Breakfast was served in the bungalow at an hour when all ordinary people, even on a Sunday, are finishing their midday meal. Conway and Kent sat down to it in their shirtsleeves and a stubby tousledness; but the Saint had been for a swim in the river, shaved with Orace's razor, and dressed himself with as much care as if he had been preparing to pose for a magazine cover, and the proverbial morning daisy would have looked positively haggard beside him.
"No man," complained Roger, after inspecting the apparition, "has a right to look like this at this hour of the morning"
The Saint helped himself to three fried eggs and bacon to match, and sat down in his place.
"If," he said, "you could open your bleary eyes enough to see the face of that clock, you'd see that it's after half-past two of the afternoon."
"It's the principle of the thing," protested Conway feebly. "We didn't get to bed till nearly six. And three eggs . . ."
The Saint grinned.
"Appetite of the healthy open-air man. I was splashing merrily down the Thames while you two were snoring."
Norman opened a newspaper.
"Roger was snoring," he corrected. "His mouth stays open twenty-four hours a day. And now he's talking with his mouth full," he added offensively.
"I wasn't eating," objected Conway.
"You were," said the Saint crushingly. "I heard you."
He reached for the coffee-pot and filled a cup for himself with a flourish.
The premonition of danger that he had had earlier that morning was forgotten—so completely that it was as if a part of his memory had been blacked out. Indeed, he had rarely felt fitter and better primed to take on any amount of odds.
Outside, over the garden and the lawn running down to the river, the sun was shining; and through the open French windows of the morning-room came a breath of sweet, cool air fragrant with the scent of flowers.
The fevered violence of the night before had vanished as utterly as its darkness, and with the vanishing of darkness and violence vanished also all moods of dark foreboding. Those things belonged to the night; in the clear daylight they seemed unreal, fantastic, incredible. There had been a battle —that was all. There would be more battles. And it was very good that it should be so—that a man should have such a cause to fight for, and such a heart and a body with which to fight it. ... As he walked back from his bathe an hour ago, the Saint had seemed to hear again the sound of the trumpet. ...
At the end of the meal he pushed back his chair and lighted a cigarette, and Conway looked at him expectantly.
"When do we go?"
"We?"
"I'll come with you."
"O.K.," said the Saint. "We'll leave when you're ready. We've got a lot to do. On Monday, Brook Street and all it contains will probably be in the hands of the police, but that can't be helped. I'd like to salvage my clothes, and one or two other trifles. The rest will have to go. Then there'll be bags to pack for you two, to last you out our stay here, and there'll be Pat's stuff as well. Finally, I must get some money. I think that's everything—and it'll keep us busy."
"What train is Pat travelling on?" asked Norman.
"That might be worth knowing," conceded the Saint. "I'll get through on the phone and find out while Roger's dressing."
He got his connection in ten minutes, and then he was speaking to her.
"Hullo, Pat, old darling. How's life?"
She did not have to ask who was the owner of that lazy, laughing voice.
"Hullo, Simon, boy!"
"I rang up," said the Saint, "because it's two days since I told you that you're the loveliest and most adorable thing that ever happened, and I love you. And further to ours of even date, old girl, when are you coming home? . . . No, no particular engagement. . . . Well, that doesn't matter. To tell you the truth, we don't want you back too late, but also, to tell you the truth, we don't want you back too early, either. . . . I'll tell you when I see you. Telephones have been known to have ears. . . . Well, if you insist, the fact is that Roger and I are entertaining a brace of Birds, and if you came back too early you might find out. . . . Yes, they are very Game. . . . That's easily settled—I'll look you out a train now if you like. Hold on."
He turned.
"Heave over the time-table, Norman—it's in that corner, under the back numbers of La Vie Parisienne. . . ."
He caught the volume dexterously.
"What time can you get away from this fête effect? . . . Sevenish? . . . No, that'll do fine. Terry can drive you over to Exeter, and if you get there alive you'll have heaps of time to catch a very jolly-looking train at—— Damn! I'm looking at the week-day trains. . . . And the Sunday trains are as slow as a Scotchman saying good-bye to a bawbee. . . . Look here, the only one you'll have time to catch now is the 4.58. Gets in at 9.20. The only one after that doesn't get to London till nearly four o'clock to-morrow morning. I suppose you were thinking of staying over till to-morrow. . . . I'm afraid you mustn't, really. That is important. . . . Good enough, darling. Expect you at Brook Street about half-past nine. . . . So long, lass. God bless . . ."
He hung up the receiver with a smile as Roger Conway returned after a commendably quick toilet.
"And now, Roger, me bhoy, we make our dash!"
"All set, skipper."
"Then let's go."
And the Saint laughed softly, hands on hips. His dark hair was at its sleekest perfection, his blue eyes danced, his brown face was alight with an absurdly boyish enthusiasm. He slipped an arm through Conway's, and they went out together.
Roger approached the car with slower and slower steps. An idea seemed to have struck him.
"Are you going to drive?" he asked suspiciously.
"I am," said the Saint.
Conway climbed in with an unhappy sigh. He knew, from bitter past experience, that the Saint had original and hair-raising notions of his own about the handling of high-powered automobiles.
They reached Brook Street at half-past four.
"Are you going to drive back as well?" asked Roger.
"I am," said the Saint.
Mr. Conway covered his eyes.
"Put me on a nice slow train first, will you?" he said. "Oh, and make a will leaving everything to me. Then you can die with my blessing."
Simon laughed, and took him by the arm.
"Upstairs," he said, "there is beer. And then—work. Come on, sonny boy!"
For three hours they worked. Part of that time Conway gave to helping the Saint; then he went on to attend to his own packing and Norman Kent's. He returned towards eight o'clock, and dumped the luggage he brought with him directly out of his taxi into the Hirondel. The Saint's completed contribution—two steamer trunks on the carrier, and a heavy valise inside—was already there. The Hirondel certainly had the air of assisting in a wholesale removal.
Conway found the Saint sinking a tankard of ale with phenomenal rapidity.
"Oil" said Conway, in alarm.
"Get yours down quickly," advised the Saint, indicating a second mug, which stood, full and ready, on the table. "We're off."
"Off?" repeated Roger puzzledly.
Simon jerked his empty can in the direction of the window.
"Outside," he said, "are a pair of prize beauties energetically doing nothing. I don't suppose you noticed them as you came in. I didn't myself, until a moment ago. I'll swear they've only just come on duty—I couldn't have missed them when I was loading up the car. But they've seen too much. Much too much."
Conway went to the window and looked out.
Presently:
"I don't see anyone suspicious."
"That's your innocent and guileless mind, my pet," said the Saint, coming over to join him. "If you were as old in sin as I am, you'd . . . Well, I'll be b-b-blowed!"
Conway regarded him gravely.
"It's the beer," he said. "Never mind. You'll feel better in a minute."
"Damned if I will!" crisped the Saint.
He slammed his tankard down on the window-sill, and caught Roger by both shoulders.
"Don't be an old idiot, Roger!" he cried. "You know me. I tell you this place was being watched. Police or Angel Face. We can't say which, but almost certainly Angel Face. Teal couldn't possibly have got as far as this in the time, I'll bet anything you like. But Angel Face could. And the two sleuths have beetled off with the news about us. So, to save trouble, we'll beetle off ourselves. Because, if I know anything about Angel Face yet, Brook Street is going to be rather less healthy than a hot spot in hell—inside an hour!"
"But Pat——"
The Saint looked at his watch.
"We've got two hours to fill up somehow. The Hirondel'll do it easy. Down to Maidenhead, park the luggage, and back to Paddington Station in time to meet the train."
"And suppose we have a breakdown?"
"Breakdown hell! . . . But you're right. . . . Correction, then: I'll drop you at the station, and make the return trip to Maidenhead alone. You can amuse yourself in the bar, and I'll meet you there. . . . It's a good idea to get rid of the luggage, too. We don't know that the world won't have become rather sticky by half-past nine, and it'd be on the safe side to make the heavy journey while the going's good. If I leave now they won't have had time to make any preparations to follow me; and later we'd be able to slip them much more easily, if they happened to get after us, without all the impedimenta to pull our speed down."
Conway found himself being rushed down the stairs as he listened to the Saint's last speech. The speech seemed to begin in Brook Street and finish at Paddington. Much of this impression, of course, was solely the product of Conway's overwrought imagination; but there was a certain foundation of fact in it, and the impression built thereon was truly symptomatic of Simon Templar's appalling velocity of transforming decision into action.
Roger Conway recovered coherent consciousness in the station buffet and a kind of daze; and by that time Simon Templar was hustling the Hirondel westwards.
The Saint's brain was in a ferment of questions. Would Marius arrange a raid on the flat in Brook Street? Or would he, finding that the loaded car which his spies had reported had gone, assume that the birds had flown? Either way, that didn't seem to matter; but the point it raised was what Marius would do next, after he had either discovered or decided that his birds had flown. . . . And, anyway, since Marius must have known that the Saint had attended the rough party at Esher, why hadn't Brook Street been raided before? . . . Answer: Because (a) a show like that must take a bit of organising, and (b) it would be easier, anyhow, to wait until dark. Which, at that time of year, was fairly late at night. Thereby making it possible to do the return journey to and from Maidenhead on good time. . . . But Marius would certainly be doing something. Put yourself in the enemy's place. . . .
So the Saint reached Maidenhead in under an hour, and was on the road again five minutes later.
It was not his fault that he was stopped halfway back by a choked carburettor jet which it took him fifteen minutes to locate and remedy.
Even so, the time he made on the rest of the trip amazed even himself.
In the station entrance he actually cannoned into Roger Conway.
"Hullo," said the Saint. "Where are you off to? The train's just about due in."
Conway stared at him.
Then he pointed dumbly at the clock in the booking-hall.
Simon looked at it, and went white.
"But my watch," he began stupidly, "my watch——"
"You must have forgotten to wind it up last night."
"You met the train?"
Conway nodded.
"It's just possible that I may have missed her, but I'd swear she wasn't on it. Probably she didn't catch it——"
"Then there's a telegram at Brook Street to say so. We'll go there—if all the armies of Europe are in the way!"
They went. Conway, afterwards, preferred not to remember that drive.
And yet peace seemed to reign in Brook Street. The lamps were alight, and it was getting dark rapidly, for the sky had clouded over in the evening. As was to be expected on a Sunday, there were few people about, and hardly any traffic. There was nothing at all like a crowd—no sign that there had been any disturbance at all. There was a man leaning negligently against a lamp-post, smoking a pipe as though he had nothing else to do in the world. It happened that, as the Hirondel stopped, another man came up and spoke to him. The Saint saw the incident, and ignored it.
He went through the front door and up the stairs like a whirlwind. Conway followed him.
Conway really believed that the Saint would have gone through a police garrison or a whole battalion of Angel Faces; but there were none there to go through. Nor had the flat been entered, as far as they could see. It was exactly as they had left it.
But there was no telegram.
"I might have missed her," said Conway helplessly. "She may be on her way now. The taxi may have broken down—or had a slight accident——"
He stopped abruptly at the blaze in the Saint's eyes.
"Look at the clock," said the Saint, with a kind of curbed savagery.
Roger looked at the clock. The clock said that it was a quarter to ten.
And he saw the terrible look on the Saint's face, and it hypnotised him. The whole thing had come more suddenly than anything that had ever happened to Roger Conway before, and it had swirled him to the loss of his bearings in the same way that a man in a small boat in tropical seas may be lost in a squall. The blow had fallen too fiercely for him. He could feel the shock, and yet he was unable to determine what manner of blow had been struck, or even if a blow had been struck at all, in any comprehensible sense.
He could only look at the clock and say helplessly: "It's a quarter to ten."
The Saint was saying: "She'd have let me know if she'd missed the train——"
"Or waited for the next one."
"Oh, for the love of Mike!" snarled the Saint. "Didn't you hear me ring her up from Maidenhead? I looked out all the trains then, and the only next one gets in at three fifty-one to-morrow morning. D'you think she'd have waited for that one without sending me a wire?"
"But if I didn't see her at Paddington, and anything had happened to her taxi——"
But the Saint had taken a cigarette, and was lighting it with a hand that could never have been steadier; and the Saint's face was a frozen mask.
"More beer," said the Saint.
Roger moved to obey.
"And talk to me," said the Saint, "talk to me quietly and sanely, will you? Because fool suggestions won't help me. I don't have to ring up Terry and ask if Pat caught that train, because I know she did. I don't have to ask if you're quite sure you couldn't have missed her at the station, because I know you didn't. ..."
The Saint was deliberately breaking a match-stick into tiny fragments and dropping them one by one into the ash-tray.
"And don't tell me I'm getting excited about nothing," said the Saint, "because I tell you I know. I know that Pat was coming on a slow train, which stops at other places before it gets to London. I know that Marius has got Pat, and I know that he's going to try to use her to force me to give up Vargan, and I know that I'm going to find Dr. Rayt Marius and kill him. So talk to me very quietly and sanely, Roger, because if you don't I think I shall go quite mad."