Knight Templar (The Avenging Saint)

LESLIE CHARTERIS

KNIGHT

TEMPLAR

INTERNATIONAL POLYGONICS, LTD.

NEW YORK CITY

KNIGHT TEMPLAR

Copyright © 1930, 1931 by Leslie Charteris.

Reprinted with the author's permission.

Cover: Copyright © 1989 by International Polygonics, Ltd.

Library of Congress Card Catalog No. 89-80432

ISBN 1-55882-010-8

Printed and manufactured in the United States of America.

First IPL printing July 1989.

To

RAYMOND SAVAGE

LONDON, MAY, 1930

Contents

CHAPTER

1.How Simon Templar Sang a Song, and Found Some of It True

2.How Simon Templar Entertained a Guest, and Spoke of Two Old Friends

3.How Sonia Delmar Ate Bacon and Eggs, and Simon Templar Spoke on the Telephone

4.How Simon Templar Dozed in the Green Park, and Discovered a New Use for Toothpaste

5.How Simon Templar Travelled to Saltham, and Roger Conway Put Up His Gun

6.How Simon Templar Threw a Stone, and the Italian Delegate Was Unlucky

7.How Sonia Delmar Heard a Story, and Alexis Vassiloff Was Interrupted

8.How Simon Templar Borrowed a Gun, and Thought Kindly of Lobsters

9.How Simon Templar Looked for Land, and Proved Himself a True Prophet

10. How Sir Isaac Lessing Took Exercise, and Rayt Marius Lighted a Cigar

11. How Simon Templar Entertained the Congregation, and Hermann Also Had His Fun

12 How Marius Organized an Accident, and Mr. Prosser Passed On

13.How Simon Templar Entered a Post Office, and a Boob Was Blistered

14. How Roger Conway Was Left Alone, and Simon Templar Went to His Reward

15. How Simon Templar Put Down a Book

CHAPTER ONE

How Simon Templar sang a song,

and found some of it true

THE SAINT SANG:

"Strange adventure! Maiden wedded

To a groom she'd never seen—

Never, never, never seen!

Groom about to be beheaded,

In an hour on Tower Green!

Tower, Tower, Tower Green!

Groom in dreary dungeon lying—"

" 'Ere," said an arm of the Law. "Not so much noise!"

The Saint stopped, facing round, tall and smiling and debonair.

"Good-evening—or morning—as the case may be," said the Saint politely.

"And what d'you think you're doing?" demanded the Law.

"Riding on a camel in the desert," said the Saint happily.

The Law peered at him suspiciously. But the Saint looked very respectable. The Saint always looked so respectable that he could at any time have walked into an ecclesiastical conference without even being asked for his ticket. Dressed in rags, he could have made a bishop look like two cents at a bad rate of exchange. And in the costume that he had donned for the night's oc­casion his air of virtue was overpowering. His shirtfront was of a pure and beautiful white that should have argued a pure and beautiful soul. His tuxedo, even under the poor illumination of a street lamp, was cut with such a dazzling per­fection, and worn moreover with such a staggering elegance, that no tailor with a pride in his profession could have gazed unmoved upon such a stupendous apotheosis of his art. The Saint, as he stood there, might have been taken for an unem­ployed archangel—if he had remembered to wear his soft black felt a little less rakishly, and to lean a little less rakishly on his gold-mounted stick. As it was, he looked like a modern pugilist, the heir to a dukedom, a successful confidence man, or an advertisement for Wuggo. And the odour of sanctity about him could have been scented a hundred yards up-wind by a man with a severe cold in the head and no sense of smell.

The Law, slightly dazed by its scrutiny, pulled it­self together with a visible effort.

"You can't," said the Law, "go bawling about the streets like that at two o'clock in the morn­ing."

"I wasn't bawling," said the Saint aggrievedly. "I was singing."

"Bawling, I call it," said the Law obstinately.

The Saint took out his cigarette case. It was a very special case; and the Saint was very proud of it, and would as soon have thought of travelling without it as he would have thought of walking down Piccadilly in his pajamas. Into that cigarette case had been concentrated an enthusiastic ingenuity that was typical of the Saint's flair for detail—a flair that had already enabled him to live about twenty-nine years longer than a good many people thought he ought to have. There was much more in that case than met the eye. Much more. But it wasn't in action at that particular moment. The cigarette which the Law was prevailed upon to accept was innocent of deception, as also was the one which the Saint selected for himself.

"Anyway," said the Saint, "wouldn't you bawl, as you call it, if you knew that a man with a name like Heinrich Dussel had recently received into his house an invalid who wasn't ill?''

The Law blinked, bovinely meditative.

"Sounds fishy to me,'' conceded the Law.

"And to me," said the Saint. "And queer fish are my hobby. I'd travel a thousand miles any day to investigate a kipper that was the least bit queer on the kip—and it woudn't be for the first time. There was a smear of bloater paste, once, that fetched me from the Malay Peninsula via Chicago to a very wild bit of Devonshire. . . . But this is more than bloater paste. This is real red herring."

"Are you drunk?" inquired the Law, kindly.

"No," said the Saint. "British Constitution. Truly rural. The Leith police dismisseth us. ... No, I'm not drunk. But I'm thinking of pos­sible accidents. So would you just note that I'm going into that house up there—number 90— perfectly sound and sane? And I shan't stay more than half an hour at the outside—voluntarily. So if I'm not out here again at two-thirty, you can walk right in and demand the body. Au revoir, sweet­heart. ..."

And the Saint smiled beatifically, hitched himself off his gold-mounted stick, adjusted the rakish tilt of his hat, and calmly resumed his stroll and his song, while the Law stared blankly after him.

"Groom in dreary dungeon lying,

Groom as good as dead, or dying,

For a pretty maiden sighing—

Pretty maid of seventeen!

Seven-seven-seventeen!"

"Blimey," said the Law, blankly.

But the Saint neither heard nor cared what the Law said. He passed on, swinging his stick, into his adventure.

2

MEET THE SAINT.

His godfathers and his godmothers, at his baptism, had bestowed upon him the name of Simon Templar; but that coincidence of initials was not the only reason for the nickname by which he was far more widely known. One day, the story of how he came by that nickname may be told: it is a good story, in its way, though it goes back to the days when the Saint was nineteen, and almost as respectable as he looked. But the name had stuck. It was inevitable that it should stick, for obviously it had been destined to him from the beginning. And in the ten years that had followed his second and less godly baptism, he had done his very best to live up to that second name—according to his lights. But you may have heard the story of the very big man whose friends called him Tiny.

He looked very Saintly indeed as he sauntered up Park Lane that night.

Saintly . . . you understand . . . with the capital S. That was how Roger Conway always liked to spell the adjective, and that pleasant conceit may very well be carried on here. There was something about the way Simon wore the name, as there was about the way he wore his clothes, that naturally suggested capital letters in every context.

Of course, he was all wrong. He ought never to have been let loose upon this twentieth century. He was upsetting. Far too often, when he spoke, his voice struck disturbing chords in the mind. When you saw him, you looked, instinctively and exasperatedly, for a sword at his side, a feather in his hat, and spurs at his heels. There was a queer keenness in the chiselling of his tanned face, seen in profile—something that can only be described as a swiftness of line about the nose and lips and chin, a swiftness as well set off by the slick sweep of patent-leather hair as by the brim of a filibustering felt hat—a laughing dancing devil of mischief that was never far from the very clear blue eyes, a magnificently medieval flamboyance of manner, an extraordinary vividness and vital challenge about every movement he made, that too clearly had no place in the organization of the century that was afflicted with him. If he had been anyone else, you would have felt that the organization was likely to make life very difficult for him. But he was Simon Templar, the Saint, and so you could only feel that he was likely to make life very difficult for the organization. Wherefore, as a respectable member of the organization, you were liable to object....

And, in fact, objections had been made in due season—to such effect that, if anything were needed to complete the Saint's own private en­tertainment at that moment, it could have been provided by the reflection that he had no business to be in England at all that night. Or any other night. For the name of the Saint was not known only to his personal friends and enemies. It was something like a legend, a public institution; not many months ago, it had been headlined over every newspaper in Europe, and the Saint's trade­mark—a childish sketch of a little man with straight-line body and limbs, and a round blank head under an absurd halo—had been held in almost superstitious awe throughout the length and breadth of England. And there still reposed, in the desk of Chief Inspector Teal, at New Scotland Yard, warrants for the arrest of Simon Templar and the other two who had been with him in all his misdeeds—Roger Conway and Patricia Holm. Why the Saint had come back to England was nobody's business. He hadn't yet advertised his return; and, if he had advertised it, nothing is more certain than that Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal would have been combing London for him within the hour—with a gun behind each ear, and an official address of welcome accord­ing to the Indictable Offences Act, 1848, in his pocket....

Wherefore it was very good and amusing to be back in London, and very good and amusing to be on the trail of an invalid who was not ill, though sheltering in the house of a man with a name like Heinrich Dussel....

The Saint knew that the invalid was still there, because it was two o'clock on Sunday morning, and near the policeman a melancholy-looking individual was selling very early editions of the Sunday papers, apparently hoping to catch returning Saturday-night revellers on the rebound, and the melancholy-looking individual hadn't batted an eyelid as the Saint passed. If anything interesting had happened since the melancholy-looking individual had made his last report, Roger Conway would have batted one eyelid, and Simon would have bought a paper and found a note therein. And if the invalid who was not ill had left the house, Roger wouldn't have been there at all. Nor would the low-bodied long-nosed Hirondel parked close by. On the face of it, there was no connection between Roger Conway and the Hirondel; but that was part of the deception....

"Strange adventure that we're trolling:

Modest maid and gallant groom—

Gallant, gallant, gallant groom!

While the funeral bell is tolling,

Tolling, tolling—"

Gently the Saint embarked upon the second verse of his song. And through his manifest cheerfulness he felt a faint electric tingle of ex­pectation. ...

For he knew that it was true. He, of all men living, should have known that the age of strange adventures was not past. There were adventures all around, then, as there had been since the beginning of the world; it was a matter for the ad­venturer to go out and challenge them. And ad­venture had never yet failed Simon Templar— perhaps because he had never doubted it. It might have been luck, or it might have been his own uncanny genius; but at least he knew, whatever it was he had to thank, that whenever and wherever anything was happening, he was there. He had been born to it, the spoiled child of a wild tempes­tuous destiny—born for nothing else, it seemed, but to find all the fun in the world.

And he was on the old trail again.

But this time it was no fluke. His worst enemy couldn't have said that Simon Templar hadn't worked for all the trouble he was going to find that night. For weeks past he had been hunting two men across Europe—a slim and very elegant man, and a huge and very ugly man—and one of them at least he had sworn to kill. Neither of them went by the name of Heinrich Dussel, even in his spare time; but Heinrich Dussel had conferred with them the night before in the slim and very elegant man's suite at the Ritz, and accordingly the Saint had become interested in Heinrich Dussel. And then, less than two hours before the Saint's brief con­versation with the Law, had commenced the In­cident of the Invalid who was not ill.

"Modest maiden will not tarry;

Though but sixteen year she carry,

She must marry, she must marry,

Though the altar be a tomb—

Tower, Tower, Tower tomb!"

Thus the Saint brought both his psalm and his promenade to a triumphant conclusion; for the song stopped as the Saint stopped, which was at, the foot of a short flight of steps leading up to a door—the door of the house of Heinrich Dussel.

And then, as Simon Templar paused there, a window was smashed directly above his head, so that chips of splintered glass showered onto the pavement all around him. And there followed a man's sudden sharp yelp of agony, clear and shrill in the silence of the street.

" 'Ere," said a familiar voice, "is this the 'ouse you said you were going into?"

The Saint turned.

The Law stood beside him, its hands in its belt, having followed him all the way on noiseless rubber soles.

And Simon beamed beatifically upon the Law.

"That's so, Algernon," he murmured, and mounted the steps.

The door opened almost as soon as he had touched the bell. And the Law was still beside him.

"What's wrong 'ere?" demanded the Law.

"It is nothing."

Dussel himself had answered the bell, suave and self-possessed—exactly as the Saint would have expected him to be.

"We have a patient here who is—not right in the head. Sometimes he is violent. But he is being attended to."

"That's right," said the Saint calmly. "I got your telephone message, and came right around."

He turned to the Law with a smile.

"I am the doctor in charge of the case," he said, "so you may quite safely leave things in my hands."

His manner would have disarmed the chief commissioner himself. And before either of the other two could say a word, the Saint had stepped over the threshold as if he owned the house.

"Good-night, officer," he said sweetly, and closed the door.

3

NOW THE UNKIND CRITIC may say that the Saint had opened his break with something like the most fantastic fluke that ever fell out of the blue; but the unkind critic would be wrong, and his judgment would merely indicate his abysmal ignorance of the Saint and all Saintly methods. It cannot be too clearly understood that, having determined to enter the house of Heinrich Dussel and dissect the mystery of the Invalid who was not Ill, Simon Templar had walked up Park Lane with the firm intention of ringing the bell, walking in while the butler was still asking him his business, closing the door firmly behind him, and leaving the rest to Providence. The broken window, and the cry that came through it, had not been allowed for in such nebulous calculations as he had made—admitted; but in fact they made hardly any difference to the general plan of campaign. It would be far more true to say that the Saint refused to put off his stroke by the circumstances, than to say that the circumstances helped him. All that happened was that an unforeseen accident intervened in the smooth course of the Saint's progress; and the Saint, with the inspired audacity that lifted him so high above all ordinary adventurers, had flicked the accident into the accommodating machinery of his stratagem, and passed on....

And the final result was unaltered; for the Saint simply arrived where he had meant to arrive, anyway—with his back to the inside of the door of Heinrich Dussel's house, and all the fun before him....

And Simon Templar smiled at Heinrich Dussel, a rather thoughtful and reckless smile; for Heinrich Dussel was the kind of man for whom the Saint would always have a rather thoughtful and reckless smile. He was short, heavily built, tremendously broad of shoulder, thin-lipped, with a high bald dome of a forehead, and greenish eyes that gleamed like glazed pebbles behind thick gold-rimmed spectacles.

"May I ask what you mean by this?" Drussel was blustering furiously.

The Saint threw out his hands in a wide gesture.

"I wanted to talk to you, dear heart.''

"And what do you imagine I can do for you?"

"On the contrary," said the Saint genially, "the point is—what can I do for you? Ask, and you shall receive. I'm ready. If you say 'Go and get the moon,' I'll go right out and get the moon—that's how I feel about you, sweetheart."

Dussell took a step forward.

"Will you stand away from that door? "

"No,'' said the Saint, courteous but definite.

"Then you will have to be removed by force."

"If you could spare me a moment—" began the Saint warily.

But Heinrich Dussel had half turned, drawing breath, his mouth opening for one obvious pur­pose.

He could hardly have posed himself better.

And before that deep purposeful breath had reached Dussel's vocal cords on the return journey, his mouth closed again abruptly, with a crisp smack, under the persuasive influence of a pile-driving uppercut.

"Come into my study," invited the Saint, in a very fair imitation of Heinrich Dussel's guttural accent.

"Thank you," said the Saint in his own voice.

And his arms were already around Heinrich Dussel, holding up the unconscious man; and, as he accepted his own invitation, the Saint stooped swiftly, levered Dussel onto his shoulder, moved up the hall, and passed through the nearest door.

He did not stay.

He dropped his burden unceremoniously on the floor, and passed out again, locking the door behind him and putting the key in his pocket. Then, certainly, luck was with him, for, in spite of the slight disturbance, none of the household staff was in view. The Saint went up the stairs as lightly as a ghost.

The broken window had been on the first floor, and the room to which it belonged was easy to locate. The Saint listened for a couple of seconds at the door, and then opened it and stepped briskly inside.

The room was empty.

"Bother," said the Saint softly.

Then he understood.

"If the cop had insisted on coming in, he'd have wanted to see this room. So they'd have shifted the invalid. One of the gang would have played the part. And the real cripple—further up the stairs, I should think...."

And Simon was out of the empty room in an instant, and flashing up the next flight.

As he reached the upper landing, a man—a villainous foreign-looking man, in some sort of livery—emerged from a door.

The Saint never hesitated.

"All right?'' he queried briefly.

"Yes," came the automatic answer.

No greater bluff could ever have been put up in two words and a stride. It was such a perfect little cameo of the art that the liveried man did not realize how he had been bluffed until three seconds after the Saint had spoken. And that was about four seconds too late. For by that time the Saint was only a yard away.

"That's fine," said the Saint crisply. "Keep your face shut, and everything will still be all right. Back into that room...."

There was a little knife in the Saint's hand. The Saint could do things with that knife that would have made a circus performer blink. But at that moment the Saint wasn't throwing the knife—he was just pricking the liveried man's throat with the point. And the liveried man recoiled instinctively.

The Saint pushed him on, into the room, and kicked the door shut behind him. Then he dropped the knife, and took the man by the throat....

He made very little noise. And presently the man slept....

Then the Saint got to his feet and looked about him.

The invalid lay on the bed—an old man, it seemed, judging by the thick gray beard. A shabby tweed cap was pulled down over eyes shielded by dark glasses, and his clothes were shapeless and ill-fitting. He wore black gloves, and above these there were ropes, binding his wrists together; and there were ropes also about his ankles.

The Saint picked him up in his arms. He seemed to weigh hardly anything at all.

As swiftly and silently as he had come, the Saint went down the stairs again with his light load.

Even then, it was not all perfectly plain sailing. A hubbub began to arise from below as Simon reached the first floor; and as he turned the corner onto the last flight, he saw a man unlocking the door of the room in which Heinrich Dussel had been locked. And Simon continued calmly downwards.

He reached the hall level in time to meet two automatics—one in the hand of the man who had unlocked the door, and one in the hand of Heinrich Dussel.

"Your move, Heinrich," said the Saint calmly. "May I smoke while you're thinking it over?"

He put the shabby old man carefully down on a convenient chair, and took out his cigarette case.

"Going to hand me over to the police?" he murmured. "If you are, you'll have to figure out a lot of explanations pretty quickly. The cop outside heard me say I was your doctor, and he'll naturally want to know why you've waited such a long time before denying it. Besides, there's Convalescent Cuthbert here. ..." The Saint indicated the old man in the chair, who was trying ineffectually to say something through a very efficient gag. "Even mental cases aren't trussed up quite like that."

"No," said Dussel deliberately— "you will not be handed over to the police, my friend."

"Well, you can't keep me here," said the Saint, puffing. "You see, I had some words with the cop before I came to your door, and I told him I shouldn't be staying more than half an hour— voluntarily. And after the excitement just before I walked in, I should think he'll still be waiting around to see what happens."

Dussel turned to his servant.

"Go to a window, Luigi, and see if the policeman is still outside."

"It is a bit awkward for you, Heinrich, old dear, isn't it?" murmured Simon, smoking tranquilly, as the servant disappeared. "I'm so well known to the police. I'd probably turn out to be well known to you, too, if I told you my name. I'm known as the Saint. ..." He grinned at Dussel's sudden start. "Anyway, your pals know me. Ask the Crown Prince—or Dr. Marius. And remember to give them my love...."

The Saint laughed shortly; and Heinrich Dussel was still staring at him, white-lipped, when the servant returned to report that the constable was watching the house from the opposite pavement, talking to a newspaperman.

"You seem annoyed, Heinrich," remarked the Saint, gently bantering, though the glitter behind Dussel's thick glasses should have told him that he was as near sudden death at that moment as it is healthy for any man to be. "Now, the Crown Prince never looks annoyed. He's much more strong and silent than you are, is Rudolf...."

Simon spoke dreamily, almost in a whisper, and his gaze was intent upon his cigarette end. And, all the while, he smiled.... Then—

"I'll show you a conjuring trick," he said suddenly. "Look!"

He threw the cigarette end on the carpet at their feet, and closed his eyes. But the other two looked.

They heard a faint hiss; and then the cigarette burst into a flare of white-hot eye-aching light that seemed to scorch through their eyeballs and sear their very brains. It only lasted a moment, but that was long enough. Then a dense white smoke filled the hall like a fog. And the Saint, with the old man in his arms again, was at the front door. They heard his mocking voice through their dazed blindness.

"Creates roars of laughter," said the Saint. "Try one at your next party—and invite me. . . . So long, souls!"

The plop of a silenced automatic came through the smoke, and a bullet smacked into the door beside the Saint's head. Then he had the door open, and the smoke followed him out.

"Fire!" yelled the Saint wildly. "Help!" He rushed down the steps, and the policeman met him on the pavement. "For heaven's sake try to save the others, officer! I've got this old chap all right, but there are more in there—"

He stood by the curb, shaking with silent laughter, and watched the Law brace itself and plunge valiantly into the smoke. Then the Hirondel purred up beside him, with the melan­choly-looking vendor of newspapers at the wheel, and the Saint stepped into the back seat.

"O.K., big boy," he drawled; and Roger Conway let in the clutch.

4

"ALTOGETHER a most satisfactory beginning to the Sabbath," the Saint remarked, as the big car switched into a side street. "I won't say it was dead easy, but you can't have everything. The only real trouble came at the very end, and then the old magnesium cigarette was just what the doctor ordered.... Have a nice chat with the police?"

"Mostly about you," said Roger. "The ideas that man had about the Saint were too weird and wonderful for words. I steered him onto the subject, and spent the rest of the time wishing I hadn't—it hurt so much trying not to laugh."

Simon chuckled.

"And now," he said, "I'm wondering what story dear Heinrich is trying to put over. That man won't get any beauty sleep tonight. Oh, it's a glorious thought! Dear Heinrich...."

He subsided into a corner, weak with merriment, and felt for his cigarette case. Then he observed the ancient invalid, writhing helplessly on the cushions beside him, and grinned.

"Sorry, Beautiful," he murmured, "but I'm afraid you'll have to stay like that till we get home. We can't have you making a fuss now. But as soon as we arrive we'll untie you and give you a large glass of milk, and you shall tell us the story of your life."

The patriarch shook his head violently; then, finding that his protest was ignored, he relapsed into apathetic resignation.

A few minutes later the Hirondel turned into the mews where Simon Templar had established his headquarters in a pair of luxuriously converted garages. As the car stopped, Simon picked up the old man again and stepped out. Roger Conway opened the front door for him, and the Saint passed through the tiny hall into the sitting room, while Roger went to put the car away. Simon deposited the he-ancient in a chair and drew the blinds; not until after he had assured himself that no one could look in from outside did he switch on the lights and turn to regard his souvenir of the night's entertainment.

"Now you shall say your piece, Uncle," he remarked, and went to untie the gag. "Roger will make your Glaxo hot for you in a minute, and— Holy Moses!"

The Saint drew a deep breath.

For, as he removed the gag, the long gray beard had come away with it. For a moment he was too amazed to move. Then he snatched off the dark glasses and the shabby tweed cap, and a mass of rich brown hair tumbled about the face of one of the loveliest girls he had ever seen.

CHAPTER TWO

How Simon Templar entertained a guest, and

spoke of two old friends

THAT HAND-BRAKE'S still a bit feeble, old boy." Roger Conway came in, unfastening the gaudy choker which he had donned for his character part. "You ought to get—"

His voice trailed away, and he stood staring.

The Saint was on his knees, his little throwing knife in his hand, swiftly cutting ropes away from wrists and ankles.

"I'll have it seen to on Monday," said the Saint coolly.

Roger swallowed.

"Damn it, Saint—"

Simon looked round with a grin.

"Yes, I know, sonny boy," he said. "It is our evening, isn't it?"

He stood up and looked down at the girl.

"How are you feeling, old thing?"

She had her hands clasped to her forehead.

"I'll be all right in a minute," she said. "My head—hurts. . . ."

"That dope they gave you," murmured the Saint. "And the crack you got afterwards. Rotten, isn't it? But we'll put that right in a brace of shakes. Roger, you beetle off to the kitchen and start some tea, and I'll officiate with the dispensary."

Roger departed obediently; and Simon went over to a cupboard, and took therefrom a bottle and a glass. From the bottle he shook two pink tablets into the glass. Then he fizzed soda-water onto them from the siphon, and thoughtfully watched them dissolve.

"Here you are, old dear." He touched the girl lightly on the shoulder, with the foaming drink in his other hand. "Just shoot this down, and in about five minutes, when you've lowered a cup of tea on top of it, you'll be prancing about like a canary on a hot pancake."

She looked up at him a little doubtfully, as if she were wondering whether her present headache might not be so bad as the one she might get from the glass he was offering. But the Saint's smile was reassuring.

"Good girl. . . . And it wasn't so very foul, was it?"

Simon smiled approval as she handed him back the empty glass.

"Thank you—so much. ..."

"Not at all," said the Saint. "Any little thing like that. . . . Now, all you've got to do, lass, is just to lie back and rest and wait for that cup of tea."

He lighted a cigarette and leaned against the table, surveying her in silence.

Under her tousled hair he saw a face that must have been modelled by happy angels. Her eyes were closed then, but he had already seen them open—deep pools of hazel, shaded by soft lashes.

Her mouth was proud and imperious, yet with laughter lurking in the curves of the red lips. And a little colour was starting to ebb back into the faultless cheeks. If he had ever seen real beauty in a woman, it was there. There was a serene dignity in the forehead, a fineness of line about the small, straight nose, a wealth of character in the moulding of the chin that would have singled her out in any company. And the Saint was not sur­prised; for it was dawning upon him that he knew who she was.

The latest Bystander was on the table beside him. He picked it up and turned the pages. . . . She was there. He knew he could not have been mistaken, for he had been studying the picture only the previous afternoon. He had thought she was lovely then; but now he knew that the photograph did her no justice.

He was still gazing at her when Roger entered with a tray.

"Good man." Simon removed his gaze from the girl for one second, with an effort, and then allowed it to return. He shifted off the table. "Come along, lass."

She opened her eyes, smiling.

"I feel ever so much better now," she said.

"Nothing to what you'll feel like when you've inhaled this Château Lipton," said the Saint cheerfully. "One or two lumps? Or three?"

"Only two."

She spoke with the slightest of American ac­cents, soft and utterly fascinating.

Simon handed her the cup.

"Thank you," she said; and then, suddenly: "Oh, tell me how you found me. ..."

"Well, that's part of a long story," said the Saint. "The short part of it is that we were interested in Heinrich Dussel—the owner of the house where I found you—and Roger here was watching him. About midnight Roger saw an old man arrive in a car—drugged—"

"How did you know I was drugged?"

"They brought a wheel chair out of the house for you," Roger explained. "They seemed to be in rather a hurry, and as they lifted you out of the car they caught your head a frightful crack on the door. Now, even a paralyzed old man doesn't take a bang on the head like that without making some movement or saying something; but you took it like a corpse, and no one even apologized."

The Saint laughed.

"It was a really bright scheme," he said. "A perfect disguise, perfectly thought out—right down to those gloves they put on you in case anyone noticed your hands. And they'd have brought it off if it hadn't been for that one slip— and Roger's eagle eye. But after that, the only thing for us to do was to interview Heinrich. ..."

He grinned reminiscently, and retailed the entire episode for Roger Conway's benefit. The latter half of it the girl already knew, but they laughed again together over the thought of the curtain to the scene—the Law ploughing heroically in to rescue other gray-beards from the flames, and finding Mr. Dussel. . . .

"The only thing I haven't figured out," said the Saint, "is how it was a man I heard cry out, when the window was smashed in the frolic before I came in."

"I bit him in the hand," said the girl simply.

Simon held up his hands in admiring horror.

"I get you. . . . You came to, and tried to make a fight of it—and you—you—bit a man in the hand?"

She nodded.

"Do you know who I am?"

"I do," said the Saint helplessly. "That's what makes it so perfect."

2

SIMON TEMPLAR picked up the Bystander.

"I recognized you from your picture in here," he said, and handed the paper to Roger. "See if you can find it, sonny boy."

The girl passed him her cup, and he took and replenished it.

"I was at a ball at the Embassy," she said. "We're staying there. ... It was very dull. About half-past eleven I slipped away to my room to rest—it was so hot in the ballroom. I'm very fond of chocolates"—she smiled whimsically—"and there was a lovely new box on my dressing table. I didn't stop to think how they came there—I supposed the Ambassador's wife must have put them in my room, because she knows my weakness—and I just naturally took one. I remember it had a funny bitter taste, and I didn't like it; and then I don't remember anything until I woke up in that house. ..."

She shuddered; then she laughed a little.

"And then you came in," she said.

The Saint smiled, and glanced across at Roger Conway, who had put down the Bystander and was staring at the girl. And she laughed again, merrily, at Roger's consternation.

"I may be a millionaire's daughter," she said, "but I enjoyed your tea like anyone else."

Simon offered his cigarette case.

"Those are the ones that don't explode," he said, pointing, and helped himself after her. Then he said: "Have you started wondering who was responsible?"

"I haven't had much time."

"But now—can you think of anyone? Anyone who could do a thing like that in an Embassy, and smuggle you out in those clothes?"

She shook her head.

"It seems so fantastic."

"And yet I could name the man who could have done it—and did it."

"But who?"

"You probably danced with him during the evening."

"I danced with so many."

"But he would be one of the first to be presented."

"I can't think—"

"But you can!" said the Saint. "A man of medium height—slim—small moustache—very elegant." He watched the awakening com­prehension in her eyes, and forestalled it. "The Crown Prince Rudolf of—"

"But that's impossible!"

"It is—but it's true. I can give you proof. . . . And it's just his mark. It's worthy of him. It's one of the biggest things that have ever been done!"

The Saint was striding up and down the room in his excitement, with a light kindling in his face and a fire in his eyes that Roger Conway knew of old. Simon Templar's thoughts, inspired, had leaped on leagues beyond his spoken words, as they often did when those queer flashes of genius broke upon him. Roger knew that the Saint would come back to earth in a few moments and condescend to make his argument plain to less vivid minds; Roger was used to these moods, and had learned to wait patiently upon them, but bewildered puzzlement showed on the girl's face.

"I knew it!" Simon stopped pacing the room suddenly, and met the girl's smiling perplexity with a laugh. "Why, it's as plain as the nose on your—on—on Roger's face! Listen. . . ."

He swung onto the table, discarded a half-smoked cigarette, and lighted a fresh one.

"You heard me tell Dussel that I was—the Saint?"

"Yes."

"Hadn't you heard that name before?"

"Of course, I'd seen it in the newspapers. You were the leader of a gang."

"And yet," said the Saint, "you haven't looked really frightened since you've been here."

"You weren't criminals."

"But we committed crimes."

"Just ones—against men who deserved it."

"We have killed men."

She was silent.

"Three months ago," said the Saint, "we killed a man. It was our last crime, and the best of all. His name was Professor K. B. Vargan. He had invented a weapon of war which we decided that the world would be better without. He was given every chance—we risked everything to offer him his life if he would forget his diabolical invention. But he was mad. He wouldn't listen. And he had to die. Did you read that story?"

"I remember it very well."

"Other men—agents of another country—were also after Vargan, for their own ends," said the Saint. "That part of the story never came out in the papers. It was hushed up. Since they failed, it was better to hush up the story than to create an international situation. There was a plot to make war in Europe, for the benefit of a group of financiers. At the head of this group was a man who's called the Mystery Millionaire and the Millionaire Without a Country—one of the richest men in the world—Dr. Rayt Marius. Do you know that name?" She nodded.

"Everyone knows it."

"The name of the greatest private war-maker in modern history," said Simon grimly. "But this plot was his biggest up to date. And he was using, for his purpose, Prince Rudolf. It was one of those two men who killed one of my dearest friends, in my bungalow up the river, where we had taken Vargan. You may remember reading that one of our little band was found there. Norman Kent— one of the whitest men that ever walked this earth. ..."

"I remember."

The Saint was gazing into the fireplace, and there was something in his face that forbade anyone to break the short silence which followed.

Then he pulled himself together.

"The rest of us got away, out of England," he went on quietly. "You see, Norman had stayed behind to cover our retreat. We didn't know then that he'd done it deliberately, knowing he hadn't a hope of getting away himself. And when we found out, it was too late to do anything. It was then that I swore to—pay my debt to those two men. ..."

'' I understand,'' said the girl softly.

"I've been after them ever since, and Roger with me. It hasn't been easy, with a price on our heads; but we've had a lot of luck. And we've found out—many things. One of them is that the work that Norman died to accomplish isn't finished yet. When we put Vargan out of Marius's reach we thought we'd knocked the foundations from under his plot. I believe Marius himself thought so, too. But now he seems to have discovered another line of attack. We haven't been able to find out anything definite, but we've felt—reactions. And Marius and Prince Rudolf are hand in glove again. Marius is still hoping to make his war. That is why Marius must die very soon—but not before we're sure that his intrigue will fall to pieces with his death."

The Saint looked at the girl.

"Now do you see where you come in?" he asked.

She passed a hand across her eyes.

"You're terribly convincing." Her eyes had not left his face all the time he had been talking. "You don't seem like a man who'd make things like that up ... or dream them. . . . But—"

"Your left hand," said the Saint.

She glanced down. The ring on the third finger caught the light and flung it back in a blaze of brilliance. And was he mistaken, or did he see the faintest shadow of fear touch a proud face that should never have looked afraid?

But her voice, when she spoke, told him nothing.

"What has that to do with it?"

"Everything," answered Simon. "It came to me when I first mentioned Prince Rudolf's name to you. But I'd already got the key to the whole works in the song I was singing just before I barged into Heinrich Dussel's house—and I didn't know it. . . ."

The girl wrinkled her brow.

"What do you mean?"

"I told you that Marius was working for a group of financiers—men who hoped to make millions out of the war he was engineering for them," said the Saint. "Now, what kind of financier do you think would make the most out of another great war?"

She did not answer; and Simon took another cigarette. But he did not light it at once. He turned it between his fingers with a savage gentleness, as if the immensity of his inspiration cried aloud for some physical expression.

He went on, in the same dispassionate tone:

"In the story I've just told you, Vargan wasn't the whole of the plot. He was the key piece—but the general idea went deeper and wider. Before he came into the story, there'd been an organized attempt to create distrust between this country and others in Europe. You must see how easy that would be to wealthy and unscrupulous men. At man alleged to be, say, a French spy, is arrested— here. A man alleged to be a spy of ours is arrested—in France. And it goes on. Spies aren't shot in time of peace. They merely go to prison. If I can afford to send for a number of English crooks, say, and tell them: 'I want you to go to such and such a place, with certain things which I will give you. You will behave in such and such a manner, you will be arrested and convicted as a spy, and you will be imprisoned for five years. If you take your sentence and keep your mouth shut, I will pay you ten thousand pounds'—aren't there dozens of old lags in England who'd tumble over each other for the chance? And it would be the same with men from other countries. Of course, their respective governments would disown them; but governments always disown their spies. That wouldn't cut any ice. And as it went on, the distrust would grow. . . . That isn't romance. It's been done before, on a smaller scale. Marius was doing it before we intervened, in June last. What they call 'situations' were coming to dangerous heads. When Marius fell down over Vargan, the snake was scotched. We thought we'd killed it; but we were wrong. Do you remember the German who was caught trying to set fire to our newest airship, the R103?"

"Yes."

"Marius employed him—for fifteen thousand pounds. I happened to know that. In fact, it was intended that the R103 should actually be destroyed. The plot only failed because I sent information to Scotland Yard. But even that couldn't avert the public outcry that followed. . . . Then, perhaps, you remember the Englishman who was caught trying to photograph a French naval base from the air?"

"The man there was so much fuss about a month ago?"

The Saint nodded.

"Another of Marius's men. I know, because I was hiding in Marius's wardrobe at the Hotel Edouard VII, in Paris, when that man received his instructions. . . . And the secret treaty that was stolen from our Foreign Office messenger between Folkestone and Boulogne—"

"I know."

"Marius again."

The Saint stood up; and again he began to pace the room.

"The world's full of Peace Pacts and Disar­mament Conferences," he said, "but where do those things go to when there's distrust between nations? No one may want war—those who saw the last war through would do anything to prevent another—but if a man steals your chickens, and throws mud at your wife when she goes for a walk, and calls you names over the garden wall, you just naturally have to push his teeth through the back of his neck. You can be as long-suffering as you like; but presently he carefully lays on the last straw just where he knows it'll hurt most, and then you either have to turn round and refashion his face or earn the just contempt of all your neigh­bours. Do you begin to understand?"

"I do. ... But I still don't see what I've got to do with it."

"But I told you!" She shook her head, blankly. "When?"

"Didn't you see? When I was talking about financiers—after I'd recognized you? Isn't your father Hiram Delmar, the Steel King? And aren't you engaged to marry Sir Isaac Lessing, the man who controls a quarter of the world's oil? And isn't Lessing, with his Balkan concessions, practically the unofficial dictator of southeastern Europe? And hasn't he been trying for years to smash R.O.P.? . . . Suppose, almost on the eve of your wedding, you disappear — and then you're found — on the other side — in Russia. ..."

The Saint's eyes were blazing.

"Why, it's an open book!" he cried. "It's easy enough to stir up distrust among the big nations; but it's not so easy to get them moving — there's a hell of a big coefficient of inertia to overcome when you're dealing with solid old nations like England and France and Germany. But the Balkans are the booster charge — they've been that dozens of times before — and you and Lessing make up the detonator. . . . It's worthy of Marius's brain! He's got Lessing's psychology weighed up to the last lonely milligram. He knows that Lessing's notorious for being the worst man to cross in all the world of high finance. Lessing's gone out of his way to break men for nothing more than an argument over the bridge table, before now. . . . And with you for a lever, Marius could engineer Lessing into the scheme — Lessing could set fire to the Balkans — and there might be war in Europe within the week!"

3

ONCE, MONTHS BEFORE, when Simon Templar had expounded a similar theory, Roger Conway had looked at him incredulously, as if he thought the Saint must have taken leave of his senses. But now there was no incredulity in Roger's face. The girl looked at him, and saw that he was as grave as his leader.

She shook her head helplessly.

"It's like a story-book," she said, "and yet you make it sound so convincing. You do. . . ."

She put her hand to her sweet head; and then, only then, Simon struck a match for his mauled cigarette, and laughed gently.

"Poor kid! It has been a thick night, hasn't it? ... But you'll feel heaps better in the morning; and I guess our council of war won't grow mould if it stands over till breakfast. I'll show you your room now; and Roger shall wade out into the wide world first thing to-morrow, and borrow some reasonable clothes for you off a married friend of mine."

She stood up, staring at him.

"Do you mean that—you're going to keep me here?"

The Saint nodded.

"For to-night, anyway.''

"But the Embassy—"

"They'll certainly be excited, won't they?"

She took a step backwards.

"Then—after all—you're—"

"No, we aren't. And you know it."

Simon put his hands on her shoulders, smiling down at her. And the Saint's smile, when he wished, could be a thing no mortal woman could resist.

"We're playing a big game, Roger and I," he said. "I've told you a little of it to-night. One day I may be able to tell you more. But already I've told you enough to show you that we're out after something more than pure soft roe and elephant's eggs. You've said it yourself."

Again he smiled.

"There'll be no war if you don't go back to the Embassy to-night," he said. "Not even if you disappear for twenty-four hours—or even forty-eight. I admit it's a ticklish game. It's rather more ticklish than trying to walk a tight-rope over the crater of Vesuvius with two sprained ankles and a quart of bootleg hooch inside you. But, at the moment, it's the only thing I can see for us—for Roger and me—to take Marius's own especial battle-axe and hang it over his own ugly head. I can't tell you yet how the game will be played. I don't know myself. But I shall think something out overnight. . . . And meanwhile—I'm sorry— but you can't go home."

"You want to keep me a prisoner?"

"No. That's the last thing I want. I just want your parole—for twelve hours."

In its way the half-minute's silence that followed was perhaps as tense a thirty seconds as Simon Templar had ever endured.

Since he started talking he had been giving out every volt of personality he could command. He knew his power to a fraction—every inflection of voice and gesture, every flicker of expression, every perfectly timed pause. On the stage or the screen he could have made a fortune. When he chose he could play upon men and women with a sure and unfaltering touch. And in the last half-hour he had thrown all his genius into the scale.

If it failed ... He wondered what the penalty was for holding a millionaire's daughter prisoner by force. Whatever it was, he had every intention of risking it. The game, as he had told her, was very big. Far too big for any half-hearted player. . . .

But none of this showed on his face. Poised, quiet, magnificently confident, with that ghost of a swashbuckling smile on his lips, he bore her calm and steady scrutiny. And, looking deep into her eyes, he thought his own thoughts; so that a faint strange tremor moved him inwardly, in a way that he would not have thought possible.

But the girl could see none of this; and the hands that rested on her shoulders were as cool and firm as a surgeon's. She saw only the Saint's smile, the fineness of the clear blue eyes, the swift swaggering lines of the lean brown face. And perhaps because she was what she was, she recognized the quality of the man. . . .

"I'll give you my parole," she said.

"Thank you,'' said the Saint.

Then Simon showed her to his own room.

"You'll find a very good selection of silk pajamas in the wardrobe," he remarked lightly. "If they aren't big enough for you, wear two suits. That door leads into the bathroom. ..." Then he touched her hand. "One day," he said, "I'll try to apologize for all this."

She smiled.

"One day," she said, "I'll try to forgive you." .

"Good-night, Sonia."

He kissed her hand quickly and turned and went down the stairs again.

"Just one swift one, Roger, my lad," he murmured, picking up a tankard and steering towards the barrel in the corner, "and then we also will retire. Something accomplished, something done, 'as earned a k-night's repose. . . . Bung-ho!"

Roger Conway reached morosely for the decanter.

"You have all the luck, you big stiff," he complained. "She only spoke to me once, and I couldn't get a word in edgeways. And then I heard you call her Sonia."

"Why not?" drawled the Saint. "It's her name."

"You don't call a Steel Princess by her first name—when you haven't even been introduced."

"Don't I!"

Simon raised his tankard with a flourish, and quaffed. Then he set it down on the table, and clapped Roger on the shoulder.

"Cheer up," he said. "It's a great life."

"It may be for you," said Roger dolefully. "But what about me? If you'd taken the girl straight back to the Embassy I might have taken a few easy grands off papa for my share in the rescue."

"Whereas all you're likely to get now is fifteen years—or a bullet in the stomach from Marius." Simon grinned; then his face sobered again. "By this time both Marius and Rudolf know that we're back. And how much the police know will depend on how much Heinrich has told them. I don't think he'll say much about us without consulting the Prince and Marius."

"Well, you can bet Marius will spread the alarm."

"I'm not so sure. As long as he knows that we've got Sonia, I think he'll prefer to come after us with his own gang. And he'll find out to­morrow that she hasn't been sent back to the loving arms of the Embassy."

Roger Conway flicked some ash from his cigarette. Those who had known him in the old days, before his name, after the death of K. B. Vargan, became almost as notorious as the Saint's, would have been surprised at his stern seriousness. Fair-haired and handsome (though less beautiful now on account of the make-up that went with his costume) and as true to a type as the Saint was true to none, he had led a flippant and singularly useless life until the Saint enlisted him and trained him on into the perfect lieutenant. And in the strenuous perils of his new life, strange to say, Roger Conway was happier than he had ever been before. . . .

Roger said: "How much foundation had you got for that theory you put up to Sonia?"

"Sweet damn all," confessed the Saint. "It was just the only one I could see that fitted. There may be a dozen others; but if there are, I've missed them. And that's why we've got to find out a heap more before we restore that girl to the bosom of the Ambassador's wife. But is was a good theory— a damned good theory—and I have hunches about theories. That one rang a distinct bell. And I can't see any reason why it shouldn't be the right one."

"Nor do I. But what beats me is how you're going to use Sonia."

"And that same question beats me, too, Roger, at the moment. I know that for us to hold her is rather less cautious than standing pat on a bob-tailed straight when the man opposite has drawn two. And yet I can't get away from the hunch that she's heavy artillery, Roger, if we can only find a way to fire the guns. ..."

And the Saint relapsed into a reverie.

Certainly, it was difficult. It would have been difficult enough at the best of times—in the old days, for instance, when only a few select people knew that Simon Templar, gentleman of leisure, and the Saint, of doubtful fame, were one and the same person, and he had four able lieutenants at his call. Now his identity was known, and he had only Roger—though Roger was worth a dozen. The Saint was not the kind of man to have any half-witted Watson gaping at his Sherlock—any futile Bunny balling up his Raffles. But, even so, with the stakes as high as they were, he would have given anything to be able to put back the clock of publicity by some fourteen weeks.

An unprofitable daydream ... of a kind in which the Saint rarely indulged. And with a short laugh he got to his feet, drained his tankard, and stretched himself.

"Bed, my Roger," he murmured decisively. "That's where I solve all my problems."

And it was so.

CHAPTER THREE

How Sonia Delmar ate bacon and eggs,

and Simon Templar spoke on the telephone

A SILVER coffee machine was chortling cheerfully to itself when Sonia Delmar came down to the sitting room at about ten o'clock; and the fragrance of grilling bacon, to the accompaniment of a sizzling noise off, was distilling into the at­mosphere. The room had been newly swept and garnished; and bright September sunshine was pouring through the open windows. Almost immediately Roger Conway entered by another door bearing a frying pan in one hand and a chafing dish in the other.

"Excuse the primitive arrangements," he remarked. "I'm afraid we don't employ a staff of servants—they're liable to see too much."

She seemed surprised to see him; and it was not until then that he realized that she had had some excuse for ignoring him earlier in the day, when his face and hands had been villainously grimed for his role of unsuccessful street news-agent.

She was wearing one of the Saint's multifarious dressing gowns—a jade-green one—with the sleeves turned up and the skirt of the gown trailing the floor; but Roger wondered if any woman could have looked more superbly robed. In the cir­cumstances, she could have used no artificial aids to beauty, yet she had lost none of her fresh loveliness. And if Roger's enslavement had not already been complete, it would have been com­pleted by the smile with which she rewarded his efforts in the kitchen.

"Bacon and eggs!" she said. "My favourite breakfast!"

"They're my favourite, too," said Roger; and thus a friendship was sealed.

But it was not without a certain rueful humility that he noticed that she seemed to be looking for someone else. He supplied the information unasked.

"The Saint went off to get you some clothes himself. He shouldn't be long now."

" 'Saint.'. .. Hasn't he any other name?"

"Most people call him the Saint," said Roger.. "His real name is Simon Templar."

" 'Simon'?" She made enchantment of the name, so that Roger wished she would change the subject. And, in a way, she did. She said: "I remembered a lot more after I left you last night. There were three of you who escaped, weren't there? There was a girl—"

"Patricia Holm?"

"That's right."

Roger nodded, impaling another rasher of bacon.

"She isn't here," he said. "As a matter of fact, she's somewhere in the Mediterranean. The Saint wouldn't let her come back with us. She's been with him in most things, but he put his foot down when it came to running the risk of a long term in prison—if not worse. He roped in an old friend who has a private yacht, and sent her off on a long cruise. And just we two came back."

"Had she been with him a long time?"

"About three years. He picked her up in another adventure, and they've stuck together ever since."

"Were they—married?"

"No."

Even then, when Roger was reflecting miserably within him upon the ease with which conquests came to some men who didn't deserve them, he couldn't be guilty of even an implied disloyalty to his leader.

He added, with simple sincerity: "You see, the question never really arose. We're outlaws. We've put ourselves outside the pale—and ordinary standards don't apply. One day, perhaps—"

"You'll win back your place inside the pale?"

"If we could, everything would be different."

"Would you like to go back?"

"For myself? I don't know."

She smiled.

"Somehow," she said, "I can't picture your friend handing round cakes at tea parties, and giving his duty dances to gushing hostesses."

"The Saint?" Roger laughed. "He'd probably start throwing knives at the orchestra, just to wake things up.... And here he is."

A car hummed down the mews and stopped outside. A moment later a bent old man, with gray beard, smoked glasses, and shabby hat, entered the sitting room. He leaned on a stick, with an untidy brown-paper parcel in his other hand.

"Such a lovely morning," he wheezed, in a quavering voice. "And two such lovely young people having breakfast together. Well, well, well!" He straightened up. "Roger, have you left anything for me, you four-flushing son of a wall­eyed horse thief?"

He heaved parcel and stick into a corner—sent beard, glasses, and hat to join them—and smoothed his coat. By some magic he shed all the illusion of shabbiness from his clothes without further movement; and it was the Saint himself who stood there, adjusting his tie with the aid of the mirror over the mantelpiece—trim, immaculate, debonair.

"Getting younger and more beautiful every day," he murmured complacently; then he turned with a laugh. "Forgive the amateur theatricals, Sonia. I had an idea there might be several policemen out looking for me this morning—and I was right. I recognized three in Piccadilly alone, and I stopped to ask one of them the time. Anyway, I raised you an outfit. You needn't be shy about wearing it, because it belongs to a lady who married a real live lord—though I did my best to save him."

He sank into a chair with a sigh, and surveyed the plate which Roger set before him.

"What—only one egg? Have the hens gone on strike, or something?"

"If you want another," said Roger offensively, "you'll have to lay it yourself. There were only four in the house and our guest had two."

Simon turned to the girl with a smile.

"Well," he said, "it's something to hear you were fit enough to cope with them."

"I feel perfectly all right this morning," she said. "It must have been that drink you gave me last night."

"Wonderful stuff," said the Saint. "I'll give you the prescription before you go, so that you can have some ready for the next time you're doped. It's also an infallible preventive of the morning after—if that's any use to you."

He picked up his knife and fork.

"Did I hear you say you saw some detectives?" asked Roger.

"I saw several. All in very plain clothes, and all flat-footed. A most distressing sight for an old man on his way home from church. And they weren't just out for constitutionals—sniffing the balmy breezes and thinking about their dinners. They weren't keeping holy the Sabbath Day. They were doing all manner of work. Rarely have I run such a gauntlet of frosty stares. It was quite up­setting." The Saint grinned gently. "But what it most certainly means is that the cat has leaped from the portmanteau with some agility. Enough beans have been spilt to keep Heinz busy for a year. The gaff has been blown from here to Honolulu. You know, I had an idea Heinrich would rise to the occasion."

2

IT WAS THE GIRL who spoke first.

"The police are after you?"

"They've been after me for years," said the Saint cheerfully, "in a general sort of way. But just recently the hunt's been getting a bit fierce. Yes, I think I can claim that this morning I'm at the height of my unpopularity, so far as Scotland Yard's concerned."

"After all," said Roger, "you can't go round kidnapping Steel Princesses without something happening."

Simon helped himself to marmalade.

"True, O King," he murmured. "Though that's hardly likely to be the charge. If Heinrich had sung a song about a stolen Steel Princess they'd have wanted to know what she was doing in his house. . . . Curse Sunday! On any other day I could have bought an evening paper and found out exactly what psalm he warbled. As it is, I shall have to go round and inquire in person."

"You'll have to what?" spluttered Roger.

"Make personal inquiries," said the Saint. "Disguised as a gentleman, I shall interview Prince Rudolf at the Ritz Hotel, and hear all the news."

He pushed back his chair and reached for the cigarette box.

"It may not have occurred to your mildewed intellect," he remarked pleasantly, "that the problems of international intrigue can usually be reduced to quite simple terms. Let's reduce Rudolf. A, wishing to look important, desires to smite B on the nose. But B, unfortunately, is a bigger man than A. C comes along and offers A a gun, wherewith B can be potted from a safe distance. But we destroyed that gun. C then suggests a means of wangling an alliance between A and D, whereby the disgusting superiority of B may be overcome. C, of course, is sitting on the fence, waiting to take them into his very expensive nursing-home when they've all half killed each other. Is that clear?"

"Like mud," said Roger.

"Well," said the Saint, unmoved, "if you wanted to find out exactly how the alliance was to be wangled, mightn't it be helpful to ask A?"

"And, naturally, he'd tell you at once."

Simon shook his head sadly.

"There are subtleties in this game," he said, "which are lost upon you, Roger. But they may be explained to you later. Meanwhile..."

The Saint leaned back, with a glance at his watch, and looked across the table at the girl. The bantering manner which he wore with such an ease slipped from his shoulders like a cloak; and he studied her face soberly, reading what he could in the deep brown eyes. She had been watching him ever since he came into the room; and he knew that the fate of his plan was already sealed—one way or the other.

"Your parole has still more than four hours to run," he said, "but I give it back to you now."

She could thank him coldly, and go. She could thank him nicely, rather puzzledly—and go. And if she had made the least move to do either of those things, he would not have said another word. It would be no use, unless she delayed of her own free will. And only one thing could so bend her will—a thing that he hardly dared to contem­plate. ...

"Why do you do that? "she asked simply.

3

"Why do you do that?" . . . "I'll give you my parole." ... He turned over those forthright sentences in his mind. And the way in which they had been spoken. The way in which everything he had heard her say had been spoken. Her superb simplicity...

"America's Loveliest Lady," the Bystander caption had called her; and the Saint reflected how little meaning was left in that last word. And yet it was the only word for her. There was something about her that one had to meet to understand. If he had had to describe it, he could only have done so in flowery phrases—and a flowery phrase would have robbed the thing of all its fresh naturalness, would have tarnished it, might even have made it seem pretentious. And it was the most unpretending thing he had ever known. It was so innocent that it awed him; and yet it made his heart leap with a fantastic hope.

"I did my thinking last night, as I said I would," he answered her quietly.

Still she did not move.

She prompted him: "And you made your plan?"

"Yes."

"I wonder if it was the same as mine?"

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"'The same as yours?''

She smiled.

"I can think, too, Mr.—Saint," she said. "I've been taught to. And last night I thought a lot. I thought of everything you'd said, and everything I'd heard about you. And I believed what you'd told me. So—I knew there was only one thing to do."

"Namely?"

"Didn't you call me—Marius's battle-axe? I think you were right. And that's something for us to know. But there's so much else that we don't know—how the axe is to be used, and what other weapons there are to reinforce it. You've taken the axe away, but that's all. Marius still means to bring down the tree. Once before you've thought he was beaten; but you were wrong. This time, if you just take away his axe, you'll know he isn't beaten. He's already undermined the tree. Even now it may fall before the next natural storm. It may be hard enough to prop it up now, until the roots grow down again—without leaving Marius free to strike at it again. And to make sure that he won't strike again, you've got to break his arm."

"Or his neck," said the Saint grimly.

Again she smiled.

"Haven't I read your thoughts?"

"Perfectly."

"And what was your plan?"

Simon met her eyes.

"I meant," he said deliberately, "to ask you to go back—to Heinrich Dussel."

"That was what I meant to suggest."

In that moment Roger Conway felt utterly off the map. The Saint had told him nothing. The Saint had merely sung continuously in his bath— which, with the Saint, was a sure sign of peace of mind. And, in the circumstances, Roger Conway had wondered. . . . But Simon had donned his disguise and departed in the car without a word in explanation of his high spirits; and Roger had been left to wonder. . . . And then—this. He saw the long, deliberate glance which the other two ex­changed, and felt that they were moving and speaking in another world—a world to which he could never aspire. And like a man in a dream he heard them discussing the impossible thing.

He knew the Saint, and the thunderbolts of dazzling audacity which the Saint could launch, as no other man could have claimed to know them; and yet this detonation alone would have reeled him momentarily off his balance. But it didn't stand alone. It was matched—without a second's pause. They were of the same breed, those two. Though their feet were set on different roads, they walked in the same country—a country that or­dinary people could never reach. And it was then that Roger Conway, who had always believed that no one in all the world could walk shoulder to shoulder with the Saint in that country, began to understand many things.

He heard them, in his dream—level question and answer, the quiet, crisp words. He would have been less at sea if either of them had said any of the things that he might have expected, in any way that he might have expected; but there was none of that. Those things did not exist in their language. Their calm, staccato utterances plunged into his brain like clear-cut gems falling through an infinite darkness.

"You've considered the dangers?"

"To myself?"

"Yes."

"I'm never safe—at any time."

"The destinies we're playing with, then. I might fail you. That would mean we'd given Marius the game."

"You might not fail."

"Have we the right?" asked the Saint.

And then Roger saw him again—the new Saint to whom he had still to grow accustomed. Simon Templar, with the old careless swashbuckling days behind him, more stern and sober, playing bigger games than he had ever touched before—yet with the light of all the old ideals in blue eyes that would never grow old, and all the old laughing hell-for-leather recklessness waiting for his need.

"Have we the right to risk failure?" Simon asked.

"Have you the right to turn back?" the girl answered him. "Have you the right to turn back and start all over again—when you might go forward?"

The Saint nodded.

"I just meant to ask you, Sonia. And you've given your answer. More—you've taken the words out of my mouth, and the objections I'm making are the ones you ought to have made."

"I've thought of them all."

"Then—we go forward."

The Saint spoke evenly, quite softly; yet Roger seemed to hear a blast of bugles. And the Saint went on:

"We've had enough of war. Fighting is for the strong—for those who know what they're fighting for, and love the fight for its own sake. We were like that, my friends and I—and yet we swore that it should not happen again. Not this new fighting—not this cold-blooded scientific maiming and slaughter of school-boys and poor grown-up fools herded to squalid death to make money for a bunch of slimy financiers. We saw it coming again. The flags flying, and the bands playing, and the politicians yaddering about a land fit for heroes to live in, and the poor fools cheering and being cheered, and another madness, worse than the last. Just another war to end war. . . . But we know that you can't end war by war. You can't end war by any means at all, thank God, while men believe in right and wrong, and some of them have the courage to fight for their belief. It has always been so. And it's my own creed. I hope I never live to see the day when the miserable quibbling hair-splitters have won the earth, and there's no more black and white, but everything's just a dreary relative gray, and everyone has a right to his own damned heresies, and it's more noble to be broadminded about your disgusting neighbours than to push their faces in as a preliminary to yanking them back into the straight and narrow way. . . . But this is different. There's no crusading about it. It's just mass murder — for the benefit of the men with the big bank balances. That's what we saw — and we were three blistered outlaws who'd made scrap-iron of every law in Europe, on one quixotic excuse or another, just to make life tolerable for ourselves in this half­hearted civilization. And when we saw that, we knew that we'd come to the end of our quest. We'd found the thing worth fighting for — really worth fighting for — so much more worth fighting for than any of the little things we'd fought for before. One of us has already died for it. But the work will go on. ..."

And suddenly the Saint stood up.

And all at once, in that swift movement, with the old gay devil-may-care smile awakening again on his lips, Simon Templar seemed to sweep the room clear of all doubts and shadows, leaving only the sunlight and the smile and the far cry of impos­sible fanfares.

"Let's go!"

"Where?" demanded Roger helplessly; and the Saint laughed.

"On the job, sweetheart," he said—"on the job! Here—shunt yourself and let me get at that telephone."

Roger shunted dazedly, and watched the Saint dial a number. The Saint's face was alight with a new laughter; and, as he waited, he began to hum a little tune. For the wondering and wavering was over, the speculating and the scheming, the space for physical inaction and sober counsel—those negative things at which the Saint's flaming vital­ity would always fret impatiently. And once again he was on the move—swift, smiling, cavalier, with a laugh and a flourish for battle and sudden death and all good things, playing the old game with all the magnificent zest that only he could bring to it.

"Hullo. Can I speak to Dr. Marius, please? . . . Templar—Simon Templar.. . .Thank you."

Roger Conway said, suddenly, sharply: "Saint—you're crazy! You can't do it! The game's too big—"

"Who wants to play for brickdust and bird­seed?" Simon required to know.

And then, before Roger could think of an ade­quate retort to such an arrogance, he had lost any audience he might have had. For the Saint was speaking to the man he hated more than anyone else in the world.

"Is that you, Marius, my little lamb?" Genially, almost caressingly, the Saint spoke. "And how's Heinrich? . . . Yes, I thought you'd have heard I was back. I'd have rung you up before, only I've been so busy. As a medical man, I can't call my time my own. Only last night I had an extraordi­nary case. Did Heinrich tell you? . . . Yes, I expected he would. I think he was very struck with my methods. Quiet—er—dazzled, in fact. . . . No, nothing in particular. It just occurred to me to soothe my ears with the sound of your sweet voice. It's such a long time since we had our last heart-to-heart talk. . . . The invalid? . . . Oh, getting on as well as can be expected. She ought to be fit to go back to the Embassy to-morrow. . . . No, not to­day. That dope you used on her seems to have a pretty potent follow-through, and I never send my patients home till they've got a bounce on them that's a free advertisement for the cure. . . . Well, you can remember me to Rudolf. I may drop in at the Ritz and have a cocktail with him before lunch. Bye-bye, Angel Face. ..."

He hung up the receiver.

"Beautiful," he murmured ecstatically. "Too, too beautiful! When it comes to low cunning, I guess that little cameo makes Machiavelli look like Little Red Riding Hood. Angel Face was great—he kept his end up right through the round—but I heard him take the bait. Distinctly. It fairly whis­tled through his epiglottis. . . . D'you get the idea, my Roger?"

"I don't," Conway admitted.

Simon looked at the girl.

"Do you, Sonia?"

She also shook her head; and the Saint laughed and helped himself to another cigarette.

"Marius knows I've got you," he said. "He thinks he knows that you're still laid out by his dope. And he knows that I wouldn't tell the world I've got you—things being as they are. On that reckoning, then, he's got a new lease of life. He's got a day in which to find me and take you away.

And he thinks I haven't realized that—and he's wrong!"

"Very lucid," observed Roger sarcastically. "But I gather he's supposed to find out where we are."

"I've told him."

"How?"

"At this moment, he's finding out my telephone number from the exchange."

"What good will that do him? The exchange won't give him your address."

The Saint grinned.

"Roger," he remarked dispassionately, "you have fully half as much brain as a small boll-weevil. A very small boll-weevil. Your genius for intrigue would probably make you one of the most successful glue-boilers that ever lived."

"Possibly. But if you'd condescend to ex­plain—"

"But it's so easy!" cried the Saint. "I had to do it tactfully, of course. I couldn't say anything that would let him smell the hook. Thanks to our recent encounter, he knows we're not solid bone from the gargle upwards; and if I'd dropped a truckload of bricks on his Waukeezis, he'd've stopped and thought for a long time before he picked one up. But I didn't. I only dropped that one little bricklet—just big enough for him to feel the im­pact, and just small enough for him to be able to believe I hadn't seen it go. And Angel Face is so clever. . . . What d'you think he's doing now?"

"Boiling glue," suggested Roger.

"He's got his whole general staff skidding through the telephone directory like so many hun­gry stockbrokers humming down the latest Wall Street prices during a slump. The exchange will have told him that the call didn't come from a public call box, and that alone will have made him shift his ears back two inches. The only other thing that could put salt horse in his soufflé would be if the call turned out to have been put through from a hotel or a restaurant; but he'd have to take his chance on that. And he'd know there was a shade of odds in his favour. No, Roger—you can bet your last set of Aertex that the entire personnel of the ungodly is at this moment engaged in whiffling through every telephone number in the book as they've never whiffled before; and in anything from one to thirty minutes from now, according to how they split up the comic annuaire between them, one of them will be letting out a shrill squawk of triumph and starting to improvise a carol about 7, Upper Berkeley Mews."

"And how does that help us?" asked Roger.

"Like this," said the Saint, and proceeded to ex­plain thus and thus.

CHAPTER FOUR

How Simon Templar dozed in the Green Park,

and discovered a new use for toothpaste

TO WALK from Upper Berkeley Mews to the Ritz Hotel should ordinarily have taken a man with the Saint's stride and the Saint's energy about four minutes. Simon Templar in motion, his friends used to say, was the most violent man that ever fumed through London; all his physical movements were made as if they were tremendously important. Buccaneer he was in fact, and buccaneer of life he always looked — most of all when he strode through London on his strange errands, with his incredibly vivid stride, and a piratical anachronism of a hat canted cavalierly aslant over the face of a fighting troubadour.

But there was nothing of that about the aged graybeard who emerged inconspicuously from a converted garage in Upper Berkeley Mews at half-past eleven that Sunday morning. He did not look as if he had ever been anything in the least like a buccaneer, even fifty years ago; and, if in those decorously wild young days he had once cherished lawless aspirations, he must long since have decently buried all such disturbing thoughts. He walked very slowly, almost apologetically, as if he doubted his own right to be at large; and when he came to Piccadilly he stopped at the edge of the sidewalk and blinked miserably through his dark glasses at the scanty traffic, looking so forlorn and helpless that a plain-clothes man who had been searching for him for hours was moved to offer to help him across the road—an offer which was accepted with plaintive gratitude, and acknowledged with pathetic effusiveness. So an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department did his day's good deed; and the pottering patri­arch shuffled into the Green Park by the gate at the side of the Ritz Hotel, found a seat in the shade, sat there, folded his arms, and presently ap­peared to sleep. ...

He slept for an hour; and then he climbed stiffly to his feet and shambled out of the park by the way he had entered it, turning under the shadow of the Ritz. He pushed through the revolving doors with­out hesitation; and it says much for the utter re­spectability of his antique appearance that the flunkey who met him within made no attempt to eject him, but greeted him deferentially, hoping that he would prove to be a millionaire, and certain that he could not turn out to be less than an earl.

"I wish to see Prince Rudolf," said the Saint; and he said it in such a way that the lackey almost grovelled.

"What name, sir?"

"You may send up my card."

The Saint fumbled in his waistcoat pocket; he had a very fine selection of visiting cards, and the ones he had brought with him on this expedition bore the name of Lord Craithness. On the back of one, he wrote: "Maidenhead, June 28."

It was the day on which he had last seen the prince—the day on which Norman Kent had died. "Will you take a seat, your lordship?" His lordship would take a seat. And he waited there only five minutes, a grave and patient old aristocrat, before the man returned to say that the prince would see him—as Simon had known he would say.

It was a perfect little character study, that per­formance—the Saint's slow and sober progress down the first-floor corridor, his entrance into the prince's suite, the austere dignity of his poise in the moment that he waited for the servant to announce him.

"Lord Craithness."

The Saint heard the door close behind him, and smiled in his beard. And yet he could not have told why he smiled; for at that moment there came back to him all that he had to remember of his first and last meeting with the man who now faced him—and those were not pleasant memories. Once again he saw the friendly house by the Thames, the garden cool and fresh beyond the open French windows, the sunlit waters at the end of the lawn, and Norman Kent with a strange peace in his dark eyes, and the nightmare face of Rayt Marius, and the prince . . . Prince Rudolf, calmest of them all, with a sleek and inhuman calm, like a man of steel and velvet, impeccably groomed, exquisite, impas­sive—exactly as he stood at that moment, gazing at his visitor with his fine eyebrows raised in faint in­terrogation . . . not betraying by so much as the flicker of an eyelid the things that must have been in his mind. He could not possibly have forgotten the date that had been written on that card, it could not by any stretch of imagination have omened good news for him: and yet he was utterly master of himself, utterly at his ease. . . .

"You're a wonderful man," said the Saint; and the prince shrugged delicately.

''You have the advantage of me."

"Have you forgotten so quickly?"

"I meet many people."

The Saint put up his hand and removed his gray wig, his glasses, his beard . . . straightened up.

"You should remember me," he said.

"My dear Mr. Templar!" The prince was smil­ing. "But why such precautions? Or did you wish to make your call an even greater surprise?"

The Saint laughed.

"The precautions were necessary," he said— "as you know. But I'll say you took it well—High­ness. I never expected you to bat an eye-lash, though—I remembered so well that your self-con­trol was your greatest charm."

"But I am delighted to see you."

"Are you?" asked Simon Templar, gently.

2

THE PRINCE proffered a slim gold case.

"At least," he said, "you will smoke."

"One of my own," said the Saint affably. "I find that these are the only brand I can indulge in with safety—my heart isn't what it was."

The prince shrugged.

"You have missed your vocation, Mr. Tem­plar," he said regretfully. "You should have been a diplomat."

"I could have made a job of it," said Simon modestly.

"I believe I once made you an offer to enter my own service."

"You did."

"And you refused."

"I did."

"Perhaps you have reconsidered your decision."

The Saint smiled.

"Listen," he said. "Suppose I said I had. Sup­pose I told you I'd forgotten the death of my dear­est friend. Suppose I said that all the things I once believed in and fought for—the things that he died for—meant nothing more to me. Would you wel­come me?"

"Candidly," said the prince, "I should not. I admire you. I know your qualities, and I would give much to have them in my service. But that is an ideal—a daydream. If you turned your coat, you would cease to be what you are, and so you would cease to be desirable. But it is a pity. ..."

Simon strolled to a chair. He sat there, watching the prince through a curling feather of cigarette smoke. And the prince, sinking onto the arm of another chair, with a long thin cigarette holder be­tween his perfect teeth, returned the gaze with a glimmer of amusement on his lips.

Presently the prince made one of his indescrib­ably elegant gestures.

"As you have not come to enlist with me," he remarked, "I presume you have some other rea­son. Shall we deal with it?"

"I thought we might have a chat," said the Saint calmly. "I've discovered a number of obscure odours in the wind during the last twenty-four hours, and I had an idea you might have some­thing to say which would clear the air. Of course, for one thing, I was hoping our dear friend Marius would be with you."

The prince glanced at his watch.

"I am expecting him at any moment. He was re­sponsible for your friend's unfortunate—er—acci­dent, by the way. I fear that Marius has never been of a very even temper."

"That is one thing I've been wanting to know for many weeks," said the Saint quietly; and for a moment something blazed in his eyes like a sear of blue flame.

And then, once again, he was smiling.

"It'll be quite a rally, won't it?" he murmured. "And we shall have such a lot to tell each other. . . . But perhaps you'd like to open the pa­laver yourself—Highness? For instance, how's Heinrich?"

'' I believe him to be in good health."

"And what did he tell the police?''

"Ah! I thought you would ask that question."

"I'm certainly curious."

The prince tapped his cigarette fastidiously against the edge of an ashtray.

"If you wish to know, he said that his uncle—an invalid, and unhappily subject to violent fits—had arrived only yesterday from Munich. You entered the house, pretending to be a doctor, before he could disclaim you; and you immediately threat­ened him with an automatic. You then informed him that you were the Saint, and abducted his uncle. Dussel, naturally, had no idea why you should have done so—but, just as naturally, he considered that that was a problem for the police to solve.''

Simon nodded admiringly.

"I'm taking a distinct shine to Heinrich," he drawled.

"You will admit that it was an ingenious expla­nation."

"I'll tell the world."

"But you own strategy, my dear Mr. Templar— that was superb! Even if I had not been told that it was your work, I should have recognized the artist at once."

"We professionals!" sighed the Saint.

"'And where did you take the lady? "

The question was thrown off so carelessly, and yet with such a perfect touch, that for an instant the Saint checked his breath. And then he laughed.

"Oh, Rudolf, that wasn't worthy of you!"

"I am merely being natural," said the prince, without annoyance. "There was something you wanted to know—you asked me—I answered. And then I followed your example."

Simon shook his head, smiling, and sank deeper into his chair, his eyes intent upon an extraordi­narily uninteresting ceiling. And he wondered, with a certain reckless inward merriment, what thoughts were sizzling through the brain of the im­perturbable hidalgo opposite him.

He wondered . . . but he knew that it would be a waste of time to attempt to read anything in the prince's face. The prince was his match, if not more than his match, at any game like that. If Si­mon had come there to fence—that would have been a duel! Already, in the few words they had exchanged, each had tested afresh the other's mettle, and each had tacitly recognized that time had fostered no illusions about the other: neither had changed. Weave and feint, thrust, parry, and riposte—each movement was perfect, smooth, cool, effortless . . . and futile. . . . And neither would yield an inch of ground. . . . And now, where cruder and clumsier exponents would still be ineffectually lunging and blundering, they had ad­mitted the impasse. The pause was of mutual con­sent.

Their eyes met and there was a momentary twist of humour in each gaze.

"We appear," observed the prince politely, "to be in the position of two men who are fighting with invisible weapons. We are both equally at a disad­vantage."

"Not quite," said the Saint.

The prince fluttered a graceful hand.

"It is agreed that you are an obstacle in my path which I should be glad to remove. I might hand you over to the police—"

"But then you might have some embarrassing questions to answer."

"Exactly. And as for any private action—"

"Difficult—in the Ritz Hotel."

"Exceedingly difficult. Then, there is reason to believe that you are—or were—temporarily in pos­session of a property which it is necessary for me to recover."

"Dear old Heinrich's uncle."

"Whereas my property is the knowledge of why it is necessary for me to recover—your property."

"Perhaps."

" And an exchange is out of the question."

"Right out."

"So that the deadlock is complete.''

"Not quite," said the Saint again.

The prince's eyes narrowed a fraction. '

"Have I forgotten anything?"

"I wonder!"

There was another moment of silence; and, in the stillness, the Saint's amazingly sensitive ears caught the ghost of a sound from the corridor out­side the room. And, at that instant, with the break­ing of the silence by the perfunctory knock that followed on the door, the grim mirth that had been simmering inside the Saint for minutes past danced mockingly into his eyes.

"Highness—"

It was Marius, looming gigantically in the door­way, with a flare of triumph in the face that might have served as a model for some hideous heathen idol, and triumph in his thin rasping voice.

And then he saw the Saint and stopped dead.

"You see that our enterprising young friend is with us once more, my dear Marius," said the prince suavely; and Simon Templar rose to his feet with his most seraphic smile.

3

"MARIUS—my old college chum!''

The Saint stood there in the centre of the room, lean and swift and devil-may-care, his hands swinging back his coat and resting on his hips; and all the old challenging hints of lazy laughter that both the other men remembered were glinting back through the tones of his voice. The reckless eyes swept Marius from head to foot, with the cold steel masked down into their depths by a shimmer of gay disdain.

"Oh, precious!" spoke on that lazy half-laugh­ing voice. "And where have you been all these months? Why haven't you come round to hold my hand and reminisce with me about the good old days, and all the fun we had together? And the songs we used to sing . . . And do you remember how you pointed a gun at me one night, in one of our first little games, and I kicked you in the—er— heretofore?"

"Marius has a good memory," said the prince dryly.

"And so have I," beamed the Saint, and his smile tightened a little. "Oh, Angel Face, I'm glad to meet you again!''

The giant turned and spoke harshly in his own language; but the prince interrupted him.

"Let us speak English," he said. "It will be more interesting for Mr. Templar.''

"How did he come here?"

"He walked up."

"But the police—"

"Mr. Templar and I have already discussed that question, my dear Marius. It is true that Dussel had to make certain charges in order to cover him­self, but it might still be inconvenient for us if Mr. Templar were arrested.''

"It is awkward for you, you know," murmured Simon sympathetically.

The prince selected a fresh cigarette.

"But your own news, my dear Marius? You seemed pleased with yourself when you arrived—"

"I have been successful."

"Our friend will be interested."

Marius looked across at the Saint, and his lips twisted malevolently. And the Saint remembered what lay between them. ...

"Miss Delmar is now in safe hands," said the giant slowly.

Simon stood quite still.

"When you rang me up—do you remember?— to boast—I asked the exchange for your number. Then the directory was searched, and we learned your address. Miss Delmar was alone. We had no difficulty, though I was hoping to find you and some of your friends there as well—''

"Bluff," said the Saint unemotionally.

"I think not, my dear Mr. Templar," said the prince urbanely. "Dr. Marius is really a most re­liable man. I recollect that the only mistake we have made was my own, and he advised me against it."

Marius came closer.

"Once—when you beat me," he said vindictive­ly. "When you undid years of work—by a trick. But your friend paid the penalty. You also—''

"I also—pay," said the Saint, with bleak eyes.

"You—"

"My dear Marius!" Once again the prince inter­rupted. "Let us be practical. You have succeeded. Good. Now, our young friend has elected to inter­fere in our affairs again, and since he has so kindly delivered himself into our hands—"

Suddenly the Saint laughed.

"What shall we do with the body?" he mur­mured. "Well, souls, I'll have to give you time to think that out. Meanwhile, I shouldn't like you to think I was getting any gray hairs over Marius's slab of ripe boloney about Miss Delmar. My dear Marius, that line of hooey's got wheels!"

"You still call it a bluff?" sneered the giant.

"You will find out—"

"I shall," drawled Simon. "Angel Face, don't you think this is a peach of a beard? Makes me look like Abraham in a high wind. ..."

Absent-mindedly the Saint had picked up his disguise and affixed the beard to his chin and the dark glasses to his nose. The hat had fallen to the floor. Moving to pick it up, he kicked it a yard away. The second attempt had a similar result. And it was all done with such a puerile innocence that both Marius and the prince must have been no more than vaguely wondering what motive the Saint could have in descending to such infantile depths of clowning—when the manoeuvre was completed with a breath-taking casualness.

The pursuit of his hat had brought the Saint within easy reach of the door. Quite calmly and unhurriedly he picked up the hat and clapped it on his head.

"Strong silent man goes out into the night," he said. "But we must get together again some time. Au revoir, sweet cherubs!"

And the Saint passed through the sitting-room door in a flash; and a second later the outer door of the suite banged.

Simon had certainly visited the prince with in­tent to obtain information; but he had done so, as he did all such things, practically without a plan in his head. The Saint was an opportunist; he held that the development of complicated plans was generally nothing but a squandering of so much energy, for the best of palavers was liable to rocket onto unexpected rails—and these surprises, Simon maintained, could only be turned to their fullest advantage by a mind untrammelled by any preconceived plan of campaign. And if the Saint had anticipated anything, he had anticipated that the arrival of Rayt Marius in the role of an angel-faced harbinger of glad tidings would result in a certain amount of more or less informative backchat be­fore the conversation became centered on pros­pective funerals. And, indeed, the conversazione had worn a very up-and-coming air before the prince had switched it back into such a very prac­tical channel. But Prince Rudolf had that sort of mind; wherefore the Saint had chased his hat. . . .

4

IT HAD BEEN a slick job, that departure; and it was all over before Marius had started to move. Even then, the prince had to stop him.

"My dear Marius, it would be useless to cause a disturbance now."

"He could be arrested—"

"But you must see that he could say things about us, if he chose, which might prove even more annoying than his own interference. At large, he can be dealt with by ourselves."

"He has fooled us once, Highness—"

"He will not do so again. ... Sit down, sit down, Marius! You have something to tell me."

Impatiently, the giant suffered himself to be soothed into a chair. But the prince was perfectly unruffled—the cigarette glowed evenly in his long holder, and his sensitive features showed no sign of emotion.

"I took the girl," said Marius curtly. "She has been sent to Saltham. The ship will call there again to-night, and Vassiloff will be on board. They can be married as soon as they are at sea—the captain is my slave."

"You think the provocation will be sufficient?"

"I am more sure of it than ever. I know Lessing. I will see him myself—discreetly—and I guarantee that he will accept my proposition. Within a week you should be able to enter Ukraine."

In the bathroom the Saint heard every word. He had certainly banged the outer door of the suite, but the bedroom door had been equally convenient for the purposes of his exit. It has been explained that he came to the Ritz Hotel to gather informa­tion.

The communicating door between the sitting room and the bedroom was ajar; so also was that between bedroom and bathroom. And while he lis­tened, the Saint was amusing himself.

He had found a new tube of Prince Rudolf's beautiful pink toothpaste, and the glazed green tiles of the bathroom offered a tempting surface for artistic experiment. Using his material after the style of a chef applying fancy icing to a cake, the Saint had drawn a perfect six-inch circle upon the bathroom wall; from the lowest point of the circle he drew down a vertical line, which presently bifurcated into two downward lines of equal length; and on either side of his first vertical line he caused two further lines to project diagonally upwards..". .

"And the other arrangements, Marius—they are complete?"

"Absolutely. You have read all the newspapers yourself, Highness—you must see that the strains could not have been more favourably ordered. The mine is ripe for the spark. To-day I received a cable from my most trusted agent, in Vienna—I have decoded it—"

The prince took the form and read it; and then he began to pace the room steadily, in silence.

It was not a restless, fretful pacing—it was a matter of deliberate, leisured strides, as smooth and graceful and eloquent as any of the prince's gestures. His hands were lightly clasped behind his back; the thin cigarette holder projected from be­tween his white teeth; his forehead was serene and unwrinkled.

Marius waited his pleasure, sitting hunched up in the chair to which the prince had led him, like some huge grotesque carving in barbarous stone. He watched the prince with inscrutable glittering eyes.

And Simon Templar was putting the finishing touches to his little drawing.

He understood everything that was said. Once upon a time he had felt himself at a disadvantage because he could not speak a word of the prince's language; but since then he had devoted all his spare time, night and day, to the task of adding that tongue to his already extensive linguistic ac­complishments. This fact he had had neither the inclination nor the opportunity to reveal during their brief reunion.

Presently the prince said: "Our friend Mr. Tem­plar—I find it hard to forget that he once saved my life. But when he cheated me, at Maidenhead, I think he cancelled the debt."

"It is more than cancelled, Highness," said Marius malignantly. "But for that treachery, we should have achieved our purpose long ago."

"It seems a pity—I have admitted as much to him. He is such an active and ingenious young man."

" A meddlesome young swine!"

The prince shook his head.

"One should never allow a personal animosity to colour one's abstract appreciations, my dear Marius," he said dispassionately. "On the other hand one should not allow an abstract admiration to overrule one's discretion. I have a most sincere regard for our friend—but that is all the more rea­son why I should encourage you to expedite his re­moval. He will endeavour to trace Miss Delmar, of course, when he finds that you were telling the truth."

"I shall take steps to assist him—up to a point."

"And then you will dispose of him in your own way."

"There will be no mistake," said the giant ven­omously; and the prince laughed softly.

In the bathroom, Simon Templar, with a very Saintly smile on his lips, was crowning his shapely self-portrait with a symbolical halo—at a rakish angle, and in scrupulously correct perspective.

CHAPTER FIVE

How Simon Templar travelled to Saltham

and Roger Conway put up his gun

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.

2

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!"

3

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.

4

"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.

CHAPTER SIX

How Templar threw a stone,

and the Italian Delegate was unlucky

FOR A MOMENT the Saint stood there, watching the tail light of the Hirondel skimming away into the darkness. He knew so well—he could not have helped knowing—the hideous doubts that must have tortured Roger's brain, the duel between jeal­ousy and friendship, the agony that the struggle must have cost. For Roger could only have been thinking of the ultimate destiny of the girl who had been pitchforked into their lives less than twelve hours ago, who was now a prisoner in the house beyond the trees, from whom the Saint had al­ready plundered such a fantastic allegiance. And Simon thought of other girls that Roger had known, and of other things that had been in their lives since they first came together, and of his own lady; and he wondered, with a queer wistfulness in the eyes that followed that tiny red star down the road.

And then the red star swept out of sight round a bend; and the Saint turned away with a shrug, and glanced down again at the sea, where lay another red star, with a green one beside it.

In that, at least, he had deliberately lied... . The ship, he was sure, had been within a mile of the shore when he spoke; and now it had ceased to move. The rattle of a chain came faintly to his ears, and then he heard the splash of the anchor.

They had run their time-table close enough! And Roger Conway, with about a hundred and eighty miles to drive, to London and back, and a job of work to do on the way, had no mean gag to put over—even in the Hirondel. The Saint, who was a connoisseur of speed, swore by that car; and he knew that Roger Conway, for all his modesty, could spin a nifty wheel when he was put to it; but, even so, he reckoned that Roger hadn't a heap to beef about. Any verbiage about Roger having nothing to do that night would be so much apple­sauce. ...

"And pray Heaven he doesn't pile that bus up on its front bumpers on the way," murmured Simon piously.

As he slipped into the shadows of a clump of trees, his fingers strayed instinctively to his left sleeve, feeling for the hilt of Belle, the little throwing-knife that was his favorite weapon, which he could use with such a bewildering speed and skill. Once upon a time, Belle had been merely the twin sister of Anna, who was his darling; but he had lost Anna three months ago, in the course of his first fight with Marius. And, touching Belle, in her little leather sheath strapped to his forearm, the Saintly smile flickered over his lips, without reach­ing his eyes....

Then, beyond the clump of trees, he stood be­side the wooden fence that walled off the estate. It was as tall as himself; he stretched up cautious fin­gers, and felt a thick entanglement of rusty barbed wire along the top. But a couple of feet over his head one of the trees in the clump through which he had just passed extended a long bare branch far over the fence. Simon limbered his muscles swift­ly, judged his distance, and jumped for it. His hands found their hold as smoothly and accurately as if he had been performing on a horizontal bar in a gymnasium; and he swung himself back to the fence hand over hand, pulled up with his arms, carried his legs over, and dropped lightly to the ground on the other side.

Fastidiously settling his tie, which had worked a fraction of an inch out of place during the per­formance, he stepped through the narrow skirting of forestry in which he had landed, and inspected the view.

In front of him, and away round to his right, spread an expanse of park land, broken by occa­sional trees, and surrounding the house on the two sides that he could see. Also surrounding the house, and farther in, lay the gardens, trellises and terraces, shrubberies and outbuildings, dimly visi­ble in the gloom. On his left, crowning a steady rise of ground, a kind of balustraded walk cut a clean black line against the sky, and he guessed that this marked the edge of the cliffs.

In this direction he moved, keeping in the shel­tering obscurity of the border of trees for as long as he could, and then breaking off at right angles, parallel with the balustrade, before he had mount­ed enough of the gentle slope for his silhouette to be marked against the skyline. He felt certain that his entrance upon the estate was not yet public knowledge, and he was inclined to stay cagey about it: the number and personal habits of the household staff were very much of an unknown quantity so far, and the Saint was not tempted to run any risk of provoking them prematurely. Swiftly as he shifted through the faint starlight, his sensitive ears were alert for the slightest sound, his restless eyes scanned every shadow, and the fingers of his right hand were never far from the chased ivory hilt of Belle. He himself made no more sound than a prowling leopard, and that same leopard could not have constituted a more deadly menace to any member of the opposition gang who might have chanced to be roaming about the grounds on Simon Templar's route.

Presently the house was again on his right, and much nearer to him, for he had travelled round two sides of a rough square. He began to move with an even greater caution. Then, in a moment, gravel grated under his feet. He glanced sharply to his left, to see where the path led, and observed a wide gap in the balustrade at the cliff edge. That would be the top of a flight of steps running down the cliff face to the shore, he figured; and beside the gap he saw a tree that would provide friendly cover for another peep at the developments on the water below.

He turned off the path and melted into the blackness beneath the tree. This grew on the very edge of the scarp; and the break in the balustrade meant what he had thought it meant—a rough stairway that vanished downwards into the dark­ness.

Looking out, Simon saw a thin paring of new moon slithering out of the rim of the sea. It wouldn't be much of a moon even when it was ful­ly risen, he reflected, with a voiceless thanksgiving to the little gods that had made the adventure this much easier. For all felonious purposes, the light was perfect—nothing but the soft luminance of a sky spangled with a thousand stars—light enough for a cat-eyed shikari like Simon Templar to work by, without being bright enough to be embarrass­ing.

He switched his eyes downwards again, and saw, midway between the anchored ship and the thin white ribbon of sand at the foot of the cliff, a tiny black shape stealing over the waters. Motion­less, instinctively holding his breath and parting his lips—the Saint's faculties worked involuntari­ly, whether they were needed or not—he could catch shreds of the sound of grating rowlocks.

And then he heard another sound, behind him, that was much easier to hear—the gritting of heavy boots on the gravel he had just quitted.

2

HE MERGED a little deeper into the blackness of his cover, and looked round. A lantern was bobbing down the path from the house, and three men tramped along by its light. In a moment their voices came to him quite plainly.

"Himmel! I shall vant to go to bet. Last night— to-night—it iss never no sleep for der mans."

"Aw—ya big skeezicks! What sorta tony outfit d'ya think ya've horned in on?"

"Ah, 'e will-a always be sleeping, da Gerraman. He would-a make-a all his time, sleeping and-a drinking—but I t'ink 'e like-a best-a da drinking."

"Maybe he's gotta toist like I got. Ya can't do nuth'n about dat kinda toist...."

The Saint leaned elegantly against his tree, watching the advancing group, and there was a hint of genuine admiration in his eyes.

"A Boche, a Wop, and a Bowery Boy," he mur­mured. "Gee—that man Marius ought to be run­ning the League of Nations!"

The three men marched a few more yards in si­lence; and they were almost opposite the Saint when the Bowery Boy spoke again.

"Who's bringin' down de goil?"

"Hermann"—the Boche answered with guttural brevity.

"She is-a da nice-a girl, no?" The Wop took up the running sentimentally. "She remind-a me of-a da girl in Sorrento, 'oo I knew—"

"She sure is a classy skoit. But us poor fish ain't gotta break—it's de big cheese fer hers, sure...."

They passed so close by the Saint that he could have reached out and knifed the nearest of them without an effort—and he did actually meditate that manoeuvre for a second, for he had a forth­right mind. But he knew that one minor assassina­tion more or less would not make much difference, and he stood to lose more than he could hope to gain. Besides, any disturbance at that juncture would wreck beyond redemption the plan which he had just formed.

The League of Nations was descending the cliff stairway, the mutter of their voices growing fainter as they went. Simon took another look at the sea and saw that the ship's boat had halved its distance from the shore. And then, after one quick glance round to see if anyone was following on immedi­ately behind the three who had passed on, he slipped out of his shelter and flitted down the steps in the wake of the voices.

He could have caught them up easily, but he hung well behind. That cliff path was trickier country to negotiate than the smooth turf above; and a single loose stone, at close range, might tell good-night to the story in a most inconvenient and disastrous fashion. Also, one of the three might for some reason take it into his head to return, and the Saint thought he would like warning of that tergiversation. So he saw to it that they kept their lead, and walked with a delicacy that would have made Agag look like a rheumatic rhinoceros.

Then he found himself on the turn of the last zigzag, while the party below were debouching onto the sands. At the same moment, the ship's boat ran alongside a little jetty, which had been screened from his view when he looked down from the top of the cliff.

He paused there, thinking rapidly, and survey­ing the scenery.

The shore itself was destitute of cover for the twenty yards of sand that lay between the end of the path and the jetty; but the miscellaneous grasses and shrubs which grew thickly over the sloping cliff extended right down to the beginning of the sands, without any bare patches that he could see, and appeared to become even thicker before they stopped altogether. This was certainly helpful, but ... He looked out towards the ship and stroked his chin thoughtfully. Then he gazed again at the jetty, where a man from the ship's boat was being helped up into the light of the lan­tern. Near that boat, alongside the wharf, but more inshore, something else rode gently on the water. ... The Saint stiffened slowly, straining his eyes, with a kind of delirious ecstasy stealing through him. He was not quite sure—not quite— and it seemed too good to be true. . . . But, while he stared, the man who had got out of the boat, and the man with the lantern, and one other of the three who had come down from the house began to walk slowly towards the cliff path; and the man with the lantern walked on the outside by the edge of the jetty, and the light of the lantern turned speculation into certainty in the matter of the sec­ond craft which was moored by the wharf. It was, by the beard of the Prophet, an indisputable and incontrovertible outboard motorboat....

The Saint drew a long lung-easing breath. . . . Too good to be true, but—"Oh, Baby!" sighed the Saint.

He was even able to ignore, for a short space, the disconcerting fact that this heaven-sent wind­fall coincided in the moment of its manifestation with a remarkably compensating disadvantage. For the third member of the reception committee was squatting on the wharf, talking to the boat's crew; and the other two were escorting the boat's passenger to the cliff stairway; and, at the same time as he perceived the movement of these events, Simon heard the sounds of a small party descend­ing that same cliff stairway towards him.

Then he looked round and saw the lantern of the descending party bobbing down the second flight above him; he could distinguish two figures, one of them tall and the other one much shorter.

Slightly annoying. But not desperate....

Reviewing the ground, he stepped lightly off the path, rounded a shrub, caught the stem of a young sapling, and drew himself silently up into the shadows. And it so happened that the two parties met directly beneath him; and he saw, as he had guessed, that the two who had descended after him were the man Hermann and Sonia Delmar.

The five checked their progress and gathered naturally into a little group, talking in an under­tone. Sonia Delmar was actually outside the group, temporarily ignored. There was no need for her custodian to fear that she might duck out; Simon could see the cords that bound her wrists to­gether behind her back, and the eighteen-inch hob­ble of rope between her ankles.

He was crouching where he was, with one arm locked about the slender trunk of the sapling that supported him precariously on the steep slope. The fingers of his free hand stroked tenderly over the ground, and picked up a tiny pebble; aiming care­fully, he lobbed the stone down.

It struck the girl's hands; but she did not move at once. Then the toe of one shoe kicked restlessly at the gravel under her feet—and if any of the men below had heard the stone fall he would have thought the sound was due to her own movements. The Saint raised his eyes momentarily to the stars above. It was classic. That girl, playing his own game for the first time in her life, so far as he knew, after she'd already walked in under the sha­dow of the axe as coolly as any qualified adventur­er—even with the axe in the act of falling she could watch the subtlest refinements of that game. When any other girl would have been shaking at the knees, thinking hysterically of escape and res­cue, she was calmly and methodically chalking her cue....

And then, quite naturally and deliberately, she glanced round; and the Saint stood up out of the shadows so that he could be plainly seen.

She saw him. Even in that dim light he could make out the eager question in her face, and he knew that she must have seen his smile. He nodded, waved his hand, and pointed out to the waiting ship. Then he smiled again; and he crowded into that smile all that he could bring to it of reckless confidence. And when she smiled back, and nodded in semi-comprehension and utter trust, he could have thrown everything to the winds and leaped down to take her in his arms. But he did not. His right hand and arm went out and upwards in a gay cavalier gesture that matched his smile; and then he sank down again into the dark­ness as Hermann curtly urged her on down the slope and the other three resumed their climb. ...

3

BUT SHE HAD SEEN HIM; she knew that he was there, that there had been no mistake yet, that he had not betrayed her faith, that he was waiting, ready. . . . And that was something to have shown her. ... And, as he dropped on his toes to the emp­ty path, Simon remembered her fine courage, and Roger Conway, and many things. "Oh, glory," thought the Saint, sinking onto a convenient boul­der, his hands on his knees. . . .

He saw her marched along the jetty and lifted down into the boat. Hermann squatted down on his haunches beside the other man who was chat­ting with the crew; the flare of the match which he struck to light his pipe brought up in sharp relief the lean predatory face that the Saint could recall so easily. And Simon waited.

Clearly the boat's crew were delaying for the re­turn of the man they had brought ashore—one of the ship's officers, probably, if not the captain himself. And much seemed now to depend on what had happened to Marius, which in its turn de­pended upon the crown prince's ablutionary pro­gramme. And to the answer to these dependent questions the Saint had still no clue. When Marius came slavering into Saltham with the tale of the desecrated royal toothpaste, no small excitement might have been expected. Therefore the Saint was sure that this had not happened before his own ar­rival on the scene; for, if it had, there would have been a seething cordon of the ungodly around the grounds of the house, and his own modest en­trance would have been a much livelier affair—un­less Marius had banked on what he knew of the Saint's former ignorance of the prince's language. And that was—well, a thin chance. ... Of course, Marius might have arrived while the Saint was do­ing his midnight mountaineering act; but even so, Simon would have expected to hear at least the echoes of some commotion. He estimated that, taken by and large, he and his record combined were an ingredient that might without conceit ex­pect to commotate any brew of blowed-in-the-glass ungodliness, and he would have been very distressed to find that the ungodly had failed to commote as per schedule. Therefore he was blush­ingly inclined to rule out the possibility. . . . But sooner or later the nocturnal tranquillity of that part of the county was bound to be rudely shat­tered, and there were more votes for sooner than later; and the quintessential part of the plot, so far as Simon Templar was concerned, was how soon— with a very wiggly mark after it to indicate impor­tunate interrogation.

But presently, after an age of grim anxiety, he heard voices above him, and slipped discreetly off the path. Two men came down—one of them, ap­parently, the Boche whose dulcet tones had a little earlier been complaining about his enforced in­somnia, for they spoke in German. The Saint lis­tened interestedly for any reference to himself as they came nearer, but there was none. The Boche complained about the steepness of the path, about the darkness, about the food on which he was fed, and about his lack of sleep, and the ship's officer expressed perfunctory sympathy at intervals; they passed on. They, at all events, were unperturbed by anything they had heard up at the house.

Simon watched them saunter down the jetty and shake hands. The officer reentered the boat. A man in the bows pushed it off with a boat-hook. The crew bent to their oars.

In the light of the lanterns held by the men on the jetty Simon could see the girl looking back to­wards the cliff; but she could not have seen him even if he had stood out in the open. And then two of the men on the quay began to trudge back to­wards the cliff path.

Two of them. . . . Simon saw them pass beneath him, and frowned. Then he looked down to the shore again, seeking the third man, and could not find him. The footsteps and voices of the two who climbed grew fainter and fainter, and presently were lost altogether. They had passed over the top of the scarp; and still the third man had not followed.

Simon hesitated, shrugged, and descended again to the path. Whatever the third man was doing, he would have to take his chance. Time was getting short. The ship must have been ready to weigh an­chor as soon as its compulsory passenger was on board; and besides—well, how soon ...?

And then, as he paused there, a very Saintly smile bared Simon's teeth in the darkness. For, if the third man was still lurking about on the shore —so much the better. His companions were gone, and the boat was some distance away . . . and the Saint was an efficient worker. The sounds of a slight scuffle need not be fatal. And the third man, whoever he was, could be used—very profitably and entertainingly used—in conjunction with that providential motorboat....

Simon sped down the path like a flying shadow. As he rounded the last corner a stone dislodged by his foot went clinking over the side of the path and flurried into a bush. He heard a sharp movement at another point beneath him, and went on care­lessly. Then a stocky figure loomed out of the dark directly in front of him.

"Chi va la?" rapped the startled challenge, in the man's own language; and Simon felt that the occasion warranted a demonstration of his own linguistic prowess.

"L'uomo che ha la penna della tua zia," he an­swered solemnly.

His feet grounded on the sand, a yard from the challenger; and, as the man opened his mouth to make some remark which was destined never to be given to the world, the Saint slashed a terrific up­percut into a jaw that was positively asking for it.

"Exit Signor Boloni, the Italian delegate," murmured the Saint complacently; and, stooping swiftly, he hoisted the unconscious man onto his, shoulder and proceeded on his way thus laden.

4

IN A FEW MOMENTS he stood on the jetty beside the motorboat, and there he dumped his burden. Then, like lightning, he stripped himself to the skin.

The Saint possessed a very elegant and extensive wardrobe when he was at home; but, on this occa­sion, its extensiveness was not at his disposal, and the elegance of the excerpt that he was wearing therefore became an important consideration. He was certainly going to get wet; but he saw no good reason why his clothes should get wet with him. Besides, he felt that it would be an advantage to preserve immaculate the outward adornments of his natural beauty: there was no knowing how much more that Gent's Very Natty was going to have to amble through before the dawn, and to have been forced to exchange any breezy badinage with Rayt Marius or Prince Rudolf while looking like a deep-sea diver whose umbrella had come un-gummed at twenty fathoms would have cramped the Saintly style more grievously than any other conceivable circumstance.

Therefore he Saint stripped. His clothes were of the lightest, and he was able to make them all into one compact bundle, which he wrapped in his shirt.

Then he returned his attention to the motorboat. It was moored by two painters; and these he de­tached. A loose narrow floorboard taken from the bottom of the boat he lashed at right angles across the tiller, using strips of the Italian delegate's trousers, carved out with Belle, for the purpose; then, to the ends of this board, he fixed the ropes he had obtained, leaving them trailing in the water behind the boat. Finally, he deposited the Italian delegate himself in the sternsheets, propping him up as best he could with another couple of duck-boards.

The Saint had worked with incredible speed. The boat which carried Sonia Delmar had not reached the side of the ship when Simon took hold of the motorboat's starting handle. With that he was lucky. The engine spluttered into life after a couple of pulls. And so, stark naked, with his bun­dle of clothes on his head and the sleeves of his shirt knotted under his chin to hold the bundle in place, the Saint slid into the water, holding one of his tiller ropes in each hand; and the motorboat swerved out from the jetty and began to pick up speed as Sonia Delmar was lifted onto the gang­way of the waiting ship.

That crazy surf ride remained ever afterward as one of Simon Templar's brightest memories. The motorboat had a turn of speed that he had not an­ticipated; its creaming wake stung his eyes, half blinding him, and strangled his nostrils when he breathed; if he had not had fingers of steel his hold on the ropes by which it towed him would have been broken in the first two minutes. And with those very ropes he had to steer a course at the same time, an accurate course—with the hull of the boat in front of him blacking out most of his field of vision, and so much play on his crude steering apparatus that it was a work of art to do no more than prevent the tiller locking over on one side or the other and thereafter ceasing to function at all. Whereupon he would, presumably, have travelled round in a small circle till the petrol tank dried up....

He found that the only way he could keep con­trol of his direction was by travelling on a series of progressive diagonal tacks: otherwise it was im­possible to keep his objective in view. Even then, the final rush would have to be a straight one. . . . The blinding stammer of the motor was a hellish affair. Long ago the men out on the water must have been asking questions. Probably the din could have been heard up at the house on the cliffs as well; and he wondered what that section of the unrighteous would make of it. ... As he swung over on another tack—he had to do this very gent­ly, for any vertical banking business would have been liable to upset the Italian delegate, and Simon wanted the Italian delegate to stay put—he glimpsed the ship's boat hanging from the falls, clear of the water, and little knots of black figures clustered along the starboard rail. Surely they must be asking questions....

He realized, suddenly, that it was time to at­tempt the last straight dash.

He sighted for it as best he could, rolled all his weight onto one rope for a moment, and then flat­tened out again. Now, if he hit the side of the ship the fishes would do themselves proud on what was left of him. ... But he didn't hit. Far from it. Through a lashing lather of spray, he saw the an­chor-chain flash past him, half a dozen yards away.

Not good enough....

As he went by, he heard the faint shred of a shout from the deck above, and the Saintly smile twitched a trifle grimly at the corners of his mouth. Then the motorboat was speeding out to sea; and again he rolled his weight carefully onto one rope.

The roughness of the ropes was scorching the in­side of his hands. The cords were too thin to be gripped comfortably, and his fingers were numbed and aching with the strain. In spite of his strength, he felt as if his arms were being torn from their sockets; and it seemed centuries since he had drawn a full free breath. . . .

The Saint set his teeth. It had got to be done this next time — he doubted whether he could hang on for a third attempt. Ordinary surf-riding was an­other matter, when you had a good board beneath you to skim the surface of the water; but when you were immersed yourself. . . . Again he sighted, turned the boat, and prayed. . . . And, as he did so, he heard, high and clear above the clamour of the engine, the sharp sound of a shot.

Well, that was inevitable — and that was what the Italian delegate was sitting in the boat for any­way.

"But what about us?" thought the Saint; and, at that moment, he felt the boat quiver against the ropes he held. "Here goes," thought the Saint, and relaxed his tortured hands. The cords whipped out of his grip like live things. Then the anchor-chain seemed to materialize out of space. It leaped murderously at his head; he grabbed desperately, caught, held it. ...

As he hauled himself wearily out of the water, drawing great gulps of air into his bursting lungs, he saw the Italian delegate flop sideways over the tiller. The boat heeled over dizzily; then the Italian tumbled forward into the bilge, and the boat straightened up somehow, gathered itself, and headed roaring out to sea. A second shot cracked out from the deck.

Simon felt as if he had been stretched on the rack; but he dared not rest for more than a few sec­onds. This was his chance, while the attention of everyone on deck was focussed on the flying mo­torboat. Somehow he clambered upwards. If it had been a rope that he had to climb he could never have done it, for there seemed to be no strength left in his arms; but he was able to get his toes into the links of the chain, and only in that way could he manage the ascent. As he went high­er, the bows of the ship cut off the motorboat from his view; but he heard a third shot, and a fourth. ...

Then he was able to reach up and grip a stan­chion. With a supreme effort, he drew himself up until he could get one knee over the side.

No one was looking his way; and, for all his weariness, he made no sound.

As he came over the rail, he saw the motorboat again, scudding towards the rising moon. A figure stood up in the boat, swaying perilously, waving frantic arms. .Then it gripped the tiller, and the boat reeled over on its beam-ends and headed once more towards the ship.

The man must have been shouting; but whatever he shouted was lost in the snarl of the motor. And then, for the fifth time, a gun barked somewhere on the deck; and the Italian delegate clutched at his chest and went limply into the dark sea.

CHAPTER SEVEN

How Sonia Delmar heard a story,

and Alexis Vassiloff was interrupted

SONIA DELMAR heard the shooting as she was hustled across the deck and up an outside com­panion. Before that, she had seen the speeding motorboat and the shape of the man crouched in the stern. The drone of its engine had rattled deaf­eningly across the waters as she was hurried up the gangway; she had heard the perplexed mutterings of her captors, without being able to understand what they said; and she herself, in a different way, had been as puzzled as they were. She had seen the Saint on the cliff path, and had understood from the signs he made that he was not yet proposing to interfere; after a fashion, she had been relieved, for so far she had gained no useful information. But she appreciated that, if he had meant to inter­fere, his chance had been then and there, on the cliff path, when he could have taken by surprise a mere handful of men who would have been addi­tionally hampered by the difficulty of distinguish­ing friend from foe; and she wondered what could have made him elect instead to come so noisily against a whole boatload.

But these questions had no hope of a leisured survey at that moment; they rocketed hazily across the back of her conscience as she stumbled onto the upper deck. The two men in charge of her, at least, placed the mysterious motorboat second in their considerations, whatever their fellows might be doing. There was a quietly efficient discipline about everything that she had seen done that was unlike anything she had expected to find in such a criminal organization as Simon Templar had pic­tured for her. Nor had anything that she had read of the ways of crime prepared her for such an efficiency: the gangs on her native side of the At­lantic, by all reports, were not to be compared with this. Again came that vicious snap of the rifle on the lower deck; but the men who led her took no notice. She tripped over a cleat in the darkness, and one of the men caught her and pulled her roughly back to her balance; then a door was opened, and she barely had a glimpse of the lighted cabin within before she herself was inside it, and she heard the key turned in the lock behind her.

The howl of the motorboat grew steadily louder, and then died down again to a fading moan.

Crack!... Crack!...

The clatter of two more shots came to her ears as she reached an open porthole; and then she could see the boat itself and the swaying figure in the stern. She saw the boat turn and make for the ship again; and then came the last shot....

Slowly she sank onto a couch and closed her eyes. She felt no deep emotion—neither grief, nor terror, nor despair. Those would come afterwards. But at the time the sense of unreality was too powerful for feeling. It seemed incredible that she should be there, on that ship, alone, alive, destined for an unknown fate, with her one hope of salva­tion lost in the smooth waters outside. Quite quiet­ly she sat there. She heard the empty motorboat whine past, close by, for the last time, and hum away towards the shore. Her mind was cold and numb. When she heard a new sound in the night— a noise not unlike that of the motorboat, but more deep-throated and reverberating—she did not move. And when upon that sound was superim­posed the thrum and clutter of steam winch for­ward, she opened her eyes slowly and felt dully surprised that she could see....

Mechanically she took in her prosaic surround­ings.

The cabin in which she sat was large and com­fortably furnished. There were chairs, a table, a desk littered with papers, and one bulkhead com­pletely covered with well-filled bookcases. One end of the cabin was curtained off; and she guessed that there would be a tiny bedroom beyond the curtain, but she did not move to investigate.

Presently she knelt up on the couch and looked up again. The ship was turning, and the dark coast swung lazily into view. Somewhere on the black line of land a tiny light winked intermittently for a while, and vanished. After a pause, the light flick­ered again, more briefly. She knew that it must have been a signal from the house on the cliffs, but she could not read the code. It would not have profited her to know that a question had been asked and answered and felicitations returned; for the answer said that the Saint was dead....

She lay down again, and stared at the ceiling with blind eyes. She did not think. Her brain had ceased to function. She would have liked to weep, to fling herself about in a panic of fear; but though there was the impulse to do both, she knew that neither outlet would have been genuine. That kind of thing was not in her. She could only lie still, in a paralyzing daze of apathy. She lost track of time. It might have been five minutes or fifty before the cabin door opened, and she turned her head to see who had come.

"Good-evening, Miss Delmar."

It was a tall man, weather-beaten of face and trimly bearded, in a smart blue uniform picked out with gold braid. His greeting was perfectly courteous.

"Are you the captain?" she asked; and he nodded.

"But I am not responsible for your present posi­tion," he said. "That is the responsibility of my employer."

"And who's he?"

"I am not at liberty to tell you."

He spoke excellent English; she could only guess at his nationality.

"I suppose," she said, "you know that you're also responsible to the American Government?"

"For you, Miss Delmar? I do not think I shall be charged."

"Also to the British Government—for mur­der."

He shrugged.

"There is no great risk, even of that ac­cusation."

She was silent for a moment. Then she asked, casually: "And what's your racket—ransom?"

"You have not been informed?"

"I have not."

"Good. That was a question I came to ask." He sat down at the desk and I selected a thin cigar from a box which he produced from a drawer. "You have been brought here, frankly, in order that you may be married to a gentleman who is on board—a Mr. Vassiloff. The ceremony will be performed whether you consent or not; and if there should ever be a need to bring forward wit­nesses, we have those who will swear that you consented. I am told that is is necessary for you to marry Mr. Vassiloff—I do not know why."

2

THE NEWS did not startle her. It came as a perfect vindication of the Saint's deductions; but now it had a grim significance that had been lacking before. Yet the sense of unreality that lay at the root of her inertia became by that much greater instead of less. She could not imagine that she was dreaming—not in that bright light, that common­place atmosphere—but still she could not adjust herself to the facts. She had found herself speaking mechanically, as calmly as if she had been sitting in the drawing room of the American Embassy in London, carrying on the game exactly as she had set out to play it, as if nothing had gone amiss. Her conscious mind was stunned and insentient; but some blind, indomitable instinct had emerged from the recesses of her subconscious to take com­mand, so that she amazed whatever logic was left sensible enough within her to be amazed.

"Who is this man Vassiloff?"

"I am not informed. I have hardly spoken to him. He has kept to his cabin ever since he came on board, and he only came out when we were— shooting. He is on the bridge now, waiting to be presented."

"Don't you even know what he looks like?"

"I have scarcely seen him. I can tell you that he is tall, that he wears glasses, that he has a moustache. He may be young or old—perhaps he has a beard—I do not know. When I have seen him he has always had the collar of his coat buttoned over his chin. I assume that he does not wish to be known."

"Do you even know where we're going?"

"We go to Leningrad."

"And then?"

"As far as you are concerned, that is a matter for Mr. Vassiloff. My own employment will be finished."

His manner was impeccably restrained and im­peccably distant. It made her realize the futility of her next question before she asked it.

"Aren't you at all interested in the meaning of what you're doing?"

"I am well paid not to be interested."

"People have been punished for what you're doing. You're very sure that you're going to escape."

"My employer is powerful as well as rich. I am well protected."

She nodded.

"But do you know who I am?"

"I have not been told."

"My father is one of the richest men in America. It's possible that he might be able to do even more for you than your present employer."

"I am not fond of your country, Miss Delmar." He rose, deferential and yet definite, dismissing her suggestion without further speech, as if he found the discussion entirely pointless. "May I tell Mr. Vassiloff that he may present himself?'"

She did not answer; and, with a faintly cynical bow, he passed to the door and went out.

She sat without moving, as he had left her. In those last few moments of conversation her con­sciousness had begun to creep back to life, but not at all in the way she would have expected. She was still unaware of any real emotion; only she became aware of the frantic pounding of her heart as the sole sign of a nervous reaction which she felt in no other way. But a queer fascination had gripped her, born, perhaps, of the utter hopelessness of her plight, a fantastic spell that subordinated every ra­tional reflection to its own grotesque seduction. She was a helpless prisoner on that ship, weapon­less, without a single human soul to stand by her, and every pulse of the rhythmic vibrations that she could feel beneath her was speeding her farther and farther from all hope of rescue; she was to be married with or without her consent to a man she had never seen, and whose very name she had only just heard for the first time; and yet she could feel nothing but an eerie, nightmare curiosity. The hideous bizarreness of the experience had taken her in a paralyzing hold; the stark certainty that everything that the captain had announced would inexorably follow in fact seemed to sharpen and vivify all her senses, while it stupefied all initiative; so that a part of her seemed to be detached and in­finitely aloof, watching with impotent eyes the drama that was being enacted over herself. There was nothing else that she could do; and so, with that strange fatalism wrapping her in an inhuman impassivity she had only that one superbly insane idea—to see the forlorn game through to the bitter end, for what it was worth . . . facing the inevitable finale with frozen eyes. . . .

And, if she thought of anything else, she thought with a whimsical homesickness of a sunny room on a quiet Sunday morning, and the aromatic hiss and crackle of grilling bacon; and she thought she would like a cigarette....

And then the door opened again.

It was not the captain. This man came alone—a man such as the captain had described, with the wide brim of a black velour overshadowing his eyes, and the fur collar of a voluminous coat turned up about his face.

"Good-evening—Sonia.''

She answered quietly, with a soft contempt: "You're Vassiloff, I suppose?"

"Alexis."

"Once," she said, "I had a dog called Alexis. It's a nice name—for a dog."

He laughed, sharply.

"And in a few moments," he said, "you will have a husband of the same name. So are you an­swered."

He pushed a chair across to the couch where she sat, and settled himself, facing her, his hands clasped over his knees. Through his thick spec­tacles a pair of pale blue eyes regarded her fixedly.

"You are beautiful," he remarked presently. "I am glad. It was promised me that you would be beautiful."

When he spoke it was like some weird Oriental chant; his voice rose and fell monotonously with out reference to context, and remained horribly dispassionate. For the first time the girl felt a qualm of panic, that still was not strong enough to shake her bleak inertia.

She cleared her throat.

"And who made this promise?" she inquired calmly.

"Ah, you would like to know!"

"I'm just naturally interested."

"It was an old friend of me." He nodded ruminatively, still staring, like a bearded man­darin. "Yess—I think Sir Isaac Lessing will be sorry to have lost you...."

Then the nodding slowed up and stopped abruptly, and the stare went on.

"You love him—Sir Isaac?"

"Does that matter? I don't see what difference it makes—now."

"It makes a difference."

"The only difference I can see is that Sir Isaac Lessing had a few gentlemanly instincts. For in­stance, he did take the trouble to ask my per­mission before he arranged to marry me."

"Ah!" Vassiloff bent forward. "You think Sir Isaac is a gentleman? Yet he is an enemy of me. This"—he spread out one hand and returned it to his knee—"has been done because he is an enemy."

Sonia shrugged, returning the man's stare coldly. Her composed indifference seemed to in­furiate Vassiloff. He leaned further forward, so that his face was close to hers, and a pale flame glinted over his eyes.

"You are ice, yess? But listen. I will melt you. And first I tell you why I do it."

He put his hand on her shoulder; and she recoiled from the touch; but he took no notice.

"Once," he said, in that crooning voice, "there was a very poor young man in London. He went to ask for work of a rich man. He was starving. He could not see the rich man at his office, so he went to the rich man's house, and there he see him. The rich man strike in his face, like he was dirt. And then, for fear the young man should strike him back, he call his servants, and say, 'Throw him out in the street.' I was that young man. The rich man is Sir Isaac Lessing."

"I should call that one of the most com­mendable things Lessing ever did," said the girl gently.

He ignored her interruption.

"Years go by. I go back to Russia, and there are revolutions. I am with them. I see many rich men die—men like Lessing. Some of them I kill myself. But always I remember Lessing, who strike in my face. I promoted myself—I have power—but always I remember."

Overhead, on the bridge, could be heard the regular pacing of the officer of the watch; but in that brightly lighted cabin Sonia felt as if there was no one but Alexis Vassiloff on the ship. His presence filled her eyes; his sing-song accents filled her ears.

"Lessing makes money with the oil. I, also, make control of the oil. He does not remember me, but still he try to strike in my face—but this time it is in the oil. I, too, try to fight him, but I cannot. There are great ones with him. And then I meet a great one, and he becomes a friend of me, and I tell him my story. And he make the plan. First, he will take you away from Lessing and give you to me. He show me your picture, and I say— yess. That will make Lessing hurt. It is for the strike in the face he once give me. But that is not enough. I must make to ruin Lessing. And my friend make another plan. He say that when he tell Lessing you are with me, Lessing will try to make war. 'Now,' he say, 'I will make Lessing think that when he make war against you he will have all Europe with him; but when the war come he will find all the big countries fight among themselves, and they cannot take notice of the little country Lessing will use to make his war against you.' All this my friend can do, because he is a great one. He is greater than Lessing. He is Rayt Marius. You know him?"

"I've heard of him."

"You have heard of him? Then you know he can do it. Behind him there are other great ones, greater than there are behind Lessing. He show me his plans. He will send out spies, and make the big countries hate each other. Then, when we have take you, he send men to kill someone—the French President, perhaps—and there is the war. It is easy. It is just another Serajevo. But it is enough. And I have my revenge—I, Vassiloff—for the strike in the face. I will have Sir Isaac Lessing crawl to my feet, but I will not be merciful. And our Russia will be great also. The big countries will fight each other, and they will be tired; and when we have finished one little country we will conquer another, and we shall be victorious over all Europe, we of the Revolution...."

The Russian's voice had risen to a higher pitch as he spoke, and the light of madness burned in his eyes.

Sonia watched him, listening, hypnotized. At no time before, even when she had heard and incredulously accepted the Saint's inspired deductions, had she fully grasped the immensity of the plot in which she had been made a pawn. And now she saw it in a blinding flash, and the vision appalled her.

As Vassiloff went on, the hideously solid facts on which his insanity was balanced showed up with greater and greater definition through his raving. It was here—all the machinery of which the Saint had spoken was there, and strains and stresses and counter-actions measured and calculated and balanced, every cog in the hole ghastly engine cut and ground and trued-up ready for Marius to play with as he chose. How the mechanism would be put together did not matter—whether Marius had lied to Vassiloff, or meant to lie to Lessing. The rocks had been drilled in their most vital parts, the charges loaded and tamped in, the fuses laid; the tremendous fact was that the Saint had been right—right in every prophecy, vague only in the merest details. The axe had been laid to the root of the tree....

She saw the conspiracy then as the Saint himself had seen it, months before: intrigue and counter-plot, deception and deception again, and the fiend­ish forces that had been disentombed for this devil's sleight-of-hand. And she saw in imagina­tion the unleashing of those forces—the tapping drums and the blast of bugles, the steady tramp of marching feet, the sonorous drone of the war birds snarling through the sky. Almost she could hear the earth-shaking reverberations of the guns, the crisp clatter of rifle fire; and she saw the swirling mists of gas, and men reeling and stumbling through hell; she had seen and heard these things for a dollar's worth of evening entertainment, in a comfortably upholstered chair. But the men there had been only actors, fighting again the battles of a generation that was already left behind; the men she saw in her vision were of her own age, men she knew....

She hardly heard Vassiloff any more. She was thinking, instead, of that morning. "Have we the right?" Simon Templar had asked. . . . And she saw once again the sickening sway and plunge of the figure in the motorboat. . . . Roger Conway— where had he been? What had happened to him. He should have been somewhere around; but she had not seen him. And if he were not to be counted in it meant that no power on earth could prevent her vision coming true. . . . "That'd mean we'd given Marius the game...."

Slowly, grotesquely, the presence of Alexis Vassiloff drifted in again upon her tempestuous thought.

His voice had sunk back to that eerie crooning note to which it had been tuned before.

"But you—you will not be like the others. You will stand beside me, and we will make a new empire together, you and I. You will like that?"

She started up.

"I'll see you damned first!"

"So you are still cold ....."

His arms went round her, drawing her to him. With her hands still securely bound behind her back she was at his mercy—and she knew what that mercy would be. She kicked at his legs, but he bore her down upon the couch; she felt his hot breath on her face....

'' Let me go—you swine —''

"You are cold, but I will melt you. I will teach you how to be warm—soft—loving. So —"

Savagely she butted her head into his face, but he only laughed. His lips stung her neck, and an uncontrollable shudder went through her. His hands clawed at her dress....

"Are you ready, Mr. Vassiloff?"

The captain spoke suavely from the doorway, and Vassiloff rose unsteadily to his feet.

"Yess," he said thickly. "I am ready."

Then he leered down again at the girl.

"I go to prepare myself," he said. "It is perhaps better that we should be married first. Then we shall not be disturbed...."

3

THE DOOR closed behind him.

Without a flicker of expression, the captain crossed the cabin and sat down at his desk. He drew towards him a large book like a ledger, found a place in it, and left it open in front of him; then, from the box in his drawer, he selected another of his thin cigars, lighted it, and leaned back at his ease. He scarcely spared the girl a glance.

Sonia Delmar waited without speaking. She remembered, then, how often she had seen such situations enacted on the stage and on the screen, how often she had read of them! ...

She found herself trembling; but the physical reaction had no counterpart in her mind. She could not help recalling all the stereotyped jargon that had been splurged upon the subject by a hun­dred energetic parrots. "A fate too horrible to contemplate"—"a thing worse than death." . . . All the heroines she had encountered faced the horror as if they had never heard of it before. She felt that she ought to have experienced the same emotions as they did; but she could not. She could only think of the game that had been thrown away—the splendid gamble that had failed.

At the desk, the captain uncrossed his legs and inhaled again from his cigar.

It seemed to Sonia Delmar that that little cabin was the centre of the world—and the world did not know it. It was hard to believe that in other rooms, all over the world, men and women were gathered together in careless comradeship, talking perhaps, reading perhaps, confident of a thousand to­morrows as tranquil as their yesterdays. She had felt the same when she had read that a criminal was to be executed the next day—that same shat­tering realization that the world was going on unmoved, while one lonely individual waited for dawn and the grim end of the world.. ..

And yet she sat upright and still, staring ahead with unfaltering eyes, buoyed with a bleak and bitter courage that was above reason. In that hour she found within herself a strength that she had not dreamed of, something in her breed that for­bade any sign of fear—that would face death, or worse than death, with scornful lips.

And the door opened and Vassiloff came in.

Anything that he had done to "prepare" himself was not readily visible. He still wore his hat, and his fur collar was muffled even closer about his chin; only his step seemed to have become more alert.

He gave the girl one cold-blooded glance; and then he turned to the captain.

"Let us waste no more time," he said harshly.

The captain stood up.

"I have the witnesses waiting, Mr. Vassiloff. Permit me...."

He went to the door and called two names curtly. There was a murmured answer; and the owners of the names came in—two men in coarse trousers and blue seamen's jerseys, who stood gazing uncomfortably about the cabin while the captain wrote rapidly in the book in front of him. Then he addressed them in a language that the girl could not understand; and, hesitantly, one of the men came forward and took the pen. The other followed suit. Then the captain turned to Vassiloff.

"If you will sign —"

As the Russian scrawled his name the captain spoke a brusque word of dismissal, and the wit­nesses filed out.

"Your wife should also sign," added the captain, turning back to the desk. "Perhaps you will arrange that?''

"I will." Vassiloff put down the pen. "I want to be left alone now—for a little while—with my wife. But I shall require to see you again. Where shall I find you?"

"I shall finish my cigar on the bridge."

"Good. I will call you."

Vassiloff waved his hand in a conclusive gesture; and, with a slightly sardonic bow, the captain accepted his discharge.

The door closed, but Vassiloff did not turn round. He still stood by the desk, with his back to the girl. She heard the snap of a cigarette case, the sizzle of a match; and a cloud of blue smoke wreathed up towards the ceiling. He was playing with her—cat and mouse....

"So," he said softly, "we are married—Sonia."

The girl drew a deep breath. She was shivering, in spite of the warmth of the evening; and she did not want to shiver. She did not want to add that relish to his gloating triumph—to see the sneer of sadistic satisfaction that would flame across his face. She wanted to be what he had called her— ice. ... To save her soul aloof and undefiled, in­finitely aloof and terribly cold....

She said swiftly, breathlessly: "Yes—we're married—if that means anything to you.... But it means nothing to me. Whatever you do to me, you'll never be able to call me yours—never."

He had unbuttoned his coat and flung it back; it billowed away from his wide shoulders, making him loom gigantically under the light.

"Perhaps," he said, "you think you love some­one else."

"I'm sure of it," she said in a low voice.

"Ah! Is it, after all, that you were not being sold to Sir Isaac Lessing for the help he could give your father?"

"Lessing means nothing to me."

"So there is another?"

"Does that matter?"

Another cloud of smoke went up towards the ceiling, "His name?"

She did not answer.

"Is it Roger Conway?" he asked; and anew fear chilled her heart.

"What do you know about him?" she whis­pered.

"Nearly everything, old dear," drawled the Saint; and he turned around, without beard, without glasses, smiling at her across the cabin, a mirthful miracle with the inevitable cigarette slanted rakishly between laughing lips.

CHAPTER EIGHT

How Simon Templar borrowed a gun—

and thought kindly of lobsters

"SAINT!"

Sonia Delmar spoke the name incredulously, storming the silence and the dream with that swift husky breath. And the silence was broken; but the dream did not break. ...

"Well—how's life, honey?" murmured the dream; but no dream could have miraged that gay, inspiring voice, or the fantastic flourish that went with it.

"Oh, Saint!"

He laughed softly, a sudden lilt of a laugh; and in three strides he was across the cabin, his hands on her shoulders.

"Weren't you expecting me, Sonia?"

"But I saw them shoot you—"

"Me? I'm bullet-proof, lass, and you ought to have known it. Besides, I wasn't the man in the comic canoe. That was an Italian exhibit—a senti­mental skeezicks with tender memories of the girl he left behind him in Sorrento. And I'm afraid his donna is completely mobile now."

She, too, was half laughing, trembling un­ashamedly now that the tense cord of suspense was snapped.

"Set me loose, Saint!"

"Half a sec. Has Vassiloff sung his song yet? "

"Yes—everything."

"And all done by kindness. . . . Sonia, you wonderful kid!"

"Oh, but I'm glad to see you, boy!"

"Are you?" The Saint's smile must have been the gayest thing in Europe. "But my show was easy! I came aboard off the motorboat several minutes before Antonio stopped the bit of lead that was meant for me. I'd got all my clothes with me, as good as new; but when I say that my own personal corpse was damp I don't mean peradven­ture, and I just naturally wandered into the nearest cabin in search of towels. I'd just got dried and dressed, and I was busy putting this beautiful shoe-shine on my chevelure with a pair of gold-mounted hair-brushes that were lying around, when who should beetle in but old Popoffski himself. There followed some small argument about the tenancy of the cabin, but I got half a pillow into our friend's mouth before he could raise real hell. Then I trussed him up with the sash of his own dressing gown; and after that there was nothing for it but to take his place."

Simon's deft fingers were working on the ropes that bound the girl's hands, and she felt the cir­culation prickling back through her numbed wrists.

"I breezed in pretty much on the off-chance. I'd still got the beard I used this morning, and that was good enough for the moment, with Vassiloff's own coat buttoned round my chin and his glasses on my nose; but I couldn't trust to it indefinitely.

The performance had to be speeded up—particu­larly, I had to find you. If Vassiloff hadn't laid his egg I should have had to go back to the cabin and perform a Caesarean operation with a hot iron, or something—otherwise the accident that I'd chosen his cabin for my dressing room might have mucked things badly. When I came in here and saw you and the skipper, I just said the first thing that came into my head, and after that I had to take my cue from him." Simon twitched the last turn of Manila from her wrists and grinned. "And there's the bitter blow, old dear; behold us landed in the matrimonial casserole. What sort of a hus­band d'you think I'll make?"

"Terrible."

"So do I. Now, if it had been Roger—"

"Simon—"

"My name," said the Saint cheerfully. "I know—I owe you an apology for that last bit of cross-examination before the unveiling of the monument, but the chance was too good to miss. The prisoner pleaded guilty under great provoca­tion, and threw himself upon the mercy of the court. Now tell me about Marmaduke."

He sank onto the couch beside her, flicking open his cigarette case. She accepted gratefully; and then, as quietly and composedly as she could, she told him all she had heard.

He was a surprisingly sober listener. She found that the flippant travesty of his real character with which he elected to entertain the world at large was a flimsy thing; and, when he was listening, it fell away altogether. He sat perfectly still, temporarily relaxed but still vivid in repose, alert eyes intent upon her face; the boyish effervescence that was his lighter charm bubbled down into the back­ground, and the tempered metal of the man stood out alone and unmistakable. He only interrupted her at rare intervals—to ask a question that went to the heart of the story like aimed lightning, or to help her to make plain a point that she had worded clumsily. And, as he listened, the flesh and blood of the plot built itself up with a frightful solidity upon the skeleton that was already in his mind. . . .

It must have taken her a quarter of an hour to give him all the information she had gained; and at the end of that time the clear vision in the Saint's brain was as stark and monstrous as the thing he had imagined so few months ago—only a little while before he had thought that the ghost was laid for ever. All that she told him fitted faultlessly upon the bones of previous knowledge and specu­lation that were already his; and he saw the thing whole and real, the incarnate nightmare of a mega­lomaniac's delirium, gigantic, bloated, hideous, crawling over the map of Europe in a foul sup­puration of greed and jealousy, writhing slimy ten­tacles into serene and precious places. The ghost was not laid. It was creeping again out of the poi­soned shadows where it had grown up,.made stronger and more savage yet by its first frustra­tion, preparing now to fashion for itself a fetid physical habitation in the bodies of a holocaust of men. . . .

And the Saint was still silent, absorbed in his vi­sion, for a while after Sonia Delmar had finished speaking; and even she could not see all that was in his mind.

Presently she said: "Didn't I find out enough, Simon? You see, I believed you'd been killed—I thought it was all over."

"Enough?" repeated the Saint softly, and there was a queer light in the steady sea-blue eyes. "Enough? . . . You've done more than enough— more than I ever dreamed you'd do. And as for thinking it was all over—well, lass, I heard you. I've never heard anything like it in my life. It was plain hell keeping up the act. But—I was just fasci­nated. And I've apologized. . . . But the game goes on, Sonia!"

2

THE SAINT STARED at the carpet, and for a time there was no movement at all in the cabin; even the cigarette that lay forgotten between his fingers was held so still that the trail of smoke from it went up as straight as a pencilled line. The low-pitched thrum of the ship's engines and the chatter of stirred waters about the hull formed no more than an undercurrent of sound that scarcely disturbed the silence.

Much later, it seemed, Sonia Delmar said: "What happened to Roger?"

"I sent him back to London to find Lessing," answered the Saint. "It came to me when I was on my way out here—I didn't see why Marius should just break even after we'd got you back, and bring­ing Ike on the scene seemed a first-class way of stirring up the stew. And the more I think of that scheme, after what you've told me, old girl, the sounder it looks to me. . . . Only, it doesn't seem big enough now—not for the kettle of hash we've dipped our ladles into."

"How long ago was that?"

"Shortly before I heaved that rock at you." Si­mon glanced at his watch. "By my reckoning, if we turned this ship round about now, we should all fetch up at Saltham around the same time. I guess that's the next move...."

"To hold up the ship?"

The Saint grinned; and in an instant the old mocking mischief was back in his eyes. She knew at once that if the business of holding up the ship single-handed had been thrust upon him, he would have duly set out to hold up the ship single-hand­ed—and enjoyed it. But he shook his head.

"I don't think it'll be necessary. I shall just wan­der up on to the bridge and make a few sugges­tions. There'll only be the captain and the helms­man and one officer to deal with; and the watch has just been changed, so no one will be butting in for hours. There's no reason why the rest of the crew should wake up to what's happening until we're home."

"And when they do wake up?''

"There will probably be a certain amount of bother," said the Saint happily. "Nevertheless, we shall endeavor to retire with dignity.''

"And go ashore?"

"Exactly."

"And then?"

"And then—let us pray. I've no more idea than you have what other cards Rayt Marius is wearing, up his sleeve, but from what I know of him I'd say he was certain to be carrying a spare deck. We've got to check up on that. Afterwards—"

The girl nodded quietly.

"I remember what you said last night."

"R.I.P." The Saint laughed softly. "I guess that's all there is to it.... And then the last chap­ter, with you marrying Ike, and Roger and I start­ing a stamp collection. But who says nothing ever happens?"

And the lazy voice, the cool and flippant turning of the words, scarcely masked the sterner challenge of those reckless eyes.

And then the Saint rose to his feet, and the butt of his cigarette went soaring through the open porthole; and, as he turned, she found that the set of the fine fighting lips had changed again com­pletely. But that was just pure Saint. His normal temperament held every mood at once: he could leap from grave to gay without pause or parley, as the fancy moved him, and do it in such a way that neither seemed inconsequent. And now Sonia Delmar looked at him and found in his changed face an answer to the question that she had no need to ask; and he saw that she understood.

"But all that's a long way off yet, isn't it?" he murmured. "So I think we'll go right ahead and stick up this hoary hooker for a start. Shall we?"

"We?"

"I don't see why you shouldn't come along, old dear. It isn't every day of your life that you have the chance to shove your oar into a spot of twenty-five carat piracy. Burn it!—what's the use of being raised respectable if you never go out for the frantic fun of bucking plumb off the rails and step­ping off the high springboard into the dizzy depths of turpitude?"