Leslie Charteris - Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

He stood by the curb, shaking with silent laughter, and watched the Law brace itself and plunge valiantly into the smoke. Then the Hirondel purred up beside him, with the melan­choly-looking vendor of newspapers at the wheel, and the Saint stepped into the back seat.

"O.K., big boy," he drawled; and Roger Conway let in the clutch.

"ALTOGETHER a most satisfactory beginning to the Sabbath," the Saint remarked, as the big car switched into a side street. "I won't say it was dead easy, but you can't have everything. The only real trouble came at the very end, and then the old magnesium cigarette was just what the doctor ordered.... Have a nice chat with the police?"

"Mostly about you," said Roger. "The ideas that man had about the Saint were too weird and wonderful for words. I steered him onto the subject, and spent the rest of the time wishing I hadn't—it hurt so much trying not to laugh."

Simon chuckled.

"And now," he said, "I'm wondering what story dear Heinrich is trying to put over. That man won't get any beauty sleep tonight. Oh, it's a glorious thought! Dear Heinrich...."

He subsided into a corner, weak with merriment, and felt for his cigarette case. Then he observed the ancient invalid, writhing helplessly on the cushions beside him, and grinned.

"Sorry, Beautiful," he murmured, "but I'm afraid you'll have to stay like that till we get home. We can't have you making a fuss now. But as soon as we arrive we'll untie you and give you a large glass of milk, and you shall tell us the story of your life."

The patriarch shook his head violently; then, finding that his protest was ignored, he relapsed into apathetic resignation.

A few minutes later the Hirondel turned into the mews where Simon Templar had established his headquarters in a pair of luxuriously converted garages. As the car stopped, Simon picked up the old man again and stepped out. Roger Conway opened the front door for him, and the Saint passed through the tiny hall into the sitting room, while Roger went to put the car away. Simon deposited the he-ancient in a chair and drew the blinds; not until after he had assured himself that no one could look in from outside did he switch on the lights and turn to regard his souvenir of the night's entertainment.

"Now you shall say your piece, Uncle," he remarked, and went to untie the gag. "Roger will make your Glaxo hot for you in a minute, and— Holy Moses!"

The Saint drew a deep breath.

For, as he removed the gag, the long gray beard had come away with it. For a moment he was too amazed to move. Then he snatched off the dark glasses and the shabby tweed cap, and a mass of rich brown hair tumbled about the face of one of the loveliest girls he had ever seen.

THAT HAND-BRAKE'S still a bit feeble, old boy." Roger Conway came in, unfastening the gaudy choker which he had donned for his character part. "You ought to get—"

His voice trailed away, and he stood staring.

The Saint was on his knees, his little throwing knife in his hand, swiftly cutting ropes away from wrists and ankles.

"I'll have it seen to on Monday," said the Saint coolly.

Roger swallowed.

"Damn it, Saint—"

Simon looked round with a grin.

"Yes, I know, sonny boy," he said. "It is our evening, isn't it?"

He stood up and looked down at the girl.

"How are you feeling, old thing?"

She had her hands clasped to her forehead.

"I'll be all right in a minute," she said. "My head—hurts. . . ."

"That dope they gave you," murmured the Saint. "And the crack you got afterwards. Rotten, isn't it? But we'll put that right in a brace of shakes. Roger, you beetle off to the kitchen and start some tea, and I'll officiate with the dispensary."

Roger departed obediently; and Simon went over to a cupboard, and took therefrom a bottle and a glass. From the bottle he shook two pink tablets into the glass. Then he fizzed soda-water onto them from the siphon, and thoughtfully watched them dissolve.

"Here you are, old dear." He touched the girl lightly on the shoulder, with the foaming drink in his other hand. "Just shoot this down, and in about five minutes, when you've lowered a cup of tea on top of it, you'll be prancing about like a canary on a hot pancake."

She looked up at him a little doubtfully, as if she were wondering whether her present headache might not be so bad as the one she might get from the glass he was offering. But the Saint's smile was reassuring.

"Good girl. . . . And it wasn't so very foul, was it?"

Simon smiled approval as she handed him back the empty glass.

"Thank you—so much. ..."

"Not at all," said the Saint. "Any little thing like that. . . . Now, all you've got to do, lass, is just to lie back and rest and wait for that cup of tea."

He lighted a cigarette and leaned against the table, surveying her in silence.

Under her tousled hair he saw a face that must have been modelled by happy angels. Her eyes were closed then, but he had already seen them open—deep pools of hazel, shaded by soft lashes.

Her mouth was proud and imperious, yet with laughter lurking in the curves of the red lips. And a little colour was starting to ebb back into the faultless cheeks. If he had ever seen real beauty in a woman, it was there. There was a serene dignity in the forehead, a fineness of line about the small, straight nose, a wealth of character in the moulding of the chin that would have singled her out in any company. And the Saint was not sur­prised; for it was dawning upon him that he knew who she was.

The latest Bystander was on the table beside him. He picked it up and turned the pages. . . . She was there. He knew he could not have been mistaken, for he had been studying the picture only the previous afternoon. He had thought she was lovely then; but now he knew that the photograph did her no justice.

He was still gazing at her when Roger entered with a tray.

"Good man." Simon removed his gaze from the girl for one second, with an effort, and then allowed it to return. He shifted off the table. "Come along, lass."

She opened her eyes, smiling.

"I feel ever so much better now," she said.

"Nothing to what you'll feel like when you've inhaled this Château Lipton," said the Saint cheerfully. "One or two lumps? Or three?"

"Only two."

She spoke with the slightest of American ac­cents, soft and utterly fascinating.

Simon handed her the cup.

"Thank you," she said; and then, suddenly: "Oh, tell me how you found me. ..."

"Well, that's part of a long story," said the Saint. "The short part of it is that we were interested in Heinrich Dussel—the owner of the house where I found you—and Roger here was watching him. About midnight Roger saw an old man arrive in a car—drugged—"

"How did you know I was drugged?"

"They brought a wheel chair out of the house for you," Roger explained. "They seemed to be in rather a hurry, and as they lifted you out of the car they caught your head a frightful crack on the door. Now, even a paralyzed old man doesn't take a bang on the head like that without making some movement or saying something; but you took it like a corpse, and no one even apologized."

The Saint laughed.

"It was a really bright scheme," he said. "A perfect disguise, perfectly thought out—right down to those gloves they put on you in case anyone noticed your hands. And they'd have brought it off if it hadn't been for that one slip— and Roger's eagle eye. But after that, the only thing for us to do was to interview Heinrich. ..."

He grinned reminiscently, and retailed the entire episode for Roger Conway's benefit. The latter half of it the girl already knew, but they laughed again together over the thought of the curtain to the scene—the Law ploughing heroically in to rescue other gray-beards from the flames, and finding Mr. Dussel. . . .