The Saint Closes the Case

CONTENTS

1.
  
How Simon
Templar went for a drive, and
saw a strange sight

2.
  
How Simon
Templar read newspapers, and
understood what was not
                 
    
written

3.
  
How Simon
Templar returned to Esher, and
decided to go there again

4.
  
How
  
Simon
  
Templar
  
lost
  
an
  
automobile,
and won an argument

5.
 
How
 
Simon
 
Templar
 
went back to
 
Brook
Street, and what
happened
             
    
there

6.
  
How Roger
Conway drove the Hirondel, and
the Saint took a knife in his
                    
    
hand

7.
  
How Simon
Templar was Saintly, and received
another visitor

8.
  
How Simon
Templar entertained his guest and
broke up the party

9.
  
How Roger
Conway was careless, and Her
mann also made a mistake

10.
How
Simon Templar drove to Bures, and two
policemen jumped in time

11.
 
How Roger
Conway told the truth and In
spector Teal believed a lie

12.
 
How Simon
Templar parted with Anna, and
took Patricia in his arms

13.
 
How
  
Simon
  
Templar
  
was
  
besieged,
  
and
Patricia Holm cried for help

14.
 
How Roger
Conway drove the Hirondel, and
Norman Kent looked back

15.
 
How
Vargan
 
gave his
 
answer,
 
and
 
Simon
Templar
wrote a letter

16.
 
How
 
Simon Templar pronounced
 
sentence,
and Norman Kent went
to
             
       
fetch his cigarette-
case

17.
 
How Simon
Templar exchanged backchat, and
Gerald Harding shook hands

18.
 
How Simon
Templar received
 
Marius, and
the Crown
Prince
                  
           
       
remembered
a debt

1
9.
 
How Simon Templar went to his lady, and
Norman Kent answered the
              
       
trumpet

Author’s
Foreword

This was the first “big” Saint novel—that is, the first story
in
which he went up against king-size international dragons, as
against
the ordinary leeches, rats, skunks, and other vermin of
the
Underworld—and it still seems to be one of the prime
favorites of those
loyal readers who have followed his adventures almost from the beginning.

For the benefit of those who may be taking up
the series so
much
later, however, I feel it may be necessary to slip in this
reminder that the book was written in 1929, when
the world
was politically,
technologically, and temperamentally a totally different place from the one we
live in today.

In those days, there was a genuine widespread
suspicion,
which I was inclined to share with a great many of my
genera
tion, that modern wars were plotted and deliberately engi
neered by
vast mysterious financial cartels for their own enrichment. There was also a
vague idea that fighting, itself, was
still a fairly glamorous activity, or
would be if the scientists
would leave it alone. No doubt there were
romantics in other
periods who thought it was more sporting to be shot at
with
arrows than with bullets, and they were followed by others
who
thought that rifles were more fun than machine-guns and
howitzers,
and after them came those who thought that poison
gas the last step to reducing glorious war
to sordidness.

This book is based on the Saint’s accidental discovery
that
the usual slightly goofy scientist has dreamed up something
called an
“electron cloud”, a sort of extension of the gas hor
ror with
radioactive overtones, and his decision that it should not only be kept out of
the hands of the stateless war-mongers, but for the good of humanity should be
suppressed altogether,
on the theory that this would still leave
heroes happily free to
enjoy the relatively good clean fun of air
raids and ordinary
mustard gas. (The original title of the book was
The
Last
Hero,
and in it the Saint first expounded his
philosophy of
“battle, murder, and sudden death” as a joyous
form of self-
expression.)

Well, this was an attitude of youth which of
course I shared
with him, or he got from me. And in those days there were
no mushroom
clouds on the horizon to make even Vargan’s
electron cloud look
like a comparatively harmless toy. But
this should not for a
moment be taken to imply that either of
us, today, would be
supporters of the “Ban the Bomb” kind
foggy-minded
idealism. There are many things which seemed
like eternal truths to
both of us in those days, which no longer
look so immutable. In
fact, I myself am often tempted now to
lean with the
optimists who think that the Bomb may actually
achieve what the
moralists failed to do, and abolish major
warfare by making it
impossible for anyone, financier or des
pot, to hope to profit
by it.

Be tolerant, then, of one or two outworn
ideas, and enjoy
it simply as a rattling good adventure story of its time,
which
I think it still is.

Prelude

It is said that in these hectic days no item
of news is capable
of holding the interest of the public for more than a
week;
wherefore journalists and news editors age swiftly, and become
prematurely
bald and bad-tempered, Tatcho and Kruschen
availing them naught.
A new sensation must be provided from
day to day, and each sensation must
eclipse its predecessor,
till the dictionary is bled dry of
superlatives, and the imagina
tion pales before the task of finding or
inventing for to-mor
row a story fantastic and colossal enough to
succeed the mas
terpiece
of yesterday.