Leslie Charteris - Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

"Terrible."

"So do I. Now, if it had been Roger—"

"Simon—"

"My name," said the Saint cheerfully. "I know—I owe you an apology for that last bit of cross-examination before the unveiling of the monument, but the chance was too good to miss. The prisoner pleaded guilty under great provoca­tion, and threw himself upon the mercy of the court. Now tell me about Marmaduke."

He sank onto the couch beside her, flicking open his cigarette case. She accepted gratefully; and then, as quietly and composedly as she could, she told him all she had heard.

He was a surprisingly sober listener. She found that the flippant travesty of his real character with which he elected to entertain the world at large was a flimsy thing; and, when he was listening, it fell away altogether. He sat perfectly still, temporarily relaxed but still vivid in repose, alert eyes intent upon her face; the boyish effervescence that was his lighter charm bubbled down into the back­ground, and the tempered metal of the man stood out alone and unmistakable. He only interrupted her at rare intervals—to ask a question that went to the heart of the story like aimed lightning, or to help her to make plain a point that she had worded clumsily. And, as he listened, the flesh and blood of the plot built itself up with a frightful solidity upon the skeleton that was already in his mind. . . .

It must have taken her a quarter of an hour to give him all the information she had gained; and at the end of that time the clear vision in the Saint's brain was as stark and monstrous as the thing he had imagined so few months ago—only a little while before he had thought that the ghost was laid for ever. All that she told him fitted faultlessly upon the bones of previous knowledge and specu­lation that were already his; and he saw the thing whole and real, the incarnate nightmare of a mega­lomaniac's delirium, gigantic, bloated, hideous, crawling over the map of Europe in a foul sup­puration of greed and jealousy, writhing slimy ten­tacles into serene and precious places. The ghost was not laid. It was creeping again out of the poi­soned shadows where it had grown up,.made stronger and more savage yet by its first frustra­tion, preparing now to fashion for itself a fetid physical habitation in the bodies of a holocaust of men. . . .

And the Saint was still silent, absorbed in his vi­sion, for a while after Sonia Delmar had finished speaking; and even she could not see all that was in his mind.

Presently she said: "Didn't I find out enough, Simon? You see, I believed you'd been killed—I thought it was all over."

"Enough?" repeated the Saint softly, and there was a queer light in the steady sea-blue eyes. "Enough? . . . You've done more than enough— more than I ever dreamed you'd do. And as for thinking it was all over—well, lass, I heard you. I've never heard anything like it in my life. It was plain hell keeping up the act. But—I was just fasci­nated. And I've apologized. . . . But the game goes on, Sonia!"

THE SAINT STARED at the carpet, and for a time there was no movement at all in the cabin; even the cigarette that lay forgotten between his fingers was held so still that the trail of smoke from it went up as straight as a pencilled line. The low-pitched thrum of the ship's engines and the chatter of stirred waters about the hull formed no more than an undercurrent of sound that scarcely disturbed the silence.

Much later, it seemed, Sonia Delmar said: "What happened to Roger?"

"I sent him back to London to find Lessing," answered the Saint. "It came to me when I was on my way out here—I didn't see why Marius should just break even after we'd got you back, and bring­ing Ike on the scene seemed a first-class way of stirring up the stew. And the more I think of that scheme, after what you've told me, old girl, the sounder it looks to me. . . . Only, it doesn't seem big enough now—not for the kettle of hash we've dipped our ladles into."

"How long ago was that?"

"Shortly before I heaved that rock at you." Si­mon glanced at his watch. "By my reckoning, if we turned this ship round about now, we should all fetch up at Saltham around the same time. I guess that's the next move...."

"To hold up the ship?"

The Saint grinned; and in an instant the old mocking mischief was back in his eyes. She knew at once that if the business of holding up the ship single-handed had been thrust upon him, he would have duly set out to hold up the ship single-hand­ed—and enjoyed it. But he shook his head.

"I don't think it'll be necessary. I shall just wan­der up on to the bridge and make a few sugges­tions. There'll only be the captain and the helms­man and one officer to deal with; and the watch has just been changed, so no one will be butting in for hours. There's no reason why the rest of the crew should wake up to what's happening until we're home."

"And when they do wake up?''

"There will probably be a certain amount of bother," said the Saint happily. "Nevertheless, we shall endeavor to retire with dignity.''

"And go ashore?"

"Exactly."

"And then?"

"And then—let us pray. I've no more idea than you have what other cards Rayt Marius is wearing, up his sleeve, but from what I know of him I'd say he was certain to be carrying a spare deck. We've got to check up on that. Afterwards—"

The girl nodded quietly.

"I remember what you said last night."

"R.I.P." The Saint laughed softly. "I guess that's all there is to it.... And then the last chap­ter, with you marrying Ike, and Roger and I start­ing a stamp collection. But who says nothing ever happens?"

And the lazy voice, the cool and flippant turning of the words, scarcely masked the sterner challenge of those reckless eyes.

And then the Saint rose to his feet, and the butt of his cigarette went soaring through the open porthole; and, as he turned, she found that the set of the fine fighting lips had changed again com­pletely. But that was just pure Saint. His normal temperament held every mood at once: he could leap from grave to gay without pause or parley, as the fancy moved him, and do it in such a way that neither seemed inconsequent. And now Sonia Delmar looked at him and found in his changed face an answer to the question that she had no need to ask; and he saw that she understood.

"But all that's a long way off yet, isn't it?" he murmured. "So I think we'll go right ahead and stick up this hoary hooker for a start. Shall we?"

"We?"

"I don't see why you shouldn't come along, old dear. It isn't every day of your life that you have the chance to shove your oar into a spot of twenty-five carat piracy. Burn it!—what's the use of being raised respectable if you never go out for the frantic fun of bucking plumb off the rails and step­ping off the high springboard into the dizzy depths of turpitude?"

"But what can I do?"

"Sit in a ring seat and root for me, sweetheart. Cheer on the gory brigand." Swiftly the Saint was replacing beard and glasses and settling Vassiloff's hat to a less rakish angle; and two blue devils of desperate delight danced in his eyes. "It seems to me," said the Saint, "that there's a heap more mirth and horseplay on the menu before we settle down to the speechifying. You ain't heard nothin' yet." And the Saint was buttoning the great fur collar about his chin with sinewy fingers that had an air of playing their own independent part in the surge of joyous anticipation that had suddenly swept up through every inch of his splendid frame. "And it seems to me," said the Saint, "that the best and brightest moments of the frolic are still ahead—so why worry about anything?"

He smiled down at her—at least, there was a Saintly glitter behind the thick glasses that he had perched upon his nose, though his mouth was hid­den. And as Sonia Delmar stood up she was shaken by a great wave of unreasoning grateful­ness—to the circumstances that made it necessary to switch off thus abruptly from the line of thought that he had opened up so lightly, and to the Saint himself, for making it so easy for her to turn away from the perilous path on which she might have stumbled. And she knew quite definite­ly that it was as deliberate and calculated a move as ever he made in his life, and he let her know it; yet that took none of the inherent gentleness from the gesture. And she accepted the gesture at its worth.