Leslie Charteris - The Saint Closes the Case

"Pat," whispered Norman; "I left her hiding in your room."

Simon nodded.

"All right. She'll be safe there for a bit. And I'd just as soon have her out of the way while Tiny Tim's beetling around. Let's see what we can do for you first."

He went on with the examination. The entrance was three inches above the knee, and it was much larger than the en­trance of even a large-calibre automatic bullet should have been. There was no exit hole, and Norman let out an involun­tary cry of agony at the Saint's probing.

"That's all, sonny boy," said the Saint; and Norman loos­ened his teeth from his lips.

"Smashed the bone, hasn't it?"

Simon stripped off his coat, and tore off the sleeve of his shirt to improvise a bandage.

"Smashed to bits, Norman, old boy," he said. "The swine are using dum-dums. ... A large whisky, Roger. . . . That'll be a consolation for you, Norman, old warrior."

"It's something," said Norman huskily.

He said nothing else about it, but he understood one thing very clearly.

No man can run very far or very fast with a thighbone splin­tered by an expanding bullet.

Strangely enough, Norman did not care. He drank the whisky they gave him gratefully, and submitted indifferently to the Saint's ministrations. In the pallor of Norman Kent's face was a strange calm.

Simon Templar also understood what that wound meant; but he did not think of it as Norman did.

He knew that Marius was standing in the window, but he did not look up until he had completed the rough dressing with practised hands that were as gentle as a woman's. He wanted to start some hard thinking before he began to bait Marius. Once well under way, the thinking process could con­tinue by itself underneath the inevitable froth of banter and backchat; but the Saint certainly wanted to get a stranglehold on the outstanding features of the situation first. And they were a pretty slimy set of features to have to pin down. What with Patricia on the premises to cramp his style, and Norman Kent crippled, and the British Secret Service, as represented by Captain Gerald Harding, a prisoner inside the fort on a very vague parole, and Chief Inspector Teal combing the district and liable to roll up on the scene at any moment, and Rayt Marius surrounding the bungalow with a young army corps that had already given proof enough that it wasn't accumu­lated in Maidenhead for a Sunday afternoon bun-fight—well, even such an optimistic man as the Saint had to admit that the affair had begun to look distinctly sticky. There had been a time when the Saint was amused to call himself a professional trouble-hunter. He remembered that pleasant bravado now, and wondered if he had ever guessed that his prayers would be so abundantly answered. Verily, he had cast his bread upon the waters and hauled up a chain of steam bakeries. ...

He rose at last to his feet with these meditations simmering down into the impenetrable depths of his mind; and his face had never been milder.

"Good-afternoon, little one," he said softly. "I've been look­ing forward to meeting you again. Life, for the last odd eight­een hours, has seemed very empty without you. But don't let's talk about that."

The giant inclined his head.

"You know me," he said.

"Yes," said the Saint. "I think we've met before. I seem to know your face. Weren't you the stern of the elephant in the circus my dear old grandmother took me to just before I went down with measles? Or were you the whatsit that stuck in the how's-your-father and upset all our drains a couple of years ago?"

Marius shrugged. He was again wearing full morning dress, as he had been when the Saint first met him in Brook Street; but the combination of that costume with this new setting, together with the man's colossal build and hideously rugged face, would have been laughably grotesque if it had not been subtly horrible.

He said: "I have already had some samples of your humour, Templar——"

"On a certain occasion which we all remember," said the Saint gently. "Quite. But we don't charge extra for an encore, so you might as well have your money's worth."

Marius's little eyes took in the others—Roger Conway loung­ing against the bookcase swinging an automatic by the trigger-guard, Norman Kent propped up against the sofa with a glass in his hand, Gerald Harding on the other side of the win­dow with his hands in his pockets and a faint flush on his boyish face.

"I have only just learnt that you are the gentleman who calls himself the Saint," said Marius. "Inspector Teal was indis­creet enough to use a public telephone in the hearing of one of my men. The boxes provided are not very sound-proof. I presume this is your gang?"

"Not 'gang,' " protested the Saint—"not 'gang.' I'm sure saints never go in gangs. But, yes—these are other wearers of the halo. . . .But I'm forgetting. You've never been formally introduced, have you? . . . Meet the boys. . . . On your left, for instance, Captain Acting Saint Gerald Harding, sometime Fellow of Clark's College, canonised for many charitable works, including obtaining a miserly millionaire's signature to a five-figure cheque for charity. The millionaire was quite annoyed when he heard about it. ... Over there, Saint Roger Conway, winner of' the Men's Open Beauty Competition at Noahsville, Ark., in '25, canonised for glorifying the American girl. At least, she told the judge it glorified her. . . . On the floor, Saint Norman Kent, champion beer-swiller at the last Licensed Victuallers' and Allied Trades Centennial Jamboree, canonised for standing free drinks to a number of blind beg­gars on the Feast of Stephen. The beggars, by the way, were not blind until after they'd had the drinks. . . . Oh, and my­self. I'm the Simple Simon who met a pieman coming through the rye. Or words to that effect. I can't help feeling that if I'd been christened Sootlegger I should have met a bootlegger, which would have been much more exciting; but I suppose it's too late to alter that now."

Marius heard out this cataract of nonsense without a flicker of expression. At the end of it he said, patiently: "And Miss Holm?"

"Absent, I'm afraid," said the Saint. "It's my birthday, and she's gone to Woolworth's to buy me a present."

Marius nodded.

"It is not of importance," he said. "You know what I have come for?"

Simon appeared to ponder.

"Let's see. . . . You might have come to tune the piano, only we haven't got a piano. And if we had a mangle you might have come to mend the mangle. No—the only thing I can think of is that you're travelling a line of straw hats and natty neckwear. Sorry, but we're stocked for the season."

Marius dusted his silk hat with a tenderly wielded handker­chief. His face, as always, was a mask.

Simon had to admire the nerve of the man. He still had a long score to settle with Marius, and Marius knew it; but here was Marius dispassionately dusting a silk hat in the very presence of a man who had promised to kill him. It was true that Marius came under a flag of truce, which he would justly ex­pect a man like the Saint to respect; but still Marius gave no sign of recognising that he was in the delicate position of hav­ing to convey an ultimatum to a man who, given the flimsiest rag of excuse, would cheerfully shoot him through the stomach.

"You gain nothing by wasting time," said Marius. "I have come in the hope of saving the lives of some of my men, for some will certainly be killed if we are forced to fight."

"How touching!—as the actress said to the bishop. Is it possible that your conscience is haunted by the memory of the man you killed at Bures, ducky? Or is it just because funerals are so expensive these days?"

Marius shrugged.

"That is my business," he said. "Instead of considering that, you would do better to consider your own position. Every telephone line for ten miles has been cut—that was done as soon as we had definitely located you. Therefore there can be no quicker communication with London than by car. And the local police are not dangerous. Even Inspector Teal is now out of touch with his headquarters, and there is an ambush pre­pared for him into which he cannot help falling. In addition to that, at the nearest cross-roads on either side of this house, I have posted men in police uniforms, who will turn back any car which attempts to come this way, and who will explain away the noise of shooting to any inquisitive persons. It must be over an hour before any help can come to you—and then it can only end in your own arrest. That is, if you are still alive. And you cannot possibly hope to deceive me a second time with the bluff which you employed so successfully last night."