The Saint in Action (29 page)

“Thanks a lot, sweetheart,” said the Saint.

A hawk would have had difficulty in following the movements that came immediately afterwards. As the Z-Man gasped with sudden fear a circle of wrought steel whipped across his shoulder, swung him completely round and placed him so that his back was towards the Saint. Then the Saint’s left hand snaked under his opponent’s left arm, flashed up to his neck and secured a half nelson that was as solid as if it had been carved out of stone.

“We can now indulge in skylarking and song,” said the Saint. “I’ll do the skylarking, and you can provide the song.”

To some extent he was right; but the Z-Man’s song was not so much musical as reminiscent of the shriek of a lost locomotive. Some men might have got out of that half nelson, particularly as the Saint was still crucified between his precarious grip on the ring and the weight that was trying to drag him down into the black void; but the Z-Man knew nothing about wrestling, and all the strength seemed to have gone out of him. Moreover, the Saint’s thumb on one side of his captive’s neck and his lean brown fingers on the other were crushing with deadly effect into his victim’s carotid arteries. Scientifically applied, this treatment can produce unconsciousness in a few seconds; but Simon was at a disadvantage, for half his strength was devoted to fighting the relentless drag on his ankles.

Raddon and Welmont started forward too late. The Saint’s wintry laugh met them at their first step.

“If anything happens,” he said with pitiless clarity, “your pal goes over first.”

They checked as if they had run into an invisible wall; and Raddon’s Gumpish face showed white as his torch jumped in his hand.

“For God’s sake,” he gasped hoarsely. “Wait–-“

“Is dat you, boss?” bawled a foghorn voice far below; and the Saint’s smile became a shade more blissful in spite of the wrenching agony in his right shoulder.

“This is me, Hoppy,” he said. “You’d better come up quickly—and look out for someone coming down.” He looked over the shuddering bundle of the Z-Man at Raddon and Welmont, still frozen in their tracks.

“There’s no way out for you unless you can fly,” he said. “How would you like to be a pair of angels?”

They made no attempt to graduate into a pair of angels. They stood very still as Hoppy Uniatz crashed off the stairs onto the ledge, followed by Patricia, and briskly removed their guns. A moment later an arm like a tree trunk took the weight off the Saint’s hand and hauled him back to the safety of the floor.

Patricia was touching the Saint as if to make sure that he was real.

“Are you all right, boy?” she was asking tremulously. “I was afraid we’d be too late. They’d locked the outside door, and Hoppy was afraid of making a noise–-“

The Saint kissed her.

“You were in plenty of time,” he said and yanked the Z-Man clear of the edge of the floor. “Think you could hold him, Hoppy?”

“Wit’ one finger,” said Mr Uniatz scornfully.

With one swift hop that was in itself a complete justification of his nickname he heaved the Z-Man to his feet from behind and held him in a gorilla grip. The Z-Man’s struggles were as futile as the wrigglings of a fly between the fingers of a small boy. And the Saint retrieved his knife and tested the point on his thumb.

“Hold him just like that, Hoppy,” he said grimly, “so that his tummy occupies the centre of the stage. I want to do some surgery of my own.”

With a swift movement that made Patricia catch her breath and shut her eyes quickly he thrust the knife deeply and forcefully into the Z-Man’s protruding stomach. There was a loud squealing hiss, and the patient deflated like a punctured tire.

“I just wanted to see whether it would make a squashy noise or merely explode,” said the Saint placidly. “You can open your eyes, darling. There’s no mess on the floor. Mr Vell is mostly composed of air.”

With a swift movement he yanked off his victim’s hat, wig, glasses and beard.

“Miss Sheila Ireland, I believe,” murmured the Saint courteously.

XI

Patricia found her voice first.

“But I thought you told me Sentinel was the Z-Man,” she said weakly. “We left Orace to tie him up–-“

“I didn’t say so,” answered the Saint. “I told you that I’d met Comrade Sentinel, and I thought I knew who the Z-Man was. But I wanted you to tell the girls about Comrade Sentinel because I knew she’d remember that he knew about her affair with Raddon, and I knew she’d be scared that he might say something that ‘d start me thinking, and I knew she’d get the wind up and feel that she had to do something about it—that is, if my suspicions were right. And I was damn right!”

“I wondered why she suddenly decided that she couldn’t stay away from the studio a little while after I told her the news,” Patricia said slowly. “But I never thought …”

“I did,” said the Saint. “I did most of my thinking in Sentinel’s office. He was twiddling a pencil—and all at once I remembered that when I was in Bryerby House the Z-Man had been twiddling a pencil too. Only the Z-Man had a different twiddle. Everybody has his own distinctive nervous habits. I started thinking about the Z-Man’s twiddle, wondering where else I’d seen it; and all at once it dawned on me that it was exactly like the way Sheila Ireland had been twiddling her cigarette holder last night when she was telling us her tale of woe. It nearly knocked me over backwards.”

He looked across at the dishevelled girl who was still writhing hysterically in Hoppy’s relentless grasp, with the smeared remains of her make-up disfiguring her face; and his eyes were hard and merciless.

“It wasn’t a bad idea to make yourself up not only like a man, but like a fat, repulsive Zeidclmann,” he said. “You nearly fooled me until I saw you running away from Bryerby House. There’s something funny about the way a woman runs, and that started me thinking. Even then I didn’t get the idea, but I was ready for it. You did the voice pretty well too; but that was your business. You only fell down on the little details like pencil-twiddling. And of course nobody would expect you to be a woman. But you were woman enough to make Andy Gump go on putting his head in the noose to try and please you even after he’d come out of stir for the cheques he forged to buy you jewelry. And you were woman enough to know what the threat of disfigurement would mean to a woman.” The Saint’s voice was like icy water flowing down a glacier. “You got it both ways. You put the boodle into your own bank account, and at the same time your rivals were having breakdowns and getting thrown out of the running and letting you climb higher. … I wonder how you’d like it if we made the punishment fit the crime?”

The girl strained madly against Hoppy’s iron hands.

“Let me go!” she screamed. “You swine! You couldn’t–-“

“Let her go, Hoppy,” said the Saint quietly.

Mr Uniatz unlocked his fingers, and the girl tore herself free and stood swaying on the edge of the floor.

“Would Andy still love you if you had a Z carved on your face?” asked the Saint speculatively.

He moved the knife in his hand in an unmistakable gesture.

He had no intention of using it, but he wanted her to feel some of the mental agony that she had given to others before he dealt with her in the only way he could. But all the things he would have liked to do were in his voice, and the girl was too demented with terror to distinguish between fine shades of meaning. She gaped at him in stupefied horror as he took a step towards her; and then, with an inarticulate, despairing shriek, she flung herself backwards into the black pit below… .

Raddon started forward with a queer animal moan, but Hoppy’s gun whipped up and thrust him back. And the Saint looked at him.

“It’s no use, Andy,” he said with his first tinge of pity. “You backed the wrong horse.”

He slid his knife back into its sheath and put an arm around Patricia.

“Where are we?” he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

“This is some sort of old ruin with a modern house built into one wing of it.” She spoke mechanically, with her eyes still hypnotized by the dark silence into which Sheila Ireland had disappeared. “I suppose it belonged to her… .”

The Saint buttoned his coat. Life went on, and business was still business.

“Then it probably contains a safe with some boodle in it,” he said. “I know a few good causes that could use it. And then we’d better hustle back and untie Comrade Sentinel before he bursts a blood vessel. We’ll have to take him back to Weybridge and add him to Beatrice and Irene for the alibi we’re going to need when Claud Eustace hears about this. Let’s keep moving.”

WATCH FOR THE SIGN OF THE SAINT!

HE WILL BE BACKI