A BULGE—a distinct Bulge," opined the Saint, as he shuffled out of the Ritz Hotel, leaving a young cohort of oleaginous serfs in his wake. There was, he thought, a lot to be said for the principle of riding on the spur of the moment. If he had called upon the crown prince to absorb information, he had indubitably inhaled the mixture as prescribed—a canful. Most of it, of course, he either knew already or could have guessed without risk of bringing on an attack of cerebral staggers; but it was pleasant to have one's deductions confirmed. Besides, one or two precise and irrefutable details of the enemy's plan of attack had emerged in all their naked glory, and that was very much to the good. "Verily—a Bulge," ruminated the Saint. ...
He found his laborious footsteps automatically leading him down St. James Street, and then eastwards along Pall Mall. With an eclat equalled only by that of his recent assault upon the Ritz, he carried the portals of the Royal Automobile Club—of which he was not a member—and required an atlas to be brought to him. With this aid to geographical research, he settled himself in a quiet corner of the smoke room and proceeded to acquire the dope about Saltham. This he discovered to be a village on the Suffolk coast between Southwold and Aldeburgh; a gazetteer which lay on the table conveniently near him added the enlightening news that it boasted of fine sandy beaches, cliffs, pleasure grounds, a 16th cent, ch., a coasting trade, and a population of 3,128—it was, said the gazetteer, a wat.-pl.
"And that must be frightfully jolly for it," murmured the Saint, gently depositing the Royal Automobile Club's property in a convenient wastebasket.
He smoked a thoughtful cigarette in his corner; and then, after a glance at his watch, he left the club again, turned down Waterloo Place, and descended the steps that lead down to the Mall. There he stood, blinking at the sunlight, until a grubby infant accosted him.
"Are you Mr. Smith, sir?"
"I am,'' said the Saint benignly.
"Gen'l'man gimme this letter for you." The Saint took the envelope, slit it open, and read the pencilled lines:
No message. Heading N.E. Wire you Waldorf on arrival.—R.
"Thank you, Marmaduke," said the Saint.
He pressed a piece of silver into the urchin's palm and walked slowly back up the steps, tearing the note into small shreds as he went. At the corner of Waterloo Place and Pall Mall he stopped and glanced around for a taxi.
It seemed a pity that Roger Conway would waste a shilling, but that couldn't be helped. The first bulletin had already meant an unprofitable increase in the overhead. But that, on the other hand, was a good sign. In the Saint's car and a chauffeur's livery Roger Conway had been parked a little distance away from the converted garage, in a position to observe all that happened. If Sonia Delmar had been in a postion to drop a note after her abduction she would have done so, and the bones of it would have been passed on to the Saint via the infant they had employed for the occasion; otherwise Roger was simply detailed to give inconspicuous chase, and he must have shot his human carrier-pigeon overboard as they neared the northeastern outskirts of London. But the note carried by the human telegraph would only have been interesting if anything unforeseen had happened.
So that all things concerned might be assumed to be paddling comfortably along in warm water— unless Roger had subsequently wrapped the automobile round a lamp-post, or taken a tack into the bosom of a tire. And even that could not now prove wholly disastrous, for the Saint himself knew the destination of the convoy without waiting for further news, and he reckoned that a village with a mere 3,128 souls to call it their home town wasn't anything like an impossible covert to draw, even in the lack of more minute data.
Much, of course, depended on how long a time elapsed before the prince took it into his head to have a bath. . . . Thinking over that touch of melodramatic bravado, Simon was momentarily moved to regret it. For the sight of the work of art which the Saint had left behind him as a souvenir of his visit would be quite enough to send the entire congregation of the ungodly yodelling frantically over the road to Saltham like so many starving rats on the trail of a decrepit camembert. . . . And then that very prospect wiped every sober regret out of the Saint's mind, and flicked a smile on his lips as he beckoned a passing cab.
After all, if an adventurer couldn't have a sense of humor about the palpitations of the ungodly at his time of life—then he might as well hock his artillery forthwith and blow the proceeds on a permanent wave. In any case, the ungodly would have to see the night through. The ship of which Marius had spoken would be stealing in under cover of dark; and the ungodly, unless they were prepared to heave in their hand, would blinkin' well have to wait for it—dealing with any interference meanwhile as best they could.
"That little old watering-place is surely going to hum to-night," figured the Saint.
The taxi pulled in to the curb beside him; and, as he opened the door, he glimpsed a mountain of sleepy-looking flesh sauntering along the opposite pavement. The jaws of the perambulating mountain oscillated rhythmically, to the obvious torment of a portion of the sweetmeat which has made the sapodilla tree God's especial favour to Mr. Wrigley. Chief Inspector Teal seemed to be enjoying his walk ....
"Liverpool Street Station," directed the Saint, and climbed into his cab, vividly appreciating another factor in the equation which was liable to make the algebra of the near future a thing of beauty and a joy for Einstein.
HE HAD PLENTY of time to slaughter a sandwich and smoke a quartet of meditative cigarettes at the station before he caught Sunday's second and last train to Saxmundham, which was the nearest effective railhead for Saltham. He would have had time to call in at the Waldorf for Roger's wire on his way if he had chosen, but he did not choose. Simon Templar had a very finely calibrated judgment in the matter of unnecessary risks. At Liverpool Street he felt pretty safe: in the past he had always worked by car, and he fully expected that all the roads out of London were well picketed, but he was anticipating no special vigilance at the railway stations—except, perhaps, on the Continental departure platform at Victoria. He may have been right or wrong; it is only a matter of history that he made the grade and boarded the 4:35 unchallenged.
It was half-past seven when the train decanted him at Saxmundham; and in the three hours of his journey, having a compartment to himself, he had effected a rejuvenation that would have made Dr. Voronoff's best experiment look like Methuselah before breakfast. He even contrived to brush and batter a genuine jauntiness into his ancient hat; and he swung off the train with his beard and glasses in his pocket, and an absurdly boyish glitter in his eyes.
He had lost nothing by not bothering to collect Roger Conway's telegram, for he knew his man. In the first bar he entered he discovered his lieutenant attached by the mouth to the open end of a large tankard of ale. A moment later, lowering the tankard in order to draw breath, Roger perceived the Saint smiling down at him, and goggled.
"Hold me up, someone," he muttered. "And get ready to shoo the pink elephants away when I start to gibber. . . . And to think I've been complaining that I couldn't see the point of paying seven-pence a pint for brown water with a taste!"
Simon laughed.
"Bear up, old dear," he said cheerfully. "It hasn't come to that yet."
"But how did you get here?"
"Didn't you send for me?" asked the Saint innocently.
"I did not," said Roger. "I looked out the last train, and I knew my message wouldn't reach you in time for you to catch it. I wired you to phone me here, and for the last three hours I've been on the verge of heart failure every time the door opened. I thought Teal must have got after you somehow, and every minute I was expecting the local cop to walk in and invite me outside."
Simon grinned and sank into a chair. A waiter was hovering in the background, and the Saint hailed him and ordered a fresh consignment of ale.
"I suppose you pinched the first car you saw," Roger was saying. "That'll mean another six months on our sentences. But you might have warned me."
The Saint shook his head.
"As a matter of fact, I never went to the Waldorf. Marius himself put me onto Saltham, and I came right along."
"Good lord—how?"
"He talked, and I listened. It was dead easy."
"At the Ritz?"
Simon nodded. Briefly he ran over the story of the reunion, with its sequel in the bathroom, and the conversation he had overheard; and Conway stared.
"You picked up all that?"
"I did so. . . . That man Marius is the three-star brain of this cockeyed age—I'll say. And by the same token, Roger, you and I are going to have to tune up our gray matters to an extra couple of thousand revs. per if we want to keep Angel Face's tail skid in sight over this course. . . . But what's your end of the story?"
"Three of 'em turned up—one in a police-inspector's uniform. When the bell wasn't answered in about thirty seconds they whipped out a jemmy and bust it in. As they marched in, an ambulance pulled into the mews and stopped outside the door. It was a wonderful bit of team work. There were ambulance men in correct uniforms and all. They carried her out on a stretcher, with a sheet over her. All in broad daylight. And slick! It was under five minutes by my watch from the moment they forced the door to the moment when they were all piling into the wagon, and they pulled out before anything like a crowd had collected. They'd doped Sonia, of course . . . the swine ..."
"Gosh!" said the Saint softly. "She's just great—that girl!"
Roger gazed thoughtfully at the pewter can which the waiter had placed before him.
"She is—just great. ..."
"Sweet on her, son?"
Conway raised his eyes.
"Are you?"
The Saint fished out his cigarette case and selected a smoke. He tapped it on his thumbnail abstractedly; and there was a silence. . . .
Then he said quietly: "That ambulance gag is big stuff. Note it down, Roger, for our own use one day. . . . And what's the battlefield like at Saltham?"
"A sizeable house standing in its own grounds on the cliffs, away from the village. They're not much, as cliffs go — not more than about fifty feet around there. There are big iron gates at the end of the drive. The ambulance turned in; and I went right on past without looking round — I guessed they were there for keeps. Then I had to come back here to send you that wire. By the way, there was a bird we've met before in that ambulance outfit — your little friend Hermann. "
Simon stroked his chin.
"I bust his jaw one time, didn't I?"
"Something like that. And he did his best to bust my ribs and stave my head in . "
"It will be pleasant," said the Saint gently, "to meet Hermann again. "
He took a pull at his ale and frowned at the table.
Roger said: "It seems to me that-all we've got to do now is to get on the phone to Claud Eustace and fetch him along. There's Sonia in that house — we couldn't have the gang more red-handed."
"And we troop along to the pen with them, and take our sentences like little heroes?"
"Not necessarily. We could watch the show from a safe distance."
"And Marius?"
"He's stung again."
The Saint sighed.
"Roger, old dear, if you'd got no roof to your mouth, you'd raise your hat every time you hiccoughed," he remarked disparagingly. "Are we going to be content with simply jarring Marius off his trolley and leaving it at that—leaving him to get busy again as soon as he likes? There's no evidence in the wide world to connect him up with Saltham. All that bright scheme of yours would mean would be that his game would be temporarily on the blink. And there's money in it. Big money. We don't know how much, but we'd be safe enough putting it in the seven-figure bracket. D'you think he'd give the gate to all that capital and preliminary carving and prospective gravy just because we'd trodden on his toes?"
"He'd have to start all over again—"
"And so should we, Roger—just as it happened a few months back. And that isn't good enough. Not by a mile. Besides," said the Saint dreamily, "Rayt Marius and I have a personal argument to settle, and I think—I think, honey-bunch—that that's one of the most important points of all, in this game. ..."
Conway shrugged.
"Then—what?"
"I guess we might tool over to Saltham and get ready to beat up this house party."
Roger fingered an unlighted cigarette.
"I suppose we might," he said.
The Saint laughed and stood up.
"There seems to be an attack of respectability coming over you, my Roger," he murmured. "First you talk about fetching in the police, and then you have the everlasting crust to sit there in a beer-sodden stupor and suppose we might waltz into as good a scrap as the Lord is ever likely to stage-manage for us. There's only one cure for that disease, sweetheart—and that's what we're going after now. Long before dark, Marius himself and a reinforcement of lambs are certain to be steaming into Saltham, all stoked up and sizzling at the safety valve, and the resulting ballet ought to be a real contribution to the gaiety of nations. So hurry up and shoot the rest of that ale through your face, sonny boy, and let's go!"
THEY WENT. ...
Not that it was the kind of departure of which Roger Conway approved. In spite of all the training which the Saint had put into him, Roger's remained a cautious and deliberate temperament. He had no peace of mind about haring after trouble with an armoury composed of precious little more than a sublime faith in Providence and a practised agility at soaking people under the jaw. He liked to consider. He liked to weigh pro and con. He liked to get his hooks onto a complete detail map of the campaign proposed, with all important landmarks underlined in red ink. He liked all sorts of things that never seemed to come his way when he was in the Saint's company. And he usually seemed to be tottering through the greater part of their divers adventures in a kind of lobster-supper dream, feeling like a man who is compelled to run a race for his life along a delirious precipice on a dark night in a gale of wind and a pea-soup fog. But always in that nightmare the Saint's fantastic optimism led him on, dancing ahead like a will-o'-the-wisp, trailing him dizzily behind into hell-for-leather audacities which Roger, in the more leisured days that followed, would remember in a cold sweat.
And yet he suffered it all. The Saint was just that sort of man. There was a glamour, a magnificent recklessness, a medieval splendor about him that no one with red blood in his veins could have resisted. In him there was nothing small, nothing half-hearted: he gave all that he had to everything that he did, and made his most casual foolishness heroic.
"Who cares?" drawled the Saint, with his lean brown hands seeming merely to caress the wheels of the Hirondel, and his mad, mocking eyes lazily skimming the road that hurtled towards them at seventy miles an hour. "Who cares if a whole army corps of the heathen comes woofling into Saltham to-night, even with a detachment of some of our old friends in support—the Black Wolves, for instance, or the Snake's Boys, or the Tiger Cubs, or even a brigade of the crown prince's own household cavalary—old Uncle Rayt Marius an' all? For it seems years since we had what you might call a one hundred per cent rodeo, Roger, and I feel that unless we get moving again pretty soon we shall be growing barnacles behind the ears."
Roger said nothing. He had nothing to say. And the big car roared out into the east.
The sun had long since set, and now the twilight was closing down with the suddenness of the season. As the dusk became dangerous for their speed, Simon touched a switch, and the tremendous twin headlights slashed a blazing pathway for them through the darkness.
They drove on in silence; and Roger Conway, strangely soothed by the swift rush of wind and the deep-chested drone of the open exhaust, sank into a hazy reverie. And he remembered a brown-eyed slip of a girl, sweet and fresh from her bath, in a jade-green gown, who was called America's loveliest lady, and who had sat in a sunny room with him that morning and eaten bacon and eggs. Also he remembered the way she and the Saint had spoken together, and how far away and unattainable they had seemed in their communion, and how little the Saint would say afterwards. He was quiet. ...
And then, it seemed only a few minutes later, Simon was rousing him with a hand on his shoulder; and Roger struggled upright and saw that it was now quite dark, and the sky was brilliant with stars.
"Your cue, son," said the Saint. "The last signpost gave us three miles to Saltham. Where do we go from here?"
"Right on over the next crossroads, old boy . . . . " Roger picked up his bearings mechanically. "Carry on ... and bear left here. . . . Sharp right just beyond that gate, and left again almost immediately. ... I should watch this corner—it's a brute. . . . Now stand by to fork right in about half a mile, and the house is about another four hundred yards farther on."
The Saint's foot groped across the floor and kicked over the cut-out control, and the thunder of their passage was suddenly hushed to a murmuring whisper that made figures on the speedometer seem grotesque. The Saint had never been prone to hide any of his lights under a bushel, and in the matter of racing automobiles particularly he had cyclonic tastes; but his saving quality was that of knowing precisely when and where to get off.
"We won't tell the world we're on our way till we've given the lie of the land a brisk double-O," he remarked. "Let's see—where does this comic chemin trail to after it's gone past the baronial hall?"
"It works round the grounds until it comes out onto the cliffs," Roger answered. "Then it runs along by the sea and dips down into the village nearly a mile away."
"Any idea how big these grounds are?"
"Oh, large! . . . I could give you a better idea of the size if I knew how much space an acre takes up."
"Parkland, or what?"
"Trees all around the edge and gardens around the house—as far as I could see. But part of it's park—you could play a couple of cricket matches on it. ... The gates are just round this bend on your right now."
"O.K., big boy. ..."
The Saint eased up the accelerator and glanced at the gates as the Hirondel drifted past. They were tall and broad and massive, fashioned in wrought iron in an antique style; far beyond them, at the end of a long straight drive, he could see the silhouette of a gabled roof against the stars, with one tiny square of window alight in the black shadow. . . . Maybe Sonia Delmar was there. . . . And he looked the other way, and saw the grim line of Roger's mouth.
"Feeling a bit more set for the stampede, son?" he asked softly.
"I am." Roger met his eyes steadily. "And it might amuse you to know, Saint, that there isn't another living man I'd have allowed to make it a stampede. Even now, I don't quite see why Sonia had to go back."
Simon touched the throttle again and they swept on.
"D'you think I'd have let Sonia take the risk for nothing myself?" he answered. "I didn't know what I was going to get out of my trip to the Ritz. And even what I did get isn't the whole works. But Sonia—she's right in their camp, and they've no fear of her squealing. It would amuse them to boast to her, Roger—I can see them doing it."
"That Russian they're bringing over—"
"Vassiloff?"
"That's it—"
"I rather think he'll boast more than any of them."
"What's he getting out of it?"
"Power," said the Saint quietly. "That's what they're all playing for—or with. And Rayt Marius most of all, for the power of gold—Marius and the men behind him. But he's the mad dog. . . . Did you know that he was once a guttersnipe in the slums of Prague? . . . Wouldn't it be the greatest thing in his life to sit on the unnofficial throne of Europe—to play with kings and presidents for toys—to juggle with great nations as in the past he's juggled with little ones? That's his idea. That's why he's playing Vassiloff with one finger, because Vassiloff hates Lessing, and Prince Rudolf with another finger, because Rudolf fancies himself as a modern Napoleon—and, by the lord, Roger, Rudolf could make that fancy into fact, with Marius behind him! . . . And God knows how many other people are on his strings, here and there .... And Sonia's the pawn that's right inside their lines—that might become a queen in one move, and turn the scales of their tangled chessgame to hell or glory."
"While we're—just dancing round the board......"
"Not exactly," said the Saint.
They had swung out onto the cliff road, and Simon was braking the car to a gentle standstill. As the car stopped he pointed; and Roger, looking past him, saw two lights, red and green stealing over the sea.
"THERE'S the bleary old bateau. ..."
A ghost of merriment wraithed through the Saint's voice. Thus the approach of tangible peril always seized him, with a stirring of stupendous laughter, and a surge of pride in all gay, glamorous things. And he slipped out of the car and stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at the lights and the reflection of the lights in the smooth sea, and then away to his right, where the shreds of other lights were tattered between the trees. "Battle and sudden death," went a song in his heart; and he smiled in the starlight, remembering another adventure and an old bravado. Then Roger was standing beside him. "How long would you give it, Saint?"
"All the time in the world. Don't forget we're fifty feet above sea level, by your reckoning, and that alters the horizon. She's a good two miles out."
Simon's head went back; he seemed to be listening.
"What is it?" queried Roger.
"Nothing. That's the problem. We didn't pass Marius on the road here, and he didn't pass us. Question: Did he get here first or is he still coming? Or isn't the prince likely to find my bathroom decoration till next Saturday? What would you say, Roger?"
"I should say they were here. You had to wait for a slow train, and then we wasted an hour in Saxmundham."
"Not 'wasted,' sweetheart," protested the Saint absently. "We assimilated some ale."
He heard an unmistakable metallic snap at his side, and glanced down at the blue-black sheen of an automatic in Roger's hand.
"We'll soon find out what's happened," said Roger grimly.
"Gat all refuelled and straining at the clutch, old lad?"
"It is."
Simon laughed softly, thoughtfully; and his hand fell on Conway's wrist.
'' Roger, I want you to go back to London."
There was an instant's utter silence.
Then—
" You want—"
"I want you to go to London. And find Lessing. Get at him somehow—if you have to shoot up the whole West End. And fetch him along here—even at the end of that gun!"
"Saint, what's the big idea?"
'' I want him here—our one and only Ike."
"But Sonia—"
"I'm staying, and that's what I'm staying for. You don't have to worry about her. And it's safer for you in London than it is for me. You've got to make record time on this trip."
"You can get ten miles an hour more out of that car than I can."
"And I can fight twice as many men as you can, and move about twice as quietly, and shoot twice as fast. No, Roger, this end of the game is mine, and you must know it. And Sir Isaac Lessing we must have. Don't you see?"
"Damn it, Saint—"
There were depths of bitterness in Roger's voice that the Saint had never heard before; but Simon could understand.
"Listen, sonny boy," he said gently. "Don't we know that the whole idea of this part of the performance has been staged for Lessing's benefit? And mightn't there be one thing just a shade cleverer than keeping Lessing neutral? That's all we'd be doing if you had your way. But suppose we fetched Ikey himself along here—and showed him the whole frame-up from the wings! Lessing isn't a sack of peanuts. If Marius thinks enough of him. to go to all this trouble to josh him into the show as an active partner, mightn't it be the slickest thing we ever did to turn Marius's battle-axe against himself with a vengeance—and get Lessing not just neutral, but a fighting man on our side? If Lessing can say 'War!' to the Balkans, and have them all cutting one another's throats in a week, why shouldn't he just as well say 'Nix!'— and send them all toddling home to their carpet slippers? Roger, it's the chance of a lifetime!"
He took Conway by the shoulders.
"You must see it, old Roger!"
"I know, Saint. But—"
"I promise you shall be in at the death. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do now, but I'm putting off anything drastic until the last possible minute. I don't want to make a flat tire of our own private peepshow if I can possibly help it—not till Ike's here to share the fun. And you'll be here with him, bringing up the beer—rear—in the triumphal procession. Roger, is the bet on?"
They stood eye to eye for ten ticked seconds of silence; and Roger's bleak eyes searched the Saint's face as they had never searched it before. In those ten seconds, all that the Saint signified in Roger's life, all that he incarnated and inspired, all that they had been through together, the whole cumulative force of a lifelong loyalty, rose up and gave desperate battle to the seed of ugly suspicion that had been sown in Roger's mind nearly two hours ago, and devilishly fecundated by this last inordinate demand. The stress of the fight showed in Roger's face, the rebellion of unthinkable things; but Simon waited without another word.
And then, slowly, Roger Conway nodded.
"Shake, " he said.
"Attaboy. ..."
Their hands met in a long grip, and then Roger turned away abruptly and swung into the driving seat of the Hirondel. The Saint leaned on the door.
"Touch the ground in spots," he directed rapidly. "I've got my shirt on you, and I know you won't fizzle, but every minute matters. And understand—if you do have to prod Isaac with the snout of that shooting-iron, prod him gently. He's got to arrive here in good running order—but he's got to arrive. What happens after that is your shout. I'd have liked to make a definite date, and I'm sure you would, too, Roger; but that's more than any of us can do on a night like this, and we'd be boobs to try. If I can manage it, I'll be there myself. If I can't, I'll try to leave a note—let's see—I'll slip something under a rock by that tree there. If I can't even do that—"
"Then what?"
"Then I'm afraid, Roger, it'll mean that you're the last wicket up; and you may give my love to all kind friends, and shoot Rayt Marius through the stomach for me, raise what you can on my Ulysses and the photographs Dicky Tremayne sent me from Paris."
The self-starter whirred under Roger's foot, and he listened for a moment to the smooth purr of the great engine; and then he turned again to the Saint.
"I'll be carrying on," he said quietly.
"I know," said the Saint, in the same tone. "And if you don't find that note, it mayn't really be so bad as all that—it may only mean that I've had an attack of writer's cramp, or something. But it'll still be your call. So don't think you're being elbowed out—because you're not. Whatever else happens, you're more than likely to have to stand up to the worst of the bowling before we draw stumps, and the fate of the side may very well be in your hands. And that does not mean maybe." He clapped Roger on the shoulder. "So here's luck to you, sonny boy!"
"Good luck, Saint!"
"And give 'em hell!"
And Simon stepped back, with a light laugh and' a flourish; and the Hirondel leaped away like an unleashed fiend.