Follow the Saint (29 page)

“We
can go on with the concert,” he explained gently.
“And I’m sure
Comrade Verdean would enjoy having a turn as Master of Ceremonies. Put the
spoon back in the fire,
Verdean, and let’s see how Comrade Kaskin likes his chops
broiled.”

Verdean
stood up slowly, and didn’t move any farther.
His gaze wavered
idiotically over the Saint, as if he was too
dazed to make up his
mind what he ought to do. He pawed
at his burned chest and made helpless
whimpering noises in his throat, like a sick child.

Kaskin
glanced at him for a moment, and slowly brought
his eyes back to the
Saint again. At the time, Simon thought
that it was Verdean’s obvious futility
that kindled the stiffen
ing belligerent
defiance in Kaskin’s stare. There was some
thing almost like tentative domination in it.

Kaskin
sneered: “See if he’ll do it. He wouldn’t have the
guts. And
you
can’t, while you’ve got to keep that gun on us. I’m not soft enough to
fall for that sort of bluff. You picked
the wrong show to
butt in on, however you got here. You’d
better get out again
in a hurry before you get hurt. You’d
better put that gun away and go home,
and forget you ever
came here——
”

And
another voice said: “Or you can freeze right where
you are.
Don’t try to move, or I’ll let you have it.”

The Saint
froze.

The voice
was very close behind him—too close to take any chances with. He could have
flattened Kaskin before it
could carry out its threat, but that was as far as he would get.
The Saint had a coldblooded way of estimating his
chances
in any situation; and he was
much too interested in life just
then to make that kind of trade. He
knew now the real reason
for Kaskin’s sudden
gathering of confidence, and why the
big
man had talked so fast in a strain that couldn’t help centring his attention.
Kaskin had taken his opportunity
well.
Not a muscle of his face had betrayed what he was
seeing; and his loud bullying voice had effectively
covered
any slight noise that the
girl might have made as she crept up.

The girl.
Yes. Simon Templar’s most lasting startlement clung to the fact that the voice
behind him unmistakably belonged to a girl.

IV

“D
ROP THAT
gun,”
she said, “and be quick about it.”

Simon
dropped it. His ears were nicely attuned to the
depth of meaning
behind a voice, and this voice meant what
it said. His
automatic plunked on the carpet; and Morris
Dolf stooped into the
scene and snatched it up. Even then, Dolf said nothing. He propped himself back
on the radio
gram and kept the gun levelled, watching Simon in silence
with
sinister lizard eyes. He was one of the least talkative men
that Simon
had ever seen.

“Keep
him covered,” Kaskin said unnecessarily. “We’ll
see what he
looks like.”

He stepped
forward and jerked the handkerchief down
from the Saint’s
smile.

And then there was a stillness
that prolonged itself through
a gamut of
emotions which would have looked like the most
awful kind of ham acting
if they had been faithfully recorded
on
celluloid. Neither Dolf nor Kaskin had ever met the
Saint personally; but his photograph had at
various times
been published in almost
every newspaper on earth, and
verbal
descriptions of him had circulated through underworld channels so often that
they must have worn a private
groove
for themselves. Admittedly there were still consider
able numbers of
malefactors to whom the Saint was no more
than
a dreaded name; but Messrs Dolf and Kaskin were not
among them. Recognition came to them slowly, which
accounted for the elaborate and longdrawn detail of their
changing expressions; but it came with a frightful
certainty.
Morris Dolf’s fleshless
visage seemed to grow thinner and
meaner,
and his fingers twitched hungrily around the butt of
Simon’s gun. Judd Kaskin’s sanguine complexion
changed
colour for a moment, and then
his mouth twisted as though tasting its own venom.

“The
Saint!” he said hoarsely.

“I
told you you might be sorry,” said the Saint.

He smiled
at them pleasantly, as if nothing had happened to disturb his poise since he
was holding the only weapon in
sight. It was a smile that would have
tightened a quality of
desperation into the vigilance of certain criminals who knew him
better than Dolf and Kaskin did. It was the kind of smile
that only touched the Saint’s lips when the odds
against him
were most hopeless—and
when all the reckless fighting
vitality
that had written the chapter headings in his charmed
saga of adventure was blithely preparing to thumb
its nose at them… .

Then he
turned and looked at the girl.

She was
blonde and blue-eyed, with a small face like a very
pretty baby doll; but the impression of
vapid immaturity was
contradicted by her
mouth. Her mouth had character—not all
of
it very good, by conventional standards, but the kind of
character that has an upsetting effect on many
conventional men. It was a rather large mouth, with a sultry lower lip that
seemed to have been fashioned for the express
purpose of reviving the maximum amount of the Old Adam in any masculine
observer. The rest of her, he noticed, carried out the theme summarized in her
mouth. Her light dress moulded itself to her figure with a snugness that
vouched for the fragility of her underwear, and the curves that it suggested
were stimulating to the worst kind of imagination.

“Angela,”
said the Saint genially, “you’re looking very well for your age. I ought
to have remembered that Judd
always worked with a woman, but I didn’t
think he’d have one with him on a job like this. I
suppose you were
sitting
in the car outside, and saw me arrive.”

“You
know everything, don’t you?” Kaskin gibed.

He was
recovering from the first shock of finding out
whom he had captured;
and the return of his self-assurance
was an ugly thing.

“Only
one thing puzzles me,” said the Saint equably. “And
that is
why they sent you to Dartmoor instead of putting
you in the Zoo. Or
did the RSPCA object on behalf of the
other animals?”

“You’re
smart,” Kaskin said lividly. His ugliness had a
hint of bluster in it
that was born of fear—a fear that the
legends about the Saint were capable of inspiring even when
he was apparently disarmed and helpless. But
the ugliness was no less dangerous for that reason. Perhaps it was more
dangerous… . “You’re smart, like Verdean,” Kaskin said
“Well, you saw what he got. I’m asking the questions again
now, and I’ll burn you the same way if you don’t
answer. And
I’ll burn you twice as
much if you make any more funny
answers.
Now do your talking, smart guy. How did you get
here?”

“I
flew in,” said the Saint, “with my little wings.”

Kaskin
drew back his fist.

“Wait
a minute,” said the girl impatiently. “He had an
other man
with him.”

Kaskin
almost failed to hear her. His face was contorted
with the blind rage
into which men of his type are fatally
easy to tease. His
fist had travelled two inches before he stopped it. The girl’s meaning worked
itself into his intelli
gence by visibly slow degrees, as if it had to penetrate layers
of gum. He turned his head stiffly.

“What’s
that?”

“There
were two of them. I saw them.”

“Then
where’s the other one?” Kaskin said stupidly.

Simon was
asking himself the same question; but he had
more data to go on.
He had left the kitchen door open, and
also left the
living-room door open behind him when he
came in. The girl had
come in through the door without
touching it; and she must have entered the house at the front,
or she would have met Hoppy before. The chances
were,
therefore, that Hoppy had heard
most of the conversation
since the
music stopped. But with the living-room door still
open, and three of the ungodly in the room facing
in different
directions, it would be
difficult for him to show himself and
go
into action without increasing the Saint’s danger. He
must have been standing in the hall by that time,
just out of
sight around the edge of
the doorway, waiting for Simon to
make him an opening. At least, Simon
hoped he was. He had to gamble on it, for he was never likely to get a better
break.

Kaskin
swung back on him to repeat the question in a
lower key.

“Where’s
your pal, smart guy ?”

“You
haven’t looked at the window lately, have you ?” said
the Saint
blandly.

At any
other time it might not have worked; but this time
the ungodly were at a disadvantage because
one of their own
number had brought up the
subject. They had another disadvantage, because they didn’t realize until a
second later that the room contained more than one window. And their third
misfortune was that they all gave way simultaneously
to a natural instinct of self-preservation that the
Saint’s indescribably effortless serenity did everything in its power
to encourage. All of them looked different ways at
once,
while all of them must have
assumed that somebody else was
continuing
to watch the Saint. Which provided a beautiful
example of one of those occasions when unanimity is not
strength.

Kaskin was
nearly between Simon and the girl, and the Saint’s swift sidestep perfected the
alignment. The Saint’s
right foot drove at the big man’s belt
buckle, sent Kaskin
staggering back against her. She was caught flat-footed,
and
started moving too late to dodge him. They collided with a
thump; but
Kaskin’s momentum was too great to be com
pletely absorbed by
the impact. They reeled back together,
Kaskin’s flailing
arms nullifying the girl’s desperate effort to
regain her balance.
The small nickelled automatic waved wildly in her hand.

Simon
didn’t wait to see how the waltz worked out. He
had only a matter of
split seconds to play with, and they had
to be crowded ones. He
was pivoting on his left foot, with
his right leg still in the air, even as
Kaskin started caroming backwards from the kick; and Morris Dolf was a fraction
of
an instant slow in sorting out the situation. The Saint’s left hand
grabbed his automatic around the barrel before the trigger could tighten,
twisting it sideways out of line; it
exploded once, harmlessly, and then the
Saint’s right fist
slammed squarely on the weasel-faced man’s thin nose.
Morris
Dolf’s eyes bleared with agony, and his fingers went
limp with the stunning
pain. Simon wrenched the gun away
and reversed the butt swiftly into his
right hand.

The Saint
spun around. Hoppy’s chunky outline loomed
in the doorway, his
massive automatic questing for a target, a pleased warrior smile splitting the
lower half of his face.
But Kaskin was finding solid ground under his
feet again, and his right hand was struggling with his hip pocket. The
girl’s
nickel-plated toy was coming back to aim. And behind
him, the Saint knew that Morris Dolf was
getting out another
gun. Simon had only taken
back the automatic he had lost a
short
while earlier. Morris Dolf still had his own gun. The Saint felt goose-pimples
rising all over him.

“The
lights, Hoppy!” he yelled. “And scram out the
front!”

He dived sideways as he spoke;
and darkness engulfed the room mercifully as he did it. Cordite barked
malignantly out of the blackness, licking hot orange tongues at him from two
directions: he heard the hiss and smack of lead, but it did not
touch him. And then his dive canoned him into the
man
called Verdean.