informed him, with a slight sinister emphasis on the pronoun. "Miss 'Olm says she's sleepin' at Cornwall 'Ouse. Nobody's worried 'er."

Simon called another number.

"Hullo, sweetheart," he said; and the Saintly voice had never been more gentle, more easy and light-hearted, more bubbling over with the eager promise of an infinite and adventurous future. "Why, I'm fine… No, there hasn't been any trouble. Just an odd spot of spontaneous combustion in the withered brain cells of Claud Eustace Teal — but we've had that before. I've got it all fixed… Never mind how, darling. You know your Simon. This is much more important. Now listen carefully. D'you remember a guy named George Wynnis, that I've talked about soaking sometime?… Well, he lives at 366 South Audley Street. He never gets up before ten in the morning, and he never has less than two thousand quid in his pockets. Phone Hoppy to join you, and go get that dough — now! And listen. Leave my mark behind!"

"You're crazy," she said; and he laughed.

"I am and I'm not," he said. "But this time I have the perfect alibi; and I want to get you every cent I can lay hold of before I cash in my chips." The lilt in his voice made it impossible to take him literally. "God bless you, keed," he said. "Be seein' ya!"

He hung up the handpiece and leaned back in his chair, inhaling the last puffs of his cigarette. Surely, this time, he had the perfect and immutable alibi. A dry sardonic smile touched his lips; but the fine-cut sapphires in his eyes were twinkling. It would give Claud Eustace something more to think about, anyway… He looked out of the windows, down the long gentle slope that was just being gilded by the sun, and saw his own Tiger Moth standing beside the old tithe barn, the propeller lost" in a swirling circle of light, the mechanic's hair fluttering in the cockpit, a thin plume of haze drifting back from the exhaust. The sky was a pale crystalline eggshell blue, clear and still as a dream, a sky that could give a man pleasant memories to carry with him into the long dark…

Without conscious thought, he hauled out his helmet from a side pocket, pulled it over his head, buckled the strap, and adjusted the goggles on his forehead. And he was doing that when a shadow fell across the desk, and he looked up.

A broad-shouldered portly form, with a round cherubic pink face and small baby-blue eyes, crowned with an incongruous black bowler hat of old-fashioned elevation, was filling the open French doors. It was Chief Inspector Teal.

Simon sprang up impetuously.

"Claud!" he cried. "I never thought I should be glad to see your huge stomach—"

"I thought you might be here," said the detective stiffly.

He came on into the room, but only far enough to allow Sergeant Barrow to follow him through the window. With that end accomplished, he kept his distance. There was still a puffy tenderness in his jaw to remind him of a fist like a chunk of stone driven by a bolt of lightning, which had reached him once already when he came too near.

"It must be this deductive business that Scotland Yard is taking up," Simon remarked more slowly.

Teal nodded without relaxing.

"I knew you were interested in Renway, and I knew you'd been here once before — when Uniatz knocked out the policeman. It occurred to me that it'd be just like you to come back, in spite of everything."

"In spite of hell and high water," Simon murmured with a faint smile, "we keep on doing our stuff. Well, it's not a bad reputation to have… But this time I've got something more important to say to you."

"I've got the same thing to say to you as I had last time," said the detective, iron-jawed. "I want you, Saint."

Simon started round the desk.

"But this is serious!"

"So is this," said Teal implacably. He took his right hand out of his pocket, and there was a gun in it. "I don't want to have to use it, but I'm going to take you back this time if it's the last thing I do."

The Saint's eyes narrowed to shreds of flint.

"You're damn right it'll be the last thing you do!" he shot back. And then his tensed lips moved into the thinnest of thin smiles. "Now listen to me, you great oaf. You want me for being mixed up with a guy named Hoppy Uniatz who smacked a cop on the button outside here the other night. Guilty. But you also want me for the murder of Manuel Enrique and the knocking off of an aeroplane from Hawker's. Not guilty and not guilty. That's what I wanted to see you for. That's the only reason on earth why I couldn't have been more glad to see anything else walk in here than your fatuous red face. I want to tell you whom you really do want!"