Leslie Charteris - The Saint Goes On

Rolling over on his back and squinting up, he could watch time creeping round the face of the clock on the mantelpiece. Five o'clock went to six, six to seven, seven to eight. From time to time he experimented with different schemes for releasing himself; but the wire with which he had been bound was strong and efficiently tied, and his movements only served to tighten it till it cut into his flesh. He would cheerfully have given a hundred pounds for a cigarette, and another hundred for a tankard of beer. Eight o'clock crawled on to nine. He began to suffer another acute physical discomfort which had always been romantically ignored in all the stories he had read about people who were tied up and kept prisoner for prolonged periods…

It was past ten o'clock when his captors returned. They wore the shabby trousers and drab shirts in which he had first met them; but the whiteness of their arms no longer puzzled him, for there is no sunshine underground.

Jeffroll went over to the door of the big built-in safe and unlocked it. He turned a switch, and an electric bulb lit up inside. There were no shelves behind the door, but where the shelves should have been he saw a black emptiness and the first rung of a ladder. The Saint was not startled, for that was what he had more or less guessed last night. Even the electric light did not surprise him; he had been putting the final touches to his theory when he looked for the cable that tapped the cross-country grid, and he was sure that the stolen current provided heavier labour besides surreptitious lighting.

The innkeeper turned back and inspected his wrists and ankles again to reassure himself that the Saint was still securely trussed.

"For the last time, will you tell us the truth?" he asked, and there was a hoarseness in his voice that seemed to be resisting a temptation to turn the demand into an appeal.

"I've told you the truth," said the Saint angrily, "and I can't alter it. I'm sorry for you, but you hurt my feelings and I hate being tied up. When I get out of here I'm afraid I shall have to charge you a lot of money for all the fun you've had out of being such a blithering fat-head."

"If you get out," said Portmore unpleasantly.

He was carrying a long coil of flex and a couple of sticks of dynamite, and these things answered yet another of the few remaining questions in the Saint's mind. To blow up the tunnel after its work was done would effectively solve the problem of delaying pursuit and hampering the tracing of the rescuers while they extended their flying start to really useful dimensions.

The men passed through the steel door and went down the ladder, disappearing one by one. Presently they had all gone, but the safe door was left open and the electric light burned dimly at the top of the dark shaft.

Simon twisted again at his bonds, gritting his teeth at the self-inflicted torture. After a while he felt his hands throbbing and going numb as the tightening metal cut off the circulation; but still he was no nearer to freedom. And no kindly accident had placed a pair of wire-cutters within his reach. He lay back at last breathlessly, and considered his fate as calmly as he could. Julia Trafford, who might have helped him, was kidnapped; Hoppy Uniatz had vanished on the trail of some crazy and incomprehensible inspiration. Nobody else knew where he was. Barring one of those miracles on which his career had already made so many arrogant demands, he could look ahead and see the doors opening for his last and most adventurous journey.

How soon would it be time to go?

Probably there would still be a little more work for the men who had gone into the tunnel to do, a few final preparations to make for the triumphal moment. By this time it was twenty minutes to eleven. Between then and midnight it would happen almost certainly. He watched the minute hand crawl maddeningly up the dial of the clock, begin to drop equally slowly down the other side…

Somebody walked with distinctly audible caution down the passage and stopped outside the door, breathing loudly. The handle rattled faintly, but the door had been locked on the inside when Jeffroll and company came in. There was a brief pause; and then a strident whisper grated through the panels.

"Is dat you, boss?"

"Good old Hoppy!" gasped the Saint joyfully.

He was not altogether without the power of movement: humping himself inelegantly across the floor like a sort of caterpillar he was able to reach the door, and then, on his knees in front of it, he managed to detach the key with his teeth and pushed it under the door with his feet. Hoppy unlocked the door and stood beaming down at him like a schoolboy who has come home with a prize.

"Hi," said Mr. Uniatz, in comradely greeting.

He stepped forward and untied the Saint as casually as he would have offered him a light for a cigarette; and it only needed this casualness to remind Simon that this complacently grinning bonehead was, after all, the cause of more than half the trouble.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" he demanded, with an ominous cooling off of his first grateful enthusiasm.

Mr. Uniatz blinked at him reproachfully, like a dog who has proudly laid a fresh-killed rat at his master's feet, only to receive a clout over the ear. Something, Mr. Uniatz began to suspect, seemed to have come between him and the Boss. The perfect harmony which had hitherto bound them together, their zusammengehorigkeitsgefühl , as the Germans so succinctly put it, seemed to have come unstuck.

"Well, boss, I listen outside de door," he said, with a generous attempt to clear up the entire misunderstanding in a sentence.

"Outside what door?" asked the Saint patiently.

"Outside dis door here," said Mr. Uniatz, no less patiently — he felt that for the first time in their acquaintanceship his deity, the boss, was found wanting in rudimentary intelligence. "I hear de udder guys have got de snatch on Julia, an' you told me dis mornin' de attorney was in de racket. So when de guy comes out I bean de guy wit' my Betsy an' go after de guy," explained Mr. Uniatz, making everything translucently clear.

Fortunately the Saint had inside information which enabled him to distinguish one guy from another; but this was about as much as he did understand.

"Let me get this straight," he said. "When I came in here, you followed and listened outside the door?"

"Yes, boss."

"And nobody caught you at it."

"I didn't t'ink about dat, boss," said Hoppy worriedly, as if he feared that he might yet be caught in that past act of eavesdropping.

The Saint wiped his forehead. He could remember himself wishing that he could listen outside that door, and discarding the idea as hopelessly impracticable; but a fool had ambled in where a Saint had certainly feared to tread.

"And you heard about Julia being kidnapped?"

"Yes, boss."

"You got steamed up about it, and pushed off to give somebody the works."

"Well, boss—"

"And then the lawyer came out."

"Yeah. He came t'ru de dinin'-room. I go after him, an' de udder guy tries to stop me; so I bean him wit' my Betsy."

"And then what?"

"De lawyer is gittin' into his heap, an' he don't know I beaned de udder guy. So I climb up in de rumble seat, an' we hit de grit."

Simon nodded, chafing his hands to ease the pain of returning circulation.

"Where did you go?"

"I dunno, boss. Foist we go down to de harbour, an' dis guy gets in a boat an' blows off. I can't find anudder boat to follow him, an' I guess he'd of seen me comin' on de water anyhow, so I sit in de car an' wait. He goes off to a yacht outside an' goes on board. He stays on de yacht free-four hours, an' I begin t'inkin' he ain't comin' back my way. I gotta toist like nobody's business, an' de fishin' guys start lookin' at me an' one of 'em comes up an' asks if I want to rent a boat. After a bit de guy comes back from de yacht, an' I duck back in de rumble an' we screw. We go maybe six miles, an' he turns in de drive of a house dat's got a board outside For Sale. Maybe de house is for sale at dat, because I take a gander t'ru de windows an' it ain't got no foinitchure inside. De red-haired guy is inside wit' a coupla gophers; an' I go in t'ru de door, which is not locked, an' dey lamp my Betsy an' stick 'em up."