"The ancient art of generalship," said the Saint, "is to put yourself in the enemy's place. Now, how should I guard Vargan if I were as fat as Chief Inspector Teal?"
They stood in a little group on the Portsmouth Road about a mile from Esher, where they had stopped the cars in which they had driven down from London. They had been separated for the journey, because the Saint had insisted on taking his own Furillac as well as Norman Kent's Hirondel, in case of accidents. And he had refused to admit that there was time to make plans before they started. That, he had said, he would attend to on the way, and thereby save half an hour.
"There were five men when we came down yesterday," said Conway. "If Teal hasn't got many more than that on the night shift I should say they'd be arranged much as we saw them—outposts in the lane, the front garden, and the back garden, and a garrison in the greenhouse and the house itself. Numbers uncertain, but probably only couples."
The Saint's inevitable cigarette glowed like a fallen star in the darkness.
"That's the way I figured it out myself. I've roughed out a plan of attack on that basis."
He outlined it briefly. That was not difficult, for it was hardly a plan at all—it was little more than an idea for desperate and rapid action, a gamble on the element of surprise. The Saint had a pleasant habit of tackling some things in that mood, and getting away with it. And yet, on this occasion, as it happened, even that much planning was destined to be unnecessary.
A few minutes later they were on their way again.
The Saint led, with Conway beside him, in the Furillac. The Hirondel, with Norman Kent, followed about fifty yards behind. Norman, much to his disgust, was not considered as an active performer in the early stages of the enterprise. He was to stop his car a little way from the end of the lane, turn round, and wait with the engine ticking over until either Conway or the Saint arrived with Vargan. The simplicity of this arrangement was its great charm, but they were not able to make Norman see their point—which, they said, was the fault of his low and brawlsome mind.
And yet, if this reduction of their mobile forces had not been an incidental part of the Saint's sketchy plan of campaign, the outcome of the adventure might have been very different.
As Simon pulled up at the very mouth of the lane, he flung a lightning glance over his shoulder, and saw the Hirondel already swerving across the road for the turn.
Then he heard the shot.
"For the love of Pete!"
The invocation dropped from the Saint's lips in a breathless undertone. He was getting out of the car at that moment, and he completed the operation of placing his second foot on the road with a terrifically careful intentness. As he straightened up with the same frozen deliberation, he found Conway at his elbow.
"You heard it?" Conway's curt, half-incredulous query.
"And how. . . ."
"Angel Face——"
"Himself!"
Simon Templar was standing like a rock. He seemed, to Conway's impatience, to have been standing like that for an eternity, as though his mind had suddenly left him. And yet it had only been a matter of a few seconds, and in that time the Saint's brain had been whirling and wheeling with a wild precision into the necessary readjustments.
So Angel Face had beaten them to the jump—it could have been by no more than a fraction. And, as they had asked for trouble, they were well and truly in the thick of it. They had come prepared for the law; now they had to deal with both law and lawlessness, and both parties united in at least one common cause—to keep K. B. Vargan to themselves. Even if both parties were at war on every other issue. . . .
"So we win this hands down," said the Saint softly, amazingly. "We're in luck!"
"If you call this luck!"
"But I do! Could we have arrived at a better time? When both gangs have rattled each other—and probably damaged each other—and Tiny Tim's boy friends have done the dirty work for us——"
He was cut short by another shot . . . then another . . . then a muddled splutter of three or four. . . .
"Our cue!" snapped the Saint, and Roger Conway was at his side as he leapt down the lane.
There was no sign of the sentries, but a man came rushing towards them out of the gloom, heavy-footed and panting. The Saint pushed Conway aside and flung out a well-timed foot. As the man sprawled headlong, Simon pounced on him and banged his head with stunning force against the road. Then he yanked the dazed man to his feet and looked closely at him.
"If he's not a policeman, I'm a Patagonian Indian," said the Saint. "A slight error, Roger."
The man answered with a wildly swinging fist, and the Saint hit him regretfully on the point of the jaw and saw him go down in a limp heap.
"What next?" asked Conway; and a second fusillade clattered out of the night to answer him.
"This is a very rowdy party," said the Saint mournfully. "Let's make it worse, shall we?"
He jerked an automatic from his pocket and fired a couple of shots into the air. The response was far more prompt than he had expected—two little tongues of flame that spat at them out of the further blackness, and two bullets that sang past their heads.
"Somebody loves us," remarked Simon calmly. "This way——"
He started to lead down the lane.
And then, out of the darkness, the headlights of a car came to life dazzlingly, like two monstrous eyes. For a second Con-way and the Saint stood struck to stillness in the glare that had carved a great trough of luminance out of the obscurity as if by the scoop of some gigantic dredge. So sudden and blinding was that unexpected light that an instant of time was almost fatally lost before either of them could see that it was not standing still but moving towards them and picking up speed like an express train.
"Glory!" spoke the Saint, and his voice overlapped the venomous rat-tat-tat! of another unseen automatic.
In the same instant he was whirling and stooping with the pace of a striking snake. He collared Conway at the knees and literally hurled him bodily over the low hedge at the side of the lane with an accuracy and expedition that the toughest and most seasoned footballer could hardly have bettered.
The startled Conway, getting shakily to his feet, found the Saint landing from a leap beside him, and was in time to see the dark shape of a closed car flash past in the wake of that eye-searing blaze of headlights—so close that its wings and running-board tore a flurry of crackling twigs from the hedge. And he realised that, but for the Saint's speed of reaction, they would have stood no chance at all in that narrow space.
He might have said something about it. By ordinary procedure he should have given thanks to his saviour in a breaking voice; they should have wrung each other's hands and wept gently on each other's shoulders for a while; but something told Conway that it was no time for such trimmings. Besides, the Saint had taken the incident in his stride: by that time it had probably slithered through his memory into the dim limbo of distant reminiscence, and he would probably have been quite astonished to be reminded of it at that juncture. By some peaceful and lazy fireside, in his doddering old age, possibly . . . But in the immediate present he was concerned only with the immediate future.
He was looking back towards the house. There were lights showing still in some of the windows—it might altogether have been a most serene and tranquil scene, but for the jarring background of intermittent firing, which might have been nothing worse than a childish celebration of Guy Fawkes' day if it had been Guy Fawkes' day. But the Saint wasn't concerned with those reflections, either. He was searching the shadows by the gate, and presently he made out a deeper and more solid-looking shadow among the other shadows, a bulky shadow. ...
Crack!
A tiny jet of flame licked out of the bulky shadow, and they heard the tinkle of shattered glass; but the escaping car was now only a few yards from the main road.
Conway was shaking Simon by the shoulder, babbling: "They're getting away! Saint, why don't you shoot?"
Mechanically the Saint raised his automatic, though he knew that the chance of putting in an effective shot, in that light, was about a hundred to one against anybody—and the Saint, as a pistol shot, had never been in the championship class.
Then he lowered the gun again, with something like a gasp, and his left hand closed on Conway's arm in a vice-like grip.
"They'll never do it!" he cried. "I left the car slap opposite the lane, and they haven't got room to turn!"
And Roger Conway, watching, fascinated, saw the lean blue shape of the Furillac revealed in the blaze of the flying headlights, and heard, before the crash, the scream of tortured tyres tearing ineffectually at the road.
Then the lights vanished in a splintering smash, and there was darkness and a moment's silence.
"We've got 'em!" rapped the Saint exultantly.
The bulky shadow had left the gate and was lumbering towards them up the lane. The Saint was over the hedge like a cat, landing lightly on his toes directly in Teal's path, and the detective saw him too late.
"Sorry!" murmured the Saint, and really meant it; but he crowded every ounce of his one hundred and sixty pounds of , dynamic fighting weight into the blow he jerked at the pit of Teal's stomach.
Ordinarily, the Saint entertained a sincere regard for the police force in general and Chief Inspector Teal in particular, but he had no time that night for more than the most laconic courtesies. Moreover, Inspector Teal had a gun, and, in the circumstances, would be liable to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Finally, the Saint had his own ideas and plans on the subject of the rescue of Vargan from the raiding party, and they did not include either the co-operation or interference of the law. These three cogent arguments he summed up in that one pile-driving jolt to Teal's third waistcoat button: and the detective dropped with a grunt of agony. Then the Saint turned and went flying up the lane after Roger Conway.
He heard a shout behind him, and again a gun barked savagely in the night. The Saint felt the wind of the bullet actually stroke his cheek. Clearly, then, there was at least one more police survivor of Marius's raid; but Simon judged that further disputes with the law could be momentarily postponed. He swerved like a hare and raced on, knowing that only the luckiest—or unluckiest—of blind shots could have come so near him in such a light, and having no fear that a second would have the same fortune.
As it happened, the detective who had come out of the garden behind Teal must have realised the same feeling, for he held his fire. But as the Saint stopped by the yellow sedan, now locked inextricably with the wreckage of the battered Furillac, he heard the man pounding on through the darkness towards him.
Conway was opening the near-side door; and it was a miracle that his career was not cut short then and there by the shot from the interior of the car that went snarling past his ear. But there was no report—just the throaty plop! of an efficient silencer—and he understood that the only shooting they had heard had been done by the police guards. The raiders had not been so rowdy as the Saint had accused them of being.
The next moment Simon Templar had opened a door on the other side of the sedan.
"Naughty boy!" said Simon Templar reproachfully.
His long arm shot over the gun artist's shoulder, and his sinewy hand closed and twisted on the automatic in time to send the next shot through the roof of the car instead of through Conway's brain.
Then the Saint had the gun screwed round till it rammed into the man's own ribs.
"Now shoot, honeybunch," encouraged the Saint; but the man sat quite still.
He was in the back of the car, beside Vargan. There was no one in the driver's seat, and the door on that side was open. The Saint wondered who the chauffeur had been, and where he had got to, and whether it had been Angel Face himself; but he had little time to give to that speculation, and any possibility of danger from the missing driver's quarter would have to be faced if and when it materialised.
Conway yanked Vargan out into the road on one side; and the Saint, taking a grip on the gun artist's neck with his free hand, yanked him out into the road on the other side. One wrench disarmed the man, and then the Saint spun him smartly round by the neck.
"Sleep, my pretty one," said the Saint, and uppercut him with a masterly blend of science and brute strength.
He turned, to look down the muzzle of an automatic, and put up his hands at once. He had slipped his own gun into his pocket in order to deal more comfortably with the man from the car, and he knew it would be dangerous to try to reach it.
"Lovely weather we've been having, haven't we?" drawled the Saint genially.
This, he decided, must be the guard who had fired at him down the lane; the build, though hefty, was nothing like Angel Face's gigantic proportions. Besides, Angel Face, or any of his men, would have touched off the trigger ten seconds ago.
The automatic nosed into the Saint's chest, and he felt his pocket deftly lightened of its gun. The man exhaled his satisfaction in a long breath.
"That's one of you, anyway," he remarked grimly.
"Pleased to meet you," said the Saint.
And there it was.
The Saint's voice was as unperturbed as if he had been conducting some trivial conversation in a smokeroom, instead of talking with his hands in the air and an unfriendly detective focussing a Smith-Wesson on his diaphragm. And the corner was undoubtedly tight. If the circumstances had been slightly different, the Saint might have dealt with this obstacle in the same way as he had dealt with Marius on their first encounter. Marius had had the drop on him just as effectively as this. But Marius had been expecting a walk-over, and had therefore been just the necessary fraction below concert pitch; whereas this man was obviously expecting trouble. In view of what he must have been through already that night, he would have been a born fool if he hadn't. And something told Simon that the man wasn't quite a born fool. Something in the businesslike steadiness of that automatic . . .
But the obstacle had to be surmounted, all the same.
"Get Vargan away, Roger," sang the Saint cheerfully, coolly. "See you again some time. . . ."
He took two paces sideways, keeping his hands well up.
"Stop that!" cracked the detective, and the Saint promptly stopped it; but now he was in a position to see round the back of the sedan.
The red tail-light of the Hirondel was moving—Norman Kent was backing the car up closer to save time.
Conway bent and heaved the Professor up on to his shoulder like a bag of potatoes; then he looked back hesitantly at Simon.
"Get him away while you've got the chance, you fool!" called the Saint impatiently.
And even then he really believed that he was destined to sacrifice himself to cover the retreat. Not that he was going quietly. But . . .
He saw Conway turn and break into a trot, and sighed his relief.
Then, in a flash, he saw how a chance might be given, and tensed his muscles warily. And the chance was given him.
It wasn't the detective's fault. He merely attempted the impossible. He was torn between the desire to retain his prisoner and the impulse to find out what was happening to the man it was his duty to guard. He knew that that man was being taken away, and he knew that he ought to be trying to do something to prevent it; and yet his respect for the desperation of his captive stuck him up as effectively as if it had been the captive who held the gun. And, of course, the detective ought to have shot the captive and gone on with the rest of the job; but he tried, in a kind of panic, to find a less bloodthirsty solution, and the solution he found wasn't a solution at all. He tried to divide his mind and apply it to two things at once; and that, he ought to have known, was a fatal thing to do with a man like the Saint. But at that moment he didn't know the Saint very well.
Simon Templar, in those two sideways steps that the detective had allowed him to take, had shifted into such a position that the detective's lines of vision, if he had been able to look two ways at once, at Conway with one eye and at the Saint with the other, would have formed an obtuse angle. Therefore, since the detective's optic orbits were not capable of this feat, he could not see what Conway was doing without taking his eyes off Simon Templar.
And the detective was foolish.
For an instant his gaze left the Saint. How he imagined he would get away with it will remain a mystery. Certainly Simon did not inquire the answer then, nor discover it afterwards. For in that instant's grace, ignoring the menace of the automatic, the Saint shot out a long, raking left that gathered strength from every muscle in his body from the toes to the wrist
And the Saint was on his way to the Hirondel before the man reached the ground.
Conway had only just dumped his struggling burden into the back seat when the Saint sprang to the running-board and clapped Norman Kent on the shoulder.
"Right away, sonny boy!" cried the Saint; and the Hirondel was sliding away as he and Conway climbed into the back.
He collected Vargan's flailing legs in an octopus embrace, and held the writhing scientist while Conway pinioned his ankles with the rope they had brought for the purpose. The expert hands of the first set of kidnappers had already dealt with the rest of him—his wrists were lashed together with a length of stout cord, and a professional gag stifled the screams which otherwise he would undoubtedly have been loosing.
"What happened?" asked Norman Kent, over his shoulder; and the Saint leaned over the front seat and explained.
"In fact," he said, "we couldn't have done better if we'd thought it out. Angel Face certainly brought off that raid like no amateur. But can you beat it? No stealth or subtlety, as far as we know. Just banging in like a Chicago bandit, and hell to the consequences. That shows how much he means business."
"How many men on the job?"
"Don't know. We only met one, and that wasn't Angel Face. Angel Face himself may have been in the car with Vargan, but he'd certainly taken to the tall timber when Roger and I arrived. A man like that wouldn't tackle the job with one solitary car and a couple of pals. There must have been a spare bus, with load, somewhere—probably up the lane. There should be another way in, though I don't know where it is. . . . You'd better switch on the lights—we're out of sight now."
He settled back and lighted a cigarette.
In its way, it had been a most satisfactory effort, even if its success had been largely accidental; but the Saint was frowning rather thoughtfully. He wasn't worrying about the loss of his car—that was a minor detail. But that night he had lost something far more important.
"This looks like my good-bye to England," he said; and Conway, whose brain moved a little less quickly, was surprised.
"Why—are you going abroad after this?"
The Saint laughed rather sadly.
"Shall I have any choice?" he answered. "We couldn't have got the Furillac away, and Teal will trace me through that. He doesn't know I'm the Saint, but I guess they could make the Official Secrets Act heavy enough on me without that. Not to mention that any damage Angel Face's gang may have done to the police will be blamed on us as well. There's nothing in the world to show that we weren't part of the original raid, except the evidence of the gang themselves— and I shouldn't bet on their telling. . . . No, my Roger. We are indubitably swimming in a large pail of soup. By morning every policeman in London will be looking for me, and by to-morrow night my photograph will be hanging up in every police station in England. Isn't it going to be fun?—as the bishop said to the actress."
But the Saint wasn't thinking it as funny as it might have been.
"Is it safe to go to Maidenhead?" asked Conway.
"That's our consolation. The deeds of the bungalow are in the name of Mrs. Patricia Windermere, who spends her spare time being Miss Patricia Holm. I've had that joke up my sleeve for the past year in case of accidents."
"And Brook Street?"
The Saint chuckled.
"Brook Street," he said, "is held in your name, my sweet and respectable Roger. I thought that'd be safer. I merely installed myself as your tenant. No—we're temporarily covered there, though I don't expect that to last long. A few days, perhaps. . . . And the address registered with my car is one I invented for the purpose. . . . But there's a snag. . . . Finding it's a dud address, they'll get on to the agents I bought it from. And I sent it back to them for decarbonising only a month ago, and gave Brook Street as my address. That was careless! . . . What's to-day?"
"It's now Sunday morning."
Simon sat up.
"Saved again! They won't be able to find out much before Monday. That's all the time we want. I must get hold of Pat. . . ."
He sank back again in the seat and fell silent, and remained very quiet for the rest of the journey; but there was little quietude in his mind. He was planning vaguely, scheming wildly, daydreaming, letting his imagination play as it would with this new state of affairs, hoping that something would emerge from the chaos; but all he found was a certain rueful resignation.
"At least, one could do worse for a last adventure," he said.
It was four o'clock when they drew up outside the bungalow, and found a tireless Orace opening the front door before the car had stopped. The Saint saw Vargan carried into the house, and found beer and sandwiches set out in the dining-room against their arrival.
"So far, so good," said Roger Conway, when the three of them reassembled over the refreshment.
"So far," agreed the Saint—so significantly that the other two both looked sharply at him.
"Do you mean more than that?" asked Norman Kent.
Simon smiled.
"I mean—what I mean. I've a feeling that something's hanging over us. It's not the police—as far as they're concerned I should say the odds are two to one on us. I don't know if it's Angel Face. I just don't know at all. It's a premonition, my cherubs."
"Forget it," advised Roger Conway sanely.
But the Saint looked out of the window at the bleak pallor that had bleached the eastern rim of the sky, and wondered.