Leslie Charteris - The Saint Closes the Case

"I spoke to Vargan last night," said Norman Kent soberly. "I think he's mad. A megalomaniac. His one idea is that his invention will bring him worldwide fame. His grievance against us is that we're holding up his negotiations with the Government, and thereby postponing the front-page head­lines. I remember he told me he was naming a peerage as part of the price of his secret."

The Saint recalled his lunch with Barney Malone, of the Clarion, and the conversation which had reinforced his in­terest in Vargan, and found Norman's analysis easy to accept.

"I'll speak to him myself," he said.

He did so shortly afterwards.

The afternoon had grown hot and sunny, and it was easy to arrange that Patricia should spend it on the lawn with a book.

"Give your celebrated impersonation of innocent English girlhood, old dear," said the Saint. "At this time of year, and in this weather, anyone searching Maidenhead for a suspici­ous-looking house, and seeing one not being used in the way that houses at Maidenhead are usually used, will be after it like a cat after kippers. And now you're the only one of us who's in balk—bar Orace. So you'll just have to give the local colour all by yourself. And keep your eyes skinned. Look out for a fat man chewing gum. We're shooting all fat men who chew gum on sight, just to make sure we don't miss Claud Eustace. . . ."

When she had gone, he sent Roger and Norman away also. To have had the other two present would have made the affair too like a kangaroo court for his mood.

There was only one witness of that interview: Orace, a stolid and expressionless sentinel, who stood woodenly beside the prisoner like a sergeant-major presenting a defaulter to his orderly officer.

"Have a cigarette?" said the Saint.

He knew what his personality could do; and, left alone to use it, he still held to a straw of hope that he might succeed where Norman had failed.

But Vargan refused the cigarette. He was sullenly defiant.

"May I ask how much longer you propose to continue this farce?" he inquired. "You have now kept me here three days. Why?"

"I think my friend has explained that to you," said Simon.

"He's talked a lot of nonsense—-".

Simon cut the speech short with a curt movement of his hand.

He was standing up, and the professor looked small and frail beside him. Tall and straight and lean was the Saint.

"I want to talk to you seriously," he said. "My friend has appealed to you once. I'm appealing to you now. And I'm afraid this is the last appeal we can make. I appeal to you in the name of whatever you hold most sacred. I appeal to you in the name of humanity. In the name of the peace of the world."

Vargan glared at him short-sightedly.

"An impertinence," he replied. "I've already heard your proposition, and I may say that I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. And that's my answer."

"Then," said Simon quietly, "I may say that I've never in my life heard anything so damnable as your attitude. Or can it be that you're merely a fool—an overgrown child playing with fire?"

"Sir——"

The Saint seemed to grow even taller. There was an arro­gance of command in his poise, in an instant, that brooked no denial. He stood there, in that homely room, like a king of men. And yet, when he continued, his voice was even milder and more reasonable than ever.

"Professor Vargan," he said, "I haven't brought you here to insult you for my amusement. I ask you to try for the moment to forget the circumstances and listen to me as an ordinary man speaking to an ordinary man. You have perfected the most horrible invention with which science has yet hoped to torture a world already sickened with the beastliness of scien­tific warfare. You intend to make that invention over to hands that would not hesitate to use it. Can you justify that?"

"Science needs no justification."

"In France, to-day, there are millions of men buried who might have been alive now. They were killed in a war. If that war had been fought before science applied itself to the per­fection of slaughter, they would have been only thousands in­stead of millions. And, at least, they would have died like men. Does science need no justification for the squandering of those lives?"

"Do you think you can stop war?"

"No. I know I can't. That's not the argument. Listen again. In England to-day there are thousands of men blind, maimed, crippled for life, who might have been whole now. There are as many again in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria. The bodies that God gave, and made wonderful and intricate and beautiful—torn and wrecked by your science, often made so hideous that men shudder to see them. . . . Does science need no justification for that?"

"That is not my business."

"You're making it your business."

The Saint paused for a moment: and then he went on in a voice that no one could have interrupted, the passionate voice of a prophet crying in the wilderness.

"There is science that is good and science that is evil. Yours is the evil science, and all the blessings that good science has given to mankind are no justification for your evil. If we must have science, let it be good science. Let it be a science in which men can still be men, even when they kill and are killed. If there must be war, let it be holy war. Let men fight with the weapons of men, and not with the weapons of fiends. Let us have men to fight and die as champions and heroes, as men used to die, and not as the beasts that perish, as men have to die in our wars now."

"You are an absurd idealist——"

"I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe that, by the grace of God, men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living will return to a grey civilisation. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in it, and fight for it, and fight in its name I against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal. You are such a thing."

"And you are the last hero—fighting against me?"

Simon shook his head.

"Not the last hero," he said simply. "Perhaps not a hero at all. I call myself a soldier of life. I have sinned as much as any man, and more than most. I have been a hunted criminal. I am that now. But everything I've done has been done for the glory of an invisible ideal. I never understood it very clearly before, but I understand it now. But you. . . . Why haven't you even told me that you want to do what you want to do for the glory of your own ideal—for the glory, if you like, of England?"

A fantastic obstinacy flared in Vargan's eyes.

"Because it wouldn't be true," he said. "Science is inter­national. Honour among scientists is international. I've of­fered my invention first to England—that's all. If they're fools enough to refuse to reward me for it, I shall find a country that will."

He came closer to the Saint, with his head sideways, his faded lips curiously twisted. And the Saint saw that he had wasted all his words.

"For years I've worked and slaved," babbled Vargan. "Years! And what have I got for it? A few paltry letters to put after my name. No honour for everybody to see. No money. I'm poor! I've starved myself, lived like a pauper, to save money to carry on my work! Now you ask me to give up everything that I've sacrificed the best years of my life to win—to gratify your Sunday-school sentimentality! I say you're a fool, sir —an imbecile!"

The Saint stood quite still, with Vargan's bony hands claw­ing the air a few inches from his face. His impassivity seemed to infuriate the professor.

"You're in league with them!" screamed Vargan. "I knew it. You're in league with the devils who've tried to keep me down! But I don't care! I'm not afraid of you. You can do your worst. I don't care if millions of people die. I hope you die with them! If I could kill you——"