Leslie Charteris - Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

And then the red star swept out of sight round a bend; and the Saint turned away with a shrug, and glanced down again at the sea, where lay another red star, with a green one beside it.

In that, at least, he had deliberately lied... . The ship, he was sure, had been within a mile of the shore when he spoke; and now it had ceased to move. The rattle of a chain came faintly to his ears, and then he heard the splash of the anchor.

They had run their time-table close enough! And Roger Conway, with about a hundred and eighty miles to drive, to London and back, and a job of work to do on the way, had no mean gag to put over—even in the Hirondel. The Saint, who was a connoisseur of speed, swore by that car; and he knew that Roger Conway, for all his modesty, could spin a nifty wheel when he was put to it; but, even so, he reckoned that Roger hadn't a heap to beef about. Any verbiage about Roger having nothing to do that night would be so much apple­sauce. ...

"And pray Heaven he doesn't pile that bus up on its front bumpers on the way," murmured Simon piously.

As he slipped into the shadows of a clump of trees, his fingers strayed instinctively to his left sleeve, feeling for the hilt of Belle, the little throwing-knife that was his favorite weapon, which he could use with such a bewildering speed and skill. Once upon a time, Belle had been merely the twin sister of Anna, who was his darling; but he had lost Anna three months ago, in the course of his first fight with Marius. And, touching Belle, in her little leather sheath strapped to his forearm, the Saintly smile flickered over his lips, without reach­ing his eyes....

Then, beyond the clump of trees, he stood be­side the wooden fence that walled off the estate. It was as tall as himself; he stretched up cautious fin­gers, and felt a thick entanglement of rusty barbed wire along the top. But a couple of feet over his head one of the trees in the clump through which he had just passed extended a long bare branch far over the fence. Simon limbered his muscles swift­ly, judged his distance, and jumped for it. His hands found their hold as smoothly and accurately as if he had been performing on a horizontal bar in a gymnasium; and he swung himself back to the fence hand over hand, pulled up with his arms, carried his legs over, and dropped lightly to the ground on the other side.

Fastidiously settling his tie, which had worked a fraction of an inch out of place during the per­formance, he stepped through the narrow skirting of forestry in which he had landed, and inspected the view.

In front of him, and away round to his right, spread an expanse of park land, broken by occa­sional trees, and surrounding the house on the two sides that he could see. Also surrounding the house, and farther in, lay the gardens, trellises and terraces, shrubberies and outbuildings, dimly visi­ble in the gloom. On his left, crowning a steady rise of ground, a kind of balustraded walk cut a clean black line against the sky, and he guessed that this marked the edge of the cliffs.

In this direction he moved, keeping in the shel­tering obscurity of the border of trees for as long as he could, and then breaking off at right angles, parallel with the balustrade, before he had mount­ed enough of the gentle slope for his silhouette to be marked against the skyline. He felt certain that his entrance upon the estate was not yet public knowledge, and he was inclined to stay cagey about it: the number and personal habits of the household staff were very much of an unknown quantity so far, and the Saint was not tempted to run any risk of provoking them prematurely. Swiftly as he shifted through the faint starlight, his sensitive ears were alert for the slightest sound, his restless eyes scanned every shadow, and the fingers of his right hand were never far from the chased ivory hilt of Belle. He himself made no more sound than a prowling leopard, and that same leopard could not have constituted a more deadly menace to any member of the opposition gang who might have chanced to be roaming about the grounds on Simon Templar's route.

Presently the house was again on his right, and much nearer to him, for he had travelled round two sides of a rough square. He began to move with an even greater caution. Then, in a moment, gravel grated under his feet. He glanced sharply to his left, to see where the path led, and observed a wide gap in the balustrade at the cliff edge. That would be the top of a flight of steps running down the cliff face to the shore, he figured; and beside the gap he saw a tree that would provide friendly cover for another peep at the developments on the water below.

He turned off the path and melted into the blackness beneath the tree. This grew on the very edge of the scarp; and the break in the balustrade meant what he had thought it meant—a rough stairway that vanished downwards into the dark­ness.

Looking out, Simon saw a thin paring of new moon slithering out of the rim of the sea. It wouldn't be much of a moon even when it was ful­ly risen, he reflected, with a voiceless thanksgiving to the little gods that had made the adventure this much easier. For all felonious purposes, the light was perfect—nothing but the soft luminance of a sky spangled with a thousand stars—light enough for a cat-eyed shikari like Simon Templar to work by, without being bright enough to be embarrass­ing.

He switched his eyes downwards again, and saw, midway between the anchored ship and the thin white ribbon of sand at the foot of the cliff, a tiny black shape stealing over the waters. Motion­less, instinctively holding his breath and parting his lips—the Saint's faculties worked involuntari­ly, whether they were needed or not—he could catch shreds of the sound of grating rowlocks.

And then he heard another sound, behind him, that was much easier to hear—the gritting of heavy boots on the gravel he had just quitted.

HE MERGED a little deeper into the blackness of his cover, and looked round. A lantern was bobbing down the path from the house, and three men tramped along by its light. In a moment their voices came to him quite plainly.

"Himmel! I shall vant to go to bet. Last night— to-night—it iss never no sleep for der mans."

"Aw—ya big skeezicks! What sorta tony outfit d'ya think ya've horned in on?"

"Ah, 'e will-a always be sleeping, da Gerraman. He would-a make-a all his time, sleeping and-a drinking—but I t'ink 'e like-a best-a da drinking."

"Maybe he's gotta toist like I got. Ya can't do nuth'n about dat kinda toist...."

The Saint leaned elegantly against his tree, watching the advancing group, and there was a hint of genuine admiration in his eyes.

"A Boche, a Wop, and a Bowery Boy," he mur­mured. "Gee—that man Marius ought to be run­ning the League of Nations!"

The three men marched a few more yards in si­lence; and they were almost opposite the Saint when the Bowery Boy spoke again.

"Who's bringin' down de goil?"

"Hermann"—the Boche answered with guttural brevity.

"She is-a da nice-a girl, no?" The Wop took up the running sentimentally. "She remind-a me of-a da girl in Sorrento, 'oo I knew—"

"She sure is a classy skoit. But us poor fish ain't gotta break—it's de big cheese fer hers, sure...."

They passed so close by the Saint that he could have reached out and knifed the nearest of them without an effort—and he did actually meditate that manoeuvre for a second, for he had a forth­right mind. But he knew that one minor assassina­tion more or less would not make much difference, and he stood to lose more than he could hope to gain. Besides, any disturbance at that juncture would wreck beyond redemption the plan which he had just formed.

The League of Nations was descending the cliff stairway, the mutter of their voices growing fainter as they went. Simon took another look at the sea and saw that the ship's boat had halved its distance from the shore. And then, after one quick glance round to see if anyone was following on immedi­ately behind the three who had passed on, he slipped out of his shelter and flitted down the steps in the wake of the voices.