Prelude for War (44 page)

He squeezed the trigger, and
the revolver jumped in his
hand. A round black mark
appeared in Luker’s forehead, and while Simon looked at it the rim of it turned
red.

And then the room seemed
to be full of thunder.

The Saint felt nothing. He
wondered, in a nightmarishly
detached sort of way,
whether he had actually been hit or
not. But he was able
to turn and align his sights without
a quiver on their
next target.

And that was when he really
felt that something must have snapped in his brain. For Colonel Marteau was not
even looking at him. He was standing stiffly upright,
a
strangely drawn and bloodless expression on his face,
his
right arm down at his side and the muzzle of his gun
resting laxly on the table. And somewhere a little further off Bravache seemed
to be sliding down the wall, like a lay figure whose knee joints have given
way. And there was a blue-
shirted figure squirming on
the floor and making queer
moaning noises. And another
pair of blue-sleeved arms
raised high in the air.
And another door open, and grim-visaged armed men swarming in, men in plain
clothes, men
in the uniforms of gendarmes and
agents
de police
and the
black helmets of the
Gardes
Mobiles.
And among them all
two men who could only
have been the ghosts of Peter
Quentin and Hoppy Uniatz,
with automatics smoking in
their hands. And another
man, short and dapperly dressed,
with a blue chin and
curled moustaches and bright black eyes,
who
seemed to be armed only with a cigarette in an amber
holder,
who strode up between them and bowed to the Saint with old-fashioned elegance.

“Monsieur
Templar,” he said, “I only regret that your
message reached me too
late to save you this inconvenience.”

The Saint had no idea what
he was talking about; but he could never have allowed the prefect of police of
Paris to
outdo him in courtesy.

“My dear Monsieur
Senappe,” he said, “really, it’s been
no
trouble at all.”

Epilogue

“T
HAT’S
a
nice bit of chinchilla,” said the Saint.

“It is, isn’t
it,” said Lady Valerie Woodchester, rubbing her cheek luxuriously on her
shoulder.

They had met quite by
chance in Piccadilly. Simon took
her into the Berkeley and
bought her a sherry.

“By the way,” she
said very casually, “I think I’m going
to
be married soon.”

“Quite right,
too,” he approved. “A healthy, good-
looking
girl like you ought to get married. Who’s the
unlucky
man?”

“Don
Knightley—Captain Knightley. You remember him
don’t
you? He rescued me from the fire.”

“So he did.” The
Saint laughed quietly; but it was a
rather thoughtful kind
of laugh. “Damn it, that was less
than
a month ago.”

“Is that all?”
she said. “It seems ever so much longer
than
that. Just think—only a month ago everything was
ordinary,
if you know what I mean. John and Ralph and
Luker
were alive, and General Sangore … Why do you think General Sangore shot
himself?”

“I suppose he thought
it was the best way out for him,”
said
the Saint soberly. “Probably he wasn’t so far wrong
at that. Anyway, let’s drink to him.”

He raised his glass.

She looked at him
curiously.

“It’s funny that you
should do that,” she said.

“Is it? I don’t think
so. We shouldn’t be having this
drink together now if it
hadn’t been for him.”

“I don’t
understand.”

“Don’t you? I thought
perhaps you might. But haven’t
you ever wondered why all
those policemen poured into that
cellar in the nick of
time, just like the last instalment of a Pearl White serial?”

“Well, I heard what
Senappe said. He got a message
from you.”

“How do you think he
got it?”

“I don’t know. I never
really thought about it. But I
suppose you did one of
those frightfully clever things that you’re famous for and got it to him
somehow. Anyway your
friend Peter and that Mr
Uniatz were there, so I knew
everything was all right,
and all I can say is I thought
it was pretty mean of you
to keep it up your sleeve and
let me go through that
perfectly paralyzing emotional
orgy—”

“I didn’t put you
through any emotional orgy,” he said
steadily.
“You see, I never sent anybody any message.”

She stared at him.

“You never——
”

“Of course not. If
you think a bit, you’ll see that I never
had
the chance to.”

“Then——
”

“Sangore sent
it.”

Her face was blank almost
to incredulity.

“But——
”

“I know all the buts,
darling. And I don’t suppose I
shall ever know much more.
I can only imagine that when
Luker told the others
exactly what was meant to happen
to us, and even had the
nerve to tell Sangore that we were
being stored at
Bledford Manor—that’s where we spent
half the night, if
you didn’t know it—it was a bit too much
even
for Sangore to swallow. The Old School Tie rose up
and
pointed accusing fingers at him, if you can follow the
metaphor.”

The Saint’s flippancy was
only in his words. His voice
was not flippant and his
eyes were very clear and unlaughing.

“Anyway, I only know
what happened. Sangore rang up
Peter at the Raphael that
night. It must have been some
time after we were taken
away from Bledford. He told
him what had happened to
us, and where we were being
taken, and what was going
to happen to us, and all about
the secret way into the
Sons of France’s headquarters,
through the back of a cheap
cafe a couple of blocks away.
And he told him all about
the plot against Chaulage and
the rest of it, and gave
him enough dope to make the
police sit up and take
notice. It was Sangore who told him to go to the prefecture. It was about the
one thing that
convinced Peter that the whole thing
wasn’t a trap. Peter was in a pretty tough spot, but he knew that he couldn’t
hope to take over that headquarters with just Hoppy and Orace to help
him, and he figured that if Sangore really w
anted
him to go to the police there must be something
in
it. So he took his chance. Fortunately it wasn’t too hard
to make the prefecture sit up, partly because a few rumours
of a coup d’etat had been leaking out and bothering them,
and partly because Senappe doesn’t like the Sons of France
at all and he’d just been praying for a break like that. The
only other thing Sangore did was to make Peter swear that he’d report
the message as having come from me and leave
Sangore
himself right out of it. As far as I can make out, the old boy must have shot
himself as soon as he rang off.
I suppose he knew that he
was in for it after that, anyway, and he preferred to go out without any mud on
him. That’s
why none of us ever said anything. But
I think you ought
to know.” He touched the lapel of
his coat. “I suppose,
in a sort of way, he’s the
one who really ought to have worn
this.”

She looked at the narrow
red ribbon in his buttonhole,
and could not say anything
just then.

The Saint gazed at the pale
straw-tinted wine in his glass, and lived again through unforgettable hours,
not all of them
only his own. And he felt a
restlessness for which there was
no accounting. It was hard
to believe that that chapter
had been finally closed.
So much had been done; but for
how long would there be
peace? …

“Anyway,” he
said abruptly, “here’s luck.”

“I saw in the paper
that Colonel Marteau and a lot of others are going to be tried next week,”
she said at last.
“You don’t think they’ll get off,
do you?”

He shook his head.

“They haven’t a hope.
The French are very practical in
these matters. Luckily I
didn’t quite kill that bloke who
was going to do the
assassination, and they got a statement
out
of him before he slid off… . It’s a pity they couldn’t
get anything definite on Fairweather, though. I hate to
think of him being the only one to get away with it, even
if he was the least important of the lot.”

“I think you’re very
vindictive,” she said. “There’s no
harm
in Algy, really. I’ve still got quite a soft spot for
him.”

“Maybe I’ll try to
develop some sort of spot for him
myself,” said
the Saint meditatively. “Let’s not bother about
him
now. Tell me more about your marriage.”

She frowned.

“What do you want to
know about it? You don’t object
or anything, do you?”

“Not at the moment.
I’m only waiting to see my solicitor
and find out what chance I’ll have of
suing you for breach
of promise. I’ve still
got the evidence, you know; and I
think
it must have been Reginald who told the newspapers
—anyway, they all printed it, and I shall have a
lot of questions to answer if you jilt me.”

She looked at him rather
sadly.

“I mean, you aren’t
really entitled to object, are you?
It isn’t as if you wanted to marry me
yourself, or anything
like that.”

“Of course I want to
marry you myself. But since your
heart belongs to another I shall be a strong
silent man and
keep a stiff upper lip and——
”

“I wouldn’t marry you, anyway,” she
said. “I admit you
did rather steal my
girlish heart away at one time, but
after
that night when everything happened I decided I just
couldn’t stand the pace. After all, spending one’s
whole
time being lugged about and
threatened with floggings and
firing
squads and being generally manhandled isn’t much of
a life for a girl,
is it? All the same, I hope you’ll come and see me after I’m married, whenever
you aren’t doing any
thing in particular. I
mean, there must be some evenings
every
now and again when you haven’t got a gang of des
peradoes after you; and Don will be away quite a good bit,
you know.”

“I think you ought to make him very
happy,” Simon remarked, a little sardonically.

She gazed
at him,
wide eyed and innocent.

“Why, naturally I
shall. After all, nobody wants an
unhappy man moping
about the place. I think I’ll have him
made
a general in a few years.”

“Just like
that,” said the Saint. “And how will you set
about
it?”

She shrugged.

“It oughtn’t to be
very difficult. I mean, I know all the right people, and he knows all the right
people, and he’s
rather stupid in the right sort of
way, and I’m rather clever,
and if a man’s stupid in
the right sort of way, and his wife’s
rather clever, and
they both know all the right people, it
isn’t
very difficult for him to be made a general.”

Simon regarded her with
honest admiration.

“You know, I’m
beginning to believe you really are
clever,” he
said. “And if he’s as stupid as you think he is
—in
the right sort of way, of course—I’m sure you’ll make
him
very happy.”

He ordered another drink
and considered her speculatively
.

“Have you by any
chance started making him happy by
allowing him to buy
you that nice bit of fur?” he asked.

“Oh no,” she said.
“I bought this myself with my own
hard-earned
money.”

Simon sat up with
impudently interrogative eyebrows.