The Saint Closes the Case (16 page)

In Simon Templar there was much of his
celebrated name
sake, the Simple One. He himself was always ready to
confess
it, saying that, in spite of his instinctive understanding of the
criminal
mind, he would never have made a successful detec
tive. His brain was
capable of it, but his character wasn’t. He
preferred the more
gaudy colours, the broader and more clean-
cut line, the simple
and straight-forward and startling things.
He was a fighting
man. His genius and inspiration led him
into battles and
showed him how to win them; but he rarely
thought about them.
He had ideals, and he rarely thought
about those: they were laid down for
him by an authority
greater than himself, and remained apart and
unquestionable.
He disliked any sort of thought that was not as concrete
as a
weapon. To him, any other sort of thought was a heresy and
a curse, an
insidious sickness, sapping honesty and action. He
asked for different
things—the high heart of the happy warrior,
the swagger and the
flourish, the sound of the trumpet. He
had said it himself;
and it should go down as one of the few
statements the Saint
ever made about himself with no sug
gestion of pose. “Battle, murder,
and sudden death,” he had
said.

And now, at last, he was on ground that he
knew, desperate
and dangerous as it might be.

“Take over the pop-gun, Roger.”

Cool, smooth, mocking, with a hint of
laughter—the voice of
the old Saint. He turned again to Marius,
smiling and debo
nair.

“It’s nice of you,” he said genially,
“to give us a call. Have a
drink, Tiny Tim?”

Marius advanced a little further into the
room.

He was robed in conventional morning coat and
striped
trousers. The stiff perfection of the garb contrasted grotesquely
with his
neolithic stature and the hideously ugly expressionlessness
of a face
that might have been fashioned after the
model of some savage
devil-god.

He glanced round without emotion at Roger
Conway, who leaned against the door with his commandeered automatic
comfortably
concentrating on an easy target; and then he
turned again to the
Saint, who was swinging his little knife
like a pendulum
between his finger and thumb.

Thoughtful was the Saint, calm with a vivid
and violent
calm, like a leopard gathering for a spring; but Marius
was as
calm as a gigantic Buddha.

“I see you have some servants of mine
here,” said Marius.

His voice, for such a man, was extraordinary
soft and high-pitched; his English would have been perfect but for its exag
gerated
precision.

“I have,” said the Saint blandly.
“You may think it odd of
me, but I’ve given up standing on my dignity,
and I’m now a
practising Socialist. I go out into the highways and
byways
every Sunday evening and collect bits and pieces. These are
to-night’s bag. How did you
know?”

“I did not know. One of them should have
reported to me a long time ago, and my servants know better than to be late. I
came to
see what had happened to him. You will please let him go—and his friend.”

The Saint raised one eyebrow.

“I’m not sure that they want to,” he
remarked. “One of
them, at least, is temporarily incapable of
expressing his views
on the subject. As for the other—well, we were
just starting
to get on so nicely together. I’m sure he’d hate to have
to leave me.”

The man thus indirectly appealed to spat out
some words in a language which the Saint did not understand. Simon smoth
ered him
with a cushion.

“Don’t interrupt,” he drawled.
“It’s rude. First I have my
say, then you have yours. That’s fair. And I’m
sure Dr. Marius
would like to share our little joke, particularly as it’s
about
himself.”

The giant’s mouth formed into something like
a ghastly
smile.

“Hadn’t you better hear my joke
first?” he suggested.

“Second,” said the Saint.
“Quite definitely second. Because
your joke is sure to
be so much funnier than mine, and I’d
hate mine to fall flat after it. This
joke is in the form of a little
song, and it’s about a man whom we call Tiny
Tim, whom I
once had to kick with some vim. He recovered, I fear, but fox
hunting
this year will have little attraction for him. You
haven’t given us time
to rehearse it, or I’d ask the boys to sing
it to you. Never
mind. Sit right down and tell me the story of
your life.”

The giant was not impressed.
  

“You appear to know my name,” he
said.

“Very well,” beamed the Saint.
“Any relation to the cele
brated Dr. Marius?”

“I am not unknown.”

“I mean,” said the Saint, “the
celebrated Dr. Marius whose
living was somewhat precarious, for his
bedside technique was decidedly weak, though his ideas were many and various.
Does
that ring the bell and return the penny?”

Marius moved his huge right hand in an
impatient gesture.

“I am not here to listen to your humour,
Mr.——
”

“Templar,” supplied the Saint.
“So pleased to be met.”

“I do not wish to waste any time——
”

Simon lowered his eyes, which had been fixed on the ceiling
during the labour of poetical composition, and
allowed them to rest upon Marius. There was something very steely and
savage about those eyes. The laughter had gone out
of them
utterly. Roger had seen it
go.

“Naturally, we don’t want to waste any
time,” said the Saint
quietly. “Thank you for reminding me.
It’s a thing I should
hate very much to forget while you’re here. I
may tell you that I’m going to murder you, Marius. But before we talk any more
about that, let me save you the
trouble of saying what you were
going to
say.”

Marius shrugged.

“You appear to be an intelligent man,
Mr. Templar.”

“Thanks very much. But let’s keep the
bouquets on ice till
we want them, will you? Then they might come
in handy for
the wreath… . The business of the moment interests me
more. One:
you’re going to tell me that a certain lady named
Patricia Holm is now
your prisoner.”

The giant bowed.

“I’m sorry to have had to make such a
conventional move,”
he said. “On the other hand, it is often
said that the most con
ventional principles have the deepest
foundations. I have al
ways found that saying to be true when applied
to the time-
honoured expedient of taking a woman whom a man loves
as a
hostage for his good behaviour—particularly with a man
of what I judge to be
your type, Mr. Templar.”

“Very interesting,” said the Saint
shortly. “And I suppose
Miss Holm’s safety is to be the price of the
safety of your—er
—servants? I believe that’s also in the convention.”

Marius spread out his enormous hands.
      

“Oh, no,” he said, in that thin,
soft voice. “Oh, dear me, no!
The convention is not by any means as
trivial as that. Is not
the fair lady’s safety always the price of
something more than
mere pawns in the game?”

“Meaning?” inquired the Saint
innocently.

“Meaning a certain gentleman in whom I am
interested, whom you were successful in removing from the protection
of my
servants last night.”

“Was I?”

“I have reason to believe that you were.
Much as I respect
your integrity, Mr. Templar, I fear that in this case your
con
tradiction will not be sufficient to convince me against the
evidence
of my own eyes.”

The Saint swayed gently on his heels.

“Let me suggest,” he said,
“that you’re very sure I got him.”

“Let me suggest,” said Marius
suavely, “that you’re very
sure I’ve got Miss Holm.”

“I haven’t got him.”

“Then I have not got Miss Holm.”

Simon nodded.

“Very ingenious,” he murmured.
“Very ingenious. Not quite
the way I expected it—but very ingenious, all
the same. And
quite unanswerable. Therefore——
”

“Therefore, Mr. Templar, why not put the
cards on the
table? We have agreed not to waste time. I frankly admit
that
Miss Holm is my prisoner. Why don’t you admit that Professor
Vargan is
yours?”

“Not so fast,” said the Saint.
“You’ve just admitted, before witnesses, that you are a party to an
abduction. Now, suppose
that became know to the police? Wouldn’t that
be awkward?”

Marius shook his head.

“Not particularly,” he said.
“I have a very good witness to
deny any such admission——
”

“A crook!”

“Oh no. A most respectable countryman of
mine. I assure
you,
it would be quite impossible to discredit him.”

Simon lounged back against the table.

“I see,” he drawled. “And that’s your complete
song-and-
dance act, is it?”

“I believe I have stated all the
important points.”

“Then,” said the Saint, “I
will now state mine.”

Carefully he replaced the little knife in its
sheath and ad
justed his sleeve. A glance at the man on the floor told
him that that unlucky servant of the Cause was recovering; but
Simon was
not interested. He addressed himself to the man in
the chair.

“Tell your master about the game we were
playing,” he invited
. “Confess everything, loveliness. He
has a nice kind face,
and perhaps he won’t be too hard on
you.”

The man spoke again in his own language.
Marius listened woodenly. The Saint could not understand a word of what was
being said;
but he knew, when the giant interrupted the dis
course with a
movement of his hand and a sharp, harsh syl
lable of impatience,
that the recital had passed through the
stage of being a
useful statement of facts, and had degenerated
into a string of excuses.

Then Marius was looking curiously at Simon
Templar.
There seemed to be a kind of grim humour in that gaze.

“And yet you do not look a ferocious man,
Mr. Templar.”

“I shouldn’t rely too much on
that.”

Again that jerky gesture of impatience.

“I am not relying on it. With a
perspicacity which I should
have expected, and which I can only commend,
you have saved me many words, many tedious explanations. You have summed
up the
situation with admirable briefness. May I ask you to be
as brief
with your decision? I may say that the fortunate accident of finding you at
home, which I did not expect, has saved
me the considerable
trouble of getting in touch with you
through the agony columns of the daily
papers, and has en
abled me to put my proposition before you with the
minimum
of delay. Would it not be a pity, now, to mar such an excellent
start with
unnecessary paltering?”

“It would,” said the Saint.

And he knew at once what he was going to do.
It had come to him in a flash—an inspiration, a summarising and deduc
tion and
realisation that were instantaneous, and more clear
and sure than
anything of their kind which could have been
produced by any
mental effort:

That he was on toast, and that there was no
ordinary way
off the toast. That the situation was locked and
double-locked
into exactly the tangle of dithering subtleties and
cross-causes
and cross-menaces that he hated more than anything else
in
the world, as
has been explained-—the kind of chess-problem
tangle
that was probably the one thing in the world capable
of reeling him off his active mental balance and
sending him
raving mad… . That to
think about it and try to scheme
about
it would be the one certain way of losing the game. That,
obviously, he could never hope to stand up in the
same class
as Rayt Marius in a
complicated intrigue—to try to enter into
an even contest with such a past professional master of the art
would be the act of a suicidal fool. That,
therefore, his only
chance to win out was to break the very rules of the
game that
Marius would least expect an
opponent to break. That it was
the
moment when all the prejudices and convictions that made
the Saint what he was must be put to the test.
That all his fun
damental faith in the
superiority of reckless action over labor
ious ratiocination must now justify itself, or topple down to
destruction and take him with it into hell… .
That, in fact,
when all the pieces on
the chessboard were so inweaved and
dove-tailed
and counter-blockaded, his only chance was to smash up the whole stagnant
structure and sweep the board
clean—with
the slash of a sword… .