Leslie Charteris - The Saint Closes the Case

"You're sure it was a bluff?"

"If it had not been a bluff I should not have found you here. Do you really think me so ignorant of official methods as to believe that you could possibly have been released so quickly?"

"And yet," said the Saint thoughtfully, "we might have been put here to bait a police trap—for you!"

Marius smiled. The Saint would never have believed that such a face could smile if he had not seen it smile once before. And it smiled with ghastly urbanity.

"Since Inspector Teal left London," said Marius, "he has never been out of the sight of my agents. Therefore I have good reason to be convinced that he still does not know where you are. Shall we say, Templar, that this time you will have to think of something more tangible than—er—what was the phrase your friends used?—than breadcrumbs and breambait?"

Simon nodded.

"A charming phrase," he murmured.

"So," said Marius, "you may choose between surrendering Vargan or having him taken from you by force."

The Saint smiled.

"Heads you win, tails I lose—what? . . . But suppose the coin falls on its blinkin' edge? Suppose, sweet pet, you got pinched yourself? This isn't Chicago, you know. You can't run little wars of your own all over the English countryside. The farmers might get annoyed and start throwing broccoli at you. I'm not sure what broccoli is, but they might throw it."

Again that ghastly grin flitted across the giant's face.

"You have not understood me. My country requires Vargan and his invention. In order to obtain that, I will sacrifice as many lives as I may be forced to sacrifice; and my men will die here for their country as readily as they would die on any other battlefield."

"Your country!"

The Saint had been lighting a cigarette with a cool and steady hand; and for all that might have been read in the scene by an observer who could not hear the words, they might have been discussing nothing more than the terms of a not-too-friendly golf match—instead of a situation in which the fates of nations were involved. ... At one moment. . . . And then the Saint split the thin crust of calm with those two elec­tric words. The voice that spoke them was no longer the Saint's gently mocking drawl. It was a voice of pure steel and rock and acid. It took those three simple syllables, ground and bonded a hundred knife-edges around them, fenced them about with a thousand stinging needle-points, and spoke them in a breath that might have whipped off the North Pole.

"Your country!"

"That is what I said."

"Has a man like you a country? Is there one acre of God's earth that a man like you loves for no other reason than that it's his home? Have you a loyalty to anything—except the bloated golden spiders whose webs you weave? Are there any people you can call your people—people you wouldn't sacrifice without a qualm to put thirty pieces of silver into your pocket? Do you care for anything in the world but your own greasy god of money, Rayt Marius?"

For the first time Marius's face changed.

"It is my country," he said.

The Saint laughed shortly.

"Tell us any lie but that, Marius," he said. "Because that one won't get by."

"But it is still my country. And the men outside lent to me by my country for this work—"

"Has it occurred to you," said the Saint, "that we also might be prepared to die for our country—and that the certainty of being imprisoned if we were rescued might not influence us at all?"

"I have thought of that."

"And don't you place too great a reliance on our honesty? Is there anything to stop us forgetting the armistice and hold­ing you as a hostage?"

Marius shook his head.

"What, then," he said silkily, "was there to stop my coming here under a white flag to distract your attention while my men occupied the rest of the house from the other side? When the fortune of one's country is at stake one has little time for conventional honesty. A white flag may be honoured on a battlefield, but this is more than a mere battlefield. It is all the battlefields of the war."

Simon was teetering watchfully on his heels, his cigarette canted up between his lips. His hands hung loosely at his sides, but in each of them he held sudden death.

"You'd still be our hostage, loveliness," he said. "And if there's going to be any treachery——"

"My life is nothing," said Marius. "There is a leader out there"—he gestured towards the road—"who would not hesitate to sacrifice me and many others."

"Namely?"

"His Highness——"

Simon Templar drew a deep breath.

"His Highness the Crown Prince Rudolf of——"

"Hell!" said the Saint.

"A short time ago you saved his life," said Marius. "It is for that reason that His Highness has directed me to give you this chance. He also wished me to apologise for wounding you yesterday, although it happened before we knew that you were the Saint."

"Sweetest lamb," said the Saint, "I'll bet you wouldn't have obeyed His Highness if you hadn't needed his men to do your dirty work!"

Marius spread his huge hands.

"That is immaterial. I have obeyed. And I await your decision. You may have one minute to consider it."

Simon sent his cigarette spinning through the window with a reckless flourish.

"You have our decision now," he said.

Marius bowed.

"If you will answer one question," said the Saint.

"What do you want to know?"

"When you kidnapped Vargan, you couldn't take his apparatus with you——"

"I follow your thoughts," said the giant. "You are thinking that even if you surrender Vargan the British experts will still possess the apparatus, which they can copy even if they do not understand it. Let me disillusion you. While some of my men were taking Vargan, others were destroying his apparatus —very effectively. You may be sure that nothing was left which even Sir Roland Hale could make workable. I'm sorry to disappoint you—"

"But you don't disappoint me, Angel Face," said the Saint. "On the contrary, you bring me the best news I've had for a long time. If you weren't so unspeakably repulsive, I believe I'd—I'd fling my arms round your bull neck, Angel Face, dear dewdrop! . . . I'd guessed I could rely on your efficiency, but it's nice to know for certain. ..."

Roger Conway interposed from the other side of the room.

He said: "Look here, Saint, if the Crown Prince is outside, we've only got to tell him the truth about Marius——"

Marius turned.

"What truth?" he inquired suavely.

"Why—the truth about your septic patriotism! Tell him what we know. Tell him how you're just leading him up the garden for your own poisonous ends——"

"And you think he would believe you?" sneered Marius. "You are too childish, Conway! Even you cannot deny that I am doing my best to place Vargan's invention in His High-ness's hands."

The Saint shook his head.

"Angel Face is right, Roger," he said. "The Crown Prince is getting his caviar, and he isn't going to worry why the stur­geon died. No—I've got a much finer bead on the problem than that."

And he faced Marius again.

"It's really truly true, dear one, that Vargan is the key to the whole situation?" he asked softly, persuasively.

"Exactly."

"Vargan is the really truly cream in your coffee?"

The giant twitched his shoulders.

"I do not understand all your idioms. But I think I have made myself plain."

"I was wondering who did it," said Roger sympathetically.

But a new smile was coming to Simon Templar's lips—a mocking, devil-may-care, swashbuckling, Saintly smile. He set his hands on his hips and smiled.

"Then this is our answer," smiled the Saint. "If you want Vargan, you can either come and fetch him or go home and suck jujubes. Take your choice, Angel Face!"