Leslie Charteris - The Saint Closes the Case

And he looked at the door, and saw the eyes of Marius.

"I should advise you to surrender, Templar," said the giant coldly. "If you are obstinate, you will have to be shot."

"That'd help you, wouldn't it, Angel Face? And then how would you find Vargan?"

"Your friend Conway might be made to speak."

"You've got a hope!"

"I have my own methods of persuasion, Templar, and some of them are almost as ingenious as yours. Besides, have you thought that your death would leave Miss Holm without a protector?"

"I have," said the Saint. "I've also thought that my surren­der would leave her in exactly the same position. But she has a knife, and I don't think you'll find her helpful. Think again!"

"Besides," said Marius, in the same dispassionate tone, "you need not be killed at once. It would be possible to wound you again."

The Saint threw back his head.

"I never surrender," he said.

"Very well," said Marius calmly.

He snapped out another order, and again the axe crashed on the door. The Saint knew that the hole was being enlarged so that a man could shoot through it and know what he was shooting at, and he knew that the end could not now be long in coming.

There was no cover in the room. They might have flattened themselves against the wall in which the door was, so that they could not be seen from outside, but that would make little difference. A few well-grouped shots aimed along the wall by an automatic would be certain of scoring.

And the Saint had no weapon but the captured knife; and that, as he had said, he had given to Patricia.

The odds were impossible.

As he watched the chips flying from the gap which the axe had already made—and it was now nearly as big as a man's head—the wild thought crossed his mind that he might chal­lenge Marius to meet him in single combat. But immediately he discarded the thought. Dozens of men might have ac­cepted, considering the difference in their sizes: the taunt of cowardice, the need to maintain their prestige among their followers, at least, might have forced their hand and stung them to take the challenge seriously. But Marius was above all that. He had one object in view, and it was already proved that he viewed it with a singleness of aim that was above all ordinary motives. The man who had cold-bloodedly shot a way through the body of one of his own gang—and got away with it—would not be likely to be moved by any argument the Saint could use.

Then—what?

The Saint held Patricia in his arms, and his brain seemed to reel like the spinning of a great crazy flywheel. He knew that he was rapidly weakening now. The heroic effort which had taken him to that room and barricaded it had cost him much, and the sudden access of supernatural strength and energy which had just come upon him could not last for long. It was like a transparent mask of glittering crystal, hard but brittle, and behind it and through it he could see the founda­tions on which it based its tenacity crumbling away.

It was a question, as it had been in other tight corners, of playing for time. Arid it was also the reverse. Whatever was to be done to win the time must be done quickly—--before that forced blaze of vitality fizzled out and left him powerless.

The Saint passed a hand across his eyes, and felt strangely futile. If only he were whole and strong, gifted again with the blood that he had lost, with a shoulder that wasn't spreading a numbing pain all over him, and a brain cleared of the muzzy aftermath of that all-but-knock-out swipe on the jaw, to be of some use to Patricia in her need!

"Oh, God!" he groaned. "God help me!"

But still he could see nothing useful to do—nothing but the forlorn thing that he did. He put Patricia from him and leapt to the door on to part of the barricade, covering with his body the hole that was being cut. Marius saw him.

"What is it now, Templar?" asked the giant grimly.

"Nothing, honey," croaked the Saint, with a breathless little laugh. "Just that I'm here, and I'm carefully arranging myself so that if anyone shoots at me it will be fatal. And I know you don't want me to die yet. So it'll keep you busy a bit longer— won't it?—making that hole big enough for it to be safe to shoot through. . . ."

"You are merely being foolishly troublesome," said Marius unemotionally, and added an order.

The man with the axe continued his work.

But it would take longer—that was all the Saint cared about. There was hope as long as there was life. The miracle might happen . . . might happen. . . .

He found Patricia beside him.

"Simon—what's the use?"

"We'll see, darling. We're still kicking, anyway—that's the main thing."

She tried to move him by force, but he held her hands away. And then she tore herself out of his grasp; and with dazed and uncomprehending eyes he watched her at the window— watched her raise the sash and look out into the night.

"Help!"

"You fool!" snarled the Saint bitterly. "Do you want them to have the last satisfaction of hearing us whine?"

He forgot everything but that—that stern point of pride —and left his place at the door. He reached her in a few lurch­ing strides, and his hands fell roughly on her shoulders to drag her away.

She shouted again: "Help!"

"Be quiet!" snarled the Saint bitterly.

But when he turned her round he saw that her face was calm and serene, and not at all the face that should have gone with those cries.

"You asked God to help you, old boy," she said. "Why shouldn't I ask the men who have come?"

And she pointed out of the window.

He -looked; and he saw that the gate at the end of the garden, and the drive within, were lighted up as with the light of day by the headlights of a car that had stopped in the road beyond. But for the din of the axe at the door he would have heard its approach.

And then into that pathway of light stepped a man, tall and dark and trim; and the man cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted:

"Coming, Pat! . . . Hullo, Simon!"

"Norman!" yelled the Saint. "Norman—my seraph—my sweet angel!"

Then he remembered the odds, and called again:

"Look out for yourself! They're armed——"

"So are we," said Norman Kent happily. "Inspector Teal and his merry men are all round the house. We've got 'em cold."

For a moment the Saint could not speak.

Then:

"Did you say Inspector Teal?"

"Yes," shouted Norman. And he added something. He added it brilliantly. He knew that the men in the house were for­eigners—that even Marius, with his too-perfect English, was a foreigner—and that no one but the Saint and Patricia could be expected to be familiar with the more abstruse perversions and defilements possible to the well of native English. And he made the addition without a change of tone that might have hinted at his meaning. He added: "All breadcrumbs and breambait. Don't bite!"

Then Simon understood the bluff.

It must have been years since the sedate and sober Norman Kent had played such irreverent slapstick with the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but the Saint could forgive the lapse.

Simon's arm was round Patricia's shoulders, and he had seen a light in the darkness. The miracle had happened, and the adventure went on.

And he found his voice.

"Oh, boy!" he cried; and dragged Patricia down into the temporary shelter of the barricade as the first shot from out­side the smashed door smacked over their heads and sang away into the blackness beyond the open window.

A second bullet snarled past the Saint's ear and flattened itself in a silvery scar on the wall behind him; but no more shots followed. From outside the house came the rattle of other guns. Simon heard Marius speaking crisply, and then he was listening to the sound of footsteps hurrying away down the corridor. He raised his head out of cover, and saw nothing through the hole in the door.